Ask A Genius 1457: Language, Deportation, and the Evolution of Believing Bullshit
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/07/15
Rick Rosner discusses the dehumanization behind mass deportation rhetoric and how evolutionary mismatches in language and cognition allow misinformation to thrive. He explains how humans are wired for face-to-face, consequence-driven communication—conditions now absent in modern media—leading to widespread belief in harmful simplifications without social penalties, enabling soft-core fascist ideologies.
Rick Rosner: Deportees are not necessarily criminals. That does not matter to the people who want them deported. To most people, it does not matter at all.
It is a civil offense to enter the country without authorization or to overstay a visa—not a criminal one. But for the people who want mass deportations, that distinction is irrelevant. They want them out.
Even if someone has lived here for twenty years, they want them out. If they are married to an American citizen—out. If they are undergoing chemotherapy—still out.
And, you know, Alcatraz was reserved for America’s most hardened criminals. But many of these people facing deportation are not criminals at all. Yet no one seems to care.
I started thinking again—something we have touched on before—about what makes it possible for someone to say things that completely break other people’s minds. Because, at this point, twenty or thirty million Americans have embraced, let’s say, soft-core fascist thinking.
They are entirely on board with anti-American values. They support ideas like, “If you try to come to America, you should be eaten by alligators.” It is absolutely insane.
While I was at the gym today, I reflected on one of the major reasons why this is happening. And it is the same reason Americans are, collectively, overweight. We evolved under very different environmental pressures.
We evolved to crave fat, salt, and sugar because they were essential for survival but were hard to come by. Today, those things are everywhere, but our biology has not caught up.
Similarly, language evolved under entirely different conditions than those we experience today. I looked it up. Language first developed through gesture. Non-human primates, for example, rely heavily on gestures to communicate.
For the first million years or so of hominid development, we used gestures. Then, around 200,000 years ago, humans began developing spoken language—mouth sounds. By about 50,000 to 30,000 years ago, full-fledged languages with grammar and vocabulary had emerged.
That time frame—around 30,000 years—is roughly how long it takes for significant evolutionary change to occur. Race, for example, which is largely determined by skin color, hair texture, facial structure, and a few other traits, can evolve within about 30,000 years under selective pressure.
So, language is one of those traits that emerged relatively recently in evolutionary terms. And there simply has not been enough time for us to re-evolve or cognitively adapt to the complexities of modern linguistic environments.
We are still operating with brains wired for face-to-face, small-group, survival-oriented communication—yet we are now flooded with media, ideology, and language on a massive and abstract scale.
So, 50,000 years ago, 20,000 years ago—even 500 years ago—language was mostly spoken, face to face. Written language did not emerge until around 3,000 BCE.
So before about 5,000 years ago, there was no possibility for communication except in direct, spoken interaction.
And when language is face to face and spoken, certain dynamics naturally come with that.
There are several key features. One is trustworthiness. In a face-to-face setting—especially in a small group, out in the wild, with a short life expectancy—it helps if your understanding of the world is either confirmed or challenged by others. Communication was built on consensus.
And if someone was spreading false or harmful information, there were real consequences. In small, close-knit communities, someone who was consistently wrong or deceptive would get shunned—or worse. They could literally get their head bashed in.
So there were consequences for bullshit. That is not the case anymore. Messages were simple because language was simple. We evolved to prefer, and more easily process, simple communication.
So we tend to believe what people say, and we are drawn to simplicity.
Now, liars thrive. Most communication today is not face to face. There are no social consequences for habitual bullshitters—no risk of shunning, no accountability.
And life has gotten so easy that we can afford to believe nonsense and still survive.
Today, more than 98% of people survive to reproductive age. Life is not as harsh as it was when language evolved.
So there are no real penalties for believing bullshit. And no penalties for spreading it, either.
Combine that with our preference for simple messages, and you end up with a situation where it is fairly easy to break people’s brains.
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