Why Are People Falling In Love With Robots? - Rob Brooks

1. 0:00 – 3:32

   Rob’s Artificial Intimacy Prophecies

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      You must feel a little bit like a prophet because everybody is talking about artificial intimacy now. Are you a trendsetter in this regard, being ahead of the curve?

   2. RBRob Brooks0:09

      Yeah, you know, I do feel a little bit vindicated, um, in that, you know, this- my book came out in 2021, so I was writing it in, you know, 2019, 2020 really, um, and a lot of the things that I was just imagining, you know, this might happen and that might happen, have come, you know, come true. There's all sorts of other things that have come true as well that I never envisioned, of course, but, uh, you know, I think people love to say, uh, "Computers will never do this, AI will never do that," um, and as soon as they do, they're almost immediately proved wrong in most cases. So we're, uh, you know, we're living through times wher- in which, uh, just about any kind of prognostication is going to be true at some level.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:52

      How did you get interested in studying artificial intimacy?

   4. RBRob Brooks0:56

      Good question. So I, um, I'm actually a biologist, I work on small- well, used to work on small, um, animals and at the nasty things they do to each other associated with sex and mating and reproduction. It's a- a bus- a sort of body of evolutionary theory called sexual conflict, and the idea there is that even a mummy and a daddy who love each other very much still, you know, don't necessarily have completely aligned interests. And in a lot of animals they, you know, those interests are super, um, unaligned, so they're actually trying to exploit each other through mating. And so for a very long time I thought, "This is really important. People need to know about this because it gives you a really interesting lens through which to look at why, in humans, sex and relationships and families can be so complicated." You know, sublime, beautiful, but- but complicated at the same time. Um, and so I was writing a book about that and I- I must say, it took me a long time, five or six years I was writing and writing, had screeds of stuff about all sorts of really heavy topics and, you know, a lot of, um, a lot of the sort of (sighs) what do you- wh- Guilt, I guess, about- about, you know, who am I to speak about this, um, imposter syndrome, I suppose. You know, who am I to talk about this? This is all the heavy stuff, this is the basis for all the culture wars, you know, I think I've got a lot to say here but I know I'm gonna get slammed. And eventually I tried to sell the book to people and they were all like, "This is just way too heavy, way too much." Um, but at the same time I was running a program at my university which tried to get people together to do, um, sort of interdisciplinary stuff to meet big challenges and, you know, refugees and climate change and all sorts of worthy topics, and I said, "No, we're a very technical university, we're going to do something on technology, do living with 21st century technology." And so I got to meet all the people at my university who were working on robotics and VR and, um, AI and we've got some amazing people in AI at, uh, UNSW where I work. And I met them and I got really- you know, had some really amazing conversations, took people out to dinner after events that we'd had, um, and, you know, it became very, very clear to me that they were- you know, had one eye on this, um, and, you know, whilst they're concerned about the killer robots killing us all, you know, in our sleep or autonomous weapons, et cetera, um, they also were just concerned about how- how badly, uh, machines might mess us up. And I thought there's sexual conflict theory right there. And that made a great vehicle for a book that was strangely a little bit more lighthearted and speculative, um, and interesting.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:31

      Draw

2. 3:32 – 10:02

   AI’s Role in Sexual Conflict Theory

   1. CWChris Williamson3:32

      the parallel between sexual conflict theory and AI for me. N- people may not see...

   2. RBRob Brooks3:37

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:37

      ... the immediate set of, uh, parallels.

   4. RBRob Brooks3:40

      Yeah. Okay, so, um, when you're, um, when you're in a relationship with somebody, you may find, um, that, you know, everything's going well and you're totally aligned, um, and- and you're both getting the same sort of thing out of the relationship, but you might not. You know, as I said, even a mum and a dad who love each other very much also have, uh, you know, disputes over money or over whose chance it is to, you know, take out the garbage or whatever it is. Um, even, you know, in relationships, often before you get to the point of, you know, having kids, et cetera, but, you know, not necessarily, when those relationships break down, people can do all sorts- they can mess with each other's heads, uh, so you have people, you know, stalking, you have them, you know, involved in coercive control, et cetera. The dominant view of that kind of thing is that it's, you know, bad person A does something bad to innocent person B, and that can- that can and does happen, but of course very often there is a- a kind of a mutual messing with each other's heads, you know, mismatched attachment styles, mismatched interests, poor communication, et cetera. Now, you make a machine that can emulate part of what it is to be in a relationship, that's going to have conversations with you, remember your name, remember what you're interested in, even a chatbot that might have sexy talk with you or whatever, um, the potential is there, of course, for that machine to deliver all the good things, the things that you want, but the potential is also there for that machine to, uh, to mess with your head, um, either inadvertently by not being very well put together or by having learned from the internet, because the internet as we know is a bit of a sewer, um, and- or- or it could be programmed, it could be- could be actually deliberately programmed by somebody to, you know, um... So an example would be a romance scam, if you think of the romance scams that people run, um, you know, they're very clunky, you have to be kind of vulnerable and perhaps- perhaps not at your best, um, and perhaps not that, you know, familiar with the internet, et cetera, to fall prey to, you know, a Nigerian prince who wants to take you away and- and as long as you send him, you know, um, $5,000 for the airfare. Um, but if you can imagine with machine learning, machine learning could learn from all of these scams to figure out not- not only to tailor the best approach and the best way of hooking you, but the best approach for this particular target.... um, and it can personalize it, um, and therefore exploit people for money. Um, and so all of those are possible forms of sexual conflict that are very much... have parallels in the things that people do to each other.

   5. CWChris Williamson6:19

      Right. So we have certain vulnerabilities in our mating psychology, and just in our attachment psychology generally-

   6. RBRob Brooks6:26

      Mm.

   7. CWChris Williamson6:26

      ... whether it be intimacy with a partner, intimacy with friends, the way that we want to show up in the world, and machines either on purpose or through, uh, um, maliciousness, or neglect, or ignorance, or impreciseness, all of these different ways are, uh, opportunities for somebody new that we are interacting with, whether that be artificial or not, to trigger those, and that can cause suffering e- and it can make people feel bad, and it can also make them feel good, and then after they've felt good, it can make them do things that they might not necessarily want to do.

   8. RBRob Brooks7:01

      Exactly. And, uh, you know, I mean, I... That is the doom and gloom part of it. That's the, um, the, you know, beware of the AI kind of view, of course. On the other side of it, the fact that, you know, machines are actually very, very good at engaging us and engaging those things that we all want to feel, um, and helping us to feel, uh, heard and, and even loved, that c- you know, has a, uh, 1,000 potential good outcomes as well. So I'm not completely down on the technology. There are people who would ban all of this technology. It's not even... I don't think it's, uh, even anywhere near to possible. Um, but there are people who, who wanna shut that whole thing down. Um, but it... Uh, you know, the- there- there is a tremendous amount of good there because there... On the other side, there's a massive epidemic of loneliness and disconnection, and, uh, folks who don't have the social skills necessarily, uh, you know, for, uh, you know, one-on-one adulting, et cetera, um, and there's a lot of good that can be delivered there. Um, so, so that's a good thing.

   9. CWChris Williamson8:00

      Who's this Davecat guy?

   10. RBRob Brooks8:02

       Davecat's an interesting cat. He's, um, very famous. I think he was, uh, in... Uh, I think he had a show or was on a show in the US, um, but he has been married to a sex doll for, uh, you know, over a decade. Um, Shidore is her name. Uh, she's had three bodies, uh, so there's a bit of wear and tear on these, um, on these sex dolls, you know. I think, um-

   11. CWChris Williamson8:29

       (laughs)

   12. RBRob Brooks8:29

       ... dressing them and, and ta- taking them places, et cetera, and, and they have now got three other girlfriends who live in their sort of polypod. Um, and, you know, they, they have social media presences all of their own. And Dave has said, um, in some of his conversations that he doesn't, he doesn't want to be let down by people and he doesn't want to be hurt by people, um, and so he's very happy just having this, you know, this world. Um, and I don't wanna sound too dismissive of it because it's... There is a very human kind of pathos to it, um, but, you know, he's... And, and he's very much aware, of course, that even though he, um, works through the, um... You know, works through it as if it were real and as if these were people. He's ver- also very much aware that they aren't, um, and that he's, you know, doing something unusual. But, um, speaks, you know, incredibly eloquently about how this is the right thing for him, and this is, uh, something that just, just suits what he needs, and I think that there's, um... Y- you know, I hope that there's... There'll be a r- increasing recognition that folks are going to be, um, having all sorts of kinds of relationships with their tech because, uh, the tech will, will be built. I'm pr- I'm fairly sure of that. If there's a way to make some money out of s- off it, it will be built.

   13. CWChris Williamson9:49

       Is it legal to be married to a robot?

   14. RBRob Brooks9:52

       No, I don't know that it's legally mar- married in any sense. It's, um, emulated, a marriage.

   15. CWChris Williamson9:58

       F- figuratively, symbolically-

   16. RBRob Brooks10:00

       Yeah, yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson10:00

       ... committed to... Okay.

3. 10:02 – 14:24

   How Modern Technology is Changing Sex

   1. CWChris Williamson10:02

      I also learned from you about the Lioness Vibrator and Auto Blow AI.

   2. RBRob Brooks10:08

      Yes (laughs) . So, um, you know, this is, uh, this is almost... was almost sort of old news, I guess, when I, um, was writing the book, but it was very interesting that you, you know, um, you've got sex toys, of course, that your, your partner can control, and that's a, a great thing if you're... If it's in f- uh, in the spirit of fun and, and you've, um, you know, go out or something like that, uh, with a toy inserted and, um, then they play on their app a little bit and, and, um, it's all very fun if it's done, you know, with consent and respect, et cetera, um, and this whole field is called teledildonics which, you know, the tele part is transmission, and I guess the dildonics must be-

   3. CWChris Williamson10:49

      (laughs)

   4. RBRob Brooks10:49

      ... the, the making of sex toys. Um, and now th- there are mutual kind of ones that you can have coordinated so, you know, y- you... Uh, there are ones for people with vulvas and there are ones with penises, um, and they... You, you know, whatever your co- combination of, of individual people is, you might, um, you know, pair a piece, devices up you... Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson11:15

      So it can synchronize what's happening to you and what's happening to them.

   6. RBRob Brooks11:19

      Yeah, and you can do this over the internet. So you may be on different continents, still able to have a, a kind of... You know, what used to be phone sex back in the '80s, um, is now, you know, a, a, a far more sophisticated kind of sex play that can be done at any distance because of the internet.

   7. CWChris Williamson11:37

      So what we're talking about here is, um, I guess, emotional intimacy, physical intimacy-

   8. RBRob Brooks11:45

      Yes.

   9. CWChris Williamson11:45

      ... you know, the, the two sort of broad buckets, I guess, of what people get out of their significant other. The sexual-

   10. RBRob Brooks11:53

       Yes.

   11. CWChris Williamson11:53

       ... satisfaction and then the connective satisfaction as well.

   12. RBRob Brooks11:56

       Yes.

   13. CWChris Williamson11:57

       What... Uh, how do you think this is related to, uh, VR porn and, and VR sex and stuff as well? Have you got any idea of the level of...... addictiveness, uh, compelling nature of VR porn compared with traditional porn?

   14. RBRob Brooks12:19

       Um, it's a good question. I don't, I don't have, um, have, you know, strict data on that kind of thing. VR is always at, you know, it's always just over the horizon it seems, and if you speak to people who've been watching this, they'll say VR has been promising to be all that for 30 years and it's never quite got there. Um, and, you know, part of that is the, is the processing power required to, you know, be able to process in all those directions, et cetera, um, but it's, it's obviously to be quite very good and it's becoming quite immersive and VR porn is becoming quite immersive. Now, the combining of that with, with teledildonics is going to, we- we are told, deliver this incredibly immersive experience, um, that will allow you to be basically dropped into a porn scene. The, the even more compelling part, I think, is likely to come when the VR can be adaptive, so it can actually figure out where you are and what you want and generate the scene, um, and that, um, has spontaneity, I suppose. Um, and, but, you know, will it ever turn up? We don't know. VR's made promises b- before. Hasn't really, uh, hasn't really always got there.

   15. CWChris Williamson13:36

       Yeah, it's one of those strange things, but we say that about, about VR, but look at what happened with large language models, right? We had, um, ten years ago, the, the concerns around super intelligence from guys like Nick Bostrom, what's it going to become, these ... da, da, da. And then I remember thinking toward the end of the 20-teens, all of these worries that we had a while ago just seem like they, they're completely, uh, not manifested. And then in the space of the last 12 months, it's been all that we've seen, and I think that that inflection point for specifically software, maybe less so for hardware, right? Because this is going to be a lot of, a lot of hardware stuff. But yeah, I, I can see that this is going to be the sort of thing that may very well reach a, an unforeseeable inflection point beforehand. So all of this

4. 14:24 – 19:55

   Should We Be Worried?

   1. CWChris Williamson14:24

      stuff that we've gone through, right? All of these different ways that people can become intimate, whether it be emotionally or physically. How worried do you think that we should be about this?

   2. RBRob Brooks14:34

      I think we should, I think we should be really worried about it. I think the problem with it is, and large language models is a great example because, you know, I think that we, we thought it was processing power and actually it was data. Um, and it was the methods for dealing with the data, um, and now that's, you know, those large language models have shown us that, you know, e- exceptional learning t- together with, you know, all of the data, um, delivers these incredibly impressive results. And I think that we should be really worried about that aspect because when we are dealing with machines that are, um, s- pushing our buttons, our revolve buttons that were there for us to deal with other individuals who had only their own experience and what little they could learn from the people around them. Um, so, you know, we, we could be outgunned by someone who is more experienced, but, you know, not, not profoundly. Not by orders of magnitude, really. Um, but now we are dealing with the possibility of an- and in fact, in many cases, the reality of, uh, machines that have all of the data from, uh, interactions, you know, all of the interactions, um, that, you know, might happen on the internet or that might happen even on a particular platform. Um, and so we are, we individuals, users are hopelessly outmatched by that, um, and that's a real concern because, um, the potential for, you know, for folks to be very vulnerable and to be, um, to kind of lose their agency, um, i- is, is profound.

   3. CWChris Williamson16:16

      And what are, what are the outcomes that you're, uh, nervous about here?

   4. RBRob Brooks16:22

      I'm most nervous about, um, about them kind of messing with our heads basically, about a, a, an epidemic of psychological, um, you know, not, not so much illness but, you know, um, vulnerability, um, in, in which people are, um, exploited, um, used, or just generally, um, not nourished by the, by their relationships with technologies, um, and, and in which people don't realize that that's w- what's happening. I'm not so ... I'm not as concerned about the, the VR girlfriend kind of situation in which you know that you know the Davecat of, of the, of the next era, um, in which somebody knows that they are, um, not in a real relationship and that this is different from the so-called real relationships, but it kind of pushes those buttons. I'm concerned though that when your shopping trolley at the grocery store is using what it knows about intimacy to manipulate you into buying crap you don't need or, um, or into making you feel like we feel when we've had a breakup because they know that that's gonna sell ice cream and ice cream is the thing we want to move this week or something like that. Those kinds of, um, sort of subterranean applications of artificial intimacy I think are potentially, you know, the, the most concerning. Uh, or similarly if, if there were a, um, at, at a state level some kind of actor basically could depress the mood of an entire country, um, potentially because, you know, in order to win an election or something like that via th- that kind of manipulation, I think that would be problematic.

   5. CWChris Williamson18:03

      Oh, I see. Right. Okay. So in the same way as how social media companies had a degree of insight around our motivations, what we're into, what we like and what we don't like, that opened up Cambridge Analytica to feed information back up. People could then create memes.... those memes then pushed the individual buttons that certain cohorts would find compelling to get them to vote in one direction or another. What you're saying is that in this new world with a much higher, um, density amount of information, emotionally, spiritually, physically, sexually, et cetera (clears throat) , all of these things combined together is going to really, really ramp up the amount of manipulation that can be done. And then if you don't have the proper safeguards around the boundaries of this-

   6. RBRob Brooks18:51

      Oh.

   7. CWChris Williamson18:51

      ... that, uh, uh, i- if your supermarket is indeed speaking to your dildo, that it's going to be able to push your behavior in ways that we might not want it to.

   8. RBRob Brooks19:02

      Yes. And that we might not anticipate. Um, and in fact, that will be probably protected as parts of, uh, uh, a sort of a, a commercial, this will be commercial knowledge. And so we may never find that out, um, you know, to the, to, to the full extent that, that we would want to.

   9. CWChris Williamson19:21

      Hmm.

   10. RBRob Brooks19:21

       Um, we may be manipulated in ways that we don't, um, we don't know we're being manipulated, you know. Um, concerned generally about the, about the fact that the enormous amount of data that companies have, um, and the fact that all of the big discoveries in human behavior currently are being, you know, um, mined not by scientists, uh, who have to go through ethics committees and do things ethically, et cetera, et cetera, but by, you know, companies with large amounts of data that are basically A/B testing the hell out of us. Um, yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson19:53

       Ho- how well are machines

5. 19:55 – 27:40

   How Accurately Can Machines Replicate Intimacy?

   1. CWChris Williamson19:55

      able to replicate intimacy? Is there an upper bound that they can get past? What are the sort of psychological evolved mechanisms that are being pushed and pulled?

   2. RBRob Brooks20:07

      All right. So, so intimacy is basically just, um, well, not, not just, it's, it's a profound and, and, you know, beautiful adaptation. But it's the capacity, the psychological capacity to think of the, the other person as part of ourselves. Um, so we, we fold them into our sense of self, which is why when somebody who's very close to you, um, you know, turns out to not be who they th- th- they represented themselves as, turns out to have awful politics or do something criminal or something like that, we get, we're devastated because it challenges not our sense of them but our sense of ourselves as well. When they die, it feels like part of us has died. You'll often hear that in people who are bereaved, um, because it, it, it a- is actually true, that you've lost a, a part of yourself, um, that you've psychologically filed aw- away. Um, so we build intimacy via s- series of, uh, s- series of steps, um, that, uh, the, the most, uh, well-understood are, um, called s- escalating self-disclosure. So, you know, we chat a little bit about things we did on the weekend, or we chat a little bit about our kids, or, you know, we, we, as the relationship progresses, we chat about things that are more important, more profound, and that we would chat about with fewer people to the point then, uh, when, um, our closest and most intimate individuals, we could chat about anything, including things that m- we might not be proud of, et cetera. Um, and that's how we build intimacy, um, not just talking, of course, touching as well. But, you know, whereas the apes, our, our ape ancestors had touch only, we have talk. Um, in fact, the reason that we're able to have such big friendship networks and so many intimates is that we're able to talk. It's a very efficient way of building connections and building intimacy. Um, turns out that that's exceptionally easy. It's an algorithmic process and so it's exceptionally easy for computers to emulate. Maybe not perfectly, but you know what? In many cases, better than humans do, of course, 'cause we're not all, you know, the poet laureate. We're not all, um, uh, you know, great at remembering what somebody did last week or what they told us a month ago, et cetera. A machine doesn't have any problem like that, of course, because, um, that's all in, in files. That's all accessible to it. So in many ways, um, machines are, are better than us at building certain types of intimacy. Now, from their point of view, i- is it intimacy? No, it's not. What they're doing is they're basically running a simulation, um, uh, that is plugged into us that is dependent on our sense of intimacy.

   3. CWChris Williamson22:59

      Hmm.

   4. RBRob Brooks22:59

      Um-

   5. CWChris Williamson22:59

      Does this show, does this show that human friendships are relatively algorithmic?

   6. RBRob Brooks23:04

      Yeah, absolutely. Um, I know that won't be popular with, with some listeners but, um, absolutely. We are, uh, you know, the way in which we build friendships, the way in which we fall in love is actually highly, highly algorithmic. Um, and-

   7. CWChris Williamson23:17

      You've got this, um, you've got this really great quote that says, "Friendship and love might seem magical but they don't arrive by supernatural intervention. They are built through mundane, iterative interactions, paying mutual attention, being generous, and disclosing aspects of ourselves to one another." And then the equivalent for love, "The subjective love feelings we think of as love form the middle part of the algorithm. Combinations of hormones lead to syndromes of sensation and subtle dose-dependent effects alter the quality of those sensations. Those sensations motivate individuals to take actions they would not otherwise take."

   8. RBRob Brooks23:52

      Absolutely, you know. I mean, we (laughs) , uh, it's a very strange thing that we do, getting really close to somebody who's not related, who we didn't know when we were younger, who we, in many cases, only met that evening, getting naked with them and sort of, you know, exchanging bodily fluids. It's an odd, odd thing. In no other context do we do that kind of stuff. And so, uh, except for perhaps contact sport, I suppose, um, but not always a- advertently. Um-And, and so we actually have to have an enormous bag of psychological tricks that not, make us not only think that that's a good idea, but choose to go out and do that sort of thing. Um, and that's basically-

   9. CWChris Williamson24:37

      Right.

   10. RBRob Brooks24:38

       ... intimacy.

   11. CWChris Williamson24:39

       So what you're saying is that, um, the mechanism of intimacy is-

   12. RBRob Brooks24:45

       (coughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson24:45

       ... so powerful that it causes us to put ourselves into, uh, real outlier situations, uh, high degrees of personal, emotional openness, um, physical exposure, exchanging fluids, um, you know, weakness and vulnerability or, or, or sort of fragility of lying there without your armor and your sword, or your family or-

   14. RBRob Brooks25:09

       Yep.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:09

       ... what- what- whatever these things, falling asleep with the person, um, you know, uh, giving them information that can be used as gossip, which can then be reputationally cata- catastrophic. Um, because of that, it is almost like a, a, a chink in our psychological defense armor. When you think about people that enter workplace meetings or negotiations for raises and stuff and they've just ... their whole soul, everything is switched on and, and they're vigilant and they're looking out for whatever threat and potential way to manipulate the situation. And then this is a particular area of our psychology which all of those defenses seem to fall down.

   16. RBRob Brooks25:49

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson25:49

       Uh, and in fact, we go and do things. Therefore, the fact that this is at least replicable to a certain degree artificially leaves us incredibly open and vulnerable. It's like a, um, a, a vulnerability in a piece of software, like a backdoor-

   18. RBRob Brooks26:04

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson26:04

       ... into a piece of software.

   20. RBRob Brooks26:05

       Absolutely. And, you know, um, in most cases that's, that's okay because we're both in that place. Once you establish that you're both in that place and you establish a certain amount of trust then you can both go there. Um, of course there are people who are very good at exploiting their trust and at, at, uh, uh, sort of assuring the other party that, that they're trustworthy. Um, and so they, uh, you know, they, they are able to manipulate people in that regard, you know, I'm talking sort of sociopathic kind of stuff.

   21. CWChris Williamson26:37

       Mm-hmm.

   22. RBRob Brooks26:39

       Um, but w- when, when it's with a machine, of course, it's not m- it's not symmetrical because the machine, of course, doesn't have the same set of interests, can't have the same set of interests, and it's not vulnerable in the way that we're vulnerable. It can make itself appear vulnerable.

   23. CWChris Williamson26:55

       Yeah.

   24. RBRob Brooks26:55

       It can reassure us that it s- seems vulnerable but it isn't vulnerable, not in that way. Um, and that's unfair. That's, that's a huge mismatch.

   25. CWChris Williamson27:04

       And also you have, as you said before, the power of using a very high number of iterations between not just you and it, but it and all however many hundred of thousand, million other people it's interacted with which makes it more effective at making you feel X or Y or Z. And then it can be purposefully malicious or, uh, accidentally negligent which can use this chink in the backdoor in your psychology to then really cause you damage. There's, uh, something else I was considering as well. Uh, uh, you kind of touched on it with Davekatt,

6. 27:40 – 34:26

   Impact of Constant Sexual Variety on Psychology

   1. CWChris Williamson27:40

      although I didn't realize that he'd shippethesied his way through a bunch of different AI girlfriends and had to replace the, the outer skin or whatever.

   2. RBRob Brooks27:48

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson27:49

      Um, have you considered what this will do for our evolved mating psychology given that especially men, but women too, could cycle through a lot of different partners? It's like the Coolidge effect on steroids-

   4. RBRob Brooks28:03

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson28:03

      ... almost. Whether these be virtual, whether they be virtual reality, uh, whether they be physical and you've got some monthly subscription where you go from Asian to African American to European to whatever, whatever.

   6. RBRob Brooks28:16

      Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's obviously a great deal of, of noise about pornography, has been for a very long time. Um, you know, uh, in, in the sense that, that, um, i- i- o- you know, people are, are wasting their lives, they're wasting their motivation by basically having access to all of the sexual stimulation e- emulating via, via pornography, um, you know, being out there mating all the time and therefore not needing to be, you know, motivated in that kind of Freudian sense to go forth and build an empire so that you can get the girl at the end of it, et cetera. And so there's this big concern that young men are wasting away. Now, th- that's ... (sighs) I'm really dubious about that because, um, even about the f- the few scientific studies that, you know, um, uh, show something like it, because, you know, w- i- if y- you go back 200, 300 years and look at all of the pamphlets against masturbation it's exactly the same kind of argument. There's a very strong compulsion in some people to basically s- you know, regulate what people are doing in their own bedrooms by themselves. Um, nonetheless, I think there is a certain sense that there, there's c- there's definitely ... uh, what, what is definitely true about that is that, um, with all of the access to pornography over the last 25-odd years of the internet, um, people aren't going out and finding people as much. Um, you know, they aren't necessarily ... the, the, the current generation of young people seems to be a lot less sexually active, a lot less sexually adventurous than say Generation X was, um, or even generations after that. Um, so I, I guess as this stuff gets more and more compelling it's going to take up, um ... it, it, it's ... it may firstly sap our motivation to go forth and do other things, um, and therefore to mate and have children, um, et cetera which will have evolutionary consequences because, you know, genes. Um, (sighs) but, um-

   7. CWChris Williamson30:20

      Are you seeing this advent of artificial intimacy as being related to the risk of young male syndrome?

   8. RBRob Brooks30:29

      Yes. Um, I think artificial intimacy has things to say about young male syndrome in, in, in two different ways. One is, I think that it's, um, it's likely to, to basically tap off a lot of the male anger, a lot of the, the, the sort of, um, incel kind- kind of related. So young male syndrome basically is, you know, angry young men late teens through to maybe the end of their 20s, willing to take risks, discount the future, do dangerous stuff, um, in order to rise in status and respect against relative to their peers. Um, and so that might be involved, you know, going out on a Friday night, um, and when somebody looks at you a little bit strange taking a front, um, and it ends up, you know, in, in some kind of physical violence and a tiny, tiny, tiny little number of those ends up in someone, you know, being punched, falling on the floor, you know, a- and dying as a consequence of their injury, et cetera. Um, and so, you know, we see this pattern with, uh, with, with fighting. We see it with violence, with property crime, with homicide, with traumatic brain injury that it really spikes in the 20s for young men. And that's because, um, you know, a lot of young men have no prospects at all and have, have historically throughout history had very few prospects of ever finding a mate and taking their place in society that, um, that y- would come with having a mate and possibly having kids and all of that kind of stuff. Now, your ancestors and my ancestors, however, did not have that problem because they transcend-

   9. CWChris Williamson32:04

      Hey.

   10. RBRob Brooks32:04

       (laughs) yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson32:05

       Winning team. We were the winning team.

   12. RBRob Brooks32:06

       Congratulations.

   13. CWChris Williamson32:07

       Come on.

   14. RBRob Brooks32:07

       And, and all of your listeners, you're all winners because, um, you've managed to transcend that again and again and again. Uh, because we know that-

   15. CWChris Williamson32:15

       40% of men and only 80% of women throughout history, right?

   16. RBRob Brooks32:19

       Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, so twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors, but every single one of your male ancestors managed to transcend that at least once, have sex at least once and-

   17. CWChris Williamson32:32

       I didn't know that.

   18. RBRob Brooks32:32

       ... raise a kid who managed to do the same thing.

   19. CWChris Williamson32:35

       I didn't know that. Okay. You said that-

   20. RBRob Brooks32:36

       Um-

   21. CWChris Williamson32:36

       You said artificial intimacy's got two things to say about young male syndrome.

   22. RBRob Brooks32:39

       Yeah. Okay. So, so one is, um, its potential to actually tap some of that energy, some of that which can be creative energy, but can also be incredibly destructive energy is huge. It's like pornography on steroids, as you said earlier. Um, in, in that it can, it can, um, basically deflect a lot of that, uh, which can pro- probably be a good thing, probably deliver a net benefit. Um, on the other hand, um, it can, um, y- you know, if, if artificial intimacy gets really good a- at pairing people up, we haven't talked much about the algorithmic matchmakers, but the matchmakers like currently Tinder and Grindr, et cetera, are matching people up. If they are giving us what we want, which is somebody who is way above us and, and way more attractive than us, um, et cetera, you know, which is what, what people want, they want to win in that regard. Um, and if it's delivering that, especially for women, then it may w- well be worsening the young male syndrome by narrowing things. Uh, you know, if you have to go to parties and you have to go out on dates in order to find people, in order to start conversations, et cetera, we're all constrained, but we all have 24 hours in the day. And so the, the, the opportunities to, to possibly date and mate are spread more evenly. If we're doing it instantaneously on an app by a quick left or right swipe and we're really looking at who's super attractive or who presents themselves really well, we can get this incredible narrowing down to a few super attractive individuals who are gonna be having, you know, a rampant time on the apps, um, and a lot of people who are getting nothing at all.

   23. CWChris Williamson34:23

       Mm.

   24. RBRob Brooks34:23

       And that could worsen young male syndrome.

7. 34:26 – 40:18

   The Problem with Algorithmic Matchmaking

   1. RBRob Brooks34:26

   2. CWChris Williamson34:26

      Yeah. What did you look at to do with the algorithmic matchmaking stuff? Have you seen it as a heaven or a hell?

   3. RBRob Brooks34:33

      I've seen it as currently, currently descending into a potential hell-

   4. CWChris Williamson34:38

      (laughs)

   5. RBRob Brooks34:38

      ... um, on account of the fact that, you know, folks have figured out what they can do and, you, you know, they wanna keep people on platforms, so they want to keep presenting people with a possibility of meeti- meeting somebody who's super attractive. Um, whereas if... For them, for it to work in a, in a, in a more, um, benign kind of way in which, uh, people match up to other people who, um, you know, where the relationship really works, it- there's a lot more learning involved. You know, those, those dating platforms that say that they match you to somebody who's compatible, who... or who's like what you want, or this is the app we want you to delete because you're gonna find your, you know, the one, et cetera, they don't know anything at the moment. They really don't, as far as I can tell, have any special insights into it. The... Currently what we, what we're looking at is, um, platforms that are able to present a, a catalog of things that look good-

   6. CWChris Williamson35:36

      Mm.

   7. RBRob Brooks35:37

      ... um, and, and then i- instead of the app doing the work, you're basically doing the work of swiping and messaging and finding, you know, then going on dates. Um, I don't... I, I, I... Like I said right at the, at the beginning of the show, people... I, I, I'm reluctant to ever say machines can't do that or won't do that because that, that'll always prove us wrong. At the moment, machines aren't figuring out the best ways of pairing people for what it is they want. And part of that's because people themselves don't necessarily know what they want. But as soon as-

   8. CWChris Williamson36:10

      Correct.

   9. RBRob Brooks36:11

      ... the apps can learn indirectly from us what it is that we want and deliver to us what we want, then that's a-

   10. CWChris Williamson36:19

       I think they, uh-

   11. RBRob Brooks36:20

       ... likely to be a really good thing.

   12. CWChris Williamson36:21

       Yeah. I think that they already are in some regard. The problem is what we click on and who we click with don't align very much.

   13. RBRob Brooks36:29

       Yes.

   14. CWChris Williamson36:29

       The things that people optimize for, for swiping right and the things that are predictive of a long-term successful relationship-... often have basically zero correlation. Like, yeah, they need to get you across the line. Like, you need to have an initial attraction to somebody, the same as in a bar, right? You, if-

   15. RBRob Brooks36:46

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson36:46

       ... if there's someone, they need to really, really overcompensate with humor or charm or the way that they move or whatever it might be if you're not physically attracted to them, which is why physical attraction, you know, the black pill gets some of this stuff right, that looks are very, very important and they can often be a doorway that is either open or closed.

   17. RBRob Brooks37:01

       Mm.

   18. CWChris Williamson37:01

       But (clears throat) on the apps, what you are optimizing for is, uh, education level, implied socioeconomic status, and attraction, and age, um, and h-height, I guess. And within that, it means that none of, pretty much none of those things have any predictive power when it comes to long-term relationship satisfaction. But the only information that the apps get about you are your response to those criteria, because they're not-

   19. RBRob Brooks37:29

       Hm.

   20. CWChris Williamson37:29

       ... going away and observing your interactions with this person over the next three month act- uh, perhaps blissful beginning of your lifetime partnership or total catastrophe that ends up in you hating each other and deleting each other from all social media. They don't actually see the stuff that people are optimizing for in the back end. They just see what they're, what they're swiping left or right for-

   21. RBRob Brooks37:49

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson37:49

       ... on the front end. And yeah, that, that leads to both the apps and the users gaming the system.

   23. RBRob Brooks37:55

       Yes.

   24. CWChris Williamson37:56

       So the users, the, the, the women will try and overemphasize their looks. The men will try and overemphasize their socioeconomic status and their height. You know, i- i- it just creates a, a game of selection criteria that then the users reverse engineer to try and work out what works. Then it's a battle between human psychology and an algorithm, again, just back and forth, back and forth.

   25. RBRob Brooks38:17

       Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's a classic sexual conflict. Again, it's an arms race. Um, and, but instead of the arms race b- being between women and men, it's an arms race between women and the app, men and the app, um, and to some extent, you know, b- between women and men indirectly, um, uh, as a consequence of that. And, um, you know, and I don't blame the people who make the apps. What they're doing is they're creating something, a marketplace for busy people who live in busy places, um, in these en- enormous cities in most cases. You know, humans did not evolve to, to live in cities of millions of people. Um, you know, we still have communities of 150 to 200 people that we interact with. Um, and our social circles spread outwards from there. Um, and, and, you know, l- current urban living just doesn't, um, doesn't deliver on that kind of thing. And so, you know, the, the, the apps are tremendously successful in one way, in, uh, all the ways that you just described. Um, but there is a real, a real space in the market for people to, um, to find what they, um, what they really want. Uh, but th- they have to know what they really want first. And that's, you know, most of us don't.

   26. CWChris Williamson39:32

       Rob, have you got a dog that's snoring next to you?

   27. RBRob Brooks39:35

       I do. Can you hear him?

   28. CWChris Williamson39:37

       Yeah, give him a nudge for me. He's cute. I like him. But give him a, let's wake him up a little bit. He's, everyone can hear him snoring. Millions of people are listening to your-

   29. RBRob Brooks39:45

       (sighs)

   30. CWChris Williamson39:45

       ... poor doggo snoring now.
8. 40:18 – 51:25

   What’s Causing Increased Male Incel Violence?

   1. CWChris Williamson40:18

      why do you think it is that we haven't got more in cell violence, going back to that young male syndrome, uh, question that we spoke about before? Because given the rates of loneliness and sexlessness that we have at the moment, especially young, young men, especially in the cohort of men that would do the risk-taking behavior to try and get that status up, I- it seems to me that there does seem to be pretty good evidence that men are being sedated out of this, you know, reproductive and status-seeking behavior through a, a little titrated dose of community through s- porn, uh, through, uh, video games and social media and, and probably reproductive cues through porn.

   2. RBRob Brooks40:53

      Yeah, I think that's exactly right. It's, you know, you, there's 24 hours in a day, and if you spend time doing the, the things that compel you and that emulate the, you know, violent war-mongering s- competition for status and respect as well as, as well as give you the sense that you, at, at some level, um, you know, attractive or at least, you're stimulated in a way that's c- like having sex with an attractive person, um, that, that's enough to neutralize that for a lot of people. They may not be happy, they may not be better off for it, um, individually, but it certainly completely neutralizes that, and I think that that's, that's, um, a massive benefit that, uh, is, you know, hard to sell to some people, to the, to the puritans, um, but I think that it's, it's something that's, that, uh, really has, has worked. Um, compare that with, you know, there are parts of the world in which, um, access to that, that kind of technology and to those kinds of, um, things are, you know, not, not really possible, um, and in which access to mating markets that are, only c- get to go through traditional ways. Um, and, uh, in, in those parts of the world, you still have a, um, a, a tremendous amount of radicalization of young men, of, uh, polarization of young men against, um, older men, against families, et cetera, um, and you see e- enormous amounts of incel violence. It might not be popular to say that, you know, the, the odd North American incel who goes out on a rampage, um, is in a way the, uh, the abhorrent kind of tip of an iceberg that is actually historically been a, a much bigger iceberg-

   3. CWChris Williamson42:42

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   4. RBRob Brooks42:43

      ... um, and his- and is still...... in a lot of parts of the world. Uh, but you know, uh, it's, it's true that, you know, where, where mating markets are fr- frees young men out, either because they have to pay bride price and many men can't afford it, or because there's a massively male-biased sex ratio. Um, those are places where young men radicalize and fall into violence, property crime, uh, gangsterism, drug addiction, mental health problems, um, in, in other parts of the world.

   5. CWChris Williamson43:12

      What are, uh, what are your favorite examples of young male syndrome throughout history or across the world? And then, how were they dealt with? Are there any, uh, examples of this that you think of, sort of particularly interesting or illuminative?

   6. RBRob Brooks43:28

      Well, I think, um, uh, s- part of the, the history of European colonialism is, uh, one of sort of second and third and fourth sons who had no prospect-

   7. CWChris Williamson43:38

      Is this, is this Portugal? Portuguese, Spain?

   8. RBRob Brooks43:39

      Yeah, Portugal in particular. Yes, yes. You know, to, to, um, very, very few prospects to basically, um, inherit land. Um, and so they had to go forth and into the military or into some kind of colonial expedition. And, you know, large numbers of them died. They were, in many respects, to their families, expendable, um, as long as the heir lived long enough, um, to inherit and to have kids of his own. Um, and so they would have to go forth and make, make something of themselves or die trying. That's, uh, you know, classic get rich or die trying scenario. Um, other favorite examples, uh, in, in sort of Imperial China, um, entire dynasties came to an end, um, o- occasionally when, uh, a sex ratio bias as a consequence of the neglect, um, of young, young girls and often infanticide of young girls resulted in very biased sex ratios. Um, and when that sort of got built up and built up and sort of got ho- out of hand, you would find that the young men would, um, th- those that were frozen out of the mating market would form militias and gangs and armies eventually. Um, and sometimes those armies overthrew the entire regime. Um, and (sighs) the other side of it is that, um, you know, in, in most of history, and by history I really mean recorded history, you know, um, over the last 12,000 years or so, um, you know, people were, were at war so often. Um, e- every, every generation or two, there would be some kind of a, a big war and that war would basically, um, eliminate so many young men that, um, those that survived had, you know, a campaign behind them, they had that status, they had that respect, um, and they were able to, to have families of their own. But it, um, it's by biasing the sex ratio to, towards a female-biased sex ration, young male syndrome was neutralized.

   9. CWChris Williamson45:43

      Oh.

   10. RBRob Brooks45:43

       Um, and that's not to say that, you know, war is good because it, it neutralizes-

   11. CWChris Williamson45:47

       Calls the men, yeah.

   12. RBRob Brooks45:48

       ... young male incel anger, but, uh, eh, the net effect is that, um, incel anger within the society never got bad enough to, to destabilize the society.

   13. CWChris Williamson45:59

       Do you think that that is a contributor then that we haven't had a large-scale conflict for quite a wh- you know, approaching 100 years now? Um, whether you want to look at it demographically in that a large chunk of men just haven't been removed due to casualties of war, uh, whether it's more sort of socioeconomically that the men that did go away and came back, that they had, um, more status, that they were seen as, as heroic which raised their mate value which made it easier for them to partner up or whether it was, uh, I guess a venting outlet for the disgruntled young high testosterone male rage to be taken out on a bunch of other people and they can come back and kind of almost-

   14. RBRob Brooks46:39

       (clears throat)

   15. CWChris Williamson46:40

       ... live the Thanos after he kills half of the universe life of, of, uh, feeling, you know, at, at peace and serene. With PTSD perhaps, but, you know, relatively serene. Um, (clears throat) is there, is there something happening there do you think, the fact that we haven't had a large-scale conflict in that way?

   16. RBRob Brooks46:56

       I think it's, I think it's surprising, um, and not, uh, not the, the lack of the conflict of course, um, you know, but it's one of those good news stories that's hard to spin because, um, you know, war is generally bad anyway and delivers so many negative externalities. Um, but the, um, yeah, I, I completely agree with you that it's, um, it's amazing that young male syndrome, uh, that sort of incel anger and violence isn't much, much, much greater. And I think-

   17. CWChris Williamson47:32

       Yeah.

   18. RBRob Brooks47:32

       ... that a huge amount of that is, is that, you know, this culture that is very sex oriented and very much about delivering, you know, experiences, whether that's in cinema or, or computer games or social media that basically push our buttons that make us feel like we've arrived and make us feel like we're living that life that people might have aspired to live two generations ago, um, has in fact neutralized a lot of that young male anger, um, in, in surprising ways. And that's, you know, when you wanna complain about popular culture, you've got to take into account the fact that it's probably done, you know, even, even though some of it's a bit heinous and, and, um, uh, you know, uh, a bit concerning for other reasons, it's probably neutralized all sorts of violence and antisocial behavior and that's pretty good.

   19. CWChris Williamson48:24

       Yeah. It's such a, a fascinating area. William Costello from, uh, UT is-

   20. RBRob Brooks48:29

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson48:29

       ... writing a, writing a paper on precisely this. I actually got quoted in my first ever academic paper-

   22. RBRob Brooks48:34

       Nice.

   23. CWChris Williamson48:35

       ... uh, for, for having coined the term that he's using for this which is the male sedation hypothesis.

   24. RBRob Brooks48:40

       Nice.

   25. CWChris Williamson48:41

       Uh, so yeah, I've got a, my first ever quotation which is, which is pretty cool. And, um, you know, it, it's just it's really interesting to think, okay, everybody has a problem, everybody rails against modern culture, it's transactional, it's treating people like objects, it's atomizing society, everyone's an individual, there's this massive amount of solipsism, this sort of belief that the self is all that matters, we have all of this stuff combined together and yet-... it can be true that that might be suboptimal and not might be, uh, might be what we don't want, but also that it's probably stopped some of the imbalances in the mating market with regards to male and female mate value from spilling out into causing, like, real, real social upheaval, like, genuine-

   26. RBRob Brooks49:26

       Mm.

   27. CWChris Williamson49:27

       ... you know, daily mass murders that occur, uh, uh, in multiple locations across the planet. I mean, dude, the fact that Korea is a country that is able to just, uh, operate in any way at all, birthrate of, like, 0.8. You've got these women in the street. Have you heard of the Four Bes, uh, Movement?

   28. RBRob Brooks49:47

       No.

   29. CWChris Williamson49:47

       It's, it's like four words in, in Korean, "Buy something, buy something, buy something, and buy something else." And it's like, no men, no work, no patriarchy, and no what-

   30. RBRob Brooks49:55

       (coughs)
9. 51:25 – 1:04:17

   Why Gender Pay Gaps May Be a Good Thing

   1. CWChris Williamson51:25

      also looked at why bigger gender pay gaps mate- mating markets better and easier for both sexes.

   2. RBRob Brooks51:35

      Yes. Yeah, so you t- you spoke earlier when we were talking about the, the matchmaking algorithms about, um, you know, uh, people wanting, women wanting to partner with men who are taller than them, um, or, or tall or whatever it is, um, and who have soc- some socioeconomic status. And, you know, um, people get very upset when you say that, but it's, it's quite obvious and quite transparent, um, in many cases. Um, and, and similarly, you know, men wanting to, to partner with women who have certain attributes as well. Now, it doesn't need to be a sophisticated preference. It could be as simple as, you know, "I will only look at people who are as tall as I am and who are as wealthy as I am," um, for it to actually have a massive net effect. You know, even if there are people who are willing to, to, to go the other way round, you still see this super concentration of opportunities amongst those who are both tall and have, uh, have great, um, uh, earning potential. Now, um, whe- when that happens, um, if there's a gender gap, uh, in, in earnings or income or wealth or whatever measure you want to use, when there's a gender gap, it means that there are more men. It g- it c- runs deeper into the socioeconomic kind of scale of men who present some kind of an opportunity. Let's say, uh, you know, a gender gap of, of, uh, one standard deviation, um, is likely to, to result in instead of 50% of men earning more than the average woman, now 70% of men earn more than the average women. Um, and so when, when you look at that, um, you see that those places where there's a squeeze in the mating market, the, the, where, where, um, some people are left out, like the incels, that gets much smaller. So with the gender pay gap of, um, you know, w- where m- men outearn women on average, you see there are fewer men at risk of becoming incels, at risk of being frozen out of the mating market. Um, there are also fewer women at the other end of the scale. It's, in, i- in this case, it's the women with, um, who earn a lot of money or who have a lot of money who don't necessarily have, uh, aren't, aren't really able to deliver on their own preferences. Um, and so, you know, at that end, the, the families of rich daughters, uh, sorry, the, the families with rich daughters are often families that, where, where the daughters don't end up partnering throughout history. Um, and so, uh, yeah, the, the, uh, uh, a gap in, i- in incomes has that effect. Interestingly, income inequality, that is, differences within a sex, have a similar kind of effect. Um, but in this case, it's high inequality de- delivers more incels. Um, and so we did some work where we, um, scraped, like, all of the Twitter for 14 years. This colleague, C- Candice Blake of, um, has this amazing resource where she's got all these tweets, um, that she's, she's, you know, downloaded over a period of time before Uncle Elon decided that we could only read a small amount of his proprietary, uh, you know, data. Um, and, um, we, we geolocated them. She del- you know, created this really cool algorithm that basically was able to geolocate tweets, so you didn't have to rely just on the people who said where they were from in their bio, but you could infer in other ways where they were from. Um, and we then looked at ones associated with the kinds of terms incels would use, their little in-group language, um, and we showed that, uh, the places...... in the world where the incels are, um, most active are in fact places that have narrow gender pay gaps, so we're going, moving towards gender equity, um, and high income inequality, and, um, sex ratios that are slightly biased towards more men. Um, so all the things that you would expect mating markets to deliver a squeeze on, you know, more angry young men down at the bottom of the socio- socioeconomic status ladder who are gonna be upset about that. All of those things delivered more incels within the United States, uh, which was pretty cool.

   3. CWChris Williamson55:55

      Why the high income inequality? What, what, what role does that play?

   4. RBRob Brooks56:00

      High income inequality creates a situation in which there are fewer men who are attractive. They're super attractive because they're right up at the top of the, the, the income scale making enormous amounts of money. Um, and, um, in the case of the way that we modeled this mathematically, it's really just, you know, no women wanted to pair with the, with the men down at the bottom end. But the tail of, um, of men who don't earn enough to be worth the bother of partnering with, um, their tail, because it's, uh, it's a very flat distribution, um, i- is bigger. And so the-

   5. CWChris Williamson56:36

      Right.

   6. RBRob Brooks56:36

      ... higher proportion of men are just not earning enough because those men that are earning the most money are taking most of the money.

   7. CWChris Williamson56:43

      Understood, yeah.

   8. RBRob Brooks56:44

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson56:44

      And then, uh, Candice also found that in areas with high income inequality, women self-objectify more, right?

   10. RBRob Brooks56:51

       Yes.

   11. CWChris Williamson56:51

       They post more sexy selfies.

   12. RBRob Brooks56:53

       Yes. Yeah, so that was, that was the first paper, um, in that series where she basically pulled out Twitter and Instagram stuff. Um, and so the idea here is that, um, there may be two ways in which women benefit from sexy selfies. You know, the, the current narrative about this in academic circles is that self-objectification is catering to the male gaze, it's, it's females being disempowered by, you know, the patriarchy, et cetera. Um, and so what we wanted to say was, "Well, let's have a look at this." It's just places where women don't have, you know, education, access to jobs, access to income, et cetera. Are those other places where you find, um, uh, lots of sexy selfies? And they aren't, that's not consistent at all. But what is the case is that high income inequality, um, is a, you know, uh, places where there's high income inequality are places in which women are likely to self-objectify through sexy selfies. They're also likely to spend more looking at economic data on grooming, hair products, clothing, et cetera, et cetera. The argument is that either, um, uh, e- either it's, um, w- w- b- women basically looking to partner up and so they're advertising what they can offer on the mating market in terms of their looks and they're trying to, you know, partner up to get one of those extremely wealthy young men or p- potential partners in the high income inequality situation in order to ... because you can climb more in social mobility. Um, or they themselves are looking for other types of economic opportunities. You know, being attractive is likely to give you more influencer roles, better jobs, um, et cetera. Um, and it could be both of those, of course.

   13. CWChris Williamson58:38

       Yeah. Fascinating. Again, another thing that's hard to hold, you know, two conflicting thoughts in your mind at one time, which is that allowing women to have access socioeconomically in terms of education to be able to liberate themselves from being reliant on a male partner is a good thing. It means that they-

   14. RBRob Brooks58:57

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson58:57

       ... don't need to get into suboptimal relationships. (clears throat) It means that, you know, they're, they're not beholden to staying in a relationship which could be abusive or could be terrible or whatever, because without it, they are nothing, they're out on the street p- potentially with a child.

   16. RBRob Brooks59:11

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson59:11

       Um, but on the flip side, it makes their dating prospects worse.

   18. RBRob Brooks59:15

       Yes.

   19. CWChris Williamson59:15

       It makes their dating prospects more difficult. And this is, again, uh, you're just tripping through all the different memes I've come up with over the last year. This is what I've called the tall girl problem. So it's so hilarious that you started this with the height example that-

   20. RBRob Brooks59:28

       Yes.

   21. CWChris Williamson59:28

       ... as a woman rises up through her own socioeconomic hierarchy, she reduces down the number of men that are above and across from her, which limits her own dating potential. This is, uh, again, fantastic for their independence and, uh, and employment and, you know, uh, everything. It's really re- brilliant. But it is a fact that it makes dating more difficult.

   22. RBRob Brooks59:48

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson59:49

       It absolutely makes dating more difficult until women are able to overcome their hypergamous nature. And from that, you know, there's a conversation, it's so common on the internet, the, um, the, the double standard that happens on the internet of people saying, "Well, look. Women, they have no idea what their standards should be. All of these girls are three out of tens, they think that they want an eight out of ten man." I'm like, "Look. You're using a, a failure of cross-sex mind reading here. You're looking at a woman from the outside for the most part." This is, again, there are, uh, uh, both men and women that are massively, massively delusional about what their mate value is, don't get me wrong. And that may-

   24. RBRob Brooks1:00:27

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:00:28

       ... be even the majority, right? That may be a useful form of self-deception that we all have. But the bottom line is that a lot of the time when men look at women who say, uh, uh, give criteria about the kind of man that they want, what they're looking at that ... it's a failure of cross-sex mind reading, they're saying, "Look. I'm, uh, judging you, woman, based on how you present physically, perhaps based on your age, perhaps based on whether or not you're coming into this with a child." What the woman is saying is, "I am basing this judgment of the man around his socioeconomic status," maybe a lot of the time because she's got two degree, maybe a bachelor's and a master's, and she earns six figures a year. Maybe she earns, you know, uh, uh, uh, very, very high net worth. Maybe she's already got a house. Maybe she doesn't care that she's already got a kid. And th- the failure comes from the fact that the men think, "Well, what I want from you is youth, fertility, and attractiveness. What you want from me is socioeconomic status."... what you're offering to me is socioeconomic status, and what I'm not offering to you is not the money that you're after.

   26. RBRob Brooks1:01:28

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:01:29

       So, um, yeah, i- i- it's a really interesting, uh, uh, discussion that goes on here between the two, and I think it's largely down to a lack of, uh, education about the other sex's mating psychology.

   28. RBRob Brooks1:01:42

       Yeah, absolutely. I think an understanding of the, of the mating psychology r- is potentially really helpful to a lot of people to figuring out why it is that they're frozen out. You know, the number of, the number of people I've met over time who are, you know, tall women, wealthy, highly educated women, who have had to choose to have children on their own, you know, completely solo is enormous. Um, and that's not the case for, you know, people who are shorter or, or not, don't earn as much, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and so you, you can't necessarily, you know, reconcile all of those things. I mean, no, you can, but, you know, you're, the odds are stacked against you. Um, and I think that if people understood this a little bit more, they'd understand why they are where they are. But that doesn't change the psychology of it, of course, because, you know, partners are, are wonderful but they're also a lot of work. They're also a lot of bother. And what we see in, in a lot of the data, um, is that as a couple, you know, starts out with the man earning more or during, during, um, you know, childbearing times, the man's earning more, et cetera. Um, and then as, as she, where she starts to, to, um, her, her income starts to go up faster than his, to the point where it matches, you get this, um, this cliff that the couples fall off. As soon as she starts earning more than him, they fall off this divorce cliff, basically, in which, um, it is no longer, you know, the relationship, uh, just is less likely to persist. And those couples that do persist tend to persist because she decides to work part-time or she basically starts to play wife a whole lot more, which is to compensate by doing ... even though she's earning more than him, by doing more around the house and more gendered domestic things, um, in a way-

   29. CWChris Williamson1:03:33

       Wow, so you're saying that, you're saying that sort of typically female housework is a prophylactic against overachieving socioeconomic women in divorce from their marriage?

   30. RBRob Brooks1:03:47

       Yeah, and I think it's a, it's a prophylactic against, like, hurt male feels, basically. Um, as, as-
10. 1:04:17 – 1:08:10

    How Out-Earning Partners Impacts Men & Women Differently

    1. CWChris Williamson1:04:17

       that happens, uh, that gets brought up. How much of this issue with the woman outearning the man as, whether it be breadwinner, whether it be education or whatever, especially when you get, um, changes in mate value with regards to socioeconomic status within a relationship that's already existing, how much of this do you think comes female to male, and how much do you think of this comes male to female? How much of it is the woman, um, like, her hypergamy switch being turned off? And how much of this do you think is the man's, uh, like, uh, in- inadequacy switch being turned on?

    2. RBRob Brooks1:04:54

       Um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, the, the, the obvious-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:04:57

       I'd love to work that out.

    4. RBRob Brooks1:04:58

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:04:58

       I'd love to pull that apart somehow.

    6. RBRob Brooks1:05:00

       It would ... Um, uh, we definitely know that, um, it's, there, there's a big female side part of that decision, in that, um, divorces in those kinds of couples, in sort of wealthy, two, both working couples in places like the United States or Australia, et cetera, divorces tend to be more often initiated by women. And, and it's, uh, the, the kind of narrative that I've seen around this kind of research has been, you know, there's this baseline level of maintenance that, you know, men are sli- somewhat high maintenance for women. They are, um, they work, um, and so their work needs to be compensated by some kind of advantage, and when that advantage withers, um, it becomes something that, that, um, you know, the women decide is not worth the bother anymore. "I'm not achieving social mobility through being with you. Um, there's not, y- you know, this deal isn't really working out for me anymore." Um, that said, I don't know that the other side of it has been examined to a sufficient degree. Common sense would suggest that it's both dir- both directions because it is a mutual negotiation.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:06:08

       Yeah, it also ... Uh, I, I agree and I understand women account for whatever it is, 70% of divorces. It is massively skewed in their favor for who makes the decision. But you don't know why they did that.

    8. RBRob Brooks1:06:22

       That's true.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:06:22

       You know, if, if the man is behaving in a manner that pushes the woman to and beyond her limit, then of course.

    10. RBRob Brooks1:06:31

        Yeah.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:06:31

        So although i- it's a very sort of common held trope that, well, you know, women do this many percent of divorces, that's not necessarily because she's the one that caused the issue. Don't get me wrong, tons and tons of women are bitches in relationships and marriages. I, I get it, right? But it could be a response to the man. Like, there's also a stat, um, the average time that it takes for someone in a relationship to say that "I love you" is three months, if they're going to do it, and it is the man the overwhelming majority of the time. It is so proportionally-

    12. RBRob Brooks1:07:05

        (laughs)

    13. CWChris Williamson1:07:06

        ... uh, th- the majority of the time, it is the male-

    14. RBRob Brooks1:07:07

        Really?

    15. CWChris Williamson1:07:08

        ... that says, that says "I love you" first. Yeah, almost always. Almost always. It's huge because it's like, it's like maybe four in five or three in five-

    16. RBRob Brooks1:07:15

        Wow.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:07:15

        ... or something like that. It's a huge number of them. Um, so there's a lot of things that you, that maybe don't necessarily make sense at first, and then you actually dig into the data and you realize, hmm, there's something going on here. It's kind of interesting.

    18. RBRob Brooks1:07:27

        Yeah. Okay. Well, that's very interesting, I think. Um-... you know, I think that, that some of the, the more, y- you know, we t- we talked about some of the less wholesome things that people do like, you know, the kind of love bombing associated with, um, g- you know, which is a precursor to coercive and controlling behavior in relationships and those kinds of, you know, trying to sweep people off their feet, et cetera, is a very male-based str- strategy. And I think it probably taps into female mating psychology, um, and that's why it tends to be so effective.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:07:59

        Oh, the over-optimizing for that emotional connection on the front end because they know that that's the sort of thing that would get them sexual access on the back end.

    20. RBRob Brooks1:08:07

        Yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:08:07

        Very good. There's two, two

11. 1:08:10 – 1:11:04

    The Benefits of Dating Attractive Men Outweigh the Costs

    1. CWChris Williamson1:08:10

       studies of yours that I saw from quite a while ago. One to do with the indirect benefits of mating with attractive males outweighing the direct costs. Can you remember that one?

    2. RBRob Brooks1:08:21

       Yes. Um, I think that was in, uh, house crickets. So, um, so indirect benefits are, um, basically genetic benefits. Um, so it's, it sounds very interesting if you're imagining it being a, a human, um, situation, but, um, y- you know, in, in the, the pop evolutionary psych literature, you would've, you know, come across this idea that, you know, what women are doing when they're looking for a, a man is gene shopping. Um, and for about 30, 40 years, the, um, people who work on a- animal behavior have been arguing about this idea of can an individual benefit genet- uh, sort of in an, in an evolutionary sense by, um, mating with a superior genetic specimen. Seems kind of obvious, but, um, the, the, the benefit in terms of having, um, uh, of, of mating with an, a good genetic s- um, specimen is that your offspring are gonna inherit half of that good genetic specimen's genes, including some of the good genes. And then when they ha- you know, go through life and they'll, they'll, um, flourish more and are more likely to be attractive, et cetera, et cetera. So, um, actually a very difficult thing to prove with any, you know, level of, of, um, certainty. Uh, what we do know is that there's often direct benefits. That is, uh, you know, if, uh, the male delivers food or protection or help or whatever, that can raise the number of offspring that the female has. Um, and in this case, direct costs I think was that attractive male crickets actually kind of, um, are a little bit nastier to mate with, and so they actually re- suppress the number of offspring that the female has, um, but they're genetically superior, and so this was one of the-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:10:05

       Quality is sufficiently high.

    4. RBRob Brooks1:10:07

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:10:07

       Yeah, very interesting.

    6. RBRob Brooks1:10:08

       One of the first situations that did this. I'm very dubious when I see the, the emphasis that's placed on genetic benefits in mate choice in humans. Not to say that there aren't any. There obviously are. But, um, but those are, are often the tr- dramatic kind of genetic benefits of mating with s- somebody who's, um, you know, uh, a fully functioning human being pr- pretty much, um, who doesn't have ... you know, isn't profoundly inbred, um, i- which has historically been a really important thing. Um, doesn't have a, a very weak immune system, et cetera. So, you know, we're cued into that kind of stuff, but, you know, um, you know, most people in healthy easygoing kind of societies, um, today don't have that much genetic benefit to deliver that would, um, that would drive that weird process by which preferences evolve.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:11:03

       So

12. 1:11:04 – 1:20:06

    The Next Decade of AI Intimacy

    1. CWChris Williamson1:11:04

       going back to the AI stuff, you wrote your book a little while ago, c- like-

    2. RBRob Brooks1:11:07

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:11:07

       ... two years ago, but that's a lifetime ago in the-

    4. RBRob Brooks1:11:11

       Yes.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:11:11

       ... world of AI. What didn't you predict? And given your perspective on this, what do you think we should expect over the next five to 10 years from this world?

    6. RBRob Brooks1:11:24

       I think, um, what I didn't predict, I didn't ... I, what I didn't emphasize as much as I probably would have liked to have done was that, um, uh, the capacity to, for chat to be so good, um, the capacity for conversation to be so good. I think, you know, the, the, um ... I think that was by far the most interesting part of the book for me to write, was the stuff about forming intimacy, about forming relationships, et cetera. Um, you know, but obviously the titillating thing everybody wants to know about the sex robots and the teledildonics, et cetera, and that is absolutely fascinating. But it's quite clear now with the big explosion in large language models, um, and in, you know, the ch- chat bots that are based on that, um, it's, it's incredible to see the progress that some of the new kind of, um, romance AI chat bots, um, are able to deliver. And I would double down on my concerns about them messing with our heads or just taking up our time and displacing other activities, social activities, that we should be doing.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:12:30

       Mm-hmm. And what about the future? What do you think's coming up over the next five to 10 years?

    8. RBRob Brooks1:12:35

       What I would like to see is, um, some AI development going into, um, sort of defense I guess. So it's, um, like in a, you know, the antiviruses. When, when computer viruses first came out, we were all vulnerable to them, and then various people started developing antivirus software, and now that runs in the background and basically just tells us the very, very rare occasion where we are threatened by something. Um, you know, it, it helps us, helps to defend us against this. I would like to see ... I don't think that we can rely on our own vigilance, um, to realize when we're being scammed by, like you said, the, um, you know, our, our supermarket tr- uh, virtual trolley controlling our dildo, et cetera. But, um, I, yeah, I, I would, I would like to see some defense side technologies that could be deployed for users, um, to basically defend us against not just bad actors, but manipulation, um, because I think that the capacity for man- manipulation is so great, um, and the way it gets under our skin, it ... we're so vulnerable to. Um, so that would, would definitely be something I think would be huge in the future.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:13:47

       Yeah. I, I, I've thought about this a lot, you know, this sort of current sex-negative trend. It's not even sex-negative, it's like human sex-negative or intimacy-negative trend that we're seeing at the moment, this sex recession or the mating crisis. And, uh, as with many things, including fast food, what is good for you and what is enjoyable don't always align, and you can often do the thing which is enjoyable and easy and convenient in place of something that's good for you, and that can continue to take hold. And we love the idea of, you know, channeling our inner Rye- Ryan Holiday and becoming the Marcus Aurelius' sort of stoic, virtuous man, and I'm gonna (clears throat) recant this new world of fake connection and fake love and fake trolley dildos, and I'm gonna make it out on my own and touch grass and do all this stuff. But, you know, all of us, every single day, are tempted by these very convenient, very pleasurable, very enjoyable experiences. You know, we take our phones to the bathroom. We watch-

    10. RBRob Brooks1:14:45

        Mm-hmm.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:14:45

        ... YouTube, we watch YouTube while we eat lunch as opposed to talking to someone next to us or just allowing our mind to have its thoughts, because boredom and discomfort has been reduced down. It's been eroded away so much that it, it, it's very easy for us to do this. So, at the moment, I'm, I'm not massively hopeful, I don't think, for people pulling themselves away from it, and there are some positives to this. You know, combating loneliness, um, r- reducing down the risk of young male syndrome, perhaps even offering companionship to women that are socioeconomically very successful and maybe struggling, uh, to find that partner that they genuinely do desire, which is, you know, just something that it doesn't seem is gonna slow down any time soon. Um, but I, I, I just, I wonder whether that's what's best for people. I wonder whether artificial intimacy is better than no intimacy at all, and whether the net benefit or the net negative of this actually ends up w- or which side of the scale it ends up, uh, falling out on. Like, is it ... Is the sedation, uh, is th- th- the fact that you're no longer motivated to go out and do s- do something, meet people in the real world yourself, is the titrated dose of real world connection worth that? And then, you know, (clears throat) downstream, let's say that it is or it isn't, it doesn't really matter. If that's what people are going to do, you are 100% going to face some genuine externalities like population collapse, and, and that's just regardless of whether it's better for people or worse, until you've got IVG and wombs, uh, artificial wombs, you're, you're fucked on that front. So real-

    12. RBRob Brooks1:16:21

        (laughs)

    13. CWChris Williamson1:16:21

        ... real inflection point of change, I think, at the moment.

    14. RBRob Brooks1:16:24

        Enormous. You know, absolutely enormous, and proliferating in ways that, that we don't anticipate either. Um, and yeah, I, I think it's really important t- to not get too doom and gloom about it because, you know, you're absolutely right. Um, you know, th- Terry Turkle says, you know, "Robots may be better than nothing, but they're not enough," and I would say in response to that, um, they're better than nothing, and that's all that some people have. You know, because there is s- so much loneliness out there. Um, and, you know, I, I think that the Replika.AI, um, romance bot that, um, you know, recently they, they sort of shut off their erotic role play because they had a, a licensing issue, et cetera, and, you know, people were bereft. They really, this, for them, this was a very real relationship. They know it's not a real relationship, but, but it feels real and it pushes real buttons for them, and that's the only way that those buttons get pushed. And I think that, you know, the potential for this stuff to make us feel more human is enormous, um, and, and so, you know, all of that good shouldn't be thrown out with, with all of the bad that's out there. Um, and, you know, we, we're, w- we'll have to navigate it very carefully and very delicately, um, and hopefully with, uh, with, with an openness that isn't simply ideological knee jerk reactions.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:17:50

        It's hard, man. It's hard. You hear about these stories, you hear about these things happening, and you just default to, right, Luddite it, switch if off, pull-

    16. RBRob Brooks1:17:58

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:17:58

        ... pull the plug, we're not going to have this, or there's a massive amount of, um, like, uh, conceptual inertia or, or, or a naturalistic, um, fallacy that th- there's, there's an ick around, you know, you hear about DaveKat and you think, "Uh, this guy's doing what with this robot?" And it's, ugh. You know, you think, that's ... But then, you know, on the flip side, there's all manner of relationships that people used to think were reprehensible and sometimes illegal and sometimes resulted in castration that have been perfectly accepted. And, um, yeah. It's, it's a really, really tough one, man. When we've got cuddle cafes, you know, and men that pay women not to have sex with them but just to sit and be with them, or vice versa, women, you know, i- increasing, uh, amounts of polygyny-

    18. RBRob Brooks1:18:50

        Mm-hmm.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:18:50

        ... because you've got a, a, a scarcity of, of men that perhaps some women are, are looking for. You've got increases in domestic violence and, um, like, uh, benefit-inflicting mating behavior from men because women who didn't date hypergomously are threatening their ... Uh, th- they know that they don't need them, they're concerned that they're going to leave them. You know, when you change, when you start to change the dynamics that the mating market has sort of vestigially had for a long time, you end up with some really strange externalities, and I think that we're just permanently eating all of those, and then technology speeding them up. Uh, and I, you know, the, the other thing, the, the most common element that everybody is familiar with when it comes to mating is the matchmaking stuff, and the matchmaking stuff doesn't seem to have got particularly much better either. You know, in some, in some ways it's facilitated an awful lot of relationships. I think between f- sort of 50 and 60% of relationships now begin online in one form or another, and, um, even that, like, they're the most fragile relationships. They're also the ones that on route to getting them can probably cause a lot of, uh, externalities that people aren't happy with. Ghosting, uh, being swindled, sort of... Yeah. It's, uh ... It's gonna be an interesting few years. Look, Rob, let's bring this one

13. 1:20:06 – 1:20:40

    Where to Find Rob

    1. CWChris Williamson1:20:06

       home, mate. I really appreciate you. I think your work is fantastic. Uh, where-

    2. RBRob Brooks1:20:09

       Thank you, Chris.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:20:09

       ... should people go if they want to check out more of the stuff that you do and keep up to date with your work?

    4. RBRob Brooks1:20:14

       Keep up with my, um, with my writing at Rob Brooks, so R-O-B B-R-double O-K s.net, um, and on Twitter it's brooks_rob, um, and you should be able to, to get most of what I say.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:20:28

       Perfect. Rob, I appreciate you. Thank you. 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: 1:20:40