Speaker 1: You can play with the future scenario and it can
Speaker 1: change your behavior today and in ways that support your
Speaker 1: health and happiness. And so it's like this weird you know,
Speaker 1: we're thinking about the future. It's changing our behavior today.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's like it's almost like the time space
Speaker 1: continuum is collapsing a little bit in our minds. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome Jane McGonagall.
Speaker 1: Jane is a world renowned game designer who challenges players
Speaker 1: to tackle real world problems such as poverty, depression, and
Speaker 1: climate change through collaboration. Jane is also a future forecaster,
Speaker 1: serving as the current director of Games Research and Development
Speaker 1: at the Institute for the Future. Her games and forecasting
Speaker 1: work has been featured in The New York Times, Wired,
Speaker 1: The Economist, CNN, NPR, and more. As a two time
Speaker 1: New York Times bestselling author, she has recently published her
Speaker 1: third book called Imaginable. In this episode, I talk to
Speaker 1: Jane about the intersection of gaming and future forecasting. Jane
Speaker 1: as searched that games are not just for escapist entertainment.
Speaker 1: They could also be used to help prepare us for
Speaker 1: what's to come. Imagining fictional simulations can inspire us to
Speaker 1: make present changes which can influence our personal and collective
Speaker 1: futures for the better. We also touch on the topics
Speaker 1: of creativity, psychotherapy, forecasting, hope, and tech. It's in my
Speaker 1: great delight to now bring you, Jane mcconnagall. It's great
Speaker 1: to be back in I feel like I was one
Speaker 1: of your very first podcast guests. I know, like episode
Speaker 1: one or two or something like, very low back at that.
Speaker 1: We should look back at that, because I feel like
Speaker 1: you were there like ground zero. Well literally it might
Speaker 1: have been the first, Like I'm sure it was like
Speaker 1: the first three episodes, like there were no live episodes
Speaker 1: when I talked to you, it was right in the
Speaker 1: ground floor. Yeah, you were right there. So thank you
Speaker 1: for believing in me back back in the day. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it, and I still I still believe in you,
Speaker 1: and I love this new book that you wrote. Before
Speaker 1: we get to the new work, and may been some
Speaker 1: time since our listeners remember the last conversation I had
Speaker 1: with you, maybe you could tell them a little bit
Speaker 1: about what a futurist is and and how in the
Speaker 1: world you created such an amazing unique niche for yourself
Speaker 1: by combining futurism with game design. I can't think of
Speaker 1: too many other people that have have really are in
Speaker 1: that niche. Yeah, if you find someone else in that
Speaker 1: niche to, yeah, yeah, it's it's I just love that,
Speaker 1: that's all. I'm all about creativity, and I love you know,
Speaker 1: self actualizing unique creative potentials like you've done. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you could just you know, we step back a moment,
Speaker 1: just tell people a little about those two things. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess my career as a futurist began
Speaker 1: before I knew what a futurist was. Scott, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you know the saying from Alan Ka the computer scientist,
Speaker 1: the best way to predict the future is to invented,
Speaker 1: And I was. Yeah, in my early game design career,
Speaker 1: I was running around telling people, we need to make
Speaker 1: a new kind of game, a game that really helps
Speaker 1: people actualize themselves in their real lives and not just
Speaker 1: a virtual world. I had all these ideas and theories,
Speaker 1: and I was doing research as a grad student at Berkeley,
Speaker 1: but what I was describing didn't quite exist yet. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I was trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: bring into existence was a type of game that would
Speaker 1: allow people who regularly play video games to apply the
Speaker 1: same mindset and creativity and flexible thinking to real world problems.
Speaker 1: So I was imagining a future where gamers were really
Speaker 1: playing in service of humanity's long term well being, but like,
Speaker 1: there weren't a lot of games that a gamer could
Speaker 1: play for that purpose. And I wound up connecting with
Speaker 1: the nonprofit organization in Palo Alto called the Institute for
Speaker 1: the Future, which you have visited, Scott. They're great people, yeah,
Speaker 1: And they said, well, you know, maybe you can make
Speaker 1: some games to help people imagine the future, and we'll
Speaker 1: see what gamers are good at when it comes to
Speaker 1: the future. And so I started creating essentially social simulations
Speaker 1: of the future, which is kind of like a Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons game, like where you sit around the table
Speaker 1: and you go on this imaginative adventure together, but instead
Speaker 1: of it being like six friends around a kitchen table,
Speaker 1: it might be ten thousand people around a social network,
Speaker 1: and we're all imagining what if we woke up and
Speaker 1: it was the worst pandemic the world had seen in
Speaker 1: a century. What if we woke up and there was
Speaker 1: this crazy misinformation conspiracy theory group on social media, and
Speaker 1: all your friends and family were thinking crazy things and
Speaker 1: you didn't know how to help them. And we're trying
Speaker 1: to imagine worlds we might wake up and think about
Speaker 1: how we could prepare for those futures or help others,
Speaker 1: or maybe even avoid them by taking action today. And
Speaker 1: that turned out to be not such a strange idea.
Speaker 1: When I first started saying gamers could definitely do important
Speaker 1: things with their gaming skills, we just it took a
Speaker 1: while to sort of prove the concept because we started
Speaker 1: making these games in two thousand and seven, two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, two thousand and nine, twenty ten. All the
Speaker 1: games are set ten years in the future, so we
Speaker 1: had to kind of, you know, wait a decade and see,
Speaker 1: you know, did imagining the future actually help people who
Speaker 1: participated or help us learn things that we could put
Speaker 1: into action once the real future arrived. Have you always
Speaker 1: been imaginative like when you were a kid, Because the
Speaker 1: thing that binds both those things is obviously an appreciation
Speaker 1: of imagination. I've read so when you were young, were
Speaker 1: you did? Were your daydreamer? In school? I was a
Speaker 1: huge daydreamer. I'm just when if you were huge day
Speaker 1: I used to get in trouble for it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I did not get in trouble for daydreaming, but I
Speaker 1: was always inventing games and immersive worlds on the playground.
Speaker 1: So I would be, you know, okay, here's the situation.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the eighties, so we were always
Speaker 1: imagining nuclear war, which we stopped imagining for a few decades,
Speaker 1: and now suddenly we're imagining it again. But we'd say, okay, imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a nuclear war and we all have
Speaker 1: to hide, and here's and on the playground we'd be
Speaker 1: making a bunker. I mean, I was always trying to
Speaker 1: design imaginative experiences for us to sort of play in.
Speaker 1: I guess you would say, I mean, some of them
Speaker 1: were fun ones, but there was a lot of now
Speaker 1: that you mention it, I love this. This is like
Speaker 1: a therapy session for me. There was always like there
Speaker 1: was like a survivalist. I don't know if that was
Speaker 1: just growing up in the eighties. You were always watching
Speaker 1: after school specials where terrible things happened to kids. You
Speaker 1: would get kidnapped, you would get locked in a basement.
Speaker 1: Do you do you remember like growing up because a
Speaker 1: neurotic Jewish mother who would drive to the stop. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so I do think. Yeah, my friends are my twin
Speaker 1: sister and I were definitely always imagining like, okay, how
Speaker 1: would we handle this terrible situation? But it was it
Speaker 1: was It didn't feel anxious at the time. It felt
Speaker 1: playful and imaginative. So maybe maybe that's where I have
Speaker 1: the ability to to, you know, find it fun to
Speaker 1: imagine things that other people describe as hard to think about.
Speaker 1: I mean, like imagining, you know, a migration crisis is
Speaker 1: one of the things that I'm asking people to play with. Now.
Speaker 1: You know, there are a lot of things that make
Speaker 1: it i don't know, painful to think about or create anxiety.
Speaker 1: But I find that you can use the psychological safety
Speaker 1: of games, you know, because when you play video game, right,
Speaker 1: they're all in apocalyptic worlds and wars and and you know,
Speaker 1: terrible disasters, and we don't experience that as overly threatening.
Speaker 1: So maybe in these future simulations, we can use that
Speaker 1: psychological safety of games to think about things that are
Speaker 1: otherwise painful or challenging to think about. Yeah. So what
Speaker 1: I'm hearing just reflecting that back on you, is that
Speaker 1: one of your superpowers is what my mentor, Dromo Singer
Speaker 1: called positive constructive daydreaming, and he differentiated that form of
Speaker 1: daydreaming from neurotic daydreaming, or he called it guilty dysphoric daydreaming,
Speaker 1: which is a different style. And then he actually differentially
Speaker 1: that from a third daydreaming style, which was poor attentional control,
Speaker 1: which is what people aid ADHD you know, tend to
Speaker 1: have difficulty with. And that's a different kind of daydream
Speaker 1: But it seems like you really had the superpower even
Speaker 1: a young age for positive constructive daydreaming. He said it
Speaker 1: was the one most link to creativity. It was the
Speaker 1: one most link to being able to plan your future
Speaker 1: in a productive way and not getting so neurotic about
Speaker 1: the content of the daydreams, but using it as fodder
Speaker 1: for planning. So that's where i'd place you in that
Speaker 1: sort of factor analysis of daydreaming styles. I love that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure everyone listening is also like self diagnosing. Now
Speaker 1: it's funny. I mean, the one of the things that
Speaker 1: has been weird about becoming a futurist is sort of
Speaker 1: sneaking up sideways on some psychological literature that's not in
Speaker 1: the field of future studies or futures thinking, which is
Speaker 1: very much in some ways, there's a lot of content
Speaker 1: to it. You're imagining a world in which everybody gets
Speaker 1: universal basic income, or a world in which cars are
Speaker 1: banned in cities, like you're trying to imagine specific futures.
Speaker 1: But in the psychology field, there is, you know, a
Speaker 1: burgeoning interest in the use of the future for positive
Speaker 1: mental health, right our ability to be motivated by the future,
Speaker 1: or if we can envision the future with more specificity,
Speaker 1: it can help either control anxiety. If we control our imagination,
Speaker 1: we can choose what to imagine instead of the constant
Speaker 1: cycle of negative scenarios who get stuck on or with depression,
Speaker 1: trying to trying to make it more specific, because I
Speaker 1: think in depression people suffer from a vague imagination, which
Speaker 1: can affect their ability to plan and motivate themselves. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I'm not a psychologist, but when I imagine
Speaker 1: the future, I do imagine a convergence of these fields
Speaker 1: a little bit more than there has been where psychologists
Speaker 1: could work with futurists. You know, futurists can give you
Speaker 1: the content for the imagination and psychologists can help design
Speaker 1: you know what types of habits or community rituals you
Speaker 1: know of imagining the future could could help us. It
Speaker 1: just improve our well being, and not just at an
Speaker 1: individual level, but at a at a community level, right
Speaker 1: a demographic level. Well, Dan, didn't you write a report
Speaker 1: for the Imagination Institute? Yes? I thought you did a
Speaker 1: terrific job with it, So I want to give you credit. Thanks,
Speaker 1: And like, I mean, what do you what do you think, Scott?
Speaker 1: I mean, there is there aren't a lot of researchers researching.
Speaker 1: I think like general future is thinking practices where we
Speaker 1: imagine ourselves ten years from today. But I feel like
Speaker 1: we need to bring some futurists into the room so
Speaker 1: we can make it, make it a little more concrete.
Speaker 1: Imagine yourself ten years from today and you have a
Speaker 1: neurosensing device that allows you to participate in a social
Speaker 1: network where you just broadcast your emotions or your thoughts unfiltered,
Speaker 1: not even typing anymore. But just you know, we can
Speaker 1: like put put actual scenarios in there. Look, I love it.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of adapting the work you've done
Speaker 1: for use in clinical psychology settings. I think that's what
Speaker 1: you're getting at. And there's such amazing potential there that
Speaker 1: has been completely unrealized. But this relates so much to
Speaker 1: my mentor Dromo Singers work. That's what I would love
Speaker 1: to get a copy of a book in your hands.
Speaker 1: The book is real quickly if I can find it
Speaker 1: quick in my bookshelf. But it's called imagery and psychotherapy. Oh.
Speaker 1: He developed a whole form of psychotherapy that is just
Speaker 1: not used much today, which uses dreaming and imagery and
Speaker 1: imagination in the future, specifically to help people with mental disorders.
Speaker 1: And I'm going I'm buying a gift as a gift
Speaker 1: to you. I'm gonna buy it. If you give me
Speaker 1: an address to send it to, I will be happy
Speaker 1: to do that. It's good, and I'll do I'll do
Speaker 1: a little mini workshop within the institute on it and
Speaker 1: sort of educate my peers and colleagues because it's interesting.
Speaker 1: There is a whole there's been some weird, interesting intersections
Speaker 1: with with with future forecasting, and I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: less like in current forms of psychotherapy. So this idea
Speaker 1: that there are futures that sort of percolate as almost
Speaker 1: like a subconscious narrative across society. There was a researcher
Speaker 1: by the name of Pollock who said that you know,
Speaker 1: the story we tell about society's futures, if they're utopian,
Speaker 1: it usually suggests that society is flourishing, and if we
Speaker 1: tell dystopian stories, we're on a downward trajectory. But there
Speaker 1: was a sense that like almost in this kind of
Speaker 1: Youngian like deep subconscious that we all have a sense
Speaker 1: of the future that's coming that manifests in our stories
Speaker 1: and narratives. And you know, I mean there there has
Speaker 1: never been any sort of fact checking, longitudinal studies of
Speaker 1: that theory. It's just sort of a it's just sort
Speaker 1: of interesting theory. But there's I think there's long been
Speaker 1: in future forecasting, even going back to the like one
Speaker 1: of the founders of the field, Alvin Toffler. His book
Speaker 1: Future Shock was about the almost a trauma of having
Speaker 1: to like move into the future when the future feels
Speaker 1: very disruptive or very changed. And you know, he had
Speaker 1: the sense that if technology changes too fast, or social
Speaker 1: norms change too fast, or laws changed too fast, the
Speaker 1: economy change, we get we get like, we get frozen,
Speaker 1: we get anxious, we have a sense of powerlessness. So
Speaker 1: I guess in the way like futures and feelings are
Speaker 1: very much bound upked. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah. Once it
Speaker 1: hijacks you're amigdala, it's like, forget about it. You're going
Speaker 1: down a dark path there. Once it hijacks your midild,
Speaker 1: forget about it. That's a that's like a pull quote
Speaker 1: if there's like a teaser for this episode. Once it
Speaker 1: hijacks you, Yeah, I wrote it's so true. I wrote
Speaker 1: an article about like the myth of the neurotic genius,
Speaker 1: because there's this idea that like genius imagination comes from
Speaker 1: a sort of crazy neurotic brain, and I actually showed
Speaker 1: the nerves science so that I was like, actually, it's
Speaker 1: not true. That's not true. Really good imagination is not
Speaker 1: one that's hijacked by the AMGDA. I think maybe that's
Speaker 1: a case of like people who are stuff are often
Speaker 1: moved to make art, and so it's like the art
Speaker 1: becomes a coping mechanism rather than you need it to create.
Speaker 1: You don't need suffering to create it, but if you
Speaker 1: are suffering, you may be very much moved to like
Speaker 1: meaning making and sense making. That's a genius point you
Speaker 1: just made, because everyone, like everyone correlation like it's causation, right,
Speaker 1: and you just like broke it down. You're like, I
Speaker 1: think it's moving in this direction. I know that I
Speaker 1: create games when I'm in deep despair, so that is
Speaker 1: my that is my sort of form of self healing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. I really resonate with that deeply. Well, tell
Speaker 1: us a little about the distinction you make in your
Speaker 1: book between positive imagination and shadow imagination, because I think
Speaker 1: that maps on nicely to some of the other things
Speaker 1: we were talking about. Yeah. Well, you know, when we
Speaker 1: consider what a future might be like at the Institute,
Speaker 1: we do try to consider both the benefits of this future,
Speaker 1: reasons to be excited about it, problems we might solve
Speaker 1: in this future, but also to balance that with well,
Speaker 1: are there maybe some unintended consequences, some risks, some harms,
Speaker 1: but vice versa. Also, when we're imagining a future global
Speaker 1: risk or threat like climate change or pandemics, we can
Speaker 1: also try to imagine, well, what might improve in society
Speaker 1: as we come together to solve these problems, or what
Speaker 1: new technologies or social movements might come into being that
Speaker 1: would ultimately lead us to a better future. I think
Speaker 1: what we find is most people tend to have sort
Speaker 1: of natural bias towards one or the other. Like if
Speaker 1: you give me any scenario, I can just tell you, Scott,
Speaker 1: like I can think of a hundred things that we
Speaker 1: could do to help have long term benefit. Like I
Speaker 1: just naturally go in that direction of looking for positive
Speaker 1: action to take. But that can be really unbalanced. So
Speaker 1: say there's a new technology, Well it might have all
Speaker 1: kinds of systemic harms and effect different people differently, or
Speaker 1: new policies, and you know, I need some help balancing
Speaker 1: out my positive imagination with the shadow imagination. So when
Speaker 1: I play with scenarios, I try to bring lots of
Speaker 1: people together who can represent their own values and their
Speaker 1: fears and their worries and their interests and their communities,
Speaker 1: and we can kind of, you know, think about, well,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a great policy, but if this group's
Speaker 1: not included, then it's actually going to exacerbate economic inequality.
Speaker 1: And if it's just for ordinary people, I find that
Speaker 1: it's like a good practice like to to if you
Speaker 1: feel really excited about something, can you balance it out
Speaker 1: with increasing your awareness of potential risks. But that's really
Speaker 1: all part of a bigger mindset that I call urgent optimism,
Speaker 1: which I mean like positive in shadow imagination. It's it's
Speaker 1: in service of feeling this urgent optimism that there are
Speaker 1: problems to be solved, changes we need to make, and
Speaker 1: that there are new ideas and policies and technologies and
Speaker 1: social movements that can help us make that change or
Speaker 1: address that risk. So we're not frozen, we're not stuck
Speaker 1: in all ways of doing things. And I'm trying to
Speaker 1: fuel people's fire for the future by helping them not
Speaker 1: feel so much, you know, anxiety or powerlessness. I love that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're urgently optimistic, virginally optimistic. Yeah, yeah, I see you
Speaker 1: did there? So did you did you coin that term?
Speaker 1: I did? And the weird thing is I coined it
Speaker 1: originally in my research on video gaming because I was
Speaker 1: trying to explain what happens essentially at a neurological level.
Speaker 1: Why will a gamer fail ninety nine times at a
Speaker 1: level and they are convinced at the hundred times they're
Speaker 1: going to succeed, Like, why why is it that most
Speaker 1: gamers spend eighty percent of the time failing and they
Speaker 1: still say they love and activity. What is happening in
Speaker 1: the brain to keep them motivated and optimistic and high
Speaker 1: energy and high attention even when they're getting all this
Speaker 1: negative feedback. Because I was thinking, if we could replicate this,
Speaker 1: even to a small degree at school or at work
Speaker 1: or in our personal pursuits, we might be able to
Speaker 1: stay engaged longer with tougher problems. So I first noticed
Speaker 1: it in Gamers, and you know, I think we probably
Speaker 1: talked about that on the first episode that we did together.
Speaker 1: You know, that just that constant sense that something good
Speaker 1: could happen in the game, Like we're making these decisions.
Speaker 1: We're making up to sixty decisions a minute, and every
Speaker 1: time we make a decision, we're getting that little expectation
Speaker 1: in the brain something that could happen. My score could
Speaker 1: go up, I could hit the weapon, like I could
Speaker 1: get an advantage. It's it's this incredible abundance of hope.
Speaker 1: And because we get the feedback so quickly, we can
Speaker 1: essentially like supercharge that anticipation and reward cycle. And so
Speaker 1: so anyway, it happens very easily in games. It doesn't
Speaker 1: happen quite as easy with regard to the future, because
Speaker 1: it takes like ten years for the future to arrive.
Speaker 1: We don't get positive feedback. We don't get any kind
Speaker 1: of feedback when we think about the future unless we
Speaker 1: essentially try to can we engineer some feedback, which is
Speaker 1: why you know, I try to get people to play
Speaker 1: games with the future, so at least we can imagine
Speaker 1: some feedback in this situation, so that it feels like
Speaker 1: you're really playing with it and not just kind of
Speaker 1: waiting for the future to happen. Oh wow, I just
Speaker 1: came up with a title for this episode, playing Games
Speaker 1: with the Future. I like it with Jane McGonagall, I
Speaker 1: love that. So you did this. You have many examples
Speaker 1: of this, and I thought now it would be good
Speaker 1: time to go through some examples. In two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight and twenty ten, at the Institute of the Future,
Speaker 1: you ran simulations that predicted human behavior in the face
Speaker 1: of a global respiratory pandemic. Now that's incredible, right, Like
Speaker 1: you you simulate this precise detail from social distancing to
Speaker 1: me asking, to wildfires and even the spread of disinformation,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories and the unbridgable political divide. So in a sense,
Speaker 1: what you're saying is you called it. Okay, Scott, Yes,
Speaker 1: And and my dream is to be the worst futurists
Speaker 1: of all time because all the things that I yeah,
Speaker 1: all the things that I predict, I tend to focus
Speaker 1: on global risks, right, So I want to be wrong.
Speaker 1: I want people to look at me and say, Jane,
Speaker 1: why were you worried about this mass migration? It never happened.
Speaker 1: Don't you look silly? Like, don't you feel silly? And
Speaker 1: I want to be like, no, because we avoided it
Speaker 1: through action today, Like, of course, as the future is,
Speaker 1: you want to prove yourself wrong. But we did, I
Speaker 1: think sort of inadvertently back up into a really interesting
Speaker 1: study of can people can individuals accurately predict at a
Speaker 1: systemic societal level weird stuff that experts did not think
Speaker 1: would happen? Right? So, one of the questions that we
Speaker 1: asked the participants in the two thousand and eight game,
Speaker 1: which was called superstruct was imagine that you've been asked
Speaker 1: to isolate or quarantine for a couple of weeks. Under
Speaker 1: what circumstances would you disobey? Would you refuse to isolate?
Speaker 1: What would you leave the house for? And the number
Speaker 1: one thing that people said was for religious worship, to
Speaker 1: go to church, to go to synagogue, right. They felt
Speaker 1: it was so deeply ingrained in who they were, that
Speaker 1: it was so important to their identity and to participate
Speaker 1: in that community. And we were so actually very early
Speaker 1: on in the actual twenty twenty pandemic. We have religious
Speaker 1: leaders who participate in the institute's community, you know, priests,
Speaker 1: we have ministers, people who lead worship. And I said,
Speaker 1: you have to go virtual because one of the most
Speaker 1: clearest facts that we got out of the simulation with
Speaker 1: people are going to prey no matter what the CDC
Speaker 1: tells them. And it turned out that that was the
Speaker 1: number one super speader risk worldwide. And people went if
Speaker 1: they were positive, they went if they were exposed. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I there is I think a misconception that
Speaker 1: individuals are bad at predicting their future states and Scott,
Speaker 1: you probably know there's there's some there's some research. I
Speaker 1: don't know what, like yeah, forecasting, right, like we're never
Speaker 1: as like happy, Like purchases don't make us as happy
Speaker 1: as we think they really were the future of our emotions,
Speaker 1: our happiness, right, But I feel like maybe that has
Speaker 1: been over extrapolated in the sense that I what I
Speaker 1: am starting to believe this is We've had multiple games
Speaker 1: where people had to live through what they imagined. The
Speaker 1: first one was World Without Oil, where people imagined oil
Speaker 1: gas reaching a certain price point, and and then it did,
Speaker 1: and we're well, okay, are you driving less? Are you
Speaker 1: carpooling more? Are you working from home? Like? What are you?
Speaker 1: And people did what they said they would do. And
Speaker 1: I feel like, maybe we can accurately predict our likely
Speaker 1: reaction to a novel situation or crisis. Maybe maybe we can't.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe we would have predicted I'll be miserable
Speaker 1: in a pandemic, and it turned out that people were
Speaker 1: actually found ways to be happy because we're so emotionally resilient.
Speaker 1: Maybe feelings aside, I do. What I see in our
Speaker 1: games is when people actually had to live through things
Speaker 1: they accurately predicted. You know, we had people practice wearing
Speaker 1: masks in the two thousand and eight game because we're like, well,
Speaker 1: what do you you know it'll be an important skill
Speaker 1: in a pandemic, Let's try it out. But what we
Speaker 1: saw was in terms of the novelty of the physical
Speaker 1: discomfort that people were reporting, the social awkwardness. Another thing
Speaker 1: that we said at the beginning of the real pandemic
Speaker 1: is like this is even though it sounds like a
Speaker 1: small and rational action to take, there's going to be problems.
Speaker 1: So people are not going to want to follow this
Speaker 1: simple advice. It's going to get complicated, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think, you know, I'm I'm excited about trying
Speaker 1: to revisit this idea about like can we predict our
Speaker 1: own futures? Because I think there is on one level,
Speaker 1: it is absolutely true that we are experts on our
Speaker 1: own futures in terms of understanding our values, our needs,
Speaker 1: you know, what we would likely be afraid of, or
Speaker 1: what would drive us to take action in defiance of
Speaker 1: you know, advice or or common sense. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: is another one of those areas where I think there's good,
Speaker 1: good dialogue to be had in the future, like what
Speaker 1: can people predict about their own future accurately and how
Speaker 1: might we leverage that intelligence because in some ways I
Speaker 1: think ordinary people are proving to be better experts on
Speaker 1: the future than the experts. Well, this is really interesting
Speaker 1: what you're saying. It kind of contradicts some of the
Speaker 1: psychology evidence to a certain degree, and in a good way.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you're contradicting this psychic because some of
Speaker 1: it's pessimistic showing that people are really well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's pessimisic. So, but here's the finding. People
Speaker 1: predict that under a catastrophes like that, they say, well,
Speaker 1: if I in both hordonic directions, so if they say,
Speaker 1: if I win the lottery, I'll be this happy, so
Speaker 1: so happy, and they're usually not as happy eventually after
Speaker 1: like a day than what they predict. And then it
Speaker 1: opposites in the other direction as well, where people will say, well,
Speaker 1: if I lost all my arms and legs, you know,
Speaker 1: I would be this unhappy, you know, But then they
Speaker 1: look to see people who don't have arms and legs
Speaker 1: just how you know, sad it is for them and
Speaker 1: the people who in the past have you know, people
Speaker 1: get a car accidents things like that, and they adapt
Speaker 1: to So there's kind of like an overarching point I
Speaker 1: get from all that research is that humans have an
Speaker 1: amazing resiliency as well as kind of an innate kind
Speaker 1: of thermog regulation thing that constantly gets us back to
Speaker 1: some baseline, that biological temperament that we have, Like we
Speaker 1: different our set point, but we all have a sort
Speaker 1: of biological temperament. So I'm wondering how that sort of
Speaker 1: evidence research details us with what you're saying. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean if we accept that that is correct, which I
Speaker 1: have read much of that literature, and I generally accept
Speaker 1: that it's correct, even in my own lived experience. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's affective forecasting, But behavioral forecasting is different. So
Speaker 1: like Scott, for example, what if I said a year
Speaker 1: from today. Okay, so it's March fourteenth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: and you're on an airplane and you've got a parachute on,
Speaker 1: and they're asking you if you want to jump. Do
Speaker 1: you think you could fairly accurately predict whether you are
Speaker 1: likely to jump or to wait for the plane to
Speaker 1: land and walk off the plane. Oh my gosh, what
Speaker 1: a what a question. Now, now I just have a
Speaker 1: follow up question, what are the probabilities they give me
Speaker 1: that thing is going to land? It's like it's a pleasure,
Speaker 1: it's a pleasure ride, Like I don't know what's happened.
Speaker 1: You've been like your friends are like, we're going parachute.
Speaker 1: I mean basically, so it's not a catastrophe in the place,
Speaker 1: could you it will land? But could you accurately do
Speaker 1: you feel like I feel I could pretty accurately tell
Speaker 1: you that short of them paying me ten to twenty
Speaker 1: million dollars, I would not do it. It's just not
Speaker 1: in my nature. I'm not brave enough. I'm interested in
Speaker 1: thrills enough, and I think I'd be traumatized by it,
Speaker 1: so I would I would avoid it. I'd have flashbacks
Speaker 1: the rest of my life. So that's what I would feel.
Speaker 1: And I am pretty confident that if you put me
Speaker 1: on a plane a year from now, that is how
Speaker 1: I would act. Now, maybe something would change. But do
Speaker 1: you feel like you could give a pretty accurate prediction?
Speaker 1: I answer, and here's what if I if it was
Speaker 1: sprung on me, If it was sprung on me without
Speaker 1: any I had no idea this was going to happen.
Speaker 1: Like I'm on the plane with all my friends. They
Speaker 1: we're having fun there. Oh by the way, Scott, we're jumping.
Speaker 1: I could say with very high confidence it ain't going
Speaker 1: to happen, folks, ain't going to happen. I'll take the
Speaker 1: videos on Instagram for you, right right. My nuanced answer
Speaker 1: is that the way knowing me, that's something that could
Speaker 1: potentially excite me that idea of doing that someday if
Speaker 1: I worked my way up psychologically and I started with
Speaker 1: like five feet where I jumped off a plane five
Speaker 1: people above the ground, that went up and build up
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, me, I don't think I'm going to
Speaker 1: say so that's great. So see, you're using your own
Speaker 1: knowledge of yourself to make the most accurate prediction you
Speaker 1: can and under what circumstances your prediction would change. So
Speaker 1: my theory is now having run I don't know, a
Speaker 1: dozen of these simulation games and being able to follow
Speaker 1: up with people to varying degrees like life. Actually sounds
Speaker 1: similar to the scenario that we imagine that if you
Speaker 1: were to get one hundred people together to make a
Speaker 1: prediction like that most of them, you know, a high
Speaker 1: a very high majority, not just like fifty to fifty chance,
Speaker 1: but a high majority would would accurately predict. Because we
Speaker 1: know ourselves, and although we change, we we can, we
Speaker 1: still we look good. We've good intelligence. We're like we're
Speaker 1: like the CIA or FBI for our own minds. And
Speaker 1: so I think you know, one of the one of
Speaker 1: the big scenarios that we're playing with now, this idea
Speaker 1: of what if up to a billion people on the
Speaker 1: planet need to move forced migration due to extreme heat, drought,
Speaker 1: WildFly wildfires and that sort of thing. Right, That's that's right,
Speaker 1: smack in the middle of expert estimates for migration in
Speaker 1: the next few decades. Right, So what if we were
Speaker 1: to try to I'm imagining move people equitably and intentionally
Speaker 1: instead of having people sort of risk life or death
Speaker 1: trying to illegally get into countries get on ships that
Speaker 1: are sinking. What if we established a global effort similar
Speaker 1: to trying to roll out the COVID nineteen vaccine. What
Speaker 1: if we had a decade to roll out a planned, equitable, safe,
Speaker 1: economically supported migration to the most climate resilient places on Earth?
Speaker 1: Who want to have denser cities where we might see
Speaker 1: more than creativity and innovation and productivity and all of that. Right,
Speaker 1: And so one of the things I'm asking people is
Speaker 1: simply what their risk for climate or what their tolerance
Speaker 1: for climate risk will be, what their decision making process
Speaker 1: will be. So there's a survey that participants take and
Speaker 1: ask questions like how many days of extreme air pollution
Speaker 1: are you willing to tolerate a year before you feel
Speaker 1: like it's time to move. How many days of extreme
Speaker 1: heat like over o one hundred and twenty degrees? How
Speaker 1: many days without power because the power grid is brittle
Speaker 1: and due to extreme weather? How many days of well whatever,
Speaker 1: you know all the the climate risk factors. And then
Speaker 1: and also where would you move? Where would you consider moving?
Speaker 1: Like list your top destinations if there was financial support
Speaker 1: to move? And northern California is no longer safe because
Speaker 1: of the wildfires, which that's where I live, Where do
Speaker 1: you think you might go? And so one trying to
Speaker 1: stimulate imagination in individuals just for themselves so that they're
Speaker 1: not like that they've never thought about it, let's at
Speaker 1: least start thinking about it in case we have to move,
Speaker 1: but also just to collect some information about I guess
Speaker 1: how fixed are we going to be? Like, look at
Speaker 1: what happened with the pandemic, and it was moving from
Speaker 1: city to city, and yet the rest of the world
Speaker 1: is like, Eh, it's just China, Okay, wh's just Italy Okay,
Speaker 1: it's just New York City. And I'm curious about how
Speaker 1: quickly or slow we might be to start moving people
Speaker 1: before there is extreme suffering? Are we going to wait
Speaker 1: until things are really really bad and we don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of time and people are soft, or is
Speaker 1: there a chance maybe if we start imagining now that
Speaker 1: we might actually start moving people around the planet in
Speaker 1: a way that supports human flourishing and less you know,
Speaker 1: like not leaving people trap behind borders. And I think
Speaker 1: we could get some good intelligence by asking people these questions. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is so important, and I guess I'm wondering, You've
Speaker 1: done great experiments on this for your recruit participants and
Speaker 1: do this formally. How can the scale up right? So
Speaker 1: how can like everyone on Twitter get a chance to participate? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: So the Institute for the Future just opened its first
Speaker 1: online simulation center where any member of the public can join.
Speaker 1: Amazing and we're doing a few things. There's a monthly
Speaker 1: scenario club, so it's like a book club, but for scenarios.
Speaker 1: So this Wednesday we're having our first meeting, and it's
Speaker 1: in multiple meetups because we have members from literally all
Speaker 1: over the world. We have over eight countries now in
Speaker 1: our community. We just opened a few weeks ago, but
Speaker 1: it's great, great for building empathy see the future from
Speaker 1: different points of view. So we're doing Scenario Club. We're
Speaker 1: doing twice a year social simulations full on, spend ten
Speaker 1: days deeply imagining a specific scenario. We're looking at decision
Speaker 1: making around geoengineering. How will the planet decide if we're
Speaker 1: going to inject self a particles into the atmosphere to
Speaker 1: block the sun for ten years? Will we get off
Speaker 1: fossil fuels? Things like that? How will we get informed
Speaker 1: consent from all of humanity? So you can come and participate.
Speaker 1: We're doing game nights future for Gasting game nights, and
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that by bringing people together to play these
Speaker 1: games with each other and with me and other experts
Speaker 1: at the institute, they'll take these skills and habits and games.
Speaker 1: And in my book Imaginable, there's a whole chapter like,
Speaker 1: so you want to run a social simulation, here's how,
Speaker 1: and you know, walkshoo step by step through the creative process.
Speaker 1: Because I don't think, I don't think it's going to
Speaker 1: be a case where we have, you know, two hundred
Speaker 1: million people playing the same simulation. As much as I
Speaker 1: would like, you know, them to be as popular as
Speaker 1: you know, Fortnite or Minecraft, I think more likely this
Speaker 1: will be a skill that lots of people have and
Speaker 1: can create their own simulations and their own scenarios to
Speaker 1: examine different futures, whether it's inside a company to imagine
Speaker 1: like long term implications of a new product or service
Speaker 1: or building, or within a city, you know, a township,
Speaker 1: a school. Yes, that's that's how I hope it will
Speaker 1: scale out, not as one big game that necessarily we
Speaker 1: all have to play at the same time, but as
Speaker 1: many hundreds of thousands of scenario designers and simulation developers
Speaker 1: all creating their own futures. Sounds like a fun position
Speaker 1: to be a scenario designer. That's cool. Well, here's some
Speaker 1: challenges in the next decade that are really important to
Speaker 1: think through. To think the the unthinkable human migration issues
Speaker 1: due to climate change. I looked into that moon after
Speaker 1: reading about that in your book, and I was like,
Speaker 1: holy cow, that we're really not prepared. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are people who just don't even want people to migrate
Speaker 1: into America, and it's like, Okay, can we think a
Speaker 1: little more broadly about the about this because there might
Speaker 1: become a day where, to no fault of anyone, you know,
Speaker 1: they can't even live where they are anymore, and that
Speaker 1: could be you by the not you gene. But you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. The people who are said no migration,
Speaker 1: you know, like to say, well, look this could be
Speaker 1: you if okay, so how have you changed the asteroid forecast?
Speaker 1: Another big pontential threat that opened my mind up big time,
Speaker 1: those threats. The future of food is medicine. Incredible. You
Speaker 1: really brought in my mind with that, and I looked
Speaker 1: into I did research in all these because I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm so nerdy and I'm like, oh my gosh, is true.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, now I'm like obsessing over
Speaker 1: like these issues. But anyway, it is a pretty much
Speaker 1: a proven fact with it. This is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things to stety is if you play with the scenario,
Speaker 1: it essentially creates more salience for that topic in your brain,
Speaker 1: Like you'll get a reward hit when you see information
Speaker 1: out in the world about it. So it's like, if
Speaker 1: you play about food as medicine, if you hear about
Speaker 1: new pilot programs to give away free fresh fruits and
Speaker 1: vegetables instead of having to pay this money for healthcare
Speaker 1: treatment later, it's going to just blinking neon vegas lights
Speaker 1: to your brain and you totally It's like you just
Speaker 1: totally start to see the clues everywhere. It's a little trippy,
Speaker 1: but you know it's cool because you learn faster, You
Speaker 1: notice a change faster because everything's jumping out at you. Well,
Speaker 1: I changed my meal delivery service this week to all vegan.
Speaker 1: You're ready for that. You're ready for the alpha gal crisis.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you got to that one about
Speaker 1: the tick tickborn pandemic where we just kicked off a
Speaker 1: big simulation of that in our urgent Optimist community last Friday.
Speaker 1: People getting ready for a world in which I mean
Speaker 1: it's people are excited, you know, I mean it's Ostensibly
Speaker 1: the simulation is about the next time we face a pandemic,
Speaker 1: will we learn from COVID and do better? But I
Speaker 1: didn't want to re traumatize people by having a simulation
Speaker 1: about a similar contagious virus. So we're simulating a tickborn
Speaker 1: pandemic where it doesn't spread from person to person. It
Speaker 1: spreads via ticks. It's not a virus, it's you develop
Speaker 1: an allergic reaction to a sugar molecule that's found in
Speaker 1: mammalion meat products. Like this is a real thing that exists.
Speaker 1: We're imagining it. And on one hand, what I hear
Speaker 1: from a lot of people like where will they find
Speaker 1: hope for the future. They want to believe that will
Speaker 1: do better next time? And even today I just saw
Speaker 1: always an op ed in the New York Times will
Speaker 1: we do better next time? Everybody's trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, reasons to feel like there's hope we've learned, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to make meaning out of what we've lived through. Right,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you know, with these these
Speaker 1: are games, I want them to feel like they are
Speaker 1: psychological safe spaces where you're not going to You're not
Speaker 1: going to have to just be overwhelmed with negative emotions
Speaker 1: in order to do the mental imagination. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: changed it to something well, I mean like we change
Speaker 1: it to the tickboard thing. But man, people are into it.
Speaker 1: They're thinking about because it helps them imagine making changes
Speaker 1: that I feel like they want to make anyway, like
Speaker 1: a more sustainable plant based diet, which in this pandemic
Speaker 1: you would have to undertake because it could literally kill
Speaker 1: you if you have meat. You know, it's weird how
Speaker 1: scenarios work like that. It's like, we may never live
Speaker 1: through a tickboarrem pandemic. But you can play with the
Speaker 1: future scenario and it can change your behavior today and
Speaker 1: in ways that you support your health and happiness. And
Speaker 1: so it's it's like this weird you know, we're thinking
Speaker 1: about the future. It's changing our bea today. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's almost like the time space continuum is
Speaker 1: collapsing a little bit in our minds. It's incredible, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: God bless the default mode brain network. Yes, thank you
Speaker 1: for teaching me about that. Thank you, Because it's all
Speaker 1: all of future imagination. Can we do that? I'm imagining
Speaker 1: the sound of the lab. Yeah, I mean that's that's
Speaker 1: where the future imagination is because you can't get that
Speaker 1: information from the reality that's around you, right, there are
Speaker 1: no facts about the future. It has to come from
Speaker 1: your own creativity, inner stream of consciousness. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: another big challenge that I had been aware of before,
Speaker 1: but you'd derided me. Just how things can go wrong
Speaker 1: here the peril and promise of facial recognition technology. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: that could lead to some really not just bias bias
Speaker 1: is good, but discrimination, which is not good. Yeah. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I think you know I was in doing the
Speaker 1: research for this book. I was unbelievably, I don't know,
Speaker 1: unnerved by discovering that the pandemic actually accelerated this technology
Speaker 1: because the companies that create facial recognition software they had
Speaker 1: to figure out how to recognize people with masks on,
Speaker 1: and they did it. All of the leading facial recognition
Speaker 1: companies Now they only need to see this little tiny
Speaker 1: sliver of your eyes, and so suddenly the technology is
Speaker 1: leap frogging. And you know, I'm asking people to imagine
Speaker 1: a world in which it's not just the government or police.
Speaker 1: It's on our apps, it's in dating apps, it's in
Speaker 1: our social media sites. And I always say, Scott, I'm
Speaker 1: like obsessed with trying to help people find ways not
Speaker 1: just to imagine the future, but to feel like more
Speaker 1: prepared for it. And one of the things I'm like,
Speaker 1: if people get you know, like, oh, facial recognition, which
Speaker 1: that I do, you can go to YouTube and you
Speaker 1: can look for a video tutorial on how to apply
Speaker 1: adversarial makeup, so you can apply makeup that confuses the algorithms,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's going to be like a dance
Speaker 1: because of the algorithms. I'm sure we'll get better and
Speaker 1: then we'll have makeup. This makeup on me, you would
Speaker 1: look like you were from the eighties because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of geometric like geometric shapes, like you have like
Speaker 1: a big triangle over one eye, like in purple, and
Speaker 1: like I'm kind of big in this. I've been I've
Speaker 1: been inspired by Andy Warholely to kind of change my look.
Speaker 1: So maybe maybe that would be the direction. I've been
Speaker 1: trying to think of what direction going, but maybe that
Speaker 1: could work. Okay, Scott, I love that for you. I
Speaker 1: love that life choice for you, because then you would
Speaker 1: become a walking change. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, like literally you're
Speaker 1: from the future. People be like, Scott, what are you
Speaker 1: doing and you're like, let me tell you about facial recognition,
Speaker 1: and yeah, totally undred percent yes. And it would also
Speaker 1: make me I've been warning some improv techniques from Second City,
Speaker 1: so yes, And it also would signal like rebelliousness, which
Speaker 1: is cool. It's cool, it's cool, like, yes, it's right.
Speaker 1: He's like I don't care about anything, right, Rack, I
Speaker 1: did make me be like no, I'm like standing up
Speaker 1: against the system, tying to it's steal information. It's very
Speaker 1: punk rock to wear adversarial makeup. It's true. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: why I like it. It's like my midlife crisis. I
Speaker 1: need to be like rage against the machine again with
Speaker 1: my facial But then I'll tell you've got on the
Speaker 1: other hand, So I have people imagine the scenario that
Speaker 1: we use to imagine how facial recognition might affect us.
Speaker 1: Is I have you imagined that you're out in public
Speaker 1: somewhere and you pick a us place, because we wish
Speaker 1: trying to make it as specific as possible, because it
Speaker 1: really works better when it's not just vague facts but
Speaker 1: like a like a real movie playing in your mind.
Speaker 1: So I say, you know, pick a pick a street
Speaker 1: in the city you live, or pick a restaurant or
Speaker 1: a store, your some pace you'r someplace specific, and you
Speaker 1: notice somebody picking up their phone and there's this gesture
Speaker 1: in the future. It's just just like click, whoop and
Speaker 1: then down and it's like the sign that you've been
Speaker 1: face yeah, face scanned and or face searched. Right. I
Speaker 1: think it's how we I had described it in the book,
Speaker 1: and and I just asked you, like, how do you feel?
Speaker 1: And does it does this does your feeling change depending
Speaker 1: on who's face searching you? What if it's like a
Speaker 1: really attractive person, What if it's a kid. What if
Speaker 1: it's somebody in a uniform and we're kind of like
Speaker 1: it does it probably does? It probably does feel creepy.
Speaker 1: I asked people to can you imagine a situation in
Speaker 1: which you would be happy to be face searched? Because
Speaker 1: we have to figure out why is this technology even
Speaker 1: going to be adopted in the first place. I mean,
Speaker 1: there must be benefits, there must be conveniences, there must
Speaker 1: be social opportunities attached to it. And so I think
Speaker 1: what's really going to blindside us is if we think
Speaker 1: a technology sounds so dystopian we just can't even believe
Speaker 1: it would ever be adopted, Like I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people feel that way about facial recognition. They are
Speaker 1: so convinced that it is just, you know, big brother dystopian.
Speaker 1: It will definitely be regulated, it will definitely not be pervasive.
Speaker 1: Normal people will not be into this. I think we
Speaker 1: could use a little help imagining why ordinary people might
Speaker 1: be into it, so that we're not so shocked and
Speaker 1: unprepared to make good decisions like we made terrible decisions
Speaker 1: about social media. I would say, as a society like
Speaker 1: how we would use it and what we'd use it for,
Speaker 1: and how we would regulate it. So maybe if we
Speaker 1: uh and literally, because people thought it was a joke,
Speaker 1: we were like, oh, what do you you're tweeting about
Speaker 1: what you ate for? B what's that a picture of
Speaker 1: your you know, shoes? Who's good? Like it was? It
Speaker 1: was dismissed as so you know, patently stupid that nobody's
Speaker 1: going to use it. It's not going to be important,
Speaker 1: you know, So we miss the opportunity to shape the
Speaker 1: future when we're dismissive. So it's just, you know, as
Speaker 1: you said earlier, it's a balance of positive and shadow imagination.
Speaker 1: We need a little more positive imagination so that we
Speaker 1: might anticipate what would lead people to embrace facial recognition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love this And what also love about what you're
Speaker 1: doing is you are applaying some science, some systematic systematicity.
Speaker 1: Is that a word? Is that a word? That is
Speaker 1: a word ray systematicity? So can you tell our listeners
Speaker 1: a little bit about the scoring methods that researchers use
Speaker 1: in scientific studies to document the benefits of futures? Thinking, mmmm,
Speaker 1: let's well, there's lots of different ways to measure. There's
Speaker 1: ways to measure skill at future imagination, and there's ways
Speaker 1: to I mean, what should we should we start with
Speaker 1: skill at future imagination or should we start with like's
Speaker 1: how do you quantify that? Yeah? I mean it? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one is the vividness. So you can literally you
Speaker 1: ask people to speak out loud, or you can measure
Speaker 1: by taking somebody's story that they tell. So I could say, Scott,
Speaker 1: picture yourself walking on the beach ten years from today.
Speaker 1: Just describe it, take a few moments to write it
Speaker 1: down or just speak it out loud, and then you
Speaker 1: just count up the number of details. Right, So is
Speaker 1: there sounds, sites, smells, emotions, Did you describe who you
Speaker 1: were with? Is it a specific person or is it
Speaker 1: vague a friend you know? Did you describe what you
Speaker 1: were wearing where their colors involved textures? So the more details,
Speaker 1: the higher the specificity score. And this is something that
Speaker 1: I work with people all the time to increase the
Speaker 1: specificity of their imagination because one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: we do future imagination is to overcome normalcy bias, so
Speaker 1: that you are the more specific your imagination, the more
Speaker 1: plausible you rate a possible future and My mission is
Speaker 1: to get people to believe that risks we dismiss and
Speaker 1: downplay and underestimate, like a pandemic or mass climbate migration,
Speaker 1: Like that it's real and we should take it seriously
Speaker 1: and don't just don't let your brains normally biased just
Speaker 1: because it's never lived through it before. Don't let your brain,
Speaker 1: you know, get stuck assuming it will never happen. So
Speaker 1: the more of details, the more likely you are to
Speaker 1: think it's plausible. So I work with people's constantly, like,
Speaker 1: make it more like the most detailed description you can.
Speaker 1: You you said hello to your you know neighbor, Well
Speaker 1: write the quote. I want to know the exact words
Speaker 1: that came out of your mouth and facial expressions your
Speaker 1: neighbor made when you've shared the news, so we get
Speaker 1: very So that's one thing we can measure. We can
Speaker 1: measure immersiveness. So we ask people after they imagine, God,
Speaker 1: imagine yourself walking on the beach ten years from now,
Speaker 1: I can just ask you to rate, like on a
Speaker 1: likeer scale, how how much did you have the feeling
Speaker 1: of as if you were already there, as if you
Speaker 1: were preliving it, or how absorbed did you feel so
Speaker 1: we rate on immersiveness, we can also rate future imagination
Speaker 1: skill on flexibility. So you could go through this whole
Speaker 1: imagine yourself ten years in the future on the beach,
Speaker 1: and then I'll be like, okay, Scott, I want you
Speaker 1: to reimagine this. Change as many details as you can
Speaker 1: change your physical you know reality, if you were totally
Speaker 1: you know, your body was exactly how it is today.
Speaker 1: I want you to change what's different about your body
Speaker 1: ten years from now. How does it feel to be
Speaker 1: walking on the beach differently, change the change the time
Speaker 1: of day if it was the morning now it's And
Speaker 1: you see how many details you can change while still
Speaker 1: coming up with a realistic or plausible story. And so
Speaker 1: you count the number of changes, and then how again
Speaker 1: on a likeer scale, how realistic does this new reimagining mean?
Speaker 1: And so if you're able to come up with highly
Speaker 1: highly realistic but also everything's different, that's the sign of
Speaker 1: your your mental flexibility around imagining the future. So there's
Speaker 1: just techniques, and you know, when I work with students,
Speaker 1: we're just practice these little habits. But one of my
Speaker 1: favorite ways to measure the benefit is so like pathways
Speaker 1: for future action. So I might have you imagine climate migration,
Speaker 1: and then I would say, Scott, how many how many
Speaker 1: things can you think of that you could do today
Speaker 1: to be more ready for this future or to influence
Speaker 1: how this future turns out, like if you want to
Speaker 1: prevent it or change it in some way. And again
Speaker 1: you just score somebody on how many things they can list.
Speaker 1: You know, they could say, well, I could research what
Speaker 1: the most climate safe cities and countries are likely to be.
Speaker 1: I could see if I have any legal pathways to migration.
Speaker 1: I could learn a new language so I can welcome
Speaker 1: people who move from Indonesia. I could learn how to
Speaker 1: cook food from Indonesia. Since you know the game says
Speaker 1: many people are likely to move from there. I want
Speaker 1: to be ready to help people feel welcome by cooking
Speaker 1: for them. The more things that you could list things
Speaker 1: you could do today that can considered having more pathways
Speaker 1: to impact the future. It's similar to the idea of
Speaker 1: like pathways of hope. How do you feel your self efficacy?
Speaker 1: I am sure you yeah, So that would be another way,
Speaker 1: And a lot of people feel like they have no
Speaker 1: way to impact the future. So this is actually very meaningful.
Speaker 1: If you can go from being like I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do about climate change. To having a list
Speaker 1: of like twenty things that you can do that help
Speaker 1: you be ready for it or change it or shape
Speaker 1: it can really create a profound shift and just our
Speaker 1: emotional state today because we don't want to feel powerless.
Speaker 1: We want to feel powerful. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: listening that, because I was wondering how you measured some
Speaker 1: of these things. For instance, it said that as an
Speaker 1: outcome of that simulation in two thousand and eight and
Speaker 1: twenty ten, with the Global Respiratory Pandemic simulation, those who
Speaker 1: participated in the simulation were less shell shocked when COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen hit, and we're able to act and adapt faster
Speaker 1: to change. To me, that's incredible and just speaks volumes
Speaker 1: to the benefit of your approach. I was just curious
Speaker 1: scientifically how you like measured those two things, like less
Speaker 1: shell shocked and ability to adapt faster to change. Yes, yes, well,
Speaker 1: in that case, you simply kind of ask people how
Speaker 1: surprise were you, How Like when did you start making
Speaker 1: changes in your routine or in the supplies you were gathering,
Speaker 1: So that would be a different that's a different that's
Speaker 1: a different type of measure, right, because the other measures
Speaker 1: are more about like changing in the moment. Now for
Speaker 1: that one, you had to wait, yeah, for reality to
Speaker 1: show up to see if it made a difference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure did Were we able to get one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the same participants? Nori Eletricia, Oh, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: because it wasn't set up as a longitudinal study. And
Speaker 1: that's this has been my big my big like call
Speaker 1: to the community is that we have to start doing
Speaker 1: longitudinal studies here. I mean, we're claiming to impact the future.
Speaker 1: We got to follow up. There's only been one big
Speaker 1: longitudinal study of these types of methods, and it was
Speaker 1: on business performance. So companies that practice these types of
Speaker 1: you know, scenario development and collecting signals of change, they
Speaker 1: you know, make more money, they have more innovation whatever.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're a capitalist that it sounds great,
Speaker 1: you know, go for it. I'm like more working at
Speaker 1: the level of you know, change the world, reform society,
Speaker 1: you know, our personal well being. So no, it was
Speaker 1: very scattershot. I would say I wouldn't I wouldn't take
Speaker 1: my experience with superstruct or evoke in terms of how
Speaker 1: it impacted our experience with future to be. It's not
Speaker 1: don't it's not anecdotal, but it's very qualitative and I
Speaker 1: really want there to be more and better evidence about
Speaker 1: this in the future. The one randomized control trial that
Speaker 1: was conducted on the second game of Voke, the World
Speaker 1: Bank did an impact evaluation where they had some players
Speaker 1: play this game and imagine helping with a future scenario
Speaker 1: in which it was also about forced displacement due to
Speaker 1: violent conflicts, so similar to what we're seeing in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: They were imagining that in Colombia and what they would
Speaker 1: do to help, How would they use their skills and
Speaker 1: abilities to help themselves, their family, or others in their community.
Speaker 1: And they found that people who played this future's game,
Speaker 1: they had more pathways to actually impact the future. They
Speaker 1: were able to, at the end of it, name more
Speaker 1: actions they could actually take. They felt more confident that
Speaker 1: global challenges could be solved, more optimistic that they could
Speaker 1: use their own skills and abilities. They were better able
Speaker 1: to articulate actual, concrete, realistic things they could do than
Speaker 1: a peer group that took traditional university coursework in social change,
Speaker 1: social entrepreneurship, political action. So there was something about the
Speaker 1: scenario that led to statistically significant increases in that confidence,
Speaker 1: that hope, that that future power or self efficacy. But again,
Speaker 1: nobody has followed up that study was you know, five
Speaker 1: or six years ago. If they ever have to live
Speaker 1: through it, does it actually impact them? To be honest,
Speaker 1: I don't know of anybody who would be set up
Speaker 1: for that. Now, if you have ideas for you know,
Speaker 1: we need a grant. Basically, we need some We need
Speaker 1: somebody with a long term grant because it's going to
Speaker 1: take ten years to follow up and figure this out.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of things. It takes that, but it
Speaker 1: also takes having for the real foresight and imagination to
Speaker 1: be able to have some surnay then ten years this
Speaker 1: thing will happen, right because imagine you imagine that there's
Speaker 1: nowhere to follow up with right that didn't happen? Yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: it's no, but it's good. It's true. It's hard, and
Speaker 1: is this something I've struggled with my whole career. It's like,
Speaker 1: you want to you want to create a body of
Speaker 1: scientific evidence to support these ideas, but it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to do. It's hard to do really rigorous studies of
Speaker 1: such uncertain domains, and like you said, if we don't
Speaker 1: know if we're ever going to live through it, how
Speaker 1: do we design. The only thing we can really measure
Speaker 1: is how people feel today. And so that's where most
Speaker 1: of the research that I've seen is this thinking about
Speaker 1: the future make us feel better today, and that's at
Speaker 1: least there's something there. We'll be confidently Tha, something good, Yeah,
Speaker 1: something good. You're doing really great work. Hopefully we get enough,
Speaker 1: you can get enough funding, some data. Buy a crystal ball.
Speaker 1: I hear they're expensive. Joke. Okay, okay, a sorofski crystal
Speaker 1: there was Those things are in the millions probably. So
Speaker 1: I want to end on this quote. You've been really
Speaker 1: gentius with your time. When to end here with your
Speaker 1: quote said that says, imagine doing something incredibly new and
Speaker 1: exciting for the next ten years years of your I
Speaker 1: want you to be able to imagine yourself doing and
Speaker 1: creating amazing things that would have been unthinkable and unimaginable
Speaker 1: before you had the futures thinking tools to inspire you.
Speaker 1: So want to enter that note and encourage our listeners
Speaker 1: to do that, you know, energize their lives, give them
Speaker 1: hope bye by by thinking the unimaginable in their lives
Speaker 1: in a positive direction. Thank you, Jane. The work you're doing,
Speaker 1: even though it's not long as Jounel, is still amazing
Speaker 1: and awesome and you're very You're so unique in this space.
Speaker 1: So thanks for chatting with me today on this Ecology Podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast.
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