An Evolutionary Psychologist's Dating Advice - Geoffrey Miller

1. 0:00 – 0:30

   Intro

   1. GMGeoffrey Miller0:00

      It's important to choose your role models carefully. Try to choose guys who are actually succeeding at something other than just giving advice, who can actually have good conversations with a variety of people on their podcast, or actually are making money in crypto, or have actually founded some company that's doing well, or who aren't just like anonymous, behind the scenes, kinda manosphere trolls. (airplane whooshing)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:26

      Geoffrey Miller, welcome to the show.

   3. GMGeoffrey Miller0:28

      It's great to be here, Chris. Really excited.

2. 0:30 – 8:20

   Why Women Aren’t Having Children Anymore

   1. GMGeoffrey Miller0:30

   2. CWChris Williamson0:31

      I just saw an article from Metro UK that's trending on Twitter today. "Half of women aged 30 don't have children for the first time since records began. 50.1% of women born in 1990 haven't had children by 30 according to ONS stats. In comparison, 57% of women born in 1970, 76% born in 1950, and 86% of women born in 1941 all had at least one child by the time that they turned 30." That is crazy.

   3. GMGeoffrey Miller1:05

      It's a pretty big difference compared to what's, uh, you know, ancestrally normal for humans. I mean, bear in mind, you know, if people are reaching puberty at ages 12 to 14 and they're not, you know, reproducing for another like 16 to 18 years, that's- that's like a hell of a delay. And you know, my mom had me when she was 19, and that was pretty normal in the mid-'60s. So on the one hand, if you compare age 30 to a modern career track for women, like if you're an academic female trying to get tenure, you know, you might have like grad school till age 26 or 28, post-docs till age 30, get your first assistant professor job, 36 years till tenure. You know, you don't even feel financially secure till your late 30s, right? But biologically, you're like, I've been capable of having a kid, you know, for years and years and years. So it's a crazy mismatch.

   4. CWChris Williamson2:04

      Dude, I-

   5. GMGeoffrey Miller2:05

      Mismatch is what we call it.

   6. CWChris Williamson2:06

      Mismatch. Dig into that. What's that mean?

   7. GMGeoffrey Miller2:09

      Mismatch between what was ancestrally normal, like in pre-history, versus what the modern world has. So, you know, a simple mismatch would be like what we eat (laughs) in terms of modern American diet versus like paleo diet. Um, or how much sunshine we get, if we're indoors most of the day versus out- outdoors. But I think the mating, uh, market mismatch is a particularly interesting and frustrating.

   8. CWChris Williamson2:36

      That's what I've been fascinated by for the last couple of months. It's so endlessly interesting. I learned... I can't remember what book it was. I want to say maybe Steve Stuart-Williams' book, uh, The Apes Who Understood the Universe, about the effect of a couple who have been together for quite a while, elected not to have children, they chose not to, but find each other becoming increasingly unattractive and can't really explain why. Is this an effect that's- that you're familiar with as well?

   9. GMGeoffrey Miller3:09

      This has not been very well studied, but I suspect there is maybe (laughs) , maybe some kind of instinctive thing where... Look, if you're a human and you're in like a long-term committed loving pair bond, and you've been having sex with someone week after week, month after month, year after year, and you're still not pregnant, under ancestral conditions, that would've been a pretty strong cue that either you're infertile or they're infertile. But whatever the case is, (laughs) this might not be a viable long-term relationship reproductively. And so, you know, maybe there's some emotional, um, reaction to that, that basically means, "I'm going to divest from this relationship." So that's another example of mismatch. Once you have effective contraception, and you can have sex for years and years and years and no baby, what's the emotional impact of that? We don't know. I don't think it's been very well studied, but I suspect it's, uh, often not good for relationships. And people might find themselves sort of, you know, questioning their commitment or falling out of love a little bit or being a little less attracted to their partner. And they might think, like, "There's no rational reason for this. I love them. I'm committed. Maybe we're married. We have a mortgage together. Why am I not into them anymore?" It might be their body telling them, like, "Okay, if you love them, where's the baby?" (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson4:41

       Yeah.

   11. GMGeoffrey Miller4:41

       Like, what happens? (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson4:41

       Well, I mean, it's because it- it doesn't know that you've elected to have this, say... The fact that we have now been able to decouple having sex from making children, because of effective contraception, there's a... Isn't there an equivalent that women have either just before giving birth or just after giving birth that they can find, is it the smell of their partner particularly, uh, off-putting, and it's something to do with the protectionist strategy, and then perhaps the smell of their own family, family members are increasingly attractive?

   13. GMGeoffrey Miller5:14

       Yeah, I've seen some stuff on that. I don't know how well-replicated it- it is, but it would certainly make adaptive sense that, look, if you're (clears throat) heavily pregnant or you've just like... where you might even be dilated and there might even be like an infection risk if you had sex, might be bad for the- the baby. Or in the first few weeks after giving birth. Like, you don't want a woman to be like super horny then. And so she might down-regulate how kind of biochemically attracted to husband she is. But on the other hand, she might be more attracted to boyfriend or husband and other family members in terms of like, "I want cuddling, I want support, I want emotional closeness and intimacy."... you know, because that's what you need when you've got a young baby.

   14. CWChris Williamson6:04

       Did you see this Wall Street Journal article that got shared by Rob Henderson the other day? "A gender split over sniffing a baby's scalp. Mothers get more aggressive and fathers less so when they inhale a chemical found in abundance on infants' heads." (laughs) Did you see this?

   15. GMGeoffrey Miller6:20

       I didn't see it, but it, it kind of makes sense because, uh, like look, when, when you're a new dad, um, and you're used to having a lot of testosterone and being kind of aggressive, you really want to go very, very gentle, you know. You really want to tamp that down.

   16. CWChris Williamson6:40

       Turn everything down. Yeah.

   17. GMGeoffrey Miller6:41

       Because... And, and this is one reason testosterone levels drop when, when men have, have kids is to, like, basically reduce the risk of, of, like, frustration-driven infanticide, you know. But on the other hand, women might need to get a little more protective about the baby and have a kind of a mama bear syndrome where, you know, they might actually need to get a little more vigilant for threats and a little more assertive about dealing with threats. As for many primate species, infanticide is a big, big problem.

   18. CWChris Williamson7:19

       From the father?

   19. GMGeoffrey Miller7:21

       From the father and from other females often.

   20. CWChris Williamson7:24

       How would it be adaptive to have infanticide from the father?

   21. GMGeoffrey Miller7:28

       It depends on how confident he is he's really the father. If he's highly confident, you do not want to kill your baby. But if you're... if you have a lot of doubt, um, then... (sighs) Th- this is like the grisly logic of evolution, and it's not, it's not pretty, but if you're pretty sure it's not your kid, then you'd really prefer that woman to start cycling again and get fertile again so you can have a kid with her. Lions do this all the time, kill lion cubs that aren't theirs. And a lot of primates do this also. So yeah, evolution's incredibly smart about kind of managing, you know, niceness versus, um, aggression and who do you seek bonds and support with all throughout, you know, the reproductive cycle.

3. 8:20 – 16:23

   ‘The Mating Mind’ After 22 Years

   1. CWChris Williamson8:20

      That's fascinating. Is it right to say that you're one of the OGs of applying evolutionary psychology to sexual dynamics, do you think? Your The Mating Mind book is 22 years old now.

   2. GMGeoffrey Miller8:31

      Yeah. I mean, it depends on how you count it, right? The real OG was Darwin. Darwin, 1871, Sexual Selection, um, book. Amazing book, it had a huge impact on me. And then you get a kind of long lull. And then in the '70s, 1970s, you get sociobiology and E.O. Wilson, who recently, you know, died and then got-

   3. CWChris Williamson8:57

      Canceled. Posthumously-

   4. GMGeoffrey Miller8:58

      (laughs) Posthumously canceled.

   5. CWChris Williamson9:00

      ... posthumously canceled. (laughs)

   6. GMGeoffrey Miller9:02

      Uh, and then you had people like anthropologist Don Simons who wrote this amazing book, The Evolution of Human Sexuality in 1979. And that had a big impact on my little field, evolutionary psychology, which really only got started in kind of the mid to late '80s. And I got into it in grad school at Stanford circa 1988, '89. And I'd been writing about, um, sexual selection and human evolution all throughout the '90s and then finally The Mating Mind book came out in the year 2000, um, five years later than I meant to publish it, but you know, that's life.

   7. CWChris Williamson9:40

      The Bob Wright book, uh, that came out, what, '93, '94?

   8. GMGeoffrey Miller9:44

      '93 or '4, yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson9:46

      Fuck, dude, that is so good. To go back and read-

   10. GMGeoffrey Miller9:49

       It really is.

   11. CWChris Williamson9:49

       To go back and read that now, it's- I did a, I did a reading list, a free reading list last year and I had 10 books that were like, you just have to, before you read anything else, these are the ones that you have to read. And Bob Wright's was, was in that. It's fucking phenomenal, man.

   12. GMGeoffrey Miller10:04

       Yeah, huge respect to him. I did a great podcast interview with him a couple years ago. He's still active. Uh, that book, The Moral Animal, big impact. Steven Pinker's books throughout the late '90s, big impact. And there was kind of a golden age of, uh, like, popular science based on evolutionary psychology in kind of the, the '90s through early 2000s. B- before everything got super politically correct and woke.

   13. CWChris Williamson10:33

       I was gonna say, why do you think that's- w- we're lacking some of those discussions now?

   14. GMGeoffrey Miller10:41

       It's just extremely, uh, difficult now to teach, even to teach undergraduates at most universities about, like, basic sex differences, you know. I've taught a class on psychology of human sexuality for about 20 years and you increasingly get blowback from the undergrads, like complaining, "Uh, I can't believe that Professor Miller is reinforcing the gender binary and he's, like, comparing male humans to males of other species. How dare he." And, um, it's gotten, like, viciously and oppressively political, particularly the last five years. And that's sad because, ugh, undergrads really want to understand mating and sex and romance and they're kind of being denied that by, like, a tiny percentage of people who have a really strong political agenda.

   15. CWChris Williamson11:39

       Such a shame, man. Like I- if... I don't know, I think a lot... I know that you're big into existential risk, which is my other pet obsession and, um, that, it really does feel like fucking being on the cusp of something absolutely terrible and awful happening that's just completely getting in the way. There's a, a quote someone put on a YouTube video a while ago, "It's the loudest minority who act like they're steering the ship." And fuck if that's not true.

   16. GMGeoffrey Miller12:10

       Yeah. And so where, where do undergrads go if they're curious to understand this, right? Hopefully, they're listening to, like, your podcast. Hopefully, they're reading Jordan Peterson. Um, there's this whole parallel, you know, intellectual ecosystem that's grown up that is much more honest about these things than anything you get in most American universities.

   17. CWChris Williamson12:35

       Let's say that someone hasn't looked at dating and sexual selection through an evolutionary lens before, how do you introduce it to them?

   18. GMGeoffrey Miller12:44

       I think one important thing to point out is neither sex is at fault for what's going on. Like, both sexes, men and women, both evolved to do the best they can given the reproductive incentives that they faced. And so neither sex is, like, the norm that you have to compare the other sex to. You often have men saying, "Oh my God, women are so neurotic. They're so anxious. They're so fearful. Like, that's weird. I don't get it." Well, if you take a woman's point of view, you know, ancestrally, if you're spending a significant amount of your adult life pregnant or with a baby or with young kids, your... the objective risk that you face from predators and pathogens and diseases and starvation is just higher than what men face. So, of course, evolution shifts your kind of, you know, (sighs) your risk tolerance in a different direction. And conversely, if women are like, "Oh my God, I can't believe men are so into status and aggression and dominance, and why do they do that? Doesn't make any sense to me." Well, if you think who managed to reproduce, which kind of men attracted women and had the r- the status and social support and the influence to be attractive, like given female hypergamy, given female mate choice, of course, you know, we're all descended from males who played that game avidly. So I think one crucial kind of emotional insight from a, an evolutionary perspective is just to accept men and women and their natures as they are, you know? And then to figure out, okay, given that, plus, like, modern culture and technology, how do you do the best you can?

   19. CWChris Williamson14:44

       Do you not find it fascinating to see how those predispositions that we have towards certain things, that's the common thread that runs through everything, and then it gets repackaged into memes that we see in fucking sitcoms and products? Uh, it's so... When you start to understand the evolutionary underpinnings of why people like the things that they like and don't like the things they don't like, it is, it is kind of like seeing the code instead of seeing the, the game.

   20. GMGeoffrey Miller15:17

       Yeah. I, I actually still like the, uh, the red pill metaphor, and there's, like, so many things that have red-pilled me, but probably evolutionary psychology was the biggest red pill for me. Just thinking human nature and human culture as it is, is the outcome of an extremely long story, a really long story, way back in deep time. And the better you understand that story, uh, the less puzzling modern life is. And I... (sighs) It's gotten to the point where, like, if there's a married couple and they don't have evolutionary insights into their relationship and their, their values and preferences and, and what drives their reactions, I think, like, why would you handicap yourself that way? Like, it's really sad. It wou- You'd be much better to go back to, like, read The Moral Animal by Robert Wright rather than go to marital therapy. Like, do both, but Jesus, read something about human nature if, if you really care about your relationship.

4. 16:23 – 28:18

   What All Married Couples Need to Know

   1. GMGeoffrey Miller16:23

   2. CWChris Williamson16:23

      What do you wish more married couples knew?

   3. GMGeoffrey Miller16:27

      I wish more married couples knew that you don't have to take your emotional reactions nearly as seriously as you typically do. For example, um, a lot of people think, "Okay, I know I'm not supposed to, like, hit my spouse. I'm not supposed to do physical violence to my spouse. And so if I have an impulse to do that, I have to control that. That's not civilized. That's bad." However, there's a lot of other, um, reactions we have that are basically, uh, what economists call punishment routines. Like, somebody else does something that pisses you off, right? And you have a reaction to punish them, to give some negative reinforcement. This can range from, "I want to hit them," to, "I want to cuss at them," to, "I don't want to talk to them for a day," to, "I want to complain about them to my friends, or God forbid, on social media." Those are all punishment routines. The instinct to want to punish them, even over something that's maybe objectively trivial, can be very strong. But we have this double standard where, like, we go, "Okay, physical punishment, that's super bad. We don't do that in a civilized marriage." But all these other things, right, are still considered kind of fair game, even if they're objectively, like, a massive overreaction to what actually happened. I think conversely, if you understand, like, why we want to punish our mate for certain, like, transgressions-... you, then you can actually play with that. Like, you can make it funny. You can kind of playfully exaggerate it.

   4. CWChris Williamson18:22

      Give me an example.

   5. GMGeoffrey Miller18:22

      My wife, my wife Diane and I do this all the time. Like, um, if she's pissed off at me for, whatever, failing to do something in the kitchen, instead of taking it seriously and going, "Oh my God, Geoffrey, you suck. You're such a bad husband," she'll start, like, mouthing nonsense syllables, but in an angry way, in kind of a self-mocking way. And so she'll be like, "Bah-gah-gah-gah-gah-gah. Grah-blah."

   6. CWChris Williamson18:51

      (laughs)

   7. GMGeoffrey Miller18:51

      And then I'll start arguing back, using, like, my defensive, like, nonsense syllables, like "Rah-rar-gar-gar-gar." Why can we do that? 'Cause we're both evolutionary psychologists, and we both know at some level, the desire to over-punish for trivial stuff is, is just ridiculous. And if you understand how ridiculous it can be, then you can make, uh, fun of your own reactions. And then you're actually, like, closer to each other. 'Cause like, I have the faith that she has enough self-insight that she can mock her own, like, feminine responses.

   8. CWChris Williamson19:33

      Programming, yeah.

   9. GMGeoffrey Miller19:35

      And she has confidence I have enough insight into my sort of masculine nature and programming that I can make fun of it. And by contrast, you go to marital therapy, most therapists will be like, "You all have to be 100% earnest all the time about your feelings. And you have to take your feelings seriously and, like, express them, and, and work through them, and talk it out." It's like, no-

   10. CWChris Williamson20:02

       So Diana, if you were angry that Geoffrey had used the sauce and not put it away, and you felt upset about it, then this is justified. We do not have n- any unjustified feelings in this. That's fucking interesting.

   11. GMGeoffrey Miller20:14

       Yep.

   12. CWChris Williamson20:14

       I've never been to counseling. Uh, but I imagine e- uh, i- in movies where I've seen it, that's what they do.

   13. GMGeoffrey Miller20:22

       Yeah. And it's, there's very few good role models in movies or TV about how to manage these things. Like, you'll almost never see somebody in a serious adult drama actually make fun of their own reactions in a kind of wise and insightful way.

   14. CWChris Williamson20:37

       The only time that you would ever see it is kind of the ditzy f- female, classic American ditzy suburbs, early 30s, still not married, like wine aunt type, lovable-

   15. GMGeoffrey Miller20:49

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson20:49

       ... like always the bridesmaid, never the bride type one. Like, "Oh, here-"

   17. GMGeoffrey Miller20:53

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson20:53

       "... here I go again, losing my shit about something that doesn't really matter." Which is kind of touching. The reason that people laugh at it is the fact that they know-

   19. GMGeoffrey Miller21:00

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson21:01

       ... there is a compulsion that is a part of her programming that had, if she had all of her, uh, rational capabilities, she might dial that back. She might tamp that down a little bit. It's just that you try to turn that up to eleven.

   21. GMGeoffrey Miller21:16

       Yeah. So that, those are two big takeaways. Like, try to have some insight into yourself, and then try to be playful with it. Um, before we started recording, we talked, for example, a little bit about, uh, female hypergamy, which is, you know, women tend to be attracted to guys who have relatively high dominance or status or prestige or fame or whatever. That's another thing where you can kind of role-play that stuff up in a relationship. So you can kinda create hypergamy even when it doesn't really exist at some objective level. And, uh, you know, people in, like, the BDSM and kink communities do this all the time with what they call power exchange, where it's like, okay, the, you know, the man's gonna pretend to have some role. Like, he's the president or he's the CEO of something, and then the woman's gonna pretend to be, like, whatever, the, um...

   22. CWChris Williamson22:14

       Secretary or some shit.

   23. GMGeoffrey Miller22:15

       ... the, the White House staffer or secretary. Like, whatever, whatever melts your butter. Like, you can do that and it can actually help your stupid human brain think, "Oh yeah, my mate is actually really cool and, like, really powerful and..." Like, if more people did that, I'm, I'm convinced that most relationships would be at least 50% happier.

   24. CWChris Williamson22:40

       That's fucking interesting. A lot of what we've been talking... Uh, Vincent Haranamon, who is Rob Henderson's co-writer on some Quillette articles-

   25. GMGeoffrey Miller22:48

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CWChris Williamson22:48

       ... data scientist that's applied his data science to looking at dynamics in the market, dating market at the moment. And, um, yeah, there's this sort of ongoing, women are outperforming men everywhere at the moment. In education, you're gonna have two to one women, uh, versus men in four-year US colleges by 2030. Women earn 1,111 pounds more than a man between the age of 21 and 29 on average at the moment. Um, and the, the issue that you have if you try and look at it from, like, a public policy perspective... And it's so, it's so interesting that I, I thought that you had to come up with a real-world rational solution to this.

   27. GMGeoffrey Miller23:26

       Mm-hmm.

   28. CWChris Williamson23:26

       But the way that your brain interprets the situation, your brain isn't this fucking all-seeing, all-knowing thing. You can use the same tricks that it's trying to play on you against itself. And if little, you know, if you do have the high-powered boss bitch lady that's got herself into a relationship with a man who, you know, doesn't earn 2 million euros as much as whatever it is that she does, um, the fact that you can compensate for that by reversing the polarity in the bedroom, is, that's really, really fucking interesting.

   29. GMGeoffrey Miller23:58

       Yeah. And there's, um... Yeah, the, like, the, the new age-y tantric concept of polarity is something also most guys should learn more about, like a masculine-feminine polarity.

   30. CWChris Williamson24:09

       How would you, how would you introduce that to someone?
5. 28:18 – 32:32

   Responding to Critics of Evolutionary Psychology

   1. GMGeoffrey Miller28:18

   2. CWChris Williamson28:18

      What do you say to the people that go, "Jeffrey, that's dumb. I don't need a man to drag a, an antelope 500 meters anymore. This is the real world in 2022. I don't w- th- this doesn't matter anymore"?

   3. GMGeoffrey Miller28:32

      I'd say that's, that's largely true objectively, but it can be quite hard to rewire your brain to say, "Oh, actually, I, I'm really attracted to, like, guys who are 5'2" rather than 6'2"." Like, fine, you can do that. I don't know that many women who are successful at doing that. And you know, the, the data from dating apps says height is a major predictor of attractiveness on dating apps, income, major predictor for men. Um, so on the one hand, if you're a smart woman, you can use the evolutionary psychology insights to go, "Okay, even though he's only 5'4", he's great on these other, like, a dozen other dimensions." You can leverage that to overcome your kind of aversion to shortness, right? And that can be really good. Just like a man could, you know, overcome aversion to some, you know, issue that a woman has, it doesn't actually matter now, um, like maybe she's got some disability, she's missing an arm from a motorcycle accident, whatever it is. Like, there are ways you can kind of hack your, your, your brain to say, "That's okay, given all the other traits that are, that are good in this person." But man, if you don't have an evolutionary perspective, how do you do that, that hacking of your own brain? You don't even know where these preferences come from, so it's extremely hard to change them.

   4. CWChris Williamson30:15

      What about from, uh, men to women? What are men looking for?

   5. GMGeoffrey Miller30:21

      It depends a lot on whether men are looking for a short-term mate or longer term mate.We know what men are looking for in a short-term mate, right? It's basically cues of youth and fertility and sexual accessibility. And, you know, we're descended from male ancestors who were kind of scanning the environment for like, "Where is an easy way to have extra reproductive success with minimal investment?" That would basically be any young, healthy woman who seems, like, fit and fertile and relatively, like, un-choosy, right? That's like minimum investment, maximum ROI. But then for a long-term mate, you know, if you're actually gonna pair-bond with someone, (smacks lips) stick around, raise kids with them, then men get a lot choosier about women's, uh, mental traits, like intelligence and creativity and sense of humor, and women's, like, emotional traits, like stability and conscientiousness and reliability. Um, and, and about women's social status, like, "Does she have a lot of friends? What's her family like?" Um, "Is she socially savvy? Can she be a good kind of, um, almost political companion where we can be like the tribal power couple?" But I think it's import- like, it's really important for men to understand the short versus long-term difference, 'cause if you don't, you end up choosing women for the short-term attractive traits, (laughs) and you get stuck in a relationship with them, and then you're like, "Oh, no, she's, like, neurotic and not that smart and a bad match, but, uh-

   6. CWChris Williamson32:13

      The sex is great.

   7. GMGeoffrey Miller32:13

      ... I guess we're s- but the, the sex is great for a while, until it isn't." So, I think, again, the better that men understand this, you know, the easier it is to sort of be honest with yourself about, what are you really looking for and what length of relationship are you, are you seeking?

6. 32:32 – 44:08

   Difference Between Beauty & Hotness

   1. GMGeoffrey Miller32:32

   2. CWChris Williamson32:32

      I had a conversation about this the other day, talking about the difference between beauty and hotness. Now, you might have different terms for it in the literature, but, uh, an immediate, very sexually available signal of fitness versus a more timeless, graceful, more subtle signal of fitness. And, um, I am absolutely adamant that society is signaling almost exclusively off hotness at the moment, that the inherent transactional, transient nature of most of young people's relationships, where basically they're masturbating with somebody else's body, uh-

   3. GMGeoffrey Miller33:04

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson33:04

      ... and they just ... th- there happens to be another consciousness in the room, um-

   5. GMGeoffrey Miller33:08

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson33:09

      ... that that is leading into hotness being used as the fundamental cue. So, look at... I don't even know if these magazines exist anymore, but, you know, if you were to get a girl on the front of some lad mag, some boy's mag-

   7. GMGeoffrey Miller33:23

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson33:23

      ... that's got fast cars and, like, scantily clad women, like, they're not selecting for beauty, they're purposefully selecting for hotness. I did two reality TV dating shows. I did Love Island and one called Take Me Out. And on that, the same, they're not selecting for women that are beautiful. That's not to say that some of them aren't or weren't beautiful, but the primary value that they're selecting for is hotness, because they only have six weeks. If you only got six weeks in a villa and you have to share a bed, there's half the number of beds as there are people, so you're sharing a bed with somebody every night, um, and they need you to switch, switch, switch, th- there's, uh, two eliminations a week and all this stuff, um, they need, they need hotness. You can't, you can't have something that takes you three months to fully appreciate all of the nuances of Louisa's fucking back arch. It's like, "No, no, no, no, no, the, the-"

   9. GMGeoffrey Miller34:14

      Yeah. (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson34:14

       ... "the half-sleeve tattoo and the lip piercing will do it for you straight away."

   11. GMGeoffrey Miller34:20

       Yeah, exactly. And there's an- there can be enormous pressure to kind of signal hotness. So, I think tattoos and piercings and certain kinds of, you know, dressing in a certain way, that basically advertises, like, "I'm, you know, potentially open to short-term mating, you know-"

   12. CWChris Williamson34:36

       What do you think it is-

   13. GMGeoffrey Miller34:37

       "... if, if we match."

   14. CWChris Williamson34:38

       What- what do you think it is about piercings and tattoos? What do you think is the subtext behind that?

   15. GMGeoffrey Miller34:44

       I think it's a little bit, it's a little bit culturally arbitrary that it, it has become associated with openness to, to kind of short-term mating or, you know, openness to being open or polyamorous or whatever, openness to threesomes, whatever, whatever you're into. Um, but once you get the signal established, once there's kind of a social consensus that, oh, if you have a lot of tattoos, that's signaling a degree of sexual openness that would not be welcome in Salt Lake City among the Mormons, you know, but would be welcomed in, like, Brooklyn or LA or whatever. B- but I think your point about hotness versus beauty is, is really, uh, on, on the money. And, like, some women are so beautiful, like, whatever, Cate Blanchett or Anne Hathaway or certain actresses like that, where it's, it's, like, almost hard to sexually objectify them. Like, it, it feels almost wrong to sort of put them in the category of like, "Oh, she's so hot." Because classy beauty, you immediately think, "Oh, I wish I had a wife like that," right? Or, "I wish I had a girlfriend like that." Um, I suspect there's something parallel with men, where, like, certain men radiate kind of like short-term hotness rather than, like, good long-term husband potential.

   16. CWChris Williamson36:13

       One of the-

   17. GMGeoffrey Miller36:13

       You've probably encountered this in the modeling world a little bit.

   18. CWChris Williamson36:15

       Correct, and in the nightlife world a lot, dude. I mean, 'cause I see... It's so funny, you know when you go into a nightclub and there's a strobe light on, and you don't actually... When there's a strobe light, you don't see people move, you see snapshots of the person. It's they're here, then they're here-

   19. GMGeoffrey Miller36:29

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson36:29

       ... then they're here, then they're here, then they're here. Um, and running a club night is exactly the same as that, but socially-So I only get to see people for five hours on a Thursday and a Friday, or whenever it is that your particular portfolio of events is running for that season or that year or whatever. And you see things happen, so you'll see, um, new group of fresher students arrive, and then maybe this guy and this girl, maybe they meet each other, and then maybe they hook up, and then maybe they start talking, and then maybe they're together for a bit, and then maybe this new girl comes in and ... But you don't see everything happen, you just see kind of, like, this brief window into it. And, dude, it's so fucking interesting to see, to be able to select the kids that are going to be the ones that are going to have the status, that are highly regarded. And you're right, I mean there's something, there's something around girls that wear those choker necklaces that have been accused of being a black belt for blow jobs by not me, um, and y- you see that par- certain signals play out, and that's what creates the stereotypes, culturally. You know, you see something, it gets reinforced, and then maybe people see that and think, "Well, I've just got out of a relationship with a boyfriend, why don't I get a nose ring and start wearing choker necklaces, 'cause that's what the culture is telling me that sort of person does." And it (trilling noise) it just starts to feed itself.

   21. GMGeoffrey Miller37:57

       Yeah, and I think ... I would just caution young people, like, w- what you want is you want maximum flexibility to adjust your signals that you're sending out in a way that is, like, dynamic and adaptive. If you get a permanent tattoo that's visible, in every job interview or y- at, at your wedding or whatever, like, it's hard to go back from that. It's hard to do tattoo removal. Whereas if you're wearing, you know, black belt choker, at least you can take that off and, like, then become respectable on Monday.

   22. CWChris Williamson38:36

       Don't need to still wear it at the wedding, yeah.

   23. GMGeoffrey Miller38:38

       So, um, like, the m- of course the more permanent the signal, the more credible a signal it is, 'cause it shows extra commitment, but I think a lot of young people really ... Like, they have a very short-term time horizon and they're really not thinking ahead about, "How is this tattoo really gonna look in 15 years? Is my future toddler gonna make fun of it?"

   24. CWChris Williamson39:03

       (laughs) Talk to me about, um, hard to fake versus easy to fake signals of, of fitness and, and prestige and stuff. I find that really interesting.

   25. GMGeoffrey Miller39:16

       Yeah, I got t- kind of obsessed with this branch of, uh, economic game theory called Signaling Theory back in the late '90s, and it had a big impact on most of what I wrote since then. The basic concept is: if you're trying to signal something, like you're a male animal and you're trying to signal, "I could fight you. I could win," right, the most reliable signals are the ones that are hard to fake where there's some pretty strong connection between, like, the trait you're trying to show off, like formidability, or capacity for violence, or body size. Pretty strong connection between that and the actual signal that you're displaying, right? So a lot of animals will kind of fluff themselves up and make their hair stand on end, or if they have feathers they'll, like, make a big show of it. So they're exaggerating their body size to intimidate rivals, but there's still a correlation between, like, your wingspan and, and, like, the part of your body that can actually fight. Um, now at the, at a kind of, like, uh, cultural level, I did a whole book called Spent, um, in 2009 that was about conspicuous consumption. And there, it's more often a matter of, "I'm gonna buy and display some particular good or service that is objectively expensive in order to show off I can afford it." And there, like, the credibility of the signal depends on, like, is it real? Like, is it actually a designer handbag, or a real Rolex, or is it fake? And do you really own that Bugatti or did you just rent it for the weekend, right? (clears throat) And so, you know, people seeing this stuff are naturally kind of skeptical. Like, if you see somebody wearing what looks like a Rolex, but everything else in their life is, is kind of, like, shitty and cheap, then you figure, "Oh, that's probably fake." Um, whereas if someone's already famous for being a billionaire and, like, you can easily Google them and you can see their net worth, then they can just wear, you know, terrible henley shirts or whatever and nobody cares because they don't have to signal through consumerism.

   26. CWChris Williamson41:44

       I learned ... I can't remember the Scott Alexander blog post. He did a glorious blog post. It wasn't I Can't Tolerate Anything Except The Out Group, it was something similar to that, where he talked about the fact that if you have, um, four layers to classes, that the top layer can use any of the bottom two's fashions, but it can't use the one below.

   27. GMGeoffrey Miller42:07

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson42:07

       And the same thing goes for everybody else is trying to signal that they are, but then you get counter signals which is the person at the very, very top cares so little. And you see this in hipster culture, especially in the UK now. Dude, some of the outfits that guys and girls go out wearing, I'm ... Where the actual living fuck did you get those clothes from? They look terrible, but it's a signal of, "I'm so cool, I don't need to adhere to-"... your idea about what cool is. My cool is so huge and fucking compensatory, it has its own orbit, that I can still be cool even whilst wearing this 30-year-old mothball-ridden fleece.

   29. GMGeoffrey Miller42:50

       Yeah, exactly. (clears throat) And the counter-signaling, um, which is where, like, you would normally expect someone to signal in a certain way, but actually they're kind of signaling the opposite. But the viewer is savvy enough to figure out that, oh, they could have done the usual signal, but they're intentionally not. Um, and like high fashion, haute- haute couture is an interesting case where basically you take like a 19-year-old, you know, six-foot-tall, super beautiful model, and you put something absolutely ridiculous, like truly absurd, on her. And as long as it required like at least, you know, 5,000 person-hours of, of effort to do all the stitching, then you can sell it to like a 50-year-old socialite who doesn't actually look that good, right? And th- that to me is very bizarre because, um, you basically have like clothes that are so ridiculous that only truly beautiful, fit women can wear them. But they're being bought mostly by women who aren't, and, and that's kind of sad.

7. 44:08 – 54:26

   Psychology of Social Groups

   1. GMGeoffrey Miller44:08

   2. CWChris Williamson44:09

      Social proof's an interesting one. I think that's kind of been co-opted as a part of high value now, high-value men and high-value women. But I find social proof to be quite interesting coming from a nightlife background, because that's what we're playing off. You know, I need to get... each year, in order to run my business, I need about 300 to 400 kids between the age of 18 and 21 that are the ones that are cool, that are in the know, that are going to the right parties, that are sleeping with the right people, that are sniffing the right drugs or whatever. Like they, they need to... tha- tha- that's the social proof. And then we've, um, commercialized that, we've utilized that to reflect what it means to go to Voodoo Events, right? You go to a Voodoo Events event and, "Oh, but that's the one that's run by the really good-looking Canadian kid," or whatever it might be. Um, but social proof happens on an individual level too, right?

   3. GMGeoffrey Miller44:58

      Yeah, totally. It... uh, in my experience, like evolutionary psychology was one important red pill. But marketing, understanding marketing and branding and how influencers work was another major red pill. And I, I think it's also crucial for people to understand, particularly in a modern social media economy where, you know, influencers are really driving, um, a lot of the desirability of goods and services, or experiences like going to a particular club. And we are just such hyper-social primates who are just so tuned into these cues that it's, it's kind of easy to manipulate that. And just y- you find the attractive people and associate them with a particular brand and everyone's like, "Oh, I guess that's cool."

   4. CWChris Williamson45:53

      Dude, tha- that- that's our industry.

   5. GMGeoffrey Miller45:56

      "Yeah, I guess that's cool now." Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson45:57

      That's what nightlife is. So there was a lady, Ashley Mears, are you familiar with her?

   7. GMGeoffrey Miller46:01

      Mm-mm.

   8. CWChris Williamson46:01

      Oh, she, she wrote an awesome book. Uh, mm, she was previously a top model in New York up until the age of about 25, but she was always at uni doing sociology throughout. Left, uh, became a professor, um, and then decided to do ethnographic research becoming a party girl. So 31 years old, still very good-looking girl, but now 10 years older than the girls that she's going out with. And they were, um, the ones that were filler girls, so they got taken... We don't really have this so much in the UK, a little bit in London, but not so much. Um, there would be a, a host of an event that would get the girls and they'd go and get sushi or whatever, like the, the aft- the dregs of the sushi. And then he'd take them into the club and they'd sit on the tables with the guys that were spending money so that they would feel... and that's your conspicuous consumption thing. But that insight around girls being used to change the experience, even though the guys that are on the table know that they're kind of not there with them, but it's a signal... I... well, it's not conspicuous consumption, is it? What's... is that ki- is that that, um, status and prestige by being associated with beautiful women, therefore I am as well? Is that what's going on?

   9. GMGeoffrey Miller47:19

      Well, there's a lot of mate choice copying dynamics where like in a lot of, uh, species, if you're a male and some female is cl- clearly interested in you, then (clears throat) the other females nearby will pay attention to that and they'll imitate the mate choices made by the other female, particularly if the other female is like more attractive or older or more, more experienced. And so you get like this winner take all thing, like Beatlemania, right, where everyone's like, "Oh my God, he's so cool." Wh- why? Just because all the other people think he's cool. You know, Justin Bieber, whoo! Um, this doesn't happen as much with men being attracted to women, but it, it does also happen there. And i- it's a- it's another thing that you can exploit in marketing, of course.

   10. CWChris Williamson48:08

       Mm. An article came out in Psychology Today yesterday. Uh, the result of this exercise and study was that three traits emerged as general necessities. Kindness, physical attractiveness, and good financial prospects. So that was both male and female. Uh, there was variation. Men tended to view women's financial prospects as a luxury, and only Eastern women saw religiosity as a necessity. Do you see that only came out yesterday?

   11. GMGeoffrey Miller48:35

       Didn't see it, but-

   12. CWChris Williamson48:36

       Dude, it's all... I'll send it to you once, once we're done. It's really, really fucking interesting. So they had a bunch of different criteria for men and women, West and East, and looked. But across them all you did have some fairly universals, kindness, physical attractiveness, and good financial prospects.... I, I think humor was the one that just about got missed off as well.

   13. GMGeoffrey Miller48:58

       Yeah. And if you, if you dig down a little bit into those three traits, and you're like, "Whoa, why would that matter?" Well, like physical attractiveness is pretty closely associated with health and longevity, which is like, "Okay, how long could I potentially be in a relationship with this person, like before (laughs) they get sick and die?" So it's kind of a time dimension. The resources dimension is like, "How much could they potentially give to me or help support me or like transfer to me that would be useful to me and like my kids and our life?" And then kindness is like, "Will they actually (laughs) transfer those benefits to me or withhold them for themselves or give them to somebody else," right? So if you kind of multiply like how long could the relationship last times how big are the resources times like what proportion of the attention and investment do I get, like that kind of covers a lot of what you want from a long-term mate.

   14. CWChris Williamson50:02

       It's a pretty good fucking function. Yeah.

   15. GMGeoffrey Miller50:05

       It's a pretty good heuristic and like, it's okay to... It's not like we're doing some Excel spreadsheet where it's like, "I have to rate all potential mates on the following 200 traits and like do a weighted linear model and like weigh it up and then like choose the best one." I know rationalists who do that, literally, but you can achieve like a decision that's like 95% that good based on just a handful of simple traits.

   16. CWChris Williamson50:36

       Yeah. I, I remember tweeting you, I think it was probably two years ago, just as I'd started to really get into evolutionary psychology, and I had a problem that, um, the more that I saw, the more I couldn't unsee.

   17. GMGeoffrey Miller50:50

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson50:51

       And I can't remember what your advice was. I, I'm sure it was great. I haven't forgotten it because it was rubbish, but I, I think it was something along the lines of like, it gets worse before it gets better.

   19. GMGeoffrey Miller51:00

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson51:00

       You start to see things... Because o- one of the criticisms that... And, and I, I understand this, you know, I, I try and put this across when I'm talking about these dynamics is that, I'm not trying to be dispassionate about this. I'm not saying that there isn't a place for love and a sense of phenomenological, existential connection with somebody that you genuinely care about. I'm not trying to reduce it down to the, you know, the autistic Excel spreadsheet. Um, but there is a, there is a big period where you go through kind of seeing things for what they are, for the signals that they are or for the reasons that people's motivations have them to do this. What, what would you say to someone that begins tumbling down the evolutionary psychology dating dynamics rabbit hole and starts to kind of... I don't know, is there like a, a nihilism, like when people learn about free will, is there an equivalent nihilism that happens with evolutionary psychology?

   21. GMGeoffrey Miller51:57

       It can, it can be tough for, for a while. I, I do think there's a little bit of a, like a dark valley that you go through that's basically like, you know, maybe read The Moral Animal and you read some David Bostoff and some Steve Pinker stuff and you read, yeah, the, The, The Ape That Understood the Universe by Steve Stewart-Williams. Great book. I've actually used that as a required textbook in some courses.

   22. CWChris Williamson52:20

       Dude, that-

   23. GMGeoffrey Miller52:21

       Um-

   24. CWChris Williamson52:21

       What a fucking great textbook.

   25. GMGeoffrey Miller52:23

       Yeah. Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson52:23

       Yeah.

   27. GMGeoffrey Miller52:24

       It covers so much. It covers like 80% of ev psych in a really digestible way. So, good to Steve Stewart-Williams for doing that. So I've seen this a lot. You, you get undergrads and they learn these things, and they can get kind of despondent and kind of depressed for a while. Um, it might last a few months or they might like take a course and then come back a couple of years later into office hours and go, "Wow, the first year after I learned about ev psych was rough. Like I saw all this stuff going on in a new, new light and I became very cynical about people's motives and their, their self-deception and all their little stratagems and all their bullshit, and I saw through it." But then, um, how do you come out of it? You, um... Once you start living with the idea that humans are just like animals, like other species, and you get used to that, and then you can start to see but what extraordinary animals are we. Like it's so awesome. Other animals just running around doing all this sexual competition shit and all this mate choice shit based on really dumb traits, like, oh, I want to have sex with the bigger gorilla, not the smaller gorilla, or the bird with better plumage. And it's like, oh, at least we have the blessings of being able to talk and be creative and do art and music and humor and all this other amazing stuff. And we have a form of romantic love that is like really sweet and very emotionally intimate compared to what most other animals do. And then you start seeing the bright side, and then you can kind of get excited again about human life.

   28. CWChris Williamson54:23

       What's your thoughts on the manosphere?

8. 54:26 – 1:04:18

   Geoffrey’s Thoughts on the Manosphere

   1. CWChris Williamson54:26

   2. GMGeoffrey Miller54:27

      I have mixed feelings about it, but largely positive. Like, um, I've been a sort of a observer of it for like 15 years or so, ever since the early days of like pickup artists in the early 2000s. And, um, uh, David DeAngelo AKA, uh, Eben Pagan is a good friend of mine, and I've like appeared at David DeAngelo events like 15 years ago.It was strange to see, like, second and third-hand ideas from, like, my early work getting kind of recycled into manosphere, like, wisdom or, or good advice, or often bad advice. Uh, and then get into arguments with manosphere guys who are like, "Miller, you don't understand s- human sexual dynamics at all, and let me, let me-"

   3. CWChris Williamson55:20

      This is my fucking work.

   4. GMGeoffrey Miller55:23

      Like, like, "Preach, let me preach, let me explain to you how sexual selection works." I'm like, "Dude, you're literally quoting back to me something I wrote in 1994."

   5. CWChris Williamson55:32

      (laughs)

   6. GMGeoffrey Miller55:32

      Like, "Thanks, but..." (laughs) I think for a lot of young men, um, they need, like, older successful role models who can explain this stuff to them in a very no bullshit, unpretentious way, you know? And that's what Tucker Max and I were trying to do with our Mate book, was kind of like conjoin evolutionary psychology with, like, brutally simple language that even your average, like, 20-year-olds could understand. And, you know, sometimes the manosphere guys get a little bit, um, overconfident. I don't know what's up. Maybe their, their testosterone supplementation is too high or whatever, but they get a little feisty and a little combative. But, um, I just think if you're a, if you're a young man listening to this, it's, it's important to choose your role models, uh, carefully, and, like, try to choose guys who are actually succeeding at something other than just giving advice, like, who can actually have good conversations with a variety of people on their podcast, or actually are making money in crypto, or have actually founded some company that's doing well, or, um, who aren't just like anonymous behind the scenes kind of manosphere trolls.

   7. CWChris Williamson57:04

      The thing that surprised me when I was watching, uh, reading Mate, your book, which is fucking dope by the way, if there are guys out there that want to kind of learn the principles of evolutionary psychology for mating, and I think that women should read that book as well, because where are all the good men at is probably a pretty fair question to ask at the moment. And if you want to be able to coach whoever it is that you're with in order to be better, or to be able to understand what it is that you actually want, really, really fucking good book. It'll be linked in the show notes below. Um, but one of the things that really surprised me about that book was how long you guys spent in a dating book for men explaining to men about what it feels like to be a woman in the dating space. That was, that was a, like a really, really welcome surprise. One of the problems that I have, the specific problem that I have with the manosphere is it treats women like the enemy, fundamentally.

   8. GMGeoffrey Miller57:54

      Yup, yup.

   9. CWChris Williamson57:54

      That is the primary problem that I have with it. And I really, really try to toe the line. I'm happy with un- uncomfortable insights, right? I'm fucking... All day I'll talk about them, because they're cool. Like, watching the fallibility of your own world crumble in front of your eyes is just something kind of humbling about that. Like, we're looking up at the night sky, right? Like, it's awe and it's dread at the same time. It's kind of cool. But you can push that so easily, you know, the hypergamous nature of women that f- they really don't have that much control over and saying, "Oh, you are actually only a 5 out of 10, so you shouldn't be thinking... You need to get with a man that does... that's homeless and lives on a couch and smokes weed all day." Like, all right, man, like, has that not being fucking done to death where you get idiot thots from Miami and put them on a podcast and do whatever?

   10. GMGeoffrey Miller58:40

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson58:40

       But there's a big section where you try and explain to men about what it's like to be a woman, um, understanding girls' feelings around physical safety, objectification, creeps, being self-conscious, and stuff like that. And that is so fucking important, I think, for men to understand.

   12. GMGeoffrey Miller58:59

       Yeah. Tucker and I did, you know, a, a podcast called Mating Grounds. We did like 250 episodes or something.

   13. CWChris Williamson59:04

       It's unreal.

   14. GMGeoffrey Miller59:05

       And, and, and that, that insight about, "Hey guys, you know, if you want to have success with women, maybe, radical idea, maybe you should spend like at least a nanosecond (laughs) trying to look at the world through a woman's point of view." And the number of guys we had call in to that podcast going like, "Wow, I never actually did that. Like, even though I have a mom and multiple sisters and many, like, ex-girlfriends, I never actually thought, 'Okay, what would the dating scene be like if I felt physically vulnerable, sexually vulnerable? If a lot of the guys who approach me are straight up, like, sociopaths and bad dudes because they're the only ones who have the courage to be super assertive?'" Right? So you're getting a biased sample of men, or online you're getting a biased sample of, like, a lot more trolls than good guys because trolls are very, very active." And just, like, spend a minute thinking about that and then think how, how as an, you know, an honorable man who has his shit together can you, like, break through all of that noise and, and chatter and fear and kind of like present yourself as, "Hey, how you doing? My name's blah, blah, blah." Um, just, like, have a normal conversation. So perspective-taking is, I think, really crucial in this.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:00:37

       What do you think there is, uh, about the zero sum mentality that I said about the manosphere? Because that's how it feels to me. It feels to me like a lot of the fundamentally, um, good but delivered poorly, uh, and with a snide top spin advice from men...... sees any man's gain as a woman's loss. Like it's, it's weird that a lot of the time they're talking about, um, how to get women and to get with women. And then when a woman does, there's this sort of low-key admission that that's somehow their loss.

   16. GMGeoffrey Miller1:01:13

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:01:13

       Like, because you gave yourself away to this guy that we've coached to try and get himself into the position of how he can have sex with you, now you're a slut.

   18. GMGeoffrey Miller1:01:20

       Yeah. Yeah, that's totally toxic. It's bizarre. And the, the irony is, a lot of the guys in the manosphere, if you ask, like, "Do you believe in capitalism or, like, communism and redistribution?" They're like, "Capitalism." "Why?" "Oh, because, like, economic exchange is positive sum, 'cause we can all get wealthier if we, like, provide good goods, goods and services to each other." And then you're like, "Okay, that makes sense in economic markets. Why do you think the mating market is somehow zero sum?" Like there's, there's some obvious low-hanging fruits, like if you have dating apps that are really, really good at matching people based on genuine compatibility, that's a win-win for everybody. It's way better than living in some medieval village where you have three potential mates and none of them share your interests and probably can't even read, right? So there's, there's so many positive sum, uh, ways we could, we could restructure the mating market to work better for everybody.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:02:31

       I took a quote from Mate and I put it in a newsletter the other day. So I'm gonna... two of both of our obsessions, game theory and, um, dating dynamics. Um, so this was to do with slut-shaming. Uh, "Female promiscuity has a tragedy of the commons effect in the mating market. If one woman offers blow jobs on the second date, it's harder for other women to keep them in reserve until the fourth date as their special treat. This creates a downward spiral of young women feeling like they have to offer more sex and, uh, to more guys just to stay in the mating game. Thus, slut-shaming is a way of enforcing a more restrained sexual norm on other women so that not all women have to become more promiscuous than any one of them would like." That shit fucking blew my mind.

   20. GMGeoffrey Miller1:03:21

       And y- (sighs) it's really e- Unless you have this kind of game theory perspective, it's really hard to understand why slut-shaming is mostly done by women to other women.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:03:32

       Correct.

   22. GMGeoffrey Miller1:03:33

       Right.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:03:33

       It also makes a lot of sense around why women tend to be the enforcers of slut-shaming because, uh, so frequently, because women are the ones who have an incentive to protect the sexual marketplace from becoming a price war of easy sex.

   24. GMGeoffrey Miller1:03:45

       Yeah. And this is also why, you know, the main opponents of sex work are often married women, right? 'Cause they have the most to lose if a husband goes off, you know, and spends money on an escort or some financial dominatrix or whatever. And if you just ask, like, "Okay, where are people's incentives? You know, what's the incentive to impose a certain social norm on human sexuality?" Often it's not that hard to figure out why it's happening.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:04:17

       There's another

9. 1:04:18 – 1:09:04

   How Twitter Shows Human Nature

   1. CWChris Williamson1:04:18

      case. I did a little bit of research around who opposes abortions mostly, and it's women. There are more women that oppose abortions than there are men.

   2. GMGeoffrey Miller1:04:31

      And I think there, it... a lot of that might be a, a bit of a virtue signal, right? 'Cause if you're... (smacks lips) (sighs) if you're a woman who's like, "Babies are sacred. We have to protect babies," it's kind of like a way of saying, "My maternal instincts are better than yours, and I'm gonna be a good mom. And one way I demonstrate I will be a good and devoted mom who, who will, you know, protect your babies, is to insult other women who seem not to protect their fetuses." And, you know, I did a whole book on virtue signaling, so I think a lot of this is, um, just all the ways we demonstrate, like, "We're morally good people, and so you can trust me, and I'm, I'm good." And, you know, you, you and I are both pretty active on Twitter, and honestly, like, 60% of the shit on Twitter is virtue signaling to me.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:05:26

      Oh, I d- I would say probably even more. M- most of the time, people aren't saying the thing that they're saying. It's just a signal around the thing that they think they're supposed to say. Here's how I see that, that play out so much. Very rarely do you ever see someone respond to a tweet... Let's say that there's a back and forth of trying to dunk on each other. Nobody... I, I, I can't remember the last time I saw it where someone said, "That is out of fucking order." Like, "You can't say that." Nobody ever wants to get to the stage where they call a stop to the game because the cool thing to do on Twitter is be this dispassionate fucking edge lord that just replies with memes of Kathy Griffin-

   4. GMGeoffrey Miller1:06:07

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:06:07

      ... uh, Cathy Newman, uh, or Kathy Griffin, um, uh, because that's what's cool. Because the signal is, "I'm so unperturbed by this, I've got so much other stuff that I could be doing. You're getting 1% of my attention," as opposed to saying, "Uh, hang on a second. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? That is an unacceptable thing to post to me."

   6. GMGeoffrey Miller1:06:28

      Yeah, my usual response when people just get out of order is I just block them. Like I block probably 30 people a day. Um, (clears throat) but conversely, you know, y- you can almost feel yourself getting swept up in that kind of edge lord, like, um, game. I try to catch myself where I think, "You know what? Once in a while, at least a few times a day, I should be like, 'Good point. You're right. I should look into that more.'"

   7. CWChris Williamson1:06:59

      Yep.

   8. GMGeoffrey Miller1:07:01

      It's hard to do, though. It's hard because-

   9. CWChris Williamson1:07:03

      It's so fucking hard.

   10. GMGeoffrey Miller1:07:05

       ... it feels like you're being submissive.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:07:08

       Yeah.

   12. GMGeoffrey Miller1:07:08

       It feels like you're, you're losing. Um, but actually, to onlookers, I think to a lot of people watching the interaction, it's actually kind of cool to do that jujitsu move of, like, "Yeah, we've been escalating this argument. But actually, on this one issue, you're right."

   13. CWChris Williamson1:07:25

       Yeah. Well, that's a counter signal, right? That I am-

   14. GMGeoffrey Miller1:07:27

       Exactly.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:07:27

       ... prepared to be so humble. Yeah, one of my favorite things to do, sometimes people have problems with the balance of guests. It's too much, uh, too right wing, or too male-dominated, or too white, or too whatever. And, and the only thing that I ever reply with is, "Who would you like me to bring on?"

   16. GMGeoffrey Miller1:07:45

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:07:45

       Like, give me, tell me. Tell me. Put it in the, put it in the comments. Tell me who you-

   18. GMGeoffrey Miller1:07:49

       (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson1:07:50

       ... think that I should bring on that fills the criteria that you have got an issue with. And the, it, I, I, it's ... I can't remember the last time that someone responded to that. They put a dickish comment. I asked a question. Their reply is almost never dickish. It's almost always, "Well, actually, here's a list of five people that I think are really interesting, and some YouTube videos on where you get started. P.S. Really love the show." And you're like, "Oh, okay, we've managed to neutralize this." There's, so there's a lesson to be learned there, I think, about deescalating, um, deescalating aggression.

   20. GMGeoffrey Miller1:08:26

       Yeah. And, you know, Twitter, to any psychologist, is just such a fascinating, like, hunting grounds for insights into human nature. And, um, that's one of the reasons I'm, I'm so active on it, is I'm always, like, partly involved as kind of a Twitter player, but it's so easy to go meta, and to be like, "This is just ... This is so funny." Like, eight billion primates running around on social media, just, like, bashing each other verbally, and playing these little status games and virtue-signaling games.

10. 1:09:04 – 1:25:24

    Is there an Increase of Simp-shaming?

    1. GMGeoffrey Miller1:09:04

    2. CWChris Williamson1:09:04

       I want to finish off that slut-shaming thing. So I, that's the first half of it, right? That's what you guys put forward in the book. Um, and then I worked it through using bro-science, uh, on my newsletter. Uh, reading that first section, about the fact that women enforce it mostly, and why you can't have the price of sexual access kind of get spiraled down and down, reading that got me thinking about the equivalent for men. And I think that it explains simp-shaming too. So, I reword what you put at the top. Male resource commitment has a tragedy-of-the-commons effect in the mating market. If one man offers gifts and resources by the second date, it's harder for the other men to keep them in reserve until the fourth date as their special treat. This creates a downward spiral of young men feeling like they have to offer more and more gifts, and go on extreme, uh, increasingly extravagant dates to more and more women just to stay in the mating game. Thus, simp-shaming is a way of enforcing a more restrained resource-giving norm on other men, so that not all men have to become more resource-committed than any of them would like. Similarly, this explains why men are mostly the enforcers of simp-shaming, because men have an incentive to stop simps from cheapening the value of all men's resources. It's hardly an iron law. Men call women sluts and men, uh, women call men simps all the time, but this game theory explanation makes a lot of sense to me. If women give sex without commitment, it cheapens the value of sex. If men give resources or commitment without sex, it cheapens the value of resources and commitment.

    3. GMGeoffrey Miller1:10:29

       Yeah. And you, you can see this in some weird little subcultures, like financial domination, right? Where, you might not be familiar with this, but there's a certain kind of online sex worker who's just like, "I'm the dominatrix. You send me money." Men who fetishize supporting women will just send these women like, thousands, tens of thousands of dollars.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:10:53

       Oh, and they, they, sometimes they drip-feed it back to them as an allowance and stuff, right?

    5. GMGeoffrey Miller1:10:58

       Yeah. And it ... I don't really get it. But, like, whatever. Um, as long as you're not like a married guy and you're taking money out of your, your mortgage account and sending it to some other random woman. (inhales deeply) But whenever other guys hear about guys who are into being FinDomed, financially dominated, like, that's like the ultimate simp. And then the, the teasing is, like, relentless. Um, I think there's even a bit of, um, stigma about, you know, men who visit sex workers, for the same reason. It's like, "Uh, how much are you paying? Like, why can't you just go to, you know, Chris's club and pick up a woman, what, for, for free?" Whatever. Um, but I think this, this is what, you know, cultural norms are, is our ... It's often our attempts to kind of control the mating dynamics of other people.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:11:57

       Why do you think it is that men who work on their charisma or their, um, abilities with women in like a, an overt, conscious way, why do you think it is that there's a bit of an ick factor sometimes around that, both from men and women?

    7. GMGeoffrey Miller1:12:22

       I think it's a funny thing. I don't kn- I don't know how much of that is kind of unique to, like, this particular cultural moment in, like, British and American, um, mating dynamics. I don't know how much of it is just a sort of like innate wariness of any guys who give off cues of being kind of Machiavellian or sociopathic or narcissistic, right? There's this concept of the dark triad personality traits, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism. And so, the guys who are high on those dark triad traits do tend to care a lot about, like, good body, how they dress, how they act, you know-... maximizing, like, cues of dominance and status that they display and kind of parlaying that into, into mating success. Um, but, you know, the guys who really benefit from, like, reading Mate or reading manosphere stuff are not typically those dark triad guys. They're more often guys who are kind of like a little socially awkward and aspy, like me, or like I used to be, and still am, where it's like, "I just don't understand women. I don't understand clothing. How do I get in shape? What is a conversation?" (laughs) And like, doing kind of remedial work on that, I think is, you know, that's a, that's a huge win. 'Cause there's a lot of guys out there with w- amazing, uh, potential that's not realized. Why? Because K through 12 public education doesn't teach any of this stuff. Why would it? Uh, male mentors, like guys' dads and uncles, don't seem to be bothering to teach it.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:14:13

       Well, I think as well, the, the gap between that generation and where we are now, in terms of what you need to know in order to be effective in the mating market, this is one of the common criticisms thrown around at some of the guys in the manosphere, that, "Bro, you've been married for fucking 40 years." Like, y- you, you literally got into a relationship during a different, like a prehistoric era.

    9. GMGeoffrey Miller1:14:36

       Yeah. I think that is, like, 50% accurate and 50%, like, a bullshit cope. 'Cause human nature doesn't change that much-

    10. CWChris Williamson1:14:46

        Yup, I agree.

    11. GMGeoffrey Miller1:14:47

        ... generation to generation. It might be true that a lot of guys' dads and granddads and uncles didn't actually have that much, like, mating experience themselves, right? They might not have actually had that many girlfriends. They might have only been in the mating market for, like, two years before they married someone as a college sophomore, right? Um, so they might not know what they're talking about. But on the other hand, uh, you know, to the extent that they've had real life experience and mating experience, um, there's no expiration date on, on human wisdom about sexuality. Yeah. Just d- just 'cause you're doing a, a dating app and you're, like, meeting people through, you know, Instagram or TikTok or whatever does not really change the basic, like, traits that people are looking for or the, the trade-offs they're facing.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:15:48

        I think one of the things as well, specifically on the guys' side, is that men like to see proof of work, or the equivalent of proof of work, right? From, to use a crypto metaphor.

    13. GMGeoffrey Miller1:15:59

        Yeah.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:15:59

        Like, where's your... Where... Show me your workings.

    15. GMGeoffrey Miller1:16:01

        Yeah.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:16:01

        Where's your, where's your proof? It's like having a fat personal trainer. Like, "It's fine-

    17. GMGeoffrey Miller1:16:05

        Mm-hmm.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:16:05

        "... I'm sure that you can get me in shape, but I'm probably gonna have a little bit more faith in the, in the trainer that's not fat."

    19. GMGeoffrey Miller1:16:11

        Yeah.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:16:12

        Um, and it's the same thing with this, that people want to see pr- proof of work. Why do you think... I thought about this loads. I think there is a, uh, subreddit called The Pink Pill, but it's a little bit more like r/womensrightsy rather than, "Here are the fundamental principles of evolutionary psychology that you should use to become a more attractive, better balanced partner for the man that you actually want to settle down with." Um-

    21. GMGeoffrey Miller1:16:37

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:16:37

        ... why do you think there isn't a, a Pink Pill?

    23. GMGeoffrey Miller1:16:44

        There, there really needs to be. And I think, uh, an awful lot of young women would be (clears throat) , you know, a hell of a lot happier if they had more, um, insight into their own preferences and desires and frustrations and where they come from and how to manage them better. Um, my wife, Diana, is working on a, uh, sort of advice book for women. And I don't wanna give away too much information about it, but what Diana has noticed in reading many, many advice books for women is that they're like 98% validation and 2% actually like, "You need to change this," right? A typical, like, Jordan Peterson book for young men is like 98%, "You kind of suck, and you really need to get your shit together."

    24. CWChris Williamson1:17:33

        (laughs)

    25. GMGeoffrey Miller1:17:33

        "And here's all the things you need to do, because, no, you're not actually a very good guy yet. And you can become that, but you're not." Women's advice books more often are like, "You're awesome. You're a queen." Like, "You're wonderful, and men don't appreciate that yet. And here's how to manipulate them into appreciating your, your inner awesomeness." I think that's terrible. Like, everybody who's young needs to work on themselves in all kind of ways. So, I think the absence of a Pink Pill is partly, young women are so used to being kind of coddled in terms of advice that they get. And I see this i- in academia too, in terms of, like, how mentors treat grad students. Uh, like, you can give pretty brutal feedback to male students often and they'll be like, "Yeah, you're right, I didn't work very hard on that paper. I need to fix it." Uh, it's extremely tricky to give brutally honest feedback to a lot of female students now, because it'll be like, "You're just sexist. You're patriarchal." Like, "What makes you-"

    26. CWChris Williamson1:18:47

        Does that actually... Have, have you seen this happen to colleagues or whatever?

    27. GMGeoffrey Miller1:18:51

        Yeah, yeah. It's, it's pretty common. It's a pretty, uh... And it's really handicapping, because, like, if you're trying to learn how to, uh, run a study or do science or write a journal paper or give a talk, like, you really need a lot.... of brutally honest feedback to get better. It'd be like trying to become an Olympic, um, you know, skier, where your coach is always like, "Awesome run. Oh, another awesome run." Like, "Great turn. Uh." No, you're not going to make progress without clear feedback. So, I think there needs to be a little bit of a cultural shift where young women need to appreciate, like, it's not actually doing you any favors in the long run to never get any, any honest advice about what you're doing wrong.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:19:50

        I wouldn't want that either. The girls that I know, that I'm friends with, would feel so fucking patronized if they found out-

    29. GMGeoffrey Miller1:19:59

        Mm-hmm.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:19:59

        ... that because of other girls who were, uh, kind of lauding this Sword of Damocles thing over the head of whoever it is that was potentially going to give them this feedback, as soon as they stray into an area that they think that... um, which again, presumably is the loud minority that believe they're steering the ship. If I, if any of the girls that I'm friends with knew that that was happening, they would be very, very unhappy. There is a big, big chunk of them that just want to become better and improve. But I also know exactly the books that you mean. I was looking, I can't remember the title of this book, but it was like, um, Not Gonna Dress Up For You, or, uh, like, Girl Doesn't Wear High Heels, or some shit like that. Pink and yellow and fucking fluffy front cover. And the entire thing was about how, oh, it was like, "You don't deserve this," something. And it was all about how everything that you're doing at the moment in your dating life is completely fine, and that-
11. 1:25:24 – 1:32:56

    Should Dating Apps be Banned?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:25:24

       the moment to ban all dating apps because they disproportionately give a very small percentage of people almost all of the success. What's your thoughts on that?

    2. GMGeoffrey Miller1:25:36

       You, you certainly get like that Pareto principle where like, okay, 80% of mating is done by whatever, 20% of guys or 2% of guys. But that's only the short-term mating, really. It's not like the top 20% of guys are getting 80% of the marriages, right? So you need the ri- you need to focus on the right metric. If the metric is how many one-night stands is someone having, yeah, dating apps are extremely unfair and they're very much a kind of winner-take-all market, particularly for, for males, but also to some degree for females. Um, but to me that's not the relevant metric. The relevant metric to me is who's, who's getting together and forming long-term pair bonds and getting married and having kids. (smacks lips) And if you, if you focus on that, I think a lot of dating apps still have enormous potential to help people meet other like-minded people. And, like, the weirder someone is, the more unusual their beliefs, uh, the more useful good dating apps could be.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:26:50

       How do you mean?

    4. GMGeoffrey Miller1:26:52

       Um, so like, I happened to meet my wife Diana, um, you know, in professional contexts and, like, conferences and we work in the same field. (smacks lips) But after we started dating, we thought, "I wonder what our match percentage is on OkCupid?" 'Cause we each used OkCupid independently. And we're like, "Okay, let's compare." Like, "Ah." And we're a 98% match, and that was sort of, like, very validating-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:27:19

       Algorithmically reaffirming.

    6. GMGeoffrey Miller1:27:21

       ... to, to us, you know? But the problem is, okay, how else would... Like, apart from working in the same field, how would we have found each other apart from OkCupid? If we're, like, Darwinian libertarian agnostics who are, like, into this and that kind of sex and have this and that weird set of alt-centrist political views, you can't just go to a bar or a club and expect to find someone who matches on all those things, especially if you really care about those, those values, as we did. (sniffs) So, if you're using dating apps and you're like, "I just want to maximize one-night stands," you're probably gonna be very frustrated. But if you view it as this amazing way to find your future spouse, you know, who actually matches you on stuff you care about, like, that's the thing that matters. That's, that's the story you're gonna tell your grandkids in the future.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:28:29

       What pieces of dating advice do you think that people should dispense with, or do you wish that more people were focusing on when they're making their choices with mates in 2022?

    8. GMGeoffrey Miller1:28:41

       (sighs) I think people are in- innately somewhat attracted to general intelligence, but I think a lot of men in particular underestimate just how incredibly useful general intelligence will be in a long-term mate in a woman. Even if the woman does not have some high-flying career, like, the amount of life stress you can avoid if your spouse is really smart and decisive and well-informed and has some wisdom is enormous; in terms of raising kids, where you live, you know, building a good social network, um, being f- like, frugal with money, making good investment decisions, um, handling health crises, figuring out, uh, "Should we worry about that lump that we found?" or whatever. Like, there's dozens of domains where general intelligence really cashes out, and I would urge... Like, most young men, you should tr- you should try to date smart and not just hot. Because until you've dated some really smart women, like for a while, and given their intelligence, like, the chance to shine so you understand, wow, there are a lot of hidden benefits to this. Until you have that experience, you'll kind of not pay enough attention to it.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:30:13

       I like that. What are you working on next? Have you got anything coming up?

    10. GMGeoffrey Miller1:30:17

        (smacks lips) Um, I want to do some more psychology research on, uh, global catastrophic risks and existential risks, 'cause that's been one of my passions the last few years. I would really like humanity to survive in the- into the 22nd century. That would be cool. And, um, (laughs) there, there's a bunch of risks that are pretty, pretty scary that, uh, I think deserve a lot more attention, a lot more research.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:30:47

        Which ones? What are you focused on?

    12. GMGeoffrey Miller1:30:49

        Um, I mean, a lot of these risks are well-known to the rationalist community and the effective altruist community, like, you know, artificial general intelligence and superintelligence, big potential x-risk. Um, bioweapons and pandemics, and particularly genetically engineered bioweapons, big risk. Um, (smacks lips) nuclear war is still a major risk.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:31:15

        Is that a... Is, is nuclear war a true x-risk?

    14. GMGeoffrey Miller1:31:18

        ... I think it's, it's certainly a global catastrophic risk. Um, there's been a lot of discussion about, like, okay, which of these global catastrophic risks could actually kill, like, all eight billion people in a way we can never recover from? Um, nuclear war, it might leave enough, um, little pockets of humanity that we could bounce back eventually, but it would still be, you know... it'd still be a pretty bad day.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:31:46

        Sub-optimal.

    16. GMGeoffrey Miller1:31:48

        Yeah. It... Like, it might mean, oh, we colonize Mars in the year 2600 rather than 2050. Um... So, the psychology of those is really interesting, because I think we have a pretty accurate model of, like, what the major catastrophic risks are. But the human ability to understand those is very, very bad. Like, we do not have a good intuitive grasp on any risks that affect, like, more people than just, like, me, my family, my little tribe. We never evolved the, the ability to be long-termist about, like, what affects all of humanity. So, I would love to do more, uh, more research on that, where you, you actually, like, use the behavioral science insights to try to guide, um, public understanding of these risks and also guide policy and what we do about it.

12. 1:32:56 – 1:40:45

    Importance of Existential Risk

    1. CWChris Williamson1:32:56

       Man, there was a brief period after I read The Precipice, uh, twice, back to back, um... And I was already familiar with X-Risks a lot, but that, that book just really, really drove it home. And it was, it was like a- an existential crisis from an existential risk book, where I read it and I was, like, "Okay, you know that this is important. You believe that this is important. What the fuck are you doing with your time that isn't screaming from the high heavens to everybody that this is the single most important task for everybody to have their focus on?"

    2. GMGeoffrey Miller1:33:27

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:33:27

       Like, you should stop doing podcasts about fucking sexual selection.

    4. GMGeoffrey Miller1:33:31

       (laughs)

    5. CWChris Williamson1:33:31

       You should stop eating and sleeping, and you should spend your time and whatever influence you have trying to get people... It... And it... As soon as I watched Don't Look Up, I just immediately resonated with the, the scientists on that, you know, as that's the job that I should be doing. And there's still a part of me, man, there's still a fucking bit of me that goes, "Sack it all off, turn the YouTube channel into an exclusively existential... Become like the pretty boy gateway drug to X-Risk awareness and fucking go for that." And I... I don't know, man.

    6. GMGeoffrey Miller1:34:03

       (laughs)

    7. CWChris Williamson1:34:03

       That, that, that entire subject area terrifies me.

    8. GMGeoffrey Miller1:34:07

       It's super important, and it's kind of a, it's kind of a downer. But yeah, maybe you should. Maybe you should become pretty poster boy for X-Risk-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:34:16

       (laughs)

    10. GMGeoffrey Miller1:34:16

        ... podcast, 'cause (laughs) , like, it, it does need a lot more attention. Um, and I have exactly the same reaction. Like, everybody watching this should go read Toby Ord's The Precipice. They should also read, uh, Daniel Ellsberg's book, uh, The Doomsday Machine, about the risk of nuclear war throughout the 20th century. Uh, and they should watch Don't Look Up after they read The Precipice.

Episode duration: 1:41:26