Men and Women and Evolution | Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying - MP Podcast #114

This video by Mikhaila Peterson was published on Sep 17, 2021.
Video length: 01:13:52.

• Freedom is the most important thing for human satisfaction.
• The ancient system placed a heavy burden on women, which can be relieved by birth control.
• Restricting some areas, such as food and entertainment, can lead to cravings and a desire for unhealthy choices.

Men and Women and Evolution | Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying - MP Podcast #114 - YouTube

Introduction

• The video is from YouTube channel by Mikhaila Peterson, where Mikhaila is speaking herself or she is interviewing her guests.
• The video is about Men and Women and Evolution, and features an interview with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying.
• The video is brought to you by Understandmyself.com, a personality test developed by Mikhaila's dad over the last 30 years with help from two other PhDs at McGill and Harvard.

Understandmyself.com

• Understandmyself.com is a website that offers a personality test and a specialized personalized report after completing the assessment.
• The website also allows users to create a relationship report with their romantic partner, providing a description of what they might expect from being in a relationship together.
• The website is designed to help users understand their personality in seriously uncomfortable detail.
• The website is developed by Mikhaila's dad over the last 30 years with help from two other PhDs at McGill and Harvard.

Religion as an Adaptive Evolutionary Tool

• The video discusses how religion is adaptive or perhaps humans need it as a species.
• Religion is expensive, requiring a significant investment of time and resources from religious people.
• Religion is complex and has been evolutionarily long-standing, with all successful cultures having mystical belief systems.
• Religion is not consistent with each other about cosmology, but belief systems that appear to be in conflict with each other and with a scientific worldview have been successful.
• Belief systems are not designed to be true, but rather to be useful in terms of spreading and being consistent with evolutionary interests.

Men and Women and Evolution | Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying - MP Podcast #114 - YouTube

Scientific View and Metaphorical Belief

• The video discusses how even our scientific view is somewhat perfectly literal, but a lot of things we describe in science are models at different levels of crudeness.
• Over time, the crudeness goes down and the literalness goes up, but even a scientific worldview has a certain amount of metaphorical belief in it.
• Many things that are conveyed in the world, including in many religions, are literally false but metaphorically true.
• The metaphorical truth has value and explains why people use it going forward.
• The video provides an example of farmers in the Guatemalan highlands who believe that planting their crops on the full moon is a way to be in good with their gods and guarantee crop success.

The Role of the Moon in Crop Success

• Researchers found that farmers who believed in the ancient belief that the gods smile on them when they plant on the full moon had better crop success.
• The modern scientific interpretation is that if you coordinate the timing of your crops such that you are also all harvesting at the same time, you effectively satiate your predators and everyone gets some of their crops eaten but no one gets all of their crops eaten.
• Planting all crops at the same time does not have a chance to grow and therefore it's the smallest amount of consumption across the entire landscape.
• Guatemalan farmers in the highlands of Guatemala have the terminology of predator association and such, but they have not effectively recognized that the moon is a giant sky clock.
• The story that goes along with the behavior that is adaptive is not literally true, but it has relevance and the fact that it is not suggests that they are not stuck in a time past that has no relevance for now.

Birth Control and Women's Role in Society

• Human social relations were rigged around certain realities of reproduction, women because it is very expensive to be stuck raising a child alone.
• Women had to be extremely careful not to engage sexually with men who did not demonstrate a willingness to commit to them.
• The problem is that this is not a very fair system, an asymmetrical burden on the other hand it does create a kind of coherence and it had consequences that were positive for men also.
• With the advent of birth control, what we have gained is far greater, an opportunity for women to expand their role in the world beyond child care and sort of you know homework uh that we were more limited to before we had the capacity to control our reproductive lives.
• Pretending that birth control comes with no cost is a tragedy and we need to figure out a way to potentially get back some of the value that we had before we had the control while not giving up the control that we now have.

The Evolution of Relationships

• Evolution handed us a function to our relationships between the sexes, but it has disappeared.
• We need to figure out what portion of that which made sense in the past can be retooled and what needs to be added to it to make it coherent in the present.
• We must go forwards, but to do so involves renegotiating our relationship with each other and with our environment.
• The lack of religion at the moment is also contributing to the predicament between men and women.
• Keeping some of the scientific advancements we've made and looking at the world in a framework might be beneficial.

The Importance of Shared Rules

• Not having a framework that is coherent and at least aspects of which remain coherent today makes things much more difficult.
• Without shared rules, it is difficult to negotiate a potential romance at work or in other social situations.
• We need to figure out some new rules that are necessary to replace the values that were lost while not losing the gains that we've made through interventions like birth control.
• It takes a while for people to figure out new rules for everything, but as long as things start getting better, it doesn't really matter.
• Recognizing others who see the same picture and you know is important to change our position.

The Need for Community

• We have lost the community that a religious faith will tend to give to you.
• People often meet online or at work, but this is too difficult to negotiate a potential romance or to meet in other social situations.
• We need to figure out some new rules that are necessary to replace the values that were lost while not losing the gains that we've made through interventions like birth control.
• We need to essentially renegotiate our relationship with each other and with our environment so that it stops making us unhealthy.
• We need to recognize that the modern pseudo-sophistication that basically decides any sort of self-regulation in the context of mating and dating is oppressive or stodgy is nonsense.

The Role of Religion

• Religion provides guidelines on how to behave that we don't have.
• Without a framework, it is difficult to negotiate a potential romance at work or in other social situations.
• We need to figure out some new rules that are necessary to replace the values that were lost while not losing the gains that we've made through interventions like birth control.
• We need to essentially renegotiate our relationship with each other and with our environment so that it stops making us unhealthy.
• We need to recognize that the modern pseudo-sophistication that basically decides any sort of self-regulation in the context of mating and dating is oppressive or stodgy is nonsense.

Section 1: Limiting Interaction to People of Similar World View

• Mikhaila Peterson speaks about limiting interaction to people of similar world view.
• This is done crudely due to technological enhancements that seem to provide more of what's good, but their hidden costs are not yet discovered.
• Slowing down the rate of change is important to prevent progress in poor directions.
• It also means that quick fixes cannot be achieved, but the rate of decay can be slowed, and new better ways to move forward can be found.
• Moving towards something in all realms with regard to religion, sex, gender, food, and school is important.

Section 2: Slow Down to Find Adaptive Foothills

• Moving towards adaptive foothills in the language of evolutionary biology is important.
• The book does not claim to provide a blueprint, as anyone who does cannot predict the future.
• Slowing down the rate of change can help find adaptive foothills across many domains.
• Collectively, humans working together can find their way up the adaptive slope to a better place.
• Across many domains, humans are in an adaptive valley, and it feels dark and despairing.

Section 3: Diet, Gender, and Politics

• Diet, gender, and politics can be discussed in the context of slowing down.
• Taking success and globalizing it too quickly may be impossible to undo.
• The precautionary principle and Chesterton's fence are tools to apply when introducing something new.
• Moving slower means applying both of these things when introducing something new.
• The invention of the first smartphone is an example of something that seemed like an enhancement but carried huge hazards.

Section 4: Conclusion

• Mikhaila Peterson discusses the importance of limiting interaction to people of similar world view.
• Slowing down the rate of change is important to prevent progress in poor directions.
• Moving towards adaptive foothills in the language of evolutionary biology is important.
• Diet, gender, and politics can be discussed in the context of slowing down.
• The invention of the first smartphone is an example of something that seemed like an enhancement but carried huge hazards.

The Difficulty of Adapting to Technological Advancements

• Mikhaila Peterson finds it difficult to believe that technology will not continue to take on an entirely different dimension in the future.
• She believes that going backwards a little bit and not getting rid of scientific achievements is necessary to adapt to new technological advancements.
• Living in a high-rise condo in the middle of a city surrounded by stressful people makes individuals more stressed because they have not adapted to being surrounded by stressful people without also being stressed.
• Mikhaila Peterson believes that getting into nature is important and can help individuals adapt to new technological advancements.
• She recommends having anything that is not of the social or human-made around individuals and being free of the thoughts, voices, sounds, and smells of other people for some period of time as regularly as possible to help individuals recenter themselves and remember what they care about.

The Importance of Understanding the Harmful Effects of Technology

• Mikhaila Peterson believes that just because we may not have all the answers to why living in high-rises popular and densely populated with stressed people may cause individuals to be stressed, it does not mean that we should just forge ahead until and unless we can demonstrate that it is safe again.
• The precautionary principle suggests that individuals should know what they know or if they know if for whatever reason they are obliged to live that way.
• Mikhaila Peterson recommends having anything that is not of the social or human-made around individuals and being free of the thoughts, voices, sounds, and smells of other people for some period of time as regularly as possible to help individuals recenter themselves and remember what they care about.
• She believes that having a tree visible outside your window provides enough access to nature that people have lower levels of stress hormones.
• Mikhaila Peterson recommends having caution when adopting anything that individuals cannot undo if they had to, as it puts individuals in danger even just by that simple recognition.

The Need for Reversibility in Technology

• Mikhaila Peterson believes that recognizing that anytime individuals do something they cannot undo if they had to makes them safer.
• She recommends having caution when adopting anything that individuals cannot undo if they had to, as it puts individuals in danger even just by that simple recognition.
• Mikhaila Peterson believes that having a need for reversibility is important when confronting technological change and individuals cannot possibly know what the implications are going to be.
• She recommends having caution when adopting anything that individuals cannot undo if they had to, as it puts individuals in danger even just by that simple recognition.
• Mikhaila Peterson believes that having a need for reversibility is important when confronting technological change and individuals cannot possibly know what the implications are going to be.

The Importance of Having a Proper World View

• Mikhaila Peterson believes that having a proper world view is important when hanging around people who have the proper world view.
• She recommends having caution when adopting anything that individuals cannot undo if they had to, as it puts individuals in danger even just by that simple recognition.
• Mikhaila Peterson believes that having a need for reversibility is important when confronting technological change and individuals cannot possibly know what the implications are going to be.
• She recommends having caution when adopting anything that individuals cannot undo if they had to, as it puts individuals in danger even just by that simple recognition.
• Mikhaila Peterson believes that having a need for reversibility is important when confronting technological change and individuals cannot possibly know what the implications are going to be.

The Importance of Self-Awareness

• Knowing if your worldview is the proper one is difficult and none of ours are likely to be the proper worldview even those who work hard to get it right are liable to be imprecise.
• One trick to figuring out where the divide between you and others begins is to ask an audience of others if they believe that human beings are altering the atmosphere in a way that will substantially change the temperature of the planet in a way that will degrade its quality for future generations.
• The upshot is to figure out what you actually disagree about before you start disagreeing.
• It is important to engage with everyone at some level, especially those who you disagree with, as they can teach you more if you can speak to each other with civility.
• Being okay with being wrong is important as it allows you to modify your worldview such that it probably will come into better agreement with what is actually true.

Taking Risks in Thinking

• Taking enough risks in your thinking means being willing to be wrong sometimes and coming back to people and saying man, I was wrong.
• It is important to be willing to do the error correction and coming back to people and saying man, I was wrong.
• Taking enough risks in your thinking means that you will have to sometimes say to people, I was wrong here's how I know, here's what I think now.
• It is important to be willing to do the error correction and coming back to people and saying man, I was wrong.
• It is important to be willing to do the error correction and coming back to people and saying man, I was wrong.

Watch the video on YouTube:
Men and Women and Evolution | Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying - MP Podcast #114 - YouTube