Robin Hanson - The Long View and The Elephant in the Brain

1. 0:05 – 15:07

   The long view

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel0:05

      Okay. Robin Hanson needs no introduction, so let's begin. So you've written a few essays on, uh, the long view, how there's no segident player... significant players that are optimizing for it. But isn't the most obvious explanation for that, that, uh, optimizing for the long term is ineffectual given how unpredictable the future is, or even counterproductive, given, uh, that you might be ignoring present circumstances?

   2. RHRobin Hanson0:26

      Well, uh, if it's unpredictable, then optimizing should take that into account. (laughs)

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel0:30

      Mm-hmm.

   4. RHRobin Hanson0:30

      But it does look like people are deviating from what they would do optimally trying to take the long term into account, uh, and taking into account the actual amount of uncertainty. Um, th- that seems... So for example, there's something called discount rates in economics, uh, and interest rates, and so, uh, if you have the long view, you would take a, a very low discount rate. That is, you would think the future was just as important. Although with uncertainty, that might make it hard to make some of the choices. But for example, resources are just generally useful, so if you just invested in collecting resources, you don't have to know exactly what's going to happen in the future to know that resources are gonna be pretty useful, wh- whatever happens. And so if you are discounting your future and not being interested in collecting resources, that's a pretty in- clear indication that you're not so interested in the long term future-

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:20

      Hmm.

   6. RHRobin Hanson1:21

      ... uh, relative to other people who might.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel1:24

      Hmm. But, um, if it's true that, like, uh, thinking about the long term future is useful, then wouldn't you expect the most powerful institutions today to be the ones that ta- thought about the long term future in the past?

   8. RHRobin Hanson1:33

      Well, that's, uh, part of the question I raise in my discussions of it. So you might think that in the very long run there would be selection for thinking more about the long term future because that would win. If we look, uh, at biology, uh, we can think that there's been a very strong, um, competition in biology for influencing the future. And in some sense, that is what evolution is about. (laughs) Species and individuals compete to influence the future, like having more descendants is the main way that biology influences the future. Now, uh, animals sometimes make plans and, uh, you as a human might make a plan to save up resources and pass them on to your kids, and we know that, uh, that sort of planning has a discount rate that goes with it because your kids only share half your genes. So your gene, individual genes, they can't save resources for themselves. (laughs) They can only save resources for this whole creature that you are, which is a bundle of genes, and this whole creature that you are, when it passes on and has descendants, those descendants only have half as many genes. And so that means that, uh, your genes have a, you know, choice between, you know, doing things that promote the genes right now (laughs) versus doing things that collect resources and have a 50/50 chance (laughs) of promoting that gene later on because its descendants now only have a 50% chance of, of sharing that gene. So that produces a discount factor of once every generation, a factor of two, and that's in the ballpark of what actual human discount rates are. And so that is a plausible explanation for human discount rates, is that, uh, we evolved in this context where, uh, when we had a choice to save resources in order to pass it on to the next generation, uh, the next generation only shares half our genes. So, see, the challenge is to come up with a unit of selection that can pass on resources to itself over the long run.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel3:38

      Mm-hmm.

   10. RHRobin Hanson3:39

       And so what that might be perhaps is a nation or a firm or a religion or, or some organizational unit, and I think we should reasonably expect that in the long run, organizations will find a way to collect resources and then promote themselves in the long run. But they haven't done that so far because mostly organizations don't really have so much of a separate existence in our world. They are a way that our genes or individuals use... Genes use individuals and individuals use organizations (laughs) to further their ends, but if the organization wants to just take over and says, "I don't care about you genes or individuals, I just want to promote myself," then the individuals and the genes will rebel (laughs) and, you know, bring the organization back in line, and that's kind of what's happened so far. Organizations haven't really been able to promote themselves as much as they might like. So the closest you might get is, say, say, religions encouraging proselytizing where, where they're promoting the religion, right? Uh, but they found a way of doing that via the individuals proselytizing and promoting themselves.

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel4:42

       Yeah.

   12. RHRobin Hanson4:43

       And so they found a, a win-win deal where the organization can promote itself and the individuals can promote themselves. But, you know, that's hard to find, and so organizations haven't been able to just collect resources 'cause what happens is if a church collects resources or a firm or a club, well, later on some humans are in charge of that organization, then they just take the resources. They just grab them and say, "To heck with this organization. Those are tasty resources. I can promote myself and my genes by just grabbing the resources and taking them away from the organization." So, you know, for the long run, the question is how can organizations find a way to collect resources and keep it directed for the purpose of the organization as opposed to allowing the people who run the organization to grab those resources for themselves?

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel5:27

       Have, have you considered doing this yourself, raising some money and then, like, building an institution to shepherd and distribute it in the future?

   14. RHRobin Hanson5:32

       Well, I, I mean, I thought it through just in terms of the the- just to understand what's going on. I'm, I'm not, you know, I'm not rich. I don't have that many resources. But one, one of the big things that's happened is this might happen if we used contracts to make it happen. So for example, I might make an organization and then I make the constitution of the organization a certain way and then I say, "Everybody who wants to join this organization, you have to agree to this constitution." And then we're gonna use law to insist that the constitution be obeyed. And if we, if we were allowed to write a co- a, a constitution that specified saving resources and that constitution would be e- enforced-... and then the organization was, doesn't, not going to be taxed or, or destroyed, then this would work. And what's gone wrong in history is that (clears throat) when organizations tried this, people associated went to the courts and said, "No, no, no, no. We want those resources." And they pushed the courts to interpret law so that these con- these contracts are not enforced.

   15. GUGuest6:26

       Oh.

   16. RHRobin Hanson6:27

       So w- we do not allow arbitrary organization contracts that allow the organization to save resources into the future. That's specifically something that law has prevented.

   17. GUGuest6:37

       What you just described sounds like a nation state. So is a nation state the unit that's figured out how to act as, like, an evolutionary agent and grow more powerful over time?

   18. RHRobin Hanson6:44

       Well, no, because nation states can't just collect resources and save them. The people who run the nation state, they get to spend them (laughs) . So in a democratic nation state, for example, uh, if the country collects a bunch of resources, then the voters go, "Mm, tasty," and they can vote in a politician who will vote to spend that, you know, who will choose to spend those resources on the voters and not save it for the future. Similarly, even, even when there's a dictator, the dictator doesn't set it up forever for the organization. They're setting it up for themselves or perhaps their children. And again, uh, they don't set it up to just keep collecting resources. But so, so just walk, let's walk it through. Today and for a very long time, almost, you know, as long as we know, interest rates have been higher than gross rates. That is, rates of return on assets have been higher faster than the economy grows. So if the economy, you know, doubles in 20 years and assets double in 10 years, you see, then, uh, any organization that chooses to grow assets will grow as a fraction of the economy until it comes to dominate the whole economy. And then at that point, interest rates would fall (laughs) until this organization really couldn't get a greater return above the growth rate of the economy, but that's an opportunity that's been sitting there for a long time and, and not really successfully taken advantage of. Nobody's really managed to create organizations that just keep lasting and collecting resources, growing faster than the economy, and therefore growing as a fraction. So what happens? Well, either the people running the organization decide to take it or outsiders decide to take it, you know? The, the local city or the local government says, "Mm, tasty," and they decide to tax it or, or just grab it, or in war, uh, invaders come and take it. And so consistently over the long run, um, we just haven't been able to do that. But it's, it's a thing that remains possible, and I predict that eventually there will be some sort of unit of selection that will take the long view.

   19. GUGuest8:45

       Oh.

   20. RHRobin Hanson8:45

       That will be able to collect resources and make choices and promote itself, uh, with a long view in mind. And that when enough of those units exist, then they will drive interest rates down to not exceed growth rates. And then at that point, the world will be full of creatures who take the long view, and then long term will not be neglected. So today you may well fear and, and, and worry that there are things that will happen in the long run that could kill us all, that will destroy us, but nobody really takes the long view so nobody's very interested now in working to prevent it.

   21. GUGuest9:19

       Hmm.

   22. RHRobin Hanson9:20

       And, uh, that's because we just don't have any units who take the long view. Uh, individual humans don't because we have these discount rates. Organizations don't because they are run by the humans, uh, b- uh, you know, and other biological species, they really can't even plan and think about the long run. So, you know, that's it.

   23. GUGuest9:40

       But as you describe if religion implicitly at least acts as if it's, uh, planning for the long term, then...

   24. RHRobin Hanson9:45

       In some ways, but not others. So that's the key thing to note. Organizations are not like agents who can plan everything with autonomy. They're just a collection of strategies that humans use, and in some ways, they can manage to promote themselves, in other ways not. But, but they aren't these conscious agents, planners who, you know, have a utility function and, and can make complicated plans to achieve the organization's ends.

   25. GUGuest10:10

       But isn't that exactly what you'd expect in like sort of an evolutionary landscape, just like this sort of

   26. NANarrator10:14

       Eventually.

   27. RHRobin Hanson10:14

       ... conscious?

   28. GUGuest10:14

       Right, so that's the whole point. Eventually, but you know, organizations are new. I mean, you have to be able to... the p- key point is, you know, humans have been around for a long time. Humans with organizations, you know, initially for a million years, human organizations were like, uh, 50 people. And that was, uh, quite a distinct thing from other primates which took a lot of work to agree, able to make human organizations with 50 people and have them function. And those were human bands. And then with farming 10,000 years ago, we managed to make, like, organizations on the scale of 1,000 people for a village, and then maybe empires. But empires only control a very limited range of things that people do in villages (laughs) . Oh, so...

   29. RHRobin Hanson10:55

       So for the most part, empires were just things that handled the military. And if the, if an empire came by and they wanted your sons for soldiers and they demanded taxes, well, you gave it to them, but otherwise, they didn't really run things.

   30. GUGuest11:06

       Sorry, so I was, I meant, like, isn't that exactly what you're expecting in the long term as in, like, you'd expect these unconscious, basically memetic, um, units to succeed in the long term? Meaning even in the future, we might, uh, you just have these, like, cultural units succeeding and not an orga-
2. 15:07 – 20:28

   Subconscious vs conscious intelligence

   1. RHRobin Hanson15:07

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel15:07

      Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Let's talk about The Elephant in the Brain. Um, so y- you split, uh, y- you explained there that we have hidden motives where we actually want one thing but we pretend we want something else. Um, our subconscious and conscious intelligence is different, like our capacity to actualize our implicit goals, and then our capacity to justify-

   3. RHRobin Hanson15:27

      Right.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel15:27

      ... them explicitly.

   5. RHRobin Hanson15:27

      So- so let's back up so we make sure we don't-

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel15:29

      Sure.

   7. RHRobin Hanson15:30

      ... confuse people. Um, we are complicated creatures, and there are many sort of levels at which we make choices. And so we can talk about causes of our choices that are proximate, that are close to the choices, and distal, far away from our- our choices. And we can have different ways we think about the causes, distal and proximate. So that- that's the key thing here. So when we are talking in our book, The Elephant in the Brain, about motives, we're focused more on distal motives. We're focused more on from a distance, what are the re- sort of fundamental forces that are pushing choices one way or the other? Those forces may or may not produce different sort of conscious thoughts just before the choice is made.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel16:16

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RHRobin Hanson16:17

      So if we think about proximate choices, you might ask, "Well, just before I made the choice, what was going on in my head? What ideas did I have? What was I talking about? What would I have said if you had asked me about it?" Those would be proximate causes. Those would be the things closest to the choice. But those are complicated and context dependent, and in many ways I think it's more robust and even easier to focus on distal causes, uh, what the fundamental forces are that are driving choices one way or the other, and those forces can reflect themselves differently in different final choices or contexts. So for example, in different times and places in history, people have thought differently about different things, and they said different words about it and- and they, you know, different thoughts come to mind. But often, it's the same fundamental forces back behind all of that that- that push people to do things. Uh, you could take romance, for example. You could say, you know, the idea of romance and what- what appropriate things are for relationships and, you know, which kind of relationships we approve of, and when you're thinking of entering relationships what's in your head, and what are you saying about it. Now, those things have changed a lot through history and places, right? People have thought very differently, and they're changing them now. But if we stand back and say, "Why do relationships exist?" Well, it's a simpler theory. (laughs) It's a simpler story. Well, we- we get why relationships exist because, you know, that's how biology reproduces. Without relationships there would be no descendants. And so from that level, it's relatively easy to find this robust explanation, uh, for, you know, some of the major elements, at least, of relationships that are independent of time and space, and are relatively simple.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel18:03

       Mm-hmm.

   11. RHRobin Hanson18:04

       So similarly, in our book, Elephant In The Brain, we're talking about sort of the more basic fundamental motives behind many things we do, uh, the motive being just a mo- a force, a- and a, you know, a thing that produces it.And so we're less interested in what's in your conscious mind at the time, and whether you're aware of it, and what you would say about it, and may- even how much that varies across nations, across time, across social classes. Uh, so, because those are all interesting, but I think the first priority would be to just sort of get the common elements. Like if there's a common element behind schools or, or medicine across time and space and social class, y- we should probably know that first before we try to figure out how, you know, rich people do it differently from poor people or Europeans do it different from Asians, (laughs) or it was done differently now versus a century ago. I mean, those are all interesting to some extent, but, you know, the first cut should just be what- what's the common element?

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel18:59

       Mm. But, uh, so if we go along that demarcation, is, is, the question then is, uh, uh, is our capacity to realize our basic motives, is that correlated with our ability to explain them later on, uh, with our conscious mind?

   13. RHRobin Hanson19:15

       Well, so the key idea in our book is to say your conscious mind has a purpose. It's built for a reason, but it's not the being the king or president that you think of or perhaps have been told. That's not what your conscious mind is for. So your conscious mind is more a press secretary. Its job is to watch what's going on and come up with good explanations that make you look good, and in particular, protect you against accusations of norm violations. And so your job isn't to know why you're actually doing things, your job-

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel19:48

       Oh, sorry.

   15. RHRobin Hanson19:48

       ... reason to explain why you're doing things.

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel19:50

       But then the que- so then my question is, um, is there some sort of correlation between how good the president is and how good the press secretary is? Because people have differing abilities to justify their actions, and people also have differing abilities to actualize their base motives. Is there some sort of correlation there?

   17. RHRobin Hanson20:05

       I mean, there probably is just because there just seemed to be this overall correlation in abilities of all sorts, (laughs) you know, uh, IQ and, and wealth, and, you know, that just good things tend to be correlated. So I would expect they're correlated roughly, not, not finely, but roughly just because, you know, people who are more capable of A tend to be more capable of boo- B for almost all A and B. That's just a general thing for people.

3. 20:28 – 26:50

   Meditators

   1. RHRobin Hanson20:28

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel20:28

      Hmm. Okay. Uh, would you expect meditators to signal less, to just be more upfront about what their motives are?

   3. RHRobin Hanson20:34

      Uh, no. (laughs) Could you tell me why you would expect that?

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel20:37

      Um, they're more self-conscious, so th- they can't delude themse- they, uh, maybe they can't, uh, fool themselves as easily and so they're less likely to fool others.

   5. RHRobin Hanson20:46

      Well, first of all, I'll ask, how do I know they're more self-conscious or self-aware? As I think you mean self-aware.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel20:52

      Yeah, sorry. Yeah.

   7. RHRobin Hanson20:53

      Because they're more aware of what they're doing and why. Um, I don't know that they are. So, so let's talk about sort of the truth-oriented community. What does that mean? So a lot of organizations and groups and, uh, you know, people in the world tell you that they are part of the truth-oriented part of the world, and that's part of their identity. They tell you, "Well, those other people there are deluded, but we, we are into truth." It, it's one of the favorite worlds in say among Christians use. Christians are telling you, "We care about the truth. We don't, you know, we have this strange religion, but it's true, and we are into truth, and those other people are not into truth." So just everybody likes to think of themselves as the people who are into truth and who are less deluded than the other people. So I just can't take people at their word for saying that they are less deluded. They might be, but merely the fact that they like to say that about themselves isn't enough for me.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel21:50

      Uh, but-

   9. RHRobin Hanson21:51

      I wanna see some concrete evidence that they are actually more truth-oriented.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel21:55

       But you have no reason to suspect that a practice like meditation would, uh, reduce the distance between your, uh, y- you know, who you present yourself to be and who you actually are? Or wh-

   11. RHRobin Hanson22:05

       Well, then I'd have to dig into what I know about meditation now. You may well know a lot more than me.

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel22:09

       I don't, yeah.

   13. RHRobin Hanson22:10

       And I, I, I will, I, I could defer but, um, you know, the last time I did a bunch of reading about meditation was just before my interview with Sam Harris because he was into meditation.

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel22:18

       Right.

   15. RHRobin Hanson22:18

       We never ended up talking about it but...

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel22:19

       (laughs)

   17. RHRobin Hanson22:20

       (laughs) But reading about it, uh, to me, I s- I saw this focus on sort of, um, a certain sort of meditative state of mind.

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel22:28

       Mm-hmm.

   19. RHRobin Hanson22:29

       So it's, they seem obsessed really (laughs) with a certain sort of state of mind. They, they are really, really trying to achieve that. And they see that that's good for themselves, and they somehow think it's good for the world. And right there, that looks a little deluded, I gotta say. (laughs) You know, because whatever the state of mind they seem to get into, I'm not seeing much evidence that it's like this thing that helps the world a lot.

   20. DPDwarkesh Patel22:54

       Mm-hmm.

   21. RHRobin Hanson22:55

       I'm not even seeing that much evidence that it's a thing that helps them a lot. What I see is that it's very prestigious in their world. They, you know, that is their ranking, pecking order. The pecking order is who has achieved this higher level of consciousness in their meditation.

   22. DPDwarkesh Patel23:07

       Mm-hmm.

   23. RHRobin Hanson23:07

       And, okay, I mean, every world has some sort of pecking order. I mean, why not that one? But, uh, I don't see much of a practical use of it really compared to all the resources they're investing in it.

   24. DPDwarkesh Patel23:20

       Yeah.

   25. RHRobin Hanson23:20

       I mean, they put a lot of time and trouble into this thing, and, you know, which have a lot of opportunity, like people take a decade off to go meditate or something like ...

   26. DPDwarkesh Patel23:28

       (laughs)

   27. RHRobin Hanson23:28

       ... just so later on they're gonna be better at something? I mean, that, there's almost nothing you can do for a decade which will somehow change you in a way to make you more productive later on.

   28. DPDwarkesh Patel23:36

       I think Sam Harris did do that, yeah.

   29. RHRobin Hanson23:39

       A decade is, is like huge. (laughs)

   30. DPDwarkesh Patel23:41

       Yeah. (laughs)
4. 26:50 – 36:50

   Signalling, norms, and motives

   1. RHRobin Hanson26:50

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel26:50

      (laughs) Um, okay. So along with the faculty to, like, fabricate pro-social reasons for what we're doing, uh, why don't we have the capacity to, uh, consciously detect other people's false, uh, explanations of what they're doing? That seems kind of useful.

   3. RHRobin Hanson27:06

      Well, we do. Um, when we have rivals, (laughs) we are unusually able to sense when they might be hypocritical and when they might be lying about their motives. Of course, we go even farther than that and attribute falsities and delusions to them that they don't have 'cause we're really eager to trash our rivals. What we have a harder time doing with, of course, is noticing our own things and things in common. So, uh, in our book, we talk about, you know, many kinds of hidden motives, and some of the hardest ones for us to see are the ones that we all share. So for example, y- you might say that your rival doesn't care about their grandma because they won't take their grandma to the hospital. (laughs) And their rival doesn't care about their country because they won't pay for more national healthcare for the rest of their country members. Um, but if all of us are deluded about medicine actually being helpful, (laughs) that's not gonna show up in those sorts of accusations about rivals 'cause that ... those are sort of appealing to shared senses of what's important and then saying this particular person, uh, doesn't share what the rest of us share about what's important. And so, um, you know, the more that motives vary across people, the more you're going to be able to n- be able to notice that a rival might be, uh, having a different motive than they say, uh, but when motives are more common, uh, it's harder to see.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel28:32

      Hmm. Uh, why, why have we even retained social norms? Why has society even evolved to have the norms it has if, uh, if it's so easy to skirt them b- by just, like, pretending to uphold them?

   5. RHRobin Hanson28:44

      It's not that easy. (laughs) So, um, just, just to be clear for our, our listeners, um, humans are unique compared to other animals in having norms, that is rules of what we, people should or shouldn't do, that we enforce via collective groups. That is, if I see you breaking a rule, I'm not just supposed to do something about it, I'm supposed to appeal to other people around me to tell them that you violated the norm and discuss with them what we should do about it so that we collectively punish. And if I see you violating the norm and I fail to do that and somebody else notices, then that's a violation on my part. So, that's the key idea of norms. And norms are what we had before law (laughs) to, uh, make people behave. And norms are still very important. And in some sense, norms are more flexible and fluid, and so we use norms when they seem sufficient and we resort to law w- for things that norms don't seem up to the task of in our modern world. Of course, up until, say, 10,000 years ago, there was no law. Norms w- (laughs) norms were everything. That's how we dealt with all problems between people was, was norms. Um, so norms are still this, you know, super power humans have and we continue to use norms. We've augmented it with law. And the context in which we enforce norms has changed in the sense that we have much larger communities that are talking. So in, you know, in the old world of a small band, I saw you break a norm, I could tell my friends, they could tell their friends, and pretty soon, like it- all 30 of us have heard it (laughs) and, and we're done. We've all gossiped about it. And of course, if you have a counterargument, you gossiped your counterargument and maybe we all get around the campfire tonight and talk it out and, you know, make a decision. And in our larger world, we have troubles with that because, you know, we're in larger communities and we just can't spread the word about everything to everybody.... and, uh, we have to decide who to tell what, and people have to decide what to listen to and what to believe, uh, in contexts where they don't know those people as well and have, don't have as much context about the accusation. And that makes it harder to handle norms in our world, but they're still pretty important.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel30:45

      Mm. Uh, shouldn't the power, shouldn't we be signaling less over time? If it seem, it seems that like, um, social norms are getting less rigid over time, so shouldn't the amount of signaling go down and the distance between our fabricated and real selves go down over time?

   7. RHRobin Hanson30:58

      So I'd say the opposite in the early transition. So if you think about foragers, say they live in a group of 30 people, these 30 people have been with each other their entire life. They know each other pretty well. So whenever they hear about something somebody's done or an accusation of what they've done, they can put that into a lot of context. Now, those 30 people have been spending their entire lives trying to impress each other. But in any one moment, they don't have to make sort of a crude signal that u- that it's hard, ambiguous to interpret. You know this person pretty well, and now you are slightly adjusting what you know about them in the context of this thing they did yesterday. But, um, that's much more sort of integrating the information about what they did into a solid impression. Of course, people don't change that much over a long time, so mostly you just keep reconfirming what you already knew about their abilities and inclinations, right? Once you moved, say, to a village-sized world for, in the farming world of 1,000 people, now you didn't know everybody that well. And now any one thing somebody did is much more of a potent signal about them. And so I think people paid a lot more attention to crude and potentially misleading signals once, uh, they were a lot more ignorant about the person who the signal is about. So in a, you know, in a group of 1,000 people, uh, you know, if somebody comes to you and wants to marry your daughter, well, you haven't been around that person your entire life. You, you can use your connections to talk to other people who maybe have and try to get information that way. Or if there's an accusation that somebody's done something bad, you have to decide whether to support that, but you don't know that much about this person. You, you hear what they said and who's, who's accusing them. And so in some sense, signaling matters more because you know less, but you still have to make key important decisions. And in our modern world, you, you, you know, you could see that continuing on. I mean, there are many people we suddenly read about in the paper we've never heard about before ever in our life, and we're making judgments about them. And so we have to make these crude judgments based on where they live or what degree they have or their gender or their age. And so therefore s- in some sense, signaling becomes very potent in that context.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel33:07

      Mm.

   9. RHRobin Hanson33:07

      All of a sudden, say the world is accusing somebody of something, you have to decide whether you're f- against them or for them. And all you have is a small number of clues. And so they've known their whole life that they need to try to make those clues look good so that at this moment, if, if it should ever come, that you will be favorably inclined toward them.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel33:26

       But isn't there another sense in which each person matters less the more people you have? If there's only 30 people in a tribe, uh, th- uh, some young boy is very likely to marry your dr- daughter. But if there's thousands of people, the next guy you meet is very unlikely to marry your daughter. So you're less likely to be observing the signals or displaying signals to the random person because they're less likely to be important to your life.

   11. RHRobin Hanson33:46

       Right. But a lot of the signals you say, it doesn't cost any more to send it to the (laughs) to any one extra person than you send it to everybody, you know. So what, you, you, you build up your muscles and then they show up and anybody who happens to see you can see your muscles, right? And you have a beautiful singing voice and anybody hears your voice can hear it. And, you know, you, you have wealth and you've got gold jingling on your chain, on your wrists, and anybody who sees you can see that. And so in a lot of ways, your signaling isn't targeted at particular audiences. Uh, you are just collecting signals that are seen by a lot of people.

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel34:16

       But what about signals that are powerful only because they're targeted, like narrow casting?

   13. RHRobin Hanson34:21

       Well, so that's, uh, a very different sort of thing. So loyalty signals I would think are, are, are much more of that. And so when people think of signaling, they mainly think about signaling ability or capacity. But in fact, loyalty signaling matters about as much as ability signaling. And loyalty signaling is about who you're loyal to, in what ways. And of course, that's a signal about a particular or other people, right?

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel34:44

       Mm-hmm.

   15. RHRobin Hanson34:45

       So now for example, I say that medicine is largely a loyalty signal. That is, you spend money to help somebody else get medical care, and that's a signal to them that you care about them. And of course, you'll have to target that at them. Uh, and, but, you know, the question is how much more do they know about you, uh, in order to interpret the signal? So th- the better they know you, the less they're going to mis, to badly judge you on the basis of this one signal. But even th- even when people know a lot about people, they still put a lot of weight on things like this. So I mean, ho- honestly, if, if you are suddenly injured and you are feeling really scared and you really are scared of your life and whether you're gonna be taken care of, having somebody you've known all your life, like, s- quit work for a bit, come and take care of you, like be around you all the time, say nice, safe things, that feel- that means a lot to you.

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel35:40

       Mm-hmm.

   17. RHRobin Hanson35:40

       So clearly in some sense, even if you've known this person all your life, you aren't making further inferences about them in that context. And there's a sense in which if you've never felt at risk of your life and this is the one moment when that happens, you've never had that signal from them before, and this is your chance to get it.

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel35:57

       Mm. Mm. Are, are we signaling more now than ever because of, like, social media?

   19. RHRobin Hanson36:03

       That's not obvious but we're signaling to different people in different ways. I'm not... I, you know, honestly I would say, you know, 80% of what we do is signaling in some sense, and that's been true for a long time. Social media just moves it around.

   20. DPDwarkesh Patel36:16

       Huh. But if we're, if we're consciously, like, putting up an image on Instagram or Snapchat, isn't that... eh, that must increase the, like, the effort we're putting into signaling than if

   21. RHRobin Hanson36:27

       Your, your ancestors were doing a lot of things consciously too.I mean, your, your ancestors, you know, bought a house, and they wore certain clothes, and they went to certain meetings, and (laughs) they made sure the f- the fence was painted and, you know, they were polite when they talked to people. I mean, almost all people always have always been doing most of the things they do with an eye toward how it will look to other people.

5. 36:50 – 42:54

   Conversation

   1. RHRobin Hanson36:50

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel36:50

      Okay. Interesting. Uh, I, I wanted to ask you about your, um, chapter on conversation. So you explained that conversation is... Actually, I'll let you explain first, what, what, what conversation is for.

   3. RHRobin Hanson37:00

      Well, so I mean, we haven't said that much about the book, so let me just say.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel37:02

      Oh, yes.

   5. RHRobin Hanson37:03

      The, the setup of the book is the first third is making it plausible that people might not be aware of their motives.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel37:09

      Yeah.

   7. RHRobin Hanson37:10

      And then the last two thirds of the book goes over 10 different areas of life. And for each one it says, "In this area of life, if you ask people what their motive is, this is what they will say. Here are a bunch of puzzles that don't fit that very well, and here's our better explanation of the motive that's really going on, which is hidden, one that people don't usually admit to." And conversation's one of our chapters, and so in that structure, the first thing we have to ask is, well, why are people talking? Now we wanna set aside very practical talk. So if you're ordering a pizza (laughs) or, you know, testifying in court, uh, there, there's a lot of context in which the purpose is pretty straightforward and mechanical in the context it's in. We're asking about conversation. So as you know, we're often just talking without much of a purpose in mind. So what we're asking is, what are you doing there when you're shooting the breeze, chatting, uh, talking about a wide range of topics that aren't very directly related to anything you're doing? So if we ask you, what are you doing when you're talking? 'Cause you're doing a lot of talking. Uh, the most common explanation I think you'll get is, "Well, we're sharing information. I know a lot of things you don't. You know a lot of things I don't. If we just share back and forth things we know, then both of us will know more, and that will be great." And that's not crazy. Of course, all of the things we say as motives aren't crazy. They do apply some of the times, that's why they work as an excuse. When we say they aren't our real motives, what we mean is that's not our main most common motive. It applies less often than we admit. So yes, we do exchange information and that is useful, but it's not the main reason we're talking. And how can I say that? Well, there are these puzzles that don't fit so well. So if we were exchanging information, first of all, we'd be keeping track of some debts. I'd say, "I've told you three things useful. It's your turn to tell me something useful." We'd be less eager to talk and more eager to listen, and we'd be talking about important things. What's the point of talking about random trivial things, uh, when you're trying to exchange information? But in fact, of course, what we do seem to, we seem to follow this rule where the conversation is supposed to bounce around at random, and wherever it goes, you're supposed to have something to say. You're not supposed to try to make the conversation go where you want it. Especially not to important things. And we do try to talk more than we listen, and we don't keep track of debts. So what's going on? What is the better explanation of conversation? So our story is, you could think of yourself as having this mental backpack of tools and resources. Every time a new topic comes up, your job is to find something in that backpack that's relevant and interesting and even impressive. The more consistently and often you can do that, play this game, whatever subject comes up, you've got something relevant and interesting, the more impressive that backpack is. That means if I'm your friend and associate and some problem happens to me and I tell you about it, you're gonna use that magic backpack to bring out something useful and that'll pretty... be helping me. And so the ordinary conversation is the game where we test each other's backpack. So we check to see, well, how useful is it? How full is it? What do you got in there? So that we could get, we could say that we want to get access to it later-

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel40:33

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RHRobin Hanson40:34

      ... um, just because they'd always be around.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel40:36

       Okay. But, but the fact that we wanna talk more than listen, uh, isn't that a problem for this theory that we're just looking for potential mates and allies? Because we'd also wanna listen to the signal our potential mates and allies are sending us, so shouldn't we want them to talk a- about as much as we do anyways?

   11. RHRobin Hanson40:51

       Well, we both, we always both want to listen to other people's signals and send our own. Uh, but of course, um, we are usually more interested in ourselves than other people. And so, uh, you know, often we, we think we've roughly got a pretty good gauge of them and slight variations on them aren't so important to us, but slight variations on us are much more important. We want to edge ourselves up just a little bit more, uh, so that we can seem to be better. Y- you know, if, if you thought of somebody who spent, you know, who is a really good judge of other people but didn't look very impressive themselves versus somebody who looks really impressive themselves, but who doesn't seem that good a judge of other people, who are people most impressed by?

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel41:33

       Yeah, that makes sense. But just as a, just as, um, a, a tool in judging people's, uh, I guess just in terms of how useful it is, shouldn't we expect people to also care as much about what, what other people are like? Because if you're talking one on one, it matters just as much, if like, you-

   13. RHRobin Hanson41:51

       Right. You care, but the question is just on the margin, how much extra effort are you gonna put into it?

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel41:55

       Right.

   15. RHRobin Hanson41:56

       So I mean, that's often a fact when people are talking, they can either listen to what the other person says or they can be planning the next thing they say.

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel42:03

       Mm-hmm.

   17. RHRobin Hanson42:04

       And it's just a matter of the relative priorities there. If you think you've got a pretty good judge of them, then you may just want to focus on moving yourself up. Another way you might think about it is for each person, there's a threshold of whether they're good enough for you. And what's mainly important is whether they're above or below that threshold.

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel42:22

       Mm-hmm.

   19. RHRobin Hanson42:23

       Uh, and it might be relatively rare that they're right near the border of the threshold where you're really trying to make a judgment about whether they're good enough. You know, sometime on, on first date, say, or interview for hiring. Now, now you are trying to... they, they might happen to be near this threshold and then it's really important.... for yourself, though, there's no threshold effect. You would just always want to be better.

   20. DPDwarkesh Patel42:44

       Right. Because you're never

   21. RHRobin Hanson42:46

       With respect to any one person, you might be good enough, but there's, uh, you know, they might talk about you to other people, and you just, you just want to go up.

   22. DPDwarkesh Patel42:51

       Okay. I see. That makes sense. Uh, oh,

6. 42:54 – 49:25

   2020 election nominees

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel42:54

      so you wrote in that chapter, because you're saying that conversation is mostly a way to judge people's capabilities. You, you write in that chapter, um, "We do not routinely expect mumbling, st- uh, stuttering, scatterbrained politicians." So-

   2. RHRobin Hanson43:06

      (laughs)

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel43:06

      ... uh, you're gonna have to explain the nominees of the 2020 election to me.

   4. RHRobin Hanson43:10

      Uh, well, I mean, there's no doubt that relative to a median citizen, the two presidential candidates are impressive. (laughs) They, you might think there's even better options out there, but now you have to look at all the other constraints. So, um, you know, leaders ha- have to meet a lot of different constraints, uh, that, that you want to select for leaders. And politicians, like democratic leaders, have even more constraints and then there's a lot of randomness going on. So again, you know, our book and our analysis is focused much more on the average case than on individual deviations. Uh, but, you know, both, both presidential candidates I understand at a rough level, how they got there and why they're there. And often, it's a matter of compromise between different groups. Uh, if you, if you can separate groups into, uh, distinct groups, each group has a sort of their favorite person, and that's not necessarily who goes up, it's often a compromise between different groups. And that compromise isn't necessarily the best from any one group's point of view. You know, if, if you just want to be an impressive speaker, uh, you know, having a simple absolutist position that you take to the extremes is much simpler and cleaner, and clearer and, uh, to explain. Uh, but of course, that's not where the median voter will go. Uh, pol- political processes when to choose compromises, and compromise positions aren't as easy to explain, or rationalize, or inspire people with. Uh, and so there's a, there, there's a trade-off there between getting a person who sits in the middle of a large group, who everybody can, you know, at least not hate too much, and having a person with a simple clear message that, uh, resonates and inspires people s- with the message.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel44:57

      Uh, so are you saying that being articulate could in a way, some ways harm you as a politician? Because-

   6. RHRobin Hanson45:02

      Oh, yes. (laughs)

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel45:03

      Okay.

   8. RHRobin Hanson45:04

      For, I mean, uh, you know, there's a standard observation about politicians is that they are not very specific with their positions. They are often purposely ambiguous, and they often seem to speak different things to different audiences. The ambiguity is part of the way to cover for that, is to say, "No, no, no, I didn't really say different things 'cause these words, you know, cover different purposes." But, yes, politicians, uh, if you, if they were very clear about their positions, that would be a big turn-off to a lot of people for whom the clarity is not a position they want. So if they can be vague, the vague words can encompass a lot of possibilities, uh, and, you know, that's only articulate in a certain sort of politician-y sort of way. If, if you look at politician speeches, you know, there's a certain style in which they're articulate, but they are... it's a very ambiguous style. It's a, it's a very not clear and precise style in which they are inspiring. They're supposed to sort of throw out words that are emotionally li- lo- you know, loaded and, uh, uh, and evoke images in your mind without committing them to that much specifics.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel46:06

      But, uh, if you think of somebody like Bill Clinton, he was somebody who was articulate, but was also, you know, (stutters) many people thought that he represented them. With the current nominees, it seems that, uh, they don't have the same faculty of clarity and conversation. Um, wouldn't it make-

   10. RHRobin Hanson46:21

       No, well, it varies. Although, you know, the word articulate is often a class-loaded word. (laughs)

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel46:28

       Uh.

   12. RHRobin Hanson46:29

       So, so for example, you know, uh, Trump went out of his way to not project high-class, th- you know, asso- signals. His winning, uh, in 2016 was basically saying there was a group of people out there who felt that they were being ignored, and he basically credibly signaled, "I'm one of you, and I'm not with them, and so therefore I will represent you." In order to do that, uh, he had to show an affiliation with them different than the others, and so he had to be a con- c- contrarian signal in some ways. He, if he just gave the usual sort of political prestige signals, that would not convince them that he was one of them. And since they felt that they were on the out, so one of the things they felt is that they were being r- ignored by cultural elites, and so Trump needed to not be a cultural elite, uh, in order to say, "I'm with you and not with them." And, you know, they were also more rural and, uh, you know, working class, and things like that. And so, Trump explicitly, purposely, successfully said, "I'm one of you" by choosing cultural styles that were like them, and specifically different from the others. And in ways to make the other people yell at him. You know, what better way to convince you (laughs) that I'm not one of them is to make them yell at me than, than I'm not with them. I'm with you.

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel47:51

       Th- this all makes sense, but it seems to contradict your, uh, explanation in, uh, the chapter on conversation. If, if conversation is a way to j- judge whether we want somebody in leadership, either it's just not important at all, or, uh, or is there-

   14. RHRobin Hanson48:05

       Well, so-

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel48:05

       ... is there

   16. RHRobin Hanson48:05

       Go ahead. So conversation, everything we do, I mean, important to note, everything we do has many motives that are relevant.

   17. DPDwarkesh Patel48:11

       Yeah.

   18. RHRobin Hanson48:11

       So, uh, there's the most, the one we'll most often mention, and then there's the one that most often matters, but there's always a lot more. So, m- in many kinds of conversations, loyalty signaling is just as important as ability signaling.

   19. DPDwarkesh Patel48:26

       Right.

   20. RHRobin Hanson48:26

       That's not so much in one-on-one conversations, although it's important there. It's important, for example, when your friend complains about something that you show support. (laughs) That's a loyalty signal. You're not being very impressive with your con- support, you're just being loyal with your support th- that you say, "Yes." You know, when you did the interaction with them, they were wrong and you were right. (laughs) And w- we do those sort of loyalty signals all the time when people around us complain or indicate some sort of rivalry, and that's a very common thing we do. And of course, in politics, loyalty signals matter all the more. So, uh, honestly, a- ability takes a second place to loyalty in politics and in many other areas of, of leadership, even for a, a manager or a CEO. Often when they are looking for subordinates to promote, promote, loyalty matters more to them than ability.

   21. DPDwarkesh Patel49:14

       Hmm.

   22. RHRobin Hanson49:14

       That's a common truism about organizational promotions and organizational coalitions. And so, yes, you, uh, often have to show loyalty before you show ability.

7. 49:25 – 54:50

   Nerds in startups and social science

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel49:25

      Mm-hmm. Th- that makes sense. Um, s- so Peter Thiel has, uh, often says that, uh, it, it's interesting how the people who are the most successful st- startup founders are somewhere on the Asperger's, uh, spectrum. Uh, um, and it suggests that they're oblivious to the hidden motives of others, or don't feel the need to, uh, put a pretense on top of their hidden motives. I'm not sure which one, but, um, uh, does that make sense to you? And d- do you think... Y- you've said yourself that you're a nerd. Does that kind of explain-

   2. RHRobin Hanson49:50

      Yeah.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel49:50

      ... your success in coming up with social science ideas?

   4. RHRobin Hanson49:53

      So there's s- several different things going on here. So first of all, if we're just talking about startups, um, you know, the most fundamental thing about a startup person is they're just on the tail of a distribution of optimism (laughs) . You know, basically, the vast majority of startups fail. And, uh, if you're gonna be starting a startup, uh, you have to, uh, be weird. Not only be weird but, you know, have a weird expectation that us- you can succeed where everybody else is failing. And so you're, you're just being selected from tail distributions, uh, you know. And so I just expect them to be weird in lots of different ways, not just Asperger-y, but lots and lots of ways, right? Uh, you know, s- so that's just, just because it's just being weird. Now, in addition to being weird, it's going to be contrary, right? A s- a startup is not just another restaurant (laughs) in an area where there's lots of similar restaurants. I mean, a startup is a kind of business where you are being contrarian with the business, right? You're choosing a b- different business concept (laughs) , a different product, et cetera. So, it's gotta select for contrarians. I mean, it's not gonna make sense to, to be part of a startup unless you have a contrarian take on the business. You have to think that you have a different idea for how the business could go and, of course, you have to be pretty confident in it and weird enough ways to actually go for it. So, you know, the things you're selecting for in a startup firm is, is obviously somebody who's not comfortably going up an organizational ladder somewhere else (laughs) . They have decided to leave that and take this big chance, uh, on a big contrarian idea, and of course, they also need to be more of a generalist. A, a startup is just, you have to do everything. You can't just be a specialist. So, um, a startup, you know, we could just make this long list of things startups are selecting for (laughs) , and, you know, autism could correlate with a number of those, but, um, you know, not necessarily the, the strongest thing. But, um, certainly one of the other things i- it has is that a startup h- founder, you know, just have to have analyzed a business, right? You have to have this theory of this industry (laughs) , even if it doesn't exist, and what the customers want and what the costs are and what the business competition strategy will be. Th- that's kind of a abstract thing. You have to have some system theory of this industry that explains to you and your investors why this isn't crazy. S- so, right, you know, Asperger's peoples, they are systems people, right?

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel52:20

      Yeah.

   6. RHRobin Hanson52:20

      They, uh, they think in terms of systems. So right there, that also explains it. I mean, so it seems to me, like, pretty over-determined that there's gonna be this correlation. What the fundamental strongest cause is, I don't know, but I'm not sure why I should care.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel52:32

      Huh. Uh, b- but do you think, uh, uh, y- you being a nerd helps you come up with all these astonishing amount of social science ideas?

   8. RHRobin Hanson52:40

      Well, so the story I tell about that is simpler. It's just to say most people who are socially skilled, they function well in their social worlds, and if they talk social science, they talk about social science theories, and they won't necessarily notice if those two are in conflict (laughs) . They will talk about how, you know, "We're all egalitarian here at this company," and then they will be dominant in their activities and make sure they win out over their rivals, and they won't notice the competition... contradiction. It won't occur to them to notice the contradiction 'cause they are so smooth and intuitive at doing the right thing and saying something else and, and, you know How do they know? 'Cause almost all our social activity, you see, is intuitive, it just comes subconsciously, and we just do it and we don't know why. We just don't even notice it unless it doesn't work.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel53:34

      Hmm.

   10. RHRobin Hanson53:34

       So nerds, in contrast, are people who don't have this social capacity to let this smoothly glide through the social world just always doing the right thing. We're doing the wrong thing all the time and wondering why it's wrong (laughs) , and so we just have much more to gain from explicit analysis and thought about our social world.

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel53:55

       Hmm.

   12. RHRobin Hanson53:55

       It still doesn't make us as socially skilled as someone who's just intuitive with it, but it makes us a little better because we think about it.

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel54:03

       Hmm.

   14. RHRobin Hanson54:04

       So now if you're a social scientist or a, a social analyst in addition to just being a nerd, now you have more of a chance of noticing the contradiction. You say this one theory and then you see yourself doing something else, and you notice that these things don't fit because you see yourself doing things more because you're being more conscious about what you're doing. You're thinking and observing, and therefore having a better chance to notice whether your theory applies. So, s- nerds are better able to notice when their own behavior or the behavior around them doesn't fit the theories they say because they will have more explicit theories about the world around them and what they're doing there.

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel54:46

       Mm-hmm.

   16. RHRobin Hanson54:46

       And more of a chance for those explicit theories to come into conflict, uh, to

8. 54:50 – 58:20

   Academia and Robin

   1. RHRobin Hanson54:50

      be tested against each other.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel54:51

      Hmm. But even still, it's, it's incredible how many, uh, original ideas you had. Is that a sort of indictment of, uh, the academia around social science ideas? Because in an effici- if it was efficient with regard to social ide- uh, science ideas, you wouldn't expect all this free energy to exist that you can gobble up alone. Like, if a stock, in a stock market-

   3. RHRobin Hanson55:08

      Oh, well- (laughs)

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel55:08

      ... if a single person could, you know-

   5. RHRobin Hanson55:09

      So-

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel55:09

      ... beat the market consistently.

   7. RHRobin Hanson55:10

      So let's talk ... So we did this conversation, uh, chapter on conversation. We can, I can say that academia fits a lot of that model of conversation. So academia, if you say, "What is it for?" People will say, "Intellectual progress. Advancement of the frontiers of research." Yay. Uh, that's like saying conversation is for sharing information. (laughs) It's not true. What academics are trying to do mainly is to show off, just like individuals are showing off. So most academics are trying to produce their next paper and have it be impressive. And when they submit it to a journal, that journal will evaluate it primarily in terms of how impressive it is. That is, how difficult was it? How many people could do this? And so the referees who are looking at it do not ask how important this is or how original this is or how useful this is. They ask overwhelmingly, "How impressive is this? Does it use difficult methods? Diffic- you know, difficult to obtain data? Did you take a lot of time polishing it? Can we find any flaws whatsoever to pick on or does it seem to have been very picked clean to be very carefully constructed and elegantly put, patched together?" That's what people are looking for, and if you can pass those tests, you are impressive and therefore academia credentials you as impressive, and so academia is the collection of people who have been credentialed at being impressive in different areas and that's what the world wants from them, 'cause students want to go to the schools with the impressive professors, reporters want to interview the impressive professors when they call up and look for a quote, funders who hand out money for research, they wanna fund the impressive people. The whole system is trying to be impressive. It's not trying to be original or useful, so there's not much of a surprise that it would be possible to be much more original or even more useful than most academics are because that's not what they're trying to do. And if you do do it in contrary to them, you won't be rewarded much. You won't gain a lot of praise or, or prizes or money or fame. You will just have been more original and useful and still mostly ignored.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel57:10

      But your example seems a clear contradiction of that. Uh, y- I mean, you're, you're quite a famous economist. Famous enough that I-

   9. RHRobin Hanson57:15

      No.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel57:15

       ... thousands of miles away know about you.

   11. RHRobin Hanson57:16

       (laughs) No, no, no, I'm not a famous economist. (laughs) I'm on the margin. I'm lucky to have survived in academia.

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel57:22

       (laughs)

   13. RHRobin Hanson57:22

       I'm, I'm lucky to have, uh, found a place and gotten tenure so I can do a lot of things, but in terms of how I'm counted by academics, I'm not very famous at all. So I might be more famous in a world of amateurs out there who talk to each other, but academics don't care about that. They don't care if you've somehow managed to become famous among a world of amateurs. It doesn't, it's not what they're competing for. That doesn't get you a job in academia. It doesn't get you a journal editorship. It doesn't get you a grant from the NSF. Having ac- amateurs like you out there is pretty useless for an academic, so, "Go for it if you want," they say.

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel57:57

       (laughs)

   15. RHRobin Hanson57:58

       "We don't care."

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel57:59

       But that incentive to have thousands of fans who will buy your books and pay attention to what you're saying, that's not persuasive to anybody?

   17. RHRobin Hanson58:05

       No. No, bestsellers are not made of thousands of sales. (laughs) That's just a little better than an academic book, which is almost nothing.

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel58:13

       (laughs)

   19. RHRobin Hanson58:13

       You wanna make a bestseller out there, you'll need, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of sales. That's where you might make a career out of selling books.

9. 58:20 – 1:09:32

   Dominance explains paternalism

   1. RHRobin Hanson58:21

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel58:21

      Oh, interesting. Okay. Um, uh, so let, let's talk about some of the essays you've been publishing recently. You have a essay called, uh, Dominance Explains Paternalism.

   3. RHRobin Hanson58:30

      Ah.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel58:30

      Um, so it, it makes sense why we'd wanna dominate our rivals, but why would parents wanna dominate uh, uh, their children? Because it should seem like they have a vested interest in their children. To the, to the extent that-

   5. RHRobin Hanson58:40

      Well, so let's, let, let's go back to basics here. Um, sh- social animals all through history, uh, biology, have organized themselves within the social group via dominance. Dominance is the one most common way that social groups of animals organize themselves. So this, it's, say the chickens pecking order, right? Chickens peck at each other, whoever's better at pecking is the better pecker, and there's a pecking order of chicken, and if you think you're mispecked in the order, then you peck up and down and see if you can change your ranking, right? That's true of all sorts of social animals all over the world. It, it, it's, of course, always this mixture of personal advantage and social advantage. I mean, social groups, you know, the, the ideal thing that social groups are somehow trying to do evolutionarily is finding a way to organize the group better while having each participant's actions be in their self-interest, right? You're trying to m- to make it be in their self-interest to help the group. Uh, so, so for example, uh, there are these babbler birds we talk about in our book, uh, in the early on in the book, and they are trying to achieve status, but one way they do it is by going into the top of the bushes and looking out for predators and calling for predators if they see them. So that helps the group and it's somewhat at their own expense of being more at risk for the predator, but they gain status by it and then that helps the group. So the group has found a way to get the striving for status to be in the interest of the group as a whole, and in addition, often the high-status birds are found cramming food down the throat of low-status birds who are resisting, so they manage to share food through this mechanism of status, whereas if you give away more food, you're a higher-status bird. So dominance is this thing that's all through all animals, and humans have it too, and so human dominance has many functional pieces, not just dysfunctional pieces. Individually, we have selfish reasons to be dominant over and beyond how socially useful it might be, but it is useful, and parental dominance is one of the more useful forms of dominance we've all agreed to, I think, in the sense that-When there are parents and children, parents need to make children do some things (laughs) that the children aren't initially at the moment inclined to do. (laughs) And that's important. If the family is moving, the k- parent needs to drag the kid along, right? (laughs) Uh, and if the kid's at risk of hurting themselves or someone else, the parent may need to step in and limit that, et cetera. So parental dominance is functional in a great many ways, and therefore child submission is functional in many ways and acceptable. Now, uh, this is also important to mention, you think of dominance as something that the dominant party is trying to be dominant and everybody else is resisting the domination, and that's just not true.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel1:01:31

      Mm-hmm.

   7. RHRobin Hanson1:01:31

      So we talk about status moves in our ch- chapter on, uh, body language, and what we say is that, uh, humans are constantly negotiating a relative status in their conversations and interactions, and it's not an equal status, but they're both agreeing to it. When you see people awkwardly interacting, that's often when they have not agreed on the relative status. Typically, they do f- come to an agreement, and that's not an equal agreement, and then one party is dominant and the other is submissive, and the submissive party is okay with it, basically. They are choosing to be relatively submissive, and we actually like being submissive in many ways, although we don't like to admit it. (laughs)

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:08

      Yeah.

   9. RHRobin Hanson1:02:09

      So, you know, uh, BDSM, right? (laughs) I- is a thing, and in that world, it's not just the dominant parties who are enjoying it, it's the submissive parties as well. And we like submission in many ways that we don't a- admit to. So, um, dominant/submission is very functional. Uh, in humans, we have this separate kind of status called prestige, and that's the one it's okay to have and to a- to, uh, acknowledge and to, uh, accommodate, whereas we're not supposed to be acknowledging or seeking or accommodating dominance. So a lot of human hypocrisy is about pretending that dominance is prestige. (laughs) So for example, bosses. Most people, when they think about other people having bosses, they don't like the idea. It's, it's a bad idea. It's, it's, it's not right that somebody should have to do what a boss says. Their boss, however, is usually okay. (laughs) Similarly with politicians, of course. Most politicians are corrupt, but not your politician. So w- what's going on? Well, um, in modern workplaces, you kinda need somebody in charge who gives orders. That's kinda basic to the setup. And so there needs to be a boss, and they have to be able to give orders, and that's dominance. A- and they are threatening to take away your money, and money is dominance too, so, like, they've got a double dominance whammy there. And so the usual human rules are, you're supposed to resist that. You're not supposed to accept that. We're all supposed to get together and defy that and, and denounce it and, and make it stop.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:33

       Mm-hmm.

   11. RHRobin Hanson1:03:33

       But we're all going to work and obeying our bosses, so what gives? (laughs)

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:37

       (laughs)

   13. RHRobin Hanson1:03:37

       Well, one of the things that's going on is our boss's main job, in many ways, is to project prestige. See, the key idea is, in these ancient human groups, if some- if somebody in the group were to say, "E- y- you all have to do what I say 'cause I'm bigger than you, and if you don't do it, I'm gonna punch you." Or, "I'm the best hunter, and if you don't do what I say, I won't feed you," that's dominance, and that's not okay. But it's okay if somebody's just the best hunter and we all just want to watch him and see how he does it and we're impressed. If somebody's the best singer, the best fire maker, whatever it is, it's okay just to be the best at someone and have people say you're the best and have people admire you, as long as you don't seem to be using it for dominance purposes. You are self-effacing and you deny it and you say, "No, no, no, I'm just ordinary," but other people say good things about you.

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel1:04:23

       (laughs)

   15. RHRobin Hanson1:04:23

       So that's what a boss needs to do. So often, as y- as you may notice in modern workplaces, bosses very rarely wanna give direct orders. They would rather indirectly suggest things because, uh, they don't want to take on this explicit dominance role. They want to be prestigious. And so we pay a lot for bosses who have, you know, impressive degrees from impressive schools, who are tall, who are handsome, who are articulate, who, who have immense, uh, stamina, work many hours, uh, because that makes them prestigious. And when they are prestigious, it's okay for us to do what they say or suggest, because we can say that that's prestige, and therefore we can actually go to work and do what we're told. And that's an important thing, that people go to work and do what they're told, 'cause otherwise the thing doesn't happen.

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel1:05:09

       Uh, there's a lot of fascinating stuff there. But I wanted to ask you about, um, uh, how, how much of our domination of children is actually helpful? You've been, uh, publishing on Twitter, uh, these tweets about how teaching your kids music is... it seems-

   17. RHRobin Hanson1:05:21

       Right.

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel1:05:21

       ... to be ineffectual. Uh, h- h- how much

   19. RHRobin Hanson1:05:22

       Well, you mentioned even previously about the dominance explains paternalism.

   20. DPDwarkesh Patel1:05:26

       Yeah.

   21. RHRobin Hanson1:05:27

       So, paternalism is this way that we all inter- treat each other that's like how parents treat children. (laughs) The word comes from parents treating children. So, as we know, parents often tell children what to do and what not to do. And then, by analogy, we often tell each other what to do and not to do, or through the government, through the homeowner's association, through all sorts of mechanisms, we treat each other paternalistically. Now, sometimes we tell each other what to do because what you do might affect other people around you, and we need to limit the damage you can do to them. But often, we are justifying our paternalism in terms of how you're hurting yourself, or how we need to make you help yourself. And that's often what we do with children too, and my argument was that in both cases, we are not admitting to ourselves how much we're just wanting to be dominant and not actually being helpful.

   22. DPDwarkesh Patel1:06:18

       Hmm.

   23. RHRobin Hanson1:06:19

       So often, we are making somebody else do what we think they should do, f- and we say it's for their own good, but what really happens is that we make them do what we, we say, and everybody sees that we are dominant 'cause we made them do what we said.

   24. DPDwarkesh Patel1:06:33

       So-

   25. RHRobin Hanson1:06:33

       And that feels good to us because it raises our status, 'cause everybody sees, "Ah, you're the dominant one. We need to, like, respect you more and to associate with you more 'cause, uh, you're the one in charge." And that's true with parents too, so, uh, with children too. So even though there are some things parents have to do, to keep the children from running into the street or things like that, parents quite commonly go well beyond that to make kids do things for their own good. So, the example is teaching a child to play an instrument. That came up in Twitter recently.And I, the, the thing that came, it came from was this study that said, well, if you look for academic or cognitive benefits, like they're better at school, or more disciplined, or, you know, more practiced or something, th- that's just not there. On average, kids who play an instrument are not getting any of those benefits o- out of it. You could say, "Well yeah, but they like to play music." Okay, and I would say, "Well, if they don't like it, and it's not giving these other benefits, what's the point?" Maybe that's a big waste. Now obviously, one of the things that's going on is a lot of parents have heard, rightly so, that in many social worlds, it's very prestigious to play an instrument. And you are seen as cultured and high class if you play an instrument, and maybe those high class colleges will give you a better look if you are seen as being a high class sort of person who plays violin, et cetera. And so many parents push their kids to play an instrument so that they can be high class. Not only supposedly gives the kid a leg- leg up later in competition for class, but also makes the parents be able to brag about the kid. But honestly, I might say this is a case where, you know, you're pretending to do something for their benefit when it's more for yours. I mean, some of them might even just be for bedtimes, for example. I mean, a very, s- you know, often when we tell a child to go to bed at a bedtime, we say, "It's for your own good. You'll be cranky in the morning if I don't make you go to bed now." (laughs)

   26. DPDwarkesh Patel1:08:26

       I'd be cranky now. (laughs)

   27. RHRobin Hanson1:08:28

       Right.

   28. DPDwarkesh Patel1:08:29

       (laughs)

   29. RHRobin Hanson1:08:29

       But you know, more plausibly, it's because you want some time alone after the kids go to bed, and that's important to you. And you know, it's also if they're cranky in the morning, that'll affect you, not just them, and this is about you.

   30. DPDwarkesh Patel1:08:48

       Yeah.
10. 1:09:32 – 1:21:26

    Remote work

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:09:32

       okay. Uh, um, oh yeah, and so you had another post recently about, um, remote work, um, where you said it's gonna be a very big deal in the future, uh, among other things. But if it's gonna be such a big deal, and we've had video conferencing technology for so long, why hasn't it happened until now? Or why, why would we expect it to happen in the future?

    2. RHRobin Hanson1:09:51

       Right, so, um, when you're thinking about the long run, there's two kinds of things to predict that will happen. (laughs) There's the expected and the unexpected. Uh, among the expected, you know, over decades, there have been this long list of things that people have been pr- predicting will happen. And when you're thinking about the future, those are the easiest things to predict in the future, the things that people have been predicting for a while. The unexpected thing that nobody sees yet, that'll happen too, but it's much harder to predict. So, the, the, the most basic prediction game is to look among all the things that people have been predicting and ask, "Well, which of those is finally gonna actually happen?" 'Cause a lot of things are predicted well before they happen. Uh, it's easy to confuse a clear view with a long distance. You know, you're standing on a, on a mountain and you see across the other mountain and you see it clearly, but that doesn't mean it's close. It just means you can see it clearly, right? And so, but when you just think about the future, there are just many ways in which people say, "Ah, that's gotta happen eventually." And then they often think, "And so it's about to happen now." Which is not quite the same thing, right? So obviously, space is, is a very dramatic example of that. People have been able to see for quite a while that eventually, space is gonna be a really big deal. That doesn't mean it's happening yet. (laughs) And clearly, maybe, you know, not obviously now. Or even fusion energy. If you look at the fundamental sources of energy that are possible, you say, "Look, fusion. Look how powerful that is. Look how, you know, that's gotta happen eventually. Eventually, we have gotta tap into that." Probably, yeah. Is it gonna be right now? Not necessarily, right? So, the game for most of these things is to ask, "Well, when will it actually happen?" Not just in principle that it will eventually happen, but to look at the details of what it takes to enable it, right? So with telecommuting, many people have been predicting that way in advance when not much happened. (laughs) And people then struggle to say, "Well, we were predicting telecommuting 30 years ago, but it didn't happen much. Why didn't it happen?" And I think if you, one of the things that goes on is, is you make these predictions based on naive theories about how things work, and then you need to refine them. So for telecommuting, many theories of telecommuting were based on very simple-minded theories of what people are doing at work. And people have correctly said, "Well, you know what? At work, you have to not only sort of do your job. You have to negotiate politics. You have to form alliances and people have to be able to read you and your loyalty, and you have to lobby for your side and your, your allies." And those are all things that are harder to do when you're back at home, especially with very limited communication mechanisms such as we had in the past. Um, but, um, you know, the question is, are those obstacles sufficient to block it forever, or do they just block it for a modest period of time? So, o- in order to think about a tr- a change like this, you wanna think about two things. You wanna th- think about the things in the way, uh, like I just talked about, sort of playing politics and negotiating things, um, you know, online versus in the office, and you wanna think about, what's the draw? Like, how big a payoff could this be?And so, I think people have correctly understood the sort of political obstacle, but they haven't really fully appreciated what the big draw was. And that's the thing I was trying to call attention to in my recent writing was to say, the draw here is much bigger than most people realize, and that's why this is gonna be a big deal, and that's why these obstacles will be overcome because, uh, there's such a huge draw. So-

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:28

       Mm-hmm.

    4. RHRobin Hanson1:13:28

       ... I say the huge draw is agglomeration. Cities, bigger cities are much more economically productive than smaller cities or no cities. And the reason is when you are in a big city, there are just a lot more different interaction partners you can have, and so there's a lot more room for specialization. In a small town, there might be one Chinese restaurant. In a big city, there can be 100 Chinese restaurants who can then specialize in different areas of Chinese rep- food at different kinds of restaurants and, you know, specialize in being low quality or high quality. There's just lots of room for specialization, and that gives a lot of payoff. Uh, all these different specialized roles. Remote work allows sort of planet-wide specialization. That's the key thing to realize. It's- we can be as if the entire planet was one big city, and that's an enormous increase in productivity when you are able to take away advantage of the specialization. So that's the thing not to realize. So there are many industries today where they have sort of specialized internationally as it is. So for example, you know, Google or Apple, you know, there aren't, there isn't one of those in every city (laughs) or one of those in every country. There's one of those in the world, and so people in those c- companies can specialize in one particular task, and then the benefit of what they do spreads across the entire world. They make the iPhone slightly better in one way, everybody in the world gains from that by getting that iPhone. There are many other jobs that we do that we haven't been able to specialize so that there's sort of a world involved. So think of a plumber or a hairdresser. Your local hairdresser, uh, doesn't have to be the best in the world at what they do, like the guy- person at Apple working on the phone has to be, because you can't go around the world to get a haircut. You have to go near where you are. So your local hairdresser is only competing with a limited number of hairdressers in your area, and so... And they can't specialize that much. The number of people they would work on, uh, is limited, so there's only a limited number of kinds of hairdressers that can be in your small area.

Episode duration: 1:40:29