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1:02

But diversity, you know, is by definition also divisive,

1:04

right? So if you feel like you're two groups

1:06

in conflict, or if you don't speak the same

1:09

language, then those ideas are not flowing. One

1:12

of the characteristics of the world,

1:14

especially thanks to social media and

1:16

the internet, is that we

1:19

are at once exposed to a greater

1:21

array of ideas and,

1:23

you know, algorithms shape our vision of that. So we

1:25

only see a certain portion of that. And

1:27

we're also able to create new tribes as never before.

1:36

What could go right? I'm

1:38

Zachary Carabell, the founder of The Progress

1:41

Network and joined, as always, by my

1:43

co-host, Emma Varvalukas, the executive director of

1:45

The Progress Network. And

1:47

this is our weekly podcast, What Could Go

1:49

Right? Where we talk about

1:51

the news of the day and

1:53

interview fascinating folks who have distinctive

1:55

views about, yes, what could go

1:57

right, or at least views of...

2:00

of how we should handle what

2:02

is going wrong. And

2:04

today we're going to talk to someone, as

2:06

we have talked to a few people on

2:08

this program, who are trying

2:11

to connect lots of dots

2:13

and trying to create a unified field

2:15

theory of who we are and how

2:17

it is that human beings have, yes,

2:19

in the past, actually solved challenges,

2:23

problems. What is it

2:25

about human beings and human societies that has

2:27

allowed us unlike other

2:29

animals that we are aware of on this planet

2:32

to act collectively? Sometimes

2:34

that collective action has been destructive,

2:36

no doubt. Often that collective

2:39

action has been constructive. We've been able

2:41

to galvanize our collective resources

2:43

in order to solve problems. And

2:45

what is it about human beings

2:47

that allows that to happen? And

2:50

so we're going to talk to someone today who has if not

2:53

a unique theory, then certainly a new

2:56

and compelling one of what it is about

2:58

humans and how humans have done this. So,

3:00

Emma, who are we going

3:02

to talk to today? So today

3:05

we are going to be talking to

3:07

Michael Muthukrishna, who's an associate professor of

3:09

economic psychology at the London School of

3:12

Economics and Political Science and technical director

3:14

of the database of religious history. He's

3:16

also a board member of the One

3:18

Pencil Project, which is dedicated to the

3:21

intersection of education, scientific research, and philanthropy.

3:24

So today we're going to be talking to him about

3:26

his book, A Theory of Everyone, which goes over what

3:28

Zachary just described. So let's go talk to Michael. Michael

3:40

Muthukrishna, or should I say Dr. Michael

3:42

Muthukrishna? You have

3:46

a fascinatingly eclectic and heterodox

3:48

background, and you have an insanely

3:51

modestly titled Muthukrishna called A Theory

3:53

of Everyone, the new science of who we

3:55

are, how we got here, and where we're going. So tell

3:58

us the story of you. What was your background

4:00

and training? How did you get to where

4:03

you are? Yeah, sure. So,

4:05

I mean, you know, when I was

4:07

in high school, I was like, you know, I want to

4:09

study physics or I don't know, philosophy or computer

4:11

science or something like that. But I decided

4:13

human behavior was underneath it all. But I'm

4:16

also a person who likes managing

4:18

risk. And I was like, a degree in psychology

4:20

isn't the most marketable thing. So I'm going to

4:22

do this with something else like law of medicine

4:24

or engineering. And so

4:26

I started working, did

4:28

a dual degree at the University of Queensland

4:30

in Australia where I did engineering and

4:33

psychology. And in the psych degree, at

4:35

first I was really into it. I was like, this is

4:37

really interesting. It's about human behavior. But

4:40

I kind of got a bit disillusioned. I

4:42

felt like everything I was learning in engineering

4:44

and other sciences weren't being applied to the

4:47

study of human behavior. There

4:49

wasn't this kind of overarching theoretical framework.

4:52

So I started applying the insights that

4:54

I could believe to engineering design. And

4:58

then around, you

5:00

know, 2007, I watched Al Gore's

5:02

documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. And

5:06

I started reading more about climate change, you

5:08

know, the IPCC reports, the Pentagon reports. And

5:10

it seems to me that everyone

5:12

was really focused on mitigation.

5:15

And I was like, okay, this seems, this is reasonable. I mean,

5:17

if we can slow the economy to save the planet, that would

5:19

be great. But I don't think that's going

5:22

to happen. It seems to run against so many things

5:24

to do with human nature and, you

5:26

know, a competition in which, you know, every

5:28

country is trying to outcompete every other country, every

5:31

company is trying to outcompete every other company, and

5:33

everybody wants more than their neighbors. So

5:35

it just seemed unlikely that was going to happen. And

5:37

so when you read the reports, there were all kinds of challenges

5:40

that we were heading towards. And

5:43

it didn't seem like we were prepared to

5:45

deal with things like mass migration, the energy

5:48

crisis, or any of these

5:50

things. We didn't have a good science. So I wanted to

5:53

try to develop a science of culture, not

5:55

to be an academic, but just to have

5:57

better tools for tackling the challenges

5:59

of, you know, How do you build a

6:01

harmonious society? How do you get people to

6:03

work together? How do you build successful organizations?

6:05

How do you increase innovation? Those kinds of

6:07

challenges. Eventually, I realized that people had been

6:09

working on this. We had made some major

6:11

breakthroughs that I describe as a

6:13

theory of human behavior or a theory of

6:15

everyone. This kind of revolutionary

6:18

shift in our understanding that happens sometimes in

6:21

a science that really causes the science to

6:23

mature. As an example of this, Newton

6:26

is a bright guy. He

6:28

already understands he's developing models in physics,

6:30

but he's trying to turn lead into

6:32

gold. He's doing that not

6:34

because he's stupid, but he doesn't have an understanding

6:36

that the world is made up of elements. You

6:39

can't turn lead into gold. You can do all kinds of chemistry,

6:41

but that doesn't count. That's alchemy. But

6:43

for alchemy to turn into chemistry, you need to periodic

6:45

tape. There's a particular set

6:47

of conditions under which that happens. I go into the

6:49

details in my book. I'll spare you. The

6:52

idea is that the reason that humans

6:54

are so different to other animals is

6:56

that we aren't just reliant on genetic

6:58

instincts or what we can learn over

7:00

our lifetime, but this kind of culturally,

7:02

socially acquired software running on our

7:05

hardware. The human brain

7:07

hasn't changed all that much in the last few million

7:09

years. Tripled

7:11

in size, and then it kind of leveled off at

7:13

around 700,000 years ago. If

7:17

anything, it's kind of shrunk. We have

7:19

gotten clever, and we have gotten clever not

7:21

because our brains change, but because the software

7:23

running on those brains change. Our

7:25

ability to reason, our ability

7:27

to count, all of those mental tools that we

7:29

have are socially acquired. We

7:33

have nice math for describing how

7:35

that software evolves, how it is that

7:37

humans acquire that software, how innovations take

7:39

place, and it has implications for how

7:41

we work together. As I was

7:43

kind of putting these pieces together, I realized this

7:47

is making major shifts

7:49

within the behavioral sciences.

7:52

It's moving over into economics. It's moving all into

7:54

these adjacent sciences, biological sciences,

7:56

but a lot of people in the public don't

7:58

know about it yet. And yet it affects

8:01

everything about our decisions that we have to make

8:03

in the coming century. So I want to

8:05

see a lot of kind of like the progress studies call

8:07

that Patrick Carlson and Tyler Cullen I think

8:10

put out a few years ago. It's like

8:12

that same kind of question of how

8:14

do you optimize for

8:16

a certain set of conditions, right? Like

8:18

how do you optimize society to get you to XYZ

8:20

place? But before we get into all of that, like

8:22

your answer for how we do that, can

8:24

you talk a little bit more? You mentioned climate

8:26

change earlier. Why

8:28

you feel that this

8:30

is kind of the like answering this question is

8:32

sort of the game changer in terms of where

8:35

we are in history? Because that seems really

8:37

important as to why you would like dive

8:39

into this theory in the first place.

8:41

Yeah. So that

8:43

was, you know, that was the starting point. The starting point was

8:46

that when

8:48

there were, you know, as economists, you know, when there are

8:50

shocks to a system, a lot

8:52

of the, a lot of institutions fail, right? Or there's

8:54

a big, there's a big change that can take place.

8:59

And there were, there were clearly changes

9:01

that were coming as a result of climate change. So

9:03

I'll give you an example. When a billion, you know,

9:05

a million Bangladeshis are underwater and they're kind of streaming

9:08

large number of refugees into India. Can India deal

9:11

with that? Does the infrastructure, can they deal with

9:13

it? Can the institutions deal with it? And

9:15

I think we saw, you know, most

9:17

recently at Europe's doorstep, the Syrian migration

9:19

crisis was a climate change precipitated disaster

9:21

of the kind that had been

9:23

commonly happening in Africa, but doesn't really quite make the

9:26

news until it's at your doorstep. Right?

9:28

So there, there are droughts, people flooded in

9:30

from rural areas into cities in order to

9:33

find jobs. There weren't the jobs

9:35

for them. The infrastructure couldn't cope. And so

9:37

people eventually rioted and you have a

9:39

refugee crisis. And so that has knock

9:41

on effects, right? So when you're, when you have a million

9:43

people at your door, this isn't like a, this

9:46

isn't an ideal case where you can design a wonderful

9:48

immigration policy. It's a humanitarian case and you deal with

9:50

it as best you can. But it's like

9:52

guests turning up in your house and you haven't bought enough groceries.

9:55

Are you going to be able to tackle that problem?

9:57

Right? And so when you put people under resource control, you

9:59

can't do that. and strains, everything becomes more difficult.

10:01

It becomes more difficult to govern them. And

10:04

this can lead to feedback loops where

10:07

everything becomes a little bit more challenging. Alongside

10:10

that, Emma, one of the big puzzles that

10:13

I work on is the

10:15

puzzle of large-scale cooperation of the kind that we

10:17

see in the modern world. So

10:19

we're doing this as a podcast, but we could have been

10:21

in the same room. And you might

10:23

take that for granted, but it's a very strange

10:26

thing, actually. From a cross-species

10:28

perspective, if we were four

10:30

chimps, we'd be four dead and maimed chimps.

10:34

It's weird from a historical perspective. This

10:36

was a few hundred years ago. We're from

10:39

very different places. It would be a threatening

10:41

situation. And even geographically today, there are some

10:43

places that are much safer than others. So

10:46

the question is, how did that happen? And the

10:48

answer seems to be that there's a

10:51

cooperation goes hand-in-hand with excess

10:53

energy availability. And when

10:56

we discovered millions of years

10:58

worth of stored sunlight in the ground during

11:00

the Industrial Revolution, thanks to cheap and available

11:02

coal, we were able to use that

11:04

to kind of supercharge human ingenuity,

11:07

and it incentivized, it created a positive sum

11:09

world, where it incentivized people working together to

11:12

do great things, build

11:15

an internet, engage in massive innovation,

11:17

but also terrible things like colonization

11:19

and wars of conquest. So

11:22

when those things were turned in hand, that

11:24

was great. We had this huge energy explosion,

11:27

but we're facing a slightly different situation today,

11:29

particularly since the 1970s, where

11:32

the numbers, both

11:34

artificially, thanks to OPEC, but also in reality,

11:37

energy availability is kind of decreasing. So

11:40

in the book, what I call the space of the

11:42

possible, which is created by our energy

11:44

ceiling and the innovations and

11:47

technological efficiencies is shrinking on

11:49

us. And so that alongside all of these crises

11:51

and just increasing number of people makes everything a

11:53

little bit more difficult. But

11:55

because we do have a kind of theory of everyone,

11:57

that we have a deeper insight than we've ever had.

12:00

we have a kind of periodic table for people, I

12:02

think we're also, for the first time,

12:04

able to tackle some of those challenges. Yeah,

12:08

I mean, you do have

12:10

an inherently optimistic

12:12

slash problem-solving

12:16

DNA in

12:20

human history and maybe in human DNA,

12:22

or at least in the human social

12:24

organization, in that a lot of what

12:26

you point out is this ability

12:29

to learn and work

12:32

collaboratively. There

12:34

have been philosophers and evolutionary biologists and

12:36

all who have pointed out that most

12:38

of the particulars that human beings do,

12:42

at least one of those things other

12:44

animals do. But

12:48

that it's impossible to find an example of

12:50

any other species that we are aware of

12:52

currently on this particular planet who

12:55

are able to combine all of

12:57

those into some lattice or framework,

12:59

let alone a cognitive framework that

13:02

allows for knowledge transmission,

13:04

whether that's through writing or oral

13:06

history or, I guess,

13:08

now whatever we call

13:11

this digital transmission system.

13:14

So I mean, that's to

13:16

me augurs for the ability

13:19

to solve collective problems. I suppose

13:22

a pushback would be, it also augurs for our ability

13:25

to magnify the problems that

13:27

we create, right? So the two-edged sword

13:29

part of it. Do you come out

13:32

more on the... Because

13:35

we've collectively been able to come together more or

13:37

less and solve the problems that we've created that

13:39

we are likely to continue to do so, or

13:41

are you more agnostic about it could

13:43

go either way? Yeah, so

13:46

from my perspective, it's like any

13:48

financial advice you get, past results

13:50

are no guarantee of future performance,

13:52

right? So what I'm trying

13:54

to do in the book is to say, it's not

13:56

sufficient to just say, hey, look, we've always been able

13:58

to... Technologically

14:00

magic our way out of things we

14:02

need to understand how how exactly that

14:04

happened like what are the levers of

14:06

innovation. And why is it that

14:09

if you look at just about any marker

14:11

of progress. I like

14:13

the way in mars but the industrial revolution

14:15

makes a mockery of everything that came before.

14:18

Like it's a it's an almost vertical take off

14:20

in declines in violence child

14:23

more survival rates you

14:25

know lifespan health whatever you want. The

14:27

last time we saw a shift like that was

14:29

the agricultural revolution. And so

14:31

you need a you need if you want

14:33

to say that we're always going to be

14:35

able to make our way out of this

14:37

you need a you need some kind of

14:39

theory some mechanism some explanation for what happened

14:41

in that moment. What happened in

14:43

previous moments like that. And

14:46

then you need to look at you know those metrics

14:48

and say okay what does what does that mean for

14:50

our future is it like is it going

14:52

to be a situation so we know when

14:54

the agricultural revolution was a major shift the

14:56

last one i suppose was fire right. With

14:59

fire we were able to kind of pre digest

15:01

food save the mechanical movement of our jaws and

15:04

shrink our guts and grow our brain. And

15:07

after that still is on a gatherers in

15:09

terms of our population

15:12

it was a one to one return on your time going

15:14

out and hunting and gathering. With agriculture

15:16

we had a solar technology switch from hunting

15:18

and gathering if you like harvesting and grinding.

15:21

You know where you can grow things it's far

15:23

more efficient and first that's great because you

15:25

grow your population you push hunter gatherers

15:27

to the margins about compete with them. When

15:30

eventually abundance turns back to scarcity as

15:32

your population size meet your new carrying

15:34

capacity and then agriculture start fighting with

15:36

one another. And then you're

15:39

in this mouth is in world where it's

15:41

a zero some world where your loss is my

15:43

game wars of conquest and you know this kind

15:46

of flat line in terms of very very slight

15:48

increase of anything. What's the thing

15:51

in terms of progress until you hit the

15:53

industrial revolution where again you see

15:55

this massive take off and as i

15:57

said that's because you had. Jewels upon

15:59

jewels. of compressed photosynthesis

16:02

turned to chemical form and compressed

16:04

into coal, oil, and natural gas.

16:06

And so we've been in the rising phase

16:09

for a long time, but that same pattern,

16:11

that abundance eventually turns to scarcity as population

16:13

size carrying capacity catches up is where we

16:15

are now. And so

16:17

if we, you know, this

16:19

is what could go right, if we want to

16:21

kind of reach that next level of abundance, it

16:23

actually does require the next energy

16:25

revolution. I think

16:29

if you look at the numbers, so there's a

16:31

particular metric that I want to share is energy

16:33

return on investment from the energy sciences. So

16:36

this tells you how much energy you get back from how much

16:38

you put in. And in an ideal

16:40

world, you want to kind of small, tiny energy

16:42

sector of your economy, and a very large, all

16:44

the other stuff the energy is buying you, the

16:46

vacations, the, you know, the food, the

16:49

going out with your friends, all of that stuff. And

16:51

so if you look at, for example, all the metrics look

16:53

like this, but I'll give you like oil discovery rates, right?

16:56

So in 1919, one barrel of oil

16:58

found another thousand, by 1950,

17:00

one barrel of oil found another hundred, and

17:03

by 2010, one barrel of oil found another five.

17:06

So in other words, our civilization,

17:08

I mean, as a species, excess

17:10

energy is shrinking, like the

17:13

literal amount that excess stuff is decreasing. And that's

17:15

what drives growth, right? That and the innovations with

17:17

which we can, you know, the things we can

17:19

do with that, those are the two things that

17:21

drive growth. And so it's shrinking. And

17:24

we had a, you know, the nuclear age was

17:26

kind of stillborn for a fear of, you know,

17:28

previous generations. And I think that would have put

17:31

us would have kept us on that path, but we

17:33

didn't invest and now's the time to do it. We'll

17:40

be right back after this break. What

17:46

should lead the news and why? If you're

17:49

curious about this question, then check out the

17:51

news meeting, a podcast that takes you into

17:53

the newsroom to hear how journalists think and

17:55

how newsrooms make decisions about which stories matter

17:58

most.