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#995 - Lionel Page - Born to Lie- How Humans Deceive Ourselves & Others

Modern Wisdom

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  • Reason Is Built For Persuasion Not Truth
    • Human reasoning evolved mainly to persuade others, not to discover objective truth.
    • We reason like lawyers: we spin evidence to win arguments rather than search neutrally for facts. Transcript: Lionel Page Yeah, look, reason is, you know, the faculty to form judgments, solve problems, be rigorous. We tend to think of it as, that is, it’s here to help us solve actual problems with, you know, facts, with reality. A good image that you can have for reason what it is, is, you know, the movie, the Stanley Kubrick movie, 2001, The Space Odyssey. And you have this bunch of apes, and they’re pretty useless. And then suddenly they wake up one morning and there’s this monolith, this black monolith. And once they touch it, suddenly kind of reason fall upon them. And then they discover that if they use a bone, they can use it as a tool, and they can use it as a weapon. And then the movie uses this as a starting point for what makes humans. Humans use reason to solve problems. And you can think that reason helps to scientific things, find the truth, send rockets in space, etc. But if you think about you and me, normal humans, how do we use reasons? I mean, we rarely really solve actual problems. When is the last time I kind of invented something or solved a practical problem? I mean, it happens, right? But it’s not super frequent. But what we do most with reason is not really that most often. Every day we use our reason to reason with other people that is we have most of the problems we face in our lives there are social problems there are problems when we interact with other People it’s not something you know uh that the computer doesn’t work or that the dishwasher doesn’t work it’s you know it’s solving how do i get my friends to do what i want, how to get my Friends to understand me, how to get my boss to give me a raise, et cetera. These are the problems we face. And we use reason. So we are reasoning, but we are not reasoning like scientists to solve problems. We’re reasoning like lawyers to convince other people. And then the key aspect, I think one of the interesting theories which came in the last 10 years about what is reason, is that reason is this. It’s not here to solve problems. It’s here for us to convince other people. And once you take this approach, it really explains a lot of, you know, people, you have a big literature on people being irrational, making lots of mistakes, et cetera. But then when you think, wait a minute, maybe we’re not actually designed to be scientists. We’re designed to be lawyers. And so some of the mistakes are by design. You know, confirmation bias, you look at the information which is convenient, you ignore the information which is inconvenient. Well, that’s what you do if you want to win your case, not if you want to find the truth. So that’s the way reason really works. In (Time 0:00:06)
  • Self-Deception Aids Social Bluffing
    • Self-deception can be adaptive because believing your own bluff hides cues of deception.
    • Robert Trivers argues self-deception reduces the cost of lying and makes social bluffing more convincing. Transcript: Lionel Page Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this idea that we self-deceive and that it’s a strategic, it works strategically to convince others. It’s an idea put forward by Robert Trivers in the 70s, the biologist Robert Trivers. And the problem he describes is, okay, you know, why do we self-deceive? And we know that we self-deceive. We know that we are the confident people tend to think that they are smarter, more handsome, nicer than, you know, than they are than other people, etc. You have a lot of data. When you ask people, you know, are you a good driver? Like I think 90% of people say they are a better driver than average. That’s just not possible. I mean, everybody, if you ask college professors, you know, I think 90% will say they are better professors than their colleagues. It’s at every level, you know, you have this kind of thing. So, okay, so why do we self-deceive and why do we have all these kind of flattering views about ourselves? So one possibility is that we just like it, you know. I mean, you know, I like thinking I’m good. So I choose to shape my beliefs and to form beliefs that I’m better than I am because I just enjoy this feeling. The problem with this explanation is that there are costs of being overconfident, of having wrong beliefs. So, you know, if I think I’m stronger than I am, maybe I’m going to go into fights I shouldn’t go into. If I think I’m a better climber, I’m going to climb a mountain, which I shouldn’t climb. If I’m feeling a better diver I’m a better swimmer, I’m going to dive into the river I shouldn’t swim into. So there are real risks. So, you know, from an evolution point of view, if we are all overconfident, there must be a reason. And it can’t be in our mind because evolution doesn’t select our mind to be happy. You know, it selects us to be successful. So if we all tend to be a bit overconfident, there must be, because there are costs, there must be benefits. And the benefits, Robert Trouffer says, that because we all try to convince each other, you know, there is always a risk that if I kind of lie, if I blatantly lie when I try to talk to you, You’ll find out, and there are costs, you know, like I’m losing reputation, et cetera, et cetera. And maybe, you know, also you find out that I’m not being honest. So one way of limiting this cost or one way of not being found out is actually to believe my own stories. You know, like, you know, poker players, they play poker they have their their sunglasses why do they have sunglasses because they don’t want to leak cues of their emotion the feeling So maybe instead of having sunglasses you could you one way to play poker if you want to bluff and be convincing is to really believe that when your game is not great actually it’s a great Game okay so it’s not possible in poker because it’s just very obvious you see the game But in the game of life, you know, your cause is not that clear. And so if you start believing that the hands that you have is stronger than it is, you might actually be able to bluff in a way. You bluff, but you believe your own bluff and that’s convincing because you don’t leak cues that you’re bluffing. (Time 0:05:19)
  • Couples’ Chore Estimates Summing Over 100%
    • Couples often overestimate their own share of chores and both believe they do more than 100% combined.
    • Lionel uses this to illustrate pervasive, everyday self-serving bias in households. Transcript: Lionel Page And people think, if you ask couples, there’s an interesting study, and you ask couples, what percentage of the housework you do? And the sum is always higher than 100%. So it’s maybe that the woman says, I do 80%, and the man says, I do 30%. (Time 0:10:20)
  • Conversation Uses Relevance And Recursive Mind-Reading
    • Real communication relies on relevance and recursive mind-reading across belief levels.
    • We compress information to change others’ beliefs with minimal processing cost using context and implicature. Transcript: Lionel Page You know what? It’s fascinating to, you know, communication comes to us very easily. You know, we chat and we talk about things, etc. Like it seems normal. But think about it. Computers were That’s able to beat crunches master, like, you know, 30 years ago. Big Blue was in 1995, I think, beating Kasparov. But it’s only only in the last two or three years that we get computers eventually able to speak like you and me. You know, before when you were talking to a computer, you felt it was artificial. You felt that, you know, it was not very deep. It was predictable, et cetera. And now only with the new language models, you feel like you’re able to speak. You can still perceive the artificial nature of it sometimes, but it looks very natural. So you needed 30 years of computer programming progress to reach this level. It tells you how difficult communicating, talking like you and me, what we’re doing now, it’s actually very complex, much more complex for a computer than playing chess at the level Of Kasparov. And the complexity is at several levels. One thing you have to think about, what is communicating? Communicating is when I say something, I am providing information and information is me giving you something which is going to change your beliefs. If I say something and it doesn’t change in any way your beliefs, it’s useless. It’s kind of boring. So it’s only if you have your beliefs, and I provide something which is novel, change your beliefs, that it is useful to you. It could be I could tell you, oh, Chris, you know, I’ve met this guy, he’s very nice, he’s an information. Or I could tell you what I tell you now about what I know. I could talk to you about the weather or whatever, but I’m giving you something which is information. Then, that’s the basics. Then if you want to look at how communication works, there would be plenty of ways we could do that. There’s plenty of things I could tell you. I could give you information about, you know, I could talk to you about the dictionary, but I’m not talking to you about the dictionary now. So what we do, there’s a linguist and and and psychologists who are cognitive scientists who have written a book about it is that we try to be relevant and relevant they define relevance As we try to provide the most information which is changing your beliefs in the most useful way to you with the minimal cost for you to treat it so when i talk to you i’m going to try to give You the most useful information to you that is what which are going to change your beliefs in a way that you find useful but at the same time giving a message which is the least hard for you To process and you can see what is relevance when you violate it so what is violation of relevance well first i could talk to you and give you information which is useless so you know i could Talk to you about things you are not interested in you’d find me boring or i could talking in a way which is not easy for you to process. I could speak very longly and very technically and that would be, you know, and even if what I say is right and useful too, but, you know, I would not make it easy for you to access. So this is the violation of relevance. And what we do, we try to do that all the time. This is amazing, you know, this principle of relevance. It’s not just when we talk about something technical. It’s every situation in our daily lives when we communicate, we very quickly communicate a lot of information in the minimal amount of words. So I’ll give you an example, for instance. Suppose that, you know, John and jane they are um thinking about what to do in the weekend and john says oh what about uh going to play tennis and jane says i’m tired so now if you think about It jane’s answer seems like if you were a robot if you were a computer you say you’d be like wait a minute like like Jen didn’t say whether she wanted or not to play tennis. She said she’s tired. So she seems like she’s not answering. Chris Williamson I’m sorry that you’re tired, but can we get back to talking about tennis? Lionel Page Yes, yes, exactly. And so how does it work? So obviously, John is going to understand what she means, right? But that she doesn’t want to play tennis. So how does John understand? Well, John has done it first. Is going to give the minimal amount of information which is i’m tired uh john will say okay they will back we have an understanding that’s what jane is doing so john will think okay if jane Say that she’s tired it’s it has to be relevant to what i was saying about tennis so it has to be relevant so what is relevant well people being tired usually don’t want to play tennis so She is indicating she doesn’t want to play tennis with me that’s why she said that but then if you think about it jen has to anticipate that this is the way john is going to interpret her So she she understands that john is going to expect her to say that well because she thinks that he’s going to understand you have this kind of recursive mind reading i know that you’re Going to think that that’s what i want to say okay and when you start understanding that that we’re doing this you know you’re putting your shoes in the other person putting his shoes Into yours you realize okay that’s really really complex that’s why computers are really sound silly to us, because they don’t do that. So they sound a bit off. Until the large language models, which are better now, but before they were sounding artificial, they were unable to do this kind of easy interaction. (Time 0:19:38)
  • Be Concise And Let Listeners Infer Intent
    • When you reply, give minimal relevant information that the listener will use to infer your intent.
    • Use context to let listeners conclude what you mean instead of spelling everything out. Transcript: Lionel Page Suppose that, you know, John and jane they are um thinking about what to do in the weekend and john says oh what about uh going to play tennis and jane says i’m tired so now if you think about It jane’s answer seems like if you were a robot if you were a computer you say you’d be like wait a minute like like Jen didn’t say whether she wanted or not to play tennis. She said she’s tired. So she seems like she’s not answering. Chris Williamson I’m sorry that you’re tired, but can we get back to talking about tennis? Lionel Page Yes, yes, exactly. And so how does it work? So obviously, John is going to understand what she means, right? But that she doesn’t want to play tennis. So how does John understand? (Time 0:23:01)
  • Cooperative Rules Coexist With Strategic Rule-Bending
    • Communication mixes cooperation and conflict, so people often push rules just to the line.
    • Self-deception helps justify minor rule-bending while retaining plausible deniability. Transcript: Lionel Page Think you know i think i tend to talk a lot here you know about self-decision conflict because often we kind of minimize it or don’t talk about it as much but i think we should emphasize That in our social interactions cooperation i mean we should appreciate how much cooperation there is most of what we do in life in society right is we abide by a lot of social rules about Conventions about how to do things you know you you go out and you drive you’re in the u.s so you drive on the right side of the road right i’m in the strass i drive on the left and i mean you’re Going to do that a hundred percent of the time right i mean at least in the u.s some other countries is random. But if you do that and everybody does that, so there’s this regularity and this is cooperative. This is, it benefits everybody. I mean, sometimes, you know, you could benefit from breaking a few rules and some people do, but if you go on the road, most people respect the rules. And you can extend this insights to all the areas of your life. You go at work and people do work. They don’t, you know, most people don’t embezzle the company and run away in another country with the money, etc. So cooperation is really, I appreciate how much cooperation there is. And we comply with rules most of the time. And I think maybe one image that you could have is that if you think about a football soccer match or whatever sport you you prefer there are rules and the rules are applied that is people Follow most of the time the rules whereas at the same time it would be it would be wrong to say that people really follow fully the rules yeah you know because if you think about football, For instance, you know, people pull out your shirt, they are kind of trying to go over the line without being, you know, just enough for the referee not to blow the whistle, etc. So that’s what we do in life. So there are rules and mostly we follow them. But, you know, if we can get some advantage by not following exactly or by going just close to the line, then we will have a tendency to do that. And self-deception here is going to help us because we can do that while convincing ourselves that we’re not. (Time 0:29:04)
  • Ambiguity Preserves Plausible Deniability
    • Ambiguity, innuendo, and plausible deniability are communication tools to avoid risky common knowledge.
    • Indirect speech lets you convey intent while keeping plausible exits if things go wrong. Transcript: Lionel Page Well, it’s because of this conflict element. Because if there is a conflict, by not saying something, I can, in a way, convey the message without keeping plausible deniability if things go wrong. Okay, so if I say, for instance, do you want to go have a drink? And my date says no, I can pretend that I was just going to, you know, invite for a drink. So we can play the game where we pretend that nothing more was involved. If I tell the policeman, I would like, could we solve this here? And I don’t offer a clear bribe. The policeman may not be able to have a case to put me in jail, you know, as an attempt for bribery. And in the office, if there is a conflict and I get angry and says, you know, what are you implying? I say, I’m not implying anything. So you keep plausible deniability. And so this is why our communication is so rich, because often we don’t say what we mean, but we convey it indirectly. (Time 0:33:57)
  • Sydney Sweeney Backlash Framed As Morality Tale
    • The Sydney Sweeney ad backlash was couched in moral terms rather than direct sexual competition.
    • Lionel and Chris discuss coalitional reactions and how political codes amplified the response. Transcript: Chris Williamson She is being sexually overt and has big boobs and is a potential intrasexual rival for some other high value partner that I would like to get with. And she is going to set an unrealistic standard of beauty that is going to difficult for us all no no no it was none of that it was all couched in moral terms it was she’s pushing eugenics She once attended a uh trump rally her family is like central southern american flag-waving, truck-driving, country music, listening, hicks. And it was at no point was the actual thing that was the issue being pointed at. It was all, she’s a bad person. And I said that me and Rob were at dinner last night singing your praises. By the way, we’ve managed to get 35 minutes in and I haven’t plugged your Substack. Can everyone go and subscribe to Optimally Irrational on Substack, please? Because it is one of the best things and it is criminally undersubscribed. It is Bitcoin at $1. So everyone can go and subscribe to that now. And you can get most of the stuff for free. The interesting thing, women have a failure of a theory of mind, cross-sex mind reading failure here, I think. They think that by derogating Sydney Sweeney’s morality, other men will think, well, that’s a beauty standard that is unreasonable. She’s a bad person. Given that she’s a bad person, I should not find her attractive. Now, maybe it’s some intrasexual competition that they think if men see that lots of other women do not consider Sydney Sweeney to be a good person, they might not be attracted to them. I’m going to just lay it out for the women that are listening. That’s not true. Men are not going to not find Sidney Sweeney attractive just because other women don’t find her a good person. However, if you are Leonardo DiCaprio and lots of other similarly valued men, if Keanu Reeves and Hugh Grant and Jared Leto and a bunch of other Hollywood A-listers were to say, I know That you fancy Leonardo DiCaprio, but he’s a bad man. He’s morally unjust. I do think that that would impact women’s assessment of this. It’s sort of male competition theory that men’s judgment of other men is kind of a big mediator of how women find that man to be attractive. This is David Putz’s stuff. I just thought it was really interesting. You know, when you’re talking about ambiguity, deniability, you have this first level, which is, it’s not about halux. It’s about eugenics. It’s about being right of center. It’s about not caring about normal people, etc., etc. And then the reverse wouldn’t be true. I just thought that was a really interesting setup. But I might be totally wrong. This is a fresh theory, okay? Lionel Page No, I get the idea of intrastexual competition. And there are psychological research showing that, I don’t remember the details, but I’ve seen papers where, you know, when you put a beautiful woman, she’s more likely to get criticized Or to be the target of ghost civ, etc. And that kind of makes sense. (Time 0:36:24)
  • Sex Differences In Friendship Structures
    • Men and women evolved different friendship networks: men form many weak ties; women form fewer strong ties.
    • These network differences shape gossip, reputation management, and communication styles. Transcript: Lionel Page So I think I can give you the reason why you have this difference between men and women. And basically, the key difference is our network of friends. How our network of friends work. Men have large networks of friends, or you would say large coalitions, and they have loose ties, weak ties. You know, you have a lot of friends, you don’t, and one friend you cannot talk to him for two years, and when you see him back, say, hey, mate, you know, how’s it going? And that’s because, well, that’s one man, I’ll tell you maybe because afterwards. And women, they have tighter networks, small networks, a few friends, and a lot of investment, you know. They talk a lot, they invest a lot, and so there is also gossiping, which you are talking about, because you manage reputation. You want to learn about reputation. You manage your own reputation. So friendship for women is much more intense in terms of, you know, the investment in each particular friendship partnership. And I think the reason for that is that men and women had to solve different problems in ancestral times. So when you read a fascinating book by evolutionary psychologist Sarah Herjory on mothers in ancestral times, one thing that appears is that it’s very hard to raise kids. Now you get a kid at the hospital and then you’ve got the nurse and then after you go to the kindergarten, you know, and drop the kid at the kindergarten, super easy. But okay, ancestors, they didn’t have that. And you know, you need to collect food. There’s no supermarket to find the food and you need to collect food with this stuff, which is just sucking the energy out of you. And so the survival of children likely was much higher when you got help. So there’s a lot of what we call alloparenting. That is, a mother gets help from her family, in particular from a mother, but also from other mothers. Sometimes, you know, other mothers helping to breastfeed your kid when you can’t. And so, you know, for that you need, if you want to give your kid to other women, you need a lot of trust. Because the kid is a huge stake, right? So you want very strong bonds with a few people who give you a lot of help. So that is, you know, you can’t ask somebody who you barely know to take your kid and breastfeed your kid, right? So this is small network, tight bonds. Men’s on the contrary, most likely, you know, they didn’t have this problem. They were engaged more in kind of occasional collective work, occasional warfare, occasional hunting, which is in big groups. And in this case, the defection of one person is bad, but not as dramatic. (Time 0:43:00)
  • Belonging And Status Drive Social Anxiety
    • Coalitional psychology makes us track both group membership and standing within the group.
    • Small shifts in perceived status trigger strong anxiety because exclusion had severe evolutionary costs. Transcript: Chris Williamson We need, we can’t bear to be left out if we feel like the group is pulling away from us. How does coalitional psychology sort of tie in with that need to belong? Lionel Page Well, I think it explains why we have this need to be. So I said, you know, I gave you the kind of extreme version about why we need coalition not to be picked up and not to be at risk in ancient times. But really, coalitions are useful for plenty of things. In the case, for instance, of mothers, you know, being with a tied group of other mothers, it helps provide support and insurance. If you’re in a big group, you can do things that you could not do, like for instance, like moving house, you move sofas, et cetera, you can do it on your own. So coalitions are useful for plenty of things. And I think our coalitional psychology is that we always care about being in a group. We care about two things. We care about being in a group and or standing in the group. Outstanding is how other people see us in the group. And, you know, when you unpack a group, there’s always an internal hierarchy. So it’s not like, it’s like a fractal. If you think of a fractal, you know, it’s a kind of Russian dolls. You know, you open a Russian doll, there’s another Russian doll. So a coalition is like that. So you have a group of friends and from the outside, you say, oh, these are the group of friends. Okay, but you go inside and actually in the group of friends, there’s kind of an inner circle, an outer circle. One thing you can see very quickly, very nicely, very interestingly, I think, is the game show Survivor. So you watch the game show Survivor. Officially, it’s a game show on surviving in the jungle. But actually, most of it is not. Most of it is a collitional game because you have a group, and they tell you at the end of the day, you’ll have to eliminate one of you, okay? And so it’s kind of run on the anxiety of being excluded massively. So, you know, they are in the group, and they know that at the end of the day, one of them is going to be out. And what was very interesting in the show is that right away you see that there’s an inner hierarchy. People says, oh, I’m safe. I’m in the top three. There’s a top three in the group? How do you know what’s the top three, right? And so there’s a top three and there’s the loose two and there’s the bottom two, for instance, one. And so the bottom two, they know that they are they’re on the chopping block so you know we have this psychology we quickly go in a group and we feel oh in this single group there’s this guy They’re tight bone they’re respected by others they’re unmovable you know they’re part of the group but me i’m kind of i’m in between i’m not sure maybe they could they could live their Life without me right and so if you’re like that, you’re stressed, etc. So this is the way we, our psychology is shaped. We really care about these things. And that drives a lot of what we do. (Time 1:04:26)
  • Signal Loyalty Through Visible Commitments
    • Signal commitment visibly to build trust in coalitions: badges, rituals, songs, or consistent actions work.
    • Use shared symbols to create credible expectations of loyalty that sustain cooperation. Transcript: Lionel Page Know, a key challenge for coalitions is the, you need loyalty, you need the commitment that people are going to work for the coalition. You know, if you’re on a football team, you need the confidence that everybody’s going to put, you know, to work their best to try to win the match. If you’re in a in an army platoon, you need your confidence that, you know, people will have your back when you run toward the front line, etc. So, what you have is that here we have a problem in game theory. It’s a problem of that you have two potential situations. One situation where people trust each other and all go and work for the group. Okay, so the football team gives us 100% and the army platoon all run in the same direction at the same time. And you have the other situations where if I don’t trust that you and others will do that, why would I do that? So maybe I don’t. I don’t run and you don’t believe, you don’t trust that people will run. So we are ineffective. So it’s also a possibility and to move us from the situation where an ineffective group to the situation we run as a unit we need the confidence each other the shared confidence that we Believe that we think we’re a unit and we work as a unit and how do you get that you get that with social identity so the groups work like they have this kind of bone so you know this feeling That we we are a team and i know we’re a team i know you know we’re a team we share the team’s logo we share the team hats you know the team t-shirt we share the team song before the match no etc And so and that explains a lot, again, about human psychology. We think things which are described as irrational. Like you’ve got the football supporters spend a lot of money on the signs for their football team. They sing during the match. Sometimes they sing during the match. They don’t even watch the match. And you think that’s a bit surprising. But that’s because the psychology gives a lot of weight on caring about signs of loyalty, displaying signs of loyalty, because being seen as a good group member, being trusted as a good Group member, you want to signal, you want to tell everybody, hey, you know, guy, I’m a part of your team, and, you know, I’m clearly, I’m not going to defect anytime. (Time 1:07:30)
  • Unawareness Makes Social Strategies More Credible
    • We’re often unaware of social games because unconscious heuristics and emotions improve cooperation.
    • Evolution favors committed emotions over cold strategic calculation to make trust credible. Transcript: Lionel Page You know, we’ve been talking and saying all these games, what we do, and they are very complex, and we’re really good at it. Okay? But at the same time, there’s a very surprising thing, is that we’re often not aware that we’re playing these games. I think you have several answers. One answer is that you don’t need to know. In a way, nature, evolution, doesn’t need to give you the rule book for you to be effective. You know, we’re very good at throwing stones, for instance, and we don’t need to know the neutron mechanics behind it. So we anticipate the of a stone. If you catch a baseball, a ball of baseball is thrown at you, you’re able to anticipate its movement and catch it. And though you do that before having done any physics in high school, by telling you the laws of physics, etc. So in a way, nature doesn’t need to give you the rulebook for you to be effective. It can just give you the ways of solving the problem. I think that’s one first answer. So we can be very good because we have the heuristics and the rules to work out in these gaps, even if we don’t need the full understanding about what’s exactly happening. But I think there’s also another aspect of it is that often it’s even better if we don’t know. And it’s another strategic aspect is that, you know, you have the saying, for instance, sometimes you call people, you say, oh, this person is a player. Or you say, this person is very strategic. And this is actually not a compliment. When you say this person is very strategic or this person is a player, you mean, you know, this person is computing, is trying to find the best ways of acting without caring for principles, For instance. Do you want a friend who is a strategic or do you want a friend who is just loyal and trustworthy? Maybe somebody who is very strategic is not totally trustworthy, because maybe if the calculations do not add up tomorrow, it’s not going to be right. Chris Williamson You’re going to be on the receiving end. You’re going to be an enemy and not a collaborator. Lionel Page Yeah. Maybe today is a friend because he finds its advantages, but what about tomorrow? So you don’t want somebody who calculates every day whether its advantage is to be a friend with you or not. And so, you know, this is a deep problem of trust. How can we trust each other, given that we always have options to defect from cooperation? There’s always plenty of opportunities to take some short-term advantage by not being fully cooperative. I could lie a bit. I could not do the right thing. You will not know, et cetera. So how can people trust each other? And one solution is to commit, to be committed to a course of action. So one solution is more than to be committed, to be committed credibly and to be able to signal this commitment. I think love is a good example. If you have two, a man and a woman, if each of them were every day being in the relationship, but open to checking whether other partners could be better, that would be hell, right? So imagine you’re in a relationship, and then every day if another guy if she finds another guy you know better in the street she drops you the problem of this kind of situation is that You know that would make it very risky to invest a lot of effort in the in the partnership so to invest you need to trust that this stuff is going to last long but to trust that this stuff is Going to last long you want the other person to be not looking at other options but looking at other options seems to be rational seems to be strategic so how do you prevent that well the Solution that’s likely given by nature is this strong emotion that we have to buy which bind us to others and which are visible and and and give visible signs to others that they can trust. So in a partnership between a man and a woman, it’s going to be love. So people will feel strong emotions of love. And when people are in love, they will purposefully not look at other options. And also, this emotion gives cues, signals, which are, you know, you can see when somebody is besotted with another person, and that’s credible. And so that’s what you want. You want to be with someone who is in love with you because you’re confident that this person is going to be willing to stay with you for a long time. In a group of friends, that would not be love, that would be friendship, but there’s the same kind of stuff. You want some people, you know, who are loyal and who are with you because they’re friends, not because they’re just a short-term advantage. Now, we’re still playing these games, but in a way, nature, the way for us to be playing these games well may be to care about not playing the games in the short-term. There is a theory in evolutionary psychology, which is more than theory, and I think there’s a lot of validity, is that you can think of the mind as made of several modules solving problems. That’s a general theory from evolutionary psychology. But one of the applications of the theory is that, you know, mind can be, in a way, could be divided in part of your mind which kind of treats information and part of your mind will make the Decision. And the trigger of these emotions, when you feel in love, when you feel friendship, etc., could be strategically triggered by one part of the mind. And your self-conscious person really feels these emotions, really is committed, and that makes you better as a player. It’s a bit abstract, but one way I think you can think about it is in the movie, I think in the second movie uh of the matrix there is the um the uh oracle and the oracle talks to neo and and maybe It’s the first one i’m not sure i think the oracle talks to neo and after a while she has asked what did you tell him and she said i told him what he needed to know what it means it means she didn’t Tell him the truth she did she told him what he needed to know to be effective and you could think that part of your brain do exactly the same thing you you know from all the information you Get your self-aware person in your mind only get the information you need to know to be effective and that means that mind, you know, part of our mind is strategic and knows when to trigger The emotions, etc. But it doesn’t tell us we don’t have an interest to be strategic when we act. We have an interest to be committed and to believe that we’re not playing the game. Chris Williamson Okay, humans are better at playing games when they don’t know that they’re games. (Time 1:30:12)
  • Use Game Awareness To Build Empathy
    • Learn these social games to gain empathy and avoid naive attributions about others’ motives.
    • Use this awareness to take a step back and reduce personal reactivity in social conflicts. Transcript: Lionel Page I’d like to tell you that it’s super helpful in practice. I mean, you know, that’s the way I see the world. So I can’t help it. So, but the fact that, in a way, the fact, I like the fact that you understand the world as it is instead of the kind of narratives and stories we tell ourselves or society tell ourselves. But at the same time, the game of the games, you know, knowing, it’s like, look, it’s like we play football. We play football. And if I come and I say, well, you know, I have a PhD in football techniques, so I know really why football works well. It doesn’t change that if I want to play football, that’s, you know, my PhD in football techniques, it’s not necessarily super useful to score a goal. You know, it might at the margin help me understand that I should shoot that well, that or the other. But the game is a game. And often, as I said, you don’t necessarily need the rulebook to be effective. We are very effective already at playing these games very well. So, understanding these games is mostly useful, I think, intellectually. Also, it’s useful often to avoid mistakes and to appreciate my own kind of biases, etc. But it doesn’t still mean that, you know, the games are the games. It doesn’t change. Chris Williamson Well, I guess we’re at the mercy of this stuff. At least for me, it helps me to have more empathy and a bit more peace around people. I wish I could extend that to myself, actually. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, like some sort of inverse stoicism where you’re able to see other people and say, you know, like as soon as you learn fundamental attribution error and You go, he, he, the guy that cut me off in traffic, he was probably just late. He’s probably not an asshole. And even if he is an asshole he’s an asshole that’s late so that’s fine um yet if you are constructed in a way where you’re always trying to push yourself to do more um turning that degree Of game playing self-deception coalition dynamic intersexual competition, and going, I should give myself a break. I should be easier on myself. That’s the final boss of social anxiety, not being kind to other people, being kind to you. Yeah. Lionel Page I agree. And the way I think understanding all that, in particular self-deception, often you’re like, okay, I want to make that case, but is that case really kind of, you know, the best one or The most accurate one, or is it just self-serving? So, you know, you become a bit more like critical and aware of the kind of biases that you have. It doesn’t make you better at winning the game, though. Because self-deception is useful. So if you curb your self-deception, it may actually not make you better at convincing others. But yeah, I do appreciate that sometimes. (Time 1:39:11)