Mindscape 255 | Michael Muthukrishna on Developing a Theory of Everyone
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- Опубліковано 17 тра 2024
- Patreon: / seanmcarroll
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
A "Theory of Everything" is physicists' somewhat tongue-in-cheek phrase for a hypothetical model of all the fundamental physical interactions. Of course, even if we had such a theory, it would tell us nothing new about higher-level emergent phenomena, all the way up to human behavior and society. Can we even imagine a "Theory of Everyone," providing basic organizing principles for society? Michael Muthukrishna believes we can, and indeed that we can see the outlines of such a theory emerging, based on the relationships of people to each other and to the physical resources available.
Michael Muthukrishna received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of British Columbia. He is currently Associate Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Among his awards are an Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and a Dissertation Excellence Award from the Canadian Psychological Association. His new book is A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going.
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#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture - Наука та технологія
after 40 minutes, I'm still not sure what this "Theory of Everyone" actually is.
Yeah, that was just a catchy title. His theories are pretty limited, and not very concise. My own theory of everyone (and everything), is all encompassing, past, present, future, at all levels, putting everything into context, from particles and waves, to plants and animals, to modern human gender politics, to the popularity of Star Trek, to societies, to evolution, and everything in between.
@@thewiseturtlethen tell me what your theory is
@@yonaoisme I haven't made an updated video on the model - which is basically Pascal's triangle, expanded, where all possible patterns/timelines/individuals/stories of combinations of stability and change (0 and 1) happen. But I have a couple of older videos on the model. And my recent video on gender uses the model to explain humans.
this is literal garbage@@thewiseturtle
Wow, thanks for your contributions to these discussions. Your channel is thoughtful & interesting; keep up the great effort 👍🏻
This was a great conversations to listen to and I feel Michael Muthukrishna is a welcome voice. I must say this reveals to me that Sean comes at this from the perspective of a privileged optimist. What seems radical to them here seems almost immanent to me as someone who faces systemic insecurity. Most people are eager for revolution, if you're not it's best to assess your privilege.
Felt odd to hear just the potential plus sides for winners of inequality but none of the societal blights that always come with it.
This was greatly enlightening Sean, Thank you both for making time for this talk and sharing it with us.
Well, that monologue (let's be honest, it wasn't much of a discussion) kind of went off a cliff halfway through the episode, didn't it? Arguing in favour of trickle-down economics? In 2023? I'm not surprised Sean opened with a disclaimer.
I was just casually working on something else while having this podcast on the background and oh boy did it have my eyebrows raised. It is mind-boggling how some people view the world and justify inequalities in our current systems.
I'm fairly new to this channel, and I lost a lot of respect for it during this episode. I've noticed in past episodes that the host tends to avoid getting too into the weeds when political concepts come up, and that's fine. What's not fine is letting a fast talking libertarian spew thinly veiled right wing talking points unchallenged for the better half of an hour, and then framing it as a scientific discussion. I really hope this episode is the last of its kind
It doesn't come across well in this interview, in his book Michael is very much not in favour of inequality and promotes land value taxes, high taxes in inheritance and strong distribution to raise the standard of wealth for the poorest people. He is still a capitalist but he's clearly not a libertarian and well within the democrat party sphere
@@boards80 That's not what I'm taking issue with. I'm criticizing his claim that injustice is downstream of general prosperity, i.e. that people are can tolerate inequality when there's enough wealth to go around, and that it only becomes a big problem when the economy slows down so much that people have to fight over scarce resources. That's literally just trickle-down economics in disguise.
@@boards80 Yes, well Muthukrishna certainly likes to talk his talk, but I got no sense that he succeeded in promoting his "theory of everyone" in this monologue. He was all over the place, but I got no sense of a "theory". Leads me to think it's not worth reading his book over other writers who publish on human biocultural evolution and neurocoginition.
Fascinating!
You can't change the way we teach math until you change the way we measure success in schools. At this point in time you can't use Wolfram on a standardized test.
1:03 "There is a moral case for people not being able to own the land." In other words, maybe the Precolumbian Nations had the right idea? Land ownership rights appear to be very absolute in the US. In much of Europe, freedom to roam on land you don't own (with sensible restrictions) is an ancient right that still exists today.
Kind of makes you wonder how that claim is meant to dovetail with his belief that land is the only thing that ought to be taxed. Sound like maybe he just doesn't believe in taxes.
@@deadeaded Maybe he meant a land use tax or ground rent payable to the state?
Thank you.
The 5 Most Energy Abundant Countries are United States, Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela. Top countries to live in are Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Hong Kong, Australia.
He's got lots of enthusiasm! I hope that, at some point, he discovers the real math of life. Currently, he's only studying a tiny part of dinosaur math, as one might call it. Real life doesn't follow the simplistic, primitive, lizard-brain functionality that is represented by competition (modern "game theory"). Some elements are forced to try to follow that math, but that's why we're all so miserable and trying to push against "modernity" in all it's anti-life artificiality.
right on! that observation is the jumping off point for a lot of creative culture building!
What a stale comment.
It’s not just him. Look up Oliver Scott Curry. Michael Tomasello. Etc. this whole nascent science of morality uses the game theory you disparage.
Michael would make a great rapper
This was really scattered but I enjoyed the wild journey.
it was so scattered and rapid-fire that I found it mainly irritating
To save time, it is important to understand the mechanisms of quantum physics. These mechanisms can seem mysterious or magical at first, but with understanding, they become less so. Currently, this is my thought about mortality🤔
45:00 Here we touch a big issue, energy is the foundation of all activity and its getting scarse. If you like this subject I can highly recommend
The great simplification
with Nate Hagens. We wont find equilibrium it will be forced on us I believe.
If I take the liberty to ask a question, pl guide dear Sean!
There must be a direct connection between Higgs field and warping of spacetime bcs mass being the common denominations! Am I correct? Pl explain. Thank you.
I can't say that other animals don't have organized schooling. I have seen a bird with nestlings demonstrating something: she had one wing extended and her head tilted. The nestlings did, too. Sorry, but the cult of "look what we did" gets on my nerves, especially when factions are actively working to disassemble the public school system. We're severing cultural knowledge in that move. As far as I know, no animals build bombs.
Thank you Mr. Muthukrishna!
I came to the same conclusion a year ago, that if we ever want to lessen the inequality that comes with and is in inherent to ones brithplace and ancestry, society must reject the concept of land ownership!
The community as a whole should determin the terms of its usage to the benefit of said community. Either as public land or source of revenue from occupying entities it should be used to provide and finance the necessary and by the community deemed essential infrastructures and services.
I would never have hoped to convince anybody to think along this line.
Its first attempt and theirfore association with communism discredits any viabillity of such a model for society, though the information age might have given us the technology to actually form such communities of varying scales capable to selfgovern and evolve/adapt.
Hearing Mr. Muthukrishna gave me hope that we might start during my lifetime to think and communicate what to strive towards to for the benefit of all as an ever evolving process!
Sencerely,
Matthias Exeler
In a world
Listened to over an hour of this and still know idea wtf this guy is talking about.
There cannot be a final theory of science since it wouldnt be falsifiable.
Its parts and predictions could be, indirectly at least.
I do not believe in Mr. Muthukrishna's version of the human world, in which "we all want to have more than our neighbour", and moreover in which "degrowth is a terrible idea". How bleak, neoliberal, and capitalist, everyone out only for themselves. If humans really were all like this, we would have no hope of solving the climate crisis we've created. I guess we'll see if we're really like this.
A theory of nothing. Aww.
He seems extremely overconfident in his ideas.
Unconvincing. He is hell bent on inequality being great and sees things black and white, rampant inequality vs total equality. Also, his arguments are shortsighted, innovation happened before the USA existed. He doesn't address the fact that some of the richest and most successful countries in the world with some of the highest degree of happiness and the highest attractiveness for business are countries like Denmark which is very far from being the USA and still has a high degree of innovation etc. He also doesn't address that while competition and inequality comes with certain plusses and minusses, rampant inequality like we have today where a very small elite sits on a historically large part of a historically large total, might not be so great.
How come we have had immense increases in productivity in the last 50 years but most people don't feel the difference, people have to work just as hard if not harder, young generations have a much harder time finding an affordable home, there is an epidemic of stress, anxiety and depression and in countries like the USA also an epidemic of homeless people, school shootings etc.
The USA is definitely not the greatest place to live for all types of people. Might be great if you have a lot of money to begin with.
And your "solutions" to climate crisis are just laughable and non scientific.
My guy has a Christian first name with Krishna in his last name. Keralite names are so funny in that regard
My theory is: people are lazy by nature. Technology helps us become more and more lazy. You can see where this is going.
Humans, and other people, are naturally creative and curious. It takes a vast amount of "culture" to repress that, and make us consistently broken. But so far we've managed it as a species. Imagine what our species will be capable of once we stop repressing ourselves, and start to actually act like humans, compassionate, creative, intelligent, and truly philosophical?
@@thewiseturtle you are saying great stuff!!!