The Genetics of Evil: Are People Born Bad? - Dr Kathryn Paige Harden

What happened after the publication of

your last book? [laughter]

>> Oh, it was a wild time. I I there was a

lot of controversy. There was a lot of

push back. Um the conversations that I

had with real people, not with other

academics, but with just people who

wrote me, people who, you know, happened

to encounter the book in some way. That

was fantastic. Um, people wrote me and

they said,

"I've always wondered why I'm so

different from my parents or why I'm so

different from my siblings and your work

has given me a new way of understanding

that." They

um wrote to me about their decision to

have kids or their decision not to have

kids and how thinking about genetics has

shaped that. So, that part of the

conversation, which is the dialogue

between an author and their readers, was

fantastic. I loved that. Mhm.

>> And then there was another part of the

dialogue which was me with other

academics and that was really surprising

to me um in part because I felt like

they some people needed to turn me into

a villain in order to

get their own message out. Um and I was

kind of caught off guard by that whole

process. So um I wish I could say that I

had a thicker skin now but I but I don't

in many ways. I I really do care what

people think. I care about getting it

right. Um so it took me a bit to think

about how to get myself back out there

in terms of the ideas in the wake of

that.

>> Especially if you're doing something

that you think is trying to educate

people about what is true.

>> Yes.

>> I'm trying to emancipate you from

ignorance and explain things that make

you feel less broken and alone. And then

someone comes in and says, "Well,

actually what she's trying to

>> what she's really saying,

>> dude, don't try and [ __ ] imbue me

with your perspective of who you think I

am or what you think my work is." And

that's where we're getting dign. There's

that line, right, that the only insults

that hurt are the ones that we believe.

I don't think that's true. I think the

only insults that hurt or the insults

that hurt most are the ones that we

think other people might believe about

us. I think the insults that hurt most

are the ones in which I didn't recognize

the person they were insulting. So when

you write a book, you have ideas and

they're literally, you know, in black

and white. They're on the text.

>> You can point and you can say, "Look, I

wrote this." And then when someone says,

"She said X," when I literally had said

the exact opposite of that. There's

something very alienating and

disorienting about

feeling like you are talking but people

are deliberately not hearing you.

>> Surely part of that must be a sense that

other people could pattern match it as

truth though because if not if if I call

you fat you're not fat. So you go well

it's funny if if I say that you're too

tanned you've got too much fake tan on.

You go I'm not wearing any fake tan.

>> Yeah. So obviously that's not going to

land. So that's what I mean that the

lens through which these criticisms at

least seem to bite the most are someone

somewhere might believe that this could

be true

>> version of me. That's true. The author

Sally Rooney, she's a novelist, an Irish

novelist, and she talks in one of her

books about there's you, the author, and

then there's a version of you that wears

your name and has your face and everyone

talks about her and but it's not you.

And in some ways she's saying the exact

opposite things. And so you almost feel

like there's like a doppelganger of you

walking around that is making the exact

opposite argument that you are. And I

think you're right that it's thinking

that other people are going to think

that she's mean.

>> Yes. Yes.

>> Is so disorienting.

>> This weird shadow page.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> It's also I think there's something

about relationships like I don't know if

you've ever been in a relationship where

you say something and the other person

doesn't hear it at all the way you

intended and then you end up having this

fight where you're like but I didn't say

that but you can't convince the other

person that you didn't say that and

you're really just

>> seeing the world and you're hearing

words in a totally different way and it

makes you feel really estranged from

other people I think when that happens

like what's what's going on that I can't

get my message across clearly. And as a

writer, words are so important to me.

They're the way that I feel like I make

sense of the world and I make change in

the world. And so when I when I feel

like my words are saying this and

someone is saying the exact opposite, I

feel like, wait, what what is happening

here? Um, my dad was really helpful in

the whole process. So my dad was a

fighter pilot for the US Navy when he

was a young man and he just kept saying

you always get, you know, the the most

uh fire when you're directly over the

target. And I just kept remembering that

that there's something about

genetics, which is a scientific field,

that really gets to it really touches on

issues that people think are really

important in their actual lives, not

just academically.

And so if I'm getting all of this fury

about a book that I wrote as a college

professor, I must actually be talking

about something important to people

>> on some deeper level, on some real low

level.

>> You did a big four million person study.

You were a part of that. I did. What did

you learn?

>> Well, it wasn't just me. There's many

co-authors.

Um, science, especially with this as a

is very much a group endeavor. And I was

really lucky to work with two of my

former trainees who are now independent

scientists on that paper. Um so we

pulled DNA from 4 million people mostly

from um UK Bioank 23 and me customers

um participants in a big study called

all of us

and we were looking at what genes are

more common in people who have done one

of seven things. So they have ADHD

symptoms in childhood.

um they had sex at a young age. They

have more sexual partners. They have

ever smoked pot. They are um engaging in

what we call problematic alcohol use,

which is drinking to the point that it

causes problems in your life. Um they've

ever smoked a cigarette and they

describe themselves as someone who

really likes to take risks. I'm a person

who likes to take risks. So what we were

looking at is genes that are more common

in people who not just in do one of

these things but are more common in any

any one of these behaviors. Can we find

genes that are just generally involved

in being a risk taker?

>> Is that suite of things altogether

risk-taking? Where's the ADHD part come

into that?

>> Oh well ADHD is mo is impulsivity and

hyperactivity. So so one way you can

think about it is this is disinhibition.

These are all of these things are

behaviors that violate some rule, right?

So someone says it's not healthy to

smoke, you shouldn't drink if you have

problems. Kids who have ADHD are get the

diagnosis of ADHD because they're doing

things in school that they shouldn't be

doing. Um sexual behavior is moralized.

So if you're having sex at 14 or if

you're having sex with very many sexual

partners, that's against kind of a

conventional morality. So they're all

things where people are engaging in a

behavior in which they might experience

consequences or might experience social

judgment and they're doing it anyways.

So there's a risk-taking element there

and there's a kind of reward seeking

element there. And there's nothing

magical about those seven behaviors.

they just happened to be the ones in

which we had enough data where enough

people had done them and we could gather

enough genetic data from people. Um, and

then we looked and saw what genes could

we discover that are associated with all

of these things. And then what else

about a person's life do they project if

we can tap into this um genetic

liability, this genetic predisposition

towards loss of risk takingaking? It's

actually a follow-up to a study that we

published a couple years ago. Um, so

it's a similar concept but just more

people this time which gives you more

power. Um, and it's interesting

how much people vary in those behaviors.

So to just think of one of them which is

number of sexual partners. number of

sexual partners in our data set ranges

from zero, so people who are lifelong

abstinate to 99 because you're not

allowed to put three digits of sexual

partners into the survey. So, um it's

really a whole range of human behavior.

And so thinking about what are the genes

that influence you at literally every

stage of your lifespan from when you're

a kid to you're turning into a sexually

mature adolescent into you know

substance use and risk-taking in

adulthood.

>> What got you thinking about wrongdoing

and impulsivity and bad behavior,

antisocial behavior?

>> I've kind of always been interested in

it. Maybe it's the opposite of me search

because I was a very not cool not

risk-taking adolescent. But when I my

first job in science

was in a um mouse lab. So it was a

behavioral neuroscience lab that studied

mice and it was studying opiate

addiction and withdrawal in mice. So, it

was getting mice addicted to morphine

and then taking it away and seeing if we

could manipulate something about their

biology, about their brain to make them

more or less addicted to that opiate

substance.

>> More resilient.

>> Yeah. More resilient. Um, and this was I

mean this was when I was a college

freshman. So, 1999 to 2000.

very you know the I when I started the

draft of the human genome hadn't even

been completed yet.

>> Um but my PI was using a method where

you manipulate how genes are expressed

in the mouse brain. So my very first job

in science my my only job before that

had been being a waitress at this like

diner in South Carolina that served meat

and three vegetables and you got the

church ladies. So I went from that to

working in this lab where my job was to

basically do little brain surgery on the

mouse brains. So put them on this little

apparatus and drill a hole in their

heads and put a little shunt in so that

we could inject things in this very

particular spot in their brains. And I

just thought this is awesome. Like this

feels like science fiction to me.

>> We're taking this behavior that I've

always seen. Um, we can get into this if

you want, but I was raised in a

fundamentalist household in a very

evangelical Christian household. So, I

was raised to think of drug use entirely

in moral terms, like this is about

willpower. This is about um your

relationship with Jesus. And now we're

modeling it in mice and now we're going

to manipulate something in mice brains

in order to see if we can change that

behavior. it has something to do with

their genes. I just thought that was an

incredible paradigm shift. Um, and so

I've I I never really switched my

interest in risk-taking phenotypes or

substance use phenotypes. What I

switched was the species. Instead of

studying it in mice, now I study it in

people.

>> What's the talk to me about the

evolutionary roots before we even get

into the really really spicy stuff of

the [laughter] heritability of

antisocial behavior and things like

that? Let's the pallet cleanser of

evolutionary psychology. What's the

evolutionary roots of sort of

aggression, dominance, impulsivity, that

kind of

>> I mean, I think we're still figuring it

out. In fact, I have a project on this

going on right now to think about can we

trace some of the the specific evolution

of the genes that are associated with

these behaviors. Um but there is a

theory that essentially humans have

selfdomemesticated

>> that they if you look at us compared to

our most you know closest genetic

ancestor in comparison to chimpanzees

>> all of us all humans males and females

juveniles and adults engage in less

aggression more cooperation.

um our physiology has changed in ways

that are less aggressive. We have, you

know, we've lost our big canines and we

don't have the same huge jaw in the same

way. And so there's some interesting

theories about um essentially humans

in their long journey towards becoming

this incredibly cooperative species.

We selected each other to be

more self-controlled, more

self-regulated.

>> At the same time,

there's there's a counterveailing force

there, which is that um there's a lot of

ways in which some risk-taking is

rewarded in a society and even necessary

in a society. So I talk in my book about

this one study where they looked at who

was most likely to be a successful

entrepreneur by the age of I think 35 in

the United States. And it was people who

had some level of you know what we might

think of as social privilege or so

material resources. So white men from

middle to upper income families. Um but

amongst them who was most likely to

become an entrepreneur

>> when controlling for white men from

upper income families.

>> Yeah. Like amongst people who might have

>> because there's lots of them and not all

of them not many of them become

successful entrepreneurs.

>> Exactly. Most of them do not. Right. So

amongst people who might say have enough

resources

>> raw materials

>> raw materials

um who does become a successful

entrepreneur and one of the best

predictors is did you engage in some

delinquency as a teenager? risk-taking.

>> Yeah. So, did you ever get did you were

you ever arrested? Did you ever paint

graffiti? Did you ever do not serious

not serious aggressive delinquency, but

some ant something that was a little bit

rulebreaking, maybe got in trouble at

school, maybe got in trouble with the

law. And you know, entrepreneurs like

that tracks, right? Like you can think

of them as people who are like

there's a conventional way of doing

things and I don't really care that

that's the conventional way of doing

things. I want to do it my own way. And

so I think that as a species we we need

cooperation but then we also need some

level of risk takingaking some outliers.

We need some level of deviance in order

to push the society forward too. And so

these things are kind of always

intentioned. the level of deviance is

less because the water line of

domestication has also gone down gone

down. Yeah, I think Rutka Bregman talks

about the puppification

>> is the term he uses. I was talking to

you before I came in about my friend

Greg from Bloom and uh he I asked him

how is it that you have managed to grow

so quickly this huge company it's maybe

going to be worth a billion dollars this

year. and he

unironically turned to me and said, "I

just think I'm too [ __ ] to work out

what risk is."

[laughter] He's like, "I don't have It's

not that I've overcome risk. It's that I

don't have the capacity

>> to be able to feel risk." He's like, "I

just don't it just it sort of doesn't

register for me." So, he just I put it

all in black.

>> Yeah.

>> And then put it all in black again. And

put it all in black again. Put it He

just keeps on betting the house. And

obviously that's going to be a

competitive advantage and you're going

to end up with survivorship buyers, the

ones who stick it out

>> because there's a lot of people who are

going to put it on black and they're

going to lose. Yeah. Precisely. So, but

you don't need you don't hear those

stories, right? You get self. Okay. So,

we have um

>> humans need to cooperate more over time.

Uh that means that we need to have more

pro-social behavior. We need to be able

to self-regulate. We need to not be

deviating from norms. They become

cultural norms which get enforced a

little bit more too. We're worried about

what other people think of us so on and

so forth. And that opens up if you're

going to be a Viking that wants to raid

Lindesfan and pillage and come back and

not have trauma about it. If you're

going to be a person who aggressively

goes to become chieftain and all the

rest, there's some opportunities that

open up. But overall,

humans have built themselves into a

pretty well regulated and self-regulated

species. I mean compared to almost other

all other species especially our primate

relatives like we have the ability to

forecast into the future the ability to

anticipate well if I do this then this

might happen and then this might happen

and the ability to take seriously the

consequences not just for ourselves but

for other people. So compared to many

other species, humans have an

extraordinary amount of empathy,

emotional empathy, the ability to feel

the distress of other people, to be able

to anticipate what the other person is

feeling. And that's again across sexes,

across genders. It's visible very early

in life.

>> So we have this architecture of

self-regulation

that exists for a reason. And then we

also have I mean humans are just like an

endlessly varying species, right? Like I

I say in my book that in every crack in

human sameness, we see evidence of the

genotype

>> because that's the grist for the

evolutionary mill is us being

genetically different from one another.

And so you're going to see that genetic

variation and risk-taking too. And

that's not all. It can be very

maladaptive at the extreme, but it's not

maladaptive all the way through

distribution. [clears throat]

As another example, there's I mean this

is not risk-taking per se, but I think

it it exemplifies a similar point which

is that if you look at the genes that

are associated with schizophrenia, so

with this very serious mental disorder

characterized by psychoticis, you know,

hearing things, believing things that

aren't true.

If you look at people who have a high

number of those genetic variants but

aren't schizophrenic,

you see that they're more likely to be

artists. They're more likely to be

engineers. They're more likely to be

musicians. They're more likely to be in

creative professions, which is a

hypothesis that we've had for a long

time. And to the extent that these genes

that are bad genes or disease genes are

also predisposing people towards art and

creativity, that's going to keep them

around in the human gene pool for

longer. And I think um my hypothesis is

that is that it's a similar thing with

disinhibition that at the extreme that's

very maladaptive outcomes but you know

to the extent that your friend has you

know is maybe a little bit further down

you get from bloom

>> and then he gets lots of material

resources and he has lots of mating

opportunities and you know he's seen as

a very attractive partner and that's

going to increase it's going to keep

those genes circulating around in the

gene pool. It's an interesting challenge

to look at pop stars or founders and

think

how many genes away from schizophrenia

were you? [laughter]

You know, like I look at uh I don't know

like a Marilyn Manson or Machine Gun

Kelly or something. I'm like you are I

mean you're pretty skitsy as it is.

You're fascinating a fascinating

individual. Has such an interesting life

with all you different directions that

you've gone in and dressing in cool

weird different ways. I reckon if I gave

you just like another 5% of the genes, I

reckon you could be completely crazy.

>> Yeah. Or if you'd had just that much

worse of a childhood environment, right?

Like if you activated a little Yes. Like

if they'd had the same genotype, but

instead of it being channeled into

creativity and being raised by nurturing

parents of direct,

>> you know, abuse or a maltreatment or

real or or even like a birth, you know,

an insert a difficult birth or labor and

delivery experience of that kind of

pushed them in that way. An inverse

question would be to look at

schizophrenic people and think how many

of you were meant to be artists and you

just had the the the wrong foundations

for the first, you know, decade of your

life. I have a a friend here in Austin

who

was in the sort of psychedelicy scene

that is everywhere in the city for

>> a good while. And I asked him, "Have you

ever partaken in mushrooms or anything

like that?" No, man. I've got I got a a

few close relatives that have got

schizophrenia and I think it was 28.

>> So once you get past 30 or 35 I think

the risk of it causing

>> a schizophrenic break. But is this this

this isn't just

>> myth. This is actual truth.

>> Truth.

>> Oh, cool.

>> Yeah. So I think there's evidence to

suggest that people who have a family

history of bipolar disorder and

schizophrenia are potentially ne more

negatively affected by cannabis and by

hallucinogens by psychedelic drugs

generally. And that the risk for that

first psychotic break is really you know

most commonly 15 to 30 like really

concentrated in young adulthood. So, if

you've made it to your to your 30s

without your without experiencing a

psychotic psych,

>> you've probably pass through the period

of major risk. That doesn't mean the

risk is over, but it's a lot smaller.

>> And that tracks also about brain

development. Like, we don't really see a

fully adult brain in terms of the wiring

of the prefrontal cortex until 27 to 30.

So, if you're thinking about

not not adding something that might

disrupt brain development while it's

still cohering and then maybe it's a

little bit safer uh after after that

period of time.

>> I told my kids if you ever want to try

psychedelic drugs you should wait until

after 30.

>> Have you got schizophrenia in your

family?

>> We do not have schizophrenia in our

family.

>> You just didn't want them to have a

psych psychotic break anyway. I I feel

like psychedelic drugs are really great.

I mean, what they do is they disrupt

your normal patterns of brain

communication and they allow parts of

your brain to talk to each other that

don't ordinarily talk to each other. And

I think that can be really powerful in

middle age when you're kind of tending

towards a neurobiological rut. You know,

when every day is the same and you're

But I think your 20s are already a

chaotic time. It's already a time of

rapid development, rapid

neuroplasticity. I don't think there's a

need to add that additional element of

disruption to it at that point in age. I

mean, lots of people do, but

and I don't know I is there great data

on is it worse to do it at 25 versus 35

or riskier? I don't know. But I've done

psychedelic drugs and I'm a psychologist

that knows something about neurobiology.

And my reading of the evidence was like,

I don't think so this would be terrible,

but I think you should wait until your

brain is cooked before you mess with it.

Before we continue, I've been drinking

AG1 every morning for as long as I can

remember now because it is the simplest

way I found to cover my bases and not

overthink nutrition. And that is why I

partnered with them. Just one scoop

gives you 75 vitamins, minerals,

probiotics, and whole food ingredients

in a single drink. Now, they've taken it

a step further with AG1 NextGen. The

same one scoop once a day ritual, but

this time backed by four clinical

trials. In those trials, it was shown to

fill common nutrient gaps, improve key

nutrient levels in just 3 months, and

increase healthy gut bacteria by 10

times, even in people who already eat

well. They've upgraded their formula

with better probiotics, more

bioavailable nutrients, and clinical

validation. Plus, it's still NSF

certified for sport, so you know that

the quality is legit. Right now, when

you first subscribe, you can get a free

bottle of D3 K2 and AG1 welcome kit,

plus bonus AG1 travel packs. And for a

limited time, US customers also get a

sample of AGZ and a bottle of omega-3s.

Just go to the link in the description

below or head to

drinkag.com/modernwisdom.

That's drinkag1.com/modern

wisdom. Do you think wrongdoing is

something that's freely chosen then? Or

are we [laughter] are we

>> just going straight into the free will

question here?

>> Yeah. Well, look, are we born

predisposed toward transgression?

>> I think we're definitely predisposed to

our transgressions. I think that luck

the luck of having your genes, the luck

of having your parents, the luck of how

those have combined.

um the choices that you make when you're

not really old enough to know the

ramifications of those choices. You

know, the choices that you make as a

young teenager, all of that really shape

the person that you are. And so that

person might be will might certainly

experience themselves as freely

choosing. But the person who is doing

the choosing, the person that is

deciding between the options,

that person is so profoundly shaped by

factors outside of their control

>> on a set of train tracks.

>> Yeah. I mean I I find the free will

question

actually I find the free will question

not not the most interesting question

because the question of do we have free

will is is a question about all of us

either all humans have free will or all

humans don't have free will and even if

we don't have free will we still have to

figure out how to treat each other and

we still have to figure out how to get

on with the business of life.

>> I'm more interested in the question of

um

what given the science

do we know about how our genes, our

environments have shaped us? And then

given that given that we definitely know

that um how shaped we are by those

forces

>> what role should that play in punishment

in reward and how we and and again in

how we treat each other.

>> I completely agree. I'm not

>> particularly interested in the free will

question. Anakah Harris been on. She was

great. Sam's been on. I know you know

him. Like cool. Alex Okconor, one of my

friends is big into this. Yeah.

>> It's fine. It's okay, but to me it feels

like a little bit of a cognitive dead

end. I'm sure maybe I'm just not smart

enough to fully I I I appreciate the the

arguments of determinism and

compatibilism so on and so forth. Uh but

for me, a much more sort of functionally

interesting one is to assume that we do

and then play with the the variables

inside of it.

>> Inside of it.

>> Yeah. Okay. This is the sandbox that

we're in. There's a a cool idea that uh

Derek Thompson came up with. But not

Derek Thompson, sorry. uh uh uh

Derek Sitters uh and he says uh

functionally true but literally false.

>> Yeah.

>> And something which is functionally true

but uh literally false but functionally

true would be a belief that we have free

will.

>> Oh that's

>> like even if you're a determinist acting

as if you're not makes your life better

because you don't outsource your agency.

Something that would be uh literally

false but functionally true might be

porcupines can throw their quills.

[laughter] They can't. They're not dark,

but if you give them a wide enough

birth,

>> they can do project them.

>> Yeah. You you you're safer. You're more

likely to be safe. Um pigs are uniquely

dirty animals, morally dirty animals,

and you shouldn't eat them. They're

morally just the same as pretty much any

other animal. Uh but their skin does

carry a higher pathogen load, especially

if you're in sort of Middle Eastern

style. So again, literally false, but

functionally true.

>> Yeah.

>> Um uh treat the gun as if it's always

loaded.

>> Yeah.

>> Um so all of these things are

interesting. Anyway, that's my that's my

position on that. Okay. So

>> I agree. I mean, I think the I think the

free will question is intellectually

interesting but of limited practical

utility for a lot of the questions that

we have. So, for example, someone runs

someone else over with their car and you

learn that that person had epilepsy and

they were having a seizure when they did

it. And then you learn that that person

knew they were epileptic but didn't take

their medication. And then you learn

that that person um doesn't have

epilepsy

but was having a panic attack because

they have a history of extreme childhood

maltreatment

and then you find out that no it's not

that but they're

>> make it stop.

>> Yeah. So all of those are different

reasons, right? So we can think of like

it's a seizure.

>> Yep.

>> It's a seizure that's governed by this

medication choice. It's a panic attack.

It's panic attack that's linked to their

um

>> mistreatment,

>> their mistreatment history. Um it's none

of those things. They seem to have mowed

someone down in cold blood,

>> but their father was also in prison for

a violent crime and their mother is also

in prison for a violent crime and they

might have inherited a tendency. We have

all sorts of wild intuitions and people

really differ in their intuitions about

all those scenarios about who who's the

most culpable and who's the most

blameless out of all of those. And the

free will question doesn't help you,

>> right? It's like

>> from the perspective of determinism,

epilepsy and the choice not to take your

epilepsy medication and the being the

psychopathic child of two psychopaths

are all the same. But that's not how

people reason about things. Y and part

of what I was interested in this book

project is,

>> okay, from the perspective of academic

philosophy, these might all be the same,

but from the perspective of the average

judge or juror or person in relationship

trying to think about why did this

person hurt me and should I forgive

them? Free will doesn't help us solve

that problem. And and why do we reason

so differently?

>> Literally true. about functionally

false. Literally true about functionally

false. All right. Heritability of

antisocial behavior.

>> Yeah.

>> What's it? How does that look? Give me

the suite of

>> the suite of it. Okay. So, antisocial

behavior are doing things persistently

that violate social norms, moral norms,

the rights of others. And so in

childhood this looks like skipping

school, lying to parents, that's mild

forms, to robbery to stealing to hurting

another person, beating them up to

torturing the family cat, cruelty to

animals. What we see is that the

heritability, which is to back up a

second, heritability is are people who

are more genetically alike more

behaviorally alike. So um we see very

high heritability 80% for schizophrenia.

So identical twins are not perfectly

similar for schizophrenia but if your

identical twin has schizophrenia you

have a 50/50 shot of developing yourself

which is way higher than a base rate of

1%. So that's

>> thought you said it was 80%.

>> So oh the the percent of variance is

80%. Um, so, so that's kind of a

benchmark that I think that people can

have in their heads about like a highly

heritable mental disorder is something

like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

What we see is that childhood antisocial

behavior is nearly as heritable as

schizophrenia,

particularly if you're looking at kids

who also have what is called unemotional

traits. So callous unemotional traits is

basically like psychopathy in children.

So children who

hurt others, break rules, upset their

parents and don't feel bad about it,

don't feel guilty about it. And that's

not just risk-taking. That's not just I

want to do something and I am am risk

tolerant. There's also an element of

again callousness of lack of empathy

towards

whether other people are hurting in that

scenario. So what we see is that in

children who have you know early onset

of antisocial behavior and antisocial

behavior accompanied by these callous

unemotional lack of guilt lack of

remorse feelings. Some of the

heritability estimates are also at 80%

just as high as schizophrenia.

Now, not every child who has antisocial

behavior shows this lack of remorse,

lack of empathy, and some of them seem

to be, you know, dealing with

environmental factors that are causing

them to act out. So, they might have a

trauma history, they might have a

maltreatment history. So what you see is

the heritability of antisocial behavior

tends to be lower in those kids. That

seems to be more of a response to your

environmental circumstances.

Whereas it's the kids where you look at

the parents and you're like these seem

to be completely average parent. They're

not maltreating the child. No one's

living in poverty. They're not living in

a highle environment and this kid is

still acting anti in this antisocial way

and doesn't feel bad about it. that is

the most heritable kind of subtype of

conduct problems. Um, and it's a real

problem in psychiatry because parents

come to the psychiatrist or the doctor's

office or the therapist's office and

they're like, "My kid is aggressive

>> and my kid doesn't feel bad about the

fact they're aggressive." And that is

the form of child mental health problems

for which we have some of some of the we

have the fewest effective treatments for

compared to say my child is depressed or

my child is anxious.

>> You know even my child even if your

child is manic there's medication for

that. It's not going to cure it but it's

going to manage the symptoms. Whereas

the persistently antisocial children,

it's we're we're we are at the limit

scientifically of knowing how to how to

effectively help them and help their

families.

[snorts]

>> How do you think most people

typically interpret the behavior of a

kid like that and what's a different

frame that you would give them using a

behavioral genetic lens?

>> Yeah. So I think often people describe

interacting with

really antisocial children that they in

their most common responses as avoidance

or harshness. So a lot of times when

people are very callous children or

adults you'll hear people say and makes

the hairs on the back of my neck stand

up. There's this sense that there's

something eerie or off or off-putting

about a child or an adult that doesn't

seem to be displaying

the kind of empathic distress at another

person's distress that we typically see

in other humans. And I think that Spidey

sense feeling that my hair is on the

back of my feeling.

>> And I think it's a I think it's an old

thing. Like I mean I think it's an

evolutionarily old

um mechanism to say okay there's

something about the the way this

organism

um

>> or or and or they respond with harshness

like I they can't act this way. They

have to know they can't act this way.

>> You know I heard a line a phenomenal

line from my friend Connor beaten from

man talks the other day. He says we try

to control that that which we feel we

cannot trust.

>> Yes. And you see it in relationships. If

you're concerned about whether or not

your is is my partner going to stray?

Are they going to cheat on me on a night

out? That is when you will see more

controlling behavior or text me when you

get there. Who are you with and how long

we out for? You said that you were going

to go did you go to I saw a photo of you

in the background as opposed to I it's I

feel like I can I don't need to do

control because the trust is there. And

it feels like it's sort of the same

here. this this child that doesn't seem

to be showing pro-social behavior and

isn't remorseful. Uh I don't trust that

if they first off, I don't trust that

they're not going to do something bad.

And if they do do something bad, I'm not

convinced that they would own up to it

or tell me or care enough to learn to

not do it again. So I need to come in as

this sort of external

structure to constrain this behavior.

Yeah, I think that's totally true. And I

think with kids, the temptation is

control and control through harshness.

So, I'm going to take away all your

toys. I'm not going to allow you to have

playdates. I'm going to withdraw my

affection. I'm going to um verbally

berate you, shame you, blame you. I'm

going to spank you or use some sort of

other corporal punishment. There are

these studies from the 90s where they

take a child with conduct problems and

they bring them into the lab and they

have them interact with a woman who's

not their mom. So this is just a

volunteer, no interaction with the

child. And they see over the course of

the interaction that even this stranger

begins to respond to the child with no

warmth, with coercion, with harshness,

with impatience.

And I think that's a very again I think

that you're picking up on the right

thing which is there's a fear and an

uncertainty and we respond to it

>> lack of trust

>> with with a lack of trust with a control

and also the way that we try to control

children in our culture is often through

a lot of harshness. The problem is that

is that those children are the most

vulnerable to harsh punishment. So, the

best p one of the best predictors of an

antisocial child

escalating in their antisocial behavior

is how harshly have they been punished

by the grown-ups in their lives.

>> Why do you think that is?

>> I think I think there's a couple

reasons. One, I think that we're back to

your friend. I'm not saying her

antisocial, but this this, you know,

attitude towards risk and potential

negative consequences. Some people are

much more sensitive to punishment than

other people. They learn immediately

from punishment or they're like, "I lost

it all. Let's go again." And I'm I'm

willing to do that same thing over and

over again. You see this even with

animals where some rats, if you train

them to press a lever and they get

alcohol for it, and then midway through

the experiment, you switch it such that

instead of getting alcohol, they now get

shocked.

Most rats, 75 to 80% will stop pressing

the bar. They're like, "Okay, well, I

used to be able to get drunk off of

this." But now I'm getting shocked, so

I'm not going to do this anymore. But

there's a minority of rats that will

actually increase their rate of

behavior. They will start pressing the

bar more. And I think some of that is

like, I'm not learning from to

anthropomorphize the rat. If I'm the rat

in the situation, I'm not learning from

punishment. I learned really well from

reward. So maybe this time maybe this

time it'll be the time that I get this

reward that I'm expecting. And I think

that there's the same sort of individual

differences between people where some

people are very reward sensitive and not

at all punishment sensitive. If they

don't learn from being punished, then

punishing them isn't going to help them

learn. Right? like that. It's and what

we see with children with antisocial

behavior is that they're one way to

think about it is it's almost like a

learning disability. This inability to

learn from pain, learn from negative

consequences.

>> And so the parent is like, well, that

didn't work. How do I ratchet this up

further?

>> Become more extreme.

>> More extreme. You don't get your phone

for two months. You don't get to see any

of your friends. We're we're going to

take everything that you like out of

your room. You don't get to do sports.

And now they're like, "Or I'm going to

spank you. I'm going to, you know, I'm

going to

berate you for being such a bad kid."

And now if none of that punishment

they're actually learning from and all

you're doing is taking away any

opportunity for them to connect with you

and care about the reward of being in

relationship with you, then you're then

you're actually destroying the one

handle that you might have, which is

people grow from connection. People grow

from wanting to be attached to another

person. Um, so I I think there's this

really vicious feedback loop that that

especially antisocial children can get

in where they elicit from adults the

exact opposite of the treatment that

they would need in order to stop their

behavior.

>> That is so fascinating. We'll get back

to talking in just one second, but

first, if you have been feeling a bit

sluggish, your testosterone levels might

be the problem. They play a huge role in

your energy, your focus, and your

performance. But most people have no

idea where theirs are or what to do if

something's off. Which is why I

partnered with Function because I wanted

a smarter and more comprehensive way to

actually understand what's happening

inside of my body. Twice a year, they

run lab tests that monitor over a 100

biomarkers. They've got a team of expert

physicians that analyze the data and

give you actionable advice to improve

your health and lifespan. And seeing

your testosterone levels and tons of

other biomarkers charted over the course

of a year with actionable insights to

actually improve them gives you a clear

path to making your life better. Getting

your blood work drawn and analyzed like

this would usually cost thousands, but

with function it's just $499. And right

now you can get $100 off, bringing it

down to $399 bucks. Get the exact same

blood panels that I get and save that

$100 by going to the link in the

description below or heading to

functionhealth.com/modernwisdom.

That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdism.

What um what about when this evolves

into adulthood?

>> Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's

what's I think so troubling and

difficult for our moral intuitions is

that by the time someone's a man, if

they're still impulsively hurting other

people, then of course we feel outrage

at that. How could you do that? How can

we stop you? Other people need to be

protected from you.

But every single one of those people was

once a child. And that

evokes more of our empathic response of

did they did they ever really have a

chance to be a different sort of man if

they if all of so much of this is rooted

in the experiences and in the

neurobiology of their childhood

development.

So where this really I think comes I

think comes to a um a crucible where we

don't really know what to do as a

society is around adolescent school

shooters. I mean you see how confused

our response to this is right if

someone's 15. You now have states some

crimes where the shooter is being tried

as an adult and their parents are being

charged as responsible for providing

with the gun. And when you see something

like that, you're like, we have no idea

what to do with teenagers as a culture.

If we're saying both the parents are

responsible for their behavior and a

15-year-old is responsible for

themselves as if they were a grown-up,

that's a sign of, I think, deep moral

confusion on the part of our society

about what we're going to do with them.

What do we do with people who harm? And

their harming is rooted in this long

developmental process that started way

before they were,

you know, really able to make any real

choices about who they were going to be

or how their lives were going to go.

>> There is definitely a question when do

you become culpable for your own

actions, right? We don't look at a

2-year-old.

>> Yes.

>> And they've got a nature. Oh, he's a bit

fussy, bit boisterous. And then you roll

the clock forward and he's 5 years old

and pulling the wings off flies in a

garden outside. And then you roll the

clock forward a little bit more and he's

setting fire to stuff in school and

bullying the kids and this is now his

fourth different education establishment

and he's been put under some special

segregated thing and he's 14 and he's

hanging around with gangs and he's what

where when do we say you are now

culpable for your actions? Well, I think

that as humans, as individual humans,

that differs by people and it's really

kind of a I mean, it's sort of also like

when is an animal conscious? You know,

it's a it's a sliding scale. There's a

lot of gray there. And then you have a

criminal legal system that's trying to

take this fuzziness between a 13 and an

18y old and say, "Okay, this is the age

at, you know, at 16 or at 15, you can be

tried as an adult." and but before that

you're you're a child. This isn't just

the United States. This isn't just

high-income countries. They have the

same debates in

um in the aftermath of genocide

um in Africa in several countries

because of the use of child soldiers.

And there's been this exact same problem

which is if someone be someone was

recruited by an army to be a soldier and

hooked on drugs and given a machine gun

at 13 and at 18 they're still a

combatant and committing war crimes. To

what extent are they culpable for that?

Are they a victim because they were they

were made to go to war or are they an

agent that we're holding responsible

because now they're a grown man and

they're still doing these things. Um, in

my book I talk about how

some of the most successful programs for

the re-entry of these child soldiers are

communities where there's rituals that

that both recognize that they were hurt

and also ask them to

um kind of admit responsibility and take

responsibility for the actions that

they've committed. Whereas we have very

little like that within the American

criminal legal system, even within a lot

of our relationships, like I did a

terrible thing. I'm not an innocent

victim and these are all the reasons

that it that I I was shaped to do that.

Holding both of those in your head at

the same time, I think is a challenging

thing for us.

>> What about addiction?

>> Addiction, I mean, I think addiction is

a very similar process. I think that

some of the most sophisticated

philosophers are people in recovery from

addiction like lit like practical

philosophers because think about what

being in recovery for addiction

asks you to do even just the steps in AA

it's I'm powerless against alcohol

I'm going to submit to a higher power

I'm going to atone and ask for

forgiveness from other people I'm going

to vow to do differently today. So, it's

this I I think that's a beautiful

example of holding in mind those two

things that I was just saying, which is

there's lots of reasons, including my

brain, including my biology, that I'm

addicted to alcohol.

I am powerless. I'm admitting my

powerlessness against this and I'm

taking responsibility. I'm seeking

forgiveness and I'm vowing to behave

differently today, one day at a time.

And there's nothing about the academic

philosophy of free will that gets you to

that point. That is both radical

compassion for a self that's been shaped

by forces beyond your control and a

determination to seek whatever agency

and responsibility that you can in like

in this current present moment. Um, so I

think that addiction is an area in which

we are starting to get to a both and

perspective.

Um, when it comes to violence, we have a

lot harder time doing that because then

there's victims that aren't, you know,

you can say like, oh, the addict's just

hurting themselves. That's not usually

true. There's also other people hurt by

that. But um

moving the the

keeping that tension in mind for other

things like we do for addiction I think

is

um is a is a move that's difficult to do

but I think a necessary one.

>> Yeah. Because the the blast radius of

damage begins to cover other people.

Yeah.

>> And in that we have a desire for

retribution, revenge to make an example

of somebody etc. etc. I guess is there

not a relationship between people's

genetics and their ability to choose or

enact agency?

>> Yeah, that's such a good question. I

I really do think that everyone

has I think that everyone can change.

I don't think that everyone's capacity

to change necessarily comes through

their own willpower. I think often

people change because their community

helps them change. Does our willpower

come from our own willpower?

>> Yeah. I mean, I I think the will I think

everything about us is related to our

genetics. Like there's no part of

ourselves that's exempt from coming from

the brain that we have. I think often

people think of, well, my sins are the

genetic part. That's the flesh, my

addiction, my riskiness, my temptation,

my tendency towards aggression. And then

there's some, you know, willpower or

like overcoming part that's like somehow

not your body or sometime somehow not

your genes.

>> Um that everything is related to your

genetics. Both both your smoking and

your quitting smoking both your

addiction and your recovery. Even your

belief in free will is heritable

>> uh is more similar and identical twins.

persuasion, size of stomach, ghrelin

release.

>> I mean, it's this again, heritability,

heritability studies or twin studies or

genetic studies are never going to tell

you like this part's your body because

this other part is your soul or your

spirit. It's all your body. It's turtles

all the way down. It's genotype all the

way down. You're never going to find

some aspect of yourself that's sort of

exempt from being embodied.

Um I talk in my book about this uh study

of twins reared apart where

um two of them met in later life and

realized that they were both very

religious and both believed in both free

will as a reflection of God's grace. And

the author of the study was talking

about the irony that they see themselves

in terms of this, you know, spiritual

freedom, but even that belief in their

spiritual freedom is very similar to

their long long separated identical.

>> I can see where you're going. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

>> Um then the study was done by this guy

Lyndon Eves who was in addition to being

a behavior geneticist also an Anglican

priest.

um who a fellow Englishman who felt came

over to the United States. And what I

love about Dr. Eve's writing, I guess

Reverend Eve's writing is that he really

resists

either ors. He's like, I am a man of the

cloth and also

I have studies showing that your genes

affect whether or not you believe God.

>> Right? So like, how do we put those

together? That's kind of a mystery of

being human.

>> It's messy. And this is one of the

reasons why I think um

the behavioral genetics argument in the

same way as the evolutionary psychology

argument, I'm sure you've seen Corey

Clark's study that she did a couple of

years ago of what are the most

reprehensible things to talk about and

the two that came up were your area of

work in evolutionary psychology. Um it's

much cleaner to say it is all

environment. it is just blank slate all

the way down because if we take we know

that it can't be entirely and the

behavioral geneticists are never apart

from Huntington's are never saying it's

exclusively on your genes and as soon as

you open the crack the optics of the

argument just fall apart because it's

nowhere near as pathy as it's just

environment bro

>> um is there a difference in heritability

of antisocial behavior

That's sexed. Do men

>> Yeah.

>> inherit more

uh accurately more is is is the

heritability a greater effect on boys

than it is on girls?

>> Generally, no. But there's one exception

that I want to come back to. So what we

see is that the genes that are

associated with antisocial behavior in

boys also affect girls. If you have a

fraternal twin, if you're female and you

have a fraternal twin that's a male

sibling, then his antisocial behavior

predicts your likelihood of manifesting

it. Um that the same liabilities are

uh reflected in the same way. So the

same genetic liabilities make you more

likely to be physically aggressive. They

make you more like to be relationally

aggressive. They make you more likely to

be substance using. They make you more

likely to be risk-taking. It's just for

everything the mean for men, the average

for men is shifted up.

>> So,

>> oh, so the same impact would have a

sorry, the the same raw materials would

have a greater impact in real life.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The same way as

women commit suicide. Sorry, women

attempt suicide more than men, but men

commit suicide more than women. It's

their ability to enact

>> violence, antisocial stuff tends to be

greater. So, it's magnified. Right.

Interesting. And so, you know, part of

that is around social opportunity. Like

for many years, you know, women were

very discouraged from drinking, very

diff discouraged from smoking. So, you

saw a big sex difference in smoking and

drinking. Now, it's more socially

acceptable for women to smoke and drink.

And so, that average difference has

narrowed and it's the same genes that

seem to be involved in both. The

exception there is that most of our

current studies have focused on what are

called the autotosomes. So we have 23

pairs of chromosomes. One pair is the

sex chromosomes X Y or XX and typically

developing children. And then the other

22 pair are the same across sexes. And

nearly all of our contemporary studies

have focused just on those 22 pairs of

autotosomes for kind of boring technical

reasons that I'm not going to get into.

We're just now really diving in to the X

chromosome to see is there something

about the X chromosome that might have

specific effects on antisocial behavior.

And the reason why that's interesting is

because men only have one X whereas

women have two. And so men are much more

vulnerable to the effects of a genetic

variant that's XL linked because they

don't have another copy to compensate.

>> Oh, that's so cool.

>> So that's why colorb blindness for

instance is much more prevalent in men

versus women because it's a sex link.

It's an X chromosome linked um genetic.

>> That is so sick. So the reason why we

think the X chromosome might be

important

um is

and again just to back up a second most

of what we study in our lab is what we

would call common genetic variation. So

these are genetic differences between

people that exist in at least 5%

sometimes people say at least 1% of the

population.

The thing about common genetic variants

is that um they're common which means

that they are likely to have a

relatively small effect in isolation

because if they had a big effect

evolution would make them not common

would weed them out very very quickly.

So you have this trade-off between how

common is a genetic variant and how big

of an effect how powerful it is. Um, so

what we're looking at is lots of common

genetic variants, each of which have a

tiny effect, but if you add them all up,

then you get an appreciable effect of

one one that's meaningful. But there are

studies of rare genetic variants. And

there's one very famous study that was

done in the 1990s where they looked at a

rare variant on um a gene on the X

chromosome and that gene was called

MAOA. So um your monoamines are how your

neurons are talking to each other. It's

like serotonin is a monoamine, dopamine

is a monoamine. So mono monoamine

oxidase is an enzyme that basically is

like a Pac-Man eating the

neurotransmitter in your brain. And if

it doesn't work well, then you get this

incredible buildup of the signals that

your brain ordinarily uses to

communicate with each other. Okay, so

why is that important? In this one

family where they found this genetic

variant on the X chromosome,

it made the MAOA

enzyme not work and all the men in that

family suffered from extremely serious

antisocial behavior problems. Whereas

their sisters were completely wow

>> typically functioning. So the men, one

raped his sister, one committed arson,

one stabbed his boss with a pitchfork.

Huge levels of antisocial violence in

this family. And the their sisters and

their moms were like, "What the [ __ ] is

going on here?" Like, why why do my sons

and my brothers keep doing this and we

don't have this problem? And it's

because they have two exes. And so if

they inherited the mutation, it didn't

matter because there was another

functioning version of

>> to regress them back toward the mean

>> to to to kind of dosage like they could

compensate for it. Whereas if if you're

a man and you have 1x and you got this,

you know, 50-50 shot, which of your

mom's exes are you getting? It's a 50-50

shot whether or not you were going to be

antisocial.

>> So that's a rare variant.

You know, the vast majority of people

who are deeply antisocial do not have

this MAOA problem.

>> Can't use the MAOA excuse.

>> They can't use the MAOA excuse. But I I

think it's important for two reasons.

And one is that we think of our moral

faculties as our ability to not go

around stabbing our boss every time

we're mad at him in moral terms, in

spiritual terms or in cognitive terms.

And it turns out that it's very

vulnerable to disruption. You can change

one letter of your genome that changes

one gene which changes one enzyme and

that capacity is really

if not destroyed very very impaired. And

so the extent to which our morality is a

biological faculty I think is very much

supported by the fact that we can so

profoundly disrupt it by this one change

in our genome. And the other thing that

I find so interesting about this case

study is that um these men were in the

criminal legal system in the Netherlands

and no one was like, "Oh, this must be a

genetic problem." They weren't not

guilty by reason of insanity. They

weren't, you know, lacking capacity to

stay on trial. They were

indistinguishable

from the rest of the offending

population based just on their behavior.

And the only reason we know that their

behavior was due to this genetic cause

is because of the familial data that

made the pattern of transmission so

clear.

And I think that really brings up the

question, how many other people who are

persistently violent in families that

are persistently violent? There might be

some

um genetic or neurobiological

explanation that we just haven't

discovered yet. Like we just don't know

that. In the 80s, they would have

considered it ridiculous. Like this

persistently violent family, it's you're

telling me it's because they have a

>> one gene that's wrong. like would have

seen sounded like science fiction,

>> but that was the case for this family.

Um, so I, you know, we haven't in modern

genomics turned our attention very often

back to the X chromosome, but my lab's

doing this now and I'm I'm really

excited about this project.

>> In other news, you've probably heard me

talk about element before, and that's

because I am frankly [laughter]

dependent on it. Uh, and it's how I've

started my day every single morning.

This is the best tasting hydration drink

on the market. You might think, why do I

need to be more hydrated? Because proper

hydration is not just about drinking

enough water. It's having sufficient

electrolytes to allow your body to use

those fluids. Each grab-and-go stick

pack is a sciencebacked electrolyte

ratio of sodium, potassium, and

magnesium. It's got no sugar, coloring,

artificial ingredients, or any other

junk. This plays a critical role in

reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while

optimizing brain health, regulating your

appetite, and curbing cravings. This

orange flavor in a cold glass of water

is a sweet, salty, orangey nectar, and

you will genuinely feel a difference

when you take it versus when you don't,

which is why I keep going on about it.

Best of all, there's a no questions

asked refund policy with an unlimited

duration. Buy it, use it all, and if you

don't like it for any reason, they give

you your money back, and you don't even

have to return the box. That's how

confident they are that you'll love it.

Plus, they offer free shipping in the

US. Right now, you can get a free sample

pack of Element's most popular flavors

with your first purchase by going to the

link in the description below, heading

to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom.

That's drinklnt.com/modernwisdom.

It kind of makes me think, well,

if suffering and vice are highly

inherited, how do we justify punishment?

Yeah, [gasps]

that's the heart of the the heart's the

heart of the question. I I want to pull

apart two ideas which

are were very confounded in my mind too

which is accountability

and punishment.

So in my mind, punishment is

um

deliberately making someone suffer as

retribution for the harm that they've

caused. Whereas accountability is saying

you've done this, you've harmed someone.

We as a community are enforcing our

rules that you don't get to do that and

we're doing what we need to do to keep

you from doing it again and and keep

other people safe.

Um,

the United States, we hold people

accountable, but we do it through a very

retributive punishment system. We

incarcerate more people in worse

conditions than any other country has

ever done in the history of the world. I

think it's more people um were

incarcerated at the height of mass

incarceration than were ever put in the

goolog by the Soviets. It's like it's a

we have a truly [snorts] massive

>> um incarceration

incarcereral state here.

So I I want to reframe your question and

I I think your question is so and it's

your question is the question that I

started my book at. I started my book

thinking

well can we justify punishing people if

and how do we who deserves to be

punished based on what we know about

science and I I have come to the

conclusion that

I don't think anyone deserves to suffer

and that doesn't mean that we have no

rules and we don't hold people

accountable and pulling those two things

apart is

>> the very unsexy argument.

>> It's very unsexy.

>> It's incredibly unsexy.

>> Well, you know, because Americans like

the either or

>> simplicity,

>> simplicity like um there's a philosopher

Hana Pequard who who writes about what

she calls the rescue blame trap. And the

rescue blame trap is

this vacasillation that we do where we

say, "This person

stabbed his boss with a pitchfork. This

person committed a horrible sexual

crime. They did it. They deserve to be

punished for it because they did it.

They did this horrible thing.

And then you think, "Oh, but they were

maltreated. Oh, but their genes. Oh, but

their neurobiology. Oh, but their

extenduating circumstances.

Maybe all of that rescues them from

blame." M

>> and that lasts for about 35 seconds

until you think about what a horrible

thing they did

>> and then you go back to the rescue and

it's this very unsatisfying cycle that

we do see seesawing between

that this this person is awful and but I

can also I'm a scientist I can think

about all the extenduating circumstances

and It's

unsexy and nuanced and and difficult and

I think takes a lot of imagination

practical and moral. But what if you're

trying to keep both of those things at

the same in your head at the same time

rather than seesawing back?

>> Does that mean that somebody who commits

a murder but has a particular genetic

profile should get extenduating

circumstance they should be treated in a

different way by the court? I I mean I

think that they I mean I think what we

do now which is like let's lock you up

with no therapy and no education and no

possibility of ever being rehabilitated

and never getting out again.

Um that's not good for that person which

you might not care about. But we also

know that it doesn't work to defer

violent crime. Like it's just like not

very effective.

>> I I agree. I I've had a couple of

conversations about the ineffectiveness

of uh like retributive justice, just

punishing for the sake of it. Let's use

something else that isn't quite as uh

contentious as whether or not the penal

system works well. Let's say that

somebody has the genes to make them uh

high desire for sexual novelty.

>> Yeah.

>> They cheat in a relationship and they

have every genetic variant under the sun

>> that predisposes them to it. And their

dad cheated on their mom. they had all

of the environmental factors that

reinforced it. Should that person's

partner take them back more easily

knowing that they had if we were able to

say, well, my 23 and me or my Intel XDNA

came back and actually said that my

dopamine B I've got the comb te variant

like the double A for this, which means

that my dopamine baseline's higher and I

process cortisol in a different way and

I actually d

>> I don't think so. No, not necessarily.

you know, the extenduating circumstances

outside of the legal system trying to

get to.

>> So, I think the cheating partner example

is a great example because I one I think

it's it gets to why we find the kind of

Roberts of Pski determinist framework to

be unsatisfying which is that we matter

to each other. We matter to each other

in this way that we call ethical or that

we call moral. And we have a a long

evolved neurobiological architecture

that is like I experience myself as a

mind that makes choices and I experience

you as a mind who makes choices and when

you make choices that hurt me, you could

give me all the philosoph philosophical

arguments all day long

>> about why you were determined to cheat.

I don't care. Um there's this

philosopher Peter Strawson who was

writing in the mid to late um 20th

century and he called these the reactive

attitudes which is the resentment, the

blame, the praise, the admiration that

we have to each other. And he basically

said, even if the thesis of determinism

is true,

there's no escaping the fact that we

matter to each other in ways that

generate these reactive attitudes.

>> Do you not end up with a kind of genetic

determinism that gets slipped in under a

different guise with the predisposition

of people towards certain types of

behaviors, which is level of culpability

changes that there's an amount that you

are culpable. There's amount of you that

did this thing and then there's a bit of

you that kind of didn't do this thing.

>> Yes. And I again I as a behavior

geneticist I do not think of it that way

at all. Like it's sort of the way that

people used to talk about the god of the

gaps. God was what we couldn't explain.

I think people are tempted towards like

a free will of the gaps right like

however much you

>> uh your behavior was heritable or

genetically determined that's the part

that you're not responsible for. And

then whatever is left over in the

remainder is the part that you're

responsible for.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> I think the condition of being human on

this planet is that none of us chose to

be who we are

and we are responsible for all of

ourselves anyways.

And also that means that we should be

kinder to each other and and more

reluctant to make the each other suffer

for the sake of suffering. Yes. thinking

about the genetic lottery and the fact

that people start from different genetic

baselines.

>> Yeah.

>> Certain people,

if your impulse control is better,

you're probably going to do better in

school. You're probably going to do

better in higher I have to assume that

you'll do better in higher education. It

means more qualifications.

>> You're less likely to be suspended for

like bringing a gun to school. Yes. See

that in the data?

>> All of these things. And is it fair to

say that one of the um perspectives that

you have about the world is that trying

to rele some of the genetic inequality

so that everybody gets a more equal

access to be able to be successful in

life is one of the things that that we

should go for.

>> I think it can be. So

>> So just on if if that's the case

>> Yeah. When it comes to having somebody

who stands in the

accuser box or the the accused the

persecutor box in court, should the same

thing not happen but just in reverse? If

we want to give a leg up to people who

have a genetic profile which makes them

less amanable to the current reward

system that this society has offered

people,

>> does that not mean the same thing just

holds true when they've misbehaved as

opposed to when they can't behave well?

Yeah. So, to some Okay, God, I have so

many different responses to this. Like,

my mind is going in five different

places at once. Um, so to some extent,

we already do this and it's in the

criminal sentencing phase of trials,

which is the quote unquote mitigation

phase. And this is where someone says

>> insanity plea,

>> no, not insanity. So, insanity is are

you going to be exempted from the normal

um the normal criminal penalties

entirely? So if you are you know

actively psychotic at the time of the

tri at the time of the crime and you

could you could not know that what you

were doing is wrong and you could not

have stopped yourself then that's not

guilty by reason of insanity which is

rarely attempted even less commonly

successful I think it's like 1% of

defendants get off by not reason by

guilty of insanity Yates um drowned her

five children in Texas um in the early

2000s. That's an example I talk about in

my book of a not guilty by reason of

insanity.

What most people have is a is a um are

you guilty or not? Did you do it or not?

And that's not focused on do you deserve

to be punished. That's focused on

>> are the facts of the did you do the

thing. And then there's a separate phase

which is the sentencing phase for so at

least for a capital crime where it's how

much does this person deserve to be

punished and that is the point of the

sentencing phase and that's where people

come in and they that you have what are

called mitigation specialists and their

job is to humanize this defendant and

say

they were born pre-term, they were born

addicted to drugs, they were deeply

maltreated by their parents. They were a

victim of sexual abuse. Here are the um

things that have happened to them that

might explain how they got to this

place.

What I find so interesting about that is

there's this idea built into the system

that some people have been negatively

affected by luck and then there's other

people who haven't, right? Like there's

like everyone everyone got to the place

where they were doing

if they're at this point in a criminal

trial. They've all gotten to this place

somehow.

>> And then the options are are you going

to be incarcerated with no hope of

rehabilitation forever versus only for

25 years? And that's different from how

other societies and other countries

treat this problem which is

someone has harmed someone else

grievously.

What do we do now? So I think this whole

process of like

um someone's done something and now

we're going to try to adjudicate how

much it was environmental luck versus

some

magical free will that they might have

versus genetics. and then we're going to

send a blame value.

>> At no point has have they brought

genetics in.

>> Well, that's what's I mean, I find this

fascinating on so many levels. And it

goes back to how academic philosophy

doesn't match the public conversation.

The reason why they don't bring genetics

in is because bringing genetics in tends

to make jurors and judges either has no

effect on their retributive sentiments

or it actually makes them more

retributive.

Oh, what was that experiment? Wasn't

there some What was that experiment?

>> It's a Okay, so there's an experiment

where they have people Well, there's

several, but I'm going to tell you about

this one. Um, where they have just

ordinary average Americans come into the

lab and they are

um given information about a number of

hypothetical sperm donors and they say,

you know, some people say, "This sperm

donor read speaks French. This sperm

donor is 6'4. This sperm donor is has a

college education. This sperm donor has

bipolar disorder. This sperm donor was

later found to have committed a violent

crime. And then they have to estimate

what is the likelihood that a child

conceived from this sperm would be tall,

would graduate from college, would speak

French, would would also commit a

violent crime themselves.

And then they ask, okay, so in this this

situation in which um the child

conceived from the sperm donor has

committed a violent crime.

Um here's details of the crime. You're

on the jury. You have to recommend the

sentence.

How many years in prison do you think

this person should get?

>> So this person um

uh I'm I'm forgetting the exact details,

but it's something along the lines in

the study. This person came up to a

couple and they were leaving a movie

theater and they tried to rob him and

they ended up, you know, killing the

male half of the couple uh with like a

box cutter.

>> So violent,

impulsive

superhero for a son

>> and and so they're asked to put

themselves in the in the jury's place.

If you I'm going ask you this. So, if

you were a juror and you had this

>> Mhm.

>> um case in front of you, how many years

in prison would you recommend as the

sentence for that?

>> Just from that crime, I don't know

anything.

>> From that crime, you don't know anything

else.

>> 20.

>> Yes. So, that's right about the average.

I think the average in the study is

between 20 and 25

>> years. But what they find is that the

people who believe that violence can be

inherited. So the people who believe

that if the sperm donor was violent, the

child conceived from that sperm is

violent regardless of their upbringing

actually suggested higher prison terms

rather than lower.

>> We need to keep that person incarcerated

because they have so little control over

their behavior that they might go and do

it again.

>> Yes. Exactly. So there's this

interesting thing where both genes and

your environment combine. They interact.

They're interwoven to shape the person

that you become who's more or less

likely to do these things. But people

reason about the genetic causes and the

environmental causes differently.

Whereas the environmental causes are

more likely to be seen as mitigating. If

you say this person committed a crime,

but he was beaten by his parent.

>> Oh wow, that is so crazy. Whereas if you

say this person committed a crime and

his dad also was violent and he maybe

even has inherited genes and may be more

retributive and that again like from the

perspective of like aki style

determinism that makes no sense right

they're both causes but the average

person the average juror the average

judge reasons about the genetic causes

and the environmental causes

>> oh my god

>> differently [ __ ]

>> which I have lots of reason I have lots

of thoughts thoughts as to why that is.

But I think that's part of like part of

why we have we don't have ready answers

for how does our growing knowledge of

the genotype fit into our everyday

um blaming practices is because we as a

culture are so confused about like or

not even confused but we we reason about

these things in such different ways.

>> Well, let me give you why I think at

least.

>> Yeah. What's your theory about why

>> one one part of it? I mean, first off,

that is [ __ ] brilliant. I mean, it's

tragic, but it's absolutely brilliant.

The fact that you can have someone uh

for whom all of the raw materials of

being very aggressive and disregulated

and antisocial with low inhibition

somehow makes them

more

more deserving of retribution.

uh and maybe in some ways actually less

culpable but more deserving of

retribution because in future they may

do it again. Yeah. As opposed to this

inherent sort of perspective we have.

Well, he was such a sweet boy until dot

dot dot and then this thing happened and

sort of perverted or molested the

direction of the that he would have been

a good person. I think most of us see

good in everybody else. And that's

probably a very uh a right idea to sort

of trust first and then scrutinize

second. Um, personally I think that the

entire world needs to read uh the

genetic lottery and blueprint by [ __ ]

plowman because just nobody

the number of people who actually

understand the genetic influence on

behavior is essentially zero. It's

essentially zero. Like when you and this

has gotten worse I think we've learned

less of it. We've somehow managed to

unlearn [laughter] [ __ ] I mean, you

even see this,

>> you even and and

maybe it's that we don't know or that we

ignore because there's some fascinating

studies around when you ask women what

sort of traits they want in a sperm

donor versus what sort of traits they

want in a partner, you get some really

interesting differences.

>> Oh.

>> Because what you get to do is separate

out um the traits I want in my future

children

>> from the traits that I'm versus the

traits I'm going to be attracted to.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Uh because I don't need your investment.

I don't need

>> Yeah, that's interesting.

>> So when you split those up, so just the

fact that that exists shows that people,

at least women, understand that their

kids are going to be made of the raw

materials of the person that they have

them with. Yeah, but I I think the the

the big problem is just a denial of the

genetic influence on behavior or a lack

of understanding or a belief that there

is some sort of a limit that you know

very pervasive blank slateist

perspective which you were thrown under

the bus for going against after your

last book and

>> anytime that I want to try and talk

about plowman or any embryo selection or

anything it just

Hitler's got a lot to answer for, right?

But this is another one of those things

>> we should definitely come back to embryo

selection. So I you said many

interesting things in there.

>> Thank you.

>> I think there's Okay, so one interesting

you thing you said was with the guy who

was abused, you can think, oh, but he

was a sweet kid and then this happened.

What you can do is you can imagine an

alternate self, an alternate person

where

this didn't happen to him and you can

empathize with this counterfactual. What

would he have been like if he hadn't

been abused or what would he be like if

he hadn't um gotten a brain tumor? Um

whereas with genes,

it's much harder to come up with the

alternate version of the person if they

didn't have their genotype.

>> And and that gets into into the idea of

genetic essentialism. So genetic

determinism is my genes made me do it.

My genes determine my behavior. So maybe

I'm less culpable for my behavior. And

that's one frame that we can think about

genes and it happens a lot, right? like

I I am genetically predisposed to

um have a higher body weight. So

therefore I'm not at fault if I have a

higher body weight. Like that's a

conversation that we're having in our

culture. And that's a genetic

determinist frame.

>> But it can switch to a genetic

essentialist frame where it's your genes

caused you to be a bad to do a bad

thing. Therefore you are a bad person.

like an inherently bad person.

>> Genetic morality.

>> Yes. You're bad to the bone. You're a

naturalb born killer. You're bad seed.

Right. We have these English idioms

>> that reflect an idea that we can kind of

wander into which is there is an essence

to a person. There's a true self.

There's a deep down thing that is Chris.

>> And in a previous time, we might have

thought that was your soul or that was

your spirit. M

>> and people talk about how genes have

become a a quote unquote essence

placeholder. So now instead of talking

about like Chris's immortal soul, we

might think well Chris's genes are his

true self, his deepest self. And it's

when people switch from genetic

determinism to genetic essentialism that

genes stop being reliably mitigating

because it's not. You were shaped by

luck and so therefore none of us is

fully under you know none of us none of

us na said something like no one you

know dragged himself by the hair out of

the swamp right like no one is creating

themselves from scratch but if you

switch to the essentialist frame it's I

don't care what your genes are your

genes are who you really are and now

you're telling me that this person is

essentially bad

>> like why would that make me feel more

sympathy for them

>> a quick aside you've probably heard

heard experts like Dr. Ronda Patrick

talk about the benefits of omega-3s.

They reduce Hello, Omega-3s. There they

are. They reduce brain function. No,

they don't. They support brain function.

Maybe I should take more. They support

brain function, reduce inflammation,

improve heart health, and are backed by

hundreds of studies. But here's the

thing. All omega-3s are not made the

same. Most brands cut corners. They use

cheap fish oil, skip purity testing,

throw in fillers, and call it a day. But

with Momentous, you know you are getting

the highest quality omega-3s on the

market. They're NSF certified for sport

and they're tested for heavy metals and

purity, so you can rest easy knowing

anything that you take from Mantis is

unparalleled when it comes to rigorous

third-party testing. What you read on

the label is what's in the product and

absolutely nothing else. Best of all,

Momentus offers a 30-day money back

guarantee. So, you can buy it and try it

for 29 days. If you don't love it,

they'll just give you your money back.

Plus, they ship internationally. Right

now, you can get 35% off your first

subscription and that 30-day money back

guarantee by going to the link in the

description below or heading to

livemus.com/modernwisdom

and using the code modernwisdom a

checkout. That's lie

mus.com/modernwisdom

and modernwisdom a checkout.

What about what else has been

experimentally tested around

retribution? I'm pretty interested in

the role that this has.

>> Yeah. So, retribution is something

So, retribution is in in my mind the

desire to make another person suffer.

It is a instinct that emerges very early

in childhood development. There's some

great work by Paul Bloom and his

colleagues showing that, you know, three

year olds are not that retributive, but

by the time you're five,

um, 5-year-olds will pay stickers,

you know, their version of money, this

prize that they really like

>> in order to see um, someone who has been

portrayed as taking away a ball clubbed

by a by a puppet. So it's like you

children will pay to see someone that

they think is a ball taker like

physically hit.

>> What do you think that is before we even

get into that? What's what is the

emotional drive for retribution?

>> I think it's an evolved cooperation

enforcement mechanism.

>> Y

>> I think that um we experience

dopamine being released. we experience

this kind of neurobiological mechanism

of wanting

um when we do things that historically

have been good for human survival and

fitness, right? Like we don't go walk

around and being like, "Oh, maybe I

should eat in 3 days." Like it feels

good to eat. It feels good to have sex.

It feels good to drink water. Because we

have to do all of that to exist and

survive and propagate our genes. And we

also feel good. We also see dopamine

being released in the vententral stratum

when we see someone who's been portrayed

as a wrongdoer

be made to suffer.

>> Has that been tested experimentally?

>> Yes, you can see that in the scanner. So

ordinarily if you see someone be be

hurt, you have an empathic response. But

if you if that person who's being hurt

is first portrayed as violating some

cooperative or moral norm, then what you

see in the scanner is that people show a

pattern that's consistent with reward

when they see that person suffer. And I

think the fact that you see it in the

same areas, in the same

neurotransmitters, as you see other

other basically rewarding processes is a

clue that this is something that was

necessary. that sense of at least

outrage

>> and um willingness to endure some cost

in order to enforce your cooperative

norms against someone else.

>> Willingness to endure some cost.

>> So I one way that we can also see

whether or not someone's um find

something rewarding is are they willing

to pay for it. like children will pay

stickers, adults will pay money. Um, and

so that we there's these economic games

where you see how much digital money

will someone pay for the opportunity to

punish a freeloader,

>> right?

>> All of these are

>> but if it was somebody that hadn't been

seen as a defector previously, they

would be like, why am I going to give my

money to punish this person that didn't

do anything and make even give you money

to not punish the person that didn't do

anything wrong? That would be

pro-social.

>> Exactly. What it's got me thinking about

if if we feel pleasure

when somebody who is seen to have

contravene some social contract is

punished.

This explains why Hitler called Jews

vermin and rats to dehumanize them

because that then legitimates

>> and traders globalist traders are

>> that is their transgression. The the

othering thing makes sense. the um

reason that we want to care so much

about our reputation uh makes an awful

lot of sense because somewhere in the

back of our mind we realize if I'm not

careful and if the optics of Chris or if

the optics of Paige are

sufficiently poorly interpreted that not

only might other people not want to

support me but other people might want

to punish me and not only might they

want to punish me they might get

pleasure from punishing me and they

might get pleasure from watching other

people punish me and they might even pay

a cost in order to support it.

>> So, you know, it really does reinforce

what's important is not who you are.

What's important is what other people

think you are.

>> And I think you see this play out. You

know, empathy is painful. Like to see

someone be hurt and hurt for them, hurt

with them is so uncomfortable.

>> Mhm. And if that person was a wrongdoer,

then I could alchemize that pain into

pleasure. And I think that gives us the

temptation to search for the ways in

which this is how I'm going to get some

pleasure. I'm going to f my morality is

going to stand on the shoulders of other

people that have fallen behind. So, we

saw this two interesting things that

we're obviously we're in the middle of

the [ __ ] Epstein furora at the

moment.

>> And uh a couple of things I've noticed.

First one was um a bunch of memes

floating around about Mark Zuckerberg

and Jeff Bezos that neither of them seem

to appear in the Epstein emails, at

least not yet. And um that was they were

sort of lorded as super cads of the

internet because they hadn't presumably

they had the opportunity to go but they

didn't something like that. Uh and that

made me think, oh, people see morality

as zero sum. So that those two people by

doing nothing differently to what

they've done yesterday to today because

the total amount of morality in the

other people was decreased,

>> the remaining people have sort of all

been raised up by it. like the fact that

this owner of a fashion brand and this

shake were in the emails but other

people who are peers of theirs weren't.

They lost so you gain. So there is this

sort of um supply this fixed supply of

morality and by some people losing it

others have been have been raised. So it

wasn't just you're not as bad as them

it's you're actively better than you

were before.

>> Yeah. the standards have shifted.

>> You have been increased by this. I

thought that was really interesting.

>> I mean, I think if you if you see any

victim of violence,

the process by which others then seize

on what they might have ever done wrong

in their life and transmit that. Once

you start noticing that pattern, it's

really, really obvious.

>> Can you say that in a different way? So,

someone is um uh

uh victimized by the police and there's

a debate about whether or not, you know,

the police were justified in hurting

this person or whether the person was

resisting arrest.

And then you have this

always this outpouring of news about

everything that this person has done in

their life. And it's they were an honor

student. They were, you know, they love

to play the guitar. And then it was

like, no, they once shoplifted or they

once like kicked a tire five five years

ago.

>> What is that? Like why are why are we

having this this not just in the

incident but the everything leading up

to it this moral reckoning with whether

or not this person ever did a bad thing

or was a did a ever ever ever did an

admirable thing. And I think the process

behind that is really complicated. It's

not just one pro, not not just one thing

that's going into that kind of

um digging through the person who's died

life. But if you remember that if you're

feeling empathy for someone suffering,

you can

toggle it over to pleasure if you can

convince yourself that they're bad and

they deserved it. It is such a

temptation.

>> It is so wild.

>> It's such a temptation. that's out

there.

>> Well, it's the freest it's some of the

freest pleasure that you're ever going

to get as well. It's it's completely

costless to you. And you you would be

familiar with the bless her heart effect

from evolutionary psychology.

>> Um it's one of the reasons that uh

female interexual competition has

venting whereas male intraexual

competition tends not to in quite the

same way. And it's um Paige, I'm really

worried about uh about Jenny. Like she

just keeps on sleeping with all of these

guys and I'm so worried about

>> Oh, it's like bow concern. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Yeah. It's vent. So you're allow

you're um what is couched under

pro-social concern for somebody else is

actually a way of spreading rumor. But

implicit in that is I mean I would never

sleep at the No, of I mean not me but

I'm worried about Jenny. So it's this

sort of very paternalistic very caring

but

>> what you get with this is something not

too dissimilar where

your morality gets to stand on the

shoulders of somebody else's. So not

only you getting the pleasure at this

person who rightly or wrongly you think

is a defector of the social laws but you

by pointing it out

>> so good you get to feel like

>> everyone else gets to see you as the oh

it's always good that that Christine was

there you know to tell us about the bad

behavior of Jenny isn't that so uh yeah

your morality gets to stand on their

shoulders and I think um there are a lot

of

>> combining

reward pathways to get people to behave

in this sort of a manner. Their sense of

uh social righteousness gets raised up.

They just

endogenously get pinged with a [ __ ]

ton of dopamine for having done this

thing. they get to potentially the sort

of justified self-deception or true uh

honest approach to this is uh that

person needs to be uh told that they've

misbehaved and pushed out and

potentially we need to be protected from

them so they need to be outcast

sufficiently um and it's all messed up

in is do they do do they should they be

on the outside or are they are we

actually

>> yeah and I think so this idea of like

you just said pushed out right? Like

pushed out this idea that we're deciding

who gets the protection of the group and

who is going to be cast as an outsider,

as a moral reparate, as someone who

deserved it and then they can be pushed

out. They can be pushed out of life

>> and we still feel pleasure at it. The

other thing about the you know the

pleasure of retribution

thinking about that changed my thinking

is

we have evolved pleasure at eating sugar

that's was necessary for our

survival of our species

>> and then now we're in an environment

where you can either eat that

sugar on steroids ultrarocessed foods

foods with no other nutritional value.

>> You're thinking about scapegoating on

steroids,

>> right? And or you can say that that

evolved desire is important and it's not

going away and I'm not going to academic

philosophy my way out of it,

>> but I'm also not going to let it lead.

>> You think we need a Zenic for

retribution?

>> And I I mean, or I think we need like a

better food culture for retribution. I

mean, I think I I really think that so

much of American culture is predicated

on feeding people the retributive

version of empty calories. How can I get

you to feel good that other people

suffering and convince you that you're

that you're a good and you get to feel

like a good person while you doing it

while you're doing it? Like what a draw.

Mhm.

>> Um, in my new book, I talk about this

trial that, um, took place in Norway

when there was, you know, Norway has

so much less crime, so much less violent

crime than the United States does. They

incarcerate way fewer people. They

incarcerate them less in less harsh

institutions for much shorter periods of

time. Um, and it's very rare for them to

have like a mass shooting event.

And but they did they had this guy

Anders Brie who um shot I think 60

children on a um an island. They were

there for a summer camp. It was the

worst mass murder in Norway's history.

Um this is someone who has had t like

who had terrible genetic and

environmental luck. He had

>> um a very unstable mother and it also he

was described as someone who was

antisocial from the time he was three or

four. Norway has this incredible

wraparound social welfare state and um

so you can see the

>> high visibility

>> the notes from the social worker being

like this child is aggressive and

violent. The other kids won't be aren't

allowed to play with him because he

keeps torturing their pets when he's

five. So even in this in this

environment where there's incredible

social resources, this person still grew

up and still grew up to be violent. I

found the trial fascinating

um because they ultimately

sentenced him to the maximum sentence in

Norway, which is 21 years.

>> Doesn't seem like a lot. It's what, like

four months per child. and they gave him

he's in the maximum security prison

which um there was an Instagram meme

which is is this a Norwegian prison or a

London hotel room and people can't tell

the difference between and the only

thing that puts it away is the security

camera dome on the ceiling of the prison

room.

>> So things that seem quite cushy for an

American system. Um and in the trial you

see the reckoning of a society where

they are saying

this person did a horrible thing. We

have our maximum retributive impulses

towards him. Of course we do. He

murdered our children

>> and he is still one of us. And how will

it corrupt us in our culture to indulge

those maximum impulses? So, we want to

keep our society safe, but we're

recognizing that he's still one of us.

He's still Norwegian. He's still part of

our society. And from an American

perspective, it was wild like reading

the this trial transcript because it was

a way of

feeling that retribution

but not leading entirely with it and

also recognizing

the inherent humanity of this person

who's part of their society.

>> Do you think somebody that shot 60 kids

has that much humanity?

>> I think we all have that humanity. I

mean, I think that's what it comes down

to. I think that every single person,

even when they do horrible things,

it's still human. And and also that even

if they don't, that me treating them

like they don't does something to my

humanity.

>> That seems to be two different

arguments. Um, one, they're related.

>> Yeah, of course. Um, I'm trying to

separate them out. I mean, yeah, I was

going to try I was about to say

something before that my ability to flip

empathy into pleasure at a defector's

pain

pathway is defunct. I always seem to on

the side of I'm so sorry for that

person. You know,

always, always, always. you've managed

to find uh an example where not just one

but it tends to be my threshold for it

tends to be a bit higher.

>> So I'm thinking about this person that

shot

>> 60 kids

the residual amount of humanity in that

person seems to be very low for me in

how I would see them.

That to me seems to be the kind of thing

even if you were to say what does this

do for society outside of it that is

such a heinous crime that I'd say it it

it is so far beyond

even the normality of abnormal crime

that that should be a you don't get to

come out again and that would be a

pro-social as far as I can see that

would be a pro-social thing to do first

off as a hey we have a limit Here in

Sweden,

>> Norway.

>> Norway. Here in Norway, we have a limit.

We may be very loving and a fun accent

like a typewriter covered in foil kick

down stairs, but

this person has gone beyond the limit.

Uh therefore, other people shouldn't.

So, I guess um

>> yeah, I like

>> warning them warning them off. But the

other one being like the that is such an

an extreme crime.

>> Yeah. the likelihood of rep even if even

if his desire to murder children drops

by one per year over the next six

decades he still wants to murder a child

like that I'm aware that's not the way

that like a fall off the murder

[laughter] murder desire

>> I got this weird like like line graph in

my head of course but it's like murder

desire inertia or whatever the [ __ ] but

>> to me that seems weak that seems wimpy

and I don't think I don't think that

that is a sufficient deterrent to others

and I also don't think it is a uh

sufficient amount of time to basically

quarantine this person.

>> So there's so many different threads in

your argument and I I want to pull them

apart because I I think they're each

interesting and and in some ways it's

like you just touched on what are why do

we incarcerate people? Like why do we

have a criminal legal system? Like what

is the purpose of it, right? and one is

just containment, just protecting the

other people from this person, right? Um

I do believe in Norway it's possible

that if at the end of the sentence he's

judged to still be a risk to others,

then he could be that sentence could be

lengthened for the sake of other people.

>> Um one is

um some sort of expression of

retribution like I don't care if you

could be better in the future. I don't

care if you had a you're going to have a

>> you lost that privilege.

>> You've lost the privilege. I

>> you did something that's beyond the pale

and now I you deserve you deserve to not

live. You deserve to suffer. You deserve

like whatever that is. And then one of

them is rehabilitation. So given that

someone has done this,

is there some intervention by the state,

by other people that can prevent it from

happening again? Repair essentially

repair this person and repair their

relationship to the community um such

that they don't commit any more violent

crimes. Um, and we don't stick with like

we don't have one lane. Like your answer

combined all of those things where

you're like, but h like what if he's

still a danger and also he did such a

horrible thing maybe it doesn't matter

if he's a danger and also if he if this

is such a long rooted problem, how could

he ever hope to change?

>> Yep.

>> Um, and I'm really interested by the

word weak. Like what is it? It's weak by

the states. It's weak by the juror. Like

what what is the is it reflects weak

social bonds? Like what is what is being

weak where?

Like that's an interesting

>> uh

it is

insufficient

uh when held up. You asked me earlier on

this person stabbed one guy with a box

and you're like yeah I gave him 20

years. at homeboy managed to do it to 60

children.

>> Yes.

>> Um have you considered

the role of

120 parents needing to feel vindicated?

>> Yeah. I mean I think there's and this

idea of vindication and also this sense

of um I I guess I should say like I was

very moved by this. I'm not saying that

you're defending the guy just getting

doing the thing or getting the 20 years.

>> And I do think it speaks to a very

different

way of thinking of the role and function

of punishment in a society because it is

so radically different from what we

would do in the United States. But I

just want to echo like I'm a mother. I

have three kids. Like if I were one of

those parents, would I be able to cooly

sit here and talk to you about not

letting their retributive instinct lead?

>> I'm not sure. Like the only time I've

ever like blacked out in anger was when

someone hurt one of my children. Like I

think there's a really basic thing in

there. And I think the other thing that

you're getting at is

>> um we signal the value of people

by how much we're willing to punish

others who've hurt them. Mhm.

>> So you know when we say like one of the

one of the things that made that that um

uh

denotes or it comes along with the

status of being an enslaved person in a

culture is that their masters get to

hurt them and no one there's no

punishment for that. Right. So, so I I

think one of the things you're picking

up on when you say like what about those

parents

>> is

does it signal something about the value

of those children or the value of those

children to their parents to their

society to the collective

if someone is not punished for hurting

them? Um, a lot of times when we someone

does something outrageous, not not even

outrageous as mass murder, we say,

"Who do you think you are?" And I think

that's saying, "Who do you think I am

that you think you can get away with

treating me like this?" So, we assert

the value of people. Correct.

>> That's part of the social signal of

punishment. And I think that's why it

wrinkles as and I don't think there is

any I don't think there's any response

to harm especially harm at that level

where there isn't going to be some

remainder that feels unsatisfying

either we're going to

>> kill burn him and kill him string him up

and burn him and kill him.

>> What does that do to us, right? Like I

think that really I think what does that

do to our

society's

again honoring of the inherent value of

every human if we are so easy for anyone

to say string them up you know good

riddance like I there there is a really

the our response to our most antisocial

people can bring out the most callous

and and unemotional and like um

antisocial instincts of ourselves where

you would never and under any sort of

other circumstances be like let them die

>> but like in this case it comes so easily

to us. Um, so again, I don't think

there's a per I don't think there is a

perfect solution to the the problem of

harm, but I do think by looking to other

societies,

we can begin to think,

well, what are we overemphasizing in our

in our approach to this, which is very

um people deserve to suffer and our job

is just to figure out how much they

deserve to suffer. Well, definitely the

retribution for something like addiction

or psychopathy feels very different to

antisocial disorder retribution, but

really that's only because the first two

are more pathized and we have names for

them.

>> But if we start to sort of take the

behavioral genetics red pill, then we

go, well,

>> take the pill, behavioral genetics pill.

Well, you know, you you you start to

think

that person that's an addict might not

have had that much of a predisposition

toward it and might actually have some

pretty strong genetic uh influences

toward willpower and they chose to do

this thing and they chose to or that

psychopath who's acting in this way is

sort of choosing to be callous. It's not

so much outside of their [sighs]

>> you know what I mean? You can see where

I'm talking here. Whereas the person

who's antisocial disorder could have

been fighting against all of the tides

of their genetic predisposition and the

epigenetic impact and the upbringing

that they had and so on and so forth. Um

we don't because we don't have this

global perspective. I can't see through

you and see sort of what contributes

what is left inside.

>> I mean I think this is where there there

will always be a gap between science

which is about averages and trends and

statistical patterns.

and biography which is this is the

individual person and I know exactly how

these combined and this individual

person and and I can see what could have

gone differently. I began my new book

well the first real first full chapter

of the book I began with this letter

that I got from someone in prison in

Texas and he's been there for his whole

adult life. He's been there since he was

16

and he um committed a sexually violent

crime um kidnapping a woman at knife

point. An awful thing I think when he

was 15 since he's been in prison since

he was 16. And then he's been, you know,

in an adult

um kind of notorious prison in Texas

since then.

and he wrote me this letter and he said,

um, there was an article in Texas

Monthly magazine about my lab. And so he

said, I read about you in Texas Monthly

and I know some people, you know, don't

believe in behavioral genetics, but I

do. I think the apple doesn't fall far

from the tree.

>> The idea of not believing in behavioral

genetics is hilarious, but please go on.

Um, and then he wrote me this series of

questions and one of them was, "What do

you think makes a child go bad, nature

or nurture?"

And

it was I mean it was such one like most

of the mail 99% of the mail I get in my

university mailbox is like

academic journals. So this is this was

very surprising to get this letter and

then I got in I opened it and um he had

cut out cartoons from other magazines

and taped them to the letter and one of

them was this white tiger on a

psychoanalyst couch and the caption goes

and they train me to perform but when I

do what I'm really good at they go

ballistic.

>> Oh that's great. which is funny and dark

and also like oh this is coming from

someone who's in jail for a sexually

violent crime like that a new shimmer on

that yeah

>> that cartoon

>> and you know he's asking he was asking

me the same question that you're asking

me which I think we we are

>> which I don't think has an answer

because I think is part of the tension

of being a modern human um

why did I do this thing why do you as a

scientist think I did this thing? And

when I was reflecting on it, it's like,

well, I can give you a scientific

answer. Like, on average, people who are

um exposed to lead and abused as

children and had labor and delivery

complications and had a certain set of

genetic variants,

>> these things combined to make you more

likely to commit a violent crime. Um,

but is that really why he's writing me?

Like it's is he won a science lesson or

is he like I think when people ask why

they're really asking was it all my

fault?

>> Yep. Am I

>> do I have hope for change? Am I okay?

They're looking for a different story

about themselves.

And this is someone who on paper might

seem like

you you didn't even make it to 15 years

old without raping a woman. Like why

should we? But there's some part of him

that's asking why and there's some parts

of him that wants information and that

to me speaks to something very universal

and human. I think it is I think it is a

a really

understandable thing to have done

something and you're like why did I do

that? Am I a stranger to myself? Does

this mean that it's all my fault? Could

I have done differently? Will I do

differently in the future? Isn't it

interesting that we don't necessarily

ask ourselves that with the same level

of like sanguin reflection when we do

something that's outside our positive

bound of what we thought we were able to

do. Yeah.

>> We don't uh we we flatter ourselves with

>> oh I I scored that goal. I mean you know

like yeah it takes a very particular

sort of person to go I don't know where

that came I don't know where that skill

came. I don't know where that romantic

gesture for Valentine's Day came from. I

don't know where that level of love and

depth and reflection came from.

>> That's interesting. I feel like with

writing, I definitely have that

experience where

>> [ __ ] where did the sentence come from?

Better than my upper bound.

>> I'll look back on writing that I've done

in the past and I'm like, that's not

bad. And I have no conscious memory of

writing it and you know that idea of

genius is not something about you, but a

genius is

>> some sort of, you know, inspiration in

the ether that can you moves through

you. I find that a really I that's

whenever I've seen my work where I'm

like that's not terrible that I I I

actually am less likely to think of it

as mine.

>> What

what have you learned about the

epigenetic inheritance stuff?

>> Yeah. I mean so the idea of epigenetic

inheritance so the idea of so your

genome is your DNA your DNA sequence

and then your epiggenome which is and

your DNA is the same in every cell in

your body and it's the the same every

day of your life whereas your epigenome

is everything on top of your genome that

affects how the genome is read in a cell

your epiggenome is why your neurons are

different than your liver cells and why

you look different than you did when you

Number nine, you have the same DNA, but

you have a different body now. And

that's because of these epigenetic

changes.

So epigenetic inheritance is this idea

that not just the DNA sequence, but

something about the epigenetic marks

that affect how the gene is read could

be transmitted from parent to offspring.

That is a really difficult and

controversial area of research. Like

some biologists think that humans do not

inherit the epiggenome.

What egg and sperm cells do is they

strip out, you know, most of the

epigenetic mark so that they aren't

inherited.

>> There is some animal models and mice

that

>> did not just see one about exercise

>> probably in mice maybe

>> the the children of mice that had

exercised more were Yeah. So in humans,

research on epigenetic inheritance is

really hard to do. You multiple

generations of data. The confounding is

terrible. And I um I'm okay with social

and political controversies, but even I

have not waited into epigenetic

inheritance. I do do stuff on

epigenetics within the lifespan of a

child. Okay. Right. So like how does

your environment

>> what's what's real and what's [ __ ]

about epigenetics?

>> Oh gosh. I mean, I think there's these

cultural memes about like um all of

trauma is epigenetically inherited or

that you can't believe anything from

behavior genetics because it's all

actually epigenetics.

I think those are vast

oversimplifications.

Um I think we understand. I gave a talk

for a group of students on campus last

week and they were like well how do you

you know I'm not really that interested

in genes because of everything we know

about epigenetics and I was like what is

what do we know about epigenetics like

what exactly are you thinking about this

is actually a very new area of research

humans they had no answer to that

question

>> great statement

>> um so I mean I'm fascinated I The sort

of epigenetics that I study is called

DNA methylation. Um, so methylation is

the addition of a methyl group, which is

kind of like a chemical tag that binds

to the DNA sequence at particular spots

and changes how

um DNA is expressed.

And I'm really interested in the the DNA

methylation is particularly in children

because I'm interested in the idea that

we can look at how,

you know, poverty or stress or trauma or

insults to health that are ultimately

going to affect your, you know, your

aging 60 years later.

>> How are they getting under the skin in

early life

long before we can actually see any of

these health problems? Like we know that

children who are for instance being

raised in poverty are likely to die

sooner. It's very hard to see the health

consequences of poverty when children

are four because four-year-olds are

healthy. Like four-year-olds all look

healthy.

>> But is that not how do you know the

difference between epigenetic impact and

just during a period where you really

needed to feed a body and an immune

system, it didn't have the fuel to be

able to do it. the epigenetic stuff

feels to be a little bit more deep and

long-lasting as opposed to this is a

more transient important period where

like if you just never went to the gym

that well I'm smaller and weaker but I'm

smaller and weaker because I didn't do

the thing required to make me big and

strong.

>> Yeah. I mean I So that's you're right

that like there's a phenotype of a child

which is like what is their growth

status? Are they overweight? Are they

too short for their age? Do they have

more infections than usual? And the

epiggenome is getting at something

that's like, you know, more at the level

of the cellular machinery.

>> And although it's controversial whether

or not epigenetic marks can be

transmitted from parent to child, we

know that they're they are propagated

across cell division. So part of how

your epiggenome works now is because

your epigenome was changed when you were

five. And those epigenetic marks, even

though you're you have different cells

now because they've been replicating

this whole time, those same epigenetic

processes have been carried over.

>> Yeah. I've heard self decision.

>> I've heard something about that. This is

probably getting into the realm of what

one of your students tried to ask you

last week.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh that when the epigenetic dial is

turned up for a particular however

something is being expressed, it is very

difficult to turn that back down. Oh, I

don't that's an interesting question. I

don't know if that's true on a general

level. Um,

>> a kind of lock in of this thing

happened, the expression is occurring at

this particular level and that is now

the level it's going to continue at.

>> I think generally speaking, what I what

I what I do think is a general pattern

is that

um it's just much harder to change your

epiggenome in adulthood than it is in

childhood. So if we look at measures of

the epiggenome at 60, they're very

correlated with where you were at 70. If

you look at at 40, they're very

correlated with you 50. That's not that

doesn't mean that, you know, health

interventions don't matter. Health

interventions can definitely make a

difference in middle age and in older

adulthood. But where you see the most

flux in what is the epigenome doing,

what is behavior doing, what is body

weight doing is in the first 10 years of

life. I mean, and that's kind of across

the board. like childhood is our period

of peak plasticity and then

>> including epigenetic plasticity

>> including I think epigenetic plasticity

>> that's cool that's a cool way to think

about it what's some of the interesting

studies around uh in uterero epigenetic

changes because you know we do have some

periods where for a brief amount of time

every girl that is watching was inside

of their grandmother.

>> Yes. Isn't that fascinating?

>> So cool. And the, you know, the

canonical studies on this are ones where

you've had like a, in humans at least

are where you've had a very serious

um insult or deprivation at a particular

point in pregnancy. So for instance,

when the Nazis blockaded Holland, there

was this very serious famine in Holland.

Um but it affected different regions of

the country differently and also people

just happened to be pregnant for

different parts of their pregnancies

>> during a little split test. What

>> you had a little split test. Some were

first trimester, some were second, some

were third.

>> Yes. And then some were just across the

border, but they were getting food from

somewhere else. And so they were just

like the village next door, but they

were not nearly as affected by the Nazi

blockade. And so they never had so much

famine. Um and you see that um uh the

children and then I think the

grandchildren of those moms who were

starved when they were pregnant have

worse health outcomes. They have higher

body weight. They have higher rates of

antisocial behavior. Um, and we're

seeing that in our research too that the

second trimester in particular is like a

very sensitive period of time

potentially for the development of of

um for brain development, for the

development of lots of behavioral.

>> Same thing goes is it mothers that go

into poverty? I've seen is it Joyce

Beninson? I feel like she did something

to do with this.

>> Yes. Um, so we're working now um I'm not

allowed to talk about the results yet,

but I'm pretty excited about them. Um

we're look we're working with a group

that has is doing a cash transfer on

unconditional cash transfer. So

essentially cash gifts to lowinccome

moms. Um so some moms get $30 extra

dollars a month and some moms get $300

extra per month. And then the kids have

been followed. They're they're now six.

And so we are looking at did cash to

moms change children epigenetics. And

the mechanism that that would move

through would be moms had an alleviation

of stress, less cortisol, better

nutrition.

>> Uh there so there seems to be moms who

get money don't report that many much

lower levels of stress. They do report

more being better able to breastfeed as

long as they wanted to. Um and they

delayed the start of child care. So if

they wanted to stay home with the baby

for longer, they could.

>> This feels less epigenetic. and and they

also um uh it improves the nutrition of

the child. So they're spending the extra

money on

>> So I get it. This to me doesn't feel

that epigenetic though. This is just if

look at attachment theory. If the kid

gets ripped away from mom, what is that

uh imbuing into their nervous system?

What what is the learned nervous system

behavior? So it's interesting that you

say that that doesn't feel epigenetic to

you because in some ways every every

behavioral change is going to be

somewhat epigenetic because again you

have the same genotype your whole life.

>> So if you're changing something is ch

and and that change is

>> there's a little record that's being

made. Okay. That's interesting. I I mean

I I this is one of the reasons I was

excited to speak to you about

epigenetics because I haven't done I

need to ask you who the best person to

talk about like who's the the spicy

world expert who's the plowman of

epigenetics.

>> Probably Steve Horvath.

>> I've been in touch with him. I should I

should I should bring him on.

>> Epigenetic age.

>> I should bring him on.

>> Um there was this episode of the

Kardashians where the Kim and Khloe get

their epigenetic age measured. Okay.

>> I think with blood, although it could

have been with saliva. And one of So

there's these these DNA methylation

clocks

>> that were trained on how old you are in

years or trained in um how many years

you have left to live.

>> And then now with new people, you can be

like you're I don't know how old you

are.

>> 37.

>> 37. You're 37, but epigenetically you're

more like a 32y old

>> or and that would predict you having a

longer lifespan. So it's this kind of

biological age

>> different to doing telomeres.

>> Yes, it's different. So telomeres is the

end of your DNA whereas this is the

pattern of those methyl groups attaching

to your

>> um and so there's this funny scene where

they're like talking about doing these

epigenetic age clocks and Kim Kardashian

says, "Oh, we're going to do the Horvath

test after Steve Horvath who's an

epigenetic researcher." And Khloe

Kardashian, I think it's Khloe, goes

horbath. Whoresbath. And she just keeps

misharing Steve Horvath's name as [ __ ]

bath.

>> Imagine that. The most the most people

on the planet that will ever hear your

name is one of the Kardashians

mispronouncing it.

>> I was Steve Horvath. I would have that

in every slide for every talk.

>> Horvath.

>> Horvotation. [laughter]

Horvath.

>> Chloe Kardashian.

>> Fantastic. Um, okay. What did you learn

about the role of luck through

motherhood?

>> Oh gosh. I mean, I think that becoming a

parent is the riskiest thing you could

do. In some ways, it's the most

optimistic gamble you could ever make.

And I in my new book, I should say the

name. My new book is called Original

Sin. I feel like my publisher would want

me to say the name the title of it. Um,

in my new book I quote the writer Andrew

Solomon who wrote this fabulous book

called Far from the Tree which is all

about parents and children who are very

different from each other. So deaf

children have hearing parents or nor

like normally functioning parents who

have um uh sants chess or music

prodigies as children. And in the

introduction to his book, he writes um

no reproduction is a myth. No children

are reproduced. Children are produced.

>> And as a behavioral geneticist, I think

that's a perfect description of I have

my genes, my partners. I I have children

with two with my first husband, my

second husband. So that's why I'm saying

saying partners. I'm not in a thuffle.

My children's dads, they have their

genes. and we have recombined them in

ways that are

unpredictable with every single one of

our children.

>> Um I I think there's something like 70

trillion possible combinations

that each

set of partners could have with all

their potential kids. And if you think

about that, about how different those

children could be and how much their

characteristics are going to shape your

life just as much as you shape your

kids' life, you really are opening

yourself up to fortune, I think, every

time you produce a child. And I mean, so

many parents describe this phenomenon

where they have a kid and they're like,

I'm a really good dad. I'm a really good

mom. I'm doing everything perfectly if

you have your easy baby first. And then

you have your second kid and you're

like,

"This is this person is totally

different. Same mom, same dad, but they

don't sleep at the same time. They don't

eat at the same time. Their temperament

is different. How they respond to how I

parent them is different. So my children

didn't ask to be here. They were thrown

into consciousness and then brought home

from the hospital with this

genetic package that no one had control

over and a family environment that they

don't have any control over. And you

know, they're so different from one

another. They're so different from one

another. And I really feel like my role

as a mom is to

who did I get like who am I getting to

know? um while they get a grip on what

it means to be on this planet. So, I

have a picture in their room

um and it's a print from an artist I

like, Haley Baitman, and it says, "It's

a miracle we ever met." And that's

really how I feel about them, that

>> I met these people

who are so different from me and so

different from each other

um based on the luck of the draw. and

and now we have to ride out this

relationship with each other. You know,

we have to figure out how to to to

attach um and grow and while they grow

up.

>> What's your perspective on embryo

selection? [sighs and gasps]

>> I have a very complicated feelings about

embryo selection. Okay. So, the first

thing I want to say is

I think that having a child again is an

incredibly

risky,

ultimately optimistic thing. And I think

babies are good. So, I really support

people's right to build their families

on their own terms, even if that's not

the terms that I would build them on. I

I I think reproductive autonomy is

really really important.

>> Good disclaimer.

>> I I think that's I think that's very

very important. Um

I think that there are some situations

in which the upsides seem very very

clear to me. Like if you have a disorder

that's prevalent in your family and you

want to mitigate even by a few

percentage points the risk of that and

that's what's going to make you feel

safe to bring a child into the world

>> like that feels like a good to me.

>> Um here's what I worry about. So those

are the pros. The things I worry about

is one, you said yourself that no one

understands genetics. Like it's

polygenic scores and and genetic risk

assessments are complicated to

understand and complicated to

communicate even to experts.

And I do worry about are the claims that

some companies are making are they being

matched by the evidence and are they

being communicated to prospective

parents in a way that appropriately

conveys the sort of uncertainty.

>> As far as I can as far as I can see, the

only company that's even remotely close

is Herasite. If it's not them, I think

everybody else and even they are still

at the absolute frontier of how it is

that they put their stuff

>> there. And I mean and they to their

credit um have been very transparent

about their statistical models and their

reasoning which not all companies have

done. Um

>> I think they're trying to do it right.

I think there's also the larger

question. I wrote about this on my

Subtock recently which is how do

how does something becoming a choice

particularly around the body

change everyone else's experience even

if they don't make that choice. So,

um, if you if if we've kind of already

seen this a little bit with Down

syndrome in that, um, in some countries,

screening for Down syndrome amongst

embryos is near universal

>> and

>> Iceland, I think,

>> I think is Iceland is in there, Denmark

is in there and nearly all of those

pregnancies are terminated or never

implanted.

And that has changed the perception of a

down's birth from this is something that

happens and it's part of our social

solidarity to support this child growing

up to you chose to have this kid because

you could have avoided it. And those are

in countries that have really strong

um sort of traditions, cultural, legal,

social, financial of social solidarity.

They have public medicine systems. Um,

in America, we already have such a

fractured sense of solidarity with each

other around our bodies.

And

how will how might that what's going to

happen when that system when everyone's

responsible for themselves and no one's

responsible to each other

um is further pressured by and now if

you have a kid who's sick or you have a

kid who has a condition we perceive it

as you chose that because you could have

prevented it by doing embryo selection.

Um, so how how does this new technology

which makes something that for all of

human history has been an a something a

chance event turning it into a choice.

How does that change all of our

relationships with reproduction? I don't

think we know the answer to that

question, but that's just that's what

I'm thinking about right now.

>> That's interesting. net net. If you had

the choice between

uh a parent having to have a kid that's

sick

so that other kids that are also sick

don't feel uncomfortable or strange

because

no one is using this new technology

or them stepping in because the the most

compelling thing weirdly enough I've

been thinking about this a lot. The most

compelling thing that I've seen is I

didn't realize when you do IVF, the

doctor already comes over and eyeballs

the embryos.

>> Oh, yes. They're already choosing. Yes.

I mean, I think

>> which you would want to do

>> like you would want to do that. You

wouldn't say, "Hey, we're going to use

IVF. Maybe one of us is a little bit

older. Maybe it's going to be a

geriatric pregnancy. Uh maybe

um we've had some fertility

complications.

Um maybe yeah, fertility comp. We've

been struggling to just get it to take.

So, we're going to get a big harvest, do

the embryo thing, and then implant.

The doctor is already looking through

the microscope,

>> and they're already selecting usually

for annuploites for crown or things like

that.

>> Correct. And so, they're already

>> and they're like, is this one blob? Is

this blobby one symmetrical or

>> is this the most circular one? I think

that I think number three is the most

circular one. So, as soon as you accept

that that is the way the IVF is done at

the moment, having a dashboard that

explains it to me makes

very little difference.

>> I think the bigger jump is

uh medically unnecessary IVF. Like if

someone IVF and then they already are

having to decide and then you're like

I'm getting more information like I I

can't implant all of them. I got to pick

one. It's that feels like less of a

frontier. And this is I mean I don't

know if that's right. Like this is just

like it feels more different but I don't

>> so ethic. Where's this coming from? From

an ethical perspective, do you think for

you?

>> I don't know if it's an ethical

perspective. It feels like a bigger

technological

leap and a bigger

social leap and our understanding of

what reproduction is. What you end up

with there is if somebody has got uh

some

fertility complications, some conception

issues, they are ethically more

justified in having kids that they can

select against negative traits and poor

for positive traits than somebody. It's

the same one of my friends was telling

me that um if he uses full self-driving

on his Tesla and he texts the

self-driving thing turns off because it

can see where your eyes are. It's got

driverf facing cameras that look at

them. So, interestingly, the safest way

for him to text while he's in his Tesla

is to drive it himself

>> while he's texting.

>> Yeah, it's like a weird incentive

structure.

>> It seems like a weird incentive

structure here.

>> Yeah. I wouldn't even say like again

I would not

I would not feel comfortable saying that

someone who had done elective IVF and

used embryo selection was behaving

unethically because I'm very wary of

imposing my own

>> why does it give you the heebie-jebies

what does it do to you given that I read

just to add one one element here I read

an article from Ethan Strauss. He does

House of Strauss. [ __ ] awesome

substack. Sports reporter, but every

time he writes something, I don't know

much about basketball and March Madness

and [ __ ] but every time he writes

something not about sport, it's one of

the best things I've ever read. He wrote

this one. It's called My Boy, and his

son has got autism. And I think he

describes it as not the send rockets to

space autism, but the flap your arms and

make noise autism. and he describes in

like sort of really sort of da d d d d d

d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d

d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d what

happens when his son goes to a party and

he sees other parents begin to react to

his son's behavior and he almost wants

to go over and give a disclaimer to

everybody in the room.

>> I want to explain to you what's

happening.

>> Yeah, I just need you to know, have they

noticed? When are they going to notice?

Are they going to say something to me,

to him? Is he ever going to be able to

look after us in old age or are we

always going to have to look after our

own child? And he loves his son, but I I

pretty sure he says, "I love my son, but

like it would be better if I could have

him, not as this." And I understand

there's a personhood problem here,

right? That like you don't get to have

him without that. The only him is the

him with that. Yeah,

>> but

anybody that is prochoice I think has to

be pro IVF because the only downside

that you have from the IVF is the

castaway embryos that don't end up

getting implanted

>> which if you're not thinking of them as

people

>> correct. Yeah.

>> Yeah. I mean I think that technology

I've said this before and I'll say it

again. New technology

makes us have to grapple with tensions

between our values that maybe we

wouldn't have had to grapple with

without the technology kind of putting a

fine point on it.

>> Yeah.

>> As a mother,

like you ask me like why does it give me

the heebie-jebies? Does it give me the

heebie-jebies? It makes me uncomfortable

for reasons I can't fully articulate.

That's the hippia.

>> I think part of it is on the one hand as

a mom,

I can think about ways in which my

children suffer

because of

the genetic hand they were dealt and

wouldn't I love to take away that

suffering

>> and and make the world safer for them,

make motherhood safer for me, reduce

suffering, right? like increase

flourishing

>> in I mean the value of your kid not

hurting

>> is

>> or not hurting other people

>> or not it's so so so high

and at the same time

I think motherhood does at least it has

for me involves

being in a relationship with a person

and meeting with them who they are and

them not being a them not being a

project for me to perfect them not being

a um a a vehicle or a vessel for my

hopes and my dreams and my aspirations.

Um but I am confronted with another

person and my job is to love them as

they are.

>> Would it not be easier then to

try and make that person as fit for the

world as possible? And then that allows

you to take your hands off the wheel

even more. But fit for the world. I

mean, fit for the world is tough in part

because we don't really know, especially

when we're moving away from

monogenic diseases where it's like,

okay, we have this there's this there's

this genotype and we it causes this

disease, it's going to happen 100% of

the time. As soon as we move from that

to these more polygenic, anything I

study, polygenic behavioral autism,

>> some of the genes associated with autism

are also associated with going further

in school, being more likely to graduate

from college.

>> IQ is negatively correlated with

happiness.

Um, some of the same genes that are

associated with going further in school

or being an artist are associated with

schizophrenia as we've talked about

before and we've talked about

risk-taking. And one of the thought

experiments I talk about in my book is

again thought experiment audience. I'm

not suggesting this thought experiment

is what if

some

um embryo selection dictator came to

power and said as of this year 2026

every couple that wants to reproduce

has to use IVF has to do um embryo

screening and has to select the kids

that have the lowest anti a social

offending risk takingaking jeans.

>> We are going to like stop murders in

this country because we're going to like

breed the sin genes out of people.

>> And you did that for several

generations. And so at every generation

you selected only the least risk-taking,

most inhibited, least antisocial.

Is that a world you want to live in?

Like is that

you've selected people who are most

likely to go along and get along and do

well in school and be great at having a

boss and like be really good at working

a desk job and like are very very

self-controlled. Perhaps to the point of

too self-control, but like

do you when you think about your family

and your friends and the cities that

you've chosen to live in, do you want to

live in a place that's populated only by

the most puritanical and inhibited among

us? Like probably not. I wouldn't.

>> You get the you get to sort of a god's

eye coordination problem here though,

right? That you parents what we really

need is to keep some of this high

externalizing behavior in the gene pool.

So we would like you to pay the price so

that we can continue to have this grist

for the mill that can spread randomly

between

>> I mean I think there I think you're

picking up on like a really fundamental

like exactly right which is that we put

so much pressure on individual parents

to be entirely responsible for the care

of their children to to mitigate any bad

outcomes. And we live in a society in

which society is better off when we have

variety when we have genetic diversity.

like there is no evolution without

mutation. There is no um the sociologist

Emil Durkheim had this passage that

crime is necessary to every society

because unless you have people who are

willing to do things differently a

society will never evolve and

>> but you are asking parents to pay a high

price if they are the ones that have to

deal with child that pay

>> and that's why I think there isn't this

is why I feel like the the dictating

reproductive policy from the top down

>> like if someone says no I'm Catholic

Like I don't I believe that those IVF

created embryos are people. I want to

have children. I want to have six

children and I want to use natural

planning planning. Like go for it.

>> You know, I really think that diversity

in a society is maintained by having

diversity. But but I mean this is kind

of a classical liberal idea like what is

your conception of the good? Like go

pursue it, right? What is your risk

tolerance for for parenting?

And it's also interesting because you

know I I gave birth to all three of my

kids in Austin.

Forget polygienic screening of embryos.

Even um genetic testing for downs was

introduced by by my obstitrician as if

she were like slowly tiptoeing over a

landmine. I'm not saying you have to do

this and I'm not saying you should do

this.

>> You're talking to a geneticist. Don't

worry. You should have just talking to a

geneticist. I'm not saying that you

would have to, you know, I'm not

suggesting you would want to terminate

the pregnancy if it was, but we do have

this option available to you. So, it's a

funny thing that this conversation about

embryo selection and its ethics is

happening at the same time where we have

a climate where if you if you wanted to

get an abortion in this state, you would

have to leave this state, right? Like

it's there's very different things

happening in terms of our our

reproductive autonomy. What do you think

about embryo selection as a counter to

the crumbling genome tubes thing?

>> I don't know about this.

>> Uh, okay. So, ancestrally there are

selection pressures that mean people who

have got genetic mutations that are

sub-optimal would have been selected

out. Uh, myopia is a good one, right?

Both you and me, you chose to go

glasses. I chose to go lasic. [laughter]

Um we have to assume that if you roll

the dice sufficient times uh both of us

would be more dead than somebody who had

perfect eyesight.

>> Yeah.

>> And when we are able to alleviate those

selection pressures by glasses and

LASIK, it means that we are able to pass

on our suboptimal. So because the

selection pressures have been relieved

largely through healthcare and support

and modern medicine stuff like that, you

do end up with a civilization that

accumulates genetic mutations that are

nonoptimal at a greater rate than would

have done previously because again this

lid has been released. And the argument

is, this is Tub's argument, um, you have

a crumbling genome that it moves toward

increasing accumulation of genetic

mutations, ones that we would not want,

but we're able to continue to support

and buttress this with uh, technological

progress. And the argument is that

embryo selection is able to step in and

reverse some of this entropy.

>> [sighs]

>> I mean, I I think this idea that

what humans are doing with

postindustrial healthcare in terms of

buffering the negative effects of genes

is somehow novel to humanity or novel to

evolution.

I don't really buy that. Like if you

look at other species, you see multiple

examples in which their ability to build

niches for themselves reduces selection

pressure on some genes and increases

selection pre pressure on other genes

which are involved in niche making.

>> But we would in at least as far as I can

see it with humans there would be no

increased selection pressure. It would

just be we will continue to compensate

over and over again. I think this idea

that there's no selection, there's

always a selection,

>> there's fewer selection pressures.

>> I think there's fewer selection

pressures around the things that were

historically associated with mortality

and now we have new ones. It's a very

it's a very common idea that you see

recur, you know, especially since Gton.

This idea that like, you know, some

something about modernity is making us

soft. Y

>> and that's going to corrode or degrade

our genome. This was um uh Pearson's

argument against universal public

education for kids. We can't be

educating all of the children because

then, you know, they'll be able to like

support themselves and reproduce and

then we won't be we won't be winnowing

out the the feeble-mindedness genes. And

that sounds kind of awful and shocking

to us in retrospect, but it made perfect

sense to them, you know, with their

logic at the time. there's a different

kind of lock in from educating or not

educating someone versus allowing a much

harder uh inheritance of genetic

mutation to keep on moving down. So

anyway, you I think it's I think it's

interesting and that 2B thing that's

that's about as spicy of a theory

basically that we should either use

embryo selection to step in or we should

limit healthcare in an attempt and this

isn't his proposal at all.

>> Um but that's that's like really on the

[ __ ] cusp. That's why I wait 2 and a

half hours to [laughter] to bring up

crumbling genome. But it's a fascinating

thought experiment, right? Like what are

we accumulating and are there some

things that we could what is it the

increase in peanut uh allergies that

we've had and that's behavioral? Uh the

increase in asthma because households

that use dishwashers and uh have like a

75% increase likelihood of asthma

because not being exposed to Okay, so we

continue to move. It's kind of like uh

snowplow parenting but for um

>> snowplow and not helicopter snowplow

parenting. I like that.

>> Exactly. It's snowplowing out of the

way. But it's snowplow civilization.

>> I mean I

I guess the I guess the other reason why

I'm just not like that concerned about

the crumbliness of our genome. I when

you say that I imagine this like kind of

overcooked chocolate chip cookie like

our genome is like falling apart. I

think about a wall

>> is um evolution takes place in vast

time. Like evolution is is a slow

process that has proceeded over eons.

And

any attempt to like take what's

happening in the last 25 years and

extrapolate

>> too far in either direction, I'm just

not all that convinced by it. And also I

just think this idea that like in some

ways the idea that there's like a good

direction for evolution or a bad

direction like I don't think evolution

has is

>> well if you were to say surely you would

say a less robust or a more robust

immune system that seems pretty

universally good right if you had

somebody that was more able to withstand

pathogens and microbes and insults to

their their health somebody who has uh

better respiratory rate, better

eyesight, better hearing. Like these

things seem realistic, like but again

with glasses and hearing aids and

antibiotics, we were able to come in and

buttress.

>> So I I I

think that being able to hear is a good

thing. I also know that there's plenty

of people in the deaf capital D deaf

community who would who would willingly

select a non-hearing child alone, you

child that can't hear if they could to

carry on the community. seen the the

personhood of the deaf [clears throat]

community, the denial of the personhood

of the death deaf community.

>> I think as a psychologist and a

geneticist,

I think of what's good or bad in an

evolutionary sense. It's always being

relative to an environment. Like white

fur is good when it's snowy a lot and it

starts to be bad as soon as it's not

snowy a lot if you're if you're a

rabbit. and not not really good or bad

in some sort of like absolute sense. So

I can see the argument that's like given

that humans will always have some

uh new novel pathogens because bacteria

and viruses evolve a lot faster than we

do. Like having an immune system that

can keep up with that is going to be

good for most of the environments that

humans will likely face in our

evolutionary future. But that there's

still a background of like what the

environment is there and not kind of

like a genetically good and like an

absolute sense I guess is the thing that

I'm responding to.

>> One of the things that you said before

about um sort of more and less

appropriate behaviors uh especially

given sort of the modern world and the

domestification domestication the the

puppification. Do you think it means or

could there be an argument made that the

current push by the mainstream to sort

of dissuade men from aggression and

dominance and impulsivity

is more unfair genetically?

>> Oh, that's interesting.

>> If if men are on average less

domesticated and appropriate

>> Yeah.

>> for a gentle modern world and does our

behavior needs to be curtailed more than

women's does. Is that unfair? Gosh. Um,

is unfair the word that I would use to

that? I so absolutely

>> Well, we're being we're being we're

being asked to modify our behavior in a

manner that women aren't simply because

of what modern society

>> I mean this has been Richard Reeves

argument. Um I don't know if you're

familiar he wrote a show.

>> Oh, really? So, you know, like if we're

not going to change schools, then we

should register all the boys and give

them an extra year as the only because

because asking a five-year-old boy to do

developmentally the exact same thing as

a 5-year-old girl isn't unfair in his in

his comparison.

>> You've spent a lot of time talking about

dominance and aggression.

>> I want to I want to go up a level to

think if I can articulate this in terms

of sort of like more general principles

and then go back to your your specific

question.

So in questions like this when we think

about fair or unfair just or unjust

I'm still very heavily influenced by RS

the political philosopher John RWS and

his thought experiment which is if you

didn't know what hand you were going to

be dealt in the natural lottery and in

the in the social lottery

what rules would you want for society

And that's an interesting question to

think like if I didn't know whether or

not I was going to be a man or a woman,

would I set school up the way that

school is set up now?

>> And I can't I I actually wish that I

could like inhabit the mind of a man for

a day just to see like is it really

different? Is it very similar? I'd be

fascinated with that. I can't do that.

But I have a son. I have a child and so

I can get to given what I know about sex

differences in brain development in

rates of ADHD and rates of conduct

disorder,

how would I design how would I design an

educational system such that my sons and

my daughters would have an equal

opportunity to thrive in them? And it

sure as heck wouldn't be what we do now.

I mean, my son's in middle school

and I [clears throat]

I think it's culturally insane what we

do. Like there is no culture on earth

before industrial capitalism that was

like, do you know what we should do with

our 12 and 13year-old pubertal boys? We

should put them inside all day.

Ask them to sit still with each other

and no older boys and no younger kids

and no responsibilities.

And we should put a 25-year-old woman in

charge of them. like

>> then we should get them to learn stuff

that they won't be able to remember a

decade later.

>> Like I whereas he does these once a

month um like go play in the woods for

the whole day.

>> Yep. And there's Joe Screens and there's

a bunch of young men and it's like we're

going to build a fire and we're going to

carve things out of wood and we're going

to like catch turtles and we're going to

fish and we're going to

hide in the brushes and while we're

there we're going to talk about math and

we're going to talk about the stars and

and you can read stuff to prepare for

your Earth native day.

>> Well, okay. Maybe maybe I put it in a

different way to unfet.

>> Yeah.

Uh should the additional level of

discipline that males specifically men

>> Yeah.

>> are required

>> Oh. Should that we have lower standards

for them?

>> No. No. The opposite. The opposite. The

uh

emotional containment that men are

forced to do in order to adhere to a

much more domesticated modern world.

>> Yeah.

>> Takes more effort.

>> Yeah.

>> Than it does for women. It just straight

up takes more effort because we are

being asked to be further away from our

set point, right? Our predisposition

pushes us in a direction that modern

society has said that we're not allowed

to go in. On average, more so for

>> there will be more people who find it

harder to

>> do that in a way that are that is

considered

>> that are men. Yes, there has been what

you could say a feminization of society

at least in as much as traits that were

more typically on the feminine side of

the conscientiousness

uh orderliness etc etc uh lower risk

takingaking lower aggression lower

dominance

those things are being

selected for that means that men need to

pay an additional price you know it's

more effortful for men to behave

>> um And given that, is that something

that should be recognized? Is that a

kind of price? We often talk about the

double shift that women do where women

have worked during the day and then they

come back home. But nobody ever talks

about the additional emotional

containment that men have to do,

especially given their nature.

>> I mean, so I gosh, I've never thought

about this before. So all of everything

I'm about to say is um

I don't have high confidence that I'm

right in anything I'm about to say.

That's just as a as a preface.

>> I should do that before every episode.

[laughter]

Um, I mean, part of what's difficult for

me to think through that is that the

distributions differ, but they're highly

overlapping. Like, most men are in the

range of normal women and most women are

in the range of normal men when it comes

to conscientiousness or agreeableness or

risk-taking. like the the sex difference

or the gender difference depending on

how you conceptualize it in these traits

is going to be the most evident

at the extreme.

>> So, you know, we're we and we do see

>> but this works all the way, right? Like

if you start to squeeze the bracket and

squeeze the window of what is

acceptable.

>> You get like outside of the tails,

men are within the female range and

women are in the

>> on average you're going to have it's

going to be a it's

>> Yeah, but the I mean the distributions

are very overlapping

>> when you run it across multiple

different traits though when you're

talking aggression and externalizing

behavior and impulsivity and risk-taking

and dominance. Like when you roll all of

those together and this isn't just a

it's someone isn't just aggressive.

>> They're aggressive and risk-taking. All

of these things together and when you

start to la this there's almost no woman

would be as risk-taking aggressive

dominant

>> outlying as the out.

>> No, even if you were to because on

average you have like these massive

overlapping distributions, right?

>> Yeah. But as soon as you go, it's this

trait and this trait and this trait and

this trait.

>> But I don't think that's true because

all those things are all correlated with

each other. So I think even if you

>> surely it would start to push those

>> hills out further.

>> I mean we could run a simulation to do

this. But I think if you were

envisioning like let's say just three

three traits some sort of

three-dimensional terrain surface

>> I think that what the things that you're

talking about are correlated enough such

that men and women are more similar than

is commonly assumed. So I do think that

the there's we definitely clearly see

sex differences at the extremes at the

outlying one but in terms of like is

your ordinary experience

>> but that's sorry

>> that different than a a woman in the

60th percentile like

>> well a question would be we can only see

the behavior of people who manifest it

>> and to say well this is where the tales

are how many men should be out on the

tails but a wrang tingling. [laughter]

>> They're white knuckling their way

through life.

>> They're white knuckling their way

through domestication and they're

thinking, "Look, modern society says

that I can't behave in that way. I'd

really better not. That's a price that

men have to pay that women don't."

>> I mean, I think there's a price to

the I think I'm being hung up on the

price to pay like

>> effort.

>> I think that there's effort,

>> a denial of a deni a denial of their

nature,

>> a type of containment. All I'm all I'm

saying is in in a modern world that

basically seems to continue to say

unless you're addicted to drugs in jail

or homeless,

you are still from a kind of privileged

background. And there are ways that you

as a man aren't even seeing some of the

additional costs that women pay, the

double shift, the domestic stuff. And I

think some interesting data around that.

Um but

>> I think that that is a the unseen cost,

right? like that would be the unseen

cost of being a woman, of being a

mother, of the things that you need to

get over.

>> I'm just seeing if there's any

leeway for sort of guys to have their

own equivalent

>> their own equivalent like source of

grievance or like sense of things are

unfair. I mean, whether or not they

should, they clearly do. Like again, I'm

not a man. I'm not going to speak for

men. Obviously, you know, the men that I

interact with are

my husband. And honestly, the the the

the modal man that I interact with these

days is a is a 18-year-old college

student who's in my class.

>> So, sorry to hear that.

>> And, you know, who are really just

trying to figure out like what is this

life thing about? Like, what is this

adult thing about? you know, there's

whether or not people should feel like

society is unfair or um society is

stacked against them. I don't think any

data point, even if I had them, that I

could come up with to be like, you

shouldn't feel like life is unfair

because here's why.

>> I think that data is really bad at

counteracting these kinds of like vibes

of feeling like the headwinds of culture

are against you. Yeah.

>> And everything that I've read and all

the data I've seen is that men and young

men in particular feel like they really

struggle to articulate what is my role

in society? Am I valued in society? I I

there used to be a lane for me and now I

don't know what that lane is anymore.

And you could think about like no, you

shouldn't feel that way because like the

distributions are overlapping or like

yes, you should feel this way because

but like neither one of those really get

at the question about like well what do

about it? like well also like this is

your personal experience but I mean I

find the the gap between young men and

young women in terms of their perception

of society of politics of hope for the

future of whether or not they trust each

other

to be really sad and alarming. And I

think anytime you start seeing

society in terms of like a zero someum

game, like if women are gaining, I'm

losing because I'm being asked to do

something that's more against my nature.

Or if men's problems are given any air

time, that is unfair because actually

like women are more deserving.

>> Yes. like this.

Um I mean I think it goes back to what I

was talking about earlier with like the

Norwegian crime which is that like when

we begin from the perspective of each

one of us has value as a human and we

are all we we are all in the same boat

now like we're all in this society

together. So how are we going to make it

work for everyone? that feels like a

much more productive way forward than

trying to adjudicate like which

should people think it's unfair or not.

Like if they do, you're going to have to

start with that like as a starting

point.

>> What do you think of the looks maxing

movement as a geneticist?

>> I mean, I know very little about this.

Um, at the end of the day, like I'm a

middle-aged college professor, so I am

like somewhat buffered from online

world. From what I have read,

it does seem to me to be very ironic

because

um

it seems that some of the interventions

are making people infertile. like I'm

going to I'm going to look smack and

take a bunch of testosterone and ruin my

ability to like procreate. Feels really

deeply ironic

>> like genetic separ.

>> It's Yes, exactly. And also my friend

Paul Eastwick who I think you talked to.

I did a couple weeks ago.

>> He did.

>> Um Paul is an old friend. I've been

talking about research with him for 15

years. And when I first met him I was

like what do you mean you don't believe

in mate value? like I don't believe you

that that doesn't exist. And now I'm

like, oh, may value exists among

strangers and acquaintances and then it

>> declines as people get to know each

other. That actually makes total sense

to me.

>> Um, but I am very convinced by his his

argument that the core task of evolution

was how do we survive and raise the next

generation? And so their biggest boon

towards that was the ability to form

pair bonds and attach to each other not

to out compete strangers for some like

signals vaguely related to genetic

fitness.

>> So what do you think it says that that's

what's being optimized for now by young

men?

>> Oh, [sighs]

what do you I mean you're you you are a

younger and a man. So what do you like

what do you think? I I actually don't

it feels very nihilistic. It feels like

if we were if we were looking at this in

another species and we were like there's

a subset of young mammals who aren't

dating, aren't interested in romance,

um aren't interested in reproducing, but

are interested in

extreme body modification

>> to give the signals that typically would

be attractive by the other sex but not

in order to get the other sex.

>> So

>> the Lux Maxing community I think is

pretty broad and in that will be a

subset of guys who are doing it in order

to get sexual access to women. They they

want to get laid. They want to get laid

so they're going to be tall or they want

to go to the the gym to get track. I did

I did look smacking, right? It was

called going to the gym.

>> Yeah.

>> Um so

a couple of interesting things. This is

defin this is kind of an

inevitable

end point or one of the points along the

journey of u understanding behavioral

genetics, understanding some mate

preferences from women at least

aesthetically for men. Um because when

you combine those two things together,

you there are certain things that are

going to be more difficult for you to

change without doing something that's

extreme. And if you

are growing up inside of a culture that

is making it increasingly difficult for

guys to

be

to get in front of women in a way that

seems warm and welcomed. Uh if you're in

a postmeto world where approaching women

in public is something that

many young men have been told that they

shouldn't do that you have a little bit

of a tall girl problem. socioeconomic

success amongst women means that they're

rising up through their own competence

hierarchy. So there's ever fewer men

that are above and across from them. So

if they want to date typically on

average uh woman wants to date a man as

educated or more than her and as wealthy

or more than she is and as tall or more

than she is, uh you end up with an

everinccreasing group of high performing

women and ever decreasing group of ultra

high performing men. If you do that and

you keep on pushing, um, I think what

you're actually seeing is guys competing

with other guys as a way to find some

end goal. You'll even hear it in the way

that they speak like Clvicular, who's

kind of the number one of this. He'll

say, "I don't care about getting girls.

I just want to mog." And what he means

is, "I want to out alpha other guys."

And what he's talking about with that,

like mogging is not just good lux, it's

formidability. And I'm sure that you've

seen a lot of the stuff around male

formidability is as good, if not a

better predictor of sexual success than

luxart are. So it's a really funny I

don't think that this is what's meant to

happen. They've ended up at what the

outcome should be in any case, which is

formidability is better a better

predictor of male sexual success than

attractiveness tends to be by pushing

for formidability that's coded in a very

man way. It's all about brow ridge,

[laughter] heavy cheeks, like strong

jawline.

>> I just I

>> being tall.

>> I feel like

>> maybe this is just me being extremely

out of touch, but

>> I'm a woman. I've been married twice.

I've dated other people. I've been in

relationships. I have, you know, I'm a

heterosexual woman who has been involved

in heterosexual relationships since I

was

15, so nearly 30 years now. And every

time I read this description of what

women or especially like educated or

high income or like com you know women

who have some social status want

>> what they're looking for in a partner

how they pick partners who they choose

to have sex with. I it always

surprises me because it bears so little

relationship to how

I have ended up in

sexually satisfying, romantically

satisfying relationships. And I think

with particularly with the education

thing, I've long thought,

you know, I've my first husband uh I met

during graduate school, so he has the

exact same education as me. Um, my

second husband has, I guess on paper,

less education than me, made less money

than me when we first met.

Um, so I'm I'm in one of those

relationships that people suggest

shouldn't happen, which is like people

marrying like across or down as a woman

>> socioeconomically. Yeah.

>> And I'm like, but my husband is

extremely competent. Like he

>> But you know what? You know what?

Competence is a predictor for future

[laughter] socioeconomic success. That

is how that would get netted down.

>> I guess so. And it's the same thing I I

always

>> but I think the sense of like you want

what you you know the competence is the

signal for like socioeconomic status. I

actually think it's the rever like if I

reflect on what I want I'm like I want a

man who knows how to contribute to the

family and contribute to the society and

like one of those ways could be money

but actually I want someone who like

again it's competence it's contribution

>> and what you're using is education level

and employment level are rough hune

aggregates that may may indicate the

level of competence of this person so I

I don't disagree, but that's also the

same as saying, well, my most recent uh

graduate student, he didn't even go to a

very good university, but he was great.

>> No, I mean, obviously, I'm a one person

like this is, you know, the end of

>> I know that you're right, but the the

the end of one thing is true. I think if

you were to look on average, assorted

mating is real. Um, but that's my I

don't think the guys are even concerned

about that. They're not worried about

they're not education maxing, they're

luxing, [laughter] right? They're not

career maxing,

>> they're not confidence maxing. Well,

they that would also be something. But I

think

>> go learn how to like chop down a tree

and diaper a baby and hike up a mountain

and and ride a horse. Competence max

instead of looks max. And then like I

feel like that might get you more

places.

>> Well, the the currency that every man is

playing with at the moment is what can

be portrayed online. And I can't show

you how good I my good

>> I mean I think that's

>> I can show you how much of a Chad I am

but not how much of a dad I am.

>> Yeah. the part that makes me so again

like so much of this is reflected back

to me in my role as a college professor

and

I I was teaching a class and I was I

made some we were talking about

de-individuation like when you're in a

dark room or you're in a costume you

feel less individually responsible and I

said offhand I was like that's why none

of the best parties are going to have

bright fluorescent lighting like you're

always going to have dim light at a good

party and my students I teach online. I

teach on a sound stage and my students

have this like ask your professor a

question button and it lit up with

students being like bold of you to think

that we've ever been to a party or I I

heard that there would be parties in

college and I've never been to one and

my co-instructor and I looked at each

other and we were like should we make a

homework assignment which is a party

like

>> turn the lights down and put some music

on and like maybe make some jello shots

and like have people over and it was so

it was there are these moments where you

you know every year I go and every year

I'm a year older and then there are

these moments where the students ask

something and you're like oh wow the

culture has shifted and I and shifted in

a way that as an older person I have not

been privy to and how much of this is

they're just not hanging out in person

as much anymore like like our if college

students are writing me and being like

I've never been to a party

>> and all of their socialization is

happening mediated two-dimensionally

through a screen.

>> You're right. Then the only competence

that seems to matter is

>> present presentation

>> the presentation of it.

>> How do you look? And but that's that's

not that doesn't go going back to Paul's

work that doesn't help you sustain an

attachment. That doesn't help you raise

as a baby. Like that's not really what I

think.

>> Think about how antiatalist most of the

sort of modern culture is at the moment

anyway.

>> Oh, American culture hates kids.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> I got in trouble for this recently. Uh

[laughter] Paige, you're great. Um I

really

>> This was so fun and so varying and all

over the place. You did it. Where should

people go? Let's bring this one home.

Tell them where to buy your things and

follow your things.

>> All right. So, my new book comes out on

March 3rd in the United States and in

April in the UK. And it's called

Original Sin: The Genetics Advice: The

Problem of Blame, and the Future of

Forgiveness. And if you were at all

interested in genetics, addiction,

antisocial behavior, how to forgive

yourself or someone else for the way

they've hurt you, or just the free will

problem, or um there's a very personal

prologue to that about having a body.

So, if you're interested in any of those

things, you should check out my book.

>> Heck yeah, Paige. I appreciate you.

>> Thank you very much for tuning in.

[music] Congratulations for making it to

the end of an entire episode. Uh,

another one that I think you'll enjoy is

right here.