WEBVTT - David McRaney on the Science Behind Persuasion 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:05.960 M This is Mesters in Business with Very Results on 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:11.280 Bloomberg Radio. This week on the podcast, I have an 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:16.320 extra special and fascinating guests. His name is David McCraney 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:21.000 and he is a science journalist and author. I first 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:25.280 came to know David's work through his blog and book 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:28.520 You Are Not So Smart, which was a fun review 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:32.720 of all of the cognitive foibles and behavioral errors we 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:37.440 all make. But it turns out that David was looking 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:41.520 at how people change their minds, how you persuade people, 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:45.440 and he thought the answer was found in all of 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:49.080 these cognitive errors. And if you could only alert people 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:52.120 to the mistakes they were making, whether it be fact 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:55.880 checks or just showing them their biases uh and the 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:58.360 heuristics they use and the rules of thumb they use 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:02.040 that we're wrong, hey would come around and see the light. 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:05.360 And as it turns out, that approach is all wrong, 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:10.120 and his mia culpa is essentially this book How Minds Change. 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:15.320 It turns out that persuading people about their fundamental beliefs 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:20.640 involves a very very specific set of steps, starting with 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:22.640 they have to want to change. They have to be 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:27.200 willing to change, which only occurs when people come to 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:31.720 the realization that they believe something for perhaps reasons that 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:36.319 aren't very good, and it's a process, it's an exploration. 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:41.400 It's fascinating the people he's met with and discussed, whether 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:45.160 it's deep canvassing or street epistemology, or some of the 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:48.840 other methodologies that are used to persuade people that some 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:53.440 of their really controversial political beliefs are wrong. He's met 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:56.720 with various people from all everything from flat Arthur's to 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:02.200 antivactors to the folks who have left the Westboro Baptist Church, 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:07.720 a pretty notorious and controversial institution. I found this conversation 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:11.680 really to be tremendous and fascinating, and I think you 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:17.040 will also. With no further ado, my interview with David McRaney. Well, 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:19.400 I've been a fan of your work and I thought 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:21.920 when this book came out it was a great opportunity 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.280 to sit down and have a conversation with you. Before 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:25.760 we get to the book, let's talk a little bit 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:29.320 about your background. You started as a reporter covering everything 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:34.560 from Hurricane Katrina, test rockets for NASA, Halfway Home for 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:39.639 homeless people with HIV. What led you to becoming focused 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.120 on behavior in psychology. Well, I thought that's what I 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:44.440 was gonna do for a living. I was. I went 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:48.280 to school to university to study psychology. I thought it 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:51.480 would be a therapist, got that degree. But then as 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:53.800 I was doing that, uh, there was a sign up 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:57.360 on campus that said opinionated in big helvetica font and 0:02:57.360 --> 0:02:58.560 I was like, yeah, I am that would mean that 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:01.079 seems what is that? And said, you know, come down 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:03.160 to the offices of the student newspaper. I went down 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:05.080 there and said, how does this work? They said, just 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.560 email us stuff. You have an opinions piece you want 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:10.080 to do. I'm like m and I I wrote a 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:14.320 really like uh sophomore thing about Starbucks on campus because 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:15.760 it was just about to come into campus. And I 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:17.359 wrote that and wrote a couple of things. And then 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:19.560 there was a study that had just recently come out, 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:21.720 and who knows if it's replicated or stood the test 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:25.120 of time, but it was when your favorite sports team loses, 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:29.720 men's sperm counts go down. And I thought, our team 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:33.320 at our school had lost every single game that year 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:37.960 so far? What does that mean for the future progeny alumni? 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:39.680 That's right? And I thought it would be a great 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:42.280 headline that would be funny. And the headline I wrote was, 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:45.280 you know, evidence suggests the sperm counts reach record lows 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:49.520 on campus. And uh one of my professors laughed about 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:51.160 it and asked the whole class that they had read it, 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:52.240 but they didn't know that I was in the class. 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:53.400 And I was like, oh, way, this could be fun 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.760 So I switched to journalism, and you know, went all 0:03:56.800 --> 0:03:58.560 the way through the student paper and then went into 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:01.560 print journalism and TV journalist. But I once I've reached 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:03.400 a certain point in that world, I wasn't able to 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:05.680 write anymore. I was doing editing and helping other people, 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.040 and I just really wanted to write something. And it 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:11.160 just happened blogs were becoming very popular that time. Uh 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:14.520 my dad says, and uh others that were like, oh, 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:18.800 that's way later. I'm thinking back to uh Yahoo's geo 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:21.560 cities and ye world. I mean, I'm I'm the o 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:23.960 G when it comes to blogging, go way way back. 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:25.800 I just happened to be there when they blew up 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:27.600 on the point of like they got book deals and 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:29.640 I started a blog called you Were Not So Smart 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:32.200 about all the cognitive biases and fallacies and heroistics that 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:35.159 I really enjoyed, and I wrote a piece about brand 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:38.800 loyalty that went viral and the rest is history. That 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:40.880 was asked to write a book about it, and then 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:43.559 I was like, oh, I will continue playing in this world. 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:45.760 But I started. I started the podcast to promote the 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:47.720 second book because the first book did so well. They said, 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:49.359 and do another really quickly, and I did, you are 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:51.800 less dumb now? You are now less dumb yet? And 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:54.159 I just so happened to start a podcast right when 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:56.160 podcasts were becoming a thing. I sent an email to 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:57.920 Mark Mayren because he had the number one podcast. I said, 0:04:57.920 --> 0:04:59.280 how do you do this? And he actually sent me 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:02.520 an email with a a point really h like each 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:06.440 with links to Amazon items and no kidding, and he 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:08.560 was very nice. And I got all this stuff and 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:11.599 started it up, and that has now becomes from the centerpiece, 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:13.479 because that's uh, I was there when I got going. 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:18.239 My My pitch for this podcast was WTF meets Charlie Rose, 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:22.360 and nobody knew what w TF was. I mean, they 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:25.200 didn't know the acronym, nor did they know the podcast. 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:27.080 Because you know, you have to be a little bit 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:30.160 of a comedy junkie to have found that in the 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:34.040 early days. Later on it was ubiquitous. So sticking with 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:37.440 journalism when you were still writing, you seem to have 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:41.280 covered some really unusual and interesting stories. Tell us about 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.360 one of the more surprising things that you covered. I 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:46.200 always wanted to do feature pieces. That was the world 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:48.120 that I loved, and that was always in journalism school 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:51.720 and you know, uh, Frank Sinatra has a cold, electricoli 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:53.880 ascid test. I just wanted to write features. I wanted 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:56.400 to be there in person and and like tell you 0:05:56.720 --> 0:05:58.800 explore humanity from the inside out my way and I 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.800 the Halfway Home for HIV positive men for homeless people 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:05.880 in the Deep South. That was a real turning point 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:07.919 for me because there's uh. I had to spend about 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:09.839 three weeks on that story, and I visited all the 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:12.479 different people, went to all the different meetings, and the 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:15.040 homelessness is very invisible in the Deep South. They often live, 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:17.520 uh in the woods. You know, they're looking for us 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:20.080 and they there's a lot of people in the Deep South. 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:21.560 I don't think there is a homeless problem. And that 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:23.960 was a really interesting way to break that story into 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:27.479 the public. You know, consciousness of no, no, there's a 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:28.880 problem here. It's just hidden from you in a very 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:31.680 particular way, and a lot of people aren't even wear 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:35.000 their organizations that dealt with that, and that really show 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:36.240 me this is the world I want to be and 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:37.600 this kind of stuff I want to do. So I'm 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:41.440 picking up a theme in both your writing columns and books, 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:44.880 which is there's a problem you don't know about it. 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.080 It's hidden, and here it is. That's the whole thing, 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:50.120 Like hidden worlds are it for me? Like I grew 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:51.640 up in a trailer in the woods in the Deep South, 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:55.000 and as an only child, I was always searching for 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:56.360 the others. I didn't know how I was going to 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:58.680 get there, and once I got at a hand was 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:00.920 extended into this stage. It's all I want to do. 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:04.640 Like I call him taramissoum moments because I remember the 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:07.839 first time you had tarremsa I was I went to. 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:09.800 It was when I was still in the working for 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:12.440 a TV station. We had a little conference where people 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:15.040 in my position went and we went there and we 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:17.360 got tarmiseu as a dessert and I remember took a 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:18.600 bite of it and I was like, oh my god, 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:21.160 this is so damn good. What what is this, and 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.720 everyone there was like, uh, it's Tarmissus, And I was like, 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:28.040 oh yeah, yeah, termisous loved the stuff and and but 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:30.360 that's it. That's what I'm pursuing now. I want more 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:32.280 of those things. I didn't know. I didn't know. You know, 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.800 that's really quite interesting. So I guess it's kind of 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:40.640 natural that you evolve towards behavior and cognitive issues. I 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:42.320 was going to ask you what led to it, but 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:44.760 it seems like that's something you've been driving for your 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.560 whole career. Yeah, it's a unity through humility. It's it's 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.440 we're all absolutely stumbling and fumbling in the dark and 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:53.640 pretending like we're we know we're up to even here 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:57.080 in these fantastic, you know, bloomberg offices, like uh. The 0:07:57.160 --> 0:07:59.080 thing I want to avoid is the sense that I've 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.920 got it all figured out. And there are massive domains 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:05.720 in psychology, neuroscience, and other social sciences that just start 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:08.920 from that place and then investigate it. And I find 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:11.520 that when I discover these things that we all share 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.720 that should give us a pause, should cause us to 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:17.360 feel humility. I feel like I'm in the right spot, 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:19.400 and I want to like dig deeper into those places 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:20.720 and reveal them so we can all be on the 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:25.160 same page that way. So blind spots, unknown unknowns, things 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:28.240 that we are just clearly clueless about, and the biases 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:31.520 that they're When I started out, things like confirmation bias, 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:33.360 wasn't you know there wasn't as just the tip of 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:35.640 the tongue as it is now and survivorship bias, things 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:39.559 like that. So I noticed in this book nothing written 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:44.960 about Dunning Krueger, nothing about Chaldoni's persuasion. Is that a 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:49.600 different approach to decision making and psychology? Like or because 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:51.280 I always assume there would be a little bit of 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:54.760 an overlap there, I didn't want to retread anything there. 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:57.079 There's some foundational stuff that I do talk about in 0:08:57.080 --> 0:08:59.200 the book that feel like you can never not talk about, 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.479 some which go back a century and like the introspection 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.840 illusion has to always be uh talked about. We don't 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:08.000 know the antecedence to our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, but we 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:10.880 are very good at creating narratives to explain ourselves to ourselves. 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:13.560 And if you always have to mention that in any 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:15.520 book about this topic, as far as concern and so 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:18.000 there's a little bit of that. But like Dunning, Krueger 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:21.200 and uh all the other big heavy hitters, I definitely 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:22.840 did not want to write How to Win Friends and 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:25.679 Influence People, Part Two because I wanted to come from 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:27.880 a very different perspective on all this, and I didn't 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:30.360 want it to be a book specifically about persuasion, because 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:32.800 I don't even start talking about actual persuasion techniques still 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:34.920 about page two hundred, Like, I show you people who 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:37.080 are doing things that could be labeled as persuasion techniques, 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:38.520 but I don't get into the like the science of 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:41.280 it till later. Other you mentioned Dunning Krueger. I I 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.960 just recently spent some time with Old Dunning, Professor David 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:47.880 Dunning he um a former guest on the show. I 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:50.520 don't think he's that old. I think, yeah, I say 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:52.880 old in the chow me pat you on the back 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.040 cut of right he Uh. I keep asking to come 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:56.360 back on the show, but he's working on a new 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:58.679 project and he's a new book on Dunning Crew. Yeah. Yeah, 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:00.200 because you know that a lot of people has been 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:02.559 all these people who want to knock it down and 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:04.959 and he's there have been attempts, but none have really 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:07.160 landed a blow. So we helped him out, or he 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:09.560 helped us out. My good friend Johansson has a YouTube 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:12.720 channel and uh it does explore different science Stuff's called 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.360 be Smart, and we were talking about that recently. There 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:17.760 was a story about someone who, uh, the pilot you 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:20.280 went unconscious and they've landed the airplane but they got 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:23.120 help from the tower. And we were talking about that 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:25.280 and I was like, I feel like I could land 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:28.520 an airplane based off all my video game experience, and 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:30.400 Joe said he thought he could too, and I said, 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.000 this has got to be done in Kruger, right, And 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:34.640 I said it would be cool if you did a 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.599 video where you got into like one of those commercial 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:41.600 commercial flight simulator and they just said, yeah, I try, 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:44.800 go ahead, land knock yourself. And so he got I 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:46.960 get I got him in touch with Dunning, and Dunning 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:49.439 was like, I can't wait to be part of this project. 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.240 So he both interviews back and forth with Dunning before 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:54.120 and after, and of course he gets in the simulator 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:56.040 and they hand him the controls and they say, okay, landed, 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:59.079 and of course he crashed. And you crashed it three times. 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:02.160 That's impressive, you know. Even David Dunning tells a wonderful 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:07.880 story about they never expected the research paper Dunning Krueger 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:11.280 on metacognition to explode. And he goes, I never thought 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.760 about trademarking it. He goes, go on, go on Amazon. 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:18.760 You'll see Dunning Krueger University shirts, key chains, all sorts 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:21.320 of stuff. He goes, there's a million dollars there. I 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:23.559 just had no experience in that, and I got a 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:28.679 little Dunning crugerd did not did not think about the 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:31.400 commercial side of it. So there's a quote I want 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.959 to share because it sets up everything. Uh, and I'm 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:37.200 I'm sort of cheating. It's from towards the end of 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:40.400 the book. We do this because we are social primates 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:43.880 who gather information in a bias manner for the purpose 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:49.360 of arguing for our individual perspectives in a pooled information 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:53.760 environment within a group that deliberates on shared plans of 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:58.720 actions towards a collective goal. Kind of sums up everything 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:01.440 we do in a US. That was a lot of work, 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:04.720 with years of work within that little little that A 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:07.319 lot of that comes from something that's called the interactions model. Uh. 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:09.080 They're sort of a peanut butter and chocolate have come 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:11.880 up and in this book because I've spent years talking 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:13.440 to people through you are not so smart, and I 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:17.040 would argue that we're flawed and irrational, right, And that 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:19.559 was there was a big pop psychology movement for that 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:23.720 about a decade ago, things like predictably Irrational and uh, 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:26.800 even the work of Knomen Diversky, like a lot of 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:29.160 the like interpretation of that was like, oh, look how 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:31.839 dumb we are, right, and look how easily fooled we're 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.040 Look how bad we were probabilities. And one of the 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:37.320 incepting moments of this book was I did a lecture 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:40.480 and somebody came up to me afterwards. Her father was 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:42.400 had slipped into a conspiracy theory, and she asked, what 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:45.160 do I do about that? And I told her nothing 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:49.280 like but I felt gross saying it. I felt like 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:50.920 I was locking my keys in my car. I felt like, 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:53.640 I think I know enough to tell you that, but 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:55.439 I know I don't. And also I don't want to 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:58.120 be that that pessimistic and centicle. And at the same time, 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:01.080 the attitudes and norms on same sex marriage the United 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:05.520 States had flipped like very rapidly, We're that. So those 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:07.640 two things together I was like, I would I want 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:10.000 to understand this better. So I invited on my podcast 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:12.559 Hugo mercy A and he teamed up with Dan Sperber 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:14.600 and they created something called the interactions model, which is 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:16.319 a model that I only want to talk to them about, 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:19.200 you know, changing minds, arguing, and it opened up this 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:22.000 whole world and through them, I also met with Tom Stafford, 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:25.480 and there's the interactionist model, and there's the truth wind scenario, 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:27.079 and those are sort of a peanut butter and chocolate 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:28.640 my come up. And it's because instead of looking at 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:30.679 people as being flawed in irrational, alsa is just as 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:34.320 biased and lazy, which is different. And what you're just 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:36.720 talking about what that paragraph is about the interactionist model, 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:39.559 which is uh, A lot of the research that went 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:43.400 into all those books from about a decade ago. They 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.200 were pulling from studies that were done on individuals and isolation. 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:49.240 And then when you pool all of their conclusions together 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:52.720 and you treat people as a group of people based 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.560 off that research, we do look kind of flawed, right, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:57.960 we do look very irrational. But if you take that 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:00.760 exact same research and you allow people to do liberating groups, 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:05.240 you get much different reactions, much different responses, and that's 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:07.320 been furthered by the work of Tom Stafford. He's been 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:09.680 taking some of the old stuff from those old studies 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:13.560 and putting them to groups and even creating um social 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:17.680 media similarcrooms that work like Twitter and Facebook and stuff, 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:20.960 but have a totally different context, allows people to deliberate 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:23.720 and argue in different ways and you get much different results. 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:25.680 You get better results were much. A good example of 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:27.760 that is like, uh, you take something from the common 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.800 reflection task or something like a I'll make it real 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:32.800 simple so we don't have to like do any weird 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:34.400 math in their heads. Like you're running a race and 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:36.320 you pass the person in second place, what place you in? 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:38.920 And you know the intuitive answer You're start trying to 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.440 work it out in your head. But the answer one 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:43.960 if you like lean back, is well I replaced second place. 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:46.600 I'm in second place. But if you ask people individually 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:48.760 you get a pretty high response fade where they get 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:51.320 the wrong answer. But if you take that exact same 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:53.840 question and you pose it to a group of people 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:56.440 and I do some lectures now and you say, Okay, 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:59.760 I'm gonna ask this question, keep the answer to yourself. Now, 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:01.360 does anyone to have the right answer. You know you 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:03.680 have the right answer. Raise your hand. Somebody raised their hand. 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:06.000 I say, okay, what's the answer. They give you the answer. 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:08.080 Then you say, explain your reasoning, and then they explain 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:09.920 the reasoning. When they give their answer, there will be 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:12.440 a grumble on the crowd. When they explain the reasoning 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:15.520 behind it, the crowd goes, Okay. Now, if you took 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:19.520 everyone's individual answer and pulled it together, you'd be like, wow, 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:22.160 this group got their wrong answer. But if you allow 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:24.680 that deliberation moment to take place where I explain how 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:26.400 reasoning to you, you get a group of people who 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.640 would go from eight percent in correct correct. And we 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:31.800 really set up for that. And the interactionist model is 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:33.720 all about this the work of Humorocity and Dan Spur 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:35.600 really have a great book about this, called The Enigma 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:38.040 of Reason. It's a it's not a light read, it's 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:40.840 really sort of you know, academic, but it's great because 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:43.920 they found, looking through the old research and their own 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:47.040 new research, that we have two cognitive systems, one for 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.280 producing arguments, one for evaluating arguments, and the one that 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:52.840 produces arguments does it very lazily and very in a 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:55.280 very biased manner. You can think of it like you 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:57.200 ask where do you want to go eat? And you know, 0:15:57.200 --> 0:15:58.880 I have three or four people after a movie like 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:01.640 hanging out in the lobby like I wanna I want 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:02.760 to go here, I want to go here, I want 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:05.360 to go here, and UH they have biased reasons for that. 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:07.920 One person's says, hey, let's go get sushi, and the 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:10.680 somebody's like, we're over here and on my ex work there, 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.560 or or I someone to say I had sushi yesterday, 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:16.160 or I don't like sushi. That you can't predict what 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:18.120 are going to be the counter argument, so you to 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:20.800 present your most biased and lazy argument up front, and 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:24.280 you let the deliberation take place in the pooled UH 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:26.960 evaluation process. You all flow the cognitive labor to that 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:30.360 we're all familiar with doing that. Everyone has their ideas, 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:31.920 You trade back and forth, and we decide on the 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:34.360 group goal on the plan, which is what this evolved 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:36.080 to do. But we are also very familiar with the 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:38.120 way that plays out on the internet, which is not 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:40.080 good for an AUC is removed and you don't get 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:42.720 the same social cues coming right, So you get like, 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:46.080 let's say, my good friend Alistair Croll, who runs conferences. 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:47.600 He put it to me like this. He's like, on 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.320 the Internet, when you say, uh, I want a grilled 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:53.400 cheese sandwich, Uh, it's not an argument for for who 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:55.800 wants grilled cheese sandwiches? Should we get grilled cheese sandwiches 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:58.840 anywhere else? Agree with me? On the Internet, on most 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:01.200 of the platforms we use today, it's saying I want 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:03.000 grilled cheese sandwiches. Who wants to go with me to 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:05.879 the grilled cheese sandwich room? And so everyone who agrees 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:07.600 with that position and is already like, yeah, that's what 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:10.760 I want to they get pulled off into a community 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:12.719 of people who want this and then a whole new 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:14.520 set of psychological act that was going to play, which 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:16.840 is all about being a social primate and being a community. 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:20.600 So there's no iteration, there's no debate, there's no consensus 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:24.600 forming as to what the best solution to that problem is. 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:29.080 You just have some salient issue and people form of 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:32.000 what looks like madness or what looks like some sort 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:34.480 of nefarious thing going down. One of the things that 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:36.760 the Internet gives us is the ability to group up 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:40.000 very quickly, and we are social prime rates. If we 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:42.840 go into a group, we start being worried about motivations 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:44.320 like I want to be a good member of my group, 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:46.160 I want to be to be considered a trustworthy member 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:48.639 of my group, and so on, and you get a 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:50.679 lot of weird stuff we see today that that falls 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.240 into the domain of being polarized or being in a 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:55.440 system where everyone is. If you have in a group 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.080 people who agree with you in your current position, it's 0:17:57.160 --> 0:17:58.639 very difficult to argue out of it because I can 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:01.280 always fall back to them from back and so that 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:02.760 that's some of the stuff that goes into that paragraph, 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:04.960 and it gets more complicated from there. But yeah, it's 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:06.919 that was very illuminating to me, and a lot of 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:09.000 the new material in this book relates back to it. 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:13.480 Not that the earlier books were wrong or incorrect in anyway, 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:15.439 but I kind of took this as a little bit 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:19.359 of a mia Kalpa in terms of, hey, I was 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:23.240 focusing on one area, but really we need to focus 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:26.800 on a broader area in terms of not just why 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:30.480 we make these cognitive eras, but how you can change 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:35.080 somebody's mind who's trapped in some heuristic or other cognitive 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:38.960 problem that is leading them the wrong life. I did 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:40.800 not intend for this to be like some sort of 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:43.320 marketing phrase or trick, but it's the truth. But I 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:45.800 in writing a book of how Minds Change, I changed 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:47.520 my mind on a lot of stuff that I was 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:50.600