What Makes Men More Attractive | Jordan Peterson
Summary
TLDRThe script delves into the human struggle with complexity, stemming from our finite consciousness against an unbounded world. It posits that cooperation, despite its flaws, is essential for survival. The discussion explores the role of evolution, including recent insights from epigenetics, and sexual selection's impact on human development. It highlights how humans, as social and adaptable creatures, have evolved to navigate multiple dominance hierarchies, leading to our cognitive flexibility and the emergence of hero mythology as a reflection of our multifaceted success across various domains.
Takeaways
- 🧠 The fundamental problem humans face is the struggle with complexity, which arises from the finiteness of individual consciousness and the vast, unbounded world.
- 🤝 Humans partly solve the complexity problem by cooperating with each other, which multiplies their cognitive and conceptual resources.
- 🌐 The critique of cooperative societies often overlooks the benefits of social structures compared to the chaos of individual existence.
- 🧬 The Darwinian notion of evolution is supported by the way complexity has been 'solved' through our evolutionary history, despite the models not being complete.
- 🔄 Epigenetics shows that acquired traits can be inherited, which is a significant shift from previous beliefs and complicates our understanding of evolution.
- 🌱 Sexual selection plays a significant role in human evolution, potentially being the primary driver, and is not merely a byproduct of random mutations.
- 🦚 The peacock's tail is an example of how sexual selection can drive evolution, as females select males based on markers of health and fitness.
- 🚹🚺 Both men and women select each other based on attractiveness, intelligence, and personality, with some differences in what traits are emphasized.
- 🌟 The 'hero' in mythology may represent the part of the human psyche that is adept at succeeding across various dominance hierarchies.
- 🌐 Human beings are generalists, capable of thriving in a wide range of environments and conditions, unlike species with very specific niches.
Q & A
What is the fundamental problem that humans face according to the speaker?
-The fundamental problem that humans face is an ongoing struggle with complexity, which emerges from the finite boundedness of individual consciousness and the unbounded excess of the world.
How does the speaker suggest we deal with the problem of complexity?
-We deal with the problem of complexity by cooperating with other people, which multiplies our resources and helps us navigate the world despite our limited cognitive abilities.
What role does the critique of cooperative societies play in the speaker's argument?
-The critique of cooperative societies is acknowledged as valid because these systems can be oppressive due to the value hierarchies they enforce, but the speaker argues that they are still better than chaos and align with our social nature.
How does the speaker view the truth of the Darwinian notion of evolution?
-The speaker views the Darwinian notion of evolution as true, but also acknowledges that our models of evolution are not complete, citing recent work in epigenetics and sexual selection as complicating factors.
What is the significance of epigenetics in the context of evolution as mentioned by the speaker?
-Epigenetics is significant because it suggests that acquired traits can be inherited, which is a radical shift in perspective and implies that environmental factors can influence genetic inheritance across generations.
Why does the speaker believe that sexual selection is a primary driver of human evolution?
-The speaker believes sexual selection is a primary driver of human evolution because it allows for non-random selection of genetic material based on attractiveness, health markers, and other traits that females may find desirable.
How does the dominance hierarchy factor into the evolution of human beings according to the speaker?
-The dominance hierarchy factors into human evolution by providing a structure where males compete for status and access to reproductive partners, and females select mates based on various markers of health and success.
What does the speaker suggest about the relationship between human creativity and dominance hierarchies?
-The speaker suggests that human creativity allows individuals to establish their own dominance hierarchies, which can be a significant advantage and is a reflection of our cognitive flexibility and adaptability.
How does the speaker connect the idea of hero mythology to the human capacity for success across dominance hierarchies?
-The speaker connects hero mythology to the human capacity for success across dominance hierarchies by suggesting that the mythological hero represents the part of the psyche that is particularly adept at navigating and succeeding in various social hierarchies.
What does the speaker imply about the adaptability of human beings in comparison to other species?
-The speaker implies that human beings are highly adaptable, similar to 'weedy species' like rats and cockroaches, capable of thriving in a wide range of environments and situations due to our general-purpose nature.
Outlines
🧠 Human Struggle with Complexity
The speaker discusses the fundamental problem of human beings as an ongoing struggle with complexity. This complexity arises due to the finite nature of individual consciousness and the vast, unbounded world. The speaker suggests that humans are surrounded by things they understand and an ocean of things they don't, including aspects of themselves. The challenge is deemed unsolvable due to the lack of cognitive and conceptual resources. Cooperation with others is presented as a way to multiply resources and better navigate the world, despite the oppressive nature of cooperative systems that force value hierarchies.
🌱 Evolution and Complexity
The speaker argues that the best argument for the truth of Darwinian evolution is how it has addressed the problem of complexity. They acknowledge the incompleteness of current evolutionary models, citing recent developments in epigenetics that allow for the inheritance of acquired traits. The speaker discusses the long evolutionary timeline of life, the role of mutations driven by factors like solar activity, and the randomness in environmental shifts. They also touch on sexual selection as a significant factor in human evolution, influencing the development of complex nervous systems and minds.
🦚 Sexual Selection and Dominance Hierarchies
The speaker delves into the concept of sexual selection and dominance hierarchies, explaining how these structures have influenced human evolution. They describe how male success in dominance hierarchies and female choice based on various markers, such as health and symmetry, have shaped our species. The speaker uses the example of the peacock's tail to illustrate how female preference for certain traits can drive evolutionary changes. They also discuss how human beings have developed multiple dominance hierarchies, leading to a broader range of success metrics and the evolution of cognitive flexibility.
🚀 Human Cognitive Flexibility and the Hero Archetype
The speaker concludes by discussing how human cognitive flexibility and the ability to succeed across various dominance hierarchies have led to the multiplication of success metrics. They suggest that humans are general-purpose creatures, adaptable and capable of thriving in diverse environments. This adaptability is linked to the hero mythology, where the hero represents the part of the psyche that excels across different challenges. The speaker reflects on the multi-purpose nature of humans, comparing us to creatures like rats and cockroaches in our ability to survive and succeed in a wide range of conditions.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Complexity
💡Cooperative Societies
💡Epigenetics
💡Dominance Hierarchies
💡Sexual Selection
💡Cognitive Flexibility
💡Cortical Expansion
💡Symmetry
💡Hero Mythology
💡Multi-purpose Creatures
Highlights
The fundamental problem of human beings is conceptualized as an ongoing struggle with complexity.
Complexity emerges from the finite boundedness of individual consciousness and the unbounded excess everywhere else.
Individual consciousness is related to functions of things too complex to be understood.
People are surrounded by a mix of things they understand and an ocean of things they don't.
The problem of complexity is not obviously solvable due to limited cognitive and conceptual resources.
Cooperating with others multiplies our resources to deal with complexity.
Critique of cooperative societies often overlooks the benefits compared to chaos.
Cooperative systems can be oppressive due to value hierarchies and forced value systems.
Epigenetics shows that acquired traits can be inherited, challenging old models of evolution.
Mutations are not entirely random, and environmental shifts can select for them.
Sexual selection is a significant driver of human evolution, influencing mate choice.
Dominance hierarchies are an old structure that predates many environmental features.
Female choice and male dominance are intertwined in sexual selection.
The peacock's tail is an example of female sexual selection for beauty as a marker of health.
Human mate selection involves evaluating markers of health and success.
Human beings have multiplied dominance hierarchies due to cognitive flexibility.
The hero mythology emerges from the psyche's ability to succeed across multiple dominance hierarchies.
Human beings are general-purpose creatures with a high potential for success in various niches.
Transcripts
so I guess the case that I was making
last time at least in part was that
you're one of one way of conceptualizing
the fundamental problem that human
beings face is to conceptualize it as an
ongoing struggle with complexity and
complexity emerges as a consequence of
the sort of finite boundedness of
individual consciousness and incredible
excess of the unbounded everywhere
everywhere else even including
underneath that consciousness because of
course your individual consciousness
depends on the function or is related to
the function of things that are so
complex you can't even understand it so
there you are surrounded by some things
that you understand in an in an ocean of
things that you don't understand at all
and including things about yourself and
it's not obvious at all how people solve
that problem because in some sense it's
not solvable the fact that you don't
have the cognitive resources or the
conceptual resources to understand
everything that you need to understand
in order to properly orient yourself in
the world
now obviously partly the way we deal
with that is that we cooperate with
other people and so that radically
multiplies our resources credibly
multiplies our resources so and then so
it's something to consider always when
you know so much of the political
dialogue that surrounds us now consists
of a critique of of cooperative
societies and an analysis of their
oppressive nature and of course that's
true because any cooperative system that
specifies a certain end point and
produces a value hierarchy of some sort
also simultaneously forces things into
that value system and then rank orders
people according to the value structure
and so there's an oppressive element to
it but compared to
being naked in chaos generally it's
better now it doesn't always have to be
because it can get murderous but
generally speaking well look we're
social animals it doesn't matter our
evolutionary pathway has already taken
us here and so we're individuals but
we're unbelievably social and so that's
that so as far as I can tell we'd have
to be completely different creatures not
to fall not to take advantage of and
fall prey to the problems with social
being alright so I think the way that
the problem of complexity has been
solved and this is the best argument I
know of for the truth of the Darwinian
notion of evolution now I don't think
that our models of evolution are
complete by any stretch of the
imagination I I know they're not partly
because of recent work done in
epigenetics which suggests that you can
a quat you can inherit acquired traits
right and when I went to university when
I started going to university in the
1980s that was heresy really like no you
cannot inherit acquired traits but
actually you can inherit acquired traits
that's the field of epigenetics studies
that and that that's a radical shift in
perspective because we also don't know
exactly what that means across any
length of time and when you're thinking
about evolutionary lengths of time
you're thinking about three and a half
billion years because that's the span of
time over which life evolved and so even
things that don't have a overwhelmingly
market potency in for one generation can
be unbelievably powerful across time and
then there's also the issue of sex so
sexual selection because you know you'll
hear Darwinists continually describe the
world and the evolutionary world as a
place of randomness and that's not true
it and I don't know why they make that
statement the mutations are random or
quasi random because we don't understand
mutations that well yet either and most
mutations are deadly right most
mutations are deadly there's a set of
them that are harmful but not deadly and
then there's a tiny tiny proportion that
could in prince
will produce some benefit to the next
generation assuming environmental
environmental shift say in the direction
of the mutation so and that's there's a
randomness element to that we know that
I mean part of the reason that you
mutate or your cells mutate your DNA
mutates is because of background levels
of radioactivity and a lot of that's a
consequence of solar activity right so
cosmic rays come zipping through the
atmosphere and they nail your DNA and
produce minor alterations and that's a
mutation and if you crank up the
background radiation rate like say
around Chernobyl then the mutation rate
rises and there's definitely a random
element to that and it's necessary for
there to be a random element because as
far as I can tell the only way you can
beat a random environment is by
producing random changes right so you
know the idea basically the the
environment isn't some static place
that's selecting for higher and higher
levels of fitness or not in any not in
any it's certainly not doing that in any
static way and so it's shifting around
randomly and then you know you have a
structure that's been your species has a
structure that's a consequence of this
immense evolutionary journey and it's
moderating itself randomly within
certain parameters the parameters being
that most mutations will kill you like
alterations in your fundamental form
generally tend to kill you so their
incremental and so the mutations are
random and they match hopefully they
rats the randomness in the environmental
shift and so you can more or less keep
up that way but then there's additional
complicating factors and they're not
trivial and one of them is whatever
epigenetics does we don't know anything
about that yet but the second one is
sexual selection and sexual selection is
no joke it could be the primary thing is
certainly one of the primary things
that's driven human evolution and I
think you can say that you think about
the environment again let's think about
the environment so you have a dominance
hierarchy and that's really an old
structure the dominance hierarchies 300
million years old because it emerged
pretty much whenever there was whenever
there was a nervous system emergent
nervous system and whenever animals had
to occupy the same territory they are
matically organized themselves into
something approximating a dominance
herky so it's a very very very very old
structure it's older than trees it's
older than flowers it's old and as far
as real goes from a Darwinian sense
permanent is real and so when you you
can say well you know or our burrial
ancestors adapted themselves to trees
and so the tree was along around long
enough to be a feature of the
environment but the dominance hierarchy
has been around a lot longer than trees
and you can think of the dominance herky
both as an adaptation to the environment
because you'd kind of think about the
dormant of Turkey as a cultural
construct but if a cultural construct
lasts long enough then it becomes part
of the environment and so the dominant
Turkey is part of the environment and
what seems to happen roughly speaking
and this is an oversimplification but
we'll go with it is that males have a
dominance hierarchy and there's a
relatively small number of males that
are relatively successful and those
successful males have preferential
access to female reproductive capacity
either because the females actively
choose the more dominant males which is
very very common or because the more
dominant males chase all the less
dominant males away so that even if the
females don't exercise choice which they
often do then the only males left around
that can serve as reasonable mating
partners are the more powerful ones and
so you think you've got two really
radical determiners of evolution as a
consequence of that one is that each I'm
not talking about female dominance
hierarchies at the moment but I can talk
about them but that's why this is an
oversimplification but what happens is
that the males obviously are selected
for their ability to move up dominance
hierarchies obviously because the ones
that are at the top of the dominance
hierarchy reproduce preferentially and
so that means the male dominance
hierarchy becomes a method of selection
but then allied with that is the female
proclivity for choice on whatever
dimension the dominance hierarchy
happens to be arranged and so then
female sexual selection also becomes a
route
call non-random selector of of what what
genetic material is going to move into
the next generation
and so I I fail to see how any of that
can be separated from the emergence of
complex nervous systems and mind over
the course of evolution because people
are creatures aren't making random
choices they're not random at all so we
even know such things like imagine a
peacocks tail
you know it's covered with eyes which is
quite interesting because eyes of course
attract attention and lots of animals
have evolved I like markings like moths
there's moss that when they unfold their
wings they have two big eyes on the back
of them and that's to keep birds from
eating them right because the birds
don't like being stared at so they stay
away from the moths but so a peacocks
tail there's nothing but eyes and so
it's very attractive and it's shimmers
and there's something about it that's
beautiful which is quite interesting too
the females have obviously been
selecting the male peacocks for beauty
they have this insane tail while so the
evolutionary biologists have thought
well what possible utility could that
tail be is it just maybe the females got
fixated on tail so to speak and you know
you've got a bald would in fact loop
going there and the male peacocks just
got bigger and bigger tails and it's
just like an evolutionary dead end it's
you know it's a positive feedback list
system that's gone out of control but
they have done things that like look at
the symmetry and and and Brett's say or
the symmetry and size and overall
quality of the male peacocks tail as a
marker for physical health so reduce
parasite load for example and it does
turn out that the healthier male
peacocks have better tail display and so
the way what the females seem to be
doing is using some marker or some set
of markers as a proxy indicator for for
for health and I think I think you could
say with with reasonable you could say
reasonable that reasonably that female
human beings do the same thing to male
human beings and there's some of that
vice-versa too like we evaluate other
for example for symmetry which is one of
the elements of beauty because healthier
people tend to be more symmetrical and
lots of animals use symmetry butterflies
if butterflies won't mate with another
butterfly
if it deviates from symmetry by the
tiniest amounts you can imagine so
symmetry is a marker and there's other
markers like shoulder width to waist
width is 1 and waist width to hip width
is another that's usually what males use
that to evaluate females in part so
there's lots of markers of health but it
also looks to me like that the data
worldwide seems to indicate that women
so imagine that women made across
dominance hierarchies and up
socioeconomically speaking and on
average across cultures women go for men
who are about four to five years older
you know it varies in the Scandinavian
countries that's shrunk a little bit but
not that much and in other cultures it's
bigger I would say that depends to some
degree on difficulty of establishing
economic independence right because in
richer countries it's easier to have
enough economic independence if you're a
male to be to be a useful participant in
the process of having children but it
doesn't matter cross culturally it's
still across and up where men mate to
cross and down they don't care much
about socioeconomic status it doesn't
seem to be part of their selection
method generally speaking so so I think
that part of that is also that the
ability of women to select for for male
health it's something like that because
it isn't that only that because if
you're healthy and energetic you're much
more likely to be successful because
it's very hard to be successful if
you're ill obviously I mean so because
the competition is just too high and
both both genders both sexes select each
other for attractiveness both selector
intelligence both to select for
personality although the difference
there are differences there in terms of
what's what's stressed but so-so
so I think you can derive a couple of
things out of out of this and this is
where I think people are different than
than other animals importantly different
is that so you imagine that there's
tremendous selection pressure to towards
the production let's say of men who are
good at climbing male dominance
hierarchies or climbing the male
dominance hierarchy but the thing that's
so interesting about people is that
we've multiplied our dominance
hierarchies you know if you take an
animal that's got a rather static
behavioral pattern then the
there's a single hierarchy elephant
seals are a good example of that so
elephant seals the males are absolutely
massive they're way way bigger than the
females and they basically have harems
roughly speaking and they use physical
prowess as their marker of status
essentially and obviously size is a huge
part of that because otherwise the male
elephant seals wouldn't be as they're
massive these things are absolutely
enormous and so it's just power slash
health
you know maybe aggression something like
that it's whatever makes them more
suitable for the kind of physical combat
that elephant seals engage in so and the
degree to which power is associated with
dominance status in those sorts of
situations seems to be associated with
the size differential between males and
females so the more power is an issue
with regards to male competence the
larger the males are compared to the
females and the more likely the males
are going to have a harem relationship
with the females and you see that a
little bit in human beings because men
are bigger than women they're not
overwhelmingly bigger that's sexual
dimorphism and you know there's some men
that are smaller than some women but on
average men are taller and they're they
have more upper body strength and so
forth so there is a power element to
male competition but it's not as
extended as it would be among animals
say like like elephant seals so in the
elephant seal you see maybe there's one
stable set of traits that's being
selected for that makes the males more
likely to reproduce but human beings
were very weird creatures because we're
so conceptually flexible and so what
seems to have happened maybe we started
male started selecting each other for
dominance competitions for something
like cognitive flexibility and and
conscientiousness it's something like
that so that would be the ability to
abstractly represent the world and then
the ability operate effectively within
it to represent yourself socially in a
way and then to carry through with that
because that enables people to trust you
so it's something like that and so that
produced cortical expansion and then
women were selecting men who were good
at that and that produced cortical
expansion and then there's an arms race
between women
men with regards to intelligence so the
women kept up or they certainly kept up
with with with intelligence as the
evolutionary cycle continued but one of
the consequences of selection for
cortical expansion and increased
cognitive flexibility was that the
number of dominance harkey's that human
beings could produce started to multiply
right because there's all sorts of ways
that you can be successful there's you
think about how many ways you can be
successful in a modern culture and you
can be successful in dimensions that
aren't really even associated with each
other so you can be successful socially
that that's what an extrovert would do
you could be successful in terms of
intimate relationships that's what an
agreeable person would do a disagreeable
person would be more successful with
regards to competition person who's high
in neuroticism would be would be trying
to protect themselves and to establish
some sort of security an open person
would be looking for a flexible creative
environment and so there's this
multiplicity of of ways that you can
establish a dominance hierarchy and be
successful in it and if you're creative
you can come up with your own damn
dominance hierarchy which is exactly
what you're doing if you're creative
right you you spin up a game that's your
game and then you you make the rules and
that's hard because if you make a new
game with new rules it's hard to
monetize it but you could be the best at
playing that game and so that's a huge
advantage to being creative if you can
pull it off so then you think well
what's happened among human beings is
the multiplication of the set of
possible dominance hierarchies so it's
become very broad and then you could say
well what's what's driving selection now
is the ability to be successful across
multiple sets of dominance hierarchies
and that accounts at least in part for
our cognitive flexibility and so that's
really what a human being is a human
being is a creature that has high
potential for succeeding across a very
wide range of potential human dominance
hierarchies and so that gives us our
transformative psyche that's the niche
that that's the niche that we've both
produced and occupy and I think it's out
of that that hero mythology emerges
fundamentally because I think what the
hero is the mythological hero is a
representation of that part of the
psyche that's particularly good at being
successful across sets of dominance
hierarchies it's a very very biological
way of thinking about it and like I
thought about this for a long time I I
can't see any way that that just can't
be the case and how else how else could
it work if we had a fixed behavioral
pattern like beavers you know you were
the most successful beaver if you build
the best damn it's like fine and then
you know what's going to be selected for
it but that isn't what people are like
and it's also why we're so multi-purpose
you know we have hands what what's a
hand for what's the evolutionary
function of a hand well you can't
specify that you could say it's
something like well the hand is useful
for doing a whole bunch of different
things with well and mouth tongue the
same thing what are words for well it's
the same thing therefore very therefore
communicating a very wide range of
information it's something like that so
we're were these weird general-purpose
animals you know we're not great at any
one thing but we can swim better than
most terrestrial animals you know we can
run faster than most animals and we
could certainly run longer like a human
being can run a horse to death over the
course of a week if they're in good
shape so like we're really good at being
a multi-purpose entity like a rat you
know where they call rats weedy species
because they can be anywhere they don't
have a specific niche like you know
there's animals down in in the Amazon
that they're specialized for like one
tree you know or one type of tree in one
tiny little area that's not what human
beings like is we're we're like
cockroaches or rats which is nasty
comparison but we can go anywhere and
thrive and so and so being particularly
good at that being particularly good at
being able to go anywhere and thrive
also seems to me to be a canonical
element of the hero mythology
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