hopefully tonight we will know more
about why we as individuals and we as
societies and we as groups make some of
the decisions and choices that we do and
to help us understand that we are
honored and thrilled to have with us
tonight Daniel McFadden professor of
economics at both USC and UC Berkeley
the 2000 Nobel laureate in economic
studies a recognition for his
development of theories and methods for
analyzing discrete choice we are equally
honored and thrilled to have with this
Jared Diamond professor of geography at
UCLA and a National Geographic
explorer-in-residence author of numerous
books including Guns Germs and Steel for
which you won the Pulitzer Prize and
also the book collapse about how
societies choose to fail or succeed well
we think we always know why we make
choices because we make them in our best
self-interest we are told by political
leaders the people know best what is
good for them they know best how to
spend their money what they want what to
do with their lives and yet we know as
individuals we do make some wrong
choices we we have marriages that don’t
work out investments that don’t work out
jobs that we wish we hadn’t taken cars
we wish we hadn’t bought shirts we wish
we hadn’t picked out of the closet so as
we look at the bigger picture if we make
all these bad choices individuals do we
make equally bad choices as a society
the list of reasons why we as a society
sometimes make choices that are not best
for us is as diverse as the list of
reasons why we sometimes make bad
marriages if i gave you a one sentence
one word explanation for why some people
make bad marriages you would know that I
was an idiot headed for divorce and
similarly with the choices by society
but some of the reasons why groups of
people or societies make bad choices
include conflicts of interest what’s
good for the tune of
on the open ocean in the short run is
not good for the fish stocks and hence
for society as a whole then one can talk
about a sequence of steps at which a
society can fail and making this a
decision the society may fail to
anticipate a problem especially if it’s
a novel problem like global warming for
which we had no basis of expectation 30
years ago once the problem arrives one
may not perceive the problem global
warmin was hard to detect in the early
phases and then once the problem is
perceived then society may choose not to
deal with the problem as is the case
with lots of elements of our society
dealing with global warming today
everyone need to feel a some consequence
of the choice that is going to be made
because obviously if we think there are
no consequences we’re not going to put
as much thought or concern about what
the choice is so taking the example of
elites Jared if if they don’t suffer a
consequence for the decision say say a
country if they don’t play by the same
rules then other choice is not
necessarily the best for a country as a
hold of the elites are not subject to
the the consequences that’s um that boy
seems to me looking at history one of
the major distinctions between societies
that make bad decisions and collapse as
a result such as the classic Lowell Maya
and societies that make good decisions
and carry on that’s to say the role of
the elite in the society if the elite do
not suffer the consequences of bad
decisions but if they carry on well
themselves in the short run then the
likely to make decisions that are good
for themselves but ultimately bad for
the society classic example of the
collapse of the Classic global and Maya
why didn’t the Kings just look out the
windows of their palaces and see the
forest coming down on the hillsides and
the soil erosion well the Kings were
doing well they would be nourished their
palaces were going up they had insulated
themselves from the short-term
consequences of their actions we were as
the opposite extreme as the Neville
which has an excellent water management
policy precisely because in the
Netherlands one-third of the country is
below sea level and the politicians and
the wealthy people are not living on
those thin strips on top of the dikes
but they’re living down below in the
polders like everybody else so that they
know that if there is a failure of water
management has happened februari one
1953 when there was a storm in the North
Sea they’re going to drown along with
everybody else and and knowing that you
will suffer the consequences of your bad
decisions is a powerful incentive to the
politicians to make good decisions
you’ve written about an example of how
we make decisions on whether to switch
lanes and traffic we’re looking at the
cars going by in the other Lane and we
see somebody passing us we should be
over there so we switch there have been
test run with cameras and actually
marking the cars that show wheel we
always think the grass is greener on the
other side of the cars are faster in the
other Lane and it’s not necessarily so
how do our eyes deceive us well there
are a variety of psychological and
physiological explanations for why we
might have this misperception that that
it’s faster than the in the next Lane
but part of it is the way we integrate
experience essentially what’s happening
is that you’re being when you’re going
slow and are being passed you you see
that more more of the time than when
you’re going fast and passing someone
else even though the number of cars you
that passed you are you passes is the
same in in both cases it’s clear and you
can scientifically prove it’s a fallacy
that the other lane moves faster
although I can report to you on my trip
to the airport in San Francisco every
claim was going faster than my link
stay in your lane this is the rule how
do we ignore what we are seeing Jared
you’ve written about Easter Island the
people had to be seeing they were
cutting down every single tree on the
island what were they thinking as they
cut down the last one none had grown
from the previous ones did they suddenly
think well next week they’ll start
growing how does a society make that
decision people may ignore what they are
seen if they have strong reason not to
want to believe it so for example in the
case of Easter Island that isolated
Pacific island famous for having
destroyed itself by chopping down all
the trees I wanted so what did the
person who chopped down the last tree on
Easter Island think as he or she was
chopping down that last tree I don’t
know but I teach elementary geography at
UCLA and I asked my students what do you
think the person chopped down last tree
on Easter Island was saying as he
chopped down the last tree and one
student said well probably the person
thought there are plenty of trees over
in the next Valley I’m sick and tired of
all these fear mongers who say that we
are on the edge of disaster when they’re
really trees waiting for us another
person would say well somebody is going
to chop down this tree anyway this tree
is doomed I have children to feed and I
might as well be the one to chop it down
and still another person according to my
UCLA students was probably a political
sir conservative who shouted out I’m
sick and tired of big government
interfering in my rights do what I want
with my quiet well how are we going to
deal with an issue like climate change
part of this is instant needs versus
long-term solutions is that some of our
difficulty we’re the instant
gratification society I need what I need
now and I can’t think about 20 years
down the road what it might look like is
that well there is certainly a bias in
individual decision-making which is
called presence bias which says that
when I considered getting something
right now versus waiting a week I really
wouldn’t want want it now if you gave me
the same week interval a year out I
would say no no I would prefer to get
the little extra by waiting but but
people have this bias and that certainly
does distort how people make decisions
in particular it it distorts how people
think about the payoff to in out of well
in the future particular there’s any
ambiguity about what those payoffs are
going to be because another feature of
decision making is that if something is
ambiguous we tend to want to stay away
from it so those things all tend to bias
towards biases towards the present there
actually it’s actually related to how
things are processed in the brain the
present is processed as a different
place the more emotional place than they
in the future so when you’re aware of
how some of these choices are made have
you come up with ideas of how you can
change the way we make our decisions or
new stimuli that can be put in because
some societies make the right choices
some individuals make the right choices
I can give you a personal example there
which comes from my work as a National
Geographic Explorer in New Guinea I’ve
learned a lot from working with New
Guineans and one of the two events that
was most dramatic for me at the time it
was not a dramatic event but it’s
affected my life ever since then
watching New Guineans make decisions we
were camped out in a forest in New
Guinea I picked the campsite where I was
studying Birds with National Geographic
support and I picked the glorious camps
I looking out over were being where i
could see hawks and Swift’s underneath a
magnificent tall tree and to my surprise
the new guineans with me said we’re not
going to sleep under that tree what’s
matter that tree is dead it may fall
down and I said that’s ridiculous it’s a
huge tree yes it is dead but it’s been
standing there for 30 years it’s not
going to fall over for another 50 years
but those New Guineans were
convinced that they would not sleep
under that tree and they slept 100 feet
away I thought they were being silly on
the verge of paranoid and then as I
continued working in New Guinea sleeping
out of the forest I realized just about
every night in New Guinea that I’m
sleeping in the forest I hear one or
trees one or two trees fall over per
night and then I started to do the
numbers if you’re going to spend your
life in New Guinea forest 365 days a
year 10,000 days and 30 years if the
risk of that dead tree falling on you
when you sleep under it is one in 10,000
and you’re living your life in the
forest you’re going to die in 30 years
rather than 60 years that’s one of the
things about working on getting this
most influenced me to be aware of rare
risks of things that you’re going to do
repeatedly all right don’t change lanes
don’t sleep under dead trees ago we’ve
got two rules here sometimes people make
choices in fact there’s a famous study
of the ultimatum game about how
societies make choices and trust what to
trust how to make their decisions and
and how to share am I going to make a
choice to share something with this
person explain the game and how it works
and what it teaches us about choices we
make sure the way the ultimatum game is
played is two players who do not
communicate with each other except
through the experimenter the
experimenter gives the first player of
pie and says make a division of that pie
and offer one of the pieces to the other
to the second player the second player
accepts it you both get your shares if
the second person rejects it then you
don’t get it the pie goes back to the
experiment so that’s that’s the
experiment career and they all know the
rules before they all know the rules
they cannot converse with each other to
make a conspiracy ahead of time so what
should happen if people are purely
self-interested is that they sit the
second player who
if he gets any positive amount of pie
he’s better off than having none he
should accept it therefore the first
player can offer the smallest positive
amount of pie and that’ll get accepted
and so the self-interest of the first
player is maximized in that way that is
not how people play it’s not help
college students play and in the play of
this game in primitive societies it’s
not the way people in primitive
societies play either offers the modal
officer offers 50 50 and in among
college students that’s usually between
thirty and thirty and forty percent of
the pie is offered to the second player
and the offers are often rejected by
about about twenty percent of the time
if it’s if it’s less than substantially
less than fifty percent so it was not in
the best interest of the person no
matter how small a piece of pie because
he knows he’s not going to get any if he
says no he knows that he’s not going to
get any but what’s going on is that we
have a a cultural norm I would say it’s
it’s stronger than a cultural norm
because it spans cultures which is we we
will punish someone if they deviate from
mine even if we ourselves are hurt by
that punishment and that seems to be a
very common trait among humans sometimes
we’re fully aware we’re making a
decision that’s not going to be good for
us but we think it’s also not going to
be good for someone else and would
rather have that album that that’s right
and that presumably is a result of the
the way we have evolved and what kinds
of group in network social network
interactions have survival value Jared
you seemed of something even more
amazing is that when the person’s
offered a larger share than fifty
percent of the pie they turn it down
it’s interesting a boy did this varies
among societies what what what Daniel is
described applies to what one can call
industrialize
societies and when these experiments
started to be done that Daniel described
the goal was to find cross-cultural
comparisons so the experiments were done
at UCLA first and at various other
American colleges and then for cultural
diversity they were done in Buenos I
days and they were done in Israel and
they were done in Japan the results were
all very similar Stan you’ll describe
but then it became realized that all of
these societies were first world
industrial societies with state
governments so in anthropologist UCLA
Joe Kendrick who was working working
with a match against Indians and Peru
got the idea of trying experiment on the
magic any Indians and the result were
entirely different among the batch of
Genghis a matcha Ganga would offer five
percent which is absurd and another
magic angle would accept five percent so
the matcha gangers they have a different
culture they live in small family units
where they’re not used to dealing with
other people and being fear with them
but the society that you mentioned Boyd
where people reject higher offers is
that in the northern lowlands of New
Guinea there are two societies which
called pot latching societies these are
societies in which people give gifts and
the purpose of a gift is to give a gift
and gain status by giving a big gift
shaming the other person who requires an
obligation to reciprocate with an even
bigger gift and the result is that
people give as big gifts as possible but
the receiver wants to refuse the gift
because it incurs an obligation now even
though what Daniel is the squad is a
game and these people know perfectly
that it’s a game nevertheless they can
free themselves from how they normally
operate and among these pot latching
societies someone offered a pie offers
the other anonymous person eighty
percent of the pie and the person
offered eighty percent of the pie
rejects it an indignation because that’s
how that society operates now now one of
the one of the features of this and
similar games is that they involve the
element of trust between between people
the trust of perhaps to someone you know
or perhaps even if someone you don’t
no and a trust itself seems is a an
element in economic activity in trading
which seems to have very primitive roots
in the development of human society
there’s some very interesting
experiments done by Ernst fear at the
University of Zurich in which people are
either administered finished a peptide
called oxytocin oxytocin is the peptide
that facilitates anitha close approach
of animals it’s related to the bond
between mothers and children it’s
related to the bond between sexual
partners and when this peptide is
administered to experimental to students
at the University of Zurich and then
they play a an economic game it turns
out that this they’re substantially
affects the degree of trust they have in
the person with whom they are playing
and what it suggests is that is that
trust was a was an element very early in
the development of trade in humans the
brain used the same biochemistry the
same circuitry for trading and trust
between training partners that it uses
between sexual partners so the shopping
and sex are really the same thing
when the change is coming rapidly we
feel a little bit out of control not
certain what choice to make is there a
tendency to revert to what well this is
the way we used to do let’s just go back
to what’s familiar when we make our
choices let’s do it the way we always
did it in the past and it worked out
then even though the circumstances may
be entirely different now and the
consequence is different what reminds me
of my wife has a clinical psychologist
who did her training postdoctoral
training with people who are in a moment
of crisis that’s say someone who’s lost
relationship lost relative been fired
and so you’re in a moment of crisis in a
moment of crisis you feel that your life
is not working your way of operating is
not working you got to find a new way
the observation is that no person can
live in a state of crisis in a state of
everything up for grabs forever and so
my wife’s experience on this experience
of crisis therapist is that for a period
of six weeks you willing to reevaluate
your life and maybe you come to a new
way of coping but if you’ve not come to
a new way of coping with in the six
weeks then you go back to your old way
because you cannot stand to operate with
no guiding principles that’s the case of
individuals in the case of society
societies also enter crises but there’s
no six-week limit it seems to me that
the United States now is in a crisis in
which we are gradually realizing that
what has worked for us in the past is no
longer working for us in the present and
we’re struggling either to hang on to
the past some of us or to find a new
solution but it’s taking us a long time
either to find a new solution or to hang
on to what worked no longer seems to be
working
you
about why we as individuals and we as
societies and we as groups make some of
the decisions and choices that we do and
to help us understand that we are
honored and thrilled to have with us
tonight Daniel McFadden professor of
economics at both USC and UC Berkeley
the 2000 Nobel laureate in economic
studies a recognition for his
development of theories and methods for
analyzing discrete choice we are equally
honored and thrilled to have with this
Jared Diamond professor of geography at
UCLA and a National Geographic
explorer-in-residence author of numerous
books including Guns Germs and Steel for
which you won the Pulitzer Prize and
also the book collapse about how
societies choose to fail or succeed well
we think we always know why we make
choices because we make them in our best
self-interest we are told by political
leaders the people know best what is
good for them they know best how to
spend their money what they want what to
do with their lives and yet we know as
individuals we do make some wrong
choices we we have marriages that don’t
work out investments that don’t work out
jobs that we wish we hadn’t taken cars
we wish we hadn’t bought shirts we wish
we hadn’t picked out of the closet so as
we look at the bigger picture if we make
all these bad choices individuals do we
make equally bad choices as a society
the list of reasons why we as a society
sometimes make choices that are not best
for us is as diverse as the list of
reasons why we sometimes make bad
marriages if i gave you a one sentence
one word explanation for why some people
make bad marriages you would know that I
was an idiot headed for divorce and
similarly with the choices by society
but some of the reasons why groups of
people or societies make bad choices
include conflicts of interest what’s
good for the tune of
on the open ocean in the short run is
not good for the fish stocks and hence
for society as a whole then one can talk
about a sequence of steps at which a
society can fail and making this a
decision the society may fail to
anticipate a problem especially if it’s
a novel problem like global warming for
which we had no basis of expectation 30
years ago once the problem arrives one
may not perceive the problem global
warmin was hard to detect in the early
phases and then once the problem is
perceived then society may choose not to
deal with the problem as is the case
with lots of elements of our society
dealing with global warming today
everyone need to feel a some consequence
of the choice that is going to be made
because obviously if we think there are
no consequences we’re not going to put
as much thought or concern about what
the choice is so taking the example of
elites Jared if if they don’t suffer a
consequence for the decision say say a
country if they don’t play by the same
rules then other choice is not
necessarily the best for a country as a
hold of the elites are not subject to
the the consequences that’s um that boy
seems to me looking at history one of
the major distinctions between societies
that make bad decisions and collapse as
a result such as the classic Lowell Maya
and societies that make good decisions
and carry on that’s to say the role of
the elite in the society if the elite do
not suffer the consequences of bad
decisions but if they carry on well
themselves in the short run then the
likely to make decisions that are good
for themselves but ultimately bad for
the society classic example of the
collapse of the Classic global and Maya
why didn’t the Kings just look out the
windows of their palaces and see the
forest coming down on the hillsides and
the soil erosion well the Kings were
doing well they would be nourished their
palaces were going up they had insulated
themselves from the short-term
consequences of their actions we were as
the opposite extreme as the Neville
which has an excellent water management
policy precisely because in the
Netherlands one-third of the country is
below sea level and the politicians and
the wealthy people are not living on
those thin strips on top of the dikes
but they’re living down below in the
polders like everybody else so that they
know that if there is a failure of water
management has happened februari one
1953 when there was a storm in the North
Sea they’re going to drown along with
everybody else and and knowing that you
will suffer the consequences of your bad
decisions is a powerful incentive to the
politicians to make good decisions
you’ve written about an example of how
we make decisions on whether to switch
lanes and traffic we’re looking at the
cars going by in the other Lane and we
see somebody passing us we should be
over there so we switch there have been
test run with cameras and actually
marking the cars that show wheel we
always think the grass is greener on the
other side of the cars are faster in the
other Lane and it’s not necessarily so
how do our eyes deceive us well there
are a variety of psychological and
physiological explanations for why we
might have this misperception that that
it’s faster than the in the next Lane
but part of it is the way we integrate
experience essentially what’s happening
is that you’re being when you’re going
slow and are being passed you you see
that more more of the time than when
you’re going fast and passing someone
else even though the number of cars you
that passed you are you passes is the
same in in both cases it’s clear and you
can scientifically prove it’s a fallacy
that the other lane moves faster
although I can report to you on my trip
to the airport in San Francisco every
claim was going faster than my link
stay in your lane this is the rule how
do we ignore what we are seeing Jared
you’ve written about Easter Island the
people had to be seeing they were
cutting down every single tree on the
island what were they thinking as they
cut down the last one none had grown
from the previous ones did they suddenly
think well next week they’ll start
growing how does a society make that
decision people may ignore what they are
seen if they have strong reason not to
want to believe it so for example in the
case of Easter Island that isolated
Pacific island famous for having
destroyed itself by chopping down all
the trees I wanted so what did the
person who chopped down the last tree on
Easter Island think as he or she was
chopping down that last tree I don’t
know but I teach elementary geography at
UCLA and I asked my students what do you
think the person chopped down last tree
on Easter Island was saying as he
chopped down the last tree and one
student said well probably the person
thought there are plenty of trees over
in the next Valley I’m sick and tired of
all these fear mongers who say that we
are on the edge of disaster when they’re
really trees waiting for us another
person would say well somebody is going
to chop down this tree anyway this tree
is doomed I have children to feed and I
might as well be the one to chop it down
and still another person according to my
UCLA students was probably a political
sir conservative who shouted out I’m
sick and tired of big government
interfering in my rights do what I want
with my quiet well how are we going to
deal with an issue like climate change
part of this is instant needs versus
long-term solutions is that some of our
difficulty we’re the instant
gratification society I need what I need
now and I can’t think about 20 years
down the road what it might look like is
that well there is certainly a bias in
individual decision-making which is
called presence bias which says that
when I considered getting something
right now versus waiting a week I really
wouldn’t want want it now if you gave me
the same week interval a year out I
would say no no I would prefer to get
the little extra by waiting but but
people have this bias and that certainly
does distort how people make decisions
in particular it it distorts how people
think about the payoff to in out of well
in the future particular there’s any
ambiguity about what those payoffs are
going to be because another feature of
decision making is that if something is
ambiguous we tend to want to stay away
from it so those things all tend to bias
towards biases towards the present there
actually it’s actually related to how
things are processed in the brain the
present is processed as a different
place the more emotional place than they
in the future so when you’re aware of
how some of these choices are made have
you come up with ideas of how you can
change the way we make our decisions or
new stimuli that can be put in because
some societies make the right choices
some individuals make the right choices
I can give you a personal example there
which comes from my work as a National
Geographic Explorer in New Guinea I’ve
learned a lot from working with New
Guineans and one of the two events that
was most dramatic for me at the time it
was not a dramatic event but it’s
affected my life ever since then
watching New Guineans make decisions we
were camped out in a forest in New
Guinea I picked the campsite where I was
studying Birds with National Geographic
support and I picked the glorious camps
I looking out over were being where i
could see hawks and Swift’s underneath a
magnificent tall tree and to my surprise
the new guineans with me said we’re not
going to sleep under that tree what’s
matter that tree is dead it may fall
down and I said that’s ridiculous it’s a
huge tree yes it is dead but it’s been
standing there for 30 years it’s not
going to fall over for another 50 years
but those New Guineans were
convinced that they would not sleep
under that tree and they slept 100 feet
away I thought they were being silly on
the verge of paranoid and then as I
continued working in New Guinea sleeping
out of the forest I realized just about
every night in New Guinea that I’m
sleeping in the forest I hear one or
trees one or two trees fall over per
night and then I started to do the
numbers if you’re going to spend your
life in New Guinea forest 365 days a
year 10,000 days and 30 years if the
risk of that dead tree falling on you
when you sleep under it is one in 10,000
and you’re living your life in the
forest you’re going to die in 30 years
rather than 60 years that’s one of the
things about working on getting this
most influenced me to be aware of rare
risks of things that you’re going to do
repeatedly all right don’t change lanes
don’t sleep under dead trees ago we’ve
got two rules here sometimes people make
choices in fact there’s a famous study
of the ultimatum game about how
societies make choices and trust what to
trust how to make their decisions and
and how to share am I going to make a
choice to share something with this
person explain the game and how it works
and what it teaches us about choices we
make sure the way the ultimatum game is
played is two players who do not
communicate with each other except
through the experimenter the
experimenter gives the first player of
pie and says make a division of that pie
and offer one of the pieces to the other
to the second player the second player
accepts it you both get your shares if
the second person rejects it then you
don’t get it the pie goes back to the
experiment so that’s that’s the
experiment career and they all know the
rules before they all know the rules
they cannot converse with each other to
make a conspiracy ahead of time so what
should happen if people are purely
self-interested is that they sit the
second player who
if he gets any positive amount of pie
he’s better off than having none he
should accept it therefore the first
player can offer the smallest positive
amount of pie and that’ll get accepted
and so the self-interest of the first
player is maximized in that way that is
not how people play it’s not help
college students play and in the play of
this game in primitive societies it’s
not the way people in primitive
societies play either offers the modal
officer offers 50 50 and in among
college students that’s usually between
thirty and thirty and forty percent of
the pie is offered to the second player
and the offers are often rejected by
about about twenty percent of the time
if it’s if it’s less than substantially
less than fifty percent so it was not in
the best interest of the person no
matter how small a piece of pie because
he knows he’s not going to get any if he
says no he knows that he’s not going to
get any but what’s going on is that we
have a a cultural norm I would say it’s
it’s stronger than a cultural norm
because it spans cultures which is we we
will punish someone if they deviate from
mine even if we ourselves are hurt by
that punishment and that seems to be a
very common trait among humans sometimes
we’re fully aware we’re making a
decision that’s not going to be good for
us but we think it’s also not going to
be good for someone else and would
rather have that album that that’s right
and that presumably is a result of the
the way we have evolved and what kinds
of group in network social network
interactions have survival value Jared
you seemed of something even more
amazing is that when the person’s
offered a larger share than fifty
percent of the pie they turn it down
it’s interesting a boy did this varies
among societies what what what Daniel is
described applies to what one can call
industrialize
societies and when these experiments
started to be done that Daniel described
the goal was to find cross-cultural
comparisons so the experiments were done
at UCLA first and at various other
American colleges and then for cultural
diversity they were done in Buenos I
days and they were done in Israel and
they were done in Japan the results were
all very similar Stan you’ll describe
but then it became realized that all of
these societies were first world
industrial societies with state
governments so in anthropologist UCLA
Joe Kendrick who was working working
with a match against Indians and Peru
got the idea of trying experiment on the
magic any Indians and the result were
entirely different among the batch of
Genghis a matcha Ganga would offer five
percent which is absurd and another
magic angle would accept five percent so
the matcha gangers they have a different
culture they live in small family units
where they’re not used to dealing with
other people and being fear with them
but the society that you mentioned Boyd
where people reject higher offers is
that in the northern lowlands of New
Guinea there are two societies which
called pot latching societies these are
societies in which people give gifts and
the purpose of a gift is to give a gift
and gain status by giving a big gift
shaming the other person who requires an
obligation to reciprocate with an even
bigger gift and the result is that
people give as big gifts as possible but
the receiver wants to refuse the gift
because it incurs an obligation now even
though what Daniel is the squad is a
game and these people know perfectly
that it’s a game nevertheless they can
free themselves from how they normally
operate and among these pot latching
societies someone offered a pie offers
the other anonymous person eighty
percent of the pie and the person
offered eighty percent of the pie
rejects it an indignation because that’s
how that society operates now now one of
the one of the features of this and
similar games is that they involve the
element of trust between between people
the trust of perhaps to someone you know
or perhaps even if someone you don’t
no and a trust itself seems is a an
element in economic activity in trading
which seems to have very primitive roots
in the development of human society
there’s some very interesting
experiments done by Ernst fear at the
University of Zurich in which people are
either administered finished a peptide
called oxytocin oxytocin is the peptide
that facilitates anitha close approach
of animals it’s related to the bond
between mothers and children it’s
related to the bond between sexual
partners and when this peptide is
administered to experimental to students
at the University of Zurich and then
they play a an economic game it turns
out that this they’re substantially
affects the degree of trust they have in
the person with whom they are playing
and what it suggests is that is that
trust was a was an element very early in
the development of trade in humans the
brain used the same biochemistry the
same circuitry for trading and trust
between training partners that it uses
between sexual partners so the shopping
and sex are really the same thing
when the change is coming rapidly we
feel a little bit out of control not
certain what choice to make is there a
tendency to revert to what well this is
the way we used to do let’s just go back
to what’s familiar when we make our
choices let’s do it the way we always
did it in the past and it worked out
then even though the circumstances may
be entirely different now and the
consequence is different what reminds me
of my wife has a clinical psychologist
who did her training postdoctoral
training with people who are in a moment
of crisis that’s say someone who’s lost
relationship lost relative been fired
and so you’re in a moment of crisis in a
moment of crisis you feel that your life
is not working your way of operating is
not working you got to find a new way
the observation is that no person can
live in a state of crisis in a state of
everything up for grabs forever and so
my wife’s experience on this experience
of crisis therapist is that for a period
of six weeks you willing to reevaluate
your life and maybe you come to a new
way of coping but if you’ve not come to
a new way of coping with in the six
weeks then you go back to your old way
because you cannot stand to operate with
no guiding principles that’s the case of
individuals in the case of society
societies also enter crises but there’s
no six-week limit it seems to me that
the United States now is in a crisis in
which we are gradually realizing that
what has worked for us in the past is no
longer working for us in the present and
we’re struggling either to hang on to
the past some of us or to find a new
solution but it’s taking us a long time
either to find a new solution or to hang
on to what worked no longer seems to be
working
you
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