#995 - Lionel Page - Born to Lie: How Humans Deceive Ourselves & Others

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2025

⏱️ 104 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lionel Page is a professor at the University of Queensland and an author. Why is human communication so complicated? For something we rely on every day, you’d think it would be simple, but language, tone, and context make it one of the most complex skills we have. So what makes communication so difficult, and what are some practical ways to get better at it? Expect to learn just how much of our lives are filled with strategic games, what most people do not understand when they think about human reasoning, why human communication is so complex, why we rely so heavily on ambiguity and innuendo, if coalitions and social connection are so important why do some people feel tension socially, if democracy is better understood as a coalition game than a truth-seeking exercise, and much more… Sponsors: See me on tour in America: ⁠https://chriswilliamson.live⁠ See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy App at https://rpstrength.com/modernwisdom Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get $100 off the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Timestamps: (0:00) What Do We Use Reason For? (5:13) Why Do We Deceive Ourselves? (15:11) Does Deception Damage Our Reputation? (24:33) Why Social Games are Hard to Navigate (34:05) The Sydney Sweeney Controversy (39:37) How Venting Masks Judgement (46:41) Communicating is More Complicated Than a Chess Game (01:01:33) Why We Feel the Need to Belong (01:13:49) Using Coalition Psychology to Understand Politics (01:26:40) Are We Aware We’re Playing Psychological Games? (01:39:38) Find Out More About Lionel Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What do most people not understand when they think about human reasoning and how it works?
0:06.8	Yeah, look, reason is, you know, the faculty to form judgments, solve problems, be rigorous.
0:14.8	We tend to think of it as, that is, it's here to help us solve actual problems with, you know, facts with reality.
0:24.3	A good, a good, a good image that you can have for a reason how, what it is, is, you know, the movie,
0:30.7	the Stanley Kubrick movie 2001, the Space Odyssey. And you have this bunch of apes and they're
0:35.8	pretty useless. And then suddenly they wake up one morning and there's this monolith, this black monoliths.
0:40.3	And once they touch it, suddenly kind of reason fall upon them.
0:45.3	And then they discover that if they use a bone, they can use it as a tool, they can use it as a weapon.
0:50.3	And then the movie, you know, use this as a starting point for what makes humans.
0:56.0	Humans use reason to solve problems.
0:58.5	And you can think that reason helps us to scientific things, find the truth, send rockets in space, etc.
1:06.3	But if you think about you and me, you know, normal humans, how do we use reasons?
1:10.3	I mean, we rarely, really solve actual problems. You know, normal humans, how do we use reasons? I mean, we rarely really solve actual problems.
1:13.3	You know, when is the last time I kind of invented something or solve a practical problem?
1:17.8	I mean, it happens, right?
1:19.1	But it's not super frequent.
1:21.0	But what we do most with reason is not really that most often.
1:25.0	Every day we use our reason to reason with other people.
1:28.6	That is, we have most of the problems we face in our lives.
1:32.3	There are social problems.
1:33.6	There are problems when we interact with other people.
1:35.7	It's not something that the computer doesn't work or that the dishwasher doesn't work.
	...

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