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

What do most people not understand when they think about human reasoning and how it works? >> Yeah, look uh reason is uh you know the faculty to form judgments, solve problems, be rigorous. We tend to think of it as uh that is it's here to help us solve actual problems with you know facts with reality. um a a good a good a good a good image that you can have for reason how what it is is you know the the movie the Stanley Kubri movie um 2001 the space odyssey and you have this bunch of apes and they're pretty useless and then suddenly they wake up one morning and there's this uh monolith black monolith and and once they touch it suddenly kind of reason >> uh fall upon them and then they discover that if they use a a bone they can use it as a tool and they can use it as a weapon and then the movie you know They use this uh as a starting point for what makes humans. Humans use reason to solve problems. And you you can think that reason help us uh do scientific things uh find the truth, send rockets in space, etc. But if you think about you and me, you know, normal humans, how do we use reasons? I mean, we we rarely really solve actual problems. You know, how when is the last time I kind of invented something or solve a practical problem? I mean, it happens, right? But 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 other people. It's not solving you know uh that the computer doesn't work or that the dishwasher doesn't work. It's you know 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 boss to give me a raise etc. These are the problems we face and 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 then the key aspect I think one of the interesting theories which came in the last 10 years about you know um what is reason is that reason is is this it's it's this it's not here to solve problems. It's here for us to convince other people. And once you take this this um approach it really explain a lot of you know people you have a big literature on people being irrational making lots of mistakes etc. But then when you think wait a minute maybe we're not actually designed to be scientists we're designed to be lawyers and so some of the mistakes are by design >> you know confirmation bias uh you look at the information which is convenient you ignore the information which is inconvenient. 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? >> Yeah, look, that's a good question. I mean we have some ability you know we have some ability to solve problem solve but the um the the anthropologist of psychologist um um looked at that that they found that you know we're pretty useless uh lots of the solutions we have there are solutions that we are given that there are social solutions that we know how to do things because we've been taught how to do you know you you might remember in Australia there were kind of British British people like uh traveling in Australia and and they lost themselves and and they were kind of you know the locals who had their customs etc were able to survive with the land and these guys had just died because you know they didn't know they don't know where to find water they don't know how to find food etc and we individually we really rarely find and solve problems we kind of inherate the problems which have been accumulate the solutions which have been accumulated by past generations so um we solve problems but really not frequently what we do most often is just we use all the solutions that we inherit. We're told how it works and we do it. >> So is it right to say that our reasoning is self-s 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 think of it when we talk about reason with a big R we tend to think of philosophers of mathematician you know that's a kind of iconic picture of reasoning etc. But really when we what we do, you know, if you think about from an evolution point of view, that's not being irrational like that and and very rigorous is not the best way of winning arguments. You know, if you if you go in debating, you know that debating you have tricks, you know, you uh you're not here to find the truth. You're here just to win your case. And that's the way our mind works. you know, so when you debate with other people, when you try to convince other people, you're going to, you know, uh, 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 necessarily strategize. We do it naturally. Often we're convinced that that's the right way. Uh, that what we say is right, right? Uh and that's the way our reason works is is to you know completely being self- serving to for us to find the best way of convincing other people. >> But we also need to convince ourselves right. This is where selfdeception comes in too. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the this idea that we selfdeceive uh and that it's a strategic uh um it works tragically to convince others is an idea put forward by Robert Trivers in in the 70s. the biologist Roberts and the the problem he describes is okay you know why do we selfdeceive and we know that we selfdeceive we know that we overconfident people tend to think that they are smarter more handsome nicer than you know than they are than than other people etc you have a lot of data when you ask people you know are you a good driver like I think 90% people say they are better driver than average yeah >> that's just not possible right I mean and it's everybody if you ask college professors you know I think 90% will say they are better professors than their colleagues, right? So, see it's at every every levels, you know, you have this this kind of thing. Yeah. >> So, okay. So, why why do we why do we selfdeceive 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, uh I I choose to uh shape my beliefs and to form belief that I'm 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, maybe I'm going to go into fights I shouldn't go into. If I if I think I'm a better climber, I'm going to climb a mountain, which I shouldn't climb. You know, if I think I'm a better diver I'm a better um swimmer, I'm going to dive into this river I shouldn't swim into. >> So, there are real risk. But, >> so, you know, from an evolution point of view, if we are all overconfident, there must be a reason. And it can't be in our mind because evolution doesn't select our mind to be happy. You know that it selects us to be successful. So if we all turn up to be a bit overconumption there must be because there are costs there must be benefits and the benefits Robert says that because we all try to convince each other you know um there's always a risk that if I kind of lie if I if if I blatantly lie when I try to talk to you you'll find out and there are cost you know uh I'm losing reputation etc etc and maybe you know also you find you find out that I'm not being honest. So one way of limiting this cost or one way of not being found out is actually to believe my own stories um you know like you know poker players when they play poker they have their their sunglasses. Why do they have sunglasses? Because they don't want to leak cues of their emotion they're 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 your game is not great actually it's a great game. >> Okay. 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 cause 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 bluff, but you believe your own bluff. And that's convincing because you don't cues that you're bluffing. >> What are some of the other ways that selfdeception creeps in that people might not notice? Some of the more subtle ways. some of the most subtle ways. Um I think you know I remember when I because I've worked on selfdeception and I published papers on on selfdeception and I talked to a journalist and and the journalist says oh yes some people selfdeceive and I was like no no no this is not this is not it. It's we all selfdeceive. So, so you know it's a the design 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 and we reason with the world no we have to think that uh just you know being being a um always a bit self-s 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 uh you know you're not guilty of this of etc. It's going to be beneficial. So I think the key insight is that we really see the world with uh rose tinted glasses. >> Uh and you know that explains explains a lot of things. You have a lot of conflict in social situations where you you hear well there's always two sides of the story. Well why is there 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 uh see the point which is favorable maybe ignoring or or or downplaying the points which are not favorable and that's why you have two sides because there's only one reality right but there always two sides because we are not uh and and we believe that is the real one right that's that's what we do um but so I think it's pervading so when you say all the subtle thing I think it's 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 you split the the chore in the household, there's a lot of conflict and and people think if you ask couples, uh there's an interesting study you ask couples what percentage of the housework you do and the sum is always higher than 100%. >> Right? So it may be that the woman says I do 80%, and the man says I do 30%, right? The total is more than 100%. Uh >> so I think it's well >> I I was thinking about you know you've alluded to selfdeception 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 selfdeception and this is to make yourself better but that betterness is couched in terms of your moral position or I am somebody who is more moral I am more deserving and that's >> you that's you purposefully putting yourself down right on the surface it's I've put myself lower as in Imm 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 uh that's one fascinistic aspect with these social games is that uh you know they're really rich and so uh how to sometimes as you say victimized like sometimes some of the rules of fairness means that if you are like um victimized you know if you have been uh uh if you have suffered some penalties either by some other people by society etc you can claim some uh retribution right uh this principle of fairness that we And so as a consequence if these principles of retributions are commonly agreed then it becomes um potentially beneficial to be a victim not not necessarily to be actually a victim but to to be seen as a victim to benefit from that and and so you know selfdeception here works as well but you know it's you could think obviously about people in like the modern um social spheres who think uh they have all like problems of of of being victimized to claim kind of social recognition. But even in the family, you'll have like the kids, you know, they they say, you know, uh I'm the victim here. Uh uh my my brother hit me, etc. So, they will ask for you to recognize a victim to be compensated. So, it's it's it's everywhere. As soon as you have a rule which tells you that which we agree which mean that which is that if you have been um if you have suffered of something you can be retributed in particular if you have suffered from somebody who made you suffer can be retributed you you will have an interest potentially in in being the victim yet if you >> okay so do you think that we're lying to ourselves more effectively than we lie to others? You think we're better at at selfdeception than we are at other deception? >> Uh well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure who you you would compare. I think I think you lie to yourself not to have to lie to others. I mean, you see, because when you lie to other lying is risky. >> Oh, that's such a I I already know exactly where you're going. Yeah. The fact the the first thing the fact that you have deceived yourself precludes the need for you usually to uh deceive others. >> Yeah. You know, you have a >> you have a saying in Seinfield uh where um uh one of the protagonists says it's not a lie if you believe it. Right? And so this is the thing. If you if you want to convince others and if believing your own story is convincing and helps you convince others, then you don't have to lie. And and and in a way it's advantageous because lying is risky. If I go out of my way and I say, you know, this stuff which is white is black and you find out, well, you know, um, you'll be like, I'm I'm going to lose your trust. Maybe you're not going to work with me anymore, etc., etc. So, but if I if I have kind of reasonable like I have I keep plausible deni denability like the stuff is u 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 it's not but I can say oh oh well sorry you know that's what that was I looked at I looked at this information so that's what I believe. So, I kind of keep plausible dability. Um, >> you know, I I I will keep you can't it's harder for you to pinpoint that I really kind of purposely try to deceive you. >> Yeah. It's not a lie if you believe it. Um, okay. How much is the fear of losing your reputation the thing that keeps people trustworthy? Then you just mentioned there that uh um >> recursive judgment of others. uh this sense well how reliable >> is Lionel when he's talk like he got that thing wrong about that's that thing being white previously um so is >> I know that that you know and you know that I I'm going to keep track of you is that is that the thing that keeps us trustworthy for the most part and almost hems in how much deception and selfdeception we deploy >> I think it is yeah uh you know if you look at the kind of you look at the fundamentals of cooperation between humans. So human, you know, I think you have to to set out what characterize humans is that we're not we're not like uh birds like robins where we have no interest in interacting with each other. So robins, you know, they they do their own stuff. They don't talk to any other robin and they find a mate once and that's it. >> Okay? >> And we're not like ants. Ants they live, you know, they kind of almost clones because they share 75% of their uh genetic material. So they are between siblings and clones. So they kind of always agree naturally on what to do. 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 also always a kind of part of conflict and so we have to negotiate this u with each other and so um when you see that the uh the key is how do agents like us who have somewhat align incentives so align interest but not fully align interest corporate and what we can see is that um there's this G. One of the most insightful thing from game theory get is that once you repeat interactions then you can really use the f the the possibility of gaining from because we have some shared interest the possibility from gaming in 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 benefits. So you know I could lie today because yeah if you trust me you know I'm going to get an advantage. But what you can see is that if we have the prospect of inter interacting a lot and then uh then you if tomorrow if we we say that we agree to cooperate all the times but if I lie and if you find out I lied you stop believing me in the future. So there's a cost now the cost is that I lose this opportunity to cooperate with you in the future. And so and when you extend this uh insight to the population well you a lot of people then the thing which police us is this recall track this uh this recall that we have this reputation. So the reputation is really this uh recall that we have that all the people can check to see whether I did abide by the rules which ensure that cooperation is sustained >> and I think it's key you know you say is it the key thing I think this is the thing that is this is the way it works that is reputation is what makes is what makes us uh comp comply with the rules of cooperating now because if we don't then our record is tainted >> and then all those people will know And as a consequence it will not cooperate and then we have a cost we have the shadow of the future which uh applies some pressure in the present. >> Yeah. So good. 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 it's fascinating to you know communication comes to us very easily. You know we chit chat and we talk about things etc. like it seems normal but think about it uh computers were able to beat Cranches master like you know 30 years ago right big blue was uh in 1995 I think in beating Kasparov uh but it's only only in the last two 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, you feel like you're able to speak. You can still re um perceive the artificial nature of it sometimes, but but it looks very natural. So you you needed 30 years of computer uh programming progress to reach this level. It tells you how difficult communicating talking like you you and me 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 and what the complexity is at several levels. One thing you 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 it's useless. It's it's kind of uh 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. Uh it could be I could tell you ah Chris you know I've met this guy he's very nice information or I could tell you 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 uh there would be plenty of way we could do that. there there's plenty of things I could tell you. 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 um linguists and and and psychologists who are cognitive scientists who have written a book about it um is that we try to be relevant and relevant they define relevance as we try to provide 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 work which are going to change your beliefs in a way that you find useful when at the same time giving a message which is the least hard for you to process and and you can see what is relevance when you violate it. So what is violation of relevance? 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'd find me boring or I could be uh talking in a way which is not easy for you to process. I could speak very longly and very technically and that would be you know and even if what I say is right and and useful to you but you know I would not make it easy for you to access so this is a variation of relevance 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 we talk about something technical it's every situations in our daily lives when we 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 and Jane they are um thinking about what to do in the weekend and John says, "Oh, what about going to play tennis?" And Jane says, "I'm tired." So now if you think about it, Jen's answer seems like if you were a robot, if you were a computer, >> you said you you' be like, "Wait a minute." Like Jen didn't say whether she wanted to or not to play tennis. She said she's tired. So she seems like she's not >> sorry that you're tired, but can we get back to talking about tennis? >> Yes. Yes. Exactly. And so how does it work? So obviously John is going to understand what she means, right? But but that she did she doesn't want to play tennis. But so how does John understand? Well, John h John has to first Jen is going to give the minimal amount of information which is I'm tired. Uh John will say okay they will be we have an understanding that's what Jen is doing. So Jen will think okay if if Jen say that she's tired it's it has to be relevant to what I was saying about tennis. So it has to be relevant. So why is this 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 Jen has to anticipate that this is the way John is going to interpret her. So she she she understand that John is going to expect her to say that well because she thinks that he's going to understand you have this kind of recursive mind reading. I know that you're going to think that such what I want to say. Okay. And when you start understanding that that we're doing this, you know, you're putting your shoes in the other person putting his shoes into yours, you realize, okay, that's really really complex. That's why computers are really sound silly relative to us because they don't do that. So they sound you know they sound a bit off until the large language language models which which are better now. But before they were sounding artificial they were unable to do this kind of >> easy interactions when 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 AIs are having to create fake new source data to retrain themselves on 35 or 30 years after we were able to be beaten at 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 Dunar 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 this uh social brain hypothesis which is like why what you know why do we why do we become so intelligent and that is dealing with uh 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 when you compare when you compare us to other apes etc. where the big difference is the complexity of our social network. So if you look at apes like chimpanzees for instance they have some coalitions like two tree but you know we have very large coalitions. We have like you look at your Facebook you have like hundreds of people at work you may have like you know dozens of people etc. And so navigating this is really really complex. I mean, you know, I think every one thing that everybody will understand is that when you play video games, you make a big you see a big difference between playing versus a computer versus playing with versus players. You know, when you play versus a computer, usually quickly you learn that the computer has this kind of predictable way of doing. So, when you play Super Mario and you arrive at the bus, you know, first time you get smashed, but then after it's ah when it throws a fireball, you hide yourself in the corner and then after you jump on it again. And it works all the time, right? But when you play against other players, no, because if you if it works once, the other players learn >> and then you have to expect that, you know, you have to anticipate their next move knowing that themselves they try to anticipate your next move. So what you have is that the complexity of playing with other people is way way more difficult to to to solve as a problem than the complexity of playing with you know either objects or even low low awareness animals. So this challenge that we face uh I think it has put it has likely put a tremendous pressure on our cognition to be for us to be smarter and and all what we most of what we do kind of results around solving and being successful at the 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. selfdeception. We're going to 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 uh 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 do those two things change? How does the way that we show up change? I think you know I think I tend to talk a lot here in in about selfdeision and conflict because often we kind of minimize it or don't talk about it as much but I think we should emphasize that in our 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 you go out and you drive you're in the US. So you drive on the right side of the road, right? I'm in Australia, so I drive on the left. And I mean, you're going to do that 100% of the time, right? I mean, at least in the US. Some some other countries is random. But if you do that, and everybody does that. So So there's this regularity. And this is cooperative. This is it benefits every 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 insights to all the areas of your life. You go at work and people do work. They don't you know uh most people don't embezzle the company and and run away in in another country with the money etc. So cooperation is really uh we have to appreciate how much cooperation there is and we comply with rules most of the time. And I think maybe one um image that you could have is that if you think about a football soccer match or whatever sport you you prefer, there are rules and the rules are applied. That is people follow most of the time the rules. But at the same time, it would be it would be wrong to say that people really follow fully the rules. Yeah. You know, because if you think about football for instance, you you know, people pull out your shirt. people they are kind of tried to go over the line without being you know just enough for for the referee not to uh to blow the whistle etc. So that's what we do in life. So there are rules and mostly we follow them but you know if we can get some advantage uh by not following exactly or by going just close to the line then we will have a tendency to do that and selfdeception here is going to help us because we can do that while convincing ourselves that we're not okay. So if we are called up, it says, "Oh, I I I didn't do anything wrong. 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 with selfdeception, trying to get some advantages. >> It seems to me that communication would would never really be fully cooperative that even the most cooperative team, two people team would always be ever so slightly in conflict. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, you're talking about I mean once once again I I really stress the aspect of cooperation. So I think we need to appreciate how much cooperation there is in communication. But at the same times you're totally right that there is you know we are not ants. There was always an element of conflict. Conflict is a big word but it just mean 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 that there's there's a negotiation you have like if you are with your uncle who talks to you at a wedding forever you know you want to to do something else there's kind of a conflict here and and so conflict is everywhere and I think it explains once you appreciate that it explains a lot of the kind of thing which is seems weird or or mysterious in communication for instance in his book um uh um yeah he write about it in several books but but I don't remember the uh um maybe the um I think the his book on language in 94 Steven Pinker talks about why uh we use um I think the is the the food for of food uh books a more recent book why we use indirect speech which is we use ambiguous statements or in windows for instance when you have a date at the end of a date you might say you know do you want to go to have a drink, right? You don't want to say something more explicit. >> So, the question is, why do you do that? Because when you said you want to go to have a drink, it's pretty, you know, it's pretty clear what what was involved, but you're not going to say, you know, to be more explicit. So, um or he he gives an example about um uh you know, somebody trying to bribe a policeman and say, "Oh, you know, I would like for us to find a way to solve it here." And he gives his wallet and there's a a bill sticking out of the wallet. So he's not saying do you want $50 and you know uh let me go it says something ambiguous. So and ambiguitity is everywhere. So for instance u you know when when there's conflict in the office usually it's not open. People are going to drop hints that they're not happy with you right they do they can be passive aggressive uh 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 when it's because of this conflict element? uh because if there's a conflict by not saying something I can in a way uh convey the message without uh with keeping plausible deniability if things go wrong. Okay. So if I say for instance do you want to go have a drink and my date says no I can pretend that I was just going to you know invite for a drink. So we can play the game where we pretend that uh 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 an attorney of bribery and in in the office if there is a conflict and I I get angry and says you know what are you implying I say I'm not implying anything right so so you keep plausible deniability and so this is this is why our communication is so rich because >> and so often we don't say what we mean, but we convey it indirectly. >> I was listening to Rob Henderson talk to Louise Perry about the Sydney Sweeney advert. So Sydney Sweeney >> 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 um sexually overt and and has big boobs and is a potential intraexual rival for some other high value partner that I would like to get with and she is going to set an 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 uh Trump rally. Her family is like Central Southern American flag waving, truck driving, 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. I said that uh me and Rob were at dinner last night uh singing your praises. By the way, we've managed to get 35 minutes in and I haven't plugged your Substack. Can everyone go and subscribe to Optimally Irrational on Substack, 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. Um, uh, the interesting thing women have a failure of a theory of mind, cross- sex mind reading failure here. think they think that by dergating Sydney Sweeny'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 some intraexual 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 uh Keanu Reeves and Hugh Grant and Jared Letto 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 uh men's judgment of other men is kind of a big mediator of how women find that man to be attractive. This is David Puttz's stuff. >> Um I just thought it was really interesting. You know, when you're talking about ambiguity, deniability, you have this first level which is it's not about hu. It's about eugenics. It's about being right of center. it's about not caring about normal people, etc., etc. >> And then the the reverse wouldn't be true. I just thought that was a really interesting setup, but I might be totally wrong. I'm I'm This is This a fresh It's a fresh theory. Okay. No, I get I get the idea of intraexual competition and and there is, you know, there are psychological research showing that uh I don't remember the details, but I've seen papers where, you know, when you put a beautiful woman in uh she's more likely to get criticized or to be the the target of gossip, etc. And and that kind of kind of makes sense. I mean, not because I want to be clear that it's not because women are bad. It's like, you know, men's have other problems, other type of competitions. It's it's just uh intraextual competitions in on both side. >> In the case of Swina, I could definitely see how this kind of plays role because yeah, I think also because of what you said, uh I think also in the case of the ad which I I saw I guess it breaks a bit of the codes, the political codes and in the US at the moment you know over the last years was very big >> about you know gender roles etc. It's kind of uh it says well there's two things. First it's overtly kind of sexualizing the body of a woman >> and two it's talking about genes which is about biology. And I think these two things is kind of you know hurt the kind of political uh ideological setup on on on part of the the US and particular on the left. So I I can see how that could trigger this kind of reaction. I I don't know anything about Sydney Swingi um what a political allegiance or whatever >> but I could see how people would try to you know would react like a as you said a coalition if you perceive is that being from the out group from you know against your group and then people get very mean uh and that can also blend as you say with intraexual competition but I could see how you know trying to dig something on her >> on the family whatever that's that's we do yeah that's a collitional mindset >> the the um ambiguity, innuendo, plausible deniability thing. Like the 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 interexual competition between men and women. Uh but women are a bit more interesting around this. They're just more complex when it comes to their >> complex. Yeah. in intraexual competition games and the way that they communicate and so on and so forth. But venting is so [ __ ] fascinating, dude. Like I I I just find it it's maybe the most interesting style of of human communication. Um yeah, >> I'm talking to you. I'm Christine. You're 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 going to get her heartbroken." And yeah, I keep trying to warn her about it, but she she just 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, >> "Yeah, >> look, Roberta, I I'm just so worried about you. I didn't, you know, this is me. I care." >> So, >> so good. >> I can so I I think I can give you the the reason why you have these difference between men and women. Uh and and basically the key difference is our network of friends. How our network of friends work? Uh men's have large networks of friends or you say large coalitions. Uh and they have loose loose ties, weak ties, you know, you have a lot of friends. You don't and one friend you cannot talk to him for two years and when you see him back say, "Hey mates, you know, how's it going?" >> Um and that's because well that's one man. I'll tell you maybe because why afterwards and women they have tighter networks small networks a few friends and with a lot of investment you know uh they talk a lot they they invest a lot and so there is also gossiping because which you are talking about because you manage reputation you you want to learn about reputation you manage your own reputation so friendship um uh friendship in in for women is much more intense in terms of you know the investment in each particular uh friendship uh partnership And I think the reason for that is uh that men and women had to solve different problems in our ancestral ancestral times. So when you read a fascinating book by um evolutionary psychologist Sarah Herry 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 kid at the hospital and then you've got the nurse and then after you go to the kindergarten you know and drop the kid at the kindergarten super easy. But okay, ancestors, they didn't have that. And you know, you need to collect food. There's no supermarket to find the food. And you have need to collect food with this uh stuff which is just sucking the energy out of you. And so the survival of children likely was much higher when you got help. So there's a lot of what we call alo parenting. That is a mother gets help from her family, particularly from her mother, but also from other mothers. Sometimes even you know other mothers helping to breastfeed your kid when you can't. 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 a kid is a huge stake right so you want >> very strong bonds with a few people will give you a lot of help so that you know you can't ask >> somebody who you barely know to take your kid and breastfeed your kid right so so this is small network tight bonds men's on the contrary most likely you know they they didn't have this problem they they were engaged more in kind of occasional collective work, occasional warfare, occasional hunting, which is in big groups. And in this case, the defiction of one person is bad, but not as dramatic. You know, if if this woman drops your kid on the ground, that's terrible. If this guy doesn't show up for the 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 uh maintenance, right, than female friendship. But I think it's natural. is kind of a reflection of the kind of different social problems we had to solve, ancestors had 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 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 uh overt. You can see how this works. But I use this example of Lionel Messi. So if you are the reserve gold goalkeeper on the team that Lionel Messi plays for >> Mhm. >> you might think well I mean I am so far in the shadow of the 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 the sort of blast radius of goodwill of you being attached to Lionel Messi is so great in the same way as here's a hunting party of eight meu and six of our friends that go and you're the one that's really fast and Robert's the one that's really strong and another one's the one that's really great at creating a spear and I'm like >> I'm the 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 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 uh coalition has the same kind of uh blast radius. >> So look, yeah, I I 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 research on that but I don't know any specific but you know that um you see that in movies that you have these girls the groups of the cute girls hang together you know they're like and so you want 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 to be separate So I think um I'm not sure I I truly I'm not sure. Yeah. >> Okay. So that's why ambiguity and innuendo is useful because plausible deniability uh >> in particular plalability a thing that Pinker says is when you negotiate the relationships you know like for instance when you're dating you negotiate the relationship whether you want to jump from friendship to more than friendship and so you want to keep your options open in case it doesn't work out when you are with a policeman you negotiate the relationship whether you're in the law or outside of the law, right? So, you want to keep your options open. So, when you negotiate relationships in particular, you want to keep uh plausible deniability. >> There's a you know, one thing in in Steven Pinker's book I love is is he reference the movie Harry when Harry met Sally. So, for the your young listeners, it's an old movie from the I think 90s and and Harry basically he he meets meets Sally and she's a a friend of his current girlfriend and he hits on her. I think he says you're very attracted. And she calls him out. She said, "How could you hit on me?" Well, you you're with my friend. And he said, "Oh, I didn't I didn't hit on you." And says, "Oh, 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's out there because now the difference that if it's not ambiguous, once he acknowledge that he has done it, once he admits that he has done it, then it's in the open. He can't anymore pretend he has not done it because now everybody knows. She knows that he did it. He knows that she she knows etc. So you know this is common knowledge and so you you want typically to avoid this this is risky common knowledge you know an open overure is risky. So being amiguous helps prevent this kind of thing. >> Okay. So it could we look at ambiguity as sort of a 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 a kind of you know it's it's one of these three aspect of communication that is I can say something you know I I talked before about recursive mind reading you can think of recursive mind reading as we have different level of belief. So one belief is you know you might believe I might believe what that you you something then you might believe that I have this belief. So for instance like maybe let's say um 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 Lo wants to go in Brazil so you have a belief on me and then I can say oh Chris believe that I want to go to Brazil I have a belief on your belief right and you can climb this chain of beliefs right and it gets obviously very easily comp complicated then now what you can do is when you it's the ambiguous thing is that you can say something which are going to change a first order belief but keeps ambiguity at the higher levels. So if I if I'm passive aggressive for instance, am I led you to think that I'm annoyed at you, but you're not sure that I know that you know, etc. So we keep the ambiguity 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? Maybe not. You see? And so so when you tell me are you unhappy? I can say no. I can. No, you I was unhappy. No, I was not unhappy. >> See >> what's paltering? I'd never heard of that term before. >> Yeah, paltering is another interesting concept. There was a paper published a few years ago on this. Uh it's you know one aspect of this rich aspect of communication because because we we we we work with this try um uh 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 be interpreted in your favor but actually you're inducing people in error. So I I give you an example which I wrote in the post. She goes Jen and Jack are you know a couple and Jay says I'm going to do 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 and Jake says oh what a great cake and she say oh thank you. Okay well what is when she says thank you she must know that Jake before because of his information assume she did it. So when she says thank you, she just say imply that she did the cake. Okay, but so this is parting because saying thank you for what a great cake is not a lie, right? But paltering is saying something true. >> Thank you is you know she's she's not lying saying thank you but which is inducing the other person in mistake in error, right? She's leading Jake to believe that she did the cake by saying thank you. So paltering is this. You can actually deceive people by saying the truth. That's interesting. Yeah. I I uh 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. This is exactly that because you know a computer you are playing chess in a kind of much larger much complex much more complex like tragic uh uh uh space you have to a computer would have to form a belief about uh you know the world form a belief about your beliefs and and now having a model of you running the same stuff. So he needs to have a model and then a model of you running the same model. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. >> Potentially another one. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what that's what I clunkily tried to explain about my consciousness theory of mind thing that in order for me to be able to understand what you're thinking, we both need to have a theory of mind. Because if we were just automatant, we would be predicting each other, which I don't think allows enough with the 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 and you know in a way the way the computer programming solve the problem is kind of cheating. The thing what is LLM? What are the large language models? Now just large language models which have been trained 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 basic you can think about when you ask a question to chip is trying to find the best answer using all the corpus of human discussion and matching. It's not exactly what it's doing but you could think of it as trying to find the kind of interaction the kind of answer that human have produced in this kind of setup. So it's kind of it's more like an imitator. It's doing more than that actually but but but really it's using the compass 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 chess and they put some algorithms to estimate the values of position in the future and then they they use brute force to be able to compute like 10 20 positions ahead, right? Uh that's not what the LLM does. It doesn't start from from scratch. It use the human language or ability to communicate to try to imitate it. >> Yeah. Which is not the same, right? It's kind of it's the equivalent of a PZ zombie type type scenario. >> It is and and and you can see once you understand what communication is, as I said, you can see where LLM still fail. For instance, one thing that you have with CH GPT is it is very psychopantic. It's always telling you you're great. >> Yes. Yes. >> And also it never says, "Oh, that's a good question. I'm not sure. I don't know." Dude, one time out of 10, nine times out of 10, it usually is sycopantic but accurate and one time out of 10 it is completely confident and absolutely wrong. >> Exactly. Exactly. So if you ask me a question because I'm trying to be relevant, I don't want to give you a wrong answer. So I will try to assess the quality of my 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 chat GP is not designed for that it's designed to predict the kind of you know answer >> uh word afterwards uh that would be in a conversation and so it doesn't have this mind readading ability doesn't go and say oh Chris you ask this question actually you shouldn't ask this question that's the wrong question the real question you want because I know what you want you want you have this problem you ask this question you should have asked this other question. This is the answer. That's what human do. Okay. Uh but charity can do that. >> In what other ways? You mentioned seduction earlier on. Do would you like to come upstairs for a drink? Um what other ways is seduction a communication game? Well, you know, it's u it's it's seduction is really you have like I was talking about like the negotiation of uh uh the relationship like the relationship stages friend or not friend it's all about that right so so you have uh I mean now nowadays actually it's interesting because things have changed a bit um with uh the online dating you remove a lot of ambiguity about the status of what you're doing you know in the past when you meet in a are when you meet with friends uh initially your friends and then there's a kind of step by step you make a you know you break the ambiguity step by step so you say something which is a bit more a bit nicer or a bit warmer than you would with anybody else and you see how the other person reacts and the other person either doesn't react and so maybe you you don't go further or maybe the other person react and then you can continue and that's the way the ambiguity is progressively by this small self safer progressively reduce until the point where you uh there's not enough not much ambiguity uh remaining that you can break it. Okay, >> so that's the old style. Uh and I guess this is still happening. But the thing is that with modern modern dating because you have online dating you start from the kind of more openly explicit point of view that we are here to consider whether we are possible match which for my generation must be a bit a bit uh strange but yeah that's the way it works. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess >> this shows just how important uh coalitions and social connection is to humans. It's fundamental. >> It is fundamental you know for several levels. I mean at a deep level if you look at the past uh I mean our ancestors were not living it was not like total anarchy but it was not super peaceful. There's a lot of evidence of of there's a lot of people dying from violent death and usually even within a community the violent deaths comes at the head of other people from the community. Like basically you imagine you know you piece off half the tribe one day you don't wake up. Okay they come during the night and they deal with you. So and that happens a lot which means that when you think about it then internal politics is key when you you 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 where are the groups in which group I am what is my standing in the group you know are people happy with me etc. >> And when we fail when we kind of you know fall down in reputation and when people are pissed off at us etc. This can be very uh anxietyinducing >> because we are really a social spaces and so you know if what do getting you know um when our friends if our 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 in this group anymore and you have social experiments very simple social experience when you have like somebody there are people throwing the balls and they throw the ball at you and you throw the ball at other it's a computer you so two people throw the ball at each other and they sometimes they throw the ball at you and you throw the ball back at them and what they do is that after a while they get the two other people to stop throwing the ball at you know they it's a mean experiment and what they found out that this very simple experiment like kind of induce anxiety in the respondent because it's it's a game it's like why are they not sending the ball to me right you get exclude this very simple game so the feeling of exclusion and and the monitoring about where we stand in which group is something which is yeah very deep in our psychology. >> Yeah. So I guess the the thing that's interesting or that I can't work out is why it is that people feel intention socially like 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 uh do you want to do you want to talk or do you want to be on your own? Like I don't know. >> It's like they actually don't. It's I kind of want to talk but I kind of need to sort this out on my own. Do you need a hand? I I 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. Um there's a friction between autonomy and connection which is difficult to navigate. >> Yeah, it's a good point. I not talked about you know this before you as a question but I guess the way I feel it is that when you ask for autonomy as a kind of more superficial level that I want autonomy now I want you know sometimes to think 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 uh that tomorrow if I come back there will be the group now if tomorrow yeah to today maybe you know I want to be a bit on my own and because as you say we're not ants so I don't want to you always my life should 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 I if this is getting threatened or if I worry that is threatened I'm 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. How does coalitional psychology sort of tie in with that that need to belong? Well, I think it's it explains why we have this need to be so 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 uh in ancient times. But really coalitions are useful for plenty of things. In the case for inance of mothers, you know, being with a tight group of other mothers, it helps provide support and insurance. Uh if you're in a big group, you can do things that you could not do like for like moving house, you move sofas, etc. you can do it on your own. So coalitions are useful for plenty of things and and I think our co collisional psychology is that we always care about being in a group. We we cares about two things. We care about being in a group uh and or standing in the group. Our standing is how other people um see us in the group. And you know when you unpack a group there's always an internal hierarchy. So it's not like u it's like a fractile. If you think of a fractile, you know, it's a kind of or Russian doors, you know, you open a Russian door, there's another Russian door. Okay. So coalition is like that. So you have a group of friend and from the outside, oh these are the group of friends. Okay. But you go inside and actually in the group of friends there's kind of in inner circle and outer circle. Um one one thing you can see it very quickly very nicely nicely very interestingly 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 >> but actually most of it is not most of it is a collitional 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 all it kind of u run on their anxiety of being excluded massively. So you know they are in a group and they know that at the end of the day one of them is going to be out and and right away what was very interesting in the show is that right away you 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 how do you know what's the top three right? And so there's a top tree and there's the loose two and there's a bottom two for instance right? And so the bottom two they say they know that they are they're on the chopping block. So, you know, we have this psychology. We quickly go in a group and we feel, oh, in this single group, there's this guy, they're tight bone, they're respected by others, they're unmovable, you know, they're part of the group. But me, I'm kind of I'm in between. I'm not sure. Maybe they could they could live their life without me, right? And so, if you're like that, you're stressed, etc. So, this is this is the way we our 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 one of the things that you need is uh commitment. So, what are the ways that what are the ways that coalitions test loyalty? >> So, I mean you you're dead right when you know a key challenge for coalitions is the you need loyalty. 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 a in an army platoon, you need your confidence that, you know, people will have your back when you run toward the front line, etc. So, what you have is that here we have a problem in game theory. It's a problem of uh that you 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 100% and the yummy platoon all run in the same direction at the same time >> and you have 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 will 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 shared confidence that we believe that we think we're a unit and we work as a unit. And how do you get that? You get that with social identity. So the groups work like they have this kind of bond. So you know this feeling that we we are a team and I know we're a team. I know you know we're a team. We share the team logo. We share the team hat you know the team t-shirt. We share the team song before the match etc. And so and that explained a lot again 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 signs for their football team. They singur during the match. Sometimes they sing during the match. They don't even watch the match. And you you think that's that's a bit surprising but that's because of psychology gives a lot of weight on uh caring about signs of loyalty displaying signs of loyalty because being seen as a good group member being trusted as a good group member you want to signal to you want to tell everybody hey you know guy I'm a part of your team and and you know I'm clearly I'm not going to defect anytime and so this explains a lot of what we do. We always want to show and we're worried about signs that people could think, oh, maybe they will think I'm disloyal, >> you know, I'm not gonna, etc. So, we're 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 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 a test of feelalty. It's like >> 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 does that make sense? No, that totally makes sense. Actually, it more than makes sense. There are people writing on this. Uh you can think that beliefs or but beliefs is what's in your head. So it's you know whether beliefs I I believe yes but but at least size of or claims that you hold the beliefs of the group. M >> uh >> they are important to signal loyalty and I think you're totally right that you know within the group there's a competition to there's there's also kind of competition to look good within the group. So one one thing that you could have in particular in political group and you can see that you know it's not just on the left on the left on the right you you see it in different ways is that if I want a claim which is a bit more extreme which is a border you know I I may tread off a bit of credibility that is I say something which is extreme or maybe the factual evidence is not super strong okay but I show to my group that I care so much about you know the the message of my group that I'm willing to say something which is which is that instead of if if on the contrary I'm I'm like oh you know I'm not sure on one hand on the other hand people think like l is not reliable the group he has some doubts >> yes yeah >> well so you have as a consequence the fact that this can give a kind of a premium to exaggerations right at the margin because there's this kind of competition for people to >> I am even more committed I look look at how committed I am I hold oh you only hold that version of the belief allow me to show you how much reality I'll suspend and in service of this thing. But this is why I, you know, when you when you combine um the need for coalition building with public displays of something that looks like loyalty and you put it online on the internet that 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 as 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 what Lionel wants. It's making Lionel more predictable so that my algo 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 go right on the one after that, and left on the one after that. It's like, no, if you just push people out to the edges, that's more predictable. So 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 rights. So, what do we think's going to happen when the school reform comes in or the taxation change or the what's going to happen with socialized healthcare? We I need to keep an eye on him. We're going to ostracize him a little bit. He's not going to be part of the inner sanctum. So, that's the first the first cost that you pay on that. But on the other side, the opposition sees you as having flawed thinking, as 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. >> Y yeah, I agree. So I think what you have is that in every in any kind of political situation political system you have different competing incentives. One you have the loyalty coalitional incentives which are which drive polarization which is I care about being seen in my groups. Uh and then you have the repetitional credibility incentives which are present in communication games. Right? So um these are the stuff where if I tell you something, if I'm not diligent in the information I provide to you, if I'm putting forward claims that you find out are false etc. I'm going to lose credibility. Then now the question is what do people care more about? Um in the good situation in the public sphere people care more about the credibility. So, you know, yes, you have loyalties to your coalition, but nonetheless, you don't want to say crackpot theories, you know, because you worry that, you know, you're going to lose your your your credibility. >> I think the problem when it gets very polarized is that then you, you know, the coalition instances really trump everything. So now saying something which is false, uh, but is in favor of your coalition, then doesn't, you don't have much cost anymore. And something I think that has happened over the the recent years and maybe it's in part because of social media but I think it's more than that is that the kind of mainstream uh institutions which were kind of helding in check uh speech and for you know the credibility of what is said if you think about the mainstream media or the scientist universities etc. they have lost their uh trust from the people and the the ability to enforce this kind of credibility cost and so the consequence in the political now in the political party in the US in the political arena it doesn't cost much to say something which is wrong if you said if you within your coalition because you there's no sanction right so if something is wrong it 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. Uh, is it is it better, do you think, to understand democracy as a coalition game than a a truth seeeking exercise? >> Yeah, totally. So, I wrote about it and I think it's key to understand what democracy is. So uh I'm not sure you know maybe people have different views of democracy but when I you know heard or looked at democracy initially uh when I was younger you know you you hear a lot about the ideal of democracy Greece the Greeks um they had the agora which is this public space people meet and discuss and make collective decisions and in a way this is often used as an ideal and you judge the modern democracy relative to it. So for instance like we think oh uh that was direct democracy. So the real democracy is direct democracy. You have an assembly and they decide together. Now we have in what we have in in modern democracy we have representative democracy. So you vote for people and in the parliament or in the presidencies they decide right. So often this is this is seen as a kind of compromise which is uh an imperfect compromise. What? So the real ideal democratic stuff is is is is um 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 for the society but I think that that is mistaken because you know once you understand that you what we have is that we have people with imperfectly aligned incentives they are in groups groups who have gathers these people who have similar incentives and similar interests and with opposite interest. What the key of politics is not finding the truth for most often it's finding ways to um how finding compromise between the different coalitions. How you split the gains from cooperation. So 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 split the gains uh from huge taxation and very limited inequality for us to very limited taxation and large inequalities? You could how do you and you know it's not just that it's like uh should we say that some professions are deserve more because it's harder for instance you know you have all these questions you can think of and that's the debate of politics and what you do is what you have is that coalitions like it's it's something which is in politic but it's also in everyday life when you negotiate about bargaining bargaining is is present in all always in all interactions even in a household for instance you don't usually bargain in a right raw and uncuff way. You don't say I want more. You know, you you don't go to your boss and says, you don't go to your boss and say I want I want a raise. I want 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 I I 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 what you do is that you're using principles typically of fairness. You say, "Well, that's fair because of my contribution. I'm 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 we we engage in what the game theorist can be more calls a game of morals. So there's a game of life, but instead of fighting and bargaining like if we were haggling 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 problems we face in our everyday life. So instead of bargaining in every situations like let's say in your household instead of every night is say haggling on who is going to do the dishwashing you >> you bargain on general principles and these principles and solves all the individual situations. So that's why all discussions are about fairness uh agreements about principles and that actually solve the problem. So what you see in politics is that coalitions like political parties etc they put forward ideological uh platforms and these ideological platforms they're actually this kind of um proposals to change the uh principles of fairness which are at the moment the compromise in society. So they're hangling in the game of morals to change the social contract which holds all the agreed principles of fairness we use in society to tilt how you bargain and and who gets what in in in in you know uh in practical situations that's what politics is. So it's interesting because once you understand that you understand that the political arguments they are neither purely idealist. So it's not that people are ideally just ideas which comes from nowhere because they tend to reflect the interests of the coalitions. But at the same times these ideas these principles they have to be kind of consistent. They have to be rigorous. They can't be incoherent otherwise they they can't they can't work and make a case >> and they couldn't be too self- serving either because it would make it would it would be flagrant about what it is that people are doing. >> Yeah. So if you if they were too self you know if if everything that you do when you put forward principles is just to be self- serving then people will know that they there's no point listening to what you say because you know there's no information in your principle the principle in a way it's like you know another example is like let's say you start playing a game you 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 right so we need to propose a rules which can be an agreement where we think okay uh we we're not sure you know tomorrow the rules might be against you and I know that you're going to to abide by the rules so that's yeah you lose credibility if you always justify the principle today which advantage you and contradicts 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 like what is a what is political ideology Yes. So, uh I don't I mean when you say people they don't um debate to find the common good, I think it's true. Uh and I think that the idea of common good itself and maybe it sounds a bit depressing but it's it's it's misguided. There's no common good because because we are individuals we have some converging interest but not totally identical interest. And so there's not one single common good. Let's say that even if you tell me, let's say we agree that climate change is important and we need to build windmills. Okay, do we put them in front of your house or in front of my house? Okay, so yes, there are there are good solutions. Some solutions are better than others, but there are always aspects of bargaining. And so um 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 always lead people to try to renegotiate it people to complain etc so we we need to find we need to find when I say we need to uh what works is 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 bids from coalitions to say okay you know what I want that's what I want uh and if the coalition is very tiny and with a bit they can be very extreme because they they you know you have a few people they can have they can be very different from the rest of the population. If you have big coalitions like big parties trying to win elections typically they are mild mildly different because you know there there are too many people for this to be um very extreme but an ideology is is a bit to to to change the social contract in your favor. So if you are maybe on the left you say we want more taxation we want to reduce inequalities we want these people work hard in working classes to have higher wages. If you're on right maybe you say well we want less taxes want to uh give more incentives to entrepreneurs to be more successful etc. And these are nice ideas uh but they tend to be aligned more with the interests of those who you know vote in these parties and those who vote in these parties. and you try to you try to move to tilt this compromised social contract at the moment in one direction or the other. >> If 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 great because people um seek truth. And by the way, you know, we talked about the social media. One big disappointment with social media was uh that when you got the internet people were thinking that dem you know people some people were thinking it would be a big democracy a big public sphere a big agura every citizens are going to be talking with each other we are going you know we can in a way cut the middleman of the mainstream media of the politicians for people to be enlightened and decide collectively about what to do and then what you see that people watch cat videos and uh you know the algorithms feed them uh not great content and they don't they're not interested in politics and people apologize. 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 where is it great I think democracy is great because for the people most people uh it's the best system to ensure that their interest is represented. Uh what you can think of is any political system is characterized by the size of the body of people who select the leader. Uh And there's a book by political scientists and game theorists we call that the selector rate. Selector rate is a people selecting the leader. So for instance in the USSR during uh the Soviet regime this was a polit bureau. So you have a group of 12 25 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 selector basically is most of the population voting. So it's a large amount of people. What you have is that the coalitional games are going to take place in the selectorate. So the coalitional games in the polit bureau if you know the history it's very cutthroat because most people died. That is a basically your elected leader or you die. You know the 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 a real mortal game there. Yeah. >> Exactly. uh and so the guys eliminated often. So the but the coalition games are within this thing in in a democracy the coalition games are within the large body of citizens who vote. But what it means is that the leader the aspiring leader how many people does 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 to to please 51% of the population, right? And and because coalitions are very flexible and can change a lot, uh if you want to to please 51% of the population, you 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 interests tend to be respected and taken care of because the politicians who compete to be elected, they care about you because you're part of this electorate. Well, if you are in the USSR, you know, most people are not in the electorate. Only a tiny portion of people are. And so if you don't matter for the leader, uh, you know, if you're not happy, too bad for you. So I think that's that's what democracy is good because very large proportion of people who decide who is elected very flexible coalitions so everybody has a chance to be at some point in the majority and that means that you matter and the politicians has an interest even if he's not philanthropist or even if he's not uh a pure altruist he has an interest to care about what you think in order to get your support. M 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. But I mean, I remember the first time that I learned about self-deception and I the funniest thing in the world, you saying, "Yes, some people are self-deceptive." It's like, "Dude, you're so self-deceptive that you're deceiving yourself into believing that only some people are selfdeceptive." Um, >> that's right. >> Why is there anything else to explain other than the the deception thing? Is there 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 not aware that we're playing these games. I think you you have several answers. One answers is that uh you don't need to know uh in a way nature evolution doesn't need to give you the rule book for you to be effective. You know uh we are very good at throwing stones for instance and we don't need to know the Newton mechanics behind it. Right? Okay. So we anticipate uh the trajectory of a you know if you catch a a baseball is go of baseball institute you're able to you know anticipate its movement and catch it and though you know you you do that before having done any physics in high school by telling you the laws of physics etc. So in a way nature doesn't need to give you the rule book for you to be effective. It 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 uristics and the rules to to to work out uh in these these games even if you we don't need the you know full understanding about what's exactly happening but 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 call 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 you do you want a friend who is a strategic or do you want a friend who's just loyal and and you know trustworthy maybe somebody who is very strategic is not totally trustworthy because maybe if the calculations do not add up tomorrow is not going to >> you're going to be on the rece you're going to be on the receiving end you're going to be an enemy and not a a a collaborator Yeah, you know maybe uh maybe today is a friend because he find its advantages but what about tomorrow? So you don't want somebody who calculate every day whether it's advantageous with to be a friend with you or not. And so you know once this is a deep problem of uh 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 is to commit to be committed to a course of action. So one solution is more than to be committed is to be committed credibly and to be able to signal signal this commitment. I think love is is a good example. If you have two, a man and a 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 you're in a relationship and then and then every day if if another guy if she finds another guy, you know, better in the street, she she drops you. The problem of this kind of situation is that you know that would make it very risky to invest a lot of effort in the in the partnership. So to invest you need to trust that this stuff is going to last long. But to trust that this stuff 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, a solution that's likely given by nature is a strong emotion that we have to bind which bind us to others and which are visible and and and and give visible signs to others that they can trust. So in a in a in a in a partnership between a man and woman is going to be love. So people will feel strong emotions of love and when people are in love they will purposefully not look at other options and also this emotion is very things uh gives um cues signals which are you know you can see when somebody is beseted with another person and that's credible and so you if you want that's what you want you want to try to be with someone who's in love with you because you're confident that this person is going to be willing to stay with you for a long time >> in in a group of friends. That would not be love. That would be friendship. But there's the same kind of stuff. You want some people, you know, who are loyal and who are with you because they're friends, not because there just a short-term advantage. Now, we're still playing these games, but in a way in nature, the the way for us to be playing these games well may be to care about not playing the games in the short term, right? uh there is um there is a a theory in evolutionary psychology which is more than a theory and I think it's it's it's it's there's a lot of validity that you know you you can think of the mind as made of several uh modules solving problems that's a general theory from evolution of psychology but one of the application of the theory is that you know your mind can be in a way could could be divided in part of your mind which kind of treat 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 strategically um uh triggered by part of one part of the mind and your self-conscious uh person really believe really feels his emotions really is committed and that makes you better as a player. Uh it's a bit abstract but one one way I think you can think about it is um in in the movie I think the second movie of the matrix there is the um the uh oracle and the oracle talks to Neo and and maybe it's in the first one I'm not sure >> but I think the oracle talks to to Neo and after a while 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 did 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 from all the information you get, you're selfaware person in your mind only get the information you need to know to be effective. And that means that yes, our mind you know part of our mind is tragic and knows when to trigger the emotions etc. M >> but it it 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 if you if you if you don't think as a as a player, if you don't think that strategically in the moment, then you you can be a more uh attractive partner in social cooperation. >> Yeah. Wow. Do you think we'd be better off if we just realized that life is all games? >> Uh look, I'm not I'm not sure. I'm not sure we're better off. I think I think in in a way, you know, sometimes living the dream is is better. Maybe it's like in the matrix, you know, I'm pulling you out of the of the of the matrix. Yeah. The reality outside is horrible. >> This is evolutionary theory overall to me. Evolutionary theory. 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 status. It it's very humbling. My point is it's very humbling. Um, we we did this we did this last time I was talking to you about um imposter syndrome and again I I really appreciate the fact that you sort of lay out on your Substack you just lay out the way that these dynamics work and I think that it's it's very good for 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 coalitions are a game. Politics are a game and selfdeception 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? >> Uh, I'd like to tell you that it's 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 to understand the world as it is instead of all the kind of uh narratives and stories we tell ourselves or society tell ourself but at the same time it's the game of the games you know knowing it's like look it's like we play football. we play football if and if I come and I say well you know I have a PhD in football techniques so I know really why football works the way it doesn't it doesn't change that if I want to play football that's you know my PhD in football techniques it's not necessarily super useful to score a 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 uh to be effective we are very effective already at playing these games very well. So understanding these games is mostly useful I think intellectually also also it's useful often to to avoid mistakes uh uh and to I had to appreciate my own kind of biases etc. Uh but it doesn't still mean that you know the games are the games. Uh uh it yeah it doesn't change. >> 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. >> Uh around other people. I'm >> I wish I could extend that to myself actually. 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 ah you know like as soon as you learn fundamental attribution error and you go he he the guy that cut me off in traffic he was probably just late. He's probably not an [ __ ] and even if he is an [ __ ] he's an [ __ ] 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 gameplay, selfdeception, coalition dynamic, you the intraexual competition vent 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. No, I agree. and and and the way I think understanding all that uh in particular selfdeception often you're like okay uh I 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 and aware of the kind of biases that that you have it doesn't make you better though at at winning the game because selfdeception is useful. So if you if you if you curb your selfdeception uh it might actually u not make you better at convincing others but um yeah I do appreciate that sometimes I you know it helps me take a step back. >> Good ladies and gentlemen uh dude everyone needs to go and subscribe optimally Irational on Substack. What else is there anywhere else that people should go? >> No that's it. Oh well they if they are really interested that's it you got my book optimally irrational where you know I talk about psychology and why the good reasons we behave the way we do why we um while the lot of strange things we do in our lives there are lots of good reasons behind it so it's in the book as well >> until next time hurry up and get writing so we can talk some more >> thank you Chris looking forward to it >> congratulations you made it to the end of the episode and if you want more well why Don't you press right here. Come on.