Is Evolutionary Psychology Bulls**t?
2025-05-20 12:00:00.000 +00:00

We're your hosts, David Pinsoff and Dave Petrozowski. This is the Evolutionary Psychology Podcast. I already screwed up. It's Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast. Well it's it's hard to um we have to enunciate the parentheses too. It's hard to um yeah. Should I say parentheses? I don't know, actually. Um, this is the first inaugural episode of the podcast in which Dave Petrozki interviews me, David Pinsoff, about how I got into evolutionary psychology, why I love it, what kind of research I'm doing right now, and what kind of ideas I'm uh having from an evolutionary perspective. That's right, David. And we will have weekly episodes being posted. And in the following episode, David will interview me.

In this episode, David covers a lot of ground about his interest in status. And what else do we talk about? I think we talk a a bit about maybe politics a little bit. I actually I I'm blinking. Um I know we definitely talk about status. I forget what else we covered. Yeah, because we're actually in the future because we've actually recorded I think nine episodes now. So but we shouldn't say that because we're breaking the fourth wall. Yeah. Um so yeah, I I genuinely don't remember what else we covered. That's crazy. Okay. Well maybe somebody can listen and refresh our memory. So Okay, thank you for listening. Uh welcome to Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast and um welcome to episode one, David.

Welcome. All right, good. So we're recording. So cool. Okay. Um So David, one thing that a lot of people in Evpsych um uh have sort of an origin story. Um and I actually realized I never um I've never asked you what is how did you come across EvPsy? Uh well I was I had a dream, I had a vision, and uh you know uh I uh I woke up with this with the website for the Center for Evolutionary Psychology just in my brain, I felt the urge to Google it. No, I'm just kidding. Um, origin story. Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like a lot of Ev Psych people do have origin stories because it's kind of an odd choice. Out of all of the careers uh to choose and all of the sub disciplines within the field of psychology to choose.

Uh Ev Psych is a pretty odd one, not merely because it's sort of a minority perspective, um, but because it's kind of controversial uh In many ways for many different reasons. Stephen Pinker wrote a whole book about why it's controversial called The Blank Slate. So it's kind of a weird new controversial discipline. And you sort of need an origin story to explain why you would choose this weird discipline in a way that you wouldn't need an origin story for a lot of other disciplines. Like I, you know, if we we were just regular social psychologists or like chemists or something, I don't know that we would need uh an origin story necessarily. Uh my origin story was I was in the the middle of a kind of uh

existential crisis in my youth. So I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I I was actually a theater major. I thought I wanted to be an actor. Um I uh moved to New York with my girlfriend, who's now my wife, um, and uh I quickly became disillusioned with uh acting in the theater world, um, and was just uh at that time also kind of discovering that I had a brain and I had a pretty good one. Um, and it took me like a long time to really discover because I hated school uh throughout most of my life. I didn't really find it rewarding. I just kind of coasted and bullshitted my way through it. Um, and uh it was really only once I began asking myself the question of what I wanted to do with my life that I started really using my brain and

thinking about like, you know, what what the fuck is going on? What is my place in the world? What is the world like? Like, uh, what am I doing here? Um, so I had a kind of intellectual awakening at that time. Um, of just I just was reading tons of books, whatever I could get my hands on uh voraciously. Uh and I just randomly happened to pick up uh a copy of The Selfish Gene and uh a copy of uh I think the Blank Slate. Um not for any particular reason. It's just these were like best-selling books and they looked like something that smart people would read, and they had lots of big words in it, so I wanted to read it. Um but I just remember uh just being totally blown away by by the insights of of evolution, evolutionary theory, selfish gene theory, just the elegance

of the idea, the explanatory power. I just felt like all of the puzzle pieces were just coming together. Uh and um from there I just I I read e anything in evolutionary psychology I could get my hands on. I did I went through the, you know, Tubian Cosmides have that website, the Center for Evolutionary Psychology. They have all their publications. I remember I was just going through and just reading them one by one. Like I could not get enough of it. Just the feeling of insight was so powerful. And so around that time I thought to myself like this is this is what I want to do. This is what I want to study. I don't even care if I'm particularly good at it uh, or I don't need to be that high status

in it. I just want to be a part of it. I just want to be around other people who are thinking this way and taking this perspective. Um, and so uh that's that's basically how it happened. I was just at a, you know, I was having an intellectual awakening, an existential crisis, and and groping for something. Um and out of all the things that I read, something about this perspective uh really just open my eyes. I it it kind of uh you know that moment in The Matrix where where Keanu Reeves, you know, uh wakes up from after being shot by Agent Smith and he can like see the lines of code and like the they all shoot the bullets. He's like, no, no, and the bullets stop. Uh that's sort of how I felt discovering evolutionary psychology, that I could just like

see the lines of code uh behind, you know all the things that we do. Um so yeah I don't know why evolutionary psychology in particular spoke to me. Maybe it had I I like to think that it has it's you know it has something to do with like its objective insightfulness and explanatory power. But yeah, I honestly don't know. I knew I I I was interested in psychology, so I was a double major in theater and psychology uh in college. Um, but I didn't learn any evolutionary psychology. I was just kind of vaguely interested in, you know, why people do what they do. When I was an actor, I was more interested in the character psyche than than the average actor was. And my acting teachers would often tell me to, you know, stop thinking and analyzing too

much, just like get into your body and you know, you know, feel the character rather than think too hard about it. So even in even as an actor, I was thinking too much about the mind. Um and uh I I I knew that I wanted to think more about the mind as a career. Um and the way of thinking about the mind that seemed uh far and away more promising and insightful than any other way was evolutionary psychology. And so that's that's where I landed and I've I've been there ever since. I I honestly c I can't quit it. You know, I as as you know I have I have a lucrative side gig. I have a really cool, fun job, you know, working for Cards Against Humanity. And even even with that, like I I couldn't like I thought I could just do that after

getting my PhD. Uh but I couldn't. I missed it too much. Like I I I st couldn't quit keeping up on developments in the field and thinking about it and writing about it. And I eventually started my blog, Everything is Bullshit, just because I had so many ideas I was sitting on, uh, and I had no place to put them. Um and uh at the same time, you know, working for Cards Against Humanity, I had developed this kind of blunt, cynical writing style that's sort of the voice of our branding. And I thought that it would be a great way to pair that skill that I developed to ideas in evolutionary psychology, sort of a marriage of these two sides of myself. And I think so far it's been working out pretty well.

I I sort of have developed this like blunt, cynical evolutionary psychologist character on everything is bullshit. And I think people sort of understand that it's a character because if you if you look at like the difference between the the essay and like the comments and my responses to the comments. It's like, you know, um provocateur in the streets, you know, scholar in the sheets, um kind of thing. Um and uh I've I've been you know really gratified by it. People seem to like the blog a lot. Uh and at the same time I've been getting back into research. Um I'm a research affiliate at UCLA now. I've been, you know, working on a few new papers, lots of big ideas. I'm in I have the the luxury of being able to just focus on big ideas and big theoretical

papers, which I know a lot of academics don't have that luxury because you know the the academic incentives are you got to publish, publish, publish lots of stuff and empirical stuff. Theoretical stuff is extremely undervalued uh in psychology. You just got to get those empirical papers out. And me, I'm more interested in theory. Uh I'm interested in the big the big questions, the Darwinian mysteries. That's what gets me going. So that's what I've been able to work on. I've been lucky enough to to be able to work on that. So yeah. Cool. Um you're you have sort of this unique thing you mentioned, the the uh the side gig. What do you think, if anything, um that you're sort of in a unique position.

Does that give you sort of a unique um scientific perspective on the sociology of science, or does it give you a chance to sort of take a step back and look at, as you said, you know, what is the currency in the realm being empirical work? Um, and are we missing sort of big picture things like theory? Um is that something that you think your um your sort of position uh have you thought about that? Like is that something that you think is um um you're uniquely positioned uh in a way? Have you thought about that? Yeah, a bit. Um I I do think that you know, me working on the ideas I want to work on at the pace that I work on them on. I don't think any academic can really afford to do that and still, you know, be competitive

in this job market. Like I I don't have that many publications, but but the ones I do have I've spent a lot of time on and thought really hard about them. And the same thing goes for the the ones I'm working on right now. I I just don't think academia i exists to facilitate that kind of scholarship where you think where you know the the emphasis is more on quality over quantity, deep thought over uh superficial thought, um, theory over empirics. I think it's the other way around in academia uh for all three of those things. Um so yeah, I do think I'm I'm uniquely privileged to to um be able to think about these big picture questions like what is what is ideology, what is social status, what are our

sacred values all about, what is humor all about? Um and I I just feel extremely lucky to be able to do that. Um and uh yeah I'm I'm also excited to get to talk to you about it uh because you're such a um well respected and and uh uh excellent scholar in the field. Um and nothing gives me greater pleasure than just um you know bouncing ideas off of people who who share this powerful perspective and just you know arriving at new insights about human nature. So well, thanks. Um uh when you're doing your work, uh so things like the status game paper or the evolution of social paradoxes, we can talk about that in a little bit. Um do you have a particular um uh sort of diorama of the world in mind?

Like are you thinking about academia or are you thinking about your life experiences or um so so this idea that you know everything is sort of this hidden status game? Um in your own experience, do you where do you think that idea came from? Honestly, um it sort of came randomly. Um so as you know, status is a huge topic in evolutionary psychology. And I and I think correctly so. I think status is arguably uh one of the most important selection pressures that has shaped human nature out of out of all of them, I think. You know, we kill for status, we die for status. Um so I had always been interested in status just because it was such a big topic in evolutionary psychology. Um, but I remember just randomly, you know, some new uh psychology paper popped up.

It wasn't even an evolutionary psychology paper, it was just an empirical paper showing basically that seeking status lowers your status, or being seen as a status seeker uh results in real social costs. People view you as selfish, manipulative, uh deceitful, untrustworthy, uh mean, narcissistic. Um, all sorts of negative judgments are heaped on you uh for being seen as a status seeker. I remember when I came across that paper, I think it was called Status is a four-letter word or something, um, it just really stuck with me. Because that was a huge wrench thrown into my understanding of the world. Like, how could I reconcile that idea with everything I knew about the importance of status seeking in humanity?

So, on the one hand, like, it's this huge, important, powerful motive that drives so much of what we do. And on the other hand, we overtly pursuing it seems to sabotage our efforts to pursue it. We have to somehow pursue status without uh creating common knowledge of the fact that we're pursuing status and that's a really hard problem to solve and so that just got me think how how do we do this this i mean what what are the mechanisms we need to solve this problem of seeking status without being seen as a status seeker um what what are the what are the cognitive mechanisms um what are the implications of this? Could this explain why uh status symbols are so volatile and arbitrary? Could this be a kind of engine of cultural evolution that throws out variation in what gets

us status and what lowers our status? Um, I started thinking about how paradoxical it was. Um and honestly, uh just thinking about this contradiction of us being status seekers and losing status for seeking status, that contradiction just gave rise to all the ideas in the paper. Um just focusing on those two premises. I think most of the ideas in the paper about sacred values, about cues and signals uh being uh unstable, um, about uh politics being, you know, about dominance, but we can't reveal the fact that it's about dominance. All those things just kind of naturally fell out of that inherent contradiction. Um and uh yeah, so it it kind of started randomly. I just this thing caught my attention.

It seemed interesting and important, and I just followed the path wherever it led, and it led me to this this paper that I'm really excited about. Uh what what is the sort of short version of why um seeking status decreases your status? Um so unfortunately there isn't a short. It's a complicated question and it's an interesting, you know, it's not I wouldn't say that it's universally true. So there are some cases where overtly seeking status doesn't really lower your status all that much. Uh and I talk about these uh in the paper. So for example, if you're if you're uh living in a really poor community and wealth is super important in a social partner. Like all the other traits that you're looking for, and in a spouse or a friend, you know,

go out the window. Do they have resources is the most critical question. And such an environment, it really makes sense if you're rich to shout from the mountaintops that you're rich, to really, you know, audaciously display your wealth, buy expensive things, because that's really important to get the message across that you're rich, rich, right? Yes, doing that kind of ostentatious displaying of wealth also makes you look kind of selfish and vain and petty. But the costs of those inferences are far outweighed by the benefits of just getting the message across that you're rich. Because people don't care about selfishness and vanity as much as they care about wealth itself in an environment like that.

So an environment like that, the uh the status seeking and signaling can be quite overt and it's and it's pretty stable. Uh but then if you go to, say, a wealthier environment where uh people have the resources they need uh to survive and flourish, uh and um uh uh being seen as wealthy doesn't actually give you that much of a competitive advantage in the social marketplace. Then all of a sudden, the benefits of shouting, I'm rich from the mountaintops, are no longer as high. And the costs of being look uh the costs of looking like a selfish, narcissistic, uh petty person are much higher. And in that case, the costs uh are likely to outweigh the benefits. Um and so in environments like that, you might try to covertly signal your

wealth. Uh, this has been referred to as stealth wealth. Um, there was a cool essay uh in the New York Times uh analyzing uh a hat that one of the characters was wearing in the sh the show Succession. And it looked uh on the surface just like a regular baseball cap. It sort of conveyed like this working class nonchalance that was kind of surprising in such a uh wealthy character. But um the the journalist actually like zoomed in on the on the type of hat it was and did some research and found that the hat is actually like you know a $50,000 hat. Right. And so it's this kind of stealth wealth or or signaling of signaling that you're wealthy without signaling you're wealthy that tends to arise in communities where uh the benefits

of signaling your wealth are outweighed by the costs of being seen as a selfish, greedy, narcissistic person. Well, um so so there's definitely variation into what extent uh status seeking uh is uh or overt status seeking lowers your status. But but I would say that in general, most of the time, being seen as a status seeker is going to lower your status for several reasons. One is that status seeking is intrinsically self-interested and competitive. Just the definition of it. It benefits me personally, and it's, you know, status is zero sum. When I rise in status, you fall. So it's intrinsically self-interested and competitive. And number two, self interested and competitive dispositions are

intrinsically undesirable in a cooperative partner. If you're trying to form mutually beneficial uh relationships with other people, you don't want someone who's only going to be looking out for themselves and wants to compete with you and be uh better than you, right? Uh and number three, um your reputation or your your value as a cooperative partner is an intrinsically important part of your status. If you're not seen as a valuable cooperative partner, someone that you want to be friends with or marry or follow in a in a group context, then that by definition lowers your status. And so those things are at odds with one another, which means that most of the time being seen as a status seeker is going to reduce your status.

It's going to come with social costs that uh lower uh your your reputation as a cooperative person. And so I think it's intrinsic to the definition of status that being seen as a status seeker lowers it. So what what are the inferences that we draw about status seekers? All sorts of things. I mean, you name it. So in the in the couple papers that have been written on this, the main inferences people draw is that they're selfish. They're selfish and mean, they're narcissistic, they're manipulative, they're deceitful. Um, they're willing to throw you under the bus or stab you in the back if it gets them more status. Um they're willing to, you know, lie or cheat to get status. You know, they're if they're athletes, they'll they'll do performance-enhancing drugs.

Um if they're uh in business, they might uh defraud people like uh Sam Bakem Free did. They'll do whatever it takes to elevate their social standing, even if it means shooting all over other people or stabbing other people in the back or betraying everyone who trusts them. They're seen as really bad people. And we have all sorts of uh of colorful words to describe these people. Asshole, dick, douchebag for women, uh a bitch. Um and uh if we are seen as, you know, sucking up to high status people to gain status, we're an ass kisser. Right? It's interesting that we're that we're using the language of disgust, you know, the anus, the the male and female reproductive organs, you know. This suggests to me that being seen as a status seeker is disgusting, which is, you know,

it's a really interesting question why the emotion of disgust is activated by s uh overt status seeking. What was disgust doing in there? I mean, disgust evolved to protect us against pathogens and parasites and toxins. What does it have to do with with status seeking? That's a whole other interesting question, but we can leave that aside and just uh make the basic claim that um status seeking in all of its manifestations, in all of its guises, there are many different types of status, and there are many different ways that seeking status can make you look bad. There are many terms we use. You know, if you're trying to seek moral status, you're a virtue signaler, you know, you're sanctimonious, you're you know self-righteous.

You know, if uh if you're um seeking status in terms of money, you're greedy. Um if you're seeking status in terms of intellectual superiority or pretentious or pompous, we have all sorts of words to describe the uh status seeking in all of its manifestations and dimensions, and they're all negative. Um So yeah, that that was my long answer to your question of w of why seeking status lowers your status. Great. And um from an evolutionary perspective, one of the things that I like about it is we get to sort of dissect sort of things that seem self-evident. And so one of the things that it sounds like you're saying is that um and you know I Annie Wirtz and I have a paper about modularity where we distinguish between intentional

level and functional level. So the intentional level is sort of the everyday like UI there's an agent in the mind. And the functional level is basically the level of software. Yeah. And so hearing you talk about this, I'm sort of translating some of this into software level, sort of functional level claims. And so one idea when, and you can tell me if this is right, is that there's sort of a system in the mind that's sort of looking for status mutualisms. So, in other words, that you know, is your status yoked to mine um so that we benefit if you go up in status I go up in as well and uh there's opportunities for my status or my extended interest status if you and I are aligned in status aspiration.

Um but then there's also really sharp delineation of to the degree that they're rival. So if somebody's a status rival, which presumably is almost everybody uh to various degrees, um that gets represented and tagged as is really important. Is that sort of a fair claim? Um yeah, I think that's fair. But the the the claim I'm making is somewhat different. So um all of the the values and motives that we have are fundamentally in conflict with one another, right? There are trade-offs to be made. Investing in one activity precludes you from investing in another activity. Spending time seeking status precludes you from spending time doing other things like parenting or finding food or what or whatever.

and the idea that I'm exploring with uh with the social paradoxes paper is that if you're seen as abnormally high on the status motive, um, what what is that coming at the expense of? What is that precluding you from being motivated to do? Uh and I would say that the inference that people are likely to draw is that it's precluding you from pursuing more cooperative or altruistic uh endeavors. I see. So it's almost like a Yeah, sorry. Um so most people when faced to ch when forced to choose between say status and uh keeping someone's trust or or or status and say keeping their marriage faithful, or status um and uh say, you know, uh uh betraying someone or lying or um uh dissing someone's, you know,

reputation, a nice person would would choose uh those other things over status. They'd say, you know, uh the status would be nice, but I'm not gonna lie to get it. Yeah, the status would be nice, but I'm not gonna betray my best friend to get it, or I'm not gonna cheat on my spouse to get it. Right. But the status seeker in all of those cases is going to choose status over those other things. And that is what we're threatened by, I think, at the end of the day. That is what is driving the negative inferences about a person who is abnormally high on status seeking motivation. And there there's plenty of empirical evidence for this as well. So there's there's literature on so-called dark triad of negative traits, narcissism,

Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Narcissism is all about status seeking. It's about, you know, I deserve better. I I care about, you know, looking superior. I want people to think I'm better than them. Uh and that trait correlates so highly with uh psychopathy and Machiavellianism and just like mean shitty behaviors that they're that they're seen as almost kind of the same thing. Um so empirically there is a well-documented relationship between status being abnormally high on on status seeking motivations and being you know generally a mean asshole. Um right. So in some sense, it's a uh exploitation detection. And the idea is that um somebody who's extreme on this is not going to be loyal, even if currently we're overlapping.

So if you're a partner, um, you're gonna for now, I'm it's interaction. It's it's just like a sort of an interaction where it's sort of transactional, right? Where I'm benefiting you now, but are you gonna be loyal to me in the future? Um, and micro cues or longer term cues that somebody's exploitative or really just looking out for themselves is sort of a flag. Totally. And it might differ, you know, based on the the time horizon of the culture. So it could be that cultures that have a really short time horizon where you really want the benefits now and you know, fuck the future. In those cultures, status seeking might not be so bad because it's a cue to benefits now. And you don't really care about, you know, the long term.

May maybe they'll betray you in in ten years or or or or cheat on you or whatever, but who cares? I'll get the benefits from them now. Um, but if you're in more of a long term stable society, then I think status games start to become really unstable and and really cloaked and hidden and disguised in all sorts of ways. Yeah. Do you think that the you mentioned that you think it's really targeted of two extreme versions? There's sort of two ver op options. One is that people who are really status seeking are are a kind in the proper domain of these systems, is to detect people who really are just looking out for status. The other option is that those are extreme versions of a natural continuum, which is

that everybody sort of is status seeking, and there's sort of a natural check on. So if you and I are in a relationship, um, we're both hunters, um, you know, we both provide each other with meat. Um, but there's sort of a detection in both of us as to whether or not either one of us is sort of getting getting uppity from the perspective of the other, you know. Like, am I starting to signal, oh, you know, David, uh, it's confusing because we have the same name, but uh so you know, but David, oh yeah, no, he's not, you know, really pulling his weight, or you know, uh really I got that one, um, that that big game the other day. Um and so even if I'm not chronically a super narcissistic dark triad type, um there still might be

sort of design in me to sort of see how much status aspiration movement I'm allowed by you. Um uh does that is that is that how you're thinking about it? Or is it really in terms of like that there are different um uh different sort of types of people and there are people who are just designed uh to be um status at the expense of these other longer term relationships? I definitely view it as more of a continuum. It's a very smooth continuum. Yeah. So I think all humans want status. So there's there's no there's no one who is zero on the continuum. That's just not possible. It's just such an important uh part of our evolutionary history, such an important correlate of biological fitness that I don't think natural selection would favor anyone who

doesn't care about status at all. Nevertheless, um there's variation in in status motivation, just as there's variation in any trait. And there are costs and benefits of being anywhere on that continuum, just as there are costs and benefits on being anywhere on any trait continuum. So I view it as very much a smooth continuum and a very hard problem to solve of how do we assess where other people are on that continuum? And if everyone's concealing their status seeking motivations, then it becomes increasingly hard to figure out who the selfish status seekers are. And if you catch a glimpse of it in someone and you don't catch a glimpse of it in anyone else, well, that's the best evidence you have that that person is relatively higher on

status seeking motivation than other people, and therefore they're not good to partner up with. Maybe you just happen to catch that person doing a typical human thing that anyone would do. But because they're the only person you caught and you didn't catch anyone else, that's the best evidence you have to go on that they're not a good partner. Yeah. Uh oh, and one thing that keeps coming up recently in work, and so like uh people like Aaron Lukashewski and Jimmy Krems is sort of people um have been finding things like, you know, people in a romantic partner prefer people who are kind and intelligent, but this sort of the tagline is kind towards whom. Um so status uh at the expense of others towards whom is sort of the the more uh stilted

tagline here, which is um then there's also the problem of if I'm observing somebody who is sort of status seeking, um there's two different options. One is they're status seeking, but who's the beneficiary of it and who's the who who who's the cost, um, who's the victim of it? Um and uh as I'm saying that, that sort of sounds similar to this sort of alliance idea of politics, is that would you make that connection that that part of the design and part of the hard problem of status is that it's not intrinsically that status aspiration is a problem, but it's always that there's a more sophisticated calculation that status is asserting sort of how things should be or the resources or what power I should have.

Um, and there's a calculation of, well, how am I going to be impacted by that? Right. If you, David, stand up in a group and say, um, I want status, I'm I'm not going to intrinsically view that as a bad thing unless I first say, well, how is him getting that status going to affect me and my interests? Yeah. So that's a really important point. So if I say I'm better than you, Dave, that's going to be threatening to you. Right. But if I say you and I, Dave, are better than that other guy over there. Right. Or our group is or you know, our group, our political coalition is better than the other political coalition, then that's not going to be threatening to you. Right. Because you're you're a beneficiary of the of that status seeking.

Right. So I think really what we find threatening is individual status seeking. I personally want to be superior to you. I want to be superior. I want to be superior to others. Yeah. Um, group status seeking, I don't think, is as highly frowned upon. So if I really want evolutionary psychologists to have higher status than other types of psychologists, that's not going to be a threat to you. On the contrary, it might even make me a more attractive social partner for you because we're going to work together to increase the standing of evolutionary psychologists. Um so I think what we're threatened by is individual status seeking and not group status seeking. Yeah. Um, unfortunately, the two uh are and can be

uh correlated. So if I I'm really gung-ho about making sure that you know evolutionary psychologists are better than other psychologists, and I really just want to shit all over the non evolutionary psychologists and diss them where whenever I can, that uh empirically is correlated with me also being uh an individual status seeker. So in in the paper, I review tons of evidence showing that people who are really zealous uh about politics, who who are really, you know, love to pontificate about how morally superior they are on social media, love to, you know, uh uh uh diss the other side, uh, you know, who indulge in conspiracy theories, um, who support authoritarian policies for their side, uh, who really like to humiliate members of the the other side,

those that those traits correlate with being a mean and shitty person. So uh zealous participation in intergroup dominance competition and intergroup status competition is actually a a pretty good cue of zealous participation and interpersonal status competition. It's it's uh it's really interesting too because the um uh uh there you can be uh so you know psych, for example, um, or any area if you sort of do the outgroup test, right? Which is sort of if you see, so if I'm status aspirational for my group and you're not a member of that group, There are two different uh extreme versions, but they're a continuum again. But um, but one is sort of I'll do anything to um uh achieve status for my group.

The other one though is that I'm sort of I'm I'm doing it in a way that is sort of palatable um or acceptable. Um so I'm doing things like um things that don't register negative reactions from an outgroup. And I wonder if that's basically the difference between the cue that somebody is an individual seeker of status versus a good coalition partner. So if I say, for example, just make it concrete. So like I'm interested in M-Psych, and instead of being like, well, everybody else is stupid, I'm just like, well, look, there are important things about evolutionary psychology, like adaptationism or design-mindedness, or understanding that there are systems in the mind that we're not conscious of. These are important things to understand about psychology.

So I am not, I'm sort of positively explaining why I think these things are important. Now, if to the degree that I specialize in these things, I'm still getting status or benefits from them. But if you're reading that or hearing that as somebody who's not an evpsych, that's a very different thing than me saying, well, you know, uh people who aren't evolutionary psychologists are stupid. Um and uh um it's so there there's sort of a way to be coalitionally entrepreneurial about your subgroup status that doesn't burn the bridges of sort of a larger community, right? Um or you can't. So right. So like maybe you are just another kind of psychologist. And so you're asking the question, is David, is is Dave, I'll call myself Dave, um, is

Dave burning bridges um with me versus not? Um, and I think one is palatable and one isn't, and it's sort of obvious, but I think one of the reasons why that might be, and I'm curious what you think, is that one, it's about ultimately is what I'm doing threatening to your status? Um, right. And number two, it's also diagnostic of if we do become allied, sort of what what would my um or if we become entangled, am I going to exploit you or not? Right. Um and so this is sort of the thing of like, you know, if somebody talks bad about their friends and I'm not friends with them, boy, I wouldn't want to be their friend because they're going to talk bad about me. Right. So um so if I'm sort of uh um uh yeah uh I

um the fact that it's palatable for you or not, I think um it's interesting Yeah. It's a huge and complicated question. So what differentiates the you know trash talking other fields of psychology in a way that might make you look mean from just talking about the positive things about evolutionary psychology and the value that it plays? Well, one is I think in the case where you're just talking about the the the insights of an evolutionary approach in a positive way, um there's plausible deniability about what your motive is. So at the end of the day, at the ultimate level, it might be a kind of status seeking move. By preaching the virtues of of F-Syche, you'll rise in standing in the the F-Syche

community. Um but it's not obvious to observers that that's what your motive is. Uh as far as they're concerned, your motive is to, you know, promote knowledge and insight and understanding. And so that so when you when you talk about knowledge and insight and understanding, you're framing what is ult at the ultimate level of status seeking motive in terms of a higher uh altruistic uh abstract goal, you know, knowledge, wisdom, uh whatever. And so this might be a good segue into sacred values. I think in the former case, when you're just talking about insight, you're you're couching the status seeking in terms of a sacred value, and that ultimately benefits our group by stabilizing our status game.

Um whereas if you are just being blunt and open about your desire for intergroup supremacy, then uh the jig is up, it's clear that that status is ultimately your motive. And then I can draw all sorts of negative inferences about you. It's interesting because even if you're overtly seeking status in a domain that I care about, it's still, it not only makes you look bad, it also threatens to make our status game collapse. So at this point it might be worth backtracking on what it means for a status game to collapse. Um I am beginning to draw more and more parallels between status seeking and investing in a stock. You know, just as stocks can be volatile, um I think status games can be volatile.

Um and just as the source of volatility for a stock is our beliefs about others' beliefs about others' beliefs about the value of the stock, I think the source of volatility in a status game is our beliefs about others' beliefs, about others' beliefs, about what we're actually doing in this status game. So a status game, in my view, can collapse when we all know that we all know that we're just engaged in a status game. Right? It doesn't collapse if I personally know or suspect it. It doesn't collapse if I suspect that you suspect it. It collapses when I know that you know that I know that you know that I know that we're just engaged in a pissing contest. Right? Then all of a sudden, uh what we're doing begins to make us look bad.

We begin to draw negative inferences about each other and worry about the negative inferences that other people will draw about us. When that happens, the hierarchy that we've created kind of inverts. It kind of kind of flips on its head. So those at the top of our hierarchy, now that we know that this is all just an elaborate pissing contest, well, those at the top are the people who are most obsessed with winning that pissing contest. Those are the worst status seekers of all. Those at the bottom were relatively uninterested in it, presumably. And so they begin to look a little bit more humble and modest. And so the the hierarchy kind of the top of the the hierarchy gets lowered and the bottom

gets lifted a little bit. And at the same time, now that the status game has has collapsed and the jig is up, we begin to gain status by doing the opposite of what was done previously. So if our status game involved, say wearing you know crisp black and white suits and neatly slicking back our hair or combing our hair, and all of a sudden it becomes common knowledge that we're just a bunch of stuffy, puffed up status seekers, um, and we begin to look bad for for you know wearing the suits and combing our hair. Well, we'll begin to gain status by doing the opposite of that, by letting our hair be long and wild and and wearing, you know, flowing, colorful outfits. Uh, because that shows that we're we're different from those status seekers.

We're not the selfish domineering, you know, uh pretentious people we're we're we're humble, authentic, we're real. Um, we begin to signal that we don't care about status, which paradoxic paradoxically uh raises our status. So when a status game collapses, the hierarchy inverts, and the players begin to gain status by doing the opposite of what was done previously, or by conspicuously differentiating themselves from the the collapsed uh uh status seeking activities. Um if that makes sense. Yeah. It's uh yeah. So I sort of got uh so I I've I sort of lost track of where we where we were and and what the original question was, but who who cares? No, it's good. It it actually reminds me, so when people go to the zoo often they'll sort of look at

primate dominance hierarchies, uh humans that is. Um and and it sort of seems really dumb, um, you know, because you're sort of like, well, why would they be locked into this dominance hierarchy? And, you know, I think people sort of really naturally uh find that um they really it really rubs them the wrong way. And I think that's part of this psychology, right? Where um I think what you're describing, where the the status game jiggers up, as you say, um, where it's sort of transparent that it is just dominance or power or force or coercion. Yeah. Um, the difference between or greed, yes, exactly. Um, number one, those in power historically are always interested in not letting that be shown. I mean, there's just an enormous amount of history of people not wanting that to be known

and cracking down on information suggesting that's true. You know, you get freedom of information acts on uh um you know declassified materials showing that this was um just power and resources were the motivation, even though that was not what was uh presented. Um but it's also that um yeah, I think, and this comes back to I think the idea of coercion, right? Where people, because we there's always a third party we can go to and say, look, this person is exploitative. And that the third party doesn't like that because it's not benefiting them and it's diagnostic that you're going to exploit. I mean, you in this example, but let's say it's a third party, right? Uh uh exploitative jerk. Um uh, you know, we're not gonna like the exploitative domineering person because there's

always a larger set of third parties we can go to who look at that and say, Well, they're not benefiting me because I'm just disinterested and they look pretty exploitative. Um, and so I wonder if that sort of open flexibility, creativity of coalitional entrepreneurship is sort of what's lacking in other to some extent, other primates or the dimensions of dominance or status. And so when people go to the zoo and they're like, Wow, that seems really horrible. Um, and even, you know, like I'm uh rereading some Orwell right now, you know, and I think like part of the horror of like Animal Farm is it's this peeling back of uh the narrative, the superficial narrative, is that this is really about dominance and power

and being in this uncomfortable place where somebody is still trying to exert coercion or dominance or power over you. Um that is just part of human nature is to not want that. And I think it's because we have this coalitional flexibility. Yes, I I couldn't agree more. So when we look at a chimpanzee dominance hierarchy where the alpha male you know bosses other people or other chimps around and and gets whatever they want, um it's a little more complicated than that. Granted, they have to form alliances and keep the peace and break up conflict. So it's it's it's kind of analogous to human status hierarchies. But it but the dominance is is more overt than than it typically is in human societies.

And that overtness is really troubling to us. It it feels icky, it feels immoral. I think a lot of the huge social changes that have happened throughout history have come from us seeing a dominance hierarchy for the dominance hierarchy that it in fact was. I think having a naked dominance hierarchy in among humans uh is some something close to impossible. I really think that we always need a moralistic pretext for dominance and for dominance hierarchy. We always need some kind of sacred narrative, some kind of myth, some kind of utopia or dystopia, uh something to justify this hierarchical relationship, this dominance uh Dynamic. One of the best examples of this, if you think of North Korea, you could not think of a

clearer example of a dominance hierarchy where Kim is at the top, you know, anyone who disobeys him gets killed. It's a brutally hierarchical place. And do you want to know what the official name of North Korea is? the People's Democratic Republic of North Korea. So even the most clearly, obviously hierarchical place from our vantage point still refers to itself as a democratic place. You always need a pretext. You know, even take take the recent, you know, the war in Ukraine. From our vantage point, it seems pretty obvious that this is a selfish, uh, authoritarian land grab by Putin. You know, he wants to crush a rising power uh near him that he feels threatened by, right? It's it's just intergroup dominance, straightforwardly.

We're gonna conquer this neighboring territory and take their stuff. Um, even there, they have to come up with a narrative that we're denazifying Ukraine. The reason we're going in there isn't just for pure intergroup dominance, it's for a higher purpose. It's to get rid of the Nazis, right? So I think that it is something close to impossible, maybe even impossible, to create a real dominance hierarchy or a real intergroup dominance hierarchy that is brutal and coercive without having some kind of shared moral narrative of what's going on. And as soon as we start to see through that narrative, as soon as we see the emperor as naked, it can collapse and you can get a social revolution. And the tragic irony of that happening is that often once that happens, you just get a new

dominance hierarchy and a new moral narrative. Right? You look at the, you know, the the socialist revolution in the in Russia, it was very much an egalitarian revolution. You know, we want to bring equality to the people, we want to help the working class tear down hierarchy, tear down the bourgeoisie. And what do you know? As soon as they rose to power, they became even more brutally hierarchical and coercive and tyrannical than the previous system ever was. And so that kind of cycle is constantly happening. Um and to me, at least, it gives me some hope, which suggests that there is f fragility in these kinds of evil systems, and that they they kind of disintegrate in the light like vampires do.

Which which gives us power, I think, to try to see through them and try to say that the emperor has no clothes. Uh, because that can lead to real social change. The tragedy is that often that social change ends up creating the same hierarchy, but just in a in a different form, with different people on top and different people on the bottom. But hopefully if we learn that that is going to be the outcome, we can try to guard against that. Um I I don't know how, you know hopeful uh that picture is, but you know, at the very least I think it it provides insights into these kinds of dynamics. Um yeah. Yeah. Um one question, and I this might lead into then this another question that is where you're

going, I think, um, is that you mentioned that everything needs sort of a moral uh cast on it. Um so even the example of North Korea or even you know the Nazis were fighting the communists, right? They were they were so exactly um uh uh why do you need that? Yeah. So um as you know, there's a a huge literature and economics and game theory showing that collective action is really hard. Um not only is it hard to coordinate uh with other people to have you know shared beliefs about what the payoffs are to collective action, uh it is hard to get everyone to cooperate when there is a free rider problem. So if we all work together and create a common benefit and we do we divide the benefits equally among us, well then free riders, people who don't participate in the collective

action but reap the benefits from it, they come out ahead. And so there is a perverse incentive to any collective action to not contribute to the collective action but still reap the benefits from it. and so we in order to solve that problem, we evolved all sorts of you know cognitive and and and cultural mechanisms for punishing free riders, for uh um creating narratives that um uh broadcast how beneficial it is for us to work together, you know, how uh bountiful the rewards are gonna be, um, how wonderful the utopia we're we're pursuing is, uh, how bad things are gonna be if we don't work together and avoid this catastrophe. We have all sorts of narratives, cognitive systems detecting free riders, detecting

cheaters, monitoring how much other people are contributing. We have a whole wealth of cultural and cognitive adaptations to solve this collective action problem. And even despite all these adaptations, it still often fails. Um, you still often struggle to get people to work together to achieve a collective benefit because it's just so hard. Uh And the incentives are often perverse. So given that we have this collective action problem, if I am contributing to a collective benefit in Darwinian terms, and that collective benefit is in the form of intergroup dominance or intergroup supremacy, and me contributing to that collective benefit makes me look bad. If it makes me look like a mean narcissistic Machiavellian status seeker.

To who that is true to my group members. Uh to your other group members. Okay, good. Yeah. Yeah. So if I if I am just, you know, coercing and and beating up and being cr needlessly cruel to outgroups and just being transparent about you know the only reason I'm doing this is because of dominance. And um that's gonna make me look bad. Or if I'm spreading lies and propaganda to try to mobilize my group to dominate the outgroup and I'm spreading out dehumanizing and demonizing narratives. And it's transparent that that's my goal. I'm just I'm just trying to generate hatred and gain power for myself and for our group, um, just just for the sake of just brute dominance. I'm gonna look like a real piece of shit.

And so there are so we have this problem of collection act, collective action that's already really hard to solve. And if you heap on top of it the idea that contributing to it makes you look bad. It makes you look amoral, mean, domineering, well then that just heaps even more costs. It makes it even more hard to overcome these hurdles of collective action. How do I contribute to the collective action if it makes me look like a sociopath? Right? And so I think the way we solve this problem is through our sacred narratives, that we have to seek intergroup dominance without creating common knowledge that we're seeking intergroup dominance. We have to come up with a sacred narrative that disguises what we're doing in

moralistic or altruistic terms. If our agenda is ultimately self-interested or or in the interests of our group, we have to disguise it as being universally benevolent as it helps everyone, it makes the world a better place. Um if we have to spread demonizing narratives and propaganda to mobilize the group to collective action, well, those aren't narratives. That's not propaganda, it's just the truth. It's just the obvious, unbiased truth, and anyone who disagrees is just crazy or stupid. If we're going to exploit or dominate or attack or kill the outgroup, well, we're not doing that for dominance. We're doing it because they deserve it. They're evil. They're a threat. They're going to destroy us if we don't handle this situation, right?

They're subhuman. It's either them or us. So we need these narratives. Intergroup dominance could not be possible without these narratives. Because as soon as we have this narrative, then all of a sudden there are social benefits to contributing to the collective action. If what we're su if what we're seeking is a virtuous aim, a virtuous goal, making the world a better place, bringing about a utopia, then me contributing to that makes me look good rather than bad. It makes me look like a virtuous person. If if the outgroup is genuinely evil and subhuman and wants to destroy us, well then me attacking them makes me look courageous and uh and valiant and noble, right? And so the presence or the absence of the narrative um makes the

difference between uh collective action being successful or being a failure. With the narrative, I gain lots of status for dominating the outgroup and contributing to that goal. Without the narrative, I start to look like a sociopath. So I think we need these narratives to coordinate uh the the the kinds of evil that has been so common throughout history. And if you look at all the all the evil that has been so common throughout history, it always has a moralistic pretext. I'm not familiar with any example where there isn't one there. And I've tried. I've I've you know, I went on Twitter and I asked like social scientists, academics, do you have any example of a group throughout history that has dominated or coerced or been

violent to an outgroup? And they had no moralistic narrative about it at all. They were just doing it for pure dominance sake, just to get resources, just to take the women, whatever. And uh they had no myth or or religious narrative or ideal ideological narrative at all. And I couldn't find, I've still yet to find an example that has been convincing. I'm open to the possibility that maybe it exists, but it it if it does, it's very rare. I think we really need these narratives for collective action to even be possible. The more uh we agree on this narrative and share it and repeat it to one another and signal that we believe it and that we're true believers, you know, the more powerful and well

coordinated and cohesive our group becomes, and the more likely our group is to rise in status and power uh and and do all the things that would have increased our fitness in ancestral environments. Yeah. Um uh it's interesting because I think there is, though, a bit of a uh a mystery and sort of cold Darwinian logic, which is which is and I it's and I think um I don't think we're we're disagreeing, but I think there's there's still sort of a core question that can still be unpacked, which is um if so let's say that we're in a group together and um you're exploiting other people for my benefit. Why would uh it be important for you or me to uh for that to be framed in a moral way? Um I think there are arguments for why that is, but I think that's sort of the um because

it makes sense for well yeah, I'll leave it at that. I mean, why would uh that's the question, and I'm sure you've thought of this, but like why even because you mentioned this would even be for the people in the group, right? Like so the people who are benefiting, why would we need that framing if if actually it's in our interest uh to just be exploitative? Yeah. Well, let's uh think about it at the individual level. I'm an individual group member and I'm deciding whether to participate in ganging up on a member of of of the out group, um, to you know, exploit them or or or whatever. In that decision, ultimately there's a system in my head that's uh assessing what are going to be the reputational consequences of this behavior.

How are people going to see me if I participate in this behavior? Um and that is should factor into the cost-benefit calculus over and above the existing cost-benefit calculus about collective action itself. Right? Over and above whether I think they're going to be free riders or whether I think we're sufficiently well coordinated or whatever. There's this additional layer of what are people going to think of me if I do this. Um and on top of that, I have to also think about what other people are going to think that other people are going to think of them. Right. Sorry, that was a complicated no no no it's good, but but just to be concrete, I think what you're saying is just uh is that you and I are in a group.

You're the you're the leader. I'm not only considering what how your status machinations are affecting me and also how what I'm gonna think of you. But part of what I'm gonna think of you is what I think other people will think of you. Right. Yes. If I'm trying to predict your behavior, then I have to get inside your head and and and try to predict uh how you will predict other people's judgments. Exactly. Yeah. Um and i i i you know, this layer uh it's called meta representation, thoughts about thoughts about thoughts about thoughts, or thoughts about other people's thoughts about your beliefs, about their desires, about your beliefs. We're very good at this kind of meta representation of embedding these uh layers of mental

states at many different levels. Um and I think that is crucially important to collective action. So uh I only want to participate in the collective action if other people are participating. If I'm the only one who's going in there, then it it's it's gonna hurt me if I participate, right? Um, so what determines whether other people are going to join me? Well, what determines that is what their beliefs are about what the payoffs are going to be, right? And what their beliefs are depends on what they think my beliefs are. Um and my beliefs, you know, my beliefs about the uh the payoffs of participating depend on my beliefs about their beliefs about my beliefs. Uh as so as soon as there's a seed of doubt that's planted in a group, that maybe

our motivations aren't so noble and high-minded. Maybe we're just doing this for tribal or sadistic reasons. Even if there's a little bit of doubt, even if I suspect that, then all of a sudden I start to suspect that other people might have had the same thought. And then I might suspect that they suspect that I've had that thought. And as soon as that seed of doubt is planted, it can be like an acid that eats through the entire group. Because now all of a sudden I'm doubting whether I will actually get status if I participate in ganging up on this member of the outgroup. If I'll if I'll actually look noble and brave, or whether I'll look sociopathic and cruel. So that doubt can feed on itself.

So I think that common knowledge of reality can destroy the incentives that are necessary to engage uh in uh outgroup cruelty or uh intergroup dominance. So I think we need the narrative in order for the collective action to be possible. And so, yes, there are costs to being deceived about that. So if I see you ganging up on the outgroup and um I perceive you as a brave and virtuous person for doing that, um, in some sense, I've been deceived about your character. I might trust you in other social interactions more than I otherwise would. I might be inclined to cooperate with you more than I should. But if we're in intense intergroup competition, and whoever wins the competition is the group that is more mobilized and cohesive and motivated and committed, where the incentives

for contributing to the collective action are really high, then the benefits of succeeding in that intergroup competition are going to outweigh the costs of being deceived about your character. Right? It's just straightforward cost-benefit calculus. When the stakes of the intergroup competition are higher, then I can accept more false information about my group. Because it's worth it. It's worth the deception that we can we can be sufficiently mobilized to outcompete the rival group. Or at least that's the argument that I make in the paper. Yeah. That in certain situations of intense intergroup competition, the costs of false information about the group and about group members' character can be

outweighed by the benefits of successful intergroup competition. Yeah. And even I would say, even if it's not false, right? I mean, there's also this thing of uh, and I think this occurs at every scale of social interaction. there's sort of, well, what in a very again kind of cold Darwinian sense, sort of a transactional thing of sort of, well, what does this person afford? And if you are uh somebody who's pretty high in dominance, then you sort of say, well, look, this is person is really helpful, or they can apply that skill to to when it's useful for me, right? And um and so that becomes sort of a a thing in a market, in a social market, right? But then I don't want it directed at me. And so there's two things.

One is if if you are sort of a a simple dominance uh uh robot where you're just sort of exerting dominance uh all over the place, then I should want to keep you around when the inner group conflict occurs, and I'm gonna keep you at arm's length otherwise. Um and there might be design to do that. Um and there's sort of roles then, you sort of an implicit roles of sort of, well, here's what this person's set of skills are good for, how they might exploit me versus others. And I want to direct the I want to direct or the bit direct the business end of their exploitation towards others and not towards me. Um But then there's the the other part too is then you know if you there's also then just partner choice where you know you if you are dominant um there might be

selection in you to sort of signal when you're gonna be dominant if you need to recruit allies and the people that you're actually you're not you could either you know actively signal I'm not gonna um uh be dominant towards you or just you know, just signal your dominant towards the outgroup. And so um uh, you know, selectivity in terms of, and this comes back to that target specificity thing, right? Um, of who the target of the dominance is, um, I think will be really important um for the system. I would agree that's important. Um, but it's also important um what the reason is for the dominance. So yeah, and is that and is that because and so this is this is something still a little I'm still a little less clear on.

So is it that to just make it concrete, if I'm in your group and I'm benefiting from the basis of the d the of the dominance, even if it's, you know, um but I'm also thinking, well uh if other people won't be. Right. So I have two options. Let's say there's a choice where David is going to do something that's going to benefit me, but I think third parties will find it morally reprehensible. It'll, they'll find it disgusting because it'll um it'll it'll it'll cue to them exploitation. There's another part which is that David's going to do something that's going to benefit me. Um, but he's also talking about it in a way, and the way it's presented is my model of third parties is it's not going to elicit strong exploitative

cues. It's in my interest, even though both things equally benefit me, it's in my interest to care about and prefer the second option. Exactly. Because there's always a larger coalitional people don't want there to be exploitation. And so even if we are super dominant, why would we run the risk of of such naked dominance that third parties, which there always are third parties, um in addition to the victims, yes. Um uh to to just give them ammunition. Why would we not write? And I that's I think you you agree. It sounds like you agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's a that's a great way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah. So where does this so now we we so now we're at great. We're I got it.

Um so now um for those of us who are um on board, what what going forward? So um, you know, there's sort of these jokes, you know, I wouldn't want to be a member of a group that, you know, would take me uh as a member uh for this kind of thing, um, given that everything is sort of uh everything is intrinsically sort of a status game in some way or another, becoming aware of that. Um, Have you thought about sort of what's the punchline in terms of what are things to look out for? Or um you know, or is this this sort of a um I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but there's sort of two, there's two metaphors. One is sort of there's a solid fixed set of rules and another is it's sort of like a

bicycle. The people who uh the people who invented um the airplane were were Orville and Wilbur uh right, and they were bicycle mechanics. And the argument is that you couldn't get a static fixed thing to fly, and people were constantly trying, and it was actually no accident that bicycle mechanics invented the airplane because what you needed in an airplane was real-time correction, um, because it's just too complicated um otherwise. Um and so, and and that's the way a bicycle works. You can't keep it upright except with just minor real-time correction. And so that's a long-winded way of saying is the alternative, and excuse the digression, is the alternative sort of a bicycle metaphor where there's not really a fixed set of rules

for how do we um avoid status schemes, but it's just this idea that we're sort of given that there's always this dynamic, There's sort of always corrections on it, or are there sort of um ways to sort of check uh the status game running rampant or hurting people? Um I'm curious what you think. If I'm understanding your question correctly, it's what's what does it matter? What's the point of all the all this knowledge? What are we gonna do with this information? How are we gonna use it to lead our lives differently if if if we do, do we ignore it? I don't know. That's the question. The short answer is I don't fucking know. Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out how things work. I'm not a philosopher.

I'm not, you know, uh I don't have all the answers on on the meaning of life or or or how to live it. So that's my my first instinct how to answer that question. My second way to answer that question uh involves just reflecting on the status games we play, not from a perspective of despair or nihilism, but from a perspective of this is the way reality works. We now have a better understanding of how reality works. How with this knowledge can we make better choices? Um so one thing I've been thinking about is what does it mean for a status game to be good or bad? Certainly there are differences uh in the types of status games that contribute to collective uh benefits and improvements, not just for the players of the

status game themselves, but for society as a whole. And there are some status games that are quite toxic and destructive and generate costs, uh, not just for the status seekers themselves, but for society as a whole. And so I think understanding that everything is a status game or everything is bullshit to slightly oversimplify uh is that we can gain some insights into which status competitions are worth engaging in and which ones aren't. Now, I have no illusions that this type of information is going to create a radical transformation in society because people have incentives to play the status games that they're likely to win. And if I come along and say that your status game is toxic and stupid, uh, well, they're

gonna say, fuck you, I'm gonna play it anyway, because I'm likely to win. And I, you know, I'm an ape and I ultimately want status. And uh, yeah, your status might game might be better for the world, but what do I care about that? I care about getting status for myself. That's what I evolved to care about. Or at least that's what the unconscious part of all of us is thinking metaphorically. So I have no illusions that that knowledge of this stuff will radically lead to human betterment and human flourishing. But I think it might make some improvements at the margin. So for people who are on the fence, who are, you know, say young and or or they're having a midlife crisis or or or they're deciding like what am I going to do with my life?

What what are what are the status games that I'm going to participate in? Um For those people where they're on the fence and information like this might actually tip them one way or the other, it might be useful to say, hey, this status game is actually better for society. Maybe I should play this one. You know, if all else is equal, might as well play the better one. Um, so I think it could lead to those kinds of improvements at the margin. Um, and I think that realistically, if you're a social scientist, that's all you can you should hope for uh and all you really can hope for. I think uh there's often um a misplaced sense of utopianism in the social sciences that can uh paradoxically uh lead to

disastrous uh outcomes and dystopias. You know, eugenics was a very utopian movement and it led to a living nightmare. Um, so I think we've got to be very careful with utopian ideas, and we have to do uh what Tyler Cowen preaches on his blog, Marginal Revolution, uh, which is pursue marginal revolutions, look at changes on the margin. Um so what are so I raised this topic of uh good versus bad status games. I'm still thinking about this. My thoughts are still tentative and open to revision, but I think it's probably uh fair to say that science is a good status game. It might be depressing for some people to hear that science is ultimately a status game and not a high-minded quest for knowledge and wisdom.

I think it ultimately is a status game. Those are the incentives that shape its trajectory. If you change the status incentives, you will change the outcome of science. As we've seen with the replication crisis, if you get status for pumping out lots of low quality publications that are unlikely to replicate, then guess what? You're gonna have you're gonna have lots of low quality publications that fail to replicate. If you change the status incentives and reward people not for pumping out counterintuitive, flashy findings that don't replicate, and you reward them instead for producing high quality work and insightful uh theories, then maybe you'll get that. So we have to figure out how to change the status incentives of science so that we get uh

better results. Um, so science is a good status game, I think. It's not perfect, it certainly has its problems. Certainly in psychology it has a lot of problems, and we can uh make some changes to try to solve those problems. Um, what's another good status game? Um, I think uh markets are a good status game. Uh I know a lot of people in academia are uh, you know, have some antipathy towards capitalism and towards markets. So I understand this is not a popular view. Um, but I think if you look at the history of capitalism and the increases it has caused in our standard of living, it is a pretty damn good status game. You have people competing to provide goods and services to other people at more and more

affordable prices, that is going to lead to better and better results over time, more innovation, more things that people want and like at more and more affordable prices. That has pretty positive results for society. Why people are so uh hostile towards markets and capitalism is another interesting psychological question. I think it has to do with the overtness of the status seeking, which you know we talked about previously. Um businesses are profit-seeking entities. Money is a kind of status, and so if all they care about is profit, then they look really icky and ugly. Uh, and we don't want to be associated with that. And so what do businesses have to do? No business in their mission statement says our mission is to seek profit.

No, they say our mission is to bring joy into people's lives or to follow grandma's uh recipe or, you know, build sustainable communities, whatever high-minded bullshit you see on corporate mission statements or values statements, right? The corporation can't just say that it's that it wants to make as much money as possible because then it it will, you know, look bad and people will not want to work for the company and people won't want to buy the goods or services produced by that company. So it needs a high-minded narrative. The problem is that everyone sees through it. We all know that at the end of the day, businesses want our money. And that makes it icky and ugly. And that makes capitalism itself, despite it producing wonderful, bountiful benefits for

us, in the form of a beautifully uh rich and colorful standard of living with you know technologies and tools and riches beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors. Despite all that, because the status seeking is overt and out in the open and on the surface, it looks icky and we don't like it, and we gain status by being anti-capitalist. I think that is a huge mistake. Um it saddens me uh that uh academia has taken that kind of anti-capitalist approach. Granted, you can talk about the costs of capitalism. Certainly it has negative externalities. You we could talk about ways of of fixing it with government intervention. That that all that's all fine. Um, but you have to acknowledge the benefits too, right?

You you you have to have a realistic understanding of how reality works. Um and even the the goals that that progressives came, you know, claim to care about, like equality between groups. There's no greater engine of equality and tolerance of outgroups than capitalism. There's tons of research on this, that exposure to a market economy makes you more tolerant of outgroups, less willing to exploit them, because it is straightforwardly incentivized. If I only trade with members of my group, I'm going to make less money. If I only hire members of my group, I'm going to have fewer job candidates. If I only work for members of my group, I'm going to have fewer job offers. If I only buy stuff from members of my group, I'm going to get shittier products.

Capitalism directively incentivizes the destruction of intergroup boundaries and intergroup barriers. It is not only one of the most powerful mechanisms for alleviating poverty, it is the most powerful mechanism for breaking down intergroup boundaries and for creating economic interdependence between countries and disincentivizing war. So it gets progressives all the things they want: reducing poverty, creating intergroup equality, reducing the uh benefits of war, and yet they hate it. And that to me is one of the greatest tragedies of progressive ideology at this moment in time. So I went off on a huge tangent there. Sorry. It's good. No, and we we should have a larger conversation because I think, you know, um uh um you

know um I do think that uh there's also a distinction and maybe we can have this discussion um next time or or soon um there is also distinction sort of between um free market and capitalism. Um right. And I think one of the criticisms of capitalism, I think everything you're saying is right, um within certain s circumspect boundaries. Um but if you look at um sort of the externalities um of uh an interest in making profit um the the entities that are um you know there's a really interesting uh history of sort of even what corporate law is, um, and and sort of that, you know, it's the there's institutional selection for the externalities don't matter. Uh, and what matters is profitability and maximizing profitability.

And so, you know, people talk about it doesn't even matter. Everybody in the in the institution can be well intended, but still the the institutional selection is um selects for a certain thing. And as we know from from natural selection, you know, whatever the selection pressure is, intentions be damned. That will be sort of what what's created. And so um uh yeah I think there's a larger um sort of discussion to have about um is is a corporation or is a modern corporation that's protected by the force of the state um or that's exploiting um as as a as sort of an externality um you know um uh is that is that what people mean by capitalism if so then there's a really fair argument against it because it's actually not a free market um system and I think that's where

um you know, I uh I think that's where there's there's a reasonable argument. So you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater that you don't um and I think uh yeah, I think I'll I'll leave it at that. Uh yeah, no. Wow, who would have thought we'd have we'd have gone in this direction, but yeah, I'm I'm game. Let's go for it. Yeah. Um so yeah, I love that distinction between markets and capitalism. There's actually a great book on this topic. I forget the author is called uh Markets Without Capitalism, I want to say, or Markets Not Capitalism. Um And they distinguish between open competition between businesses to provide goods and services and voluntary association or consumption of their goods and services,

and uh capitalism uh under places like the United States, where you have the biggest businesses often colluding with the government to entrench their position and entrench their power. And often you get regulatory capture where they pass uh uh regulatory barriers to prevent competitors from entering into the industry. They try to get you know occupational licenses that makes it harder to get a job of that industry, which increases the salaries of people in that industry industry. So you get all sorts of collusion between the biggest players in any uh market and the government itself. Uh and that I think is often what people are objecting to with capitalism. It's it's the uh um abuse of state power uh by uh

uh big businesses and and major players and and the industry and the uh corruption and collusion between them yeah uh and the government that a lot of people I think correctly object to. That's right. Yeah yeah corporate corporate welfare essentially to put to put it simply yeah. Yes. Yes. So that's that's an important caveat that I don't think that is a good status game. I think that's a very bad status game. What I think is a good status game is the kind of open competition uh that is where where the competition is not um unfair at the start, where where the big players don't have a pre existing advantage because they're cozying up to people in government. Right. Right. That's that's the kind of status game that I think ultimately results in collective

betterment and improvements in our standard of living, where whoever has the best goods and services wins. You know, whoever can produce them, you know, efficiently with the lowest price and the whoever, you know, produces the best stuff, they get the richest. You know, that is a is a good status game. But if I have a if I'm a big player in the industry and I use the government to entrench uh our interests and and and have a kind of monopolistic grab over that industry, then that is bad. Um so yeah, important distinctions to be made there for sure. Um And it's an interesting overall political conversation to be had. But the broader point is just that if we're going to be good progressives and

try to think about the negative externalities that market competition is creating, and if we're going to try to create wise government interventions, which I think the progressive movement is all about, and I think that's a legitimate goal, then you have to acknowledge that in addition to the negative externalities that are happening, there are extraordinary benefits. Um and you have to have some perspective as well and not just want to, you know, throw out the entire system or burn it all to the ground. Um so Yeah, no, no, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I I I agree with that. And and so swinging back then, the argument would be that more information about the externalities of status schemes, um, and and sort of laying

bare. I mean, almost it's sort of a cartoonish view of the world, but sort of the idea would be that um uh to the extent that there's sort of disinterested third parties are sort of like, here are the status games, you young person growing up in the world. Here is what exists, here are their externalities, and you just sort of shop for them. And then some combination of, well, here is my interest in proclivities, and I think I could do well in this, or maybe you you narrow it down. Um, that sort of is all happening implicitly now, uh, or not at all. But the idea would sort of be, and again, I don't, I don't, I'm not suggesting this is a realistic thing, but in an ideal world, it would just be sort of more information about we

we all acknowledge that these are all status games um and uh and then it's just information about which ones fit you and then which what externalities there are um to them both within uh and across so I mean you know the externalities within of science uh there's a there's this long standing thing that's kind of going by the wayside now of or ideally of people being good scientific mentors, but being predatory socially or sexually on people, right? Um, and and that was sort of uh because those costs were hidden or there wasn't coordination around those costs, that wasn't sort of understood, or uh there wasn't outrage about that. And now there is. Um it just not it's certainly still happening, but it's um it's less, hopefully, because of

that. Um so so yeah, so I guess the idea would be then as much as possible just being aware that there are these externalities, people being people, and they're they're they're always sort of uh and just being aware of sort of uh checking those externalities, especially when they're pernicious or negative. Absolutely. Um and I think one broader implication of this way of thinking is that cynicism is underrated. I think people uh pay a lot of social costs for being seen as a cynical person. I think people rightly or wrongly think that cynics are mean and untrustworthy and unpleasant. Um but I think there is a different kind of more enlightened cynicism, which is not born of despair or uh nihilism or self-entitlement or bitterness.

Um, but just born of an honest recognition of the fact that that we're animals, that we're apes, and that we have all sorts of, you know, undesirable and unflattering motives and drives. Um, and that if we want to understand why people do the things they do and why our world is structured the way it is, it really helps to have a clear-eyed understanding of that. And to see through the bullshit stories that we're so prone to telling about ourselves. I think that kind of cynicism, to the extent that it's rooted in reality and a solid understanding of human psychology and human nature, can be really good. It can be a great thing. It can help make dominance games collapse. It can help us see that the emperor is naked.

It can prevent, you know, bullies from taking power in the first place if we see through their motives and have a more cynical understanding about human nature in general. Um that doesn't say, you know, maybe maybe there are costs to it at taking this kind of cynical perspective. I'm not sure. I haven't thought through it all. But I think at the at the very least, I would say that cynicism, at least of the kind we're talking about, is underrated. And it's helpful when we're evaluating, you know, the various status games we play and which ones we should participate in. It's helpful to see them as status games in the first place, which is uh impossible to do unless you're sufficiently cynical. Right.

To even see the stuff we're doing as status games is already a very cynical thing to do. Um, it's sort of to to even get to the place where you can decide between good and bad status games, you have to be a pretty cynical person. And I think if we could get rid of some of the stigma of being a cynic, um that might be helpful. What what does cynical mean to you, and how do you think most people understand the word? So the con uh my understanding of cynic cynicism and the cynicism that I subscribe to is different from the intuitive understanding of what cynicism is. So the intuitive understanding of cynicism is that um everyone is selfish and they don't and it's just every man for themselves. Um uh nobody can be trusted.

Uh it's just a dog-eat dog world. So that's not the kind of cynicism that I subscribe to. Um I don't think self-interest is our only motive. We also care about our families, we care about our friends, we care about our groups, uh, and we often do uh uh altruistic things for our friends and family and fellow group members. Ultimately it cashes out in in uh long-term benefits for us, otherwise it wouldn't exist. Um but we do care about other people, not just ourselves. So, my kind of cynicism is not that everything is self-interested. It's a little bit broader. Everything is self-interested, nepotistic, or group interested. Everything, or at least our deepest motives, our basic motives that arose by natural

selection. They can really only be one of three things. They can be self-interested, nepotistic, or group interested. There's no other way for the genes underlying those motives to be driven to fixation than if they provide benefits to the focal individual who has the genes, or they provide benefits to the focal individual's kin who have some likelihood of sharing the gene, or they provide benefits to some individual within the focal individual's group who are likely to benefit the focal individual in some way, either by reciprocating or working together with that person or or helping that person compete against others, etc. So, my brand of cynicism, which I call Darwinian cynicism, is just basically

focusing on the unholy trinity of human nature, which is selfishness, nepotism, and groupishness, and using that as a uh heuristic for uh it predicting and and of and um explaining human behavior, That anytime we see someone doing something, we should try as our, you know, at first, our first best guess should be that it comes down to some kind of uh self-interested benefit, some kind of benefit to the person's family, or some kind of uh groupish benefit. Um, and if we can't explain the individual's behavior in those terms, then we can start maybe reaching for other weirder explanations. But that should be our first best guess, given that we're animals and we're products of natural selection.

Um, So that's the kind of cynicism I subscribe to. Why is that cynical? Well, because it rules out a motive that is very common in human culture and human discourse. It rules out the motive of making the world a better place, of being just altruistic toward everyone, you know, regardless of who they are, how likely they are to reciprocate, how much status it gets you. Though none of that meant we just want to do good for good's sake. We want to, you know, we wanna uh you know um save the planet, we wanna uh improve the welfare of the human flourishing, you know, the good of the species. You know, evolutionary biologists discovered uh many decades ago that motivations to act in the good of the species cannot evolve, right?

This was an early kind of group selectionist idea from Wynne Edwards that the lemmings will throw themselves off the cliff to control population be for the good of the species. Evolutionary biologists now know that that's that's not how evolution works. Organisms don't act for the good of the species. They can't evolve to act for the good of the species. They evolve to act for the good of themselves and their kin and those who share uh the the genes in question. And they can even do that while driving their species off a cliff. So many species go extinct. This is called species suicide, because each member of the species is doing something that is in in their individual fitness interests while collectively harming the entire species.

So if we're investing lots of time and resources in competing with each other for status or mates, that's time and resources that we could have been investing into uh other activities that could have helped our species proliferate. Instead, we're burning those resources fighting with each other. And the more of those resources get sunk into the competition, the worse the species is uh as a whole. And so um, good of the species motives can't evolve. And yet we often claim to have good of the species motives. So if you look at um Starbucks' corporate mission statement, I think it's something like our mission is to uh inspire and nurture the human spirit, uh, one cup, one neighborhood at a time.

That's a kind of you know, making the world a better place, you know, generally altruistic goal. Um and I don't think those those types of goals are plausible. I don't think they can plausibly evolve. And so, insofar as someone is describing their motives in those overly altruistic terms, we should be skeptical, just as we're skeptical of Starbucks's mission statement. Nobody is trying to predict what Starbucks is going to do next by saying, hmm, what would most likely inspire and nurture the human spirit? Is this going to be more inspiring and nurturing to the human spirit, or is this acquisition going to be more inspiring and nurture to the human to the human spirit? No one's asking that question.

Because that's the wrong question to ask if you want to actually predict what Starbucks is going to do. If you want to actually predict what Starbucks is going to do, you have to ask what's going to maximize their profit. Similarly, I think we need to view humans in the same way. We have PR systems in the same way that Starbucks has PR systems, and they serve the same function as the PR systems of Starbucks. And if we want to understand and predict human behavior in the same way that economists can understand and predict the activity of corporations, we need to see through that PR. We need to see through that bullshit and we need to get sufficiently cynical in the same way that economists I think are sufficiently cynical about uh what goes on in the

marketplace. Yeah, um if I can redescribe what you're saying and see if if the idea is not that uh claims about things being beneficial to people don't exist. It's not uh uh reducing those down to um that they don't exist. It's that um all claims about what should be done are arise out of evolved design that is a product of natural selection. And so of all of the um ideas about what should be done, they're all coming out of motivational systems designed by natural selection. And so they're not designed purely for a group benefit. Even if that's sort of I would I would say it may be group benefit, but not species benefit, not general benefit, not industrial. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sure, sure, sure, sure.

So uh so that so the sophistication is to understand that there may be times where uh designs might produce ideas that are really terrible and shitty and create really bad externalities, or they might create really great externalities and really good beneficial things that do. But in every case, it's the results of design for quote-unquote self or extended interest. And so it's not the case that we shouldn't shop between those things that have crappy outcomes and good outcomes. It's that we should be skeptical when somebody is selling us a pure motive. Yes. And so really this comes back to this idea of openness, which is that so I mean I I I genuinely believe that many people uh throughout history um

have done really heroic things to make the world better. But the idea would be that in every single case, that's the result of design. That's either from a Darwinian sense misfiring or is well, well, well designed and firing. But we can understand. So, you know, if we're white working for civil rights or rights of a disenfranchised group, we can understand that we're doing it because we also care about uh people care that we care about it and we want to be heard and hearing us being heard uh is validating. Um but in that case the social benefit and our personal benefits align. Um and uh and so if everybody knows that that's true and we know it's true, then it's okay. Um, but if I'm sort of selling this thing that um I'm not getting anything out of it,

I'm really just sacrificing myself. Um, that's the thing to be skeptical of, sort of um is is the idea. Yeah, that's that's a great way of putting it. Um or at least I think that is the more insightful way to see things. Um I recognize that, you know, maybe we don't want to see things that way all the time. You know, maybe we have our objective, you know, evolutionary psychologist hat that we put on it sometimes when, you know, when we're making more abstract decisions about, you know, public policy or what status game we want to play or whatever. But when we're actually playing those status games in in the moment, um, maybe we take that hat off and we we we you know subscribe to the feel-good narratives and and and the

sacredness and and you'll get caught up in it, just like any normal human being would. And and um I think that's okay. Um I don't think this kind of Darwinian cynicism is is a is a hat to wear at all times. I think if you did wear it at all times, uh it would probably be pretty depressing and and your and your life would be pretty unlivable. Um, you know, I don't I certainly don't wear that hat when I'm like hanging out with my daughter. Um yeah, it's at the end of the day a gene replication strategy that I'm so interested in her well-being. Uh, but it's certainly I'm I'm not thinking that way when I'm when I'm taking care of her. Um so yeah, I think there's a time and a place to to put on this this perspective.

Um, and it's not necessarily all the time. Yeah. And I I for me, and you know, uh maybe this is just uh a difference, uh, and maybe I don't do this, but um I think there's also something to be said, and I I like um I like um Work that sort of questions the initial assumption. I remember just real quick, I took an argument debate class once in undergraduate in college. And I remember I was sort of arguing a position, and the professor said, Well, you're accepting the first premise of the argument, and that's really your problem. And I realized that as soon as I accepted the first premise, which is almost feels polite to do, you know, it it sometimes that can be the lethal point. And what I really like is where we there's sort of sometimes false choices that you

can reject. And so for me at least, I don't know if I take off my Darwinian hat when I'm with my son in the following sense of when I'm with him, I feel sheer joy and I benefit immensely from all of the time and energy and devotion I put into him. And at the same time, I realize why that exists, right? Like that that it's still um so so I think for me at least it comes back to um if you think that the reason why love exists or caring about people exists, exists in this sort of abstract, disembodied way that has nothing to do with your biology. And that in order for it to exist, it has to be independent and exist away from this biology if you're forced to make this choice between there's an evolutionary logic for this

being the outcome, or else it's not good. For me at least, that's sort of the distinction I would like to get rid of, right? Which is sort of to say uh um, you know, it's all um there's all an evolved logic to it. And then once you accept that, then it's a matter of, well, what are the externalities? What are the consequences going from there? And so uh so no, I think that's right that you know, if you if you understand a Darwinian perspective as as being an ulterior motive, then you should take the hat off. But for me at least, I sort of keep my hat on, but I view it as just sort of uh it's an additional thing in the same way. Like when I look out and see, I think it's really cool that I can see and I know that

that's all made possible my machinery. And for me at least, like knowing that it's machinery doesn't make it less cool, right? Um so um yeah anyway I I uh um yeah maybe that's just a mixed metaphor in in uh but but I uh um but I agree completely that um uh that this idea of cynicism in this way um can be depressing um but i don't think it needs to be um like i think right now what we're doing is uh you know is an attempt to increase our status um but i'm learning something from it and i hope other people do and i think that's an externality of it um and i think it's beneficial um and I don't think it's a bad thing to want status either, because you know, people um uh if you look at people who uh people who are um

low bargaining power, people who are harmed by people who are victims, uh like if you look at what it looks like when somebody doesn't have status, that can be a bad situation. So I don't think you know people people deserve status by virtue of being people. Um yeah and uh it's just a matter of people don't deserve status by virtue of exploiting other people. Um and I think that that's a consensus um an open information structure is required to like make that split that hair I would say. Yeah. I ideally the only ways to get status in our world would be by, you know, producing goods and services that other people want, or by coming up with new and ins uh insightful ideas in science or philosophy, or by, you know, uh effectively helping

others. Um ideally those would be the only ways to get status. And certainly those are existing ways that you can get status. And that's wonderful that that that is true. There are other bad ways that you can get status too. And you know, ideally we can try to uh attack those other ways and hopefully get status for attacking them. Yeah. And uh and then one quick throwback at the beginning of this, you mentioned you didn't like school. uh and and now you can't not do it. What do you in light of this discussion have you uh um and you know if it if it's too self divulging uh you can just say no but have you thought about um why or what switched um what led to that switch? Um, well, it's interesting.

Um, so I hated most of school. Um, but there were a few bits and pieces I did like. So I didn't really like biology class, but the part on evolution I loved. That was the only part where like my attention just perked up, and I was like, wow, I can't believe how elegant and insightful this is. This explains everything. And then I, you know, when I went back to like ribosomes or whatever, I started falling asleep again. Um and uh and the other subject I liked in high school was I took an AP psychology course. Um and I found that interesting and I, you know, didn't fall asleep during that class. Um so maybe I'm just innately interested in evolution and psychology and and then when those things were put together it it kind of it was everything to me.

Um, I don't know. It's an interesting question why why we choose the particular paths we choose. Ma maybe there's just a lot of genetic variation and maybe maybe I have genes for being interested in evolutionary psychology. Who who knows? We uh we uh um uh one can do a task analysis of curiosity. We actually did that as a group. Um interesting. Uh so maybe we can get some folks on about that. So yeah, certainly there's variation in in the elicitors of curiosity for people. Different people are curious about different things. Um, but for me, I I think education was too much about um you have to do this stupid thing and jump through this arbitrary hoop and come up with a bullshit paper. You have to, you know, read the novel and, you know, talk about metaphors and symbolism or

or whatever. And like it all just seemed pointless and stupid. Um and the only thing that really excited me was the feeling of insight, the feeling of understanding of the puzzle pieces coming together, of a really simple idea that explains a lot of complex things. That has been my my North Star, I think. And I and I got very little of that in high school and college. Um, but I came to it on my own and discovered it on my own. And when I found it, I couldn't get enough of it. So I think that that would be the the difference. I I don't think the current education system is structured on eliciting that feeling of insight and awe uh and explanatory power. Uh it has a different set of incentives and a different set of goals that you know I'd be

happy to get into. And I think you can tell a very cynical story about it. Um, but uh it's not, I think, designed to uh nurture people's sense of curiosity and wonder and awe. Uh oftentimes it ends up crushing it. Yeah. Um it sounds like principle. Um you you want principles that are applicable. Uh and and in some sense what was happening was in a way sort of coercive, right? It was just uh there's a a well-known psychologist who um I actually um This stuck with me. What she said was the way we teach high school science is like science laboratories is a bit analogous to like if the way we taught baseball was for kids to recreate plays, great baseball plays of history. So you sort of like force people to behave in exactly the same way as this particular play

happens. So the person in left field should run this way, the person should hit the ball exactly this way. And that's how the training begins. And then only if you're good enough at that are you allowed to sort of do it creatively on your own. Um right. So it's sort of this pantomime of um of here's what you do, without giving people the autonomy and the creativity to sort of apply principles. Yeah. It it is sad, but I think in a perverse way, it's it's it's part of what the system is all about, because it's part of measuring your ability to do that. And your ability to do that is a very valuable quality in the marketplace. You know, if you look at what kinds of employees people want to hire, you want to hire the

employee that's gonna follow the rules, that's gonna do what you say, that's gonna, you know, toe the line. If if they if they need to bullshit to to get something done that's going to be in the in the in the corporation's interests, whether it be writing a a mission statement or a a PR campaign, that's the kind of employee you want. You want a conformist, obedient, uh rule follower. Um and also you want, you know, a smart, attentive person who can pay attention to boring bullshit and jump through arbitrary hoops if they need to. Um, you need someone who's hardworking, who's who's organized and sticks to a schedule and can get get shit done. I mean, those are the types of traits that you need to prevail in the current educational

system. And those are the types of traits that a lot of businesses want. And that's ultimately what the what the education system is about, I think, is signaling that you have those traits, not giving you those traits. I don't think it it actually teaches you to be smarter or more hardworking. But it allows you to get a credential that says that you do have those traits. And that makes you very attractive as an employee. So yeah, I uh I I I very much subscribe to the the signaling model of education uh Pioneered by an economist by the name of Spence, I think, and popularized by Brian Kaplan in his book, The Case Against Education, which I think is a really interesting and provocative book. I'm probably not qualified to judge the economics of it because I'm not an economist, but

from a psychological and sociological perspective, I think it is a really powerful theory of what education is all about. That it's ultimately about signaling that we have these traits that are desirable to employers. And it's not about actually increasing our productivity or our civic mindedness or any other high-minded thing. Uh so sorry to you know bring the conversation back to a cynical place, cynical, dark, and depressing place. We were getting so uplifting and and uh positive there, and I brought us back down. I'm sorry. Um No, don't be. Um no, and I mean I think yeah, and I think the converse of that. I mean, so like uh John Dewey um and other people, if you look at sort of people trying to design science or education

generally, um, in a way that uh encourages creativity and autonomy. Um there's a lot of sort of historically was a lot of work on that. Um and uh yeah, I think if you were to ask sort of what is the current system well designed to do, I think that that these newer analyses, um I think it would be hard to to escape this idea. But I think it comes back to again, um not not you shouldn't apologize because the first thing to uh to change something is to sort of acknowledge that it is that way um and that it is just uh a consequence of sort of institutional history. Um and and and it continues to exist and there are status games involved. And so if you want something to change, um uh the leverage point is

either find new people whose status would benefit from a realignment of how the system is structured, or uh or go after the status of, you know, there's an enormous uh incentive to um institutional incentive, for example, to teach to tests, because people make profits on that. And uh it's very easy to sort of say, well, look, we're improving this thing. And the first thing you or I know who has had any training in um psychology is that you're confusing the measurement for the um for the thing being measured. Um and if you take that to an absurdity, you know, where you confuse those two things, the thing that you're actually trying to improve, um, which is the child, um, for example, even in ideal world, you're sort of gonna end up with uh a poorly designed system.

Um so uh I think being being blind about what institutional selections or what status schemes are going on um is is not a a cheerful thing at all. So you shouldn't apologize. Yeah, it's it's it's one of one of the benefits of of a cynical perspective, I think, um, at least in in the Darwinian sense, is that you get a better understanding of how things work, even if it's not a pretty picture. Um, and that's the only way to make them better is if you have a clearer understanding of it. Sounds good. Um any final thoughts. Well, this was a very uh wide ranging and fun conversation. I love all the different turns it took and uh I had a I had a blast. Yeah, me too. Uh sounds good. Well um we'll we'll see what happens uh next time.

Cool. All right. Thanks, man. Thank you for listening. Uh if you like what you're hearing, please leave us a kind review or check out our Patreon page if you want to throw us some money. Uh yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Is there anything else to say? Um uh come back for the next episode and um or if you're in the middle of binge listening, you know, go for that. Okay. Um stay tuned for the for the next episode.