What Do BDSM & Meditation Have In Common? | Professor Paul Bloom | Modern Wisdom Podcast 120

1. 0:00 – 1:15

   Humans default to “us vs. them”: minimal group bias in action

   1. PBPaul Bloom0:00

      Some people think that the, the modern notion of race isn't something we've had for that long. But certainly breaking the world up into us versus them-

   2. CWChris Williamson0:10

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   3. PBPaul Bloom0:12

      ... um, and liking the us and really hating-

   4. CWChris Williamson0:15

      (laughs)

   5. PBPaul Bloom0:16

      ... the them i- is natural. There's, there's now tons of studies, including from babies, but also from young children, cross-cultural studies, computer simulations of biological evolution. If there's one thing we know, my field knows, it's that a propensity to break the world up into us versus them, um, comes natural. So there's even these very clever study. You get 100 people in a room, you know, like you and me, and we all have a coin, and we all flip our coin. So roughly half is heads, half is tails, go into different parts of the room. Then we ask, "So what do you guys think... You're tails. What do you think of the tails group?" They think, "We're smarter."

   6. CWChris Williamson0:54

      (laughs)

   7. PBPaul Bloom0:54

      Even put- putting myself aside, it so happens the tails group is smarter. The heads group, you seem to have like a, a bunch of ****** over there. Like, who, who likes them?

   8. CWChris Williamson1:02

      (laughs)

   9. PBPaul Bloom1:03

      And, and even the, you know, the most arbitrary ways of cutting us apart sets up psychological mechanisms where, where we, where we split the world.

2. 1:15 – 3:16

   What Paul Bloom studies: pleasure, morality, self, religion, and suffering

   1. CWChris Williamson1:15

      I'm joined by Professor Paul Bloom. Paul, welcome to the show.

   2. PBPaul Bloom1:20

      Thank you so much for having me.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:21

      It's a pleasure to have you on. Eh, been listening to a lot of your work recently, some fantastic interviews with Sam Harris, some podcasts that you did a little while ago. But, um, some super interesting stuff. We've been talking about empathy and about resilience a lot on the show. Recently discussed Eliud Kipchoge's, uh, sub-two-hour marathon performance-

   4. PBPaul Bloom1:40

      Oh, yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:40

      ... which was a, a very resilient, uh, physical feat that people have seen. Um, so we got a lot, a lot to delve into today. But how would you describe the work that you do if someone hadn't met you before and, and didn't know you?

   6. PBPaul Bloom1:55

      So I'm interested in... I'm a psychology professor at Yale, and I'm interested in human nature. And so my work goes from topic to topic, and they're kind of related. Um, broadly, I'm interested in pleasure, what we like, why we like it. I'm really interested in morality. Um, how do we explain our intuitions about good and evil? Um, how do we explain our, our, our, um, who we hate, who we admire, and what kind of moral judgments are good for us? Like, how should we think morally? And there, my work kind of blends into, into philosophy. And that was my most recent book, Against, Against Empathy. And, um, and I'm interested in a cluster of things. I'm interested in the self. I'm interested in, um, how we think about, uh, things that aren't like us, like robots or, um, non-human animals. Uh, interested in religion, where religious belief comes from. Most recently, I've been interested in suffering. So I have a kind of dream job where I, you know, I get (laughs) , I get paid perfectly fine to, uh, to just ask some really cool questions and my students and my colleagues work on them.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:02

      It must feel nice to be able to indulge your intellectual curiosity on a yearly basis and just keep on changing that up every so often.

   8. PBPaul Bloom3:11

      Yeah, they haven't fired me yet, and it is, it is, it is-

   9. CWChris Williamson3:14

      (laughs)

   10. PBPaul Bloom3:14

       ... very nice.

3. 3:16 – 5:54

   Why “obvious” questions matter: stepping back from taken-for-granted instincts

   1. CWChris Williamson3:16

      (laughs) Um, so you touched on a word there, morality. And, uh, I think a lot of the stuff that you're talking about are questions that people take for granted, or their appearance that, that is something that people just take as fact. Do you often find when you begin to look at the first principles or real strip things back to basics, do you find a bit of a disconnect or people just looking at the questions that you're asking and thinking that, "Well, why are you asking that? Why are you asking what is morality? Or why are you asking what is empathy?"

   2. PBPaul Bloom3:49

      It's interesting. My, my... It, it's a good question. My work tends to fall into one of two extremes. So I'm sometimes interested in things that are honest to God puzzling for a lot of people. Like, you ask people, you know, what do people get out of, um, uh, sadomasochistic sex or hot saunas or, um, or watching movies that terrify them? And people say, "I don't know. That's really cool that we do." But some of my questions, and this is what you're getting at, involve questioning things that we take for granted. And William James, a long time ago, a great psychologist, you know, said, "It's only to a scholar can you ask a question like, you know, why do people get flushed when everybody's looking at them? Why do we get hungry when we smell something delicious?" And these are questions like, you know, why does the apple fall from the tree? You know, you got to be in some way step back and be a scholar. And so say, say, "Well, okay, sure that happens, it's obvious, but, but why do we work that way?" And so for morality, you know, if you right now, you walked outside and you saw somebody slapping a child, just beating the crap out of a four-year-old, you would be shocked. You'd probably spring to action. Why? And it's not enough for you to say, "Well, of course, it's just natural. It's obvious." Okay, let's spell it out. What's bothering you? Can you imagine a person who would find this funny or have no interest at all? And those are sort, sort of the questions I ask.

   3. CWChris Williamson5:14

      Yeah. I imagine that that must get you into some interesting, interesting situations thinking about some of the times some of the people that I spend my time with and talking to, and every so often you do, you posit a question or make a point about something and half of the room sort of turns and looks and gives you this... (laughs)

   4. PBPaul Bloom5:34

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:34

      ... side eye.

   6. PBPaul Bloom5:36

      Yeah. When they discover you're really not one of them. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson5:39

      Yeah, yeah. I know.

   8. PBPaul Bloom5:41

      They're sort of, uh, they're sort of, uh, looking at things from the outside perspective in our business.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:44

      Yeah. I, I think to, to fly a flag for the outsiders, I, I definitely find those questions more interesting than, than not being able to look at them with perspective.

   10. PBPaul Bloom5:53

       Yeah.

4. 5:54 – 9:40

   Empathy vs. compassion: defining terms and why ‘feeling others’ pain can be harmful

   1. CWChris Williamson5:54

      So let's talk about empathy. It's something that we've-

   2. PBPaul Bloom5:57

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson5:57

      ... discussed recently on the podcast. I often use the cliche that I have a crippling level of empathy, but then-

   4. PBPaul Bloom6:03

      Ah.

   5. CWChris Williamson6:04

      ... I don't actually know if I do have a crippling level of empathy, or if I have a crippling level of compassion, and I'd quite like to work out whether ... w- which one of those it is.

   6. PBPaul Bloom6:14

      So, some days, I regret calling my book Against Empathy, because the word empathy has a lot of meanings, and I don't care what you call it. Like, the, the, it's ... So if ... Some people just take empathy to mean kindness or goodness, and I think everybody should be kind and good, and I don't think there's such a, a thing as a crippling level of goodness. You should be as maximally good as you can. That would be great. You just ta- ta- to have a lot of goodness means you're a good person. But there's a more foc- ... There's a set of more focused meanings that I'm more interested in, and one sense of empathy, which is what I'm, uh, targeting in my book, is putting yourself in another person's shoes, feeling what they feel, absorbing their pain. And a lot of people describe this as a very good thing. I actually think in many ways it could be a very bad thing. And you actually put your finger on one aspect of it, which is, you look at the people who help other people face to face, day to day, um, people who work, uh, um, e- uh, firefighters, cops, nurses, doctors, shrinks, people who, who, who, um, who are ER workers. Here's what they have in common. They're pretty low empathy. They, they, they care about people, they understand people, they want to help people, but they could be with somebody who's screaming in agony and they're cool with it. They don't feel it. And then they, you know, they, they, they, they treat people for nine hours, and then they go home with their family, and they order sushi, and they watch TV, and, and, and they don't get upset. Now, if you have a crippling, uh, level of empathy, you could not do that. You may not last a week doing that, because the pain of others might get to you too much. And so this is one way of answering your question, whether it's empathy or something else. So I'll ask you, (clears throat) if you're with somebody who's very depressed or very upset or very angry, does that affect you in a way that you're not comfortable with?

   7. CWChris Williamson8:07

      Yes.

   8. PBPaul Bloom8:08

      Then you have high empathy, my friend. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's ... As long as you keep it under wraps. But it means that there's certain things you probably are not as good at doing as others, other people would be.

   9. CWChris Williamson8:20

      Like?

   10. PBPaul Bloom8:20

       Uh, you would not do well as a therapist, 'cause a therapist, you might spend eight hours a day, nine hours a day (clears throat) dealing with people who are anxious and depressed and weeping and, and deeply upset. And if you ca- ... If you absorb their feelings, if you feel what they feel, you will be run through a ringer each day. So I have a friend of mine, and she's, she's a shrink, and so she tells me ... She works like 15-minute session, pause, 15-minute session, pause, 15-minute ... And I say, "That must drive you up the wall, dealing with those people who are so upset." And she says to me, um, "No. I, I actually find it fascinating. I love solving their problems. I tr- I try to work, try to figure this out and everything. I find it exhilarating." And she's wired up differently than me, and it's why she can do the job and I can't.

   11. CWChris Williamson9:10

       What's your disposition?

   12. PBPaul Bloom9:12

       Um, highly empathic in that way, uh, in that ... And then, so in some way, when I, I talk about the problems of empathy and say there are better ways to do things, better ways to be good in getting caught up, uh, in the pain of others, to some extent it's a sort of self-therapy thing. Like, you know, I, I'm, I'm talking to myself here.

   13. CWChris Williamson9:34

       (laughs) For a couple of hundred pages.

   14. PBPaul Bloom9:39

       Yeah. Well-

   15. CWChris Williamson9:40

       (laughs)

5. 9:40 – 11:20

   Empathy’s moral downside: bias, favoritism, and unfair decision-making

   1. PBPaul Bloom9:40

      ... I, I put in some jokes. I, I tell some stories. I mean, it ... It's also, it's also, just, just to make sure it's not ... I don't want people to think my work is entirely self-therapy. It's, it's that a lot of people, even people who aren't empathic, think that empathy is the way to go for morality, and I discuss in the book all sorts of reasons why not. So, one is the reason that you raised, which is the extent of a personal connection impairing your, your role as a helper. But the more general thing is that empathy is powerfully biased. We know this from everyday life. We know this from, uh, uh, a thousand experiments. So I'm looking at you. You know, you're, you're, uh, a guy who's ... Or same rough, same skin color, ethnicity as me, English speaker, similar background, whatever. So I can feel for you. You're my kind of guy. I could feel your pain. If I heard you were in trouble, I could get upset by it, by that. That's how empathy works. But what if you were different? What if you were a different skin color, different gender, you didn't speak English? What if you were disgusting in your, in your

   2. CWChris Williamson10:41

      (laughs)

   3. PBPaul Bloom10:41

      ... form, like you were a homeless person or something, you hadn't washed for a long period of time? What if you were frightening? All of those things shut down empathy. And so to the extent we can say, intellectually, I think that, uh, um, uh, a middle-aged white man from my, my city, his life matters just as much as somebody I will never see in Sub-Saharan Africa. To the extent I could acknowledge that, it means I have to transcend empathy. Empathy pushes you to the, to the close, to the similar, and as moral reflective beings, we say, "We could do better than that."

6. 11:20 – 12:47

   What replaces empathy: rational compassion and Buddhist-inspired care

   1. CWChris Williamson11:20

      So what's, what's a purer version of empathy? Or what's a less biased version of empathy?

   2. PBPaul Bloom11:28

      So I think bias very nature, empathy is biased. Empathy is, is, is, is impure. In some way, your question's like saying, I complain about racism, and you say, "Well, what's a purer form of racism?"

   3. CWChris Williamson11:42

      (laughs)

   4. PBPaul Bloom11:42

      Oh, racism-

   5. CWChris Williamson11:43

      Do not answer that, please.

   6. PBPaul Bloom11:45

      ... racism's gonna ... Ra- Racism's gonna be racism.

   7. CWChris Williamson11:47

      Yeah.

   8. PBPaul Bloom11:47

      But I think the gist of your question is, what should we replace it with? And-

   9. CWChris Williamson11:50

      Yes, correct.

   10. PBPaul Bloom11:51

       So, I had this book, Against Empathy, and the subtitle is The Case for Rational Compassion. And so rational is part of it, which is that you should sort of, as you go through the world, if you're a country, if you're an industry, if you're an individual, and try to make the world better for people, and use your head to do so.... try to figure out what's, what's, you know, what's the best thing to do. But compassion is, I think, the answer to your question, which is you should care about people. Y- you see this distinction in Buddhism. So Buddhism is very clear. It says, you know, you want to be a good person, you want to be a helper, um, don't get caught up in other people's pain. Instead, love them. Fill, fill your heart with good cheer and happiness. You know, you see the- the- these, these Buddhist monks, and they're radiating joy, even when dealing with people who l- are in horrible pain or live in squalor. And that's the way to do it, compassion and love, but not empathy.

7. 12:47 – 20:12

   Where empathy is useful: relationships, shared experiences, and bonding

   1. CWChris Williamson12:47

      How do you define the difference, the specific differences then between empathy and compassion? Is it simply not putting yourself in somebody else's shoes?

   2. PBPaul Bloom12:56

      That's at the core of it. So, so maybe here's a good example. Suppose we're really good friends, and I am anxious. I am coming to you, and I'm upset about something. I'm just anxious, and I'm upset. Maybe I'm in tears and everything. If you were to feel empathy for me, you would feel my anxiety. You would share my anxiety with me, and you would be anxious too. But if you were to feel compassion for me, you would see I'm in distress, and you'd want to make my distress go away, and you would help me. And this could lead to two very different responses. I- I- I- If you felt empathy, you'd kind of be there, maybe crying a little bit with me and so on, and it wouldn't make me any better. In fact, in some extent, it makes me worse. I now have two problems, not just one.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:38

      (laughs)

   4. PBPaul Bloom13:38

      But if you felt compassion for me, you might try to cheer me up, or you say, "Dude, calm down. Take a deep breath. It's not as bad." You would be a model for me with your calmness, with your authority. This is an old insight. We want... What we want in friends... Take sadness. What we want in friends is not somebody to multiply our sadness, but somebody to replace it with happiness. Now, I don't want to overstate this. There are things I think I, I wrote in my book that were a bit too strong, and I think there are some cases where we do want empathy. So a good example of this is anger. So suppose I come to you, my friend, and I'm furious at somebody. I said, "You know, this guy did this, and he did that, and how could he treat me that way and everything?" And I want you as a friend not to say, "Huh, I really appreciate your perspective, and I hope, hope you calm down."

   5. CWChris Williamson14:29

      (laughs)

   6. PBPaul Bloom14:29

      I want you to say, "He said that to you? Let's, let's go to his house and, and, and, and beat the crap out of him." You get angry too. That's what pals do. If I'm, if I'm watching a TV show and I'm really into it, I don't want you to sit there next to me. You're sitting there. I want you to be into it too. I want us to share the feelings, and there's actually psychological work showing that just two people silently, um, sharing each other's feelings while watching a movie or show and everything, there's a pleasure in that, and there's a connection in that.

   7. CWChris Williamson14:59

      Mm-hmm.

   8. PBPaul Bloom15:00

      So I'm not against empathy in general. Empathy can do a lot for us. It can do a lot for relationships, could be a great source of pleasure. But as a source, as a moral guide, who should I help, who should our country go to war with and everything, it is, I think, very limited.

   9. CWChris Williamson15:17

      It strikes me that both empaty- empathy and compassion can't exist in isolation. If I was the only person on the planet, and the planet was completely whitewashed except for me, is there such a thing as... Well, I suppose there's self-compassion, but there's not such a thing as self-empathy, is there?

   10. PBPaul Bloom15:35

       No, it's hard to imagine what it'd be to put yourself in your own shoes.

   11. CWChris Williamson15:39

       (laughs)

   12. PBPaul Bloom15:39

       It's kind of a, a mental gymnastics that's hard to imagine. Um, you could of course feel s- much empathy and compassion for people, but they would just have to be from your imagination.

   13. CWChris Williamson15:50

       Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah.

   14. PBPaul Bloom15:51

       People from your memories or people you imagine. And, and, you know, if there's books left in this, this apocalyptic world, um, you could feel plenty of empathy for characters in books.

   15. CWChris Williamson16:01

       Yes.

   16. PBPaul Bloom16:02

       And, and again, I think, I think that... You know, I, I love stories, and I, and I read a lot. And, um, and the feeling of empathy and, and, and that sort of imaginative pleasure is, is super important.

   17. CWChris Williamson16:14

       Mm-hmm.

   18. PBPaul Bloom16:15

       I wouldn't want to (...) that.

   19. CWChris Williamson16:18

       It's what immerses you in the story, right?

   20. PBPaul Bloom16:21

       Exactly. You know, there are other things that could immerse you in a story, but, you know, you... Often, a story has an engaging character, and you put yourself in his or her shoes, and then you adopt their perspective, and you go through life as them. So, you know, I'm, I'm reading a Stephen King novel now, The Institute, and a lot of it is this boy who's trapped, uh, who's been kidnapped, and you really see the world through his eyes.

   21. CWChris Williamson16:46

       Mm-hmm.

   22. PBPaul Bloom16:46

       And that's not such an interesting case. To me, the cooler case, and again, that just gets back to the problem of empathy, is that, um, even a, a bad character, if you get connected with him, you would adopt his perspective. I don't know. You ever watch, um, uh, like, um, Breaking Bad or Sopranos?

   23. CWChris Williamson17:05

       Yeah, yeah.

   24. PBPaul Bloom17:06

       So, so both of these shows at the core had, uh, uh, Walter White, Tony Soprano, guys who are actually not good guys. You're not supposed to take them as, like, these wonderful superheroes to follow. But once you have them on the screen, and you think about them, and you get absorbed in them, all of a sudden, their interests become your, your interests. There's an old problem, you know. One of my favorite books is Lolita by Nabokov, you know, and, and, and, uh, the, the main character of that, Humbert Humbert, is a pedophile. He's a pedophile pursuing the affections of this young girl. But by the time you're 10 pages in the book, he's your guy. It's a first-person narrative here in his head. Part of you says, you know, "This is wrong," but part of you cheers him on. And so a good storyteller can use empathy to, to cause you to have a connection with characters who are just awful.

   25. CWChris Williamson18:00

       And I suppose that manifests itself in the real world as bias.

   26. PBPaul Bloom18:04

       Yes, yes. All of this manifests itself as bias. As soon as one person steps out of a crowd and says, "Put yourself in my shoes," the whole world changes.And there, there's a, there's experimental research on this. So, um, Dan Batson is a great psychologist of empathy, has a study where, um, where he tells you about a little girl, and she needs an operation. And, uh, and if she doesn't have an operation, terrible things will happen to her. But she's on a ... there, there's a l- a lineup, a list, and she's low down on the list. And it's a fair list. Other kids are ahead of her. Should you move her up? And you say, "No, if it's a fair list." But then he adds a, a little twist. He says, "Try to feel what it'd like to be her. Put yourself in her shoes." Now things flip, and you wanna move her up the list. You know? I have 100 people applying for a job, and I'm looking at their files and da, da, da. And then one person comes up to me and says, "Let me tell you my story." And all of a sudden, that person, he or she, is, is my person, even though the other 99 also had stories. It's just that, that the, by accident, the one who got to tell me theirs got to sway me. And, and I think that these things are morally corrosive. I think they're very natural, but the amount of bias they incur in the world is terrible. And it sets up empathy in a very tight connection with something like racism. I mean, whose stories are you likely to hear? Whose, whose, whose lives are you most likely to get connected with? Well, people around you, your group, your friends, your family. And those people are your, your ... psychologists call your in-group. Empathy favors the in-group. But as a moral person, you might say, "Look, even if somebody doesn't have the good fortune to be one of my friends or to, to look like me, still that person has as much moral value as anybody else." And that's what empathy misses.

   27. CWChris Williamson20:02

       Mm. It's totally removing rationality, isn't it? That rank, rank order of whatever is first come, first serve, or people who need it the most, of a, out of a group of 100.

   28. PBPaul Bloom20:11

       That's right.

8. 20:12 – 22:43

   Evolutionary roots: why compassion makes sense, and why empathy may relate to parenting

   1. CWChris Williamson20:12

      Did you have a look at how empathy and compassion would have been used evolutionarily by our ancestors? Did you think about that?

   2. PBPaul Bloom20:22

      I did. It's a very interesting question. Um, so the idea of caring for others, some sort of compassion for others, um, it used to be thought that this is crazy and non-Darwinian. Like, why would we ever have that? And it was a great puzzle for Darwin. Like, if, if nature is red in tooth and claw, if it's the survival of fit ... of, of, uh, of the fittest, um, why would we ever care for another? It's some ... it has to be a miracle, some people said. Um, or other people say, "We don't really care for other people." Can't. You know, just cynics all the way down. But the neo-Darwinian view got really sophisticated about a 100 years ago, and then people began to make sense over time of how you could evolve caring for others. So, for instance, one simple way is that if you take a sort of ... if, if ... once you have a genetic understanding, there's no sh- hard and fast division between myself and my children, who share half my genes-

   3. CWChris Williamson21:18

      Mm-hmm.

   4. PBPaul Bloom21:19

      ... and my siblings, who share half my genes, and my cousins and nieces and nephews and so on, who share different fractions of my genes. So, it behooves me from an evolutionary point of view to care about them as well, to really have them matter. So, that's one thing they call a kin selection. A second thing is sort of reciprocal altruism. So, suppose you and I work well together, you know? When we, when we kill an animal that's too big for either one of us to bring back-

   5. CWChris Williamson21:45

      Mm-hmm.

   6. PBPaul Bloom21:45

      ... we work together and bring it back. We do this repeatedly. We both gain from our interaction. Well, then it makes sense for me to care about you. And so these mechanisms, which aren't infinitely broad, but specific, uh, I think, I think can help capture where compassion comes from. Empathy is a little bit different. Nobody really knows why we have empathy, feeling the pain, feeling the feelings of others.

   7. CWChris Williamson22:08

      Mm.

   8. PBPaul Bloom22:09

      One theory, um, is that, um, it actually has to do with parenting, that your connection with your young child or your young baby, uh, helps if you have a truly empathic bond. And one reason to take this seriously is that the hormones that connect up, um, with empathy are also involved in breastfeeding and childbirth.

   9. CWChris Williamson22:40

      Okay, so you-

   10. PBPaul Bloom22:40

       So, empathy may be an adaptation for dealing with babies.

9. 22:43 – 25:22

   Empathy and compassion in the body: hormones, brain circuitry, and surprising effects

   1. CWChris Williamson22:43

      (coughs) Have you defined how empathy physiologically manifests itself in someone, then?

   2. PBPaul Bloom22:50

      Um, there's-

   3. CWChris Williamson22:50

      You mentioned hormones there.

   4. PBPaul Bloom22:52

      There's, there's studies of hormones. There's a way in which hormones, um, can, can elicit empathy and drive empathy. What's interesting is you get a dissociation, um, with a, a separation from compassion. So, for instance, if ... In some studies, they raise people's empathy, but then these people become more racist. And there's no contradiction.

   5. CWChris Williamson23:14

      Hmm.

   6. PBPaul Bloom23:14

      When you raise people's empathy, you're not ratcheting up your goodness. What you're doing is you're making them more connected to those they're connected to. Well, by the by, they'll be less connected to those they're not connected to. There are studies, there are brain imaging studies, um, some lovely work done in Germany, um, where they get people to be empathic, to put yourselves in the shoes of others, or to get people to care about others, and these show very distinct neural profiles. So, I think just by now good reason to believe that empathy and compassion run on different brain circuitry, are connected to hormones in different ways, and they're kind of separate. And this is important, because if empathy and compassion were in- inextricably linked, then me telling you to give up on empathy would be kind of crap advice, because then you also wouldn't care about people at all.

   7. CWChris Williamson24:07

      So, it's important for us to try and work out where the rubber meets the road between these two?

   8. PBPaul Bloom24:12

      It really is. It's important for us, it's important for somebody like me, as, as a psychologist to understand it, but it's important for everybody to realize, as they make through their, make it through their regular life-... where did their moral thoughts and feelings come from? You know, if you say, "Oh," you know, um, "same sex marriage is horrible. It's an atrocity," uh, and I say, "No, it seems fine. It seems perfectly fine," it, I think, each of us should be able to look and say, "Well, why do we feel that way? Where's our arguments?" We should be reflective about these things. You think this is just what a sort of psychologist/philosopher would say, but, but I think a lot of our moral instincts, "Let's do this. Let's punish these people. Let's reward these people," are based on sort of brain processes and psychological processes that, if we reflect upon them, we wouldn't trust them as much.

   9. CWChris Williamson25:09

      There's a lot of things that people take for granted about our nature that, as you've identified, perhaps not even isn't optimal, is detrimental or is damaging.

   10. PBPaul Bloom25:20

       Mm-hmm.

10. 25:22 – 30:55

    Natural isn’t moral: tribalism, revenge, and building social rules to curb instincts

    1. CWChris Williamson25:22

       And I- I think, I honestly do think that these sorts of questions, I can see how they're inflammatory. I can see how the suggestion that racism, for someone who's empathic, might actually be natural, that- that- that they have to work against that.

    2. PBPaul Bloom25:38

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson25:38

       Because immediately, it's such a slippery slope with bigot at the bottom, as Douglas Murray says-

    4. PBPaul Bloom25:45

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson25:45

       ... a bog of bigots at the bottom that you slip down to say, "Well, racism might be natural." It's like, okay, well, let's think about that. We spent the vast majority of our evolutionary history in tribes of, what, 25 to 50? Something like that. Absolutely terrified that there's some pathogen one valley away-

    6. PBPaul Bloom26:02

       Yeah.

    7. CWChris Williamson26:02

       ... that's gonna, that's gonna infect us and kill us-

    8. PBPaul Bloom26:05

       Yeah.

    9. CWChris Williamson26:05

       ... or a tribe that'll come and take all of our food and rape all of our women, or do you know what I mean? Like...

    10. PBPaul Bloom26:10

        Yep. It's extremely... I, like, whether or not racism is natural is kind of a fraught topic. It depends what you think race is. Some people think that the- the modern notion of race isn't something we've had for that long. But certainly, breaking the world up into us versus them-

    11. CWChris Williamson26:29

        Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

    12. PBPaul Bloom26:30

        ... um, and liking the us and really hating-

    13. CWChris Williamson26:33

        (laughs)

    14. PBPaul Bloom26:34

        ... the them is- is natural. There's- there's now tons of studies, including from babies, but also from young children, cross-cultural studies, computer simulations of biological evolution. If there's one thing we know, my field knows, it's that a propensity to break the world up into us versus them, um, comes natural. So there's even these very clever... So you get 100 people in a room, you know, like you and me, and we all have a coin, and we all flip our coin. So roughly half is heads, half is tails, go into different parts of the room. Then we ask, "So what do you guys think... You're tails. What do you think of the tails group?" You think, "We're smarter."

    15. CWChris Williamson27:12

        (laughs)

    16. PBPaul Bloom27:12

        Even put- putting myself aside, it so happens the tails group is smarter. The heads group, you seem to have, like, a- a bunch of dicks over there, like, who- who likes them?

    17. CWChris Williamson27:20

        (laughs)

    18. PBPaul Bloom27:21

        And- and even the, you know, the most arbitrary ways of cutting us apart sets up psychological mechanisms where- where we, where we split the world. And you're entirely right that it's, that it's natural. Now, of course, you know, being (laughs) natural, it could still be terrible.

    19. CWChris Williamson27:38

        Hmm.

    20. PBPaul Bloom27:39

        And so much... It- it's a bizarre fallacy to say, "Since it's natural, it's good." Um, I think so much of what we do in the world with great success is we use our intelligence to sort of transcend our natural instincts.

    21. CWChris Williamson27:56

        100%.

    22. PBPaul Bloom27:57

        We do- we do this physically. You know, I'm wearing contact lenses 'cause my eyes are bad. Um, we take antibiotics to fight infections, and none of this was natural. Um, but we also do it psychologically. We also say, like for instance, we have, we say, "Some forms of bias are wrong, so we make them illegal, and we try to work around them," and so on. Um, some sort of vi- you know, vengeance, revenge, the appetite for revenge, is- is, I think, profoundly natural.

    23. CWChris Williamson28:23

        Hmm.

    24. PBPaul Bloom28:23

        But we say, "Don't have it. Offload it to the cops." And, uh, you know, a guy, a guy cuts me off. No, I can't kill him. You know, I could-

    25. CWChris Williamson28:33

        But what about-

    26. PBPaul Bloom28:33

        ... blank. I could... Yeah?

    27. CWChris Williamson28:34

        ... what about something that's, that's very natural that would be jealousy-induced stealing? If you were to see someone else has something, why wouldn't, why wouldn't you just take it? Like, "Well, I want that."

    28. PBPaul Bloom28:45

        It seems that that sort of impulse, I think, would be very natural.

    29. CWChris Williamson28:49

        Yeah.

    30. PBPaul Bloom28:49

        But you can imagine, as we all get together in society, we all sit around as a world. This is like a reconstruction of things, and you say, "You know, all that jealousy-induced stealing, we're better off without it." And some hands go up, and they say, "I really like it." And then you say to the person, "Okay, um, what do you like more? A world in which you get to steal from everybody else, but they get to steal from you, or a world where everybody gets to keep their stuff?" And presumably people will say, "On balance, let's all keep our stuff."
11. 30:55 – 33:20

    Moral progress over time: consent, bullying, rights, and Pinker-style optimism

    1. CWChris Williamson30:55

       (laughs) It's so complex, isn't it? It's so complex. One of the things that I- I was thinking there, again, rolling it forward to sort of the real- the real sort of worst parts of human impulses is how, uh, the- the development of, um, pushing people to have consensual sex and saying that unconsensual sex is something which is absolutely not allowed, because I'm going to guess that for the vast majority of our evolutionary history that- that also might not have been the case, not naturally. And all of these things, you know, when you- when you think about it, it- it is... When you look at it from a first principles perspective, it really is a- an interesting sort of question, a set of assumptions to- to look at as to why these things happen.

    2. PBPaul Bloom31:44

       Yeah, I mean, there- there's a general argument that Steve Pinker and many others have made, but Steve Pinker makes it m- in the strongest form, that in a lot of ways, the world has been getting better and better and better and better. Um, you know, you think the world sucks now, and in ma- many ways it does, but I would rather be... This is the best time in history, take last, you know, last, say, 30 years, I think, to be an ethnic minority, to be, um- to be, uh, physically disabled or mentally disabled, to be, um- to be a woman, to be a sexual... you know, to- to be... And- and a large reason why this is so is that we've been better at working out the very problems you're talking about. We're trying to understand consent, we're trying to- to figure out how to balance all sorts of things, but also a growing respect for people's rights and autonomy. You know, when I was, um- when I was young, nobody cared about bullying. You know, just consider, you know, kids smack each other now, who cares? And now, when my kids go to school, people are just really concerned about it. They say, you know, "No kid should be bullied." And I'm thinking about it and says, "Yeah, that makes sense."

    3. CWChris Williamson32:53

       (laughs)

    4. PBPaul Bloom32:53

       It's kind of- it's kind of messed up that kids will punch each other and nobody minds. Um, and similar thing, issues about sexual harassment and sexual assault, I think- I think we're learning to become better to each other. Now, you know, plainly, there's a million ways in which we're- we're crap to each other, but we're- we're getting better, I think.

    5. CWChris Williamson33:14

       That's good.

    6. PBPaul Bloom33:14

       We're getting better in part by- by smart people struggling with these questions.

12. 33:20 – 43:18

    Identity, in-groups, and today’s discourse: Twitter, purity spirals, and the limits of nuance

    1. CWChris Williamson33:20

       I suppose as well, I don't want to go down this road because I've swam down it too much recently, but I suppose that people who take complex issues like these, plant a flag in one side of the ground or the other and reduce them down to their most simplistic forms and then attach them to a Twitter bio, are really- really (laughs) -

    2. PBPaul Bloom33:39

       (laughs) .

    3. CWChris Williamson33:39

       ... really doing a disservice to the development. And I- I do think, as I've seen posted more recently, like within the last year to six months, concerns about where our real intellectual integrity and our- our real intellectual power is being placed. Recently went to go and see Douglas Murray give a- a talk with Lionel Shriver, uh, literally two days ago for The Spectator, and his primary concern at the moment is that some of the best minds on the planet are spending their time thinking, including him, his most recent book, The Madness of Crowds, is about this, about socially constructed differences between gender, race, sex, sexuality. And I- I- I do- I do wonder how- how much further along we might have been in 30 years. Obviously, we don't know how- how much more time is going to be embroiled in some of these discussions, but yeah, when you talk about some of the things that you're doing, which are really uncovering the first principles of our nature, trying to work out real hard questions about why we are the way we are, and yet some super smart people, Douglas, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, you know, Sam Harris, uh, uh, they get embroiled in these things. That one tweet that he sent could have been sent about something else that wasn't that. Do you get what I mean?

    4. PBPaul Bloom34:55

       I- I do. I mean, you're raising a lot of issues here. So personally, actually, I find questions of- of, um- of gender and sex to be absolutely fascinating and underexplored. But I see your broader point, which is that, you know, my experience, I- I spend too much time on Twitter, and- and so much of it is, um, people defending outlandishly extreme positions, and then, you know, a sense of ideological purity on both sides, very strong. And then, um, you know, nas- nasty attacks that don't bring us anywhere closer. And- and I'm kind of an optimist about things, I think outside of social media, there's actually some excellent discourse and- and- and progress. But for a lot of these questions about human nature, particularly questions revolving around sex, revolving around ethnicity and race, um, they connect very much with our identities. And so they're not abstract theoretical questions to be bandied about, maybe nor should they be, because they affect people's- people's real lives.

    5. CWChris Williamson36:01

       Mm-hmm.

    6. PBPaul Bloom36:02

       Um, I understand the point that Jordan Peterson was making about, um, wanting to have the freedom to describe people as he chose. I also understand the anger he got by people who felt that their identity was being belittled by somebody who had power over them. So this is not getting at it one way or another-

    7. CWChris Williamson36:19

       Mm-hmm.

    8. PBPaul Bloom36:20

       ... but- but, um, these issues are, as you say, complicated. And- and to go back to what, we were talking about racism, uh, you know, everybody I know would say, "Oh, well, racism, that sort of in-group, out-group is just morally wrong. It's morally atrocious." But...... other forms of in-group, out-group division, it's less clear. I love my children much more than I love you. More than that. I care for them. I give them resources, much more than I would give to you. Is this morally wrong? Well, maybe an extreme utilitarian like Peter Singer might say, "Well, it's kinda, w- you know, it's human nature, but we could have done better." But I'm, I'm inclined to think that some, some sort of in-groups, like in-groups of family and in-groups of friendship, are actually intrinsically valuable. So I would draw a distinction between me saying, "I only care, I care the most about white people." That's kind of a crappy way to live your existence. On the other hand, if I was to say, "I care the most about my family and friends," that doesn't seem as odious. What do you think?

    9. CWChris Williamson37:25

       I agree. I think the interesting question is, where does the group of family and friends extend out to?

    10. PBPaul Bloom37:33

        Yes.

    11. CWChris Williamson37:33

        At what point, at what point does the rubber meet the road?

    12. PBPaul Bloom37:37

        Yes. And, and our affiliations are complicated. I think, I, um, I think, you know, we all have multiple ones. I'm, I'm a Canadian, I'm Jewish, I'm a professor. Um, I'm a man. You know-

    13. CWChris Williamson37:51

        You support a football team, you suppo-

    14. PBPaul Bloom37:53

        ... (laughs) that's right.

    15. CWChris Williamson37:53

        Or it would be a hockey team. It'd be a hockey team in Canada, wouldn't it?

    16. PBPaul Bloom37:55

        That's right, that's right. Well, actually, I am, I am wearing a-

    17. CWChris Williamson37:58

        (laughs) .

    18. PBPaul Bloom37:58

        ... a, a Toronto Blue Jays t-shirt for this-

    19. CWChris Williamson38:00

        Nice.

    20. PBPaul Bloom38:01

        ... discussion. No. If you got a, uh... But, but we have multiple affiliations. To some extent, they're harmless. I think sports teams actually just give the world more pleasure than any suffering. And sometimes, they're, they're, you know, when it comes to religion and race, they're the most serious things in the world. And, and to go back to it, we recognize it's natural. We should never, ever infer that that means it's good. But it does mean that we have to be very prepared for an uphill battle when fighting it.

    21. CWChris Williamson38:34

        You're literally combating human nature-

    22. PBPaul Bloom38:36

        Yes.

    23. CWChris Williamson38:36

        ... or combating what most people take-

    24. PBPaul Bloom38:38

        Yes.

    25. CWChris Williamson38:38

        ... to be natural.

    26. PBPaul Bloom38:40

        Yes. And, you know, there's different responses. So you mentioned Sam Harris before. So I do think there's a powerful impulse, or set of impulses, leading us to be religious. One way you could do it is like Sam does: deal with it head-on. You know, don't be religious anymore, it's stupid. Do something else. On the other hand, there are other people who say, "No, we're never gonna get rid of this, so let's try to make religions more reasonable, more kind, defang them a little bit, a little bit less religious, more spiritual. Tone 'em down." I think this, uh, guy, uh, Alain de Botton argued it once in a talk I saw.

    27. CWChris Williamson39:17

        He's... So, I, I have, uh, the listeners will be familiar. I've been reading his most recent book, which might interest you, uh, An Emotional Education.

    28. PBPaul Bloom39:25

        Oh.

    29. CWChris Williamson39:25

        Um, and-

    30. PBPaul Bloom39:26

        Thank you.
13. 43:18 – 46:41

    New book theme: ‘The Pleasures of Suffering’—spice, fear, BDSM, and meaningful difficulty

    1. CWChris Williamson43:18

       I agree. Moving on to what you're working on now. At some point within the next two years-

    2. PBPaul Bloom43:26

       Yes.

    3. CWChris Williamson43:26

       ... there will probably be a new Paul Bloom book out.

    4. PBPaul Bloom43:29

       Yes.

    5. CWChris Williamson43:30

       What can you tell us about it?

    6. PBPaul Bloom43:31

       Um, its title, uh, may be The Pleasures of Suffering. It may be, uh, Sweet Spot, and then a helpful sem- uh, help- helpful subtitle like, uh, Suffering, Pleasure, and the Good Life.

    7. CWChris Williamson43:45

       Mm-hmm.

    8. PBPaul Bloom43:46

       And it will be about why we are drawn towards suffering, and it will look at it at two levels. One level is the pleasures we get from certain forms of suffering, so I'm thinking of every... sort of mundane things like we eat spicy foods that burn our mouths. We, uh, we like saunas and hot baths and roller coaster rides. Uh, Halloween's coming and people are gonna go to haunted houses to have the... The, the, the, the... terrified to be scared. Uh, some people engage in consensual sex involving some degree of pain and degradation, humiliation. Um, why... where do all those appetites come from? They're so paradoxical. There's not a huge puzzle. To go back to sort of things that are explained, you know, somebody would look at you funny if you say, "I wonder why people like ice cream."

    9. CWChris Williamson44:33

       Mm-hmm.

    10. PBPaul Bloom44:34

        And they'd say, "Well, dude, ice cream's delicious."

    11. CWChris Williamson44:36

        Mm-hmm.

    12. PBPaul Bloom44:37

        You know? Okay. That's... it's not... y- you... the details need to be worked (laughs) out, but that's... that makes sense. But then you ask, you know, why do people like eating spicy food so hot it makes them soaked with sweat and they're crying? Some people do. So that's half the book. The other half of the book is sort of asking a broader question, which is, what do we want out of life? And I wanna argue it's not just pleasure or even happiness. It's a deeper form of meaning or purpose. And for that, suffering arises again, because we know we're living a meaningful life when we're suffering, to some extent.

    13. CWChris Williamson45:15

        Why?

    14. PBPaul Bloom45:16

        Any proj- any... because any project of any value requires effort. It requires the possibility of failure. It requires difficulty, often conflict, often anxiety. You know, having kids is the pure example of this, which is you've gotta be an idiot. Everybody knows if you're gonna have kids, it's gonna be tough. But this toughness is tied in so tightly with its reward. If you told me about something you did and you said, "It was easy-peasy, no pain at all, no suffering at all," I would guarantee you you're not gonna take much of value from it. How hard could it have been? How significant could it have been? So, so I think meaningful, difficult life pursuits will require suffering. S- it's wrapped in the very notion of difficulty.

    15. CWChris Williamson46:11

        I think there's some really broad implications for how people live their lives there, talking about overcoming obstacles and, and suffering.

    16. PBPaul Bloom46:20

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson46:20

        Certainly, I know for me that when my life gets too comfortable, that's the only time that a little existential sort of tick at the back of my head starts to, starts to appear. But when I'm (clears throat) constantly working on something that is both challenging and worthwhile, that really doesn't occur.

14. 46:41 – 53:41

    BDSM, meditation, and flow: escaping self-consciousness through intensity

    1. PBPaul Bloom46:41

       Yeah. That's, uh, that's one aspect of what I'm interested in. So, um, this guy, uh, uh, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi developed a concept of flow, which is what you're alluding to. And a flow state is when you're just really into something and it's just perfect. It's just right. If, if it's too easy, it's boring. It's just fun, it's boring, whatever, like watching TV, watching bad TV. But if it's too difficult, it's frustrating and you're just sick of it. Flow state is just this Goldilocks state right in between, where if you do it right, you lose track of time. You str- you su- you... the level of difficulty is such it captures you and it captures your consciousness. People in these states say, you know, you go for a long time, you're working on your book, or, or, or some project, and then you forget to eat. You forget to eat, you lose, you lose track of appointments, you don't sleep, whatever. And that's, that's sort of... that's one aspect of what I'm talking about. But you don't have that unless you have difficulty.

    2. CWChris Williamson47:43

       Because there needs to be a challenge.

    3. PBPaul Bloom47:45

       Needs to be a challenge. That's right.

    4. CWChris Williamson47:47

       I'm trying to relate that to people that like to get spanked with leather things during sex and wear-

    5. PBPaul Bloom47:56

       (laughs)

    6. CWChris Williamson47:56

       ... (laughs) ridiculous outfits. I wanna see... I wanna hear the flow state for BDSM, uh, s- I was gonna say sufferers there, but it's not, is it? (laughs) BDSM fans.

    7. PBPaul Bloom48:08

       Well, I'll make, I'll make the connection for you, actually. The... (laughs) I think that-

    8. CWChris Williamson48:12

       I can't wait to... I cannot wait to hear this.

    9. PBPaul Bloom48:14

       They're not gonna be... they're not gonna be quite the same story, but here's, but here's, um, a connection. It's not my own. It's by a psychologist, Roy Baumeister, which is... one theory of what goes on with BDSM is that it liberates you from your consciousness. So, if you're like a lot of people... I'll speak for myself, won't speak for you, but I'm in my head all the time. My kind of... um, s- my, my, my anxieties, my nerves, my self-talk, my memories, my responsibilities, things I'm ashamed of, things... you know, all this stuff is in my head. Um-One way to empty your head of all of this is to, um, to get really good at meditation. And maybe after 10 years of meditative practice, you could empty out that head of yours for a while. But here's a way somebody could do it really quickly. They could slap you in the face really hard. Now, you're not gonna like being slapped in the face, but I'll tell you, when that slap hits, for a second afterwards, your head is clear. Your, uh, you know... there, there's this great quote by, um, you know, by an, a dominatrix saying, "Nothing captures one's attention more than a whip." And s- so the idea is, a B1 theory BDSM is that, well, the physical level and someone's at the psychological level, it's an escape from yourself. It's in some way, it's the opposite of meditation. Meditation, you sit ru- you, you, you kind of, you know, you're just stuck in your head, observing and trying to deal with it, anything like that. The BDSM, along with things like, uh, intense exercise, um, some drug experiences.

    10. CWChris Williamson49:57

        Extreme sports?

    11. PBPaul Bloom49:59

        Extreme sports, yeah. You know, I'm not a big martial arts guy, but the first time I ever did Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I'm there, uh, rolling with somebody, first time in my life. And so this goes on for a while, and I'm like, you know, I'm (laughs) no good at it, but just, you know, getting twisted into a pretzel by a guy. And, but I realized afterwards that during that, I don't know, three minutes, five minutes, I thought of nothing else. I thought, uh, my head was clear. And, uh, and, and that's... I understand is what BDSM can do for you.

    12. CWChris Williamson50:33

        There's not many situations now, you know, to the listeners that, uh, that tuned in at the moment, think about the last time that you didn't have any thoughts other than the one thing that you were doing or other than any one thing for more than about 30 seconds.

    13. PBPaul Bloom50:50

        Yeah.

    14. CWChris Williamson50:51

        If you held a gun to my head right now and told me when that was, I, I'd, I'd have to do a fair bit of work.

    15. PBPaul Bloom50:57

        And so, if you're ever fortunate enough to get mugged, there you go. Maybe you'll have that. Something... Now, now, obviously there's bad sides to being mugged, but, but the-

    16. CWChris Williamson51:08

        It's a wonderful, wonderful meditative practice though of being mugged. (laughs)

    17. PBPaul Bloom51:12

        ... but, (laughs) but the, but the one good side is, during that period, you're in the moment, you know. And, and that moment of the slap... Now, you know, there's all other things going on. And, you know, you're re- this is a case your mileage really may vary. But, um, but I did some rock climbing. Again, I'm not saying my son is a serious rock climber, I'm awful at it, but it's the same thing. The mixture of fear, the tr- the need to solve a problem, the physicality of it all. You're not thinking of anything else. But you don't have that unless you have a task that's powerful enough to take away from your consciousness to, to, to, to devote your entire focus. One way to do that is through extreme difficulty. Another way to that is extreme pain. And that's what they have in common.

    18. CWChris Williamson51:59

        It's... I tell you what, I did not, I did not think that you were going to be able to draw those two together, but you've managed to do it.

    19. PBPaul Bloom52:05

        Oh, thank you.

    20. CWChris Williamson52:06

        (laughs) Yeah, a- again, going back to the, uh, going back to the extreme physical exercise thing, um, I'm a crossFitter myself, I have a lot of friends that do it. And the place that I see my athletes, the, the, my friends put themselves into on a weekly basis, a daily basis in the gym, is Jordan, who's the owner of the, the gym that we have, and it's a yearly ritual that the final workout of the open, which tends to be a very particular kind of time domain, a power endurance workout, which is like-

    21. PBPaul Bloom52:42

        Mm-hmm.

    22. CWChris Williamson52:42

        ... uh, sort of a 2K row-ish kind of, um, area, maybe a 7 to 10 minute, uh, or 5 to 10 minute of just go, full go. And, um, every single year, there's a... it's almost like a meta meme now about the fact that he's straight outside to go and throw up in the drain, but he does-

    23. PBPaul Bloom52:58

        (laughs)

    24. CWChris Williamson52:58

        ... it every single year. He'll go and do it. And this guy is able to choose to put himself in that place in front of-

    25. PBPaul Bloom53:05

        Yeah.

    26. CWChris Williamson53:05

        ... a crowd of people who all know that he's going to throw up, and he knows that he's going to throw up, and he doesn't do it any other time, and it's this workout, and, and you just think, "Why?" But I know why. I know why, and that's one of the situations I can say when, when you haven't got anything left-

    27. PBPaul Bloom53:21

        Yeah.

    28. CWChris Williamson53:21

        ... and there, there is, there is something that's oddles- oddly so satisfying about that. So have you looked again to ask the same question? Have you looked evolutionarily why, why that's the case?

    29. PBPaul Bloom53:34

        The evolutionary benefit of that kind of thing, I have looked, I am not really that close to finding an answer.

    30. CWChris Williamson53:39

        I'm excited-
15. 53:41 – 1:05:35

    Suffering as signaling, personas, and why podcasts allow real thinking

    1. PBPaul Bloom53:41

       It's a great, it's a great question. I mean, there's something else going on in suffering that your story is bringing out, which is sometimes it's social. So sometimes it's social in that you're signaling something about yourself, your friend is signaling that he had put in all he has. Nothing to be proud of. It's not a bad thing to show your, your friends too. Um, you could be signaling your courage, your endurance, your piety. There's all these religious rituals involving showing suffering, and it, it's meant to show your, your, um, your subservience to God, your love of your, of, of your c- fellow ethnic group, your fellow religious group. So suffering can serve many purposes.

    2. CWChris Williamson54:20

       The Puritan work ethic, I suppose, like that.

    3. PBPaul Bloom54:22

       Exactly.

    4. CWChris Williamson54:23

       Yeah.

    5. PBPaul Bloom54:24

       Exactly.

    6. CWChris Williamson54:25

       Yeah. Well, you see that as well in the, the hustle and grind culture of young entrepreneurs now, right?

    7. PBPaul Bloom54:33

       Mm-hmm.

    8. CWChris Williamson54:33

       The, the sort of Gary Vaynerchuk approach of sleeping five hours a night, and when you want to succeed as much as you want to breathe, a lot of that's signaling.

    9. PBPaul Bloom54:43

       A lot of it's signaling. And then, of course, there's... I imagine, in these communities there's always a counter signaler.... somebody who says, you know, "Look, yeah, I just got nine hours of sleep."

    10. CWChris Williamson54:54

        (laughs)

    11. PBPaul Bloom54:54

        "I'm gonna work a bit and I'm gonna go for a walk in the park."

    12. CWChris Williamson54:56

        (laughs) Chill out.

    13. PBPaul Bloom54:57

        And, and what they're, what they're saying is, "I am so good, I don't need..." You know, y- it's basically the equivalent of the young dot-com guy-

    14. CWChris Williamson55:06

        Mm-hmm.

    15. PBPaul Bloom55:06

        ... going to a meeting, you know, wearing, wearing a hoodie and sweatpants, which is, you guys have to wear suits to save

    16. NANarrator55:12

        Fuck the system, man.

    17. PBPaul Bloom55:12

        ... most of your wealth and everything. I am s- And, and, you know, there's no such thing as not giving a shit. There's just signaling you don't give a shit.

    18. CWChris Williamson55:22

        (laughs) That is, that is a fantastic quote.

    19. PBPaul Bloom55:27

        (laughs)

    20. CWChris Williamson55:27

        "There is no such thing as giving a shit. There is just signaling that you don't give a shit."

    21. PBPaul Bloom55:31

        Exactly.

    22. CWChris Williamson55:32

        I'm gonna, I'm gonna use that. Um, yeah, uh, you know what I think c- increasingly about as I, as I spend time speaking to guys like yourself and, uh, Robin Hanson from Elephant in the Brain-

    23. PBPaul Bloom55:44

        Mm-hmm.

    24. CWChris Williamson55:44

        ... and Rick Hanson and a lot of these people who think about, um, William Von Hippel. Guys that s- really do think-

    25. PBPaul Bloom55:50

        Mm-hmm.

    26. CWChris Williamson55:50

        ... about sort of why we come from that, and Robert Greene was on recently and this, that, and the other.

    27. PBPaul Bloom55:54

        Mm-hmm.

    28. CWChris Williamson55:54

        Increasingly now, and I wonder whether this is the same for you, understanding people's motivations with a l- at least a little bit more nuance than I do, uh, probably a massive amount more understanding than I do, I see people sometimes like WWE characters. You know?

    29. PBPaul Bloom56:11

        Mm-hmm.

    30. CWChris Williamson56:11

        Like, they've got this persona that they're playing, and this is the brand that they've attached their flag to.

Episode duration: 1:05:35