WEBVTT - Ep129 "Is utopia possible or do human brains preclude it?" with Paul Bloom 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:10.560 Would a utopia be possible and would it even be desirable? 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:15.400 Are we wired up with desires and preferences like tribalism 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:20.080 and jealousy that make perfect societies difficult to achieve? 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:22.599 Do we love hierarchies? 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:28.080 Why are primate brains such excellent detectors of unfairness? 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:30.160 Do we actually like struggle? 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:35.120 Did the Church's disavowal of first cousin marriages lead to 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:39.559 better politics? This week we'll talk with psychologist Paul Bloom 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:48.800 about the possibility slash impossibility of achieving societal utopias. 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:52.080 Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:55.360 I'm a neuroscientist and author at Stanford, and in these 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:59.400 episodes we sail deeply into our three pound universe to 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:02.640 understand why and how our lives and. 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:04.840 Societies look the way they do. 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:23.960 Today's episode is about whether we humans yoked with our 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:27.800 brains and our psychologies, whether we will ever get to 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:33.240 a utopian society. Imagine a world where everyone has what 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:37.640 they need, no crime, no hunger, no injustice, a place 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:41.399 of peace and fairness and fulfillment. For as long as 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:43.839 we have been human, we have dreamed of such a place. 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:46.720 We've even given it a name utopia. 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:47.520 Now. 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:52.440 The word utopia was coined by Thomas Moore in fifteen sixteen. 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:58.440 He described a fictional island society where private property didn't exist, 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:02.680 and where everyone worked and where everyone shared equally. But 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:06.520 even then he chose the word as a pun from 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:11.280 the roots ooh topos, which means no place. This was 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:16.000 his hint that such perfection might not exist anywhere or 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.600 any when. But this possibility of it not coming to 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:23.760 fruition has never stopped people from thinking about it and 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.960 working toward it, and often picking up arms to try 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:31.480 to achieve it. But again and again the road to 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:35.120 utopia gets off ramped by human nature. 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:37.200 One historical example. 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:40.320 Of this comes from the French Revolution in seventeen eighty nine. 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:45.080 It was all about liberty and equality and fraternity, and 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:47.880 that's nothing but good stuff. It makes total sense to 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:51.919 be on board with that. The monarchy was overthrown, they 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:56.440 tossed out feudal privileges, they declared a new republic. But 0:02:56.720 --> 0:03:00.919 by seventeen ninety two France was tearing itself apart. He 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:04.720 had royalists and moderates and radical factions. They were all 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:08.280 in the fight for dominance. And so out of this chaos, 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:13.160 in seventeen ninety three emerged the Committee of Public Safety, 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:17.880 which was an emergency body to protect the revolution from 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:23.600 enemies foreign and domestic, and its leading voice was Maximilian Robespierre. 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:28.239 He was known as the Incorruptible because of his unbending 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:31.399 devotion to revolutionary virtue. 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:32.760 He believed all the. 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:37.200 Way down that the revolution had to be defended militarily, 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:43.760 of course, but also morally through purity unity. The destruction 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:51.920 of corruption. To him, terror was justice. So they made 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:57.960 revolutionary tribunals to accuse people of counter revolutionary activity. This 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:03.800 was anyone noble's clergy, political opponents, former allies, and what 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:08.840 was called the law of suspects made essentially everyone vulnerable 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:14.600 to arrest if they were showing insufficient enthusiasm for the revolution. 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.200 And as you remember from your history classes, the guillotine 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:21.159 became the symbol of the new order because it was 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:26.359 proposed as an egalitarian instrument of execution. So over the 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:30.960 next two years there were seventeen thousand executions, and at 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:34.560 least that many more who died in prisons or summary killings. 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:36.280 So what the heck happened here? 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:40.440 What Robespierre so desperately hoped for was what he called 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:44.760 a republic of virtue, where citizens would be motivated by 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:49.320 civic morality rather than self interest. But in practice, what 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:54.400 he thought of as virtue became enforced conformity. Anybody could 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:59.440 become a suspect. They could be labeled as corrupt, or aristocratic, 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:05.640 or insufficiently revolutionary. So what happened is the revolution, which 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:09.320 looked like it was aiming towards the utopia, quickly became 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:14.279 known as the Reign of Terror. Everyone was frantic and scared. 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:18.320 Revolutionaries turned on each other. A bunch of the early 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:22.640 leaders were sent to the guillotine by their former ally, Robespierre. 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:26.120 So by mid seventeen ninety four, everyone who knew Robespierre, 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:30.120 even as close allies, everyone was in fear for their lives. 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.640 So finally, in July of seventeen ninety four, he got 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:37.760 arrested and guillotined, and the Reign of Terror finally ended. 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:41.960 So this is just one of a gajillion examples where 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:47.400 the pursuit of moral purity and ideal justice slips into violence. 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:50.800 This is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union. The 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:55.680 original communist revolutionaries were so clear and bright eyed on 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:59.480 the utopia that they wanted to build. But between Lenin 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:04.560 and star there were an estimated one million political executions. 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:08.400 Both Lenin and Stalin believed they were creating a new 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:15.560 purified world and egalitarian utopia free from exploitation. But just 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:20.040 like with Robespierre, the pursuit of purity turned into the 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:25.440 destruction of perceived impurity. Just like the French Revolution, the 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:29.719 Soviet experiment began with a dream of equality and ended 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:34.080 in terror. In the thousands of cases like these, utopian 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:41.080 zeal plus human psychology, fear and rivalry and paranoia and tribalism, 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:47.799 this combination produces the opposite of paradise. Whenever movements aim 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:54.160 to purify human nature itself, they eventually turned the blade inward. 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:58.520 And this is where psychology and neuroscience become key parts 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:01.960 of the analysis, because at the center of every grand 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:07.240 political blueprint sets the human brain, a brain that evolved 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:11.840 in survival conditions, tuned for tribalism. 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:13.240 For hierarchy, for rivalry. 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:15.920 This has been a topic close to my heart for years, 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:17.920 and in fact, one of my short stories in my 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:21.360 book Some is exactly on this topic. So to set 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:25.360 the table for today's podcast. I'll read that story now. 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:30.680 This is called egalitaire. In the afterlife, you discover that 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:34.240 God understands the complexities of life. 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:36.200 She had originally submitted to. 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:39.760 Peer pressure when she structured her universe like all the 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:44.040 other gods had, with a binary categorization of people into 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:47.200 good and evil. But it didn't take long for her 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:50.320 to realize that humans could be good in many ways 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:55.720 and simultaneously corrupt and mean spirited in other ways. How 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:58.760 was she to arbitrate who goes to heaven and who 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:03.040 to hell? Might not be possible. She considered that a 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:07.360 man could be an embezzler and still give to charitable causes. 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.640 Might not a woman be an adulteress, but bring pleasure 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:15.120 and security to two men's lives. Might not a child 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:21.320 unwittingly divulge secrets that splinter a family. Dividing the population 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:25.320 into two categories good and bad seemed like a more 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:29.559 reasonable task when she was younger, but with experience these 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:34.240 decisions became more difficult. She composed complex formulas to weigh 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:37.880 hundreds of factors and ran computer programs that rolled out 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:42.760 long strips of paper with eternal decisions, but her sensitivities 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.800 revolted at this automation, and when the computer generated a 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:50.920 decision she disagreed with, she took the opportunity to kick 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:54.600 out the plug and rage. That afternoon, she listened to 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:58.839 the grievances of the dead from two warring nations. Both 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:04.000 sides had suffered, both sides had legitimate grievances, both pled 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:08.840 their cases earnestly. She covered her ears and moaned in misery. 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:12.560 She knew her humans were multi dimensional, and she could 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:17.199 no longer live under the rigid architecture of her youthful choices. 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:22.120 Not all gods suffer over this. We can consider ourselves 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:25.679 lucky that in death we answer to a god with 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:31.400 deep sensitivity to the byzantine hearts of her creations. For months, 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.920 she moped around her living room in Heaven, head drooped 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:39.600 like a bulrush while the lines piled up. Her advisers 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:43.960 advised her to delegate the decision making, but she loved 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:46.520 her humans too much to leave them to the care 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:49.960 of anyone else. In a moment of desperation, the thought 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:53.600 crossed her mind to let everyone wait online indefinitely, letting 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:56.680 them work it out on their own. But then a 0:09:56.840 --> 0:10:00.680 better idea struck her. Generous spirit. She I can afford it. 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:05.320 She would grant everyone, every last human a place in heaven. 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:09.160 After all, everyone had something good inside. It was part 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:13.280 of the design specifications. Her new plan brought back the 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:16.520 bounce to her gait, returned the color. 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:17.120 To her cheeks. 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:20.800 She shut down the operations in Hell, fired the devil, 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:23.840 and brought every last human to be by her side 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:29.560 in Heaven, newcomers or old timers, nefarious or righteous. Under 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:33.040 the new system, everyone gets equal time to speak with her. 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:37.319 Most people find her a little garrulous and over solicitous, 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:41.160 but she cannot be accused of not caring. The most 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:44.360 important part of her new system is that everyone is 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:48.840 treated equally. There is no longer fire for some and 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:52.720 harp music for others. The afterlife is no longer defined 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:57.880 by cots versus water beds, raw potatoes versus sushi, hot 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:02.000 water versus champagne. Every everyone is a brother to all, 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:05.960 and for the first time, an idea has been realized 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:08.640 that never came to fruition on earth. 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:10.679 True equality. 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:16.120 The Communists are baffled and irritated because they have finally 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:19.600 achieved their perfect society, but only by the help. 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:21.600 Of a god In whom they don't want to believe. 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:26.640 The meritocrats are abashed that they're stuck for eternity in 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:31.319 an incentiveless system with a bunch of pinkos. The conservatives 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:36.040 have no penniless to disparage, the liberals have no downtrodden 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.360 to promote. So God sits on the edge of her 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:43.600 bed and weeps at night because the only thing everyone 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:49.720 can agree on is that they're all in hell. That 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:53.480 was the story Egalitaire from my book Some. So let's 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:55.960 get back to the human foibles that get in the 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:59.840 way of utopias. An important clue is that these aren't 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.480 learned behaviors. You can look at how predisposed we are 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:07.680 to tribalism, for example, by looking at children. An experiment 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:10.240 in the nineteen fifties took two groups of boys at 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:13.959 summer camp and randomly separated them and gave them different 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:18.000 team names, the Rattlers and the Eagles, and the psychologists 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:23.319 watched closely and measured how quickly this descended into tribal hostility, 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:28.280 hurling insults, raiding each other's cabins, burning each other's flags, 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:31.160 breaking into physical violence. 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:32.560 You don't need. 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:36.120 Decades of history to divide two groups. The division can 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:41.280 happen in days or hours because group identity us versus them, 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.040 lives deep in our circuitry. And by the way, the 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:47.680 things that get in our way with building utopias aren't 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.520 limited to humans. You can see the general elements throughout 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:54.640 the animal kingdom. In one study, all Link in the 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:58.360 show notes, you have capuchin monkeys trained to do a 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:01.320 little task for a slice of queer, and they're perfectly 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:05.600 happy with that payment until they see the monkey next 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:08.839 to them get a nice, juicy grape which is better 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:12.200 for the same amount of work. And suddenly the cucumber 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.640 becomes an insult. The monkeys fling it back at the 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:17.559 researcher and pound. 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:18.640 The cage in outrage. 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:21.800 Because even for our cousins in the animal kingdom, they 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:26.120 are keenly attuned to others getting more than them. This 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:32.520 insults a very deep seated root of fairness. So what 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:35.240 does this mean when you have societies with millions of 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:38.440 humans and everyone is looking at their neighbors to see 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:41.880 if they feel anyone is getting something better than they are. 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.880 So the question I want to explore today is if 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.640 children fracture into tribes with just some labels and monkeys 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:52.199 riot when they feel like they're not getting enough, and 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:56.600 every adult human attempt at rebooting the system seems to 0:13:56.679 --> 0:13:59.560 end up in a reign of terror and political executions. 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:06.080 What chance does utopia stand? Are humans fundamentally incompatible with 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:11.359 paradise or are these drives flexible and capable of being reshaped? 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:13.640 So this is what I want to explore today with 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:16.240 my guest psychologist, Paul Bloom. 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:19.280 He has thought deeply about human. 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:24.760 Nature, our capacities for kindness and cruelty, our hunger for fairness, 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:28.280 our appetite for meaning. We're going to talk about whether 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:34.560 utopia is politically possible or do our flawed, ambitious, competitive 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:38.240 brains always going to get in the way, or are 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:42.000 there ways we might at least move in the right directions. 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:45.040 Paul Bloom is a professor of psychology at the University 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:48.400 of Toronto and Professor Emeritis at Yale. He's the author 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:51.400 of psych The Story of the Human Mind, and many 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:55.160 other influential books. So let's jump into this conversation at 0:14:55.160 --> 0:15:04.280 the crossroads of psychology and society. So, Paul, almost all 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:07.880 thinkers have thought about the issue of utopia and whether 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:11.880 it's possible, and most political movements are trying to get 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:15.120 themselves in that direction. But you're a little less hopeful 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:20.200 about the possibility of reaching utopia because of human nature, 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:21.320 So tell us about that. 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:26.320 So I find the idea of utopia really interesting. It's 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:28.200 not such a practical concern. I mean, if you and 0:15:28.200 --> 0:15:30.440 I were to talk about the troubles of today, we 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:33.920 probably wouldn't settle on when we ever reach utopia or not. 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:36.480 We'll be talking about, you know, local improvements, and maybe 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:38.920 things suck in certain ways, let's it must make them better. 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:43.840 But Nick Monstrom said it really nicely describe utopias as 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.120 a thought experiment, as a way of exploring what we 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.000 want and what we're capable of. And I think the 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:53.680 idea of utopia is an excellent way to think about 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:58.160 human nature. And in particular, if you think deeply about utopia, 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:02.000 you'll come to see that certain aspects of our nature, 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.720 of human nature that make it untenable, that we are 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:09.560 not suited for a perfect world, that certain aspects of 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:14.440 how we are mean perfection will be forever out of reach. 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:16.920 It doesn't mean we can't make things better. It doesn't 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:22.120 mean near utopias aren't possible, but a perfect world unless 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:25.440 you radically reconfigure human nature so that we're not human anymore, 0:16:25.720 --> 0:16:28.040 will be forever unattainable. 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:30.240 And give us a sense of those facets of human 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:32.440 nature like self interest and envy. 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:38.000 Yeah. Absolutely, Well take this particular case. In every utopia 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:42.160 people have thought of, there's some degree of equality and 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.320 a sort of mutual love where people care about everybody 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:48.840 else within this utopian community. You to see why that 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.040 would make sense. You think about tribes and families, and 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:55.160 they push against each other and our interests get torn apart. 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:58.960 And there are utopian thinkers, you know, such as Maw 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.840 who thought we simply dissolved these special ties now would 0:17:02.880 --> 0:17:05.800 force people from different social classes to marry one another, 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:08.040 you know, taking away old choice and say well, this 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:11.600 will bring people together. A lot more benign example is 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:14.399 the Israeli kibbutz. When I was a teenager, I spent 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:17.439 a summer in the kibbutz in Israeli desert, and this 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:20.200 is a traditional kibbutz where their children were raised communally. 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:23.040 People have a baby, the baby was was sort of 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:26.000 given to sort of general daycare area where it would 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:29.240 be taken care of, and babies ended up ultimately knowing 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:32.760 who their biological parents were. But there was nothing, No 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:34.600 big deal was made of it. The idea would be 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.359 the bonds of family could easily be dissolved. Now his 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:40.879 experiment was a failure. The kibbutz was a failure. People 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:44.720 love their children, children love their parents. People have greater 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:47.280 ties to their siblings and their parents and their aunts 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:52.280 and uncles than they do to strangers. And there's every 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:54.720 indication that this is part of how we're wired up 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.399 to be. It's, to some extent it's evolutionary biology one 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.320 oh one, which is, you know, the forces that guided 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:04.600 the evolution of our desires and our preferences were highly 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:07.600 sensitive to whether or not other entities shared your gams. 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:10.280 You know. So parents love their children because parents who 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:12.520 don't didn't love their children, didn't reproduce as much as 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:16.800 parents who did, and that causes that the bonds of 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:20.600 family push against somebody who'd say, well, you just want 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:22.440 a good society. You want people to just care about 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:25.439 societies care about friends and strangers the same way. So 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:28.320 too with the bonds of friendship. So two of the 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:30.960 bonds of romantic love, and romantic love sets up other 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:34.119 problems like jealousy. If I'm really attracted to somebody and 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:38.199 I want them, if they don't choose to be with me, 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:41.600 it could be very painful for me. And if they 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:43.240 do choose to be with me, often I want them 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:44.920 to only choose to be with me, and they want 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:46.879 me to only be with them, and that could be 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:51.480 painful too. And in fact, every utopia has had problems 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.639 with sex. Either on the one extreme, either what they 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:58.520 say is no sex except for procreation, trying to make 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:01.480 a problem go away that way, or everybody has sex 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:04.600 with everybody else communal marriage, and those don't work out either. 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:24.560 So I mean, short version, human nature is messy. 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.600 So we have things like tribalism, we have rivalry, and 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:30.000 your point is these are hardwired in and they are 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:34.000 adaptive generally, but they're also destructive to. 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:36.920 The to the concept of a utopia. 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:39.359 So your take is that a world without conflict or 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:43.440 competition would actually run counter to how our motivations work. 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:46.000 So we talked a little bit about the bonds of 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:50.800 family and friendship and love. Another feature of our nature 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:55.800 is we are hierarchical beings. We are you know, ultimately primates, 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:58.480 and we care about how we stand relative to other people, 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:01.760 so you know, we want them. We don't want an 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.159 equal world, for instance. We want a world where merit 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:09.479 is corresponds to results, at least to some extent, and 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:12.320 so we chafe against pure equality. There's been a series 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:15.440 of studies that have been done, some of them from 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:19.120 my lab of children. And despite where you sometimes here, 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:24.120 we're not natural born egalitarians. If you work twice as 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:26.880 hard as me, even like a four year old things, 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:29.439 you should get more than me for your work. And 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:31.280 a situation where we if we were to get the 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:37.840 same would be you know, considered unfair. And this sort 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:43.879 of this idea that marriage should be rewarded again means 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:46.679 the ideal world from a psychological point of view is 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:49.760 an unequal one. But the unequal one leads to resentments 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:53.880 and frustration and so on. And you know, existing political 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:57.120 systems like communism and socialism and capitalism try to deal 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:00.720 with us through some complicated set of compromises. And I 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:03.080 think the compromises are kind of the best we're going 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:05.480 to get. It'll be kind of equal in this way 0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:08.080 and unequal in this way. We'll reward in this way, 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:09.679 but not in this way. We'll set up limits in 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:11.520 this way, not in that way. But the idea of 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:15.919 a perfectly smooth world where we're all the same. Maybe 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:18.440 it could be imposed, but people be very unhappy with it. 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:21.760 What's an example of a piece of legislation that finds 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:22.480 a compromise. 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:25.600 Well, i'll say the tax system. So you can imagine 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:28.760 a tax system which treated the rich and poor identical. 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:31.479 The billionaire has to pay a percentage and the pauper 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:35.480 had to pay a percentage. That seems absurd. Just the 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:38.119 idea of sort of marginal utility would say that these 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:41.520 people should be treated differently. You should tax the millionaire more. 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:46.040 On the flip side, a system that entirely confiscated the 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:50.840 money of the rich would also discourage the accumulation of wealth, 0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:55.160 discourage businesses, discouraged creation. So what you have in most society, 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:58.479 isn't it a progressive tax system? So and so you know, 0:21:58.720 --> 0:22:01.800 the poor pay nothing. Are five percent and as ten 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:05.280 percent and it is fifteen percent, and and nobody's happy 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:07.439 with us because well everybody says, oh, it should be 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:10.720 higher here or lower here. And I certainly have no 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:13.320 ideal solution. But the point is, there isn't going to 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:15.560 be an ideal solution, just some sort of rough and 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:19.920 ready compromise. So too with the balances between individual freedom 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:23.080 and the safety of other people. So every society is 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:25.719 going to have some constraints on free speech. You know, 0:22:25.800 --> 0:22:28.880 you can't you can't threaten to kill somebody. You can't 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:32.200 do insider trading, you can't blackmail people or extort people 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:35.560 if it gets too onerous. And political speeches block people 0:22:35.640 --> 0:22:39.560 push back, and most so many of our political debates 0:22:39.600 --> 0:22:43.600 right now struggle with as the margins you know, right now, 0:22:43.760 --> 0:22:45.359 right now in the United States, you know, some people 0:22:45.400 --> 0:22:49.200 want flag burning band either business or flag burning speech. 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:52.640 We shouldn't we shouldn't ban it. Yeah, my point isn't 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:54.720 the same thing, but these particular debates. But to say 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:57.240 this is our fate, we are, oh, he's going to 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:00.400 be arguing at these at these basic things because there's 0:23:00.400 --> 0:23:01.640 no optimal solution. 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:04.280 So, Paul, you and I did a podcast a while 0:23:04.280 --> 0:23:07.879 ago when we talked about loneliness and the question of 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:11.919 whether if somebody isn't working at all the painful stuff 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:15.840 about relationships, maybe they won't get better at them, and 0:23:15.880 --> 0:23:18.520 maybe that will actually be a disservice to them. By 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:23.040 the same token. I think you feel that if all 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:26.720 struggle were removed in let's say a utopia of the 0:23:26.760 --> 0:23:29.280 future where AI and machines and other things could take 0:23:29.320 --> 0:23:32.879 care of everything for us, we would lose something about 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:34.360 meaning in our lives. 0:23:34.440 --> 0:23:36.600 Tell us your take on that we would. 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:39.320 I wrote about this in my books The Sweet Spot, 0:23:39.359 --> 0:23:42.720 where I argued that there's an optimal level of struggle, 0:23:42.800 --> 0:23:45.760 of difficulty that's important for a meaningful and good life. 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:49.000 And then Nick Mostron recently wrote a book on utopia 0:23:49.240 --> 0:23:51.560 where you took up this issue and talked about a 0:23:51.640 --> 0:23:54.800 possible sort of post scarcity world where we have everything 0:23:54.800 --> 0:23:56.239 we need. We have all the food we need, all 0:23:56.280 --> 0:24:00.040 the shelter we need, anything we want that have, and 0:24:00.480 --> 0:24:03.159 so there need not be any struggle. Maybe there'll be 0:24:03.160 --> 0:24:06.520 no disease by then. And I have two thoughts of this. 0:24:07.160 --> 0:24:09.399 One thought is that that would be a boring world, 0:24:09.520 --> 0:24:13.000 a frustrating world, one that we would find we will 0:24:13.040 --> 0:24:16.600 lead to an wi and misery. We like struggle, I mean, 0:24:16.760 --> 0:24:20.320 too much struggle is miserable, but too little struggle is 0:24:21.440 --> 0:24:24.800 bad too, And so the first thought is that world 0:24:25.000 --> 0:24:29.280 will be terrible. The second thought is a world with 0:24:29.840 --> 0:24:33.840 no conflict and no struggle is not I think possible, 0:24:34.800 --> 0:24:37.000 because maybe we'll have enough food and maybe we'll have 0:24:37.080 --> 0:24:42.119 enough shelter, enough resources. But you know, there will always 0:24:42.119 --> 0:24:44.520 be a case as long as we're people that somebody 0:24:44.520 --> 0:24:47.399 will love somebody and they won't love them back. There 0:24:47.400 --> 0:24:49.520 will always be the case so long as we're people 0:24:49.840 --> 0:24:52.800 that you will want an award, a prize and honor 0:24:53.119 --> 0:24:54.640 and I will want it too, and there's just one 0:24:54.680 --> 0:24:55.320 to go around. 0:24:55.720 --> 0:24:57.040 And to follow up on that point. 0:24:57.359 --> 0:25:02.119 Your view, also, I think is that inequality is structurally unavoidable, 0:25:02.200 --> 0:25:06.000 because even if you had a society where everyone had everything, 0:25:06.080 --> 0:25:10.200 people will seek new markers of status and distinction. 0:25:11.080 --> 0:25:11.600 That's true. 0:25:11.680 --> 0:25:14.360