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So trying not to try is about this concept, Wu Wei And I realized at the end of my climb that I had lost all sense of time, that I had lost any sense of myself Getting into Wu Wei is very hard to do from the computer or on your smartphone.
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That's kind of the Japanese concept of forest bathing, right?
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Reddit self-help got really pissed off when they got to the end.
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Cause we're like, there's no solution. She has a rule.
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And that is when you're at dinner, all the cell phones have to go under the center of the table.
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We could not be successful adults without this ability to delay gratification.
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At the time prisoners were treated just unconscionably and horribly, and he saw this as a way that where they could be more humanely treated.
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Stop pushing so hard, go walk in the woods.
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This is what makes humans, humans.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Hi, I'm Jim O'Shaughnessy and welcome to Infinite Loops.
1:03
Sometimes we get caught up in what feel like infinite loops when trying to figure things out.
1:08
Markets go up and down, research is presented and then refuted, and we find ourselves right back where we started.
1:15
The goal of this podcast is to learn how we can reset our thinking on issues that hopefully leaves us with a better understanding as to why we think the way we think and how we might be able to change that to avoid going in infinite loops of thought.
1:32
We hope to offer our listeners a fresh perspective on a variety of issues and look at them through a multifaceted lens — including history, philosophy, art, science, linguistics, and yes, also through quantitative analysis.
1:49
And through these discussions help you not only become a better investor, but also become a more nuanced thinker.
1:59
With each episode we hope to bring you along with us as we learn together.
2:01
Thanks for joining us, now please enjoy this episode of Infinite Loops.
2:08
Disclaimer: Jim O'Shaughnessy is chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management, where Jamie Catherwood is an associate.
2:16
All opinions expressed by Jim, Jamie and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management.
2:25
This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
2:31
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.
2:36
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well, hello everyone.
2:39
It's Jim O'Shaughnessy with another episode of Infinite Loops.
2:43
I am getting the absolute best guests.
2:45
I was chatting with my son when this first began and he goes, "Why are you doing this podcast, Dad?"
2:53
And I said, "Honestly, so that I can chat with super smart people who can teach me things."
2:57
And boy do I have one of those.
3:01
My guest today is Edward Slingerland ... we'll work on that. Slingerland.
3:08
Professor at the University of British Columbia and author of ’Trying Not To Try’ and ‘Drunk’. Welcome.
3:16
Edward Slingerland: Thanks for having me.
3:17
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So I love your work.
3:20
I, myself, have read the Dao De Jing since I was 18 years old.
3:24
I finally started to figure out what it actually meant when I was in my mid 50s. It took me a long time.
3:30
Edward Slingerland: You should let me know that.
3:32
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Right, exactly. Touché.
3:36
Let's put it this way, my interpretation of what it means to me.
3:40
I love the idea that you present that you called the paradox.
3:45
So, wu-wei, which translates a lot of different ways.
3:49
I'm going to let you take our listeners and viewers through it.
3:53
I'd also like it, if you wouldn't mind, you did a great job of looking at this idea of actionless activity.
3:59
Through the lens, not only of Laozi, but of Confucius, of Zhuangzi, et cetera.
4:06
If you could give us an overview of what we're going to be talking about in terms of this idea of effortless activity flow.
4:13
There's a lot of different names, we're going to talk about those and how they differ from it later on.
4:18
Edward Slingerland: Right, okay.
4:19
Yeah, so the concept, so ’Trying Not To Try’ is about this concept pronounced wu-wei in Mandarin.
4:25
So literally no doing or no action or no trying.
4:31
It's sometimes translated as non-action, which I think is misleading because it typically refers to a state where I translate it as effortless action.
4:41
So it's a state where you lose a sense of yourself as an agent, you don't notice the passing of time, you're completely self-conscious and yet you're completely successful.
4:53
Everything you do, you're physically skilled in the world.
4:56
And crucially for the early Chinese, you're very skillful in the social world.
5:02
So you are charismatic, people trust you, everything kind of works out.
5:07
So the early Chinese, both the Confucians and the Daoists and one of my dissertation project, which turned into my first book.
5:16
One of the novel arguments I was making there is that people tend to associate wu-wei with Daoism broadly understood.
5:24
So I mean Daoism is just this label that we put respectively on these thinkers like Lao Tzu or Zhuangzi are the two major figures.
5:32
But they weren't part of a self-identified school, Daoism was invented by Han librarians basically.
5:40
They're trying to figure out where to put these books in the shelf, they came up with a label for them.
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But there's a reason they got put together.
5:46
There are some commonalities between Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi.
5:50
And wu-wei has always been associated with them.
5:53
But what I was arguing in my dissertation and first book, and I argue as well in ’Trying Not To Try’, is that the Confucians actually also had wu-wei as an ideal state.
6:03
They just had a different idea about how you get there.
6:06
They were really more focused on active trying, very roughly speaking the Confucians think you need to try not to try and think you need to stop trying.
6:16
The reason and one of the other arguments in my earlier work was that a lot of the theorizing in early China, so debates about self-cultivation, about human nature.
6:30
One coherent way to see them is as these attempts to solve what I call the paradox of wu-wei.
6:37
So if you have, as your goal being spontaneous, you want to be spontaneous, you want to get the benefits of being spontaneous.
6:47
You face a tension, a real ...
6:47
and it's a real paradox of how can you try not to try?
6:53
How can you consciously try to be unselfconscious?
6:57
And in ’Trying Not To Try’, I point out it's a genuine paradox.
7:00
It's not just a wordplay and it falls out of the structure of our mind.
7:04
So if I tell you, "Relax, be spontaneous."
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The part of your brain I'm activating, very roughly the prefrontal cortex, kind of the executive control part of the brain.
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The part I'm activating when I tell you that is the part we want to shut down.
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So it's very similar to the late social psychologist Dan Wegner talked about the white bear paradox.
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If I say don't think of a white bear, you are thinking of a white bear.
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I just put the idea in your mind.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Exactly.
7:34
Edward Slingerland: It's the same problem with ’Trying Not To Try’.
7:37
So I argue in the book, it's a real direct paradox to try to use your mind to shut your mind down.
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So what I walk through then is the various strategies that the early Confucians and Daoist came up with to trick you into not thinking about [inaudible] to get you around it in an indirect way.
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They often involve using the body as a way to shut the mind down.
8:04
So the Confucians give you rituals to do and music to listen to and chanting to do.
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The Daoists, it's a little less clear what they're having you do.
8:13
But some of it clearly involves meditating, sitting meditation, maybe breathing practices.
8:19
So they're giving you these bodily techniques, in a way it's like using the body as a workaround to get around this problem of shutting the mind down.
8:29
So that's what ’Trying Not To Try’is about, these various strategies that the early Chinese came up with and each has their strengths and weaknesses.
8:38
None of them is a solution because ...
8:38
I mean, this is the disappointing part of the book.
8:44
I've marketed when it first came out as a self-help book and people who read a self-help book were really pissed off when they got to the end because they were like, "There's no solution. It is a real paradox."
8:54
And so there are these strategies, but at the end of the day, it remains a real paradox.
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But at least seeing the importance, I think the crucial message of ’Trying Not To Try’ is that early Chinese were right in identifying the importance of spontaneity.
9:15
The fact that there are certain goals in life that you can only attain through not trying.
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So things like happiness or trust or love or creativity, creative insights.
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The problem with our society I think is that we really focus on striving and trying and if you're not doing well, try harder.
9:40
So I do think it's helpful for us to realize that in certain domains of life, the way to succeed is to stop pushing so hard and to somehow figure out how to let go.
9:54
That's kind of the big take home.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, I wrote a thread called ’Trying Not To Try’, I guess it's an homage. I completely concur.
10:05
It is truly a paradox and I was familiar with all of the various methodologies that people suggested for doing it.
10:14
But you're right, like when you do get to the end, I quoted I think from the little prints, it's one of those things that you can only see out of the corner of your eye.
10:23
That if you turn and look, it disappears.
10:26
So I've also tried to incorporate some things that we're going to talk about in a bit, your work on the unconscious and how you try to unite or at least communicate better with the unconscious.
10:39
Which is also maddening at many times.
10:42
I wonder, is there a western equivalent of ’Trying Not To Try’?
10:49
The ancient Greeks had the aristeia moment, where that was the moment in battle where the hero lost any thought of himself and was said to be divinely inspired and that led him to effortless supremacy.
11:08
So that was the ancient Greeks.
11:10
Then now we see a lot of people talking about slack, talking about flow.
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How do you think that these differ from the Chinese concept?
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Edward Slingerland: Well, so certainly the ancient Greeks value this spontaneity.
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and not just in battle, but if you look at Aristotle, he thinks that the truly virtuous person, one of the hallmarks of a true virtue is that is what we would call wu-wei using Chinese terminology.
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A truly brave person doesn't calculate and have to force themself into battle.
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The truly brave person when danger calls just plunges in and knows what the right thing to do is.
11:57
So a hallmark of virtues for Aristotle is that they're spontaneous at a certain level.
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He actually, I argue in my academic work, that he faced very similar paradox.
12:09
So how to teach someone to be just, if they're not already naturally just.
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It seems like the training is going to mess it up.
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Anyone who's concerned with character states, anyone who's concerned with turning you into a different type of person than you are and giving you sincerely new dispositions is going to face this paradox.
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So the ancient Greeks faced it, so did the medieval Christian thinkers faced it because they wanted you to really accept Christ.
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Not because you're afraid of hell or you want to go to heaven.
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But just because you really love.
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You need to create love in someone that's not there already, how do you create that love?
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So they had this problem, too. So lots of cultures ...
12:57
any culture that's focusing on changing your dispositions is going to run into this problem.
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I think the reason it fell in philosophical concern is because of the rise and the enlightenment of these hyper rationalist models of ethics. Where it's about ...
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so in ’Trying Not To Try’, I talk about very loosely, you can call it conscious versus unconscious.
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Or system one, the more fast hot unconscious system versus system two.
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The models that became dominant in the enlightenment in Europe were very much system two, top down, rationalist, conscious models.
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So how do you know what the right thing to do is?
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You consult the categorical imperative and it tells you what the maxim is that you need to follow.
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Or deontology, how do you know what the right thing to do is?
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Look at the situation, calculate the cost and benefits, do the math and you'll know what the right thing to do is.
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They're all very reliant on the conscious mind.
13:57
Not only don't have anything to say about changing the dispositions, they're actually a little bit suspicious about that approach.
14:05
So Kant's very worried about dispositional approaches to ethics.
14:09
So they don't have the try not to try problem because trying is cool for them [inaudible] all the time.
14:17
So that's I think why we've kind of stopped worrying about this paradox in our conscious lives or kind of literature and philosophy.
14:26
Where it's survived is in sub communities that are very much grappling with the problem of getting into spontaneity.
14:35
So athletes who are worried about falling out of the zone or choking.
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Performers who know that they're all going to be good.
14:43
The people I probably heard from most after ’Trying Not To Try’ were people who did improv.
14:49
They were just like, "This is essential tension we face is you go out there, you can't be trying.
14:55
But if it doesn't come, you get nervous and you want to try."
14:58
So communities that depend on spontaneity have always been aware ...
14:58
remained aware of this [inaudible] and called it by [inaudible].
15:09
But I think that it's remained alive.
15:11
Then another big hallmark was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on flow where he made this concept part of mainstream psychology again.
15:22
I think that was a very important moment, as well.
15:24
But I am careful in the book, I want to distinguish wu-wei from flow.
15:28
I mean, basically I think Csikszentmihalyi got it slightly wrong in terms of characterizing it.
15:34
So if flow has all the ...
15:34
it is the same state as wu-wei, right?
15:38
It's your unselfconscious loses a sense of time, everything works out.
15:42
Csikszentmihalyi wanted to distinguish flow from just zoning out. He didn't want you ...
15:47
if you sit on your phone and you're scrolling through Twitter for two hours or watching stupid cat videos on YouTube, he didn't want to call that flow.
16:01
Even though it's got some of the hallmarks, you lose a sense of time, you lose sense of yourself.
16:07
So what he landed on as the difference was complexity and challenge.
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So he thought flow states were about constantly ramping up the challenge and complexity so that you were engaged but it wasn't so hard that you got frustrated, it wasn't too easy that you got bored.
16:28
His model was like rock climbing or sports, we're always having to ramp things up to get engaged.
16:35
Even as an undergraduate, when flow came out when I was finishing my undergrad degree and I actually went to one of my friends in grad school was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's son Mark.
16:46
So I went to school with his son.
16:50
Even then I thought there was something wrong with that view, even based on the examples he gave.
16:55
So one of his examples in the original flow book, the one that was so popular is about Serafina, I think her name is, this woman who lives in the Italian Alps.
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She gets up every morning and does the same thing she does every day.
17:09
She leads the cows to pasture, she cards wool, she does these things she's done every day and will continue to do and she gets into flow doing those things.
17:23
I remember thinking, "It's not like rock climbing.
17:25
It's not like she's always having to lead the cows to a more challenging pasture, just remain in flow.
17:31
It's pretty simple stuff."
17:33
Then after flow, a lot of data came in.
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So Csikszentmihalyi and his colleagues started polling people on, tell us when you were in flow, what you were doing?
17:44
What people report is they tend to get in flow in situations like playing with children or hanging out with friends and chatting about nothing.
17:55
This is also not rock climbing or professional sports.
17:59
This is very simple stuff.
18:01
So this is where I argue in the book that wu-wei is a more helpful concept in the sense that the hallmark of wu-wei is that ...
18:07
for them it's a religious framework.
18:15
So you're in wu-wei because you're absorbed in the Dao, the way, the kind of cosmic way.
18:23
Converting this, I think, into naturalistic language, I argue that what this corresponds to is you get into wu-wei or proper flow when you're absorbed in something bigger than yourself that you value that you think is important.
18:39
So if I spend two hours coding.
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And maybe it's not complex coding, but I've solved a problem that I really cared about or I've contributed to a charity that needed my help.
18:53
I come out of that feeling pretty good about myself.
18:56
That's because the thing I was doing was valuable and in retrospect, I value it.
19:00
If I spend two hours watching cat videos and eating Doritos, I come out of that feeling gross and tired rather than energized.
19:11
That's because [inaudible] that I don't ...
19:11
I wasn't absorbed in something that I value.
19:17
I'm arguing that flow is really important concept, but we need to understand it slightly differently than Csikszentmihalyi defined it.
19:24
It's really about being absorbed in something bigger than you, that you value.
19:30
Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's an excellent distinction.
19:33
My personal experience with, I guess we'd call it flow, was in fact I wasn't rock climbing but I was climbing as a young man up a very steep incline that went down to the Mississippi River.
19:49
I realized at the end of my climb, that I had lost all sense of time, that I had lost any sense of myself, that all of my movements and everything weren't planned, they just happened.
20:10
This was an 80 degree or 75 degree angle.
20:14
So you had to literally use the trees as ways to pull yourself up.
20:20
I remember when I got to the top, I still remember this even though I think I was 20 or 21, how good I felt.
20:29
I just felt like amazingly good.
20:33
So I contemplated that for the rest of my walk back to my house because it was just like, "Oh, I got to get some more of this."
20:41
Edward Slingerland: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:43
It's easier to get when you're out in nature too because nature, it is bigger than you by definition.
20:51
Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's kind of the Japanese concept of forest bathing.
20:55
Where you're just meant to go out and don't have an agenda, just wander around in the woods.
21:02
I find that that too is quite lovely in the way.
21:07
It does shut off your prefrontal cortex.
21:14
Do you think that there are other ...
21:14
so in this instance, me climbing up that hill or rock climbing, forest bathing, walking in the forest without an agenda.
21:23
Are there any other external stimuli ...
21:23
and I want to reserve booze and alcohol because we're going to talk about your work there.
21:31
So are there any other external stimuli that are not mood altering?
21:38
So we'll put to the side, alcohol, psychedelics, et cetera.
21:42
How about other external things that people, especially westerners who are going to be the majority of the people listening to our discussion, could seek out that might help them get into this state more easily?
21:56
Edward Slingerland: Well I think nature is the most obvious one.
22:00
Going far as sitting on a beach in the ocean immediately, at least for me, puts me into these states. Doing stuff ...
22:09
probably my next trade book is going to be about the importance of contact with the physical world.
22:17
So simple tasks that are connecting you to physical stuff like weeding the garden or chopping vegetables and cooking can do this to you.
22:31
Dogs and kids are pretty useful because being around other living creatures that are social and don't have PFCs is helpful.
22:41
So I think that's why playing with kids often gets you into the state.
22:46
Social interaction when it's genuine and easy puts you in the state, as well.
22:50
So interacting with people you genuinely connect with and don't have to exert executive function to socialize with. This is typically ...
23:00
a sign of a good friend is somebody who is effortless to hang around with.
23:07
So I think everybody knows who those people are in their lives and those are good ways to get into wu-wei.
23:14
But it's very hard to do.
23:15
Getting into wu-wei is very hard to do in front of the computer or on your smartphone.
23:19
I think that's one of the problems we face now.
23:21
I think in previous generations, I'm old enough to be that previous generation.
23:28
When I was in college, we didn't have smartphones and so no matter how busy my day at school was, I had built-in downtime.
23:38
At the very least, walking from class to class.
23:43
I would mind wander and look at the trees and wonder about the weird squirrels, where do they live in the winter?
23:52
You have enforced downtime at certain points of the day that my students don't have.
23:58
Because when they walk from class to class, they're on their smartphone the whole time.
24:03
Checking Instagram or doing whatever.
24:06
So I think one key is to just disconnect from artificial devices and engage with the physical world is a good way to start.
24:18
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, I have an idea.
24:21
I can't elevate it to thesis yet because I'm not sure that it can be negated.
24:26
So my generation, when I was going to college, we barely had computers.
24:30
Joking, obviously, I graduated in 1982.
24:34
Well, I was meant to graduate in 1982.
24:37
I did a lot of downtime and ultimately got my degree in '85.
24:44
So I mean, we still type things on typewriters because of course we had computers, I had one of the first one because I thought they were so cool.
24:52
But my thesis about the cell phone is that ...
24:52
so I'm 62 and the cell phone, even though I have it near me most of the time, I don't use this device to look at Twitter, to look at Instagram, to look at any of those things. I think ...
25:10
and you can correct me because you probably know better than me.
25:14
But I think that this idea of the ...
25:14
well zombie is too strong a term, of the mindless movement like this.
25:26
It could either hypnotize you and maybe that's part of flow.
25:32
My point being though that I grew up in an era way before even cell phones.
25:40
So I think I am more correlated with using a computer to look at Twitter and things like that.
25:50
The other thing that I'm probably more correlated with just because of my age and when I grew up is the idea ...
25:54
for example, if my wife comes in, I immediately shut the computer screen, look at her and we have a conversation.
26:04
Do you think it is what cohort you grew up in?
26:08
Do you think if younger people just said ...
26:08
my daughter, for example, she's a young millennial, so she's 27, 26 now.
26:17
She has a rule and that is when you're at dinner, all the cell phones have to go under the center of the table.
26:22
Are those things helpful for the younger people who grew up on the scrolling methodology as opposed to the computer?
26:30
Edward Slingerland: Yeah, no, it's definitely a generational difference.
26:34
My daughter's going to be 16, she's grown up in an era of smartphones.
26:40
She does everything on the phone.
26:41
I feel old fashioned because I'm like you, I would need to get on a laptop.
26:47
Then Socrates would be horrified by that because maybe we shouldn't be using writing at all.
26:52
So there's always this kind of ...
26:52
every generation is grumpy about new technology that the new generation's using. I just find I can't ... I'd like to type.
27:02
But I think that because they're ...
27:02
the difference with the smartphone ...
27:02
so okay, maybe it's just a new technology that old people are grumpy about. But I don't think so.
27:13
I think there's actually a qualitative difference because [inaudible].
27:20
You can have it with you all the time and it's so addictive.
27:23
It really is designed by really clever engineers to addict you.
27:30
So that's where I think people who have grown up with it and really are drawn to living in the smartphone world need strategies.
27:39
This is kind of the Confucian approach is where you have rituals, you have certain [inaudible] you do things.
27:46
So with my daughter, it's always been since she's little, no cell phones at the table.
27:52
So you're just not allowed to have the cell phone at the dinner table.
27:55
But it creeps into all things.
27:58
She takes it on walks and she'll look at it.
28:01
I think also people differ in their proneness, even I have colleagues and friends who are my cohort, they're my age group and I notice are noticeably more addicted to their phones than I am.
28:14
You can almost see if they put it away for a little bit because it's a meal or something.
28:21
Any chance to [inaudible] something up or check something, they'll do it.
28:26
It's almost like they just need a little bit of heroin.
28:29
Just need a little of it.
28:31
I think it requires discipline and conscious strategies.
28:36
The other thing we've always done with my daughter is no cell phone in her room at night.
28:40
So at night she plugs it in the living room and it doesn't come out again until the morning.
28:45
I think that's helpful too.
28:47
But you need to actually come up with conscious, top down, PFC driven strategies because it's such an addictive thing.
28:55
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I'm fascinated by it because I also think that the digital natives like your daughter do have some pretty amazing skill sets that my generation can only look on and wonder at the ability, the creative ability, which I think is interesting.
29:14
I have a young person who worked for me and he's an artist, a digital artist.
29:21
So I asked him, "How long would it take you to do?"
29:25
And I was asking for an image that actually turned to animation and he's like, "Oh." We were on a Zoom.
29:32
Edward Slingerland: Yeah, no.
29:34
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And he just showed it to me. And I'm like, "Okay."
29:39
So I wonder, just to get back to the whole concept that we're talking about.
29:44
Why do you think that of all of the various schools in the early China, where all of this got started.
29:51
Why do you think that Confucianism and Daoism are the one ...
29:51
like verse legalism or some of the other Chinese traditions that you don't hear too much about these days.
30:03
But I find that a well-educated Westerner certainly knows about Confucianism.
30:10
Most of the people I chat with know about Daoism, as well.
30:13
Why the longevity in those two particular schools?
30:17
Edward Slingerland: That's a bit of a puzzle.
30:21
So it is in the Warring States period, there we're schools of, for instance, logic.
30:27
There was a school of logician, you [inaudible] were very rationalistic, looked a lot like western philosophers in certain ways, and that school didn't survive, Maoism.
30:39
It may have been a historical accident.
30:41
So one thing about the Maoists, they were very organized.
30:47
Because of their utilitarianism, they were dedicated to defensive warfare and were organized into these very disciplined units.
30:55
So they got systematically wiped out by the first emperor of Xin because he saw them as a threat.
31:02
it may have just been a historical accident if these guys were too organized.
31:05
Yeah, I don't know why rationalism and the kind of abstract mode of doing philosophy didn't become dominant in China.
31:15
Legalism is a tricky thing to talk about because it didn't officially survive, but it really did.
31:24
So Confucianism, when we think of Imperial Confucianism, the way it actually functioned as a state ideology was a convenient mixing of Confucianism and legalism.
31:36
So the Han Dynasty, the Xin Dynasty, the first unified dynasty in China was explicitly modeled on legalist principles.
31:46
The Han at a certain point took over, wanted to distinguish themselves from the Xin and say, well, we're ...
31:52
but they inherited all these legalist institutions from the Xin and kept them in place.
32:00
So the actual way China has been run for millennia has been a mixture of legalist principles on the ground, but a Confucian or Buddhist Confucian flavored ideology.
32:17
So these other schools have survived, they just aren't as prestigious or officially as recognized as Confucianism and Daoism.
32:25
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, it's an interesting idea.
32:28
You're right about the legalist tradition in viewing everything that if you're looking at China and I'm an amateur, you're the expert.
32:35
But yeah, I found that very interesting.
32:37
You also mentioned utilitarianism, which here in the West, Jeremy Bentham is probably best known for. I was looking at ...
32:43
I'm very interested in artificial intelligence and one of my beliefs is that the more open, the better.
32:51
In other words, the more cognitive diversity, the more people from different cultures who have the opportunity to interact with it, the better.
33:01
Because I would be very presumptuous of me to say that I know what all the good use cases are going to be. Of course, I don't.
33:09
I probably don't even know 0. 00001% of them.
33:13
I like the idea of the collective humanity, if you will.
33:18
Having the ability to have access to these tools.
33:21
The reason I bring that up is because Bentham came up with the panopticon.
33:26
I used the panopticon as an example of what closed AI controlled by a few looks like.
33:32
I have soon to be five grandchildren in June, and if I can do anything that makes it so they don't live in a world that is ruled by a panopticon AI, God dammit, I'm going to do that thing.
33:46
So I wonder sometimes the reason I'm asking is, so Bentham and the panopticon, when he came up with that idea, it was truly for humane reasons.
33:58
If you read what he says about it, he was trying to solve an ugly and horrible problem in not only Britain, but in Europe, in general, at the time.
34:08
Prisoners were treated just unconscionably and horribly.
34:12
He saw this as a way that they could be more humanely treated.
34:17
But then of course, it morphs into the all seeing eye and our human nature of not knowing if we're being watched and just defaulting to the idea that we're always being watched, which is not great for human beings.
34:29
So to tie it together, what do you think about ...
34:29
are a lot of these ideas that were originally meant for one type of state rule, like we're talking about the Chinese or societal mores, if you will.
34:45
Do things change over time to a point where all of that that used to be incredibly valuable is maybe not so much when you see it in a different light?
34:57
Like I'm mentioning the panopticon.
34:59
Edward Slingerland: Yeah, it's interesting that Mozi [inaudible] essentially had a version of panopticon.
35:09
So he has a whole chapter Ghost it's called, Ghost or Spirits.
35:15
Where he's arguing against this growing disbelief in spiritual beings that he saw around him.
35:23
He's a bit of a fundamentalist and he really believes it's important for public morality that people believe that there are ghosts and spirits everywhere watching them all the time.
35:35
They're like the heavenly secret policemen who are going to be watching and punishing you if you're doing bad.
35:42
So utilitarianism has often gone, along with either legalist ideas or ideas that the way to get a good state is to carefully police people's behavior.
35:55
That's going to require surveillance and strict rules and word and punishment.
36:00
It's a very ancient idea.
36:02
You see it all the way back in early China.
36:04
I think the problem with it is that I think that [inaudible] the intuition that the right way to regulate society is through new norms.
36:16
So getting people to embrace certain values that they then are self activating, that are wu-wei, that are spontaneous.
36:25
The way to get good people is to turn people into good people and not through external reward and punishment.
36:32
But the problem with that is it's kind of loosey goosey and maybe it doesn't work as ...
36:37
I don't know if it works as well.
36:39
So you look at modern China.
36:41
Modern China is not a very wu-wei place.
36:43
It looks a lot like [inaudible] pervasive surveillance, very strict rules, very strict social control, very little individual freedom.
36:56
So that's the other thing, too, is some people ...
36:56
just because Confucianism and Daoism started at a certain point in China in the fourth, fifth century BC, it doesn't mean modern China's like that at all.
37:08
Certainly the modern mainland China is not like this.
37:11
So this idea of a police state can have very nice motives at first.
37:19
So I mean, Mozi really was genuinely upset about the inequality and the pain and suffering that he was seeing around him, and he wanted to fix it so that people would be better off.
37:31
But his solution was essentially creating a police state.
37:35
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I herald from the freedom Maximalist side of things.
37:41
I think that most systems are complex and adaptive.
37:45
And if you understand complex adaptive systems, you know that all emergence and new things comes from the bottom, not from the top.
37:53
That one of the ways to maximize that is to give a huge variety of people a very different dispositions and aptitude and passions, access to things and let the great ideas flow.
38:11
Now I realize that that is also somewhat utopian in its thinking process.
38:16
We have to have rules and regulations and I'm absolutely aware of that.
38:21
But I do think elsewhere you talk about honest and there's a lot of research that shows that we as a species, human beings, we default to honesty.
38:35
We default to honesty for a very good reason, in my opinion.
38:38
And one that can be supported by looking at evolution, looking at our beginnings in hunter gatherer tribes.
38:45
In that we are a very unexpected apex predator on a planet.
38:50
When you look at our physical attributes and endowments, they ain't all that good.
38:56
Unless we are collectively acting together and using all of the tools, including our mind and our consciousness, to do better than a more naturally gifted by nature.
39:10
Like a lion or a tiger or with the jaws and the claws.
39:14
So I wonder, it leads me into the next thing I wanted to talk to you about, which is the limits of rationality.
39:21
Which is something that I'm absolutely fascinated by because I tend to be a ...
39:21
I started life as a rationalist and I'm not that anymore.
39:31
I don't really even know what I am.
39:33
I am definitely have over a long period of time made efforts to rewrite my mental models, to bring the unconsciousness into play in a variety of ways.
39:44
By the way, that's really hard.
39:47
But I also like this idea of imbued or saturated intuition.
39:54
In other words, so I've been doing what I do for a long, long time.
39:58
What I find and have found is that the more I do what I do, the more my intuitions about certain things get better and better.
40:08
Now I'm still have that rational aside because I write them down.
40:12
Because I'm swayed by the work of Will Storr who wrote the book ‘Scientific Storytelling’ and ‘The Status Game’, who is a guest on the podcast.
40:22
In which he basically shows all of the studies that show our brains thinks they're doing us a kindness when we're wrong about something and they erase that memory.
40:34
They only tell us, oh, when we were right, they remind us, "You were right. You were right."
40:39
So it's one of the reasons why I try to keep myself honest by writing down an intuition and then saying, was it right or wrong? I wonder ...
40:47
right now there's the whole McGilchrist tribe looking at we're two left brained.
40:47
to a certain extent, I agree with that.
40:57
I think that a holistic approach using if you can, the entire brain.
41:03
You mentioned dogs earlier and my unconscious is poking me and saying, "Jim, say this thing about dogs."
41:11
So I believe that dogs are natural Daoist sages.
41:18
Actually spending time with a dog is just such a wonderful experience.
41:26
I've sat and watched dogs and they're so immediate and they're so natural, spontaneous themselves.
41:37
Usually dogs that are highly trained, obviously that is the case.
41:40
But back to McGilchrist, the right and left brain.
41:44
Like one of the things that I have a hard time with is sort of, I'm seeing ... not him per se.
41:51
But some of his true believers, like almost trying to make a villain out of the left brain.
42:00
A villain out of the concept of basically abstraction.
42:06
I personally think that we need both.
42:10
I personally believe that without abstraction, we don't know anything about quantum physics, we don't know ...
42:15
which, by the way, quantum physics, if you overdose on Laozi and then you think, "Oh, I'll do some science."
42:23
Then you go and read some of the quantum theorists, they're all like saying the same thing.
42:29
Schrödinger's saying, "If you add up all of the minds in the world, it equals one." So non-dual.
42:34
David Bohm, who came up with the hidden variables theory, very, very out there in terms of ...
42:34
he truly believes that ...
42:39
I think is a very interesting thesis and I don't have the capacity to say this is right or wrong.
42:48
But this idea that the universe is interactive and connected.
42:53
You and me, we're seeing duality where it doesn't exist.
42:58
So I know that's a long way into the rationality, but you made a point that I thought was really excellent.
43:05
It was the hot and cold distinction.
43:07
In other words, I guess Danny Kahneman would call it system one and system two.
43:12
But talk a little bit about that and how people could better incorporate that into their every day life.
43:20
Edward Slingerland: This idea that the abstract thought or left brain is the villain.
43:27
It's the villain for certain goals.
43:30
So it's important to think from an evolutionary perspective why we have a prefrontal cortex in the first place.
43:37
This maybe is a natural segue into ‘Drunk’ because this becomes an important issue in ‘Drunk’. The PFC is crucial.
43:45
We could not be successful adults without this ability to delay gratification, suppress certain things and replace it with another impulse, to plan for the future, to think abstractly.
43:59
This is what makes humans, humans.
44:01
So it's also a very expensive part of the brain.
44:04
So it wouldn't be there if it wasn't doing something crucial.
44:07
So I think that any kind of coherent story about the self has to give a role to cold cognition and system two cognition.
44:16
We don't want the world run by a bunch of four year olds, adult bodies, right?
44:25
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Right, right.
44:26
Edward Slingerland: Which happened relatively recently in the United States.
44:29
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Indeed. Not to good effect.
44:32
Edward Slingerland: Somebody without a PFC, basically. So we need the PFC.
44:35
The role of the PFC is to also help shape the system one system.
44:42
So when you talk about ...
44:42
you said something about your intuition is getting better over time in a domain.
44:47
I mean, this is a skill acquisition.
44:50
Skill acquisition typically involves system two exertion, cognitive control.
44:56
If I'm learning how to play tennis, I need to really pay attention to how I've been told to hold the racket and [inaudible] and how to step through and how to hit the ball.
45:08
I have different models for windshield wiper, try to get the ...
45:08
you have all these conscious things you're thinking of that you're trying to then impose on your body.
45:20
That's the only way to learn how to play tennis.
45:22
You can't just go out and start swinging a racket and that's system two based. It's cold cognition.
45:27
Yet to get good at tennis, you have to essentially download that into your hot cognition and make it automatic.
45:37
Once you get really good, once you become an expert, then system two does become the enemy.
45:44
So this is what happens with choking, there's really good by Sian Beilock, got a great book called ‘Choke’ I think or ‘Choking’, where she looks at the literature on sports choking.
45:53
The best way to screw up a professional athlete is to get them to engage their cold cognition.
45:59
So supposedly McEnroe, who was a dick, would do this to people if they were serving really well, when they switched sides, he'd be like, "Hey, your serves really great today.
46:12
What are you doing differently?"
46:13
Then start thinking, "I don't know, what am I doing differently?"
46:17
Then they would ruin their serve.
46:20
So it's a delicate balance.
46:22
You need cold cognition to develop any kind of new skill, which all humans do.
46:28
I mean, we're completely dependent on learning artificial skills to survive in the world.
46:33
We're not born with everything we need online.
46:36
So there are a lot of species in the world that don't need cold cognition because they've got everything they need built into system one.
46:45
For whatever reason, we didn't take that evolutionary path.
46:48
We developed this prefrontal cortex and the ability to abstract and the ability to exert cognitive control and change our hot systems.
46:54
So you have to value that as part of what makes us human.
46:59
So I think the key is knowing what the function of the PFC is, in what kinds of situations we need it.
47:08
But also, in what kind of situations it's good to shut it down.
47:12
That's where humans have developed various technologies for doing that.
47:17
Some of them are these meditative techniques or ritual things, getting involved in the world.
47:23
Some of them we've also figured out that we can use chemical substances to do this. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah. The ‘Drunk’ ...
47:28
one of my researchers said to me, "Ask him how drunk he was when he wrote ‘Drunk’."
47:33
Edward Slingerland: Yeah, that's actually a really good question.
47:37
Because this is actually not in the book, but I had written probably 10 versions of the book proposal for ‘Drunk’ and my agent kept sending it back to me and she was like, "Nah, boring." And she was right.
47:53
All the science was there, all the arguments were there, everything was there.
47:59
But it was in this very plodding, like here's the problem, here's why the problem's interesting, here's some ideas about it. It was boring.
48:11
It was logically consistent, but it lacked oof.
48:16
I realized, it's because I hadn't taken my own advice in the book and I hadn't written any of it drunk.
48:23
So what I needed was actually something unexpected and catchy.
48:28
So I was on a business trip, this was pre-COVID and I was meeting some colleagues, but I had a couple hours before dinner.
48:35
So I went down to the hotel lobby with my laptop and ordered a Negroni.
48:41
By the end of my Negroni, probably at about 0.
48:41
08 blood alcohol content, about when I should not have been operating a motor vehicle.
48:51
What is now the first two pages of the book just popped into my head.
48:58
Really the phenomenological experience was that I was just taking dictation.
49:02
I was just writing down something that some part of my brain was telling me.
49:08
Everyone remarks on the beginning of the book, how it just sucks you in and it's engaging. That was produced at 0.
49:13
08 blood alcohol content.
49:16
It's the kind of just coming in from a weird direction thing that's hard to get on coffee, just thinking completely in a PFC driven way.
49:27
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, I love that.
49:29
So I will tell him, I'm very happy that I asked him and I'm going to text him right after we're done and tell him he had a really great answer to that.
49:36
I think it's probably apocryphal, but the story that I'm familiar with about Alexander the Great and his generals, I'm sure you've heard it.
49:45
Where they made their battle plans in the bright sun of daylight and they were all being rational.
49:52
This is why we should do this.
49:54
But then they would get incredibly drunk that night.
50:00
The story as I've heard it is if they woke up in the morning still committed to the battle plan after having discussed it while they were drunk, it was a go.
50:11
But if they woke up in the morning with misgivings, it was scratched. Is that a true story? Is that a true story?
50:18
Edward Slingerland: I don't think we know.
50:20
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, right.
50:21
Edward Slingerland: It sounds like exactly the kind of thing ...
50:21
I've heard the exact same story attributed to the Persians, the people Alexander were fighting. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
50:32
Edward Slingerland: So I don't know who it is. The important thing ...
50:33
and I've heard it said about the German Visigoths according to Tacitus.
50:37
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Right. That's right.
50:39
Edward Slingerland: So this has been said about a lot of different people.
50:41
So I think it's just probably lots of people do this.
50:44
It just gets attributed ...
50:44
whenever someone's really successful, you're like, "Well, what's their trick?"
50:49
One of those tricks is contemplating things while drunk.
50:54
So one of the main themes of ‘Drunk’ is that even though we've been told from the scientific [inaudible] that our taste for intoxicants is an evolutionary mistake. That's a mistake. It can't be right.
51:10
Because alcohol is so costly and it's really quite dangerous substance.
51:16
So the fact that the taste for it has remained in our gene pool and then our cultural repertoire, means there have to be some adaptive benefits that it's serving.
51:26
I talk about a bunch of the benefits, but one of the crucial ones is this, the creativity thing or the insight thing.
51:34
Again, the PFCs great for a lot of things.
51:39
But one of the problems, many problems with it, is it interferes with or suppresses creative thought.
51:46
So kids, I look at data that this is Alison Gopnik work at UC Berkeley.
51:53
Little children are great at lateral thinking tasks.
51:56
So tasks where to solve it, you have to come up with an unusual thing, that's kind of hard, that you need an insight to see.
52:02
You can't just logically churn through it.
52:05
Four year olds are great at these tasks and our performance on them goes down linear fashion as we age.
52:13
In the book I lay down on top of that, our PFC maturation.
52:17
So basically as our PFCs maturing, we get less and less creative.
52:22
This is because evolution's got this trade off design problem where it wants us to have cold cognition but not too soon.
52:31
It's kind of slow walks the development.
52:33
Because the PFC is a last part of a human being to develop.
52:37
It's the last part of the brain to develop and well after your body is fully mature.
52:42
So it clearly is because evolution's got ...
52:42
we need to be open to things, we need to be able to learn new things, we have to trust people.
52:50
So it wants to slow walk the development of the PFC.
52:54
So then as an adult, you've got this problem where you're stuck with this PFC that you do need, but then you still confront situations where you need lateral insight.
53:05
You need to be able to see new possibilities, you have to see the whole realm of possible factors that normally the PFC is just focusing you on task relevance stuff.
53:15
So what we figured out is we can use a tool like alcohol to just turn the PFC down for a little bit.
53:23
Three hours, we're back like a four year old again in certain ways.
53:28
Then, hey, that battle plan the PSC came up with, basically you're consulting your unconscious and saying, "What do you think about that?"
53:39
Your unconscious may pull up some stuff that you hadn't considered.
53:44
The story is probably apocryphal, but it captures a really important function of alcohol.
53:49
Which is that it's a way to temporarily turn down our PFC so that we can get creative insights when we need them. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
53:58
I find that in your argument absolutely fascinating because I, A, agree with it.
54:03
I think that the ability that external chemicals can allow us to push it down.
54:12
But then I wonder because I've seen some literature that says ...
54:12
and I know this is N equals one, so I can't extend it.
54:22
But it's an interesting observation from an old friend of mine who basically he loved his drinks.
54:29
And when you'd go to his house, he had this wonderful spot in upstate ...
54:29
or not upstate, it was Hudson River Valley.
54:37
And he had a horse and the horse every day if you went there, the horse was knocking his head against the apple tree so that the apples would drop.
54:50
But then the horse waited until they fermented to eat them.
54:56
Is it not just humans who are alcohol seeking?
54:59
Is it is other species, as well?
55:02
Edward Slingerland: Yeah.
55:04
Fruit that has fermented enough that it's starting to produce alcohol has got a lot of sugar in it too and a lot of calories.
55:11
Alcohol is actually a very important source of calories.
55:14
It's got a lot of chloric content in the molecule, which is why drinking is really bad if you're trying to lose weight.
55:21
So yeah, and other species also get the kick.
55:26
So I mean, the standard story is what I call evolutionary hijack theory.
55:31
That ethanol just happens to trigger this reward circuit in our brain for no good reason at all.
55:38
Then we just figured this trick out and that's why we drink.
55:40
Clearly that's why other species pursue alcohol when they can't because they have the same reward circuit.
55:46
So it does the same thing.
55:48
It can't be the whole story with humans because we're the only species that has organized the large scale production of alcohol and made it central to most of our social rituals and religious rituals.
56:04
Really, it's arguably the oldest thing we've been doing.
56:08
We've been getting together and producing and consuming alcohol for as long as we've been doing anything in an organized fashion as a species. That's really unusual.
56:20
That's kind of the puzzle I want to answer is why are we so intent on doing this?
56:27
Whenever people go to a new place, if they're colonizing a new area or they're frontier.
56:33
The first thing they do is figure out, what can we ferment?
56:37
Or they bring alcohol making equipment with them.
56:41
It begs explanation, why we're so intent on producing and consuming alcohol?
56:50
I argue that just the mistake or byproduct theory isn't convincing.
56:55
Again, given the extreme costs.
56:56
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, I agree with that.
56:59
In your work you also point out that it predates agriculture itself.
57:03
So alcohol was more important to our early ancestors than food, in a way.
57:09
Edward Slingerland: Yeah, yeah.
57:10
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Because they exerted their efforts there and then that kind of led to, "Oh, maybe we should like start growing food, too."
57:18
so I am fascinated by that idea.
57:21
I had a scholar named Brian Muraresku on, who wrote a book called ‘The Religion with No Name’.
57:29
It was essentially a look at some of the early Greek cults, the mysteries of Eleusis and the cults of Dionysus, et cetera.
57:38
His thesis was that not only were they packing a punch with the alcohol side of what they were serving at the gatherings, but they were also doing rudimentary psychedelics in them.
57:51
As he joked to me once, that their sales pitch line was almost, you had to do it because it was come to our gathering and speak with the gods.
58:03
So what do you think about other drugs outside of alcohol, like specifically psychedelics, where the self is essentially obliterated?
58:16
But you're also, I think, not in a condition where ...
58:16
like your writing of the first several pages with 0. 08.
58:24
You were still able to write those great pages.
58:28
Whereas that doesn't really happen with psychedelics, right?
58:31
Edward Slingerland: Yeah.
58:33
So I do talk about other chemical intoxicants and I talk about psychedelics.
58:36
Psychedelics are doing some very similar things as alcohol is doing.
58:41
So they're kind of de-patterning the brain, they're allowing this crosstalk.
58:46
The difference is they're doing it in a really extreme way.
58:49
So they're completely disassociating you from reality, completely de-patterning your mind and for a long period of time, typically.
58:59
Most hallucinogens trips last for six hours. So they're important.
59:05
I think that Michael Pollan has got this really good analogy, I think where he argues that psychedelics are for cultural evolution, what mutagens are for genetic evolution.
59:18
For evolution of work, we need a lot of variation.
59:21
We need to kick up a lot of variation.
59:23
Most of that variation's going to be useless or even harmful.
59:27
In the same, most genetic mutations are harmful.
59:30
Yet, every once in a while there'll be one that's useful, and then adoption can lock onto that and select that.
59:37
His argument is that psychedelics are this tool we use to just rattle up the brain, produce completely random stuff.
59:48
99% of that going to be garbage or nonsense.
59:52
But every once in a while, maybe there's an important insight out of there.
59:55
Alcohol is doing a very similar thing, just much more mildly.
1:00:00
That's why I think alcohol's the daily social drug that people use.
1:00:05
Typically, in most cultures, psychedelics are reserved for either special occasions.
1:00:11
So in cultures where everyone uses them, it's rarely.
1:00:14
You don't do it every night.
1:00:16
If you're using it regularly, it's a specialized class who's using it regularly.
1:00:22
So sometimes the way cultures deal with this is designate a certain group of people who ... shamans or priests.
1:00:29
And their job is to be doing hallucinogens all the time and coming up with crazy stuff.
1:00:34
Some of it's going to be useful.
1:00:36
So it's either done rarely or it's done by a specialized class.
1:00:40
Just psychedelics are too powerful to incorporate into everyday life and everyday rituals. So that's why humans ...
1:00:47
it's just like we have different tools.
1:00:50
You use a different size hammer when you're doing one job as opposed to another.
1:00:55
We have this problem, we need to come up with a new insight.
1:00:59
Does it need to be a really, really new insight?
1:01:01
Well then maybe we need to go in the desert and eat peyote.
1:01:06
Is it just that the beginning of my book proposal sucks and I need to come up with a catchier beginning?
1:01:13
Maybe I'll just have a Negroni. It really is ...
1:01:15
humans use different power tools to do different jobs. But it's a spectrum.
1:01:22
So psychedelics are just way farther along on the spectrum in terms of disassociating you than alcohol is.
1:01:27
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, totally agree.
1:01:30
Also Timothy Leary, the poster boy, who really wasn't and shouldn't have been made into the poster boy that Nixon made him into.
1:01:38
Had a really interesting kind of meta programming idea, which I'm sure you're familiar with.
1:01:43
Where he believed that the imprinting of the basic top ...
1:01:43
he called it top dog, bottom dog, winner script, loser script.
1:01:52
These are all his words, not mine.
1:01:54
Then when you keep going up his chain, he gets to this idea of meta programming and he says, "The only way you can do that is with psychedelics."
1:02:04
So they might have a different use case there.
1:02:06
But as I'm looking at my notes and listening to you, we've already come to the section on the unconscious.
1:02:13
Because I'm wondering how much ...
1:02:13
we're talking about your idea of beer before bread, desire to drink predates everything.
1:02:25
I wonder how much of that is for the reason that you used it for with the opening of your book.
1:02:34
In other words, how much of it, do you think, was either an unplanned discovery?
1:02:40
Like Ken Stanley, I don't know if you're familiar with his work.
1:02:43
But he's kind of got this stepping stone idea about the way we should ...
1:02:43
his is, if you really want to have a great experience in life, be much more open to ...
1:02:50
don't set some goal and then say, "I must work towards this goal."
1:03:00
Rather say, "This is the direction or the journey I wish to go in." And just pay attention.
1:03:06
He says, "You go from stepping stone to stepping stone and each time you uncover some new learning.
1:03:11
It's a bit like wu-wei in that you only uncover it if you're not looking for it, according to Kenneth.
1:03:17
So I wonder, do you think that the idea of the introduction of the alcohol and it shuts down the prefrontal cortex temporarily.
1:03:27
Then, does that mean that it's like we are being ruled entirely by our unconscious or subconscious? Or no?
1:03:35
Edward Slingerland: It's just allowing the unconscious a little bit more power.
1:03:40
It's essentially taking away the playground monitor for a little while.
1:03:45
So the goal of the PFC is to just monitor hot systems and notice when they're going wrong or correct them.
1:03:54
That's gone to a certain extent.
1:03:55
That's important when the hot systems need to do their job.
1:03:58
So this idea of stepping stones is very similar in the skill ...
1:03:58
that the fact that experts, so again, like let's say skilled athletes, professional athletes.
1:04:10
If Roger Federer wants to put a backhand down the line, he's not thinking about how he needs to move his racket to do that or how his arm needs to move.
1:04:22
He's thinking about putting it back [inaudible].
1:04:25
His brain sets a goal and then his body just knows how to do it. That's important.
1:04:31
So again, if we asked him to remember and describe to us later how you did that, he wouldn't do it very well.
1:04:38
So there are a lot of goals like that, where you need to shut down the cognitive control systems to do well.
1:04:46
So one of those goals is creativity, and that's one of the important functions I discuss in ‘Drunk’. The other is trust.
1:04:55
So the other big function, I think, of alcohol historically has been in the service of creating trust and bonding between people.
1:05:07
So, you talked a little bit about, one of the features of us as a species is we're pretty useless as individuals.
1:05:15
We're pack animals and we're completely dependent.
1:05:18
Unlike chimpanzees and other primates, we're just useless on our own.
1:05:23
We're not very strong, we're actually not particularly that smart on our own.
1:05:27
Why we're [inaudible] because we tap into collective brains that humans together work together to come up with solutions to things and then pass down those solutions using culture.
1:05:37
So that's what makes us powerful is culture and the ability to work together.
1:05:42
But that requires working together and trust.
1:05:45
The weird thing I argue in ‘Drunk’, we occupy this odd, as a species, an odd ecological niche where we're primates.
1:05:53
And a lot of our basic instincts and biology is very similar to the chimpanzee.
1:05:59
But if you look at the way we live, especially in large scale post agricultural societies.
1:06:05
The way we cooperate looks a lot more like social insects.
1:06:09
We look like ants or bees.
1:06:11
I mean, you would never see an army of chimpanzees going into battle together, all lined up and organized.
1:06:19
It's just not how it works.
1:06:21
Yet humans line up and go into battle.
1:06:24
Humans line up and get on an airplane and sit in close quarters that chimpanzees would tear each other apart if they were forced together like that.
1:06:33
Yet we sit and eat our crackers and behave for the most part.
1:06:37
So humans are really domesticated and obedient and cooperative.
1:06:43
One of the [inaudible] is how we manage to do that, especially with [inaudible] collaborating with non-kin all the time.
1:06:50
And often in one off interactions, so interactions where we're never going to see the person again.
1:06:56
One of the tools that we use to make this work is religion.
1:06:59
So this is something I've argued in my previous work, that belief in certain types of deities, engaging in certain types of rituals helps to create a sense of bonding that help people to cooperate.
1:07:11
But another way we do it is alcohol.
1:07:13
So there's a reason that any time you have potentially hostile individuals, or at least individuals with potentially differing interests who need to sit down and come to an agreement or figure something out, they don't start talking until they've gotten drunk. They eat and they drink.
1:07:33
Or they use some other chemical intoxicant that has very similar effects.
1:07:37
That's because the other function of down regulating the PFC, is that it's hard for you to lie.
1:07:45
It's a kind of truth serum.
1:07:47
So if I've down regulated your ...
1:07:47
lying is a really cognitively challenging task.
1:07:53
If I'm trying to lie to you about something, I have to keep in my mind simultaneously in real time, both what I'm telling you is the truth and what I know to be the truth.
1:08:04
I have to keep those separate.
1:08:06
Any emotional reactions that I have that are about that other thing, that's the truth, but I'm not telling you.
1:08:12
I have to suppress those reactions.
1:08:15
Then I have to simulate new reactions that correspond the lie I'm telling you.
1:08:19
It's really you're revving up your PFC to lie successfully.
1:08:22
If I then before I start to ask you about something, I give you a couple shots of vodka.
1:08:26
I basically impaired your lying mechanism.
1:08:30
It's going to be harder for you to convince me that you're trustworthy if you're not.
1:08:36
So it's down regulating the PFC in a way that makes it hurt a lie.
1:08:41
It's also, the other main effect of alcohol is it's boosting these pro-social hormones.
1:08:47
So it's boosting serotonin, dopamine, which just makes you less likely to want to lie.
1:08:53
Because you're feeling cooperative and you're feeling happy about yourself and other people.
1:08:59
So it's a drug that we use to help people ease into and maintain social relations.
1:09:08
Which is crucial for us as a species. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
1:09:12
Of course, in vino veritas, is a well-known Latin phrase for good reason.
1:09:17
I wondered, as I was getting ready for this and going through some of my notes on your stuff.
1:09:22
I did wonder, though, about the idea that to be honest, is that the animalistic self exclusively?
1:09:32
Because I would say there's an alternate model to honesty.
1:09:36
That is that there are layers to honesty that get put by the prefrontal cortex.
1:09:43
Okay, so I have to be empathetic or I have to be ...
1:09:43
I don't want to hurt that person.
1:09:51
That my mom used to call them white lies.
1:09:53
I don't know if everyone's mom called them white lies. But I wonder about that.
1:09:58
I wondered your reaction to that. I mean, because ...
1:09:59
to show compassion, to be empathetic.
1:10:04
Those seem to me, at least, to be functions of the prefrontal cortex and the planning, and if then, and the ability to think about what can happen in the future from our actions now. Or am I wrong? Is it truly the ...
1:10:23
I don't know if you know the work of Jed McKenna, but he basically says we are a fear based animal, humans.
1:10:31
And it guides us, emotions guide virtually everything we do.
1:10:37
The prefrontal cortex kind of saved us, if you will, from that more animalistic side of life.
1:10:44
But I don't know, what do you think?
1:10:47
Our unconstrained emotional core, if we shut off the prefrontal cortex, we are going into a completely different part of our being.
1:10:57
We've all had the experience of getting drunk, in vino veritas, saying something that maybe impulsively.
1:11:08
That we might be feeling at that moment, but if we really examine our lives, and I do it through journaling, other people do it through other methods. We really don't believe.
1:11:18
It was almost like what we said wasn't really the truth, it wasn't really honest.
1:11:25
It was a spontaneous feeling at that moment of exhilaration that we were getting from, as you mentioned, all of the chemical dumps that happened with alcohol are well known and well documented.
1:11:37
What do you think about that?
1:11:38
Edward Slingerland: I mean, certainly if you take away the [inaudible], all sorts of stuff could happen. That's why ...
1:11:45
especially at really high levels of inebriation, very dangerous things can happen.
1:11:51
You dis-inhibit people too much, it could be bad.
1:11:54
But people who get mean when they drink typically are mean people.
1:12:01
They just learned to be not mean in daily life through cognitive control.
1:12:06
The meanness comes out when that's taken down.
1:12:08
You may say things that your conscious mind doesn't feel.
1:12:13
So the feeling that that rush of serotonin and dopamine can certainly make you feel closer to people in the moment than you really feel like the next morning when the PFC's in charge of getting all that, those hormones are gone.
1:12:28
So, that's one way in which it could be misleading.
1:12:30
"Oh, I love you guys, you're my best friend."
1:12:33
You're like, well, in retrospect.
1:12:36
But there's something ...
1:12:36
humans seem to find it useful to get a read of what people are like when the playground monitors not in charge.
1:12:48
We've historically found that important and there is some value to it.
1:12:51
But certainly, it impairs your ability to be polite, which could be good and bad.
1:12:58
Maybe I want to know what you really think about ...
1:12:58
maybe it's not nice for you to tell me what you really think about my book.
1:13:03
But I actually want to know what you really think.
1:13:05
Then I'm going to want to get you a little drunk first before I ask you.
1:13:08
You'll be rude, maybe, because you need the PFC to engage in certain types of politeness and compassion.
1:13:15
So again, it's not a cure all.
1:13:17
It's not like everyone [inaudible] time would be the best way to engage in society.
1:13:24
It's a tool that we use selectively in certain situations when it's useful.
1:13:29
I think it is useful in some situations.
1:13:31
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I agree.
1:13:33
I think your work is absolutely fascinating and highly recommend it to our listeners. I can't believe ...
1:13:38
I think we were in wu-wei because it's already an hour and a half since we started recording.
1:13:44
Edward Slingerland: Yeah, yeah.
1:13:45
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I can't believe that.
1:13:46
I honestly can't believe that.
1:13:47
So this has been absolutely fascinating.
1:13:50
Thank you so much for coming on. Your work is great. What's next?
1:13:55
Do you have something in the works right now?
1:13:56
Edward Slingerland: The next book is probably going to be an academic book about virtue ethics and moral perception and early Confucianism.
1:14:07
But then the next trade book is going to be about this theme I touched on briefly of the importance of the physical world and contact with the physical world.
1:14:17
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Interesting. Interesting. Well timed. Well timed, as well. Well, thank you.
1:14:22
This has been really fun for me.
1:14:23
What we do at the end of every podcast is we wave a wand and we make you magical in the sense that you get to speak into a little magic microphone two ideas or concepts that are going to incept all humans on the planet.
1:14:41
They're going to wake up the next day, think it's their idea.
1:14:46
So they won't even know that you didn't plant this idea in them.
1:14:49
They're going to wake up and think they did it.
1:14:51
A bit like the thing on the best government that Laozi has.
1:14:55
The best leader is the one where the people say, "We did it ourselves."
1:15:00
So you get to incept two things in all of humanity.
1:15:05
What two are you going to incept?
1:15:07
Edward Slingerland: Stop pushing so hard.
1:15:11
Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's a good one.
1:15:13
Edward Slingerland: It'd be one of them.
1:15:17
Maybe the other is, go walk in the woods. Some version of that.
1:15:24
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I'll tell you what, I love those.
1:15:28
Because if you did just those two ...
1:15:28
if every human just did those two things, life would be a lot better and the world would be a much better place, in my opinion. So I love them both.
1:15:39
Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
1:15:42
Edward Slingerland: Yeah, thanks. This was a lot of fun.