00:00:26.640When one discovers that the wisdom of the ancients doesn't apply to the current environment, there's a natural process in which we bootstrap new ways of being.
00:00:36.160And so although this predicament is unlike any transition humans made before, the toolkit for dealing with such transitions is already present.
00:00:47.260Welcome to the Michaela Peterson podcast with Brett and Heather, episode 114.
00:00:51.640114. Brett and Heather have a new book out, A Hunter Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century,
00:00:58.620Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life. It gives information on how we can adapt to an
00:01:04.220incredibly quickly changing society and how we're not really built for this kind of life
00:01:09.040and much more. It's kind of the culmination of their life's work. It's awesome. It's just been
00:01:14.660released on the 14th and is available linked below. I love the work they do and think they're
00:01:20.840amazingly brilliant. They have a very analytical way of thinking, and they're one of the saner
00:01:25.440couple of voices that are out online right now. We spoke about evolution and biology and men and
00:01:31.380women touched on the trans debate going on right now, monogamy versus polygamy. It was a really
00:01:36.920fun conversation. I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you do, please be sure to hit subscribe.
00:01:50.840Brett and Heather, welcome to my podcast.
00:18:03.020Now, the funny thing is once you realize that, then you also begin to realize that even our
00:18:08.820scientific view is somewhat perfectly literal. But a lot of things we describe in science are
00:18:15.200actually models at different levels of crudeness. And over time, the crudeness goes down and the
00:18:20.520literalness goes up. But even a scientific worldview has a certain amount of this metaphorical
00:18:26.440belief in it. And, you know, we shoot for a scientific worldview in which that is minimized,
00:18:31.940but it's not zero in any field yet. And in some fields like biology, where we're still quite new
00:18:38.520in the process of discovery, there's an awful lot of metaphor that does not line up perfectly with
00:18:44.500what's going on inside of cells or creatures. So the phrase that we use in the book and have
00:18:50.340used elsewhere is that many things that are conveyed in the world, including in many religions,
00:18:56.580are literally false, but metaphorically true. And that metaphorical truth has in it the value
00:19:03.080that explains why people use it going forward. And so while a cover story that a person of a
00:19:09.360particular faith or mythology gives you may not actually square with the underlying physical
00:19:14.700reality of the universe, that does not mean that that story isn't incredibly valuable. And so one
00:19:20.260of one of the stories that we provide in the book is of farmers in the Guatemalan highlands who
00:19:26.040say that planting their crops on the full moon is it planting or harvesting actually
00:19:32.940it is planting it's planting the crops on the full moon allows those farmers to basically be in good
00:19:41.840with their gods that they are that that is that is the way to guarantee crop success because that
00:19:47.420is what the gods want. And it's really very hard to imagine that the moon is having any effect on
00:19:57.200crop success at all. And yet this belief persists. And when a couple of researchers went and looked,
00:20:03.360it turned out that indeed those farmers that acknowledged and abided by this ancient belief
00:20:10.260that the gods smile on you when you plant on the full moon had better crop success. They had to
00:20:16.100ask why, like what, what could the moon possibly have to do with this? And the, you know, the
00:20:21.240modern scientific interpretation of what the, of the explanation is that if you coordinate,
00:20:28.020if you synchronize the timing of your crops, such that you are also all harvesting, such
00:20:32.820it's all coming into ripeness and harvest time at the same time, you effectively satiate
00:20:37.880your predators, the crop predators, all of the things that would eat the crops are, have
00:20:43.360all of the crops available to them at the same moment. And so instead of having a succession of
00:20:47.960crops to eat, everything that would be eating the crops has it all at once. And so everyone gets some
00:20:52.600of their crops eaten, but no one gets all of their crops eaten. Whereas if you were to plant when it
00:20:58.120was convenient for you, the first person whose crops reached edibleness would have their crop
00:21:03.820eaten and the population of the pests would grow. And so only by planting them all at the same time
00:21:09.080does the population of pests not have a chance to grow? And therefore, it's the smallest amount
00:21:13.900of consumption across the entire landscape. Right. So, you know, do the Guatemalan farmers
00:21:19.660in the highlands of Guatemala have the terminology of predator satiation and such? No, they do not.
00:21:25.980But have they effectively recognized that the moon is a giant sky clock, right? And that by
00:21:31.320following the giant sky clock and synchronizing on the basis of that, that they have better success?
00:21:37.020that's fabulous and that does you know that does not suggest that they are um you know that they
00:21:43.780are somehow stuck in a time past that has no relevance for now it absolutely has relevance
00:21:49.240and the fact that the story that goes along with the behavior that is adaptive isn't literally true
00:21:54.860actually doesn't matter that is so cool that's so cool yeah i feel like i feel like god is a
00:22:03.740simpler explanation than the predator. Wow. Predator satiation. Yes. I have a hard time with
00:22:13.400that. Anyway, that, yeah, that's very interesting. Okay. Another section of your book, you talk about
00:22:18.480birth control and women for better or for worse. Better and worse. Yes, both. Better and worse?0.69
00:22:26.920Sure. Okay. Okay. What's the worst? Well, the worst is that it used to be human social relations
00:22:33.640were rigged around certain realities of reproduction. Women, because it is very1.00
00:22:40.860expensive to be stuck raising a child alone, were extremely careful not to engage sexually with men
00:22:48.220who did not demonstrate a willingness to commit to them. And the problem is that that's not a
00:22:54.880very fair system, right? To have women have to be on guard in order not to be stuck raising children1.00
00:23:00.640alone is an asymmetrical burden. On the other hand, it does create a kind of coherence and
00:23:07.720it had consequences that were positive for men also. If men, in order to be worthy of women
00:23:16.080enough to have a sexual relationship with them, had to demonstrate capacity in the world that
00:23:21.360would make them worth choosing and then demonstrate a willingness to commit, that actually created
00:23:26.520higher quality male behavior. And so many of the things about the world that functioned
00:23:31.760were born of this sexual asymmetry. So we have lost something with the advent of birth control
00:23:39.060that was actually functioning. And we argue very strongly in the book that what we have gained is
00:23:44.400far greater, that we have actually achieved a set of opportunities for women to expand our role in
00:23:52.980the world beyond, um, beyond childcare and sort of, you know, homework, uh, that we were more
00:23:59.580limited to before we had the capacity to so control our, our reproductive lives, but pretending that
00:24:06.580it comes with no cost is, is a tragedy. And we need to figure out a way to potentially get back
00:24:15.180some of the value that we had before we had the control while not giving up the control that we
00:24:20.500now have, you know, the, the, the benefits of print role are, are widely understood. And, um,
00:24:26.520and, you know, frankly, it benefits men too, because, you know, in those spheres in, you know,
00:24:31.300basically in every sphere where there are at least some women who are interested in doing the work,
00:24:35.920um, having women be capable of doing the work and not having to worry that they may at any moment
00:24:41.560be sidelined by, um, by a family that they didn't necessarily want is of course good for everyone
00:24:48.260because it brings everyone who wants to contribute in any individual creative or analytical sphere
00:24:52.620into that sphere. But, but what has been lost is something it's, and it's not, you know,
00:24:58.320it's not anti-feminist to say, so it's just recognizing that what evolution handed us in
00:25:03.580this case, um, happens to have a function to it and, and it's disappeared. So how can we,
00:25:10.320how can we recreate the coherence of the relationships between the sexes without
00:25:15.000asking for a regressive backwards view of the world. And this is a theme across the book.
00:25:20.720This is maybe one of the easier examples to understand. But in general, we're stuck in a
00:25:26.300predicament as essentially modern hunter-gatherers in a non-hunter-gatherer environment. We are stuck
00:25:33.240with the inability to go backwards. There's nowhere to go. We can't return to the 50s. We
00:25:38.380can't return to hunting and gathering. And we must go forwards. But to go forwards involves
00:25:45.380figuring out what portion of that which made sense in the past can be retooled, can be preserved,
00:25:52.480and what needs to be added to it to make it coherent in the present. And in every case,
00:25:57.520we need to essentially renegotiate our relationship with each other and with our
00:26:02.700environment so that it stops making us unhealthy. Maybe one of the ways to fix that predicament
00:26:10.940between men and women, um, maybe, maybe the lack of religion at the moment is also contributing
00:26:17.360to that. Cause at least that gives you some guidelines on how to behave that we don't have.
00:26:22.820So perhaps keeping some of the scientific advancements we've made and then looking at
00:26:27.420the world in that kind of framework might be beneficial. Yeah. I mean, I think it's very
00:26:32.720analogous that, you know, we aren't religious people, but not having a framework that was
00:26:40.060coherent and that at least aspects of which remain coherent today to, for instance, hand down to our
00:26:46.040children makes things much more difficult that, you know, we don't, we can't assume that we
00:26:50.380share with any of our neighbors or any of our children's friends and their families,
00:26:54.300a particular way of viewing the world or of you know coming together for shabbat or for church or
00:27:00.800for whatever right and and with that of course we've also lost the community that are that a
00:27:06.220religious uh faith will tend to give to you you know so where do people meet now they often meet
00:27:11.880online or they meet at work and of course that's just too difficult now like you know how how is
00:27:16.680it that you're going to negotiate a potential romance at work so where where do you meet you
00:27:21.240meet online or at bars or in other social situations that are ever more fraught and without
00:27:26.640shared rules. And I think too much of modernity imagines that any rule from the past is archaic
00:27:34.300and outdated. And fact is some of them are, and some of them are outdated, but what they provided
00:27:42.340was necessary. So we need to figure out some new rules. We can't just say, well, then no rules is
00:27:47.020the best way to go. We need some framing. As I said, we talk in the book about a model
00:27:54.040for how it is that human beings move from one niche to another. When one discovers that the
00:28:01.040wisdom of the ancients doesn't apply to the current environment, there's a natural process
00:28:05.080in which we bootstrap new ways of being. And so although this predicament is unlike any transition
00:28:10.860humans made before, the toolkit for dealing with such transitions is already present. And in fact,
00:28:16.540We're doing it right here. We're talking about what the predicament is, what it says.
00:28:21.680You know, we're recognizing that the the modern pseudo sophistication that basically decides any sort of self-regulation in the context of mating and dating is oppressive or stodgy.
00:28:34.980Well, that's nonsense. And so what we are expecting to see is that as people increasingly recognize that a free for all in the area of sex and romance is not causing anybody to be satisfied or happy, quite the opposite, that people will start opting out.
00:28:53.800And that means that they will opting out of the free for all.
00:28:57.200Yeah, they're opting out of the free for all.
00:28:58.820And that what they will do is they will figure out crudely at first what rules they want
00:29:05.700to abide by and interact with others who see the same picture.
00:29:10.060And over time, they will figure out how to improve those rules so that they're more effective
00:29:14.300at replacing the values that were in the systems that were lost while not losing the gains
00:29:19.820that we've made through interventions like birth control.
00:29:23.800Hmm. That sounds tough for people. Like how to play a game together, figure out new rules for
00:29:31.740everything, take some from old rules and make up new ones. That seems like it's going to take a
00:29:37.800while. Well, A, as long as things start getting better quickly, it doesn't really matter that
00:29:44.540it takes a while. That's how human beings change their position in the universe.
00:29:49.200Well, right. But you already probably have a pretty good idea what some of the things that don't make sense are. And just simply recognizing others who see that same picture and, you know, limiting your interaction to people of similar worldview is an obvious thing to do.
00:30:06.800So I think we've just we've done it very crudely because many of the technological enhancements seem like they just simply provide more of what's good and it takes a while to discover what the hidden costs are.
00:30:21.460And I think part of the message that you've already alluded to, Michaela, is that we're
00:30:28.520The rate of change is itself part of the problem.
00:30:30.920And so slowing down will inherently, hopefully, change, slow the rate at which we are progressing
00:30:38.440in poor directions, but it also means that we aren't going to get quick fixes.
00:30:43.260We will hopefully slow the rate of decay and find new, better ways to move forward.
00:30:50.060You know, not moving backwards, not moving forward so quickly with so many uninvestigated changes that can't be undone, but moving towards something in all of these realms, with regard to religion, with regard to sex and gender, with regard to, you know, with regard to food and school and, you know, just so many things.
00:31:10.020moving towards a well an adaptive foothill in the language of evolutionary biology and you know we
00:31:16.440don't claim in the book to provide a blueprint because you know any anyone who does anyone who
00:31:21.160says i got this i know exactly what it's going to look like they can't so they're they're either
00:31:26.140fooling themselves or they're trying to fool you and we do think that we can find our ways to
00:31:31.980to many hopefully of these adaptive foothills across many of these domains and from then
00:31:36.720collectively, all, all of us humans working together, find our way up the adaptive slope
00:31:42.460to someplace better than we are now, because it really feels like across so many domains,
00:31:46.480we're in an adaptive Valley and it just feels dark and, and people are filled with despair
00:31:52.300for good reason. So when you guys talk about slowing down, what does that look like?
00:31:58.220well in in what context okay say you mentioned diet you mentioned gender i would assume politics
00:32:10.020like do you mean just not making any life-changing and country-changing decisions too quickly like
00:32:16.220what does slow down look like well one of one of the things would be with regard to diet say
00:32:21.060um we talk in the book about some of the great successes of western medicine antibiotics and
00:32:28.420vaccines and surgery are just three of the amazing successes of western medicine and that doesn't mean
00:32:34.400that at every moment you should apply those those solutions to any given problem right there are
00:32:40.320problems for which those are not the solutions we now know that the over prescription of antibiotics
00:32:46.580to livestock has made our livestock sick and our ecosystem sick and our people sick. And so slow
00:32:53.640down on taking a success and saying, I'm now going to globalize that. I'm going to take this thing,
00:33:00.080which is a grand success and generalize and globalize so quickly that it may be impossible
00:33:05.920to undo. So there are two tools that are really the mirror image of each other that we describe
00:33:11.900in the book. One is the precautionary principle, where when something is new, you assume that it
00:33:17.520has hazards until it's demonstrated to be safe. And the other is Chesterton's fence, named after
00:33:23.380G.K. Chesterton, who first outlined the logic of it. And in his formulation, if two people happen
00:33:30.980onto a fence that appears to have no value, and one of them proposes that maybe it should just
00:33:36.140be eliminated, the other person's response should be, not until you figured out what the value of
00:33:40.780it was. Once you know what the value of it was, you're in a position to say whether it still has
00:33:46.040that value. But until you know what the value of it was, you have no idea. You may be removing
00:33:51.040something very functional. And in fact, there are many examples in medicine and elsewhere where
00:33:57.300things that were very important were not understood to be so by an establishment that simply hadn't
00:34:05.160spotted their value yet. So moving slower means applying both of these things. When you come up
00:34:11.120with something new, I mean, you know, we all remember the invention of the first smartphone,
00:34:19.160right? The first smartphone seemed a very interesting new way to do things, but it
00:34:28.120obviously carried huge hazards with it. And it took over the world before anybody had a chance to
00:34:33.880to notice what the hazards were, right? And it may be that it is in fact playing a huge role
00:34:40.660in our increasingly dysfunctional social environment and the breakdown of institutions
00:34:48.540and governance that has followed along with it. So even something like the smartphone that seems
00:34:53.300like it's just going to be an enhancement to life is something one should treat with great caution
00:34:57.260at the point it's introduced yeah i find it difficult to believe that going forward things
00:35:04.300aren't going to get harder aren't going to get harder like technology is going to take on and
00:35:10.000i i assume an entirely different even dimension um and i don't understand how we can adapt to that
00:35:18.060without i think going backwards a little bit and not getting rid of the scientific achievements
00:35:22.520we've had, but simplifying lives, like perhaps, this has only recently occurred to me, but
00:35:27.460perhaps living in a high-rise condo in the middle of a city surrounded by stressful people
00:35:32.360makes you more stressed because you haven't adapted to be surrounded by stressful people
00:35:36.840without also being stressed. And so you talk about getting into nature and how important that is.
00:35:43.520And I think that's kind of like going backwards a little bit. What do you guys think?
00:35:49.120it's it's certainly hearkening back to an earlier time um and yes but when when we say you can't go
00:35:55.960backwards uh we are really alluding to sort of a traditionalist you know usually a conservative
00:36:02.080view of like wasn't it all great then like wasn't there a moment in you know the medium past um to
00:36:09.360which we can aspire and we would say you know no no but have there been missteps in modern times
00:36:16.280that we absolutely should try to undo for sure.
00:36:19.780And in fact, the sooner we do that, the better.
00:36:22.380And the idea that living in high rises, densely populated with a whole bunch of other stressed
00:36:29.700people may actually cause you to be stressed as well.
00:38:24.800Like, you know, what is it that you as an individual could be doing that could make
00:38:29.460the world a better place for you and the ones you love and everyone.
00:38:33.280And it's harder to do that when you're constantly getting input from all the other people.
00:38:37.220So we talk in the book about us having cautiously begun to retool traditions that we inherit from
00:38:48.140religion. And so our Hanukkah tradition in the house involves a different principle for each
00:38:55.780night of Hanukkah that we talk about with the kids. And as they get older, they understand it
00:38:59.900with more and more sophistication. And one of the principles involves what we call a need for
00:39:05.520reversibility. So in a situation where you are condemned to confront technological change and
00:39:11.940you can't possibly know what the implications are going to be, it would be foolish to adopt
00:39:17.120anything that you couldn't unadopt upon the discovery that it was more harmful than it was
00:39:21.700beneficial. And so how do you operationalize that? It's a difficult puzzle. But whether we
00:39:27.560should recognize that anytime we do something we couldn't undo if we had to, that we are putting
00:39:32.860ourselves in danger, even just that simple recognition makes us safer.
00:39:39.000Interesting. Okay. That makes sense. You spoke earlier about hanging around people who have the
00:39:45.260proper worldview, but I would assume that many of the people that I disagree with probably think
00:39:52.580that they have the proper worldview. So there are tricks, are there tricks to figuring out
00:39:57.880whether or not your worldview is the proper worldview or is a healthy worldview?
00:40:02.860But you can't know if your worldview is the proper worldview, and probably none of ours are the proper worldview.
00:40:08.100Even those of us who work quite hard to get it right are liable to be imprecise fairly often.
00:40:15.840But one trick that I've learned is when you have a divide between you and others, figuring out where that divide begins is often incredibly enlightening.
00:40:30.280So, for example, I'm a liberal and I believe that environmentally we've made terrible errors, that we are degrading the planet at a rapid rate and that we have an obligation to do something about it.
00:40:42.760And I know that if I walk into a room of conservatives, that we're going to differ in all likelihood about global climate change.
00:40:51.060But I also know that I can ask an audience of conservatives, I can say, well, if you believed that human beings were altering the atmosphere in a way that was going to substantially change the temperature of the planet in a way that was going to degrade its quality for future generations, would you be interested in engaging a solution that would slow or halt that process?
00:41:15.560I always get agreement on that question. And so then I know that what we really differ over is
00:41:20.920whether or not this is happening or whether or not it is human caused and what the solutions
00:41:26.280might be. But that's half of the difference that might exist between us erased in one question,
00:41:32.840right? Now we know that what we really need to talk about is, well, what is the evidence that
00:41:36.360is happening and what are the solutions that might work? And that's a much easier discussion.
00:41:41.000So I guess the, the upshot is figure out what you actually disagree about before you start
00:41:47.100disagreeing. Yeah. And I would add, um, you know, people, you should engage with everyone at some
00:41:54.480level, right? Like people who you disagree with, especially you are likely to learn more from them
00:41:59.820if you can speak to each other as civility. But there are a couple of things that I tend to look
00:42:04.580for and that I think are valuable, probably universally, no matter, no matter what other
00:42:09.000demographic things are true of you, you know, religious, atheist, old, young, white, black,
00:42:13.560female, male, doesn't matter. You need to be not just willing to, but adamant that you will
00:42:20.020error correct when you discover errors and have a curiosity about the world. So error correction
00:42:25.940and curiosity. And those two things get you a long, long way. And you know, that that's not
00:42:31.540a encapsulation of the scientific method. That's not sufficient. It's there's not enough formalism
00:42:35.720there. But those two things get you a long way to that, like error correction and curiosity
00:42:40.020and exposing yourself to people who don't agree with you will actually allow you to modify your
00:42:46.600worldview such that it probably, hopefully will come into better agreement with what is actually
00:42:51.160true. Yeah. So basically being okay with being wrong. Absolutely. And, and, you know, I think,
00:42:58.280I think this is farther down the list of importance, but taking enough risks in your
00:43:03.360thinking, and I would say also physically and psychologically, but we're talking sort of
00:43:06.760analytically, creatively right now, taking enough risks in your thinking that you are wrong.
00:43:11.320Sometimes, like if you're never wrong, you're probably not taking enough risks.
00:43:15.380And so that means though, that you will have to do the error correction and coming back to people
00:43:21.200and saying, man, I was wrong. That sucks, right? It doesn't feel good. So if you're going to be0.92
00:43:26.440someone who is pushing the boundaries of what you yourself understand and what you know,
00:43:30.600that is basically going to guarantee that you will have to sometimes say to people,
00:43:35.160I was wrong. Here's how I know. Here's what I think now. I may still be wrong,
00:43:39.100but I know I was wrong about that. And you have to be willing to do that.
00:43:43.740This is why you should never be 100% certain about anything. I feel like in the past,
00:43:48.520whenever I got stuck into a frame of mind where I was like, oh no, 100%, this is it.
00:43:53.720I always just got walloped. It hasn't, it's happened a few times with like autoimmunity and
00:43:59.460medical system and like, Oh, diet plays a role type of thing, where it was like,
00:44:02.780everything I believed was completely wrong. I was like, Oh, that hurts. And so now I just try
00:44:08.220and be careful. Like if I ever feel too certain about something, I'm like, ah, maybe there's
00:44:12.160something there to poke around into. Absolutely. This is actually something that Brett has done
00:44:17.160with our boys in particular, with regard to asking them how certain they are of a conclusion.
00:44:22.760Right. And, and anytime they say a hundred percent, it's like, well,
00:44:26.700now I know what you're doing wrong, right? You're being categorical. And it's not that
00:44:30.620there aren't things that you could work your way to near certainty about, but if you didn't start
00:44:36.640out with, you know, if you didn't start out with some doubt, then it's very unlikely you figured
00:44:41.620out what might be wrong with your perspective. And it's also a very useful trick when you are
00:44:46.820talking to somebody who has a perspective that conflicts with yours, asking them what they think
00:44:53.960the chances are that they are substantially in error will force them to reveal that they haven't
00:45:00.020checked into the question, or it will cause them to recognize that there actually is some room for
00:45:04.540doubt and to figure out where it exists. And those are keys forward. Oh, I really like that. I'm so
00:45:09.760glad I found some other people who do that. That's how my conversations with people go. I'm like,
00:45:14.120no, no, I'm like 94% sure about this. No, 87. Okay. Like only 60, but 60, but I'm glad that
00:45:22.060I'm glad that that's not just a me thing. That's fine. It can be baffling to people, right? But
00:45:27.320it's so useful. It's so useful. Yeah, definitely. Okay. I have some other more questions here that
00:45:37.040I want to get to before I let you guys go. You talked about, okay, so I'm talking about, you
00:45:45.040know, allergies, autoimmunity, and all this stuff because of what happened to me. And you guys talk
00:45:51.040a bit about how that's a result of too much change too quickly, potentially. So can you get
00:45:57.640into that a little bit about allergies, autoimmunity, how North America is kind of ill
00:46:04.040at the moment, not just with COVID, but with actual, you know, obesity, depression, et cetera?
00:46:09.840Yeah, sure. First, the thing to realize is if you were to stand on a street corner and just watch
00:46:15.640people walk by, you'll see a tremendous amount of pathology. And that isn't normal, right? If you
00:46:21.300were to hang out in a forest and watch creatures go by, you probably would see essentially none.
00:46:26.760And some of that is about the fact that when pathology arises, a predator will often take
00:46:31.940advantage of it. But a lot of it has to do with the fact that we are just doing so many novel
00:46:36.740things that are causing pathology. And in many cases, we don't have any idea what they are.
00:46:41.660And so, you know, it is an amazing fact that if you stand on that street corner, you will see obese people walk by regularly.
00:46:51.280We know obesity is unhealthy, that it degrades life.
00:46:54.660And we also know that whatever it is that causes that is something that is happening to them after they've been at least conceived and probably born.
00:47:03.140Which means that if we could figure out what it was and stop doing it, we could cure that problem.
00:47:07.700How much human well-being would be increased if we cured that problem?
00:47:11.040So the fact that we are not obsessed with figuring out the root cause is odd.
00:47:15.980But when we talk, for instance, about the hygiene hypothesis, which is not new with us, but the idea that we have, again, with the antibiotics, really, you know, we have over cleaned our environments.
00:47:25.420We have made our environment so sterile by misunderstanding that microorganisms, basically, and imagining that everything that is bacterial is bad.
00:47:36.660And so this, you know, this is a trend that started before we came to understand the gut
00:47:41.100microbiome and we still don't understand it as you are well aware, but we understand a lot more
00:47:45.620than we did 40 years ago. And so the idea that we know it exists, exactly. And the idea that
00:47:52.360we contain multitudes and that wiping out those multitudes, because we're scared of some germs
00:47:57.160is probably bad for us is, you know, really base level. Like it really is not a finesse understanding,
00:48:04.560but it does provide a framework for understanding what a lot of autoimmune disorders probably
00:48:10.620are emerging from allergies. And then there's a similar kind of, oh, I've got the solution,
00:48:17.340therefore I'm going to generalize it. Reductionism in, for instance, our approach to
00:48:23.700you know, just the molecules that we have exaggerated. Sugar tastes good, right? And so
00:48:30.760we are going to concentrate it and put it in everything to make us want more. And, you know,
00:48:36.560that's our modern environment, taking advantage of our ancient desires, add markets, and we're
00:48:43.340off to the races. So the immune system is a developmentally sensitive, literally a complex
00:48:53.540system. It requires that in your early life, it has the correct exposures to detect the difference
00:49:03.580between the molecules that you yourself make and the molecules that you don't make. And literally
00:49:09.140what it determines is very early in development, it recognizes those molecules that you make before
00:49:17.660you're born, before it's exposed to the outside world. And it eliminates the fraction of immune
00:49:21.820cells that react to those molecules. So what's left over are immune cells that only react to
00:49:27.540molecules you don't make. Now, the problem is that system is not supposed to encounter, for example,
00:49:35.400things that you eat. Things that you eat are not molecules that you make. And therefore,
00:49:40.180if your immune system is allowed to see them, it will regard them as hostile, just as it will
00:49:44.740regard pollen as hostile and it will react to it. And so these food sensitivities are like an
00:49:51.940autoimmune disorder to your food, right? An autoimmune disorder in the narrower sense is you
00:49:57.040reacting to your own molecules as if they were the molecules of a foreign invader. All of these
00:50:02.660things are going to be the result of exposures that are novel. That is to say, if you had
00:50:08.460developed in your ancestral environment, the inputs to the system would not have caused you
00:50:13.340to react to your food or to your own molecules in this way. So the question again, as with the
00:50:17.880obesity question as well, what is the root cause of the immune system encountering molecules that
00:50:23.760it shouldn't be seeing or having the wrong reaction? And how can we stop? How can we stop
00:50:29.280doing that? So those in the future will not experience those things. And again, we're not
00:50:33.820nearly curious enough about the question. We're much more interested, for example, in treating
00:50:38.740these things as chronic conditions than figuring out why they happened and not causing them anymore
00:50:44.240i just read an article this morning so i'm very into the autoimmune research and anything that
00:50:50.120has to do with leaky gut specifically so food sensitivities and autoimmunity and i read an
00:50:54.180article this morning it was like groundbreaking news leaky gut contributes can contribute to
00:51:00.240rheumatoid arthritis and here's the drug to fix it and i was just like okay so like another 30
00:51:06.940years before they link leaky gut to diet. I don't know. Do you think things are going to get better?
00:51:14.720Well, they have to, right? I mean, you have to.
00:51:17.880We're on a trajectory in which they can't get worse much longer. And so in some sense,
00:51:23.720that's frightening, but it's also the thing that is likely to cause people to wake up
00:51:30.780and recognize that we have a system, for example, a system where markets find any opportunity where
00:51:39.000something can be sold at a profit and exploit it. And some fraction of what's being sold at a profit
00:51:44.920is actually harmful to us. And so we have to recognize that this system being allowed to
00:51:50.760run its course is damaging people and we have to rein it in. Will we do it? Very hard to say, but
00:51:57.680certainly the first step is recognizing that that process is going to continue to have us
00:52:04.820cause disease at all levels. And we should certainly be attempting not to do that.
00:52:12.640Yeah, I hope so. I feel like just looking at maybe Soviet Union or other situations that got
00:52:19.620pretty turbulent, I feel like things got more turbulent than they are now before they switched
00:52:25.580directions so it's a bit concerning it is concerning yeah and this and you know every
00:52:32.820moment that you're living through is later than all the previous instantiations and so you know
00:52:37.800we've got more novelty more hyper novelty more technological advancement now and so you know
00:52:42.940history will not repeat itself you know to what degree it will rhyme we don't yet know
00:52:47.740okay okay i've got a few more questions you guys talk about gender and monogamy
00:52:55.340and how part of at least part of that is adaptive so can we get into that a little bit we are very
00:53:02.780much in favor of both gender and monogamy they're both excellent um yeah well let's let's separate
00:53:09.500these issues when you say gender you're really talking about uh the phenomenon of people um
00:53:16.740switching genders or ascribing to different genders than yeah uh than they were when they were
00:53:25.340younger. So there's a very ancient history of people functioning as what we would now call
00:53:33.120trans that exists in many cultures. What is not ancient is the ability to alter one's physiology0.99
00:53:41.380with hormone interrupting drugs or to alter their bodies with surgery. It is also the case
00:53:50.100that the pattern in which people are, um, telling us that they feel that they are a different gender
00:53:58.120than the one, uh, that we would, um, that follows their sex that we would. Yeah. That follows their0.60
00:54:05.020sex is the right way to say it is suggestive of a contagious process. And that that is likely not
00:54:12.900a natural phenomenon. It is likely a result of things like, uh, cell phones and social media
00:54:19.540causing belief systems to be transmitted in a novel way, which suggests that those are likely
00:54:26.340to be very unhealthy patterns. So let me take a slightly different tack. I think gender and
00:54:31.200monogamy are distinct, pretty distinct in my mind, because we have what some will view as a
00:54:40.440traditional regard for monogamy, but it doesn't come from traditional logic. It comes from
00:54:47.500evolutionary logic. And we have a very untraditional, or at least I do. And I think we
00:54:52.640must both. I have a very non-traditional view of the value of almost all gender norms. So,
00:54:58.820you know, gender is the behavioral expression of sex. Sex is binary. Sex is at least 500 million
00:55:06.340years old in our lineage alone, maybe closer to one and a half billion years old. It's not,
00:55:11.720it doesn't change in mammals. You can't change your sex. Gender being the behavioral manifestation0.99
00:55:19.060of sex and us being a species that is actually much more monogamous, and there's lots of evidence
00:55:25.960for this, but much more monogamous than really any of our close relatives, you would expect that
00:55:31.820the behavioral manifestations of our sex would be more flexible in us than they are in many other
00:55:38.840species that the reasons to have very different female, female behaviors and from, from male
00:55:45.820behaviors are not nearly as strong in a species that is, has, you know, relatively low levels of
00:55:50.920sexual dimorphism as we have. Um, but then it's also obviously true that we do have sexual
00:55:56.200dimorphism, that we are different, that women are different from men and that women will always be,
00:56:01.400um, constrained by some aspects of anatomy and physiology by gestation and lactation,
00:56:07.460right? That's never going to be the domain of men and pretending otherwise is just reality denying.
00:56:13.100So, you know, are there things that are downstream of being, of being female and therefore capable0.60
00:56:18.800of bringing a child into the world and, and suckling that child at your breast? Of course0.98
00:56:23.400there are. Can men be paternal in a way that is like a maternal engagement with their own offspring?
00:56:31.920yes they can but that is newer and so it's not going to be as it's not going to be the default
00:56:40.260in the way that maternal behavior with their own with their own babies will be so i would say
00:56:45.940you know gender non-conformity is fabulous if that's you know if that's who you are and it was
00:56:52.580who i was um that's terrific and gender non-conformity is very different from gender
00:56:57.040dysphoria, gendered unconformity. It's just like, Hey, you know, I was a tomboy. I vastly prefer
00:57:01.900doing math and climbing trees to playing with dolls and having tea parties. I just never did
00:57:06.300the, never did the dolls and tea parties thing. I did a lot of playing in the dirt and with numbers.
00:57:10.520And I never once thought I was a boy. I never once told by anyone, if you like math, you're a boy
00:57:16.420in part, guess what? That's regressive. That's outdated regressive sexism is what that is.
00:57:21.660so it's also true that I'm in a stable long-term loving monogamous relationship that's also
00:57:28.780heterosexual and we've got two beautiful children and okay I didn't happen to love pregnancy at all
00:57:35.040but I loved everything else past pregnancy and it wasn't that it was because I really thought
00:57:41.460I was a man or anything like that right like there are things that are just prescribed and
00:57:47.020like it or not, it's true. You know, if you want to have children that are genetically your own0.73
00:57:52.200and you're female, you're going to end up burying them. You know, there's some modern technologies0.99
00:57:56.520which allow people to do that who really have no other way around it. But, you know, we are
00:58:01.180the result of three and a half billion years of evolution. And for almost half of that,
00:58:07.220probably we've been sexual beings still getting around it, how we behave in the modern world
00:58:11.940with regard to our norms. Almost all of that is flexible. And almost all of that flexibility is
00:58:16.780to the good. Yeah, I will say Heather was terrible at being pregnant, but I would have been worse.0.99
00:58:22.200Yeah, I was going to say, you try it. Yeah, no, I believe me, you did beautifully from my0.99
00:58:27.500perspective, not least because you freed me from the burden of attempting it. But
00:58:31.640let's get to the point about monogamy, though. Our point in the book is that monogamy
00:58:38.220is a complex story. The fact that we have sexual dimorphism, it's not a radical sexual dimorphism,
00:58:45.120but there's a difference in average size between males and females. And that says that there's a
00:58:49.280long history of non-monogamy in humans. That said, the fact is... Sorry, I have to slow down there
00:58:57.160for a sec. What's suggested of a long history of non-monogamy? When you look at species that are
00:59:03.680monogamous, if you look at gibbons, for example, you will find that males and females are the same
00:59:09.440size, right? That they are armed similarly. And the reason is because if the system has sexual
00:59:17.780conflict, if males are trying to exclude each other from mates, then they end up being favored
00:59:24.380in species like ours to be larger, right? Because size allows them to displace other males.
00:59:30.640Larger and with a greater weaponry, like in terms of muscle mass or bigger teeth,
00:59:33.660you know, just the ability to fight with the weapons they've got.1.00
00:59:36.520So females are closer to the ecological optimum of what the species should be.
00:59:41.640And then males are distorted by sexual competition in other species, species that compete in three dimensions.
00:59:49.260Males can end up being smaller because agility in flight, for example, maybe the mode of competition.
00:59:54.340And sometimes the competition may be about song or colorful plumage.
00:59:59.520But the men, the men, the males will tend to be in polygynous species, show you're in some way.
01:00:04.580And as Brett says, you know, farther off what would be the ecological optimum for the species if there were no sexual competition going on.
01:00:12.260So we are a sexually dimorphic species.
01:00:14.560We are not radically so, but we are somewhat so, which says there's been a lot of polygyny.
01:00:18.860But we are less so than our closest relatives.
01:00:21.840Less so than our closest relatives, which means that recent evolution has reduced that dimorphism.
01:00:26.520We've been moving in the direction of monogamy.
01:00:28.160And more to the point, the recent history of our species is one in which monogamous cultures have flourished and spread.
01:00:38.740And so most people alive on Earth today come from cultures that are monogamous.
01:00:42.780And so as much as our ancient history may involve some degree of polygyny, our modern evolutionary history points in the direction of monogamy.
01:00:50.760And from our perspective, we shouldn't really care what evolution wants for us.
01:00:56.660Evolution is not an honorable process, but we can understand that the advantages that caused monogamy to spread in recent evolutionary history are advantages that we should value and therefore we should stabilize monogamy in humans.
01:01:12.100So those advantages include a reduction in violence, a reduction in warlikeness, so violence within your population, right? And the tendency of a population to attack other populations will be increased by polygyny, which tends to sideline a certain number of males, right?
01:01:31.120For every male who has multiple partners, there will be at least one male who has none.
01:01:37.320Those sexually frustrated males who are left out of mating and dating can very easily be turned into an army to seek profit abroad.
01:01:45.580And frankly, the history of warfare is one with an awful lot of sexual violence associated with it, too.
01:01:52.040Right. So just to be clear, the violence that is reduced as you move from a polygynous to a monogamous society will be both men against other men, but also men against women, that both of those kinds of violence will be reduced.
01:02:04.520Right. And the fact is human babies are incredibly labor intensive to raise.
01:02:13.520Yes. A monogamous culture is one in which that burden is distributed much more fairly.
01:02:19.660Right. Because monogamous cultures bring all males who are capable of being brought into child rearing into the into the system and therefore distributes the labor more broadly.
01:02:32.560it creates siblings that are full siblings rather than half siblings. So their tendency to cooperate
01:02:39.300will go up. So the long and short of it is if you like things like a safer world in which war is
01:02:46.500rarer, if you like the idea that the labor of raising the next generation should be more broadly
01:02:52.560distributed, that it shouldn't fall so heavily on the shoulders of women, but should be shared
01:02:57.000between men and women. If you like any of these things, then really you want a monogamous system
01:03:02.980because it causes these things to happen. And the advantages are really so unambiguous
01:03:08.900that this ought to be a primary concern. Unfortunately, the thing that seems to have
01:03:14.460favored, or at least the argument that we make in the book, the thing that seems to have favored
01:03:18.060the spread of monogamy is the expansion of human populations, because an expanding population
01:03:24.180does better if it can grow faster. And because monogamy brings all of the adults who can in
01:03:31.700principle be involved in child rearing into that activity, it means the number of offspring that
01:03:36.280can be raised goes up. The flip side of this is that when you reach the end of an opportunity,
01:03:41.900when a population has grown and expanded as far as it can go, monogamy will tend to break down
01:03:47.200and males will again start displacing each other from mating opportunities, which is exactly what
01:03:51.760we're seeing, not just in what we think of as polyamory, which is really a euphemism,
01:03:58.420but in what we call serial monogamy, which is also a euphemism. Serial monogamy is really
01:04:03.700a name for what we should call serial polygyny. It is, in fact, individual males raising multiple
01:04:10.580families in sequence, and that does have the tendency to exclude other males from
01:04:16.120animating opportunities at all, which is going to bring about exactly the harms that we were
01:04:20.560discussing. Wow. That's so interesting. So, so that's a decline in society as well,
01:04:28.740potentially, but could that be, is that because our, why is that happening? Is that because there
01:04:33.220are too many people and it's just an evolutionary adaptation or is that because everyone's glued to
01:04:39.000their phones and going crazy? It's not really the phones. It was happening well before we had
01:04:44.320smartphones. Really what it is- Like 60s, 70s. It was kind of happening then, right?
01:04:50.920Yes. And I think what we were really feeling is evolutionarily for game theoretic reasons,
01:04:58.340as you bump up against the limits of population, the outbreak of male-male competition and the
01:05:06.220tendency to favor this kind of behavior goes up. Now, civilizations counteract that, right? It's
01:05:13.100very interesting that for example um uh christianity has favored monogamy right even though
01:05:24.260christianity obviously is a system in which powerful males who would be exactly those you
01:05:30.720would expect to benefit from polygyny have made the rules right so really what this is is an
01:05:36.880evolutionary paradox well where evolution is the solution to a paradox that we would otherwise see
01:05:42.400where powerful males have made rules that seem to favor less powerful males and others.
01:05:48.320And the reason has to do with what we were just discussing.
01:05:55.080And therefore, these belief systems have been carried along with the behaviors that have enhanced the power of those who held those belief systems.
01:06:03.680And frankly, you know, I think I think you're right that sort of the 60s, 70s is when a lot of these things began to decohere some.
01:06:10.300And this gets us back to the point about things like birth control, which is amazing and necessary.
01:06:18.020And I don't know any women who would have us go back.
01:06:22.080I don't know if I know any men who would have us go back, but I know that I don't know any women who would have us go back pre, you know, widely and freely available birth control.0.67
01:06:32.080That said, once it became available, it allowed women to to behave like not very interesting men sexually, as opposed to encouraging men to behave like good women.0.87
01:06:47.860Right. So we're like we went lowest standard denominator on sexual behavior instead and and used used wide access to birth control, which, again, is a boon as an excuse,
01:07:00.180as opposed to going like, this is amazing. Let's now be able to plan our families and not find
01:07:06.940ourselves trapped and thus in lives that we never intended for ourselves when it, when there was
01:07:11.600a mistake that was made. Um, but rather let's, let's use this and also be our best selves and
01:07:21.120not, not fall into, you know, the, the CAD strategy of men. Why, you know, why, why should
01:07:28.400women behave like men at their worst. Yeah. I want to refine one thing about this.1.00
01:07:32.760Men have two reproductive strategies, right? One involves producing offspring that one does not0.97
01:07:38.300invest in and the other involves producing offspring that one invests heavily in. And
01:07:42.900when men are operating according to that second strategy, they are naturally similar to women in1.00
01:07:48.460their coosiness and their behavior. So really the question is why in a system where technology has1.00
01:07:57.380allowed us to effectively choose what kind of behavior we want to engage in, why would0.53
01:08:01.560we default to that initial male strategy and try and induce women to behave that way, rather
01:08:07.620than urge both men and women to their better high investment strategy, which makes the0.80
01:08:14.280world function, makes people happier, creates healthier children with good role models.
01:08:21.060We basically, we defaulted to the worst or the second worst mode, depending upon how
01:08:25.800you view it. And we bypassed the obvious solution, which was to encourage responsible behavior in the
01:08:34.660context of mating and dating of a kind that has a very long history with humans.
01:08:41.240Well, I mean, people do that because it's more fun in the short term and we're not taught about
01:08:46.320long-term fun. Yeah. On the other hand, I'm not sure. I think it seems like it should be more fun
01:08:54.040in the short term. But people are really dissatisfied. And I think that they need
01:08:58.260to notice they've never been sexually freer. But it's hard to imagine an era in which there
01:09:05.320has been so much complaining about the sexual environment. Those two things are two sides of
01:09:11.060the same coin. That freedom wasn't so wonderful. And the fact is, we needed to be grateful for
01:09:19.420the freedom that was provided by birth control. And we needed to treat it carefully rather than
01:09:24.720see it as, you know, licensed to get rid of all of the rules and the coherence of the system.
01:09:29.620And then at the point that we did that foolishly, and it produced a huge amount of dissatisfaction
01:09:36.280and frankly, sexual violence and all sorts of other things. This is a place where reversibility
01:09:42.340has to be the key. If it didn't work, if it produced a paradoxical outcome, where instead
01:09:47.080of being tremendously sexually satisfied, people are frustrated and angry about their sex lives,
01:09:52.460then maybe the answer is, well, where was our wrong turn? Yeah. Yeah. So we imagine that simply
01:09:59.680maximizing freedom is always the thing that will make us most satisfied, and it's not inherently.
01:10:05.200And that exists at the same time as the recognition that the ancient system put much more of the
01:10:10.840burden on women and that birth control has the capacity to relieve some of the unfairness,
01:10:17.400if you will, of the ancient system and make it one in which men and women can both be their best
01:10:24.380selves out in the world. But that does not mean that we should simply act as if no constraint
01:10:30.940is the best policy, because it's clearly not. As Brett said, we taught undergraduates for 15 years
01:10:37.680and we knew them very, very well. And we heard from many of them, how unsatisfying this world
01:10:44.840was with regard to relationships and expectations. Yeah, I agree. I think that goes for a number of
01:10:53.620things too, not just relationships and sex. And maybe if you're hooking up with a bunch of people
01:10:58.240and you're miserable, you could try hooking up with fewer people. That seems, it does seem a
01:11:02.360little counterintuitive. I can understand that, but I think that has to go with also,
01:11:06.100um, you know, screen time diet to just overdoing it being like, you get a little bit of joy. So
01:11:13.360you're like, okay, that's the direction I should go in. But if you're overall Lee,
01:11:16.960if you're overall unhappy with your life, then maybe you need to restrict some areas.
01:11:20.800I think that's smart. Yeah. I mean, every, everyone knows the term junk food, but we talk
01:11:25.620about junk food, junk sex, junk entertainment, you know, the junk, the junkification of the
01:11:31.100choices that are available to us, which exactly, as you say, prioritize the short term over the
01:11:35.320long-term. And those of us who have changed our diets, right. For instance, um, or who have always
01:11:41.300been on a diet that, that encourages the eating of real whole food, know that that's delicious.
01:11:47.220But if you currently eat junk food, you might imagine that will never taste good for me.
01:11:52.180You know, a salad will never taste good for me, but, but your body will learn to find it utterly
01:11:57.000delicious and to crave it. In fact, and the same will be true for sex. The same will be true for
01:12:01.260entertainment, but it will be a process. It's amazing how close the relationship is in all
01:12:10.540things between delayed gratification and wisdom. In other words, a child will gravitate to that
01:12:17.720thing that they want right now and that the adult recognizes that actually foregoing the thing you
01:12:23.680want right now and investing in something deeper, sometimes even over the course of years or longer
01:12:30.140is the way to ultimately end up more satisfied.
01:12:33.560But, you know, it's not intuitive for a child.