#728 - Gregory Clark - Is Social Status Determined By Your Genetics?
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My yesterday is gregory Clark. He's a professor of economics, the university of california, Davis, a researcher and an author. Everyone has a dream of making a Better life for their family, but fascinating new research suggests that your social status is heavily predetermined bio genetics, and that your descendants escaping the position they've always been in is actually very unlikely.

Expect to learn if social status is actually herriton, how much genetics really plays a role in social hierarchy, how researchers can tell where the next ten generations of children will fall on the social later, how higher and lower status can impact the birthrate, why more attractive people have more social status, the difficulties of publishing research like this, and much more. Perhaps unsurprisingly, greg's work has been a little unpopular in certain circles. But IT is fascinating.

IT is so, so interesting. Uh, I really, really hope that you enjoy this one also. I'm back in Austin, log me, left U.

K. Behind after my Christmas break and i'm back here ready to do some real damage to the next few months. And we've gone. I'm off to vegas and L A. A next week. We we a bit and the lining up is just so wild, I cannot wait to show you the episode des, that we've got scheduled yeah get ready for these ones.

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Plan your trip at a robot outcome. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome greg clock.

What's this new paper of yours about the inheritance of social status?

So the paper looks at forever and twenty five thousand people in england over the course of four hundred years who are all link together by descent and marriage. And just asks, what describes how you inherit social status. And IT ends up that there are actually three very interesting aspects.

One is that there's a very strong inheritance of status, much stronger than people conventionally believe. And so there's an underlying correlation is really strong. The second astonishing aspect is that, that correlation hasn't changed over the course of four hundred years.

There is no more social liability now than the was in the seventeen six hit, the eighteen th century, the sixth century. But the most surprising element of all is that if you want to predict how correlated people will be, then that prediction is based on what's their genetic correlation. And so the data is just very consistent with a really simple model of genetic transmission, where what just matters is how how many genes do we have in common, and to explain how much outcome will have in common.

Uh, and uh, that S. C. Is, for many people, very surprising and also quite troubling for a lot of people.

What is the methodology of you being able to track genetics across such a long period of time? how? How are you able to do that? Presumably, ancestry dot com wasn't tracking people four hundred years ago.

right? So the is fine. And so basically, I was using there. There are all these kind of interesting societies in britain. And one is the guilt of one name studies.

And these are two or three thousand people who've devoted themselves to following the history of particular earnings in england. And they've done fantastic jobs, kind of actually tracking people's geneology over hundreds of years. And so that part is, is, is straight forward. But the only thing we can do here is we have we have no direction etic evidence here. What we can look at though, is what would be the predictions of a genetic model of transmission.

And that has a distinctive and very clear set of predictions about how coral related fourth cousins, third cousins, second cousins, first cousins will be uh and and IT all depends on how much a saltman there is, an marriage, how strong these coral lations will remain. And so there's also, you know, predictions about siblings, about grandparents, grandchildren. And as you say, the the very surprising thing here is that the predictions of that model are very consistent with this data for england uh and IT IT really is, uh, you know so I so so there's nothing conclusive here.

There's nothing direct, but there is just a very interesting empty pattern. And then as part of the paper, I also can say, well, what about other features of inheritance of status that would be consistent with genetic transmission? Do they also called? And so here's one example, is, with genetic transmission, mother should always have an equal influence, his fathers, in terms of outcomes for children, because you get half of your genetics from each parent.

Now, if we go back to one thousand nine hundred and century england, fathers play a very different social role than they do. now. If you look now, mothers still actually spend much more time with children than doing fathers.

And so we would actually expect with social transmission that maybe sometimes fathers are more important and other times mothers are much more important. But the data for this lining edge in england is very clear. If you, anna, predict children's outcomes, mothers and fathers play exactly the same way.

And and you know, once so early on, we have evidence on the literacy of mothers and fathers that's equally predictive of what the child literacy would be. And IT doesn't matter if it's a boy or a girl in in those cases. Again, equally predictive for other outcomes like occupation.

We don't have occupations for women in the sixth century, but we can proxy women occupations by, for example, taking their brother and then taking their husbandman's brother, and then actually give us a good proxy for what their occupational status. And then we can see which predicts child outcomes Better. Is that the mother's proxy or the father's proxy? And the answer again is no, it's exactly the same.

wait. And so and that's come true, as I say, all the way through the last three hundred years, that mothers and fathers play exactly the same role in terms of outcomes, except for one important outcome. And that outcome is wealth for wealth, fathers, and much, much more influential than others.

And that's because wealth tended in england to floor on the patrol line, that men inherited more family wealth, and women did. And so what matters is what your father's wealth on the patrico line is supposed to your grandfather on on the metro. So as they say, there's this is one piece of interesting and cellar evidence.

A second piece is watch the effect of birth order on outcome, right? And in the social world, I mean, I don't if you have children, I had three and the oldest child gets much, much more parental attention than the Younger ones stood, right? And talk to anyone who has children.

This is true. I mean, the parents are new thing. When the first kid comes along, the parents of all these ideas about, they gonna shape these kids. And so and and importantly, we know that older children get more attention than the Younger children. So you might expect that older children will do much Better in terms of social outcomes.

Ah IT turns out in this data no, it's in in almost every case earth out that doesn't matter your chances in life for the same where the first or the last and a lot of the families in the nineteen ninety century there are ten children. And so you would think the tenth one is coming in to this kind of crowded family. There is no more space.

My own parents were both from families of twelve and by the time, you know, my father and mother, I think, but both were number nine by the time they came along, the housing incredibly tight. You're sharing a bed with three siblings and stuff like that. And but IT turns out IT IT IT IT doesn't matter, except again, there's a slight exception for the top one percent of families in the one thousand nine century.

The kind of elite the oldest son is doing Better than the Younger sons. But that's the only thing matters. The old and the older son inherits more, but is also more likely to be sent to university than the Younger sounds.

So you do see slight deviations for this, but for ninety nine percent of the population, IT doesn't matter what birth order is. And then, and I have think you can look at is what about family size? Isn't that going to influence your outcomes? Because the more children there are, the less resources there are, the less parental attention again, in the era.

So there's na up to marriages of around by eighty eighty, where in england family size was random. People made no attempt to control fertility. IT is amazing.

They just apparently got married. Produce children. Sometimes there's only one child, you know, just the accidents of fertility.

In the sample we have, there's one guy who has twenty seven children from two different wives. And so you get this enormous variation in family side. And then IT has no effect, except for richer families for wealth.

And then if you from a larger family, then your wealth actually declines, right? right? So if you're from a wealthy family and its larger, your wealth declined because the west has to get .

divided yeah if if inheritance is going to play a large role in determining your future level of wealth and there are more people taking from that pie, each liver of .

the pie is smaller yeah right. So so I say so that's another aspect, another thing we can look at is do you ever need to meet your parents for them to influence through social outcomes? And so in a lot of the period that we're looking at, um you know parental death is occurring at rapally early ages for some people in their fifties, sixties.

And so about ten percent of the kids their father dies before their ten years old. And we can then see how correlated are you with your father as a function of you know you you know them all way up to your twenty one or they died or they died before you were ten IT makes no difference to outcomes. You you don't do any worse in life.

You're not any less correlated with your father. Uh, you you apparently you never need to meet your parents for them to have exactly the same influence on your outcomes so so as to see this study then is based on this observational data, right? And so IT doesn't prove anything directly, but i'm working on a book which is going to have all of this kind of ancillary evidence about the nature of social life and essays.

A surprising amount of this says it's not social transportation. IT seems to actually be genetic transmission. That is the consistent pattern that would explain people's outcomes.

When you talk about outcomes, you're using words like social status where they end up in life, stuff like that. What is social status based on what you're talking about here.

right? So the specific measures we have are did you go to higher education of some kind ah what was your literacy earlier on? Uh, the best one we have is what is your occupational status, right? And then we also know for everyone whose most people who alive now, what's the value of your house that you're living in and that's pretty good indicator of your income level.

And then also, what's the nature of the neighborhood you're living in is IT one where there's lot of educated people, there's low crime rates such that so we have a kind of measure of and and that we got down to the the almost the street level, uh, what's the quality of of that? And so as to say so we have these kind of multimedia res, but what i've seen with the data here is that these things tend to move pretty closely together, that basically high status people have more education, more wealth, higher occupational status, they live in nicer neighbours ods, they tend to live longer, uh, all of these things. And that's why I I think of IT inherently is there there's just some underlying kind of social abilities that people have and the that's the thing that's being transmitted between the generations.

It's interesting to think about how you tried to tease apart social transmission and genetic transmission of genetic inhalants, I suppose because a lot of people would love and say, well, you know, if you come from a family that is well off, think about the culture that you have around the house, around the dinner table. Think about the sort of things that are being spoken about.

Think about the kind of friends that you are going to play with the your parents are going to have. You're going more likely to go to after school clubs. You're more likely to maybe have a tutorial, maybe be a encouraged to play sports or to play a musical instrument or all of these different things. And yet IT seems like behavioral genetics wins out yet again.

yes. And so now IT turns out I didn't know because i'm coming from an economics and kind of history background and I just got interested in this. And I had this data and I thought of, well, that's try to fit a genetic model.

What would happen, uh, in this field is very fractious and very kind of of ideology is very important to people. And IT turns out most of people actually don't want to believe that simple genetic transmission plays an important role in social life. And so most of the people in this field actually seemed to believe the cultural transmission of the type that you've described is actually very significant and very important.

But there is one kind of puzzling thing about that, which is people don't focus on this a lot, but there's a lot of variation within any family in terms of the outcomes for children. And children's outcomes are no more correlated and and they have roughly the same correlation as between a parent and a child. What what the you know, the correlation of child outcomes.

Now, if you really believe strongly in cultural transmission, I know when I look at bike was one of four children. If I look at the expectations, my parents, head of us, if I look at the dinner table conversations, I SAT around. And if I look at the housing we lived in, neighborhood we were in, it's all the same for all four of us. And so if you really believe cultural transmission, you would expect that siblings really would show very, very strong correlations.

right? Because you you have essentially the same environment for all siblings, right? But and the only thing that would have been the only variable that you would have had would have been some sort of, uh, genetic one that you got this particular combination of sperm egg and somebody else got .

the rest right. And and so IT turns out then the the one and people don't seem to focus on that a lot, that there is this puzzle with culpa al uh transmission, which is you explain why siblings are actually significantly different and and with genetic things that is partly because you inherit different genes, rich parent.

But a lot of IT is just because whatever genetic blueprint you have, there's a random about what body eventually it's assembled from that blueprint and that means that even identical twenties are not identical in terms of their pinot pe, right? And you know if people there is a very famous investigator of tween, um he had a whole project which sought to look in detail at families where you had identical twins and one was different from the other. One went to college and one didn't.

And he interviewed the twins. He interviewed all their relatives. Ves, I think they spent years doing this in detail analysis, and IT came up with inclusion. In the end, they could find nothing. They would actually explain why these differences existed.

And so I said, I think there actually it's something, again, where genetic explanation has this idea about this, this irreducible random about life and and about how the genetic instructions get implemented. And that explains why even identical twins will not turn out to be identical. Um and so uh sweaty so so cultural eminence is this interesting alternative.

Um the IT is hard to test, right? Because someone could say, well, I believe in culture, but I believe IT has exactly the same form of transmission as we come through genetics. And then, you know, it's such a loose form of explanation, right?

Because everyone has their own ideas about how culture Operates. What matters is IT that you know, you have some figure in the family that you can look up to is the actual contact. The matters is IT the schooling that people go to. Um and so it's very hard to um to find stuff that would refute a kind of cultural explanation because inherently unlike a the genetic explanation is just not super well have specified but as he I think the strongest thing is this fact of the way siblings vary within families and the fact that it's very hard and then to to understand why a sibling number one is doing great, sibling number two is struggling when so much is common in terms of people's backgrounds. And as siblings ks, when they are growing up.

why do you think IT is that this genetic explanation of social inhalants and social status is so ideologically unpopular.

like, well, IT absolutely seems to be because it's saying somehow, mechanically at birth, your life chances are pretty much determined, right? And that, uh, the state or society is not going to be able to do very much to actually change outcomes, right? And so applies a kind of roughly conservative social policy, because that would say all the expenditures res on schools and other things like that are really not going to have much fact in terms of of social outcomes ah. And so I think it's that and then also people are worried immediately about who wonder that imply about uh the relative fertility of group different groups in society and the implications of that.

What is you mean about relative fatlings?

Oh because once once you've say to look what happening is that one person is successful in life because they have this genetic material and the other person is unsuccessful because they don't have the favorable genetic material, then the issue immediately comes up. Well, you know, if this first group was to multiple and increase their share of society, there would be all of these potential social benefits.

If the other group was not to do that, they would be an avoidance of social costs. And so people are, I think, rightly very concerned about the potential social implications of this. But the only problem is, I mean, when we're thinking about how the world is, it's very it's it's very important not to to adopt certain positions just because that would make life easier, right?

Uh, I mean, when you're thinking about, you know the way the world is actually Operating, uh, the important thing is, is never to have the n view in sight. In terms of what explanation do I I favor, what explanation do I find plausible here? I mean, we'll just have to live you know, whatever this actually explanation is, if IT turns out genetics really is important, we'll just have to live with those consequences ah what is .

what what is the consequence of ignoring the genetic implication?

Well, I there's several consequences. One is, for example, I think as a society we've t out you on and I should do as a background point here, I made my life working in education, but it's firmly my belief that we vastly exceeded the amount of education that people should usefully get society right that and we done that in part because it's been regarded as the key to social mobility, social vance's, leveling the playing field.

And now we're adding forever. Now, instead of just getting A, B, A, people now think that they have to get a masters degree. Uh there's there's actually you know the empirical evidence that education is actually improving people's lives is actually very weak.

But didn't sam, didn't you say previously that one of the um parameters that you'd used was education level, whether or not they did get to higher education. So you saying that that as a useful indicator of someone's future life outcomes is becoming less and less effective at being predictive.

I yes, here's an example of why this doesn't seem to be very predictive. So in the U. K, at various states, we've extended the amount of compulsory schooling the people get.

So I think like nineteen, seventy three, forty six, nineteen, nineteen, we've and we move from twelve years to fourteen years, fifteen years, sixteen years. I think now it's supposed be close to to eighteen years. We can actually look at those episodes and you get them two core hearts of people.

You get the people from just to four, the change who get, on average, you know, they only have to be there to fifteen. And then you suddenly get a new cohort who on average, get a half year of extra schooling, and then you can look incorrectly and say, what what happened. Did that improve these people's life outcomes and and the answer for britain is no.

None of these adjustments to education showed up in anyway as an improvement in uh, no income or uh mortality, a langevin. None of these things were actually changed. And we also have this house value evidence.

So you can say that the people look at an extra half year of education and up living in a slightly nicer or in a nice of your neighborhood. The answer is no. okay.

And so so so I to say that mean the problem is that we ve we are now spending about ten percent of national income on education in various forms. And in part, as I say, this is really driven by this idea, that path, a kind of universal social mobility, is to get everyone educated. And I think that's an illusion.

And that, you know, there there are other things we could spend that income on. One of things we could do IT, is just we could just redistribute more money to people at the lower end of the income spectrum, uh, rather than thinking that everything has to go through something like education. And so you know, i'm here in denmark now.

Denmark is I think one of the most equal side is in the world, world, and it's quite impressive what they've actually achieved in denmark. There's there's not a lot of homeless people. There's um you know this the state will provide for you and you know that the labor market seems to provide pretty well for people. The minimum wage is something like twenty or twenty five pounds effectively in the society. And so you know, I think there's a lot of social policy that actually very useful and very helpful and that if we think that the things we have to spend on our stuff like education and in order to improve social ability, I think that end up just a long waste of resources in the society.

Shouldn't assortative meeting nudge this stability? Isn't that kind of a little bit of a dice role? What what world does marriage play in this?

Well IT IT turns out in in the data that i'm looking at, that's the that's the key element of the story is that we can measure assortative meeting IT turned out britain has fantastic cally good marriage records because the the marriage record in england and whales, at least from eighteen thirty seven onwards, IT actually asks what is the father of each party and watch the father's occupation and what's the husband and wife's occupation.

And then also early round and also effectively measures legal acy. And so IT actually know there's a lot of information on these marriage records and the government is sitting on something like hundred and ten million of these. And but IT costs, I think, eleven pounds to to order one of them.

But there's a bunch of kind of freeLance amateur anarchist geneology sts who've said about going to the record offices and recording this data and and setting IT up on a website. And so we were able to get about one point five million of these records from this site. And what's evident in that data is that people are matching very, very closely in marriage.

Uh, and that's consistent and not changing in england all the way from eighteen thirty seven till now. And that when people somehow in marriage, what matters to people was the underlying social status of the person they were marrying. And that is something that has very big social consequences because a, it's going to mean that the inheritance of status is much stronger. And if what was happening is that men just married a random moon, I suppose, man, the only thing they cared about was the physical attractiveness of their spouse, and they married in that way, then the parents would not be very strongly correlated in status. And consequently, the children will not be very strongly correlated with any individual parent.

because just to be reject that a woman attractiveness has a negligible or not at all relationship between her social status.

right? And and and and so so we could imagine that kind of model of marriage. And what you'll do then is also, over time, IT would result in less distribution of abilities and society, right? Because of what's happening is very high status people marry only very high social abilities people.

Then you get, over time, a widening of the distribution of abilities in society. And so who decides to marry? Whom actually has these huge social consequences? In terms of how strongly status is passed on, but also in terms of what's the overall distribution of abilities within society. And so uh with a the marriage pattern that you're observing in britain then uh this is what is actually driving this very slow social mobility. And you could actually predict with genetics transmission in that if you just force people to marry at random, you would actually almost double the rates of ability in a society.

That's the redistribution strategy that we should be pushing toward. None of this education stuff just get people to get people to mix the social status that they are marrying within.

More that right? If you just gave me a random here, someone's I D numbers. So I I guess we don't have an I D in britain, but here's here's your number ah and and and this is actually very interesting. And so so we've actually done some work on another aspect of marriage, which IT was widely believed, that the way marriage works is that somehow women tend to marry up. The women trade off physical attractiveness for status in males.

And studies definitely show that when people report there are kind of ideal marriage partner, that women report more about income or education after that, and men report more about physical appearance, right? And so so we were expecting potentially in this data to find that when we have this huge collection of marriages, that women, on average, would be somehow moving upward in this, you know, pattern, and and men would be marrying women of somewhat lower status. Now the only way that can actually work in society of everyone is marrying everyone.

Then you've got ta have equality in terms of states. But what easily can happen is that IT could be that high status women who are not physically attractive find that difficult to find mates. And then low status men, whatever their characteristics are, also find that difficult to find mates.

And the interesting thing for the english data all the way through is that there's absolutely no sign of this. On average, men and women, they are marrying people of equal status. And that, you know, and it's the same pattern for right at the top of the distribution and right at the bottom of the distribution.

And so somehow the way marriage is Operating in practice is that people are just matching up mainly on their kind of social status and that you you actually not getting this uh h as they marrying up by women or marrying down by men. And so so that's a kind of interesting social aspect of our society, which is why do people choose to marry in that way. And it's not obvious that that's gonna the happiest marriage or the ideal marriage. What I wouldn't be that people seem to care so much about someone's kind of underlying status.

But I think what what this reflects is that when you're dating someone, uh, we have these very imperfect measures as social scientists about how many years have you been to school, what your occupation, what your income, people getting married to actually have much, much more information you can tell by talking to someone for not that long a time, what's their scent of humor, what's their knowledge? How smart are they? How clever are they? How imaginative are they? And that is interesting, that these things will seem to matter a law when people get married, and that they're leading to this can very tight assortment of people at very similar levels and the kind of social hira 给 and as I say， they're undependable this tendency to have just a lot of persistence across generations .

yeah so your research points out that historically men tended to pair with women who have fathers with similar social status to .

themselves.

That's great. Me, as men fall behind women in education, do you think that women will begin to pair with men who have fathers of similar status to themselves?

Um also now this yes, this is clearly happening that that women are getting more years of education. Uh, the difference in earnings is not great. So I think men are still ahead in terms of earnings.

Um but but I think what's just will happen is that there's a ranking of males as prospects in the marriage market. There's a ranking of women. And so now women, actually, we're going to typically marry men potentially who have less level of education, but I think the relative ranking is going to remain the same.

yes. So maybe women, i'll be likely to evaluate the education dates, father, before deciding to commit to a date. Like does this man have the education genes, even if he himself did not attend college?

right? So one of the interesting aspects of the data that I have is that, uh, IT turns out, if you wanna predict for a given marriage how well the children are gonna do in life, there's a huge amount of information in the relatives of the people getting married. And so in fact, if you wanted to set up a new dating service, you could actually tell people, here's the optimal waiting of the uncles, the ants, the grandparents and stuff like that. That if you just want to maximize what your social prospects of your children are, this would constitute the ultimate match then, right?

So you don't geneology ical dating.

Yeah, that's right. And and you could get these algorithms that would actually a tell you, you know this will be a significantly you Better child in terms of social outcomes ah if you were to to match this way uh and so um yeah so so I say IT is interesting because people when they're matching, they look like they trying to maximize the prospects for their children like in terms of the choosing a may right uh and a and I see that's an interesting social I don't know why we would tend to do that because it's it's not true in all societies。

So for example, if you go to large parts of the middle east now, or even native american communities in south america, cousin marriage is still very common where you end up actually having very restricted choice as to who you can marry. And so the in that type marriage, you're actually less able to assert, even though you marrying your when SHE is kind of ironic, uh, that you these cousins actually will be more different socially then the way people are actually marrying at something like england. So they're actually achieve you wow.

that is so insane that if if left to random chance, people will find on the street someone who is closer to their family social status and someone who is actually a part .

of their own family yes no, that's an amazing feature. Yes, but IT is actually true .

is bunkers that is completely new bunkers um .

so yeah so so I and the other thing that was amazing about this is that this pattern I say the the new source of marriage data starts in eighteen thirty seven. That um pattern is there immediately in eighteen thirty seven.

Even though at that time most women didn't formally have occupations and and so the way were able to judge how well and imagine is to look at the parents, to look at the fathers and see how closely are they correlated in term of this marriage pattern and and so as to say, this is a time when most of these women that men were marrying we're going to be engage mainly in raising children but still when they married they wanted someone who can very similar social position h to themselves um and and so as to say so so IT is a surprising feature of the nature marriage in this society does this mean by the way, one thing I should add is part of the reason of taken up this position in denmark is actually to get access. Denmark has this amazing set of can register data where everyone here has an I D number and every action in your life is recorded under that I D number. And the government then.

So this is true of norway, sweden, vinland, denmark. Uh, social scientists come to these societies because, you know, take just one example. I've seen a paper which looks at people's earnings and its correlation and connection with the psychiatric medications that they were prescribed.

This is the real surveilLance state. Who knew that scandinavia, with the real surveilLance state.

god, they don't reveal an individual information. But as I say, they they have this amazing set of data here. And so one of the things we wanted to look at is, well, as this paton, you see in england, is that just peculiar to england?

yes. I mean, that first question. England, uh, very classist system. A very well as w we use words like push, you know, IT is still very ingrained. A accent denotes status and offer a lot school that you went to, grammar schools, the introduction of things like that, old boys clubs, gated communities, all that sort of stuff very prevalent in england. What's the likelihood that this is a cork exclusive to just the united kingdom.

right? And um yes. And so the reason I actually was the interested here was to say to be look at the modern denmark because everyone thinks of this is a very high mobility society, is a very gata and very different.

Now there's a study that's been done in sweden where they managed to assemble a kind of a similar kind of panel of relatives. But actually, in this case, they're just looking also across people who married. So they're looking at who supports the connection between you and your brother and law, you and your brother or laws wife's cousin, where they assemble one hundred and forty one different types of relatives.

And some of them go across five marriages, right? And what this data they have, they can actually link you to people who are, you never are actually gonna meet in social life, but you know, your five marriages apart. And what is interesting is people maintain a correlation in outcomes like education, even across five marriages, right? That's how strong the social links are.

And when we look at them, how strong that in is in marriage. In sweden, it's the same strengths. In england, people are matching up in the same way he eat marriage in terms of their underlying status. And they have this very slow implied rate of social mobility also in a place like sweden.

And so I think this is, this is a general kind of maybe north european or european, probably all of europe kind of pattern, right? And I don't know what it's going to be like in in some other society. I suspect it's not gonna that different, right? When I read about place of like china and the kind of things that people are looking for in terms of mates in china.

And so I think you know, the british know and and i've as they I grew up in scotland, then spent I was an undergraduate in england, then i've spent a lot of time in america. The british actually keep beating themselves out that somehow they have a uniquely class ridden and classes society. But there's actually no evidence of that, right? I mean, social.

we just like to abuse ourselves. We will find something to feel ashamed about, just like a puritan work ethic. As i'm whipping myself with the cat of nine tails, we here.

you know, he turned out, so I I grew up in glass, go in a fairly kind of grey area. And so I had a good friend there, who I became an oil trader in london, being very successful. You know, you might be university, provided that he actually has married a woman who is from a very distinguished family in the english upper classes uh and you know and then numbing .

of the american admire one wrong at the time. Congratulations made .

so so as says, i've even seen in kind of personal life that there is kind of you know quite a lot of social mother and also from studying england in the past um there's this group, the who cannot who arrived in england in the sixteen eighties and they were protestant refugees from france and grounds vely educated but they you know they had their own religion and they had smoke french um the is amazing how quickly they are simulated into the upper reaches of english society.

And people with these who cannot surnames ames, which are quite distinctive. By eighteen hundred, they were thirty times more likely to go to oxford, cambridge than the average person in the england, right? And so, you know, so you think about these places, as you know, exclusive old boys clubs stuffer that.

But the experience of english society is there are definitely, is this upper class? There are these fancy schools. There's eaten, there's a there's all the rest of that stuff. But my experience looking at this is that it's very open, upper class. If you've got the money, the education, the connections you are, the doors actually open.

okay. So does this mean largely the people who are in the upper class locked in across time? He mentioned that one of your friends as much to cuber out of the blood, the fees under hay and get up in get up into the high fluting of a troposphere over time to these people are like revert back to the mean, revert back to that mean.

Um well, I mean the important thing about the S A C, the upper classes that there's you know IT slow IT takes about three hundred years, but there's a universal force of kind of regression into the meat. So we go back and take people three hundred years ago who are the most delete people in society. I mean, it's taken a long time for that to happen, but there is this universal tendency to move downwards.

If you're in the lead and if you're at the bottom, there's an equal tendency to move up. That's one of the astonishing features of social life. Looking at this geneology is the people in the bottom ten percent. There are ones whose kids have the most prospect of upward mobility. And you know it's very hard to actually then uh, kind of stop people falling into poverty because it's not that you go to find the bottom ten percent of people will say, okay, there are the ones we need to treat.

But because IT turns out a lot of people who are falling into poverty are people who are coming from a bit higher in the social spectrum, who just have bad lock and kind of moved down, right? And so so that you know one thing that's actually interested to me as as so i've spent a lot of time studying economics, and Frankly, we've accomplished almost nothing. I don't know why there's a nobel prize, the economics, because, you know, we can predict what the outcome of the economics is going to be next year.

We can put take quitter going to be growing economy is which are declining. The macroeconomics is suggest and the effect. But when he comes to social mobility there at the group level societies, actually, you see really honest kind of physics of social ability. Yeah, so if I tell you, you know, here's here's a thousand people who have the top one percent of social status. I can predict pretty much exactly where their children will be for the next ten generations inside.

Just think about that sentence that you ve just .

said the that's like .

clevis or deviation or something right now.

I mean, what IT is just saying that at least that you can predict for any individual right? And for every individual family, there's different path. There's a lot of random this, right? So that's the thing that we say to people is, look, the good news is your outcomes don't seem to be entirely determined by genetics. There's also complete random this as .

well for static fantastic is whether the agency in this dry about, dry about that, the some dice being rolled somewhere by god, yeah, I mean, this is, this is a plus maxim, right? Genetics to do not predetermine, but they do predispose yeah. And when you swear that across enough of a populous, you end up with just like you like thema dynamics, right? It's like winds that blow in particular directions and they encourage particular outcomes.

right? No, I mean, what so what is impressed? Actually, I am. So this is why I actually, I always was a little surprised by how how kind of exercise people are about class and social ability, right? Because somehow. There is this kind of feeling that that that there is this permanent advantage group that they're able to take advantage of the position of the time and you know get all of these unearned benefits. Um if you look at people who are at the top one percent of the study, what is more impressive is whatever wealth they have, they are not able to stop their children moving .

downwards on average .

because of regression to the main yes.

And there's there's nothing they can do signs and for why that is, which is that most people are unable to look along at only anything. They're able to look at things during that period of life. And when they came in, these people were at the top.

And when they go out, those people are at the top. You know, maybe there's some movement, but this regression to the mean happens over long, long, long periods of time at this generation. This generate this idiot child that decides to gambled his money away.

This, you drunk this ba ba slowly, just chips and chips and chips away. But anybody that's using the seas at them and us, it's a tribal game, and they've been at the top, and they will always be at the top. And this is exactly why the rockefellers or the lizard alien people, or whoever IT is that in charge of the world have always been. None will always be.

Yeah no I I agree. I mean the uh yes as is is hard for people to take that kind of long perspective and and even you know modern uh economists and sociologists often are just looking at the current generation, the earlier generation. So one kind of nice think about the field i'm in, which just looking at, you know, people three hundred and four hundred years is that you really can see that dynamics play itself out.

And you and the other thing that you can see is that all of these incredible social changes with political franchise, education, social services, all the rest of that stuff, hasn't fundamentally changed british society that that we we could be living in the Victorian era. It's the same era yeah. And the obvious the .

obvious question is what's the implication of this for a society that praises at the ultra of meritocracy? Like, what? what? What are the implications? You put all of this data together, you realize this sort of a thing. What does this mean? Like, what are the implications?

what? What implication is that? I is, I think that society is more matter to craft than people tend to believe that people with the ability tend to be able to move up within the society, right? And and people without ability are tending to move down, and no matter what their parentage was or what advantages they got from their parentage, and that people tend to be over focused on this kind of absence of meritocracy are the importance of your kind of lining age.

Your class stuff is bad. And so one thing I actually draw is some kind of sense of we do live in a surprisingly mediocre tic world now in other terms, in terms of social policy. Um one implication one immediate implication, for example, is if you look at the experience of the hugon otz coming to england, their descendants are still five times as likely to go to oxford cameras than the average person in england three hundred years later. So one kind of interesting implication of this is that if you were concerned about the output of the society as a whole, or the social functioning y of the social is a whole, then in immigration policy you should really look seek out high status immigrants, right? Uh.

because they not that not push down the social mobility of the native population.

IT would but but IT would. You know that group will eventually be assimilated, ted, into the societies a whole. And so if we look no five generations from now, the societies a whole will be Better.

all of the more .

productive popularly. But IT is true. You know, if you have a lite immigrants, then they tend to display the upper classes. Whereas if you have low status immigrants, the that tends to favor the upper classes in the society and attends to compete with people at the law and of the society. But IT does say that um you know immigrants are actually going to have a surprising kind of long term impact on the society. They're not just gonna absorbed and leave the society .

otherwise unchanged, right? Because you've taken a kind of a hamet's ally sealed genetic bomb, and you've deposited IT. And the after shock, the after effect of that is going to continue down the road.

right? And and and now IT IT turns out, hope so. One of my co authors, neel commons, has done some study, you know, because i'm a irish origins.

His couple years around he was born in ireland, a irish immigrants to britain. There's still somewhat of an underclass in britain, uh, even though a lot of them have been in britain for a hundred or hundred and fifty more years. Well.

for the irish .

genetic so so yes, as I say, so that end like if that is really because of the uh the genetics of that population, it's kind of interesting that it's IT actually has an impact for for very long uh time. Uh and so so because there are some views that would say, look, everyone has exactly the same potential. You know so when immigrants come in IT doesn't matter what their educational background is, what other things are.

because he told them in the primary school, in the secondary school and get them a six form degree and .

they onna be just the same. And it'll make no long run impact on the society. Uh, but I say I think if you really do believe that there is this element, then I would say, well, in immigration policy.

So some to eis, for example, like australia, new zealand and canada have these incredibly restrictive immigration policies were basically they want you only if you are pretty highly educated uh and what that would say is that will actually have kind of long lasting impacts on those societies in terms of average educational levels, every giblet levels uh and um so that but other than that, you know, look, people choose to have children. They choose not to have children. They will have the social consequences IT would have the social consequences IT transmitted also just by social mean.

Yeah doesn't interesting, doesn't interesting question given that we've got a the declining birth rates at the moment are for the first time in quite a while. And the particular cohort that are choosing to reproduce, uh uh assorting as well uh IT seems like people who are more right leaning are having proportionally less fewer children than people who are left left leaning.

A downstream from that that has to select in some ways for social status, educational achievement. So and so unless it's totally run at which IT could be IT seems unlikely that would be the case. A have you got a prediction given the changing birth rate of what this is going to do to the inheritance of social status?

Well, uh, he turns out there have been some studies in england because they got this thing, the U. K. biobank.

And so the U. K. Biobank has metrics of what your educational potential is based on your genetics and bed britain, dear god. And but uh, then you can .

they can actually .

people can look at IT and say, well, how many children do people have based on what their educational genetic genial potentialities? And the answer is it's very slightly what's called this that is there is a very slight tendency for people with lower potential, just genetic dentist, to to have more children. But it's really not that significant.

But what is actually interesting, again, looking at this data in the past in england, is that these forces of relative fertility across different groups, we're really big in the past. And to in the period leading up to the industrial revolution, the upper classes in britain were super for cunt, and we're basically having fifty percent more children than the lower classes in each generation. And so you do see this period where if you think, if this is the case, that is always on genetic potential, that the average age abilities of england were rising.

Immediately after the industrial revolution, we move to a completely different phase where the upper classes just gave out having children, and within like one generation, they moved from having three or four, on average, children to having one child. Amazingly quick transformation. And so then actually, you enter these other period where you are.

And this is the period where the new genesis are all running around, because they were responding to what they saw as this incredible social problem. But then since I think the nineteen six years like that, there hasn't been that much change. But there are actually these periods in the past where you would actually get these significant changes in what average ability levels .

would be in britain. Has there been any other unique step change uh, in the last recent history that means that some of the rules and lessons that we've taken from sixteen hundred tube two thousand or whatever uh may no longer apply the introduction of uh home mono birth control and reliable contraction. Uh the introduction of home schooling or of the internet or you know like is there anything you think is a potential step change, a difference of kind, not just a difference of degree when IT comes to the influences on this stuff?

Um to be honest with you know I I actually think that um people look at all the new technologies we have and everything else and they think of fundamentally, you know social life must have dramatically changed and the possibilities of dramatically changed. But you know the other than the decline in the number of children, we're really not seeing a lot of change in the nature of social life in britain. IT hasn't changed that much.

Ince, you know the the preindustrial era uh and um you know there's a surprising kind of constancy to the way people live family life, the way people produce children. And after that, the fact that just have many eur of them um and so so yeah not expecting any great social revolutions, things like you know so things like assisted reproduction technology that's become important, a kind of favors upper class people because it's expensive. And you know so it's going to affect potentially reffing lt.

But I think it's still the case that is a kind of minority of all children upon n in that way. And so I I don't see IT as having dramatic impacts. Now the one thing that is on the horizon that would be kind of personally, I would find a little bit worrying.

Are you going to talk about .

embryo selection?

Yes, there is. Is I B G. Embryo selection? I knew IT.

So I am. Talk to some of the people who are who are have got venture capital now and trying to develop these technologies. now. The thing about Andreas selection is IT currently, you've got ta look among among your own embro.

right? And so there .

isn't that much not not that range, but I would be convinced in some like china, they will go ahead with this, right? And and when one illustration of this is. Now in the united states is, you know, it's quite common for application parents to think what kind of a nice pathway to a good college is if they are kid to a good athletics.

And so there are all they used to be, all these slots. Ts, when you can be in the hockey team, you know, at harvard, uh, a whole bunch of those middle class parents were giving growth harmons to their perfectly Normal sized children. He decided to gain them.

great. Instead that would go get into an ivy education. yeah.

And and you know and costing a huge amount of money of this stuff is incredibly expensive. And you know if parents are willing to do that, hate if they're willing to take you know someone who's five full ten and say we're gonna take you to the special doctor and get to these growth hormones um then people will engage in every s so I don't .

I don't disagree. I I do think that IT plays into at least that the use of growth hormones ys into the highly environmental, highly um um culturally influenced, none behavioral genetic non genetic determinism view of the world.

I think that the upper classes are going to have to square the circle of accepting behavioral genetics as as powerful of a force that IT is because publicly the luxury belief that is often put forward is, you know, we just need to do more welfare, and we need to do so. And so often IT doesn't really matter. You know, you haven't got this determinism through genetics and stuff that parallel, sly, close to you jeni s that that sounds an awful lot like something the adult IT would have spoken about. Meanwhile, the meeting assault timely but they are gonna have to ultimately put their money where their mouth is with regards to this because if certain families that decide to use embryo selection and then maybe even gene enhancement, embryo enhancement techniques are they're going to fall behind its an arms race ultimately for offspring and those people are going to fall behind .

yeah I mean least the evidence in the U. S. Is if you look at how much people are willing to spend for private schooling, which is is unclear how much advantage that has but they're spending fifty, fifty thousand a year, stuff like that.

And so I am confident in place, like the U. S. They would do this. But I made even more confident in place, like china, that they would do this. I mean, because there people are are trying to have boys exposed the girl and after that, they're willing to abort the fees if it's the wrong gender. Uh and and so I actually I I do fear that you know and they're definitely people who want to break down that barrier and push you know us towards these technologies. The only thing is I mean things like educational outcome depend on like a thousand different outside on the gene and so it's not going to be easy.

That's the education gene that we just need to tink with you, right?

You know so there's no simple uh solution uh to that uh but but you know IT IT for sure that that stuff like that will will come in future and and and then I mean the the other we will people just decide, well, maybe I I don't need my partner's egg. Get some other egg.

I like, I like you as a wife around the house, but your .

genetics does this really .

smart girl at work.

So, uh so so so there you know, IT IT will be interesting to see a what people are do. But I think, I mean, the advice for using class parents now is you should just enjoy your children, right? If you really are upper class, they're unlikely to exceed you in terms of their outcomes in life.

They're more likely to move towards mean. And so if you're having children, IT should be with that realization that you know that's just the nature of social life can process. When i'm teaching students, I should never do that. I'm sure they hate me. I actually point out to them that since they actually represent an upper class group, if there's fifty of them here in the class, is predictable that their children will do less well in life than they will.

All of this hard work to give you, your children, the advantage so that they can slip down this snake and just stand up a little bit.

Yeah, so I said, i've got a future at the resolution to self. Do not find this out.

Did you see this new study on physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility that came out recently?

Oh, I don't think I did.

And so I like say, gosh, villa and greg's bulled shack i've absolutely butcher on. Physical attractiveness matters both for males and females into generational social ability outcomes, but IT more important, females, even when child characteristics accounted for. Using data of about eleven thousand individuals from the united states national longer udal study of adolescent help, we contacted the existing scholarship by investigating a physical attractiveness assessed when individuals around fifty years old is an important predict of into generation social ability measure. After twenty years results, we found that physical attractively masses for both male and females into generational social mobility outcomes, but IT is more important. Females, even one child of characteristics such as various aspect of parental city, economic position, individuals, health, a proxy for I Q E neigh's od conditions and interviewers fixed effect are accounted for using computed data for observations with missing information across three measures of social mobility, education, occupation and income, physically attractive to males are more likely to be socially mobile than males of average attractiveness. Conclusion physical attractiveness an independent predict of intergenerational social ability outcomes regarding individuals, educational, occupational and income attainment.

So so a couple I actually I haven't seen that paper. I didn't need you to actually go look at IT now uh but um one thing that interesting there again is you you would expect from the conventional wisdom that would be women who would actually be the one for physical attraction would matter IT more than men.

But what I can tell you is that someone has just produced a working paper on economists where they've actually identified their physical attractiveness and found that more attractive economists have do Better in terms of publication and and I don't know what they must go to the websites of universities or something like that and then describe these things and they had someone treat them, uh, and there as, say, the puzzle is journal editors not Normally look at pictures of people, you know, when the paper comes in, say, well, how handsome, how tall is this person uh and so I suspect for these things that probably um physical attractive is just another part of social competence. They are basically highly competent. People know that get a nice haircut, you know, and occasionally shave and stuff like that. And that that is really just another kind of imperfect indicator, basically what people's can overall social abilities are.

What was the response when you dropped this paper?

Oh, this, the the P. N A S paper. Well, well, you'd probably have heard about that. I got cancelled, the classical university .

that gives give us that story.

But that was in sometimes that was mild because I had published two books, each with a helmet pon. So my first book was a failure to arms a brief economic history of the world. The second book was the sun also rises earnings and social mobility. And so there's a great pund that involves uh, genetic transmission.

And so that is for whom the bell ker of tools, uh I Q and social life, not I Q I genetics and social life and so anyway, I was you to give a talk at the uh economic department at uh glasses and this was in the time of code and so I call in and they say, well, just one problem, the dean that ordered that the the seminar bee cancel there was a petition by one hundred members of the faculty, uh saying that they this was super science ah that Eugene ics was to be opposed in all of its forms and so IT was astonishing because then the dean said, I actually i've looked at the paper and I don't see any problem with the paper, but the title is a problem. So if you would just change the title will scheduled the emr. But then I felt on principle that I can't really have I don't care about much about the title, but I can't have the team tell me that.

And so that, as I say, IT wasn't astonishing turn in universities that a bunch of people, and i'm sure most of these people learn you humanity of sociology or other subjects like that, feel that they can actually call for cancellation of of something else. I mean, so you you could magine, they could come and be critical and stuff that, but but also I mean that that we reach that stage and and effectively, when they did that, there was no cost to the university of doing that, right? I thought the the dean and the principle of the university played IT very well because as administrators because he said we were not cancelling anything.

There's just so much interest in this talk that we think we need some kind of enhance security. And so we're just deferred the to get to a Better place. Um but the funny thing then was that someone put me in touch with a reporter from the times and I thought, you know, they should publicize that these guys do stuff like this. The time now is the world's most workless newspaper.

The reporter for the times had a story that was headline eu genesis denied opportunity to speak been university eight puxi so so as I say it's IT is and and they couldn't even get my age right uh you know the things I want things he couldn't get right in the story and so so yes so that is actually been a uh a concern uh and and I also noticed I mean so what i'm doing this stuff, you know it's there's every possibility that something is wrong, that you haven't done things correctly. You know that's the nature of doing these kind of studies. Uh, but I do notice that the the of twitter climate that surrounds anything that has any hint about genetics is brutal and unforgiving, right? And people are just ready to go to the barricade. Es.

what do you think that is?

I honestly, I don't really understand why it's become more kind of so and grain because, for example, hate is genetically determined height and no one seems to get very upset about that fact. Uh, and they do all of these studies, the same kind of studies they do for education. They can tell you for everyone hears what their height potential is.

Uh, we know how is transmitted ted, we know equally transmitted from mothers and fathers and and you know and so people are eye color or other stuff like that. People seem to fine that properly find. So why people somehow think that because social characteristics are also genetically, finally, genetically transmitted, that is time to kind of to go to the barricades and to just, you know, think of some reason why this cannot be no.

use your theory of mind, what you think this is a threat to to them, evidently a threat to something.

Yeah, that is is interesting question. I mean, why? Because it's not just the people say are not interested in that or you know don't tell me that is stuff that they actively want to exclude any such discussions from the academy, right?

I mean they they want to close down at those types of investigations um and you know that I am still a little bit mystified as to why you know why the in particular this has become so uh controversial right because I say notice now red a bunch staff and behavioral genetics and a lot of people who are practicing behavioral genetics are very busy trying to find reasons for why behavioral genetics does not directly affect that much about people's lives, right? So you know so now there's this thing called genetic nurture. I don't have to read about that.

No, what's this? So sounds awful. IT sounds that sounds like it's going to annoy me, and i'm going to think about IT for .

the rest of the day, right? So here is just study that was done just a couple years ago. You inherit half of your parents DNA on average.

And so what they did was they can type that DNA and see this is what your education of potential is. And so what they did in the study in iceland was they took people's outcomes. They had their own DNA, and then they had the DNA that didn't inherit from their parents.

They had no influence on their body, right? Because this was the stuff that didn't get transmitted to them. And then they looked at predicting how many years of education they would get as a function of the DNA you didn't herit and the DNA you didn't inherit.

And IT turns out the DNA you didn't inherit is also predictive of what outcome is gonna and IT has about after the weight of the DNA you actually inherited. And what the explanation then that they proposed for this is that basically maybe the way genetics is working is that your parents, because of the kind of DNA they have, set up a certain kind of an environment and a certain kind of nurture for you. And that's actually what to doing the work that what's transmitting to the next generation, what your social status, and then it's going to be correlated with your DNA because you inherit the DNA from the parents. But it's not directly the DNA that's doing the work. It's the environment, that excess .

so much acrobatics and fucker y going .

on and try .

and dance around, oh my god, wow that that's really impressive. I've i've got a circus. I've actually got the image of circus in my mind at the moment is someone doing like spirals through the yeah I don't know I i've had a couple of conversations. Any conversation with page harden a few years ago that at the genetic lottery page very, very great research. A do IT Richie being on the show plus being on the show to its fantastic page.

F M particularly interesting because you know see somebody who is politically from the left but scientifically um from the behavioral genetics camp a couple of things that I can think of a anything that looks like gene ish, like genetic type explanations are immediately ambassage as being right of center or far right or completely like bited um the academy at the moment is left leaning uh and becoming increasingly uh feminized as well. Like just literally in the um proportions of women that you have that are attending is undergraduates. And you know this is going to grow into mostly female professors over the next few decades as well.

Some great research by corey Clark found that behavioral genetics, evolutionary psychology explanations were most likely to be disliked by female professors um because they are seen as being a less empathetic that sort of less would you feel the less egalitarian? Where is the male professors? We're more happy to have this come across.

So I think generally you have this shift toward a people, not things, or a empathy not reality um approach um that that could sway things in in one way and I guess in another. No, I come from A A very working class background. The only thing that was remarkable about stocking on tea was that IT.

Had the highest teen pregNancy rating in the U. K. And then after a while IT IT didn't IT didn't even have that anymore.

Um had the widest high street in the U. K. As well. I think the widest pedestrian and high street in the U. K.

Are really clutching at straws to train come up with something um and you know I I feel very proud. I think I think i'm the first person in my family to go to university. I ended getting a master as well and I I really love the things that I do.

And I see in my I do feel sometimes like being told that my success is a online to own quite so much feels IT feels disappointed ing in in a way um IT also feels reassuring in a way, because you can kind of go hands off the wheel in summer regards. But IT doesn't you think? Well, cking now, like I I thought I worked really hard at that thing, and I did, right? I did.

I had to do the thing, and the thing was hard, but for someone to come along and say, well, yeah, but you didn't choose your conscious ously level and you didn't choose your openness to experience and didn't choose you neuroticism and he didn't choose you. Bb A B, yeah, I get that. Um I need to difficulties irca to square and i'm still yet to work out how to fully fold this into my world view.

You know I am currently in london about to do my life tour and i've got these life shows that i'm doing and i'm studying on stage and i'm telling people on stage that they have way more control over their outcomes than they think, because the bar is set incredibly low, because most people have external alizad their locals of control. If you take a tiny little bit of work ethic and apply IT, that you can make massive changes in your life. Because i've seen this myself.

But for me, to square that circle with this genetic predisposition thing is really, really difficult, because I know that there are things that people can do that can give them Better outcomes even later into life, because IT happened to me. And yet, over time, genetics is this, you know, this sort of gravitation force that just sucks people toward whatever they were supposed to be. In any case, I, I.

I, I agree with you that, I mean, that is, you know, because the way we lead our life is by making all these conscious struggles and making these decisions and deciding to spend time on this opposed to something else. And so IT is very hard to square with saying, well, that's just that was just your the lottery produced. That's the type of person you are. And yeah, no. And I agreed for motivation speakers that the news about genetic transmission .

is not right. Guys, I know that you are coming here to feel in powered, but we're going to do an hour a half on behavioral genetics. Leave feeling despondent. Good night, 你不懂。 yeah. wow.

I don't know if everything interesting that happened in your life happened about thirty years ago.

yeah. Yep, yep. What I mean, you know, this was, this was plums. Big piece of advice. Like the single most important decision that you can make in your child's outcomes are who you have them with.

And if you want to have you want to have a Better child, you know don't bother reading books about diet and neonatal care and and an optimal fucking bedroom temperature of neurological growth during the totally years and all the rest of IT, just spend more time finding a smart partner right like that. That's the that's the big solution and it's dimon wing. And I think that IT pushes against the A A merit cronic world that says your success is are yours to bear. Uh, a landa tons got this beautiful, beautiful analogy. I wish that he'd had a conversation with plant yourself as someone because I think IT would have been really great he says, um back in ancient greece the begins on the street were referred to was unfortunately that lady fortuna hadn't bless them right.

And you'll remember lady fortuna, she's holding a set of scales and the reason that SHE holding a set of skills is that SHE gives and SHE takes away right and there is supposed to be this baLanced to the universe, which I think is a nice excuse um for why some people have good things and other people don't that get that come up and eventually if you roll the clock forward by two thousand years, what is that that we call people who don't have anything going on, there are loser, right? It's not that that unfortunate. It's that if the people who succeed are worthy of bearing the fruits of their successes, the people who don't succeed are worthy of bearing the losses of theirs as well.

And that's why there's language that kind of sent is the locus of control upon the individual has has changed. That is a fundamentally what a mattock racy is, are you are able to enact change in your life. Your merit is what will determine your outcomes.

And there are relatively few barriers in the way. And that means for the people, maybe this is a luxury belief as well. In some regards, people that are at the top, they don't want to be told. The only reason that they managed to get into this high polluting institution was because of their mother's mother's mother's father's mother's all the way back.

yeah. So I mean, maybe you could say there is this always this random element and maybe it's openness to kind of experience. So a stuff like that can can increase that random, right? That that this would be the thing to say look like half of your outcomes in some sense to pin on just random shock.

And maybe there's a way of kind of choosing to take more gambles in life, right and and right because of, for example, as an academic, there are certain types of paper you can write. There are just much more risky than others were half the time. It's going to come to nothing, know, more than half the time, ninety percent of the time, but that might kind of pay off and might, you know, go somewhere.

row dice.

yeah. So, so and that would be A A thing about what kind of attitude do you have to life, right? Are you gonna a be conservatives or kind of afraid of of these things? Or you know, I suppose.

you know, coming into IT. Well, what if you got you trying to conver? Are you trying to explore? Are you trying to hold on to what IT is that you have?

You know, if you've managed to come from a family that from a wealthy background, maybe you do you like, let's just don't be the generation that fox IT up for, you know, great grandpa, who made a few million pounds doing whatever, whatever like that. Just not be your optimized. Do not be in idiot as supposed to be a hero.

Where is someone that lower down the distribution you would look to explore more than exploit, right? We need i've got very little to lose. My downside is limited.

My upside is basically assist tric. So yeah, fascinating, fascinating. great. I I think it's so interesting and really excited to future write this book.

I think it's I think it's I don't know what the conclusion I think that what would be really important when you do finally sort around all of this out will be to try and put some sort of like, I know, how does someone immediate this into their life, I think is what he is fascinating all the way down, super interesting, really, really, really cool. The question that everyone's going to be left with is, all right. And now how we're I supposed to see the .

world and myself, right? Very difficult. The one very practical piece of advice, I would say, is the as a modern society, we are obsessed with childbearing and with investing enormous quantities of time and effort in children.

And and we have a society where increasingly it's not clear that we are actually going to sustain ourselves as a society, right? And so one kind of interesting message, I think, would be to say, look, there's not a lot of evidence that all of that stuff matters much. Just have children enjoy them, right? You don't have to go through this exercise kind of thinking parenting, you could just relax, have a glass of warning.

they'll be found not really pregnant.

not pregnant after that, right? But but you know and and that actually would be one kind of, I think in an important lesson that actually people would would need because I know as first parent myself, we went to ridiculous extent in terms of what we did, you know as parent to try and determine and predispose .

your child's outcomes despite the fact that they're on a set of train tracks that are heading to the same destination.

Yeah yeah and and you know I could get all that time back. That's what I want. The enemy. So there are some kind of upsides to this. Uh and and then you know but uh, as a person can intellectually, it's kind of nice to see that they're really even in the complicated social world that we live in this idea that there really is almost of kind of physics to social life, it's kind of attractive and powerful so yeah so I guess my big ambition though, when life is not to not to write a how to book for from middle class parents and militating behavior genetics no.

I understand. Great clock lady and gentleman, greg. I think IT works fantastic. This really, really interesting. I can't way to see what you do next. Why should people go if they want to keep up to date with your work or read more of the .

stuff that you've done? So so the article that just came out in the of the national academy of scientists actually open access and it's actually not that hard for people to look at that and read that uh and then you know, I have if you just google my name, but I have a website with a bunch of kind of working papers and various topics that they they can do and then hopefully in a year and actually be a book. Finally, thanks.

my pleasure. Thank you, gregory.