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Lessons - Why You Don't Know Your Real Motives | Robin Hanson - Economics Professor & Author of The Elephant in the Brain · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore how hidden motives shape behavior more than most realize.
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  Discover why subconscious biases block accurate self-assessment, understand how patterns and laughter,
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  conversation, and politics reveal deeper truths, and uncover how exposing these forces
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  challenges assumptions and reshapes views on human motives.
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  So understanding that, understanding that we are wrong a lot in the actions that we take
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  or the presumptions that we internalize, how is it even possible to model different outputs or
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  different ideas if the test group is flawed? How do we ever predict anything? How do we ever
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  improve anything? Well, so you're designed not to see your real motives. You're designed to see
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  the motives you want to say. So if you just try to look at yourself and try to see your real motives,
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  that's not going to go very well. Your subconscious is ready to divert you from that.
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  What you'll have more success doing is looking at just humans in general, looking at their
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  average behavior and trying to come up with average typical motives to explain average typical behavior.
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  Your subconscious mind is not very well set to defend against that. It doesn't care so much
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  against that as long as it's not directed at you. So what we do in our book is to go through
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  10 different areas of life and in each area, we say, what's the usual stated motive?
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  And then what are a bunch of things that don't make sense that don't fit very well with that
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  story and then offer an alternative motive that fits better with a bunch of the puzzles that we
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  describe. And that's our method of analysis to say, here's a motive that makes more sense of
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  these various puzzles. And most of these puzzles might not even be things you have noticed or if you
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  notice, thought were very interesting or important. And so usually they didn't interfere with
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  your usual story about what's your motive for it. Now, after hearing about this podcast or
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  reading our book, you will be more in a tougher situation pretending to have usalotus. So we'll
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  have to warn you right up front. We're going to interfere with your ability to pretend to have
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  these real motives. So that might put you at this advantage in the usual evolutionary faking
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  in games, because usually your subconscious mind just does a great job of pretending to have a
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  certain motive and getting away with making you think that's lollable because you haven't noticed
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  these contradictions. So sorry about that. No, no, no, no, no, no, I mean, it's serious. I know.
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  The question is, why read our book? Why learn this stuff? Because it might not be in your system
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  other stuff. So we do think say social scientists and policymakers have more of an interest and perhaps
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  even an obligation to learn this stuff, but ordinary people may not really want to know. It might
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  not be an interest to know. What would what would so let's let's again, let's bring it down to
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  to layman's terms when you start to understand. So the 10 areas that you cover body language, laughter,
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  conversation, a consumption, our charity education, medicine, religion, politics, those are the the
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  10 areas that you touch on in the book, correct? Just want to make sure they were. Yes, those are
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  them and we could have done another 10 or 20 areas. And it heavily I had a longer book, but these
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  are the ones we chose. We think this is enough to make the point clear. There's a lot of good
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  mode. Can you like? So walk walk me through when somebody does understand something like that.
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  Let's let's pick an example. Whatever one is is top of mind for you. What would what would be
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  brought to light when somebody understands hidden motives in any of these topics? Perhaps politics
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  is too easy for most people. I don't know if they start early in the list. So things later in the
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  left are some often harder swallow because people aren't passionate about them. But let's start right
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  out with a laughter. Okay. One of the earliest chapters. So you laugh. Other people laugh. We
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  are all laugh a lot. And if you ask, why do people laugh? What are we laughing? You might say because
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  it was funny. If you think about it, it's not much of an explanation. And you might they will
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  say, you look at the literature and say, well, what are the theories people have? And they say,
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  well, it incongruous or it was sort of a benign violation or other sorts of things like that.
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  And these work a little bit, but not that well. And so the first order of business is to collect
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  these puzzles. What are the sort of features and data points that we know about laughter?
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  At best, they ones that are puzzling. Well, one thing that's puzzling is that speakers laugh
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  more in the listener. And people laugh a lot more when it's social than when it's a social
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  enormous range of times more. And we laugh about a lot of things that would be actually pretty
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  embarrassing to say straight out loud without laughing. Also, for example, we might laugh at the
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  joke. Don't drop the soap in the prison shower. Aha. Now, if you think about it, it's literally
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  laughing at prison rate, which in most people's conscious mind isn't the sort of thing you should be
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  making a lot of fun of because it's a terribly serious sad thing. So why would we laugh at that joke?
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  Our standard theory that we're just taking from literature is that laughter is a play signal.
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  You do many things for real, and then you also do things in play. So children and play in small
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  animals will play a fight, play run, play chase, play climb. And in those play modes, they don't quite
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  do the real thing. They don't have the claws out, for example. But they'll try to go to emotions
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  in order to practice what they would need to do. They are for real. Humans are very social. So we
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  do a lot of play. A lot of our play is social. And since we have these norms in
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  they're very important, a lot of our play centers around violating norms or not violating norms
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  during forcing them or not. So laughter among humans is often about doing something that would
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  seem to violate a norm, but doesn't really hurt us. And so the key thing is that when we're
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  playing, the thing that can go wrong is that somebody actually gets hurt. So even when small
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  animals are play fighting, one of them might actually get bit, one of them might start bleeding.
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  And at that moment, they need to stop playing. So playing animals and humans all need to be
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  watching out for whether anybody is really getting hurt. And checking to see whether we're still
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  playing. And so they need a way to say, oh, stop. We need or not playing on also a way to say,
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  we're fine. Let's keep playing. And laughter is basically a we're still playing signal.
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  You are doing something that looks like it might hurt, but it doesn't hurt. And you're saying,
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  it doesn't hurt. And so similarly, in the prison shower joke, you and the other person are not
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  in prison. You're not in the prison shower. You don't know anybody in prison. It doesn't
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  have threatened you, personal. You feel safe. So even though you're protecting, you're acting like
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  you're violating this norm, you're not actually getting hurt and you nobody around you expect to get
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  hurt. Nobody expects to get called on for this violation of a norm. And so you're safe. And so
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  we're doing this all the time with laughter. We are playing violating norms going up to the edge
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  of things and checking that we all feel safe. We're okay. And it feels very good because it
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  bond you to people. You realize, well, they could call me on this and they could, you know,
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  rat me out and report me for this violation, but they won't because they're my associates. And
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  we're all having good fun here. I was just reading the point that you mentioned as well.
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  About it also in line with laughter. You mentioned that babies laugh more with their mothers.
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  How does that, and I'm just curious as to why you indicated that piece in particular?
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  Well, I was probably lifting a lot of little correlates that we know of.
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  I mean, but the key point there is, you know, it's a signal of feeling comfortable. And so you do
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  it with people you're comfortable with. And so for example, people often say, I fell in love with
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  him or her because we laughed or he or she made me laugh, right? What is that saying?
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  It's saying in your mouth, somebody who you are comfortable with, right? Who you can violate
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  norms, who you can break rules or pretend to break rules, and they will be okay with that,
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  and they will protect you. And they will not, you know, you could do play fighting with them,
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  and they won't really hurt you. Now, when you engage with that and you start to laugh,
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  does it mean that you're coming from a place of feeling uncomfortable and then the laugh
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  brings you together or allows you to feel psychologically safe?
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  It has to be a plausible violation that might hurt you, right? It's not, it has to have a bit
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  of a tooth. So, you know, you can see this from stand-up comics or something. If they,
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  if their jokes are all about cereal boxes or putting on socks, it wouldn't have much of an edge,
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  they call it, yeah. And so it wouldn't be as funny, right? So they have to go to an edge where
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  there seems to be some risk of somebody getting hurt. Yeah. Otherwise, it's not edgy. And then it's
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  not funny. It's funny, it's reassuringly funny when you go to that edge and then you say, aha,
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  I'm still safe. I mean, of course, it's like even being on an amusement park ride, right?
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  You go on a roller coaster or something else like that. What's the fun? It's because it feels
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  dangerous, but you're not hurt. If you actually got hurt on the roller coaster, well, that wouldn't
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  be fun. Funny anymore. No, not fun, right? No. But if you just sat in a park bench, that's not
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  fun either. You have to go to the edge of danger, but not go past the edge of danger and then it's
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  fun. Similarly for humor and enjoying comic, we have to go to the edge of seeing that we, in fact,
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  could have been hurt and see that we aren't. And then we are knowing that the other person
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  have our back that they're protecting us. We are safe with them because they could have heard of.
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  I'm also curious about your point on conversation. And I don't mean to just go through the
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  internal list. But I was reading a segment on the piece of conversation about how conversation
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  does not usually involve the exchange of useful information. Brian, it's more meant to show off
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  our mental ability, which I thought was interesting. You see now we're laughing because it's uncomfortable.
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  Or maybe it is comfortable. We're trying to make it comfortable, but it's an awkward topic. It's
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  not a fun thing to think of. We are now vulnerable because this topic is applicable to what we're
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  doing right now. And so we're now vulnerable to the accusation that we are showing off right now,
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  which is a no-no. You're not supposed to show off. And so we laugh because we are somewhat
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  confident that we each won't actually attack the other person on this ground. Yeah, we feel safe
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  enough there, but we feel enough at risk. So it's to make it funny. I like that. Now, now,
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  last or I can see how that could be an eye opener for someone. But I don't think that's going to
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  change their entire world. Whereas conversation is something we do every single day. You laugh
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  with someone. So the structure of our book is the first part we try to make it plausible that people
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  could have hidden motives. And we actually have some examples of animals and other things with
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  humans. And we just try to make it really plausible that in general people could not know about
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  thermotives. And then we have some relatively easy thought ball chapters where we have descriptions
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  of hidden motives that people will mostly be able to accept. Body language laughter and things
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  like that. And then we sort of move up the scale, the things that people will get more upset about.
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  And be more resistant to concluding that thermotives aren't what they think they are.
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  And by that time, hopefully, we've convinced you'll look. There's a lot of hidden motives. It's
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  plausible that there could be a motive here. That might not be enough to convince you that there
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  is in fact one, but it means it's not crazy. And so that's sort of the structure here. It's
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  to first tell you it's not crazy to have hidden motives. Not crazy to believe people do not know
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  why they do things. And we can go through some of those other examples if you want. And then we're
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  moving to things more centers. So out of these 10 chapters, most people have like an area that's
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  more sacred for them. And they will be resistant to believing hidden motives in their sacred area.
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  But in the other areas, they'll be fine with that. So for example, if you're really into art,
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  you'll find it hard to accept our story on art. If you're not into art, you're a STEM grader,
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  something you'll find it quite easily to accept that those artists have hidden motives because that's
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  not you. They worry for religion or politics, you know, a fast central tier life, you will find it
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  harder to buy our story. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that
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  subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation,
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  check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.