1 00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:02,880 David, this is Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast. 2 00:00:03,120 --> 00:00:04,480 I'm David Pinsoff. 3 00:00:04,720 --> 00:00:06,320 I'm David Petrozowski. 4 00:00:06,800 --> 00:00:08,640 This is Actual Evolutionary Psychology. 5 00:00:08,880 --> 00:00:10,080 By Actual Evolutionary 6 00:00:10,080 --> 00:00:23,360 Psychologists, 7 00:00:25,250 --> 00:00:30,530 David, today we have a weird episode where we are uh I'm outside. 8 00:00:30,690 --> 00:00:31,490 You're inside. 9 00:00:31,810 --> 00:00:37,490 Uh we have a medium uh length episode today because uh people were sick for after H 10 00:00:37,650 --> 00:00:37,810 bus. 11 00:00:38,210 --> 00:00:39,650 I'm still getting over a cold. 12 00:00:39,810 --> 00:00:42,050 So we're sort of doing a medium length episode. 13 00:00:42,130 --> 00:00:46,290 We're just talking a coup about a couple issues like design and good or bad adaptationism. 14 00:00:47,380 --> 00:00:52,500 I think, you know, we we covered some interesting topics about this this concept of design 15 00:00:52,500 --> 00:00:56,100 and why it's so important important to evolutionary psychology, what it means to be design 16 00:00:56,180 --> 00:00:58,900 minded, why it is a defensible stance to take. 17 00:00:59,060 --> 00:01:00,900 So and just some misunderstandings. 18 00:01:00,980 --> 00:01:04,180 We're going to cover in year two, we're going to also talk about just some topics and 19 00:01:04,180 --> 00:01:05,540 issues, not just interview people. 20 00:01:05,620 --> 00:01:07,220 And this is a good uh intro of that. 21 00:01:07,380 --> 00:01:10,660 But we'll we'll uh we'll end here and we'll see everybody next week. 22 00:01:11,060 --> 00:01:11,330 All right. 23 00:01:11,490 --> 00:01:12,050 Sounds good. 24 00:01:12,290 --> 00:01:12,610 Okay. 25 00:01:17,490 --> 00:01:17,810 All right. 26 00:01:17,890 --> 00:01:19,170 We're recording David. 27 00:01:19,490 --> 00:01:23,490 Today, David, how are you after HBus? 28 00:01:24,610 --> 00:01:25,570 I'm doing great. 29 00:01:26,130 --> 00:01:26,610 Yeah. 30 00:01:27,250 --> 00:01:28,930 Recharged intellectually? 31 00:01:29,490 --> 00:01:29,890 Yeah. 32 00:01:32,610 --> 00:01:35,810 And uh yeah, lots of food for thought that I'm still digesting. 33 00:01:35,890 --> 00:01:37,250 It was a wonderful HBAS. 34 00:01:37,490 --> 00:01:37,970 Fantastic. 35 00:01:38,050 --> 00:01:38,370 Yeah. 36 00:01:39,320 --> 00:01:45,080 and today is uh also a special episode because uh uh a lot 37 00:01:45,080 --> 00:01:47,000 of people are recovering from HBS. 38 00:01:47,160 --> 00:01:51,160 We've had we had uh a couple of people pull out of scheduled interviews because they 39 00:01:51,160 --> 00:01:52,280 weren't feeling well. 40 00:01:52,440 --> 00:01:55,960 Um I'm actually getting over a cold as well. 41 00:01:56,200 --> 00:02:02,120 Um uh we're gonna talk to Josh Schnodgrass soon about lassitude, which is the emotion of 42 00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:03,080 feeling not well. 43 00:02:03,160 --> 00:02:05,560 So Oh yeah, that that paper's awesome. 44 00:02:05,640 --> 00:02:06,200 I love that paper. 45 00:02:06,440 --> 00:02:09,080 Yeah, it's counterintuitive that that's an emotion. 46 00:02:09,490 --> 00:02:14,450 It is counterintuitive, uh, but also very enlightening to to view feeling sick as an 47 00:02:14,450 --> 00:02:14,770 emotion. 48 00:02:15,890 --> 00:02:21,890 Um, but so I thought we would just uh today uh we're gonna just do a sort of 49 00:02:21,890 --> 00:02:27,810 in-between episode where we're gonna cover a couple topics maybe that um people 50 00:02:27,970 --> 00:02:32,600 have questions about that we've had people submit uh questions about or or sort of common 51 00:02:32,600 --> 00:02:38,120 misunderstandings uh to catch people up who might um want to have those 52 00:02:38,120 --> 00:02:39,560 issues addressed. 53 00:02:41,240 --> 00:02:41,880 Yeah. 54 00:02:42,280 --> 00:02:44,040 I realize that's very abstract. 55 00:02:44,120 --> 00:02:46,600 Um, but uh but yeah, let's get into it, David. 56 00:02:46,680 --> 00:02:52,570 Uh one thing is um, and I can hear everybody uh ending listening because we don't 57 00:02:52,570 --> 00:02:53,450 have a guest this week. 58 00:02:54,410 --> 00:02:57,210 That's an old bit, but um, but it doesn't get old. 59 00:02:57,370 --> 00:03:02,170 Um, one question um I heard people talk about is the idea of design. 60 00:03:02,330 --> 00:03:08,170 Um, and uh here's a good uh let me pull up my um here 61 00:03:08,330 --> 00:03:08,570 we go. 62 00:03:08,730 --> 00:03:12,810 Okay, here's here is a comment from somebody who is I don't believe in evolutionary 63 00:03:12,810 --> 00:03:17,130 behavioral scientists, but I've heard this sentiment expressed before, which is why is it a 64 00:03:17,130 --> 00:03:22,660 common statement that natural selection designs traits when it literally doesn't. 65 00:03:22,820 --> 00:03:27,540 It's just a passive filter changing relative frequencies of genes. 66 00:03:27,780 --> 00:03:32,020 It doesn't design or create any gene or phenotype. 67 00:03:32,900 --> 00:03:34,260 Thoughts about that, David? 68 00:03:34,740 --> 00:03:36,180 Uh it's a really great point. 69 00:03:36,340 --> 00:03:39,780 Uh there is, I think it's a misleadingly simple question. 70 00:03:39,860 --> 00:03:44,570 It's actually hugely complicated, touching on many different things. 71 00:03:44,810 --> 00:03:50,730 So, why do we use design language when we're not intelligent design theorists? 72 00:03:51,370 --> 00:03:57,050 Uh I think the answer is that um 73 00:03:57,610 --> 00:04:01,210 it is a useful and insightful way of thinking. 74 00:04:01,530 --> 00:04:07,040 So um the philosopher Dan Dennett talks about the design stance as a kind of uh 75 00:04:09,040 --> 00:04:10,960 intuitive way of understanding the world. 76 00:04:11,600 --> 00:04:16,880 He argues that natural selection is a design process without a 77 00:04:16,880 --> 00:04:17,840 designer. 78 00:04:18,160 --> 00:04:21,200 That is, it creates the appearance of design. 79 00:04:21,920 --> 00:04:27,910 And he thinks that that is the best most insightful way to understand 80 00:04:27,910 --> 00:04:33,670 the products of natural selection, that uh you do not actually need a designer to have the 81 00:04:33,670 --> 00:04:39,030 appearance of design or the improbable functional organization of matter. 82 00:04:39,190 --> 00:04:44,470 So if you think about our tools, you know, hammers, cars, these are uh 83 00:04:44,630 --> 00:04:50,500 non-random organizations of matter, and they are improbably well 84 00:04:50,660 --> 00:04:53,540 organized for solving a particular problem. 85 00:04:54,500 --> 00:04:59,620 And Dennett has argued that natural and and Richard Dawkins and others has have ar argued 86 00:04:59,620 --> 00:05:04,580 that natural selection is the only process that can give rise to that 87 00:05:04,900 --> 00:05:08,340 improbable fit between form and function. 88 00:05:09,220 --> 00:05:14,830 There are other psychological aspects to this question, which is why do we use the design 89 00:05:14,830 --> 00:05:18,510 stance when we're trying to understand the mind? 90 00:05:18,750 --> 00:05:23,790 We have systems in the head for thinking about people, for thinking about artifacts, for 91 00:05:23,950 --> 00:05:28,270 thinking about tools and the proper functions of tools. 92 00:05:28,430 --> 00:05:32,430 We have systems in the head for thinking about foraging, mating, whatever. 93 00:05:32,640 --> 00:05:37,200 And so the question is if we're minds trying to understand the human mind, which part of 94 00:05:37,200 --> 00:05:39,840 our mind should we use to understand the human mind? 95 00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:44,960 And in traditionally in psychology, we've used our folk psychology to do psychology. 96 00:05:45,120 --> 00:05:49,840 We've used the system in the head that evolved for understanding people to understand 97 00:05:49,840 --> 00:05:50,160 people. 98 00:05:50,480 --> 00:05:54,640 But you, Dave, have argued that we should that's actually the wrong system in the head to 99 00:05:54,640 --> 00:05:54,880 use. 100 00:05:55,040 --> 00:05:58,000 Or or we shouldn't use that system primarily. 101 00:05:58,320 --> 00:05:59,040 Yeah, exactly. 102 00:05:59,360 --> 00:05:59,920 Or even primary. 103 00:06:00,080 --> 00:06:00,640 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 104 00:06:00,960 --> 00:06:01,120 Yeah. 105 00:06:01,710 --> 00:06:05,150 Um, it's better for us to to use the design stance. 106 00:06:05,390 --> 00:06:07,070 And so maybe I'll put it to you, Dave. 107 00:06:07,150 --> 00:06:12,990 So w why do you think that we should not use folk psychology to do psychology 108 00:06:13,070 --> 00:06:19,070 and and we're better off using the design stance, the artifact stance to understand 109 00:06:19,070 --> 00:06:19,630 psychology? 110 00:06:20,190 --> 00:06:26,030 Well, I think the folk psychology is fine, uh, but it doesn't get you what we 111 00:06:26,030 --> 00:06:32,020 want, which is a scientific understanding, because it's the folk psychology system is 112 00:06:32,020 --> 00:06:34,100 not designed for a scientific understanding. 113 00:06:34,260 --> 00:06:37,460 So scientific understanding has sort of two components. 114 00:06:37,620 --> 00:06:40,980 One is understanding how the thing works. 115 00:06:41,220 --> 00:06:44,420 And then the other one is prediction. 116 00:06:44,820 --> 00:06:50,660 What it means how something works is roughly speaking, that uh you understand the 117 00:06:50,660 --> 00:06:55,780 subsystems and then you understand their relations, such that you can do a counterfactual 118 00:06:55,780 --> 00:07:01,730 and sort of say if I change this part or this piece has this piece of 119 00:07:01,730 --> 00:07:06,050 information or is in this setting, this will then lead to this outcome. 120 00:07:06,130 --> 00:07:09,010 And that leads to the second part, the prediction part. 121 00:07:09,890 --> 00:07:15,810 And the idea is that natural selection, the theory of mind system, it's good at prediction, 122 00:07:15,970 --> 00:07:17,410 but it's a very rough cut. 123 00:07:17,490 --> 00:07:22,530 So, like if I know that David likes France, I know he's going to tend to go to France, but 124 00:07:22,530 --> 00:07:25,650 it's not anything like a how does the system work? 125 00:07:25,900 --> 00:07:29,100 And it's not going to be very predictive, right? 126 00:07:29,260 --> 00:07:33,740 And actually, how my theory of mind system even generates that prediction is sort of all 127 00:07:33,740 --> 00:07:34,220 black box. 128 00:07:34,380 --> 00:07:35,660 Like I don't know how that works. 129 00:07:35,820 --> 00:07:41,180 So, in the same way, like I can anticipate that David's room will um 130 00:07:41,500 --> 00:07:42,940 obey the laws of physics. 131 00:07:43,020 --> 00:07:46,300 And if I see a violation of the laws of physics, I'll be surprised. 132 00:07:46,620 --> 00:07:48,700 But that system is doing all the work. 133 00:07:48,780 --> 00:07:54,460 And if I was a physicist, I would have to flesh out what are the rules that my expectations 134 00:07:54,460 --> 00:07:55,260 follow, right? 135 00:07:55,470 --> 00:07:59,230 So basically that's just a way of saying that we have this intuition. 136 00:07:59,550 --> 00:08:04,190 It doesn't get us what are the subcomponents and how do they work bit. 137 00:08:04,670 --> 00:08:10,670 And that's where we need to come up with new pieces of design for lack of a better way of 138 00:08:10,670 --> 00:08:11,070 putting it. 139 00:08:11,150 --> 00:08:15,230 Like David, as you mentioned, like you know, a lines tracking system or visual system or 140 00:08:15,230 --> 00:08:15,550 whatever. 141 00:08:15,630 --> 00:08:18,830 And then the issue of how you carve those up is a separate issue. 142 00:08:18,910 --> 00:08:24,880 Um, but then the other part is the prediction part, and that it's hard to predict outcomes, 143 00:08:24,960 --> 00:08:28,640 even like weather or you know, the performance, like what a car will do per se. 144 00:08:28,720 --> 00:08:33,520 But in some sense, for a scientific understanding, we're at least more interested in 145 00:08:33,520 --> 00:08:39,440 narrowing the scope to here's a more mandatory style rule that a 146 00:08:39,440 --> 00:08:42,720 complex system should follow, like a computational system. 147 00:08:43,120 --> 00:08:48,990 And then if we know how the algorithms or the functions work, then we can know how 148 00:08:49,550 --> 00:08:52,750 one setting, a change in a setting should produce a certain outcome. 149 00:08:52,830 --> 00:08:54,990 And that's sort of the logic of experimental design. 150 00:08:55,150 --> 00:09:00,990 So a lot of experimental studies in psychology are not often framed this way, but you can 151 00:09:00,990 --> 00:09:05,470 think of them as if you think of them below the level of the whole agent, what you're doing 152 00:09:05,470 --> 00:09:10,270 is you're saying if if this theory of function is correct, there should be a system that's 153 00:09:10,270 --> 00:09:16,020 sensitive to this part of the world, and that if our stimuli make that system in 154 00:09:16,180 --> 00:09:20,260 into one state, then we should get some general outcome, which is what we measure in our 155 00:09:20,260 --> 00:09:20,660 study. 156 00:09:20,820 --> 00:09:21,380 So I don't know. 157 00:09:21,540 --> 00:09:22,100 I don't know, David. 158 00:09:22,180 --> 00:09:23,380 Does that answer your question? 159 00:09:24,260 --> 00:09:24,980 Um, sort of. 160 00:09:25,060 --> 00:09:30,420 So is the idea that our folk psychology system is really good at predicting things, even a 161 00:09:30,420 --> 00:09:36,070 year in advance, you can predict my physical location, uh, and that wherever 162 00:09:36,070 --> 00:09:39,110 HBS is, you can predict that I'm going to be there next year. 163 00:09:39,350 --> 00:09:42,070 And that's a really powerful prediction if you think about it. 164 00:09:42,150 --> 00:09:46,550 Like uh not even ph physicists can predict you know what's gonna happen. 165 00:09:46,630 --> 00:09:49,990 Uh well I mean th astronomers can in terms of the position of the planets and stuff like 166 00:09:49,990 --> 00:09:53,430 that, but yeah, um it's very hard to predict something a year in advance. 167 00:09:53,590 --> 00:09:53,750 Yes. 168 00:09:53,910 --> 00:09:58,230 And yet our folk psychology can do that, uh very precisely, it can predict the location of 169 00:09:58,230 --> 00:09:58,950 my body. 170 00:09:59,190 --> 00:10:01,270 And that's really impressive. 171 00:10:01,510 --> 00:10:07,500 But what you're arguing is I what I think you're arguing is that that's not enough, is 172 00:10:07,500 --> 00:10:09,740 that we also want explanation. 173 00:10:09,980 --> 00:10:10,140 Yeah. 174 00:10:10,300 --> 00:10:14,940 And so folks' psychology can tell you, you know, why I'm gonna be at HBES, or it can it can 175 00:10:14,940 --> 00:10:16,940 tell you that I'm going to be at HBES next year. 176 00:10:17,100 --> 00:10:23,100 But it cannot tell you what what it means for my mind to have a belief about HBES, 177 00:10:23,500 --> 00:10:29,370 what it means for for me to want to go there, why I want to go there, what goals am 178 00:10:29,370 --> 00:10:30,330 I trying to achieve? 179 00:10:30,490 --> 00:10:31,850 Uh what is a goal? 180 00:10:32,090 --> 00:10:37,690 The processes that are involved that that that got my body to HBAS, none of that is in the 181 00:10:37,690 --> 00:10:39,050 folk psychology system. 182 00:10:39,210 --> 00:10:43,050 And that's ideally what we want if we want to fully understand the human mind. 183 00:10:43,130 --> 00:10:48,490 We don't just want intuitions that can make certain predictions but are sort of lack any 184 00:10:48,490 --> 00:10:49,370 kind of foundation. 185 00:10:49,530 --> 00:10:51,210 We want to know what the foundation is. 186 00:10:51,370 --> 00:10:53,380 Is that one way of putting what you're saying? 187 00:10:53,700 --> 00:10:54,340 Yeah, I think so. 188 00:10:54,420 --> 00:10:57,620 I mean, I think to just put it concretely, I think this is what you said. 189 00:10:57,780 --> 00:11:03,540 I'm just gonna restate it is that if I'm using my intuition to predict that you'll be at 190 00:11:03,540 --> 00:11:09,380 HBES next year, if we want to be scientists and not just ourselves, um 191 00:11:09,940 --> 00:11:15,860 uh pre scientifically, we would want to have a scientific account of well, what does it 192 00:11:15,860 --> 00:11:18,420 mean that I predict that you're gonna go to HBES? 193 00:11:18,580 --> 00:11:24,030 Like what's going on in me that leads to the prediction that you're gonna go to 194 00:11:24,030 --> 00:11:27,950 HBus wherever it is, um, Arizona, for example. 195 00:11:28,430 --> 00:11:33,310 Um and once you start thinking about well, what is how do you explain Dave's ability to do 196 00:11:33,310 --> 00:11:33,550 that? 197 00:11:33,630 --> 00:11:35,710 Then you're starting to get scientific. 198 00:11:35,950 --> 00:11:41,310 There's a separate question, which is then how do you get scientific about the fact that 199 00:11:41,310 --> 00:11:46,110 you, David, independent of my representation of you, um, want to go to HBus? 200 00:11:46,350 --> 00:11:48,910 And what does how does how would you build a robot to do that? 201 00:11:49,020 --> 00:11:53,980 So I think you know, it comes back to this thing of uh you don't understand something if 202 00:11:53,980 --> 00:11:55,180 you can't sort of build it. 203 00:11:55,420 --> 00:12:00,540 And the goal of scientific psychology is to figure out how 204 00:12:01,180 --> 00:12:05,420 our folk psychology works and to not just use it. 205 00:12:05,660 --> 00:12:10,540 We don't have to not document what its outputs are or its contents are. 206 00:12:10,620 --> 00:12:12,380 That's sort of the thing to be explained. 207 00:12:12,750 --> 00:12:16,910 if you're just using that, then you're just not doing science, I would say. 208 00:12:16,990 --> 00:12:22,990 Or you're doing a a kind of science where you're cataloging the outputs 209 00:12:22,990 --> 00:12:28,750 of intuitive psychology, but you're still you still need principles, right? 210 00:12:28,830 --> 00:12:34,350 Like you can't just, I think it was Carl Popper who said if a scientist just collected data 211 00:12:34,350 --> 00:12:39,860 all their lives in a notebook or observations all their lives in a notebook, nobody would 212 00:12:39,860 --> 00:12:44,580 think, oh, this should be like in a science museum, because it's just, you know, like today 213 00:12:44,660 --> 00:12:48,820 I woke up and I had an egg for breakfast, and it was there was a bluebird. 214 00:12:49,060 --> 00:12:54,980 And, you know, uh, science is not just about cataloging arbitrary outcomes, it's 215 00:12:54,980 --> 00:13:00,900 an attempt to apply principles that are generalizable, rules, to make some inferences, 216 00:13:00,980 --> 00:13:02,740 uh, to have a framework. 217 00:13:03,060 --> 00:13:09,050 And if I just say David's gonna go to HBest next year, with a unless you're trying to infer 218 00:13:09,050 --> 00:13:14,970 some principle, um, then uh then you're not really trying to do, to do science. 219 00:13:15,130 --> 00:13:19,210 And once you start asking, well, what are the principles, then you start getting into, 220 00:13:19,530 --> 00:13:24,010 well, David has a desire, so that's sort of a principle, but that's a principle of our 221 00:13:24,010 --> 00:13:25,450 intuitive psychology. 222 00:13:25,610 --> 00:13:26,890 Is that a theory? 223 00:13:27,130 --> 00:13:27,800 I don't know. 224 00:13:28,040 --> 00:13:29,880 But then how does a desire work? 225 00:13:30,120 --> 00:13:33,800 And that's where you get into the to the weeds of science. 226 00:13:33,880 --> 00:13:36,680 So but that's the the basic idea is that it's just not enough. 227 00:13:36,840 --> 00:13:42,120 There's not enough um uh not enough structure in the explanation. 228 00:13:42,600 --> 00:13:45,640 David wants to go to HBus, even though it works really well. 229 00:13:46,360 --> 00:13:51,270 Yeah, that's an another interesting point, which is that the fact that you are able to 230 00:13:51,270 --> 00:13:55,510 predict my behavior a year from now itself is the thing we want to explain. 231 00:13:55,670 --> 00:14:00,230 Like that's a really impressive ability to emerge uh from nature. 232 00:14:00,470 --> 00:14:02,310 And we want an explanation of that. 233 00:14:12,940 --> 00:14:15,340 year are infinitesimally small, right? 234 00:14:15,580 --> 00:14:20,060 Insofar as you are a hunk of matter that can predict where I'm going to be in a year, we 235 00:14:20,060 --> 00:14:21,260 need an explanation for that. 236 00:14:21,420 --> 00:14:26,380 And the only explanation we know of that can explain that kind of non-random organization 237 00:14:26,380 --> 00:14:28,300 is natural selection, right? 238 00:14:28,540 --> 00:14:29,980 Entropy is really powerful. 239 00:14:30,060 --> 00:14:35,020 It prevents matter from accumulating these kinds of functional organizations. 240 00:14:35,340 --> 00:14:40,300 And insofar as we see a departure from entropy toward a system that can make 241 00:14:40,590 --> 00:14:43,470 predictions a year in advance, we want to explain that. 242 00:14:43,630 --> 00:14:46,990 We want to explain the selective process that created that system. 243 00:14:47,310 --> 00:14:50,990 Another way of putting it is that, you know, let's say I have a black box and every now and 244 00:14:50,990 --> 00:14:52,750 then it just it spits out a prediction. 245 00:14:52,910 --> 00:14:54,990 You know, tomorrow it's it's gonna rain. 246 00:14:55,150 --> 00:14:57,950 You know, a year from now Dave's gonna be at HBES. 247 00:14:58,110 --> 00:15:00,670 And I have no idea how the box works. 248 00:15:01,120 --> 00:15:02,640 I could just say, I don't want to do science. 249 00:15:02,720 --> 00:15:06,240 I'm just gonna listen to the box and uh go about my life. 250 00:15:06,400 --> 00:15:09,600 Or you could say, I want to do science and I want to figure out how the box works. 251 00:15:09,840 --> 00:15:15,680 And it seems like using folk psychology is just kind of taking the outputs of the of 252 00:15:15,680 --> 00:15:21,120 the box and reifying them and trying to spin them as as theories or as explanations when 253 00:15:21,120 --> 00:15:23,120 they're not, they're just outputs of a of a black box. 254 00:15:23,280 --> 00:15:27,270 But when we want to do science, we want to actually get in there and see how the system 255 00:15:27,270 --> 00:15:27,590 works. 256 00:15:27,990 --> 00:15:28,230 Yeah. 257 00:15:28,390 --> 00:15:34,150 And I think like this comes back to the issue of design and looping back to that, and 258 00:15:34,150 --> 00:15:35,910 there's still a lot to say about that. 259 00:15:36,150 --> 00:15:41,910 But I think the alternative to just saying like this neuron bumps into this or this 260 00:15:41,910 --> 00:15:47,110 molecule bumps into this, you know, it's hard to do that for David's going to end up in 261 00:15:47,110 --> 00:15:48,390 Arizona next year. 262 00:15:48,550 --> 00:15:53,620 So the middle ground is something like the design stance where you it's 263 00:15:53,620 --> 00:15:57,780 teleological to say, look, there's some system that has some function. 264 00:15:57,940 --> 00:16:03,860 Like the plant grows towards light, and we don't know exactly or worry so much 265 00:16:03,860 --> 00:16:05,540 about exactly how it's implemented. 266 00:16:05,700 --> 00:16:11,140 There's different ways to implement it physically, but we can roughly predict that the 267 00:16:11,140 --> 00:16:12,900 plant will grow towards light. 268 00:16:13,060 --> 00:16:15,460 There's a sort of a functional system that does that. 269 00:16:15,620 --> 00:16:20,510 And so trying to decompose desires and beliefs into more specific 270 00:16:21,790 --> 00:16:27,070 systems, it makes it harder because now you have lots of characters in your story, but it's 271 00:16:27,070 --> 00:16:30,270 not as many characters as physical interactions. 272 00:16:30,510 --> 00:16:33,390 And it's abstract means-ends. 273 00:16:33,550 --> 00:16:34,590 This has this function. 274 00:16:34,750 --> 00:16:38,270 And you have to sort of posit them, like, you know, there's a foraging system, it cares 275 00:16:38,270 --> 00:16:43,550 about calories, it cares about macronutrients, it cares about search time and handling time 276 00:16:43,630 --> 00:16:45,070 and costs and benefits. 277 00:16:45,480 --> 00:16:50,040 These are still abstractions, but they're more concrete than beliefs and desires. 278 00:16:50,200 --> 00:16:52,360 So I think it's just sort of this middle ground. 279 00:16:52,520 --> 00:16:53,080 Yeah. 280 00:16:53,960 --> 00:16:58,520 Another argument you could give is that what we're ultimately looking for is a unification 281 00:16:58,520 --> 00:17:04,280 of knowledge, of a bridging of the gap between psychology and biology and physics. 282 00:17:04,360 --> 00:17:08,010 That this this is all part of the same reality. 283 00:17:08,170 --> 00:17:13,290 There are different levels that we can look at, but ultimately we want an explanation of 284 00:17:13,290 --> 00:17:17,530 our minds that is concilient with and consistent with our understanding of the natural 285 00:17:17,530 --> 00:17:19,930 world and the physical world in general. 286 00:17:20,170 --> 00:17:24,970 Simply relying on our our folk psychology intuitions is not going to get us there. 287 00:17:25,450 --> 00:17:25,690 Yeah. 288 00:17:25,930 --> 00:17:30,570 I mean, one question for you, David, is I mean, like the the original email or the original 289 00:17:30,570 --> 00:17:36,260 comment that we read is this concern that like we're not positing that there's actually a 290 00:17:36,260 --> 00:17:39,460 designer, and we're sort of talking metaphorically. 291 00:17:39,700 --> 00:17:44,420 I wonder though, there's another argument, which is that accepting that design requires a 292 00:17:44,420 --> 00:17:49,700 designer is the wrong step, and that natural selection literally does design things. 293 00:17:49,940 --> 00:17:53,860 Maybe this is definitional because it depends on what you mean by design, but there is an 294 00:17:53,860 --> 00:17:59,250 argument that changes in gene frequencies are the reason 295 00:17:59,250 --> 00:18:04,610 why certain means-ends proximate systems exist. 296 00:18:04,770 --> 00:18:10,290 The reason why there's a bit of flesh that acts as if it cares about calories or that 297 00:18:10,290 --> 00:18:16,210 cares about something abstract like the expected reproductive success 298 00:18:16,210 --> 00:18:19,020 of a morph in a con specific, you know. 299 00:18:19,180 --> 00:18:24,060 Um, the reason why that chunk of matter does that and not the infinite number of other 300 00:18:24,060 --> 00:18:29,740 things it might do, like play table tennis or calculate pi to the infinite 301 00:18:29,740 --> 00:18:34,780 decimal place, is because those things had an effect on fitness, and 302 00:18:34,940 --> 00:18:40,250 fitness uh changes is what can design uh 303 00:18:40,490 --> 00:18:41,610 flesh, right? 304 00:18:41,770 --> 00:18:47,530 So I mean there's an argument that if you strip out the idea that there is a intelligence 305 00:18:47,530 --> 00:18:53,450 to begin with and you need to explain intelligence, then design a 306 00:18:53,450 --> 00:18:59,290 non-intelligent design, uh a non a design created by a pro dumb 307 00:18:59,290 --> 00:19:02,810 process is the original design. 308 00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:08,600 And there's an argument then that, you know, lateral selection literally does design, is d 309 00:19:08,680 --> 00:19:14,360 actually does design things insofar as what you're describing as design is a 310 00:19:14,360 --> 00:19:20,360 means-ends system that's acting as if it's for producing a particular kind of outcome. 311 00:19:20,840 --> 00:19:21,080 Right. 312 00:19:21,320 --> 00:19:26,350 I mean there's you could even make the argument that human design doesn't even exist to a 313 00:19:26,350 --> 00:19:26,670 certain extent. 314 00:19:26,830 --> 00:19:30,590 I mean, you can think about the the idea of an intelligence that designs something, that 315 00:19:30,670 --> 00:19:33,390 that itself is a folk psychology intuition. 316 00:19:33,710 --> 00:19:39,230 And that itself is probably a misleading description of how the process works. 317 00:19:39,390 --> 00:19:43,150 If you take, you know, the example of a human designing a tool to perform a particular 318 00:19:43,150 --> 00:19:47,900 function, even there, probably there is some kind of quasi Darwinian process going on 319 00:19:47,900 --> 00:19:52,860 inside that human's brain where they're thinking and considering different possibilities 320 00:19:52,860 --> 00:19:53,820 and possible ideas. 321 00:19:53,900 --> 00:19:57,980 And you know, the the ideas that make sense are going to rise to the top, and the ones that 322 00:19:57,980 --> 00:19:59,740 don't are going to get filtered away. 323 00:19:59,900 --> 00:20:02,700 And then they're going to and the ones that they try out, they're going to try some things 324 00:20:02,780 --> 00:20:06,220 that's not going to work, and those get discarded, and the things that actually do work are 325 00:20:06,220 --> 00:20:07,420 going to stick around. 326 00:20:07,690 --> 00:20:12,410 And then if you zoom out past that particular human and you look at the process of cultural 327 00:20:12,410 --> 00:20:17,530 evolution or cultural change, the design aspects that that work are probably going to be 328 00:20:17,530 --> 00:20:21,450 favored by cultural evolution if you're taking a cultural evolutionary perspective. 329 00:20:21,690 --> 00:20:25,610 It may be the case that it's just Darwinism all the way down, that there isn't even a clear 330 00:20:25,610 --> 00:20:29,930 case of human design, that there's a is there's a Darwinian whittling process within that 331 00:20:29,930 --> 00:20:34,730 human's mind, there's a Darwinian whittling process within cultural evolution that filters 332 00:20:34,730 --> 00:20:37,260 out the cultural variants that don't work. 333 00:20:37,420 --> 00:20:42,700 And it may be that, you know, there really is no quote unquote designer. 334 00:20:42,780 --> 00:20:45,980 And that's just a kind of folk psychological simplification. 335 00:20:46,140 --> 00:20:49,980 So maybe all design is without a little homunculus designing it. 336 00:20:50,300 --> 00:20:51,420 Yeah, it would have to be, right? 337 00:20:51,500 --> 00:20:56,710 And I think even within the individual, that stuff's being done by systems that are 338 00:20:56,710 --> 00:20:57,750 probably doing something like this. 339 00:20:57,830 --> 00:20:59,990 I like to say that everything is trial and error. 340 00:21:00,070 --> 00:21:01,670 You just don't always see the error, right? 341 00:21:01,830 --> 00:21:05,510 So the trial and error can be over evolutionary time. 342 00:21:05,670 --> 00:21:08,150 So let's say we take our artifact psychology. 343 00:21:08,310 --> 00:21:12,790 There were alternate versions of our artifact psychology that were selected out. 344 00:21:12,950 --> 00:21:14,790 Um, so that's some trial and error. 345 00:21:14,870 --> 00:21:19,510 And then within an individual existing, so if David wants to build a better mousetra, that 346 00:21:19,510 --> 00:21:24,070 system, I mean, more precisely, it's not David is designing a mousetrap. 347 00:21:24,150 --> 00:21:29,200 I mean, you can say that, but precisely and more more precisely, there's a bunch of systems 348 00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:34,560 in David that are doing this generate, evaluate, 349 00:21:34,880 --> 00:21:40,080 select, refine process that eventually leads to David being like, oh, I have an idea. 350 00:21:40,320 --> 00:21:45,680 And so, yeah, so in that sense, um it's it's mechanism all the way down. 351 00:21:45,760 --> 00:21:51,520 And to sort of say, start off by saying, look, natural selection doesn't design anything 352 00:21:51,600 --> 00:21:56,410 because it's not an intelligence, and you need an intelligence to design something, it's 353 00:21:56,410 --> 00:22:02,010 sort of ironically it's using the mechanistic outcome to 354 00:22:02,490 --> 00:22:05,450 like sort of reject that it's all mechanistic in a way. 355 00:22:06,410 --> 00:22:08,010 Yeah, totally. 356 00:22:08,650 --> 00:22:14,090 So so I I would say, you know, I mean, Brett Beheim alluded to this, you know, the the 357 00:22:14,090 --> 00:22:18,570 synthesis between population genetics and the design in the organism. 358 00:22:18,650 --> 00:22:22,570 I mean, Lita alluded to this too, that what George Williams would was doing was saying, 359 00:22:22,730 --> 00:22:28,300 look, it's changes in gene frequencies and populations wedded to changes in 360 00:22:28,300 --> 00:22:32,700 organism design, those are the two things that are that are hooked up together. 361 00:22:33,100 --> 00:22:36,060 That's really the uh modern synthesis. 362 00:22:36,220 --> 00:22:39,260 In that sense, it it literally is design. 363 00:22:39,340 --> 00:22:42,460 And I think it's fine to talk about design. 364 00:22:42,620 --> 00:22:47,820 I think, I think maybe the kernel of truth, my thought is that if you say, well, there's 365 00:22:47,820 --> 00:22:51,970 design for fitness, and you say fitness teleology, right? 366 00:22:52,130 --> 00:22:53,170 This is Letus point. 367 00:22:53,330 --> 00:22:57,410 If I know I'm in an economic scheme and I know I'll never see David again again, I should 368 00:22:57,410 --> 00:22:58,370 sort of screw him over. 369 00:22:58,530 --> 00:23:04,450 Or if I know that uh, you know, pornography is not gonna lead me to differential 370 00:23:04,450 --> 00:23:08,530 to have like more babies, I shouldn't care about pornography because like I know. 371 00:23:08,770 --> 00:23:14,770 So the idea of there's sort of this um rationality that's sort of ideal and 372 00:23:14,770 --> 00:23:15,650 knows everything. 373 00:23:15,890 --> 00:23:16,130 Yeah. 374 00:23:16,370 --> 00:23:20,920 I mean, the other point to make is that using the design stance or the folk artifact 375 00:23:20,920 --> 00:23:25,160 system, whatever you want to call it, has been tremendously successful in biology. 376 00:23:25,320 --> 00:23:29,160 Like it it, you know, it's been said that nothing in biology makes sense except in light of 377 00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:29,560 evolution. 378 00:23:29,720 --> 00:23:33,000 I think you could also say that nothing in biology makes sense except in light of the 379 00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:33,800 design stance. 380 00:23:34,040 --> 00:23:39,960 You think about our knowledge of how the molecular machinery work, proteins, uh RNA DNA, 381 00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:42,650 all the different parts of our morphology. 382 00:23:42,810 --> 00:23:47,770 We have organs and within them cells and different molecular structures. 383 00:23:48,090 --> 00:23:52,970 If you just try to understand how parts of different animals work, how parts of the body 384 00:23:52,970 --> 00:23:58,330 work, you really cannot understand any of that without availing yourself of a design 385 00:23:58,330 --> 00:24:02,810 metaphor that this thing has this particular function, and that's why it's shaped this way, 386 00:24:02,890 --> 00:24:05,610 and that's why the process works this way and not some other way. 387 00:24:05,850 --> 00:24:10,320 This little mole piece of molecular machinery does this, this piece does that. 388 00:24:10,480 --> 00:24:14,800 Like it it's kind of inconceivable to even think about what biology would look like if we 389 00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:18,320 could not avail ourselves of functional design thinking. 390 00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:22,960 And so the argument would just be it's been so successful in biology in general. 391 00:24:23,120 --> 00:24:27,920 Uh, why don't we try to leverage that success and see how s successful it can be when we 392 00:24:27,920 --> 00:24:29,280 apply it to the mind? 393 00:24:30,150 --> 00:24:32,870 Yeah, and I think my point, uh, I agree with that. 394 00:24:32,950 --> 00:24:38,950 And I think my point is that the design stance, it's refracted through the constraints of 395 00:24:39,110 --> 00:24:40,710 it's not going to be a perfect system. 396 00:24:40,870 --> 00:24:44,150 It has to use cues that were available over evolutionary time. 397 00:24:44,470 --> 00:24:50,070 And it's not just uh an ideal design from the perspective of any any 398 00:24:50,230 --> 00:24:55,300 outcome that would be that would produce uh fitness benefits under any environmental 399 00:24:55,300 --> 00:24:57,460 circumstances would be selected for. 400 00:24:57,700 --> 00:25:00,020 And um yeah, I think I think that's right. 401 00:25:00,100 --> 00:25:03,700 But yeah, I I think the bottom line is that I think it's fine to talk about natural 402 00:25:03,700 --> 00:25:09,140 selection designing things as long as you understand that it's not a foolproof 403 00:25:09,460 --> 00:25:12,580 process that's literally driven by a person. 404 00:25:13,220 --> 00:25:19,170 And if you give them the information, um, like oh yeah this is a one shot 405 00:25:19,170 --> 00:25:24,130 encounter or in a modern environment this won't lead to fitness you know the mechanisms 406 00:25:24,290 --> 00:25:30,210 it's not real time fitness teleology it's just that there's a design that was designed for 407 00:25:30,210 --> 00:25:36,130 a particular set of environmental circumstances that's the design um and that's sort of 408 00:25:36,130 --> 00:25:41,730 fixed and you can't if you take the design out of a it's an evolutionary relevant 409 00:25:41,730 --> 00:25:44,660 context then you might get weird results. 410 00:25:44,980 --> 00:25:50,180 With if you keep that caveat of the notion of an EA, then I think it's fine to be design 411 00:25:50,260 --> 00:25:50,580 minded. 412 00:25:50,740 --> 00:25:55,700 If you don't do that, then yeah, I can see how being design minded would would mislead you. 413 00:25:56,260 --> 00:25:56,420 Right. 414 00:25:56,580 --> 00:26:00,820 So th there's a bad way to be design minded where you could say that the function of the 415 00:26:00,820 --> 00:26:02,820 mind is to maximize fitness. 416 00:26:03,060 --> 00:26:03,300 Yes. 417 00:26:03,540 --> 00:26:03,780 Right. 418 00:26:03,860 --> 00:26:08,020 We want the the reason why we have brains is just to figure out how we can have the most 419 00:26:08,020 --> 00:26:08,420 babies. 420 00:26:08,650 --> 00:26:08,810 Right. 421 00:26:09,290 --> 00:26:12,170 That would be a bad uh design stance. 422 00:26:12,570 --> 00:26:17,210 The right design stance is, well, yes, in some sense, minds are designed to maximize 423 00:26:17,210 --> 00:26:20,970 fitness, but within a very specific environment, that the environment is crucial. 424 00:26:21,130 --> 00:26:27,050 And so once you recognize that our minds are designed to promote fitness in a very specific 425 00:26:27,050 --> 00:26:32,980 set of ancestral environments and ecologies, then you have the right design 426 00:26:32,980 --> 00:26:36,740 stance and you can begin to make predictions about how the mind works that make sense. 427 00:26:36,980 --> 00:26:41,940 But if you strip away the environment and the and the ecology and you just use your design 428 00:26:41,940 --> 00:26:45,940 stance to think about what a fitness maximizing computer would do, you're just going to go 429 00:26:45,940 --> 00:26:46,500 astray. 430 00:26:46,580 --> 00:26:51,700 Uh and so I think another piece of the design stance is it has to be ecology and 431 00:26:51,700 --> 00:26:52,820 environment focused. 432 00:26:53,060 --> 00:26:53,220 Yeah. 433 00:26:53,620 --> 00:26:58,340 And without an understanding of of of the environment in which the phenotype was selected, 434 00:26:58,420 --> 00:26:59,940 you have no understanding of the phenotype. 435 00:27:00,330 --> 00:27:00,810 Yeah, that's right. 436 00:27:00,890 --> 00:27:05,450 And I think the environment and ecology go together with actually being design minded 437 00:27:05,530 --> 00:27:10,890 because if you say people are designed to maximize their fitness and you understand that it 438 00:27:10,890 --> 00:27:14,970 sounds like you're saying a design stance thing, but if you if you think of it from an uh 439 00:27:14,970 --> 00:27:18,970 intentional theory mind level, then you just say people are motivated to maximize their 440 00:27:18,970 --> 00:27:19,610 fitness. 441 00:27:19,850 --> 00:27:23,930 And so whether or not it incurred in an ancestral environment or not, you just sort of say, 442 00:27:24,010 --> 00:27:28,140 well, people look around and look at what maximizes their fitness, and they just do it. 443 00:27:28,460 --> 00:27:34,380 So I think a lot of misunderstanding happens where people think they're talking at a 444 00:27:34,380 --> 00:27:38,300 design level stance, and they're saying, look, there's a system that's for maximizing 445 00:27:38,300 --> 00:27:38,780 fitness. 446 00:27:38,940 --> 00:27:43,340 But all they're really doing is they're just that's the agent who has an intention or a 447 00:27:43,340 --> 00:27:45,340 goal to maximize their fitness. 448 00:27:45,870 --> 00:27:50,990 The way you know if somebody's being design minded is you're forced to have 449 00:27:51,630 --> 00:27:57,630 deterministic cues where the cues are what are the inputs, what are the processes, 450 00:27:57,790 --> 00:28:01,390 what are the outputs, and these things are are mechanistic or deterministic. 451 00:28:01,550 --> 00:28:07,550 That's even if you take an ancestral versus modern perspective, if you're 452 00:28:07,550 --> 00:28:13,420 actually just using your theory mind, the theory of mind system might still lead you to 453 00:28:13,420 --> 00:28:16,620 think, well, it was ancestrally good to be maximize your fitness. 454 00:28:16,700 --> 00:28:18,300 Let's do it in modern environments too. 455 00:28:18,380 --> 00:28:18,620 Yeah. 456 00:28:18,940 --> 00:28:19,260 Right. 457 00:28:19,500 --> 00:28:20,460 And it's important. 458 00:28:20,540 --> 00:28:22,300 I mean, a lot of people get tripped up on this. 459 00:28:22,540 --> 00:28:28,060 They think that um the mind is is for maximizing fitness and that we're calculating, you 460 00:28:28,060 --> 00:28:32,860 know, the how many babies we can make if we if we take option A versus option B. 461 00:28:33,180 --> 00:28:33,580 So yeah. 462 00:28:33,660 --> 00:28:38,630 So I think design, as long as you know it's not a person doing it, it's fine to talk about 463 00:28:38,630 --> 00:28:40,710 it in the context of natural selection. 464 00:28:41,910 --> 00:28:42,390 For sure. 465 00:28:42,710 --> 00:28:47,350 Should we talk about bad ways to do design thinking? 466 00:28:47,510 --> 00:28:53,190 So we already talked about one, which is fitness teleology, the idea that the mind is 467 00:28:53,190 --> 00:28:57,510 designed to maximize fitness independent of what the environment is and what the 468 00:28:57,510 --> 00:28:58,390 constraints are. 469 00:28:58,550 --> 00:29:04,280 Uh are there other bad ways that this way of thinking has 470 00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:04,680 gone? 471 00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:10,600 I mean, I think I think one of them is sort of an oversimplification, uh short-term versus 472 00:29:10,600 --> 00:29:16,520 long-term meeting, or like genetic quality, um, things like that, where there's this idea 473 00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:22,520 that um there's an essence of there's a design looking for something like genetic quality, 474 00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:26,920 and not thinking about, well, that has to be a Q-based system. 475 00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:29,310 What does genetic quality mean? 476 00:29:29,390 --> 00:29:35,390 Well, it would be things like, well, there's variation in uh how injured or prone 477 00:29:35,390 --> 00:29:39,630 to disease an organism is, and what cues would those be? 478 00:29:39,870 --> 00:29:45,790 And that doesn't necessarily mean genes per se, but it's just cues of like on the 479 00:29:45,790 --> 00:29:50,270 ground, which robots are in better condition versus others, you know, and that and that 480 00:29:50,270 --> 00:29:52,510 changes the way you sort of start thinking about it. 481 00:29:52,590 --> 00:29:58,040 And leaving it at the level of genetic quality, I think essentializes it sort of conflates 482 00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:00,120 selection pressures with the design. 483 00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:06,360 And it sort of leads to shorthands that I think lead one not to look into, well, what is 484 00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:08,040 the exact design? 485 00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:10,440 I think short-term and long-term mating is another one. 486 00:30:10,600 --> 00:30:15,080 Well, you could invest a little bit in a lot of offspring or a lot in a few offspring. 487 00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:18,520 And so maybe males are more designed for short-term mating. 488 00:30:18,690 --> 00:30:22,290 And then you just get this idea of, well, well, let's just look at short-term mating versus 489 00:30:22,290 --> 00:30:23,970 long-term mating motivations, which is fine. 490 00:30:24,050 --> 00:30:29,570 And, you know, like that's that's data and that's maybe an insight compared to what existed 491 00:30:29,570 --> 00:30:30,210 before. 492 00:30:30,450 --> 00:30:36,130 But then work through the logic of, okay, so I'm a male and I have a short-term mating 493 00:30:36,130 --> 00:30:36,770 preference. 494 00:30:36,930 --> 00:30:39,730 How does that play out in a real world ecology? 495 00:30:40,210 --> 00:30:45,100 Do I do differentially better if you're investing in your offspring social political 496 00:30:45,100 --> 00:30:46,060 capital, and I'm not. 497 00:30:46,140 --> 00:30:50,860 So like Brooke Shelza and that and uh the other people we've talked to have sort of argued 498 00:30:50,860 --> 00:30:56,620 that um there's a lot more to investing in the offspring than just uh conception, and uh 499 00:30:56,700 --> 00:30:57,900 as as people put it. 500 00:30:58,060 --> 00:31:04,060 And so I think thinking about selection pressures or mechanisms in these slogan y ways 501 00:31:04,140 --> 00:31:10,140 of like short-term, long-term, or good genes, it's a shorthand that prevents people 502 00:31:10,140 --> 00:31:11,980 from actually fleshing out the design. 503 00:31:12,060 --> 00:31:18,010 And I think it leads to just a cottage industry of studies that in some 504 00:31:18,010 --> 00:31:23,930 way resemble or sound like they're consistent with that slogan, but it's 505 00:31:23,930 --> 00:31:29,850 not fleshing out a design or even asking what would the design look like given 506 00:31:29,850 --> 00:31:33,690 that it has to naturally evolve in a real environment. 507 00:31:34,900 --> 00:31:35,140 Right. 508 00:31:35,380 --> 00:31:41,220 I guess the pitfall there is not thinking of the design in terms of the ecology 509 00:31:41,300 --> 00:31:47,060 again, where um the mind is by design an organ that uh 510 00:31:47,700 --> 00:31:53,220 processes information from the ecology and uses that information to guide 511 00:31:53,220 --> 00:31:54,100 behavior. 512 00:31:54,420 --> 00:31:55,860 That's why we have a mind. 513 00:31:55,940 --> 00:32:01,540 It it's it it processes information, it makes behavior contingent on that information. 514 00:32:01,780 --> 00:32:05,810 I think probably where people are going wrong is that they're sort of viewing the mind as 515 00:32:05,810 --> 00:32:07,250 analogous to any other organ. 516 00:32:07,410 --> 00:32:13,010 So like a liver just detoxifies poisons from the blood and it doesn't it doesn't do that 517 00:32:13,010 --> 00:32:16,290 conditional on some kind of environmental uh information. 518 00:32:16,370 --> 00:32:17,730 It just it just naturally does that. 519 00:32:17,890 --> 00:32:19,730 The heart just pumps blood throughout the body. 520 00:32:19,890 --> 00:32:25,890 It doesn't do that conditional on, you know, uh whether your uh mate is flirting 521 00:32:25,890 --> 00:32:26,530 with someone else. 522 00:32:26,690 --> 00:32:28,370 It just always pumps blood throughout the body. 523 00:32:28,450 --> 00:32:31,640 It's not con contingent on anything in the environment. 524 00:32:31,720 --> 00:32:34,120 The same thing goes with the lungs, any other part of the body. 525 00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:36,840 These are not information contingent adaptations. 526 00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:39,400 Their job is to do one thing and they do that thing. 527 00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:41,320 You could quibble with that. 528 00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:45,480 Maybe in some sense, some organs are contingent on some types of information, but the 529 00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:48,920 degree of contingency is way lower than it is in the brain, which is that's that's the 530 00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:50,120 whole reason why it's there. 531 00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:55,240 You know, we have these elaborate sense organs to pick up information from the environment 532 00:32:55,370 --> 00:32:59,530 and use it to guide behavior, our other organs of the body don't have sense organs, or at 533 00:32:59,530 --> 00:33:03,770 least not ones that are as elaborate uh as our eyes and ears. 534 00:33:04,010 --> 00:33:08,650 And so I think when people do kind of lazy theorizing, like, oh, men just they want to 535 00:33:08,650 --> 00:33:13,210 pursue short-term mating in the same way that the heart pumps blood, and they just do that 536 00:33:13,290 --> 00:33:15,930 that's it that's not in any way contingent on anything in the environment. 537 00:33:16,010 --> 00:33:17,130 That's just what that's what men do. 538 00:33:17,210 --> 00:33:21,930 They they pursue short-term mating and the heart pumps blood and and and it's uh sort of 539 00:33:22,500 --> 00:33:27,460 devoid of any kind of e ecological thinking that I think is necessary for the design 540 00:33:27,460 --> 00:33:27,860 stance. 541 00:33:28,180 --> 00:33:30,100 That might be where where people are going wrong there. 542 00:33:30,420 --> 00:33:30,740 Yeah. 543 00:33:31,060 --> 00:33:32,100 Yeah, I like that a lot. 544 00:33:32,180 --> 00:33:32,580 Yeah, yeah. 545 00:33:32,740 --> 00:33:37,220 I think it also it comes back to like Lita's point of like it's a depth psychology where 546 00:33:37,220 --> 00:33:42,580 it's if you take an intentional perspective, it's people really are motivated because they 547 00:33:42,580 --> 00:33:44,660 want to maximize their genetic interest. 548 00:33:44,900 --> 00:33:47,220 You know, that's the real reason why they're doing something. 549 00:33:47,300 --> 00:33:53,150 And so that's why it's deflationary to talk about genes when we're talking about falling 550 00:33:53,150 --> 00:33:58,270 in love or caring about your children or caring about social partners and being altruistic. 551 00:33:58,430 --> 00:34:03,390 If you view those as opposed, I think that's a good mark that you're probably operating at 552 00:34:03,390 --> 00:34:04,350 the wrong level. 553 00:34:04,430 --> 00:34:10,110 Um, and you're understanding genes in design, not at the level of design, but 554 00:34:10,350 --> 00:34:14,670 but at the intentional level, such that there's some rivalry between the two. 555 00:34:15,380 --> 00:34:15,620 Right. 556 00:34:15,780 --> 00:34:20,100 And I think it gets you greater purchase on the variation that does exist across cultures 557 00:34:20,100 --> 00:34:21,620 and between individuals. 558 00:34:21,940 --> 00:34:26,900 If you focus your analysis on how the mind is interacting with the environment to produce 559 00:34:26,900 --> 00:34:30,900 the behavior and what kinds of information it's using from the environment to adjust 560 00:34:30,900 --> 00:34:31,620 behavior. 561 00:34:32,740 --> 00:34:37,540 For example, if you if you ignore that, then you might predict just uh naively more 562 00:34:37,540 --> 00:34:41,460 universality than in fact exists among people. 563 00:34:41,990 --> 00:34:46,150 Whereas if you view the mind as an organ that is designed to pick up information from the 564 00:34:46,150 --> 00:34:50,470 environment and strategically use it, then you would predict a lot of variation insofar as 565 00:34:50,470 --> 00:34:53,990 there's variation in different environments, different affordances, different constraints, 566 00:34:54,150 --> 00:34:55,590 different ecologies, et cetera. 567 00:34:55,910 --> 00:34:56,550 Yeah, that's right. 568 00:34:56,630 --> 00:35:02,630 And I think, you know, the uh the the sort of trope that um evolutionary psychologists 569 00:35:02,630 --> 00:35:04,710 don't study cross-cultural differences. 570 00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:10,560 I'm of two minds with that, because on the one hand, like a lot of theorizing is based on 571 00:35:10,560 --> 00:35:14,080 weird populations, and that's you know, that is a problem. 572 00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:18,080 I mean, that said, a weird population is still a human being, right? 573 00:35:18,160 --> 00:35:21,680 Um and it's easy to sort of poo-poo that. 574 00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:27,430 But on the other hand, the kernel of truth is that if you're taking the design stance, 575 00:35:27,590 --> 00:35:33,590 cross-cultural variation or no cultural being a default is useful if you're taking 576 00:35:33,590 --> 00:35:38,950 the design stance because exactly as you said, all the variation and outcomes tell you 577 00:35:38,950 --> 00:35:40,790 about the underlying design, right? 578 00:35:41,030 --> 00:35:46,310 Um, but if you're if you're sort of not operating at the design stance, then you sort of 579 00:35:46,310 --> 00:35:50,630 have this idea well, like there's some outcome that's evolved or genetic or innate. 580 00:35:50,710 --> 00:35:52,840 Like, is theory of mind innate. 581 00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:55,000 Well, theory of mind has to be universal. 582 00:35:55,160 --> 00:36:00,200 So looking at universals, um, it could there's a good smart way to do it, and there's sort 583 00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:01,080 of a dumb way to do it. 584 00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:05,800 The smart way, I mean, dumb is too strong, but the smart way is to say these are all 585 00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:08,520 outcomes that are diagnostic of design. 586 00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:14,760 Um, or the attempt to describe universals is getting at a level of abstraction that 587 00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:16,360 isn't just outcomes. 588 00:36:17,270 --> 00:36:23,030 But the other version is to say, do men always prefer sexual 589 00:36:23,030 --> 00:36:24,390 variety over women? 590 00:36:24,630 --> 00:36:29,030 What I think we're kind of describing as sort of fast and loose design stance that might 591 00:36:29,030 --> 00:36:30,710 not even be design stance thinking. 592 00:36:31,190 --> 00:36:31,430 Yeah. 593 00:36:31,910 --> 00:36:37,430 Another way to think of it is that uh the universality is what produces the variation. 594 00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:38,480 right? 595 00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:43,120 We have a universal design that responds strategically to certain types of information that 596 00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:44,720 vary across different ecologies. 597 00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:48,960 And insofar as that information varies across ecologies, you're going to see different 598 00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:50,560 outcomes across ecologies. 599 00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:54,000 But what is universal is not the output. 600 00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:55,600 The output is going to change. 601 00:36:55,840 --> 00:37:01,200 What's universal is the information processing structure that responds to that information. 602 00:37:01,410 --> 00:37:03,330 Uh, and that and that's the important part. 603 00:37:03,490 --> 00:37:06,690 That's that's the the human nature that that we're interested in as evolutionary 604 00:37:06,690 --> 00:37:07,250 psychologists. 605 00:37:07,410 --> 00:37:11,170 Not necessarily the stuff that is the same across cultures, although that's that's part of 606 00:37:11,170 --> 00:37:12,930 it and that gives you some clues. 607 00:37:13,090 --> 00:37:16,770 Uh what we're interested in is, you know, what is that machinery doing? 608 00:37:17,010 --> 00:37:21,810 Uh and you would expect a machine, a really complicated machine, to produce different 609 00:37:21,810 --> 00:37:23,890 outputs in response to different situations. 610 00:37:24,050 --> 00:37:29,880 And that is indeed why the brain exists is to, you know, produce uh adaptive behavior in 611 00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:34,840 in response to particular situations and contexts and ecologies. 612 00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:40,360 Yeah, I I don't think you can overestimate how much misunderstanding evolutionary 613 00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:46,280 psychology is understanding the words and concepts through the lens of just 614 00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:47,320 the intentional level. 615 00:37:47,480 --> 00:37:52,920 So if you have this idea that uh evolutionary psychologists are interested in genes and 616 00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:57,130 universals, and you understand that from the intentional level, then you would think that 617 00:37:57,130 --> 00:38:01,530 people's underlying motivations are genes, not the surface level things. 618 00:38:01,690 --> 00:38:05,370 So it's this depth psychology, as Lita talked about, and thus you get all this stuff of 619 00:38:05,370 --> 00:38:08,330 like, well, people are they really altruistic, or is it just their genes? 620 00:38:08,410 --> 00:38:10,890 Or do people really love their family or not? 621 00:38:11,050 --> 00:38:12,010 Or is it just their genes? 622 00:38:12,090 --> 00:38:14,250 Or do you really care about other people or is it just your genes? 623 00:38:14,410 --> 00:38:17,500 That's the wrong way to think about it, because it's in opposition. 624 00:38:17,740 --> 00:38:22,540 The other one is if it's universal, if if what evolutionary psychologists think is 625 00:38:22,540 --> 00:38:28,140 universal is just sort of the desires and beliefs of of people, then everywhere people 626 00:38:28,140 --> 00:38:31,820 should believe the same thing, desire the same thing, act the same way. 627 00:38:31,900 --> 00:38:33,180 Um I don't think that's true. 628 00:38:33,260 --> 00:38:35,500 So evolutionary psychology is clearly wrong. 629 00:38:35,660 --> 00:38:39,020 Um and that's not what evolutionary psychologists say, but I think again, that's like a 630 00:38:39,020 --> 00:38:43,180 symptom of taking the design not taking the design stance, which is a weird way to think. 631 00:38:43,330 --> 00:38:48,130 And but I think the the defaults of taking the intentional theory of mind approach to 632 00:38:48,130 --> 00:38:53,970 psychology, that's that is sort of well, most of the misunderstandings of evolutionary 633 00:38:53,970 --> 00:38:58,850 psychology, I think, are a consequence of treating it from that perspective and 634 00:38:58,850 --> 00:39:00,850 misunderstanding it from that perspective. 635 00:39:01,250 --> 00:39:01,410 Right. 636 00:39:01,810 --> 00:39:05,890 I I think there is a defensible version of that, which is that you can say that human 637 00:39:05,890 --> 00:39:08,120 motivations are are universal. 638 00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:12,440 Like every human wants physical safety and health, and, you know, they they want their 639 00:39:12,440 --> 00:39:18,200 offspring to be safe and well fed, and they want status and support and 640 00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:20,360 uh coalitional strength. 641 00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:24,840 You know, yeah, I think there's a defensible reading of that, which is that, you know, the 642 00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:29,110 underlying things we're striving for and we evolved to strive for the the things that 643 00:39:29,110 --> 00:39:35,030 natural selection picked up on as fitness proxies to strive for, those things 644 00:39:35,030 --> 00:39:35,990 are universal. 645 00:39:36,310 --> 00:39:42,150 But the strategies that people pursue to to get those fitness proxies, to get those those 646 00:39:42,150 --> 00:39:45,590 goals, those motivations, are going to be different from place to place. 647 00:39:45,670 --> 00:39:50,310 You know, just the simplest possible example, you know, every human everywhere has fear of 648 00:39:50,310 --> 00:39:52,630 being in in physical danger, right? 649 00:39:52,710 --> 00:39:57,430 And there are systems in the mind that monitor the environment for signs of physical 650 00:39:57,430 --> 00:39:57,830 danger. 651 00:39:58,020 --> 00:40:01,300 And you could say that, you know, that is a universal part of human nature. 652 00:40:01,460 --> 00:40:05,540 But what is dangerous in one place is going to be very different from what is dangerous in 653 00:40:05,540 --> 00:40:06,260 a different place. 654 00:40:06,500 --> 00:40:10,100 You might have snakes in one place and not in another place, you know, poisonous spiders in 655 00:40:10,100 --> 00:40:11,300 one place and not in another place. 656 00:40:11,540 --> 00:40:16,820 You might have warfare that is intense and ubiquitous in one place and not so intense and 657 00:40:16,820 --> 00:40:18,820 ubiquitous in another place. 658 00:40:19,220 --> 00:40:24,290 So just because the underlying fear system is the same across humans doesn't mean that the 659 00:40:24,290 --> 00:40:28,930 outputs of that fear system and the strategies that people take to pursue the goal of 660 00:40:28,930 --> 00:40:30,370 safety are going to be the same. 661 00:40:30,530 --> 00:40:31,410 They're going to be very different. 662 00:40:31,810 --> 00:40:32,690 Totally agree, David. 663 00:40:32,770 --> 00:40:34,770 David, maybe should we just end here? 664 00:40:35,410 --> 00:40:35,970 That's fine. 665 00:40:36,130 --> 00:40:37,090 I think this is good. 666 00:40:37,330 --> 00:40:41,330 Um we'll we'll uh we'll end here and we'll see everybody next week. 667 00:40:41,650 --> 00:40:42,530 All right, sounds good. 668 00:40:42,770 --> 00:40:43,090 Okay. 669 00:40:44,220 --> 00:40:45,260 Hey everybody. 670 00:40:45,500 --> 00:40:49,660 Uh we're doing provisional recording, so thanks for bearing with our abrupt ending. 671 00:40:49,740 --> 00:40:55,420 Uh on our way out here we'll hear from Greg Bryant, who we ran into at HBS in Robot 672 00:40:55,500 --> 00:40:56,380 Morocco as well. 673 00:40:56,540 --> 00:40:57,820 Thanks everybody for listening. 674 00:40:57,980 --> 00:40:59,260 We'll see you next week. 675 00:40:59,980 --> 00:41:00,940 Here maybe I'll get on this side. 676 00:41:01,100 --> 00:41:02,140 Yeah, because David, you have to say something. 677 00:41:03,180 --> 00:41:04,700 So David Oh okay. 678 00:41:04,850 --> 00:41:06,050 Uh how's it going, Greg? 679 00:41:06,290 --> 00:41:06,930 I'm doing well. 680 00:41:07,090 --> 00:41:08,370 Yeah, did you have a good HPAS? 681 00:41:08,530 --> 00:41:10,690 Yeah, both both conference both conferences were good. 682 00:41:11,010 --> 00:41:12,530 Yeah, oh you went to CES and HPS. 683 00:41:12,610 --> 00:41:13,490 Yeah, I did the whole spiel. 684 00:41:13,650 --> 00:41:14,290 Oh wow, okay. 685 00:41:14,370 --> 00:41:15,170 Which one was better? 686 00:41:16,450 --> 00:41:17,090 No way, man. 687 00:41:17,330 --> 00:41:17,650 No way. 688 00:41:17,810 --> 00:41:18,770 You're not touching that one. 689 00:41:18,850 --> 00:41:19,410 Nope. 690 00:41:19,650 --> 00:41:21,010 Um, I like them both, you know. 691 00:41:21,090 --> 00:41:26,400 Uh actually it's been inspiring me to think about what kinds of factors would um 692 00:41:26,720 --> 00:41:31,280 cause the divisions we see and what kinds of things could we do to increase the um 693 00:41:31,680 --> 00:41:32,720 community overall. 694 00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:33,360 For sure. 695 00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:37,680 And um I'm thinking about that right now and I think people need to write about it and 696 00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:38,400 think about it. 697 00:41:38,720 --> 00:41:39,440 Totally agree. 698 00:41:39,520 --> 00:41:43,520 Yeah I think that was a common theme I saw here at at HBES at least. 699 00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:48,880 I didn't go to CDS, but uh the desire to have greater unification uh within the 700 00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:50,000 evolutionary social sciences. 701 00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:50,800 Absolutely. 702 00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:56,010 Yeah yeah I mean the old version of HBES included um all these different people. 703 00:41:56,170 --> 00:41:56,570 Yeah. 704 00:41:56,730 --> 00:42:02,330 And now, you know, the community's fracturing a little bit for reasons that are good too 705 00:42:02,490 --> 00:42:07,130 because people are specializing, but I think we need to figure out how to come together as 706 00:42:07,130 --> 00:42:13,050 evolutionary behavioral science or behavioral scientists and uh and see 707 00:42:13,050 --> 00:42:17,530 each the value in each other's work and then recognize where there may be empirical 708 00:42:17,530 --> 00:42:19,050 differences that are resolvable. 709 00:42:19,300 --> 00:42:19,700 Yeah. 710 00:42:19,940 --> 00:42:23,860 It was really great they were able to do like organize the two back to back too. 711 00:42:24,340 --> 00:42:30,100 Yeah, I mean like uh Clark mentioned, uh that was a uh difficult uh thing to get 712 00:42:30,100 --> 00:42:30,420 going. 713 00:42:30,900 --> 00:42:34,900 But um hopefully people appreciated that and then you can do it again. 714 00:42:35,140 --> 00:42:35,380 Yeah. 715 00:42:35,540 --> 00:42:35,940 Yeah. 716 00:42:36,180 --> 00:42:42,100 Uh any uh any big any takeaway findings, talks, things that stuck with you from 717 00:42:42,100 --> 00:42:42,980 the conference? 718 00:42:43,220 --> 00:42:44,500 Oh, that's a tough one. 719 00:42:44,980 --> 00:42:46,770 Um what did you talk about? 720 00:42:46,850 --> 00:42:47,490 Either any of that? 721 00:42:47,730 --> 00:42:49,970 Yeah, yeah, what your talk could be your favorite talk. 722 00:42:50,290 --> 00:42:50,450 Exactly. 723 00:42:50,530 --> 00:42:50,930 That was definitely. 724 00:42:51,410 --> 00:42:52,210 I saw Greg's talk. 725 00:42:52,290 --> 00:42:52,690 It was very good. 726 00:42:52,850 --> 00:42:54,690 It was about laughter. 727 00:42:55,250 --> 00:43:01,250 You want to give the Yeah, well I'm um I just talked about um just kind of an 728 00:43:01,250 --> 00:43:07,170 incremental um uh finding in my own research program that was in 729 00:43:07,170 --> 00:43:11,860 collaboration with the folks I work with at the Bioacoustics Research Lab in France looking 730 00:43:11,860 --> 00:43:16,180 at um how volitional laughter functions as an effective signal and there aren't really 731 00:43:16,180 --> 00:43:20,740 laugh types that are associated with different meanings but instead laughter works on the 732 00:43:20,740 --> 00:43:25,860 dimension of valence in particular that allows people to communicate different kinds of uh 733 00:43:25,860 --> 00:43:27,940 meanings in their discourse. 734 00:43:28,260 --> 00:43:34,210 So like a evil laugh versus a happy laugh or well that those were two of the eight 735 00:43:34,450 --> 00:43:40,290 contexts we looked at and evil laugh which doesn't really happen in normal um 736 00:43:40,610 --> 00:43:41,170 conversation. 737 00:43:43,010 --> 00:43:48,770 Yeah it was kind of we included that to really see how a real category that we know exists 738 00:43:48,930 --> 00:43:51,330 how that would manifest in the data. 739 00:43:51,490 --> 00:43:51,730 Uh-huh. 740 00:43:51,890 --> 00:43:55,010 Um and that one was the only category that was highly recognizable. 741 00:43:56,380 --> 00:44:02,300 But yeah, it's uh just trying to figure out the puzzle of how nonverbal um vocalizations 742 00:44:02,460 --> 00:44:05,820 are you know perceived and what the acoustic features are. 743 00:44:06,300 --> 00:44:12,060 Do whales laugh not that I know of but I'm assuming they have play vocalizations of some 744 00:44:12,060 --> 00:44:12,300 sort. 745 00:44:12,540 --> 00:44:12,860 Right. 746 00:44:13,100 --> 00:44:14,540 Or play signals. 747 00:44:15,020 --> 00:44:15,180 Yeah. 748 00:44:15,650 --> 00:44:16,210 That makes sense. 749 00:44:16,690 --> 00:44:21,250 Yeah, but pro probably probably it wouldn't be how a how to cocoa has got me thinking about 750 00:44:21,250 --> 00:44:21,490 whales. 751 00:44:21,890 --> 00:44:21,970 Yeah. 752 00:44:22,130 --> 00:44:22,530 Yeah, no. 753 00:44:23,490 --> 00:44:23,890 Yeah, no. 754 00:44:24,050 --> 00:44:25,250 I would bet they'd have a place signal. 755 00:44:25,410 --> 00:44:30,130 But the odds of it being uh that there being convergence evolution toward the lap in 756 00:44:30,130 --> 00:44:32,610 particular is a place signal seems unlikely. 757 00:44:33,170 --> 00:44:33,570 Definitely. 758 00:44:33,730 --> 00:44:33,810 Yeah. 759 00:44:34,050 --> 00:44:34,210 Yeah. 760 00:44:34,370 --> 00:44:39,170 But I mean it th there could be some place signal that is um sort of appears within the 761 00:44:39,170 --> 00:44:40,690 repertoire that they already have. 762 00:44:40,850 --> 00:44:41,010 Yeah. 763 00:44:41,250 --> 00:44:44,700 Or it co evolves with their own localizations Yeah. 764 00:44:44,780 --> 00:44:48,300 Yeah, it would be cool to see if there's a particular vocal signature that happens at the 765 00:44:48,300 --> 00:44:49,660 onset of play behavior. 766 00:44:50,140 --> 00:44:50,540 Yeah. 767 00:44:50,780 --> 00:44:51,180 Yeah. 768 00:44:51,340 --> 00:44:53,340 Uh they probably have visual signals as well. 769 00:44:53,420 --> 00:44:54,220 I don't yeah, yeah. 770 00:44:54,300 --> 00:44:56,140 I don't know about whale play, have to say. 771 00:44:56,300 --> 00:44:56,780 Yeah. 772 00:44:57,100 --> 00:44:58,140 A little hard to measure. 773 00:45:01,420 --> 00:45:01,580 Yeah. 774 00:45:01,820 --> 00:45:03,100 Yeah, I don't want to dominate the podcast. 775 00:45:03,660 --> 00:45:04,490 No no, that's great, Frank. 776 00:45:04,650 --> 00:45:05,050 Thank you so much. 777 00:45:05,210 --> 00:45:05,610 Good to see you. 778 00:45:09,370 --> 00:45:09,930 Awesome. 779 00:45:10,890 --> 00:45:12,250 Yeah, two whales left.