WEBVTT

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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.

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Yeah, it's interesting.

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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,

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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.

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I have no idea why that is.

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

00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:45.040
have this intuitive set of systems for understanding other people um that we apply in that

00:15:45.040 --> 00:15:49.200
context and we we've are reluctant to let go of that intuitive psychology.

00:15:49.280 --> 00:15:55.250
But when we're um focusing on non-social or asocial processes, there's no temptation

00:15:55.250 --> 00:16:00.210
to bring in our folk psychology and it's easier to just think about the the mechanistic uh

00:16:00.210 --> 00:16:00.850
workings.

00:16:01.410 --> 00:16:06.450
The the the hypothesis I would maybe make for this is that uh the more cultural variation

00:16:06.450 --> 00:16:11.650
you have with the behavior, the more counterintuitive it is for people to understand that

00:16:11.650 --> 00:16:14.700
it might be relying on basic computational building blocks.

00:16:14.780 --> 00:16:15.580
You know what I mean?

00:16:15.820 --> 00:16:16.060
Yeah.

00:16:16.700 --> 00:16:20.060
For instance, I feel like Nicolas Bomart has had quite a bit of trouble explaining to

00:16:20.060 --> 00:16:25.100
anthropologists that fairness might be a module that may have evolved because people have

00:16:25.100 --> 00:16:28.460
the strong intuition that, oh, there are so many different things to which we apply

00:16:28.460 --> 00:16:32.540
intuitions of fairness, you know, obligations towards gods, obligations towards other

00:16:32.780 --> 00:16:36.940
groups, um, and their and their cultures where we don't feel any obligations towards uh

00:16:36.940 --> 00:16:37.740
gods, for instance.

00:16:37.820 --> 00:16:43.370
So there's so much cultural variation in how the fairness, costs, and benefits algorithm um

00:16:43.610 --> 00:16:45.130
operates and relates to.

00:16:45.210 --> 00:16:49.370
And because people have that sense that there's a lot of cultural variation, they become

00:16:49.370 --> 00:16:54.730
reluctant to see the diversity of behaviors as being underlined by like some just basic

00:16:54.730 --> 00:16:57.530
mathematical functions that might be universal in the human mind.

00:16:57.850 --> 00:16:59.370
Yeah, for sure.

00:16:59.610 --> 00:17:04.620
Um so we're talking about the more sort of um

00:17:04.940 --> 00:17:10.540
intellectual barriers to taking an evolutionary psychological approach to politics, but

00:17:10.540 --> 00:17:14.620
there are um other barriers that are probably even more formidable.

00:17:15.100 --> 00:17:20.540
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.

00:17:20.780 --> 00:17:25.290
Uh the first problem is is just you know, being in evolutionary psychology at all, which is

00:17:25.290 --> 00:17:28.010
sort of an inherently controversial discipline.

00:17:28.090 --> 00:17:31.290
It has it has had a long history of controversy.

00:17:31.450 --> 00:17:34.490
Um so right off the bat, there's some difficulty there.

00:17:34.650 --> 00:17:40.650
But in addition to that, um you are studying uh literally the most controversial and heated

00:17:40.650 --> 00:17:46.380
topic in existence, um the the topic of controversy itself, uh which is

00:17:46.380 --> 00:17:47.020
politics.

00:17:47.260 --> 00:17:50.780
And so you're taking a controversial approach to controversy itself.

00:17:51.500 --> 00:17:52.700
And I am in trance.

00:17:53.020 --> 00:17:57.980
And and you aren't the country of Marxism, social constructionism, Bourdiasian sociology,

00:17:58.060 --> 00:17:59.020
and postmodernism.

00:17:59.420 --> 00:18:04.540
Yes, I I th throw the the the French cheese on there as well, and we'll have a a lovely uh

00:18:04.620 --> 00:18:06.540
lovely meal here of controversy.

00:18:07.260 --> 00:18:12.690
Um yeah, so uh how do you deal with with with that side have you uh

00:18:12.770 --> 00:18:17.890
encountered any difficulties with that side of things the political nature of your work um

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

00:18:24.450 --> 00:18:30.050
being in a politically controversial topic politically controversial framework um

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

00:18:36.050 --> 00:18:41.480
has that backlash looked like there are there are difficulties at all levels, my poor

00:18:41.480 --> 00:18:42.120
David.

00:18:43.320 --> 00:18:43.880
Life is hard.

00:18:44.040 --> 00:18:46.680
No, I mean no, to start with the positive.

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

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

00:18:55.800 --> 00:19:00.840
heated conversation with them about human behavior or morally charged topics, etc., that

00:19:01.080 --> 00:19:01.640
space bien.

00:19:01.720 --> 00:19:02.440
It goes well.

00:19:02.630 --> 00:19:02.870
Okay.

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

00:19:07.190 --> 00:19:10.550
across as a provocator, it goes quite well with the students.

00:19:10.710 --> 00:19:13.830
It can go well with the more standard social scientists.

00:19:14.310 --> 00:19:16.310
It can go well with most people.

00:19:16.550 --> 00:19:19.990
Also with political activists, you know, anti-racist activists, feminist activists who

00:19:19.990 --> 00:19:22.950
don't like to be told that there are psychological sex differences, et cetera.

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

00:19:27.990 --> 00:19:31.510
good faith and you listen to people and you're and you're a good pedagogue.

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

00:19:38.720 --> 00:19:39.920
mostly good experiences.

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

00:19:43.920 --> 00:19:49.600
super woke objections to uh the innatism that I sometimes defend with respect to tribalism

00:19:49.600 --> 00:19:50.560
or sex differences.

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

00:19:54.790 --> 00:19:56.870
I know my onions, I know what I'm talking about.

00:19:57.110 --> 00:19:57.990
They they listen.

00:19:58.070 --> 00:20:02.870
And you can also socialize them to the evolutionary style of thinking quite early on.

00:20:03.030 --> 00:20:06.950
For instance, if you have them as undergrads or even master students, you can really, if

00:20:06.950 --> 00:20:12.230
you're good enough, you can really transmit all those axioms of evolutionary reasoning that

00:20:12.230 --> 00:20:14.630
we find so counter counterintuitive to a lot of people.

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

00:20:17.990 --> 00:20:22.790
they're and they're doing the homework, you can really transmit and teach EvoSyc relatively

00:20:22.870 --> 00:20:24.070
early on successfully.

00:20:24.560 --> 00:20:24.960
Yeah.

00:20:25.280 --> 00:20:28.160
That said, um, yes, of course.

00:20:28.240 --> 00:20:33.040
I mean, the mind is wired to have difficulty distinguishing facts from moral implications,

00:20:33.120 --> 00:20:33.440
etc.

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

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

00:20:42.720 --> 00:20:47.990
always have to repeat the fact that those statements of fact have no ideological or moral

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

00:20:53.990 --> 00:20:58.150
of like women in politics and in science, all the while recognizing that there are average

00:20:58.150 --> 00:21:01.350
differences in ability and interest, for instance.

00:21:01.670 --> 00:21:07.190
Um, basically, you just have to always repeat the same basic um axiom of

00:21:07.350 --> 00:21:08.230
evolutionary reasoning.

00:21:08.310 --> 00:21:10.790
And if you do that well, I think people can listen.

00:21:11.540 --> 00:21:17.460
Um, as far as France is concerned, as such, um, yeah, France is a difficult

00:21:18.020 --> 00:21:23.620
national environment to do all this because the dominant software is really like Borduosian

00:21:23.780 --> 00:21:27.780
sociology, pre-social constructionist approaches to human behavior.

00:21:27.940 --> 00:21:33.140
Uh, it's only recently that the cognitive sciences have spread in the social sciences a

00:21:33.140 --> 00:21:33.780
little bit.

00:21:34.910 --> 00:21:40.270
The evolutionary influences are even more recent and very, very, very, very minority.

00:21:41.550 --> 00:21:45.790
Basically, it's mostly at Ecole Normale Superior Institute Nico that people are trained in

00:21:45.790 --> 00:21:47.390
evolutionary social science.

00:21:47.630 --> 00:21:51.390
Outside of it, it's not really seen all that much.

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.

00:21:59.150 --> 00:22:03.940
One problem we have, I think, with the French public debate about politics and social

00:22:03.940 --> 00:22:09.620
science is that the heterodox academic revolution that took place in the US

00:22:10.020 --> 00:22:11.940
really hasn't been integrated in France.

00:22:12.100 --> 00:22:16.500
Like most people who study human behavior and politics are quite leftist.

00:22:16.740 --> 00:22:21.060
And there's not much acknowledgement of the importance of viewpoint diversity in studying

00:22:21.060 --> 00:22:25.780
those topics, political viewpoint diversity, epistemological, methodological viewpoint

00:22:25.780 --> 00:22:26.420
diversity.

00:22:26.740 --> 00:22:32.530
Um, and so yeah, and so if you're an evolutionary minded

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

00:22:37.250 --> 00:22:41.730
leftists who are all social constructionists in anthropology or sociology, you're gonna

00:22:41.730 --> 00:22:46.610
have difficulty communicating because those people are not necessarily aware of of the

00:22:46.610 --> 00:22:51.970
benefits of everything there is to gain from allowing more viewpoint diversity in academia.

00:22:52.140 --> 00:22:53.500
They're not really reflective about it.

00:22:53.900 --> 00:22:54.780
We don't talk about it enough.

00:22:54.860 --> 00:22:58.140
And so it doesn't raise a little a lamb bell in people's brains.

00:22:58.220 --> 00:23:02.060
And so there's more space for political intolerance and dogmatism.

00:23:02.460 --> 00:23:04.620
And I feel like in France it's a bit difficult in this respect.

00:23:04.700 --> 00:23:05.260
But it's getting better.

00:23:05.340 --> 00:23:05.820
It's getting better.

00:23:05.900 --> 00:23:07.100
I don't want to be a catastrophist.

00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:07.820
It's getting better.

00:23:08.140 --> 00:23:08.380
Yeah.

00:23:08.540 --> 00:23:09.180
Yeah, for sure.

00:23:09.340 --> 00:23:15.340
I mean, if if there's anyone who uh has expertise about um the benefits of

00:23:15.340 --> 00:23:21.230
viewpoint diversity and the costs of having um epistemic um homogeneity

00:23:21.390 --> 00:23:22.670
or uh insularity.

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

00:23:27.310 --> 00:23:32.510
orthodoxy, dogmatism when people bind themselves into groups where alternative viewpoints

00:23:32.510 --> 00:23:35.710
are taboo and get punished and censured.

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

00:23:40.750 --> 00:23:46.670
of politically like minded people when they organize and coordinate and punish alternative

00:23:46.670 --> 00:23:47.790
ways of thinking.

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

00:23:53.740 --> 00:23:59.740
obviously that um has damaging effects um on the pursuit of truth, um given uh you

00:23:59.740 --> 00:24:01.420
know uh these these processes.

00:24:01.580 --> 00:24:07.100
Um and so I I'm curious, you know, what

00:24:07.340 --> 00:24:13.310
you see as the causes of ideological orthodoxy um uh

00:24:13.710 --> 00:24:18.430
suppression of ideas of speech of alternative viewpoints.

00:24:18.670 --> 00:24:22.430
Um on the one hand, it's kind of confusing from an evolutionary perspective, because you

00:24:22.430 --> 00:24:25.470
you might naively think that you we'd want to get at the truth.

00:24:25.550 --> 00:24:27.950
And truth is good for our biological fitness.

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.

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,

00:24:37.820 --> 00:24:40.460
you might naively think that that would be bad for us as a group.

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

00:24:45.260 --> 00:24:51.020
world and have more accurate beliefs about where the goodies are and where the threats are.

00:24:51.420 --> 00:24:57.410
And yet, what we find just repeatedly throughout human history and across cultures is

00:24:57.410 --> 00:25:02.370
that when people organize into competitive coalitions, the opposite happens.

00:25:02.450 --> 00:25:04.450
They sort of lose their minds a bit.

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

00:25:10.450 --> 00:25:16.210
and dogmatism and sacredness of certain values and

00:25:16.450 --> 00:25:17.410
beliefs.

00:25:20.040 --> 00:25:26.040
uh I'm curious how you would um counter the sort of naive evolutionary prediction

00:25:26.120 --> 00:25:30.360
that that we we should not expect this, that we should expect you know good epistemics

00:25:30.360 --> 00:25:32.440
coming out of of human groups.

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

00:25:38.600 --> 00:25:42.840
uh reconcile it with you know a more evolutionary functionalist approach.

00:25:43.270 --> 00:25:43.590
Yeah.

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

00:25:47.910 --> 00:25:49.750
mean, it's become pretty standard in Evo Psych.

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

00:25:55.510 --> 00:25:57.990
is better than being left without a coalition, right?

00:25:58.070 --> 00:26:02.230
Uh that the what is really, really essential for human uh fitness is to have social

00:26:02.230 --> 00:26:07.200
support, to be integrated in a group, pretty much whatever the group is.

00:26:08.080 --> 00:26:12.160
So there has been very strong selection pressures for wanting to create communities,

00:26:12.320 --> 00:26:18.160
orthodoxies, to fit in, to satisfy our homophily bias, you know, a preference for people

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,

00:26:23.040 --> 00:26:26.480
and with whom like coordination and cooperation will be mutually beneficial, etc.

00:26:26.640 --> 00:26:26.880
etc.

00:26:27.520 --> 00:26:32.490
So it's incredibly surprising that on abstract questions of politics, on which being wrong

00:26:32.490 --> 00:26:35.450
doesn't really affect the fitness and the welfare of individuals.

00:26:36.010 --> 00:26:39.770
It's not really surprising that on those abstract questions of politics or science, people

00:26:39.770 --> 00:26:44.170
will prioritize aligning with the group, aligning with what they perceive to be the

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

00:26:48.330 --> 00:26:49.610
which they live.

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,

00:26:55.850 --> 00:26:57.930
it's not going to concretely affect my welfare.

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

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.

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

00:27:12.520 --> 00:27:17.480
that there are no innate psychological differences between the sexes, it's also unlikely to

00:27:17.480 --> 00:27:19.320
affect my my fitness concretely, right?

00:27:19.400 --> 00:27:24.610
Those are relatively abstract questions of knowledge and public policy that um that are

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

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

00:27:34.610 --> 00:27:38.850
very is very opinionated on those questions and has and has like a dominant opinion you

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

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

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

00:27:53.120 --> 00:27:58.000
that uh within that community be it a political party a political identity a neighborhood

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

00:28:03.600 --> 00:28:09.280
other aspects to it your question was why are people behaving orthodox um

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

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

00:28:21.570 --> 00:28:26.610
concrete everyday decisions that th there's just little cost to having false beliefs about

00:28:26.610 --> 00:28:26.770
them.

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

00:28:31.170 --> 00:28:31.890
be able to act on it.

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

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

00:28:39.330 --> 00:28:40.050
something like that.

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

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

00:28:50.780 --> 00:28:52.780
the social benefits being so large.

00:28:53.420 --> 00:28:57.580
In the meantime there are very high social benefits in aligning with the group, inclusion,

00:28:57.660 --> 00:29:01.180
protection, friendships, blah blah blah, and status acquisition, right?

00:29:01.260 --> 00:29:06.700
If you can um compete against your comrades within the group in terms of like how

00:29:06.700 --> 00:29:12.530
dogmatically or orthodox um you can be at kind of like embodying the ideology of the

00:29:12.530 --> 00:29:12.930
group.

00:29:13.090 --> 00:29:15.170
You have avenues for status acquisition.

00:29:15.250 --> 00:29:17.330
You have ways of attracting attention towards you.

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

00:29:22.050 --> 00:29:23.010
political vibe, etc.

00:29:23.330 --> 00:29:23.570
Yeah.

00:29:23.650 --> 00:29:25.570
And so it's uh it's it's good in many respects.

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

00:29:30.690 --> 00:29:33.970
is adapted to his social environment should be prior prioritizing.

00:29:34.220 --> 00:29:34.460
Yeah.

00:29:34.700 --> 00:29:36.460
No, yeah, that that that makes a lot of sense.

00:29:36.620 --> 00:29:42.300
I'm curious what your take is on this distinction between um intuitive and

00:29:42.300 --> 00:29:47.980
reflective beliefs that has been proposed by um people like Dance Berber and Hugo

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

00:29:53.740 --> 00:29:55.420
practical behavioral effects.

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

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

00:30:05.730 --> 00:30:08.850
there's a coffee table right there um but that's not gonna affect my behavior.

00:30:08.930 --> 00:30:12.370
I'm not gonna like move my body around it the hypothetical coffee table.

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.

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

00:30:22.620 --> 00:30:26.620
myself, Antoine believes it's gonna rain tomorrow, but that doesn't necessarily mean that

00:30:26.620 --> 00:30:30.780
I'm going to, you know, bring an umbrella tomorrow, because you could be wrong.

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

00:30:36.140 --> 00:30:37.660
and it's not gonna affect my behavior.

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

00:30:43.270 --> 00:30:44.470
behavioral implications.

00:30:44.630 --> 00:30:46.550
And these are called reflective beliefs.

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.

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

00:30:56.870 --> 00:30:59.830
for social purposes to fit in or to gain status.

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

00:31:04.550 --> 00:31:07.580
regulating our behavior on a day-to-day basis.

00:31:07.820 --> 00:31:10.940
And I'm curious, uh number one, if you if you buy that distinction.

00:31:11.100 --> 00:31:15.580
And number two, where um ideologies fit on that continuum.

00:31:15.740 --> 00:31:20.620
Do you see ideologies as largely being composed of reflective beliefs, or do you view them

00:31:20.620 --> 00:31:25.580
as as uh being composed of intuitive beliefs that actually guide concrete behavior?

00:31:25.970 --> 00:31:26.290
Yeah.

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

00:31:29.890 --> 00:31:30.370
you, David.

00:31:30.610 --> 00:31:31.170
Oh okay.

00:31:31.970 --> 00:31:35.570
In relationship to the Allayan theory of ideology, uh in particular.

00:31:36.210 --> 00:31:38.210
I'm I'm a huge fan of of the distinction.

00:31:38.290 --> 00:31:40.210
I think it's extremely uh insightful.

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.

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

00:31:49.090 --> 00:31:50.450
uh in the recent decade.

00:31:51.330 --> 00:31:56.920
Um yeah, a good illustration is for instance people's relationship to those to the notion

00:31:56.920 --> 00:32:00.680
of uh post-truth or relativism or alternative facts, right?

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,

00:32:06.600 --> 00:32:10.760
of there being external facts that constrain our will and constrain our movements, etc.

00:32:11.480 --> 00:32:15.560
It's not possible to have evolved as organisms without presupposing the existence of an

00:32:15.560 --> 00:32:20.280
external world, uh, with like constraining facts, and therefore to be exploding at an

00:32:20.840 --> 00:32:23.710
implicit level a concept of truth.

00:32:23.870 --> 00:32:27.950
But the x at the explicit verbal level, it's completely possible to be a relativistic

00:32:27.950 --> 00:32:30.190
philosopher who says that there is no truth.

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

00:32:35.870 --> 00:32:39.230
table just because uh he or she says that there are no facts.

00:32:39.470 --> 00:32:42.030
They will keep the two the two realities separate, right?

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

00:32:47.080 --> 00:32:52.280
practical affairs, all the while denying the reality of there being facts, or the reality

00:32:52.280 --> 00:32:55.880
of any concept of truth, or the usefulness of any concept of truth.

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

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

00:33:06.600 --> 00:33:08.600
that you know don't constrain his will, etc.

00:33:08.760 --> 00:33:10.840
So there's just a mental disconnect there.

00:33:11.560 --> 00:33:15.450
Um what about algebra beliefs?

00:33:15.610 --> 00:33:20.970
Um by default, I would tend to agree with the idea that they are pretty

00:33:20.970 --> 00:33:21.850
reflective.

00:33:22.170 --> 00:33:26.890
Um I feel like political ideologies have a relatively weak relationship to behavior.

00:33:27.210 --> 00:33:30.170
Uh always a pretty strong, you know, belief action gap.

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

00:33:34.970 --> 00:33:36.810
that the the plant is warming up, etc.

00:33:37.050 --> 00:33:37.290
etc.

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

00:33:42.520 --> 00:33:44.040
completely stop flying, for instance.

00:33:44.120 --> 00:33:48.120
So there's always like a decalage, a gap, a disconnect between the two.

00:33:48.520 --> 00:33:53.080
Sure, or or or even just like more apocalyptic beliefs about climate change.

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

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

00:34:01.640 --> 00:34:05.830
reflective belief because their behavior is not, you know, if I truly believed that climate

00:34:05.830 --> 00:34:09.910
change was going to destroy in accordance with the literal endorsement of the of the

00:34:09.910 --> 00:34:10.230
belief.

00:34:10.550 --> 00:34:10.710
Yeah.

00:34:10.790 --> 00:34:14.390
If I truly thought that climate change was going to destroy everything, or at least, you

00:34:14.390 --> 00:34:19.990
know, make significant damage to humanity in the next 20 years, say, I would be

00:34:19.990 --> 00:34:22.390
panicking right now and figuring out how to get my family.

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

00:34:27.510 --> 00:34:28.870
the next 10 years or whatever.

00:34:28.950 --> 00:34:29.270
Yeah, yeah.

00:34:29.640 --> 00:34:29.960
Exactly.

00:34:30.120 --> 00:34:35.160
And so the the the fact that climate catastrophists are not acting like that suggests that

00:34:35.160 --> 00:34:36.600
their belief is more reflective.

00:34:36.760 --> 00:34:38.520
At least I think that's that's plausible.

00:34:38.920 --> 00:34:39.240
Yeah, yeah.

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

00:34:43.320 --> 00:34:47.560
know feeding and building conversations, that they have to do with signaling and uh and

00:34:47.560 --> 00:34:49.400
maybe trying to influence others.

00:34:49.640 --> 00:34:55.350
One one question there, so to the extent that those reflective political beliefs are for

00:34:55.350 --> 00:35:01.190
social influence, micropropaganda, um mobilizing others, coordinating

00:35:01.190 --> 00:35:02.390
collective actions.

00:35:03.430 --> 00:35:09.430
An important question there is like how motivating are there on the spreaders' behavior

00:35:09.430 --> 00:35:11.750
and on the audience's behavior, right?

00:35:12.630 --> 00:35:16.550
Uh I think that's a that's a big um that's a big question.

00:35:16.870 --> 00:35:20.470
When I wrote about speech repression, for instance, I emphasized that people had

00:35:20.470 --> 00:35:25.920
motivations to control and regulate flows of information to keep other people

00:35:25.920 --> 00:35:30.560
mobilized in favors of uh in favor of causes that they care about, like anti-racism.

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

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

00:35:42.080 --> 00:35:47.440
regulate the dissemination of research that may be spreading racist views, for instance.

00:35:47.760 --> 00:35:52.890
But do those efforts of speech repression and regulation, are they efficient at maintaining

00:35:52.890 --> 00:35:53.530
the mobilization?

00:35:53.690 --> 00:35:57.930
Are they efficient at reducing the spread in society of views that are demoracist?

00:35:58.010 --> 00:35:58.890
That's another question.

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

00:36:04.170 --> 00:36:07.610
regulation is efficient for them to want to cancel and to regulate the speech.

00:36:07.770 --> 00:36:08.890
Does it reach its effects?

00:36:08.970 --> 00:36:10.010
It's another question.

00:36:10.810 --> 00:36:11.290
Interesting.

00:36:12.400 --> 00:36:12.880
Yeah.

00:36:13.120 --> 00:36:18.480
So are you asking the question of of whether people's belief in the um

00:36:18.480 --> 00:36:24.400
effectiveness of anti racist activism is could itself be a reflective belief

00:36:24.560 --> 00:36:25.680
that maybe Yeah.

00:36:25.840 --> 00:36:27.600
I I think that's that's plausible.

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

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

00:36:37.440 --> 00:36:39.890
these in uh these particular sensitivities.

00:36:40.050 --> 00:36:42.290
Um, what happens directly after that?

00:36:42.450 --> 00:36:47.650
Uh well, the rise of right wing populism, Trump, uh, overt or more overt racism.

00:36:47.730 --> 00:36:51.570
It seems if anything, it has made matters worse rather than better in terms of improving

00:36:51.570 --> 00:36:54.530
race relations, um, in in America at least.

00:36:54.690 --> 00:36:59.010
Um, so the causal evidence of, you know, greater anti racist activism, less racism doesn't

00:36:59.010 --> 00:36:59.570
seem to pan out.

00:36:59.650 --> 00:37:04.130
If anything, uh what we observe suggests the opposite, that it actually uh exacerbates it.

00:37:04.210 --> 00:37:07.740
Um like a backlash and uh Yeah.

00:37:08.140 --> 00:37:12.620
Um so that's an interesting uh example of of another possible ref reflective belief.

00:37:12.700 --> 00:37:18.220
That that really the function the function of these beliefs are to mobilize a a coalition

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

00:37:24.380 --> 00:37:26.140
spread of of racist ideas.

00:37:26.700 --> 00:37:28.700
Yeah, yeah, it's really a complicated question.

00:37:28.860 --> 00:37:34.770
Um At the same time, I would maybe want to be a bit charitable

00:37:34.770 --> 00:37:38.930
towards those anti-racist activists and assume that they really believe that when they are

00:37:38.930 --> 00:37:44.610
trying to intervene on information flows to keep people mobilized in favor of anti-racism,

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

00:37:48.610 --> 00:37:49.170
behavior.

00:37:49.410 --> 00:37:49.730
Yeah.

00:37:49.970 --> 00:37:55.960
Um But uh but your original question was more about the link between ideological

00:37:55.960 --> 00:37:57.560
convictions and people's behavior.

00:37:57.720 --> 00:37:59.320
Um, what is your take on that?

00:37:59.480 --> 00:38:03.640
What would be like the average correlation between people's political beliefs and and their

00:38:03.640 --> 00:38:04.040
behavior?

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

00:38:07.960 --> 00:38:08.920
approximation like that?

00:38:09.240 --> 00:38:11.640
Yeah, I think it's a it's a completely fascinating question.

00:38:11.720 --> 00:38:14.200
It's something that I've been thinking about a lot as well.

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

00:38:20.590 --> 00:38:23.790
probably almost entirely reflective beliefs.

00:38:24.030 --> 00:38:29.870
Um uh and that's not inconsistent with behaving

00:38:29.870 --> 00:38:32.510
in ways that might suggest intuitive belief.

00:38:32.750 --> 00:38:38.520
Because I think you could think of um say um not

00:38:38.920 --> 00:38:41.880
r renouncing all air travel or or or whatever.

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

00:38:45.800 --> 00:38:46.440
coalition.

00:38:46.600 --> 00:38:52.120
And that can coexist with a purely reflective belief about climate catastrophism.

00:38:53.960 --> 00:38:58.520
Particularly if I'm not particularly attentive to whether that is actually going to be

00:38:58.520 --> 00:38:59.400
effective or not.

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

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

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.

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

00:39:19.470 --> 00:39:24.270
intuitive belief that that's going to improve the situation or be effectively altruistic,

00:39:24.350 --> 00:39:26.270
but that itself is a kind of signal.

00:39:26.640 --> 00:39:32.560
Um so part of um the function of of a reflective belief might

00:39:32.560 --> 00:39:36.880
be to signal to others um deceptively that one has an intuitive belief.

00:39:37.120 --> 00:39:41.520
So that adds an additional layer of confusingness and complexity.

00:39:41.840 --> 00:39:47.600
But yeah my my intuition uh increasingly these these days is I I think that ideologies

00:39:47.920 --> 00:39:53.290
um are uh are are largely if not entirely um Composed of

00:39:53.290 --> 00:39:54.810
reflective beliefs.

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

00:39:58.970 --> 00:39:59.290
effects.

00:39:59.370 --> 00:40:03.290
I think you could imagine cases where they might have practical effects.

00:40:03.850 --> 00:40:08.250
So like let's take the case of biological, um

00:40:08.730 --> 00:40:14.570
biologically organized uh psychological

00:40:14.570 --> 00:40:16.490
sex differences, let's say.

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

00:40:22.420 --> 00:40:28.340
innate differences between boys and girls, um that could plausibly affect the way I parent

00:40:28.340 --> 00:40:29.460
my children, right?

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

00:40:35.380 --> 00:40:38.260
princesses and and and and dresses and so forth.

00:40:38.580 --> 00:40:40.020
As a matter of fact, she is.

00:40:40.260 --> 00:40:41.780
Um I didn't teach that to her.

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.

00:40:46.990 --> 00:40:49.470
Oh, I am, and she's absolutely into that stuff as well.

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

00:40:53.950 --> 00:40:54.750
stuff than the usual girl.

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

00:40:59.310 --> 00:41:01.870
on makeup and wearing dresses and all that stuff.

00:41:02.110 --> 00:41:03.630
Um but I didn't teach her that.

00:41:03.710 --> 00:41:06.030
Um, you know, my wife didn't teach her that.

00:41:06.350 --> 00:41:08.990
Um it just sort of happened naturally.

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

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

00:41:16.980 --> 00:41:18.020
naturally drawn to that.

00:41:18.260 --> 00:41:20.660
But if I truly believe uh to convince me of that.

00:41:20.740 --> 00:41:21.060
Yeah, yeah.

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

00:41:24.420 --> 00:41:24.820
perspective.

00:41:25.540 --> 00:41:25.940
Right.

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

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

00:41:36.650 --> 00:41:37.610
princesses, right?

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?

00:41:43.130 --> 00:41:44.170
Where did she get this idea?

00:41:44.330 --> 00:41:48.170
You know, who who manipulated her into into having this preference, right?

00:41:48.490 --> 00:41:52.170
And it might cause real damage for me if I concr if I intuitively believed that.

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.

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

00:42:04.360 --> 00:42:04.680
them.

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:07.240
Um that's sort of where I'm leaning.

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

00:42:13.320 --> 00:42:19.160
points me in the direction that um ideologies are are largely reflective

00:42:19.480 --> 00:42:24.360
is people's reactions to the tremendous body of evidence on uh

00:42:24.360 --> 00:42:26.200
partisan-motivated reasoning.

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

00:42:31.270 --> 00:42:35.110
are biased to confirm uh favored political narratives.

00:42:35.350 --> 00:42:38.470
There's a tremendous body of research in the social science, one of the most well

00:42:38.550 --> 00:42:42.710
replicated phenomena of all time, of partisan motivated reasoning.

00:42:43.110 --> 00:42:48.150
And there are large meta-analyses showing that the degree of bias, of political bias, is

00:42:48.150 --> 00:42:51.110
roughly equal on both sides of the political spectrum.

00:42:51.350 --> 00:42:57.260
That um my political opponents, whom I despise and think are crazy, are just as biased

00:42:57.260 --> 00:43:02.300
to form their particular um uh political beliefs as I am.

00:43:02.620 --> 00:43:08.620
And uh most people, when I tell them that, they think it it makes sense.

00:43:08.700 --> 00:43:12.460
They're maybe a little troubled by it, but people buy it.

00:43:13.070 --> 00:43:19.070
Um, but it doesn't trigger the amount of panic I would expect it to trigger.

00:43:19.310 --> 00:43:24.750
Like if I truly believe that something that I that I cared about was profoundly biased.

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,

00:43:31.150 --> 00:43:31.630
let's say.

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,

00:43:35.630 --> 00:43:40.620
I was biased to ignore it or to dismiss it or to not take it seriously.

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

00:43:43.980 --> 00:43:44.620
bias.

00:43:44.940 --> 00:43:49.580
Um, if I learned that, that would be extremely upsetting to me.

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

00:43:54.780 --> 00:43:56.300
take to get rid of that bias, right?

00:43:56.460 --> 00:43:59.580
Getting rid of that bias would be my top priority, right?

00:43:59.900 --> 00:44:01.580
Why why why should it be so consequential?

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

00:44:05.180 --> 00:44:05.980
normative force.

00:44:06.140 --> 00:44:07.180
Is it what you're saying?

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,

00:44:12.450 --> 00:44:13.650
that's a belief that I really care about.

00:44:13.730 --> 00:44:17.970
I really care that my belief about my daughter's suffering or lack thereof is accurate,

00:44:18.050 --> 00:44:18.370
right?

00:44:18.530 --> 00:44:18.850
Yeah.

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

00:44:24.130 --> 00:44:26.610
actually biased, was actually inaccurate.

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,

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

00:44:34.850 --> 00:44:35.330
in yourself.

00:44:35.760 --> 00:44:36.080
Exactly.

00:44:36.160 --> 00:44:39.280
And I would be extremely motivated to get rid of that bias.

00:44:39.760 --> 00:44:42.320
To do whatever it took to get rid of that bias.

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

00:44:46.240 --> 00:44:47.920
ideologies or in their political judgments.

00:44:48.240 --> 00:44:48.560
Exactly.

00:44:48.720 --> 00:44:53.360
The motivation to overcome political bias is virtually absent.

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

00:44:58.470 --> 00:45:00.870
supposedly care most about those beliefs.

00:45:01.030 --> 00:45:01.350
Right?

00:45:01.830 --> 00:45:05.510
Which suggests that their accuracy motives, if they exist, are really, really weak and

00:45:05.510 --> 00:45:06.790
really not their priority.

00:45:07.190 --> 00:45:07.750
Exactly.

00:45:07.990 --> 00:45:08.470
Exactly.

00:45:08.790 --> 00:45:10.950
You incidentally, do you think there are accuracy motives?

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

00:45:15.270 --> 00:45:17.430
also a scholar of political psychology.

00:45:17.590 --> 00:45:20.630
He doubts that there are anything like accuracy motives.

00:45:20.710 --> 00:45:23.510
He thinks that it's like it's like a folk theory of psychology.

00:45:24.020 --> 00:45:26.660
Well, I think that I'm that that seems crazy to me.

00:45:26.740 --> 00:45:29.300
It's like there definitely are accuracy motives in some kind of things.

00:45:29.540 --> 00:45:33.380
Accuracy motives, accuracy motives in the domain of abstract beliefs about how society

00:45:33.380 --> 00:45:33.860
works, let's say.

00:45:34.180 --> 00:45:38.420
Because of course we have accuracy motives about not dumping into furniture in the room or

00:45:38.420 --> 00:45:38.740
whatever.

00:45:38.900 --> 00:45:43.140
But when it comes to higher order beliefs about how society works at large or microscopic

00:45:43.140 --> 00:45:45.300
facts or whatever, do you think people have an accuracy motive?

00:45:45.380 --> 00:45:46.660
You would you would think so.

00:45:47.030 --> 00:45:47.430
Hmm.

00:45:47.590 --> 00:45:48.950
That's uh that's a tough question.

00:45:49.030 --> 00:45:49.990
I'm not sure.

00:45:50.230 --> 00:45:55.750
Um I think I can imagine that the that that such motives might exist, um,

00:45:55.910 --> 00:46:01.270
insofar as those, you know, macroscopic beliefs have, you know, concrete practical

00:46:01.270 --> 00:46:01.750
implications.

00:46:01.910 --> 00:46:07.350
So like my larger abstract beliefs about how society works or how gender works, like those

00:46:07.500 --> 00:46:12.140
I could see how those might affect my practical decisions in day-to-day life.

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

00:46:16.060 --> 00:46:20.620
example, um that could uh you know affect you know how I interact with specific humans,

00:46:20.780 --> 00:46:21.100
right?

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.

00:46:25.660 --> 00:46:25.820
Yeah.

00:46:26.620 --> 00:46:30.060
There's the question of the of the practical usefulness of those beliefs being true, but

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

00:46:35.410 --> 00:46:40.370
right in those domains by scaffolding from your concern for being right about practical

00:46:40.370 --> 00:46:41.010
affairs, right?

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

00:46:45.810 --> 00:46:46.130
truth.

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

00:46:49.410 --> 00:46:50.530
there that they're there, etc.

00:46:50.770 --> 00:46:53.650
I need to make practical use of the concept of the truth there.

00:46:53.730 --> 00:46:56.450
I have an accuracy model for those practical affairs.

00:46:56.690 --> 00:47:02.340
I extend that concern to more abstract sense of affairs that don't

00:47:02.580 --> 00:47:06.740
that cannot affect me as concretely as the the functures I could bump into.

00:47:07.300 --> 00:47:12.500
So I think it's conceivable that there is like a psychological extension or scaffolding of

00:47:12.500 --> 00:47:17.460
that concern to other to other domains of cognition that are wider in scope or smaller.

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

00:47:23.300 --> 00:47:23.620
digress.

00:47:24.050 --> 00:47:29.890
I think it's plausible that you know once you get sufficiently abstract and distant

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

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

00:47:40.530 --> 00:47:41.970
coalitional implications.

00:47:42.130 --> 00:47:44.050
That seems plausible to me.

00:47:45.970 --> 00:47:51.410
One limit that I would potentially see to the theory that um most ideological beliefs are

00:47:51.410 --> 00:47:53.980
just reflective is extremists.

00:47:54.140 --> 00:47:54.300
Yeah.

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

00:47:59.660 --> 00:48:01.740
Scott Aitron, Hamad Shaik, etc.

00:48:02.860 --> 00:48:08.140
Those guys are really dead sure that their ideology is true and they're willing to

00:48:08.140 --> 00:48:13.420
sacrifice the totality of their self-interest uh for abstract causes

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.

00:48:18.550 --> 00:48:18.790
Yeah.

00:48:19.350 --> 00:48:24.310
Maybe, you know, processes of competitive signaling within the group involved a little bit.

00:48:24.710 --> 00:48:29.910
Um, I seem to be remembering that suicide terrorists, you know, sometimes make the promise

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

00:48:34.310 --> 00:48:36.390
the feeling that it's too late to paddle back, etc.

00:48:36.950 --> 00:48:41.670
So there might be like social processes of status competition and not losing the face that

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

00:48:47.200 --> 00:48:51.280
sacrifice for the caliphate, I'm gonna sacrifice for the communist revolution, I'm gonna

00:48:51.280 --> 00:48:52.480
sacrifice for my nation.

00:48:52.640 --> 00:48:56.880
I have difficulty believing that those are not causally efficient in motivating the

00:48:56.880 --> 00:48:57.520
behavior.

00:48:58.160 --> 00:49:02.960
But for at least a small segment of extremists or very committed, uh devoted actors, like

00:49:03.040 --> 00:49:06.480
you know, Scott Aitwin would call them, or super courageous soldiers or whatever.

00:49:07.890 --> 00:49:09.970
Yeah, no, that that's definitely like the toughest case.

00:49:10.210 --> 00:49:10.850
For sure.

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

00:49:17.250 --> 00:49:18.290
reflective.

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,

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

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.

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

00:49:40.920 --> 00:49:42.040
they engaged in the action.

00:49:42.120 --> 00:49:46.280
That is exactly what they wanted to make you think with the action.

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

00:49:49.800 --> 00:49:53.400
extraordinarily devoted to this cause, right?

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

00:49:59.080 --> 00:50:04.650
awe-inspiring way are sufficiently large and you're in a community where status is

00:50:04.650 --> 00:50:08.570
extremely intertwined with the status of your family members.

00:50:08.890 --> 00:50:12.730
Um and you're your status prospects are quite low.

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

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

00:50:23.050 --> 00:50:23.370
make.

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,

00:50:28.090 --> 00:50:34.020
you know, really large status gambles that could make sense for, you know, a small number

00:50:34.020 --> 00:50:39.060
of individuals in some contexts where where um status and kinship are deeply intertwined

00:50:39.140 --> 00:50:42.500
and where status prospects uh otherwise are low.

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

00:50:48.180 --> 00:50:48.340
head.

00:50:48.420 --> 00:50:50.580
I don't know what what they're what they truly believe or not.

00:50:50.820 --> 00:50:51.220
Who knows?

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.

00:50:56.130 --> 00:51:01.010
Yeah, I think for a range of those extremists, uh your analysis is completely correct.

00:51:01.090 --> 00:51:06.210
Uh, you know, as as secular westerners, we tend to underestimate the degree to which um

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

00:51:11.970 --> 00:51:13.330
like uh Muslim communities, etc.

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.

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

00:51:23.260 --> 00:51:26.700
really to be remembering Scott Aitran, Sam Harris, etc.

00:51:27.260 --> 00:51:32.060
repeating the point that a lot of um terrorists were especially lone wolves that were

00:51:32.060 --> 00:51:38.060
relatively disenfranchised that didn't seem to be able to derive a lot

00:51:38.060 --> 00:51:40.460
of status benefits from their extremism.

00:51:42.630 --> 00:51:47.350
the or on the other hand, they were pretty well socially integrated and they had pretty

00:51:47.350 --> 00:51:48.950
good economic prospects.

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

00:51:55.110 --> 00:52:00.710
relatively middle class, even somewhat upper class guys, a lot of engineers, Jordan, Egypt,

00:52:00.790 --> 00:52:01.350
etc.

00:52:02.630 --> 00:52:04.790
Those guys had outside options.

00:52:05.040 --> 00:52:06.960
Um they had pretty good lives.

00:52:07.120 --> 00:52:09.280
I think some of them were living in the US already.

00:52:09.520 --> 00:52:12.080
Many of them, most of them were living in the US already.

00:52:12.320 --> 00:52:16.000
Um so there you would say their motivation was not economic.

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

00:52:21.840 --> 00:52:27.120
prestige that they would derive within their Muslim communities back home, for instance, or

00:52:27.200 --> 00:52:29.040
or maybe their families in the US or whatever.

00:52:29.120 --> 00:52:32.480
That that that's what you would retain as the as the most plausible explanation?

00:52:32.830 --> 00:52:33.870
Yeah, that's what I would say.

00:52:33.950 --> 00:52:35.310
Yeah, and that's that's a good point.

00:52:39.950 --> 00:52:45.710
That if if if you know no plausible status motive exists that could cause a

00:52:45.710 --> 00:52:50.190
behavior like that, then yeah, that that challenges what I'm saying.

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

00:52:54.910 --> 00:52:56.510
attacks in December 25.

00:52:57.440 --> 00:53:02.320
I went to Australia in December to study people's social perceptions of the attacks, and

00:53:02.320 --> 00:53:04.320
there are their fork theory of jihadism.

00:53:04.400 --> 00:53:06.960
I haven't published a paper yet, but I'm writing it up.

00:53:07.280 --> 00:53:13.120
And there, if I'm not wrong, those two jihadi guys, one son, one dad,

00:53:13.280 --> 00:53:18.080
operated mostly as lone wolves, and they weren't they were like relatively recent um

00:53:18.310 --> 00:53:24.230
converts to political Islam and um I'm not sure they really depended on

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.

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

00:53:35.190 --> 00:53:39.910
symptoms of like extreme belief rigidity or maybe some forms of autism or psychopathy that

00:53:39.910 --> 00:53:41.670
are that are driving the effect a bit.

00:53:42.070 --> 00:53:44.400
More also rewards and status.

00:53:44.640 --> 00:53:44.880
Yeah.

00:53:45.520 --> 00:53:48.640
But I must also admit that I'm not enough of a specialist of extremism.

00:53:48.800 --> 00:53:53.600
So details of those life trajectories, and I don't know enough about them.

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

00:53:58.640 --> 00:53:59.120
examples.

00:53:59.280 --> 00:54:03.440
I do think the evidence is a is a bit stronger for mass shootings.

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

00:54:07.210 --> 00:54:13.050
that these are humiliated people who who are low status and seek to and their

00:54:13.050 --> 00:54:14.650
status prospects are very low.

00:54:14.810 --> 00:54:20.330
And and through doing this act of mass violence, they can at least attain some status.

00:54:20.490 --> 00:54:25.690
And these are usually highly narcissistic status motivated people who who are hu who feel

00:54:25.690 --> 00:54:27.530
humiliated and are are driven to commit these acts.

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.

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

00:54:38.800 --> 00:54:40.720
the case might not be as strong.

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

00:54:45.520 --> 00:54:46.400
computationally?

00:54:46.640 --> 00:54:51.680
So th there's a cognitive process of status acquisition that motivates the extremism.

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

00:54:57.870 --> 00:55:01.790
comes back to basically camp or the tribe uh and survives the action.

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

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

00:55:10.830 --> 00:55:15.150
function of status acquisition cannot be fulfilled, or it's just fulfilled at the at the

00:55:15.150 --> 00:55:18.350
psychological level in the moment of satisfaction when they kill everybody on the on the

00:55:18.350 --> 00:55:18.670
campus.

00:55:18.750 --> 00:55:20.110
So, like what do you think is going on?

00:55:20.880 --> 00:55:22.080
Yeah, I'm not sure.

00:55:22.240 --> 00:55:23.440
Um exactly.

00:55:23.600 --> 00:55:29.440
Yeah, i it might be that, you know, our status psychology is kind of cluey

00:55:29.520 --> 00:55:35.040
and doesn't really calculate, you know, what's gonna happen, like what whether status

00:55:35.040 --> 00:55:36.720
really matters after you're dead or not.

00:55:37.040 --> 00:55:39.040
Um that that could be part of it.

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

00:55:43.040 --> 00:55:46.400
status comes to us is sort of not as relevant as it should be.

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

00:55:50.950 --> 00:55:51.990
reach that status goal.

00:55:52.070 --> 00:55:52.310
Yeah.

00:55:52.630 --> 00:55:52.950
Right.

00:55:53.030 --> 00:55:54.390
That that could be it.

00:55:54.630 --> 00:55:55.750
Um I'm not sure.

00:55:55.830 --> 00:56:00.550
But then again, like, you know, status effects after your death still matter for fitness.

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

00:56:06.230 --> 00:56:08.230
and have a really good reputation for being a hero.

00:56:08.630 --> 00:56:08.790
Yeah.

00:56:11.190 --> 00:56:11.430
Yeah.

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

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

00:56:22.040 --> 00:56:23.240
your family members.

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

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

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.

00:56:34.520 --> 00:56:36.600
Uh and so those kinds of effects exist as well.

00:56:36.760 --> 00:56:42.390
I mean, there's a whole understudied area of like the psychology of legacy and posthumous

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

00:56:46.310 --> 00:56:46.870
looking at.

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

00:56:51.830 --> 00:56:57.350
ever with the um with the with a commentary article in BBS in 2018

00:56:57.830 --> 00:56:59.190
uh on the White House, R.

00:56:59.510 --> 00:57:04.000
Whitehouse, you know, the Oxford anthropologist, he was basically proposing a um a theory

00:57:04.000 --> 00:57:09.440
of self-sacrifice in you know extreme military or terrorist behavior and he theory his

00:57:09.440 --> 00:57:15.280
theory relied only on inclusive fitness and the idea that the ideology hacks your your your

00:57:15.280 --> 00:57:19.120
family-based sense of altruism and I was like what about reciprocity models?

00:57:19.280 --> 00:57:20.960
What about partner choice models?

00:57:21.200 --> 00:57:25.600
Maybe people who sacrifice themselves in combat, who jump on a grenade or whatever.

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

00:57:29.790 --> 00:57:32.990
will survive and will accrue status while coming back to camp.

00:57:33.310 --> 00:57:34.590
But something happens.

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

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

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.

00:57:48.620 --> 00:57:49.100
Interesting.

00:57:49.260 --> 00:57:49.660
I don't know.

00:57:49.740 --> 00:57:50.300
Yeah, I agree.

00:57:50.380 --> 00:57:53.740
There's not a lot of debate on that in evolutionary social science.

00:57:53.900 --> 00:57:57.420
Uh for one good reason, which is that it's very speculative.

00:57:57.580 --> 00:57:57.820
Yeah.

00:57:58.140 --> 00:58:02.380
People could come up with mathematical models, etc., but good luck running experiments on

00:58:02.380 --> 00:58:07.420
self-sacrifice and also good luck just approaching observationally people who are extreme

00:58:07.420 --> 00:58:08.780
enough to commit that kind of act.

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

00:58:14.220 --> 00:58:16.540
few people do that with an evolutionary mindset.

00:58:16.830 --> 00:58:17.070
Yeah.

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

00:58:23.150 --> 00:58:24.670
the signal recipients.

00:58:24.830 --> 00:58:28.910
You know, if if extreme self sacrifices are signals, you could understand the psychology of

00:58:28.910 --> 00:58:32.910
the signal receivers and what they infer about someone who sacrificed their life for

00:58:32.910 --> 00:58:38.270
someone and their motivation to to benefit that that person or uh give them reputational

00:58:38.270 --> 00:58:42.990
rewards or or you know confer benefits to the person's associates or family members.

00:58:43.150 --> 00:58:47.400
Like you could study that aspect of it um pretty pretty fruitfully.

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.

00:58:50.520 --> 00:58:51.400
That that's a good point.

00:58:51.640 --> 00:58:55.560
There's uh I'm considering to do a research trip to Israel in November.

00:58:55.720 --> 00:58:56.040
Yeah.

00:58:56.120 --> 00:59:00.200
Uh to get acquainted with the literature on extremism and you know depolarization

00:59:00.200 --> 00:59:02.520
techniques, etc, that the Israelis have deployed.

00:59:02.680 --> 00:59:06.680
And yeah, you're right, like the Palestinian public opinion would be ideal to study

00:59:07.030 --> 00:59:12.550
perceptions of martyrdom and and extremism among the population on the recipient side.

00:59:12.950 --> 00:59:16.310
There are polls and there are experiments to be run on Palestinians there.

00:59:16.790 --> 00:59:19.350
But here again, it's not easy to access those populations.

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

00:59:23.510 --> 00:59:25.190
five hundred Palestinians to answer it.

00:59:25.350 --> 00:59:26.630
It's possible, but it's difficult.

00:59:26.710 --> 00:59:28.150
There's an entry barrier.

00:59:28.460 --> 00:59:28.860
Yeah.

00:59:29.020 --> 00:59:30.060
Yeah, for sure.

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.

00:59:34.620 --> 00:59:40.300
Um well, uh evolutionary psychologists who are listening, get on get on this topic of

00:59:40.380 --> 00:59:46.300
um self-sacrifice, uh legacy, posthumous fitness effects, um totally

00:59:46.300 --> 00:59:47.980
understudied and extremely important.

00:59:48.490 --> 00:59:48.730
Yeah.

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

00:59:53.130 --> 00:59:57.690
power when you can ask your questions to large nationally representative samples of people.

00:59:57.930 --> 00:59:58.090
Yeah.

00:59:58.250 --> 01:00:02.970
But then almost by definition, people will those people will not be very radical, not be

01:00:02.970 --> 01:00:04.090
extremists.

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

01:00:09.930 --> 01:00:12.490
the and the thinking processes of extremists, it's possible.

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

01:00:16.920 --> 01:00:20.760
Arabic or whatever, to push those people to begin with, and samples will be small.

01:00:21.240 --> 01:00:25.000
It's harder to draw inferences that are evolutionally meaningful for the species.

01:00:25.480 --> 01:00:26.280
Yeah, for sure.

01:00:26.520 --> 01:00:31.800
I mean, it it reminds me a bit of Ed Hagen's work on suicidality.

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

01:00:37.640 --> 01:00:43.510
cases of power, social power imbalance or social conflict, um it can

01:00:43.670 --> 01:00:49.590
be rational to um send a really extreme uh uh uh injurious signal or

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

01:00:55.510 --> 01:00:59.830
out of a really bad situation of of social conflict and and powerlessness.

01:00:59.990 --> 01:01:03.350
Um and that because competition did he study, do you remember?

01:01:03.750 --> 01:01:07.670
Um I forget the the population in particular that he looked at with this.

01:01:08.200 --> 01:01:13.560
But he does find empirically that people who attempt suicide do receive all sorts of

01:01:13.560 --> 01:01:16.760
benefits following the suicide attempt.

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

01:01:21.640 --> 01:01:23.480
less following the suicide attempt.

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

01:01:27.080 --> 01:01:30.200
know, marry someone in an arranged marriage, they might attempt suicide, and then the

01:01:30.200 --> 01:01:31.320
marriage gets called off.

01:01:31.480 --> 01:01:34.070
Like those So he studied those types of effects.

01:01:34.150 --> 01:01:39.270
So there's at least some evidence that these extreme um signals can have benefits.

01:01:39.350 --> 01:01:43.430
And if you look at the actual probabilities that these suicide attempts will be completed,

01:01:43.510 --> 01:01:47.030
um, it could be that the benefits outweigh the expected costs.

01:01:48.070 --> 01:01:53.270
Um and so there might be something uh analogous to um extreme

01:01:53.270 --> 01:01:56.710
self-sacrifice, to you know suicidal uh political violence.

01:01:56.870 --> 01:01:58.950
I'm not sure you know what what the calculations are.

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

01:02:03.940 --> 01:02:07.860
you know attempts to kill themselves in an act of political violence, like how many are

01:02:07.860 --> 01:02:09.220
there a lot of failed attempts at that?

01:02:09.300 --> 01:02:10.500
I I have no idea.

01:02:10.660 --> 01:02:14.260
Um how how often are they are they are they truly completed?

01:02:14.420 --> 01:02:17.540
You know, how I wouldn't be able to I wouldn't be able to tell.

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

01:02:22.180 --> 01:02:26.260
the veil of ignorance about mortality from uh John Tuby and Lida Cosmidis.

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

01:02:31.070 --> 01:02:33.710
you don't know who's going to get killed if anyone gets killed.

01:02:34.270 --> 01:02:38.590
First of all, otherwise, you know, it's not worth the risk for any individual fighter.

01:02:38.830 --> 01:02:44.750
And uh and often there's an asymmetry in so basically raids in um hunter-gatherer

01:02:44.750 --> 01:02:47.550
societies are very murderous for the group that gets attacked.

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

01:02:52.350 --> 01:02:52.910
whatever.

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

01:02:58.040 --> 01:03:01.720
and whatnot, the risk of being killed yourself as the assailient, as the attackant,

01:03:01.960 --> 01:03:02.920
actually quite low.

01:03:03.080 --> 01:03:08.120
And so that's probably why the whole collective behavior evolved in the first place.

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

01:03:12.120 --> 01:03:14.840
on the attacker side, the risk of dying are low.

01:03:15.090 --> 01:03:18.210
and we worry more about the the those watching it then.

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

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.

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

01:03:31.170 --> 01:03:33.570
object, like we can understand that.

01:03:33.730 --> 01:03:34.610
Um I don't know.

01:03:34.690 --> 01:03:40.220
I mean 'cause if you look at cases of um seppuku in in Japan, um, like

01:03:40.300 --> 01:03:45.900
those fit my model actually pretty good because those are extremely um uh uh interdependent

01:03:45.900 --> 01:03:48.220
societies where kinship is hugely important.

01:03:48.300 --> 01:03:53.020
And if you suffer shame and dishonor your family, that could have devastating fitness uh

01:03:53.020 --> 01:03:53.580
impacts.

01:03:53.740 --> 01:03:58.700
And if the only way to offset those devastating fitness impacts is by killing yourself, it

01:03:58.700 --> 01:04:01.660
could be uh fitness-wise irrational calculation.

01:04:01.820 --> 01:04:04.550
Um and so it could be in cases like that.

01:04:04.790 --> 01:04:09.750
Um maybe this model applies, but with you know, modern technologies like bombs that you

01:04:09.750 --> 01:04:12.310
know we don't really understand how they work.

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

01:04:17.270 --> 01:04:20.630
people might be willing to walk the extra mile and and actually kill themselves.

01:04:20.710 --> 01:04:20.950
Yeah.

01:04:21.110 --> 01:04:21.350
Maybe.

01:04:21.590 --> 01:04:21.990
Yeah.

01:04:22.230 --> 01:04:22.710
Yeah.

01:04:22.870 --> 01:04:23.820
Uh it's interesting.

01:04:24.940 --> 01:04:25.420
I don't know.

01:04:25.500 --> 01:04:29.900
I I don't know enough about extremism anymore to really be talking about it publicly.

01:04:30.060 --> 01:04:32.060
Uh it actually was fun.

01:04:33.100 --> 01:04:34.860
Yeah, for sure.

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

01:04:40.860 --> 01:04:42.620
it's it's paradoxical.

01:04:43.180 --> 01:04:46.300
Um, and that is that love paradoxes, don't you?

01:04:46.730 --> 01:04:47.050
I do.

01:04:47.130 --> 01:04:48.490
I do love social paradoxes.

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

01:04:54.090 --> 01:04:55.210
a social paradox.

01:04:55.370 --> 01:05:00.970
Um so the idea that um if I'm really committed to truth with a

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.

01:05:06.250 --> 01:05:10.570
And anybody who's not committed to the truth and being rational, screw them.

01:05:10.730 --> 01:05:12.490
I hate them, let's punish them.

01:05:12.730 --> 01:05:18.220
Um the more I have that moralization of rationality and truth with a capital T,

01:05:18.940 --> 01:05:23.900
of being, you know, of seeing reality clearly, the more I hold that attitude.

01:05:23.980 --> 01:05:28.940
In fact, the less rational I am and the less connected to truth I actually am.

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

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

01:05:39.260 --> 01:05:44.610
logic, that those types of people are in fact the the most likely to spread um

01:05:44.770 --> 01:05:50.770
inaccurate, misleading, um distorting news to sort of curry favor with

01:05:50.850 --> 01:05:51.650
with their coalition.

01:05:51.730 --> 01:05:54.770
Is that is that roughly correct or am I um uh oversimplifying?

01:05:55.250 --> 01:05:55.410
Correct.

01:05:55.570 --> 01:05:56.290
It's roughly correct.

01:05:56.530 --> 01:05:58.210
First of all, thanks for your interest in that paper.

01:05:58.370 --> 01:06:02.290
It came out in political communication and I published it with the Michael Beng Pearson.

01:06:02.530 --> 01:06:06.800
I think the story is slightly less sexy and attention grabbing than that.

01:06:06.880 --> 01:06:08.400
But but but thanks for interest.

01:06:08.880 --> 01:06:14.480
What we show is that people who score higher in moralization of rationality, so people who

01:06:14.480 --> 01:06:20.480
elevate basing your beliefs on logic and the evidence more, that's

01:06:20.480 --> 01:06:25.120
possibly associated with more willingness to share hostile news that target the art group,

01:06:25.680 --> 01:06:27.710
and including hostile fake news.

01:06:27.790 --> 01:06:30.750
But we have no reason to be that people know that the fake news were false.

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.

01:06:34.750 --> 01:06:37.550
So it's at least plausibly connected to motivated reasoning.

01:06:37.870 --> 01:06:38.430
Yes, yes.

01:06:38.670 --> 01:06:43.470
At least it's at least it predicts something like political hostility on the public sphere

01:06:43.630 --> 01:06:46.590
and the assumption that it's okay to insert political enemies.

01:06:46.670 --> 01:06:46.910
Okay.

01:06:46.990 --> 01:06:47.390
Yeah.

01:06:47.620 --> 01:06:52.020
And then what we show is that that relationship between moralizing rationality and sharing

01:06:52.020 --> 01:06:58.020
hostile news is largely explained, like there it has a lot of overlapping variance with the

01:06:58.020 --> 01:07:02.260
correlation between being a status seeker and sharing hostile news.

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

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

01:07:10.340 --> 01:07:11.940
moralization or rationality.

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

01:07:16.670 --> 01:07:17.710
hostile news.

01:07:17.790 --> 01:07:21.470
And when you when you control for the association between moralization of rationality and

01:07:21.470 --> 01:07:26.830
hostile news sharing with the status seeking metrics, the coefficient of moralization of

01:07:26.910 --> 01:07:30.670
ration moralization of rationality goes down by about two-thirds.

01:07:30.750 --> 01:07:30.990
Okay.

01:07:31.310 --> 01:07:31.550
Interesting.

01:07:31.790 --> 01:07:37.780
So it sounds like it seems like those people who claim to be rationality moralizers

01:07:37.780 --> 01:07:42.340
are in fact status seekers or people who like to engage in moral understanding.

01:07:42.500 --> 01:07:48.100
And they will try to rationalize or sublimate or cloak or hide those status seeking

01:07:48.100 --> 01:07:51.540
motives under the guise of being motivated by the truth.

01:07:52.100 --> 01:07:55.060
Maybe there's something like a self-deception process going on.

01:07:55.220 --> 01:07:59.620
They tell themselves that the true motive for their hostility is the pursuit of the truth

01:07:59.700 --> 01:08:03.380
and being objective and being in touch with reality, etc.

01:08:03.770 --> 01:08:07.850
But it seems like actually the the the core motivation that drives them is more like

01:08:07.850 --> 01:08:11.610
partisan hostility and still seeking and the pressure to dominate opponents.

01:08:11.770 --> 01:08:11.930
Yes.

01:08:12.170 --> 01:08:14.010
Is it a bit more is it a bit more clear?

01:08:14.250 --> 01:08:15.610
Yes, so thank you.

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

01:08:20.330 --> 01:08:24.010
call uh grandstanding, you know, what what group has called grandstanding, moral

01:08:24.090 --> 01:08:24.890
grandstanding.

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

01:08:30.360 --> 01:08:35.000
enter the political arena and be heard, and if you don't want to immediately activate

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

01:08:39.560 --> 01:08:44.040
mobilize people for your cause and against your enemies, etc., you have to claim like

01:08:44.040 --> 01:08:46.200
you're on the side of the truth and rationality.

01:08:46.280 --> 01:08:50.440
You have to claim like you have data and rigorous thinking on your side.

01:08:50.680 --> 01:08:52.120
Otherwise people won't pay attention.

01:08:52.280 --> 01:08:56.490
And so I think there's a like cultural selection pressure whereby in modern environments

01:08:56.570 --> 01:09:00.730
that are so permeated by the culture of science, rationality, and the rhetoric of

01:09:00.730 --> 01:09:05.210
objectivity, people feel obligated to claim that they have objectivity and the truth on

01:09:05.210 --> 01:09:08.890
their side if you want they want to play their status games and their partisan games.

01:09:08.970 --> 01:09:14.730
And I think that's what what's happening in our US samples of basically prolific

01:09:14.730 --> 01:09:18.490
workers and one you go sample that it's naturally representative.

01:09:18.810 --> 01:09:22.600
We manage to replicate those effects that I've described two times in three independent

01:09:22.600 --> 01:09:23.000
samples.

01:09:23.160 --> 01:09:24.600
So the effect is really there.

01:09:25.000 --> 01:09:25.240
Cool.

01:09:25.400 --> 01:09:27.960
Yeah, no, it's it's a really fascinating effect.

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

01:09:33.720 --> 01:09:39.640
recent paper in American Psychologist, um The Evolution of Social Paradoxes, um, where uh

01:09:39.800 --> 01:09:45.550
status seeking is uh rarely overt, um, because if I come out as an

01:09:45.550 --> 01:09:50.830
overt status seeker or overtly seeking dominance and superiority, well, my status is

01:09:50.830 --> 01:09:53.870
actually going to fall rather than uh uh increase.

01:09:54.110 --> 01:09:54.510
Right.

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

01:09:59.950 --> 01:10:04.910
just looking morally superior, about dominating my political enemies, about gaining status

01:10:04.910 --> 01:10:06.990
in my coalition, if those are my true goals.

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

01:10:10.670 --> 01:10:11.740
be thwarted, right?

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

01:10:17.420 --> 01:10:20.940
has nothing to do with status seeking and and dominance.

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

01:10:27.020 --> 01:10:29.580
truth or rationality is the cover story.

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

01:10:34.990 --> 01:10:38.590
dominate people, but because I care about the truth with a capital T.

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

01:10:43.950 --> 01:10:46.830
uh punishing liars and people who try to hide the truth.

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

01:10:52.830 --> 01:10:53.230
motive.

01:10:53.390 --> 01:10:56.030
And I think these cover stories are are are everywhere in our culture.

01:10:56.270 --> 01:10:56.600
I agree.

01:10:59.560 --> 01:10:59.880
Yeah.

01:11:00.360 --> 01:11:04.440
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm pretty convinced that sacred values are also a form of moral

01:11:04.440 --> 01:11:05.400
grandstanding.

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

01:11:10.040 --> 01:11:13.160
people never really for real saquarize anything.

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

01:11:17.800 --> 01:11:20.040
their secret values are inviolable, etc.

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

01:11:25.190 --> 01:11:30.230
value as being a trade-off between two secret values, the trade-offs become acceptable.

01:11:30.310 --> 01:11:33.670
So it suggests that people don't really absolutice any value for real.

01:11:33.990 --> 01:11:37.910
They just claim they do to save the face for revolutional benefits.

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

01:11:43.350 --> 01:11:48.920
their I don't know, nuclear program or their organ

01:11:49.240 --> 01:11:53.320
donations or whatever that they claim to be sacralizing are in fact not that sacred.

01:11:53.640 --> 01:11:53.960
Hmm.

01:11:54.040 --> 01:11:55.080
Could you actually elaborate?

01:11:55.240 --> 01:11:58.040
I I'm I don't know if I'm familiar with this um this paper.

01:11:58.120 --> 01:11:58.760
So uh

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

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

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

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

01:12:25.910 --> 01:12:31.350
that it's called um taboo trade-offs and heritageal counterfactuals um in which he

01:12:31.350 --> 01:12:37.110
basically says that um you know political entrepreneurs and and and citizens etc by default

01:12:37.110 --> 01:12:43.000
claim to have uh inviolable sacred values, uh, but they will consent to

01:12:43.000 --> 01:12:47.640
trading those sacred values against other values if the other values are presented as

01:12:47.640 --> 01:12:48.840
equally sacred.

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

01:12:54.280 --> 01:12:59.080
sounding like you're trying to arbitrate between two super core core moral values, it

01:12:59.080 --> 01:13:02.920
becomes a bit acceptable to desecralize the putative secret value.

01:13:03.000 --> 01:13:03.720
You know what I mean?

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

01:13:07.880 --> 01:13:13.330
sacred, It's more like a posturing, a sincere posturing, probably, a reflective belief that

01:13:13.330 --> 01:13:14.530
they hold sincerely, etc.

01:13:14.690 --> 01:13:14.930
etc.

01:13:15.330 --> 01:13:19.890
But it doesn't have the behavioral traction, the motivational traction that it should have

01:13:19.890 --> 01:13:25.090
if they fully endorse the belief intuitively, uh fully, literally.

01:13:25.410 --> 01:13:26.450
Is it making sense?

01:13:26.850 --> 01:13:32.740
Yeah, so let's say I think that you know freedom is sacred and security

01:13:32.740 --> 01:13:33.220
is sacred.

01:13:33.300 --> 01:13:36.260
And there are obviously cases where those two values trade off.

01:13:36.340 --> 01:13:41.300
That in order to increase my security and safety from, say, terrorism or domestic or

01:13:41.300 --> 01:13:46.020
international threats or whatever, we need to ramp up surveillance and really get uh and

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,

01:13:50.740 --> 01:13:50.820
right?

01:13:50.980 --> 01:13:55.140
We need to, you know, punish people who are saying damaging things out of concern for

01:13:55.140 --> 01:13:55.860
safety.

01:13:56.100 --> 01:14:01.010
So if these two values conflict, say freedom and and safety, um

01:14:01.810 --> 01:14:07.650
then uh if you offer me money to say give up my

01:14:07.970 --> 01:14:11.490
personal freedom, um I will say no, freedom is sacred to me.

01:14:11.570 --> 01:14:11.650
Right.

01:14:11.890 --> 01:14:12.850
That's gonna back fire.

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

01:14:19.170 --> 01:14:21.410
say no, that's no that's insulting.

01:14:21.490 --> 01:14:22.210
How dare you, right?

01:14:22.290 --> 01:14:24.500
I'll I won't accept that money.

01:14:24.820 --> 01:14:30.740
But if you say um, well, in order to um preserve our security, we need to

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

01:14:33.940 --> 01:14:36.260
security, then I'm much more likely to say yes.

01:14:36.500 --> 01:14:37.540
To say yes, we should do that.

01:14:37.620 --> 01:14:38.660
Is that basically the idea?

01:14:38.980 --> 01:14:40.180
That's exactly the idea, yeah.

01:14:40.340 --> 01:14:41.700
Okay, that's exactly the idea.

01:14:41.860 --> 01:14:47.460
And I'm remembering um the preprint by Manjir Singh and Mochi Hoffman,

01:14:47.860 --> 01:14:53.670
unpublished, called Commitment and Impersonation a Repetitional Based Theory of

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

01:14:58.470 --> 01:15:02.950
because they came to have like offered a pretty exhaustive treatment of sacred values.

01:15:03.510 --> 01:15:09.430
And I remember them saying saying saying something about um when

01:15:09.590 --> 01:15:14.790
political actors should be most motivated to herald their values as being really sacred.

01:15:15.580 --> 01:15:17.580
And I don't quite remember what they say.

01:15:17.740 --> 01:15:22.220
But basically, if the if the goal is to maintain a good reputation, there are specific

01:15:22.220 --> 01:15:25.980
situations where you should really broadcast the fact that you really consider the secret

01:15:26.060 --> 01:15:27.260
value as being sacred.

01:15:27.500 --> 01:15:32.300
And you should be seeming like you will never accept to treat it against something secular

01:15:32.380 --> 01:15:36.710
like money or uh economic benefit or whatever.

01:15:36.870 --> 01:15:39.670
Uh but so yeah, if you're interested in secret values, look up that paper.

01:15:39.830 --> 01:15:40.550
Did you know it?

01:15:40.790 --> 01:15:41.910
Yeah, I I I do know it.

01:15:41.990 --> 01:15:43.430
Yeah, I I am familiar with it for sure.

01:15:43.510 --> 01:15:43.750
Yeah.

01:15:43.830 --> 01:15:44.550
Yeah, no, I like that paper.

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

01:15:49.990 --> 01:15:50.790
the time for it.

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

01:15:56.710 --> 01:15:58.390
thing has been around since 2021.

01:15:58.470 --> 01:15:59.350
I think it's a great paper.

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

01:16:04.400 --> 01:16:05.760
has tried anything else with it.

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.

01:16:09.840 --> 01:16:10.560
I I like it too.

01:16:10.640 --> 01:16:12.880
Yeah, I'll uh send them my way.

01:16:12.960 --> 01:16:14.800
Maybe I'll have time to help him out.

01:16:15.200 --> 01:16:18.080
Um, if you're listening, Manveer, um feel free to reach out.

01:16:18.240 --> 01:16:20.320
No, that I I love the paper too.

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

01:16:26.290 --> 01:16:31.730
of sacred or principled behavior is um designed to imitate

01:16:32.050 --> 01:16:36.930
extreme individuals who for whatever reason um act in that way.

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

01:16:41.010 --> 01:16:42.850
And they say nothing about those extreme individuals.

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

01:16:46.770 --> 01:16:47.570
they exist possibly?

01:16:47.650 --> 01:16:48.050
We don't know.

01:16:48.120 --> 01:16:49.560
And you're making no claim about this.

01:16:49.640 --> 01:16:50.360
We would like to know.

01:16:50.680 --> 01:16:51.000
I agree.

01:16:51.080 --> 01:16:54.280
Yeah, that I think is the major weakness of the paper.

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

01:16:59.160 --> 01:16:59.640
entirely.

01:16:59.800 --> 01:17:03.320
If you just imagine that we can imagine such people, right?

01:17:03.720 --> 01:17:06.760
And we can imagine that other people can imagine such people, right?

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

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

01:17:15.390 --> 01:17:15.710
that person.

01:17:15.790 --> 01:17:16.510
That's all it takes.

01:17:16.590 --> 01:17:18.750
It's just a matter of recursive mind reading, right?

01:17:18.830 --> 01:17:20.990
So you don't actually need those individuals to exist.

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

01:17:24.990 --> 01:17:25.150
them.

01:17:25.310 --> 01:17:28.190
And then you can get that sort of thing arising all on its own.

01:17:28.430 --> 01:17:28.830
So that's it.

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

01:17:33.310 --> 01:17:35.870
and very committed and have super focused interests.

01:17:36.540 --> 01:17:40.540
Are there people in the evolutionary social sciences or psychology who defend that that

01:17:40.540 --> 01:17:45.500
could be an evolutionary sorry, an evolutionary advantage of being autistic?

01:17:51.500 --> 01:17:56.860
Yeah, that that that the um pretty intense level of commitment that some autistic people

01:17:56.860 --> 01:18:02.350
are capable of might have been favored genetically through its uh signaling benefits or its

01:18:02.350 --> 01:18:03.070
commitment benefits.

01:18:03.150 --> 01:18:03.470
I don't know.

01:18:03.550 --> 01:18:04.910
Uh are there people who pretend that?

01:18:04.990 --> 01:18:05.950
I'm I'm asking generally.

01:18:06.190 --> 01:18:06.670
I have no idea.

01:18:06.910 --> 01:18:08.830
Oh, I I've I've I have not read anything on that.

01:18:08.910 --> 01:18:09.870
That's interesting.

01:18:10.110 --> 01:18:11.150
Um cool.

01:18:11.390 --> 01:18:15.150
I guess the default hypothesis would be that autistic people are high in systematizing

01:18:15.150 --> 01:18:20.910
intelligence, and therefore that makes them good analysts, engineers, uh problem

01:18:20.910 --> 01:18:22.030
solvers, blah, blah, blah.

01:18:22.270 --> 01:18:25.630
But it's also possible that the mental rigidity is beneficial for their reputation

01:18:25.710 --> 01:18:26.030
sometimes.

01:18:26.190 --> 01:18:26.750
I don't know.

01:18:27.470 --> 01:18:28.270
Interesting.

01:18:29.240 --> 01:18:31.000
Yeah, I'll have to think about that more.

01:18:31.240 --> 01:18:34.760
Um well, uh we're approaching an hour and a half.

01:18:34.840 --> 01:18:36.760
This has been a really fun conversation.

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

01:18:40.840 --> 01:18:42.440
forth and sharpen our our thinking.

01:18:42.840 --> 01:18:44.600
You've been a bit messy, and that's mostly my fault.

01:18:44.680 --> 01:18:48.440
I used to last night, but it was it was really funny.

01:18:48.840 --> 01:18:49.480
Yeah, for sure.

01:18:49.560 --> 01:18:52.120
Is there anything else that um you wish we would have covered?

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

01:18:56.520 --> 01:18:57.800
you're excited about?

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

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

01:19:08.290 --> 01:19:13.730
video scientific dissemination uh in the form of like short video capsules on Instagram.

01:19:13.890 --> 01:19:18.210
I talk about political psychology, social media, the relationship between the sexes,

01:19:18.450 --> 01:19:20.530
patriarchy, misogyny, etc.

01:19:21.200 --> 01:19:26.960
So beyond just looking up my uh my website, uh Antoine Marie SCI.com as a

01:19:26.960 --> 01:19:31.760
regular scholar and my uh Google Scholar, people can also, if they want, follow me on

01:19:31.760 --> 01:19:32.560
Instagram.

01:19:33.200 --> 01:19:36.800
Uh where my handle is, sorry, I forgot to to specify

01:19:37.120 --> 01:19:40.480
Antoine.marae.sci.

01:19:41.290 --> 01:19:44.170
But I don't expect your listeners to be very active on Instagram.

01:19:44.330 --> 01:19:46.170
I think they're too nerdy for this.

01:19:47.050 --> 01:19:47.930
Perhaps, yes.

01:19:48.010 --> 01:19:49.290
I don't have an Instagram account myself.

01:19:49.370 --> 01:19:52.650
So but if you do have Instagram, uh follow Antoine.

01:19:52.730 --> 01:19:54.250
He's uh an excellent scholar.

01:19:54.410 --> 01:19:56.330
Um this has been a lot of fun, Antoine.

01:19:56.410 --> 01:19:58.330
Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

01:19:58.570 --> 01:19:59.610
Thanks so much, Dave.

01:19:59.930 --> 01:20:00.410
All right.

01:20:00.650 --> 01:20:01.530
Take care.

01:20:02.090 --> 01:20:03.050
Bye bye.

01:20:05.840 --> 01:20:11.520
So, David, you talked a lot this episode, and I was doing something

01:20:11.520 --> 01:20:13.760
completely else while this was happening.

01:20:13.920 --> 01:20:16.480
So I feel like I should carry the outro here.

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

01:20:22.960 --> 01:20:28.640
support us on Patreon, please comment on social media, let us know what guests and uh

01:20:28.640 --> 01:20:33.760
episodes and topics, debates, um uh, you know,

01:20:34.970 --> 01:20:37.610
yeah, what what I don't know what else to say.

01:20:37.930 --> 01:20:38.090
Yeah.

01:20:38.170 --> 01:20:40.890
I'm I I mean, yeah, there's there's the Patreon thing.

01:20:41.130 --> 01:20:44.490
There's uh social media kindness.

01:20:45.290 --> 01:20:49.450
There's uh sending us emails about your thoughts and suggestions.

01:20:49.770 --> 01:20:51.930
Do we have an email address yet?

01:20:52.570 --> 01:20:56.410
People have been emailing uh maybe they maybe they're just emailing our personal emails?

01:20:56.490 --> 01:21:00.650
I guess we don't have no it's ep the pod at gmail.com.

01:21:00.810 --> 01:21:04.170
I don't think I don't think literally anywhere we've ever said that.

01:21:04.720 --> 01:21:05.120
Hmm.

01:21:05.200 --> 01:21:05.360
Okay.

01:21:05.680 --> 01:21:07.360
Maybe I should put that in the show notes.

01:21:07.680 --> 01:21:10.400
Yeah, that might be a good thing to put in the show notes.

01:21:12.000 --> 01:21:14.640
Yeah, we're recording an outro right now.

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.

01:21:21.680 --> 01:21:25.760
Or just now, after you're doing this, putting our email in the show notes.

01:21:26.160 --> 01:21:26.880
No, it's fine.

01:21:26.960 --> 01:21:27.200
Yeah.

01:21:29.040 --> 01:21:30.240
Yeah, but you know what?

01:21:30.320 --> 01:21:35.730
It's okay, because you shouldn't expect polished uh production value from things that

01:21:35.730 --> 01:21:36.930
aren't selling you something.

01:21:37.170 --> 01:21:40.610
Maybe you could suggest commercials we can include on our our podcast.

01:21:41.090 --> 01:21:44.290
Oh, should we put some product placements uh in the episodes?

01:21:44.610 --> 01:21:48.210
Uh yeah, we got to do product placements, PSAs.

01:21:48.450 --> 01:21:53.090
Um I mean, presumably it would be for an exchange of some amount of money.

01:21:53.320 --> 01:21:57.080
Um, but then there's that whole like what are they selling to our listeners?

01:21:57.640 --> 01:22:01.400
Maybe we could drop some kombucha ads into the episode on the microbiome.

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,

01:22:07.640 --> 01:22:13.640
according to um um Katrine Whiteson are not Katrina Whitzen are not

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?

01:22:18.430 --> 01:22:19.790
One of them was good, one was bad.

01:22:19.950 --> 01:22:20.190
Yeah.

01:22:20.750 --> 01:22:20.990
I forget.

01:22:21.070 --> 01:22:21.150
Yeah.

01:22:21.390 --> 01:22:22.270
But listen to that episode.

01:22:22.670 --> 01:22:25.790
It confuses like the distinction between proscribe and prescribe.

01:22:25.870 --> 01:22:26.910
I always mix those up.

01:22:27.070 --> 01:22:29.790
So one of those is proscribed and one of those is prescribed.

01:22:29.870 --> 01:22:31.390
The probiotic and the prebiotic.

01:22:31.710 --> 01:22:34.590
The prebiotic's okay, the probiotic's not so good.

01:22:35.070 --> 01:22:35.390
Yeah.

01:22:35.630 --> 01:22:35.950
Yeah.

01:22:36.110 --> 01:22:39.150
But only one of the off just eat some fiber.

01:22:39.240 --> 01:22:39.880
Just look for the fiber.

01:22:40.200 --> 01:22:41.080
Yeah, fiber's great.

01:22:41.160 --> 01:22:42.120
I highly recommend it.

01:22:42.360 --> 01:22:42.600
Okay.

01:22:42.680 --> 01:22:43.560
Uh this is enough.

01:22:43.640 --> 01:22:46.360
We'll see you all next week or in a couple weeks.

01:22:46.440 --> 01:22:48.440
Um and we'll get our week.

01:22:48.600 --> 01:22:49.720
We'll get our edits together.

01:22:49.960 --> 01:22:51.080
We'll get our shit together.

01:22:51.160 --> 01:22:51.320
Okay.

01:22:51.560 --> 01:22:52.200
Uh or not.

01:22:52.280 --> 01:22:52.520
Yeah.

01:22:52.680 --> 01:22:52.840
Okay.

01:22:53.080 --> 01:22:56.200
It was good to good to good to hear good to listen to you, David.

01:22:56.280 --> 01:22:57.560
You did a great job this episode.

01:22:57.800 --> 01:22:58.040
Thank you.

01:22:58.120 --> 01:22:58.600
I appreciate it.

01:22:58.680 --> 01:22:59.160
I missed you.

01:22:59.240 --> 01:22:59.880
I'm glad to have you back.

01:23:00.120 --> 01:23:00.920
Oh thanks, David.

01:23:01.080 --> 01:23:01.400
All right.