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>> What's happening, man? Hey, good to be

back. [music] Good to see you. So the

reason why we had such a quick

turnaround is because the last episode,

one of the main reasons why you wanted

to come on in the first place is you you

wanted to further discuss some

discoveries about evolution.

Yes. Specifically, I have alluded in a

number of different places, including

here, to there being another level to

Darwinian evolution that does a lot of

the heavy lifting um that we um require

in order to explain the diversity of

forms that we see in biology. But I

haven't been specific on what I believe

that layer is. And I felt [snorts] like

it was time. I think um for one thing

the advances in AI mean that such things

are going to emerge naturally and I

wanted to put it on the table before uh

it simply gets discovered as a matter of

computing horsepower

>> and we were just rambling about so many

different things and we never got to it

last time. So he said, "All right, let's

do another quick turnaround. Come back."

>> Right.

>> All right.

>> So, um,

>> no beans.

>> Let's let's talk biology. And let me

just say, [snorts] you know, I know it's

not everybody's bag, but I do think just

about everybody has at some point

listened to the story that we tell about

adaptive evolution and wondered if it's

really powerful enough to explain all of

the creatures that we all know and love.

Right? So the classic story is that you

have a genome that it contains a great

many genes. A gene is a sequence in DNA

that results in proteins being produced.

The DNA describes exactly the sequence

of amino acids in a protein. And a

protein would typically be one of two

things. It would either be um an enzyme,

which is a little bit misleading as a

term, but an enzyme, well, enzyme isn't

misleading, but an enzyme is a catalyst.

Catalyst is misleading. It's really a

machine that puts other chemicals

together. So, a lot of the genes in the

genome are these little molecular

machines that assemble molecules. And

the other thing that proteins are likely

to be are structural. So something like

collagen proteins can make a matrix that

allows you to sort of build a sculpture

biologically.

And what we say is that the

uh the amino acid sequence is specified

by the genome in three letter sequences,

right? Codons. Each three letters

specifies a particular amino acid that

gets tacked on. You get a sequence of

amino acids that then collapse into

whatever they're going to be, whether

it's an enzyme or a structure based on

little electromagnetic

affinities that they have, little side

chains that have a positive or a

negative charge that attract each other.

So basically, these machines assemble

themselves by folding in very complex

ways that then causes them to interact

with the molecules around them in very

specific ways. ways that greatly reduce

the energy

um necessary and make the reactions much

more likely to happen. That's why we

call it a catalyst. But really the way

to think of it is a little molecular

machine.

So we say the way evolution works is

random changes happen to the DNA because

DNA is imperfectly copied or is impacted

by radiation which will eliminate a

letter in the DNA and then that letter

will get replaced by a different letter.

There are only four choices. But some

fraction of the time you get a threelet

combination that specifies a new amino

acid. Almost all of the time that will

make the little molecular machine worse

or break it all together. Occasionally

it will leave the machine functional in

a way that's somewhat better than the

previous one. And then evolution will

collect all of those advances. And

that's how evolution works. That's the

story we typically tell. And in fact um

that's the story that is encoded in

what's called the central dogma of

molecular biology. Um now the problem

most people will have thought about that

and they will have heard okay random

mutations that change this code in ways

that alter proteins.

That doesn't sound that sounds like a

very haphazard process and a very

difficult way to get from one form of

animal or plant or fungus to another. So

if you've had that thought

that just doesn't seem powerful enough

and then biologists have said well

you're not realizing how much time

elapses that allows these very

occasional positive changes to

accumulate. And that's true.

If that's a thought you've had this is

this this process isn't powerful enough

to explain the creatures I'm aware of.

Then what I'm going to tell you is a way

in which that process is not the only

process. And by adding a different

process, very much a Darwinian one, we

can see that the power to create all of

the creatures that we see is much

greater than the story that we've been

told. Okay? So, I'm going to put a

hypothesis on the table about what

enhances this. And essentially what I'm

arguing is if you sat down to a computer

game, right, something very realistic,

and somebody says, "Well, that's all

binary."

That's true. It's all binary. But what

they're not telling you is that there's

an intervening layer that greatly

increases the power to use binary to

make something like a computer game.

Right? So there are multiple different

levels inside your computer. One of them

is that your computer can be programmed

in a language that is much closer to

English and then a compiler can take the

what you've written that a computer

can't understand and turn it into a

computer understandable code. And so the

ability to make powerful programs

depends on our ability not to have to

program our computers in binary, but to

be able to program them in C++ or

whatever. That's the kind of thing I'm

I'm pointing to is a mechanism that

enhances the power of evolution to do

the stuff that we know evolution

accomplishes.

Okay. So here's what I think is the

missing layer. And I will say I've done

a bunch of research to figure out how

much of this is understood and I find a

very confusing picture. It actually

depends which field I come at it from to

see what the blind spots are. But I'm

going to leave that primarily

uh for another time. Let's just say the

two fields in question are my field

evolutionary biology and a a

interdisciplinary science called evode.

Okay, Evodo is the evolution of

development and evo is um a much newer

uh in some ways a more vibrant field. I

would argue my field is stuck. Evo DVO

has been making progress from the

developmental side on a number of

different questions.

Okay, so now let's talk about adaptive

evolution and what adaptive

evolutionists seem to be missing that I

think does a bunch of the heavy lifting

in terms of explaining creatures.

So let me let me just start by saying

the the thing I said at the beginning

about protein coding genes being altered

by random mutation resulting in changes.

I'm not arguing that that is in any way

a false story. It explains a great many

things.

My point is that what it primarily

explains are things at nano scale,

right? It can explain the difference in

a pigment molecule very easily. And we

know that it does. It can explain things

somewhat larger than that like the very

special structure. When you're a kid, do

you ever play with the feathers of a

bird? You pull them apart and then they

zip back together,

>> right? Those kinds of things can be

readily explained by the mechanism as we

present it. What I'm going to argue is

difficult to explain

is the change from one macroscopic form

to another. So for example,

the wing of a bat. The wing of a bat

evolved from the foot of a terrestrial

or aroreal, meaning tree dwelling,

mammal, like a shrew. So, I sent uh

Jamie a picture of a shrew's foot. Maybe

we should just put it up. Um, so what

we'll look at is the the foot of a

shrew, and it won't surprise you at all.

It looks exactly as you would expect.

It's got, you know, digits and it looks

like every other mammal's foot. So, here

we have an example of it. Okay. Now,

let's take a look at the the wing of a

bat.

So, here we have the wing of a bat. Now,

that wing is a highly modified front

foot.

The ribs that suspend that uh that hold

the membrane the what we call the

patagia apart are highly elongated

fingers. Right? So what you're seeing

are the fanges of that little shrew foot

elongated very much so.

Now, what the Evo Divo folks will tell

you and and they are right about this is

that the difference between that bat's

wing and its fingers and that shrews

foot and its toes

is not a molecular difference. There may

be molecular differences between the

foot and the wing, but you could build

that wing and that foot out of the very

same molecules.

What you're doing is distributing them

differently. You have different amounts

of molecules distributed in different

ways to make these elaborate structures

from the primitive structures. With me

so far?

>> Yep.

>> Okay. So,

what I realized more than 25 years ago,

um, many people who've heard you and me

talk before will have heard us talk

about my work on tieumirs.

So tieumirs, you'll remember, are

structures at the end of every

chromosome that are not genes.

They are repetitive sequences. They're

written in DNA, but it's basically just

a repeated series of letters again and

again and again. And the tieumir

basically the number of repeats that are

there dictates how many times a cell

line can duplicate. It loses repeats.

Each time it duplicates and when it gets

down to a critically low number, it

stops reproducing.

Now, we've talked before about why that

system exists. The short version is in

creatures like us, it prevents cancers

from happening because if a cell line

runs away and just starts reproducing,

it runs into this limit, the hay flick

limit, and stops reproducing. So it

prevents cancer, but it limits the

amount of repair that we can do in a

lifetime. So it causes us to sess to age

and grow feeble as we do so.

But what it said to me when I was doing

that work was that there is a kind of

information that can be stored in

genomes

in DNA that is not protein oriented.

It's not what we would call a leic. It's

not written in three-letter codeons.

It's actually a number

stored the same way you would store a

variable in a computer program. Right?

The tieumir, the length of the tieumir

is a count of how many times a cell line

is allowed to divide over a lifetime.

It's a number. And what occurred to me

all those years ago was that the ability

to store a number in the genome is

fantastically powerful.

What it means if you could store a lot

of numbers in the genome is that you

could describe creatures by

aotting

something either a quantity of material

or an amount of time in development that

you could specify things in the language

of numbers that you can't specify in the

language of amino acids.

So the hypothesis that I'm putting on

the table

is that the evolutionary process has

built a system in which variables

uh in which integers are stored in DNA

and those integers

dictate phenomena like developmental

timing, turning on and off something

like the growth of one of those uh

failanks the fanges in the in the

fingers. If you could radically increase

the number that dictated the length of

one of those bones, then selection would

effectively be in a position to play

with adjacent forms.

So, am I confusing you or is this making

sense?

>> It's making sense.

>> Okay. So the question is [clears throat]

all right the tieumir is a special case.

The tieumir exists at the end of a

chromosome and it can only exist at the

end of a chromosome because of the way

it functions. So a tieumir is not

actually just a string. It's actually a

loop and the tieumir loops back and at

the very tip there's a little section

where the DNA is not double stranded.

It's single stranded and that single

strand inserts between two other strands

of DNA. So if you loop the DNA at the

end of the chromosome back, it's called

a dloop. And then you get this one

little single stranded DNA that inserts

between a double stranded and makes a

very tiny triple stranded like uh cap so

that it holds the loop in place. You

can't do that in the middle of a

chromosome. So it's not like there are

tieumirs all over the place. But what

there are are a bunch of sequences

that were traditionally dismissed as

junk DNA that have been used as a

molecular marker in biology for decades.

We use something called microatellites.

Right? So a microatellite is a

repetitive sequence in DNA that does not

code for a protein. It's just like a

tieumir in that way. And they vary in

length. They vary in length a lot. So

that you may have a species in which the

genome is very homogeneous.

But between populations there will have

been change in the length of these

microatellites. Changes that as far as

we know don't make any difference. But

if you're a biologist in the field and

you want to know if the trees in this

valley are more closely related to the

trees in valley A or valley B, you can

look at a particular microatellite and

you can say these trees have a

microatellite at this location that is

more similar in length to population A

than to population B. Thus with some

confidence we think it's more close it

evolved from population A something like

that. So we use them as a tool for

assessing things like relatedness, but

we don't typically think of them as

a storage modality for a kind of

information that might be useful. So the

hypothesis that I'm putting on the

table, and by the way, these things are

extremely common in the genome. there

are many more

v variable number tandem repeats in the

genome than there are genes right and my

point is I don't know whether evolution

uses them as a place to store variables

that then become important in describing

creatures but evolution is a very clever

process

and the ability to store a variable I

feel highly confident that there will be

any variables stored in many different

ways that there are ways in which you

can store a variable in [clears throat]

um triplet codeon language but they're

clumsy they're crude. So you can have

things like um

a dosage compensation. You can have a

gene that's repeated multiple times and

the more copies you have the larger dose

of the product that you get. Right?

>> [snorts]

>> So if you have three copies of alcohol

dehydrogenase, you'll have more alcohol

tolerance than two copies. Something

like that. So that demonstrates a way in

triplicodon language that you can store

a variable. But what I'm arguing is that

there's at least in principle the

possibility for a vast library of

variables that have developmental

implications for the way creatures look

that allows you to go I mean imagine for

a second the the most recent common

ancestor of all bats.

Okay. Most recent common ancestor of all

bats is an animal that has gone from

no ability to fly to the ability to fly.

As soon as you have the ability to fly,

the number of things that you could do,

the number of niches that are available

is very large.

>> Can I pause right there and ask a

question? Sure.

>> So,

>> here's the the real question

specifically in regards to flying. Y

>> how does an animal go from being a shrew

or some other rodent type creature to

something that eventually can fly? And

what are the steps along the way? And

how would that even facilitate itself?

Like how how would you get an animal

that's completely stuck on the ground

and can only hop a little bit to

something that can literally

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>> This is why I love you, Joe. I mean,

it's one of the reasons. Um,

this is a question that has perplexed

biologists. We have done a lot of work.

We know a lot.

>> It's one of the most fantastic abilities

of all the animals,

>> right? How surprising is it? That's the

question. Is it so surprising that it's

actually impossible? And I think the

answer is just simply no. It's quite

possible.

>> Well, it's obviously it's possible.

Well, no. I mean, you know, let's let's

uh steal man the opposing position,

>> intelligent design position.

>> There there's certainly a lot of people

who would argue that actually no, there

are gaps you you can't jump. And

>> we should explain that as well. Like

this is one of the reasons why this

argument has come up because intelligent

design asserts that random mutation and

natural selection does not account for

the vast variety of species and it could

not account for a rodent or a shrew

which is believed to be our common

ancestor eventually becoming a human

being. Um,

let's just say I have, you know,

initially I thought that all of the

intelligent design folks were

anti-scientific

and uh really um basically just

religious people uh wielding uh

sophistry. I now know several of them in

person and quite like them and I quite

like them scientifically. I think they

actually have done an excellent job of

pointing out the folly in evolutionary

biology. And in part, what I'm saying is

I appreciate they're pointing out that

the mechanism that we teach is not

powerful enough to do what we claim it

does. I I have the same suspicion. My

argument is there is a mechanism that is

powerful enough and we haven't been

looking at it because we've been telling

the story that we've got it nailed

already and I just don't think we do.

So, let's go to your your question about

how you get from a creature that can't

fly at all to a creature that does fly.

And now, my feeling is actually this one

is pretty easy.

>> And I'm not saying that we know how it

did happen in the case of a bat. We are

hobbled in the case of bats by two

things. One, the fact that bats are

primarily tropical. The bulk of the

species are tropical. And the other is

that the majority of bats are small with

spindly limbs.

What that means is that they don't

fossilize well. Tropics are not a good

place for fossilization.

>> And bats are not a good candidate for

fossilization. And so unfortunately, the

fossil record doesn't tell us a clear

story the way it does

>> well. The bird story is getting ever

clearer. We've got good bird fossils in

a way that we didn't when you and I were

young. Um, but in the case of of a bat,

I would say the way to think of it is

this.

Um, have you seen flying squirrels?

>> Yes.

>> Okay. You've seen them fly?

>> Mhm.

>> Okay.

>> Not in person, but videos. Oh,

>> okay. I I have actually twice seen it.

>> Yeah.

>> The funny thing is they're not uncommon,

but they are very uncommon to see. And

the reason they are uncommon to see is

that they're nocturnal and they are so

damn silent. Right? So, the two times

I've seen it was when they got into an

argument with each other,

>> okay? And they started chattering and I

was like, "Huh, what what what is this?"

And okay, lo and behold, it's flying

squirrels and they're moving through,

you know, a patch of forest and it's the

most amazing thing, right? These things,

you know, technically they're not

flying. They're purely gliding. I would

argue that that's actually not a really

good distinction because at some level

what they're doing is powering flight by

climbing trees. So they climb a tree,

you know, they've got potential energy,

and then they glide to the next tree.

They'll go from the end of a branch and

they will glide much farther than you

would think is possible, right? It's

really like it challenges you. I'm Am I

really seeing what I'm seeing? It's hard

to believe they can do it. And then they

land on the trunk of the tree. That's

why they're so silent, right? They land

on the trunk so it doesn't make a big

noise as they hit some branch and the

leaves rustle and all of that. But

anyway, if you if you've seen these

creatures do it, then you can imagine a

pretty clear story, right? Imagine a

squirrel that doesn't glide. A regular

garden variety squirrel.

Well, that squirrel certainly faces gaps

between trees that push it to its limit.

And then there's gaps that are just a

little beyond its limit. And you could

imagine lots of scenarios in which a

predator is chasing a squirrel and it's

got it out onto the end of a branch and

the squirrel has to leap and so it's got

to be pretty durable in case it can't

make it to the next tree. They are. Um,

but any squirrel that had just a little

advantage in getting to that next tree

would out compete ones that got consumed

or died because they, you know, hit the

ground too hard or fell in front of a

predator that took advantage of it or

something like that. So, there is an

advantage that comes from even a tiny

little increase in the distance you can

jump. So that gets you pretty clearly

from no ability to glide at all, ability

to jump as is to the ability to glide a

little to the ability to glide a lot to

the ability to glide the way modern

flying squirrels do which is like so

impressive, right? But it's still not

it's not flapping flight. It's not

powered. So you can imagine a story in

which the shrew ancestor climbed things

and had the same situation. And maybe it

starts out, in fact, it probably does

start out with um maybe a little webbing

between the fingers that gives it just a

little extra lift, right? And you could

imagine once you get onto that little

foothill, a little lift, well, a little

more lift would be good. So those

individuals that had just slightly more

webbing out competed those individuals

that had slightly less webbing.

>> But what would cause them to develop the

webbing in the first place?

>> Well, that's just it is, you know, um

>> is that random mutation? Is that

>> Well, yeah. I would say at some level

these things all have to start there.

But my my overarching point is

selection

not only discovers forms, it discovers

ways to discover forms. So I call these

ways explorer modes. This is a a concept

I've taken a certain amount of crap

over, but I'm quite convinced of it. I

would argue that our consciousness is an

explorer mode, right? Our consciousness

allows us to

come up with ideas that might be useful

and to kind of test them in our heads

and to figure out how we would try them

out in life and then to build a

prototype and see how it works and then

discover how it might be improved. And

you know sooner or later you get you get

from you know the right flyer of 1903

which can stay off the ground for barely

half a minute to not so many years later

a modification of the same aircraft that

can circle the Eiffel Tower. Right? It

it's that process that is the ability to

explore design space in some way that is

not random.

And to the extent that the genome is

capable of storing a large number of

variables and then applying them, what

that means is at the point that you have

the first true bat, right, the first

flyer, that animal has discovered

an adaptive landscape, a series of

opportunities that we represent as peaks

that is unknown,

right? What can you do if you can fly

that you couldn't do when you could only

climb? Well, you can move between

distant trees and collect fruit. You can

catch insects that are flying on the

wing. You can seek out uh mammals and

birds and slit them open and drink their

blood. You can catch fish that come to

the surface and cause ripples. These are

all things that bats do. And the point

is the initial bat presumably didn't do

much of any of that. It did some

probably a generalist something. But

having achieved flight, there's a

question about how evolution can find

all of the opportunities that are now

suddenly available. And the idea that

this happens through occasional random

mutation of a protein coding gene that

alters something important is in my

opinion

ridiculous.

That more likely, vastly more likely is

a system in which parameters like finger

length and the length of each failins in

the finger is stored as a variable

and those variables

get readily modified. In other words,

um, if you, you know, looked at the hand

of every human being, you would see that

there is already a ton of variation in,

you know, the relative lengths of the

different digits and the relative

lengths to each of the knuckles. and

that if those things are reflective of a

particular state stored as essentially

an integer in the genome that all of the

adjacent states are very available

um and therefore

evolution can explore what uh Stuart

Kaufman would call the adjacent

possible. Right? Have you heard that

term?

>> No.

>> Have you had Stuart on? No.

>> So Stuart Kaufman is a uh complex

systems theorist and his uh point, one

of many, is that effectively

the creatures we see exist in a design

space and that selection finds the

things that are similar to what you've

got near enough to be accessed and

advantageous.

Right? So if you have a rodent of one

size and there is you know let's say you

have a rodent that specializes on a

particular seed and it exists in a

habitat where there's another seed

that's similar but much bigger. Well

then you need to access the adjacent

possible in order for a second species

or subspecies of this rodent to evolve

to take advantage of this untapped

resource. So if you think of, you know,

all of the things that you've got and

then all of the things that you might

want that are similar, that's the

adjacent possible. And my point is

variables as one of the primary modes of

information storage in the genome

provides a mechanism for evolution to

explore the adjacent possible

in a radically more effective way than

the story we typically tell about random

mutations to protein coding genes.

Right? There's nothing undarwinian about

this. Darwin didn't know anything about

genes. probably to his advantage in the

long term because if he had understood

genes, he might have made many of the

same mistakes that we made in the middle

of the 20th century in evolution where

we became overly focused on the genes we

understood. But basically everything

that the Darwin said was about a vague

hereditary information and numbers is no

less a candidate for that than triplet

codeons stored. uh that code for amino

acids. So my point is Darwin is

untouched by this. Darwin is still the

guy. He nailed it. And this is just as

Darwinian as protein coding genes. It's

just vastly more powerful with respect

to taking a form that you've already got

and finding a similar form that you

don't yet have. Um now there's lots of

nuances about how this could work.

There's lots of questions I certainly

can't answer. I will say as as I was

mentioning at the top this story seems

to be largely unadressed

in adaptive evolution space. If I come

at it from the evo devo side, I see much

more

uh description of mechanisms that work

like this. But I don't see the

revolution that should happen when

you've come to understand that you have

this very powerful additional

evolutionary mechanism that should be

causing a massive uptick in the power of

what we can address adaptively.

and it does not seem to be there. Now

it, you know, I'm not in a university

anymore. I'm not primarily working as a

biologist, so it's possible I've missed

something, but there's Well, I mean, as

you know, we have massively

dysfunctional institutions

and they

I you know, I've thought my field was

stuck in a ditch since really before I

entered it. You know the last major

progress in my field was 1976

and

>> really

>> that's what I think. Yeah.

>> And what was that?

>> Um the selfish gene

provides us a mechanism. It's basically

a synthesis of what we understand about

adaptive evolution. It provides the

first gateway to understand cultural

evolution in rigorous Darwinian terms. I

don't think that that um that gateway I

don't think we ever went through it. In

fact, when I've talked to Dawkins about

his uh effective discovery, the meme,

he doesn't seem to understand the power

of it. Um he thinks of it as I mean he

says in chapter 11 of of the selfish

gene he says um that the landscape of

memes is like a new primeval soup which

is not what it is. It's actually a

solution that the genes have come up

with for how to evolve things like

humans more rapidly than can be done at

the genetic level. Right? We can evolve

at a cultural level which solves a

problem for the genes that the genes

can't solve directly. And that means

that all of the space of human culture

and the culture of other creatures, but

our culture is vastly uh more uh refined

and powerful and diverse.

But that space is basically a an

enhanced it's it's another enhancement

to the toolkit of Darwinian evolution

which we have unfortunately

often dismissed as non-evolutionary or

as a parallel kind of evolution rather

than as a turbocharged adaptive

evolution that is targeted at the same

objectives as our genes are, which is

what it really turns out to be. So in

any case, that was 1976.

The thing that has been a revolution

since then was Evo Divo, evolution of

development, but it didn't come from the

the Darwinists. It came primarily from

the developmental side. These are people

who were focused on mechanism. And so in

some sense the the story of the failure

of biology to update our evolutionary

model is the result of a historical

accident. Right? So the the first

Darwinists including Darwin himself were

not focused on molecular scale

mechanisms because they couldn't be.

They didn't have any tools to look at

those things. And so they looked at the

creatures and they saw patterns and so

they became very focused on recognizing

the patterns and what they imply about

what must be going on inside. But they

got out of the habit of thinking about

mechanism because the mechanisms weren't

available to them. The developmental

biologists were exactly the inverse.

They didn't really have patience for

evolutionary thinking. They were purely

about mechanism and all kinds of

experiments like you know taking a piece

of one egg and grafting it into another

egg and watching the weird monster that

is created when the egg is getting the

same signal from two different

directions right that kind of thing. Um,

and you know, evo devo is a very good

start on bringing these things together,

but I don't know if it's academic

territoriality or just lack of

imagination seems to be preventing uh

the revolution in our understanding of

the most powerful process that exists

and it's frustrating. So anyway, I hope

um

I hope others will take this to heart.

It could easily be that the larger point

is right that variables in the genome

are very important and that the variable

number tandem repeats are not the way

that they are stored. That would be

interesting. Maybe the variable number

tandem repeats are the way it's stored.

In which case, there's an awful lot to

be learned about how that information is

read. In other words, if once you know

that that's true, if it is, then the

question is, okay, well, how do we look

into a particular genome and see the

mapping of those variables onto the

creature that we see running around in

the forest, right? That that would be an

amazingly powerful mapping to have. Um,

so anyway,

uh I didn't want to leave it as a vague

illusion to a hidden layer. I wanted to

point to a hidden layer that would

explain how this process that we've all

learned about might be much more

powerful than the story we've been told

about it.

I was watching a documentary once on the

BBC uh about the Congo and it's a really

amazing documentary and one of the

things that it points out to is the

rapid development of new abilities that

these animals have that live in the

Congo that used to be on the plains and

as the the rainforest expanded they were

kind of trapped in here. And one of them

they pointed to was dykers. you know

those little small analopes

>> that now have the ability to swim

underwater for as much as a hundred

yards and they eat fish.

>> And they were talking about it like this

is this fantastic development because

they know how long it took for the

grasslands to have been overtaken by the

rainforest and it wasn't that long and

it it didn't seem to account for the

adaptation that they were seeing in

these animals.

This is exactly the thing that bugs me

is imagine what would have happened if

there was not an enhanced evolutionary

toolkit to that creature.

>> It would have gone extinct,

>> right?

>> That's the story again and again, right?

>> Well, it's a story with humans, right?

Inuits. It's a story with people that

live in extremely cold climates, right?

They've developed all these adaptations

to uh be able to survive in this intense

weather where people who live in the

tropics if they you moved them to that

environment they would die. It's a story

with every cate of creatures.

This is a chaotic planet right at levels

that I think maybe we don't even fully

yet appreciate.

The difference between committing to a

particular way of existing that seems

really awesome for some period of time

and then is suddenly impossible and the

ability to leap from one way of being to

another is the key to getting through

time which is what evolution is doing.

Right? I always phrase it as the purpose

that evolution points towards is lodging

your genes as far into the future as you

can get them. And people don't, I think,

fully appreciate when I say that that

it's not just a clever rephrasing of

what might be more standard might be

found in a textbook. The point is

anything that satisfies that objective

is valid.

So for example,

if you have So we have a process, it's

one of my favorites um to think about

which is called adaptive radiation.

Adaptive radiation is where you get some

creature that either solves some problem

or gets to some new place and then

diversifies and we get 50 or 100 or a

thousand

species that are derived from that

initial discovery. Right? So you get

this blooming of forms, right? The first

bird, what was the first bird even

doing? We don't know, right? But what we

do know is that we have 11,000 species

of these things now all doing subtly

different stuff, right?

>> Some of them not even flying,

>> right? Some of them have lost the

ability to fly. So the point is the

discovery of birdness opens up a huge

number of potential discoveries.

Evolution would be a dumb process if it

didn't effectively search that space. if

it randomly waited to find each of those

opportunities. That's so much less

powerful than searching the space. And

then once you get the search of a space,

okay, so you get, you know, a hundred

hits, you get some innovation, it

provides a 100 niches that you could

move into from there. It creates a

hundred species. And it turns out most

of those niches are durable on the scale

of 10,000 years. but not 50,000 years.

So you get a bunch of them going

extinct.

But as long as one of them or two of

them have gotten through that

bottleneck, right? The huge blooming of

branches and then the pruning of

branches,

the ancestor has now gotten to the

future in the form of however many

species made it through that destructive

process. It is selection at a different

scale than we typically think of it. And

so

thinking of evolution as this dynamic

process that is not only searching

design space but learning to enhance its

capacity to search design space in order

to get into the future is the way to

think of it. It's much more powerful

than the clumsy version that we describe

even if we don't yet understand where

that power is lodged. If we were

imaginative and we said, "Okay, what

would I do if I was evolution to enhance

the likelihood of getting to the

future?" Well, then you start finding

these explorer modes. And you know, I I

understand that I will be ridiculed for

saying that because it imposes on

selection a uh directionality that

probably at a technical level we are

right to assume does not exist. But let

me point this out. We often say that

evolution cannot look forward. It can

only see the past. At a technical level,

this is true. On the other hand, we all

agree that evolution built us.

I can see the future, right? I can

understand what is likely to happen. I

can extrapolate and see things that

haven't occurred yet. and I will do

hypothesis testing to see if my

understanding is correct. But the point

is evolution can't see the future, but

it can build creatures that see the

future on its behalf. Isn't that kind of

like it looking into the future?

>> It feels a lot like it is to me.

>> I've always been fascinated by animals

that don't change. Like animals that

have reached some very bizarre apex

predator r like crocodiles for instance.

crocodiles, dragon flies, sharks,

>> horseshoe crabs.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. So,

this is a place where I think um a good

evolutionary course says the right thing

about it. What a good evolutionary

course says about this is

we think of these creatures as

backwards.

They are the opposite. They are so good

that in spite of competition from more

modern forms, they still persist. Right?

If you've watched a dragon fly, it's a

super agile creature, right? It's a

formidable predator. Um, and so anyway,

when you see one of these creatures that

has been very little modified, it's

because it did find a form that's

durable over a very long period of time.

And um in some ways that's the greatest

strategy, right? Having to change in

order to deal with the changes in uh in

the environment is

perilous. Having found something that is

so durable that it consists that it it

persists era after era, epoch after

epoch is um at least a very

comprehensible strategy and um arguably

the better one because anything that has

existed that long.

Maybe we talked in a past podcast about

the the Lindy effect.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah. The the idea that we tend to think

that the longer something's been around

that it's overdue to be destroyed. but

that often the answer is something

that's been around a long time is

actually built to last. And so if it's

been around a long time, you might

expect to see it last a lot longer. Um,

so it's it's that it's the Lindy effect

in in animal or plant form.

>> So it's just essentially evolution

nailed it. They developed an animal

that's so adaptive and and so designed

to succeed in its particular environment

that it doesn't really need to change.

>> Yes. And in fact, you know, we are in

some ways, we haven't been around that

long, but our

it looks like we are a variation on that

theme precisely because we have a

generalist

body plan, right? The physical robot

that is the human being is capable of

doing a tremendous number of things. And

the software program can be essentially

entirely rewritten. Right? The culture

that you inherit can take a person and

it can rewire them for a very different

niche, including the ability to avail

themselves of whatever tools are

necessary to do whatever things that the

body plan doesn't do on its own. Right?

So that's a cool strategy, right? to

have a a generalist robot and a software

program that can be swapped out as as

needed. That evolution can rewrite very

rapidly. That evolution can rewrite on

the basis of not only the conjecture of

an intelligent creature, but the pulled

parallel processing of multiple

individuals of the species. Right? This

is what Heather and I describe in our

book as [snorts] campfire.

Right? The light has faded. It's too

dark for you to be productive at

whatever your niche is. You gather

around the campfire and you talk. You

talk about problems that you've run into

solutions that you're working on. You

pull the information. People have

different histories. They have different

skill sets and they parallel process the

puzzles and they come up with ideas

which you know the most amazing

adaptation of all is the one we're using

right now.

>> Right?

>> The ability for me to put an abstract

idea into your head over open space by

vibrating the air molecules between us.

I mean that is a miracle.

>> Pretty crazy.

>> It's amazing. and you know that we can

prove that we're not fooling ourselves.

I could say something, you know, that

nobody's ever thought of. Um, you know,

like, uh, I don't know,

uh, potato rocket ship, right? And you

could draw on the piece of paper your

interpretation and I could say, "Yeah,

that's the thing I was thinking of,

right? That ability to prove that we are

in fact exchanging abstract ideas across

open air and that that allows multiple

minds that are not physically touching

each other to process together

uh concepts is it's truly stunning and

in conjunction with the generalist robot

that can use tools. It's a it's an

amazingly good strategy.

When [snorts] you talk about humans, one

of the things that fascinates me about

people is the the changes in human

beings because of the environment,

because of uh input, meaning like

certain chemicals were exposed to uh

sedentary lifestyle. There's changes

that are taking place that we can

measure from human beings that lived in

the beginning of the 20th century to

people that live now in the beginning of

the 21st century. you're one of the

things that people are talking about

with a a great concern like Dr. Channis

Swan done a lot of work on this is the

impact of microplastics on our endocrine

system and how it's greatly diminishing

uh males ability to procreate and

females ability to uh bring a baby to

term. So you're getting many more

miscarriages and uh lower testosterone

counts, smaller testicles and penises,

reduced size of the taints, all these

different things that she attributes to

phalates and various uh chemicals that

are endocrine disruptors that are

ubiquitous in our in our world. Um is

this something that you think about? Do

you do you like is this something are we

in the middle of an adaptation or some

sort of a change of the human species?

Um, no.

>> Or is it just being poisoned?

>> We We're being poisoned. And we're being

poisoned in a particular way. I would

say we have effectively

threatened to kill the goose that lays

the golden eggs.

The normal pattern for human beings is

you inherit your ancestors world.

Every so often that's not true. Every so

often a generation finds itself in a

brand new circumstance. You know, you

kayak kayak across some body of water

and you end up in some foreign place in

which the animals and plants aren't the

same and your old way of life isn't

going to work and you have to bootstrap

something new.

It's the same as

it's similar to the first flying

uh mammal is suddenly faced with a whole

set of opportunities that it has to

figure out how to solve. But the point

is every so often a generation gets a

wild curveball and it has to start not

from scratch but close to it.

But in general, okay, that first

generation figures out how we're going

to make a living here. And it passes

that information on to its descendants

who have a lot of room to refine what

their ancestors figured out. And for

some generations, you get this rapid

refinement process. And then eventually

you kind of figure it out. I know how

we're going to live in this valley and

here's how it works. And one generation

passes it on to the next and the valley

doesn't change very much.

>> That process is sustainable. Humans are

excellent at dealing with it, right?

Because we're good at parallel

processing puzzles, right? A population

of people can figure out how to live

here when the way to do it doesn't look

like how we lived there.

However, there is a threshold at which

our amazing ability to adapt culturally

and physiologically

is outstripped. And that is the point at

which technological change is so fast

that you're not even a an adult in the

same environment you grew up in. That's

what we now consistently live in. Right?

The world you and I now live in doesn't

look anything like the world we grew up

in. Right? The number of radical

differences in terms of the chemicals

that we encounter, in terms of the

behavior of other people, in terms of

the information that comes into our

eyes. These things have all been

revolutionized. I've frankly seen

several revolutions. You and I have both

seen several revolutions already. You

know, we had the computer, then we had

the internet, then we had the

smartphone, then we had social media.

Now we're facing AI, right? Each of

these things would take time to

metabolize, to deal with the harms of

them, to learn how to address them in a

wise way. But we never get the chance to

figure that out because the next one is

already upon us. In fact, it's

you ever go body surfing and you get

into a situation where the the waves are

just coming too quick and as soon as you

catch your breath from one, the next one

is on you, right? It's just like that.

You can't you can't do that, right? You

need time to to settle. And our rate of

change is so high. This is what Heather

and I call hyper novelty. Hypern novelty

is the state at which even our amazing

ability to rapidly adapt is incapable of

keeping pace with technological change.

>> That's where we are.

>> Um that really concerns me with humans.

that drop off of testosterone, the

miscarriage rate increasing, like that's

that's really spooky because I don't see

any change in the environment. Like I I

don't see any change in the use of

plastics. I don't see any change in

these endocrine disrupting chemicals

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Well, I agree and I think, you know, we

need to think outside the box with

respect to what kinds of inputs might be

affecting us. I will say in parallel

with what I think is a much more toxic

environment, you know, and

developmentally toxic environment,

um, we have a radical change in the way

human beings are interacting with each

other, right? And it is unclear to me

what how farreaching the consequences of

that might be. But um you know we talked

last time about the impact of the sexual

revolution and of reliable birth control

and uh and abortion

>> on the way males and females interact

with each other. that basically

sex being the ultimate reward, the most

powerful motivator that exists.

When birth control made sex common or

made it possible for sex to be common by

virtue of uh radically reducing the risk

that females face in engaging in sex

with men who won't invest.

It robbed us of

the central organizing principle of

civilization

and the consequences of that central

organizing principle evaporating are

incredibly farreaching. Right? In

effect, we do not know that there is a

way for us to live without that central

organizing principle. We don't know that

it lasts. And we are running that

radical experiment. And then we're going

to augment that radical experiment um

now with AI and presumably

AI powered sex robots and companions and

other things that the mind is not built

to properly understand. Right? So what

effect are all of these things having?

you know, is there a feedback effect

from uh your perception of the sexual

landscape onto the development of your

children? I don't know. It's conceivable

that there is such a thing. Um, but I do

know that if we were wise,

we would

slow the pace of experienced change way

down.

>> But how is that even possible at this

point?

>> I'm not saying it is,

>> right? But I'm saying if we don't, I

think we know that we're doomed. So in

light of that, what would you do if you

knew that down that path was

destruction? You would start thinking

about the question of is there some way

I'm, you know, maybe you can't reign in

the pace of technological change. You

can certainly,

and we should, if we were wise, we would

insulate

young people from exposure,

especially to new stuff, right? There's

a question about what stuff that we

already have, what effect it's having on

them. But the fact that we're just going

to expose them to every new revolution

without figuring out what its comp it

its consequences are is insane, right?

[clears throat]

We need to provide young people with a

chemically andformationally

stable environment where the puzzles are

solvable and they are relevant to the

adult world we expect them to live in,

which is difficult because we don't know

what world they're going to live in. But

not in not immunizing them is a terrible

error, right? It it can't work, right?

The the reason human childhood is the

longest developmental uh childhood in

the animal kingdom by far is that it is

the training for adult life. If the

training ground doesn't match the world

that you're going to be an adult in,

because the world you're going to be an

adult in is something nobody can

predict, it is guaranteed to make you a

fish out of water as an adult. It's

extremely disruptive and

>> and essentially every new groundbreaking

technology, every new breakthrough,

every new paradigm shifting thing that

gets created is a completely new

environment for these children.

>> Completely new

>> and no road map, no manual of how to

navigate it. And then we're seeing all

the psychological harms, increase in

anxiety, self harm, especially amongst

young girls, y

>> suicidal ideiation, actual suicide.

>> Well, I mean,

in other contexts, I have said I

probably said to you, you know, there

are no adults,

>> right? That's one of the shocking

discoveries of becoming uh adult age is

that it's not like there's some set of

adults who knows what to think about

this and how to approach it. One of the

reasons that you would have no adults is

that it's kind of impossible to imagine

where they would come from. Right? An

adult is somebody who has picked up the

wisdom for how to deal with the world

that you live in.

Where would that wisdom have come from

if the world just showed up five minutes

ago? Right? It's in principle impossible

to deal with this level of change. So at

at most what you can do is become you

know very robust.

>> Do you think that this is where like

rights of passage ceremony come from

that there's a thing that differentiates

you between the younger version of

yourself. You've gone through this thing

and so it requires a shift in the way

that you view yourself and the world.

Now you have passed. Now you've gone

through, you know, whatever the ceremony

is, depending upon your culture. Now you

are a man.

>> Yeah. In fact,

>> or a woman.

>> In a hunter gatherers's guide to the

21st century, Heather and I argue that

rights of passage are the place. So

they're are they're artificial in a

sense, right? We dictate that this is

the moment at which you go from being a

boy to being a man who is eligible to

marry or something like that.

>> Yeah. And the [snorts] point is, you

know that that date is coming. You there

is a thing that causes you to have made

that transition, right? Maybe it's a

vision quest of some kind. Maybe it's uh

an animal that you have to hunt and

bring back or something. But the point

is, you grow up with the knowledge that

I am a prototype until that marker. And

after that marker, it's for real. Right?

So you pick up an increasing level of

reality until you hit that agreed upon

boundary at which point everybody is in

a position to hold you responsible for

your behavior and to expect you to have

certain skills on board and the

abandonment of these things. Right? What

we have is such a preposterous

dim shadow of what once was. you know,

okay, you've graduated high school,

>> right?

>> Well, I assure you, graduating high

school means very little in terms of

whether or not you know how to navigate

the adult world.

>> And in fact, it leaves people with more

anxiety because you don't feel like

you're an adult, but yet you're supposed

to be one. I'm 18 now. I [snorts] need

to get a job. And you're out there in

the world and very confused and trying

to figure it out along the way. and also

trying to pretend that you're a man

because maybe that somehow will make you

feel more like one or take on male

behavior, start smoking cigarettes,

whatever it is, like whatever you see

adult people do. Go to the bar, like

whatever it is, and try to emulate what

you think are men or women. Especially,

you know, if you think about what we

actually do to these kids, we put them

in schools where the adults are in some

sense themselves immunized from the

realities of the adult world and they

end up having these ridiculous notions

about, you know, whatever it may be.

It's very easy to pick on, you know,

gender ideology or uh equity or

>> but these are good examples though

because they're preposterous,

>> ridiculous,

>> and they get adapted or adopted rather

by enormous groups of people and then

reinforced violently like like Well, I

always say that the more ridiculous the

idea is, the the more uh aggressively

people fight against the resistance of

this idea.

>> Yeah. It's um they're solving some other

problem. Yes.

>> But at the level of how civilization is

going to run, we are

>> uh signing our own death warrant,

putting our children in environments in

which what they pick up is a

determination to be unrealistic in the

face of evidence that they are wrong.

That's And then another thing that we're

not course correcting,

>> right?

>> Yeah. I mean, people complain about it

when their kids are going to that

school, but more kids are going to that

school and it just keeps happening over

and over again. And then they go into

the workforce and they have these crazy

ideas and they tank companies, you know,

because they try to impose these

ridiculous ideologies in the real world

and actual people that have become

actual adults and are out there working

and and struggling go, "This is [ __ ]

horshit and I'm not going along with

this and [ __ ] your company." And then

all of a sudden that company gets and

then there's some adaptation that way

because people realize like hey we can't

do this anymore. This is bad for our

business. We've got to course correct.

But that seems like it's one of the only

ways that they do is by real world

application and it being soundly

rejected

>> well

>> and financial consequences.

>> The problem is that all those

consequences are way too indirect to

correct the people who are driving the

change.

>> Right. And

>> and the people that aren't connected to

that world at all because their entire

existence is based in this La La Land

where they're being funded by La La

Land. They're teaching La La Land

ideology. They're reinforcing it and

then they're in a position of authority.

So they are the person that these young

people look up to and they're very

articulate and they string words

together well so they look impressive. I

said, "Well, this guy must be right, you

know, and my parents must be really

stupid and they've ruined society and,

you know, we got to give communism a

shot. It just hasn't been done

correctly,

>> right? We just got to go far enough."

Um, well, the problem is the thing that

does turn you into an adult is a world

of consequences.

right now as a child somebody should

prune that world of fatal consequences

or you know ones that would get you

maimed but allowing you to experience

the harm of your wrong understanding of

the world is how you improve your

understanding of the world and so a

we're not even doing that right we've

got this system in which we are allowing

people who know nothing to teach

children the nothing that they know as

if it was a high-minded

um and important and then they are

immunized from consequences by uh what I

think you and I would agree was

initially a well-intentioned attempt to

protect people from bad luck. You know

that uh people who are liberal-minded as

as you and I both are don't want to see

people suffer because of bad luck. But

when you start immunizing people from

the consequences of their bad

decision-making, whether the people

you're immunizing are corporate

executives who have uh gambled badly

with uh the resources of their

corporation or you know children who

make bad decisions and uh it causes them

to be disliked at school. People have to

have those consequences come back to

haunt them so that they will stop making

the same mistakes and get wiser. And any

place that you break that with the

equivalent of a welfare program, you are

guaranteeing that you will end up with

an infantilized adult population.

>> Yeah.

>> Right.

>> That it's it's

horrible reality, you know, because the

compassionate, kind people want a safety

net. You want a social safety net, but

making people rely on that social safety

net and then having generation after

generation relying on that social social

safety net, you stifle all growth and

development and make people dependent.

>> Well, my arg infants.

>> Yeah, you do. Um, my argument would be a

system functions really well when people

are immunized from real bad luck, right?

things that they it's not the

consequence of their bad

decision-making. It's actually, you

know, you happen to get a tumor because

of a genetic vulnerability or an

encounter with some chemical that you

had no ability to know was there. But

that as soon as you start immunizing

people from the downstream effects of

their own bad decisions where they had

better decisions that were available to

them, you just get the evolution of

civilization into a quagmire. Well, this

is my fear, my great fear about the

concept of universal basic income.

>> Yep. That we're going to essentially

make an entire civilization dependent

upon its overlords.

I can't see how it could go well. I

understand.

>> I can't see how it could go well either.

I think if you're a nice person, you're

like, well, all these jobs are going to

be replaced by AI and automation. We

need to find some way to help people and

give them the quality of life that they

they need to succeed. But you're making

them dependent on the state forever,

>> right? And what we really need to do,

and I I do not see any mechanism that is

capable of it, but what we really need

to do is figure out how we want people

to allocate their time, how what

problems we would like them to address

themselves to, right? And then we need

to reward them for success relative to

those problems and allow them to suffer

from the failure to make progress

relative to those problems. Now, I don't

exactly know what those problems are

because civilization is changing so fast

that it's very hard to even define what

it is that will need to be done. But

PE and I think we talked about this last

time, people are not going to be

coherent

absent purpose. They need to have

purpose. And it used to be that biology

itself forced purpose onto you right on

the frontier. The ability to

win a mate to provide enough shelter,

consistent enough food, uh all of the

things necessary for life that that was

a full-time occupation. It was

difficult. Not everybody could pull it

off. And so it created a very

concentrated purpose. you succeeded, if

you managed in this environment to do

all those things and leave some

offspring who were well adjusted to the

situation.

In

our environment, there is nothing like

this. And the

winning a mate has been turned into

chaos. What does it even mean? Are there

mates out there that you would want to

win? Are they interested in reproducing?

Are they interested in raising children?

Are they going to, you know, farm that

job out to some crazy person who uh

believes you can switch gender by just

saying you've done it, right? So the

purpose has become incoherent.

The subordinate purposes which came

later, right? The ability to invest in a

career to climb some corporate ladder.

It doesn't sound very appealing to me,

but at least I understand what it is,

right? At least, you know, okay, there's

a game. The company wants certain things

accomplished. To the extent that you

accomplish them better than your

competitors, you rise farther. It leaves

you an income that you can spend in

whatever way you want, that will impress

a mate, right? It's at least

understandable.

The puzzle that we have given people now

is

completely incoherent and universal

basic income

I presume will keep people from starving

but it ain't nearly good enough. People

have to know what they're supposed to be

doing because not doing it causes them

to suffer and succeeding at it causes

them to feel good. they need at least

that much direction.

>> But is it possible that we can move past

the idea that

providing people or a person being able

to provide themselves with shelter and

food, which is essentially what we're

saying with universal basic income,

we're saying you will have enough money

to have shelter, you will have enough

money to have food, and you could

acquire basic goods. That this is not

really what we should be working towards

in life anymore. and that it's possible

to find some other purpose, goal, or

task that would replace those things.

And money would seem would would just be

what's it would just be a thing that

you're using to acquire the means to

survive. And now you pursue this other

thing. Maybe not necessarily for a

monetary reason, not not necessarily to

acquire wealth, but instead to educate

yourself in instead, you know, to as a a

process of human development, a skill

that you're learning, um, a thing that

you're competing in, something.

>> Sure. Except except for one thing.

What has to be true at the end of that

substitute purpose is some undeniably

valuable reward. Right.

>> Cuz that's the motivating factor.

>> That's the thing that will cause you to

do it.

>> Right.

>> Right. So not starving is a great

motivation. Right.

>> Right.

Being able to buy stuff is a decent

enough motivation to the extent that

there is stuff that's desirable that's

out of reach unless you get enough

wealth. That's a decent enough

motivation. the

nothing I think nothing is going to

substitute for the difficulty of

um well for males the difficulty of

winning

uh the ability to have a

sexual relationship with a desirable

female. Right? We now have all sorts of

things that cause people not to want to

pursue that. Um there are things, you

know,

obviously there's porn, there's going to

be sex robots. Um so that

>> prostitution,

>> prostitution, right? And you know, part

of me is wondering why women are not up

in arms

over the fact that they are being

competed with with ever more

sophisticated

technology. Um I'm I'm confused by why

that is not an affront.

>> I think some women are there. They're

definitely um at arms uh about porn and

and they think that not only are they

competing with this, but it's changing

young men's view of sex.

>> Oh, I think it absolutely is. In fact, I

think, you know,

>> it's much more rejected amongst women.

>> That is not what I'm hearing really from

my sons. Um

>> I'm hearing Oh, okay.

>> What are you hearing? that women are uh

increasingly involved with porn. That

it's really Yes. And which surprised

>> involved in the creation or the viewing?

>> Watching it. God, that's that was never

the case when I was young.

>> Oh, of course not. No, I think it I

think it's not.

>> If you went over a girl's house and she

had a collection of porn, that that was

a [ __ ] warning signal.

>> Huge red flag,

>> right? Well, I think, you know, I don't

there are plenty of voices out there

that are um focusing on the defects of

um modern women. I don't want to add to

that chorus, but I do think there is

something shocking about

the degree to which young women seem to

have signed up for the idea that

being liberated

that the measure of whether or not they

have been liberated is how much they are

behaving like men at their worst.

>> Right? Like the the boss lady is a lady

that behaves like a man at work. behaves

like a man at work. Um, treating sex

very casually is not a normal thing for

females to do. And

>> Right. And it's in a lot of films, it's

shown as a sign of character for the

woman.

>> Exactly.

>> The woman's just a boss [ __ ] and she

doesn't give a [ __ ] and she kicks these

men to the curb and and they're

distraught and they're like emotionally

wrecked and she's just back to business.

Get to work.

>> Yeah. Exactly.

>> Weird.

>> The whole thing is weird

>> cuz it's so unattractive, too. It's

really unattractive.

>> Yeah. It's odd. I mean, it's odd to even

say that it's unattractive, but look, I

find it unattractive in men.

>> Yeah. Well,

>> I mean, if I was a woman and a guy that

was just wholly desiring, conquering,

and moving ahead and and and didn't give

a [ __ ] if uh he's like, "Fuck off.

Everybody eat shit." Like, no compassion

for other people, just only focused on

success and winning, winning, winning

winning. It's Gordon Gecko, you know?

It's like the most unattractive

characters in films. The greedy

billionaire character that doesn't give

a [ __ ] about the consequences of his

actions and what happens to the world,

>> right? It it makes no sense. And I think

[snorts] men and women are

obviously

substantially different.

I

>> That's a controversial statement.

>> It [laughter] really shouldn't be. It

really shouldn't be. But I will just say

I have puzzled over the fact that our

culture does not have a profound

relationship with the

uh symmetry represented by a yinyang

symbol.

>> The yin-yang symbol is profound as far

as I'm concerned because it describes a

perfect symmetry that is not

superficially symmetrical. Right? It's a

complimentarity

that

is I think it's a very proper

description of what you're actually

searching for in a in a mate in a

marriage, right? You're looking you're

not looking for somebody to be the same

as you. You are looking for somebody to

be as perfectly complimentary with what

you are as is possible in in essentially

any every regard. And

what we are getting instead is this sort

of mindnumbing belief that you know

what's good for the goose is good for

the gander which it it as I keep saying

it has robbed us of all coherence and I

think it also

um you know I've started paying

attention to a bunch of of these male

accounts that are fed up with females.

people that I consider insightful but

who are not in any way where I am with

respect [clears throat] to this topic,

you know. So, people I don't know, do

you know the account Homath?

>> Homath.

>> Homath. [laughter]

Well, Homemath is pretty darn funny.

He's very insightful about a lot of

things that have gone wrong, but he's

also

um

it's tragic. He's just bitter about the

state of modern women and has given up

on finding anyone because he thinks he's

discovered that it's impossible. Um,

likewise,

>> that's ridiculous.

>> Well, it depends. I mean, I think you

and I are in the fortunate position of

being happily married to wonderful

people. And I will tell you that um

having two sons and looking at the world

that they are supposed to be finding a

mate in,

it's not obvious how this is supposed to

work.

>> It wasn't obvious when I was young

either, but you just got to pick wisely.

And you also have to find people. You

have to you have to find them the type

of people that you're actually

interested.

>> Yeah. But imagine imagine the following

thing,

>> right? Imagine that. Um,

first of all, who you are as a sexual

being is the result naturally of your

exposure, right? You come to understand

what sex is and how you're supposed to

behave from stories. Uh, in ancient

cultures, you would observe a certain

amount because perfect privacy wasn't a

thing.

that has all now been disrupted by porn.

Right? So people get developmental

experiences of sex from this commodity

which is not accurate. It is not a

description of the way people actually

interact, right? It's meant to captivate

you and the different pornographers are

in competition with each other. So

they're providing you an increasingly

extreme view of sex in order to get your

attention.

>> It's almost like a superhero movie.

>> Yeah. It's

>> like it doesn't exist in the real world.