The Hidden Motives in Everyday Life | Robin Hanson

1. 0:00 – 2:33

   Hidden motives & evolutionary psychology: setting up the “elephant in the brain” lens

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      (wind blowing) Hello, friends. We are talking today about hidden motives in everyday life. Robin Hanson is the author of The Elephant in The Brain. This book is an evolutionary look at why we do the things we do, what are the reasons that our brain is encouraging us to perform particular actions, and how are we deceived by the monkey inside of our own mind? If you've never dabbled in the world of evolutionary psychology before, this is a fantastic introduction to it and it- I found it super interesting. We break down why competition is such an important driving factor for humans, how collectively established rules and norms came about in hunter-gatherer societies and why they're important. We also talk about the dark side of those rules and norms, about lying and cheating and how evolutionarily it's a very effective way to move forward. We look at laughter from an evolutionary perspective, conversations, body language, gossip, and why there is a justification for gossip actually being useful in hunter-gatherer societies and in the modern day, how consumer behavior is influenced by hidden motives, healthcare, altruism and being charitable, and an awful lot more. What's super interesting and I think very liberating about this discussion is the fact that it reminds us just how at the mercy of our primitive brains we really are. Now, our environment has progressed an awful lot over the last 5,000 years, but our brains haven't (laughs) changed all that much and it's nice and important to be reminded of the fact that we're basically just hairless apes that have managed to harness a little bit of electricity. So, let's find the elephant in our brains. (upbeat music) Robin Hanson, welcome to Modern Wisdom. How are you today?

   2. RHRobin Hanson2:11

      I'm very happy to be here.

   3. CWChris Williamson2:13

      (laughs) Fantastic. So you are-

   4. RHRobin Hanson2:14

      We're gonna talk about interesting stuff, aren't we?

   5. CWChris Williamson2:16

      We are gonna talk about interesting stuff, yeah. We're gonna blow some minds today, I think. Uh, so-

   6. RHRobin Hanson2:21

      Let's go.

   7. CWChris Williamson2:21

      ... you are an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford, u- amongst other titles.

   8. RHRobin Hanson2:32

      I am indeed.

2. 2:33 – 3:41

   Why Hanson’s work spans so many fields (and what that signals)

   1. CWChris Williamson2:33

      (laughs) So reading your website, the bio is a lot like being hosed down with a bit of a pressure washer. You've got over 3,890 citations and have been published nearly 100 times across a very, very wide range of fields. Why- why is your work so eclectic? Why is it so varied?

   2. RHRobin Hanson2:55

      Well, um, most academics, uh, basically look for a secure place, a place where they are in authority and where they can contribute and where they've been rewarded, and then they stay there. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson3:09

      Mm-hmm.

   4. RHRobin Hanson3:09

      And I've been much more of a wanderer looking for the most interesting topics and especially looking for anything more interesting than what I've been working on lately. Uh-

   5. CWChris Williamson3:18

      Okay, so is it a short attention span? (laughs)

   6. RHRobin Hanson3:20

      ... and that makes you wire. (laughs) To some extent, but, uh ...

   7. CWChris Williamson3:23

      Yeah.

   8. RHRobin Hanson3:23

      So, at least in the past I held myself to the standard of if I was gonna go into a new area, I should produce a publication there-

   9. CWChris Williamson3:30

      Mm-hmm.

   10. RHRobin Hanson3:31

       ... that would be published by the experts in that area and that would acknowledge that I had made a contribution and that would justify the fact that I had, uh, distracted myself from other things and-

   11. CWChris Williamson3:40

       (laughs)

   12. RHRobin Hanson3:40

       ... done something in that area.

3. 3:41 – 6:03

   The core puzzle behind the book: why the world ‘doesn’t make sense’ under stated motives

   1. CWChris Williamson3:41

      Yeah. (laughs) I get that completely. So that's a bit of, uh, of signaling I suppose straight away, which is what we're gonna- we're gonna get stuck into in a little bit. So, your book, Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, it came out at the start of the year. Can you tell us why you wrote this book?

   2. RHRobin Hanson4:00

      S- so this is, uh, the answer to a puzzle that's been bothering me all my life.

   3. CWChris Williamson4:07

      Okay. (laughs)

   4. RHRobin Hanson4:07

      And so I've been noticing that in many areas, uh, there's just a lot of things that don't make sense, a lot of the things that are strange, and that's been bugging me for a long time. Why are all these strange things? They're like, "Why doesn't the world make sense?" And I decided, well, this was an answer to a lot of puzzles, a lot of reasons why, uh, things don't make sense is that we've been just making the wrong assumption, a key wrong assumption about motives. Uh, in most areas, people have a standard motive, they'll tell you about why they do it, and we usually just take them at their word and think about the details and I realized that in an awful lot of areas, they're just wrong about their basic motive. The- the most fundamental thing they're saying about why they're doing it is, in an important sense, wrong.

   5. CWChris Williamson4:53

      Do you think that's consciously wrong or a combination of deceptive and, uh, unconscious motivations?

   6. RHRobin Hanson5:01

      It varies. Uh, it's com- that part is complicated. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson5:04

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   8. RHRobin Hanson5:05

      Uh, because we each vary in, uh, ourselves and- and what's important to us, et cetera. So each one of us tends to have something in our lives that we consider the most sacred and important.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:16

      Mm-hmm.

   10. RHRobin Hanson5:17

       And in that area we insist on idealism about our motives. We ins- so if- if you are a researcher, say, and that's the thing that's your sacred thing, then you are really- uh, it's really important to you that you see your motive in research as high and important, uh, to justify-

   11. CWChris Williamson5:32

       Yeah.

   12. RHRobin Hanson5:32

       ... your respect for that and- and making it so central to you. And then in most other areas of your life, you're more willing to accept lower motives because, uh, those aren't central to your identity. Even if people might say they do things for some high motive, you're willing to admit, well, yeah, people say that but they don't mean it quite as much as they say and I'm willing to admit that I am, you know, really quite so focused on that because that's less the center of your life. (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson5:56

       I get that. I get that totally. So let's ask the- the main question that everyone wants to know, what is the elephant in the brain? (laughs)

4. 6:03 – 7:24

   Defining the ‘elephant in the brain’: motives we all sense but avoid naming

   1. RHRobin Hanson6:03

      The elephant in the brain is a metaphor, a- analogous to the elephant in the room. So, the elephant in the room is this thing we all know is there, but we don't want to talk about, so we step around it and we pretend it's not there. And the elephant in your brain is the thing that you all kind of know is there in your brain that you don't want to talk about, and it's the motives that you have that you don't like to admit to, most of which are more selfish than you'd like to admit.

   2. CWChris Williamson6:29

      Okay. So there's a, a Colette quote about your book which I absolutely love, and it says, "Everything from higher education to belief in God is best understood through the prism of an elaborate mating ritual predicated on enumerable intersecting status competitions." Are we just essentially hairless monkeys? Is that-

   3. RHRobin Hanson6:49

      (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson6:49

      ... is that the, the long and short of it?

   5. RHRobin Hanson6:53

      Well, just is too strong. (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson6:55

      (laughs)

   7. RHRobin Hanson6:56

      Just would say there's nothing more.

   8. CWChris Williamson6:57

      Okay, yeah.

   9. RHRobin Hanson6:58

      We are certainly something more-

   10. CWChris Williamson7:00

       Yep.

   11. RHRobin Hanson7:01

       ... but we do exaggerate how different we are.

   12. CWChris Williamson7:03

       Mm-hmm.

   13. RHRobin Hanson7:04

       Certainly we are much more like other monkeys and other primates than we'd like to admit. Uh, we often pretend as if humans are just this whole separate set of creatures for whom the usual animal rules just don't apply.

   14. CWChris Williamson7:16

       Mm.

   15. RHRobin Hanson7:17

       And that's definitely not true. But we are different in many important ways, and we are not just the same as all the other animals.

5. 7:24 – 10:17

   Humans as primates: grooming, talk, and alliance-management

   1. CWChris Williamson7:24

      I get that. I get that totally. So, have you got some examples of similarities between ourselves and monkeys that might strike home to some of the listeners?

   2. RHRobin Hanson7:34

      (laughs) Well, I don't study monkeys, per se, myself.

   3. CWChris Williamson7:38

      (laughs)

   4. RHRobin Hanson7:39

      But, uh, a, a common observation about primates and many other kinds of, um, monkeys is that they spend a lot of time grooming. They sit and pick at each other's, uh, back, uh, taking out bugs and dirt.

   5. CWChris Williamson7:52

      Mm-hmm.

   6. RHRobin Hanson7:53

      And, um, that's just a thing, uh, lots of primates do. And we don't do so much of that directly, but we indirectly groom by talking. (laughs) While we are accomplishing a similar thing in a little larger groups by just hanging around with each other and talking and, and basically saying, "I'm willing to spend time with you. I'm willing to focus my attention on you and, uh, do these modest things that would seem to be in your interest, uh, to help you, mainly just to show you that I'm with you and, and I support you."

   7. CWChris Williamson8:25

      Mm-hmm. So what's the, what's the justification for that? Or what's the reasoning behind that, that it comes, comes through to us as humans now? We, we can see why you would do that as a monkey, but what's the motivation for us as humans in the mon-

   8. RHRobin Hanson8:39

      Well, so if humans were looking at monkeys picking each oth- you know, each other's fur, we'd say we're helping cleaning their fur. But in fact, they spend a lot more time doing that they need to, to keep each other clean so it seems to be more of a political activity. (laughs) They're doing it to show their alliance with each other and so they actually do more of it when they're in larger groups when they have more people they need to reassure of their alliance with. So humans are also in large groups and we also need to show each other that we are loyal and that we are with them in various groups, but we don't like to say that out loud and directly.

   9. CWChris Williamson9:09

      (laughs)

   10. RHRobin Hanson9:09

       And so we do all these things with each other whose indirect purpose is to reassure each other that we're together and, and we like each other and we're loyal to each other, but we need to make up other excuses for what we're actually doing. (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson9:21

       Yes.

   12. RHRobin Hanson9:22

       So we talk, we, we talk and we converse and we talk as if we cared that much about the sporting team or the latest new-

   13. CWChris Williamson9:28

       (laughs)

   14. RHRobin Hanson9:28

       ... news story, et cetera, or the latest gossip and, uh, we just have to have all these other reasons that we say for what we're doing because we aren't as comfortable directly saying, "I'm just doing this to show that you and I are still an item."

   15. CWChris Williamson9:41

       I get that. I get that. So am I right in thinking that monkeys or primates are, they spend a disproportionate amount of time on the more higher social status, uh, primates within the group when they're doing grooming?

   16. RHRobin Hanson9:56

       Absolutely.

   17. CWChris Williamson9:56

       Is that right?

   18. RHRobin Hanson9:57

       Yes, of course, absolutely. And so-

   19. CWChris Williamson9:58

       And is that, that, that would be reflected, I suppose, with people laughing at the boss's joke, right? Or, or-

   20. RHRobin Hanson10:04

       Yeah, so we, we definitely select who we spend the time with and who we pay attention to according to social status and prestige. We are much more interested in, uh, gaining the attention of and showing our allegiance to people who are higher status.

6. 10:17 – 13:04

   Competition as the engine: cooperation as a strategy to win

   1. CWChris Williamson10:17

      Mm-hmm. Yeah, I totally get that. So why is competition such an important driving factor for humans or for, for animals overall?

   2. RHRobin Hanson10:28

      Well, the standard story, which is right, (laughs) is that animals are in a fierce competition in the long run. Uh, evolution is this, you know, process that never ends whereby in each generation some people have more descendants than others and whatever features, uh, produce having more descendants are rewarded and emphasized, and over many, many generations, those are the features we all have. We are all packed full of the features that tend to promote having more descendants.

   3. CWChris Williamson10:57

      Yep.

   4. RHRobin Hanson10:58

      And competition is one of those features.

   5. CWChris Williamson11:01

      So sending and receiving of our signals as a, as a potential partner and survival, these are all key drivers.

   6. RHRobin Hanson11:10

      Right now, um, when people think about competition, they often think about it in con- contrast to cooperation as if these were-

   7. CWChris Williamson11:18

      Yes.

   8. RHRobin Hanson11:18

      ... the opposites. And of course in a more direct sense, we are cooperating most of the time, but we are cooperating as a strategy to compete. (laughs) That is, uh, if you and I are cooperating with each other, that benefits you and I relative to all the other people out there who might not be cooperating quite as much as we are.

   9. CWChris Williamson11:37

      Yes.

   10. RHRobin Hanson11:38

       And so, um, the strict competition induces cooperation as a strategy to win the competition.

   11. CWChris Williamson11:47

       So you band together in small groups. It's still to take the top spot, but if you need to, if you need to buddy up with a number of other animals, you can do it?

   12. RHRobin Hanson11:58

       And you do need to. (laughs) And typically, you need to get into relatively large groups so humans have pioneered very large social groups, very large complicated social groups that other primates certainly, uh, didn't have and that's one of our triumphs is that we are able to cooperate at much larger scales than other primates can do.

   13. CWChris Williamson12:15

       What's the, what's the comparison there in terms of numbers?

   14. RHRobin Hanson12:19

       ... well, (laughs) millions.

   15. CWChris Williamson12:21

       Yep.

   16. RHRobin Hanson12:21

       You know? So most primates might cooperate in a group of, you know, eight to 10 or something and humans, originally foragers could cooperate in groups of 20 to 50-

   17. CWChris Williamson12:33

       Mm-hmm.

   18. RHRobin Hanson12:33

       ... and some loca- local neighbors up to 150 but today, we cooperate in groups of many millions.

   19. CWChris Williamson12:39

       Yep.

   20. RHRobin Hanson12:40

       Uh, and that's just way out of the scale of what other primates can manage.

   21. CWChris Williamson12:43

       (laughs) Yeah. So was that one of the key drivers of human progression, was the fact that we were able to create these complex social structures and, uh, sustain them as well? So it wasn't like you just put everyone in a, in a group and then after a couple of weeks everyone just ripped each other to shreds?

7. 13:04 – 15:48

   How early human groups worked: social norms, third-party enforcement, language, and weapons

   1. RHRobin Hanson13:04

      (laughs) Well certainly, um, our being able to manage large groups, uh, is an important part of our evolution and the way we manage them is important to understanding what we are and how we interact. So clearly, we have built on larger and larger groups over time and we've added more and more structure to how we do that. But, um, you can get lost in all that if you don't go back to the very first smallest groups and ask, "How did we at least manage those?"

   2. CWChris Williamson13:30

      Mm-hmm.

   3. RHRobin Hanson13:31

      And so these small groups of 20 to 50 people, we were able to have larger groups than most other primates, uh, because we had social norms. So social norms are rules about what you're supposed to do or not supposed to do, and the rules that other people enforce, third parties enforce. So the key idea is if I see you breaking a rule, I'm supposed to tell other people and then we're supposed to talk about what to do about you breaking the rule. And so we will then coordinate to, uh, respond. Now we will respond first in small ways if we can get you to re- to stop in a small way, but we will have a r- set of escalations available to us-

   4. CWChris Williamson14:09

      (laughs)

   5. RHRobin Hanson14:09

      ... that ends in killing you off if necessary-

   6. CWChris Williamson14:12

      (laughs)

   7. RHRobin Hanson14:13

      ... uh, because that's, that's always in the background as an available option but, uh, we have these social norms. So that's a key distinction between us and other animals. Other animals have typical behaviors and you could call those norms if you like, but that's not the same as the norm in humans where you're supposed to enforce the norm. And so not enforcing the norm is, is, is breaking the rule, so there's a norm for enforcing the norms and-

   8. CWChris Williamson14:33

      (laughs)

   9. RHRobin Hanson14:33

      ... that's a key way that these things get worked.

   10. CWChris Williamson14:36

       I get that, totally. Am I right in saying that weapons were a important part of enforcing these norms as well, right? Because it meant that the strongest person in the group wasn't necessarily the one who had the most power anymore.

   11. RHRobin Hanson14:50

       Yes, and so in a group of say chimpanzees, if there's a big chimpanzee going around giving everybody orders and the rest of you, like, want to take him down, it's kind of hard because, uh, you know, only a couple of you can really get close to them and you could throw the first punch when he wasn't looking but, uh, that's not gonna help very much.

   12. CWChris Williamson15:07

       (laughs)

   13. RHRobin Hanson15:08

       (laughs) And so it's actually pretty hard for any large group to, uh, to actually counter the big guy.

   14. CWChris Williamson15:15

       Mm-hmm.

   15. RHRobin Hanson15:15

       But in a group of humans, uh, with weapons, you could all stand kind of far away and then 20 of you could stand far away and all pelt him with rocks (laughs) and, uh, that would be much more effective.

   16. CWChris Williamson15:26

       Job done.

   17. RHRobin Hanson15:28

       And so, uh, human weapons and language, uh, uh, allowed social norm enforcement much more than for other animals. So language is necessary in order to be able to say, "I have to tell you what this other person did wrong-"

   18. CWChris Williamson15:39

       Mm-hmm.

   19. RHRobin Hanson15:40

       ... "and then you have to tell me that, yeah, that's, you agree that that was a real violation and then we have to talk about what to do about it." And all of those things are just much harder to do without language.

8. 15:48 – 18:20

   Gossip’s real function: coalition-building, enforcement, and weaponized rumor

   1. CWChris Williamson15:48

      I get that. I've got a, a question from George McGill, who is one of our listeners, and he's a massive fan of the book. He asked a couple of questions that I think are pertinent here and he asked: why do we gossip, what percentage of human conversation is gossip, and does Robin think people are aware of how much they gossip?

   2. RHRobin Hanson16:09

      (laughs) Um, gossip doesn't tend to have a good reputation. So people like to downplay their tendency to gossip. We mostly discuss it when we talk about it.

   3. CWChris Williamson16:20

      (laughs)

   4. RHRobin Hanson16:21

      Uh, so a highbrow people are supposedly gossiping less, although that's not been my experience.

   5. CWChris Williamson16:27

      But no one-

   6. RHRobin Hanson16:27

      Whenever I've seen highbrow people, they're gossiping a lot.

   7. CWChris Williamson16:29

      All, all the time. No one ever talks about how much they love watching TMZ, do they? (laughs)

   8. RHRobin Hanson16:34

      Well, some people do, so over time people are more willing, but, but basically, uh, it's striking how much people do gossip given how much they seem to disapprove of gossip.

   9. CWChris Williamson16:43

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   10. RHRobin Hanson16:44

       Uh, but gossip is, um, an obvious useful thing for species like humans to be doing. Uh, first of all, we just, we need to be talking about something 'cause we're just hanging out with each other trying to show how much we like each other and we're also trying to impress each other, and we're looking for something to talk about that could be useful and gossip is, is pretty useful 'cause gossip is how we find out who's been doing what and who we approve and disapprove of and who we're gonna coordinate against. (laughs) And so, you know, being such complicated political creatures, we're always trying to form coalitions that have us on the inside and our rivals on the outside-

   11. CWChris Williamson17:18

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RHRobin Hanson17:19

       ... and gossip helps us do that.

   13. CWChris Williamson17:21

       So that's part of enforcing, enforcing the rules and norms, right? If I do something wrong and-

   14. RHRobin Hanson17:28

       Sure.

   15. CWChris Williamson17:29

       ... a, a bunch of... I, I know that there is this external accountability that's going to come back and get me because if Suzy sees me doing it, she's gonna tell Brian and Brian's gonna tell and da, da, da, and-

   16. RHRobin Hanson17:39

       Right.

   17. CWChris Williamson17:39

       ... it goes around.

   18. RHRobin Hanson17:40

       Right. So when it's working well- (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson17:43

       Yeah. Okay. (laughs)

   20. RHRobin Hanson17:43

       ... that's what's supposed to happen.

   21. CWChris Williamson17:44

       That's when Suzy's not a lying bitch, yeah.

   22. RHRobin Hanson17:46

       Right.

   23. CWChris Williamson17:47

       (laughs)

   24. RHRobin Hanson17:47

       But, uh, say, uh, we have this norm mechanism and we aren't gonna use it fairly. Maybe you and I are gonna try to use it to our advantage against our rivals.

   25. CWChris Williamson17:54

       Yeah.

   26. RHRobin Hanson17:55

       Well, we still need to use gossip to make that work. We have to decide what we're gonna accuse somebody else of even if it's not true-

   27. CWChris Williamson18:01

       Yep.

   28. RHRobin Hanson18:02

       ... and decide who e- who else will go along with us and then spread our false rumor-

   29. CWChris Williamson18:07

       Yep.

   30. RHRobin Hanson18:08

       ... so that we can make our rival suffer for this false rumor. I mean, uh, uh, once we have this norm mechanism, we can use it for all sorts of purposes, some of them good, some of them bad. But we'll still need gossip for that-
9. 18:20 – 23:01

   How to infer hidden motives: theory-building, behavioral details, and evolutionary priors

   1. CWChris Williamson18:20

      I get that. So other than logical deduction-What, how have you been able to make this, make these phenomenon more, um, established in history? Because we don't know what was happening 5,000 years ago with a high degree of accuracy in terms of social norms and stuff like that. So how have you actually been able to, when you wrote the book, how were you able to, um, manifest this?

   2. RHRobin Hanson18:48

      So the fundamental issue here (laughs) is that humans around us all the time are doing all sorts of strange things (laughs) . Uh, and when we ask them why are they doing that, they give us some reasons. And if we don't think much about it, then the reasons kind of make sense. But the more we probe into the details, the less sense it makes. So that's this puzzle I collected over a career of all these strange things people are doing.

   3. CWChris Williamson19:11

      Mm-hmm.

   4. RHRobin Hanson19:12

      And so the fundamental question is, well, what are people actually doing? And there's really no escaping the following process, which is to generate alternative theories about what they're really doing and compare each of these alternative theories to the many details of our behavior. Um, any alternative theory surely would make sense of some of the patterns. That's why you made it up in the first place.

   5. CWChris Williamson19:34

      Yep.

   6. RHRobin Hanson19:36

      Uh, but the, the real challenge is to explain lots of little details of behavior. The more little details of behavior that can be explained by any one theory with, with making few assumptions, then the better that theory sits.

   7. CWChris Williamson19:47

      Yes.

   8. RHRobin Hanson19:47

      And that's the whole structure here. Uh, of course, that's in a sense most of social science, really.

   9. CWChris Williamson19:53

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   10. RHRobin Hanson19:54

       And, and most of science, all sorts of things, which is just, you have to have alternative theories. You have to have a bunch of details of data, and then you match the theories to the details, and you see which theories better match the details. Um, so to generate these theories, it helps to have some general idea of what kind of theories you might be looking for. So having some idea of how humans evolved and where humans came from in the first place, uh, gives you some things to be thinking about in terms of theories. But in the end, the, the most fundamental thing that's going on is taking the, the strange patterns of behavior and asking which theories can make sense of these. And so, uh, mostly, uh, what we're saying in the book isn't focused on ex- looking at our distant ancestors.

   11. CWChris Williamson20:38

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RHRobin Hanson20:38

       It's focused on people today and what they're doing and what could possibly explain (laughs) these things people are doing. I, I should mention that my book has a co-author, Kevin Simler, an excellent co-author. Um, and, uh, we, to, the two of us wrote this book together.

   13. CWChris Williamson20:52

       Yep, I got that. So it's, it's interesting that logical deduction appears to have brought us to... I mean, it's a pretty robust theory. It, it seems like it explains an awful lot. So I mean, if it's, if it's wrong, it's very surprisingly wrong, right? At least in my, at least in my view.

   14. RHRobin Hanson21:09

       (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson21:09

       And I'm gonna get, well, you've dedicated an entire book to it, so I'm gonna presume you don't think it's wrong either.

   16. RHRobin Hanson21:13

       Well, I don't think it's wrong, but, um, I'm really struck by the fact that, uh, we are making a big claim, which should surprise you in the sense that not only are we claiming something is different than you thought, we are... It should surprise you that it's even possible to do that today (laughs) .

   17. CWChris Williamson21:31

       Yeah.

   18. RHRobin Hanson21:31

       That is, people have been studying humans for thousands of years now. Humans have always been very interesting to other humans. So we have a vast history of many millions of people thinking carefully about human behavior and, and trying to explain it. So after all that time, how could it even be possible (laughs) to tell you some very surprising result, not about just some small corner of human behavior, but about a wide range of human behaviors? That right there should be surprising to you. So I'm, I'm really struck by the fact that we are saying a big thing. We are claiming that a lot of your preconceptions are not just a little wrong, a lot wrong, and that it's possible to say such a thing and think that you're roughly right.

   19. CWChris Williamson22:11

       (laughs)

   20. RHRobin Hanson22:11

       Uh, and, and it's interesting-

   21. CWChris Williamson22:11

       We should, we should know everything already, right? We should know everything.

   22. RHRobin Hanson22:14

       Well, well, about most people and ordinary human motives for most ordinary things, you would think so, 'cause-

   23. CWChris Williamson22:20

       Yeah.

   24. RHRobin Hanson22:20

       ... not only do we all live a long life, but we're all the time talking to ourselves and other people about why we're doing things. So it, it should be surprising that we, we could be that wrong about so many things. And then I also think it's surprising that with this book where we arguably claim that people are that wrong and have some, at least some decent arguments in support-

   25. CWChris Williamson22:41

       Mm-hmm.

   26. RHRobin Hanson22:41

       ... there are so many people who just yawn and can't be bothered to be interested (laughs) , that they don't find the topic very interesting. It's also, it's also-

   27. CWChris Williamson22:48

       Uh, I don't, I don't think that I want to go for a beer with those people.

   28. RHRobin Hanson22:53

       (laughs) Well, that's most of the world though, so (laughs) . You're gonna be ask

   29. NANarrator22:55

       (laughs)

   30. CWChris Williamson22:56

       Well, most, most of the world, most of the world isn't getting an invite to the pub, if that's the case.
10. 23:01 – 32:09

    Why intellectuals miss this (and what conversation is ‘for’): showing off, not usefulness

    1. RHRobin Hanson23:01

       Uh, but in a sense, most intellectuals aren't very interested. I, I would think that most ordinary people, if you sat down to them at the bar and just started talking about them, they would be kind of interested.

    2. CWChris Williamson23:10

       Mm.

    3. RHRobin Hanson23:11

       So I think it's striking that most of our professional intellectuals are less interested. That's-

    4. CWChris Williamson23:15

       Why do you think that is?

    5. RHRobin Hanson23:18

       Well, it's about what an intellectual is there for, so which comes down to motive. So we, we talk as if our intellectuals are there to, you know, figure things out for us, you know? We, we try to figure things out for ourselves and then s- you know, we only get so far 'cause we're just one person and, and our, we have a busy life. And then we have these specialists out there and they're supposed to be figuring out more for us. And when they figure out more, then they tell us and then we can all learn from that. That, that would be the simple theory of what intellectuals are for.

    6. CWChris Williamson23:46

       Yeah.

    7. RHRobin Hanson23:47

       And it's wrong. (laughs)

    8. CWChris Williamson23:49

       (laughs)

    9. RHRobin Hanson23:49

       It's not in fact what intellectuals are for and why they're there, which helps you explain why they are a- in fact not telling you that many useful things that often.

    10. CWChris Williamson23:58

        What are they there for?

    11. RHRobin Hanson24:01

        Well, um, some kind of intellectuals are just kind of like why we are talking to each other in ordinary conversation, and they're just an extension of the space that we're... of conversation. And then that s- slips into intellectuals are there to just re- be really impressive (laughs) and to be high-status people we all want to associate with. So in our ordinary conversations, a lot of what we're doing is showing off, uh...... we talk in our book as if w- you have this mental backpack of tools and when you have a conversation, the rule is, the conversation's just supposed to follow some random path on whatever random topic it goes to. You're not supposed to try to control that very much. But wherever it goes, you're supposed to just show that you have something interesting to say. Not something very useful necessarily, but something interesting. And if- if you can just consistently pass that test all the time, uh, then you're a pretty good ally. You'd be a nice person to have around 'cause wherever the conversation goes, whatever we need, you've got stuff-

    12. CWChris Williamson24:53

        Yeah.

    13. RHRobin Hanson24:53

        ... that applies. And so that's a way we interact with each other is mostly using conversation as a way to show off as opposed to be directly useful.

    14. CWChris Williamson25:01

        (laughs)

    15. RHRobin Hanson25:02

        And then we are part of these larger conversations in the news media, podcasts even, academia. And in these larger conversations, we are doing something similarly. Uh, we are being even more impressive, even more selective about who to listen to and we want to listen to people who are showing off an even larger, sharper-honed metal backpack of the tools.

    16. CWChris Williamson25:22

        Yep.

    17. RHRobin Hanson25:22

        We're also staying in the conversation, whatever the current conversation is in that scope with each academic discipline has a conversation, news media has a conversation, et cetera. Uh, you know, the- the gossip around your office has a con- conversation, whatever it's on, and you're just supposed to jump into that conversation and show impressive things. Uh, and that's what most conversation, even larger intellectual conversation is about, is mostly showing off. So-

    18. CWChris Williamson25:46

        (laughs)

    19. RHRobin Hanson25:47

        ... I- I'm an academic and most academic journals, they are very selective about who they publish.

    20. CWChris Williamson25:52

        Yeah.

    21. RHRobin Hanson25:52

        Uh, they are very careful and if you submitted something to them, most of them are rejected. If it's gonna be accepted, they'll have lots of suggestions about how to change it, they'll be very nitpicky. But mostly they're not actually wondering how useful this is (laughs) . They're- they're not actually thinking very much about how important this contribution will be and whether it will make the world a better place. They're mostly focused on how hard was that, uh, is that a really difficult thing and are we really impressed by the fact that somebody could do that.

    22. CWChris Williamson26:17

        I, uh, I recently did a podcast with Sabine Hossenfelder who is author of, uh, a book which talks about how beauty is leading physics astray.

    23. RHRobin Hanson26:27

        Yes. Indeed.

    24. CWChris Williamson26:28

        And, um, I found it absolutely amazing to... First off, I discovered that physicists are people too, which was a revelation, a revelation (laughs) to me. But secondly, the cognitive biases and the political power games that get played within the physics community specifically, we spoke about that, but obviously it'll- it'll expand out into many others, but it was whether or not you're seen from the right hymn sheet and- and sort of kneeling, uh, in front of the- the correct sort of powers that be and all that sort of stuff. It seems so strange for a layman like myself to think that you- you presume that science and academics are these bastions of- of knowledge purity. Do you know what I mean?

    25. RHRobin Hanson27:10

        (laughs) Right now it's odd, of course, that you would presume that. If- if we just said, well, you're a primate there, you're in a world of competitive primates who- who try to get ahead from each other. Why would you think there was this bastion of purity out there? Where would that come from? How could it perpetuate itself? That's just pretty strange thing to presume.

    26. CWChris Williamson27:29

        It is.

    27. RHRobin Hanson27:29

        But we do presume that a lot (laughs) . We do listen to these people who give themselves pretty, you know, high-minded descriptions and praise and we just let them get away with it (laughs) . Politicians, regulators, CEOs, scientists, you know, musicians, athletes, all of these people, we let them give these pretty high-minded grandiose pictures about themselves and we accept it because what we really want to do is just affiliate with them 'cause hey, they're pretty impressive.

    28. CWChris Williamson27:58

        (laughs)

    29. RHRobin Hanson27:59

        If somebody knew that you... Hey, 'cause, you know, you got to drop her name (laughs) . I- I met her once many years ago, that's why I could drop her name, but-

    30. CWChris Williamson28:05

        Yeah.
11. 32:09 – 38:47

    Pretexts, rule-bending, and indirect bragging: how norm enforcement becomes theater

    1. CWChris Williamson32:09

       Okay. Well, um, so I want to get back into some of the meat and veg, so to speak, of the book itself. I want to talk about pretexts, lying, and cheating. Can you take us through how you summarized that, please?

    2. RHRobin Hanson32:24

       All right. So there's this idea that we have these norms, uh, there's these rules that, of things you're not supposed to do-

    3. CWChris Williamson32:29

       Yeah.

    4. RHRobin Hanson32:29

       ... and then you're supposed to enforce the norms. And so, uh, but we're actually trying to get away with not following the rules. (laughs) 'Cause the rules are usually a bit in our way. And so while you might think it would be hard to avoid these rules when everybody else is watching out for deviations in the rules and ready to enforce them, but it turns out not to be (laughs) quite as hard as you might think. 'Cause what everybody really wants to do is to look like they're trying to enforce the rules. (laughs)

    5. CWChris Williamson32:54

       (laughs)

    6. RHRobin Hanson32:55

       They're not trying so hard to actually enforce the rules as to avoid the accusation that, "Look, you did not enforce the rule when you were supposed to."

    7. CWChris Williamson33:01

       Mm-hmm.

    8. RHRobin Hanson33:01

       So we're all really weakly motivated to enforce these rules, which lets us get away with avoiding the rules as long as we have any sort of weak pretext, just a little excuse. (laughs) That's all everybody's looking for. (laughs) If you're gonna be really obvious about breaking the rules, well, they're gonna have to come down on you because otherwise they're gonna look bad, but if you give them any little excuse to pretend that they didn't see it or that it wasn't what they saw, or whatever, they're just, they're happy to have those excuses 'cause it's not like they really care whether you follow the rule themselves. They just care to look like they were enforcing the rule when they were supposed to.

    9. CWChris Williamson33:32

       I guess, I guess that not only do the rules make li- people's lives more difficult, but enforcing the rules also make people's lives more difficult.

    10. RHRobin Hanson33:40

        That's a big, that's absolutely a big pain. So, an example we give, uh, is the example of drinking alcohol in public. In, in many places, most places in the United States, it's against the rules to drink alcohol in public. Now... And the police are supposed to enforce that rule, but they don't really want to. They think they have more important things to do. I don't think it, they don't actually think it's that harmful typically, but they think that if you really put it in their face, waving a big bottle of wine around, say, that you're-

    11. CWChris Williamson34:05

        Yeah.

    12. RHRobin Hanson34:05

        ... guzzling off of-

    13. CWChris Williamson34:06

        Yeah.

    14. RHRobin Hanson34:06

        ... then they have to do something 'cause you were, you were forcing them. But they don't really want to, and so they'll take any little excuse so that, a standard, classic, you know, solution is you put your alcohol bottle in a paper bag and then you drink out of the paper bag. (laughs)

    15. CWChris Williamson34:20

        Yeah.

    16. RHRobin Hanson34:21

        And now it's not obvious what you're drinking out of. Now, it, it is kind of obvious in the sense that whoever drinks out of anything (laughs) whoever drinks anything in public out of a paper bag but alcohol when you think about it. (laughs)

    17. CWChris Williamson34:30

        You don't, you don't, it's not Dr. Pepper under there, right?

    18. RHRobin Hanson34:33

        Right. Of course, of course it's alcohol, but you've got this excuse.

    19. CWChris Williamson34:36

        Mm-hmm.

    20. RHRobin Hanson34:37

        And so the police have this excuse. So the police can look the other way and say, "Well, it was a paper bag. I couldn't tell." And, uh, that lets them pretend not to enforce the rule. And we do this all the time with all sorts of rules. So-

    21. CWChris Williamson34:49

        There's this, there's this odd cooperation between the rule breaker and the rule enforcer, neither of whom want to be at the mercy of the rules, and both of whom weirdly somehow are working in c- like, cahoots to actually subvert them.

    22. RHRobin Hanson35:07

        Yeah, the rule enforcer's just trying to be lazy. (laughs)

    23. CWChris Williamson35:10

        (laughs)

    24. RHRobin Hanson35:10

        Just trying to not deal with it.

    25. CWChris Williamson35:12

        Mm-hmm.

    26. RHRobin Hanson35:13

        And the rule breaker's trying to help the other guy to be lazy so that they don't get enforced. (laughs)

    27. CWChris Williamson35:17

        (laughs) Well, mutually, it's mutually beneficial.

    28. RHRobin Hanson35:20

        Right, and this, this happens all the times and ............................ So there's, there's kinds of things you shouldn't say and if someone says it too directly, and now you'll have to disapprove 'cause if somebody said, "Hey, this person said this thing," and you didn't disapprove, you heard it, then now you're in trouble, right?

    29. CWChris Williamson35:31

        Yeah.

    30. RHRobin Hanson35:32

        But as long as they give you any decent excuse (laughs) any level of indirection, say, of hinting what they were saying, not saying it directly, any level of seeming to be joking about it, you know, whatever it takes, then the people around you who would have to enforce this rule, they're, they're mostly quite happy to not enforce the rule 'cause you gave them the excuse to pretend it didn't happen. Which is why we can evade so many rules, which is why we put so much effort into evading rules. So, so again, so one of the, uh, things that is the big thing that happens in a lot of the areas in, in our book that we talk about is bragging.
12. 38:47 – 51:31

    Body language & laughter as hard-to-fake signals: play, boundary testing, and social strength

    1. CWChris Williamson38:47

       Yeah. Okay, okay. So, I want to talk about some of the ways that hidden motives manifest themselves quite typically in modern life now. You've got a, a whole part of the book which is dedicated to body language and laughter, conversations, and a, a whole bunch of other things, consumer behavior. And I want to go through them, 'cause I want to give people some, some nice tacit examples of, that, uh, can hopefully hit home some of the, the concepts that we're talking about here. So body language was one of the first, one of the first things that struck me, having recently read a little bit about it. And I think you said biologically, an, uh, an expensive act. Is that right?

    2. RHRobin Hanson39:27

       Well, uh, it's expensive to fake-

    3. CWChris Williamson39:30

       Okay.

    4. RHRobin Hanson39:30

       ... is what we said-

    5. CWChris Williamson39:31

       Okay.

    6. RHRobin Hanson39:31

       ... more precisely.

    7. CWChris Williamson39:32

       Yeah.

    8. RHRobin Hanson39:32

       Uh, so, uh, when we use words, um, it's often easier to say the opposite of what we mean, because, uh, the cost of using one set of words isn't directly not that different from the cost of using another set of words.

    9. CWChris Williamson39:48

       Mm-hmm.

    10. RHRobin Hanson39:49

        Uh, but the body language tends to be communicated in ways that are more credible because it more naturally goes along with what m- makes sense to do. Uh, so for example, um, if you're stressed and scared, it'll show up in tension in your voice because your body is tense, because it makes sense to be tense when you're scared. Uh, it makes less sense to be relaxed when you should be scared, because, uh, if you're s- tense, then you're gonna be ready to move at a moment's notice. And when you're relaxed, you'll be sluggish and won't move quite so fast.

    11. CWChris Williamson40:19

        Yeah.

    12. RHRobin Hanson40:20

        So, uh, the fact that someone is relaxed is more of a credible signal that they, in fact, are not scared. Um, similarly, uh, you know, talking with a big, booming voice is a credible signal that you have a big, booming voice cavity, i.e. you have a big body-

    13. CWChris Williamson40:36

        Yeah.

    14. RHRobin Hanson40:37

        ... and a lot of energy to move air through it. And that's a credible signal that you are big-

    15. CWChris Williamson40:42

        (laughs)

    16. RHRobin Hanson40:42

        ... and that you have energy to spend.

    17. CWChris Williamson40:44

        Yeah.

    18. RHRobin Hanson40:44

        And so, again, uh, another credible signal. Um, you know, the fact that I look at you is a credible si- signal that I'm interested in you, because, well, if I'm interested in you, it makes sense to look at you.

    19. CWChris Williamson40:56

        Yeah.

    20. RHRobin Hanson40:56

        That's where I want to spend my resources, to looking at you, because hey, that is, that's what I'm interested in. So i- in all of these ways, and many more, um, body language tends to be more credible. That is, um, the things it says are side effects of choices we make because, uh, the signals we're sending are true.

    21. CWChris Williamson41:15

        Yes.

    22. RHRobin Hanson41:16

        And so it's harder to lie about body language, which is something of a problem because we're often in the mood to lie about many of these things.

    23. CWChris Williamson41:23

        (laughs)

    24. RHRobin Hanson41:24

        W- which is often why we deny our body language and we downplay it. And so even though we're actually looking at body language a lot and, and reading it a lot and, and taking it seriously a lot, we allow each other to pretend that body language doesn't matter. So if somebody says words that disagree with their body language, we're often just willing to go along with those words because, hey, we don't want to fight 'em on it. And so, uh, if that's what they want to pretend to be thinking or feeling, then we'll, we'll let them do that.

    25. CWChris Williamson41:50

        It's the easier route, right?

    26. RHRobin Hanson41:52

        Well, when, when we're feeling somewhat cooperative, at least. If, if it's a rival that we want to take down, then we might be happy to point out the contradictions. But usually we are a more cooperative mood (laughs) . And so yeah, body language tends to be more faithful and therefore is more problematic (laughs) exactly when we are trying to, uh, avoid admitting our motives.

    27. CWChris Williamson42:12

        I get that. Um, laughter is a really odd phenomenon, isn't it? It's a very-

    28. RHRobin Hanson42:18

        Well, laughter-

    29. CWChris Williamson42:19

        ... bizarre thing.

    30. RHRobin Hanson42:20

        ... i- is (laughs) is a specially credible signal of being relaxed.
13. 51:31 – 1:00:30

    Consumer behavior & marketing: products as a vocabulary for identity and status

    1. CWChris Williamson51:31

       It's like leveraging a trade. It's just, it's like putting a trade down and leveraging it. It's like, well look, this is, this is how much equity I've got at ten times but you only need to see, you only need to see like ten percent of that. You don't need to see the full amount of my trade. Um, so I wanted to talk about how consumer behavior is influenced by hidden motives. I thought this was particularly interesting given that I come from a marketing background.

    2. RHRobin Hanson51:57

       So, uh, I'm an economist and economists like don't talk much about marketing. (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson52:02

       (laughs)

    4. RHRobin Hanson52:02

       And you know, implicitly we- we don't think much of it or at least, you know, in their usual mode, but, uh, over time of course I've come to realize it, marketers know a lot. There's a lot of interesting knowledge embodied in what marketers know. Uh, so, when we look at buying ordinary products, the usual story most of us will give if we point to any one product is that there are product features we like. Point to my phone, my car, my sweater.

    5. CWChris Williamson52:27

       Yeah.

    6. RHRobin Hanson52:28

       Uh, you know, you will mention price, reliability, you know, fashion, uh, et cetera as the reason why you bought that thing or even for an experience you bought. Uh, and we know that that matters somewhat but we also all kind of know that most people pay a lot of attention to how the products they buy and use make other people see them. They are looking for the image effect, the social effect on how people see them when they buy and use products. And we all kind of know that. We all kind of know that that's somewhat important but we often still again don't admit it in the context of each thing we do and we may not be quite (laughs) aware enough to realize just how important it is. So when we think about advertising for example, we think advertising is talking to us and trying to trick us into things. So for example, if we see a picture of a beer on a beach, we might think well they're trying to trick me into thinking that this beer is as good as the beach because it's sitting next to a beach.

    7. CWChris Williamson53:31

       Mm-hmm.

    8. RHRobin Hanson53:31

       I mean how stupid would I have to be-

    9. CWChris Williamson53:33

       Yeah. (laughs)

    10. RHRobin Hanson53:33

        ... to think that just because you showed me a picture of a beer next to a beach and I like beaches therefore I'll like your beer.

    11. CWChris Williamson53:38

        I like beer. Yeah, exactly.

    12. RHRobin Hanson53:39

        (laughs) Or I'll like your particular beer, right? Uh, and so we- we often think that advertising must be, you know, just completely ineffective or it must be effective on all these idiots out there that we are not because, uh, we know that merely because you show us a picture of a beer on a beach that doesn't mean the beer is good unless we think like all of us are stupid inside, in our subconscious, and it doesn't matter what our conscious mind thinks, they- they're just pushing our buttons and making us like the beer even if we consciously don't think we should.

    13. CWChris Williamson54:09

        Yeah.

    14. RHRobin Hanson54:10

        So that's you know most people's simple theory of marketing (laughs) is that these things are really stupid but I guess they work on somebody and maybe they work on me unconsciously but they shouldn't.

    15. CWChris Williamson54:20

        Yeah.

    16. RHRobin Hanson54:20

        Because there's just no argument there.

    17. CWChris Williamson54:22

        Mm-hmm.

    18. RHRobin Hanson54:23

        Um, but we say well it's actually a little more sophisticated than that. Um, you are trying to project yourself to the people around you. You are trying to say a lot of things about yourself and you say a lot of things through the products you use. So if you're hanging around at- at a bar say waving a beer, people look at your beer and they'll draw conclusions about you from your beers and you're going to ask yourself, "Well what beer do I want to wave around?"... so that people get the right message about me that I want to send.

    19. CWChris Williamson54:49

        Yep.

    20. RHRobin Hanson54:50

        And so all these products we have and use expand this vocabulary we have of all the messages we could send. The kind of sweater I wear, the kind of car I drive, the kind of phone I have. It all says things about me, and I care what other people think about me.

    21. CWChris Williamson55:03

        Mm-hmm.

    22. RHRobin Hanson55:04

        And, uh, I can say them indirectly through these products, uh, in ways that's even deniable if, if someone were to accuse me of trying to show off (laughs) something, brag about various features. I, I'll just claim, "No, no, no, I just like these product's features." And so the, the key idea here is that this language of associations between products and features of people is created by these advertisements. Without this picture of a beer on a beach, people wouldn't look at that beer and think beach.

    23. CWChris Williamson55:30

        Yes.

    24. RHRobin Hanson55:30

        And now I want to wave the beer around, and now because of that ad, they think beach. So I can say I'm a beach guy by waving that beer.

    25. CWChris Williamson55:40

        I totally get that.

    26. RHRobin Hanson55:40

        And that's for many people what they want to say. That's the thing they want to say about themselves is, "I'm a beach guy."

    27. CWChris Williamson55:45

        Yeah, or whatever equivalent it is. I, uh, I did a podcast with Social Chain, some of the listeners will know and have listened to it, and, um, during that... So I run club nights, that's my job in the UK, and during that conversation, I got onto the concept of self-branding that we do. So every night after our event has gone, we'll have a photographer there and he'll take photos at the event, and the next morning those photos will get uploaded onto Facebook and people will go on and they'll tag themselves and they'll tag their friends and sometimes they'll save them and they'll post them on their social media and they'll have it on their Instagram and all the rest of the stuff. And the guys from Social Chain were asking me about how we compete in a marketplace which is incredibly homogenous. I mean, club nights are people in a room getting drunk to music, and it really doesn't matter how much more complicated you try and make it. I've done this job for 12 years-

    28. RHRobin Hanson56:38

        Right.

    29. CWChris Williamson56:38

        ... and it was people getting drunk in 2006 when I started, and it's people getting drunk in a room to music now in 2018, and it, it's not going to change. So they asked, "How do you compete?" Because in a small city like Newcastle with 800,000 people, there's a finite number of venues, there's maybe only 20 venues that have got, uh, appropriate, uh, licensing conditions to be able to actually operate events in them, so you mean that you could be in the same venue as another competitor with the same drinks prices, with a similar music policy, et cetera, et cetera. And what I started talking about was that we try and compete a lot of the time on the intangibles of the brand value and what that says about the customers that go there. And this example that I like to use is, if I speak to someone and I ask them, "So how was your night? How was your night last night? You went out to X place last night. How was it?" And the first thing that they'll say is, "Oh, mate, it was unbelievable. There were so many fit girls there." And you go, "Well, hang on a second. The other consumers of the product have no bearing on the actual product itself." I don't ask you how your new iPhone is and you say, "Oh, yeah, mate, it's fantastic. David Beckham's got one." You actually talk about the features of the product. But very specifically with club nights, what people do is they use it as this signal to other people because they're going to get their photos tagged there, and it's, "Oh, I go to Voodoo on a Saturday. That means I've got these particular kinds of traits that you can infer from the fact that you've seen me tagged in the photos," and this, that, and the other. And what it means is that our job now as club promoters quite highly is to purely create brands that make people want to be associated with them, because if you have a brand that when someone gets tagged in a pho- in a photo of your event, they're desperately untagging it because it makes them some social leper. (laughs)

    30. RHRobin Hanson58:24

        (laughs)
14. 1:00:30 – 1:07:57

    Altruism, egalitarian foragers, and Dunbar layers: where ‘helping’ comes from

    1. CWChris Williamson1:00:30

       I totally get that. So, um, moving on to charity. Altruism and being charitable seem like quite modern concepts. We don't... uh, well, I personally don't think about hunter-gatherer societies giving some lonely outcast a portion of their recent kill out of pity or whatever, but there's a, an established background for this sort of phenomenon. Is that right?

    2. RHRobin Hanson1:00:52

       Yeah, I think you're just wrong about what hunter-gatherers were like. So (laughs) , in fact, foragers or hunter-gatherers were extremely egalitarian.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:01:00

       Okay.

    4. RHRobin Hanson1:01:00

       Uh, they lived in groups of say, 20 to 50 and they had very little physical property and they shared most food and other things and they made collective decisions and so they did help each other a lot. Um, they raised children together. The, you know, the whole group would raise children, uh, teach them things like that and so in fact, in the typical forager hunter-gatherer group, it was a very high degree of sharing and help.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:01:26

       If you were a weak member of that group, why would you be helped along by the rest? Why would they want to share resources with you?

    6. RHRobin Hanson1:01:33

       Well certainly if you're temporarily weak-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:01:35

       Yeah.

    8. RHRobin Hanson1:01:36

       ... they want to show that they are loyal to you and each other and that's how they help each other and that, you know, they are a loyal member of the group and they are showing anybody that they help you that, uh, somebody else would be in that need, they'd help them too.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:01:48

       And if they are in that need at some point in the future?

    10. RHRobin Hanson1:01:52

        Uh, right. And so they'll, and they'll be, as long as you seem to be trying as hard as you can, they may even have a fair bit of tolerance for your not being quite as productive as others.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:01:59

        Mm-hmm.

    12. RHRobin Hanson1:02:00

        Uh, certainly if you're young, you may not be pulling your weight yet, but later on you, they hope that you eventually will get strong enough to pull your weight.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:02:07

        Good analogy. Yeah.

    14. RHRobin Hanson1:02:08

        And they have a fair bit of slack. They have a fair bit of extra resources usually and, um, you know, sometimes there's times of famine, et cetera, but, but usually there's enough extra resources that they can carry a few slackers as long as those slackers don't, you know, look like they're trying to slack.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:02:23

        (laughs) Yeah, if they're only limping when you see them, but they're running around-

    16. RHRobin Hanson1:02:28

        Right. Yeah, yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:02:28

        ... you hear something about them running around totally fine when you t- when your back's turned.

    18. RHRobin Hanson1:02:33

        So actually most human work groups all through history have been like this. Um, I mean we can look at, you know, literature on, on work group- people in a, in a factory shop or things like that and often the, the people just form this strong norm of we together are going to help each other and support each other and we don't want to let management say take us apart by figuring out who, which one of us are more productive and, and, you know, or making us all work harder. And so, uh, there was a whole era when management was trying hard to (laughs) incentivize factory workers to work harder and to work better and the, and the factory workers would be coordinating to stop them because they were trying more to, to protect this one f- one for all and all for one sort of work group where they, uh, they just took care of each other.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:03:18

        Is that unionizing?

    20. RHRobin Hanson1:03:20

        Uh, unions wou- would be a way to express that more formally, but it-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:03:22

        Yeah.

    22. RHRobin Hanson1:03:23

        ... it happened informally a lot. Uh, the, so this, so humans really have this ancient egalitarian streak and we, we do that within families certainly. Uh, we often, you know, take care of other people and families even if they're a bit of slackers if they are not slacking too much.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:03:41

        Yeah. So you've mentioned a couple of times that typical sort of hunter-gatherers, nomadic, uh, roaming bands of, of humans were groups of 20 to 50. I had it in my head before reading your book that it was groups of 250 and that there was a, uh, a perceived psychological limit on the number of close connections that we can hold. Is th- do you know if that's got any, uh, has that got any truth behind it?

    24. RHRobin Hanson1:04:09

        So, so, so the, the, there's two different units. One is the unit of the group that like sleeps together every night and then every few months gets up and moves together to a new campsite.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:04:19

        Okay.

    26. RHRobin Hanson1:04:20

        So that group size is the band of 20 to 50.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:04:23

        Yep.

    28. RHRobin Hanson1:04:23

        Now these bands periodically would meet up with other bands and those other bands would be of a similar size and so they would know enough of these other bands that roughly they would know roughly 150 people total.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:04:35

        Okay.

    30. RHRobin Hanson1:04:36

        So these groups would typically have good relations and in fact if you, you know, were born in one group, you'd leave to another group if you were say a woman a- and at the age of maturity and so they wanted to keep good relations with the other groups because that's where they'd get their future mates. Uh, and so mostly these groups had good relations and mostly, uh, they met up periodically and so that's the larger group of 150 was all the people you'd ever met in your life was probably like 150 people.
15. 1:07:57 – 1:14:38

    Can we ever drop hidden motives? The ‘press secretary’ model and implications for policy

    1. CWChris Williamson1:07:57

       (laughs) Yeah, very true. So you touched on this earlier on about whether or not you, you weren't even sure about whether it was desirable for humans to remove these hidden motives. Could you envision a world in which we've dispensed with this, uh, the, the artifact of our, uh, uh, our heritage, so to speak, and we're, we're completely, uh, uh, free from that, of the hidden motives that we have in our brain?

    2. RHRobin Hanson1:08:26

       I can imagine a lot of things. So I could imagine creatures who did not hide their motives, um, but we aren't those creatures. (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson1:08:35

       Mm-hmm. (laughs)

    4. RHRobin Hanson1:08:35

       And we would have to change a lot to become those creatures, uh, a lot. (laughs) So I'm not seeing that scenario play out anytime soon.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:08:45

       Mm-hmm.

    6. RHRobin Hanson1:08:46

       Um, I, I do see that sometimes the world changes and we have to admit some things that are unpleasant to admit, and then we often find ways to say, create some specialists who admit it among themselves, but let the other rest of us ignore it. (laughs)

    7. CWChris Williamson1:09:01

       (laughs) Yeah.

    8. RHRobin Hanson1:09:03

       And so we often find ways to adapt socially so that we can have a similar attitude about things even if, uh, somebody somewhere has to be realistic about things.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:09:12

       I get that. Um, can you explain your idea of the press secretary, please? I thought this was super interesting.

    10. RHRobin Hanson1:09:18

        So that's not original with us. It's, uh, you know, many people have mentioned this-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:09:22

        Yeah.

    12. RHRobin Hanson1:09:22

        ... but I th- I think it, it helps you see yourself in a different way.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:09:26

        Yes.

    14. RHRobin Hanson1:09:26

        So we often realize we have this vast mind underneath us, and we are sitting on the top of it, we think, as if we were the king or president, uh, running over all these minions underneath us. And instead, this metaphor of the press secretary says, "Well, think of yourself as the press secretary instead."

    15. CWChris Williamson1:09:42

        Yeah.

    16. RHRobin Hanson1:09:42

        You, you're there near the top, you, you hear people at the top saying things, but you're not actually making the big decisions. Your job is just to see the big decisions being made and make up some excuses for them.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:09:51

        (laughs)

    18. RHRobin Hanson1:09:52

        Your job is to justify it somehow to the press who then says, "What were you doing?"

    19. CWChris Williamson1:09:56

        (laughs) There's a Stephen Cass quote here that says, "You are not the king of your brain. You are the creepy guy standing next to the king going, 'A most judicious choice, sir.'" (laughs)

    20. RHRobin Hanson1:10:09

        Right, and, and, uh, that's, uh, an excellent, uh, if- if somewhat disturbing image.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:10:13

        (laughs)

    22. RHRobin Hanson1:10:14

        'Cause, 'cause we do like to think of ourselves as, as running ourselves, and it's hard not to think that way sometimes, but, um, uh, well, there's a sense in which we don't run ourselves nearly as much as we think we do.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:10:25

        Yeah, I totally get that. Understanding our brains in this way, is, uh, is it helping people liberate them? I'm aware that the, the point of this book is not to be prescriptive. And I think having been-

    24. RHRobin Hanson1:10:37

        There's a lot-

    25. CWChris Williamson1:10:37

        ... exposed to a lot of the self-development and sort of self-learning, introspective work world over the last couple of years, it's really refreshing actually to hear a book which just posits an idea that appears to be pretty, pretty well founded and tr- doesn't try to be too prescriptive about it. But if you were to make a, not a prescription, but if you were to draw a conclusion that gives people a little bit of a sense of direction to move forward, have you got one?

    26. RHRobin Hanson1:11:09

        Well, the people who most need our book are the people whose job it is to describe and understand our world. (laughs) Say, social scientists and policy analysts.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:11:18

        Mm-hmm.

    28. RHRobin Hanson1:11:18

        Uh, they are constantly m- you know, describing our world in enough detail that they use that as the basis for some policy reforms, that they propose changes to our world on the basis of their story about what our world is. So if those people's stories are just wrong, that's just gonna go badly.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:11:34

        It's a loop, a, a vicious echo chamber of bad upon bad, right?

    30. RHRobin Hanson1:11:40

        Uh, well, it, again, if, if people say, th- think that education is to learn more material and then they propose policy reforms on the basis of helping people learn more material faster, if in fact, um, school isn't about learning material, then, uh, people will just not be interested in those policy reforms. They will ignore them, shrug their shoulders, and go on with what they're doing, which is basically what we've seen for the last several decades. Uh, policy researchers have come up with lots of ways we can learn more material faster, and mostly we just have not adopted those things, whi- which is, um, a problem from the point of view of all those people's work and effort trying to reform education.

Episode duration: 1:15:49