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This is Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast.

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I'm David Pinsov.

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I am David Dave Petrozzewski.

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Uh, and this is actual evolutionary psychology by actual evolutionary psychologists.

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All right, David, I have two words for you.

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Jury duty.

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Yes, I I served on a trial, and because the trial's over, I can actually talk about it.

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It was a really interesting experience.

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Uh I served on a trial uh where the charge was assault with a deadly weapon.

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Yikes.

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Yeah.

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Uh in addition to uh criminal threats.

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So yeah, it was it was kind of intense, kind of stressful, honestly.

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And I actually I volunteered to be the foreman uh stupidly because it ended up just

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stressing me out a lot.

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But yeah.

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Well, thank you for your service.

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Um one of the reasons to bring it up.

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Um I don't think this is an all is well ends well situation for the accused or you,

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but uh but the reason to bring it up, I mean you can let us know uh if it if it ended well.

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I don't know what that would mean in this context.

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But um but in any case, the reason we're bringing it up is because we were gonna have some

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more episodes and recordings this summer.

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But jury duty got in the way.

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It did, yes.

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It resulted in a lot of scheduling snafus.

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Uh which led to me interviewing Antoine Marie uh by myself, actually, because I I kept

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canceling our our podcast because of jury duty and it kept the trial kept going on for

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longer than I expected.

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And then Dave assumed that I was still on jury duty.

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And so it just things got kind of confused.

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And so uh that's very kind.

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I think it was my scheduling mix up, but uh but yeah, I assumed you were like in on jury

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duty uh for perpetuity essentially.

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So um but on that so um so on that note, um sh let's

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talk about the Antoine episode that I was not there for.

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Yeah.

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So this was a really fun conversation about uh the evolutionary psychology and

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sociology of politics, you know, both studying politics and the politics of studying

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politics.

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Uh it's you know, politics all the way down.

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Like how do you um approach this topic with a clear head?

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Um how do you interface with people who might not share your perspective?

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Um, what what it even means to believe, say, in an in a political ideology.

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Is it the same kind of belief as you know beliefs about a coffee mug being on the table or

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having two hands?

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And so we talk a lot about this distinction between intuitive and reflective beliefs.

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four or five occasions thinking, oh, I'd like to say something, which as I was just saying

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before we started recording means I should be a co-host of a podcast.

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So that's good.

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Um, but I want to poke on here in the preface.

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You guys talked about um if you actually believe something, you would behave differently.

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Yeah.

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Uh and I generally agree with that, but I also would not underestimate how much

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people don't know what to do, even when they think something is true.

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So, like if I knew an asteroid was going to like hit the earth in like two years,

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I'm not sure how differently people would behave.

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Maybe they would, but I want to just put that out there as a devil's advocate for even if

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you actually believe something that's pretty radical, uh, or you would think people would

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behave differently.

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I think sometimes people behave weirdly because they, unless they are trained to know what

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to do, contingent on weird situations, they sort of act normally to a surprising degree.

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Anyway, that's my two cents.

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Yeah.

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Use useful caveat.

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Yeah.

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It's you know, it it continues to be an interesting and controversial topic to what extent

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we quote unquote truly believe what we think we believe.

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I I tend to um be sympathetic with the side that actually a lot of what we think we

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believe, we actually don't believe deep down in the sense of, you know, I have two hands,

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there's a coffee cup on the table.

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I think that a lot of our beliefs um serve social signaling functions and aren't sort of

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operating the machinery of our bodies and helping us navigate space and time.

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Um but that you know that's um a controversial position, and and there's still a lot of

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uncertainty, and we're still studying um how this belief thing works.

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So if you're interested in that debate, um this is a really fun and fascinating

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conversation on politics, belief, and political belief.

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Sounds good.

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And I'll just edit myself in on occasion.

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No, I'm kidding.

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I won't do that.

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And I'm not sure I believe even what I said earlier, but uh look forward to uh um uh uh

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enjoy this episode with uh David and Antoine and not myself, and I hope you

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don't enjoy it too much for that reason.

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Yeah.

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Please feel very dissatisfied and make sure you really miss Dave.

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It was, it was, I was honestly a David.

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I was like, oh man, he doesn't need me.

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This was great.

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David's pulling it off.

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So I'm just going to do that.

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Oh no.

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The whole time I was like, oh, where's Dave when I need him?

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Dave would have come in with the perfect response here.

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Here I am running my mouth.

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Yes.

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Okay, good.

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Well, uh, here is uh David and Antoine, and we'll see you either next week or or in

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a couple weeks.

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and just blame jury duty as we get back on our feet.

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Blame our trial by jury system.

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Exactly.

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Okay, here we go.

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Antoine, you are a scholar of politics, um

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specializing in um evolutionary approaches toward politics,

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coalitions, ideologies.

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We've had a lot of guests on the podcast on topics related to politics.

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So belief, misinformation.

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We had that episode with Dan Williams.

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We've talked we've dabbled in, you know, disgust, coalitions, morality, areas around this

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topic, but we haven't right confront we haven't confronted it head on.

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Um and so um I'm curious, you know, as as a scholar of politics,

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um if if there's something that you think is

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Like what what do you think is is is one of the most elementary mistakes that people make

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when approaching this topic?

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I because it's it's an incredibly difficult topic to approach just because you know all of

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us are political animals.

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We all have opinions and and and stakes and various issue issues.

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So I'd imagine it's it's difficult to get your head on straight with this topic.

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So what do you see as the most as like the biggest pitfalls and the biggest things to avoid

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when approaching politics scientifically?

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Yeah.

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Thanks a lot, Dave, for the uh for the invite.

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To that big question, I think I would say that um the main problem is like cognitive

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blindness.

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And that's a problem that people you know have throughout the social sciences.

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They don't pay enough attention to how the mind works.

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They don't have enough interest in the computational steps that bring us um uh to be able

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to form you know concepts about how we form groups and mass modern societies and mass

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politics and how how democracy works or any area of human behavior, actually.

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Most people who study politics are in political science departments, sociology departments,

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communication science departments, and they they they don't have a lot of interest in

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psychology and cognitive science.

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They like to say that we are social animals and that uh our behavior is uh is shaped by a

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whole lot of um socialization forces, etc.

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but they really kind of like look under the hood or investigate how all this is supposed to

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be implemented at the computational level of the individual mind.

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So I think if anything, that could be, I hope, one of my contributions.

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Um, you know, along the lines of the work that you have been doing with the um alignment

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theory of ideology, uh, along the lines of uh, you know, of course, um classical social

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psychological work like Jonathan Haidt on you know the intuitive foundations of ideologies

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and and more foundations and Sarah, and of course, uh Dan Williams, uh, whom I really hear,

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and I and I feel like sometimes I agree with everything he says.

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Um, I think all of us try to take a cognitive dive into uh politics, political

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behavior, and how the mind represents uh mass politics, In particular, how are evolved

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minds which evolve by natural selection to live in small groups and engage in competition

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with other small groups in the savannah of the Pleistocene, how all those how those minds

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work in mass modern societies, which are massively different in some in terms of

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geographical scale, population size, the degree to which we can polarize into

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sub-identities and you know very uh extensively distributed networks of uh

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interconnections and um and yeah, political parties, political identities, etc.

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So yeah, that's what I'm trying to do.

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Um looking under the hood and understanding how the mind, how the inferences of the mind

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make possible to be political animals.

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Interesting.

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So um you're at the the Center for Political Research in

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Oscar, yeah, in Paris, yeah.

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In Paris.

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Um you know, we've had you know different levels of professional status among all the all

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of our guests, uh, and different levels of you know uh evolutionarily uh

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evolutionary integration in terms of people's um departments.

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So where do you sit in that spectrum?

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Are you sort of the lone evolutionary guy in the room or are there uh other people who

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share your perspective?

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Um uh w what's it like being in that environment?

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Yeah, that's a great question.

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So it it might be useful for your audience to know that in France there are basically two

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main research centers that do evolutionary stuff.

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Institut Jean Nico at the Economal Supérieur, that's where Hugo Mercier, Nicolas Beaumont,

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Dance Berber work or used to work.

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And AST in Toulouse, that's where you have I don't know what active

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researchers are working nowadays there, but at least it's also a pretty active research

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center for evolutionary stuff.

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So once you have graduated your PhD at Jean-Nico IEST, you need to be placed somewhere

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professionally.

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So you need to kind of like radiate out of those two main research centers.

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And I guess I'm sort of like trying my luck at Science Po, I would say.

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I'm not the only person who comes from Institute Jean-Nico who's working there.

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Melusine Bunfaller is also like a junior assistant professor who was hired there recently

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at Athens Po.

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Uh Lou Safra is also a relatively junior assistant professor who was hired there recently,

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and she also did her PhD at Jean Nico.

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I think we're pretty much the three main people who are really interested in evolutionary

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things.

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I know one guy, Hugo Meyer, who does evolutionary approaches to diplomacy and war, but he's

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at the SERI, which is an international relations center at Sciences Po.

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At CEVIPOF, we're basically just two political psychologists with an evolutionary mindset,

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Lusafrain and I.

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You might want to uh interview Lou Safra.

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I think she could she could make for a good guest.

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Um at Sevipuff, we we all do we all do like experimental or quantitative approaches to

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politics for the most part, but only a minority of us really try to take care of

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focus on the mechanisms of how the mind works.

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And even fewer of us have an evolutionary understanding.

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I think most people are sympathetic towards evolutionary approaches when they do

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experimental stuff.

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Uh, but very few of us are really kind of like explicit about, you know, linking ancestral

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section pressures to contemporary behaviors, I I would say.

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Interesting.

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I mean, so it's interesting that you mentioned cognitive blindness as as is

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one of the pitfalls to approaching um psychology.

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And and and you brought it up again just now, the sort of getting really concrete and uh

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precise about how the mind works, about what the mechanisms are, what the information

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processing structure is like.

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Do you see this as a problem of instinct blindness, where um it just seems so easy and

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fluid and natural for us to form political judgments, to f to figure out who's on who's

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who's on which side of the political spectrum.

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And these uh instincts just sort of sort of happen so quickly and automatically that we

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lose sight of how complicated they are and how many um different variables are are

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processed by the mind to give us these judgments of who's on which side of the political

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spectrum and how you know intensely loyal or or or um or moderate they are, for

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example, or how radicalized they are.

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It's partly that for sure.

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It's partly that for sure.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Um is the other part of it just um a lack of computationalism that uh people might

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be thinking, you know, sort of loosely about feelings and and beliefs inside of the head,

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but um the way in which they're approaching is not sufficiently mechanistic and precise.

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Uh is that is that part of the issue as well?

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Yeah.

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Um So, yeah, I guess our fork psychology is not very

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computational.

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Yeah.

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Uh, we probably underestimate the extent to which most of our cognitive processes fulfill

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you know evolutionary adaptive functions are pretty specific and that can be identified.

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Uh, we are not super used to thinking of ourselves as being sophisticated computers that

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basically you know draw inferences from input information, etc.

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Yeah.

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Um in the in the quantitative social sciences, I don't think people are too wedded with the

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ghost in the machine view of psychology that you know Pinker denounces in a blank slate,

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etc.

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I think people are not too dualistic, but they're still a bit too too dualistic in the

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sense that they might not not fully, you know, uh realize or take into account or assume

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the fact that basically we're computers.

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Um I don't think they would defend that there's a soul or whatever, but um but they they're

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often a bit uncomforta uncomfortable with reductionism and uh materialistic descriptions of

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uh thought processes.

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Uh I think also people tend to maybe make the inference that if you describe thought and

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political intuitions and political uh reasoning, etc., in terms of inferences, it

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means you're reductionist and it means that you're denying the social influence of other

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people or your cultural um setup or your historical epoch or whatever on how

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you think at the individual level.

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You know what I mean?

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People have difficulty recovering a computational understanding of how the mind works and

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the notion that there's cultural variation and that you know um political cognition is

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historically situated.

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I feel like.

249
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Yeah, it's interesting.

250
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Because like no one really is bothered by taking a computational approach to like visual

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perception or like, you know, uh cognition, uh or you know, standard topics in

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cognitive psychology like problem solving, logical reasoning, you know, stuff like that.

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It seems very natural and intuitive to take a more computational approach.

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But it's interesting that when you move into the social side of things, our relationships

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with people, our loyalties, um, that that that all of a sudden, um,

256
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once we move into that area, this computational way of thinking becomes more

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alien or it doesn't seem like it fits as well uh on that side of things.

258
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I have no idea why that is.

259
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Um it probably has something to do with our our our folk psychology that you know we we we

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have this intuitive set of systems for understanding other people um that we apply in that

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context and we we've are reluctant to let go of that intuitive psychology.

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But when we're um focusing on non-social or asocial processes, there's no temptation

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to bring in our folk psychology and it's easier to just think about the the mechanistic uh

264
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workings.

265
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The the the hypothesis I would maybe make for this is that uh the more cultural variation

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you have with the behavior, the more counterintuitive it is for people to understand that

267
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it might be relying on basic computational building blocks.

268
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You know what I mean?

269
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Yeah.

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For instance, I feel like Nicolas Bomart has had quite a bit of trouble explaining to

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anthropologists that fairness might be a module that may have evolved because people have

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the strong intuition that, oh, there are so many different things to which we apply

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intuitions of fairness, you know, obligations towards gods, obligations towards other

274
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groups, um, and their and their cultures where we don't feel any obligations towards uh

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gods, for instance.

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So there's so much cultural variation in how the fairness, costs, and benefits algorithm um

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operates and relates to.

278
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And because people have that sense that there's a lot of cultural variation, they become

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reluctant to see the diversity of behaviors as being underlined by like some just basic

280
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mathematical functions that might be universal in the human mind.

281
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Yeah, for sure.

282
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Um so we're talking about the more sort of um

283
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intellectual barriers to taking an evolutionary psychological approach to politics, but

284
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there are um other barriers that are probably even more formidable.

285
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So I w I what I what I see you I see you're you're you in a in a sort of twofold problem.

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Uh the first problem is is just you know, being in evolutionary psychology at all, which is

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sort of an inherently controversial discipline.

288
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It has it has had a long history of controversy.

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Um so right off the bat, there's some difficulty there.

290
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But in addition to that, um you are studying uh literally the most controversial and heated

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topic in existence, um the the topic of controversy itself, uh which is

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politics.

293
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And so you're taking a controversial approach to controversy itself.

294
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And I am in trance.

295
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And and you aren't the country of Marxism, social constructionism, Bourdiasian sociology,

296
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and postmodernism.

297
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Yes, I I th throw the the the French cheese on there as well, and we'll have a a lovely uh

298
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lovely meal here of controversy.

299
00:18:07,260 --> 00:18:12,690
Um yeah, so uh how do you deal with with with that side have you uh

300
00:18:12,770 --> 00:18:17,890
encountered any difficulties with that side of things the political nature of your work um

301
00:18:18,450 --> 00:18:24,290
both literally in terms of you studying politics and also in a broader sense of of you know

302
00:18:24,450 --> 00:18:30,050
being in a politically controversial topic politically controversial framework um

303
00:18:30,290 --> 00:18:36,050
have you experienced any backlash in in in doing this stuff uh and what has that if so what

304
00:18:36,050 --> 00:18:41,480
has that backlash looked like there are there are difficulties at all levels, my poor

305
00:18:41,480 --> 00:18:42,120
David.

306
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Life is hard.

307
00:18:44,040 --> 00:18:46,680
No, I mean no, to start with the positive.

308
00:18:46,760 --> 00:18:51,080
Um, I think on the whole, if you if you communicate to people that you're of intellectual

309
00:18:51,080 --> 00:18:55,800
good faith, if you're a good pedagogue, if you don't interrupt people when you have a

310
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heated conversation with them about human behavior or morally charged topics, etc., that

311
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space bien.

312
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It goes well.

313
00:19:02,630 --> 00:19:02,870
Okay.

314
00:19:03,510 --> 00:19:07,190
On the whole, if you're a good communicator of your of your knowledge, if you don't come

315
00:19:07,190 --> 00:19:10,550
across as a provocator, it goes quite well with the students.

316
00:19:10,710 --> 00:19:13,830
It can go well with the more standard social scientists.

317
00:19:14,310 --> 00:19:16,310
It can go well with most people.

318
00:19:16,550 --> 00:19:19,990
Also with political activists, you know, anti-racist activists, feminist activists who

319
00:19:19,990 --> 00:19:22,950
don't like to be told that there are psychological sex differences, et cetera.

320
00:19:23,670 --> 00:19:27,990
On the whole, it works really well if you have the right ethos and and you and you show

321
00:19:27,990 --> 00:19:31,510
good faith and you listen to people and you're and you're a good pedagogue.

322
00:19:32,800 --> 00:19:38,720
That said, um, and I feel like I've performed decently at those skills, so I've had

323
00:19:38,720 --> 00:19:39,920
mostly good experiences.

324
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:43,920
Uh, and my and my students respect me, and they're not like constantly you know raising

325
00:19:43,920 --> 00:19:49,600
super woke objections to uh the innatism that I sometimes defend with respect to tribalism

326
00:19:49,600 --> 00:19:50,560
or sex differences.

327
00:19:50,720 --> 00:19:54,710
And if you manage to kind of like instill a little bit of a sense of authority, and I know

328
00:19:54,790 --> 00:19:56,870
I know my onions, I know what I'm talking about.

329
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They they listen.

330
00:19:58,070 --> 00:20:02,870
And you can also socialize them to the evolutionary style of thinking quite early on.

331
00:20:03,030 --> 00:20:06,950
For instance, if you have them as undergrads or even master students, you can really, if

332
00:20:06,950 --> 00:20:12,230
you're good enough, you can really transmit all those axioms of evolutionary reasoning that

333
00:20:12,230 --> 00:20:14,630
we find so counter counterintuitive to a lot of people.

334
00:20:14,710 --> 00:20:17,750
If you have the right students and they're smart and they've been selected and they're and

335
00:20:17,990 --> 00:20:22,790
they're and they're doing the homework, you can really transmit and teach EvoSyc relatively

336
00:20:22,870 --> 00:20:24,070
early on successfully.

337
00:20:24,560 --> 00:20:24,960
Yeah.

338
00:20:25,280 --> 00:20:28,160
That said, um, yes, of course.

339
00:20:28,240 --> 00:20:33,040
I mean, the mind is wired to have difficulty distinguishing facts from moral implications,

340
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etc.

341
00:20:34,160 --> 00:20:38,720
So in any audience in which you make claims about, you know, we evolve to be tribal or we

342
00:20:38,720 --> 00:20:42,720
evolve to be uh slightly different on average men and women on this or that trait, you

343
00:20:42,720 --> 00:20:47,990
always have to repeat the fact that those statements of fact have no ideological or moral

344
00:20:47,990 --> 00:20:53,910
implications, that you can very well be a progressist and a feminist and be uh all in favor

345
00:20:53,990 --> 00:20:58,150
of like women in politics and in science, all the while recognizing that there are average

346
00:20:58,150 --> 00:21:01,350
differences in ability and interest, for instance.

347
00:21:01,670 --> 00:21:07,190
Um, basically, you just have to always repeat the same basic um axiom of

348
00:21:07,350 --> 00:21:08,230
evolutionary reasoning.

349
00:21:08,310 --> 00:21:10,790
And if you do that well, I think people can listen.

350
00:21:11,540 --> 00:21:17,460
Um, as far as France is concerned, as such, um, yeah, France is a difficult

351
00:21:18,020 --> 00:21:23,620
national environment to do all this because the dominant software is really like Borduosian

352
00:21:23,780 --> 00:21:27,780
sociology, pre-social constructionist approaches to human behavior.

353
00:21:27,940 --> 00:21:33,140
Uh, it's only recently that the cognitive sciences have spread in the social sciences a

354
00:21:33,140 --> 00:21:33,780
little bit.

355
00:21:34,910 --> 00:21:40,270
The evolutionary influences are even more recent and very, very, very, very minority.

356
00:21:41,550 --> 00:21:45,790
Basically, it's mostly at Ecole Normale Superior Institute Nico that people are trained in

357
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evolutionary social science.

358
00:21:47,630 --> 00:21:51,390
Outside of it, it's not really seen all that much.

359
00:21:51,470 --> 00:21:56,350
And it's um and people who do that tend to hide a little bit, I would say.

360
00:21:59,150 --> 00:22:03,940
One problem we have, I think, with the French public debate about politics and social

361
00:22:03,940 --> 00:22:09,620
science is that the heterodox academic revolution that took place in the US

362
00:22:10,020 --> 00:22:11,940
really hasn't been integrated in France.

363
00:22:12,100 --> 00:22:16,500
Like most people who study human behavior and politics are quite leftist.

364
00:22:16,740 --> 00:22:21,060
And there's not much acknowledgement of the importance of viewpoint diversity in studying

365
00:22:21,060 --> 00:22:25,780
those topics, political viewpoint diversity, epistemological, methodological viewpoint

366
00:22:25,780 --> 00:22:26,420
diversity.

367
00:22:26,740 --> 00:22:32,530
Um, and so yeah, and so if you're an evolutionary minded

368
00:22:32,530 --> 00:22:37,250
centrist like me and you're facing like a like a like a like an array of uh super strong

369
00:22:37,250 --> 00:22:41,730
leftists who are all social constructionists in anthropology or sociology, you're gonna

370
00:22:41,730 --> 00:22:46,610
have difficulty communicating because those people are not necessarily aware of of the

371
00:22:46,610 --> 00:22:51,970
benefits of everything there is to gain from allowing more viewpoint diversity in academia.

372
00:22:52,140 --> 00:22:53,500
They're not really reflective about it.

373
00:22:53,900 --> 00:22:54,780
We don't talk about it enough.

374
00:22:54,860 --> 00:22:58,140
And so it doesn't raise a little a lamb bell in people's brains.

375
00:22:58,220 --> 00:23:02,060
And so there's more space for political intolerance and dogmatism.

376
00:23:02,460 --> 00:23:04,620
And I feel like in France it's a bit difficult in this respect.

377
00:23:04,700 --> 00:23:05,260
But it's getting better.

378
00:23:05,340 --> 00:23:05,820
It's getting better.

379
00:23:05,900 --> 00:23:07,100
I don't want to be a catastrophist.

380
00:23:07,180 --> 00:23:07,820
It's getting better.

381
00:23:08,140 --> 00:23:08,380
Yeah.

382
00:23:08,540 --> 00:23:09,180
Yeah, for sure.

383
00:23:09,340 --> 00:23:15,340
I mean, if if there's anyone who uh has expertise about um the benefits of

384
00:23:15,340 --> 00:23:21,230
viewpoint diversity and the costs of having um epistemic um homogeneity

385
00:23:21,390 --> 00:23:22,670
or uh insularity.

386
00:23:22,750 --> 00:23:27,310
It's it's you because that's one of the main things you study, which is um ideological

387
00:23:27,310 --> 00:23:32,510
orthodoxy, dogmatism when people bind themselves into groups where alternative viewpoints

388
00:23:32,510 --> 00:23:35,710
are taboo and get punished and censured.

389
00:23:35,870 --> 00:23:40,750
Um so you're at the forefront of studying this very phenomenon of what happens to a group

390
00:23:40,750 --> 00:23:46,670
of politically like minded people when they organize and coordinate and punish alternative

391
00:23:46,670 --> 00:23:47,790
ways of thinking.

392
00:23:48,030 --> 00:23:53,740
And um so you so you you know what the downsides of that are and and uh and

393
00:23:53,740 --> 00:23:59,740
obviously that um has damaging effects um on the pursuit of truth, um given uh you

394
00:23:59,740 --> 00:24:01,420
know uh these these processes.

395
00:24:01,580 --> 00:24:07,100
Um and so I I'm curious, you know, what

396
00:24:07,340 --> 00:24:13,310
you see as the causes of ideological orthodoxy um uh

397
00:24:13,710 --> 00:24:18,430
suppression of ideas of speech of alternative viewpoints.

398
00:24:18,670 --> 00:24:22,430
Um on the one hand, it's kind of confusing from an evolutionary perspective, because you

399
00:24:22,430 --> 00:24:25,470
you might naively think that you we'd want to get at the truth.

400
00:24:25,550 --> 00:24:27,950
And truth is good for our biological fitness.

401
00:24:28,110 --> 00:24:32,590
It's good to know where the rocks and trees are and where the predators and prey are.

402
00:24:32,750 --> 00:24:37,660
And if we get into a group of people and we're all very confused about how the world works,

403
00:24:37,820 --> 00:24:40,460
you might naively think that that would be bad for us as a group.

404
00:24:40,540 --> 00:24:45,260
And we might want to organize in such a way that we could be more well informed about the

405
00:24:45,260 --> 00:24:51,020
world and have more accurate beliefs about where the goodies are and where the threats are.

406
00:24:51,420 --> 00:24:57,410
And yet, what we find just repeatedly throughout human history and across cultures is

407
00:24:57,410 --> 00:25:02,370
that when people organize into competitive coalitions, the opposite happens.

408
00:25:02,450 --> 00:25:04,450
They sort of lose their minds a bit.

409
00:25:04,770 --> 00:25:10,450
They sort of get detached from reality and they and they go into these zones of orthodoxy

410
00:25:10,450 --> 00:25:16,210
and dogmatism and sacredness of certain values and

411
00:25:16,450 --> 00:25:17,410
beliefs.

412
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:26,040
uh I'm curious how you would um counter the sort of naive evolutionary prediction

413
00:25:26,120 --> 00:25:30,360
that that we we should not expect this, that we should expect you know good epistemics

414
00:25:30,360 --> 00:25:32,440
coming out of of human groups.

415
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:38,600
Um and I'm curious w uh why why you think this phenomenon happens and how we can

416
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:42,840
uh reconcile it with you know a more evolutionary functionalist approach.

417
00:25:43,270 --> 00:25:43,590
Yeah.

418
00:25:43,830 --> 00:25:47,910
Well, I guess one element of answer I think is uh, and I'm sure you will agree with it, I

419
00:25:47,910 --> 00:25:49,750
mean, it's become pretty standard in Evo Psych.

420
00:25:50,310 --> 00:25:55,510
It's the notion, you know, uh disseminated by uh John Tuby, for instance, that um anything

421
00:25:55,510 --> 00:25:57,990
is better than being left without a coalition, right?

422
00:25:58,070 --> 00:26:02,230
Uh that the what is really, really essential for human uh fitness is to have social

423
00:26:02,230 --> 00:26:07,200
support, to be integrated in a group, pretty much whatever the group is.

424
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:12,160
So there has been very strong selection pressures for wanting to create communities,

425
00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:18,160
orthodoxies, to fit in, to satisfy our homophily bias, you know, a preference for people

426
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:22,960
who by and large agree with us and who seem to be sharing a worldview and long-term goals,

427
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:26,480
and with whom like coordination and cooperation will be mutually beneficial, etc.

428
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:26,880
etc.

429
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:32,490
So it's incredibly surprising that on abstract questions of politics, on which being wrong

430
00:26:32,490 --> 00:26:35,450
doesn't really affect the fitness and the welfare of individuals.

431
00:26:36,010 --> 00:26:39,770
It's not really surprising that on those abstract questions of politics or science, people

432
00:26:39,770 --> 00:26:44,170
will prioritize aligning with the group, aligning with what they perceive to be the

433
00:26:44,170 --> 00:26:48,330
majority, the vox popularly at the given time in which they live and at the given place in

434
00:26:48,330 --> 00:26:49,610
which they live.

435
00:26:50,170 --> 00:26:55,610
If I'm wrong about the reality or the um, you know, human made character of climate change,

436
00:26:55,850 --> 00:26:57,930
it's not going to concretely affect my welfare.

437
00:26:58,010 --> 00:27:02,840
If I'm wrong about the question of whether or not there is a mass replacement at the you

438
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:06,600
know in the domain of like uh immigration policy, it's not going to affect my my welfare.

439
00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:12,520
If I'm if I'm if I'm hopefully wrong in believing, if I'm uh hopelessly wrong in believing

440
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:17,480
that there are no innate psychological differences between the sexes, it's also unlikely to

441
00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:19,320
affect my my fitness concretely, right?

442
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:24,610
Those are relatively abstract questions of knowledge and public policy that um that are

443
00:27:24,610 --> 00:27:28,770
hard to test that are hard to falsify and and and and being wrong about them doesn't really

444
00:27:28,770 --> 00:27:34,610
affect the individual um interest so so if the social vibe in which you are has a

445
00:27:34,610 --> 00:27:38,850
very is very opinionated on those questions and has and has like a dominant opinion you

446
00:27:38,850 --> 00:27:43,570
better go along for if you want to maintain your connections if you want to you know if you

447
00:27:43,570 --> 00:27:47,330
want to find a partner if you want to find friends if you want to preserve followers if you

448
00:27:47,330 --> 00:27:53,120
want to preserve subscriptions and so there's a risk of uh audience capture um you know in

449
00:27:53,120 --> 00:27:58,000
that uh within that community be it a political party a political identity a neighborhood

450
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:03,600
or an academic community potentially I think that's one element of answer uh would you see

451
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:09,280
other aspects to it your question was why are people behaving orthodox um

452
00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:15,920
so so yeah so what one aspect is is is just the low cost of of a lot of these beliefs is

453
00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:21,570
that they're they're so distant and abstract um uh and so f far from one's

454
00:28:21,570 --> 00:28:26,610
concrete everyday decisions that th there's just little cost to having false beliefs about

455
00:28:26,610 --> 00:28:26,770
them.

456
00:28:27,010 --> 00:28:31,170
And even if, you know, uh uh you know, if if I had the true beliefs, like yeah, I wouldn't

457
00:28:31,170 --> 00:28:31,890
be able to act on it.

458
00:28:31,970 --> 00:28:35,410
Like I maybe I could vote, but like m the chance that I'm gonna sway an election and

459
00:28:35,410 --> 00:28:39,330
actually change the world with my vote is, you know, you know, one in sixty million or

460
00:28:39,330 --> 00:28:40,050
something like that.

461
00:28:40,220 --> 00:28:45,820
So these beliefs are so distant and hard for me to um affect and have few implications for

462
00:28:45,980 --> 00:28:50,780
my decisions that it's just the the costs of me being wrong are just so low relative to the

463
00:28:50,780 --> 00:28:52,780
the social benefits being so large.

464
00:28:53,420 --> 00:28:57,580
In the meantime there are very high social benefits in aligning with the group, inclusion,

465
00:28:57,660 --> 00:29:01,180
protection, friendships, blah blah blah, and status acquisition, right?

466
00:29:01,260 --> 00:29:06,700
If you can um compete against your comrades within the group in terms of like how

467
00:29:06,700 --> 00:29:12,530
dogmatically or orthodox um you can be at kind of like embodying the ideology of the

468
00:29:12,530 --> 00:29:12,930
group.

469
00:29:13,090 --> 00:29:15,170
You have avenues for status acquisition.

470
00:29:15,250 --> 00:29:17,330
You have ways of attracting attention towards you.

471
00:29:17,410 --> 00:29:22,050
You have um ways of potentially becoming a leader of that coalition of that group, of that

472
00:29:22,050 --> 00:29:23,010
political vibe, etc.

473
00:29:23,330 --> 00:29:23,570
Yeah.

474
00:29:23,650 --> 00:29:25,570
And so it's uh it's it's good in many respects.

475
00:29:25,650 --> 00:29:30,690
In very in in in many concrete social respects, it's um that's what the um individual that

476
00:29:30,690 --> 00:29:33,970
is adapted to his social environment should be prior prioritizing.

477
00:29:34,220 --> 00:29:34,460
Yeah.

478
00:29:34,700 --> 00:29:36,460
No, yeah, that that that makes a lot of sense.

479
00:29:36,620 --> 00:29:42,300
I'm curious what your take is on this distinction between um intuitive and

480
00:29:42,300 --> 00:29:47,980
reflective beliefs that has been proposed by um people like Dance Berber and Hugo

481
00:29:47,980 --> 00:29:53,740
Mercier, where um there are some beliefs that are sort of um isolated or cut off from

482
00:29:53,740 --> 00:29:55,420
practical behavioral effects.

483
00:29:55,580 --> 00:30:00,610
That they're kind of analogous to pretending or to hypotheticals, you know, where we can I

484
00:30:00,610 --> 00:30:05,650
can hypothetically imagine that um you know there's a there's a coffee table sorry there's

485
00:30:05,730 --> 00:30:08,850
there's a coffee table right there um but that's not gonna affect my behavior.

486
00:30:08,930 --> 00:30:12,370
I'm not gonna like move my body around it the hypothetical coffee table.

487
00:30:12,450 --> 00:30:17,010
It's just it's not gonna actually um impinge on the on the on the way I act in the world.

488
00:30:17,170 --> 00:30:22,620
Um or I can consider a proposal that you're saying, you know, I I can I can think to

489
00:30:22,620 --> 00:30:26,620
myself, Antoine believes it's gonna rain tomorrow, but that doesn't necessarily mean that

490
00:30:26,620 --> 00:30:30,780
I'm going to, you know, bring an umbrella tomorrow, because you could be wrong.

491
00:30:30,940 --> 00:30:36,060
And if I don't trust you, then it's just gonna remain a hypothetical uh uh uh possibility

492
00:30:36,140 --> 00:30:37,660
and it's not gonna affect my behavior.

493
00:30:37,820 --> 00:30:43,270
And so the idea is that a lot of our beliefs are sort of um cut off from their pr practical

494
00:30:43,270 --> 00:30:44,470
behavioral implications.

495
00:30:44,630 --> 00:30:46,550
And these are called reflective beliefs.

496
00:30:46,630 --> 00:30:50,870
We don't truly believe them on a deep level in a way that actually guides our behavior.

497
00:30:51,030 --> 00:30:56,870
We just sort of um uh we we verbally believe them, we say we believe them, we say them

498
00:30:56,870 --> 00:30:59,830
for social purposes to fit in or to gain status.

499
00:30:59,990 --> 00:31:04,550
Um we might even believe that we believe them, but but deep down they're not actually

500
00:31:04,550 --> 00:31:07,580
regulating our behavior on a day-to-day basis.

501
00:31:07,820 --> 00:31:10,940
And I'm curious, uh number one, if you if you buy that distinction.

502
00:31:11,100 --> 00:31:15,580
And number two, where um ideologies fit on that continuum.

503
00:31:15,740 --> 00:31:20,620
Do you see ideologies as largely being composed of reflective beliefs, or do you view them

504
00:31:20,620 --> 00:31:25,580
as as uh being composed of intuitive beliefs that actually guide concrete behavior?

505
00:31:25,970 --> 00:31:26,290
Yeah.

506
00:31:26,530 --> 00:31:29,890
No, it's great that you're asking me that question because I actually wanted to ask it to

507
00:31:29,890 --> 00:31:30,370
you, David.

508
00:31:30,610 --> 00:31:31,170
Oh okay.

509
00:31:31,970 --> 00:31:35,570
In relationship to the Allayan theory of ideology, uh in particular.

510
00:31:36,210 --> 00:31:38,210
I'm I'm a huge fan of of the distinction.

511
00:31:38,290 --> 00:31:40,210
I think it's extremely uh insightful.

512
00:31:40,370 --> 00:31:43,730
Um it's been you know walking around in my head for the last uh eight years.

513
00:31:43,890 --> 00:31:49,090
I think it's one of the major conceptual innovations in the human sciences in in the recent

514
00:31:49,090 --> 00:31:50,450
uh in the recent decade.

515
00:31:51,330 --> 00:31:56,920
Um yeah, a good illustration is for instance people's relationship to those to the notion

516
00:31:56,920 --> 00:32:00,680
of uh post-truth or relativism or alternative facts, right?

517
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:06,520
At an implicit level, it is impossible for organisms to not assume a concept of the truth,

518
00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:10,760
of there being external facts that constrain our will and constrain our movements, etc.

519
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:15,560
It's not possible to have evolved as organisms without presupposing the existence of an

520
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:20,280
external world, uh, with like constraining facts, and therefore to be exploding at an

521
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:23,710
implicit level a concept of truth.

522
00:32:23,870 --> 00:32:27,950
But the x at the explicit verbal level, it's completely possible to be a relativistic

523
00:32:27,950 --> 00:32:30,190
philosopher who says that there is no truth.

524
00:32:30,350 --> 00:32:35,870
That person will not necessarily bump into the walls or bump into his uh you know uh desk

525
00:32:35,870 --> 00:32:39,230
table just because uh he or she says that there are no facts.

526
00:32:39,470 --> 00:32:42,030
They will keep the two the two realities separate, right?

527
00:32:42,270 --> 00:32:47,080
Keep assuming the existence of an external world and a concept of truth when it comes to

528
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:52,280
practical affairs, all the while denying the reality of there being facts, or the reality

529
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:55,880
of any concept of truth, or the usefulness of any concept of truth.

530
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:02,040
Trump knows that when he uh turns the wheel of his uh golf car to the left, he's gonna go

531
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:06,600
to the left and not to the right, all the while claiming that there are alternately facts

532
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:08,600
that you know don't constrain his will, etc.

533
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:10,840
So there's just a mental disconnect there.

534
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:15,450
Um what about algebra beliefs?

535
00:33:15,610 --> 00:33:20,970
Um by default, I would tend to agree with the idea that they are pretty

536
00:33:20,970 --> 00:33:21,850
reflective.

537
00:33:22,170 --> 00:33:26,890
Um I feel like political ideologies have a relatively weak relationship to behavior.

538
00:33:27,210 --> 00:33:30,170
Uh always a pretty strong, you know, belief action gap.

539
00:33:30,330 --> 00:33:34,970
Um I I I may say to whomever wants to listen to me that I care about the environment and

540
00:33:34,970 --> 00:33:36,810
that the the plant is warming up, etc.

541
00:33:37,050 --> 00:33:37,290
etc.

542
00:33:38,010 --> 00:33:42,520
Uh I have a much greater propensity to say that I'm pro-environment than I have to

543
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:44,040
completely stop flying, for instance.

544
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:48,120
So there's always like a decalage, a gap, a disconnect between the two.

545
00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:53,080
Sure, or or or even just like more apocalyptic beliefs about climate change.

546
00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:57,720
So I think it's plausible that a lot of people who think that like the world is going to

547
00:33:57,720 --> 00:34:01,640
end imminently as a result of climate change, I think it's plausible that that is merely

548
00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:05,830
reflective belief because their behavior is not, you know, if I truly believed that climate

549
00:34:05,830 --> 00:34:09,910
change was going to destroy in accordance with the literal endorsement of the of the

550
00:34:09,910 --> 00:34:10,230
belief.

551
00:34:10,550 --> 00:34:10,710
Yeah.

552
00:34:10,790 --> 00:34:14,390
If I truly thought that climate change was going to destroy everything, or at least, you

553
00:34:14,390 --> 00:34:19,990
know, make significant damage to humanity in the next 20 years, say, I would be

554
00:34:19,990 --> 00:34:22,390
panicking right now and figuring out how to get my family.

555
00:34:22,870 --> 00:34:27,510
You would go so survival mode, and you would be checking uh like a food in storage for like

556
00:34:27,510 --> 00:34:28,870
the next 10 years or whatever.

557
00:34:28,950 --> 00:34:29,270
Yeah, yeah.

558
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:29,960
Exactly.

559
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:35,160
And so the the the fact that climate catastrophists are not acting like that suggests that

560
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:36,600
their belief is more reflective.

561
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:38,520
At least I think that's that's plausible.

562
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:39,240
Yeah, yeah.

563
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:43,320
It's just that those beliefs are mostly for social consumption, that they're mostly for you

564
00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:47,560
know feeding and building conversations, that they have to do with signaling and uh and

565
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:49,400
maybe trying to influence others.

566
00:34:49,640 --> 00:34:55,350
One one question there, so to the extent that those reflective political beliefs are for

567
00:34:55,350 --> 00:35:01,190
social influence, micropropaganda, um mobilizing others, coordinating

568
00:35:01,190 --> 00:35:02,390
collective actions.

569
00:35:03,430 --> 00:35:09,430
An important question there is like how motivating are there on the spreaders' behavior

570
00:35:09,430 --> 00:35:11,750
and on the audience's behavior, right?

571
00:35:12,630 --> 00:35:16,550
Uh I think that's a that's a big um that's a big question.

572
00:35:16,870 --> 00:35:20,470
When I wrote about speech repression, for instance, I emphasized that people had

573
00:35:20,470 --> 00:35:25,920
motivations to control and regulate flows of information to keep other people

574
00:35:25,920 --> 00:35:30,560
mobilized in favors of uh in favor of causes that they care about, like anti-racism.

575
00:35:31,360 --> 00:35:37,120
It's enough for me if I'm uh if I'm if I'm if I'm an anti-racist canceller, it's it's

576
00:35:37,120 --> 00:35:42,080
enough for me to want to keep people committed to anti-racism in society, to want to

577
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:47,440
regulate the dissemination of research that may be spreading racist views, for instance.

578
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:52,890
But do those efforts of speech repression and regulation, are they efficient at maintaining

579
00:35:52,890 --> 00:35:53,530
the mobilization?

580
00:35:53,690 --> 00:35:57,930
Are they efficient at reducing the spread in society of views that are demoracist?

581
00:35:58,010 --> 00:35:58,890
That's another question.

582
00:35:59,130 --> 00:36:04,170
It's enough for people to want it's enough for people who believe that their speech

583
00:36:04,170 --> 00:36:07,610
regulation is efficient for them to want to cancel and to regulate the speech.

584
00:36:07,770 --> 00:36:08,890
Does it reach its effects?

585
00:36:08,970 --> 00:36:10,010
It's another question.

586
00:36:10,810 --> 00:36:11,290
Interesting.

587
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:12,880
Yeah.

588
00:36:13,120 --> 00:36:18,480
So are you asking the question of of whether people's belief in the um

589
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:24,400
effectiveness of anti racist activism is could itself be a reflective belief

590
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:25,680
that maybe Yeah.

591
00:36:25,840 --> 00:36:27,600
I I think that's that's plausible.

592
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:32,400
Um because I mean if you look at at the evidence, um if you you know look at the rise of um

593
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:37,440
you know anti-racist rhetoric, the this the so-called Great Awokening, the rise in in in

594
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:39,890
these in uh these particular sensitivities.

595
00:36:40,050 --> 00:36:42,290
Um, what happens directly after that?

596
00:36:42,450 --> 00:36:47,650
Uh well, the rise of right wing populism, Trump, uh, overt or more overt racism.

597
00:36:47,730 --> 00:36:51,570
It seems if anything, it has made matters worse rather than better in terms of improving

598
00:36:51,570 --> 00:36:54,530
race relations, um, in in America at least.

599
00:36:54,690 --> 00:36:59,010
Um, so the causal evidence of, you know, greater anti racist activism, less racism doesn't

600
00:36:59,010 --> 00:36:59,570
seem to pan out.

601
00:36:59,650 --> 00:37:04,130
If anything, uh what we observe suggests the opposite, that it actually uh exacerbates it.

602
00:37:04,210 --> 00:37:07,740
Um like a backlash and uh Yeah.

603
00:37:08,140 --> 00:37:12,620
Um so that's an interesting uh example of of another possible ref reflective belief.

604
00:37:12,700 --> 00:37:18,220
That that really the function the function of these beliefs are to mobilize a a coalition

605
00:37:18,380 --> 00:37:24,380
uh rather than to uh um enact a kind of effective altruism to uh to stop the

606
00:37:24,380 --> 00:37:26,140
spread of of racist ideas.

607
00:37:26,700 --> 00:37:28,700
Yeah, yeah, it's really a complicated question.

608
00:37:28,860 --> 00:37:34,770
Um At the same time, I would maybe want to be a bit charitable

609
00:37:34,770 --> 00:37:38,930
towards those anti-racist activists and assume that they really believe that when they are

610
00:37:38,930 --> 00:37:44,610
trying to intervene on information flows to keep people mobilized in favor of anti-racism,

611
00:37:44,850 --> 00:37:48,610
they really they really believe that it's working, that it has a causal effect on people's

612
00:37:48,610 --> 00:37:49,170
behavior.

613
00:37:49,410 --> 00:37:49,730
Yeah.

614
00:37:49,970 --> 00:37:55,960
Um But uh but your original question was more about the link between ideological

615
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:57,560
convictions and people's behavior.

616
00:37:57,720 --> 00:37:59,320
Um, what is your take on that?

617
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:03,640
What would be like the average correlation between people's political beliefs and and their

618
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:04,040
behavior?

619
00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:07,960
You think it's 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, or does it make no sense to even come up with an

620
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:08,920
approximation like that?

621
00:38:09,240 --> 00:38:11,640
Yeah, I think it's a it's a completely fascinating question.

622
00:38:11,720 --> 00:38:14,200
It's something that I've been thinking about a lot as well.

623
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:20,590
Um where I currently am on the question is that uh yeah, I think it's it's

624
00:38:20,590 --> 00:38:23,790
probably almost entirely reflective beliefs.

625
00:38:24,030 --> 00:38:29,870
Um uh and that's not inconsistent with behaving

626
00:38:29,870 --> 00:38:32,510
in ways that might suggest intuitive belief.

627
00:38:32,750 --> 00:38:38,520
Because I think you could think of um say um not

628
00:38:38,920 --> 00:38:41,880
r renouncing all air travel or or or whatever.

629
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:45,800
You could think of that as a as a as a kind of social signal to other people in my

630
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:46,440
coalition.

631
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:52,120
And that can coexist with a purely reflective belief about climate catastrophism.

632
00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:58,520
Particularly if I'm not particularly attentive to whether that is actually going to be

633
00:38:58,520 --> 00:38:59,400
effective or not.

634
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:04,190
So if I'm doing things that are probably not going to be effective, you know, let's say I'm

635
00:39:04,270 --> 00:39:08,590
I'm throwing soup at the Mona Lisa, I'm doing these kinds of purely symbolic acts, or maybe

636
00:39:08,590 --> 00:39:13,470
I'm you know a part of a protest and I'm you know vandalizing the university gymnasium.

637
00:39:13,630 --> 00:39:19,470
Um it's it's possible that you know those kinds of actions are not connected to an

638
00:39:19,470 --> 00:39:24,270
intuitive belief that that's going to improve the situation or be effectively altruistic,

639
00:39:24,350 --> 00:39:26,270
but that itself is a kind of signal.

640
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:32,560
Um so part of um the function of of a reflective belief might

641
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:36,880
be to signal to others um deceptively that one has an intuitive belief.

642
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:41,520
So that adds an additional layer of confusingness and complexity.

643
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:47,600
But yeah my my intuition uh increasingly these these days is I I think that ideologies

644
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:53,290
um are uh are are largely if not entirely um Composed of

645
00:39:53,290 --> 00:39:54,810
reflective beliefs.

646
00:39:55,210 --> 00:39:58,970
And I and I don't think it's purely because the beliefs themselves don't have practical

647
00:39:58,970 --> 00:39:59,290
effects.

648
00:39:59,370 --> 00:40:03,290
I think you could imagine cases where they might have practical effects.

649
00:40:03,850 --> 00:40:08,250
So like let's take the case of biological, um

650
00:40:08,730 --> 00:40:14,570
biologically organized uh psychological

651
00:40:14,570 --> 00:40:16,490
sex differences, let's say.

652
00:40:16,810 --> 00:40:22,260
Um if I think that, you know, people are purely blank slates, there are no um uh

653
00:40:22,420 --> 00:40:28,340
innate differences between boys and girls, um that could plausibly affect the way I parent

654
00:40:28,340 --> 00:40:29,460
my children, right?

655
00:40:29,700 --> 00:40:35,380
If I think that, you know, my my daughter has no predisposition to, you know, be into

656
00:40:35,380 --> 00:40:38,260
princesses and and and and dresses and so forth.

657
00:40:38,580 --> 00:40:40,020
As a matter of fact, she is.

658
00:40:40,260 --> 00:40:41,780
Um I didn't teach that to her.

659
00:40:42,260 --> 00:40:46,100
I hope you're at least trying to teach her to tinker and to fix her bike, etc.

660
00:40:46,990 --> 00:40:49,470
Oh, I am, and she's absolutely into that stuff as well.

661
00:40:49,950 --> 00:40:53,950
Uh if anything, she's a little, you know, she's more into you know, sort of gender atypical

662
00:40:53,950 --> 00:40:54,750
stuff than the usual girl.

663
00:40:54,830 --> 00:40:59,310
But she but she does show the usual interest in being beautiful and put pretending to put

664
00:40:59,310 --> 00:41:01,870
on makeup and wearing dresses and all that stuff.

665
00:41:02,110 --> 00:41:03,630
Um but I didn't teach her that.

666
00:41:03,710 --> 00:41:06,030
Um, you know, my wife didn't teach her that.

667
00:41:06,350 --> 00:41:08,990
Um it just sort of happened naturally.

668
00:41:09,070 --> 00:41:13,060
Uh and there are other, you know, anecdotal cases of people with boys and they're into

669
00:41:13,060 --> 00:41:16,980
boyish things and they didn't, you know, push them into that, that they were just sort of

670
00:41:16,980 --> 00:41:18,020
naturally drawn to that.

671
00:41:18,260 --> 00:41:20,660
But if I truly believe uh to convince me of that.

672
00:41:20,740 --> 00:41:21,060
Yeah, yeah.

673
00:41:21,220 --> 00:41:24,260
I think a lot of that is endogenous and it's not really surprising from an elementary

674
00:41:24,420 --> 00:41:24,820
perspective.

675
00:41:25,540 --> 00:41:25,940
Right.

676
00:41:26,180 --> 00:41:31,220
Um and you know, it's possible that if I truly believed that, you know, kids were blank

677
00:41:31,220 --> 00:41:36,650
slates, that I might be, you know, really furious about the fact that my daughter was into

678
00:41:36,650 --> 00:41:37,610
princesses, right?

679
00:41:37,850 --> 00:41:42,970
I might, you know, talk to members of uh of her school and say who who taught her that?

680
00:41:43,130 --> 00:41:44,170
Where did she get this idea?

681
00:41:44,330 --> 00:41:48,170
You know, who who manipulated her into into having this preference, right?

682
00:41:48,490 --> 00:41:52,170
And it might cause real damage for me if I concr if I intuitively believed that.

683
00:41:52,490 --> 00:41:58,250
Um so I think it's not so much that the beliefs themselves cannot have practical effects.

684
00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:04,360
I think it's more that um even if they did, I I don't think we intuitively believe

685
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:04,680
them.

686
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:07,240
Um that's sort of where I'm leaning.

687
00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:12,200
And and you know, I'm I'm open to being convinced, but for me, the big thing that

688
00:42:13,320 --> 00:42:19,160
points me in the direction that um ideologies are are largely reflective

689
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:24,360
is people's reactions to the tremendous body of evidence on uh

690
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:26,200
partisan-motivated reasoning.

691
00:42:26,550 --> 00:42:31,270
So these are so we all have we all know that there that political bias exists, that people

692
00:42:31,270 --> 00:42:35,110
are biased to confirm uh favored political narratives.

693
00:42:35,350 --> 00:42:38,470
There's a tremendous body of research in the social science, one of the most well

694
00:42:38,550 --> 00:42:42,710
replicated phenomena of all time, of partisan motivated reasoning.

695
00:42:43,110 --> 00:42:48,150
And there are large meta-analyses showing that the degree of bias, of political bias, is

696
00:42:48,150 --> 00:42:51,110
roughly equal on both sides of the political spectrum.

697
00:42:51,350 --> 00:42:57,260
That um my political opponents, whom I despise and think are crazy, are just as biased

698
00:42:57,260 --> 00:43:02,300
to form their particular um uh political beliefs as I am.

699
00:43:02,620 --> 00:43:08,620
And uh most people, when I tell them that, they think it it makes sense.

700
00:43:08,700 --> 00:43:12,460
They're maybe a little troubled by it, but people buy it.

701
00:43:13,070 --> 00:43:19,070
Um, but it doesn't trigger the amount of panic I would expect it to trigger.

702
00:43:19,310 --> 00:43:24,750
Like if I truly believe that something that I that I cared about was profoundly biased.

703
00:43:24,910 --> 00:43:30,830
Like if I believed that I was biased to um ignore or or downplay my daughter's suffering,

704
00:43:31,150 --> 00:43:31,630
let's say.

705
00:43:31,710 --> 00:43:35,470
You know, every time she was sick or she was hurt or she her feelings were hurt, whatever,

706
00:43:35,630 --> 00:43:40,620
I was biased to ignore it or to dismiss it or to not take it seriously.

707
00:43:40,700 --> 00:43:43,980
And I learned that there's a tremendous body of social science research that I have that

708
00:43:43,980 --> 00:43:44,620
bias.

709
00:43:44,940 --> 00:43:49,580
Um, if I learned that, that would be extremely upsetting to me.

710
00:43:49,820 --> 00:43:54,780
And I would take it I would I would panic and look for any kind of concrete action I could

711
00:43:54,780 --> 00:43:56,300
take to get rid of that bias, right?

712
00:43:56,460 --> 00:43:59,580
Getting rid of that bias would be my top priority, right?

713
00:43:59,900 --> 00:44:01,580
Why why why should it be so consequential?

714
00:44:01,660 --> 00:44:05,180
Because it it would be showing that people's ideological beliefs don't have a lot of

715
00:44:05,180 --> 00:44:05,980
normative force.

716
00:44:06,140 --> 00:44:07,180
Is it what you're saying?

717
00:44:07,650 --> 00:44:12,370
So what I'm saying is if I thought I was biased to ignore my daughter's suffering, say,

718
00:44:12,450 --> 00:44:13,650
that's a belief that I really care about.

719
00:44:13,730 --> 00:44:17,970
I really care that my belief about my daughter's suffering or lack thereof is accurate,

720
00:44:18,050 --> 00:44:18,370
right?

721
00:44:18,530 --> 00:44:18,850
Yeah.

722
00:44:19,250 --> 00:44:24,130
Um and if I learned of a tremendous body of evidence to show that my belief about that was

723
00:44:24,130 --> 00:44:26,610
actually biased, was actually inaccurate.

724
00:44:26,690 --> 00:44:31,330
Um that would motivate a profound systemic ability to come up with the truth on that topic,

725
00:44:31,410 --> 00:44:34,850
and that would freak you out in terms of like how much intellectual confidence you can have

726
00:44:34,850 --> 00:44:35,330
in yourself.

727
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:36,080
Exactly.

728
00:44:36,160 --> 00:44:39,280
And I would be extremely motivated to get rid of that bias.

729
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:42,320
To do whatever it took to get rid of that bias.

730
00:44:42,720 --> 00:44:46,240
And people don't sound like they are trying very hard to correct the biases in their

731
00:44:46,240 --> 00:44:47,920
ideologies or in their political judgments.

732
00:44:48,240 --> 00:44:48,560
Exactly.

733
00:44:48,720 --> 00:44:53,360
The motivation to overcome political bias is virtually absent.

734
00:44:53,520 --> 00:44:58,470
And it's even and it's especially absent in the most politically motivated people who who

735
00:44:58,470 --> 00:45:00,870
supposedly care most about those beliefs.

736
00:45:01,030 --> 00:45:01,350
Right?

737
00:45:01,830 --> 00:45:05,510
Which suggests that their accuracy motives, if they exist, are really, really weak and

738
00:45:05,510 --> 00:45:06,790
really not their priority.

739
00:45:07,190 --> 00:45:07,750
Exactly.

740
00:45:07,990 --> 00:45:08,470
Exactly.

741
00:45:08,790 --> 00:45:10,950
You incidentally, do you think there are accuracy motives?

742
00:45:11,110 --> 00:45:15,270
I remember discussing that in in in in pretty great depth with one of my friends who's uh

743
00:45:15,270 --> 00:45:17,430
also a scholar of political psychology.

744
00:45:17,590 --> 00:45:20,630
He doubts that there are anything like accuracy motives.

745
00:45:20,710 --> 00:45:23,510
He thinks that it's like it's like a folk theory of psychology.

746
00:45:24,020 --> 00:45:26,660
Well, I think that I'm that that seems crazy to me.

747
00:45:26,740 --> 00:45:29,300
It's like there definitely are accuracy motives in some kind of things.

748
00:45:29,540 --> 00:45:33,380
Accuracy motives, accuracy motives in the domain of abstract beliefs about how society

749
00:45:33,380 --> 00:45:33,860
works, let's say.

750
00:45:34,180 --> 00:45:38,420
Because of course we have accuracy motives about not dumping into furniture in the room or

751
00:45:38,420 --> 00:45:38,740
whatever.

752
00:45:38,900 --> 00:45:43,140
But when it comes to higher order beliefs about how society works at large or microscopic

753
00:45:43,140 --> 00:45:45,300
facts or whatever, do you think people have an accuracy motive?

754
00:45:45,380 --> 00:45:46,660
You would you would think so.

755
00:45:47,030 --> 00:45:47,430
Hmm.

756
00:45:47,590 --> 00:45:48,950
That's uh that's a tough question.

757
00:45:49,030 --> 00:45:49,990
I'm not sure.

758
00:45:50,230 --> 00:45:55,750
Um I think I can imagine that the that that such motives might exist, um,

759
00:45:55,910 --> 00:46:01,270
insofar as those, you know, macroscopic beliefs have, you know, concrete practical

760
00:46:01,270 --> 00:46:01,750
implications.

761
00:46:01,910 --> 00:46:07,350
So like my larger abstract beliefs about how society works or how gender works, like those

762
00:46:07,500 --> 00:46:12,140
I could see how those might affect my practical decisions in day-to-day life.

763
00:46:12,460 --> 00:46:16,060
If I have a general belief about if I have a general belief about like human nature, for

764
00:46:16,060 --> 00:46:20,620
example, um that could uh you know affect you know how I interact with specific humans,

765
00:46:20,780 --> 00:46:21,100
right?

766
00:46:21,740 --> 00:46:25,500
So I don't I don't think it's implausible that that those kinds of motives might exist.

767
00:46:25,660 --> 00:46:25,820
Yeah.

768
00:46:26,620 --> 00:46:30,060
There's the question of the of the practical usefulness of those beliefs being true, but

769
00:46:30,060 --> 00:46:35,250
there's also the psychological question of how you may develop a concept of wanting to be

770
00:46:35,410 --> 00:46:40,370
right in those domains by scaffolding from your concern for being right about practical

771
00:46:40,370 --> 00:46:41,010
affairs, right?

772
00:46:41,250 --> 00:46:45,810
You may imagine that we have uh, you know, we we we we make practical use of a concept of

773
00:46:45,810 --> 00:46:46,130
truth.

774
00:46:46,210 --> 00:46:49,410
There are furniture in the room, I don't want to bump into them, I want to know they're

775
00:46:49,410 --> 00:46:50,530
there that they're there, etc.

776
00:46:50,770 --> 00:46:53,650
I need to make practical use of the concept of the truth there.

777
00:46:53,730 --> 00:46:56,450
I have an accuracy model for those practical affairs.

778
00:46:56,690 --> 00:47:02,340
I extend that concern to more abstract sense of affairs that don't

779
00:47:02,580 --> 00:47:06,740
that cannot affect me as concretely as the the functures I could bump into.

780
00:47:07,300 --> 00:47:12,500
So I think it's conceivable that there is like a psychological extension or scaffolding of

781
00:47:12,500 --> 00:47:17,460
that concern to other to other domains of cognition that are wider in scope or smaller.

782
00:47:17,940 --> 00:47:23,300
Um but okay sorry that that was an apartheid uh it's my PhD brain that won't that want to

783
00:47:23,300 --> 00:47:23,620
digress.

784
00:47:24,050 --> 00:47:29,890
I think it's plausible that you know once you get sufficiently abstract and distant

785
00:47:29,890 --> 00:47:35,250
from practical conc concerns that we we sort of stop caring about whether the the thing is

786
00:47:35,250 --> 00:47:40,530
true or not and we sort of only care about the social implications and the reputational and

787
00:47:40,530 --> 00:47:41,970
coalitional implications.

788
00:47:42,130 --> 00:47:44,050
That seems plausible to me.

789
00:47:45,970 --> 00:47:51,410
One limit that I would potentially see to the theory that um most ideological beliefs are

790
00:47:51,410 --> 00:47:53,980
just reflective is extremists.

791
00:47:54,140 --> 00:47:54,300
Yeah.

792
00:47:54,460 --> 00:47:59,660
People on the ultra-right, on the ultra-left, uh jihadis are studied by uh people like uh

793
00:47:59,660 --> 00:48:01,740
Scott Aitron, Hamad Shaik, etc.

794
00:48:02,860 --> 00:48:08,140
Those guys are really dead sure that their ideology is true and they're willing to

795
00:48:08,140 --> 00:48:13,420
sacrifice the totality of their self-interest uh for abstract causes

796
00:48:14,070 --> 00:48:18,390
There, I feel like it's a bit harder to assume that the beliefs are held only reflectively.

797
00:48:18,550 --> 00:48:18,790
Yeah.

798
00:48:19,350 --> 00:48:24,310
Maybe, you know, processes of competitive signaling within the group involved a little bit.

799
00:48:24,710 --> 00:48:29,910
Um, I seem to be remembering that suicide terrorists, you know, sometimes make the promise

800
00:48:29,910 --> 00:48:34,310
that they will sacrifice for the group in front of a videotape, and then they might have

801
00:48:34,310 --> 00:48:36,390
the feeling that it's too late to paddle back, etc.

802
00:48:36,950 --> 00:48:41,670
So there might be like social processes of status competition and not losing the face that

803
00:48:41,670 --> 00:48:47,200
play a role, but abstract ideal ideology of like I'm gonna save the caliphate, I'm gonna

804
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:51,280
sacrifice for the caliphate, I'm gonna sacrifice for the communist revolution, I'm gonna

805
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:52,480
sacrifice for my nation.

806
00:48:52,640 --> 00:48:56,880
I have difficulty believing that those are not causally efficient in motivating the

807
00:48:56,880 --> 00:48:57,520
behavior.

808
00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:02,960
But for at least a small segment of extremists or very committed, uh devoted actors, like

809
00:49:03,040 --> 00:49:06,480
you know, Scott Aitwin would call them, or super courageous soldiers or whatever.

810
00:49:07,890 --> 00:49:09,970
Yeah, no, that that's definitely like the toughest case.

811
00:49:10,210 --> 00:49:10,850
For sure.

812
00:49:11,410 --> 00:49:17,090
But I think even there, we shouldn't rule out the possibility that even those beliefs are

813
00:49:17,250 --> 00:49:18,290
reflective.

814
00:49:18,610 --> 00:49:24,370
Um and it may be that that very impression that you have of, say, a jihadist terrorist,

815
00:49:24,530 --> 00:49:30,370
that they are a true believer, truly devoted, um, just the amount of awe and terror you

816
00:49:30,370 --> 00:49:35,330
feel at someone who has the capability to do that and is that committed to an ideology.

817
00:49:35,570 --> 00:49:40,920
Um it could be that the very impression you have of them as being a true believer is why

818
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:42,040
they engaged in the action.

819
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:46,280
That is exactly what they wanted to make you think with the action.

820
00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:49,800
And it's precisely what they wanted to make their fellow group members think that they are

821
00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:53,400
extraordinarily devoted to this cause, right?

822
00:49:54,120 --> 00:49:59,080
Um and it could be that, you know, if the status benefits of behaving in such an

823
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:04,650
awe-inspiring way are sufficiently large and you're in a community where status is

824
00:50:04,650 --> 00:50:08,570
extremely intertwined with the status of your family members.

825
00:50:08,890 --> 00:50:12,730
Um and you're your status prospects are quite low.

826
00:50:12,890 --> 00:50:17,770
Um and if by doing this thing you tremendously increase your status and thus the status of

827
00:50:17,770 --> 00:50:23,050
your family members, it could be that in some cases that could be a rational decision to

828
00:50:23,050 --> 00:50:23,370
make.

829
00:50:23,610 --> 00:50:28,010
So I wouldn't rule out the possibility that they're reflective beliefs, but they're just,

830
00:50:28,090 --> 00:50:34,020
you know, really large status gambles that could make sense for, you know, a small number

831
00:50:34,020 --> 00:50:39,060
of individuals in some contexts where where um status and kinship are deeply intertwined

832
00:50:39,140 --> 00:50:42,500
and where status prospects uh otherwise are low.

833
00:50:42,660 --> 00:50:48,180
Or at least, you know, it's hard to know I can't get inside of a you know a a jihadist's

834
00:50:48,180 --> 00:50:48,340
head.

835
00:50:48,420 --> 00:50:50,580
I don't know what what they're what they truly believe or not.

836
00:50:50,820 --> 00:50:51,220
Who knows?

837
00:50:51,380 --> 00:50:55,300
Maybe they are true believers, but I think it's at least possible that they're not.

838
00:50:56,130 --> 00:51:01,010
Yeah, I think for a range of those extremists, uh your analysis is completely correct.

839
00:51:01,090 --> 00:51:06,210
Uh, you know, as as secular westerners, we tend to underestimate the degree to which um

840
00:51:06,530 --> 00:51:11,970
behaving super devoted to your face can you know accrue status uh on you and your family in

841
00:51:11,970 --> 00:51:13,330
like uh Muslim communities, etc.

842
00:51:13,650 --> 00:51:17,570
So there's probably a lot of that involved that we fail to appreciate to its full extent.

843
00:51:17,890 --> 00:51:23,260
At the same time, I'm not a specialist of the literature on extremism but I I seem to

844
00:51:23,260 --> 00:51:26,700
really to be remembering Scott Aitran, Sam Harris, etc.

845
00:51:27,260 --> 00:51:32,060
repeating the point that a lot of um terrorists were especially lone wolves that were

846
00:51:32,060 --> 00:51:38,060
relatively disenfranchised that didn't seem to be able to derive a lot

847
00:51:38,060 --> 00:51:40,460
of status benefits from their extremism.

848
00:51:42,630 --> 00:51:47,350
the or on the other hand, they were pretty well socially integrated and they had pretty

849
00:51:47,350 --> 00:51:48,950
good economic prospects.

850
00:51:49,430 --> 00:51:55,110
Uh like for instance, the the the 15 the 19 hijackers of of 9/11, they were like

851
00:51:55,110 --> 00:52:00,710
relatively middle class, even somewhat upper class guys, a lot of engineers, Jordan, Egypt,

852
00:52:00,790 --> 00:52:01,350
etc.

853
00:52:02,630 --> 00:52:04,790
Those guys had outside options.

854
00:52:05,040 --> 00:52:06,960
Um they had pretty good lives.

855
00:52:07,120 --> 00:52:09,280
I think some of them were living in the US already.

856
00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:12,080
Many of them, most of them were living in the US already.

857
00:52:12,320 --> 00:52:16,000
Um so there you would say their motivation was not economic.

858
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:21,840
It was not to improve their living centers or whatever, but it would be to do with like the

859
00:52:21,840 --> 00:52:27,120
prestige that they would derive within their Muslim communities back home, for instance, or

860
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:29,040
or maybe their families in the US or whatever.

861
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:32,480
That that that's what you would retain as the as the most plausible explanation?

862
00:52:32,830 --> 00:52:33,870
Yeah, that's what I would say.

863
00:52:33,950 --> 00:52:35,310
Yeah, and that's that's a good point.

864
00:52:39,950 --> 00:52:45,710
That if if if you know no plausible status motive exists that could cause a

865
00:52:45,710 --> 00:52:50,190
behavior like that, then yeah, that that challenges what I'm saying.

866
00:52:50,350 --> 00:52:54,910
Um I wonder what was the situation of the two guys that committed the Bond Aid Beach

867
00:52:54,910 --> 00:52:56,510
attacks in December 25.

868
00:52:57,440 --> 00:53:02,320
I went to Australia in December to study people's social perceptions of the attacks, and

869
00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:04,320
there are their fork theory of jihadism.

870
00:53:04,400 --> 00:53:06,960
I haven't published a paper yet, but I'm writing it up.

871
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:13,120
And there, if I'm not wrong, those two jihadi guys, one son, one dad,

872
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:18,080
operated mostly as lone wolves, and they weren't they were like relatively recent um

873
00:53:18,310 --> 00:53:24,230
converts to political Islam and um I'm not sure they really depended on

874
00:53:24,230 --> 00:53:29,350
the approval of a of a of an important you know network of uh of other Muslims over there.

875
00:53:29,830 --> 00:53:35,030
Uh so there are cases where I'm like tempted to imagine that it's more like you know

876
00:53:35,190 --> 00:53:39,910
symptoms of like extreme belief rigidity or maybe some forms of autism or psychopathy that

877
00:53:39,910 --> 00:53:41,670
are that are driving the effect a bit.

878
00:53:42,070 --> 00:53:44,400
More also rewards and status.

879
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:44,880
Yeah.

880
00:53:45,520 --> 00:53:48,640
But I must also admit that I'm not enough of a specialist of extremism.

881
00:53:48,800 --> 00:53:53,600
So details of those life trajectories, and I don't know enough about them.

882
00:53:53,920 --> 00:53:58,640
Yeah, no, that definitely is you're starting to convince me out of this position with those

883
00:53:58,640 --> 00:53:59,120
examples.

884
00:53:59,280 --> 00:54:03,440
I do think the evidence is a is a bit stronger for mass shootings.

885
00:54:03,600 --> 00:54:07,210
I think if you look at the profiles of people who commit mass shootings, it's pretty clear

886
00:54:07,210 --> 00:54:13,050
that these are humiliated people who who are low status and seek to and their

887
00:54:13,050 --> 00:54:14,650
status prospects are very low.

888
00:54:14,810 --> 00:54:20,330
And and through doing this act of mass violence, they can at least attain some status.

889
00:54:20,490 --> 00:54:25,690
And these are usually highly narcissistic status motivated people who who are hu who feel

890
00:54:25,690 --> 00:54:27,530
humiliated and are are driven to commit these acts.

891
00:54:27,610 --> 00:54:32,480
So I think the story um is a little better with the case of of mass shooting.

892
00:54:32,640 --> 00:54:38,640
But yeah, with with um political violence and suicide bombings, I think yeah, it's uh it's

893
00:54:38,800 --> 00:54:40,720
the case might not be as strong.

894
00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:45,520
Um but I but I would need to confess with the mass shooters, what do you think is going on

895
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:46,400
computationally?

896
00:54:46,640 --> 00:54:51,680
So th there's a cognitive process of status acquisition that motivates the extremism.

897
00:54:51,920 --> 00:54:57,870
The function of that is to uh confer status to the person which when he or she

898
00:54:57,870 --> 00:55:01,790
comes back to basically camp or the tribe uh and survives the action.

899
00:55:01,950 --> 00:55:06,590
But in the case of those mass shooters, there's a kind of like a miscalculation of the

900
00:55:06,590 --> 00:55:10,830
risks and they end up being uh killed by the crops or they commit suicide, and so the

901
00:55:10,830 --> 00:55:15,150
function of status acquisition cannot be fulfilled, or it's just fulfilled at the at the

902
00:55:15,150 --> 00:55:18,350
psychological level in the moment of satisfaction when they kill everybody on the on the

903
00:55:18,350 --> 00:55:18,670
campus.

904
00:55:18,750 --> 00:55:20,110
So, like what do you think is going on?

905
00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:22,080
Yeah, I'm not sure.

906
00:55:22,240 --> 00:55:23,440
Um exactly.

907
00:55:23,600 --> 00:55:29,440
Yeah, i it might be that, you know, our status psychology is kind of cluey

908
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:35,040
and doesn't really calculate, you know, what's gonna happen, like what whether status

909
00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:36,720
really matters after you're dead or not.

910
00:55:37,040 --> 00:55:39,040
Um that that could be part of it.

911
00:55:39,120 --> 00:55:43,040
Like we just we're just we wanna get status and and and like whether we're alive when that

912
00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:46,400
status comes to us is sort of not as relevant as it should be.

913
00:55:46,560 --> 00:55:50,950
Um There's no mental representation of the continuation of life and whether or not you will

914
00:55:50,950 --> 00:55:51,990
reach that status goal.

915
00:55:52,070 --> 00:55:52,310
Yeah.

916
00:55:52,630 --> 00:55:52,950
Right.

917
00:55:53,030 --> 00:55:54,390
That that could be it.

918
00:55:54,630 --> 00:55:55,750
Um I'm not sure.

919
00:55:55,830 --> 00:56:00,550
But then again, like, you know, status effects after your death still matter for fitness.

920
00:56:00,870 --> 00:56:06,150
Um, in terms of, you know, if you have a reputation, if you die, say, serving your country

921
00:56:06,230 --> 00:56:08,230
and have a really good reputation for being a hero.

922
00:56:08,630 --> 00:56:08,790
Yeah.

923
00:56:11,190 --> 00:56:11,430
Yeah.

924
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:16,680
It's that that reputation is, you know, uh is going to, you know, confer benefits on your

925
00:56:16,680 --> 00:56:21,800
family members, um, versus if you die as a hated villain, that's going to impose costs on

926
00:56:22,040 --> 00:56:23,240
your family members.

927
00:56:23,480 --> 00:56:27,720
Um and there's also reciprocal altruism dynamics where, you know, if you do a good deed for

928
00:56:27,720 --> 00:56:30,840
me, like, and I can't reciprocate the good deed to you because you're gone, I might

929
00:56:30,840 --> 00:56:34,440
reciprocate it to your daughter or to your family member, you know, as a surrogate for you.

930
00:56:34,520 --> 00:56:36,600
Uh and so those kinds of effects exist as well.

931
00:56:36,760 --> 00:56:42,390
I mean, there's a whole understudied area of like the psychology of legacy and posthumous

932
00:56:42,390 --> 00:56:46,310
fitness effects that I think is you know really worth exploring that pretty much no one is

933
00:56:46,310 --> 00:56:46,870
looking at.

934
00:56:47,190 --> 00:56:51,830
But uh you'll be you'll be uh you'll be uh delighted to learn that my first publication

935
00:56:51,830 --> 00:56:57,350
ever with the um with the with a commentary article in BBS in 2018

936
00:56:57,830 --> 00:56:59,190
uh on the White House, R.

937
00:56:59,510 --> 00:57:04,000
Whitehouse, you know, the Oxford anthropologist, he was basically proposing a um a theory

938
00:57:04,000 --> 00:57:09,440
of self-sacrifice in you know extreme military or terrorist behavior and he theory his

939
00:57:09,440 --> 00:57:15,280
theory relied only on inclusive fitness and the idea that the ideology hacks your your your

940
00:57:15,280 --> 00:57:19,120
family-based sense of altruism and I was like what about reciprocity models?

941
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:20,960
What about partner choice models?

942
00:57:21,200 --> 00:57:25,600
Maybe people who sacrifice themselves in combat, who jump on a grenade or whatever.

943
00:57:25,760 --> 00:57:29,790
There's a there's a mechanism in their head that misfires, that believes that the person

944
00:57:29,790 --> 00:57:32,990
will survive and will accrue status while coming back to camp.

945
00:57:33,310 --> 00:57:34,590
But something happens.

946
00:57:34,670 --> 00:57:39,070
Uh but the the function of it is to create like a cycle of resprovity for status, and

947
00:57:39,070 --> 00:57:44,910
sometimes it misfires and in in kind of like um yeah, and and the the person ends up dying

948
00:57:44,910 --> 00:57:48,270
for for for reason that is not really adaptive and that is not the function of the trait.

949
00:57:48,620 --> 00:57:49,100
Interesting.

950
00:57:49,260 --> 00:57:49,660
I don't know.

951
00:57:49,740 --> 00:57:50,300
Yeah, I agree.

952
00:57:50,380 --> 00:57:53,740
There's not a lot of debate on that in evolutionary social science.

953
00:57:53,900 --> 00:57:57,420
Uh for one good reason, which is that it's very speculative.

954
00:57:57,580 --> 00:57:57,820
Yeah.

955
00:57:58,140 --> 00:58:02,380
People could come up with mathematical models, etc., but good luck running experiments on

956
00:58:02,380 --> 00:58:07,420
self-sacrifice and also good luck just approaching observationally people who are extreme

957
00:58:07,420 --> 00:58:08,780
enough to commit that kind of act.

958
00:58:09,020 --> 00:58:14,220
Scarletran did that with the jihadists of uh Syria and Iraq for a few years, yeah, but very

959
00:58:14,220 --> 00:58:16,540
few people do that with an evolutionary mindset.

960
00:58:16,830 --> 00:58:17,070
Yeah.

961
00:58:17,310 --> 00:58:22,830
I mean, it it it is a little more amenable in terms of studying the psychology of um

962
00:58:23,150 --> 00:58:24,670
the signal recipients.

963
00:58:24,830 --> 00:58:28,910
You know, if if extreme self sacrifices are signals, you could understand the psychology of

964
00:58:28,910 --> 00:58:32,910
the signal receivers and what they infer about someone who sacrificed their life for

965
00:58:32,910 --> 00:58:38,270
someone and their motivation to to benefit that that person or uh give them reputational

966
00:58:38,270 --> 00:58:42,990
rewards or or you know confer benefits to the person's associates or family members.

967
00:58:43,150 --> 00:58:47,400
Like you could study that aspect of it um pretty pretty fruitfully.

968
00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:50,200
Um and I and so far as I'm aware there's there's nothing on that.

969
00:58:50,520 --> 00:58:51,400
That that's a good point.

970
00:58:51,640 --> 00:58:55,560
There's uh I'm considering to do a research trip to Israel in November.

971
00:58:55,720 --> 00:58:56,040
Yeah.

972
00:58:56,120 --> 00:59:00,200
Uh to get acquainted with the literature on extremism and you know depolarization

973
00:59:00,200 --> 00:59:02,520
techniques, etc, that the Israelis have deployed.

974
00:59:02,680 --> 00:59:06,680
And yeah, you're right, like the Palestinian public opinion would be ideal to study

975
00:59:07,030 --> 00:59:12,550
perceptions of martyrdom and and extremism among the population on the recipient side.

976
00:59:12,950 --> 00:59:16,310
There are polls and there are experiments to be run on Palestinians there.

977
00:59:16,790 --> 00:59:19,350
But here again, it's not easy to access those populations.

978
00:59:19,430 --> 00:59:23,510
It's not easy to run around like a like a Quartsquis questionnaire in Arabic and to get uh

979
00:59:23,510 --> 00:59:25,190
five hundred Palestinians to answer it.

980
00:59:25,350 --> 00:59:26,630
It's possible, but it's difficult.

981
00:59:26,710 --> 00:59:28,150
There's an entry barrier.

982
00:59:28,460 --> 00:59:28,860
Yeah.

983
00:59:29,020 --> 00:59:30,060
Yeah, for sure.

984
00:59:30,300 --> 00:59:34,380
But um yeah, it would be it'd be super interesting to to look at this stuff.

985
00:59:34,620 --> 00:59:40,300
Um well, uh evolutionary psychologists who are listening, get on get on this topic of

986
00:59:40,380 --> 00:59:46,300
um self-sacrifice, uh legacy, posthumous fitness effects, um totally

987
00:59:46,300 --> 00:59:47,980
understudied and extremely important.

988
00:59:48,490 --> 00:59:48,730
Yeah.

989
00:59:49,050 --> 00:59:53,130
I mean, the difficulty in social science is that uh of course you have way more statistical

990
00:59:53,130 --> 00:59:57,690
power when you can ask your questions to large nationally representative samples of people.

991
00:59:57,930 --> 00:59:58,090
Yeah.

992
00:59:58,250 --> 01:00:02,970
But then almost by definition, people will those people will not be very radical, not be

993
01:00:02,970 --> 01:00:04,090
extremists.

994
01:00:04,410 --> 01:00:09,930
And uh and if you want to maximize chances of really accessing the perspectives and the and

995
01:00:09,930 --> 01:00:12,490
the and the thinking processes of extremists, it's possible.

996
01:00:12,570 --> 01:00:16,920
But then you have to learn like a tribal language or like a non-Western language, like

997
01:00:16,920 --> 01:00:20,760
Arabic or whatever, to push those people to begin with, and samples will be small.

998
01:00:21,240 --> 01:00:25,000
It's harder to draw inferences that are evolutionally meaningful for the species.

999
01:00:25,480 --> 01:00:26,280
Yeah, for sure.

1000
01:00:26,520 --> 01:00:31,800
I mean, it it reminds me a bit of Ed Hagen's work on suicidality.

1001
01:00:31,960 --> 01:00:37,640
Uh we we had him on the podcast, and the argument he makes is that in some extreme

1002
01:00:37,640 --> 01:00:43,510
cases of power, social power imbalance or social conflict, um it can

1003
01:00:43,670 --> 01:00:49,590
be rational to um send a really extreme uh uh uh injurious signal or

1004
01:00:49,590 --> 01:00:55,510
risky signal where you would risk death or or or severe injury to um to get oneself

1005
01:00:55,510 --> 01:00:59,830
out of a really bad situation of of social conflict and and powerlessness.

1006
01:00:59,990 --> 01:01:03,350
Um and that because competition did he study, do you remember?

1007
01:01:03,750 --> 01:01:07,670
Um I forget the the population in particular that he looked at with this.

1008
01:01:08,200 --> 01:01:13,560
But he does find empirically that people who attempt suicide do receive all sorts of

1009
01:01:13,560 --> 01:01:16,760
benefits following the suicide attempt.

1010
01:01:16,920 --> 01:01:21,640
You know, like women in abusive relationships, you know, they'll they'll they'll get abused

1011
01:01:21,640 --> 01:01:23,480
less following the suicide attempt.

1012
01:01:23,720 --> 01:01:27,080
You know, you know, a person who call for help, yeah, a person who doesn't want to, you

1013
01:01:27,080 --> 01:01:30,200
know, marry someone in an arranged marriage, they might attempt suicide, and then the

1014
01:01:30,200 --> 01:01:31,320
marriage gets called off.

1015
01:01:31,480 --> 01:01:34,070
Like those So he studied those types of effects.

1016
01:01:34,150 --> 01:01:39,270
So there's at least some evidence that these extreme um signals can have benefits.

1017
01:01:39,350 --> 01:01:43,430
And if you look at the actual probabilities that these suicide attempts will be completed,

1018
01:01:43,510 --> 01:01:47,030
um, it could be that the benefits outweigh the expected costs.

1019
01:01:48,070 --> 01:01:53,270
Um and so there might be something uh analogous to um extreme

1020
01:01:53,270 --> 01:01:56,710
self-sacrifice, to you know suicidal uh political violence.

1021
01:01:56,870 --> 01:01:58,950
I'm not sure you know what what the calculations are.

1022
01:01:59,110 --> 01:02:03,860
I'm not actually not sure like you know what the actual mortality rates are for someone who

1023
01:02:03,940 --> 01:02:07,860
you know attempts to kill themselves in an act of political violence, like how many are

1024
01:02:07,860 --> 01:02:09,220
there a lot of failed attempts at that?

1025
01:02:09,300 --> 01:02:10,500
I I have no idea.

1026
01:02:10,660 --> 01:02:14,260
Um how how often are they are they are they truly completed?

1027
01:02:14,420 --> 01:02:17,540
You know, how I wouldn't be able to I wouldn't be able to tell.

1028
01:02:17,620 --> 01:02:22,180
I remember reading in Pascal Boyer's Mind May Societies, uh, you know, the the theory of

1029
01:02:22,180 --> 01:02:26,260
the veil of ignorance about mortality from uh John Tuby and Lida Cosmidis.

1030
01:02:26,590 --> 01:02:31,070
Like basically, if you want it to be worth it to go into battle, you want to make sure that

1031
01:02:31,070 --> 01:02:33,710
you don't know who's going to get killed if anyone gets killed.

1032
01:02:34,270 --> 01:02:38,590
First of all, otherwise, you know, it's not worth the risk for any individual fighter.

1033
01:02:38,830 --> 01:02:44,750
And uh and often there's an asymmetry in so basically raids in um hunter-gatherer

1034
01:02:44,750 --> 01:02:47,550
societies are very murderous for the group that gets attacked.

1035
01:02:47,710 --> 01:02:52,350
Uh, it's often the case that you know 80% of the men will be murdered on the spot or

1036
01:02:52,350 --> 01:02:52,910
whatever.

1037
01:02:53,150 --> 01:02:57,960
But if you if you conduct your your raid well enough, quickly enough, early enough at dawn

1038
01:02:58,040 --> 01:03:01,720
and whatnot, the risk of being killed yourself as the assailient, as the attackant,

1039
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:02,920
actually quite low.

1040
01:03:03,080 --> 01:03:08,120
And so that's probably why the whole collective behavior evolved in the first place.

1041
01:03:08,360 --> 01:03:12,120
So I don't know, wo I wouldn't be able to come up with figures, but it's quite likely that

1042
01:03:12,120 --> 01:03:14,840
on the attacker side, the risk of dying are low.

1043
01:03:15,090 --> 01:03:18,210
and we worry more about the the those watching it then.

1044
01:03:18,610 --> 01:03:22,130
And and it could be like a kind of mismatch, like we just don't know how to think about say

1045
01:03:22,290 --> 01:03:27,250
a bomb strapped to your chest as like a you know like an intuitive cause of death.

1046
01:03:27,330 --> 01:03:31,170
Like it could be that like physically killing yourself with a sword or or with a sharp

1047
01:03:31,170 --> 01:03:33,570
object, like we can understand that.

1048
01:03:33,730 --> 01:03:34,610
Um I don't know.

1049
01:03:34,690 --> 01:03:40,220
I mean 'cause if you look at cases of um seppuku in in Japan, um, like

1050
01:03:40,300 --> 01:03:45,900
those fit my model actually pretty good because those are extremely um uh uh interdependent

1051
01:03:45,900 --> 01:03:48,220
societies where kinship is hugely important.

1052
01:03:48,300 --> 01:03:53,020
And if you suffer shame and dishonor your family, that could have devastating fitness uh

1053
01:03:53,020 --> 01:03:53,580
impacts.

1054
01:03:53,740 --> 01:03:58,700
And if the only way to offset those devastating fitness impacts is by killing yourself, it

1055
01:03:58,700 --> 01:04:01,660
could be uh fitness-wise irrational calculation.

1056
01:04:01,820 --> 01:04:04,550
Um and so it could be in cases like that.

1057
01:04:04,790 --> 01:04:09,750
Um maybe this model applies, but with you know, modern technologies like bombs that you

1058
01:04:09,750 --> 01:04:12,310
know we don't really understand how they work.

1059
01:04:12,870 --> 01:04:17,190
It might not activate as powerful uh kind of like survival instincts and in in which case

1060
01:04:17,270 --> 01:04:20,630
people might be willing to walk the extra mile and and actually kill themselves.

1061
01:04:20,710 --> 01:04:20,950
Yeah.

1062
01:04:21,110 --> 01:04:21,350
Maybe.

1063
01:04:21,590 --> 01:04:21,990
Yeah.

1064
01:04:22,230 --> 01:04:22,710
Yeah.

1065
01:04:22,870 --> 01:04:23,820
Uh it's interesting.

1066
01:04:24,940 --> 01:04:25,420
I don't know.

1067
01:04:25,500 --> 01:04:29,900
I I don't know enough about extremism anymore to really be talking about it publicly.

1068
01:04:30,060 --> 01:04:32,060
Uh it actually was fun.

1069
01:04:33,100 --> 01:04:34,860
Yeah, for sure.

1070
01:04:35,100 --> 01:04:40,860
Um I I wanna get to one last uh topic of yours that I find really interesting because

1071
01:04:40,860 --> 01:04:42,620
it's it's paradoxical.

1072
01:04:43,180 --> 01:04:46,300
Um, and that is that love paradoxes, don't you?

1073
01:04:46,730 --> 01:04:47,050
I do.

1074
01:04:47,130 --> 01:04:48,490
I do love social paradoxes.

1075
01:04:48,570 --> 01:04:54,090
And I I cited your this paper of yours in my in my social paradoxes paper as an example of

1076
01:04:54,090 --> 01:04:55,210
a social paradox.

1077
01:04:55,370 --> 01:05:00,970
Um so the idea that um if I'm really committed to truth with a

1078
01:05:00,970 --> 01:05:06,170
capital T and facts and I want to be rational and logical, and I really moralize that.

1079
01:05:06,250 --> 01:05:10,570
And anybody who's not committed to the truth and being rational, screw them.

1080
01:05:10,730 --> 01:05:12,490
I hate them, let's punish them.

1081
01:05:12,730 --> 01:05:18,220
Um the more I have that moralization of rationality and truth with a capital T,

1082
01:05:18,940 --> 01:05:23,900
of being, you know, of seeing reality clearly, the more I hold that attitude.

1083
01:05:23,980 --> 01:05:28,940
In fact, the less rational I am and the less connected to truth I actually am.

1084
01:05:29,100 --> 01:05:33,260
Or at least that's that's roughly what you found in in your paper: the people who moralize

1085
01:05:33,740 --> 01:05:39,260
rationality, who have these beliefs that I'm the one who cares about truth and facts and

1086
01:05:39,260 --> 01:05:44,610
logic, that those types of people are in fact the the most likely to spread um

1087
01:05:44,770 --> 01:05:50,770
inaccurate, misleading, um distorting news to sort of curry favor with

1088
01:05:50,850 --> 01:05:51,650
with their coalition.

1089
01:05:51,730 --> 01:05:54,770
Is that is that roughly correct or am I um uh oversimplifying?

1090
01:05:55,250 --> 01:05:55,410
Correct.

1091
01:05:55,570 --> 01:05:56,290
It's roughly correct.

1092
01:05:56,530 --> 01:05:58,210
First of all, thanks for your interest in that paper.

1093
01:05:58,370 --> 01:06:02,290
It came out in political communication and I published it with the Michael Beng Pearson.

1094
01:06:02,530 --> 01:06:06,800
I think the story is slightly less sexy and attention grabbing than that.

1095
01:06:06,880 --> 01:06:08,400
But but but thanks for interest.

1096
01:06:08,880 --> 01:06:14,480
What we show is that people who score higher in moralization of rationality, so people who

1097
01:06:14,480 --> 01:06:20,480
elevate basing your beliefs on logic and the evidence more, that's

1098
01:06:20,480 --> 01:06:25,120
possibly associated with more willingness to share hostile news that target the art group,

1099
01:06:25,680 --> 01:06:27,710
and including hostile fake news.

1100
01:06:27,790 --> 01:06:30,750
But we have no reason to be that people know that the fake news were false.

1101
01:06:30,830 --> 01:06:34,670
It's at least hostile are cases that's so it's it's a it's got it.

1102
01:06:34,750 --> 01:06:37,550
So it's at least plausibly connected to motivated reasoning.

1103
01:06:37,870 --> 01:06:38,430
Yes, yes.

1104
01:06:38,670 --> 01:06:43,470
At least it's at least it predicts something like political hostility on the public sphere

1105
01:06:43,630 --> 01:06:46,590
and the assumption that it's okay to insert political enemies.

1106
01:06:46,670 --> 01:06:46,910
Okay.

1107
01:06:46,990 --> 01:06:47,390
Yeah.

1108
01:06:47,620 --> 01:06:52,020
And then what we show is that that relationship between moralizing rationality and sharing

1109
01:06:52,020 --> 01:06:58,020
hostile news is largely explained, like there it has a lot of overlapping variance with the

1110
01:06:58,020 --> 01:07:02,260
correlation between being a status seeker and sharing hostile news.

1111
01:07:02,660 --> 01:07:06,100
When you're a status seeker, when you're higher in moral grandstanding, and when you're

1112
01:07:06,260 --> 01:07:10,340
high when you're higher in status-driven risk taking, you're also more likely to be high in

1113
01:07:10,340 --> 01:07:11,940
moralization or rationality.

1114
01:07:12,270 --> 01:07:16,670
And when you're higher on those uh status seeking metrics, you're also more likely to share

1115
01:07:16,670 --> 01:07:17,710
hostile news.

1116
01:07:17,790 --> 01:07:21,470
And when you when you control for the association between moralization of rationality and

1117
01:07:21,470 --> 01:07:26,830
hostile news sharing with the status seeking metrics, the coefficient of moralization of

1118
01:07:26,910 --> 01:07:30,670
ration moralization of rationality goes down by about two-thirds.

1119
01:07:30,750 --> 01:07:30,990
Okay.

1120
01:07:31,310 --> 01:07:31,550
Interesting.

1121
01:07:31,790 --> 01:07:37,780
So it sounds like it seems like those people who claim to be rationality moralizers

1122
01:07:37,780 --> 01:07:42,340
are in fact status seekers or people who like to engage in moral understanding.

1123
01:07:42,500 --> 01:07:48,100
And they will try to rationalize or sublimate or cloak or hide those status seeking

1124
01:07:48,100 --> 01:07:51,540
motives under the guise of being motivated by the truth.

1125
01:07:52,100 --> 01:07:55,060
Maybe there's something like a self-deception process going on.

1126
01:07:55,220 --> 01:07:59,620
They tell themselves that the true motive for their hostility is the pursuit of the truth

1127
01:07:59,700 --> 01:08:03,380
and being objective and being in touch with reality, etc.

1128
01:08:03,770 --> 01:08:07,850
But it seems like actually the the the core motivation that drives them is more like

1129
01:08:07,850 --> 01:08:11,610
partisan hostility and still seeking and the pressure to dominate opponents.

1130
01:08:11,770 --> 01:08:11,930
Yes.

1131
01:08:12,170 --> 01:08:14,010
Is it a bit more is it a bit more clear?

1132
01:08:14,250 --> 01:08:15,610
Yes, so thank you.

1133
01:08:15,930 --> 01:08:20,330
So yeah, I think it's a form of like it's it's it's a form among others of what you may

1134
01:08:20,330 --> 01:08:24,010
call uh grandstanding, you know, what what group has called grandstanding, moral

1135
01:08:24,090 --> 01:08:24,890
grandstanding.

1136
01:08:25,050 --> 01:08:30,360
If you want to participate in the public debate in modern societies, uh if you want to

1137
01:08:30,360 --> 01:08:35,000
enter the political arena and be heard, and if you don't want to immediately activate

1138
01:08:35,400 --> 01:08:39,560
people's subs um suspicion and if you want to have a some kind of like influence and maybe

1139
01:08:39,560 --> 01:08:44,040
mobilize people for your cause and against your enemies, etc., you have to claim like

1140
01:08:44,040 --> 01:08:46,200
you're on the side of the truth and rationality.

1141
01:08:46,280 --> 01:08:50,440
You have to claim like you have data and rigorous thinking on your side.

1142
01:08:50,680 --> 01:08:52,120
Otherwise people won't pay attention.

1143
01:08:52,280 --> 01:08:56,490
And so I think there's a like cultural selection pressure whereby in modern environments

1144
01:08:56,570 --> 01:09:00,730
that are so permeated by the culture of science, rationality, and the rhetoric of

1145
01:09:00,730 --> 01:09:05,210
objectivity, people feel obligated to claim that they have objectivity and the truth on

1146
01:09:05,210 --> 01:09:08,890
their side if you want they want to play their status games and their partisan games.

1147
01:09:08,970 --> 01:09:14,730
And I think that's what what's happening in our US samples of basically prolific

1148
01:09:14,730 --> 01:09:18,490
workers and one you go sample that it's naturally representative.

1149
01:09:18,810 --> 01:09:22,600
We manage to replicate those effects that I've described two times in three independent

1150
01:09:22,600 --> 01:09:23,000
samples.

1151
01:09:23,160 --> 01:09:24,600
So the effect is really there.

1152
01:09:25,000 --> 01:09:25,240
Cool.

1153
01:09:25,400 --> 01:09:27,960
Yeah, no, it's it's a really fascinating effect.

1154
01:09:28,120 --> 01:09:33,720
Um I uh the way I understand it or the way I think about it is is in terms of you know my

1155
01:09:33,720 --> 01:09:39,640
recent paper in American Psychologist, um The Evolution of Social Paradoxes, um, where uh

1156
01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:45,550
status seeking is uh rarely overt, um, because if I come out as an

1157
01:09:45,550 --> 01:09:50,830
overt status seeker or overtly seeking dominance and superiority, well, my status is

1158
01:09:50,830 --> 01:09:53,870
actually going to fall rather than uh uh increase.

1159
01:09:54,110 --> 01:09:54,510
Right.

1160
01:09:54,750 --> 01:09:59,950
Um, and so if I'm a uh a a status seeker in a political context and really my goals are

1161
01:09:59,950 --> 01:10:04,910
just looking morally superior, about dominating my political enemies, about gaining status

1162
01:10:04,910 --> 01:10:06,990
in my coalition, if those are my true goals.

1163
01:10:07,150 --> 01:10:10,670
I cannot come out and say that those are my true goals, because those then those goals will

1164
01:10:10,670 --> 01:10:11,740
be thwarted, right?

1165
01:10:12,060 --> 01:10:17,420
And so I need some kind of cover story, um, some kind of explanation for my behavior that

1166
01:10:17,420 --> 01:10:20,940
has nothing to do with status seeking and and dominance.

1167
01:10:21,180 --> 01:10:27,020
And what I think is going on is that the sacred value or the moral, the moralized value of

1168
01:10:27,020 --> 01:10:29,580
truth or rationality is the cover story.

1169
01:10:29,820 --> 01:10:34,990
That the reason I'm doing this uh uh uh is not because I'm seeking status or trying to

1170
01:10:34,990 --> 01:10:38,590
dominate people, but because I care about the truth with a capital T.

1171
01:10:38,830 --> 01:10:43,870
Or I or I care about, you know, being in touch with reality and showing people and and and

1172
01:10:43,950 --> 01:10:46,830
uh punishing liars and people who try to hide the truth.

1173
01:10:46,990 --> 01:10:52,830
And that is my sort of sacred cover story for the underlying uh uh status and dominance

1174
01:10:52,830 --> 01:10:53,230
motive.

1175
01:10:53,390 --> 01:10:56,030
And I think these cover stories are are are everywhere in our culture.

1176
01:10:56,270 --> 01:10:56,600
I agree.

1177
01:10:59,560 --> 01:10:59,880
Yeah.

1178
01:11:00,360 --> 01:11:04,440
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm pretty convinced that sacred values are also a form of moral

1179
01:11:04,440 --> 01:11:05,400
grandstanding.

1180
01:11:05,960 --> 01:11:10,040
You know, there's the there's the uh empirical work of Philip Tetlock on the fact that

1181
01:11:10,040 --> 01:11:13,160
people never really for real saquarize anything.

1182
01:11:13,320 --> 01:11:17,800
You know, they they'll find some um some some trade-off taboo and they will claim that

1183
01:11:17,800 --> 01:11:20,040
their secret values are inviolable, etc.

1184
01:11:20,870 --> 01:11:25,110
But when people can look the other way, or when they can reframe a trade-off with a secret

1185
01:11:25,190 --> 01:11:30,230
value as being a trade-off between two secret values, the trade-offs become acceptable.

1186
01:11:30,310 --> 01:11:33,670
So it suggests that people don't really absolutice any value for real.

1187
01:11:33,990 --> 01:11:37,910
They just claim they do to save the face for revolutional benefits.

1188
01:11:38,070 --> 01:11:43,350
But in fact, at the at the more implicit level, they agree that you know their territory or

1189
01:11:43,350 --> 01:11:48,920
their I don't know, nuclear program or their organ

1190
01:11:49,240 --> 01:11:53,320
donations or whatever that they claim to be sacralizing are in fact not that sacred.

1191
01:11:53,640 --> 01:11:53,960
Hmm.

1192
01:11:54,040 --> 01:11:55,080
Could you actually elaborate?

1193
01:11:55,240 --> 01:11:58,040
I I'm I don't know if I'm familiar with this um this paper.

1194
01:11:58,120 --> 01:11:58,760
So uh

1195
01:12:05,640 --> 01:12:09,560
so you're talking about when when the when the sacred value is traded off against something

1196
01:12:09,720 --> 01:12:15,160
that um there are cases where they are willing to trade it off or is it it's I don't

1197
01:12:15,160 --> 01:12:19,910
remember quite well but I think it's it's it it's in his uh trains in cognitive science

1198
01:12:19,910 --> 01:12:25,830
paper from 2003 and there's probably a a longer maybe gpsp paper or something like that

1199
01:12:25,910 --> 01:12:31,350
that it's called um taboo trade-offs and heritageal counterfactuals um in which he

1200
01:12:31,350 --> 01:12:37,110
basically says that um you know political entrepreneurs and and and citizens etc by default

1201
01:12:37,110 --> 01:12:43,000
claim to have uh inviolable sacred values, uh, but they will consent to

1202
01:12:43,000 --> 01:12:47,640
trading those sacred values against other values if the other values are presented as

1203
01:12:47,640 --> 01:12:48,840
equally sacred.

1204
01:12:49,480 --> 01:12:54,280
Like if you don't sound like you're encroaching on a core moral value, if you're only

1205
01:12:54,280 --> 01:12:59,080
sounding like you're trying to arbitrate between two super core core moral values, it

1206
01:12:59,080 --> 01:13:02,920
becomes a bit acceptable to desecralize the putative secret value.

1207
01:13:03,000 --> 01:13:03,720
You know what I mean?

1208
01:13:03,960 --> 01:13:07,880
So it's a job that implicitly people don't really believe the secret values to be fully

1209
01:13:07,880 --> 01:13:13,330
sacred, It's more like a posturing, a sincere posturing, probably, a reflective belief that

1210
01:13:13,330 --> 01:13:14,530
they hold sincerely, etc.

1211
01:13:14,690 --> 01:13:14,930
etc.

1212
01:13:15,330 --> 01:13:19,890
But it doesn't have the behavioral traction, the motivational traction that it should have

1213
01:13:19,890 --> 01:13:25,090
if they fully endorse the belief intuitively, uh fully, literally.

1214
01:13:25,410 --> 01:13:26,450
Is it making sense?

1215
01:13:26,850 --> 01:13:32,740
Yeah, so let's say I think that you know freedom is sacred and security

1216
01:13:32,740 --> 01:13:33,220
is sacred.

1217
01:13:33,300 --> 01:13:36,260
And there are obviously cases where those two values trade off.

1218
01:13:36,340 --> 01:13:41,300
That in order to increase my security and safety from, say, terrorism or domestic or

1219
01:13:41,300 --> 01:13:46,020
international threats or whatever, we need to ramp up surveillance and really get uh and

1220
01:13:46,020 --> 01:13:50,660
really infringe upon my privacy and my freedom to, you know, say and do what I please,

1221
01:13:50,740 --> 01:13:50,820
right?

1222
01:13:50,980 --> 01:13:55,140
We need to, you know, punish people who are saying damaging things out of concern for

1223
01:13:55,140 --> 01:13:55,860
safety.

1224
01:13:56,100 --> 01:14:01,010
So if these two values conflict, say freedom and and safety, um

1225
01:14:01,810 --> 01:14:07,650
then uh if you offer me money to say give up my

1226
01:14:07,970 --> 01:14:11,490
personal freedom, um I will say no, freedom is sacred to me.

1227
01:14:11,570 --> 01:14:11,650
Right.

1228
01:14:11,890 --> 01:14:12,850
That's gonna back fire.

1229
01:14:13,410 --> 01:14:19,170
Likewise if you give me money to to give up on the security of of of our nation, I'm gonna

1230
01:14:19,170 --> 01:14:21,410
say no, that's no that's insulting.

1231
01:14:21,490 --> 01:14:22,210
How dare you, right?

1232
01:14:22,290 --> 01:14:24,500
I'll I won't accept that money.

1233
01:14:24,820 --> 01:14:30,740
But if you say um, well, in order to um preserve our security, we need to

1234
01:14:30,740 --> 01:14:33,940
give up some freedom, or in order to you know preserve our freedom, we need to give up some

1235
01:14:33,940 --> 01:14:36,260
security, then I'm much more likely to say yes.

1236
01:14:36,500 --> 01:14:37,540
To say yes, we should do that.

1237
01:14:37,620 --> 01:14:38,660
Is that basically the idea?

1238
01:14:38,980 --> 01:14:40,180
That's exactly the idea, yeah.

1239
01:14:40,340 --> 01:14:41,700
Okay, that's exactly the idea.

1240
01:14:41,860 --> 01:14:47,460
And I'm remembering um the preprint by Manjir Singh and Mochi Hoffman,

1241
01:14:47,860 --> 01:14:53,670
unpublished, called Commitment and Impersonation a Repetitional Based Theory of

1242
01:14:53,670 --> 01:14:58,390
Principal Behavior that look up that you might want to look up if you don't know it already

1243
01:14:58,470 --> 01:15:02,950
because they came to have like offered a pretty exhaustive treatment of sacred values.

1244
01:15:03,510 --> 01:15:09,430
And I remember them saying saying saying something about um when

1245
01:15:09,590 --> 01:15:14,790
political actors should be most motivated to herald their values as being really sacred.

1246
01:15:15,580 --> 01:15:17,580
And I don't quite remember what they say.

1247
01:15:17,740 --> 01:15:22,220
But basically, if the if the goal is to maintain a good reputation, there are specific

1248
01:15:22,220 --> 01:15:25,980
situations where you should really broadcast the fact that you really consider the secret

1249
01:15:26,060 --> 01:15:27,260
value as being sacred.

1250
01:15:27,500 --> 01:15:32,300
And you should be seeming like you will never accept to treat it against something secular

1251
01:15:32,380 --> 01:15:36,710
like money or uh economic benefit or whatever.

1252
01:15:36,870 --> 01:15:39,670
Uh but so yeah, if you're interested in secret values, look up that paper.

1253
01:15:39,830 --> 01:15:40,550
Did you know it?

1254
01:15:40,790 --> 01:15:41,910
Yeah, I I I do know it.

1255
01:15:41,990 --> 01:15:43,430
Yeah, I I am familiar with it for sure.

1256
01:15:43,510 --> 01:15:43,750
Yeah.

1257
01:15:43,830 --> 01:15:44,550
Yeah, no, I like that paper.

1258
01:15:44,870 --> 01:15:49,990
I propose my beer to uh help him out uh improve and resubmit the paper and I'm not finding

1259
01:15:49,990 --> 01:15:50,790
the time for it.

1260
01:15:51,030 --> 01:15:56,710
Uh so it's like you know sleeping as a as a Google Docs in our computers and um and the

1261
01:15:56,710 --> 01:15:58,390
thing has been around since 2021.

1262
01:15:58,470 --> 01:15:59,350
I think it's a great paper.

1263
01:15:59,430 --> 01:16:04,320
It was rejected from uh psychological reviews and BBS, and since then I don't think ManVir

1264
01:16:04,400 --> 01:16:05,760
has tried anything else with it.

1265
01:16:06,000 --> 01:16:09,600
And it's sad because I think it's a it's a good analysis, it's a good theory.

1266
01:16:09,840 --> 01:16:10,560
I I like it too.

1267
01:16:10,640 --> 01:16:12,880
Yeah, I'll uh send them my way.

1268
01:16:12,960 --> 01:16:14,800
Maybe I'll have time to help him out.

1269
01:16:15,200 --> 01:16:18,080
Um, if you're listening, Manveer, um feel free to reach out.

1270
01:16:18,240 --> 01:16:20,320
No, that I I love the paper too.

1271
01:16:20,480 --> 01:16:26,290
Um, my only quibble with it, I mean, so their model, from what I remember, is that a lot

1272
01:16:26,290 --> 01:16:31,730
of sacred or principled behavior is um designed to imitate

1273
01:16:32,050 --> 01:16:36,930
extreme individuals who for whatever reason um act in that way.

1274
01:16:37,090 --> 01:16:40,610
Maybe they're autistic, maybe they're have some kind of glitch in their brain and they just

1275
01:16:41,010 --> 01:16:42,850
And they say nothing about those extreme individuals.

1276
01:16:42,930 --> 01:16:46,770
They just say Exactly Let's imagine they exist and people are imitating them, but then do

1277
01:16:46,770 --> 01:16:47,570
they exist possibly?

1278
01:16:47,650 --> 01:16:48,050
We don't know.

1279
01:16:48,120 --> 01:16:49,560
And you're making no claim about this.

1280
01:16:49,640 --> 01:16:50,360
We would like to know.

1281
01:16:50,680 --> 01:16:51,000
I agree.

1282
01:16:51,080 --> 01:16:54,280
Yeah, that I think is the major weakness of the paper.

1283
01:16:54,520 --> 01:16:59,160
Um and I think you that part of the paper could totally you could just dispense with it

1284
01:16:59,160 --> 01:16:59,640
entirely.

1285
01:16:59,800 --> 01:17:03,320
If you just imagine that we can imagine such people, right?

1286
01:17:03,720 --> 01:17:06,760
And we can imagine that other people can imagine such people, right?

1287
01:17:06,840 --> 01:17:11,150
And if we imagine such people and admire them, well then I can imagine that you'll imagine

1288
01:17:11,150 --> 01:17:15,310
them and admire them, and that will motivate me to behave to as that person and imitate

1289
01:17:15,390 --> 01:17:15,710
that person.

1290
01:17:15,790 --> 01:17:16,510
That's all it takes.

1291
01:17:16,590 --> 01:17:18,750
It's just a matter of recursive mind reading, right?

1292
01:17:18,830 --> 01:17:20,990
So you don't actually need those individuals to exist.

1293
01:17:21,150 --> 01:17:24,990
You just need people to be able to imagine them and imagine that other people will imagine

1294
01:17:24,990 --> 01:17:25,150
them.

1295
01:17:25,310 --> 01:17:28,190
And then you can get that sort of thing arising all on its own.

1296
01:17:28,430 --> 01:17:28,830
So that's it.

1297
01:17:29,070 --> 01:17:33,310
It makes me think of uh I agree, it makes me think of autistic people who can be very rigid

1298
01:17:33,310 --> 01:17:35,870
and very committed and have super focused interests.

1299
01:17:36,540 --> 01:17:40,540
Are there people in the evolutionary social sciences or psychology who defend that that

1300
01:17:40,540 --> 01:17:45,500
could be an evolutionary sorry, an evolutionary advantage of being autistic?

1301
01:17:51,500 --> 01:17:56,860
Yeah, that that that the um pretty intense level of commitment that some autistic people

1302
01:17:56,860 --> 01:18:02,350
are capable of might have been favored genetically through its uh signaling benefits or its

1303
01:18:02,350 --> 01:18:03,070
commitment benefits.

1304
01:18:03,150 --> 01:18:03,470
I don't know.

1305
01:18:03,550 --> 01:18:04,910
Uh are there people who pretend that?

1306
01:18:04,990 --> 01:18:05,950
I'm I'm asking generally.

1307
01:18:06,190 --> 01:18:06,670
I have no idea.

1308
01:18:06,910 --> 01:18:08,830
Oh, I I've I've I have not read anything on that.

1309
01:18:08,910 --> 01:18:09,870
That's interesting.

1310
01:18:10,110 --> 01:18:11,150
Um cool.

1311
01:18:11,390 --> 01:18:15,150
I guess the default hypothesis would be that autistic people are high in systematizing

1312
01:18:15,150 --> 01:18:20,910
intelligence, and therefore that makes them good analysts, engineers, uh problem

1313
01:18:20,910 --> 01:18:22,030
solvers, blah, blah, blah.

1314
01:18:22,270 --> 01:18:25,630
But it's also possible that the mental rigidity is beneficial for their reputation

1315
01:18:25,710 --> 01:18:26,030
sometimes.

1316
01:18:26,190 --> 01:18:26,750
I don't know.

1317
01:18:27,470 --> 01:18:28,270
Interesting.

1318
01:18:29,240 --> 01:18:31,000
Yeah, I'll have to think about that more.

1319
01:18:31,240 --> 01:18:34,760
Um well, uh we're approaching an hour and a half.

1320
01:18:34,840 --> 01:18:36,760
This has been a really fun conversation.

1321
01:18:36,920 --> 01:18:40,840
Um, I feel like it's just been a chance for us to sort of you know bounce ideas back and

1322
01:18:40,840 --> 01:18:42,440
forth and sharpen our our thinking.

1323
01:18:42,840 --> 01:18:44,600
You've been a bit messy, and that's mostly my fault.

1324
01:18:44,680 --> 01:18:48,440
I used to last night, but it was it was really funny.

1325
01:18:48,840 --> 01:18:49,480
Yeah, for sure.

1326
01:18:49,560 --> 01:18:52,120
Is there anything else that um you wish we would have covered?

1327
01:18:52,280 --> 01:18:56,520
Anything you you want to uh tell our listeners about, things you're working on now that

1328
01:18:56,520 --> 01:18:57,800
you're excited about?

1329
01:18:58,370 --> 01:19:03,490
Um, okay, so it might it might sound surprising, but I would be happy if some people um

1330
01:19:03,730 --> 01:19:08,290
were willing to follow me on Instagram because a few months ago I started doing some uh

1331
01:19:08,290 --> 01:19:13,730
video scientific dissemination uh in the form of like short video capsules on Instagram.

1332
01:19:13,890 --> 01:19:18,210
I talk about political psychology, social media, the relationship between the sexes,

1333
01:19:18,450 --> 01:19:20,530
patriarchy, misogyny, etc.

1334
01:19:21,200 --> 01:19:26,960
So beyond just looking up my uh my website, uh Antoine Marie SCI.com as a

1335
01:19:26,960 --> 01:19:31,760
regular scholar and my uh Google Scholar, people can also, if they want, follow me on

1336
01:19:31,760 --> 01:19:32,560
Instagram.

1337
01:19:33,200 --> 01:19:36,800
Uh where my handle is, sorry, I forgot to to specify

1338
01:19:37,120 --> 01:19:40,480
Antoine.marae.sci.

1339
01:19:41,290 --> 01:19:44,170
But I don't expect your listeners to be very active on Instagram.

1340
01:19:44,330 --> 01:19:46,170
I think they're too nerdy for this.

1341
01:19:47,050 --> 01:19:47,930
Perhaps, yes.

1342
01:19:48,010 --> 01:19:49,290
I don't have an Instagram account myself.

1343
01:19:49,370 --> 01:19:52,650
So but if you do have Instagram, uh follow Antoine.

1344
01:19:52,730 --> 01:19:54,250
He's uh an excellent scholar.

1345
01:19:54,410 --> 01:19:56,330
Um this has been a lot of fun, Antoine.

1346
01:19:56,410 --> 01:19:58,330
Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

1347
01:19:58,570 --> 01:19:59,610
Thanks so much, Dave.

1348
01:19:59,930 --> 01:20:00,410
All right.

1349
01:20:00,650 --> 01:20:01,530
Take care.

1350
01:20:02,090 --> 01:20:03,050
Bye bye.

1351
01:20:05,840 --> 01:20:11,520
So, David, you talked a lot this episode, and I was doing something

1352
01:20:11,520 --> 01:20:13,760
completely else while this was happening.

1353
01:20:13,920 --> 01:20:16,480
So I feel like I should carry the outro here.

1354
01:20:17,120 --> 01:20:22,960
Um, but despite feeling that way, I never know what to say other than, you know, please

1355
01:20:22,960 --> 01:20:28,640
support us on Patreon, please comment on social media, let us know what guests and uh

1356
01:20:28,640 --> 01:20:33,760
episodes and topics, debates, um uh, you know,

1357
01:20:34,970 --> 01:20:37,610
yeah, what what I don't know what else to say.

1358
01:20:37,930 --> 01:20:38,090
Yeah.

1359
01:20:38,170 --> 01:20:40,890
I'm I I mean, yeah, there's there's the Patreon thing.

1360
01:20:41,130 --> 01:20:44,490
There's uh social media kindness.

1361
01:20:45,290 --> 01:20:49,450
There's uh sending us emails about your thoughts and suggestions.

1362
01:20:49,770 --> 01:20:51,930
Do we have an email address yet?

1363
01:20:52,570 --> 01:20:56,410
People have been emailing uh maybe they maybe they're just emailing our personal emails?

1364
01:20:56,490 --> 01:21:00,650
I guess we don't have no it's ep the pod at gmail.com.

1365
01:21:00,810 --> 01:21:04,170
I don't think I don't think literally anywhere we've ever said that.

1366
01:21:04,720 --> 01:21:05,120
Hmm.

1367
01:21:05,200 --> 01:21:05,360
Okay.

1368
01:21:05,680 --> 01:21:07,360
Maybe I should put that in the show notes.

1369
01:21:07,680 --> 01:21:10,400
Yeah, that might be a good thing to put in the show notes.

1370
01:21:12,000 --> 01:21:14,640
Yeah, we're recording an outro right now.

1371
01:21:17,360 --> 01:21:21,200
As you can see, this is a really well-oiled machine here with with me and Dave.

1372
01:21:21,680 --> 01:21:25,760
Or just now, after you're doing this, putting our email in the show notes.

1373
01:21:26,160 --> 01:21:26,880
No, it's fine.

1374
01:21:26,960 --> 01:21:27,200
Yeah.

1375
01:21:29,040 --> 01:21:30,240
Yeah, but you know what?

1376
01:21:30,320 --> 01:21:35,730
It's okay, because you shouldn't expect polished uh production value from things that

1377
01:21:35,730 --> 01:21:36,930
aren't selling you something.

1378
01:21:37,170 --> 01:21:40,610
Maybe you could suggest commercials we can include on our our podcast.

1379
01:21:41,090 --> 01:21:44,290
Oh, should we put some product placements uh in the episodes?

1380
01:21:44,610 --> 01:21:48,210
Uh yeah, we got to do product placements, PSAs.

1381
01:21:48,450 --> 01:21:53,090
Um I mean, presumably it would be for an exchange of some amount of money.

1382
01:21:53,320 --> 01:21:57,080
Um, but then there's that whole like what are they selling to our listeners?

1383
01:21:57,640 --> 01:22:01,400
Maybe we could drop some kombucha ads into the episode on the microbiome.

1384
01:22:01,960 --> 01:22:07,560
Yeah, we can't do the uh probiotics, but we can't do prebiotics because the probiotics,

1385
01:22:07,640 --> 01:22:13,640
according to um um Katrine Whiteson are not Katrina Whitzen are not

1386
01:22:13,800 --> 01:22:18,350
so good for you, but prebiotics that are just fiber, it was one of the two, remember?

1387
01:22:18,430 --> 01:22:19,790
One of them was good, one was bad.

1388
01:22:19,950 --> 01:22:20,190
Yeah.

1389
01:22:20,750 --> 01:22:20,990
I forget.

1390
01:22:21,070 --> 01:22:21,150
Yeah.

1391
01:22:21,390 --> 01:22:22,270
But listen to that episode.

1392
01:22:22,670 --> 01:22:25,790
It confuses like the distinction between proscribe and prescribe.

1393
01:22:25,870 --> 01:22:26,910
I always mix those up.

1394
01:22:27,070 --> 01:22:29,790
So one of those is proscribed and one of those is prescribed.

1395
01:22:29,870 --> 01:22:31,390
The probiotic and the prebiotic.

1396
01:22:31,710 --> 01:22:34,590
The prebiotic's okay, the probiotic's not so good.

1397
01:22:35,070 --> 01:22:35,390
Yeah.

1398
01:22:35,630 --> 01:22:35,950
Yeah.

1399
01:22:36,110 --> 01:22:39,150
But only one of the off just eat some fiber.

1400
01:22:39,240 --> 01:22:39,880
Just look for the fiber.

1401
01:22:40,200 --> 01:22:41,080
Yeah, fiber's great.

1402
01:22:41,160 --> 01:22:42,120
I highly recommend it.

1403
01:22:42,360 --> 01:22:42,600
Okay.

1404
01:22:42,680 --> 01:22:43,560
Uh this is enough.

1405
01:22:43,640 --> 01:22:46,360
We'll see you all next week or in a couple weeks.

1406
01:22:46,440 --> 01:22:48,440
Um and we'll get our week.

1407
01:22:48,600 --> 01:22:49,720
We'll get our edits together.

1408
01:22:49,960 --> 01:22:51,080
We'll get our shit together.

1409
01:22:51,160 --> 01:22:51,320
Okay.

1410
01:22:51,560 --> 01:22:52,200
Uh or not.

1411
01:22:52,280 --> 01:22:52,520
Yeah.

1412
01:22:52,680 --> 01:22:52,840
Okay.

1413
01:22:53,080 --> 01:22:56,200
It was good to good to good to hear good to listen to you, David.

1414
01:22:56,280 --> 01:22:57,560
You did a great job this episode.

1415
01:22:57,800 --> 01:22:58,040
Thank you.

1416
01:22:58,120 --> 01:22:58,600
I appreciate it.

1417
01:22:58,680 --> 01:22:59,160
I missed you.

1418
01:22:59,240 --> 01:22:59,880
I'm glad to have you back.

1419
01:23:00,120 --> 01:23:00,920
Oh thanks, David.

1420
01:23:01,080 --> 01:23:01,400
All right.