EVERY SPOKEN WORD
145 min read · 29,005 words- 0:00 – 6:40
Why is Everything Bullshit?
- CWChris Williamson
Why is everything bullshit?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Oh. Well, uh, for two reasons. Uh, one is that we don't really know the true reasons for why we do things. So, we think that, um, we can just introspect on our minds and just... And, and the true reasons for why we do things just, just comes to the surface. Uh, we have full access to all of our underlying motivations and goals. Uh, but there is a lot of research, decades of it, in fact, that shows that that is not true. What we're really doing when we're explaining why we do things is we're coming up with a nice-sounding, self-flattering story, a story that makes us look good, that makes us look competent, and rational, and virtuous. Uh, but we really don't know the truth about why we do things. Um, and, uh, the other reason is that we are just as in the dark, if not more in the dark, about why other people do things. That is, uh, we don't have access to their inner monologue or to the, the sights and sounds that make up their consciousness. Uh, and yet, we are, uh, often just as confident about the reasons we give for other people's behavior as we are about the reasons we give for our own behavior. Um, so if you combine these two facts, that we don't know why we ourselves do things and we don't know why other people do things, and you combine those two facts with the fact that most of what we talk about ultimately pertains to the reasons why we and other people do things, well then, most of what we talk about is bullshit.
- CWChris Williamson
H- how is that different to lying?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Well, uh, lying is when you, uh, deliberately misrepresent the truth. So, you know what the truth is, and you are intentionally saying something different. Bullshitting is, uh, is when you don't really know the truth, or when you don't really care about the truth. The truth is just not your concern. It's irrelevant. You're trying to pursue a social goal, whether that's looking good, whether that's persuading someone, whether that's, uh, you know, making yourself, uh, look virtuous, or competent, or rational, uh, or getting a better deal in a negotiation. That's the goal, not truth. Um, and you might occasionally say true things, uh, in service of that goal, but whenever you do, it's by accident. It's not by design. The truth just happens to conveniently serve your purposes in that particular instance. But when it doesn't serve your purposes, you, uh, neglect it, ignore it, downplay it, minimize it, et cetera. So really, what bullshitting is, is a kind of truth-free ki- uh, communication. Uh, you don't care about what's, what's true, and it's just not, uh, uh, at the top of your mind. It's not your, your top priority.
- CWChris Williamson
Sometimes, I guess, it may end up being that the thing that you are bullshitting about may also end up being true. You might kind of, like, close your eyes, throw the dart, and it hits the bullseye on the truth dartboard. And it's like, "Hooray! Like, I told the truth today." Um, i- i-... This can be quite disempowering, I imagine, for many people to hear that you, you don't truly know yourself. You don't truly know other people. The things that you do believe that you're doing are not the r-... You're not doing them for the reasons that you think that you're doing them.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, how do you not become a despondent black pill that throws himself off a bridge, uh, given the fact that you've basically told everyone listening from your insight of expertise as a trained academic in the world of psychology that truly understanding yourself and the people around you is a hopeless, thankless, impossible task?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Hmm. Well, I don't think it's impossible. If, if it was impossible, I wouldn't be, uh, researching it. I wouldn't be writing about it. I wouldn't have a Substack called Everything is Bullshit. So, it must be, be possible for at least somebody to be right about why we do things. And, you know, it just so happens that I think I'm the one who's right. I think we have... I have the real reasons why we do things. Uh, and I think those reasons are backed up by a lot of interesting, uh, research from psychology, and from evolutionary biology, and game theory. Um, so I wouldn't say that the search for the true reasons for our behavior is hopeless. Um, but that doesn't make it any less, um, flattering. I mean, it, it doesn't... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DPDavid Pinsof
I, I mean, I, I... The thing is, it's still kind of a bummer, because, uh, even if we can say what the true reasons for our behavior are, those aren't going to be the reasons that we like. Um, they're not gonna be the ones that make us look good, because obviously, we have an incentive to, uh, give, uh, better reasons for our behavior than the true ones. So, finding out the true ones, uh, is going to be a bummer necessarily. It's going to make us look bad. It's going to make us feel uncomfortable. Uh, and it's going to disrupt a lot of the status games that we play with one another. So, uh, you know, it's, it's a bummer, but it's a double-edged sword. I mean, you can use it to (laughs) , uh, attack your rivals and attack, you know, status games that you see other people playing that you don't like. Um, it's gonna be much harder for you to, to, to call out the bullshit in yourself and to call out the, uh, the bullshit in the status games you're playing. Uh, but, you know, ultimately, I think that, uh, a clearer understanding of ourselves is going to lead to good outcomes. I'm not sure what the exact causal pathway is between knowledge and good outcomes, but I'm, I'm pretty confident the, the pathway is there.
- CWChris Williamson
In Robert Wright's Why Buddhism Is True, which I know that you're a fan of as well, he's got this great quote that says, uh, "Ultimately, happiness comes down to deciding between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions or the discomfort of becoming ruled by them." And I know that happiness is something that we may end up getting, uh, uh, into later on as well. But, uh, I, I do think that largely he's true, and I asked, uh, Geoffrey Miller this. I've asked David Buss this. Um, I've talked a lot about evolutionary psychology on the podcast over the last two to three years. It's been a pet obsession of mine.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
I find it endlessly fascinating, and it seems as close to me as, uh, a discipline that peers under the hood of human, um, motivation to work out the genuine reasons for why we do things. And it doesn't always get that right, um, but it, it, it tries to get close to it. But...... as many of the people listening to the show and I have realized, it can become disheartening to realize that you are essentially a marionette being played by the puppeteer of this ancient, millennia-old programming.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, uh, you know, anybody that's taken the proximate versus ultimate reasons for behavior red pill understands that even the best reasons that you can give for the things that you do are not the reasons why you do them.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, so the, the, the rabbit hole descends, uh, uh, very deeply.
- 6:40 – 11:07
How to Properly Absorb Evolutionary Psychology
- CWChris Williamson
For the people that I have force-fed a lot of EP to over the last, whatever, uh, thousand days or so, how would you advise them to ameliorate or absorb the insights that they learned that are fascinating from the world of evolutionary psychology or even behavioral genetics and stuff like that too? Um, h- h- how do you deal with this? The, the, the fact that it's both interesting and enlightening and-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... can make you feel less agentic and less sort of sovereign over your own behaviors as well. How, how do you avoid that making you feel too despondent?
- DPDavid Pinsof
It's interesting. Uh, the way I avoid it is by going one step even deeper and analyzing the despondency itself and where that comes from. And, uh, and seeing that the despondency itself is another kind of, uh, marionette string (laughs) that is, you know, being pulled by my, uh, deeper biological instincts. Uh, so if you think about what that despondency is, well, it's, it's the feeling that, um, your collective projects that you're engaging in, uh, your goals, um, that they're being exposed in some sense. Um, and, uh, and, and all of a sudden their value has decreased, um, because... I mean, this is something that I've, I've written about recently. Uh, uh, we cannot play a status game if we're all aware that it's a status game. Because as soon as we become aware of it, then we stop getting status for playing it, um, because wanting status is a cue of low status. We don't like status seekers. We don't like social climbers. We call them vain and narcissistic and insecure and selfish and petty. Uh, and, um, we don't want to be seen in that way. So, this creates a paradox in that in order to seek status, we cannot be seen as seeking status. We have to somehow get status without making it look like that was the goal, right? Uh, and when I say it's the goal, that can be desa- be destabilizing. It can threaten to make our status games that we're all playing together collapse, and we hate that. That's scary. 'Cause if, if they collapse, then we could lose all our accumulated status that we've gained over many years of playing this game and practicing it and honing our strategies, right? That's very scary and very threatening. Uh, and I... You know, there's not much I can say to make it any less scary. Um, it is scary. But I think the upside of it is that being aware of the status games we play, uh, a- and the logic of how they work can help us choose between them a little more wisely. Uh, some status games are clearly better for the world than others. Um, some status games lead to better outcomes. Um, I ult- I, I think status is ultimately... Or sorry, I think science is ultimately a status game. Um, you know, scientists are, you know, competing for prestige, uh, just like any other human in any other industry, right? They, they wanna get that citation count up. They wanna impress their peers and show off their, uh, their formidable intellects. Um, and, uh, I think if we understand that that's ultimately how science works, that empowers us to shape the institution of science so that scientists are incentivized to uncover more true things. Uh, and if we're aware of how oth- other institutions work, uh, we can shape the incentives to, uh, uh, create better results. And if we're, you know, young, we're having a midlife crisis and haven't yet decided what status game we're going to play, understanding how they work is going to help us choose the status game that is ultimately going to lead to better results for all of us. And so if we can make us all more enlightened, uh, more aware of the games we're playing, we can be wiser stewards of those games and we can choose more wisely among those games.
- CWChris Williamson
I think the bottom line is there is no environment, there is no situation in which more ignorance I can th- uh, would create a better outcome. You... There are, there are, uh, troughs of despair, whatever that thing of, like, enlightenment is, there's a path of enlightenment, and there's the, the trough of despair and the valley of difficulty and the, the peak of believing you know it before you descend back into the valley of despair again. Um, uh, but there, there is no situation in which I can imagine more ignorance would actually be, uh, uh, would be useful for this.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So, I wanna get into seeing whether we can squeeze the spiral of status and seeking it and then undoing it and then learning it again to see if we can actually get to the point of doing something which is good for us and why we do what we do. But before
- 11:07 – 15:21
The Randomness of Status Games
- CWChris Williamson
we even do that, like, why is status so weird and random? Just high level, why, why is it like that?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Well, it, it goes back to what I was talking about, uh, uh, about the fact that, uh, we cannot play a status game while being aware that it's a status game. So there's an inherent fragility at the heart of all of our status games. There's a paradox there. And the paradox is we, we cannot know what we're doing while we're doing it, right? (laughs) Um, so, uh, in order for us to successfully, uh, compete for status with one another, um, i- the secret cannot get out that we're competing for status, right? So if we're engaged in a self-important, serious intellectual conversation, uh, it cannot be revealed that what we're doing is participating in an intellectual pissing contest. You know, if you and I found out that we're just, you know, we're, we're pissing around and, and trying to show off our, our impressive intellects, well then all of a sudden we would lose all of our motivation to play the game. We would, we would not be having the conversation because the opportunity, the potential to gain status from it would, would be gone. Um, so we then-
- CWChris Williamson
Why, why is it, why is it the case that, uh, thinking about the game destroys the game?
- DPDavid Pinsof
... uh, well, because as soon as we think about the game, we realize that it is a game and then we realize that we're status-seekers, and then we can no longer gain status because we don't like status-seekers. In order to gain s-
- CWChris Williamson
Why don't we like, why, why don't we like status-seekers?
- DPDavid Pinsof
For a number of reasons. Um, one is that we see them as selfish. Um, they, they tend to prioritize their own status-seeking over the wellbeing of others. That's one reason. Um, another reason is that, uh, they're probably low-status. If, if you want status, that means that you don't have it, right? So, that's another reason. Uh, w- we don't like them because we see them as disingenuine, uh, uh, as manipulative, as dishonest, as willing to lie or backstab to, uh, raise their own status. Um, so, uh, for all these reasons, uh, being seen as a status-seeker is going to lower your status. That's, that's the paradox. Um, and so because we cannot let that cat out of the bag, that makes our status games, uh, i- inherently fragile and prone to collapsing, uh, under the weight of their own recognition, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
So you, you've got this quote in one of your articles where you say, "We pretend we don't care about status as a way of gaining status."
- DPDavid Pinsof
That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
So the, the, the point being that not only is the game undone as soon as you stare in the mirror or say, "Beetlejuice" three times and then state of-
- DPDavid Pinsof
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... status all descends on you, um-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... you can also be more flippant or more casual about the byproduct of status you gain from doing the thing that is status-seeking whilst not recognizing it. By playing it that way, you gain even more status by avoiding looking like this Machiavellian manipulator that's wheedling his way to the top.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Exactly. Yeah, so if I, you know, buy a Prius because I care about the environment, that's a very different story that you could tell about me than me buying a Prius to show off my virtue, right? And, uh, it's the same behavior in both cases, but the intention is different, the goal is different. Um, and, uh, in so far as the status-seeking goal is revealed, it cannot be achieved. So if I am just, you know, uh, buying Priuses and, uh, you know, uh, (laughs) uh, avoiding plastic and, and, and doing all these environmental things just to look good and just to show off how great I am, well, I, I'm not gonna get status for doing that. My heart has to be in the right place in order to get status, in order to actually look virtuous. In order to signal my virtue, I cannot know that I'm signaling my virtue, and you cannot know that I'm signaling my virtue-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, so-
- DPDavid Pinsof
... because if you knew, you wouldn't, you wouldn't award me virtue.
- CWChris Williamson
So I understand the why I can't know-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... why other people shouldn't be able to detect, but why is it important that you yourself aren't aware of this? Is it just because the best way to deceive others is to believe it yourself?
- DPDavid Pinsof
That's the idea. Yeah, as George Costanza once said, uh, in Seinfeld, uh, (laughs) "It's not a lie if you believe it." Yeah, I think we have to convince ourselves of these things in order to be more convincing to others. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. That makes, that makes a, a whole lot of sense. How
- 15:21 – 18:00
How Social Media Has Impacted Status Games
- CWChris Williamson
is it the case then that in 2023, virtue signaling and performative empathy are two of the biggest trends on the internet that, to me s- on its face just seems, like, totally transparent? What's happening there? Have you, have you considered virtue signaling or performative empathy and, and kind of some of the, um, uh, facilitations that modern technology has enabled, people's status-seeking and how, how it's, uh, molested and perverted that?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah, so, uh, social media is a really weird and alien form of socializing that we have invented. Uh, and it's, it's alien in the sense that it's, uh, ex- it's like, uh, shouting your opinions on a loudspeaker to, you know, uh, uh (laughs) to hundreds or thousands of people. Uh, you know, socializing in the ancestral environment and small-scale hunter-gatherer societies, um, you weren't really talking to more than a few people at any given time. Uh, so the fact that you can tweet something and have hundreds or thousands or even millions of people read it, uh, is a really novel situation, and it makes the reputational consequences of our activity on social media way, uh, more important than they were in ancestral environments. So in some sense, our psychology is not equipped to deal with this. Uh, and the other, uh, weird thing about social media is that there's a permanence to it. So if I tweet something, it's gonna be really hard for me to get rid of all evidence of that tweet on the internet, right? Uh, (laughs) uh, the same thing goes for posting something on social media or saying something on a podcast. Like, the information is gonna be present on some computer somewhere, right? And that is of, also a really weird thing, you know. If, if you're socializing with a bunch of hunter-gatherers, uh, and you say something offhandedly, the fact that, you know, most people are probably gonna forget that or, or, or not know exactly what it was that you said, that is to your advantage, right? Because if they might misremember it, you might be able to dispute what their interpretation was of what you said. You know, there's a little bit of ambiguity, uh, uh, and room for negotiation, uh, in a, in a, in a free-flowing conversation where memory is the only means of recording it. Uh, but where we have computers recording it, uh, all of a sudden, that, that, that makes our words, like, set in stone, uh, and undeniable, and I, I can no longer, like, wiggle out of something I said on the internet 10 years ago. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, it's written in stone. I can't change it. Uh, a- and I can't negotiate. I can't say, "Oh, you're just remembering it wrong." You know, like (laughs) that, that strategy is not available to me. Uh, so it's those two things, I think, the permanence and, and the huge audience we have that are really alien to us, and I think they're, uh, messing with our psyches in really profound ways.
- 18:00 – 25:44
How to Gain Status While Hiding Status Signalling
- CWChris Williamson
- DPDavid Pinsof
Going back to the fundamentals of how status works, it seems to me that the sweet spot is to somehow find a way to signal a trait whilst concealing the fact that you're signaling the trait.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DPDavid Pinsof
But the problem here is that the signaling of the trait is ultimately the thing that's going to get you status. So you can't-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DPDavid Pinsof
... completely conceal it, because if you completely concealed it, then it wouldn't achieve you any status in the first place.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. That's right.... how do we balance this?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah. Uh, well, uh, the, the key is the word completely there. Uh, so if we completely concealed it, then we, we wouldn't do anything or say anything, right? We wouldn't leave the house. We, we, we wouldn't be going on podcasts or, or writing Substack posts. Um, the trick is to conceal it maybe 90% of the way (laughs) , you know, so that, you know, only the really attentive person is going to pick up on, on the fact that, uh, that you're great (laughs) , you know. Or, uh, and, and, and the thing is, they cannot pick up on the fact that you were trying to look great. They have to, uh, pick up on the fact that you are great, so you have to make your signal look like a cue. So, it's probably important to backpedal on the distinction between signals and cues. So, a signal is something that, uh, is intended to convey information, right? So if I say, "Hey, look at me," that's a signal. Um, in evolutionary biology, we talk about signals as being something that evolved for the purpose of conveying information. Um, a cue is something that, uh, is not intended to convey information. Uh, and in evolutionary biology we say it's, uh, uh, it evolved, but it, the, the reason it evolved was not to convey information. So for example, if I'm sweating a lot or if I'm stammering a lot during this interview, that's a cue that I'm nervous, but it's not a signal. Uh, cues are important in that, uh, observers can use them as valuable sources of information to guide their behavior, uh, but they, but they weren't, uh, intentionally emitted, uh, by the, by the person, right? Um, so the thing is, we're constantly looking for valid cues about a person's character, right? Um, but we're not looking for signals, because we know that, uh, signals, uh, are, are, uh, can be dishonest in some sense. We know that there's an incentive to fudge and distort signals to make ourselves look good, right? Um, and so we really, we wanna, we wanna catch someone in, in, in their, in their true form, as if they weren't being watched, you know? Uh, we wanna gain deep insight into, into, you know, what they're, what they're really like and how they're really gonna behave when no one's looking, right? And so, that's the game that we play, is we try to make (laughs) our signals look like cues. We try to, uh (laughs) , make it look like we're, we're gonna behave this way when no one's looking, uh (laughs) , when people are looking, or when we think people are looking. Or, or maybe we're, we're not even aware of it at all. But, but in any case, that's the game we're playing, because we're ultimately looking for reliable signs of a person's character so that we can count on them, uh, to behave in certain ways when we're not judging them, when we're not looking them, uh, when they might have the opportunity to backstab us. Uh, we, we really... That's, that's the key thing that we're looking for. And we wanna try to signal that without making it look like we're signaling that. Uh, and in some sense, we may not even know ourselves that we're signaling that. It, it may be better for it to be unconscious.
- CWChris Williamson
It's got me thinking about the, uh, common held piece of dating advice, which is, uh, look at how they treat serving staff and waiters when you go to restaurants. And I think that, that... I might be right in saying that that is something people think of as a cue that is indicative of a signal-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that it's indicative of something that's deeper. It's, you know, it's like the sweating or the stammering, that it's seen as such a normal, everyday interaction that it should be people at their least encumbered, right?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
This is their true, your true self comes out on YouTube between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM at night, um, when you're dealing with a serving, a serving staff person or a waiter in a restaurant that's got your order wrong. Like, those are the two times that you're at your truest-
- DPDavid Pinsof
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... um, uh, your most transparent. Uh, and I, I'm thinking about, uh, different examples of that. What about... You, you wrote this great article on your Substack that everyone should go and check out about status. Was there anything that popped up that you thought was a particularly interesting example of, uh, the weird ways that status can get hijacked, that people use it and abuse it and, and kind of get confused by it?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah. Um, so, uh, actually there was an interesting piece in, in The New York Times, uh, I was reading, um, about how wealth signals have become concealed. Um, so I don't know if you noticed this, but in, in Succession, uh, one of the main characters was wearing a baseball cap. But if you actually zoom in on the cap and, and do some research, you find out that the cap is like, $20,000 or something like that (laughs) , right? So it might look like a normal baseball cap that sort of conveys his, you know, working class nonchalance, and yet it is just a covert, uh, status signal. Uh, and then the article goes through many examples of these things that are designed to look cheap and mundane and commonplace, but on closer examination are actually wildly expensive. Uh, and that sort of... Well, what we call that in game theory is a buried signal. That is, only some people can det- can, uh, detect the signal. So, wealthy people are gonna know that it's, that it's expensive, but ordinary people aren't gonna know. So you're trying to signal the trait to a specific type of audience, uh, whom you really value, uh, while maybe not caring so much about other audiences. Uh, so that's, that's an interesting, uh, example of it. Um, and the other interesting example of how these status games work is, um, what I call sacred values. And I think, uh, what a sacred value does is it allows us to play a status game, uh, without realizing it's a status game. And that, and that basically what they are is they're, they're cover stories. They're narratives that we all share and that we all tell ourselves about the true reasons why we're doing things. Uh, and they're often altruistic and noble, uh, and idealistic, uh, and overly abstract, um, so that they can potentially accommodate, uh, any- anything we're doing. Um, you know, stuff like authenticity, self-actualization, happiness, equality, justice, honor. Um, these are all sacred values that are, uh, designed to protect our status games from collapsing. Uh, and, and the way they, uh, protect our status games is by, uh, appearing as though they are the opposite of status.So in so far as, as status is, uh, petty and small-minded and selfish, uh, sacred values are high minded and altruistic and larger than ourselves. Um, we wanna try to engineer the concept to be as distant from status as possible so that it's not confused with status. 'Cause as soon as it's confused with status, the status game collapses. Um, so that's what a big part of what I think sacred values are, and, and I think if you look at any cult, any tight-knit group, um, their status hierarchies are bathed in sacredness. Uh, sacredness is j- is, is, is saturated, uh, in, in their culture. The, it's not even a status hierarchy. It's, it's a, it's a justified great chain of being. You know, uh, it's, you know, these people are, are, are genuinely wiser and more virtuous, and that's why they have power over us, you know. We're not submitting to a dominant alpha. Uh, the alpha, you know, the, the person is, is shepherding us toward wisdom and transcendence. Um, and so I think, uh, having a nice sacred ideology or belief system allows a status game to really persist and remain stable for a long time, uh, and, uh, and, and protect the members of that community from, from the kind of collapses that I'm talking about.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you say to the
- 25:44 – 30:11
What If I’m Just Being Altruistic?
- CWChris Williamson
people who reply, "Eat shit, David. Honor and integrity and telling the truth and altruism and empathy and hard work and all of this stuff, the- those are axiomatically good things, and you trying to pull the wool from my eyes and say that this is actually secretly me trying to get laid, uh, you need, you need to get in the sea."
- DPDavid Pinsof
Um, I would say that, you know, I actually have some sympathy (laughs) for, for that reaction. So I'm not saying that, uh, because these sacred values are bullshit that they're necessarily bad. Um, I think, you know, some bullshit is better for the world than, than other bullshit, you know. Uh, if you look at science, you know, there, i- it's, it's bathed in sacred values of knowledge and wisdom and disinterested truth-seeking. Um, and, and in some sense, they're, those values are bullshit. Uh, but in another sense, it's really good that those are the values that are, you know, being pursued or at least, you know, being pretended to, to be pursued, um, because, uh, uh, the institution of science needs those values in order to persist and in order to uncover genuine truths. Um, for the same reason, you know, uh, status games around success in business or athletics or whatever, um, they can, uh, motivate genuinely good behavior. Uh, and yes, you could say that, uh, at the end of the day, it's motivated by, by status, but, uh, you know, a- at some point you got to shrug your shoulders and just say, "That's human nature, and we gotta deal with that, and we got to accept it." Uh, and if we wanna change the world for a better, we- for the better, we have to recognize that. 'Cause i- if we wanna create a better world, there's no way to do that other than by changing the social norms, which ultimately means changing what gets us status and what doesn't. Like, that's, that's what social change is, at the end of the day. It's changing what gets us status and what doesn't. And if you don't realize that that's how social change works, you're not gonna change anything. And so I think being realistic about how this works is going to make us wiser, uh, uh, both consumers of culture and producers of culture.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, what should people take away, given that you've just spent 20 minutes deconstructing potentially what everybody is motivated to do, their behavior's due to? Uh, how should this inform the way that they see the world and move forward?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah. Um, I think it can give you, um, a, a little more compassion and empathy, honestly. Um, and that you realize that everyone out there is just as scared and insecure and, and self-conscious and, and lonely as you are. And that's ultimately what's driving their behavior. Um, and, you know, it can help us, you know, have a little empathy for the people we might disagree with politically. You know, we, we, we like to think that they are in pursuit of some, you know, evil, wicked agenda, but really, they're just, they're in pursuit of the same agenda we are. You know, they, they wanna be loved. (laughs) They wanna be praised and respected, uh, and that's ultimately what's behind them. And, and, you know, we, we have the same human nature as them. Uh, and the more we understand that, I think the more we can better work together with those people, uh, under the recognition of our own shared humanity.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I, uh, a, a couple of things there. Definitely most people that did heinous, awful, despicable things in the past believed that they were doing good.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
There's very few people who actually do evil things in full recognition that it's evil-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... because that's not the way that we're wired. What wo- what would be the motivation to do that? There has to be something on the other side of it. Um, and-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Absolutely.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I think the acceptance of the fact that status games aren't going away, ultimately it's very difficult to even conceive of a world in which genuine altruism, bereft of any sort of, um, reflective glory on the person, the, the, the altruist, uh-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... how, what that would even look like, how that would even work.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And, and how you would motivate someone to do it. So the bottom line being that you need to work with the world the way that it is as opposed to the way that you would have it be. It's not this first principles, pure rationality, this is, you know, long-termism meets effective altruism thing, bro. Like, that's just not how we're wired, and the, the way that we are wired and the most effective way to do this is to say, "Okay, we have kind of, like, the thermodynamics of human behavior going on here."
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm. Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
We need to be able to play within the rules of this game. And there's another,
- 30:11 – 35:14
What People Misunderstand About Our Desires
- CWChris Williamson
another Substack post of yours which I absolutely loved, which was to do with desires, our desires and how they work. So what is it, what is it that most people don't understand about how desires work, do you think?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah. Uh, the thing that people don't understand and perhaps aren't willing to admit because it's, it's uncomfortable to admit...... is that our st- our desires are relative. Uh, they're competitive. Um, we don't just want to get an education, we want better educational credentials than our rivals. You know, we don't just want people to like us, they want, we want people to like us more than they like other people. We don't just wanna have opinions, we wanna have better opinions, and, uh, smarter and wittier opinions than other people. Um, uh, you know, the list goes on. I list, I think, like, 10 or 12 of them in, in the post. But, uh, the idea is that, uh, uh, we're constantly comparing ourselves to other people, um, because ultimately we are evolved creatures. We are products of Darwinian natural selection. And biological fitness is an inherently relative concept. So, I could have, you know, all the food I want. You know, (laughs) I could, I could have a nice, a nice house, uh, access to water. You know, I could get everything I want. But if my neighbors are doing way better than me, uh, then that's not gonna matter. Eventually my genes are going to dwindle, uh, relative to the genetic, uh, representation of my neighbors, right? So ultimately, from a Darwinian standpoint, I want to have higher fitness than my rivals, than my competitors. That is the only way to maximize my genetic representation in future generations. So it's con- it's comparative, it's competitive. Natural selection is the competition between the stuff that's selected and the stuff that's not selected, which means that we... uh, our brains are collections of the stuff that was selected, right? Which means that that stuff had to be better in some sense than the stuff that wasn't selected. Which means that our desires are ultimately revolving around being better than our competitors, being better than our rivals. I do think that it's, to a significant extent, built into our nervous systems. Um, and there's a problem.
- CWChris Williamson
How so?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Um, I, I don't think that, uh, we can, we can change that fact. I think, I think it's... I think evolution wired us to, uh, uh, out-compete our rivals. Because the most competitive among us were most likely to out-compete their rivals, and were most likely to pass on their genes to the next generation, right? We are descended from the most competitive and successfully competitive of our ancestors. We weren't, we're not descended from the uncompetitive losers, right? (laughs) Um, but, uh, of course, the irony is, we're, we're descended from, uh, competitive people who successfully concealed their competitive nature. Because in order to win the competition, you cannot look competitive, right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DPDavid Pinsof
We compete to reassure each other that it's not a competition. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, okay-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Which is -
- CWChris Williamson
... an (inaudible) problem.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah. So the problem is that we can't all get what we want, right? If what we want is inherently relative to what other people have, then we cannot get what we want at the same time, right? Uh, and that, that is the problem. So that, what that means is that w- w- w- we're just going to keep competing with one another until the end of time. We're never going to achieve some utopia where there's no more social hierarchy or where everyone is happy for all time. Uh, because no matter how much stuff we get, we're always going to be comparing ourselves, uh, and our stuff to our neighbors and the stuff that they have, right? Uh, and we could all be, you know, have intergalactic time traveling, uh, pods. Uh, we could have, you know, (laughs) immortality elixirs, and yet we're still going to be jealous and envious of our neighbors who have better immortality elixirs and, and better intergalactic time traveling pods than we have, right? It's never gonna go away. There's no, um, there's no happy ending to the human drama. We're just gonna keep jockeying for status until we obliterate ourselves or go extinct. But (laughs) there is some hope. I don't wanna be completely (laughs) depressing here. I, I know that I tend to lean in that direction with my Substack and I'm trying to work against it. But, uh, I think the one way we can sort of outsmart evolution is by, uh, success- uh, successively out-competing older generations. So, if, if status and living standards keep rising from generation to generation, then, uh, we're all better than somebody, and that's always gonna be the previous generation. And that's great, 'cause ultimately what we want is to be better than somebody. It gives everyone what they want. But here's the loophole, is that the previous generations actually want future generations, which include their children and grandchildren, to be better off than themselves. It's in, and then it's in their Darwinian fitness interests, uh, for future generations to, to do well, right? So everybody wins when we keep... when we out-compete our elders, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DPDavid Pinsof
When we say, "Okay, boomer," that is, that is the slogan of human progress, right? (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DPDavid Pinsof
We, we want old people to become more and more irrelevant, uh. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah, that's brilliant.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So,
- 35:14 – 43:08
Our Need to Out-Compete Our Elders
- CWChris Williamson
I, I, I've got it in my head. Um, Jean Twenge's work, uh, on generations looked at how from whatever it was, the Gen Xers and the one before it, the... not the boomers. What was the one just after the Great Depression? Anyway, that group all the way through, and she talks about, um, this uprising of the middle class, the ease of access to cars, the ease of access to households, et cetera, et cetera. And then you see this pivot, and you can even see... uh, you call it intergenerational competition theory. You can even see the reverse of this at work or, or when this goes wrong. And I think that, uh, millennials and per- specifically Gen Z have a bee in their bonnet because they look at their parents' generation, and they see that they were able to buy a house by the age 30, and they were able to support a family just on one living wage, and they were able to afford two cars and two holidays per year on, on a normal job. Uh, and they don't think that that's the case. And yet there are children who are upset that they're not doing better than their parents.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
But there are very rarely parents who are upset to see their children doing better than them.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
And I think that that, that seesaw asymmetry, uh, explains your ICT idea.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah, absolutely. I think you can explain a lot of the problems we're having by the inability of some segments of the population to out-compete their elders.Um, and I mean, if you look at, you know, uh, uh, the research on, uh, what's called deaths of despair, um, it's, it's primarily happening among groups of people who think of themselves as failing to out-compete their elders or among elders who view their children as failing to out-compete them. Um, so, I think-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, wow, that's one as well, that parents of, of dispossessed children?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yes, yes. Um, so I think what happens is when, when we fail to out-compete our elders and we're all on the same playing field, well, then the zero sum competitive tragedy of the human condition catches up to us. And now, all of a sudden, we all have to be better than each other again, right? We were all happy when we w- we could all be better than old people, right? We all win, you know? (laughs) But if we're not better than old people, then, oh, no, who are we gonna be better than? Now we have to compete with one another.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- DPDavid Pinsof
You know, we have to, we have to form coalitions and tribes to, to get more stuff than other people. And all of a sudden, the competitive ugliness of human nature kicks in. So, I really do think that the, the key to prosperity is, is intergenera- successful intergenerational competition. It might be the one thing that is preventing us from killing each other.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I, I dropped my insight about this, uh, to do with the fact that because of this comparative game that I think is relatively in- inescapable, uh, definitely at a macro level, individually, you know, enough meditation, psychedelics might be able to dissuade you of this, but it, that's, that's not going to work for the populous. I said to Sam Harris that I think it's a reason that universal basic income fundamentally doesn't work, because you end up flattening the income hierarchy down. "Oh, well, we've got robots to do everything now." And we believe that everyone's just gonna lie under a tree, totally blissed out, doing fucking poetry and, and, and playing the acoustic guitar. What's, uh, what, what's more likely gonna happen is that people are going to find weird and wonderful ways to accumulate status again. They're going to start this competition game all over again. Okay, so we've flattened income. You've, you will have read Will Storr's book, uh, The Status Game, where he talks about that, uh, group that has yams. They, they build th- grow the biggest yam, and then they give it to their enemy. Um, like, it, it's just gonna be a, a f- a society of people growing massive yams or, or, or-
- DPDavid Pinsof
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... crocheting or whatever it is that's, you know, an arbitrary-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... not that much more or less arbitrary than accumulating resources or buying a Ferrari or, or a Rolex or getting boob job, but, you know, largely just a different status game. And I think that it's, it's one of the problems that you get when you look at, um, at UBI. And also, uh, if you're right, and I feel like you probably are, and this intergenerational competition theory is one of the domesticating forces that keeps people feeling, uh, happy and, and sane-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that I might not be doing better than my next door neighbor but I'm doing better than my parents, on average, across, uh, across a, a civilization-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... if we are about to face a population collapse in which you're going to have negative GDP growth for a sustained period of time, and we can't offset that with automation and AI-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... you are locking in, uh, r- y- you're locking in pan-generational recession, right?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And I think that, you know, uh, for all that you can say, "Objectively, living standards should be able to be ameliorated because we've got all of the automation," and the blah blah. And it's like, yeah, but how do people feel they're doing? Like, what's-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the mental state of the 2060 born child compared with our generation now? What, what, w- w- how do they, how do they feel about this? And if they look back and they see a golden era that we think is some awful version of the actual golden era that was the boomers, and they look back, and they think, you y- it's despondency all the way down?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah. No, I, I agree with you, um, in some sense, uh, uh, in that we cannot get rid of our status games. And I think a lot of toxicity comes from the misguided notion that we can, that we can achieve a status-free utopia. I think that's a dangerous idea, uh, a- and a, and a fundamentally unrealistic idea, I think. You know, uh, uh, you, you mentioned Will Storr's book, The Status Game. He's got a wonderful chapter on, um, the rise of communism, uh, and how it was a competitive dominant movement that, uh, appeared to be against competitiveness and against dominance. You know, it was an egalitarian, anti-egalitarian movement that created enormous as imbalances, enormous imbalances of power and inequalities of power and status, uh, among the more, you know, uh, the loyal members of the regime got all these benefits and privileges and perks. You know, the disloyal members of the regime were, uh, excluded, marginalized, sometimes killed, uh, sometimes sent to (laughs) forced labor camps. So, uh, if you think about the communist utopia where everyone is equal, it is, in fact, the opposite, where, uh, it has some of the starkest and ugliest, uh, and most brutal forms of inequality known to our species. So, I certainly agree with you that, um, uh, utopian theorizing is misguided. Um, I agree with you that, uh, getting rid of our status games is impossible. Um, and I also agree that it's, uh, that in some sense, we need to choose among the status games that are the best for our species. And insofar as status games go, I think competing to offer people goods and services at more and more affordable prices is not that bad of a status game, you know? Like, it incentivizes us to do things that are generally helpful and to give things, give things to people that they generally want. So, I think markets are a pretty good status game as far as status games go, and I think that they are, uh, sadly underrated, uh, by a lot of people on the political left. Um, that isn't to say that they can't coexist with, with a basic income. Um, perhaps they can as, you know, as, as, as a sort of safety net for, you know, uh, the, the direst forms of, of poverty. But, um, I do think that we need to appreciate the benefits of markets as incentivizing the right kinds of behavior. And I think oftentimes the reason why we don't like markets is because the status competition is too out in the open for us.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah.
- DPDavid Pinsof
It's too icky.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DPDavid Pinsof
You know, we don't like to be seen as greedy or as, uh, uh, materialistic. Uh, and so in order to signal that we're not greedy and we're not materialistic, we often oppose capitalism and oppose markets, and we try to create, uh, anti-consumerist consumer cultures where we consume anti-consumerist books and, and T-shirts and, and, and podcasts.
- 43:08 – 52:06
Do People Really Want to Be Happy?
- CWChris Williamson
say to people who claim that their fundamental goal in life is to be happy?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Uh, I would say in the nicest, uh, and most polite way possible, that that is bullshit. (laughs) Um, and I'm not trying to be mean, but I do think it's bullshit. Uh, I don't think we want stuff inside our heads. If you think about the way that evolution programmed our brains, it doesn't make any sense for evolution to program us to want stuff inside of our heads. It makes sense for evolution to program us to want stuff in the world, stuff like food, sex, status, resources, right? The things that correlated with biological fitness in ancestral environments, those are the things that we are wired to want and to seek out. Um, we don't want the idea of that stuff. We don't want the story of that stuff. We want the real stuff in the real world. We don't want to be misguided or mistaken. We don't want to be deceived about it. We want the real stuff. Um, so I find the idea that we evolve to want happiness to be fundamentally evolutionarily implausible. I don't think it makes any sense, especially when you think about what happiness is from a functional evolutionary perspective. And in my post Happiness Is Bullshit, I give a theory about what I think happiness is, uh, and what I think it is, is a- a prediction error. It's when your brain expects something to be at a certain quality and it ends up being better than you expected, right? The food is tastier than you expected. The sex is better than you expected. You know, uh, you- you thought that the paella would taste like shit, but it ends up tasting amazing. Um, you thought that everyone would roll their eyes at your dumb joke, and everyone's rolling on the floor. Those are the types of things that give you happiness. They are unexpectedly good outcomes, and what happiness is, is your brain recalibrating itself in light of an unexpectedly good outcome. So when, uh- when you have a prediction error, your brain sort of lights up and kicks into gear and does all these things to reprogram yourself so you can get more of that thing in the future. So it, um- it plays the happy scenario in your head over and over again, analyzing it, uh, figuring out what might have caused the good thing to happen, what you got wrong. It's revising your beliefs, updating your expectations, shifting your priorities. All these things are happening, uh, when we experience what we call happiness. But that doesn't mean that we want to be happy. That's not the thing that we're seeking. Uh, when you play a guessing game, you're not looking to maximize the number of times you hear the words "getting warmer." No, you want- you want to guess the thing. That's the point of the game. If you guess the thing on the first try without any "getting warmers," you've won the game. You've done a great job, right? You shouldn't, uh, (laughs) cry that you failed to get any "getting warmers" 'cause the "getting warmers" are irrelevant. They're just there to help you. They're there to push you in the right direction, and I think happiness is ultimately there to push you in the right direction. But it's not the thing we actually want. It's not the thing we're seeking! Uh, and even if we did want it, uh, we couldn't get it because it's impossible to get, right? (laughs) Something that is intrinsically unexpected is impossible to pursue. Pursuing happiness is like planning your own surprise party, right? You can't do it. (laughs) So I think... Uh, in fact, I think insofar as people do pursue happiness or try to pursue happiness as a status-seeking tactic, uh, they are setting themselves up for depression and misery. Um, I think we oftentimes, what we don't... We- we don't want to be happy but we want to appear happy. We want to appear like a happy person, like we're well-adjusted, we're healthy- we're healthy, we're self-actualized, you know, we're nice, we're happy-go-lucky. Um, that's what we really want. We want to convince other people that we're happy and even convince ourselves that we're happy, uh, and perhaps convince ourselves that we really do wanna be happy and we're the type of person who seeks happiness as opposed to status or- or prestige or something. That's ultimately what we're seeking. But as... In so far as we seek that, we're making ourselves miserable because we cannot get the thing that we're seeking. Um, and so I think a lot... (laughs) There's a lot of toxicity around the pursuit of happiness and self-actualization. I think we would do well to stop pursuing happiness, uh, because the more we pursue it, the less of it we'll get.
- CWChris Williamson
What's better to pursue instead?
- DPDavid Pinsof
(laughs) Oh man, uh, I guess our bullshit sacred values? Uh... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DPDavid Pinsof
Uh, assuming that we pick the right ones. Yeah, I mean, it's- it's a great question. I wish we had, uh, a say in the matter. I don't know that we do have much of a say. I think evolution has chosen our desires for us, and we just- we do the best we can to- to fulfill them and- and we can't really do anything else. I don't... I- I'm skeptical of the idea that we can remake ourselves, uh, and- and fundamentally redesign our basic desires. Uh, I think that's a pipe dream. Um, the best we can do is choose among the desires we have that evolution gave us and try as best as we can to prioritize the ones that are, uh, better for us, I guess, better for the world, um, you know, ones that we can- that we're more proud of. Um, you know, I- I- I have a 15-month-old daughter. I try to prioritize that desire over my other desires, and that's, you know... It's- it's an evolved desire, you know? (laughs) My- my DNA is shaping me to- to care for my offspring, but I don't care, you know? I- I'm still proud of that desire. I still wanna, uh, fulfill it and, uh, and that's- that does- that's a desire I can get behind and I think, you know, if we- if we're more wise about all the desires we have and choosing among them, I think we can choose better ones or at least shift ourselves a little bit towards the better ones.
- CWChris Williamson
You've got a number of hammer blows. Uh, there's a list of problems with the idea that humans want to be happy. So I'm gonna read a few of these off just in case people were not feeling too completely broken yet.
- DPDavid Pinsof
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"We know that if we savor every moment, every smile, every meal, every ray of sunshine, we will be happy. Yet we savor maybe 1% of those moments. We know that if we appreciate what we have, from the roof over our heads to the clothes on our backs, we will be happy. Yet we appreciate maybe one- 1% of what we have. Good news makes us happier than bad news, yet we consume way more bad news than good news even though we can't do anything about the bad news and even though there is plenty of good news available. Anger feels bad, yet when we're angry with our loved ones, we think about all the times they made us angry, which just makes us angrier. Why don't we think about all the times they made us happy? We can delude ourselves into believing pretty much anything, the Earth is flat, the world is run by a cabal of sadistic pedophiles, et cetera, yet we never delude, uh, ourselves into believing that everything is perfect and wonderful as it is."... if we were actually pursuing happiness, we'd be very good at it by now, given our many years of practice. Yet, studies show that we suck at it. We're incredibly bad at predicting how happy things will make us or how long happiness will last. There are vast bodies of scientific evidence that could stop us from sucking at happiness, like positive psychology, the science of happiness. Yet, most people aren't very interested in this research because it's kind of boring. We work too much and some of us literally work ourselves to death, even though we're well aware that this makes us unhappy. Having a child makes us less happy and more stressed, and we know this, yet we do it anyways, often multiple times. We maintain relationships with assholes even though it would be clear that we'd be happier without those assholes in our lives. We constantly beat ourselves up, but almost never give ourselves compliments, and we complain about Twitter on Twitter.
- DPDavid Pinsof
(laughs) Well, you know, it sounds so much better when you read it, Chris.
- CWChris Williamson
Ah.
- DPDavid Pinsof
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
It's the British accent. Um, but yeah, man, I, you know, all of those, it- it- it's so right, and you kind of lay out a bunch of objections. Oh, well, it's hard. Oh, well, I- I want to do it or I try to do it even though I can't do it. Um, you know, there are a number of, um, potential barriers that people would put in place about why it is that they would want to do that, and they don't manage to achieve it, they mean to do it even though they're not good at it. I don't know what replaces it though, you know-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Hm. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... peace of mind is the closest approximation I've found to something that's scalable-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Hm.
- CWChris Williamson
... as like a mental state that I think that people should really, really try and optimize for. I think meaning is probably not far off as well, but meaning-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... can actually be perturbed by peace of mind. Um, so, you know, from everybody that I've spoken to, and it- it- it often gets into just a semantic argument of like, "Well, what do you mean by happiness exactly? And what do you mean by meaning exactly? And is it... How long does happiness last?" So on and so forth. Um, but it's my belief that if ultimately what we want is to live a life which in retrospect we are glad that we lived-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... a combination of peace of mind and meaning. Peace of mind facilitates everything else, because if you don't have peace of mind, uh, no matter how good the life is, you're Dan Bilzerian in a, in a rocket ship surrounded by Playboy models, like guess what? You're having a shit time. So, th-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that doesn't matter. Your moment to moment experience of the world is going to be tarnished.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And if you don't do anything which is meaningful, the second that you do begin to reflect on whatever it is that you've done, you're going to be ashamed of it, or at the very least, you're just not going to be proud of it. Because-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... I think, you know, meaning is doing the thing which you tomorrow would have wanted you to do, right? Like that's-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that's a- a nice conception of it, that in ret-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
- 52:06 – 1:01:59
Finding a Life Purpose Beyond Status-Seeking
- CWChris Williamson
But between those two things, like I don't really know what the fuck else we're doing here. Like what, what, what, what are we doing here? We're playing these status games.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
But ultimately, our desires aren't our desires. They're desires that are manipulated by a variety of other things that we didn't get to choose. We're hopelessly-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... at the mercy of these millennia-old marionette strings that are, that are playing with-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... our different preferences. Even if-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... we do manage to do enough evolutionary psychology to learn why we do, the proximate reasons for our behavior, the ultimate reasons for our behavior come and smash us in the face. And then happiness-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... the one thing that's supposed to be this universal good that we're all chasing after, maybe isn't actually that scalable. And, and how would evolution have programmed it into our brains in the first place? So-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... yeah, lots of, lots of nails in coffins, I feel.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah. You know, Chris, I wish I was better at poking holes, or I wish I was better at telling new stories than I was at poking holes in our existing stories (laughs) 'cause I'm clearly better at, at the hole poking than I am of, of, (laughs) of the telling of the new stories. May- maybe that's something you're better at than me. Uh, but yeah, no, it's something that, uh, I've struggled with. Um, what do we do, uh, if not pursue happiness? Um, well, I- I like your idea of pursuing meaning. Um, what I think meaning is, is ultimately long-term, I mean sorry to bring it back to the (laughs) depressing evolutionary psychology, but what I think meaning is, is long-term fitness value. So, we have things that maximize our fitness in the long run with uncertainty and with continued effort and persistence, and we have things that maximize our fitness in the short run, uh, immediately. So things like, you know, uh, food in your mouth right now, that makes you happy or makes you feel pleasure. But caring for your child, that's more of a long-term fitness maximization strategy, you know. Your child isn't gonna become a healthy adult all at once. It's gonna take many years, uh, and, and a lot of patience, uh, and a lot of, um, uh, kindness and, and support from other people. Um, the same thing goes for starting a social movement, forming a tribe, uh, that's gonna be a successful tribe or it's gonna out-compete other tribes. That takes a long time. It takes a lot of effort and persistence. And it might, uh, it might cause you pain in the short run, you know. Uh, my daughter can sometimes be a pain in the ass. Uh, but what meaning does is it helps me weather those storms. It helps me, uh, put up with, with those temporary pains and discomforts, and keep my eyes on the prize of the long-term goal of raising her to be a healthy adult. Um, the same thing goes for other meaningful projects like, you know, um, forming a, a stable community, forming a strong tribe, uh, cultivating a valuable skill that gets you a lot of success. That's something that takes a really long time and, and can be meaningful for people. Um, forming a really good, uh, trusting relationship with, with somebody can be meaningful. Uh, those things are good. I like those things. I think we should pursue those things. But the thing is, we already were pursuing those things (laughs) . And we, and we, you know, we, we never were pursuing happiness. It was just a story we told ourselves, uh, to begin with. So it's not so much what should we pursue now that we can't pursue happiness. We were never pursuing happiness to begin with. We were already pursuing, uh, the goals that we already had, right?... we're already trying to form good relationships and be good parents or, you know, cultivate a valuable skill, or, or, or whatever. And now, it's just, uh, uh, you know, making us more aware of those goals that we actually have, right? That's, that's what poking holes in our bullshit does, is it, it j- it makes us more familiar with the stuff we're already doing and we, and, and the stuff we already want. Um, so, uh, the question of what to pursue instead of happiness, I think, is the wrong question. The right question is, what story are we gonna tell ourselves now that the happiness story i- is bullshit? Uh, a- and unfortunately, I don't have a great answer. I may, y- maybe you can come up with a better answer. But I think there are plenty of other better stories available we can tell ourselves. You know, we're, we're trying to seek the truth. We're trying to understand ourselves. We're trying to make the world a better place. We're trying to be effectively altruistic, and, and perhaps we're trying to see through the bullshit of effective altruism to make it even more effectively altruistic. Um, there are plenty of, uh, good stories we can tell ourselves. Uh, and I think we just gotta choose between them.
- CWChris Williamson
The conflict is where a lot of discomfort arises.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So, when people believe that they should feel happy and they don't, and y- you, you're, uh, battling against this, I would be interested to know, if we had an am- anti-happiness happiness movement, um, that kind of helped to relinquish people from chasing it, I, I wonder whether more of it would happen, first off. I've seen some evidence that people who actually work on happiness or that they, uh, purposefully try to be happy, they read books on happiness, they result in having lower levels of wellbeing moment to moment in-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... in self-reports. Um, but also the, the, the, the pleasant emotion that you get when you do things that you know are good because you've designed them in advance to be good, because you know that spending time in nature makes you feel better than spending time on the couch-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... therefore, you spend that time in nature. And, "Oh, shit, as a byproduct of doing this, I, I feel this sense of, uh, well, that's, that's suspiciously like happiness."
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"That thing that's just happened to me is-"
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"... roughly proximate to what happiness is supposed to be." So-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I, I wonder whether, um... Uh, y- but again, you know, we, uh, spiral it one, one layer deeper, Naval's got this great quote where he says, uh, desire, uh, "Desires are a contract we make with ourselves to be unhappy until we get what we want."
- DPDavid Pinsof
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And I don't think that that's necessarily untrue, that as soon as you posit an ideal, you then begin to compare yourself to that ideal. And up until the point at which you reach it, there is a sense of dissatisfaction. Um-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- 1:01:59 – 1:12:09
Why We Find Certain Things Interesting
- CWChris Williamson
- DPDavid Pinsof
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Why do we find things interesting?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Hmm. Well, I think you might know where I'm gonna go with this, but I'll, I'll, I'll take you through the journey anyway. Um, so you might think that we're interested in, in stuff that's useful for us, you know, stuff that helps us make better decisions, live better lives, pursue happiness even. Or you might think that we're interested in, in the truth, stuff that's, uh, insightful and accurate, uh, that reveals the subtle contours of reality. Really, at the end of the day, we're just, we're seekers of knowledge, you know. We, we want wisdom, you know. That's, that's what we're after when we're, we're clicking through blog posts and, and tweets (laughs) and Facebook posts. We're ultimately looking to gain useful knowledge, truths about how the world works, right? That's the conventional story. Uh, but the conventional story is bullshit, (laughs) unsurprisingly. Uh, I don't think we want any of that stuff or, at the very least, it's very low on our list of priorities. I think, uh, too often we tell the story about ourselves that we're the smart ones in the animal kingdom, that the reason the human brain is so big is, is so that we can, uh, use tools and build impressive machines and conquer nature. I think that story is wrong. Uh, I think the reason why our brains are so huge is because our groups are so huge, and we need to navigate those groups. Uh, I think the human brain is a fundamentally social brain. I think the brain evolved not for tool making and practical decision-making, but for gossiping, politicking, rule following, covert rule-breaking, rationalizing, uh, self-deception. I think, uh, you might call us Homo hippocrates, as, uh, Robin Hanson calls us. I think if... You know, if, if you reflect on what you actually use your brain for, it's almost completely about people and people-related stuff, right? You don't spend your time thinking about home repair and, and, (laughs) and auto parts, right? You know, tools are a very small part of the, of the, of the stuff that occupies your mind. Uh, most of the time, you're thinking about, "Oh, how can I, uh, make this person happy? How can I resolve this conflict?" You're gossiping. You're, you're thinking about, uh, conflicts with family members or, you know, you're worried about some snide remark someone made and whether they secretly don't like you or, or whatever. Like, this is the stuff that your brain is used for. And if this is what your brain is used for, it's hard to argue that your brain is ultimately (laughs) a, a rational tool-making machine. It's clearly a gossip, uh, and, and, uh, rationalization machine. That's really what it's about. It's about winning arguments, (laughs) winning social conflicts, gaining status. Uh, and so, uh, once you apply that lesson to what we find interesting, you realize that, uh, what we find interesting is the stuff that fulfills our unflattering social goals that we do not want to admit, either to other people or to ourselves. For example, I list a whole bunch of them in this post. Uh, it's called You Will Find This Interesting. Uh, for example, uh, we want attention. Uh, we are interested in things that get us attention because when people pay attention to us, that makes us feel smart and important and special. Uh, and so we are attracted to the titillating, uh, the gory, the scary, uh, the sexy, uh, the gross, um, the paradoxical, the confusing. Uh, all these things help us get attention. Uh, we're interested in things that, uh, uh, almost no one else believes, so strange beliefs, weird beliefs, counterintuitive beliefs, because if we can prove to people that they're right, well, then we get to look smarter than everyone else. So, we're looking for, for that, uh, for those rare beliefs that help us gain an edge, uh, over our competition. Uh, you know, same thing goes for moral beliefs. Uh, we want stuff that makes us look morally superior to other people. We want stuff that casts our political rivals in a negative light, uh, that makes our political allies look good. We want, uh, information that justifies what we were going to do anyway or what we wanted to do anyway. Uh, we want to fit in. Uh, we read the news and s- and, uh, read about sports and celebrity gossip not because these things are inherently useful, but because everyone else is talking about them and we don't want to be left out of the conversation. You know, if you think about what's true and useful, you know, the vast majority of it is old, and yet we're obsessed with the news. And I think that goes to show that we're more interested in being part of the conversation that people, uh, are having than we are at finding useful truths. Uh, and, you know, the list goes on. We wanna, you know, uh, signal our membership and, and special cliques by, uh, you know, name-dropping people that, uh, proves that we're in the know and, you know, mentioning books that only members of our subculture would know. Like, oh, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, only, uh, really smart members of the intelligentsia will know that one. And that helps me connect with fellow members of the intelligentsia while subtly excluding dumb-dumbs who aren't as cool as me. Um, so there's all... There are these signaling games we play, these form-... you know, these, uh, these cliques we form, the subtle acts of exclusion. Um, yeah, lots of stuff like that. I, I go into more, uh, ugly, unflattering letters in, in the piece, but that's, that's the gist.
- CWChris Williamson
I understand that. So, w- what... Give... Explain to me why then our brains are so interested in bullshit. Like, if they were invol-... uh, evolved by natural selection-
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... why do they seem to function so poorly? Why are they not actually trying to seek truth?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm. Well, uh, if you think about the truths that we actually read about on the internet, uh, almost none of them are actually practically relevant. You know, if you, if you think about, like, you know, the policies that are going through Congress, like, you're not gonna be able to affect those policies. Like, you can vote, yeah, but you have a, what? A 1 in 60 million chance of swaying the election. Like, you can't really do... Uh, if you think... You can't do anything about the, the political, uh, (laughs) events that are taking place in your country, and yet we're fascinated by politics. That's almost all, all of what we pay attention to, right? Which goes to show that, uh, it doesn't make much sense for us to care about what's actually true in the political domain because what's true or what's false doesn't really affect us. What affects us is our social standing, uh, among members of our community. So yeah, I might not personally lose out if I support a policy that makes the world worse, but-... uh, if I support that policy and it gains me status among my political allies, well, then I, I win, right? So I'm gonna care way more about the status I get from my political allies than I'm gonna care about whether the policy is actually making the world better. Um, and so, uh, it really, from an evolutionary standpoint, it shouldn't matter to us what's true or what's false about these abstract, uh, distant, uh, impractical matters that we read about and, and talk about. Uh, you know, we're not talking about, you know, how to fix our toilets (laughs) or like, you know, how to, how to do practical things in the real world, at least not most of the time. Uh, most of the time, we're talking about really vague, abstract, fuzzy political, uh, matters that have no bearing on our, our practical day-to-day lives. And that's where these social motives come to the fore and dominate any other practical truth-seeking motives.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I was gonna say wh- why is it then that we are so distracted by those things?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Why is it that we care about Congress and, and all the weird shit?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah. I think they help us fulfill our social goals in a way that practical beliefs cannot. So, if I think that, um, let's say, uh, (laughs) the sky is blue, uh, that's not going to help me to differentiate myself from other people. It's not gonna help me si- signal membership in a particular clique, because everyone believes that the sky is blue, you know? If I believe that, um, there's something wrong with, uh, my carburetor in my car, uh, other people aren't gonna disagree with that. I can't be (laughs) ... I can't use that to gain status, right? So, there are really only a specific set of beliefs that we can use to play social games with one another, uh, a- and they have to, by design, be disconnected from the practically relevant ones. 'Cause if they were, if we, if w- if we used our practical beliefs to jockey for status and form cliques, well, then our practical beliefs would be wrong, and we would fuck up all the time in our lives. So, we have to separate the intuitive practical beliefs that we use to actually make decisions from the vague, airy, abstract political beliefs that we use to form groups and jockey for status. And never the twain shall meet, uh (laughs) , you know? And, uh, that is by design, I think. 'Cause if they did meet, uh, well, we'd make bad decisions and we'd fail in our social goals at the same time. So, we have to have our cake and eat it. We have to, you know, intuitively, unconsciously know what's true, uh, for the immediate practical decisions we make, while at the same time, uh, pretending to believe all sorts of other weird, abstract, vague things to curry favor with our allies and with the people we wanna, uh, impress.
- CWChris Williamson
What is the lesson to take away then? Is it that interesting stuff is overrated and that we should seek out more ******* boring shit?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yeah, basically. Uh, I- I think, uh (laughs) , that's, that's one of the lessons I, I take from it. I think, um, we have this b- bullshit idea of ourselves that, that we're, you know, high-minded knowledge seekers. And I think that it's healthy for us to see through that. Um, I think we often ignore and neglect and look down upon the boring person at a party, or a boring friend, or a boring family member. We think we're better than them because we have access to more interesting tidbits (laughs) . You know, we've read the latest think piece and, and therefore, we're better than them. Um, and I think this kind of intellectual status game is increasing our sense of loneliness and alienation, you know? Uh, if we're trying t- if we're constantly competing to be interesting and we're looking for the most interesting conversation partners, well, we're gonna spend more time listening to podcasts like this one to make virtual friendships with, uh, people who are, who are, who sound really interesting instead of talking to real people in the real world, like our friends and family members who might not be as interesting, but will offer us more fulfillment and companionship than the virtual friends that we try to, um, make -
- CWChris Williamson
I was on board. I was on board until I realized-
- DPDavid Pinsof
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... it was goi- it was going to reduce the listenership of the podcast.
- DPDavid Pinsof
(laughs) Sorry. Sorry, Chris.
- CWChris Williamson
It's fine.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Listen- listen to this podcast, but not any of the other ones.
- CWChris Williamson
That's right. That's th- this is the only one that is able to thread the needle between evolutionarily what's adaptive and, uh, ethically what is optimal. David Pinzauf,
- 1:12:09 – 1:12:53
Where to Find David
- CWChris Williamson
ladies and gentlemen. David, I love your work. Uh, everythingisbullshit.substack.com for your stuff?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Yes. That's correct.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, it's, it's phenomenal. Uh, everybody needs to go and subscribe to that. Where else should they go to harass you and find your stuff online?
- DPDavid Pinsof
Uh, you can feel free to harass me on, uh, Twitter of all places, uh (laughs) , the, uh, nadir of human happiness, uh, you can find me @davidpinzauf on Twitter. Feel free to DM me if you want. Uh, I'm very friendly. Much friendlier than, uh, than I might appear based on my gloomy beliefs.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) David, I appreciate you. Thank you, mate.
- DPDavid Pinsof
Thanks so much, Chris. It's been a blast. (instrumental music plays)
- CWChris Williamson
If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks, and don't forget to subscribe.
Episode duration: 1:12:53
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