Mutual Understanding Michael Vassar and I talk about egos
Michael Vassar and I had this exchange on Twitter, and this podcast is a followup discussion. I think we mostly didn’t find a huge disagreement, but did cover some interesting ground.
Transcript:
Divia (00:02)
Hey, I'm here today with Michael Vassar because we had a disagreement on Twitter that was actually from many years ago that I recently circled back to. And Michael, which is totally in character, was like, let's actually hash this out. And yeah, I've known Michael for a really long time, definitely more than, we met more than 15 years ago. And I would describe you as one of my biggest intellectual influences for sure. I feel like at some point you sort of
I was like, what's going on? And you were like, let me try to tell you, which is, I don't know, it's very much what you're like. Something I quite admire about you is how perhaps more than anyone I know, it seems like you are really dedicated to being like, okay, you person in front of me, how are you making sense of the world? How am I making sense of the world? Let's like actually bridge that gap and talk about it. And so, yeah, I think it's fitting that we're here going to try to do a little bit of that now.
And I'll start by just sharing. So yeah, I had posted, and this was one of the early things that I posted when I got back into Twitter around 2019. I was talking about words and I said, there's an issue with the word ego where people need self -concept, self -concepts are important in load -bearing. And then the word for it makes all of that sound nefarious. And then Michael said,
Self -concepts are load -bearing, but suboptimal. Memory, perspective, and epistemology concepts are better and less vulnerable to memetic infections. So, I don't know, that's kind of the context. Should we dive in? What are your thoughts?
Michael Vassar (01:36)
Sure, I could dive in. I mean, I can see the value of something that is non -conceptually selfie, like Schopenhauer's concept of will and representation, as something distinct from memory and epistemology. The idea that there is a thing that is not represented that structures and constructs
Divia (01:52)
What is?
Michael Vassar (02:06)
the subject matter, the content of representation, like the way Yoshibok talks about consciousness says that you're definitely a simulation because you're conscious. Things that can be you are necessarily conscious and they're necessarily simulations of something else that is not AU and is not conscious, you know?
Divia (02:26)
Okay, so on the one hand that makes sense to me and then I'm like, okay, but are you arguing that like we shouldn't even have a word like I?
Michael Vassar (02:35)
I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have a word like I, I'm arguing that the natural meaning for the word I is...
also the natural meaning for ego in a stage one and two simulation non -performative world. Like there's a performative shadow world and a non -performative ego world. And the real self is in some sense a particular monkey and in some sense
Divia (02:50)
Right?
Yeah.
Michael Vassar (03:16)
physics or evolution or the fabric of reality in Deutsches' sense and like the agency of the self.
Divia (03:24)
Like an all self type of self, mean? When you say that?
Michael Vassar (03:26)
Well, not all self insofar as it's evolution, it's not necessarily all self. Physics is a fully extended self, but evolution and computation are like...
Divia (03:31)
Okay, but in terms of its physics, I'm like, that sounds like pretty broad, yeah.
Okay, all right, so there's a lot to unpack, but I think where I'm starting from is like, no, but there's a monkey, for sure, that's sort of like, I don't know, more, there's a body, there's a bag of skin, there's a thing, but there's also like a feature in the world that is not just the body, that.
Michael Vassar (03:57)
There is a body, there is a monkey.
Divia (04:06)
To me it seems natural to use some word like I to have some sort of self -concept around this feature and it's like, it's nebulous, it's fuzzy, whatever, there's a bunch of nonsense, but like, we do need something to refer to this feature, right?
Michael Vassar (04:18)
So like the issue is that there's the version of eye that's in my head and the version of eye that's in your head. And it's natural for the version of eye that's in my head to be a partial picture that I construct to shape my actions and the version in your head to be a partial picture that you construct to shape your actions. And for those two things to be like pretty different so that
Divia (04:35)
Yeah.
Yes.
Michael Vassar (04:48)
If I forget something that I said I was to do something for you that I said I was going to do, this is unintentional from the perspective of my eye and not unintentional from the perspective of your eye because the eye that is constructed by me is a
Divia (05:04)
Cool.
Michael Vassar (05:10)
tool for remembering commitments, among other things. And the eye that is constructed, the micol that's constructed by you, is the thing that constructs that tool. So the thing that constructed, the thing that constructs my eye, like parts of that are part of your eye and not part of my eye. So it's intentional from the perspective that treats me as the eye in your head.
if I forget the commitment and not intentional from the perspective and like there's a
Divia (05:43)
mean, that seems like an oversimplification. It seems like sometimes when I'm thinking of other people, I'm like, that one seemed really like a random oversight. And sometimes that seemed like a pattern that they don't think of as intentional, I wouldn't. Like, think that's it. But I think it would depend, right?
Michael Vassar (05:59)
Yeah, it depends to some degree, but I mean, like you might say that sometimes there is
Divia (06:05)
You're talking about the fundamental attribution error basically, right? No?
Michael Vassar (06:09)
Yeah, I guess you could think of it as the fundamental attribution error. I don't really think I was thinking of it that way. I think I'm talking about something bigger than the fundamental attribution error, more general.
Divia (06:16)
Mm
Okay, okay, so let me try to back up again. there's, we both agree there's some feature in the world that, and then there's a self -model in the person's own head, like in my head, and then there's a self -model, there's a model of me in other people's heads, and those are gonna be different, right? Because they serve different purposes. And then it is, so then it is true for sure that there's a thing where I...
We're people in general, think, where culture encourages us to have, try to unify these things and have some eye that's like my public facing me that I keep track of and that I kind of want other people to like, that we're sort of trying to have the same thing about what I am. Like that's also part of it, right?
Michael Vassar (07:07)
Right, but I would say that the thing that that's the thing I would call ego in a stage one. No, I'm not objecting to it. That thing that we're creating together is one of the meanings of the word ego. And there's a different thing. Yeah. And there's a different thing, which is also called ego, which is more like
Divia (07:13)
That's what you're objecting to.
Mm
Yeah, the sort of the social model of the person.
Michael Vassar (07:35)
like Vitae in a Vampire of the Masquerade sense, it's more like a...
Divia (07:38)
I don't know what that is.
Michael Vassar (07:44)
social substance that is used to animate a
more integrated pattern of behavior in a person who has become performative. So like,
Divia (08:09)
Okay, let me see, wait, sorry, sorry. Let me just take a second to digest that. You're saying there's some sort of social...
thing that gives life to something, like some sort of social power that gathers and it's like, okay, you could be a kind of integrated thing in so far as you live up to this performance.
Michael Vassar (08:31)
Insofar as you are recognized in this way, insofar as you are validated in this way, you can construct a more coherent, although still in some sense performative or an authentic agent. I think about it as there is a non -traumatized state that hopefully our children are still in, wherein one has a
Divia (08:36)
Okay.
Okay.
Mm
Michael Vassar (09:02)
integrated, not perfectly integrated, course, that's physically impossible, but a not at all disintegrated self, because the constraints of building a self model haven't come into conflict with the constraints of building a shared self model that you and others can also share.
Divia (09:26)
Okay. Sorry, I don't know if that seems... I guess I'm skeptical that that isn't sort of there pretty early, but maybe.
Michael Vassar (09:28)
and
So it seems pretty unlikely that our two -year -olds need to, when modeling themselves, also model our modeling of them. They don't succeed very well at false belief tasks. And that's related, I think, to modeling other people's models.
Divia (09:46)
Yeah.
For sure they're not very, yeah, I would agree that they're definitely not very good at it. Whether it already seems like an active thing they're trying for, I don't know. I'm sort of more agnostic about that part. It seems like it easily might be.
Michael Vassar (10:15)
I feel like they're actively trying to share information about themselves and they're actively trying to get attention, but I don't feel like they are.
Divia (10:21)
Right.
Michael Vassar (10:27)
trying to have a reputation.
Divia (10:30)
Yeah, I'm just, I think I hear what you're saying. I feel more agnostic on that.
Michael Vassar (10:34)
Okay.
So it seems like they certainly are not.
So I think that really up to a fairly old age, like old enough to have like a lot of fairly concrete memories and to have interests and to talk to people, cetera, I was like not really thinking about other people's picture of me at all. Like I think I can.
Divia (11:16)
Okay.
Michael Vassar (11:21)
remember being a second grader and being aware of how cringe I had been, not in those words that didn't exist, as a first grader. How like in show and tells or something, how I had been just showing and telling about things that I was interested in and not really at all thinking about the mental states of the people I was showing and telling to.
Divia (11:31)
Mm
Yeah.
Michael Vassar (11:50)
and whether they might be interested or what they might know or not know to begin with. I feel like between first and second grade, there was some level of metacognition that is coming online and after fairly detailed memory traces had been laid down and not fallen into the distant past.
Divia (11:54)
Sure, yeah.
I mean, yeah, I don't know. I have more thoughts about this. Does this seem like an important part of, like, is this a tangent or is this central?
Michael Vassar (12:22)
So like, I mean, I think that
One open question is the ego construct that we construct together in order to make a substitute for my picture of myself and for your picture of me that we can both work around. That ego construct is
Divia (12:43)
Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Vassar (12:51)
It's a matter of great debate how similar that ego construct is to the construct I would build for myself on my own or that you would build for me on your own. And also a matter of great debate how similar either of those things are to the actual monkey.
Divia (13:11)
Yeah, though I think I object again to calling it the monkey. I'm like, there's a feature that seems more like a... This also seems like a bad way to describe it, but it's sort of like a distributed process. Also.
Michael Vassar (13:22)
Should we call it a monkey god? Should we call it Hanuman? I mean, it's a thing that is in some ways enormously powerful compared to the thing that we normally imagine ourselves to be. I like to say that we are very puny. What we think we are is very puny compared to the Greek gods. And what we think the Greek gods are is even more puny compared to the thing we actually are.
Divia (13:31)
Mm
Michael Vassar (13:51)
And the thing we actually are is even more puny than that compared to reality. But like, there's a big gap between the thing we think we are and the thing we actually are that involves the fact that the thing we think we are is creating the world we find ourselves in, in every moment. And we don't think of ourselves as doing that. We don't have conscious ability to mentally paint a
Divia (13:52)
Right, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, no, and I think I follow that,
Right. Yeah, okay.
Michael Vassar (14:19)
seemingly perfectly rendered reality around ourselves. And you know, like we don't have the ability to just immerse ourselves in full illusion, but we like, in fact, do have the ability to create the thing we think is reality out of very limited data.
Divia (14:35)
Yes, that's right.
I mean, very limited. seems pretty high bandwidth about that, no?
Michael Vassar (14:44)
I mean, if you are watching a small child, they can't create a reality that is very similar to ours. They have very high salience on certain patterns that they're very fixated on, like trains and airplanes, but they will totally fail to understand what you are doing when you point at fireworks for the first time. And they'll just understand the activity of
Divia (14:56)
No, for sure, but that's a bit -
This is some kids more than others. Yeah, no, but it's...
Yeah,
Michael Vassar (15:13)
saying fireworks and pointing at the sky, but will not in fact point at fireworks because fireworks are an anomalous thing and you need lot of development of vision. You see what I'm saying? They haven't done the training.
Divia (15:28)
I do, but I'm like, right, but that does seem like we understand about fireworks in part because we have so much more data than the young kid, right?
Michael Vassar (15:36)
But some of that data is data of having seen a lot of fireworks. that it's not just the sense.
Divia (15:39)
Yes, still for sure. Yeah, definitely.
Okay, there's so many interesting places we could go with this and I have no idea how much I should try to sort of bring our listeners along with what may or may not make sense about this conversation. But I think I want to try to figure out what the core thing is. I'm like, all right, so we maybe have like a potential disagreement or maybe it's semantic. No, I think it's not. Like a potential disagreement about what exactly is young kids are doing, how much, but then, and you're also saying, look, there's this thing that
Society is kind of, I don't know, like sort of injecting people with some ability to integrate. Can you say more about that part?
Michael Vassar (16:23)
Yeah, okay. So there is this thing, trauma or secondary socialization. like primary socialization is the construction of the original ego and the original other model. And like that happens around age seven or eight primarily. And it's like, in some sense, probably the biggest cognitive
Divia (16:45)
This is the thing you're talking about where you're like, when I was in first grade, I didn't realize about show and tell, but now I do. Okay, so I think I'm still stuck on this. like, okay, but I think a lot of kids, not necessarily with their explicit thoughts, but I feel like they have some, some kids at that age, I think are pretty tuned in to like, it's pretty primary for them. Like how are other people to reacting to what I'm doing right
Michael Vassar (17:09)
Yeah, but in a vibes -y way.
Divia (17:10)
think there's so much variation. I agree, in a vibes -y way, but I'm like, and I think that part, again, I think there's huge variation and I think it's there from the time babies come out, that some babies are very into that in a vibes -y way and some babies not so much.
Michael Vassar (17:27)
Right, so there is a participatory, vibes -y way of behaving that is, by default, going to kind of gradually condense and congeal and integrate with a subject -object way of behaving.
Divia (17:44)
Okay, that seems right, yeah.
Michael Vassar (17:45)
And eventually, that will peak at around age 10 or so. You'll be kind of maximally integrated, completely done with primary socialization and not really started on secondary socialization. And then there's this.
Divia (18:01)
Okay.
Michael Vassar (18:06)
folk psychology, which is the psychology of folk theory of mind, that's formalized as homo economicus, but in a slightly perverse way that seems to either assume somewhat equivocally that a very high level of rule abidingness or a or no rule abidingness
Divia (18:13)
Okay.
Michael Vassar (18:36)
doesn't really like, like there's an equivocation of does homo economicus steal never or all the time? If homo economicus steals all the time, then there can be no economy. If homo economicus never steals, we're dealing with a fairly simplified model of the economy.
Divia (18:55)
True. I mean, some people have models of like, well, then they're just police and stuff, which is obviously incomplete, like, economics classes do discuss this.
Michael Vassar (19:05)
It's sufficiently incomplete that it never convinced me even a little bit. the first time I did steal anything was when I was lecturing 15 year olds on how obviously incomplete it was. So I walked into a candy store and took out not some candy, but like a whole box of candy. And it's like, look, you can just, not a candy store, a store. And then I'm like, look, if you want to, if you.
Divia (19:12)
Yeah.
Michael Vassar (19:32)
you can pay any attention at all to where other people's attention is and just take anything you want. And we don't do that because it would make us uncomfortable and we don't want to mess with systems that we depend on.
Divia (19:44)
I to a certain extent that's true, but I think we maybe disagreed somewhat about this in the past also, but it seems to me though, if you do remove the actual law enforcement side of things, then eventually over time, people will do some sort of more profit maximizing thing about stealing the things from the store and reselling them, et cetera. I think we do see this when, right?
Michael Vassar (20:08)
So I think that when we see, okay, so I think that.
What we see right now is a world where we built law enforcement and also dismantled the right to self -defense and implemented a sort of cryptic class and abuse system wherein people who are tracked as good guys in a sense or slave morality types or whatever you want to think about it will be aggressively prosecuted for
dubious violations of the law if they are getting uppity and where people who are presenting as bad guys or lawless or master morality will not be bothered at all. Okay, so 100 years ago, we had law but we didn't have police everywhere and 150 years ago, we had police almost nowhere, but we had private prosecutions. had...
Divia (21:09)
Yes.
Michael Vassar (21:09)
You could hire investigators, you could hire lawyers, you could arrest people. And to some degree, people still can do that, but it's so trivial that the courts are going to be so hostile to it that in actual practice you can't. So it seems that...
Divia (21:23)
Yeah, we sort of dismantled the natural anarcho -capitalism that we used to have.
Michael Vassar (21:28)
Right. seems that the dismantling the, right. Anarcho -legalism. We had anarcho -legalism, not anarcho -capitalism. Like in the book of Judges, you have law and no king.
Divia (21:35)
Check your legalism. What does that mean?
What is that? Why is that a just, okay. What does anarcho -legalism mean? I've never heard that term.
Michael Vassar (21:50)
I mean, I haven't heard of it either. okay, what I'm saying is that anarcho -capitalism tends to imply that there's no, maybe something like private courts. While you can have like official courts, but the official courts are not part of a, or integrated with a state apparatus in a manner that gives the state apparatus a lot of power to legislate or control them.
Divia (21:52)
You
Yeah, that's true, right.
Yeah.
Michael Vassar (22:20)
the courts. So in Islam you have like
Divia (22:22)
Okay, sure, fine. So it's not strictly private, but it was mostly like private initiative to use the public courts is what you're saying, or the government courts.
Michael Vassar (22:32)
It, like, prosec, investigation and prosecution were strictly private. Investigation and prosecution were strictly private except for like exotic things like the secret service that are very limited domains of focus, mostly counterfeiting.
Divia (22:47)
Okay, I don't know much of this history, but anyway, so I think I do wanna also try to stay a little bit on what's central. This is all part of like, look, most people don't steal stuff because they think they shouldn't or it feel weird or something more like that than because of concerns about enforcement. That seems true for most people.
Michael Vassar (23:07)
Right. And at an equilibrium, people will protect their own property and they also mostly won't steal stuff, I would think. there is a path, throughout most of history, in most times and places, I think, people would have protected their own property and not... Right.
Divia (23:20)
What do you mean by equilibrium?
Yeah.
Yeah.
As much as they could, anyway.
Michael Vassar (23:36)
But I mean, they would not have accepted, they wouldn't have protected it from big bandits, but they would have protected it in routine interactions. They would not have had the intuition that when they were in the right, it was still against them to apply coercion to self -defense or holding onto their property, you know?
Divia (23:46)
Seems right.
Yeah, my impression is that society's like hunter -gatherers or early historicalists or agriculturalists, I think they do have some property anyway. I think the degree to which they can, but I mean, it's sort of, in some ways it seems circular. I think this is like what David Freeman talks about, like natural property. Like the thing that they called property was the stuff that they could do that with. And then the thing that they couldn't do that with, they didn't try to own it.
Michael Vassar (24:07)
You
Yeah.
Divia (24:34)
Like they didn't, like I think many peoples did not try to own land because how would they even do that?
Michael Vassar (24:41)
I mean they would do that as a collective. They would have territory as a pride.
Divia (24:44)
They would do it somewhat as a collective, for sure, but even then I think sometimes it was limited about that.
Michael Vassar (24:49)
Well, if the land is very low quality, then they just wouldn't try to own it. If they are basically desert people, then they just wouldn't try to own it. If they're like, right.
Divia (24:58)
Yeah, I think it depends. there is some sort right, so I think it does seem like a natural outgrowth of how people behave or something, that there will be some things that they will try to protect them and it will be practical to do that and then they will call it property or something. I don't know if that word exactly, but they will have some sense of ownership for those things.
Michael Vassar (25:19)
Yeah, that seems true.
Divia (25:21)
Right.
Yeah, how much wealth accumulation, because also sometimes it wasn't practical for reasons other than defending it to really accumulate very much wealth. Anyway, like a lot of things, they're either too large or they don't store well or like all of those standard sort of economic arguments for why people didn't used to be able to accumulate very much.
Michael Vassar (25:40)
Absolutely.
Divia (25:50)
Anyway, yeah, okay, so I agree. People naturally do have some impulse to defend the things that they think of as theirs because there's some sort of equilibrium about that. That seems right.
Michael Vassar (26:00)
Yeah. Right. So like, I think that that was doing the job, not policing for most people, almost all people at almost all times in history before the 20th century.
Divia (26:15)
that people's personal property, it didn't really matter about the police in terms of that.
Michael Vassar (26:19)
Yeah, and I mean, there would have been like a registry of deeds in the court system and they might have in a more serious conflict taken one another to court for damages or whatever, but they would not be using the police to do that. They would still be having like a bailiff that comes and says to come to court and there's an assumption that of course you're going to come. And like, if you didn't, it would be a very large deal and people, you you like, you might have a
Divia (26:24)
Mm
Yeah, no -
Right.
Michael Vassar (26:50)
Posse rather than a police system.
Divia (26:54)
I mean, that also seems like the original form of law that emerges various places. Again, I'll say David Friedman, like, feud law, right? Like, okay, fine, we sort of can't resolve this. Like, I'll get my people, you have your people.
Michael Vassar (27:01)
short.
But I mean, like, I was thinking more like Icelandic law or like outlaw status being a thing. You know, people want to be under the protection of the law and not to be not under the protection of the law. And they don't want the sheriff to be rounding people up to hunt them down. But, you know, that's like a older thing than policing.
Divia (27:07)
Okay, anyway, sorry.
Okay.
Okay, sure.
Michael Vassar (27:30)
OK, so.
How did we get into this? We were talking about homo economicus.
Divia (27:36)
Because you were saying that there's sort of two. Yeah, exactly. There are two archetypes. There's homo economicus that never steals and homo economicus that always steals. That's what you're saying.
Michael Vassar (27:44)
Yeah, I'm saying that there's something about, homo economicus is a refinement in some sense of the folk psychology, the theory of mind, pre -secondary socialization. But it also contains this particular equivocation, I think, which is characteristic of the ways in which concepts get distorted.
when they get sort of formalized and also brought into legitimacy in ways that make them part of how we justify things. Where I was going though is that basically, homo economicus describes 10 -year -olds. basically, homo economicus does not describe 40 -year -olds.
Divia (28:27)
Okay.
Michael Vassar (28:42)
secondary socialization thing that happens. like early psychology, like psychophysics and theories of perception was about refining the ego model, refining the details of the folk psychology. And then with psychoanalysis and pragmatism, you start to have what you might call shadow psychology, the investigation not of the details of the ego model.
but of the unconscious, the investigation of the stuff that is just not predicted at all by the ego model, and which is in fact strongly anti -predicted by the ego model.
Divia (29:17)
Yeah, for sure there's a bunch of stuff. Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that people have their self -model and then it's important for predicting what's gonna happen or really understanding it at all, these other bits that aren't included in their official self
Michael Vassar (29:31)
Yeah, so these other bits are basically
More.
So by the time you're like 10, the vibe -y stuff has been pretty thoroughly integrated with the homo economicus stuff, I would say. And then secondary socialization is largely about like...
Divia (29:55)
Okay.
Michael Vassar (30:04)
Breaking the ego, breaking the shared self model that you and I can both see when we are talking about a me and replacing it with a approximate model of a more generic ego made out of vibes and archetypes. So like when
Divia (30:18)
Okay.
Michael Vassar (30:33)
We're 10, it's fairly easy to agree about commitments and it's natural and obvious. But by the time people are 30, they have any sort of class status. They are mostly not navigating life or maybe not entirely not navigating life through the use of the sort of self -model.
that we learn to coordinate around with like, like, like there's the original ego that's built in the process of primary socialization. And then there is the, then there is, and like in a D and D game or whatever, the original ego would be like your character sheet, you know? And then there's like a secondary ego that is like a
Divia (31:23)
Yeah, okay.
Michael Vassar (31:33)
level of like manometer or something, like some sort of a fluid that you get from validation that like causes a higher fidelity or lower fidelity, shorter lasting or longer lasting, more forceful or less forceful stimulation of an ego by within a person whose ego has been basically destroyed.
Divia (32:01)
Yeah, interesting.
Michael Vassar (32:04)
And we call both of those egos, but they're like totally different types of things. Like when we say someone has a big ego, that necessarily refers to the latter thing. And the latter thing is kind of necessarily sinister, because it's a simulacra, and simulacra are necessarily sinister.
Divia (32:20)
Sure.
Okay, I think, but I feel like this is, when you say it like this, I'm like, okay, then I think you're agreeing with me a lot. I'm like, my objection to treating the word ego is sinister is I'm like, no, but we need to be able to talk about the regular thing.
Michael Vassar (32:41)
We need to be able to talk about the regular thing, but other entities than us need us not to be able to talk about the regular thing.
Divia (32:50)
Yeah, no, this is why, okay, then I agree. This is my objection. I'm like, I think that's the original point of my tweet. I'm like, look, and I was also talking about status. like, that one I'm more like, it just almost seems simpler to just not ever use that word given how many problems it seems to cause. But I can't stop, yeah, but I can't stop using the word I, not really. And so.
Michael Vassar (32:54)
Okay.
I agree, we should never use the word status. It's actually just a
Now, the word I is great, it's just you have to recognize that people, when grownups say I, they are being ironic.
Divia (33:29)
This is related to your Twitter bio, right? Something about how, I don't know, I was just looking at it. You said your Twitter bio currently says the most ironic outcome is the most likely, reducing the irony is your job.
Michael Vassar (33:41)
Yeah. So, I...
think that we need to be able to talk about two human natures. And there is a political conflict that is prior to other political conflicts about which of those two human natures is to be normalized. The human nature after secondary socialization or human nature before secondary but after primary socialization.
Divia (34:00)
Hmm.
Yeah, neither. I don't, I guess my instinct or something about that is, neither, because the first one, I wanna keep a lot about the first one, but it's not up to navigating the actual world as an adult, which then seems, that's a problem.
Michael Vassar (34:31)
So, I mean, it is up to navigating the actual world as an adult, so long as you...
Stay out of situations where you might possibly have class privilege.
Divia (34:53)
Maybe, I don't know, I'm not currently, I mean, I agree that that's sort of, insofar as we're talking about the same thing, the sort of more normal ego. Okay, fine, the thing I would call like the more normal ego, it seems capable of doing plenty, but there's a reason that people don't, I'm like, I don't know, class pr - I don't know, I'm skeptical.
Michael Vassar (35:00)
I'm sure we're talking about the same thing.
So like if you are an Uber driver, if you are an Uber driver, you can navigate the world completely with normal ego. That's why it's fun to talk to Uber drivers and not fun to talk to PhDs. Right. And not PhDs, even though most people, when they were much younger, when they were 10, you would have rather talked to the PhD than to the Uber driver. But now that they're 30, you'd rather talk to the Uber driver than the PhD because they're navigating with a normal ego.
Divia (35:22)
I do talk to Uber drivers a lot.
I don't know. don't know that I spend much time talking to PhDs, but if I do, I think they seem fine to talk to.
Michael Vassar (35:50)
OK, let's see MBAs if you prefer.
Divia (35:52)
I don't, maybe I just don't come across. I feel like almost everyone I've personally come across is pretty fun to talk to unless it's like I'm interacting with a bureaucracy and then they're really not.
Michael Vassar (36:05)
So.
Divia (36:08)
Okay, so sorry, let me go back. the, when you say the thing about...
memory perspective and epistemology concepts are better and less susceptible to memetic imperfection. What do you mean by that?
Michael Vassar (36:28)
feel like if we have a idea of self that is coming partly from the vibe -y thing, you know, and that vibe -y thing, you know, there's a type of guy, there's a actual particular animal that is part of a self -image.
But there's also a generalization about a cluster of Mimesis targets that is also part of the self image.
Divia (37:06)
cluster of mimesis targets. What does that mean?
Michael Vassar (37:09)
Like, there are other people who seem to be...
to getting things that you do not seem to be getting and suggesting that you ought to emulate them and maybe ought to envy them. And those people are performing archetypes and they are granting recognition only insofar as one's are driven by that sort of performative imitation and not
Divia (37:21)
Yes.
Okay. Yeah.
Michael Vassar (37:46)
and refusing to recognize, coordinating to not acknowledge behaviors that are driven from the individual set of memory traces and perspectives.
Divia (38:06)
I think one thing that I don't really understand, you seem to have a model of it.
The thing that, and I keep struggling to describe it, even though you've just pointed at it, something about like some kind of life force or whatever. I don't really want to call it that, but some sort of motive power maybe that the social world is giving to people when they act in accordance with these types of expectations.
Michael Vassar (38:36)
I think I'd go in recognition. Maybe maybe maybe ego and ego.
Divia (38:39)
with the acts, okay, so they get some motive power from recognition.
Michael Vassar (38:44)
Yeah.
Divia (38:46)
Okay, so but how does that work? Like in a, mechanical a way as you can, I think I hesitate, I hesitate to call it validation because like it seems like there's a, cause again, I'm like, no, but I think there's a very normal thing that isn't what you're talking about that people get from validation.
Michael Vassar (38:48)
or validation, but recognition seems more than validation.
Yeah, recognition seems more it.
Divia (39:08)
Okay, so I'll use recognition and you're saying people get, does it seem fair to say people get some sort of motive force from this recognition?
Michael Vassar (39:16)
Yes.
Divia (39:17)
Okay, how does that work in your model?
Michael Vassar (39:20)
It seems like...
when people
interacting with secondarily socialized people.
and communicating from their perspective, trying to communicate to a secondarily socialized person as an ego to another ego, the secondarily socialized person will stonewall. They will present blank, inane objections, not process, eyes glaze over. Yes.
Divia (40:06)
is like what Scott Aronson calls a blank face, right?
which is I think people will know what that means in the context of a bureaucracy for sure. Like if you're going to the, I don't know, right?
Michael Vassar (40:20)
Well, people will know from experience, but they will actively and specifically mischaracterize. They will like very specifically claim that it means something else. And you see that in the comments of Scott Erickson's article on blank faces.
Divia (40:35)
What do they, don't know that I looked at the comments. What do you mean? What do they claim and what is it actually?
Michael Vassar (40:38)
So, everybody claimed that bureaucracies are mindlessly following rules when they are doing nothing of the sort. There are... yeah.
Divia (40:46)
because they're not actually following the rules. Like if you try to be like, no, but the rule says this, they won't be like, in that case I'll do it. Is that what you're talking about?
Michael Vassar (40:53)
Yeah, not at all. Right. They're just making s**t up. They're blank -facing. They're stone -bowling. are...
Divia (40:59)
We do mostly follow a bunch of the rules.
Michael Vassar (41:02)
They mostly, that's because, right, okay, so that's because they're a low status bureaucracy. If you go to the DMV or you pay your taxes, they will almost perfectly follow the procedure. If you go to the post office, they will almost perfectly follow the procedure.
Divia (41:04)
Like if I go to the DMV, it's annoying, but they are mostly following the procedure.
And though I think it is true that if for some reason they're not and I try to complain about it and be like, but that's what the procedure says, that didn't usually get me anywhere.
Michael Vassar (41:29)
I'm not even sure that it wouldn't with the DMV. I'm not sure, but I think it would with taxes. usually, yeah. I, but if you are trying to get a license to put orange juice vending machines, like trust -based orange juice vending machines in the local park, you will.
Divia (41:38)
With Texas, that seems right, yeah.
Michael Vassar (41:55)
at some point get stone rolled by bureaucrats. And if you talk to like a very skillful bureaucrat about it, they're like, okay, you even suggested that they ought to do things because the rules say to do them. You spoke to, you wrote to them from a framework that assumes that their job is to implement a set of rules and that negates them.
You're done after that. You have no hope. You're, you know, merely acknowledging, merely pinning down that rules exist will mean that you can't get a grant. you can't, like, there's a difference between, think about it as bureaucracies versus HR bureaucracies, like low -class bureaucracies versus HR bureaucracies.
Divia (42:42)
Okay, but I have very little, okay, I have no experience with things like trying to get a license to do business. I expect most people don't. So I would think the comments of Scott Aronson's thing are mostly people thinking of the bureaucracies that people, that almost everyone does deal with.
Michael Vassar (42:58)
you know, I think you have experience trying to get into elite universities. There you're dealing with bureaucracy and the bureaucracy will definitely not be impressed by your saying the rules say you should admit me, even if you could like prove it.
Divia (43:06)
Yeah, that's true.
No, for sure. have to... But you know, I mean, did... And I'm sure it's all different now, but at the time I like bought books about it and I was like, what do they say to do? And I tried to do those things.
Michael Vassar (43:29)
Yeah, you're trying to do those things.
Divia (43:33)
Yeah, which is different. mean, it does seem like for most elite admissions procedures, there's a bunch of stuff that, I mean, you could maybe find it written down, but then it'll change once it is, at least somewhat.
Michael Vassar (43:45)
And even if it is written down, it just won't be adhered to, basically at all.
Divia (43:53)
No, no, I don't mean that the rules are written down. I mean, sometimes, like, I don't know, I read some, I read some How to Get into College book. It wasn't written by, it was like a former admissions officer that was like, they're periodically those. Correct, they're not rules.
Michael Vassar (44:02)
But that's not rules. I'm saying the elite world is full of things that just plain claim they have rules, like the FDA, and that in fact make a reasonable show of having rules, but it's absolutely awful show. When push comes to shove and actual decisions made, the causal chain that leads to decision is like never driven by the rules.
Divia (44:26)
Yeah, I don't, again, I'm like, just, think I don't have personal experience there. It's true, I have some personal experience with admissions. The FDA for sure seems like it's really messed up and very perverse. That seems easy to see.
Michael Vassar (44:43)
So the thing is the FDA seems like it has an incredibly well thought through, totally reasonable, non -perverse, gigantic bureaucratic machine that doesn't actually connect to reality, that doesn't actually ultimately get to determine whether a drug gets approved or not, but like creates a fairly thorough impression of
reasonable, rigorous investigation of the sort that you would actually want.
Divia (45:16)
Yeah, okay, so leaving that aside, let me go back to, you're saying that there's some sort of motive force that people get from recognition, post -secondary socialization. What's your model of how that works?
Michael Vassar (45:27)
So it.
Divia (45:29)
Like why can they then do stuff or whatever? Because then that is your claim, right?
Michael Vassar (45:33)
Yeah, it sounds like...
It seems like...
Roughly, the original ego construct is a construct for mutual recognition of territorial claims to a pretty high degree.
Divia (46:00)
you're talking about which type of ego construct, the first one or the second one.
Michael Vassar (46:02)
The original one, the first one, the primary socialization. The primary socialization creates an ego construct, which is about recognition of territorial claims to at least a significant degree. And then it's not entirely, not nearly entirely, but that's at least a big part of it.
Divia (46:16)
Okay, can basically, yeah, I'll take that.
Yeah, I can see it.
Michael Vassar (46:26)
And like the secondary socialization one, ego construct, the secondary socialization dissolves the ego as a way of dissolving territory claims. And it also constructs novel temporary egos as a way of making territorial incursions. So like
When I think of anger versus outrage as the material for this, if your primary socialization ego is affronted, you feel anger and a desire to resolve and make things right. If you are forced to never resolve things in the more important parts of your life,
Divia (47:02)
Okay.
Yeah.
Michael Vassar (47:24)
through efforts at resolution. Eventually your ego breaks down and with it motivation and you join in.
Divia (47:34)
Well, I think I'm like, how though? How does that, how is your model of that working? Like what breaks it down?
Michael Vassar (47:41)
So speculatively, you're familiar with the idea of predictive processing theory, first -gen free energy minimization.
Divia (47:50)
Predictive processing theory, yes. First in free energy minimization, sort of. keep trying to, I've read the Wikipedia page, Emmet Scherer on Twitter explained some stuff about it, so it was helpful, but I'm like, I think there's something that people keep talking about that I don't know what it is also. So, sort of.
Michael Vassar (48:05)
OK, so free energy minimization is very, very clearly not the driver of all behavior. But it is very clearly something that has to happen at some limit when you have no available free energy.
Divia (48:17)
Okay, can you explain to me slash anyone maybe who's listening what you mean by free energy minimization?
Michael Vassar (48:22)
So free energy is an analogy from energetic landscapes in chemistry and other parts of physics where you have like a metaphorical energetic, I don't know how to say it more directly than that, but it's an analogy from the types of
Divia (48:46)
Can you give an example of like a social phenomenon that would seem natural to you to describe in terms of this analogy of free energy minimization?
Michael Vassar (48:53)
So stealing is the most natural one. So like when you are violating territorial boundaries, you have to keep track of the fact that you might get in trouble. And when you're surrounded by social threats,
Divia (49:07)
Okay, can you say that in a sentence that includes the term free energy minimization? That seems true, but I want to understand it better.
Michael Vassar (49:17)
Your attention is automatically drawn to territorial violations you might make. And your attention is automatically drawn to threats against you.
And when you're surrounded by more threats than you can track with like consciously in the high resolution way that you learned to do from primary socialization, when that method of tracking threats no longer serves you.
But when you find that as long as you are being moved by vibes, the threats don't manifest and people spontaneously organize to protect you from them. When you find that you can't make claims from anger, but you can violate territory from vibes and be supported.
Divia (50:02)
Okay, but what does...
Okay, but what? Same request. Can you say that sentence with the term free energy in it?
Michael Vassar (50:19)
It, there's a lot of information that you have to be tracking and all of that information that you're tracking takes energy in a literal sense. You have to be like checking things. And when you don't have enough energy in the literal sense to check the things to get, you know, to outland territorial violations, you can't avoid transgressing. You can't avoid.
Divia (50:25)
Yeah.
Michael Vassar (50:49)
threats by not doing anything that would give people
Divia (50:52)
So what does that have to do with free energy minimization?
Michael Vassar (50:57)
in my model, relaxing into archetypal behaviors is easy. It doesn't bottleneck things on the hippocampus and the amygdala.
And that makes it, it's relaxing. You hold, when you're angry, you hold it in your body. When you're outraged, you don't hold it in your body.
Divia (51:24)
For sure, yeah.
I never thought about that. I don't know if that I agree with that or not, but I'll go with it. Okay.
Michael Vassar (51:37)
like
Divia (51:37)
So you.
Okay, so I still have this open question about what exactly people mean by free energy. But if I leave that aside, yes, it does seem, I think I understand your argument that there's something people start doing that involves more tracking effort on the individual level. And if instead, people can defer to the vibes and then it's more like outsourcing that, they don't have to do it themselves.
It doesn't get them the same answer, but then they don't have to do it themselves and it gets them a similar result where nobody's bothered.
Michael Vassar (52:16)
And it gives them much better result, it gives them people helping them, which they weren't getting before.
Divia (52:20)
them. Okay.
Michael Vassar (52:24)
So rather, gets them secondarily socialized people helping them. Specifically, gets them secondarily socialized people protecting them from other people's eager claims.
Divia (52:35)
from other people's legitimate ego, including legitimate ones, you're saying.
Michael Vassar (52:38)
Yes, especially legitimate ones. It gets much more dedicated protection from legitimate than from illegitimate Euroclaims.
Divia (52:48)
Okay, and so then this is meant to be your answer for why do people get motive force from this type of recognition? And you're saying basically that they correctly predict that they will be able to easily do things if they are synced up this way and they correctly predict that insofar as they're trying to do the same class of things, they won't really be able to if they're not. And so then they're like, I don't have the energy to do it. Is that the claim?
Michael Vassar (53:13)
Yeah. Yeah. And when they get recognition, they are inspired, the villages term, it affects their breath, it affects their posture, to create a simulated, a local simulated ego that transgresses.
Divia (53:16)
Okay.
Meaning, so what do you mean by that local stimulated ego?
Michael Vassar (53:36)
So the thing that AIs do, like chatbots, a local simulated ego. They don't have a persistent self. They don't have memories. They have like a context window, but they don't have a set of boundaries that is tracked in the same sort of way.
Divia (53:38)
Okay.
Okay.
And the reason that it appears in the form of a simulated ego is why to interface with people's real normal ego structures or what? Because you need...
Michael Vassar (54:08)
Yes, yes.
The secondarily socialized people cannot produce enough resources to sustain themselves. have their album get extractive from primarily socialized people.
Divia (54:30)
You're saying because you need.
Michael Vassar (54:30)
Like secondary socialization is a pre -commitment to be confused about the nature of one's primary socialization.
Divia (54:45)
You're saying that in order to actually create value for real, you need to do a certain type of tracking of.
closer to object level, like object level reality and less convoluted social reality. And you think that the secondarily socialized people can't do this. And so they couldn't be creating value.
Michael Vassar (55:05)
Yeah, you have... I mean, they can create some value, but they can't create enough value to maintain themselves fully. They need to be net extracting too.
Divia (55:20)
Okay, so let me go back to your tweet and see if I can understand it in light of what you just said. You said, self -concepts are load -bearing but suboptimal. And by self -concepts here, you mean secondarily socialized eco -structures or egos or whatever. You say memory, perspective, and epistemology concepts are better and less vulnerable to memetic infections. And by that, is what you mean.
Michael Vassar (55:33)
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm trying to pin down the primary ego, but...
Divia (55:44)
Okay, all right, well, yeah, I think I agree with that. It certainly does seem better to me with the big caveat of like, okay, but people then do need to be able to interface with the world. Also, including secondarily socialized people, at least sometimes. Some people do.
Michael Vassar (56:04)
They do, they absolutely do.
Divia (56:07)
So the first thing seems close to strictly better except for... No, sorry. That's not even true either. It seems like overall, I'm like, yes, that seems better. And then people also need to be able to interface with that world, which seems to me like a... I don't know. When I look around, I'm like, it seems broadly, not exactly like an unsolved problem, but like people have their own special, this is kind of how I do it, kind of kludgy solutions to that insofar as they're trying to solve it, right?
Michael Vassar (56:34)
Yes. Like the primarily socialized thing is too self -protective. doesn't, like, if you want to have a nation, if you want to have people who are holding territory against other people, there's a free rider problem. You know, the primary socialization that produces value doesn't create enough commitment to fighting to like hold territory.
Divia (56:41)
What does that mean?
Michael Vassar (57:03)
against another nation or another group.
Divia (57:10)
Yeah, I mean, it does seem to be the big problem with, I don't know, I'm very sympathetic to the NCAP thing, but then it's like, okay, but then what about that there are these other countries and they're not gonna really let you do that? Is that what you're saying?
Michael Vassar (57:22)
Yeah
You need people who are, from a primary socialization perspective, irrationally motivated to fight for specific things and not for other things in order to have enough people fighting on the same side to like...
Divia (57:27)
Okay.
You want some sort of patriotism type thing you're saying and you can't do it with primary socialization, that's the claim.
Michael Vassar (57:46)
Yeah.
You can do a lot more of it with primary socialization, but everyone will hate you. That's what Israel is doing. They're incredibly effective.
Divia (58:07)
Was your claim, wait, is your claim that people in Israel don't have secondary socialization? It seems like a bold claim.
Michael Vassar (58:12)
much much much much less.
My claim is that that's what Judaism is. It's a minimum viable secondary socialization for preserving almost all of primary socialization while having enough secondary socialization for collective defense.
but not necessarily for collective territorial defense, just for collective physical defense.
Divia (58:34)
Okay.
not necessarily for collective territorial defense. What does that mean? Israel is still there. It's still on the map. It still exists. So it seems like empirically.
Michael Vassar (58:46)
Right, but like
It, but it has a lot of difficulties in continuing to exist. hasn't existed for that long. It doesn't seem obvious that it can continue to exist for that long. It seems pretty likely that it can't continue to exist for that long and stay the same sort of culture that it is now.
Divia (58:58)
For sure.
Yeah, I mean, it's also in a pretty...
Like you think it might develop a different type of socialization in order to continue existing? More of it?
Michael Vassar (59:17)
Yeah, it would have to. It seems likely to have to.
Divia (59:21)
It's an interesting prediction. can you say more about how how do you expect it to play out with Israel?
Michael Vassar (59:30)
I am very uncertain. I think that...
It will be very, very hard for Israel to be accorded the same types of rights to self -defense that all other nations are accorded. It has so far been very, hard for Israel to be accorded those sorts of rights of self -defense.
Divia (59:56)
By accorded, you mean in terms of like how other countries talk about Israel and how other countries treat Israel or... Yeah, I mean, this is the thing people say a lot. They'll be like, well, you look at like, people complain a lot about, they're killing too many civilians compared to combatants. And I think everybody agrees it's a cost, it's bad to kill civilians. But then people are like, okay, but look at like any sort of urban warfare, any sort of embedded enemy, any other nation doing the same thing, their ratios are not better, right? Does that sort of thing you mean?
Michael Vassar (1:00:00)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Yes.
Divia (1:00:25)
Okay.
And you claim.
Michael Vassar (1:00:29)
And in every other conflict in the world, the conflict is less morally unambiguously one -sided. In any other conflict in the world, the people who are calling for their deaths very, very explicitly and recording it and bragging about it, don't get this sort of sympathy.
Divia (1:00:51)
Right, for sure. That seems true to me.
that people are, I mean, there's some, I don't know, but there's some tendency, I think, for people to try to sympathize with the underdog no matter what that will apply to in other places too. But it does seem different in the case of Israel, for sure.
Michael Vassar (1:01:13)
I mean, even Israel being seen as not the underdog is weird.
Divia (1:01:17)
as not the underdog. Well, I but they do have, I agree, but they do have much better military for reasons that make sense, but I think that's why they're not, right? By the people who don't see them.
Michael Vassar (1:01:27)
Well, no, I don't think so, because Iran has a powerful military, Turkey has a powerful military.
Divia (1:01:33)
But I think people are less sympathetic to Iran than they are to Palestine.
Michael Vassar (1:01:39)
They are, but the war with Palestine is a proxy war with Iran and everyone knows it.
Divia (1:01:46)
I mean, everyone, that's one of those things, like you know it's V's post, right? Like, does everyone really know it? Kind of everyone knows it, but are the actual -
Michael Vassar (1:01:53)
Everyone's socialized, knows it. Nobody's secondarily socialized, knows it.
Divia (1:01:59)
Right. Which I think is many of the people with the loudest objections, right?
Michael Vassar (1:02:01)
That's the opposite of what everybody, no, but I'm saying that's what everybody, everybody knows normally. No, no, the everybody knows phrase means everybody secondarily socialized knows it.
Divia (1:02:06)
you're saying that's the meaning of the phrase.
I see.
Michael Vassar (1:02:15)
I was using it in the, in inverted meaning. you know, it is actually common knowledge. If you take the situation and have like chat GPT three or 3 .5 to educate yourself. Yeah.
Divia (1:02:16)
Okay, got it, got it, got it, okay.
Or I ask my Uber driver. No, like I do sometimes actually, not about this exact thing, but I have asked my, cause you know, had a bunch of Uber drivers that were in Afghanistan and they were all like, yeah, everybody knows these things are coming from, you know, Iran and these things. And I'm like, well, how do you know that? They're like, well, we see the trucks. I don't know. Like they seem to know it.
Michael Vassar (1:02:48)
Right.
Right. So like that, or if you have a kid investigate for, for now we're on chat GPT, it'll be, you know, like, how is this a question? How is this confusion?
Divia (1:03:04)
Okay, I mean, but most people don't like it's just classic, like people, the classic result is you ask people who are chanting from river to sea, like which river and sea are you talking about? Can you identify any of this on a map? And they're like, no, can't, right?
Michael Vassar (1:03:15)
Sure, but they're secondarily socialized, that's the point. They're engaging in outrage display, not an anger display.
And you can see that on their bodies in terms of the way they hold themselves.
Divia (1:03:27)
How do you identify it?
Michael Vassar (1:03:30)
So like their shoulders will be less crunched in. Their shoulders will be like more rolled back. Their posture will be more swaying side to side and less upright.
Divia (1:03:41)
Because you're saying it's a less energetically expensive thing because they sort of know that the social context has their back in a particular way? They're outsourcing that part of it?
Michael Vassar (1:03:49)
Yeah. Yeah.
Divia (1:03:57)
Alright, well, good
Michael Vassar (1:03:57)
They're in a sense literally not keeping track of things on their fingers. There's less tension from their shoulders to their fingers, whereby things can be kept track of.
Divia (1:04:06)
interesting.
Okay, well, ultimately, I don't know. I feel pretty satisfied about, think we, I now think that we no longer have much of a disagree, like about details of how the world is, especially in a bunch of parts. I'm like, I don't know about that. I think we don't have a major disagreement based on the tweets. Tons of, tons of interesting things we talked about, but I do want to respect your time. know you don't have it forever today. So I don't know. Is there anything else you want to hit before we?
Michael Vassar (1:04:21)
Yeah, agreed.
Divia (1:04:38)
Stop recording this.
Michael Vassar (1:04:40)
feel like this was pretty good, but let's talk again sometime. Alright, nice talking. Alright, bye, Devia.
Divia (1:04:43)
Okay, thanks so much. Thanks for coming on the podcast and talk to you later.
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