The Evolutionary Psychology Of Human Morality - Rob Kurzban

1. 0:00 – 11:00

   Evolutionary Psychology of Abortion Policy

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Talk to me about the evolutionary psychology of abortion policy.

   2. RKRob Kurzban0:05

      Yeah, so, um, a lot of people think that where your abortions come from is, like, your philosophy in life, and I know you've sort of thought a lot about people's philosophies, and so we all live by these kind of, you know, really high level ethics and so on. But what we've argued is that what you really wanna do is look at where people's interests lie, right? So the evolutionary view points to genetic interests, fitness interests. And so we sort of had this idea, this is a collaboration with my, my former, um, colleague Jason Weeden, that said, well, maybe what's really going on here is that if you think about abortion as a tool that people could use to have a relatively promiscuous lifestyle, right? So the cost of, you know, making a mistake, if you wanna put it that way, go, is relatively low as long as there's abortion services. Um, so maybe what's really going on is people who wanna live a lifestyle in which they can have a sexual strategy which is maybe a little bit more promiscuous and so on, that they're gonna be in favor of it, and the other way too, right? So if you've got people who are living a monogamous lifestyle, what you really don't want is your partner to be tempted to stray, and one way that you could deter them is by making that behavior costly. So, you know, I, I should say I was very skeptical of this explanation when I first heard it, so we gathered a lot of data and, um, it was surprising to me. It turns out that people who have views which, you know, kind of comport with that strategy, who are kind of monogamous, they tend to be opposed to a- abortion services and the reverse. So what's really going on here is that people are sort of using favoring abortion as a way to get the policies in place that advances their reproductive interests. So it's a very ... I, it sounds very cynical.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:44

      Yeah.

   4. RKRob Kurzban1:45

      Um, you know, it'd be great if everyone just had a set of principles which they live by. I mean, if anything, you know, the last 10 years, if they've shown us anything is that, you know, principles go out the window as soon as, y- you know, as soon as people's interests are involved. Um, and so that's, that's basically the idea is that w- if you wanna un- understand people's kind of moral commitments, the first place you wanna look is not to their overarching principles, but you wanna look at where their fitness interests lie.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:09

      Why?

   6. RKRob Kurzban2:10

      Well, so the i- the argument is that over evolutionary time, people who advocated for those kinds of rules and norms that advanced their interests would have had greater reproductive success, so we're sort of designed to figure out ... Look, we live in a moral world. Like, humans are weird. Like, we have these, all these rules about what you can and can't do. You can eat this food, but you can't eat it if you're having this other one. Um, you know, there's always rules about violence, there's always rules about, you know, everything. But what that means is that once you have moral communities, if you can influence what those rules are, you could use those rules to prevent the kinds of things that are gonna be bad for your fitness interests and advance those sorts of things which are gonna be good for your fitness interests. So we're descended from people who strategically played with the rules, like poking them here and there, so that they and their family and their offspring, you know, did better than their competitors. I mean, uh, once you start thinking about it that way, again, it's a little cynical, but it's also scary.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:03

      Mm-hmm.

   8. RKRob Kurzban3:03

      Right? So what we should be aware of when people tell us what their positions are is to, uh, you know, first ask this question. Okay, well, where do their interests lie? And maybe that's-

   9. CWChris Williamson3:13

      How could this benefit you?

   10. RKRob Kurzban3:15

       Exactly. And we should be pretty skeptical when it turns out that people really like the rules that benefit them. I mean, we're seeing this now, right? Like, I don't wanna get right into it, but certain people, suddenly they're in favor of free speech, you know, after being told for five years there's one word that if you say it, it's literal genocide, so we have to stop people from saying, you know, the, a bad word. And then the next day, they're out there, like, "I wanna say all these words about, you know, pretty bad things." And they say, "No, that's ..." You know, so once you see the- the- these sort of switches, you can sort of see that, well, people are just playing around with the rules to try to advance whatever their, their particular interests are.

   11. CWChris Williamson3:52

       Can you think of an example of something where, uh, a moral rule is being put forward, uh, promoted by someone, and it doesn't personally benefit them, therefore it lends more credence? Could you give us, uh ... Given that there's this slightly cynical view perhaps of where people, uh, are coming from with their motivation around abortion, um, w- what would be an example of, of the opposite?

   12. RKRob Kurzban4:19

       Yeah, that's, that's a great question. I think that when you think about history's heroes, oftentimes it's those guys. So for example, you know, the people in the civil rights movement who were advocating for equal rights for groups that they didn't belong to, I mean, that's pretty good, right? I mean, um, I think of cases like, uh, (laughs) in the old days, the ACLU when they're advocating for people's rights to march in Skokie, you know, under the banner of a swastika, um, you know, it was a very principled sort of thing. That's not in their interests, so I think there are cases where people really do sort of, uh, have a set of principles and they're willing to, you know, do things that really do work against their interests in the service of supporting those principles. I mean, I think, you know, in many ways, this was sort of the vision of, of liberalism, which was to say it's the principle that matters, you know, not, not your particular stakes.

   13. CWChris Williamson5:14

       Mm-hmm.

   14. RKRob Kurzban5:14

       So those, I think those are sort of interesting examples. Uh, and I think every time we sort of think about someone as a hero, what, oftentimes what that is is someone supporting a principle which is not particularly good for them, comes at some cost. Yeah, it would've been great for people who were living in, you know, a very asymmetrical society if you're at the top of it, to keep that going, you know? You've got a good thing going. So fighting for our civil rights and, and legislation which promoted them, I think, you know, that was pretty heroic.

   15. CWChris Williamson5:40

       What are the most common pushbacks or criticisms that you get when you propose this personally motivated agenda rule for abortion policy?

   16. RKRob Kurzban5:54

       Well, another, yeah, it's an interesting question, so I'll say a couple things. So, you know, you, I, I know that you hang out quite a bit with academics, and so there's sort of two kinds of ways that, that academics wind up dealing with, um, with ideas they don't like. Uh, the first one is to, you know, engage them, the second one is to ignore them.And (laughs) but you know, b- by and large, my experience and, and, you know, even to this day with a few, is, is that it hasn't really been engaged all that much. Um, a little bit, you know, so you have, you have some scholars who have talked about it, and what they typically will do is they'll, you know, s-... And they're not wrong about this. There is evidence that sort of does, in some context, support the sort of what's the matter with Kansas sort of thing, so this is the idea that, you know, people are voting against their self- interests. Um, and a lot of it does depend a little bit on how you parse out the data, right? So the, the, the, you know, this, like so many areas, it's complicated. So, you know, if you look at this dataset, you might find support for it, but if you attempt this others, other dataset, you might not. But it's usually the people who say, "No, there really are these, these principles here." People are clustering into left and right, for example, in the US, um, and they're gonna vote that way. And if you know one kind of issue, their stance on one issue, you're going to be able to guess their-

   17. CWChris Williamson7:07

       Mm-hmm.

   18. RKRob Kurzban7:07

       ... stance on another to say, no, there really is this kind of, like, overarching philosophy that's guiding people's choices. Again, I sort of believed that until we started running our own studies. I mean, you know, we ran this study where we asked people for their views on, uh, recreational drugs, and, you know, if you'd, ah, told me, "Is that going to predict people's views on abortion?" I would have said, "I don't know. Probably not. I mean, it doesn't seem that related." But, um, yeah, so it turns out that recreational drug use is sort of related to this more promiscuous lifestyle, which then feeds into this view about abortion. And so there's a relationship there, and it's pretty hard to tell another story that kinda, like, allows you to make that prediction before you, before you ran the study.

   19. CWChris Williamson7:53

       Was Jamie Krems involved in this at all?

   20. RKRob Kurzban7:56

       She wasn't. Um, Jamie used to come to my lab meetings. She's a, a dear, close friend. Um, she mostly has been focusing on, um, some really interesting stuff on, um, aggression within, you know, with both male and female styles of aggression and different kinds of styles. My guess is she'd be sympathetic to these styles of argument, but I, I wouldn't wanna put words in her mouth.

   21. CWChris Williamson8:17

       She was on the show last year, and she was the first person that taught me about... What, what do you call this? What's the name for this particular theory of, uh, o- of abortion motivation?

   22. RKRob Kurzban8:26

       You know, again, academics are so funny. You know, you, you really do the best when you get some branding in there, and we never branded it. Um-

   23. CWChris Williamson8:33

       Oh, Rob, come and talk to me.

   24. RKRob Kurzban8:35

       Yeah, I know.

   25. CWChris Williamson8:35

       I'm like a, I'm like a, a fucking marketing agent. I'm like a media agency for ideas. I can't really do very well with ideas, but-

   26. RKRob Kurzban8:43

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson8:43

       ... I'll name the, I'm, I'll name the living shit out of them. Anyway, so-

   28. RKRob Kurzban8:46

       Well, yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson8:46

       ... that, that theory, um, Jamie, Jamie said it. Lots of people, I imagine, um, will be unhappy to hear that... And this is both sides of the fence. This is one of those really, like, fascinating propositions that annoys both parties equally. It, it, um, kind of derogates both positions at the same time. So, kind of to recap and, and tell me where I get this wrong, trying to work out why people would support or be, uh, against abortion policies, access to abortion, uh, requires you to look at what is the incentive that they... W- what are the, uh, reasons and the benefits that they are afforded by holding that particular position? People who are in relationships, particularly monogamous relationships, particularly marriages, perhaps with kids, are going to be more likely to want to restrict abortion because it imposes a higher cost on casual sex, which means that their committed partner, which they do not want to go anywhere else, is therefore going to be less inclined to potentially have casual sex because the externalities of doing that are going to be higher because maybe there's a child and maybe they can't get rid of it. On the flip side, the people who are single are going to be more likely to be in favor of abortion, uh, or the people that are probably, like, high in sociosexuality, maybe polyamorous, consensual non-monogamy, stuff like that. Uh, because for them, they want to. Th- th- there is no reason for them to increase the potential cost of an accidental pregnancy, uh, if they are having a lot more sex, if they're having sex with multiple partners that they don't intend on having a child with. And that is, um, in contrast, I think, to what a lot of people believe as to be their reason for their stance on abortion, which is something highfalutin, moralistic, it's to do with values and virtues and, and, and, and ethics and purpose and human life, and is it six weeks or is it on conception? Is it a bundle of cells? Does it have moral worth? All of this stuff. Um, how, how close am I there?

   30. RKRob Kurzban10:48

       Well, honestly, you really are right that you're, you're marketing it, 'cause you just marketed it better than I did. Yes, you put it... You did it. Yeah, uh-
2. 11:00 – 17:15

   Why This is a Good Example of Human Morals

   1. CWChris Williamson11:02

      moving forward to the next step there, (clears throat) what this... Let's just say that this is true.

   2. RKRob Kurzban11:07

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson11:07

      Let's say that this is... And, uh, we don't even need to say that it is true. Like, presumably, there's layers going on here, that you can have a moral imperative, uh, that allows you to s- uh, adjust the way that you want the world to be and the things that you believe and what you... It would be... I, I would be very, um, interested to find someone who says, "I, in no way, am influenced by my own incentives. They have zero, c- absolutely 0% influence on my worldview." I think that that would be a very... I would like to meet that person. I think that that would be a very strong, strong case to make. Um, so what does that tell us about the position and the use of moral beliefs and of these sort of overarching philosophies, uh, life design directions and stuff, uh, and, and how that is used to excuse and disabuse us of our our belief about why we do the things that we do? How, how did, how does that kind of tie into the bigger picture?

   4. RKRob Kurzban12:12

      Yeah. I mean, the way I think about it is that...We're all sort of in this social world where we wanna broadcast the most angelic version of ourselves we can. And that's why, of course, when people talk about their positions on, say, abortion, they're not gonna refer to their lifestyles, because it's, you know, you don't get any, you know, you don't get any moral points for saying, "Yeah, I, I want people not to have abortions so that, you know, my husband doesn't go off and, you know, have an affair." You get way more moral points for that by saying, "I believe in the sanctity of life." And don't get me wrong, I also sort of believe, (laughs) I mean, you know, I think that life is valuable and so on. And so a lot of it has to do with this idea that we're constantly sort of cultivating, again, going back to marketing, cultivating an image that makes us look as good as possible, and a lot of that just, you just can't say what your reasons are. And this is why I think it's so interesting, I mean, this goes all the way back to Freud, right? Like, one way that you could avoid giving up the game is by not actually sort of consciously knowing what it is. That's why people don't, they don't really know, right? They see these contradictions and they say, "Well, you know, I think life begins at conception," and if you really push them on it, you know, you can show that they don't, they don't really think that. So for example, or that there should be an exception for rape and interest, in-incest, you know. Like, if you ask someone who had that view and said, "Well, let's suppose a 13-year-old found out that it, they were, you know, the product of, you know, rape or incest. Would it then be okay to kill them?" They'd, they'd say, "No, of course not." You know, that's... So what you could tell from that is, you know, people, they don't sort of want to know the real reasons for why they have their positions, because those reasons look, make them look selfish. So much better to kind of manufacture this image of yourself that makes reference to, you know, the, the kinds of things that are gonna make you look good in your environment. So for people who are pro-choice, that's talking about, you know, women's bodily autonomy. Again, I don't wanna say that I don't respect women's bodily autonomy. Or if you're on the other side respecting, you know, the sanctity of life. That's why these words get used, is because you cultivate an image that's the most positive you can. And a lot of times, this is wh-, you know, this, this ties into this notion of self-deception, whereas if, if I don't really know the selfish motivation for a position that I'm taking, that's actually kinda good, 'cause then I can't sort of give up the game.

   5. CWChris Williamson14:24

      Ah, yeah, that quote about, um, the easiest way to, uh, like, tell a lie is to believe it and you are the easiest person to deceive, type thing.

   6. RKRob Kurzban14:35

      Yeah, I, I don't know the, the, the quote, but yes, exactly, you know. And that's why, uh, you know, a lot of us walk around not really knowing the motives for our, our actions. That does, you know, that means it can't leak out as easy.

   7. CWChris Williamson14:47

      Yeah. What would you say, just to kind of round this out, what would you say to the person that feels, uh, morally very insulted, uh, but potentially curious at investigating their deeper motives, uh, about this? Like, this Rob guy telling me that actually my motives are coming from this very sort of selfish, self-interested place. Uh, I don't think that that's true. I think I've investigated this a lot. I've even had debates with my friends over dinner about whether or not I think that we should, you know, Roe versus Wade should be repealed or not, all the rest of it. Um, how would you advise someone to, uh, equanimously investigate, uh, their, their, their, their intentions? And, and generally today as we sort of go through this stuff, and also more generally, as you learn about evolutionary psychology, what is the frame that you take, either personally or that you advise other people to, to be like, personally, motivationally, intellectually curious and sort of open to, to, to, uh, learning about these mechanisms?

   8. RKRob Kurzban15:47

      Yeah. I think that's, you know, such a great question, and I wish, I wish there were more of that. I think, you know, my view on this is that it, it's getting harder and harder, 'cause the best way to kind of test to see your ideas is to have a discussion while someone disagrees with you, and I feel like that's happening less and less, uh, in the world in general. And it's definitely not happening where it was supposed to happen, which is in the corridors of academe, right? Like...

   9. CWChris Williamson16:13

      Mm-hmm.

   10. RKRob Kurzban16:13

       That's where, that was supposed to be the crucible, where you say your thing and give your logic and I give my evidence and be like, "Oh, you, that's a, that is a data point, I didn't know. Let me change my mind." Like, that never happens, right? Because everyone in the halls of academe, they all think the same these days, right? So we've seen Jon Haidt's work on this and the ho-homogeneity of views. But for that person, yeah, I think it's, it's you gotta talk to somebody who has a different view, and the smarter the better, right? Because you wanna be able to back it up. And the real magic happens when you f- catch yourself in a contradiction, right? When you say, "I wanna believe this thing, but I wanna believe this other thing, and those two thing, two things can't be true, so then now I really have to go back." That's why these, you know, when you're looking at these policy stuff and you do these hypotheticals and you go, "Well, you know, under this circumstance, that cir-" Once you kind of figure out where you've got the, the contradiction, then you can kind of tunnel back out, kind of see where your principle has gone wrong. But that's hard, right? People don't wanna really talk to people who don't agree with them anymore.

   11. CWChris Williamson17:12

       Yeah.

   12. RKRob Kurzban17:13

       And, and I...

   13. CWChris Williamson17:13

       What, w- w- what makes

3. 17:15 – 21:54

   Why We Don’t Deviate From Our Tribal Line

   1. CWChris Williamson17:15

      you think or w- w- why do you think it is that this, like, attack on our identity, you know, th-this, uh, lack of openness to other ideas and this sort of very, uh, like, personalization of our worldview, has that always been the case? Was it that, you know, a Socratic dialogue 2,000 years ago, someone really felt that their ego was being destroyed? Or is there something new about wearing moral beliefs as lapel pins that's, that's sort of occurred recently? Have you considered that?

   2. RKRob Kurzban17:48

      Yeah, that's a great question. I, I think there's, I, I, it would be great, right, to go back and, and kind of see if, if, if the same phenomena was, you know, among the Greeks and so on. I sort of feel like one piece of it is technology, which is that, you know, any deviation from, you know, where your particular tribe's party line is now very visible because of social media, and so sort of the costs of diverging from the view are different now from maybe what it would've been. Um, I mean, heck, in the past, you, you'd make some remark and...... later, you could deny it. Now, you know, it's written in ink in the internet, and you're gone. So that might kind of squish people towards a certain kind of homogeneity, because they don't even want to move into the space of divergence from their tribe's view. Uh, you know what I mean? So, so that would be one possibility, and I think that's linked to another, you know, piece of technology, which is, man, like, you know, it used to be that the kinds of punishments that you get would be from the state or from your friends. Now, of course, social media has added a whole new piece, you know, and a new part of it. And so, by, again, by sort of putting yourself out there, it's not just deviating from whatever the party line is, you know, you're exposing yourself to a lot of attacks from other people, particularly in the public sphere. So I... Yeah, my guess is technology has changed it quite a bit, and it has to do, again, with the fact that, you know, humans are these moral creatures who are just looking for people to wag their finger at and say, "You're- you're bad," or, "Your idea is bad." Um, but I do think there's something modern about... There's something that does seem distinct about how, you know... Like, so when I started as, as an academic way back in the day, I don't think it would have been true that just asking questions about some of the third-rail topics right now were kind of moralized in the way they were.

   3. CWChris Williamson19:34

      Hmm.

   4. RKRob Kurzban19:34

      I might just be misremembering, 'cause I'm, I'm old and, you know, in the past everything is, you know, bright and rosy and sunny and everything that... Whatever. But, like, I remember people doing stuff on, you know... Like, The Bell Curve came out, and sure there was some controversy, but it... I, I don't, I don't know. I, I guess also you... People like to tell the story about how, you know, when sociobiology came out, there was a conference where E.O. Wilson got a splat- you know, a pitcher of water thrown on him. You don't know that story?

   5. CWChris Williamson20:01

      No.

   6. RKRob Kurzban20:02

      Oh, in my world, that's, like, famous. That's... Everyone knows that. Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson20:04

      What was he, what was he talking about?

   8. RKRob Kurzban20:06

      So he had this idea that maybe evolution applies to humans too, you know, back in '75. And, um, so there's some pushback on that, right? So that I, I... That's... I... As far as I know, that story is true, but for all I know, it could be apocryphal. But by the same token, like, I don't remember the kinds of, you know, experience... Things that you see now, where you, again, you just ask questions about... I mean, even if you, if you ask the question, "What is a woman" in some contexts, then you, for some reason, now you get into this massive amount of trouble.

   9. CWChris Williamson20:33

      Yup.

   10. RKRob Kurzban20:33

       I don't remember that. So it does seem like we've trans in- kind of transitioned into a very moralistic cultural moment.

   11. CWChris Williamson20:40

       Yeah. I... Certainly, the technology thing is... I've spoken about it a lot. Um, one other contributing factor to this, uh, our opinions and our deeds are very apart, far apart from each other. You don't get to see what someone does, but you g- do get to see what someone says. And the cost of saying the right thing is so low that I think many, uh, low truth, low trust tribes would sooner have a false ally than a true adversary. Do you know what I mean?

   12. RKRob Kurzban21:16

       Yeah, totally.

   13. CWChris Williamson21:17

       Uh...

   14. RKRob Kurzban21:18

       Yeah, I, I think that's exactly right. A- and again, this, this connects both up to the academy in general, but, you know, again, some of these, you know, the protests which, you know, is on everyone's mind right now. One thing that's super interesting are these cases where, you know, you ask people about what's at stake, you know, when they're out there in a tent or whatever, and, you know, we don't have great data on it. We have anecdotes, but many of them have no idea. And so what are they doing there? It doesn't have to do with advancing a particular policy or, you know, trying to influence a particular policy. It's, "I'm showing up here. I'm signaling my commitment to this ideological community."

   15. CWChris Williamson21:52

       Oh. O- okay, so, you know, we have

4. 21:54 – 29:36

   The Psychology of Campus Protests

   1. CWChris Williamson21:54

      these campus protests going on at the moment. From a morality, assessment, signaling, incentive, evolutionary psychology lens, what do you make of them? What are you, what are you seeing when you look at these protests?

   2. RKRob Kurzban22:06

      I think... Yeah, I think a big part of it really is this signaling that you are committed to a particular set of ideas, and therefore, your particular tribe. The way that this has shaken out, for whatever reason, on, on, um, college campuses, among the sort of elites, if you wanna call them that, is that the, the, the commitment is to this oppressor-oppressed dynamic. And so you're saying, "Whoever is on the, you know, oppressor side, I'm against them. Uh, and so I'm gonna show up to this thing, I'm gonna spend my time, my energy." It's interesting because, you know, the masks are an interesting feature of it, because signaling theory says that you get the most bang for your buck if you can signal honestly. So you, you know, one way to do that is to say, "I'm gonna stand up for this principle, and I'll take the consequences." Whereas it's not clear that that's what's going on here. But I think the main thing that we're seeing in these protests is this saying, you know, um, "I belong to this, in this community, in terms of the ideology that it endorses." A set of beliefs, a set of, sort of princip-

   3. CWChris Williamson23:05

      Even if they don't actually know what those beliefs or that ideology is?

   4. RKRob Kurzban23:09

      Exactly. I mean, it, it's, it's sort of a... I- I don't want to be too cynical about it, but it's kind of irrelevant, you know. Again, you see these great interviews where people go in and say... You know, they... You can ask people basic facts about, you know, whatever it is they're protesting. You can ask them, uh, facts about w- what is it that these people want to bring about, and it's very clear that many, maybe not all, but many have no idea. And, of course, the reason that that makes sense is that they don't care, you know? (laughs) That's not why they, why they're there. They're there to say... You know, it's a shibboleth, in some sense, right? As long as you-

   5. CWChris Williamson23:38

      What's a shibol- what's a shibboleth?

   6. RKRob Kurzban23:40

      Oh, this is that big biblical story. I'm gonna mess... I hope I don't mangle this, but this is the idea that, um, there was, uh, two sets of people, and one of them wasn't able to pronounce a particular cluster of, you know, letters. And so in order to make sure the person really was from that group, you had to say this word that included that syllable. And if they could say it... It's like, you know, I, I took French. Americans are terrible at the O, U distinction, you know? So-

   7. CWChris Williamson24:05

      Wait, okay, you're saying this is like a verbal, lexical shit test?

   8. RKRob Kurzban24:09

      It is a shit test, yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson24:10

      (laughs) Wow.

   10. RKRob Kurzban24:11

       Yeah, yeah. It's a little bit of a shit test. And... Yeah, so... By the way, I, uh, I, I looked at your reading list, and I, you know... I love the shit test terminology. I, I, I think we should adopt it. But, um-Exactly. So it's saying, "Are you really a member of our tribe," right? Um, and so if you show up here and you, whatever, you're ready to face the consequences, I mean, it's hard to show loyalty, right? If I just said to you, "Oh, I'm, you know, I'm your best friend," you'd be like, "Whoa. Okay. It's cheap for you to say that." This comes right out of your average signaling theory from evolutionary biology and economics. But, you know, if I find out you need a kidney and I put my hand up right away and be like, "Yeah."

   11. CWChris Williamson24:46

       So that's a costly signal. Yeah. It's interes- ... Isn't it interesting that, um, someone's time, uh, you know, that, that they're living in tents, um, they're, uh, if they're students, they're missing class, if they're, uh, employed, they're missing work, um, they presumably... I mean, maybe they're having fun, but from the outside, it doesn't look that fun. Um, so that's a high investment. That's like a costly signal. You can't, you can't be there and not actually be there.

   12. RKRob Kurzban25:14

       Right.

   13. CWChris Williamson25:14

       And the being there is, uh, uh, is pretty sucky, which makes it odd to think, why not watch 30 minutes on YouTube to understand the ideology that yo- ... That, so that when the guy with the microphone does come-

   14. RKRob Kurzban25:32

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:32

       ... and say, "Hey, do you, can you point to the River Jordan on a map?" Or, "Do you know what from the river to the sea is?" Or, "What's the actual outcome that you're looking to do here?" Or, "Why are you here?" Or whatever it might be. And obviously, the on-street interviews are cherry-picked to make people-

   16. RKRob Kurzban25:46

       Right.

   17. CWChris Williamson25:46

       ... look either really stupid or really smart. You never get to see... It's the same as, um... Uh, one of my friends has a great piece of advice about looking at TripAdvisor reviews or Booking.com reviews for hotels, says disregard all of the one-star and five-star reviews. He's like only have a look at the two, three and fours, because those are the ones that actually have taken time to really think about what it is that, that they're doing. And it's kind of the same as that. But yeah, look at how much, um, time you're investing, effort, missing class, missing work, sleeping in, uh, on a tent, um, and, and yet the, what would be more v- aligned, ideologically aligned investment of, "I'm gonna learn a bit about what we're doing," um, doesn't seem to, which suggests a, um, like fragility or, uh, a shallowness, uh, to what's actually going on here.

   18. RKRob Kurzban26:37

       Yeah. Sha- shallowness among, you know, college-aged students, who would have thought? What a, yeah, what a shocker. I totally agree with you. That's why I find the mask thing so interesting, because that's a good way to keep the signal honest, right? Is to say, "I'm here to face the consequences." And yet-

   19. CWChris Williamson26:51

       Are there lots of just... I haven't been watching much of this. Are lots of the people that are at the protests masked up?

   20. RKRob Kurzban26:56

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson26:57

       And is that COVID mask or, like, balaclava mask?

   22. RKRob Kurzban27:00

       Um, a little of both.

   23. CWChris Williamson27:01

       Okay.

   24. RKRob Kurzban27:01

       And what's so interesting to me is-

   25. CWChris Williamson27:02

       Is... Well, I mean, uh, the, the only thing I would push back on that-

   26. RKRob Kurzban27:04

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson27:04

       ... maybe is, is this part of some big suite of, well, you know, we are still concerned about-

   28. RKRob Kurzban27:11

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson27:11

       ... super-spreader even- is this, like, vestigial COVID bullshit? Or, um, is this, we look hard and wear Antifa-type, black-

   30. RKRob Kurzban27:19

       Right.
5. 29:36 – 38:24

   Evolutionary Origin of Morality

   1. CWChris Williamson29:36

      we, you know, we're sort of dancing around the topic of morality. What are the evolutionary origins of where morality comes from and, and what's the function of something like morality?

   2. RKRob Kurzban29:48

      Well, this goes back to your prior question about, you know, my views on abortion. So I have a view on this which people don't really engage very much, but I'll tell you my view. Uh, it's a little different from most, so-

   3. CWChris Williamson29:57

      We've pissed everyone off already. Let's keep going.

   4. RKRob Kurzban29:59

      Yeah. There's really no one left, so I might as well-

   5. CWChris Williamson30:01

      (laughs)

   6. RKRob Kurzban30:01

      ... try and get the last bit, yeah. Um, so I'll start with what I don't think. A lot of people, when they say, when they talk about the human moral sense, and this goes all the way back to Darwin, they talk about cooperation. So we're moral because we're cooperative creatures. Fine. Um, and then there's, you know, another line of argument that locates the origin of morality in trying to suppress, uh, violence and harm. So whatever. That's another line. So-My view is a little bit different. So the, my view is that humans are weird, so we tend to cooperate in groups, but we do so in this very strange fashion where we switch sides from time to time. So like, you know, in non-human animals, you're always siding with your kin. That's, that's just the way it always happens. Um, but in humans sometimes, you're siding with this person, sometimes you're siding with that. And our argument is, the nice thing about morality is that... And when I say morality, what I really mean is moral judgment. So when I say, "Chris, it was wrong of you to take my mango or to take Fred's mango. That was wrong of you." Um, what, as long as I can persuade everyone else around me that you did the thing that was wrong, then when you're having this conflict with Fred, so you and Fred are in this fight and I'm like, "Here's what we should do. We should gang up against Chris because he did the thing that was wrong." And the nice thing about that is when fights break out, I'm always on the side that has everybody else on it. So the argument is that morality is wh- what we call a side-choosing mechanism. It says when fights broke out, break out, find the person who did something that we called wrong, and that could be took the mango or hit Fred in the face or didn't wear a headscarf, or-

   7. CWChris Williamson31:39

      Or had an abortion.

   8. RKRob Kurzban31:40

      ... or had an abortion. And when that thing, when that happens, I could be on the side that everyone else is, because we're all wagging our finger at the same person. So unlike, it's not a cooperative strategy, it's not an anti-harm strategy. It's just a way to avoid being on the losing side of conflict. And this, the- the- the thing that's interesting about, I think, about morality is that, you know, even if you were my best friend, you know, if you did a thing, if you did steal the mango, I'm, you know, I'm still better off saying, "Look, I'm your friend, but, you know, you should pay a $3 fine or £10 fine or whatever it is, 'cause you did the wrong thing." So this is a view that locates morality, and again, and it's pretty cynical, but it's a very selfish kind of thing. It's just saying, "I just don't want to stand next to the guy who's accused of being s- of doing something wrong." That's the main role of morality, is I wanna be on the side of the people doing the accusing, not the person who did, who got accused.

   9. CWChris Williamson32:30

      So that un- that explains the function of morality and d- adaptively how it's advantageous, but I, I'm still struggling to understand, like, where moral rules come from or why particular rules are, c- come about.

   10. RKRob Kurzban32:48

       That's a great question. Yeah. So, w- the idea there... So, uh, you know, I spent a lot of time with anthropologists, and when I was a grad s- student, I was trained as a psychologist, but then I, half of my advisor team was anthropologists, the late great John Tooby. Um, and then I spent some more time with Rob Boyd. So what you're really asking a question about is cultural change. So the idea here is, you know, people are minting moral rules all the time, according to this view. So, you know, don't, you know, put the beads on the string or, you know, don't fish in the sacred lagoon, or whatever. And some rules just t- get some support, so... And this comes from self-interest. So let's take h- rules against harm. Someone says, "You know what we should do? We should have a rule that says no one can punch someone else in the face for no reason." And like, I have a face that I don't want to get punched. I'm gonna support this rule, right? And so all cultures wind up with these anti-harm rules, anti-violence rules. And so those are really stable in the, sort of the cultural sense, right? So like, some ideas are just stable. It just goes all the way back to, like, the Dawkins idea of a meme. They're just like memes, right? So... And some rules are just good. And then some rules, it takes a minute to figure out whether or not they're good or bad. So, you know, I like the example of charging interest, which I know, uh, you know, again, your readers, you can nap- take a little nap here, but I love ch- you know, the qu- interest as an interesting thing, 'cause there were lots of cultures that said, "You can't charge interest. It's bad, it's usury."

   11. CWChris Williamson34:09

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RKRob Kurzban34:09

       And then other cultures said, "Yeah, give your money to someone. If they can use it as capital to do something cool, let them do it, and then they'll give you a little bit more than you gave them back." And it just turns out that's, like, such an amazingly good rule to have, that says you may as opposed to you must not charge interest. Um, and so this really explains why it is that, you know, Western cultures, why capitalism works so well, is 'cause it moves resources, capital, from less useful to more useful purposes.

   13. CWChris Williamson34:37

       Wh... Is there a obvious selection criteria for the societies and civilizations that did versus did not permit interest? Was it societies that had fewer people but more money versus societies that had more people but less money or something?

   14. RKRob Kurzban34:56

       I mean, once you get into these questions, it's so hard. Like, these cultural things are so difficult. I think it was, you know, just the West was sort of just ready for, for whatever reason, you know? The foundations-

   15. CWChris Williamson35:04

       Mm-hmm.

   16. RKRob Kurzban35:04

       ... were laid for this idea, um, that- that sort of... (sighs) It's complicated, right? That does, uh... I- I think the answer is, ah, who knows?

   17. CWChris Williamson35:13

       Yeah.

   18. RKRob Kurzban35:13

       But, but what happened was that when cultures had this idea, they were able to just get more stuff, right? Because then-

   19. CWChris Williamson35:19

       Mm-hmm.

   20. RKRob Kurzban35:19

       ... cult- you know, capitalism has all these nice benefits, and they grew very fast.

   21. CWChris Williamson35:23

       So moral rules, uh, like, u- using interest-

   22. RKRob Kurzban35:26

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson35:27

       ... i- is a pretty good example, right? I, I don't think many people in the West would consider... I mean, some people might not be happy about charging interest, but it's kind of par for the course. It's like, "Look, if you're gonna give me money for a while, I probably need to incur some kind of cost, or else I can just take... I- I'm, like, free to be obliged to have your money at any point." Um, I think it's an interesting example of something that right now we really take for granted, but in the past might have been very contentious. What I'm thinking about is when a new rule gets introduced, like you mentioned before, much of our motivation, it seems, is to be on the side of most people, right? Like, and that is basically just don't be the one that's singled out. Don't be the punch-the-guy-in-the-face guy, be the person that says, "Don't punch the guy in the face," guy. Um, this means a couple of things. First off, there's, like, this sort of memetic cyclical nature, presumably to when new rules get introduced, and then there must be a kind of...... temperature checking thing that people do. Uh, and then there must be, as well, I guess finally, a reason why people go with or go against the crowd. So there must... Do- do people kind of observe what others do? Has this got implications for, like, crowd mentality and stuff like that?

   24. RKRob Kurzban36:54

       Yeah. And I think this is why people are so excited about advertising their moral views all the time. I mean, have you ever had difficulty trying to get someone to give their opinion about, you know, some pot- you know, some moral contest? Like, people, they- they fall all over themselves, right? Um, this is people's favorite pastime is to talk about what they think is bad and wrong and so on. So yeah, I think all of- everything you just said is right. Um, and I think the other... Yeah, the- the thing about charting interest, you're exactly right, that we lose sight of the fact that there was this whole big process by which, you know, that rule became common, but it wasn't always. I mean, e- even property rights, right? Like, it used to be that, you know, there are some- there's still places where people say that, you know, you have a property right over this, but you don't have a property right over that, and people argued about that. I like the example of Napster, right? 'Cause again, I'm showing my age here, but for a minute, you know, there's a whole bunch of people who sort of thought, "You know what? Information should just be free." And there's something nice about that. It sounds good. But, like, if you made the song, that doesn't sound so good. So there was a big fight about, you know, wha- who has a property right over it?

   25. CWChris Williamson37:53

       Mm-hmm.

   26. RKRob Kurzban37:53

       What does that property right look like? And then we got to the current sort of equilibrium, right, where we, you know, have the technology that sort of helps us allow people to sell their digital stuff, I mean, whatever they sell. Um, but again, we don't notice it much because that fight's over, right? There are things that we do notice are where the fights are. So the abortion one is a- is a very good example. Um, you know, a- anything that's sort of at the center of, you know, modern political fights is basically where we're trying to figure out a bunch of these different kinds of moral rules and where we're going to land.

6. 38:24 – 46:38

   When Morality Gets Weaponised

   1. RKRob Kurzban38:24

   2. CWChris Williamson38:24

      Okay. How does morality get used as a weapon then?

   3. RKRob Kurzban38:29

      Yeah. So, I mean, I think the best examples of that are the classic examples like, think about Salem in this country, you know, the witchcraft trials, where, you know, once you have this surrounding set of rules about what you can't do, with better and worse criteria for deciding about whether or not someone did it, you know, these accusations can be wielded as weapons. You know, all you gotta do is get enough other people to agree with the accusation or put the person into context in which they can't, you know, um, or are unable to deny. So, I mean, this is why I think... This is the big thing about morality that really separates my view from most other... A lot of people think morality is this warm, fuzzy, you know, unicorns, pooping gold bars and marshmallows, whereas I don't view it that way. I view marsh- uh, marshmallows.

   4. CWChris Williamson39:14

      (laughs)

   5. RKRob Kurzban39:14

      I view morality- I mean, I view marshmallows very favorably. But, um, I view morality as, yeah, so it's this- it's this thing. We're all living in this world where, at any moment, someone can make an, um, moral accusation, you know. "Chris broke this rule. He did that thing." Um, even- even thought crimes, right? So if during the religious ages, right? So if you thought there were two sacraments instead of the seven sacraments, right, you could be subjected to unholy torture for who knows how long. So that's what I mean. Like, these accusations that- that one has broken a moral rule, these really... I- I- I think of, uh, these accusations as attacks and morality as a weapon. This is the way that we can recruit other people. And again, history is replete with this, right? In this country, you might or might not know there has been some racial tension over our, you know, history, and- and there were places in, you know, the American South where you could say, "That person from a group that I don't like looked at m- me or my partner in a funny way," and then next thing you know, that person is dead, you know-

   6. CWChris Williamson40:10

      Yep.

   7. RKRob Kurzban40:10

      ... because th- that's an attack. What did they do? They did this- they broke this rule about I... you know, where they can look. So this is the way I view morality as this weapon that we can all use and have to be conscious of at any given moment, right? I mean, does that make sense?

   8. CWChris Williamson40:26

      It does. Uh, I understand why you would choose to use morality to not be the target of some accusation, to not be in the Eye of Sauron. There must be... It feels like there must be more benefits afforded as well, though. Some, uh, uh... The ability for your sort of, um, v- nobility and virtue to kind of stand on the shoulders of somebody else. "I would never." Like, so there must be more than simply avoiding being the target. What- what are the actual benefits that are being afforded to the people who are sort of the moral judgment makers?

   9. RKRob Kurzban41:09

      Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know. Again, I sort of am compelled by Salem, and so one of the things about someone who keeps their powder dry, you know, manages to persuade people not to accuse them and so on-

   10. CWChris Williamson41:19

       What does that, what does "keep your powder dry" mean?

   11. RKRob Kurzban41:22

       Right.

   12. CWChris Williamson41:22

       Where did that come from?

   13. RKRob Kurzban41:23

       Oh, yeah. I think it's because back in the day of flintlocks, if your powder got any water in it, then when you tried to ignite it, you wouldn't get the spark. It's-

   14. CWChris Williamson41:30

       So what- what d- what does that mean as an analogy?

   15. RKRob Kurzban41:33

       Yeah, so yeah, good question. The analogy is something like manages to keep free of tripping over something that would cause someone to make an accusation. So just to add-

   16. CWChris Williamson41:42

       Okay. Oh, okay.

   17. RKRob Kurzban41:44

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson41:44

       Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

   19. RKRob Kurzban41:45

       Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to make that so...

   20. CWChris Williamson41:46

       No, no, no. I s- I did. I'm enjoying learning all different words.

   21. RKRob Kurzban41:50

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson41:50

       That one and... Yep.

   23. RKRob Kurzban41:51

       Yeah. Um, so, I mean, the thing about any time that big moral conflicts emerge, the- the person who's not, as you put it, in the Eye of Sauron, which I also like, like other people benefit. Like during the- during the Salem witch trials, you know, some of that stuff was about land rights. And so once someone's, you know, burned at the stake or, you know, whatever, in a jail cell for a l- long time, the stuff, the remaining stuff gets reassembled. And so there's more stuff to go around.

   24. CWChris Williamson42:20

       Mm-hmm.

   25. RKRob Kurzban42:21

       So there are real benefits to being the moralistic person who manages to stay out, you know... Again, as long as, as long as the eye doesn't land on you, there's all these benefits to be had by sacrificing the people in your social world. Um, you know, it's incredibly tempting.

   26. CWChris Williamson42:36

       I had a conversation with Andrew Doyle, who wrote a book called The New Pr- Puritans, uh, using the Salem Witch Trials as a historical comparison to look at what's happening with a lot of cancellation and social justice at the moment. I- I found out about spectral evidence. Have you learned about this?

   27. RKRob Kurzban42:54

       No, no, tell me.

   28. CWChris Williamson42:56

       Uh, I'm pretty sure it was called spectral evidence.

   29. RKRob Kurzban42:57

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson42:58

       Let me show you. Spectral evidence. Yep, spectral evidence was testimony in which witnesses claimed that the accused appeared to them or did harm in a dream or a vision. Contemporary witch law held that witches could project themselves spiritually, either directly or with the aid of Satan in order to harm their victims from afar. So spectral evidence is, um, kind of like original sin, in a way. Uh, and it's also y- the, uh, lineage that you can draw to modern social justice is probably pretty- pretty straight. Uh, but there was, like they'd been using, during the witch trials, they'd been using spectral evidence for decades, fucking ages. Like it was admissible in court. Spectral evidence was something that was admissible in court. And there was this story where one day, whatever the equivalent of the Supreme Court or the ruling court or whatever, of whatever version of America existed at the time, they sent this thing up and they were like, "We're just gonna check. You know that we've been using this spectral evidence thing like quite a bit for quite a while now? That's- that's okay, right?" And this letter came back and was like, "What the fuck are you talking about?"
7. 46:38 – 54:39

   Can Morality Be Done Well?

   1. CWChris Williamson46:38

      probably presented a pretty unflattering view of morality. Surely, morality in its best form is still quite nice, though. You know, you mentioned earlier on, uh, harm.

   2. RKRob Kurzban46:53

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson46:53

      Or- or- or a pushback against harming people.

   4. RKRob Kurzban46:56

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson46:56

      That seems to be, I would put that down as a pretty universal good.

   6. RKRob Kurzban46:59

      Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson46:59

      What, like isn't morality nice and- and what is morality at its best? And also are there any fundamental, kind of like universal- universal in that they appear a lot, uh, laws of morality?

   8. RKRob Kurzban47:14

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson47:14

      Like what are the under- what are the underpinnings of it? And- and can't it be done well?

   10. RKRob Kurzban47:18

       I totally agree. I mean, don't get me wrong. I mean, morality can be a force that, you know, leads to great ha... I mean, I think harm and property rights are the two big ones. I mean, you know, we now have a whole bunch of ways that we can stop people from harming each other because we've encoded th- that morality into the legal system and we've given the state the use of force to- to, you know, enforce those rules. That's great. You know, when it's working, it's, you know, that's really wonderful. Same thing about property rights, which goes, you know, it's great to say, "Look, if you take my mango, then, you know, you're going to get punished," because then I can either eat my mango or I could sell it to somebody who wants it more. And then we've now increased the good in the world, right? Because I have the money and you have the mango. Um, and that's pretty great. Uh, all the stuff about... And I think the other thing is just more- more generally, I mean, you know, I don't hide it all that well, but my full- you know, I'm- I'm a libertarian at heart. Um, not the big L libertarian, but, uh, the person who says, "Look, as long as you don't hurt anybody and everything's consensual and everyone's an adult, do whatever you want." And a lot, some moral rules have moved in that direction, right? So like, you know, it- it's... I remember before Obama came out in fr- in favor of same-sex marriage, you know, libertarians, little l, were ahead of that curve. Like, I don't care what sex you are if you want to get, enter into a contract. Like, everyone should have access to the contracts. And the- the sort of-... once you en- sc- o- once you put those kinds of ideas into laws, which really, again, are just, what that really was, was saying, "This is a moral principle we have now, which is that we're going to treat everybody the same." That's great. Like, I think that is morality at its best. That's saying, look, if the rules are the sorts of rules that work in favor of people's choices and liberty, and against, you know, harm, unprovoked harm, then morality's doing a great job, and we don't have much more than that.

   11. CWChris Williamson49:06

       I'm thinking about the trajectory of human moral principles over time, and thinking about how it seems to me like there's two buckets of, uh, moral principles. One being, uh, the protection to, and the other being the prohibit- pro- uh, prohibition of. Like, you, th- this is, with gay marriage, you are all- it is protected for you to be able to do that. I mean, you could... Uh, yeah, and the other side being the prohibition, you cannot have sex under this age, you cannot do this particular thing before this time. As the arc of human civilization and morals and stuff continues to progress, does that not mean that there's like, this ever-increasing accumulation of a more complex system of morality, which makes being a human and dancing through that minefield evermore difficult?

   12. RKRob Kurzban50:04

       Oh my God, yeah, totally agree. I mean, as, as cultures become more complex and technologies change, I mean, yeah, I mean, just think about the things that people run afoul of that they just couldn't have run afoul of before. I mean, I, I just saw this thing yesterday or the day before, you know, getting into trouble because you didn't post the black square-

   13. CWChris Williamson50:20

       Mm-hmm.

   14. RKRob Kurzban50:20

       ... in some cultures. You're like, like, yeah, that was definitely not something my hunter-gatherer ancestors had to worry about, right? It's just, they didn't have to worry about omitting a, some particular signal or whatever. And yeah, it's totally complicated. And of course, as you get more people and they're, they're living more densely, you know, the kinds of things that affect other people goes up. You know, I'm, I'm playing my stereo and I'm in, uh, you know, whatever, in the Pleistocene.

   15. CWChris Williamson50:44

       Mm-hmm.

   16. RKRob Kurzban50:45

       Obviously I would've been... Like, it doesn't really matter, right? But like now, it d- so, so you need to have all these different rules that weigh your benefits against my costs and so on.

   17. CWChris Williamson50:52

       Yeah.

   18. RKRob Kurzban50:52

       It's really complicated and, and it's, yeah, it's hard to keep up with it. I mean, um, you know, this, this is an area where, you know, my, my, uh, my friend Josh, who we works on our little Substack together, he's constantly trying to persuade me that we should just go back to like, a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, in part because it's just not so complicated. You know, you just don't have to worry about all these r- and he's, you know, there's something to that. I mean, dental care, something that, you know, as a modern thing, I'm very, you know, very fond of. Don't wanna have to go back to work-

   19. CWChris Williamson51:20

       Very pro-dental care.

   20. RKRob Kurzban51:22

       ... pro-dental care, yeah. Um, but he's got a point which resonates with yours, which is just like, we have to deal with all of these, you know, people around us, but all of the complexities of the rules interacting with each other.

   21. CWChris Williamson51:34

       Yeah. I wonder how, I wonder how much of the sort of ambient stress that humans feel in the modern world is just downstream from a shit ton more rules, and it's kind of more complex, and you know, if we do have an increase, for whatever reason, we don't need to go down the rabbit hole of like, autism spectrum disorder, uh, social isolation, just social ungainliness, um, what that probably feels like for an increasing proportion of humans is a more complex, nuanced world that I need to move through more deftly, at a time where more people than ever before have a reduced capacity at dancing through that more complex world.

   22. RKRob Kurzban52:20

       Totally, and this, I've become a little bit, uh, closer, and I wasn't for a while, but I'm close, reading a bit more closely the adolescent literature on mental health. Because that seems to be the area where, at least by some reports, you've got these kids who are just constantly in fear of tripping up against what they're, whatever the current thing is-

   23. CWChris Williamson52:41

       Mm-hmm.

   24. RKRob Kurzban52:41

       ... whatever the current issue is. And, and I think, I wonder if that helps to explain a little bit, 'cause you know, there's, uh, there's other evidence, you know, they're not going out and playing, and, and they're not, you know, whatever they're... That, that maybe there's a little bit of a risk aversion, just the less-

   25. CWChris Williamson52:53

       100%.

   26. RKRob Kurzban52:53

       ... you sort of put yourself out there. And what that means is they're not having the challenges that, you know, I mean, we did. I mean, I, I don't know more than you have, but you know, we did all, we said and did all kinds of (laughs) dumb stuff when we were that age. N- none of it was captured on an iPhone, not a single thing. And so, I wonder if that's playing into exactly you're saying, like you've gotta tiptoe around this stuff, you've gotta, you know, hit it, you've gotta adjust or like, get it just right. And then even then you're not safe, because tomorrow the rule might be the other way, right? And yeah, oh, I got you 'cause you got the other way then.

   27. CWChris Williamson53:22

       What are some of your favorite examples of, uh, new modern moral rules, the posting of the black square may be a small one, but are there any that, um, have come about relatively recently, uh, that might surprise people when they realize that these aren't instantiated in, you know, like human history or whatever?

   28. RKRob Kurzban53:42

       Um, I mean, I would say anything, anything drawn from the kind of, you know, the identitarianism, this idea that you always have to back, um, the, you know, in, in many, in many little subcultures, particularly in the United States, you always have to back whatever it is, whoever it is, the person that, that falls in the category of being the oppressed person.

   29. CWChris Williamson54:03

       Mm-hmm.

   30. RKRob Kurzban54:03

       I mean, I get it, like there is sort of, I sort of share the intuition that you should sort of root for the underdog. But the way that that has taken off, I mean, again, I'll, I'll wear my, my politics on my sleeve. I mean, I was shocked at, you know, going back to the protests. You know, you, you have this conflict, and don't get me wrong, it's obviously complicated, but one side is intentionally trying to, you know, kill civilians, and the other side is intentionally trying not to do that. Um, and yet the, you know, the moral norm in many cultures is to loudly back the, what I take to be the side that's, you know, doing this stuff.

8. 54:39 – 1:06:37

   We Can’t Agree on What is True Anymore

   1. RKRob Kurzban54:39

      Go ahead.

   2. CWChris Williamson54:39

      I s- I suppose the, um...... the sort of degree of complexity to layer on top of all of this is the inability for people to agree on what is true, right? This multiplicity of sources of truth. "Well, no, that's not, that's not your truth, that's not the truth. That's just your interpretation of this thing." Um, and it- it- it- this kind of comes back to the increasing complexity of rules and morality that people need to weave through. You know, I- I always think, all the time, about Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice.

   3. RKRob Kurzban55:09

      Mm.

   4. CWChris Williamson55:09

      All the fucking time, I think about this. It's, like, so fundamental. I even remember where I was when I first listened to that. The road, Great North Road, in, uh, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, driving north toward the A1 from the s- the city center. I remember the first time I was listening to that, uh, YouTube video, and I was just like, "Oh, my God." So for the people that don't know, um, th- 40 years ago, you would go to the jeans store and there would be one type of jeans, and you would- it would be in different waist sizes, and you would go in. And sure, maybe you didn't want these blue Levi's jeans or whatever. Let's say 60 years ago. I don't know. Whatever. Um, and sure, maybe they're not perfect for you, um, but you had very little decision fatigue and any suboptimal outcome in your jean choice did not feel like a personal deficiency in your decision-making criteria. It felt... Th- th- there was no other option, right? So like, what else could you have done? So you have this degree of sort of, uh, satisfaction and satisficing, uh, when it's from like a beh- uh, economics, uh, economics standpoint. Then you roll the clock forward to now and you go into the jeans store, and it's boot cut or skinny, it's ripped, it's bleached, it's- it's cropped, it's black, it's high-rise, it's low-rise, it's all... You know, that means that any... Even though the total, uh, utility of one decision has increased because you can get precisely the exact pair of jeans that you wanted to get, you are now faced with this huge amount of decision fatigue. And- and any suboptimal decision, if you put a pair of jeans on, you're like, "Ah, I really don't like the way that my ass looks in these jeans. I- I wish I'd got the ones that were a bit darker, the gray instead of the black," or whatever. Uh, that's your fault now. And it's kind of the same with all of the different options we have for information, that, well, it's great. Like, I don't want to live in a world where I don't have answers to questions that I want to ask, in ChatGPT, Google, Wikipedia, stuff like that. Fucking fantastic. I can see everything. But I now have gone from having to be an information sourcer to an information discerner. I- I now have to use... And- and for almost all of human history, you had less information than you needed. So, I think that v- within probably the last 50 years, humanity has gone from having less information than it wanted to way more than it needs. And the skillset from, uh, foraging for information versus discerning from, uh, an overwhelming amount of information, that's a very different skillset. And I don't think that we are particularly well-adapted to do that.

   5. RKRob Kurzban57:44

      Totally. And I think that goes back to the top of our discussion where, you know, you think about where people getting their information, and you've got the sort of the, in my, you know, for in the US, you've got the MSNBC crowd and then you've got the Fox News crowd. And then you ask this question, "Well, why do people seek the..." You know, they get... An economist would talk about a confirmation bias, right? Which it's weird. Like, it's actually weird that people have a... You know, if I just wanna maximize what I know about the world, I sorta don't wanna limit the evidence to just whatever supports... I actually wanna look for counterexamples, right? And then this question is why, you know, why is that there? Um, and it's important, right? Because as you say, you wind up in this tiny little information ecosystem. I actually wonder if it goes back to what you were, you know, we were kind of talking about earlier, which is, do I really wanna see the holes in my own argument? Do I really wanna kinda lift the curtain back behind? And, you know, if you're, you know... I- I think that- for whatever reason, people experience that as discomfort. And I do think it has to do with the fact that once you sort of do have that experience, um, yeah, you kinda have to say, "You know, maybe my motivations are not quite as pure." And then once I know that, maybe you'll find out-

   6. CWChris Williamson58:54

      Yeah.

   7. RKRob Kurzban58:54

      ... because I'll say it out loud. And I think that's why it's so interesting to- to, you know, spend some time listening to people who have these kinds of exper- uh, you know, these conversion experiences, right? Like the- the liberal who's been mugged and becomes a conservative or- or vice versa or whatever. Because those are people who really do have this interesting experience of having, like, very firm beliefs, but both ways. And they can wrestle with, "Wait, how did I believe that?" And, you know, my experience of those conversations is they- they almost always say the same thing, which is, "Well, everyone around me, that's what they thought." (laughs) It's just like, okay, but then that sort of pushes back. Well, why were you around those people all the time? Um...

   8. CWChris Williamson59:30

      Yeah. I mean, you know, the, um, peak version of that are these people that were brought up in cults.

   9. RKRob Kurzban59:36

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson59:36

       Right? Uh, and, uh, you didn't know any other part of the world. Uh, I had... Goddammit, who was the lady that did the witch trials of J.K. Ro- uh, Megan Phelps-Roper, who was a part of the Westboro Baptist Church.

   11. RKRob Kurzban59:48

       Oh, right.

   12. CWChris Williamson59:48

       And, uh, she came on the show, fascinating, you know, just total indoctrination. It was the physics of her sort of social psychological system, wh- all of these beliefs. Uh, and then she comes out of it and like, sort of just, uh, you know, this fugue fever dream state that she was in and kind of gets released into the world and there's all of these other things. Uh, I- I read this sentence from Nick Bostrom, uh, a couple of weeks ago. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. He refers to it as thinking in superpositions. So, superposition from, uh, quantum physics.

   13. RKRob Kurzban1:00:23

       Physics.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:00:23

       Yeah, where you have sort of two- two particular positions at the same time, and until you observe them sufficiently closely, they don't collap- you don't collapse the superposition. And it's just a... I'm sure that the physics people, like, have a problem with it because it's, like, not that accurate, but it's basically holding two con- contradictory views in your mind at the same time and not choosing to collapse that superposition too quickly. It's like, "All right, I'm just gonna, like, keep trying to hold these things. And the more..."... that I spend time trying to think about that, like not, I'm not gonna, like, lock my sense of identity to one thing, and obviously I do it all the fucking time with everything-

   15. RKRob Kurzban1:01:01

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:01:01

       ... whether it's pickleball versus paddle or, or like some big geopolitics thing. Um, but the more that I'm able to do that, the happier I feel. Like I just, my texture of daily experience seems to be way better because I'm just curious about the outcome as opposed to feeling like some sort of ego death thing is gonna happen if whatever flag post I've pinned my colors to is, uh, a- abused in some way or, or, or damaged by a maybe very valid, uh, alternate argument. There's this, uh, remember listening to Eckhart Tolle forever ago when I was like first tr- starting to read things and listen to, to things, and he says that, um, one of the reasons that people cling on to their beliefs so much is that admitting that you're wrong is tantamount to death.

   17. RKRob Kurzban1:01:55

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:01:55

       But it's death to the ego, and death to the ego is almost the same as death to yourself. Like, you are that ego, you are your positions, and, uh, yeah, it's one of the reasons why publicly admitting that you're wrong or you, like, publicly saying, "I've changed my mind. I used to believe this thing and I don't," the more that you can do that, I think you cultivate in yourself a kind of like safety, you know, like how people be- learn to relationally or in terms of their attachment become safe, "I go through a difficult thing and I come out the other side and I'm all right." And the more that you can kind of get out ahead of it yourself, uh, I think is, I- I'm, I'm thinking about trying to do this a lot, uh, personally, just like, "I was wrong about that and I was wrong about this, and I'm really not too sure about that," the more that you do that, I think the m- more open it engenders you to be to new ideas and changing your beliefs in future.

   19. RKRob Kurzban1:02:44

       Yeah. Uh, s- yeah, it reminds me, there's this great... I don't, I'm probably gonna get it wrong. There's an economist, I think it was Kenneth Arrow, but might not have been, and someone asked, said something like, "Uh, I see that you change your mind a lot." It was a guy who revised his views as publications and I... It might be apocryphal, but he says, "Yeah, that's what I do when I realize I'm wrong. What do you do?" And i- it's just this, this great sort of moment, right? And I, I will say this, man, like I think it's unusual for you to feel good about this ability to sort of keep two things in your head 'cause there's, I think there's some good psychological literature that, you know, people who have just one cause and just keep pushing on it, um, the sort of fanatic types and, you know, like Westboro, but those people are pretty happy. You know, they have, it's a little bit like the paradox of choice thing, which is they've got rid of the patterns which says you, like, "I'm gonna be this direction, this is my thing, um, I'm gonna believe on this, so I'm gonna be a fanatic about it, and I'm not gonna look for contrary information." I do think there's something to what you're saying, which is, you know, I don't want to get too woolly, but you do sort of feel like the world would be a better place with more of the Kenneth Arrow types or whatever, what you're describing, which is... I don't know. I mean, I think a lot about the difference between what the academy was when I envisioned what it was gonna be like and then what I experienced, you know. Like, I, I grew up on Star Trek, so I assumed it was a bunch of Vulcans, like, you know, sitting around the table and being like, "I have this evidence. I believe this thing." And this other person says, "Well, I have this counter-evidence," and the first person says, "I have decided to revise my view." And like, and then like-

   20. CWChris Williamson1:04:12

       Right, dispassionate, uh...

   21. RKRob Kurzban1:04:13

       Yeah, and like, and then, and then it's, it's nothing like that. It's like, "I have this mountain of data that undermines this thing you just said," and like, "I still believe my thing, and I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna write a book about it."

   22. CWChris Williamson1:04:22

       Yeah. That's wrong or that's unethical, or you're using motivated reasoning-

   23. RKRob Kurzban1:04:26

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:04:26

       ... or you're a xenophobe, bigot, racist, homophobe, whatever it might be.

   25. RKRob Kurzban1:04:30

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson1:04:30

       Yeah. Uh, okay, so...

   27. RKRob Kurzban1:04:32

       Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to distract, just to say, like, I don't... The people you would expect to be like you, which is to say, "Oh, I've got the couple of," are academics where you're just like, "Okay-"

   28. CWChris Williamson1:04:40

       Mm-hmm.

   29. RKRob Kurzban1:04:40

       "... I've got these couple of ideas, let's just figure it out." That's not, hasn't been my experience.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:04:43

       Yeah, I mean, that's the gold standard. I'm, I'm usually probably pretty black and white basic bitch bro science most of the time. But, uh, Cori Clark's been on the show and, uh-
9. 1:06:37 – 1:11:39

   Learnings From Studying Hypocrisy

   1. CWChris Williamson1:06:37

      yeah. So, okay, so we've got morality, we've got its bases. What is interesting about studying hypocrisy and kind of adding that into this, uh, worldview?

   2. RKRob Kurzban1:06:49

      Yeah. So I mean, it, it, to some extent it, it, it hinges on that remark you just made. So like my, one of my passions was really understanding the basic design of the human mind and so-You know, for me, I was very interested in this idea about modularity, that there's different parts of your mind that are doing really specific jobs and they're kind of isolated from each other. So, you know, you got a visual system that sees and a, whatever, a vocal system that talks. And, you know, when you build that all the way up, you get this possibility that you can have one part of your mind that has a particular principle, right? Like, don't steal music or whatever. And then another part of your mind is like, "I kinda wanna have music without paying for it." And so you kind of do that thing, and one question is, you know, how can people be so inconsistent? And I think these kinds of inconsistencies tell us something about this really basic way in which humans are designed, which is we're in parts, like the Walt Whitman, you know, "I contain multitudes," kind of thing. So for me, hypocrisy is, is kinda like a window into the very deep architecture where the brain isn't just one big mushy thing. It's actually a lot of different parts, and you can have one bit that, you know, has a particular principle or a moral commitment, and then you could have another system that acts completely contrary to that moral principle. So for me, I don't know, I think hypocrisy, it's sort of like one of the ways that you get a view of this fundamental part of human nature, uh, which, you know, that's hard. It, it's- it's hard, you know, it's hard for people to introspect, to see themselves and, and that's why psychology, I think, is such a hard topic is, right? The brain, trying to understand the brain. But for me, it's these inconsistencies that I think really reveal that, ah, there's gotta be something in there that's sort of not, it's not homogeneous. It's all these different bits and pieces.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:08:33

      Because it's in conflict with itself.

   4. RKRob Kurzban1:08:35

      Exactly. So I think optical illusions are like this, right? So you're like, you see something and part of your brain knows those two circles are definitely the same size, but you're looking at it like, "Those two things look completely different," or whatever the optical illusion is. And so what that's telling you is that you've got one, you know, you've got two different parts of your brain with completely different beliefs or representations or whatever you wanna say. That, to me, is interesting, and all I'm saying is that scales all the way up from low level vision all the way up to morality. Uh, and that's cool because that means that we can use this idea about brain parts to study, you know, all of it, everything in the middle.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:09:09

      Just give me your definition of hypocrisy so that we're all playing from the same hymn sheet here.

   6. RKRob Kurzban1:09:14

      Yeah. People use it differently. So, I- I feel like it should just mean cases where someone endorses a particular moral principle and then acts in a way that contradicts that principle. And people have different views about hypocrisy, but that's sort of what I think. So if you say, yeah, if you say, "Thou shalt not murder," and then you kill your neighbor or something, that makes you a hypocrite. Obviously, that's an extreme case, but there's all sorts of, you know, examples like that. I don't know, when I was, when I was writing the book on this, I did search for a while, and it's hard to resist these cases where you ha- and here my colleagues shine through a little bit, but, you know, these pious, you know, anti-abortion people who then pay their mistress to get an abortion. You're like-

   7. CWChris Williamson1:09:52

      Hmm.

   8. RKRob Kurzban1:09:53

      So that would be, for me, like the quintessential kind of, kind of thing where you-

   9. CWChris Williamson1:09:57

      It's the, it's the senator who's vehemently against gay marriage that's secretly going on Grindr-

   10. RKRob Kurzban1:10:05

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:10:05

       ... on his second phone that his wife doesn't know about on an evening.

   12. RKRob Kurzban1:10:08

       Exactly, yeah. So if you're, if you're saying out loud, "Here is my moral belief," and then in your spare time, you are doing the thing that you say is bad, bad, bad, for me, that sort of is the, that's hypocrisy. Again, people can have different views on this, right? So people, sometimes people use the word to mean something like, "Well, I apply this rule differently for this group as opposed to that group," and that's fine. I mean, I, I don't love to, you know, get too deep into the definition, but that's, that's for me, I think, the best way to sort of think about it.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:10:33

       What is your problem with moral hypocrites, then?

   14. RKRob Kurzban1:10:37

       Well, this goes back to our discussion about what morality is. So if you think of morality as kind of a weapon, what that means is that, you know, you're using these moral principles to advance your interests by, you know, saying, "Don't do this, and if you do that, I'm gonna attack you," or whatever, "I'm gonna get everyone," whatever. And in terms of your behavior, you're also doing this thing, right? So you're, you're sort of trying to get double credit as a hypocrite. You're, you- you have the moral principle to beat other people in the head in, and you're gonna be able to do the action that, you know, no one else is allowed to do or gets punished for. So that's bad. So I, you know, this goes back to your question about what, why is morality good? Well, it's supposed to stop people from, you know, being selfish and taking other people's stuff and doing harm. You know, w- uh, hypocrisy is really, you know, the ultimate expression of selfishness. I'm gonna be selfish in having this principle that I'm gonna use to attack you, and I'm gonna do the thing anyway. Um...

   15. CWChris Williamson1:11:31

       Yeah. So rules for thee but not for me. Uh, do as I say, not as I do. You know, the cliches sort of speak for themselves. Talk

10. 1:11:39 – 1:17:09

    The Equation of Bullying

    1. CWChris Williamson1:11:39

       to me about this sort of bullying equation, bullying equals attack plus impunity. How does that fold in here?

    2. RKRob Kurzban1:11:45

       Yeah, so this goes back to, um, you know, that, the- the point I was making about the American South. So like, there's lots of contexts in the, in, you know, the- the Salem witch trials as well. So there's, there's lots of cases where people could level moral accusations and not really have to worry about themselves getting attacked for leveling them. So again, a white person in the American South, uh, someone who is in the right political position during, uh, the Salem witch trials. Today, and I don't wanna get too deep into this, but there are certain kinds of people who are protected. Um, you know, so I- I guess I might as well dive into it. So, you know, there are certain, certain kinds of racism ac- accusations that you could make, um, and, uh, whether they're true or false, you're not really gonna suffer any penalty for leveling that accusation. But it's a deadly accusation. Sometimes literally, I suppose, in certain kinds of, of contexts, right? For the reason you just said, right? Soft cancellations, hard cancellations. Um, and so if you're in the position whether, again, you're a white person in the South or you're a whatever, a Puritan or you're a protected class...... then, you know, you can attack someone with a moral accusation, true or not, and basically not have to worry about the cost, right? Like, in l- in some contexts, you do, right? So there's lots of contexts in which making an accusation to lead to a cost may be because the... you know, back, you know, back before states, because that person's relatives might, you know, take revenge on you for whatever. Or you could just get, you know, in trouble for making a false accusation. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." So, you know, when, when we create a world in which people are really not responsible for, you know, certain kinds of accusations, even if they're false, or even actions, uh, where th- where there's no consequences, you sort of open it up. I mean, look, again, people just weigh their costs and benefits. Can I get a benefit from making some sort of accusation? And, uh, you know, whether that's in terms of the kinda like approval from my group, or maybe somehow I'm going to get their stuff, or, you know, if you're in my company, maybe I go up a notch if I take you down five. Um, and again, the, the important part of bullying there is, yeah, I mean, to go back to just actual bullying, right? So the quintessential Nelson from The Simpsons, if he's on the playground, he's a big guy, he's the biggest kid.

Episode duration: 1:43:46