#2427 - Bret Weinstein

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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

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The Joe Rogan Experience.

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Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

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What's happening, Matt?

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Hey, good to be back.

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Good to see you.

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So the reason why we had such a quick turnaround is because the last episode,

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one of the main

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reasons why you wanted to come on in the first place is you wanted to further

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discuss some

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discoveries about evolution.

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Yes, specifically, I have alluded in a number of different places, including

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here, to there

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being another level to Darwinian evolution that does a lot of the heavy lifting

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that we

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require in order to explain the diversity of forms that we see in biology.

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But I haven't been specific on what I believe that layer is.

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And I felt like it was time.

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I think, for one thing, the advances in AI mean that such things are going to

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emerge naturally.

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And I wanted to put it on the table before it simply gets discovered as a

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matter of computing

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horsepower.

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And we were just rambling about so many different things that we never got to

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it last time.

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So I said, all right, let's do another quick turnaround, come back.

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Right.

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All right.

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So let's talk biology.

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And let me just say, you know, I know it's not everybody's bag, but I do think

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just about

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everybody has at some point listened to the story that we tell about adaptive

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evolution

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evolution and wondered if it's really powerful enough to explain all of the

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creatures that

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we all know and love.

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Right.

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So the classic story is that you have a genome, that it contains a great many

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genes.

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A gene is a sequence in DNA that results in proteins being produced.

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The DNA describes exactly the sequence of amino acids in a protein.

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And a protein would typically be one of two things.

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It would either be an enzyme, which is a little bit misleading as a term.

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But an enzyme, well, an enzyme isn't misleading, but an enzyme is a catalyst.

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Catalyst is misleading.

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It's really a machine that puts other chemicals together.

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So a lot of the genes in the genome are these little molecular machines that

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assemble molecules.

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And the other thing that proteins are likely to be are structural.

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So something like collagen proteins can make a matrix that allows you to sort

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of build a

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sculpture biologically.

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And what we say is that the amino acid sequence is specified by the genome in

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three-letter sequences,

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right, codons.

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Each three letters specifies a particular amino acid that gets tacked on.

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You get a sequence of amino acids that then collapse into whatever they're

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going to be,

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whether it's an enzyme or a structure based on little electromagnetic affinities

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that

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they have, little side chains that have a positive or a negative charge that

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attract each other.

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So basically these machines assemble themselves by folding in very complex ways

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that then causes them to interact with the molecules around them in very

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specific ways.

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Ways that greatly reduce the energy necessary and make the reactions much more

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likely to happen.

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That's why we call it a catalyst.

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So we say the way evolution works is random changes happen to the DNA because

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DNA is imperfectly copied or is impacted by radiation,

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which will eliminate a letter in the DNA.

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And then that letter will get replaced by a different letter there are only

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four choices.

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But some fraction of the time you get a three-letter combination that specifies

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a new amino acid almost all of the time.

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That will make the little molecular machine worse or break it all together.

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Occasionally, it will leave the machine functional in a way that's somewhat

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better than the previous one.

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And then evolution will collect all of those advances.

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And that's how evolution works.

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That's the story we typically tell.

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And in fact, that's the story that is encoded in what's called the central dogma

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of molecular biology.

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Now, the problem, most people will have thought about that and they will have

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heard, okay, random mutations that change this code in ways that alter proteins.

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That doesn't sound, that sounds like a very haphazard process and a very

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difficult way to get from one form of animal or plant or fungus to another.

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So if you've had that thought, that just doesn't seem powerful enough.

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And then biologists have said, well, you're not realizing how much time elapses

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that allows these very occasional positive changes to accumulate.

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And that's true.

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If that's a thought you've had, this process isn't powerful enough to explain

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the creatures I'm aware of,

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then what I'm going to tell you is a way in which that process is not the only

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process.

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And by adding a different process, very much a Darwinian one,

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we can see that the power to create all of the creatures that we see is much

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greater than the story that we've been told.

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Okay.

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So I'm going to put a hypothesis on the table about what enhances this.

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And essentially what I'm arguing is if you sat down to a computer game, right,

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something very realistic,

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and somebody says, well, that's all binary.

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That's true.

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It's all binary.

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But what they're not telling you is that there's an intervening layer that

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greatly increases the power to use binary to make something like a computer

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game, right?

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So there are multiple different levels inside your computer.

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One of them is that your computer can be programmed in a language that is much

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closer to English,

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and then a compiler can take what you've written that a computer can't

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understand and turn it into a computer understandable code.

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And so the ability to make powerful programs depends on our ability not to have

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to program our computers in binary,

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but to be able to program them in C++ or whatever.

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That's the kind of thing I'm pointing to is a mechanism that enhances the power

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of evolution to do the stuff that we know evolution accomplishes.

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Okay.

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So here's what I think is the missing layer.

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And I will say I've done a bunch of research to figure out how much of this is

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understood,

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and I find a very confusing picture.

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It actually depends which field I come at it from to see what the blind spots

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are.

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But I'm going to leave that primarily for another time.

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Let's just say the two fields in question are my field, evolutionary biology,

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and an interdisciplinary science called evo-devo.

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Okay.

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Evo-devo is the evolution of development.

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And evo-devo is a much newer, in some ways, a more vibrant field.

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I would argue my field is stuck.

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Evo-devo has been making progress from the developmental side on a number of

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different questions.

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Okay.

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So now let's talk about adaptive evolution and what adaptive evolutionists seem

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to be missing that I think does a bunch of the heavy lifting in terms of

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explaining creatures.

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So let me just start by saying the thing I said at the beginning about protein

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coding genes being altered by random mutation resulting in changes,

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I'm not arguing that that is in any way a false story.

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It explains a great many things.

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My point is that what it primarily explains are things at nanoscale, right?

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It can explain the difference in a pigment molecule very easily, and we know

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that it does.

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It can explain things somewhat larger than that, like the very special

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structure.

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When you're a kid, do you ever play with the feathers of a bird?

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You pull them apart, and then they zip back together, right?

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Those kinds of things can be readily explained by the mechanism as we present

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it.

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What I'm going to argue is difficult to explain is the change from one macroscopic

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form to another.

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So, for example, the wing of a bat.

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The wing of a bat evolved from the foot of a terrestrial or arboreal, meaning

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tree-dwelling, mammal like a shrew.

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So I sent Jamie a picture of a shrew's foot.

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Maybe we should just put it up.

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So what we'll look at is the foot of a shrew, and it won't surprise you at all.

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It looks exactly as you would expect.

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It's got, you know, digits, and it looks like every other mammal's foot.

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So here we have an example of it.

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Okay.

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Now let's take a look at the wing of a bat.

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So here we have the wing of a bat.

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Now that wing is a highly modified front foot.

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The ribs that hold the membrane, what we call the patagia, apart are highly

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elongated fingers, right?

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So what you're seeing are the phalanges of that little shrew's foot, elongated,

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very much so.

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Now what the Evo Devo folks will tell you, and they are right about this, is

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that the difference between that bat's wing and its fingers and that shrew's

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foot and its toes is not a molecular difference.

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There may be molecular differences between the foot and the wing, but you could

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build that wing and that foot out of the very same molecules.

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What you're doing is distributing them differently.

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You have different amounts of molecules distributed in different ways to make

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these elaborate structures from the primitive structures.

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You're with me so far?

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Yep.

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Okay.

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So what I realized more than 25 years ago, many people who've heard you and me

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talk before will have heard us talk about my work on telomeres.

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So telomeres, you'll remember, are structures at the end of every chromosome

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that are not genes.

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They are repetitive sequences.

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They're written in DNA, but it's basically just a repeated series of letters

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again and again and again.

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And the telomere, basically the number of repeats that are there, dictates how

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many times a cell line can duplicate.

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It loses repeats each time it duplicates.

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And when it gets down to a critically low number, it stops reproducing.

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Now, we've talked before about why that system exists.

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The short version is in creatures like us, it prevents cancers from happening.

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Because if a cell line runs away and just starts reproducing, it runs into this

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limit, the Hayflick limit, and stops reproducing.

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So it prevents cancer.

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But it limits the amount of repair that we can do in a lifetime.

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So it causes us to senesce, to age and grow feeble as we do so.

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But what it said to me when I was doing that work was that there is a kind of

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information that can be stored in genomes, in DNA, that is not protein-oriented.

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It's not what we would call allelic.

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It's not written in three-letter codons.

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It's actually a number stored the same way you would store a variable in a

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computer program, right?

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The telomere, the length of the telomere, is a count of how many times a cell

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line is allowed to divide over a lifetime.

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It's a number.

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And what occurred to me all those years ago was that the ability to store a

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number in the genome is fantastically powerful.

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What it means, if you could store a lot of numbers in the genome, is that you

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could describe creatures by allotting something,

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either a quantity of material or an amount of time in development,

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that you could specify things in the language of numbers that you can't specify

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in the language of amino acids.

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So, the hypothesis that I'm putting on the table is that the evolutionary

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process has built a system

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in which variables, in which integers are stored in DNA,

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and those integers dictate phenomena like developmental timing,

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turning on and off something like the growth of one of those phalanx,

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the phalanges in the fingers,

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if you could radically increase the number that dictated the length of one of

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those bones,

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then selection would effectively be in a position to play with adjacent forms.

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So, am I confusing you, or is this making sense?

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No, it's making sense.

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Okay, so the question is, all right, the telomere is a special case.

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The telomere exists at the end of a chromosome,

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and it can only exist at the end of a chromosome because of the way it

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functions.

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So, a telomere is not actually just a string, it's actually a loop,

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and the telomere loops back, and at the very tip,

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there's a little section where the DNA is not double-stranded, it's single-stranded,

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and that single-strand inserts between two other strands of DNA.

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So, if you loop the DNA at the end of the chromosome back, it's called a D-loop,

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and then you get this one little single-stranded DNA that inserts between a

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double-stranded

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and makes a very tiny triple-stranded, like, cap, so that it holds the loop in

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place.

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You can't do that in the middle of a chromosome,

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so it's not like there are telomeres all over the place.

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But what there are are a bunch of sequences that were traditionally dismissed

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as junk DNA

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that have been used as a molecular marker in biology for decades.

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We use something called microsatellites, right?

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So, a microsatellite is a repetitive sequence in DNA that does not code for a

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protein.

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It's just like a telomere in that way.

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And they vary in length.

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They vary in length a lot,

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so that you may have a species in which the genome is very homogeneous,

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but between populations, there will have been change in the length of these

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microsatellites,

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changes that, as far as we know, don't make any difference.

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But if you're a biologist in the field,

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and you want to know if the trees in this valley are more closely related to

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the trees in Valley A or Valley B,

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you can look at a particular microsatellite,

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and you can say these trees have a microsatellite at this location

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that is more similar in length to population A than to population B.

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Thus, with some confidence, we think it's more close.

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It evolved from population A, something like that.

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So, we use them as a tool for assessing things like relatedness.

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But we don't typically think of them as a storage modality for a kind of

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information that might be useful.

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So, the hypothesis that I'm putting on the table,

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and by the way, these things are extremely common in the genome.

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There are many more variable number tandem repeats in the genome than there are

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genes, right?

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And my point is, I don't know whether evolution uses them as a place to store

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variables

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that then become important in describing creatures,

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but evolution is a very clever process.

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And the ability to store a variable, I feel highly confident that there will be

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many variables stored in many different ways,

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that there are ways in which you can store a variable in triplet codon language,

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but they're clumsy, they're crude.

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So, you can have things like a dosage compensation.

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You can have a gene that's repeated multiple times,

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and the more copies you have, the larger dose of the product that you get,

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right?

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So, if you have three copies of alcohol dehydrogenase,

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you'll have more alcohol tolerance than two copies, something like that.

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So, that demonstrates a way in triplet codon language that you can store a

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variable.

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But what I'm arguing is that there's, at least in principle,

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the possibility for a vast library of variables that have developmental

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implications for the way creatures look

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that allows you to go, I mean, imagine for a second,

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the most recent common ancestor of all bats, okay?

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Most recent common ancestor of all bats is an animal that has gone from no

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ability to fly

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to the ability to fly.

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As soon as you have the ability to fly, the number of things that you could do,

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the number of niches that are available, is very large.

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Can I pause right there and ask a question?

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Sure.

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So, here's the real question, specifically in regards to flying.

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Yep.

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How does an animal go from being a shrew or some other rodent-type creature

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to something that eventually can fly and what are the steps along the way?

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And how would that even facilitate itself?

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Like, how would you get an animal that's completely stuck on the ground

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and can only hop a little bit to something that can literally traverse 3D space?

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This is why I love you, Joe.

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I mean, it's one of the reasons.

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This is a question that has perplexed biologists.

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We have done a lot of work.

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We know a lot.

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It's one of the most fantastic abilities of all the animals.

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Right.

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How surprising is it?

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That's the question.

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Is it so surprising that it's actually impossible?

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And I think the answer is just simply no.

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It's quite possible.

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

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Well, no.

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I mean, you know, let's steel man the opposing position.

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Intelligent design position?

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There's certainly a lot of people who would argue

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that actually know there are gaps you can't jump.

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We should explain that as well.

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This is one of the reasons why this argument has come up,

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because intelligent design asserts that random mutation

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and natural selection does not account for the vast variety of species,

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and it could not account for a rodent or a shrew,

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which is believed to be our common ancestor,

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eventually becoming a human being.

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Let's just say I have, you know,

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initially I thought that all of the intelligent design folks

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were anti-scientific and really basically just religious people

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wielding sophistry.

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I now know several of them in person and quite like them,

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and I quite like them scientifically.

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I think they actually have done an excellent job

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of pointing out the folly in evolutionary biology.

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And in part, what I'm saying is I appreciate their pointing out

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that the mechanism that we teach is not powerful enough

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to do what we claim it does.

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I have the same suspicion.

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My argument is there is a mechanism that is powerful enough,

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and we haven't been looking at it because we've been telling the story

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that we've got it nailed already, and I just don't think we do.

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So let's go to your question about how you get from a creature that can't fly

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at all

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to a creature that does fly.

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And now my feeling is actually this one is pretty easy.

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And I'm not saying that we know how it did happen in the case of a bat.

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We are hobbled in the case of bats by two things.

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One, the fact that bats are primarily tropical.

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The bulk of the species are tropical.

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And the other is that the majority of bats are small with spindly limbs.

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What that means is that they don't fossilize well.

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Tropics are not a good place for fossilization,

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and bats are not a good candidate for fossilization.

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And so unfortunately, the fossil record doesn't tell us a clear story

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the way it does the bird story is getting ever clearer.

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We've got good bird fossils in a way that we didn't when you and I were young.

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But in the case of a bat, I would say the way to think of it is this.

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Have you seen flying squirrels?

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Yes.

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Okay.

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You've seen them fly?

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Mm-hmm.

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Not a person, but videos.

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Oh, okay.

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I have actually twice seen it.

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Yeah?

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The funny thing is they're not uncommon, but they are very uncommon to see.

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And the reason they are uncommon to see is that they're nocturnal,

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and they are so damn silent.

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All right?

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So the two times I've seen it was when they got into an argument with each

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other.

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Okay?

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And they started chattering, and I was like, huh, what is this?

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And okay, lo and behold, it's flying squirrels,

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and they're moving through, you know, a patch of forest.

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And it's the most amazing thing, right?

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These things, you know, technically, they're not flying.

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They're purely gliding.

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I would argue that that's actually not a really good distinction

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because at some level what they're doing is powering flight by climbing trees.

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So they climb a tree, you know, they've got potential energy,

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and then they glide to the next tree.

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They'll go from the end of a branch,

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and they will glide much farther than you would think is possible, right?

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It's really like it challenges you.

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Am I really seeing what I'm seeing?

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It's hard to believe they can do it.

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And then they land on the trunk of the tree.

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That's why they're so silent, right?

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They land on the trunk so it doesn't make a big noise as they hit some branch,

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and the leaves rustle and all of that.

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But anyway, if you've seen these creatures do it,

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then you can imagine a pretty clear story, right?

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Imagine a squirrel that doesn't glide, a regular garden variety squirrel.

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Well, that squirrel certainly faces gaps between trees that push it to its

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limit,

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and then there's gaps that are just a little beyond its limit.

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And you could imagine lots of scenarios in which a predator is chasing a

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squirrel,

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and it's got it out onto the end of a branch, and the squirrel has to leap,

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and so it's got to be pretty durable in case it can't make it to the next tree.

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They are.

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But any squirrel that had just a little advantage in getting to that next tree

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would outcompete ones that got consumed or died

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because they, you know, hit the ground too hard

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or fell in front of a predator that took advantage of it or something like that.

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So there is an advantage that comes from even a tiny little increase

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in the distance you can jump.

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So that gets you pretty clearly from no ability to glide at all,

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ability to jump as is,

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to the ability to glide a little,

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to the ability to glide a lot,

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to the ability to glide the way modern flying squirrels do,

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which is, like, so impressive.

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Right?

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But it's still not, it's not flapping flight.

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It's not powered.

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So you can imagine a story in which the shrew ancestor climbed things

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and had the same situation.

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And maybe it starts out, in fact, it probably does start out

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with maybe a little webbing between the fingers

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that gives it just a little extra lift.

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And you could imagine, once you get onto that little foothill,

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a little lift, well, a little more lift would be good.

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So those individuals that had just slightly more webbing

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out-competed those individuals that had slightly less webbing.

26:52

But what would cause them to develop the webbing in the first place?

26:55

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

26:57

Is that random mutation?

27:00

Is that...

27:02

Well, yeah, I would say at some level

27:04

these things all have to start there.

27:07

But my overarching point is

27:11

selection not only discovers forms,

27:18

it discovers ways to discover forms.

27:21

So I call these ways explorer modes.

27:24

This is a concept I've taken a certain amount of crap over,

27:29

but I'm quite convinced of it.

27:31

I would argue that our consciousness is an explorer mode, right?

27:35

Our consciousness allows us to come up with ideas

27:40

that might be useful and to kind of test them in our heads

27:43

and to figure out how we would pry them out in life

27:47

and then to build a prototype and see how it works

27:49

and then discover how it might be improved.

27:52

And, you know, sooner or later you get,

27:55

you get from, you know, the right flyer of 1903,

27:58

which can stay off the ground for barely half a minute

28:00

to not so many years later,

28:03

a modification of the same aircraft

28:05

that can circle the Eiffel Tower, right?

28:08

It's that process.

28:10

That is the ability to explore design space

28:13

in some way that is not random.

28:16

And to the extent that the genome is capable of storing

28:20

a large number of variables and then applying them,

28:24

what that means is at the point that you have

28:27

the first true bat, right, the first flyer,

28:31

that animal has discovered an adaptive landscape,

28:37

a series of opportunities that we represent as peaks

28:40

that is unknown, right?

28:43

What can you do if you can fly that you couldn't do

28:46

when you could only climb?

28:47

Well, you can move between distant trees and collect fruit.

28:52

You can catch insects that are flying on the wing.

28:56

You can seek out mammals and birds

29:00

and slit them open and drink their blood.

29:03

You can catch fish that come to the surface and cause ripples.

29:08

These are all things that bats do.

29:10

And the point is the initial bat

29:12

presumably didn't do much of any of that.

29:14

It did some, probably a generalist something.

29:17

But having achieved flight,

29:20

there's a question about how evolution can find

29:24

all of the opportunities that are now suddenly available.

29:27

And the idea that this happens through occasional random mutation

29:33

of a protein-coding gene that alters something important

29:36

is, in my opinion, ridiculous.

29:40

That more likely, vastly more likely,

29:44

is a system in which parameters like finger length

29:50

and the length of each phalanx in the finger

29:53

is stored as a variable.

29:55

And those variables get readily modified.

30:01

In other words,

30:02

if you looked at the hand of every human being,

30:07

you would see that there's already a ton of variation

30:11

in the relative lengths of the different digits

30:15

and the relative lengths to each of the knuckles.

30:18

And that if those things are reflective

30:20

of a particular state stored as essentially an integer

30:25

in the genome,

30:27

that all of the adjacent states are very available.

30:32

And therefore, evolution can explore

30:38

what Stuart Kaufman would call the adjacent possible.

30:43

Right?

30:44

Have you heard that term?

30:45

Have you had Stuart on?

30:47

No.

30:47

So Stuart Kaufman is a complex systems theorist

30:52

and his point, one of many,

30:55

is that effectively the creatures we see

31:01

exist in a design space

31:04

and that selection finds the things

31:08

that are similar to what you've got

31:10

near enough to be accessed

31:12

and advantageous.

31:14

Right?

31:16

So if you have a rodent of one size

31:19

and there is, you know,

31:22

let's say you have a rodent

31:23

that specializes on a particular seed

31:26

and it exists in a habitat

31:29

where there's another seed

31:30

that's similar but much bigger,

31:33

well then,

31:34

you need to access the adjacent possible

31:37

in order for a second species

31:39

or subspecies of this rodent

31:41

to evolve,

31:42

to take advantage of this untapped resource.

31:45

So if you think of, you know,

31:47

all of the things that you've got

31:49

and then all of the things

31:50

that you might want that are similar,

31:52

that's the adjacent possible.

31:54

And my point is

31:56

variables as one of the primary modes

32:01

of information storage in the genome

32:03

provides a mechanism for evolution

32:06

to explore the adjacent possible

32:09

in a radically more effective way

32:13

than the story we typically tell

32:16

about random mutations

32:17

to protein coding genes.

32:18

Right?

32:19

There's nothing un-Darwinian about this.

32:22

Darwin didn't know anything about genes,

32:24

probably to his advantage in the long term,

32:27

because if he had understood genes,

32:28

he might have made many of the same mistakes

32:30

that we made in the middle of the 20th century

32:33

in evolution

32:34

where we became overly focused

32:35

on the genes we understood.

32:37

But basically,

32:39

everything that Darwin said

32:41

was about a vague hereditary information

32:45

and numbers is no less a candidate for that

32:50

than triplet codons stored

32:52

that code for amino acids.

32:55

So my point is

32:56

Darwin is untouched by this.

32:59

Darwin is still the guy.

33:01

He nailed it.

33:02

And this is just as Darwinian

33:04

as protein coding genes.

33:06

It's just vastly more powerful

33:09

with respect to taking a form

33:11

that you've already got

33:11

and finding a similar form

33:13

that you don't yet have.

33:14

Now, there's lots of nuances

33:16

about how this could work.

33:17

There's lots of questions

33:18

I certainly can't answer.

33:20

I will say,

33:21

as I was mentioning at the top,

33:23

this story seems to be

33:25

largely unaddressed

33:27

in adaptive evolution space.

33:30

If I come at it

33:31

from the evo-devo side,

33:33

I see much more

33:36

description of mechanisms

33:39

that work like this.

33:40

But I don't see

33:42

the revolution that should happen

33:44

when you've come to understand

33:47

that you have this very powerful

33:49

additional evolutionary mechanism.

33:52

That should be causing

33:54

a massive uptick

33:55

in the power

33:56

of what we can address adaptively.

33:58

And it does not seem to be there.

34:02

Now, you know,

34:03

I'm not in a university anymore.

34:05

I'm not primarily working

34:06

as a biologist.

34:07

So it's possible

34:08

I've missed something.

34:09

But there's,

34:10

well, I mean, as you know,

34:12

we have massively

34:14

dysfunctional institutions.

34:17

And they,

34:18

I, you know,

34:21

I've thought my field

34:22

was stuck in a ditch

34:23

since really before I entered it.

34:25

You know,

34:25

the last major progress

34:27

in my field

34:27

was 1976.

34:29

And...

34:31

Really?

34:31

That's what I think.

34:32

Yeah.

34:33

And what was that?

34:35

The selfish gene

34:36

provides us a mechanism.

34:40

It's basically a synthesis

34:42

of what we understand

34:43

about adaptive evolution.

34:44

It provides the first gateway

34:48

to understand cultural evolution

34:51

in rigorous Darwinian terms.

34:53

I don't think that that gateway,

34:57

I don't think we ever

34:58

went through it.

34:59

In fact,

35:00

when I've talked to Dawkins

35:01

about his effective discovery,

35:05

the meme,

35:06

he doesn't seem to understand

35:08

the power of it.

35:09

He thinks of it as,

35:11

I mean,

35:12

he says in chapter 11

35:14

of The Selfish Gene,

35:15

he says that the landscape of memes

35:19

is like a new primeval soup,

35:22

which is not what it is.

35:24

It's actually a solution

35:26

that the genes have come up with

35:28

for how to evolve

35:30

things like humans

35:31

more rapidly

35:33

than can be done

35:34

at the genetic level.

35:35

We can evolve

35:36

at a cultural level

35:37

which solves a problem

35:38

for the genes

35:38

that the genes

35:39

can't solve directly.

35:40

And that means

35:41

that all of the space

35:44

of human culture

35:45

and the culture

35:46

of other creatures,

35:47

but our culture

35:47

is vastly more refined

35:51

and powerful

35:52

and diverse.

35:53

But that space

35:55

is basically

35:57

an enhanced,

35:59

it's another enhancement

36:01

to the toolkit

36:01

of Darwinian evolution,

36:04

which we have

36:06

unfortunately

36:06

often dismissed

36:08

as non-evolutionary

36:11

or as a parallel

36:13

kind of evolution

36:14

rather than as

36:15

as a turbo-charged

36:18

adaptive evolution

36:19

that is targeted

36:21

at the same objectives

36:23

as our genes are,

36:25

which is what it really

36:26

turns out to be.

36:26

So in any case,

36:28

that was 1976.

36:29

The thing that has been

36:34

a revolution since then

36:36

was Evo Devo,

36:38

evolution of development.

36:39

But it didn't come

36:41

from the Darwinists.

36:42

It came primarily

36:43

from the developmental side.

36:44

These are people

36:45

who were focused

36:47

on mechanism.

36:48

And so in some sense,

36:50

the story

36:51

of the failure

36:52

of biology

36:53

to update

36:56

our evolutionary model

36:57

is the result

36:59

of a historical accident.

37:01

So the first Darwinists,

37:05

including Darwin himself,

37:06

were not focused

37:08

on molecular scale mechanisms

37:10

because they couldn't be.

37:12

They didn't have any tools

37:13

to look at those things.

37:14

And so they looked

37:15

at the creatures

37:16

and they saw patterns.

37:19

And so they became

37:20

very focused

37:21

on recognizing

37:21

the patterns

37:22

and what they imply

37:23

about what must be

37:24

going on inside.

37:25

But they got out

37:27

of the habit

37:27

of thinking about mechanism

37:28

because the mechanisms

37:29

weren't available to them.

37:32

The developmental biologists

37:33

were exactly the inverse.

37:34

They didn't really have patience

37:36

for evolutionary thinking.

37:38

They were purely

37:39

about mechanism

37:40

and all kinds

37:42

of experiments

37:42

like, you know,

37:44

taking a piece

37:45

of one egg

37:46

and grafting it

37:47

into another egg

37:48

and watching

37:49

the weird monster

37:49

that is created

37:50

when the egg

37:52

is getting the same signal

37:53

from two different directions,

37:54

right,

37:55

that kind of thing.

37:56

And, you know,

37:58

evo-devo

37:59

is a very good start

38:01

on bringing

38:02

these things together,

38:03

but I don't know

38:04

if it's academic

38:05

territoriality

38:06

or just lack

38:06

of imagination

38:07

seems to be preventing

38:09

the revolution

38:12

in our understanding

38:13

of the most

38:14

powerful process

38:16

that exists.

38:17

And it's frustrating.

38:20

So anyway,

38:21

I hope

38:22

others will

38:25

take this to heart.

38:27

It could easily

38:28

be that the

38:29

larger point

38:30

is right,

38:31

that variables

38:32

in the genome

38:32

are very important

38:33

and that the

38:35

variable number

38:36

tandem repeats

38:36

are not the way

38:37

that they are stored.

38:38

That would be interesting.

38:39

Maybe the variable

38:40

number tandem repeats

38:41

are the way it's stored,

38:42

in which case

38:43

there's an awful lot

38:44

to be learned

38:45

about how that information

38:46

is read.

38:47

In other words,

38:48

once you know

38:49

that that's true,

38:50

if it is,

38:50

then the question is,

38:51

okay, well,

38:52

how do we look

38:53

into a particular

38:54

genome and see

38:55

the mapping

38:56

of those variables

38:57

onto the creature

38:58

that we see

38:59

running around

38:59

in the forest?

39:00

Right?

39:01

That would be

39:02

an amazingly

39:03

powerful mapping

39:04

to have.

39:05

So,

39:07

anyway,

39:08

I didn't want

39:11

to leave it

39:11

as a vague

39:13

allusion

39:14

to a hidden layer.

39:16

I wanted to point

39:17

to a hidden layer

39:19

that would explain

39:20

how this process

39:21

that we've all

39:22

learned about

39:22

might be

39:23

much more powerful

39:24

than the story

39:25

we've been told

39:26

about it.

39:26

I was watching

39:28

a documentary

39:28

once on the BBC

39:29

about the Congo

39:31

and it's a really

39:32

amazing documentary

39:33

and one of the things

39:34

that it points out

39:35

to is the rapid

39:36

development

39:37

of new abilities

39:38

that these animals

39:39

have that live

39:40

in the Congo

39:41

that used to be

39:42

on the plains

39:43

and as the

39:44

rainforest expanded

39:46

they were kind

39:47

of trapped

39:48

in here

39:48

and one of them

39:49

they pointed to

39:50

was dikers,

39:50

you know,

39:51

those small

39:52

antelopes

39:52

that now

39:53

have the ability

39:54

to swim underwater

39:55

for as much

39:56

as 100 yards

39:57

and they eat fish

39:59

and they were

40:00

talking about it

40:01

like this is

40:01

this fantastic

40:02

development

40:03

because they know

40:04

how long

40:05

it took

40:05

for the grasslands

40:07

to have been

40:07

overtaken

40:08

by the rainforest

40:09

and it wasn't

40:10

that long

40:10

and it didn't

40:12

seem to account

40:13

for the adaptation

40:14

that they were

40:15

seeing in these animals.

40:17

this is exactly

40:18

the thing

40:19

that bugs me

40:19

is

40:20

imagine what

40:22

would have

40:22

happened

40:22

if there was

40:24

not an enhanced

40:25

evolutionary toolkit

40:26

to that creature.

40:28

It would have

40:29

gone extinct.

40:30

Right.

40:30

That's the story

40:32

again and again.

40:33

Well, it's a story

40:34

with humans, right?

40:35

Inuits.

40:35

It's a story

40:36

with people

40:37

that live

40:37

in extremely

40:37

cold climates,

40:38

right?

40:39

they've developed

40:39

all these adaptations

40:41

to be able

40:43

to survive

40:44

in this intense

40:45

weather

40:46

where people

40:47

who live

40:47

in the tropics

40:48

if you've moved

40:49

them to that

40:49

environment

40:49

they would die.

40:50

It's a story

40:51

with every

40:52

clade of creatures.

40:54

This is a chaotic

40:58

planet, right?

40:59

At levels

41:00

that I think

41:01

maybe we don't

41:01

even fully yet

41:02

appreciate.

41:02

The difference

41:05

between committing

41:07

to a particular

41:08

way of existing

41:09

that seems

41:10

really awesome

41:11

for some period

41:11

of time

41:12

and then

41:12

is suddenly

41:13

impossible

41:13

and the ability

41:15

to leap

41:15

from one way

41:16

of being

41:16

to another

41:17

is the key

41:18

to getting

41:19

through time

41:19

which is what

41:20

evolution is doing.

41:21

Right?

41:22

I always phrase

41:23

it as the purpose

41:24

that evolution

41:26

points towards

41:27

is lodging

41:28

your genes

41:29

as far into

41:29

the future

41:30

as you can get them.

41:31

And people don't

41:32

I think fully

41:33

appreciate when I say

41:34

that that it's not

41:35

just a clever

41:36

rephrasing

41:37

of what might

41:39

be more standard

41:40

might be found

41:40

in a textbook.

41:41

The point is

41:43

anything that

41:45

satisfies that

41:46

objective

41:47

is valid.

41:49

So for example

41:51

if you have

41:53

so we have a process

41:55

it's one of my

41:56

favorites

41:56

to think about

41:58

which is called

41:58

adaptive radiation.

41:59

Adaptive radiation

42:01

is where you get

42:02

some creature

42:03

that either

42:04

solves some

42:05

problem

42:05

or gets to

42:06

some new

42:06

place

42:07

and then

42:08

diversifies

42:09

and we get

42:10

50 or 100

42:11

or 1,000

42:12

species

42:13

that are derived

42:14

from that initial

42:15

discovery.

42:16

Right?

42:17

So you get this

42:17

blooming of forms.

42:19

Right?

42:19

The first bird

42:20

what was the first

42:22

bird even doing?

42:23

We don't know.

42:25

But what we do

42:26

know is that

42:27

we have 11,000

42:28

species of these

42:29

things now

42:30

all doing

42:30

subtly different

42:31

stuff.

42:32

Right?

42:32

Some of them

42:33

not even flying.

42:33

Right.

42:34

Some of them

42:35

have lost the

42:35

ability to fly.

42:36

So the point is

42:37

the discovery

42:39

of birdness

42:40

opens up

42:41

a huge number

42:42

of potential

42:43

discoveries.

42:44

Evolution would

42:45

be a dumb

42:46

process

42:47

if it didn't

42:48

effectively

42:49

search that

42:50

space.

42:51

If it randomly

42:52

waited to find

42:53

each of those

42:54

opportunities

42:55

that's so much

42:57

less powerful

42:58

than searching

42:59

the space.

42:59

And then

43:00

once you get

43:01

the search

43:02

of a space

43:03

okay so you

43:04

get you know

43:05

a hundred hits

43:07

you get some

43:08

innovation

43:08

it provides

43:09

a hundred

43:09

niches that you

43:10

could move

43:11

into from there

43:11

it creates

43:12

a hundred

43:13

species

43:13

and it turns

43:14

out most

43:16

of those

43:16

niches are

43:17

durable on

43:18

the scale

43:19

of 10,000

43:20

years but not

43:21

50,000 years.

43:22

So you get

43:22

a bunch of

43:23

them going

43:24

extinct.

43:24

But as long

43:26

as one of

43:27

them or two

43:28

of them have

43:29

gotten through

43:29

that bottleneck

43:30

right?

43:31

The huge

43:31

blooming of

43:32

branches and

43:32

then the

43:32

pruning of

43:33

branches.

43:33

The ancestor

43:36

has now

43:36

gotten to

43:37

the future

43:38

in the

43:38

form of

43:39

however many

43:40

species made

43:40

it through

43:41

that destructive

43:43

process.

43:43

It is

43:44

selection at a

43:46

different scale

43:47

than we typically

43:47

think of it.

43:48

And so

43:48

thinking of

43:51

evolution as

43:52

this dynamic

43:52

process that

43:53

is not only

43:54

searching design

43:56

space but

43:56

learning to

43:57

enhance its

43:58

capacity to

43:59

search design

44:00

space in

44:01

order to get

44:01

into the future

44:02

is the way to

44:03

think of it.

44:03

it's much

44:04

more powerful

44:05

than the

44:06

clumsy version

44:07

that we

44:07

describe even

44:08

if we don't

44:08

yet understand

44:09

where that

44:09

power is

44:10

lodged.

44:10

If we were

44:12

imaginative and

44:12

we said okay

44:13

what would I

44:14

do if I was

44:15

evolution to

44:16

enhance the

44:16

likelihood of

44:17

getting to

44:17

the future?

44:18

Well then you

44:20

start finding

44:21

these explorer

44:21

modes and

44:23

you know I

44:24

understand that

44:24

I will be

44:25

ridiculed for

44:25

saying that

44:26

because it

44:27

imposes on

44:28

selection a

44:30

directionality

44:32

that probably

44:34

at a technical

44:35

level we are

44:35

right to

44:36

assume does

44:36

not exist.

44:37

But let me

44:39

point this out.

44:41

We often say

44:43

that evolution

44:44

cannot look

44:45

forward.

44:45

It can only

44:46

see the past.

44:48

At a technical

44:49

level this is

44:50

true.

44:50

On the other

44:51

hand we all

44:52

agree that

44:53

evolution built

44:54

us.

44:55

I can see the

44:57

future.

44:58

I can

44:59

understand what

45:01

is likely to

45:01

happen.

45:02

I can

45:02

extrapolate and

45:03

see things that

45:04

haven't occurred

45:05

yet and I

45:07

will do

45:07

hypothesis testing

45:08

to see if my

45:09

understanding is

45:10

correct.

45:10

But the point

45:10

is evolution

45:11

can't see the

45:12

future but it

45:14

can build

45:14

creatures that

45:15

see the future

45:15

on its behalf.

45:16

Isn't that kind

45:18

of like it

45:18

looking into the

45:18

future?

45:19

It feels a lot

45:20

like it is to

45:21

me.

45:21

I've always been

45:22

fascinated by

45:22

animals that

45:23

don't change.

45:24

Like animals

45:25

that have

45:26

reached some

45:26

very bizarre

45:28

apex predator

45:29

like crocodiles

45:30

for instance.

45:31

Crocodiles,

45:31

dragonflies,

45:33

sharks,

45:34

horseshoe crabs.

45:35

Yeah.

45:37

So this is a

45:39

place where I

45:40

think a good

45:42

evolutionary course

45:43

says the right

45:44

thing about it.

45:45

What a good

45:45

evolutionary course

45:46

says about this

45:47

is we think of

45:49

these creatures

45:50

as backwards.

45:53

they are the

45:54

opposite.

45:54

They are so

45:56

good that in

45:57

spite of

45:57

competition from

45:58

more modern

45:59

forms they

46:00

still persist.

46:01

Right?

46:02

If you've

46:02

watched a

46:02

dragonfly it's

46:04

a super agile

46:05

creature.

46:06

Right?

46:07

It's a

46:07

formidable

46:08

predator.

46:08

And so

46:12

anyway when you

46:12

see one of

46:13

these creatures

46:13

that has been

46:14

very little

46:14

modified it's

46:15

because it

46:16

did find a

46:17

form that's

46:18

durable over a

46:19

very long

46:20

period of

46:20

time.

46:21

And in

46:23

some ways

46:23

that's the

46:24

greatest

46:24

strategy.

46:25

Right?

46:26

Having to

46:26

change in

46:27

order to

46:28

deal with

46:28

the changes

46:29

in the

46:31

environment

46:32

is perilous.

46:34

Having found

46:36

something that

46:37

is so durable

46:37

that it

46:38

consists,

46:38

that it

46:39

persists era

46:40

after era,

46:41

epoch after

46:42

epoch is at

46:44

least a very

46:45

comprehensible

46:45

strategy and

46:47

arguably the

46:48

better one

46:49

because anything

46:49

that has

46:50

existed that

46:50

long,

46:51

maybe we

46:53

talked in

46:53

a past

46:54

podcast about

46:54

the Lindy

46:55

effect.

46:56

Yeah.

46:57

The idea that

46:59

we tend to

47:00

think that the

47:00

longer something's

47:01

been around

47:01

that it's

47:02

overdue to

47:03

be destroyed

47:04

but that

47:05

often the

47:06

answer is

47:07

something that's

47:07

been around a

47:08

long time is

47:08

actually built to

47:09

last.

47:09

And so if it's

47:10

been around a

47:11

long time you

47:11

might expect to

47:12

see it last a

47:12

lot longer.

47:13

So it's that.

47:15

It's the Lindy

47:16

effect in animal or

47:18

plant form.

47:19

So it's just

47:20

essentially

47:21

evolution nailed

47:23

it.

47:23

They developed

47:24

an animal that's

47:26

so adaptive and

47:27

so designed to

47:29

succeed in this

47:30

particular environment

47:31

that it doesn't

47:32

really need to

47:32

change.

47:33

yes and in fact

47:34

you know we

47:35

are in some

47:36

ways we

47:37

haven't been

47:37

around that

47:37

long but

47:38

our it

47:42

looks like we

47:43

are a variation

47:44

on that theme

47:45

precisely because

47:47

we have a

47:49

generalist body

47:51

plan right.

47:52

The physical

47:53

robot that is the

47:54

human being is

47:56

capable of doing a

47:57

tremendous number

47:58

of things and the

47:59

software program

48:00

can be essentially

48:01

entirely rewritten

48:03

right.

48:04

The culture that

48:05

you inherit can

48:06

take a person and

48:08

it can rewire them

48:10

for a very

48:10

different niche

48:11

including the

48:12

ability to

48:14

avail themselves

48:14

of whatever tools

48:16

are necessary to

48:17

do whatever things

48:17

that the body

48:18

plan doesn't do

48:19

on its own

48:19

right.

48:20

so that's a

48:22

cool strategy

48:22

right to have

48:24

a generalist

48:25

robot and a

48:27

software program

48:28

that can be

48:28

swapped out as

48:30

as needed that

48:31

evolution can

48:31

rewrite very

48:32

rapidly that

48:33

evolution can

48:34

rewrite on the

48:36

basis of not

48:38

only the

48:39

conjecture of an

48:40

intelligent creature

48:41

but the pooled

48:43

parallel processing

48:45

of multiple

48:46

individuals of the

48:47

species right.

48:49

this is what

48:49

Heather and I

48:50

describe in our

48:50

book as

48:51

campfire right.

48:53

The light has

48:54

faded.

48:54

It's too dark for

48:56

you to be

48:56

productive at

48:57

whatever your

48:57

niche is.

48:58

You gather

48:59

around the

48:59

campfire and

49:00

you talk.

49:01

You talk about

49:02

problems that

49:03

you've run into,

49:04

solutions that

49:06

you're working

49:06

on.

49:07

You pool the

49:08

information.

49:08

People have

49:09

different histories.

49:11

They have

49:11

different skill

49:12

sets and they

49:14

parallel process

49:15

the puzzles and

49:16

they come up

49:17

with ideas

49:18

which, you

49:19

know, the

49:19

most amazing

49:20

adaptation of

49:22

all is the

49:23

one we're using

49:23

right now.

49:24

The ability for

49:27

me to put an

49:28

abstract idea

49:29

into your head

49:30

over open space

49:32

by vibrating the

49:33

air molecules

49:34

between us, I

49:35

mean, that is

49:37

a miracle.

49:37

Pretty crazy.

49:39

It's amazing and

49:40

you know, that

49:41

we can prove

49:41

that we're not

49:42

fooling ourselves.

49:43

I could say

49:44

something, you

49:45

know, that

49:45

nobody's ever

49:46

thought of, you

49:48

know, like, I

49:50

don't know, a

49:52

potato rocket

49:53

ship, right?

49:54

And you could

49:54

draw on the

49:55

piece of paper

49:56

your interpretation

49:57

and I could say,

49:58

yeah, that's the

49:58

thing I was

49:59

thinking of, right?

50:00

That ability to

50:02

prove that we

50:03

are in fact

50:04

exchanging abstract

50:05

ideas across

50:06

open air and

50:06

that that allows

50:07

multiple minds

50:09

that are not

50:09

physically touching

50:10

each other to

50:11

process together

50:13

concepts is

50:16

it's truly

50:18

stunning and

50:19

in conjunction

50:20

with the

50:21

generalist robot

50:21

that can use

50:22

tools, it's

50:23

an amazingly

50:24

good strategy.

50:25

When you talk

50:27

about humans,

50:28

one of the

50:28

things that

50:29

fascinates me

50:30

about people

50:31

is the

50:31

changes in

50:33

human beings

50:34

because of

50:34

the environment,

50:35

because of

50:37

input, meaning

50:39

like certain

50:40

chemicals were

50:41

exposed to,

50:41

sedentary

50:43

lifestyle, there's

50:44

changes that are

50:45

taking place that

50:46

we can measure

50:47

from human beings

50:49

that lived in the

50:50

beginning of the

50:50

20th century to

50:51

people that live

50:52

now in the

50:53

beginning of the

50:53

21st century.

50:54

One of the things

50:56

that people are

50:57

talking about with

50:58

a great concern,

50:59

like Dr.

50:59

Shanna Swan,

51:00

done a lot of

51:01

work on this,

51:01

is the impact of

51:03

microplastics on

51:04

our endocrine

51:04

system and how

51:06

it's greatly

51:07

diminishing male's

51:09

ability to

51:09

procreate and

51:10

female's ability

51:11

to bring a

51:13

baby to term.

51:13

So you're getting

51:14

many more

51:15

miscarriages and

51:17

lower testosterone

51:18

counts, smaller

51:19

testicles and

51:20

penises, reduced

51:21

size of the

51:22

taints, all these

51:23

different things that

51:24

she attributes to

51:25

phthalates and

51:26

various chemicals

51:27

that are endocrine

51:28

disruptors that are

51:29

ubiquitous in our

51:30

world.

51:32

Is this something

51:33

that you think

51:34

about?

51:34

Do you, like, is

51:36

this something, are

51:37

we in the middle of

51:39

an adaptation or

51:40

some sort of a

51:41

change of the human

51:42

species?

51:42

No.

51:44

Or is it just being

51:45

poisoned?

51:45

We're being poisoned

51:46

and we're being

51:48

poisoned in a

51:49

particular way.

51:50

I would say we

51:51

have effectively

51:52

threatened to kill

51:54

the goose that lays

51:55

the golden eggs.

51:57

The normal

51:58

pattern for human

52:00

beings is you

52:02

inherit your

52:04

ancestors' world.

52:05

Every so often,

52:07

that's not true.

52:08

Every so often, a

52:10

generation finds

52:11

itself in a brand

52:12

new circumstance.

52:13

You know, you

52:15

kayak, kayak across

52:17

some body of water

52:18

and you end up in

52:19

some foreign place

52:21

in which the

52:22

animals and plants

52:23

aren't the same

52:24

and your old

52:26

way of life

52:27

isn't going to

52:28

work and you

52:28

have to bootstrap

52:29

something new.

52:30

It's the same

52:32

as it's similar

52:34

to the first

52:36

flying mammal

52:39

is suddenly faced

52:41

with a whole set

52:41

of opportunities

52:42

that it has to

52:43

figure out how

52:43

to solve.

52:44

But the point

52:45

is every so often

52:46

a generation gets

52:47

a wild curveball

52:48

and it has to

52:49

start not from

52:50

scratch but close

52:51

to it.

52:51

But in general,

52:54

okay, that first

52:55

generation figures

52:56

out how we're

52:56

going to make a

52:57

living here and

52:58

it passes that

53:00

information on to

53:01

its descendants who

53:02

have a lot of room

53:03

to refine what

53:04

their ancestors

53:05

figured out and

53:05

for some generations

53:06

you get this rapid

53:07

refinement process

53:08

and then eventually

53:10

you kind of figure

53:11

it out.

53:12

I know how we're

53:12

going to live in

53:13

this valley and

53:14

here's how it

53:14

works and one

53:15

generation passes

53:16

it on to the

53:16

next and the

53:17

valley doesn't

53:17

change very much.

53:18

That process is

53:21

sustainable.

53:22

Humans are

53:23

excellent at

53:24

dealing with

53:25

it, right?

53:25

Because we're

53:26

good at

53:27

parallel processing

53:28

puzzles, right?

53:30

A population of

53:31

people can figure

53:32

out how to

53:32

live here when

53:34

the way to do

53:35

it doesn't look

53:35

like how we

53:36

lived there.

53:37

However, there is a

53:39

threshold at which

53:41

our amazing

53:42

ability to adapt

53:43

culturally and

53:45

physiologically is

53:47

outstripped and

53:49

that is the point

53:50

at which

53:50

technological change

53:51

is so fast that

53:53

you're not even

53:55

an adult in the

53:56

same environment

53:57

you grew up in.

53:58

That's what we

53:59

now consistently

54:00

live in, right?

54:01

The world you and

54:02

I now live in

54:03

doesn't look

54:03

anything like the

54:04

world we grew up

54:04

in, right?

54:05

The number

54:05

of radical

54:07

differences in

54:07

terms of the

54:09

chemicals that we

54:10

encounter, in

54:11

terms of the

54:12

behavior of other

54:13

people, in

54:13

terms of the

54:14

information that

54:15

comes into our

54:16

eyes.

54:16

These things have

54:17

all been

54:17

revolutionized.

54:18

I've frankly

54:19

seen several

54:20

revolutions.

54:20

You and I have

54:21

both seen several

54:22

revolutions

54:22

already.

54:23

You know, we

54:24

had the

54:25

computer, then

54:26

we had the

54:27

internet, then

54:28

we had the

54:29

smartphone, then

54:30

we had social

54:31

media, now we're

54:32

facing AI, right?

54:33

Each of these

54:34

things would take

54:36

time to

54:37

metabolize, to

54:39

deal with the

54:39

harms of them, to

54:41

learn how to

54:42

address them in a

54:43

wise way, but we

54:44

never get the

54:44

chance to figure

54:45

that out because

54:46

the next one is

54:47

already upon us.

54:48

In fact, it's

54:49

you ever go body

54:51

surfing and you

54:53

get into a

54:53

situation where the

54:54

waves are just

54:55

coming too quick

54:56

and as soon as

54:56

you catch your

54:57

breath from one,

54:58

the next one is

54:58

on you, right?

54:59

It's just like

55:00

you can't do

55:02

that, right?

55:02

You need time

55:04

to settle and

55:07

our rate of

55:08

change is so

55:08

high, this is

55:09

what Heather and

55:10

I call

55:10

hypernovelty.

55:11

Hypernovelty is

55:12

the state at

55:12

which even our

55:14

amazing ability

55:15

to rapidly

55:16

adapt is

55:17

incapable of

55:18

keeping pace

55:18

with technological

55:19

change.

55:20

That's where we

55:21

are.

55:21

That really

55:25

concerns me

55:26

with humans,

55:26

that drop

55:27

off of

55:28

testosterone,

55:29

the miscarriage

55:30

rate increasing,

55:31

that's really

55:34

spooky because

55:35

I don't see

55:36

any change

55:38

in the

55:39

environment.

55:40

I don't see

55:41

any change

55:42

in the use

55:43

of plastics,

55:43

I don't see

55:44

any change

55:45

in these

55:46

endocrine

55:46

disrupting

55:47

chemicals

55:47

being in

55:48

our systems.

55:49

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57:06

I agree and

57:07

I think we

57:08

need to think

57:09

outside the

57:09

box with

57:10

respect to

57:10

what kinds

57:11

of inputs

57:12

might be

57:13

affecting us.

57:14

I will say

57:15

in parallel

57:17

with what

57:18

I think

57:19

is a much

57:20

more toxic

57:21

environment,

57:21

you know,

57:22

and developmentally

57:23

toxic environment,

57:24

we have

57:27

a radical

57:28

change in

57:29

the way

57:30

human beings

57:31

are interacting

57:32

with each

57:33

other.

57:33

And it

57:36

is unclear

57:37

to me

57:37

how far

57:40

reaching the

57:40

consequences

57:41

of that

57:41

might be.

57:42

But,

57:43

you know,

57:44

we talked

57:45

last time

57:47

about the

57:48

impact of

57:49

the sexual

57:49

revolution

57:50

and of

57:51

reliable birth

57:51

control

57:52

and abortion

57:54

on the way

57:55

males and

57:56

females interact

57:57

with each

57:57

other.

57:58

That basically

57:59

sex being

58:01

the ultimate

58:03

reward,

58:04

the most

58:05

powerful

58:05

motivator

58:06

that exists,

58:07

when birth

58:10

control made

58:11

sex common

58:12

or made

58:12

it possible

58:13

for sex

58:13

to be

58:14

common

58:14

by virtue

58:15

of radically

58:18

reducing the

58:18

risk that

58:19

females face

58:20

in engaging

58:21

in sex

58:22

with men

58:22

who won't

58:22

invest,

58:23

it robbed

58:25

us of

58:26

the central

58:28

organizing

58:29

principle of

58:30

civilization

58:31

evolution.

58:31

And the

58:32

consequences of

58:33

that central

58:34

organizing

58:34

principle

58:35

evaporating

58:36

are

58:37

incredibly

58:38

far

58:39

reaching.

58:39

In effect,

58:42

we do not

58:42

know that

58:43

there is a

58:44

way for us

58:45

to live

58:45

without that

58:46

central organizing

58:47

principle.

58:47

We don't know

58:48

that it

58:48

lasts.

58:48

And we

58:51

are running

58:51

that radical

58:52

experiment and

58:53

then we're

58:53

going to

58:54

augment that

58:55

radical

58:55

experiment

58:55

now with

58:57

AI and

58:59

presumably

58:59

AI-powered

59:02

sex robots

59:03

and companions

59:04

and other

59:05

things that

59:05

the mind

59:06

is not

59:06

built to

59:08

properly

59:08

understand.

59:09

Right?

59:11

So what

59:12

effect are

59:13

all of

59:13

these things

59:14

having?

59:14

You know,

59:14

is there a

59:15

feedback effect

59:16

from your

59:18

perception of

59:19

the sexual

59:20

landscape on

59:21

to the

59:21

development of

59:22

your children?

59:22

I don't know.

59:23

It's conceivable

59:24

that there is

59:25

such a thing.

59:25

But I do

59:28

know that

59:28

if we were

59:29

wise,

59:29

we would

59:31

slow the

59:34

pace of

59:35

experienced

59:37

change way

59:38

down.

59:39

But how is

59:40

that even

59:40

possible at

59:41

this point?

59:41

I'm not

59:42

saying it

59:42

is.

59:43

Right.

59:43

But I'm

59:43

saying if

59:44

we don't,

59:45

I think we

59:45

know that

59:46

we're doomed.

59:46

So in

59:47

light of

59:48

that,

59:48

what would

59:49

you do

59:49

if you

59:49

knew that

59:50

down that

59:50

path was

59:52

destruction?

59:52

You would

59:54

start thinking

59:54

about the

59:55

question of

59:56

is there

59:56

some way,

59:57

you know,

59:57

maybe you

59:58

can't rein

59:58

in the

59:59

pace of

59:59

technological

1:00:00

change.

1:00:00

You can

1:00:01

certainly,

1:00:02

and we

1:00:03

should,

1:00:04

if we were

1:00:04

wise,

1:00:05

we would

1:00:05

insulate

1:00:07

young people

1:00:09

from exposure

1:00:11

especially

1:00:12

to new

1:00:13

stuff,

1:00:13

right?

1:00:14

There's a

1:00:14

question about

1:00:15

what stuff

1:00:16

that we

1:00:16

already have,

1:00:17

what effect

1:00:18

it's having

1:00:18

on them,

1:00:19

but the

1:00:20

fact that

1:00:20

we're just

1:00:20

going to

1:00:20

expose them

1:00:21

to every

1:00:21

new

1:00:21

revolution

1:00:22

without

1:00:22

figuring out

1:00:23

what its

1:00:24

consequences

1:00:25

are is

1:00:26

insane,

1:00:27

right?

1:00:28

we need

1:00:30

to provide

1:00:30

young people

1:00:32

with a

1:00:33

chemically

1:00:35

and

1:00:36

informationally

1:00:37

stable

1:00:39

environment

1:00:40

where the

1:00:40

puzzles are

1:00:41

solvable and

1:00:42

they are

1:00:42

relevant to

1:00:43

the adult

1:00:44

world we

1:00:44

expect them

1:00:45

to live

1:00:45

in,

1:00:45

which is

1:00:45

difficult

1:00:45

because we

1:00:46

don't know

1:00:46

what world

1:00:47

they're going

1:00:47

to live

1:00:47

in.

1:00:48

But not

1:00:50

immunizing

1:00:51

them is

1:00:52

a terrible

1:00:54

error,

1:00:54

right?

1:00:55

It can't

1:00:56

work,

1:00:56

right?

1:00:57

The reason

1:00:58

human childhood

1:00:59

is the

1:00:59

longest

1:01:00

developmental

1:01:00

childhood in

1:01:02

the animal

1:01:03

kingdom

1:01:03

by far

1:01:05

is that

1:01:06

it is

1:01:07

the

1:01:07

training

1:01:08

for

1:01:09

adult

1:01:09

life.

1:01:09

If the

1:01:11

training

1:01:11

ground

1:01:12

doesn't

1:01:12

match

1:01:13

the

1:01:13

world

1:01:13

that

1:01:13

you're

1:01:14

going

1:01:14

to

1:01:14

be

1:01:14

an

1:01:14

adult

1:01:14

in

1:01:14

because

1:01:15

the

1:01:15

world

1:01:15

you're

1:01:15

going

1:01:15

to

1:01:15

be

1:01:15

an

1:01:16

adult

1:01:16

in

1:01:16

is

1:01:16

something

1:01:17

nobody

1:01:17

can

1:01:17

predict

1:01:18

it

1:01:19

is

1:01:19

guaranteed

1:01:20

to

1:01:20

make

1:01:20

you

1:01:21

a

1:01:22

fish

1:01:22

out

1:01:22

of

1:01:22

water

1:01:23

as

1:01:23

an

1:01:23

adult.

1:01:24

It's

1:01:25

extremely

1:01:26

disruptive

1:01:27

and

1:01:27

essentially

1:01:28

every

1:01:28

new

1:01:28

groundbreaking

1:01:29

technology

1:01:30

every

1:01:31

new

1:01:31

breakthrough

1:01:31

every

1:01:32

new

1:01:32

paradigm

1:01:34

shifting

1:01:34

thing

1:01:35

that

1:01:35

gets

1:01:35

created

1:01:36

is

1:01:37

a

1:01:37

completely

1:01:38

new

1:01:38

environment

1:01:38

for

1:01:39

these

1:01:39

children

1:01:40

completely

1:01:41

new

1:01:41

and no

1:01:42

road map

1:01:43

no

1:01:44

manual

1:01:44

of how

1:01:45

to

1:01:45

navigate

1:01:45

it

1:01:45

and

1:01:46

then

1:01:46

we're

1:01:46

seeing

1:01:47

all the

1:01:47

psychological

1:01:48

harms

1:01:48

increase

1:01:49

in

1:01:49

anxiety

1:01:50

self-harm

1:01:50

especially

1:01:51

amongst

1:01:52

young

1:01:52

girls

1:01:52

suicidal

1:01:54

ideation

1:01:55

actual

1:01:55

suicide

1:01:56

well

1:01:57

I mean

1:01:57

in

1:01:59

other

1:01:59

contexts

1:02:00

I have

1:02:01

said

1:02:02

I probably

1:02:02

said to

1:02:02

you

1:02:03

you know

1:02:03

there are

1:02:04

no

1:02:04

adults

1:02:05

that's

1:02:06

one

1:02:06

of the

1:02:06

shocking

1:02:07

discoveries

1:02:08

of becoming

1:02:08

adult age

1:02:10

is that

1:02:11

it's not

1:02:11

like there's

1:02:12

some set

1:02:13

of adults

1:02:13

who knows

1:02:14

what to

1:02:14

think about

1:02:15

this

1:02:15

and how

1:02:15

to approach

1:02:16

it

1:02:16

one of the

1:02:17

reasons

1:02:17

that you

1:02:17

would have

1:02:18

no adults

1:02:19

is that

1:02:20

it's kind

1:02:20

of impossible

1:02:21

to imagine

1:02:22

where they

1:02:22

would come

1:02:22

from

1:02:23

right

1:02:23

an adult

1:02:24

is somebody

1:02:24

who has

1:02:26

picked up

1:02:26

the wisdom

1:02:27

for how

1:02:27

to deal

1:02:28

with the

1:02:28

world

1:02:29

that you

1:02:29

live in

1:02:30

where would

1:02:32

that wisdom

1:02:32

have come

1:02:32

from if

1:02:33

the world

1:02:33

just showed

1:02:33

up five

1:02:34

minutes ago

1:02:34

right

1:02:35

it's in

1:02:36

principle

1:02:36

impossible

1:02:37

to deal

1:02:38

with this

1:02:39

level of

1:02:39

change

1:02:39

so at

1:02:40

most what

1:02:41

you can

1:02:41

do

1:02:42

is become

1:02:43

you know

1:02:44

very robust

1:02:45

do you think

1:02:47

that this is

1:02:47

where like

1:02:48

rites of passage

1:02:48

ceremony

1:02:49

come from

1:02:51

that there's

1:02:51

a thing

1:02:53

that differentiates

1:02:54

you between

1:02:54

the younger

1:02:55

version of

1:02:55

yourself

1:02:56

you've gone

1:02:56

through this

1:02:57

thing

1:02:57

and so

1:02:58

it requires

1:02:58

a shift

1:02:59

in the way

1:02:59

that you

1:03:00

view yourself

1:03:01

and the

1:03:01

world

1:03:02

now you

1:03:02

have passed

1:03:03

now you've

1:03:04

gone through

1:03:04

you know

1:03:05

whatever the

1:03:05

ceremony is

1:03:06

depending upon

1:03:07

your culture

1:03:07

now you are

1:03:08

a man

1:03:09

yeah in fact

1:03:10

or a woman

1:03:11

in a hundred

1:03:12

gatherers guide

1:03:12

to the 21st

1:03:13

century

1:03:13

Heather and I

1:03:14

argue that

1:03:15

rites of passage

1:03:16

are the

1:03:18

place

1:03:19

so they're

1:03:20

artificial in a

1:03:21

sense

1:03:22

right

1:03:22

we dictate

1:03:23

that this is

1:03:24

the moment

1:03:24

at which

1:03:24

you go from

1:03:25

being a boy

1:03:26

to being a

1:03:27

man who

1:03:27

is eligible

1:03:28

to marry

1:03:28

or something

1:03:29

like that

1:03:29

yeah

1:03:29

and the

1:03:30

point is

1:03:31

you know

1:03:31

that that

1:03:32

date is

1:03:32

coming

1:03:32

you there

1:03:33

is a

1:03:34

thing

1:03:34

that causes

1:03:36

you to

1:03:36

have made

1:03:37

that transition

1:03:38

right maybe

1:03:39

it's a vision

1:03:39

quest of some

1:03:40

kind maybe

1:03:41

it's an

1:03:42

animal that

1:03:43

you have to

1:03:43

hunt and

1:03:43

bring back

1:03:44

or something

1:03:45

but the

1:03:45

point is

1:03:46

you grow

1:03:47

up with

1:03:47

the knowledge

1:03:48

that I

1:03:49

am a

1:03:49

prototype

1:03:49

until that

1:03:51

marker

1:03:51

and after

1:03:52

that marker

1:03:53

it's for

1:03:54

real

1:03:54

right

1:03:55

so you

1:03:56

pick up

1:03:57

an increasing

1:03:58

level of

1:03:59

reality

1:04:00

until you

1:04:01

hit that

1:04:01

agreed upon

1:04:03

boundary

1:04:03

at which

1:04:05

point

1:04:05

everybody

1:04:05

is in a

1:04:06

position to

1:04:07

hold you

1:04:07

responsible for

1:04:07

your behavior

1:04:08

and to

1:04:09

expect you

1:04:10

to have

1:04:10

certain

1:04:11

skills on

1:04:12

board

1:04:12

and the

1:04:14

abandonment

1:04:15

of these

1:04:15

things

1:04:16

right

1:04:16

what we

1:04:17

have

1:04:17

is such

1:04:18

a

1:04:19

preposterous

1:04:20

dim shadow

1:04:23

of what once

1:04:23

was

1:04:24

okay

1:04:24

you graduated

1:04:25

high school

1:04:26

right

1:04:27

well I

1:04:27

assure you

1:04:28

graduating

1:04:28

high school

1:04:29

means very

1:04:30

little in

1:04:30

terms of

1:04:31

whether or

1:04:31

not you

1:04:32

know how

1:04:32

to navigate

1:04:33

the adult

1:04:33

world

1:04:34

and in fact

1:04:35

it leaves

1:04:35

people with

1:04:36

more anxiety

1:04:37

because you

1:04:38

don't feel

1:04:38

like you're

1:04:39

an adult

1:04:39

but yet

1:04:39

you're

1:04:40

supposed to

1:04:40

be one

1:04:40

I'm 18

1:04:42

now

1:04:42

I need

1:04:43

to get

1:04:43

a job

1:04:44

and you're

1:04:44

out there

1:04:45

in the

1:04:45

world

1:04:45

and very

1:04:46

confused

1:04:47

and trying

1:04:48

to figure

1:04:48

it out

1:04:48

along the

1:04:49

way