WEBVTT

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Hi, I'm Paul Verschoor, and together with my colleague Julia Lupp,

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we're speaking with Ed Slingerland about the role that ritual and alcohol have

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played in generating collaboration throughout history.

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A professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia,

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Ed's research encompasses Chinese thought, comparative religion,

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cognitive science, and the relationship between the natural sciences and humanity.

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Edvard Slingerland, welcome, Edvard. Thanks for having me. Great.

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So, Edward, to start our conversation, maybe you can give us a little bit of

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a sketch of the trajectory, your professional trajectory, that brought you to

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the point where you are today and hopefully tomorrow.

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Yeah, to the point where I'm writing about alcohol, which is puzzling to my colleague.

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Exactly. This is the million-dollar question. How did I get here?

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It actually is not as strange as it seems. So, you know, my specialty is early

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Chinese philosophy and also comparative religions, my PhDs in religious studies.

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And I've done a lot of work, as

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Julia knows, on the cognitive science of religion, evolution of religion.

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So, I'm interested in a couple questions. One, just at a very broad level.

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I'm interested in mysteries hiding in plain sight.

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So, when it comes to the evolution of religion, as a scholar of religious studies,

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we study religious diversity, we study how people differ across the world in

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their religious beliefs and practices, so history of religion.

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We very rarely stop and look at religion and go, why do people do that?

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And when you do that, It's a puzzle because religion is really costly.

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It's costly at the individual level, observing taboos, going to church,

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scarifying yourself, cutting off the foreskin of your penis.

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It's very costly for groups, cultural groups.

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So these large scale societies that build massive pyramids that have no practical function.

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And ancient China, a significant portion of the GDP just went into the ground

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into these massive tombs where they put a good 20% of GDP,

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just they buried it and made it unusable by living human beings.

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You would think that individuals and cultures that didn't go in for this kind

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of waste, especially on such a large scale, would do better than groups that do it.

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So, a group that instead of building a massive tomb to the first emperor of

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Qin and building a terracotta army that they then buried in the ground,

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if another group did the same thing, but actually armed a real army,

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you'd think that they would defeat the group that made the fake army and buried it.

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But they don't. All large-scale societies we know of go in for religious waste,

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if you want to think of it this way, on a large scale.

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And so, this is where we got interested in, well, there's got to be functions,

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positive functions that religion is doing for groups and for individuals that pay for the cost.

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And that's where our big project on the evolution, cultural evolution of religion got started. Okay.

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I started to think about alcohol in the same way, chemical intoxicants in general,

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but particularly alcohol.

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It's incredibly costly. It's physiologically costly for individuals.

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It causes liver damage, raises cancer risk.

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We think probably a good 15% of the human population is prone to alcoholism,

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so they're unable to use alcohol in a safe way.

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It causes lots of group problems, social chaos, alcoholism causes lots of societal problems.

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It sucks up a huge amount of resources.

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So, in ancient Sumer, the estimate is half of their grain production went into making beer.

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So, they're taking nutritious, healthy grain and turning it into a low-dose

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neurotoxin. And that's kind of puzzling.

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The other puzzling thing is we've been doing it for a

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really long time so unlike so the standard story about

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alcohol is that it's an evolutionary mistake it's just

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alcohol is just hijacking reward circuits in our brain that evolve for other

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reasons um the problem and there are certainly evolutionary mistakes so um our

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taste for junk food is a good example um so that's a classic mismatch mistake

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where it was once adaptive to like fat sugar but But now in some parts of the world,

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in very recent times, it's become a problem.

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Another evolutionary mistake I talk about as a type of hijack is masturbation,

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or just non-reproductive sex.

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So, you know, we get this great reward from evolution for reproducing,

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but we figured out a way to game the system and we get away with it.

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But, you know, in these cases with the junk food example, it's a very recent

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problem and still geographically constrained.

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There's still lots of places in the world where getting enough fat and sugar is a problem.

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For people. And with the masturbation example, it's not very costly.

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And it doesn't, contrary to what people may have been taught as children, make you go blind.

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So, it doesn't, not physiologically costly, not costly to society, unlike alcohol.

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So, you know, alcohol does make you go blind if you drink enough of it.

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So, and we've been doing, we've been producing alcohol for as long as we've

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been doing anything in an organized fashion as a species.

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So, I explore in my recent book, Drunk, this beer before bread hypothesis that

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argues that humans were gathering and making beer,

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and having these big religious rituals that we don't know much about the content

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of them, but some sort of religious rituals thousands of years before we had agriculture.

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And that, But in fact, it was the desire to make more and better beer and wine

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that caused people to start settling down and cultivating crops.

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So in this regard, the desire to get intoxicated actually very directly gave rise to human cultures.

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So it's not, it actually kind of follows naturally from work I've done before,

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both trying to explain a puzzle, something that should be puzzling that doesn't puzzle us enough.

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Um and then trying to look for what the functional role might be and i think

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i assume one of the reasons you've had me is because the functional roles revolve

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a lot of them revolve around.

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I'm not hearing your audio now. Sorry, that's me. I just pushed a button.

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But what I want to know first is really your personal trajectory,

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because you say you have a background in Chinese philosophy.

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There is also into the cognitive science of religion.

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So it also means what are the intellectual tools you bring to bear on this challenge, right?

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That's why I always like to understand that trajectory. So would that really

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be, let's say, Chinese philosophy, cognitive science? Would you really see that

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as the perspectives that you take here, or are there other elements that we should consider?

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Well, I'm trained as a humanities scholar, so I'm originally trained as a historian

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and a linguist, as a sinologist.

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So I'm bringing those tools to bear, so the tools of a historian, tools of a linguist.

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But then after graduate school, I found myself getting drawn by the cognitive

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sciences. So, cognitive linguistics at first, how metaphors work in the mind.

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And then that got me interested in how metaphors work and so behavioral neuroscience.

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And then that got me interested in why the brain is structured the way it is.

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So, that got me into evolutionary theory.

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And so, my toolkit now is very much gene culture co-evolutionary theory.

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I'm using the tools of a historian and cross-cultural historical surveys,

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but then analyzing what I'm seeing using the tool, using the theoretical framework

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of gene culture co-evolution.

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Right. Great. But in our case, the question is around collaboration,

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and you earlier also mentioned cooperation.

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Do you differentiate between the two, or do you see this as sort of different

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words, same phenomenon?

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They overlap quite a bit um collaboration are you hearing that i heard something

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yeah there's some kind of crazy that's a ghost in your bookshelf.

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I live down in downtown vancouver and i think this is road work that's just

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started hopefully it's short-lived i assume we can edit this sure no problem

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we could edit this out we We can add more noise.

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You won't hear it. We can add more noise later.

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Yeah. I have no control over what happened down here. So, um,

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yeah, I think it stopped. Um,

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So, I'm arguing in the book that, let's take alcohol as an example,

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but religion has some similar effects.

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It does two important functional things.

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It enhances creativity, so individual creativity, but also group creativity.

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And that may be kind of more in the collaboration bucket.

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So it's alcohol, one of the functions of alcohol is to down regulate to turn

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down a few notches or prefrontal cortex, right?

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So PFC is really important for pursuing rational self interests for controlling

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emotions for staying focused on task, it's super important part of the brain.

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But there's pretty good evidence that it interferes with creativity,

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it interferes with lateral thinking, which is why kids, for instance,

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are much more creative than adults because their PFCs are not very developed.

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One of the things alcohol does is essentially return us temporarily to being like a kid.

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It turns down our PFC a few notches so we can regain some of that cognitive

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flexibility we had as children.

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But then what it's also doing is disinhibiting us, So, we're less inhibited.

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It's also pumping up feel-good hormones.

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So, we're serotonin, endorphins, we're getting boosted.

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And so, we're feeling both better about ourself and better about other people.

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We're feeling more likable and we're also liking other people more.

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And I think that combination is really crucial for collaboration.

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So, one of the things I argue you is that there's a really good reason that

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successful organizations are,

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use alcohol in professional context when

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you're getting groups of individuals together who maybe have different

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types of training um they may not know

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one another but you want them to uh you

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know spitball things to come up with new ideas i mean the anstroman forum does

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this right we go we work all day but then we go out and drink right um it's

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a it's a crucial tool i actually argued uh when we got this big partnership

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grant from the canadian government uh they shirk our federal funding organization

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will not pay for alcohol.

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And I actually went separately to my dean and said, I cannot run a huge international

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collaboration without alcohol.

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I need to be able to get people, sit them down, downregulate the preferential

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courtesies, get them to trust each other and talk more.

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And so I actually got a kind of separate slush fund from my dean that I could use to pay for wine.

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And it was crucial. I mean, in fact, that grant

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itself came out of a collaboration that started because we

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finally got a pub on campus at ubc we

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didn't have a place for grown-ups to drink there was a

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grad student pub um and then i

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think 2010 ish this pub opened up right near the bus loop and so it was very

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easy to stop there on your way home from work and um joe henrik and ara noren

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zion and i and some other steve heiner started meeting after work and chatting about,

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oh, I'm interested in religion too, and I have this type of expertise.

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And I really don't think that the collaboration would have gotten off the ground

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without that kind of just the 0.08 BAC seems to be the sweet spot, like a B or two N.

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But now, Edward, so you're saying, okay, alcohol, this sort of slight suppression

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of prefrontal cortex can facilitate collaboration.

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But then what is collaboration? How would you define it and what is it good for?

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Collaboration is, I think, pursuing some sort of dimly envisioned goal in a

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cooperative manner where different individuals are bringing different strengths to the table.

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So, I see collaboration. So, you know, in our grant, I was a historian.

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I was a religious studies scholar. I had knowledge of the content of religions

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historically and across the world that, say, Joe or Ara didn't have.

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Joe had gene culture, co-evolutionary theoretical framework that he was bringing to the table.

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Ara had expertise in psychology of religion, experimental evidence about religion.

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And then we had a kind of vague sense of, hey, we want to do a big project.

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And here's a couple questions that we

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think are cool like why do people build big monuments why do people um sacrifice

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to invisible beings and we we just started talking um and we we tried to figure

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out um and so i think that it's a dimly perceived goal because the goal i think

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in good collaborations,

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the goal is not set in stone and usually changes a bit in the course of the conversation.

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But yeah, I think, I mean, at least in an academic context, collaboration is

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about some shared question.

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You have some shared questions that interest you all, but you have different

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tools that you're bringing to the table.

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And if we now go back to your earlier example on religion, and you were also

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describing that as entailing massive collaboration to for instance build monuments to your gods.

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Sure. So how do you see then this relationship between religion and collaboration?

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Is collaboration a necessary feature to build your religion?

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Is your religion a necessary feature to scale your collaboration?

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Yeah, I haven't thought that carefully about this distinction between those

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two things, but I would see, so if you want to talk about Gobekli Tepe,

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this is a site in present-day Turkey where hunter-gatherers,

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again, long before agriculture,

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were coming from all over, they were converging on this site.

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And they were, I would call that then cooperating. They

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were cooperating to build this massive ritual

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site with these huge stone stelae that

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they would cut out of the rock and drag long distances and

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erect and carve um they would

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capture a game and they would have large feasts

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and and they were also almost certainly making huge quantities

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of beer there were these huge bats that were used to

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to contain some liquid and we know people were making beer in

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this part of the world at this point but this is before the neolithic

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this is still before this is uh yeah

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neolithic um so this is the site the dates are

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a little bit disputed but somewhere between 10 12

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000 years ago okay so uh so yeah before yeah

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right right at this shift um so i'd

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call that cooperation in the sense that you'd have

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to presume there's some group who's in charge and they know that they want to

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build this site for whatever religious reasons they have and then they're having

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to get the cooperation of the workers to do it to all these people to work together

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and do it um and clearly you know one One of the ways they did this was by providing

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gear and providing feasts.

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And this is something we see in traditional societies around the world,

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that if you have a large scale public project that needs to get done.

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Uh in the era before you had

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unionized workers and you know wage labor uh

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you do it uh either by enslaving people or by

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enticing them with with feasts with alcohol and

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food um and so there you

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have people cooperating so maybe i'd call it less

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collaboration because it's not clear that the people building the

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site had a lot of input into the design or what

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it was going to be used for um but people

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need to learn to cooperate on large scales and so

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the second um i talked a little bit about this creativity function

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another function of alcohol is to help us i

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call it a kind of cognitive disarming um so humans in cooperation situations

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often face cooperation dilemmas where you know prisoners dilemma type situations

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um you're going to get the best payoff if you trust the other person,

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but you don't have usually a way to ensure that they're trustworthy,

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that they're actually going to cooperate.

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And so, the rational strategy is to defect.

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So, rational agents will defect, but they'll get a suboptimal outcome.

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And real human beings solve prisoner's dilemmas all the time.

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We cooperate, we don't stitch on each other.

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We help each other move couches and do all these things where we don't have

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any guarantee of a payback.

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Um one of the ways you get people past

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prisoners dilemma situations is religion you

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get them to trust each other because hey we all believe in the same god and

00:18:15.437 --> 00:18:20.077
how do you know i believe in that god because would i tattoo my face if i didn't

00:18:20.077 --> 00:18:23.557
you know would i cut off the foreskin of my penis if i didn't believe in this

00:18:23.557 --> 00:18:29.017
god so we do costly signaling in the context of religion to create trust,

00:18:29.257 --> 00:18:31.737
to create in-groups that can cooperate

00:18:31.737 --> 00:18:35.637
the way that blood relatives can cooperate. That's one way to do it.

00:18:36.237 --> 00:18:40.237
Another way to do it is alcohol. And they're often used together.

00:18:40.497 --> 00:18:42.697
They're synergistic in this respect.

00:18:43.097 --> 00:18:49.117
So alcohol is by suppressing your similar set of functions for a different goal.

00:18:49.197 --> 00:18:55.777
By slightly suppressing the PFC, it's making it harder for you to lie or to cheat.

00:18:56.037 --> 00:19:00.697
So, lying is cognitively a very difficult task.

00:19:00.897 --> 00:19:05.917
You have to keep in mind both what reality is and what you said reality was.

00:19:06.377 --> 00:19:12.537
You have to be able to suppress leakage, facial expression, emotional leakage

00:19:12.537 --> 00:19:15.597
that would be counter to what you're claiming reality is.

00:19:16.277 --> 00:19:20.677
It's really difficult. Lying is very difficult. And it's totally PFC driven.

00:19:20.937 --> 00:19:24.017
If your PFC is impaired, it's harder for you to lie.

00:19:24.869 --> 00:19:29.009
What, that's kind of intuitive. What's a little less intuitive is people are

00:19:29.009 --> 00:19:33.429
better lie detectors when their PFCs are turned down a few notches.

00:19:33.869 --> 00:19:37.489
And that seems to be because we think we know how to detect lies,

00:19:37.729 --> 00:19:42.029
but we don't. And so if we're using our PFC, we're like relying on something

00:19:42.029 --> 00:19:48.089
we saw in a Sherlock Holmes show, you know, where, oh, look to see if he looks left when he talks.

00:19:48.189 --> 00:19:51.709
And that's not really what you need to look at. You need to look at a bunch,

00:19:51.909 --> 00:19:57.209
a big bandwidth of data, facial expressions, tone of voice.

00:19:57.989 --> 00:20:01.749
And you're better at doing that when you're a little relaxed and you're not

00:20:01.749 --> 00:20:03.229
consciously trying to do it.

00:20:03.389 --> 00:20:09.449
Right. So, I argue that you have a bunch of hostile, potentially hostile people,

00:20:09.549 --> 00:20:12.989
for instance, and you need to sit them down and get them to agree on something.

00:20:13.829 --> 00:20:18.069
What's the one thing all cultures across the world do first?

00:20:18.589 --> 00:20:24.169
They get them drunk. Or they use kava or some other intoxicant that has very similar properties.

00:20:24.869 --> 00:20:29.209
But you mentioned a number of things now that we should maybe try to elaborate.

00:20:29.209 --> 00:20:33.289
So, on the one hand, it's this linkage between religion and collaboration,

00:20:33.729 --> 00:20:44.189
and in some sense, you interpreted that in terms of sharing a common value in some sense.

00:20:44.269 --> 00:20:48.589
We have a similarity which is expressed in our religious commitment,

00:20:48.789 --> 00:20:52.889
and I'm showing you my religious commitment because, like you,

00:20:53.029 --> 00:20:56.029
I have my face tattooed with something or other, right?

00:20:56.029 --> 00:21:00.509
Or you compare genitals and you show what has been done to them.

00:21:01.789 --> 00:21:05.269
But now, is that really enough?

00:21:05.389 --> 00:21:12.069
Because if you analyze religion, you might also see incentive structures that

00:21:12.069 --> 00:21:15.389
would, in some sense, coerce people into collaborating.

00:21:15.789 --> 00:21:21.849
Because if you don't help the other, you would act against the fundamental laws

00:21:21.849 --> 00:21:25.669
of your religion if that other is a member of your religious group.

00:21:25.669 --> 00:21:30.309
So there's a bit of this issue now, is it common identification with some upper

00:21:30.309 --> 00:21:36.009
and uber being, or is it also the adoption of a much more complex,

00:21:36.209 --> 00:21:39.909
if you want, cognitive structure of rules of conduct?

00:21:40.956 --> 00:21:47.296
Yeah, it's probably both, and they're probably kicking in. They're probably both contributing.

00:21:47.596 --> 00:21:58.076
So the way I'd rephrase that is you can imagine one force is a bonding-created trust.

00:21:58.356 --> 00:22:06.016
So I feel connected to you. you, I'm internally motivated to cooperate with

00:22:06.016 --> 00:22:11.216
you because I come to see you as a brother, as a brother in our religion in some way.

00:22:12.376 --> 00:22:16.056
So that's internally motivated. You can also imagine,

00:22:16.236 --> 00:22:19.616
and this is one of the things ours, Neuron Zion, has done a lot of work on,

00:22:19.716 --> 00:22:23.156
that if I believe that if I don't cooperate,

00:22:23.276 --> 00:22:26.616
I'm going to be punished in the afterworld or i believe

00:22:26.616 --> 00:22:29.376
that god can look into me and see if i'm

00:22:29.376 --> 00:22:32.716
lying or not um that's an external sanction

00:22:32.716 --> 00:22:35.916
based essentially what you're doing there is um

00:22:35.916 --> 00:22:40.336
you're removing you're removing the prisoner's dilemma problem because i can't

00:22:40.336 --> 00:22:43.416
prisoners dilemma i don't know if you're going to cooperate or not but if god

00:22:43.416 --> 00:22:48.316
knows and god's going to take care of whacking you if you don't cooperate then

00:22:48.316 --> 00:22:53.416
it's not a dilemma anymore so yeah so both could be working so with that That

00:22:53.416 --> 00:22:54.856
raises an interesting question, right?

00:22:54.936 --> 00:23:00.636
So on the two interrelated questions, on the one hand, what are then the intrinsic

00:23:00.636 --> 00:23:06.896
drives for collaboration that are genetically predefined and picked up during evolution?

00:23:07.476 --> 00:23:12.476
And how has human culture then elaborated on that to scale it,

00:23:12.536 --> 00:23:18.536
right? So how do you see that linkage between intrinsic drives for collaboration

00:23:18.536 --> 00:23:22.136
and then their further expansion for scalability?

00:23:23.339 --> 00:23:26.619
Yeah, so we intrinsically are motivated to cooperate with kin,

00:23:26.819 --> 00:23:34.319
and then less so with unrelated people we know and have reciprocal relationships with.

00:23:34.479 --> 00:23:40.239
So, you know, kin selection and reciprocal altruism drive a lot of behavior

00:23:40.239 --> 00:23:41.999
across the animal world.

00:23:42.459 --> 00:23:45.839
And that's one of the things humans just get for free.

00:23:46.799 --> 00:23:51.599
So, in terms of scaling, one of the things religion is doing is exploiting that

00:23:51.599 --> 00:23:56.379
psychology but expanding, for instance, the scope of kin.

00:23:56.599 --> 00:24:01.219
So, it's one of the reasons that religions tend to use kin-based language to

00:24:01.219 --> 00:24:04.099
talk about co-religionists who call each other brothers and sisters.

00:24:04.419 --> 00:24:07.039
You talk about God as your father or mother.

00:24:07.759 --> 00:24:11.359
So, you're tapping into something that

00:24:11.359 --> 00:24:14.219
you get for free just for being a human um for being

00:24:14.219 --> 00:24:17.759
any type of animal that reproduces um but

00:24:17.759 --> 00:24:20.759
expanding the scope of it so that's that's one very easy way

00:24:20.759 --> 00:24:25.619
to do it but also you're creating you know when you go through also when you

00:24:25.619 --> 00:24:32.639
go through a lot of religions have kind of painful initiation rituals and going

00:24:32.639 --> 00:24:37.779
through a painful experience with another person also creates bonds that is

00:24:37.779 --> 00:24:40.579
probably tapping into some basic built-in stuff,

00:24:40.879 --> 00:24:46.739
but cultures have figured out how to get it ramped up so that you can have that

00:24:46.739 --> 00:24:51.479
feeling of brotherhood or being bonded with a much larger group than you would

00:24:51.479 --> 00:24:53.299
typically get in a small-scale society.

00:24:54.599 --> 00:24:58.339
Preston Pyshke So, would you be able to, also given the work you've done,

00:24:58.959 --> 00:25:06.719
do you see then common features across the main religions of the world in build a ladder?

00:25:06.719 --> 00:25:09.999
Yeah absolutely um um and

00:25:09.999 --> 00:25:14.719
especially in what we call pro-social religions so the

00:25:14.719 --> 00:25:20.079
what you get for free out of human cognition when it comes to religious cognition

00:25:20.079 --> 00:25:27.799
is supernatural beings so humans seem just um prone to over projecting agency

00:25:27.799 --> 00:25:33.519
onto the world so um you know the storm storm comes and destroys our fishing vessels,

00:25:33.879 --> 00:25:38.999
we don't think, oh, random cause and effect, you know, mechanistic world,

00:25:39.119 --> 00:25:41.279
we want an intentional story about it.

00:25:41.339 --> 00:25:44.659
So, the sea god is angry at us, we didn't do something.

00:25:45.079 --> 00:25:49.339
So, projecting intentionality onto the world seems to be something we do naturally.

00:25:51.119 --> 00:25:56.879
But what this gets you is not what pro-social religions look like.

00:25:56.879 --> 00:26:03.159
Like what it tends to get you is what most small scale society religions look

00:26:03.159 --> 00:26:05.439
like. So you've got a bunch of God's,

00:26:06.235 --> 00:26:10.435
They typically have different areas they're in charge of, the sea, the sun.

00:26:11.295 --> 00:26:15.355
You've got ancestor, often ancestor spirits you need to placate.

00:26:15.895 --> 00:26:21.375
But it tends to be, they're not typically moral. So, in most small-scale societies,

00:26:21.955 --> 00:26:26.655
the gods don't really care about human collaboration, if you want to think of

00:26:26.655 --> 00:26:29.175
it that way. The gods just want their stuff.

00:26:29.515 --> 00:26:33.195
You know, the ancestors want to be fed, the gods want to be reverenced.

00:26:33.195 --> 00:26:36.095
And um you want to think about the greek

00:26:36.095 --> 00:26:38.955
greek pantheons a bit like this right the greek gods

00:26:38.955 --> 00:26:43.235
are just messing with people they get if they don't get reverence they they

00:26:43.235 --> 00:26:48.615
get angry um they don't they're certainly not moral um so we think that a a

00:26:48.615 --> 00:26:52.935
new development is when you get this idea that the gods actually care about

00:26:52.935 --> 00:26:56.675
us collaborating essentially they care about pro-social norms

00:26:56.935 --> 00:26:59.735
they don't just want stuff they don't

00:26:59.735 --> 00:27:02.755
just want their sacrificial goods they want

00:27:02.755 --> 00:27:05.675
us to be good to one another they want us to be generous they want

00:27:05.675 --> 00:27:10.255
us to not lie they want us not to not violate social norms that's an innovation

00:27:10.255 --> 00:27:18.855
another innovation is the ability is an expansion of surveillance so often small-scale

00:27:18.855 --> 00:27:23.135
society gods don't know what's happening outside the village for instance,

00:27:23.315 --> 00:27:25.175
where they don't know what's happening in the dark.

00:27:26.195 --> 00:27:30.515
So, if you get the idea that God knows everything, anywhere in the world,

00:27:30.635 --> 00:27:34.775
past and future, God can also look inside and not only see your behavior,

00:27:34.835 --> 00:27:37.595
but see your motivations, that's a very powerful idea.

00:27:38.455 --> 00:27:41.415
If you have the idea that God can watch you everywhere you go,

00:27:41.535 --> 00:27:42.675
it's a very powerful idea.

00:27:43.495 --> 00:27:48.675
If you get these kind of costly rituals where people are both,

00:27:48.815 --> 00:27:50.515
they're doing things in synchrony.

00:27:51.490 --> 00:27:55.330
And they're typically consuming chemical intoxicants at the same time.

00:27:55.650 --> 00:27:57.470
They're creating bonds with one another.

00:27:58.190 --> 00:28:01.790
They're making, but they're also signaling. They're making costly signals to

00:28:01.790 --> 00:28:05.810
one another that make everyone feel like, oh, I can trust that he's really part

00:28:05.810 --> 00:28:08.510
of our group. These are all cultural innovations.

00:28:09.030 --> 00:28:13.390
And so, our argument is that the forces of cultural evolution,

00:28:13.710 --> 00:28:19.230
in the same way you get with genetic evolution, you get convergent evolution, right?

00:28:19.230 --> 00:28:25.210
So dolphins and sharks look similar, even though they're very different genetic histories.

00:28:26.070 --> 00:28:32.250
Around the world, when you get large-scale societies, you get common features in religions.

00:28:32.590 --> 00:28:36.750
And this is the result of convergent evolution in a cultural sense.

00:28:36.750 --> 00:28:43.190
So, earlier you also indicated this sort of at the edge of the Neolithic,

00:28:43.310 --> 00:28:47.090
you started to hunter-gatherers, just sort of started to have more collaborative

00:28:47.090 --> 00:28:50.270
processes or collaborative cooperative processes.

00:28:50.950 --> 00:28:56.330
And you could argue that this could be handled with standard hierarchical power relationships.

00:28:57.070 --> 00:29:01.390
So, within that context, what problem is religion then solving, right?

00:29:01.430 --> 00:29:10.550
So, how would that boost that process? So what's a unique feature that religion adds to this?

00:29:10.690 --> 00:29:15.770
Is it that it also gives you sort of an ontological frame to look at the unknown

00:29:15.770 --> 00:29:19.370
that go beyond the standard human power relations?

00:29:20.430 --> 00:29:22.870
Or what's that added feature? Yeah.

00:29:23.421 --> 00:29:28.901
Yeah. So the people who are building these sites, places like Gobekli Tepe,

00:29:29.021 --> 00:29:33.421
are cooperating on a much larger scale than is typical for hunter-gatherers.

00:29:33.481 --> 00:29:36.101
So this is not small-scale societies anymore.

00:29:36.281 --> 00:29:41.581
They're actually cooperating to build the beginnings of what creates agriculture

00:29:41.581 --> 00:29:42.961
in large numbers. What are the numbers?

00:29:43.101 --> 00:29:46.221
What kind of numbers are we looking at then? Yeah, that's a good question.

00:29:47.241 --> 00:29:52.761
Probably at least you needed probably about 500 people at a time to be moving

00:29:52.761 --> 00:29:54.341
the stones and erecting them.

00:29:54.881 --> 00:29:59.601
So, much larger scale cooperation than you'd get in typical hunter-gatherer bands.

00:29:59.601 --> 00:30:04.861
Ants um the they're coming together they probably don't know each other well

00:30:04.861 --> 00:30:10.141
so they're coming from different regions and so what what you're getting so

00:30:10.141 --> 00:30:12.461
for instance at gobekli tepe um,

00:30:13.321 --> 00:30:19.141
there are different parts of the ritual site and that have different animals

00:30:19.141 --> 00:30:24.741
that are featured so whatever one one area may have crocodiles predominating

00:30:24.741 --> 00:30:29.941
another one um one of the theories is that what this is, is kind of totem animals.

00:30:30.201 --> 00:30:33.861
So, you're giving people a new fictional identity that's linked,

00:30:34.081 --> 00:30:37.301
you know, as you say, to some kind of ontological claim about the world.

00:30:37.381 --> 00:30:43.481
So, you have this idea that there's a crocodile God, and the crocodile God wants X, Y, and Z.

00:30:44.141 --> 00:30:48.521
And we who all tattoo ourselves with the mark of the crocodile and worship the

00:30:48.521 --> 00:30:51.181
crocodile God are brothers in a significant way.

00:30:51.521 --> 00:30:57.861
We can trust one another. We know we can meet someone one far away from the

00:30:57.861 --> 00:31:02.641
ritual site, but greet them in a way that shows that we are worshippers of the

00:31:02.641 --> 00:31:05.781
crocodile God, and then therefore we know we can cooperate right away.

00:31:07.301 --> 00:31:13.981
Religion's giving you this tool that allows you to scale up cooperation on a

00:31:13.981 --> 00:31:17.281
level that you just can't, we think you can't get without it.

00:31:18.681 --> 00:31:22.241
Okay. Julia, you want to go? Okay.

00:31:23.646 --> 00:31:27.406
You're muted. You're muted. You're still muted.

00:31:30.106 --> 00:31:36.766
You're still muted. There we go. I want to go back to the, you've raised the

00:31:36.766 --> 00:31:41.986
issue of trust several times, and perhaps Gobekli Tepe is a good point to discuss this.

00:31:42.506 --> 00:31:48.786
Because we're going to be looking at what makes collaboration succeed and what makes it fail.

00:31:48.786 --> 00:31:54.246
And so if we were to imagine a hunter-gatherer, a large hunter-gatherer group,

00:31:54.406 --> 00:32:02.406
do you see this religious institution as providing sort of a sense of trust

00:32:02.406 --> 00:32:08.326
that the individuals in the group will trust to do a collaborative project without

00:32:08.326 --> 00:32:10.666
questioning the leaders who are in charge?

00:32:10.666 --> 00:32:15.986
And this concept of the supernatural, whether you're going to add punitive measures

00:32:15.986 --> 00:32:22.826
or not, notwithstanding, does it give a structure to the collaborative effort

00:32:22.826 --> 00:32:24.126
or the cooperative effort?

00:32:24.986 --> 00:32:30.246
It gives a shared narrative, typically, about why you're doing what you're doing.

00:32:30.366 --> 00:32:34.266
So everyone's on the same page in terms of what the goals are and why.

00:32:34.266 --> 00:32:42.006
Um and it gives you this trust that people are internally motivated to cooperate and not,

00:32:42.706 --> 00:32:45.926
relying on sanctions um so the

00:32:45.926 --> 00:32:51.406
reason we can solve a cooperation dilemma is that we run into where um i know

00:32:51.406 --> 00:32:55.546
that i'm pulling on my end of the rope i can't see my buddy who's on the other

00:32:55.546 --> 00:32:59.266
side but i assume he's pulling too and not just sitting down you know resting

00:32:59.266 --> 00:33:02.726
or having a snack um how do

00:33:02.746 --> 00:33:05.906
i know that because i know that he is possessed

00:33:05.906 --> 00:33:09.006
by the same love and reverence for

00:33:09.006 --> 00:33:12.206
the crocodile god that i possess um so

00:33:12.206 --> 00:33:17.706
it it gives you some assurance that the the other members of your group are

00:33:17.706 --> 00:33:22.306
internally motivated to collaborate and to cooperate in a way that's not relying

00:33:22.306 --> 00:33:28.826
on sanctions so it provides social cohesion yeah yeah and it's you know there

00:33:28.826 --> 00:33:29.926
are other ways you can get it.

00:33:29.986 --> 00:33:36.666
So one of the things that Ara has argued is once you get into modern industrial societies.

00:33:38.662 --> 00:33:45.282
It's possible that rule of law could take over some of the functions that religion used to do,

00:33:45.482 --> 00:33:52.102
and maybe nationalistic values can give you the same kind of sense of shared

00:33:52.102 --> 00:33:54.102
goals and shared identity,

00:33:54.282 --> 00:33:57.902
and maybe that's when you're going to see organized religions start to wither

00:33:57.902 --> 00:34:01.702
away because the functions are taken over by their structures.

00:34:02.642 --> 00:34:05.622
But around the world, the way we see it happening first tends

00:34:05.622 --> 00:34:08.482
to be with religious police and i think it's because

00:34:08.482 --> 00:34:11.542
it's a it's very effective way to tap into some basic

00:34:11.542 --> 00:34:14.982
cognitive tendencies we already have but push

00:34:14.982 --> 00:34:22.862
them in a certain direction then in that case we we could look at at um at least

00:34:22.862 --> 00:34:27.102
let's say three stages of the scaling of human collaboration right because first

00:34:27.102 --> 00:34:32.442
we hunt the gatherer then we we We add a religious layer to find scaling,

00:34:32.482 --> 00:34:38.622
and then possibly the nation-state might become the next step in that scaling.

00:34:39.162 --> 00:34:46.502
But that raises the first question, are we aware of any sort of massive religion

00:34:46.502 --> 00:34:48.142
that actually failed? Yes.

00:34:51.166 --> 00:34:54.566
Religions that fail i don't think

00:34:54.566 --> 00:34:57.406
so because we just don't know we don't know about them

00:34:57.406 --> 00:35:01.766
because they're gone um so but this is interesting right because it's not that

00:35:01.766 --> 00:35:08.266
the written written record is is that short right yeah yeah one of the things

00:35:08.266 --> 00:35:13.126
we um so we're built we have this project big project that i'm running now it's

00:35:13.126 --> 00:35:14.786
called the database of religious history history.

00:35:15.526 --> 00:35:21.566
And one of the goals of the database, we don't have enough data to do this yet,

00:35:21.686 --> 00:35:27.986
is to try to answer that question by looking at periods of history when you do get...

00:35:27.986 --> 00:35:31.826
We have enough data that we know about the groups that failed.

00:35:33.006 --> 00:35:39.286
Typically, we don't. But we have period like, if you want to think about 19th

00:35:39.286 --> 00:35:43.166
century America, you have a lot of these new religious movements that arise,

00:35:43.366 --> 00:35:46.806
you have all these utopian communities that arise, and a lot of them fail.

00:35:46.926 --> 00:35:49.926
But then some of them do, you know, Mormonism, for instance,

00:35:50.046 --> 00:35:52.006
Church Latter-day Saints does really well.

00:35:52.786 --> 00:35:57.886
You could look at, you know, the period when Christianity arose.

00:35:58.106 --> 00:36:03.966
So, you have a lot of these, you know, prophets arising, they're preaching different things.

00:36:04.766 --> 00:36:09.726
Most of them fail and don't take off, but one of them ends up doing really well.

00:36:09.886 --> 00:36:12.526
So, So what we want to do is

00:36:12.526 --> 00:36:16.426
try to gather as much data as we can about the beliefs and practices of these

00:36:16.426 --> 00:36:24.466
different groups and see if we can find some common features to the ones that

00:36:24.466 --> 00:36:28.886
do take off and become successful and whether there are common features to the

00:36:28.886 --> 00:36:31.146
ones that we don't know about today,

00:36:31.266 --> 00:36:36.386
except through historians who study these obscure archives, we know about them.

00:36:36.986 --> 00:36:42.306
But you could say that the Judean Christian religions sort of.

00:36:43.128 --> 00:36:50.088
Conquered the world that was then dominated by the Roman religion or Greek religion, right? Right.

00:36:50.408 --> 00:36:55.668
Yeah. So, you also want to look at how certain religions supplant others.

00:36:55.908 --> 00:36:59.588
And so, we want to be able to trace, for instance, the movement of Buddhism.

00:36:59.728 --> 00:37:03.588
So, Buddhism is another of these world religions that arises from time and place.

00:37:04.228 --> 00:37:07.448
Out-competes some religions around it,

00:37:07.448 --> 00:37:10.808
and then gets spread moves to china um and

00:37:10.808 --> 00:37:14.548
and then and we're particularly interested in what features so we know a lot

00:37:14.548 --> 00:37:17.828
we actually china is a good example because we know a lot about what's happening

00:37:17.828 --> 00:37:23.988
in china before buddhism comes we know a lot about buddhism in india um then

00:37:23.988 --> 00:37:28.128
we're going to be able to to basically see what happens when buddhism comes

00:37:28.128 --> 00:37:29.788
to china how does buddhism change.

00:37:30.308 --> 00:37:33.748
But also how does it change indigenous chinese religions

00:37:33.748 --> 00:37:36.888
um and there's going to be a two-way street there um

00:37:36.888 --> 00:37:41.228
and it'll be interesting to see if there's a common trend to

00:37:41.228 --> 00:37:45.208
the way that world religions tend to shape cultures in

00:37:45.208 --> 00:37:48.468
which they're they're transplanted so but

00:37:48.468 --> 00:37:52.008
in the context of our discussion of today you

00:37:52.008 --> 00:37:54.988
could also argue that okay if religion emerged to

00:37:54.988 --> 00:37:57.868
scale collaboration is it then so

00:37:57.868 --> 00:38:01.108
that the judeo-christian values were

00:38:01.108 --> 00:38:04.648
more effective in scaling collaboration elaboration than the

00:38:04.648 --> 00:38:08.288
roman copy of greek religion you could

00:38:08.288 --> 00:38:11.368
argue that um but you know you'd want to see i'd

00:38:11.368 --> 00:38:15.408
be interested in what the features were that were new i mean are some of them

00:38:15.408 --> 00:38:19.648
are i think kind of obvious you've got a high god the guy cares about morality

00:38:19.648 --> 00:38:26.288
um uh you have other very successful religions you know buddhism and islam have

00:38:26.288 --> 00:38:29.088
also been been quite successful in terms of

00:38:29.288 --> 00:38:32.428
becoming world religions that spread to new regions.

00:38:32.728 --> 00:38:36.808
And so you want to be able to... But why I'm asking about it is I was hoping

00:38:36.808 --> 00:38:40.768
that you could articulate then what these distinguishing features could be.

00:38:41.561 --> 00:38:48.361
Yeah. So, a moralistic god. So, the Greek gods and Roman gods tended to be amoral, right?

00:38:48.401 --> 00:38:53.621
They wanted, not entirely, they cared about certain things like honoring contracts.

00:38:54.701 --> 00:38:59.681
They certainly cared about you honoring the civic structure and the rulers,

00:38:59.941 --> 00:39:02.621
but they tended to be generally amoral.

00:39:02.621 --> 00:39:07.961
They wanted their, like small-scale society gods, they just wanted their sacrifice,

00:39:08.241 --> 00:39:10.601
and they got angry with you if you didn't do it.

00:39:12.021 --> 00:39:16.401
You have this new god who actually cares about whether or not you lie and steal

00:39:16.401 --> 00:39:19.001
and gives you some commandments and,

00:39:19.121 --> 00:39:28.381
you know, is preaching the idea of brotherly love and treat strangers as brothers.

00:39:29.321 --> 00:39:32.221
This is arguably more effective at tying people together.

00:39:32.621 --> 00:39:36.581
Um the idea of supernatural punishment

00:39:36.581 --> 00:39:39.981
seems pretty powerful uh so the idea

00:39:39.981 --> 00:39:43.701
that there's a heaven and hell and you're going to have certain consequences or

00:39:43.701 --> 00:39:47.041
in the buddhist context that there's a law of karma that's going to affect your

00:39:47.041 --> 00:39:53.401
rebirth um so so there's a collection we have a piece in behavioral and brain

00:39:53.401 --> 00:39:59.641
sciences from 2016 i think that r is the lead author on called The Evolution

00:39:59.641 --> 00:40:01.041
of Pro-Social Religions.

00:40:01.161 --> 00:40:03.541
And we pick out a series of these features.

00:40:04.601 --> 00:40:10.601
Pro-social, moralistic gods, supernatural monitoring, costly displays.

00:40:10.741 --> 00:40:16.681
There's about five or six key features that we lay out that we think the various

00:40:16.681 --> 00:40:19.761
successful religions around the world seem to converge on.

00:40:21.801 --> 00:40:29.481
You're muted. it are these features also of immediate relevance in boosting collaboration.

00:40:31.961 --> 00:40:38.261
Yeah well i mean you can see if we actually i'm told that god cares about whether

00:40:38.261 --> 00:40:40.721
or not i collaborate well and sincerely

00:40:40.721 --> 00:40:44.541
with another person that's gonna immediately ramp up collaboration,

00:40:45.941 --> 00:40:48.941
monitoring costs of real humans are

00:40:48.941 --> 00:40:51.621
gonna go down i'm gonna be less i'm gonna be

00:40:51.621 --> 00:40:55.561
spending less of my time monitoring your behavior if

00:40:55.561 --> 00:40:59.141
i'm confident that god is monitoring your behavior and that you believe that

00:40:59.141 --> 00:41:04.021
god is monitoring your behavior so it it's going to free up a lot of energy

00:41:04.021 --> 00:41:13.021
for collaborating and cooperating rather than um monitoring uh and sanctioning people.

00:41:14.465 --> 00:41:19.245
But now I could also turn it around and say, look,

00:41:19.385 --> 00:41:27.045
this notion of explaining the intentions in the universe or the projected intentions

00:41:27.045 --> 00:41:34.205
in the universe through religion might also be a great tool by a vicious genius

00:41:34.205 --> 00:41:37.145
to control large groups of people.

00:41:37.145 --> 00:41:44.445
So that in some sense would mean you build pyramids as a necessary step in building

00:41:44.445 --> 00:41:51.485
a coercive society, and you build in these rituals, and you make people believe certain things.

00:41:51.485 --> 00:41:55.165
So then the religion is not the driver of the collaboration,

00:41:55.285 --> 00:42:05.385
but it's a tool that is used to coerce collectives to engage with or to serve in the goals of others.

00:42:05.385 --> 00:42:08.285
So so would you

00:42:08.285 --> 00:42:11.165
would you accept that that this sort of dual the dual

00:42:11.165 --> 00:42:15.405
use of religion absolutely okay yeah

00:42:15.405 --> 00:42:18.565
hierarchical the move from hunter-gatherer life to

00:42:18.565 --> 00:42:21.745
living in large-scale societies sucked for

00:42:21.745 --> 00:42:24.785
most people your quality of life went way down right

00:42:24.785 --> 00:42:32.545
um so hunter-gatherer at least in the the levant in the golden triangle um you

00:42:32.545 --> 00:42:38.785
know we're pretty egalitarian hunter-gatherer lifestyle was probably a lot more

00:42:38.785 --> 00:42:43.385
pleasant than early agricultural life. You had a much more varied diet.

00:42:43.585 --> 00:42:46.745
You had much more interesting tasks to do.

00:42:46.825 --> 00:42:52.605
Hunting and gathering is more interesting than building a pyramid or tending to grain.

00:42:53.825 --> 00:43:01.265
So, the move from small-scale societies to large scale societies was probably

00:43:01.265 --> 00:43:06.165
a happiness and quality of life loss for most individuals.

00:43:07.263 --> 00:43:12.483
It was a big gain for the few at the top. And it's interesting because I think

00:43:12.483 --> 00:43:15.203
if you look at the kind of arc of this development,

00:43:15.383 --> 00:43:21.763
on the other hand, creating those stratified societies is what gave us agriculture

00:43:21.763 --> 00:43:24.203
and then technology and literacy.

00:43:24.983 --> 00:43:30.583
These are the things that allowed us to eventually invent technologies that

00:43:30.583 --> 00:43:34.063
raise the standard of living of everybody and create modern science.

00:43:34.063 --> 00:43:39.483
And, you know, the average person today lives much, whoever was in charge of

00:43:39.483 --> 00:43:47.803
Gobekli Tepe at the pinnacle of that society would love to live like the average resident of Germany.

00:43:48.403 --> 00:43:55.303
So, it has improved, you know, it eventually improved everyone's lives,

00:43:55.483 --> 00:43:59.783
but we had to go through this period where things were bad for most people most of the time.

00:43:59.783 --> 00:44:01.723
So, yeah, so large-scale cooperation

00:44:01.723 --> 00:44:06.743
involves people subverting their own interest to the group interest.

00:44:07.103 --> 00:44:09.883
Right. And that's often bad for a lot of individuals.

00:44:10.963 --> 00:44:14.583
But the irony is that these achievements that you were talking about,

00:44:14.663 --> 00:44:19.943
and you forgot to mention Facebook and TikTok, are actually occurring at a time

00:44:19.943 --> 00:44:22.403
where societies become, again, more secular. Right.

00:44:23.323 --> 00:44:27.523
So, in this whole point, the whole period that was dominated by religion,

00:44:27.723 --> 00:44:30.103
that was the time that life sucked for most people.

00:44:31.063 --> 00:44:35.523
Yeah. I mean, things start to get better and the Renaissance quality of life.

00:44:35.663 --> 00:44:39.303
I mean, the Romans did, you know, what have the Romans done for us?

00:44:40.623 --> 00:44:43.723
Aqueducts, you know, the famous Monty Python bit about that.

00:44:44.343 --> 00:44:47.303
You know, the Romans did a lot of great things. They built roads.

00:44:47.763 --> 00:44:49.403
They improved sanitation.

00:44:49.763 --> 00:44:54.223
They brought water. So, there were improvements gradual,

00:44:54.583 --> 00:45:03.863
but you're right that what really seemed to accelerate this was the creation

00:45:03.863 --> 00:45:06.543
of the scientific worldview,

00:45:06.943 --> 00:45:16.003
which required suppressing or at least bracketing religious beliefs or putting

00:45:16.003 --> 00:45:18.403
them to the side when thinking about the world.

00:45:18.403 --> 00:45:23.483
So, there is something ironic there that you get these religion help large-scale

00:45:23.483 --> 00:45:24.763
societies get off the ground,

00:45:24.983 --> 00:45:29.123
but then they seem to be the most successful when they can figure out a way

00:45:29.123 --> 00:45:35.023
to then build institutions that take over a lot of the work that religion used

00:45:35.023 --> 00:45:39.843
to do and bracket most religious beliefs.

00:45:40.123 --> 00:45:46.023
I don't think I'm a person who believes there's kind of pseudo-religious beliefs

00:45:46.023 --> 00:45:47.623
kicking around in all of us.

00:45:47.743 --> 00:45:53.423
I mean, I'm an atheist, but I think that I'm committed to certain norms that

00:45:53.423 --> 00:45:57.163
I don't really have empirical evidence for.

00:45:57.303 --> 00:46:01.383
I just believe in them deeply, like human rights and human dignity.

00:46:02.563 --> 00:46:06.503
But if it's a type of religion, it's really stripped down religion,

00:46:06.683 --> 00:46:08.203
and that seems to have done really well.

00:46:08.503 --> 00:46:12.743
But the transition you describe, that's also the transition from living in a

00:46:12.743 --> 00:46:17.263
world filled with magic transiting in a world where there's no more magic.

00:46:18.174 --> 00:46:22.914
Yeah. So, that seems to be one of the transitions that allowed science to happen

00:46:22.914 --> 00:46:29.734
was suppressing a lot of intuitive things.

00:46:29.974 --> 00:46:34.814
I mean, science is counterintuitive. So, what's intuitive is thinking that if

00:46:34.814 --> 00:46:37.914
we want it to rain, we pray to the God of rain.

00:46:38.134 --> 00:46:41.694
That is plugging into our basic social reasoning.

00:46:41.874 --> 00:46:45.034
It makes complete sense to most people. It's what most people around the world

00:46:45.034 --> 00:46:47.514
do when they need rain. They pray to a God to get rain.

00:46:48.694 --> 00:46:54.434
Realizing that the world is not intentional and trying to figure out the principles,

00:46:54.754 --> 00:46:58.614
the mechanical principles that are really driving it is counterintuitive.

00:46:58.854 --> 00:47:01.974
And that was some kind of cognitive achievement that happened gradually

00:47:01.974 --> 00:47:04.914
in Northern Europe at

00:47:04.914 --> 00:47:07.874
a certain period of time right why that happened obviously is an

00:47:07.874 --> 00:47:10.874
entire cottage industry but then

00:47:10.874 --> 00:47:13.754
in some sense given your analysis you

00:47:13.754 --> 00:47:18.354
would say well then this whole belief in a nation state with its roots in enlightenment

00:47:18.354 --> 00:47:24.334
is still sharing certain aspects that we find in these religions because there's

00:47:24.334 --> 00:47:29.194
also this ideal of this higher entity which is now your nation and your national

00:47:29.194 --> 00:47:33.174
identity it's like praying to the crocodile God, right?

00:47:33.234 --> 00:47:35.654
Because look, my passport, we are actually brothers.

00:47:36.194 --> 00:47:43.034
So what kind of carryover do you see there to the belief in national identity,

00:47:43.934 --> 00:47:46.234
and nationalism and the nation state?

00:47:47.514 --> 00:47:51.294
A lot, obviously. So the nation state borrows stuff that works.

00:47:52.734 --> 00:47:56.014
Synchronized rituals, right? We have big parades where we march.

00:47:56.174 --> 00:48:01.554
We have symbols that we wave. We have pledges of allegiance that we make, perhaps.

00:48:02.054 --> 00:48:07.794
But I don't think it's that neat a division because the modern nation states

00:48:07.794 --> 00:48:11.934
that arose tended to see themselves in a religious worldview, right?

00:48:12.274 --> 00:48:19.394
America was certainly based on the idea that God gave this land to us because

00:48:19.394 --> 00:48:22.434
we're destined to be great.

00:48:22.854 --> 00:48:26.354
And in America, it's still a very common view.

00:48:26.354 --> 00:48:29.854
You um so they're not easily um

00:48:29.854 --> 00:48:32.534
untangled and they use a lot of the

00:48:32.534 --> 00:48:35.634
same tools um there's a very good reason why

00:48:35.634 --> 00:48:43.314
um religion and politics tend to be mixed together in most places in the world

00:48:43.314 --> 00:48:52.094
north europe and and canada are probably um real outliers in this regard this

00:48:52.094 --> 00:48:54.654
the united The United States looks a lot more like the rest of the world.

00:48:58.289 --> 00:49:02.189
How would alcohol improve that? How would alcohol improve that?

00:49:03.529 --> 00:49:09.709
So, the basic argument in my book, Drunk, is that alcohol is serving a lot of

00:49:09.709 --> 00:49:14.729
the same functions that religion is in terms of enhancing trust,

00:49:14.989 --> 00:49:15.809
enhancing cooperation.

00:49:17.689 --> 00:49:24.429
When you sit down with someone and drink a few beers, I argue it's similar to

00:49:24.429 --> 00:49:26.369
when you sit down and shake hands.

00:49:27.009 --> 00:49:30.349
You're showing you don't have a weapon when you shake hands.

00:49:30.469 --> 00:49:33.809
When you drink a few beers, you're taking your prefrontal cortex out and putting

00:49:33.809 --> 00:49:37.249
it on the table and saying, you know, I've given up cognitive control.

00:49:37.549 --> 00:49:44.749
So, it's a tool for enhancing trust between individuals. That's very important.

00:49:45.389 --> 00:49:51.889
It also helped the transition, you know, hunter-gatherers were probably motivated

00:49:51.889 --> 00:49:56.089
to settle down by the appeal of intoxication.

00:49:56.369 --> 00:50:01.129
So, you know, we have beer, come join our crocodile, uh, God group.

00:50:01.569 --> 00:50:06.829
Um, once they made that transition and suddenly their quality of life plummeted,

00:50:06.829 --> 00:50:10.409
alcohol probably helped them deal with that quality of life decline.

00:50:10.669 --> 00:50:13.569
Um, it helps with stress. It helps with mood.

00:50:13.769 --> 00:50:19.329
Um, there's a, um, you know, people laboring on the crocodile God temple all

00:50:19.329 --> 00:50:23.229
day long, probably at the end of the day, went home and drank beer and made

00:50:23.229 --> 00:50:25.989
them feel better the same way we have a drink at the end of the day.

00:50:25.989 --> 00:50:30.309
Um so it helps with stress reduction um and

00:50:30.309 --> 00:50:33.369
helps with mood it helps with creativity in

00:50:33.369 --> 00:50:36.069
the ways we've laid out right people get together they drink a

00:50:36.069 --> 00:50:39.329
little bit and they come up with better ideas uh they're

00:50:39.329 --> 00:50:42.349
less self-conscious about sharing what

00:50:42.349 --> 00:50:46.309
if they were sober they would think is a stupid idea they

00:50:46.309 --> 00:50:49.509
may be willing to say something right because they're

00:50:49.509 --> 00:50:52.229
disinhibited um so it has a lot

00:50:52.229 --> 00:50:55.749
of it helps humans get along in

00:50:55.749 --> 00:50:58.789
these weird large-scale societies that we've created so

00:50:58.789 --> 00:51:01.949
it was in a way it's both the motivation the original motivation for

00:51:01.949 --> 00:51:06.529
creating them but then once we get into them it's then a tool for helping us

00:51:06.529 --> 00:51:11.149
both cope with the difficult it's difficult living in large-scale societies

00:51:11.149 --> 00:51:16.929
um and also helps these societies to to function in better ways and that's That's

00:51:16.929 --> 00:51:19.849
how alcohol is paying for itself, essentially.

00:51:19.869 --> 00:51:22.009
It's paying for the cost in this regard.

00:51:23.229 --> 00:51:28.729
So does it follow that a lack of alcohol will lead to a breakdown in societal

00:51:28.729 --> 00:51:30.469
cooperation or collaboration?

00:51:31.409 --> 00:51:32.789
That's what I would predict.

00:51:34.169 --> 00:51:35.609
So, you know...

00:51:36.782 --> 00:51:41.362
It's hard to do this on a large scale experimentally. What you can do is take

00:51:41.362 --> 00:51:43.142
advantage of natural experiments.

00:51:43.522 --> 00:51:49.122
So, in the book, I report this one study that I think is still unpublished by

00:51:49.122 --> 00:51:53.622
an economist who looked at a natural experiment, which was the imposition of

00:51:53.622 --> 00:51:55.062
prohibition in America.

00:51:55.642 --> 00:51:58.762
And we tend to think of that as something that happened all at once at the federal

00:51:58.762 --> 00:52:00.502
level, but that's not the case.

00:52:00.542 --> 00:52:03.822
It actually was imposed over a very long period of time at the county level.

00:52:04.122 --> 00:52:10.222
And so, he took advantage of that variation and looked at counties that were

00:52:10.222 --> 00:52:15.322
previously wet where alcohol was legal and then had prohibition imposed.

00:52:16.042 --> 00:52:20.762
And then as a proxy of collaboration, he used patent applications.

00:52:21.162 --> 00:52:26.242
So, he had data, county-level data on patent applications made in a given year.

00:52:26.442 --> 00:52:31.622
And what he found was when prohibition gets imposed, patent applications go

00:52:31.622 --> 00:52:36.742
down 15% and take about three years to get back to previous levels.

00:52:37.222 --> 00:52:42.242
And he argues what's happening there is, so, you know, prohibition didn't mean

00:52:42.242 --> 00:52:44.502
people stopped drinking entirely, right?

00:52:44.562 --> 00:52:49.622
They had homemade alcohol at home or bootleg liquor, but what it did is shut

00:52:49.622 --> 00:52:55.322
down the saloons. And so, it stopped group drinking, it stopped social drinking from happening.

00:52:55.522 --> 00:53:00.262
And he thinks that's what's going on. So you see this drop in innovation when

00:53:00.262 --> 00:53:03.442
people can't gather in saloons and chat anymore.

00:53:03.822 --> 00:53:09.662
And he thinks what's happening three years later is speakeasies are arising.

00:53:09.962 --> 00:53:13.322
People are creating workarounds and coming up with new ways,

00:53:13.462 --> 00:53:15.382
underground ways to socialize and drink.

00:53:16.142 --> 00:53:20.782
So it's correlational, but it's kind of neat bit of correlational evidence.

00:53:21.282 --> 00:53:27.082
Um, I would also predict, so I talked a little bit about in the book about COVID, um, um,

00:53:27.709 --> 00:53:33.069
So, with people, you know, annual conferences getting canceled and what people

00:53:33.069 --> 00:53:38.329
do at annual conferences, they go to talks, they give talks, but they drink.

00:53:38.809 --> 00:53:42.469
The main motivation, right, is to go and see your friend, colleagues,

00:53:42.909 --> 00:53:47.049
meet people you've heard of and want to talk to and you meet over drinks.

00:53:47.609 --> 00:53:51.409
That didn't happen for a year and a half. It's still not happening very much.

00:53:52.029 --> 00:53:57.569
I'd predict that we're going to see a drop in creativity and collaboration.

00:53:57.989 --> 00:54:00.809
And you could pick a proxy to measure that.

00:54:01.329 --> 00:54:07.549
There was one I did dig up. It's in a footnote because I stumbled on this study

00:54:07.549 --> 00:54:09.409
late in the process of writing the book.

00:54:09.669 --> 00:54:14.869
But again, a natural experiment that happened was a political science annual

00:54:14.869 --> 00:54:17.649
conference got canceled because of a hurricane.

00:54:17.929 --> 00:54:21.589
So, this one year, the annual conference didn't happen.

00:54:21.869 --> 00:54:27.049
And these scholars found that in the wake, the one year after that canceled

00:54:27.049 --> 00:54:34.609
annual conference, the percentage of papers that co-authored went down significantly.

00:54:35.169 --> 00:54:38.089
So, you seem to have a fall in collaboration.

00:54:39.169 --> 00:54:42.949
So, I'm going to predict that COVID has done a similar thing.

00:54:43.229 --> 00:54:47.409
When we're not getting together in person and meeting over drinks anymore.

00:54:47.929 --> 00:54:53.069
We're having these weird Zoom meetings where we're not drinking together.

00:54:53.429 --> 00:54:58.629
We have very reduced bandwidth in terms of facial expressions and tone of voice.

00:54:58.989 --> 00:55:02.689
The timing's a little bit off and timing is crucial, right?

00:55:02.849 --> 00:55:08.009
The social signals that we use to coordinate when it's time for me to stop talking

00:55:08.009 --> 00:55:13.869
and when it's time for you to start talking are fractions of a second, and Zoom screws that up.

00:55:14.149 --> 00:55:17.509
So we're lacking all the dynamics of in-person meeting.

00:55:17.729 --> 00:55:22.969
I think we're going to see a really serious effect on innovation and collaboration.

00:55:23.829 --> 00:55:27.409
But Edward, in some sense, there have been other proposals on,

00:55:27.429 --> 00:55:31.289
let's say, how mushrooms and the consumption of mushrooms,

00:55:32.149 --> 00:55:39.309
hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms also led to the creation of religion.

00:55:39.629 --> 00:55:44.949
And there, it was sort of the hallucinogenic component that would contribute to that,

00:55:45.109 --> 00:55:49.009
while in your case, you would say, well, it's more this sort of the suppression

00:55:49.009 --> 00:55:54.929
of the cognitive control that leads to, if you want, more magical thinking and

00:55:54.929 --> 00:55:58.369
the creation of religious considerations.

00:55:58.369 --> 00:56:02.929
So, how do you see that link to other drugs, including, let's say,

00:56:02.949 --> 00:56:07.149
mushrooms and these mushroom theories on the evolution of religion?

00:56:08.138 --> 00:56:12.958
Yeah, well, I mean, hallucinations are the result of suppression of cognitive control.

00:56:13.198 --> 00:56:19.098
So, what's happening in trips, mushroom trips, LSD trips, is the playground

00:56:19.098 --> 00:56:22.698
monitor is gone now and different parts of the brain can talk to each other

00:56:22.698 --> 00:56:24.058
that don't normally talk to one another.

00:56:24.278 --> 00:56:28.798
And you get these weird kind of synesthesias where you're getting sensory modes

00:56:28.798 --> 00:56:30.538
kind of overlapping in weird ways.

00:56:31.838 --> 00:56:35.298
So, Michael Pollan's got a relatively recent book about this,

00:56:35.358 --> 00:56:37.518
you know, How to Change Your Mind, and he's arguing that.

00:56:38.138 --> 00:56:40.818
Um hallucinogens have played this important role so i look at

00:56:40.818 --> 00:56:44.178
hallucinogens the book the book is about chemical intoxicants

00:56:44.178 --> 00:56:48.578
in general so i look at uh right i look at

00:56:48.578 --> 00:56:56.958
kava i don't look at uh caffeine or nicotine because those are not intoxicants

00:56:56.958 --> 00:57:01.838
so caffeine and nicotine are friends of the prefrontal cortex they they enhance

00:57:01.838 --> 00:57:05.538
your cognitive control and i'm not interested in them i'm interested in things

00:57:05.538 --> 00:57:07.358
that mess with your pfc essentially essentially.

00:57:07.598 --> 00:57:10.678
And hallucinogens do that. Cannabis does that.

00:57:11.698 --> 00:57:15.618
My argument in the book, though, is that the reason that I focus primarily on

00:57:15.618 --> 00:57:18.558
alcohol is because alcohol is the king of intoxicants.

00:57:18.598 --> 00:57:21.558
It's by far the most commonly used chemical intoxicant.

00:57:22.238 --> 00:57:25.398
And it's a better drug in certain ways.

00:57:25.718 --> 00:57:29.458
It's not an accident that it's the king of intoxicants. I think if you gave

00:57:29.458 --> 00:57:34.678
a group of cultural evolutionary engineers some design specs,

00:57:35.018 --> 00:57:39.358
you said, we need something, We want a chemical substance that will suppress

00:57:39.358 --> 00:57:42.518
PFC, but not for too long and not too much.

00:57:43.358 --> 00:57:47.078
We want it to be short-acting because we want people to be able to do this for

00:57:47.078 --> 00:57:49.498
a few hours, but then get back to everyday life again.

00:57:50.098 --> 00:57:52.758
We want it to be easy to make. You should be able to make it anywhere.

00:57:53.418 --> 00:57:54.858
You should be able to dose it well.

00:57:55.796 --> 00:57:59.676
It would be something like alcohol. So cannabis, for instance,

00:58:00.056 --> 00:58:04.376
is very difficult to dose, whether you're smoking or eating it.

00:58:04.456 --> 00:58:08.676
And also cannabis has very variable effects across individuals.

00:58:08.756 --> 00:58:12.476
It has very almost opposite effects in different individuals,

00:58:13.296 --> 00:58:17.316
whereas alcohol's effects are pretty consistent across individuals. It's easy to dose.

00:58:18.696 --> 00:58:26.536
Hallucinogens are just so powerfully disassociate you from reality that they're

00:58:26.536 --> 00:58:29.156
not useful for most of the things we use alcohol for.

00:58:29.296 --> 00:58:33.616
You're not going to sit down with business partners to negotiate a contract

00:58:33.616 --> 00:58:35.436
and all drop acid together.

00:58:36.796 --> 00:58:39.376
It's going to end up being a very interesting contract, right?

00:58:39.756 --> 00:58:42.776
And they're too long acting. I mean, they take too long.

00:58:43.176 --> 00:58:48.836
I am open to the fact that the idea that in the modern world,

00:58:48.876 --> 00:58:52.476
we may be able to adapt some of these drugs to be more user-friendly.

00:58:52.656 --> 00:58:54.816
So I talked a little bit about microdosing.

00:58:55.576 --> 00:58:59.396
But now that we can synthesize the active component of, let's say,

00:58:59.416 --> 00:59:05.636
psilocybin mushrooms, we may be able to take smaller doses that would give us

00:59:05.636 --> 00:59:07.776
some of the alcohol-like benefits.

00:59:07.856 --> 00:59:12.196
So we'd still be able to sit down and talk to colleagues. We'd still be able to go to work.

00:59:12.976 --> 00:59:16.396
But we'd have some of these benefits without the cost because the problem with

00:59:16.396 --> 00:59:21.756
alcohol is the two big strikes against it is it's really dangerous physiologically.

00:59:21.756 --> 00:59:25.056
It's really damaging physiologically and it's

00:59:25.056 --> 00:59:30.796
super addictive it's physiologically addictive um on the level of kind of cocaine

00:59:30.796 --> 00:59:37.156
and heroin right it's um whereas cannabis and psychedelics are pretty harmless

00:59:37.156 --> 00:59:41.816
physiologically and don't seem to create um physiological addiction,

00:59:42.698 --> 00:59:49.278
Well, cannabis, chronic use can really lead to rather important shifts in how

00:59:49.278 --> 00:59:54.178
the cerebellum and prefrontal cortex interact, right? Suppression of cortex.

00:59:55.818 --> 01:00:00.378
But okay, it's not comparable. Compared to alcohol, it's a safer drug.

01:00:00.578 --> 01:00:04.338
Right. And it does, and it can be on, you can be psychologically addicted to

01:00:04.338 --> 01:00:07.678
cannabis, but it doesn't create physical addiction in the way alcohol does.

01:00:07.678 --> 01:00:11.538
But what's interesting in terms of also this distinction between alcohol as

01:00:11.538 --> 01:00:15.858
sort of the perfect drug in that sense versus hallucinogenics,

01:00:15.958 --> 01:00:22.498
in the ritual sense, this was often also delegated to an elected few, right?

01:00:22.578 --> 01:00:28.338
They would have the trip and then report back to the rest of the community what the gods told them.

01:00:28.798 --> 01:00:31.418
Yeah, so that's interesting. Yeah, I talk about that. Typically,

01:00:31.818 --> 01:00:36.978
because hallucinations are so powerful, cultures have two different strategies

01:00:36.978 --> 01:00:38.978
for dealing with it. One is the one you said.

01:00:39.158 --> 01:00:42.158
So, there's a class of people, shamans, right?

01:00:42.258 --> 01:00:47.178
And their job is to trip a lot, but that's their full-time job.

01:00:47.458 --> 01:00:49.458
They don't have to farm. They don't have to do anything else.

01:00:49.598 --> 01:00:54.278
And then they come back and tell us what the gods said, which is basically their

01:00:54.278 --> 01:00:58.118
parts of their brain that don't normally get to talk to the conscious part of

01:00:58.118 --> 01:00:59.438
the brain suggesting solutions.

01:00:59.438 --> 01:01:03.918
So, you know, why are the gods angry with us? We haven't been capturing game.

01:01:04.778 --> 01:01:08.638
The shaman takes a bunch of mushrooms and goes up in the mountain and,

01:01:08.658 --> 01:01:13.238
you know, has a trip and speaks to the gods and maybe comes up with.

01:01:13.278 --> 01:01:15.778
So, Michael Pollan has a great analogy.

01:01:16.858 --> 01:01:20.418
He argues that hallucinogens are

01:01:20.418 --> 01:01:23.598
to cultural evolution what mutagens

01:01:23.598 --> 01:01:26.698
are for genetic evolution so for

01:01:26.698 --> 01:01:30.218
genetic evolution you need variation you need mutations uh

01:01:30.218 --> 01:01:35.298
they're mostly really bad they mostly have negative consequences but every once

01:01:35.298 --> 01:01:40.138
in a while one is good and that that's what that's the raw material for selection

01:01:40.138 --> 01:01:46.918
to act on he thinks for cultural evolution you need variation you need kind of entropy,

01:01:47.198 --> 01:01:49.038
you need the brain scrambled up a bit.

01:01:49.418 --> 01:01:54.918
And most of what that's going to produce is nonsense. So most of what you come

01:01:54.918 --> 01:01:56.578
out of with a trip is nonsense.

01:01:57.238 --> 01:02:01.018
But maybe every once in a while, you come up with something that's really new,

01:02:01.178 --> 01:02:04.898
because it never would have happened if these brain regions weren't talking

01:02:04.898 --> 01:02:06.738
to one another. And it's useful.

01:02:07.838 --> 01:02:14.098
And so the shamans provide that. Or the other strategy groups use is everyone

01:02:14.098 --> 01:02:19.358
does hallucinogens, but we only do it once or twice a year. It's a very special ritual.

01:02:19.678 --> 01:02:22.658
But it's never an everyday drug for everybody.

01:02:23.198 --> 01:02:28.618
Right. Clear. So Edward, to get us to the finish line, two questions.

01:02:30.798 --> 01:02:34.678
Do you believe humans will ever manage to establish a sustainable collaboration?

01:02:37.756 --> 01:02:41.816
Like all of us on the planet together? Exactly.

01:02:43.296 --> 01:02:46.296
No. I'm kind of pessimistic about that.

01:02:47.036 --> 01:02:50.816
You know, I think… Let's be pragmatic about it, right? If we face these global

01:02:50.816 --> 01:02:53.696
challenges now, we need a global response.

01:02:53.836 --> 01:02:58.356
So, by consequence, we need global collaboration. How are we going to manage that?

01:02:59.576 --> 01:03:02.956
If you could make it… The problem

01:03:02.956 --> 01:03:06.356
with the global challenges we face is they're not… they're

01:03:06.356 --> 01:03:09.536
happening at a time scale and on a causal scale

01:03:09.536 --> 01:03:17.276
that i don't think we're evolved to really get right so climate change is causality

01:03:17.276 --> 01:03:23.076
so diffuse like the the link between me driving to work and the storm that happened

01:03:23.076 --> 01:03:29.376
that wiped out louisiana is so diffuse it's just we're not good at thinking about that.

01:03:30.716 --> 01:03:37.736
So, if we can figure out some way to make something like climate change feel

01:03:37.736 --> 01:03:43.816
real to people in the same way, look, here's the invading army that is threatening us.

01:03:43.956 --> 01:03:47.176
How do we know it's happening? Because look over the walls. There they are.

01:03:48.736 --> 01:03:53.456
People are not rational, right? So, you got to get their guts on board.

01:03:54.096 --> 01:03:58.356
So, I guess if we could figure out a way to make some of these existential global

01:03:58.356 --> 01:04:03.716
threats cognitively graspable, emotionally graspable by people.

01:04:04.236 --> 01:04:11.416
Maybe you'd be able to... You get collaboration and cooperation in the face of common enemies.

01:04:11.936 --> 01:04:17.256
And obviously, climate change is a common enemy. We're all going to be affected by it.

01:04:18.356 --> 01:04:23.516
But I just don't think we've been very successful in getting people to feel that.

01:04:24.156 --> 01:04:29.696
Or think about COVID response and just the political divisions in the United

01:04:29.696 --> 01:04:35.716
States, for instance, or even here in Canada on just no-brainer things like vaccines.

01:04:36.756 --> 01:04:39.736
I mean, you could have reasonable disagreement on whether or not kids should

01:04:39.736 --> 01:04:43.296
go to school or whether or not masks should be required in the classroom.

01:04:44.016 --> 01:04:47.276
But vaccines are just, there's no rational answer.

01:04:48.244 --> 01:04:52.424
Debate about that but there is there's well there's debate about it because it's been,

01:04:53.184 --> 01:04:55.824
tribalized and i just you know the

01:04:55.824 --> 01:05:00.484
the way getting people together in religious groups large-scale societies is

01:05:00.484 --> 01:05:05.764
in a way fighting against our tribal nature is creating a super tribe or it's

01:05:05.764 --> 01:05:11.304
suppressing tribal instincts but they're always there and i think what we've

01:05:11.304 --> 01:05:13.204
seen is they They come back.

01:05:13.924 --> 01:05:19.364
Right. But if I listen to your analysis, the consequence would be that we could

01:05:19.364 --> 01:05:23.144
set up a new religion where we have to protect.

01:05:23.224 --> 01:05:28.064
It's more like a Gaia-oriented religion that has to sort of protect Mother Earth.

01:05:28.244 --> 01:05:32.064
And Mother Earth is our new god, and we have to venerate her by making sure

01:05:32.064 --> 01:05:33.884
that she doesn't get further compromised.

01:05:34.504 --> 01:05:39.684
Wouldn't that be a way through this? We start to mobilize again all these very

01:05:39.684 --> 01:05:45.404
primitive responses of collaboration in order to actually achieve this goal

01:05:45.404 --> 01:05:48.144
because the rational route is closed.

01:05:49.404 --> 01:05:52.484
Yeah. How do you practically do that, though?

01:05:52.924 --> 01:05:59.704
You need a Jesus, right? You need one or a series or a group of charismatic

01:05:59.704 --> 01:06:02.424
leaders who can convince you of this. And a lot of beer.

01:06:02.684 --> 01:06:05.944
And a lot of beer. beer organic beer

01:06:05.944 --> 01:06:09.024
you know exactly sustainably um but yeah

01:06:09.024 --> 01:06:12.204
so this something like that is in theory

01:06:12.204 --> 01:06:16.844
great um it's just the practicalities of how you would get it off the ground

01:06:16.844 --> 01:06:22.204
because people need to believe it right they need to they need to believe it

01:06:22.204 --> 01:06:26.024
and that's the tricky thing well in that sense you could argue that that these

01:06:26.024 --> 01:06:30.704
movements who try to sort of instill ecological psychological change,

01:06:31.084 --> 01:06:36.604
right, have in some sense already these kinds of metaphysical considerations

01:06:36.604 --> 01:06:39.484
in them. So you can build on that.

01:06:40.349 --> 01:06:44.109
Yeah, that's where I hope the database of religious history is going to prove helpful.

01:06:44.289 --> 01:06:48.529
Because if we can, once we get enough data, if we can see that there are these

01:06:48.529 --> 01:06:53.129
common features of religions that are successful, you can imagine then kind

01:06:53.129 --> 01:06:57.529
of basically consciously engineering a type of new that had some of these features.

01:06:57.529 --> 01:07:00.289
You have 10 years, right? So we've got to hurry up.

01:07:00.529 --> 01:07:06.189
The last question, Edward, my last question, if you could change one thing in humans, right?

01:07:06.269 --> 01:07:10.729
So you're the Uber God and you can change one feature, one trait of humans,

01:07:11.069 --> 01:07:16.389
what would it be so that they would collaborate more effectively? Oh, God.

01:07:23.229 --> 01:07:28.329
As an Uber God, you cannot resort to that. So this is it. Yeah. Yeah.

01:07:29.829 --> 01:07:34.009
It's tricky because you change, anything you change could have these knock-on

01:07:34.009 --> 01:07:35.409
effects that you can't predict.

01:07:35.669 --> 01:07:41.509
That's why. So yeah, I'd like to change, you know, let's change human selfishness,

01:07:42.309 --> 01:07:49.329
you know, self-regarding, but if you change that or you get a screw with parenting,

01:07:49.609 --> 01:07:51.169
would you screw with friendship?

01:07:52.329 --> 01:07:55.109
I don't know. Right. You would also screw with agency.

01:07:56.469 --> 01:08:00.749
Yeah, I can't answer that question. I'm not a Newbery god.

01:08:01.709 --> 01:08:08.989
But yeah. No, look, I would have said that there's a self-limiting alcohol absorption

01:08:08.989 --> 01:08:13.209
system that brings everybody to the sweet spot of, what was it,

01:08:13.269 --> 01:08:16.569
0.8 or 0.08? 0.08, 0.08 it seems to be.

01:08:16.709 --> 01:08:20.169
So 0.08 homeostat in the brain.

01:08:21.472 --> 01:08:25.452
Yeah, being able to turn, if we had a way to turn that on really easily or,

01:08:25.532 --> 01:08:30.152
you know, so one thing I'd change is not give us a tendency to be physiologically

01:08:30.152 --> 01:08:37.392
addicted to alcohol and change what would be nice as a drug that does everything alcohol does,

01:08:37.652 --> 01:08:40.372
but is not physiologically harmful or addictive.

01:08:40.992 --> 01:08:46.832
Exactly. That would be nice. And maybe micro-dosed psilocybin is going to be

01:08:46.832 --> 01:08:51.412
that, but it's early days. We only have about eight years of experience with that.

01:08:51.492 --> 01:08:54.912
And we've got about 12,000 years of experience with alcohol.

01:08:55.352 --> 01:08:57.632
So yeah. Great.

01:08:58.792 --> 01:09:01.612
Edward Slingerland, thank you very much for this conversation.

01:09:02.152 --> 01:09:04.412
Yeah. Thanks, Ted. Thank you very much.

01:09:04.692 --> 01:09:09.112
Yeah. Thanks for having me. This was great. So Edward, yeah,

01:09:09.212 --> 01:09:12.832
I hope we're not derailing too much, of course, your analysis of religion and

01:09:12.832 --> 01:09:14.372
also the role of alcohol in that.

01:09:14.372 --> 01:09:17.212
That because i was really to really switch you

01:09:17.212 --> 01:09:19.952
to the collaboration side no that's all

01:09:19.952 --> 01:09:23.312
those are all relevant questions yeah yeah that was great

01:09:23.312 --> 01:09:26.352
and i really would like to read your book so um

01:09:26.352 --> 01:09:29.812
i have to find it somewhere okay it's

01:09:29.812 --> 01:09:34.292
everywhere okay and i yeah i don't i'm not at airports anymore you know so i

01:09:34.292 --> 01:09:39.212
don't see the book yeah right right right and um yeah i would be really happy

01:09:39.212 --> 01:09:44.112
to to follow up because for in my case in my work on consciousness i also postulate

01:09:44.112 --> 01:09:47.552
that there's an intentionality prior, right?

01:09:47.612 --> 01:09:49.952
So you have the Kantian categories of space and time.

01:09:50.432 --> 01:09:55.632
And I believe there's also an intentionality prior that's just implanted in

01:09:55.632 --> 01:09:56.772
the brain from the beginning.

01:09:57.012 --> 01:10:02.332
And from that unfolds all these complexifications that we now are trying to

01:10:02.332 --> 01:10:04.552
deal with through religion, for instance.

01:10:05.556 --> 01:10:10.016
Okay. So something like Dennett's intentional stance, you mean? No, no, no.

01:10:10.156 --> 01:10:14.796
Because for Dennett, it's also more of a cognitive tool. Like it's easier to

01:10:14.796 --> 01:10:16.216
look at the world. It's easier to, yeah.

01:10:16.576 --> 01:10:20.876
But for me, it started in the Cambrian explosion.

01:10:21.476 --> 01:10:27.456
As soon as you have predator-prey systems, you can only survive if you have intentionality prior.

01:10:27.716 --> 01:10:33.436
Because as a prey, you just have to consider everything unknown and expect it

01:10:33.436 --> 01:10:38.256
as a potential predator. So now you start to impose intentionality on the whole world by necessity.

01:10:39.356 --> 01:10:43.176
So predator-prey systems for me are really the beginning of this intentionality prior.

01:10:43.576 --> 01:10:46.276
Oh, that's interesting. And then, of course, in the case of humans,

01:10:46.576 --> 01:10:50.216
when you add culture, symbol systems on top of that, okay, now we have the gods.

01:10:50.956 --> 01:10:54.756
Right, right. But it's really the evolutionary trick. It's the only way to survive

01:10:54.756 --> 01:10:56.136
in multi-agent systems.

01:10:57.376 --> 01:10:58.496
Yeah, that's interesting.

01:10:59.756 --> 01:11:03.496
Yeah, that's cool. I can send the paper to you. Yeah, I'd like to see it.

01:11:03.516 --> 01:11:10.236
Is it wrong? I've got a – my last monograph was actually on mind-body concepts in early China.

01:11:10.836 --> 01:11:16.576
Oh, cool. And arguing that they are there contrary to popular belief.

01:11:16.976 --> 01:11:21.556
And they're there because they're built in. They're part of the cognitive architecture.

01:11:21.896 --> 01:11:24.956
Oh, that's – but that's not an airport book, I think.

01:11:25.436 --> 01:11:29.276
That's not. It's called Mind and Body in Early China. Okay.

01:11:29.856 --> 01:11:34.096
Oh, that's great. Great. Okay. No, that sounds very relevant because it seems...

01:11:34.096 --> 01:11:36.696
It might be relevant. Okay. That's great.

01:11:37.476 --> 01:11:39.376
Well, Luke Edwards, thank you very much.

01:11:40.436 --> 01:11:45.496
I hope we can bump into... Hi, you listened to one of our podcasts in the series

01:11:45.496 --> 01:11:50.636
on collaboration produced by the Ernst Trommel Forum and the Convergent Science Network.

01:11:51.396 --> 01:11:54.316
You can find more episodes on our website.