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

27:28So when you play Super Mario and you're rather the boss, you know, first time you get smashed. But then after it's a, I went, it's all the fireball. You hide yourself in the corner and then after you jump on it again. And it works all the time. Right. But when you play against other players, no, because if you, if it works once, the other players learn, and then you have to expect that, you know, you have to anticipate their next move, knowing that themselves, they try to anticipate your next move. So what you have is that the complexity of playing with other people is way more difficult to solve as a problem than the complexity of playing with either objects or even low -wellness animals.

28:09So this challenge that we face, I think it has likely put on tremendous pressure on our cognition to be smarter and all what we do most of what we do, kind of results of our but wrong, solving and being successful at his social problems. Yeah. OK, so what's the difference in strategies that we use when we're being cooperative, than when we're being in conflict? Because yeah, sure, self -deception, we're going to believe most of the things that we say, that makes it easier to lie. But we can't do that all the time. we have to be more collaborative and more sort of honest and aligned with certain people and more adversarial and more in conflict with others.

28:58So how does cooperation and conflict, how does two things change? How does the way the show up change? I think I tend to talk a lot about here in about self -decision and conflict because often we kind of minimize it or don't talk about it as much. But I think we should emphasize that in our social interactions, cooperation, I mean, we should appreciate how much cooperation there is. Most of what we do in life in society, right, is we abide by a lot of social rules about conventions, about how to do things. You know, you grow it and you drive, you're in the US, so you drive on the right side of the world, right?

29:36I mean, the striker, so I grow on the left. And I mean, you're going to do that 100 % of the time, right? I mean, at least in the US, some other countries is random. But if you do that, and everybody does that, so says this is regularity, and this is cooperative. This is, it benefits everybody. I mean, sometimes, you know, you could benefit from breaking a few rules and some people do, but if you go on the road, most people respect the rules. And you can extend this in size to all the areas of your life. If you go at work and people do work, they don't, you know, most people don't and dissolve the company and run away in another country with the money, etc.

30:14So cooperation is we appreciate how much cooperation there is and we comply with rules most of the time. And I think maybe one image that you could have is that if you think about a football soccer match or whatever sport you prefer, there are rules. rules. And the rules are applied. That is, people follow most of the time the rules. But at the same time, it would be wrong to say that people really follow fully the rules. Because if you think about football, for instance, people pull your shirt, they are kind of try to go over the line without being just enough for their referee not to blow the whistle So that's what we do in life.

30:57So there are rules and mostly we follow them. But, you know, if we can get some advantage by not following exactly or by going just close to the line, then we will have a tendency to do that. And self -disception here is going to help us because we can do that while convincing ourselves that we're not. Okay, so if we are called up, it says, oh, I didn't do anything. I didn't know I was doing anything wrong. So we are mostly cooperative, But there is always a potential element of conflict, which often we try to rationalize our behavior with self -disception, try to get some advantages. It seems to me that communication would never really be fully cooperative, that even the most cooperative team, two people team, would always be ever so slightly in conflict.

31:44Yeah, yeah, no, you're totally right. Once again, I really stress the aspect of cooperation. I think we need to approach it. How much cooperation there is in communication. But at the same time, you're totally right. That there was, you know, we are not ants. There was always an element of conflict conflict is a big word, but it just means that we don't want the same thing. It could be as much as, you know, somebody wants to talk a long time, and somebody else wants to talk less, right? And there's a negotiation you have. Like if you are with your uncle, who talks to you at a wedding forever, you know, you want to do something else as kind of a conflict.

32:19Yeah. And so the conflict is everywhere. And I think it explains once you appreciate that, it explains a lot of the kind of thing which seems weird on our mysterious in communication. For instance, in this book, you had you write about it in several books, I don't remember the, maybe I think the is book on language 94 Stephen Pinker talks about why we use I think there is the the food for a food book so more recent book What we use in Jorak's pitch which is we use ambiguous statements or in windows for instance when you're a date at the end of a date You might say no do you want to go up to have a drink right?

33:04You don't want to say something more explicit The question is why do you do that because When you said you want to go up to have a drink it's pretty you know It's pretty clear what was involved, but you're not going to say, you know, to be more explicit. So, he gives an example about, you know, somebody trying to bribe a policeman, is they're all, you know, I would like for us to find a way to solve it here and he gives his wallet and there's a bill sticking out of the wallet. So he's not saying, do you want $50 and, you know, let me go, he says something and because so, and I'm a good is everywhere.

33:38So for instance, you know, when they're conflicting the office, usually it's not open. People are going to drop hints, but they're not happy with you, right? They do, they can be passive -aggressive. They're not going to say, you know, I'm not happy because of that. So why do we not say things clearly and explicitly? Well, it's because of this conflict element. Because if there's a conflict By not saying something, I can in a way Convent the message without With keeping plausible deniability if things go wrong Okay, so if I say for instance, do you want to go up out of a drink and my date says no?

34:16I can pretend that I was just going to you know invite for a drink so you can play the game where we pretend that Nothing more was involved if I Tell the policeman I would like could we solve this here? and I don't offer clear bribe. The policeman may not be able to have a case to put me in jail, as a time for bribery. And in the office, if there is a conflict, and I get angry and says, what are you implying? And say, I'm not implying anything. So you keep plausible deniability. And so this is why our communication is so rich, because often we don't say what we mean, but we convey it indirectly.

35:27how to code or build a website or do back end inventory management. Shopify takes all of that off your hands and allows you to focus on the job that you came here to do, which is designing and selling an awesome product. You can upgrade your business and get the same checkout that we use at Newtonic with Shopify by going to the link in the description below and signing up for a $1 per month trial period or by heading to Shopify .com slash modern wisdom or lowercase. that Shopify .com slash modern wisdom to upgrade just selling today. I was listening to Rob Henderson talk to Louise Perry about the Sydney Swini advert.

36:03So Sydney Swini ad for the jeans? Yeah, did this ad for American Eagle and everybody got upset about it and what was interesting was the way that women sort of criticized Sydney Swini was not the way that if you were a robot you would probably predict. It wasn't she is being sexually overt and has big boobs and is a potential, intracexual rival for some other high value partner that I would like to get with and she is going to set an unrealistic standard of beauty that is going to be difficult for us all. No, no, no, no, it was none of that. It was all couched in moral terms. It was she's pushing eugenics.

36:52She once attended a Trump rally. Her family is like central southern American flag wave in truck driving country music listening, Hicks. And it was at no point was the actual thing that was the issue being pointed at. It was all she's a bad person. And I said that me and Rob were at dinner last night singing your praises. By the way, we've managed to get 35 minutes in and I haven't plugged your substack. Can everyone go and subscribe to optimally irrational and substack please because it is one of the best things and it is criminally under -subscribed. It is Bitcoin at one dollar. So everyone can go and subscribe to that now.

37:38And you can get most of the stuff for free. Um, the interesting thing, women have a failure of a theory of mind, cross -sex mind reading failure here, I think. They think that by derogating Sydney's Swini's morality, other men will think, well, that's a beauty standard that is unreasonable. She's a bad person. Given that she's a bad person, I should not find her attractive. Now, maybe it's some intracexual competition that they think if men see that lots of other women do not consider Sydney Swini to be a good person, they might not be attracted to them. I'm going to just lay it out for the women that are listening.

38:24That's not true. Men are not going to not find Sydney Swini attractive just because other women don't find her a good person. However, if you are Leonardo DiCaprio, And lots of other similarly valued men, if Keanu Reeves and Hugh Grant and Jared Leto and a bunch of other Hollywood A -listers were to say, I know that you fancy Leonardo DiCaprio, but he's a bad man. He's morally unjust. I do think that that would impact women's assessment of this. It's sort of male competition, Neary, that men's judgment of other men is kind of a big mediator of how women find that man to be attractive. This is David Putz's stuff.

39:12I just thought he was really interesting. You know, when you're talking about ambiguity, deniability, you have this first level, which is it's not about her locks. It's about eugenics. It's about being right of center. It's about not caring about normal people, etc, etc. And then the reverse wouldn't be true. I just thought that was a really interesting setup. But I might be totally wrong. I'm this is this a fresh theory. Okay. Now, I get the idea of intracexual competition. And there are all psychological research showing that I don't remember the details, but I've seen papers where when you put a beautiful woman, she's more likely to get criticized or to be the target of gossip, etc.

39:57And that kind of makes sense. I mean, not because I want to be clear that it's not because women are bad. like, you know, men's have all the problems and all the top of competitions. It's just a intersectional competition in on both sides. In the case of Sweden, I could definitely see how this kind of plays rule because yeah, I think also because of what you said, I think also in the case of the ad, which I so I guess it breaks a bit of the code, the political code. I mean, the US at the moment, you know, the last years was very big about gender rules, et cetera. It's kind of, it says, there's two things.

40:37First, it's overtly kind of sexualizing the body of a woman. And two, it's talking about genes, which is biology. And I think these two things, it's kind of, you know, hurts the kind of political, ideological setup on part of the US and particular on the left. And so I can see how that could trigger this kind of reaction. I don't know anything about this in this with political allegiance or whatever, but I could see how people would try to you know would react like a, as you said, the coalition, if you perceive that being from the out group, from you know against your group and then people get very mean and that can also blend as you say with intracexual competition, but I could see how you're trying to dig something on her, on the family, whatever, That's the collisional mindset.

41:29The other ambiguity in you window, plausible deniability thing, like the perfect example of this I think is venting. So some of the great research done around venting. Again, this isn't for me to lay it at the feet of women. Guys have, like, intersexual competition between men and women. But women are a bit more interesting around this. They're just more complex when it comes to that. I'm a complex, yeah. Interest sexual competition games and the way that they communicate and so on and so forth. But venting is so fucking fascinating, dude. Like, I just find it, it's maybe the most interesting style of human communication.

42:08Yeah. I'm talking to you, I'm Christine, you're Lisa, and we're talking about our friend, Roberta. And I say, I'm so worried about Roberta, Lisa. She's just sleeping with all of these guys. And I'm really worried that she's gonna get her heart broken. And I keep trying to warn her about it, but she just doesn't seem to listen to me. Okay, like on the surface, I'm being a good person, I'm being cooperative, I'm caring, I'm being compassionate for my friend, but under the surface, what I'm doing is talking totally openly about Roberta's sexual exploits. I'm implicitly putting myself on a high moral pedestal by saying, I would never.

42:45That is not part of me. And it's all couched in if Roberta ever finds out that I told you, I'm like, Yeah, Roberta, I'm just so worried about you. I didn't, you know, this is my care. So so good. I can so I think I can give you the the reason why you have these defense between men and women and Basically the kitty first is On network of friends. How are network of friends work? Men have large networks of friends or use a large coalition and they have loose ties, weak ties. You know, you have a lot of friends, you know, and one friend you cannot talk to him for two years and when you see him back, say, oh, right, you know, how is it going?

43:29Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. And that's one man, I'll tell you maybe because why afterwards. And women, they have tight on networks, small networks, a few friends, and with a lot of investments, you know, they took a lot, they invested a lot, and so there is also a good sitting because you're talking about, because you manage reputation, you want to learn about reputation, you manage your own reputation. So, friendship, friendship for women is much more intense in terms of the investment in each particular friendship partnership. And I think the reason for that is that men and women had to solve different problems in the ancestral times.

44:10So when you read a faceting book by evolutionary psychologist Sarah Hurtry, you know, mothers in ancestral times, one thing that appears is that it's very hard to raise kids. You know, now you've got, you get a kid at the hospital and then you've got the nurse and then after you go to the kindergarten, you know, and drop the kid at the kindergarten, super easy. But okay, all the sisters, they didn't have that. And you know, you need to collect food, there's no supermarket to find the food and you have to collect food with this stuff, which is just sucking the energy out of you. And so the survival of children, like he was much higher when you got help.

44:47So there's a lot of what we call alloparenting. That is, a mother gets health from her family, about her from her mother, but also from other mothers. Sometimes you know, other mothers helping to breastfeed your kid when you can't. And so, you know, for that you need, if you want to give your kid to other women, you need a lot of trust. Because the kid is a huge stage. So you will, very strong bones, We have a few people who give you a lot of help. So that is you know, you can't ask Somebody would you barely know to take your kid and breastfeed your kid, right? So so this is small network Tight bones man's on the contrary most likely, you know that they didn't have this problem they were Engage more in kind of occasional collective work occasionally warfare occasional hunting Which is in big groups and in this case the defection of one person is bad, but not as dramatic If this woman drops your kid on the ground, that's terrible.

45:42If these guys, as I'm sure, for the herd, is a bad guy, but you're not going to die for that. And so I think that's why we have these kind of men friendships are much lower maintenance, right, and female friendship. But I think this natural is kind of a reflection of the kind of different social problems we had to solve, once it had to solve. Well, I think the way that men, the way that men and women compete, you know, over versus covert, I think the blast radius as well of male success versus female success. People would assume I think that guys are more competitive in a way because the status just games are more overt.

46:33You can see how this works. But I use this example of the Lionel Messi. So if you are the reserve gold goalkeeper on the team that Lionel Messi plays for. You might think, well, I mean, I am so far in the shadow of them, I'm not even the guy that is in the goal while the other guy that's the superstar at the other end scoring in the opposition's goal. But the sort of blast radius of goodwill of you being attached to Lionel Messi is so great. In the same way as he is a hunting party of eight me, you and six of our friends that go and you're the one that's really fast and robets the one that's really strong and another one's the one that's really great at creating a spear.

47:22And I'm like, I'm the second best carrier or something. And I'm like, well, I'm not exactly the top guy, but the fact that I'm associated with this coalition of men kind of raises me up in the standing overall. The blast radius seems to be wide. I'm not convinced that the same thing is true for women. I'm not convinced that a single successful woman who is in your coalition has the same kind of blast radius. So look, yeah, I don't know. OK, I don't know work about that. But if you think at a kind of anecdotal level, it seems to me, and I think there is research on that. But I don't know any specific.

48:07But you know that you see that in movies that you have these girls, the groups of the cute girls, hang together. You know, they are like, and so you would wonder if it was, because if there was too much competition from being close to the top girl, why would you want to be together? You'd want to be separate. So I think I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Okay, so that's why ambiguity in a new window is useful because plausible deniability. In particular, plausible deniability, I think that Pinker says is when you negotiate the relationships. For instance, when you're dating, you're negotiating the relationship, whether you want to turn from friendship to more than friendship.

48:54So you want to keep your options open in case it doesn't work out. When you are with a policeman, you're negotiating the relationship, whether you're in the law or outside of the law, right? So you want to keep your options open. So when you're negotiating relationships in particular, you want to keep plausible the reliability. There is one thing in Stephen Pinker, as Buker, I love is he referenced the movie Harry when Harry met Sally. So for the young listeners, it's an old movie from the 1990s. And Harry basically met Sally and he sees a friend of his current girlfriend and he hits on her. I think he says you're very attracted.

49:32And she calls him out. He says, how could you hit on me while you go with my friend? And he says, oh, I didn't hit on you. He says, oh, well, maybe I did. And so what? I take it back. And she says, you can't take it back. It's out there. And it sounds there because now the difference is that if it's not ambiguous, once you have a knowledge that you have done it, once you have admitted that you have done it, then it's in the open. He can't anymore pretend he is not done it because now everybody knows. She knows that he did it, he knows that she knows, etc. So you know this is common knowledge. And so you want to be able to avoid this.

50:05This is risky common knowledge. You know, an open overture is risky. So being on MIGU's helps prevent this kind of thing. Okay. So can we look at ambiguity as sort of a communication style, a type of deception that we've sort of normalized? I'm not sure if it's a kind of deception. It's one of these three aspects of communication. That is, I can say something. I talked before about recursive mind reading. You can think of recursive mind -wraiting as we have different levels of beliefs. So one of the beliefs is, you know, you might believe or might believe that you, you, or something then you might believe that I have this belief.

50:50So for us like maybe let's say we are talking about where to go in holiday and I want to go in Brazil and so that's the fact. You might think oh Lionel wants to go in Brazil so he has a belief on me and then I can say oh Chris believe that I want to go to Brazil. have a belief on your belief. And you can climb this channel of beliefs, right? And it gets obviously very easily complicated. And then now what you can do is when you say ambiguous thing is that you can say something which are going to change with first sort of beliefs, but keeps ambiguity at the higher levels. So if I if I'm passive aggressive, for instance, I might let you to think that I'm annoyed at you, but you're not sure that I know that you know, etc.

51:32So you can be keeping on the top, but I can still manage to let you know I'm not happy, but then now do you know that I know that you know that I'm not happy maybe not. And so when you tell me are you unhappy, I can say no, I can no, you think that wasn't happy. No, it was not unhappy. See. What's paltering? I'd never heard of that term before. Yeah, paltering is another interesting concept. there was a paper published a few years ago on this. It's, you know, one aspect of this rich aspect of communication. Because, because we work with this communication works with us trying to be always relevant, you can actually manipulate that to say something and use the fact that people are going to interpret it.

52:26So you can say something, you expect it's going to interpret it in your favor, but actually you're inducing people in error. So I give you an example which I wrote in the post. Suppose Jan and Jack are a couple and Jay said I'm going to do a cake for your birthday and then the last minute she doesn't have enough time. So she go to the bakery and she brings it and Jack says, oh, what a great cake. And she said, oh, thank you. Okay, well, what is she saying what is a thank you? She must know that Jack before because of his information Assume she did it. So when she says thank you, she just I Say imply as she did the cake, okay, but so this is Paul to increase saying thank you for what a great cake is not a lie Right, but it is altering is saying something true Thank you as you know, she's she's not lying saying thank you But which is inducing the other person in mistake in error, right now She's leading Jack to believe that she did the cake by saying thank you.

53:22So paltering is, you can actually deceive people by saying the truth. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Function. Did you know that your annual physical only screens for around 20 biomarkers, which leaves a ton of gaps when it comes to understanding your health, which is why I partnered with Function Dereun lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, and then they've got a team of expert physicians that take the data put into a simple dashboard and give you actionable recommendations to improve your health and lifespan.

53:54They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels and your thyroid function, getting your blood withdrawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with function it is only $499 and for the first thousand modern wisdom listeners you get $100 off, making it only $399 bucks. So right now you can get the exact same blood panels that I get and save $100 by going to the link in the description below, are heading to functionhealth .com slash modem wisdom. That's functionhealth .com slash modem wisdom. That's interesting. Yeah, I, I, uh, it's so funny, man, when you think about the complexity and how it's not the first order thing, it's not the second order thing, it's five levels down.

54:35It kind of becomes easier to work out why chess is actually a simpler game than just having a conversation and fully understanding what it is that a human means? Yeah, exactly. This is exactly that. Because, you know, a computer, you're playing chess in a kind of much larger, much complex, much more complex, astragic space. You have to, a computer would have to form a belief about, you know, the world from a belief about your beliefs. And now, now having a model of you running the same stuff. So you need to have a model and then a model of you running the same model. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes.

55:14Yes, yes. Well, that's why I clonically tried to explain about my consciousness theory of mind thing that in order for me to be able to understand what you're thinking, we both need to have a theory of mind because if we were just a automaton, we would be predicting each other, which I don't think allows enough, with the level of complexity that we've got, like motivation, reason, complex cooperation, all of these things start to fit in. And you know exactly and you know in a way the way the computer programming solve the problem is kind of cheating. This thing what is LLM? What are the large language models?

55:54Just large language models have been trained on human production. So in a way the computers really never started solving cracking the code of communication from scratch. They just model that. Yeah, they just imitate. So they're like all the humans talking and basically you can think about when you ask a question to charge IPT, trying to find the best answer using all the corpus of human discussion and matching it's not exactly what it's doing, but you could think of it as trying to find the kind of interactions, the kind of answer that human have produced in this kind of setup. So it's kind of it's more like an imitator.

56:29It's doing more than that actually. But really, it's using the corpus of human as a primary source to do what it does. So it's not like the chess computers, the chess computers, they put the rule of chess, and they put some algorithms to estimate the values of position in the future, and then they use brute force to be able to compute like 10, 20 positions ahead. That's not what the LLM does. It doesn't start from scratch. It's used the human language or ability to communicate, to try to imitate it. Yeah, which is not the same, right? It's kind of like it's the equivalent of a P zombie type, type scenario.

57:08It is. And you can see, once you understand what communication is, as I said, you can see where LLM still fail. For instance, one thing that you have with chat GPs, it is very psychophantic. It's always telling you your grades. Yes, yes. And also, it never says, oh, that's a good question. I'm not sure. I don't know. One time out of ten, nine times out of ten, it usually is sick, a fan -tick, but accurate. On one time out of ten, it is completely confident and absolutely wrong. Exactly. So if you ask me a question, because I'm trying to be relevant, I don't want to give you a wrong answer. So I will try to assess the quality of my information.

57:50Relative to the information you already have, I'm already going to tell you something. If I think I know something that you don't, that is useful to you. If I don't, I say, well, I'm not sure I know, you know, I have anything to say on this. But the charge of it is not designed for that. It's designed to predict the kind of, you know, answer word afterwards that would be in a conversation. And so it doesn't have this mind -reading ability. It doesn't go and say, oh, Chris, you asked this question. Actually, you shouldn't ask this question. That's the wrong question. The real question you want, because I know what you want.

58:23You want, you have this problem. You have this question, you should have, this other question, this is the answer. That's what you mean to do, okay? But charge if it can do that. In what other ways, you mentioned seduction earlier on, would you like to come up says for a drink? What other ways is seduction a communication gain? Well, you know, it's a, it's seduction is really, you have, I was talking about like the negotiation of the relationship, like the relationship stages, friend or not friend. It's all about that, right? So, you have, no worries actually. It's interesting because things have changed a bit.

59:06With the online dating, you remove a lot of ambiguity about the stages of what you're doing. You're not in the past when you meet in the bar, when you meet with friends, initially, your friends, and then there's a kind of step -by -step you make. because you break the ambiguity step by step. So you say something which is a bit nicer or a bit warmer than you would with anybody else and you see how the other person reacts and the other person either doesn't react and so maybe you don't go further or maybe the other person reacts and then you can continue. And that's the way the ambiguity is progressive by his small steps which are safer, progressively reduced until the point where you're, there's not much ambiguity remaining that you can break it.

59:51So that's the old style. And I guess this is still happening, but the thing is that we've modern dating because you have online dating, you start from the kind of more openly explicit point of view that we're here to consider whether we are possible match. Which for my generation must be a bit strange, but yeah, that's the way it works. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did I guess this shows just how important coalitions and social connection is to humans. It's fundamental. It is fundamental. You know, for all of our several levels, I mean, at a deep level, if you look at the past, I mean, our ancestors were not living, it was not like total unlucky, but it was not super peaceful.

1:00:38There's a lot of evidence of, there's a lot of people dying from violent death and usually even within a community, the violent death comes at the head of other people from the community. Like basically you imagine, you know, you piece of half the tribe, one day you don't wake up. They come during the light and they deal with you. So, and that happens a lot. Which means that when you think about it, then internal politics is key. When you want to be with a stronger pro -France, your reputation matters. you don't want to feel that you are the outside, etc. And all psychology is really tuned to do that.

1:01:13That is to track where are the groups? In which group I am? What is my standing in the group? Are people happy with me, etc. And when we fail, when we kind of, you know, full -done in repetition and when people are pissed off at us, etc. This can be very anxiety inducing because we are really a social space. And so, you know, if, why do getting, you know, when our friends, if our friends are not happy with us, that really can really upset us because that's really we feel all I'm losing. I'm not in this group anymore and you have social experiments. Very social, simple social experiments when you have like somebody, there are people throwing the balls and they throw the ball at you and you throw the ball at all that it's on computer.

1:01:57You saw two people, saw the bullet each other and sometimes they saw the bullet you and you saw the bullet back at them. And what they do is that after a while they get the two other people to stop throwing the bullet you. You know, it's a mean experiment. And what they found out that it's very simple experiment like kind of induced anxiety in the respondent because it's a game. It's like why are they not signing the bullet to me? You get exclude. It's very simple game. So the feeling of exclusion and the monitoring but where we stand in which group of So is something which is, yeah, very deep in our psychology.

1:02:30Yeah, I guess the thing that's interesting or that I can't work out is why it is that people feel intention socially, that why it is that there's a friction between autonomy and connection. So if it's just that coalitions are really important, social connection is lifeblood to humans, but we also want this degree of independence. I suppose that goes back to what you said. We're not quite ants, but we're not quite robins. And we're in this sort of messy middle zone. And even us, how many times have you, somebody asked your partner, do you wanna talk or do you wanna be on your own? And like I don't know.

1:03:13It's like they actually don't know. I kind of want to talk, but I kind of need to sort this out. Do you need a hand? I want to have autonomy. I want to have independence, but I also want to be able to rely on people. I want to be able to open up. There's a friction between the economy and connection, which is difficult to navigate. Yeah, it's a good point. I've not talked about this before you asked a question, but I guess the way I feel it is that when you ask for autonomy is at a more superficial level that I want to turn to me now. I want to sometimes something now. But the belonging to the group is kind of for good.

1:03:47So I want to feel that I belong that I'm safely in a group that tomorrow if I come back, they will be the group. Now, if tomorrow, yeah, today maybe, I want to be a bit on my own, and because as you say, we're not ants, so I don't want to always be always shaped by everything from the group. But I think there is this kind of, the primary thing is that I want to feel confident that I'm part of the group. And if I, if this is getting threatened, or if I worry that it's threatened, I'm going to be stressed about it. Um, okay. Well, what does, what does coalition psychology tell us about our anxiety to belong?

1:04:26Then we need, we can't bear to be left out if we feel like the group is pulling away from us. How does coalition all psychology sort of tie in with that need to belong? Well, I think it's, it's explained why we have this need to be, so I said, I gave you the kind of extreme version about why we need why we need coalition not to be picked up and not to be at risk in ancient times. But really, coalitions are useful for plenty of things. In the case for instance, mothers, you know, being with a tight group of other mothers, it helps provide support and insurance. If you're in a big group, you can do things that you could not do, like for example, moving house, you move sofas, et cetera, you can do it on your own.

1:05:10So, coalitions are useful for plenty of things. And I think our collisional psychology is that we always care about being in a group, we care about two things, we care about being in a group and our standing in the group, our standing is how other people see us in the group. And when you unpack a group, there's always an internal hierarchy. So it's not like a fractal. If you think of a fractal, it's kind of a Russian dose. You know you open a Russian door there's an all -Russian door, okay? So a coalition is like that. So you have a group of friends and from the outside is like oh these are the group of friends Okay, but you know go inside and actually in the group of friends there's kind of a near in your circle and outer circle One one thing you can see very easily very nice to be nice.

1:05:58Yeah, very interestingly I think is the game show survivor So you watch a game show survivor Officially it's a game show on surviving in the jungle But actually, most of it is not. Most of it is a collisional game because you have a group and they tell you at the end of the day you'll have to eliminate one of you, okay? And so, or it's kind of run on the anxiety of being excluded massively. So, you know, they are in a group and they know that at the end of the day, one of them is going to be out. And what's very interesting in the show is that right away you see that there's an inner hierarchy.

1:06:32People says, oh, I'm safe. I mean, the top three. There's a top tree in the group. How do you know what's the top tree, right? And so there's a top tree and there's the loose two and there's a bottom two for instance one. So the bottom two they say they know that they are on the chopping block. So you know we have this psychology. We quickly go in a group and we feel all in this single group. There's this guy, their tight bone, their respective others. They're unmovable. They're part of the group. But me, I'm kind of, I mean between, I'm not sure. Maybe they could, they could live their life with me, right?

1:07:04And so if you're like that, you're stressed, et cetera. So this is the way we, or psychology shape, we really care about these things. And that drives a lot of what we do. Well, surely you can't have a flimsy coalition. One of the things that you need is commitment. So what are the ways that coalitions test loyalty? So I mean, you're right. Right. When a key challenge for coalitions is the, you need, you need the commitment that people are going to work for the coalition. If you're on a football team, you need the confidence that everybody is going to put to work their best to try to win the match.

1:07:47If you're in an army platoon, you need your confidence that people will have your back when you run towards the front line, etc. So what you have is that here we have a problem in again theory it's a problem of that you have two potential situations one situation where people trust each other and all go and work for the group Okay, so the football team gives us 100 % and the army platoon all running the same direction at the same time And you have the other situations where if I don't trust that you and others will do that Why would I do that? So maybe I don't I don't run and you don't believe you don't trust that people run so we are ineffective.

1:08:26So it's also a possibility. And to move us from the situation where an ineffective group to the situation where we run as a unit, we need the confidence each other, the shared confidence that we believe that we think we're a unit and we work as a unit. And how do you get that? You get that with social identity. So the groups work like they have this kind of bomb, so you know, this feeling that we we are a team and I know we are a team, I know you know we are a team. We share the team's logo. We share the team hats, you know, the team T -shirt We share the team's song before the match, no, etc.

1:09:02And so and that explains a lot of gain out about the human psychology We think things we shall describe as irrational like you go the football supporters Spend a lot of money on the science for their football team This thing during the match sometimes they sing during the match. I don't even watch the match and you think that's it's not be surprising, but that's because of psychology gives a lot of weight on carrying about signs of loyalty, displaying signs of loyalty because being seen as a good group member, being trusted as a good group member, you don't want to signal, you want to tell everybody, hey you know guy, I'm a part of your team and you know I'm clearly I'm not going to defect anytime and so this explains a lot of what we do, we always want to show and we're worried about signs that people could think or maybe they will think I'm disloyal, you know, I'm not gonna, etc.

1:09:54So we care about that a lot. Yeah, I had it in my head this idea around, especially during sort of 2020, when the purest beliefs you needed to adopt your entire ideology wholesale, that what people were doing with some of the more extreme political beliefs that people were being asked to raise a hand in support of was that it was less about we think that this particular new policy is something which is really effective. And more, this is a test of field. It's like, are you prepared to put reason to the side? And actually in that way, the more ridiculous the political belief, the stronger the show of your loyalty to the group, because you've had to suspend even more of your reason and your rationality in order to...

1:10:53does that make sense? No, that doesn't make sense actually. It more than makes sense. There are people writing on this. You can think that beliefs is what's in your head. So it's, you know, whether beliefs, I believe yes, but at least size of claims that you hold the beliefs of the group. They are important to signal loyalty. And I think you're totally right that, you know, within the group, there's a competition to, there's, there's also kind of competition to look good within the group. So one, one thing you could have in particular group. And you can see that, you know, it's not just on the left, on the left, on the right.

1:11:33you sit in different ways. Is that if I want to claim, which is a bit more extreme, which is a border of, I made a bit of credibility that is I say something which is extreme or maybe the fact or evidence is not super strong. But I show to my group that I can so much about the message of my world, that I am willing to say something, which is that instead of if on the contrary, I'm like, oh, you know, I'm not sure on one hand on the other hand, people think like, I know it's not reliable when it will be. Yes, sometimes. Yes. Well, so you have the consequence of the fact that this can give a premium to exaggerations at the margin, because it's kind of competition for people to...

1:12:15I am even more committed. Look at how committed I am. I hope you only hold that version of the belief. Allow me to show you how much reality I'll suspend in service of this thing. But this is why I, you know, when you combine the need for coalition building with public displays of something that looks like loyalty and you put it online on the internet, and then you sprinkle algorithms in. This kind of explains almost all of political polarization as far as I can see. As soon as you see most of the political polarization is being one of two things. First is algorithms online can get you to click on stuff in one of two ways.

1:13:00The first way is to become better at predicting what you will click on. And the second is nudging your preferences to make you more predictable and more easy to work out. So algorithms work in two ways. It's not just becoming better at reverse engineering or final once. It's making the more predictable so that my algorithm works better. So this naturally pushes people out to the edges because if you're in the middle you go left on one thing You go right on the next thing you go right on the one after that and left on the one after that Said no if you just push people out to the edges that's more predictable.

1:13:32So that's the first thing But the second thing is as soon as you realize that If you don't adhere to your coalition's beliefs on this thing you pay Probably more than two costs, but you pay two very high costs The first one is you are seen by your own side as an unreliable ally. Well, you know, Lionel was with us on immigration, but he wasn't with us on gun rights. So what do we think is going to happen when the school reform comes in or the taxation change or what's going to happen with socialized healthcare? We need to keep an eye on him. We're going to ask to ostracize him a little bit. He's not going to be part of the inner sanctum.

1:14:08So that's the first cost that you pay on that. But on the other side, The opposition sees you as having flawed thinking, as not being committed to the cause, as not being actually that much of a steadfast. They can see the gaps in your coalition and they can see that you were a weak part of that. No, I agree. So I think what you have is that in every, in any kind of political situation, political system, you have different competing incentives. One, you have the loyalty collisional incentives, which are drive polarization, which is I care about being seen in my groups. And then you have the repuditional credibility incentive, which are present in communication games, right?

1:14:55So these are the stuff where if I tell you something, if I'm not diligent in the information provide to you, if I'm putting forward claims that you find out our false etc. I'm going to lose credibility. Then now the question is, who are the people care more about? In the good situation in the public sphere, people care more about the credibility. So, you know, yes, you have a lot of this to your coalition, but nonetheless, you don't want to say track put series, you know, because you worry that you know, you're going to lose your your credibility. I think the problem when it gets very polarized is that then you know the collisional instances retrump everything.

1:15:36So now saying something which is false but is in favor of your collisional then you don't have much cost anymore. And something I think that has happened over the recent years and maybe it's in part because of social media but I think it's more than that is that the kind of mainstream institutions which where I held in shake speech and for the credibility of what he said, do you think about the mainstream media or the scientists, universities, etc. They have lost their trust from the people and the ability to enforce its kind of credibility cost. And so the consequence in the political, not in the political party in the US, in the political arena, it doesn't cost much to say something which is wrong if you said it if you are within your coalition because there is no sanction.

1:16:28Right? So if something is wrong, it doesn't work. You drop it. And you can see something else. And you can move on. So this sounds a lot like politics. Right? I'm aware that we're talking about coalitions, but even the process of politics, not just the coalitions of the groups of people, the sports teams, the religious groups, whatever, is it, is it better do you think to understand democracy as a coalition game than a truth -seeking exercise? Yeah, totally. So I wrote about it. And I think it's key to understand what democracy is. So I'm not sure, maybe people have different views of democracy, but when I heard or looked at democracy initially, what I was younger, you hear a lot about the idea of democracy, Greece, the Greeks, they had the Agara, which is this public space, people meet and discuss, make collective decisions.

1:17:28And in a way, this is often used as an ideal and you judge the modern democracy relative to it. So, for us like, we think, oh, that was direct democracy. So, the real democracy is direct democracy. You have an assembly and they decide together. Now we have in, what we have in modern democracy, we have representative democracy. So you vote for people and in the parliament or in the presences that decide, right? So often this is seen as a kind of compromise, which is an imperfect compromise, because the real ideal democratic stuff is the agora. And then what we think that people do in this public sphere, the agora is that they try to find the right solution for the city, the right solution for the society.

1:18:14But I think that that is mistaken because once you understand that what we have is that what people with imperfectly aligned incentives, the iron groups, groups where we have gathered these people with similar incentives and similar interests and with opposite interests, what the key of politics is not finding the truth for most often, it's finding ways to how finding compromise between the different collisions. How you split the gains from cooperation. So we cooperate in society. We create wealth because there's no crime, because there is no war, because there's laws and companies work, et cetera.

1:18:53How do you split the gains? From huge taxation and very limited inequality for us to a very limited taxation and large inequality. How do you, and you know, it's not just that. But it's like, should we say that some professions are deserved more because it's harder, for instance, you have all these questions you can think of. And that's the debate of politics. And what you do is what you have is a coalition's, like it's something which is an impolite party, it's also in every day life. When you negotiate about bargaining, bargaining is present in all, always in all interactions, even in a household, for instance.

1:19:30You don't usually bargain, you know, right, rule and uncool way. You don't say, I want more. You know, you don't get your bus in space. You don't go to your bus and say, I want to raise, I want 20%. And why? Because that's what I want. No, you don't say it. I really feel like I'm contributing a lot to this project. I've worked very hard. I think that the team has been carried forward by me. The future growth of the business really depends on me. Yeah, so what you do is that you're using principles to be like fairness. You say, well, that's fair because of my contribution. I deserve more, right?

1:20:09I've been here for a long time. You know, I've experienced all that makes it I deserve more. And so what we use, we we engage you what the game theorists can be more called the game of moral. So there's a game of life. But instead of fighting and bargaining like if we're haggling on a street market every day. we have to go on principles in the game of morals and these principles are you can figure out as kind of general ways to solve all the kind of particular bargaining problems you face in your everyday life. So instead of bargaining in every situation like let's say in your household instead of every night is say haggling on who's going to do the dishwashing.

1:20:48You you bargain on general principles and these principles and solves all the individual situations. That's why our discussions are about fairness, agreements about principles, and that actually solves the problem. So, what you see in politics is that coalitions, like political parties, etc. They put forward ideological platforms, and these ideological platforms, they actually is this kind of proposals to change the principles of fairness, which are at the moment the compromise in society. So they're handling in the game of morals. It changed the social contract, which holds all the agreed principles of fairness we're using society to tilt how you bargain and who gets what's in practical situations.

1:21:43That's what politics is. So it's interesting because once you understand that, you understand that the political arguments are not either purely idealist. So it's not that people are ideally just ideas which comes from nowhere because they tend to reflect the interests of the coalitions. But sometimes these ideas, these principles, they have to be kind of consistent, they have to be regressed, they can't be incoherent, otherwise they can't work and make a case. And they can be themselves serving either because it would be flagrant about what it is that people are doing. Yeah, so if there were two softs, you know, if everything that you do when you put for principles is just to be self -serving, then people will know that there is no point listening to what you said.

1:22:25It's because, you know, there's no information in your principle. The principle in the way, it's like, you know, another example is like, let's say you start playing a game, you want to agree on rules. If when you propose to a rule for the game, I know that you always propose the rules which advantage you, I'm going to stop listening to you. So we need to propose a rules which can be an agreement where we think okay We're not sure you know tomorrow the rules might be against you and I know that you're going to abide by the rules so that's Yeah, you lose credibility if you always Just find the principle today which advantage you and contradict what you were saying yesterday What is a political ideology through this lens then because with that perspective It doesn't exactly feel like democracy is a system where people deliberate to find the common good Like what is a what is political ideology?

1:23:15Yeah, so I don't I mean when you say people They don't are a debate to find the common good. I think it's true And I think that the idea of common good itself and maybe it sounds a bit depressing but it's it's it's misguided There is no common good because because why individuals we have some converging interest, but not totally identical interest. So there is not one single common good. Let's say that even if you tell me, let's say we agree that climate change is important, and we need to build a windmills. Okay, do we put them in front of your house or in front of my house? Okay. So yes, there are good solutions.

1:23:55Some solutions are better than others, but there are always aspects of bargaining. And so the key is to find an agreement, which is going to be sustainable. You know, society is to find something which is not always lead people to try to renegotiate it, people to complain, et cetera. So we need to find what I say we need to. What works is finding agreement that people are willing to live with. Right. That's what it is. So ideologies is you can think that there are beads from coalitions to say, okay, you know what, I want, that's what I want. And if the coalition is very tiny and they can be very extreme because they have a few people, they can be very different from the rest of the population.

1:24:42If you have big coalitions, like big parties trying to win elections, typically they are mild, mildly different because there are too many people for this to be very extreme. But an ideology is a bit to change the social contract in your favor. So if you are maybe on the left you say we want more taxation, we want to reduce inequalities, we want these people work hard in working classes or high wages. If you are right maybe you say well we want less taxes, we want to give more incentives to entrepreneurs to be more successful, etc. And these are nice ideas but they tend to be aligned more with the interests of those who know what these bodies and those who want these bodies.

1:25:23and you try to move to tilt this compromised social contract the moment in one direction or the other. If democracy doesn't seek truth, why is it that people defend it so passionately then? Well, that's an excellent question. I think it is wrong to think that democracy is great because people seek truth. And by the way, we talked about the social media. One big disappointment with social media was that when you go the internet, people were thinking that some people were thinking it would be a big democracy, a big public sphere, a big agorah, every citizen is all going to be talking with each other.

1:26:06We can't, in a way, cut the middleman of the mainstream media, of the politicians for people to be enlightened and decide collectively about what to do. And then what you see that people watch cat videos and you know the algorithms feed them Not great content and they're not interested in politics and people are polarized So it didn't go at all in the direction people were hoping for so if democracy is not to find the truth what it is Where is it great? I think democracy is great because for the people most people It's a best system to ensure that their interests are represented what you can think of is any political system is characterized by the size of the body of people who select the leader.

1:26:51There is a book by political scientists and game theorists who call that the selectorite. Selectorite is the people selecting the leader. So for instance, in the USSR during the Soviet regime, it was a polypure. So you have a group of 12, 25 people. If you want to be the next leader, you need the majority in this group. So, okay, that's one version. Another version is when you have a lot of people, and democracy is a select right, basically, most of the population, population voting. So it's a large amount of people. What you have is that the collisional games are going to take place in the select rate.

1:27:27So the collisional games in the point bureau, if you know the history, it's very cutthroat because most people died. So that is basically your elected leader or your die. You know, the second guy, the one who's other elected, often has a limited lifespan because he's kind of a threat. So that's a real mortal game there, yeah. Exactly. And so the guy's eliminated, often. So the, the, the collational games are with me this thing. And in the democracy, the collational games are within the large body of citizens who vote. But what it means is that the leader, the aspiring leader, how many people that this leader has to please?

1:28:05Well, in the Soviet Union, the leader has to please, like, you know, 15 people to be elected. In a democracy, the leader has to please 51 % of the population. And because collisions are very flexible and can change a lot, if you want to please 51 % of the population, you might need to be able to personally talk to more than 51 % of the population, the other contender as well. And so what you have is that everybody's interests tend to be respected and taken care of because the politicians will compete to be elected. They care about you because you're part of the selectorate. When you're in the USSR, most people are not in the selectorate, but only a tiny portion of people are.

1:28:53And so if you don't matter for the leader, if you're not happy to bet for you. So I think that's what democracy is good because very large proportion of people decide with elected very flexible coalitions. So everybody has a chance to be at some point in the majority. And that means that you matter and the police has an interest, even if he's not philanthropist or even if he's not a pure altruist, he has an interest to care about what you think in order to get your support. What? The thing that sort of ties everything that we've spoken about together today, I guess is the invisibility of it to us, the fact that there is a thing happening and our awareness of what's actually happening, they sometimes touch up against each other.

1:29:44I mean, I remember the first time that I learned about self -deception and the funniest thing in the world, you're saying, yes, some people are self -deceptive. It's like, dude, you're so self -deceptive that you're deceiving yourself into believing that only some people are self -deceptive. That's right. Yeah, why is there anything else to explain other than the deception thing? Is there anything else to explain why we not aware that we're playing these games? Okay, I think that's a fascinating question. You know, we have been talking and saying all these games what we do and they are very complex and we're really good at it.

1:30:18Okay, but the same time there's a very surprising thing is that we, we often not aware that we're playing these games. I think you have several answers. One answer is that you don't need to know. In a way, nature, evolution doesn't need to give you the rule book for you to be effective. You know, we are very good at throwing stones, for instance, and we don't need to know the new time mechanics behind it. Right. So we anticipate the trajectory of a... You know, if you catch a baseball, a baseball is strong too. you're able to anticipate it's moving and catch it. And though, you do that before having done any physics in high school about telling you the laws of physics, et cetera.

1:31:04So in a way, nature doesn't need to give you the rule book for you to be effective. It can just give you the ways of solving the problem. I think that's one first answer. So we can be very good because we have the heuristics and the rules to work out in these games. Even if we don't need the full understanding about what's exactly happening. But I think there is also another aspect of it is that often it's even better if we don't know. And it's another strategic aspect. Is that you have the saying, for instance, sometimes you call people, you say, oh, this person is a player, or you say this person is very strategic.

1:31:41And this is actually not a compliment. When you say this person is very strategic, or this person is a player, you mean, this person is computing, is trying to find the best ways of doing, of acting without caring for principles, for instance. Do you want a friend with a strategic or do you want a friend with just loyal and, you know, trustworthy? Maybe somebody with a strategic is not totally trustworthy, basically, because maybe the calculations do not add up tomorrow is not going to be on the receiving end.

1:32:18You're going to be Maybe today is a friend because he finds its advantages, but what about tomorrow? So you don't, somebody will calculate every day whether it's advantage to be a friend with you or not. And so, you know, once this is a deep problem of trust, how can we trust each other, even that we always have options to defect from cooperation. There is always plenty of opportunities to take some short term advantage by not being fully cooperative. I could lie a bit, I could not do the right thing, you will not know, etc. So how can people trust each other? And one solution is to commit, to be committed to a course of action.

1:33:00So one solution is more than to be committed, to be committed credibly, and to be able to signal this commitment. I think love is a good example. If you have two men and women, if each of them were every day being in the relationship but open to checking whether other partners could be better. That would be hell. Imagine your relationship. And then every day, if another guy, if he finds another guy better in the street, she drops you. The problem of this kind of situation is that that would make it very risky to invest a lot of effort in the partnership. To invest, you need to trust that this stuff is going to last long.

1:33:41but to try that stuff is going to last long, you want the other person to be not looking at other options. But looking at other options seems to be rational, seems to be strategic. So how do you prevent that? Well, a solution that's likely given by nature is this strong emotion that we have to bind us to others and which are visible and give visible signs to others that they can trust. So in a part of the issue between the man and woman is going to be loved. So people will feel stronger emotions of love and when people are in love they will Purposefully not look at other options and also this emotion is very things gives Hughes signals which are you know you can see when somebody is besotted with another person and that's credible and so You if you want that's what you want you want to try to be with someone within love with you because you're confident that this person is going to be willing to stay with you for a long time In in a group of friends that would not be loved and we friendship, but there's some kind of stuff You want some people you know world loyal and what will you because they're friends not because they're just a short -term advantage now We're still playing these games, but in a way nature The way for us to be playing these games well, maybe to Care about not playing the games in the short term, right?

1:35:04There is a There is a theory in evolutionary psychology, which is more than theory, and I think it's a lot of validity, that you can think of the mind as met of several modules solving problems. That's a general theory from evolutionary psychology. But one of the application of the theory is that your mind can be in a way could be divided in part of your mind, which kind of treat information, and part of your mind would make the decision. And the trigger of these emotions when you feel in love, when you feel friendship, etc. could be straggly triggered by one part of the mind. And your self -conscious person really feels these emotions, really is committed and that makes you better as a player.

1:35:57It's a bit abstract, but one way I think you can think about it is in the movie, I think in the second movie of the Matrix, there is the Oracle. And the Oracle talks to Neo, and maybe since the first one, I'm gonna show. But I think the Oracle talks to Neo, and after, while she has asked, what did you tell him? And she said, I told him what he needed to know. What it means? It means she's telling the truth. She told him what he needed to know to be effective. And you could think that part of your brain do exactly the same thing. You, you know, for more information you get yourself a wear person in your mind.

1:36:40Only get the information you need to know to be effective. And that means that yes, or mind, you know, part of our mind is tragic and knows when to trigger the emotions, etc. But it doesn't tell us we don't have an interest to be tragic when we act. to have an interest to be committed and to believe that we're not playing the game. Okay. Humans are better at playing games when they don't know that they're games. Yes, because if you don't believe, if you don't think as a player, if you don't think that it's tragic in the moment, then you can be a more attractive partner in social cooperation. Yeah.

1:37:23Wow. Do you think we'd be better off if we just realized that life is all games?

1:37:31I'm not sure I'm not sure who are better off. I think I think in a way you know sometimes leaving the dream is better maybe it's like in the matrix you know I'm pulling you out of the matrix yeah this is really terrible. This is evolutionary theory overall to me. Evolutionary theory learning anything about evolutionary theory is just a sequence of becoming more and more aware of how little control I have over my desires, how little I author my own thoughts and actions that the thing that I used to take pride in, I shouldn't take pride in because actually it's some thinly veiled status. It's very humbling.

1:38:18My point is it's very humbling. We did this last time I was talking to you about Imposter Syndrome. And again, I really appreciate the fact that you sort of lay out on your sub -stack. You just lay out the way that these dynamics work. And I think that it's it's very good for sort of peering under the hood. But if you were to When it comes to the way that you operate in your own life Knowing what you know about the fact communication is a game, coalitions are a game, politics are a game Self -deception is self -serving Are there any ways that you have used this information in a practical manner?

1:39:00Or is it just, is it simply something interesting? Or have you actually adapted your behavior in any way given what you know about this stuff?

1:39:11I'd like to tell you that it's a super helpful in practice. I mean, you know, that's the way I see the world. So I can't help it. So, but the fact that, in a way, the fact, I like the fact that you understand the world as it is instead of the kind of narratives and stories which also serve or society to also. But at the same time, the game of the games, knowing it's like, look, it's like we play football. We play football. If I come and I say, well, you know, I have a PhD in football techniques. So I know really why football works well. It doesn't, it doesn't change that if I want to play football, that's, you know, my PhD in football techniques, it's not necessarily super useful to score gold.

1:39:59You know, it might at the margin help me understand that I should shoot that well or the other. But the game is a game and often, as I said, you don't necessarily need the rulebook to be effective. We are very effective already at playing these games very well. So understanding these games is mostly useful, I think, intellectually. Also, it's useful for to avoid mistakes, and to appreciate my own kind of biases, etc. But it doesn't still mean that the games are the games. Yeah, it doesn't change. Well, I guess we're at the mercy of this stuff. At least for me, It helps me to have more empathy and a bit more peace around other people.

1:40:48I wish I could extend that to myself actually. It's kind of like, I don't know, like some sort of inverse stoicism where you're able to see other people and say, you know, like as soon as you learn fundamental attribution era and you go, he, he, the guy that cut me off in traffic, he was probably just late. He's probably not an asshole. And even if he is an asshole, he's an asshole that's late. So that's fine. Yet if you are constructed in a way where you're always trying to push yourself to do more, turning that degree of game playing, self -deception, coalition, dynamic, the intracexual competition, venting, and going, I should give myself a break.

1:41:29I should be easier on myself. That's the final boss of social anxiety, not being kind to other people, being kind to you. Yeah, I agree. And the way I think understanding all that,

1:41:44in particular self -deception, often you like, okay, I want to make that case, but is that case really kind of, you know, the best one or the most accurate one? Or is it just self -serving? So you become a bit more like critical and aware of the kind of Bars is that that you have it doesn't make you better though at winning the game though Because self -discipline is useful. So if you if you curb yourself deception It might actually not make you better at convincing others, but uh, yeah, I do I appreciate that sometimes I you know it helps me Take a step back Good Needle polish ladies and gentlemen.

1:42:26I did everyone needs to go and subscribe Optimally rational on sub stack. What else is there anywhere else that people should go? No, that's it. Oh, well, they need they are really interested. That's it. We got my book Opti -Railational where you know I talk about psychology and why the good reasons we be here the way we do why we while a lot of strange things we do in the lies are lots of good reasons behind it. So it's in the book as well. Until next time hurry up and get writing so we can talk some more. Thank you Chris. We're going forward to it.