Exploring Fermi's Paradox and Runaway Consumerism in Extraterrestrial Civilizations

My guest today is Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychologist, associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, and author of many books, including (most recently) 'Virtue Signaling: Essays on Darwinian Politics & Free Speech'. 

We spoke about how consumerist culture limits fertility, the status games that parents play with their children, how the blank slate view of human nature makes parenting more difficult, and why it's adaptive to lie to ourselves about our true motivations.  

In the extended part of the episode, we spoke about whether polyamory only works for a subset of the elite, and debated the merits of its normalisation.