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dot com.

0:32

Coming up on the Mark Devine Show. Competition

0:35

and cooperation go hand in hand.

0:37

If you want to know the story of all of life, like

0:40

you are not an individual organism, you

0:42

are an ecosystem, you are the Amazon rainforest.

0:44

There's a microbiome within you that you

0:47

could not live without that's made up of billions

0:49

of cells of things that are not your DNA.

0:51

Our greatest achievements and our worst atrocities

0:54

were through competition, but cooperative

0:56

competition. We worked together to compete

0:58

with others. Competition and cooperation

1:01

are two sides of the same coin.

1:07

Welcome to the Mark Devine Show. I'm your host, Mark

1:09

Devine. I appreciate your time and attention

1:11

today. Thank you so much for being here. On

1:14

this show, I love to explore what it means

1:16

to be courageous, fearless, and

1:18

innovative through the lens of the world's most inspiring

1:21

and resilient leaders. I speak to martial

1:23

arts grandmasters, Navy SEALs,

1:25

high-powered CEOs, and economic

1:28

psychologists who've written amazing books

1:30

like my guest today, Michael Muthukrishna.

1:34

Michael's a professor at the London School of Economics. He's

1:36

got an educational background in engineering and psychology

1:39

with graduate training at Harvard in

1:41

evolutionary biology, economics, and stats.

1:44

He was brought up in Sri Lanka,

1:47

Botswana, Papua New Guinea, Australia,

1:49

Canada, United States, and now lives in the United

1:51

Kingdom.

1:52

Michael's the author of The Theory of Everyone,

1:55

Who We Are, How We Got Here, and

1:57

Where We're Going.

2:01

Michael, welcome to the Mark Devine Show. I'm super

2:04

excited to have you here today. Thanks for your time,

2:06

sir. Likewise, Mark. Thanks so much for having me here. Really

2:08

nice to meet you. You're over in London. How's

2:11

it over there right now? What's the energy? Jolly

2:14

old England. It's a little rainy. It's a little foggy.

2:16

It's what you might imagine. Yeah.

2:19

I love England. It's a beautiful place. How's

2:21

the mood of the country? Is there

2:24

a lot of fear and uncertainty

2:26

and confusion and doubt like there is over here in the

2:28

States these days? Oh, absolutely. Maybe

2:31

even more so, especially economically. Things

2:33

have been rough since Brexit and there's

2:36

a lot of people you might talk to who said England is done.

2:38

We were once an empire, world's

2:40

largest empire, and those days are long

2:43

gone. We're just clawing onto relevance.

2:46

I think there's moves to try to figure out what the

2:48

future looks like and nobody knows really.

2:52

I've been reading the work of Peter Zaihan,

2:54

who's a geopolitical futurist

2:57

thinker. It's been really fascinating to

2:59

hear his perspective on what a post global

3:02

order world looks like. He's describing

3:04

the global order being the post

3:06

Bretton Woods order that the United

3:08

States created the world by protecting

3:11

sea lanes, supply chains, and injecting enormous

3:14

amounts of capital. He makes

3:16

the point, and it sounds true to me, that

3:18

we have basically, the United States has basically,

3:21

whether they know it or not, has ended that. We've

3:23

decided to retrench. We

3:25

don't have the wealth. We don't have the mind

3:28

space as a country to be

3:30

the global presence, which protects all

3:33

those supply chains and all that old

3:35

order. Now you're seeing it starting to fray and

3:37

reorganize and Brexit was part of that. Yeah.

3:39

There's a lot that you could say about that. We've

3:42

been privileged to live under Pax Americana

3:44

for a long time, but things are more difficult,

3:46

especially since the 1970s and

3:48

the Bretton Woods global oil crisis and all

3:50

of that. There's so many factors

3:52

that went into it. Some of those are just historical events.

3:55

I still remember when they published the letter

3:57

from Osama bin Laden, where they laid out a book about

3:59

the world. out what he wanted to do. And

4:02

his plan was, I want to get America

4:04

entrenched in wars that it'll struggle

4:06

to fight. And in many ways he succeeded.

4:09

But then on top of that, I think there's

4:12

this website, WTF happened in 1971.

4:14

I don't know if you've ever been to it. And

4:16

it shows how the world comes apart in 1971, end

4:19

of Bretton Woods. And you see inequality rises,

4:22

productivity falls. By all metrics,

4:24

things get a lot worse from there. My

4:27

explanation for that is really, it was the rise

4:29

in oil prices, the creation of OPEC, and

4:31

the actual shift in our excess energy

4:34

capacities. We have plenty of energy, but it's

4:36

nowhere as cheap as it used to be. And energy

4:38

is really what, it's what multiplies human

4:40

ingenuity, right? You can't keep the American machine,

4:43

the American military machine moving without

4:45

that cheap oil. Right. And that's a key point

4:47

that the Zion character makes, is

4:49

that really what will accelerate

4:51

the global disorder is access

4:54

to oil. And if you don't access oil,

4:57

you don't produce your own oil. And America

4:59

doesn't now, because of the shale revolution,

5:01

doesn't need to protect its supply

5:03

lines from the Middle East, then you have

5:06

this myth of reorganization of everyone

5:08

trying to align with whatever

5:10

local sources of oil they can get or protect

5:12

the sea lanes. And that looks very different than

5:15

what we had in the last 60 years or so. You

5:18

were economic psychology. What, explain

5:21

what that is to us? Yeah. So I mean, economic psychology

5:23

is basically economic behavior. How

5:26

do people behave, especially and how does that interact

5:28

with our economic systems? But my background

5:30

is kind of a, it's an unusual mix. So, I mean,

5:32

I started my career as an engineer and

5:35

I did a dual degree where I majored

5:37

in psychology, but I took classes

5:40

in econ and poli sci philosophy, everything

5:43

really. And then in grad school, I

5:45

cross trained in economics, psychology,

5:48

data science and evolutionary biology. Went

5:50

to Harvard, did human evolutionary biology as a postdoc,

5:52

and then took my current position. So, I mean, the book

5:54

is, it has a bold title, a theory of everyone.

5:57

What it's trying to say is, look, every discipline's focused on the focusing

6:00

on a particular area and scientists are often very

6:02

focused on a single thing. But you have

6:04

to do the engineering thing. You have to step out and be able to zoom

6:06

in and out of a system and then you can really

6:08

see what's going on. So, you know, you're alluding to

6:10

some of that, the role that energy plays, for example,

6:13

and that crosses so many disciplines to try

6:15

to understand that, right? It crosses your politics,

6:17

it crosses human behavior, it crosses

6:19

economics, you know, political science, the whole thing. Just,

6:22

you know, to give some longer historical examples, you know,

6:24

the reason that I live in the country that once had

6:26

the world's largest empire was cheap and available coal.

6:29

The Industrial Revolution kicks off here and

6:31

then, you know, Europe as a whole takes off.

6:33

You get the great divergence and eventually other countries,

6:36

once they access that technology and the ability

6:38

to put energy to work for them, then you get this kind of

6:40

great convergence. Right now we're seeing the

6:42

opposite, right? Where we're seeing this kind of decline and it's

6:44

exactly what you said. The countries that have access

6:47

to cheap and available oil have a lot of control

6:49

and people are aligning themselves as best they can. And

6:52

other countries are taking advantage of that. So I don't know if you've ever

6:54

read, it's actually in Russian, but there's lots of translations

6:57

and rewrites on Alexander Dugan's Foundations

6:59

of Geopolitics. Do you know this book? I

7:02

do. I have not read it, but I think it

7:04

sounds about time. Let's talk about it real quick. So Dugan,

7:06

you know, allegedly was, you

7:08

know, one of Putin's advisors. You know, he wrote kind

7:10

of Putin's playbook, if you like.

7:12

His actual relevance is unclear, but it seems

7:14

like a lot of his thinking made its way into Russian

7:16

military training. You know, he has this crazy

7:18

idea about there are two kinds of civilizations,

7:20

land-based and sea-based. The United

7:22

States is like a sea-based civilization. You

7:25

know, Russia is more land-based civilization. He

7:27

looks at the world and he says, look, America's military

7:29

is too large. There's no way that Russia

7:31

can compete there, but it is open

7:34

to fractures within its society. So if we

7:36

can ferment those fractures, like, for example,

7:38

the racial divide between blacks and whites and

7:40

other groups, we can ferment that. We can kind

7:42

of, you know, destroy America from within. And

7:44

we can do the same thing in other places. So, you know, this

7:47

is, 1997 he writes this, you know, if we

7:49

cut off Britain from the rest of Europe, this is

7:51

critical. Like, we need to, you know, encourage anti-European

7:54

sentiment because the axis of Germany

7:56

and Britain together is too strong. Germany

7:58

should be given power within the world. Europe, Ukraine

8:01

should not exist. Eventually, we need to take that back.

8:03

Finland shouldn't exist. That should be a little bit scary. So,

8:06

I mean, if you look actually, if you look at the, you

8:08

know, the world since the

8:10

21st century began, it's very much Dugan's

8:12

vision by accident or by plan.

8:15

Yeah, you can clearly see how Russia

8:17

has played that playbook extremely

8:19

well, right? And yeah, especially in the, you know,

8:21

the different political elections and whatnot. Let's go

8:23

back to economic behavior. I like

8:26

to relate it to kind of this massive

8:28

green movement, right? And so, this push at

8:30

a political level, both United States

8:33

and Europe and, you know, at the global institutional

8:35

level for green energy and investing and

8:37

all that and EVs and whatnot. And yet,

8:40

human behavior is saying, you know what, we just

8:42

want cheap energy and we want things to

8:44

work, right? We want our lights to be on.

8:46

And so, now we have Ford and GM, they

8:48

can't, you know, there are lots of full of unsold EV cars,

8:51

they can't produce these cars. And then the word

8:53

starting to get out that, you know, the batteries and

8:55

the technology in this green tech is actually

8:57

far dirtier, so to speak, then

9:00

fossil fuels. What's your take on the whole, you know, kind

9:02

of green movement versus fossil fuels from

9:04

an economic psychology perspective? So, I mean,

9:06

look, EVs are, I drive an

9:08

electric vehicle, I should say, and I mean, I just love it

9:11

in terms of its performance. It's fantastic.

9:13

How green they are depends on, you know, what you're using

9:15

to generate your power. Like, if you're generating

9:18

a bunch of, you know, coal power down the road, then you're

9:20

not really a green vehicle, right? And of course,

9:22

the batteries themselves, you know, the degree

9:24

to which they're recyclable are also an environmental hazard.

9:27

I think, you know, there's a lot of ideology

9:29

in the green movement that is kind of worrying. There's

9:31

various ways to analyze the energy sciences,

9:34

and you know, I'm an outsider to this kind of reading it, but

9:36

I can at least read it as an engineer. There are various

9:38

metrics. And one metric that I think is really a powerful

9:40

lens is what's called the energy return on investment.

9:43

So this is the amount of energy it takes to

9:45

get some amount of energy back. And that

9:47

is really a measure of your excess energy. It's

9:50

what you want is an energy source that with

9:52

very little, you get so much back. And

9:54

oil used to be like that. And, you know, through

9:56

fracking and the shale revolution, where kind of the

9:59

numbers have gone up again. But when we first, like

10:01

in 1919, one barrel of oil found you another

10:03

thousand barrels. In 1950, one

10:06

barrel oil found you another hundred. And

10:08

by 2010, one barrel of oil found you another five.

10:10

Wow. And so you can see precipitously these

10:12

numbers are dropping. And if you look at the other

10:14

energy technologies that we have available, only

10:16

a few really make sense in terms

10:19

of those numbers. So hydropower, fantastic.

10:21

If you've got fast flowing rivers, use them. If

10:23

you're Canada, go ahead and use that. Solar

10:26

is a little bit tricky. It's got an initial investment.

10:28

There's a fusion reactor in the sky, and the more efficiently

10:31

we can use that, that's great. But of course, transmission

10:33

is a huge issue. We haven't solved the battery. Like,

10:35

so you can think of fossil fuels really as

10:38

millions of years worth of stored

10:40

sunlight, right? So you have the fusion reactor

10:42

in the sky, photosynthesis, converting to

10:44

chemical form, and then compressed over

10:46

millions of years into hard rock,

10:49

coal, and oil and natural gas. And

10:51

we don't have that equivalent. Like even, you know,

10:53

hydrogen isn't quite there. We don't have that.

10:56

It's really nuclear is probably our cleanest

10:58

bet in terms of our future. And

11:01

there are great technologies on the horizon, small modular

11:03

reactors, micro reactors. I

11:05

mean, fusion, if we ever get there, would turn us into

11:07

the first generation of a galactic civilization. It

11:09

would be unbelievable. But even on the horizon,

11:11

I think part of the challenges we face is the

11:14

stillborn nuclear age. Had we made the

11:16

right investments and looked

11:18

into better and better technologies there, I think

11:21

that geopolitics and the

11:23

levels of global cooperation would look very

11:25

different today. Why is there so much resistance? Was

11:27

it just Fukushima? Or is it money

11:30

flowing, opportunity money flowing into the other green

11:33

text? But why aren't we pursuing

11:35

nuclear power in all its forms?

11:38

Because it's so much safer now than it was when

11:40

Three Mile Island or Fukushima. This is like

11:42

an open question. There is no known answer at the moment. There's

11:45

lots of speculation. So initially,

11:47

I think the fact that it was a dual use technology

11:49

with massive military applications as well as

11:52

applications in the commercial sector, that was

11:54

a bit scary to a lot of people, just the awesome power that

11:56

we had under our control and then the devastation that

11:58

we were able to deploy with that. that, hangover

12:01

from the hippies, there was kind of a movement where somehow

12:03

it got tied up, you know, these fears that

12:05

drove a lot of it. A lag between the

12:07

understanding of the safety, you know, a lot of the problems

12:10

that are, they're actually solved. So, you know, in

12:12

the book, I, you know, I say, look, to think about nuclear

12:14

technologies today, thinking about 1950s

12:16

technologies, is like looking at cars

12:19

or airplanes. Like, you would never drive or

12:21

fly, you know, given the safety numbers back

12:23

in the 1950s, right? But today's cars

12:26

are way safer, you know? They break on

12:28

command. You know, today's airplanes rarely

12:30

go down. And it's the same with nuclear technologies,

12:32

right? Like the amount of waste we've been storing

12:35

it for years quite safely on site,

12:37

because it's so small, actually, and it requires

12:39

very little radiation shielding. So, you know, when I

12:41

visited a nuclear power plant last year, for example,

12:44

you know, I could stand next to it. And in the Netherlands,

12:46

anyone can, you can go visit their waste facilities,

12:48

and it's very, very safe. You know, I think there's a lot of

12:50

myths, and some of it just requires a little bit of public

12:53

education, and a shift away from that

12:55

messaging from the 60s and 70s.

12:57

Are we seeing any of these more forward-looking countries

13:00

investing it now again in nuclear

13:02

power? Because they see what we were talking about

13:04

earlier, that, you know, access to oil might be a little

13:07

bit tricky. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah.

13:09

And you know, especially where you don't have it. So, you know, China

13:11

has something like 228 reactors under construction. I

13:14

think it's because of the over the amount of regulation

13:17

that emerged in the regulatory environment. Plants

13:20

are very expensive to build in the West. You

13:22

know, they take a very long time, and they often go over budget.

13:24

But the Koreans were able to do it cheaply,

13:27

on time, under budget. And so they're

13:29

doing the same thing, even in the Middle East, which is, you

13:31

know, if the Middle East are building nuclear reactors,

13:33

I think that should be assigned to everybody. In this

13:35

country, too, you know, where there's a push toward

13:38

nuclear, and I honestly think for Britain,

13:40

where I live, nuclear is the future.

13:42

There's not much more that they have access

13:44

to since the North Sea kind of dried up. You

13:46

seem to be well educated on this point. How

13:48

far from a commercial application

13:51

for fusion do you think we are? What I will say

13:53

is, you know, the joke is that it's always between,

13:55

you know, next Monday and the next 30 years.

13:58

Look, I defer to experts like Vaclav Shostakovich. Schmill,

14:00

who say the earliest we're going to see it is about 2050. That

14:03

is a while away. That's why the nuclear fission in

14:05

the shorter term is essential. And I

14:07

guess natural gas is a backup to solar. One

14:10

thing that is different is that there's several viable

14:12

potential pathways and more

14:15

investment in the private sector

14:17

and the public sector in a startup-like

14:20

ecosystem that we've ever seen before.

14:23

And that's very exciting because it means that there's quite a number

14:25

of possibilities. There's a lot of branching chains,

14:27

if you like, that might lead to viable

14:29

fusion. But you don't know until you get there. I'd

14:32

like to shift focus a little bit

14:34

to talk about your work with your book. I

14:36

have to admit, my audience knows this,

14:39

but I'm a longtime yogi at

14:41

heart. I started practicing Zen meditation

14:43

when I was 21 and I went into the Seals

14:45

and continued my practice. And I'm martial

14:48

arts, of course, a lot of similarities. But then

14:50

I got into authentic yoga

14:52

through a guy named Paramahansa Yogananda and

14:54

Patanjali Sutras, really understanding

14:57

deep, deep, deep, deep dive and really

14:59

embracing the practice. And so when I saw your last name,

15:01

Mutha Krishna, I immediately thought

15:03

of the Bhagavad Gita and Krishna and Arjuna's

15:06

path. And you're an Indian guy. And

15:08

then I saw the title of your book, Theory of Everyone.

15:10

And I was like, I

15:12

wonder how much your

15:14

spiritual beliefs have

15:18

guided your work. No one ever asked me

15:20

that question, Mark. I'm glad you did. Yeah.

15:22

So, I mean, I would say diversity

15:25

has been my life experience.

15:28

My family is actually from Sri Lanka, which is of course

15:30

a Buddhist country, one of the last homes of the

15:32

original Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism. My

15:34

mother's family were Hindu. My

15:37

father's family are like Catholics back to like

15:40

16th, 17th century. I kind of had this interesting

15:43

blend of cultures always open to me.

15:45

And I think as a kid, I

15:47

was always looked, look, there's all these claims on the table.

15:50

And this has got to be the most important question

15:52

about how we should lead our lives. And we should

15:54

all spend a pile of time. And I looked at things like Pascal's

15:57

Wager, which is like, do I believe in God? Do I not believe in

15:59

God? believe in God, does

16:01

God exist, does God not exist? And my reaction

16:03

to that, look, when Pascal wrote it, he was

16:05

thinking about the Christian God. There was nothing else on the table.

16:08

But I think what Pascal is really telling

16:10

us is that this is an important question and you should

16:12

be evaluating these options. I

16:14

would consider myself an agnostic

16:17

theist. So that is, as a scientist,

16:19

I'm agnostic about everything. I've got no idea what

16:21

the reality of the world is.

16:24

Did the Buddha see something that the rest

16:26

of us did it? What are the depths

16:28

of understanding that the Indus Valley

16:31

were able to understand? If there

16:33

is a God, the great simulator in the sky,

16:35

does he interfere in the world? Did he pick a moment

16:37

in history to place his son,

16:39

whatever that means? So

16:41

I think I ended up narrowing it down

16:44

to, in terms of a way of life, a

16:46

very Buddhist-detached, this

16:48

too shall pass way of living. And I did

16:51

practice meditation for a long time. In the book, I should talk about

16:53

how I use flotation tags, like

16:55

isolation chambers as a kind of cheat code to

16:57

meditation. Shut off all sensory input

17:00

and your mind is no choice but to meditate.

17:03

I'm Catholic. I think there's a lot of richness in

17:05

the blend of, not at

17:08

the level of the people, but at the level of the

17:11

theology between how science

17:14

and spirituality kind of go hand in hand, reason. I think

17:16

it was John Paul II who said, reason

17:18

and faith, the two wings by which we fly. There

17:20

are more craters on the moon named after Jesuit

17:22

scientists than any other group. So there's a very long

17:25

tradition there. There's other interesting claims

17:27

as well. The Baha'is, for example, that's an interesting

17:29

one. The claim that actually in each

17:32

moment, if there is a God, he

17:34

releases in each moment these individuals

17:36

or people, the Krishna, the Buddha,

17:39

Jesus, whatever, and these are manifestations. That's

17:41

an interesting claim. You have to look at the details.

17:43

Maybe that should be my next book. Everything I

17:45

talk about in the book is really trying to explain in

17:48

a very secular way, really, because

17:51

I don't want to commit anyone to any

17:53

beliefs. But a lot of what

17:55

we discover, especially when it comes to the evolution

17:57

of religion, aligns.

17:59

In the book I talk about higher scales

18:02

of cooperation, working together in cohesion

18:04

and coordination at a higher scale is not

18:07

only a great secular ambition, a

18:09

secular goal, but also one that aligns

18:11

well with the teachings of the major

18:14

world religions. It's the Aatman

18:16

and the Brahmin are one. It

18:18

is a unified reality for all of us.

18:22

It aligns very nicely. So I think religion

18:24

as it is evolved has picked up on things that help us work

18:26

together better. But of course every,

18:29

as I say in the book, every scale of cooperation is also

18:31

a scale of conflict. It allows you to reach

18:33

this higher scale but then you're in conflict with people

18:36

who believe something different and that's the great challenge

18:38

of our age and energy has a big part to play in

18:40

that because it's easy to be nice when there's

18:42

more to go around. Okay,

18:44

we're

18:47

going to take a short break here from the Mark Devine show

18:49

to hear a short message from one of our partners.

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22:54

You're

22:58

right, like at the broadest perspective,

23:00

you know, all religions are pointing toward the same thing

23:02

and words can only be pointers because, you know,

23:05

words are rooted in duality. This,

23:07

that, up, down, man, woman, and

23:08

source, Brahman is

23:11

non-dual. Advaita, which is the

23:13

Buddhist tradition, means not two, so

23:15

we are both and. We are that

23:17

and this. But within this,

23:19

this contracted human form, you

23:22

have all stages of evolution.

23:24

You have the most depraved evil

23:27

to the highest form, you know, espoused

23:29

in Jesus or, or maybe even Krishna

23:31

and Shiva if they were actual humans, you

23:34

know. Yeah, similar to the Jesus or Buddha.

23:36

And so what you said about this

23:39

movement globally through humanity to

23:41

more cooperation, I agree with you because

23:43

as individuals evolve

23:46

along their scale of consciousness or, or let

23:48

more of that light love Sat Chit

23:50

Ananda through, they generally become

23:53

more loving and inclusive and compassionate. I

23:55

see that flourishing on planet Earth

23:57

as almost like a counterbalance to the crazy

24:00

the chaos and violence that's going on. I

24:02

think humanity, despite what people read

24:04

in the news, is actually moving in a very good direction.

24:06

Let's say a few. From an evolutionary

24:08

perspective, you know, it's not an accident that the major world

24:11

religions preach these things because it's

24:13

almost like any world religion that

24:15

exists today is a religion that

24:17

has enabled groups to cooperate and

24:20

work together at a higher scale, otherwise they wouldn't be here.

24:22

There are other faiths and other traditions that

24:24

existed, the Shakers, right? Famously,

24:26

they were an offshoot of the Quakers that believed

24:29

in celibacy for everyone. They're not around.

24:31

It wasn't a good belief to have to

24:34

help your group to create a

24:36

human race.

24:39

Exactly. So there's been a filtering process, I think, you

24:41

know? These religions

24:43

are offering social technologies, if

24:46

you like, that allow you to see something

24:48

and feel something maybe more than

24:50

yourself and allow us to cooperate with beliefs

24:53

that require us to kind of work together.

24:55

What one can do in a scientific world

24:57

is to try to come up with a life's

25:00

philosophy that is consistent with the

25:02

reality we understand through science. When

25:05

you see that and you realize how much we don't know, it

25:07

creates, I think, a lot of intellectual humility.

25:09

You know, I think it was Heisenberg who said,

25:12

when you first drink from the glass of science, you

25:14

know, you become an atheist, but at the bottom you find God.

25:16

I love that. The more you know, the more you realize

25:18

you don't know. And if we

25:20

were peoples of the 17th, 18th, 19th

25:23

century, we would think we'd worked it all out. And

25:25

in reality, there's a lot more to understand. So

25:27

I often think, you know, as me as a scientist, science

25:29

is a slow prayer as

25:32

we begin to understand creation and we

25:34

begin to understand our world. And the more we understand,

25:36

if there is a creator or

25:39

greater reality, be it humanity in the future,

25:42

the universe itself, a great simulator,

25:45

God is envisioned in the holy books, we

25:47

begin to understand that reality better by understanding

25:49

the creation, by understanding the objects that humans

25:51

make. You can understand a little bit about the psychology

25:55

of humans. That's where I think these things

25:57

really nicely align. The more we understand, the more

25:59

we understand our world.

25:59

ourselves, and the more we understand any potential

26:02

reality.

26:03

Now, you said that we're heading upwards.

26:05

I think we are, but I think there's also, in

26:07

Christianity, there's a concept of original sin,

26:09

which I think one reasonable interpretation

26:11

of that is that a lot of our behavior

26:13

we now understand is governed by kind of cultural

26:16

software that we acquire from our societies,

26:18

like you studying the yogis and so on. It

26:21

gives you new ways of thinking, new tools,

26:23

new realities. It moves us away

26:25

from a very conflict-based,

26:28

zero-sum animal way

26:31

of living one's life. That's the original sin. In

26:33

many ways, we live in a thoroughly Christianized

26:35

world. The idea, for example, that we

26:38

hold these truths to be self-evident, that all

26:40

men are created equal. If it was self-evident,

26:42

you wouldn't have had to say that. The lady doth protest

26:44

too much. It's a crazy idea, but it's equal

26:46

under God. If you look at a world

26:49

of Simone Biles and Usain

26:51

Bolt, this is not an equal world. We're

26:54

not equal, but we are equal in some sense, but only

26:56

if you believe in some kind of creator. We

26:58

hold these kinds of beliefs. I think there are

27:00

greater things, what is it, the greater things in heaven

27:03

than are taught in your philosophy or a few. You

27:06

invoked Heisenberg. You know, so Heisenberg also

27:09

with the Heisenberg principle said that we

27:11

affect that, which we observe. Then

27:13

you line that with quantum

27:16

physics, which says that a particle can

27:18

simultaneously be a wave. When

27:20

I look at that, I say, interesting. The

27:22

particle is the matter.

27:26

The wave is the energy. Both

27:28

exist simultaneously. Wherever

27:31

you put your attention, if you're putting all your attention

27:33

as a man strictly

27:36

a material, an objective separate thing

27:38

or a woman, then you contract

27:40

it into the matter form and then

27:43

the dogma and the principles and the thinking

27:45

that you know reality and grasping

27:47

for a belief system and

27:50

then that leads to positionality and conflict.

27:52

Whereas if you can relax into the

27:55

wave form of your life, which is energy

27:58

or what the yogis would call satchit. Ananda,

28:00

life flows through you and you become uncontracted,

28:03

open, free, and

28:05

allowing and inviting. It's

28:07

almost like the yin and the yang. The yang is that

28:09

kind of grasping outer and the yin

28:11

is the receptive inner. The whole

28:14

philosophy is that those two need to be

28:16

merged. Even Jesus said that. The masculine

28:19

and the feminine need to come together in

28:21

one. I want to relate this to our culture

28:24

and economy. Our economy is all masculine,

28:27

all yang, all linear.

28:29

It is the particle side of science.

28:33

We're missing that receptivity, that

28:35

flow, that refreshing recycling

28:37

energy of life flowing through our

28:39

economies. I don't see how they

28:42

can survive long, long term.

28:44

I mean maybe 50, 100 years. I think

28:46

that this relates to energy too. You're going to see

28:49

whole new systems arise

28:51

which are circular economy and allow

28:54

that kind of like more of that life

28:56

force through. I didn't articulate

28:58

it very well, but what do you have

29:00

to say about that? Bitcoin

29:02

is probably a good part of that. I think I understand.

29:05

It can be a useful analogy. The

29:07

interesting thing I guess about the wave function is

29:09

that it is really neither a particle nor

29:12

a wave. It behaves as a particle

29:14

under some circumstances. It behaves as a wave. It's

29:16

fine for me to say just shut up and calculate. We don't

29:18

know what this is and we're trying to map it back

29:20

to something that's at a meta scale. We're trying

29:23

to map it back to something at our scale where

29:25

we have particles and we have waves. What's

29:27

happening at that quantum scale is neither of those

29:29

things. We just have imperfect analogies. All

29:32

we have are our perceptions. If there was something

29:34

right in front of us but that wasn't accessible

29:37

to electromagnetism

29:39

with which we see or vibrations

29:41

with which we hear or chemicals with which we smell

29:44

and taste or electrons, whatever

29:46

for a touch, we would not perceive

29:48

it. It would literally just not be there. The

29:50

same way that neutrinos are just simply not there. When

29:53

evolution first emerged, Darwin

29:56

was a Victorian gentleman. He wasn't thinking

29:58

about women at all. He was focused

30:00

on competition as the driver of

30:03

evolution. And some people still think about that. And

30:05

actually, there were many women at the time, Brown

30:07

Blackwell, for example, Antoinette Brown Blackwell,

30:10

Clements-Royaire, who pointed out, it's like you're missing

30:12

the other half of this, which is cooperation. Competition

30:15

and cooperation go hand in hand. If

30:17

you want to know the story of all of life, you

30:20

are not an individual organism. You're

30:22

an ecosystem. You're the Amazon rainforest. There's

30:25

a microbiome within you that you could

30:27

not live without that's made up of billions

30:29

of cells of things that are not your DNA. Our

30:32

greatest achievements and our worst atrocities

30:34

were through competition, but cooperative competition.

30:37

We work together to compete with others. So

30:39

competition and cooperation are two sides of

30:42

the same coin. This is all part of this kind

30:44

of theory of everyone, understanding these mechanisms

30:47

and how they play out in our world. It's hard

30:49

to know what the future economic systems are going to

30:51

be like. Capitalism has worked quite well.

30:53

I mean, it's lifted a lot of people out of poverty. I

30:55

actually worry about things like degrowth,

30:58

for example, because what they artificially do is they

31:00

create a zero sum world. When

31:02

growth stops, it means that inequality is entrenched.

31:05

That means that your win is my loss. That

31:07

incentivizes destructive competition rather

31:10

than productive competition. At the same

31:12

time, we live on a planet. So I think what

31:14

we really need is the next era of abundance. We've

31:16

reached these eras of abundance in our history. Fire

31:19

was one. Then agriculture, the Industrial

31:21

Revolution is the era of abundance we're now

31:23

living through, the kind of shadow of that. The

31:25

next era of abundance, I think, is nuclear effusion

31:28

or whatever it might be. That will

31:30

enable us. It will give us the power to

31:32

embody some of the things you're talking about. With enough

31:35

energy, you can desalinate the water

31:37

you need. You can plant

31:39

all the forests you want. You can carbon

31:41

capture. All of those problems of conservation

31:44

and of climate change become a lot easier when you

31:47

have more energy at your disposal,

31:49

literal energy. Part of the issue as well with

31:51

capitalism is that it's a system we've come

31:53

up with. It has these nice emergent properties, but

31:56

because it entrenches inequality

31:58

over time, and we don't have good leveling mechanisms.

32:01

Over time it breaks down because people

32:03

fight over smaller and smaller shares as

32:06

pieces are captured and growth is one of the things

32:08

that helps you escape that. Actually, in the book,

32:10

I advocate some ideas that might seem radical

32:13

until you realize how recent they are. So income

32:15

tax, 1913, that was when

32:17

income tax first emerged and capital gains

32:19

tax at the same time. It was 1% up

32:22

to about, in today's money, about 100,000. It was 7% at the highest

32:26

rate up to like 10 million or something like that. Sales

32:28

tax in 1927, I think, was when it first emerged.

32:31

These taxes are what economists call distortionary

32:34

in that they cause you to work less, you

32:36

know, because you don't want to enter that next tax bracket. They

32:38

cause you to trade less because of sales tax, capital

32:41

gains, and whatever. They're not good taxes. What

32:43

we should really be taxing, if anything, is

32:45

things like the land. So land value

32:48

taxes, for example, of all the assets

32:50

you can own and use, the one that you

32:52

did not create, so patents you created, companies

32:54

you created, worship art you created, whiskey

32:57

you created, you did not create the land. And

32:59

so actually, if you look, it's one of these kind of secrets that's

33:02

supported by economists across the political spectrum,

33:04

like major economists as well as Nobel Prize winners,

33:06

but we just don't know how to transition. So I suggest some pathways

33:08

to transition toward, get rid of all the other taxes,

33:11

stop taxing that stuff. Even inheritance

33:13

taxes can be kind of distortionary and they're difficult to

33:15

implement and people take their money with them. They

33:17

can't take the land with them. You can't take the

33:19

land to the Bahamas, you know? So

33:21

if we, you know, there are paths, I think even with a small

33:24

tax, let's say three to six percent, you can pay

33:26

for the US military, you can pay for Medicare, you can

33:28

pay for the whole thing. All of these things emerge

33:30

from this kind of theory of everyone. They suggest

33:32

the things we should be looking at that are preventing

33:35

us from reaching that world that I think you're describing,

33:37

that you described so well. What's the Enron

33:39

Effect? The Enron Effect is what happens

33:41

when people don't understand evolution

33:43

and they think of it as just competition. So,

33:46

you know, Jeffrey Skilling, his favorite

33:48

book, was Dawkins, The Selfish

33:50

Gene. And from it, you know, he understood

33:53

evolution as just this competition. He didn't

33:55

understand, it was about cooperation as well.

33:57

Like you are a cooperative organism, as I said.

35:57

quote,

36:00

most of them were going to fail, meant that

36:02

we got the Alphabets, we got the Amazons,

36:05

you know, we got the Apples, we got those few

36:07

successes. And at a country level,

36:09

and I would say at a global level actually,

36:11

because the world benefited from it, they paid

36:13

for the rest. It is about competition, but it's

36:15

about cooperative competition, productive competition,

36:18

where we work harder to out-compete one another. We

36:21

share the benefits at some level, through

36:23

the tax system, which is through the mere fact that

36:25

these innovations can be built upon, and we localize

36:27

the failure, but we don't fall so far that people

36:30

are afraid to try.

36:31

That's one of the strengths of the United States as well. Yeah, for

36:33

sure. Okay,

36:36

we're going to take a short break

36:38

here from the Mark Devine Show, to hear a short

36:40

message from one of our partners.

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38:53

So the title of your book,

38:54

The Theory of Everyone, give

38:57

us kind of like the, you know, the three sentence elevator

38:59

pitch.

38:59

What is that theory? I know we probably touched

39:01

on different aspects of the vision, but what

39:04

are like some of the most important pathways to see

39:06

this come to fruition?

39:08

A Theory of Everyone is a play on the

39:11

theory of everything in physics, which is this grand unifying theory that

39:13

connects, you know, the fundamental forces. It connects

39:15

general relativity with, you know, the

39:17

physics of the very vast, with the physical, The

39:20

claim that I make is that, you know, those who work

39:22

in this area now realize that we have for the first

39:24

time, this major revolution that turns the human

39:26

and social sciences into a real science.

39:30

It's the moment when alchemy turns into chemistry because

39:32

we now understand like Newton, he's a smart guy, but

39:34

he's trying to turn lead into gold. Why?

39:36

He doesn't know that the world is made up of

39:38

elements, elements that have patterns that fit into a

39:40

periodic table and, you know, recombine in specific

39:43

ways. And you can make gunpowder and you can, you

39:46

know, you can make a gunpowder and you can make a gunpowder and you can

39:49

make, you know, you can do all kinds of chemistry, but you

39:51

can't turn lead into gold because you're different elements. We

39:54

have that same understanding for humans

39:56

and social and cultural evolution. And that

39:58

understanding stems from. how we evolved

40:01

and I don't want to you know you can get into the details but

40:03

the essence of the theory is that what makes us

40:05

a new kind of animal is that we are heavily

40:08

reliant not just on genetic hardware

40:10

as every other animal is and not just

40:12

on individual learning what we learn over our lifetime

40:15

but cultural software that's running

40:17

on our brains that is evolving alongside

40:19

us and that we acquire from our societies

40:22

learning from the greats of the past who have

40:24

filtered the best stuff over time and

40:26

when a child is born the first thing that they do is

40:28

catch up on the last several thousand years of human

40:31

history and we do it through our schools

40:33

we do it through our societies and a lot of the things

40:35

you think of as being human are not there

40:37

in fact cultural it's all the way from we

40:40

have jaws that are too weak and guts that are too

40:42

short for anything other than cooked food but

40:44

we have no instincts for cooking or even fire we

40:46

like fire we might have some instincts for liking fire but we

40:48

don't know how to make fights kind of hard if you're not taught all

40:51

the way to numeracy you know so like you might think humans

40:53

can count for a lot of our history this is all

40:55

we got one two three many

40:57

you know and it took a long time to use stones

41:00

or body parts yeah it's true

41:02

it's true you know it took a long time to understand

41:04

like numbers it took centuries

41:07

before we could even I come up with the idea of zero

41:09

you know you're talking about India's is the beginnings of zero

41:12

as a number and the negative numbers that

41:14

was until the 17th and 18th century when we came up

41:16

with a number line a new piece

41:18

of software that we could download like an app into

41:21

our heads teach it to children and now negative

41:23

numbers were accessible to us before that you know this is

41:25

quote from in the book of from Francis Miserie's

41:27

at this British mathematician he says negative numbers darken

41:30

the very fabric of reality you know

41:32

something along those lines he's like this is awful he doesn't

41:34

have the double I you know he's not familiar with this once

41:36

you have that you're like oh okay I get it you know and then I can

41:38

do the complex plane I can do all this other stuff so

41:41

what we do we are different kind of animal

41:43

in that we don't prefer what

41:45

we see in the world we defer

41:47

to the things that we learn from all of

41:50

the people around us maybe two more examples

41:52

mark if you if you don't judge me you know one is that people

41:54

believe that it is germs that make

41:57

us sick and asked me what are germs they're like invisible

41:59

animals I'm like Are the germs with us in the room right

42:01

now, Mark? It's like, you've never

42:03

seen it, but the smartest people and

42:05

everyone around you is washing their hands in behaving

42:08

ways that are consistent. Now, if you were in the

42:10

Amazon, you were in the Garani tribe, you would equally have

42:12

some evidence for spirits making you sick.

42:14

And the stories of anthropologists said, it's

42:16

the water making you sick, and they're looking at the water, and it's like, nothing's

42:19

in this water. And then they start laughing at the anthropologist,

42:21

like, he thinks there's invisible animals, can you see

42:23

those? You even ignore your

42:25

own senses. For most people, I know

42:28

there's flat earthers, but if you look around the world,

42:30

the world looks flat for your perception,

42:32

and the sun is clearly moving across the

42:34

sky from east to west. But if

42:37

I were to try to convince you of that, most

42:39

people instead believe that we're on a spheroid rotating

42:41

around a star, one of many stars in the Milky Way, and

42:43

to the best of my knowledge, that's true. But

42:45

I personally don't have access to that. We

42:48

as a collective, as humanity have access,

42:50

and it is through trust that we acquire

42:53

this knowledge and even ways of

42:55

thinking about the world. It's like he was

42:57

saying, these great traditions, they give

42:59

you a new way to see the world. They give you

43:01

a new emotional set, a new

43:04

language with which to speak. That is

43:06

the secret to what it means to be human, the ability to

43:08

acquire that software. So in the same way that

43:10

if you want to understand pivot tables

43:12

in Excel or a chat GPT, you don't look

43:14

in the CPU, you don't look in the GPU.

43:17

It's not in the hardware, it's in the software. And

43:20

the book is all about how to write that software,

43:22

how to become more creative, how to become more literally

43:24

more intelligent on IQ tests. You

43:27

ask me, what do I need to do? Well,

43:29

I refer to four laws that are governing this

43:31

whole thing, all the way from bacteria to businesses,

43:33

from cells to societies. And they are

43:36

energy, and our access to energy and our ability to

43:38

do that. Our innovations, and

43:40

so the efficiency with which we can use that

43:42

and put it to work for us. Cooperation,

43:45

so how we work together and what

43:47

incentivizes higher and lower scales

43:49

based on energy abundance typically, and

43:52

the forces of evolution, both genetic

43:54

evolution and cultural evolution, which

43:56

is writing the software of your mind. And with

43:58

those four, you can understand all of that. whole bunch of things and

44:01

lay down a path to a better future. It seems

44:03

to me that we're on the cusp of an accelerant

44:06

with artificial intelligence that can radically

44:08

accelerate all four of those pathways.

44:11

I agree. And what's your thought

44:13

on AI and what it's going to or how it's going to affect

44:15

us? I refer to AI as a fourth line of

44:17

information in the book. So alongside, you know,

44:19

genes, culture, and individual experience,

44:22

you now have this ability to look across

44:25

all that humans have created and

44:28

find tailored specific information

44:30

as well as find, you know, in that latent

44:32

space, new discoveries, new scientific truths,

44:35

right? And that's empowered as never

44:37

before. So I think, you know, we used

44:39

energy and we used our technology to

44:42

empower our muscle. We can

44:44

travel faster in cars and airplanes.

44:47

We can, you know, build things faster with factories

44:49

and power tools. We're now using that energy

44:51

and technology to empower our minds as never

44:54

before. The incident was the beginning. The

44:56

fact that we can, you know, speak across

44:58

the oceans as if we were in the same room, that

45:00

was the beginning. The next step is minds

45:02

working alongside us, capturing this

45:04

conversation and doing it in a kind of personalized

45:07

way. I'm a big data driven guy

45:09

in terms of life. You know, it's like the more data you have,

45:11

the better your intuitions are, your gut

45:13

gets better. But a lot of the data

45:15

that's available to us is about the average. What

45:18

makes the average person happy? What makes the

45:20

average person, you know, smarter, more attractive?

45:23

But the average person is ironically pretty rare.

45:25

None of us is average. The average is some imaginary

45:28

middle person across all of these different dimensions

45:30

that doesn't exist. I don't care

45:32

what makes that person happy. I don't care what

45:35

makes that person money. I don't care what makes that person,

45:37

you know, more attractive. I want to know what makes

45:39

me happier, smarter, you know,

45:42

more attractive. And so that's what AI gives you. It allows

45:44

you to kind of, by knowing you better and

45:46

knowing the data better, it can find you in that space

45:48

and say, Mark, this is what you need to do to empower

45:50

your life. I think that's one of the powers. Now, there's also

45:52

a lot of dangers. You know, I don't want to downplay that. One

45:55

of them is also just centralization, right? All these companies

45:57

building on open AI technologies. Open AI

45:59

owns that. There's also LAMA, the

46:01

open source version, but it's not as good, it's not as cutting

46:04

edge. There's a concern around centralization,

46:06

and there's of course a concern around how these technologies

46:09

are used, because just like nuclear power, they're dual

46:11

use. They could be used for our

46:13

great achievements and our atrocities.

46:16

And so actually, what the book is also describing

46:18

is how to solve some of the legacy

46:21

challenges, like for example,

46:24

inequality challenges around governance,

46:27

how we can trigger a creative explosion and

46:29

how to create more opportunities for more people, things that

46:31

are actually holding us back and are going to become

46:34

worse in a world of AI. If we can solve these

46:36

problems, AI will be a

46:38

blessing to the world. But we

46:40

do have to solve some of those issues. I like

46:42

that vision, and I share it, but I

46:44

do think there's going to be some rocky times in

46:47

between while we figure it out. Read

46:49

the book. At the end of the book, I basically

46:52

say, look, if there's one central message, it

46:54

is this, and that is that the world was

46:56

made by people no smarter than you, than

46:59

you and I. And in fact, not

47:01

as smart as you and I, because we know rising

47:03

IQ scores are ... We have getting more intelligent. We

47:05

have better software than our ancestors did. The folks that

47:07

you think about in history stood out because

47:10

they were the few that had access to books and knowledge

47:12

when many did not. It has always

47:14

been a small group of dedicated

47:17

individuals empowered by a set of ideas

47:19

that have changed our world. It was always that.

47:22

The suffragettes, the Fabians creating

47:24

the social welfare state here,

47:26

the expanding circle of morality of those

47:29

we care about. You can see even words

47:31

like the ones I mentioned earlier. We hold these truths

47:33

to be self-evident that all men are created equal. The

47:35

feminists use this as ... We

47:38

hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women

47:40

are created equal. These are the words used by Martin

47:42

Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln

47:44

Memorial where he said, I'm calling on America to

47:46

live out its ideals where that all men are created

47:48

equal. These ideas, I think,

47:51

when they're widely spread, when they're widely understood.

47:54

I wrote the book, I'm not showing you five different

47:56

studies and saying, trust me, I'm a scientist. I

47:58

want to show you. I wanna tell you, I wanna show

48:00

you how you can understand this is true about

48:03

yourself, about our world, about

48:06

where we're headed. And here's what we can

48:08

advocate for and here's what we can do to create

48:11

a better future, not just for yourself, but your children

48:13

and every homo sapien to follow. Boom,

48:16

mic drop. Michael, thank you so much for your

48:18

time and your book, Theory of Everyone, who we

48:20

are, how we got here, where we're going.

48:22

You just wanna send people to the audio

48:24

book or the hard copy or do you have any

48:27

special website or what's the deal? Google

48:29

is your friend. There is a website that's localized

48:32

to whatever country you're in, a theoryofeveryone.com.

48:34

It'll point you to links where you can check it out, but

48:36

just Google it otherwise. Thanks so much for having

48:39

me, Mark. I enjoyed this conversation. No, it's been

48:41

a pleasure. And do you do any social media? If

48:43

some enterprising individual wanted to reach out to you and connect.

48:46

I'm on all the socials. So you can find me, M. Mithukrishna,

48:49

on Twitter or X now, I guess,

48:51

LinkedIn, Michael Mithukrishna, Instagram,

48:54

Facebook. If there's a social media, I'm

48:56

on it. Awesome. Well, it's been

48:58

an honor speaking with you, Michael. I really appreciate your time

49:00

and congratulations on that great work. I can't wait to read it myself.

49:02

Likewise, Mark. Thank you so much. Booyah.

49:08

Well, that was one of the most interesting and

49:10

inspiring conversations that I've had in a long time with

49:13

Michael Mithukrishna. Thank you so much

49:15

for your time and for your presence

49:17

here on the Mark Devine Show. Go get his book, A Theory

49:20

of Everyone. I'm gonna read it

49:22

myself and I'm really excited to

49:24

read it myself and I'm really

49:26

stoked to have had the opportunity to speak with Michael.

49:29

Show notes are up on markdivine.com. Video

49:31

will be on our YouTube channel. You can reach me

49:34

at TwitterX at Mark Devine on Instagram

49:36

and Facebook at Real Mark Devine. If

49:38

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49:57

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50:00

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50:02

And shout out to my incredible team, Catherine

50:04

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50:07

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50:21

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50:23

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50:25

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50:44

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50:48

See ya.