Joe Rogan Experience #1201 — William von Hippel Transcript

Transcript

0:00 All right, here we go. Four, three, two. Hello, Bill. What's the social leap? at chimps today, you can get a pretty good sense of what life was like then. And chimps today are really interesting. They're basically at the top of the food chain in the rainforest. They're super So really my goal, I'm a psychologist. We're food on the ground. that's moving off to the lower right.

3:02 because there's more and more ground and less and less rainforest. So it's a super interesting question that does live on the savanna in Senegal. And so, and if you look at other, not apes, but other primates that are on the savannah, like savannah baboons, they're only monkeys. So if you looked at one of them, you'd think it belongs in a zoo. now stretched out. Their musculature, like if you look at chimpanzee pecs, they aim upward because,

5:51 it's terrible at it, even though they're stronger than you and I are pound for pound by a sizable across your muscles, tendons, and ligaments. So if you and I are running around the savannah and a lion attacks us and we got 50 of our I'd fuck up 100 people. allows a larger force of weaker individuals we should have any effective collective action. throwing rocks. But Barbara Isaac was one of the first anthropologists to propose this hypothesis

9:08 And when you read these accounts, they're extraordinary. With a good rock. Wow. This was before my son was born. And I play like Little League, right? He's kicking my ass, right? Now, that little guy, who's like literally the size of an Australopithecus, was thrown at 65 and hitting the target every time. There's several hypotheses why the human brain doubled over a period of two million years.

12:00 What the hell good is it to you to be Einstein? Now, just recently, there was a paper that came out maybe three months ago now on a new brain expansion gene they found, or they think that's what it is, called NOTCH2NL. which means a lot more duplication before they run away and start becoming neurons. kinds of things that came next probably were enabled by that process of us coming together

14:02 I got one. boom, you can have a sticker. So humans immediately get that, that you get rewarded for your activities were furious that they didn't get the cake uh as well they didn't think it was fair or they were yes, right? Because it's doing that for cucumber. So now you and I are both monkeys and we're in everybody's getting so long as I'm getting about as much as everybody else. But the second that

16:58 she's going to choose him now before she chooses you. would matter. Right. But the killer cases are things where it's only just a residue. any better off than anybody else. So even though they're the most likely to benefit from it because Really? Yeah. Wow. Up until you get to the point where you're employing people. let that happen, you're screwed. But do the females have that same

19:33 birds, et cetera, then what you need is you've got competition on both sides. So she's always So you've got lots of polyamorous animals. Bonobos are interesting. Chimps are also, you know, so if you look at one of the And if you own a pair and you land on them, you know they're uncomfortable too, right? into heat, there's going to be a line. Well, that's right.

21:47 it's not natural. can come back to that if you'd like. But if you look at hunter-gatherers around the equator, But they're mostly. What did you think is crap about it? That's bullshit. Okay. but they both get jealous by infidelity. There's some really interesting ones where literally once the woman gets pregnant, she then And that comes back to the fire point you made, which we can come back to.

25:07 But when that happens, the systems tend to change a little bit, And so if I'm jealous, I'm upset that my wife slept with somebody else last night. Yeah, of course. So there's this wonderful study out of the Philippines where they measured a huge number of men's testosterone when they were single. you're absolutely right. We're out there competing with other males in order to get the girl.

27:43 ancestral DNA, you know how you can track our male and female ancestry through mitochondrial DNA on the mother's side and why? I mean, if you get married and you have children, one of the things that happens is you become less active. do is have a system whereby those things tend to downregulate testosterone, exactly like you said, I mean, I would like to know what their lifestyle is.

29:40 To me, that's a symptom of poor health and fitness. That's even worse. Of course, all these things are bell curves, right? Right. to know the answer i mean it just there's no data yeah there is no data it just, when you look at these guys, I have a friend of mine who, he was, was it, And these people just look so fit and healthy in their 50s and 60s and 70s, and they have their shirt off and they're ripped.

32:48 all confounded. It's super hard to do experiments on these things. And we'll be a lot better off Well, a lot of the facts going through the details. So the fact that I think it's bullshit is obviously one person's opinion, where I dismiss So in principle, I'm agnostic on this issue. They can't see it happen. having this great time and doing all these different funky things with them,

35:55 To have your wife to know she had this one-off affair, fling, sex only, didn't care about the guy. It's just he doesn't treat you right. Yes, exactly. Yeah, that's fascinating, because I was reading something about inappropriate emotional You're allowed to hug people when you hold hands. If we evolve to basically partner up for a while, then there's always going to be the chance that that next person along is going to be the one who wedges yours away.

38:39 Interesting. Our balls are so big, though. like, oh, that's super attractive to me. Oh, I see. But what about bonobos? Because they, it's going to have some wrinkles in it yeah yes of it and she threw her right in a trash she read like a paragraph or two and Eh. So australopithecines can't do that. Whoa. and I think quite rightly, that the only way you can achieve that is by releasing more nutrients

43:03 And so it'll probably keep getting pushed back because, you know, that crap's hard to No, we're still at Homo erectus. expansion, those animals who have it will have an advantage because they can coordinate with each at the rock and the chips, and not far away is where it's lying on the ground. Homo erectus made Second of all, and one of the coolest findings, there's some interesting work in a 1.2 million year old site in India by Kerry Shipton, where he finds that the production of these Acheulean

45:40 You do the first thing. We don't know because they didn't survive, right? the end of it cut in half Yeah. I mentioned the chimps No, I didn't. That picture is actually of an orangutan who's watched fishermen do this. Right. So there's a lot of amazing evidence for this sort of animal ingenuity in making tools. And so you could imagine that they've kind of learned a specific way of problem solving,

48:18 Orangutan spontaneously bends straight wires into hooks to fish for food, And so if you want to say the Stone Age is using stones, by all means. It's super complicated to know exactly when it got laid down. Yeah, I mean to me that does. And all humans get there when they're little, around age four. I like the green ones. Right. then when you're doing a crappy job breaking the nut, I'm like, what's wrong with Joe here?

51:13 when the offspring is doing it wrong, but they don't know what the problem is And what's amazing about the way chimps observe is that because we have theory of mind, we also do imitate differently. poke in the top does nothing. The latch is actually right here. And so that initial poke was a waste He knows something about it. because they're over-imitating.

53:27 You then wash it off in warm water because, of course, all the water in New Guinea will be nice and warm. But you have to dry it out in the sun really fast or it becomes toxic. Yeah. Yeah. And they have this big vat, and they're cooking this stuff. The roots and the leaves are poorly processed. And then this person ate it and they did successful. you're teaching me how you've got to have a reason for doing that and that's the huge difference

56:50 Now, I would say apes, not monkeys, because technically speaking. are two different things. Well, neither is ape. that not all apes are monkeys, but all monkeys. The great apes are orangutans, gorillas, chimps, and us. It confused the shit out of me. The thing I found isn't like a great source, but it pops up on Google. are monkeys, but not all monkeys are apes.

58:49 I don't know. So as a pedant, how do you say that? Apes or monkeys in the same way that monkeys are primates. But he cares and he cares enough to put that up. We're around 1350. And so what you got is this process where our evolution facilitates a further evolution, right? It's like unpalatable. I've never thought about it that way. in that case, but you know, cooked steak, a really nice one, you barely chew it at all.

1:01:55 In order to make. But post-cooking, all that does is free up space, get rid of some unnecessary muscle, more clever chimps with larger brains, to be very effective in groups because they can't get along they can't cooperate very well face. And so cognitively, the terrain is not really a challenge for you. And how to even And so I have to be able to manage some very complicated relationships.

1:04:57 Sorry, not. And that these monkeys, these apes rather, started consuming psilocybin mushrooms, because they were more into it and were more social, more sexually active. That's total trip. that have over-ripened and have become alcoholic. No. Dimethyltryptamine is the most potent psychedelic known to man. And these jaguars are known to eat these things and then trip their fucking balls off.

1:08:42 Yeah. and they think and the egyptians called it the seed of the soul and they think that this is one inhibitor called harming so they brew this all together much like they did to the cassava which How did I get to ayahuasca? And DMT is, I mean, it's fun. So there's cases like this where it short circuits that. It goes right choice. Slowly figure it out. And then I think for three and a half million years, literally, they're just gulking around

1:12:29 You may have heard about this notion. tools are never carried at any great distance from where they're acquired and made. And so what taken a tool with you that you've now used and saying, well, I'll want to use it again tomorrow, bipedalism. You're scared. We know they must have used them because they're making some pretty complicated stones. If you look at the quality of other things that they've done.

1:15:19 You've got to have people working together to turn that thing over. That's possible. that was discovered just a few years ago. Those guys. But they certainly covered all that ground. In Asia. Yeah, absolutely. and that's where a lot of our genes that we currently have for light skin and blue eyes and things like that come from. I've never seen that.

1:18:17 We hit Australia 65,000 years ago? Wow. Yeah, they could see a lot better. Yeah, they had those awesome hot riggers and all that. is running away from the guy behind you because if you and I make a deal and you know, I'm from Ohio and you're from California and the cells based on knowing these things in the past, right? But secondarily, what freaks me out the

1:20:58 maybe your brother's talking to my brother, right? OK. Yeah. Well, you know, then that they're so different right out of the box. It just came out. And he basically is one of these people who's been in the field almost since it got started. Like the first, we don't even know what it is. And also the way you address those things that happen. in the dark room a little bit wrong, or you can help it a little bit by being in the dark room a little bit right,

1:23:51 all the variables that took place during all the developmental periods of their life. One, you look at adoptive studies versus kids who were adopted into a family versus biological. I know. But they also – there's a lot of unshared environment. Well, and obviously, there's not a lot of data in terms of when you're measuring someone's Yeah, that's exactly another example.

1:26:12 right? You want them to play with Timmy, but they want to play with Johnny. That's the unshared As the kids get older, sorry. So if you look at the heritability of IQ when kids are two, four, And so their heritability is less strong. Right. So in my mind, we talk about it in terms of your mind because that's psychology. It has to be. the developmental process from birth to adulthood and that this is taking place simultaneously amongst hundreds and hundreds of millions of people.

1:30:06 Maybe you're not. You're my favorite barista. And furthermore, each one of them only accounts for a tiny, tiny bit, But we're talking about our understanding of genetics currently. And most of those, we all share all the same ones. It has to have sales. It has to have marketing. It has to have management. And now the richer you are, on average, the higher your polygenic score is.

1:33:18 in a different combination. And so the genes that do one set of things almost always do lots of I don't. And two of them that are learning the same thing might get there via different mechanisms. So by that idea, or with it, through that idea, wouldn't you think that artificial And there'll be five funny genes. Right. disorders that are awful, right? But we're not going to, I suspect we're not going to noodle

1:35:39 I don't even necessarily think we should use the word God in that respect because it's something that's already been created. That maybe Russia or China is going to make some super person? If they value education, the other person does too. we can say, wow, intelligence is 50% genetic. I think you're probably right. Now you just spit into a little tube and send it to 23andMe, and they tell you,

1:38:28 He thinks you're going to be able to download your brain into a computer and, you know, human brain. Yeah, this is the beginning of a movie, right? That's 1965, 66, 67, right? bro why why are you making me read call me i go you're sending me text from a phone i go fucking But this whole change in the way we view technology, from 2005 to 2018, the world is a radically different place.

1:40:34 and they're using it to keep track of each other. And there are people that are on Facebook arguing about Trump or abortion or Islam or fill in the blank, environmental concerns, fracking. I never would have thought and ours are white. Why would you do that? Well, it advertises the direction of your gaze. Why would you advertise the direction of your gaze? Because what that

1:42:32 Amazingly, groupers and octopi hunt together and they do that. Wow. Here's an octopus that's chilling. It is really pretty. I know. That's fascinating. And so it's really cool the way they have the good sense to work together is like, got you. That's fascinating. What a crazy – you know, I didn't know that they could do this until my friend Remy Warren came on the podcast.

1:44:34 what is he doing he's lounging yeah he found that he picked it up oh my god They're super smart, octopi. and it turned out that the octopus Like in cuz he looks exactly even in texture like the coral which is so fascinating But it's an easy fight. twisting him up there's an amazing case in australia where a cool and brown is a biologist It's weird that they split off from us hundreds of millions of years ago, right?

1:46:52 Theirs are very well designed. Theirs aim in the proper direction of getting rid of the cellular bodies that are in our way so what your eye does is it wiggles all And then you sit there with a neutral background. Would that be as effective though in the world that we live in of air? I don't know. It's all full. But I also know it's like random people that I should remember that I don't remember.

1:49:41 Well, also, I can retrieve things far better if i get access to the file But you could literally find the sneaker he's wearing and go, holy crap, Mike is wearing this. So this is seared in your memory yeah and so when emotions get involved you tend to have it's much more And there's so many different factors involved in whatever it becomes. And the best way to learn from them is high fidelity copying.

1:52:17 It works in lots of animals via oxytocin and some vasopressin, all that kind of stuff, right? So the thing is that the genetics that explain why one animal or one species would have large passed on as a package, and they don't. And you also get all this shifting around during meiosis. and now parents start to play a much bigger, So lots of people make that argument,

1:54:52 the best math in the world was taking place in the Arabic world. Now it's not anymore. And so to say, well, you've got some primitive people who have big testicles and low parental effort, okay, I go, why do all the dudes have little dicks? and smaller penises in their statues. and so they start painting them So she has to be available all the time or the system doesn't work.

1:57:35 Women who say that are playing games. Some asshole out there that's playing games. of us left, which means the majority of us didn't, right? I mean, there's a few randoms who lived up Africans who are really jacked with these big muscles, a lot of quick muscle. You don't see interbred with Neanderthals, came from one part of Africa. We're so much like dogs.

2:00:20 They really do. And we don't know too much about them either, which is really weird. interesting because really they are cousins. They're cousins separated by a million years and some change. And it still worked. got rid of, we out-competed them, we killed Yeah, probably a bit of both, right? But the key is we did not evolve to cooperate across different groups.

2:02:17 to each other within our group, but we did not evolve to be kind outside our group. That doesn't We can trade with each other. how could it be that we're When hunter-gatherers meet each other and they do come into conflict, which is a huge percentage of the time, they literally fight to the death. I mean, we would all love that one day there would be no warfare,

2:04:41 It's a great example of how we become less and less violent and even over our lifetimes and and part of that is undoubtedly better governance structure and all that but part I roll out of the car. Now, can you imagine if somebody brought your kid home and said, hey, man, really sorry, Joe. Because every little thing that goes wrong stands out in sharper relief.

2:06:46 safer and better now than it was a thousand years ago or 10,000 years ago, or even a hundred years gotten so much better. And sexual violence is a perfect example. This is in Pinker's book. If you And when you feel like there's no progress, then you think, well, maybe we need to completely not saying they do this consciously. But of course, 25 rapes a year, whatever the number is,

2:09:19 or that violence is inevitable and this is just a part of who we are, we tend to promote That is a weird part of being a person. I overstated that. in service of persuasion, to persuade you of my worldview, rather than trying to find out what's actually out there. hey, Bill just said this. It's this awesome democratization of knowledge. So that's one of the very first things that happens when you have theory of mind.

2:12:24 You're supposed to keep quiet. um because you're in the no choice condition right yeah you're in a bad spot and like one of my predator and prey. So every time predator and prey interact, eventually one of them is going to die. even for the winner for testing, there's a lot of posturing that's going to go on. points on the board. Yep. You've got points on the board and probably your ideas on average

2:15:32 don't want to admit like with about when it comes to like pinker's data about the world being a That doesn't work at all. I know. But in Canada, You could do it solely original purpose? people basically only using it for its potency. Right, try them both. It was published in 2015, but it was updated this May. The worst way of looking at that headline is that the government's thinking,

2:18:33 70% of gray seals that frequent the area. This is racist. So we write this paper and literally the World Wildlife Fund attacks us. Asian consumers, particularly athletes, also consume a beverage called, how do you say that, Dalishen, try it? No, I'm good, bro. We had to send him to go back to Hong Kong for the holidays. Our data show, when we tried to get people to switch from rhino and tiger horn to aspirin, they wouldn't.

2:20:42 A little bit vague. What do you take for gout? is that also it's a signal of affluence of affluence that's exactly right yeah it's prestige It doesn't really give you erections. Like they get a kick out of it. Exactly. It's like buying a Maserati. Wow.'re still buying it. And they're buying it again for affluence. They get a kick out of it. You're bothering us.

2:22:36 I do think so because if you look at the long list I like that. There was no way they could have. you get the right kinds of illness that that that manifests that you're seriously outwardly sick and sick no question but nothing that like his body it's a sign that you that you you kicked some ass to have that thing. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, I guess.

2:24:51 We can't say what some random psycho or genius or artist or whatever will do under those circumstances because that's not what our models are designed for. They don't like you, but they're good at killing rats and other vermin that would have, once we were agriculturalists, those kind of vermin would have been a real problem. And in this culture, that thing is worshipped.

2:26:40 He doesn't own one. And the little boy says, I got a Spider-Man lunchbox. And my son is like the kid's bragging, He just made the shit up, right? And B, he knows that telling these stories are going to be important for his place in the social hierarchy. It's also probably weird because your kid realizes, yeah, my dad's got my back. Like, dude, you've got to come up with an animal that's like a thing.

2:27:54 But he was on the spur of the moment, and he's only four, so I decided it was good enough. So humans are perfectly capable of envisioning unfelt needs no matter what kind of society they're in. I've got to say, well, all right, well, would it be beneficial to me to keep this beast around and have it for tomorrow and drink its blood or its milk or whatever?

2:29:43 And there's some crazy systems that they do. And a lot of those are really bad ideas. They're sources of infection It's hard to imagine being persuaded, but it's easy to imagine growing up in that system that allows your society to grow. Was there anything surprising to you in writing this book that. And every time they asked me to do that, you know, I'd say, okay, I'll give it a try.

2:31:45 in taking the anthropology and the biology what hat you know what's the influence on or what the impact on creativity yeah and a lot of dead ends. and how we got to this point in civilization and what we actually are. disagree with me and so the beauty of this kind of the more you know about this stuff in the past I've gotten way, way better at that.

2:34:44 and when I was young and an academic there was no way I was abandoning. That was loss. All I was And if I tend to have my ideas because they tend to make the world a more hospitable place to build, then in a way I kind of do need to defend them. Now, if you do things differently than I do things, so you eat this food and I eat that food, that because there's so much information now, and it's so easy to get to, that perhaps there'll be

2:37:29 Exactly. Well, I guess it goes with sports teams really? never? Yeah, so I think it's like Oliver Wendell Holmes or someone who said, I mean, that's where it gets real weird, right? Yeah. Yeah. set. John Hyde, I don't know if you've than I tell you fairness or harm is more important. all these things are, I hate to say it, but they're like 50% genetic, right? Some of us

2:41:07 Of course. So I know little about it, very little about it. My behavioral underfeed the mother when the baby's in there. And that causes the baby's methylation of some And the key thing is, that makes good sense because it's a way to respond to times of famine. will also have some of these strategies. you made of what I've said. But if you ignore that gender effect, in all probability, those fetuses that could survive in a mother during famine might just be the more robust specimens, right?

2:44:05 and we're a long way from either of them. And so the epigenetic effects that they show, how do we know that this particular collection of foods will actually do you any good? How do we know how well people are that is then when people's diets move around, you say, oh, look, this diet has this effect and that and just locks in. And of course, agriculture is only 12,000 years old

2:46:30 And there's an argument that we actually evolved to have a tolerance for beer rather than a drunk with hippos running around can't be a good idea also if you think about wine or wine or any booze, the first time you drink it, it's disgusting. if I ate what some six-year-old can eat in India or something like that. to deal with. Garlic, all these things are super

2:47:53 The closer you get to the equator, the more languages you have and the more religions you have. And there's more ethnocentrism as you go close to the equator. You don't need to anymore. Like, what? right? That's how evolution works. And that's just starting to happen. And so now scientists and using things like whatever the future version of CRISPR is going to be.

2:50:20 So my diet should be 60% protein and yours should be 15% or mine should have more And so because genes account for most of our weight. because all of us have the same underlying problem that evolution didn't really worry about obesity And that was an argument that people who are experts on nutrition are making about one of the more recent diet plans that people are using.

2:52:43 One of the things that they're showing is they lose a shitload of weight. Right. And so the thing is that I suspect you're What about leafy green vegetables? and I'll eat a little bit of it. I know, and more bitter And then when you come back to – I don't know if you know this work like Paul Rosen started with amnesics. Wow. And so you don't even need to know you ate it. And so your hunger mechanism is still there. But

2:55:33 hunter-gatherer on the planet. When you're hungry every day, everybody loves meat. It's not only well, there's nutrients in that I don't already have. And so you could imagine getting hungry Now you can have pancakes, whatever it is. And one of the founders, I believe it was Carlos Gracie, invented this. I have no idea. really you need and then you'll stop i don't want any more chicken but if there's chicken

2:58:29 when it starts and when it finishes across all the students eating it. And he found that as the to get. So you're going to have these high-carb diets, and then everybody can have variety. I know. They are fat, sugar, and salt. It's harder to stay married if you're a celebrity than if you're a nobody because those people are just have novelty constantly they have variety constantly and the

3:00:11 Thank you.