Mistrust

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Sara Nonu and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing why we're suspicious of successful people and due to the lockdown, and usually we're recording this remotely. Nick, I don't know about you, but something I've noticed is that people are often quite suspicious of me, and the only thing I can put it down to, and it might be the same for you, I don't know, I put it down to my success, basically, it's just jealousy. But yes, that's what we want to talk about, being jealous of successful people. What's that all about, Nick?

Speaker B: 00:00:49

Yeah, well, I mean, I think there's been exacerbated, I think, by COVID-19. There has certainly over the last few years been sort of a lot of scepticism about the motives and underlying objectives of big industry people. So if you take sort of the Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, there's been a lot of stories recently about when they're funding research into COVID-19, well, is it a secret conspiracy to try and enslave us all, to put microchips in our bodies? Is it all really basically being motivated by greed? But I think more generally, you look at how sort of successful businessmen are portrayed in the media, they're always baddies, aren't they? If you're watching a film, and someone is the CEO of a corporation in that film, they're going to be a baddie. Even if they're nice, you know that they're going to turn out to be a baddie and be doing something evil. And that's a tradition that goes in Hollywood, certainly all the way back to the likes of Frank Capra, where the local businessman was always the bad guy, and the sort of down-to-earth, normal, average, humble Joe, he was the good guy. And I think it's an interesting question why that is. So are we right to be suspicious of sort of, you know, people who are successful and powerful? Or is it just some sort of atavistic nonsense that we should do away with? And actually, Bill Gates is just like you and me, and probably a nice guy, and he's not trying to enslave us all or anything. As implausible as that sounds. Sarah? I was just gonna say, I think it's not

Speaker C: 00:02:45

people suspicious of successful people. And I think that can be sometimes internally driven, or have something to do with the people you're around, or as Nick was saying before, you know, you're looking at media, sensationalism, fake news and misinformation that's put out there about successful people, especially like looking at people like Bill Gates and whatnot. I mean, if you look at Trump, I was reading something that said, you know, every time that people come out, the haters of Trump come out and say more things about him, he increases in the polls.

Speaker B: 00:03:19

No, I mean, there's so there's, I mean, that's, but that's the wider question of, is it helpful? Is it a good thing that we're suspicious of these people?

Speaker A: 00:03:28

I mean, I guess there's a few ways to come at this. One of them might be that a belief, or no, potentially a reality that successful people are successful because they're nasty, right? Or because they're manipulative, or they're ruthless, right? There's a, there's definitely a kind of narrative about that. That could be part of it. Second, combined with that, when you have, you know, if it's not like, we're probably not talking about, you know, the head of your local supermarket, not that local supermarkets exist anymore. But you know, we're not talking about the head of some sort of, you know, minor leisure center or something, you know, we're talking about.

Speaker B: 00:04:07

No, but you say that, but actually, when you see portrayals of people like that, sort of middle managers, they're always portrayed as the sort of little Hitler character, aren't they? So that they've got their own little empire. And even within that, they're a kind of they're a control freak, and socially dysfunctional. And, you know, yeah, so I think it does go all the way down.

Speaker A: 00:04:29

Well, it does. And it doesn't because it's summed up in what you said there, that there's a little Hitler syndrome, where Hitler was sort of in charge of quite a big stuff. Yeah, big Hitler. Because I think part of that is a humor or satire around, my God, what would these people do if they were in charge of ICT chemicals, a PLC kind of thing. So I think that's part of it. I think the other thing is we've talked about a little bit is, you know, is it the case? And I honestly don't know that, for example, in East Asian literature and tradition, the leaders are heroes and benevolent and always do wonderful things, like, you know, I suspect that's, but that's not always the case. But I wonder if I mean, there's definitely something in this of the Western narrative about, you know, rebelling against the man and, and, you know, a little guy fighting against all odds and that side of things. So that's just a collection of thoughts, not totally organised. But that's just sort of, you know, for starters, anyone got any response to that? Let's start with the first

Speaker B: 00:05:28

idea that we write to be suspicious of successful people. Now, there is actually quite a lot of evidence, or at least, well, there's suggestions. I mean, it's hard to know these things for sure. But, but there's, there's, you know, some, some reasonably plausible evidence that CEOs are much more likely to be psychopaths than an average person. So I think I've seen one study, which claims that one in five CEOs are, you know, clinical psychopaths, as opposed to about one in 100 people in the general population. Now. So why is that? Well, they sort of, there's various theories about why psychopaths are able to succeed in organisations like that. But, you know, essentially, psychopaths are very good at manipulating other people. And the whole point about having an organised hierarchy is it enables you to use that ability to manipulate other people to achieve levels of power that you would never be able to get on your own. And, you know, the whole sort of the pattern, which is that, you know, people join, psychopaths will join an organisation. And, you know, be sort of helpful, potentially even, you know, possibly altruistic within, within, you know, when they've joined an organisation, but then, at that point, they will sort of evaluate and identify the people who are going to be most helpful for their career, and then manipulate, you know, manipulate the image that other people have of them. So, you know, to create sort of a false narrative about their ability and capability. And then, and then to, to eliminate rivals, and eventually to ascend in that pattern of, you know, where you're, where they, you know, they're very good at being, being helpful and useful to people who are above them, and who can help pull them up. And they're completely, you know, anyone who looks like a rival is sort of eliminated. And, and that's something that you can, you can do in a, in a social, in a social organisational hierarchy. And that's one of the theories why psychopathy has evolved in the first place is because it works, you know, it's parasitic on existing organisations, but it but it does work. So, um, now, you know, let's not forget four out of five CEOs aren't psychopaths, but actually, enough of them are, that it's a plausible rationale for why people are suspicious of powerful people. This makes me feel like I should be suspicious of everyone I work with. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know. I feel a bit like I'm, you know, compared to Jeff, Jeff Bezos. I'm not even, I'm not even sure I'm first division. I might, I might only be second. I'm pleased that you're trying though. You're in the game. When Aleph Insights is big enough, I'm going to turn into a tyrannical maniac. So yeah, yeah, you're right. So stop me now while it's while it's while you've still got time.

Speaker A: 00:08:37

So we were moving along. What was the next thing we talked? Yeah. So we talked about should we suspicious be suspicious of CEOs? Yeah, I mean, there's there's more generally, though, that the

Speaker B: 00:08:47

fact that, you know, even if you're not a psychopath, does success in an organisation necessarily require you to be to be morally, you know, suspect in some way? So is it possible to be and I think a lot of people think that and I'm not sure myself, I mean, success in an organisation often will, you know, will come out of it, ability to understand and, you know, understand social networks, but not necessarily to manipulate them to your advantage. I mean, Bill Gates became powerful, because he set his own organisation up, you know, created something which lots of people wanted to buy. He never he never worked his way up through an organisation. But But I but so so, you know, I suspect I mean, that could have something to do with it, you know, what's the pattern? What's the pattern where you got to where you are, you know, it's perfectly possible that someone might be just very good, and be successful. But I guess the people we should be suspicious of are the ones who are successful, despite, despite possibly not being obviously talented at anything, you know?

Speaker A: 00:09:56

No, I was just gonna say, I know. Plus, there are plenty of psychopaths who are not CEOs, right?

Speaker B: 00:10:02

Most psychopaths aren't CEOs. Yeah, CEOs aren't psychopaths. Let's just get the record straight. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: 00:10:09

That was the first thing we were talking about. I've got the second that was the first point we wanted to cover. I forgot the second point that we want to cover.

Speaker B: 00:10:15

Well, I think there's the other. I think there's an issue about where we were touching on this question of, you know, is, is, is, is, is it? Is there something bad about about the existence of, you know, of people who are insanely wealthy, for example? And this, I think, comes down to one of these, this sort of persistent tension that we have in, in, in sort of our modern economies, which, which is between sort of sharing, what I think is sometimes called sort of hunter gatherer norms, and farmer norms. So the, the idea being that are sort of, in underlying terms, we, we are basically foragers, we're hunter gatherers. And, and our kind of fundamental values are those of hunter gatherers, the things that we really value. But the way the economy works depends on a much more recent set of farmer type norms. And so the key differences there are things like, you know, for, for a farmer, reward is directly related to effort. Whereas for a forager or hunter gatherer, it's much more to do with luck. It's much more Yeah, I mean, like, you know, whether you happen to be the one who killed the animal today, is is luck, you know, and that typically sort of your hunter gatherers don't have monetized things. So there's people sort of share and keep some sort of account of how much people are contributing. And in that sort of society, an inequality indicates that someone isn't is violating norms by not sharing. Inequality is not a bad thing in a farmer society. In fact, that's the incentive to make you work harder. Yeah. So so and I think, I mean, so the argument goes that, you know, we are basically foragers, even though our wealth and welfare depends on farmer type norms and a farmer type economy. We still deep down are basically suspicious of people who don't look like they're sharing, sharing things, you know. So So the idea is that yes, we're suspicious of people in general, of people who are sort of seem to benefit from inequality because we fundamentally think that wealth is a zero sum game. And it isn't.

Speaker A: 00:12:38

Yeah. Sarah?

Speaker C: 00:12:40

I'm taking a slightly different perspective on this. What I think the first thing is a lack of knowledge about successful people in terms of maybe how they got there or what they're doing. And all we're really getting is information that's fed to us from media, other people's opinions. And I think that that fuels our suspicion of people, how they got somewhere. The other thing is that, you know, maybe they have something that you want that you've not been able to achieve. Maybe you have your own contempt for them and that drives your suspicion. I think there's also, you know, people are envious. That's that could be another key thing that drives someone's suspicion of successful people in terms of.

Speaker B: 00:13:23

n founded on for the last few: 1000

Speaker C: 00:15:17

make sense from a status standpoint. I think there's also like an element to adding to that is that, you know, people can use those people who are successful can use suspicious people than the naysayers, the haters to improve themselves as well. They can take, take the comments that they hear, they can take things on board, and they can produce better products, better music, better films, just to combat the naysayers, which, in turn, enhances their status enhances their wealth.

Speaker A: 00:15:48

I think it's quite a common trope, right to mistrust highly successful people, right. But the logical conclusion of that as well is that you should absolutely trust really unsuccessful people. I'm not sure I need to run run a ruler over that logic there, but carry on.

Speaker B: 00:16:10

No, but you see what I mean? On that sliding scale, if you know, it might be the case that you're actually sort of moderately successful. And that's where the dreams have got it wrong in some way.

Speaker A: 00:16:20

Yeah, because and actually, you know, it was the opposite of someone who's highly successful, you know, you might say someone who's homeless, for example. And, you know, should you trust them completely? I mean, maybe, maybe not. I don't know. It's, I don't think people do, you know? I don't know, just throwing it out there, you know, so as you say, maybe there's sort of somewhere in the middle. I think there's an issue here about signaling.

Speaker B: 00:16:47

You know, is it the case that someone being very successful, indicates that they have got their priorities wrong in a way that we don't, that we just don't like or we don't approve of, you know, that it's wrong to care that much about success, that we think in sort of fundamental terms, that someone who has devoted their entire life to making their company successful, must necessarily be the kind of person who wouldn't prioritize things that we actually think are important. You know, so we wouldn't necessarily want to trust them to look after a cat, for example, because they may be willing to sacrifice the cat in some way, if it made their company more successful. You know, there's the idea that it indicates, it indicates a failure to prioritize the right things. And I, and I think that that does sort of suggest that, I mean, if that's true, that actually anyone who has lived who has some kind of extreme outcome associated with their life, we might feel the same about them, we might think, well, you know, not that it's necessarily true in an individual case, but that it indicates that someone has failed to prioritize appropriately. So I mean, I think you're right. But I don't think you can't just you can't go. Yeah, as I suggested, I think it's probably not so much that, you know, trust goes up as as power goes down. But then somewhere in the middle is sort of where we would trust people, because we kind of think they're more likely to make decisions that are appropriate. You know, not unduly risky, risk taking in their behavior, or, you know, or not put too high a priority on, you know, wealth compared to friendship, for example, and those kinds of things.

Speaker A: 00:18:29

Yeah. Sarah, anything to add to this point?

Speaker C: 00:18:33

No, I think I just think that's a really interesting point thinking about it in terms of like values. Who do you find suspicious and successful? And who don't you? Like a CEO, like Bill Gates, a lot of people would find him suspicious, but I'm just trying to think of what would be the equivalent in terms of it, like maybe a family values based system, like who would be the equivalent that people wouldn't be suspicious of? Does anyone have one? Yeah, like, there'll be people out there that people like, who are successful and people will look up to because they have the same values that they have. And then they'll be the ones that they're suspicious

Speaker A: 00:19:12

of. That's a good point. Who is a globally renowned individual who no one is suspicious of? Or the majority of people are not suspicious of? Dalai Lama. I was about to say the Dalai Lama. What did you say? Oprah. Oprah. Yeah, no, I'm not. No, I think it's a good answer though. I don't think it's true. I'm a bit suspicious. I'm a bit.

Speaker C: 00:19:35

I think you've also got to think about the different masses that there are, right? So everyone falls in different categories. You know, you guys are a lot older than I am, just putting it out there. You're going to have different values than I have.

Speaker B: 00:19:46

Might be worth saying, now, is it cheap talk? So is it all cheap talk? Us moaning about successful people? I wonder if there's an element of sort of social bonding involved. I mean, you know, you look at the popularity of, well, like the Robin Hood legend, obviously, it's ancient, you know, the idea of the little guy standing up against the evil, corrupt, you know, barons or kings. And the success of stories like that suggests to me maybe, well, maybe we just, you know, we like that story. And knocking successful people is a way of bonding, you know, is a way of sort of putting ourselves in that narrative and enjoying the fact that we're doing our bit to bring the big guy down. And, you know, that we don't really mean it. I mean, people are still buying, shopping at Amazon and using Windows, aren't they? I mean, you know, for all our supposed suspicion about these people, we're not, you know, we're still reading about them and talking about them on podcasts. There's a great tweet from last year, which was Clay Routledge said, we're living in an era of woke capitalism, which companies pretend to care about social justice, to sell products to people who pretend to hate capitalism. And I think there's, you know, a lot of truth to that, you know, everyone goes on about it, but actually,

Speaker A: 00:21:18

we're still buying the stuff. I've lost count the number of times I've either sort of read or heard someone apologize for buying stuff from Amazon. It's, you know, just saying, oh, I know I shouldn't really do this, but I do do this. It's like smoking or something. So exactly as you say, Nick, I want to, I've got a silly question to finish things off, but before I do, is there anything anyone wants to say either Nick or Sarah? No, I was just wondering if

Speaker C: 00:21:49

people just prefer in general, like those who sit on the sidelines, do nothing, don't set goals, just kind of be average, like, are you less inclined to be not judged or not hated if you do that compared to those who actually get up and do something? Like, is it more than just looking at those who are famous and successful? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're right, because it's

Speaker A: 00:22:12

that same kind of thing when you show me someone who never made a mistake, and I'll show you someone who never made anything. It's that kind of thing. It's by putting yourself out there, much like Bill Gates has, albeit unintentionally maybe, is you just naturally along the way, you're going to create an opinion about you, right? Whereas people sit on the sidelines, no one cares about them. No one cares about us guys. So, yeah. I mean, my dad was a journalist

Speaker B: 00:22:38

and one of the, you know, people always, celebrities often say, you know, well, we, just because we're famous doesn't mean that you've got, you know, it's open season on us and you can dish dirt on us and all that kind of thing. And my dad always had, you know, the sort of fairly common journalistic view, which is, well, if you, you know, if you use your fame to get success, then you should take the flip side of that, which is that, you know, you're going to be of increased interest and things that you do that are bad are going to be of interest as well. I'm just reminded of a story. It's more of an allegory, really, just the of the guy who, you know, drives back to his hometown up North in a big Rolls Royce and all his mates all say, well, look at you, la-dee-da, coming back and showing off about, you know, you're fantastic, you know, how rich you are. And then he says, no, it's all right. I won the lottery. And they all say, oh, that's all right then. Whereas if he'd have earned it himself, he'd have been, he'd have been judged to be, you know, as kind of coming back and rubbing their noses in it. But the fact that he was, you know, just won it on the lottery means, okay. And, you know, obviously that's not a true story, but I think as an allegory, it feels right. It feels actually quite plausible. And you can understand, I mean, I can understand that feeling that people would have, you know, oh, that's okay. You were just lucky. That's fine. But if you actually worked for it, you know, and I'm not sure what I feel about that, you know. Yeah. Psychopathic tendencies.

Speaker A: 00:24:03

Yeah. Okay. To finish things off, I've got a silly question I want to ask. And we started talking about this early on, especially in this, this thing of status versus, I don't know, fame or wealth or whatever. I've got, I've got a choice for you, right? You could either be living in the 21st century, as we are, and be, you know, upper middle class, let's say, middle to upper middle class, have a sort of reasonably good income, nice life, all that side of things. Okay. Probably look pretty much like we are. Or you can be a medieval absolute monarch, probably in Europe. And with all the upsides in terms of status, but also the downsides in terms of things like, well, you might be overthrown, but more, more prosaically than that, is things like a finger infection. Exactly. You might die at 30. If you live to 35, consider yourself lucky. But with obvious upsides as well. I'd like to start off with, well, who would like to go first? You know, I think I already, I can already predict Nick's answer, by the way. Me too, absolutely. But Sarah, yeah, go for it. I am going to go

Speaker C: 00:25:15

with living now. Absolutely. I want all the comforts that I have now. I want to have great medical care. I want to have a fridge and more importantly, more than anything else. And the reason why I won't go camping is because I've got a working toilet. That's pretty much it. I like it

Speaker B: 00:25:33

now. I'm taking it now. I'm not to be sniffed at, literally. Yeah, no, I get it. Yeah, no, good answer. Fair enough. Nick? Well, you know, it won't surprise you to hear that I have actually thought about this quite a lot. If you're studying economics, it's one of the fundamental questions you have to tackle in economics. Oh, really? Okay. Well, the idea of, you know, utility and, you know, being able to compare utility across different people and across different times, and whether or not that's possible, whether or not our perceived utility is the same as our actual utility, which I think is really a very, you know, significant question that we don't probably spend enough time thinking about. But, you know, if I don't go round constantly thinking, wow, how great my life is, because I have antibiotics, does that necessarily mean that I, you know, it isn't actually adding to my utility? Or is it but in some way, I'm not aware of it? You know, am I, can you have utility that you're not aware of, you know? So my instinct is to want is immediately to go for the medieval king. I want to be a medieval king. But I actually think from a point of view, I probably in a meaningful sense, don't. I mean, I do, I do, I would want to be a medieval king. But But I think actually, I think I'd be worse off. If I was for all the sorts of reasons that Sarah was talking about, as fun as it would be. You is the worst thing, though. And

Speaker A: 00:27:04

I think it's what you were talking about is that you might be better off now. But you might be happier back then. You know, you're having more fun. You don't know what you're missing, right?

Speaker C: 00:27:14

So you don't know about flushing toilets and better healthcare systems. Yeah, this is a problem about

Speaker B: 00:27:20

the kind of hedonic treadmill that we are. It's very, very hard to go back down in well. Yeah,

Speaker A: 00:27:26

ing middle class now, because: 1000

Speaker B: 00:28:16

rained for a long time: 1000

Speaker A: 00:28:48

maybe happier, because you wouldn't have all that social media nonsense about you. And if there is any nonsense about you, well, you just you just send in, you know, send in the troops and you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. With a bit of good old fashioned hanging, drawing and quartering. Great stuff. Okay. All right. We'll stop there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Sara Nonu and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. And until next time, goodbye.