Machiavellian apes: deception and counter-deception

Tim sits down with Max Bennett to explore how our brains evolved over 600 million years—and what that means for understanding both human intelligence and AI.

Max isn't a neuroscientist by training. He's a tech entrepreneur who got curious, started reading, and ended up weaving together three fields that rarely talk to each other: comparative psychology (what different animals can actually do), evolutionary neuroscience (how brains changed over time), and AI (what actually works in practice).

*Your Brain Is a Guessing Machine*

You don't actually "see" the world. Your brain builds a simulation of what it *thinks* is out there and just uses your eyes to check if it's right. That's why optical illusions work—your brain is filling in a triangle that isn't there, or can't decide if it's looking at a duck or a rabbit.

*Rats Have Regrets*

*Chimps Are Machiavellian*

*Language Is the Human Superpower*

*Does ChatGPT Think?*

(truncated description, more on rescript)

Understanding how the brain evolved isn't just about the past. It gives us clues about:

- What's actually different between human intelligence and AI

- Why we're so easily fooled by status games and tribal thinking

- What features we might want to build into—or leave out of—future AI systems

Get Max's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Intelligence-Humans-Breakthroughs/dp/0063286343

Rescript: https://app.rescript.info/public/share/R234b7AXyDXZusqQ_43KMGsUSvJ2TpSz2I3emnI6j9A

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 Introduction: Outsider's Advantage & Neocortex Theories

00:11:34 Perception as Inference: The Filling-In Machine

00:19:11 Understanding, Recognition & Generative Models

00:36:39 How Mice Plan: Vicarious Trial & Error

00:46:15 Evolution of Self: The Layer 4 Mystery

00:58:31 Ancient Minds & The Social Brain: Machiavellian Apes

01:19:36 AI Alignment, Instrumental Convergence & Status Games

01:33:07 Metacognition & The IQ Paradox

01:48:40 Does GPT Have Theory of Mind?

02:00:40 Memes, Language Singularity & Brain Size Myths

02:16:44 Communication, Language & The Cyborg Future

02:44:25 Shared Fictions, World Models & The Reality Gap

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REFERENCES:Person:

[00:00:05] Karl Friston (UCL)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNYWi996Beg

[00:00:06] Jeff Hawkins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VQILbDqaI4

[00:12:19] Hermann von Helmholtz

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermann-helmholtz/

[00:38:34] David Redish (U. Minnesota)

https://redishlab.umn.edu/

[01:10:19] Robin Dunbar

https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/people/robin-dunbar

[01:15:04] Emil Menzel

https://www.sciencedirect.com/bookseries/behavior-of-nonhuman-primates/vol/5/suppl/C

[01:19:49] Nick Bostrom

https://nickbostrom.com/

[02:28:25] Noam Chomsky

https://linguistics.mit.edu/user/chomsky/

[03:01:22] Judea Pearl

https://samueli.ucla.edu/people/judea-pearl/

Concept/Framework:

[00:05:04] Active Inference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkR24ieh5Ow

Paper:

[00:35:59] Predictions not commands [Rick A Adams]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23129312/

Book:

[01:25:42] The Elephant in the Brain

https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyday/dp/0190495995

[01:28:27] The Status Game

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58642436-the-status-game

[02:00:40] The Selfish Gene

https://amazon.com/dp/0198788606

[02:14:25] The Language Game

https://www.amazon.com/Language-Game-Improvisation-Created-Changed/dp/1541674987

[02:54:40] The Evolution of Language

https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Language-Approaches/dp/052167736X

[03:09:37] The Three-Body Problem

https://amazon.com/dp/0765377063