The Talk

 

On 10/23/2023, Jordan Peterson interviewed primatologist Robert Sapolsky. I took notes on the interview and will respond where necessary or relevant. The title of the interview, Psychologist Talks To Top Primatologist, The Jordan Peterson Podcast. 

 

This introduction was provided for the interview: “Dr. Jordan B Peterson sits down with Neuroendocrinology researcher and author of the upcoming book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Robert Sapolsky. They discuss how Game Theory applies to human behavior across iterative rounds of play, the unexpected success of the tit-for-tat principle, the role of dopamine in the anticipation ... and reward reinforcement in the future.”

 

Jordan (J after this): “Let’s discuss game theory. Rats show an emergent morality of play. Explain game theory.”

 

My response: It seems that what is emerging in other animals is an emergent morality of play or cooperation, not just competing for power and supremacy, and that  morality of play over war, will have survival value for the species over time.

 

Robert (R after this): “Game theory is not just fun and games. It was the purview of war strategists and was geared for mutually assured destruction. Biologists got a hold of it. Zoologists thought its predictions could come true if based on good hypotheses. There is an intrinsic logic to how animals evolved. Game theory, applied to animals and human beings, demonstrates that there is a logic to our behavior, sculpted by evolutionary exigencies so we know when it is optimal to do X or the opposite of X. There will be necessary constraints on the physiology of an organism.”

 

My response: If thre is a biological logic to how animals evolve, the nomological theory may be constructed that Logos is running through and perhaps writing the laws of nature, those changing and unchanging. This logic could have arisen from matter by accident from nothing by chance, or it could be seen as evidence of God’s logical mind and grammar, or Logos, operating the world.

 

J: “Those constraints will be reflective of its environmental predictions a priori, and match something here in reality. We can analyze the context within which behavior occurs connect to physiology.

The context of behavior is the mere requital of immediate needs. There is reciprocal action in social space between many individuals, many of whom are repeated interactions and crucial if the individuals in a group are not just to gratify the self—they have others to consider. Iterated needs over a vast expanse of time in a complicated social environment."

 

R: “The shadow of the future is a phrase to cover this.”

 

J: “We cannot predict the future, but we can approximate, and we act today seeing the future; the higher the functions of the brain develop, the more we will not just gratify ourselves today, but sacrifice today for future need. The individual must constrain his anger and impulses to gain future possibilities.

Game theory reveals that we suppressed our immediate gratification for long term anticipation. What do you think? Is it your immediate wants and needs that need care, but that does not meet your long term needs for you. You are an iterated community of selves over time. You will have ups and downs over time so treat others well, a community across time.”

 

R: “If humans or animals will do it, all will thrive. “

 

My response: These two scientists seem to apply game theory as a theory that suggests, based in research and science, that ancient creatures and humans learned to cooperate because it had survival value for each creature and person while alive, and for the community, as a whole, in each generation.

This seems to offer altruistic-collectivist ethics as what helped humans survive, and that seems likely, though today, with advanced technological society, making egoist-individual ethics are ethos, I propose, increases our well-being and survival value, though animals will still be altruistic communities.

 

J: “The ethical obligation to the self is the same as the obligation to other people, and that leads to altruism.”

 

R: “Scratch the surface of any altruist out there and you will find an egoist, but people decide it is in their own best interest to engage in self-constraint, and be forward-thinking and pro-society; it is self-interested in the long run to practice the Golden Rule. You can play top-lobster game theory or cooperate for the species to survive. Utilitarianism is not a bad ethic in the long run.”

 

My response: I want the ethics for individuals and the community to be egoism-altruism and that is in the best interest of the individual and for society, in the short run, and in the long run.

 

J: “Short-term utilitarianism versus long-term utilitarianism will produce conflict, so strong negotiation is required.

Explain tit-for-tat iterated game competition.”

 

R: “Tit-for-tat: if we not see someone again, we could stab them in the back and come out ahead. If we see them repeatedly it is better to cooperate.

It is the prisoner’s dilemma: to cooperate or stab each other in the back; if both cooperate, both get the rewards. If both stab each other, both are punished.

Back-stabbers may win the battle, but cooperators win the war. Evolution sculpted tit-for-tat for all sorts of species. Bats cooperate—feeding tit-for-tat, a social contract.

Tit-for-tat hits a wrinkle if there is a signal error, and one side stabs the other side by accident, but you did not a signal error. If cooperate and trust, will believe that it was just a signal error.”

 

J: “We play multiple iterations of multiple iterated games with many people at the same time, so virtualization makes glitches more dangerous. Face to face contact signal error has less damage, because the signal error is stopped quickly.

Psychopaths manipulate virtualization to victimize with one-off exchanges, no replication tracking, and can’t track the reputation of tetrad types in the virtual world.”

 

R: “We can modify tit-for-tat so can tell if the offense was backstabbing or a signal error, so go from lateral to vertical exchanges to see if it ends signal errors, and then practice forgiveness of offender.”

 

J: “Shared culture is an abstract multicultural game. If someone dislikes foreigners, cultural games dictate only trust neighbors that are individuated, not trust an outsider, a chaotic barbarian. If many share the culture, then are incentivized to play the games.

The default is 2 year-olds do not cooperate, a Hobbesian world of competition, not shared games. If we have a whole society of cheaters and backstabbers, how to get cooperative games if 2 foreign groups play but simple trade games on the borders, and some have faith that if they cooperate and take a risk, the other side will reciprocate, and then build cooperation.”

 

R: “Backstabbers get to cooperate with cooperators and all gain.”

 

J: “God tells Abraham to accept the covenant and I make Jews plentiful on the earth. The covenant between Yahweh and Abraham is a cooperative, tit-for-tat motif. If the Hebrews cooperate with Yahweh and each other, and stick to it, over time the future would be bright for their descendants.

The higher order sacrificial principle helps survival, to sacrifice the present to a future in an optimized manner. They can do this through use of game theory, the structure of iterated game theory. The structure of iterated game theory introduces an emergent reality modeled in computers and can be generalized to all people, an underlying ethos of iterated interactions.

This cooperative pattern becomes a cultural ethos and matches the arrival the frontal cortex, for using long-term strategies to govern short-term exigencies. Religion maps this sacrifice of the present to the future good by adaptive strategies. We have dopamine rewards triggering delayed gratification.”

 

R: “With religions, some are appealing, so if join it or other religions, there are great rewards if you stick it out. Frontal cortex favors religions of retention over religions of recruitment. Dopamine that triggers long-term thinking has predicting potency of a positive system. Cortical maturity is for delayed gratification for future, deferred by larger gratification.”

 

J: “Cain and Able were the first humans, so they had to work, and work is sacrificial, one is not doing what one wants to because one is doing what one has to, for the sake of family—it is a communal gift. The sacrificial urge and the emergence of pre-frontal cortex all at the same time.”

 

R: “Our neurochemistry is just like that in animals with a different outcome; animals are just about today, but we can sacrifice for 6 generations out. Is this an afterlife? Delay gratification for afterlife, or for children’s betterment, a cleaner world, more peaceful, etc.”

 

My response: Delaying gratification for 6 generations out may be a form of immortality and secular afterlife for secularists and atheists but making things better for future generations in this world, though laudable, should not conflict with rewards sought in the next world for our immortal souls.

 

J: “The dopamine reward to reinforce our anticipation of a future reward, a way of anticipating that future.”

 

R: “With dopamine reward when I hit the lever and a treat comes out, then I anticipate a reward and hit the lever and get the reward, so I have agency.”

 

J: “Agency: I have mastery. I have behavioral competences that match environmental demands that is like being on sacred ground—you know what to do there."

 

R: “Then experimenter alters the experiment by introducing the illogical and vulnerable into the system, it seemed so logical but has become illogical. The light goes on, the dopamine kicks in, the rat hits the lever, get the reward, and all is predictable, and he gets his reward.

Now the light goes on, the rat gets the dopamine push, hits the lever, and only gets a reward 50% of the time. The rat feels uncertainty, triggering more dopamine, and tries to figure out how to make the game predictable. He has been manipulated and tricked, receiving only partial rewards, even though he now becomes addicted to dopamine, making his situation worse as he keeps pushing the lever.”

 

J: “The hero in mythology goes into unchartered territory and masters it and gains treasure, and distributes wealth to the whole community. If reality cuts his rewards, he feels the rush of more dopamine will risk yet another try in unchartered waters for greater reward.”

 

J: “If he keeps trying, he will get the reward. The dopamine reward is to pursue an infinite landscape of future possibilities. Life is a series of games, and you are a winner if people want to play with you, cooperating.”

 

R: “If people can opt out, they avoid your dopamine-triggered long-term goals; if they refuse to work with others, not cooperating or reciprocating, they get a reputation for not sharing, and they isolate themselves. Where in small towns, and all is an open book, you must reciprocate.

In anonymous big cities you do not have to reciprocate. Ironically, if are extra generous, you will be punished for being too generous, and making others look bad.”

 

J: “If you break the rules, you get punished. That is predictable. If you are virtuous and punished, that is hell. If you are encouraged for being creative, generous, and natural, people like that.

Limbic responses and the frontal cortex provide us with lots of rewards with varied game interests to reward us.”

 

R: “The danger is to wider and wider and resort to resetting more dopamine hits with more and more games, and endless pleasure and rewards, so the player becomes jaded and bored. Today’s satiation is tomorrows unhappiness, and pushes the impetus to discover new landscapes of reward. Consciousness is not for satiation, so the player could fall asleep to be renewed to explore and expand. Yesterday successes not enough so invent tomorrow, poetry and new technology.”

 

My response: Reward and pleasure only work if when merited and not constant or cheaply dished out. Most of the time we should be motivated by doing our job or duty out of obligation, and though meriting constant reward, we motivate ourselves, not just for accolades—more stable approach in the long run.

The ambition to keep inventing and creating can be from a sense of duty and habit, as well as being bombarded with constant rewards until one is jaded and no longer motivated to move outward and upward.

 

J: “The path of maximum adventure is better than the path of infant satiation. The abstract sense of meta-satiation, never satisfied, is in the hunt, the forward-seeking, keep-reaching goals and going higher is the pleasure the happiness of pursuit. If one does not have a positive adventure, one will follow a bad, pathological one.”

 

My response: If we do not maverize, we will find wicked substitutes, and make the world worse off than if we were never born.

 

J: “God is all-knowing, all-loving, all-seeing; what does God lack? Limitation. God needs humans to create totality. Limitation has advantages that totality lack. Creativity is enhanced by arbitrary limitations. Limitation keeps us happy. Limitation makes us more creative.”

 

My response: This paragraph is profound. That Absolute, Perfect God without limits would need humans to create totality. I know that it is true and somehow connected to the law of moderation, and this is not to suggest that God is imperfect or lacking. No, God wrote the law of moderation, so De would know in advance and mandate in advance that creating humans with our limits and mortality and sinfulness, that these traits would make us valuable to God in some way, and somehow complete the universe. If we can be moral and creative, then we will be a blessing to God and make a real contribution to people, the nature of reality and to the world itself.

 

I recall reading someplace in Eric Hoffer that freedom and creativity abound most magnificently where restrictions occur, natural or legal, and this line of thinking is close to what Jordan is providing here for the reader to mull over.

 

When Mark Levin writes about ordered liberty, this same vein of thinking emerges, that a creative, good life cannot flourish under deterministic or totalitarian constraint, nor under elements of complete licentiousness and lawlessness.