Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
richard dawkins welcome back to the show
i am very excited to spend some time
with you again so thank you for joining
me well thank you very much well you are
for anybody that doesn't know you're a
legendary evolutionary biologist as well
as a prolific author you have a new book
out called books do furnish a life and
really taking a pretty beautiful
aesthetic look back at science writing
and many of the
the really sort of famous conversations
that you've had over the years
and the scope of topics that you cover
are really breathtaking the one
theme that really stands out to me is
just
how evolution works how science works
how we've gotten here
and as you build trying to get momentum
behind secularism and bring bringing
science into a place of prominence
almost as an art form and i don't even
know that you would use the word almost
i think you're pretty comfortable with
that idea
um
and what i find fascinating and i think
will be a great jumping off point for us
is that the
the very thing that you're fighting
against this
tendency towards
religiosity for lack of a better word is
is itself a function of evolution and
then the tools that you use to try to
sway the cultural conversation and move
people into something that you think
would be
more beautiful more useful i'm not sure
what word you will slot in there is also
a tool of evolution and so i want to
start with this idea of what what are
what i'll call the physics of human
behavior what is that
base level
of how we are as a species how does our
mind work why do we tend towards the
things that we tend towards and how can
we
move people nudge them in a direction
that might be
more useful
it's a curious matter isn't it that
um
our brains were fashioned by natural
selection
to survive and reproduce in on the
african savannah
and
uh for that you didn't need
well you certainly didn't need quantum
theory and relativity and
um anything other than
fundamental
physics of the way things move when you
touch them and drop them and throw them
and things that of course we had to have
but
uh it's clear that we've moved hugely
beyond
what was
in a utilitarian sense useful for our
evolving
ancestors and i suppose the same goes
for art as well
uh it goes for the aesthetic sense i
suppose we have to as evolutionists make
a case to
understand why it is
that we
are capable of doing science capable of
doing
poetry of doing art
uh of
responding aesthetically being moved by
things
these are
mysteries they're not beyond solution
but i think they are
mysteries that are well worth
talking about and thinking about
yeah i agree with that very much and
when i think about
what are the things that make life as
joyful as beautiful as exhilarating as
it is
for me that leads me to face back inward
and to look at the nature of my mind and
so one thing that i've i've been talking
a lot about socially recently is not to
think about things but to think about
the nature of things and how they are at
at a base level and
if i were to prognosticate about what
and i'll say it a different way what i
hope to be remembered for
is getting people to
really understand that they're having a
biological experience and by that i mean
that your brain works
in a specific way there are just certain
things that it does
and
i want someone to write a book about
what is our sort of true and fundamental
nature and so i'm going to throw out
some things that i think are true and
i'd love to hear either your pushback if
you think i'm crazy uh or if you agree
that they are true then how they came to
be true and what their repercussions are
so
one of the most fundamental things i
think to the human mind and for people
to understand about themselves is that
they're we are
constantly deciding
what to think about the thing that's
happening to us
so there's a region of the brain the
deep limbic system that isn't
necessarily
there to tell you what's happening it's
there to tell you how to feel about
what's happening
and
to me that is when i think about the
the journey that you're on the battle
that you're in the midst of
it's
it's anchored in that moment that
we feel things
that we then
they feel true so if somebody says
something
mean to me or that i perceive as being
mean then i perceive that person as
having
attacked me for instance and it feels
justified for me to have a
strong
aggressive reaction back against them
until i realize wait a second
i can insert myself into that moment i
don't have to believe that emotion
because there is an area of my brain
that told me that that thing was bad
that that statement was aggressive but
in reality it may not have been meant
that way it may merely be somebody
pointing out a
uh
a falsehood in my thinking or something
along those lines but for me i was
trapped in the emotional cycle until i
understood that evolution has delivered
this region of my brain that is designed
to paint with emotion my experience
one do you think that that's a
fundamental thing and if so how did we
get here
so you're talking about a kind of tussle
between the
call it the reptilian brain
uh which feels which responds
emotionally
in the way you say it could be a an
aggressive response for example
and the higher mammalian brain
which comes which steps in and says no
wait a minute
let's think about this
um
yes that seems plausible to me it has
affinities i think with daniel
kahneman's fast and slow
thinking
um
and
there is a certain a certain tussle and
i think perhaps we have to
balance those two
and
i suppose what i've
tried to do in my
writing career is to
emphasize the
the rational
thoughtful
side
um
of the brain
and to
um not deny the existence of the
emotional
but to
try to foster
the control of the emotions by
reason
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the reason i think that this is
come to pass is when i think about the
brain from an evolutionary standpoint it
seems like
because everything is so context
dependent
and because my brain has to be nimble
and this speaks to sort of why we may
have stalled out in the field of
artificial intelligence in terms of
getting something that is true general
artificial intelligence is that
one thing may be good
in one context and then bad in another
context and so for
the human animal to achieve what it has
achieved there would have to be a region
of the brain that is focused on context
dependency
how to feel about something happening
and
when i get down and i look under the
hood of the brain and i start thinking
why do people act in ways that run
contrary to what would be useful to them
i just keep coming back to that
emotional painting
has either become pathological given the
space that we're living in now in a
modern context or was always a difficult
thing i you know maybe that just this is
the nature of the human condition and
we're always going to suffer from this
but
after reading viktor frankl's book man's
search for meaning and him talking about
between stimulus and response there's a
gap and you can insert conscious control
over that gap i really became obsessed
with that to me seems to be the single
most important point in any human life
is to understand that okay evolution
gave you this region of your brain which
is going to read the context
tell you how to feel about what just
happened so in one context might be good
in another context might be bad
and then you have to understand that you
don't have to be
a
slave to that you don't have to dance to
that tune that you can insert that
conscious control does that feel
right to you in terms of when i think
about the trajectory of your career and
what you're trying to accomplish with
your center and trying to swing people
back towards reason and logic
that to me feels like the
piece of evolution that you're fighting
against
yes i think that could be so
um
when you say insert consciousness
strictly speaking it doesn't have to be
conscious it happens it won't mean it is
conscious
um but
um
you could imagine
an evolved life form
which did everything you say but did not
have the
spark of consciousness
that we subjectively know we have i
think that may be a separate issue from
the one you're raising
i think i'm not entirely sure what if i
understand what what you're raising
actually
so i
where i'm trying to
understand are the things that are very
fundamental to the human mind the things
that are going to happen whether you
want them to or not and so because of
what i do i'm constantly coming into
contact with people that are looking for
help and that help maybe i want to build
a better business that help maybe my
marriage is imploding that help maybe
i want to
you know get better at my job make more
money whatever
as i have tried to walk people through
those things i keep asking myself what
has it been that's allowed me to have
the kind of success that i've had and to
me it always comes back to that moment
the ability to
the frame of reference to distrust my
emotions to not just take them as
factual so hey that thing that just
happened made me angry
is that because what just happened to me
is quote unquote wrong that there is
some moral judgment to be passed on that
or is it hey evolution has given me
this thing which reads the context of my
environment tells me how to feel about
it but that thing isn't
tied to my goals it's tied to
evolution's goals so
what i'm trying to get your take on is
one
do you agree that that's one of the most
fundamental things happening in the
human mind and if it is and we can
certainly talk about how it's played out
in your life how you've addressed it
and then i want to layer on other things
that i think like for instance we're an
active species i think it is innate to
the human brain you will go into a space
you will explore it and you will try to
dominate it and then you will try to
exploit it i think that is just that is
the wiring of the human mind and
where i find society goes awry or where
people end up in just tremendous
emotional distress
is when they don't recognize that they
their brain is a product of evolution it
is imperfectly created for a modern
context
and because of that lack of
understanding they end up in these just
emotionally tumultuous places with no
idea of how to get out
and so my hope is over our time together
we can lay out
and you really touch on so many of these
issues in
books do furnish a life and i'm going to
try to thread that needle of what those
fundamental things are about the nature
of a brain that is the product of
evolution
i think i agree with you insofar as i
understand it but perhaps we should get
on to
threading the needle um and looking at
the book itself
to see
where you're taking this because this is
very much your thesis you're talking
about not mine
and i'm not sure i understand well
enough
to i think i understand
what you're saying when enough
let me ask you not to to repeat it to
anybody else so to speak
fair so let me ask a really direct
question what do you think are some
tenants that are fundamental to
the human mind
well
many of them would be fundamental to any
animal's mind any any surviving
creatures mind so things like hunger and
thirst and sex and
um the need to dominate fellow species
members that need to
do whatever it takes to survive to to
reproduce all those sorts of things
and the discipline of evolutionary
psychology
studies those in
taking account of their evolutionary
origin and also in so far as they are
modified
in
the very foreign environment of
of civilization
um so there are all those things
then there seem to be emergent
properties
which have nothing to do with
evolutionary survival or only in a very
very indirect sense
and it's those that mystify me
uh the the capabilities of the human
mind
in a civilized environment building upon
by cultural evolution
building upon
the achievements of others
as newton said standing on the shoulders
of giants
what the human mind achieves today
in the form of
science in particular
technology
is
utterly bewildering when you think about
it in an evolutionary context it's so
far beyond
what we're ever naturally selected to do
so do you think that that's just sort of
a
almost accidental result of what we have
been selected to do i think it in in one
sense it is accidental um i i would have
been very hard to predict it would have
been very hard
to
look at our
pleistocene ancestors and predict
that one day they would be capable of
producing
einstein
um and it's hard to see why our brain is
capable of reaching so far beyond
what was necessary for
survival it's it's not
we doesn't get mystical about it i mean
we see it in the form of computers where
computers were
originally designed as calculating
machines and then without any
modification to the fundamental
architecture
lo and behold
they become
chess playing machines and simulation
machines and
ai machines and musical composition
machines etc those are all emerging
properties which had nothing to do with
the original function of calculation but
simply emerge
um as a result of
the architecture which was originally
built to calculate
and so how do
you do you have hypotheses around that
so
you recognize that it's happening we
have this sort of emergent phenomenon
that is you know whether it's music
poetry wonder ah
insights into the universe things that
seem wholly unnecessary for just our
basic survival and procreation do you
have a hypothesis as to how we've ended
up here not really i can only think that
that something about what was necessary
to survive in our particular ecological
niche um had they had that emergent
consequence um
there are various
ideas about what
how that was good for survival um
one idea is that um
we are a social species where a
competitive species we exist in we swim
around
in an environment of each other
and part of an important part of that as
it is with many species but in our
ancestors no doubt it was important
to to dominate
to rise to the top of the tree
uh and
um
so
the ability to
to think
and to um to reason and to be
intelligent could have been a device for
out-competing
rivals
another theory which is which is fully
compatible with that is that it's sexual
selection
that
um being brainy is sec is sexually
attractive
uh and um
so
those individuals who were who showed
evidence of
being able to think well
of intelligence perhaps artistic ability
the ability to
to recite epic poetry or to do
complicated dancing or to do all the
sorts of things which
don't appear on the face of it to have
uh
economic value to have a survival value
um
nevertheless they might have been
appealing to the opposite sex and might
have been
um
a vehicle to success
in
competitive
interactions those are two possible
pressures that that pushed us
into having emergent properties which
went beyond
what would seem to be the utilitarian
needs of survival
that's really interesting to me so one
sexual selection in and of itself is
utterly fascinating um it was funny
there was a really funny part in the
book where you talk about how uh had
evolution fully understood what we were
doing by inventing condoms the act of
rolling on a condom should have become
extraordinarily painful and i was like
that is very funny uh and true
and okay so as i think about that um
what i love about that is
as i
look at what it would have been like to
be coming up from an evolutionary
standpoint
creativity for instance so i meditate to
get into a creative state and when i try
to explain to people what the purpose of
meditation is for me one it's lowering
um your stress and anxiety just at a
physiological level but two it does seem
to shift your brain into a different
brainwave pattern that i'll call calm
and creative i forget where i first
heard that i'm not making that up but um
and so i feel like i'm more able to get
these uh far-flung ideas to connect
together a unique way to use something
and so if i think back to
you know whether it's the first use of
tools and things like that
you know using like you even see some
animals doing this where they'll stick
like a a reed into a honeycomb so that
they can pull out the honey without
having to just destroy uh the honeycomb
and
that has to occur to you at some point
and that moment of creativity would have
to be one of two things so it fits i'm
i'm truly just echoing what you're
saying where you've got this okay i want
to be the best at hunting gathering
honey whatever the case may be
so i've got that competitive edge which
makes sense from an evolutionary
standpoint but where this gets really
fascinating is when my sexual partner is
turned on by
the fact that i have made this
interesting breakthrough of now i can
use this tool and now you put these two
things together and you get this ever
escalating arms race of
i want to be more competitive and i'm
super curious to see if you think this
breaks along
the sexes at all if there's going to be
a difference in terms of what they find
interesting
but i'm going to try to be the best
hunter the best honey gatherer whatever
and then
that's getting me a sexual mate and
my desire to out compete and then be
more clever and then also that the other
person is feeling a sense of awe or
wonder when you see somebody do
something new and
exciting or useful
that is
really really fascinating do you think
that explains it or do you are you
haunted by the idea that there's
something more learning
i i think that that could well be part
of it um
there's a
evolutionary psychologist called
geoffrey miller who's written a book
expounding the idea of sexual selection
as a pressure
towards becoming um
well towards the expansion of the brain
actually
um
tool use is is interesting because
if you look at the history of um the use
of flint's
napping flints
it goes for a very long period without
any improvement
and you'd think that
if you think about the way we use tools
we we
we copy each other we
an apprentice copies a master tool user
and
learns from the master and then gets an
idea
to improve
the technique
over what the master is doing so
um you you see a
uh
carpentry or whatever it might be you're
constantly devising new ways new
inventions
and and
um
mentally visualizing imagining a better
way of doing of doing
something um
that is
obviously
very important in our technology
and yet
i forget how long it is but but but if
you look at the at the wreck of the
archaeological record
there were
huge expanses of time
when flint implements
didn't get any better they they stayed
at the level they got to
uh as though there was no ingenuity
going on
and if it was
if sexual selection was driving you'd
expect to see again improvement
so
it's as though something changed at some
point um
and
the
emergent
race took off
arms race perhaps arms race with with
with rivals took off
um
and i'm not quite sure when that would
be i think that there was a moment
about 45 000 years ago when there seems
to have been a big leap forward
in
art and creativity
and who knows what that was due to
if you had to guess what what guess
would you make because that that's
interesting so my initial as you were
saying it my initial thought was the um
innovations were just happening in
another area that maybe didn't survive
as well
um
i would like to think that the that the
boost was given by language but that's
not plausible i mean it's not plausible
that that
language wasn't invented until 45 000
years ago it seems much more plausible
that language is older than that
nobody knows exactly when language
started
and i suppose it's still still
conceivable
that there was no language until the
so-called great leap forward
um
that that strikes me like it's so funny
to push back on you who knows
ten thousand times more about this than
i do but i know just enough to be
dangerous uh
given that whales for instance have the
equivalent of a name essentially they
have a
lyric i don't know what words to use
around this but they have a lyric that's
unique to them
and
that strikes me as the beginnings of
language so if we're seeing it if if
we've all you know come out of the sea
and we're seeing that in creatures that
are still in the sea it strikes me as
either it's co-evolving and so language
just happens to spring up uh you know in
several different places
and that i forget what animals but they
have like different sounds they make if
they see something red versus if they
see something blue so there there are
identifying characteristics across a lot
of species that we could sort of lump
into you know being prototype languages
if you will um
so
that to your point does not seem like it
would be well let's find that language
um
there are
all sorts of attributes of animal
communication which
um you could say are sort of
elements of language like name
um
using different um sounds to mean
different things
um you can find it all over the animal
kingdom even in bees in monkeys in wales
but that's
not language
uh language human language
has this extraordinary
capacity
of um
indefinite complexity
due to
embedded
hierarchically embedded syntax
so the ability to say something like
the man who i saw yesterday who was at
the waterhole and was um drawing water
for his wife said to me so and so
um now that is
a grammatically complex sentence with
multiple
openings of brackets and then closing of
brackets
and that
is unknown anywhere else in the animal
kingdom the this hierarchical embedding
of
phrases and clauses
within sentences
uh which in principle are in
indefinitely expandable
this is the house that jack built this
is the ha this is the zone so that santa
said it sounds in the censor that the
jack built um
this capacity to
embed
sub clauses within the main sentence and
some sub-sub-clauses and sub-sub-clauses
it's that i think that makes human
language
utterly unique
and the the fact that
bees and
vervet monkeys
can
communicate things like in the case of
the bees where and how far away and how
and and and what direction
food is
the fact that whales can have a name
the fact that
monkeys can give a three different alarm
calls one for leopards one for snakes
and one for eagles
um
that's that's really small beer compared
to
the
um
grammatical
hierarchical syntax which human language
has
yeah that that is for sure so all right
if we're ruling out language because we
know that it didn't or it's implausible
that it happened 45 000 years ago and
i'm guessing just because of the
complexity that would take far longer
than that well i don't know i mean
nobody knows it's possible i suppose
that
linguists do
suggest that language evolved once that
all human languages are descended from
one single common ancestor
in if they're right
then that one ancestral language had to
come into being at some point and i
suppose it could have been as recent as
recent as as forty five thousand years
ago
um
i yeah i mean it could it could be
nothing changed in the brain i mean the
the brain itself
was as fully developed before that time
as after
so it's so it's it it doesn't go with
any kind of increase in brain size
if that if that were the case
and you don't think that the
um the evolution of language would
follow a very similar trajectory that
okay whales have names uh
there are different calls that monkeys
can make based on whether it's an eagle
a leopard or a snake uh you don't think
that that is the early building blocks
that then lead to what we have now i
think that that those building blocks
had to be there
but
uh but but the the final human um
advance was syntactic
grammar
okay so rockingly syntactic grammar
when was the great leap forward
well archaeologically i i quoted forty
five thousand years and and i'm i i dare
say it's different in different parts of
the world but but
that's when you start getting
cave paintings and and sculptures and
things like that
and do those do they show up in
different places around the world at the
same time i don't know i i think i'm
thinking of europe there and i'm not
sure whether whether we have the same
kind of things in different parts of the
world
that would be utterly fascinating if for
whatever reason it takes a certain
amount of time for the brain to sort of
make that leap um
very very interesting i want to go back
to sexual selection what are some of the
most fascinating things like
one thing that i love about you and that
you cover in the book is
these moments where
the natural world is so profound that
you have
you have a truly elevated um
i mean i will say basically it's got to
be to me the same sort of part of the
brain that triggers when you're having a
religious experience you have that same
sense of transcendent awe
what has sexual selection given us that
leaves you that sort of gobsmacked
well that that transcendent sense i get
uh all the time from
not just from biology but from
astronomy from looking up at the milky
way galaxy and things like that
um
sexual selection
social sexual selection has produced
some of the most extravagant
i suppose the most extravagant
flowerings of
um
evolutionary exuberance
um
birds of paradise um peacocks
with equivalents in fish
amphibians
um
mammals in the in their calls um
sexual
selection
has been controversial in evolutionary
in the theory in the history
evolutionary theory
um
it was a controversial matter between
darwin and wallace what is the
co-discoverer of natural selection
um who described himself as more
darwinian than darwin
wallace hated the idea of
what darwin called sexual selection
because what the the um
female choice aspect of sexual selection
in darwin's view
involved just postulating
that females have some kind of aesthetic
sense
that females just simply liked
that p hens for example
for some reason unknown
just liked the
mesmerizing beauty of peacock
tales
wallace
hated that idea because it seemed to him
mystical it's odd that he hated it
because wallace himself got quite
mystical
in late later in life and became
a devotee of spiritual seances however
in the field of sexual selection wallace
wanted uh
things like peacock's tails to be useful
it's hard to see how they could be
useful but but
um he wanted it to be if not directly
useful he wanted the peacock's tail to
be a badge
of utilitarian
usefulness
in some sense
and um
this disagreement between darwin and
wallace it's all in in a wonderful book
by helena cronin called the ant and the
peacock
this she traces the
history of darwin and wallace's
disagreement from each other
and traces it through the 20th century
after their deaths
uh and so
the modern study of sexual selection
can be
divided between those followers of
darwin and those followers of
of wallace
in a in a modern
sense
um the
accusation of mysticism
isn't right
um
you can
in you can accommodate it
you can accommodate the idea of female
choice of female aesthetic preference
uh in a proper
model of natural selection uh r.a fisher
did this ari official the great um
statistician and
one of the three inventors of population
genetics in the 1920s and 30s
um
where he suggested that you can that you
can put a genetic value on
female
aesthetic preference so you say not only
are there genes that make males have
tails of a certain shape size color etc
there are genes in females
that make them like certain features in
males
and you have a co-evolution
between the female genes and the male
genes as the as the females evolved to
like certain characteristics in males in
parallel to that males evolved
to fit in
with what the females
like
and if you set up your mathematical
model in the right way
that can lead to a runaway process
uh whereby
um
tales or whatever it might be become
more and more extravagant more and more
ridiculous for mercy from a utilitarian
point of view
so that was what fisher achieved fisher
as it were resolve the disagreement
between darwin and wallace
but
what we might call neo-wallet malaysians
neo-wallacians today
um
don't necessarily disagree with fisher
but they
um
carry the idea the wallacian idea
of
sexual selection being a badge of
utilitarian functionalism
um so
an extravagant peacock's tail
can be seen as a badge of health for
example because w d hamilton suggested
this
a
[Music]
a female
is looking for health a healthy mate
so in a way natural selection is
favoring females
that become
good
diagnostic doctors
that become able to
diagnose whether a male is healthy or
not
and using the brightness of a male's
plumage for example
is one way in which females could
diagnose whether the male is
healthy
and at the same time
this is the really difficult part of the
hamilton theory
males are selected
to become easier to diagnose
it's as though
natural selection favors males
that come with
the equivalent of a thermometer sticking
out of them
to enable the female to diagnose them
um
and the theory works even if the male is
unhealthy
he still
natural selection still favors the
the evolution of
thermometers blood pressure meters
um
in in male and not literally of course
but something equivalent to that um
and so for the neo-wallacians
sexual selection
favors
females that become good diagnostic
doctors
and males that become advertisers
of
health
and the more extravagant sorry the the
the more healthy the male is the more we
can afford costly
advertisements like extravagantly
beautiful long tails which only
a
really healthy male could afford
to display
so that's the kind of
neo-wallacian
approach to sexual selection both of
them produce
aesthetically pleasing results to us
results that are aesthetically pleasing
to us
and at the same time
results that are aesthetically pleasing
to
the opposite sex
you use the word healthy in there and i
want to get a clear definition of what
you mean by that so
um
when i think about humans and what
certainly as a guy you're drawn to are
signs of fertility
so
that we could certainly round to health
are females necessarily looking for
health or are they looking for signs of
fitness which may be given the
evolutionary context an even more
complicated word
but is yeah define health for me in that
scenario in in the context i was talking
about health means
what what we as as humans and doctors
think of it as meaning it means
freedom from bacteria from viruses um
if for example um
one of the points hamilton i think was
hamilton made is that um
diarrhoea would be a
a badge of ill health
and um a long tail
might be uh
become dirty if you have diarrhoea
and so
um
having a long tail which is which is
clean
um is an advertisement of health
um that's i didn't put that very well um
there's
um
red bare skin
in
things like turkeys or some monkeys some
baboons for example
um
are
ways in which the female might gauge the
um
color of the blood
um
that i i'm not sure how plausible that
is but it's like that's the kind of
thing that hamilton is talking about the
if the male is advertising health for
the female what he does
is to bring to the surface
those characteristics which
um would enable
a vet
a veterinarian
to diagnose health
um
temperature
blood pressure
perhaps some
breathing
uh
cleanly without without
wheezing
any anything that that makes that makes
healthy in the conventional sense i mean
in the sense that that that a doctor
would understand as being as being
healthy is exactly what hamilton was
talking about
and what about where some of these
things and and
they may not indicate ill health but
they certainly become risky from a
fitness perspective
whether that's um the antlers of a buck
and he's putting so much of his
micronutrients into that to build that
out that if he doesn't shed them he's
going to die because he's not going to
make it through the winter with
all of his vitamins being stored in his
antlers or the peacock that has such
massive plumage would be far easier to
catch and eat by a predator
so
is is that part of that debate is is
that there
or is this something else entirely no uh
it is it is there um
the the um sort of underlying theory can
now attribute to the israeli zoologist
zahavi amats zahavi uh his so-called
handicap principle um which was
unfashionable when he first proposed it
and and i'm afraid i rubbished it in the
selfish gene and then i i had to climb
down in the second edition of the
selfish gene because
my colleague alan graffen produced a
workable
mathematical model that shows that it
works the handicap principle
uh which is a more general case of what
i've just been talking about in the
hamilton
health theory states that
um
a costly
display like huge antlers
or a huge tail in the case of a of a
peacock
um
only a really fit male could afford
to produce this
great big
tale or these great big
antlers so it is an advertisement
um
that says i'm
capable of paying the genuine cost
of this
display
and if i were
an unfit weak
health unhealthy male
i would not be capable of it my answers
would be small
so it goes with
a female tendency to choose
males
who are displaying a costly
uh
well display such as such as antlers
um
the the
graphene model shows that this will work
under some circumstances that it is
evolutionarily stable it can work but at
the same time as
males let's call them males it could
work the other way but usually would be
males the same time as
males
who have a range of possible displays
that they could
put out
and
among those are costly ones
so as a strategy might be produce a very
costly display
um
and females at the same time
[Music]
are or the receivers of the signal more
generally at the same time
are selected
to choose
either cost-free displays something like
padded shoulders which any fool can do
versus genuine muscular shoulders which
only a genuinely
strong male could afford to do so
something like antlers
are an unfakeable signal they're heavy
they they endanger the the stag he's
more likely to get tangled up in the
bushes or taught or caught by a
by a predator
um
so
um
the the strategy
the male the male strategy
make your displays as costly as possible
is stable at the same time as the female
strategy
insist
on only mating with males who make
costly displays
that's what we call evolutionarily
stable
and so that evolves that's that's why
according to the
the harvey theory and the hamilton
theory is just a branch of that of it uh
that's why according to the harvey
hamilton graphene theory
um
we see
costly displays and the thing about
peacock's tales is above all that they
are costly
they they probably cost the male his
life because
he's more likely to be eaten by a
predator if he has a very long heavy
tail makes it difficult for him to take
off things like that
now how does this manifest in humans
what are the there's obviously the
cliches of
uh women flaunt their physical beauty
men flaunt their wealth um
is there truth to that is it just a
stereotype like what are we doing
well i'm always rather hesitant about
what what what we're doing or that
everybody wants to wants to go that in
that direction i'm curious why are you
hesitant
oh
because it's politically sensitive i
mean there are all sorts of political
strands which you which which you get
you get dumped on if you if you start
talking about humans in this kind of way
um
well these harvey i mean zahavi himself
loved talking about humans and so things
like buying a costly engagement ring
uh taking the woman out to an expensive
dinner
um that kind of thing is it fits in with
with his um
his
his way of
speaking um in the case of humans we
have the
an apparent reversal because it looks as
though it's females who wear lipstick
and and and do do
the kind of peacock it kind of displays
so
that kind of
works the other way around
um if it works at all
in females not in all cultures actually
i mean there are there are cultures
where
males
do the displaying males do the peacock
thing and have great big headdresses and
dances where they'd see how jump right
rival with each other who can jump the
highest in a ritual dance that kind of
thing
but in our culture it looks as though
it's females who are doing the doing the
equivalent of peacock display
it's really interesting and i
if this goes uh to a point where you're
no longer comfortable talking about it
just let me know but so needless to say
i find humans absolutely fascinating uh
and we are if not the only one of the
only animals that where the female
obfuscates her
um
when she's able to conceive her um
her fertility cycle and so one idea that
i heard was that the version of wearing
makeup is to show sexual um
signs of like uh sexual receptiveness so
the blushing of the cheeks things that
mimic sort of being aroused and whether
that's true or not i don't know but that
certainly is a an interesting
way to look at it if okay i hide it and
so i need to have ways where i can cue
somebody in
is one particular way do you have a take
on why
female
reproductive cycle is hidden when in all
other animals at least that i know of
there's like a grand display to let you
know it's a it's a pretty hot topic um
female concealed ovulation um there's a
certain amount of evidence which is
probably controversial as to whether it
really is completely
concealed um one of the studies that's
been done
uh
by evolutionary psychologists is the
study of um
um
dancers at clubs
who um
hold
or or hostesses um
uh at
clubs
where they they live on tips they get
they they have drinks bought for them
and they get and they get tips
and um somebody i forget who did a study
in which they measured the amount the
the the amount of the tips that these
women got
um
and
correlated it
with their sexual cycle
and what they've what the study found
was that the tips went up
when they were um at the when they were
ovulating
um which might suggest that um
[Music]
maybe there's some kind of pheromone
that that's subconsciously being
detected by the men who are doing the
tipping or it might suggest that the
women have some kind of subconscious
knowledge of
when they're ovulating and this changes
their behavior in some way um but that's
that's one study that i
know of about
concealed ovulation
um
as for the evolutionary advantage of
concealed ovulation
um
the obvious advantage in not concealing
it is you tend to get mated when you're
ovulating which is what chimpanzees do
um
in in a promiscuous fashion but um
in a species which
where the female needs to
count on male loyalty
um
if the male
doesn't know when she's ovulating
that might provide a pressure for him to
stick around and be loyal to one female
uh rather than
go dashing off
away from a female who is not ovulating
and
simply homing in on whatever females are
ovulating which is what male chimps do
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this is to me where this stuff starts to
get really fascinating
um
you know obviously i know right now it's
very taboo to talk about the differences
between sexes but that to me is crazy
making because it's so disconnected from
what actual life experience is like and
i i mentioned this to you the first time
that we met that five years ago if you
had asked me i probably would have
described humans as being more or less a
blank slate
and then the more that i get in there
and really look at what's going on i
realize that we're not that there are
you know let's call it 50 that's
hardwired 50 that's malleable and then
there are differences between the sexes
and it's like the more i look at the
differences between the sexes the easier
it becomes to relate to my wife to
understand to like get how she
approaches the world and it's
it's absolutely enlightening and i don't
think that one is better than the other
i just find it utterly fascinating from
an evolutionary standpoint how we've got
this race of different needs and i'll be
curious to get your take on this so
it from what i've read and what seems
logical to me
the real big thing comes down to
for a woman it is just obscenely
resource intensive to have a child from
nine months of having to carry that
child to then having to take care of it
after
it's born to this you know years-long uh
period where it has to be cared for just
constantly whereas for the guy it's very
low right so there's low investment it's
basically whatever the biological cost
of the semen is
and that's it and so you would expect
from an evolutionary standpoint that you
would get into this sort of fascinating
co-evolution to be sure but that they
would go in opposite directions that
women are going to be tuned to what i've
heard referred to as a sort of detective
mode like you said of being able to see
is this guy going to be loyal are they
going to be there are they going to help
me raise this child
what are ways that you see that play out
differently and men and women that give
you
hints to our evolutionary past
what you've just laid out is the
standard um evolutionary argument which
applies to any species uh and um
it's due to robert trivers um to bill
hamilton to ra fischer
um in in various forms and so it's the
economic imbalance between the sexes
where
um the
the female sex is the is the
economically valuable sex the scarce
resource
um because as you say
um the female makes a tremendous
investment especially in mammals but in
in i mean just it starts off with the
fact that eggs are bigger than sperms
and and
from that
much else follows
uh including in mammals the fact that
females are invested in
in
prolonged pregnancy and then lactation
and so on which which um
males do not have to pay that cost and
so
it is possible for
males to just to distribute their genes
among lots of females and get away with
it
but um so that there is
potentially a selection pressure on
males to become promiscuous which there
isn't in females so because the female
doesn't benefit but once she's pregnant
she's there's no further benefit in
mating with anybody
and so on i mean it's all pretty obvious
stuff
um
and trivers develops the theory in a
very sophisticated way
uh and you've just applied it to humans
and it seems to me entirely sensible
that there seems to be no reason why you
should not apply to humans if you want
to um you get into political trouble if
you do
um and um
there's a kind of
um
standard sociological response which is
the blank slate um
the the view that
uh humans come into the world knowing
nothing and there's there's everything
everything about them everything about
us comes in
through the environment through
education and imitation and so on
um
and there's no predisposition among the
sexes
um
the blank slate well
have you have you seen steve pink have
you ever interviewed stephen pinker i
haven't interviewed him but i've read
the book the blank slate for sure which
informed much of
i would love to so
yes hopefully one day soon he's a very
very
clever intellectual and knows an
enormous amount about lots of different
things
and the blank slate is one of his
excellent books
um
so
yes i mean the the the issue of the the
uh the balance between
genes and environment in in any animal
but including humans
um what we're really talking about there
is the study of variance the study of
variation how much what proportion of
variation
can be attributed to genes
and this is really just just a
sub department of the analysis of
variants which statisticians use all the
time
um
fisher developed the analysis of
variants
looking at agricultural
data
where he was
looking at the contribution of
fertilizer and rainfall and genetics of
wheat
plants and so on um and calculating the
proportion of the variance that you can
attribute
to fertilizer to rainfall to soil
quality and to genes
and you can do that in in any creature
it doesn't have to be wheat plants you
can do it in in humans you can do it in
anything you like
and um
heritability
is the word he used we one one uses for
that proportion of the variance which
can be attributed to genes
and it's not an absolute figure because
it depends upon the environment that you
provide um
but one of the ways in which it's
studied is is with twin studies
where you you know
there are identical twins have all their
genes in common and you know you can
compare them level with fraternal twins
twitch who are
uh just like ordinary siblings um
and you can calculate therefore the the
proportion of the variance which can be
attributed to genes you can calculate
this
by comparing monozygotic identical twins
with fraternal dizygotic
twins
and
you get a figure
which varies from
what you're measuring to what you're
measuring so in the case of height it's
it's
a very high correlation a very a very
high
um correlation between identical twins
as opposed to fraternal twins so if you
know how tall
one twin is
you can predict with pretty good
accuracy how tall his or her
identical twin will be but with less
accuracy how tall
fraternal twin will be now what you do
is you compare
those figures with those cases where
identical twins are reared apart
it doesn't happen often
um
but
it happens it happens sufficiently often
you can get some some data
twins that are separated at birth for
one reason or another and given
different foster um
or adoptive
parents
and so by comparing
identical twins read together identical
twins read a part fraternal twins read
together a fraternal prince read a part
you come up with a heritability figure
and for height i say it's very high
for weight it's not so high because it
depends more on how much you eat
for iq
it's remarkably high
which is politically
unfashionable
um but it's true
because people don't want iq to be tied
to genes
yes
uh so um
but nevertheless the fact the facts are
there and so you can you can study the
heritability of anything you like
uh and uh but by by doing twin studies
and so as you look at the things that
are heritable not heritable how does
that help us better understand as men
and women are co-evolving for sure but
there there are these divergent paths
one i'll give an example of the kind of
thing that i'm asking towards so one
example that i heard was um
when you understand female power
structures then you really begin to
understand sort of this dynamic between
men and women and the person speaking
was saying look to think that women
don't have hierarchical structures
within their own female to female peer
groups would be just a gross
misunderstanding
and she was saying basically you don't
look at men and go oh i'm going to go
compete on a physical basis you find
another way to make sure that you can
you know get safety um get cooperation
you know
get your own needs met all of that
and she said so it becomes this very
social thing which is why you see in
female peer groups there is this like
status ranking and when you talk to
women uh in a n of one study to be sure
that's not you know a truly controlled
study then they'll say yeah there's you
know you get these sort of pecking
orders um but it's all psychological
it's all social and then when you get
men it's very physical whether it's
jumping the highest running the fastest
fighting whatever like it's it's just
very obvious um
and understandably so in terms of
our evolutionary past looking at a
hunter gatherer or society
guys are going to evolve to be better at
things like and tell me if this is
controversial i think this is
well accepted
that men are better at tracking movement
for instance
and you can understand why that would be
advantageous out on a hunt
and that in terms of upper body strength
men on average these are obviously just
averages men on average have better
upper body strength on average they're
taller but when you start looking at
ultra long distance running for instance
the sexes begin to even out and so if as
a tribe we had to move over tremendously
long distances together then you would
understand why that would end up evening
out so
one
i'm sure some of what i just said is uh
controversial but to be honest i don't
know which parts
so i'd love to know like in there are
there people that you know would dispute
any of that
i don't know about um the
rivalries and female groups it does seem
to me to be
um
utterly implausible to suggest that
given that males and females
have different um
physical organs their different sizes
different
um
different physical strength as you say
different roles to play in reproduction
um it would be
really remarkable if they didn't have
psychological differen