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Sex and Dating Apps | Rob Henderson | EP 193 — Transcript

by Jordan B Peterson · 19,159 words · 3,185 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:04i wonder if this has something to do
0:06with just sort of sociosexual
0:07orientation of you know whoever whoever
0:10happens to be expanding the beliefs so
0:13if you tend to be a person who's had
0:15your heart broken or had a lot of
0:16negative interactions maybe you had the
0:18expectation of monogamy and then you
0:20sort of have one too many negative
0:21experiences then you may start to be
0:23very preoccupied with uh with the issue
0:26of concern i think that's exactly what
0:28happens i i think that so you know we
0:30talked about people being shielded from
0:32the consequences of their luxury beliefs
0:35and they're shielded to some degree
0:38right but my suspicions are is that the
0:41relationship between sex and emotional
0:44intimacy is a lot tighter than people
0:46want to presuppose when they
0:49insist that all forms of sexual
0:51expression are laudable it's just not
0:53the case emotionally
0:58[Music]
1:14hello everyone i'm pleased today to be
1:16able to speak with rob henderson he's a
1:18phd student in evolutionary and social
1:20psychology and gates cambridge scholar
1:23at the university of cambridge he
1:26received his bachelor's degree in
1:27science in psychology from yale and is a
1:29veteran of the u.s air force
1:32his writing has appeared in the new york
1:33times the wall street journal and
1:35colette among other outlets he is
1:38currently writing a memoir tentatively
1:41titled troubled a memoir of foster care
1:44family and social class to be published
1:46in late 2022 by gallery books a division
1:49of simon schuster
1:51he is possibly best known for the idea
1:54of luxury beliefs which is where i first
1:57came across them first published in the
1:59new york post in short form and then in
2:01longer form in colette thanks very much
2:04for agreeing to talk to me today rob
2:06it's a pleasure to have you here
2:09it's great to be here dr peterson thank
2:10you no problem so let's talk first of
2:13all about luxury beliefs and exactly
2:15what that means and how you came
2:17uh come up with the idea and
2:19what the consequence of disseminating it
2:21has been
2:23yes so the luxury beliefs idea
2:26i define as ideas and opinions that
2:29confer status on the upper class while
2:31often inflicting costs on the lower
2:33social classes
2:35and i mean there are multiple strands to
2:37this idea but it originally started with
2:39my observations in undergrad at yale um
2:42so as you said you know currently i'm a
2:44grad student at cambridge before this i
2:46was a student at yale but before that my
2:48life was a lot different i grew up in
2:50foster homes in la
2:52later i was adopted into a working class
2:55town in northern california serving the
2:57military so i just had a completely
2:58different
2:59set of life experiences and background
3:01than many of my peers
3:03at this ivy league university
3:05and
3:06in that new york post essay the
3:09the original luxury beliefs essay i
3:11opened with this story of uh this
3:12conversation i had with a classmate of
3:14mine in undergrad
3:15uh we're sort of talking about
3:16relationships and career and she said to
3:18me you know i just think monogamy is
3:20outdated i just think it's you know not
3:23really good for society i think it's
3:24just this sort of old patriarchal way of
3:26thinking
3:27and i'd heard things like this before
3:29but this time i asked her um
3:31well what do you plan to do you know
3:33what do you want to do with with your
3:35own life and with your own relationship
3:36situation and so on in the future and
3:39she herself said well i'd like to get
3:41married and settle down and have a
3:43family at some point you know sort of
3:44after my career takes off and i asked
3:46her what was your life like before that
3:48you know how did you grow up and
3:50essentially she had come from a very
3:52stable intact to parent family
3:54and so
3:56this
3:57puzzled me because this was uh
3:59emblematic of so many of the opinions
4:01i'd heard of my uh in undergrad from my
4:03peers they would say one thing they
4:05would believe this one set of
4:07interesting or unusual beliefs that i'd
4:10never heard before from anyone else uh
4:12but then they themselves had come from
4:14sort of more conventional uh
4:17upbringings
4:18and they themselves planned to have that
4:20kind of life that sort of uh more stable
4:23traditional family i'd once heard
4:24someone put this way that um you know a
4:27lot of sort of affluent
4:29people they uh what is it they walk the
4:3150s and talk the 60s and i wondered you
4:34know what's going on here
4:36um
4:37and so while i was an undergrad i came
4:39across a series of papers series of
4:41ideas both from psychology and sociology
4:43so these sort of sociological aspects um
4:47i drew this from thorsten vablin
4:49and vaden's idea you know he wrote the
4:50theory the leisure class in the late
4:5119th century and he basically said that
4:54you know the elites of his day they
4:56broadcast their status with their
4:57material goods with you know expensive
5:00clothes tuxedos uh evening gowns they
5:03take up these very uh expensive and
5:05time-consuming hobbies like golf or
5:07beagling
5:08and all of this is to basically indicate
5:10their high social position and you know
5:12some people say this book was written
5:13sort of tongue-in-cheek but i think
5:15there's a lot of truth to this
5:17now if we fast forward to the modern day
5:19uh i think it's there are two things
5:21going on with why it's not actually
5:23fashionable anymore to display your
5:25status with luxury goods with material
5:28goods
5:30number one i think it's become viewed as
5:31kind of gauche if you walk around an ivy
5:33league campus today the students don't
5:35look like they don't have the iv look of
5:37like the 1950s or 1960s they kind of
5:39just look like regular college students
5:41number one
5:42and i mean this is true pretty much
5:44anywhere if you look at very wealthy
5:46people and the famous example of this
5:48would be mark zuckerberg wearing cargo
5:51shorts and a hoodie it's just not that
5:52cool anymore to
5:54wear clothes that indicate that your
5:56high social status
5:57the other thing is material goods have
5:59become more affordable
6:01um you know even my sort of poor and
6:03working class friends back home all of
6:05them have iphones um you know maybe of
6:08course like their life
6:09aren't as comfortable as my peers in
6:11college but a lot of material goods have
6:13become so affordable that it's become
6:14harder to stand out in that way yeah you
6:17so reflected i think to some degree in
6:19the decline in burglary
6:22all right material objects just aren't
6:24as worth as much as they were and so
6:25they don't distinguish between people
6:27anymore
6:28it's not worth it anymore uh to steal
6:31things
6:31and and so so that's uh that's the
6:34aspect of it that led me to think okay
6:37well
6:38first of all you know luxury goods are
6:40not being displayed as much by the upper
6:42class but i still think it still seems
6:44to me they care very much about social
6:45status and this is where the psychology
6:47aspect of it comes in
6:49from a researcher named cameron anderson
6:51at uc berkeley he's a psychologist who
6:52found
6:54he and his colleagues found that
6:55basically
6:56the upper class cares the most about
6:58social status
6:59they care the most about obtaining it
7:01and they care the most about preserving
7:02it which at first i thought was a bit
7:05counter-intuitive i thought that perhaps
7:07the the most downtrodden
7:09the kind of uh people who are in the
7:10lowest strengths of society we care the
7:12most about obtaining money and wealth
7:13and status but that's actually not true
7:15it's the people who are already at the
7:16top who care the most about it and
7:18that's really what i saw at yale 2 uh
7:20where you know these people were very
7:22much they were strivers um they were
7:24very interested in pursuing status do
7:26you suppose that's a partial consequence
7:28of the fact that failure is perhaps more
7:32painful than success is rewarding
7:35so once you have it
7:37let's say you have high social status
7:39you're very much inclined to keep it
7:42because the alternative would be so
7:44i suppose in some sense unthinkable so
7:47catastrophic for you
7:50right so so this is the the idea of
7:53almost like this prospect theory idea
7:54that when you have it it hurts twice as
7:56much as obtaining it i think there is
7:58something to this idea um i noticed
8:01there was a lot of anxiety
8:03uh among many of my peers uh
8:06this feeling that they have to keep up
8:09they have to constantly strive they have
8:11to get on to the next goal
8:12and i think what exacerbates this
8:15feeling is that they're surrounded by
8:17people just like them uh it was it was a
8:19bit
8:20unlike
8:22my own experience
8:25when i had got into undergrad
8:27i um
8:29i thought like okay so i'm okay i got
8:30into college like that was my goal i
8:32never thought i was ever going to get
8:33into college and so when i got there i
8:34thought like oh i'm okay
8:36and then i saw that these people didn't
8:37feel okay that they had to get the next
8:39internship they had to get into law
8:40school they had to do this they had to
8:41do that
8:42and i think a lot of it is because
8:44they're around people they've grown up
8:45around those kinds of people their
8:47entire life
8:48and
8:49so
8:50there's this belief like it was
8:52inevitable like they always had to do
8:53this there was never a question of their
8:55success right right for me it wasn't
8:57like that yeah well it wasn't all this
8:59pressure when i taught at in boston at
9:01harvard i mean one of the things i
9:03noticed was that the students there were
9:06you know they were pleased to be at
9:07harvard there was no doubt about that
9:09but they it was extremely competitive
9:12implicitly
9:14and i suppose that's part of the
9:16consequence of it being essentially
9:18based
9:19as as much as it could be on
9:21on competitive merit
9:23and so it was also the case that many of
9:25these students had been outstanding
9:27where they had come from they were class
9:29valedictorians and usually had at least
9:31one or two other major accomplishments
9:33under their belt but then when they got
9:35to these intensely selected institutes
9:38they were also in some sense average
9:41instantly and below average in many ways
9:44because you know no matter how smart you
9:46are the probability that you're the
9:47smartest person in your class at harvard
9:49is pretty damn low
9:51and so
9:52the implicit level of competition was
9:54extremely high
9:55and so that might also exacerbate the
9:58sort of tendencies that you're
9:59describing and people tend to compare
10:01themselves to their immediate peers not
10:03to the broader world
10:05right
10:06and and and this is part of why i think
10:08is is is driving this um you know i make
10:11this this point in the essay that
10:13they're they're dunbar's number you know
10:14they're the 150 closest people to them
10:17are
10:31large part have reattached or they sort
10:32of detached status to goods and
10:34reattached it to beliefs
10:37uh and this was driven by my you know
10:39sort of what i saw where i heard
10:41opinions and ideas that i had never
10:43heard anywhere else i mean probably the
10:45most you know contentious uh recent
10:48example of what uh of a luxury belief is
10:51this idea of abolishing the police
10:54um
10:55to me this is so emblematic of
10:57you know very comfortable highly
11:00affluent educated people who would never
11:02have to bear the cost of of what that
11:04policy would entail and yet they're
11:07propounding it they're you know they're
11:09they're broadcasting it and promoting it
11:11uh with the knowledge that this is going
11:13to make them look good to their peers
11:14it's going to make them look uh
11:16progressive and interesting and
11:17provocative and win them all these
11:18social points from their social circle
11:21uh without really giving much thought to
11:23what would happen to the poorest among
11:25us
11:26and yeah
11:29one of the things that always struck me
11:31about
11:33beliefs in
11:34progressive so-called progressive causes
11:37among high status individuals or those
11:39who are about to be high status
11:41individuals which would typify everyone
11:43in an ivy league university i mean if
11:46they're not high economic status at the
11:48present time they certainly will be by
11:50all likelihood by the time they're 30 or
11:5240. so they're already part of the upper
11:55class regardless of their claims
11:57they seem to want to have it both ways
11:59they want to be members of the most
12:01privileged class and then also be
12:03rewarded
12:04for
12:05their ally ship let's say with the
12:07oppressed and so they get to be rich and
12:09privileged and friend to the oppressed
12:12at the same time which always seemed to
12:14me to be a form of of
12:17of greed rather than
12:19sympathy rather than genuine sympathy
12:22there's not much self-sacrifice involved
12:24in the adoption of the beliefs that you
12:25just described and what i don't remember
12:27who said it when the
12:29upper class catches a cold the lower
12:31class gets pneumonia
12:33and so
12:34these destabilizing beliefs are a lot
12:36harder on people at the bottom of the
12:38socioeconomic structure than they are
12:41for people at the top who as you said
12:44tend
12:44to get married disproportionately often
12:47compared to people who are lower down on
12:49the socioeconomic structure
12:52yeah there's uh there's sort of this
12:56sinister theme that i saw sometimes uh
12:59where
13:00i would see students for example say um
13:03that investment banks are emblematic of
13:05capitalist oppression
13:07and then i would see those same exact
13:09students attending recruitment sessions
13:10for goldman sachs
13:11um and
13:13my interpretation of what they were
13:14doing here
13:16is basically they were trying to
13:18undercut their rivals they were trying
13:19to undercut their competition so
13:21uh if you and i are students and i can
13:23convince you that investment banks are
13:24evil don't work there that's one less
13:26competitor that i have in my quest to
13:28the top
13:29uh some people have told me that this is
13:31too cynical
13:32i used to think that i don't know as
13:34time goes on most likely yeah well i was
13:36struck too at
13:38harvard by
13:39the disproportionate movement of
13:43harvard undergraduates into financial
13:45services
13:46so
13:47i didn't understand until i went to the
13:48united states and worked at that
13:50extraordinarily powerful university what
13:53a staggering proportion of the students
13:55end up in jobs exactly like that and
13:58they are
13:59considered
14:00very broadly i would say among the
14:02undergraduates as the highest status
14:04jobs they certainly have tremendously
14:06high starting salaries and
14:08i mean
14:09harvard produced comparatively few
14:11scientists let's say
14:14so
14:15yeah i noticed this uh i mean it's i've
14:17seen the data on this something like 30
14:19of of undergrads at places like harvard
14:21yale and princeton
14:22at least 30 it might be closer to 40
14:24percent end up working in either
14:26investment banking
14:27finance or i think tech is the the third
14:30most popular
14:31right and they end up being often being
14:33consultants and so forth so and fair
14:36enough i mean they're high cognitive
14:38ability individuals generally and so
14:40it's not surprising that they vie and
14:42they're competitive for the reasons that
14:44you described in other reasons there's
14:46powerful socialization at work too
14:48so it's not surprising that they
14:50gravitate towards those jobs but then i
14:52suppose to what degree do you think
14:54beliefs of this sort are also motivated
14:56by guilt
14:58i mean i've often i've often seen you
15:00know in the united states in particular
15:02more well-to-do people tend to put their
15:04children in private schools
15:07and i think there's a tremendous amount
15:08of guilt about that because they are
15:10well they are racially segregated
15:12comparatively speaking
15:14at least along some dimensions and and
15:17that's a really not an egalitarian thing
15:19to do even though you may be motivated
15:22to provide whatever advantage you can
15:24for your children
15:25so
15:26is it guilt as well as the broadcasting
15:28of status in your opinion
15:31i i don't know i think that there's a
15:33lot of um
15:35performative guilt it seems like they
15:36talk a lot about guilt but when it comes
15:38to actually paying any kind of personal
15:40cost i really don't see
15:43their their behaviors aligning with
15:46their luxury beliefs uh like you said
15:48they they're willing to shell out all
15:49this money for private schools they're
15:51willing to pay money to live in secure
15:53neighborhoods there was a story last
15:55year sort of at the height of the uh the
15:57pandemic
15:58in addition to a lot of the protests and
16:00the rights that were going on in
16:01manhattan a lot of rich new yorkers fled
16:03to the hamptons and they had hired
16:05private security
16:06um
16:07and you know that's
16:09that's perfectly sensible i mean i
16:10understand why they would do that but
16:12this is sort of the the actions of of
16:14the affluent that they take um
16:16the broadcast one set of beliefs but
16:18then privately they'll do everything
16:19they can to secure the their safety and
16:23the future of their their children
16:25so maybe it's guilt but i'm not sure how
16:28how genuine it is um
16:31i mean i i just saw like i mean there's
16:32so many examples of these luxury beliefs
16:34that i saw uh you know from like i said
16:36the the police issue
16:38to uh the like open borders
16:41to uh decriminalization of drugs i mean
16:44all of these uh
16:46these issues i think
16:48are
16:50disproportionately harmful to
16:52working class lower class people
16:54and there's there's no
16:56cost no actual maybe there's guilt but
16:59there's no actual uh uh sort of
17:02costly uh benefit or costly extraction
17:06well it also may be that when you're
17:09relatively have been relatively
17:11protected
17:13but implicitly let's say okay so
17:17you live in a gated community you live
17:18among wealthy people you live in a
17:20neighborhood where crime is essentially
17:22non-existent
17:24where privation is essentially
17:25non-existent all of these things
17:29then
17:29the cost of
17:32order provision seems disproportionately
17:35high because you have no idea what it's
17:37good for
17:39and so you can imagine that you might
17:41also be inclined to only look at the
17:44negative side of
17:45well drug criminalization and police
17:48funding and all of that because
17:53it doesn't appear in your world that
17:54there's a necessity for those things
17:57so if you've lived your whole life so
18:00comfortably and you've never experienced
18:02any kind of hardship or any serious
18:04hardship then a lot of this is taken for
18:06granted well at least not of the not the
18:08kind of hardship i mean it's not like
18:10people who are well-off don't still have
18:12hardship because their families get sick
18:14and there's still all sorts of but
18:15they're protected very well from social
18:18unrest let's say
18:20and so the means necessary to ensure
18:23that
18:24society remains at peace the enforcement
18:27reasons for example and that would
18:29include border protection
18:31seem exclusionary and unnecessary when
18:35they've never been a threat of any sort
18:37at all
18:39yes i mean
18:41even beyond the physical safety issue
18:43um
18:44one one other interesting example of
18:46this phenomenon i think is
18:49a lot of people in tech these sort of
18:52tech tycoons will
18:54sort of promote the benefits of
18:56addictive technology while privately
18:59they uh go on these sort of dopamine
19:01fasts they don't use this technology
19:03steve jobs famously would not let his
19:05kids use an ipad
19:07um a lot of other
19:10people in tech reportedly tell their
19:11nannies to carefully monitor how much
19:13their children use smartphones and so on
19:17there are tv personalities who own
19:20television networks but they don't have
19:21a tv at home
19:22and a lot of this i think is sort of
19:24like you know don't get high on your own
19:25supply uh you know addictive technology
19:29is okay for the masses all of you can
19:30sort of get sucked into these screens
19:32but i'm going to be very careful with
19:33how me and my children and my family
19:35interact with this technology that i'm
19:37getting rich off of
19:38so it goes even beyond the sort of
19:41physical security i think it's more even
19:44more so about
19:45um
19:46you know you're taking care of yourself
19:49while not so much thinking about the
19:51harmful effects on on others
19:54yeah so it's a matter of wanting to have
19:55it both ways and so what what would you
19:58consider
19:59what is the universe of luxury beliefs
20:04like uh
20:05well i would say that luxury beliefs are
20:07are primarily situated of course uh
20:09among highly educated affluent people
20:12and essentially i mean there's
20:15i suppose you know i'm not keeping this
20:17compendium at least not yet of every
20:19luxury belief that exists but
20:21essentially um if someone of a high
20:23social position expresses a belief i
20:26think it's important for anyone who
20:27holds any kind of influential position
20:29in society to think about well what are
20:31the consequences of if that belief were
20:33to be implemented and especially when it
20:35trickles down um
20:38it's one of the effects
20:41yeah well i mean conservatives are
20:42always concerned with unintended
20:44consequences right and so they don't
20:46presume that hypothetically benevolent
20:49social policies are going to produce a
20:51positive result
20:53sure and and i think there's there are
20:55social patterns that that uh give reason
20:58for for concern so for example um
21:01the this idea of sexual promiscuity i
21:04think the the latest manifestation of
21:06this is is polyamory um i had this
21:09conversation with a friend of mine uh
21:11you know a couple years ago he uh told
21:13me you know rob when i when i opened up
21:14my my tinder app you know this dating
21:16app uh and i i put the radius to just a
21:19couple of miles around you know he also
21:21attends you know a university when i
21:24when i put it just to a couple miles
21:25around
21:26um you know it's pretty much all of my
21:28matches all of the other profiles i see
21:30are other other women students at the
21:32university
21:33and when i look at their bios
21:35half of them say that they're
21:37polyamorous or they're interested in an
21:39open relationship or they're not looking
21:41for anything too serious
21:43and then he told me when he extended the
21:45radius to match with women outside of
21:47the university uh
21:49into the town which is um you know sort
21:52of this working-class town
21:54uh he said that about half of the women
21:56that he he saw on on his app were single
21:59moms
22:00and
22:01so and it's the same age group right
22:02like 18 to say 23 years old so in the
22:05university they're interested in having
22:07fun and then the 18 to 23 year old
22:10working class women are having a much
22:11different experience of life
22:14and my claim is that the luxury beliefs
22:16of the former have basically trickled
22:19down and wrecked havoc among the latter
22:22so starting in the 1960s
22:24there's data from robert putnam and
22:26charles murray and others which you may
22:27have seen showing for example that in
22:291960
22:31uh working children born to working
22:33class families and children born to
22:34affluent families 95 of them were uh
22:38born and raised by both of their birth
22:40parents
22:41and if you fast forward from 1960 to
22:442005
22:45uh the affluent families the children of
22:48the affluent
22:49uh had dipped slightly so it was 95 in
22:511960 and by 2005 it had dropped to 85
22:54percent so it was a slight drop but by
22:56and large still overwhelmingly uh intact
22:58families and for the working class again
23:00in 1960 was 95 and by 2005 it had
23:03dropped to 30 percent so a completely
23:05different world
23:06too because there's an interesting
23:09progression
23:10between different ethnicities and races
23:13along that curve so the first correct me
23:16if i'm wrong but i believe this to be
23:18the case the first population that
23:20really affected was the black population
23:23then it was the hispanic population
23:26then it was the the white population but
23:28the curves match they're just um
23:31they're just like 10 years apart
23:34if you if you look at the same
23:36socioeconomic level and so yeah that's a
23:38good example of
23:40policies that are hypothetically liberal
23:42at the high end having a devastating
23:44effect
23:45farther down
23:46and you know these people who it's
23:48people who claim that marriage for
23:50example is a patriarchal institution
23:52well the best rejoinder to that i know
23:55of is then well why do the rich get
23:56married and the poor don't
23:58they choosing to oppress themselves
24:00given their options
24:02it doesn't make any sense i mean i think
24:03it's an absolutely foolish theory to
24:05begin with but
24:07but
24:08that seems to me to be a piece of data
24:10that indicates quite clearly that if you
24:12have a choice
24:14that's what you pick or if you have the
24:16widest possible level of choices that's
24:18what you choose
24:19and so yeah it's a it's a catastrophe
24:21although you know that's that the fact
24:24that it's a catastrophe is also hidden
24:26by a whole other set of luxury beliefs
24:28like
24:29all families are of equal value
24:32which in some sense is true
24:35right because if if you're thinking
24:37about
24:39how each person should be valued and
24:41whether or not
24:42the child of a single mother should be
24:44valued well obviously the answer to that
24:46is yes but that doesn't mean that all
24:50family configurations are equally
24:52functional
24:53on average
24:55and i think the data is absolutely clear
24:57that children with intact to parent
24:59families do far better now if you get
25:02divorced there are things you can do
25:04that moderate the effect of the divorce
25:10what's his name
25:12he wrote the boy crisis
25:14warren farrell has documented farrell
25:16has documented a number of ways that
25:18people who get divorced can
25:20ensure that their children
25:22do about as well as they would in an
25:23intact family and some of that involves
25:26approximately 50 percent contact with
25:28each parent
25:30i think the parents also need to attend
25:32counseling
25:33third party counseling so that they can
25:35maintain a reasonable relationship and
25:37they have to live within
25:39something approximating a 20-minute
25:41drive from one another
25:42something like that but i mean that
25:44takes a lot of balancing and dancing to
25:46replicate that environment and it seems
25:48impossible in our society to have us
25:50discussion about the fact that
25:52some forms of families
25:55are
25:56better for children than others
25:58and because we think of any imposition
26:01of a value analysis of that sort as
26:03discriminatory and you know in some
26:05sense it is discriminatory because when
26:07you say that one thing is better you're
26:09also saying at the same time that the
26:12opposite of that is worse
26:14well then it depends on who you're
26:16trying to focus on and well i i go by
26:18the data fundamentally and
26:20you know children born to young single
26:23mothers especially if the young single
26:25mothers are troubled and therefore also
26:27easy targets for predatory males
26:30they don't do well and there's
26:32multi-generational effects of that and
26:34we're too bloody
26:36naive and
26:37and
26:40i don't know
26:42immature
26:43i guess
26:45to have a serious conversation about
26:46such things and we also don't know how
26:48to put the genie back in the bottle
26:50but there's no tax break for example for
26:53stable married couples
26:55so there's no economic policy that
26:57supports it
26:59yeah i i mean
27:01i i'm not entirely
27:03sure that that would even change
27:05much i mean i think this is much more of
27:06a cultural issue than an economic issue
27:09i mean you know a lot of people say well
27:11the reason well it's kind of interesting
27:12how how many different excuses are
27:14produced for this i mean like you said a
27:15lot of people say that it's this
27:17patriarchal institution but then why are
27:19the rich getting married more than the
27:20poor well i don't know and then a lot of
27:22people
27:22let let's talk about that for a minute i
27:24mean
27:25sure
27:27i suppose that claim is grounded in the
27:30historical
27:32interpretation that
27:35in the past
27:36women were treated in some sense
27:39as the equivalent of property
27:42and
27:44now whether or not that's a reasonable
27:46interpretation of the past is entirely
27:49up for debate although we could say that
27:51it was more true 150 years ago than it
27:53is now but we could also point out that
27:56birth control was a lot less
27:59reliable
28:01yeah and so the relationships between
28:03men and well and women didn't have the
28:04freedom they have today for all sorts of
28:06reasons hygienic reasons for that matter
28:08i mean one of the things that freed
28:10women was the easy access to
28:13technology that dealt with menstrual
28:15cycle
28:16and public toilets and all of that i
28:19mean we just don't understand how much
28:22sanitary technology for example is built
28:24into the infrastructure
28:26as well as safety
28:28because women can walk down the street
28:30unaccompanied without any problem
28:32comparatively speaking we don't
28:34understand how much of that has changed
28:35the relationship between the sexes
28:38and so
28:39there may have been property-like
28:41associations with marriage 150 years ago
28:45but first of all that doesn't
28:46necessarily mean that that was a
28:48patriarchal institution
28:50i mean it was still the case that the
28:52idea was that the men would stick around
28:55and provide economic support and care
28:57for the children and that's a long-term
28:59binding contract and it seems to me the
29:02obvious opposite in some sense of
29:04libertine freedom
29:06so where's the patriarchy in that
29:08precisely
29:10i mean women weren't equal in some sense
29:12but
29:13there are reasons for that
29:15i mean many people have made the
29:17argument that by loosening the norms
29:19around marriage it's actually been to
29:21the benefit of of men
29:23in some sense you know to be able to
29:25have lots of promiscuous partners with
29:28many different women and perhaps
29:31impregnate some of them and not have to
29:32stick around there's no obligation to
29:34them beyond maybe producing childhood
29:36that means that it's
29:38advantageous to psychopathic men
29:41right darker bad types well exactly
29:44because you know the hallmark of
29:46psychopathy is
29:47short-term advantage
29:49taken by a given individual without care
29:51for anyone else
29:52and it certainly seems to me like dating
29:55apps like tinder now i don't i don't
29:58want to call every male who's successful
30:00on tinder a psychopath i'm not saying
30:02that but i would say that it isn't
30:04obvious to me at all that
30:07if you're a successful polyamorous male
30:10on tinder and so that's going to be a
30:12very tiny subset of men
30:14that are hyper selected by women a tiny
30:16subset of men
30:18who who receive almost no rejection
30:22they're set up to learn to be
30:24psychopathic because
30:26all their
30:27interactions with other people can be
30:29devoted to short-term sexual
30:31gratification with no emotional intimacy
30:33or long-term
30:34commitment
30:35and that's a hell of a training ground
30:37as far as i'm concerned that's that i
30:39mean it depends on what you want for a
30:40society but
30:42as you said even the affluent women who
30:44profess
30:45a desire for polyamory which is complete
30:47bloody rubbish in my estimation and
30:49completely underestimates the economic
30:51consequences of sex they still dream of
30:55the fairy tale princess who meets the
30:57prince who you know wakes her up with a
30:59kiss and and they're married happily
31:01ever after so it's it's such bloody
31:03nonsense we allow our culture to be run
31:05by the pathetic fantasies of immature
31:07adolescent
31:10delusion fundamentally as far as i can
31:12tell
31:13there was a study i saw um
31:16i think it was last year on on this very
31:18question of of who uses dating apps and
31:20sort of their personality traits and so
31:22on and they did indeed find and these
31:24these were just university students
31:25which you know take it for what it's
31:27worth but the uh uh the people who are
31:30using the dating apps which is about
31:31one-third of the the students uh in in
31:33the sample pool the they were um sort of
31:37more likely to be interested in
31:39short-term sexual conquest not really
31:40surprised more uh more interested and
31:43more likely to use drugs and alcohol
31:45more likely to have sort of callous
31:48sexual attitudes i can't remember the
31:49exact term they used for this for this
31:51construct but basically they were more
31:53likely to agree with statements like sex
31:55is like a game where one person wins and
31:57the other person loses so if you're
31:59using a dating app you're more likely to
32:00say uh yes to that kind of question so
32:04in a way
32:05status element to that i mean there's
32:07the old trope of notches in the bed
32:09frame and
32:10among adolescent competitive adolescent
32:13males there's no reason
32:15there's every reason to be competitive
32:17about how much you can drink and how
32:18many people you can lure into bed i mean
32:21even if you don't necessarily believe
32:22that personally you know at a deep level
32:25and maybe you suffer for it emotionally
32:27to some degree even though you might
32:28obscure that from yourself it's
32:30certainly something to score points with
32:31with your peers
32:33and there's plenty of that kind of you
32:35know that competitive bantering
32:38in in adolescent especially adolescent
32:40male culture and i mean it's not
32:42surprising to some degree because
32:44adolescent males have to figure out how
32:46to
32:47navigate the sexual landscape and
32:48they're going to do that in all sorts of
32:50awkward and
32:52finely unproductive ways it's not an
32:54easy thing to bind or to regulate
32:56properly but
32:57i mean these technologies like tinder
33:00tinder is a transformative technology
33:03and it's radically underestimated in
33:04terms of its potency because
33:06it
33:07produces
33:08hyper-successful predatory males and
33:11reduces rejection it eliminates
33:13rejection because i mean you can be
33:15totally rejected in which case you're a
33:17failure on tinder but
33:19in normal
33:20pre-mating interaction let's say there's
33:23a high probability of rejection
33:24especially on the part of males
33:26and that text well there's actually
33:27research on this yes
33:29on tinder uh yes uh
33:32so there's there's research basically
33:33showing this so on tinder uh
33:35women are they they like you know swipe
33:38right they like the profiles of only
33:40four percent of the men that they see on
33:43the app whereas for for uh men when they
33:46see female profiles they swipe right or
33:48like uh more than sixty percent that six
33:51zero sixty percent of the profiles right
33:53so that's really worth concentrating on
33:55because that's a great example of
33:57hypergamy
33:59right so women mate across and up
34:04success hierarchies
34:06and men mate across and down
34:10right so and women like men who are
34:13about four years older
34:14cross-culturally
34:16they like men who manifest signs of
34:18success as well as being handsome and
34:21personable in all of that and the reason
34:23for that as far as i can tell is that
34:25they're looking to
34:27equalize
34:28the economic disparity that exists
34:30because women
34:32take a harder hit from sex and pregnancy
34:34than men
34:36so they're looking to equalize that and
34:38no wonder they're looking for someone
34:40who's competent
34:41this is for long-term media who's
34:43competent and generous
34:45right you want both of those so
34:46competence would be intelligence general
34:49cognitive ability and the markers that
34:50go along with that they want
34:52conscientiousness or openness as well as
34:54other desirable personality traits and
34:56they want generosity honesty all of
34:59those but so they're looking for someone
35:00who can provide well it's not because
35:02they're greedy precisely it's because
35:04well they're going to put themselves in
35:06a more vulnerable position if they have
35:07a child and we know this because even
35:10affluent women who have a child by
35:11themselves or who get divorced tend to
35:15drop down the socioeconomic hierarchy a
35:17fair bit which is of course why alimony
35:20payments and all of that are necessary
35:22so this hypergamy means women are much
35:24more selective in their mating than men
35:26are and that's true cross-culturally and
35:28it's not surprising because they pay a
35:29bigger price for sex it's more dangerous
35:31for women because they can get pregnant
35:33and it might be more dangerous
35:35emotionally as well and i believe that
35:37would be a reflection of their higher
35:38levels of agreeableness and higher
35:40levels of negative emotionality so women
35:42do put themselves at risk more and that
35:44might be why there's such a
35:46intense debate about what constitutes
35:48can't consent on campuses despite these
35:51beliefs in polyamory and all of these
35:53things but so anyways on tinder as you
35:55said women select four percent of the
35:58men
35:59yes so that means i would imagine that
36:01four percent is very high up on what
36:03you're calling into the success
36:04hierarchy i have a friend a good looking
36:07guy
36:08uh he was very active on tinder for a
36:11while and he accumulated more than
36:13twenty thousand matches on the app
36:15twenty thousand
36:16twenty thousand and he was so successful
36:19that tinder
36:20uh pinpointed him early on and uh gave
36:23him all kinds of free perks and bonuses
36:25and lifted his radius restrictions gave
36:27him the
36:29the tinder gold app or whatever version
36:30of it basically trying to
36:32continue to use the app
36:34yeah
36:35they wanted to entice him this is so
36:37amazing they never want you to leave
36:38these are unbelievably pernicious and
36:41vicious broad-scale social experiments
36:43that are far more potent than anything
36:45like government policy
36:47you know i mean
36:49he's in genghis khan territory
36:52with 20 000. i don't know i mean it's
36:54really
36:55twenty thousand yeah well my suspicions
36:57are he tried
37:00and i i know he'll get a kick out of
37:01that that records for for like me
37:04athletes for example and movie stars
37:06there's some of the men have reportedly
37:09slept with thousands of women yes wilt
37:11chamberlain and
37:12um there's others who who are in the
37:14same category but they're people they're
37:16men who have women throwing themselves
37:17at them all the time lining up for them
37:20and and i've read biographies of people
37:22who had that sort of thing happen as
37:23well but that's not the typical male
37:25experience i know the typical male
37:27experience is all rejection
37:29exactly right they might get a couple
37:30matches a week
37:32right right so while so you see what's
37:34happening is that tinder is one of the
37:37forces that's transforming monogamy into
37:39polygamy and the problem with polygamy
37:42is that it it follows a pareto
37:44distribution like the distribution of
37:46wealth is that some tiny minority of men
37:49get all the sexual opportunity and all
37:52the rest get virtually none and that is
37:54a recipe for for social instability i
37:57mean that that sort of deregulation
38:00of romantic relationships you know
38:02whereas in the past it was expected for
38:04you to have one partner and over time
38:05settle down whereas now it's
38:07a total free-for-all i mean there are
38:10aspects to this that a lot of people
38:11don't think about i mean i talk to young
38:12people so i have younger friends who who
38:14i talk to who are sort of very active on
38:16on the apps and then sort of the dating
38:18scene and they'll tell me things like
38:20it's it's even easier to cheat so in the
38:22past if you wanted to be unfaithful to
38:24your partner it was risky because you
38:26know essentially like you you had the
38:28same social circle you had the same
38:30friends everyone knew everyone else but
38:31now with the apps you can match with
38:33someone who is completely outside of
38:35your social reality outside of your
38:37partner's social reality you can have a
38:38very discreet rendezvous no one will
38:41ever know about this
38:42um ghosting has become more common i
38:44don't know if you about ghosting but
38:45it's basically where you're in a
38:47relationship with someone
38:48um and after you have sex you know once
38:51or however many times then you just
38:53vanish you never see that person again
38:56uh delete you know delete them from your
38:58phone block them on social media you
38:59never have to see them again and there's
39:01no social cost to this that's a real
39:03psychopathic conquest strategy yes
39:06right yeah because the psychopaths they
39:08tend to form relationships that are very
39:10um predatory and then disappear
39:14because that way their reputations stay
39:16intact as long as they can continue to
39:18disappear
39:19but i'm interested in what you had said
39:20before about whether this is actually
39:22sort of cultivating psychopathy in young
39:25people and young men where you know in
39:27the in the past you know typically a
39:28psychopath would do that on their own
39:30but now with the apps and the technology
39:33removing all of the friction from
39:35you know breaking up with someone or
39:37having to communicate with someone that
39:38you no longer want to see them
39:40i think a lot of people who who ghost
39:42others they're not even thinking in
39:44those terms they're not thinking i want
39:45to maliciously hurt this person or i
39:47don't care about this person it's just
39:49it's like it's easy you know you press a
39:50few buttons on your smartphone and you
39:52can move on to the next conquest
39:54um and i think a lot of people wouldn't
39:56act that way otherwise well the question
39:58would be what happens to you after you
40:00do that four or five times you know
40:02let's say you're not particularly
40:03psychopathic to begin with it's like you
40:06you you learn what you practice
40:08and i would say look if if you're using
40:11people continually as a means to an end
40:13and i think sex is probably the most
40:15effective way of doing that
40:18then
40:18you're establishing a pattern of
40:20interaction between you and other people
40:22at perhaps the deepest possible level
40:26and so if you do that repeatedly
40:28first of all you're not you're certainly
40:30not engaging in anything that might be
40:31regarded as a as a meaningful or deep
40:34relationship
40:35quite the contrary you regard that as
40:38excess baggage that's an impediment to
40:40your next conquest so to speak
40:43so
40:44how would that not
40:46i mean it'd be now you said there was
40:48research on tinder has there been
40:49research on the relationship between the
40:51dark triad and these hyper successful
40:53men
40:56well i've seen research on dark triad
40:58and tinder use and you know people who
41:00are high on dark triad do tend to be
41:01more successful accumulate more partners
41:05uh specifically whether you know this is
41:07related to gender and whether men are
41:09more successful or or more likely to to
41:11hurt others using these apps i haven't
41:13seen anything on that i have
41:15interestingly seen
41:17um i think this was from pew
41:20where they
41:21broke down the data by
41:23education level
41:25and they asked people questions like
41:27have you ever been harassed on this
41:28dating app have you ever met someone on
41:30a dating app who inflicted physical harm
41:32on you
41:33basically the wide variety of negative
41:35experiences through using dating apps
41:37and they found that people who are not
41:39college graduates were far more likely
41:41the women were far more likely to report
41:43negative experiences on the dating apps
41:45compared to
41:46college educated women and to me this is
41:49also indicative of this you know this
41:50sort of social class divide
41:52um another manifestation of the luxury
41:54belief of sexual promiscuity where you
41:57know you introduce these dating apps you
41:59have no idea what's going to happen or
42:00how this is going to warp society and
42:03how people are going to interact in
42:04romantic relationships and it's
42:07disproportionately harming
42:09uh lower educated lower income women who
42:12are like you're saying they're probably
42:13more likely to meet psychopaths they're
42:15probably perhaps less adept in some ways
42:18at screening for certain kinds of guys
42:20the other thing is
42:24because
42:26well they're a lot more they're a lot
42:28easier to prey upon i mean their
42:30straights are a lot more desperate and
42:32they've knocked themselves out of the
42:33single girl dating market and lowered
42:36their market value so to speak i hate to
42:38speak of it in terms like that but it's
42:40clearly the case because to initiate a
42:43relationship with a woman who has a
42:45child already is to initiate a
42:47relationship that has a lot higher up
42:48front cost the complexity of negotiating
42:51the relationship with the child the
42:52additional responsibility that has to be
42:54taken on instantly and none of that's
42:57the least bit trivial
42:59so
42:59so
43:00so that means and we know that in
43:02general if you
43:04do a triangular imagine triangular
43:06representation of a social hierarchy on
43:09any valued dimension
43:10the people who are at the lowest level
43:12are those who are most susceptible to
43:14any sort of uh destructive tendency that
43:17comes whistling through they don't have
43:19as much social support they're a lot
43:21closer to abject poverty they don't have
43:24the the broad social network or the
43:26opportunities um so everything affects
43:29them disproportionately including
43:31epidemic illnesses and it's the case
43:33throughout the
43:34kingdom of life that low status
43:37confers
43:38vulnerability that's why people go for
43:41higher status at least in part yeah so
43:43right that the tinder
43:45i mean
43:48i don't know how widespread tinder use
43:50is i don't know that much about tinder
43:51but when i first found out about it i
43:53thought this is a technology that while
43:55they certainly named it properly because
43:57tinder starts fires and it's a fire
44:00starter and not just sexually and
44:02something like 40 last i saw something
44:05like 40 percent of people under 30 are
44:07using the apps i would imagine it's
44:09probably higher now
44:10especially in the wake of covet so the
44:12data that i saw when we collected i
44:14think in 2019 but after covid and the
44:16pandemic and the lockdowns
44:18um there's no other way to meet people
44:19so i'd imagine a lot more people
44:21download those apps and we'll see if
44:23they wean themselves off or if they're
44:24hooked i mean these tech companies use
44:26very
44:28manipulative
44:30strategies i talked to an executive i
44:31won't say which dating app this was but
44:34he told me that some dating apps
44:37some dating apps will um basically what
44:40they call i think they're called seating
44:42where they'll put fake profiles of very
44:44attractive usually women right because
44:46men are are actually more likely to use
44:47dating apps and they're sort of more
44:50likely to pay for the premium profiles
44:53compared to women who don't have to
44:54because they're going to get matches
44:55anyway um
44:57so anyway the the dating app companies
45:00they'll see them with fake attractive
45:02women profiles and
45:05intentionally match with men who have
45:07recently downloaded a new profile who
45:08basically newly created one and the idea
45:10here is that if they if they download
45:12the app and they immediately match with
45:14an attractive woman uh and then they
45:16usually have a couple of conversational
45:18exchanges like hey how's it going good
45:20how are you and then that's it the uh
45:23the robot no longer responds to the user
45:26but the reason why this is done is
45:28basically to give them a little hit
45:30right it gives them it's like
45:35it's a major hit yeah yeah and so
45:37basically they called it chasing the
45:39dragon which is basically a term from
45:41from from drug usage right from heroin
45:43you give them a little hit and then
45:44they're going to be chasing that high
45:45for the rest of their lives so
45:47you know i think that
45:49there's so many complexities to this it
45:51yeah it is and and
45:53yeah they are uh creating
45:57a lot of i think a lot of heartbreak and
45:59a lot of frustration
46:02over that
46:05wow
46:07if if you're interacting with someone
46:09fake i mean that could be tailored to
46:11your desire
46:13be people i'd have all you'd have to do
46:15is look at the pictures that someone was
46:17looking at and produce a composite
46:19that's a that's an amalgam of those
46:21attractive
46:23women let's say and
46:24mean that the possibility for
46:26manipulation is almost infinite and
46:28you won't say which dating app that's
46:30too bad because they deserve the
46:32exposure but you know i i understand
46:34your reticence that's really
46:35unbelievably appalling and malevolent
46:38well i will say that if if one app is
46:41doing it then that means
46:42more than likely they all are so it
46:44almost doesn't even matter uh they're
46:45probably all doing some version of that
46:47because that's how they get users
46:49right yeah well it's not that clever an
46:51idea you know it's it's a pretty obvious
46:53idea in a very crooked and horrible sort
46:56of way
46:57so
46:57it's not like it would take a genius to
46:59think it up
47:01yeah
47:02yeah and so so this idea of oh and i
47:05wanted to go back so so this idea of um
47:07differently educated women different
47:10social classes having different
47:11experiences on the dating apps well
47:12they're also having entirely different
47:14experiences in in the real world too in
47:16terms of their dating and romantic
47:18relationships after the erosion of
47:20marriage
47:21after the um sort of deteriorating
47:24norms around
47:26dating and romance
47:27if you know i i talked to some people
47:30from my hometown for example
47:32and i think about you know the kinds of
47:34guys who stayed behind who didn't go off
47:35to college who didn't join the military
47:37who just sort of languished and hung
47:39around there
47:40these are not you know just to put it
47:42bluntly these are not uh it's not prince
47:44charming
47:45and so when women are dating these men
47:48and there's no social norms no no forces
47:51constraining them many of them act very
47:53poorly
47:54um you know a lot of alcoholism a lot of
47:56drug use uh you know verbal and
47:59sometimes physical abuse emotional abuse
48:02um a lot of these guys who sort of are
48:04not not so educated
48:06don't have a lot of money not a lot of
48:08life prospects when they get involved
48:10with a woman they don't necessarily
48:11treat her very well whereas you know in
48:13the past i think that there were
48:15stronger norms around how you're
48:16supposed to treat the opposite sex and
48:18how you're supposed to interact with
48:19them date them what's expected of you
48:21and so on i think with the
48:23um sort of dissolution of expectations
48:26has come a lot more
48:27trouble for lower income young women
48:31yeah hypothetically the ones that the
48:33progressives are trying to do something
48:35for
48:37are removing this constraints of
48:38patriarchal relationships for example
48:40the question always is what flows in
48:42when you remove the dikes right i mean
48:45that's another problem i suppose in some
48:47sense that's analogous to the
48:49the protection of of social classes
48:52many of these institutions that are so
48:54casually criticized
48:57we don't know what forces shaped them so
49:00you know i've been pilloried in the
49:02press repeatedly for pointing out that
49:04um
49:06normative monogamy
49:08controls male aggression
49:11now that it's amazing to me that i've
49:13been slashed to ribbons for making that
49:15case because i thought that was like
49:17anthropology 101.
49:20so you know there's two things that
49:22every society needs to control and one
49:24is female fecundity because of its high
49:26cost and the other is male aggression
49:28it's like well i thought everyone knew
49:30that if they were even moderately
49:31educated and well how do you control
49:33that regulate it for everyone's interest
49:36particularly for the interest of
49:38children the answer seems to be the
49:40imposition of monogamous norms
49:42now people object well are people truly
49:44monogamous and the answer is not if you
49:47set up the environment to differentially
49:49award hyper-successful polyamorous males
49:53which is exactly what gender does and
49:54there are societies where that's the
49:56case where one man has a thousand wives
49:59so to speak and 999 men have none
50:03but those aren't societies that are
50:05stable and those young men who have
50:07nothing to do
50:09find things to do
50:11and they aren't necessarily the sorts of
50:12things that you want them to be doing
50:15because what the hell do they have to
50:16lose
50:17fundamentally
50:19and it's not a good idea to
50:21generate a society full of young men who
50:23have very little to lose
50:25so
50:27i
50:29and it is an appalling thing that the
50:32privileged classes
50:34are more likely to disparage marriage
50:37let's say
50:38and these ideas
50:40trickle down over time they sort of
50:42permeate throughout society because
50:44elites affluent educated people wheel
50:46disproportionate influence uh whether
50:49it's through media pop culture fashion
50:52do you know here's something cool yeah
50:54so do you know that names
50:56drift down the social hierarchy
51:00huh
51:01well so well so
51:03uh
51:04influential upper class people will
51:06produce a name for their child
51:09and then that name is gets popularized
51:12all the way down the social hierarchy
51:13until it becomes passe
51:15and so and becomes more and more common
51:17as it drifts down so this influence that
51:20you're describing you can measure it
51:22everywhere they're the fashion leaders
51:23they're on the cutting edge and everyone
51:25imitates
51:26and so
51:27yes
51:28and i think that
51:29so so you know of course like actual
51:31fashion clothing of course the sort of
51:33trendsetters and then it trickles down
51:35to everyone else i i didn't i didn't
51:37know this about names which is really
51:38interesting but i think it it is also
51:40for sort of
51:42moral beliefs as well one idea that i've
51:44sort of been playing with maybe this is
51:46you know a little bit dangerous for me
51:48to say but i've been thinking about this
51:50you know who was championing
51:52um
51:53sort of
51:53color blindness integration this idea
51:57that you know we should treat everyone
51:58on their merits and so on i mean
52:01whatever 50 or 60 years ago this was a
52:03very progressive idea and it was mostly
52:05championed by highly educated people
52:07more affluent people they also tended to
52:09leave the abolitionist movement in the
52:11u.s and so on
52:12but more recently
52:14uh things have changed so my idea here
52:17is that in the past the elites had this
52:19idea of color blindness over time that
52:22idea trickled throughout society
52:24such as such that now today if you talk
52:27to a typical middle class or working
52:28class
52:29western person they do tend to basically
52:31believe in color blindness um their
52:34racial attitudes are basically like who
52:36cares um
52:38and it's not it's not an important thing
52:40in their lives
52:41and so now that the elites have spread
52:44this belief how do they once again
52:46distinguish themselves from the hoi
52:48polloi
52:49from those middle and working class
52:50people they once again have to make race
52:52an important feature of our social
52:55reality um
52:57so now i have to comment about your
52:59theories there for a sec if you don't
53:00mind
53:04when
53:05francis galton
53:06150 years ago started studying
53:10he thought about it as
53:13excellence something like that i mean
53:15some of the iq research came out of that
53:17he started to measure people on a whole
53:19variety of different dimensions but his
53:21conception of of excellence of
53:24superiority let's say
53:25wasn't so much cognitive capacity
53:29the more differentiated sorts of things
53:31that we might measure today and
53:32associate with some degree of value
53:34conscientiousness creativity
53:36intelligence galton who is an english
53:38aristocrat which is the reason i'm
53:40bringing this up
53:41was at the forefront of that movement
53:43and he believed like most english
53:45aristocrats of his time that
53:47england was a superior culture and that
53:49english aristocrats were the hallmark of
53:52english superiority right and so but
53:54that superiority
53:56was fundamentally i would say moral
54:00that the superiority that was being
54:02searched for wasn't economic exactly
54:05that the economic superiority was an
54:08indicator of the moral superiority
54:11and so and that would be associated yes
54:14yes so that would be associated with
54:15something like moral purity
54:18and and and associated with disgust now
54:21george orwell talked about
54:23because he was from
54:25relatively higher social status i think
54:27he was upper middle class but he said he
54:29had a visceral distaste of the working
54:32class
54:34and he had to overcome that and he did
54:36he worked in restaurants and he worked
54:37in all sorts of jobs he went to war i
54:39mean orwell strove to overcome that
54:42visceral disgust
54:44and disgust is the opposite of disgust
54:46is purity and that's associated with a
54:48kind of moral superiority and so one of
54:51the things that your idea one of the
54:53ideas that your concept brings up is the
54:56notion that the central axis of social
54:59hierarchy is something like assumed
55:01moral superiority and everything else is
55:03a marker of that including economic
55:05wealth you know i have this economic
55:07wealth because i deserve it that's an
55:09indicator that i'm superior morally
55:12and that would go along with the idea of
55:14i think that would go along with the
55:15idea of luxury belief
55:17you need to distinguish yourself from
55:19the contaminated lower classes
55:21constantly
55:22and there were reasons which is i think
55:24with the past
55:26you think that is what's going on
55:29i do i think that that that drives in
55:31large part the motivation to uh to
55:34broadcast these beliefs is to
55:37basically tell the world i'm not one of
55:39the you know the the hoi polloi one of
55:41the little people unwashed masses the
55:43unwashed mashes and and so they're
55:46they're telling us you know to society
55:47at large and and in particular they're
55:49telling their peers you know don't
55:51mistake me for one of those people there
55:53and so this is sort of what i'm getting
55:55at with this idea that you know now that
55:57now that the masses believe that race
55:59should no longer be treated as a big
56:01deal in society
56:02if you're a member of the elite if you
56:04say that you're you may be at risk of
56:08being mistaken
56:09for one of the masses and so now you
56:11have to sort of reintroduce the
56:12importance of race and ethnicity and so
56:14on
56:15and say that we you know you don't want
56:18to be colorblind you want to sort of
56:20highlight our differences and and so on
56:22but this here is a luxury belief because
56:26you know
56:27you may be able to
56:29sort of promote this sort of
56:31racial divisions among highly educated
56:33highly affluent people
56:35and in all likelihood it's probably not
56:36going to hurt you very much but if that
56:38belief is reintroduced into society
56:41where we should once again pay very
56:42close attention to what skin color we
56:45are or what race we are
56:46that could create a lot of problems for
56:49ordinary people well i think it is the
56:51world problems already because well
56:53because
56:54look i think
56:55one of the factors and i'm certainly not
56:58alone in this although maybe i can
56:59differentiate it a bit better
57:01i think a big part of the reason that
57:03trump was so attractive i saw this hat
57:06in florida i've told this story before
57:10it said trump 2021
57:13trump 2020 yeah because [ __ ] you twice
57:17and i thought yeah that's exactly right
57:19it's because there's this perception on
57:21the part of the working class perhaps
57:24particularly among working-class males
57:26and maybe even more particularly
57:28among working-class white males
57:31that the progressive types that
57:32hypothetically stand for the oppressed
57:34have nothing but contempt for them
57:37and the attraction to trump was
57:39yeah well here have some of this
57:43i feel that um every once in a while
57:45i'll go back to my to my hometown red
57:47bluff california yeah and i'll talk to
57:50people
57:51and i can feel this you know like i'll
57:53tell them i grew up here i'm you know
57:54i'm sort of this is my hometown
57:56and whenever it comes up so what do you
57:58end up doing uh i'm honest and i say you
58:01know i ended up going to yale or
58:03cambridge or whatever but i i'm i'm
58:05always very quick to follow it up with
58:07but but i i enlisted in the military
58:09this is sort of my protection of like i
58:11was in the military before i did all
58:12this other stuff because i can sense
58:14like when i say go to yale there's this
58:15sort of moment of awkward silence and i
58:18can tell they're sort of updating their
58:19view of me and probably not in a good
58:21direction either
58:23uh and so then when i follow it up with
58:25but i enlisted and then sort of things
58:26calm back down i had this experience a
58:29couple years ago in a casino playing
58:31cards uh in corning which is an even
58:33more poor and small town in northern
58:35california
58:36uh and my sister had you know let it
58:39slip to the dealer that i was a student
58:41at yale and the dealer looked at me for
58:42a second he's like what are you even
58:44doing in here you know in the sense that
58:46like number one why would you be
58:48gambling in here if you go to a school
58:49like that and then number two like it
58:51sort of sounded like i'm not really sure
58:53i want you to be in here
58:54and i told him like you know hey i serve
58:57in the military i just want to play some
58:58cards let's you know let's just have a
59:00good time and and he sort of let his
59:02guard down at that point but i think
59:04there is this um feeling among more
59:07blue-collar working-class people that
59:10you know the elites over there are they
59:12look down on us they
59:14view us in a certain way
59:15they treat us like we're stupid or
59:18backwards
59:19or evil or racist or whatever
59:21and really it's i mean it's just not
59:24true um
59:25that kind of disdain also just sort of
59:27amplifies the divisions
59:29and
59:30that is something that i'm also trying
59:31to highlight to elites as well i think
59:33that there's been a lot of emphasis in
59:35psychology
59:38on the role of fear in promoting belief
59:42but i think that
59:44disdain contempt and disgust have been
59:48under appreciated as
59:51separating motivational
59:54factors
59:55yes
59:56and
59:58it's one thing if someone's afraid of
1:00:00you
1:00:01that's not exactly offensive
1:00:05i mean you might regard it as
1:00:06unfortunate but there's also a kind of
1:00:11implicit
1:00:12respect a little bit of dominance
1:00:14exactly exactly
1:00:16but if they're disgusted by you or
1:00:18disdainful of you
1:00:20that means that you're in the
1:00:22contemptible
1:00:24and rotting category essentially
1:00:26and that's a lot bigger dagger aimed at
1:00:29your heart than
1:00:31than fear i mean would you rather be
1:00:34shied away from or sneered at
1:00:38right
1:00:39right yeah right yeah yeah
1:00:40i think this is this is part of what's
1:00:42uh what's driving these these sort of
1:00:44class divisions
1:00:46um
1:00:47that that the sort of working class and
1:00:49lower class they feel this they feel
1:00:51that there's this disdain for them on
1:00:53the part of the upper class and this is
1:00:54part of what i'm trying to highlight too
1:00:55with this idea is to to basically say
1:00:58that like there are these divisions
1:01:00social class exists in america and this
1:01:02is something that we need to be thinking
1:01:03about whenever we broadcast these silly
1:01:05beliefs that no one believes in and uh
1:01:08what blows my mind is that you know the
1:01:09data are freely available you can see
1:01:11what
1:01:12the majority of americans believe about
1:01:14the police or voter id laws or drugs or
1:01:17what have you
1:01:18uh
1:01:19and
1:01:20the affluent just don't care very much
1:01:22they're still going to broadcast their
1:01:24very silly beliefs
1:01:26um
1:01:27i guess well it could even be
1:01:29to take your hypothesis perhaps a step
1:01:31further but perhaps you've already
1:01:33thought this
1:01:34up
1:01:37it's a real marker of my status that i
1:01:39can afford insane beliefs
1:01:42look look how crazy i can be and still
1:01:44survive
1:01:46well it's yes is it
1:01:48right exactly it's completely
1:01:49significant
1:01:50exactly it's exactly that it's that it's
1:01:52like a peacock's tail i can laden myself
1:01:55down with this palpable absurdity it has
1:01:58no material effect whatsoever on my
1:02:00continued existence
1:02:03so the peacock is dragging around this
1:02:04very heavy colorful set of tail feathers
1:02:07and can still survive and
1:02:09the sort of highly educated affluent
1:02:10members of the side can drag around
1:02:12these very expensive costly luxury
1:02:14beliefs that clearly have no
1:02:16correspondence to reality
1:02:17and they can still survive well and they
1:02:20have some correspondence to reality for
1:02:22them because they can afford to
1:02:23experiment with the beliefs without
1:02:25immediately perishing
1:02:27or without you know fatally compromising
1:02:30their lives in most cases not all but in
1:02:32most cases whereas if you're
1:02:34farther down the chain and have less
1:02:36protection you toy around with polyamory
1:02:38and you end up as a single mother when
1:02:40you're 18. that's the end of that
1:02:43and so then you have the rest of your
1:02:44life to think about well perhaps that
1:02:46wasn't very wise but you know it's a
1:02:48little late then
1:02:50yeah well you can believe whatever you
1:02:52want if you are a graduate of a top
1:02:54university and you are economically
1:02:57comfortable you can have whatever set of
1:02:59beliefs you want
1:03:00and in all likelihood you'll be just
1:03:02fine
1:03:03but
1:03:04you know i i want to underline that
1:03:07because you are the you know you are the
1:03:10most sort of sealed from the
1:03:12consequences of your beliefs you
1:03:13actually
1:03:14and at the same time you wield the most
1:03:15influence in society it's very important
1:03:18to understand if you have a belief and
1:03:20you're trying to implement it into
1:03:22policy or to uh sort of erode or create
1:03:25new norms or whatever
1:03:26just be very careful with what it is
1:03:28that you're doing um you know you can
1:03:30treat it as a game and gain status but
1:03:32in the longer term this is going to hurt
1:03:34um you know it's going to hurt a lot of
1:03:36people it's going to hurt the very
1:03:37people that supposedly we care the most
1:03:38about
1:03:40so what have been
1:03:42the consequences for you of
1:03:44being known for
1:03:46this kind of theory you're a student at
1:03:48cambridge you're in psychology
1:03:51um you were an undergraduate at yale i
1:03:53believe you were an undergraduate yale
1:03:55were you an undergraduate when you wrote
1:03:58your essay on luxury beliefs
1:04:01no that was um during my first year here
1:04:03at cambridge uh in 2019
1:04:06um
1:04:07you know it's been
1:04:09it's been an interesting experience i
1:04:10was a little bit nervous when i first
1:04:12wrote it simply because of the way
1:04:14things are going in universities i had a
1:04:16very
1:04:17um
1:04:18sort of turbulent introduction
1:04:20to
1:04:21university life to campus life when i
1:04:23first entered undergrad so this was in
1:04:26the fall of 2015. it's kind of funny so
1:04:29in 2015 so i had just gotten out of the
1:04:31military in august i started class in
1:04:33september and a couple weeks later um i
1:04:36saw that jonathan height was giving a
1:04:38talk on campus and i had just read his
1:04:41book the righteous mind about moral
1:04:43psychology which is an interest of mine
1:04:45and i thought that that's what his talk
1:04:46was going to be about but the entire
1:04:48talk was basically about you know our
1:04:50university is meant to
1:04:52equip students with the ability to seek
1:04:54truth or is it meant to keep them safe
1:04:56and protect them and shelter them and so
1:04:58on i went to this talk totally confused
1:05:01because that is not what i expected him
1:05:02to talk about that's not what i knew
1:05:03height for i knew him for his research
1:05:04his psychology research
1:05:06um
1:05:07right so i didn't really i hurdled the
1:05:09coddling of the american mind as well
1:05:11that hadn't come out until
1:05:13next year the year after okay um
1:05:15so i only knew heid as the author of the
1:05:17righteous mind
1:05:19and
1:05:20i
1:05:20i didn't have the context for what that
1:05:23talk was about because i was basically
1:05:26an outsider to
1:05:28this kind of world of you know free
1:05:29speech debates and you know what is the
1:05:31purpose of a campus and all of this
1:05:33stuff i was basically just like a dude
1:05:36who felt lucky to get into this great
1:05:37university
1:05:39um
1:05:40and then about what three weeks after
1:05:42that uh
1:05:43erica christakis
1:05:45who was a faculty member at yale wrote
1:05:46this infamous email
1:05:48about
1:05:49uh basically defending freedom of
1:05:50expression uh the yale university
1:05:53administration basically emailed the
1:05:55students on halloween yes yes so they
1:05:58basically told students that the
1:05:59administration told students you know be
1:06:01careful what you wear and all this stuff
1:06:03and erica costas wrote a follow-up email
1:06:05saying you know if you have a problem
1:06:06with what people are wearing you should
1:06:07talk to them you know it's important to
1:06:09uphold freedom of expression and so on
1:06:11and there was this entire campus
1:06:13eruption
1:06:14my first experience you know having seen
1:06:17any kind of uh campus uh protests like
1:06:19this before students coming together
1:06:22there was this uh
1:06:23very sort of dark undercurrent around
1:06:25campus people were very afraid to to
1:06:27speak out against what was happening um
1:06:30and so that basically uh was my
1:06:33introduction to
1:06:35what uh college is like uh
1:06:37and that has basically stayed with me
1:06:39ever since it was very formative
1:06:40experience for me to see what had
1:06:42happened there the other thing is i mean
1:06:44i i met with erica christofis later i
1:06:46was interested in taking a class with
1:06:48her she taught a class at yale called
1:06:49the concept of the problem child uh
1:06:51which is basically you know this idea of
1:06:53of um you know sort of orphaned children
1:06:56children who get into trouble and
1:06:57mischief and so on in this sort of
1:06:59history and psychology of all that and
1:07:01you know naturally to me given my
1:07:02background is a very interesting idea
1:07:04i was wait listed for that class and i
1:07:07was very disappointed to learn that she
1:07:08stepped down from teaching she said that
1:07:10yale is not a good climate for for
1:07:12teaching anymore because yeah well it's
1:07:14no pain
1:07:16right exactly it doesn't take very many
1:07:18mobbing experiences to do you in
1:07:21yeah well i mean i i had met with her
1:07:23and i met with nicholas her husband
1:07:25later who was also targeted by the mob
1:07:27and to see like like the way that the
1:07:29students treated them called them every
1:07:31name in the book demanded that they be
1:07:32fired and so on and then to like you
1:07:34know discover that they were very good
1:07:36people uh in in their personal lives um
1:07:40they had taken in foster kids of their
1:07:41own and and helped them and so on and so
1:07:43like to see this this clash between like
1:07:46what the students were saying about them
1:07:47and who they actually were uh
1:07:49i mean it uh
1:07:51you know sort of formed this this
1:07:52cynical perspective that i still have
1:07:54about what kind of people go to these
1:07:56universities and what their intentions
1:07:58are
1:07:59um
1:08:00but in any case to talk to you about too
1:08:02in terms of your luxury beliefs so
1:08:04you know we were talking we've talked
1:08:07about two things in some sense we've
1:08:09talked about luxury beliefs and we've
1:08:10talked about sexual politics
1:08:13i suppose right and so i there's a way
1:08:17of bringing those together so
1:08:20do you think there's have you look at
1:08:22gender differences in luxury beliefs so
1:08:24for example i
1:08:27the universities especially the liberal
1:08:29arts are now dominated by women
1:08:32and that's not a trivial transformation
1:08:34it's a fundamental transformation and
1:08:37it i mean heights
1:08:39coddling idea
1:08:41is easily associated with you know an
1:08:44excessive amount of dependence let's say
1:08:47and so
1:08:48if the maternal role is fundamentally
1:08:50the sheltering of infants
1:08:52which i think is a reasonable way of
1:08:54looking at it
1:08:55then well then what happens when that
1:08:57becomes political i mean because we
1:08:59don't know anything about women's
1:09:01large-scale political behavior
1:09:04because this is all new and so when you
1:09:06have an institution that's essentially
1:09:08oriented to young people
1:09:10who could be regarded as children but
1:09:12wouldn't have to be but could be
1:09:13regarded as children
1:09:15is the maternal expression that their
1:09:18safety and security and emotional
1:09:20well-being is paramount and then let's
1:09:22take this a step further just to be
1:09:24annoying and horrible
1:09:26these are all women who are at their
1:09:27peak age of fecundity
1:09:30and you might say well what's happening
1:09:31with all those maternal instincts
1:09:33they're just gone all of a sudden i mean
1:09:36many 19 year old girls i've talked to
1:09:38many of them
1:09:39believe that their career is going to be
1:09:41the most important thing in their life
1:09:44very few 30 year old women believe that
1:09:46even if they have high-powered careers
1:09:49because they tend to discover that
1:09:51high-powered careers come at a
1:09:53substantial cost
1:09:55like 60 70 hour work weeks etc and so
1:09:59that life might be best spent in the
1:10:02bosom of family and friends and with
1:10:04children etc that's where much of the
1:10:06true value is and most women figure that
1:10:08out by the time they're in their 30s
1:10:10which is why high-powered law firms for
1:10:12example have a hell of a time
1:10:14retaining their extremely competent and
1:10:17highly valuable women no one likes to
1:10:19talk about this they wouldn't talk about
1:10:20it in the law firms that i consulted for
1:10:23many many of them all the women would
1:10:25talk about it privately but never
1:10:26publicly the discussion was always about
1:10:29how the law firms weren't doing enough
1:10:31to support women with their children and
1:10:33all the women knew that wasn't true that
1:10:35wasn't what was going on and the law
1:10:37firms were bending over backwards to try
1:10:39to accommodate them because they wanted
1:10:40to keep their high-performing women for
1:10:42obvious economic reasons
1:10:44and so we have all these young women
1:10:47in who dominate institutions now like
1:10:50well especially the humanities and
1:10:51liberal arts and universities
1:10:53it's like well is that the reason that
1:10:56security and safety and
1:10:58the sanctity of the home this is a
1:11:00community this is a home it's like no
1:11:02that's not what a university is actually
1:11:06but but that's what it could be so
1:11:09what do you think of that and these are
1:11:11discussions that no one will have
1:11:12obviously
1:11:14yeah yeah i'm sorry to put you on the
1:11:16spot you can tell me to go to hell if
1:11:17you want because you're probably already
1:11:19in enough trouble but
1:11:22no i mean i think it's an interesting
1:11:24idea
1:11:25uh
1:11:26i'm just not entirely sure
1:11:28if that's what's happening here i mean
1:11:30maybe i guess it maybe it would depend
1:11:32on the level of analysis we're talking
1:11:34about here i mean i think at a more
1:11:35proximate level so maybe at that
1:11:37approximate level it's about sort of
1:11:39gaining social status in your local
1:11:41environment but perhaps there's sort of
1:11:42this ultimate evolutionary level like
1:11:44why is it that these are the steps now
1:11:47that one must take to obtain social
1:11:48status yeah yes maybe underlying that
1:11:50are the evolutionary reasons well that's
1:11:52exactly the question here well you also
1:11:54might wonder
1:11:56what messages do
1:11:58women at the peak of their fertility
1:12:01want to broadcast to the community
1:12:06well to the men and to the women for
1:12:07that matter
1:12:08and it might be i'm a caring person
1:12:12well well why why would you broadcast
1:12:15that that specifically because we're
1:12:17looking at all sorts of potential values
1:12:19you could broadcast right
1:12:21the luxury values that are selected
1:12:23appear to be ones that are putatively
1:12:25associated with compassion
1:12:28i mean it tilts hard in that direction
1:12:30and height has shown that because
1:12:32liberal types and and and the luxury
1:12:34values that you're describing seem to be
1:12:36associated with progressive liberalism
1:12:38tremendous amount of that is driven by
1:12:40compassion and
1:12:42lack of harm rather than more
1:12:44conservative uh values let's say
1:12:47well i did see this study fairly
1:12:50recently i think mitch brown is a grad
1:12:52student he was an author on this
1:12:53basically showing that
1:12:55broadcasting uh
1:12:57moral values
1:12:58uh
1:12:59does sort of increase
1:13:01attractiveness to others and i can't
1:13:04exactly remember what the specifics were
1:13:06but they were sort of involved around
1:13:08social justice about caring for the
1:13:10oppressed and the downtrodden and so on
1:13:12and
1:13:13i think the effect was was most
1:13:16pronounced for men broadcasting these
1:13:18views uh and women found this to be
1:13:20particularly attractive um
1:13:23but i i could imagine like it would go
1:13:25the other way too although a lot of the
1:13:26sort of evolutionary psych papers i've
1:13:28seen on sort of mating psychology
1:13:30it doesn't i mean men seem especially
1:13:32young men seem most interested in in
1:13:34appearance like far far more than any
1:13:37other sort of uh personality or
1:13:39behavioral uh dimension among the women
1:13:41but it's possible i mean what you're
1:13:42saying that maybe it's not so much about
1:13:44um
1:13:45you know trying to trying to
1:13:47impress the man but maybe just the
1:13:49community as a whole or or their fellow
1:13:51peers it also might not be a matter of
1:13:54impressing it might be a matter of
1:13:57a particular form of orientation
1:14:00taking a new target
1:14:02i mean for for most of human history
1:14:05women who were in between 19 and 25 had
1:14:09infants
1:14:11right
1:14:11okay so now they don't okay so that
1:14:14that's not like triv that's not a
1:14:16trivial transformation that's a
1:14:18fundamental earth-shaking
1:14:20traumatic dramatic transformation
1:14:23and so
1:14:24we would expect that to have no
1:14:26political impact whatsoever
1:14:30yeah i i mean it's it does seem to me
1:14:33that it it's unlikely that it would have
1:14:35zero effect
1:14:36um
1:14:37i guess my question would be why now
1:14:39then um
1:14:41why would it i mean because women have
1:14:43been going to university now for 50 plus
1:14:45years um i think they've been the
1:14:46majority dominate
1:14:49well they've dominated i mean i think
1:14:50they've tipped past 50 since i think the
1:14:52early 90s
1:14:54so why is it now that you know this i
1:14:57mean perhaps
1:14:58you know that's that's one ingredient is
1:15:00sort of the uh the dominance of of women
1:15:03on universities in addition to maybe
1:15:05social media and a few other sort of
1:15:07more recent uh inventions that have that
1:15:10have spurred this on
1:15:11yeah well there was definitely a spike
1:15:13in politically correct beliefs of the
1:15:15sort that you've described in the 90s
1:15:17oh interesting right right i mean but
1:15:20what seemed to happen then i think that
1:15:23was when i was teaching in boston
1:15:25it it bubbled up but then the economy
1:15:27boomed so madly that people seem to be
1:15:29preoccupied by other things for a long
1:15:31period of time
1:15:33so
1:15:34and then it went kind of back
1:15:35underground and i thought well maybe
1:15:37we're done with that nonsense to some
1:15:38degree but it certainly popped back up
1:15:40more recently and also 30 years isn't
1:15:43very long i mean we're looking at
1:15:45massive demographic transformations in
1:15:47the structure of our society we don't
1:15:49understand i mean we already talked
1:15:50about the effect of technology
1:15:53of computer technology on on mating but
1:15:56we certainly haven't talked about the
1:15:58effect of
1:15:59of relatively
1:16:00um
1:16:01accessible and effective birth control
1:16:04technology and all of that we touched on
1:16:06that but i mean these are huge changes
1:16:08that we don't know anything about
1:16:10i mean even the
1:16:12the sort of birth control issue i mean
1:16:15it's really interesting to see just like
1:16:16how the how the the the discussion
1:16:19around dating has changed so much i mean
1:16:21i remember
1:16:22you know reading things from the sort of
1:16:24early 2010s like 2012 2013 about how
1:16:28hookup culture was this great thing that
1:16:30was liberating and i think more recently
1:16:32people are now starting to question that
1:16:34um about whether that's i mean educated
1:16:37people questioning whether this is good
1:16:39for society
1:16:40and
1:16:41yeah i i mean i've read this very
1:16:43interesting
1:16:44article a long form article in brookings
1:16:47i can't remember the authors
1:16:49specifically about reproduction
1:16:50technology and how
1:16:52essentially
1:16:54this has given rise to in some ways to
1:16:58to more broken homes and their reasoning
1:17:00was that once um
1:17:03once reproduction became a biological
1:17:06choice for the mother then fatherhood
1:17:08beca in a social choice for the man
1:17:11simply because in the past if a woman
1:17:12got pregnant there were all of these
1:17:14norms in place uh for the man to
1:17:16basically marry the woman you know these
1:17:18sort of shotgun marriages the community
1:17:20shamed the men into marrying the women
1:17:21if you skipped out on the woman then you
1:17:23were seen as a deadbeat and so on there
1:17:24was a lot of taboo and shame around that
1:17:27but
1:17:28we don't even know what effect there is
1:17:31socially for example
1:17:33with the presumption that well if you
1:17:35get pregnant it's your own fault because
1:17:37the
1:17:38reliable reproductive prevention
1:17:40technology is at hand
1:17:42you know and many women who get pregnant
1:17:44have not taken the pill properly for
1:17:47example and so i'm not saying that they
1:17:49should be blamed for that i'm not saying
1:17:50that what i am saying is that it opens
1:17:53the door for attribution of
1:17:55responsibility to the women and we don't
1:17:57know what that effect has what effect
1:17:59there is of that on social institutions
1:18:02that is actually the argument if i
1:18:04recall from this brookings article which
1:18:06was that
1:18:07you know not necessarily societal of it
1:18:09wasn't like society suddenly said well
1:18:10now if you get pregnant your fault
1:18:11because of the pill it was more on a
1:18:13local level um couples started to
1:18:15believe this men started to believe it
1:18:16um the neighborhood the community right
1:18:19started to accept that you know if a man
1:18:21has sex with a woman and she gets
1:18:23pregnant the man can say to himself well
1:18:24that's not my problem that's kind of
1:18:25your fault because you know you have
1:18:27this magical pill that can
1:18:29whatever so i don't have to get involved
1:18:30anymore and i think the the local
1:18:32community and the social environment
1:18:34sort of tacitly if not if not um sort of
1:18:37openly but at least tacitly started to
1:18:38accept this kind of logic this kind of
1:18:40reasoning
1:18:41and this basically allowed men to skip
1:18:43out on their responsibility well it's
1:18:45almost inevitable to accept it if you
1:18:47accept the proposition that women now
1:18:48have control over the reproductive
1:18:50function
1:18:51and we don't want to dm like i thought
1:18:53the 20th century would be remembered for
1:18:55three things
1:18:57hydrogen bomb
1:18:59computer chip
1:19:01the pill
1:19:03three bombs right the tree because i
1:19:05mean there hasn't been a time in human
1:19:07history where females had control over
1:19:08the reproductive function it's a it's
1:19:11it's the equivalent of almost the
1:19:13equivalent of a new species in terms of
1:19:15dramatic biological transformation
1:19:18someone's going to someone's going to
1:19:19edit that part out and turn
1:19:23good luck to them it's not like i don't
1:19:25feel bad for the women who are put in
1:19:26this position i certainly do they have a
1:19:28tremendous amount to contend with but
1:19:30you know the the
1:19:32the other thing that's quite interesting
1:19:34is all of the debates about consent that
1:19:36have emerged on campus
1:19:38and exactly what constitutes consent i
1:19:40mean because the the 60s hypothesis in
1:19:43the wake of the pill was
1:19:45well sex doesn't really matter so
1:19:48you know any consent will do because
1:19:50it's now become a trivial
1:19:52endeavor
1:19:53i mean that was the theory right it's
1:19:55just sex well and aids put the blocks to
1:19:58that theory very very rapidly and
1:20:00and you know no one likes to talk about
1:20:02this because there's many things we
1:20:04don't like to talk about but the aids
1:20:06virus mutated to take advantage of
1:20:08promiscuity in a major way and so
1:20:11promiscuity gener promiscuity
1:20:13distributed aids and and contributed to
1:20:15the manner in which it manifested itself
1:20:18and so
1:20:19sex turned out to be
1:20:21as deep a dangerous force in multiple
1:20:23dimensions apart from mere reproductive
1:20:26um
1:20:27you know danger the other sexually
1:20:29transmitted disease were reasonably
1:20:31controlled with antibiotics
1:20:33so
1:20:34i find it interesting that people are so
1:20:37just reluctant to talk about the
1:20:39importance of sex as an incentive i mean
1:20:41there's a lot of discussion in society
1:20:42for example about economic incentives
1:20:44about jobs professions
1:20:46economic and equality and so on but
1:20:49there's not much talk about the the role
1:20:51that sex plays i mean you know from the
1:20:54sort of evolutionary perspective sex has
1:20:55been around since before we were human
1:20:58sex is still going to be around long
1:20:59after humans have gone extinct like sex
1:21:01is universal it's it's what drives every
1:21:03single species but we i'm just surprised
1:21:06at how often we overlook it as as an
1:21:08incentive for behavior and how fast
1:21:11things are changing in the realm of sex
1:21:13i just saw this uh statistic
1:21:16uh from the washington post showing that
1:21:18from 2008 to 2018 the number of sex the
1:21:22amount of sexlessness among men under
1:21:25the age of 30 has doubled
1:21:26so in 2008
1:21:2915 of men under age 30 reported not
1:21:31having sex in the past year and by 2018
1:21:34it had doubled to about 30 percent and
1:21:36for women it had it it increased
1:21:39slightly it was something like
1:21:4010 in 2008 to like 15 in 2018 so there
1:21:45was an increase a slight increase but
1:21:47for men it has doubled
1:21:49to the point where about one in three
1:21:51young men are reporting that they
1:21:52haven't had sex in the past year which
1:21:54is a very new thing
1:21:55um despite the despite the media gaps
1:21:58right despite the apps despite um even
1:22:01more uh support supposedly for
1:22:04um sexual freedom and for polyamory and
1:22:07novel relationship arrangements and the
1:22:11further sort of devaluing of of the
1:22:13importance of sex
1:22:14um more people are having less of it men
1:22:17and women but especially young men yeah
1:22:20well my understanding is that's damn
1:22:22near epidemic in japan
1:22:26so what's happening
1:22:28a tremendous number of young men in
1:22:30japan are falling into that category and
1:22:32in fact this society has become
1:22:34increasingly sexless even among young
1:22:37people i mean that's reflected to some
1:22:39degree in the declining birth rate but
1:22:41now it's been a long time since i look
1:22:43looked at the statistics but that's my
1:22:45understanding and so
1:22:46if it happened there it's not surprising
1:22:48that it you know might happen here and
1:22:50that might be a consequence too of this
1:22:52emergent polygamy that we were
1:22:54describing is that all the spoils are
1:22:56going to a very few
1:22:58few men of course there's also the
1:23:00the also the effect of pornography which
1:23:03is a
1:23:04substitute
1:23:05and
1:23:07you know that's also
1:23:08i don't know much about the literature
1:23:10on pornography use
1:23:12and the relationship between it and
1:23:14and actual sexual activity
1:23:16um i have read some ominous things about
1:23:18the increase in failure to achieve
1:23:21erections among young men
1:23:23that at least in principle is a
1:23:24consequence of pornography use but
1:23:27um i don't know how reliable that is
1:23:30data that that married men are more
1:23:32likely to experience divorce
1:23:34if they watch any amount of pornography
1:23:37and it's sort of uh you know
1:23:39the more the more pornography they use
1:23:42the more likely they are to to get
1:23:44divorced
1:23:45um
1:23:46i think that yeah this this is another i
1:23:48mean this is a very recent invention too
1:23:49sort of streaming digital pornography
1:23:52um
1:23:53i've heard that researchers are having
1:23:54difficulty even studying this simply
1:23:56because they can't really find a control
1:23:57group they you know there's no young men
1:23:59who don't watch porn
1:24:01at least at least have never not been
1:24:03exposed to it and so this is a very
1:24:05difficult thing for them to even even
1:24:06study well it's another
1:24:10indication of the
1:24:11emergence of polygamy
1:24:14because it's virtual polygamy
1:24:17we can have an unlimited number of
1:24:18attractive sexual partners now it's all
1:24:20virtual
1:24:21right but but that as
1:24:24that is a transformative technology
1:24:27i mean there's more pictures of
1:24:29of nude women in one day than anybody in
1:24:31history would have ever seen in their
1:24:33entire life
1:24:35yeah and i and i see this uh you know
1:24:38the the consequences of this how young
1:24:40people interact now where
1:24:42there's even these contests to see how
1:24:44long they can go without
1:24:46watching it almost like it's a game
1:24:49um you know these sort of communities on
1:24:51reddit or on social media where they'll
1:24:52sort of try to
1:24:54um go for a month or go for 90 days or
1:24:57whatever without watching it um at first
1:25:00i think it starts this game no fap and
1:25:02they're trying to i think
1:25:04you know on the one hand it's sort of a
1:25:06game for them it's a contest but on the
1:25:07other hand i think there is this
1:25:08underlying you know beneath the sort of
1:25:11joking around about it i think there is
1:25:12this view that like this probably isn't
1:25:13good for us and let's see if we can get
1:25:15off of it let's see if we can stop
1:25:17um
1:25:18and
1:25:19i i don't i don't see like how this
1:25:21isn't changing people i mean i was i
1:25:23feel very fortunate because i came of
1:25:25age just before
1:25:26uh you know sort of uh fast
1:25:29internet and all of this stuff that
1:25:30started taking off like right before
1:25:32youtube all of this stuff and i can
1:25:34imagine that if i was a i don't know if
1:25:35i was 13 and all of this stuff had
1:25:37existed today like i'm sure it would be
1:25:39warping my brain in one way or another i
1:25:42mean between between the internet
1:25:43between social media and then of course
1:25:45the digital porn and the endless images
1:25:48um
1:25:49i i don't know how like very young boys
1:25:51are are dealing with this this new um
1:25:54this new technology
1:25:56well these are all
1:25:58it's very difficult for society to
1:25:59structure itself around monogamous norms
1:26:02that took a lot of work
1:26:04and
1:26:04when that's taken apart it's not at all
1:26:07obvious how to put it back together
1:26:10so and it does appear that we're
1:26:13seeing the consequences of that
1:26:15the consent issue on campus i think is
1:26:17extraordinarily interesting
1:26:19because
1:26:20it isn't what you would would have
1:26:22expected it isn't what anybody predicted
1:26:24right we thought with the relaxation of
1:26:26sexual norms that there would be this
1:26:28possibility that sex could become casual
1:26:31and there is an insistence it's so
1:26:33strange to watch and this is associated
1:26:36with your luxury belief item our idea
1:26:40on the one hand we have this
1:26:42absolute insistence
1:26:45by the progressive types essentially
1:26:47especially that
1:26:49any and all form of sexual expression is
1:26:51not only acceptable but to be celebrated
1:26:54no matter what the form is
1:26:58and on the other hand we have this
1:26:59insistence
1:27:01that sex is so dangerous that the
1:27:03culture is best conceptualized as a rape
1:27:06culture and that every step of sexual
1:27:09interaction between the young man and
1:27:10the young woman needs to be documented
1:27:13like formally and perhaps even in
1:27:15writing because that has been proposed
1:27:17at some universities and so there's this
1:27:19perversity about the twin insistence
1:27:22right it's
1:27:23all forms of sexual expression are
1:27:25laudable
1:27:27and freeing yet it's so dangerous that
1:27:29every bit of it has to be documented and
1:27:34the fundamental orienting
1:27:37structure is something like rape
1:27:40i wonder if this has something to do
1:27:41with just sort of sociosexual
1:27:43orientation of you know whoever whoever
1:27:46happens to be expanding the beliefs so
1:27:48if you tend to be a person who's had
1:27:50your heart broken or had a lot of
1:27:52negative interactions maybe you had the
1:27:53expectation of monogamy and then you
1:27:56sort of have one too many negative
1:27:57experiences then you may start to be
1:27:59very preoccupied with uh with the issue
1:28:02of concern i think that's exactly what
1:28:04happens i i think that so you know we
1:28:06talked about people being shielded from
1:28:08the consequences of their luxury beliefs
1:28:10and they're shielded to some degree
1:28:14right but my suspicions are is that the
1:28:17relationship between sex and emotional
1:28:19intimacy is a lot tighter than people
1:28:22want to presuppose when they
1:28:25insist that all forms of sexual
1:28:27expression are laudable
1:28:29it's just not the case emotionally
1:28:31and those people the ones who are who
1:28:34are supporting or promoting the complete
1:28:36sexual freedom they may just be sort of
1:28:38less sensitive
1:28:39to having negative sexual experiences
1:28:42because like you're saying all of it is
1:28:43fun all of it is free there's uh all of
1:28:45it is laudable and so for them if they
1:28:47have you know experience that someone
1:28:49else might do as negative for them it's
1:28:50just not a big deal and so this is why
1:28:52they're they're promoting more of a more
1:28:54open sexual
1:28:58they could be high in openness say so
1:29:00exploratory and low in agreeableness so
1:29:02you know they're not as they're not as
1:29:04so associated they're not as likely to
1:29:06form
1:29:07immediate
1:29:08empathy i mean this itself may be
1:29:11connected to your earlier question about
1:29:13sort of the the the growth in the number
1:29:16of female students on campus i mean
1:29:18there's been interesting research from
1:29:20uh so john berger i think i'm getting
1:29:22his name right wrote a book called
1:29:24datonomics where he goes uh he he
1:29:26discusses at length the role that sex
1:29:28ratios play
1:29:29uh for social interactions for romantic
1:29:32interactions and basically he found that
1:29:33on campuses where there's uh
1:29:37more women than there are men
1:29:39uh there's much more hookup culture
1:29:41women expect less of the men
1:29:45they report that like basically feeling
1:29:46despondent about their chances of
1:29:48getting a boyfriend uh men on the other
1:29:50hand seem to have a much more uh uh
1:29:53enjoyable time uh they report having
1:29:55more sexual partners feeling uh more
1:29:57upbeat
1:29:59feeling more hopeful having more hookups
1:30:00and so on whereas on university campuses
1:30:03like caltech where there tend to be more
1:30:05men than women it's actually the reverse
1:30:07where women are more likely to have a
1:30:08boyfriend to be more satisfied with
1:30:10their romantic situation
1:30:12and so on and basically the the um i
1:30:15mean and this has been documented in
1:30:17across cultures in different cities
1:30:18different societies and so on and
1:30:19basically the idea is that when there's
1:30:22a large number of women
1:30:24and a scarcity of men women have to
1:30:26compete
1:30:27for
1:30:28that small pool of men and they're more
1:30:29willing to basically modify their
1:30:31behavior in ways that men find appealing
1:30:34which you know oftentimes is sort of
1:30:36short-term casual sex
1:30:38uh you know hookups um sort of very
1:30:41casual situations whereas when the river
1:30:44versus the case and there's a scarcity
1:30:45of women in a large number of men then
1:30:47men tend to modify their behaviors to be
1:30:48more oriented toward long-term
1:30:49relationships towards commitment and
1:30:51emotional connection and so on
1:30:53and so as universities
1:30:55uh become more dominated by by women and
1:30:59the sort of
1:31:01sexual uh
1:31:02so their satisfaction with the sexual
1:31:04landscape declines then maybe this is
1:31:06related to some of what we're seeing of
1:31:08course maybe with consent and some of
1:31:10these other social justice issues that
1:31:11we're seeing that a lot of it may be
1:31:14sort of driven by um sort of
1:31:16dissatisfaction with the romantic
1:31:18landscape and and the way that men are
1:31:20behaving a sense of being exploited but
1:31:23then i would be interested to know if in
1:31:26those universities where there's a
1:31:28relatively smaller proportion of men and
1:31:30the men report being more satisfied i
1:31:32wonder
1:31:33if that's the median or the average
1:31:37right because i would say that's the
1:31:38average
1:31:39you think so i because i was thinking
1:31:41that in those situations it would still
1:31:44be a relatively small minority of men
1:31:46who are getting all the sexual attention
1:31:49now it might be better to be the mean
1:31:53well wouldn't that mean that the mean
1:31:55satisfaction would be high whereas the
1:31:56median might yes that is sorry yes
1:31:58you're exactly right that's exactly
1:32:00right okay so there'd be there'd be a
1:32:01fair bit of variation around the mean as
1:32:03well yeah right yeah i i would agree
1:32:06with that i mean
1:32:07there's there's a lot of like sort of
1:32:08interesting findings i think this was a
1:32:10study from mit which showed that like
1:32:12something like half of the graduates of
1:32:14mit male male graduates of mit graduate
1:32:17as virgins and
1:32:18um
1:32:19i think that this this pattern has also
1:32:21been found in other top universities as
1:32:23well and
1:32:24and so this probably goes to this idea
1:32:25that a small number of the men at at
1:32:27universities are accumulating uh more
1:32:30well that would go along with the four
1:32:31percent
1:32:33rating four percent description of
1:32:35tinder and so what happens is that where
1:32:37there's a relatively small number of men
1:32:39that competition between women becomes
1:32:41incredibly intense but for a very small
1:32:43fraction of the men and because those
1:32:45men have endless short-term options
1:32:48there's no satisfaction on the female
1:32:50side with regard to anything past you
1:32:52know a short-term casual relationship
1:32:55i saw this really uh kind of amusing
1:32:57study it was in pnas of um
1:33:00this idea of sexy selfies and which
1:33:02countries
1:33:03uh in which countries are women most
1:33:05likely to post sort of sexually
1:33:07provocative image of themselves on the
1:33:08internet and on social media
1:33:10and
1:33:11so the researchers you know they put
1:33:12forth various hypotheses one of them was
1:33:14maybe it's maybe it's patriarchy maybe
1:33:16in cultures where uh women are treated
1:33:19very poorly they feel like they have to
1:33:21present themselves in a certain way very
1:33:22sexually provocative poses and so on but
1:33:25that's not what the researchers found
1:33:26what they found was that in in countries
1:33:28where um
1:33:29uh income inequality tends to be high uh
1:33:32that's when women are most likely to
1:33:33post sexy selfies and their um their
1:33:36conclusion here was that when women are
1:33:38competing for a shrinking number of
1:33:40highly successful men
1:33:42um they're more likely to pose in
1:33:44provocative ways on the internet in in
1:33:46the hopes of capturing their attention
1:33:48which is maybe what we're seeing on you
1:33:49know on instagram and on on various
1:33:51other social media apps where
1:33:54um i think there is this this sort of
1:33:56like i don't know tilting towards more
1:33:58more and more
1:34:00sort of pornographic adjacent content in
1:34:03the hope of capturing uh more attention
1:34:06and
1:34:07so i think that a lot of a lot of what
1:34:09we're seeing may be it may be due to
1:34:11sort of this this overlooked topic of of
1:34:13the sexual dynamics in society
1:34:17so what's been the consequence for you
1:34:19of having pursued this line of thought
1:34:21we we started to touch on that but we
1:34:22didn't touch on it that much
1:34:25um
1:34:26it hasn't been too bad um you know some
1:34:29people have questioned me on this i've
1:34:31had some somewhat nasty comments
1:34:34uh from other graduate students here at
1:34:36cambridge
1:34:37um
1:34:38social media stuff but it really hasn't
1:34:40been that bad um
1:34:44yeah i've actually met uh quite a number
1:34:46of people who agree with me
1:34:49and who are glad that someone is
1:34:50speaking out about this issue
1:34:52um i actually met um yeah a lot of
1:34:54friends by by talking about this openly
1:34:57i think that this is if this is just one
1:34:59of those things where people are are
1:35:01silent because they're afraid of the
1:35:02reputational cause but when someone else
1:35:04starts speaking out they feel more
1:35:05comfortable sort of coming out of their
1:35:07shell more and more and discussing it
1:35:09i on the other hand i
1:35:12you know i'm sort of reluctant to
1:35:14continue uh along a career in academia
1:35:17simply because of everything that i've
1:35:18seen so i mentioned before what i saw at
1:35:20yale with the christakisses um part of
1:35:22the reason why i came to cambridge you
1:35:23know there are many reasons but one of
1:35:24the reasons why i came here was because
1:35:26i thought it would be different i
1:35:27thought that the um
1:35:29sort of uh social mobbing and the sort
1:35:32of student protests and i thought that
1:35:34was kind maybe i hoped that it was an
1:35:36american thing and i thought that well
1:35:37maybe if i go to england things will be
1:35:39calm maybe things aren't as political
1:35:40over there and within a matter of months
1:35:44two things happened one was you were
1:35:45supposed to come here to be a research
1:35:48fellow and then you were just invited
1:35:49because of the student protests and then
1:35:50two there was a young postdoc named noah
1:35:53carl who was supposed to you know he's a
1:35:54postdoc here and he was fired uh because
1:35:56of student protests as well and so i
1:35:58thought okay well i come over here
1:36:00hoping to get away from that and it sort
1:36:02of followed me over here so maybe maybe
1:36:04this is a sign that uh i'm supposed to
1:36:06be doing something else other than than
1:36:08uh than remaining uh within within uh
1:36:11the the academy so once i'm finished
1:36:13with my phd i may have yeah i heard the
1:36:15grapevine that uh
1:36:17you know hypothetically i was disinvited
1:36:20from cambridge because
1:36:21a photograph was taken with me in new
1:36:24zealand of someone wearing a
1:36:27t-shirt that was critical of islam
1:36:30but i learned through the grapevine that
1:36:32the decision to disinvite me had been
1:36:34taken before that and that was used as
1:36:36an excuse and not at all
1:36:39reliable source
1:36:41yeah so stunning stunning so that all of
1:36:44that it was very
1:36:46costly and painful for me to undergo
1:36:48that and
1:36:49you know it's so peculiar because i was
1:36:51going to cambridge hypothetically to
1:36:53talk about biblical stories with you
1:36:55know people at the divinity center there
1:36:57and the biblical story
1:36:59the lectures that i've done have been
1:37:01very popular and in reasonably
1:37:03influential and you know well received
1:37:06by atheists and religious people alike
1:37:08so it was a serious academic endeavor
1:37:10and it was very
1:37:12difficult to bear the
1:37:14oprobrium let's say that was associated
1:37:16with that
1:37:17um
1:37:19i understand that that you know things
1:37:21have perhaps changed for the better with
1:37:22regards to such decisions more recently
1:37:25but
1:37:26um it was shocking to me to to find out
1:37:29that it was based on a lie
1:37:31and yeah
1:37:33my reputation you know it's it's it's
1:37:36it's uh it's quite something so so where
1:37:39are you in your phd program now
1:37:42uh so
1:37:43finishing up my third year i should have
1:37:45one more year and then i will be
1:37:47returning to the states don't know
1:37:48exactly what i'll be doing but uh yeah
1:37:51like i said probably probably not in a
1:37:53university at that point yeah things
1:37:55have changed uh yeah so much over the
1:37:57last few years in terms of
1:37:59the you know political correctness and
1:38:02how reluctant people are to speak out
1:38:04and
1:38:05i think um
1:38:06yeah i started to experience that at the
1:38:08university of toronto i started to get
1:38:10nervous about
1:38:14talking about sex differences and
1:38:16personality
1:38:18you know when i was just i taught a
1:38:20personality course and i published
1:38:22papers on sex differences in personality
1:38:25so it was actually an area of
1:38:26specialization of mine and for years i
1:38:29would lay out the data which was
1:38:32somewhat
1:38:35ethical i don't mean laying it out i
1:38:37mean the data itself it's like while
1:38:38there might be differences between men
1:38:41and women and there might not be but the
1:38:43empirical evidence suggests that
1:38:47if you add all the personality
1:38:48differences between men and women
1:38:50together you can reliably discriminate
1:38:53between who's a man and who's a woman
1:38:54with women with about 75 percent
1:38:56accuracy which is pretty accurate but
1:38:59trait by trait men and women are more
1:39:02alike than different so yeah fair enough
1:39:05um and there are two dimensions where
1:39:08the differences particularly manifest
1:39:10themselves
1:39:11sensitivity to negative emotion and
1:39:12agreeableness and
1:39:14and so that's that and
1:39:16then those differences are bigger in
1:39:18egalitarian countries than in
1:39:19non-egalitarian countries which is
1:39:21counter-intuitive and surprising and
1:39:23shocking
1:39:25and interesting
1:39:27also holds true for dark triad
1:39:29characteristics by the way so
1:39:30psychopathy narcissism and
1:39:31machiavellianism the gender gap is
1:39:33larger in more egalitarian cultures
1:39:36you may not be surprised to know that
1:39:37but i found that pretty interesting i
1:39:39mean it sort of falls in line with all
1:39:40the other research you're describing
1:39:43yeah it's very interesting that more
1:39:44egalitarian policies magnify some
1:39:47differences they ameliorate in
1:39:49scandinavia the preferred age gap
1:39:52between women and men is somewhat
1:39:54smaller than in non-egalitarian
1:39:56countries so there are some
1:39:58there are some
1:40:00phenomena that do
1:40:02modify towards
1:40:04equality with egalitarian social
1:40:06policies but lots don't anyways i
1:40:08started to get nervous about lecturing
1:40:10about those sorts of things i i thought
1:40:12geez i'm nervous about this isn't that
1:40:15strange
1:40:16and part of it was because i did have
1:40:18some female students who came up to me
1:40:20after lectures and who were
1:40:23offended you know they were snippy and
1:40:25and sarcastic and that very rarely
1:40:27happened to me and so it was quite
1:40:30marked
1:40:32you know i'd have the odd hyper feminist
1:40:34type stomp out of my first class
1:40:37even a few years ago just as a you know
1:40:40demonstration of sorts but that
1:40:42that really meant nothing
1:40:44but and then now my graduate students
1:40:46started telling me that they were very
1:40:47nervous about discussing anything to do
1:40:49with sex differences and the women
1:40:51particularly and and so that's that
1:40:53started to become worrisome
1:40:56so
1:40:57and what do you see happening in in
1:40:59cambridge what's it been like there for
1:41:00you
1:41:02i mean well
1:41:03well really it's been it's been a very
1:41:05strict lockdown over the last uh 15 plus
1:41:07months or so
1:41:08but before that it wasn't you know it
1:41:10wasn't bad i was i was still fairly open
1:41:12with my views uh you know i wrote i
1:41:15defended uh you in an op-ed in the new
1:41:16york times i've written you know the
1:41:18luxury beliefs post i've i've not been
1:41:20i've not necessarily withheld my views
1:41:22um
1:41:24fortunately within my department i
1:41:25haven't had much of an issue i think the
1:41:26psych department here is very solid um
1:41:29but you know more broadly the culture
1:41:31the campus culture is um
1:41:34you know about the same as it is
1:41:35anywhere else uh sort of um people are
1:41:38people are afraid i had a conversation
1:41:39with a professor here
1:41:41last year i had lunch with him and he
1:41:44it was interesting when he told me he
1:41:45said that um it's not necessarily that
1:41:48the faculty agree with a lot of the sort
1:41:51of extreme political uh movements that
1:41:54are going on but they just want to be
1:41:56left alone um they just want to do their
1:41:58work they just want to do the research
1:41:59yeah and if a bunch of social mobs come
1:42:02after them and say you know you better
1:42:04sign this petition or you better say
1:42:05this or you better post that they just
1:42:07want to do it and and get get these
1:42:09people out of their lives get it out of
1:42:10their hair
1:42:11and so they're not
1:42:13they're not ideologues many of them
1:42:15probably most of them are not but they
1:42:17just want to sort of get back to their
1:42:19lives and they'll just do whatever they
1:42:20have to they're selected for that i mean
1:42:23to become an academic
1:42:26a research academic you have to be
1:42:28obsessive about some
1:42:30specialization
1:42:31and you have to
1:42:33wall yourself off from everything else
1:42:35and pursue that because otherwise you're
1:42:37not publishing your three papers a year
1:42:39or whatever it requires to maintain your
1:42:42academic status it takes a tremendous
1:42:44amount of specialization and so
1:42:46we set up universities to put up walls
1:42:49around people who were willing to
1:42:51specialize so they could do exactly that
1:42:54but it's laid them open to invasion by
1:42:57people who have a political agenda and
1:42:59that's often failed researchers who
1:43:01become administrators for example and
1:43:03who are interested in
1:43:06power which is pretty much what they
1:43:07talk about all the time as well
1:43:09and so i mean i've seen
1:43:11faculty
1:43:12are
1:43:14in some sense powerless
1:43:16by choice in some ways
1:43:18against the kinds of demands that you're
1:43:20describing but it's also a consequence
1:43:23of the selection methods that produce
1:43:24them to begin with and the purpose of
1:43:26the university
1:43:28i had a friend here uh who was very
1:43:31active online on social media so he was
1:43:33a graduate you know medical school
1:43:35graduate who came here is against
1:43:36cambridge scholar to do research and i
1:43:37think biochemistry or something
1:43:39and he posted something online about um
1:43:42his views on on being a pro-life person
1:43:45and
1:43:46you know his phd supervisor and people
1:43:49in his department were getting all kinds
1:43:50of calls you know saying that they had
1:43:52to let him go that they should fire him
1:43:55uh they need to kick him out of
1:43:56cambridge and so on and
1:43:58you know they basically they didn't kick
1:44:00him out but they told him like you have
1:44:01to take down your social media account
1:44:02because we just can't have people
1:44:04constantly calling and emailing and
1:44:06harassing and so on the activists just
1:44:08make it so costly
1:44:10to have an opinion that people just sort
1:44:12of you know they sort of silence
1:44:14themselves you know why why would you
1:44:15want to get involved they just sort of
1:44:17acquiesce to it not because they agree
1:44:18but just because they don't want to have
1:44:20to deal with the burden it's very it's i
1:44:21mean it's a sort of clever strategy i
1:44:23think on on the part of the activists
1:44:25um
1:44:26that's something that i'm interested in
1:44:27too is just like who who tends to to be
1:44:30attracted to those movements and how
1:44:31effective they are i mean i've seen
1:44:33academic papers retracted because um the
1:44:36journal editor uh you know they posted
1:44:38something like you know we had to
1:44:39withdraw this paper because the journal
1:44:40editor received credible threats of
1:44:42physical violence like you can literally
1:44:44threaten to kill the journal editor and
1:44:46then they'll just take take out whatever
1:44:47paper you want him to take out i mean
1:44:49it's uh like it's very interesting to
1:44:51see that this is this is uh the world
1:44:52we're living in
1:44:55yeah well it's no it's no joke to be
1:44:57targeted like that and it's not
1:44:59surprising it shuts people down
1:45:01it's really hard i mean it's
1:45:02understandable yeah i don't begrudge
1:45:04anyone for for for doing it um a lot of
1:45:07people don't
1:45:09yeah they just don't have the stomach to
1:45:11deal with with that level of of
1:45:13notoriety or controversy um the way that
1:45:16you and others have
1:45:17yeah well it isn't obvious that i've
1:45:18dealt with it either so i'm still here
1:45:21but that's about all i'd say about it
1:45:23it certainly hasn't been
1:45:24it's been terrible i'm sorry i took your
1:45:26personality test um
1:45:29shortly after it it came out when you
1:45:30still had the discount going and i
1:45:32scored in the ninth percentile in
1:45:34agreeableness um
1:45:36so i think that might have something to
1:45:38do with why i'm okay with with uh you
1:45:40know sort of taking on some of this heat
1:45:43yeah yeah well the thing about
1:45:45disagreeable people is that they will
1:45:46say what they think
1:45:48yeah
1:45:49yeah yeah yeah so was that compassion or
1:45:51politeness
1:45:53it was it was it was very low on
1:45:55politeness and a little higher on
1:45:56compassion but still like pretty low on
1:45:59both
1:46:00uh and it averaged out to the ninth
1:46:01percentile so so at least i'm i'm you
1:46:04know a little more compassionate than i
1:46:05am polite
1:46:07well one in 10 isn't you know isn't that
1:46:10low really all things considered
1:46:12so
1:46:13but but that would explain that would
1:46:16explain your willingness to take
1:46:18confrontational positions or adversarial
1:46:20positions let's say well obviously you
1:46:22also believe that they're you know that
1:46:24you're relating something that is true
1:46:26so we don't know how much moral courage
1:46:28it takes and what personality attributes
1:46:31are
1:46:31shaping the ability to
1:46:33voice unpopular truths but i suspect
1:46:35disagreeableness has something to do
1:46:37with it
1:46:38it's strange in my case because i'm very
1:46:40agreeable as it turns out but
1:46:42which is probably why i pay a high price
1:46:44for doing it even though i do do it
1:46:47so interesting
1:46:49yeah i was uh yeah i mean i i'd gotten
1:46:52in a lot of trouble in school as a kid i
1:46:54um
1:46:55yeah i just always had this sort of um
1:46:58disposition
1:46:59to uh to rebel and to question rules and
1:47:02and so on and and fortunately over time
1:47:05i was able to get it under control to
1:47:06some extent i also scored pretty high in
1:47:08conscientiousness which may be part of
1:47:09why i was able to
1:47:11land where i where i've landed but i you
1:47:14know it was a long securities path to
1:47:16get here
1:47:17right yeah well conscientiousness is a
1:47:19colder virtue but it tends to pay off in
1:47:22the long run
1:47:24so what do you think you're going to do
1:47:26when you finish your degree you know you
1:47:28said you're you're not that interested
1:47:29in pursuing an academic path
1:47:32yeah i well my book is supposed to come
1:47:34out later next year so near the end of
1:47:36next year and i'll probably be spending
1:47:39a lot of time promoting that and
1:47:42yeah i i don't know i do enjoy research
1:47:45writing teaching all of those things so
1:47:47in whatever capacity i can
1:47:49continue to do that whether it's working
1:47:51at a think tank
1:47:52or or even just going full independent
1:47:55and and sort of starting my own channel
1:47:56or something like that um
1:47:59and yeah i'll just be continuing writing
1:48:00and and
1:48:02sharing my views in one way or another
1:48:04although i'm not exactly sure what form
1:48:05that'll take
1:48:07well it was really good talking with you
1:48:09today i thought the discussion was
1:48:11moved along at a great clip and uh i
1:48:14appreciated your viewpoints and your
1:48:15candor all of that and
1:48:18i learned a fair bit as a consequence of
1:48:20talking to you and so much appreciated
1:48:24likewise thank you dr peterson you bet
1:48:26you bet good to meet you maybe we'll
1:48:28meet up in cambridge if i ever come
1:48:30there
1:48:31let's do it
1:48:32[Music]
1:48:55you

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