Kind: captions
Language: en
Heather Hying, Brett Weinstein, welcome
back to the show. Previously apart, now
together. I'm super excited to have you
guys.
Thank you, Tom, for having us.
Thanks for having us. Glad to be back,
dude. The new book, A Hunter Gather's
Guide to the 21st Century. I loved it.
Uh, it is absolutely extraordinary. And
I want to begin with a quote from the
book that is quite ominous. And then I
want to see what you guys have to say
about this bad boy. So here we go. This
is literally a direct quote from the
book towards the end, but I quote, "We
are headed for collapse. Civilization is
becoming incoherent around us."
I'd love to know what you guys mean by
that and if that to you is a big part of
the thread through the book because it
was for me.
Well, the first thing to say is that you
skipped the warning in the front of the
book that it should only be read while
sitting down so [laughter]
fall over and injure themselves. Um,
yeah. Well, we are headed for collapse.
That's really not even an extraordinary
claim. If you just simply extrapolate
out from where we are, we are
outstripping the planet's capacity to
house us and we don't appear to have a
plan for shifting gears. So, it's it's
really a factual statement. Now the
question really is why? And the the
bitter pill is that the very thing that
made us so successful as a species is
now setting us up for disaster. That is
to say, our evolutionary capacity to
solve problems has uh outstripped our
capacity to adapt to the new world that
we've created for ourselves. And so
we've become psychologically and
socially and physiologically and
politically unhealthy and our
civilization isn't any better.
That said, if any species could get us
out of this mess, it's us. Like you
know, it's exactly as Brett said. We are
the most labile, the most adaptable, the
most generalist species on the planet
and born with the most potential to
become anything else previously
unimagined. So I do feel like in the end
the message of the book which is
explicitly and consistently evolutionary
in all of its different instantiations
is hopeful and yes that that quote that
you read is ominous and I think as Brett
said you know a factual statement but we
can do this. We we have we have to do it
and uh we need to try. And in fact, in
evolutionary biology, we recognize
something we call adaptive peaks and
adaptive valleys. And it would have to
be true that to shift gears to something
much better, something that that uh gave
humans more of what it is that we all
value, we would have to go through an
adaptive valley and it would look
frightening. And in fact, they are
dangerous places to be, but it's part
and parcel of shifting from one mode of
existence to another.
All right. I think an idea that's going
to be really important to get across.
And this is something as a guy that only
ever thought I would talk about
business. And then in trying to explain
how to get good at business, I kept
having to come back to mindset. And then
trying to explain mindset, I keep having
to go to evolution. It's like that we're
having a biological experience that your
brain is an organ. It comes uh you guys
said that we are not a blank slate, but
we are the blankst of slates, which I
think is a phenomenal way to put this
idea. And I want to tie that to the
title and get your guys' take. So it's a
hunter gatherer's guide to the 21st
century. And so the way that I take that
is that notion. You have to understand
that you're a product of evolution. That
your brain is a product of evolution.
And then once you understand the forces
of evolution and how we got here, then
maybe, just maybe, we can find our way
out of it. So, what are the key elements
to being a product of evolution that you
think people miss that we must
understand if we're going to navigate
our way well out of this valley of
evolution? Let me say first um that the
the title a huntergatherer's guide to
the 21st century uh evokes that sort of
romanticized huntergatherer on the
African savannah of the paleolithic
which of course is a part of our human
history and does have many lessons in it
to teach us about who we are now and who
we can become. But as we say in the
book, we are all parts of our history.
Like we are not just hunter gatherers.
We are also right now
post-industrialists.
And there are evolutionary implications
of that. Go a little farther back, a lot
farther back depending on your framing.
And we are agriculturalists. Go farther
back, we're hunter gatherers. Go farther
back, we're primates. We're mammals.
We're fish. all of these moments of our
evolutionary history um have left their
mark in us and have something to teach
us about both what our capacities are
and what our weaknesses are and what we
can do going forward.
And I would add the lessons from
evolution uh are both good and bad here.
One thing that we realized that our
students over the course of many years
of teaching this material realized was
that everything about our experience as
human beings is shaped by our
evolutionary nature. And that has a very
disturbing upshot because we are
fantastic creatures with an utterly
mundane mission, the very same mission
that every other evolved creature has to
lodge its genes in the future.
um and that this actually explains the
nature not only of our physical beings
but of our culture and our perception of
the world. So understanding that all of
that marvelous architecture is built for
an utterly mind-numbing purpose is an
important first step in seeing where to
go. But the other thing to realize and
you referenced our our assertion that we
are the blankst slate that has ever
existed or has ever been produced by
evolution.
And what this means is that we actually
have an arbitrary map of what we can
change. That to the extent that our
genomes have offloaded much of the
evolutionary adaptive work to the
software layer, that means we are
actually capable of changing that layer
because that layer is built for change.
But not everything exists in that layer.
So some things about what we are are
very difficult to change. Some things
are actually trivial, easily changed.
And knowing which is which is a matter
of sorting out where the information is
housed, but it's all there for the same
reason.
It's exactly it's all there for the same
reason. It's all evolutionary, be it
genetic or cultural or anything else.
Can you guys give us an example of and I
found this very provocative in the book
and it certainly rings true to me but
that to say that we are in some ways
fish from an evolutionary standpoint
that we are you know in some ways
primates from an evolutionary
standpoint. What does that mean exactly?
Again it's a factual claim one that once
you've seen the picture standing from
the right place is uncontroversial. When
we say, you know, is a platypus
warm-blooded, we are not asking a
question about its fogyny, right? We're
asking about how it works, right? When
we ask, is a whale a mammal? We are
asking a question about fogyny. So, when
we ask the question, are humans fish? If
we're asking a functional question, then
maybe not. But if we're actually asking
a question akin to is a mouse a mammal,
right? Uh then we are asking a question
about the evolutionary relatedness of
that creature to everything else. And
the key thing you need to understand is
that a group a good evolutionary group
like mammal or primate or ape is a group
that if you imagine the tree of life
falls from the tree of life with a
single clip, right? If you clip the tree
of life at a particular place, all of
the apes fall together. If you clip it
lower down, all of the primates fall
together. And the claim that we are fish
is a simple matter of if we agree that a
shark is a fish and we agree that a
guppy is a fish, if you clip the tree of
life such that you capture those two uh
species, you will inherently capture all
the tetropods, which is to say creatures
like us. Um so we are fish as a factual
matter if the question is one of
evolutionary relatedness.
So let me um if if I may just say um say
that in in slightly different words.
There are at least two main ways to be
similar, right? You can be similar
because you have shared history and you
can be similar because you've converged
on some solution. And so dragonflies and
swans both fly, not because the most
recent common ancestor of dragonflies
and swans flew, but because in each of
their uh environments, flight was an
adaptive response. And um that means
that flying flyingness is not a
phoggenetic. It's not a historical
representation of what those two things
are. Whereas if you say well um both ma
both whales and humans lactate in order
to feed their babies um that is a
description of of something that they
both inherited from a shared ancestor.
Right? So the earliest mammal lactated
to feed its young. If any any organism
on the planet today um that is
descendant of that first mammal that
lactated to to feed its young is a
mammal. Even if some future mammal went
a different way and lost the ability to
dilactate, it would still be a mammal.
So, you know, Brett mentioned tetropods,
uh, tetropods, you know, were the fish
that came out onto land with, you know,
four feet and started moving around and
it's the amphibians and the reptiles and
the birds and the mammals, but snakes
are tetropods. Not because they still
have four feet because they don't, but
because they are member of those that
group. So, it's a it's a historical
description of group membership as
opposed to like an ecological
description of what we're doing. So,
we're not aquatic like most fish are,
but we're fish because we belong to a
group that includes all the fish.
Now, I'm going to say why I think that
matters and why I think you guys put
that at the beginning of a book that
sort of has this punchline of like, hey,
we're really headed towards disaster and
we have to be very thoughtful and here
are some solutions. So the reason why in
business you end up having to talk about
evolution is because I need a business
owner to understand you cannot trust
your impulses because your impulses may
not have the growth of your business in
mind. It may not reflect an
understanding of consumer behavior. It
may simply be something from our
evolutionary past that was like um akin
to it's better to jump away from the
garden hose thinking that it might be a
snake than it is to think that it might
be a garden hose and it really is a
snake. And once you understand, okay, my
mind is structured in a certain way. It
has these insane biases. It tends me
towards certain things like the one that
bothers me the absolute most is that
when people have a feeling, it feels so
real. It and you never translate it into
logic. So you're like that thing makes
me angry, therefore it is bad and it
must be attacked, assailed, whatever.
And if you run a business like that, if
you cannot divorce yourself from I have
an impulse, stop that. insert conscious
control and then figure out sort of what
the first principles logical buildup is.
You can't solve a novel problem. And
until you can solve a novel problem in
an environment that changes as rapidly
as our current world, you guys call it
hyper novelty, if I remember correctly,
you you get into these crazym scenarios.
And so while
it seems almost absurd to say that in
some way we are fish, the the key point
that I take away from your book and that
just seems so powerful to recognize to
me is that you have to understand that
you it wasn't a perfect construction at
least not towards modern goals. Does
that make sense to you guys?
Absolutely.
Absolutely. Now there are um there are
really two upshots to this claim that
you are a fish right it's very hard for
people to wrap their minds around it the
first time but once you realize that
this is what we mean when we say uh you
know a whale is a mammal that we are
making a claim about the the tree of
life then you can actually teach
yourself how adaptive evolution works
just by simply recognizing that snakes
are the most uh specios caid of legless
lizards snakes are lizards right you
don't think of it that way but they are
um seals are bears that have returned to
the sea. Right? So once you understand
that all you have to do is say actually
this is a that it's unambiguous and that
means that adaptive evolution is the
kind of process that can turn a bear
into an aquatic uh creature like a seal.
Right. So that's
or lizard into a snake,
right? Or a lizard into a snake. Um, the
other thing that you mention and you're
you're right on the money, which is that
if you use your intuitive honed
instincts in order to sort through novel
problems, you will constantly upend
yourself because those instincts aren't
built with those problems in mind. Now,
the thing that's special for us humans
is that [snorts] we have an alternative.
And the alternative, we argue in the
second to last chapter of the book, is
consciousness. that the correct tool for
approaching novel problems is to promote
whatever the underlying issue is to
consciousness to share it between
individuals who likely have different
experience will see different components
of it clearly and to come to an emergent
understanding of what the meaning of the
problem is and what the most likely
useful solution may be. So in some sense
really what you're saying is in this
context you're trying to get people to
get into their conscious mind and
process this as a team activity rather
than go with their gut which is very
likely wrong.
Absolutely. And you know our capacity um
as humans but that includes as a modern
human who is you know trying to engage
in business with people to oscillate
between this conscious state and a
cultural state uh which is one in which
actually maybe change isn't happening so
rapidly. Maybe the rules that we've got
are good for the current situation.
Let's just do this. Let's do a set and
forget on this set of things over here
and not not constantly renegotiate.
Whereas in this other part of the
landscape, we actually do need to stay
in our conscious minds and yes, we need
to tamp down the emotion and tamp down
the, you know, the quick gut response,
but engage with one another and
recognize that, you know, it's not Satan
on the other side of the interaction.
It's another human being with all the
same kinds of strengths and weaknesses
as each of us has.
Yeah. There's a really interesting thing
that happens when you have um a team
around you, whether they're employees or
otherwise, where um the ju literally
just the other day I said something to
my team and several of them misconstrued
it and I could see they were having a
big emotional response and I said,
"Okay, tell me your objection in a
single sentence with no commas, no
run-ons, no parentheticals." And what
you find is that old Einstein quote of
if you can't explain it simply, you
probably don't understand it very well.
And so people have this emotional
reaction, but they and they then enact
out in the world that emotional
reaction, but they don't actually stop
to take the time to be able to say it in
a single sentence. And so you end up in
what my my wife and business partner and
I call you end up having to chase them
because you'll solve the they'll say,
"Here's my problem." You'll solve it and
say, "Cool. So if I do something that
addresses that and they'll be like well
it's not quite that it's it's this and
then you solve that and they're like
well it's not and it's like when you
force people to say something really
simply it forces them to interpret that
emotion to bring it into the conscious
mind and then to actually deal with it.
Um which I find utterly fascinating. Do
you guys have a method by which you do
that in your own lives or that you've
taught other people to do it? Yeah, I
would say there's a a first go-to move,
which is let's figure out what we
actually disagree about. And very
frequently, um you can cover half the
distance or more just simply by
separating an issue into two different
ones. So, for example, if I talk to a
conservative audience, I know we're
going to disagree about climate change,
but I also know from experience that I
can get a conservative audience to agree
that if they believed that human
activity was causing substantial change
to the climate and that that was going
to destabilize systems on which we were
dependent, that they would be
enthusiastic about doing something about
it. And so what we really disagree about
is whether or not we are causing
something sufficient that we need to
take that action. Right? That's half the
distance covered in a matter of just
simply dividing it into two puzzles. And
you'd be amazed almost everything that
we have fierce disagreements about look
like this where you just sort of assume
the other side has every defect rather
than realizing we agree to a point at
which point we we differ.
Yeah. No, and this is um this is
different from what we were just talking
about, right? with regard to you know
are you having an emotional or an
analytical response. This is a question
of okay we think we're talking about the
same thing but probably we are using the
same words for different categories in
our
yes
and can we can we figure out how many
subcategories there are and you know say
I've got five in my thing and you've got
five but maybe there's only two that
overlap so maybe we focus on those two
but maybe there's also maybe that you
know the devil in the details is in one
of those one of those other six that is
only in one of the people's brains and
when it's revealed be like actually you
think I believe that thing and I don't
like that's not something we share
between us. So yeah having the
capability to go in and like zoom in and
out on problems and say actually the
problem can be smaller than you think
and and also it is larger than you think
and then I think and let's constantly
re re-evaluate the the framing and the
scale at which we're doing analysis.
You guys talk in the book about theory
of mind and Heather, I know you've uh
either started writing, have written or
have threatened to write a science
fiction novel, which you know I
desperately want you to do and publish.
Um, but I've started doing a game when I
find myself in that situation where, and
I learned this in my previous company,
where both of my partners were really
smart guys, but every now and then we'd
get in an argument and I'd be like, I
think they're an idiot, but I know
they're not an idiot and they think I'm
an idiot, but I'm not an idiot. And so I
started approaching it as a writer and
saying, "Okay, if I were writing this
character in this scene, what would have
to be true for them to be acting this
way? What would they have to believe, be
thinking, whatever? And in my marriage,
this has become an extraordinary tool of
saying for you to be reacting this way,
you would have to think that I believe
XYZ. Is that the issue?" And then by
getting to that what I call base
assumptions,
you can really begin to facilitate that.
You guys must have encountered this a
bazillion times with students. How do
you unearth that? Like what's the
process of of uncovering that?
Especially, in fact, it is so weird to
me that you two have become like the
most attacked people on planet Earth. I
I will never quite understand how this
has happened, but how do you guys tease
out and not just go, "Ah, they're evil."
How do you find those underlying issues?
Well, first of all, I think we're we're
attacked because we we look like
villains, right?
So much so,
right? Exactly. Um well, you you hinted
issue here that I think is actually
quite modern. So if you lived any sort
of normal existence from an ancestor,
you know, even just a couple hundred
years before the present, you would find
that they pretty much grew up around the
people that they ended up interacting
with as adults. They didn't stray very
far from home. Everything would be
incredibly familiar. And the language
that they used to interact with
everybody they were encountering would
have been shared because it would have
been picked up from an immediate group
of ancestors that they both knew. Right?
When we use English to talk to someone
else, we have an incredibly blunt tool
because the ancestor from which we
picked up that shared language is quite
distant. And what this does, you know,
you really have two kinds of people in
the world. You've got people who more or
less use the tool like English as it was
handed to them and they don't question
it. And you have people who are trying
to break new ground. And what is true
for everybody who breaks new ground is
that they end up building a personal
toolkit. They will redefine words so
that they become sharper and more
refined and more useful. And then when
you put two such people together, they
will talk right past each other because
they don't remember that they redefined
things. So, one thing that is essential
if you're going to team up with someone
else who is generative and done their
own work and arrived at some interesting
conclusion, you need time. It's weeks of
talking to each other before you even
understand how they use language. Once
you do that, you can have an incredible
conversation. But if you think you're
going to sit down with them and
immediately pull what you know and get
somewhere, you got another thing coming
because at first they're going to sound
like they don't know what they're
talking about, right? You've got to find
those definitions and figure out what
they mean. And it's actually if once you
realize that this is the job, it's very
pleasurable and it's it's really an
honor when somebody lets you look
through their eyes, you say, "Oh, that's
how you see the world." And now I get a
chance to see it that way and then let
me show you what I'm seeing and you
really can get somewhere. But there's no
shortcut about the time necessary to
learn each other's language.
That's right. And that that really is a
parallel for what we were doing in the
classroom as well. you know, we didn't,
you know, if we if we were teaching 18-y
olds, if we were teaching freshmen, we
didn't assume that they all came in as
experts, obviously. Um, and yet the same
logic applies that everyone has, you
know, I I I wouldn't say actually I I
don't think I really agree that, you
know, regardless of what language you're
speaking, you either, you know, take it
on on faith as as you have received it
or you act um decisively to change it.
think teenagers tend to be modifying
language pretty actively. And so,
especially when you um you know find
yourself in a room full of you know
relatively young people in a college
classroom, you have a lot of people who
are using language differently um than
you the professor does. And then you're
also in the business of introducing to
them um you know a set of tools some of
which has specialized language
associated with it um associated with
you know whatever it is that you're
teaching and finding the common ground
between these like okay actually all of
us modify language some and let's figure
out how to use language that we can all
agree on and understand and um you know
for for the purposes of communication as
opposed to for the purposes of
displaying group membership.
Yeah, I agree.
Because that's because that that's what
jargon is often is about group
membership displays and that's what um
you know memes and especially um well a
lot of the a lot of the very rapidly
changing language um that doesn't happen
in technical space is really about
demonstrating that you're on the inside
of some some joke. Well, actually, this
is a perfect case uh of a personal
definition that must be shared otherwise
you can't talk, right? Because uh I at
least distinguish between terms of art
and jargon. Most people will use the
term jargon for both things. But the
point is terms of art are a necessary
evil, right? You have to add some
special term because the language that
you're handed, the general language
doesn't cover it. And so you need a
special term to describe something. And
that means that somebody walking into
the conversation isn't necessarily aware
of what's being said until they've
learned that term. Jargon is the
pathological version of this. Jargon is
the use of these specially defined terms
to exclude people from a conversation
that they probably could understand and
that they might even realize you didn't
know what you were talking about if they
could understand the words that you were
using. So you use those words to protect
yourself. And um until somebody gets
that when you say jargon, you're not
talking about specialist language.
you're talking about a competitive
strategy, um, they won't know what
you're saying. So
uh and you know the difference as
Heather points out is in a room full of
18-year-olds especially when you're the
professor at some level you can say look
here are the terms that we need in order
to have this conversation and more or
less people will adopt them because
that's the natural state of things
rather than two peers getting together
where you have to you know my my rule is
I don't care whether the definition ends
up being the one that I came up with or
your set of definitions. It doesn't
matter to me. What I need is a term for
everything that needs to be
distinguished. And we both need to know
what those terms are in order to have
the conversation. But whose terms they
are doesn't matter.
Well, and yet um you know, as as I think
we say in the book, our undergraduate
adviser, Bob Triivers, extraordinary
evolutionary biologist, when we were
leaving college and applying to grad
school, he gave us a piece of advice
about what kinds of jobs we might
ultimately uh want if we were to stay in
academia. and he said, "Do not accept a
job in which you are not exposed to
undergraduates." Um because um teaching
undergraduates means exposing yourself
and the thinking that you are presenting
to to naive minds who will throw curve
balls at you. And some of those curve
balls are going to be nuisances and
maybe they'll waste your time. But some
of them are likely to reveal to you the
uh frailty in your own thinking or in
the thinking of the field. And that is
the way the progress is made. And so you
know who whom we call peers is uh up for
discussion and recognizing that we can
we can all learn from almost every
person that we interact with uh is a
remarkable way forward.
Yeah. And the correlary to that is uh
there's a lot of pressure not to reveal
what you don't know by asking questions
that will establish the the boundaries
of your knowledge. and being courageous
about actually acknowledging what you
don't know often leads to the best
conversations. Right. It
You guys do talk about that in the book.
And I think that this is such an
important idea. I'd love to tie it to
something else you talk about, which is
what is science? Like you guys have a
pretty unique take on what science is.
That it could be done with a machete and
a pair of boots out in the jungle. It
can be done in a laboratory. Um yeah,
what is science?
Science is a method for correcting for
bias
and that method is pretty well known. It
has had a few updates along the way, but
the the basic idea is it is a slightly
cumbersome mechanism for correcting for
human bias. And the result is that it
produces a set of models and a uh a
scope of knowledge that improves over
time. And what improves means is it
explains more while assuming less
and and fits with all of the other
things that we think are true maximally.
Right? Ultimately uh all true narratives
must reconcile and that includes the
scientific narratives that we tell at
different scales. Right? The nanocale
has to fit with the macroscopic scale
even if we don't understand how they fit
together yet. So ultimately we're sort
of filling in from both sides what we
understand and what we expect is that
they will meet in the middle like a
bridge and um if they don't it means we
got something wrong somewhere.
Yeah. So science is not the methods of
science. [clears throat] It's not the
glasswware and the expensive
instrumentation and it's not the um
indicators uh that you're a scientist
because you're wearing these things. You
know, it's not the lab code and it's not
the conclusions of science. It's not the
things that we think we know, many of
which things are actually true and some
of which aren't. Science is the process
and all those other things are sort of
hallmarks that may or may not be
accurate proxies uh when you're trying
to figure out is that person doing
science? Is this science over here? Um
but what science is is action process.
And it's worth saying that you don't
need it for realms that are not
counterintuitive, right? You don't need
to do science in order to figure out
where the desk chair is before you sit
down. Right? It is apparent to you where
the desk chair is because you're built
to perceive it directly. Now, every so
often, we all have the experience of
looking at something and not being able
to figure out what we're seeing. There's
some optical illusion, the way we are
sitting, where we are in relation to the
object we're looking at. And then you
[snorts] will go through a scientific
process. You know, if that is a so and
so, that also suggests this. And I can
see that that's not true. So what could
it be right? That that process is
scientific. But by and large the direct
perception of objects around you because
it is intuitive because it's built to be
intuitive. Your system is built to
understand it in a way that makes it
intuitive doesn't require this. So we
need science where things are
sufficiently difficult to observe or
counterintuitive. So you need a process
to correct for your expectations.
What drives all this to me and that gets
missed even though it's sitting in plain
sight is to make progress you must
hunger to know where you are wrong. And
if you can derive and again I come at
everything from a business lens in
business if you can derive tremendous
pleasure and quite frankly self-esteem
from your willingness to seek out the
imperfections in your thinking you'll
actually make it. If you don't and it's
an ego protective game for you and your
ego is built around being right, then
you're you're going under. And to your
point about exposing yourself to
undergrads, some of the most phenomenal
like incisive questions challenging my
leadership have come from like interns
who just they've never had a job before.
And so they're like, "Oh, why are we
doing XYZ?" And you're like, "Why are we
doing that?" And if in that moment
you're like I must you know present
myself and have a reason for why we are
doing that you actually talk yourself
into something and because the market
much like evolution or reality which is
something I want definitely want to talk
about how there's a weirdness that we're
living through now where people feel
like if they can convince you through
language of something that it actually
somehow affects the underlying truth but
in business the market does not care
like you can convince your team that
you're right but if the market doesn't
embrace it, you're going to fail. And
there's something wonderful about that.
Well, I want to I want to push back
slightly. Uh admittedly, this is not an
area of expertise, but it seems to me
that there are two things that business
needs to be divided into two things in
order to really understand what you're
getting at. the business where the
market is actually uh in a position to
test your understanding of what is true
and what will work and what people want
and things like that is one thing that's
real business and then there's a kind of
rent seeking in which it may be about
uh you know a company uh that does not
have a functional product that is
selling the idea that it will have a
product that no one else will have and
its stock price rises is uh as a matter
of speculation that may well be a realm
in which it is uh it is deception. In
fact, this this is beyond the scope of
the book. But [snorts] wherever
perception is the mediator of success,
you have deception as an important
evolutionary force. Where physics
dictates whether you've succeeded or
failed, you don't have that problem. You
can't fool physics. So I don't know what
the two words for the two kinds of
business are but the rent seeeking part
of business and the actual production of
superior goods or the same goods at a
cheaper price uh that's a different kind
of of business structure. Well here's
what's interesting uh really fast on
that point. I think that they do fall
under the same category. So when I say
that the market decides so if your pitch
is hey boys and girls we have to deceive
the market and we have to you know game
it and here's how we game it and so
everything is a function of your goal.
So if your goal is to deceive and to you
know create a pump in your stock price
there is a way to do that that will work
and there is a way to do that that won't
work. [snorts] And now getting into
honorable goals versus you know
dishonorable goals that that is really
fascinating. Um, but I think that they
they do fall into the same category of
either the thing you do moves you
towards your goals or it does not.
Yeah.
Yep. I mean, I still think there's room
for a division because there is uh, you
know, the mythology of the market is
that it pays for value and rent seeking
violates that. Rent seeking effectively
is a failure of the market. And so I
don't know I don't know where the
definitional split needs to be but it
does seem to me that although you're
right the the you know whether whether
what you are doing is uh assessing what
you believe the psychology of the market
to be or whether you are assessing what
might be physically possible in terms of
a product. Those are both real systems
that you are either correct about or
not. Um but there there does seem to me
to be a distinction between rent seeking
and and uh the production of actual
value.
And there's a perfect analogy to be
made. um uh to academic science of
course. And so in academia, if you are a
scientist, you are supposed to be
seeking an understanding of reality. Um
but the way that modern science is done
uh involves a lot of requesting of
grants from most of the federal
government. And um just as I imagine in
business, although definitely not um my
area of expertise, the bigger you are,
the harder it is to change course. And
um in academia in part that means uh the
later in your career you are the harder
it is to change course and therefore the
harder it's going to be to do something
like embrace that you were wrong. And
you know actual honorable good
scientists will always will always fess
up and talk publicly about when they
were wrong. Um, but if your entire lab
is contingent on a model of the universe
that is turning out to look ever less
likely, it's going to be much more
difficult for you to do that, for you to
embrace the wrongness of, you know, what
might be the livelihoods of not just
you, but many of the people who are
working under you.
How would you handle it?
Well, you have to restructure things so
that uh what actually matters is being
right in the long term. And what we have
is an epidemic of corruption inside of
science, which has more or less been
spotted first with respect to
psychology. Now, psychology is difficult
to do because you're inherently looking
into the mind and you don't have a
direct ability to measure most of what's
there. But the P hacking crisis um
basically the abuse of statistics to
create the impression of discovery which
then resulted in the inability to
reproduce a large fraction of the
results in psychology is actually the
tip of a much larger iceberg. That
basically science as a process is um
excellent. But science as a social
environment is defective and especially
defective where we have plugged it very
directly into market incentives and
we've put uh scientists at an unnatural
level of competition for a tiny number
of jobs. We produce huge numbers of
applicants which means that the
incentive to cheat is tremendous and
those who stick to the rules probably
don't succeed very well. So basically
what we have is a uh a race to discover
who is best at appearing scientific and
delivering those things that um that the
field wants to believe rather than those
things that the field needs to know. So
the the short answer to your question
which isn't especially operationalizable
is you need to put a firewall between
market forces and the scientific
endeavor because although science is an
incredibly powerful process, it is also
a fragile process that needs insulation
from market forces or it cannot work. So
I would say just in brief again not
particularly operationalizable but um
reward public error correction right um
you know no matter no matter at what
stage you are and what the nature of the
error was um unless there was
intentional fraud which of course does
exist um public error correction should
be rewarded uh without shaming uh
without you know loss of of priority in
other things and the ability to do
science Because not only do we need
people to be able to um see that they've
made mistakes and and actually course
correct, but we need people to be taking
enough risks early on that they are
likely to sometimes make errors. And so
in the current environment where any
error can be considered like the death
nail for a career, we have ever more
timid scientists and um that is making
us less good at science as a society.
And in fact, it almost seems implausible
that people would go around
acknowledging their errors. But it
wasn't so long ago that this was fairly
common. In fact, uh I used to study
bats. And there's a famous example of
this not so long ago. uh guy named
Pedigrew had advanced a radical
hypothesis that suggested that the old
world fruit bats, the so-called flying
foxes, were in fact not part of the same
evolutionary history as the bats that we
see here in the New World, for example,
the microbats. Um he argued that they
were in fact flying primates, which was
a fascinating argument. It was based on
their neurobiology looking more like uh
monkey neurobiology than it does like
bat neurobiology which turned out to be
the result of the fact that they use
their eyes rather than echolocation.
Um so it was wrong and what he said at
the point that it was revealed by the
genes that he had been wrong was if it
is a wrong hypothesis it has been a most
fruitful wrong hypothesis which was
absolutely right. the work that was done
to sort that out was tremendously
valuable. And so anyway, nobody who has
had to course correct and admit an error
finds it pleasant. But we have to
restore the rules of the game where the
longer you wait, the worse it is. So
that the incentive is as soon as you
know you're wrong, owning up to it so
that you are on the right side of the
puzzle as quickly as possible. that that
has to be the objective
as you guys look at society and where
we're at now. So, one problem you've
obviously just very eloquently laid out,
you've got incentives around admitting
that you're wrong is uh could be the
death nail of your career. What else is
going on that makes you guys have that
um quote that we started the the episode
with around you know sort of the you
didn't use the word disintegrating but
that there's to put my own words to it
there's a crazym that's happening at the
societal level. What has led to that?
Like what are three or four factors that
are causing that breakdown?
Well, um, you know, in in part, you
know, the the bias that we have as
evolutionary biologists is that we see a
failure to understand what we are as,
uh, producing short-term reductionist,
metricheavy, pseudoquantitative answers
to questions that uh, warrant a much
more holistic and emergent approach. And
so, what are some of the the things that
modern humans have embraced or have been
told to embrace and some of us have and
some of us haven't? um that have helped
produce uh problems for for modern
people. Uh this is not this is not new
with us but um the ubiquity of screens,
the change in parenting styles to
protect children from risk and uh
unstructured play and the drugging of
children legally with anti-anxiety and
anti-depression meds more likely if
they're girls and with speed if they're
boys. Uh those three things in
combination, all of which were sort of
on the rise in the 90s and hit fever
pitch in the in the as early teens, um
helped produce a generation that uh
became in body adults um but with minds
that had not had a chance yet uh to
actually learn what it is to be human.
And some of that is reversible. And you
know really we just by by
[clears throat] chance we were college
professors,
excuse me, we were college professors
for basically the entire period of time
um during which millennials were in
college. So we taught millennials from
from beginning to end. And almost to a
person our students were amazing and
receptive and creative and um and
capable. And if you you know when when
we talk about the generation of
millennials it's those people who were
drugged and screened and helicopter and
snowplow parented right so with
individual attention people can be
pulled out of the tail spin but as a
societal level that's exactly what we're
in as a tail spin.
What is the tail spin exactly though?
What is it about those things that what
does it create in people? I want to
address that as part of a uh a slight
reorientation of the question. So one of
the things that is causing the
dysfunction is you know it's not just
the fact of the screens but it's what
they imply that virtually everything
that people know is coming through a
social channel right so it is all open
to manipulation augmentation distortion
and what people generally do not pick up
in the normal course of an education
even what we consider to be a high
quality education is interact action
with systems that allow you to check
whether or not that which sounds right
actually comports with logic. Um so for
example,
if you interact with an engine, you
can't fool an engine into starting. You
either figure out why it isn't starting
or you don't. And so we advocated for
students that they dedicate some large
fraction of their education to systems
that are not socially mediated in which
success or failure is dictated by a
physical system that tells you whether
or not you've understood or failed to
understand.
And I mean this can be mechanics or
carpentry, but it also can be you know
baking frankly or learning to play the
guitar,
right? or or parkour, anything where
success or failure is nonarbitrary. What
you don't want is an education built
entirely of I succeeded when the person
at the front of the room told me I got
it. Because if the person at the front
of the room is a dope, which
unfortunately happens too often, you may
pick up wrong ideas and feel rewarded
for believing in them and that can
result in tremendous confusion. I would
just finally say that the book really is
about what we have informally called an
evolutionary toolkit. And that
evolutionary toolkit, the beauty of it,
what we saw and what students reported
to us in their picking it up. Uh that
toolkit allows with a very small set of
assumptions the understanding of a large
fraction of the phenomena that we care
about. Almost everything we care about
as humans is evolutionarily impacted.
And the ability to go through what you
are told about your psychology or your
teeth or anything like that and say,
does that make sense given the highest
quality Darwinism that we've got? Does
it make sense to be told that our
genomes suddenly went haywire and that's
why an everinccreasing fraction of young
people need orthodonia? Nope. Not for a
moment. Does it make sense that we have
a piece of our intestine called the
appendix that is no longer of any value
and yet a huge number of people have uh
this thing become inflamed and burst so
that their lives are placed in jeopardy?
Nope, it does not. The ability to check
what you're being told against a set of
lo a a a toolkit for logic that is so
robust that you can instantly spot
nonsense is a very powerful enhancement
and it does not involve knowing more. It
involves knowing less and having that
little bit that you know be really
robust.
That's terrific. I would just say it
doesn't necessarily involve you knowing
less but being certain of less.
It requires that you rest what you know
on less. The foundation is more robust
and uh less elaborate. I was just about
to ask what it means to know less. So,
thank you for that. Um yeah, that is
very interesting when I think about h I
forget the exact quote, but as the
island of your knowledge grows, the
shore of your ignorance grows too. You
know, whatever the the famous quote, but
it's a really interesting dichotomy. So,
all right. We've got this generation
that's growing up. They're looking at
screens. You guys make a pretty
interesting um assertion in the book
about what screens do in terms of you're
getting emotional cues from a nonhuman
entity and that it may play a part in
the rise in autism. I found that
incredibly interesting. Um, what I want
to better understand is what's going on
in our brains that so helicopter
parenting or snowplow parenting for
instance, like why does that trap us in
a perpetual childhood? You guys talk
about rights of passage in the book. I'd
be very curious to to hear like how do
we begin to deal with some of these
things, whether it's screens, whether
it's snowplow parenting. You know, if I
find myself a a 19-year-old and I
realize I've been done dirty. I've been
on drugs for ages. I was raised
essentially by a screen. I'm, you know,
having trouble connecting, having
trouble relating, and my parents have
taken care of everything for me. What
are the symptoms I need to look out for?
And then how do I push forward?
Well, uh, in terms of symptoms, this is
more or less a, uh, it's a self-
diagnosing problem. You either none of
us feel perfectly at home in modernity
because in fact we are not at home. We
can't be even you know the the world
that we live in is not the world of our
grandparents. It's not even the world
that we were born into. We live as
adults in the world that uh just
literally didn't exist when we were
born. And that
it's not the world even that our
children were born into unless they were
literally born yesterday.
Right. Exactly. It's changing so fast it
can't be. But that said, you either are
feeling constantly confused about what
you're seeing and hearing and you don't
know what to think or you've found
something that allows you to move
forward. And even if you can't fully
manage what it is you're confronting, it
should surprise you less and less. And
so we we provide a couple of tools in
the book. We talk about the
precautionary principle and we talk
about Chesterton's fence which are
really two sides of the same coin. And
if your life has been built around the
idea that whatever the newest thing is
the, you know, the latest wisdom is what
you uh were brought up on then in all
likelihood you are, you know, taking
various drugs to correct for various
things which may very well be the
symptoms of the last drugs you you took.
uh you you know you may be engaging in
all kinds of behaviors uh to fix
mysterious problems. Maybe you can't
sleep and you know so you're you're uh
taking some aggressive mechanism to deal
with that. The basic point is back away
from that which is novel and untested
and in the direction of that which is
time-tested and it will result in a
decrease in anxiety and increase in your
control over your own life and the way
you'll tell is that you will feel less
confused more of the time.
Can you guys define Chesterton's fence?
I thought that was a really great part
of the book.
Yeah. Um so GK Chesterton was a 20th
century political philosopher maybe I'm
not sure exactly how he would have
defined himself but um of of the many
contributions that he made um to you
know I think he was a conservative um
but of one of the many contributions
that he made was imagining two people on
a walk together and coming across a
fence that appeared to be in their way
and person A says let's get rid of the
fence and person B says Well, what's it
here for? Person A says, "I don't care.
It doesn't matter. I just want it gone."
And person B, uh, Chesterton, I suppose,
uh, in my telling here says, "There's no
way that I should let you get rid of the
fence until and unless you can tell me
what its function is. If you can tell me
what its function is or was originally
here for, then maybe we can talk about
whether or not it's time for it to go.
But until you can explain to me what the
function is or was, then there's no way
that I should allow you to get rid of it
simply because you see it as an
inconvenience. So, um, you know, the
appendix that Brett already mentioned,
um, is is a perfect example of this. And
we talk about in the book things like,
you know, Chesterton's breast milk. You
know, we should, you know, we should we
should be abandoning breastfeeding. Um,
you know, we are abandoning
breastfeeding to the degree that we're
doing so at our peril. uh Chesterton's
play, not letting children have long
periods of unstructured play in which
adults are not monitoring them and are
not telling them not to bully each
other. Even though bullying is bad, yes,
but allowing children to figure out for
themselves in mixed age groups how it is
to navigate risk themselves, that is how
those children will grow into competent
young people. And you know, if you do
arrive at 19, having been drugged into
submission and having had your parents
clear all of the hazards out of the way
for you, the thing you can do is start
exposing yourself to risk. And risk is
risky. You know, um this is, you know,
this is both a tautology and also
shocking to people because, you know,
wait, you're you're telling me I need t