0:00

The introduction in English starts

0:02

around minute 3. Hello,

0:11

I'm from

3:00

the Volta Intrutsum. Today

3:02

we are diving into an enlightening

3:04

conversation with Tom Chatfield, a British

3:06

author and tech philosopher. Tom

3:08

is the author of several books

3:11

focused on improving our thinking in

3:13

today's tech-dominated world, including bestsellers like

3:15

Critical Thinking and How to Think.

3:18

He also teaches these skills to

3:21

a wide range of audiences, from

3:23

schools to corporate boardrooms, and he

3:25

has recently designed a successful online

3:28

course on Critical Thinking and Decision

3:30

Making for the Economist's Education. In

3:33

his most recent book Wise Animals,

3:35

Tom explores our relationship with technology,

3:38

examining the lessons that our ancestral

3:40

past may hold for our present

3:42

challenges. In this very

3:44

thought-provoking conversation, we discussed Tom's advice

3:47

for how to think more critically

3:49

in today's complex world, we talked about

3:51

strategies to combat the influence of cognitive

3:53

biases in our mind, a term that

3:55

many of you probably know from the

3:58

work of the late Daniel Kahneman. and

4:00

the importance and also difficulty of

4:02

challenging our assumptions. We

4:05

also talked about how to better think

4:07

collectively and the importance of creating trust

4:09

in order to be able to have

4:11

open conversations and also

4:13

some techniques Tom advises in order

4:15

to generate deep discussions and good

4:17

decision making in all contexts. In

4:20

the final part we turn our

4:22

focus to Tom's latest book and

4:25

I asked his view on two

4:27

big impacts technology is currently having

4:29

in our society. One of them

4:31

is the change that mass interactive

4:33

media is bringing to traditional democratic

4:36

structures, exacerbating polarization and eroding public

4:38

trust in institutions. And the

4:40

other one, which is probably very close

4:42

to home to those of you who

4:45

have young children, is the troubling rise

4:47

of what many experts refer to as

4:49

the epidemic of mental illness among children

4:51

and teenagers driven by the increasing role

4:53

of social media in their lives. It

4:56

was a fascinating conversation, so let me

4:58

leave you with Tom Chatfield. Tom

5:06

Chatfield, welcome to Coreaty C'est In Graz. Thank you

5:09

very much, and it would be great to be

5:11

with you. I'm a big fan of your work.

5:14

I think I knew it before finding your book

5:16

on critical thinking. Then I

5:18

came across your work in a course you

5:20

put together for The Economist on critical thinking

5:23

and future skills, and then your new book,

5:25

Wise Animals, which we'll also be talking about.

5:28

Let's start. I'm very curious about this. What happened

5:30

so that you ended up writing books on critical

5:32

thinking, technology, and the like? What

5:35

happened? What's your background? How did you end up here? So

5:39

I guess I've always wanted to be a

5:41

writer since I was very young and I

5:43

started out writing fiction and poetry

5:45

and drama and things like that, but

5:47

I also did my Masters and my

5:49

Doctorate and taught a bit at Oxford

5:52

in literature and a bit of philosophy. I was

5:56

very geeky. I also love

5:58

computers And maths and things

6:00

like that. that and it became

6:02

very clear to me that all

6:04

the stuff I cared about Mueller

6:06

did the culture. The idea is

6:08

the morals these big debates would

6:11

being mediated through new forms of

6:13

technology. That technology was touching upon

6:15

all aspects of human life and

6:17

and it also I think became

6:19

equally clear to me that a

6:21

lot of the time the weight

6:23

technologies talked about and discussed is

6:26

not very rich, is not very

6:28

philosophically informed, is not very thoughtful,

6:30

Is quite shallow so she like

6:32

I became almost obsessed with the

6:34

idea what the question? What

6:36

does it mean to think about technology?

6:39

Well, What? Does it mean

6:41

to come to grapple with the modern

6:43

world using all the tools that philosophy

6:45

and social science and literature and so

6:47

on have given us and soak. In

6:50

my work I I wrote my first

6:52

book about video games one of my

6:54

obsessions or began to collaborate with. Academic

6:57

publishers and social scientists and I

6:59

I can have some my way

7:01

towards critical thinking. As. This

7:03

interdisciplinary place where you write

7:06

and talk about. What? It

7:08

means to think well and rigorously. And.

7:10

To do so together and I guess that

7:12

it struck a chord for me. I'm very

7:14

passionate about it and for me. It

7:17

unlocks the digital world for

7:19

people. It. Takes the resources

7:21

we have at our fingertips today and

7:24

and if you give people should help

7:26

people develop thinking skills you know then

7:28

is equips people to make the most

7:31

of the potential sophie of digital age

7:33

rather than be manipulated. So yes, I've

7:35

almost become obsessed with this like as

7:37

I've written quite a few books about

7:40

it. I've taught variously, office on courses

7:42

I work with companies. I sort of

7:44

do everything I can really to explore

7:47

this theme of well with how can

7:49

we be more. Thoughtful. And

7:51

rigorous and the way we engage with with

7:53

the modern world and the skills we need

7:56

to thrive in it. Interesting because they're your.

7:59

Path. Is not very. And like mine although

8:01

Ellerbeck runs are different, mine is in economics

8:03

but for me critical thing he was also

8:05

the natural place where I landed although I

8:07

didn't think of that's in the beginning there

8:09

I think because of what you just described

8:11

it it is both kind of the met

8:13

a skill which is. At the

8:15

basis of thinking about everything. And.

8:18

It's increasingly important ones. Technology gets more

8:20

developed than do and you have an

8:22

overload of information. You have a I,

8:25

you have social media, you have fake

8:27

news so Sinhalese, it was already important

8:29

and it's gets even more important than

8:31

yeah, Absolutely. And to some degree I

8:34

think you've hit the nail on the

8:36

head. Their that sending people to focus

8:38

on the features of technology, walk and

8:40

technology Do what's it's capabilities and that's

8:43

great. That's. Fascinating. But even

8:45

more important is the question,

8:47

Well, one of the features

8:49

of a human minds what

8:51

our strengths and weaknesses and

8:53

I think cognitively we both

8:55

very brilliant and very vulnerable.

8:57

And particularly the work of

8:59

psychologists like Danny Karma Man

9:01

and a lot of others

9:03

you don't Great workarounds that

9:05

have biases and she rustic

9:07

Spider Economics Cylon. There's just

9:09

been such rich recent research

9:11

illuminating both what makes On

9:13

Nibble. On how we can overcome

9:15

this vulnerability is on. When I think about

9:17

ai technology the great question from is not

9:19

what on the technology do. Not.

9:21

What does it mean to be obsessed

9:24

with? it's? it's features. But. How

9:26

can we try to make sure

9:28

that we are robust against manipulation

9:30

that we take a close interesting

9:33

reality in what's really going on

9:35

to win? Not distracted and deceived

9:37

and bewildered and disempowered. So when

9:39

I write books when I was

9:42

on courses, they have these two

9:44

aspects on the one hand, building

9:46

up. Ah, Skills: A

9:49

Logical reasoning through. The.

9:51

Scientific Method. Through.

9:53

Research. That on the other

9:55

hand, understanding. Of under abilities.

9:58

Resisting. Paste. This

10:00

bias. Mental. Show cops

10:02

manipulation. On. It's two things

10:04

for me, the go together to

10:07

defined critical thinking and in the.

10:09

Twenty. First century focusing on the on

10:11

the first and was you've been asked this

10:13

question but of have thought about it quite

10:16

awhile. Who did you find critical thinking as

10:18

the sauce killer high school path? I think

10:20

I guess a soft in some ways I

10:23

like self because it suggests to me that

10:25

it's and that is not as much as

10:27

a science and that it's as much a

10:29

kind of attitude of mind. It's a mindset.

10:32

I think it begins with humility and what

10:34

I mean by that is just the realization

10:36

that individually our minds are. I will use

10:38

a very small. A very limited and

10:41

the quest to become less deceived

10:43

is something we do together that

10:45

we do incrementally. The great danger

10:47

is that we moved to quickly.

10:50

Towards. Generalizations and false

10:52

conclusions to be overestimate our knowledge caught

10:54

him has this great saying he says

10:56

in the route so many errors

10:58

in cook mission is the idea. What

11:01

you see is all there is.

11:03

some the have a look cause he

11:05

got stuff at your fingertips and

11:07

so all of us of course we

11:09

do this. We know a tiny

11:12

amount. And. We assume that tiny

11:14

amount can answer all questions, and the

11:16

great battle is to work with other

11:18

people to get out of that mindset.

11:20

And. Instead to become an investigator's of reality

11:23

together. So for me or that as

11:25

a lot of science in there. It's

11:27

fundamentally a sub still because it

11:30

it begins and ends with self

11:32

knowledge and weaves almost self discipline

11:34

with the discipline to. Not.

11:36

Just leaked conclusions to does

11:38

does or to control your

11:41

own cognition and and directed

11:43

it mindfully. In the service

11:45

of of reality of truth of understanding.

11:48

We're uncommon in been divorced and other

11:50

researchers were were behind his does conclusions

11:52

They develop that mother which which I

11:54

think is widely know know those of

11:56

us to a system in all range

11:58

between system one and system doing. With

12:00

system one it sort of that the

12:03

automatic wonder the one that's based on

12:05

heuristics and the system to is the

12:07

one hopefully we are both using now

12:09

which had we are singing deliberately about

12:11

something and and consciously and then from

12:13

system one we get. Biases.

12:15

Which is when it's not only automatic

12:18

but it's also our reasoning. It's is

12:20

also by as I wonder what's what's

12:22

your view and I'm on my we

12:24

have these biases because it's relatively easy

12:27

to know why we have these automatic

12:29

reasoning Because it's much more efficient in

12:31

terms of resources. It's much faster, so

12:33

much faster to not have to sink

12:36

consciously about something. It is as just

12:38

workouts automatically based on past patterns. But

12:40

the bias is so. This does systematic

12:42

deviations from rationality for me. I'm not

12:45

done. Not that obvious. Where. Where

12:47

we get them from That that's right and

12:49

them. I was lucky enough in a to

12:51

note that economy a little bit into. He

12:54

collaborated with me. And my my

12:56

critical thinking skills testing for his death Actually

12:58

a I say yes yes I did some

13:00

little bits of kind of. Work with

13:02

him in America know lot but I was

13:04

lucky enough to speak to him about this.

13:06

and of course like his work into the

13:08

schism done or in his mother's. Is

13:11

putting you know a new analysis on

13:13

very old ideas and the way for

13:15

me as think about a bias is

13:17

that a bias is a miss Foreign

13:19

Service stick and what I mean by

13:21

that is a heuristic as a rule

13:23

of thumb. And. Mental shortcut.

13:25

That's. Really important when you're evolving

13:27

when you're trying to survive as

13:30

an animal. You. Need to

13:32

be able to act in a sauce decision.

13:34

Appropriate way to. if you see something that

13:36

looks a bit scary or threatening or dangerous,

13:38

you gotta run away from it. You can't

13:41

spend your time analyzing it is something, smells

13:43

bad, luck, some familiar you want to

13:45

avoid it and then ask questions later. And.

13:48

So it's always been the case.

13:50

That fast. Efficient, fairly

13:52

reliable actions are keep us alive

13:55

and then slow considered analysis is

13:57

what we do afterwards to him.

14:00

There is to develop strategies over time

14:02

collectively and humans a supremely good at

14:04

that. But of course the conditions we

14:06

live in now. Look. Nothing

14:08

like the conditions we evolved

14:10

him, and so a heuristic that's

14:13

quite useful one hundred thousand years

14:15

ago that for example, if

14:17

someone or something looks i'm

14:19

familiar, be cautious that now can

14:22

lead us into all kinds

14:24

of problem because if you're

14:26

advertising something, you go for a

14:28

truck dismissed familiarity to create

14:30

a halo and or a

14:32

halo effect. A beautiful person drugs,

14:35

a beautiful car with a symmetrical

14:37

face, or conversely, a stereotype.

14:39

A very in a crude generalization about

14:42

someone who looks different to you encourages

14:44

you to treat them as an enemy

14:46

or to think of them as different

14:48

it to you and in in negative

14:51

ways and that maybe that would have

14:53

kept you safe one hundred thousand years

14:55

ago. but of course it's a very

14:58

very poor way that interacting with fellow

15:00

human beings in the modern world and

15:02

so. I guess the key is

15:04

that a lot of the time Mental short

15:06

a dude and useful. Choose what you have

15:09

for lunch. Choose what you were. You know,

15:11

choose what to do today. How to have

15:13

fun. But. And I'm going

15:15

to quote Done A Again on this

15:17

is of the trouble is when faced

15:19

with a difficult question a lot of

15:22

the time we answer an easy question

15:24

instead without noticing the substitution. So.

15:26

He's a hard question who would be

15:28

in the best? Next. President United

15:30

States. Who would be the what's the

15:33

best plan for the future of the

15:35

European Union? What's a good tax scheme

15:37

is a very hard questions. Very.

15:40

Difficult questions, Very slow to investigate.

15:42

He's an easy question. Which

15:44

of these two people? Looks. More

15:46

attractive and like a strong leader

15:49

which of these people as the

15:51

more symmetrical face which these people

15:53

is more familiar to you. These

15:56

are very easy questions and unless

15:58

we try really hard. We.

16:00

Can to. Swap. With easy

16:02

questions for the hard questions. Unanswered.

16:05

Those instead and that was very

16:07

efficient. In evolutionary terms, it's very

16:09

dangerous in the modern world, so

16:11

it's incredibly difficult. Even. For

16:13

the smart people, doesn't really matter

16:15

how smart you are, incredibly difficult

16:17

to slow down and interrogate your

16:19

own emotions and in a way

16:22

you have to begin with the

16:24

fact that all of us will

16:26

have a strong instant feelings and

16:28

the challenges then to negotiate with

16:30

them. Rather than pretend we can

16:32

become perfectly rational, which is. A

16:34

meaningless idea. And. Was that a

16:36

better rustic know they sort? So. Do.

16:39

You think that's a better restrict because. We.

16:41

Live in larger groups. It's because

16:44

we leaving more diverse society. So

16:46

what? I guess It's a bad

16:48

humor. partly because it leads us

16:50

into Era. So for example, the

16:53

question of which tax scheme will

16:55

be better at preventing poverty or

16:57

incentivizing work. That's an empirical question

16:59

about complex systems and it doesn't

17:02

have an intuitive answer. My gut

17:04

feelings about tax worthless. You know,

17:06

because the question is mathematical and

17:08

economic? An abstract. My gut feelings

17:11

about running. Away from lines of probably

17:13

quite good and my gut feelings about

17:15

people, I know whether I can trust

17:17

someone I know very well as perfectly

17:20

good. And so the trouble is, there

17:22

are situations in which our gut feelings

17:24

are valid and useful, and that broadly

17:26

is when we know a person or

17:28

situation well when we have relevant expertise.

17:31

But outside of that. Our.

17:33

Gut feelings are awesome. Worse than

17:35

useless. My gut reaction to attack

17:37

scheme to a politician to a

17:39

charity appeal to wear money should

17:41

be spent in all of those

17:43

areas. Our intuitions worse than useless

17:45

and so we absolutely have to

17:47

try to. Pause. And

17:49

come up with a context that helps guide

17:52

our intuitions at Under Up and he we

17:54

can do this so for example we can

17:56

try come up with a better question. So

17:58

rather than saying okay, what you. The like

18:00

about tax to like the idea of adding

18:02

very low tax of hard work is just

18:05

get to get rewarded. Or did you got

18:07

there have a very heavy tax is not

18:09

a good thing. Instead you could say to

18:11

people okay here's a visualization of different tax

18:14

game Since gonna show you with visuals the

18:16

distribution of wealth in a soft it's gonna

18:18

do we a graph is gonna show you

18:20

and then you might for example look at

18:23

this graph of the cubbies visuals of sight.

18:25

Well actually this game really penalizes people here

18:27

or this scheme really penalize people. Do this.

18:30

So we can try and come up with better

18:32

frame things. That. Allow our intuitions to

18:34

function better when allow us to think better.

18:37

And that's a big question, right? Ultimately,

18:39

when it comes to technology, Will.

18:42

Result: Official intelligence or just a

18:44

graph of key question for me

18:46

as does this technology. Elevator

18:49

Cognition and encourage us

18:51

to. Make. A better, a

18:53

more reality based decision. Or

18:55

does it try and. Manipulate.

18:57

Us and pushes towards a decision

19:00

not on the basis of evident

19:02

so reason, but on the basis

19:05

of politics or propaganda or oh,

19:07

exploitation. The difficulty I think that

19:09

as you mention a thing though.

19:12

The. Rick Adelman describes his that you will reject

19:14

or never perfect of course of that's why

19:16

are they are shortcuts but they are more

19:18

or less but records or they work well

19:21

when when the environment is. Predictable.

19:23

Enough and you have. Time. Enough

19:25

to gain that experience, rights and

19:27

in most of our current environment

19:29

specially those complex once it's quite

19:31

difficult to have that says what

19:33

you're suggesting. it makes lots as

19:35

you that we frame things in

19:37

a way that the cognitive overload

19:39

these lowering the sense that enables

19:41

people to think about that rationally

19:43

exactly current. His really simple advice

19:45

that I think is really good

19:47

you have limited time. Unlimited

19:49

attention. So when you're facing a

19:52

complex or important question and when

19:54

you don't have enough information that

19:56

friend good information to answer accurately.

19:59

pause and seek

20:01

cognitive reinforcements. It's

20:03

a golden rule, slow down and

20:06

look for something or someone that

20:08

will help you make an evidence-based

20:10

decision and this partly also

20:12

means embracing uncertainty. We saw this during

20:14

the pandemic when a lot of

20:17

the time, understandably, a situation

20:19

of fear and horror

20:22

as well as hope and learning, a

20:24

lot of the time, people were terrified by

20:27

uncertainty, politicians and citizens

20:30

and they desperately wanted a simple

20:32

story to hang onto and answer. It's

20:34

this, it's that, this works, this

20:37

won't work and in some ways

20:39

the most important message which was

20:41

emotionally very difficult was it is

20:43

uncertain and the most important thing

20:45

we can do is seek

20:47

more evidence, is act fast and

20:49

preventatively in this area but in this area,

20:51

keep our minds open. It

20:53

may be that we think wearing a

20:55

mask is very important and then it

20:57

turns out it's not that important compared

21:00

to other things. It may be

21:02

we think the virus spreads by contact and

21:04

then we learn it spreads through the air and

21:07

so on. It's incredibly difficult but

21:09

important to keep an open mind

21:11

and to follow the evidence and to try not

21:14

to get sucked into turning it

21:16

into an ideological or tribal

21:18

battle. That's the enemy of good thinking.

21:20

Suddenly, so many questions that

21:23

are so important these days become

21:25

matters of identity and allegiance and

21:28

that is absolute poison for critical thinking

21:31

because it causes people to judge them

21:33

by tribal allegiances

21:35

rather than by evidence

21:38

and open mindedness. And you

21:40

were mentioning uncertainty

21:42

and that's one of the things we have a very

21:45

hard way to get our heads around.

21:47

So actually it's one of the topics

21:49

I cover in the, in one module

21:51

of my critical thinking program causal explanations

21:54

because we deal very

21:56

poorly with randomness and uncertainty. So if

21:58

what you were suggesting, which

22:00

makes a lot of sense, was emphasised by

22:03

both politicians and practitioners during the

22:05

time of Covid. It would

22:07

have been very difficult for that message to

22:09

pass, as it was very difficult. So saying,

22:11

we actually don't know this, so this is

22:13

still an open question. We'll see. So this

22:15

is the most reasonable response

22:18

that we don't know yet. It's a very difficult

22:20

message emotionally. If you want to seem strong as

22:22

a leader, if you want to give people hope.

22:24

So if we think about uncertainty,

22:27

social media makes it really

22:30

obvious just how

22:32

difficult it is to communicate

22:34

uncertainty effectively. If I

22:36

want to go viral on, you know,

22:38

X or TikTok or whatever, saying

22:41

something like, it's complicated, no

22:44

clear answer, we need to seek more evidence,

22:46

I'm not quite sure. That's pretty much the

22:49

least viral thing I can say. We're

22:51

saying, wow, there's this compelling evidence, there's

22:53

this conspiracy, there's this story, we've got

22:56

to do this. These calls to action

22:58

will get a lot of attention. And

23:00

so we have a very direct conflict

23:03

between content

23:05

and ideas that are emotionally arousing

23:09

and the mindset of truth

23:11

seeking. And I

23:13

think a huge challenge for technology

23:15

and leaders today, which is to

23:17

be eloquent and persuasive, but

23:20

at the same time to admit to uncertainty and

23:22

to change minds, to talk

23:24

in a strong way about I'm

23:26

not sure. And again, in terms of advice,

23:29

I think one of the most powerful and

23:31

useful things that you can say, work

23:35

online in your everyday life is, I'm

23:37

not sure. What do you think?

23:41

What evidence is there? What's the other side of the story? And

23:43

it can be very difficult to do

23:46

that because it doesn't look like strength

23:48

or leadership or decisiveness, but it's really

23:50

valuable. Yeah. And on social

23:52

media, do you think there's a way to square

23:54

that circle? Do you see someone doing that? Yeah,

23:57

of course. Interestingly, I

23:59

think. One of the great

24:02

gifts of social media can be the

24:04

trust that can exist between person and

24:06

their audience. When

24:08

you see how a lot of

24:10

young people use things like YouTube,

24:13

you go to follow someone who's

24:15

a great gamer, who's a great

24:17

streamer, who's passionate about a product,

24:19

who's passionate about engineering. In

24:22

these areas, actually, because

24:24

people's reputation and relationship with their followers

24:26

is so important, they will often say,

24:28

it's really complex, let me take you

24:31

on a journey. It's

24:33

fascinating how complex this is. Did you know how

24:36

crazy the history of Minecraft did? Did

24:38

you know how difficult it was to hand-carculate

24:41

how to get a rocket to the moon?

24:43

Did you know that rocket science is

24:46

really complicated, that building, and so on?

24:48

So there's a lot of great ways

24:50

that you can draw people into the

24:52

story of complexity, the story of uncertainty.

24:55

And I think trust is the key in

24:57

areas that people care about and trust people

24:59

in, where people

25:02

have got skin in the game, where

25:05

the communication is about where you're

25:07

accountable to your audience. We

25:09

have a specific audience to write. That's

25:11

right. So if I'm an

25:13

influencer writing about even fashion, and I

25:16

just talk absolute nonsense, no

25:18

one's going to trust me as a good

25:20

advisor. If I'm writing about video games or

25:22

science, my audience are not going to follow

25:24

me if I turn out to be

25:27

wrong. But of course, there's a

25:29

lot of games online that are just played for

25:31

clout, that are just played for impact, that are

25:33

just where the game people is

25:35

playing is not about truth, is not about

25:37

understanding. It's about influence, it's about

25:40

persuasion, and so on. It

25:42

all comes down to storytelling, really. And for

25:44

me, then this is

25:46

helpful, because actually we

25:48

can tell really good stories that are

25:50

also true, if we are

25:53

willing to bring an audience with us. If

25:55

we have confidence that our audience

25:57

are not idiots, and this is another thing, right?

26:00

can't be patronizing. If you

26:02

treat people like idiots, if you have a low opinion of them, you

26:06

fail to understand why people

26:08

arrive at wrong beliefs or why people disagree

26:10

with you. Often, actually,

26:12

there are very good reasons. For example,

26:15

vaccination. A lot of

26:17

people would distrust for the vaccination for

26:20

good reasons. I think misguided reasons, but

26:22

a lot of people in America and

26:25

elsewhere felt that they were

26:27

being lied to or patronized by the

26:29

government, that the government doesn't

26:31

have their best interests at heart when it

26:33

comes to healthcare. That's quite true in

26:35

America. In a lot of countries, people are

26:38

treated with contempt. And until you

26:40

understand why people are deeply distrustful of what

26:42

politicians say, you can't then

26:44

attempt to persuade them or take them on a

26:46

journey. You can even argue with

26:48

them. So if they distrust the

26:50

source of information, you can't even have

26:53

an argument or discussion with them because there's no

26:56

common ground even at the basic level. That's

26:58

right. And the common ground is so important.

27:01

When you want to talk to someone, you're

27:03

not enemies playing a

27:05

zero-sum game. Maybe you are sometimes

27:07

in some fields, but generally

27:10

speaking, starting with the idea

27:12

that other people have good

27:14

reasons for their beliefs that

27:16

are good and compelling to them and

27:18

trying to understand those reasons, that's a

27:20

powerful way of building coalitions

27:22

and finding, you know, saying, look, we all

27:24

want to get through

27:27

this. We're not necessarily enemies.

27:29

There's a common ground here. Now, we

27:31

can't always do that, of course, but

27:34

the ability to build coalitions with diverse

27:36

views, incredibly important in

27:38

politics, in government, in healthcare

27:41

and society, you know, critical

27:43

thinking is not about being a clever person

27:45

who's always right. That's a very

27:48

bad thing to aspire to be, because

27:51

ultimately, you're aspiring to be

27:53

divisive and self-righteous and

27:55

privileging your own cleverness Over

27:57

engagement with other people. You know, I Think for me,

28:00

The great art is bringing as

28:02

many people together as you can

28:04

and is cultivating mutual respect and

28:06

trying to build forms of understanding

28:09

together. The. Or and because you never

28:11

know if a writer not. And actually it's

28:13

interesting because the we got around. Three.

28:15

Or four dishes in our conversation. So far

28:17

as who talk about. Limitations of

28:19

our minds we talked about complexity and how

28:21

the world is both much more complex than

28:24

the world we evolved in and is getting

28:26

much more complex nowadays with technology and just

28:28

no way that you mentioned trust and how

28:30

it makes it much more difficult for us

28:33

to find common ground and I feel I

28:35

don't know if you felt that when you're

28:37

writing your book and then putting together these

28:39

programs. I think that's

28:42

or. I found myself concluding that the

28:44

classics critical thinking is not specially helpful.

28:46

For instance, detective arguments are completely useless

28:48

in the real world. So the the

28:50

classic argument that all men are mortal

28:52

Soviet it is a man. Therefore, he's

28:54

more to visit like the classic is

28:57

active arguments because you live in the

28:59

real world because he doesn't tell you

29:01

anything which is not and aspects which

29:03

is nothing that the raw material so

29:05

to say right? So Smith is then

29:07

tell you anything which is not in

29:09

the reasons to begin with. And the

29:11

real world is about our biases is

29:13

is about having common ground with the

29:16

others and is about dealing with complexity.

29:18

It's that makes it impossible to conclude

29:20

anything on that Detective Macys see, that's

29:22

that's right. But I would put it.

29:24

A different way which is that I

29:27

think these tools a very valuable but.

29:29

They come in. Ah Steve done a

29:32

lot of work so a deduct his

29:34

argument. Tells you what is already

29:36

present in your premises. It spells it

29:38

out. Or that can be

29:40

very useful Suffer example if he said,

29:42

you know I don't trust vaccines because

29:45

they're on natural. Now. You.

29:47

Can spell out deductively certain things

29:49

from that you can say. Okay

29:52

so what you're saying He is.

29:55

Anything that some that's what is untrustworthy.

29:58

Their saw. wearing clothes

30:00

is unnatural. So that's

30:02

bad. Or living in a house is bad.

30:05

Are you saying that? Is that what

30:07

you mean? Or alternatively, if it's natural

30:09

for humans to wear glasses and clothes

30:11

and use antibiotics and go on airplanes,

30:14

then it's probably natural for us to

30:16

make vaccines too. Is that

30:18

what you mean? So you can

30:21

use the tools of deduction to see

30:24

where your premises lead you and then

30:26

investigate whether your premises are or aren't

30:28

good. But you're right that actually...

30:30

And also Tom, sorry to interrupt. And also

30:32

the example you were pointing out is a

30:34

good example of a bad inference. So the

30:37

premise might even be okay, but the inference

30:39

to the leap from the premise to the

30:42

conclusion is wrong. That's right. And of course,

30:44

inference in a way is a form of

30:46

hidden premise. All

30:48

inferences are in a sense

30:51

a premise about what follows and what

30:53

the logic of the situation is. And

30:55

what we're asking people to do, and I

30:58

think this is the crucial point, is

31:00

not, as you say,

31:02

seek perfect confidence through deduction.

31:04

It's to go back and

31:07

reconsider their premises and assumptions.

31:10

And so with critical thinking, today,

31:12

I put a lot

31:14

of emphasis on the groundwork. What

31:16

are your fundamental beliefs? Why

31:19

do you believe them? What are

31:21

other people's fundamental beliefs? Are you

31:23

really sure about those? What are

31:25

your feelings? How are your

31:27

feelings getting in the way here? What else

31:29

is going on? And so you're right, there's

31:31

other stuff, the classical work

31:33

around deduction and induction

31:36

and even abduction. I think

31:38

it's very valuable, but

31:40

I think we need to pay a great deal of

31:42

attention to the stuff that comes before

31:45

that, which is actually often

31:47

just a matter of observation, like thinking

31:49

harder. Okay, so yeah, we're saying unnatural

31:52

things are bad, but what do we mean by

31:54

that? Well, often what people actually mean is, I

31:57

don't trust the motives.

32:00

of some people creating new stuff and selling it,

32:02

like pharmaceutical companies or tech companies. And you can

32:04

then say, well, okay, well, that might

32:06

be a reasonable thing to say, but

32:09

it's not about natural or unnatural. To

32:11

some degree, it's about the grounds

32:13

that you have for trusting individuals.

32:16

And then the question is, well, what evidence

32:18

would persuade you? Because again, you

32:20

drive a car, for example, you live in

32:22

a building, you probably want to

32:24

have a qualified surgeon perform

32:26

an operation on your child, rather

32:29

than someone from 300 years ago, with

32:32

a rusty saw. So

32:34

we get to much more interesting stuff.

32:36

But yeah, it's about pausing and thinking

32:38

and, and not just going off

32:40

on this kind of deductive goose chase,

32:42

where it was you say you pretend

32:44

that you possess certainty. And

32:46

in my experience, and I bet in yours too,

32:49

asking questions works much better than going head

32:52

on against the argument. But it requires some

32:55

training because it goes, I think it goes

32:57

against our natural instincts, which is much more

32:59

to go head on and disagree. But if

33:01

you start asking questions, as in the example

33:03

you just gave, suddenly find

33:05

out that people didn't exactly mean that

33:07

or they were not that confident in

33:09

the reasons themselves, right? Exactly, exactly. And

33:11

of course, in order to ask questions

33:14

in good faith, you need

33:16

there to be, if you like, trust in

33:18

the room. So when I work

33:20

with companies with organizations, a

33:22

lot of the time, the question is one of kind

33:24

of culture and atmosphere. Everyone says, Oh, you can ask

33:26

any questions you like, but often in a meeting or

33:29

a boardroom. In fact, there's a lot of

33:31

fear and a lot of ego. So how

33:33

do you really establish that kind of

33:35

trust? And there are if you

33:38

like tricks, you can do with this. One

33:40

famous one is the example of a pre-mortem,

33:42

which I'm sure you and

33:44

your listeners may have heard of. It's a

33:46

very simple trick. It just says, let's pretend

33:50

that it's two years in the future

33:52

and our big project has gone

33:54

wrong. It's a disaster. And

33:57

now we're all going to have a competition,

33:59

a game. Where we talk about

34:01

why it went wrong. It's a game,

34:03

but it gives you permission to talk about Uncertainty

34:06

and failure you say okay Yeah, no our

34:08

new product went wrong because it turned out

34:10

that nobody liked it it turned out it

34:13

was too expensive It went wrong because our

34:15

competitors released a better one it went wrong

34:17

because we got sued and

34:19

so suddenly you Create

34:22

permission for people to challenge the

34:24

narrative to talk about assumptions. There's

34:26

lots of ways of doing this Yeah, I love

34:28

that too the primortum and there's another one I

34:30

don't know if you've seen that in practice, which

34:33

is it's similar actually it's

34:35

that obligation to dissent So whenever

34:37

there's a meeting you cannot leave

34:39

without someone expressing an opposing opinion

34:41

exactly, right? Yeah, the devil's advocate

34:43

and that's of course one of

34:45

the oldest Philosophical exercises

34:47

unaware of is that

34:50

of arguing both sides? Goes

34:52

all in about to ancient Greece and and

34:54

indeed other disciplines, you know and India

34:56

and elsewhere and Vedic thought even Where

34:59

the idea is that until you know

35:01

the other side of

35:03

the argument? You don't even know

35:06

your side of the argument. So you swap

35:08

you played that was advocate in the modern

35:10

world You might say you stress test an

35:12

idea by subjecting it to critical

35:14

scrutiny. It's a very powerful idea We

35:17

see it in science all the time in

35:19

science, you know, you start off with a

35:21

null hypothesis where

35:23

you're Starting assumption is

35:26

that the thing you're investigating is false

35:28

or not true and then you have

35:30

to try and prove that it's not

35:32

just Chance that there is a real

35:34

effect you discipline yourself to do that

35:36

and it's such an important mentality Because

35:38

everybody wants to say oh, you know,

35:41

you can say anything you like But

35:43

actually unless you put a framework

35:45

in place that really Demands

35:47

that people stress test ideas and speak

35:49

up. It won't happen by magic. Oh,

35:52

yeah Yeah, yeah in most cases by

35:54

the way Have you you probably tried

35:56

one of those debate models in which

35:58

you're forced to define? defend the opposite side.

36:00

And it's a great experience in that I have

36:03

a friend, she

36:05

participated in one of those ones, and

36:08

she had to defend China's dictatorship in some

36:10

other issue. I don't remember which one, but

36:12

then she was so persuasive that she won

36:14

the debate. She had

36:17

a very bad conscience by the end of it. It's

36:19

a great exercise. I do this with children and I've

36:21

written books for children as well. Interestingly,

36:26

when I'm doing this with companies

36:28

or schools or universities, I

36:30

often start with something very low stakes

36:32

to get people into that playful mindset.

36:35

And so I'll encourage people to come

36:37

up with an idea they disagree with,

36:39

but about something unimportant, like a movie,

36:42

like a film, or a food

36:44

they hate, or something like that. Because if

36:47

it's unimportant, if it's

36:49

not ideologically charged, then

36:51

people are very comfortable playing with it. And then

36:53

you take it to something more important. And

36:56

the more I work around this with

36:58

people running workshops and designing courses, and

37:01

I chair organizations as well, and

37:03

so on, the more

37:05

I feel there's the psychological work. I

37:07

do work around meditation and mindfulness and

37:09

breathing and listening. Because actually,

37:12

controlling your emotions and

37:14

finding comfort with discomfort

37:16

is so important. And

37:19

in so many politically and

37:21

economically charged atmospheres, none

37:23

of this happens. And people don't

37:25

want to admit that they're scared

37:27

or angry or uncomfortable or afraid.

37:30

But even very senior people often are.

37:33

And again, working with people on that

37:35

can be a very powerful way of

37:37

giving permission to think, if we don't

37:40

have that permission, that time, that

37:42

space, none of the good stuff

37:44

can happen. Those are two very important points,

37:46

I think. First, if you don't have that space, none

37:48

of the good stuff happens. And that's the one that

37:50

you made previously, that if you don't create

37:53

that space on purpose, it won't happen

37:55

by itself, or very seldom will it

37:57

happen by itself. Absolutely. And you know,

38:00

It can be really hard to

38:02

do and organizations and as government's

38:04

indeed, you know to do both

38:06

of those things to get permission

38:08

and to build the right kind

38:10

of. Spaces. And

38:12

again, this is where we can get back to

38:14

the evidence about cognition. There are

38:16

things people are bad at like

38:18

probability. Would. Just. Not very

38:20

good at that intuitively, but there are

38:23

things people do that like ranked ordering

38:25

for example. So if I give people

38:27

a whole bunch of numbers and say

38:29

you know which the preferred outcomes which

38:31

looks better for the organization a lot

38:34

of the time people will be very

38:36

last verse without be overly persuaded by

38:38

large numbers will They'll find it very

38:40

hard to compare different kinds of statistical

38:42

so on. But. It you say

38:44

to people. Rankin order these different

38:47

outcomes in terms of preference. People

38:49

will often be very good at

38:51

coming up with the first, second,

38:53

third, fourth, and fifth choice. So.

38:55

You can then. Tap. Into.

38:58

Valid intuitions. But. The

39:01

key question we keep coming back

39:03

to his a lot of the

39:05

time on social media or in

39:07

technological contexts. The design of

39:09

the system is all about. Emotion

39:12

and impact. Rather

39:14

than evidence and cognition.

39:17

And. So something as simple and city

39:19

as email. The. Way an organization

39:22

uses email is often set

39:24

up to force people. To.

39:26

Send like a hundred messages a day.

39:28

Really fast. Really?

39:31

Stressed to prove they're working. At.

39:33

Some really, really bad way

39:35

of using human minds and

39:38

human time. But. Lots

39:40

of organizations just do it by default. is

39:42

sending emails it to in the morning, or

39:44

is sending a hundred emails to prove that

39:46

you're doing your job. That's. Gonna

39:49

get. Really bad results. You can get

39:51

really bad. Think it lots of. Fear

39:53

and anxiety every time you send an

39:56

email. You. Create an email for someone

39:58

else to answer. Much. better

40:00

sometimes to have. So Amazon do this quite well

40:02

actually, whenever you think of them as a company.

40:05

They have very good meetings and

40:07

presentations. Arguments expressed not

40:09

in PowerPoint, like one side of

40:11

a sheet of paper, discussions where

40:14

a team has to make an argument and

40:16

a counter argument, which is not about individuals

40:18

showing off, and emphasis on

40:20

ideas and evidence, a ban on lots

40:23

of emails, lots of attachments, and insistence

40:25

and so on. So these

40:27

protocols, how you communicate, how you share

40:29

information, how you run your meetings, have

40:32

a huge effect in terms of the

40:34

quality of the thinking you get and

40:36

potentially the errors you avoid. It's

40:40

amazing that which is natural,

40:42

we use a lot of the same examples

40:44

and use cases because I also love that

40:46

example of Amazon in which rather than having

40:48

presentations, you have a document and that

40:52

policy they have and they're not the only ones that you get

40:55

into the room and you spend the first 15

40:57

or 30 minutes reading the document

40:59

rather than talking straight on without

41:01

reading what's actually the matter under discussion,

41:04

which is something that happens in

41:06

most organizations, of course, precisely because

41:08

you had to spend all that time writing emails

41:10

and answering to emails. Often you didn't

41:12

have time to fully read the email about which

41:15

that meeting is, so you end

41:17

up going to the meeting without having prepared and that

41:19

system forces you to prepare already

41:21

inside the room, which I think is a great overview.

41:23

That's right, that's right. And actually, I

41:25

see an analogy with some schools that

41:28

I visited, some religious schools where

41:30

you start the day with a couple

41:32

of moments of silence. You

41:34

start a lesson with a moment of silence

41:36

that before a question is answered, people just

41:39

sit with it for a

41:41

minute and small pauses

41:43

and silences can be

41:45

incredibly powerful just for

41:47

30 seconds. 30 seconds before

41:50

anyone speaks, we're just going to sit

41:52

with this question for 30 seconds. Even

41:55

that as an intervention can be

41:57

transformative sometimes. And again, it's mandatory,

41:59

right? Yeah, not optional. Yeah, not

42:01

optional. Again, you have to make it mandatory. Interesting.

42:04

So that's one I hadn't seen before Some

42:09

work and read read books by

42:11

a friend called Robert pointing who wrote a

42:13

book called pause and

42:16

he's I've taught of business schools with him

42:18

and so on and he very

42:20

much uses ideas like this about the

42:22

power of pauses and The

42:25

point of a pause is that

42:27

it's only by pausing that you can think

42:29

twice When we're

42:31

thinking critically, we're thinking not once but twice

42:35

We're having a thought and then we're saying hang on

42:37

a second. Is my thought Accurate

42:40

and useful and honest or

42:43

is there more I need to know without

42:45

a pause None of

42:47

the other stuff happens Even

42:49

in in conversations even the one we're having

42:52

right now, so it's often useful to pause

42:54

for a few seconds to think But

42:57

it's very unnatural to us. I think so

42:59

that's why for instance I forget the exact

43:01

name of these songs we do, you know

43:03

when we are talking and we are thinking

43:05

about what you want to say And I

43:07

say so Tom, you know and I do

43:09

this These feelers these are

43:11

meant to so I use them and everyone uses

43:13

them kind of unconsciously to sort of feel the

43:16

space Feel the air so that you don't step

43:18

in and the same thing goes for answering questions

43:20

right away So if you ask me a question

43:22

and I spend three or four seconds thinking about

43:24

it. I Fear

43:26

that either you will go on speaking or

43:28

someone else Well in this case not but

43:30

in real life someone else will step in

43:32

and talk so we are sort of trained

43:35

not to do that But that training

43:37

goes against good thinking as you

43:39

were saying. That's right. And sometimes

43:41

we have to unlearn Some

43:44

of the habits I think a lot of it does

43:46

come back to trust and to

43:48

shared values and you can write

43:50

these things down You can have a protocol you can

43:53

just say look We're not going

43:55

to interrupt. We're gonna have a

43:57

two-second pause after someone has spoken or

43:59

again a couple

44:01

of boards and one very simple

44:03

thing I do when the question

44:05

is important is A, ask everyone to read

44:08

it in advance and prepare some thoughts, but

44:11

B, is to go around the table and

44:14

ask everybody in turn to

44:16

just make a contribution and

44:18

everybody else to listen just

44:21

to make sure that the room isn't

44:23

dominated by the most confident. As

44:27

you say, silences can be

44:29

very unnatural and uncomfortable, but

44:31

I think something almost magical can happen if

44:34

you welcome silences and normalize them,

44:37

which is that they can become fertile,

44:40

they can become a place

44:43

where people show each

44:45

other respect, people think twice,

44:47

people generate ideas, people embrace

44:49

a different rhythm of

44:52

talk that isn't just performative

44:54

that isn't just performing confidence

44:57

and decisiveness. Again,

45:00

it's something I try

45:02

and model, I suppose, in a lot of the

45:04

work I do. I don't

45:07

use a PowerPoint, I don't even

45:09

use prepared notes sometimes,

45:12

just so that people look, I want to get you

45:14

thinking and talking and listening, I want

45:16

to get one person to talk to another, and

45:18

then that person to speak back what

45:20

they think they've heard, and just

45:23

to spend some time talking about what they think

45:25

they've heard, what they think they've

45:27

understood, they've misunderstood, clarifying this

45:30

active listening technique. And

45:32

it can be revelatory

45:35

because people realize that

45:37

they don't have much of this kind of

45:39

listening and time and attention in their lives,

45:42

and that if you deploy it

45:44

selectively, it's very powerful. It's

45:47

quite brave not to use PowerPoints,

45:49

I find brave in the sense that you

45:52

have nothing to hold to if you

45:54

suddenly forget what you were saying. But

45:56

also, so this part is obvious, but

45:58

I think sometimes these it creates a sense

46:00

of uneasiness on the part of the audience. If you

46:03

go there without PowerPoints, people

46:05

generally think, okay, he's exactly sure what he's talking

46:08

about. What will this be

46:10

about? Is it

46:12

only him talking? Some people find, in my experience,

46:14

find it strange. Yes, that's right.

46:16

And I think often what

46:19

I need to do for people is tell them quite

46:21

a lot in advance about what I'm going to do

46:23

so that they're confident, they're

46:26

structured there and exercises there and content

46:28

there. It's not in PowerPoints form, it's

46:30

in my head. But

46:32

I do say to people, and I've been giving

46:35

talks and running workshops

46:37

and working around this for more

46:39

than 10 years now, and

46:41

I've got more confident at being, I guess,

46:45

authentic or trying to be and saying, look,

46:47

I'm talking about thinking. So

46:49

what I want to do is get people thinking. I

46:52

want to have everybody in my audience doing

46:54

some thinking, pausing for 30 seconds,

46:56

having some dialogue in pairs, sharing

46:59

ideas. And in some ways,

47:01

I have less and less content and

47:04

more and more because it's the doing. My

47:06

goodness, there's a lot of content out there. The

47:08

world doesn't need more content. The

47:10

world needs more thought. But

47:13

you're right that some audiences want

47:15

a PowerPoint. Some people want

47:17

the comfort of that. And

47:20

then it's finding ways of doing that that still

47:24

have a little bit of thoughtfulness in

47:26

them. You've

47:30

been teaching critical thinking to, I imagine, very different audiences. So

47:32

you wrote

47:52

a book and the book is by definition

47:54

to a general audience. I mean, you

47:56

don't know the specific audience or the

47:58

specific people are reading the book. book but

48:00

it's anyone. Then you're also, as

48:03

I understood doing it at schools

48:06

and you're doing it in companies and

48:08

you put together that course with the

48:10

economists that we talked before. What

48:12

is your experience taught you about the

48:14

type of skills and the type of

48:17

challenges that people face in these different realities? So I

48:19

bet that the general public for

48:21

instance and the

48:23

corporate public have different challenges

48:26

in the sense that the

48:28

first is probably more concerned with societal

48:31

issues, politics, social media and

48:33

the second with more concrete

48:36

problems about improving decision making,

48:38

problem solving, making meetings

48:40

more efficient and whatnot. So I guess

48:43

the challenges themselves will be different, right?

48:45

They're very different but interestingly

48:48

the more I do, the more

48:51

I find that the same fundamental

48:53

kind of exercises and experiences

48:56

that work in schools with

48:59

12 year olds also work

49:01

in boardrooms for chief executives. That's

49:03

quite interesting. And so some

49:05

of the stuff we've talked about. So you do

49:07

the same things, that's interesting. I do the same,

49:09

in some ways I do the same things with

49:11

different content. I get people to

49:14

do active listening, to speak, to

49:16

listen, to pause. I

49:19

get people to argue different sides in

49:21

a debate. I get people

49:23

to try reframing questions in multiple

49:25

ways. I get people to try and

49:28

reflect upon their own assumptions. And

49:31

when it connects psychologically, ironically

49:34

enough I think for senior

49:36

executives or people in very senior

49:39

positions, being given permission to

49:41

play these kind of games and talk about

49:43

their feelings and ideas and think about

49:46

thinking. It can

49:48

be most powerful when it isn't just

49:50

full of business jargon

49:53

and when it isn't just about saying

49:55

what's the strategy for your organization, what

49:57

are your challenges, you know, what are

49:59

your threats and you know

50:01

opportunities and and so on

50:04

but in some ways you know if

50:06

someone brings me in it's because they

50:08

probably want something different to

50:11

a kind of standard business school

50:13

or course so for me

50:15

the you know the holy grail is almost

50:18

you know the fundamental insight that works for everyone

50:20

but of course you use very different language you

50:23

use very different examples you have to

50:25

speak to someone's reality and so when

50:28

I'm dealing with teenagers I often talk

50:30

about social media and AI and work

50:32

when I deal with organizations I'll talk

50:34

about organizational strategies and

50:36

how different organizations run meetings and

50:39

so on but I

50:41

think the fundamental sort of human experience

50:43

of and there's that eureka

50:45

moment when someone does something

50:47

for themselves and it opens up a slightly

50:50

new way of thinking give them a slightly

50:52

new thinking tool and that's always the price

50:54

no matter who

50:56

the audience is. Yeah interesting so

50:58

the topic changes but the method

51:00

stays the same and

51:03

I guess in companies it might even be a

51:06

more added value in a sense because I

51:08

feel that when you work in a corporate

51:10

environment you are working in a with a

51:12

level of abstraction which helps to some extent

51:14

because we need that straight we need concepts

51:17

to think about complex things but at

51:19

some point it starts helping because you're using

51:21

those concepts which are not challenged anymore so

51:24

they are kind of crystallized maybe

51:26

no one really knows what that means what the

51:28

strategy means or the strength means or the or

51:30

the second of the market or the customer whatever so

51:32

suddenly you don't know what it means and then you go

51:35

in I guess and get them to to

51:37

paraphrase what the other said to start

51:39

questioning assumptions and suddenly you get those

51:41

eureka moments. That's exactly right you know

51:43

big organizations will tend to have a

51:46

lot of unexamined assumptions and

51:48

they have to because you know you have

51:50

to assume a lot an organization

51:52

is a huge kind of machine a huge

51:55

structure and it can be a very good and

51:57

a very successful machine and that's partly of

51:59

course the power of having an external speaker

52:01

and an external perspective. It

52:04

gives people, again, permission to challenge and

52:06

change, or just be honest or just

52:08

listen. I think most

52:10

consultants, most people who work with different

52:12

organisations will say the same thing, which

52:15

is sometimes when you just talk to people at length

52:17

and let them express

52:19

the uncertainties and

52:21

try and explain to someone else what's

52:24

going on. That's when

52:26

these little insights coalesce. Again, there's a

52:29

very simple trick here, which I've written

52:31

about and used. Explain

52:33

like I'm five, explain like I'm

52:35

six. Imagine that I'm a smart

52:39

seven-year-old and I know nothing

52:41

about your organisation at all, but I'm really

52:43

interested. You've got to explain to me

52:45

what you do in your job, but

52:47

you've got to make it work for a

52:49

seven-year-old. You can't just say, well,

52:52

I'm a VP of communications and

52:54

I manage a cross-platform strategy, taking about

52:57

conventional and new and emerging media. You

52:59

can't say that. You have to say,

53:01

well, my job is

53:03

to try and tell the world about what

53:05

we do. You have

53:08

to use ordinary language. Actually,

53:11

I come back to, I have a great memory

53:13

of being at a conference with Danny Kahneman,

53:15

among other great people a few years ago.

53:18

My memory

53:20

of him is he sat on the

53:22

back row and every now and then he just raised

53:24

his hand and he said, I'm

53:26

very sorry. I just don't

53:28

really know what you're talking about. What

53:31

do you mean? And there's someone

53:33

very distinguished at the front talking about, for

53:36

example, their research or their

53:38

AI strategy. He'd say, yeah, but why

53:41

are you doing that? What do you mean? You've

53:43

just said your strategy is

53:45

to reinvent workflows by integrating

53:47

AI. What does that mean?

53:50

Why do you want to

53:52

do that? And

53:54

of course, he had such a reputation

53:57

that these questions were taken seriously, but these

53:59

very simple questions. are very powerful. Yeah, it

54:01

reminds me, I don't know if you read about that,

54:03

but it reminds me a lot of what Richard

54:05

Feynman used to do. Oh absolutely,

54:08

yeah. Right, so you get

54:10

people who went to his office and

54:12

they suddenly started making, posing these very,

54:15

very basic questions that almost startled

54:17

the other person, but suddenly

54:19

as they went, the other

54:21

person found out that there was, what would eventually

54:24

usually find out that there was some

54:26

gap in the reasoning, and you wouldn't get

54:28

to that without those questions. Absolutely right. Feynman's

54:30

a wonderful example. I think he was someone

54:33

who physicalized things as well. He

54:35

would play with the ball, throw

54:38

stuff around, make things. Anything that

54:40

helped you see more clearly was

54:42

good. He obviously made great discoveries

54:45

in quantum electrodynamics and the fundamental

54:47

physics, but also made some huge

54:49

contributions to the biological sciences

54:53

and around other ideas that he took an interest

54:55

in. I think having someone

54:57

ask these questions and the only agenda

54:59

is trying to understand better. That's the

55:01

crucial thing, right? That's critical thinking in

55:04

a nutshell. Your agenda is

55:06

just trying to really understand a bit better

55:08

what's going on. You're not trying to look

55:11

clever. You're not trying to score points.

55:13

Maybe at that point in time, you're not even trying to make a

55:16

profit, down the line you are, but

55:18

at that point in time, it's just like, what's really going on? What

55:20

do we really do here? What is

55:22

your job? What are you really doing?

55:25

What are you really worried about? These

55:27

questions are very powerful. You can't spend your whole

55:29

life answering them or asking them, but to

55:32

be able to have those questions in the room

55:35

can be transformative for individuals

55:37

and organizations. Yeah, because you'll

55:39

find out that there were

55:41

some assumptions that were not

55:43

questioned and that were actually

55:45

essential. Always. I was getting

55:48

excited. I just did a lovely example for

55:50

SpaceX, say, who put a huge amount of

55:52

money and effort into

55:54

trying to catch elements

55:57

called fairings that were

56:00

shed by their rockets. They're

56:02

like covers, but very expensive covers

56:04

that would drop down when

56:06

the rocket went up and they'd fall into the ocean

56:09

and be wasted. And they're costing like a million dollars

56:11

a pop. So you're wasting millions of dollars every time

56:13

you fly a rocket, even though you're reusing the main

56:16

units of it. And they had these

56:18

genius ideas about massive robot boats with

56:20

nets and things like that to try

56:22

and catch these fairings and

56:24

reuse them. But the rate was really low. It

56:26

was really difficult and in bad weather and so

56:28

on. And then they took a few steps back

56:30

and said, well, hang on a second, what are

56:32

we doing here? We want to

56:35

reuse these things and not waste them. It will

56:37

save us millions. So we're trying

56:39

to catch them in massive robot nets. But

56:41

that's crazy. That's not working. What if we

56:43

just spent a bit more money and made

56:45

them waterproof? What if we just made

56:48

it so that these things drop into the ocean and rather

56:50

than be lost and get spoiled, they

56:52

just float, the key components

56:54

are protected, and we scoop them up. And

56:57

they did that. And suddenly, they've got

56:59

basically 100% reuse rate, because they just

57:03

took a step back and said, what are we trying

57:05

to do here? We're not trying to build a robot

57:08

space component catcher. We're

57:11

just trying not to waste stuff. So let's just build

57:14

it differently. So it floats. Yeah, that's an

57:16

interesting story. And it resonates with me because

57:18

I think we have difficulty

57:22

with adjusting our behavior

57:24

in a manner that's not incremental. So

57:27

usually what we do is we

57:29

adjust incrementally. So something changes from a situation to

57:31

the other region. Sometimes what's

57:33

required is a complete change. And

57:35

that's very unnatural to

57:37

us, I find. Absolutely. Yeah, in a way,

57:39

it's part of a sort of a sunk

57:41

cost fallacy, which is, you know,

57:44

you put a certain amount of time and effort into

57:46

a solution or a product or an idea. And

57:48

then, you know, your mission becomes

57:50

to put more effort into that you

57:53

can't let it go. Whereas

57:55

actually, the most important lesson might

57:57

be, you've discovered that that doesn't work.

58:00

And what you've learned is you need to try

58:02

a different approach that you're going to get there.

58:05

And of course, science is often like that. You

58:07

put huge amounts of effort into

58:10

trying to make Einstein's

58:12

equations work at the

58:14

level of fundamental particles. You

58:17

really desperately, God doesn't play dice.

58:19

You do not want there to

58:21

be a random or unpredictable component

58:23

in fundamental physics. So you try

58:26

and you try and you try

58:28

to save Einstein's equations. And

58:30

then eventually you have to admit experimentally

58:32

that you take a few steps back

58:34

and, yep, uncertainty is there in

58:36

the fabric of the universe. You

58:39

have to embrace the uncertainty. You can't get rid of it. It

58:42

seems to be fundamental. You have

58:44

to change your whole notion of what is fundamental. And

58:46

there's lots of wonderful writing about

58:49

paradigm shifts in ideas. And

58:51

I guess the essence of that, Thomas

58:53

Kuhn and others wrote about the fact

58:55

that you have incremental discoveries, as

58:57

you say, that update a model.

59:00

But eventually, at some point, a

59:03

new way of thinking comes along when

59:05

the old way of thinking can

59:07

no longer explain and hold all the

59:09

new knowledge. Suddenly

59:12

a whole new paradigm, a whole new way

59:14

of thinking emerges because

59:16

you need that paradigm shift to

59:18

deal with all the

59:21

new things you've learned about the world. And

59:23

it gets unsustainable to keep using the old

59:25

model. That's right. But the

59:27

old model is still good for some point.

59:29

We still use Newton's equations on a large

59:32

scale. We still use Einstein's equations. But we

59:34

also need Feynman and Bohr

59:36

and Schrodinger and others' occasions to

59:39

do different things. You don't just throw away

59:41

the old, but we find new things and

59:43

new ways alongside it. I'm curious

59:45

about the dynamics you do, both

59:47

with the general public and in

59:49

schools and in companies. How

59:52

large a number can you have in

59:54

those meetings in the room? Or

59:57

to ask in another way, what's the ideal number of people for

59:59

the world? that work well. Because

1:00:02

I'm asking this because I find that if

1:00:05

the audience is too large, and

1:00:07

by too large, I mean over 10 people,

1:00:09

it starts getting difficult to

1:00:11

have a single conversation which is organized at the

1:00:13

same time. For me, I guess again,

1:00:16

I almost reframe it, I see

1:00:18

it the other way around. How can I have

1:00:20

something that's valuable for any number of

1:00:22

people? So I

1:00:24

love working with groups of 10

1:00:27

or 20 people. But I also do

1:00:30

classes and master classes in person for people like

1:00:32

200, 300 people, where

1:00:34

I'll get people organized in groups and

1:00:36

get them doing exercises and kind of

1:00:38

trust them with it. And then online

1:00:41

or events wise, I've done talks for

1:00:43

thousands of people, or even broadcasts for

1:00:46

the audiences of millions of people eventually.

1:00:48

And the key for me

1:00:50

is asking, well, how can you give a

1:00:52

meaningful experience to this number

1:00:54

of people? What's the thing you need to

1:00:56

do? And I guess I probably fail quite

1:00:59

often. It's harder with more people. But very

1:01:01

broadly, I try to find a way to

1:01:03

kind of trust people with

1:01:05

ideas, to give them something and then trust

1:01:07

them to make something of it. So

1:01:10

with a very large number of people, you just have

1:01:12

a pause, you have a silence, you just say, look,

1:01:14

I want you to take 10 seconds right now to

1:01:17

think about this, to

1:01:19

reflect upon this point. I want you to

1:01:21

go away and do this. I'm going to tell you this story.

1:01:23

The smaller numbers of people, but still hundreds, you can say I'm

1:01:25

going to split you into groups. And I want you to talk

1:01:27

to each other about this. Yeah, they

1:01:29

do it themselves. Do it themselves.

1:01:31

But you're right that ultimately, you know, with

1:01:33

a couple of dozen people, you can do

1:01:35

something a little more magical. And

1:01:38

you can kind of have a room and have

1:01:40

people really in the moment talking to each other

1:01:43

and working together and all

1:01:45

hearing each other. And that isn't

1:01:47

possible with larger numbers of people. Or

1:01:49

that interestingly, when I do things online,

1:01:52

I find group chat can be very powerful, because

1:01:55

actually, people can't hear many voices at

1:01:57

the same time, you know, it just becomes a shouting

1:01:59

match. But with a group chat, you

1:02:02

can say to people, you know, okay, we're going

1:02:04

to reframe this question, we're going to come up

1:02:07

with as many different ways as we can of

1:02:09

defining a word like fairness, or efficiency, these words

1:02:11

that seem so simple, but they'll actually turn out

1:02:13

to have 30 or 40 or 50 different meanings.

1:02:15

And not the same to everyone. Not the same

1:02:18

to everyone. You say to an organization, okay, so

1:02:20

here's your core values, you're an organization, and you're

1:02:22

all about delivering value for customers. So

1:02:25

each of you is now going to time right down in the

1:02:27

group chat what you think that means in a sentence. And

1:02:29

you're going to get 60 different sentences and some

1:02:31

of those sentences are going to be contradictory. And

1:02:34

this thing that people thought we're all

1:02:36

about making, you know, helping our clients

1:02:39

be more efficient. So we're all

1:02:41

going to write down what we think the word efficient means. And

1:02:43

lo and behold, it means 50 different things.

1:02:47

Yeah. But what I find strange and a bit

1:02:49

annoying there is that I think vagueness

1:02:52

in the corporate world has some appeal.

1:02:54

So if you deliver a

1:02:56

talk talking about excellence or greatness or

1:02:58

whatever other vague words we can

1:03:01

think of, if you do it with

1:03:03

the right rhetoric, so if you do it with

1:03:06

right enthusiasm and with good delivery,

1:03:09

it often persuades people more than something

1:03:11

which explains better and in concrete terms

1:03:13

a concept. In other words, it

1:03:16

seems that vagueness works towards

1:03:19

persuasion in the rhetorical sense. I think

1:03:21

that's right. Vagueness is very safe

1:03:24

because you can't, if I said my

1:03:27

vision for this company is to be

1:03:29

bold and to be brave and

1:03:31

to be beautiful. What does that mean? Like

1:03:34

you can't call me on it. And I said, and I

1:03:36

can't disagree with that. No one, right? If

1:03:38

I said my vision for this company is to deliver

1:03:40

a minimum of a 15% increase in turnover and

1:03:45

profits and to be employing 25% more

1:03:47

people and to be shipping 10% more

1:03:50

product, very obviously you

1:03:52

can call me on that. Also if you're vague,

1:03:55

people are free to project their own ideas

1:03:57

onto it. I think I'll render.

1:04:00

And Feynman is very useful here, particularly

1:04:02

his work in education. He worked on an education

1:04:04

board and took a horror of

1:04:06

everybody in the education board. He read all

1:04:08

the textbooks. Yeah, I read. And

1:04:11

he made a lovely distinction between clarity

1:04:13

and false precision. Clarity

1:04:15

has been clear about what you mean. Clarity

1:04:17

is saying in a school textbook, when

1:04:20

the car drives along the road,

1:04:23

the surface of the road scrapes off little bits

1:04:25

of rubber from the wheel. And

1:04:27

very gradually, the rubber of the wheel

1:04:29

gets scraped away by the road and

1:04:31

the energy of driving. So you have

1:04:33

to replace it with a new wheel.

1:04:37

And that's clear. You're explaining

1:04:39

to some kids about the ideas underlying

1:04:42

friction. Whereas false

1:04:44

precision is saying, over

1:04:46

time, friction causes the erosion of wheel

1:04:48

rubber. That sounds really

1:04:50

scientific, but it doesn't explain anything. It

1:04:53

just sounds good. And Feynman made the point

1:04:55

that clarity is really important. And

1:04:57

that doesn't mean trying to be hyper precise. Again,

1:05:00

to be clear is to say, I

1:05:02

want to see our organization growing

1:05:05

year on year by more than our

1:05:07

competitors. It's nice and clear. Whereas

1:05:10

perhaps false precision is saying, I

1:05:12

want to see a minimum uplift of

1:05:14

2.2% above base

1:05:16

rate on a quarterly basis or something

1:05:19

like that. When talking about the

1:05:21

future in terms like that is meaningless, because

1:05:24

the error margins in measurement and

1:05:26

so on. Sorry

1:05:29

to interrupt, but I think Feynman's point had a lot

1:05:31

to do with clarity

1:05:33

being associated with being

1:05:36

concrete. So talking about concrete stuff,

1:05:38

whereas that false precision

1:05:40

usually employs concepts which might

1:05:42

not be vague, but are

1:05:44

not necessarily known by

1:05:46

your interlocutors. Exactly right. There's

1:05:49

these sort of two dangers really that you're hyper

1:05:52

precise in a meaningless way, or

1:05:55

that you're vague and obscure. And as you

1:05:57

see, true clarity is somewhere in the middle.

1:06:00

clarity is explaining

1:06:02

in kind of simple concrete language what

1:06:04

you're actually talking about. The

1:06:07

values of organizations is

1:06:09

a classic area for kind of vagueness and

1:06:11

hand waving because they're sort of designed to

1:06:13

make people feel good and be vaguely nice

1:06:15

and that's very safe. People

1:06:18

can project on it, makes people

1:06:20

feel warm inside, but actually I

1:06:22

think it can be very, very

1:06:24

undemanding in the worst sense because

1:06:27

we come back to the idea of

1:06:29

science that a theory or an idea

1:06:31

which can't be tested or disproved isn't

1:06:34

worth very much. You know,

1:06:36

if it explains everything, it explains nothing.

1:06:38

If I have a statement with which

1:06:41

no one would disagree, it's probably not

1:06:43

worth saying. I want our organization to

1:06:45

be inclusive and bold. Well, who doesn't?

1:06:47

Does anyone want their organization to be

1:06:49

timid and un-inclusive? Probably

1:06:52

not. I want my organization

1:06:54

to be a leader in its

1:06:57

field. Well, again, do I want my

1:06:59

organization to be a follower in its

1:07:01

field? And that simple trick of

1:07:03

saying, well, is the opposite of this statement

1:07:05

even vaguely credible? Is

1:07:08

this actually anything at all? But of

1:07:10

course it can be quite dangerous to say this. A lot of people

1:07:13

just want a bit of vague,

1:07:18

feel-good noise. Yeah, you

1:07:20

want a round, I don't know if this expression

1:07:22

exists in English, like you want round talk, like

1:07:24

in the sense of not

1:07:27

having angles or edges.

1:07:30

And it's not very different from politics.

1:07:33

It's not exactly the same, but you get whenever

1:07:36

you're talking to a broad

1:07:39

audience, which is diverse, you

1:07:42

end up, I think, having to

1:07:44

use that vague speech. Yeah, it's

1:07:46

a real danger. And it's

1:07:48

a strategy. I

1:07:50

do think that the kind of the

1:07:52

greatest examples of rhetoric, which obviously are

1:07:54

rare, combine inspiration

1:07:57

and persuasion. with

1:08:00

real kind of rational content.

1:08:04

We think back to Martin Luther King's

1:08:06

speeches and things like that. Visionary

1:08:09

rhetoric, but also

1:08:11

specific, painfully specific,

1:08:14

concrete, rooted

1:08:17

imagery and ideas and

1:08:19

asks. That's a very good point. And also,

1:08:21

in a sense, his speech,

1:08:23

to take that example, does

1:08:25

what we've been talking about,

1:08:27

which is question some assumptions which are

1:08:31

vague or imperfect or unrealistic. So it has

1:08:33

clearly that rational part and then on top

1:08:35

of it, obviously, has that

1:08:37

amazing rhetoric. So you have the two

1:08:39

components working with each other. That's right.

1:08:42

And I think we're not always

1:08:44

going to get that. We're talking about

1:08:46

one of the greatest orators in modern

1:08:48

history. But it's okay, I think,

1:08:50

to look at these examples and

1:08:52

realize that it's possible to aspire

1:08:55

to say something concrete and

1:08:58

meaningful and challenging to throw down an

1:09:00

actual challenge to people that we, you

1:09:02

know, rather than just to

1:09:04

play it safe. Yeah. Tom, you have

1:09:06

a new book out called

1:09:09

Wise Animals. Let's talk about it. I

1:09:11

meant to talk about it earlier in our

1:09:13

conversation, but it's your fault. You were too

1:09:16

interesting talking about this topic. So I

1:09:19

only arrived at it now. Well, it's better that

1:09:21

I ask you to pitch the book. You'll do

1:09:23

it better than me. Well, it's a book I

1:09:25

loved writing because in a way, it's just about

1:09:27

a lot of things that fascinate me. It

1:09:30

tells the story of

1:09:32

how human technology

1:09:35

evolved alongside humanity

1:09:37

and how the human story

1:09:40

is entwined with tools and

1:09:42

technological artifacts from before the beginning

1:09:45

of our species, of how

1:09:47

fire and flint tools and then much

1:09:49

later language and then much later literacy

1:09:51

and so on. These are not

1:09:53

just sort of optional extras.

1:09:56

These are absolutely entwined with

1:09:58

our humanity. The

1:10:00

key lesson for me could be really

1:10:02

summed up by the idea that there's

1:10:05

no such thing as a neutral

1:10:07

tool, that the technologies we collectively

1:10:10

make and use and develop have

1:10:13

all kinds of biases and

1:10:15

potentials and properties that push

1:10:17

us towards certain kinds of

1:10:19

action and understanding that shape

1:10:22

who we are and how we understand the world. So

1:10:25

when it comes to things like artificial

1:10:27

intelligence and autonomous systems

1:10:30

and indeed social media, we

1:10:32

need to ask ethical

1:10:35

and imaginative questions about

1:10:37

what we want from these systems.

1:10:40

We need to ask what it means to build

1:10:42

systems that serve the best in us, that

1:10:45

elevate our decision making, speak

1:10:47

to the themes I've been we've been talking about

1:10:50

so far. And the

1:10:52

message for me is that technology doesn't

1:10:54

determine our fate, that collectively

1:10:57

over time, we have control, we

1:10:59

get to shape and

1:11:01

choose between different possible futures. We

1:11:04

get to build technologies that serve different

1:11:06

ideas and purposes. So what does it

1:11:09

mean for technology to serve rather than

1:11:11

subvert democracy? What does it

1:11:13

mean to build systems that help us make better

1:11:16

and more informed decisions rather

1:11:18

than trapping us in

1:11:20

intense emotions and delusions? What

1:11:23

does it mean to build infrastructure and

1:11:26

cities that are beautiful, that

1:11:28

are livable, that are compatible

1:11:30

with the health of our planet

1:11:33

rather than destructive of it? So in a

1:11:35

funny way, it's a bit of a crazy

1:11:37

book. It's a very personal book. But it's

1:11:40

a book about technological humanism

1:11:42

and what it means

1:11:44

to talk about technology richly

1:11:46

in terms of emotion and

1:11:48

cognition and philosophy and aesthetics,

1:11:50

as well as just engineering.

1:11:53

Yeah. And I'm very curious to to

1:11:56

hear your opinion on these topics because

1:11:58

you unlike me, not only thought

1:12:01

about these topics but also done the research

1:12:03

on the history of our relationship to technology

1:12:05

and you have this interesting

1:12:07

expression that we co-evolved with technology which

1:12:09

I think is quite beautiful, especially in

1:12:11

that broad sense in

1:12:13

which you interpret the meaning of technology.

1:12:15

There we go again about concepts, right?

1:12:17

So that's the concept in which the

1:12:21

meaning you give to it includes

1:12:23

also the early tools we've used

1:12:25

and even language. That would be

1:12:27

enough for a whole conversation or even more than one so

1:12:29

we don't have time for it. But

1:12:31

I'm curious to know your view on two big

1:12:33

topics and two big challenges I think we have

1:12:35

nowadays. One is the

1:12:38

challenge digital media and

1:12:40

social media brings

1:12:42

to democracy with tribalism that

1:12:44

you mentioned earlier, populism,

1:12:47

polarization. And the other one has to do with

1:12:50

social media and children and specifically

1:12:52

advice for parents like us who

1:12:55

we have to deal with children

1:12:57

growing up in this age. But let's

1:12:59

start with the first

1:13:01

which is a topic I'm very curious about.

1:13:03

I even wrote a book which is partially

1:13:06

about this, about the impact of fake

1:13:09

news populism, tribalism and

1:13:11

how to deal with it. And to be honest,

1:13:14

I don't know the answer. So I know that

1:13:16

it's clearly a challenge that democracy is facing. So

1:13:18

the old model of democracy was not prepared for

1:13:21

the world of social media so that's clear. I

1:13:24

don't know yet what the future will look

1:13:26

like and especially how the transition to that

1:13:28

future will look like. So if you can

1:13:30

enlighten us, Tom, on

1:13:32

the path and the destination,

1:13:34

that would be very helpful. Well,

1:13:37

the one thing I feel

1:13:39

fairly confident about is that

1:13:41

it's a mistake to focus on technology

1:13:44

in the abstract. That actually

1:13:47

talking about social media doing things

1:13:49

to society as though it's a

1:13:51

sort of force out there that just makes stuff happen

1:13:53

is the wrong way of thinking about it. We

1:13:56

need to see how any technology is

1:13:58

embedded in a particular society. So

1:14:01

technology like social media is obviously

1:14:03

where people can be polarised, can

1:14:06

find voices, can be deceived, can

1:14:08

be manipulated, it can be used by populists, it

1:14:10

can be used as part of

1:14:12

vast stretches of surveillance, it can also be

1:14:14

used for great good and education and so

1:14:16

on. But all of

1:14:18

these things are embedded in particular

1:14:21

societies, in particular ways. And

1:14:23

when we talk to people about this, we

1:14:25

find again and again, that not that many

1:14:27

people just have their minds changed by social

1:14:29

media. It's more

1:14:31

that the things that they already want

1:14:34

to believe or fear or encouraged to

1:14:36

believe, they then seek out in social

1:14:38

media and it maybe amplifies these. So

1:14:40

I think you need to talk about

1:14:43

it in the context of people's

1:14:46

jobs, people's security

1:14:48

of earning, the levels

1:14:50

of equality and exclusion within a

1:14:52

society, its education and so on.

1:14:55

To some degree, you also need to talk

1:14:57

about the regulation of technology companies and the

1:15:00

ways in which monopolies are around allowed

1:15:02

to exist and the ways

1:15:05

in which certain public goods

1:15:07

and assets are or aren't

1:15:09

exploited or undermined. So

1:15:11

ultimately, and this is a bit of

1:15:14

a non-answer, it becomes a question of

1:15:16

sort of governance and what

1:15:18

a society believes itself to be and

1:15:20

what it prioritises and the ways in

1:15:22

which it regulates and the

1:15:24

ways in which social media, ultimately,

1:15:26

I think, social media can be

1:15:28

most useful when it highlights deep

1:15:31

sources of discontent and division

1:15:33

and exclusion. We look

1:15:35

across Europe, we see the rise of

1:15:37

the far right, of xenophobia

1:15:40

and isolationism, we

1:15:43

see a lot of fear about the future, we see a

1:15:45

lot of despondency, we see a lot of disinformation

1:15:47

and misinformation, but of course, for

1:15:50

me, I actually think it's a mistake

1:15:53

to empower governments to legislate

1:15:55

for what is or isn't true. That

1:15:57

seems to me to be very dangerous, it seems to me a

1:15:59

tool. that would probably backfire, that

1:16:02

is in itself tending towards

1:16:04

the totalitarian. What

1:16:06

does it instead mean to

1:16:08

reinforce structures of scrutiny, to

1:16:11

reinforce tolerance on a societal

1:16:14

level, to have an

1:16:16

education system, to have social

1:16:18

safety nets, to have systems

1:16:21

of justice that address

1:16:24

the concerns underlying

1:16:27

these fears? If people worry about

1:16:29

their jobs and their incomes and

1:16:31

their future and their planet and

1:16:33

their society, they're telling a government

1:16:35

something very important. But you

1:16:38

can't fight that battle in the realm of social media.

1:16:40

It's very easy to scapegoat it.

1:16:43

And I think, actually, I almost

1:16:45

end up thinking that the excessive focus

1:16:48

on technology is a red herring, is

1:16:50

a distraction from the deeper issues. So

1:16:53

this is often my answer when it comes to technology,

1:16:55

that we have to be a little suspicious of

1:16:58

the idea that the technology in itself

1:17:00

can either fix things or

1:17:02

make them worse and make them terrible. Interesting.

1:17:05

I have a different view there, I'd

1:17:08

say, because of course we don't

1:17:10

have the counterfactual here. So we

1:17:12

don't have the parallel universe in which social media

1:17:14

was not invented. But I

1:17:17

find the changes that we have had

1:17:19

in society and democracy so

1:17:22

big that I don't find any other cause

1:17:24

than the impact of social media.

1:17:26

And when I say social media, I'm

1:17:28

including also other platforms of internet, and

1:17:30

I'm including WhatsApp and so on. Of

1:17:33

course, again, I don't have the counterfactual, so I cannot

1:17:35

prove this. But I find, for instance,

1:17:37

I don't know what to think of this, but I

1:17:39

find parallel with the invention of the printing press quite

1:17:42

persuasive. As you

1:17:44

know, when Gutenberg invented the printing press, suddenly

1:17:47

what it meant in practice – it was

1:17:49

not actually that sudden, because back then things

1:17:51

took a bit longer to have their effects –

1:17:53

but with a few decades, suddenly books started

1:17:55

being printed out and so the readers of books started becoming

1:17:58

more and more and more and more and more and more

1:18:00

becoming much more in number than they used

1:18:02

to be. So the previous elites that were

1:18:04

basically a few hundred or a few thousand

1:18:06

people that had access to knowledge no

1:18:08

longer had the monopoly of that knowledge and

1:18:10

suddenly you have a lot of people reading

1:18:13

which was not of course the masses but

1:18:15

much more people than before and

1:18:17

that changed, that had a huge impact in

1:18:19

society and it led for instance to the

1:18:21

religious wars. And then after the

1:18:24

religious wars we actually got enlightenment which was much

1:18:26

better than what we had before but we had

1:18:28

to go through the religious wars and I feel

1:18:30

that we are kind of living through. So

1:18:33

here I would agree with you

1:18:35

here but I think the societal

1:18:37

change is the rise of mass interactive

1:18:39

media in general, not social media

1:18:41

in particular. Social media is

1:18:43

very significant but I think… So again the

1:18:45

concept was misleading again.

1:18:47

Yes but I think the analogy with Gutenberg is

1:18:50

very close in some ways. Media

1:18:52

and mass interactive media, the mobile

1:18:54

phone as a technology, absolutely.

1:18:57

Gutenberg printing transformed

1:19:01

the relationship of the majority of

1:19:03

humanity with written history and records.

1:19:06

It had been a province of the elite through

1:19:08

most of history, through most of

1:19:10

geography and it became over

1:19:13

a few centuries the province

1:19:15

of the majority and now the

1:19:18

creation of mediated records is becoming…

1:19:20

everybody does all the time and

1:19:22

not only that but also now

1:19:24

the creation of

1:19:28

records of media is arguably becoming

1:19:30

the province of machines,

1:19:33

of machine agents, of AIs and so on.

1:19:35

So this is huge, yes this is huge.

1:19:38

I just don't want to focus too much on

1:19:40

social media in particular but it's an immense revolution

1:19:42

and I don't think we can

1:19:44

fully understand it. I do think

1:19:47

that social media can point us

1:19:49

towards some of the dangers of course which

1:19:51

is about the spread of

1:19:53

emotionally impactful information at the expense

1:19:55

of truth, of

1:19:58

tribalism, the undermining of… common

1:20:00

bodies of knowledge and understanding, the

1:20:03

empowerment of dictators

1:20:05

and manipulators and surveillance of all stripes.

1:20:07

So yes, these are huge social trends,

1:20:10

but I guess I would want to

1:20:12

focus upon the bigger picture and

1:20:15

the mutual relationship. So as

1:20:17

you say, Gutenberg is interesting partly because

1:20:19

existing religious institutions tried to use

1:20:21

the Gutenberg press and presses

1:20:24

to spread the truth as they saw it, and

1:20:26

then Luther and others tried to

1:20:28

spread their truth greatly to the shock of

1:20:30

the Catholic authorities. You know, it was the

1:20:32

channeling of old conflicts in through new channels.

1:20:35

And I think it's this combination of the

1:20:37

old and the new. So I wouldn't dispute

1:20:39

the which is arguably what we are witnessing.

1:20:41

Yes, it is. Absolutely.

1:20:43

And I guess this is the thing you

1:20:45

see, I don't have, I guess,

1:20:48

a kind of a single answer to

1:20:50

it. You are a proper philosopher, you have

1:20:52

questions not answers. I have questions. This is

1:20:54

what philosophy does. We try to get people

1:20:56

to ask better quality questions. Although ironically enough,

1:20:59

I do greatly enjoy trying to provide concrete

1:21:01

policy advice and, you know, concrete ideas. I

1:21:03

think it's very important to come up with

1:21:05

specific recommendations. Last

1:21:08

question. What do you think

1:21:10

on the impact of social media on mental

1:21:12

health? As you know, there's a big discussion

1:21:14

around these about some people call it the

1:21:17

mental illness epidemic. Jonathan Haidt, we might know

1:21:19

is a social psychologist, he has a new

1:21:21

book out called The Anxious Generation.

1:21:23

I was listening to a podcast with him the other

1:21:25

day. And he has this, I

1:21:28

mean, these troubling numbers that show that mental

1:21:31

health has deteriorated a lot, especially

1:21:33

since 2012, which is basically the

1:21:35

turn when social media really

1:21:38

got big and its impact, especially

1:21:41

girls. And I have two girl daughters, although they

1:21:43

are still too young for that. But I talk

1:21:45

with friends who have children, especially those

1:21:47

who have girls, when they get even

1:21:50

sometimes pre-teens and they want to have their mobile phones,

1:21:52

it's a big challenge. They don't they actually don't know

1:21:54

how to manage it, whether they should give it to

1:21:56

them, they should monitor, then sometimes they want

1:21:58

to do things in a certain way. they want to

1:22:00

be more restrictive. But her

1:22:03

friends, their friends are not, or their parents'

1:22:05

friends are not being equally restrictive, so they

1:22:07

have no option then to adopt the same

1:22:09

behavior. It's a big challenge, I feel. As

1:22:12

a parent, I struggle with this. I

1:22:14

think it can be very, very

1:22:16

disconcerting to battle with

1:22:18

your children from a young age over

1:22:21

something that you feel may be making

1:22:23

them less safe, making them less well,

1:22:25

that may be powerful in ways that

1:22:27

they are ill-equipped to deal with. One

1:22:30

of the great challenges, I think, of

1:22:32

parenting and education is to try and

1:22:34

help young people grow into

1:22:38

happy digital citizens who can use

1:22:40

technology well, who can find balance.

1:22:42

I think the evidence is perhaps

1:22:44

more equivocal than Heitz argument suggests,

1:22:46

and there's real evidence there. I'm

1:22:48

fairly familiar with it. He makes

1:22:50

a very strong case, people like

1:22:52

Talakow and others have pointed out that some

1:22:54

evidence are on. Oh, you heard the

1:22:56

same podcast then. Yeah, around global

1:22:59

suicide rates and country

1:23:01

to country and so on, means that

1:23:03

the big picture is

1:23:05

unclear. I think very

1:23:07

broadly, there's a very strong

1:23:09

case for caution. There's

1:23:11

a very strong case for schools and governments

1:23:14

helping parents to put more

1:23:17

limits and barriers around use

1:23:19

of technology and to understand it better, to be less

1:23:21

afraid. I think what every parent

1:23:24

wants is to have good conversations

1:23:26

with their children about what they're doing. To keep

1:23:28

children safe, of course, you need

1:23:30

to know what they're doing, and they need to

1:23:32

trust you with that. I think

1:23:35

one of the simplest and greatest dangers is just

1:23:37

children having lots of private time on

1:23:40

devices, unscripted by their parents with

1:23:43

unfettered access to the internet. Not

1:23:45

because phones are inherently evil or

1:23:47

bad, but because the

1:23:49

amount of danger,

1:23:52

violence, manipulation and so on that can come

1:23:55

at a young person through the screen of

1:23:57

a phone is enormous. For me, perhaps the

1:23:59

most powerful. point that height and others have

1:24:01

made is that very broadly it's

1:24:04

easy today to give children far

1:24:07

too little risk and

1:24:09

independence in the real physical world and

1:24:11

far too much risk and independence in the digital

1:24:14

world. This balance is wildly

1:24:16

out of kilter that children should

1:24:18

be spending more time exploring

1:24:22

on their own physically taking some risks

1:24:24

doing stuff in the world, in

1:24:26

their towns, in their

1:24:28

neighborhoods and should be spending much less time

1:24:31

going into risky unsupervised areas of

1:24:33

the internet and being left alone

1:24:35

for hours with

1:24:37

unfitted access. But how do you do

1:24:39

that in practice? Because I haven't

1:24:43

reached that phase yet, but is there a

1:24:45

way in which you can give like partial

1:24:47

autonomy or partial privacy to kids? Because if

1:24:49

we look at the time in which we

1:24:52

both grew up, obviously there

1:24:54

was much less that we could do with the

1:24:56

internet, but we had full privacy. At least I

1:24:58

have full privacy in practice. I include whatever I

1:25:00

want in some part because

1:25:02

my parents didn't exactly understand at that

1:25:04

point how computers and internet work. But

1:25:07

now this as I see it, you can either give

1:25:09

kids a mobile phone or give them

1:25:11

a mobile phone and see what they are doing or give

1:25:14

them a mobile phone and not see what they are doing.

1:25:16

So you cannot give them

1:25:18

like partial privacy. So you can either monitor

1:25:21

them or not monitor them. Maybe

1:25:23

I mean naive but I don't think you are. I

1:25:25

think it's incredibly difficult and I would just be lying

1:25:27

if I said I had a perfect answer. My

1:25:29

imperfect answer is that a mobile phone is

1:25:31

a physical object. And

1:25:34

very broadly speaking, you know,

1:25:37

children can have it for some time, for some

1:25:39

apps, but not

1:25:41

all of the time and not for all apps

1:25:44

and not for all services. It gets harder as

1:25:46

children get older. Yeah. What's your concrete advice? So

1:25:48

in terms of age, let's say I

1:25:50

was a parent, my

1:25:53

oldest daughter was turning 12 and

1:25:55

she wanted a mobile phone with access to social media.

1:25:57

Would you advise that? Would you say I wait? until

1:26:00

she was 14 or 15. I would try

1:26:02

to suggest a mobile phone with no access

1:26:04

to social media. I would try to suggest

1:26:06

doing a lot of stuff on shared screens

1:26:08

and shared spaces, even on tablets. I play

1:26:11

video games with my kids and so on, who are 8

1:26:13

and 10. But already, you know,

1:26:15

it can be a losing beat. Things

1:26:17

like that. And I think trying

1:26:20

to have very clear time boundaries and

1:26:22

space boundaries around it. I don't like

1:26:24

the idea of private screens in bedrooms.

1:26:26

I don't like the idea of there

1:26:29

being just, you know, a lack of

1:26:31

variety in time. I think

1:26:33

it can be really hard to resist peer pressure. I

1:26:36

just try to keep talking to my kids about

1:26:38

what's going on and taking interest in it and

1:26:41

having conversations. But most importantly, I

1:26:43

think the ideal for me is

1:26:46

working with them to find kind of rules

1:26:48

and boundaries to understand that it's a contract,

1:26:50

that you're not enemies, that you're just trying

1:26:52

to find a way to balance

1:26:54

the positives and the negatives and make sure

1:26:57

that if there's bad or

1:26:59

worrying or upsetting stuff, they come to you. But

1:27:01

also that the home and the family can

1:27:04

be a place of safety. Because one of the great dangers

1:27:06

of a phone for all of us can be that there's

1:27:08

no time and no space in which we

1:27:10

are off and safe.

1:27:13

Perhaps the best concrete advice, which is hard to take,

1:27:16

is to model the behaviors yourself that you want to

1:27:18

see. Is to yourself,

1:27:20

you know, put your phone away, turn it

1:27:22

off, put it in a box, don't sleep

1:27:24

with it in your bedroom, you know, use

1:27:26

different technologies. And I try and I often fail to

1:27:28

say, you know, drive out the bad with the good,

1:27:31

so to speak. I try to buy great video games

1:27:33

for my kids. You know, I

1:27:35

buy the Zelda games, the Mario games,

1:27:38

Minecraft is a wonderful game, try to

1:27:40

celebrate that rather than games

1:27:42

that are very exploitative based on, you know,

1:27:44

kind of freemium models. They try to

1:27:46

get them kind of really on Kindle and using interactive

1:27:49

books and doing coding rather

1:27:51

than just being on YouTube

1:27:54

the whole time. But I also get it

1:27:56

wrong. And I just desperately hope that

1:27:59

I can provide enough balance

1:28:02

and love and support and options and

1:28:04

opportunities that my

1:28:06

children will come to me when

1:28:09

they are worried or sad and

1:28:11

that their home and their life will

1:28:13

have enough space and time

1:28:15

and safety in it that they

1:28:17

can do the learning they need to do. Yeah.

1:28:20

Tom, I'm mindful of your time so I'll let you

1:28:22

go. It was a great conversation. Thanks. I mean, I

1:28:25

wish you all success for all

1:28:27

your endeavors, especially your book Wise Animals

1:28:29

so everyone who's listening, I encourage you

1:28:31

to read. I mean, as you understood

1:28:33

already, Tom has a very sharp mind

1:28:35

so that's my recommendation. Thanks, Tom. Thank

1:28:37

you so much. It's been my very

1:28:39

great pleasure. Thank

1:29:05

you.