Born to Lie: How Humans Deceive Ourselves & Others - Lionel Page - #995

What do most people not understand when they think about human reasoning and how it works? Yeah, look reason is you know the faculty to form judgments solve problems be rigorous we tend to think of it as That is it's here to help us solve actual problems with you know facts with reality A good a good image that you can have for reason how it is Is you know the movie the standard kerbic movie 2001 the space of DC and you have this bunch of apes and they're pretty useless And then suddenly they wake up one morning and there's this a monolith is back monoliths and once it touches it certainly kind of reason Full upon them and then they discover that if they use it by born they can use it as a tool and they can use it as a weapon And then the movie you know say use this as a starting point for what makes humans humans use reason to solve problems And you can think that reason helps to scientific things find the truth send rockets in space, etc But if you think about you any normal humans, how do we use reasons? I mean we really really solve actual problems, you know When is the last time I kind of invented something or solve a practical problem? It happens right but it's not super frequent But what we do most with reason is not really that most often every day we use our reason to reason with other people That is we have most of the problems we face in our lives.

There are social problems. There are problems when we interact with the people It's not something you know that the computer doesn't work or that the dishwasher doesn't work It's solving how do I get my friends to do what I want how to get my friends to understand me how I get my bus to give me a raise etc. These are the problems we use reason so we are reasoning but we are not reasoning like scientists to solve problems We're reasoning like lawyers to convince other people and the key aspect I think one of the interesting theories which came in the last 10 years about What is reason is that reason is this? It's it's it's it's it's not here to solve problems here for us to convince other people and once you take this Approach it will explain a lot of you know people you have a really true people being irrational making lots of mistakes etc.

But then when you think well, I mean maybe we're not actually designed to be scientists with some of the mistakes are by design You know confirmation bias You look at the information which is convenient you ignore the information which is new continent Well, that's that's what you do if you want to win your case not if you want to find the truth So that's the way reason really works in that case if Human reasoning is more about persuasion than it is problem solving is our capacity for problem solving just a byproduct of the fact that we're here And capable of convincing and persuading other people You know, there's a good question. I mean we have some ability. You know, we have somebody to stop problem-solve it the the anthropologist of psychologists Look that's they found that you know, we're pretty useless Lots of the solutions we have that socials that were given that there are social solutions that we know how to be things because we've been Talked how to do you know, you might remember in Australia They were kind of a British British people like traveling in Australia and they lost themselves and and and they were kind of You know the locals who had their customers They were able to survive with the land and these guys had just died because you know, they didn't know they don't know what to find What are they not? and we Individually we really really find and solve problems we can have any rate of problems which have been actually the solution which have been Exulated by past generations, so we solve problems, but really not frequently what we do most often is just we use all the solutions That we narrate we're told how it works and we do it So is it right to say that our reasoning is self-serving in that way?

Yeah, yeah, you know, that's I think that's one of the biggest insight we get is that when we take a little Bad reason with big R we tend to think of fields of hers of mathematician, you know, that's kind of iconic a picture of reasoning Etc, but really when we what we do you know, she think about from any relation point of view That's not being a rational like that and very rigorous is not the best way of winning arguments You know, you should go in debating you know that debating you have tricks You know, you you're not here to find the truth You hate us to win your case and that's the way our mind works, you know So when you debate with the people when you try to convince other people you're going to you know Just put a nice angle a nice spin to what you say you're going to avoid going into areas where you think that you may be in trouble Etc, and we do it naturally right we don't need to do any to necessarily strategize we do it naturally We're convinced that that's the right way that we say is right right and that's the way our reason works is to you know Completely being self-serving to first to find the best way of convincing other people But we also need to convince ourselves, right? This is where self-deception comes in too. Yeah, yeah, yeah so the this idea that we serve this if and that it's a strategic It works tragically to convince others is an idea performed by Robert Trigos in the 70s the biologist Robert Trigos and The primary described is okay, you know, why do we sell this and we know that we sell this if we know that we have a Confident people tend to think that they are smarter more handsome nicer than you know than they are than other people etc, you have a lot of data when you ask people you know you're a good driver like I think that Nine percent people say they are a better driver than ever. Yeah, I just not possible I mean it's everybody if you ask college professors, you know, I think I said that better professors than their colleagues Every levels, you know, you have this kind of it.

So, okay, so why do we why do we sell this here? And why do we have all these kind of flattering views about ourselves? So one one possibility is that we just like it, you know, I mean, you know, I like thinking I'm good So I choose to shape my beliefs and to form believe that I'm better than I am because I just I just enjoy this feeling The problem with this explanation is that there are costs of being Overconfident of having wrong beliefs. So, you know, if I think I'm stronger than I am and I'm going to go into fights I shouldn't go into if I think I'm a better climber.

I'm going to climb a mountain which I shouldn't climb a better diver Better swimmer I'm going to dive into this river I shouldn't swim so they are really risk, but so you know For many of the point of view if we are all over confident there must be a reason and it can't be you know Mine because the vision doesn't select or mine to be happy, you know that it selects us to be successful So if we all turned up to be a bit of a constant there must be because our cost there must be benefits and the benefits Robert Truth says that because we'll try to convince each other, you know There's always a risk that if I kind of lie if I if I blatantly lie when I try to talk to you You'll find out and our costs, you know I'm using repetition etc. I'm sorry, and maybe you know also you find you find out that I'm not being honest So one way of limiting discuss or one of them being found out is actually to believe my own stories You know like you know pocket players when they play poker they have their sunglasses What does that sunglasses because they don't want to leak cues of their emotion the feeling so maybe instead of having sunglasses? You could you one way to play poker if you want to bluff and be convincing is to really believe that when your game is not great Actually, it's a great game So it's not possible in poker because it's just very obvious You see the game but in the game of life, you know your cars is not that clear and so if you start believing that your The hands that you have is stronger than it is you might actually be able to bluff in a way You believe your own bluff and that's convincing because you don't leak cues that job Nothing What are some of the other ways that self-deception creeps in that people might not notice some of them or otherwise? some of them are such a ways I Think you know I remember when I because I worked on South Asian and everybody papers on South Asian and I took to a journalist and the Joyce is oh, yes, some people self-deceive This is not it it's we all self-deceive so you know it's a the design with by design We're all doing that is that you forget the truth forget the you know We have the view that we view the world and we reason with the world now.

I have to think that just you know being being a always a bit Self-serving if it works if you can get a small advantage by believing your own stuff and you can push you know convince other that you know You deserve a bigger share, you know, you're not guilty of these of that etc. It's going to be beneficial So I think the key in size is that we really see the world with roasted glasses And you know that explains that explains a lot of things you have a lot of conflict in social situations where you hear Well, there's two sides of the story. Well, why is that two sides of the story? Well, there's two sides of the story because everybody is seeing the story trying, you know, like a lawyer trying to See the point which is favorable maybe ignoring or or don't playing the point which are not favorable That's why you have to size is there's only one reality right?

But they're always too sized because we are not and we believe that all side is a real one right? But so I think it's perfecting so we say all the subtle thing I think it's it's everywhere you think about You know if you're in a couple and you think about how you negotiate who does what you know How is the show the household with a lot of conflict and and people think if you are couples There's an interesting city in your schools. What percentage of the housework you do and the service was higher than 100% right? So it's maybe that the woman says that 80% and the men says I do 30% right?

So I think it's everywhere I was thinking about you know You've alluded to the self-deception being people perhaps thinking that they are better than average But better can appear in a lot of different ways that we might not see I have to assume that The desire to be seen as a victim Even if you haven't been particularly victimized is a type of self-deception and this is to make yourself better But that betterness is couched in terms of your moral position Oh, I am somebody who is more moral I am more deserving and that's in that's you purposefully putting yourself down right on the surface It's I put myself lower as I mean victimized But that is actually just a second order 4d chess move to try and get yourself to morally be seen as somebody who is higher somebody Who is worthy of more? Totally yeah, you know like that's one fascinating aspect with these social games is that you know that really rich and so how to Sometimes I just victimized like sometimes some of the rules of fairness means that if you are like victimized you know if you have been If you have suffered some penalties either by some other people by society, etc You can claim some retribution as it's this principle of fairness that we use and so as a consequence if these principles of Retribution are commonly agreed then it becomes Potentially beneficial to be a victim not none is a to be actually a victim but to be seen as a victim to be in a field and and so you know I have this issue here works as well, but you know it's you could think of you see about people in like a modern social sphere as we think they have all like Problems of being victimized to claim kind of social recognition But even in the family you'll have like the kids, you know they say you know I'm the victim here My brother hit me etc. So they will ask for you to recognize our victim to become considered So it's everywhere as soon as you have a rule which tells you that which we agree which means that which is that if you have been If you have suffered of something you can be Retributed in particular suffer from somebody who may be you suffer can be attributed you you will have an interest potentially in being Okay, so Do you think that we're lying to ourselves more effectively than we lied to others think we're better at self-deception than we are at other deception I'm not sure I'm sure you would compare I think I think you lied to yourself not to have to lie to others I mean you see because when you lie to other lying is that such a I already know exactly where you're going Yeah, the fact the the first thing the fact that you have deceived yourself Procludes the need for you usually to Exactly, yeah, you know you have a you have a saying in Sanchfield where One of the protagonists says it's not a life you believe it right and so This is the thing if you if you want to convince others and if you believe in your own story is convincing and helps you convince others Then you don't have to lie and in a way it's advantageous because lying is risky if I go out of my when I say you know This stuff which is white is black and you find out well, you know, I'm You're like I'm going to use your trust maybe you know work with me anymore etc So but if I if I have kind of reasonable like I've put a key plausible deniability denability like the stuff is white But I only gathered information which would induce me to think it's black So if I tell you well, you know from what I see it's black and you tell me no no it's not But I guess oh, oh well, sorry, you know, that's what I looked at a look at this information So that's why I believe so I kind of keep plausible denability You know, I will keep you can't it's hard for you to pinpoint that I really kind of purposely try to deceive you Yeah, it's not a lie if you believe it Okay, how much is the fear of losing a reputation the thing that keeps people trustworthy then you just mentioned there that um Recursive judgment of others this sense. Well, how reliable is Lionel when he's taught like we got that thing wrong about that That's that thing being white previously.

Yeah, so is I know that you know and you know that I'm gonna keep track of you Yeah, is that the thing that keeps us trustworthy for the most part and almost hems in how much Deception and self-deception we deploy I think it is yeah, you know if you look at the kind of You look at the fundamentals of cooperation between humans So you know, I think you have to set out what character is human is that we're not we're not like birds like Robins We have no interest in interacting with each other so Robins, you know, they do their own stuff They don't talk to any other Robin and they find a mate one so that's it and we're not like ants And they leave you know they kind of almost clones because they share 75% of their genetic materials So there are between siblings and clones so they kind of always agree naturally on what to be we are in this kind of in between Which is complex where we share we have a lot of interest in common But we're also always a kind of part of conflict and so we have to negotiate these with each other and so when you see that the The key is how do agents like us who have Somewhat align incentives online interest, but not fully align interest corporate and what we can see is that There's is a get one of the most insightful thing from game theory get is that once you repeat interactions Then you can really use the future the position of gaining from because we have some shedding trace the position from getting the future to police The interaction in the present so in the present you could always have a kind of an incentives not to be cooperative because you know You can take benefit so you know, I could like today because yeah, if you trust me I'm going to get an advantage, but what you can see that if we have the prospect of interacting a lot And then then if tomorrow if we say that we agree to corporate all the time But if I lie and if you find out I like to stop believing me in the future So there's a cost now the cost is that I lose this opportunity to corporate with you in the future And so and when you extend this inside to population Well, you're a lot of people then the thing which polices is this record track this this recall that we have is reputation So the reputation is really this recall that we have that all the people can check to see whether I did abide by the rules Which ensure the corporation is sustained and I think it's key You know, it's a key thing I think this is a thing that is that this is where it works that is reputation is what makes is what makes us Comply with the rules of corporate now because if we don't then our record is tainted And then all those people will know that and as a consequence it will not corporate and then we have a cost We have the shadow of the future which applies some pressure in the present This episode is brought to you by the RP hypertrophy app This app has made a massive impact on my gains and enjoyment in going to the gym of last year It's designed by dr. 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Okay, so I All of this it presumably is what makes human communication so complex that it's not it's not a simple task To try and do yeah, you know what it's fascinating to your communication comes to us very easily You know which each has and we talk about things etc like it seems normal, but think about it Computers were able to beat crunches master like you know, but he is ago Big blue was in 1995 in beating Kasparov But it's only only in the last two or three years that we get computers eventually able to speak like you and me You know before when you were talking to a computer you felt it was artificial you felt that you know It was not very deep it was predictable, etc And now only with the new language models if you feel like you're able to speak you can still Proceed the artificial nature of it sometimes, but it looks very natural so you needed 30 years of computer programming progress to reach this level It tells you how difficult communicating talking like you only what we're doing now It's actually very complex much more complex for a computer than you know playing chess at the level of Kasparov and what the complexity is at several levels One thing you have to think about when what is communicating communicating is when I say something I am providing information and information is me giving you something which is going to change your beliefs If I say something and it doesn't change in any way your beliefs.

It's it's useless. It's kind of boring So it's only if you have your beliefs and I provide something which is novel change your beliefs that it is useful to you It could be I could tell you are christian or this guy is very nice Information I could tell you know what I tell you now about what I know I could talk to you about the weather whatever But I'm giving you something which is information Then that's the basics then if you want to look at how communication works There would be plenty of way we could do that there was a lot of things I could give you information about you know I could talk to you about the dictionary, but I'm not talking to you about the dictionary now. So What we do there's a linguist and and psychologist who is a communist scientist who have written a book about it Is that we try to be relevant and relevant the defined relevance as we try to provide is the most Information which is changing your beliefs in the most useful way to you With the minimal cost for you to treat it. So when I talk to you I'm going to try to give you the most useful information to you That is what we're going to change your beliefs in the way that you find useful Well at the same time giving a message which is the least hard for you to process And you can see what is relevant when you violate it.

So what is violation for level as well? First I could talk to you and give you information which is useless So you know, I could talk to you about things you're not interested in you find me boring Or I could be talking in a way which is not easy for you to process Speak very longly and very technically and that would be you know, and even if what I say is right And useful too, but you know that I would not make it easy for you to access So these are the violation for this and what we do we try to do that all the time. This is amazing You know this principle of relevance. It's not just when you talk about something technical It's every situation you know daily lives when you communicate We very quickly communicate a lot of information in the minimal amount of words So I'll give you an example for instance suppose that you know john and jane they are thinking about what to do in the weekend and jones is What about going to play tennis and jane says I'm tired so now If you think about it Jans answer seems like a show a robot if you were a computer You said you'd be like wait a minute like jane didn't say whether she wanted to or not to play tennis She said she's tired.

So she seems like I'm sorry like you're tired, but can we get back to talking about tennis? Yes, that's exactly and so how does it work? So obviously jane is going to understand what she means right? But but that she doesn't want to play tennis, but so how does john understand well john john has done first jane is going to Give the minimal amount of information which is I'm tired John was okay.

They will that we have an understanding that's what she is doing. So jane will think okay If jane said that she started it's it has to be relevant to what I said by tennis so it has to be relevant So why does relevant well people being tired usually don't want to play tennis? So she is indicating she doesn't want to play tennis with me. That's what she said that but then if you think about it jane has to anticipate that This is the way john is going to interpret her so she she understand that john is going to expect her to say that Well, because she thinks that she is going to understand she got this kind of recursive mind rating I know that you're going to think that's such what I want to say Okay, and when you start understanding that we're doing this you know, you put in your shoes and the other person putting issues into yours You realize okay, that's really really complex.

That's why computers are So on silly relative to us because they don't do that. So they sound you know, they sound a bit off until the large language models which are better now But before they were sounding artificial they were unable to do this kind of easy Interaction going what is understanding each other is doing this kind of recursive mind reading Yeah, and I suppose the fact that it's taken so long and it you know the entire corpus of every written word and now even synthetic data That a is having to create fake new source data to retrain themselves on 35 or 30 years after we were able to be beaten a chess it kind of explains so one question on that um I keep on learning about the importance of coalition building of communication of solving social problems of theory of mind I need to be able to work out what john means when he asks jane and what jane meant with that and john and jane were friends last week But not this week and you scale that up to a done by number of 150 Yeah, how likely do you think it is that human consciousness like the sense the phenomena of being a me of having a sense that I am here Of being able to model your mind reflect on my own my own motivations that kind of metacognitive process How much of that do you think is just a byproduct of us having to be able to navigate our way through complex social games and communication? Well, I think you know, there's a social brain hypothesis, which is like what you know, why do we can so intelligent and that is dealing with social interactions and I think I think that's the key to understand all of the why we are as intelligent as we are and why we think the way we do It's because of the fact that we have to deal with social interactions So when you compare when you compare us to other apes etc Whether big difference is a complexity of a social network So if you look at apes like chimpanzees friends, they have some coalitions like two three But you know, we have very large coalitions We have like you look at your facebook you have a hundreds of people at work You have like you know dozens of people etc And so navigating this is really really complex I mean, you know, I think one thing that everybody will understand is that when you play video games You see a big difference between playing versus computer Playing with versus players You know when you play with this computer usually quickly you learn that the computer has a kind of predictable way of doing So when you play super Mario and you run at the bus, you know, first time you get smashed But then after you say oh when it's through the fireball you hide yourself in the corner And then after you jump on it again, and it's works all the time, right? But when you play against other players, no because if you if you do it once the other players learn And then you have to expect that, you know, you have to anticipate the next move knowing that themselves they try to anticipate an expo So what you have is that the complexity of playing with other people is way way more difficult To solve as a problem then the complexity of playing with, you know, either objects or even low low Anymore, sorry, so this challenge that we face I think it does put it as likely put a tremendous pressure on our cognition to be for us to be smarter and Or what we most of what we do kind of results of our wrong solving and being successful at social problems Yeah, okay, so what's the difference In strategies that we use when we're being cooperative than when we're being in conflict because yeah sure self-deception We're gonna believe most of the things that we say that makes it easier to lie But we can't do that all the time.

We have to be more collaborative and more sort of honest and aligned with certain people and more adversarial and more in conflict with others So how does cooperation and conflict how does two things change? How does it change? I think you know, I think I tend to talk a lot about here in about Satisfaction and conflict because often we kind of minimize it or don't talk about it as much But I think we should emphasize that you know social interactions cooperation I mean, we should appreciate how much cooperation there is most of what we do in life in society, right? Is we abide by a lot of social rules about conventions about how to do things?

You know, you you go out and you drive you on the US so you drive on the right side of the road Right? I mean this drive so I drove on the left and I mean you're going to do that a hundred percent of the time I mean at least in the US some other countries is Random but if you do that anybody does that so say this is regularity and this is corporate This isn't even if it's everybody I mean sometimes, you know, you could benefit from breaking a few rules and some people do But if you go on the road most people respect the rules and you can extend this inside to all the areas of your life You go at work and people do work They don't you know most people don't embersolve the company and run away in another country the money etc So cooperation is really I appreciate how much cooperation there is and we comply with rules most of the time And I think maybe one image that you could have is that if you think about a football soccer match or whatever sports you prefer There are rules and the rules are applied that is people follow most of the time the rules Whereas at the same time, it would be It would be wrong to say that people really follow fully the rules Because if you think about football for instance, you know, people pull your shirt People are kind of trying to go over the line without being you know, just enough for the referee not to To build a whistle etc So that's what we do in our rules and mostly we follow them But you know if we can get some advantage by not following exactly or by going just close to the line Then we will have a tendency to do that and self-deception here is going to help us because we can do that while convincing us that we're not Okay, so if we are called up, it says, oh, I didn't do anything or I didn't know I was doing anything wrong Okay, so we are mostly cooperative But there's always a potential element of conflict which often we try to rationalize our behavior We'll start the session trying to get some advantages It seems to me that communication would would never really be fully cooperative That even the most cooperative team to people team would always be ever so slightly Oh totally Yeah, no you're too too bad I mean once again, I really stress the aspect of cooperation So I think we need to approach it how much cooperation there is in communication But at the same time, you're totally right that there was you know, we're not ants There was always an element of conflict is a big word that it just means that we don't want the same thing It could be as much as you know, somebody wants to talk a long time and somebody else wants to talk less, right? And there's a negotiation you have like if you are with your uncle who talks to you at the wedding forever You know, you want to do something else as another conflict Yeah, and so Conflict is everywhere and I think it explains once your pressure that it explains a lot of the kind of thing which seems weird on mysterious in communication for instance in his book You heard you write about eating several books, but I don't remember the Maybe the I think the is book on language 94 seven pinker talks about why we use And I think there is the the foot for a foot book so more recent book Well, we use intro speech which is we use ambiguous statements in windows For instance when you are your date at the end of the day, you might say no, you want to go up by a drink Why you don't want to say something more explicit the question is why do you do that because when you said you want to go up to a drink It's pretty you know, it's pretty clear what was involved, but you're not going to say You know to be more at least so or he gives an example that You know somebody trying to bribe a policeman is that all you know I would like for us to find a way to solve it here and it gives his wallet and there's a bill sticking out of the wallet So he's not saying do you want $50 and you know, let me go say something and so and I mean it is everywhere So for instance, you know when there's conflict in the office usually it's not open people are going to drop hints And they're not happy with you right they do they can be passive aggressive They're not going to say, you know, I'm not happy because of that So why do we not say things clearly and explicitly? Well, it's because of this conflict element Because if there's a conflict by not saying something I can in a way Convent the message without with keeping possible deniability if things go wrong Okay So if I say for instance, you want to go up a drink and my date says no I can pretend that I was just going to invite for a drink So you can play the game where we pretend that nothing more was involved If I tell the policeman I would like could we solve this here and I don't offer clear bribe The policeman may not be able to have a case to put me in jail, you know as a don't for bribery And in the office if there is a conflict and I get angry and says, you know, what are you implying?

I'm not implying anything So this is why our communication is so rich because and often we don't say What we mean but we convey it indirectly In other news Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce companies in the US They are the driving force behind Gymshark and Skims and Aloe and Nutonic and that is why I partnered with them because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers their best in class Check out this 36% better on average compared with other leading commerce platforms and with shop pay You can boost your conversions by up to 50% they've got award-winning support that's there to help you already step Look, you're not going into business to learn how to code or build a website or do back-end inventory management Shopify takes all of that off your hands and allows you to focus on the job that you came here to do Which is designing and selling an awesome product You can upgrade your business and get the same checkout that we use at Nutonic with Shopify by going to link in the description below And sign you up for a $1 per month trial period or by heading to shopify.com Or lowercase that shopify.com to upgrade your selling today I was listening to Rob Henderson talk to Louise Perry about the Sydney Sweeney advert So Sydney Sweeney advert Yeah, did this ad for American Eagle and everybody got upset about it and what was interesting was the way that women sort of criticized Sydney Sweeney was not the way that if you were a robot you would probably predict It wasn't she is being sexually overt and Has big boobs and is a potential Intra-sexual rival for some other high-value partner that I would like to get with and she is going to set a unrealistic standard of beauty That is going to be difficult for us all. No, no, no, it was none of that It was all couched in moral terms. It was she's pushing eugenics. She once attended a Trump rally her family is like central southern american flag waving truck driving the country music listening Hicks And it was at no point was the actual thing that was the issue being pointed at it was all she's a bad person And I said that me and Rob were at dinner last night singing your praises by the way we've managed to get 35 minutes in and I haven't plugged your sub stack and everyone go and subscribe to optimally irrational on sub stack please because it is one of the Best things and it is criminally undersubscribed.

It is Bitcoin at $1 so everyone can go and subscribe to that now And it's and you can get you can get most of the stuff for free the interesting thing women Have a failure of a theory of mind cross-section mind reading failure here. I think they think That by derogating Sydney Sweeney's morality Other men will think well, that's a beauty standard that is unreasonable. She's a bad person given that she's a bad person I should not find her attractive now Maybe it's an intersectional competition that they think if if men see that lots of other women do not consider Sydney Sweeney to be a good Person they might not be attracted to them I'm going to just lay it out for the women that are listening That's not true men are not going to not find Sydney Sweeney attractive just because other women don't find her a good person. However if you are um Leonardo DiCaprio and lots of other similarly valued men if Keanu Reeves and Hugh Grant and Jared Leto and a bunch of other Hollywood A-Listers were to say I know that you fancy Leonardo DiCaprio, but he's a bad man He's morally unjust.

I do think that that would impact women's assessment of this It's sort of male competition theory that men's judgment of other men is kind of a big mediator of how women find that man to be attracted This is David Puts' stuff. I just thought he was really interesting You know when you're talking about ambiguity deniability you have this first level, which is it's not about halux It's about eugenics. It's about being right of center. It's about not caring about normal people, etc And then the reverse wouldn't be true.

I thought that was a really interesting setup I might be totally wrong. I'm this is a fresh theory. Okay I get the idea of interest or competition that and there is a bit you know, there are all psychological research showing that I don't remember the details, but I've seen papers where you know when you put a beautiful woman She's more likely to get precise or to be the target of both cities etc And that kind of kind of makes sense me not because I want to be clear that somebody goes woman the bad It's like, you know, it means up all the problems and other type of competitions It's just interest or competition in the home both sides In the case of Sweeney, I could definitely see how these kind of plays roll because yeah I think also because of what he said I think also in the case of the ad which I saw I guess it breaks a bit of the Code the political codes and in the u.s. At the moment, you know, the last year was very big about, you know, gender roles, etc It's kind of It says well, it says two things first.

It's overtly kind of sexualizing the body of a woman and two is talking about genes Which is about biology. I think these two things it's kind of you know hurts the kind of political Idogical setup on part of the US about you on the left So I can see how that could trigger this kind of reaction I don't know anything about sitting in the political legends or whatever But I could see how people would try to you know would react like a as you said the coalition If you proceed is that being from the our group from, you know against your group and then people get very mean And that can also blend as we say with interest or competition But I could see how you're trying to dig something on her on the family whatever that's that's we do that's a conditional mindset the other Ambiguity in you endo plausible deniability thing like the perfect example of this I think is venting So some of the great research done around venting again This isn't for me to lay it at the feet of women guys have and like intersectional competition between men and women But women are a bit more interesting around this they're just more complex when it comes to that It's more complex in the way that they communicate and so on and so forth But venting is so fucking fascinating dude like I just find it's maybe the most interesting style of human communication Yeah, I'm talking to you. I'm christine your Lisa and we're talking about our friend Roberta And I say I'm so worried about Roberta Lisa She's just sleeping with all of these guys and I'm really worried that she's gonna get her heart broken and you know I keep trying to warn her about it, but she she doesn't she doesn't seem to listen to me and okay like on the surface I'm being a good person. I'm being cooperative.

I'm caring. I'm being compassionate for my friend But under the surface what I'm doing is talking totally openly about Roberta's sexual exploits I'm implicitly putting myself on a high moral pedestal by saying I would never that is not part of me And it's all couched in if Roberta ever finds out that I told you I'm like Roberta. I'm just so worried about you I didn't you know this isn't I care So so good again, so I think I give you the reason why you have these different between men and women and basically the key difference is On network of friends how are network of friends work? Men's have large networks of friends.

Well, you say large collisions And they have lose lose ties with ties, you know, you have a lot of friends You don't and one friend you cannot do it for two years and when you see bags, you know, how's going? Um, and that's because that's one man I'll tell you baby because we're afterwards and women they have tight on networks small networks a few friends and a lot of Investments, you know, they took a lot they they invest a lot and so there's also a sitting because we're talking about because you manage Repetition you want to learn about reputation you manage your own reputation. So friendship Freshly for women is much more intense in terms of you know the investment in each particular friendship partnership and I think the reason for that is that men and women had to solve different problems, you know, on social social times So when you read a fascinating book by evolutionary psychologist Sarah hergery On, you know mothers in ancestral times one thing that appears is that it's very hard to raise kids You know, now you've got you get the key that the hospital and then you've got the nurse and then after you go to the kindergarten, you know And drop the kid at kindergarten super easy, but okay answers as I didn't have that And you know, you need to collect food you there's no supermarket to find the food and you have you need to collect food with this stuff Which is just sucking the energy out of you and so the survival of children like it was much higher when you got help So there's a lot of what we call allo parenting that is a mother gets help from her family About it from a mother but also from other mothers Sometimes you know other mothers helping to breastfeed your kid when you come and so You know for that you need if you want to give your kid to other women You need a lot of trust because the kid is a huge step You want very strong bones with a few people who give you a lot of help So that you can't ask somebody would you barely know to take your kid and breastfeed your kid, right? So so this is small network to it's bones.

The man's on the country most likely, you know, they didn't have this problem They were engaged more in kind of occasional collective work, occasional warfare, occasional hunting Which is in big groups and in this case the defection of one person is bad, but not as dramatic You know if this woman drops your kid on the ground, that's terrible If these guys doesn't show for their hand, he's a bad guy, but you know, you're not going to die for that And so I think that's why we have these kind of men friendships are much lower maintenance, right? And female friendship, but I think it's natural it's kind of a reflection of the kind of different social problems We had to solve answers to how to solve Well, I think the way that men The way that men and women compete, you know overt versus covert, um, the I think the blast radius as well of male success versus female success People would assume I think that guys are more More competitive in a way because the status games are more overt You can see how this works, but I use this example of lien al messy So if you are the reserve gold goalkeeper on the team that lien al messy plays for You might think well, I mean I am so far in the shadow of them I'm not even the guy that is in the goal while the other guy that's the superstar is at the other end scoring in the opposition's goal But the sort of blast radius of goodwill of you being attached to lien al messy is so great In the same way as he is a hunting party of eight me you and six of our friends that go And you're the one that's really fast and rob it's the one that's really strong and another one's the one that's really great Greetings, and I'm like I'm the second best carrier or something And I'm like well, I'm not exactly the top guy But the fact that I'm associated with this coalition of men Kind of raises me up in the standing overall the blast radius seems to be wide I'm not convinced that the same thing is true for women I'm not convinced that a single successful woman who is in your Coalition has the same kind of blast radius. Oh, yeah, I don't know Okay, I don't know work about that, but if you think at a kind of anecdotal level It seems to me and I think there's a research on that but I don't know anything but you know that You see that in movies that you have these girl the groups of the two girls hang together You know, they're like and so you would wonder if it was you know, if there was too much competition from being close to the top girl Why would you want to be together? You want to be separate?

So I think I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure Okay, so that's why ambiguity in a new window is useful because plausible deniability Because in particular personal deniability The thing that pinker says is when you negotiate the relationships, you know Like for us when you're dating your negotiate the relationship whether you want to jump from friendship to more than friendship And so you want to keep your options up and in case it doesn't work out when you are with a policeman Your negotiations relationship whether you're in the lower outside of the low, right? So you want to keep your options, but so when you negotiate relationships in particular you want to keep plausible deniability There's one thing in Stephen Pinker's book.

I love his reference a movie Harry when Harry Met Sally So for the young listeners it's a normal movie from the 90s And Harry basically he met me and he sees a friend of his girlfriend and he hits on her I think he says you're very attractive and she calls him out She's like how could you hit on me while you're my friend and he said hi? I didn't hit on you as well. Maybe I did and so what you know, I take it back and she said you can't take it back It's out there and and it sounds there because now the difference that if it's not ambiguous once he had knowledge that he's done it Was he admits that he has done it then it's in the oven he can't anymore pretend he's not done because now everybody knows She knows that he did he knows that she knows etc So, you know, this is common knowledge and so you want to pick it to avoid this. This is risky common Open overture is risky.

So being ambiguous helps prevents this kind of thing. Okay, so Can we look at ambiguity as sort of a Communication style a type of deception that we've sort of normalized I'm not sure if it's a kind of deception. It's kind of you know, it's one of these three aspects of communication That is I can say something, you know, I thought before that records you mind reading you can think of recursive mind reading as we have different levels Really, so one of these is you know, you might believe I might believe what you that you you something then you might believe that I have this belief So first like maybe let's say We are talking about where to go in holiday and I want to go in Brazil and so that's a fact You might think oh Lionel wants to go in business really for me And then I can say oh Chris believe that I want to go to Brazil have a belief on a belief You can climb this channel really swag and it gets obviously very easily complicated And now what you can do is when you say ambiguous things that you can say something to change with first of the beliefs But keeps ambiguous at the higher levels So if I if I'm passive aggressive for instance, I might like you to think that I'm annoyed at you But you're not sure that I know that you know, etc. I see so that you can be on the top But I can still manage to let you know I'm not happy but then now do you know that I know that you know that I'm not happy You see and so so when you tell me are you unhappy?

I can say no, I can't no you know, I was unhappy What's paltering I never heard of that term before yeah, paltering is another interesting concept There was a paper a position a few years ago on this It's you know one aspect of this rich aspect of communication because because we work with this Communication works with us trying to be always relevant you can actually manipulate that to say something and Use the fact that people are going to interpret it so you can say something you expect is going to interpret it in your favor But actually you're using people in error. So I give you an example which I would in the post because Jen and Jack are you know a couple and just say I'm going to be a cake for your birthday And then the last minute she doesn't have enough time so she go to the bakery and she brings a cake and Jack says Oh, what a great cake and she says oh, thank you. Well, what is so much? She says thank you.

She must know that Jack before because of his information. I should she did it So when she says thank you she just say implies she did the cake, okay, but so this is part of the thing Thank you for what a great cake is not a lie, right? But it partering is saying something true. Thank you, you know, she's a she's not lying.

Thank you But which is inducing the other person in mistake right now She's leading Jack to believe that she did the cake by saying thank you So paltering is you can actually deceive people by saying the truth in other news this episode is brought to you by function Did you know that your annual physical only screens for around 20 by a Marcus which leaves a ton of daps when it comes to understanding your health Which is why I partnered with function they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one and then they've got team of expert physicians that take the data But into a simple dashboard and give you actionable recommendations to improve your health and lifespan They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels and your thyroid function getting a blood electron and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands But with function it is only $499 and for the first thousand monomism listeners you get a hundred dollars off making it only 399 bucks so right now you can get the exact same blood panels I get and save a hundred dollars by going to the link in the Description below by heading to function health calm slash monomism. That's function health calm slash monomism That's interesting. Yeah, I It's so funny man when you think about the complexity and how it's not the first order thing It's not the second order thing. It's five levels down.

It kind of becomes easier to work out why Chess is actually a simpler game than just having a conversation and fully understanding what it is that the human means Yeah, exactly that because you know a computer you're playing chess in a kind of much larger much complex much more complex Space you have to computer would have to form a belief of that You know the world from belief about your beliefs and now having a model of you running the center So you need some more and then a lot of you running the same model. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes Yes, well, that's why that's why I Concrete tried to explain about my consciousness theory of mine thing that in order for me to be able to understand what you're thinking We both need to have a theory of mine because if we were just automaton We would be predicting each other which I don't think allows enough with a level of complexity that we've got like motivation reason Conflict cooperation all of these things start to fit in and you know exactly and you know in a way the way the computer programming Solved the problem is kind of cheating but single what is L. M What are the large language models?

Now just large language models have been shined on human production So in a way the computers really never started solving cracking the code of communication from scratch. They just modeled it Yeah, they just imitate so they're like all the humans talking and you can think about when you ask a question to charge Pts trying to find the best answer using all the copies of human discretion and matching It's not exactly what it's doing, but you could imagine think of it as trying to find the kind of interaction the kind of answer that human have Producing this kind of so it's kind of it's more like an imitator It's doing more than that actually but it's using the copies of human as a primary source to do what it does So it's not like the chess computers. You know the chess computers They put a rule of chase and they put some algorithms to estimate the values of position in the future And then they use brute force to be able to compute like 10 20 positions ahead That's not what the LMM does it doesn't start from scratch It's use the human language or ability to communicate to try to imitate it Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, which is not the same right? It's kind of it's the equivalent of a P zombie type type scenario It is and you can see once you understand what communication is that I said you can see where LMM still fail For instance one thing that you have with JPT is it is very psychophantic. It's always telling you your greatest. Yes Yes, and also it never says oh that's a good question I'm not sure I don't know one time out of ten nine times out of ten it usually is Sicophantic but accurate and one time out of ten it is completely confident and absolutely wrong exactly exactly So if you ask me a question because I try to be relevant I don't want to give you a wrong answer So I will try to assess the quality of information relative to the information you already have I'm already going to tell you something if I think I know something that you don't that is useful to you If I don't I say well, I'm not sure I know you know I have anything to say on this But the the charge it is not designed for that.

It's designed to predict the kind of you know answer Well afterwards that would be in a conversation and so it doesn't have this mind-reading ability doesn't go and say oh Chris You asked this question actually you should ask this question. That's the wrong question the real question you want because I know what you want you want you You have this problem you ask this question you should have as this other question. This is your answer That's what you mean do okay, but charge it can do that in what other ways you mentioned seduction earlier on you Would you like to come up says for a drink? What other ways is seduction a communication game?

Well, you know it's It's it's actually is really you have I was looking about like the negotiation of The relationship like the relationship stages friend or not friend. It's all about that right? So you have No, it is interesting because things have changed a bit with the online dating you remove a lot of ambiguity about The stages of what you're doing you're in the past when you meet in a bar when you meet your friends Initially your friends and then there's a kind of step-by-step you make as you know you break the ambiguity step-by-step So you say something which is a bit not a bit nicer or a bit warmer than you wouldn't anybody else and you see how the other person reacts And the other person either doesn't react and so maybe you don't go further or maybe the other person right and then you can continue And that's the way the ambiguity is progress you by small central shop safer progressively reduce until the point where you're There's not enough not much ambiguity Remaining that you can break it. Okay.

So that's the old style And I guess it's still happening But the thing is that we've modern modern dating because you have online dating you start from the kind of more openly Exclusy point of view that we are here to consider whether we are possible match which for my generation must be a bit Strand but yeah, that's it works. Yeah. Yeah, yeah This shows just how important coalitions and social connection is to humans it's Fundamental it is fundamental You know for not for several levels. I mean at a deep level if you look at the past I mean on sisters we're not leaving it was not like total anarchy, but it was not super peaceful And there's a lot of evidence of there's a lot of people dying from violent They've and usually even within a community if the violence comes at the head of other people from the community Like basically you imagine, you know, you piece of half the tribe one day You don't wake up and they come during that and then you would so that happens a lot Which means that when you think about it then internal politics is key when you want to be with a strong group of friends You don't your reputation matters You don't want to feel that you are the outside etc And all psychology is really tuned to do that that is to track where are the groups in which I am What is my standing in the group?

You know, people happy with me etc and when we fail when we kind of you know full-down in reputation and when people have this stuff It's gonna be very exciting using because we are really a social species and so you know if Why do getting you know when our friends for friends are not happy with us that really can really upset us because that's really we feel Oh, I'm losing I'm not even this girl anymore and you have social experiments very simple When you have like somebody there are people throwing the balls and there's sort of a little bit you and it's a little bit So two people sort of like each other and they sometimes they're looking at you and you sort of all that And what they do is that after a while they get the two other people to stop throwing the ball at you No, it's a mean experiment and what they found out that it's very simple experience like kind of induced anxiety in the respondent Because it's a game is like why they're not signing the ball to me, but you get it's very simple game So the feeling of exclusion and and the monitoring but where we stand in which group is something which is yeah, very deep in all psychology Yeah, I guess the thing that's interesting or that I can't work out is why it is that people feel intention socially that why it is that There's a friction between autonomy and connection So if it's just that coalitions are really important social connection is lifeblood to humans But we also want this degree of independence I suppose that goes back to what you said we're not quite ants but we're not quite robins and we're in this sort of messy middle zone and Even us do you want to be how many times have you somebody asked your partner? Do you want to talk or do you want to be on your own? I don't know it's like they actually don't know I kind of want to talk but I kind of need to sort this out Oh my god, do you need a hand I want to have autonomy? I want to have independence, but I also want to be able to rely on people I want to be able to open up There's a friction between enemy and connection, which is difficult to navigate.

Yeah, it's a good part I've not talked about you know this before you ask a question But I guess the way I feel it is that when you ask for autonomy is kind of a more superficial level that I want to To me now I want to know sometimes something now, but the belonging to the group is kind of for good Right, so I want to feel that I belong that I'm safely in a group that tomorrow if I come back They will be the group now if tomorrow. Yeah, today Maybe I want to be a bit on my own and because as you say, we're not hands So I don't want to you know always my life to be always shaped by anything from the group But I think there's this kind of the primary thing is that I want to feel confident that I'm part of the group And if I if this is getting threatened or if I were to destroy them going to be stressed about it Okay, well, what does what does coalition psychology tell us about our anxiety to belong then we need we can't bear to be left out If we feel like the group is pulling away from us, but how does coalition psychology sort of tie in with that that need to belong? Well, I think it explains why we have this interview So I said, you know, I gave you the kind of extreme version about why we need why we need coalition Not to be picked up and not to be at risk in ancient times But really conditions are useful for planter things in the case for instance mothers you know being with a tight group of All their mothers it helps provide support and insurance if you're in a big group You can do things that you could not do like for like moving house you move so fast etc You couldn't do it on your own so conditions are useful for plenty of things and and I think our coalition of colleges that we always care about being in a group We care about being in a group and all standing in the group or standing is how other people See us in the group and you know when you unpack a group. There's always an internal hierarchy.

So it's not like It's like a fractal you know, it's a kind of a Russian doll's you know, you're gonna rush and all there's an old Russian So coalition is like that. So you have a group of friends and from the outside. Oh, these are the group of friends Okay, but you're going sign actually in the group of friends. That's kind of an inner circle in outer circle When one thing you can see very quickly very nice to be very interesting I think is the game show survivor.

So you watch a game show survivor officially It's a game show on surviving in the jungle Yeah, actually most of it is not most of it is a collisional game because you have a group and they tell you at the end of the day You'll have to eliminate one of you. Okay, and so all it's kind of Run on our anxiety of being excluded massively So, you know, they are in the group and they know that at the end of the day one of them is going to be out and Why do I was very interesting in the show is that right away? We see that there's an inner hierarchy people says Oh, I'm safe. I mean the I mean the top tree.

There's a top tree in the group. How do you know? What's the top tree right? And so there's a tree and there's a loose to and there's a bottom two for instance What is the bottom two they say they know that they are they're on the table?

So, you know, we have this psychology we quickly go in a group and we feel oh in this inner group There's this guy that I'm there restricted by others. They're unbelievable. You know that part of the group But me I'm kind of I mean between I'm not sure maybe they could live their life for me, right? And so if you're like that just try to etc.

So this is this is the way we Psychology shape we really care about these things and that drives a lot of what we do well surely You can't have a flimsy coalition one of the things that you need is Commitment. So what are the ways that what are the ways that coalitions test loyalty? So I mean you're right when you know a key challenge for coalitions is the You need more to you need the commitment that people are going to work for the coalition You know if you're in a football team You need the confidence that everybody's going to put you know to work their best to try to win the match if you're in a In an army platoon you need your confidence that you know people will have your back when you run to From line except so what you have is that here? We have a problem in get there.

It's a problem of that you have two potential situations one situation where people trust each other and all go And work for the group. Okay, so the football team gives us a hundred percent and the army platoon all running the Center at some time and you're the other situations where if I don't trust that you and others will do that why would I do that? So maybe I don't I don't run and you don't believe you don't trust that people run so we are ineffective So it's also a possibility and to move us from the situation where an ineffective group to the situation we run as a unit We need the confidence each other the share confidence that we believe that we think we're unit and we work as a unit and how do you get that? We get that with social identity So the groups work like they have this kind of bone So you know this feeling that we are a team and I know we're a team I know you know we're a team we share the teams logo we share the team hats, you know the team t-shirt We share the team song before the match no, etc And so and that is a lot of you know about the human psychology We think things which are described as irrational like you got the football supporters Spend a lot of money on the science for their football team They sing during the match sometimes they sing during the match They don't even watch the match and you think that's exactly surprising But that's because the psychology gives a lot of weight on Caring about signs of loyalty this laying signs of loyalty because being seen as a good group member being trusted as a good group member You don't want to signal you want to tell everybody a new guy I'm a part of the team and and you know I'm clearly I'm not going to defect anytime So this explains a lot of what we do we always want to show and we're worried about signs that people could think or maybe they will think of disloyal you know I'm not good etc So we care about that a lot.

Yeah, I I had it in my head this idea around Especially during sort of 2020 when the purest beliefs you needed to adopt your entire ideology wholesale that what people were doing with some of the more Extreme political beliefs that people were being asked to raise a hand in support of was that it was less about We think that this particular new policy is something which is really effective and more This is a test of fealty. Yeah, are you prepared to put reason to the side? And actually in that way the more ridiculous the political belief the stronger the show of your loyalty to the group because you've had to Suspend even more of your reason and your rationality in order to does that make sense? Well, I thought that makes us actually more than an example.

There are people writing on this you can think that beliefs or beliefs is what's in your head so it's you know whether beliefs I believe yes But the size of claims that you hold the beliefs of the group They are important to signal loyalty and I think you're totally right that you know within a group Competition to there's there's also kind of competition to look good with the group So one one thing that you could have in between political and you can see that You know, it's not just on the left on the right You see it in different ways is that if I want to claim which is a bit more extreme Which is a border of you know, I may try to a bit of credibility that is a something which is extreme Or maybe the fact only be that is not super strong Okay, but I showed to my group that I can so much about you know the message of my book I am willing to say something which is which is that instead of if on the contrary I'm like oh, you know, I'm not sure on one hand on the other hand people think like I'm not reliable. I'm a good yes, I'm just yes. Yeah. Well, so you have a the consequence of the fact that this can give a kind of a Premium to exaggerations right at the margin because this kind of competition for people to Committed look at how committed I am I hope you only hold that version of the belief allow me to show you how much reality I'll suspend in service of this thing But this is why I you know when you when you combine the need for coalition building with public displays of something that looks like loyalty and you put it online on the internet And then you sprinkle algorithms in this kind of explains almost all of political polarization as far as I can see as soon as you see Most of the political polarization is being one of two things first is Algorithms online can get you to click on stuff in one of two ways The first way is to become better at predicting what you will click on and the second is nudging your preferences to make you more Predictable and more easy to work out so algorithms work in two ways.

It's not just becoming better at reverse engineering final once It's making a little more predictable so that my alga works better So this naturally pushes people out to the edges because if you're in the middle you go left on one thing You go right on the next thing you're right on the one after that and left on the one after that No, if you just push people out to the edges That's more predictable That's the first thing but the second thing is as soon as you realize that if you don't adhere to your coalition's beliefs on this thing You pay probably more than two costs, but you pay two very high costs The first one is you are seen by your own side as an unreliable ally Well, you know Lionel was with us on immigration, but he wasn't with us on gun right So what do we think's gonna happen when the school reform comes in or the taxation change or the what's gonna happen with social Self-care we I need to keep an eye on him. We're gonna ask ostrichize him a little bit He's not gonna be part of the inner sanctum So that's the first the first cost that you put on that but on the other side the opposition sees you as Having flawed thinking as not being committed to the cause as not being actually that much of a steadfast They can see the gaps in your coalition and they can see that you were a weak part of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, so I think what you have is that in every in any kind of political Situation political system you have different competing incentives when you have the loyalty conditional incentives which are drug polarization Which is I care about being seen in my goes And then you have the reputational credibility incentive which are present in communication games, right? So these are the stuff where if I tell you something if I'm not diligent in the information probably to you if I'm putting for claims That you find out our false etc.

I'm going to lose credibility Then now the questions. What do people care more about? In a good situation in the public sphere people came out by the credibility So, you know, yes, you have to notice your coalition, but none of us you don't want to say Track what's theories, you know, because you worry that you know, you're going to your your credibility I think the problem when it gets very polarized is that then you you know, the coalition says it's really trump everything so now saying something which is false, but he's in favor of your coalition then doesn't you don't have much cost anymore and Something I think that has happened over the recent years and maybe in team part because of social media But I think it's more than that is that the kind of mainstream Institutions which we are kind of helping in check speech and you know the credibility of what he said you think about the mainstream media or the scientists universities, etc. They have lost their Trust from people and the ability to enforce this kind of credibility cost and so the constant is political now in the political Party in the US in the political arena.

It doesn't cost much to something which is wrong if you said if you were in your coalition Because there's no sanction right so if something is wrong doesn't work you drop it and you can say something else and you can move on So this sounds a lot like politics, right? I'm aware that we're talking about coalitions, but even the process of politics not just the coalitions of the groups of people the sports teams the religious groups Whatever is it is it better? Do you think to understand democracy as a coalition game than a truth-seeking exercise? Yeah, totally so I wrote about it and I think it's key to understand what democracy is so I'm not sure you know, maybe people have different ways of democracy, but when I you know heard or look at democracy initially I was younger, you know, you hear a lot about the idea of democracy Greece the Greeks they had the Agora Which is a stupid space people meet and discuss and make collective decisions And in a way, this is a fence used as an ideal and you judge the modern democracy relative to it So for us like we think oh that was direct democracy So the real democracy is direct democracy I mean I decided to get up now we have in what we have in modern democracy We have a certain democracy you vote for people and in the parliament or in the prison seat they decide right So often this is this is seen as a kind of compromise which is an imperfect compromise Because a real ideal democratic stuff is the thing the Agora and then what we think that people do in this public sphere The Agora is that they try to find the right solution for the city the right solution for the society But I think that that is mistaken because You know once you understand that what we have is that what people with imperfect align incentives the iron groups were Gathers people with similar incentives and similar interests and with opposite interests What the key of politics is not finding the truth for most of them.

It's finding ways to How to find compromise between the different cultures how you split the games from corporations? We cooperate in society we create wealth because there's no crime because there's no war because there's laws and you know companies work etc How do you speak the games? From huge taxation and very limited inequality funds to a very limited taxation and large inequality You could how do you and you it's not just that it's like should we say that some professions are deserve more because it's harder for You have all these questions you can think of and that's a debate of politics and what you do is what you have is that coalitions Like it's something which is that in politics, but it's also in everyday life when you negotiate about bargaining bargaining is present in always you know Interactions even in the household for instance. You don't usually bargain, you know, right?

Row and uncoof way don't say I want more, you know, you don't know your boss in space You don't go to your bus and say I want I want to raise 20% and why because that's what I want no You don't say I really feel like I'm contributing a lot to this project. I've worked very hard I think that the team has been carried forward by me the future growth of the business really depends on me and I Yeah, so what you do is that you're using principles to be a fairness It's a well that's fair because of my contribution. I deserve more right. I've been here for a long time You know, I've experienced all that makes I deserve more and so what we use we engage you while the game theories can be more calls a game of moral so there's a game of life but instead of fighting and bargaining like if we're hanging on a street market every day We haggle on principles in the game of morals and these principles are you can think of as kind of general ways to solve all the kind of Particular bargaining products will face in every day I so instead of bargaining in every situation like let's say your household instead of every night It's say hanging on who's going to do the dishwashing You bargain on general principles and these principles and solves all the individual situations That's why our decisions are about fairness Agreements by principles and that actually solve the problem.

So what you think politics is that? traditions like political politics etc. They put for ideological platforms and these identical platforms actually is this kind of proposals to change the Principles of fairness which are at the moment the compromise in society So they're hanging in the game of malls. We change the social contract Which holds all the agreed principles of fairness we use in society to tilt how you bargain and who gets what's in in you know In practical situations, that's what politics is interesting because Once you understand that you understand that the political arguments They are not the purely idealist so it's not that people are ideally just ideas which comes from nowhere because they tend to reflect the interest of the Qualicians but they sometimes these ideas these principles they have to be kind of consistent They have to be rigorous they can't be incoherent Always it they can't they can't work and make a case and they can't be self-serving either because it would make it would be flagrant about What it is that people are doing?

Yeah, so if you if they were too soft You know if everything that you do when you put four principles is just to be self-serving then people know that there's no point listening to what you say It's because you know, there's no information in your principle the principle in a way It's like you know another example like let's say you stop playing a game You want to agree on rules, okay? If when you propose to a rule for the game I know that you always propose the rules which advantage you I'm going to stop listening to you So we need to propose a rules which can be an agreement where you think okay? We're not sure, you know tomorrow the rules might be against you and I know that you're going to buy by the rules So that's yeah, you lose credibility if you always just find the principle today which advantage you and contradict what you were saying yesterday What is a political ideology through this lens then because with that perspective? It doesn't exactly feel like democracy is a system where people deliberate to find the common good.

What is it? What is political ideology? Yeah, so I don't I mean when you say people they don't I'm debate to find the common good. I think it's true And I think that the idea of common good itself and maybe it sounds a bit depressing, but it's it's misguided There's no common good because because we individuals we have some conversion interest, but not totally Identical interest and so there's not one single common good.

Let's say that even if you tell me this is we agree that climate Just is important and we need to build a windmill's okay Do we put them in front of your house in front of my house? Okay, so yes, there are good solutions Some solutions are better than others, but they are always aspects of bargaining and so the key is to find an agreement Which is going to be sustainable, you know, we society is to find something which is not always Lead people to try to renegotiate people to complain etc. So we need to fight we need to fight when I say we need to What works is what finding agreement that people are willing to live with right? That's that's what it is.

So ideologies is You can think that there are beads from coalitions to say okay, you know what? I want that's what I will and if the coalition is very tiny and they can be very extreme because they have a few people They can have they can be very different from the rest of the population You have big qualitions like big parties trying to win elections typically that are mind-minded different because you know There are too many people for this to be very extreme But an ideology is a bit to change the social contract in your favor So if you are maybe on the left to say we want more taxation we want to reduce inequalities We want these people work hard in working classes of high wages You're right, maybe you say well, we want less taxes want to give more incentives to entrepreneurs to be more successful etc. And these are nice ideas But they tend to be aligned more with the interests of those we know what this is but is what is it? And you try to try to move to tilt this compromise social contract the moment in one direction or the other If democracy doesn't seek truth, why is it that people defend it so passionately then?

Right. That's an excellent question. I think it is wrong to think that democracy is very big people See truth and by the way, you know, we talk about the social media one big is upon who the social media was Then when you go the internet people were thinking that you know, people some people think it would be a big democracy a big Big Agora With each other we have you know, we can in a way cut the middleman of the mainstream media of the politicians for people to be enlightened and By what you do and then what you see that people watch cat videos and you know the algorithms with them Not great content and they're not interested in politics and people are polite So it didn't go at all in the direction people were hoping for so if democracy is not to find the truth what it is Why is it great? I think it was great because for the people most people It's the best system to ensure that they are interested to present it What you can think of is any political system is characterized by the size of the body of people who select the leader There's a book by political scientists and games that is a select right select right is a people selecting the leader So for instance in the USSR during The situation was a polypeuro so you have a group of twelve twenty five people if you want to be the next leader You need the majority in this group, right?

So okay, that's that's one version another version is when you have a lot of people and democracy is a select right basically Most of the population population voting so it's a large amount of people what you have is that the coalition of games are going to Take place in the select right the coalition of games in the polypeuro if you know the history is very cut through because most people died So these are basically your elected leader or you die The second guy the one who's not elected has often has a limited lifespan because he's kind of a threat right so that's a real mortal game Yeah, exactly and so the guys eliminated often so the the coalition of games are going to be the thing In a democracy the coalition of games are within the large body of citizens with food But what it means is that the leader the aspiring leader how many people that this leader has to please well in the Soviet Union The leader has to please like you know 15 people to be to be elected in a democracy the leader has to please 51% of the population Right and because collisions are very flexible and can change a lot if you want to please if you want to You might need to be able to personally talk to more than 51% of the population the other contender as well And so what you have is that everybody everybody's interest tend to be respected and taken care of because the politicians will Compete be elected they care about you because you're part of this electorate when if you are the USSI you know Most people are not in this electorate only a tiny portion of people are and so if you don't matter for the leader You know if you're not happy to bad for you So I think that's what democracy is good because very large proportion of people decide we selected very flexible coalitions So everybody has a chance to get some point in the majority and that means that you matter and the police has an interest Even if he's not philanthropy, so even if he's not a pure altruistic has an interest to care about what you think in order to get your support What the thing that sort of ties everything that we've spoken about together today, I guess is The invisibility of it to us the fact that there is a thing happening and our awareness of what's actually happening They sometimes touch up against each other. I mean I remember the first time I learned about self-deception and the funniest thing in the world You saying yes some people are self-deceptive. It's like dude yourself self-deceptive because deceiving yourself into believing that only some people are self-deceptive Why is there anything else to explain other than the deception thing is anything else to explain why we not aware that we're playing these games? Okay, I think that's a fascinating question You know, we have been talking and saying all these games what we do and they are very complex and we're really good at it Okay, but at the same time there's a very surprising thing is that we We often are aware that we're playing these games.

I think you have several answers One answer is that you don't need to know in a way nature evolution doesn't need to give you the rule book for you to be effective You know We're very good at for instance, and we don't need to know the new ton mechanics behind it Okay, so we anticipate the trajectory of a store You know if you catch a baseball is a ball of baseball is not true You're able to you know, participate it's movement and catch it and though, you know, you you do that before having done any Physics in high school by telling you the little physics etc So in a way nature doesn't need to give you the rule book for you to be effective You can just give you the ways of solving the problem I think that's one first answer So we can be very good because we have the u.s.T.E.C. and the rules to work out in this case Even if you don't need the you know full understanding about what's exactly what I think there's also another aspect of it is that often It's even better if we don't know and it's another strategic aspect is that you know You have the saying for instance, sometimes you cool people you say oh this person is a player Or you say this person is very strategic and this is actually not a compliment when you say this person is very strategic or this person is a player You mean, you know this person is computing is trying to find the best ways of doing of acting without caring for principles for instance, right? Do you want a friend with a strategy or do you want a friend which just loyal and and you know first worthy? Maybe somebody with this strategy is not to be trustworthy because maybe it's a calculations do not add up tomorrow It's not going to be on the receiving end you're gonna be an enemy and not a collaborator yeah, you know, maybe maybe today's a friend because if I need advantages, but what about tomorrow?

So you don't so many who calculate every day whether it's advantageous with your friend with you or not and so you know once this is a deep problem of Trust how can we trust each other given that we always have options to defect from cooperation There's always plenty of opportunities to take some short term advantage by not being fully cooperative I could lie a bit I could not do the right thing you will not know etc so how can people trust each other and and one solution is is to commit to be committed to a cost of action So what solution is more than to be committed creatively and to be able to signal this commitment I think love is a good example if you have two a man and woman If each of them were every day being in the relationship but open to you know checking whether other partners could be better That would be hell right so imagine your relationship and then and then every day if another guy another guy you know better and the truth She drops you the problem of this kind of situation is that you know that would make very risky to invest a lot of effort in the in the partnership So to invest you need to try that is going to last long but to try that is going to last long you want the other person to be Not looking at other options, but looking at other options seems to be rational seems to be strategic So how do you prevent that? Well, the solution that's likely given by nature is strong emotion that we have to buy which bind us to others And which are visible and and give visible size to others that they can trust so in a In a partnership between a man and woman is going to be loved so people will feel stronger emotions of love and when people are in love They will purposefully not look at other options and also this emotion is very it gives cues signals Which are you know, you can see when somebody's decided with another person and that's credible And so you if you want that's what you want to be with someone with you because you're confident that this person is going to be willing to stay with you for a long In a group of friends that would not be loved that we friendship that this is some kind of stuff You want some people, you know, we're loyal and we'll be because they're friends not because they're just a short amount of it Now we're still playing these games, but in a way nature the way for us to be playing these games Well, maybe to care about not playing the games in the short term, right? There is a There is a theory in evolutionary psychology, which is more than theory and I think it's a lot of baddies That you know, you can think of the mind as made of several Modules solving problems. That's a general theory from a religious psychology But one of the application of the theory is that you know, your mind can be in a way could be divided in Part of your mind which kind of treats information and part of your mind will make the decision and The trigger of these emotions when you feel in love when you feel friendship, etc could be Stressively triggered by part of one part of the mind and your self-conscious Person really really feel these emotions really is committed and that makes you better as a player It's a bit abstract, but one one way I think you can think about it is in in the movie I think the second movie of the Matrix there is the Oracle and the Oracle talks to Neo and maybe since the first I'm sure I think the Oracle talks to Neo and After what she has asked what did you tell him and she said I told him what he needed to know What it means it means she didn't tell him the truth She told him what he needed to know to be effective and you could think that part of your brain do exactly the same thing You you know For more information you get yourself aware person in your mind only get the information you need to know to be effective And that means that yes or mind, you know part of our mind is tragic and knows when to trigger the emotions, etc Right, but it doesn't tell us We don't have an interest to be strategic when we act we have an interest to be committed and to believe that we're not playing the game Okay, humans are better at playing games when they don't know that they're games Yes, because if you don't believe if you don't think as a as a player if you don't think that it's tragic in the moment Then you can be a more attractive partner or corporation.

Yeah. Wow. Do you think we'd be better off if we just realized that life is all games? Uh, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure who we're better off. I think I think in a way, you know, sometimes leaving the dream Is better. Maybe it's like in the Matrix.

You know, I'm pulling you out of the of the Matrix. Yeah, this is horrible This is evolutionary theory overall to me evolutionary learning anything about evolutionary theory Uh is just a sequence of becoming More and more aware of how little control I have over my desires Uh how little I author my own thoughts and actions that the thing that I used to take pride in I shouldn't take pride in because actually it's Some thinly veiled state. It's very humbling. My point is it's very humbling.

Um, we did this we did this last time I was talking to you about Um imposter syndrome and again, I really appreciate the fact that you sort of lay out on your sub stack You just lay out the way that these dynamics work and I think that it's it's very good to sort of peering under the hood but if you were to When it comes to the way that you operate in your own life Knowing what you know about the fact communication is a game. Coalition is a game. Politics are a game. Self deception is is self-serving Um Are there any ways that you have used this information in a practical manner?

Or is it just is it simply something interesting or have you actually adapted your behavior in any way given what you know about this stuff? Um, I'd like to tell you that it's a super helpful in practice. Um, I mean You know, that's the way I see the world so I can't I can't help it so uh, but um the fact that in a way the fact I like the fact that you understand the world as it is instead of the kind of Narratives and stories which tells us ourselves. But at the same time it's the game of the games You know knowing it's like look it's like we're play football We play football if and if I come and I say well, you know, I'm a phaegean football techniques So I know really why football was where it doesn't it doesn't change that if I want to play football That's you know my phaegean football techniques.

It's not necessarily super useful to score goal You know, it might at the margin helps me understand that I should shoot that well that or the other but the game is a game and often as I said You don't necessarily need the rule book to be effective. We are really effective already at playing these games very well So understanding these games is mostly useful at an intellectually also useful for them to avoid mistakes Uh, and to I actually appreciate my own kind of biases etc, but it doesn't still means that you know the games are the games Uh, yeah, it doesn't change. Mm. Well, I guess we're at the mercy of this stuff.

Uh, at least for me It helps me to have more empathy and a bit more peace. Oh, yeah, around other people I'm I wish I could extend that to myself actually. I mean, it's kind of like I don't know like some sort of inverse stoicism Where you're able to see other people and say, you know, like as soon as you learn fundamental attribution error You go he he the guy that cut me off in traffic. He was probably just late He's probably not so and even if he's an asshole.

He's an asshole. That's late. So that's fine. Um, yet if you are Constructed in a way where you're always trying to push yourself to do more Um Turning that degree of game playing self-deception coalition dynamic Inter-sexual competition event and going I should give myself a break.

I should be easier on myself That's that's the final boss of social anxiety not being kind to other people being kind to you Yeah, I agree. And the way I think I'm standing all that Uh In particular self-deception often you like okay, uh, I want to make that case But is that case really kind of you know, uh, the best one or the the most accurate one? Or is it just self-serving? So you know, you become a bit more like critical and and aware of the kind of biases that you have It doesn't make you better.

But we think the game though Because self-deception is useful. So if you curve your self-deception, uh, it might actually, uh, not make you better at convincing on this But uh, yeah, I do appreciate that sometimes I you know, it helps me take a step back Good, lean up, hodge ladies and gentlemen, dude, everyone needs to go and subscribe optimally rational on sub-stack What else is there anywhere else that people should go? No, that's it. Oh, well, they they are really interested.

That's it We got my book optimally rational where you know, I talk about psychology and why the good reasons would be here the way we do Why we um, why there are a lot of strange things between our lives there are lots of good reasons behind it So it's a good one. Until next time hurry up and get writing so we can talk some more Thank you Chris. We're looking forward to it