TRIGGERnometry - Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying： Sex, Religion, Evolution (Live Episode)

00:00:00.000 Hey KK, do you like Trigonometry?

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00:00:38.320 No niece, mate.

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00:00:43.680 And this one will sell out just as quickly.

00:00:46.940 Tickets are strictly limited and they're selling like copies of the Communist Manifesto.

00:00:51.920 Greatest book in the world, second only to 10 cute things you didn't know about Joseph Stalin.

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00:01:00.400 Anyway, see you there, guys.

00:01:03.180 Hello and welcome to a very special live episode of Trigonometry.

00:01:10.320 I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:11.700 I'm Constantine Kisson.

00:01:12.940 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:18.900 It does not get any more fascinating than the two brilliant guests, returning guests to the show that we have for you today.

00:01:25.820 They are, of course, evolutionary biologists, Heather Hying and Brett Weinstein, who are here with us to talk about their brilliant, fantastic book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century.

00:01:36.880 We cannot wait to speak with them.

00:01:38.840 The show is going to work like this.

00:01:40.340 Very simple.

00:01:41.280 We're going to chat with Brett and Heather for about an hour, an hour and 10 minutes.

00:01:44.680 We're going to have a very short break, and then after that is going to be your chance to put questions to Brett and Heather.

00:01:52.280 If you want to have that, all you need to do is send us a super chat on YouTube or send us a PayPal.

00:01:58.240 The link to that is in the comments section below this video.

00:02:01.920 Well, without any further ado, let's welcome Brett and Heather in here.

00:02:05.780 Let's get the conversation started.

00:02:07.420 Guys, welcome back.

00:02:09.420 Gentlemen.

00:02:10.540 Thank you for having us both.

00:02:12.000 It's good to be here.

00:02:12.680 So good to have you back.

00:02:14.400 I tweeted about this, and I genuinely meant it.

00:02:16.540 I've been like a kid on Christmas morning all day today because we can't wait to speak with you.

00:02:20.940 The book is absolutely fantastic.

00:02:23.000 I really recommend everybody read it.

00:02:25.160 And let's get straight into it.

00:02:26.600 Of course, in the book, you talk about evolution, some of the adaptations, both physically and genetically and culturally, that we've seen.

00:02:33.920 And you talk about how that is compatible or not quite compatible with the modern world.

00:02:39.600 But I think before we get into some of that detail, the underlying theme of the book that I kept having in the back of my head as I was reading it was that Facebook slogan of move fast and break things.

00:02:51.140 And my sense was what you're really saying is, as a Western industrial civilization, we've moved so fast and broken so many things that many of the things you talk about in the book, whether it's advice on food, advice on sleep, advice on parenting, advice on dating.

00:03:05.620 In all of those areas, we're no longer living in ways that are actually healthy for us.

00:03:12.060 Well, move fast and break things might make sense if you did it well.

00:03:15.880 Unfortunately, the way we have done it has caused us not to stop doing the things that are broken rather than to learn from them and prototype our way to a better future.

00:03:24.240 And so, yes, that is one of the themes of the book is that we are now living in uncharted territory that is so different from what we are evolved to deal with that we are simply incapable of adapting fast enough to keep up.

00:03:37.340 Yeah. And the idea that move fast and break things is the rule you should abide by or the rule you shouldn't abide by is part of the problem.

00:03:44.500 Right. Move fast and break and be willing to break your arm, perhaps as a way to know how to navigate risk in the world.

00:03:51.020 Okay. Move fast and be willing to break your head. No, like don't do that. That's not a good choice for a human being. It's not going to end well for you.

00:03:59.660 So part of I think you're right. I think that is one of the themes of the book. And part of it, too, is tradeoffs in everything. Right.

00:04:07.040 It is there are there will be no or almost no static rules with which we can live our lives.

00:04:12.500 We need to understand that we are evolving, changing complex beings and so need strategies that adapt with the times and with us.

00:04:21.020 And one of the rules you talked about in the book, and it's something that I think we're seeing more and more in our society, is avoiding simple solutions to incredibly complex problems.

00:04:33.360 Well, in some sense, you want solutions to be as simple as possible, but the idea that you should kid yourself that the solution will be simple.

00:04:43.720 You're not entitled to a simple solution to a complex problem, especially if you haven't even really understood what the problem is.

00:04:49.860 So very frequently, what we'll do is we'll identify a symptom as if it was a problem, and then we'll try to treat that symptom and we'll create a proliferation of even further symptoms rather than looking for the root cause and figuring out how to solve it once and for all.

00:05:05.120 Yeah.

00:05:06.600 Go for it. Please. Go ahead.

00:05:08.160 One of the other themes, which is exactly what you, Francis, are alluding to here with the question, is the problem of reductionism.

00:05:16.560 That sometimes simple solutions are the right ones, but far too often, as Brett points out and as we do repeatedly throughout the book, as soon as you have something that you've measured, you mistake that for the thing that needed to be measured and the only thing that needed to be measured.

00:05:30.460 And so now we've got a number, we've got a thing to point to that may or may not be the key symptom of the broken system in question, but we lose our motivation to keep looking for more things when we have a number in hand.

00:05:45.460 And so sometimes a simple solution will be the right one, but very often it's not.

00:05:50.820 And we need to keep our brains alive and our eyes open to continue to look for the deeper truths.

00:05:57.580 And Heather, very much to your point, that's actually what I was going to ask you about.

00:06:02.240 It might sound to someone who hasn't yet read the book that we're talking in abstract here very much.

00:06:07.200 So can you put some flesh on those bones for people?

00:06:09.960 What are some of the examples of the reductionism, the scientism that you all should talk about in the book that I think you're alluding to there?

00:06:17.860 Yeah.

00:06:18.080 Well, one example is the idea that the appendix is a vestigial organ.

00:06:24.080 And, you know, almost everyone who lives in the weird, you know, that acronym, Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic world, knows someone who has had a run-in with appendicitis.

00:06:36.720 And in some cases it's been, you know, close to deadly.

00:06:39.460 Usually people don't die anymore, but only if you live close to a medical facility.

00:06:44.260 And so the story that we've been handed for decades now is this organ has no function for us, is all cost, and so it is incumbent upon us to surgically remove it at first sign of disease.

00:06:56.740 Well, that story doesn't hold up from an evolutionary perspective because we've only been living in this post-industrial world for 150 years, call it, and the idea that this organ has been just killing people off for all of this time, for, you know, for however long it is that people imagine it to have been vestigial, forgets the power of selection.

00:07:20.220 So selection would have begun to produce this organ had it been entirely non-functional.

00:07:27.400 As it turns out, the fact of the disease in the appendix is a result of our modern lifestyles.

00:07:34.660 And we know that because when we look at non-weird cultures, non-weird peoples, the rate of appendicitis is almost zero. 1.00

00:07:41.700 And in fact, it may actually be zero.

00:07:44.140 I don't remember the numbers.

00:07:45.700 But what you do have is an emerging story about what the value is, that in those cultures where the food is not quite so sterile, not quite so clean for our guts, and for those people who have more frequent bouts of GI distress and GI illness, the appendix effectively acts as a repository for good bacteria with which it repopulates the gut after such bouts.

00:08:09.580 So in the weird world where our appendix doesn't get used much because our food is so clean and, you know, probably too clean, the appendix becomes inflamed because it's not used.

00:08:20.940 So it is becoming, in our very, very modern circumstances, a hazard, but it is still not a hazard in most of the world where people don't live like we do.

00:08:30.720 The error in thinking was that looking at this, and because we couldn't identify the value of the appendix, assuming it didn't have one, rather than saying, we can see that it obviously must have one.

00:08:42.660 Not only does the organ itself have some expense in building it, but the cost of the risk that comes from having one is substantial enough that the pressure to eliminate it would have been overwhelming.

00:08:52.740 It's also true that phylogenetically, it makes sense that it would be an organ in the process of disappearing because our relatives that would have to have it in order for that story to be true, do not.

00:09:04.120 So it was, I spotted, in fact, in college, the idea that the appendix had to have a purpose that we hadn't identified, that the vestigial story was simply wrong.

00:09:13.520 But it was decades before anybody figured out a story that was satisfying as to what it did, and we have to get comfortable with that.

00:09:21.120 We are new to biology in a way that we are not to physics and chemistry, and that means that very frequently, although we can say something about how a system works, we don't understand it well enough to be authoritative, and we have to be patient to figure out what all of the details are in order to see the full story.

00:09:36.140 And Brett, yeah, go for it, please.

00:09:39.140 Let me just add one more thing to that, which is we invoke in the book the concept introduced by G.K. Chesterton of Chesterton's Fence, right, in which two people walking down a road run into a fence and it's in their way, and one of them says, let's get rid of it.

00:09:53.660 And the second one, the more wise one, says, there's no way that we should get rid of it until and unless we can identify what its function is supposed to be, at which point then we can talk about it.

00:10:03.420 But until you know what its function is or was supposed to be, there's no way that you should just get rid of it.

00:10:08.960 And so we raise that early in the book, this parable of Chesterton's, which has come to be known as Chesterton's Fence, and we basically say, look for other things in the world like this.

00:10:20.340 So Chesterton's Appendix, Chesterton's Breast Milk, Chesterton's Play, Chesterton's Gods, right?

00:10:26.640 There are many things that we moderns are foregoing because it feels to us like we're done with that, we've evolved beyond it, we are moderns, we don't need that thing anymore.

00:10:37.900 And too often we get rid of things that still have function or are tied to things with function, and we do so because we haven't actually stopped to try to figure out what the function might be.

00:10:47.340 Don't you think, Heather, that actually shows that we're arrogant as a culture, we're arrogant as a society, that we look at things, and because we can't understand them or we don't find a purpose for them, therefore we dismiss them?

00:11:01.400 Absolutely.

00:11:02.260 Yes, yes we are.

00:11:03.180 And I think people in many cultures have an arrogance to them, but it is symptomatic of too many of the systems that have the power to drive narrative in weird cultures.

00:11:16.520 The arrogance is lauded rather than skepticism being lauded too often.

00:11:21.440 And we see this in evolutionary biology in particular, where there has been incredible resistance to the idea that religious traditions are in some way meaningful and important, right?

00:11:32.960 They've been dismissed as mind viruses, which they obviously aren't, right?

00:11:36.920 They're just as adaptive as a wing or an eye or any other structure.

00:11:40.760 And the reason that we've done that is because, in some sense, they are not literally true.

00:11:48.300 But the fact that they are not literally true shouldn't persuade us of anything one way or the other.

00:11:52.040 What they ought to be is, just like a wing or an eye, they ought to be functional, right?

00:11:55.980 Functional belief systems are ones that give you an advantage, and that doesn't necessarily come from them being literal and analytic.

00:12:02.760 So, yes, there is an arrogance, and it is something we will think more clearly when we get past it and we realize just how early we are in the study of adaptive complex systems.

00:12:16.080 Well, you've both preempted my question there, which is kind of the spiritual appendix of religion.

00:12:21.000 As you were talking about the appendix, I was thinking about this.

00:12:24.140 So, is it like the appendix in that, in a weird culture, we don't actually need it, and it's actually potentially a source of inflammation and harm?

00:12:34.500 Or is it that we've just taken away something out of our societies without really fully appreciating the value that it still has for us?

00:12:42.620 It is both to the 10th power, and that's the problem.

00:12:46.480 Because what we have is a compendium of wisdom matched to past environments.

00:12:52.880 And it's Chesterton's fence after Chesterton's fence.

00:12:56.280 There are structures in there that are still serving their original purpose and are vitally important.

00:13:01.200 There are other structures in there that may not only be useless, they can actually be harmful in our current environment.

00:13:07.220 And the process of sorting which is wheat and which is chaff is going to be a very difficult one.

00:13:13.080 But what we can say for sure is that it starts with the recognition that those belief systems were adaptive.

00:13:19.980 That doesn't necessarily mean they were good.

00:13:22.200 There were lots of things that urged people to war, things we mustn't do again, that were adaptive.

00:13:29.140 So, what does adaptive mean for people who are not evolutionary biologists?

00:13:32.760 What adaptive means is that they are the product of selection, and they enhance the chances that the creature that has these traits will have their genes lodged in the future.

00:13:43.760 It does not mean good.

00:13:44.940 To say that something is adaptive does not mean that you are saying that it is good, either for you, the individual, or the population in which that adaptive trait may be spreading.

00:13:56.300 Goodness is a moral assessment.

00:13:58.520 And we say early in the book, as we always did in our classrooms as well, that we will not fall prey to the naturalistic fallacy, the is-ought fallacy.

00:14:08.580 There are sort of a cluster of similar fallacies that philosophers recognize.

00:14:12.540 But to recognize that something is natural, which is itself a complicated term, but to recognize that something is evolutionary is not the same thing as recognizing, as claiming that it is what should be.

00:14:27.280 And, you know, that, in fact, is the error that people who have abused evolutionary thinking have made, people like social Darwinists and eugenicists and such have made exactly that error.

00:14:37.340 They have seen some measure of success and have decided that that thing that has succeeded in the way that they have claimed it is, therefore, who should be winning.

00:14:46.020 And there is nothing in evolutionary thinking, actually, that suggests that.

00:14:50.140 It's also important for people who are bootstrapping a model for thinking about evolution to realize that you have competing strategies in which both versions or the multiplicity of versions are all products of selection.

00:15:03.820 So ruthlessness is certainly a product of selection, as is compassion.

00:15:08.440 Rape is a product of selection, as are laws that punish people who rape, right?

00:15:13.240 These are competing strategies.

00:15:15.420 And what that, in part, does is it puts the onus on us to figure out which parts of what is evolutionary we wish to retain and augment and which ones we wish to banish.

00:15:27.220 And it's really a human question.

00:15:29.320 It can't be solved simply by science for exactly the reason that Heather is pointing out.

00:15:34.420 The fact that something is isn't the same as it being a good thing.

00:15:40.260 And choosing is our obligation.

00:15:43.240 Brett, before I interrupted you to ask you to explain adaptive to us and our audience, you were talking about religion being an adaptive thing.

00:15:52.440 What does that mean for us?

00:15:55.820 Well, it means a number of things.

00:15:57.760 One, as long as scientific folks keep wagging their finger at religious folks and saying you're suffering from a delusion, we're never going to get anywhere.

00:16:06.880 Because religious folks know that they're not suffering from a delusion, which doesn't mean that what they believe in is literal or even still relevant, right?

00:16:15.540 We have to get to a conversation in which the scientific folks acknowledge what religion has been and why it has characterized every important society.

00:16:24.540 And the religious folks recognize that their book of wisdom may in fact be so out of date that it needs a rethinking beyond the style of rethinking that has typically characterized religion, right?

00:16:39.780 We could, it would annoy many people, but we could draw a phylogeny of religions and you could see that, you know, Christianity is a version of Judaism and that Protestantism is a version of Christianity.

00:16:51.580 And we could, you know, we could, you know, increasingly divide these things.

00:16:54.540 Those are competing programs for exploiting habitats.

00:16:59.020 Some of them are adapted to different places and times.

00:17:03.200 And, you know, it works in an evolutionary fashion for a reason.

00:17:06.720 Sectarian difference is effectively like variation in a population of creatures in which those variants that more efficiently exploit the landscape and frustrate competition between members of the same lineage prosper.

00:17:20.100 And those that fail to do those things go extinct.

00:17:22.740 That's how these things got shaped by selection.

00:17:25.380 And it's why we have these remarkable narratives in the present.

00:17:29.740 But to recognize that these are products of evolution is to say that we know that they are adapted to the environments from which they came and not the environments that we find them in.

00:17:39.480 And that puts the onus on us to figure out which portion of these things is still relevant and which portion needs an update or replacement.

00:17:45.900 The part of the book that I found really interesting was where you tackled astrology, because now we're very dismissive of people who enjoy astrology.

00:17:57.160 But you in fact said, look, hang on, there is merit behind this way of thinking.

00:18:03.680 Yeah, which will sound astounding with just that introduction.

00:18:09.100 Indeed, it did to us when we first began thinking about this.

00:18:15.040 The fact is that modern astrology is generally bunk, because it asks only what day you were born, and then imagines that it can tell you a whole lot of things about your adult personality as a result, I think.

00:18:29.600 If my understanding of postmodern astrology is right.

00:18:31.860 But we cite in the book a study that looks at birth month at, gosh, I think it's maybe even over a million records from a hospital in the New York area over 80 or 90 years.

00:18:51.120 It separates these births, separates these births by month, and then does this longitudinal analysis of tens, dozens, maybe over a hundred different maladies that afflict human beings, and asks the question before doing the analysis, do maladies that people have in adulthood, are they predicted by the month in which they were born?

00:19:12.540 The thinking behind this being, by the month in which they were born, but remember that the difference here between this and most modern astrology is that the control is the place.

00:19:24.540 All of these people were born in the same place.

00:19:27.200 And so if you were born in New York in December, are you not likely to be exposed to different pathogens and different early experiences than if you're born in New York in June?

00:19:38.260 That is the reason that we can begin to expect, and that these researchers predicted, and that they indeed found, that there are indeed disease differences by birth month, if and only if you keep track of where you were born.

00:19:53.800 So most modern astrology doesn't do that, and there's no reason to think that it has any predictive power at all, really completely not.

00:20:00.500 But if you include place and birth month, more or less, and we have evidence that disease, physical disease varies by birth month when you control for place, well, behavior might as well.

00:20:15.900 Because just as you might have more access to the outside and to exploring if you're born in one month versus another and thus get different exposures to disease, you might also have different tendencies to be socializing or to be inward focused versus extroverted.

00:20:38.300 So I want to clear this up a little bit because I can almost hear our haters cracking the champagne open and pouring glass out of glass.

00:20:48.020 The point is an ancestral version of astrology in which a person that was resident in a location was analyzing other people resident in those same locations and noticing that the moment in the year at which you were born might have impacts on your temperament or other parameters of your life.

00:21:07.520 That person might have had predictive power having nothing to do with the content of the stories they would tell about why you were that way, but just the simple fact that somebody born in October meets a certain sequence in their nutrition, in the pathogens that they encounter, et cetera.

00:21:24.480 So modern astrology, because it doesn't pay attention to where you were born, is bunk.

00:21:29.740 It's nonsense. 0.95

00:21:30.780 It's a con.

00:21:32.160 But the point is it doesn't mean ancestral astrology was.

00:21:35.940 Ancestral astrology would have been a metaphorical explanation for patterns that could not have been described in analytical terms.

00:21:43.400 And it is, of course, in principle possible for somebody to resurrect such a tradition at any time.

00:21:48.600 Interesting, though.

00:21:49.320 One thing you just said, I think, gives even more reason to imagine that ancestral astrology would have been more predictive than modern astrology, even if you do control for where you're born, which is that, at least in the weird world, our diet doesn't tend to differ much over the year.

00:22:04.880 Even those of us who buy at farmers markets and try to eat seasonal produce, we all have plenty of food to eat throughout the year, pretty much.

00:22:13.160 And so the pattern pre-industrially and certainly pre-agriculturally of boom and bust cycles in just simply available of food and also available of particular macronutrients might have specifically exaggerated predictions, exaggerated the patterns around which you could have predicted differences that would have come from when you were born.

00:22:34.900 I also think, you know, it bears analogy to the relationship between, why am I blanking on the term, alchemy and chemistry, right?

00:22:46.820 A lot of modern chemistry emerges from the wrong-headed attempt to create gold out of other things, right?

00:22:53.320 A problem that is fundamentally nuclear and therefore not within the realm of chemistry, which is about electric charge primarily.

00:23:00.760 But the point is, the study was productive, just as somebody who didn't have the tools to look into your pathogens because they existed before the germ theory of disease and didn't have tools that could even find such things, might have noticed patterns.

00:23:15.660 You know, the stories that the stories that they told about it may have been useful and our modern understanding of, oh, you know, we have a cyclic pattern of disease through the year and it may have impacts on development.

00:23:30.940 You know, there's now a legitimate scientific study of this, which has more or less displaced the prior version.

00:23:35.960 But anyway, and, you know, many things are like this.

00:23:39.220 You don't necessarily know what you're looking for when you set about study and you may tell yourself wrong stories.

00:23:45.060 It may be that acupuncture works for reasons we don't yet know, but chi is a myth, you know, very likely that it is.

00:23:53.880 Anyway.

00:23:54.320 But the thing that you also talked about in the book is how important myths are in a way that we don't understand and in a way how it bound us together in our societies.

00:24:07.460 Well, not only are they important, I mean, you know, we sometimes drive our colleagues crazy because our scientific colleagues love to imagine that they have no faith and that they are trafficking in facts, not myth.

00:24:22.380 But this is not how science progresses.

00:24:25.120 A, you need to have at least a little bit of faith in order to do science, right?

00:24:29.360 The idea is to minimize the amount, but it can't be zero, right?

00:24:32.460 Because you don't even know for sure that you exist, that you're not in someone else's experiment being fed data in order to see what your mind will do with it, right?

00:24:40.200 You can't prove that you're not there.

00:24:41.820 So you assume it.

00:24:42.660 You have faith that you actually do exist and you can observe the universe and do science.

00:24:46.720 That's not useful to spend time worrying about that.

00:24:48.640 Right.

00:24:49.040 You can either spend your entire life on that one puzzle and never get anywhere, or you can say, I'm going to just take that one on faith and I'm going to work on things that might matter and go forward.

00:24:56.940 But as we build a model of the universe scientifically, there are zones that we understand really well and then there are giant gaps we can't fill in yet.

00:25:07.380 And very often as you get from a zone you know well towards a gap you don't know anything about at all, you become increasingly metaphorical in the way you describe things.

00:25:17.420 So, you know, atoms as billiard balls, right?

00:25:20.920 We know that atoms are not billiard ball like now, but we didn't.

00:25:24.480 And thinking that they were billiard ball like was good enough for a while.

00:25:28.680 It allowed us to do certain things and not others.

00:25:30.560 So, the basic point is any system of comprehension involves a whole lot of myth and yes, there is value in trying to minimize the amount that's dependent on myth because those myths can steer you wrong, right?

00:25:44.120 You don't necessarily know what's contingent on what when it's told in some narrative form.

00:25:48.260 But anyway, science contains myth.

00:25:52.880 The idea is to get rid of that myth.

00:25:54.860 We're nowhere near doing that fully yet and we ought to just accept it that, you know, it's not like there are the myth people and the fact people.

00:26:02.540 We all have a good deal of myth in our models.

00:26:05.420 I guess it's also true though that even those of us who are highly analytical also take in information through narrative.

00:26:13.300 And many people vastly prefer the narrative route for taking in information, whether or not they recognize that.

00:26:21.700 And since we are a narrative species, using myth to reveal truths, even if they come via stories that are, as we say, literally false, but metaphorically true, is likely to be a better way to encapsulate those so that we retain them and we can use them going forward.

00:26:42.680 Most people will remember a story better than a graph.

00:26:47.480 It's very, yeah, it's a very powerful way of putting it.

00:26:50.680 Most people do remember a story.

00:26:52.380 It's the way we're built.

00:26:53.980 The part of the book that I found very, very interesting is where, if I say so myself, you flirted a little bit with social conservatism when talking about sex and reproduction.

00:27:06.580 Yeah, well, it's not really social conservatism.

00:27:10.400 Well, I don't know.

00:27:11.320 I don't know what to say.

00:27:12.020 I would say that there are elements of social conservatism which are actually correct and that the idea, you know, a libertarian view of sex does not appear to be making people happy.

00:27:22.840 It does not appear to be making civilization more functional.

00:27:26.040 It appears to be isolating people from each other, causing people to be taken advantage of, increasing sexual violence and normalizing it.

00:27:34.000 So, yeah, there's a lot wrong with the way people are engaging.

00:27:38.380 But what I think is maybe a little bit subtle is that this is a sex-positive position.

00:27:46.540 It is not sex-positive as that term is typically used.

00:27:49.500 But the idea is if you recognize what an important and valuable gift sex is, and it's an evolutionary gift, right?

00:27:56.940 Evolution actually turned us into one of very few species that has sex for pleasure, right?

00:28:03.380 That was not a modern invention.

00:28:04.840 That was not us rebelling against our biology.

00:28:06.920 That was our biology awarding us an incredibly valuable tool for bonding.

00:28:12.160 And in so doing, it gave us a responsibility, which we are treating terribly, right?

00:28:18.680 We are not recognizing how marvelous it is that we were given that gift.

00:28:22.380 And then we gave ourselves a gift in the form of birth control, which allowed us to control even more.

00:28:27.900 And what we started doing is treating it frivolously, like a recreational activity, right?

00:28:33.680 And I'm not saying it shouldn't be fun.

00:28:35.160 It should be tremendously rewarding.

00:28:36.720 But, you know, but the point is when people think if sex is good, then easy access to sex must be great, right?

00:28:44.740 When they think that, they're thinking something incorrect.

00:28:47.660 And the proof is all around us.

00:28:49.840 And when you say the proof is all around us, what do you guys mean?

00:28:52.860 I'm sorry to jump in, Heather, but what are you guys talking about? 0.98

00:28:55.600 Surely, come on, everybody's having sex. 0.98

00:28:57.680 That's brilliant.

00:28:58.660 People just get, you know, get together.

00:29:00.680 They hook up.

00:29:01.260 Isn't that the liberal brilliance of the modern society that we've all been striving for, to free women from the risk of sex?

00:29:10.460 And now we're all liberated and everything is wonderful.

00:29:13.080 I've never heard you use those words, mate.

00:29:14.640 No, no, I don't actually agree with them, obviously, as you know.

00:29:17.760 Yeah, everyone is sexually satisfied now, right?

00:29:22.320 Just listen to them talk and you'll know how happy they are.

00:29:25.860 That's it right there.

00:29:26.980 And at the point that everyone is so clearly not sexually satisfied, what do we do?

00:29:32.080 We double down and double down and double down. 1.00

00:29:33.960 Okay, let's push more junk sex in your face at all moments. 1.00

00:29:38.320 Make it apparently available to everyone at any time they want it. 1.00

00:29:43.320 And let's see what happens.

00:29:45.000 Well, we're just getting more dissatisfied and more and more and more.

00:29:48.640 So, you know, there is also a problem with imagining that it is, I mean, of all things, to imagine that this should be a matter of personal, individual agency, sex seems like a particularly strange choice.

00:30:03.400 You know, we know it was an error to go towards junk food over in food space, but at least you're only poisoning your own body.

00:30:09.040 To go towards junk sex when sex is explicitly relational, when it's explicitly about two people, about two people coming together and exploring each other in a more deep and intimate way than, you know, than any other way that we know.

00:30:23.580 To imagine that that can be driven by the market effectively and that what's in my head, because I saw pictures and some video of someone doing something over here to someone not related to you, I'm going to bring that into my bedroom with you and it's going to be good. 0.97

00:30:39.900 That there's no relationship to anything that is rewarding or satisfying.

00:30:45.120 You know, is it physically titillating?

00:30:47.520 Can you actually, can you get off?

00:30:49.220 Yeah, okay, but that's it.

00:30:50.940 Then it's over.

00:30:51.460 Just like junk food, the pleasure is very quick and ends quickly and then you're left with an abyss afterwards, right?

00:30:59.860 You don't end up with the reward that lasts a long time, whereas you do with non-junk food and with non-junk sex and with non-junk music and non-junk everything, right?

00:31:10.820 We can reward ourselves by training ourselves, just as those who have weaned themselves off fast food into enjoying a delicious and nutritious diet, into being rewarded by, you know, sexual pleasure that is wildly sex positive, but that isn't about having your head turned and, you know, chasing down every hot thing that you see.

00:31:33.540 So, I just want to add to this, I think it is important, people who've read the book will know that we argue that men have two reproductive strategies and women have one.

00:31:43.460 The two, I mean, we divide it into three because, you know, rape is a strategy that works. 1.00

00:31:49.460 It's one that hopefully we can drive to something like zero.

00:31:52.280 But there's, generally speaking, a no-investment strategy where a male behaves in a way that in the past would have impregnated a female and walks away, so-and-go, as one of my students called it.

00:32:07.420 And then there's a strategy in which males invest in a partner and that partner's offspring, right?

00:32:14.200 And when men are in that mindset, they are not the same as women, they have different values, but they are similar to women in their level of choosiness and discernment. 0.90

00:32:25.760 And so what we effectively have is a modern culture in which we are getting men to default to their worst mode, their non-investment mode, and then getting women to mirror that behavior. 0.92

00:32:38.160 And it's not making men or women happy.

00:32:41.200 That's the problem, is that we have a better mode, and we are defaulting away from it.

00:32:45.860 There were certainly some problems with first- and second-wave feminism. 1.00

00:32:50.940 I always called myself a feminist, even though I came of age really as third-wave feminism was happening.

00:32:58.140 And it didn't look like it could possibly become ascendant the way it did.

00:33:01.780 So I, you know, in my younger years, would call the third wave, who hadn't yet identified themselves as third-wave feminists, the faux feminists, the fake feminists, because it looks illiberal.

00:33:11.540 It looks, you know, it looks, frankly, kind of misogynistic and regressive, and it's going to send not just women but all of us backwards.

00:33:18.420 So this feels consistent with an actually liberal perspective on bringing equality of opportunity to men and women equally, but not pretending that we're the same, because we're not.

00:33:32.980 And one of the parts of the book that I found really interesting in this chapter was talking about how a society where there was less relationships, where we were less monogamous, encourages male violence.

00:33:46.080 Yeah, it directly does, because for reasons we don't have to go into, sex ratios tend to be about even at birth.

00:33:57.120 And so what happens is, if you have a system in which some men-

00:34:00.640 Sorry, which just means that there are an equal number of boys and girls born absent other considerations.

00:34:04.860 So any system that causes some men to have more than one wife leaves other men sidelined, and one doesn't have to extrapolate very far to see that a bunch of sexually frustrated men either becomes a problem internal to a society,

00:34:21.800 or it becomes a global problem when the elites who have more than one wife take all of those sexually frustrated young men, arm them, and point them over a border at some enemy that maybe doesn't see it coming.

00:34:35.260 And, you know, that's a pattern of history, and if we don't want to see that, if we don't want to see war-like nations, and if we don't want to see violence within our own culture, monogamy is clearly the way to go.

00:34:47.120 It also has other really important benefits.

00:34:50.000 It increases the tendency towards cooperation.

00:34:53.760 In other words, full siblings have twice the reason to cooperate, as half siblings do.

00:34:58.000 It causes males to all be brought into productive activities, and frankly, the coherent system of motivation that arises out of a circumstance where all men have the prospect of finding a mate but need to be worthy in order to impress someone to get them to accept them as a mate,

00:35:23.360 that that that system actually results in a tremendous amount of innovation and productivity in our society.

00:35:30.160 So, yeah, the benefits are many, and unfortunately, the sophistications of the moment are self-obsessed, and they are, frankly, delusional, right?

00:35:42.280 We hear stories about polyamory being a better system for child-rearing because, basically, nobody knows whose child is whose, and so everybody participates in raising them, and it'll all be glorious, and that's nonsense.

00:35:56.640 Men are wired to need a high certainty of paternity before they're likely to invest.

00:36:01.860 Well, but I think it's true, to give them their due, that in a situation in which no man knows whose child he has fathered, that all men will contribute to parenting equally, which is to say, none at all. 0.50

00:36:14.520 That's what will happen.

00:36:15.980 That is what will happen.

00:36:17.220 I should say, again, I hear our detractors opening yet more champagne because they will have heard us say something that argues that adoption doesn't exist, and adoption definitely does exist.

00:36:28.000 But the point is, there's a difference between the eyes-wide-open version that actually functions for good reasons, there are reasons that people want to adopt, and there are honorable reasons, and the idea that people who just don't know whose children are whose are going to invest in them all at some high level, which is not going to happen.

00:36:46.360 Heather, could I take you back to when you were talking about men and women and equal but not the same?

00:36:52.580 Is that really the core of the problem here?

00:36:56.960 Because I know from my own experience with my wife how empowering and liberating it is for us both to be able to say, you know, if my wife says, why can't you be more like this?

00:37:07.500 For me to be able to say, it's because I'm a man, or vice versa, for her to be able to say, well, I'm behaving in this way because I'm a woman.

00:37:14.760 It's the most freeing thing for us as a couple.

00:37:17.600 But to say that out loud in public is sexist, is misogynistic, to say, well, she's like that because she's a woman, or he's like that because he's a guy.

00:37:27.520 We're not allowed to do that anymore, it feels like, sometimes.

00:37:30.700 That's interesting.

00:37:31.500 You know, I don't think I've ever said that.

00:37:34.560 I don't think we've ever had those kinds of conversations.

00:37:36.700 You should try.

00:37:37.140 I promise you.

00:37:37.720 It's great.

00:37:38.100 Well, but I think we don't because it seems, I know what you mean, and there's absolute truth in what you're saying, but there's also the risk of a conflation between the individual and the population.

00:37:51.800 Sure.

00:37:51.900 So to recognize that men and women are different on, you know, across many domains, it's not just height and muscle mass and hip width.

00:38:00.160 It's also variance in many things and interests and the interest, the difference in interests, like for, you know, things versus people hold for neonates, for babies and across cultures.

00:38:12.980 You know, this is not some, this is not the Western patriarchy informing us of how we should behave.

00:38:17.640 It's not what it is.

00:38:19.280 But we are, we are, we have overlapping distributions.

00:38:22.740 And so, you know, if I had a chalkboard here, I draw two, two bell curves that are largely overlapping.

00:38:28.160 And, you know, that's not, that's not exactly the right description for something like, for instance, intelligence.

00:38:35.700 Like intelligence, it seems that men and women have the same average intelligence, but men have much wider variance, much greater variance. 0.99

00:38:44.700 And so there's more male geniuses and more male idiots than there are women. 1.00

00:38:48.740 And on average, you know, we have about, you know, the same intelligence. 0.99

00:38:53.420 So that's, that's interesting in and of itself.

00:38:56.140 That said, there are female geniuses and perhaps the smartest woman, however you might want to measure it on earth today, the smartest person on earth today might be female. 1.00

00:39:04.680 There is nothing in the truth of greater variance in male intelligence than in female intelligence, suggesting that there couldn't be women who were smarter than, than the smartest men, right? 0.61

00:39:17.940 So the population level truth is absolutely true.

00:39:22.240 And we are ignoring it at our peril. 0.90

00:39:24.560 It's ridiculous. 0.89

00:39:25.380 It's reality denying. 0.70

00:39:26.380 It's getting in the way of a tremendous amount of not just progress at the societal level, but progress for individuals who are pretending that these differences don't exist.

00:39:36.240 But that doesn't mean that any individual cannot achieve something because the, because of the sex they were born to, with a few exceptions, of course.

00:39:46.760 Things like gestation and lactation are simply, you know, are simply getting problematic here.

00:39:51.380 Well, I actually would love to have a conversation where I could say, you know, I'm this way because I'm a man, but she won't put up with it.

00:40:03.680 That's because she's a woman. 1.00

00:40:06.540 That's right.

00:40:07.580 Exactly.

00:40:10.700 But the book was fascinating right the way through.

00:40:14.240 I just want to touch on pornography very, very quickly, because it seems to me that, and this is coming from a former teacher, that this is a ticking time bomb.

00:40:24.300 And that what people don't seem to understand is, especially online pornography, has found a way to hack our lizard brains and essentially just get addicted to dopamine hit after dopamine hit after dopamine hit.

00:40:39.600 It's terrifying, isn't it?

00:40:40.960 Or am I exaggerating?

00:40:41.880 No, you're not exaggerating.

00:40:43.940 I think ticking time bomb is a weird analogy because it seems to have already gone off.

00:40:48.900 I mean, it's distorting the way people are interacting, and it is making them much, much worse.

00:40:56.160 But the number of things that are wrong with it and the reasons are pretty obvious, right?

00:41:00.460 So for one thing, if we define pornography as erotic content that's generated for profit, which I really think is the best way to define it.

00:41:08.980 And the point is, well, we know what an entity trying to make profit off of sex is, you know, we know what puzzle they're trying to solve, which is they need to gain attention in, you know, and they need to displace competitors who are trying to gain attention with the very same ancient good.

00:41:25.420 Right. They're they need to gain attention by with images of people having sex. 0.51

00:41:30.480 So how do you distinguish yourself?

00:41:31.980 Well, you're going to move in the direction of the extreme, in the direction of taboo, in the direction of things that aren't good, like sexual violence.

00:41:39.740 And the problem is that human beings are not we don't arrive in the world knowing how sex works. 0.60

00:41:48.380 Right. It's something we have to learn. It's something, in fact, you're supposed to learn with a partner, which is an amazing activity to to be engaged in.

00:41:57.300 But the first kind of information that humans tend to have, at least in an ancestral environment, is, you know, people sleeping in the same hut.

00:42:05.920 The parents may have sex. The children may be pretending to be asleep.

00:42:09.040 They get some sense of what sex actually looks like. Right.

00:42:11.720 Right. Well, if that part of your mind that's looking to figure out what sex is, is seeing pornography in which people are choking each other or whatever else.

00:42:19.540 Right. It begins to think that that is normal.

00:42:22.400 And so now we have this situation where somehow men and women are supposed to work side by side, treat each other as equals and then go into the bedroom and choke each other.

00:42:31.440 That that that's not going to work. So then we get into this situation where, you know, consent is something that has to be sought every two minutes or I don't know what people are doing.

00:42:43.120 Right. No, that you know, that that seeking of consent thing, it's actually pretty unsexy.

00:42:49.700 Right. The moaning is supposed to be the indicator of consent.

00:42:54.140 Right. At some level, there's an ancient system there that we've displaced in favor of some modern thing that's so market driven that it can't help but distort our view.

00:43:04.620 Well, and in this, as in so many things and many of the systems we talk about in the book, part of the problem is that we've cleaned up the childhood environment so much that the first exposure that children will have to sex is, my God, from porn.

00:43:19.240 Right. From complete strangers doing things for a market, as opposed to, you know, maybe, you know, maybe stumbling across adults or playing, you know, playing doctor or whatever the hunter gatherer version of that was.

00:43:34.740 You know, exploring sexually as children in interesting, reasonable ways and thus coming of age already with some sense of what bodies are, what their bodies can do, what feels good, what doesn't, as opposed to, nope, childhood is a time for none of that.

00:43:55.680 That's not what's supposed to happen during childhood at all. And therefore, we're going to let the screens do it for you. Like, that's an insane way to teach children about sex. And that's exactly what we're doing.

00:44:07.740 So, yeah, ticking time bomb. Absolutely. How can we allow children to actually be children and to play in schoolyards and skin their knees and to look at each other across a classroom and make eye contact and do a little flirting at, you know, at younger ages than we are currently imagining is possible?

00:44:32.640 And say, okay, as long as long as no one is crying foul, as long as no one is actually getting hurt in a real way, this is actually how we learn to be adults.

00:44:43.260 And instead, we cocoon them. You know, we put the children in little boxes and we keep them from all risk and we drug them and we give them screens and, you know, we do the other things as well.

00:44:54.720 But the helicopter parenting and the schools that do the same thing, that keep, you know, that keep referees in all sports and free play isn't possible means that, of course, people arrive at the cusp of adulthood with the bodies of adults, but the brains of children.

00:45:10.620 And just coming back to porn for a second, and let's keep the kids being exposed to a side, although we don't seem to be able to do that in our society.

00:45:20.540 But for the sake of this argument, let's try and separate the two. Isn't there some evidence that societies which do have pornography, A, have less sexual violence and also that you might also describe the existence of pornography as adaptive?

00:45:34.200 I mean, I remember visiting Greece and they have these like 5,000 year old little clay models of pornography on them and stuff like that.

00:45:42.680 So, no? You're shaking your head, Brett?

00:45:45.760 Yeah.

00:45:46.360 Maybe they were painted in 1974, but you know what I mean.

00:45:49.660 No, I know what you mean. I just disagree with your terminology. That was not porn, okay?

00:45:54.980 That was erotica. And we draw this distinction quite clearly. There's nothing wrong with erotica, right?

00:46:01.200 It's not all good. But the point is, if somebody has something to say sexually, that's completely valid. It's a very ancient process.

00:46:09.960 It is the market that is distorting this. It is the idea that you want to see something sexual and then somebody wants to meet that need and they have some competitor that they have to overwhelm.

00:46:21.980 And that is going to result in, you know, incest being the subject, right? Incest is bad for a biological reason we now well understand, but didn't, right?

00:46:31.940 We knew it was bad, but we didn't understand the problem of deleterious recessive genes coming together when siblings mate, for example.

00:46:39.500 So it was taboo because selection caused us to view it that way correctly.

00:46:45.580 And now it is being explored in porn because it's a way to differentiate some porn from others.

00:46:51.840 So there's nothing wrong with the erotica. It is ancient. Yes, you'll find sexuality represented in virtually every culture,

00:46:59.700 but it is the immediate gratification that comes from the market's desire to get you to spend money you would not spend that is so destructive.

00:47:09.800 It is also incredibly destructive to have it so easily available that it replaces your mind's sexual creativity, right?

00:47:19.760 You become a consumer of sexual narrative rather than a generator.

00:47:23.720 And this is kind of, you know, uncomfortable stuff to talk about, but there's a reason that human minds are obsessed with sex in the way they are.

00:47:32.500 And men are different in this regard. They are differently obsessed, but they are obsessed with sexual content.

00:47:37.500 And the point is you are supposed to obsess over details. You are supposed to obsess over real people.

00:47:45.700 It actually affects how you move through the world, what you want and what you'll do when you get in range, right?

00:47:53.420 You're supposed to be generating scenarios that have relevance to the real world, not fantasizing about the hunky pizza guy, right?

00:48:02.140 Right. So the point is we are denying kids that landscape and we are turning them into sexual consumers rather than people who will participate in some relationship

00:48:12.140 that will be likely the most important one in their lives with some toolkit that's ready to handle it.

00:48:18.340 I know we've had what seems like a fairly negative conversation, but actually the book is full of recommendations and ways that advise you in terms of food,

00:48:34.120 which is something, and sleep, which is things we haven't really talked about.

00:48:37.060 And maybe this is a good chunk as we get towards the end of the interview part to talk about that.

00:48:42.740 Talk to us about some of the new adaptations that we can make at the individual level and also the societal level

00:48:49.380 to start to address some of the problems that we've created for ourselves.

00:48:54.660 Well, I mean, you know, to pick up on the conversation we've been having, we have some new tools at our disposal.

00:49:02.680 Birth control, for example, allows women to choose if and when to reproduce and how much. 0.93

00:49:08.680 That means that we have a whole new set of opportunities with respect to careers that women can enter and participate in in different ways. 0.98

00:49:18.920 So we have all of these opportunities that are the result of a technology, but that technology has downsides as well.

00:49:25.540 It is causing people to treat sex in a frivolous way that is causing them to be less kind to each other,

00:49:32.300 to prioritize the building of meaningful permanent relationships at a much lower level.

00:49:37.660 And so the question is, with all of these things, is how do we take the advantages that come from novel technology

00:49:45.660 and separate them from the costs that happen when we deploy those technologies arbitrarily?

00:49:52.360 So that was not a suggestion.

00:49:55.080 That was staying negative.

00:49:56.740 I've got a positive thought.

00:49:57.720 That sort of, that comes to, that brings together some of the things you've talked about, the, you know, sex, relationship, and sleep.

00:50:05.760 Which is to say, anyone who's had a newborn in the weird world has thought in advance, at any rate,

00:50:12.660 about how it is that they're not going to be sleep deprived for the first many months of their life with that newborn.

00:50:18.280 And one of, you know, birth control is an incredible modern invention that has freed women and the opportunities available to us,

00:50:27.140 and therefore couples as well, greatly.

00:50:29.240 And of course, it comes with costs too.

00:50:32.140 Similarly, the ability to express breast milk and to save it for later so that the mother does not have to be on hand 0.98

00:50:39.120 at all moments that her baby might need that breast milk is a wonderful modern invention.

00:50:45.380 But as actually one of our students back at Evergreen began to wonder with regard to, you know,

00:50:51.640 why are there so many sleep problems in newborns in the weird world?

00:50:56.560 She began to wonder if, given that we now know that breast milk is not just nutrition,

00:51:01.240 just like food is not just nutrition, and not just even immune information,

00:51:06.580 but possibly other things as well.

00:51:09.700 Maybe it is helping to entrain the sleep cycle.

00:51:12.060 Maybe it is helping to establish a circadian rhythm for the baby.

00:51:16.220 And therefore, it is hypothesized, and we do have this in the book,

00:51:21.200 that if you are in the position where you are a new mother,

00:51:25.820 and you have a partner who is, you know, willing and able to help feed your child,

00:51:30.340 and your child is only getting breast milk,

00:51:32.060 that when you express milk, putting not just the date, but the time on it,

00:51:37.660 so that if the baby gets up at two in the middle of the night,

00:51:41.040 and it's dad's time to feed the baby,

00:51:44.440 if you pull a bottle from the freezer that is from two in the afternoon,

00:51:48.800 there is a good chance that you have just sent that child the signal,

00:51:52.100 it is daytime, it is time to wake up and play now.

00:51:55.800 And that baby may now be well fed and well awake and not ready to go back to sleep.

00:52:00.400 You know, it is time to rock and roll on what you want to send.

00:52:03.020 The signal is you are now well fed.

00:52:05.300 It is still the middle of the night.

00:52:06.800 We are all sleeping, and so should you be.

00:52:09.480 And the simple, you know, the simple fix to the modern wonder

00:52:14.520 that is the ability to control our reproduction and our feeding of our babies

00:52:18.780 of time stamping breast milk that you've expressed

00:52:22.940 may well help with the sleep deprivation that so many new parents experience.

00:52:28.400 So that's just, you know, that's kind of involved.

00:52:31.240 But there are a lot of things like this where, okay,

00:52:33.180 it's not that modernity is bad.

00:52:35.180 Modernity is fast.

00:52:36.380 It's too fast changing for us to keep up very well.

00:52:39.580 But if we think evolutionarily,

00:52:41.380 there is often something that we can just add

00:52:44.020 to what it is that we're doing

00:52:45.680 in order to get some of the coherence back.

00:52:48.300 And what about some of the stuff that if you hadn't just written this book,

00:52:55.140 we'd normally be talking with you guys about on the show,

00:52:58.540 which is, I mean, I can, I'm trying to make it less negative

00:53:02.560 than it's going to come out.

00:53:03.680 But, you know, I'm tempted to describe it as the slow

00:53:06.920 or rapid breakdown of society, depending on how you see it.

00:53:09.820 But you know what I mean, right?

00:53:10.760 And you're kind of alluding to it with the impact of the sexual revolution,

00:53:17.660 the impact of the hookup culture and all of that.

00:53:20.420 That has downstream consequences, which we see on the streets,

00:53:23.680 which we see, you see in your former college, etc., etc., etc.

00:53:28.620 How are we going to fix that?

00:53:30.900 Well, okay.

00:53:32.980 How can I say positively?

00:53:35.000 I don't know that we are going to fix it.

00:53:36.680 But if we were going to fix it,

00:53:39.680 the first step would be recognizing what the process is

00:53:44.520 that is creating all of the dysfunction

00:53:46.620 and recognizing that as incoherent

00:53:49.820 as a lot of the complaints about Western civilization have become,

00:53:54.060 that the frustration is actually about something, right?

00:53:58.180 We have an incredibly productive society

00:54:00.680 that does not distribute things well.

00:54:03.060 It does not protect people from, for example,

00:54:05.580 the consequences of bad luck,

00:54:07.720 which we absolutely should do, right?

00:54:10.080 Protecting people from the consequences of bad decisions is a mistake,

00:54:13.260 but protecting them from the consequences of bad luck is our obligation,

00:54:17.120 and it's good for all of us to do it.

00:54:19.280 So the first step is recognizing what we're doing wrong.

00:54:23.280 One thing we're doing wrong

00:54:24.380 is we are letting markets decide what we should want

00:54:27.800 rather than just simply deciding

00:54:29.460 how best to solve problems that we have handed to them.

00:54:33.100 And then the second thing is to recognize

00:54:35.380 that on our current trajectory,

00:54:37.540 we know that the resources of planet Earth

00:54:40.880 will not continue to support us,

00:54:42.420 that we are actually headed into great danger,

00:54:45.120 that that is not a situation that is totally novel.

00:54:49.000 Many past populations have faced situations like that,

00:54:51.860 but that in order to get out of a trajectory

00:54:55.040 that is likely to be fatal

00:54:57.240 or at least extremely destructive,

00:54:58.900 the right thing to do is for us to rise

00:55:02.180 to what we call collective consciousness

00:55:03.980 and get serious about the question

00:55:06.180 of how else we might exist so that we don't have this.

00:55:09.340 And, you know, what we have is a civilization

00:55:11.360 that has been a fantastic prototype,

00:55:13.860 but the structures, you know,

00:55:16.220 18th century solutions to how we will govern ourselves

00:55:18.900 just simply aren't adequate to our modern problems.

00:55:21.660 It's time to figure out how to take

00:55:23.140 the things that they discovered that do work

00:55:25.380 and the values that they correctly focused on

00:55:27.700 and build them into a system

00:55:29.500 that is capable of dealing with modern problems.

00:55:33.040 So anyway, that's the last chapter of the book

00:55:35.000 is about that.

00:55:36.620 And you touch upon that, this idea,

00:55:39.180 and that in our society, we're addicted to growth.

00:55:42.940 And we believe that growth is always good,

00:55:45.160 but in a sense, growth is slowly destroying us.

00:55:48.560 Well, and really life is addicted to growth.

00:55:51.580 All evolved beings are addicted to growth.

00:55:53.560 So that, again, it's not just about the weird societies.

00:55:57.580 It is what we are.

00:55:59.080 So, you know, we argue in the book

00:56:01.000 without pretending to provide a blueprint

00:56:03.280 because we argue that we need to get

00:56:06.820 to the beginning of an adaptive foothill

00:56:08.660 so that we can climb from there

00:56:10.120 and explore what the future can look like

00:56:12.420 that is maximally productive and fair for all.

00:56:15.800 But the growth itself is, yes, an addiction,

00:56:20.940 but we do crave it.

00:56:22.020 So how can we create the sensation of growth

00:56:25.340 without actually using more stuff?

00:56:27.720 So we need to grow with things that are non-zero sum,

00:56:32.480 things like creativity and innovation

00:56:34.560 and, you know, lasting contributions

00:56:38.140 rather than the throwaway junk culture

00:56:41.060 that we have now,

00:56:42.360 which is accelerating the rate

00:56:44.080 at which growth is killing us.

00:56:45.300 And this may sound like a nonsense fantasy,

00:56:48.060 but it's really we're invoking something

00:56:50.300 that's actually got plenty of precedent, right?

00:56:53.760 Spring is delightful, right?

00:56:55.400 The idea that you should always want it to be spring

00:56:57.240 may seem fanciful,

00:56:58.260 but we make it spring all the time in our homes

00:57:00.560 and we don't violate any rules of physics to do it.

00:57:03.120 The fact is you've got a steady state

00:57:04.880 and, you know, as you're cooling your house,

00:57:07.700 you're warming the backyard

00:57:08.780 and that's just simply how it works.

00:57:10.460 So the question is,

00:57:11.260 how can we do that same trick

00:57:12.900 with our human senses

00:57:16.200 so that our growth is not eroding the world

00:57:19.860 out from under us

00:57:20.960 and so that each generation leaves a world 0.99

00:57:23.100 as intact as the one it inherited?

00:57:25.200 That ought to be our goal.

00:57:26.740 It's really our obligation

00:57:27.920 and it is possible,

00:57:29.460 but it's not going to happen automatically.

00:57:31.320 The market's not going to find this.

00:57:33.160 The market has, in fact,

00:57:34.080 caused the problem

00:57:34.940 because we've given it hegemony

00:57:37.020 over not just how to solve problems,

00:57:39.340 but what problems to address.

00:57:42.320 You were almost positive there for a sec, Brett,

00:57:44.760 but you went back to there is no solution.

00:57:47.560 You didn't quite say that.

00:57:49.060 You know, the key to a meaningful positivity

00:57:52.140 is staring into the abyss

00:57:53.980 until it's about freaking you out.

00:57:56.240 Well, on that-

00:57:57.440 Sounds scary.

00:57:58.400 Yeah.

00:57:59.140 On that very positive note,

00:58:00.740 we are going to take a short break

00:58:02.880 for questions.

00:58:03.480 Reminder, guys,

00:58:04.100 if you want to send in a question

00:58:05.480 for Brett and Heather,

00:58:06.760 do so using the super chats.

00:58:08.460 Anton has been collating them

00:58:09.640 or the PayPal link is in the description.

00:58:11.680 We're going to take about a three-minute break.

00:58:13.420 We'll come back with questions

00:58:15.360 directly from you for the guys

00:58:17.260 and we very much look forward to that.

00:58:18.960 We'll see you in three minutes.

00:58:21.200 Hey, Constantine.

00:58:22.360 Do you love trigonometry?

00:58:23.680 Of course.

00:58:24.740 Incredible interviews,

00:58:26.260 hilarious live streams,

00:58:27.780 hard-hitting satire,

00:58:28.980 plus my handsome jawline.

00:58:31.140 Whatever takes away from your hairline.

00:58:33.120 But if you do love trigonometry

00:58:34.600 and you want to support us,

00:58:36.420 there's only one place to do that

00:58:38.320 and that's on Locals.

00:58:40.000 Yes, Locals is a brilliant platform

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00:58:43.940 to our show

00:58:44.820 and other problematic creators.

00:58:47.460 The great thing about Locals

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00:58:52.120 That's right.

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00:59:09.380 We've got everything from mugs,

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00:59:15.420 Join our community

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00:59:18.420 and the pinned comment below.

00:59:19.900 See you there, guys.

00:59:23.680 Hey, KK.

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01:01:22.860 All right.

01:01:23.620 Welcome back, everybody.

01:01:24.900 Let's get Brett and Heather 1.00

01:01:25.940 back as well, Anton,

01:01:27.040 and let's get to the question.

01:01:28.880 We've got a bunch of questions.

01:01:30.360 Guys, the first is actually

01:01:31.940 two questions

01:01:32.880 from two separate people,

01:01:33.860 but very much the same subject.

01:01:35.220 I'm going to merge them into one.

01:01:37.180 Don John says,

01:01:38.040 Jonathan Haidt,

01:01:38.720 who you both know,

01:01:39.800 states that woke universities

01:01:41.080 are here to stay,

01:01:42.520 that other institutions of learning

01:01:44.380 should be established

01:01:45.180 to counter them.

01:01:46.600 And FM,

01:01:47.240 very much on that subject,

01:01:48.560 says,

01:01:49.080 would you consider organizing

01:01:50.700 a new university,

01:01:51.920 one without illiberalism,

01:01:53.740 or what recommendations

01:01:54.740 would you make

01:01:55.480 on current universities

01:01:56.460 in the US?

01:01:58.440 Oh, boy.

01:01:59.320 Yeah.

01:02:01.600 Big, big necessary question.

01:02:05.420 Can the existing institutions

01:02:07.720 be saved,

01:02:08.760 or do we need

01:02:10.580 new systems entirely?

01:02:12.300 Maybe, maybe some of them

01:02:15.800 can be saved, kind of,

01:02:17.800 but we definitely need

01:02:18.640 a new system

01:02:19.180 because we need

01:02:19.780 a functioning system

01:02:20.540 of higher ed.

01:02:22.080 We did spend

01:02:23.200 a little bit over a year

01:02:24.440 working on a project

01:02:25.280 to try to bootstrap

01:02:26.780 a new kind of higher ed

01:02:27.700 based on some of what

01:02:28.620 we learned at Evergreen

01:02:29.640 because despite what,

01:02:31.780 you know,

01:02:32.080 despite what everyone knows

01:02:33.300 about how Evergreen blew up

01:02:35.040 and, you know,

01:02:35.800 how we came to the public eye

01:02:37.060 at all,

01:02:37.880 it really did have

01:02:39.280 some extraordinary

01:02:40.280 foundational principles.

01:02:42.300 which allowed for education

01:02:43.820 in a way that

01:02:44.620 doesn't happen elsewhere.

01:02:47.420 You know,

01:02:47.540 the full-time interaction

01:02:48.640 with students,

01:02:49.240 really getting to know people well.

01:02:50.840 The problem is

01:02:51.540 that's hard to make scale,

01:02:52.920 right?

01:02:53.180 And so, you know,

01:02:53.860 what you're doing

01:02:54.520 and what we're doing

01:02:55.740 with podcasts,

01:02:57.380 with trigonometry

01:02:57.920 is a kind of education,

01:03:00.800 but it doesn't,

01:03:02.020 for the most part,

01:03:02.640 allow for a back and forth.

01:03:03.660 So you can't get

01:03:04.260 to know the people.

01:03:05.040 And that is,

01:03:06.680 you know,

01:03:07.580 that is definitely

01:03:08.260 a restriction

01:03:09.140 on how far

01:03:10.460 you can go with it.

01:03:11.480 So,

01:03:12.200 yes,

01:03:14.560 Brett and I,

01:03:16.380 both individually

01:03:17.120 and together,

01:03:18.020 have considered

01:03:18.920 and are considering

01:03:20.520 ways in which

01:03:21.560 we might

01:03:22.140 think about

01:03:24.580 new models

01:03:25.520 of higher ed,

01:03:27.140 but it is,

01:03:29.540 there are many challenges.

01:03:31.360 I'll leave it at that.

01:03:32.080 I'll let you riff.

01:03:32.940 All right.

01:03:33.740 A couple of things.

01:03:34.960 I don't think

01:03:35.640 these institutions

01:03:36.840 can be saved.

01:03:38.780 I think it's more

01:03:39.860 or less the point

01:03:40.660 where your dog

01:03:41.660 has rabies

01:03:42.600 and the idea is

01:03:43.780 that's not really

01:03:44.340 your dog anymore,

01:03:45.320 right?

01:03:45.740 That's an animal

01:03:46.720 with rabies

01:03:47.180 and it's got to go.

01:03:48.920 I do think

01:03:50.020 alternative institutions

01:03:51.460 are the way to go.

01:03:52.720 There's a reason

01:03:53.220 that it will be difficult

01:03:53.960 to create them.

01:03:55.480 The first question

01:03:56.480 that you have to ask yourself

01:03:57.720 at the point

01:03:58.100 you decide to set up

01:03:59.000 such a thing

01:03:59.520 is,

01:04:00.760 will you seek accreditation?

01:04:01.980 If so,

01:04:02.940 you have one failure mode,

01:04:04.240 you will turn into

01:04:04.940 exactly the same thing

01:04:06.020 that you're trying to replace

01:04:07.040 or will you not

01:04:08.000 seek accreditation

01:04:08.820 in which case

01:04:09.420 you will be hobbled

01:04:10.180 by all of the obstacles

01:04:11.320 that will have been placed

01:04:12.100 in your path

01:04:12.700 in order to keep

01:04:13.360 the stranglehold

01:04:14.160 on education

01:04:14.760 that the current

01:04:15.420 accredited system has.

01:04:17.240 So,

01:04:17.640 at some point

01:04:19.120 people are going to realize

01:04:20.200 actually I don't want

01:04:21.100 the students

01:04:21.520 from the accredited institution 0.99

01:04:22.760 because they're all crazy, 0.99

01:04:24.620 right? 0.90

01:04:24.940 I want the students

01:04:26.060 from the institution

01:04:27.020 that makes sense

01:04:27.740 that isn't accredited

01:04:28.760 and isn't crazy

01:04:29.960 because it's not accredited

01:04:31.140 or that allowed

01:04:32.420 for it not to be crazy

01:04:33.460 and because of that

01:04:35.140 there will be

01:04:35.660 a massive attempt

01:04:36.660 to stamp out

01:04:37.780 any new types of

01:04:39.780 stamp out

01:04:40.340 or capture

01:04:40.900 any new institutions

01:04:41.840 that aren't accredited

01:04:43.200 and show signs

01:04:44.000 of being able to do this.

01:04:45.060 So,

01:04:45.160 that's really

01:04:45.540 where the battle

01:04:46.100 is going to be

01:04:46.720 and as soon as

01:04:47.460 you've got one established,

01:04:49.040 others will grow.

01:04:50.160 So,

01:04:50.300 the battle will be

01:04:50.900 over the first one,

01:04:51.940 right?

01:04:52.220 Will somebody

01:04:52.800 be able to stabilize

01:04:54.060 an alternative

01:04:55.200 university,

01:04:56.380 let's say,

01:04:56.820 that effectively educates

01:04:59.420 while not participating

01:05:00.300 in this woke nonsense

01:05:01.940 and if they can get one,

01:05:03.620 then that'll be a model

01:05:04.660 and we'll get a new system

01:05:05.740 and,

01:05:06.480 you know,

01:05:06.780 the fact is

01:05:07.300 the other system

01:05:07.900 will collapse

01:05:08.400 because who's going

01:05:09.040 to hire the graduates?

01:05:10.360 Yeah,

01:05:10.520 so let me just add

01:05:11.280 one thing.

01:05:13.140 In the U.S.,

01:05:13.700 I don't know the system

01:05:14.500 in the U.K.,

01:05:15.560 but in the U.S.,

01:05:16.820 being accredited

01:05:17.720 gives you access

01:05:18.400 to federal grants

01:05:19.280 and the federal grants

01:05:20.340 come in two large categories,

01:05:22.580 many more than this,

01:05:23.340 but the two that are

01:05:25.260 the most concerning

01:05:26.540 are the grants

01:05:29.500 for low-income students,

01:05:30.860 so without things

01:05:31.700 like Pell Grants

01:05:32.300 in the United States,

01:05:33.420 most students

01:05:34.040 could not go to college

01:05:34.880 and if you're not accredited,

01:05:35.940 you can't get Pell Grants,

01:05:36.880 therefore you can't attract

01:05:37.720 low-income students

01:05:38.580 and the other big category

01:05:40.840 is grants for research

01:05:43.080 and because,

01:05:44.480 again,

01:05:44.880 of the problem

01:05:45.480 of the market forces

01:05:46.420 driving so much

01:05:48.340 of what has happened

01:05:48.900 in higher ed

01:05:49.660 for the last many decades,

01:05:51.460 most science now

01:05:52.480 is big science,

01:05:53.880 which is to say

01:05:54.680 expensive science

01:05:55.800 and the value

01:05:57.400 of big science

01:05:58.980 to institutions

01:05:59.940 is hopefully sometimes,

01:06:01.800 yes,

01:06:01.960 the science itself,

01:06:03.060 but unfortunately

01:06:03.780 much of the value

01:06:04.640 is that institutions

01:06:05.500 get a tremendous percentage

01:06:07.380 of the overhead

01:06:09.280 on those grants

01:06:10.280 and so if you are

01:06:11.980 not accredited

01:06:12.660 and therefore

01:06:13.400 your big science

01:06:14.640 science faculty

01:06:15.400 cannot apply

01:06:16.240 for funds

01:06:16.900 from in the U.S.

01:06:17.680 or BNSF,

01:06:18.520 NIH,

01:06:19.000 DOD,

01:06:19.980 even if they can get

01:06:22.240 grants,

01:06:23.020 even if there's

01:06:23.600 somehow massive

01:06:24.680 philanthropic money

01:06:26.220 through which they

01:06:26.900 can get grants

01:06:27.600 to do their work,

01:06:28.680 it will be very hard

01:06:29.840 to move back and forth

01:06:31.740 between that system

01:06:32.800 and one which is accredited

01:06:34.080 because they will have

01:06:34.780 no history

01:06:35.420 of grant getting

01:06:36.780 the likes of which

01:06:37.540 all of their peers do.

01:06:38.960 So what we don't want

01:06:40.020 is two still-functioning

01:06:41.940 systems that work

01:06:42.780 side by side

01:06:43.500 but can't interact

01:06:44.240 with one another

01:06:44.860 of higher ed.

01:06:45.880 We need a way

01:06:46.860 for all communication

01:06:48.500 to happen,

01:06:49.440 for science to work

01:06:50.540 across boundaries,

01:06:51.680 for education

01:06:52.420 to work across boundaries

01:06:53.440 and it can't work

01:06:56.300 if there is this

01:06:57.560 still struggling

01:06:59.320 with its last breaths

01:07:00.500 accredited system

01:07:01.980 which is holding on

01:07:03.420 to all of the federal money

01:07:04.560 and an unaccredited system

01:07:07.180 which may have

01:07:09.200 philanthropic money

01:07:10.280 but will not allow

01:07:11.760 either students

01:07:12.860 as Brett alluded to

01:07:13.740 or faculty

01:07:14.420 to move back and forth

01:07:15.420 between the two.

01:07:16.080 And also a more societal

01:07:18.640 level worry

01:07:19.360 that I think

01:07:20.560 ought to be included

01:07:21.820 in this conversation

01:07:22.560 and tell me what you

01:07:23.500 think about this.

01:07:24.560 We just interviewed

01:07:25.420 Vivek Ramaswamy

01:07:26.440 who's written a book

01:07:27.320 called Woke Inc

01:07:28.060 and one of the things

01:07:29.240 he was talking about

01:07:30.380 was that if you

01:07:31.380 go down the path

01:07:32.520 of creating two markets

01:07:33.960 essentially

01:07:34.460 you have, you know,

01:07:36.220 woke people

01:07:36.880 shopping,

01:07:37.820 buying their coffee

01:07:38.680 only from Starbucks

01:07:39.620 and everyone else

01:07:40.480 buying their coffee

01:07:41.120 from Black Rifle

01:07:42.200 eventually you get

01:07:43.880 to a point

01:07:44.360 where you are actually

01:07:45.020 going to get

01:07:45.440 to civil war

01:07:46.040 because the interests

01:07:47.300 are just so

01:07:47.960 diametrically opposed

01:07:48.940 there's nothing

01:07:49.700 holding you together

01:07:50.620 and is it not

01:07:52.080 then, I mean,

01:07:53.620 is it not then desirable

01:07:54.520 to at least to try

01:07:55.440 and reform these institutions

01:07:56.560 or maybe to just wait

01:07:58.080 until the next generation

01:07:59.500 who are desperate

01:08:00.280 to push back

01:08:01.140 against their millennial parents 0.64

01:08:02.580 get in there

01:08:03.200 or do you not see

01:08:04.540 that happening, Brett?

01:08:05.700 Well, I don't think

01:08:06.640 civil war is all that likely

01:08:08.220 in the next few weeks

01:08:10.200 I would say.

01:08:12.320 Sorry.

01:08:13.300 Again, with the advice.

01:08:14.000 He's not in a good mood.

01:08:14.880 What have you been feeding him?

01:08:16.160 I'm in a great mood.

01:08:16.900 What are you talking about?

01:08:18.360 Yeah, this is a good mood.

01:08:19.640 Look, here's the problem, okay?

01:08:22.200 I don't disagree 0.95

01:08:23.320 that if you have

01:08:24.460 two separate systems

01:08:25.500 that they point us

01:08:27.040 in this direction.

01:08:27.780 On the other hand,

01:08:28.780 we have been watching

01:08:30.280 and trying to call attention

01:08:32.020 to the growing dysfunction

01:08:33.180 in the academy

01:08:34.340 for decades, right?

01:08:36.960 It does not listen.

01:08:38.320 It will not rescue itself.

01:08:39.860 There is no level

01:08:40.780 of obviousness

01:08:41.620 that is sufficient

01:08:42.420 to get it to wake up.

01:08:44.260 And so, again,

01:08:46.180 here's the problem.

01:08:48.120 Maybe you've got

01:08:48.960 a dog sled team

01:08:49.980 and your dogs have rabies, right?

01:08:53.380 Now, the argument might be,

01:08:54.620 well, we can't very well

01:08:55.620 shoot the dogs

01:08:56.520 because they're our dog sled team, right? 1.00

01:08:58.760 We'll be stuck here. 0.99

01:08:59.920 But you have to shoot the dogs 0.98

01:09:01.380 because they have rabies. 0.77

01:09:02.560 That's where we are.

01:09:03.520 And my point is

01:09:04.100 that's not the fault

01:09:05.240 of those of us

01:09:05.980 who have tried to explain

01:09:07.580 that this was happening,

01:09:08.520 that it was a lethal danger.

01:09:09.580 I mean, we started making this point

01:09:11.360 in the 90s, right?

01:09:13.840 They won't listen.

01:09:15.160 And because they won't listen,

01:09:16.400 they've got a system

01:09:17.080 that can't be rescued.

01:09:18.520 So, yes, we have to rescue it

01:09:20.480 and it's not going to work.

01:09:21.940 It's time that we stop

01:09:23.200 kidding ourselves about that.

01:09:25.360 And, you know,

01:09:25.960 it's possible

01:09:26.620 if you generate

01:09:27.580 the parallel system

01:09:28.560 and it demonstrates value

01:09:30.840 that some of those institutions

01:09:32.960 will say,

01:09:33.500 hey, we're going to get

01:09:34.120 left in the dust.

01:09:35.340 Let's abandon this trajectory

01:09:37.120 and let's reboot the university.

01:09:39.180 Great.

01:09:39.800 Let's bring them along, right?

01:09:41.180 After all,

01:09:42.180 they have beautiful campuses.

01:09:44.140 They've got libraries

01:09:45.140 all stocked with books.

01:09:46.980 They've got everything you need

01:09:48.500 in order to run a university

01:09:50.560 except for a staff

01:09:51.500 that knows what they're doing, right?

01:09:52.940 Or maybe the staff does,

01:09:53.900 but the faculty largely doesn't, right?

01:09:56.140 So that's the problem.

01:09:57.260 And we could re-infuse them

01:09:59.080 with competent people.

01:10:00.560 But, you know,

01:10:01.860 I'm not arguing

01:10:02.580 that the situation is healthy

01:10:06.780 if we have to start from scratch.

01:10:08.500 It's a terrible waste.

01:10:09.860 But, you know,

01:10:10.720 having watched how we got there,

01:10:12.540 I don't think there's a lot of hope

01:10:13.780 for them waking up.

01:10:15.100 And I guess there's another dimension

01:10:17.120 along which we're dividing,

01:10:18.360 which maybe it won't be surprising

01:10:19.660 given that what we're talking about

01:10:21.100 is sort of woke versus not woke.

01:10:22.780 But in the U.S. anyway,

01:10:25.160 the sex ratio of college students

01:10:27.020 is becoming ever more skewed.

01:10:28.880 It's like 60-40 now,

01:10:30.880 women to men.

01:10:31.920 And the prediction is that

01:10:32.860 within not too much time,

01:10:34.760 it's going to be two to one.

01:10:36.560 And this means that

01:10:38.960 there are a whole lot of young men

01:10:40.460 who are doing something

01:10:41.420 that's not college

01:10:42.320 who would otherwise

01:10:43.340 have been going to college.

01:10:45.240 Therefore, we're already getting

01:10:47.020 this system.

01:10:48.780 You know, it's not that

01:10:49.500 there aren't always going to be

01:10:50.780 many people who don't go to college.

01:10:52.440 And that's fine.

01:10:53.820 And many people are incredibly productive

01:10:55.600 and do wonderful things without that.

01:10:58.580 But for those people

01:10:59.540 who intended to go to college,

01:11:01.360 who wanted to go to college,

01:11:02.420 who thought that they would

01:11:03.100 benefit from it,

01:11:05.020 if men more than women 0.69

01:11:06.540 are saying,

01:11:07.720 not for me,

01:11:08.400 not that kind,

01:11:09.420 not with education

01:11:10.420 looking that way,

01:11:11.880 then we are exactly

01:11:13.740 moving towards chaos

01:11:15.200 because that won't last.

01:11:19.080 And this question

01:11:20.580 is actually loosely tied in

01:11:22.340 to what we're talking about.

01:11:23.420 And it's from Mackie McKinney.

01:11:25.000 Can you explain

01:11:26.540 what critical race theory is

01:11:28.220 and what is so dangerous about it?

01:11:30.640 My girlfriend is getting her PhD

01:11:32.540 and claims it's all overblown nonsense.

01:11:35.100 And I don't understand

01:11:36.580 what it is exactly.

01:11:38.380 Love you both.

01:11:40.340 Nice finish there.

01:11:41.440 Yeah, it was.

01:11:42.000 Full stop, then love you both.

01:11:44.500 Yeah, I mean,

01:11:45.440 we could, you know,

01:11:47.220 James Lindsay would do

01:11:48.300 a better job

01:11:49.540 as would Helen Pluckrose

01:11:50.960 or Peter Boghossian.

01:11:52.560 But, you know,

01:11:53.040 critical race theory

01:11:53.980 began with a

01:11:56.280 honorable study

01:11:58.300 into structural biases

01:12:00.300 in the court system,

01:12:02.480 of which there are

01:12:03.260 structural biases

01:12:04.100 that resulted in

01:12:05.260 a person having

01:12:06.600 different prospects

01:12:07.380 given a case

01:12:08.280 with the same

01:12:08.980 the same evidence

01:12:11.040 based on the color

01:12:11.880 of their skin.

01:12:12.760 This is decades ago.

01:12:13.700 It's like late 70s or so.

01:12:15.200 Decades ago.

01:12:16.060 But it evolved

01:12:17.220 into an obsession

01:12:19.040 with race

01:12:19.920 that effectively assumes

01:12:21.700 that any difference

01:12:23.480 in outcome

01:12:24.420 is inherently

01:12:25.440 the result

01:12:26.260 of oppression.

01:12:27.440 And this becomes

01:12:28.200 perfectly absurd.

01:12:29.500 In fact,

01:12:29.800 some of the jokes

01:12:30.700 that we once made

01:12:31.760 about conclusions

01:12:32.540 that would ultimately

01:12:33.320 be reached

01:12:34.400 have now been reached

01:12:35.840 and broadcast.

01:12:36.960 So, for example,

01:12:38.960 you know,

01:12:39.620 the idea

01:12:40.440 that there is

01:12:41.580 something about

01:12:42.920 the modern

01:12:44.380 system

01:12:46.300 of national parks

01:12:47.680 that must be racist

01:12:49.460 because the races

01:12:50.660 are not equally

01:12:51.360 represented there.

01:12:52.900 Well, that's not true.

01:12:54.260 You can go to

01:12:54.820 a national park

01:12:55.540 and you can demonstrate

01:12:56.480 the fee is the same.

01:12:57.800 Nobody looks twice at you

01:12:59.020 no matter what you look like.

01:13:00.580 If you pay the fee,

01:13:01.540 you're able to go in.

01:13:02.400 This has something to do

01:13:03.360 with preferences.

01:13:04.880 And now those preferences

01:13:05.720 may ultimately

01:13:06.540 be traceable

01:13:07.400 to disparities.

01:13:08.800 In other words,

01:13:09.660 populations that haven't

01:13:10.700 had access

01:13:11.440 to the national parks

01:13:12.580 in the past

01:13:14.220 for various reasons

01:13:15.860 may be less likely

01:13:16.820 to find value

01:13:17.760 in those things now

01:13:18.600 just because

01:13:19.140 the tradition

01:13:19.980 of going there

01:13:20.640 hasn't been passed down.

01:13:21.860 But that's not

01:13:22.420 the same thing

01:13:23.120 as saying

01:13:23.600 the system

01:13:24.240 is currently

01:13:25.020 white supremacist 0.84

01:13:26.180 and that is the reason 0.98

01:13:27.300 that we find

01:13:27.960 different color people

01:13:29.140 here than there,

01:13:30.480 right?

01:13:30.760 Bike lanes 1.00

01:13:31.460 aren't white supremacist.

01:13:32.920 National parks

01:13:33.560 aren't white supremacist.

01:13:35.240 Colleges aren't 1.00

01:13:36.120 white supremacist.

01:13:37.660 And the assumption 0.88

01:13:38.900 that they must be

01:13:39.860 or everything

01:13:40.400 would be dead even

01:13:41.360 is

01:13:42.040 absolutely illogical.

01:13:44.860 And the fact

01:13:46.120 that this has now

01:13:46.700 spilled out

01:13:47.500 of colleges

01:13:48.100 into all

01:13:49.380 of these structures

01:13:50.120 that it's in fact

01:13:51.000 moving through

01:13:51.780 corporations

01:13:52.440 of all places

01:13:53.360 and taking over

01:13:54.860 their approach

01:13:56.580 to managing relations

01:13:58.660 within their staff

01:14:01.360 is evidence

01:14:02.360 that somehow

01:14:03.000 the conclusion

01:14:03.600 is sacred

01:14:04.160 and it is immune

01:14:05.100 to reason.

01:14:06.360 Yeah.

01:14:06.580 So it's

01:14:07.060 viewing the world

01:14:08.140 entirely through

01:14:09.240 a racial lens

01:14:09.940 without any ability

01:14:11.060 to consider

01:14:11.600 other factors

01:14:12.420 which

01:14:13.840 there will be

01:14:15.060 those who say

01:14:15.580 okay intersectionality

01:14:16.520 is trying to encourage

01:14:17.480 us to think about

01:14:18.660 all of these factors

01:14:19.320 but of course

01:14:19.880 it's just

01:14:20.400 the demographics

01:14:21.140 that are fashionable

01:14:22.440 of the moment

01:14:23.060 that we're supposed

01:14:23.640 to be talking about.

01:14:24.700 So as Brett alluded

01:14:25.900 to cynical theories

01:14:27.060 by Helen Pluckrose

01:14:28.920 and James Lindsay

01:14:29.700 does a terrific job

01:14:30.680 of describing

01:14:31.220 what this is

01:14:32.500 and where it's

01:14:33.280 gotten to

01:14:33.960 but the fact

01:14:36.220 is it's being used

01:14:37.280 as an ideology

01:14:38.480 which is to say

01:14:39.360 something that you

01:14:40.080 must accept

01:14:40.740 and shall not question

01:14:42.140 in institutions

01:14:43.560 of higher learning

01:14:44.300 and in K-12 schools

01:14:45.820 in the earlier

01:14:46.780 schooling as well

01:14:47.680 and it's indoctrinating

01:14:50.180 rather than educating.

01:14:51.800 You are told

01:14:52.360 to accept this

01:14:53.400 and accept

01:14:54.080 that your skin color

01:14:55.420 is both your fate

01:14:56.320 and describes

01:14:58.080 whether you are

01:14:58.900 oppressed

01:14:59.240 or oppressor

01:15:00.040 and that feels

01:15:01.520 like the very opposite

01:15:02.540 of what anything

01:15:03.700 claiming to be

01:15:04.220 a liberal arts education

01:15:05.080 should be teaching.

01:15:06.440 Actually I want

01:15:06.800 to amend my answer

01:15:07.760 for succinctness.

01:15:09.500 It is the inverse

01:15:10.920 of the colorblind society

01:15:12.840 and colorblind society

01:15:14.940 has been falsely

01:15:15.760 portrayed as a myth

01:15:17.480 because people

01:15:18.160 aren't colorblind

01:15:18.840 but colorblind society

01:15:19.860 means that the court

01:15:20.660 needs to be colorblind

01:15:22.120 to you when you come in

01:15:23.580 it needs to treat you

01:15:24.420 with indifference

01:15:25.120 to your race

01:15:25.640 which is true

01:15:26.200 as we do need to

01:15:27.280 as employers

01:15:27.920 or educators

01:15:28.620 or anything else

01:15:29.340 and so critical race theory

01:15:31.660 is the idea

01:15:32.160 that we have to be

01:15:32.900 racially obsessed

01:15:34.060 rather than work

01:15:35.960 towards being indifferent

01:15:37.360 to race

01:15:37.940 in the distribution

01:15:39.160 of well-being.

01:15:40.360 Without pretending

01:15:40.980 that it doesn't exist.

01:15:42.120 Right.

01:15:43.080 Well as you say

01:15:44.320 Peter Boghossian

01:15:45.240 James Lindsay

01:15:45.860 Helen Pluckrose

01:15:46.640 and Christopher Rufa

01:15:47.660 who we had on the show

01:15:48.440 recently all do

01:15:49.140 a pretty good job

01:15:49.920 explaining this

01:15:50.900 and we've had them

01:15:51.480 all on the show.

01:15:52.860 We've got a question

01:15:53.640 from someone

01:15:54.180 who wants to be

01:15:54.900 kept anonymous

01:15:55.420 which I don't know why

01:15:56.180 because their question

01:15:56.780 really isn't

01:15:57.300 particularly incendiary

01:15:58.300 that they're asking

01:15:59.380 why people believe

01:16:01.060 in utopias.

01:16:02.240 Why people believe

01:16:08.680 in utopias.

01:16:09.220 I think actually

01:16:09.840 there's a pretty good

01:16:10.800 evolutionary explanation

01:16:11.900 for this

01:16:12.600 and that is

01:16:14.340 if you think about

01:16:16.140 what creatures

01:16:17.060 ought to be wired

01:16:18.840 to do

01:16:19.340 they ought to be wired

01:16:20.920 to solve problems

01:16:22.320 that are accessible

01:16:23.100 to them.

01:16:23.980 In other words

01:16:24.560 if a creature

01:16:25.240 is moving

01:16:26.540 through its landscape

01:16:27.460 inefficiently

01:16:28.460 in the pursuit

01:16:29.020 of food

01:16:29.580 then moving

01:16:30.240 through it

01:16:30.520 more efficiently

01:16:31.300 is the equivalent

01:16:32.080 of finding more food

01:16:33.200 right

01:16:33.580 because it wastes less

01:16:34.780 so we have an obsession

01:16:36.880 with problem solving

01:16:38.100 that doesn't have

01:16:39.420 anything to do

01:16:39.800 with us being humans

01:16:40.620 but we humans

01:16:41.500 do it in a human way

01:16:42.660 now the problem is

01:16:44.140 if you're obsessed

01:16:45.100 with problem solving

01:16:46.040 right

01:16:46.660 and it troubles you

01:16:48.060 as it troubles me

01:16:48.960 that my refrigerator

01:16:50.180 puts heat

01:16:51.460 into my kitchen

01:16:52.400 in the summer

01:16:53.600 right

01:16:54.380 I want my refrigerator

01:16:55.500 actually outside

01:16:56.640 of the wall

01:16:57.280 of my kitchen

01:16:57.880 so that it puts heat

01:16:58.640 into my backyard

01:16:59.380 and doesn't heat my house

01:17:00.480 when I don't want

01:17:01.080 my house heated

01:17:01.760 right

01:17:02.400 that's a solvable problem

01:17:03.840 so if you get

01:17:05.000 into that mindset

01:17:05.620 where you spot

01:17:06.220 all the little things

01:17:06.920 that are wrong

01:17:07.460 and you try to think

01:17:08.120 about how we would

01:17:08.680 do them in a way

01:17:09.280 that's better

01:17:09.780 then you will

01:17:11.300 at some point

01:17:12.040 arrive at the idea

01:17:13.300 that this could

01:17:14.100 all be perfected

01:17:15.380 but you won't

01:17:16.200 at first understand

01:17:17.180 what perfected

01:17:17.900 would have to mean

01:17:18.720 right

01:17:19.080 you won't understand

01:17:19.840 what trade-offs are

01:17:20.860 and you will imagine

01:17:21.540 that you could solve

01:17:22.180 every problem simultaneously

01:17:23.480 and wouldn't that

01:17:24.100 be marvelous

01:17:24.600 you can't

01:17:25.740 because those problems

01:17:26.560 are in tension

01:17:27.120 with each other

01:17:27.760 right

01:17:28.180 there's a reason

01:17:29.040 that the refrigerator

01:17:29.700 isn't on the outside wall

01:17:31.180 and it has to do

01:17:32.040 with the efficiency

01:17:32.640 of building homes

01:17:33.420 and you have to decide

01:17:34.180 which is the priority

01:17:35.120 or at what level

01:17:36.400 you will balance them

01:17:37.260 so basically the idea

01:17:39.120 is a naive problem solver

01:17:41.400 that looks into society

01:17:43.400 and sees all of the problems

01:17:44.640 but doesn't understand

01:17:45.640 what the downsides

01:17:46.480 of the solutions would be

01:17:47.540 or how they would interact

01:17:48.780 arrives at the idea

01:17:50.420 aha

01:17:50.780 I know what we should do

01:17:51.940 and they end up

01:17:52.540 trying to maximize

01:17:53.400 something that is

01:17:54.300 their focal obsession

01:17:55.920 and everything else

01:17:57.280 crashes as they try

01:17:58.760 to maximize it

01:17:59.580 so effectively

01:18:01.300 it is the intermediate

01:18:03.160 level of understanding

01:18:04.220 yes there are lots

01:18:04.940 of problems to be solved

01:18:05.880 but you need to be

01:18:06.540 sophisticated about

01:18:07.340 how you do it

01:18:07.960 rather than naive

01:18:08.640 so the person

01:18:09.700 asking the question

01:18:10.460 doesn't seem to

01:18:11.360 think that utopia

01:18:12.240 is a desirable

01:18:13.540 end point

01:18:14.220 or a possible one

01:18:15.480 but one of the other

01:18:16.340 errors in those

01:18:18.080 who do

01:18:19.280 who do strive

01:18:21.480 for utopia

01:18:21.960 is imagining

01:18:23.400 that we live

01:18:24.500 in a static world

01:18:25.740 right

01:18:26.200 like not only

01:18:26.940 do trade-offs

01:18:27.640 preclude utopia

01:18:29.120 as Brett just suggested

01:18:30.280 but you know

01:18:31.320 in evolution

01:18:31.780 everything is

01:18:32.340 context dependent

01:18:33.200 and the reason

01:18:33.760 that there is

01:18:34.240 no fittest state

01:18:35.300 to be in

01:18:36.120 with any permanence

01:18:38.040 is because

01:18:38.540 environments change

01:18:39.620 so what

01:18:41.520 what it is

01:18:42.800 that you want

01:18:44.120 today

01:18:44.880 is not necessarily

01:18:45.720 going to be

01:18:46.300 the thing

01:18:46.660 that you want

01:18:47.180 in a week

01:18:47.740 and it also

01:18:49.380 the concept of utopia

01:18:50.380 also forgets

01:18:52.080 or never understands

01:18:52.840 that actually

01:18:54.020 the striving itself

01:18:55.180 is part of

01:18:56.400 where we derive

01:18:56.900 our pleasure

01:18:57.320 from

01:18:57.740 so just

01:18:58.900 you know

01:18:59.260 actually to go

01:18:59.820 back to one of

01:19:00.260 the things

01:19:00.480 we were talking

01:19:00.880 about in the

01:19:01.200 first hour

01:19:01.740 one of the reasons

01:19:03.440 that people aren't

01:19:04.300 sexually satisfied

01:19:05.140 now even though

01:19:06.320 sex is available 0.83

01:19:07.040 all the time

01:19:08.020 at every moment

01:19:08.880 is that the chase

01:19:10.700 is gone

01:19:11.140 right

01:19:11.820 that there is

01:19:12.760 that there isn't

01:19:13.700 that that period

01:19:14.680 of oh I wonder

01:19:15.720 if I could

01:19:16.940 I might

01:19:17.400 I'm not sure

01:19:18.080 oh that's felt

01:19:19.120 like a setback

01:19:19.780 but maybe I'm

01:19:20.360 now moving closer

01:19:21.140 that that is

01:19:22.160 that is actually

01:19:23.040 part of the fun

01:19:23.820 that is part

01:19:24.560 of what feels

01:19:25.200 like productivity

01:19:27.560 and joy

01:19:28.740 and allows you

01:19:30.040 to be driven

01:19:30.560 to be creative

01:19:31.240 or analytical

01:19:31.780 or whatever it is

01:19:32.800 that is your

01:19:33.600 your particular toolkit

01:19:35.300 with which to make

01:19:36.100 progress in the world

01:19:37.060 and so you know

01:19:38.540 getting getting to

01:19:39.740 the state

01:19:40.200 where and everything

01:19:40.780 is fine

01:19:41.440 well it's guaranteed

01:19:42.580 not to feel fine

01:19:43.520 for more than

01:19:44.120 a little while

01:19:44.840 because you

01:19:45.920 your brain

01:19:46.500 will then continue

01:19:47.360 to seek growth

01:19:48.160 let me follow up

01:19:50.500 on that Heather

01:19:50.900 because as you

01:19:51.640 were talking

01:19:52.180 it was actually

01:19:52.720 quite interesting

01:19:53.380 because I was

01:19:54.040 thinking how

01:19:54.920 what you're saying

01:19:55.700 about evolution

01:19:56.800 and I've heard

01:19:57.280 this phrase

01:19:57.660 obviously a billion

01:19:58.320 times it's the

01:19:59.120 species most adaptable

01:20:00.260 to change

01:20:00.860 that blah blah blah

01:20:01.740 but I was thinking

01:20:02.800 about it on an

01:20:03.420 individual level

01:20:04.260 in our society

01:20:05.080 we tend to teach

01:20:05.960 people you know

01:20:07.260 you go to school

01:20:08.460 you get your grades

01:20:09.720 then you go to

01:20:10.360 college you get

01:20:11.260 your degree

01:20:11.960 then you get a PhD

01:20:12.900 then you and you

01:20:13.920 train increasingly

01:20:15.500 specialized to do

01:20:16.580 one thing

01:20:17.260 and you get more

01:20:18.200 specialized and more

01:20:19.020 and by the time

01:20:19.600 you're 50

01:20:20.100 hopefully you're

01:20:21.540 like the one

01:20:22.200 person in the world

01:20:23.020 that can do that

01:20:23.820 thing right

01:20:24.660 the problem is

01:20:25.780 in our society

01:20:26.620 by the time

01:20:27.080 you're 50

01:20:27.480 that thing

01:20:27.980 might not need

01:20:28.520 to be done

01:20:28.940 anymore

01:20:29.280 so on a

01:20:30.680 personal level

01:20:31.620 what advice

01:20:32.760 I think young

01:20:33.260 people watching

01:20:33.880 this or people

01:20:34.420 who are kind

01:20:34.840 of in limbo

01:20:35.620 perhaps

01:20:36.020 what ought to

01:20:37.680 be a useful

01:20:38.580 attitude at the

01:20:39.520 individual level

01:20:40.540 to how you

01:20:41.660 develop as a

01:20:42.500 human being

01:20:43.060 so that you

01:20:43.900 as an individual

01:20:44.620 are adaptable

01:20:45.620 to change

01:20:47.260 one of the

01:20:48.520 answers is

01:20:49.240 exactly in your

01:20:50.000 question

01:20:50.420 right

01:20:50.800 explore lots

01:20:52.420 and lots

01:20:52.860 of domains

01:20:53.440 anything that

01:20:54.540 you think you

01:20:54.980 might be

01:20:55.240 interested in

01:20:56.140 explore that

01:20:57.180 and don't ever

01:20:58.100 assume that

01:20:58.520 you're too

01:20:58.840 old

01:20:59.200 but also

01:21:00.100 recognize that

01:21:00.880 there are

01:21:01.380 developmental

01:21:01.800 periods during

01:21:02.580 which it will

01:21:03.000 be easier to

01:21:03.920 learn another

01:21:04.840 language

01:21:05.360 pick up a

01:21:05.900 musical instrument

01:21:06.620 that sort

01:21:07.120 of thing

01:21:07.520 right

01:21:07.840 and specifically

01:21:09.500 explore

01:21:10.220 like generate

01:21:11.100 skills

01:21:11.700 generate

01:21:12.220 expertise

01:21:12.800 or even

01:21:13.800 just some

01:21:14.580 facility

01:21:15.180 you know

01:21:15.560 you need

01:21:15.920 not be

01:21:16.320 expert in

01:21:16.900 lots and

01:21:17.280 lots of

01:21:17.600 things

01:21:17.880 but the

01:21:18.220 more things

01:21:18.780 in which

01:21:19.080 you have

01:21:19.320 some

01:21:19.580 facility

01:21:20.120 the more

01:21:20.960 broad

01:21:21.340 thinking

01:21:21.660 you're

01:21:21.860 likely

01:21:22.060 to be

01:21:22.420 and the

01:21:22.760 better

01:21:23.040 problem

01:21:23.940 solver

01:21:24.220 you are

01:21:24.560 likely

01:21:24.860 to be

01:21:25.240 and make

01:21:25.840 sure

01:21:26.020 that some

01:21:26.340 of those

01:21:26.640 things

01:21:27.000 live in

01:21:27.800 the physical

01:21:28.200 world

01:21:28.720 such that

01:21:29.560 the outcome

01:21:30.240 that you

01:21:30.780 create

01:21:31.280 cannot be

01:21:32.160 negotiated

01:21:32.760 away

01:21:33.180 such that

01:21:34.220 you either

01:21:34.760 did or

01:21:35.220 did not

01:21:35.620 build a

01:21:36.000 table

01:21:36.360 that holds

01:21:37.400 the weight

01:21:37.820 of the

01:21:38.120 plates

01:21:38.400 on it

01:21:38.920 you did

01:21:39.660 or did

01:21:40.000 not bake

01:21:40.480 a cake

01:21:40.960 that other

01:21:42.800 tastes good

01:21:43.400 and it

01:21:44.760 doesn't

01:21:45.300 poison them

01:21:46.000 right

01:21:46.340 things

01:21:47.580 need to

01:21:49.020 you will

01:21:50.620 be best

01:21:51.140 taught

01:21:51.640 to

01:21:52.680 recognize

01:21:53.540 the actual

01:21:54.260 feedback

01:21:54.680 that the

01:21:55.020 world

01:21:55.200 can give

01:21:55.660 you

01:21:55.980 by making

01:21:56.920 things

01:21:57.340 in it

01:21:57.840 wherein

01:21:58.400 the world

01:21:59.120 is giving

01:21:59.500 you the

01:21:59.780 feedback

01:22:00.100 as opposed

01:22:00.660 to the

01:22:01.420 people

01:22:01.700 in it

01:22:02.100 and you

01:22:02.700 can always

01:22:03.060 coerce

01:22:03.440 the people

01:22:03.860 so I

01:22:04.180 think

01:22:04.460 the line

01:22:04.960 in the

01:22:05.140 book

01:22:05.300 is something

01:22:05.700 like

01:22:06.100 you can

01:22:07.060 oh boy

01:22:08.700 you can't

01:22:09.460 trick a

01:22:09.960 tractor

01:22:10.340 or a

01:22:11.720 tree

01:22:12.140 you know

01:22:12.580 you can't

01:22:12.940 but you

01:22:13.180 can fool

01:22:13.800 another

01:22:14.220 person

01:22:14.720 I didn't

01:22:15.640 get the

01:22:15.900 line right

01:22:16.240 but it's

01:22:16.620 something to

01:22:17.180 that effect

01:22:17.540 you can

01:22:17.820 fool another

01:22:18.180 person

01:22:18.560 but you

01:22:19.060 can't

01:22:19.340 fool

01:22:19.500 reality 0.97

01:22:19.980 yeah

01:22:20.620 I would

01:22:21.380 say two

01:22:21.720 things

01:22:22.020 one invest

01:22:22.800 in tools

01:22:23.600 right

01:22:24.100 knowledge

01:22:24.520 is free

01:22:25.200 and the

01:22:26.060 domain

01:22:26.480 may change

01:22:27.460 but if

01:22:27.740 you've

01:22:27.900 invested

01:22:28.280 in tools

01:22:29.120 that can

01:22:29.500 be adapted

01:22:30.000 to whatever

01:22:30.420 new domain

01:22:31.060 emerges

01:22:31.500 you'll be

01:22:31.840 better off

01:22:32.440 and if

01:22:33.120 you've

01:22:33.280 engaged

01:22:33.760 with

01:22:34.240 physical

01:22:34.960 systems

01:22:35.760 then you

01:22:36.180 will have

01:22:36.660 a good

01:22:37.540 intuitive

01:22:37.920 idea

01:22:38.480 of how

01:22:38.980 things

01:22:39.280 actually

01:22:39.640 work

01:22:40.060 whereas if

01:22:40.500 you've

01:22:40.680 invested

01:22:41.020 in abstractions

01:22:42.020 that the

01:22:43.040 person at

01:22:43.460 the front

01:22:43.740 of the

01:22:43.960 room

01:22:44.160 told you

01:22:44.820 you were

01:22:45.120 being smart

01:22:45.740 about

01:22:46.040 the person

01:22:46.620 at the

01:22:46.820 front of

01:22:47.040 the room

01:22:47.260 may be 0.99

01:22:47.560 a fool 1.00

01:22:47.940 and so 1.00

01:22:48.520 they may

01:22:48.980 have

01:22:49.140 miseducated

01:22:50.020 you

01:22:50.320 but an

01:22:51.300 engine

01:22:51.520 won't do

01:22:51.940 that

01:22:52.240 right

01:22:52.640 gardening

01:22:54.300 won't do

01:22:54.820 that

01:22:54.980 the stuff

01:22:55.340 either grows

01:22:55.780 or it

01:22:56.060 doesn't

01:22:56.380 so

01:22:57.080 those

01:22:57.800 those two

01:22:57.980 things

01:22:58.320 we have

01:23:00.320 a question

01:23:00.860 now

01:23:01.180 from

01:23:01.520 a very

01:23:02.880 passionate

01:23:04.500 supporter

01:23:05.080 of ours

01:23:05.500 called

01:23:05.760 Eli

01:23:06.040 Munoz

01:23:06.600 and he

01:23:07.320 said

01:23:07.540 I've

01:23:07.800 heard

01:23:07.960 physicists

01:23:08.400 talk

01:23:08.860 about

01:23:09.120 sensing

01:23:09.480 the

01:23:09.720 divine

01:23:10.160 in

01:23:10.720 deep

01:23:10.960 math

01:23:11.340 have

01:23:12.260 you

01:23:12.400 discovered

01:23:12.820 anything

01:23:13.180 like that

01:23:13.660 in

01:23:13.840 deep

01:23:14.120 biology

01:23:14.960 or in

01:23:16.000 jungle

01:23:16.380 forest

01:23:17.120 studies

01:23:17.720 yeah

01:23:20.060 I mean

01:23:20.300 I think

01:23:20.540 we all

01:23:20.980 have our

01:23:21.880 version

01:23:22.380 of this

01:23:23.480 I call

01:23:26.200 mine

01:23:26.780 the cosmic

01:23:27.440 joke

01:23:27.980 right

01:23:28.740 the cosmic

01:23:29.360 joke

01:23:29.680 can be

01:23:30.000 told a

01:23:30.460 thousand

01:23:30.800 ways

01:23:31.260 and every

01:23:31.660 so often

01:23:32.120 you watch

01:23:32.560 a creature

01:23:33.000 do something

01:23:33.780 and suddenly

01:23:34.400 you understand

01:23:35.160 what must

01:23:35.880 be going

01:23:36.300 on inside

01:23:36.880 of that

01:23:37.220 creature's

01:23:37.720 mind

01:23:37.960 for example

01:23:38.640 right

01:23:39.020 and suddenly

01:23:39.540 you realize

01:23:40.000 well

01:23:40.240 isn't it

01:23:41.660 fascinating

01:23:42.120 that the

01:23:42.460 universe

01:23:42.820 generated

01:23:43.600 a creature

01:23:44.280 that could 0.68

01:23:44.720 solve a

01:23:45.080 problem

01:23:45.460 like that

01:23:46.220 and that

01:23:46.480 that would

01:23:46.740 be true

01:23:47.080 whether

01:23:47.280 there was

01:23:47.600 anybody

01:23:47.980 here

01:23:48.300 to notice

01:23:48.900 at all

01:23:49.360 if humans

01:23:49.760 had never

01:23:50.180 evolved

01:23:50.600 that squirrel

01:23:51.360 would still

01:23:51.860 be doing

01:23:52.280 that thing

01:23:52.940 right

01:23:53.480 with no

01:23:53.960 one there

01:23:54.200 to appreciate

01:23:54.660 it

01:23:54.980 right

01:23:55.680 so

01:23:55.980 yeah

01:23:56.460 there's

01:23:56.760 there's

01:23:57.080 the

01:23:57.400 the marvel

01:23:59.360 of biology

01:24:01.400 that exists

01:24:02.160 I was thinking

01:24:03.040 the other day

01:24:03.480 about

01:24:03.780 even a house

01:24:05.440 fly

01:24:05.760 right

01:24:06.400 we look

01:24:06.700 at a

01:24:06.860 house

01:24:07.040 fly

01:24:07.280 and

01:24:07.500 mostly

01:24:08.260 we feel

01:24:08.920 disgust

01:24:09.600 because a

01:24:10.060 house fly

01:24:10.480 may have

01:24:10.960 walked on

01:24:11.340 feces

01:24:11.680 before it 0.57

01:24:12.180 walks on

01:24:12.580 your lunch

01:24:12.980 right

01:24:13.300 so they

01:24:13.640 are

01:24:13.940 grotesque

01:24:14.880 in one

01:24:15.140 way

01:24:15.280 but if

01:24:15.500 you think

01:24:15.740 about

01:24:16.000 the mechanism

01:24:17.800 of a

01:24:18.180 house

01:24:18.380 fly

01:24:18.680 and even

01:24:19.720 the structure

01:24:20.600 it's a

01:24:21.100 beautiful

01:24:21.720 creature

01:24:22.380 it really

01:24:23.220 gorgeous

01:24:24.120 eyes

01:24:25.180 that are

01:24:25.600 almost like

01:24:26.260 multifaceted

01:24:27.220 jewels

01:24:27.840 this incredibly

01:24:29.300 sophisticated

01:24:29.900 flight architecture

01:24:31.160 it's an amazing

01:24:32.500 creature

01:24:32.880 and these things

01:24:33.320 fly by us

01:24:33.900 and we don't

01:24:34.200 give it a second

01:24:34.920 thought

01:24:35.200 so yeah

01:24:35.540 there is

01:24:35.960 something

01:24:36.340 about just

01:24:37.900 looking at

01:24:38.820 what selection

01:24:39.400 has produced

01:24:40.080 and thinking

01:24:40.700 what a gift

01:24:42.800 it is to be

01:24:43.780 the kind of

01:24:44.400 creature

01:24:44.720 who can even

01:24:45.380 understand

01:24:46.060 what that

01:24:47.140 object is

01:24:47.800 how it must

01:24:48.860 work in some

01:24:49.620 regard

01:24:50.000 and you

01:24:51.480 know

01:24:51.640 appreciate

01:24:52.200 the process

01:24:53.240 that

01:24:54.100 that

01:24:54.380 created

01:24:54.760 it

01:24:55.160 I get

01:24:55.680 I think

01:24:56.020 what you're

01:24:56.340 describing

01:24:56.760 I would

01:24:58.380 call awe

01:24:58.980 right

01:24:59.660 that

01:25:00.080 very often

01:25:01.820 being in

01:25:02.640 in the

01:25:03.560 Amazon

01:25:03.940 in nature

01:25:05.460 in Portland

01:25:06.000 everywhere in

01:25:06.820 between

01:25:07.160 I am filled

01:25:08.480 with awe

01:25:09.000 for me

01:25:10.780 I don't

01:25:12.320 use the

01:25:12.780 language of

01:25:13.380 the divine

01:25:14.140 and I

01:25:15.360 remember

01:25:15.680 actually being

01:25:16.620 being in

01:25:17.860 high school

01:25:18.280 and searching

01:25:19.440 for meaning

01:25:19.940 as I think

01:25:21.280 all human

01:25:22.060 beings do

01:25:22.900 unless they

01:25:23.900 are

01:25:24.260 they have

01:25:25.260 it

01:25:25.420 drugged

01:25:26.800 and bad

01:25:27.280 parented

01:25:27.880 and bad

01:25:28.180 education

01:25:28.640 out of

01:25:29.120 them

01:25:29.360 or something

01:25:30.040 but we

01:25:31.100 all do

01:25:31.720 a lot

01:25:32.180 of active

01:25:32.680 searching

01:25:33.060 for meaning

01:25:33.660 and purpose

01:25:34.880 especially

01:25:35.700 during those

01:25:36.300 teenage years

01:25:37.040 and I

01:25:38.520 was dabbling

01:25:39.360 here and

01:25:39.780 there

01:25:40.020 I was

01:25:40.340 thinking

01:25:40.600 about

01:25:40.860 Buddhism 0.96

01:25:41.200 I was

01:25:41.780 thinking

01:25:42.060 about

01:25:42.360 various

01:25:42.820 ways

01:25:43.260 of

01:25:43.440 approaching

01:25:43.860 what

01:25:44.500 is the

01:25:45.480 meaning

01:25:45.720 of all

01:25:46.120 of this

01:25:46.520 and

01:25:47.600 actually

01:25:48.800 it was

01:25:50.380 you

01:25:50.960 a couple

01:25:51.260 years

01:25:51.500 into

01:25:51.700 college

01:25:52.140 Brett

01:25:52.580 and I

01:25:52.760 had been

01:25:53.020 friends

01:25:53.460 throughout

01:25:54.020 high school

01:25:55.240 and about

01:25:56.220 halfway through

01:25:56.720 college

01:25:57.180 we got

01:25:57.960 together

01:25:58.380 and you

01:25:59.820 gave me

01:26:00.580 a Richard

01:26:01.640 Dawkins

01:26:01.980 book

01:26:02.340 gave me

01:26:02.860 the blind

01:26:03.180 watchmaker

01:26:03.720 and said

01:26:04.460 that I

01:26:04.840 might find

01:26:06.140 some things

01:26:06.640 in there

01:26:06.940 that I

01:26:07.180 would find

01:26:07.520 interesting

01:26:07.940 and

01:26:08.620 for me

01:26:09.760 that was

01:26:10.400 the moment

01:26:11.340 it opened

01:26:12.320 up and I

01:26:12.900 thought

01:26:13.140 this is

01:26:14.340 going to

01:26:14.860 turn out

01:26:15.360 this way

01:26:15.900 of understanding

01:26:16.460 the world

01:26:17.020 an evolutionary

01:26:17.760 understanding

01:26:18.460 of the

01:26:18.780 world

01:26:19.060 and this

01:26:19.360 doesn't

01:26:19.620 contain

01:26:19.920 everything

01:26:20.320 but this

01:26:20.720 has the

01:26:21.140 seeds

01:26:21.420 in it

01:26:21.820 will turn

01:26:23.620 out to

01:26:24.080 hold so

01:26:25.020 much of

01:26:26.540 the meaning

01:26:27.480 I've been

01:26:27.840 looking for

01:26:28.400 and also

01:26:29.100 it will

01:26:29.760 enable me

01:26:30.340 to still

01:26:31.280 have a

01:26:31.580 sense of

01:26:31.900 awe and

01:26:32.600 mystery

01:26:33.080 about the

01:26:33.720 universe

01:26:34.120 when we

01:26:35.160 used to

01:26:35.560 teach

01:26:36.740 Heather and

01:26:37.880 I talked

01:26:38.340 privately

01:26:38.940 about what

01:26:40.500 was minimally

01:26:42.000 necessary to

01:26:42.840 convey in a

01:26:43.740 program

01:26:44.300 for it to

01:26:45.560 be worth

01:26:45.980 the

01:26:46.160 students

01:26:46.500 while

01:26:46.740 we used

01:26:47.020 to talk

01:26:47.380 about the

01:26:47.880 keys to

01:26:48.260 the kingdom

01:26:48.660 and the

01:26:49.080 idea was

01:26:49.880 they need

01:26:50.620 to walk

01:26:51.060 away from

01:26:51.500 the program

01:26:52.140 with enough

01:26:53.480 that if they

01:26:54.240 got the

01:26:54.820 message and it

01:26:55.380 means something

01:26:55.900 to them that

01:26:56.540 they can then

01:26:57.200 go forward

01:26:57.800 without us

01:26:58.700 being there to

01:26:59.380 direct them

01:27:00.060 right they need

01:27:00.680 enough of the

01:27:01.340 tools to say

01:27:02.340 aha here's

01:27:03.200 what these

01:27:03.540 questions are

01:27:04.540 here's how I

01:27:05.320 might go about

01:27:06.100 answering them

01:27:06.820 here are the

01:27:07.540 kinds of people

01:27:08.280 who have

01:27:08.580 insight that

01:27:09.160 actually contributes

01:27:09.940 to my ability

01:27:10.600 to do that

01:27:11.160 and you know

01:27:12.300 for many of

01:27:13.480 them it worked

01:27:14.180 many of them

01:27:14.900 demanded that

01:27:15.780 we write some

01:27:17.020 kind of book

01:27:17.540 that would allow

01:27:18.080 them to pass

01:27:19.000 the thing on

01:27:19.580 to their

01:27:19.960 friends and

01:27:20.980 this book is

01:27:21.700 in large

01:27:22.220 measure the

01:27:23.080 result of

01:27:23.580 that process

01:27:24.280 do you ever

01:27:25.900 stop and think

01:27:26.920 you know like

01:27:27.920 you described

01:27:28.540 the house fly

01:27:29.460 you'd see

01:27:30.780 certain animals

01:27:31.720 you'd get

01:27:32.120 confronted by

01:27:32.980 awe-inspiring

01:27:33.760 beasts that

01:27:34.420 there must be

01:27:35.000 a god that

01:27:36.180 this simply

01:27:36.740 can't have been

01:27:37.380 created you know

01:27:39.020 organically that

01:27:39.900 there must be

01:27:40.480 some kind of

01:27:41.020 divine creator

01:27:41.880 did you just

01:27:42.800 ask two

01:27:43.320 evolutionary

01:27:43.840 biologists

01:27:44.540 in seeing

01:27:45.500 evolution in

01:27:46.260 action they

01:27:46.840 make they

01:27:47.300 think of god

01:27:48.080 yeah

01:27:48.480 is that what

01:27:48.900 happened

01:27:49.180 i dig it

01:27:49.800 i like the

01:27:50.320 question

01:27:50.700 there are

01:27:53.060 evolutionary

01:27:53.440 biologists who

01:27:54.260 would say yes

01:27:54.940 yeah actually

01:27:55.540 and i will tell

01:27:56.440 you that i

01:27:57.240 check in with

01:27:58.580 that explanation

01:27:59.340 frequently and i

01:28:00.440 ask myself have

01:28:01.680 i yet seen

01:28:02.480 something that

01:28:03.580 cannot in

01:28:04.640 principle be

01:28:05.280 explained by the

01:28:06.120 process that we

01:28:07.180 are studying and

01:28:08.600 i will tell you

01:28:09.440 the result of

01:28:10.360 checking in with

01:28:11.040 that idea very

01:28:11.920 frequently is that

01:28:13.580 i know for sure

01:28:14.580 there is a

01:28:15.580 missing level

01:28:16.500 that the process

01:28:18.800 in the evolution

01:28:19.800 textbook does not

01:28:20.940 explain the

01:28:21.460 creatures that we

01:28:22.140 see and that's

01:28:22.900 not because there

01:28:23.800 is a divine

01:28:24.500 influence it's

01:28:26.360 because we have

01:28:27.560 fooled ourselves

01:28:28.760 into imagining

01:28:29.540 that random

01:28:30.600 mutations being

01:28:31.700 selected is

01:28:32.720 sufficient to

01:28:33.440 change something

01:28:34.700 that's like a

01:28:35.340 shrew into

01:28:35.840 something that's

01:28:36.420 like a bat and

01:28:37.180 it's not there's

01:28:38.220 an amplifier in

01:28:39.260 there that we

01:28:39.800 have not

01:28:40.220 described well

01:28:41.040 and i think if

01:28:42.300 you watch

01:28:42.820 assuming civilization

01:28:45.040 hangs together

01:28:45.880 we're going to

01:28:46.960 discover that

01:28:47.760 layer and that

01:28:48.820 layer is going to

01:28:49.900 make it a lot

01:28:50.840 easier to

01:28:51.580 understand how

01:28:52.920 the creatures

01:28:53.540 emerged uh in

01:28:55.300 the marvelous form

01:28:56.280 that we find

01:28:56.800 them well that is

01:28:58.440 spicy indeed

01:28:59.480 it is good

01:29:01.360 all right well

01:29:02.700 that then you

01:29:03.560 understood it because

01:29:04.400 that's the point

01:29:05.180 is yeah you've

01:29:05.960 been given a

01:29:06.620 description of

01:29:07.980 a process that's

01:29:08.920 too crude to

01:29:09.500 have done the

01:29:10.520 things that you

01:29:11.400 see and that's

01:29:12.420 not your mind

01:29:13.000 playing tricks on

01:29:13.780 you um but

01:29:15.240 there's no reason

01:29:16.160 to think uh we

01:29:18.040 can't rule out a

01:29:19.160 divine influence but

01:29:20.340 there's it's not i

01:29:21.500 don't think it's

01:29:21.900 going to be

01:29:22.220 necessary because

01:29:23.520 there are darwinian

01:29:24.720 processes that will

01:29:25.860 fill in that gap

01:29:26.940 some of which we

01:29:28.300 um begin to

01:29:29.160 outline in the

01:29:29.940 book yep

01:29:30.460 actually that's

01:29:32.080 great uh well

01:29:33.060 it's a question

01:29:33.700 about human

01:29:34.540 beings now uh

01:29:35.740 winter mute uh

01:29:36.980 says i think

01:29:38.380 that's from

01:29:38.760 switzerland says

01:29:39.600 i always assumed

01:29:40.340 history repeats

01:29:41.220 itself uh because

01:29:42.700 human nature

01:29:43.340 doesn't change we

01:29:44.720 fall into the

01:29:45.340 same traps over

01:29:46.200 and over again

01:29:46.780 because our

01:29:47.260 brains haven't

01:29:47.960 evolved much for

01:29:48.880 about 200 000

01:29:49.780 years uh is

01:29:51.240 there a remedy

01:29:51.860 stroke am i wrong

01:29:53.220 he or she says

01:29:54.500 right and wrong

01:29:56.140 um there is a

01:29:58.860 tendency for

01:29:59.660 problems to be

01:30:00.800 very similar and

01:30:02.100 therefore us to

01:30:02.960 fall into the

01:30:03.460 same traps

01:30:04.140 there's a very

01:30:05.240 sad pattern

01:30:06.580 where we solve

01:30:08.320 a problem and

01:30:09.480 then having

01:30:10.580 solved that

01:30:11.220 problem people

01:30:11.960 forget that it

01:30:12.940 was a problem and

01:30:13.780 they dismantle the

01:30:14.640 solution and

01:30:15.200 reinvent it so

01:30:16.660 that's awfully

01:30:17.380 frustrating

01:30:17.940 whatever could

01:30:19.160 you be talking

01:30:19.600 about so many

01:30:21.500 things um yeah

01:30:22.700 i mean dismantling

01:30:23.520 the west because

01:30:24.500 it isn't working

01:30:26.200 fairly is absurd

01:30:27.440 right let's fix

01:30:28.620 the unfairness about

01:30:29.620 it let's diagnose

01:30:30.580 it correctly and

01:30:31.300 fix it but um

01:30:32.580 so there is

01:30:34.960 that but then

01:30:35.680 there is also

01:30:36.360 the possibility

01:30:37.480 of you know i

01:30:39.440 think people don't

01:30:40.440 know enough about

01:30:41.380 game theory um

01:30:43.220 and the reason

01:30:44.800 that i hit this

01:30:46.260 drum frequently is

01:30:48.280 that game theory

01:30:49.260 nicely takes all

01:30:50.360 of these very

01:30:51.060 specific problems

01:30:52.380 and gives us a

01:30:54.480 general name for

01:30:55.760 a failure right so

01:30:57.180 a tragedy of the

01:30:58.080 commons uh or a

01:30:59.500 collective action

01:31:00.160 problem the point

01:31:01.880 is you can have

01:31:03.500 a hundred versions

01:31:04.200 of that but

01:31:04.720 they're variations

01:31:05.380 on the theme and

01:31:06.180 the solutions will

01:31:06.920 look alike as

01:31:07.680 eleanor ostrom's

01:31:08.780 nobel prize winning

01:31:09.800 work tells us that

01:31:10.920 ancient cultures

01:31:12.000 figured out solutions

01:31:13.100 to these things and

01:31:13.880 in fact their

01:31:14.620 solutions were

01:31:15.260 presented in um

01:31:16.780 in uh narrative

01:31:18.420 metaphorical form

01:31:20.040 because they had to

01:31:20.740 be right they

01:31:21.500 didn't know the

01:31:21.940 game theory so

01:31:23.340 anyway that's a

01:31:25.280 hopeful sign because

01:31:26.380 what it means is if

01:31:27.300 we can study these

01:31:28.020 things correctly we

01:31:29.520 can actually generate

01:31:30.520 solutions that we

01:31:31.480 can apply each time

01:31:32.480 the problem re-emerges

01:31:33.860 and we should be

01:31:34.640 shooting for that

01:31:35.280 fantastic the next

01:31:39.600 question is from

01:31:40.360 Casey Kuhn and uh

01:31:43.020 this person asks can

01:31:44.340 you talk about the

01:31:45.340 evolutionary utility of

01:31:47.120 whistleblowers are 1.00

01:31:48.820 there any examples of

01:31:50.100 proto whistleblower

01:31:51.140 protections asking for

01:31:53.340 a friend

01:31:53.820 so was that proto

01:31:57.600 whistleblower protections

01:31:58.760 is that what the

01:31:59.300 second part yes are

01:32:00.900 there any examples

01:32:01.700 i think the problem

01:32:04.400 is almost turned on

01:32:05.360 its head because the

01:32:07.200 point is in an in an

01:32:08.760 ancestral circumstance

01:32:10.080 if we go sufficiently

01:32:10.960 far back the lineage

01:32:13.800 right the tribe or the

01:32:15.300 band would be united

01:32:17.600 in wanting to spot the

01:32:19.400 problems because they

01:32:20.460 were bad for the long

01:32:21.660 term prospects of the

01:32:22.820 people involved and

01:32:23.800 and so what has

01:32:24.400 happened is by

01:32:25.280 generating these very

01:32:27.020 large systems in

01:32:28.820 which uh one group

01:32:30.680 effectively does

01:32:31.820 oppress another whether

01:32:32.960 that's you know one

01:32:34.020 race oppressing another 0.94

01:32:35.020 or management uh

01:32:36.440 oppressing workers or

01:32:37.660 whatever it is um

01:32:39.300 there becomes a need

01:32:40.920 for somebody who can

01:32:42.120 endure the mechanisms

01:32:43.620 that are built to

01:32:45.080 frustrate the process of

01:32:46.820 correcting and

01:32:47.700 injustice right so the

01:32:49.600 need for whistleblowers

01:32:50.640 is new and so the

01:32:52.380 search for the ancient

01:32:53.340 solution is probably

01:32:54.520 wrong-headed but yeah

01:32:56.460 you you want to you

01:32:57.520 want to enhance the

01:32:59.120 quality of the world

01:33:00.080 figure out how to make

01:33:01.520 people safe for

01:33:02.460 pointing out the

01:33:03.300 uncomfortable true

01:33:04.260 things that uh describe

01:33:06.240 what jeopardizes us

01:33:07.380 yeah i think this is

01:33:08.380 right i think this is

01:33:09.080 one of the relatively

01:33:09.880 rare situations where it

01:33:11.200 might almost be a

01:33:12.080 step function like there

01:33:13.320 was there was a scale

01:33:14.620 of organization below

01:33:16.580 which whistleblowing

01:33:18.020 wasn't necessary because

01:33:20.300 it was all done by

01:33:21.340 people who knew one

01:33:22.120 another and so as we

01:33:23.820 scale up we become more

01:33:25.360 anonymous and you know

01:33:26.880 people effectively become

01:33:28.060 commodities such that

01:33:30.040 whistleblowing is the

01:33:31.600 necessary sometimes the

01:33:33.400 only way to fix the

01:33:35.620 wrongs whereas you could 1.00

01:33:37.380 have done it by more

01:33:38.800 ancient human interaction

01:33:39.920 before and that's not

01:33:41.660 there's nothing actionable

01:33:42.640 in that but i am i'm

01:33:43.900 afraid that that fascinating

01:33:45.700 question but i think i

01:33:47.040 think that's where i'm

01:33:48.520 going to land well i

01:33:49.880 would take the example

01:33:50.800 of um what banking

01:33:53.000 used to be versus what

01:33:55.300 it's become if you

01:33:56.420 imagine some even just

01:33:57.880 a couple hundred years

01:33:58.960 ago you know the banker

01:34:00.360 who was going to

01:34:01.200 actually carry the loan

01:34:02.740 that they were giving

01:34:03.540 you needed to really

01:34:05.400 make sure that you were

01:34:06.240 in a decent position to

01:34:07.380 pay it back right they

01:34:08.600 had no interest in lying

01:34:09.860 to themselves about that

01:34:10.880 the subprime mortgage

01:34:12.360 crisis involved a lot of

01:34:13.900 people who knew that

01:34:14.980 they were going to

01:34:15.660 make a loan and then

01:34:16.780 sell it and therefore

01:34:18.140 wouldn't be there uh

01:34:19.780 when things went bad

01:34:21.020 and it created a whole

01:34:21.940 system of perverse

01:34:22.840 incentives so what

01:34:24.480 happened that problem

01:34:26.640 solving modality

01:34:28.040 couldn't figure out why

01:34:30.040 we shouldn't you know

01:34:31.620 allow you to uh bundle

01:34:34.040 mortgages and sell

01:34:35.240 them uh as a package

01:34:37.620 right and you know it's

01:34:39.020 hard to describe why

01:34:39.820 you shouldn't be able

01:34:40.540 to now we've seen what

01:34:42.180 happens if nobody can

01:34:43.180 figure out how to

01:34:43.840 explain the problem um

01:34:45.440 but we have to

01:34:46.180 recognize that we're

01:34:46.820 doing that to

01:34:47.340 ourselves all the time

01:34:48.300 there are lots of

01:34:48.880 things we shouldn't do

01:34:50.280 but it's very hard to

01:34:51.480 explain why

01:34:52.160 and isn't part of the

01:34:54.640 problem as well that

01:34:55.780 when you whistleblow you

01:34:57.960 automatically expel

01:34:59.180 yourself from the group

01:35:00.240 and as primarily tribal

01:35:02.280 creatures that goes

01:35:03.480 against our very our

01:35:05.560 very instincts does it

01:35:06.760 not

01:35:06.980 well but that's the so

01:35:09.260 not here but elsewhere

01:35:11.800 uh i've talked about a

01:35:14.000 process i call cultivated

01:35:15.480 insecurity where the

01:35:17.580 system of your life the

01:35:18.820 fact that your mortgage

01:35:19.820 your insurance uh your

01:35:22.360 retirement all depend on

01:35:25.200 the relationship with an

01:35:26.120 employer places you in a

01:35:27.980 very awkward position

01:35:29.060 because you may be doing

01:35:29.940 well but it can all go

01:35:31.580 south all of a sudden

01:35:32.520 this is of course

01:35:33.120 somewhat different in the

01:35:33.820 uk right there are

01:35:35.500 distinctions but i guess

01:35:36.620 the point is the cultivated

01:35:38.420 insecurity makes it very

01:35:39.740 hard to do something like

01:35:41.140 be a whistleblower and

01:35:43.040 the remedy is a system

01:35:45.740 that actually not only

01:35:47.300 protects whistleblowers

01:35:48.620 but if you spot something

01:35:50.440 that's actually a hazard

01:35:51.540 to lots of people or

01:35:53.220 threatens to destroy a

01:35:54.240 great deal of public

01:35:55.120 wealth or whatever um

01:35:56.840 you should be rewarded

01:35:58.140 for calling attention to

01:35:59.720 it so you want to

01:36:00.600 cultivate security um

01:36:02.560 you know you're right

01:36:03.480 britain is going to be

01:36:05.140 better at least with

01:36:05.960 respect to something like

01:36:07.100 health care which is not

01:36:08.160 dependent on your

01:36:09.260 relationship with your

01:36:09.920 employer so cultivating

01:36:12.320 security so that people

01:36:14.160 are free to describe what

01:36:16.200 they see and to call

01:36:17.480 attention to bad patterns

01:36:18.700 is the key if you want

01:36:20.080 those kinds of problems

01:36:21.440 solved and the fact that

01:36:23.000 we are so desperately

01:36:24.080 insecure um and so

01:36:26.400 dependent on our

01:36:27.320 relationship with uh the

01:36:29.080 people we would be

01:36:29.800 blowing the whistle on um

01:36:31.740 is the reason you know

01:36:33.120 from the point of view of

01:36:34.800 the public it's a bug but

01:36:36.080 from the point of view of

01:36:36.840 the people who don't wish

01:36:37.760 to have the whistle blown

01:36:38.580 it's a feature i guess one

01:36:40.080 of the things is um

01:36:41.480 recognizing actually that

01:36:43.620 we all belong to multiple

01:36:44.640 tribes and uh imagining

01:36:47.340 that the group that you're

01:36:48.540 whistleblowing against may

01:36:49.680 feel like your home group

01:36:51.080 your home team um but as

01:36:53.280 those of us who have

01:36:54.060 experienced cancel culture

01:36:55.300 can attest um it turns out

01:36:57.800 that there are many many

01:36:58.720 people out there who think

01:37:00.300 many things and who are

01:37:02.180 interested in coming

01:37:03.280 together into what might be

01:37:04.700 seen as tribal affiliation

01:37:06.440 um you had no access to

01:37:08.640 before for instance um or

01:37:10.660 whom by some descriptors

01:37:12.240 might appear to be of a

01:37:13.480 very different tribe

01:37:14.260 entirely and so we can you

01:37:16.200 know we can use demographic

01:37:17.840 characteristics or political

01:37:19.820 ideology or um excuse me

01:37:23.180 or you know teams that we

01:37:25.160 vote for or places that we

01:37:26.500 live as the ways that we

01:37:28.660 describe the tribes to which

01:37:29.700 we belong but really trying to

01:37:32.080 identify as many as possible

01:37:34.420 of these things by which we

01:37:36.180 might group ourselves and

01:37:37.920 then finding others in those

01:37:39.600 groups such that yes we're

01:37:41.240 tribal of course in group

01:37:42.820 out group dynamics are real

01:37:44.120 and they never go away but

01:37:46.320 the more groups to whom you

01:37:47.840 feel a sense of belonging and

01:37:49.900 feel like you're on the in

01:37:50.940 group there uh the less

01:37:52.700 fraught being whistleblowing

01:37:54.060 being a whistleblower will be

01:37:55.820 and also the more secure you

01:37:58.100 will actually be and more

01:37:59.560 capable of actually standing up

01:38:01.740 and being courageous when it's

01:38:03.100 called for

01:38:03.600 all right guys i should say

01:38:05.780 we've got a lot of messages

01:38:07.020 flowing and which aren't

01:38:08.060 questions but just people

01:38:09.220 appreciating you coming on the

01:38:10.660 show and are spending this

01:38:11.640 time talking together and of

01:38:13.620 course we appreciate that as

01:38:14.940 well um and we appreciate your

01:38:17.060 appreciation of their

01:38:18.080 the mutual appreciation society

01:38:21.380 is in session uh but uh

01:38:23.380 speaking of uh cultivated

01:38:25.180 insecurity i caution you about

01:38:27.020 this question uh important john

01:38:28.960 we did say we'd take a covet

01:38:30.740 question or two and by the

01:38:31.740 way for everybody watching

01:38:32.900 we will do another 10 minutes

01:38:34.100 or 15 minutes if you guys are

01:38:35.320 happy to to stick around so

01:38:36.680 if you want to send in a

01:38:37.980 superchow or paypal go ahead

01:38:39.340 and do that uh but here's

01:38:40.960 important john and he says

01:38:43.360 drum roll please if you had a

01:38:45.840 choice between taking the

01:38:46.980 vaccine or waiting to get

01:38:48.680 covered and then taking

01:38:49.640 ivermectin which would you

01:38:51.040 personally choose and why

01:38:52.400 okay this is this is a

01:38:55.140 dangerous question for us and

01:38:57.200 it's not that analytically

01:38:58.560 speaking we shouldn't be able

01:38:59.900 to address it are you

01:39:02.220 indicating that you can't

01:39:02.960 hear me no no i can't hear

01:39:04.560 you i've just got this thing

01:39:05.560 in my ear that's all it's it's

01:39:06.720 a bit irritating okay you go

01:39:08.560 for it there are no hidden

01:39:10.300 signals or anything like that

01:39:11.940 no no go for it i thought

01:39:13.880 yeah no it's because they're

01:39:15.720 uncomfortable in my ears

01:39:16.880 cut cut anton cut cut this

01:39:18.720 yeah go for it all right so

01:39:22.420 the problem is first of all it

01:39:24.500 must be said we are not

01:39:25.600 doctors we are not in a

01:39:26.660 position to advise people

01:39:28.140 about this i do think people

01:39:29.720 need to be aware that the

01:39:31.040 information that they have at

01:39:32.640 their disposal is quite noisy

01:39:36.280 and compromised by propaganda

01:39:38.900 of various kinds

01:39:39.920 we don't know about all of the

01:39:44.300 consequences of having had

01:39:46.240 covid right you could say based

01:39:48.900 on what we know now does it

01:39:50.760 make sense to allow yourself to

01:39:53.580 get covid and treat it very

01:39:54.940 aggressively which seems to be

01:39:56.220 possible we see cases like joe

01:39:58.800 rogan like pierre cory where

01:40:01.020 very aggressive treatment seems

01:40:02.460 to turn the disease around right

01:40:03.640 away and apparently generate

01:40:05.360 natural immunity which is highly

01:40:07.060 desirable much better than the

01:40:08.380 immunity generated by the

01:40:09.440 vaccines here's the problem we

01:40:12.520 don't know for sure that covid

01:40:15.480 doesn't do something like hide in

01:40:18.140 well herpes viruses for example

01:40:20.720 hide in neurological tissue where

01:40:22.900 they're shielded from the immune

01:40:24.340 system and then they reemerge

01:40:26.000 we don't have the evidence that

01:40:28.460 covid does that but could it do

01:40:30.720 that and therefore if one got the

01:40:32.860 disease thinking that i'll get it

01:40:34.380 and i'll treat it would they be in

01:40:36.720 danger of having a recurring disease

01:40:38.540 that might you know uh chicken pox

01:40:41.300 become shingles so diseases change in

01:40:43.500 their manifestation over time so we

01:40:46.040 can't rule that out right that's a

01:40:48.360 very serious problem if it's there

01:40:50.880 and it changes the answer to the

01:40:53.340 the question that we've been asked so

01:40:55.460 it's very hard to make these

01:40:57.040 decisions what we desperately need

01:40:59.480 is a group of people who are well

01:41:02.720 informed on this topic to be

01:41:04.960 completely insulated from the

01:41:06.740 political and economic environment

01:41:08.560 that is so destroyed our ability to

01:41:10.540 talk about it and we need them to

01:41:12.360 talk about what actually is the best

01:41:14.340 approach because it is true we see

01:41:16.540 again and again the immunity that

01:41:18.380 comes from the disease is far in a way

01:41:21.360 better than the immunity that comes

01:41:22.880 from the vaccines for two different

01:41:24.160 reasons one it's broader because it's

01:41:26.620 to the entire virus not just one

01:41:28.400 subunit of one protein and two because

01:41:31.320 it doesn't fade in the same way that

01:41:33.080 the immunity generated by the vaccines

01:41:34.840 does so it's a complex landscape i

01:41:39.840 don't want to give an answer because

01:41:41.040 the fact is if we give an answer it

01:41:42.700 might affect what people do and you

01:41:45.740 know we might have an instinct but the

01:41:47.060 point is what we know for sure is that

01:41:49.380 we are operating on incomplete

01:41:51.020 information about the consequences of

01:41:53.640 the vaccines and the consequences of

01:41:56.480 covid

01:41:56.760 thank you very much brett uh so the last

01:42:01.080 question is uh nowhere near as com as

01:42:03.740 controversial it's from john t speaks

01:42:05.900 and he asks what's the evolutionary role

01:42:08.800 of laughter

01:42:09.440 um it's yeah you want to start uh it it is

01:42:18.960 communicative as so much of what humans

01:42:21.540 do and it is it gets back to exactly what

01:42:25.120 you were just talking about francis with

01:42:26.620 regard to um establishing tribal boundaries

01:42:29.800 and you know there is laughter that feels

01:42:34.080 wonderful and laughter that can feel

01:42:35.700 wonderful but even as you're doing it you

01:42:37.820 know is exclusionary and um that both of

01:42:43.280 those functions exist uh for laughter and

01:42:46.700 that therefore you know just you know maybe

01:42:49.640 to go back to the very beginning of our

01:42:51.080 conversation it's not laughter is adaptive

01:42:54.200 it's present in all the cultures of of all

01:42:56.940 human beings and that doesn't mean it's

01:42:59.220 good you know laughter almost always feels

01:43:01.840 good to us but there are examples when it

01:43:04.280 is uh malicious when it does harm to uh to

01:43:08.540 those who are being laughed at and so

01:43:11.080 saying that it is adaptive uh as a way of

01:43:14.120 effectively increasing social cohesion um

01:43:17.140 does not mean that that social cohesion is

01:43:19.320 necessarily a wonderful thing because some

01:43:21.940 forms of social cohesion are actually doing

01:43:24.000 great damage

01:43:24.700 so i would i would say years ago i was

01:43:27.940 working on a project about this question

01:43:30.460 not on laughter specifically but on humor

01:43:33.540 obviously laughter is an indicator of humor

01:43:36.680 but roughly speaking not anymore

01:43:39.420 prayer

01:43:39.880 not what with what have on comedy shows on

01:43:44.480 tv

01:43:44.840 actually it reminds me there was a interview

01:43:48.620 with one of the writers for the i never saw

01:43:50.880 the show with the show alf alien life form

01:43:53.100 uh who described that in the writing room

01:43:55.740 they had a thing that they called humor

01:43:58.760 like substance

01:43:59.820 where you know it was a half hour show and

01:44:02.500 they needed a certain number of jokes and

01:44:04.460 sometimes they didn't have enough jokes and

01:44:05.900 they would put in something that had the

01:44:07.040 form of a joke and then the laugh track would

01:44:09.100 make it sound like a joke but it just didn't

01:44:11.300 have the content

01:44:11.960 um so anyway to your point

01:44:13.960 that sounds like a horseman of the apocalypse

01:44:15.340 right there it was a horseman of the apocalypse

01:44:17.040 but we did not recognize it

01:44:18.400 um the point was uh the argument that i made in my

01:44:24.160 prior project was that humor was a mechanism

01:44:28.240 and in fact the exercise of humor

01:44:30.820 is a mechanism of exploring things that hover

01:44:34.140 at the edge of what we are conscious of

01:44:36.860 and so if you have a room full of people

01:44:38.580 when you tell a joke

01:44:39.620 they're erupting in laughter

01:44:42.200 is a recognition that they are all suddenly aware

01:44:45.320 of the same truth that they had not formerly understood

01:44:49.440 they were all aware of

01:44:50.560 so a good humorist is searching that landscape for things

01:44:54.560 everybody knows but people don't say

01:44:56.220 and if you say it

01:44:57.080 we can get into why timing might be important here

01:44:59.940 but if you say it correctly

01:45:01.380 the point is there's a sudden dawning of recognition

01:45:04.000 um and uh

01:45:06.100 serves to cement the tribal belonging 0.93

01:45:07.880 it serves to both cement the tribal belonging

01:45:10.700 and to exclude

01:45:11.700 because if you think about

01:45:12.900 um the person who doesn't get the joke

01:45:15.840 right if you're the only person in the room

01:45:17.520 who doesn't laugh

01:45:18.380 that's a thoroughly uncomfortable

01:45:19.620 feeling

01:45:20.840 or if you are going to pretend to get it

01:45:23.460 and you laugh inappropriately at the joke

01:45:25.900 you laugh and it's not the punchline yet

01:45:27.400 or whatever

01:45:27.820 you reveal yourself to be an outsider

01:45:29.780 and it's

01:45:30.320 so there's that element of the thing

01:45:32.680 but anyway i was talking to somebody about this

01:45:35.020 and they alerted me to a quote that i didn't know

01:45:37.880 which was tom stoppard who says

01:45:39.860 laughter is the sound of comprehension

01:45:42.800 which i thought was excellent

01:45:45.300 oh of course that's stoppard 1.00

01:45:46.860 yeah

01:45:47.160 that's great

01:45:47.540 that's wonderful

01:45:48.600 well speaking of stopping

01:45:51.300 uh thank you both for joining us

01:45:53.420 it's been an absolute pleasure

01:45:54.660 we uh both

01:45:55.640 uh and all of us here at trigonometry

01:45:57.220 wish you all the very best

01:45:58.420 with the book tour

01:45:59.640 uh and promoting the book

01:46:01.120 it's really a book worth promoting

01:46:03.000 we speak to a lot of people

01:46:04.140 it's one of those

01:46:04.920 that i really thoroughly recommend to people

01:46:07.260 and it's a rare

01:46:08.820 it's a rare

01:46:09.740 there it is

01:46:10.520 yeah it is

01:46:11.060 this is our only copy

01:46:12.480 their soul that we had to beg for

01:46:14.120 for this copy

01:46:14.980 that's our only one

01:46:16.440 well when

01:46:16.980 if it ever happens

01:46:18.480 that we can visit you over in the u.s.

01:46:20.460 or you can visit us over here

01:46:21.880 we're gonna beg you for another copy

01:46:23.600 and sign

01:46:24.180 please please please

01:46:25.160 uh but in the meantime

01:46:26.320 thank you so much for joining us

01:46:27.880 it's been an absolute pleasure

01:46:28.960 thanks

01:46:29.740 love you guys

01:46:30.460 it's been a pleasure

01:46:31.120 thank you

01:46:31.800 thank you very much

01:46:32.880 okay guys uh thank you for tuning in

01:46:35.920 uh as you will agree

01:46:37.320 that was a wonderful episode

01:46:38.680 if you want to watch

01:46:40.180 any other trigonometry episodes

01:46:41.980 they always go out

01:46:42.920 on wednesdays and sundays

01:46:44.520 7 p.m british standard time

01:46:46.320 2 p.m eastern standard

01:46:47.940 we also do

01:46:48.940 raw shows

01:46:49.960 which go out tuesday

01:46:51.040 thursday

01:46:51.880 friday

01:46:52.540 saturday

01:46:53.220 at the exact same time

01:46:54.600 thank you so much for tuning in

01:46:56.480 take care

01:46:57.300 and see you soon guys

01:46:58.640 hey kk

01:46:59.720 do you like trigonometry

01:47:01.780 yes

01:47:02.560 do you like live shows

01:47:04.640 yes

01:47:05.060 then you're going to love

01:47:06.960 the next trigonometry live show

01:47:08.940 on the 2nd of november

01:47:10.820 at the leicester square theatre

01:47:12.960 in london

01:47:14.300 it'll be with one of our

01:47:15.540 all-time favorite guests

01:47:17.120 peter hitchens

01:47:18.460 this is very exciting news

01:47:20.700 i will make sure to take out

01:47:22.500 an advertisement in pravda

01:47:24.140 tomorrow

01:47:24.820 a fleet of sponsored ladders

01:47:26.700 will descend on the kremlin

01:47:28.180 to promote this wonderful event

01:47:30.180 our great and powerful leader

01:47:31.900 uncle vlad

01:47:32.820 will be wearing sponsored

01:47:34.280 trigonometry speedos

01:47:35.680 on white horse

01:47:36.780 no niece mate

01:47:37.900 our first show with andrew daw

01:47:39.800 is now completely sold out

01:47:42.060 and this one

01:47:43.140 will sell out

01:47:44.040 just as quickly

01:47:45.120 tickets are strictly limited

01:47:47.280 and they're selling like copies

01:47:49.000 of the communist manifesto

01:47:50.760 greatest book in the world

01:47:52.340 second only to

01:47:53.340 10 cute things you didn't know

01:47:55.100 about joseph starlin

01:47:56.420 i love that buzzfeed article

01:47:58.640 anyway

01:47:59.440 see you there guys

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TRIGGERnometry - September 18, 2021

Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying： Sex, Religion, Evolution (Live Episode)

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