WEBVTT 00:00:01.120 --> 00:00:01.600 Welcome. 00:00:01.920 --> 00:00:03.920 Wait, can we do the tagline first? 00:00:04.160 --> 00:00:04.480 Sure. 00:00:04.720 --> 00:00:05.600 Actual evolutionary. 00:00:05.840 --> 00:00:08.240 No, it doesn't make any sense to start with a tagline. 00:00:09.200 --> 00:00:11.280 Yeah, I think you'd start with the title. 00:00:11.440 --> 00:00:14.720 And then maybe title uh name. 00:00:15.120 --> 00:00:16.560 So what's the APA format? 00:00:16.720 --> 00:00:19.840 It's uh d author uh I think it's title names. 00:00:20.560 --> 00:00:22.800 Well, running head, but what is a running head? 00:00:22.880 --> 00:00:24.320 What what nonsense is that? 00:00:24.560 --> 00:00:27.010 And why are that is really ridiculous? 00:00:27.490 --> 00:00:29.090 I don't like the image of a running head. 00:00:29.170 --> 00:00:31.410 It's it's very grotesque and macabre. 00:00:31.490 --> 00:00:31.730 Uh yeah. 00:00:31.970 --> 00:00:32.450 We should bring class. 00:00:32.930 --> 00:00:35.570 Imagine like a head with like two two little legs. 00:00:36.370 --> 00:00:37.570 Yeah, it's really gross. 00:00:37.730 --> 00:00:38.050 Okay. 00:00:38.210 --> 00:00:41.330 Um not anyway. 00:00:41.490 --> 00:00:43.730 Um I'm David Petrozowski. 00:00:43.890 --> 00:00:49.890 This I'm talking to David Pinsoff, and we're here because we are on 00:00:49.890 --> 00:00:53.010 a podcast that you apparently clicked on. 00:00:53.500 --> 00:00:53.820 Yes. 00:00:53.980 --> 00:00:57.740 And that podcast is called Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast. 00:00:58.620 --> 00:01:01.100 Which is sort of redundant because we already know it's a podcast. 00:01:01.740 --> 00:01:02.060 That's true. 00:01:02.140 --> 00:01:03.580 We should just call it Evolutionary Psychology. 00:01:03.820 --> 00:01:07.900 Well, we don't want to claim to be like all of evolutionary psychology. 00:01:08.300 --> 00:01:13.420 Here's the thing you if you don't know that it's a podcast, then you just saw evolutionary 00:01:13.420 --> 00:01:17.500 psychology window it's a podcast, but once you're already in a podcast venue, it's 00:01:17.500 --> 00:01:18.140 redundant. 00:01:18.220 --> 00:01:20.540 There's no optimal way, there's no optimization. 00:01:20.990 --> 00:01:23.310 Well, I think we hit it right by putting it in parentheses. 00:01:23.630 --> 00:01:24.190 Oh that's true. 00:01:24.350 --> 00:01:26.990 Yes, we did demote it by putting it in parentheses. 00:01:27.150 --> 00:01:27.310 Okay. 00:01:27.470 --> 00:01:27.550 Yeah. 00:01:27.630 --> 00:01:28.910 So it's not yeah. 00:01:29.390 --> 00:01:30.670 The demotion was correct. 00:01:30.910 --> 00:01:32.030 Yeah, we made the right choice there. 00:01:32.110 --> 00:01:32.270 Okay. 00:01:32.350 --> 00:01:36.270 Uh anyway, hopefully you made the right choice by listening to this and uh continue 00:01:36.270 --> 00:01:36.590 listening. 00:01:36.750 --> 00:01:37.950 Enjoy the music. 00:01:51.600 --> 00:01:54.240 Today we have Leo Fettucci. 00:01:54.480 --> 00:01:58.640 David Leo is in the enviable place of living in France. 00:01:58.880 --> 00:01:59.120 Yes. 00:01:59.440 --> 00:02:00.320 Living in France. 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:01.360 Where is he? 00:02:01.840 --> 00:02:07.840 Uh he is at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, one of the uh best places to 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:10.160 do evolutionary social science, in my opinion. 00:02:10.320 --> 00:02:15.910 Uh the people in in France who are doing evolutionary social science are just uh uh blowing 00:02:15.910 --> 00:02:16.150 me away. 00:02:16.310 --> 00:02:21.110 So we we recently had Magnifique très magnifique, uh we had Hugo Mercier on, he was 00:02:21.110 --> 00:02:23.110 awesome, and we have uh Leo Fettucci. 00:02:23.430 --> 00:02:27.190 Uh and he is um a up-and-coming young scholar. 00:02:27.270 --> 00:02:29.830 I believe he's the youngest person we've had on on the podcast thus far. 00:02:30.710 --> 00:02:31.430 First postdoc, yep. 00:02:31.590 --> 00:02:32.710 First postdoctoral researcher. 00:02:32.870 --> 00:02:38.390 He's just doing really fascinating stuff on uh morality, cooperation, uh the 00:02:38.390 --> 00:02:44.060 psychology of self-control and delayed gratification, and and why we might moralize that, 00:02:44.140 --> 00:02:50.060 like why it's seen as virtuous to delay gratification and temptation and exhibit 00:02:50.060 --> 00:02:50.780 temperance. 00:02:51.100 --> 00:02:52.300 Really fascinating stuff. 00:02:52.460 --> 00:02:54.300 We get into all of that and more. 00:02:54.380 --> 00:02:55.500 It was a really fun conversation. 00:02:55.740 --> 00:02:59.660 Yeah, I've always been curious why people care about all these things that we care about. 00:02:59.740 --> 00:03:02.860 And if you're curious too, then this might be an episode for you. 00:03:03.170 --> 00:03:03.650 Absolutely. 00:03:03.730 --> 00:03:07.730 And I have a hard time delaying gratification when it comes to French cuisine. 00:03:07.810 --> 00:03:13.810 I I stuff my face with fine cheeses and uh well while you're while you're while 00:03:13.810 --> 00:03:18.530 you're while you've got that mental image let's not delay your gratification of listening 00:03:18.530 --> 00:03:20.290 to this episode and let's get going. 00:03:20.770 --> 00:03:21.490 Enjoy. 00:03:27.330 --> 00:03:29.490 David would you like to do the honors? 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:30.320 Yes. 00:03:30.480 --> 00:03:32.240 Hello, Leo Fettucci. 00:03:32.320 --> 00:03:33.440 It is great to see you. 00:03:33.600 --> 00:03:35.120 Uh, we're really excited to talk to you. 00:03:35.440 --> 00:03:35.920 Hello. 00:03:36.080 --> 00:03:36.560 Thank you. 00:03:37.600 --> 00:03:42.720 So you are at, I think, one of the greatest places to study evolutionary social science. 00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:44.560 And where is that, uh Leo? 00:03:45.440 --> 00:03:50.080 Oh, I mean, that's nice actually for the uh for the institute and the department. 00:03:50.160 --> 00:03:52.800 So it's the Institute for Advanced Studies in Toulouse. 00:03:52.880 --> 00:03:57.730 It's kind of a weird uh department or institute where there are many, many different uh 00:03:57.730 --> 00:04:01.970 disciplines uh brought together, often in an evolutionary perspective. 00:04:02.050 --> 00:04:06.610 So there are anthropologists, psychologists, evolutionary biologists, but also uh people 00:04:06.610 --> 00:04:10.850 who are not that much actually in an evolutionary perspective, uh like economists and 00:04:10.850 --> 00:04:11.970 political scientists. 00:04:12.210 --> 00:04:17.780 And it's basically the goal is to break down discipline boundaries into a 00:04:17.780 --> 00:04:20.580 unified science of human behavior, blah blah blah. 00:04:21.140 --> 00:04:27.060 So of course this is close to what we try to do and I think you guys are trying to do 00:04:27.060 --> 00:04:27.460 too. 00:04:27.700 --> 00:04:28.980 So yeah it's it's quite cool. 00:04:29.300 --> 00:04:30.980 Yeah it sounds weird in a good way. 00:04:31.220 --> 00:04:36.180 Weird in a interdisciplinary some of the most cutting edge stuff in evolutionary psychology 00:04:36.180 --> 00:04:38.180 that I'm personally most excited about. 00:04:38.740 --> 00:04:41.860 I uh you know I I'm a fan of French food. 00:04:41.940 --> 00:04:44.770 I think it's better than um uh American food. 00:04:44.850 --> 00:04:46.290 I'm a fan of French music. 00:04:46.450 --> 00:04:50.210 Uh I th I I find it better than American music, and I I think the same is true of 00:04:50.210 --> 00:04:51.570 evolutionary psychology. 00:04:55.810 --> 00:04:57.970 I don't think so for evolutionary psychology. 00:04:58.210 --> 00:04:59.090 But yeah, thank you. 00:04:59.570 --> 00:05:03.250 Uh the um uh I don't even know what I was gonna say. 00:05:03.330 --> 00:05:08.860 Something about Freedom Prize, but I'll just exactly uh that might be a good uh segue 00:05:08.940 --> 00:05:11.660 actually into a question for you. 00:05:11.900 --> 00:05:17.900 So uh speaking of freedom fries or French fries, uh if I just uncontrollably 00:05:17.900 --> 00:05:23.740 just guzzle down a huge plate of French fries, you might make certain inferences about my 00:05:23.740 --> 00:05:28.460 character, my even my moral character, how trustworthy I am, you know, whether I'm a good 00:05:28.460 --> 00:05:28.780 person. 00:05:28.940 --> 00:05:30.860 That's kind of a weird inference to make. 00:05:31.100 --> 00:05:34.460 What what's the connection between, you know, guzzling down French fries 00:05:37.390 --> 00:05:39.230 So what's what do you think is going on there? 00:05:39.710 --> 00:05:41.390 Okay, yeah, so I see where you're going. 00:05:41.710 --> 00:05:44.110 So it's related to uh yeah. 00:05:44.350 --> 00:05:49.870 Um it's related to a question that has puzzled me, but for a more general question, which 00:05:49.870 --> 00:05:53.790 is about the cognitive architecture and adaptive function of moral judgment in general, but 00:05:53.790 --> 00:05:58.990 like in the space of how we explain human moral judgment, there is a a a tiny part of the 00:05:58.990 --> 00:06:03.960 moral domain that is that seems particularly weird because it's it's apparently not related 00:06:03.960 --> 00:06:08.360 to what we straightforwardly associate to like the adaptive function of reciprocal 00:06:08.360 --> 00:06:10.040 cooperation or this kind of stuff. 00:06:10.200 --> 00:06:13.720 And it's this kind of puritan what we've called puritanical moral judgment. 00:06:13.880 --> 00:06:19.000 So it's related to John Haidt's idea about uh purity, uh moral values, etc. 00:06:19.400 --> 00:06:24.680 And one type of moral judgment that people make in this kind of domain is that if you 00:06:24.680 --> 00:06:30.090 indulge too much in pleasure, like uncontrollably indulge in your in your french fries or 00:06:30.170 --> 00:06:35.930 or also drugs or or any kind of behavior that we intuitively uh characterize 00:06:36.010 --> 00:06:38.810 as hedonistic or whatever the false concept. 00:06:39.370 --> 00:06:43.290 In many societies people seem to think that this kind of behavior is is wrong, although 00:06:43.290 --> 00:06:45.210 it's a behavior that is harmless to other people. 00:06:45.290 --> 00:06:49.530 So this is a classical puzzle in moral psychology, as you as you mentioned, it's uh it's 00:06:49.610 --> 00:06:50.730 it's quite puzzling. 00:06:51.020 --> 00:06:56.700 And so, what we've tried to argue is that in fact, so many people argue that uh 00:06:56.860 --> 00:07:02.140 these kinds of moralizations of apparently harmless behavior cannot be explained by regular 00:07:02.140 --> 00:07:06.300 cognitive adaptations for reciprocal cooperation or even cooperation in general. 00:07:06.380 --> 00:07:11.180 Rather, to explain them, you need to mention other adaptive challenges that have explained 00:07:11.180 --> 00:07:13.500 separate uh cognitive adaptations. 00:07:13.690 --> 00:07:19.130 Sometimes people talk about disgust, the idea that uh glutony, for example, in the case you 00:07:19.210 --> 00:07:21.530 mentioned, is like it would would trigger disgust. 00:07:21.610 --> 00:07:26.170 And this is because we would have these feelings of aversion, of disgust, that we find them 00:07:26.170 --> 00:07:27.130 uh immoral. 00:07:27.290 --> 00:07:33.290 And what we try to do is to try to tie back uh this like purity type violation that 00:07:33.290 --> 00:07:39.210 is kind of harmless behavior into the standard uh approach to human moral 00:07:39.210 --> 00:07:39.690 cognition. 00:07:39.850 --> 00:07:45.840 And and the idea is that um In fact, when you indulge too much in bodily pleasure, this 00:07:45.840 --> 00:07:51.600 has a relation to self-control, self-control being the ability to uh resist temptation for 00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:54.240 immediate rewards in favor of long-term goals. 00:07:54.400 --> 00:08:00.000 And it it happens to be so that uh conditional cooperation or 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:04.320 reciprocal cooperation or how however you want to call it is a delay of gratification 00:08:04.320 --> 00:08:08.400 problem because like ultimately at the ultimate evolutionary level, it's literally a 00:08:08.450 --> 00:08:13.650 behavior that requires to resist or to forgo the immediate benefit of cheating. 00:08:13.730 --> 00:08:18.850 Like in the prisoner's dilemma, payoff matrix, really, you cannot make uh cooperation 00:08:18.850 --> 00:08:20.690 evolve if it's only one shot. 00:08:20.770 --> 00:08:23.090 Like in the prison, cheating pays more than cooperative. 00:08:23.170 --> 00:08:27.490 It's only because of the repetition of the game, because of the of the of the long-term 00:08:27.490 --> 00:08:32.290 social interactions or the long-term effects on your reputation that your behavior in the 00:08:32.290 --> 00:08:38.080 prison uh carries, uh, that you can get an evolutionary benefit 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:40.480 back from resisting this temptation of cheating. 00:08:40.560 --> 00:08:46.160 And so, in the same way that cheating uh requires uh delaying gratification, uh 00:08:46.400 --> 00:08:51.920 so because cheating requires delaying gratification, people should have a psychological 00:08:51.920 --> 00:08:57.920 mechanism for uh making inferences or social inferences based on the fact that people who 00:08:57.920 --> 00:09:03.870 are in general more indulging or less self control or less able to um delay 00:09:04.030 --> 00:09:06.750 gratification are less trustworthy cooperation partner. 00:09:07.150 --> 00:09:13.150 Now, I mean maybe maybe I can stop there, but like people often interpret 00:09:13.150 --> 00:09:19.070 the th uh the so my theory of puritanism as being just this, but I don't think in fact we 00:09:19.070 --> 00:09:23.230 don't argue in the paper that it's about uh inference of trustworthiness. 00:09:23.390 --> 00:09:28.750 I think that the so is more more complicated, but um I mean if you want me to get into this 00:09:28.910 --> 00:09:34.740 or happy to so so um yeah let me just see if I can summarize the logic. 00:09:35.140 --> 00:09:35.380 Exactly. 00:09:35.700 --> 00:09:41.460 So um so in order for us to mutually benefit from cooperation, uh 00:09:41.540 --> 00:09:45.220 I have to delay a lot of uh pleasures. 00:09:45.380 --> 00:09:49.140 Say I see a candy bar sticking out of your pocket, I have to resist the impulse to just 00:09:49.140 --> 00:09:49.620 grab it. 00:09:49.790 --> 00:09:53.550 You know, if I'm in a marriage and I see an attractive partner who might be interested, I 00:09:53.550 --> 00:09:59.550 have to delay the or I have to uh suppress the urge to uh flirt with or cheat on on 00:09:59.550 --> 00:10:00.190 my partner. 00:10:00.510 --> 00:10:06.430 Um if uh if I see an opportunity to um to to kill someone or 00:10:06.430 --> 00:10:09.950 to hurt someone you know in the in the in the moment that might immediately benefit me, or 00:10:10.030 --> 00:10:15.180 if I see an opportunity to lie to like get extra stuff, I have to suppress the impulse to 00:10:15.180 --> 00:10:15.660 do that. 00:10:16.060 --> 00:10:20.860 And the reason why I would suppress the impulse in all of those cases is for some long-term 00:10:20.860 --> 00:10:24.620 benefit that would ultimately outweigh the present benefit that I'd take. 00:10:24.780 --> 00:10:28.940 So if I value my marriage, the value of being in a healthy long-term marriage outweighs the 00:10:28.940 --> 00:10:30.940 benefit I'd get from immediately cheating. 00:10:31.260 --> 00:10:36.700 If I see you, the value of our friendship, our long-term friendship, outweighs the benefit 00:10:36.700 --> 00:10:39.420 I'd get from snatching the candy bar out of your pocket. 00:10:40.220 --> 00:10:45.590 You know, the the value of cultivating a reputation as an honest person uh outweighs the 00:10:45.590 --> 00:10:49.030 benefit of lying in the moment to get extra stuff. 00:10:49.190 --> 00:10:53.590 So all of these examples of of cooperation have this common thread where I need to suppress 00:10:53.590 --> 00:10:58.470 the urge to get this immediate benefit in order to get this long term benefit. 00:10:58.630 --> 00:11:02.550 Um is that a fair summary of of the of the of the general idea? 00:11:03.110 --> 00:11:08.300 Yeah, the generality is that is that cooperation is the delay, I mean, the the missing link 00:11:08.540 --> 00:11:13.980 between uh harmless indulgence and reciprocal cooperation is delay of gratification. 00:11:14.140 --> 00:11:17.740 Both kinds of behavior uh imply a delay of gratification. 00:11:17.900 --> 00:11:23.500 Now, I don't think that you can get, and this actually speaks to the more deep nature of 00:11:23.500 --> 00:11:24.940 moral judgment in the human mind. 00:11:25.020 --> 00:11:29.740 I don't think that you can get from the simple idea that people infer uh from your 00:11:29.740 --> 00:11:35.150 indulging behavior that you're a non trustworthy person because you're a uh uh a non self 00:11:35.230 --> 00:11:38.590 controlled person, that the behaviour is immoral. 00:11:38.990 --> 00:11:44.990 Uh because it doesn't explain what people what people in many societies uh uh uh don't 00:11:44.990 --> 00:11:50.990 don't only like um avoid uh glutons on the cooperation market, 00:11:51.390 --> 00:11:53.710 they also want them to stop from indulging. 00:11:53.790 --> 00:11:54.430 It's a scene. 00:11:54.750 --> 00:11:59.470 And as anything in many puritanical societies, people want to control it in the sense of 00:11:59.520 --> 00:12:00.720 stopping the behavior itself. 00:12:00.880 --> 00:12:06.880 So that's why in the theory, uh I had this weird part that was originally a weird 00:12:06.880 --> 00:12:10.560 part to me, which is the idea that in fact people believe that there should be a causal 00:12:10.560 --> 00:12:15.760 effect of your indulgence on your own capacity in the future to restrain your impulses. 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:20.320 For example, in many puritanical cultures, what you find is folk psychological beliefs that 00:12:20.400 --> 00:12:25.530 uh if you indulge too much in sex or food or masturbation or drugs, then you will become in 00:12:25.530 --> 00:12:29.290 the future less able to resist these kind of temptations. 00:12:29.610 --> 00:12:34.490 And so because it makes you a more impulsive person, it has a causal impact on your ability 00:12:34.490 --> 00:12:37.130 to honor your pro-social obligations in the future. 00:12:37.290 --> 00:12:42.980 And so just as having a gun in your pocket, you can think it's immoral if it 00:12:43.220 --> 00:12:46.740 increases the probability that you will shoot me, a harmful behavior. 00:12:46.980 --> 00:12:52.100 Then enacting a behavior that's increasing that increases the probability that you will 00:12:52.100 --> 00:12:57.860 cheat, for example, by uh degrading your character, which means making you more 00:12:57.860 --> 00:13:03.060 impulsive, uh, is immoral because it increases the probability of cheating, not because it 00:13:03.060 --> 00:13:07.250 signals uh that you have diagnostic threats of people who cheat. 00:13:07.410 --> 00:13:08.370 Doesn't that make sense? 00:13:08.770 --> 00:13:09.650 Yes, it does make sense. 00:13:09.730 --> 00:13:11.170 So we're we're trying to explain two things. 00:13:11.330 --> 00:13:15.650 You know, one thing is why we might draw inferences about someone if they're gluttonous or 00:13:15.650 --> 00:13:18.930 if they're impulsive or if they are are bad at delaying gratification. 00:13:19.090 --> 00:13:24.210 But that's um a separate question from why we actually in some societies have rules that 00:13:24.210 --> 00:13:28.930 punish people for engaging in self contr uh in you know impulsive behavior. 00:13:29.090 --> 00:13:33.500 So there in in many societies that you know there were you know strong moral rules against 00:13:33.820 --> 00:13:34.620 masturbation. 00:13:34.780 --> 00:13:37.180 Uh I believe gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins. 00:13:37.660 --> 00:13:37.900 Exactly. 00:13:39.100 --> 00:13:43.180 So we're so we're not merely avoiding and distrusting people who display a lack of 00:13:43.180 --> 00:13:47.740 self-control, we're actively punishing them and creating rules and institutions that 00:13:47.740 --> 00:13:48.940 inflict costs on them. 00:13:49.020 --> 00:13:51.500 And that's another thing that needs to be explained. 00:13:51.740 --> 00:13:57.210 And the idea, um uh your idea for explaining that is that we have this folk 00:13:57.290 --> 00:14:03.210 belief that if you um the more you uh indulge in your impulses, indulge in bodily 00:14:03.210 --> 00:14:07.690 pleasures, you know, eat the French fries, masturbate, uh, etc. 00:14:07.930 --> 00:14:12.650 etc., the more likely you are to defect in cooperative interactions, the more likely you 00:14:12.650 --> 00:14:16.570 are to cheat on a spouse, to cheat in a deal, etc., etc. 00:14:16.890 --> 00:14:17.690 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:14:17.850 --> 00:14:18.170 Exactly. 00:14:18.330 --> 00:14:18.570 Exactly. 00:14:19.130 --> 00:14:25.020 Uh can I can and and so I wanna poke on the the 00:14:25.020 --> 00:14:27.820 folk belief thing to make sure I understand. 00:14:27.980 --> 00:14:33.980 Um so my understanding of sort of uh the best adaptationist 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 00:14:39.660 --> 00:14:42.710 doing this very David Pinsoff Pinsophian. 00:14:42.790 --> 00:14:43.510 Is that the adjective? 00:14:43.670 --> 00:14:44.310 Pinsofian. 00:14:44.470 --> 00:14:45.270 I believe it is the adjective. 00:14:45.350 --> 00:14:45.430 Yes. 00:14:45.670 --> 00:14:46.150 I want to make it. 00:14:46.710 --> 00:14:47.830 Let's make Pinsafian a thing. 00:14:48.070 --> 00:14:48.470 All right, great. 00:14:48.630 --> 00:14:49.030 I like it. 00:14:49.110 --> 00:14:49.910 It sounds really nice. 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 00:14:55.670 --> 00:15:01.430 background that are sort of looking around and saying, um, I want to enforce norms 00:15:01.430 --> 00:15:06.880 that are beneficial to me, and that sort of carve up the world or produce externalities 00:15:06.880 --> 00:15:07.920 that benefit me. 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 00:15:13.280 --> 00:15:15.120 driving, which I personally do. 00:15:15.280 --> 00:15:21.200 Um, and everything that sort of is a habit of people that leads to walking 00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:23.200 or riding their bike, I'm like, that's awesome. 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 00:15:28.720 --> 00:15:31.130 food restaurants, I'm like, these are morally bad. 00:15:31.210 --> 00:15:32.970 I'm like outraged about that, right? 00:15:33.050 --> 00:15:35.050 I have like this mild thing going on in my head all the time. 00:15:35.210 --> 00:15:35.610 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:15:36.650 --> 00:15:42.330 And so my question is, is that theory the the is is what 00:15:42.330 --> 00:15:48.170 you're proposing uh uh falling within that, but it's solving a more 00:15:48.170 --> 00:15:53.680 specific mystery that are that was existing within this worldview or is what you're saying 00:15:53.680 --> 00:15:54.960 different than this worldview? 00:15:55.040 --> 00:15:55.360 Yeah. 00:15:55.920 --> 00:15:56.560 It's different. 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 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 00:16:07.680 --> 00:16:09.520 No anybody from Santa Barbara will have discussion. 00:16:09.760 --> 00:16:14.000 Okay, yes the sophisticated French revolutionary psychologist compared to the Santa 00:16:14.080 --> 00:16:14.480 Barbarians. 00:16:14.560 --> 00:16:14.640 Yes. 00:16:14.880 --> 00:16:15.360 Yes exactly. 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 00:16:20.350 --> 00:16:24.910 conversation between the the French the French and the great and the Santa. 00:16:25.950 --> 00:16:27.310 Yeah, so let me yeah, I want to understand. 00:16:27.390 --> 00:16:28.830 So yeah, civilizes. 00:16:29.630 --> 00:16:31.790 No no no no no, that's not at all what I wanted to suggest. 00:16:32.110 --> 00:16:32.910 We're we're just gonna be able to do that. 00:16:33.870 --> 00:16:34.750 Fituchian? 00:16:35.070 --> 00:16:35.870 Fetucian. 00:16:36.430 --> 00:16:38.750 Pituccian's a lovely oh that sounds nice. 00:16:38.830 --> 00:16:38.990 Yeah. 00:16:39.390 --> 00:16:41.310 Petra Zussian, boy, that's horrible. 00:16:41.470 --> 00:16:45.790 Boy, like really Yeah, how how do you put the MJ's name is hor 00:16:58.380 --> 00:16:58.700 Yeah, yeah. 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 00:17:04.380 --> 00:17:07.830 and moral judgments that benefit their own self-interest. 00:17:08.230 --> 00:17:09.910 That seems completely obvious to me. 00:17:09.990 --> 00:17:11.990 I completely I'm completely on board with that. 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 00:17:18.950 --> 00:17:24.630 self-interestedly like principles, but rather like the cognitive logic of moral judgment in 00:17:24.630 --> 00:17:25.190 the human mind. 00:17:25.270 --> 00:17:29.590 So why is it that people think that some behavior are morally wrong? 00:17:29.830 --> 00:17:35.660 Sometimes, I completely agree, they will uh say or even think that 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 00:17:41.020 --> 00:17:43.500 wrong are stuff that violate their own interest. 00:17:44.060 --> 00:17:49.820 But um uh so what we think 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 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 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 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 00:18:10.830 --> 00:18:15.070 everyone did it on rough approximation, then everyone would be worse off. 00:18:15.310 --> 00:18:18.270 This is basically the principle of collective action and reciprocal cooperation. 00:18:18.440 --> 00:18:20.920 So the idea is more that we have a social contract. 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 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 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 00:18:37.720 --> 00:18:41.770 resist temptations, uh then we would all be worse off. 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 00:18:47.130 --> 00:18:52.010 impulses because like this is the necessary condition for us to have an orderly, peaceful 00:18:52.010 --> 00:18:53.130 society or whatever. 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 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 00:19:05.050 --> 00:19:10.900 for people to benefit of the very fact of saying that something is morally 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 00:19:15.220 --> 00:19:16.180 own sinf interest. 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 00:19:21.540 --> 00:19:24.740 and I'm threatening you has to be some additional benefit. 00:19:24.820 --> 00:19:26.100 Otherwise people wouldn't use it. 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 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 00:19:36.770 --> 00:19:37.650 mind of the receiver. 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, 00:19:43.250 --> 00:19:44.690 otherwise the signal is not listened. 00:19:45.090 --> 00:19:51.010 So for me to benefit from the very fact of strategically manipulating people by saying 00:19:51.010 --> 00:19:56.240 what you're doing is morally wrong, it has to tap at least sometime into a 00:19:56.480 --> 00:20:02.400 cognitive system that interprets this message as actually what you're doing is violating 00:20:02.400 --> 00:20:03.120 the public good. 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 00:20:07.840 --> 00:20:09.280 wrong that will damage your reputation. 00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:17.710 So what you're doing is violating mutual benefits instead of just my own interest. 00:20:17.790 --> 00:20:21.950 Because people have already psychological adaptation for like bargaining for self-interest. 00:20:22.350 --> 00:20:27.070 Why uh they they would need a new type of mental representation that is moral 00:20:27.070 --> 00:20:27.630 representation. 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. 00:20:33.790 --> 00:20:34.350 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:20:34.430 --> 00:20:34.510 Okay. 00:20:34.590 --> 00:20:36.350 So I think let me let me make sure I understand. 00:20:36.510 --> 00:20:42.260 Because so I think I I think what I was articulating assumed what you said explicitly, 00:20:42.340 --> 00:20:43.540 which is always a bad thing. 00:20:43.700 --> 00:20:45.540 So in it's excellent that you said it. 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 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. 00:20:57.860 --> 00:20:58.100 Right. 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 00:21:02.070 --> 00:21:03.990 like that's and then everybody has that. 00:21:04.070 --> 00:21:05.910 And and that actually should be represented. 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 00:21:10.550 --> 00:21:13.110 other person, like maybe David, would go along with, but nobody else. 00:21:13.190 --> 00:21:13.910 Thanks, David. 00:21:14.070 --> 00:21:18.790 Um but then there's others that sort of more and more people might go along. 00:21:18.870 --> 00:21:23.510 And there should be machinery for representing these this triage of sort of how many others 00:21:23.510 --> 00:21:25.030 are likely to go along with it. 00:21:25.190 --> 00:21:30.400 And I think um what you're describing is that the moral system 00:21:31.360 --> 00:21:37.280 has the design of distinguishing between those categories and what we quote unquote 00:21:37.360 --> 00:21:43.360 call as sort of moral things or ideas or suggestions, or when 00:21:43.360 --> 00:21:48.640 I'm motivated out of moral outrage, it's the expression of the calculation 00:21:49.280 --> 00:21:55.030 that it's not only roughly in my interest, according to the mechanisms, But 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 00:22:00.950 --> 00:22:04.070 expressed that they might go along with it too. 00:22:04.310 --> 00:22:05.990 Um that's what you're saying. 00:22:06.470 --> 00:22:08.390 That's a great uh uh point. 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 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 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. 00:22:24.280 --> 00:22:27.560 Sure, yeah, it's to it's to because like we are going into that. 00:22:27.720 --> 00:22:33.400 So um to answer your point, the the the design of the 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. 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 00:22:43.750 --> 00:22:47.750 evolutionary biology of cooperation between like broadly two types of cooperation. 00:22:47.990 --> 00:22:52.230 One is like common interest, mutualism, by product cooperation or whatever, and the other 00:22:52.230 --> 00:22:56.470 is really a reciprocity, conditional cooperation, collective action, whatever. 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 00:23:02.230 --> 00:23:06.630 cooperative behaviour, that is behaviour that benefits another individual, but that is uh 00:23:06.950 --> 00:23:10.520 already in the immediate act in the actor's immediate self-interest. 00:23:10.600 --> 00:23:14.600 So behavior that benefits others, uh, but without a free rider problem. 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 00:23:18.600 --> 00:23:20.040 benefiting others. 00:23:20.200 --> 00:23:26.040 Uh but but this is different from the logic of conditional cooperation or whatever, where 00:23:26.200 --> 00:23:31.240 you I benefit from my cooperative, my own cooperative behavior, only to the extent that it 00:23:31.240 --> 00:23:36.600 triggers in the recipient on or other people a conditional response that benefits me. 00:23:36.810 --> 00:23:40.250 And this is where the free rider problems uh comes in. 00:23:40.490 --> 00:23:45.770 And to us, the Parisians, the 00:23:46.170 --> 00:23:51.770 moral cognition is an adaptation to detect what would be the social contracts, uh, 00:23:52.410 --> 00:23:58.410 these the mutually beneficial social contracts that would all benefit us if we all paid 00:23:58.410 --> 00:24:01.610 the cost, the short-term cost of uh cooperating. 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 00:24:07.200 --> 00:24:08.720 big public good and we can benefit. 00:24:08.800 --> 00:24:10.000 But there is an incentive to cheat. 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 00:24:13.920 --> 00:24:16.720 without paying the cost of cooperating in return. 00:24:16.880 --> 00:24:22.720 Uh, but that is different from just uh uh morally prescribing what is in 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 00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:28.400 interests. 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 00:24:32.720 --> 00:24:33.280 representation. 00:24:33.360 --> 00:24:34.560 You just need we want. 00:24:35.210 --> 00:24:41.210 uh we want uh mechanism uh or we like but not we ought 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 00:24:46.170 --> 00:24:51.450 non-public good there's no uh selection or explanation for a design that has a 00:24:51.450 --> 00:24:57.130 punitive enforcement uh structure and it's precisely because free 00:24:57.130 --> 00:25:02.900 riding is possible that that you're getting this um that you're you're basically 00:25:02.900 --> 00:25:08.740 asking uh people to accept that there will be some cost contingent on them 00:25:08.740 --> 00:25:09.540 not doing it. 00:25:09.700 --> 00:25:15.460 Um, and it's precisely for this second free rider um uh um free 00:25:15.460 --> 00:25:19.540 rider uh sensitive or vulnerable to free riding is the is the correct phrase. 00:25:19.700 --> 00:25:24.900 It's vulnerable to free riding and that explains the design features of morality that 00:25:24.900 --> 00:25:26.340 otherwise are a mystery. 00:25:26.660 --> 00:25:28.340 Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. 00:25:28.470 --> 00:25:34.310 I mean, I think people thank you. 00:25:34.710 --> 00:25:35.990 Okay, cool. 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 00:25:42.230 --> 00:25:44.550 think about it in terms of the game theory of it. 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 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 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 00:25:58.420 --> 00:26:01.780 what is in our interests and doing exactly it's more of a coordination problem. 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 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 00:26:10.100 --> 00:26:10.420 doing. 00:26:10.580 --> 00:26:14.180 It's just that we all we all are better off if we all coordinate. 00:26:14.490 --> 00:26:14.650 Yeah. 00:26:14.810 --> 00:26:14.970 Exactly. 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 00:26:18.650 --> 00:26:19.610 mutually benefit from that. 00:26:19.770 --> 00:26:22.330 That's not moral, it's just a coordination problem, right? 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 00:26:27.930 --> 00:26:33.690 game, where we might all benefit if people uh uh refrain from defecting or free riding. 00:26:33.770 --> 00:26:36.410 And and that's where the moral emotions come in. 00:26:36.650 --> 00:26:37.290 Cool. 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 00:26:43.860 --> 00:26:46.900 uh cooperative potential or one's value as a cooperative partner. 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 00:26:51.220 --> 00:26:55.300 temptations, the more likely I am to cooperate with you in prisoners' dilemmas, the more 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 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 00:27:04.420 --> 00:27:05.220 goods game. 00:27:05.460 --> 00:27:06.420 Yeah, exactly. 00:27:07.010 --> 00:27:07.570 Cool. 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 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 00:27:18.130 --> 00:27:22.210 the future and more likely to defect or free ride in cooperative interactions. 00:27:22.610 --> 00:27:22.930 Okay. 00:27:23.330 --> 00:27:23.570 Cool. 00:27:24.290 --> 00:27:25.010 Yeah, and sorry, yeah. 00:27:25.170 --> 00:27:29.490 Yeah, sorry, just to just to uh uh finish the summary 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 00:27:36.980 --> 00:27:39.940 indulging in bodily pleasures, is itself a public good. 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 00:27:48.500 --> 00:27:53.460 suppress our impulses and delay gratifications, if we all practice that ability uh uh and 00:27:53.460 --> 00:27:58.210 together, then we will all become better at um delaying gratification and we will all 00:27:58.210 --> 00:27:59.250 become better at cooperating. 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 00:28:03.250 --> 00:28:04.130 suppress our yes. 00:28:04.370 --> 00:28:04.610 Exactly. 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. 00:28:08.610 --> 00:28:13.890 You're cheating on other people's efforts to become more disciplined persons uh that will 00:28:13.890 --> 00:28:17.970 make up for a more uh uh efficient cooperative society. 00:28:20.020 --> 00:28:20.260 Okay. 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 00:28:26.180 --> 00:28:30.580 think about the pretty large variation that we see in these kinds of moral norms? 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, 00:28:34.500 --> 00:28:36.820 masturbation has been moralized in many societies. 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 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 00:28:44.370 --> 00:28:48.210 subtle social judgment, but there's no like moral rule against it or anything like that. 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 00:28:53.970 --> 00:28:58.690 know, people doing impulsive things, uh, you know, indulging their bodily pleasures. 00:28:58.850 --> 00:29:02.130 Whereas in other societies they're really puritanical, uh, and they're you know, these 00:29:02.130 --> 00:29:03.330 strong puritanical moral courts. 00:29:03.410 --> 00:29:04.930 So how where do the differences come from? 00:29:05.010 --> 00:29:06.450 Why why is there such strong variation? 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 00:29:10.370 --> 00:29:10.770 everywhere? 00:29:11.320 --> 00:29:13.000 Yeah, no, no, that's a great question. 00:29:13.080 --> 00:29:15.240 Um I don't think I have a definite answer. 00:29:15.400 --> 00:29:21.240 So um uh broadly, this this view of moral 00:29:21.240 --> 00:29:27.080 cognition as just an adaptation for detecting the set of possible uh collective 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 00:29:33.530 --> 00:29:39.290 surely will be super sensitive to context because like the the costs and 00:29:39.290 --> 00:29:43.610 benefits of different behavior and so the collective benefit the collective costs and 00:29:43.610 --> 00:29:47.850 benefits of different behavior will depend on the payoffs on the material payoffs that will 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 00:29:53.290 --> 00:29:58.160 moral judgment will vary a lot across contexts and so it it completely accommodates uh the 00:29:58.160 --> 00:29:59.680 very fact of moral variation. 00:29:59.840 --> 00:30:04.320 Now, as to explaining the logic of moral variation, in particular in the plenary technical 00:30:04.480 --> 00:30:05.040 domain. 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. 00:30:08.640 --> 00:30:12.160 Uh I think we need more data, is um something like this. 00:30:13.280 --> 00:30:19.040 Uh so we like it seems to be the case that these folk 00:30:19.200 --> 00:30:24.370 psychological beliefs themselves, that the more you indulge in pleasure, uh, the more 00:30:24.450 --> 00:30:29.090 addict, the more of an addict you will, an uncontrollable addict you will become. 00:30:29.250 --> 00:30:32.450 Uh seems to decrease in modern societies. 00:30:33.730 --> 00:30:39.250 Possibly because like people are, I mean, we know that with uh with uh economic modernity, 00:30:39.330 --> 00:30:44.210 people are becoming less impulsive, less uh more self-controlled, uh more patient. 00:30:44.290 --> 00:30:46.690 So there's a lot of cross-cultural data on that. 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 00:30:51.320 --> 00:30:57.160 less impulsive, it appears as less and less a collective action that is worth it to 00:30:57.400 --> 00:31:02.360 to restrain ourselves, given that we won't become addict in any in any case. 00:31:02.520 --> 00:31:03.400 You see what I mean? 00:31:03.640 --> 00:31:05.480 Like uh indulge in your French prize. 00:31:05.560 --> 00:31:07.240 I know you will be reliable tomorrow. 00:31:07.400 --> 00:31:08.120 You see what I mean? 00:31:08.280 --> 00:31:10.770 That's why I I interesting. 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 00:31:17.810 --> 00:31:21.490 might be really nervous and uptight about people doing anything that might make them 00:31:21.490 --> 00:31:23.730 vulnerable by making loud noises or whatever. 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 00:31:27.090 --> 00:31:28.850 gonna be as vigilant and we're not gonna care as much. 00:31:29.010 --> 00:31:33.010 So th analogously, if we live in an environment where people have really low self-control 00:31:33.090 --> 00:31:37.240 and it's really threatening to social stability, uh, we're gonna be really uptight about, 00:31:37.320 --> 00:31:38.760 you know, displays of low self control. 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 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 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 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 00:31:55.400 --> 00:31:58.600 self control because we we already know that we have the situation under control. 00:31:58.870 --> 00:32:04.710 Is that basically it's it's a contract that is not mutually beneficial uh 00:32:04.870 --> 00:32:10.870 anymore because the cost I would have to pay by uh refraining from indulgence 00:32:11.030 --> 00:32:16.950 uh is is so it's the same, but uh compared to the or but 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 00:32:22.380 --> 00:32:24.860 the the the cost that we have to pay. 00:32:25.020 --> 00:32:25.900 That would be the idea. 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 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. 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 00:32:41.580 --> 00:32:47.580 prediction, which is that societies in that are lower in self-control moralize low 00:32:47.580 --> 00:32:50.860 self-control more societies that are higher in self-control. 00:32:51.270 --> 00:32:52.870 Yeah, I would love to touch this position. 00:32:52.950 --> 00:32:56.550 I'm looking for ways to I think like descriptively we find it. 00:32:56.630 --> 00:33:02.230 I mean more britannical societies are also uh in general uh societies that are less uh 00:33:02.230 --> 00:33:06.710 economically uh developed and are also poorer, and we know that these societies also have 00:33:06.710 --> 00:33:09.430 lower trust and lower uh patience. 00:33:09.670 --> 00:33:13.680 Uh uh but now everything correlates with everything, you know. 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 00:33:18.720 --> 00:33:24.080 people in my social environment are low in self control, the more I should moralize self 00:33:24.160 --> 00:33:24.240 control. 00:33:24.640 --> 00:33:25.280 So yeah, yeah. 00:33:25.520 --> 00:33:26.960 So it's something I'm yeah, yeah. 00:33:27.120 --> 00:33:29.120 I don't know if people I yeah, no, sorry. 00:33:29.360 --> 00:33:30.400 Oh no, go ahead. 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 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 00:33:39.970 --> 00:33:40.770 psychological beliefs. 00:33:40.850 --> 00:33:46.690 Is it by because they observe uh other people being uh impulsive and also being cheaters? 00:33:47.170 --> 00:33:52.530 Because these correlations seem to exist, but it doesn't seem to be objectively true that 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 00:33:57.730 --> 00:33:58.850 control, apparently. 00:33:59.020 --> 00:34:00.060 Like in the right. 00:34:00.300 --> 00:34:00.700 There doesn't. 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 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. 00:34:08.540 --> 00:34:10.300 As far as I'm aware, the correlation doesn't exist. 00:34:10.540 --> 00:34:11.020 Yeah, exactly. 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. 00:34:16.620 --> 00:34:20.220 It's a placeholder that's very quote unquote more domain general than it looks like. 00:34:20.460 --> 00:34:20.540 Right. 00:34:20.620 --> 00:34:21.580 And it might even be the opposite. 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, 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 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 00:34:32.670 --> 00:34:33.150 other way. 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 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 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 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 00:34:54.560 --> 00:34:58.800 hungry, we're gonna moralize gluttony for obvious reasons, right? 00:34:59.600 --> 00:35:05.600 Um uh and and so like why the self control in that context about 00:35:05.600 --> 00:35:08.320 that thing really matters, it makes complete sense, right? 00:35:08.480 --> 00:35:11.760 Not that it's trivial, it's still, you know, there's software that's required. 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 00:35:17.920 --> 00:35:22.810 that like one account is that like people's self-control is just better. 00:35:23.210 --> 00:35:29.210 But another one is that the norms themselves sort of get selected in a dynamic way. 00:35:29.370 --> 00:35:31.930 So let me just like make the following example. 00:35:32.090 --> 00:35:37.850 Um, which is let's imagine that we're like shipbuilders and we have uh this 00:35:38.010 --> 00:35:42.960 is a Rob Boyd point, like the world is opaque and complicated, and we might have 00:35:42.960 --> 00:35:43.680 superstitions. 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 00:35:48.240 --> 00:35:50.800 it's bad luck, and like the ship will sink. 00:35:51.360 --> 00:35:56.080 And if we're a small group of people, we don't really test that idea. 00:35:56.320 --> 00:35:58.960 And so it's just exists in our world. 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 00:36:05.070 --> 00:36:10.830 interacting with a lot of people, that idea, that sort of folk knowledge of like purple 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 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 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 00:36:23.710 --> 00:36:24.750 of pure random. 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 00:36:30.680 --> 00:36:33.080 linkage and it's violated it. 00:36:33.320 --> 00:36:38.520 And so one other alternative is that, just to like follow the analog, is that 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 00:36:44.760 --> 00:36:47.610 it might just be equivalent to like the purple thing, right? 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 00:36:52.650 --> 00:36:55.930 reason if we were actually starving, you know, it like it makes sense. 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 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, 00:37:04.650 --> 00:37:05.770 quote unquote, right? 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 00:37:11.850 --> 00:37:13.770 self-control actually matter? 00:37:14.140 --> 00:37:19.900 And it feels like a lot of things that people moralize, like every generation, they're 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? 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 00:37:31.340 --> 00:37:36.220 who benefit me, who I can trade with, who are completely fine. 00:37:36.380 --> 00:37:39.580 The world didn't catch into flames, like this feels like a trope. 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 00:37:44.990 --> 00:37:50.590 self-control, it's actually that there's sort of like almost epid epidemiological selection 00:37:50.750 --> 00:37:56.590 on just sort of which which things get moralized simply out of this sort of 00:37:56.590 --> 00:38:00.990 like in a large-scale social world, the ones that don't really count eventually get 00:38:00.990 --> 00:38:01.710 selected out. 00:38:01.790 --> 00:38:06.110 But our evolved psychology is constantly churning out the ones that are thinkable, like 00:38:06.110 --> 00:38:11.480 sex, like food, which really shouldn't matter for a modern technological economy. 00:38:11.880 --> 00:38:12.600 Do you buy that? 00:38:12.680 --> 00:38:14.120 And is that a different account? 00:38:14.280 --> 00:38:15.240 Or what what do you think about it? 00:38:15.560 --> 00:38:15.960 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:38:16.040 --> 00:38:17.320 No, no, it is a different account. 00:38:17.400 --> 00:38:18.200 I mean, it's very interesting. 00:38:18.280 --> 00:38:23.160 I think uh so yeah, so yeah, so there are many things to answer. 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 00:38:28.040 --> 00:38:32.090 psychological belief, I'm thinking of the false psychological beliefs about the effect of 00:38:32.090 --> 00:38:35.290 the behavior on your on your um on your traits. 00:38:35.450 --> 00:38:39.690 That is, if you indulge, you become less self-controlled. 00:38:40.570 --> 00:38:42.810 This seems to be false. 00:38:43.530 --> 00:38:47.210 I mean, at least some things are addictive, right? 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 00:38:51.610 --> 00:38:52.250 drugs you are. 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. 00:38:57.560 --> 00:39:02.040 Um but but the correlation between uh the fact that people believe that there is a 00:39:02.040 --> 00:39:06.200 correlation between the fact that you're more impulsive and the fact that you will cheat 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. 00:39:10.760 --> 00:39:15.000 And people when we present people who indulge, people do uh answer that they they they 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 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 00:39:26.290 --> 00:39:32.210 some stuff like that so uh yeah so 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 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 00:39:42.690 --> 00:39:48.660 become given my behavior so the idea is that have more evidence that this is 00:39:48.660 --> 00:39:51.540 false, maybe in in everyday life. 00:39:51.700 --> 00:39:52.100 Maybe. 00:39:53.220 --> 00:39:54.100 Maybe. 00:39:55.700 --> 00:39:57.540 But it's just you encounter a lot of people. 00:39:57.620 --> 00:40:02.020 I mean, in medieval Christianity, in medieval France, people still do encounter a lot of 00:40:02.020 --> 00:40:02.740 people, right? 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 00:40:09.060 --> 00:40:14.930 than a pure uh taboo like superstition like if i if i go uh 00:40:15.250 --> 00:40:21.010 if i uh wear this pair of of uh of uh of boots then uh something 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 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. 00:40:32.450 --> 00:40:34.530 I don't know that's great that's super fun to think about. 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 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 00:40:46.480 --> 00:40:50.320 purity of the purity domain as it was carved by moral psychology. 00:40:50.480 --> 00:40:51.920 I don't think this this argument does. 00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:56.080 I think it does really just for the puritanical puritanical stuff that is really right 00:40:56.320 --> 00:40:56.800 pleasure. 00:40:56.960 --> 00:40:57.040 Right. 00:40:57.360 --> 00:40:58.720 The fact that pleasure is a problem. 00:40:58.880 --> 00:40:59.040 Yeah. 00:40:59.120 --> 00:41:00.870 Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 00:41:09.270 --> 00:41:09.750 uh norm. 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 00:41:14.790 --> 00:41:18.630 account is completely uh uh uh I see completely uh probable. 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 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 00:41:28.880 --> 00:41:30.640 uh touching that kind of tree. 00:41:30.720 --> 00:41:34.240 And if dramatic consequences happen, including to other people, then it's immoral. 00:41:34.320 --> 00:41:37.680 But you don't need the self-control uh medician to the same thing. 00:41:37.760 --> 00:41:39.600 You need this only if the problem is pleasure. 00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:40.880 Yeah, yeah, that's great. 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 00:41:45.120 --> 00:41:50.190 real time, like even in science, there there can be c confusion or misunderstanding or 00:41:50.190 --> 00:41:54.750 people even arguing past each other because there's lack of our ability to sort of 00:41:54.750 --> 00:41:58.590 coordinate about which slice of reality we're trying to explain. 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. 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 00:42:10.190 --> 00:42:12.190 what the the slice of the pie you're figuring out. 00:42:12.270 --> 00:42:13.230 So thank you very much, Leo. 00:42:13.310 --> 00:42:13.630 Sorry, Dave. 00:42:13.870 --> 00:42:14.430 No, no, thank you. 00:42:14.590 --> 00:42:14.830 Thank you. 00:42:14.990 --> 00:42:15.940 Uh yeah. 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 00:42:22.100 --> 00:42:26.020 of argument that this this all all this puritanical morality, this business about 00:42:26.020 --> 00:42:29.620 self-control and it relating to cooperation, let's just assume for the sake of argument 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 00:42:34.020 --> 00:42:39.940 actually no correlation between um your ability to delay gratification in a food context 00:42:39.940 --> 00:42:44.610 or a masturbation context or whatever, and your your cooperative uh potential, your your 00:42:44.690 --> 00:42:46.450 ability to cooperate in prisoners' dilemmas. 00:42:46.530 --> 00:42:50.530 Let's say that, you know, indulging in bodily pleasures has no effect on your future 00:42:50.530 --> 00:42:52.850 ability to cooperate in social dilemmas. 00:42:53.090 --> 00:42:55.170 Let's just assume that it's all bullshit, right? 00:42:55.490 --> 00:42:59.970 Is your theory compatible with that possibility or does it require that there's some act 00:43:00.130 --> 00:43:01.330 objective truth to it? 00:43:01.730 --> 00:43:03.010 No, that's a great question. 00:43:03.250 --> 00:43:08.720 Uh the theory doesn't need that, but then it's unsatisfactory that people just believe 00:43:08.720 --> 00:43:09.200 bullshit. 00:43:09.360 --> 00:43:14.800 Because as an evolutionary psychologist like you, I like to believe that uh what people 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 00:43:19.440 --> 00:43:25.440 of making huge mistakes, except in in cases that uh are also interesting, which is like 00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:30.770 adaptive misbelief or byproduct of otherwise adaptive mechanisms, superstition being one of 00:43:30.770 --> 00:43:35.490 them, as as as uh as uh as uh Dave uh put forward. 00:43:35.650 --> 00:43:36.930 But yeah, the theory is compatible. 00:43:37.090 --> 00:43:42.690 The theory is compatible with just the theory just states uh when whenever people 00:43:42.690 --> 00:43:48.610 moralize uh harmless body pleasure is because they hold the folk psychological belief 00:43:48.770 --> 00:43:54.580 that this behavior has an indirect uh social cost, uh which is the increased 00:43:54.580 --> 00:44:00.100 probability of cheating that this uh private behavior will have 00:44:00.420 --> 00:44:02.740 by altering your character or whatever. 00:44:02.900 --> 00:44:08.100 Or at least the prototypical cases in human cultural story like the the the seven deadly 00:44:08.100 --> 00:44:10.180 sins, uh yeah. 00:44:10.420 --> 00:44:12.420 Are about are about this kind of bullish. 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 00:44:19.370 --> 00:44:23.450 that the the the ideology of of Puritanism is is totally false. 00:44:23.610 --> 00:44:28.570 Um but there's something about it that that it makes it kind of self-fulfilling. 00:44:28.970 --> 00:44:34.650 Um and that um if I moralize anything that imposes a cost on people, so 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 00:44:40.410 --> 00:44:41.290 month or whatever. 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 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 00:44:48.280 --> 00:44:49.560 long-term cooperation partner. 00:44:49.720 --> 00:44:52.520 And that's really costly, obviously, with withholding food. 00:44:54.040 --> 00:44:59.880 And uh as as a you know, we've created an institution where the only 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 00:45:04.120 --> 00:45:07.960 people who prioritize their uh long-term reputation uh in this community. 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 00:45:11.560 --> 00:45:13.850 long-term reputation in this community. 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 00:45:19.530 --> 00:45:23.210 that automatically become self-sustaining, right? 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 00:45:28.890 --> 00:45:33.930 signal of moral character because it's a costly signal and because it uh it communicates 00:45:33.930 --> 00:45:36.650 the person how much the person values their reputation in that community. 00:45:37.040 --> 00:45:39.200 Yeah, that's a Sosus uh thing. 00:45:39.360 --> 00:45:40.640 I think Sosis had this. 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 00:45:44.640 --> 00:45:48.480 unless you stand out on the rain on the porch for uh for a day. 00:45:48.720 --> 00:45:49.600 David, that's great. 00:45:49.680 --> 00:45:50.000 I love that. 00:45:50.080 --> 00:45:51.760 Yeah, that's a great yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:45:51.840 --> 00:45:54.160 It's really uh yeah, yeah. 00:45:54.400 --> 00:45:56.880 It's really the costly signaling uh alternative. 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 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 00:46:09.010 --> 00:46:12.370 it's more like it could be any cost that you incur. 00:46:12.530 --> 00:46:18.450 It doesn't explain the specific uh uh focus and even obsession, it 00:46:18.450 --> 00:46:20.930 seems, of puritanical cultures with pleasure. 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? 00:46:25.700 --> 00:46:26.740 Pleasure is just a benefit, right? 00:46:26.980 --> 00:46:29.140 I know withholding that benefit is a cost by definition. 00:46:29.380 --> 00:46:29.620 That's true. 00:46:29.940 --> 00:46:31.380 That's true, that's true, that's true, that's true. 00:46:31.620 --> 00:46:32.340 But like, yeah, yeah. 00:46:32.420 --> 00:46:33.300 No, that's true, that's true. 00:46:33.460 --> 00:46:34.180 Yeah, it's good, David. 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 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 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 00:46:50.370 --> 00:46:51.650 short term benefits. 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 00:46:57.650 --> 00:46:58.210 myself. 00:46:58.450 --> 00:47:01.330 And to a discounted degree, I might not want that. 00:47:01.650 --> 00:47:03.410 And I can qualify that in a second. 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 00:47:07.970 --> 00:47:09.570 biased, quote unquote, towards, right? 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 00:47:13.860 --> 00:47:19.220 intrinsic welfare versus then I just want them to be good 00:47:19.220 --> 00:47:21.620 citizens because I'm going to interact with them. 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 00:47:27.620 --> 00:47:32.980 my partner or my child is gluttonous or taking short-term benefits, 00:47:33.780 --> 00:47:35.940 the um versus not. 00:47:36.530 --> 00:47:42.050 Um I wonder if like looking at those sort of closer people, or myself 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. 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, 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? 00:47:59.410 --> 00:48:01.970 So there are social signaling costs. 00:48:02.290 --> 00:48:05.520 Um so it's it's a complicated prediction. 00:48:05.840 --> 00:48:07.040 But I feel like I don't know. 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 00:48:11.360 --> 00:48:17.040 strangers, but we're talking about these like, you know, the the sort of gluttony and 00:48:17.040 --> 00:48:23.040 self the the non-disciplinary, the non-discipline, like non-puritanical, non-stoic 00:48:23.040 --> 00:48:24.160 indulgences? 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 00:48:28.800 --> 00:48:30.320 really close to, quote unquote? 00:48:30.480 --> 00:48:30.640 Yeah. 00:48:30.960 --> 00:48:33.360 And does that tell us something about the design? 00:48:33.770 --> 00:48:34.810 Yeah, that's a good question. 00:48:34.970 --> 00:48:36.650 Honestly, I never thought about that. 00:48:37.850 --> 00:48:39.210 No, it's a good question. 00:48:39.290 --> 00:48:39.930 Yeah. 00:48:42.090 --> 00:48:43.050 I need to digest. 00:48:43.530 --> 00:48:45.690 Yeah, no, it's I mean, because you can see it either way, right? 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 00:48:49.930 --> 00:48:55.930 myself and like my reproductive partner or like my kids to just like take the goods, 00:48:56.010 --> 00:48:57.610 like not disconnect the future. 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 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 00:49:07.740 --> 00:49:12.380 other people like they're like they're they are following the norm. 00:49:12.540 --> 00:49:12.780 Right. 00:49:12.860 --> 00:49:18.860 And so maybe maybe that sort of hypocrisy, quote unquote, maybe maybe there's sort of 00:49:18.860 --> 00:49:19.820 design features for that. 00:49:19.980 --> 00:49:25.890 Because you really um you know uh for you know if we're all starving 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 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 00:49:37.650 --> 00:49:40.050 and my kid's more hungry I'm really upset about that. 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 00:49:45.570 --> 00:49:49.650 thinking about it the again what I want and what I think is wrong. 00:49:52.560 --> 00:49:52.960 Yeah. 00:49:53.200 --> 00:49:57.840 I mean we also talked yeah, we also talked to Daniel about like self-conscious emotions, 00:49:57.920 --> 00:50:00.240 which is sort of the function of them, right? 00:50:00.480 --> 00:50:06.160 Is to sort of is to represent if I do this, how will others 00:50:06.160 --> 00:50:06.880 view this? 00:50:07.200 --> 00:50:11.840 And I think that this is a really the self-conscious emotion adaptations, I think, are 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 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 00:50:22.350 --> 00:50:24.350 of benefits and the machinery is just going? 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 00:50:30.590 --> 00:50:32.830 um that's gonna go in the cost list. 00:50:32.910 --> 00:50:33.070 Yeah. 00:50:33.310 --> 00:50:33.790 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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, 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, 00:50:44.340 --> 00:50:45.620 which is the shame function. 00:50:45.700 --> 00:50:47.860 I mean the shame uh what feeds into shame. 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, 00:50:51.620 --> 00:50:56.980 which is what I think is wrong, even if I do it, uh which feeds guilt. 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 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. 00:51:07.890 --> 00:51:08.610 This is what I mean. 00:51:08.690 --> 00:51:12.770 But it's it's uh uh interest it's important, functionally important and approximately 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 00:51:17.650 --> 00:51:21.970 talk only about this particular type of mental representation that's not my representation 00:51:21.970 --> 00:51:25.890 of my reputational value or whatever, but really what I think is wrong or not, which 00:51:25.890 --> 00:51:30.300 ultimately of course serves the uh the reputational function of being a trust for uh 00:51:30.300 --> 00:51:33.340 cooperative partner but seems to be approximately dissociated. 00:51:33.580 --> 00:51:38.220 Actually I think Daniel has worked has worked uh where where they precisely show that you 00:51:38.220 --> 00:51:43.820 can um not do something wrong but when you get cues that uh people want to 00:51:43.820 --> 00:51:48.300 socially exclude you that you have a low social value or reputational value then shame is 00:51:48.300 --> 00:51:52.220 triggered while you still have hold the belief that you did nothing wrong. 00:51:52.300 --> 00:51:58.170 So it it seems that the two systems the system that uh uh uh computes 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 00:52:03.290 --> 00:52:07.770 not and what is right and wrong, is is cognitively distinct from another system that is 00:52:07.770 --> 00:52:11.290 computing the the the the the benefits that I get from it. 00:52:11.450 --> 00:52:12.410 Does that make sense? 00:52:12.730 --> 00:52:13.130 Yeah yeah. 00:52:13.290 --> 00:52:13.450 Yeah. 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 00:52:19.820 --> 00:52:25.100 know coordination for mutual benefit and cooperating in a prisoner's dilemma or public good 00:52:25.100 --> 00:52:25.420 game. 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 00:52:30.460 --> 00:52:34.940 words improperly and say stupid things and communicate poorly, I might feel shame about 00:52:34.940 --> 00:52:38.460 that because people are going to judge me as a bad conversation partner, right? 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? 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 00:52:46.050 --> 00:52:46.770 anything like that. 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 00:52:51.970 --> 00:52:54.930 that are analogous to the prisoner's dilemma or the public goods game. 00:52:55.090 --> 00:52:59.170 And not just uh reputational damage in general or reputational damage as a coordination 00:52:59.170 --> 00:52:59.410 partner. 00:52:59.490 --> 00:53:02.770 It's in particular reputational damage as a cooperation partner. 00:53:03.570 --> 00:53:06.290 Yeah, and and yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. 00:53:06.500 --> 00:53:07.860 And and yeah, completely. 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 00:53:13.300 --> 00:53:16.500 approach and reparative according to the Exactly. 00:53:16.980 --> 00:53:17.300 Yeah. 00:53:17.540 --> 00:53:17.940 Exactly. 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 00:53:23.380 --> 00:53:28.500 well designed to repair your moral validation, that is to compensate the gap between what 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 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 00:53:40.330 --> 00:53:44.010 deserved in the first place and that you didn't give them in the first place. 00:53:44.250 --> 00:53:46.330 I mean many people disagree with that. 00:53:47.050 --> 00:53:48.170 That's why I'm gonna do that. 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, 00:53:53.050 --> 00:53:54.570 which is punishment. 00:53:54.810 --> 00:54:00.400 Um And uh why why we punish, uh, why we inflict costs on 00:54:00.400 --> 00:54:01.520 wrongdoers. 00:54:01.680 --> 00:54:04.880 Um and what's interesting, you have a very different perspective on this. 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 00:54:08.640 --> 00:54:09.600 to deter. 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 00:54:14.320 --> 00:54:16.000 mistreat my friends again. 00:54:16.240 --> 00:54:18.240 And that seems very intuitive. 00:54:18.400 --> 00:54:21.040 Um uh that that's that's the function of of punishment. 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 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 00:54:32.350 --> 00:54:34.670 know is is popular among you uh Parisians. 00:54:34.830 --> 00:54:37.550 Um so if you could but but only among Parisians. 00:54:37.950 --> 00:54:38.990 Only among Parisians. 00:54:39.550 --> 00:54:41.070 No I'm I'm I'm partial to it as well. 00:54:41.150 --> 00:54:42.990 I think it's it's uh it's insightful. 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 00:54:47.950 --> 00:54:49.550 the more intuitive view of punishment? 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 00:54:54.240 --> 00:54:54.560 now. 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 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 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. 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 00:55:16.880 --> 00:55:18.000 cheaters or whatever? 00:55:18.170 --> 00:55:22.810 because I do believe that there is a very good evolutionary function of deterrence that is 00:55:22.810 --> 00:55:23.370 uh here. 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 00:55:29.290 --> 00:55:32.490 stuff, less of the norm enforcement uh boyed uh view. 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 00:55:37.770 --> 00:55:38.730 uh towards yourself. 00:55:38.810 --> 00:55:40.090 I mean, I'm totally sold. 00:55:40.410 --> 00:55:46.100 Uh Um what again seems puzzling to me is the future of the 00:55:46.100 --> 00:55:51.380 moral judgment of punishment, which is something uh of the moral judgment that is often 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 00:55:57.220 --> 00:55:57.380 not. 00:55:57.460 --> 00:56:00.580 It can be the case that I punish you, but that you don't deserve it. 00:56:00.820 --> 00:56:01.060 Right? 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. 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. 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 00:56:17.010 --> 00:56:17.170 it. 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 00:56:22.530 --> 00:56:28.050 even a very quantitative, fine-grained uh uh intuition because uh if uh you um 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 00:56:34.080 --> 00:56:36.480 apple from me again, but it's morally wrong to do so. 00:56:36.560 --> 00:56:42.240 I don't have the right to punish you disproportionately compared to the compared to the 00:56:42.560 --> 00:56:47.520 to the your what is often called in the punishment literature in moral philosophy but also 00:56:47.520 --> 00:56:49.120 in moral psychology, your just dessert. 00:56:49.280 --> 00:56:54.080 So uh what I'm trying to explain is what is the cognitive grammar and corresponding 00:56:54.080 --> 00:56:57.920 adaptive function of this puzzling mortal representation of just desserts. 00:56:58.000 --> 00:57:02.590 That is the quantity of cost, the precise quantity of cost that moral violators morally 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 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 00:57:14.190 --> 00:57:17.630 law and the philosophy of punishment between like what is often called like the 00:57:17.630 --> 00:57:21.470 consequentialist account of of punishment in moral philosophy according to which the 00:57:21.470 --> 00:57:22.830 function of punishment is to deter. 00:57:23.070 --> 00:57:28.900 So the justification of punishing people is only uh forward looking in the sense of uh 00:57:29.060 --> 00:57:34.820 rooted in the future benefits that this will generate by uh uh uh disincentivizing 00:57:34.820 --> 00:57:40.420 future uh violations versus uh retributivist accounts of uh punishment 00:57:40.580 --> 00:57:44.020 rooted in like the SDs of count and and much later. 00:57:44.180 --> 00:57:49.910 Uh the idea that uh we pun the justification to punishment is just 00:57:49.910 --> 00:57:52.150 to give offenders what they deserve. 00:57:52.310 --> 00:57:56.150 By the very fact that they have committed a moral violation, that they have uh taken 00:57:56.150 --> 00:58:02.150 benefits from other people, uh uh they morally deserve in order to pay their debt, that 00:58:02.150 --> 00:58:06.710 is, to inflict a cost that is proportionate to the cost they have inflicted, and to 00:58:06.780 --> 00:58:11.980 evolutionary psychologists, the and what what we find in the social psychology literature 00:58:11.980 --> 00:58:13.740 is that people are more intuitive retributivists. 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 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 00:58:24.540 --> 00:58:29.340 immoral to go too far in punishment compared to the violation, etc. 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 00:58:34.220 --> 00:58:35.420 deterrenced way. 00:58:35.690 --> 00:58:41.210 So this is a puzzle for an evolutionary psychologist because the form doesn't seem to 00:58:41.210 --> 00:58:42.010 follow the function. 00:58:42.250 --> 00:58:46.650 The function of punishment in all of the evolutionary social sciences deterrence. 00:58:46.730 --> 00:58:52.730 And yet the cognitive design doesn't seem to be sensitive to deterrence relevant cues, or 00:58:52.730 --> 00:58:54.170 it is, but not completely. 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 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, 00:59:05.980 --> 00:59:10.300 like in the same very same way that uh we think about distributive justice, punishment is 00:59:10.300 --> 00:59:11.500 about retributive justice. 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 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 00:59:21.340 --> 00:59:25.340 our collective action by giving you more benefits and restoring justice because you deserve 00:59:25.340 --> 00:59:25.580 more. 00:59:25.740 --> 00:59:29.660 So, all these features, these precise cognitive features of the moral psychology of 00:59:29.750 --> 00:59:33.510 punishment don't seem to straightforwardly follow from the uh standard evolutionary 00:59:33.590 --> 00:59:33.990 rationals. 00:59:34.070 --> 00:59:35.830 And so that's the puzzle I'm trying to solve. 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 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 00:59:45.350 --> 00:59:49.270 generally think there is a puzzle in the moral psychology of punishment that has not been 00:59:49.430 --> 00:59:52.070 addressed by the evolutionary literacy. 00:59:52.300 --> 00:59:52.540 Yeah. 00:59:52.620 --> 00:59:54.380 That's so you want to yeah. 00:59:54.460 --> 00:59:55.020 Sorry, go ahead. 00:59:55.180 --> 00:59:55.580 Oh no, yeah. 00:59:55.660 --> 00:59:55.900 So go. 00:59:56.140 --> 00:59:56.220 Yeah. 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 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 01:00:06.940 --> 01:00:09.420 function and looking at this phenomenon in the world. 01:00:09.500 --> 01:00:13.500 And you're seeing it's a lovely example of the testability of how making design 01:00:13.500 --> 01:00:14.220 predictions. 01:00:14.390 --> 01:00:20.230 and we have this thing, uh moral um uh this moral um system or the 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 01:00:24.710 --> 01:00:30.550 the design features for um the forward looking uh deterrence and it really seems 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 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 01:00:40.630 --> 01:00:40.870 trying. 01:00:41.110 --> 01:00:45.860 Yeah Yeah, exactly. 01:00:45.940 --> 01:00:47.700 So the the basic idea is the following. 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 01:00:52.500 --> 01:00:55.220 then elaborate on it, and it's counterintuitive at the first time. 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 01:01:00.180 --> 01:01:06.100 costs after uh uh cheating behavior is uh a form of compensation to the victim. 01:01:06.260 --> 01:01:09.140 So when uh and I will I will explain that. 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. 01:01:14.710 --> 01:01:18.790 So cheating in general is perceived approximately as uh an injustice. 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 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 01:01:30.390 --> 01:01:31.270 of five euros. 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, 01:01:36.880 --> 01:01:38.880 and uh what I have actually given him. 01:01:39.040 --> 01:01:42.560 And by this very fact, this creates literally a moral debt. 01:01:42.720 --> 01:01:48.080 That is that now for our moral psychology, the five missing euros are literally the debts 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 01:01:53.930 --> 01:01:54.650 moral wrong. 01:01:54.810 --> 01:02:00.730 That is to restore a relationship to a distribution of costs and benefits that ought 01:02:00.810 --> 01:02:05.690 to be in the first place, because it was mutually beneficial, and that wasn't. 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 01:02:12.970 --> 01:02:13.610 victim. 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 01:02:19.780 --> 01:02:20.820 material compensation. 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. 01:02:26.740 --> 01:02:32.340 That is that uh David has got back what he originally deserved in the first place. 01:02:32.420 --> 01:02:36.980 And accordingly, justice institutions across human societies, and we've we've done work 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 01:02:41.810 --> 01:02:46.290 small scale, even small scale politically decentralized societies, compensatory justice is 01:02:46.290 --> 01:02:49.570 absolutely central to the justice systems of human societies. 01:02:49.730 --> 01:02:53.090 A straightforward way to deal with wrongdoing is not punishment, actually, it's 01:02:53.090 --> 01:02:53.970 compensation. 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. 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 01:03:05.490 --> 01:03:11.440 compensation of this uh moral debt, but in another 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 01:03:17.440 --> 01:03:18.960 uh from harming me. 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 01:03:25.120 --> 01:03:28.400 very fact of harming others is uh is ultimately a benefit to you. 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 01:03:34.090 --> 01:03:38.810 very fact, ultimately speaking, David, David is extracting a benefit from me. 01:03:38.970 --> 01:03:44.730 So for David to be compensated of the benefits I owed him in the first 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 01:03:49.850 --> 01:03:54.970 compensate himself by harming me, that is by extracting benefits, uh ultimate benefit, by 01:03:54.970 --> 01:03:56.890 the very simple fact of harming me. 01:03:57.210 --> 01:04:03.060 But and one of these benefits that David can take from me by harming me is 01:04:03.060 --> 01:04:06.740 not only like, for example, cost infliction in a competitive interaction, it can be also 01:04:06.740 --> 01:04:07.540 deterrent. 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 01:04:13.940 --> 01:04:16.100 who can be easily exploited. 01:04:16.340 --> 01:04:22.100 There is a deterrent element to it, but the the quantity of costs that David is 01:04:22.100 --> 01:04:27.540 morally allowed to inflict on me uh after uh my my uh 01:04:27.540 --> 01:04:33.370 cheating uh to him is constrained by this backward looking logic of the 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 01:04:39.290 --> 01:04:41.610 extract back to cost infliction. 01:04:41.770 --> 01:04:42.650 Does that make sense? 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 01:04:48.970 --> 01:04:53.450 there, the quantity of cost that the offender deserves to receive in order for justice to 01:04:53.450 --> 01:04:58.490 be restored is just uh uh um uh 01:05:00.320 --> 01:05:04.000 a benefit extraction through cost infliction that is computed distributively. 01:05:04.160 --> 01:05:08.640 Basically the distributive computation that that are the core of our moral psychology, 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 01:05:12.320 --> 01:05:16.240 you deserve and I deserve, and how much uh so what we owe to each other. 01:05:16.400 --> 01:05:21.030 The cost that we infoke on each other after moralation, after moral violation, are also 01:05:21.030 --> 01:05:22.310 computed distributively. 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 01:05:26.630 --> 01:05:29.670 proportionate to the cost uh I have inflicted on you. 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 01:05:36.390 --> 01:05:41.590 uh from me by through material compensation after a moral violation is proportional to the 01:05:41.590 --> 01:05:43.030 number of pigs I've taken you. 01:05:43.110 --> 01:05:47.080 Otherwise, you're if you're taking too much, you're simply violating mutual benefit or 01:05:47.080 --> 01:05:48.440 justice in the other direction. 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 01:05:54.440 --> 01:05:55.720 more than you deserved. 01:05:55.880 --> 01:05:56.760 Does that make sense? 01:05:56.920 --> 01:05:58.840 It's always a mess to explain. 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 01:06:04.920 --> 01:06:10.690 um and you take um one of my pigs, but you end up taking a hundred 01:06:10.690 --> 01:06:12.290 from all of us, right? 01:06:12.850 --> 01:06:18.610 Now if I took the if I took um that many from you, 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 01:06:25.330 --> 01:06:25.810 from you. 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 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 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 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 01:06:47.920 --> 01:06:52.400 representing that for everyone but but everybody sort of agreed to that so i think the 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 01:06:57.040 --> 01:07:02.530 in me versus um versus that the costs were inflicted on the whole community. 01:07:02.690 --> 01:07:08.370 And I'm not allowed to sort of free ride on the retribution of 01:07:10.130 --> 01:07:11.330 the whole community. 01:07:11.570 --> 01:07:15.330 The fact that that's true even is sort of an acknowledgement of this design feature. 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 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 01:07:25.340 --> 01:07:28.780 screwing him over too, and he's not gonna Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:07:28.860 --> 01:07:29.980 Uh so completely. 01:07:30.380 --> 01:07:36.220 And uh so one way I try to to to put it for 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, 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. 01:07:46.350 --> 01:07:52.350 So uh uh student uh researchers on honor cultures, for example, or or revenge cultures, 01:07:52.430 --> 01:07:57.710 they they say exactly that that uh um uh taking your eye after you took mine 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 01:08:04.590 --> 01:08:08.120 I get from uh uh being CR, basically. 01:08:08.360 --> 01:08:13.000 So having the reputation of someone who is not easily exploited, which is a deterrence 01:08:13.000 --> 01:08:13.400 rationale. 01:08:13.480 --> 01:08:19.320 I do think the deterrence rationale is true that that people have benefited from harming 01:08:19.320 --> 01:08:24.040 others after moral violations, because and the benefit they get is that they get a 01:08:24.040 --> 01:08:26.440 reputational capital of someone who is not easily exploitable. 01:08:26.520 --> 01:08:28.200 Basically, they deter your aggression. 01:08:28.360 --> 01:08:33.190 But the amount of the deterrence benefit that you are allowed to take from me is 01:08:33.190 --> 01:08:36.070 constrained by how much you are allowed to take in the first place. 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 01:08:40.630 --> 01:08:42.230 that uh you you have to. 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 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 01:08:53.750 --> 01:08:56.440 and you kill me, it's too much. 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 01:09:07.960 --> 01:09:12.280 punishment and deterrence from one that is focused on the perpetrator to one that is 01:09:12.280 --> 01:09:13.720 focused on the victim. 01:09:14.040 --> 01:09:14.200 Yes. 01:09:14.280 --> 01:09:20.210 Um so the purpose of punishment um you know is not focused on hurting 01:09:20.210 --> 01:09:25.570 or or deterring the perpetrator so much as making things right for the victim. 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 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. 01:09:36.850 --> 01:09:37.090 Exactly. 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. 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 01:09:49.740 --> 01:09:52.940 likely to harm uh the victim again in the future. 01:09:53.260 --> 01:09:57.180 So to sort of satisfy the the victim's uh anger. 01:09:57.660 --> 01:10:03.470 Um and uh those are two equally uh viable routes to uh uh satisfying 01:10:03.470 --> 01:10:05.710 the victim and making them whole again. 01:10:05.870 --> 01:10:10.510 Um and you could kill two birds with one stone by having the perpetrator uh themselves 01:10:10.510 --> 01:10:11.470 benefit the victim. 01:10:12.110 --> 01:10:15.550 So it not only deters the perpetrator, it also provides benefits to the victim. 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 01:10:20.030 --> 01:10:20.510 transgressions. 01:10:20.590 --> 01:10:23.470 And this is how conflicts are usually restored in small-scale societies. 01:10:23.550 --> 01:10:26.110 This is what your work with uh Manvir Singh. 01:10:26.270 --> 01:10:31.200 Um So it it entails a lot of really interesting 01:10:31.360 --> 01:10:37.280 predictions, which is that the desire to or the morality 01:10:37.280 --> 01:10:42.720 of punishing the victim should very much depend on how the victim feels toward the 01:10:42.720 --> 01:10:43.680 perpetrator. 01:10:43.920 --> 01:10:49.600 If the the victim is really angry uh and vengeful toward the perpetrator, then then 01:10:49.600 --> 01:10:52.080 punishing the perpetrator is going to seem more just. 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 01:10:57.470 --> 01:11:02.270 perpetrator, let's say, then all of a sudden punishing the perpetrator becomes less just 01:11:02.510 --> 01:11:04.910 because it's not actually benefiting the victim in any way. 01:11:05.470 --> 01:11:05.870 Yeah, yeah. 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 01:11:09.870 --> 01:11:14.350 allowed to inflict the punishment such that they personally benefit from deterring the 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 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 01:11:23.920 --> 01:11:24.800 anonymously. 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 01:11:29.920 --> 01:11:30.880 back, right? 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 01:11:36.960 --> 01:11:38.400 lightning in your eye, right? 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? 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 01:11:47.600 --> 01:11:49.470 coming from the victim themselves. 01:11:49.630 --> 01:11:52.590 And so that they are deterred in particular from harming the victim again. 01:11:52.670 --> 01:11:52.750 Yeah. 01:11:52.910 --> 01:11:54.350 As opposed to the general community. 01:11:54.590 --> 01:11:57.150 So it's benefiting the victim in particular. 01:11:57.470 --> 01:11:58.190 That's really interesting. 01:11:58.590 --> 01:11:58.750 Yeah. 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 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. 01:12:07.950 --> 01:12:09.710 No, we we're gonna do it. 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 01:12:13.390 --> 01:12:13.630 said. 01:12:14.100 --> 01:12:20.100 And there there actually are cases where the victim's family uh gets to decide 01:12:20.100 --> 01:12:24.180 whether the the perpetrator uh gets a life in prison sentence or a death sentence. 01:12:24.420 --> 01:12:28.020 In fact, I believe this happened in the case of Matthew Shepard, who was murdered. 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 01:12:33.380 --> 01:12:37.450 actually made the decision that the the perpetrator should get a a life in prison sentence 01:12:37.530 --> 01:12:38.970 as opposed to a death sentence. 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 01:12:44.330 --> 01:12:45.210 opposed to the state. 01:12:45.610 --> 01:12:45.690 Yeah. 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 01:12:51.370 --> 01:12:57.050 it's creating common knowledge that the victim, or in this case, the extended 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 01:13:02.330 --> 01:13:04.090 shots, quote unquote. 01:13:04.650 --> 01:13:05.050 Yes. 01:13:05.290 --> 01:13:05.530 Yes. 01:13:05.680 --> 01:13:06.160 Yeah, exactly. 01:13:09.760 --> 01:13:15.760 Important thing about this is that uh the victim still uh doesn't 01:13:15.760 --> 01:13:17.360 have the right to go too far. 01:13:17.600 --> 01:13:23.440 Moral cognition is computing what is objectively uh the the amount 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. 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 01:13:34.110 --> 01:13:39.550 penalty for someone who just stole their car, we judge that it's an excessive claim. 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 01:13:44.590 --> 01:13:49.630 trying to explain, it's an excessive claim because it's disproportionate to the debt uh 01:13:49.780 --> 01:13:52.580 That is to the quantity of benefit that they were allowed to receive. 01:13:52.740 --> 01:13:53.620 You see what I mean? 01:13:54.180 --> 01:13:57.460 And this and this actually might be the exception that proves the rule, because I like 01:13:57.460 --> 01:13:58.180 that, Leo. 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 01:14:02.420 --> 01:14:08.420 is, for example, when it is excessive, or what counts as excessive depends on 01:14:08.580 --> 01:14:09.380 such community. 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 01:14:13.060 --> 01:14:16.740 quote unquote moral boundary, which is actually the tautological thing. 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 01:14:21.930 --> 01:14:25.850 we're especially not worried about them reciprocating conflict. 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 01:14:31.050 --> 01:14:34.250 members who stole the melon, but an outgroup member, we're allowed to like kill them. 01:14:34.490 --> 01:14:34.970 No limit. 01:14:35.450 --> 01:14:37.450 And everyone is like, that's the moral. 01:14:37.690 --> 01:14:43.690 And so that that shows you that what gets counts counts as moral moralized, or 01:14:43.690 --> 01:14:49.100 what counts as the fair or overgo going too far, is a 01:14:49.100 --> 01:14:55.100 consequence of social agreement about sort of who we are, right? 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? 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 01:15:02.700 --> 01:15:03.740 the next day, the next day. 01:15:03.900 --> 01:15:05.740 But in the out group, no, I don't, right? 01:15:05.820 --> 01:15:07.020 So I don't care about them. 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 01:15:13.100 --> 01:15:18.450 moral circle or sort of what's what seems like an excessive just 01:15:18.450 --> 01:15:24.210 dessert really is in the eye of the beholder and specifically it's with within these 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 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 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 01:15:41.400 --> 01:15:44.760 groups or people we don't care uh we don't see or interact with. 01:15:45.240 --> 01:15:45.720 Completely. 01:15:45.800 --> 01:15:46.040 Yeah. 01:15:46.120 --> 01:15:46.520 Yeah yeah. 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 01:15:52.440 --> 01:15:55.400 uh enacted, there needs to be a moral contract in the first place. 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 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 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. 01:16:09.870 --> 01:16:10.030 yeah. 01:16:10.270 --> 01:16:10.510 Yeah. 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 01:16:16.750 --> 01:16:20.670 rather than punishing the perpetrator, and there are two ways to restore the victim, one is 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 01:16:25.070 --> 01:16:25.790 harming the victim. 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 01:16:31.780 --> 01:16:32.660 a criminal trial. 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 01:16:37.380 --> 01:16:38.340 doesn't benefit at all. 01:16:38.500 --> 01:16:41.060 It's just a matter of how much the the perpetrator is getting punished. 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 01:16:45.460 --> 01:16:45.700 harm. 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 01:16:52.310 --> 01:16:56.950 is harm and being inflicted on the perpetrator, then you might expect more harm to be 01:16:56.950 --> 01:17:00.550 delivered to the perpetrator because they aren't able to get benefits in any other 01:17:00.550 --> 01:17:00.950 currency. 01:17:01.030 --> 01:17:05.430 The only currency they can get is how badly the uh the perpetrator suffers. 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 01:17:10.070 --> 01:17:12.710 response because that's the only way that the victim can benefit at all. 01:17:12.940 --> 01:17:13.180 Right. 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 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 01:17:21.420 --> 01:17:21.660 whole. 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 01:17:25.420 --> 01:17:28.620 sick or injures that person, if they compensate the person, the company's fine. 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. 01:17:32.460 --> 01:17:36.270 As long as the victim is fairly compensated, we have the intuition that, you know, justice 01:17:36.270 --> 01:17:37.390 has been served and that's fine. 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 01:17:41.790 --> 01:17:46.270 way to actually restore the victim, uh, is to make the perpetrator suffer, then you're 01:17:46.270 --> 01:17:51.630 gonna uh get more sadism uh and more cruelty in criminal trials uh toward the 01:17:51.630 --> 01:17:52.430 perpetrator. 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 01:17:57.390 --> 01:18:01.640 forces you to to invest more heavily in the That's great. 01:18:01.800 --> 01:18:02.360 That's awesome. 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 01:18:08.200 --> 01:18:08.680 test that. 01:18:24.680 --> 01:18:30.630 Is it the case that if I punish you, then you're then if 01:18:31.190 --> 01:18:37.190 the offender is punished, then the victim is not entitled anymore to compensation. 01:18:38.310 --> 01:18:44.230 If punishment is really a form of compensation, then the fact of punishing should dissolve 01:18:44.230 --> 01:18:48.390 the moral right of the victim to compensation, because they they have already been 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 01:18:52.700 --> 01:18:53.340 the offender. 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 01:18:59.100 --> 01:19:02.940 so that the criminal injustice system actually cuts the the very possibility of 01:19:02.940 --> 01:19:05.340 compensation and maybe that's why it's it's so punitive. 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 01:19:09.900 --> 01:19:11.900 because like it forgets about the victim. 01:19:12.060 --> 01:19:15.670 Often people say, you know, it's only um the victim is not restored. 01:19:15.830 --> 01:19:20.070 That that's what the whole uh restorative justice movement is about, saying like the people 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 01:19:26.070 --> 01:19:26.710 offenders. 01:19:26.790 --> 01:19:27.190 But yeah. 01:19:27.590 --> 01:19:27.830 Right. 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 01:19:32.470 --> 01:19:33.110 and legal systems. 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 01:19:37.110 --> 01:19:41.430 Common Law, Liberalism and the Evolution of Common Law, which is basically tort law, you 01:19:41.430 --> 01:19:43.020 know, compensating the victim. 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 01:19:47.020 --> 01:19:49.900 basically a crime against the person versus a crime against the state. 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 01:19:55.500 --> 01:19:56.380 through tort law. 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 01:20:02.290 --> 01:20:06.850 perpetrator by framing it as a conflict against the state versus a conflict against the 01:20:06.850 --> 01:20:07.170 victim. 01:20:07.330 --> 01:20:10.770 And gradually it was replaced with criminal law where the the victim was no longer 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 01:20:15.730 --> 01:20:16.130 fines. 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 01:20:21.650 --> 01:20:23.890 conflicts happening in in the community. 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 01:20:28.960 --> 01:20:31.600 actually a kind of unnatural way of resolving conflicts. 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 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 01:20:38.720 --> 01:20:40.160 repairing and restoring the victim. 01:20:40.480 --> 01:20:40.720 Yeah. 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 01:20:45.840 --> 01:20:46.560 doesn't make any sense. 01:20:47.120 --> 01:20:47.680 It doesn't, yeah. 01:20:47.970 --> 01:20:50.370 It's because it evolved from this kind of parasitical. 01:20:50.930 --> 01:20:51.570 Criminal law. 01:20:51.810 --> 01:20:52.050 Yeah. 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 01:20:58.290 --> 01:21:01.490 highway and you get fined, you should actually. 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 01:21:05.650 --> 01:21:08.290 say, you know, and Leo and I are next to you. 01:21:08.530 --> 01:21:11.570 Your money, if and if you get fined, the money should go to us. 01:21:11.730 --> 01:21:14.450 Maybe the person who caught you, because you know, they have to do something too. 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 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 01:21:24.080 --> 01:21:29.040 because you know as Leo as you said like the the the retribution versus forward or 01:21:29.040 --> 01:21:33.360 deterrence looking is sort of also a approximate ultimate confusion right because 01:21:33.520 --> 01:21:36.480 ultimately like it's it's kind of a little bit of wolf. 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 01:21:43.330 --> 01:21:46.210 matter or is is different depending on the situation. 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 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 01:21:58.210 --> 01:21:59.890 did something to David, right? 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 01:22:06.400 --> 01:22:11.120 purple shirts, and David hates the purple shirts, then now all of a sudden you're 01:22:11.120 --> 01:22:13.680 calculating, well, he could have done that to me. 01:22:13.920 --> 01:22:14.160 Yeah. 01:22:14.400 --> 01:22:18.320 So in some sense, you are probabilistically the victim too. 01:22:18.560 --> 01:22:24.480 And so the idea that sort of the the amount of just deserts that we feel, 01:22:24.720 --> 01:22:29.250 um, and whether or not like why somebody like did a crime. 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 01:22:35.250 --> 01:22:35.890 do something? 01:22:35.970 --> 01:22:37.650 Like, let's say somebody kills somebody. 01:22:37.890 --> 01:22:40.610 Is it because they were just the fourth person to walk by? 01:22:40.930 --> 01:22:43.330 We really want to punish that person. 01:22:43.570 --> 01:22:47.410 And the idea is that that's because probabilistically we're all victims. 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 01:22:52.940 --> 01:22:53.740 fourth person. 01:22:54.460 --> 01:22:58.060 But if the reason why that person killed somebody was because you know they had a 01:22:58.060 --> 01:23:01.500 long-standing relationship, and you know, we all know we don't have that kind of 01:23:01.500 --> 01:23:02.060 relationship. 01:23:02.300 --> 01:23:03.100 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:23:03.340 --> 01:23:07.820 It it really narrows down that like that that's diagnosed diagnostic, that that person 01:23:07.820 --> 01:23:09.100 would hurt us per se. 01:23:09.340 --> 01:23:14.970 And so I really like this idea of um that what counts even as a just 01:23:14.970 --> 01:23:18.650 dessert is a function of sort of who the victim is. 01:23:19.210 --> 01:23:23.050 And in some sense, we become the victim like a terrorist attack. 01:23:23.130 --> 01:23:26.730 You know, like we were all attacked, this like trope or like a group based attack. 01:23:27.050 --> 01:23:32.490 Um, and that would suggest then that the just dessert for responding is much higher 01:23:33.050 --> 01:23:33.530 as well. 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 01:23:38.650 --> 01:23:42.340 know, that this the from a social signaling perspective, exactly. 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 01:23:48.260 --> 01:23:53.300 shirted Leo, it's show it signals to the world that you are also exploitable. 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 01:23:58.500 --> 01:24:00.500 everyone knows you're a purple shirt too. 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 01:24:06.550 --> 01:24:07.350 have their pig. 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 01:24:13.510 --> 01:24:16.150 steal a purple shirt's pig was super weird example. 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 01:24:21.190 --> 01:24:23.990 shirt, it's gonna be punished, right? 01:24:24.230 --> 01:24:25.110 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 01:24:31.110 --> 01:24:36.340 a violation that is that is harming the the reputation of of several uh the deterrent 01:24:36.500 --> 01:24:40.900 reputation of several individuals and not only the proportionate response is higher. 01:24:40.980 --> 01:24:41.060 Yeah. 01:24:41.300 --> 01:24:41.460 Exactly. 01:24:41.540 --> 01:24:42.660 So yeah, predicts very much. 01:24:43.300 --> 01:24:46.740 It explains why hate crimes are punished more severely than individual crimes. 01:24:47.220 --> 01:24:48.580 It's a crime against an entire group. 01:24:48.820 --> 01:24:51.540 It threatens the entire group versus a specific individual. 01:24:51.940 --> 01:24:52.820 Yeah, that's that's really good. 01:24:52.900 --> 01:24:56.260 Yeah, and that's why there's a search for what's the motive. 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 01:25:01.050 --> 01:25:02.490 it seems obvious why that is. 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 01:25:08.090 --> 01:25:13.930 what kind of cost who who are the reputational um uh yeah, from a social 01:25:14.090 --> 01:25:16.650 signal perspective, who what's the class of victims? 01:25:17.050 --> 01:25:17.930 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:25:18.090 --> 01:25:19.210 Yeah, that's really good, David. 01:25:19.290 --> 01:25:19.930 Yeah, I like that. 01:25:20.650 --> 01:25:21.600 Yeah, that's really interesting. 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 01:25:24.880 --> 01:25:27.520 question you were asking about uh criminal justice. 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 01:25:32.800 --> 01:25:34.960 do we have civil and criminal justice? 01:25:35.200 --> 01:25:35.920 Like it's real. 01:25:36.400 --> 01:25:36.560 Yeah. 01:25:37.600 --> 01:25:37.840 Yeah. 01:25:37.920 --> 01:25:40.480 And and and because the king, the king had to get paid. 01:25:40.640 --> 01:25:40.800 Yeah. 01:25:41.520 --> 01:25:45.390 Yeah, yeah, but even even in modern societies, we still have that. 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 01:25:50.430 --> 01:25:53.790 anything about law, but I think I got that, I'm not sure. 01:25:53.950 --> 01:25:55.470 Uh please correct me. 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, 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 01:26:06.350 --> 01:26:11.260 it as cheating behavior in a dyadic reciprocal interaction where they think. 01:26:11.500 --> 01:26:15.740 And I was framing uh understanding the crime as a cheating behavior in a collective action. 01:26:15.820 --> 01:26:17.500 Yes that does many victims. 01:26:17.660 --> 01:26:21.660 And so you know they say a crime is a tort uh tort against society. 01:26:21.980 --> 01:26:25.660 Uh uh so there are behavior that violates the interest not only of one particular 01:26:25.660 --> 01:26:29.020 individual, but all of the individual in the nation or the social contract. 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. 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 01:26:37.970 --> 01:26:43.970 just said, Dave, about the that the fact that certain violations have uh more than 01:26:43.970 --> 01:26:49.010 one victim and how this implies stuff about the justice response. 01:26:49.330 --> 01:26:49.570 Right. 01:26:49.650 --> 01:26:49.810 Yeah. 01:26:50.290 --> 01:26:50.530 Yeah. 01:26:50.610 --> 01:26:52.610 And that circles back to the morality thing, right? 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 01:26:57.170 --> 01:26:58.290 all been harmed. 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, 01:27:02.800 --> 01:27:05.760 this eating French fries thing isn't just harming me. 01:27:05.840 --> 01:27:06.880 It's harming all of us. 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. 01:27:13.360 --> 01:27:13.600 Yeah. 01:27:13.680 --> 01:27:14.240 Yeah. 01:27:15.360 --> 01:27:16.400 Very cool stuff. 01:27:16.480 --> 01:27:20.230 Um so we're we're approaching the end of of our time. 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 01:27:24.070 --> 01:27:24.310 shame. 01:27:24.390 --> 01:27:24.470 Yeah. 01:27:24.870 --> 01:27:25.830 Because I wanted to talk about that. 01:27:25.910 --> 01:27:27.430 It's a super fun topic. 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 01:27:31.670 --> 01:27:34.390 about uh elite status signaling and see what you think of it. 01:27:34.630 --> 01:27:34.870 All right. 01:27:35.030 --> 01:27:35.110 Okay. 01:27:35.510 --> 01:27:39.350 So um so there's this idea of like quote unquote highbrow art. 01:27:39.960 --> 01:27:43.160 So there's the uh fine dining versus McDonald's. 01:27:43.320 --> 01:27:49.320 There's you know uh uh the the Russian novel um Shakespeare um versus 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 01:27:54.840 --> 01:28:00.120 uh film about a collapse of a you know uh farming collective in post-communist Hungary 01:28:00.280 --> 01:28:05.880 versus um you know reality TV or you know um uh you know 01:28:06.280 --> 01:28:10.250 the latest dumb you Marvel movie or whatever, right? 01:28:10.410 --> 01:28:10.730 Yeah. 01:28:11.130 --> 01:28:15.130 And some of these forms of art are considered higher status or classier. 01:28:15.370 --> 01:28:21.050 And it might be that insofar as self-control correlates with social status, and you know, 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 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 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 01:28:34.410 --> 01:28:40.360 expect people to signal their self control via the types of art that they consume. 01:28:40.520 --> 01:28:46.120 So, insofar as something requires uh a suppression of impulses, if I can sit through a 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 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 01:28:56.120 --> 01:28:58.440 self control and I'm and I'm really high status. 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 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 01:29:09.050 --> 01:29:11.130 it, then that suggests a kind of self-control. 01:29:11.210 --> 01:29:15.450 That there's something about elite art or highbrow art where it requires you to suppress 01:29:15.450 --> 01:29:18.570 some kind of impulse um in order to appreciate it. 01:29:18.650 --> 01:29:21.370 And that's what makes it classy, that's what makes it high status. 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. 01:29:27.160 --> 01:29:29.400 It's not an an indulgence of bodily pleasure. 01:29:29.480 --> 01:29:33.560 It actually takes some kind of refinement, it takes some cost, it takes some investment in 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, 01:29:38.120 --> 01:29:42.280 or learning the historical context if you're watching a black and white movie. 01:29:42.520 --> 01:29:43.800 All these things require costs. 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 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. 01:29:52.850 --> 01:29:54.130 What what do you think about that theory? 01:29:54.530 --> 01:29:55.890 No, I I love that theory. 01:29:56.050 --> 01:29:57.970 I mean uh I would love it to be true. 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 01:30:03.730 --> 01:30:08.930 it's the case, but only insofar as self-control also cues 01:30:09.090 --> 01:30:09.890 competence. 01:30:10.600 --> 01:30:16.600 It doesn't seem to me that uh that the the kind of status related 01:30:16.600 --> 01:30:22.440 inference that we make about some people having more sophisticated uh 01:30:22.760 --> 01:30:27.080 cultural consumption than others is about trustworthiness. 01:30:27.240 --> 01:30:32.120 That that doesn't seem to be what is at stake when people despise um 01:30:33.000 --> 01:30:37.030 uh uh T V reality is what I mean. 01:30:37.350 --> 01:30:37.510 Yeah. 01:30:37.750 --> 01:30:41.670 Uh in rather they seem to say that these people are dumb. 01:30:42.310 --> 01:30:46.150 These people say I see. 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 01:30:51.270 --> 01:30:55.190 are two dimensions of of person perception, of social perception, trustworthiness and 01:30:55.190 --> 01:30:55.590 competence. 01:30:55.840 --> 01:30:59.200 Competence means your ability to extract benefit from the environment and trustworthiness, 01:30:59.280 --> 01:31:01.520 how much you're willing to give benefits to others. 01:31:01.680 --> 01:31:06.080 My argument on puritanism was really focused on the trustworthiness dimension, uh, that is 01:31:06.160 --> 01:31:07.680 your ability to resist cheating. 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 01:31:13.520 --> 01:31:16.880 for based on cultural consumption, people are really making inference about competence, 01:31:16.960 --> 01:31:21.360 that is how smart people are, how sophisticated people are, but which also relates to 01:31:21.360 --> 01:31:21.920 self-control. 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 01:31:27.810 --> 01:31:33.730 world independently of your uh uh willingness to uh uh repay debt 01:31:33.730 --> 01:31:37.330 or or or help others in uh in cooperative interactions. 01:31:37.570 --> 01:31:39.810 So I I I I I love what you're saying. 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 01:31:44.050 --> 01:31:49.650 case is not the cooperation uh self-control relationship, but rather more the other 01:31:49.650 --> 01:31:53.640 relationship that seemed to exist between self-control and uh competence. 01:31:53.960 --> 01:31:54.600 Does that make sense? 01:31:54.680 --> 01:31:55.320 And what do you think? 01:31:55.640 --> 01:31:56.280 Yes, yes. 01:31:56.360 --> 01:31:57.080 No, I buy that. 01:31:57.160 --> 01:31:58.280 No, I think that's probably part of it too. 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 01:32:01.960 --> 01:32:06.760 about someone who watches reality TV or or or whatever, and see what kind of inferences 01:32:06.760 --> 01:32:08.040 people make about that person. 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 01:32:11.000 --> 01:32:13.240 maybe you'd also make the inference that they're low status. 01:32:13.400 --> 01:32:15.720 Um, but what is low stay use? 01:32:15.960 --> 01:32:19.000 I mean, that's your topic, but uh yeah, what is yeah. 01:32:19.080 --> 01:32:19.670 Oh, yeah. 01:32:19.910 --> 01:32:23.510 Yeah, what is what is what is status but you know, perceived confidence comp competence, 01:32:23.590 --> 01:32:23.670 right? 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 01:32:30.070 --> 01:32:30.550 signal. 01:32:30.630 --> 01:32:32.230 Uh maybe qu quasi moral. 01:32:32.310 --> 01:32:33.910 Like there's a bit of a moral flavor to it. 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 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. 01:32:44.400 --> 01:32:46.480 This is like we should have Keila and you on together. 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 01:32:51.200 --> 01:32:56.720 labs is this idea of like ecology stereotypes and sort of discounting the future. 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 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 01:33:08.790 --> 01:33:14.150 ideas that there's sort of machinery for tracking to what degree people are 01:33:14.310 --> 01:33:16.550 calibrated to discount the future. 01:33:16.790 --> 01:33:20.230 Um and it might be a blanket thing, but it might even be very specific, right? 01:33:20.310 --> 01:33:25.830 Like, like, you know, David might discount the future um when we're at home. 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 01:33:30.800 --> 01:33:35.120 example, um uh but uh so but I don't, right? 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 01:33:38.560 --> 01:33:41.120 like, oh, you're just you're being a slob, right? 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 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 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 01:33:58.070 --> 01:34:02.710 like super uber in this category, um, right, uh, of that. 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, 01:34:08.870 --> 01:34:10.870 is just yeah, it's connection. 01:34:11.430 --> 01:34:11.990 Yeah. 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 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. 01:34:23.240 --> 01:34:24.600 It would be really interesting to look at empirically. 01:34:24.920 --> 01:34:25.000 Yeah. 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 01:34:29.160 --> 01:34:33.240 maybe just the confabulated word for these other dimensions, right? 01:34:33.400 --> 01:34:38.600 Like I don't think we have whatever word like signaling high status or highbrow. 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, 01:34:45.000 --> 01:34:45.960 what the hell are you talking about? 01:34:46.120 --> 01:34:49.160 Like we haven't cashed it out computationally or an evolutionary perspective. 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 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 01:34:58.430 --> 01:34:59.070 this thing? 01:34:59.310 --> 01:35:02.270 Um but general competence, I don't know, right? 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 01:35:07.710 --> 01:35:11.230 to do to sort of unpack what does high status mean or high brow. 01:35:11.310 --> 01:35:12.990 And I think you guys are exactly right. 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. 01:35:17.500 --> 01:35:21.980 Like there's tons of work and concern about like social status differences, social class 01:35:21.980 --> 01:35:26.460 differences, and people looking down on lower classes, quote unquote. 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. 01:35:31.020 --> 01:35:33.580 And I I suspect what you're studying as part of that. 01:35:33.740 --> 01:35:34.380 Yeah. 01:35:34.940 --> 01:35:35.340 Yeah. 01:35:35.660 --> 01:35:36.380 Totally. 01:35:36.570 --> 01:35:38.170 Well Yeah, yeah, uh yeah. 01:35:38.330 --> 01:35:43.530 I I would love to know what status is uh once you figure out uh Yeah. 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 01:35:47.370 --> 01:35:47.690 status. 01:35:47.770 --> 01:35:51.530 I think there are actually probably relevant differences between class and status. 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 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 01:36:00.860 --> 01:36:04.460 privileged versus, you know, unpredictable and threatening environment, it's gonna lead to 01:36:04.460 --> 01:36:08.140 different, you know, uh abilities to delay gratifications, different, you know, time 01:36:08.140 --> 01:36:11.500 horizons and willingness to di you know discount the future. 01:36:11.660 --> 01:36:15.420 Um and that stuff might be what we're thinking about when we think about class. 01:36:15.500 --> 01:36:18.060 But that it might act but status might actually be a different thing. 01:36:18.220 --> 01:36:20.860 Um and so it makes it even more complicated. 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 01:36:24.700 --> 01:36:28.410 potentially separable and you know, very subtle and complicated. 01:36:28.650 --> 01:36:30.490 Uh just a complete aside, David. 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, 01:36:35.130 --> 01:36:39.770 but like there is sort of like academic propaganda or intelligentsia propaganda. 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 01:36:44.650 --> 01:36:47.370 come up as often as you would think it would. 01:36:47.850 --> 01:36:48.650 Is that true? 01:36:48.810 --> 01:36:52.890 And is that because it's in nobody's interest to bring it up? 01:36:54.410 --> 01:36:56.360 Yeah, It very well could be. 01:36:56.440 --> 01:36:56.680 Yeah. 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 01:37:02.440 --> 01:37:04.520 as, you know, classy elite people. 01:37:04.680 --> 01:37:04.760 Yeah. 01:37:05.000 --> 01:37:08.520 Uh and I think it's a lot of the underlying uh cause of populism. 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 01:37:12.280 --> 01:37:16.310 is is it's resentment and hostility toward our class of people. 01:37:16.630 --> 01:37:16.950 Right. 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 01:37:20.870 --> 01:37:22.150 water we swim in, right? 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 01:37:26.310 --> 01:37:27.270 view it as a threat. 01:37:27.430 --> 01:37:31.270 And I think that's a big part of what um you know uh populism is. 01:37:31.590 --> 01:37:31.830 Right. 01:37:31.990 --> 01:37:32.630 Um yeah. 01:37:32.950 --> 01:37:38.860 And so and we're incentivized to um uh to not uh land on high versus 01:37:38.860 --> 01:37:43.500 low class or having resources and not, but to do something that's an orthogonal category. 01:37:43.580 --> 01:37:49.500 So say, look, there's other high resource people that differ than me in another dimension, 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. 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 01:38:00.530 --> 01:38:02.210 to be high versus low resources. 01:38:02.290 --> 01:38:08.290 I'm incentivized to consume propaganda that's about uh the high resource 01:38:08.290 --> 01:38:09.810 people who are unlike me. 01:38:10.130 --> 01:38:12.450 Yes, now now you're thinking a Pensafian way. 01:38:12.850 --> 01:38:13.810 Pensophian, yes. 01:38:14.370 --> 01:38:15.090 Yeah, okay. 01:38:15.810 --> 01:38:16.770 Cool, cool, cool. 01:38:16.930 --> 01:38:17.090 Yeah. 01:38:17.250 --> 01:38:20.210 Uh Leo, is there anything that we should have asked you? 01:38:20.770 --> 01:38:21.250 Whoa. 01:38:22.020 --> 01:38:23.860 Uh no, I don't think so. 01:38:24.340 --> 01:38:24.900 I don't think so. 01:38:25.220 --> 01:38:27.380 Well, actually, let me listen, let me ask you something. 01:38:27.540 --> 01:38:32.100 Where so I think you might be one of the first postdocs that we've interviewed. 01:38:32.420 --> 01:38:36.580 Is it true that you're a postdoc and that you're looking for a job? 01:38:36.980 --> 01:38:37.380 Yes. 01:38:37.620 --> 01:38:37.940 Okay. 01:38:38.180 --> 01:38:39.220 Yes, I am. 01:38:39.540 --> 01:38:40.020 Okay, good. 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 01:38:46.020 --> 01:38:48.580 Leo is uh looking for a job. 01:38:49.030 --> 01:38:49.510 Exactly. 01:38:49.830 --> 01:38:50.870 I'm looking for a job. 01:38:50.950 --> 01:38:51.750 And thank you so much. 01:38:51.910 --> 01:38:53.510 I mean, I'm honored to be the first one. 01:38:53.750 --> 01:38:56.550 Yeah, well, and yeah, yeah. 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 01:39:00.390 --> 01:39:02.070 the next like little bit? 01:39:02.310 --> 01:39:05.270 Um, just just briefly, uh Yeah, yeah. 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 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 01:39:15.030 --> 01:39:15.750 authority. 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 01:39:21.240 --> 01:39:27.240 people uh think that you have a duty to obey uh that leaders 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 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 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 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 01:39:47.330 --> 01:39:51.890 relationship itself while most previous ideas in moral psychology have been about 01:39:51.890 --> 01:39:55.490 dominance, uh games, this kind of thing. 01:39:55.570 --> 01:39:57.330 I think it's all about reciprocity. 01:39:58.370 --> 01:40:03.330 That's a really fascinating and understudied question, the psychology of authority and when 01:40:03.330 --> 01:40:05.890 we th view authority as legitimate. 01:40:06.080 --> 01:40:08.400 and I'll I'll probably send you other books on that topic. 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 01:40:13.200 --> 01:40:13.680 completely agree. 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 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 01:40:22.560 --> 01:40:24.400 aggressor, but you're talking about the victim again. 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 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. 01:40:33.120 --> 01:40:33.360 Yeah. 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 01:40:38.250 --> 01:40:44.170 uh we have good theories of uh when we people will submit and other people dominate 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 01:40:48.970 --> 01:40:54.810 command or when it's morally wrong to disobey uh uh or even morally obligatory to 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 01:41:00.300 --> 01:41:05.980 uh somewhat disconnected from the uh proximate and ultimate logic of people's actual 01:41:05.980 --> 01:41:06.540 behaviors. 01:41:06.700 --> 01:41:07.420 So yeah, anyway. 01:41:07.740 --> 01:41:10.140 Ooh, well, I just that just really uh one quick question. 01:41:10.220 --> 01:41:14.380 We had Deb Lieberman on Deb Lieberman's studies moral psychology. 01:41:14.460 --> 01:41:18.700 And she we we talked a lot about how sort of the dark side of morality. 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 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 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 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? 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 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 01:41:48.920 --> 01:41:49.960 psychology is generally good. 01:41:50.360 --> 01:41:55.320 Like, I think most people who don't who aren't evolutionary psychologists maybe or would 01:41:55.320 --> 01:41:57.560 just say, like, oh, our moral psychology is good. 01:41:57.640 --> 01:41:58.600 Of course it is. 01:41:59.000 --> 01:42:03.000 Except for people who know about like history and international relations, like, you know, 01:42:03.080 --> 01:42:03.720 in lots of moral. 01:42:04.120 --> 01:42:07.880 And so many historians or social scientists might say our moral psychology is bad. 01:42:07.960 --> 01:42:12.410 I think when you take an evolutionary perspective, I think people fall down all kinds of 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 01:42:17.690 --> 01:42:18.170 right answer. 01:42:18.330 --> 01:42:19.610 Like I yeah what do you think? 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 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 01:42:29.930 --> 01:42:32.490 morally wrong but because of our moral psychology. 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 01:42:37.400 --> 01:42:39.960 cognitive algorithm is sensitive to input parameter. 01:42:40.120 --> 01:42:45.080 And so people will have a different moral judgment depending on the input that they have. 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 01:42:49.480 --> 01:42:50.920 means that morality is not good. 01:42:51.160 --> 01:42:56.600 But what uh what you're saying is moral is that your morality is good. 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 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 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 01:43:10.450 --> 01:43:11.810 describes what morality is. 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 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 01:43:19.890 --> 01:43:24.930 non-contradictory way you could think about it where you could say that most of morality 01:43:24.930 --> 01:43:29.840 and moral discourse and moral practice is in large part net harmful to people. 01:43:30.000 --> 01:43:34.480 It it leads to exploitation, domination, and rationalization of oppression in all sorts of 01:43:34.480 --> 01:43:34.960 ways. 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 01:43:41.200 --> 01:43:42.960 negative in terms of its consequences. 01:43:43.040 --> 01:43:46.320 Uh except for of course the moral judgment I'm making about that very thing. 01:43:46.880 --> 01:43:47.440 Yeah, exactly. 01:43:47.600 --> 01:43:47.760 Yeah. 01:43:48.080 --> 01:43:48.960 Yeah, yeah, I agree. 01:43:49.510 --> 01:43:50.550 I'm more on the good side. 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 01:43:56.470 --> 01:43:59.510 David has that road. 01:43:59.670 --> 01:43:59.830 Yeah. 01:43:59.910 --> 01:44:00.870 I'm more on the good side. 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 01:44:05.430 --> 01:44:10.070 taking an evolutionary approach, is that the idea that's because something is entrained by 01:44:10.070 --> 01:44:11.510 our moral psychology, right? 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 01:44:15.260 --> 01:44:15.820 take from this? 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 01:44:20.540 --> 01:44:25.820 from evolutionary psychology of moral psychology is that just because something feels 01:44:25.820 --> 01:44:31.340 moralized to you, that's not data that it's actually a good thing 01:44:31.570 --> 01:44:32.130 per se. 01:44:32.290 --> 01:44:38.210 It might be, but just because you feel morally strong about something doesn't automatically 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 01:44:43.250 --> 01:44:48.690 that it's good from the perspective of if I sat down and thought through the 01:44:48.690 --> 01:44:49.650 consequences of it. 01:44:49.810 --> 01:44:50.130 Yeah. 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 01:44:56.100 --> 01:44:56.660 completely agree. 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, 01:45:00.740 --> 01:45:01.700 intuitive physics. 01:45:01.860 --> 01:45:02.260 Yeah. 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. 01:45:08.020 --> 01:45:08.580 No, exactly. 01:45:08.900 --> 01:45:09.220 It's pretty good. 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 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 01:45:16.740 --> 01:45:17.220 modern physics. 01:45:17.540 --> 01:45:21.330 You could say a similar thing about you know morality, you know, most morality and most 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 01:45:25.650 --> 01:45:28.210 benefit analysis and institutional design and stuff like that, you know. 01:45:28.370 --> 01:45:28.850 Yeah, exactly. 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 01:45:32.690 --> 01:45:35.810 this come up when we talked about like is intuitive psychology wrong or right? 01:45:36.050 --> 01:45:38.450 Or I think we even had this earlier in this conversation. 01:45:38.610 --> 01:45:42.770 It comes back to like what's the swath of hu of reality you're imagining. 01:45:42.930 --> 01:45:48.660 And if I'm imagining all the bad things that moral psychology does, because most of 01:45:48.660 --> 01:45:53.140 the moral entrepreneurship that I see on social media is bad. 01:45:53.380 --> 01:45:56.820 I might say all of more most of our moral psychology is bad. 01:45:56.980 --> 01:45:59.700 And if that's what I'm imagining, it makes sense that I'm saying that. 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 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 01:46:08.020 --> 01:46:08.740 moral to do that. 01:46:08.820 --> 01:46:11.220 And if that's what you're imagining, then our moral psychology is good. 01:46:11.300 --> 01:46:12.820 And there's really not a fact of the matter. 01:46:12.900 --> 01:46:15.380 It's just like what you're what class of the world you're imagining. 01:46:15.540 --> 01:46:16.580 So I think that's Yeah, yeah. 01:46:17.190 --> 01:46:20.790 That's the problem with morality is that unlike with physics, there is no objective, I 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 01:46:25.510 --> 01:46:27.910 let's imagine there is no more objective moral truth. 01:46:28.310 --> 01:46:31.590 Then what does it mean to have it objectively morally right? 01:46:31.670 --> 01:46:37.430 I think it's just like taking the good inputs, having the inputs right, and 01:46:37.430 --> 01:46:39.110 then all you have is the computation. 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. 01:46:42.790 --> 01:46:43.350 You see what I mean? 01:46:43.510 --> 01:46:47.190 So then I think that there's still a difference between intuitivity and intuitive uh uh 01:46:47.200 --> 01:46:51.680 moral judgment or morality, that's in that that's all we have in a specific. 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 01:46:57.200 --> 01:46:58.560 physics, right? 01:46:58.720 --> 01:47:00.320 Like uh that's true, yeah. 01:47:00.480 --> 01:47:05.440 So uh recognizing that it's a coordination, the ultimate grammar of it is coordination, and 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 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 01:47:14.130 --> 01:47:17.490 benefits another person is, and then just trying to have a discussion about that. 01:47:17.890 --> 01:47:21.010 Of course, a lot of the rhetoric is designed to obscure that, right? 01:47:21.170 --> 01:47:23.410 That's that's another Pinsafian point. 01:47:23.490 --> 01:47:26.610 Like I don't wanna but I think that's the the way forward. 01:47:26.770 --> 01:47:27.410 But yeah. 01:47:29.090 --> 01:47:29.730 Cool. 01:47:29.940 --> 01:47:31.140 Well, what a fun conversation. 01:47:32.020 --> 01:47:32.660 We gotta have you back. 01:47:32.740 --> 01:47:36.020 Maybe we should do like a religion episode with with Leo and maybe someone else. 01:47:36.180 --> 01:47:36.500 Oh yeah. 01:47:36.820 --> 01:47:37.460 Because it's really good. 01:47:39.860 --> 01:47:41.860 I'm happy to talk about uh about anything. 01:47:41.940 --> 01:47:42.660 I mean, thank you so much. 01:47:42.740 --> 01:47:43.380 It was so fun. 01:47:43.460 --> 01:47:44.500 Uh it was so cool. 01:47:44.580 --> 01:47:44.980 Thank you so much. 01:47:45.380 --> 01:47:46.180 Yeah, time flew by. 01:47:46.260 --> 01:47:46.500 Thank you. 01:47:46.660 --> 01:47:47.060 Yeah, yeah. 01:47:47.540 --> 01:47:48.420 Thanks so much, man. 01:47:53.780 --> 01:47:54.580 Is that a good French accent? 01:47:54.820 --> 01:47:56.260 Je Paul and Petit for France. 01:47:56.580 --> 01:47:56.740 Yeah. 01:47:56.900 --> 01:47:57.940 I I don't know. 01:47:58.020 --> 01:47:58.900 I'm not, yeah. 01:47:59.330 --> 01:47:59.650 Yeah. 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 01:48:05.090 --> 01:48:05.730 your joy. 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. 01:48:09.810 --> 01:48:11.730 You can say nice things about us on social media. 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. 01:48:16.610 --> 01:48:18.610 Uh have some have some french fries. 01:48:18.850 --> 01:48:20.770 But uh organic French fries. 01:48:20.930 --> 01:48:22.770 Don't uh pesticides are a problem. 01:48:23.010 --> 01:48:25.010 So please get some organic potatoes. 01:48:25.090 --> 01:48:27.570 Maybe make your own or Ooh, homemade french fries. 01:48:27.810 --> 01:48:28.980 That would be that would be nice. 01:48:29.220 --> 01:48:29.460 Yeah. 01:48:29.620 --> 01:48:29.940 Yeah. 01:48:30.100 --> 01:48:31.540 Uh and there's you know with French fries. 01:48:32.180 --> 01:48:33.380 Send some French fries to us. 01:48:33.620 --> 01:48:34.900 Yeah, send it in the mail. 01:48:35.220 --> 01:48:39.860 That would be nothing like getting uh French fries on the mail. 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 01:48:45.940 --> 01:48:46.740 in the mail anymore. 01:48:47.060 --> 01:48:47.540 It's true. 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 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 01:48:56.100 --> 01:48:56.420 or something. 01:48:56.660 --> 01:49:01.750 I feel like well if you figure out how to transport French fries. 01:49:01.910 --> 01:49:05.190 Uh if you can get us french fries, we'll be very impressed. 01:49:05.430 --> 01:49:05.830 Yeah. 01:49:05.910 --> 01:49:06.710 Uh you know what? 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 01:49:11.030 --> 01:49:13.670 bring us french fries, we will have you on the podcast 100%. 01:49:14.310 --> 01:49:15.830 That's our guarantee. 01:49:16.550 --> 01:49:16.790 All right. 01:49:17.750 --> 01:49:20.150 Enjoy and uh we'll see you next week. 01:49:20.420 --> 01:49:21.140 See you next week.