#1274 - Nicholas Christakis

Mar 28, 2019

Nicholas Christakis is a sociologist and physician known for his research on social networks and on the socioeconomic, biosocial, and evolutionary determinants of behavior, health, and longevity. He is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab. He is also the Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science.

Play Episode

Hello friends welcome to the show this episode of the podcast comes to you from Bleacher Report live presenting one Championship won Championship has made its way to the US and they've signed to of the US's biggest martial arts Stars Demetrious Mighty Mouse Johnson and Eddie Alvarez to former UFC champion tool both compete in there one debut on March 31st on both are competing in the first Grand Prix about Demetrious Johnson who is of course the former UFC flyweight Champion when the greatest martial artist of all time and he will compete in the flyweight Grand Prix and Eddie Alvarez who is a three-time world champion former UFC champion former Bellator Champion he will also compete this time though indeed lightweight Grand Prix a new era will also feature the lightweight world championship bout between Edward Foley Yang and shinya Aoki one championship

fantastic organization I'm very excited about them they they put on some fantastic amazing fights between really world class martial artists and they have a bunch of different rules that I like that are different than the UFC's I love the way that promote their fights they also have kickboxing the grappling events it's an amazing amazing organization and you can tune in to see all of this Eddie Alvarez and Demetrious Mighty Mouse Johnson in the world title fight

you could see and stream a new era Sunday March 31st on Bleacher Report live so stream all of One championship bout live on Bleacher Report live and that should be a lot of fun folks I'm very excited I love the fact there's more of these organizations and they are they are huge all across the world we are also brought to you buy four sigmatic four sigmatic is I was actually drinking this during the podcast today I drink their lion's mane mushroom Elixir mix I drink it all the time if you see me drinking like a dark colored liquid that's probably what it is 64% of Americans drink coffee daily but four sigmatic has something way better than regular coffee that's been getting people drink mushroom since 2012 and four sigmatic I know drinking mushrooms but

four sigmatics though they sell mushroom coffee it actually tastes great it's damn good for you the founding funguys the four sigmatic grew up foraging for mushrooms in Finland and in fact defense have been brewing mushroom tea for centuries they knew that mushrooms were some of the world's most nutritious Foods so they brought it to America in a format that they knew we'd love coffee mushroom coffee it has half the caffeine of regular coffee but it's amazing stop they have mushrooms in it that they won't make you high but it will help you to think personally I'm a big fan of this lion's mane mushroom and that is one of these that is one of the mushrooms it's in there another one is chaga lion's mane is it's actually very good for brain health it's very good for your neurochemistry and chaga is a winter necessity that help support immune system

mushroom coffee comes in easy to use single carry easy to use and carry rather single-serving packets you can stash them in your back put in your desk Kari when your suitcase wherever you wherever you want to bring him and the USDA organic and paleo certified it has 0 grams of sugar in zero calories just a whole lot of power and of course we've got a special offer for listeners this podcast you can receive 20% off your four sigmatic offer when you go to four sigmatic. Com Rogan or use the discount code Rogan at check out that Four sigmatic f o u r s i g m a t i c. Com Rogan or use the discount code Rogan at checkout for 20% off

and last but not least we are brought to you by Cabo Cabo remote controls they have but if you have a theater set up in your house and you know you set up everything and you know you have a bunch of different mote controls it's kind of a pain in the ass most people know if you have a lot of them and they're sitting all over the place and one of them runs out of batteries and Fike and this one doesn't work anymore you can simplify all that shit with the control center by car the one universal remote that really does it all control center is not just another streamer it manages all your content and simplifies your home theater so that you can control everything connect to your TV with one easy to use voice control remote the setup is easy you plug in your streamer sound system cable or satellite even your game con

and control center control center will handle the rest then you just say the name or whatever you want to watch control center will take you straight there say a movie say TV show an actor even a specific episode of your favorite show and control center will pull up all your options even YouTube sit back say whatever you want to watch and then relax with control center it's amazing you can shop now and you can get 40% off control center with the promo code Rogan that's 5995 40% off the regular price of 9995 control center is available at CAA vrbo.com and Best Buy service plan required first 45 days free see website for details control center by Cavo one remote that does

okay that's it I guess today is I got up and want to talk to you for a long time he is a former professor at Yale a brilliant man in author of a great new book called blueprint The evolutionary origins of a good Society I really enjoy talking to him and I hope you enjoy this podcast please welcome Nicholas christakis

The Joe Rogan Experience

all day

yes hello Niklas Ajo how are you man great to meet you it's really good to meet you too I became aware of you like many people did with the infamous Halloween costume incident at Yale I wear explain that for people who don't know what happened cuz it's kind of crazy seeing it went national tree many students were struggling with how to balance it conflicting syrup need certainty that conflicting needs, on the one hand to create an environment in schools where everyone's who felt welcomed as we've democratized admissions to our American universities I think we should have people from all walks of life is started moving into these institutions claiming them for their own which I think is appropriate but at the same time these institutions had wonderful heritage's of commitment to free expression and open debate and

reason as a principal for resolving our differences and and some of those values came into tension and two around the country there was a lot of heat about this and I happened to walk into a propeller myself and and wound up in some challenging a circumstances and you know I was not

it was not the worst thing that's ever happened to me but you know it was in the top ten challenging moments I've had in my life looks like that's a very lawyer like way of describing exactly what happened why I struggle of you can tell the story if you want and then I can correct and I take responsibility for teaching young people and it is the case that many people lost their minds and we lost our senses and and and the faculty to let me know there is one thing to talk about people in their college-age people but the end of The Faculty also didn't

but the thing is is that you know my commitment is my commitment is to is to teaching more generally and I don't want to be defined by that event I don't want that to be, the most important thing about me you don't have this book this book that we're going to talk about that is it important thing in my life and stain sheets my values it talks about what I think is important about the world so I'm trying to be balanced about it it's one thing that happened I did my best it's in a pack of that me and let me help out here because you're being so nice about the whole thing so people know what we're talking about there was an incident that was captured on someone's cell phone where you were standing here clip went viral but there were many people filming that day and an hour or more of the two or three hours I was out there as available well I'm glad that you had the courage to do that though to stand out there and talk to those kids but some of them were clearly

there's something that happens when people become extremely self-indulgent when they know that they have this platform and they have someone who is in a position of authority and they get to hamstring them in front of the public and that's what I felt was going on just my understanding of human nature I knew what you was doing what she was doing by shouting and screaming this is our fucking home you know I will you know we were supposed to be safe here I was like I see what's going on she's throwing up the flag of virtue for all of her friends to see how amazing she was so she's putting on a show people do that it's it's it's human nature you handled it admirably you stood there and you you just listen to her and you never yelled back and you never raise your voice and you remain calm but that sort of environment where the children and I want to see children they're basically adults but acting like children this is one of the irony is it that people that age you know can fight in Wars

Luther live scans so I think it's a it's a it's right inappropriate to hold people responsible for their actions certainly if you're 20 years old you're an adult you're still growing you're still changing you're still learning I'm not the same man I was when I was 20 but you have to be responsible for your behavior I don't think you get a total pass either it's hard out you do not get a toll pass and you know for folks who don't have a 20 year old in their life and don't remember what it was like yeah you're not a fully-formed thing at your your field of chaos emotions and hormones and and you're probably away from the instructions of your parents for the first time and you know you're Cuttin loose and trying out new new ways of communicating that way it's a it's a lot of it's a mess but most people felt horrified watching that that you

are subjected to that when you're being very reasonable and also what it all came about was your wife had sent out an email saying like hey maybe you should be okay for someone to wear a fucked-up Halloween costume. Maybe it's okay to Super someone to dress up like crazy horse we had out very important intellectual the station to take it we've lost a lot of nuance in our political lives in general in our country right now and also in the in the nuances think about difficult topics so what I was saying was not that necessarily the people she was not taking a position on any particular costumes like this is okay if I offended but she was saying was that she didn't think the university should be telling students what to wear right and she was asking the suits do you students at this age at Yale do you really want the university to be sending guidance

what you are perhaps you should think about that you're adults you're smart you're in an environment that privilege is free expression do you really want to grab the power to an institution to tell you how to communicate thought that she was saying that that she was defending a particular course of action would she was saying was you she was saying do you students really want to surrender that kind of control over your own lives to older adults and did so I don't believe they did I think they wanted absolute enforcement of what they thought to be wrong or right yes

yes I think that's right so they they they they many but not all of the students

in part of the motivation in in Erica writing that note was that many many of her students in the fact many hundreds of other students felt infantilized by this policy and they're having a big build-up prior to that event including an article in the New York Times about these Halloween costume policies around the country and weren't they kind of ridiculous and so they were people were saying wait a minute do we really need adults to be told in this institution especially given its commitments to open expression what to wear and keep in mind that there could be many ways in which the costume that offends you might not might I might not know why so let's say you have been abused by a priest and you were the one of the rule said you shouldn't mock religion for example was what one of the one of the provisions so so a university-wide email went out sign by 13 people saying you know don't don't don't

people's deeply-held Faith Traditions but what if for the sake of argument you had been a up abused by a priest and you wanted in Halloween to dress up as a Catholic priest for example you're holding up a doll and someone else who had a different who's Catholic was very deeply offended by that well who should have judicate that like you know is it the role of the institution to come down and say yes you can express yourself this way no you cannot and so the argument was let the young people learn let them sort it out themselves let them learn by talking to each other expressing themselves and you know that hurts my feelings here's why it hurts my feelings and other person to I understand I don't understand I reject that reason and and sort of by into a kind of commitment to free and open expression that actually I think ultimately serves the objectives of righteous social progress if we really want to do better in our society or in any society in my view

we have to create an environment where we can talk to each other grad good faith listen carefully make subtle distinctions and and free people up to express what they're thinking so we can have a real Marketplace of ideas that's my commitment or my belief that's a wonderful believe it I mean that's really I couldn't agree with you more more enthusiastically that's really that sounds like the best possible environment for growing up and learning as long as you have someone to sort of moderate or someone to mediate if things go sideways

yes or I don't think you necessarily need a third-party mediator but you do need a shared understanding of of core liberal principles and these principles are kind of commitment to free and open expression a commitment to debate a commitment to reason so how are you and I going to come to a better understanding of what is true about the world we could fight right in the stronger person would decide what's right we could vote doesn't seem quite right either you know 350 Cardinals voted the Galileo was wrong that didn't bake Galileo wrong or we could use principles of reason and inquiry to try to appreciate the world together right we're looking out at the world saying that's confusing does the sun does the Earth revolve around the Sun or does the Sun revolve around the earth or that's confusing should have King have money you know should have King have ultimate Authority in a state or is that not how we want to organize a state so we you and I look at the world and debate and think about okay

and we exchanged reasons and we use evidence and ways of understanding and study in the world that to me is the only way to truth actually that some people will think that religion is the way the truth right they think that the truth is you know it's god-given for example now I am very sympathetic to religious belief systems but I don't think that's the way the truth that it's a way to some truths actually it's a way to some somewhere but anyway so that's what our universities in our society are you where things are officially committed to that the models of our universities are all about free inquiry and pursuit of knowledge and our country is committed to that in our Bill of Rights right we have a commitment to free and open expression freedom of assembly freedom of religion and so forth and and those ground rules that in my view make it possible for us to have a better Society

and

and there's more I said well I'm sure we will get into a dumpster we will do that again I couldn't agree with you more. I just think we need more reasonable conversations and a screaming and less shouting people down and less stopping yes yes the mob action is very weird because I don't remember it from the light from the Vietnam War protests to what's going on today there was this long Gap where you didn't hear about University shutting down speech this is fairly new to this is within the last time a half decade or so yes I mean they're always in our society at large penis not forget the McCarthy era where you had the right wing was you're really interested in shutting down, if you were a professor or an artist who had far left political views

yes and that's what's wrong or even if you would want went to a communist meeting yes it was all about us just to educate yourself being criticized for following online people that disagree with yes what are they saying I'm friends with people I don't agree with I have a friend I have I have friends across the political Spectrum from though I don't have any I have a friend and he thinks there should be private ownership of Roads

female libertarian that's a ridiculous position

this man that he's he also thinks somewhat less controversially is harder decision he also thinks that you you shouldn't be you should be able to sell your butt your organs you know we should have a market in kidneys that you you know you right now are you alive yeah you can give away one of your kidneys you can never tell me about about a young guy who sold his kidney to get an iPhone in another country the country yes yes and wound up having an infection and lots of second kidney has one of these things because people who want to sell their blood are usually fucked-up correct and so it's safer in countries where you were people terribly

believe that he he he it was I love to baiting him and I learned from it be like recently he said to me and I and I think I have a better answer he said he doesn't understand why black Jesus Christ is Lil xan kiss anarchists and Libertarians Albany their asses kicked their really do settle down but the things I said and I think any kind of extreme ideology but the point is we can learn there is some wisdom almost anywhere right hand and the problem comes from excess expression you know that the problem comes from things to extremes and we get to private ownership of Rhodes yes store a Libertarian I'm kidding I don't really think you'd get your ass kicked just joking around but it is

it's a position that I always feel like to be remedied with psychedelic drugs almost always get where they're coming from I understand personal responsibility but we already except that there's some things that we agree on that we should all chip in to pay for like roads in their basement so whenever doctor prescribes a medication they could see if the drugs yeah I'm sure the rest of us pay taxes and we say we're all going to pitch in together and we're going to have the FDA certified so that when I go to my pharmacist and buy a drug the pharmaceutical companies and killing me by Shawty manufacturing practices yes so I think that's right we get together and is a free society and we do these things we want an encore

Judiciary right we don't want people to be ashore and one of them is the capacity to openly debate ideas and to expose ourselves to ideas across the gamut and political ideas about scientific ideas so how are we going to win the battle against anti-vaxxers like how are we going to persuade people who believe that vaccines kill people for which there's no scientific evidence that they're wrong we could imprison them but that's Force we could vote which is sort of what we're doing or saying okay well you're a minority group who believes these things so we're not going to allow you to control policy or we could try to win the Battle of ideas and persuade them ultimately that's the only path that's to remind you that gets us to where we want to be ya and just an honest assessment of the actual data like what we really know and understand how

scientist come to conclusions but the problem is these Echo Chambers were people get involved with online that magnify all these beliefs and you get radicalized let me have some so true people get involved these Facebook groups she's anti-vax Pacer Facebook groups or you know all of the all sorts of different things mean that's how these Flat Earth people get going listening only the people that are involved in this circle that don't have a a greater understanding of the science involved and they decide to the ice wall desk of the earth you know like the edge of the Earth it was just a disc now the new theory that there's a nice wall actually is it's kind of not falsifiable

you would find a way to make it so that you can't disprove it right that you don't get to an edge there's no way there's a nice wall is what they're saying now and are you aware of hashtag space is fake no I'm not I understand. Expose myself that's in my dad space is a bunch of people that believe that space is fake okay that it's not real but there's no real space and that there's like lights up there on that this is some sort of a plan by Satan it's a lot of it very difficult it has to do with the firmament use descriptions and depictions from the Bible yeah it's super Bazaar and what's really bizarre as when you listen to the YouTube videos or these discussions that are done by people that you

words that are real they string them together correctly they have like full sense as they appear to be articulate it's very confusing if you're a dummy if you let you listen to those who go to wow this guy making a lot of sense he's not but it sounds like he's making a lot of sense cuz he's using all these words that are correctly uses no arms he's saying it articulately it is it like that everything seems like all my expenses man is exposing and if you don't know any better and that's all you listen to that's where you're heading to go the same with the anti-vax movement if you only listen to these anti-vaxxers they're making so much sense like oh my God is giving everybody all sorts of ailments oh yeah it is as you say scientific words but it's actually not scientifically correct ride do you know what does this was then does That Was Then does that they lay out a kind of causal chain which is false and then there's a problem of nuance in perspective because they're so

how many people that get vaccinated as hundreds of millions of people in this country billions of people worldwide and then there are instances rare appearances were people have real issues as vaccinations well there is are somewhere they have real issues so for example there's some vaccines which are known to cause certain neurological conditions rarely one out of a million or one of a hundred thousand extension more commonly is a situation in which you have vaccination is so, and everyone is getting vaccinated and often that occurs near to An Occurrence of some other rare condition vaccine has been no it's a coincidence either or yes there's both in the end there's also you know if it's one out of a million you have 300 million times if 3 million million people with an issue is a big deal right with 300 million people yes you easily could have 300 really big cases in 03

a hundred cases website has died from vaccines and then you bring those in front of people you know it doesn't feel good if it's your child but when we look at the greater perspective of humanity and you say we'll listen you don't want to bring back smallpox you don't want your child to get measles maybe you can get measles when they can't even be vaccinated for it this is one of the reasons why we need to vaccinate children to make sure they don't get measles is the series fucking problem and a serious problem that scientist have labored for Untold yes Gates treasure truck and expert and she's a medical store in an expert in Victorian era surgery Lindsey fitzharris and she wrote this great book called The butchering art and in it there's all these images you shoot one of them she brought up of what smallpox actually looks like

get it's horrible yes we just covered people's body like it's credible but that's obviously neither here nor there so this book blueprint The evolutionary origins of a good society when did you start this about 9 or 10 years ago and I at the time in my lab we were doing research on friendship we were doing research on on why people have friends it is actually it's not it's not provide an account for why we have sex with each other many animals are most animals are most animals relative proportions anyway most animals reproduce sexually and it's not hard to provide an account for how

why we why sex originated why we reproduce sexually it's not hard to provide an account for why we are choosing our mates or why we are careful of who we have sex with but human beings don't just mate with each other we be friend each other we form long-term non-reproductive unions two other individuals to come we're not related why that's very rare in the animal kingdom very few creatures do this we do it certain other primates elephants certain whales and that's mostly it so the question is why so I became interested in my lab and try to understand the Deep origins of friendship why would natural selection have equipped us with his capacity and that's at the station for an exploring all kinds of other things in our lives like why we love each other why do we why do we eat when we have sex with the person we tend to become attached to that we develop emotional sentiment about them that's not an essential to having sex yet we do that

and then I became interested in other kinds of good things like not as just love and friendship but cooperation and teaching teaching is another crazy thing

we take it for granted that we teach each other but think about this most animals are able to learn so little fish in the ocean learns that if it swims to the light it finds more food there so the fish then learns to be Tropic to to move towards the light that's individual learning some animals develop was called social learning social learning is really efficient so if I put my hand in the fire I learned that I burn myself I pull my hand out I've learned something I paid a price on something I could observe you putting your hand in the fire you pay all the price but I gave most of the knowledge it's almost is going to learn all people you shouldn't put your hand in the fire so the Joker's hand in the fire so social learning is super efficient learning from others but we take it to an even further level we don't just passively observe other other animals have our own species and learn from them we teach each other

that is very rare in the animal kingdom where one animal sets out to teach another animal something so the book is it is is a is about the evolutionary origins of a good Society it's also a kind of response kind of push back to a long tradition in The Sciences of attention to the bad parts of our nature you know the scientist in my view have for too long been looking at the origins of of murder and tribalism and selfishness and mendacity but but I think the bright side has been denied attention it deserves because we have also involved to love and to befriend each other and to be kind to each other and to cooperate and to teach each other all these good things and I'll shut up please don't know and I think about this

this must have been the case that the benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs

we would not be living socially

if my exposure to you harmed me on net if I came near you and you were violent to me you killed me or you gave me misinformation you tell me lies about the world then my connection to you would ultimately harm me that I should be better off living as an isolated animal so animals that come together to live socially there the benefits of that must outweigh the costs my living us living as a group so all this attention to the ways in which our interactions are bad that we kill each other that we steal from each other that we lie to each other that we have tribalism and all of these traits which we do every century is replete with ours I'm not like pangloss I don't think like in a Pollyanna like everything's great that's not me but what gets me is a kind of optimistic focus on the good parts of our of human nature and the recognition that those good parts must in Toto overwhelmed the back

well they certainly have to do so many human beings Kaminski obvious that this is working yes we have propagated we're everywhere in fact you're you're exactly right in the argument and that's disgusting the book The Way We have achieved the kind of social conquest of the Earth the way our species is is a spread-out occupy every Niche which is also very rare most animals live in one year Grizzlies live in in this part of the world they don't live in Amazonia and you don't polar bears live in this part of world they don't live in Arizona Etc so so good but our species lives everywhere and the way we have come to be able to do that is by the capacity to have culture to teach and learn from each other to accumulate knowledge so in the book I talked about a lot of this famous hit a story called The Lost European explorer Files about how European explorers are lost they lose their supplies

and other people and survive because they have learned to how to live there so we've spread out around the world chapter in the book at the beginning about shipwrecks so

so I have this Dragon so I have this when I try to set out to do in the beginning the book as I say look it's clear that our genes shape the structure and function of our bodies

it is increasingly clear that our genes also straight shape of structure and function of our minds are behaviors whether you are risk-averse how intelligent you are whether you have Wanderlust these properties are properties that depend in part on your jeans

but it's also clear to me and that's what the book argues is that our genes shape not just a structure and function of our bodies not just a structure and function of our minds but also the structure and function of our societies and to really prove that what we would need is something known as The Forbidden experiment and the Forbidden experiment is an experiment in which we took a group of babies who have never been taught anything or a cultural had no culture and stranded on an island and let them on their own to see what kind of society they would make when they grew up your how would the organize themselves socially is their kind of an innate society that human beings are puppy wire to make an Essence unethical and cruel but actually monarchs for thousands of years of contemplated this experiment so Herodotus rights in about how one of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs wanted to know what kind of language would what was the natural language we had in us that we would speak if we were not taught a language so this Pharaoh it is said took two babies

and gave them to a mute Shepherd to raise to see how did the children speak when they grew up and nnn. Emperor Akbar attempted is there was a couple of European Kings that attempted this obviously we can't actually do this so what I do in the book is I look at a series of other approximation of that and one chapter is devoted to looking at shipwrecks groups of men typically but sometimes men and women who between 1500 and 1900 there were 9000 shipwrecks many more thousands of ships were lost at sea and in 20 of those cases we found 20 cases where at least 19 people were stranded for at least two months and you know there's a kind of here's a map of the men with yours one crew I can tell you about but here's a map of the of the shipwrecks like these are that the all over the world that where they occurred and when they occurred and how many people that were and and so then I I I got all the ridge

what counts from the sailors from the people on the wrecks and all contemporary archaeological excavations of those racks were where they had been excavated and and try to understand what kind of society did these isolated cruise actually wind up making and there was some amazing stories that were that I found in there

so they stayed for at least two months how many of them actually established a real civilization how many of them stuck forever most of those Crews were eventually affect all of those Crews had at least one Survivor because if they had all died, then I wouldn't be able to know in which the sailors in the Pacific and they managed to catch a big petrol one of those huge birds that you know like the Condor and and they they they put a little note in a little tiny bottle and they tied it to its feet and this petrol flu thousands of miles and landed in Australia and was found with a note indicating where the ice stranded Sailors were and a ship was sent to go find them in and they got there but they had all died they were all gone so they she wants this this this bird joke

I think if you had that choice you would communicate rather than each oh I think yes yeah for a little bit but nobody knows but the point is that we have to be for me to be able to describe what happened we needed at least one Survivor and often they were many cases where everyone survived I mean there was one pair of cases that I was amazing to me

in 1846 in South Auckland Islands just north of Antarctica south of New Zealand the Grafton was wrecked on the southern part of the island the camera Big Island was 90 miles long or something or 20 miles. If he's 20 miles long

on the southern part of the island five men are wrecked in the Grafton and on the northern part of the island the infraco Rex 19 men are wrecked on the in Brickell all the Grafton Crews survives the in both people screws were on the island at the same time they never encountered each other they're struggling for survival it's like a like an experiment like who's going to win Survivor and 16 of the 19 man on the on the entry code crew. I think there's also cannibalism in that Crusoe it's a it's a very very different outcome for various reasons so anyway the point is that in the book I start with a series of stories about how people come together

to make attempts to make new civilizations I use the example of unintentional communities without with shipwrecks I have I looked at it intentional communities like communes and and that you put Suzanne Israel and 1970s communes in the United States in the 19th century communes in the United States actually going back to Roman times they're always been groups of people who said she's fucked up I'm going to go and we're going to make it a cat going to start afresh I look at settlements in Antarctica of scientists I look at the Pitcairn in the Mutiny on the Bounty I look at the Shackleton Expedition many many cases of stranded isolated groups of people trying to make a new social order and then I also use data from experiments we do in my lab we have the software where tens of thousands of people have come and play these games we we can create these temporary artificial societies of real people or people come and spend an hour or two and we would

like we can engineer the society we can have a lot of inequality or little inequality Ark various other features and then we can observe what happens and I looked at all of that did all those stories and say look there is a deep and fundamental way that no matter what human beings make a society the underlying fundamental principles about society which are as innate as the fact that you have two kidneys most people almost everyone or your pancreas makes insulin

but they're very different all throughout the world right I mean there's totalitarian societies those

you look around the world and the way the example I give is that yes there's a huge cultural variation around the world just like you said to tell turn societies people have different foods and they have different ways of dressing and variation and it's marvelous an interesting and obvious to anybody

but I think we're missing the forest from the trees to me this is like you and I are sitting on a plane and we look it up a hill that's 300 feet and nine hundred feet and we say those are very different Hills but actually took a step back we would see that we are on we were on a plateau and one was a mountain that was 10300 feet and another was a mountain that was 10900 ft and actually there is much more deep in fundamental plate tectonic forces that are creating these two mountains that are very similar but we are just focused on The Superficial top so the argument in the book is that everywhere in the world people have friendship people love their Partners people cooperate people teach each other these are fundamental common principles shared by everyone even though there's also a lot of variation even in a place like North Korea North Korea that that state

so totalitarian States apply huge cultural pressure to suppress this innate tendency it's like it's like a religious you need a lot of belief in God to suppress your innate desire to have sex right so you can have a belief system that's very powerful that kind of prevents you squashes what would otherwise be a kind of inescapable inclination you have so totalitarian regimes in this is disgusting the book to they are very threatened by the institution of the family they're threatened you need to owe your loyalty to the state not to your family not to your friends and so they have a series of Institutions that you know everyone is comrade everyone just called, for example or

or there is a lot of a lot of times while I want I want to know if I want to speak at the state level let me let me take it down a notch to communes so if you think about communes you're going to make a communist people and you want them to feel real loyalty to the communist

one way you can do that is you want to reduce the commitment people have to their Partners let's say they're at their mates in an order to do that you can go to one or two extreme either you can prohibit sex like the Shakers and you say okay no one can have sex with anyone because we're all in the Communist and we all love each other and we're not going to have special love for particular people

or you could go to The Other Extreme and you can have polyamory everyone can have sex with everyone else once again you see that subverts the special relationship that people might form with particular individuals and so both of those strategies even though they're opposite are attempting to do the same thing which is the breakdown real relationships face-to-face relationship between individuals so that you can have a commitment to this higher group and that's what to tell Terry and States also face the same dilemma and that's also why I didn't lie a lot of the states try to reduce gender differences right there you like you know the mile jacket the men and women all wearing the symbol similar kind of tire for instance because they want to have people see themselves as interchangeable and not as individuals and relationships not be particular did you study Colts

a little bit not a lot there's some talk a little bit of the book about cults but I don't really need to get to Carleton order to make the argument that I'm making make arguments just to compare cuz that isn't essentially like in particular The Rock Niche Colts and the Oregon to Wild Wild Wet n Wild Wild Country documentary on Netflix did you see that have a fantastic day. Essentially took over an entire town and started fussing and homeless people to vote did was really weird and you know I mean for there's moments in the documentary like maybe they're onto something and then of course it goes completely sideways they want a poisoning people and chaos but I am absolutely fascinated by those types of environments where people do decide they're going to Branch off from regular they don't they're unsatisfied with regular civilization

they can all move to some locations that's it for this what people do that they keep expressing some of these at me I just was reinforcing what you said but yes that's right I'm always fascinated by people that are unhappy with the current state of affairs they don't like the way Society feels to them they don't feel like they belong they want to try somewhere else I mean it and what was really interesting to me is the last time someone did this as a country as far as I know is the United States it really is it's also very unique to this is one of the weirdest countries in the world in terms of our ability to freely express ourselves and we have more guns were

is about the fact that anyone can be an American my parents immigrated from Grease I was raised in this country you know I to be an American means to buy into a certain set of principles like the Bill of Rights and many other countries are very xenophobic you know you can't become a Japanese it's you can't become you can't be nationalized in Japan you can but it's extremely difficult in a rare is so it's a very homogeneous a country Switzerland is another country is very difficult to become Swiss you can't be naturalized as this was sent me you can but it's extremely difficult and we're so but the United States we say you are an American if you for all the whole world you're welcome bring us your tired your you know what the famous saying on the foot on them I forgot the same on the bottom of the of the Statue of Liberty

how your wretched your your full bar and whatever it is and you can come to this B Shores and make her life a new and and all you need to do to be an American is to buy into a commitment to constitutional governments Democratic rule Bill of Rights in these principles we should know that they were people that were brought as slaves involuntarily to these Shores we don't always realize our best virtues we allow people to come but like the Irish and treat them as second-class Citizens or the Italians were the Greeks even you know we we don't always do that but but the idea that you're putting on the table which I think is correct is that

you can be an American this is a special unusual experiment you can't reinvent yourself quite that way and to my knowledge in any other colony or country that's why it's one of the weirdest things that this is a country where anti-immigrant sentiments are running rampant yes the Native Americans today since then is it in such a unique environment for expression mean it's really no other country that has as free expression yes it's a it's just it's a very unusual thing and this unusual thing is the most recent incarnation of country

I think there are you know then this ties in with the whole set of ideas about American exceptionalism you know are we how different are we what is the source of our wealth what is the height of our civilization you know I'm I'm I am distressed by some of the direction our country is going in at the moment but I think you know what I think in the long Arc of History I think the United States stands for many of the best principles in the world and I'm prepared to defend those principles to and I think about what you were saying with your libertarian friend you know someone who may be an anarchist or whatever then there's room for all these weird opinions of human beings it's 300-plus million yes it's just the idea that America is like white nationalists in Charlottesville this is what's wrong with America

call savaricas volume you know your get you going to have certain ridiculous ideas and volume that is incredible mass of humans in large I think that's right I think our size contributes to pour makes a kind of heterogeneity of ideas more easy you know if we were tiny Country Casino like you go to European countries that are tiny Speck what you're talking about earlier which again you're highlighting which I agree with is that we want an environment in which people can the ground rules are clear so you know you can't there's no physical contact allowed right so you'd ride bright-line distinction between words and deeds so I completely reject the idea that words are violent violent yeah totally totally reject that and because

for the two different things I don't believe so grounders are you know I can't touch you but I can speak other ground rules are that we are committed to open expression a good ground would be that we graph positive intent we Grant good intent that is to say I try to put what you're saying in the most favorable light first I think about it I still can't wait a minute what is he saying what does he mean by that he means you may be an idiot a person may be an idiot they may be vile they may be violent they may be wrong you all of those things are also possible but that's not the first go to so anyway please set those ground rules I think I believe strongly that in the marketplace of ideas truth will out and righteousness wow that's that's what I think maybe I'm wrong maybe in fact what we need is a benevolent dictator who you know comes down until this all what to think and do but that's not the world I want to live in ya the benevolent dictator idea is what does that come from like what is it just because it's that's really been the only way that Society

is actually function for most of the past 2000 years that will come down and fix it this is the inclination towards Trump I think that we will you know that but the way out is to have a kind of imposition from above and I think that's very dangerous actually and this earlier in college campuses it's the same principle right like the idea of that Big Daddy's going to come down and tell us what to do and fix the situation think is undemocratic in the end but a big Daddy has to follow the rules these children want I mean this is part of the issue with the idea of him words equal violence me this is not a well thought-through idea in this is an idea that is real

they can hurt your feelings yes they can be unpleasant all of that is true but I think we need to send. End Greg lukianoff argue we actually might want to create the other reasons to draw the distinction between words and violence and to cultivate an appreciation for that distinction and that is by allowing people to speak we may actually reduce violence because we can identify who has these crazy ideas we know who so if you're if if if I believe that someone hates people like me and I create an environment in which we allow him to say he hates people like me I think it's horrible that he hates people like me I'm not defending these people like me but we might now know who he is so

additional additional benefit of creating a free and open Marketplace of ideas as we identify where the crazy is you know I'd like to know who are the people that hold these beliefs because as a public health expert and I was at the hospice doctor for many years I took care of patients were long time anyway I was praying and still interested in a lot of our projects around the world are public health projects in order to be able to be people to wisdom you have to know where where is the endurance run well if it's secret you don't know it so that's another benefit of fostering this climate of open expression yeah and the solution to these bad ideas for someone to come up and give a better idea someone to debate or to explain what's wrong with it and to do it in a reasonable manner when people start shouting and screaming and pulling fire alarms like it's this site that idea of silencing people from speaking it somehow none of this is going to help this is

this is also part of deplatforming even based on just reasonable people with differing opinions salusa rights activists in in England who went to prison for his imprisoned in foreign countries for defending a gay rights and he was deplatformed in England a couple of years ago and here's the problem would be platforming the first of all it is totally right and appropriate to protest so someone is speaking something you don't want I will strongly defend protest stand outside yell and scream hold banners up whatever you can't interfere with the right of the speaker to express themselves first point but even more important the reason we don't want that it's not so much because we're interested in the right of the speaker

it's because we're interested in the rights of the listeners the people who are want to listen to that person have a right to listen to that person in a free Society so when we prevent them but it's not that I'm silencing you I'm I am interfering with the ability of all the people who want to hear you to hear you cuz their rights that matter to so if we the deplatforming it's not about oh so and so was unable to speak in such and such a place it's a fact that all the people that wanted to hear someone so we're deprived of their opportunity to do so so I think the answer to words we do not like the answer to speech we do not like his more speech it's not silencing yeah and there's also the obvious situation you put someone in when you do to attempt to silence him you put them under duress and their message changes you you make someone more combative and yes this is often been the argument for why Trump became president in the first place that people were were tired

of the argument on the other side I mean I'm not political scientist and I followed that literature little bit I think there is a strong argument that that is one of the factors that contributed to the success let's get my however that the majority of Americans voted for Hillary Clinton and and correct but all the people who voted yes that's right that's another whole problem but 63 or so million I mean it about 3 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton then voted for Donald Trump so so what were you saying I we were talking about people wanting to silence people that the polar opposite of that I would agree with that and I think that that's another you know that's what is a variant of the argument we were discussing earlier which is that you one of the advantages of creating a free and open Society

you said you allow your Live and Let Live and then you don't you don't you you tend to you avoid creating kind of suppressed and open communication is so critical and it's also critical to have a reasonable polite conversation like people can oppose each other in for in their idea but you should be able to express how and why you oppose that idea without it being this sort of personal Vendetta people who get angry I mean I will engage in discourse the way you and I might want

to engage in that this course but I do agree with you completely that ideally we would have a kind of civilized conversation that allowed us to learn and to grow and I think ultimately that's a sweeping saying is is better for our society as well but I think we should acknowledge that people are going to be upset but we should also applied people for not being upset I think there's a there's a higher value to people being able to communicate reasonably I don't think that that's reinforced enough and I don't think that's appreciated enough need a screen for me on that I just think this is something that we can do and we can get better at it it's like martial arts discipline is not an easy thing Joe and it's tempting the go-to strategy that many people have

it's important to note that free speech is difficult and it's not an easy thing it's a natural inclination to want to silence your opponents but it's wrong it is harmful and it's actually harmful to you to do that so so so I think we need to have an educational system that cultivates cultivates that but cultivates the capacity to tolerate an idea that you don't like to think about that idea and then to respond to that idea so so so you know but it should be reinforced I think there's a way to do that and appreciate that as a way to call that out when you see it and just I think the world needs more of it and if we can figure out a way to do that we will find that we are differences are not nearly as egregious that they're not nearly as disgusting so I think they know that there's such

like you know when you go to a foreign country initially you're overwhelmed by the different food in the different smells of the different architecture and anyone who's traveled even to a different state has had this experience and yet actually once you get to know the people you see that they're very human they're like us they love their partners and they hang out with her friends and they work together to build a civilization in a society and they have schools and they teaching they learn and they do all of these basic things that are a fundamental part of our common humanity and this is what I talk about a blueprinted length you know like I know I just I think it's I think there's a kind of there's a kind of flawed Beauty to the world that captivates me and it's a little bit on the there's this aesthetic tradition in in in Japan and philosophy called wabi-sabi do you know why but why we saw he has no probably know about it but you mean another word so I brought her to die like the Western aesthetic for pottery is like these perfectly symmetrical beautiful

Blaisdell pots but there's a tradition in Japan of slightly imperfect pots you know like a cracked pot or a pot that's slightly misshapen is very difficult the Masters to make these pots and it's it's it's called wabi-sabi and it's about it's about how in Perfection the kind of beauty of imperfection a kind of flawed Beauty like a hot girl with a gap in her teeth yes I suppose

yes I suppose that would be a good example of that or you know L McPherson you'll famously had that little was it her I forgot which was the famous model that Sydney Crawford yeah I had that famous mole on her face so it's not hard to look around the world and see the violence in the murderer in the Warfare in the incompetent leadership and all of these awful things about our species

don't really a fucking unbelievable species actually who do amazing things we've comparison to other species and there's a kind of flawed Beauty to us and I think that it's it's wrong to be seduced to the dark side you know it's wrong to like only focus on those on the best of I also think it's a kind of moral and philosophical laziness right if we allow ourselves to just think that old. You know people are awful it kind of relieves us of any duty to be good and to work to make the world better it's a kind of you know surrender to the dark side I think it's wrong and in the book shows exactly how and why that's wrong and and how we how natural selection is shape of these wonderful qualities which are shared the world over so you go to the foreign country your initial e perplexed by their crazy practices and then slowly but surely you find our common humanity and I anyway I find out it's pleasing at least to me that perspective

yeah that's one of the cool things about travel right you you broaden your perspective in your understanding of what it means to be a person go to these different environments and tries out to the different foods are different are there different architecture and you got all this is also possible to people can live like this you go to Greece and you have resin flavored with Christina and you wondering why would these Crazy Greeks put pine resin in there ruining perfectly good white wine and then after a while you start saying you're the first time the first time I had Scotch whiskey I I I didn't know what I thought about it and now I love whiskey right it's an acquired taste so the first time you drink something like that you think you know yes they put resin they put pine resin in their white wine to chill it I should have brought you some emails that you some Kool-Aid

the Witch Is Dead from the beginning yeah I just write on a jump it's cold and so good and yes that's right things are just good right out of the bunch is good yes Kool-Aid is just good fried foods you know yeah sure yummy a lot of them yeah french fries yes I'm not sure about what I should mention but anyway I love Papa

and my sister will be listening probably and so she will laugh when she gets this part because whatever I just pull over and indulge myself and then I terrible terrible I know what if you really want indulge and you like chicken Roscoe's Roscoe's Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles with my family will try to get don't you make that face try to go there the other day with my family on Sunday there was an hour-and-a-half wait play Sunday

yeah man it's it's an LH addition to hell yeah and butter yeah you mean The Shootist find it on that yes it's perfectly it's this is a damn Delicious you sound like you're from another planet I make maple syrup I live in Vermont and I make maple syrup I tap my own trees and. Wow what a freak I have a I have a guy giving people hard time for waffles and chicken together show me the crown has it now channels a liar he does not get a promotion or something else is nonsense chicken waffles waffles and chicken tastes like cat litter compared to that also sweet Chick Fil-A could try to get this out of here so I can go fuck off Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles

Define damn good that's fine but that's a waste of maple syrup take it from the man who makes up to push-ups sweet chick is good I'm sore sweet it's not as place I get it I love it I guess I've been there it's great. Is there a reason why does an hour-and-a-half wait on a Sunday in town for just shoot a man's good all right I'll try that it's so good about insult someone those places been there forever we used to get it I found out about it from 9th 1994 when I was doing Newsradio 95 is I guess since you left the Massachusetts know I went to New York for a couple years that I moved out here and someone ordered Roscoe's chicken waffles what is this doesn't look as good as it looks when you there when you're there and you smell it

Stam could do a Roscoe's commercial hear you better have nothing to do. Going into a food coma son anyway how do we get to that opening your mind so you could read it. So you are counteracting my resin flavored white wine with maple syrup PS I love spicy food but I really really enjoyed Thailand I really enjoyed their style of cooking and they're kind of Fest in the field units on the on the hot peppers like you know like how hot you know I like habanero I like pretty spicy compared to the average person

from that I used to do Fear Factor with my friend Tommy hersko shots Tommy used to eat a chili with him I couldn't believe how hard this is crazy I think people just have a different inherent like it's almost like built into their bodies both I think it's both some people are better able set summer faster Runners than others but it's also training so you have to eat a lot you slowly work your way up to being able to tolerate in like those really super hot peppers I tied I find it a very unpleasant I have a friend just like you really into it like really seeks out the hotness I think it's a little bit like addiction like you tolerate like like as you get used to like the less hot stuff now you need more and more stuff in order to get the same exactly some people think it's some people say that it's not for me I cook meat with jalapenos I slice it up and I'll have like a piece of the meet with the jalapenos to get especially elk with Jalapenos in a sensational

good yes but my kids always make fun of me because I'm bald so my whole head is covered with sweat make them over white my head. How old are your kids the youngest ones at 8 and 10 and you have you have all all daughters twenty-two-year-old a 10 year old and a few plot dad Survival on the y-axis and fraction of female children on the x-axis survival is slightly longer for men who have higher fraction of daughters is boys drive you to your fucking great as you're so goddamn crazy there's lots of theories as to why it happens but I think in that isn't that one of them it's free and a bit more scientifically is a maniac my ten-year-old daughter and I just imagine if she was a bore I'd be terrified that she does just lighting things on fire blowing up buildings boys are a problem account

let me know I think I think

you know I think it's I think

well we could get onto the whole generation I'm not sure we want to but I think the boys are responsible a let's talk about chimpanzees it's easier okay male chimps do most of the violence about 95% of the violence murders are committed by male chimpanzees and most of the victims are males and you know I think it's there is no doubt that biology plays a very important role in mail proclivity to violence for example sure they are trouble the many ways in which a society are cultural traits that we invent their purpose is to shape and guide those Tendencies to violence to kind of mitigate them so we don't need we don't just use culture for that purpose there there's an argument in the book that we humans have have domesticated ourselves so

I can look at if you compare dogs to wolves and domesticated cats to wild cats from which they descended or a guinea pigs to the wild guinea pigs from which they descended or or horses to to the wild horses Twisted soon as you again and again you compare these couplets these pairs you find that the domesticated version of these animals that are much more Placid much more peaceful they also tend to have floppy ears they have piebald fur so guinea pigs and dogs and cows all have splotchy black white and brown fur why is that the animals from which they evolved didn't have those Tucanes blotchiness so and they become much more peaceful if you compare a human beings and but they had those animals were domesticated by humans like I deliberately allowed the reproduction of this member of the litter and not that member because this member was was flip nicer and so cross time we evolve a more domesticated version of The ancestral speech

so we get in a we get my miniature dachshund from a wolf like the one like the kind of things that were photographed out in your Studio Gear

crazy transition now if you look at humans and you compare us to to the oven on to our ancestors or to other primates for all the world that looks like we have been domesticated we are more peaceful and Placid we have sex outside non reproductive sex is another thing so these domesticated animals will have sex even when it's not time to reproduce we we are Tails we don't have tails anymore but our tails to get shortened there all these features that we have these these behavioral qualities and these physical properties that we have our are we get a feminization of our faces are jaws become smaller like if you look at you compare these two domesticated animals to their non-domesticated ancestors the domestic affairs are less violent so we lose a lot of the traits that physical and psychological traits associated with violin

but there was no one that domesticated are so the theory is the question is how how did that happen and one of the theories it's disgusting in in Blueprint and that's Advance by other scientists this is not my work is that we sell domesticated and that what happened over the Centre over the Millennia over millions of years is that weaker individuals in our groups when one individual became too autocratic into violent into powerful they banded together and kill that guy and so over time we were killing the more violent members of our species weeding out those people and therefore the gene pool change across time and we self domesticated we are more peaceful today then we would have been because we domesticated ourselves and this is one of the arguments it's also made to help explain the origins of goodness actually and the origins of cooperation because a few good yet to kill the bad person

running everything that evil correct recreational sex does occur in bonobos which is getting weird sexual sex you know so bonobos are felt to be a self domesticate a chimpanzee so the symbols of bonobos or chimps as as they say dogs are the wolves and but there was the dogs we domesticated the bonobos self domesticated is the theory how well the theory is that they did it like we were saying by weeding out killing them more aggressive members it was what we know must have happened is that the nicer guys must have been able to have more offspring so the gene pool change over time because of the differential success of the of the of the nicer guys now people have looked at this even

human societies Abe look for instance there's a study of talked about in the book of different Pathways to reproductive success amongst it's Imani which is a group in Amazonia

and other societies are similar so you can either be like big and strong or you can be charismatic and have useful knowledge and both ways you have more children so there are these competing ways in our species of enhancing a reproductive Fitness are you aware I'm supposed to work at with baboons that's a fascinating case right cuz they were studying baboons in Africa they would eat from Human garbage and a bunch of them got sick and died and it turns out that the most violent and ruthless of them got sick and died and it changed the entire culture of the baboon tripod I don't know that story that was a mistake at least are kind to each other and that's a good as it lasted for Generations this different kind of backing

try about this yeah I'm doing a shity job I'm sure of explaining it but I'm by love that I'm so fascinated by the case work remind me I'm a little familiar with that particular study I didn't know that it started with garbage however that members of the troupe and change the entire culture to the point where Generations later they were still using this more but peaceful ways of the culture it may have changed the culture but it appears we're arguing that you're changing tree produces small ones hot dogs my whole life and one of the things that you do not realize

yellow lab and I've had a bunch of different dogs have red mastiffs and pitbulls and German Shepherds bark all the time he's actually a Chihuahua and Australian Shepherd but he's like that big tiny little thing he's the best but my point being is that you can see if you get a dog from a breeder you really can see how they can cultivate certain types of behavior like I asked if you passed away this year he came from this guy who bred dogs for films and for police training and he was the most calm most chilled-out dog I've ever had in my life he was a giant dog is 140 lb but he you could have him taken anywhere and trust him with a baby I'm so cold like everything was like totally heat but this

purposely anytime a dog showed any aggression towards people or any aggression towards dogs wouldn't let him breathe so how can anyone hear the stories like that or no stories like that and not then also think the genes play a role in human behavior you have children realize it when you have children you see. Okay this is not I didn't do this this is this comes from me there certain traits that my children have I watch I go okay this is not this isn't something in there I don't see how crazy I am eternally how hard I work at things they how obsessive I get with things they was doing it is very weird it's very weird because you see you're okay well how much of this shit that's in me is what how much of me is me deciding to be this person and how much of me has no choice about half and half I would say overall on average across traits how much do you think

it's passed down through genetics in terms of inclinations like like the nature of their religious you are or how risk-averse you are like I can I can about half a variation and how you look at a group of people and some are more risk-averse than others about about half of that has to do with jeans and 1/2 has to do with how they were raised or what environments they grew up in so you know there's a kind of an eight and it's too many of our qualities and you can shake them you know for example you can't you couldn't make me a musician unfortunately I have almost no musical talent I can dance I think I mean I think others would even say that I can do that but that's not just like I think I can do but I have no music on Devon and I can appreciate music I like. But I can't produce it there's no way you could train me I don't think to be a musician but so some of it is

inborn and some of it is is is taught for all of these qualities yes it's a fascinating thing to watch it emerge from a child isn't it as a parent you see where we have adopted like I my mother had three biological children and I have two adopted siblings that come from actually a multiracial family have a black sister and a Chinese brother and my mother was an incredible human being she died when I was 25 she was 47 and we have been foster parents my wife and I and in so and might we have lots of adopted kids and extended family in addition to biological kids and so you can see you can see the play of jeans you can see the extent to which I kind of inherited traits of these people that we all have and you see the shape by how you're raised and you know so both and this is exactly why nature or nurture is both always

the case of so many things in this life we wanted everything to be buying area

it's it's nutts it's a total of your talkin earlier to total loss of nuance and an inability to see any gray and some people think and I think that's what you were trying some people think that we are hardwired to like dichotomies to see you know male and female end and up and down and good and evil and then left and right into simplify the World by fine. And that we'd like it that is soothing to us to think that the world can be divided into two categories us but it may not always like but many times can three Shades of Grey and it's harder that's harder to live in the gray yes I completely agree and that's why I've always been a poet I mean I get it I think it's incredibly foolish to deny that but people find comfort in denying if I comforted me tribal Define confer.

yes it's it's a simplified view of the world and it's it's foolish and dangerous after you know now sometimes your war with an enemy you know it's me or him and we're also them there are circumstances in which it's a different survival survival which says we are good they are evil it's like we've been saying a different kind of ways and different parts of our conversation is I think foolish and wrong and ultimately self-injurious actually so we used to have a martial arts I spent years training in Shotokan karate very traditional Japanese style which I loved

I'm sure you've had the same thing you actually are grateful for your report to your opponent to your opponent Rochester opponent training partners

so this is you know I think that the kind of that aspect of that kind of training is is a life lesson as well write the capacity to see that in the same happens with ideas how to my ideas get better how do I discover my laboratory new knowledge I discovered against opposition right someone says you're wrong about that it's not true and I'm like oh yeah let me prove it to you here's what I'm going to go back and do more experiments and come back to you with more arguments and more data and show you that actually I'm right about this or not you go back to me like they were right we were wrong so that's the way you uncover truth right it's the way you get to bore Perfection is the kind of yin and yang actually so so so yes I think that

I think that this this this this this simplification of the world to think of you know I'm good and you're evil is really miss understand that in many not all but many circumstances of misunderstands what's happening in also it brings back this problem that human beings have always had with ego and this need to be right and that is identifying yourself and each individual discussion and debate and battle and needing to Triumph and even though you desire to be correct you have to understand when you are not and you have to appreciate someone who shows you that you are incorrect because they are allowing you to grow you're not finished product there's no way you can be I talk to people I agree with I don't learn as much to get together with that private roads dude I just came from his house and he also

God damn that's cliche but it's hilarious is so I'm pro-gun mercenary

Yahoo saw that coming. Really funny Sabrina thought I said before we talk about my friend you learn from them and I lost it rain there but no worries so yeah I mean that's that's another issue that I faced with this podcast people get upset at me for having people on that have opinions that they disagree with that's a nuts the other thing that you you're you're doing a disservice by providing a platform that that that sprays it keep saying platform send them a platform you have power which you should use wisely I have power I should have some power in some parts of our lives and I think it is okay to say you have some power you do you know you have lots of millions of listeners people respect you lots of people about presidents

but the idea that by talking to someone you are somehow abusing their power that's that's crazy quite the opposite I think that you are shining bright light of day on to discuss that but it's also quite schizophrenic does that mean if you ever seen when a schizophrenic person draws these connections where they have one person and that person met this other person that person used to work with this other person and that person met Hitler so you know Hitler yes it's it's a weird sort of thing where you're not allowed to even communicate or be in contact with someone who is in this supposed incident it's it's very childlike this perspective and it's very binary and it's it's a really common thing today that you you're seeing people trying to reinforce the side

and push it on other folks I think that

like we were talking about I think that exposing ourselves to breath of ideas to people we disagree with I you know I think and creating an environment in which people can express themselves you know you're not going to get any arguments from you against on that point and I just think it's better for everybody like we were talking about before when you meet someone who can give you a lesson and Inn Express something in a way that makes you reconsider your own ideas you hold sacred I mean I'll give an example when I

when I am at my wife 30 years ago I I wasn't pro-death penalty but I was I would say I was 7 neutral to the death penalty I would be like you know Ted Bundy to State and put him to death and I had all the kind of conventional reasons or I didn't really care he's a vile person he killed all these people tortured them it's the family's we'll get any relief it whatever that's fine I had some concerns cuz I was a statistician about conviction of the innocent and I support the Innocence Project and I am very concerned with police brutality I have for years been Abbott police brutality is vile and and abhorrent and must be firmly resisted I think that I think the the the prosecutorial misconduct the way people are prosecutors lie and put people in prison you know there been many many cases of people on death row who are innocent. Should offend our conscience so even back then I had some concerns about the death penalty because

because I recognize that you know we can't be perfect we're going to convict some innocent people and also let some guilty people go free that's not as bad as killing good putting to death the innocent but they're both so I had that concern about the death penalty but otherwise I was like that's okay my opinions have totally change I'm completely opposed to the death penalty for many reasons not just the statistical reason but also I think it's immoral I don't think the state should put it I think we can rip deprive you of Liberty I think we can make sure you're not a threat to society we can block you out for the rest of your life but I think we the state should not be taking people's lives in that way really strange about locking someone up it's very strange people incarcerated I think it's the same as stalinist Russia and we have very long prison sentences which are nuts you don't need them for deterrence actually for nonviolent drug offense

not sure if we should have more we should have a higher certainty of punishment higher fraction people have actually commit a crime should be fine but I think we should we could cut in half or less that the duration is I think you'll be able to deter criminals from doing things with a 3-month sense if they are very confident that they will be convicted if they're caught where's now we have a system where most are not convicted like this jussie Smollett thing which is just ridiculous in the news

I bet they're giving a huge long sentences it's like they're paying $0.02 for every one that didn't yes it does make any sense and it's expensive it ties up or prison system does the situation a few years ago when there's a very famous director and writer by the name of David Simon who I consider a friend he did the wire he was a showrunner for a bunch of other very famous wonderful

TV programs that he started his career actually as a reporter in in Baltimore he was a beat reporter and then went on to become a writer to the wire and so forth and he told the story tale to students about how he had just come back from Summit President Obama was still president where he was trying to help the students to see that you can find common ground with your political opponents and that you need to listen to them and talk to them in order to to find that ground and so he told the following story he said I just came back from Camp David where there was a meeting about how to reduce incarceration in our society and he said the Koch brothers were there and the students all his tests and Newt Gingrich was there in the students all his tests and a bunch of liberal people were there the students were really happy about that and then they said was why did you go how could you associate yourself with those evil people and he said look he said the conservatives want to reduce incarceration because it's 6

pensive the Liberals want to reduce incarceration because it's unjust and the Libertarians want to reduce incarceration because the state shouldn't be depriving people of Liberty and I can find common ground with these people that reduce incarceration why would I not talk to them and the students didn't seem to understand that they were like they couldn't get it that's why they shouldn't be able to vote

I think I should be 25 to talk in your political enemies was it or something else yes we're talking about people telling you that you shouldn't associate with people that have varying opinions is yes and so we have a horrible problem in our society with with incarceration a larger fraction of our populace is incarcerated we deprived after you paid your debt to society we often have these these we deprive you of your right to vote which I think is wrong you paid your debt to society should be able to we want you to feel part of society you want to welcome you back if we have that vision of Justice well how about the registered sex offender that's a serious problem especially for crimes these crazy cases with

send my conscience I know a guy who got charged as a registered sex offender cuz he urinated outside urinating outside abuse or you know you have these Romeo and Juliet laws which are not in every state now thank God you know you have a 16 year old boy in a 14 year old girl there have to be exceptions for that kind of sexual practice they're exchanging sexually explicit images they should not be considered sex offenders for the rest of their lives so I'm

so yes so all of those things so the problem is not likely be a huge fraction of people in prison with extremely long prison sentences compared to any many European country for the same crime and it's costly it's unjust it's ineffective I think we should change the policies on this and maybe we will there's also the idea of reforming them it's it's they're not using all the tools within their disposal they're not really getting good at tempted it and I just don't think it does anything other than make their life hell for a short. Of time which were hoping we hope deters them from doing future cry Justice there's deterrence their safety right like so violent criminals that we put in jail we need to do that I mean not interested in being killed by somebody tried to kill someone else should have been in jail for a while 20 years so I'm not a time for murder

well European European standards are about 20 years actually and that they're different things like if you want to deprive them if your if your vision is there being punished for the killing of life therefore they surrendered their life is certify for now I kind of just as you would think they would be the rest of their lives and we can debate whether or not if you if you want to provide Public Safety recent people that age out of there a lot of men typically the older wiser they're not interested in criminal in that kind of criminal Behavior many of them are not so that does that suggest you don't need life sentences for murder and I think it also depends and we have four gradation to murder you know we have like the impulsive stopped at the intent matters a plan for this matters that depravity matters all of these things are are factors and I don't think we should have a one-size-fits-all incarceration for murder yes

what do you think I think it depends entirely on the circumstance of two men are engaged in some sort of a dispute and one whines up killing the other one that's a big difference between that someone breaking into your house and killing your daughter yes a correct and I also think you've been in that like I I really am opposed to these a stand-your-ground laws I think those are if you have the opportunity

to avoid conflict and to avoid you or not I would prefer is a state to require that you walk away even if it makes you feel embarrassed then give you the right to kill someone for offending you in those those videos of the of the guys and that was shot the guy on his knees and up in the parking lot in the I forgot what state it was like not long ago or two ago they got into an altercation in the parking lot I got five words with someone in the park yes there's no threat to him and he was he was not prosecuted on the stand-your-ground argument which is not we are something of Jesus so it was it was crazy didn't get prosecuted I don't think so we can look up the fact that were several cases that were several cases like this

my Sensei Kazumi Tabata this was years ago was 30 years ago now and he told us the following story he said there was a sensei in this Village in Japan and the students were coming to the dojo and it was Thursday the best student that you know and then all the other students and they were walking through the village and they passed the approach to horse that was on the street from the rear and it startled the horse and as the horse reared up and kick its leg the the best student instantly did it a kind of ratings did the chicken the end the end the yob the horse's leg went right in front of him and all the other students were amazed at his ability and they will get to the dojo and they tell the Sensei this is my Sensei telling me this story telling all of us the story and a those students get to this the Dodge only tell that the sentence story

and the sense he's very angry and they don't understand why why is he so angry he said if he were a really good student of mine he would have walked on the other side of the street

he would have avoided the horse all together

so the real wisdom is to avoid avoidance of conflict in the first place there's no reason to seek out conflict and so on the stand-your-ground laws you know if the choice is either you just avoid the conflict you know someone someone swore at you or called you an asshole or was unreasonable Chark that doesn't give you the right to kill them so anyway I don't have to go to this is well death penalty how much of a deterrent it is locking people up I just I'm not sure I'm not really sure if that actually stops people from doing things I think it stopped some people I think there been academic research on this I just don't think there's any real Rehabilitation other than personal choice mean I think that the real Rehabilitation comes from someone making a personal choice to never be that person that way

you're being locked up with a bunch of Pardon criminals and you your debts you're you're you're not suggesting no Mom suggested struggling with this is the concept of nuances yes this is applied here better than anywhere else I think I got the impression looking at your face when I told my Sensei Japanese karate story that you didn't agree necessarily know that's a very wise way of looking at ya don't don't be near a fucking horse and wants to kiss you very smart to get out of there I'm a big believer in avoiding conflict I'm the first guy is what we should be out of here. It's actually important and he learn from it is very rarely do you learn too much I love you will you learn don't do that again that's relearn for physical complex don't do that again

but you know what what happens in nature with animals happens with people if you let them get to that level and it's scratched down to the the you know remove that thin film of society and let spy with rocks to Foster those I have a

there's a sense in which and I talked about this in the book there's a sense in which as we create those environments we actually change ourselves as a species there's a set of ideas at school known as Gene culture coevolution and the idea is that we create certain kinds of cultural environments

those kind of cultural environments Advantage certain ones of us making those of us that are born with certain abilities better off which then leads to those environments being created even more let me give you some example of the most famous example of this is something on his lactase persistence so many people not about half the world can adults can drink milk the other half cannot they get lactose intolerant

why can you drink milk as an adult about that like why why are you capable of drinking milk as an adult in our ancestral State actually up till about ten thousand years ago only babies could you to just milk is only babies have milk babies would suckle at their mother's breast and have milk and then and then it would never drink milk again there'll be no milk to drink there was there for no reason for any adult to be able to just lactose which is the principle sugar in milk because it was no lactose in your diet if you didn't encounter milk so human beings were able to digest lactose when they were babies they lost that capacity all human beings when they got to about two or three or four or five when they no longer when they were infants

well about between 3 and 9000 years ago in multiple places in Africa and in Europe human being suddenly domesticate animals we domesticate milk-producing animals like cattle and sheep and goats and camels and now all of a sudden there's a supply of milk around us because of our cultural Innovation because of the thing we invented we created the domestic breeds now we have milk now there for those Among Us who are mutants were born with the ability to have our lactase the enzyme that digests lactose persist into adulthood this is known as lactase persistence those of us who had that would have a survival Advantage because we could have another source of calories at the rest of the people in our group couldn't consume they couldn't drink milk like we could and we had a source of unspoiled water we could drink milk everyone else at the drink this filthy water that they didn't have access to so those Among Us who have these qualities could reproduce better survive headed and survival advantage

this is happened several times as when well documented the genetics of this is all been worked out several times because we have evolved to be a slightly different genetically and it doesn't stop with cows I think that when we invent cities about over 5,000 years ago so we did we leave at agriculture about 10,000 years ago debated exactly when we invade cities between five and ten thousand years ago we start having fix settlement earlier you and I were talking about population density just not our ancestral State we always lived as a group that socially I think that is we invent cities people with different kinds of brains are better able to survive in cities

so now that we've invented cities word bandaging people with certain kinds of brains and therefore I think in a thousand or 2,000 or 5,000 years just like the milk example will be different people as a result of something we humans manufactured that we made and I could keep giving you examples of this in the book I have an example other example about their they're called the sea Nomads these are people who don't live on land they live on houseboats that sale around the Pacific for thousands of years they had this lifestyle and they died for their food dive so they forage on the seabed they are the world's best free divers they spend hours per day underwater they can hold their breath longer than anyone else and they they do do it nothing except with weights and wouldn't goggles they die down into the seabed and Fortune they hunt they hunt underwater with Spears okay they hunt underwater with Spears mind-boggling but they

I have evolved have different spleens and different oxygen metabolism than you and I sold those among them that could survive the Dives feather families made more babies and now we think this happened to thousand years ago there different the ones that couldn't died so their invention of a seafaring way of life their invention of a way of living and see the boats technology the spearfishing technology Technologies creates an environment cultural environment around them which modifies natural selection and change the kind of genes of those people have these are disgusting blueprint and their many examples of I want to see an image of these goggles goggle you may come up with it and let me give you what are they using for Allen's there's no lens

I didn't look at the technology at that level but live in Pismo doesn't protect your eyes I think it's I think it's through slits

got some something on I can see it well no because they didn't have glass or maybe they have to let me see

that looks like that that's it that's an actual a modern look at so look at that can you find Google yes but but they used to have these wooden goggles anyway that you adopted or adapted brother to this new lifestyle sort of like to have developed this ability to not get frostbite in to not get numb fingers in cold weather I did not know that example that died from Alaska that they they did genetic testing on these people and they did

credibly flexible right that's what we have flexibility so so think about think about like when we settle the Tibetan Plateau would you and being settled the Tibetan Plateau they were different challenges there are is cold up there and there's not a lot of oxygen up there now we could genetic evolution is not fast enough we can become furry you know like one way to cope with the cold is to become furry again we didn't do that why because we have clothing with cultural means of coping with this situation so for the cold to cope with the cold we use culture

there was no cultural means to cope with the low oxygen up there they didn't have bottled oxygen 5000 years ago there was no way to produce oxygen they didn't have a chemistry to produce auction oxygen to cope with the low auction turn pressure up there locks intention up there they've all genetically so that the people who live in that in the Himalayas they actually have different kinds of hemoglobin compared to better able to extract oxygen from the environment so they're two different challenges that are cope with a different ways one is cope with culture mean by cultural revolution when is cope with genetically which is much slower with genetic Evolution and it's the cultural evolution is the cultural traits that natural natural selection equips us with a capacity to accumulate knowledge in to teach each other stuff

and getting that rare ability as we discussed earlier we're able to spread out across the planet and living all these to similar environments we use our cultural ability to dominate the planet basically the one you were when you were creating this

will you actually thinking of it as a blueprint that someone would follow

yes or no I wasn't thinking of it that way but have you finished the book I do think that there are like I don't in the book I talked a little bit in the book about implications for these ideas for for artificial intelligence like this we create robots even if between sex robots are autonomous vehicles or forms of bots online how should those Bots be so it's not to injure our society so there are some policy implications I discuss in the book but I I wasn't thinking of this is so as a as a as a prescription like this is the way to live a good life but partly because as high as I argue in the book you know we don't need to affirmatively seek a good life we have been endowed by natural selection with the capacity to make a good life full of these qualities and so this blueprint is I want to use the word God give it doesn't come from God but it's somewhere else that we that we do this

so how much time are you put into artificial intelligence sex robots like what rules should they give for sex robots and how much could damage interpersonal relations yes that's a great question that's exactly the right question in my view so are concerned with sex robots from a liberty point of view should not in the slightest be whether you enjoy sex robot business would be hard-pressed to object the problem is with talking to Alexa and is part of the program Alexa because they want to make a Lexus of the obedient servant of your child it doesn't require a child to say please Alexa would you you know play the music for me

is your child can be as rude as she wants to Alexa and Alexa will do what you want when you should be concerned about however is not your child interaction with Alexa would you should be concerned about is what your child is learning from interacting with Alexa. Then she takes the playground so now she's rude to other children

so Alexa is corroding our social fabric Alexa in this example is making children rude to each other so our concern is not so much do we make do we make you like asimov's Laws of Robotics to eat it's not that we want to program the robot so that they're doing harm you it's true the first law we don't want the robot to do an act of commission or Omission harmer allow humans come to be harmed it's that we're concerned about how the robot in interacting with you might cause you to harm others

the robot the robotic intelligence creates these externality these Cascade effects so the Alexa example we might want to regulate the programming of devices that speak to children

not because we want to deprive your daughter of the right to speak how she wants but because we recognize that that robot is going to cause your daughter to be rude to other people is it really do you really think she likes the temp what's the weather that would make your drawings surely I think it will contribute make it so novel two kids that they know it's not a person I don't think it really right but we're using so some people believe that actually the emergence of sex robots will surely appear in the next 10 or 20 years will will be a fantastic bun they think that

you'll be able be able to experiment are you be able to experiment with same-sex relationships for example a group sex you might learn to be a better lover so you can practice the robots and therefore you would be more experience when you were having sex with a real human so they say you can't get venereal diseases from a sex robots feelings so people think that the argument based on ethical grounds is that this would be terrific. This will be a benefit other people have the opposite opinion other people think that actually having sex with a robot first of all is symbolically and conceptually vile they think that you know what it did take sex and converts it into a kind of a machine literally a bit machine like that you don't function and they furthermore think that it would result in you have in one having a kind of anonymous or impersonal interactions with humans sucks believe that you'll be untrained you know to let say want an obedient you know partner for example

I don't know which way it's going out in the way I don't have to get make a stand on it because what I'm interested in recognizing is that when we talked about allowing people to have sex with sex robots not allowing it's going to happen the focus of our concern should be not what is your experience in your bedroom when you have sex with a sex robot are concerned as a state like my interest I've no steak or control over what you're doing over there but my interest isn't in once you have had that experience how does that change how you interact with other people and their I think just like anything else like you can you can make all the garbage you want in your house

but if you start polluting the environment you're harming me so now I have a reason for intervening in your activities on your land you can't pollute your own land if that pollution runs off onto my land and so the similar argument can be made or look at a ton of his Vehicles here's an example

right now we have all roads almost all roads have just human drivers and in 20 or 30 years almost all rows will probably have only non-human drivers machines will drive in those autonomous vehicles probably can be yoked together they can communicate with each other so that you'll have like like trains of cars moving in synchrony like each of them will be communicating with the other nearby cars and you'll have a laminar flow we're all these vehicles are smoothly moving and joining the highway leaving the highway and communicating on a city-wide scale slowing traffic down miles away because they anticipate with ar that will be a jam here if they don't end and I think that'll be great unless you looking forward to a time I mean I still like to take my car to a Speedway but you know you know

but in between we're going to have a world of what I call hybrid systems of human driven cars and autonomous vehicles coexisting in a on a plane

I need a plane and we need to be worried about that because these are autonomous vehicles when we interact with them are going to change how we interact with each other for example do we program The Economist vehicle to drive at a constant steady speed if you're the designer of the car you might say I don't want this car to crash I want the car to drive in a very predictable and what's best for the occupants of the car that's what that allow me to sell more vehicles

but it may be the case that actually when people are in contact with such a vehicle they get lulled into a false sense of security vehicle never does anything new drive you home and then they Veer off and they go to a part of the highway where they're just human drivers and now having been lulled into a false sense of security because more collisions is not paying attention

so that autonomous vehicle has changed how I drive in a way that harms other people so maybe the programming of the vehicle should be to occasionally do erratic things to like suddenly slow down or speed up a little bit obliged you need to stay vigilant and pay attention is I'm interacting with that car so that then when I go to another part of the highway when I interact with humans once again they said here is that it's not just about the one-on-one interaction between the robotic artificial intelligence and the human being it's about how the robots affect us in my lab we do many experiments in Social systems were to take a group of people that we drop online we drop a bot or in the laboratory with a physical robot and we watch how the presence of the robot doesn't just modify how the human interacts with the robot but how do humans interact with each other so we put a robot right there looking at us with its third eye would we you know what to change how you and I talk to each other because

different types of experiments were doing clearly in the sex robot realm that's going to be a problem we see the difference between humans that have Point addictions addictions when people do they developed is very impersonal way of communicating with people and they they think about sex and the objectification of the opposite sex in a very different reason a different way it is flavors the way you come to see if if your expectations are are Guided by that is going to be some sort of artificial life-form that you created sin distinguishable have you can have it indistinguishable sex partner that it is you know some incredibly beautiful woman that is a robot and then

format for man houses for robots are going to be as into it as men because I think women desire more emotional intimacy and I think I'm a nut on a scale than men do I think I think the jury still out on know what the relative balance what you meant when we might be surprised that that will be replaced especially given a societal expectations and women can Farm those in and I'll give them a chance to not to mention Beach or better off in the gender debate with the emergence of sex robots station genetically where they're doing genetic expert on humans and with the Advent of crispr emerging Technologies

that that's hundreds of years away but yes I think so I wonder I mean I don't know if it is I think if they start cracking the mountain China and they start giving birth to 8 ft tall Superman yes 12 inch dicks yes can I have a real issue yes we will hold it in the future they're going to have that they were going to have an early humans yes I think so I think we're going to start by using these Technologies to cure a monotonic diseases so you know like thalassemia for example so what diseases are immune deficiencies single Gene is defective and once we start with eventually I think there will be people who are other people their offspring for example and modified them in the ways that you suggest

far smarter is not one of these side effects of the show and with the genetic manipulation of these Chinese babies to eliminate HIV that they made him smarter and smarter what's clear from the most recent findings I've seen from that case is that unsurprisingly is anyone could predict the technology one particular region of the genome so they were other changes in the genome and these children that occurred elsewhere rather than the target is increased immunity to HIV don't know what those are but we could make a better in some ways we have no way of knowing it would be premature find that it would be sure to come to the hospital

can I get like 40% more clicks blueprint is how these Technologies when we invented cities that was a technology that changed how we interact with each other so you and being set up for a very long time I've been inventing when we invented weapons that was a technology that changed back with each other so we have previously done this kind of thing in this because I love to study history and I love to study like how crazy the world was 4000 5000 years ago a thousand years ago

understanding of the consequences of our actions are so different than anybody has ever had before we have just a Joe up a broader first of all we have examples from all over the world now that we can study very closely which I don't think really was available that many people up until fairly recently our capacity to discern them and just our in-depth understanding of these cultures all over the world like this is like what do you've been telling him today about these the divers and others we just have so much more data yes and so much more of an understanding than ever before yes I love the idea that we are I mean I believe that this is probably the best time ever to be alive and I think that's probably why I think that's true I think there's certainly a lot of terrible things that are wrong in the world today also true but I think that there's less of that and more good agreement

no I think that's right and but one of the argument that I make is this is a kind of Steven Pinker argument that your outlining which is you know with the emergence of people are living longer than they ever have a planet in Starvation we have less violence I mean every indicator of human well-being is up and it's partly due or largely in the recent last thousand years to the to the emergence of the Enlightenment and the Phyllis the philosophy and the science that was guided that emerged about 300 years ago and 200 some-odd years ago and and culminating in the present and continuing so I think I think this is not just a kind of so-called whiggish view of history is not at the progressive sort of fantasy I think it's the case that these philosophical and scientific moves that our species made in the last few hundred years has improved our well-being however as we've been discussing today it's not just historical forces that are tending towards making us better off

a deeper and more ancient and more powerful force is also at work which is natural selection its evolutionary and not just historical forces that are relevant to our well-being and we don't just need to look to philosophers to find a path to a good life natural selection has equipped us with these capacities for love and friendship so so yes I told her we would you were better off today than we've ever been on average across the world however it's not just that that's contributing to our well-being this natural selection is literally why we are in this state now and why we were hoping this trend will continue in this better place 50 years from now 100 years from now over those time scale so those are historical forces but the point is we are set up for success

allows you to manipulate tools so natural selection is giving you an opposable thumb culture let you use a computer do you worry about the circumventing of this natural process by artificial intelligence is artificial intelligence going to introduce some new incredibly powerful factor into this whole chain of events that by having sex robots and sex or are or robot workers automated as I'm concerned that these again these concerns were not the first generation to face these concerns that was similar concerns with the Industrial Revolution that workers were being put out of work when machines were invented nevertheless work persisted people still have jobs to do it was a disruption there's no doubt about it I think Google and the information revolution and these types of robotic automation are destructive they're going to affect how we allocate

labor and capital and data in our society than I thought you were losing too just to check if you were to the debate which I don't know the answer to on whether a I will use everything to face like a Terminator type existence where you know the machines rise up and kill us all or not and you look very smart people on both sides of that debate and I read them all and like I would like he's right and then they'll be the guy that has the option for our lifetime

I don't know the answer to that I think there's an issue also with the the concept of artificial like artificial life artificial intelligence it's I think it's going to be a life is just going to be a life that we've created and I don't think it's artificial I just think it's a different kind of life I think that we're thinking of biologically-based Life of sex reproduction in terms of the way we've always known it as being the only way that life exists but if we can create something in that something besides to do things it starts to recreate a silicon-based life-form like why not why why does Leah have to be something that only exists through the that you know multiplication of cells yes that's very charitable of you and it's a people make that plain some people think that you know those machines in the distant future will look back at us as like one stage of evolution at

we said that we are some sort of an electronic caterpillar that he has to give birth to a butterfly cocoon we don't even know what that's a great metaphor you have a hard time accepting that cuz you're a person yes it's against my interests are so flawed all these things we've outlined all the problems with those are go away with artificial intelligence philosophical question I think it's inevitable and I think if the single-celled organisms are sitting around wondering what the future would going to be like where are we going to be replaced will they make antibiotics are so clogged we gonna break the ocean we pull the fish out of it you fuck up the air back commit genocide is all these things that are real or artificial life won't have those problems because it won't be emotionally based won't be biologically based it'll just exist

that's a really good story we're so flawed why not you said something so much better beautiful too but I think vultures probably think they're beautiful to that's why they breed with each other while they are beautiful but the wonderful about us and I think that would that wonderful creative quality is the reason why we created artificial life in the first place it's like this do you know if you look at a lot of things

the art whether it's the Egyptian you know that the that the pyramids are other kinds of artistic expression we seem to have had a desire to transcend death you know to make things that sure that looks like ice but weren't alive friends forever so I mean I think in that regard I think you're quite right that it's not going to stop at Tennessee's I can stop now you're you're very as I said charitable positive take on the claim and your analogy to single-celled organisms which were just you know but a fleeting not a fleeting they're still there but a phase in our Evolution you know is something I'm going to have to be thinking about it because it's disturbing honestly what's an objective perspective if I took myself out of the human race which I really can't but if I tried to fake it I would say oh I see what's going on here Vine iPhones and new MacBooks because they they know that this is what's going to help the production of newer more Superior technology ice

more we consume it's also based I think in a lot of ways our insane desire for materialism is fueling this and it could be an inherent property of the human species that it is designed to create this artificial life and that literally is what it's here for and much like an ant is creating an ant hill and doesn't have some sort of a future plans Ciara's kids in 401k plan that we are doing is like this inherent property of Being Human Being our curiosity are Wanderlust our desire all these things are built in because if you follow them far enough down the line 100 years 200 years and inevitably leads to artificial life yes I think I think that's possible and of course we're not going to be lights to test that idea there so I will

Maywood crisper and all this crazy shit that's coming down I'll come on I said no biological systems are very hard to engineer of course the people who do that kind of work I think a lot of them but I think it's entirely possible that there's a twenty-year-old listening to this podcast will be a lot more than that I think it's entirely possible that 30 year olds today could be a hundred fifty but I think there's a you give another 10 years of research you give maybe 10 years more I think it's entirely by myself I heard about that about 10 or 20 years ago they bet that there was a person born that then that year who would live to be a hundred fifty and on one side you had one guy who said no they say they'd be a bet a billion dollars and they

doubt it was open up a bank account compound interest to get a obliged obliged back yes and a n a n a designated the National Academy of Sciences or some entity like that that would

that would have judicate the back 250 years and and they they specify the kinds of documentation that might be needed and they allowed for in the future they may be other ways of ascertaining how old some it is and those can be used and that's the bet so I thought you might be right about that like you know there are humans that live naturally 220 we have that capacity actually there's an interesting idea why do we dye it all looks like she never given us an immortal species

yeah yeah I have and I've never reached a conclusion but I always figured you live long enough will especially up until recent history only long enough to recognize I was all crazy hustle natural selection not have created a creature that Live Forever by the two different kinds of things that can kill you in transit causes an extrinsic causes the things inside your body that result in you dying defects diseases and so forth or outside your body like accident lightning strikes trees fall and you just died and so forth

because it's impossible to eliminate all extrinsic causes because some people are going to die from accidents it would be if inefficient from the point of view of evolution to evolve to be in more because we would have all this capacity to be immortal we would have these bodies capable of immortality which lets it would be a belushin early demanding like to evolve anything like and I or a brain or strong any any quality lactase rightly like we talked about earlier you you don't have lactase persistence into adulthood because it's not needed solution doesn't waste anything would be no reason for that there was there was there would be no reason immortality

because inevitably some people would be killed eventually by accident anyway so unless you can create a world in which there are no accidents or no extrinsic causes of death it would be inefficient from an evolutionary point of view to evolve in mortality So Def the reason we dying naturally

some people think is that the reason we die naturally is that there are unnatural causes of death in the world

like accidents if we could have limited the unnatural causes so that nowhere no no time ever we ever killed by trees falling or lightning strikes or things like that then actually over time we would have to live indefinitely this is the theory

crazy idea is fasting but do you think that nature had that sort of sort of foresight but that's how natural selection Works think about the expense to make you capable of immortality and then 2 days when I get hit by a bus

I've wasted all that effort but if you want done to one person you wasted that effort if you did get it to other people you have the potential to create an incredibly wise person with a thousand years of life and experience and education and learning stop. There's a world in which you're never struck by lightning never hit by a bus number for tree branch then then the theory is that we would have evolved to be immortal so it's almost like the life that you live you're inevitably going to get killed by extrinsic causes yes if you extend that life to A Thousand Years then it's absolutely going to happen that's just living in a bubble just terrified of the world throwing rocks landing on your head and this model and apply to an individual it's about our species

I think you should get live your life afraid I think that's a difficult think that's a sad life to live life afraid it takes practice to be on afraid of you be more afraid if you could live a thousand years without an accident you know cuz I like if you're one of those crazy rock climber do is like Alex Honnold and you either crazy he's crazy I love them them tell if you talk if you met him a couple times he's awesome. How do the surprise should not be afraid cuz I read that he talks about his his fear centers are different than the rest of us I don't know about that. He said basically that the experience he just stays mellow and calm and then if things go wrong it's really bad like you like you know you don't want to be free

underwater in the cave the end end in despair watering out when it was running out of oxygen yeah horrible crazy scary story you have to those guys are all so different either they're born that way or they could be that way you have to keep calm because when you and I lose our cool and start hyperventilating or oxygen consumption skyrockets and that's the opposite of what you need to do in that situation he talked about you know like trying to stay calm and the battling the demons yet not going to die like this yes yeah yeah the movie what it what did it say it say it the kids amygdala isn't fire and yes okay but isn't that possible to die

it's just through development of constant abstain threatening situations what special forces guys I think that's right and that the guy's a special force guys it's like the capacity to shoot back when you're being shot at keeping your call yes moving positions and abilities not panicking but it is also the case that some people for example the most famous study in this regard was a study of London taxi drivers London taxi drivers can go from any point the city to any other point city is called the knowledge they have a mental map of the whole city and it's freakish it takes years to be able to know how to navigate the city with thousands of May 10th of thousands of street names they can do it by like dead reckoning they scan this is a paper about 10 years ago they brain scan these guys and they had I forgot which region of the brain but they had through learning it is felt

modify that region of the brain is like you say that he'd learned to be this way there's a big deal isn't firing because he trained himself but I Honnold Honnold Honnold is this way because he learns her but it's more likely I think that he's like Usain Bolt that was born with the credibly by preponderance of fast-twitch fibers in his legs so you can run like the wind any trains as well you have both right good at least require both ability plus training and I think Donald is probably like that he's probably born with an amygdala doesn't fire so much and he's an amazing. You know climber's crew is back on the right like the end now so the nature-versus-nurture would apply to chess players as well I would like to see their brain scan like yes I would love to sit and stand

quickly looks at people that go under high stress and look for those kinds of things been doing that since 2005 I guess and she goes Its wits pages long this whole thing about his brain but it is unusual but it also the amount of time think about people that are in high-stress high-stress is one thing this kid is in a life-threatening absolute fatality City everyday all day I know I mean he lives in a van and just climbs yes it is it is amazing. It's amazing so I mean I don't know I've never met him I admire him very much and I love this like you said the beginning it's very important to have skills of any kind of his skills are amazing. Admire music musical skills in carpentry skills in martial arts skills and statistical skills and medical skills you know I think it's in this world you as well

thought yourself through acquiring the skills and knowledge and information and disabilities about how to acquire skills and I think it's also kind of you also find often times that the the practice of acquiring a skill teaches you other things that can then be used in other areas yes so even if you like you know like like you make the effort to learn the violin or to learn Chinese for example or whatever you know some effort you that sell discipline than can be translated that's the Miyamoto Musashi quote the book from the book of five rings once you know the way broadly you see it in all things yes that's very good you know I remember that my mind is flashing back to return the mortality that scene at the Ed Helms Helms Deep when the Lord of the Rings win

he saw they're protecting their yard at the look at the castle and the elves, and help the humans you know the movie probably not because they have been killed by extrinsic forces they would have lips looked so so so you know the way broadly you'll see it in all that yes that's right yeah it was just about acquiring excellence in something else you understand what it takes to acquire excellence in something and then you can apply that to other things as well it's the same process just a different path yes that's right listen Nicholas thank you so much for being here thank you so much I can't wait to read this book I'm going on vacation somewhere read this with me. Thank you so much I appreciate it

thank you everyone for tune in to the show and thank you to caavo thank you to caavo control center you can shop now and get 40% off control center with the promo code Rogan that's 5995 40% off the regular price of 9995 control center is available at Cobo. Com that CAA veoh.com and Best Buy service plan required first 45 days is free see website for details control center by Cavo one remote that does it all we're also brought you buy four sigmatic and four sigmatic delicious coffee mushroom coffee motherfuckers get on it in again not just the coffee I love this lion's mane mushroom Elixir I drink it all the time during podcast they've got a special offer for listeners this podcast you can receive

percent off your four sigmatic offer go to four sigmatic. Com Rogan or use the discount code Rogan at checkout that's f o u r s i g m a t i c. Com Rogan or use the discount code Rogan at checkout for 20% off at four sigmatic. Calm and last but not least we are brought to you by Bleacher Report live presenting one Championship won Championship has made its way to the US ladies and gentlemen I'm pretty fucking pumped big fan of this company and a big fan of the way they put on their promotions and some really high-level Fighters including Demetrious Mighty Mouse Johnson and Eddie Alvarez 2 of the newest additions Garry tonon one of the best Grapplers on the planet is also fighting this event tune in and see how they compete in their inaugural inaugural that's a weird word

one bout make sure you stream a new era Sunday March 31st on Bleacher Report live stream all of One Championship bouts live on Bleacher Report live thank you everyone thanks to TuneIn preciate you and I hope you're doing well much love to you all bye-bye