David Buss: Sex, Dating, Relationships, and Sex Differences | Lex Fridman Podcast #282

1. 0:00 – 2:19

   Introduction

   1. DBDavid Buss0:00

      What do women want? Tell me what all the things women want in a long-term mate.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:04

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DBDavid Buss0:05

      And so I would start at one end of the blackboard, and there were like five blackboards, and they'd say, "Well, I want a mate who's, who's kind, who's understanding, who's intelligent, who's healthy, who's got a good sense of humor, who shares my values." And, and I'd just go, and I'd fill up five blackboards and then run out of space. So and then, and then I turn to the men, and I say, "Well, what do men want?" And then I, I run out of space after about a blackboard and a half-

   4. LFLex Fridman0:29

      Yeah

   5. DBDavid Buss0:29

      ... 'cause they, they can't think of anything else. [laughs] Uh, so women think-

   6. LFLex Fridman0:32

      I think there's a lot of explanations for that. The following is a conversation with David Buss, evolutionary psychologist at UT Austin, researching human sex differences in mate selection. He's considered one of the founders of evolutionary psychology and has authored many exciting and challenging books, including The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating, Bad Men: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault, and The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill. We talk a lot about sex, dating, relationships, and love. I take these at-times controversial topics very seriously. But I also try to inject humor and ridiculousness throughout this conversation, and all conversations I do. [laughs] Please do not mistake my silliness for a lack of seriousness, and my seriousness for a lack of silliness. And above all, do not mistake my suit and tie or my PhD as a sign of intelligence or wisdom. I barely know what I'm talking about on most days. I'm simply curious and hoping to understand, the way a child does, what the heck is going on in this weird and wonderful civilization of ours. If I say something stupid, as I often do, I promise to learn and to improve. As Mark Twain said, "I do not want my schooling to interfere with my education." Open-minded curiosity, I think, is the best guide for a proper and fun lifelong education. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's David Buss.

2. 2:19 – 9:04

   Sex vs Violence

   1. LFLex Fridman2:19

      What is more important in the history of the development of human civilization, sex or violence? So mating strategies-

   2. DBDavid Buss2:27

      [laughs]

   3. LFLex Fridman2:27

      ... or military strategies?

   4. DBDavid Buss2:29

      Oh, well, both are important. I mean, uh, first of all, w- I mean, humans are a sexually reproducing species, and so everything has to go through sex. You know, so in m- our, our mating psychology has to be very rich and complex because, uh, to succeed, uh, for us to be here now, uh, all of our ancestors in a, an unbroken chain, uh, have had to succeed in selecting a fertile mate, attracting that mate, uh, being mutually chosen by that mate, um, stay together long enough, do all the sexual things you need to do to reproduce, have the kids survive, et cetera. So everything has to go through mating. And in that sense, I think it's, uh, I mean, survival is really only, uh, a means to an end, if you, if you will. Uh, so, uh, so, so sex has gotta be important, and humans have a very rich, evolved sexual psychology or an evolved mating psychology. Okay, but, uh, [laughs] I wouldn't minimize the importance of violence either. There's a ton of evidence that humans evolved in the context of small groups and with a fair amount of small group warfare, so intertribal warfare, uh, where, uh, and this is a, a harsh realization, but there historically, um, this is part of our bad evolutionary history, it has been advantageous from a purely reproductive standpoint to conquer, uh, a neighboring group, kill the males, uh, and, uh, get whatever resources they have, including females and, and sexual resources, tool, as well as tools, weapons, territory, and so forth. And so, um, and so I think that we have, uh, and of course, it's, it's typically males, um, who do that. I mean, yes, some females have participated in warfare, but, uh, as far as I know, there's never been a single case in all of human recorded history of women forming a war tribe with other women to attack another group of women and kill them and capture the men, uh, as husbands. But the, these, uh, this phenomenon is common, um, in the ethnographic record in small group, uh, studies. Um, it, it's part of our common thing. So just one concrete example. Unfortunately, he's dead now. He passed away. Napoleon Chagnon, who studied the Yanomamö for many, many years, um, when he first started interviewing them, he, he asked them, you know, "Why do you go to war?" Um, and they said, "Well, to, to capture women, of course. What-- It's the only sensible reason." And then they said, you know, "Why do, why does your culture go to war?" Or however they phrased it. And he, and he said, "Well, you know, we go to war for, to spread democracy and ideas and everything." They basically fell off their logs laughing at such a stupid reason, because why risk your life for anything, um, other than women? Now, of course, it's more complex than that, because, uh, some, um, go to war for, uh, reputational reasons. They say, "If we, if we don't retaliate, 'cause we've been attacked and they've stolen three of our women, if we don't retaliate, then we will get a reputation as exploitable, and then other groups will start to attack us as well." And so they get into these cycles of, um- You know, like the Hatfields and McCoys of, uh, attacks, counterattacks, retribution, and part of it is, is, um, reputation management. Um, so that's, that's between groups, and, and I think that's been the, the primary source of violence, but not the only source. So, um, there's also within group conflict, and so many ethnographies, many traditional societies have things, some of them are ritualized, like wrestling matches or, uh, in the Yanomamö, they have, uh, these, uh, or used to, these, uh, chest-pounding duels, where, so if we're in this match, you challenge me, and I have to, of course-

   5. LFLex Fridman6:43

      So a chest-pounding duel.

   6. DBDavid Buss6:44

      [laughs]

   7. LFLex Fridman6:45

      I like this.

   8. DBDavid Buss6:46

      Yeah, yeah. So the-

   9. LFLex Fridman6:47

      So it's not, you're not hitting each other. You're just, it's like peacocking. You're really-

   10. DBDavid Buss6:50

       Oh, oh, no, you're hitting each other.

   11. LFLex Fridman6:51

       Oh, sorry.

   12. DBDavid Buss6:52

       So yeah.

   13. LFLex Fridman6:52

       Yeah.

   14. DBDavid Buss6:52

       So they, they, they get 20 paces away, and they, they run up, and you punch the other guy in the chest-

   15. LFLex Fridman6:59

       In the chest

   16. DBDavid Buss6:59

       ... and he has to basically stand there, and then he does the same to you.

   17. LFLex Fridman7:03

       Ribs and everything? Oh, wow.

   18. DBDavid Buss7:04

       Uh, and then it's basically last man standing.

   19. LFLex Fridman7:08

       That's, well, I suppose that's better than the face. That's an interesting decision with the chest.

   20. DBDavid Buss7:13

       Yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman7:14

       I mean, I'm sure if you get good at that kind of thing, you could start breaking ribs.

   22. DBDavid Buss7:18

       Yeah.

   23. LFLex Fridman7:18

       And you can get loose about the rules of where exactly in the chest you can hit. What are [laughs]

   24. DBDavid Buss7:23

       Yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman7:23

       And then, and there's that guy who's always known for hitting not exactly-

   26. DBDavid Buss7:26

       [laughs]

   27. LFLex Fridman7:26

       ... in the chest.

   28. DBDavid Buss7:27

       Right. Where-

   29. LFLex Fridman7:27

       Accidentally missing. [laughs]

   30. DBDavid Buss7:28

       Right, right. The, the, the Mike Tyson of-
3. 9:04 – 21:00

   Mating strategies

   1. LFLex Fridman9:04

      Words are funny, powerful things. You authored the textbook titled Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of Mind in its, uh, sixth edition. What is the magic ingredient that gave birth to Homo sapiens, do you think? Is it fire, cooking, ability to collaborate, share ideas-

   2. DBDavid Buss9:24

      Oh

   3. LFLex Fridman9:24

      ... ability to contemplate our own mortality, all that kind of stuff?

   4. DBDavid Buss9:27

      Yeah. Well, I think it's hard to isolate one factor. I know, uh, I know you've had Richard Wrangham on this-

   5. LFLex Fridman9:33

      Yeah

   6. DBDavid Buss9:33

      ... podcast. It was a wonderful, wonderful interview, and, uh, he used to be a colleague of mine when I was a professor at, at Michigan, and, um, I've stayed in touch with him, uh, on, off. He's a brilliant, brilliant guy, and he thinks, uh, fire and cooking have been one of the key things, but I think it's hard to isolate. Um, I would trace at least part of our uniqueness to, uh, the uniqueness of our mating system. So we have in, in mating, uh, unlike chimpanzees, who are our closest primate relative, and of which Richard Wrangham is, is a, a world's expert, but they have basically no long-term pair-bonded mating.

   7. LFLex Fridman10:16

      Mm-hmm.

   8. DBDavid Buss10:16

      Okay? They, female comes into estrus, all the mating, all the sex happens, most of the sex happens during that window. But humans have evolved long-term pair-bonded mating, uh, and it's, it's only one mating strategy, but it's a really important one, and then you have with that, um, male parental care. So basically, again, you go back to chimps, and chimps, uh, with whom we share more than 98% of our DNA, the males don't do anything. So they inseminate the females, but then when the kids are born, they basically don't do much of anything in terms of provisioning and so forth. But human males do. We invest, um, in, in the modern [laughs] environment, could be decades, you know, especially with the boomerang kids and everything. But, uh, we're, uh, now not all males do, but compared to the vast majority of mammals, we are a very heavy male parental investment species.

   9. LFLex Fridman11:15

      Could you, uh, if it's okay, and I'll ask you a bunch of dumb, basic questions, uh, 'cause those are fun. Uh, could you define mating here? Are we, does mating refer to the, the, the series of sexual acts that lead to reproduction? Does it include, like, dating and love and camaraderie, uh, loyalty, all those things?

   10. DBDavid Buss11:37

       Yes. Uh, I, you know-

   11. LFLex Fridman11:38

       Yes. [laughs]

   12. DBDavid Buss11:39

       Yeah, yeah. When I first started studying, yeah, I don't re- So it's, when I first started studying it, I looked for the right term, and, uh, obviously it's much broader than sex. So by mating, I include Things like mate selection, uh, mate preferences, mate attraction, mate retention, mate poaching, um, mate expulsion. Okay

   13. LFLex Fridman12:01

       Mate poaching, that sounds fun.

   14. DBDavid Buss12:03

       Yeah.

   15. LFLex Fridman12:03

       So the early, the, um, the game theoretic str- strategy of mate selection is primary what mating, what mating is about? Or do you include the long-term once, uh, you agree that you're gonna stick this out for a while and have multiple children, is that also mating?

   16. DBDavid Buss12:20

       Yes, I include that as well.

   17. LFLex Fridman12:22

       Okay.

   18. DBDavid Buss12:22

       So it's, it's, it's a broad-

   19. LFLex Fridman12:23

       Category

   20. DBDavid Buss12:23

       ... broad definition and, and, and absolutely includes the emotion of love. Um, and of course there are many different types of love. Brotherly love, love of parents t- for children. Uh, but love, I think, uh, and this is one of the shifts in the social sciences. So when I was an undergraduate, for example, I was taught that love is this, um, invention by some Caucasian European poets a couple hundred years ago. And, um, and it turns out that's not the case. So you, you, there's been extensive cross-cultural evidence now that, um, that people, not every person in all cultures of course, but all, some people in all cultures experience this emotion that we call love.

   21. LFLex Fridman13:07

       And for the word love, are we going to, in this conversation, try to stick to sort of romantic love for the, the, f- for the, for the meaning of the word love?

   22. DBDavid Buss13:15

       Well, well, there, uh, that's, that's a great question [laughs] . But, um, I mean, there, uh, it's pretty well-established that there are these different phases o- of, of love. So there's this, uh, infatuation phase where, uh, our psychology, we, we get obsessional thoughts. It's hard to focus on work. When we're not with the person, we're thinking about the other person constantly. Uh, so there's kind of like idiol- uh, i- ideational intrusion-

   23. LFLex Fridman13:44

       Mm-hmm

   24. DBDavid Buss13:44

       ... into our psychology. But you, you, you can't sustain that. I mean, it'd be, uh... And then of course, uh, there's a, a, pardon the phrase, but what I describe as the fucking like bunnies phase of-

   25. LFLex Fridman13:56

       Yeah

   26. DBDavid Buss13:56

       ... of this, you know, intense sexuality. But-

   27. LFLex Fridman14:00

       Mm-hmm

   28. DBDavid Buss14:00

       ... people have other adaptive problems they have to solve. Uh, and so you can't stay in that state for too long, and so that subsides over time and, um, and develops into, um, at least in many cases, this warm attachment.

   29. LFLex Fridman14:15

       Cuddling bunnies. Long-term cuddling bunnies-

   30. DBDavid Buss14:18

       Yes. That's-
4. 21:00 – 24:54

   Social construct of beauty

   1. LFLex Fridman21:00

      Yeah, because it's all socially constructed anyway. So this, uh, I mean, the question I have is you said there's, the interesting thing about mating strategies is there's a small pool of desirable mates. And what the word desirable means is socially defined almost by on purpose to make sure the pool always stays small.

   2. DBDavid Buss21:22

      I would have a couple thoughts on that. Now, it's an interesting i-issue, set of issues you raise. Okay, one is that, um, w-we ha-- I think we have evolved adaptations. Part of our psychology is to detect differences. Um, and so this is why, um, like a, I don't know, a, a m- a Martian or an alien coming down, uh, they might look at humans and say, "Boy, they all, they all look alike."

   3. LFLex Fridman21:46

      Mm-hmm.

   4. DBDavid Buss21:46

      Uh, it's one, just like we look at, uh, I don't know, zebras or whatever-

   5. LFLex Fridman21:49

      Yeah

   6. DBDavid Buss21:49

      ... and we think they all look, look alike. Um, but what's important in decision-making, especially in the mating domain or even friendship domain or, or coalitional selection domain, is the differences. And, and so I, I noticed this, just a concrete example of this. Um, uh, I was sitting around, this is again, uh, ages ago, uh, uh, watching a, um, a, a something like a Miss America beauty contest. And people in the r- with a bunch of other people, and they were saying, "Boy, did you see Miss North Carolina? What a dog." And, and so-

   7. LFLex Fridman22:26

      Yeah

   8. DBDavid Buss22:26

      ... this is astonishing. And so here are like, uh, 50 contestants who were selected as the most attractive in their state, presumably, um, although they, they claim it's based on talent. Um, but, um, but we notice the differences. Um, and, and, and, uh, and this is why I would push back a little bit on the term socially constructed because I think it's, um, there are many different meanings of that, of that phrase. And-

   9. LFLex Fridman22:53

      Sure

   10. DBDavid Buss22:53

       ... one meaning i- i- that some people have, one connotation is that it's arbitrary, and I don't think it's arbitrary. So, uh, this is another, been another shift in understanding standards of beauty, where it used to be believed in the, in the social sciences you can't judge a book by its cover. Beauty is only, uh, skin deep. Um, you know, don't judge people on the superficial characteristics. But in fact, physical appearance provides a wealth of information about the health status of someone. Their, uh, in the case of males, their physical formidability, and we have formidability assessment adaptations, and then fertility as well. So there are a very predictable set of cues to fertility that have evolved to be part of our standards of attractiveness, and, and they're not arbitrary. There are some culturally arbitrary ones, so like- You go to the, the Maori in New Zealand, for example, and they find tattoos on their lips to be very attractive. Uh, so there are some culturally arbitrary things, um, but, uh, standards of beauty like, uh, cues to youth, cues to health, uh, in women, clear skin, uh, full lips, clear eyes, lustrous hair, um, a small waist-hip ratio, that is, uh, circumference of the waist relative to the hips, uh, is a cue to youth and fertility and, and a c- and a cue to health. Symmetrical features, so we are a, a bilaterally, bilaterally symmetrical species, but we all have, we all have, uh, deviations from perfect symmetry that are due to different things, so mutation load, uh, environmental insults, diseases during development, and so forth.

   11. LFLex Fridman24:45

       All right. But that, that's kind of deeply biological. Like, there's cues that indicate something that is biologically true ab- about a particular

5. 24:54 – 28:56

   Evolution of mating evaluation

   1. LFLex Fridman24:54

      human. So if we... We'll talk about mo- both men and women. Uh, so we're now talking about what men want in the mating strategies when they look at women. So you're saying small waist-to-hip ratio.

   2. DBDavid Buss25:10

      Right.

   3. LFLex Fridman25:12

      Is-- How much of that is our deep biological past, on top of which we can build all kinds of different standards of beauty? So, you know, we have many things going on in our brain. Um, our value of other humans in selecting a mate might, uh, incorporate a lot more variables as we get into the twenty-first century. So how quickly does our, um, valuation of a mate, uh, evolve relative to the evolution of, um, the human species?

   4. DBDavid Buss25:49

      You're using evolve in the sense of culturally evolve?

   5. LFLex Fridman25:51

      Culturally evolve-

   6. DBDavid Buss25:52

      Uh, uh-

   7. LFLex Fridman25:52

      ... and then relative to biologically evolve.

   8. DBDavid Buss25:55

      Yeah. Uh, well, uh, I think that there are, um, there are some things that are biologically evolved, some standards, standards of attractiveness, um, and there are some of the things that I mentioned. So in male evaluation of females, l- let me back up and just say what is the underlying logic? Why would we have standards of attractiveness? So, um, it, it, it, h- here's the interesting thing, and this gets back to your earlier question about what is, um, unique to humans or, or what distinguishes us or what set us off on the path that we did, is, um, chimpanzee males do not have any difficulty figuring out when a female is fertile. She signals that like crazy with the bright red genital swel- uh, swelling, uh, olfactory cues. She goes into estrus. In humans, we have, and this was actually a third thing that I wanted to add earlier, we have concealed ovulation, okay? Relatively concealed ovulation, which is remarkable given how close we are primatologically to, to chimpanzees. Uh, and so, um, uh, there's, there's a little bit of evidence that there are subtle changes that occur when women ovulate, non- women not on hormonal contraceptives.

   9. LFLex Fridman27:16

      But it's mostly concealed.

   10. DBDavid Buss27:17

       But it is, it is largely concealed.

   11. LFLex Fridman27:18

       Do you think that's a feature or bug in, uh... Like, did we evolve that? Is that a c- is that a-

   12. DBDavid Buss27:24

       [laughs]

   13. LFLex Fridman27:25

       ... a cool inven- a powerful invention for the human species?

   14. DBDavid Buss27:28

       I, I think it's, it's an adaptation in women that women have evolved concealed ovulation, uh, and I think it's a feature, not a bug. Uh-

   15. LFLex Fridman27:36

       Yeah, it gives more-- Would it give more power for women to select, uh, a mate?

   16. DBDavid Buss27:45

       There are a couple different hypotheses about it, but the one that I think is most plausible, uh, is that, you know, if, again, comparing it to chimps, female goes into estrus. The male just has to try to monopolize her while she's in that estrus phase, and then they basically ignore the females after that. If you can't know when a f- when a woman is fertile, then you have to stick around a lot longer, and so I think long-term pair bonding co-evolved with concealed ovulation, uh, and with that also a very different form of sexuality, which is that we have sex throughout the, uh, the ovulatory cycle, um, and, uh, chimps don't. You know, there's, there's a little bit of mating, a little bit of sex toward the edges of the, um, estrus cycle, but, but very little.

   17. LFLex Fridman28:41

       So that, that actually makes mating a more fundamental part of, um, interaction between humans than it does for chimps, so m- meaning like year-round, every day-

   18. DBDavid Buss28:52

       [laughs]

   19. LFLex Fridman28:52

       ... we're constantly selecting mates in terms of biologically speaking. So what,

6. 28:56 – 34:08

   Mating selection desires

   1. LFLex Fridman28:56

      what else, what, what else do m- men want-

   2. DBDavid Buss28:59

      Well, uh-

   3. LFLex Fridman28:59

      ... today in the twenty-first century versus in, in the caveman days?

   4. DBDavid Buss29:04

      A wonderful question. To answer it, though, I have to distinguish between long-term mating and short-term mating. Uh, and in long-term mating, it gets very complicated. So as, as a, um, uh-

   5. LFLex Fridman29:18

      [laughs] That's one way to put it, yeah.

   6. DBDavid Buss29:20

      Uh, [laughs] uh, well, well, so, so I teach a course in, in human sexuality at, at University of Texas at Austin, and, um, one of the things, this is back in the days when there were chalkboards and you, and you, and you taught with a piece of chalk and wrote things on the board, um, and what I would do is I would ask the class, I teach this large class, one to two hundred, I'd say, "What do women want?" Tell me what all the things women want in a long-term mate.

   7. LFLex Fridman29:47

      Mm-hmm.

   8. DBDavid Buss29:48

      And so I would start at one end of the blackboard, and there were like five blackboards, and they say, "Well, I want a mate who's, who's kind, who's understanding, who's intelligent, who's healthy, who's got a good sense of humor, who shares my values." And, and I'd just go, and I'd fill up five blackboards and then run out of space.

   9. LFLex Fridman30:05

      Mm-hmm.

   10. DBDavid Buss30:06

       And, and so you, uh, uh, first this large number of characteristics that people want, and then specific magnitudes of those characteristics or, or amounts. So I'd say, "You, you want a mate who's, say, generous with their resources."

   11. LFLex Fridman30:20

       Mm-hmm.

   12. DBDavid Buss30:20

       And they say, "Yes, w- I want a mate who's generous with their resources." So I says, "So, like a guy who," and this is in women's mate selection, "a guy who at the end of every month gets his paycheck and gives it to the, uh, local wino, um, on, on the drag." And they say, "Well, well, no, not that generous."

   13. LFLex Fridman30:35

       Yeah.

   14. DBDavid Buss30:35

       "Okay, generous toward me [laughs] -"

   15. LFLex Fridman30:38

       Right

   16. DBDavid Buss30:38

       ... "not, not indiscriminately generous." And so you want a mate who's, um, ambitious, you know, who's a, a hard worker. Yes, but, but not a workaholic, you know? And so, uh, a- and so then you get to interactions among different characteristics, um-

   17. LFLex Fridman30:55

       So there's a lot of characteristics, a lot of variables in this very complex optimization problem for women.

   18. DBDavid Buss31:00

       Yes, that's right, and more so for women than for men. So and then, and then I turn to the men, and I say, "Well, what do men want?" And then I, I run out of space after about a blackboard and a half-

   19. LFLex Fridman31:11

       Yeah

   20. DBDavid Buss31:11

       ... 'cause they, they can't think of anything else. [laughs] Uh, so women think-

   21. LFLex Fridman31:14

       I think there's a lot of explanations for that. [laughs]

   22. DBDavid Buss31:17

       [laughs]

   23. LFLex Fridman31:17

       Besides the, the lack of the number of variables, it's also, you know, um, [laughs] I mean, it's, that's interesting. So what, what's the difference between the variables? So on the men's side, what are the variables?

   24. DBDavid Buss31:27

       Well, there, in long-term mate selection, there, there's a lot of overlap.

   25. LFLex Fridman31:32

       Sure.

   26. DBDavid Buss31:32

       Okay? Um, so things like intelligence, um, good health, sense of humor, um, a- an agreeable personality, someone who's not too neurotic or moody or, or emotionally volatile. Uh, but there are key differences as well, and the differences stem from, they, they basically fall in the delimited number of domains. So for men, it's physical attractiveness, physical appearance, and youth are the two real big ones. Okay? Men prioritize those more than women do. And so that's why you have phenomena such as, uh, this, uh, quote, lo- love at first sight, where sometimes men can, they can walk into a party, and they see a woman across the room, and they say, "That, I'm gonna marry that woman. That's the woman for me." Women very rarely do that. And most men do- don't do that either, but men are much more inclined to fall in love at first sight. That's because they prioritize physical appearance. Why? Because physical appearance provides that, this wealth of information about a woman's fertility status, and this is from, from an evolutionary perspective, from a, a purely reproductive perspective, in, in business school, they would call it job one. Job one is you have to select a fertile mate. So those who, in our evolutionary past, who selected infertile mates, so post-menopausal women, for example, um, did not become our ancestors. So we are all the descendants of this long and unbroken chain of ancestors who, all of whom succ- succ- succeeded in selecting a fertile mate. But fertility cannot be observed directly. Uh, it can-

   27. LFLex Fridman33:19

       You have to use some cues.

   28. DBDavid Buss33:21

       Ex- exactly. And the- and there are cues that are probabilistically related to this underlying quality of fertility that we can't observe directly.

   29. LFLex Fridman33:30

       And we're doing that computation in our heads. What about men? What do men want for short-term mating?

   30. DBDavid Buss33:37

       Well, so for short-term mating, um, for both sexes, uh, physical appearance, uh, looms very large. So, so in c- so women are... Now, physical attractiveness and appearance, they're important for women in long-term mate selection, so I don't wanna, um, mislead anyone on that. They're just not as important as they are for men. Um, and so a lot of characteristics come for women before physical appearance, physical attractiveness.

7. 34:08 – 40:32

   Difficulties of monogamy

   1. DBDavid Buss34:08

      Um-

   2. LFLex Fridman34:09

      So women, so if we switch to women, what do women want? They want also physical appearance for short-term mating.

   3. DBDavid Buss34:17

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman34:17

      Phys- physical attractiveness. What else?

   5. DBDavid Buss34:21

      Uh, well-

   6. LFLex Fridman34:22

      Some cues that represent physical attractiveness, that maybe represent health.

   7. DBDavid Buss34:26

      Well, well here's, this is your, uh, uh, it's-

   8. LFLex Fridman34:29

      I'm learning a lot here.

   9. DBDavid Buss34:30

      Yeah. [laughs] Well, so, uh, uh, but you're, you're also a- asking a very interesting question about, uh, what is, uh, controversial within the evolutionary psychology, um, field, right, right? And not totally resolved. So-

   10. LFLex Fridman34:43

       That's why you're on the sixth edition of the book, and there, there could be-

   11. DBDavid Buss34:47

       [laughs]

   12. LFLex Fridman34:47

       ... a lot more editions coming.

   13. DBDavid Buss34:48

       Yeah, yeah. I revise it every four years or so because there's four years of, um, new, interesting work, and so it deserves updating. But the traditional, I should say, uh, uh, answer to your question is that women go for good genes, cues to good genes in the short term, and cues to resources in the long term, and this has been a hypothesis that advocated, I didn't come up with this, this one, um, by, um, Steve Gangestad, a former student of mine, Marty Haselton, Randy Thornhill, and some other, um, very smart players in the field. And, um, and what they used as, uh, markers of good genes are things like symmetrical features, uh, and masculine features, so strong jawline, high shoulder-to-hip ratio, um, you know, o- other, other sorts of masculine features. But I started to doubt this Explanation for what women want in the short term, [inhales] um, because of some other findings. So for, for women, a lot of short-term mating is not one-night stand mating. So, but rather it's, uh, affair mating. So, uh, so if you ask the question, why do women have affairs? So let's m- m- restrict the question for the moment. M- my colleagues would argue, well, women have affairs because they're trying to get good genes from one guy while in-- they're getting an investment from the regular partner-

   14. LFLex Fridman36:27

       Mm-hmm

   15. DBDavid Buss36:27

       ... the, the husband. Okay. But the problem is that when women have affairs, uh, 70-plus percent tend to fall in love with or become attached to their a- affair partner. Now-

   16. LFLex Fridman36:41

       Oh, sorry, what percentage? Seventy?

   17. DBDavid Buss36:42

       Uh, yeah, 70-

   18. LFLex Fridman36:43

       Some large majority.

   19. DBDavid Buss36:44

       Yeah, 70%-

   20. LFLex Fridman36:45

       Wow

   21. DBDavid Buss36:46

       ... or, or, or more. In contrast to men, where it's more like 30% of men who have affairs fall in love with or become attached to their affair partner. So but from a design perspective, um, an engineering perspective, if you will, uh, that's a disastrous thing if you're just trying to get good genes. So you're trying to retain the investment of one guy-

   22. LFLex Fridman37:08

       Yeah

   23. DBDavid Buss37:09

       ... while getting good genes surreptitiously from this, you know, guy who presumably has more. Falling in love with him, becoming attached, that's, that's not a feature you [chuckles] want.

   24. LFLex Fridman37:20

       Yeah, it's bad engineering. [laughs]

   25. DBDavid Buss37:22

       Yeah, e- exactly. It's bad engineering. And so, and so I developed a, a- an alternative, uh, hypothesis that I call the mate-switching hypothesis, which is that, um, affairs are one way in which women, um, divest themselves of a, uh, a cost-inflicting partner or a partner who, uh, things aren't working out well with, and it's a way to either transition back into the mating market or to, or to trade up in, in the mating market. Uh, and, and so, a- and anyway, so these are, these are probably the two leading hypotheses about why, why women have affairs, and I am putting my money on the mate-switching hypothesis. Um, my, uh, esteemed colleagues are putting their money on the good genes hypothesis. But I think the evidence for the good genes hypothesis is starting to, um, look shakier than initially, um-

   26. LFLex Fridman38:17

       Well, this is a heated debate

   27. DBDavid Buss38:18

       ... proposed.

   28. LFLex Fridman38:18

       I mean, mate switching sounds like a-- so, so from a game theory perspective, from an engineering perspective, this seems to make a lot more sense, unless you put a lot of value in lifelong, sort of in the long-term mating, uh, some kind of value in the, um, lifelong singular relationship, like monogamy.

   29. DBDavid Buss38:39

       Yeah. Uh-

   30. LFLex Fridman38:40

       And maybe we do psychologically, maybe there's a, a big s- evolutionary advantage to that.
8. 40:32 – 43:08

   Importance of male appearance

   1. DBDavid Buss40:32

      And those conditions will differ for men and women.

   2. LFLex Fridman40:34

      What are some of the cues in terms of what women want? Um, you know, go to the gym. It's a, a, a ho- hotly contested debate. You said evolutionary psychology, and this is, uh, in the, uh, bro psychology forums that I visit, uh, multiple times a day. No, I'm just kidding. Uh, w- what, what's the most important cue of appearance for guys? Um, what muscle group is the most important to work on?

   3. DBDavid Buss41:02

      Well-

   4. LFLex Fridman41:02

      Do women care about biceps, is what I'm asking.

   5. DBDavid Buss41:05

      In terms of physical appearance, um, uh, a, a good, um, uh, shoulder to hip ratio, so relatively wide shoulders relative to hips, um, is, is one. Women tend to prefer men who are, uh, physically fit and well-toned, but not muscle-bound. So like if you go to, oh, I don't know, some of like those early, uh, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was doing the Mis- Mister whatever it was contest, you see-

   6. LFLex Fridman41:41

      Oh

   7. DBDavid Buss41:41

      ... women don't find those attractive, the, the extremely muscle-bound guys. But they like, uh, a guy who's physically fit, high shoulder to hip ratio. Uh, they like guys who are physically taller than they are.

   8. LFLex Fridman41:54

      Mm-hmm.

   9. DBDavid Buss41:55

      Um, and guys who are a bit above average in, in height. So- If the average, so if, um, you know, the average is, I don't know, five nine, five ten in that there for humans, depending on the culture, women prefer a- an inch or two taller than that. Um, so, um-

   10. LFLex Fridman42:15

       So shoulders, height, dad bod. What, what, what's dad bod?

   11. DBDavid Buss42:20

       [laughs]

   12. LFLex Fridman42:20

       Why don't, why, why do you want a dad bod? What, why do you-

   13. DBDavid Buss42:23

       Well, well, what-

   14. LFLex Fridman42:24

       Why, why not, how do I define dad bod?

   15. DBDavid Buss42:26

       Wait, wait, what is a dad bod?

   16. LFLex Fridman42:28

       Dad bod is not muscle bound.

   17. DBDavid Buss42:30

       Okay, so out of shape.

   18. LFLex Fridman42:31

       A little, no.

   19. DBDavid Buss42:32

       No?

   20. LFLex Fridman42:32

       No, just a little bit.

   21. DBDavid Buss42:34

       Uh-huh.

   22. LFLex Fridman42:34

       A little bit of, uh, a cushion for the pushing.

   23. DBDavid Buss42:38

       [laughs]

   24. LFLex Fridman42:38

       I don't know what the kids call it these days. Uh, but just a little bit, a little bit of, of fat. So what's, why, do, do they not want, uh, guys to be obsessed with their body? Is that, or is that some evolutionary thing?

   25. DBDavid Buss42:50

       Ye- yeah, I think that, um, women might interpret a guy who is so obsessed with his body that he's, uh, they might view that as a sign of nar- narcissism.

   26. LFLex Fridman43:02

       Yes.

   27. DBDavid Buss43:03

       Um, and that's not a good trait.

   28. LFLex Fridman43:06

       [laughs] Uh,

9. 43:08 – 46:23

   Importance of wealth

   1. LFLex Fridman43:08

      what about like cultures where large sort of overweight men are valued? Is that, how do you explain, like how much can we override the evolutionary desires with our sort of cultural f- fashions of the day that maybe represent other desirable aspects like wealth?

   2. DBDavid Buss43:27

      Well, wealth is, uh, resources have always been important, um, especially to women. So is a man able to acquire resources, and i- is he willing to dispense them to her and her kids? So that's always important. In traditional cultures, that boils down to hunting skills. So if, um, so I asked a, a colleague friend, Kim Hill, who's, uh, probably the world's leading expert on the Ache of Paraguay, and, uh, and you ask Kim like what, what leads to high status in the Ache in males, hunting skills. That's, that's-

   3. LFLex Fridman44:05

      Nice

   4. DBDavid Buss44:05

      ... the one, the one thing, the big variable.

   5. LFLex Fridman44:08

      And that's resources.

   6. DBDavid Buss44:09

      And, and that's resources. Now, what's, what's interesting about modern culture is we have cash economies.

   7. LFLex Fridman44:16

      [laughs]

   8. DBDavid Buss44:16

      But cash economies are relatively recent. Um, and y- you know, historically, there's over the vast, uh, ninety-nine percent of human evolutionary history, you weren't able to stockpile resources in the way that you-

   9. LFLex Fridman44:29

      Mm-hmm

   10. DBDavid Buss44:29

       ... are today. Um, although there are in- interestingly certain ways you can do it. So, so like you, you, you kill a large game animal. Okay? You bring it back, you get some status points because you give some to your family, you, you can share it more widely with the group, et cetera. Um, but, um, but it's gonna go bad, right? You can't just say, "I'm gonna keep this carcass around for the next several months." Okay, but, and, and I think, I think it's Steve Pinker who might have used to coin this phrase, that they, they store the meat in the bodies of other people. And so, for example, they store it in their friends. So, you know, um, hunting success is, um, you know, it's a, it's a hit or miss kind of thing. So you might come back empty-handed four times out of five, but and, but when you do, you share your meat with others. And then when, you know, and then they reciprocate by sharing their meat with you. And so, and so you can store resources in the bodies of other people, which is I think an interesting way to think about it, but that can only go so far. And when you have cash economies, you have both the ability to stockpile resources, but also this kind of explosion in, um, inequality of resources, and that's evolutionarily recent.

   11. LFLex Fridman45:50

       What about, now this is the difference between the Huberman, the excellent Huberman Lab podcast that you did that people should listen to. He is a brilliant scientist, a, um, sort of, uh, a, a rigorous analyst of what is true in the scientific community, also helps you with great advice on how to live. Now, in contrast to that, I am a, um, a terrible, uh, [laughs] uh, almost idiotic level journalist, so this is what you have to

10. 46:23 – 50:15

    Penis and breasts

    1. LFLex Fridman46:23

       deal with. Another thing that people talk about that women care about is penis size. Does penis size matter for women in sexual selection?

    2. DBDavid Buss46:33

       Well, um, there's controversy about that.

    3. LFLex Fridman46:35

       In the evolutionary psychology community?

    4. DBDavid Buss46:37

       Well, I, it's not-

    5. LFLex Fridman46:38

       Is there papers on penis size?

    6. DBDavid Buss46:40

       I wouldn't say, uh, scientific papers, so speculations, uh-

    7. LFLex Fridman46:44

       Sure

    8. DBDavid Buss46:44

       ... a- about-

    9. LFLex Fridman46:45

       So not in nature or, or in science.

    10. DBDavid Buss46:47

        Yeah, yeah, no, nothing, nothing, uh, that I've seen there. Um, you know, I, I, I think that there's individual variability. Um, so, uh, this is something that comes up, again, you know, when I ask women in the class, my classes, you know, "What do women want?" Some of them will say, you know, a large penis. Uh, but I think there's variability, um, in, in that preference, and it also might depend in part on the variability in the woman's anatomy. So, um-

    11. LFLex Fridman47:18

        But do you think there's something fundamental in terms of evolutionary psychology, in terms of evolution, or is this a quirk of culture that's current, that's maybe somehow connected to pornography or something like that?

    12. DBDavid Buss47:30

        Yeah. My, my guess is it's, it's something that's, um, perhaps a quirk of culture or, or something that is e- evolutionarily recent.

    13. LFLex Fridman47:40

        Hmm.

    14. DBDavid Buss47:40

        Um, but, um, but, but I don't know. I mean, it's, it's a topic that hasn't been explored much. I've never done work on it and, um-

    15. LFLex Fridman47:47

        Well, somebody should do a PhD, uh, sort of some archeologist should do a PhD on the history of human civilization a- and its, uh, valuation of penis size and, and the correlation of penis size to the value of the male. Okay. Moving on, another absurd question t- in terms of what men want. Again, definitely not a Huberman Lab podcast question.

    16. DBDavid Buss48:14

        [laughs]

    17. LFLex Fridman48:16

        Why do men, let's say a large fraction of men, love boobs?

    18. DBDavid Buss48:22

        Well, uh, I, I think that, uh [laughs]

    19. LFLex Fridman48:25

        You're one of the, uh, most cited evolutionary psychologists, and this is what you signed up for, this, this, these kinds of questions.

    20. DBDavid Buss48:32

        Que- que- questions like this. Yeah, yeah. Well, so again, this is something I haven't studied directly, but, um-

    21. LFLex Fridman48:37

        [laughs]

    22. DBDavid Buss48:38

        ... uh, uh, scientifically. [laughs]

    23. LFLex Fridman48:40

        Yes, yes.

    24. DBDavid Buss48:41

        Uh, but, um, but yeah, there's been some work on that. And, and it's, um-

    25. LFLex Fridman48:45

        Another cultural quirk, perhaps?

    26. DBDavid Buss48:47

        Uh, no, I don't think it's a cultural quirk, because I think it's the, uh, the shape that matters a lot, because shape is gonna be a, a, a cue to fertility. Uh, and so one of the things that humans are attracted to in the opposite sex is sexually dimorphic features, and breasts are a sexually dimorphic feature. And-

    27. LFLex Fridman49:10

        What does dimorphic mean?

    28. DBDavid Buss49:11

        Uh, d- difference between, difference in morphology between males and females.

    29. LFLex Fridman49:16

        Got it.

    30. DBDavid Buss49:17

        Um, dimening to morphic morphology. Uh, so, um, and, and women don't develop, uh, breasts until, um, puberty or po- post-puberty. Uh, and, and so, uh, as a sexually dimorphic characteristic, we tend to be attracted to that. Same is true with, by the way, with the waist to hip ratio that we mentioned earlier. Uh, prior to puberty, males and females have very similar waist hip ratios. But at puberty, um, there's a differential, uh, hip development and fat deposition that creates a sexual dimorphism, uh, with respect to waist hip ratio. And so again, that's, men are attracted to this waist hip ratio. The, n- no man consciously says that they find this woman att- more attractive than that woman. They don't think, "Ah, she has a waist hip ratio of .70. That's for me."
11. 50:15 – 53:14

    Fashion

    1. LFLex Fridman50:15

       w- so isn't that fascinating that we just build these entire industries of fashion and what we find beautiful around these kinds of ideas. And we just, a- and then n- n- not just, not just fashion, and then we build, uh, we have s- uh, sociological tensions about whether we should care about this kind of thing or not. There's, there's battles in that space. Th- it's, it's like [sighs] they seem so simple. It's just the human body, and we wear clothes. First of all, that's, that's a funny thing. What, what's the, why are we wearing clothes? What's the shame aspect-

    2. DBDavid Buss50:52

       Yeah

    3. LFLex Fridman50:52

       ... of covering up the body? Is that another feature, or is that, what is that?

    4. DBDavid Buss50:55

       Yeah. That's a, that's a, that's an interesting question, and I, I don't know. Um-

    5. LFLex Fridman50:59

       It's just like hiding a, a ovulation. Maybe that's another hiding, like, uh, maybe hiding is a great game theoretic thing to play with 'cause it can give you, it can give the powerless more power by covering, maybe.

    6. DBDavid Buss51:11

       Well, well, well, I think there are f- a few things. So one is the sort of arbitrary features of fashion, and then the other is the aspects of fashion that attempt to, um, magnify, uh, what is inherent in our evolved standards of beauty.

    7. LFLex Fridman51:29

       Yeah.

    8. DBDavid Buss51:29

       So for example, um, women tend to wear things that accentuate their waist hip ratio. Um, uh, so I mean, s- historically, those, um, w- in the old days, corsets, for example, cinched the woman's, uh, waist. Um, uh, and you wouldn't see fashion develop in a way that made a woman seem, um, old, unhealthy, um, uh, pockmarked, uh, signs of open sores or lesions, or right. There, there are certain domains, um, design spaces that you wouldn't, that, that no culture would develop. Um, so but there are arbitrary features, but sometimes they're not entirely arbitrary, or they're arbitrary at one level of description but not at another. So for example, fashion tends to be linked with status, and that's why it constantly changes. It's the high status people start wearing a certain type of clothing, uh, and then when the lower status people imitate them, then they have to shift to signal their status. And so I think the fashion and clothing is in part linked to status.

    9. LFLex Fridman52:42

       So this is not you talking. This is me. I just wanna make a, a, a statement, a profound statement, that I think yoga pants, now this is broadly speaking-

    10. DBDavid Buss52:50

        [laughs]

    11. LFLex Fridman52:51

        ... but yoga pants is one of the greatest inventions in human history. There's fire and yoga-

    12. DBDavid Buss52:56

        [laughs]

    13. LFLex Fridman52:56

        And I'm just gonna leave it there. I'm a, I'm a fan. Um, and I have, uh, female friends that talk about how comfortable yoga pants are, which is what I'm referring to when I say it's one of the greatest inventions, because comfort and fashion is really, um, really important to me.

12. 53:14 – 1:00:49

    Body objectification

    1. LFLex Fridman53:14

       Let me ask about sort of the sociological aspect of this. So I've, um, I've talked to Mark Zuckerberg, who, uh, uh, the Meta, who's the C- CEO, founder of Facebook and now Meta and, uh, owns Instagram.

    2. DBDavid Buss53:28

       Right. I've heard of him. [laughs]

    3. LFLex Fridman53:30

       Yeah. He's a, yeah. [laughs] He, uh, uh, holds the American flag and likes the water. Anyway, um, so there's been criticisms of social networks and so on, and I just wanna ask you about the broader question here, that there's a object- objectification of the human body in the media, and that creates standards for young women, for young men perhaps, but more young women.

    4. DBDavid Buss53:59

       Yeah.

    5. LFLex Fridman53:59

       Um, you mentioned to the cruelty that women can have towards each other in terms of-

    6. DBDavid Buss54:03

       Yeah.

    7. LFLex Fridman54:03

       Well, w- let's, you know, cruelty is already a moral judgment. Just you've, you've made a statement about the fact that women us seem to point out imperfections in other women.

    8. DBDavid Buss54:15

       Right.

    9. LFLex Fridman54:15

       Um, do you think it's a problem in our modern society that we objectify each other in this way? Do you think this is, this is a fundamental aspect of our biology that we need to, um, um, suppress versus celebrate?

    10. DBDavid Buss54:37

        Yeah.

    11. LFLex Fridman54:37

        Just like we might suppress our natural desire for violence, if such exists, um, in modern society.

    12. DBDavid Buss54:45

        Well, a couple, couple thoughts on that. I, I think it is, um, damaging. Um, the, uh, the fact that, uh, so many images are displayed in, in social media, and so, um, what I would say is that there's what's called in, in the field, uh, an evolutionary mismatch. So we evolved in the context of small group living where there was mate competition, but your competitors were a small number of other potential individuals. And so people do comparisons. Um, okay, but now what we have is, uh, this bombardment, bombardment of our visual system and our sexual psychology and our mating psychology with, with thousands and thousands of images, um, that are not at all representative of who our actual competition is in, in the, in the mating domain. And so I think that, um... And, and there, there's actually evidence on this that, um, uh, uh, Baz Luhrmann actually said something like this in his, uh, Sunscreen song. I don't know if you ever heard that.

    13. LFLex Fridman55:54

        No.

    14. DBDavid Buss55:54

        But it's like a set of advice, wonderful, like, string of advice, song about advice, but he says, uh-

    15. LFLex Fridman55:59

        Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry. Go ahead.

    16. DBDavid Buss56:01

        Yeah, he says, "Don't read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly." [laughs] You know, and I think that there's truth to that. That is, especially with, with women, they look at all these images and, you know, of course they're photographed, they're Photoshopped, uh, they're, they're highly selected and, and not at all representative. And so women compare themselves to that. So I think this social comparison is an evolved feature of humans. I mean, males do it, females do it. But it's exacerbated in the modern environment in wildly evolutionarily mismatched ways. And so I think, I think that it is, it is destructive, it's harmful. There's evidence that, um, it hurts women's self-esteem. So here's just another, uh, factoid or fact, if you will, that at least in Western cultures, uh, males and females have, uh, roughly the same l- overall average levels of self-esteem. But once, uh, puberty hits, all of a sudden, women's self-esteem starts to drop. And I think it's because when they enter mate competition, then they start, um, uh, elevating the importance they attach to physical appearance. And then, as you point out, the, the tremendous objectification that i- saturates social media and media in general is, um, it's, it's d- damaging and harmful. I don't know how to undo it, though. I don't know how to design a society that, um, that undoes that.

    17. LFLex Fridman57:34

        Well, one of the ways we undo things, just like you pointed out, is we use words. When we manipulate society, we manipulate s- social and status hierarchies using our words for ill.

    18. DBDavid Buss57:47

        Mm-hmm.

    19. LFLex Fridman57:47

        And we can do the same for good, and that's why there's-

    20. DBDavid Buss57:50

        [laughs]

    21. LFLex Fridman57:51

        ... a lot of clickbait articles about, uh, you know, Instagram, um, hit, you know, leading to a lot of suffering amongst, uh, teenage girls and all those kinds of things. Um, the, I'm criticizing the clickba- bait nature and not the contents of the articles. But, you know, and those articles hopefully become viral in a way that makes us rethink about how we build social networks that kind of allow us to, to easily misrepresent how we look when we are, quote, unquote, influencers, and what m-

    22. DBDavid Buss58:26

        Yeah

    23. LFLex Fridman58:26

        ... mental effect it has on the, um, on young people that look up to those influencers. But I guess you're, it's not the objectification fundamentally that's the problem. It's the inaccurate, it's the fake news. It's the f-

    24. DBDavid Buss58:40

        Yeah, that's-

    25. LFLex Fridman58:40

        ... fake new, misrepresentation. Y- you still objectify, uh, the male body, the female body, but you do so, uh, while misrepresenting the actual truth. And, and so you're moving the average, you're moving the standard representation of what a male should look like, what a woman should look like. And, uh, the, the dishonesty is the problem, not the objectification.

    26. DBDavid Buss59:03

        Here's just one other interesting empirical finding on that, and it has to do with another dimension that I think is harmful, and, and that's the thinness dimension. Uh, and so if you, a- a- and these are studies originally done by Paul Rozin, but they've been replicated, where if you ask men, "Okay, what is your ideal figure in a woman?" And so they have these, say, nine figures that vary from very, very thin to average to, to plump. Men give it the midpoint. They say the, the, the midpoint is in, well, thinness or plumpness is what I value. And you ask women, "What is your ideal body type for you?" They give it, th- they say thinner. But then if you ask them, "What do you think males' ideal body type is?" They put it at exactly the same spot that they put their own ideal, which is thin. And so there's actually an inaccurate perception of how thin men desire women to be. Uh, and I think that's partly exacerbated by the, the fashion industry, where the, the models are often rail thin, and, you know, they're- W- m- the lore is that clothes hang better on thin models, and then on TV, they say you gain 15 pounds over what you really are or whatever.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:00:25

        Yeah.

    28. DBDavid Buss1:00:25

        But for whatever reason, women misperceive how thin men want them to be, and so you have ... This is another huge sex difference, is, uh, eating disorders. Um, anorexia, uh, for example, bulimia, uh, binging, purging, where these, these disorder, eating disorders are nine to 10 times more common in women than in men.

13. 1:00:49 – 1:07:45

    Wear sunscreen

    1. LFLex Fridman1:00:50

       Can I just take a small tangent? 'Cause it, it was such a beautiful, uh, the sunscreen song, such a beautiful one, the ... If I can read some of the words from it.

    2. DBDavid Buss1:00:58

       Yeah.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:00:58

       'Cause I, I really enjoy it.

    4. DBDavid Buss1:01:00

       Yeah.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:01:00

       Uh-

    6. DBDavid Buss1:01:00

       It's a great, it's a great song

    7. LFLex Fridman1:01:02

       ... for people, you should check it out. It's called Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen. I guess it's actually a speech to a class. I don't know if that's artificial or real, but it's, it's a speech that gives advice, and it goes, "Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of '97," I just remember it even now, those, those words. "Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. Long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proven [laughs] by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they're faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at the photos of yourself and recall in a way that you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be the things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindsides you at 4:00 PM on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing every day that scares you. Saying don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with the people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead. Sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how." [laughs]

    8. DBDavid Buss1:02:47

       [laughs] I can't do that.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:02:48

       "Ke- keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't." For me, that's true for 50, 60, and 70 year, year-old's, honestly. "Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone. Maybe you'll marry. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40. Maybe you'll dance the Funky Chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's. Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it [laughs] but in your own living room. Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, for as older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young. Live in New York City once." I actually took this advice. This is fascinating advice. I, I remembered this advice well. Uh, it's broadly applied. "Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths. Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable-

    10. DBDavid Buss1:05:01

        [laughs]

    11. LFLex Fridman1:05:01

        ... politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you'll have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one [laughs] might run out. Never mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen." [laughs]

    12. DBDavid Buss1:05:44

        Right.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:05:44

        So th- this is, uh, so thank you for allowing me to read it. It's almost sentimental for me. I don't know when I first heard it.

    14. DBDavid Buss1:05:49

        No.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:05:50

        Um, but there's a few pieces of advice in that, you know, uh, similar to, like, the poem If by Rudyard Kipling. Um, there's some deep truths when you step back and look at it all, and also the, the places where you live 'cause I, I, I, uh, lived for a time in, I guess, Northern California with Google and so on.

    16. DBDavid Buss1:06:13

        Wow.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:06:14

        And one of the reasons I had to leave is I was become-- I felt I was becoming soft. Um, this, this is my own personal experience. And the same is true for the, uh, um, the cities of the East. They can, if you're not careful, make you hard, because everybody's super busy and rushing around and, and, uh, there's just a buzz to the city, which is exciting, it's empowering, but it can, it can, it can change you in ways. And so, uh, it's one of the reasons I'm here in Austin.

    18. DBDavid Buss1:06:45

        Yeah.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:06:45

        I fell in love with the city-

    20. DBDavid Buss1:06:46

        Yeah

    21. LFLex Fridman1:06:46

        ... because it's such a nice balance of both.

    22. DBDavid Buss1:06:47

        It's, it's a great move. And, uh, yeah, I've, I've lived on both coasts as well, um, Boston area and then, uh, Berkeley, California. So, um, so I'm familiar with both of them.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:06:57

        How'd you end up in Austin, as a, just a small aside?

    24. DBDavid Buss1:07:00

        Well, uh, well, I got, I, I got my undergraduate degree here, uh, and then left for 20 years and, uh, migrated around. Uh, so went to Berkeley, UC Berkeley, for my PhD, Harvard for my first job, University of Michigan, and then the, a job opened up, um, at University of Texas, uh, for an evolutionary psychologist. And so, um, they wanted me, fortunately. So I was very happy to... So I've always loved Austin. I mean, it's, uh-

    25. LFLex Fridman1:07:31

        Yeah, the love never died. It was there.

    26. DBDavid Buss1:07:32

        Yeah. Yeah.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:07:33

        [laughs]

    28. DBDavid Buss1:07:33

        It's a great town. I was glad that I left, so, and experienced, well, both coasts and also the Midwest, but, um, happy to be back in Austin.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:07:43

        Let me ask a difficult question.

14. 1:07:45 – 1:24:54

    Gender

    1. LFLex Fridman1:07:45

       Now, we did pretty good with some difficult questions already, but there are people in this world today who believe that gender is purely a social construct. You, I think, are not one of those people. To you, what are the difference between men and women? How much of those differences are nature and how much is nurture?

    2. DBDavid Buss1:08:07

       I guess if we-- you're asking the question, um, morphologically or psychologically. I, I assume you're asking psychologically.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:08:15

       The question is what it is, and the answer-- Sometimes the questions don't contain with them the trajectory you take with the answer, right? So I think I was asking both, and the fact that both are a thing is an interesting thing.

    4. DBDavid Buss1:08:35

       Yes.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:08:35

       So you wrote a book, textbook, I should say, Evolutionary Psychology, right?

    6. DBDavid Buss1:08:41

       Yes.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:08:41

       Those, both of those words are in the book title.

    8. DBDavid Buss1:08:44

       Right.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:08:44

       Psychology, that's the human mind.

    10. DBDavid Buss1:08:47

        Yes. Yeah.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:08:48

        So how much of gender, how much of sex is the human mind, and how much of it is the biology?

    12. DBDavid Buss1:08:56

        The way that I phrase it, so, so I, I don't like, um, sort of dividing the world into two categories, things that are biological versus things that are not biological. Um, uh, so the biology is actually defined as the study of life and life processes. And so at that sort of abstract level, everything we do is biological, including culture and our capacity for culture, which I think is an evolved capacity that humans have. Um, when you get to the issue of, uh, sex and, and gender, I mean, one cut at your question is, uh, are there universal psychological sex differences? Um, and the answer to that question is, yes, there are some. So, for example-- Well, and this is in, in one of your areas of specialty, uh, engineering. Um, one of the interesting things is that, uh, it, it's called the people's thing dimension. So do you want an occupation? Do you want a job that involves, um, people, social interaction, or are you happy with a job that just involves things, mechanical objects or computer code or, or whatever? And this is one of the largest psychological sex differences that, that exists, and it's true in every culture. So, uh, in terms of, I don't know, um, magnitude of effects, it's, uh, an effect size of, um, more than a standard deviation difference between the means, um, on this psychological sex difference. And so one of the interesting things is, so if you go to places like, go to the most, um, gender egalitarian cultures in the world, so places like Sweden, uh, or Norway, uh, which are explicitly gender egalitarian and, and, and are truly in many, many ways, uh, but you allow people freedom of choice, the, the-- some of these sex differences actually get larger, the psychological sex differences and also assortment into different occupational, uh, choices. Um, now, but this, this is not something that I study. I study mating, and the sex differences, if you ask what are the-- where-- in what domains are the sex differences the largest, it turns out they occur within the domain of mating and sexuality.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:11:28

        Mm-hmm.

    14. DBDavid Buss1:11:28

        So our evolved sexual psychology, our evolved mating psychology is to some degree sexually dimorphic, okay? With the, uh, very important asterisk that we're talking about overlapping distributions. So there are some things that-- So if you look at human morphology, um, we, we talked about breasts earlier. Women have evolved functional breasts that's functional for lactation. Um, men don't. So there's n-no amount of, um, uh, culture or social coercion can cause men to have lactating breasts. Uh, psychologically, we don't see dimorphism that extreme, where something is literally present in one sex and totally absent in the other. So there's overlap in the distributions. So I mentioned earlier that in the mating domain, men, men more than women, on average, prioritize physical appearance, physical attractiveness, relative youth. Women, on average, prioritize resources, resource acquisition, qualities that lead to resource acquisition, like status, ambition, industriousness, and so forth. But there's overlap in the distributions. So some women place a Total priority on how physically attractive the guy is, and, uh, some men view that as i- as irrelevant. And, and, and, uh, so, so the, the point that I'm making is that there are s- there are psychological sex differences that, um, make some people uncomfortable. Um, but, you know, it's one of these things where I'm a scientist. Uh, I'm not a political advocate. Uh, um, and so I'm-- I adhere to the empirical data on-- empirical data are very strong in these domains. So with respect to sex differences in the mating domain and sexuality, and things we haven't even talked about like desire for sexual variety and sex differences in the whole, uh, desire for short-term mating, a huge sex difference is there. Uh, and these have been documented universally in all cultures. So, um, okay, now are there, uh, i- are there things that are culture-specific or social/cultural overlays onto these fundamental psychological sex differences? Absolutely. Um, but th- there's also an issue of, um, kind of l- levels of analysis, levels of abstraction, and how closely you look at the phenomenon. So quick analogy, language. So you could say, well, um, in China, they speak Chinese. In Korea, they speak Korean. In Brazil, they speak Portuguese. Say, look how culturally infinitely variable languages are, which they are at that level. But do humans have a universal human innate grammar? And I think the evidence points to answer yes to that. At least that's what Steve Pinker, Paul Bloom, and some other, uh, o- others argue. So at one level ab- of abstraction, things are infinitely culturally variable, or at least highly culturally variable. At another level of abstraction, there's universality. So here's one example in the mating domain o- o- of this. So Margaret Mead, who is a famous, um, anthropologist, uh, uh, studied the Samoan Islanders, and she ar- tried to argue basically for the infinite malleability of things like gender and gender roles and so forth. She said-- And she said, "Look at this culture. The-- In this culture, it's the men who paint their face," uh, whereas, you know, in Western cultures, it's the women who wear makeup and so forth. Well, it turns out if you, if you look carefully at the culture where men paint their face, they're painting a, a war paint on their face. [chuckles] They're not, they're not putting on makeup to enhance their cues to youth and cues to health. They're putting on war paint to make themselves more ferocious or to demarcate what tribe they're in, what coalition they're in. And so at sort of one level of, uh, abstraction, you could say, well, there's high cultural variability in application of face paint. But on another level, there's really a fundamental functional difference in the purpose to which the paint is applied.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:15:54

        [sighs] Yeah, and then you can abstract the paint away and, I mean, fashion in general just magnify the characteristics that are appealing to the opposite sex. 'Cause war paint is probably, you know, it is you're magnifying the characteristics that are appealing to the, uh, the other sex. So ability to gain resources, maintain resources is, um, status, uh, status in the hierarchy, all those kinds of things.

    16. DBDavid Buss1:16:22

        Well, but, well, that's, that's part of it. But I think another part has to do with, in, in that case, male coalitions. So we, we, we're in a, a intense-- This is another unique characteristic. I don't know if you got into this with Richard Wrangham. I don't remember you talking about this. But, uh, he's written a lot about male coalitionary psychology, and humans cooperate, uh, to an extraordinary de- degree in forming coalitions for the purpose of competing with rival coalitions. And so you even see this with, um, well, you see it in the sports, sports arenas with, with team sports, you know, where this team wears a, a different uniform than that team. Uh, they have different mascot, et cetera. And so part of that is, um, male coalitionary psychology.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:17:12

        Well, you-- So you write, again, so r- returning to the textbook. Now, pe- people should know you wrote a lot of incredible book that is maybe more accessible than The Evolutionary Psychology Textbook. But in-

    18. DBDavid Buss1:17:23

        Oh, so, uh, the, The Evolutionary Psychology Textbook is very accessible. So it's written-

    19. LFLex Fridman1:17:27

        Yes, it is extremely accessible.

    20. DBDavid Buss1:17:29

        Yeah.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:17:29

        But that's not your thing. And on Amazon, you can't, you know, it, it's a pain. It's a textbook. It's not, you know, it's, it's a little bit more of a pain to purchase, which I did. I, I bought all your books. They're amazing. Uh, we'll talk about a bunch of them. But in terms of coalitions, in, uh, chapter 12 of your Evolutionary Psychology Textbook, you write about status, prestige, and social dominance. So how do hierarchies of status and social dominance emerge in human society? And, uh, what's the value of status in sexual selection? We talked about, uh, cues of individual health and all that kind of stuff, but what, what the heck's the purpose of status? Why, why does it matter if I'm the big boss?

    22. DBDavid Buss1:18:14

        Well, uh, it, it matters because status is, uh, influences your access to resources and your ability to influence other people within your, within your group. And so, um, this is part of the reason why women prioritize a man's social status, uh, how he is viewed in the eyes of others, because high-status men have access to, to more resources. Um- It's interesting that you ask about that because, um, I've, uh, just published... Th- this is with, uh, Patrick Durkee, a former graduate student of mine. We published a couple papers on precisely this issue, where we looked at what we call human status criteria. That is, what are the things that lead to increases or decreases in status, and we did this in 14 different cultures. And we found some things that are universal, but also some things that are sex differentiated. Um, uh, and, uh, so universal things like people value, uh, trustworthiness. They value, um, intelligence, wisdom, knowledge. So it's even, i- if you go across cultures, uh, even to the small scale scul- cultures that we alluded to earlier, uh, there are these wise, wise people, wise men, wise women in the culture who have, uh, people go to for advice, for wisdom. Uh, and so having a wide range of knowledge is, is a universal status criterion. Uh, and there's some things that are sex differentiated, and they often fall into the mating domain as well. This is where mating and status are interestingly related to each other in that, um, successful mating increases your status, but having high status also gives you access to more desirable mates. Um, and so

    23. LFLex Fridman1:20:14

        [laughs] The game gets harder and harder always. So wait, uh, so are we talking about what are the character- what, what's the role of power and wealth, those kinds of things? So you said wisdom is universal.

    24. DBDavid Buss1:20:28

        Yeah.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:20:28

        What about wealth and power?

    26. DBDavid Buss1:20:29

        Yeah. Well, uh, well, um, I guess it depends on what you mean by power. So I think of power as the ability to, to influence, um-

    27. LFLex Fridman1:20:37

        A large number of people.

    28. DBDavid Buss1:20:38

        Yeah. So, um, and this is one of the interesting things about the fact that cash economies are so, are, are, are evolutionarily very recent, in that we're, people are like, so, so I guess recently or it's about to happen, uh, that, um, Elon Musk is gonna ta- uh, buy Twitter.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:21:00

        Yeah.

    30. DBDavid Buss1:21:00

        Where it say-
15. 1:24:54 – 1:26:44

    What motivates humans

    1. LFLex Fridman1:24:55

       How much do you think these mating strategies underlie all of human civilization? Like, what motivates us? Uh, you know, there's, uh, uh, Becker with The Denial of Death. Like, what, why do we build castles and bridges and rockets and-

    2. DBDavid Buss1:25:13

       [laughs]

    3. LFLex Fridman1:25:14

       ... the internet and all of this? Is it some complex mush, or is it underneath it all, are we all just trying to get laid?

    4. DBDavid Buss1:25:21

       Uh, well, I wouldn't reduce it to something quite as trying to get laid. Uh, but I, I think, I think mating is, is, is certainly part of it. Um-

    5. LFLex Fridman1:25:33

       I wonder how big of a part, 'cause so with, with, uh, Ernest Becker, the idea is that we're all trying to achieve an illusion of immortality.

    6. DBDavid Buss1:25:42

       Yeah.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:25:42

       So we're trying to create something that outlasts us, and therefore we create bigger and bigger things and societies and bridges and-

    8. DBDavid Buss1:25:48

       Yeah. Well, I think what-

    9. LFLex Fridman1:25:49

       ... architecture

    10. DBDavid Buss1:25:50

        ... what, what's missing from Becker's analysis is, uh, you know, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a fascinating book to read, Denial of Death, but what's missing is that I think that the reason that... A- a- and, and again, I think it's more men than women, I think there's a sex difference on this, that men, uh, want to build a, a, a lasting legacy because that will in turn affect their lineage.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:26:19

        Mm-hmm.

    12. DBDavid Buss1:26:20

        Um, and, uh, al- although I, I do... Now, Woody Allen is out of favor, but I remember this quote from him. He said, he said he, he didn't want to achieve immortality through his work, he wanted to achieve immortality by not dying. [laughs]

    13. LFLex Fridman1:26:37

        [laughs] Oh, boy. The, the funny ones are also, uh, deeply flawed often.

16. 1:26:44 – 1:34:49

    Dominance and submissiveness

    1. LFLex Fridman1:26:45

       Staying on the topic of sex differences in a very different way perhaps. So dominance and submissiveness, something you've also written about. What's the role of that inside relationships, about this human dynamic of dominance and submissiveness? Um, is that a feature or a bug? So the, the stable state that these dynamical systems arrive at, uh, is it good to have an equality within a relationship or is it good to have differences in a relationship?

    2. DBDavid Buss1:27:19

       Uh, are you talking about romantic relationships or just in human relationships?

    3. LFLex Fridman1:27:23

       Romantic probably, because unless it could be generalized to human [laughs] relationships. Perhaps it could be generalized to human relationships. I wasn't thinking that, but perhaps it could be. But let's sta- start with romantic. I guess one-on-one.

    4. DBDavid Buss1:27:36

       I'm personally in favor of, uh, equality, uh, on that dimension within romantic relationships and, um, in the, in... I don't talk about my personal life, uh, but, um, but I've been in relationships, uh, and the best ones tend to be those where, where there's, uh, equality and one, one person does not, uh, dominate the other. Um, but I guess what I was, the reason I ask you is in what type of relationships because there are some, um, things like coalitions where hierarchy is very important to the function of the coalition. So i- it's like you, if you're like a war coalition or something in small group warfare, you, you can't just have equality. You have to have, um, leaders that are, are determining the, um, the battle plan, so to speak. Um, and so if you have, uh, you, you, you're, you're, you're attacking a neighboring group or something and everyone gets an equal say, it's, it's not gonna work that way. And so we tend to, um, appoint as leaders those who are, uh, doesn't always work out well, but those who are presumably wise or good, effective leaders. And even talk about, and I'm sure you're familiar with this, and I'm not an expert on this, but, you know, wartime leaders versus peacetime leaders. And so again, it depends on, you know, what the goal is of the group that you are a part of. Um, and so, and so I think there is functionality and utility to a lot of our evolved psychology of status and dominance and submissiveness. So for example, a- a- and, and you have to look at the individual psychology, and this is actually something I'm currently studying, um, again, with, with Patrick Durkee, uh, where one advantage of the status hierarchies is that you're not always battling. You know? So you determine, um, and that's why, h- here's another sexually dimorphic aspect of our psychology, formidability assessment. So there's, there's evidence that males engage in this, you know, "Can I take this guy or can he take me?"

    5. LFLex Fridman1:29:55

       [laughs]

    6. DBDavid Buss1:29:56

       Like, and it's like a spon-

    7. LFLex Fridman1:29:57

       That's the entirety of my life, yes. [laughs]

    8. DBDavid Buss1:29:58

       It's, it's like a spontaneous assessment of, of formidability. And, and it also, the, that information is critical because that means, like, who you should not challenge or-

    9. LFLex Fridman1:30:11

       Yeah

    10. DBDavid Buss1:30:11

        ... or who you, who you can challenge with impunity, impunity. So, um, and, and there's functionality to su- submitting, uh, as well, you know, because you, you defer to someone so that you don't get vanquished and you live to see another day. Uh, so, so I think we, we actually have a very rich psychology of status hierarchies and dominance and submissiveness.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:30:35

        So especially sort of, uh, violent conflict. Yes. But back to relationships. So maybe phrased another way, what is masculinity? What is femininity? Is there value inside a relationship for dy- for differences? You talked about matings, mating. Mating strategies with the dating stage where you're selecting the mate, but also within, you know, mating broadly defined as the entirety of the process. Are th- Should those differences be magnified and celebrated or, um, sort of suppressed?

    12. DBDavid Buss1:31:21

        I've seen enough different relationships work, and I've seen enough relationships implode to say there's no, there's not one size fits all on, on these things. So even with respect to masculinity and femininity, um, some reduce it psychologically to two other terms, which are agency and communion. So where agency is, you know, are you instrumental, goal-oriented, um, get tasks done, et cetera, communion is, you know, more the, the love and forming connections with other people and so forth. Um, and I, I published a study a way back on, uh, un- what's, what are called unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion. So you ... There are, like, good and bad aspects of agency and communion, so-

    13. LFLex Fridman1:32:12

        They can go ... So there's toxic, as they say, masculinity, toxic femininity. You can just rephrase that saying there could be toxic agency and toxic communion.

    14. DBDavid Buss1:32:21

        Yeah. Yeah. And, and so, and so some elements of masculinity, uh, the unmitigated masculinity is, uh, I think, terrible. I was actually walking around downtown Austin earlier today, and I'll just give you this example, and this guy, um, was, um, I guess, stuck and wanted the car ahead of him to move, and all of a sudden he screamed out of his window, "Move your fucking car."

    15. LFLex Fridman1:32:50

        Yeah.

    16. DBDavid Buss1:32:51

        Like, uh, and, and, and then jumped out of his car and to approach the other guy. To me, that's, that's, um, toxic masculinity, i- if you will. We, we don't need that, you know? [laughs]

    17. LFLex Fridman1:33:03

        Yeah, so and this, this ... By the way, as somebody who worked with cars qu- quite a long time in terms of human interaction with semi-autonomous vehicles, it's so fascinating how the car and traffic brings out, like, the worst in human nature in a sense. Or maybe to rephrase that, it maybe challenges you to explore something that, uh, in terms of temper, in terms of anger, in terms of anxiety, that you have been bottling it u- up. There's something th- where the car is like a vessel for psychological experiment of how much stress you can take, and some people, that stress is like heating, uh, it's making the water boil, and it's fascinating to see what that results in. I think if you are the kind of person that explodes emotionally, uh, in traffic, that means there's deeper issues to sort of confront. And it seems like the, the traffic and the car is a place where you get to confront your, the shadow. Carl Jung's shadow.

    18. DBDavid Buss1:34:09

        [laughs]

    19. LFLex Fridman1:34:10

        There's something deep within that that we don't often fish. We're alone with ourselves, and we get to see who we truly are.

    20. DBDavid Buss1:34:17

        Yeah. Well, we're ... Yeah, it can bring out road rage, and also there's this, um, I don't know, when you're in the vehicle, there's, you have this shell around you, and so there's this feeling that you are protected from-

    21. LFLex Fridman1:34:32

        Yes

    22. DBDavid Buss1:34:32

        ... uh-

    23. LFLex Fridman1:34:33

        So you could be yourself. You can be your true self in this moment, and sometimes that true self in this moment is an angry, screaming person-

    24. DBDavid Buss1:34:41

        Yeah

    25. LFLex Fridman1:34:41

        ... which means you have, you have to introspect that shadow, shine a light.

17. 1:34:49 – 1:44:40

    Johnny Depp defamation trial

    1. LFLex Fridman1:34:49

       Let me ask you about something that's ongoing currently, it'd be fascinating to get your opinion on. So, um, something I've been watching, some of the world has been watching, is the defamation trial brought by Johnny Depp against Amber Heard.

    2. DBDavid Buss1:35:04

       Mm.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:35:05

       Have you gotten a chance to watch any of it?

    4. DBDavid Buss1:35:06

       Um, I haven't watched it, but I've read some reports of it.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:35:10

       What, what's your analysis on this particular dynamic? We talked about toxicity in the space of agency and communion. What do you make of this, this relationship that's presented to the world in its raw form?

    6. DBDavid Buss1:35:29

       You know, I don't have strong opinions on it. I think in th- this stage in the trial, we've heard from him primarily.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:35:35

       Yes. We have not, and we should say for people listening in case this is published a little bit later, we have not heard from Am- Amber Heard. [laughs]

    8. DBDavid Buss1:35:43

       Right. Not heard from Heard.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:35:44

       In the way ... Heard from Heard. We're doing that. That's going to be happening this week.

    10. DBDavid Buss1:35:49

        I, I don't know. I, I think that I've seen, a- and this is another topic that I have studied, is, uh, intimate partner violence and some of the nastier, um, stuff that goes on within relationships, and I think that, um, when this nasty stuff happens, sometimes, sometimes it's asymmetrical, but sometimes it's symmetrical in the sense that they get into these downward spirals where one is assaulting the other, or even with physical violence, one starts pushing the other, shoving the other, hitting the other, and then the other hits back, and so you get into these, um, uh, cycles. And so, uh, coming at one point in time, you know, in this case of, uh, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, you know, uh, years later and trying to disentangle what actually went on in their relationship, um, I, I don't, I don't feel qualified even to do that.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:36:48

        Well, it's fascinating to see. So first, I mean, I have a lot of opinions, um, particularly because I'm just a, um, a fan of Johnny Depp as a person and a fan of Johnny Depp the actor and the kind of characters he created. The person because Maybe this is fiction, maybe this is reality, but they, they tend to rhyme and, uh, mirror each other. But his fascination with Hunter S. Thompson and there's some aspect of him taking on the Hunter S. Thompson personality-

    12. DBDavid Buss1:37:19

        Mm-hmm

    13. LFLex Fridman1:37:19

        ... where there's this layers upon layers of wit and humor, and it's, and also anxiety and darkness with the drug use and all that kind of stuff.

    14. DBDavid Buss1:37:28

        Yeah.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:37:28

        So it's very human, very real person. And so you get to, one of the beautiful things about this trial is y- you get to, uh, basically have a long form podcast. [laughs]

    16. DBDavid Buss1:37:38

        [laughs]

    17. LFLex Fridman1:37:38

        And you get to reveal the complexity of this human, the humor under pressure, under, uh, under stress, but also just the rawness of love, the things that love makes you do or whatever that is. What, you, you know, whatever the things that keeps us in relationships that are toxic, in that turmoil, the hope, the, um, the d- self-delusion, the, the, the push and pull of longing and, um, fights-

    18. DBDavid Buss1:38:14

        Yeah

    19. LFLex Fridman1:38:14

        ... and the, the ups and down, whatever the-

    20. DBDavid Buss1:38:16

        Yeah, the rollercoaster-

    21. LFLex Fridman1:38:17

        The rollercoaster of it

    22. DBDavid Buss1:38:17

        ... the, the, the makeup sex.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:38:19

        Yeah, exactly.

    24. DBDavid Buss1:38:20

        The, the, you know, yeah.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:38:21

        Is, and the questions arise whether that's a feature or a bug. Like, why do we, why are we drawn to that? You mentioned in mate selection, for long-term mate selection, um, I think you said women, but I think maybe both, uh, don't want a kind of, you had scientific and eloquent words to use, but basic- basically crazy people. [laughs] You d-

    26. DBDavid Buss1:38:43

        Yeah

    27. LFLex Fridman1:38:43

        ... you, you want somebody who's stable.

    28. DBDavid Buss1:38:44

        Em- emotionally unstable. Yeah.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:38:46

        Yes.

    30. DBDavid Buss1:38:46

        Yeah. So, um, uh-
18. 1:44:40 – 1:53:00

    Jealousy

    1. LFLex Fridman1:44:41

       What about the role of jealousy, something you also-

    2. DBDavid Buss1:44:45

       Yeah

    3. LFLex Fridman1:44:45

       ... have written about in a relationship. Is, uh, is that a feature or a bug? You ki- you started to speak about it, but is, is it good to be, uh, jealous of your partner inside of a relationship? How does it go wrong? How-- w- the pros and cons.

    4. DBDavid Buss1:45:03

       So, uh [chuckles] so I've written a whole book on this, uh, called The, The Dangerous Passion, um, why jealousy is as necessary as sex and love. Um, and, uh, I think that, uh, one cut at your question is that, um, a moderate-- uh, so first of all, I think it's, it's a feature, not a bug in, in most cases. So in the, in the sense that you, you have to have an adaptation that is sensitive to threats to a valued relationship, okay? Because, and I think I alluded to this earlier, that just because you're in a relationship and you're in a relationship with a desirable partner doesn't mean that, you know, you've finished solving the problems of mating that you need to solve, because there are threats from the outside. So mate poachers, people who try to lure your partner away for either a sexual encounter or a more committed romantic relationship. Uh, and then there's also dissatisfaction within the relationship, so your partner might become tempted to be sexually unfaithful or romantically unfaithful or emotionally unfaithful. And so, and so we need humans with the evolution of long-term pair bonding, we need adaptations to guard the relationship and be sensitive to threats to the relationship. Uh, and I think jealousy is one of those. I think that's wh- it's a key one. And now, um, that, uh, I think that, uh, there are a variety of benefits to it, but also a variety of, um, costs or downsides to jealousy, because we know that jealousy, male sexual jealousy is the leading cause of spousal abuse and spousal violence, physical, physical violence, probably emotional violence as well, or psychological violence. Uh, and so that's why I call it the dangerous passion. It's, it's, it's a necessary emotion, but it is also a dangerous emotion. Um, leads to homicide. Um, you know, leads to, uh... A- and I've studied also homicidal ideation, uh, which is, intersects with this topic in that, um, men, sometimes women to a lesser degree, develop homicidal ideation about people who are trying to poach their mates or who do poach their mates, uh, successfully poach their mates. So what jealousy does is it, is it alerts you to a threat to the relationship, and it motivates, um, checking out the source of the threat. How threatening is this? So it inc- people tend to increase vigilance of their partner. In the modern world, it includes, you know, hacking into their cell phone or computer, monitoring them, um, uh, uh, sometimes stalking them. Uh, uh, but also can include positive things. So it might be that... So one trigger of jealousy is, is, is a direct threat to the relationship. But there's another more subtle trigger of jealousy, which is a mate value discrepancy. So usually, when people mate, there is-- they, they assort or pair up on overall mate value. So the, in the American 10-point scale, the eights tend to pair up with the eights, the sixes with the sixes, the tens with the tens, and the ones with the ones.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:48:28

       More American? Is there other, other scales?

    6. DBDavid Buss1:48:31

       Uh, I, I, I don't even know.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:48:31

       I wonder if the, the miracle systems, where there's a binary. I just go with the binary, zero, one.

    8. DBDavid Buss1:48:36

       [laughs]

    9. LFLex Fridman1:48:37

       Sorry. Go ahead.

    10. DBDavid Buss1:48:38

        Okay. [laughs]

    11. LFLex Fridman1:48:38

        I know, uh-

    12. DBDavid Buss1:48:38

        Yeah

    13. LFLex Fridman1:48:39

        ... the eights pairs with the eights, sevens with sevens.

    14. DBDavid Buss1:48:40

        Yeah, yeah. So i- in general, but there are errors in mate selection. You kind of alluded to the, that issue earlier, that sometimes people make errors, errors in mate selection, which they do. So sometimes you think this person is well-matched on mate value, but they're not. But then things change. So a, let's say, uh, y- they're the same. You have, uh, two sixes, and then all of a sudden, the woman's career takes off. All of a sudden, she's, you know, uh, getting promotions, she's, uh, uh, acquiring wealth, she's, uh, attracting- Men who are of a different m- m- mate value than she previously did, well, that triggers jealousy in the guy. Even if she swears she's gonna be totally loyal and she has no signs of leaving or no signs of infidelity, a mate value discrepancy is gonna trigger jealousy. Now, what can it do? Well, it can do, in the broadest sense, people can do two classes of things. They can do cost-inflicting things or benefit-providing things. So the, the man in that situation might say, "Okay, I need to devote more attention to my partner. I need to up my game when it comes to resource acquisition. I need to lavish more attention and gifts on her." And so there's a whole suite of benefit-provisioning things that can help to reduce that mate value discrepancy, and then there's al- also cost-inflicting things that... And, and, and humans unfortunately do both s-

    15. LFLex Fridman1:50:10

        [laughs]

    16. DBDavid Buss1:50:10

        ... both sets of things.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:50:13

        Yeah, I, there's also this, uh, maybe that's love. I notice, um, the people I especially love or have a connection to, romantically or otherwise, there's a feeling like, "I don't deserve you." So, uh, with friends, with so on, like, I mean, I d- tend to think that about almost everything, which is why it's a strong signal when I don't feel it that way, which is like, "I can't... I'm... How lucky am I to have this?" Uh, and that's a g- that's a w- that's a weird illusion of inflation of value or something. Like, uh, I think that the positive effect of that is makes mo- motivates me to be better h- I guess on this-

    18. DBDavid Buss1:50:55

        Yeah

    19. LFLex Fridman1:50:55

        ... one to 10 scale to be higher, and you just sort of kinda have to e- like, it's a nice feature that your mind sees others that you have affection towards as higher value, and it forces you to have that. Like, I'm, I'm a person that experiences jealousy, and that forces me to be better.

    20. DBDavid Buss1:51:14

        Yeah.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:51:15

        Like, get my shit together. [laughs]

    22. DBDavid Buss1:51:16

        Yeah. Well, and I, and I think that the, the, um, sometimes the best relationships are when both people feel lucky to be with the other person.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:51:25

        Yes. Yeah. Yes, exactly. It's balanced that way. And then that's when you, in terms of jobs, in terms of going to the gym, all those kinds of things, and, um, yeah, so a little bit of jealousy. I've, I have a discussion with those people. I always wonder, there's people in relationships where like, "No, no, they je- there's no, they never experience jealousy." I wonder what that's like, 'cause they're very successful relationships. But, uh, and I always wonder, you know, I'm currently single, so I'm always doubt that I know what the hell I'm doing at all. Uh, but I- I'm definitely somebody that experiences jealousy and kind of enjoys jealousy, um, like, a, a little bit. [laughs]

    24. DBDavid Buss1:52:01

        S- s-

    25. LFLex Fridman1:52:01

        Of, like, missing. To me, that's like-

    26. DBDavid Buss1:52:03

        Yeah

    27. LFLex Fridman1:52:03

        ... you're missing the other person.

    28. DBDavid Buss1:52:05

        Yeah. Well, and-

    29. LFLex Fridman1:52:06

        You're longing for the other person

    30. DBDavid Buss1:52:07

        ... a- and here's another, uh, interesting wrinkle that I, I also talk about in the book, is, uh, sometimes people intentionally evoke jealousy in their partner. Uh, and I think that's also a kind of testing of a bond-
19. 1:53:00 – 1:57:13

    Mate poaching

    1. LFLex Fridman1:53:00

       to, it's a good way to test. That said, I mean, I love the term mate poaching, by the way. I believe here in Texas, mate poaching is officially legal, so-

    2. DBDavid Buss1:53:08

       [laughs]

    3. LFLex Fridman1:53:08

       ... we're allowed to... One of my favorite songs by Hendrix is Hey Joe. Um, "Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?"

    4. DBDavid Buss1:53:15

       Yeah.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:53:16

       And yeah, I actually, I, I always wanted to play that song, but I get, um, I start to think about guns and so on. I think it's supposed to capture a feeling. It's not actual violence. It's saying, "I'm gonna shoot my old lady. I caught her messing around with another man." That's, um, that's a blues type of feeling, like of anger, of, um, I guess from mate poaching, for, uh, mate switching performed by the partner, and then the, uh, the frustration and the anger that's resulting there. I al- I always wondered why the violence is directed towards the partner versus-

    6. DBDavid Buss1:53:55

       Well, it's-

    7. LFLex Fridman1:53:55

       ... the person who did the-

    8. DBDavid Buss1:53:56

       Yeah, it's, it's-

    9. LFLex Fridman1:53:57

       ... the ma- the other male

    10. DBDavid Buss1:53:58

        ... tends to be evenly split. Um-

    11. LFLex Fridman1:54:00

        [laughs]

    12. DBDavid Buss1:54:00

        So sometimes, and that's, I mean, m- men especially, uh, when someone poaches on their mate, they have homicidal fantasies.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:54:10

        Towards which-

    14. DBDavid Buss1:54:11

        To, well-

    15. LFLex Fridman1:54:12

        ... equally split, you said

    16. DBDavid Buss1:54:13

        ... toward the mate poacher. Yeah, but, but e- but equally split. So, so it's, uh, um... I think the, the non-lethal violence, uh, tends to be more directed toward the mate because it's, it's, and this is a, um, horrible thing of male sexual psychology, but I think part of the violence is functional in the sense that it's designed to keep a mate and prevent her from engaging in anything with, um, with other, with other-

    17. LFLex Fridman1:54:43

        Oh, it's-

    18. DBDavid Buss1:54:43

        ... potential mate poachers. But, um, uh, but people do. Uh, it's, so even, I mean, so it goes back, uh, like to the Fre- French law where they had the, uh, so-called crime of passion.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:54:57

        Mm-hmm.

    20. DBDavid Buss1:54:57

        So if, if a husband walked in and found, uh, his wife, uh, having sex with some other guy in bed and shot him, that was viewed as a crime of passion. It's still not legal, but you get, kind of get a discount-

    21. LFLex Fridman1:55:10

        Yeah

    22. DBDavid Buss1:55:10

        ... uh, for it. Whereas if he, if he goes home, thinks about it for a while, then gets the gun and comes back, then that's premeditated murder.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:55:17

        Yeah. See, to me, I, I guess everybody's different. To me, I have zero- anger towards the partner on that situation. To me, 'cause that's definitive proof [laughs] of disloyalty, so, like, why, what's the, what's the function of the anger there?

    24. DBDavid Buss1:55:33

        Yeah.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:55:33

        To me, uh, all of my anger is th- towards the, the guy, the poacher.

    26. DBDavid Buss1:55:40

        Right. Right. [clears throat]

    27. LFLex Fridman1:55:41

        Because I, uh, um, uh, some of it has to do probably with the status establishing. Like, it's, uh, what was the term you used? The formidability?

    28. DBDavid Buss1:55:51

        Yeah, formidability assessment.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:55:52

        Assessment.

    30. DBDavid Buss1:55:53

        Yeah.
20. 1:57:13 – 2:08:29

    Polyamory

    1. LFLex Fridman1:57:13

       Uh, what do you make of polyamory?

    2. DBDavid Buss1:57:16

       Um-

    3. LFLex Fridman1:57:16

       So what, what the heck is... What do you make of marriage? What are your thoughts about marriage? What are your thoughts about lifelong monogamy? And what's your thoughts about polyamory, given that we've been talking about ideas of mate switching and poaching and all that kind of stuff?

    4. DBDavid Buss1:57:29

       Yeah. I think that we evolved to be, I prefer the term, uh, a pair-bonded, um, species. So pair bonding is one of the strategies. Pair-bonded long-term mating is one of the strategies. But that doesn't necessarily mean for decades and decades or, and, or lifelong, 'cause we often pair bond serially. So we get into a relationship that might last a year or five years, and then break up, and then form another relationship. So we engage in serial mating. Um, we engage in infidelity. We engaged in, we engage in some short-term, uh, mating. Um, and, uh, so we have a, a, what I describe as a menu of mating strategies, and which particular mating strategy an individual adopts depends on a wide variety of factors. It, I think some are just kind of personal proclivities. Some depend on your mate value. So if you are an eight, a nine, or a 10, you have more options for what mating strategy you wanna pursue. Um, if you're a one or a two, you're not gonna be able to be polyamorous, um, in, in all likelihood. Um, there's a lot of attention to polyamory now, uh, and, uh, it's unclear whether this, whether there's an increase in it or whether people are just talking about it more. Uh, it is the case, and I know, uh, I know several people who are in polyamorous relationships, and I've talked, uh, with them in detail about them, and jealousy is often a factor in that. And they, they describe it as kind of like, um, a, an emotion that has to be somehow tamed or dealt with in, in some way. And so, and so in polyamory, there are many different types of polyamory. So in, like one type, for example, is you have a primary love partner, and then some others on the side that are permitted, usually within, in consensual terms, within a, an explicit contract that the co- that the primary partners work out. So it's okay if you, you know... I know this one couple, it's okay if you do it, uh, outside the city limits of Los Angeles, but not within. Uh, some say, "It's okay for Thursday, but I want the weekend, the Friday and Saturday nights to me."

    5. LFLex Fridman1:59:53

       Yeah.

    6. DBDavid Buss1:59:53

       Um, uh, it's okay if there's sexual involvement, but no emotional involvement. So there are different type, different strategies that people work out, and some of them are designed to try to keep jealousy at bay. 'Cause I think it's an evolved emotion that is a natural emotion that, that people experience. Um, now interestingly, there's a, there's a, while we're on th- this topic, there's a sex difference therein. Um, uh, namely, if you contrast sexual jealousy with emotional jealousy, or sexual infidelity with emotional infidelity. And so we, we, in one set of studies, I put my participants, or we used to call them subjects, um, into this, what I call the Sophie's choice of the jealousy dilemmas. I said, "Imagine your partner became interested in someone else, and you discover that they have had, uh, passionate sexual intercourse with this person, and they've gotten emotionally involved with them. They've fallen in love with them. Which aspect of the infidelity upsets you more?" And when you, m- and, and that's why it's called the Sophie's choice. Both terrible choices, right?

    7. LFLex Fridman2:01:06

       Yeah. [laughs]

    8. DBDavid Buss2:01:08

       Uh, but men much more likely to say the sexual infidelity is what upsets me more. Women, it's like, "Why are you even asking me? It's a no-brainer." 85% of the women say the emotional infidelity is what bothers them, me more. Former student of mine, uh, Barry Cooley, did a really interesting study of a analysis of this reality show called Cheaters. I've actually never seen it, but-

    9. LFLex Fridman2:01:30

       Mm

    10. DBDavid Buss2:01:30

        ... where, where if you, um, suspect your partner of cheating, then the detective from the TV team will follow the person, uh, and then they'll call up and say, "We've just seen, well, your hu- found your husband here in the no-tell motel. Do you wanna come down and talk to him?" And so the, and so what he analyzed, though, was the verbal interrogations that people had when they confronted their partner, and women wanted to know, "Are you in love with her?" Men wanted to know, "Did you fuck him?"

    11. LFLex Fridman2:02:04

        Mm-hmm.

    12. DBDavid Buss2:02:04

        Or, "Did you have sex with him?"

    13. LFLex Fridman2:02:06

        Mm.

    14. DBDavid Buss2:02:06

        And so it's, it's this sex difference in sensitivity to these different cues of infidelity. And, and of course, there's, there's an evolutionary logic to this, to this sex difference, and it's been replicated, not, not the Cheaters study, but, um, the, uh, hypothetical Sophie's Choice study has been replicated now in Sweden and China, and, you know, it's, it's a universal sex difference.

    15. LFLex Fridman2:02:31

        So given that sex difference, and you mentioned another one to just return to, which is, um, in the engineering disciplines.

    16. DBDavid Buss2:02:38

        Yeah, person-thing orientation.

    17. LFLex Fridman2:02:39

        Person-thing. So until I started to see writing about it in the sort of psychology literature, I observed this anecdotally a lot. And the reason I observed it is I was confused, so I care a lot about robots. I'm a robotics person. And so a lot of males in the robotics community really didn't care about the, what's called the human-robot interaction problem, which is, like, robots when they interact with humans. And then a lot of, uh, females, all brilliant, in, in the robotics community cared about the human-robot interaction. They cared about the human, the, what the robot, how it communicates with the human, the human in the picture, human in the loop. And I was really confused, like, 'cause the difference to me in my anecdotal interactions, but the, the n is quite large there. [chuckles] Like, I, you know, I'm in the robotics community. I know a lot of people.

    18. DBDavid Buss2:03:30

        Yeah.

    19. LFLex Fridman2:03:31

        And I was confused because for me, I really care about human-robot interaction.

    20. DBDavid Buss2:03:37

        Yeah.

    21. LFLex Fridman2:03:37

        I, I see-- I care about both a lot. And in s- in, in the same thing here in terms of emotional cheating versus physical cheating, I care a lot about both, and I have, like, this oscillating brain. So I wonder what that says about my brain. So I'll, I'll often wonder this, 'cause there's specific sex differences that are represented in the data and the literature, and I seem to oscillate depending on mood.

    22. DBDavid Buss2:04:03

        Yeah.

    23. LFLex Fridman2:04:03

        And I wonder what that says about me. Why do I care so much about that robot on the floor? I care not, uh, half I care about how it works, and the other half, how it makes other people feel.

    24. DBDavid Buss2:04:17

        Yeah.

    25. LFLex Fridman2:04:18

        What is that?

    26. DBDavid Buss2:04:18

        Yeah. So, so I guess what I would say, this gets back to our earlier discussion of agency and communion, where, uh, I actually think that it's a sign of being, uh, well-balanced to have both capacities, uh, within you. And so w- you get, um, people who are, um, unimodal, or j- they just have one mode of operating. Let's say it's the thing mode-

    27. LFLex Fridman2:04:43

        Mm

    28. DBDavid Buss2:04:44

        ... which, which engineers tend to be good at. You almost, you have to be good at it to be a, a good engineer, 'cause things have to actually work.

    29. LFLex Fridman2:04:51

        Yes.

    30. DBDavid Buss2:04:52

        You know? [chuckles] It's, it's not in some, you know, dream or hypothetical state. Things have to, have to actually work. But with the agency and communion, I think it's good to have a balance, and that's why I think some of the best r- romantic relationships are those where people are, uh, they're high on what they used to call androgyny, where they have both the positive features of agency and communion, the positive features of masculinity and femininity-
21. 2:08:29 – 2:17:27

    Female vs Male sexuality

    1. LFLex Fridman2:08:29

       You wrote a book called Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations From Adventure to Revenge, that sounds fun, and Everything in Between. So why do women have sex?

    2. DBDavid Buss2:08:42

       Well, I co-wrote it with a female [laughs]

    3. LFLex Fridman2:08:44

       Yes

    4. DBDavid Buss2:08:44

       ... who's Cindy Meston, a, a wonderful, uh, friend, and colleague, and co- co-author, and co-collaborator. Um, I wouldn't be presumptuous enough to write a book called Why Women Have Sex by myself [laughs] as, as, as a male.

    5. LFLex Fridman2:08:58

       Did you contribute anything to this book?

    6. DBDavid Buss2:09:00

       Uh-

    7. LFLex Fridman2:09:01

       I'm just kidding. [laughs]

    8. DBDavid Buss2:09:01

       [laughs] I, I did, but I have to, uh, tell you a story about the, um, the origins of this idea, uh, which I give credit to Cindy Meston for. Um, and we were, we, we, she's a colleague in, in the psychology department with me, and we would go out to dinner once a week or so. And, and we were just talking about this. She raised this issue, and so we started to brainstorm. W- w- what, originally it was why humans have sex, and that's the, the scientific article we published was why humans, 'cause we're interested in males and females. And so I said, um, "I would come up, well, uh, they have sex because of X." And then Cindy Meston would come up, she'd say, "Oh, here's seven other reasons." And then I'd come up with one more, and she'd come up with another seven. [laughs]

    9. LFLex Fridman2:09:44

       Yeah.

    10. DBDavid Buss2:09:45

        So it was like, you know, so, so she's in, in, in some sense importantly the, um, you know, originator or fountain of this, of this idea. But, um-

    11. LFLex Fridman2:09:54

        Oh, so sh- she's able, there's something about the way she thinks about sexuality that's able to deeply introspect about reasons for sex.

    12. DBDavid Buss2:10:02

        Yeah, and probably especially about female sexuality. And this is one of the interesting things and why it's so fun for me to collaborate with, with, um, in this case a fe- a female, because they do have a different sexual psychology than males. And so, and I've noticed this, that's why in my graduate society, I've like, I've had 30 or so PhD students. About half have been male, half have been female, and the, the, the women come up with different questions, different scientific questions that I wouldn't have thought of necessarily. Um, and so, um, and so anyway, so it turned out to be a good collaboration. I will, I will say that we, we co-wrote it, and that I did contribute, [laughs] contribute to it.

    13. LFLex Fridman2:10:45

        Good. [laughs]

    14. DBDavid Buss2:10:45

        Um, and, uh, especially the, the, um, the evolutionary insights, um.

    15. LFLex Fridman2:10:50

        So is there a good few words you can say, uh, s- to why women have sex? What are some primary motivations?

    16. DBDavid Buss2:10:58

        Well, we, we originally came up with a list of 237 reasons-

    17. LFLex Fridman2:11:03

        Yes

    18. DBDavid Buss2:11:03

        ... uh, for why, uh, why humans have sex, and they range from, you know, some of the obvious ones, uh, because it feels good, uh, because I wanted to relieve stress, uh, be- to relieve menstrual cramps, to get rid of a headache, uh, to get my boyfriend off my back so I could get some work done.

    19. LFLex Fridman2:11:26

        Yep.

    20. DBDavid Buss2:11:26

        Um, so things like that.

    21. LFLex Fridman2:11:28

        [laughs]

    22. DBDavid Buss2:11:28

        To, to others, uh, like, um, [laughs] there's another one, uh, so that he'd take out the damn garbage. [laughs]

    23. LFLex Fridman2:11:34

        Yeah. Yeah.

    24. DBDavid Buss2:11:35

        [laughs] Was one.

    25. LFLex Fridman2:11:36

        Yeah. [laughs]

    26. DBDavid Buss2:11:36

        Uh, but another one, it was kind of interesting that, uh, someone, one nomination was, uh, to get closer to God.

    27. LFLex Fridman2:11:43

        Hmm.

    28. DBDavid Buss2:11:44

        So this, there were some that were kind of, uh-

    29. LFLex Fridman2:11:46

        Spiritual

    30. DBDavid Buss2:11:47

        ... spir- spiritual motivations for having sex. And then some of the nastier ones, like to get revenge on my-
22. 2:17:27 – 2:24:01

    Pornography

    1. LFLex Fridman2:17:27

       What do you think is the effect on this young male brain, or female too, of pornography? So one of the fascinating things that the digital world brought us, now I, I grew up at a time when, like, a magazine, like a Victoria's Secret magazine was, like, my source of, um, sexual inspiration. Uh, [laughs] but that was so, that was before the internet, and now the internet with pornography makes it extremely accessible. All kinds of kinks, all kinds of wild variety. Um, I mean, v- variety and quantity is, um, immense. So what do you think that has, how that affects mate selection, mating, and just the human psychology of the, of the t- of the two sexes of the species?

    2. DBDavid Buss2:18:22

       Yeah. Great question. A big question. [laughs]

    3. LFLex Fridman2:18:25

       Yeah.

    4. DBDavid Buss2:18:26

       Uh, so I mean, we could have a whole podcast just on, on that, or at least talk for a while about it. So I'll just say a couple things, uh, about that. One is, again, uh, there's a sex difference. And I, I feel like I'm a broken record here hammering on this, but, uh, it is-

    5. LFLex Fridman2:18:41

       So a lot of it, just to actually echo the thing, please be a broken record. 'Cause it's, it's interesting. The more we get to the mating, the more there's sex differences rep- present themselves. They surface.

    6. DBDavid Buss2:18:54

       Yes. Yeah. That's right, and in many psychological domains, there are, are no sex differences, or the sexes are very similar. Uh, but pornography is consumed, ab- about 80% of the consumers are men. Uh, so it is very heavily a male consumer, um, industry, uh, if you will. And, um, I think that, uh, it can have positive and negative effects depending on the circumstances. So one, um, potential negative effect is that men might develop unrealistic expectations about what sex Will be like or should be like in, in real life. Uh, and so, and so I remember actually this, I just heard about this one case of, um, I won't mention any, any names, where, um, a man got married and he had been accustomed to seeing very large breasts in his pornography consumption and discovered that his wife had what he perceived to be very small breasts. Uh, in fact, they were actually just medium size.

    7. LFLex Fridman2:20:05

       Mm-hmm.

    8. DBDavid Buss2:20:05

       But because he had been so heavily exposed to pornography and the artificially enhanced, uh, breast size that is often depicted in pornography that, um, he had, uh, come to expect something that was, that was unrealistic. In this case, um, n- not leading-- that's not, not, not the way to lead off to a great sex life [laughs] with your wife by being disappointed in her breast size. So I think that people can develop, m- in this case men, unrealistic expectations also about the kind of sexual acrobatics that porn stars engage in, and when they get in real-life situations can put pressure on women to become-

    9. LFLex Fridman2:20:48

       Sure

    10. DBDavid Buss2:20:49

        ... you know, uh, to fulfill those, those kinds of images. Um, but the other thing, the, the other kind of detrimental effect that it has is, a- and this is something that is emerging culturally, is I think it has a dampening effect on men's pursuit of r- real-life relationships.

    11. LFLex Fridman2:21:09

        Yeah.

    12. DBDavid Buss2:21:09

        Uh, because in some sense it kind of bleeds off some of that sex drive or sexual desire or sexual energy. Um, and so they're-- a- a- and some men get addicted to it, so they're spending hours and hours and hours a day consuming pornography. Uh, and so I think it can have a, a detrimental effect on, uh, even on men's ambition.

    13. LFLex Fridman2:21:31

        Yeah.

    14. DBDavid Buss2:21:32

        Um-

    15. LFLex Fridman2:21:32

        There, there's something really powerful about that sexual energy. Not to be all, like, spiritual about it, but it seems like that's somehow correlated with ambition. So, like-

    16. DBDavid Buss2:21:43

        Yeah

    17. LFLex Fridman2:21:43

        ... uh, one of the things that pornography can take away is, like, e- exactly as you said, is your pursuit of love out there, including women, but also love of things, meaning, like, building awesome, epic things.

    18. DBDavid Buss2:22:00

        Yeah.

    19. LFLex Fridman2:22:00

        The love of both bridges and women.

    20. DBDavid Buss2:22:03

        Yeah. [laughs]

    21. LFLex Fridman2:22:03

        [laughs] Uh, bridge-building and, and, uh, and relationship-building. Yeah, there's something about that energy and, um, and also, uh, yeah, there's a sort of, uh, a vicious downward spiral because it somehow staunches your development because it limits social interaction that, um, the push and pull of, of, uh, r- romantic social interaction. It cuts the edge off of that, and it forces you to be, um, to spend way too much time with yourself without the development of that social interaction. Yeah, I don't, I don't know, but there-- so out- outside of the, um, the expectations on all those kinds of things, it seems to have a detrimental effect on the development of the, of the human mind.

    22. DBDavid Buss2:22:50

        Yeah.

    23. LFLex Fridman2:22:50

        What, what is that? I don't, I don't-- 'cause some of that is echoed in, you know, people talk about the metaverse, that some of our life will be in the digital space, and it's like on one hand, well, if it brings you happiness, if it brings you joy sh- short-term and long-term, why is the metaverse not the same or better than the real world? But there is something still missing, and what is that? Um, something of, of the pleasure you feel with porn is still missing. It's really not representing some of the fundamental pleasure you feel when you interact with real people, and that could be just the growth you experience. Like, real people can reject you. [laughs]

    24. DBDavid Buss2:23:32

        [laughs]

    25. LFLex Fridman2:23:32

        The challenge, the, the, again, the push and pull, all of that, the dance of human relations.

    26. DBDavid Buss2:23:37

        Yeah, yeah, and the, uh, exploration of your sexuality. So, um, on porn you can kind of passively explore because you can see, you know, as, as you mentioned, uh, a wide variety of things and, and, and people, people do that. But in terms of exploring your, your own sexuality, I think there's no replacement for a real human being.

23. 2:24:01 – 2:33:10

    Sex and Violence continued

    1. LFLex Fridman2:24:02

       So you've written about violence, and here we're talking about porn and sex. Uh, I don't know if you have thoughts on this, but I'd love to ask your opinion on, quote, "incels." So here I would like to quote Wikipedia, uh, that define incels as "members of an online subculture of people who define themselves as unable to get a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one." They also write-- Now, I don't know if Wikipedia is the accurate source about incels, but here it is. They write, quote, "At least eight mass murders resulting in a total of sixty-one deaths have been committed since 2014 by men who have either self-identified as incels or who had mentioned incel-related names and writings in their private writings or internet postings. Incel communities have been criticized by researchers and the media for being misogynistic, encouraging violence, spreading extremist views, and ra- radicalizing their members." Is there some insight that you draw from this connection of sex and lack of sex to violence?

    2. DBDavid Buss2:25:06

       Well, uh, I think sex and violence are linked in, in various ways. Uh, and, uh, it's, it's, it's not just, it's not just incels. So, uh, uh, if you look at, um, serial killers, for example, uh, and this is another thing that I've-- um, true crime is, uh, kind of a avocation of mine. I just enjoy reading about true crime and following true crime stories.

    3. LFLex Fridman2:25:37

       What's avocation?

    4. DBDavid Buss2:25:39

       Uh, p- hobby.

    5. LFLex Fridman2:25:40

       A hobby.

    6. DBDavid Buss2:25:41

       Side, side-

    7. LFLex Fridman2:25:41

       It's a side super-

    8. DBDavid Buss2:25:42

       ... side interest

    9. LFLex Fridman2:25:42

       ... super fancy word for hobby. I got it. Cool.

    10. DBDavid Buss2:25:44

        Yeah. Uh, that, uh, like, like Ted Bundy Um, he was actually-

    11. LFLex Fridman2:25:49

        Fascinating

    12. DBDavid Buss2:25:50

        ... very charming and, and didn't have any trouble attracting women, but his killing spree started shortly after he was rejected by a very high status a- attractive woman. Uh, and he felt a rage about being rejected by her. Uh, now who knows, that's an N of one, and we don't know if, you know, you know, being rejected, um, causes serial killing per se, but sex and violence are related in, in different ways. Um, I, uh, argue, and, and I haven't studied the incel community in, in detail. I actually have an incoming graduate student who's gonna start in the fall who, who has been studying the incels, and so he'll have a more informed picture. But my attitude is, um, there are ways to improve your mate value. If you're having trouble attracting a mate, there are ways to improve your mate value because a lot of things that women want in a mate are improvable. You know, they, women want guys who are, um, compassionate, who are understanding, who, uh, are, uh, ambitious, who, who acquire resources, et cetera. They're... Who, who are physically fit. There are things you can do to improve your mate value. And so I would say, rather than, uh, I would encourage incels or the incel communities, rather than being hostile toward women or being angry at women, um, just do things to improve your mate value, and then you will be more successful at attracting women.

    13. LFLex Fridman2:27:27

        Yeah, I mean, some of it, that's a fascinating-- So, um, your student will be studying that. There's a, um... Listen, I love the internet. The internet always wins, and there's a fascinating aspect to it, which is just humor. And I, um, I'm fascinated by seeing the humor, whether it's 4chan or Reddit and all that kind of stuff, where, where people maybe will self-identify as incels as a joke, as a kind of, basically representing the fact that, you know, it's hard to get women. This, this, the struggle, the struggle, and for women, it's hard to get a mate that they, you know, the-- They're basically jokingly representing the, the, the challenges, the difficulty of the mate selection process, that the desirable group is smaller than the entire group. That's it. And they're joking about it. But then it's interesting how quickly humor, uh, again, a dynamical system, it can, uh, g- turn into anger. And that, on the internet, is so interesting to watch, like how trolling, light trolling is humor, but it can turn into aggression. And I, I've just seen... It's weird. It's weird how this is true on the internet, but you also just look at the dark aspects of the twentieth century that I've been reading a lot about, how kind of light-hearted things turn dark quickly. And, uh, it's interesting. I, I don't know-

    14. DBDavid Buss2:28:57

        Yeah

    15. LFLex Fridman2:28:57

        ... what to make of it because, uh, it's basically sexual frustration that all humans feel. It's, you know, dating in general, can turn into anger, uh, can turn into so-sophisticated philosophical constructs like, uh, about how the world works, of who really is pulling the strings.

    16. DBDavid Buss2:29:19

        Right. Yeah.

    17. LFLex Fridman2:29:20

        And that turns some of the worst crimes committed, uh, by the Nazis, for example, or by extremely intelligent people that constructed models of how the world works. Uh, and th-there's, there's something about [chuckles] sexual frustration is one of the really powerful forces that could be a catalyst for constructing such models. And once you've done that, shit gets a lot more serious, [laughs] and it's no longer a joke. It's serious. But at the same time, when you just look from the surface, it's kind of jokes.

    18. DBDavid Buss2:29:52

        Yeah. Well-

    19. LFLex Fridman2:29:53

        It's, it's weird

    20. DBDavid Buss2:29:53

        ... that's interesting points that you're making. I, I think that this, this is one way in which evolution has built into us, um, a, um, a feature which is really bad for our overall happiness, uh, and, and that is that it's created desires that can never be fully met.

    21. LFLex Fridman2:30:16

        Yeah.

    22. DBDavid Buss2:30:16

        You know? And that includes in the mating domain. So even with people who are successful in attracting, you know, somewhat desirable mates, maybe they want, you know, Gisèle Bundchen or some, you know, they, they desire things that are, that are, w-women that are higher in mate value or, uh, or, or a larger number of partners than they can successfully attract. And, and in a way, I mean, these, these serve as, evolution's built into these because they're motivational devices. They motivate us to try to get what we want, but it also makes us miserable or at least unhappy or dissatisfied because there are desires that can never be fulfilled. And this is, and this is to mention one more sex difference, this desire for sexual variety, meaning a variety of different partners, is much, much greater in men than in women. Um, and so that's why even, like, in, in pornography consumption, men will, like, you know, go through multiple, multiple, multiple, um, images and sex scenes and so forth, uh, compared, compared to what women who consume pornography go through. Uh, but this desire for sexual variety is, is something that makes men mi- miserable because it's something that they can't, most men, unless you're a, a king or a despot or, um, you know, uh, have, have a harem, uh, it's something that can never be fulfilled in everyday life. And so I even th-think that, you know, you, you talk to men who are walking down a city block in Austin or New York City or San Francisco or wherever, and they pass by- They could pass by six women and feel a sexual attraction to six different women in one city block, you know?

    23. LFLex Fridman2:32:05

        [laughs]

    24. DBDavid Buss2:32:05

        Um, now, and so this is-

    25. LFLex Fridman2:32:08

        Yeah

    26. DBDavid Buss2:32:08

        ... again, where evolution has created in this desires that can never be fully met. And, and-

    27. LFLex Fridman2:32:14

        Stupid evolution. Well, it's useful, right? And the, the hilarious thing, now this is always up, up my own mind by just observing people, once you get that 10 or that, uh, beautiful woman that you've been lust- You take her for granted-

    28. DBDavid Buss2:32:29

        Right, right

    29. LFLex Fridman2:32:30

        ... and you move on to the next thing. [laughs]

    30. DBDavid Buss2:32:31

        There are classic cases like, um, I don't know if you're, you remember this, this case, but, uh, Hugh Grant, um, was with Elizabeth Hurley, who is a gorgeous model, and he was caught having sex with a prostitute, I think it was in, in LA or whatever, and he's, he's got Elizabeth Hurley. W- why are you having sex with a prostitute? But-
24. 2:33:10 – 2:44:54

    Cancel culture

    1. LFLex Fridman2:33:10

       So many of the ideas you do research on are pretty controversial, or at least the topic is controversial somehow. Maybe you can speak to that. But d- what are your thoughts on the current climate of cancel culture, or maybe there's a better term for it, that word is, like, loaded now, uh, about you doing research in this pa- space that is so sort of, uh, essential, so crucial to understanding human nature? How, how... What are the difficulties? What are the concerns for you to be able to freely explore?

    2. DBDavid Buss2:33:45

       Yeah. I've been doing, um, research on these things. So when you, when you combine, um, sex or sexuality with sex differences, with evolution, each of these topics are controversial by themselves, and you bring them together, the intersection becomes especially controversial. Uh, but I, uh, I, I guess view myself as a scientist, and so, um, and so I would rather be, uh, scientifically correct than politically correct, uh, if you will. So I don't-- I have no interest in... I don't have a- an agenda. I don't have a political agenda. I don't have any agenda other than discovering human nature. That's what I've devoted my scientific career toward, and I'm-- and that's why I do the studies in responsive to empirical data and, and the best theories that we have available, or best conceptual tools. Um, so, um, do some of these things upset people? Yeah. Yeah, they do. As a matter of fact, even, um, early in my career, before I started publishing on some of these things, I gave a talk in the sociology department. This was at University of Michigan. And a female professor came up to me afterwards and said, uh, "You know, you really shouldn't publish the results of your studies." Um, and I said, "Why not?" And she said that it would-- That, that people-- Women have it hard enough as it is without, you know, knowing about these things. And my view is, um, my view is that's naive. I, I think suppression of scientific knowledge is, is a bad thing, and suppression of scientific knowledge about sex differences is, is a bad thing. Uh, men and women are not psychological clones, uh, especially when it comes to the mating domain and sexuality domain. The only, the only other domain that shows massive sex differences that we haven't touched on is aggression and violence. So the, the leading cause of violence is, is being a male. Uh, males have a mon- And the more extreme the violence, the more males have a monopoly on it. So when you get to homicide, warfare, males have a monopoly on it. And we need to understand human nature, and we need to understand sex differences therein in order to be in a position to effectively solve some of the social problems that these sex differences create. Um, so, um, you know, so I've been, um, gotten some flak. Uh, uh, no one's tried to cancel me, uh, in my work so far. So I'm, I'm, I'm-

    3. LFLex Fridman2:36:33

       Just wait.

    4. DBDavid Buss2:36:34

       Yeah, just, uh [laughs] Yeah. So-

    5. LFLex Fridman2:36:36

       But does it hurt you personally? Just is it, is it psychologically difficult, you know, to do this work? Because, uh, what is research? Is thinking deeply through things and, uh-

    6. DBDavid Buss2:36:45

       Yeah

    7. LFLex Fridman2:36:45

       ... um, like, uh, doing studies, but also interpreting them and thinking through what is the right questions to ask.

    8. DBDavid Buss2:36:52

       Yeah.

    9. LFLex Fridman2:36:52

       What does this mean? And for that, you have to have a clear mind, a, um, an optimistic mind, a free mind and all that. So it's-- You're just a human, so ps- psychologically, is it difficult? Does it wear on you?

    10. DBDavid Buss2:37:07

        Yeah, um, yeah. I would say not, not really, but, um, I've been, I think, fortunate. So even, say, my latest book, I published a book recently on conflict between the sexes, and, um, and it deals with very controversial topics, including intimate partner violence, uh, like with the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard thing. Um, and I, I don't talk about that in the book. But, um, uh, and, uh, and it's been largely well-received, you know, and I think partly it's because I am careful in my publications not to endorse it. So one of the common conflations that people make is they think that, uh, it's something that you think is good, you know, that, you know, um, if you find a sex difference, that there should be a sex difference. This is the is-ought confusion, um- And so I try to make it very clear, uh, that I'm studying what is, not what ought to be, and a lot of things that I discover about what is the case I would prefer them not to be. And I think, uh, you kind of alluded to this earlier by saying that we, um, have to override some of our violent, uh, inclinations or impulses, or, uh, w- the way I would phrase it is we have to, um-

    11. LFLex Fridman2:38:28

        Control them?

    12. DBDavid Buss2:38:29

        ... control or keep quiescent or suppress, uh, some of, of the nastier sides of, of human nature. And, and we've successfully done that in some domains. So, um, you can talk about, like, one group that fascinates me is, uh, the Vikings and the whole, that whole, um, uh, uh, era.

    13. LFLex Fridman2:38:50

        Mm-hmm.

    14. DBDavid Buss2:38:50

        And so you have, you have in, in Sweden, Norway, for example, uh, these are, these have the, like, the lowest homicide rates on Earth.

    15. LFLex Fridman2:39:01

        Yeah.

    16. DBDavid Buss2:39:01

        Um, but you go back 400 years ago, 600 years ago, people were killing each other right and left.

    17. LFLex Fridman2:39:08

        Yeah.

    18. DBDavid Buss2:39:08

        You know? And so, and so finding that, uh, so, so this is, le- leads me to be optimistic that we can, um, change conditions to suppress our evolved proclivities, just like the one, one physical example that I sometimes use is callus-producing mechanisms. We have evolved callus-producing mechanisms that are very valuable. We develop thickness in the areas of our skin that have experienced repeated friction. But we can, in principle, design environments where we don't experience repeated friction. Um, and so we won't grow calluses. And so you've designed an environment that basically prevents the activation of our callus-producing mechanism. I think we can do the same thing with some of these other inclinations, um, and, and have succeeded in, you know, uh, reductions of homicide in, even in the last couple hundred years.

    19. LFLex Fridman2:40:04

        And some of that has to do with the myths and stories we tell ourselves, like, again, it's language. 'Cause I, I mean, I love the Vikings, uh, Valhalla, that idea.

    20. DBDavid Buss2:40:14

        Yeah.

    21. LFLex Fridman2:40:15

        That's a myth. That's an idea. That's a promise for the, for the great land beyond, over there beyond the mountains. It's like, uh, Animal Farm, Sugarcandy Mountain, that is promised to you if you're a great warrior. I believe Valhalla is where half the soldiers go, um, as a reward for, for great soldiering, for being great warriors. And the thing I just recently have been reading quite a bit about Valhalla, which is, um, it's such a fascinating how the my- these myths are constructed. The, um, I believe, I just think this is such an awesome setup in terms of a, a, a kind of heaven, which is they spend the entire day fighting [chuckles]

    22. DBDavid Buss2:41:04

        [chuckles]

    23. LFLex Fridman2:41:04

        So they, they... For joy, and if they die, they're reborn the next day. So it's, it's, you're basically the passion, the thing you're passionate about without the consequences. On top of that, I think there's a pig or a boar, um, that is, they keep eating. So it's regenerated every single day, so unlimited food, and there's unlimited beer, I believe.

    24. DBDavid Buss2:41:29

        Right.

    25. LFLex Fridman2:41:29

        So it's like, it's like-

    26. DBDavid Buss2:41:30

        Or, or, or mead, maybe. [laughs]

    27. LFLex Fridman2:41:32

        Mead. Mead. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

    28. DBDavid Buss2:41:33

        Yeah.

    29. LFLex Fridman2:41:33

        It's mead. I don't know. That's, that's fascinating that we construct these myths, and at the same time, um, these myths can be used to get humans to do some of the worst atrocities. So some of the violence requires us to have those myths of what is waiting for us beyond death, sort of beyond, over there in Sugarcandy Mountain, as, uh, the crow says that in Animal Farm. And so, you know, I think the more and more in this modern society, the positive of not constructing so many myths is that we get to live more in the moment, and that forces us to optimize and improve the moment, and we get to face the irrational and the painful aspect of violence. Maybe we should reduce that in the here and now. Yeah, the downside is we may not, if we dispose of God or these kinds of religious and spiritual ideas, we might descend into a, you know, what Nietzsche worried about with nihilism. S- And it's a, it's a beautiful dance 'cause humans seem to tie themselves together with narratives.

    30. DBDavid Buss2:42:36

        Yes. Yeah.
25. 2:44:54 – 2:53:18

    Elon Musk and Twitter

    1. LFLex Fridman2:44:54

       you hope that the internet, the distributed nature of the internet makes it more difficult to run a propaganda campaign, at least of the classical sort. I do have, uh, a, a question about this, 'cause you mentioned Elon Musk when we're talking about status hierarchies, like you and I-

    2. DBDavid Buss2:45:10

       It-

    3. LFLex Fridman2:45:10

       ... can't buy Twitter. [laughs]

    4. DBDavid Buss2:45:11

       And w- well, wealth accumulation, yeah.

    5. LFLex Fridman2:45:13

       What, what do you think about Elon buying Twitter, um, in particular in the reason, the stated reason, uh, that he's doing so in, um, emphasizing free speech?

    6. DBDavid Buss2:45:26

       That's an interesting question, but I don't really have an informed opinion about it. You know, I don't know, um, uh, it's not my area of expertise, and I don't, um, I don't know enough details, and I also don't know what his plans are for Twitter, what, what changes he plan- proposes to implement.

    7. LFLex Fridman2:45:44

       Well, uh, uh, the reason I bring that up is because... and, and you've, you've kind of said you don't necessarily feel a tremendous amount of pressure, but in doing controversial research, in doing research on controversial topics, you're also a communicator, and Twitter is a platform which you communicate, and there's going to be, if you get canceled somewhere, you get canceled on Twitter.

    8. DBDavid Buss2:46:07

       Yeah.

    9. LFLex Fridman2:46:07

       And so there's pressure. So what does free speech look like in these public platforms? It's communicating difficult ideas. It's changing your mind. It's exploring ideas and not fearing the mob, uh, the mob that pressures the platform to remove you from the platform or to ban you, shadow ban you from the platform, decrease your reach artificially on the platform. And those are really fascinating questions-

    10. DBDavid Buss2:46:38

        Yeah

    11. LFLex Fridman2:46:38

        ... that we get to deal with in this new digital age. And so there's a lot of ideas. You said what Elon is planning to do. Forget Elon. How do you do this well? That's the question. And, uh, there's sort of an absolutist view of free speech, let anyone say anything, and I tend to be a person that believes everybody should have the freedom to say anything. The question with a social media platform is, well, uh, can you force anyone to hear what you have to say? Because the virality, the viral nature of communication means that you can, uh, control who hears what you say.

    12. DBDavid Buss2:47:19

        Yeah.

    13. LFLex Fridman2:47:20

        The virality of that, the search and discovery aspect, and it's a, I think that's a fascinating question from the algorithmic perspective. The amount of data out there, just like papers, there's a huge amount of papers. What you want is to find the best papers, the ones you agree with, but also the ones that challenge you, and you don't want to nonstop read the papers that challenge you. You're going to be mentally exhausted. There's a bucket of attention and focus and mental energy you can allocate. The ones that really challenge you, the ideas that really challenge you are exhausting. It's good.

    14. DBDavid Buss2:47:54

        Yeah.

    15. LFLex Fridman2:47:54

        Just like going to the gym is good. But then you also want to read, um, things that are fun for you, and th- those are, you know, um... If you spend your whole life in arguments, that's going to be exhausting. You wanna hang out, chill with your friends, watch some Netflix, have fun, whatever.

    16. DBDavid Buss2:48:12

        Yeah.

    17. LFLex Fridman2:48:13

        Uh, easygoing, and sometimes have difficult academic arguments with people, for example, with people you disagree with, but not all the time. You have to have a platform. What does free speech actually looks like? It's a platform where everybody can challenge anybody but not destroy them by doing so mentally. So you have to balance, uh, personal growth of each individual person on the platform. But definitely removing people from a platform is a terrible thing. So on top of that, it's like, how do you get measures that the platform is doing good? What I really like what Elon said, and I've talked to him about this, is, uh, pissing off everybody equally, the extremes of every side equally. In the political spectrum, you could say the left and the right is, uh, measuring by pissing off the extremes equally, because currently there seems to be an asymmetry in that. So that's one good measure. That allows you to maximize, as he says, "The area under the curve of human happiness." Um, that's one thing. The, the other is repres- people representing themselves honestly, so removing the bots from the platform. It's such a weird world we live in-

    18. DBDavid Buss2:49:26

        Yeah

    19. LFLex Fridman2:49:26

        ... where you don't know who's real or not. So anonymity is an awesome thing. The awesome aspect of anonymity is it protects people's privacy. It actually gives them freedom to think, freedom to speak even more so. But when anonymity is weaponized, it allows you to be cruel to others without the repercussion of cruelty that you would feel in the physical world.

    20. DBDavid Buss2:49:52

        Right.

    21. LFLex Fridman2:49:52

        And so you, you wanna use anonymity as a shield versus as a, as a sword, so to protect yourself from the attacks of others, but not as a way to hurt others, and those are all really tricky things to figure out. And it not, you know, uh- Not all of it's gonna be solved with an edit button, which I believe is the most requested Twitter feature. Anyway, I think, I think this is really, um, I think this is fascinating not just for people talking about politics, which is what everyone seems to care about, but also for science, for people challenging each other in the scientific domain. 'Cause I, I, I at least have hope for scientific communication where people can start playing around with different mediums of communication, so not just academic papers, but just ideas.

    22. DBDavid Buss2:50:37

        Yeah.

    23. LFLex Fridman2:50:38

        And playing with those ideas.

    24. DBDavid Buss2:50:39

        Yeah, absolutely.

    25. LFLex Fridman2:50:40

        Especially when you have ... So evolutionary psychology-- Well, no, that, even that, it can be super high turn- uh, uh, turnover rate of importance. But, you know, you have with COVID, it seems like the progress of science and scientific debate, uh, is most powerful in that context if it's done really quickly. And it feels like Twitter, like most, most of the best things I've learned about COVID and to stay up to date was, uh, was on Twitter.

    26. DBDavid Buss2:51:08

        Yeah.

    27. LFLex Fridman2:51:08

        Which is so exciting to see, uh, science happening so, so, so quickly in all kinds of domains there. And that, that was great, but then you step in with labels of what's misinformation. You have this kind of, uh, conformity seeking, uh, labels of what is true and not, which is a very unscientific thing to me, in the name of protecting the populace. It's a weird, it's a weird, um, impulse that people have, which is, well, here's an organization, here's an institution that is a possessor of the truth, and everybody e- else is untrue. Now, a lot of the time, maybe majority of the time, that institution is going to be correct. This consensus. Consensus is the consensus because it's usually correct. But the biggest ideas are going to be against the consensus. And certainly that's true in evolutionary psychology, where it seems like, are we even-- is the cake even baked yet? [laughs] It feels like there's a lot of turmoil in terms of figuring out human psychology.

    28. DBDavid Buss2:52:14

        Well, there's a lot [laughs] that we don't know. I mean, if human psychology, if it, if it were a simple thing and we only had, you know, three or a half a dozen psychological adaptations, we would've discovered all of them by now. It's, it's that it's so complex, multifaceted, multi-mechanism, um, uh, part that describes human nature that it, it, it was what makes it exciting, but also the amount that we know is small compared to the amount that we don't know. And so that's why you have to approach these things with, um, with a certain humility. A- and that's why even like in the, in the mating and sexuality domain, which I've been studying for a number of years, I, I keep coming across things that I don't know, questions that are unanswered, um, which, which is, is, um, ma- makes it exciting from my perspective. I mean, that's what the joy is of being, being a scientist.

    29. LFLex Fridman2:53:15

        [sighs] You mentioned,

26. 2:53:18 – 2:59:11

    Serial killers

    1. LFLex Fridman2:53:18

       I gotta return real quick to, uh, Ted Bundy.

    2. DBDavid Buss2:53:21

       Uh-huh.

    3. LFLex Fridman2:53:21

       You mentioned you have, uh, so you, you, you've written about murder and violence-

    4. DBDavid Buss2:53:25

       Right

    5. LFLex Fridman2:53:26

       ... in a long distant past, but the thread runs through your work today. Who to you is the most fascinating serial killer of, of the, of the true crime-

    6. DBDavid Buss2:53:37

       Yeah

    7. LFLex Fridman2:53:37

       ... uh, things that you've explored?

    8. DBDavid Buss2:53:39

       I think, well, Ted Bundy's way up there. Uh, I think, uh, Charles Manson, um, uh, a- and is another. Um-

    9. LFLex Fridman2:53:49

       Have you seen-- On Ted Bundy, 'cause I find him super fascinating.

    10. DBDavid Buss2:53:52

        No.

    11. LFLex Fridman2:53:53

        Have you seen, uh, there's a lot of movies on him. Extremely wicked, shockingly evil and vile. It's a retelling of his life from the perspective of his girl- long te- term girlfriend.

    12. DBDavid Buss2:54:04

        No, I have not seen that one yet.

    13. LFLex Fridman2:54:05

        Which ties together a lot of our conversation. So I-- it's probably my favorite one. A lot of people say it's the best movie on Ted Bundy, so you should definitely watch it.

    14. DBDavid Buss2:54:14

        Hm. I will.

    15. LFLex Fridman2:54:15

        Uh, I recommend it to others, but it's from a perspective, uh, of the relationship. And it just-- One of the really powerful windows into a serial killer that I saw there is that from the perspective of the relationship, you can have just this healthy looking relationship. Yeah, there's some fights and so on, but the usual dating and all that kind of stuff was all there.

    16. DBDavid Buss2:54:40

        Yeah.

    17. LFLex Fridman2:54:40

        So all the murders he was doing, he had a long-term girlfriend throughout all of that. And also throughout all of that, I'll try not to give away in y- in case you don't know the story. Throughout all of that, she stood by his side. She, she refused to believe everything that was happening.

    18. DBDavid Buss2:54:56

        Yeah.

    19. LFLex Fridman2:54:56

        Until, until, um, you know, the very end. Of course, it shifts in the very end, and that's a fascinating shift, uh, of the, the breaking of the, the illusion. But it's really fascinating that you can have those two things that y- you-

    20. DBDavid Buss2:55:13

        Yeah, well, I think that part of it is we have these stereotypes that we expect people like serial killers to be these, um, ugly, um, drooling creatures that are sort of, uh, e- evil all the time. Uh, and so, um, that's why even like you had, um, I don't know if this is-- if I'm remembering this correctly, but like Stalin, who killed, you know, mill- millions of people, apparently like loved his kids and loved his family and people. So, so we have-- that's part of the complication, uh, the, the complexity of human nature and human psychology, is we, we don't have just this one, you know, this one property that dictates how we behave in all circumstances.

    21. LFLex Fridman2:56:03

        Yeah. The devil is going to be charismatic. That's why, um- That's one of the things I've learned-

    22. DBDavid Buss2:56:12

        Yeah

    23. LFLex Fridman2:56:12

        ... about just looking at evil people, looking at Jeffrey Epstein, who seemed to have hoodwinked quite a lot of people.

    24. DBDavid Buss2:56:18

        Yes. Yeah, that's another, that's another fascinating case. Yeah, not of a... He wasn't a serial killer, but a serial sexual predator.

    25. LFLex Fridman2:56:27

        And a lot of people I know and respect didn't see the evil.

    26. DBDavid Buss2:56:35

        Yeah.

    27. LFLex Fridman2:56:36

        And so I never met the guy, but it's like, are you guys oblivious? Like, what, what was... There must have been something, and from everything I see, it's purely just charisma. It's the, it's the, it's the smoke and mirrors-

    28. DBDavid Buss2:56:51

        Yeah

    29. LFLex Fridman2:56:51

        ... that, uh-

    30. DBDavid Buss2:56:51

        Well, he was a very charming psychopath.
27. 2:59:11 – 3:11:12

    Advice for young people

    1. LFLex Fridman2:59:11

       given the trajectory of your life, in geography and in science, can you give advice to young folks today, high school, college, thinking about how to make their own trajectory, how to make their own way through life that they can be proud of, be the career or just love life or life?

    2. DBDavid Buss2:59:32

       Yeah. Well, not necessarily on, on careers, but I can give advice on, on mating, you know?

    3. LFLex Fridman2:59:40

       [laughs]

    4. DBDavid Buss2:59:40

       And I, I think it's one of these things where, um, you know, we have requirements in, for the courses that students have to take in high school, for example, and I think there should be a required course on relationships, on, on mating. Um-

    5. LFLex Fridman2:59:57

       So not just sex.

    6. DBDavid Buss2:59:59

       Yeah, not, not, not, not just sex at all.

    7. LFLex Fridman3:00:01

       Mating.

    8. DBDavid Buss3:00:01

       Yeah. 'Cause I mean, most of what's taught is they tau- they teach you about sexual health and how not to get an STI and so forth. Um-

    9. LFLex Fridman3:00:08

       Yeah, my, my teacher, uh, put a condom on a banana.

    10. DBDavid Buss3:00:11

        Right. Right. But the, the, but-

    11. LFLex Fridman3:00:13

        It was very exciting

    12. DBDavid Buss3:00:13

        ... but, um, how, how to select a mate. Um, how do you know if you're in a bad mating relationship? Uh, how to, how to get out of a, you know, a, a bad mating relationship. Um, I think that, uh, that there's, at this point in the science, even though there's a lot that we don't know, we know enough to at least provide some heuristics or general gui- guidelines to things to watch out for. So just as a, as a concrete example, uh, with intimate partner violence, uh, and this is male to female, there are statistical predictors of is this guy, uh, does he have an increased probability of beating you up? Uh, and they are things like if he starts to insist on knowing where you are at all times, if he starts cutting off your relationships with your friends and your family. Um, so there are these kind of early warning signs, and I think women should know about those. Uh, or even things like, um, that women are most in danger of being killed by an ex during the first three to six months after they've broken up with him. You know, that, that sometimes they think it's, you know, the guy will say, "Oh, meet with me one, one last time, and then I won't bother you again." Um, no, this is a dangerous time. So I think there's some knowledge that we do know that can be used to make informed decisions about our mating lives, and I think that should be taught.

    13. LFLex Fridman3:01:42

        So consider that, like take that, the, the mate- the mating strategies, the mate- the mating life seriously.

    14. DBDavid Buss3:01:49

        Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, because, um, you know, aside from a small number of people who are totally uninterested in any kind of mating or sexuality, and there are a small percentage that fall into that category, um, we all confront problems of mating, you know?

    15. LFLex Fridman3:02:07

        How do you... You know there's that, uh, um, called the, the mathematical model, like secretary problem, marriage problem. I don't know if you're familiar.

    16. DBDavid Buss3:02:15

        Yeah.

    17. LFLex Fridman3:02:15

        But basically you have a g- it's, it's a silly, perhaps not, uh, th- it's a formalized, simplified Queuing theory type of thing where it's, you have n- n subjects and you get to date some number of, um, people, and then there's a stopping condition, I believe it's n over e, beyond which you pick the next partner which is better than anybody you've dated before. So, uh-

    18. DBDavid Buss3:02:45

        Yeah. Yeah

    19. LFLex Fridman3:02:46

        ... let's not overemphasize that idea, but, um, if, if I were to psychologize it, I, I would say that some exploration is good, some dating is good, but at a certain point you pick somebody, given the set of people you've explored, you pick somebody who is, uh, pretty desirable within that group.

    20. DBDavid Buss3:03:11

        Yeah, yeah. But I would add that what you also wanna do is you want to, um, mate with someone who's equivalent in mate value or, or, or has even, what's more difficult is, has a, um, likely equivalent future mate value trajectory, because nothing remains static.

    21. LFLex Fridman3:03:34

        Yes.

    22. DBDavid Buss3:03:35

        Uh-

    23. LFLex Fridman3:03:35

        That's beautiful

    24. DBDavid Buss3:03:35

        ... um, but it's also the case that there are individual things, and we haven't talked about these, but things like, um, religious, uh, orientation, political orientation, uh, values. These are extremely important to be compatible on. And so you do have cases of, let's say, a Democrat marrying a Republican, uh, uh, and that sometimes works. But you're gonna get into a lot of conflict, other things being equal. Or someone who's, um, deeply religious versus someone who is not at all religious. That's just gonna be a problem. Or someone who's of a different religious faith. Um, and, and so, uh, compatibility on those things. Compatibility also on personality dimensions. But I think there's some main effects, Lex. So I would, I would recommend avoiding that dimension we talked about [laughs] of emotional instability. 'Cause if you sign up for that, you at least should know you're gonna be in for, uh, a lot of conflict. It may be exciting at times, but there's gonna be a lot of ups and downs.

    25. LFLex Fridman3:04:39

        Know what you sign up for. What about how much to date? So there's a culture, I'm, uh, speaking soon to a founder and longtime ex-CEO of Tinder, so there's that culture of digitalized dating, of swipe right, swipe left. Uh, is it positive, negative? How much should you date?

    26. DBDavid Buss3:05:03

        Yeah.

    27. LFLex Fridman3:05:03

        Uh, th- what's the number? And also, what number of sexual partners should you-- What, what's optimal?

    28. DBDavid Buss3:05:09

        Yeah.

    29. LFLex Fridman3:05:10

        Asking for a friend.

    30. DBDavid Buss3:05:10

        I, I don't know if there's a single o- optimum there.

Episode duration: 3:32:42