Why Is Everyone Acting Like A Victim? - Rob Henderson (4K)

Chris Williamson 0:00 What is the friendship paradox?

Rob Henderson 0:02 The friendship paradox is this phenomenon in which, uh, your friends have more friends than you do. Uh, your sex partners have more sex partners than you do. Your Twitter followers have more... Or ex, your ex followers have more, uh, followers than you do. And it's a, it's a paradox because it seemingly doesn't make sense. You know, how can your friends have more friends than you on average? And many, uh, many of your listeners especially, I think, will be familiar with this sort of Pareto phenomena that, you know, a disproportionate, uh, number of, of awards go to a small number of people, a disproportionate, uh, uh, amount of money goes to a small percentage of people as well. But this also works in the social realm. So, you know, the example that I gave in a recent Substack post is to imagine you have, keep it easy, you have 10 friends, and, uh, three of your friends are kind of like you, you know, just kind of an average person with an average social life. Uh, you have three friends who are shut-ins, who maybe don't go out that much, but you have another friend who is a super connector and has 100 or 150 or maybe even 1,000 friends. I mean, uh, there's some people who, who are just sort of very social, super extroverted in that 99th percentile, and so when you average this across all 10 of your friends, uh, they, they may have, you know, on average 20 plus friends while you have 10. And so it, it sort of, uh, at, at first glance it doesn't make sense, but then, you know, when you, when you sort of break it down mathematically, it does, and this is why there's that, that paradox. And then same with sex partners, you know, maybe you've had five or 10 or 20 sex partners, but one of those people may have had 100 plus, and so when you average that out, your sex partners have had more sex partners than you. And then same with Twitter followers, right? Like, you know, maybe, uh, you know, one of your followers has, you know, a million plus while you have 10,000 or something. Average that out and the math still, um, shakes out in the same way. The example, uh, that I, that I also gave in that essay is, uh, you know, when, when Warren Buffett walks into an auditorium, everyone becomes a millionaire, on average.

Chris Williamson 1:52 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 1:52 Right? And it's the same kind of idea here, so...

Chris Williamson 1:56 Yeah. And what's the implication psychologically for people with that?

Rob Henderson 1:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:59 Is that a felt sense at all? 'Cause obviously it's-

Rob Henderson 2:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:02 ... uh, kind of anti, uh, typical to what you would expect. This is all a surprise to everyone to find out that if Warren Buffett's in the local postcode, that they've just become a, an honorary millionaire for the most v- v- ... Due to mathematics.

Rob Henderson 2:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:17 Is there some sort of sense by which people are, are conscious of this sort of thing? I know that Gad Saad in his most recent book talks about-

Rob Henderson 2:24 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:24 ... uh, the best sort of people to be friends are the people who are having a little bit less sex than you.

Rob Henderson 2:28 (laughs) Right. Yeah, yeah, I, I remember that, I remember that from, from his book. Well, yeah, I... So, so I think that we, we, we fall prey to, um... So, so in that, the, the classic psychology book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman coined this term, "What you see is all there is." Uh, and we pay attention to what's visible, what's right in front of us, the, the known knowns, but we don't necessarily pay much attention to the, the known unknowns, the things that, that aren't in our immediate, uh, line of vision. And so with, with the friendship paradox, we will pay a lot of attention to the most extroverted people. They're very visible, they enjoy often being very visible. Extroverted people tend to be that way. They update their social media pages a lot, uh, when you... They're, they're more likely to, uh, text you and then be responsive to your texts, and more likely to, to, to meet up with you and then tell you about their, uh, uh, adventures hiking in the Himalayas or how they just got back from this country or, uh, just got done speaking at, at this event and so forth. And so you're listening to this person and, and for many people they may hear this and think like, "Wow, everyone out there is doing all of these great things and, you know, here I am sort of working my 9:00 to 5:00 or just, you know, sort of living a, a, a normal ordinary life." And, uh, and many people, uh, will report feeling sort of, um, uh, diminished socially. Uh, and this is an interesting phenomenon here because there's a ton of research in social psychology on this idea called the better-than-average effect. Uh, and the better-than-average effect or the illusory superiority effect as it's sometimes called is essentially that we tend to, uh, uh, believe ourselves to be better than others. There's this sort of self-enhancement that goes on. So when you ask, um, people, "Are, are you, you know, are you smarter than average? Are you a better driver than average?" Um-

Chris Williamson 4:03 (laughs) It's like 75% of people-

Rob Henderson 4:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:05 ... believe that they're a better-than-average driver.

Rob Henderson 4:07 Exa- ... Yeah, exactly. Uh, uh, you know, there's, there's research in academia too. You know, you ask students, "Are you a, you know, a better student than average?" Ask professors, "Are you a better teacher than average?" And, you know, w- ... Yeah, exactly, 70, 80 plus percent say they're better than the average person, uh, in all of these domains. Um, and yet, um, there's fascinating work on... Related to the friendship paradox, that we tend to have a sort of uncharacteristically dismal view of our social lives. So there've been a couple of studies now in which, you know, they, they ask participants, uh, you know, "Do you, do you go to more or fewer parties than others? Do you see your family more or less than others? Do you have more or fewer friends than others? Do you eat alone more or less than others?" And generally speaking, people think that they are, uh, sort of less socially connected, they have fewer friends, they eat alone more, they go to fewer parties. And-

Chris Williamson 4:53 So this is an inversion of the illusory super-

Rob Henderson 4:55 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 4:55 ... superiority complex.

Rob Henderson 4:56 Right, we sort of have, uh, at least in the social realm a, a, a lesser-than-average effect rather than a better-than-average effect. And, and this is related to that friendship paradox and that, um, that sort of what you see is all there is. Uh, the way the researchers explain this is that, um, again so you, so you, you s- ... When you think to yourself, "Well, do I go to more or fewer parties than others?" Well, you know, when I see other people at parties and I'm not at a party and, uh, you know, I, I see my family, you know, X amount of times a year, but then when I pull up social media and I see people, you know, taking selfies with their dad or whatever-

Chris Williamson 5:25 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 5:25 ... um, or their mom or their sis- ... And so you see all of these, and then you start to think, "Well, you know, I'm not with my family right now when I saw that photo." And so you, uh, sort of easily sort of fall prey to this idea that well, everyone out there is taking these selfies and having a good time and going home and, and, um, and you're not, and you're not paying attention to the people who aren't with their families. Uh, you know, one of the lines I use in, in that poster summarizing this research is, no one is taking, uh, photos and posting them online when they're eating lunch alone or when they're binge watching a TV show or when they're just having an off day and just need some time to decompress and be alone for a while.

Chris Williamson 5:59 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 5:59 They're not, uh, you know, uploading a video or taking photos of themselves that... You know, we, we tend to take photos when we're being social, when we're being extroverted.

Chris Williamson 6:06 Peak experiences.

Rob Henderson 6:06 Exactly, the peak experiences. And, and, uh, I know you've, you've, you've talked about this before, about, uh, what is it? Comparing, uh, uh, you know, your blooper reel to everyone else's highlight reel-

Chris Williamson 6:15 Correct.

Rob Henderson 6:16 ... or something like that.

Chris Williamson 6:17 Yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 6:17 And so we do that and then we tend to think like, "Well..."... everyone else is sort of at the party without you. Uh, there's a nice line, uh, in one of the papers that I cite, the researchers, you know, sort of, sort of, um, painting a picture of what this might look like of a student in- in a college dorm room, uh, maybe doing their homework, being a diligent student, and they hear a party going on upstairs.

Chris Williamson 6:36 Mm.

Rob Henderson 6:36 And you hear all the lights and all the music and everything, and it sounds like everyone's up there and you're thinking, "Wow, I'm the only one here doing my- doing my homework." But you're not hea- you know, you're- you're- of course you're not hearing all of the other students, uh, in that dorm room as well also-

Chris Williamson 6:47 Doing their homework. (laughs)

Rob Henderson 6:48 ... doing their homework. They're not making any noise.

Chris Williamson 6:49 Yeah. (laughs)

Rob Henderson 6:50 Right? So this is what you see is all there is or what you hear is all there is. And so that person is sitting there thinking, "Everyone is at the party without me," when this isn't the case. Um, it's just you happen to be hearing the people who are at the party-

Chris Williamson 7:01 Right.

Rob Henderson 7:01 ... not the people who aren't.

Chris Williamson 7:02 So there's a... This is very much due to the visibility of particular types of social experiences-

Rob Henderson 7:09 Mm.

Chris Williamson 7:09 ... that is now facilitated by being online?

Rob Henderson 7:11 Right, right.

Chris Williamson 7:12 I learned about the 1% rule-

Rob Henderson 7:14 Okay.

Chris Williamson 7:15 ... from you.

Rob Henderson 7:15 Okay.

Chris Williamson 7:16 Go through that. I feel like-

Rob Henderson 7:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:17 ... that's related here.

Rob Henderson 7:18 This is the 1% rule on the internet. And it's, you know, it's- this isn't, uh, empirical research, but this is just a sort of shorthand way of understanding how, uh, how social media works, how the internet works now. Uh, and the basic idea is that, uh, online, 1% of internet users, uh, are creators. They're the ones out there producing the videos and the podcasts and the- the written content, and all of the things that we're sort of consuming when we pull open our phones. And then 9% of internet users are, uh, are commenters. They're engaging with the content in some way, maybe they're, uh, reposting, or retweeting, or liking, or commenting. They're the ones who sort of, uh, want to engage with the content in some way. Maybe they're not, uh, uh, original content, uh, producers, but they do like to sort of, uh, make themselves visible by- by, uh, by being commenters and so on. And then 90% of people are just lurkers, the people that we aren't seeing, the people who are just sort of passively scrolling their phones or, uh, uh, you know, looking at your- looking at your stuff, listening to it, reading it, but they're not, um, they're not engaging with it in the same way. And I think a lot of, you know... So I'm a- I'm a Substacker, you're a podcaster. I think a lot of content producers, they-

Chris Williamson 8:23 1%. Could they be? (laughs)

Rob Henderson 8:24 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, the 1%. But we pay a lot of attention to that 9%. Uh, and- and of course, because of the, uh, the negativity bias, you know, you may have, uh, 100 nice comments, and then there's three people who are like, "Wow, this sucks."

Chris Williamson 8:36 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 8:37 And you're like... You know, you'll beat yourself up that day, like, "Man, why do these people not like this?" Um, but you didn't... You know, you're- you're- you're assigning less weight to those 97 comments that were positive, but you're also not thinking about the 90% of people who didn't comment at all.

Chris Williamson 8:50 Wow.

Rob Henderson 8:50 And based on that breakdown, right, if- if 97 comments are positive and three are negative, you can probably estimate that that's probably roughly how those other 90% feel.

Chris Williamson 8:58 970.

Rob Henderson 8:59 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 8:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 9:00 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:00 Silent, nice comments.

Rob Henderson 9:02 Yeah. I saw this, um... Yeah, I read this- this, uh, this essay, uh, uh, recently about- about a TV show, uh, in which the executives were threatening to cancel it, uh, because they had received... And this was I think in the 1980s, it was a sitcom, and, uh, the executives were threatening to cancel it because they received some- some angry emails, or n- or angry- angry snail mail from- from the viewers, so this was the '80s. And, uh, and the- the- the showrunners were... Basically they drew this analogy of like, you know, this is like, you know, going- going to a stadium of 100,000 people and two of them write a nasty letter to you, right? That's the equivalent, right? Because we have X number of million viewers-

Chris Williamson 9:38 Yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 9:38 ... and- and you got a couple of hundred mean letters.

Chris Williamson 9:40 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 9:41 Whereas the other million plus people didn't write anything or maybe they're writing positive things. And so I think, yeah, we... that- that- that 1% rule can sort of help us to contextualize, um, sort of all of the social phenomena that are going on online.

Chris Williamson 9:53 I remember the general election a few years ago where the Tory party won by the biggest landslide in a very long time and the- the red wall fell and all the rest of this stuff.

Rob Henderson 10:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:05 Uh, and I remember seeing Stormzy or Bugsey Malone and that year's winner of Love Island and someone else like- like h- Daniel Radcliffe or someone, uh, tweeting about how, you know, "We need to make sure that we get the Labour Party in and I'll be voting Labour," and you see all of these replies and I was like, "Oh my God, look at this. It's gonna be a total landslide." You know, like, th- they've- they've got... Bugsey Malone has tweeted about it. (laughs)

Rob Henderson 10:36 (laughs) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:37 And, um, then it was th- as far in the opposite direction as it's ever been in 50 years.

Rob Henderson 10:43 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:43 And it's like, you know, the map is not the terrain-

Rob Henderson 10:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:46 ... and the internet is not the real world.

Rob Henderson 10:48 Right.

Chris Williamson 10:48 And here's another thing as well, you know, you've got the 1%, 9%, 90%, but I think it's only around about 10 to 15% of people in the UK have a Twitter account.

Rob Henderson 11:02 Yeah. Right. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:03 Right?

Rob Henderson 11:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:03 So not only you're not thinking about all of the silent lurkers-

Rob Henderson 11:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:06 ... you're not thinking about all of the people who aren't on Twitter that don't even know that this is going on.

Rob Henderson 11:09 They're not even looking at it.

Chris Williamson 11:10 Did you hear the episode I did with Sam Harris?

Rob Henderson 11:13 Uh, I- I listened to clips of it, yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:14 Cool. So he comes up with this idea called digital leprosy.

Rob Henderson 11:17 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:18 This is just awesome by him.

Rob Henderson 11:21 Okay.

Chris Williamson 11:21 So he says, um, because he's no longer online-

Rob Henderson 11:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:26 ... he's not exposed to the potential cancellations and online furors that he's a part of. So kind of in the same way as a leper may be losing limbs and- and digits and be unaware that it's happening-

Rob Henderson 11:38 Right.

Chris Williamson 11:39 ... he may be being canceled right now, but because he's not online, he's unaware of the cancellation that's occurring or the whatever, like he's... Sam Harris is trending again, and he's like, "Well, I'm not on Twitter." And he's told his friends, "Look, don't send me screenshots of what people are saying about me on the internet." So he is able to just, you know, blissfully move through his existence. He called it digital leprosy, which I just thought-

Rob Henderson 12:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:01 ... was like such a lovely idea.

Rob Henderson 12:03 Such a... It's an evocative term.

Chris Williamson 12:04 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 12:04 Man, that's good. Yeah, yeah. Well, I... Yeah, I guess in that case it would depend on what your- what your aims are, I could imagine. So someone like Sam, you know, he's, uh, he's an intellectual, he has his podcast, and he probably... It- it wouldn't help him to see all of the- the nasty comments, but if you're-

Chris Williamson 12:18 I think it may be a little bit more than, uh, like two out of 100,000 or whatever at the moment as well-

Rob Henderson 12:24 (laughs) Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:24 ... he's kind of popular to hate on the internet.

Rob Henderson 12:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's... yeah, that's a good point. But- but I- I suppose, well, for other people, if you're... Well, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind would be like a politician, you would want to know what's going on, how people are reacting to you. Yeah, exactly, sort of keep your- keep your finger on the pulse of, uh, your constituents. Um-There is a, there is a, a... One of the, one of the chapters in, in Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power, where... And, and, and the book is about the attainment of power, of course. So, he writes that in, in those kinds of situations, uh, you actually want to be more plugged in to the social scene. It, it actually isn't wise to withdraw, uh-

Chris Williamson 12:59 Hmm.

Rob Henderson 12:59 ... because you'll end up losing power, you'll end up losing influence.

Chris Williamson 13:01 Interesting.

Rob Henderson 13:02 Um, depends-

Chris Williamson 13:02 He also has a rule about how, uh, aloofness is alluring though-

Rob Henderson 13:05 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:06 ... uh, which I think is interesting and-

Rob Henderson 13:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:07 ... is definitely true.

Rob Henderson 13:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:09 I was with, uh, Dan Bilzerian-

Rob Henderson 13:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:11 ... last weekend-

Rob Henderson 13:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:12 ... and, uh, was talking to him, and he's kind of been, he's sort of absconded from the permanently online Instagram, you know, like, tits and psychedelics existence that people, he kind of got famous for.

Rob Henderson 13:25 Right.

Chris Williamson 13:25 And I was asking him about that, and he said, "Well, you know, like," he's kind of going through a bit of a metamorphosis at the moment, I think, in, in many regards-

Rob Henderson 13:31 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:32 ... um, which was very interesting to see, and I sort of dug into his psychology a lot over dinner.

Rob Henderson 13:36 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:37 Uh, but also, he was like, "From a tactical perspective, just not being chronically online sucks in speculation, which is actually good for brand-"

Rob Henderson 13:48 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:48 "... in some ways." You know, people are like, "What is happening?" And I think, you remember... This may have been different for you, given your, uh, uh, slightly more chaotic than my upbringing, but each, uh, each summer, when you would leave school and come back, you'd always think, "Oh, here's my opportunity to reinvent myself." Like, "I'm gonna be the sporty kid," or, "I'm gonna be the cool kid." Or maybe that was just me. Um, but-

Rob Henderson 14:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:10 ... I kind of get the sense that if you're going through a, a, a period of rapid change or-

Rob Henderson 14:15 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:15 ... rapid reflection or whatever, uh, a little bit of, um, receding perhaps-

Rob Henderson 14:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:22 ... from being so, uh, publicly ava- This is why monk mode, I think for guys, has become such an important meme, right?

Rob Henderson 14:29 Ah.

Chris Williamson 14:29 That it's this retreat to focus on the three Is, introspection, isolation, and, um, like, inner work or something else.

Rob Henderson 14:37 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:37 And, um, uh, the reason that it's so good, I think, is that it allows people to, like, go away, do the chrysalis thing, and then try and emerge as something new-

Rob Henderson 14:44 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:44 ... whilst not trying to bring along all of the existing, like, "I'm trying to update one step at a time-"

Rob Henderson 14:50 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:50 "... all of the different changes." It's like, no, no, no, I get to go away and then come back with a relatively blank slate or-

Rob Henderson 14:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:56 ... more blank than it was.

Rob Henderson 14:57 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:57 And, um, yeah, I think there's, I think there's something there.

Rob Henderson 15:00 Yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, it, it, it sort of depends on what your aims are, and es- and especially when you're, when you're young and you're still sort of, uh, uh, trying to stabilize your identity and figure out who you are, that having those moments of withdrawal and reflection can, can be very helpful. Um, yeah, and, and, you know, it's funny, those, those, the, the laws of power, a lot of them do contradict each other, and Greene openly, I've, I've seen him. He acknowledges this, but-

Chris Williamson 15:23 Hmm.

Rob Henderson 15:23 ... it's his, it's, it's based on context, it's based on sort of where you are in the life cycle and how, um, how power is acquired in your sort of local environment and, and so on and so, so, so basically, you know, it's, this isn't like a one-size-fits-all sort of checklist. It's more of a-

Chris Williamson 15:38 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 15:38 ... sort of holistic... Exactly, exactly.

Chris Williamson 15:38 At all times and all places. It's at specific times at specific places.

Rob Henderson 15:42 Right, right.

Chris Williamson 15:42 Well,

Chris Williamson 15:43 you've been looking at a lot of young male syndrome recently.

Rob Henderson 15:46 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:46 I think this is gonna be one of the most important memes of the coming decade.

Rob Henderson 15:49 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 15:49 And, uh, both of us have been talking about it, at least in part, for maybe, like, three or four years, I think online.

Rob Henderson 15:54 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 15:55 But it's picking up steam. What have you learned digging deeper into the modern conception of young male syndrome and how it's sort of manifested?

Rob Henderson 16:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:05 What have you learned?

Rob Henderson 16:06 Yeah, yeah, well, so, so, yeah, the young male syndrome, this constellation of traits that are associated with, uh, a certain period of time in young men's lives, typically the teens and the early 20s, uh, you know, heightened levels of risk-taking, reduced self-control and inhibition. Uh, if you look at rates of criminality, for example, uh, they tend to peak at around age 19, and this is true regardless of, uh, culture and society, sort of all across the world, in non-industrialized, hunter-gatherer communities, and all the way up to sort of wealthy and rich societies, that it's the young men. If you look at who's committing the crime in that society, it's, it's inevitably going to be sort of men aged, say, roughly 15 to maybe 24. Even things like, uh, like, like, so this is just in the US context, likelihood of being hospitalized for punching walls.

Chris Williamson 16:53 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 16:54 Uh, there was a nice graph I saw, uh, and I, and I posted it online, um, of, you know, the sort of, the distribution of, of, of, um, young, or, or men, just men in general being hospitalized for it. And it's all concentrated, again, 15 to 24, it's like, you know, 10-year-olds aren't being hospitalized for punching walls, and neither are 60-year-olds, it's all that sort of young male group. And, you know, I'll, I'll admit, I've punched walls before. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 17:14 Yeah. Did you see, uh-

Rob Henderson 17:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:15 ... Aleksandr Daitserak posted a, a, quote-tweeted a, an image this morning that was a mother-

Rob Henderson 17:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:20 ... asking how she could help her son, and it was just a photo of his bedroom wall. And this bedroom wall was just hole after hole after hole, and then the door had a hole in it, and it's like... I mean, it, it looked like a sufficiently flimsy American house-

Rob Henderson 17:33 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:33 ... that the hospitalization risk was quite low, but that the decorating risk might be quite high.

Rob Henderson 17:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, uh, in that case, I mean, that, yeah, that, that sounds like it would require some, some serious-

Chris Williamson 17:42 Intervention.

Rob Henderson 17:43 ... some serious, yeah, intervention, some serious treatment. What I find interesting is, uh, especially for young men that sort of... That this, this is, I think, an expression of young male syndrome, is when a young man, uh, experience some, some sort of, uh, usually, like, a minor injury, and then their immediate response is to lash out. So, like, I saw this with some of my friends where, um, you know, like maybe, uh, I don't know, something simple like, uh, like they accidentally, uh, poke themselves in the hand or something, and then their immediate response is to punch something. So, they hurt themselves and they're pissed, and then they punch something. And, and I think that this is basically a, a misfiring of this kind of evolutionary impulse of, of if a, if an intentional agent hurts you, it actually is, uh, advantageous, uh, to, to fight back, right?

Chris Williamson 18:24 Anger response.

Rob Henderson 18:24 Right, exactly. So, so if, uh, I don't know, like, the cactus plant stabs me-

Chris Williamson 18:29 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 18:29 ... you know, maybe punching the wall is unwise.

Chris Williamson 18:31 Right.

Rob Henderson 18:31 But if you do something to upset me-

Chris Williamson 18:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 18:32 ... and then I immediately respond physically, that can actually be, um, uh, an adaptive strategy. So I think, like, that is... You know, this is, this is speculation, but this is what I think is going on there because otherwise it doesn't make sense, right? (laughs) You-You're injured, let me injure my-

Chris Williamson 18:43 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 18:43 Let me break my hand now. Right?

Chris Williamson 18:44 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 18:44 It makes no sense, so.

Chris Williamson 18:45 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 18:47 So yeah, so the young male syndrome, yeah, sort of in- reduced inhibition, increased risk-taking, criminality, uh, risky driving. Um.

Chris Williamson 18:55 Hmm.

Rob Henderson 18:55 You know, if you look at, uh, who, who's arrested for drinking and driving, who, uh, gets into the most auto accidents, who is the most likely to be killed simply crossing the street. Yeah, so, so I think it says, yeah, men are twice as likely to be killed simply crossing the street as women. Um, so there are so many sort of different, different factors here. And there was actually one, on, on the, on the seatbelt point, there was an interesting study which found that men are less likely to wear seatbelts when there's, when they're accompanied by a male passenger, relative to when they're sitting by themselves or when they're sitting with a, with a, with a woman.

Chris Williamson 19:26 What do you think that's saying?

Rob Henderson 19:28 I think that is, uh, one possibility here is, uh, is essentially the attempt to signal toughness, uh-

Chris Williamson 19:36 Hmm.

Rob Henderson 19:36 ... that, you know, you, of, of course, like there's a lot of interesting work here and a lot of discussion and, and debate around this, um, because of course men want to signal to women, and we want to signal that we're s- you know, strong, and that they can acquire resources, and all those kinds of-

Chris Williamson 19:50 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 19:50 ... um, sort of bedrock, uh, um, findings in evolutionary psychology. But then we also want to impress other men too. You know, you want to show that you would be a, you know, in, in, in the ancestral context, you want to show that you would be good in a, in a violent conflict against a rival coalition.

Chris Williamson 20:05 A strong compatriot.

Rob Henderson 20:06 Or if you're, uh, uh, big game hunting, you want to show that you're strong. And so I think the way that it might manifest itself in the modern age is, "I don't need to wear a seatbelt. You know, I'm gonna show my friends and my mates, like, I don't need to wear this, like I'm s-"

Chris Williamson 20:17 That two-ton rocket ship going towards me hasn't got shit.

Rob Henderson 20:19 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:20 Uh, well, we both became fans of that David Putt study.

Rob Henderson 20:23 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:23 That was able to predict the, uh, number of sexual partners based on not female ratings of attractiveness of male faces but other male ratings of toughness-

Rob Henderson 20:34 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 20:34 ... of the same male faces.

Rob Henderson 20:35 Super cool study, yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:36 That the women's at- attractiveness rating had basically zero predictive power.

Rob Henderson 20:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:41 But that the man's toughness rating had, like, quite a good bit of predictive power.

Rob Henderson 20:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:45 Was it you that taught me, or was it Dunbar that taught me about, um, men's street crossing in the presence or without the presence of women?

Rob Henderson 20:53 Hmm. That was probably Dunbar, at the time.

Chris Williamson 20:55 Right. Okay, so this, this, this study is so much fun. So they got, um... Crossing the street is really interesting, because it's a relatively discrete variable. You have distance of vehicle from street crossing, and then you have, uh, like, the presence or lack of presence of a female. And men, the diff- difference in how close the vehicles would get-

Rob Henderson 21:19 Okay.

Chris Williamson 21:19 ... and men were prepared to pro- cross the street in the presence of a woman was like a third-

Rob Henderson 21:25 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 21:25 ... of what it was when there was no women around.

Rob Henderson 21:27 That's fascinating.

Chris Williamson 21:27 Like, "Look at all of this, you know, surplus fitness that I have."

Rob Henderson 21:30 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:30 "I'm gonna cross the street while this car's only 15 yards away from me," or whatever.

Rob Henderson 21:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. All the... I think, yeah, the young male syndrome is... Yeah, I think it, it sort of depends on the context, but yeah, it is most likely to sort of be expressed when you're trying to impress women or when you're trying to impress, uh, men again. So I don't think, yeah, it would, I don't think it would necessarily impress young women, uh, you know, that you're driving without a seatbelt, right? And I think maybe on some level guys understand that, but with, with, with... It wouldn't necess- it's not so much that you're impressing your friend when you put... when you don't wear the seatbelt. It's that if you do, you might be mocked or made fun of.

Chris Williamson 22:03 Hmm.

Rob Henderson 22:03 Or that what's, you know, are, you know, "What are you wearing a seatbelt for?" That kind of, especially in like 19-year-old guys, you know, that kind of thing.

Chris Williamson 22:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 22:10 Um, and so it's not so much trying to look tough but just not to look weak.

Chris Williamson 22:14 Very interesting. Okay, so, but young male syndrome-

Rob Henderson 22:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 22:17 ... specifically seems to be, uh, worsened amongst sexless, dispossessed-

Rob Henderson 22:24 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 22:26 ... rambunctious young guys-

Rob Henderson 22:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 22:28 ... coalitioning together in small groups to go and set shit on fire and push over granny.

Rob Henderson 22:33 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we, yeah, yeah, that's, uh, it's, you know, when a, when a young man is isolated sort of by himself, there's only so much damage he can do, but it's sort of the, the ri- the risk becomes exponentially greater sort of as that, as, as he sort of partners with other men and they collaborate and start to plan. And so yeah, this is, uh... I mean, so, so you had this, this interesting term about the, the sedation-

Chris Williamson 22:56 Male sedation hypothesis.

Rob Henderson 22:57 ... hypothesis.

Chris Williamson 22:57 Yeah, it's in a g- it's in, uh, a study at the moment with Buss and William. They're testing it.

Rob Henderson 23:01 Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking about, because I remember when you first told me about that, something that had come to mind is, um, you know, I had friends. I mean, this is, you know, sort of back in the... I don't know if people still play this game World of Warcraft, but I remember I had a couple of friends who, like, lost years of their life to this game. And they were like... And, and they, they, the way that they spoke, you know, as, as, you know, when you told me about this, I thought like, yeah, these young guys, you know, this is, you know, 18, 19, this was years ago, but they would say like, "All right, you know, I gotta, I gotta hop off the phone, I'm going on a raid."

Chris Williamson 23:29 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 23:29 "You know, I got a raid scheduled," you know. Like, well, you don't have a raid scheduled, you have, you know, seven hours of sitting in your laptop chair.

Chris Williamson 23:35 Computer game scheduled.

Rob Henderson 23:36 (laughs) Yeah, exactly.

Chris Williamson 23:36 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 23:37 But in his mind he's like, "I'm going with my other internet friends and we're gonna go, you know, raid this castle," or I, whatever they do in this game. And I could see that, yeah, this is a sort of an expression of that or an example of that, of you know, just young guys who ordinarily might be out causing trouble and instead they're just online, uh, and that's how they do it. You know, I saw this funny-

Chris Williamson 23:55 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 23:55 ... this funny post on Twitter, um, and this guy, you know, he said something about, you know, back in the day if you were like a hyper curious young man, uh, you know, you'd, you'd basically start, like, uh, trying to document the, like, visible differences between the mushrooms, uh, right around your house. And today what they do is, like, try to collect all the rings in a Sonic game.

Chris Williamson 24:13 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 24:13 You know, like speed run a, a Sonic game, right? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 24:15 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 24:17 Uh, and so yeah, I think the, the virtual world is sucking in a lot of, a lot of, uh, angry and aggressive men. But it, we may also be losing like that sort of the pattern matching, sort of systematizing young men too.

Chris Williamson 24:25 Absolutely. Yeah. Well, it's just, it's managed to hijack an awful lot of the status-seeking, coalitional, uh, curiosity, adventurous behavior that young men are, you know...... throughout all of history has been kind of acclaimed for.

Rob Henderson 24:45 Mm.

Chris Williamson 24:45 You know, you look at, um, my favorite example of the solution for young male syndrome was Portugal in the 1800s.

Rob Henderson 24:51 What did they do there? Eh?

Chris Williamson 24:52 They... The first son was allowed to m- There was a- a- a- an imbalance in the sex ratio.

Rob Henderson 24:57 Okay.

Chris Williamson 24:57 Uh, and they knew that if son one married, because he was the oldest son-

Rob Henderson 25:03 Mm.

Chris Williamson 25:03 ... but son two, three, and four perhaps-

Rob Henderson 25:05 Mm.

Chris Williamson 25:06 ... uh, weren't permitted to marry, and there weren't enough women to marry, that this was gonna cause problems, so they just put them on galleon ships and said, "Go, you know, pioneer the New World. Away you go." So they just... they literally exported the young male problem by putting the men on ships-

Rob Henderson 25:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:21 ... and giving them this sense of adventure, you know, channeling their aggression outward-

Rob Henderson 25:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 25:25 ... against either a new world or- or, uh, political enemies or whatever it was. And, uh, yeah, I think that, uh, there is still a question. Vincent came on the show, mutual friend, came on, and he's been researching and he says that, you know, every single time that we have high rates of sexlessness and blah, blah, blah, we have an increase in associated violence. And-

Rob Henderson 25:44 Mm.

Chris Williamson 25:45 ... it's just n- at the moment, and someone may tell me that I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem to be there in the data.

Rob Henderson 25:49 Mm.

Chris Williamson 25:49 Right? We have incel black pill ideology. There was this period, maybe about two years ago, where, uh, they were even, uh, donat- uh, uh, uh, claimed to be a domestic terror threat, I think, uh, incels.

Rob Henderson 26:03 Oh, right. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 26:03 Uh, they were a terrorist group.

Rob Henderson 26:05 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw that.

Chris Williamson 26:06 Right? Um, whereas, like, show me the violence. Show me the uptick in the violence. Now, that's not to say there hasn't been an uptick in murders and stuff, but I think a lot of that can be attributed to the-

Rob Henderson 26:16 Something else?

Chris Williamson 26:16 Yeah, exactly.

Rob Henderson 26:17 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 26:17 Like the receding of police from inner cities.

Rob Henderson 26:19 Right.

Chris Williamson 26:20 Um...

Rob Henderson 26:21 Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if the... So, so on its face it seems silly, right, that, uh, these incels is a domestic terror threat, but I wonder if they were just sort of... if they were actually familiar with the research on the young male syndrome and the sort of historical past. I mean, maybe I'm giving them too much credit.

Chris Williamson 26:34 I think you are.

Rob Henderson 26:35 But, but they... Essentially, they were sort of anticipating the possibility and they're just sort of getting out ahead of it and saying, "Well, you have a lot of young, sexless, angry young men, and historically, that's been the, uh, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, group that's been dangerous, so let's just designate that label on them." But I think, yeah, in the modern age, with- with technology, with video games, with porn, with scrolling phones, I mean, yeah, I've seen sort of research on, uh, what young men, like jobless young men do.

Chris Williamson 27:03 Mm.

Rob Henderson 27:03 Um, and most of the time they're scrolling their phones-

Chris Williamson 27:06 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 27:06 ... playing computer games, watching porn, overeating junk food. They're not really

Chris Williamson 27:10 You see Nicolas Eberstadt's work on that?

Rob Henderson 27:12 Uh, I haven't. Is this... This is r- related to the Men Without Work?

Chris Williamson 27:15 It's like Men Not Working or whatever it is-

Rob Henderson 27:17 Yeah, I think I s- Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:17 ... whatever his book was called. Just awesome. But yeah, it's like some insane percentage of men are NEETs, not in education, employment, or training-

Rob Henderson 27:26 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 27:27 ... uh, but also are prime working age, like I think it's 22 to 50, um, and it's this unseen... 'Cause i- uh, im- unemployment rates are relatively low in America, but hiding in that data is a very unusual cohort of men who are electing to be unemployed.

Rob Henderson 27:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:44 They're living on, uh, social welfare in one form or another or it's, uh, and/or still living at home, spending an insane amount of hours per year playing, uh, video games. And while they're playing video games, 50% of that time is either on prescription medication or whilst taking weed. So you just have very... It's like, okay, here's the big data. Okay, well, what's that? Like how's this constituted? Who are the component people that make up this data? And you go, "Hang on a second. Like what's this chunk?" It's like... I think it's like eight million or 14 million men, prime working age men, electing to, uh, retreat from the employment market. Now, we put this episode up and, uh, a lot of guys that are maybe a part of this cohort or tangential to this cohort commented, and, you know, the sentiment very strongly was, "Why should I contribute to a world which doesn't value me? Uh, why am I going to work to get a, uh, five foot three, 210 pound, uh, woman w- who's already gone through two marriages and got four kids?" Uh, you know, just very despondent. Evidently, uh, guys who don't see much future for themselves.

Rob Henderson 28:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:53 And, uh, it was- it was really eye-opening, 'cause l- largely the comments on Modern Wisdom tend to be pre- personal growthy, agentic, highly sovereign, upwardly mobile, et cetera. Um, but this episode, like, blasted out of the algorithm into the wider internet, or maybe it got shared on some forums or whatever. Uh, and it was very, very interesting. Uh, and I got to see a... you know, I got a window into- into this world and it didn't seem... These guys didn't seem very happy.

Rob Henderson 29:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:22 Um, they were maybe, uh, comfortable in their nihilism-

Rob Henderson 29:26 Hm.

Chris Williamson 29:27 ... uh, but I don't think that they were particularly, uh, fulfilled.

Rob Henderson 29:30 I mean, they're- they may be comfortable when they're young, but there's... I- I- You know, I'd be curious whether sort of as- as we move forward, um, you know, decade ah or two decades later... I mean, it's one thing to be a- a- a NEET when you're 19 or 23, but when you're 43 or 51 and you're single, maybe you've never had a girlfriend and you've spent most of the last, you know, several decades just playing video games and- and- and-

Chris Williamson 29:57 Wallowing in collective misery-

Rob Henderson 29:59 Yeah, wallowing in it and-

Chris Williamson 29:59 ... on forums and stuff.

Rob Henderson 30:00 Yeah. Uh, I think there's... Uh, I mean, now in the modern age we have so much freedom, you don't have to work anymore, you don't have t- I mean, if you don't want to or if you live in a modern rich society, um, you can collect sort of extended unemployment or maybe live with your parents or, um, find ways to... I mean, you know, very few people now, very few young men are sort of literally starving or having to steal food to survive. And, uh, and now if you want to do something difficult you have to make the choice to do it-

Chris Williamson 30:26 Hm.

Rob Henderson 30:26 ... rather than, um-... sort of, uh, uh, be- be pressured sort of by- by external factors. I saw this- I saw this- this TikTok video. I'm not on TikTok, but people sometimes send these to me. And I saw this one, this- this- this, uh, this young guy, I think he was in the army, U.S. Army, and he was just sort of walking through his barracks, and, uh, and he was asking these- these other- these other, uh, young- young guys, these young recruits, uh, you know, "If you could talk to your recruiter right now, what would you say?" And, uh, you know, these- you know, these other young guys were like, "I'd tell him to go fuck himself," or like, "God, this sucks," or, "Why did I do this?" So on and so forth. And I'm watching this, I'm like, "I know exactly what he's talking about," because I was there. I was, you know-

Chris Williamson 31:03 Yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 31:03 ... I- I- I'd enlisted.

Chris Williamson 31:04 You were Air Force, right?

Rob Henderson 31:05 And I was in the Air Force. And I remember, especially like the first two years are just awful. Like, once you get in a bit of rank and a bit of responsibility, like once you go through the training program-

Chris Williamson 31:11 Stop eating shit.

Rob Henderson 31:12 Yeah, exactly. Then you're like, you know, then you're okay. But the first couple of years really suck. And so what I knew, like, these were all very young guys, they were still sleeping in bunk beds, and I would have said the same thing, you know. And- and God, like, TikTok didn't exist back then.

Chris Williamson 31:23 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 31:24 But I'm watching this, and I'm thinking like, "These guys don't understand," right? "In- in five years from now, they're gonna be glad that they ate shit for however-"

Chris Williamson 31:32 Yep.

Rob Henderson 31:32 "... many years."

Chris Williamson 31:32 Yep.

Rob Henderson 31:32 "... and they did this, they went through this experience." Um, and- and I think a lot of young- a lot of young guys won't even go that far, right? They won't even enlist. Which is fine, you know, everyone has their own sort of th- make your own choices. But in that moment, I understood that like, "This sucks, why did I do this?" Like, "This is awful." And then you go through it, and you can sort of, in hindsight, go back and say it like, "It was- it was a character-forming experience. It was good for me." Like, "I was an idiot when I was 19, and I probably needed a bit of that structure, a bit of that discipline. I needed to have my ass kicked a little bit." And, uh, and I think, yeah, like, you don't ... But- And- and those guys volunteered to do that, right? You have to choose to do-

Chris Williamson 32:06 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 32:07 ... undergo that experience.

Chris Williamson 32:07 So you've already pre-selected-

Rob Henderson 32:09 And when you don't have to-

Chris Williamson 32:09 ... for someone who's got the agency to get moving.

Rob Henderson 32:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:11 Yeah. I

Chris Williamson 32:12 had this idea-

Rob Henderson 32:12 Even then it still sucks.

Chris Williamson 32:13 I had this idea about, um, uh, the- the reason that victimhood culture has become so widespread is because the human system's demand for challenges has outstripped our modern reality's ability to deliver that.

Rob Henderson 32:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:25 Right? That we want, we just want something to push up against. And if we don't have real challenge, we will create imagined challenge-

Rob Henderson 32:33 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:33 ... for ourselves. And, um, yeah, uh, uh, you know, rampant fragility, and this kind of like soy externalizing locus of control, uh, culture, that's going on at the moment. It's so interesting though that you've got this barbell strategy where, you know, 50%, or maybe more, percent of the people are, uh, young men are- are happy to lean into the, "Uh, I've learned a bit of behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology, and- and taken the black pill in many regards because I'm a genetic dead end." But, at the same time, you have the ascendancy of David Goggins, Jocko Willink, Alex Hormozi, you know, these guys who are all about doing the hard thing, overcoming the suck, like, "No one's coming to save you. It's only you that's going to get you," et cetera, et cetera. So you have this increasing sort of divergence-

Rob Henderson 33:24 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:24 ... between the two. Uh, and I think, you know, assortative mating, which is people of a kind mating with people of their kind-

Rob Henderson 33:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:33 ... right? So, uh, just Silicon Valley, 135 IQ people with, you know, professional tennis-level skills having kids together. So you ha- kind of have this genetic splitting apart, which also is going to have a psychological, uh, like heretable psychological echo, I suppose.

Rob Henderson 33:51 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 33:51 So the conscientious people will have more conscientious kids, and so on and so forth. And then Melissa Carney's new book, The Two-Parent Privilege-

Rob Henderson 33:56 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:57 ... is talking about how those college-educated people who've got that predisposition again get an even bigger advantage. So I think that the Matthew effect of this, right? "To those who have everything, more will be given. To those who have nothing, more will be taken."

Rob Henderson 34:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 34:09 It's just gonna continue to spread and spread and spread.

Rob Henderson 34:11 Yeah, I think, I mean, that's- that's a distinct possibility. And it seems like in the short term, that is what's occurring. I mean, I even read this, oh man, which book was this? Uh, it was a speculative hypothesis about why there's a, like sort of pronounced levels of, uh, kids being born on the spectrum in Silicon Valley. And it's because- (laughs)

Chris Williamson 34:31 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 34:32 It's not necessarily because the engineers and the programmers themselves are autistic, but they may be sort of- sort of somewhere on the spectrum, and then they partner with someone who also shares some of those genes-

Chris Williamson 34:40 Right, like a comorbidity.

Rob Henderson 34:41 ... and then of course, exactly. And then they ha- well, they have children, and then- and then the child is sort of at a- at an, uh, heightened risk of- of getting autism.

Chris Williamson 34:48 Yep, yep.

Rob Henderson 34:48 Uh, but I think generally speaking, I mean, uh, th- uh, I don't know if this is- if this is- this could be interpreted as a white pill or a black pill, but I just read, uh, this book The Sun Also Rises by Gregory Clark, who's, uh, an economic historian, uh, very well versed in the behavioral genetics as well. And essentially that book, he documents, uh, in various societies, essentially how, uh, social status, sort of loosely defined as sort of wealth and influence and so on is very sticky, uh, across generations. And essentially what he finds, you know, he- he- he tracks surnames, uh, and finds that, you know, repeat-

Chris Williamson 35:20 Oh fuck, I got introed to this guy from Matt at Aporia. He's gonna come on.

Rob Henderson 35:23 Oh yeah, yeah, he's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 35:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 35:25 Um, and yeah, I spoke with- I spoke with Matt about- about, um, Gregory Clark- Gregory Clark's work as well. And essentially, you know, he- he tracked status not through s- so, you know, there's- there's- there's this fear, especially in the modern era of assortative mating, that more and more women are going- getting educated and men are- are dating educated women, and they're having children who are educated and so on. But what essentially he finds is that when you- when you look at data from decades past, centuries past, before, uh, women were sort of educationally and economically emancipated, when they were still sort of stuck in these rigid gender roles, if you pair or if you look at the status of- of a given man interested in a woman and then look at the status of the woman's father, there is like a very tight correlation there. So even though the woman herself isn't, um, highly educated or isn't working in a prestigious occupation, often she comes from a family in which her father was.

Chris Williamson 36:13 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 36:14 And so one of Clark's claims generally speaking in this book is that people are very good at sort of finding people who are similar to themselves even if you don't have the sort of external visible badges of- of class or education or credential, right?

Chris Williamson 36:28 How does that manifest if it's not the external badges?

Rob Henderson 36:32 Yeah, well-... but basically, people, people clustered together in the same clubs, family friends, organizations-

Chris Williamson 36:38 Right. Right, right, right.

Rob Henderson 36:38 Um, so, so maybe, uh, you know, maybe the man didn't meet the woman in the workplace the way that they would now, but maybe, um, you know, his boss's friend says, "Hey, I have a daughter who you might get along with, and even though she isn't working, she's, you know, the daughter of the-"

Chris Williamson 36:52 So it's like a-

Rob Henderson 36:52 "... the friend of the boss."

Chris Williamson 36:53 ... it's like a social instantiation of the, uh, class, uh, disposition.

Rob Henderson 36:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 37:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is, uh, yeah, this is interesting to me. I mean, so, so Scott Alexander did a, a long piece on, on assortative mating, I think earlier this year, and he talked about how there's surprisingly little, um, uh, sort of, sort of matching across, uh, sort of educational and class lines on the things that you would expect, on things like, like attractiveness, for example.

Chris Williamson 37:19 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 37:19 I think there's this... Especially in the sort of, like, the red pill, um, online spaces of, you know, men don't really care about education. They really care about, uh, you know, how attractive a woman is. Um, and yet, uh, at least the, the data that I saw sort of, uh, curated by, by Scott Alexander is that, you know, it's very rare for a highly educated man to actually date the, you know, the, the, the college dropout who, uh-

Chris Williamson 37:43 Hm, or the barista at Starbucks.

Rob Henderson 37:45 ... worked... Yeah, the barista, exactly.

Chris Williamson 37:46 So yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 37:46 Yeah. Or, or if they do date the barista at Starbucks, she has a college degree, and they think a mistake that we might make... Uh, you know, I'm sort of channeling Gregory Clark here, is that like, oh, he knew that she had a college degree, and that's why he was open to dating her. Whereas I think Clark would say, actually, they, they, they had a, they had some conversations together, and through that, he could sort of tell that they were maybe roughly in the same class, the same space-

Chris Williamson 38:05 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 38:05 ... her sort of, uh, uh, levels of curiosity and intellect, and all of the sort of, uh-

Chris Williamson 38:09 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 38:09 ... psychological attributes, uh, they, they matched along those lines. So, you know, even though she maybe works, uh, uh, uh, somewhere that doesn't require a college degree, she has one, and she's the kind of person who would get a college degree.

Chris Williamson 38:20 Predisposed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 38:22 Predisposed, and then they, they sort of match along those lines. The assortative mating still holds. I think, yeah, there's, there's su-... So, so again, like, is this a white pill or a black pill? It could be a black pill because, you know, status is sticking. It almost doesn't matter what you do.

Chris Williamson 38:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 38:32 But then, on the other hand, it's a white pill in that, like, you know, even though we have all of these educational and occupational trends in the modern world, it doesn't act-... It may not actually change the sort of underlying social and romantic dynamics that have sort of-

Chris Williamson 38:43 Right, yeah.

Rob Henderson 38:44 ... been with us for centuries.

Chris Williamson 38:45 It's more stable-

Rob Henderson 38:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:47 ... than we might think.

Rob Henderson 38:48 I think there... Yeah, I think it might be.

Chris Williamson 38:49 I mean, you're a r-... Look at you-

Rob Henderson 38:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:50 ... as like the poster child for... What was it th-... S-... Uh, kids that grow up in... Is it single parent homes are like 10 times more likely to go to college than adopted kids? What was the stat?

Rob Henderson 39:03 Oh, no, no, no, no. So, so the stat is, uh, it was on foster kids specifically. Um, so I did, uh, you know, some of this research as I was writing, writing my book that'll be out next year, and then, um, uh, I, I wrote this essay that's, uh, that was in The Free Press a couple of years ago which basically, um, so in the US, kids who are, uh, raised in families in the bottom, uh, socioeconomic quintile, so the bottom 20%, essentially kids raised in poor families, uh, roughly 11% of them graduate from college. Which is pretty low because the, the, the average rate in the US is around 35%. So it's pretty low, 11% versus 35%, but the ama-... The number, uh, or the percentage of, of foster kids in the US who graduate from college is 3%. And so, in other words, a kid raised in a poor family is four times more likely to graduate from college than a foster kid.

Chris Williamson 39:52 (laughs) .

Rob Henderson 39:53 Uh, and so I used... You know, I... This is sort of, essentially to me, sort of evidence that instability and, uh, sort of disorderly environment-

Chris Williamson 40:01 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 40:01 ... is, uh, is obvi-... Uh, is perhaps something that we should be paying more attention to. It obviously has an effect, but it may be something that, that deserves more attention than we're giving it, relative to sort of the material factors.

Chris Williamson 40:11 Did you dig into Melissa Carney's new one? Have you read that yet?

Rob Henderson 40:14 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I re-... I just read it. I finished it, uh, a couple of weeks ago. Excellent book. Excellent book. Yeah, The Two-Parent Privilege.

Chris Williamson 40:18 Dude.

Rob Henderson 40:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:19 So I watched...

Chris Williamson 40:20 Uh, she's been on the show. Anyone that hasn't seen that can go back and listen to the episode I did with Melissa. She was great. But, I mean, she is, you know, as straight down the line policy wonk, DC pilled as you're going to get, right?

Rob Henderson 40:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:32 Like, she's like the female Richard Reeves.

Rob Henderson 40:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:34 You know? Like, she's just there to do... Help do policy and do the DC thing, and-

Rob Henderson 40:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:39 ... and... She's a statistician, demographer lady, right?

Rob Henderson 40:43 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:43 She's... I, I tried to push her on the episode and was like, "So, why is this occurring?" Like, "Give me the implications here. Infer for me what you think is the underlying mechanism." And she was very reticent about trying to work out what's going on from a psychological perspective. And I thought, "Wow, that's really, uh... That's a good signal that she's not prepared to get out over what she sees is her domain of expertise."

Rob Henderson 41:08 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:08 "I have this. This is what I do." And uh, she did it a little bit, but she didn't go too far, and I was like, "That's a really good signal."

Rob Henderson 41:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:14 But what I saw on the internet before her book came out, tons and tons and tons of articles saying, you know, this is, uh, like hard right Christian talking points, uh, being legitimated by cherry picked data. You haven't read the data. The book's not out yet.

Rob Henderson 41:32 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:33 And what I saw was her, as someone, as far as I could see, that if you were to do political compass on, it would probably be like just left of center, uh, and again, uh, very not prepared to say things that she didn't understand and didn't have data to back up and so on and so forth. But on the internet, the only people that weren't lambasting her as being some sort of, you know, like bigot, judgemental asshole that's telling people that come from single parent households that they shouldn't, and, uh, "What? So you're saying that women should stay in an abusive relationship instead of, uh, you know, allowing the- themselves and their child to have a good stepparent?" And blah, blah, blah, like just all straw man shithouse arguments. And I saw the exact path that many, many people are taking, which is causing them to bend toward the right.

Rob Henderson 42:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:20 Because you go, "Hang on a second. I've put this piece of work out which is relatively dispassionate," which is actually... It's the two-parent privilege.

Rob Henderson 42:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:27 This is a championing of how we can fix underprivileged kids, which is fundamentally a left wing phenomenon, right? It's class.

Rob Henderson 42:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:35 We're trying to fix the class problem.The only people that were accepting of her, or weren't, like, accusing her of doing awful things-

Rob Henderson 42:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:42 ... were the people that were center right and further right.

Rob Henderson 42:45 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:45 So what you see is how somebody that has a left-leaning, uh, predisposition-

Rob Henderson 42:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:50 ... perhaps or just a centrist disposition, gets nudged by their treatment toward the right. They go, "Okay, well, fuck you guys."

Rob Henderson 42:57 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:58 Like, if, if, if you're not gonna accept me, I'll happily... Like, and she, I wish that I'd noticed this before I spoke to her, 'cause I would've loved to have asked her about this. But yeah, like, that's not... I, I can completely see how the tribalism of, of both sides, and I'm sure that there's an equivalent dynamic on the right-

Rob Henderson 43:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:16 ... pushing people toward the left that I don't see.

Rob Henderson 43:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:18 Um, but the tribalism of the left and the purity spiral of the left-

Rob Henderson 43:21 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:21 ... and its, its rapidity at judging people-

Rob Henderson 43:26 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:28 ... to see bigotry where there may not be some-

Rob Henderson 43:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:31 ... I can absolutely see how this is causing more and more people to lean-

Rob Henderson 43:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:37 ... in a different direction.

Rob Henderson 43:38 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I saw, I saw a lot of that, uh, sort of the ad hominems online, and a lot of the insults and derogatory comments that were directed at her, and I thought, "Yeah, they were completely unfair." The book, I mean, the other thing is, like, the book is, is very dense, but it's also, um, you can read it in an afternoon. I mean, she presents the data in a beautiful way, a very sort of straightforward way that any sort of educated and curious person can understand. Uh, and it seems like, yeah, most people just didn't even bother flipping through it and, and having a look, because she, uh, caveats multiple times that this isn't a, this isn't a, a book about sort of, sort of judging people or about values, it really is about, um, sort of looking just sort of from a dispa- dispassionate point of view, what did the data say about outcomes for kids in various sort of family, uh, arrangements. So, yeah, I thought that was so strange. I mean, yeah, and she does stick close to the data. I think generally speaking, that's a good idea when you're making arguments that are unpopular, (laughs) that you should stick very closely to the data and not go too far ahead of your skis there, just because, um, you're going to be held to a higher standard when you say something that's, that's unpopular. Um, there's that sort of can versus must distinction, uh-

Chris Williamson 44:44 What's that?

Rob Henderson 44:44 ... sort of the classic finding in psychology about how when people are, uh, predisposed to, uh, support a certain point of view, essentially they implicitly ask themselves, "Can I..." And, and then they come across a piece of information that supports that point of view, they implicitly ask themselves, "Can I believe it?" And generally speaking, the answer will be, "Yes, I can believe that." Uh, and when they encounter something that is at odds with that point of view, they-

Chris Williamson 45:08 Hmm.

Rob Henderson 45:08 ... implicitly ask themselves, "Must I believe it?" And if they find a reason, if there are any, any flaws in that argument, or any, any reason whatsoever why they can discount it, then they say, "Oh, I, I don't have to," right?

Chris Williamson 45:18 Doesn't that, doesn't this show up... Was it you that taught me about how this shows up in Twitter arguments, where-

Rob Henderson 45:22 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 45:23 ... when people are wanting, uh, somebody puts a point on the internet that goes against something that they believe, and then they go and google and search for, uh, like, why such and such a thing is true.

Rob Henderson 45:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 45:34 Uh, and they're ju- it's like you're not asking for, um, is this thing true, you're looking for arguments that support your side.

Rob Henderson 45:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:41 So you're looking for a good barrister, rather than an honest judge.

Rob Henderson 45:45 Yes. Right, right, right. Yeah, you want, um, you want so- uh, well, you're looking for arguments, of course, that sort of, you know, the classic confirmation bias idea, you're looking for information, you're monitoring, and then you're sort of overlooking anything that, that might make you feel uncomfortable or that might call your beliefs into question. There was a really cool study, I wanna say this was in the '90s, um, sort of along this vein. I mean, it's, it's, uh, it's a neat example because it's sort of disconnected from politics. Y- like, I think anyone can appreciate this, which is essentially what these researchers did, was they brought these participants into the lab, um, and, uh, they, they told these participants, you know, they showed them, um, this, this jar, and it was really just water, but they told them it was this sort of chemical solution-

Chris Williamson 46:24 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 46:24 ... and if you drop a, a strip of water into it... So in one condition, they told the participants, "You drop this strip of water into it, um, and it, and it doesn't change color, it just sort of remains the same white or whatever it was, uh, then that means that you don't have this sort of rare, unique, uh, congenital disease."

Chris Williamson 46:40 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 46:40 You know, you dip it in, leave it in for a few seconds, pull it out, stays the same, you're good to go. And so they brought some participants in, and, you know, basically they found, you know, participants would dip it in, didn't change color, they'd walk right out. In another condition, they told the participants, um, "You know, you dip the strip into the piece of paper, and if it changes color, then that means you're good to go. If it stays the same, that means you may potentially have this con- congenital illness." And in this case, what did the participants do? They dipped the strip into the water, waited, dipped it back in, waited, took another strip, dipped it back in, waited, and then they started to get nervous.

Chris Williamson 47:11 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 47:11 And essentially they were going for that confirmation, because what, what did they want to believe? They wanted to believe that they were healthy, and when they did not receive information that supported that, then they started to, to sort of, you know, shuffle through, and, and, and, uh, and try to, try to find ways to confirm that, that, that belief.

Chris Williamson 47:25 We both came across the same research that shows that chads rather than incels are the extreme misogynists.

Rob Henderson 47:30 (laughs) Right, yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:31 Dude, I love this.

Rob Henderson 47:33 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I saw, uh, William retweet that one, and that's when it got on my radar. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 47:37 Of course he does. Of course he, of course he does. Of course he does.

Rob Henderson 47:39 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:39 Anything that's pro-incel, yeah. Uh, "Men with higher levels of sex partners are more likely to hold extreme misogynist views, which contradicts the incel narrative. Extreme misogyny correlates with status seeking and dominance orientation, both of which also correlate with high levels of sex partners."

Rob Henderson 47:57 Hmm. Yeah, I thought that was, uh, an absolutely fascinating study, and it, it links up very nicely, you know, I, I, when I was in, in grad school, I read, um, David Buss's Evolutionary Psychology textbook cover to cover, and one of the things he points out there, uh, is, is, uh, that, you know, there's, there's not much, if any, research supporting what, uh, what's referred to as the mate deprivation hypothesis. You know, this idea... So the mate deprivation hypothesis is essentially that, you know, young men who are, who are deprived of mates are more likely to develop these sort of, uh, uh, uh, misogynistic attitudes, they're more likely to, uh, coerce women into sex, or more likely to commit sexual assault. And essentially, uh, all the research that I've seen indicates almost the, the reverse of that, and including the study here, uh, which points in the same direction, which is that the men who are the most likely to commit sexual coercion or assault are also men who are the most likely to, uh, to have consensual sex partners as well.

Chris Williamson 48:51 Wow.

Rob Henderson 48:51 Um-And, yeah, all of these things sort of come together and correlate with status-seeking, dominance orientation, extroversion, um, uh, the, probably, I would imagine, narcissism as well, and maybe some of the other dark triad traits of being, being particularly attractive, uh, to women. And, uh, you know, this is now, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm more comfortable speculating, uh, than maybe I should be.

Chris Williamson 49:13 Get it out there. You're not even part of the academy anymore.

Rob Henderson 49:15 (laughs) But, but tell me anything, I'm-

Chris Williamson 49:15 Say what you want.

Rob Henderson 49:16 Well, you know, I have a foot in, but, but, but I'm comfortable with sort of making this, this is just a hypothesis, but I think that most, many, maybe most women would be pretty reluctant to actually be sort of alone in, like, like be in a situation in, in, in which they could potentially be alone and assaulted by the sort of prototypical incel, like-

Chris Williamson 49:39 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 49:39 ... you know, the sort of lonely, unattractive, isolated, angry male.

Chris Williamson 49:43 Warning flags.

Rob Henderson 49:44 Um, right, exactly. Like, they would know in advance, like, "I don't need to be alone with this guy. There's something off about him." Uh, again, the sort of prototypical, I'm not saying all incels are like that, but that's sort of archetypical image of a, of an incel. Whereas, um, probably just, just sort of, you know, uh, uh, I think this is, this is pretty intuitive that, that women would be more willing to sort of be alone and, and potentially be in a risky situation with a man who is attractive, right? And so just through the sort of differentiating levels or different, differing levels of likelihood-

Chris Williamson 50:12 Exposure.

Rob Henderson 50:12 ... of being alone and exposure alone.

Chris Williamson 50:14 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 50:14 That, um, yeah, that, uh, that, that assault would be more likely to happen in one context than the other. Um, and so I think that may partially explain some of those differences that if women were alone with actual incels (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 50:25 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 50:26 ... as much as they're alone with, you know, status-seeking, dominance-oriented, uh, uh, extroverts, then maybe those, the numbers would be different. But, but generally speaking, I think that finding is suggestive. And then in my own personal life, I mean, when I think about the guys who-

Chris Williamson 50:41 All of the men that you spend your time alone with.

Rob Henderson 50:42 Yeah, well, that I spend, yeah, yeah, and that I feel a- yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:45 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 50:45 Um, but the guys that I know who are particularly, you know, at least numerically successful, I don't know if you are...

Chris Williamson 50:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 50:52 ... what does success mean in this context? But just have had a lot of sex partners, they do tend to be a little bit more glib, a little bit less, um, preoccupied with, "Well, what does she think of me?" Or, you know, or, or, or, um, or sort of, what traditional or conventional or, or hold sort of benevolent sexist attitudes, right?

Chris Williamson 51:11 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 51:11 It's usually, usually a little bit more, uh, I guess on the positive, I mean, more jokey or playful, but then on the other, it can sort of dip into, you know, the example that I... So, so I, I posted, uh, one of these studies online and sort of commented that, um, you know, I think this is easy to understand when you reverse the genders. You know, if you think about like, like a woman who spends a lot of time, um, attracting men. I'm thinking about someone like, like a stripper, for example. Like, I'm sure they have extremely cynical attitudes about men, right? Uh, whereas women, like if you think about a woman who doesn't really, you know, may- maybe isn't very attractive or hasn't had a boyfriend or hasn't had that much experience around men, they probably have-

Chris Williamson 51:48 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 51:48 ... a little bit more sort of may- maybe slightly more optimistic views or at least, um, less, less cynical views about men.

Chris Williamson 51:56 Dude, so Sadia Khan, psychology, psychology lady, she does like, uh, couples counseling and stuff. Uh, she gave me this really interesting answer to the question, uh, are hot girls more crazy, right?

Rob Henderson 52:11 (laughs) Okay.

Chris Williamson 52:11 So the classic, the classic question, like finally Aristotle's got an answer. Um, and she said that the experience that hot girls have of most men-

Rob Henderson 52:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:25 ... jades their view of all men, because the men that she spends her time around are unbelievably pliable, they cheat on their partners with her, they try to shower her with gifts, they say things that they think she wants to hear, they're duplicitous. So the-

Rob Henderson 52:43 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:43 ... reality distortion field of the beautiful woman causes all of the men or many of the male interactions on average to, uh, group together, to clump together in a way which doesn't show men in a particularly good light.

Rob Henderson 52:55 Right. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:56 How fucking cool is that as an idea?

Rob Henderson 52:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:59 Like the reality distortion field of the hot girl or something.

Rob Henderson 53:03 Yeah. Yeah, that is... Uh, it reminds me of this, this, this interview I watched years ago of, uh, Chris Rock, and he said that basically being... Well, I don't know if he's, he said something along the lines of being an attractive woman is like being a celebrity or being a celebrity is like being an attractive woman-

Chris Williamson 53:15 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 53:15 ... where once you reach a certain level of fame or notoriety or recognition, that people react to you in a predictable way.

Chris Williamson 53:23 Yep.

Rob Henderson 53:23 In a way that, that is often obnoxious or, um, you know, try to give you free things or try to, try to court you or, you know, they're, they're looking for something from you. And, uh, yeah, that is, yeah, where you're only seeing a sort of, you're only seeing sort of one version of that person, whereas everyone else might see another version.

Chris Williamson 53:38 And, and pre-selecting for the only sorts of people who are prepared to go up to the hot girl in the first place.

Rob Henderson 53:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:43 I saw this with strippers, uh, and I would imagine it may be the same with OnlyFans girls as well. A lot of the strippers that I was friends with throughout my 20s when I was working in nightlife had very, very jaded views of men-

Rob Henderson 53:54 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 53:54 ... because they were seeing the stag on his bachelor party out in Newcastle, you know, trying to get a blow job off one of the strippers that are in there.

Rob Henderson 54:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:05 Right? Like men at their worst selected for it, their worst around the women-

Rob Henderson 54:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:10 ... that are able to, you know, cajole or coerce or encourage them to do a thing that's or whatever. Uh, and, "Oh, that's how all men are."

Rob Henderson 54:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:17 There was this really great segment,

Chris Williamson 54:20 uh, on Rogan's show years and years ago, Tim, one of Tim Dillon's first appearances. And Joe's, uh, I think Tim's talking about how the LA comedy scene is very ruthless-

Rob Henderson 54:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 54:31 ... and Joe has just moved to Austin and is saying, "Ah, I don't know what you're talking about. Uh, it's fantastic over there. Uh, every time that I go into a room, everyone treats me really great." Uh, and Bl- and Tim cuts in, he goes, "Ho- hold on one second. Like you do know that you are Joe Rogan."

Rob Henderson 54:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:46 Right?

Rob Henderson 54:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:47 Like, do you, like you bend reality around, there's this sphere that follows you where like who the fuck's gonna treat you like shit?

Rob Henderson 54:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:54 Right?

Rob Henderson 54:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:55 Like the biggest podcaster in the world's just walked in.

Rob Henderson 54:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 54:57 And, um, I spoke to Tucker Max about this over dinner a couple of months ago. It's so interesting. Um, and I was talking about how-I- I- I've noticed certain groups of people treating me differently over the last couple of years as s- status and, and renown, and wealth, and whatever has, has changed. And there is a reason now to be nice, perhaps, or maybe there's not a reason to be nice, they don't even know it, but something happens. They've heard that's the guy with the podcast or whatever. Mm-hmm. So, you just notice that (clears throat) like the average stranger interaction has adjusted in some way. Maybe I'm just super, like, charismatic or whatever. I've changed my confidence. That-

Rob Henderson 55:34 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 55:34 ... totally could be it too.

Rob Henderson 55:35 Could be, yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:35 But my more, um, like, highly skeptical, uh, cynical view of it is, like, people want something or whatever. Anyway, and, um-

Rob Henderson 55:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 55:42 ... I was talking to Tucker about this and he said, uh, "To become rich or famous as a man is to accept being a, a resource to be extracted for, from or an object to be desired."

Rob Henderson 55:52 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 55:52 And he said that, uh, women become objectified as soon as they become, uh, you know, like womanly.

Rob Henderson 55:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:57 You know, you're 13 years old and the boys in the class now start to see that you've got boobs and, and then you become like 17, 18 and the whole world objectifies you for a while because your value is immediate and upfront. Whereas-

Rob Henderson 56:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 56:07 ... you know, this is a red pill takeaway I guess, that like, uh, women are born with value, men have to create it.

Rob Henderson 56:12 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 56:13 Um, and i- it is, unless you're Brad Pitt or, you know, somebody who is, is super good-looking and has that upfront, um, you have to achieve some degree of, of, of self-generated value in order for people to, uh, treat you in a, to objectify you.

Rob Henderson 56:31 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 56:31 Right? Like no one's, no one's just objectifying the random dude in the street.

Rob Henderson 56:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:34 But if the random dude in the street gets out of a Bugatti, maybe they are, right?

Rob Henderson 56:38 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:38 Ooh, what's he got? Ooh, dude, let me tell you, let me ask you about blah, blah. Uh, yeah, uh, to, to become a, an ex- a resource to be extracted from, uh, or an object to be desired. Thought it was very interesting.

Rob Henderson 56:48 Yeah. Yeah, there's a sort of a, a positive feedback loop that happens there too. I think with, with the Bugatti example, um, so, so you have this, uh, prestigious material good, and then you step out of it, and then suddenly, you know, you're, you have increased social capital because people are drawn to you. But I think this happens even, even within just the realm of social capital itself. I mean, you know, I, uh, I'll just use this, this personal example of, you know, I was, I was walking through an airport with some friends and, uh, and then, yeah, oops, recognized a couple of different times, but, you know, so I, I was with friends, but then they had friends who didn't really know, like they, oh, they kinda know that I write and stuff-

Chris Williamson 57:19 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 57:19 ... but they don't really... And then I got recognized and suddenly, they became more interested in talking to me. Like-

Chris Williamson 57:23 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 57:23 ... "Oh, what do you, yeah, what exactly? Tell, tell me more about it." And so I think it's like, um, you know, you get recognized once and then other people become interested, and then suddenly, you can't, you know?

Chris Williamson 57:31 Da-da-da-da-da.

Rob Henderson 57:31 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 57:31 Did I ever tell you that story when I walked down Broadway with Peterson-

Rob Henderson 57:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 57:35 ... uh, in Nashville?

Rob Henderson 57:37 I don't think so.

Chris Williamson 57:37 So, uh, we went for dinner. It was about two years ago from now. And I went for dinner with him, and there was that famous video of him dancing with his wife and Ben Shapiro was there in Nashville.

Rob Henderson 57:45 Okay. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 57:45 Just a few years ago.

Rob Henderson 57:46 Oh, I did see, I saw s- yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:47 And s- it was the night after that.

Rob Henderson 57:48 Okay.

Chris Williamson 57:48 So, he loved this bar and we were gonna go back to this bar, and he didn't have any of his security with him. Uh, so it was me, Michaela, Michaela's now husband, and Jordan.

Rob Henderson 57:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 57:58 Uh, and Michaela's husband's like six-foot-four-

Rob Henderson 58:01 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:01 ... ki- kind of dude. So like-

Rob Henderson 58:02 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:02 ... he was like, he's like a tall guy or whatever.

Rob Henderson 58:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 58:04 Uh, but no security. And Jordan starts walking down, uh, uh, Broadway, like the street in Nashville, right? It's where Kid Rock's bar is and Whiskey Row and all this stuff. And they, on a weekend, close it off at, I think they close it off at both ends or maybe they don't. But anyway, it's, it's stacked. (laughs) Someone notices Jordan Peterson and then goes over to, like, get a photo with him and shake his hand and, "Hello, how are you?" And then other people notice the other people are standing talking to someone, so a queue forms-

Rob Henderson 58:32 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 58:33 ... to speak to Jordan Peterson. He's accumulating a tail of humans as he walked like a fucking comet, right? Walking down Nashville.

Rob Henderson 58:40 (laughs) A comet.

Chris Williamson 58:41 Yeah, honestly.

Rob Henderson 58:42 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:42 And, uh, I, I remember thinking like, "Oh, my God." We were the young-

Rob Henderson 58:46 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:47 ... uh, delegates' uh, dinner-

Rob Henderson 58:49 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 58:49 ... drinks thing last night at ARK here in London. Uh, and sure enough, there was a, a queue of people. Like this is a conference of people selected for a very, like, particular set of interests.

Rob Henderson 59:01 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:01 And then we went to 150-person drinks thing-

Rob Henderson 59:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:06 ... which is selected from within that group-

Rob Henderson 59:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:08 ... the people that were invited to go to this thing. And even within that selected group of a selected group, the Peterson comet tail-

Rob Henderson 59:16 The tail thing, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:16 ... thing existed again. So, um, yeah.

Rob Henderson 59:20 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:20 And that's almost like a, like a physical manifestation of what you're talking about that's going on socially.

Rob Henderson 59:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:25 Right? People see, they don't see a physical queue, but they see, uh, uh, like a social cue-

Rob Henderson 59:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:32 Right? Like a C-U-E.

Rob Henderson 59:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:33 And they go, "Oh, okay. Right."

Rob Henderson 59:35 And as, I would, I would be curious. I mean, may- maybe in the, the example of the 150 or, or smaller group of, of selected people, they probably are familiar with Jordan it sounds like. But, uh, in the example of him walking down, is it Broadway, the street in Nashville?

Chris Williamson 59:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 59:48 When that tail formed, what I would be curious to know is probably many of those people, maybe most of them did know who Jordan was. But what I'm curious about are the people who didn't know who he was, but just saw the tail.

Chris Williamson 59:56 Exactly. Let's get a, let's just get a-

Rob Henderson 59:56 They're like everyone's following that guy-

Chris Williamson 59:58 (laughs) Let's get a photo.

Rob Henderson 59:58 ... I guess I'll get in the line. Like, I guess he's famous, let's go check this out. And now they're fol- and so, you know, so-

Chris Williamson 1:00:03 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 1:00:03 ... what percentage of those people were, were familiar with him too? You know, there's these, there are these classic studies from, uh, from Milgram. Uh, so most people know Milgram through the, um, the obedience studies of, you know, the, uh, uh... He, you know, essentially tricked people into shocking and, and believing that they were injuring someone or perhaps killing them. But there were these other studies that Milgram did and, and, and other social psychologists, you know, this sort of classic work back in the day of, you know, he'd just have people, uh, on, on like a Manhattan street and just have like four or five research assistants look up at the sky, just like me, you, and a couple other th- people-

Chris Williamson 1:00:32 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 1:00:32 ... just look up at the sky like this. And then gradually what happened is people would be walking by and they'd see, you know, four people looking at something and they'd stop and look up too. Like, "What are they looking at?" And then, and then there's suddenly this massive crowd would form-

Chris Williamson 1:00:43 Hue created the entire time. (laughs)

Rob Henderson 1:00:43 ... of like suddenly you have 40 people looking up at the sky and no one knows what they're looking at.

Chris Williamson 1:00:48 At nothing. Wow.

Rob Henderson 1:00:48 Right? Everyone's trying to figure out what those original four people, right? So there is that-

Chris Williamson 1:00:51 Wow.

Rob Henderson 1:00:51 ... sort of imitative, you know, quality that, you know, which is, which is, you know, it's, it's adaptive, uh, but it's also, you know, it can kind of misfire-

Chris Williamson 1:00:57 Ridiculous.

Rob Henderson 1:00:58 ... and lead to these funny situations, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:00 Being moderate is a green

Chris Williamson 1:01:02 flag. You see this new one about extremist views?

Rob Henderson 1:01:05 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:01:05 William shared the graph of it.

Rob Henderson 1:01:08 I haven't seen this one, but, uh, let's not. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:10 Let me get your take on this. This is awesome. Researchers polled over 1,000 registered US voters aged 18 to 34. A majority of both men and women consider far rightism and far leftism to be red flags in a potential partner. 76% of women and 59% of men consider identifying as a MAGA Republican-

Rob Henderson 1:01:29 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:01:30 ... to be a major turn-off.

Rob Henderson 1:01:31 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:31 64% of men and 55% of women said they'd also swipe left on someone identifying as a communist.

Rob Henderson 1:01:38 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:39 So that was high number of women, 76% for MAGA, 64% of men for communist. 55% of women said that listening to Joe Rogan was a red flag.

Rob Henderson 1:01:48 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:01:49 30...

Rob Henderson 1:01:49 What about modern wisdom? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:01:51 35... Yeah, that wasn't on there. Uh, 35% of men. Uh, 41% of men said the same for a woman being into astrology.

Rob Henderson 1:01:58 Hmm, okay, I mean...

Chris Williamson 1:02:00 20% of women. Uh, 33% of men said red flag for they say Black lives matter.

Rob Henderson 1:02:06 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:06 14% of women. Uh, 53% of women for they refuse to see the Barbie movie.

Rob Henderson 1:02:11 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:12 Uh, 53% of women, uh, 58% of women for they say there are only two genders. So-

Rob Henderson 1:02:17 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:18 ... more women concerned about the two genders thing than the Barbie movie. Interesting-

Rob Henderson 1:02:23 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:23 ... uh, what that is. But yeah, just overall, it seems like, um, far rightism, far leftism, uh, uh, uh, being moderate is a green flag.

Rob Henderson 1:02:33 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:33 Basically, like, having... But that being said, how is saying that there are only two genders, like, an extreme position? How, how, uh, how... Like, I would've thought that that would've been the moderate position, right? Like, uh, well, I guess it depends. Yeah, but the, the bar stool's been turned upside down. But yeah, overall, when it comes to dating, it seems like a majority of both men and women consider far rightism and far leftism to be red flags in a potential partner.

Rob Henderson 1:02:56 Wha- wha- what age group is this? Are these young, young people?

Chris Williamson 1:02:58 18 to 34.

Rob Henderson 1:02:59 18 to 34, okay, yeah, that makes a lot... Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, yeah, I mean, you've, you've probably seen some of these data, too, about sort of the political divergence of young men and young women, um, which is really... I mean, it's really interesting because, uh, a lot of the, the press, the media will concentrate on, you know, the supposed, uh, right-wing radicalization of young men, when actually mo- most of the sort of political psychology survey data indicates the reverse, where men are... young men are slightly turning to the right. There's sort of a s- a slight turn, whereas for young women, there's a sharp, like a sharp rise in young women identifying as left or far left.

Chris Williamson 1:03:32 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 1:03:32 So it's actually the, the women, uh, who are being sort of, uh, uh, radicalized or, or turning to a more extreme direction. Um-

Chris Williamson 1:03:39 Yeah, but we don't mind about that one.

Rob Henderson 1:03:40 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:40 We, nobody... We don't need to care about that.

Rob Henderson 1:03:42 Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, well, i- i- so I think, like, in t- in terms of, like, violence and so forth, right, there's no, there's no young female syndrome.

Chris Williamson 1:03:48 Ah.

Rob Henderson 1:03:48 Uh, or, or if there is one, it would be... it would manifest itself differently. And, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:03:52 The female longhouse.

Rob Henderson 1:03:53 (laughs) The female, yeah, the longhouse.

Chris Williamson 1:03:55 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 1:03:57 Um, but yeah, I mean, uh, in terms of the sort of the classic threats of terrorism and so forth, I mean, but, but, uh, yeah, that's, that's interesting. I mean, so, so some of those, like yeah, the, the two genders one, uh, that's interesting.

Chris Williamson 1:04:09 58% of women.

Rob Henderson 1:04:10 58% of women. I found, like, the... Yeah, there's a, there's a, a sort of a, a neat reversal there of, like, MAGA Republicans versus communist-

Chris Williamson 1:04:16 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 1:04:16 ... where most men a- seemingly okay with dating a, a, a MAGA-w- identifying woman, but women, uh, are more okay with dating a communist-identifying man.

Chris Williamson 1:04:24 But here's the thing, right? That-

Rob Henderson 1:04:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:25 ... it's not apples for apples, right?

Rob Henderson 1:04:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:28 Like, uh, 35% of men said that a woman listening to Joe Rogan was a red flag.

Rob Henderson 1:04:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:35 But a man listening to Joe Rogan and a woman listening to Joe Rogan is not the same thing.

Rob Henderson 1:04:39 That's true too, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:40 You know what I mean?

Rob Henderson 1:04:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:41 R- like, there was one about, uh, owning a gun.

Rob Henderson 1:04:44 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:44 That, like, some quite high percentage of women said that owning a gun was a red flag, right?

Rob Henderson 1:04:49 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:49 In America.

Rob Henderson 1:04:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:50 Um, but a woman owning a gun is not the same as a man owning a gun.

Rob Henderson 1:04:54 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:54 Right?

Rob Henderson 1:04:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:55 And, and the same for listening to Joe Rogan and so on and so forth. So, uh, it- it's... it makes for very interesting reading, but I actually think that, like, if a woman does listen to Joe Rogan, there'll be some nonzero number of men in there that are like, "That's a, like, that's a boys"-

Rob Henderson 1:05:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:11 ... "show. Like, why, why... Like, oh, maybe she's super disagreeable or maybe she's, like, gonna try and arm wrestle me in bed or something." Like...

Rob Henderson 1:05:17 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I have... I've heard this, um, you know, just, just speaking with young guys that, uh, you know, they are, to some extent, sort of bothered by these gender differences in politics and how, like, more and more young women are sort of identifying in, in, in a more sort of ex- sharp left-wing direction. Um, but then they, they also sort of lament that, you know, a lot of young... 'Cause you have to be, you know, uh, to some degree psychologically peculiar if you're a young woman who is a sort of right-wing person or, or, or identifying openly as a conservative-

Chris Williamson 1:05:49 Hmm.

Rob Henderson 1:05:49 ... because you're sort of going against the grain, right? Like, you are an outlier in that sense.

Chris Williamson 1:05:54 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 1:05:54 And that of- often sort of coincides with other things that young men are kind of annoyed by. Uh, it's... So it's like it's a, it's a-

Chris Williamson 1:05:59 It's the astrology one, dude.

Rob Henderson 1:06:00 ... exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:06:00 41% of men said that a woman being into astrology is a red-

Rob Henderson 1:06:03 That one, that one was confusing to me. I think, like, that's fine. You know, that's like a very-

Chris Williamson 1:06:06 Oh, Rob, come on.

Rob Henderson 1:06:06 ... to me, like, a feminine way of thinking, you know. Like, I think it's... you know, I, I, I

Chris Williamson 1:06:11 I can't remember who, wha- who was it that said... Was it they said, uh, um, uh, the big five is astrology for men.

Rob Henderson 1:06:19 (laughs) I've heard that for evolutionary psychology too.

Chris Williamson 1:06:20 Yeah, evolutionary psychology is-

Rob Henderson 1:06:21 Evolutionary psychology is-

Chris Williamson 1:06:22 ... is astrology for men.

Rob Henderson 1:06:23 Yeah, but I mean, well, well, that's fine, but there are, like, you know, a lot of... well, a lot of men, but, but at least in my experience, more women are interested in the MBTI, the Myers-Briggs.

Chris Williamson 1:06:31 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 1:06:32 And that is... I mean, it's, you know, it's not, it's not completely astrology, but it's more like astrology than the big five. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:06:37 I had... Yeah, it is.

Rob Henderson 1:06:37 So-

Chris Williamson 1:06:38 I had, uh, uh, Spencer Greenberg on the show. Do you know Spencer?

Rob Henderson 1:06:42 I-

Chris Williamson 1:06:42 Real interesting dude.

Rob Henderson 1:06:43 I think I've seen some of his, yeah, some of his stuff.

Chris Williamson 1:06:44 I got intro'd to him from William MacAskill.

Rob Henderson 1:06:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:46 Um, just super interesting guy, mathematician, but just does science. Like, uh-

Rob Henderson 1:06:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:50 ... I don't know what he's funded