Kind: captions
Language: en
evolutionist pulled a simulation over
your eyes that optimizes you for
survival and not accuracy tragically
this prepares us for savanas not cities
and that makes Modern Life very
difficult to navigate well but joining
me today is legendary biologist Robert
spolski and we're going to take a hard
look at the hidden truth while there is
no God there is no Free Will and nothing
happens for a reason you can still
massively improve your
life let me ask ask right now I think
there's a lot of people that feel lost
they feel lazy they have no sense of
what to do with their lives and given
that there is no God no purpose and no
free will how do people go about
improving their lives right off the bat
what I think that's tapping into is one
of the misconceptions about the notion
that there's no free will which is that
is synonymous with oh my God if
everything's determined nothing can ever
change and all you need to do is look at
the world around you and know that like
people change dramatically societies
change all of that changes the brain
changes there's this whole trendy sexy
field of
neuroplasticity about how the brain does
all that yeah change
occurs where people get into trouble is
when change has occurred they conclude
thus I chose to change
and that's where you are predicating
your whole stance and the notion that we
are captains of our ships and there's
free will and all of that and that's not
the case in the slightest when we change
it is because we have been
changed by a certain
circumstance and why have we been
changed in the particular way that we
have because all those prior
circumstances that made us who we are
over which we had no control brought you
to that moment so that you were going to
respond to this stimulus in the way that
you did and would change you in the way
that it did so we are capable of being
changed and even better once we are
changed in a particular way it can even
lead us to modify our Behavior so that
we're changed in that way even more
so and nonetheless we are not sitting
there and exercising free will when we
decide you know I'm no longer a Buddhist
and instead I'm a nudist now or
something so here's the way that I
approach life is very much that um
everything is Downstream of biology and
ideas and I've said many times on the
show that on my Tombstone I wanted to
read you're having a biological
experience because as somebody that has
um really I have been changed profoundly
so I don't need to take any credit for
that but but the just empirical evidence
is I went from hardly being able to get
myself out of bed uh because I had a set
of
ideas uh just based on what I had
encountered the home I grew up in my
personal genetics and the things that I
respond to but all of that led me to a
point in my early 20s where I had a hard
time getting out of bed I'm talking I
would lay in bed for four to five hours
a day every day and it was really only
shame that eventually got me moving uh
so I would even take credit for that but
ultimately I I had biology that was to
the point where I could receive the
ideas and then once I encountered those
ideas I was able to put together what I
call a frame of reference that and I'll
I'll be as careful as I can I know I'm
going to slip up in terms of language
that makes it sound like that I'm in the
driver's seat uh but have have a frame
of reference that is uh puts me in a
position where I am on a path to
improving and getting better and so when
you look at my life over a long period
of time again without needing to clap
for
me but as I've accumulated these ideas
it's had a profound impact on my life
the quality of my life uh my emotional
tenor the financial outcomes all of it
and so I became obsessed as somebody
who's worked in the inner cities I've
seen up close what it looks like when uh
somebody hasn't been given the right
environment with which to build uh their
biology uh with which to get the right
set of ideas and it's absolutely
devastating and if I try to map out in
my own mind what it means to exist in a
world without free will I start actually
thinking of myself as a change agent as
a uh a capsule that carries ideas that
when other people encounter those ideas
some of them will be changed and so that
to me is the frame for this conversation
is going to be what are the things that
people need to do to their biology
because they are hearing this right we
can make that assumption so they're
hearing this so now they're encountering
these ideas we'll assume that they're at
least fertile enough soil that the ideas
will take plant not all of them will but
it's just a more useful assumption um
what ideas would you want to plant in
people's minds during this time that
will be most fruitful if they want to
move in a positive direction
for people to learn enough about the
biology and its interactions with
environment and how it turns us into who
we are out of our control all of that to
recognize that blame and
judgment and a sense of
entitlement and self-satisfaction and
none of those things make any sense at
all and all they do is send people in
about bad Direction either of wanting
people to be treated less well than
average because if things that they've
done that you were willing to decide
they were responsible for or deciding
that you should be treated better than
average because of things that you've
done that in actuality you did not earn
and did not deserve and that you were
just handed by random luck in life and
if people come out of that that you know
deciding you know judgment is almost
always a suspect concept and it doesn't
make a whole lot of sense to ever hate
anybody because that's like hating you
know plants that grow with some Toxin
and that have made you sick it's just
you know outcome of stuff and that no
matter how good you are at
something um that doesn't entitle you to
more consideration of your needs than
anybody else deserves what do you think
are the evolutionary reasons why we have
that proclivity so people bend towards
not even bend they are yanked towards
the illusion of Free Will and as I
really sit like whenever somebody asks
me about this if I'm being interviewed
I'll say yeah Free Will is an illusion
but it really doesn't matter we'll get
to the societal implications because I
know that's an important part of your
book and and your stance but on an
individual life I don't think I think it
is far wiser to act as if you have free
will because that frame of reference
will uh put you in a more empowered
mindset which I think makes you more
fertile for good ideas to take hold um
does that seem to you why we would from
an evolutionary standpoint have
developed that delusion well it
certainly can be the the fuel of
motivation um and that is something that
obviously is highly adaptive in many
circumstances um it's also incredibly
protective psychologically me we are a
weird species in that we are the only
ones out there who know that inevitably
at some point our hearts are going to
stop beating
whoa bummer and the only way to function
is to have evolved a very unique
capacity for
self-deception we are a species that can
generate enough
circumstances where we know that bad
news is coming and we can't do anything
about it and where that could be
crushing that it has become adaptive to
decide that we actually have more agency
than we do in reality and I think the
best way to appreciate that is to look
at a disease of people who were not able
to do
self-deception and who were not able to
rationalize away reality and what that
is is clinical
depression these are people who are
pathologically prone towards seeing the
world for what it is and they're like
poster children for showing the
psychologically protective effects being
able to
decide that things are going to be okay
and you are the master of your fate and
then that sort of thing it's good for
our mental health until it turns out not
to be good for our mental health so how
do we walk that line because that's one
of the questions I had reading your book
is uh Why Try So fervently to pull
people out of a delusion that as you
just said is better for their mental
health well because it turns out it all
depends on who the person is um I would
bet
anybody who would go out and buy this
book about the neurobiology and
philosophy of the Free Will debate and
all of that and actually go and read it
my guess would be they're not homeless
my guess would be they had enough
protein in their diet when they were a
kid and the opportunity of schooling
that they actually know how to read and
can comprehend it I bet all sorts of
things about them in other words they're
one of the lucky ones and there's this
ironic pre-screening that anyone who has
the luxury in life to sit around and
think about are we captains of our own
fate and what does biology tell us and
how about Aristotle and all that that we
are the lucky ones who have wound up in
this position and thus what being being
convinced that there's no free will does
is take the wind out of a lot of our
accomplishments what do you mean I
didn't earn having my corner office and
being a CEO what do you mean I didn't
earn my Advanced college degrees I
worked hard I were there are all those
nights where my roommate went to parties
and I stayed and studied and said I
earned this I earned this I earned love
by being like a kind person or empathic
or whatever and like whoa bummer that's
deflating to hear that if it's true I
don't believe it blah blah that I did
not earn any of this that none of this
reflected the core of the me in there
with all these wonderful positive
attributes but what that mostly means
though to me is most people on
Earth rather than being given privilege
and power and
you know efficacy and all of that
because of traits that they didn't
really earn that they had no control
over and they just locked out with most
people on Earth instead are suffering
deprivations and being ignored or
neglected or considered unworthy of
attention or because they're getting
treated badly because of stuff they had
no control over so virtually by
definition anyone who's going to go and
read a book like this is going to be
bummed by it and and feel like oh my I
can't work that way because look I
busted my ass in grad school or whatever
um and the people whose lives are being
made a lot tougher by the fact that it's
all
random um all that there's no free will
does is free you from the myth that this
is a just world and people get what they
deserve it's very interesting so when I
I I really tried to parse through okay
what do I want people to do with this
information and from my perspective and
I'll be very interested to see if we
agree on this from my perspective the
the only reason I want people to
acknowledge that free will uh doesn't
exist is that if you do not understand
your own biology you're going to derail
so if you don't understand that you have
a bias towards ingroup then you're going
to treat people in the outg group
ridiculously if you understand that you
have a pensent towards in group but that
you can and this is something that I
learned from you so much what we're
going to talk about today I've learned
from you but um take Sports you look at
somebody that's of a different ethnicity
that in one instance you clock as an
outgroup and then if they're wearing a
jersey of your favorite team you
suddenly clock as an ingroup so
understanding the way in which the way I
always say it is your brain is messing
with you your brain is optimized to keep
you alive long enough to have kids that
have kids now that's not the thing that
I focus on what I focus on is how do you
have what I'll call a good life and it's
probably worth us defining that uh so
for me my nor star is I'm trying to um
move the individual and society as an
echo of the individual towards increased
human flourishing and decreased human
suffering now I'm going to make the base
assumption you're not a sociopath and
all of that because sure the thing that
makes Hitler flourish is going to be
very different uh than what I hope makes
the vast majority of humanity flourish
but that that's sort of my Northstar and
so to get people to understand your
brain is not optimized for Joy it's not
optimized for pleasure it is optimized
for survival in a historic evolutionary
environment that we're no longer in and
so there is this wild mismatch between
what you what will make you thrive today
and your impulses so that's where I root
around okay this is why I'm trying to
get people to understand this is is
there any of that that um you focus on
as well or are you interested only in
that societal echo of hey morons you're
acting foolishly and you're holding
people accountable for things that make
no
sense well no I think framing things and
you've got the perfect word for it in
terms of The evolutionary mismatches
that we deal with with we've got you
know Paleolithic appetites and suddenly
we've got fast food and and obesity
epidemic all of that I mean the the
mismatches is a really useful Concept in
terms of all of this um we have a
mismatch in that our building blocks of
agency our building blocks of a sense of
efficacy and of registering with those
around us
were built with 99% of human history
spent in small hunter gatherer bands
where you did have
efficacy and your opinion counted
because everyone's opinion counted very
egalitarian by the best guesses and
these were familiar and you
registered and you had a sense of
efficacy and now we're in a society
where you know just to mention once we
stumbled into idiocy of inventing like
socioeconomic status after inventing
stuff and the unequal distribution of
stuff once we get into
that we can have somebody who's born
into poverty and I'm not exact on the
statistics but in this country there's
now something like a 90% chance that
they will still be in poverty as an
adult in other words they can be subject
to a world of lack of control
control and lack of agency and lack of
Free Will and a pretty bruising kind of
way that's very novel for humans um I
think that's one aspect of the mismatch
in that our tendency to delude ourselves
into thinking we have more agency than
we actually do um didn't have that much
of a chance to go off the rails it was
pretty focused in reality back when we
were being like 99% of humans and it's
this current world instead where it is
so destructive for so many
people to be taught that they deserve
what they get when I think about the way
things are I'm always looking for what
is the evolutionary explanation of how
that would come to pass like why if if
we don't have free will and we are just
bil balls bouncing around something is
selecting for that and when I think
about meritocracy is probably a good
place to start when I think about
meritocracy that isn't going to go away
uh no matter how many people recognize
that they don't have free will and one
idea that I love of yours is this idea
that we are machines that are aware of
our Machin but aren't comfortable with
with our Machin and when I think about
okay if I could get everybody to just
snap not think about
meritocracy um I don't think it will
work and the reason that I don't think
it will work is as much as it pains me
to say this there are machines meaning
us I'm using your word uh that are
better at things than other people and
whether we should or not we value
different things right so once you have
an evolutionary algorithm running in
your brain that says not only do I Want
You To Survive I want you to pass on
your genes to the Next Generation and I
want them to survive so now that
algorithm creates what I'll refer to as
a simulation so it it is not trying to
show you the real world right we only
see
0.35% of the available electromagnetic
spectrum so it's like we already know
this is a gross simplification of what's
there and if it's simplifying it's
making decisions of what to show what
not to show and it's making those based
on that desire for survival so now I'm
like okay uh if that's true then the
things that we have now theoretically at
least are selected for because they do a
good job of that and since we are
optimized to be good at things that
allow our genes to pass forward there's
already a hierarchy of values you're
never going to be able to get people to
ignore that some machines are better at
those things that we value than others
does that make sense totally um
and two levels of
response um the first amid that picture
of yeah we are driven to pass on copies
of our jeans all of that but then you
get somebody who joins some group that
involves celibacy
or then you get somebody who adopts a
child from the other side of the planet
who Bears virally no genetic relatedness
to them and yeah there are strong trends
that have been sculpted by Evolution but
you know we specialize in the ID
idiosyncrasies of being exceptions at
every possible turn I mean there's not a
whole lot of evolutionary biology that
could explain like giving up your life
for somebody on the other side of the
planet and setting like that so we are
we are shaped by Evolution but we we
manag to have a lot of wiggle room with
it but in this larger sense now of
like what do we do with the fact
that we are machines who could know our
Machin what do we do with the fact that
we kind of want to have a world in which
dangerous people can't do damage and
where competent people the ones who were
doing difficult stuff how do you do that
and in some ways dealing with the
dangerous people is a lot
easier
and quarantine models of All Sorts that
are out there that that people who are
asking not for reform of Criminal
Justice System but replacing it entirely
what's the much harder one for my money
is the flip side um which is how do you
deal with the fact that it makes no
sense whatsoever to like decide that
someone who has the skills to remove
that brain tumor from your head and can
do that amazingly well and is totally
unique in that regard blah blah all of
that um it's really hard to construct a
world in which they will not somehow
feel
entitled my wife Lisa struggled
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trouble seeing but I worked so hard to
get there being able to work so hard is
another biological attribute just like
having like good dexterity with your
fingers so they can like suture you
without like making a mistake kind of
thing um I think it's in the realm of we
need to make sure it's only competent
people who are doing brain surgery on
you and we need to have them motivated
enough so that they've gone enough
sleepless nights to learn how to master
this and to do all that yet somehow have
the person rather than thinking I've
earned extra consideration I earned to
be able to be in the front of the line
because of how skillful I am and here's
where I'm getting utopian ridiculously
for them to mostly just feel
gratitude and pleasure at seeing what
their hands are able to
do wow I looked out wow sit me down at a
keyboard of a piano and look how it
turned out that I'm the sort of person
with the sort of nervous system where I
can now play something that moves people
to tears wow how cool is that that I
walked out and got to be like someone
who could experience that experience
knowing that you were able to generate
this okay so that's totally ridiculous
that we're going to think of making
people go through like years and years
of neurosurgery residencies and like all
of the agonies of that and the enormous
emotional investment and everything else
in there that they will come out the
other end and say yes all I do is feel
gratitude that the randomness of the
universe has put me in a position where
I can help people by removing their gleo
blastomas you know that one's going to
be an uphill battle
obviously and there's that bias that the
people listening to this will probably
be tilted already in a direction where
there's something they've worked hard at
and they're good at and all of that
and asking that we just have like
gratitude for how Randomness turned out
with us
that we were given the gifts to make
less pain in the world around all these
other machines yeah you got to get a
pretty high futin State of Mind where
that's going to work um maybe all we
could do with that sort of a low Rend
version of the solution is just
recognize how inappropriate a sense of
entitlement is in all sorts of domains
because you can do something fancy in a
scout with with a scalpel doesn't mean
you are a better person than somewhere
else and that seems like a plausible
thing to try to train Society in um it's
not too
lunatic to get people to the point where
a really really skilled
neurosurgeon and a really really skilled
garbage
collector can both feel good about
themselves and feel good that they
locked out to have disability but not
that they're somehow better than the
person next to them who can't do that
this is a very complicated idea so um as
somebody who really focuses I was going
to say takes Pride but I know better uh
as somebody who focuses a lot on
usefulness I I want things to be useful
I want to put useful ideas out I want to
take useful ideas in so I know a part of
what we're going to want to touch on
today is very much what the societal
implications are for this and how we can
improve societ Society criminal justice
system I know is an example you use a
lot that'll be a good one to talk about
um before we get to that though what I
have a mantra in business which is don't
try to change Behavior try to leverage
it and I feel and you obviously
acknowledge it you say look it's going
to be a tall order to get people to do
it I'm stepping into the utopian Zone
but um when I hear these ideas I start
thinking okay well how do we make sure
that these become useful how do we get
them to generate momentum so that life
really can be better now you
didn't expressly push push back on my
northst star so I'll assume for now that
we're both on board with um we want
people to thrive and we want to reduce
suffering as much as possible um I I
know that I believe that getting people
to um the point where we give them as
good of a shot as humanly possible to um
bi logically be ready to absorb useful
ideas and to encounter those ideas as
much as possible so I obsess a lot about
education and what that looks like in
fact before we started rolling talking
to you about I'm so grateful to you
you've put so much content out into the
world that just makes it more likely
that people are going to encounter those
ideas okay so anyway going back to the
idea of don't try to fight Behavior try
to leverage it don't try to fight
biology try to leverage it so we've got
like Evolution has selected for things
and one of those things is that and I
think you have said this in the past we
are a hungry species we hunger for so
many things and I think about when
somebody comes to me and is like you
know hey I'm really struggling in my
life the first thing I say is Go serve
somebody else get out of your own head
go do something awesome for somebody
else we are evolutionarily wired for
that because we're a social creature and
so you want to do things that elevate
not only you but other people so I just
I'm not fighting the biology I know you
will get something positive out of that
and then the other one though is
progress make progress in your own life
set a goal and work towards that I I
make video games I assume you know
nothing about my background but we make
video games here and so all day long
we're thinking about reaching into
somebody's brain and squeezing the
dopamine centers to um get them to want
to engage now for now just assume that
I'm not an evil schmuck that's just
trying to get all the money in the world
and that my whole reason for existing is
implanting empowering ideas and
entertainment but nonetheless we have to
think about that and so
when I want to get to the point where
these ideas are not encountering sort of
utopian like whatevers like this is
never going to happen I want to say what
what's real like meritocracy is not
going away because people value things
and they what we may change what they
value fair enough but they're going to
value a thing and they're going to want
to get good at that thing and they're
going to want to be praised for doing
that thing and they're going to want to
feel that they're better for doing that
thing and it's like we've already run
the experiment monks are people that are
like hey I'm not an idiot I recognize I
need to be grateful I need to see a
blossoming flower for what it is and
really see it and understand a rock and
know that there's nothing good or bad
but thinking makes it so just Nobody
Does it so it's like this tiny tiny
fraction so do you think that I'm
misunderstanding what we what will be
easy to get us to do and what will be
hard to get us to do I agree completely
it's very very hard it seems to get
around the problem of motivation and
drive and even dirty words like ambition
and things of that sort in a context of
there being no free will um amid that
though we can show over and over that we
can manage that in some domains because
we have already Managed IT okay so a bit
of social conditioning you meet someone
and you shake their hand and they say oh
you have beautiful eyes and we're all
conditioned to say thanks and most of us
who were sensible say thanks and then a
quarter second later realize how idiotic
that is wow thanks for praising me for
my choice of photo receptor genes
um you know that's a domain where we've
made some progress to that most people
would feel sheepish if the other person
went on for too long most people would
be willing to point out the realities of
agency or lack thereof if someone tried
to introduce a law that people with your
eye color get treated better in society
um most people would see the fallacy of
that so we accomplished that in that
domain um we're able to navigate a world
in which people can appreciate eye
color and where in
general the person complimented for it
does not come out of that feeling
entitled that they earned their eye
color and I don't know enough about the
history of people liking eye colors and
such but I'm sure there was a time in
the past where with a mindset where
basically every attribute that anyone
had that was positive was a sign that
they had a good Soul because Beauty on
the outside and Beauty inside were
exactly the same and intertwined and and
disease is God's way of punishing you
and that whole there was a time in the
past where someone said you have
beautiful eyes would know that they were
being complimented about their Moral
Moral anchor because the two go hand in
hand and then we kind of learned n that
actually has nothing to do with it it's
just like so you can say oh thanks
because you're socialized and you say
that and like if you come out of it
feeling like you have earned that
compliment for your eye color that's
ridiculous yet at times in the past
there's people who would have
interpreted exactly that way we're in a
mindset now that your eye color is not
some sort of index of your as a person
we manage to get there and we can manage
to get there in other domains as well
like there are people somebody with
photographic memory may think it's kind
of cool or find circumstances where it's
advantageous I there being circumstances
where photographic memory is not
advantageous but we are of a
sufficiently informed mechanistic world
at this point
that they don't think they had anything
to do with their photographic memory or
the fact that they happen to have
perfect pitch or something like that and
if people praise them too much for that
they're able to feel a little sheepish I
not I don't know I just read a page and
I remember it what I just glance it and
I remember it I had nothing to do with
it I can just hear a C sharp in my head
anytime I want and it's always like
perfect down to like a couple of Beats
of you know
vibration that's how I turned out we've
been able to get to the point where some
of those ways in which we can be
appreciated for some positive attribute
we can accept the appreciation while
accepting actually we had nothing to do
with it and I'm not sure I would be
comfortable in a world in which only
people with perfect pitch get to have
covid
vaccines we've done that in some Realms
we could do it more but it's not going
to be easy okay so uh let me ask do you
believe people should build their
self-esteem yes and just
because I am of the place and time to if
nothing else see that as instrumentally
a good thing people will work harder if
they have good self-esteem people will
be able to put their shortcomings into
proper perspective and realize that
something bad may be bad but it's not
the entire world and it is not your
destiny things like that are protective
and efficacious and that's often a good
tool to have to make somebody feel
better
self-esteem like great example where
that intersects with all of this um a
domain where we used to
see room for blame and labeling and
insights into lack of motivation all of
that is you know when I was a kid if you
know I had trouble learning to read and
I simply was not getting there and it
would be very easy at that time for me
to be labeled as LA or unmotivated or
whatever and then Along Comes scientist
about 30 years ago and discovers that no
you can have some screwy thing happening
with the layering of neurons and like
layer four of this part of your qu text
and as a result like curved Loop letters
you tend to reverse them when you're
looking at them and you have
dyslexia and that's great we just
figured that out that's great on a very
concrete level um
because people could then learn what to
do what to do for people with dyslexia
so they could learn to read more readily
it gives you sort of more insight into
the outliers but what it also does bring
it back to this is like in the old bad
world where you're screwed up cortical
layering in this part part of your brain
instead is interpreted as laziness and
lack of motivation is your
self-perception and your self-esteem is
built around that for the rest of your
life and one sees all the ways in that
become self-defeating and like these
endless wow it wasn't until I was 40
that I was diagnosed with this learning
difference and all those years that I
felt myself being this yeah self-esteem
is a good thing to build up for efficacy
thereafter self-esteem is not a good
thing if it feels entitlement but it
certainly has its place and we can see
those circumstances where we decide
we're watching agency where there wasn't
and the outcome isn't great and the kid
still isn't learning how to read and
they are being taught what their
self-esteem is going to mumble you know
in their ears for the rest of their
lives now now that's a pretty bad thing
what should people build their
self-esteem
around well
given that none of it makes
sense and we're all machines and it
makes no sense for a machine to feel
good about itself and that's irrational
except when it makes the machine work
better except when one has learned the
contingencies well enough that the right
kind of self-esteem will make someone
Kinder will make them more likely to
feel somebody else's pain will Foster
all sorts of good stuff yeah in those
cases if your self-esteem is built
around you know the world is going to
have been a better place because a whole
bunch of molecules came together
randomly and formed that thing that I
called
me that's a good reason to have
self-esteem now going going back to cuz
here is the confounding variable you
were talking about people understand
that their eyes are just their genetics
and they didn't do anything to deserve
it which obviously I totally agree um
but at the same time Beauty has power uh
I didn't do anything to deserve being
six feet tall but I can reach things
that my wife can't so how I coming at it
from my perspective I wouldn't want
people to build their self-esteem around
something that they didn't earn just
because I don't think it will
return um anything super useful but this
is where I'd want them to start leaning
into the delusion of Free Will and say
but I would want you to for instance
just to use your example to say hey go
out of your way to be more kind and
doing things like that that you're now
putting attention and energy into uh
that I would say build your self-esteem
around that now again this goes back to
Northstar for me everything is adding up
to you want to do things that increase
human flourishing your own and others
decrease human suffering your own and
others um but I would encourage them to
do that do you at that point have such a
a reaction to the illusion of Free Will
and the negative consequences that you
see to that which I the word you've used
the most like if we were to do a word uh
diagram entitlement would just be this
gigantic glowing red orb um
are you so concerned that the illusion
of Free Will creates a sense of
entitlement and probably self-defeating
right because it's going to create
entitlement in people who think they're
awesome and it's going to create a sense
of self-defeating I'm lame I'm not
worthy and people who fall out of step
for whatever reason which could go back
to natal prenatal epigenetic I mean
before they're even born um are you so
afraid of that that you would never want
somebody to lean into the like hey like
I know Free Will doesn't exist but I
operate my daily life like it does maybe
the conclusion is you know some nice
pragmatic pragmatic thing which is like
it's it's impossible to imagine how
we're supposed to function if we really
really reject an ocean of free will all
the time I've thought this way since I
was 14 and I can't imagine it or pull it
off
99% of the time um because it's really
really hard maybe what we should do in
the face of reality of how hard this is
because we are people of our place and
time and things that intuitively seem
just intertwined with our sense of
efficacy and our goodness and our well
you know intentions and all of that
maybe save the effort for when it really
counts maybe save it
for
when you know judgment is really
consequential
when people really are causing damage if
they secretly believe they're a better
person than somebody else for something
had nothing to do with when people are
okay with a society running on myths of
like any kid could grow up to be
president kind of thing yeah put your
effort into the rare ones of those and
like if you want to feel good about
yourself because your eye color you know
go ahead it's not the end of the world
um
you know save it for where it matters
and I think what is amply
clear is in a world in which the
organizing myth is we get what we
deserve and effort somehow is coupled
with outcome um there'll be no shortage
of finding places where it really
matters let me ask you when you think
about the the grips of the biology the
biases that we have the things that we
are in the grips of what are the ones
that make you most concerned obviously
we have entitlement which I think if I'm
understanding you correctly entitlement
is born of thinking that you have
earned height Beauty intelligence
whatever whatever um what are other
traps that we fall into that for
tomorrow to be better than today we need
to get people out of one of the biggest
ones is one of those uphill battles in
terms of like how we're wired up in some
very fundamental way which is in the
right setting a setting of a feeling of
righteousness all of that we like to
punish we like to punish individuals and
translating that into like actual
biology like one of the most reliable
ways of getting dopamine running and
anticipation and all of that is to have
somebody think that they are going to be
able to punish someone for an infraction
and that they are doing something
righteous and you see the same thing
with rats you get a rat that is being
stressed and is secreting stress
hormones and it gets to bite another rat
a complete innocent bystander and the
first rat stress hormone levels go down
it feels better and you see the same
thing in non-human primates you know
displacing aggression displacing
restation and then especially inventing
cultural trappings that tell you this is
actually like good civic duty that one's
really tough because if you're trying to
say it makes no sense whatsoever to have
a world in which there's any blame or
punishment damn but it kind of does feel
good to punish like I know of this guy
who's coming up for what four five
different criminal trials in the next
year and I will be very very pleased if
the outcome is if he's locked up for
years to come and maybe even like feels
lonely in the
process but yeah that really doesn't
make sense um I mean I see this all the
time and in like at a point a few years
ago I I I do a lot of work with public
defenders offices with murders and
trying to teach juries about how screwed
up brains can be and how like they will
will like virtually be guaranteed to
make the wrong choice at various
junctures all of that and there was some
guy who went into a house of worship
with an automatic weapon and mowed down
a whole bunch of people and it was
completely horrifying and a few days
later I'm listening on the radio saying
well the alleged shooter here was a rain
today and it was decided they're subject
to Federal hate crime charges also and
that makes them eligible for the death
penalty and my first thought was yeah
fry the guy just son of a they and
then two seconds later I think what are
you talking about you're working on a
death penalty case right now and seeing
okay maybe what we have to settle for is
after two seconds of saying yeah fry the
son of a to remember no that's
actually it's not by chance this person
turned out this way and I have no idea a
like what their view of the world is and
how much pain and damage got them to
that point blah blah blah all of
that so maybe we should not expect our
first reflex to be saying oh what a poor
guy that circumstances made him a
damaging individual my heart goes out to
him and my task is to love the unloved
or to love the
unlovable
um know be pissed off and want him to be
fried two seconds later and then somehow
in there get into your
algorithm to stop and look back on that
and see if this actually makes any sense
maybe that's what we have to settle for
doing amid you saying what are the
things that I see is really
insurmountable whoa two seconds of
thinking about this guy being like
flayed by you know the whole town square
watching him be decapitated and horses
pull his limbs apart it whatever yeah
okay okay let's St for a second this
doesn't make any sense maybe in the face
of like okay we really like punishing
get people to the point where they can
feel the pleasure in that and then three
seconds later um we have taught the more
meta level of how we think about things
to reflect on does this actually make
any sense it's interesting I think we're
going to have
to Define what makes something make
sense because this what you're saying
makes sense to me in a very stable
Society where we have a way to
quarantine people but again I look at
everything from an evolutionary
perspective now whether the following
stat is accurate or just directionally
correct I heard that roughly 80% of
people in the Navy Seals uh score very
high on the um psychopathy scale if I'm
not mistaken and that's because from an
evolutionary standpoint you need people
that can kill just without remorse
because you live Liv an insanely
dangerous world where there were people
that were coming to kill you they did
not think of you as human you were other
they were going to uh take everything
you own they were going to take your
women they were going to rape them and
they were going to kill you like very
bad things happen on on an evolutionary
time scale it it is just a Litany of
tragedy and horror and you know
obviously right now there are two hot
Wars going on that I'm aware of maybe
more
uh October 7th was a level of horror
that was just startling to behold and so
it's like oh yeah humans really are
capable of just an insane level of
violence and
dehumanization and so when you say it
doesn't make sense it's like it feels
like a maybe in this current time in
this country it doesn't make sense but I
get why from an evolutionary perspective
it was select Ed for how do you think
about
that well one of
the the
great sort of bugaboos about sort of
evolution and sort of the first Decades
of social darwinists saying what is is
what was meant to be and sort of
naturalistic fallacy all of that is this
notion that what evolution rewards is
aggression and domination and passing on
more copies of your gen and a lot of
what both evolutionary biologists who
like sit there and do math modeling and
evolutionary biologists you sit and look
at animals including humans is you know
this concept of alternative strategies
like there's lots of different ways in
which humans succeed and passing on
copies of their genes and baboons and
like one thing I've seen in my of
studying baboons is the guy who was able
to walk away from every stupid
provocation instead of getting into a
fight when you look at his whole
lifespan he will have left more copies
of his jeans than the guy who fights his
way to be Alpha and is there for eight
months be before somebody breaks his arm
in a fight like nice guys yeah it's not
just nature bloody tooth and Claw and
it's not just that nice guys finished
last um one manifest ation of that is
like I am by Nature extremely
pessimistic but I have to admit some
retrospective optimism um looking at
sort of the the Hoban picture you you
painted just now one of the things that
all sorts of nice socialized
Anthropologist will come to blows about
is when did our ancestors invent
Warfare and there's one school of
thought that says we have common dissent
from a shared ancestor of chimps about
six seven million years ago and overwhel
overwhelmingly what it shows is our
entire history is a species has just
been blotched with organized violence
and warfare and such and sort of citing
certain contemporary studies of
indigenous populations and rates of
violence and such and paleontological
records of how often you're finding an
arrow head stuck in somebody's like
skull when you dig them up kind of thing
and then meanwhile the alternative
school is that when you look carefully
there's actually no evidence of
organized Warfare up until we invented
agriculture about 12,000 years ago up
until we became sedentary up until
either because of Agriculture one
notable case where people had the
greatest fishing hole on Earth in North
Kenya about 12,000 years ago and were
willing to be violent to defend it but
as soon as you had people become
sedentary and start farming and start
generating Surplus and being able to
make things and also having Surplus time
you could invent things like a standing
military you could invent things like
hating somebody because they've got more
stuff than you have and I'm quite
convinced by the evidence suggesting
that humans did not invent organized
violence
until like the last 10 12,000 years or
so and you look carefully at say the
anthropological records looking at
contemporary hunter gatherers and how
often they're violent and overwhelmingly
it's built around they are keeping out
people who are trying to come in and
take their land because they want to
like cut down the forest and things like
that Amazonian
circumstances you go through it and I
think the good news
is we haven't been a species reflexively
organizing into massive violence against
each other for all that long of a time
it's a pretty recent
invention that said what the best
evidence suggests is that
individual hominins have been killing
each other at the same rate in every
sort of culture on Earth over individual
conflict kind of thing
everywhere you look when you spend
enough time say studying Kalahari hunter
gatherers in
Botswana and like if you're studying a
band of 30 of these people you're G to
have to watch them for like 55 years
running to get enough observations to
tell you what their their violence rate
is like compared to downtown in Detroit
over the course of a year but when you
get enough of those data there's
basically the same ratees of some guy
killing some other guy over reproductive
access of some guy killing some woman
over a perceived rejection of overtures
of some guy killing some other guy over
an honor
violation yeah that we've been doing
forever and that proves to be a very
tough one no degree of punishment in the
form of a death penalty does much for
Crimes of Passion whether you were
talking about like an ancestor two
million years years ago or people in
most cultures on Earth including all
those nice swell heartwarming cter
gatherers you come home and you find
your loved one in bed with somebody else
and your impulsive Crime of Passion
there is going to be pretty unchangeable
by external contingencies of
punishment so that aspect of us I think
is really really longlasting the notion
of a whole bunch of homonyms coming
together and working in a Cooperative
way with the willingness to have a
hierarchy of command to go and try to do
damage to somebody else's equivalent
group that's not all that baked into our
our Legacy I don't
think that's the first time I've heard
that that is very interesting now
knowing your own work on chimps chimps
will band together and do Patrol parties
and raid other chimp groups and kill
them off um
given that are that sounds more to me
like organized military it's not exactly
a standing army but it rhymes with it um
so given that we are on that same
evolutionary
tree why do you think that it we don't
have that in our just Eternal
past well for a very simple reason first
off I wish I had had the luck to spend
decades with chimps but I SP them with
baboons who are baboons sorry they're
not they don't make tools like that
they're not as smart but they're plenty
interesting when it comes to primates
being awful to each other in interesting
ways
um well exactly what you bring up was
the driving force and Notions of like
our demonically violent past because our
closest relative historically is chimps
six seven years million years ago we
share 98% of our DNA or so and yeah they
have organized violence they kill each
other they kill each other in ways where
the males in one group will
systematically kill all the males in
another group and take over their
territory and expand that and whoa look
this we've got this Legacy of six
million years back and all of that and
there's one word that shows how this is
not really the case bonobo
bonobo
chimps pygmy chimps they used to be
called bonobos have a completely
different social system they are female
dominated they have virtually no
aggression nothing like that has ever
been seen in a bonobo they solve every
source of social tension with sex and
sex of every stripe you could imagine
they're totally groovy all of that and
you look and oh we share 98% of our DNA
with bonobos as well they are as close
of cousins as chimps are and even
separate of the fact that we're not
chimps we're not bonobos we solved our
own
evolutionary selective challenges in a
you unique way all of that you know
we're as closely related to the most
groovy pacifists out there in the
primate world as we are to murderous
demonic chimps so that does in that one
and some of the most influential writing
about our supposed inevitability of
violence because of our shared chimp
ancestry predated our knowledge about
bonobo social behavior and bonobo
genetics and what the genome looks like
okay very interesting um it doesn't seem
self-evident to me that if we're related
to both of them equally and we are in
today's age certainly capable of extreme
violence look I I may be optimistic
where you're pessimistic I think the
vast majority of humans just want to get
on with their day and they're loving and
kind uh but we do have these weird
evolutionary quirks that make other
people the outgroup US the ingroup we
have Envy uh so there are things that
will then trigger that murderous rage we
are
also uh i' be very interested to see if
there are studies on this but as an
entrepreneur I will tell you that people
crave certainty and that when you give
them certainty you can get them to
follow you and people are so very
malleable and if you give them Something
to Believe In and then say hey but we
have to go kill these other people uh
they'll they'll be here for it if things
are bad enough and you need look no
further than the um rise of the Third
Reich and anybody unfamiliar with that
history is is it's just absolutely
astonishing and I am a big believer uh
in what Soulja nson said which is the
line through good and evil runs through
every human heart so when I look at
those stor St I go oh God I have all
those same uh the same ability to be
manipulated to come to just hor
horrifyingly erroneous conclusions so
anyway bringing it back to the monkeys
given how far off the violent or far off
the beaten path to violence that we have
proven that we are capable of going when
I look at bonobos who uh have every
groovy flavor of sex as you were saying
and I look at at least in contemporary
Society uh even now like there there is
a shame there is a sense of that needs
to be in private so I don't feel a ton
of kinship there um and then with chimps
dominance aggression hierarchy as a guy
in business I will say yeah that all
sounds pretty familiar um again I don't
know the studies in the way that you do
so I'd love to know is there is there
more to that story that shows that no no
no we're really in alignment with but
noos and if we are does that mean that
if they had stuff to protect they had a
farm they could hoard wealth do you
think they too would break bad
eventually yeah um which is a great
question um I think what you're alluding
to with your entrepreneurial self
recognizing the Chimp in you
um is you know we're not a chimp we're
not a bonobo have been subject to the
same evolutionary rules but came up with
a unique solution to a unique set of
challenges but nonetheless one that can
have a lot of overlap with how chimp
solved it or bonobo solved it but what I
think is implicit in your statement um
is we show staggering amounts of
variability we have both I don't know
Elon Musk and the dolly Llama Or you
know whatever we're incredibly varied
species and
we are
simultaneously the most violent species
on Earth but also the most cooperative
and altruistic and empathic and
sometimes it could be the same person
who embodies both of those behaviors and
sometimes it could be the same behavior
and it's in the eye of the beholder
whether this person is a terrorist or a
freedom fighter kind of thing you can
reboot your life your health even your
career anything you want all you need is
discipline I can teach you the tactics
that I learned while growing a billion
dooll business that will allow you to
see your goals through whether you want
better health stronger relationships a
more successful career any of that is
possible with the mindset and business
programs in Impact Theory University
join the thousands of students who have
already accomplished amazing things tap
now for a free trial and get started
today so we're a
very in the mid little confused species
with tremendous individual
variation and thus there's an implicit
danger to decide that any other species
out there is a good model for making
sense of how we evolved and I think one
can cherry-pick stuff on that and I
guarantee you there's somebody somewhere
on some organic farm wearing birken
stocks or whatever whose natural
affinity will be much more with bonobos
or yeah we're we're highly variable in
that way great great example of this
okay in
primatology there's this broad
classification you can do um across like
150 primate species or so there are
species that are monogamous parab
bonders and there are ones who are
polygamous polyas parab bonders Gibbons
cang some South American monkeys and
then there's all the Apes and most of
the Old World primates and all of that
so you see these two patterns and it
turns out there's all sorts of traits
that go in common with if you turn out
to be a parab bonding species or a
polygamous species a tournament species
and these traits play out in remarkable
ways in a species in which males mate
with a lot of females different females
you don't see male parental care because
they don't care in a species in which
females are meeting with multiple males
over the course of their cycle you don't
see male parenting either because
there's a high degree of uncertainty in
a species like that where there's High
degrees of aggression there's selection
for secondary sexual characteristics
like lots of muscle and sharp canines
and then you look at one of the pair
bonding species and males and females
look exactly the same because they've
been selected for the same sort of
traits being good parents and male maret
monkeys will do more parenting of their
offspring than even the the females will
and these are two totally different
sorts of pictures sufficiently so like
you go out in a newly discovered Island
and there's a new primate nobody has
ever seen before and you manage to see
this one way up in that tree as a male
you see his penis and then magically he
falls out of the tree dead so you've got
his body to exam and then and over there
there's a female because you saw her
nursing somebody young and she falls out
of the tree and now you can compare them
and you know nothing whatsoever about
the species social system right off the
bat if the male is a whole lot bigger
than the female you're looking at a
tornament species right off the bat if
you look at you know the length of time
the female nurs isn't how much milk can
be stored you're finding out something
about if she's a pair bonding species
and right away you look at whether
females and males have canines so whole
bunch of these you know nothing more
than and like you've just found out all
this private stuff about them so where
do humans fit and by every measure some
of our genetic diseases the degree of
difference between the average male
human and female human in life
expectancy body mass lung capacity width
of nostrils all of that you know sperm
levels and the testes all these things
that are functions of that by every one
of those measures we're about halfway in
between we're not a parir bonding
species and we're not a tournament
species we're halfway in between and
that was part of what made us
generalists so on the average we're that
and what's also clear is amid that
average of us being halfway in between
and Confused a whole lot of the time and
basically basically that explains you
know half of Earth's poets and all of
Earth's divorce lawyers the fact that
we're confused some way halfway in
between um is that individuals are not
always halfway in between they're skewed
way out on one end or the other there's
Gene profiles related to hormones like
vasopressin and oxytocin and their
receptors which are significant
contributors to how stable and Fidel
fidelius whatever the word how how
faithful somebody is in their
relationships how close of interpersonal
space they stand in front of somebody of
the opposite sex if they're heterosexual
while they're already in a
relationship like that winds up so we're
this species where we don't fall into
any of those patterns easily and thus
we're on some fairly thin ice in saying
you know in this regard we just much
more chimp is than we're bonoo is or
whatever we're we're highly variable and
we by definition the species that
doesn't fit into any of those categories
and when you look at the individuals
amongst us none of them fit into the
what the average is for our
species yeah that the getting into how
much of our um makeup is either echoed
in our body or driven by our body I find
endlessly fascinating um my wife and I
been together for been married for 21
years and so we get asked a lot about oh
you know what's the secret to a long
marriage
and while I rarely give this answer the
thing that's in my mind a lot of times
is I almost certainly have a lot more
receptors for
vasopressin because I get so much out of
bonding with my wife I don't know what
to do with
that not to mention what she has to do
with that um yeah this is exactly our
our discussion of oh my God we're
machines and you just proved that you're
a machine who could know your Machin in
that regard and does that like do in
Hallmark cards does that do win like the
feelings that you feel that you feel so
strongly that they feel real even if
they aren't real because you're just
machine yeah that's that's the challenge
that we have that's somehow we need to
come to terms with us knowing our
Machin in the sense that like you can do
biomechanics on
pelvic arches and angles of femur with
pelvic arches and thus in this species
they could leap in this way and in that
species they can't and here's the the
equations that will prove it and that
could make perfect sense to you and
still your jaw drop drops open the first
time you see that a gazelle can leap 20
ft across you know a rivered and that's
the most amazing thing and you're like
can't believe the world has produced
something like this and you can do that
and understand the equations that it
makes it possible for their hind legs to
Spring that
way we have to be able to sort of come
to some sort of you know treaty and
peaceful stance with our knowing our
Machin and knowing and sensing the gears
just underneath the surface
explaining the things that make us who
we are and you and your Vaso pressent
receptor profile while at the same time
still being able to say
like it's amazing having somebody Who
You're Universe revolves around them and
theirs around yours and yeah okay it's
Vas res receptors we need to be able to
do that
simultaneously because knowing like the
architecture of a gazelle's pelvis
should not take away your ability to
just be a struck by like how they turned
out that way how circumstances produced
an animal that could that gracefully go
flying that far in the
air so be intellectually taken with
biomechanics and be grateful for the
like awe and Aesthetics of getting to
watch it and I think that's the only
thing we can do with our being machines
who understand our Machin so okay good
for you you got the right kind of
vasopress receptors
um like may it bring you lots of
pleasure and it's a good thing if it
does somehow we have to reconcile
that yeah well it's definitely brought
me a lot of pleasure that is for sure um
the body is one thing that I'm always
thinking about from an optimization
standpoint I'm always encouraging people
that remember you're having a biological
experience if you're not getting sleep
if you're not getting sunlight if your
diet sucks if you're not exercising like
all of these things are going to make it
hard for you just to process the world
um there's a couple things I'd like to
touch on just to really drive this home
for people one is um what I've heard you
talk about before which is the idea that
the timing of your parole hearing to
when the last time the judge ate was uh
and then Phineas Gage and Phineas Gage
is the one I always reach to when people
are like oh what do you mean of course
we have free will I'm like bro uh walk
us through those Phineas Gage every
every neuroscientist on Earth at some
point was sat down in their grandma
grandpa's knee and told the tale of
Phineas Gage and neuroscientists almost
requireed to consider naming their kid
after Phineas Gage phas Gage was a
railroad construction line Foreman in
Vermont in the 1840s obviously like a
sobrius reliable guy if he was the
foreman of this churchgoing devout guy
showed up for work every day all of that
one day somebody like left a stick of
dynamite where they shouldn't and Gage
was carrying this in this three-foot
tamping iron Rod that you do something
with that to make railroad lines go
through mountains and stuff and this
caused an explosion and it shot this
metal pole into his eye and out the
front part of his skull and it landed 30
feet away with a large part of his
frontal cortex stuck to it and you know
he had just had an interesting
biological intervention and the remark
is this went through so fast and with
such force that it cauterized all the
blood vessels he wasn't even bleeding he
was like a little bit dazed and got up
and like somebody went and like got the
the boss who looked in his head and said
oh my God Gage I see what's wrong you've
got a hole in your head I can see all
the way out at the top of your head and
they said you know tell you what Gage
take the rest of the day off let see you
tomorrow and some of his friends walked
mile and a half with him to go to the
town Doctor Who looked in there and said
oh something shot through your eye and
at the top of your skull and weird and
this doctor proceeded to be able to
document what happened to Gage which was
guge was almost literally overnight
transformed into this disinhibited hyper
aggressive alcoholic sexually predatory
monstrous guy who was never able to work
for years and years afterward because
and what we had just learned was
summarized by the Doctor Who in his
notes said gauge is no longer gauge
something about that part of the brain
constrains the animal energies within us
and that's a pretty good 19th century
definition of what the frontal cortex
does in terms of regulating behavior and
emotion all of that and that was the
first
demonstration that you could change like
the fundamental character and moral
values and everything else of somebody
just by mucking around with their brain
mucking around with an iron Rod that
goes through there so this was an UNS
subtle one and thus it's easy for us to
appreciate that as the causitive agent
that had nothing to do with free will
but this is an extraordinary example and
all we've learned since then are subtler
versions of it one that should give one
pause which is depending on the study 25
to 75% of the men on Death Row in this
country have a history of a concussive
head trauma to the front of their heads
where their frontal cortex is and when
you put that in context you're not
looking at bad souls or you're not
looking at people who just are not
capable of feeling somebody else's pain
you're looking at a broken machine
you're looking at a a machine whose
breaks in this particular domain
Shattered by concussive trauma so you
know Phineas guge was the first of our
lessons in that and all we've done since
then is learn far more subtle stuff is
underneath the surface than just metal
rods or concussive head injuries you
know this is where all of us are turning
into who we are the judges the hungry
judges I love this study um and it has
been subject to some controversy this
was was published in a very prestigious
Journal a number of years ago looking at
parole board judges in a particular
country where the researchers were and
they examined all of the decisions these
judges made over the course of a year as
to whether to Pearl somebody or send
them back to prison and this was well
more than a thousand cases something
like that and then looking for like what
predicted when a judge would free
someone versus send it back for another
five years
and out popped this flabbergasting
finding which was the single biggest
predictor was how many hours it had been
since the judge had eaten a
meal oh my God see a judge right after
lunch and there was about 60% chance of
being pared by four hours later you were
down to basically a 1% chance oh my this
is this is like Earth shattering all of
that what is this about this is about
something very simple like when you
haven't eaten your blood sugar levels go
down when they're low you don't have
enough glucose to run your brain which
is the most expensive organ like pound
forp pound in your body and you
especially don't have the means to run
the most expensive part of your brain
the frontal cortex the frontal cortex
that would make you say wait wa wait
before you just send the guy back think
a little bit about his circumstances
think about whether you know someone
like that makes you a little bit edgy
because of how tough they look try to
try to look past that think about how
the world has been from their
perspective that takes energy in the
same way that we become more selfish and
less Cooperative when we're hungry or
tired or sleep deprived and all of that
yeah it's low blood glucose and your
expensive part of the brain can't do the
harder thing so that's amazing but
what's even more interesting is like if
you took that judge at that point and
said hey look at this you had a guy with
the exact same history the other day
there and you paroled that guy and this
guy you sent back to jail how come
they're not going to say because I had
low blood glucose they're GNA quote
Emanuel Kant or something and and come
up with a post Haw explanation what's
that telling us you know our most
consequential decisions that tap into
the core of us as morally reasoning
beings we biological machines all of
that that said this study has been ired
in controversy one group sort of wrote
in and challenged the conclusions based
on statistics and for my money the
original group reanalyzed their data in
accord with these people's complaints
and showed that it did nothing to their
conclusion another group has challenged
them on an artifact of how the study was
done and That Was Then controlled for
and shown to be intact another complaint
was brought up which when you look at it
closely makes the point of of the
original study even stronger I think it
is held up and it is held up in other
Realms as well go in and you're going to
go into a bank and ask a bank officer
for a home loan mortgage loan or
whatever make sure you go in right after
they've had lunch the same exact
phenomenon the more hours it has been
the more likely they ought to turn down
a loan application studies where you
give people job application to read and
some of them by name are from an
outgroup member and some are from one of
us and the more hours it's been the
shorter time you spend reading the
outgroup members application before you
toss it in the trash the more hours a
doctor has gone without sleeping the
more implicit racial bias they show when
they make judgments about dosages for
painkillers all of that yeah there's all
this biology going on and then the
coolest thing is superimposed on that is
this great cultural wrinkle that I saw
in a paper that came out more recently
which is looking at one circumstance
where the more hours it has been since
the judge has eaten the meal the more
forgiving they are and the more
benevolent and the more empathic what is
this about these are Muslim judges in
Sharia courts during Ramadan when
they're fasting during daylight hours
and you're hungry then not because
godamn it I had to go to this meeting
during lunchtime and I didn't get to eat
and I'm starving because you're
reflecting on the meaning of life and
your responsibility to your fellow
humans and what God wants if you if
that's the culture you're growing up in
being hungry because it's Ramadan makes
you more merciful get the same drudge
four weeks later and they're starving
because they missed lunch and they're
going to throw the book at the person
just like the American judge would do
whoa so all of that mechanistically and
then there's a cultural wrinkle that's
thrown in on top of that so if you were
raised in that sort of culture two
different types of hunger bring out very
different things in your moral
decision-making process wow not only are
we we machines were really interesting
ones yeah that is crazy to me that
context can have that kind of impact on
it um which also makes me think about uh
dopamine testosterone things that people
think they have like a really strong
beat on oh it does this but in reality
they are way more context dependent um
walk me through that how is it possible
that testosterone can mean one thing in
one context and another in another
because you are secreting it in response
to contextual
information incredible
like mistake people have in their heads
is that testosterone causes aggression
testosterone does not cause aggression
testosterone makes aggressive
individuals more sensitive to social
cues that trigger aggression and there's
all sorts of studies that have been done
that show that testosterone does not
turn on the radio if the radio is
already turned on it UPS the volume on
it it UPS the sensitivity of the system
to whatever you have been socially
trained to learn to view as a
provocation of aggression so that but
then you see there's something even more
subtle there going on it's not that
testosterone causes aggression yeah yeah
yeah we just got rid of it and it's not
even that testosterone makes you more
aggressive if you are already getting
the social cues that trigger
aggression what testosterone really does
is make you more likely to do whatever
behaviors give you status when your
status is being
challenged okay you're baboon and your
status is being challenged because some
guy is like hassling you and challenging
if you're a
baboon status being challenged is
answered by you get into a fight with a
guy baboons are a lot simpler than us
but then in our world all you have to do
is go to like some fancy ass private
school that's having their annual
auction and fundraiser or whatever and
you see a whole bunch of like
self-satisfied Captain of industry Rich
guys there who are on the board at the
place and they're sitting there half
drunk because they make sure the banquet
has lots of alcohol flowing and then you
get to watch these like Masters of the
Universe compete with each other as to
who could bid the highest in this
charitable auction oh my God these are
Apes who are sitting there trying to
maintain their social status by seeing
who can give away more of their money
whoa we're a weird species go explain
that one to about
and you can show this experimentally
there are economic games where people
ACR status by being more generous give
people testosterone and they make more
generous
offers the issue isn't that say
testosterone makes aggression more
likely and that that's the problem the
problem is that we hand out status for
aggression so readily that is very
interesting to me and what what do you
make of the fact that
well what I take away from that is that
men are selected for their response to
testosterone which is why they have so
much more of it than women uh which
means that men for some reason Evolution
wanted to make sure that we would defend
our status what do you think that's all
about well that immediately fits into
things like that gets you more copies of
your genes passed on and that sort of
business going back to the fundamentals
there what it tells by the time you get
to us is there's a lot of different ways
to optimize that we're a complicated
species and sometimes you do that by
like being a CEO Maverick and you know
before you know it that's one version of
incredible status and some of the time
you do it by like being a warlord
somewhere and you know context dependent
we are a very heterogeneous species in
terms of cultures and cultural values
and what we mostly have our brains that
evolved not to be set in stone but
instead to be malleable enough to learn
what your particular cultures rules are
do you think that um it indicates that
women are selecting males based on
status yes and most studies indicate
that one classic body of work by a guy
named David bus University of Texas at
Austin um doing this massive
cross-cultural study of people all over
the planet and like here's 25 adjectives
and rate them for how far they are up in
your list of what you would look for in
a in a partner in a in a spouse whatever
and what you saw was
consistently men uh in every culture out
there uh averaged preferring a partner
who was a number of years younger than
them consistently women chose for
partners who were older than them
consistently women put money earning
capacity in the guy higher up on the
list than the guy would do consistently
men put potential fertility higher up on
the list than women would do and this
was crosscultural this was all over the
world oh my God some of the stuff is so
solid there and then you find out what
the most interesting thing is about the
study which is regardless of culture the
most common number one thing on the list
was kindness oh my God all this cultural
stuff and inculcation at roles and
gender roles and maybe it's not
inculcation because biology is making
that and we're so different women and
men and Mars and Venus and and yeah at
the end of the day like everyone put
kindness at the top of their list so
like we make perfect sense as just
another primate when you look at us
through one angle and then we're
completely bizarre and unprecedented in
another that like you can have people
who are hunter gatherers are living in
like the middle of Chicago and somebody
who's a socialist or someone who's a
capitalist or some and they all come out
with roughly the same list of
preferences there yet a list that has
some stereotypical gender
differences oh we're a really weird
primate we're a primate but we're a very
unique one the things that people rate
from a sexual attractiveness perspective
has become very much a hot button issue
um I'm very curious to hear what you
think about this whenever I think about
my wife as being like me I my prediction
engine breaks and I can no longer
predict her behavior when I think of
women and look of course there's more
overlap than there is difference 100%
but there's a great I'm going to
paraphrase it I don't remember who said
this but uh there's a quote that goes um
any individual man is a mystery but put
them in the Aggregate and they are a
mathematical certainty and uh I will say
that the same is true of women I that
makes a lot of sense to me that if
you're looking at any one person of
course you have to get to know them you
have to figure out what is particular
about them but as you begin to step back
to the population level suddenly you get
a lot of things a lot of um traits that
become reliable at a um at a population
level and so when I think of my wife as
being very different than me um of
having more classically feminine ways of
approaching the world so she doesn't
have my level of aggression she is far
more um interested in people than things
she's far more interested in subtleties
of
communication um she um values me for
very different things and I value her I
mean obviously there's a lot of overlap
but just that they become these outliers
uh do you see that as yes at the
population level there are going to be
there are big differences between men
and women or no no no that's all much to
do about nothing and um better to think
of them as as you would think of
yourself well it depends in what domain
you're making the assessment uh higher
ability appropriateness to cast a vote
in a ballot sort of thing yeah it took
this country only
a bunch of centuries to figure out that
that's not a domain in which sex
differences are
pertinent so there it shouldn't matter
matter and it doesn't matter and equal
pay and you know all that sort of stuff
hoay for a progressive agenda um when it
looks
at
systematized thought versus relational
thought and sex differences in that
that's a Fairly reliable one those are
interesting and like people even know
what different gonadal hormones do to
the cortex during fetal life and stuff
like that so that's really interesting
but what you come down to is exactly
your point which is there's no human out
there who is an average human um your
average human is an average human but
there is no individual who fits
averageness across the board
because it's a statistical artifact if
you throw enough data points together
and patterns emerge and patterns emerge
with certain distributions of
frequencies and thus you can identify
somebody who's average in the middle but
look closely and they're not going to be
Side by some trade or whatever that's
why I don't know
sociologists probably can tell us a
whole lot more about you know what is
changing the economy will do to rates of
violence than psychotherapists can do
because one of them specializes in
aggregate predictability from
populations and the other one does one
case at a
time and depending on what you want to
know one could be a more valid approach
than the other but yeah individuals on
the average are individualistic and you
know hoay for that and we're far more
variable than your average you know
porcupine is because we evolved in a way
we're a lot more elow room and the
workings of the system so I want to go
back to neurochemistry so dopamine has
become something that people are really
focused on these days in terms of the
way that our lives are um structured
such that you know whether it's being on
social media just the way that a phone
is able to trigger all these rewards uh
that phones seem designed very much like
a slot machine with colors and sounds
and alerts and alarms um what what do
you what do you advise for people that
you know in terms of if if our goal in
this interview is to get out a bunch of
ideas that uh nonfree will having beings
uh will hopefully take on and move in a
Direction that's more useful um what do
you tell people about dopamine about
dopamine detoxing how should people
approach a life if they want to um not
become the puppet of their
phone I think one thing to recognize is
another one of those misnomers
testosterone is not about aggression
dopamine is not about reward and
pleasure initially it is but when you
look more closely what it's more about
is it's about anti anticipation of
pleasure it's about how great it is
going to be when the reward actually
happens the neurochemistry that is much
more built around endogenous opioid like
neurotransmitters things like dopamine
is about anticipation and even more
importantly dopamine is about the
motivation you derive from that
anticipation how many times are you
willing to press that lever with your
paw in order to get that reward there
what dopamine is about is it's the fuel
for go gold directed
behavior and that's a very different
picture than dopamine is about reward
and such because it tells you the
fueling of behavior with dopamine is
mostly about the fueling of the ability
to hold your breath and weight because
it's going to be that much more amazing
when it
comes the ability to decide the future
may carry a larger re than the present
and it's worth waiting for and you know
mice can do
that monkeys can do that and they could
do that for a few minutes at a time and
we could do it deciding that if you have
a certain mindset doing a certain sort
of delayed gratification will get you
into heaven when you're dead whoa you
could maintain dopamine as like a
motivator of you know anticipation of
reward and thus living a pure sacred
life or whatever because you're going to
like wind up in Paradise afterward or
because you're maintaining dopamine
while you press the lever over and over
because you've got this bizarre thing
you want to leave a better planet for
your great
grandchildren like we take the basic
dopamine system that like motivates you
to press a lever in order to get a nice
food pallet if you're like a monkey
sitting there or elaborate and then we
do it for
like taking on a five generation long
project to building some like Gothic
Cathedral where like you were going to
train your children to be the stonemason
who will take over when you die and like
Whoa We Could maintain dopamine up there
for incredibly long periods of time so
that's the first thing people should
know about dopamine and so and us when
trying to make sense of like we're the
species that can hold our breath for a
long long long time and that's very
unique the other thing about it is like
you look at a baboon and you look at
what are its sources of pleasure in life
what are some of the things it could
anticipate and it's basically like food
that you want or sex that you're
motivated about or if you're in a bad
bad mood somebody smaller and weaker who
you can beat up on to displace your
frustration and that's about it for a
bad Moon's like inventory of things to
feel anticipatory about but then you get
us and we've got people who could be
anticipatory that you know with another
14 years of digging in Old Divi Gorge
you're GNA pull up a homed fossil like
nothing anyone's ever seen and you are
going to feel such pleasure and you've
been scraping there in the Sun for 14
years out of anticipation that it's got
to be there and then you turn around and
then you also use dopamine because the
doughnut you get afterward when you come
at the end of the day tastes delicious
and you know it's going to taste
delicious and then you turn around and
you use dopamine because the smell of a
flower is going to be amazing and then
you turn it around because you hope that
whoa once again you can have like
multiple orgasms in one and then when
that's all done you go to the symph and
like you can't believe Beethoven could
do such things with like a picky third
chord or something like that and we're
weird because we've got to use the same
dopamine system it's the same
neurotransmitter and it's the same
circuitry and we use it for everything
from like the smell of a flower to
winning the lottery to taking cocaine to
like understanding a passage of like
some philosopher who's impen able and
suddenly it makes sense and O we just
released dopamine just like a baboon
does when it has just killed a gazelle
and is getting to eat it what a bizarre
species we are and the only way we can
do that in that some of the time on our
dopamine dial going from 0er to 10 means
a great smelling flour and some of the
time going from Zer to 10 is you've just
won the lottery the only way we can do
that is it's a syst system that has to
reset the gain on the system really fast
because right now you're doing good flow
smells and you've got a way have to have
a way to tell the system we've just
switched over to winning the lottery
dopamine and going from zero to 10 on
that is totally different than going Zer
to 10 on the flowers and people are
beginning to actually figure out unique
things about circuitry in the human
brain of the dopamine system that allows
you to reset the gain on the system more
there's more little feedback loops in
the wiring this this is totally cool
stuff and it has to work that way and
once you've got a system that can reset
so you can go from doing flowers to the
lottery and then back again to like
solving a math equation you got a
downside to that which I think people
need to be aware of and one that
explains like an incredible percentage
of human misery if you've got a system
that res sets that e easily by
definition whatever was an amazing
wonderful surprise yesterday is going to
feel like something you're entitled to
today and is going to feel insufficient
tomorrow and that's this price of
Perpetual hunger that we pay for a
system that constantly has to has to
habituate to whatever the latest
pleasure was because you got to reset
the whole thing for starting the
repetitive motivation process all over
again and guarantees whatever is nice
now is going to leave you hungry
tomorrow and like that's how we go do
things like invent you know vaccines and
fly to the moon and and write whatever
Grand achievements that yeah we can have
extraordinary sources of motivation to
carry us through with that um but but
another way of stating that is what is
okay today is going to be insufficient
tomorrow and yeah but what have I done
lately my next Noel has to be even
better than this one or my next public
offering has to be even more successful
than this one where the species that
always gets hungry again is another way
of saying that we're a species that
always habituates to the present which
is another way of saying that we're the
species that has to use the same
dopamine system for incredibly different
things on like the turn of a dime
spinning on a dime or whatever and
that's the price we pay we're always
going to invent new stuff unlike chimps
chimps make tools and all of that and
you find 20,000 year old paleontological
sites of chimps tool making and they
were making the same tools 20,000 years
ago that they're making now they don't
have incremental advances in their
material culture we're the species that
keeps inventing new stuff and we're the
species that also what was great
yesterday is going to be kind of boring
tomorrow and more more and
more so how do we
avoid uh dying on the treadmill of
dopamine well I think awareness of it is
a good thing those of us who celebrate
on a regular basis we have somewhere in
their values in our head that what is
implicit in us could be made more
visible and examinable by explicit
self-reflection and we're even like able
to understand literatures that's showing
things like implicit biases when made
explicit by self-reflection weakens
those implicit
biases yeah think about this stuff
wonder why it is like what was amazing
yesterday isn't feeling like quite
enough today and why it's boring now and
you should be able to get something
better and more exciting and something
shinier and newer and all of
that like whether it's a neurochemist
version of understanding it or I don't
know like what was that Theologian
Merton who wrote about this a lot that
level of understanding this in either
version that sort of
insight should make you a little bit
skeptical about the omnipresence of your
hungers and
that's a realm in which whether it's
poetry or reading neurochemistry
journals if either of those accomplished
that that's a good thing that's a good
way to make mechanism work to your
advantage and recognize how much we are
running on Hunger that like takes us up
wrong Pathways and even if it takes us
up the right one isn't going to last for
very long one thing that I found very
useful in life is exactly what you're
talking about now which is the idea of
just pulling something into the light
acknowledging what it is understanding
its
impact uh and then being able to make
changes based on now that I know that
was a big breakthrough for me um in my
life with brain plasticity which you
mentioned at the very top of the
interview um once I could understand
what was happening I knew how to take
advantage of it so we you know we've
talked a lot about obviously that Free
Will doesn't exist we've talked about
the ways that our brain works and how
we're trapped by biology now again going
back to the world diagram entitlement is
going to be this gigantic word um I
understand what you're afraid of when it
comes to free will but now I want to
talk about at a societal level the the
changes that you want to see um be made
so I think that look PE your book
basically breaks into two parts number
one is Free Will doesn't exist and you
give extraordinarily detailed and
compelling reasons why that is true um
I'll sum up for me Phineas gagee was all
I needed to hear like oh wait I can
completely change somebody's life just
by damaging their brain like that to me
just makes it so self-evident there
could be no soul there could be um
nothing beyond my ability to uh process
and so whether I'm disrupting that by
something I'm eating that's disrupting
my gut which is disrupting the serotonin
that's being made which therefore my
brain has less to deal with like it just
seems so self-evident to me that we are
our biology and I will never understand
uh I have awe and this is something you
were very clear about recognizing this
stuff leaves me in awe I I stand in
Wonder and the same kind of reverence
that people that are religious have I
have that and I want that for people and
and and I love that but it just seems
impossible for me to make the leap that
we have a soul when I'm like well what
if my brain got damaged like do I then
reconstitute when I'm in heaven like I
don't understand it doesn't make any
sense to me uh also I have a terrible
memory am I going to have a terrible
memory in heaven like all it just this
is all so weird to me so setting that
aside though so now we look at the
criminal justice system and this becomes
the second half of the book which is
like okay if I can get you all to
believe that it's as uncomfortable as it
is to embrace that Free Will doesn't
exist that you don't get to own your um
accomplishments in the way that you
would probably want to uh but the
criminal justice system and the changes
that you want I think will be the other
controversial part so what's the what's
the pitch in reality so if we're going
to quarantine people um what do you mean
by that and how do we actually pull it
off okay so when deciding you could
subtract responsibility let alone like a
culpable soul out of making sense of
humans damaging actions against other
humans um what you're left left with
there is how do we protect Society from
people who are dangerous and what sort
of the public health model quarantine
model of infectious disease is built
around is number one figure out how to
constrain the person so that they're no
longer an infectious danger to people
around them number two don't do a
smidgen more than that because the
person doesn't deserve that number three
make sure you're framing that in a
context where this person had absolutely
nothing to do with the fact that there's
some like virus floing out of their
lungs now into the air around them and
number four put effort
into understanding where disease like
that comes from original causes and
stuff and when that's turned into the
same thing for dealing with like
damaging humans in the way that we would
call now criminality figure out how to
constrain them so that they're not
dangerous anymore obviously like not
believing in Free Will doesn't mean
we'll just let murderers running around
all over the place constrain them don't
do it an inch more than you need to
Don't Preach to them in the process
about how there's some sort of Soul
that's relevant to all of that and make
sure like any good Public Health person
you are interested in root causes and
try to figure out what it is that
creates people who are damaging in that
way and try to fix things at that level
and this sounds completely like know
absurdly idealistic or something but we
do that all the time and just to give
two different domains we do that all the
time you get a car whose brakes aren't
working and it's dangerous it'll kill
people you don't know how to fix it it's
dangerous constrain it don't use it put
it in a garage don't do a smidgen more
than that don't go in every day with a
sledgehammer and smash the hood of the
car because it deserves retro ution for
the fact that it breaks failed and it
hit someone Don't Preach to it and at
that point try to figure out why breaks
fail okay so that's that's machines as
machines but what about us as machines
how do we do that where we really can
subtract out a sense of responsibility
and blame and culpability all we do that
all the time there's a circumstance
where there's a certain type of human
who is dangerous to the people around
them they will harm them they will
damage them and this is a danger and we
have to take societal steps to prevent
this from happening and what do you do
if that's your kid and they have a nose
cold you keep them home from
kindergarten tomorrow because the rule
is if your child is sneezing a lot
please keep them home so they don't get
everybody else sick constrain them
quarantine them so that they're now not
a danger to the other classmates but
don't tell them they can't play with
their toys today when they're home
because they're bad having caught a
rhino virus and don't like confuse
Health with purity of Soul like previous
centuries and tell them they've gotten
rotten soul and that's why they're
sneezing and make sure people are
figuring out why people get nose colds
and if there's a way to prevent it wow
we have subtracted a blemish on your
pristine moral soul out of 5-year-old
sneezing and we're able to protect other
kids from getting the nose cold and we
don't tell this kid that they're a
rotten human because they're sneezing
and it's a more human place and it's a
healthier
Place great that's our
blueprint we've got two things that
we've been talking about this entire
episode one is biology everything is
Downstream of that uh but it's also
Downstream of ideas and so the one thing
that I worry about with this approach is
that
if we assume people don't have free will
but they are going to respond to the
ideas that they're able to ingest um by
one let's take the kid example that has
a nose cold so that works quarantining
them works because the immune system's
kicking in is going to fix that the car
brakes thing um that's probably closer
because there's something wrong and
let's say we're not a mechanic so we
don't know how to fix it we know it's
Danger we can recognize that we can put
the car in a garage um that's
incarceration of some kind whether it's
a mental hospital or otherwise and while
I hope that tomorrow we have the
Breakthrough and this becomes the thing
that you can cure and then it's you you
quarantine them long enough to cure them
and then you let them go um but we don't
yet have that solution so it still ends
up being incarceration now I hear you
and one of the things you want is just
to make sure that we're not smashing the
car hood because because it deserves to
be smashed for having bad breaks I I
definitely understand that but I that
still feels like incarceration and then
as we get into what that's going to look
like in real life it feels like that's
just going to play out the same way that
we are now because they're going to be
housed with other people it is going to
be the violent and the deranged and it's
all going to end badly the second part
of this is uh do you know um Sam bankman
freed
do I know okay no but I no no no I just
mean the the story of what happened so
yeah which is fast okay so for he's very
fascinating for people that don't know
quick primer um ends up defrauding
people out of8 billion do he's awaiting
sentencing right now but he's been
convicted now the weird twist here is
that his mother wrote an essay uh called
Beyond blame saying like hey like we
have to I mean very similar to what
you're saying now this I don't know that
she said broken car but like you you
have to separate the um the person from
the thing that they did and so one I'm
not saying that
Sam uh is abusing the system though that
is another thing you have to worry about
is whatever system you put in place
people are going to exploit it 100% And
so follow the show me the incentives and
I'll show you the outcome says um
Berkshire hathway I'm forgetting is
Charlie Monger so if you incentivize
people to say oh it wasn't me which it
wasn't but like people will begin ideas
will plant themselves in people's minds
that are you know have that criminal
nature to begin with and and they're
going to leverage that in the system
it's like what we see right now with you
make it uh you don't prosecute people
that steal less than $900 or whatever
and they'll go in and steal $800 99
we're watching that play out so um I
worry about that do you think it is just
pure coincidence that um Sam bankman
Freed's mother happened to write an
article about that and he happens to be
what the second biggest uh fraud of all
time and no doubt it's competitive with
Bernie maid off because he isn't quite
in his leag
um Sam's mother who I am forced to note
is a
colleague of mine she's professor at
Stanford law school and has built a
career about sort of issues of Free Will
and stuff and I I can't get past the
point that it's just the most
wonderfully ironic thing on Earth and I
can't like stop just seeing that is like
a meme for like the unlikely turns that
happen in the world oh my god of course
his mother that's what kind of legal
scholar she is and then when you look
closely that both she and her husband
benefited financi actually quite a bit
from Sam
Shenanigans yeah yeah okay we've got an
irresistible version of the oh my God if
you convince people there's no free will
we're all just going to run a muck
people are going to run a mck because
there's no responsibility and there have
been some unfortunately highly
compelling convincing studies done
supposedly showing that when you psych
Psy psychologically manipulate people uh
to believe Less in their agency they
cheat more It games immediately
afterward things yeah we're all going to
run a muck because because the devil is
just underneath the surface and thank
God it's only the veneer of reward and
Punishment and societal disdain that
keeps you acting civy and we're all just
you know hobbsy and Savages
underneath but then you look closer at
that literature and instead of looking
at somebody who you've just manipulated
into feeling a little bit less belief in
their agency get somebody who comes in
and says I don't believe in Free Will I
haven't believed in it forever I don't
believe in it and you put them in a
circumstance like that and they are
exactly as highly
ethical as is someone who believes we
need to be held responsible for our
every action and all of that what's that
about there's an amazing parallel the
other version of people will just run a
muck they'll run a muck if they stop
believing in God because forget you're
not responsible for your actions this is
the version of no one will hold you
responsible for your ultimate actions
and oh my God they're going to run a
mock in that whole thing and what you
see when you look at it is atheists
people who are strident solid in their
atheism are just as moral in their
behavior as are the most religiously
observant people out there and who are
the ones who fall off but that that you
know Olympian State there it's the
people in between for whom they don't
believe in God but it's mostly because
they're apathetic about it or they're
religious but it's just for the kids or
just in the holidays or whatever and
what you see is this ironic thing you
get somebody who is thought long and
hard about the basis of human goodness
and what we to our fellow human and
where meaning comes from all and it
basically doesn't matter if your
conclusion is yes we have free will and
we the Agents of our action or you
conclude yes there is a God or if you
conclude there's no free will or there's
no God the fact that you've done the
hard work to think through this is what
virtually
guarantees that neither end of the
spectrum runs a muck and you know as one
quasy anecdotal example of this this
after World War II there are all sorts
of sociological studies of who are the
people who risked their lives to save
various outgroup members from Nazis and
stuff and it wasn't the people with
rarified philosophy degrees and it
wasn't the people who were highly
religious in a particular way it was
people who were either highly religious
or highly secular and were brought up
that way by their parents and had built
a system of moral imperatives built
around that because you thought long and
hard about it and it doesn't really
matter which end of it you wind up with
and you know in the face of but you know
still you're dangerous person you're
going to put him in a prison with other
violent people and that's just a
breeding ground and like that doesn't
look good I'm virtually required by law
to say at this point the
Scandinavians the scand they have a
penal system that avoids most of that
and they have a system where
responsibility is viewed as far less
part of the picture than the American
system and they have a system where
prisoners are treated far far better and
where the principle is one of quarantine
and minimal constraint nothing more than
that and oh my God people are going to
run a market and they've got on Tenth
the violent crime rate that we do and
they have one fifth the recidivism rate
that we do talk to me more about that
I'm not aware of that so what do they do
in the prison system uh are they
educating people are they um really
cracking down on violent outbursts how
do they pull that off yeah they do all
that and they view that as a system okay
the the greatest example is Andre brevik
he was that white supremacist guy who 10
years ago whatever went and killed 75
people in
Norway um went to this island where
there was a whole bunch of a progressive
parties summer camp for teenagers thing
going on and he killed a cop and took
his uniform and showed up there
pretending and mowed down 70 kids there
after he had after setting off a bomb
just outside the office of the Prime
Minister who is a progressive liberal
and in fact had grown up in that summer
camp program and all of that and this
was the worst atrocity in the history of
like Norway and he made it worse by
throughout his trial giving pseudo naazi
salutes throughout insisting he wanted
to be considered a prisoner of war of
like the white Knights of Templar Army
trying to save Europe from the the
ethnic horde that and like and what do
they do they convicted him and they gave
him the longest jail sentence possible
that is allowed by law in Norway he's in
jail for about 20 years and he has an
apartment he has internet access he's
currently enrolled as a part-time
student at the University of Oco irony
of irony majoring in political science
and he's got like a fitness machine and
when he's getting a little bit lonely
like the state will pay retired cops to
come and play cards with him because
he's feeling a little bit isolated there
because he has Ren renounced his beliefs
and he's still dangerous so his
constraint has to involv he doesn't get
to interact much with other people and
like that's what done that's what's done
with him and that's the sort of society
they have and admit that they've got a
far far lower crime rate than they do
for a gazillion other reasons than in
the United States because they believe
governments should support the social
needs of people and you know off we go
in the Scandinavian Utopias that may not
hold up to close examination all that
great so it's not just that
but the shest measure of it is you ask
member of societies after that trial was
completed was Justice done and
overwhelming majority of people in
Norway thought this was the appropriate
thing to do with him and you asked the
family members of his victims and there
were few of them who wanted to torture
him for the rest of the time but the
most average response of family members
of the victims was yeah
he's away the government has done what
it's supposed to do he's away and even
better than he could never harm someone
again we never have to think about him
again that pathetic broken guy who
latched on to vicious you know rabbit
ideology at some point because he had
been a nobody mediocrity his whole life
and this made him feel important for a
little while and he fell into the hands
of sociopaths who manipulated them him
with their ideology
yeah poor schmuck that's how we turned
out to be like that but best of all we
don't have to think about him anymore
he's never going to hurt anyone anymore
and that's the kind of society they've
constructed there oh my God people are
good to run a mck no they've got a
fraction of the crime rate that we do in
the United States and a fraction of the
recidivism rate the P the purpose of
their quarantine system is to train
somebody to have useful skills when they
come out the other end to have a society
that has a network that will give him
the opportunity to live by that and
along the way try to teach him skills
about empathy and like trying to
understand what damage consists of and
what it is you did to other people and
whoa it works it works better than here
and it works better than here in a place
where not only do we believe in God and
Free Will and something that we
inculcate your average American kid in
from like kindergarten but where we
prove over and over that it hasn't done
any good because where Society filled
with violence and treating people
terribly and stuff like that so like
whoa a lot that God-fearing has gotten
Us in this country
here yeah you look at the the options
the comparisons to choose from and like
there's better ways of doing it and ways
that are capable of subtracting out the
pleasure of punishment and retribution
and the notion that penalizing somebody
is virtue in and of itself and you can
subract all that stuff out and it's a
more Humane place and it works
better such an interesting debate this
whole thing free will all of it it's
crazy Robert thank you so much for
joining me today where can people uh
follow
you
oh well I have to say at this point you
know I got this book and it just got
published last month and it's called
determined a science of life without
free will uh penguin random house where
people can follow me I don't know but my
young adult children have recently
gotten enthused about this
and I'm doing something now I don't know
if I'm tick tocking or twittering or ask
me anything
on AMA
on they they've set that up because they
insist that I'm so as of a week ago I
have a social media presence and that is
all I know about it um so somewhere I'm
out there
and good luck finding it I sure don't
know how to but welcome to the 21st
century even if I'm not really part of
it yet that's all right free will uh it
lacking Free Will has has led you to
that so nobody nobody blames you we'll
put it in the show notes uh that way
people can find you very easily you are
well worth following that is for sure
speaking of things that are well worth
following everybody if you haven't
already be sure to subscribe and until
next time my friends be legendary take
care peace if you enjoyed this episode
check out this deep conversation with
Donald Hoffman about reality and
Consciousness what we are are avatars of
the one the one awareness is exploring
all of its possibilities through
different
avatars