This is what I love about this Substack: That I get to read about "that" kind of book. Boom's thesis is so refreshingly heterodox and it's probably true. I have to think about Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk, in which he displays example after example of Elon and his teams going absolutely all-out on a seemingly impossible quest - and more often than not succeeding in the end, after a world of pain and sometimes endless delays. This is the aggressive energy that ultimately changes the world and will shape our future. I'm not cut out for it, but I have immense respect for those who are.
The argument that more well-off and comfortable people should take more risks seems backwards, unless the risks aren't all that bad and they're bored or something? I think you're missing some important components of risk-taking: (1) What are the alternatives? In societies before modern medicine, safety practices, and insurance, there were more immediate dangers everywhere, probably resulting in a more casual acceptance of risks. Nowadays, with fewer risks to worry about day-to-day, we get excited about rather subtle, long-term risks. (2) Sometimes they have romantic notions of what it would be like. This probably explains why boys would run away to become soldiers or sailors, which doesn't happen so much anymore.
We could also study the people who *do* take more risks nowadays, and what motivates them. Immigrants come to mind. Wars and economic devastation are motivating, but there are also strivers.
The connection to having a family seems a little odd, too. Aren't risk-takers stereotypically young, single men? It was certainly true in California in 1849.
> D) the best way to sell somebody on a lie is to believe it yourself, so we “fall in love” as a way of tricking ourselves into believing we’re committed, so we can then trick others.
> This has the character of a lot of evolutionary psychology arguments — superficially plausible, but no actual evidence for it, and kinda falls apart if you think about it too hard.
Maybe I'm dense, but can you spell how it falls apart out for me?
It sounds basically true to my mind, if you're considering the male POV in the EEA (and of course, it's males who do the courting and pitching of woo).
I guess it depends on what you mean by "tricking," but I think we can say with confidence that most fathers in the EEA weren't "in it for the long haul."
"Til death do us part" is a modern invention, after all, and very poorly adhered to at that (~42% vintage divorce rates, higher among anyone who's been divorced and remarried).
Deep time is a big and diverse place, but I thought we were reasonably sure that most H Sap followed serial monogamy practices in the EEA, because that's what people do today.
In present day Hadza, don't ~40% of siblings have a different father? Doesn't this argue that serial monogamy is prevalent in HG even today?
Doesn't our 42% vintage divorce rate and unmarried cohabitation habits argue that serial monogamy is what the majority of the populace does today, even?
In that sense, the evo psyche argument sounds straightforwardly true to me, and I don't understand where it falls apart.
Evolutionary psychology often has that quality of making sense but being hard to actually prove. That being said, it seems convincing to me too. It's basically Nature's way of making sure we DON'T follow our short-term self-interest but that of the species. In order to do that, we need to enter a recognizable special state (love) which will convince everyone that it is the case that we are not egotistically rational. It's weird way to phrase it as tricking yourself though since it's part of your chemical processes.
Extending this to the economy as the post did, it seems like a critique of liberalism and the economic rational agent. We actually need to have part of our people irrationally pursuing goals that will mostly fail but sometimes revolutionize the sector. This will benefit the economy as a whole but not the personal business of the individuals.
I really enjoyed the left turn into romance and commitment. It reminded me of the Elvis line: "Wise men say/Only fools rush in/But I can't help/Falling in love with you."
If we want to make a cultural argument beyond demographics, perhaps there is a sense that the irony and self-liberation of the 1970s easily calcifies into an identity-based insecurity that cannot maintain the foolish earnestness that defines bubbles. I always find striking the way that japanese anime directed at young men valorizes absurd ambition and exactly the sort of foolish risk-taking that seems to power these bubbles in a way that little to no media in the US does (our superheroes practice ironic distance). There's a topical line in the very popular One Piece manga where a character laughs appreciatively about the main character's antics and says "what wonders fools create!" I think about that a lot.
There's also an argument in economic history that this ability to have individuals take risks in ways that may be bad for them but end up being good for society is related to collectivist and individualist cultures (Greif writes about it here comparing the practices of collectivist Middle Eastern Jewish merchants and their contemporary individualist Genoan Italian merchants https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2138652.pdf --- note the importance of liberal institutions like an individualized, rationalized justice system).
I also would relate this to the importance of (especially high-skilled) immigration to the growth of the US economy. It's highly, highly likely that immigrants are more risk-taking than the native-born (just think of the selection effects), and this comes out in immigrants starting a disproportionate number of highly successful companies.
I see glimmers of hope around this in the Progress Studies and their assorted constellation of groups and individuals, but I am congenitally hopeful (and young), so we'll see how convincing it ends up being.
There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in the notion that we are both risk averse and don't care about the future. Generally, being risk averse means you have specific preferences about the future, wanting to limit your range of possible outcomes; by definition you care a great deal about the future. Generally the great "YOLO!" cry is indicative of not caring (enough) about tomorrow in favor of making tonight awesome.
If we run hard with the risk aversion and ignore the bit about not caring about the future, then it works a lot better with the theory of being afraid of commitment. The tails of the outcome distribution get cut off, but unfortunately all the really big advances are in the tails. I would argue that our particular brand of risk aversion cuts off the upside risk much more than the downside risk in fact, but maybe that is just a result of being over exposed to mindless corporate safetyism too much of late.
I love this. It gets me wondering whether future orientation and risk tolerance are necessarily tightly correlated or if they are best thought of as independent axes?
This is what I love about this Substack: That I get to read about "that" kind of book. Boom's thesis is so refreshingly heterodox and it's probably true. I have to think about Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk, in which he displays example after example of Elon and his teams going absolutely all-out on a seemingly impossible quest - and more often than not succeeding in the end, after a world of pain and sometimes endless delays. This is the aggressive energy that ultimately changes the world and will shape our future. I'm not cut out for it, but I have immense respect for those who are.
The argument that more well-off and comfortable people should take more risks seems backwards, unless the risks aren't all that bad and they're bored or something? I think you're missing some important components of risk-taking: (1) What are the alternatives? In societies before modern medicine, safety practices, and insurance, there were more immediate dangers everywhere, probably resulting in a more casual acceptance of risks. Nowadays, with fewer risks to worry about day-to-day, we get excited about rather subtle, long-term risks. (2) Sometimes they have romantic notions of what it would be like. This probably explains why boys would run away to become soldiers or sailors, which doesn't happen so much anymore.
We could also study the people who *do* take more risks nowadays, and what motivates them. Immigrants come to mind. Wars and economic devastation are motivating, but there are also strivers.
The connection to having a family seems a little odd, too. Aren't risk-takers stereotypically young, single men? It was certainly true in California in 1849.
> D) the best way to sell somebody on a lie is to believe it yourself, so we “fall in love” as a way of tricking ourselves into believing we’re committed, so we can then trick others.
> This has the character of a lot of evolutionary psychology arguments — superficially plausible, but no actual evidence for it, and kinda falls apart if you think about it too hard.
Maybe I'm dense, but can you spell how it falls apart out for me?
It sounds basically true to my mind, if you're considering the male POV in the EEA (and of course, it's males who do the courting and pitching of woo).
I guess it depends on what you mean by "tricking," but I think we can say with confidence that most fathers in the EEA weren't "in it for the long haul."
"Til death do us part" is a modern invention, after all, and very poorly adhered to at that (~42% vintage divorce rates, higher among anyone who's been divorced and remarried).
Deep time is a big and diverse place, but I thought we were reasonably sure that most H Sap followed serial monogamy practices in the EEA, because that's what people do today.
In present day Hadza, don't ~40% of siblings have a different father? Doesn't this argue that serial monogamy is prevalent in HG even today?
Doesn't our 42% vintage divorce rate and unmarried cohabitation habits argue that serial monogamy is what the majority of the populace does today, even?
In that sense, the evo psyche argument sounds straightforwardly true to me, and I don't understand where it falls apart.
Evolutionary psychology often has that quality of making sense but being hard to actually prove. That being said, it seems convincing to me too. It's basically Nature's way of making sure we DON'T follow our short-term self-interest but that of the species. In order to do that, we need to enter a recognizable special state (love) which will convince everyone that it is the case that we are not egotistically rational. It's weird way to phrase it as tricking yourself though since it's part of your chemical processes.
Extending this to the economy as the post did, it seems like a critique of liberalism and the economic rational agent. We actually need to have part of our people irrationally pursuing goals that will mostly fail but sometimes revolutionize the sector. This will benefit the economy as a whole but not the personal business of the individuals.
This is essentially the prisoner's dilemma.
I really enjoyed the left turn into romance and commitment. It reminded me of the Elvis line: "Wise men say/Only fools rush in/But I can't help/Falling in love with you."
If we want to make a cultural argument beyond demographics, perhaps there is a sense that the irony and self-liberation of the 1970s easily calcifies into an identity-based insecurity that cannot maintain the foolish earnestness that defines bubbles. I always find striking the way that japanese anime directed at young men valorizes absurd ambition and exactly the sort of foolish risk-taking that seems to power these bubbles in a way that little to no media in the US does (our superheroes practice ironic distance). There's a topical line in the very popular One Piece manga where a character laughs appreciatively about the main character's antics and says "what wonders fools create!" I think about that a lot.
There's also an argument in economic history that this ability to have individuals take risks in ways that may be bad for them but end up being good for society is related to collectivist and individualist cultures (Greif writes about it here comparing the practices of collectivist Middle Eastern Jewish merchants and their contemporary individualist Genoan Italian merchants https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2138652.pdf --- note the importance of liberal institutions like an individualized, rationalized justice system).
I also would relate this to the importance of (especially high-skilled) immigration to the growth of the US economy. It's highly, highly likely that immigrants are more risk-taking than the native-born (just think of the selection effects), and this comes out in immigrants starting a disproportionate number of highly successful companies.
I see glimmers of hope around this in the Progress Studies and their assorted constellation of groups and individuals, but I am congenitally hopeful (and young), so we'll see how convincing it ends up being.
Interesting.
The first part is how the great Victorian British Empire declined.
Their investors went for safer investments in colonial resources rather than the grand technical projects of the earlier years.
Thus, it was Perkins--a British chemist--who after failing to get funding in Britain-- kickstarted the German Chemical industry.
When I started university teaching there were quite a few science, math and engineering students.
Now maybe 90% are majoring in business or finance--and this is the disaster that I knew would happen.
For the second part, societies are fueled by big shared dreams and die without them.
But, I agree successful bubbles help survival.
" Progress is our most important product."--G. E. slogan 1960's.
Thank you so much for this post 🤝
Great review as always!
There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in the notion that we are both risk averse and don't care about the future. Generally, being risk averse means you have specific preferences about the future, wanting to limit your range of possible outcomes; by definition you care a great deal about the future. Generally the great "YOLO!" cry is indicative of not caring (enough) about tomorrow in favor of making tonight awesome.
If we run hard with the risk aversion and ignore the bit about not caring about the future, then it works a lot better with the theory of being afraid of commitment. The tails of the outcome distribution get cut off, but unfortunately all the really big advances are in the tails. I would argue that our particular brand of risk aversion cuts off the upside risk much more than the downside risk in fact, but maybe that is just a result of being over exposed to mindless corporate safetyism too much of late.
I love this. It gets me wondering whether future orientation and risk tolerance are necessarily tightly correlated or if they are best thought of as independent axes?
I think they can be very independent, I certainly don't see any firm link. I personally am very risk averse and very future oriented.