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Joe Rogan Experience #1173 - Geoffrey Miller

Geoffrey Miller is an evolutionary psychologist, serving as an associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico and known for his expertise in sexual selection in human evolution.

Joe RoganhostGeoffrey MillerguestJamie VernonguestGuest (unidentified, brief participant)guest
Sep 25, 20183h 2mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:0015:00

    ... for 4, 3,…

    1. JR

      ... for 4, 3, 2, 1. (gavel bangs) Jeffrey.

    2. GM

      Hey. Joe.

    3. JR

      Hey. Thanks for being here, man.

    4. GM

      How you doing?

    5. JR

      Appreciate it.

    6. GM

      It's my pleasure, and honor.

    7. JR

      And, uh, on the day where Bill Cosby goes to the pokey. (inhales deeply) Crazy.

    8. GM

      Sad story, that.

    9. JR

      Uh, sad for some people, happy for others. Sad that he's only going away for ... F- ... I wonder if that's a death sentence for a man at his age? Essentially it is, right? He's like 81 or something like that.

    10. GM

      It would be weird if justice took into account, like, your health status in awarding sentences.

    11. JR

      Right. I think they have done that, though. Didn't they do that with that guy who was Speaker ... Hassert? Who was Speaker of the House, who was convicted for molesting a large number of boys when he was a wrestling coach?

    12. GM

      Oh, yeah.

    13. JR

      Do you remember that man?

    14. GM

      Yeah.

    15. JV

      He did 15 months.

    16. JR

      15 months. Imagine. They mu- ... I mean, that's, that's pure insanity.

    17. JV

      He was in a wheelchair when he was 15.

    18. GM

      Yeah.

    19. JV

      That could've been ...

    20. JR

      Well, there's-

    21. JV

      ... darker.

    22. GM

      Exactly.

    23. JR

      There's no way, if he was a 25-year-old able-bodied man who had done the exact same thing, he would have gone to jail for 15 months for, uh, admitting to molest a large number of kids who were under his care, uh, when he was a wr- ... He was a wrestling coach, right?

    24. JV

      Uh, I think so. That sounds right.

    25. GM

      Yeah.

    26. JR

      Yeah.

    27. GM

      Oh, he was the guy the movie-

    28. JV

      Yeah.

    29. GM

      ... was made of. No.

    30. JR

      No.

  2. 15:0030:00

    But then there's the…

    1. GM

      other folks would have said, "Oh, my God, it'll remind people what they're missing, and so it'll- it'll nuke marriages. The divorce rate will go to 80%."

    2. JR

      But then there's the third option, which is the, sort of the Cosby-esque thing, is that the addiction, that there's- there's... And maybe I can ask you about this. Like, what is it about things, whether it is gambling or, you know, whatever, video games, there are things that people get obsessed with, and those things become almost a part of who they are? It- it takes over their minds so much. Like, if you had a pie chart of the human brain-

    3. GM

      Yeah.

    4. JR

      ... with some folks, there's a giant chunk that's just porn. It's, like, 40% of the brain, just porn.

    5. GM

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      Like, what happens? What is- what is it about the mind that makes one obsessed, whether it's with gambling or whatever- whatever the vice, whatever the- the thing that makes you addicted?

    7. GM

      Well, I mean, one thi- one issue is people differ in their- their conscientiousness, right? Their degree of self-control and their ability to kind of resist temptations and keep their- their eyes on the target, like career, family, kids, you know, do the right stuff. Um, other people are like, "I just can't control myself in any domain of life," whatever it is. Video games, porn, um, doing my homework, whatever. But I think we also have to cut people some slack, because remember, you know, if you're a teenager and you're really into video games, um, Call of Duty, whatever it is, there are literally thousands of people designing that game to be as addictive as possible and beta testing it and refining it and- and, you know, doing the level design so it gives you just the right reinforcers at the right pace. And of course we're not gonna be very good at resisting that, because the power of capitalism and tech and- and innovation to kind of, um, exploit our brains is- is pretty awesome.

    8. JR

      Am I being naive or are they just trying to be entertaining? I mean-

    9. GM

      Yeah.

    10. JR

      ... are they just trying to make an amazing game that's totally immersive and sucks you in, or are they really thinking, "Hey, this Geoffrey Miller guy, I wanna get him fucked up on Battlefield Earth"? No, that was the John Travolta movie, right? (laughs)

    11. GM

      Yeah. That- that did not succeed.

    12. JR

      Okay, okay. Let's just say Unreal Tournament.

    13. GM

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      "I wanna get him fucked up on Unreal Tournament and get him completely addicted to this."

    15. GM

      Uh, th- they're just maximizing sales and profit and, you know

    16. GI

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      But are they doing it consciously or are they just trying to make the best possible game that's so entertaining, and then it just, as a side effect, it becomes, uh, addictive?

    18. GM

      I think it's a s- well ... Okay, if you're running a video game company, the- the folks actually doing the programming, right? Character design, level design, whatever, they want it to be awesome. They want it to just be-

    19. JR

      Yeah.

    20. GM

      ... the best game ever that is just so fun to play. But the management knows, "We have to sell it. We have to make it compelling. We have to make people excited about the next version and- and, you know, the add-ons." So I think the- there's kind of like a-... a super ego and id issue going on, even within companies. Where the, the designers just want it to be cool.

    21. JR

      Right.

    22. GM

      And management just wants a viable commercial product.

    23. JR

      But doesn't that just come with something that's cool? I mean, I'm, I'm just playing devil's advocate here, 'cause I'm not exactly sure how... I'm friends with a few guys who, who make video games. Uh, CliffyB, who, uh, worked for Epic Games, who makes, uh ... He showed us Unreal, way back in the day, even before Jaime worked here. We got to see, uh, them making Unreal Tournament, like as it was being made. And, uh, I went to the id offices when they were working on Quake III, which were just these amazing games. And it seemed to me -- and again, I could be naive -- but it seemed to me that all they were doing was just trying to make awesome shit that they like.

    24. GM

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      And then, it became addictive just 'cause it was so good.

    26. GM

      I think that's most of it. Um, yeah, I mean, this summer, like, my girlfriend and I were each doing, working on our next book proposals. And we each got a little bit addicted to Age of Empires HD-

    27. JR

      (laughs)

    28. GM

      ... which was like back in the day, 20 years ago. And it's really fun 'cause we learned a lot about each other just watching each other play. Like, we had such different strategies, and- in terms of like what you build, what you prioritize, how you deal with enemies. Like, it, it's an amazing kind of personality test-

    29. JR

      Mm.

    30. GM

      ... in its own right. Um, and we each got a little bit addicted temporarily in a- in our own way. And I don't think that's an intention of the designers. It's just, if you make anything awesome, whether it's music, whether it's standup comedy-

  3. 30:0045:00

    You have- …

    1. JR

      the average person that has a, like a very intensive job, like say if you're involved in something, uh, computer coding, electronics, something that's 10, 12 hours a day, you're im- engrossed. You don't have a lot of time to focus on other areas. I mean, you don't really have a lot of time to expand your understanding of whether it's biology or mathematics. Whatever it is that doesn't apply to what you do for a living-

    2. GM

      You have-

    3. JR

      ... really have very little time.... so this, this notion that you... Like, people are embarrassed about things they don't know, and I think that's really unfortunate. It's- it's- it- it's one of the main stumbling points when it comes to, like, open and honest discourse. There's not... You're not dumb if you don't know some things, you know? You just don't know some things, and you... There's no way you know everything.

    4. GM

      Yeah, I- I think it's a great point. A lot of people have these cognitively demanding jobs, and that's not just white-collar workers. I mean, a lot of manual trades, um, you've got to think about what you're doing and it- it's hard mental labor. And then you get home and you have dinner and you have the kids and their homework and your family life, and what are you gonna do by the time you finally have some alone time at, whatever, 9:00 p.m.? Are you gonna, you know, turn on the Nature Channel and watch a really hardcore David Attenborough-

    5. JR

      (laughs)

    6. GM

      ... you know, animal behavior documentary?

    7. JR

      Right, right.

    8. GM

      Or are you gonna be like, "I'll just rewatch," you know, um-

    9. JR

      Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. (laughs)

    10. GM

      ... Vanity Fair or Vanity Point or whatever, yeah.

    11. JR

      Yeah, I mean, people wanna escape at that point, yeah. It's... There's not enough time in the day. One of the most beautiful things about podcasts that was completely unexpected for me is that it gives me this very unusual opportunity to sit down and talk to somebody without any interruptions for three hours, which I could never ask someone to do in real life.

    12. GM

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      And it never came up before. Like, if we have dinner, if you and I went out to dinner, we'd be talking, you know, maybe someone else would be with us, different conversations, we'd be eating. "Oh, this is amazing. Did you try that? Oh, that's good. What are you up to? Blah, blah, blah." Those are, like, little simple conversations, it's fun and everything, but it's not completely locked in like this with, uh, the headphones on-

    14. GM

      (laughs)

    15. JR

      ... through a microphone, the knowledge that other people are listening, and that these- these subjects that you're discussing, you're allowing these ideas to play themselves out, and you're- you're sort of moving them around and- and asking questions and looking at them from different angles. And- and to have that liberty and freedom to do that is- is a very rare thing, and for people that get to listen, and I- I enjoy Sam Harris's podcast, in particular, at Radiolabs, one of my favorites. But one of the... Th- there's so many good ones out there, but what's really good about them is that you get a- an- a chance to listen to discourse uninterrupted, un- s- uh, uncensored, undirected.

    16. GM

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      And this is something that I think is sorely missing from the rest of our culture, and it's one of the reasons why these things have caught on so well.

    18. GM

      Yeah, I mean, if you respect the ideas that you're talking about, you should be willing to give time-

    19. JR

      Yes.

    20. GM

      ... and attention-

    21. JR

      Yeah.

    22. GM

      ... and let them kind of breathe, like opening a bottle of wine and just letting it do the aeration thing-

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. GM

      ... before you pour it. And y- it's funny how much of a thirst there is for that. I mean, if you'd asked me 10 years ago, "Would anybody ever spend three hours listening o- to a podcast?" I would have said, "No, there's just this- this one-way acceleration of culture that's gonna be faster and faster. Nobody will watch more than a 90-second clip on YouTube, that'll be it."

    25. JR

      Yeah.

    26. GM

      And instead, it's the opposite way. I think people have a yearning for a more relaxed pace of dialogue that is actually a break from the- the- the frenetic pace of their work life, right?

    27. JR

      Yeah. Um, m- I think even, like, leaning towards things that are, like, tech reviews, things along those lines. Those are getting longer and longer, when people are dis-... I mean, there was never a television show where someone would discuss cellphones in depth with no interruption for over an hour. That's very common now, where- where someone will go over all the different details of a phone and let you know, like, "Here's- here's what's new about the Galaxy Note9," and- and they get fucking hundreds of thousands of views. Like, clearly, someone's missed something.

    28. GM

      Yeah, I mean, even on YouTube, like, you can get 25-minute reviews of, like, an AR-15 accessory.

    29. JR

      Yeah. (laughs)

    30. GM

      Not ju- not just the, like, the rifle, but, like, the red dot scope or whatever.

  4. 45:001:00:00

    Well, whenever you get…

    1. GM

      beliefs are the right ones to have, even though it didn't start out political at all.

    2. JR

      Well, whenever you get freaky, you go left wing. Like, if you get freedom and freaky and drugs, it's left wing. Period, right? I mean, there's no real ... I mean, unless it's some Eyes Wide Shut-type shit, where you're wearing masks and everybody's got a ...

    3. GM

      Right. Uh, yeah, you don't typically hear people like, "Well, I went to Burning Man and I dropped acid and, and I realized, like, Mormon monogamy is really the proper way to live."

    4. JR

      (laughs) Yeah. They're nice people, though. They might be right.

    5. GM

      Yeah, yeah.

    6. JR

      Mormons are the nicest cult of all time. They're, they are some of the nicest folks. I know, uh, if I had to say, if, like, there's one religion, were I to say, like, what are, what are the, what are your expectations of friendliness and niceness? Like, where, where's, where's the highest expectation? For me, it's Mormons.

    7. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    8. JR

      That's one religion. Like, I think it's nonsense. I think Joseph Smith was a little con man in 1820 when he found golden tablets that contained the lost work of Jesus, and only he could read 'em 'cause he had a magic rock, and all that crazy shit. It is absolutely ridiculous. But the end result is a bunch of really nice folks. Like, they have a wonderful community. They're really nice to each other. Once they got rid of all that polygamy shit, you know, once they got rid of the 90 wives and, you know, dressing up like a pilgrim, they, they became, like, a really nice community of people. They're, like, generally really friendly.

    9. GM

      So my granddad, who was a, a business school professor, um, back in the '40s he moved his, his little family to Salt Lake City, and they lived there for a while. And he was really inspired by the kind of family values. And I think that's one reason he sort of went on to have 12 kids of his own.

    10. JR

      Oh.

    11. GM

      And not that he turned Mormon, but he thought, "They're onto something in terms of how seriously they take, um, the future, both on Earth and, and in the afterlife, they believe in."

    12. JR

      Well, in the afterlife, don't they get a planet of their own when they die?

    13. GM

      Right. Uh, well, this is something I loved about the TV series The Expanse. I don't know if you've seen it.

    14. JR

      I keep hearing about it, and I haven't gotten into it yet. It's just too many damn shows that are awesome to watch these days. But as soon as I'm done with Ozark, I'm gonna jump in.

    15. GM

      What I loved about it is it's set maybe a couple hundred years in the future. And so, we've colonized Mars and the asteroid belt, and there's one group of people who are building the first ship to colonize a distant star system. And who's doing it? The Mormons.

    16. JR

      Of course.

    17. GM

      And I thought, of course, of course it's gonna be a religion that has a far-sighted approach, and that's kind of pro-natalist, and that's all about family values, and, and, like, increasing their numbers, and, and ... Yeah, of course it's gonna be them. Not, what, so- uh, uh, social justice warriors putting together a starship?

    18. JR

      (laughs) Yeah. Did you ever see the, um, um, the Osmond Family photograph from one of their albums, their early albums, where they all got their own planet? 'Cause they think that when you die, you get your own planet. And so, the album was based on that concept. And, like, if you, you open up the album, it's like, "Oh, here's f- Planet Donny." Lookit.

    19. GM

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      He's got her own little asteroid belt. (laughs)

    21. GM

      Yeah, they're, they're totally locked and loaded to do the, uh, the interstellar colonization.

    22. JR

      It's strange, though. I mean, it's stra- It's strange the blinders that people go on, that people put on, and that they would put those blinders on. Like ...... it's almost like, if you just can go, "Hey, look, let's just all admit Joseph Smith was full of shit. But we got a good thing going on here, folks. We're all real nice to each other, and there seems to be some real positive energy involved in believing in this higher power and this greater good and this overwhelming sense of community that we all have."

    23. GM

      And they have a sense of humor about it.

    24. JR

      Yeah.

    25. GM

      Like, the way they reacted to the South Park guys doing Book of Mormon-

    26. JR

      It's fantastic.

    27. GM

      ... was like, fair enough. Pretty hilarious.

    28. JR

      They took out a full-page ad-

    29. GM

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      ... in the playbook. I mean, that, tha- th- and that is a brutal musical, in terms of, like, the way they're depicted. Buffoons, believing in nonsense, trying to recruit these indigenous people. It's kind of ... I mean, it's ruthless and hilarious at the same time. And they're like, "Wonderful."

  5. 1:00:001:15:00

    Yeah. …

    1. JR

      pharmaceutical companies.

    2. GM

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      Like they're drug dealers who are against drugs. It's literally like hookers doing a commercial against strippers. That's literally what it's like. And we just accepted this and it- it was all over television, it was everywhere you look. It became parody. I mean, it became preposterous. It was like, this is your brain on drugs, you remember the eggs?

    4. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      And everybody's like, "I'm hungry." I mean, a mi- million comedians had jokes on that. (laughs)

    6. GM

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      You've given me the munchies, man. This is, uh, just insanity that this is allowed to take place, is that drugs that kill enormous numbers of people are allowed to demonize drugs that kill no one any-... ever in the history of use. If you looked at that rationally, if you were something from some other planet that was studying the human race, and y- you saw the way we program people and the way we spend enormous sums of money to project a certain idea and get it into people's heads through these very influential short memorable videos, you'd be like, "This is a culture and a civilization, a c- uh, uh, an organ- an organism that is mad."

    8. GM

      (laughs)

    9. JR

      "This is madness."

    10. GM

      Yeah, I, I often ask, like, myself, w- how is this gonna look in 50 or 100 years to whatever my, my great-grandkids or future people who stumble upon my books or this podcast or whatever? And I think i- if this would make zero sense and would be totally embarrassing, both, um, intellectually and ethically, then don't take it seriously. Uh, in this particular issue, I think it's really important for citizens to understand how much of science is constrained by what can be funded by the federal government, and that we are not actually supported to do certain kinds of research that might be really helpful to people. It's the same thing with sex research, right? It is virtually impossible to get federal funding to do any kind of sex research in America these days. So what do you do? You write a grant to do something else, and then you kind of do the sex research on the side using, like, some of the resources. Um, I don't do this, but everybody I know who does sex research does it.

    11. JR

      Is it because they're concerned that the image of funding sex research versus funding w- whether it's obesity or hunger or, you know, p- poverty, whatever it is, like, th- these are... there's not enough resources to go around. Why would you spend any money studying this? You must be a pervert.

    12. GM

      It's partly that, but it's, it's partly, you know, the individuals in Washington who administer these grants don't want the political flack if some politician discovers, "Oh, you're, you're doing funding on, on, like, how women can have more orgasms. Outrageous."

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. GM

      And it's like, that sounds like one of the most cost-effective ways to increase human happiness-

    15. JR

      (laughs)

    16. GM

      ... I've ever heard of, right? Um-

    17. JR

      Right, but people are embarrassed of orgasms.

    18. GM

      People are embarrassed about it and...

    19. JR

      They're embarrassed of all sex.

    20. GM

      Yeah. Um, marital therapy research, you can do. Like, if you wanna research, how do you make a monogamous relationship less full of stress and argument, y- you can get some money to do that. But even there, l- like, the kind of suggestions you could make are quite restricted, um, in terms of what, what kind of therapy you're allowed to, to research or talk about. So, uh, yeah, I wish citizens understood this, because their tax dollars are not being allocated in the best way to, to deliver the benefits in their real lives to their families and their relationships th- that they, that they could do.

    21. JR

      So to bring it all back to obesity, what, what I would like, and I bet I could say the same about you, is w- we'd like to take some of these sort of influential videos that we've seen done that demonize innocuous drugs, like marijuana, and put those on sugar, put those on how p- uh, pe- people are addicted to sugar. People are addicted to so many things that are causing obesity, so many things that are causing us to have this epidemic of... you know, I mean, if you go to Disneyland, it's one of the saddest things in the world to see how many people are on scooters 'cause they've eaten themselves out of their ability to be mobile on their own. They're just overflowing off the, off the side of these scooters. It's, it's very depressing. And then you see them, what they eat. They're drinking slushies and, you know, eating fucking nonsense. And this, this is a r- a- and, and again, it's another addiction and then the availability of it is so... I mean, imagine if you were a heroin addict and everywhere you went has heroin. That's what it's like to be a sugar addict. If you're a sugar addict, every store you go into is filled with your drug. Every 7-Eleven, right when you go to pay for your gas or whatever you're doing, it's filled with your drug right there in front of you. Your drug's everywhere.

    22. GM

      And, you know, if, if you wanna do something alternative, like, I've been involved in the paleo movement for a few years and, and, like, my girlfriend's vegan, and if you wanna find good paleo or vegan food, it's, like, getting a little easier, but it's not mainstream enough that there's, like, a whole aisle in Walmart devoted to it.

    23. JR

      Right.

    24. GM

      And-

    25. JR

      Just a shitty aisle. (laughs)

    26. GM

      (laughs) Yeah. Uh, so, I don't know. The, the, the food system is a pretty hard nut to crack because there's an awful lot of money at stake and the-

    27. JR

      Yeah.

    28. GM

      ... profit margins on junk food are very, very high.

    29. JR

      And it's also, it's very difficult to keep things on the shelf. Things go... I mean, if you have real fresh food, it goes bad very quickly.

    30. GM

      Yeah.

  6. 1:15:001:22:26

    Mm-hmm. …

    1. JR

      out how to manipulate those shapes, which seems to be right around the corner with the robot fuck dolls. It seems like they're both gonna arrive probably at the same time, where you're gonna be able to choose from, you know, having sex with a robot or having sex with The Hulk. Like, there's gonna be real possibilities that everyone's gonna look like Thor. I mean, this seems like it's not too far away, one, two, three generations, maybe possibly inside of our lifetime-

    2. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JR

      ... we'll have mastered the human form to the point where we're... the world's gonna be preposterous. I mean, it's gonna be like the Star Wars cantina scene everywhere you go.

    4. GM

      Oh, yeah. Well, this is what happens whenever you have a, a biological innovation that opens up new possibilities in terms of the evolution of bodies or behaviors, is you get this adaptive radiation, this explosion of possibilities, like the Cambrian explosion-

    5. JR

      Hmm.

    6. GM

      ... right? 530 million years ago, animals finally figured out how do you program a multicellular body with a nervous system. And as soon as they got that, boom, you've got all these, these bizarre new forms and then you get, you know, dinosaurs and mammals and us. I think once we can program the human genome and you have parents who are like, "I wanna... I wanna select for kids who are, like, really tall and really religious," right? And other parents are like, "I want cute little hobbit babies who are, like, hardcore atheists."

    7. JR

      With furry feet.

    8. GM

      And then you'll, you'll get a divergence.

    9. JR

      Imagine if your parents decided to make you a hobbit. Like, they coulda done anything they want. I mean, but, like, the first early adopters, I imagine, it's gonna be about fetal transformation-

    10. GM

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      ... about taking something that's in the womb and d- uh, manipulating it, and then as it emerges and then evolve- and grows, then you're gonna see what it is. If your fucking parents were just gigantic JRR Tolkien fans and you have f- furry feet and you're two feet tall, you're like, "What the fuck, Mom?" Like, "You asshole."

    12. GM

      "I just wanted a hobbit. I didn't want a baby." Like, uh, well, it was either a hobbit or a cave troll, so you should count your blessings.

    13. JR

      Yeah. That's entirely possible that-

    14. GM

      I think-

    15. JR

      ... we-

    16. GM

      ... that I think the sex bots will come a lot earlier.

    17. JR

      Quicker? Yeah?

    18. GM

      I think within-

    19. JR

      How close are we? What do we look like? What do we look like right now in terms of sex bots? What are we looking at? Let's see. State of the art. Type Google state of the art sex robot.

    20. GM

      (laughs)

    21. JV

      Start talking and I'll see what they have there at... in Texas.

    22. GM

      I think they look pretty good, but they're not-

    23. JR

      They're not good at moving?

    24. GM

      ... that good at, like, language or conversation-

    25. JR

      Right.

    26. GM

      ... or eye contact or-

    27. JR

      Hand jobs.

    28. GM

      ... or movement or whatever.

    29. JR

      Yeah.

    30. GM

      But I think there will be this tipping point where they can do conversation that's good enough, right? It doesn't have to be quite as smart as an actual lover, but it can be a hell of a lot nicer.

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