WEBVTT - Ep148 "How can we improve political dialog?" with Saul Perlmutter 0:00:05.080 --> 0:00:08.240 How can we improve political dialogue? And what does this 0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:11.799 have to do with discovering that the universe is behaving 0:00:11.880 --> 0:00:16.000 completely differently than expected. Why do we all cling to 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:20.280 beliefs even when evidence pushes against them, What does this 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.760 have to do with polarization? And what if the biggest 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:28.560 problem facing humanity could be solved with practice. Today we're 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:31.560 going to talk with Saul Pearl Mutter, a Nobel Prize 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:35.519 winning astrophysicist. But instead of the cosmos, we're going to 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:38.240 talk about the inner cosmos. We're going to talk about 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:41.680 polarization in society and how we might be able to 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:48.839 address that with a different kind of thinking. Welcome to 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.159 Inner Cosmos with me David Eagelman. I'm a neuroscientist and 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:55.520 author at Stanford and in these episodes we sail deeply 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:59.040 into our three pound universe to understand why and how 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:02.520 our lives look the way they do, and specifically today, 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:05.640 why we think the way we do, and whether we 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:20.080 can improve our thinking. Okay, so imagine you've spent years 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:25.520 as an astrophysicist, as space scientist working to understand the 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.160 universe out there. You've got a bunch of measurements, you 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:33.920 have your instruments calibrated to exquisite precision. You've pulled in 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:37.720 data from stars that exploded billions of years ago, these 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:40.280 little pinpricks of light you can't even see with the 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:43.080 naked eye, and you and your team have worked to 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:46.039 stitch all of that together into a single picture. And 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:48.920 finally you pull all this into one place and you 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:52.160 plot the data, and you look at the curve and 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:57.360 something is off. Let's say it's not dramatically off, but 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:02.400 the data just isn't land in a place that it should. Now, 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.840 this is the key moment in science, and it's maybe 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:09.920 not what you expect, because in this situation, you don't 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:13.480 jump up and shout eureka and call a press conference. 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:18.720 What happens instead is that you assume your graph is wrong. 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:22.000 Because what we all learn in science is that if 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:27.320 something looks really surprising, the most likely explanation is that 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:31.720 you screwed something up. So you go back, you check 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:35.760 the instruments, you look at all your assumptions, you tweak 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:40.560 the calibration, you dig really deep to see whether there's 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:43.480 some bias in how you collected the data or some 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:48.000 stupid explanation hiding in the machinery. And you do this 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:51.800 for days, and then for weeks and months, you keep 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:56.800 rebuilding this graph, and it keeps landing in that strange place. 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:00.840 So you refine the measurements and the graph stays. You 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:05.359 improve the calibration, and the graph just sharpens. And then 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:10.840 very very slowly you begin to entertain the possibility that 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:15.320 maybe the graph is right. What if the universe itself 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:20.920 is doing something unexpected, Because you know that ever since 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:25.040 the Big Bang, the universe has been expanding outward. Everything 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.920 is rushing away from everything. But the pull of gravity 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:33.119 should be slowing down that expansion over time. Like when 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:35.320 you throw a ball up in the air, it goes 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.080 up and then it slows because of gravity, and eventually 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:41.880 it falls back down. So the universe should be slowing 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:46.000 down under the influence of gravity and eventually coming back together. 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:52.200 Except your graph says it's not doing this. Your graph 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:58.680 says the expansion of the universe is accelerating. In other words, 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:04.000 something is pushing everything apart, something we don't understand, something 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:08.280 we now call dark energy. Now, one of the key 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:11.320 figures in this discovery, and who we're going to talk 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:15.760 to today is Saul pearl Mutter at the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:20.040 And that discovery that the expansion of the universe is 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:26.760 accelerating completely reshaped our understanding of cosmology. And in twenty 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:30.719 eleven Saul was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. But 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:32.880 here's the point I want to make right now. His 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:38.240 big discovery came about as a long, uncomfortable process of 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:43.480 eliminating every possible way that he could be wrong. And 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.599 that's what scientific thinking is. It's not like what they 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:49.880 teach you in high school science, where they tend to 0:04:50.440 --> 0:04:54.640 give science as a collection of facts. Instead, science is 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:59.080 a way of thinking. It's a way of navigating uncertainty. 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.400 It's a way way of asking, over and over, how 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:08.159 might I be fooling myself? Now, this is deeply counterintuitive 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:12.200 to how our brains usually operate, because our brains are 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:17.200 evolved to lock onto patterns and construct stories. A whole 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:20.160 bunch of my episodes touch on this point that brains 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:25.120 are always seeking explanations that feel coherent, and once we 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:29.560 have a model of the world, we tend to protect it. 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:33.520 We look for confirming evidence, and we tend to filter 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:39.640 out contradictions. But a scientific mindset asks for something different. 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:43.800 It asks for a kind of intellectual humility. What it 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:46.520 asked for is a willingness to say, look, I might 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:49.520 be wrong. In fact, I'm probably wrong about a bunch 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:53.080 of things, and the only way forward is to keep 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:57.160 testing and keep updating. Now, when we look at the 0:05:57.200 --> 0:06:01.800 political world around us, that might mindset of being willing 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:06.160 to be wrong is starting to feel more relevant than ever, 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.640 because we are living in a moment saturated with information, 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:13.400 but we struggle to process it. All of us take 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:18.240 really complex issues and smush them down into binaries like 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:22.520 us and them, or good and evil. We all form teams, 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:27.640 we defend our positions, and we treat uncertainty as weakness. 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:32.880 But what if the ability to live with uncertainty is 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:36.080 one of the most powerful tools we have for solving 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:40.400 the mess that we're in. What if thinking in probabilities 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:44.760 and revising our beliefs and engaging with disagreement. What if 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:48.080 this is our way out of the whole. So today's guest, 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:53.000 Saul Pearlmutter, has spent his whole career grappling with uncertainty 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:56.920 at the largest possible scale, but in recent years he's 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:00.400 turned his attention to something closer to home. He has 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:04.920 zoomed in on this issue that scientists every day rely 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:09.360 on a set of thinking tools that aren't always taught explicitly. 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:13.440 In other words, scientists have ways of reasoning about uncertainty 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:18.120 and evidence and disagreement. And Saul asked himself, what if 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:23.080 everyone learned these tools? What if we taught everyone not 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:28.640 just the content of science, but the process of thinking scientifically. 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:33.240 Because the stakes are about how we all make decisions 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:37.720 in a society, how we communicate, how we navigate a 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:43.280 very complex, very interconnected world. So I started this episode 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.960 with a conversation about a graph that didn't make sense. 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.240 But today's show is really a conversation about how we 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:54.600 come to believe something that overturns our expectations. And ultimately, 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:58.640 it's a conversation about how a species standing on a 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:03.400 small planet under and expanding universe might learn to think 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:08.280 just clearly enough to build an excellent future. Here's my 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:16.280 conversation with Saul Pearl Mutter. Okay, so, Saul, let's start 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:22.040 when you discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:25.240 When you first got this idea about dark energy, What 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:29.760 did that moment feel like intellectually? Was it excitement, skepticism, 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:33.280 disbelief because of other things that you'd thought previously. 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:36.880 I think what people may not realize about the life 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:40.280 of a research scientist is that most of the time 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:42.760 you're trying to figure out what's broken. That most of 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.120 the time you're trying to figure out, you know, okay, 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:47.640 what's wrong with my current setup, what's wrong with the 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:50.160 data that I just brought in? If you're really lucky, 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.439 you're trying to figure out what's wrong with the fundamental understanding. 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:53.520 Of the universe. 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:56.880 But that's that's really lucky, you know, if you get 0:08:56.880 --> 0:09:00.720 to that point. And so when we first started data 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:06.280 that suggested this kind of unusual result, the first assumption is, Okay, 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:08.959 we're lucky that we've managed to piece all the parts 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:11.320 together and we got a graph at all. Now we 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:14.840 have to figure out, you know what, what parts of 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:17.120 the graph to trust, what things we still have to recalibrate. 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:20.199 And you just don't take it at all seriously when 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:22.040 you when you first see it, you're just happy you 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:24.240 got a graph. It's you know, there's so many different 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:26.240 elements of the story that you had to pull together, 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:28.240 and so much data had to be collected, and you were, 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:30.520 and you're so many calaborations that you had to do. 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:33.520 Then the hard work starts that you're starting to work 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:36.199 on the next you know, part of the hard work 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:38.520 of trying to figure out what do you believe? And 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.600 finally what happened after months and months is that the 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:47.000 data kept sharpening up, looking stronger and stronger as we 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:51.440 understood and calibrate everything, and it was starting to stay 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:54.640 in this rather odd place that suggested the universe was 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:57.080 not doing what we expected. It wasn't slowing down as 0:09:57.120 --> 0:10:00.200 expansion as you would expect gravity would slow it, but 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:03.320 it seemed to be speeding up. And this is saying 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:08.319 that finally, after months and months, we start to believe Okay. 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:11.080 That's probably the answer. We're going to have to go 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:11.760 public with this. 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:15.600 But so the moment of AHA is a little bit 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:19.240 hard to describe, right because it's not a AHA moment, 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:24.079 you know, that instant, It's AHA spread out over seven 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:26.920 eight months and so but by the time you finally 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:28.800 believe it, it's no longer a big surprise. 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:32.440 So the most interesting discoveries in science are often the 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:36.640 ones that contradict our expectations. And so how does the 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:41.200 scientific process train people, and you, in particular in this case, 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:45.360 to embrace having been wrong and having a new model 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:46.280 of something. 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:49.920 Once you having in your mind that you're that most 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:51.920 of what you're doing is trying to figure out what's 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:55.040 broken and trying to build up confidence in different pieces. 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.960 In some sense, the idea that something is wrong with 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:03.640 the big watching theory is is a part of the game. 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:05.679 It's it's it's kind of what you're trying to do. 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:07.720 You're trying to figure out can we sharpen up our 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:10.640 understanding of the world and can we figure out, okay, 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.120 which part have we not quite got right yet? And 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:18.080 for the community as a whole, the huge excitements are 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:20.520 whenever you figure out something that we all had thought 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:22.600 was the case and now we figured out something new 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:23.000 about it. 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:24.319 But your career is. 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:28.960 Based on as a sciences it's based on really doing trustworthy, 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:33.080 very careful work so that people trust that the results 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:35.560 that you're doing aren't just what you hope they would be, 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:39.080 they're actually what you find and that you are checking 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:41.079 for everything you could that could be a mistake. 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:43.800 And so that's where all this comes from. 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.120 That that that that ability to convince people that you've 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:50.760 really looked for your own mistakes, and in some sense 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:54.960 probably it's the reason that science has had to learn 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:57.720 how to work with people you disagree with, because they're 0:11:57.720 --> 0:11:59.000 the ones who are going to help you find your 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:03.920 mistakes most effectively. I mean, I can say in their 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:07.200 particular case we had, there was a rival team that 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:12.240 started working after we'd started this project. They started racing 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:16.280 with us, using the very very similar techniques to get 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:20.320 the result, and it was a very fierce competition. But 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:23.040 that actually is what helps you. The fact that you 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:24.800 have a group that's going to try to figure out 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:26.920 where you're making your mistakes and you're trying to figuret 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:28.079 where they're making their mistakes. 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:29.199 It's one of the best. 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:33.920 Ways to make that kind of guarantee that you've really 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:35.400 hunted for where the problems are. 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:37.959 A lot of people when they hear about dark energy 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:41.760 and dark matter, they interpret that as ignorance, but scientists 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:46.080 interpret this as progress. So why if your goal. 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:49.400 Is just to prove things you already know, then it 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.840 sounds like it's a big step backwards if you found that, oh, 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:56.240 what we thought was true is wrong. But that's so 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:58.760 much not the philosophy of what you're trying to do 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:03.000 in the sciences. In the big picture, you're trying to 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:05.480 you're assuming that there are things that we don't understand, 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:07.320 and you're trying to figure out what they are. And 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.800 so it's a huge success when you figure out that 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:14.320 there's something that we had misunderstood and that now we've 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:17.680 honed in our home di in on our understanding just 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:18.480 a little bit more. 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:19.640 So. 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:22.160 This is the kind of thing that just you know, 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:24.200 the scientists week up in the morning hoping they do 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.840 someday they figure out something that overturns a piece of 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:31.040 the puzzle, and that that's really where the excitement is. 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:35.240 So you in your career sat in your lab and 0:13:35.280 --> 0:13:40.880 in meetings and you realize that scientists seem to be 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:45.079 using a set of of course thinking tools that maybe 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:49.160 the rest of society could benefit from. And so you 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:53.880 about twelve years ago started a course at Berkeley tell 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:54.520 us about that. 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.360 Yeah, So I was I think I was watching some 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.720 political debate. This is you know, even before all the 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:05.800 current uh you know, particularly strong polarization. But it's one 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:07.000 where I think they were trying to figure out what 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:09.160 was the right level to set the debt ceiling or 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:13.400 something in one of these earlier periods, and and it 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:17.040 wasn't a particularly uh you know, vociferous, uh you know, 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:20.280 a moment. But even so, it struck me that the 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:23.640 style of the conversation didn't look at all like the 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:26.480 style of conversations I saw at the lunch table of 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:29.960 a bunch of scientists talking about almost any topic, and 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:32.720 it included things like that probabilistic thinking that I just 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:35.560 you know that we just discussed. There are all these 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:38.280 different just parts of the vocabulary of how people talked 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:42.040 that were I felt very good at helping think through 0:14:42.040 --> 0:14:46.400 a problem rationally and be able to handle just the 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:49.360 the logic of the question in a way that I 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:52.720 thought was missing. Uh, when you saw our society asking 0:14:52.920 --> 0:14:55.120 just a cold question about what is the right level 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:57.960 to set a debt in a in the debt ceiling 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:01.960 in a society, that's not a it's not an emotional question. 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:05.440 It's just a question of what works best. And yet 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:08.640 you're not hearing any of that kind of thoughtful discussion 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:13.040 that you would see around any bunch of scientists, just 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.480 using the terminology that they would use. So I found 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:19.000 myself asking, well, where is it that these that this 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:21.080 terminology comes in. I mean, it's not like we're taught 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.000 it in any physics, biology and chemistry course that I 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:26.680 know of, and uh, and I realized that it was 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:29.960 taught sort of by osmosis. By as people go through 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:33.560 a training as a research scientist, working with other scientists, 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:37.200 they start to learn this vocabulary of ideas, and it 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:38.880 just seemed to me that it would be really useful 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:41.920 for everybody to know about it much much earlier, even 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:43.520 if they were going to be scientists, they should learn it, 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:46.560 learn it like directly, not just you know, little by 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:49.000 little through what people say. And then people are not 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.640 going to become scientists, they should be using this all 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:53.960 the time. It's it's just a very useful way to 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:59.560 have an approach that helps you think through problems in a. 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:00.000 In a very effective way. 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:03.080 Hey, for almost anything you do day to day, and 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:06.760 for any business decision, any medical decision, any you know, 0:16:06.800 --> 0:16:09.920 personal decision, this could all be useful. 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:12.920 So that's what picked off this this idea for the course. 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:14.840 And so you hooked up with a couple of your 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:18.280 colleagues and you started thinking about what are the scientific 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:21.360 tools that could be useful for public conversation and as 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:24.840 the starting set. You came up with twenty three of them, 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:27.960 so give us a flavor of what sort of ideas 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:28.880 would be useful. 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:33.480 Absolutely, and I should mention that my colleagues John Campbell, 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:37.720 philosopher and Rob mccoonn, a social psychologist in the Public 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:40.760 Policy School, that I thought it was really important to 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:43.200 bring people from other parts of the university together because 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:44.920 as a physicist, you know, it's not like we have 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:48.760 a monopoly on all these thinking tools, and that you 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:50.840 want to try to bring the best of you know, 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:54.360 what everybody's been coming up with. And we actually put 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:56.960 a sign up asking people come work on the on 0:16:57.040 --> 0:17:00.280 the on this developing the course, saying signing, you know, 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:03.040 are you embarrassed watching our society make decisions? Come help 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:05.359 invent the course and come help save the world. And 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:09.679 about thirty people started showing up, like every week at 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:11.639 the end of Fridays we would hangk We would be 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:13.959 there for a few hours before dinner, trying to come 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:15.680 up with you know, what would a set of concepts 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:17.399 look like that would be helpful for everybody to have. 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:20.320 So in answer to your question, I mean, these some 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:25.560 of the concepts where things like propositions are probabilistic. We 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:27.720 we know them, just as we were saying before, you 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:31.760 know some that we know for real strong certainly ninety 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:35.040 nine point nine nine percent, some sixty percent. Other concepts 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:40.000 were ideas like, when you look to understand patterns in 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:42.680 the world and signals in the world of of what's 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:46.639 going on, it's very easy for our brains to see 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:50.920 patterns that are just random noise, that things that will 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:55.080 randomly to us appear like there's ah, we've suddenly just 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:59.280 detected you know, a A this relationship, this is causing 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:04.600 this a huge fraction of the time, and it's easy 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:07.160 to see that humans will just see a pattern that 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:11.680 is not really there. It's just the random events look 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:13.800 like a pattern to us because our brains are such 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:18.280 good pattern finders. So that concept led to the idea 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.119 of you know, what are the elements that we've learned 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:24.160 about how do you differentiate those kinds of mistakes? And 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:27.160 these are the issues of false positives and false negatives. 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:30.720 You know, when is it dangerous to think you seeing 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:32.800 a pattern that's not there? But when is it dangerous 0:18:32.840 --> 0:18:35.080 to miss a pattern that really is there? And how 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:37.399 do you balance those and what's the right order of 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:40.160 techniques that people have developed to handle those. So these 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:43.520 are three concepts you have to start with. Many of 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:46.679 the concepts are very much these cautionary ones, how to 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:49.800 avoid fooling yourself, because so much of science is built 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:52.239 around the idea that we tend to fool ourselves, and 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:55.119 so we're constantly having to develop these techniques to avoid 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:59.720 doing it again. But there are other unbalancing concepts that 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:02.840 we each which are techniques for keeping going and for 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:07.320 some sense of optimism and forward motion despite all that 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:12.680 cynical uh you need to avoid to avoid another chance 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:15.480 to you fool yourself. And so some of the concepts 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:20.200 include things like the idea that scientists have really as 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:25.239 a culture, developed a capability to have some confidence that 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:27.919 you can solve a problem, and therefore you stick to 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:31.160 it long enough to actually solve it, because most people 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:33.560 give up way too soon or in a difficult problem, 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:35.840 and that this is just a trick of the trade, 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:39.199 is to have a little bit of an arrogance just 0:19:39.560 --> 0:19:41.040 long enough to be able to get you to the 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:47.960 point of actually being able to take on big problems. 0:19:57.720 --> 0:19:59.720 So let's step back to the first issue you mentioned 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:03.320 about probabilities. So how did this come up at the 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:06.639 beginning of the pandemic? What happened in terms of public 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:10.920 communication of scientists to the public. That's where the issue 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:14.119 of probability started. Really the interface had a lot of 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:14.960 friction there. 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:15.760 Now now here. 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:18.240 I feel like there was a real missed opportunity because 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:21.119 and I should say before I say anything else, I 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:23.640 should say, if you are a public official and you're 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:27.720 in a position that you suddenly faced the pandemic, it's 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:30.600 really difficult, right, I mean, I can and so people 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:35.040 making mistakes. I feel absolutely no you know, sense of 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:38.000 you know, smugness. Though I would have done better. I'm 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:41.040 sure that I would have done worse because it's really 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:45.240 difficult to figure this out, But in armchair quarterbacking watching. 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:48.000 It, you know, from the outside, I would say that, 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:53.600 you know, there was a moment where you had a 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:56.119 choice of being absolutely. 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:58.040 Confident about what it was you were going to tell 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:01.199 the public to do, and I think that ended up 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:05.920 being a trap. That you should not claim a confidence 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:09.520 that you don't actually have, and that you should put 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:11.520 up with the fact that some people may be a 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:14.760 little less willing to follow you in exchange for a 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:19.119 really strong sense of honesty about here is what we 0:21:19.160 --> 0:21:21.159 know and here's what we don't know, and we are 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:23.960 going to play the odds. And when I said I'm 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:27.920 chair quarterbacking, I realized that actually the metaphor of football 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:30.600 plays could have been really useful that I think it 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:33.359 would have been a moment to leveled with the public, 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:36.359 and I think that people could have listened if you said, 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:41.119 we are about we're in a football game with the virus. 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:45.639 We don't know its plays, it doesn't know our plays, 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:48.320 but it will try to adapt to our plays. We're 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:50.280 going to try to get ahead of it and go 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:52.800 with a better play depending on what we see it doing. 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:55.600 And so every week, every two weeks. 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:57.200 Every month, we're going to tell you what our latest 0:21:57.200 --> 0:22:00.680 play is, and then we're going to play it as 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:02.440 best we can and we're going to win this football game, 0:22:02.560 --> 0:22:05.159 you know. Whereas if instead you say we're going to 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:07.040 come up with, you know, here's the rule. This is 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:09.560 what you guys should do from that on, and then 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:11.760 a month later you have to change it because now 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:14.080 we known something different. People say, well, you keep changing 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:16.359 your mind, how do I know what to follow? But 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:19.840 if you tell people this isn't a you know, a 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:22.399 one off thing. You know, either we're right or wrong. 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:26.080 This is a constant update that we're going to figure 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:28.159 out its plays and then we're going to do our plays. 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:30.199 People would get it, I think, and I think they 0:22:30.200 --> 0:22:34.679 would follow you as you updated the recommendations as we 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:35.240 learn more. 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:39.439 And part of the idea here is that generally the 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:43.200 world doesn't think too much in probabilities, but in sports 0:22:43.280 --> 0:22:46.600 they do, right, That's that's your point here, naturally, Yeah, exactly. 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:48.119 And you know this is those things where you know, 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:50.320 we often feel like, oh, well, how could the public 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:53.560 probably possibly follow something so complex. The answer is they 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:56.879 do it all the time in certain situations, and so 0:22:56.960 --> 0:22:59.280 all we need to do is have them recognize that, oh, 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:01.440 this is another situation in which we have to use 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.320 that muscle that we that we have, that that thinking tool, 0:23:05.640 --> 0:23:08.159 and you know, we we understand it, you know, in 0:23:08.200 --> 0:23:10.760