Episode 26: Evolution and Sexual Perversion (with Jesse Bering)

You want to know what I think?

Yes.

I think you're some kind of deviated prevert. I think General Ripper found out about your preversion and that you were organized.

In some kind of mutiny of preverts.

Now move.

The greatest has spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Who are you? Who are you? A very bad man. I'm a very good man. Good man. They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. Pay no attention to that man. Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to very bad wizards. I'm Tamela Summers from the University of Houston.

And I'm David Pizarro from Cornell University, and I am clearly the one without the stroke going on right now. Tamela, unfortunately, can't actually say the intro.

Just I'm over it. This is the last time we're ever going to say it. We're doing a different intro next time. I don't know what it is yet, but we're doing a different one. I can't say it with any kind.

Of do your research.

I've heard the recovery rate for Bell's Palsy is pretty good, though it's been.

A few years for Tamler. And that voice that you hear is our guest for today cognitive psychologist, evolutionary psychologist, author, let's just say author now and a good friend of mine, Jesse Baring, who is Skyping in from upstate New York where he reads about nabokov and writes books. Thanks for coming on.

Not anymore. I'm not as much of a fan of Nabakov as I used to be since I've learned that he was homophobic. And I had some nasty sides to him too. I mean, I'm certainly a fan of his writing.

Why are you so prejudiced against homophobes?

I don't know. They're so likable.

So he was homophobic and his brother was gay?

Well, I mean he wasn't like violently homophobic or anything like that, but he had a number of sort know, snide comments if you actually read Lolita quite closely. And some of the other works, it's.

Well, Pale Fire, the guy is Charles Kinboat is gay.

He always struck me as always having.

These young boys over to play ping pong in the basement.

Yeah.

Wait, that's wrong.

Dave has a young boy and locked in his basement right now.

I feed let's. If you don't know Jesse Baring's work, then I don't think you've been on the internet very much, but this discussion is hopefully a little taste of what Jesse writes about.

A little taste of tasteless.

So you started off with your work really on evolution and natural selection as sort of a cause of our religious and supernatural beliefs. Or at least that's what you sort of cut your teeth on as an author, right?

Yeah. I started my career as an academic writing about the evolutionary history of religion, why we believe in God, which I've never been a believer. I've always seen God more as sort of an illusion, an elaborate psychological illusion. And I wanted to get to the bottom of that. So I spent the first ten years of my life basically trying to understand why people reason this way about destiny and purpose and the afterlife.

So do you have a capsule view on the role of natural selection in Motivating or our religious beliefs?

It's hard to put into a nutshell, which is never a good well, that's because you're too close theory.

Yeah. Let me give it is this fair to say that supernatural beliefs are a byproduct of our evolved cognitive structures that evolved for other reasons entirely?

Right. I mean, to me, theory of mind is really the key cognitive component that allows us to think about these grand existential questions, like what our minds will be like after we die, or the minds of others after they die, or why God is doing what he's doing, putting ourself into God's shoes, taking his perspective. I mean, basically, when we're thinking about God, we're playing the role of psychoanalysis and trying to understand why bad things happen to good people. It doesn't make any sense. We're trying to put ourselves into God's shoes, so to speak. And without a theory of mind, of course, we simply couldn't engage in that exercise. But I think it was a byproduct of our everyday social interactions with other people that kind of spilled over into this other religious domain. And then, I suppose, what separates me from maybe some of the other theorists in the series, that I believe that as a byproduct, it was then subjected to natural selection. Once it happened as a byproduct, then it evolved sort of its own interesting devices.

So can you give an example of some of those interesting devices?

Yeah, I mean, I think that what it did as a consequence of spilling over into this other territory is that it addressed a critical problem for our species, which was the problem of language. And when we think about the evolution of language, of course, it's always or typically it's seen as a very positive thing. It allowed us to share our feelings and our emotions and our beliefs and share technical information from generation to generation. This sort of cognitive scaffolding that Thomasello talks about, for instance. But it came with a dark side, I suppose, in the sense that it also motivated gossip, really potent, virulent gossip. And we were collecting information about others, but they were collecting information about us. So the basic argument that I've made is that when we suffer the illusion, or we have the illusion that there's a mind that is concerned about our social behaviors. It's going to prevent us from doing things that other people would talk about and therefore mire our reputation, which would translate to genetic fitness deficits and encourage us to inhibit these pre, potent, selfish responses. Right.

Yeah. The thought that there's an invisible observer.

It'S a moral police dog, sort of watchdog sort of thing.

So we may have needed it to become the cooperative species.

Well, that's my argument, but I also say that I don't think that we need it anymore because technology has largely replaced this eye in the sky.

Well, thanks for telling us. Now, natural selection already solves.

Yeah, we still can't get rid of it. It's still there, which is sort of a lot. Now we have Google, we've got Google.

We'Ve got DNA, we've got the know.

Airport security, all that stuff. Hidden cameras. I mean, it does basically what God was designed to to I want to.

Point something out because our listeners won't be able to see this, but Jesse right now is standing there's, a bright mirror right behind him, and he looks like a saint. He looks very that sharing the truth.

With a capital T. I think that.

We'Re doing a disservice because you sound actually like such a reasonable, good scholar right now. And really what we wanted to talk to you about was yeah, I want to talk controversy. Was penises and vagina.

Related to God somehow?

Yes.

Let's talk a bit about evolutionary psychology, because there's probably no more controversial topic within the scientific community than evolutionary psychology. I mean, it has some of the most vocal opponents, and their opposition is fierce to what is essentially supposed to be a scientific theory. You're a card carrying evolutionary psychologist, right. Are you happy to call yourself that?

Really? Actually, I certainly write extensively about evolutionary psychology and evolutionary psychological findings because I happen to find it incredibly interesting and fascinating and revealing about human nature. But I would not call myself professionally an evolutionary psychologist. I think I'm sympathetic to the work that they do, but I'm more of a cognitive scientist. My own research has been more less sort of traditional standard textbook evolutionary psychology and more cognitive science. But I make a lot of evolutionary arguments.

Right. So we should mention your book on this, and I always forget which of the titles is the British title and the Evolution of God one.

Well, the religion book, the US. It was called the belief instinct.

There's the god instinct.

The God Instinct is the UK, which I didn't like either title, to be honest. The original title was Under God's Skin, but they wanted something that was a little bit more transparent, I think.

Bastards.

Yes. So For Better Under God's Skin, I've.

Learned that authors have very little about.

Under God's foreskin, these types of things.

Yeah. Under his foreskin.

Yeah.

I don't think he has that would reunite the two threads of your research.

But for better or for worse? Tambler's question is really you are considered by many to be I am perceived that way, sure. You're a very vocal proponent, at least.

Well, and not completely without reason. Right. So you wrote maybe one of your most controversial Slate articles. We should note that Jesse writes a very entertaining column.

My introduction failed miserably to mention what Jesse is and what he does, but.

Yeah, he writes but you did mention that he's in upstate New York.

Yeah, that was the relevant and that he's standing in front of a window.

Yes, he's standing in front of a mirror. So you wrote in that column that natural selection had equipped women with ways of resisting rape and avoiding getting pregnant by a rape. And this is pre. That whole ridiculous. A woman's body