Episode 285: On Culture and Agriculture

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having

[00:00:06] an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics.

[00:00:09] Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing

[00:00:14] my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] Why do you think your mommy or daddy are always telling you, don't put that in your mouth?

[00:00:21] Let's find out.

[00:00:26] I'm a very good man.

[00:01:08] Just a very bad wizard.

[00:01:11] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards.

[00:01:13] I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.

[00:01:15] Dave, the city of Houston, God's chew toy, the like squeaky mouse for the kitten.

[00:01:22] We just got hit by a surprise Derrico a couple of days ago.

[00:01:26] Do you even know what a Derrico is?

[00:01:28] No idea.

[00:01:29] I've never heard that.

[00:01:30] I'd never heard it either.

[00:01:32] And it was fucking crazy and extremely destructive to one of our neighborhoods in particular,

[00:01:39] like our neighborhood and downtown and a couple of neighborhoods northwest of us.

[00:01:45] Yeah, like we had heard there was going to be some thunderstorms, maybe heavy rains,

[00:01:49] kind of normal par for the course.

[00:01:50] And then all of a sudden we get this tornado warning and it comes like 15 minutes before

[00:01:55] this whole thing happens.

[00:01:57] And luckily, like I was home and I brought in like the garbage and the recycling because

[00:02:02] it was that day, you know, got Eliza into the house, didn't have time to like get the

[00:02:06] camping supplies.

[00:02:07] And then all of a sudden, like the fucking most insane storm I've ever been in comes through.

[00:02:13] So a Derrico is like a tornado, but it's bigger and the winds are straight ahead instead of

[00:02:19] swirly. So you just get like 100.

[00:02:22] We had like 100, 110 mile an hour winds just coursing through this parts of the city and

[00:02:28] just fucking it up.

[00:02:29] Like our neighborhood is fucked up right now.

[00:02:32] And I know friends who a tree like fell through their house.

[00:02:35] We got lucky for the most part.

[00:02:37] We have like a little damage, but like for the most part, we are hugely lucky.

[00:02:41] We're also hugely lucky to have power because which we got back the following morning.

[00:02:46] A lot of people still don't have it and they're not giving encouraging signs on when.

[00:02:51] So it is crazy.

[00:02:52] I didn't think we were going to be able to record.

[00:02:55] OK, a couple of things. Hold on.

[00:02:56] First of all, is that how people say it?

[00:02:58] Derrico?

[00:02:59] Don't know. I've only read it.

[00:03:00] OK, because it's derecho, which is the Spanish word for straight.

[00:03:05] Yeah. So I mean, that's not to say that it's not pronounced there, Derrico.

[00:03:08] But it's I was like, oh, yeah, that's helpful.

[00:03:14] You like how that's like my I'm not like, how are you?

[00:03:16] How is everybody? I'm like, you're pronouncing it wrong.

[00:03:18] Maybe you are. I've never heard the word before.

[00:03:20] But yeah, I certainly haven't.

[00:03:24] So you did you get like a phone alert?

[00:03:26] Mm hmm. Yeah.

[00:03:27] Both my daughter and I, we were home and wife was at work and she had to deal with.

[00:03:30] She was downtown.

[00:03:31] So she had to deal with like a whole school ballet schools of people like that.

[00:03:35] She has to get down into the Houston Ballet.

[00:03:37] Like like the wind would pick up their tutus.

[00:03:39] Yeah. They were just going to fly.

[00:03:41] Be like Marilyn Monroe and the seven year itch.

[00:03:46] So, you know, like she's, you know, like she runs the Houston Ballet Academy.

[00:03:52] So she had to get everybody down into whatever safe space that they have.

[00:03:55] We just huddled in our hallway with Trixie.

[00:03:57] Did the message say like what to do?

[00:03:59] Like go to your basement.

[00:04:00] You're like, I don't have a fucking basement.

[00:04:01] Nobody has a basement in Houston.

[00:04:02] It would just be immediately flooded.

[00:04:04] So like just get away from the windows and shit.

[00:04:06] Yeah, we stayed away from the windows.

[00:04:08] Everyone's.

[00:04:08] But like it was, it was like being in a, like a, some kind of post-apocalyptic

[00:04:12] movie while it's happening.

[00:04:14] Like I'd never, we've been through hurricanes.

[00:04:15] We've been through like a lot and I've never been through anything like this.

[00:04:19] Never like been a part of winds like that.

[00:04:22] And you would just hear explosions and then things falling.

[00:04:25] And then like, yeah, our street was kind of decimated.

[00:04:29] Trees are down everywhere, everywhere.

[00:04:31] And I know you sent me a picture of like what, what appeared to be just the top

[00:04:34] half of a tree.

[00:04:35] Just on a power line.

[00:04:36] Like on a power line.

[00:04:37] That whole area is fucked up.

[00:04:38] Like not that the power line fell.

[00:04:39] That's like a half a block from my house.

[00:04:41] Yeah, I know.

[00:04:42] It's like, like Dorothy's fucking house just trapped on a power line.

[00:04:47] This is why I said if you died in a tornado, I would sample it.

[00:04:50] I would sample your screaming tornado death and add it to our opening song.

[00:04:55] Oh, you would?

[00:04:56] That's right.

[00:04:57] Yeah, it's, that's actually a very fitting way for me to die.

[00:05:00] And it almost happened.

[00:05:02] So.

[00:05:02] That's crazy.

[00:05:03] Yeah, it's, it's fucked up.

[00:05:04] Like also like five people died.

[00:05:06] Yeah, it's like Houston really is right now a, we have biblical weather these

[00:05:11] last eight or nine years.

[00:05:13] Yeah, it's like the ending of a serious man.

[00:05:15] Like this is what happened at the end.

[00:05:16] Yeah.

[00:05:17] We didn't see it, but that's.

[00:05:18] Right.

[00:05:18] Like, yeah, soon it'll be just the ending of Magnolia and we're going to get

[00:05:22] frogs from the sky and we'll all just be screaming at our pharmacists.

[00:05:30] Shit.

[00:05:30] I'm glad, I'm glad you're okay.

[00:05:33] Yeah.

[00:05:33] Except for those five people.

[00:05:34] We got lucky.

[00:05:35] I have lots of friends who got much less lucky, so.

[00:05:38] Yeah.

[00:05:38] We'll see.

[00:05:38] Trixie is like, you know, this is bullshit.

[00:05:41] Give me the fuck back to the SPCA, you know?

[00:05:45] Like I can't, I can't live here.

[00:05:47] It's like, I'm just like, I hope they were okay.

[00:05:50] She's just going and eating all the chocolate.

[00:05:52] It's like trying to end it.

[00:05:55] So what are we doing today?

[00:05:57] We have a packed show.

[00:05:59] Um, a kind of traditional throwback show maybe.

[00:06:02] It's full of like empirical, uh, findings.

[00:06:05] Yeah.

[00:06:06] You know?

[00:06:06] Lots of findings, but a little culture war stuff in the beginning.

[00:06:10] Yeah.

[00:06:10] Just to, you know, for those people.

[00:06:12] So for the main segment, we're talking about an article recently published in

[00:06:16] Nature Communications on rice farmers and wheat farmers and the question of the

[00:06:21] origins of collectivism and individualism.

[00:06:24] Yeah.

[00:06:24] Like are rice farmers more collectivistic than wheat farmers?

[00:06:28] And is the fact that they're rice farmers, is that why they are

[00:06:32] more collectivistic?

[00:06:33] Yeah.

[00:06:33] Well, like the origins of culture, like big questions.

[00:06:36] Big questions.

[00:06:37] Questions that, you know, I used to work on back in the day.

[00:06:40] So yeah.

[00:06:41] But, but first we have a paper that's also published in a real journal, right?

[00:06:47] Like a-

[00:06:48] Yeah.

[00:06:48] It's a good journal.

[00:06:49] Good journal.

[00:06:49] Perspectives on psychological science.

[00:06:51] Taboos and self-censorship among US psychology professors.

[00:06:56] So this is a paper, uh, by Corey Clark and then a lot of other-

[00:07:01] Et al.

[00:07:02] Et al.

[00:07:03] Yeah.

[00:07:03] It's a who's who of, what do we call?

[00:07:06] On the kind of IDW adjacent-

[00:07:11] Yeah.

[00:07:11] I'd say it's people from a wide range of what you'd call centrist to like kind

[00:07:15] of reactionary.

[00:07:16] Yeah.

[00:07:17] Something like that.

[00:07:18] So you have like Jeffrey Miller, Bowmeister, Weingard.

[00:07:22] Yeah.

[00:07:23] And my friends here at Cornell, Steve Cici and Wendy Williams, Phil Tetlock.

[00:07:28] The paper that will go through a bunch of taboo conclusions that people can draw if

[00:07:36] they're studying psychology and assess to the degree to which A, people believe in

[00:07:42] these taboo conclusions.

[00:07:44] And then B, if they do, to what extent they self-censor, to what extent they

[00:07:49] think censoring others is okay, to what extent that influences how they engage

[00:07:55] with the profession.

[00:07:56] You know, it's a funny paper.

[00:07:58] It reads quite reasonably, you know?

[00:08:01] Yeah.

[00:08:01] If there are some borderline reactionary people on there based on their kind of

[00:08:07] public personas, it doesn't come across in the paper, I don't think.

[00:08:11] At least on one level, you know?

[00:08:13] You could take like a more esoteric reading, like a more dog whistly reading.

[00:08:19] And there are times where it kind of feels like you should have subtitles for this,

[00:08:24] like in Annie Hall, you know?

[00:08:27] Right.

[00:08:28] Here's where we're getting to race science and why the real research is being

[00:08:33] suppressed or something.

[00:08:35] But it would be very hard to like pin it down anywhere for that.

[00:08:39] It's, and it may not, and that may be completely unfair, but it is, that did

[00:08:43] jump out at me that there is a kind of other level to read this otherwise

[00:08:47] seemingly reasonable, if a little boring paper on this topic that, you know, doesn't

[00:08:54] say anything that's surprising in the least.

[00:08:56] Yeah.

[00:08:56] Now my belief is that the group of authors that are sort of less reactionary had a

[00:09:01] say in how this gets written up and discussed.

[00:09:04] So the others just had to be content with their little signs, planting little

[00:09:07] signs that will let their Straussian readers...

[00:09:11] Like a watermark of Pepe the Frog.

[00:09:15] If you look at the letters on page three, you can make out Pepe the Frog.

[00:09:20] What they did was they interviewed 40 people on Zoom, like a qualitative

[00:09:24] interview to talk about this stuff.

[00:09:25] And then based on those, they created a survey and then asked 470 psych

[00:09:31] professors.

[00:09:31] But I was one of the 41.

[00:09:33] So I sat and had a long conversation with Corey about this stuff, which was

[00:09:37] good, but I didn't take the survey.

[00:09:39] Well, that would have been compromised, I think.

[00:09:41] Yeah, exactly.

[00:09:41] Given that you're free to...

[00:09:42] I know the answers.

[00:09:45] You know what's true and what's false.

[00:09:47] Exactly.

[00:09:48] So they talk about the issue here, right?

[00:09:51] So it says on page three here, a primary goal of science is to pursue an

[00:09:56] empirically accurate description of the natural world.

[00:09:59] And nature does not always conform to human social values and desires.

[00:10:04] True enough, right?

[00:10:05] Indeed, the claim that humans strive to climb status hierarchies as among

[00:10:10] scientists is likely true.

[00:10:12] Clark and Weingart citing themselves here.

[00:10:15] But it is not a particularly flattering view of human nature.

[00:10:18] A scholar speaking the truth, or at least what he or she sincerely believes to be

[00:10:22] true on the basis of the evidence may occasionally offend some or even most

[00:10:26] people.

[00:10:28] But you know, the idea is if you're engaged in a fact finding mission, a

[00:10:33] disinterested quest for the truth, that's not something you can expect the world

[00:10:39] to conform to whatever kind of the woke trends are in this latest iteration.

[00:10:44] What if you were like a true idealist and you just thought that in fact nature did

[00:10:47] conform?

[00:10:48] Yeah, like a Talon philosopher, you know, like, yeah, it absolutely does persuade

[00:10:55] people.

[00:10:56] Yeah.

[00:10:56] I mean, when we get to the conclusions though, like it's very hard for many, if not

[00:11:01] most of them to determine what's so taboo about them.

[00:11:03] But I guess we'll get to that.

[00:11:05] So I guess, you know, that's fine.

[00:11:07] You know, like it's obviously a lot more complicated in terms of, well, given that a

[00:11:12] lot of these reports are likely to be false, you know, it's not about like, if this is

[00:11:17] true, we have to keep it under wraps.

[00:11:19] You know, like Saul Smoliansky thinks about free will skepticism or something like

[00:11:23] that.

[00:11:23] You know, it's more like, well, okay.

[00:11:26] Like, you know, this is kind of bullshit anyway, this whole way you're going about

[00:11:30] measuring things.

[00:11:31] So like if you're going to then use that method and come up with a conclusion that

[00:11:36] could be considered racist or transphobic or whatever, you know, maybe we're going to

[00:11:42] be a little harder on that stuff.

[00:11:44] I don't agree that our measures are always bullshit, but sure, I get your point.

[00:11:47] But you get my point.

[00:11:48] I could resist your subtle digs at my silence would somehow sound like agreement.

[00:11:54] Complicity, yeah.

[00:11:55] Agreement, yeah.

[00:11:56] So you could debate whether that's even appropriate.

[00:11:59] But I do think that's what we're talking about here, at least in large part.

[00:12:03] The one thing I did want to ask you, so they have as a kind of a motivating thing that

[00:12:08] nature, human behavior and also nature communications have changed publication

[00:12:13] guidelines indicating that papers may be rejected and even retracted on the basis

[00:12:19] of harm concerns surrounding research conclusions.

[00:12:22] Is that true?

[00:12:22] They did change their guidelines.

[00:12:24] So they published an editorial, I think in 2022 and I didn't see, I believe that

[00:12:30] they are claiming that they could reject or retract.

[00:12:33] But when you read the changes that they made, it just sounds like the regular kind

[00:12:39] of woke shit.

[00:12:40] Like they're just like, okay, like we already know that we don't want to publish any

[00:12:46] research where like humans were harmed.

[00:12:48] Right. We're not letting people actually shock or, you know, we can't do those kinds

[00:12:52] of things anymore.

[00:12:53] Milgram stuff.

[00:12:53] But we also are broadening our conception of harm to include the fact that some group

[00:13:00] members could be like, let me actually read it.

[00:13:04] So content that is premised upon the assumption of inherent biological, social or

[00:13:08] cultural superiority or inferiority of one human group over another based on race,

[00:13:12] ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:13:16] They say editors reserve the right to request modifications to or correct or otherwise

[00:13:20] amend post publication and in severe cases refuse publication of or retract post

[00:13:25] publication. Content that undermines or could reasonably be perceived undermine the

[00:13:28] rights and dignities of an individual or human group on the basis of socially constructed

[00:13:32] or socially relevant human groupings.

[00:13:33] Content that includes text or images that directly or indirectly disparages a person

[00:13:37] or group on the basis of socially relevant groupings.

[00:13:40] And the last one, submissions that embody singular privileged perspectives which are

[00:13:45] exclusionary of a diversity of voices in relation to socially constructed or socially

[00:13:49] relevant human groupings.

[00:13:50] This stuff, like I was a little bit like pissed when they published this, but it could be

[00:13:55] super milk toasty.

[00:13:56] Like it doesn't it sounds like just broad enough that it just depends, I guess, on how

[00:14:03] you interpret what's found.

[00:14:04] It's an interesting justification that I never thought of before, which is, look, we

[00:14:08] already do this with IRBs.

[00:14:10] Right. So like we already don't allow all sorts of things that might shed light on the

[00:14:16] human mind but would be unethical to perform on participants.

[00:14:21] So like this isn't that different in kind from that.

[00:14:24] You know, we're already not engaged in a completely unconditional search for the truth.

[00:14:29] Right. If you have a question that is like, you know, how long can you shock somebody

[00:14:36] before they start developing mental illness?

[00:14:40] People would be like, well, you just can't ask that.

[00:14:43] So yeah, you're right. I hadn't actually thought of it really in that way.

[00:14:47] So I guess the objection is that this could be used to like not publish something that

[00:14:53] says, you can imagine saying, oh, cognitive decline occurs even earlier than we

[00:14:58] thought. Like by the time people are 55, their short term memory is such that they

[00:15:03] couldn't hold down a real job and that could have implications.

[00:15:06] And so they might say like.

[00:15:07] As someone who's approaching that age, I think it's definitely true.

[00:15:11] You're right. And so I don't know how much they've exercised any of this.

[00:15:17] Yeah. It's always a question of, you know, it's like, do you, are you opening the door

[00:15:20] for ideological capture or whatever?

[00:15:23] And I think, you know, here it'll depend how you think about all of this, dependent on

[00:15:28] the details of what we're talking about, what they've actually done versus what they're

[00:15:32] published as saying that they're going to do and what exactly the things that they're

[00:15:38] worried about. People are either going to censor or self-censor their beliefs.

[00:15:43] So should we go through those?

[00:15:44] Do you have any things to say about how they set up the experiment?

[00:15:48] No, I don't think so.

[00:15:49] I mean, they constructed a survey.

[00:15:51] I guess it's good to know how they're doing it.

[00:15:53] So people got a series of these taboo conclusions and they were asked to with a

[00:15:59] little sliding scale ranging from zero to 100.

[00:16:02] How confident are you in the truth or falsity of this statement?

[00:16:06] So from 100 percent confident it's false to 100 percent confident it's true.

[00:16:10] And they got like people who put hundreds for both for all of the questions, which is

[00:16:15] kind of remarkable.

[00:16:17] Did they say that like for real?

[00:16:18] Did I? Yeah, I thought so.

[00:16:20] There definitely are people who put 100 in every one.

[00:16:23] I couldn't tell if it was 100 for all of them, but I thought it was.

[00:16:28] But I didn't know if it's 100 for both sides or not.

[00:16:30] Maybe we can when we read the statements, we can talk about whether this was phrased

[00:16:35] in the best way because the combination of the statements and what they're asked to

[00:16:39] rate, I think leads to some real weird ambiguity.

[00:16:43] Yeah, because then they're also asked to rate a bunch of different things about how

[00:16:46] comfortable they would feel expressing their beliefs and what should happen to people

[00:16:50] who express those beliefs or publish findings trying to support those beliefs.

[00:16:54] So let's go through the questions and then we can because honestly, this is where I

[00:16:59] have the most to say.

[00:17:01] Are you going to answer?

[00:17:02] Yeah. OK, yeah, I will.

[00:17:04] The first one is tendency to engage in sexually coercive behavior likely evolved

[00:17:09] because it conferred some evolutionary advantages on men who engaged in such

[00:17:14] behavior. I don't know, just because, you know, like I doubt there's a fully

[00:17:20] fleshed out theory of this.

[00:17:21] I would put this at like what's the zero percent means you don't believe you're 100

[00:17:26] percent sure it's false.

[00:17:28] When you're taking it, you see 100 percent true on one side and 100 percent false on

[00:17:33] the other side. Anyway, I'd put this at like 20 percent disbelief.

[00:17:37] But yeah, don't have that disbelief.

[00:17:39] Yeah. What about you?

[00:17:40] Well, here's where I already start to get into like issues and I don't think I'm being

[00:17:44] pedantic, but you tell me like when they say the tendency to engage in sexually

[00:17:48] coercive behavior. So you're basically saying like rapiness or whatever, right?

[00:17:52] Like sexual likely evolved.

[00:17:54] I think that some of it likely evolved.

[00:17:57] So I think that there are reasons why men are more violent in general.

[00:18:01] What they're really trying to ask here is, is it that men who raped were more likely

[00:18:06] to reproduce and have offspring who raped?

[00:18:09] Like that was a like low status strategy for males.

[00:18:12] The males who couldn't actually get like women to engage in consensual sex still

[00:18:18] needed their DNA, needed them to like replicate.

[00:18:21] And so they would engage in the plan B, the rapey strategy.

[00:18:26] Conceptually involuntary celibate is not a category that they held in their head.

[00:18:33] So I believe that that could be a plausible piece of the puzzle.

[00:18:38] But I think that there's maybe general tendencies to be violent that evolved.

[00:18:42] And then there's also cultural reasons that men engage in that kind of aggression.

[00:18:47] And so what do I say if I believe that like some small piece of the puzzle is,

[00:18:54] like I'm actually pretty sure.

[00:18:56] So you could put like 80% for this.

[00:18:59] Yeah. And it makes it sound like I'm like that.

[00:19:01] What I'm saying is that it is the most like exhaustive explanation or something

[00:19:05] like that, but I'm not right.

[00:19:06] I'm just really confident that some small piece.

[00:19:09] Right. Exactly.

[00:19:10] So yeah. Is that pedantic?

[00:19:12] No, I mean, on one level, absolutely not.

[00:19:14] You're totally right.

[00:19:15] Like if you interpret it that way, then I think like the most reasonable answer is

[00:19:19] probably that you're 70 or 80% kind of towards that side based on what we

[00:19:24] understand about all of our evolved tendencies or just tendencies period.

[00:19:29] Probably have some connection to how we evolved.

[00:19:31] But like what got me thinking about this was not just the inherent ambiguity, but

[00:19:36] why this is considered a taboo conclusion.

[00:19:39] Like why is this such a politically polarizing question?

[00:19:42] Right. Like it sometimes seems like an issue just gets almost randomly.

[00:19:48] It gets pulled into the like political battles of the time.

[00:19:53] And like, you know, it's just not clear.

[00:19:55] Like why if you put 80 or 90% that yes, this was to, you know, 250,000 years ago

[00:20:04] in the African savanna, like an evolutionary strategy, like why would that be

[00:20:09] something that people would be all like hot and bothered by no matter how it turns

[00:20:13] out? Like it's, it is funny to see, like there's certain things like this.

[00:20:18] And I have, you know, like we've probably talked about like why this is, but like

[00:20:22] why do you think this one is politically charged in any way?

[00:20:26] There's a sociological answer that is not, you know, it's only like the proximal

[00:20:31] one, which is that a few years ago, like 20 years ago now, some evolutionary

[00:20:36] psychologists, no actually biologists and anthropologists wrote a book called

[00:20:39] The Natural History of Rape.

[00:20:42] Basically saying as much, right?

[00:20:44] And they went to great lengths to say, we're not saying in any way that this

[00:20:49] justifies rape, which is weird that you even have to say that.

[00:20:53] Right. That's the question.

[00:20:54] Why would you feel like you would have to say that for that more than we live in a

[00:20:58] rape culture that warps like young men's minds?

[00:21:01] Yeah. Like that doesn't justify rape.

[00:21:03] I think it boils down to your old area of interest, which is people read that as

[00:21:09] people who engage in rape.

[00:21:10] It was biologically determined in a way that I can't, that we have no control over.

[00:21:14] We can't blame them.

[00:21:15] And so we have to blame them less. Yeah.

[00:21:16] Yeah. But it's just such a bizarre thing if you think about it, just like you don't

[00:21:19] have to think about it that reflectively, you know, like it's just nobody's saying

[00:21:25] that you're determined. There are plenty of low status males, if that's the theory

[00:21:29] they're working on, that don't rape people.

[00:21:31] And there's no reason to think that this if this was culturally influenced, we would

[00:21:35] have more control over our behavior than if, you know, I think it really is though

[00:21:40] that they think like you're excusing sexual assault.

[00:21:43] Right. Like you're saying it's okay.

[00:21:45] Like rapists have this ironclad excuse now, you know?

[00:21:48] Yeah. I almost think what might be going on is that the people who criticize it

[00:21:54] criticized it on the grounds that other people might interpret it that way, even

[00:21:57] though they themselves know not.

[00:21:58] And so there is this like weird meta level of like, I just want to make sure nobody,

[00:22:04] you know, uses this as their twinkie defense.

[00:22:06] Like you can't help it.

[00:22:08] Your honor, you don't understand.

[00:22:09] Like back in the Pleistocene era, low status males may have sexually assaulted

[00:22:15] women as part of an evolutionary strategy.

[00:22:18] Right. So like rapey Ricardo here, he couldn't help himself.

[00:22:22] Rapey Ricardo?

[00:22:23] That sounds so anti-Hispanic.

[00:22:25] You know, just because a deletro blew through your city doesn't mean you have to

[00:22:30] like take it out on all of us.

[00:22:31] It was more a Ricky Ricardo reference, if I could interrogate my head.

[00:22:36] But yeah, like, you know, again, like I just don't get it.

[00:22:39] Like it seems like if you were arguing that this is a deeply misogynistic society

[00:22:44] that like makes young men who aren't getting women into powder kegs of sexual

[00:22:50] violence, it's like that seems like that should excuse that person more than what

[00:22:55] happened 250,000 years ago.

[00:22:58] If you really think like this culture is turning these people into it.

[00:23:01] But it's no, it's like, oh no, if that's true, then they're also still fully

[00:23:05] responsible for doing it.

[00:23:06] Whereas, you know, if it's something that happened hundreds of thousands of years

[00:23:11] ago that we're just speculating, like could have like been adaptive, then that

[00:23:15] then they're completely off the hook.

[00:23:16] It's just a bizarre way of thinking.

[00:23:18] You know, if you really just think about it for a second.

[00:23:20] And then I think that you start developing heuristics that are knee jerk responses to

[00:23:24] evolutionary psychology studies that make any claims about this stuff when they can

[00:23:30] honestly be criticized on so many grounds that don't require you to make a moral

[00:23:34] argument.

[00:23:34] Yeah.

[00:23:36] All right.

[00:23:36] Okay.

[00:23:36] Should we move on to the next one?

[00:23:37] Yeah.

[00:23:38] Number two, gender biases are not the most important drivers of the

[00:23:43] underrepresentation of women in STEM fields.

[00:23:46] All right.

[00:23:46] Before I give my number, how do you interpret this?

[00:23:49] Like the gender biases of like search committees, the gender biases of like

[00:23:56] people in the field or just gender biases in the world and the culture like in

[00:24:04] America?

[00:24:05] You're right to point out it's going to come up again.

[00:24:06] I think this kind of question.

[00:24:08] Yeah.

[00:24:08] I interpret this as, you know, little girls are told, you know, Barbie says that

[00:24:14] they hate math.

[00:24:15] Right.

[00:24:15] That this is how I interpret this.

[00:24:17] Um, as, as well as hiring committees, but I read it at least as the claim that

[00:24:22] like biologically and in a lot of these, I wish they would just say biologically

[00:24:27] rather than phrase it in the opposite way.

[00:24:30] Right?

[00:24:30] Like gender biases are not the most important drivers.

[00:24:33] It's also like gender biases makes it seem like people are, I don't know, being

[00:24:39] biased in the moment rather than some deeply ingrained aspect of a particular

[00:24:45] culture.

[00:24:46] I don't know.

[00:24:46] Yeah.

[00:24:47] Yeah.

[00:24:47] I would read, sorry.

[00:24:48] I would refer to that as discrimination because I really do think that these are

[00:24:53] like young women are discouraged from, from doing math or whatever.

[00:24:57] But I mean, this is a huge problem.

[00:24:59] So here's what I wanted to ask.

[00:25:00] Like, I know that the opposite of gender bias as an explanation isn't only

[00:25:06] biological forces or whatever, by biological like differences.

[00:25:10] Yeah.

[00:25:11] Yeah.

[00:25:11] But I think that they are treating it as opposite.

[00:25:15] And so it would just read more clearly if they said agree.

[00:25:19] How much do you agree or disagree that biology is the most important driver of

[00:25:23] the underrepresentation of women in STEM?

[00:25:25] So like my sense is that if they wrote the statements that way, they themselves

[00:25:31] sound a little bit, uh,

[00:25:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:25:34] Very self-sensory.

[00:25:35] Right.

[00:25:35] By how they're phrasing it.

[00:25:37] Yeah, because it's really like, I don't love that the way of phrasing.

[00:25:41] So if you're talking about is this shaped in part by deeply ingrained cultural,

[00:25:45] you know, in conjunction with some biological influences, yes.

[00:25:50] But like, I don't like to reduce all that to biases for reasons that we've

[00:25:54] fought about quite bitterly at times.

[00:25:57] Yeah.

[00:25:57] Yeah.

[00:25:58] Right.

[00:25:58] Our worst fights.

[00:25:59] Um, and what bothers me even like above and beyond that in this one is not the

[00:26:04] most important drivers.

[00:26:06] So what is important?

[00:26:07] Like, cause now we've gone from making a scientific claim to one of like

[00:26:12] something can be caused by bias.

[00:26:14] Only 10% of the effects could be caused by bias, but I think that they are the

[00:26:18] most important sources of,

[00:26:21] I interpreted that as just influence.

[00:26:23] Like the most important is the one that has the most influence.

[00:26:26] Yeah.

[00:26:26] Right.

[00:26:26] Like that explains the most variance.

[00:26:28] Yeah.

[00:26:28] So, I mean, I would put probably like, this is one where I just like, it's not

[00:26:32] helpful for me to answer it because like, I kind of reject the whole framing of

[00:26:37] this question.

[00:26:38] Yeah.

[00:26:38] But I also think, you know, smuggled in there, there's so much objectionable

[00:26:44] about it is the idea that like STEM fields are so obviously superior that if

[00:26:49] women like choose not to do it, they're being discriminated, you know, it's a

[00:26:53] bias against them.

[00:26:55] Maybe they're smart.

[00:26:56] Maybe they want to go into humanities cause like that's like the better field

[00:26:59] and it's like the other way and the biases are the other way.

[00:27:02] So like poor guys are getting like pressured by like the patriarchy to take

[00:27:09] shitty finance and like engineering jobs, like soul sucking, like oil and gas

[00:27:13] jobs.

[00:27:15] How did finance become STEM?

[00:27:17] It is.

[00:27:18] Math.

[00:27:21] Yeah.

[00:27:21] I mean, implicit in this is that it is a bad thing that they're underrepresented,

[00:27:26] but I don't know that there's that much more to it.

[00:27:28] I think, I think it's more saying something about you.

[00:27:30] Yeah.

[00:27:31] I'm with the women.

[00:27:35] You're with the women who all choose not to get jobs.

[00:27:38] Who choose not to get interviews, get lower teaching evaluations just cause

[00:27:43] they're women.

[00:27:44] Again, this actually just confuses me too because of the phrasing gender biases

[00:27:50] are not the most important driver.

[00:27:52] Am I supposed to be confident that it's false?

[00:27:54] Now I have like a bunch of negatives that I have to like undo in my head.

[00:27:57] Like I'm like,

[00:27:59] I'm discarding that question.

[00:28:01] I feel like that's a manipulation check.

[00:28:03] If you answer that question, then you haven't really thought about this enough.

[00:28:07] I went through all of these with Bella before we recorded and it was nice to hear

[00:28:11] her get really frustrated in the phrasing of these.

[00:28:14] She's like, I just won't answer that.

[00:28:15] Like I would.

[00:28:18] All right.

[00:28:18] Number three, same issue here.

[00:28:20] And also confusing in terms of, I guess to say this is false is the taboo

[00:28:26] conclusion.

[00:28:27] Academia discriminates against black people, e.g.

[00:28:30] in hiring promotion grants, invitations to participate in colloquia symposia.

[00:28:35] Yeah.

[00:28:36] It's also such a sweeping statement.

[00:28:38] Academia does this, you know?

[00:28:40] Right.

[00:28:41] And when like, are we talking about, are we talking about like right now or are we

[00:28:47] talking about like throughout, you know, like the history of higher education where

[00:28:52] it's undeniably true that like a lot of people were shut out.

[00:28:56] Yeah.

[00:28:57] Pursuing these kinds of opportunities.

[00:28:59] So I don't know, but I guess if it's taboo, we're supposed to say no, academia

[00:29:05] doesn't discriminate.

[00:29:06] Is that the idea?

[00:29:07] That's the taboo one.

[00:29:08] If you agree that it doesn't discriminate.

[00:29:11] Yeah.

[00:29:11] Yeah.

[00:29:11] I want to say something about like who the audience is here.

[00:29:14] Like these are all people who are in academia.

[00:29:16] So we all know the many efforts that are made to actually hire, promote and invite

[00:29:23] black participants at our institutions.

[00:29:27] And we're doing that because we have a real belief that that's something that

[00:29:31] needs to be done.

[00:29:32] So, so like the answer seems so much to be both of these things.

[00:29:39] Yeah.

[00:29:39] Like some black academics that I know get invited to give talks like every week of

[00:29:45] their calendar year.

[00:29:46] Right.

[00:29:46] And it's, it's all because people have this belief.

[00:29:49] Yeah.

[00:29:49] So in one sense, the answer then is no.

[00:29:52] Exactly.

[00:29:52] In fact, it's us.

[00:29:54] It's the fucking white guys that can't get these opportunities.

[00:29:57] Yeah.

[00:29:58] We're getting a little angry about it, frankly, that we're a little bitter.

[00:30:01] We might have to start a little backlash.

[00:30:06] Right.

[00:30:07] And also, also what you said about higher education historically, but also this is,

[00:30:11] I guess, purposefully excluding the discrimination that occurs earlier on that

[00:30:16] might discourage people to go into academia.

[00:30:18] And then it's like a hundred percent the other way.

[00:30:20] Like I think there's all sorts of subtle ways in which we discourage.

[00:30:24] And the fact that they don't see that many black professors teaching, like

[00:30:29] there's all sorts of ways in which that's definitely true.

[00:30:32] Even if you think a lot of departments are trying to remedy this and actually

[00:30:37] taking active steps.

[00:30:39] Now, whether that's true down the line, like across all universities, but

[00:30:43] certainly in a lot of universities that's happening.

[00:30:46] Right.

[00:30:47] All right.

[00:30:47] Number four, biological sex is binary for the vast majority of people.

[00:30:53] Now, is this really taboo to agree with?

[00:30:55] I know.

[00:30:55] Because even the people who I know who are hardcore of the belief that like sex

[00:31:01] isn't binary would also agree that it is for the vast majority of people.

[00:31:06] Right.

[00:31:06] Yeah.

[00:31:07] I think so.

[00:31:08] Yeah.

[00:31:08] Like I think we're going to be a test case here with like, we'll see if we should

[00:31:12] have self-centered, censored, self-censored.

[00:31:16] Also, also self-center.

[00:31:19] Yes.

[00:31:20] But yeah, like that just seems, and especially that they say like biological

[00:31:24] sex.

[00:31:25] Yeah.

[00:31:25] Yeah.

[00:31:26] That doesn't seem to me to be controversial at all.

[00:31:28] So we await our cancellation.

[00:31:31] Like we can go on Bill Maher.

[00:31:33] He can be all like.

[00:31:35] Oh, did you see that Bill Burr?

[00:31:36] I did.

[00:31:36] And it was like, it was good, but like I kind of expected more from it than based

[00:31:40] on what everyone was saying about it than it actually is.

[00:31:43] But I loved it.

[00:31:44] I saw it without, without any prejudices and it was great because, you know, Bill

[00:31:50] Burr is, I like him.

[00:31:51] I think he's clever.

[00:31:52] He's never been my favorite guy.

[00:31:54] Yeah.

[00:31:55] But I think he was fucking amazing.

[00:31:57] I obviously love Bill Burr.

[00:31:58] I've seen him a bunch of times.

[00:32:00] He's a Boston guy.

[00:32:01] So, cause he's so, he really does walk the line so perfectly both like in terms of

[00:32:08] everyone just knows his heart is in the right place so he can get away with saying

[00:32:11] a lot of things that other people can't.

[00:32:13] But also he just has the right opinion about this, which is stop bitching about

[00:32:18] like everybody's hypersensitivities and also you don't know what the fuck you're

[00:32:24] talking about for people like Bill Maher.

[00:32:27] And you know, one thing that Bill Burr has that's amazing is his ability to quickly

[00:32:33] find the most vulnerable part of the person he's attacking and like bring them

[00:32:39] down.

[00:32:39] Yeah.

[00:32:39] Right.

[00:32:40] Like by the end of the like whatever three minute thing, like Bill Maher seemed like

[00:32:44] you shouldn't have a career.

[00:32:45] No, I know.

[00:32:46] It was.

[00:32:48] That's such a good skill, you know, you find that vault and just go for the jugular

[00:32:53] and.

[00:32:53] Yeah.

[00:32:53] It was like Ja Rule after.

[00:32:56] Exactly.

[00:32:57] He does.

[00:32:57] And he, you know, he learned that at the like comics table at the comedy salad,

[00:33:01] getting Patrice O'Neill to just like, to just destroy everybody's life.

[00:33:06] One of the only people who got toe to toe with any single person.

[00:33:09] Yeah.

[00:33:10] Okay.

[00:33:10] Uh, I guess we should go through more quickly because I think a lot of my other

[00:33:14] complaints about these are.

[00:33:16] Yeah.

[00:33:16] There's some, we don't want to be too boring by saying like the question was

[00:33:19] phrased wrong, even though that's my conclusion for all of the social sciences

[00:33:22] in the United States discriminates against conservatives, eg and hiring promotion

[00:33:27] grants, invitations to participate in colloquia slash symposia.

[00:33:32] This is an interesting one because discriminate is a tricky word here.

[00:33:38] You know?

[00:33:38] Yeah.

[00:33:39] There's a certain kind of conservative that can be a bit of a pain in the ass

[00:33:42] about the fact that they're conservative and, and not because they're bad people

[00:33:46] necessarily, but just cause they're of a certain age and a certain sensibility.

[00:33:51] And I bet that those people in a kind of self perpetuating cycle make themselves

[00:33:56] less and less welcome over the years because people are typically a little

[00:34:00] more liberal and less apt to share their point of view.

[00:34:04] So yeah.

[00:34:06] You know, I also think that what is true is that liberal professors assume a room

[00:34:11] full of liberals and when they're teaching will constantly make disparaging

[00:34:16] remarks about conservative points of view in a way that if you were, you know,

[00:34:20] just some like 18 year old kid who was raised in a conservative household, like

[00:34:24] I'm sure you would feel like you were sort of not welcome to have the views that

[00:34:28] you had.

[00:34:29] I think some, maybe some professors do that, but I don't think that's the norm.

[00:34:33] And not even talking about academic topics.

[00:34:34] I'm talking about like just joking about like the idiot Republicans.

[00:34:38] And I don't know like proportion of people who do it.

[00:34:41] Like I hope that most don't, but I do, I have seen it happen and been like,

[00:34:46] and then there's all kinds of stuff that might be correlated with conservatism

[00:34:49] that people might think, well, if he's, he's religious,

[00:34:53] he might not be a good scientist.

[00:34:54] Like that kind of discrimination I'm sure exists.

[00:34:56] And in fact,

[00:34:57] it almost prevented me from getting my job when one of the committee members found

[00:35:01] out that I had been raised on damages and went to seven damages college.

[00:35:05] They almost put the kibosh on hiring.

[00:35:08] And they think they would have been against the law,

[00:35:11] but they told me years later.

[00:35:14] Yeah. I mean like I only found out like two years into the podcast,

[00:35:18] I never would have started a podcast with a four day ad.

[00:35:22] But then once we had started, I was like, all right, you know,

[00:35:24] and you haven't been that bad either. You know, like I've learned something today.

[00:35:28] Thank you.

[00:35:30] Racial biases are not the most important drivers of higher crime rates among

[00:35:36] black Americans relative to white Americans. Again,

[00:35:38] the use of the are not just to avoid saying either culture,

[00:35:44] black culture or black biology.

[00:35:45] Well this is where I think like the biases might not be the most important

[00:35:51] factor, but like here's where I think biases,

[00:35:54] like it is a problematic word because if you're talking about like racist

[00:35:58] structural and institutional factors,

[00:36:01] which is normally separate from biases,

[00:36:04] which is like we're being biased against you in person right now because of our

[00:36:09] implicit or explicit racism, you might think, well, you know, that's there,

[00:36:13] but it's not nearly as important as these structural and institutional factors

[00:36:18] that are also racist. So it's just like a dumb question then. Like I,

[00:36:22] like I think like I would say probably like, you know, 90%,

[00:36:26] whichever is that they're not the most important driver.

[00:36:30] I mean the biggest flaw in this is that the scale is a scale of confidence in the

[00:36:35] claim and the claims can be interpreted in so many different ways.

[00:36:39] Give us a more specific claim and ask us what we believe it to be.

[00:36:43] Okay. Number seven,

[00:36:44] men and women have different psychological characteristics because of evolution.

[00:36:49] Is that controversial?

[00:36:51] I mean yeah for some people, but I think for the vast majority of people,

[00:36:55] it seems like it's not. And again, what, yeah,

[00:36:57] what the question is is secretly trying to get at is the view that that anything

[00:37:04] that might be say like a social or economic inequality is a result of,

[00:37:08] of biological evolutions causing women's psychology to be different.

[00:37:13] Again, like there's all this like stuff that you're,

[00:37:14] I think that you're supposed to read into these.

[00:37:16] Cause otherwise the questions are just like naturally like, well,

[00:37:21] what do you mean? You know,

[00:37:23] like you want to clarify certain ideas and try to pin it down in ways that might

[00:37:27] not even be possible. But like, you're right.

[00:37:30] You have to interpret this in a way that's already been kind of defined by the

[00:37:35] culture wars to some extent.

[00:37:37] If you're even just to like figure out what it is they're asking.

[00:37:41] So I do think like that there are different psychological characteristics

[00:37:44] because of evolution. I just think that they're small enough.

[00:37:47] That's not matter.

[00:37:48] I think they're small enough to not matter that much,

[00:37:51] but not small enough that you should make your daughter like play with Tarzan's

[00:37:57] and only take a robotics afterschool program.

[00:38:02] Well, wouldn't, wouldn't you want to make up for biology?

[00:38:05] No,

[00:38:06] because I don't necessarily think one is superior than the other cause I'm not

[00:38:09] a sexist. So the eighth one here now,

[00:38:14] like if you're listening to this with a dog in the room,

[00:38:17] watch your dog's behavior.

[00:38:21] Genetic differences explain non trivial 10% or more variance in race differences

[00:38:27] in intelligence test scores.

[00:38:29] Is this whole paper really about this one question?

[00:38:34] They embedded a bunch of like foils to get at this.

[00:38:37] Exactly.

[00:38:39] Yeah, it might be. To this, I'm, I would just say,

[00:38:43] I laid out my position about this in a two part episode,

[00:38:47] but the like TLDR is that,

[00:38:50] that I don't think the question makes that much sense to begin with.

[00:38:53] Unless you interpret it in a certain way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:57] And I would also refer people to what Dave said in that episode for once we

[00:39:01] agree. Yeah.

[00:39:02] I guess nine is also one that this could be about eight and nine make sense.

[00:39:06] You kind of bury them in towards the end.

[00:39:08] Transgender identity is sometimes the product of social influence.

[00:39:13] Like again, like sometimes, yeah. Like, right. Like, I mean, clearly,

[00:39:17] like I know, I know people that that's been true of.

[00:39:20] Again, talking to my daughter who is like as, as liberal as you can get right

[00:39:25] here growing up in Ithaca where like I heard somebody say that in her child's

[00:39:30] elementary school class,

[00:39:32] like 50% of the kids or more are identifying as non-binary and non-binary

[00:39:38] counts as transgender for most people. And they're not, yeah, yeah.

[00:39:43] I don't think that something has all of a sudden happened that nine year olds

[00:39:46] are like more likely to admit to their biological inclinations of being not

[00:39:51] binary.

[00:39:52] So again, it's like you have to almost read into this as,

[00:39:57] Oh, you have to take the fully woke position on this,

[00:40:01] which is it's not ever social influence. It's always just,

[00:40:06] this is how you feel and have always felt.

[00:40:08] And that's just unrealistic and implausible.

[00:40:12] And I don't think any like reasonable person would disagree that that's true to

[00:40:17] some extent, especially sometimes it's such a Weasley word. Okay. Last one.

[00:40:21] Democratic diversity, demographic, demographic diversity,

[00:40:26] race, gender in the workplace often leads to worse performance.

[00:40:30] This is another case where, okay.

[00:40:33] What they really want to say is that there is research claiming to show that

[00:40:38] diversity improves performance. Yeah. Right.

[00:40:42] And so a lot of times you will hear like people like HR will say shit like,

[00:40:49] and really research has shown that if we champion diversity,

[00:40:53] our outcomes will be better,

[00:40:54] which by the way is the most fucked up reason to value diversity.

[00:40:57] Like it's such a capitalist reason to like, by the way,

[00:41:00] if you hire at least two black people on your team,

[00:41:03] you will actually increase the profits of your company.

[00:41:07] And your H index will benefit.

[00:41:10] And so phrasing it in this way is, it seems like.

[00:41:15] I'd straightforwardly disagree. Like I don't know what they mean by often,

[00:41:18] but I would take it as more than half the time. And I don't think that's true.

[00:41:21] Yeah. The word often seemed weird there. Like why is this?

[00:41:24] Some of these are sometimes some of these are often,

[00:41:26] some of these are important. Some of these are, yeah.

[00:41:29] Unlike a lot of the other ones like this one,

[00:41:31] I think there's a straightforward reading of it that I would just say, no,

[00:41:35] I disagree. Yeah. I guess like, you know, they,

[00:41:38] they do find some self censorship,

[00:41:40] but if you really don't know what people think they're attesting to in the first

[00:41:44] place, it's hard to interpret all of this, all of these results.

[00:41:48] So I don't have that much to say about their findings,

[00:41:51] which are fairly modest, I think,

[00:41:53] but they're what you'd expect for a lot of these. So like,

[00:41:56] if we go to just how confident are you that these are true,

[00:42:00] the averages are so close to, I mean,

[00:42:04] they're confident in their truth and they're confident in their falsehood,

[00:42:07] but the standard deviations are huge. So this is just what they're capturing is

[00:42:11] that like probably half of their sample was like super anti-woke and half of

[00:42:17] their sample was super woke.

[00:42:18] Yeah. And then they say there's a couple of possible causes for why they're

[00:42:24] self-censoring and more supportive of censoring.

[00:42:29] One is that they over inflate the fears of expressing these opinions,

[00:42:34] which I think like if I had to guess, like with a lot of money,

[00:42:37] I would put it on that one that because this is such a focus in a lot of the

[00:42:42] media outlets that these people are likely to visit,

[00:42:46] they are convinced that they're a persecuted minority right now who believes

[00:42:51] that like there are some biological differences between men and women,

[00:42:54] but they also say,

[00:42:55] but maybe there really is a kind of punitive culture out there,

[00:42:59] which of course is true to some extent, you know,

[00:43:02] like I think we've passed the peak of it,

[00:43:04] but it's always been a little undercurrent there. And so, you know,

[00:43:09] again, fully reasonable in terms of how they present it at the end.

[00:43:13] It's just the questions are,

[00:43:16] they're vague enough that it's really hard to know like what to make of any of

[00:43:20] this.

[00:43:20] Yeah. Maybe the fairest reading is that knee jerk saying no or knee jerk saying

[00:43:25] yes, like, you know,

[00:43:26] true or false is just a sign that you've caught been too caught up in like the

[00:43:31] culture war.

[00:43:32] Exactly. That exactly right. And you know,

[00:43:35] like the perfect way to respond, like where you're not too woke,

[00:43:39] but you're also not a secret racist or,

[00:43:44] you know, like a turf is how we responded to it.

[00:43:48] Exactly. That is perfect. Perfectly calibrated.

[00:43:52] So just do that people and you'll be fine in academia and elsewhere.

[00:43:56] Good conclusion. All right.

[00:43:57] We'll be right back to talk about more cultural differences,

[00:44:01] more interesting cultural differences.

[00:45:13] To very bad wizards.

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[00:49:01] Now let's get to talking about cultural differences in collectivism,

[00:49:05] individualism,

[00:49:07] really kind of the origin of culture in general.

[00:49:10] In this recent paper in nature communications called people quasi randomly

[00:49:15] assigned to farm rice are more collectivistic than people assigned to farm wheat

[00:49:20] by Thomas Tellhelm and Xiaowei Dong. Okay,

[00:49:24] here's just a little bit of background I guess for a long time.

[00:49:28] I'd say like the biggest part of cultural psychology within social psychology

[00:49:33] has been focused a lot on this one dimension of collectivism versus

[00:49:38] individualism. Like you have that sense too, right? Yeah, definitely.

[00:49:41] Like I looked at this research for my book relative justice and it was extremely

[00:49:46] helpful. Yeah. And there's a lot of reason for that.

[00:49:49] One dumb reason is that we had easy access to East Asian population in American

[00:49:53] universities.

[00:49:54] So we could pump out a bunch of work showing sort of that this difference

[00:49:59] exists and what it consists of.

[00:50:01] And so people have cataloged like over the last, what,

[00:50:05] 2030 years,

[00:50:07] a whole bunch of differences between the East and West culture and cognition.

[00:50:12] And this dimension of individualism is associated with increases in analytic

[00:50:17] thinking that is typical of Western culture.

[00:50:19] Whereas East Asian culture is more collectivistic,

[00:50:23] more holistic and more interdependent.

[00:50:26] And that I think is well documented enough that you might have thoughts about

[00:50:31] that. But assuming that that general thing is true,

[00:50:35] that this finding is true,

[00:50:36] the question as to why this exists,

[00:50:39] like why these differences exist hasn't really been well explained.

[00:50:44] And there've been a few explanations that have been proposed to try to explain

[00:50:50] this difference. One is just genetics. So some people have proposed,

[00:50:54] oh,

[00:50:54] there's something just in the genes of East Asian versus Western people that

[00:51:00] gives rise to this different style of thinking.

[00:51:03] And that might then lead to this different kind of culture.

[00:51:06] I don't think there's much good evidence for that. But another one,

[00:51:11] a very popular one is that modernization just sort of shifted the West toward

[00:51:17] individualism.

[00:51:18] But there are issues with that modernization view.

[00:51:22] There are a lot of exceptions.

[00:51:24] Modernization occurred in places like Japan and Korea and Hong Kong,

[00:51:28] just as much as it occurred in the West.

[00:51:30] But those cultures nonetheless are quite collectivistic and they fit the pattern

[00:51:36] of collectivistic, holistic, interdependent. In this paper,

[00:51:39] Thomas Tallahelm who first proposed this theory back in 2014 argues he,

[00:51:46] he offers like a,

[00:51:47] I think a pretty elegant attempt at an explanation for why these differences

[00:51:50] exist to begin with.

[00:51:51] And he says there is a fundamental difference in the kind of agricultural

[00:51:56] practices that are involved with rice farming versus weed farming.

[00:52:01] And because of that geographical regions that had relied a lot on rice farming

[00:52:06] ended up becoming much more interdependent collectivistic.

[00:52:10] And that worked its way into culture and cognition.

[00:52:13] And the reason is that rice farming just requires a lot more work.

[00:52:18] So by his estimate, double the amount of labor.

[00:52:21] One of the reasons is because you need irrigation and like lots of,

[00:52:25] you need to flood the rice paddies and that requires a lot of cooperation.

[00:52:30] So cultures that emerged in areas where that was the primary source of

[00:52:33] agriculture,

[00:52:34] he and his colleagues argue would have become more collectivistic.

[00:52:38] And he originally showed this evidence by looking at geographical regions in

[00:52:42] China that traditionally had a wheat farming versus rice farming and showed that

[00:52:48] this difference did emerge. But that like, that's all correlational.

[00:52:51] So this is an attempt at giving some quasi experimental evidence to try to test

[00:52:57] it constantly.

[00:52:57] And as a kind of contrasting position as a lead in this reminded me a lot of the

[00:53:02] literature on honor cultures versus non honor cultures,

[00:53:06] which also had a kind of agricultural versus herding kind of explanation for it.

[00:53:13] Right. So the idea was that people in herding cultures,

[00:53:17] because their wealth and their livelihood was more precarious because it was all

[00:53:23] focused on protecting their herd of animals that they owned and people would

[00:53:29] frequently raid and try to steal their property.

[00:53:31] So they had to send a message that that was going to cost you if you try to

[00:53:36] steal our goats and cows or whatever. So, well,

[00:53:40] I guess more goats if you try to steal our goats.

[00:53:42] When I was in Sardinia a couple of years ago,

[00:53:44] like there's still like a lot of studying of the kind of goat herder honor

[00:53:48] culture there and a very famous researcher that worked on this. Right.

[00:53:52] But what's interesting about that theory,

[00:53:54] which I think is very much in line with what you were saying,

[00:53:57] which I think is very much in line with the kind of gene culture co-evolution,

[00:54:01] Joe Henrick theory,

[00:54:02] which is we're genetically have a capacity to transmit norms and to reinforce

[00:54:11] norms and punish norm violators.

[00:54:14] But they're not that much more specific than that.

[00:54:16] And so your environment will then shape what your norms are.

[00:54:20] And in honor culture, there had to be a norm for you can't fuck with us.

[00:54:24] We can't demonstrate weakness.

[00:54:26] We always have to stick up for our own and we always have to send deterrent

[00:54:31] messages that you just didn't need to do if you were in a more agricultural kind

[00:54:34] of culture,

[00:54:35] because stealing and raiding somebody's farm and crops can only get you so far.

[00:54:41] I took one of your corn.

[00:54:43] I got an apple and like a whole bushel of strawberries.

[00:54:47] So you're done. Your whole family is done.

[00:54:51] You have to do like the fuck fucked up things like steal their water, you know?

[00:54:56] But that requires a whole other suite of norms.

[00:54:59] So what's interesting is that the way that theory works is also meant to

[00:55:04] explain people in the American Southeast who are descendants,

[00:55:08] supposedly descendants of Scots, Irish,

[00:55:11] hurting cultures and so have kind of inherited their norms even though they're

[00:55:15] no longer herders, you know, like they're not,

[00:55:18] those norms aren't necessarily adaptive for their current environment.

[00:55:22] It's just something that you inherit as part of your culture.

[00:55:27] But what this is suggesting is the environment works a lot more immediately to

[00:55:34] shape these norms than what the kind of leading honor culture theories suggest.

[00:55:40] So that's,

[00:55:41] what's very interesting about this is you had these people in the fifties who had

[00:55:47] the same cultural or, you know,

[00:55:48] like similar cultural backgrounds that were just randomly assigned by the

[00:55:53] Chinese government after world war two to either be wheat farmers or rice

[00:55:58] farmers.

[00:55:58] And so you're talking about a set of norms developing in a very short amount of

[00:56:03] time that don't necessarily have any relation to what their descendants 200

[00:56:09] years ago had, you know, those norms,

[00:56:12] you see what I'm saying? Like the difference between those things.

[00:56:15] The effect of your environment would be much more immediate if this finding is

[00:56:20] true.

[00:56:21] Yeah. Although, you know, the culture of honor stuff,

[00:56:25] does it make a claim about how long it took to develop those norms?

[00:56:28] Because I think it's still possible that they, the norms develop quickly.

[00:56:32] They're just slow to go away, which is something that this paper also argues.

[00:56:36] That's a good point. Yeah, that's right.

[00:56:38] So it could be that you develop it quickly and then you keep them like where,

[00:56:42] no matter what your like new environment is. Yeah.

[00:56:45] But even as you say it, like that's, I mean,

[00:56:47] I would have thought that this is like a very slow process because hundreds of

[00:56:52] years of culture is developing. But yeah, culture can be an adaptation.

[00:56:56] If the wheat farmers,

[00:56:57] if we were already talking about a Chinese culture that bends towards

[00:57:00] collectivistic and if the wheat farmers become more individualistic pretty

[00:57:04] quickly,

[00:57:05] then that does kind of speak against the idea that these things are, you know,

[00:57:10] long lasting even if you can acquire them quickly.

[00:57:13] Yeah, that's interesting. That's an interesting point.

[00:57:16] I think the data might speak a little bit to that because they definitely are

[00:57:20] less collectivistic. I mean, if you believe the data,

[00:57:24] but the way that the paper frames it is the rice farmers became more

[00:57:30] collectivistic and that's what's sticking around even after they're done. Yeah.

[00:57:34] So like you said,

[00:57:35] the Chinese communist party essentially randomly assigned a group of people

[00:57:40] after, after the war to start wheat or rice farms.

[00:57:44] And like crucially these were people who were seemingly selected at random.

[00:57:50] It's not like they selected people who had experience in rice farms or wheat

[00:57:55] farms.

[00:57:56] They didn't select based on how old or young you were or any demographic

[00:58:00] characteristic.

[00:58:01] It seemed like there was no concern about who was being put into one or the

[00:58:05] other group and the regions that they were assigned to start these farms really

[00:58:09] close together.

[00:58:10] Meaning that you could equate like a whole bunch of other environmental

[00:58:13] variables. They're only like 50 kilometers apart.

[00:58:16] And the only real difference was that in some areas you couldn't farm rice

[00:58:20] because the land was too high above the river and you can't get the water from

[00:58:25] the river up to that elevation.

[00:58:28] So you have this like rare instance where you can get this quasi random

[00:58:32] assignment to these two different conditions. And this happened in the fifties.

[00:58:36] Like it's pretty cool. I don't know how, who,

[00:58:39] yeah, I don't know who first figured out that this would be a way to test this

[00:58:42] hypothesis, but that's like half of the work right there is like, Oh shit.

[00:58:45] It's a great idea. Yeah. It's like a natural experiment. You know,

[00:58:48] all the problems about all the different, I mean,

[00:58:51] I will have a couple of complaints about methodology here,

[00:58:54] but all the complaints about, Oh no, it's in a laboratory environment.

[00:58:57] And so that corrupts it in some way. Excuse it. You can't generalize.

[00:59:01] Like that's not an issue here.

[00:59:03] And yet you still have the pretty clean control condition and manipulation.

[00:59:08] Exactly. Yeah. So 70 years after this started,

[00:59:12] these researchers went in and gave measures of collectivism slash individualism

[00:59:17] and they demonstrated that, yeah, it appears after 70 years,

[00:59:21] like you were saying a pretty short time that these cultures have already

[00:59:24] emerged. And like, it's not just like the year that you're rice farming,

[00:59:28] you're getting to that mode, right? That like cognitive mode.

[00:59:31] Like even when people, the rice farms,

[00:59:34] it turns out like got rotated out and people still,

[00:59:38] even if they weren't currently rice farming,

[00:59:40] we're more likely to have this collectivist way of thinking.

[00:59:44] Yeah. And the,

[00:59:44] and the thinking behind that is just that you just need more cooperation as a

[00:59:49] white farmer. It sounds like a wheat farmer,

[00:59:50] like you're fucking kicking up your legs and living is easy.

[00:59:55] Right. Totally.

[00:59:57] But rice farming requires that you actually like deal with other people,

[01:00:01] cooperate to some degree.

[01:00:02] You know, the question of like where cultures come from just in general is super

[01:00:06] fucking interesting. Right. And like it,

[01:00:08] I don't remember thinking about it that much growing up when you're just like,

[01:00:11] so why? Cause your fate,

[01:00:12] you're introduced to different cultures quite a bit, right? I guess,

[01:00:16] depending like we travel out, there's like completely different people.

[01:00:19] And it just doesn't seem like a natural thing.

[01:00:21] It never was like a natural thing for me to say.

[01:00:23] So why are like Brazilians so much nicer,

[01:00:26] even though I don't think they're genetically that much different from the

[01:00:29] Germans that birthed them.

[01:00:30] Yeah, no, I know.

[01:00:31] Like in some ways it's like the most unsurprising outcome,

[01:00:36] which is yeah, of course.

[01:00:37] Like people in warmer weather cities are like more relaxed and more cheerful and

[01:00:42] more hospitable and friendly than people in cold weathers.

[01:00:45] It's not surprising.

[01:00:46] Like if it's freezing most of the time and you're shut in your house that you

[01:00:52] will be a little more less like social than if you're always outside,

[01:00:57] you know? And that's been ingrained into your culture.

[01:01:00] And so like it's not surprising and yet you're right.

[01:01:03] We don't ask why or how very often.

[01:01:06] And we don't look into the details very often.

[01:01:08] One of the stuff that's really cool about the honor culture research is the

[01:01:13] extent to which they really dug into the details and you know,

[01:01:16] like then found similar kind of environmental factors maybe in like mafia

[01:01:22] families and some inner city environments where like showing signs of weakness

[01:01:28] can be really destructive for you and bad for your family.

[01:01:33] So like there's all sorts of ways in which that research kind of highlights this

[01:01:38] stuff.

[01:01:39] But what's cool about this is from an outsider non-farming perspective,

[01:01:43] like you just wouldn't think wheat farming or rice farming would have big a

[01:01:46] difference. But according to this,

[01:01:49] so one of the proposed explanations that the author brings up in his first paper

[01:01:55] is that there's this theory of pathogen prevalence that argues that in places

[01:02:00] with higher levels of disease like pathogens that promote disease,

[01:02:04] that made it more people more wary of strangers and made those cultures more

[01:02:10] insular and collectivistic.

[01:02:12] And they point out that while you see this as a correlation,

[01:02:16] pathogens are also strongly correlated with heat and rice grows in hot areas.

[01:02:20] So, you know, you never know like, right, what the,

[01:02:22] what the actual reason might be. We can observe these correlations.

[01:02:26] So that would mean they should be more concerned about pathogens in the,

[01:02:31] but they're still not.

[01:02:32] Cause it's still so you still need cooperation even if you're risking.

[01:02:36] Right. Yeah.

[01:02:37] But, but with,

[01:02:38] you would be interdependent in a more insular community and still wary of

[01:02:42] strangers. I think that's what he's saying.

[01:02:44] You were going to transition to something.

[01:02:45] Well, I was going to transition into the way their measures, right?

[01:02:49] And there's one thing that if I have a complaint about this,

[01:02:53] it's that they really chose these measures that are like,

[01:02:57] I'm questioning their validity and I question also their rationale to the point

[01:03:02] where I think there might be a typo. So here's what they say.

[01:03:05] This is on page eight of the PDF.

[01:03:09] To measure cultural differences, we chose tests based on two criteria.

[01:03:13] First,

[01:03:13] we chose measures that previous research has linked rice wheat differences and

[01:03:17] larger East West differences.

[01:03:18] We did this because it allows us to know whether the cultural differences

[01:03:21] between rice and wheat farms are similar to larger East West cultural differences

[01:03:26] established through decades of research. Okay, fine.

[01:03:29] Second, we chose implicit and non self-report measures.

[01:03:34] This helps us avoid the documented problems of using self-report surveys to

[01:03:38] measure cultural differences.

[01:03:39] Meta analyses have found that self-report scales fail to find

[01:03:44] East West differences in collectivism.

[01:03:47] One meta analysis of self-report studies found that people in Japan are more

[01:03:51] collectivistic than people in the U S wait, what is that a re is that a typo?

[01:03:56] No, I think so. Like I,

[01:03:58] I noted the same exact thing and the title of the paper doesn't say,

[01:04:03] but I'm pretty sure.

[01:04:04] Disqualifying to find Japanese participants more collectivistic

[01:04:09] than us participants. That would be in line with what you would expect.

[01:04:12] Yeah. Yeah. That's why I think it's the opposite.

[01:04:14] I think it's the opposite.

[01:04:16] There is evidence that self-report collectivism is correlated with non self-report

[01:04:20] measures in the wrong direction, even within a single country.

[01:04:24] But like,

[01:04:24] why are you privileging the non self-report measures and the like certain the

[01:04:28] normal survey studies, which, you know,

[01:04:31] I got fairly familiar with just cause like maybe it's them that are wrong.

[01:04:35] I mean like on the surface you might think, yeah,

[01:04:38] the fact like what words you match up to each other doesn't tell you that much

[01:04:42] about like how collectivistic you really are, you know?

[01:04:45] Cause that's one of their measures is like,

[01:04:47] do you put the rabbit with the carrot or do you put it with the cat and like in a

[01:04:52] more oppositional way? And it's like, Hey, I don't know. Like,

[01:04:57] I like certainly nothing in their justification for using these implicit

[01:05:03] measures even made sense. Nevermind seems compelling,

[01:05:06] even if that was a typo and they just meant to reverse it.

[01:05:09] Yeah. So I agree with you that they're disparaging of the self-report stuff

[01:05:12] seems weird given that that surely is how we found this difference,

[01:05:16] but it may not be.

[01:05:17] And I think that their use of the term implicit is just wrong here.

[01:05:21] I mean, it's pretty implicit. Like your,

[01:05:23] the word matching task is pretty implicit.

[01:05:25] Well, it's maybe not a direct measure of collectivism,

[01:05:29] but it is a direct measure of holistic thinking relational thinking just cause

[01:05:35] you don't know what the hypothesis is. It doesn't make it implicit. Right.

[01:05:39] I guess.

[01:05:40] Yeah. See,

[01:05:40] I think they're just using a measure of something that's correlated with

[01:05:45] collectivism.

[01:05:46] But how do they know that it's correlated?

[01:05:47] Like not based on its correlation with self-report studies apparently because

[01:05:52] they disparage those.

[01:05:54] So how I feel like it has to be because of its correlation with other measures

[01:05:59] of collectivism, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I had the same issue, right?

[01:06:02] It's like the primacy of what they're calling implicit measures feels weird.

[01:06:06] Yeah. Well, let's talk about the measures because I don't, I, again,

[01:06:09] I don't think that these are implicit measures.

[01:06:10] So one of these measures is what you're referring to.

[01:06:14] It's the measure of cultural thought style.

[01:06:17] So this is a measure of basically a difference between the kind of thinking that

[01:06:24] is relational versus the kind that's categorical.

[01:06:28] So people are,

[01:06:29] are given three things and they're supposed to pair the two that are like each

[01:06:34] other. So the example that you mentioned earlier,

[01:06:37] you're given the word or the picture carrot, rabbit,

[01:06:42] and cat.

[01:06:43] And the idea is that if you pair things because of their relation to each other,

[01:06:50] right? In this case, the rabbit with the carrot,

[01:06:53] that's a different mode of thinking than if you pair the rabbit with the cat

[01:06:57] because they're both mammals and they belong to the same category or they're

[01:07:00] both animals for instance.

[01:07:02] And this is the difference in this kind of thinking has been shown in East and

[01:07:08] West.

[01:07:08] So people in the East are more likely to have that kind of relational style than

[01:07:14] people in the West. So I think they just took this as like, okay,

[01:07:17] this measure has been used as an East West difference before.

[01:07:20] So we're going to just do that one. Yeah. Like, so, which is fine.

[01:07:24] That's fair enough. It's just,

[01:07:26] so has the self-report ones.

[01:07:28] And based on one meta analysis,

[01:07:32] I know that says it says opposite in Japan. It does seem weird.

[01:07:35] It doesn't matter. I don't like that. This isn't a preregistered study.

[01:07:40] And this is a case where preregistration would matter to me because if they did,

[01:07:45] I'm not accusing them of being dishonest,

[01:07:46] but this is just the kinds of practices that people used to do. You,

[01:07:50] you can imagine that they asked explicitly and it didn't quite work out.

[01:07:54] And so they don't report.

[01:07:55] And so they came up with the reason why we don't have to report those,

[01:07:58] those measures. So yeah, again, not saying they're doing it,

[01:08:02] but their explanation for why they're not including it doesn't make sense.

[01:08:06] Makes no sense. So anyway, like it's kind of interesting,

[01:08:10] but it does boil down to like whether that is a valid measure and why they think

[01:08:16] it's a valid measure, but it's to be fair,

[01:08:17] they also have a couple other ones too.

[01:08:19] Yeah. And again,

[01:08:20] these are sort of indirect in the sense that they're not directly just like

[01:08:24] about collectivism necessarily.

[01:08:26] They're about what's supposed to be components of collectivism.

[01:08:29] So another one they have is this measure of what you might call loyalty or you

[01:08:33] might call nepotism.

[01:08:35] And that is you present people with scenarios where you just ask them,

[01:08:40] imagine that you engage in a business deal with a friend or a stranger and that

[01:08:45] person lied to you and that lie actually made you lose money.

[01:08:50] Would you be willing to pay some money of your own to punish them by removing

[01:08:54] money from their account? So like,

[01:08:56] would you be willing to put up your own money to punish them or would you be

[01:09:00] willing to reward them for having like brought in this deal and been honest

[01:09:04] about it? So everybody gets four versions of this, right?

[01:09:08] You either enter a business with a friend or with a stranger and then the,

[01:09:11] that person is either honest with you or they lie.

[01:09:14] And then you're asked how much do you reward the honest person and how much

[01:09:18] would you punish the dishonest person, the one who lied.

[01:09:22] And as a measure of loyalty or nepotism,

[01:09:25] you just essentially look at how much more people play favorites with their

[01:09:31] friends, punish them less and reward them more compared to a stranger.

[01:09:34] If you're being like completely equal about strangers and friends,

[01:09:39] exactly impartial in the, in the truest sense,

[01:09:42] then those numbers should all be pretty similar to each other.

[01:09:45] But if there's a big difference in that you're rewarding your friend more,

[01:09:48] this is loyalty.

[01:09:49] And presumably collectivistic cultures are more likely to engage in that kind of

[01:09:53] loyalty or nepotism. That's another part that I find interesting, which yeah,

[01:09:57] it's like saying it's a value judgment whether you call it loyalty or nepotism.

[01:10:01] Yeah. And you know,

[01:10:03] it's not like people in Western cultures don't practice nepotism.

[01:10:06] So you could individually have problems with all of these measures,

[01:10:11] especially because it has to be an extremely sensitive instrument in this case

[01:10:16] to demonstrate differences between otherwise kind of culturally similar people.

[01:10:23] So yeah, pre-registration you're right.

[01:10:26] This is a clear case where that would have been hugely helpful.

[01:10:30] Now in their defense, this measure has been shown to distinguish between,

[01:10:34] I think this is the one where Singapore versus US,

[01:10:37] you give people this measure and you get a clear difference in how much just

[01:10:41] like dollar value of how much they show favoritism to their friends versus

[01:10:46] strangers.

[01:10:47] Like what?

[01:10:48] It's like a $25 difference.

[01:10:50] Yeah. No, I mean,

[01:10:51] it's just a question of whether that is supposed to generalize to some kind of

[01:10:55] real cultural norm or not.

[01:10:57] There could be a lot of reasons why people in Singapore might give more money to

[01:11:02] like their somebody that they knew or reward someone unfairly and American

[01:11:07] don't that don't necessarily have to do with how deeply ingrained the culture is.

[01:11:12] So saying that this is going to,

[01:11:14] in a more fine grained context capture something of the differences between two

[01:11:20] neighboring communities, like it's a little bit a leap of faith.

[01:11:24] Well, I mean,

[01:11:25] I didn't mean to imply that it had only ever been tested in Singapore versus the US.

[01:11:28] No, no, no. I know what I mean.

[01:11:30] Like I do,

[01:11:31] but I think that it might be taken care of as an objection if you've reliably shown

[01:11:34] it in Japan and China and compared it to US and Canada,

[01:11:37] like regularly,

[01:11:39] you would at least be willing to say that there's something that is causing this

[01:11:43] difference.

[01:11:43] And if that's something can be found in this sample,

[01:11:47] then the question would be so like why is it found here and in all of those other

[01:11:52] things?

[01:11:53] Right.

[01:11:53] Yeah, that's fine.

[01:11:54] Yeah.

[01:11:55] Withdrawn.

[01:11:58] Now speaking of drawn,

[01:12:00] this other one is interesting.

[01:12:02] This is the measure of self.

[01:12:06] Yeah,

[01:12:07] this seems like faddy.

[01:12:09] You know what I mean?

[01:12:10] It's,

[01:12:11] it seems like a fad though from the sixties.

[01:12:14] It seems like a,

[01:12:15] it seems like a projective test of sorts.

[01:12:19] It's a,

[01:12:20] this test of self inflation or what they call an implicit test of individualism.

[01:12:25] And what you're asked to do is you're just said,

[01:12:27] okay,

[01:12:28] we're going to ask you to draw a basic network of you and your family and like

[01:12:32] the relations.

[01:12:33] So draw circles and lines,

[01:12:35] make one of those circles represent you and the lines are the relationship that

[01:12:39] you have in the other circles represent other people.

[01:12:41] And now what they do,

[01:12:43] so this is a simple drawings of circles and what they do is they measure the

[01:12:48] circumference of this circle that you drew representing yourself and compare it

[01:12:52] to the average size of the circles you drew for other people.

[01:12:55] Yeah.

[01:12:56] Now if this works,

[01:12:58] if this is pretty cool,

[01:13:00] like if it's really measuring.

[01:13:02] Just give it to like,

[01:13:04] you know,

[01:13:04] your fiance,

[01:13:05] you know,

[01:13:07] draw my penis and draw the P the penises of other men that you've slept with.

[01:13:12] I,

[01:13:12] yeah.

[01:13:12] So this one is like,

[01:13:14] I think I have looked,

[01:13:16] used this research in my own work because there was a chapter in relative justice

[01:13:20] where we talked about like the sense of self and how in collectivist cultures

[01:13:25] self was considered more integrated with their community.

[01:13:28] And in an individualist culture was the self was considered more atomistic and

[01:13:33] with less influence and a less porous boundary between,

[01:13:38] you know,

[01:13:38] the idea was an individualistic cultures.

[01:13:40] The thing that separates you as your skin from other people.

[01:13:43] And that's a lot more porous in a collectivist cultures.

[01:13:47] And I think they used versions of this kind of exercise to determine like exactly

[01:13:52] how porous your sense of self was.

[01:13:56] And yeah,

[01:13:57] I mean like again,

[01:13:58] it's,

[01:13:58] it wouldn't surprise me if this correlated in some ways with some interesting

[01:14:04] different cultural differences on the self,

[01:14:05] which I think there clearly are.

[01:14:07] It's just like,

[01:14:08] this was research that I was looking at that was from like the eighties,

[01:14:12] you know,

[01:14:12] like seventies and eighties and you know,

[01:14:15] like the circle stuff.

[01:14:16] So I don't know to what extent.

[01:14:18] It reminds me of these projective tests that are like this,

[01:14:22] this one called house tree person where you ask people to draw a house between

[01:14:26] the person and then you see how big they drew the cell.

[01:14:29] Like the person is supposed to represent yourself.

[01:14:31] How big are you in relation to the house?

[01:14:33] Like but,

[01:14:35] but they measured it down to the millimeter.

[01:14:38] And so,

[01:14:39] so what you get is this metric that is what's the average difference in size

[01:14:44] between your circle and the average other circles you drew.

[01:14:47] And yeah,

[01:14:48] like you get these results where rice farmers,

[01:14:52] they draw themselves closer in size to the other family members than wheat

[01:14:57] farmers.

[01:14:58] Wheat farmers are just like the fat cat,

[01:15:00] like the Monopoly guy with his cigar.

[01:15:03] Or like I was just thinking like the,

[01:15:05] the,

[01:15:05] you know,

[01:15:06] the guy in a leather jacket who's a loner and like,

[01:15:10] yeah,

[01:15:11] Christian Slater and Heathers.

[01:15:14] Or just James D or one of these,

[01:15:17] the man with no name.

[01:15:19] Yeah.

[01:15:20] He was from a wheat farming.

[01:15:21] You can tell the man with no name trilogy,

[01:15:25] like clear wheat farmer just ended there.

[01:15:29] No,

[01:15:29] it's a,

[01:15:30] it is funny.

[01:15:30] Like I believe that this kind of explanation is true and illuminating.

[01:15:35] And so I want them to,

[01:15:38] I want these to be right.

[01:15:39] You know,

[01:15:40] like I,

[01:15:41] but I do like,

[01:15:42] I can't deny that I have some skepticism regarding some of these measures in the

[01:15:47] way they're used to gauge this kind of you know,

[01:15:52] like really just these Chinese,

[01:15:55] like what are they thinking about getting that put in front of them?

[01:15:59] You know,

[01:15:59] they're just from these regions that was once assigned to be wheat and rice

[01:16:04] farmers.

[01:16:05] But like,

[01:16:06] great.

[01:16:06] I like these kinds of studies because I totally buy the ultimate kind of

[01:16:11] spiritual point that they're making.

[01:16:14] Right.

[01:16:14] Yeah,

[01:16:15] no,

[01:16:15] I,

[01:16:15] yeah,

[01:16:15] I think I would have used different measures.

[01:16:17] You know,

[01:16:17] one,

[01:16:18] one answer to why they use these is because like in the 2014 paper that he did,

[01:16:21] I think these are the ones that he used.

[01:16:22] So he wanted to like use the same measure that he used in the more large scale

[01:16:27] study.

[01:16:28] But I,

[01:16:29] yeah,

[01:16:29] I would have also included,

[01:16:31] I don't know,

[01:16:32] some something else.

[01:16:33] I would have at least reported an explicit,

[01:16:37] like,

[01:16:37] yeah.

[01:16:38] You know how,

[01:16:39] how much do you value,

[01:16:40] you know,

[01:16:41] your family and friends or whatever,

[01:16:43] you know,

[01:16:43] I don't know something like,

[01:16:44] cause if you show that it's not related,

[01:16:46] that's interesting.

[01:16:46] If you show that it is related,

[01:16:48] that's just further evidence where you,

[01:16:49] yeah.

[01:16:50] Like I wonder like,

[01:16:51] yeah,

[01:16:51] give this guy sodium pentothal and it's like,

[01:16:54] did you run explicit measures?

[01:16:56] Just be honest,

[01:16:57] you know?

[01:16:58] No,

[01:16:59] but like I agree that they should have either way.

[01:17:02] And what you definitely shouldn't have done is say,

[01:17:05] well,

[01:17:05] we can't trust self-report measures because they showed that Japan,

[01:17:09] Japanese participants are more collectivistic than United States participants.

[01:17:13] It's like,

[01:17:13] no,

[01:17:14] those sound pretty solid,

[01:17:15] you know,

[01:17:15] based on how we know.

[01:17:16] I would put money on that.

[01:17:18] That's a typo.

[01:17:20] And that what they meant to say was there's this weird meta-analysis on straight up self-report,

[01:17:25] Japanese people report being more individualistic and that can't be right.

[01:17:29] Yeah.

[01:17:29] But again,

[01:17:29] even saying that is like,

[01:17:31] well,

[01:17:31] it could be like,

[01:17:32] you know,

[01:17:33] like a lot has changed since.

[01:17:34] A lot has changed,

[01:17:35] exactly.

[01:17:36] But once again,

[01:17:37] we are the real data colada.

[01:17:38] We find mistakes in backers and we demand a retraction.

[01:17:43] Not even nature communications like spotted what we did.

[01:17:48] Unbelievable.

[01:17:50] Okay.

[01:17:50] I want to talk a little bit about the magnitude of these,

[01:17:52] because if you,

[01:17:52] if you look on page five,

[01:17:55] they graph these very pretty graphs of the main findings across these three measures.

[01:18:01] They're nice graphs because they're not only bar graphs that show a standard error of the mean.

[01:18:07] Yeah.

[01:18:08] Well,

[01:18:08] standard error of the mean,

[01:18:09] which is a little different,

[01:18:10] but that allows you to kind of eyeball whether these are significantly different.

[01:18:13] If those lines don't overlap,

[01:18:16] but it also,

[01:18:16] they also show you kind of the distribution.

[01:18:19] So you can see that there's a lot of noise.

[01:18:20] People are answering sort of across the board.

[01:18:24] Like,

[01:18:25] you know,

[01:18:25] you couldn't just eyeball the data and see that there was a clear difference before tallying it up.

[01:18:32] And the differences actually are a lot smaller than I thought they would be given,

[01:18:38] just looking at the graphs and hearing the description,

[01:18:41] I wrote down what these differences were.

[01:18:43] Okay.

[01:18:44] So this one was,

[01:18:45] I think the clearest one.

[01:18:47] So wheat farmers treat friends and strangers much more similarly.

[01:18:53] Like when you look at that,

[01:18:54] it's,

[01:18:55] it's almost like in the aggregate,

[01:18:56] they're not really distinguishing between friends and strangers when they reward or punish them.

[01:19:00] If anything,

[01:19:00] where's the rice farmers are more.

[01:19:03] Yeah,

[01:19:03] exactly.

[01:19:04] The other ones,

[01:19:06] like the self inflation one,

[01:19:08] where they measured the difference in the sizes of your circle versus the people you draw.

[01:19:13] It's a difference of like between slightly more than one millimeter for the rice farmers and slightly more than three millimeters for the wheat farmers.

[01:19:23] Like I didn't sit and measure like what this difference would look like.

[01:19:28] Cause I'm not a,

[01:19:29] I'm not a monster who uses the metric system anyway,

[01:19:32] so I wouldn't know how to do this.

[01:19:33] And then the relational categorization one.

[01:19:35] So now this is the one where you're asked essentially 10,

[01:19:39] you're given 10 sets of three words and you're asked which of which are the words go together.

[01:19:44] And there's a relational answer and there's a categorical answer.

[01:19:48] Americans are more likely to give the categorical answer.

[01:19:51] Um,

[01:19:52] East Asians are more likely to give the relational answer.

[01:19:54] So what this is showing is percent of the answers that were relational out of those 10.

[01:20:00] And one of the things they noted was this was the highest across the board,

[01:20:04] the highest relational answer group that they've measured.

[01:20:08] So rice and wheat farmers.

[01:20:09] But the difference is like between what I can eyeball cause I couldn't find the actual numbers.

[01:20:15] Something like 87% of the rice farmers to 84% of the wheat farmer.

[01:20:22] It's like,

[01:20:22] yeah,

[01:20:23] that's nothing like that's nothing right.

[01:20:26] And so when you translate all of these into effect sizes,

[01:20:29] they're all right around the same range,

[01:20:31] like 0.15 to 0.19 if that means anything to you.

[01:20:35] Um,

[01:20:35] that's a pretty small effect even for the loyalty nepotism one.

[01:20:39] Yeah.

[01:20:40] Those are the higher ones,

[01:20:41] right?

[01:20:41] Like in the 0.18,

[01:20:42] 0.19 cause the graph,

[01:20:44] that one looks dramatic.

[01:20:45] Yeah,

[01:20:45] yeah.

[01:20:46] Right.

[01:20:46] Like it looks,

[01:20:48] but that's about the size of the effect that I get when,

[01:20:51] or like the Yoel and I get when we look at the relationship between discuss sensitivity and

[01:20:55] political orientation,

[01:20:56] right?

[01:20:57] It's about that.

[01:20:58] And I always try to remind people that that's like a really small slice of the pie.

[01:21:02] Like it's theoretically interesting and it certainly is here theoretically interesting because these are people who've only been divided for 70 years who are showing,

[01:21:12] uh,

[01:21:13] presumably ostensibly cultural differences.

[01:21:16] Um,

[01:21:16] but it's not like all of a sudden you've turned people into like this Sicilian communist mafia versus,

[01:21:25] yeah,

[01:21:25] exactly.

[01:21:27] Yeah.

[01:21:27] And I didn't see them talk too much about the fact that they're kind of small.

[01:21:32] Yeah.

[01:21:33] I'm,

[01:21:33] I mean,

[01:21:34] I buy it.

[01:21:34] I'm with you in spirit.

[01:21:36] This seems right.

[01:21:37] And I wouldn't expect it.

[01:21:39] Honestly,

[01:21:40] if the effects were huge,

[01:21:41] I would be much more suspicious of the researchers.

[01:21:45] Uh,

[01:21:45] these are reliable but small effects.

[01:21:47] It's interesting that you get them so clearly and essentially the same people in the same environment randomly assigned to one versus the

[01:21:54] other.

[01:21:55] But it is what it is.

[01:21:57] I just,

[01:21:57] yeah.

[01:21:58] But I like it.

[01:21:59] I'm a fan of this explanation.

[01:22:00] And let's end on that note.

[01:22:02] We're fans.

[01:22:03] We don't buy the measures maybe,

[01:22:05] but we buy the thinking behind it.

[01:22:09] And the coolness of the,

[01:22:10] just the thought to be like,

[01:22:11] Hey,

[01:22:11] let's look at this and these people.

[01:22:13] Yeah.

[01:22:13] Using accidents of nature that then otherwise,

[01:22:16] that,

[01:22:16] that's why I really don't like the implicit measures.

[01:22:19] It's because you're taking,

[01:22:20] you have something that's so perfect,

[01:22:22] like that feels very valid.

[01:22:24] You know,

[01:22:24] in terms of the,

[01:22:25] what you're studying.

[01:22:26] And then you put in these measures that just,

[01:22:30] it's really hard to know what to make of them.

[01:22:33] You have to connect a lot of other dots.

[01:22:35] I would love for them to go in and actually interview people.

[01:22:40] Yeah,

[01:22:40] talk to them.

[01:22:41] Exactly.

[01:22:41] Yeah.

[01:22:41] And see whether you can,

[01:22:42] you can see these differences emerge.

[01:22:44] Now for something like cognitive,

[01:22:46] you know,

[01:22:46] the categorization task,

[01:22:48] maybe you can't,

[01:22:48] maybe that's the only way to get at like those,

[01:22:52] those differences in cognition.

[01:22:53] But,

[01:22:54] but still like you're presumably you're interested in collectivism and those

[01:23:00] cognitive tasks like holistic versus analytic thinking are just like one

[01:23:04] subset of what's going on.

[01:23:06] And could have to do with the kind of calculations you have to make as a rice

[01:23:10] farmer versus the wheat farmer or,

[01:23:12] you know,

[01:23:13] like an,

[01:23:14] yeah,

[01:23:14] that's a good,

[01:23:14] that's a really good point.

[01:23:15] So who knows?

[01:23:16] I just think,

[01:23:17] yeah,

[01:23:17] like this is where if you pair this with a good ethnographic approach as well.

[01:23:22] And so you have these kind of complimentary approaches working together.

[01:23:26] It would be a lot more compelling.

[01:23:27] Yeah.

[01:23:27] Yeah.

[01:23:28] The pioneering work of Joe Henrich,

[01:23:30] I think on some of this stuff is really good because it also does incorporate

[01:23:35] more qualitative analyses as well.

[01:23:39] Yeah.

[01:23:39] I looked up the original paper in 2014 where they documented this,

[01:23:43] this rice theory and Joe Henrich was actually asked to give his perspective on

[01:23:49] it in that same volume in science.

[01:23:51] And he,

[01:23:53] he seemed on board with it.

[01:23:54] And that to me like was a,

[01:23:56] like if Joe Henrich co-signs the findings doesn't mean they're right,

[01:23:59] but it means that there was nothing like glaring.

[01:24:01] There's something to take seriously here.

[01:24:03] Yeah,

[01:24:04] exactly.

[01:24:05] All right.

[01:24:05] It sounds like we should all try to be wheat farmers.

[01:24:08] It's the easy life.

[01:24:10] I'm eating Chinese food tonight and I wonder if that's just going to make me

[01:24:14] more individualistic.

[01:24:15] I'm just like,

[01:24:17] collectivist.

[01:24:18] I'm endorsing.

[01:24:19] Well,

[01:24:19] it depends what you're having.

[01:24:20] Are you having rice?

[01:24:21] It's a good question.

[01:24:22] I'm having fried rice and my wife is having noodles.

[01:24:25] And I think that that says something deep,

[01:24:27] deeply true about your

[01:24:32] individualistic wife.

[01:24:33] Now you know why.

[01:24:35] Yeah.

[01:24:35] They're not rice noodles.

[01:24:36] They're not rice noodles.

[01:24:37] Not her fault.

[01:24:40] It's like a rapey Ricardo.

[01:24:42] Can we title the episode rapey Ricardo?

[01:24:46] All right.

[01:24:47] Lucy,

[01:24:49] bend over.

[01:24:51] Join us next time on Very Bad Whippets.