#162 [EN] Tom Chatfield - Amplifying minds: the vital role of Critical Thinking in the Digital Era

Data: Wed, 24 Apr 2024 · Duração: 01:29:01

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Tom Chatfield 00:00:00.00Olá, eu sou o José Maria Pimentel e sejam muito bem-vindos a mais um episódio do 45 graus. 00:00:16.74Como sabem, o pensamento crítico é um tema que me diz muito e por vários motivos. 00:00:22.12Desde logo, é uma das razões que me levaram e levam a fazer o 45 graus, porque a melhor maneira de desenvolvermos a nossa capacidade de pensar bem é expandirmos o nosso conhecimento e, sobretudo, entrar em contato com pessoas de áreas muito diferentes e com formas de pensar muito distintas. 00:00:39.78Além disso, nos últimos anos tenho-me dedicado a investigar este tema de maneira mais direta, o que acabou por dar origem aos workshops de pensamento crítico, bem como a aulas e também a formações que tenho dado a empresas. 00:00:50.94Foi neste percurso que descobri o convidado de hoje, Tom Chatfield, um autor e filósofo que tem trabalhado, sobretudo, sobre os desafios do mundo digital e que escreveu vários livros dedicados ao pensamento crítico e às competências de futuro. 00:01:04.34É engraçado porque eu só descobri o livro do Tom já depois de ter criado o meu próprio programa de pensamento crítico e, curiosamente, embora ele organize os conteúdos de maneira bastante diferente, a verdade é que cobrimos praticamente os mesmos pontos essenciais. 00:01:18.82argumentação, explicações causais, como lidar corretamente com números e informação no mundo, cada vez mais dominado pela tecnologia e, claro, a importância de termos atenção à maneira como a nossa mente nos prega partidas e nos pode levar a raciocinar mal. 00:01:33.36Como vão ver, o Tom pensa muito bem e é um excelente comunicador e, por isso, decidi desafiá-lo para vir ao 45 graus para discutirmos estes temas que nos interessam aos dois e suspeito também a muitos de vocês. 00:01:45.44Como vão ver, foi uma conversa muito interessante. 00:01:47.96Como foi em inglês e para não limitar a audiência, vou mudar agora de língua. 00:01:51.76Mas antes disso, momento publicitário. 00:01:54.90Este episódio, tal como o anterior, é patrocinado pela Blanky, uma marca portuguesa focada em produtos inovadores para melhorar o nosso sono. 00:02:02.96A pensar nas noites quentes que aí vêm, a Blanky acaba de lançar um novo produto, os lençóis Ice 2.0, feitos de bambu, e que eles descrevem como, e cito, os lençóis mais frescos e macios de Portugal. 00:02:15.88Suaves como a seda e mais frescos do que o linho. 00:02:18.48O truque, digamos assim, está no acabamento e, sobretudo, no material, o bambu. 00:02:23.66Eu, como provavelmente vocês, também nunca tinha experimentado lençóis de bambu, mas a verdade é que é um material muito usado noutras geografias pela sua respirabilidade e pela capacidade de absorção de umidade. 00:02:35.54E isto faz com que os lençóis se mantenham frescos durante a noite, mesmo nas noites mais quentes. 00:02:40.22Para saber mais, visitem o site blanky.pt ou, para uma experiência mais tátil, passem por uma das lojas parceiras indicadas no site. 00:02:48.52Qualquer compra pode ser trocada ou devolvida gratuitamente pelo que podem comprar sem receio. 00:02:53.32E agora, de volta à introdução. 00:02:55.28Hoje, estamos em uma conversa enloucada com Tom Chatfield, um autor britânico e tech philosopher. 00:03:02.18Tom é o autor de vários livros focados em melhorar nosso pensamento no nosso mundo tech-dominado, incluindo best-sellers como Critical Thinking e How to Think. 00:03:12.22Ele também ensina essas habilidades a uma grande maioria de audiências, de escolas até corporais. 00:03:18.32E ele tem recentemente designado um curso de curso de Crição e Decision-Making para o Economist. 00:03:26.50In his most recent book, Wise Animals, Tom explores our relationship with technology, examining the lessons that our ancestral past may hold for our present challenges. 00:03:36.84In this very thought-provoking conversation, we discussed Tom's advice for how to think more critically in today's complex world. 00:03:44.64We talked about strategies to combat the influence of cognitive biases in our mind, a term that many of you probably know from the work of the late Daniel Kahneman, and the importance, and also difficulty, of challenging our assumptions. 00:03:58.26We also talked about how to better think collectively, and the importance of creating trust in order to be able to have open conversations, and also some techniques Tom advises, in order to generate deep discussions and good decision-making in all contexts. 00:04:13.84In the final part, we turn our focus to Tom's latest book, and I asked his view on two big impacts technology is currently having in our society. 00:04:23.44One of them is the change that mass interactive media is bringing to traditional democratic structures, exacerbating polarisation and eroding public trust in institutions. 00:04:33.28And the other one, which is probably very close to home to those of you who have young children, is the troubling rise of what many experts refer to as the epidemic of mental illness among children and teenagers, driven by the increasing role of social media in their lives. 00:04:49.68It was a fascinating conversation, so let me leave you with Tom Chatfield. 00:05:00.40Tom Chatfield, welcome to 45 Braus.

José Maria Pimentel 00:05:02.80Thank you very much for having me. 00:05:02.80Great to be with you.

Tom Chatfield 00:05:05.28Yeah, I'm a big fan of your work. 00:05:05.28I think I knew it before finding your book on critical thinking. 00:05:11.44Then I came across your work in a course you put together for The Economist on critical thinking and future skills. 00:05:16.24And then your new book, Wise Animals, which we'll also be talking about. 00:05:22.08Let's start. 00:05:22.08I'm very curious about this. 00:05:22.08What happened so that you ended up writing books on critical thinking, technology, and the like? 00:05:25.36What happened? 00:05:25.36What's your background? 00:05:29.92How did you end up here?

José Maria Pimentel 00:05:32.40So I guess I've always wanted to be a writer since I was very young. 00:05:32.40And I started out writing and poetry and drama and poetry and drama and things like that. 00:05:38.56But I also did my master's and my doctorate and taught a bit at Oxford in literature and a bit of philosophy. 00:05:38.56And I was very geeky. 00:05:38.56I also love computers and maths and things like that. 00:05:38.56And it became very clear to me that all the stuff I cared about, you know, the culture, the ideas, the morals, these big debates were being mediated through new forms of technology. 00:06:07.04And technology was touching upon all aspects of human life. 00:06:07.04And it also, I think, became equally clear to me that a lot of the time, the way that technology is talked about and discussed is not very rich, is not very philosophically informed, is not very thoughtful, is quite shallow. 00:06:25.52So if you like, I became almost obsessed with the idea or the question, what does it mean to think about technology well? 00:06:25.52What does it mean to kind of grapple with the modern world using all the tools that philosophy and social science and literature and so on have given us? 00:06:42.46And so in my work, I wrote my first book about video games, one of my obsessions. 00:06:42.46I began to collaborate with academic publishers and social scientists. 00:06:42.46And I kind of found my way towards critical thinking as this interdisciplinary place where you write and talk about what it means to think well and rigorously and to do so together. 00:07:05.46And I guess that it struck a chord for me. 00:07:05.46And for me, it unlocks the digital world for people. 00:07:05.46It takes the resources we have at our fingertips today. 00:07:05.46And if you give people, if you help people develop thinking skills, you know, then it equips people to make the most of the potentials of a digital age rather than be manipulated. 00:07:30.64So, yeah, I've almost become obsessed with this. 00:07:30.64I guess I've written quite a few books about it. 00:07:30.64I've taught variously. 00:07:30.64I've designed courses. 00:07:30.64I work with companies. 00:07:30.64I sort of do everything I can really to explore this theme of, well, how can we be more thoughtful and rigorous in the way we engage with the modern world and the skills we need to thrive in it?

Tom Chatfield 00:07:50.64Interesting, because your path is not very much unlike mine, although our backgrounds are different. 00:07:50.64Mine is in economics. 00:07:50.64But for me, critical thinking was also the natural place where I landed, although I didn't think of that in the beginning. 00:08:03.16And I think because of what you just described, it is both kind of the meta skill, which is at the basis of thinking about everything. 00:08:03.16And it's increasingly important once technology gets more developed and you have an overload of information, you have AI, you have social media, you have fake news. 00:08:03.16So suddenly it was already important and it gets even more important now.

José Maria Pimentel 00:08:25.88Yeah, absolutely. 00:08:25.88And to some degree, I think you've hit the nail on the head there that so many people just focus on the features of technology. 00:08:25.88What can technology do? 00:08:25.88What's its capabilities? 00:08:25.88And that's great. 00:08:25.88That's fascinating. 00:08:38.20But even more important is the question, well, what are the features of human minds? 00:08:38.20What are our strengths and weaknesses? 00:08:38.20And I think cognitively, we're both very brilliant and very vulnerable. 00:08:38.20And particularly the work of psychologists like Danny Kahneman and a lot of others who've done great work around sort of biases and heuristics and behaviour economics and so on. 00:09:01.96There's just been such rich recent research illuminating both what makes us vulnerable and how we can overcome those vulnerabilities. 00:09:01.96And when I think about AI and technology, the great question for me is not what can the technology do, not what does it mean to be obsessed with its features, but how can we try to make sure that we are robust against manipulation? 00:09:25.72That we take a close interest in reality and what's really going on, that we're not distracted and deceived and bewildered and disempowered. 00:09:25.72So when I write books, when I design courses, they have these two aspects. 00:09:25.72On the one hand, building up our skills through logic, through reasoning, through the scientific method, through research. 00:09:47.96But on the other hand, understanding our vulnerabilities, resisting hastiness, bias, mental shortcuts, manipulation. 00:09:47.96And it's the two things for me that go together to define critical thinking in the 21st century.

Tom Chatfield 00:10:04.90Focusing on the first, I don't know if you've been asked this question, but I've thought about it quite a while. 00:10:04.90Would you define critical thinking as a soft skill or a hard skill?

José Maria Pimentel 00:10:14.44I think I'd go for soft in some ways. 00:10:14.44I like soft because it suggests to me that it's an art as much as a science and that it's as much a kind of an attitude of mind. 00:10:14.44It's a mindset. 00:10:14.44I think it begins with humility. 00:10:14.44And what I mean by that is just the realization that individually, our own minds, our own worldviews are very small and very limited. 00:10:34.26And the quest to become less deceived is something we do incrementally. 00:10:34.26The great danger is that we move too quickly towards generalizations and false conclusions, that we overestimate our own knowledge. 00:10:49.98Kahneman has this great saying, he says, you know, at the root of so many errors in cognition is the idea that what you see is all there is. 00:10:59.10You've got stuff at your fingertips. 00:10:59.10And so all of us, of course, we do this. 00:10:59.10We know a tiny amount and we assume that tiny amount can answer all questions. 00:11:09.60And the great battle is to work with other people to get out of that mindset and instead to become investigators of reality together. 00:11:18.04So for me, although there's a lot of science in there, it's fundamentally a soft skill because it begins and ends with self-knowledge and with almost self-discipline, with the discipline to not just leap to conclusions, to this desire to control your own cognition and then direct it mindfully in the service of reality, of truth, of understanding.

Tom Chatfield 00:11:41.60Yeah. 00:11:41.60And Kahneman and Traversky and other researchers who are behind these conclusions, they developed that model, which I think is widely known nowadays of a two-way system in our brain between system one and system two, in which system one is sort of the automatic one, the one that's based on heuristics. 00:11:58.50And then the system two is the one, hopefully we are both using now, which is that we are thinking deliberately about something and consciously. 00:12:05.78And then from system one, we get biases, which is when it's not only automatic, but it's also our reasoning. 00:12:13.64It's also biased. 00:12:15.20I wonder what's your view on why we have these biases, because it's relatively easy to know why we have this automatic reasoning, because it's much more efficient in terms of resources, it's much faster. 00:12:26.96So it's much faster to not have to think consciously about something that you just work out automatically based on past patterns. 00:12:34.38But the biases, so these systematic deviations from rationality, for me, are not that obvious, where we get them from.

José Maria Pimentel 00:12:41.94That's right. 00:12:41.94And I was lucky enough, you know, to know Danny Kahneman a little bit until he collaborated with me on my critical thinking course just before his death, actually. 00:12:52.30And I did some little bits of kind of work with him in America, not a lot, but I was lucky enough to speak to him about this. 00:13:00.66And of course, like his work in Tversky's and Danareli's and others, is putting, you know, a new analysis on very old ideas. 00:13:09.30And the way for me of thinking about a bias is that a bias is a misfiring heuristic. 00:13:15.50And what I mean by that is a heuristic is a rule of thumb, a mental shortcut. 00:13:19.58That's really important. 00:13:21.06When you're evolving, when you're trying to survive as an animal, you need to be able to act in a fast, efficient, appropriate way. 00:13:28.64So if you see something that looks a bit scary or threatening or dangerous, you've got to run away from it. 00:13:33.84You can't spend your time analysing it. 00:13:36.04If something smells bad or looks unfamiliar, you want to avoid it and then ask questions later. 00:13:41.82And so it's always been the case that fast, efficient, fairly reliable actions are what keep us alive. 00:13:49.50And then slow, considered analysis is what we do afterwards to empower us to develop strategies over time collectively. 00:13:57.20And humans are supremely good at that. 00:13:59.14But of course, the conditions we live in now look nothing like the conditions we evolved in. 00:14:04.70And so a heuristic that's quite useful 100,000 years ago, that, for example, if someone or something looks unfamiliar, be cautious. 00:14:13.06That now can lead us into all kinds of problem, because if you're advertising something, you go for attractiveness and familiarity to create a halo, an aura, a halo effect. 00:14:24.96A beautiful person drives a beautiful car with a symmetrical face or conversely, a stereotype, a very crude generalisation about someone who looks different to you, encourages you to treat them as an enemy or to think of them as different to you in negative ways. 00:14:45.42And that maybe that would have kept you safe 100,000 years ago. 00:14:49.68But of course, it's a very, very poor way of interacting with fellow human beings in the modern world. 00:14:56.30And so I guess the key is that a lot of the time, mental shortcuts are good and useful. 00:15:02.18Choose what you have for lunch. 00:15:03.26Choose what you wear. 00:15:04.60You know, choose what to do today, how to have fun. 00:15:07.78But, and I'm going to quote Danny again on this. 00:15:10.42He said, the trouble is, when faced with a difficult question, a lot of the time we answer an easy question instead, without noticing the substitution. 00:15:20.14So here's a hard question. 00:15:21.56Who would be, you know, the best next president of the United States? 00:15:25.24Who would be the, what's the best plan for the future of the European Union? 00:15:29.18What's a good tax scheme? 00:15:31.54These are very hard questions, very difficult questions, very slow to investigate. 00:15:36.46Here's an easy question. 00:15:37.92Which of these two people looks more attractive and like a strong leader? 00:15:43.44Which of these people has the more symmetrical face? 00:15:46.98Which of these people is more familiar to you? 00:15:49.20These are very easy questions. 00:15:51.28And unless we try really hard, we tend to swap these easy questions for the hard questions and answer those instead. 00:15:59.60And that was very efficient in evolutionary terms. 00:16:02.70It's very dangerous in the modern world. 00:16:04.40So it's incredibly difficult, even for smart people, it doesn't really matter how smart you are. 00:16:09.46It's incredibly difficult to slow down and interrogate your own emotions. 00:16:14.46And in a way, you have to begin with the fact that all of us will have these strong, instant feelings. 00:16:20.58And the challenge is then to negotiate with them rather than pretend we can become perfectly rational, which is a meaningless idea.

Tom Chatfield 00:16:29.90And why is that a bad heuristic nowadays? 00:16:31.86So do you think that's a bad heuristic because we live in larger groups? 00:16:36.62It's because we live in more diverse societies?

José Maria Pimentel 00:16:39.14Well, I guess it's a bad heuristic partly because it leads us into error. 00:16:43.06So, for example, the question of which tax scheme will be better at preventing poverty or incentivizing work, that's an empirical question about complex systems. 00:16:54.00And it doesn't have an intuitive answer. 00:16:56.56My gut feelings about tax are worthless, you know, because the question is mathematical and economic and abstract. 00:17:04.12My gut feelings about running away from lions are probably quite good. 00:17:07.98And my gut feelings about people I know and whether I can trust someone I know very well is probably good. 00:17:13.74And so the trouble is there are situations in which our gut feelings are valid and useful. 00:17:19.06And that broadly is when we know a person or a situation well, when we have relevant expertise. 00:17:24.44But outside of that, our gut feelings are often worse than useless. 00:17:29.32My gut reaction to a tax scheme, to a politician, to a charity appeal, to where money should be spent. 00:17:35.90In all of those areas, our intuitions are worse than useless. 00:17:39.36And so we absolutely have to try to pause and come up with a context that helps guide our intuitions. 00:17:47.02And there are plenty of ways we can do this. 00:17:48.56So, for example, we can try and come up with a better question. 00:17:51.24So rather than saying, OK, what do you like about tax? 00:17:54.58Do you like the idea of having very low tax and hard workers just get to get rewarded? 00:17:59.26Or do you like the idea of a very heavy tax? 00:18:01.50Is that a good thing? 00:18:02.68Instead, you could say to people, OK, here's a visualization of different tax schemes. 00:18:07.02And it's going to show you with visuals the distribution of wealth in a society. 00:18:12.40It's going to draw you a graph. 00:18:13.52It's going to show you. 00:18:14.66And then you might, for example, look at this graph or look at these visuals and say, well, actually, this scheme really penalizes people here. 00:18:21.40Or this scheme really penalizes people there. 00:18:23.42So we can try and come up with better framings that allow our intuitions to function better and allow us to think better. 00:18:31.00And that's a big question, right? 00:18:32.86Ultimately, when it comes to technology, whether it's artificial intelligence or just a graph, a key question for me is, does this technology elevate our cognition and encourage us to make a better and more reality-based decision? 00:18:48.72Or does it try and manipulate us and push us towards a decision, not on the basis of evidence or reason, but on the basis of politics or propaganda or exploitation?

Tom Chatfield 00:19:03.12The difficulty, I think, is that, as you mentioned, I think the way Katman describes this is that you, well, heuristics are never perfect, of course. 00:19:10.16So that's why they are shortcuts. 00:19:11.24But they are more or less perfect or they work well when the environment is predictable enough and you have time enough to gain that experience, right? 00:19:21.02And in most of our current environments, especially those complex ones, it's quite difficult to have that. 00:19:26.16So what you're suggesting, it makes a lot of sense, is that we frame things in a way that the cognitive overload is lower, in a sense that enables people to think about that rationally.

José Maria Pimentel 00:19:37.18Exactly correct. 00:19:37.74Here's some really simple advice that I think is really good. 00:19:41.52You have limited time and limited attention. 00:19:44.80So when you're facing a complex or important question, and when you don't have enough information at hand, good information to answer it accurately, pause and seek cognitive reinforcements. 00:19:56.72It's a golden rule. 00:19:58.40Slow down and look for something or someone that will help you make an evidence-based decision. 00:20:05.00And this partly also means embracing uncertainty. 00:20:07.52We saw this during the pandemic when a lot of the time, understandably, a situation of fear and horror, as well as hope and learning. 00:20:18.14A lot of the time, people were terrified by uncertainty, politicians and citizens, and they desperately wanted a simple story to hang on to and answer. 00:20:28.34It's this, it's that. 00:20:29.76This works, this won't work. 00:20:31.10And in some ways, the most important message, which was emotionally very difficult, was it is uncertain. 00:20:38.40And the most important thing we can do is seek more evidence, is act fast and preventatively in this area. 00:20:45.06But in this area, keep our minds open. 00:20:47.26It may be that we think wearing a mask is very important. 00:20:51.06And then it turns out it's not that important compared to other things. 00:20:54.76It may be we think the virus spreads by contact, and then we learn it spreads through the air and so on. 00:21:01.58It's incredibly difficult but important to keep an open mind and to follow the evidence and to try not to get sucked into turning it into an ideological or tribal battle. 00:21:13.04And that's the enemy of good thinking. 00:21:14.52Suddenly, so many questions that are so important these days become matters of identity and allegiance. 00:21:20.76And that is absolute poison for critical thinking, because it causes people to judge them by tribal allegiances, rather than by evidence and open-mindedness.

Tom Chatfield 00:21:33.64And we deal, as you were mentioning, uncertainty. 00:21:36.86And that's one of the things we have a very hard way to get our heads around. 00:21:40.94Actually, it's one of the topics I cover in one module of my critical thinking program on causal explanations, because we deal very poorly with randomness and uncertainty. 00:21:51.56So if what you were suggesting, which makes a lot of sense, was emphasized by both politicians and practitioners during the time of COVID, it would have been very difficult for that message to pass, as it was very difficult. 00:22:04.44So saying, oh, we actually don't know this, so this is still an open question. 00:22:08.70We'll see. 00:22:09.30So this is the most reasonable response, but we don't know yet.

José Maria Pimentel 00:22:13.16It's a very difficult message emotionally. 00:22:15.24If you want to seem strong as a leader, if you want to give people hope. 00:22:18.66So if we think about uncertainty, social media makes it really obvious just how difficult it is to communicate uncertainty effectively. 00:22:29.54If I want to go viral on, you know, X or TikTok or whatever, saying something like, it's complicated, no clear answer, we need to seek more evidence, I'm not quite sure. 00:22:41.96That's pretty much the least viral thing I can say. 00:22:45.20We're saying, wow, there's this compelling evidence, there's this conspiracy, there's this story, we've got to do this. 00:22:51.90These calls to action will get a lot of attention. 00:22:53.94And so we have a very direct conflict between content and ideas that are emotionally arousing and the mindset of truth seeking. 00:23:06.32And I think a huge challenge for technology and leaders today, which is to be eloquent and persuasive, but at the same time to admit to uncertainty and to change minds, you know, to talk in a strong way about I'm not sure. 00:23:20.56And again, in terms of advice, I think one of the most powerful and useful things that you can say in work, online in your everyday life is, I'm not sure, what do you think? 00:23:34.28What evidence is there? 00:23:35.36What's the other side of the story? 00:23:37.28And it can be very difficult to do that because it doesn't look like strength or leadership or decisiveness, but it's really valuable.

Tom Chatfield 00:23:45.52Yeah. 00:23:45.52And on social media, do you think there's a way to square that circle? 00:23:45.52Do you see someone doing that?

José Maria Pimentel 00:23:50.48Yeah. 00:23:50.48So, of course, interestingly, I think one of the great gifts of social media can be the trust that can exist between person and their audience. 00:24:01.38You know, when you see how a lot of young people use things like YouTube, you go to follow someone who's a great gamer, who's a great streamer, who's passionate about a product, who's passionate about engineering. 00:24:14.52And in these areas, actually, because people's reputation and relationship with their followers is so important, they will often say, it's really complex. 00:24:24.70Let me take you on a journey. 00:24:26.44You know, it's fascinating how complex this is. 00:24:28.62Did you know how crazy the history of Minecraft did? 00:24:32.16Did you know how difficult it was to to hand calculate how to get a rocket to the moon? 00:24:37.42Did you know that rocket science is is really complicated, that building, you know, and so on. 00:24:42.18So there's a lot of great ways that you can draw people into the story of complexity, the story of uncertainty. 00:24:49.00And I think trust is the key in areas that people care about and trust people in and where where people have got skin in the game, where the communication is about where you're accountable to your audience.

Tom Chatfield 00:25:02.84You have a specific audience to write.

José Maria Pimentel 00:25:05.22That's right. 00:25:05.90So, you know, if I'm an influencer writing about, you know, even fashion, and I just talk absolute nonsense, no one's going to trust me as a good advisor. 00:25:15.04If I'm writing about, you know, video games or science, my audience are not going to follow me if I turn out to be wrong. 00:25:21.50But of course, there's a lot of games online that are just played for clout, that are just paid for impact, that are just where the game people is playing is not about truth, is not about understanding. 00:25:32.22It's about influence. 00:25:33.50It's about persuasion and so on. 00:25:35.24It all comes down to storytelling, really. 00:25:37.82And for me, then this is helpful, because actually, we can tell really good stories that are also true, if we are willing to bring an audience with us. 00:25:49.16If we have confidence that our audience are not idiots, and this is another thing, right? 00:25:53.68You can't be patronizing. 00:25:55.48If you treat people like idiots, if you have a low opinion of them, you know, then you fail to understand why people arrive at wrong beliefs or why people disagree with you. 00:26:05.88And often, actually, there are very good reasons. 00:26:07.74So, for example, vaccination. 00:26:10.86A lot of people were distrust for the vaccination for good reasons. 00:26:15.12I think misguided reasons, but a lot of people in America and elsewhere felt that they were being lied to or patronized by the government, that the government doesn't have their best interests at heart when it comes to health care. 00:26:28.72That's quite true in America. 00:26:29.98I mean, you know, in a lot of countries, people are treated with contempt. 00:26:32.80And until you understand why people are deeply distrustful of what politicians say, you can't then attempt to persuade them or take them on a journey.

Tom Chatfield 00:26:41.38You can even argue with them. 00:26:42.42So if they distrust the source of information, you can't even have an argument or discussion with them because there's no common ground even at the basic level.

José Maria Pimentel 00:26:52.42That's right. 00:26:52.84And the common ground is so important. 00:26:55.38You know, when you want to talk to someone, you're not enemies playing a zero-sum game. 00:27:00.40Maybe you are sometimes in some fields, but generally speaking, you know, starting with the idea that other people have good reasons for their beliefs that are good and compelling to them and trying to understand those reasons. 00:27:13.54That's a powerful way of building coalitions and finding, you know, saying, look, look, we all want to get through this. 00:27:21.12We're not necessarily enemies. 00:27:23.22There's a common ground here. 00:27:24.76Now, we can't always do that, of course, but the ability to build coalitions with diverse views, incredibly important in politics, in government, in healthcare, in society. 00:27:36.60You know, critical thinking is not about being a clever person who's always right. 00:27:40.74That's a very bad thing to aspire to be because ultimately you're aspiring to be divisive and self-righteous and privileging your own cleverness over engagement with other people. 00:27:52.84You know, I think for me, the great art is bringing as many people together as you can and is cultivating mutual respect and trying to build forms of understanding together.

Tom Chatfield 00:28:03.82Yeah, and because you never know if you're right or not. 00:28:06.38And actually, it's interesting because we've gone around three or four issues in our conversation so far. 00:28:11.64So we talk about limitations of our mind. 00:28:14.04We talked about complexity and how the world is both much more complex than the world we evolved in and is getting much more complex nowadays with technology. 00:28:24.24And just now you mentioned trust and how it makes it much more difficult for us to find common ground. 00:28:29.24And I feel, I don't know if you felt that when you're writing your book and then putting together these programs. 00:28:34.72I think that's, or I found myself concluding that the classic critical thinking is not especially helpful. 00:28:42.70For instance, deductive arguments are completely useless in the real world. 00:28:47.68So the classic argument that all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore he's mortal. 00:28:53.46This is like the classic deductive argument. 00:28:55.60This is useless in the real world because it doesn't tell you anything which is not in the raw material, so to say, right? 00:29:02.34So it doesn't tell you anything which is not in the reasons to begin with. 00:29:05.90And the real world is about our biases, is about having common ground with the others, and it's about dealing with complexity that makes it impossible to conclude anything on a deductive basis. 00:29:16.04You see, that's right.

José Maria Pimentel 00:29:17.34But I would put it a different way, which is that I think these tools are very valuable, but they come in after you've done a lot of work. 00:29:26.76So a deductive argument tells you what is already present in your premises. 00:29:31.66It spells it out. 00:29:33.02And that can be very useful. 00:29:34.82So, for example, if you said, you know, I don't trust vaccines because they're unnatural. 00:29:40.26Now, you can spell out deductively certain things from that. 00:29:45.48You can say, OK, so what you're saying here is anything that's unnatural is untrustworthy. 00:29:52.18Therefore, wearing clothes is unnatural. 00:29:55.56So that's bad. 00:29:56.86Or living in a house is bad. 00:29:59.12Are you saying that? 00:30:00.12Is that what you mean? 00:30:00.98Or alternatively, if it's natural for humans to wear glasses and clothes and use antibiotics and go on airplanes, then it's probably natural for us to make vaccines, too. 00:30:12.20Is that what you mean? 00:30:13.62So you can use the tools of deduction to see where your premises lead you and then investigate whether your premises are or aren't good.

Tom Chatfield 00:30:23.04But you're right that actually. 00:30:24.72And also, Tom, sorry to interrupt. 00:30:26.16And also the example you're pointing out is a good example of a bad inference. 00:30:30.38So the premise might even be OK, but the inference, so the leap from the premise to the conclusion is wrong.

José Maria Pimentel 00:30:37.78And of course, inference in a way is a form of hidden premise that, you know, all inferences are, in a sense, a premise about what follows and what the logic of the situation is. 00:30:49.08And what we're asking people to do, and I think this is the crucial point, is not, as you say, seek kind of perfect confidence through deduction. 00:30:58.60It's to go back and reconsider their premises and assumptions. 00:31:03.88And so with critical thinking today, I put a lot of emphasis on the groundwork. 00:31:10.22What are your fundamental beliefs? 00:31:12.40Why do you believe them? 00:31:14.20What are other people's fundamental beliefs? 00:31:16.40Are you really sure about those? 00:31:18.58What are your feelings? 00:31:20.20How are your feelings getting in the way here? 00:31:22.26What else is going on? 00:31:23.66And so you're right. 00:31:24.36This other stuff, the classical work around deduction and induction and even abduction, I think it's very valuable. 00:31:33.46But I think we need to pay a great deal of attention to the stuff that comes before that, which is actually often just a matter of observation, like thinking harder. 00:31:44.52Okay, so yeah, we're saying unnatural things are bad, but what do we mean by that? 00:31:48.48Well, often what people actually mean is, I don't trust the motives of some people creating new stuff and selling it, like pharmaceutical companies or tech companies. 00:31:58.58And you can then say, well, okay, well, that might be a reasonable thing to say, but it's not about natural or unnatural. 00:32:04.68To some degree, it's about the grounds that you have for trusting individuals. 00:32:10.82And then the question is, well, what evidence would persuade you? 00:32:13.58Because again, you drive a car, for example, you live in a building, you probably want to have a qualified surgeon perform an operation on your child rather than someone from 300 years ago with a rusty sore. 00:32:27.22So we get to much more interesting stuff. 00:32:29.42But yeah, it's about pausing and thinking and not just going off on this kind of deductive goose chase, where, as you say, you pretend that you possess certainty.

Tom Chatfield 00:32:40.44And in my experience, and I bet in yours too, asking questions works much better than going head on against the argument. 00:32:48.02But it requires some training because I think it goes against our natural instincts, which is much more to go head on and disagree. 00:32:54.66But if you start asking questions, as in the example you just gave, suddenly you find out that people didn't exactly mean that or they were not that confident in the reasons themselves, right?

José Maria Pimentel 00:33:04.54Exactly, exactly. 00:33:04.54And of course, in order to ask questions in good faith, you need there to be, if you like, trust in the room. 00:33:13.00So when I work with companies, with organisations, a lot of the time the question is one of kind of culture and atmosphere. 00:33:19.80Everyone says, oh, you can ask any questions you like, but often in a meeting or a boardroom, in fact, there's a lot of fear and a lot of ego. 00:33:26.26So how do you really establish that kind of trust? 00:33:30.56And there are, if you like, tricks you can do with this. 00:33:33.06One famous one is the example of a pre-mortem, which, you know, I'm sure you and your listeners may have heard of. 00:33:39.42It's a very simple trick. 00:33:40.92It just says, let's pretend. 00:33:43.30Let's pretend that it's two years in the future and our big project has gone wrong. 00:33:48.94It's a disaster. 00:33:50.42And now we're all going to have a competition, a game where we talk about why it went wrong. 00:33:56.38It's a game, but it gives you permission to talk about uncertainty and failure. 00:34:01.00You say, OK, yeah, no, our new product went wrong because it turned out that nobody liked it. 00:34:06.08It turned out it was too expensive. 00:34:07.58It went wrong because our competitors released a better one. 00:34:10.74It went wrong because we got sued. 00:34:13.38And so suddenly you create permission for people to challenge the narrative, to talk about assumptions. 00:34:20.04There's lots of ways of doing this.

Tom Chatfield 00:34:22.10Yeah, I love that too, the pre-mortem. 00:34:24.20And there's another one. 00:34:25.00I don't know if you've seen that in practice, which is, it's similar, actually. 00:34:28.84It's an obligation to dissent. 00:34:30.76So whenever there's a meeting, you cannot live without someone expressing an opposing opinion. 00:34:36.28Exactly right.

José Maria Pimentel 00:34:37.04Yeah, the devil's advocate. 00:34:38.04And that's, of course, one of the oldest philosophical exercises I'm aware of is that of arguing both sides. 00:34:45.32It goes all, you know, back to ancient Greece and indeed other disciplines, you know, and India and elsewhere and Vedic thought even, where the idea is that until you know the other side of the argument, you don't even know your side of the argument. 00:35:01.22And so you swap, you play devil's advocate. 00:35:03.42In the modern world, you might say you stress test an idea by subjecting it to critical scrutiny. 00:35:09.24It's a very powerful idea. 00:35:11.04And we see it in science all the time. 00:35:12.88In science, you know, you start off with a null hypothesis where your starting assumption is that the thing you're investigating is false or not true. 00:35:23.18And then you have to try and prove that it's not just chance, that there is a real effect. 00:35:28.58You discipline yourself to do that. 00:35:30.56And it's such an important mentality because everybody wants to say, oh, you know, you can say anything you like. 00:35:36.74But actually, unless you put a framework in place that really demands that people stress test ideas and speak up, it won't happen by magic.

Tom Chatfield 00:35:46.38Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:35:47.26In most cases, especially. 00:35:48.30By the way, have you, you've probably tried one of those debate models in which you're forced to defend the opposite side. 00:35:54.84And it's a great experience in that. 00:35:56.50I have a friend and she participated in one of those ones and she had to defend China's dictatorship in some or other issue. 00:36:05.06I don't remember which one. 00:36:06.48But then she was so persuasive that she won the debate. 00:36:10.40It's a great exercise. 00:36:11.30She had a very bad conscience by the end of it.

José Maria Pimentel 00:36:13.40It's a great exercise. 00:36:14.28And I do this with children and I've written books for children as well. 00:36:17.50And interestingly, when I'm doing this with companies or schools or universities, I often start with something very low stakes to get people into that playful mindset. 00:36:28.78And so I'll encourage people to come up with an idea they disagree with, but about something unimportant, like a movie, like a film or a food they hate or something like that. 00:36:39.66Because if it's unimportant, if it's not ideologically charged, then people are very comfortable playing with it. 00:36:47.18And then you take it to something more important. 00:36:49.20And the more I work around this with people running workshops and designing courses and I chair organizations as well and so on, the more I feel there's this psychological work. 00:37:00.82Like I do work around meditation and mindfulness and breathing and listening because actually controlling your emotions and finding kind of comfort with discomfort is so important. 00:37:12.08And in so many politically and economically charged atmospheres, none of this happens and people don't want to admit that they're scared or angry or uncomfortable or afraid, but even very senior people often are. 00:37:27.72And again, working with people on that can be a very powerful way of giving permission to think. 00:37:33.24If we don't have that permission, that time, that space, none of the good stuff can happen.

Tom Chatfield 00:37:38.96Those are two very important points, I think. 00:37:40.34First, if you don't have that space, none of the good stuff happens. 00:37:43.96And that's the one that you made previously, that if you don't create that space on purpose, it won't happen by itself or very seldom will it happen by itself.

José Maria Pimentel 00:37:52.50Absolutely. 00:37:53.22And, you know, it can be really hard to do. 00:37:55.50And organizations and governments, indeed, you know, to do both of those things, to give permission and to build the right kind of spaces. 00:38:05.90And again, this is where we can get back to the evidence about cognition. 00:38:09.34There are things people are bad at, like probability. 00:38:12.96We're just not very good at that intuitively. 00:38:16.48But there are things people are good at, like rank ordering, for example. 00:38:20.12So if I give people a whole bunch of numbers and say, you know, which are the preferred outcomes which looks better for the organization, A lot of the time people will be very loss-averse, or they'll be overly persuaded by large numbers, or they'll find it very hard to compare different kinds of statistics or so on. 00:38:37.64But if you say to people, rank in order these different outcomes in terms of preference, people will often be very good at coming up with a first, second, third, fourth, and fifth choice. 00:38:48.98So you can then tap into valid intuitions. 00:38:53.54But the key question we keep coming back to is a lot of the time on social media or in technological contexts, the design of the system is all about emotion and impact rather than evidence and cognition. 00:39:10.72And so something as simple and silly as email, the way an organization uses email is often set up to force people to send like 100 messages a day really fast, really stressed to prove they're working. 00:39:27.18That's a really, really bad way of using human minds and human time. 00:39:33.10But lots of organizations just do it by default. 00:39:35.70You're sending emails at 2 in the morning or you're sending 100 emails to prove that you're doing your job. 00:39:42.20That's going to get really bad results. 00:39:44.96You're going to get really bad thinking, lots of fear and anxiety. 00:39:48.44And every time you send an email, you create an email for someone else to answer. 00:39:53.20Much, much better sometimes to have. 00:39:54.92So Amazon do this quite well, actually, whatever you think of them as a company. 00:39:58.68They have very good meetings and presentations, arguments expressed not in PowerPoint, like one side of a sheet of paper, discussions where a team has to make an argument and a counter argument, which is not about individuals showing off, an emphasis on ideas and evidence, a ban on lots of emails, lots of attachments and insistence and so on. 00:40:20.28So these protocols, how you communicate, how you communicate, how you share information, how you run your meetings have a huge effect in terms of the quality of the thinking you get and potentially the errors you avoid.

Tom Chatfield 00:40:34.04It's amazing, which is natural. 00:40:36.22We use a lot of the same examples and use cases because I also love that example of Amazon in which rather than having presentations, you have a document. 00:40:44.80And that policy they have and they're not the only ones that you get into the room and you spend the first 15 or 30 minutes reading the document rather than talking straight on without reading what's actually the matter under a discussion, which is something that happens in most organizations, of course, precisely because you had to spend all that time writing emails and answering to emails. 00:41:05.74Often you didn't have time to fully read the email about which that meeting is. 00:41:09.88So you end up going to the meeting without having prepared. 00:41:12.60And that system forces you to prepare already inside the room, which I think is a great idea.

José Maria Pimentel 00:41:17.40That's right. 00:41:17.86That's right. 00:41:18.38And actually, I see an analogy with some schools that I visited, some religious schools, where you start the day with a couple of moments of silence. 00:41:28.02You start a lesson with a moment of silence that before a question is answered, people just sit with it for a minute. 00:41:35.54And small pauses and silences can be incredibly powerful. 00:41:40.68Just 30 seconds. 00:41:42.5430 seconds. 00:41:43.46Before anyone speaks, we're just going to sit with this question for 30 seconds. 00:41:48.50Even that as an intervention can be transformative sometimes.

Tom Chatfield 00:41:52.04And again, it's mandatory, right? 00:41:54.10Yeah. 00:41:54.48Not optional. 00:41:55.24Yeah, not optional. 00:41:55.88Again, you have to make it mandatory. 00:41:57.22Interesting. 00:41:58.12So that's one I hadn't seen before. 00:42:01.08I've borrowed it partly.

José Maria Pimentel 00:42:02.52I've done some work and read books by a friend called Robert Poynton, who wrote a book called Pause. 00:42:10.12And I've taught at business schools with him and so on. 00:42:13.04And he very much uses ideas like this about the power of pauses. 00:42:18.68And the point of a pause is that it's only by pausing that you can think twice. 00:42:24.64When we're thinking critically, we're thinking not once but twice. 00:42:28.56We're having a thought and then we're saying, hang on a second. 00:42:31.84Is my thought accurate and useful and honest? 00:42:36.56Or is there more I need to know? 00:42:38.96Without a pause, none of the other stuff happens.

Tom Chatfield 00:42:43.04Even in conversations, even the one we're having right now. 00:42:46.98So it's often useful to pause for a few seconds to think. 00:42:50.90But it's very unnatural to us, I think. 00:42:53.66That's why, for instance, I forget the exact name of these sounds we do, you know, when we are talking and we are thinking about what you want to say. 00:43:00.58And I say, so Tom, you know, and I do this. 00:43:04.54These fillers, these are meant to. 00:43:06.72So I use them and everyone uses them kind of unconsciously to sort of fill the space, fill the area so that you don't step in. 00:43:12.80And the same thing goes for answering questions right away. 00:43:15.22So if you ask me a question and I spend three or four seconds thinking about it, I fear that either you will go on speaking or someone else, well, in this case not, but in real life, someone else will step in and talk. 00:43:27.54So we are sort of trained not to do that. 00:43:30.64But that training goes against good thinking, as you were saying.

José Maria Pimentel 00:43:34.06That's right. 00:43:34.58And sometimes we have to unlearn some of these habits. 00:43:39.00I think a lot of it does come back to trust and to shared values. 00:43:43.58And you can write these things down. 00:43:45.38You can have a protocol. 00:43:46.30You can just say, look, we're not going to interrupt. 00:43:49.72We're going to have a two-second pause after someone has spoken. 00:43:52.68Or, again, I chair a couple of boards. 00:43:56.28And one very simple thing I do when a question is important is, A, ask everyone to read it in advance and prepare some thoughts. 00:44:04.54But B is to go around the table and ask everybody in turn to just make a contribution and everybody else to listen just to make sure that the room isn't dominated by the most confident vote. 00:44:20.08And as you say, silences can be very unnatural and uncomfortable. 00:44:24.52But I think something almost magical can happen if you welcome silences and normalize them, which is that they can become fertile. 00:44:34.94They can become a place where people show each other respect. 00:44:40.24People think twice. 00:44:41.38People generate ideas. 00:44:42.58People embrace a different rhythm of talk that isn't just performative, that isn't just performing confidence and decisiveness. 00:44:53.34And, again, it's something I try and model, I suppose, in a lot of the work I do. 00:45:00.08I don't use a PowerPoint. 00:45:02.14I don't even use, you know, prepared notes sometimes. 00:45:05.96I just say to people, look, I want to get you thinking and talking and listening. 00:45:09.36I want to get one person to talk to another and then that person to sort of speak back what they think they've heard and just to spend some time talking about what they think they've heard, what they think they've understood, what they've misunderstood, clarifying this active listening technique. 00:45:25.52And it can be revelatory because people realize that they don't have much of this kind of listening and time and attention in their lives. 00:45:36.14And that if you deploy it selectively, it's very powerful.

Tom Chatfield 00:45:41.72It's quite brave not to use PowerPoints, I find. 00:45:44.36Brave in the sense that you have nothing to hold to if you suddenly forget what you were saying. 00:45:48.96But also, so this part is obvious, but I think sometimes it creates a sense of uneasiness on the part of the audience. 00:45:56.52If you go there without PowerPoints, people suddenly think, okay, is this guy completely sure what he's talking about? 00:46:02.36What will this be about? 00:46:05.48Is it only him talking?

José Maria Pimentel 00:46:07.28Some people find, in my experience, find it strange. 00:46:09.58Yes, that's right. 00:46:10.74And I think often what I need to do for people is tell them quite a lot in advance about what I'm going to do so that they're confident there's structure there and exercises there and content there. 00:46:22.70It's not in PowerPoint form. 00:46:24.20It's in my head. 00:46:25.48But I do say to people, and I've been giving talks and running workshops and working around this for more than 10 years now, and I've got more confident at being, I guess, authentic or trying to be and saying, look, I'm talking about thinking. 00:46:42.76So what I want to do is get people thinking. 00:46:45.24I want to have everybody in my audience doing some thinking, pausing for 30 seconds, having some dialogue in pairs, sharing ideas. 00:46:54.14And in some ways, I have less and less content and more and more because it's the doing. 00:47:00.30My goodness, there's a lot of content out there. 00:47:02.18The world doesn't need more content. 00:47:04.20The world needs more thought. 00:47:06.16But you're right that some audiences want a PowerPoint, some people want the comfort of that, and then it's finding ways of doing that that still have a little bit of thoughtfulness in them.

Tom Chatfield 00:47:23.76Contribua para a continuidade e crescimento deste projeto no site 45oraospodcast.com. 00:47:29.16Selecione a opção Apoiar para ver como contribuir, diretamente ou através do Patreon, bem como os benefícios associados a cada modalidade. 00:47:39.86You've been teaching critical thinking to, I imagine, very different audiences. 00:47:44.90So you wrote the book, and the book is, by definition, to a general audience. 00:47:49.32I mean, you don't know the specific audience or the specific people are reading the book, but it's anyone. 00:47:56.02Then you're also, as I understood, doing it at schools, and you're doing it in companies, and you put together that course with the economies that we talked before. 00:48:05.88What has your experience taught you about the type of skills and the type of challenges that people face in these different realities? 00:48:13.32So I bet that the general public, for instance, and the corporate public have different challenges in the sense that the first is probably more concerned with societal issues, politics, social media, and the second with more concrete problems about improving decision-making, problem-solving, making meetings more efficient and whatnot. 00:48:36.18So I guess the challenges themselves will be different, right?

José Maria Pimentel 00:48:39.22They're very different. 00:48:40.64But interestingly, the more I do, the more I find that the same fundamental kind of exercises and experiences that work in schools with 12-year-olds also work in boardrooms for chief executives. 00:48:56.86That's quite interesting. 00:48:57.90And so some of the stuff we've talked about.

Tom Chatfield 00:49:01.42So you do the same things. 00:49:02.28That's interesting.

José Maria Pimentel 00:49:02.78I do the same. 00:49:03.44In some ways, I do the same things with different content. 00:49:06.48I get people to do active listening, to speak, to listen, to pause. 00:49:12.34I get people to argue different sides in a debate. 00:49:15.54I get people to try reframing questions in multiple ways. 00:49:20.22I get people to try and reflect upon their own assumptions. 00:49:24.94And when it connects psychologically, ironically enough, I think, for senior executives or people in very senior positions, being given permission to play these kind of games and talk about their feelings and ideas and think about thinking, it can be most powerful when it isn't just full of business jargon and when it isn't just about saying, what's the strategy for your organization? 00:49:51.76What are your challenges? 00:49:52.98What are your threats and opportunities and so on? 00:49:58.34But in some ways, if someone brings me in, it's because they probably want something different to a kind of standard business school or course. 00:50:08.84So for me, the holy grail is almost the fundamental insight that works for everyone. 00:50:15.02But of course, you use very different language. 00:50:17.20You use very different examples. 00:50:18.94You have to speak to someone's reality. 00:50:22.08And so when I'm dealing with teenagers, I'll often talk about social media and AI and work. 00:50:26.68When I deal with organizations, I'll talk about organizational strategies and how different organizations run meetings and so on. 00:50:34.18But I think the fundamental sort of human experience of, and there's that eureka moment when someone does something for themselves and it opens up a slightly new way of thinking, gives them a slightly new thinking tool. 00:50:46.78And that's always the prize, no matter who the audience is.

Tom Chatfield 00:50:51.92Yeah, interesting. 00:50:52.50So the topic changes, but the method stays the same. 00:50:56.06And I guess in companies, it might even be a more added value in a sense, because I feel that when you work in a corporate environment, you are working with a level of abstraction, which helps to some extent, because we need concepts to think about complex things. 00:51:12.32But at some point, it starts helping, because you're using those concepts, which are not challenged anymore. 00:51:17.74So they are kind of crystallized. 00:51:19.64Maybe no one really knows what that means, what the strategy means, or the strengths means, or the segment of the market, or the customer, or whatever. 00:51:26.70So suddenly, you don't know what it means. 00:51:28.08And then you go in, I guess, and get them to paraphrase what the others said, to start questioning assumptions. 00:51:34.00And suddenly, you get those eureka moments. 00:51:36.46That's exactly right.

José Maria Pimentel 00:51:37.60Big organizations will tend to have a lot of unexamined assumptions, and they have to, because you have to assume a lot. 00:51:45.44An organization is a huge kind of machine, a huge structure, and it can be a very good and a very successful machine. 00:51:52.38And that's partly, of course, the power of having an external speaker and an external perspective. 00:51:57.26It gives people, again, permission to challenge and change, or just be honest, or just listen. 00:52:02.78And I think most consultants, most people who work with different organizations will say the same thing, which is sometimes when you just talk to people at length and let them express the uncertainties and try and explain to someone else what's going on. 00:52:19.30That's when these little insights coalesce. 00:52:22.12Again, there's a very simple trick here, which I've written about and used. 00:52:26.88Explain like I'm five. 00:52:28.68Explain like I'm six. 00:52:30.10Imagine that I'm a smart seven-year-old, and I know nothing about your organization at all, but I'm really interested. 00:52:38.06And you've got to explain to me what you do in your job. 00:52:41.10But you've got to make it work for a seven-year-old, so you can't just say, well, you know, I'm a VP of communications, and I manage a cross-platform strategy, you know, taking about conventional and new and emerging media. 00:52:54.30You can't say that. 00:52:55.22You have to say, well, my job is to try and tell the world about what we do. 00:53:01.70You know, you have to use ordinary language. 00:53:04.58And actually, I come back to, you know, I have a great memory of being at a conference with Danny Kahneman, among other great people, a few years ago. 00:53:12.58And my memory of him is he sat on the back row, and every now and then he just raised his hand, and he said, I'm very sorry. 00:53:21.76I just don't really know what you're talking about. 00:53:24.26What do you mean, with someone very distinguished at the front talking about, for example, their research or their AI strategy? 00:53:33.58And he'd say, yeah, but why are you doing that? 00:53:35.40What do you mean? 00:53:36.54You've just said that your strategy, you know, is to reinvent workflows by integrating AI. 00:53:43.94But what does that mean? 00:53:45.16Why do you want to do that? 00:53:47.84And, of course, he had such a reputation that these questions were taken seriously. 00:53:52.40But these very simple questions are very powerful.

Tom Chatfield 00:53:55.28Yeah. 00:53:55.46It reminds me, I don't know if you read about that, but it reminds me a lot of what Richard Feynman used to do. 00:54:01.20Oh, absolutely. 00:54:02.00Yeah, yeah. 00:54:02.68Right? 00:54:03.04So you get, you get, you get people went to his office and he suddenly started making, posing these very, very basic questions that almost startled the other person. 00:54:12.46But suddenly, as they went, the other person found out that there was, well, would eventually usually find out that there was some gap in the reasoning. 00:54:21.22And you wouldn't get to that without those questions.

José Maria Pimentel 00:54:23.64Absolutely right. 00:54:24.60Feynman's a wonderful example. 00:54:25.90I think, you know, he was someone who physicalized things as well. 00:54:28.96He would, you know, play with the ball, throw stuff around, make things. 00:54:32.80You know, anything that helped you see more clearly was good. 00:54:36.34You know, he obviously made great discoveries in quantum electrodynamics and the kind of fundamental physics. 00:54:41.84But also, you know, made some huge contributions to the biological sciences and, you know, around, you know, other ideas that he took an interest in. 00:54:49.50And I think having someone ask these questions and the only agenda is trying to understand better. 00:54:55.68That's the crucial thing, right? 00:54:57.04That's critical thinking in a nutshell. 00:54:59.02Your agenda is just trying to really understand a bit better what's going on. 00:55:03.34You're not trying to look clever. 00:55:05.88You're not trying to score points. 00:55:07.62Maybe at that point in time, you're not even trying to make a profit, you know, down the line you are. 00:55:11.84But at that point in time, you're just like, what's really going on? 00:55:14.28What do we really do here? 00:55:16.06What is your job? 00:55:17.08What are you really doing? 00:55:19.20What are you really worried about? 00:55:21.06These questions are very powerful. 00:55:22.44You can't spend your whole life answering them or asking them. 00:55:25.20But to be able to have those questions in the room can be transformative for individuals and organizations.

Tom Chatfield 00:55:32.18Yeah. 00:55:32.62Because you'll find out that there were some assumptions that were not questioned and that were actually essential.

José Maria Pimentel 00:55:38.42Always. 00:55:39.08There's a lovely... 00:55:40.16Sorry, I was interrupting. 00:55:41.24Go ahead, go ahead. 00:55:41.74I'm getting excited. 00:55:42.34That is a lovely example for SpaceX, say, who put a huge amount of money and effort into trying to catch elements called fairings that were shed by their rockets. 00:55:56.00They're like covers, but very expensive covers that, you know, that would drop down when the rocket went up and they'd fall into the ocean and be wasted. 00:56:03.28And they're costing like a million dollars a pop. 00:56:05.30So you're wasting millions of dollars every time you fly a rocket, even though you're reusing the main units of it. 00:56:10.86And they had these genius ideas about like massive robot boats with nets and things like that to try and catch these fairings and reuse them. 00:56:19.38But the rate was really low. 00:56:20.60It was really difficult and in bad weather and so on. 00:56:23.08And then they took a few steps back and said, well, hang on a second. 00:56:26.44What are we doing here? 00:56:27.94We want to reuse these things and not waste them. 00:56:30.64It will save us millions. 00:56:32.06So we're trying to catch them in massive robot nets. 00:56:35.22But that's crazy. 00:56:35.94That's not working. 00:56:36.72What if we just spent a bit more money and made them waterproof? 00:56:40.86What if we just made it so that these things drop into the ocean and rather than be lost and get spoiled, they just float. 00:56:47.12The key components are protected and we scooped them up. 00:56:50.54And they did that. 00:56:52.04And suddenly they've got basically 100% reuse rate because they just took a step back and said, what are we trying to do here? 00:56:59.22We're not trying to build a robot space component catcher. 00:57:04.60We're just trying not to waste stuff. 00:57:06.38So let's just build it differently so it floats. 00:57:09.56Yeah.

Tom Chatfield 00:57:09.88That's an interesting story. 00:57:11.14And it resonates with me because I think we have difficulty with adjusting our behavior in a manner that's not incremental. 00:57:20.86So usually what we do is we adjust incrementally. 00:57:23.70So something changes from a situation to the other, which sometimes what's required is a complete change. 00:57:29.42And that's very unnatural to us, I find.

José Maria Pimentel 00:57:32.50Absolutely. 00:57:33.34Yeah. 00:57:33.64In a way, it's part of a sort of a sunk cost fallacy, which is, you know, you put a certain amount of time and effort into a solution or a product or an idea. 00:57:42.22And then, you know, your mission becomes to put more effort into that. 00:57:46.96You can't let it go. 00:57:48.64Whereas actually, the most important lesson might be you've discovered that that doesn't work. 00:57:54.10And what you've learned is you need to try a different approach that you're going to get there. 00:57:58.84And of course, science is often like that. 00:58:00.48You know, you put huge amounts of effort into trying to make Einstein's equations work at the level of fundamental particles. 00:58:10.52You know, you really desperately, God doesn't play dice. 00:58:13.74You do not want there to be a random or unpredictable component in fundamental physics. 00:58:19.20So you try and you try and you try to save Einstein's equations. 00:58:23.64And then eventually, you have to admit experimentally that you take a few steps back and, yep, uncertainty is there in the fabric of the universe. 00:58:32.36You have to embrace the uncertainty. 00:58:34.02You can't get rid of it. 00:58:35.44It seems to be fundamental. 00:58:37.14You have to change your whole notion of what is fundamental. 00:58:40.20And there's lots of wonderful writing about paradigm shifts in ideas. 00:58:44.82And I guess the essence of that, Thomas Kuhn and others wrote about the fact that you have incremental discoveries, as you say, that update a model. 00:58:53.54But eventually, at some point, a new way of thinking comes along when the old way of thinking can no longer explain and hold all the new knowledge. 00:59:05.16Suddenly, a whole new paradigm, a whole new way of thinking emerges because you need that paradigm shift to deal with all the new things you've learned about the world. 00:59:16.80Yeah.

Tom Chatfield 00:59:16.92And it gets unsustainable to keep using the old model. 00:59:20.34That's right. 00:59:21.26Yeah.

José Maria Pimentel 00:59:21.40But the old model is still good for some, you know, we still use Newton's equations on a large scale. 00:59:25.84We still use Einstein's equations. 00:59:27.18But we also need, you know, Feynman and Bohr and Schrödinger's and others' equations to do different things. 00:59:33.94We don't just throw away the old, but we find new things in new ways alongside it.

Tom Chatfield 00:59:38.54I'm curious about the dynamics you do both with the general public and in schools and in companies. 00:59:45.42How large a number can you have in those meetings in the room? 00:59:50.12Or to ask in another way, what's the ideal number of people for that to work well? 00:59:55.96Because I'm asking this because I find that if the audience is too large, and by too large, I mean over 10 people, it starts getting difficult to have a single conversation, which is organized at the same time.

José Maria Pimentel 01:00:08.74For me, I guess, again, I almost reframe it. 01:00:11.52I see it the other way around. 01:00:12.88How can I have something that's valuable for any number of people? 01:00:17.06So I love working with groups of, you know, kind of 10 or 20 people. 01:00:21.84But I also do, you know, kind of classes and masterclasses in person for people like 200, 300 people, where I'll get people organized in groups and get them doing exercises and kind of trust them with it. 01:00:32.98And then, you know, online or events wise, I've done talks for thousands of people or even broadcasts, you know, for the audiences of millions of people eventually. 01:00:42.82And the key for me is asking, well, how can you give a meaningful experience to this number of people? 01:00:49.16What's the thing you need to do? 01:00:50.44And I guess I probably fail quite often. 01:00:53.10It's harder with more people. 01:00:54.38But very broadly, I try to find a way to kind of trust people with ideas, to give them something and then trust them to make something of it. 01:01:03.72So with a very large number of people, you just have a pause. 01:01:06.86You have a silence. 01:01:07.50You just say, look, I want you to take 10 seconds right now to think about this, to reflect upon this point. 01:01:14.08I want you to go away and do this. 01:01:15.62I'm going to tell you this story. 01:01:17.18The smaller numbers of people, but still hundreds, you can say, I'm going to split you into groups and I want you to talk to each other about this.

Tom Chatfield 01:01:22.74Yeah, they do it themselves.

José Maria Pimentel 01:01:24.58Do it themselves. 01:01:25.52But you're right that ultimately, you know, with a couple of dozen people, you can do something a little more magical and you can kind of have a room and have people really in the moment talking to each other and working together and all hearing each other. 01:01:40.16And that isn't possible with larger numbers of people. 01:01:43.62Although, interestingly, when I do things online, I find group chat can be very powerful because actually people can't hear many voices at the same time. 01:01:52.52You know, it just becomes a shouting match. 01:01:54.30But with a group chat, you can say to people, you know, okay, we're going to reframe this question. 01:01:59.28We're going to come up with as many different ways as we can of defining a word like fairness or efficiency. 01:02:04.76These words that seem so simple, but that actually turn out to have 30 or 40 or 50 different meanings. 01:02:10.44And not the same to everyone. 01:02:11.34Not the same to everyone. 01:02:12.26You say to an organization, okay, so here's your core values. 01:02:14.90You're an organization and you're all about delivering value for customers. 01:02:18.64So each of you is now going to time right down in the group chat what you think that means in a sentence. 01:02:23.22And you're going to get 60 different sentences. 01:02:25.20And some of those sentences are going to be contradictory. 01:02:27.92And this thing that people thought were all about making, you know, helping our clients be more efficient. 01:02:34.00So we're all going to write down what we think the word efficient means. 01:02:37.00And lo and behold, it means 50 different things. 01:02:40.26Yeah.

Tom Chatfield 01:02:40.72But what I find strange and a bit annoying there is that I think vagueness in the corporate world has some appeal. 01:02:48.30So if you deliver a talk talking about excellence or greatness or whatever other vague word we can think of, if you do it with the right rhetoric, so if you do it with the right enthusiasm and with a good delivery, it often persuades people more than something which explains better and in concrete terms a concept. 01:03:08.32In other words, it seems that vagueness works towards persuasion in the rhetorical sense.

José Maria Pimentel 01:03:15.14I think that's right. 01:03:16.26Vagueness is very safe because you can't, if I said my vision for this company is to be bold and to be brave and to be beautiful, what does that mean? 01:03:27.74Like you can't call me on it. 01:03:29.26And who can't disagree with that? 01:03:30.98No one, right? 01:03:31.48If I said my vision for this company is to deliver a minimum of a 15% increase in turnover and profits and to be employing 25% more people and to be shipping 10% more product, very obviously, you can call me on that. 01:03:47.54Also, if you're vague, people are free to project their own ideas onto it. 01:03:52.98I think our friend Feynman is very useful here, particularly his work in education. 01:03:57.36He worked on an education board and to the horror of everybody in the education board, he read all the textbooks. 01:04:02.22And he made a lovely distinction between clarity and false precision. 01:04:08.68Clarity is being clear about what you mean. 01:04:10.90Clarity is saying in a school textbook, when the car drives along the road, the surface of the road scrapes off little bits of rubber from the wheel. 01:04:21.28And very gradually, the rubber of the wheel gets scraped away by the road and the energy of driving. 01:04:27.10So you have to replace it with a new wheel. 01:04:30.84And that's clear. 01:04:32.56You're explaining to some kids about the ideas underlying friction. 01:04:37.14Whereas false precision is saying, over time, friction causes the erosion of wheel rubber. 01:04:43.12That sounds really scientific, but it doesn't explain anything. 01:04:46.58It just sounds good. 01:04:47.90And Feynman made the point that clarity is really important, but that doesn't mean trying to be hyper-precise. 01:04:53.78Again, to be clear is to say, I want to see our organization growing year on year by more than our competitors. 01:05:02.22It's nice and clear. 01:05:03.44Whereas perhaps false precision is saying, I want to see a minimum uplift of 2.2% above base rate on a quarterly basis or something like that. 01:05:13.90When talking about the future in terms like that is meaningless because the error margins in measurement and so on.

Tom Chatfield 01:05:21.44Sorry to interrupt, but I think Feynman's point had a lot to do with clarity being associated with being concrete. 01:05:30.50So talking about concrete stuff. 01:05:32.28Whereas that false precision usually employs concepts which might not be vague, but are not necessarily known by your interlocutors. 01:05:41.60Exactly right.

José Maria Pimentel 01:05:42.64Exactly right. 01:05:43.28There's these sort of two dangers, really, that you're hyper-precise in a meaningless way or that you're vague and obscure. 01:05:49.94And as you say, true clarity is somewhere in the middle. 01:05:53.70True clarity is explaining in kind of simple concrete language what you're actually talking about. 01:05:59.80And the values of organizations is a classic area for kind of vagueness and hand-waving because they're sort of designed to make people feel good and be vaguely nice. 01:06:09.54And that's very safe. 01:06:10.90People can project onto it. 01:06:12.68It makes people feel warm inside. 01:06:14.54But actually, I think it can be very, very undemanding in the worst sense because, you know, we come back to the idea of science that, you know, a theory or an idea which can't be tested or disproved isn't worth very much. 01:06:30.02You know, if it explains everything, it explains nothing. 01:06:31.90If I have a statement with which no one would disagree, it's probably not worth saying, I want our organization to be inclusive and bold. 01:06:40.68Well, who doesn't? 01:06:41.76Does anyone want their organization to be timid and uninclusive? 01:06:45.86Probably not. 01:06:46.52I want my organization to be a leader in its field. 01:06:51.12Well, again, do I want my organization to be a follower in its field? 01:06:55.42So, and that simple trick of saying, well, is the opposite of this statement even vaguely credible? 01:07:01.68Is this actually anything at all? 01:07:03.96But of course, it can be quite dangerous to say this. 01:07:06.08You know, a lot of people just want a bit of vague, feel-good noise.

Tom Chatfield 01:07:13.34Yeah, you want a round, I don't know if this expression exists in English, like you want round talk, like in the sense of not having angles or edges. 01:07:23.86And it's not very different from politics. 01:07:27.30It's not exactly the same, but you get, whenever you're talking to a broad audience, which is diverse, you end up, I think, having to use that vague speech.

José Maria Pimentel 01:07:39.32Yeah, it's a real danger, and it's a strategy. 01:07:43.84I do think that the kind of, the greatest examples of rhetoric, which obviously are rare, combine inspiration and persuasion with real kind of rational content. 01:07:57.24If we think back to, you know, Martin Luther King's speeches and things like that, visionary rhetoric, but also specific, painfully specific, concrete, rooted imagery and ideas and asks.

Tom Chatfield 01:08:13.76Yeah, that's a very good point. 01:08:14.64And also, in a sense, his speech, to take that example, does what we've been talking about, which is question some assumptions which are vague or imperfect or unrealistic. 01:08:27.20So, it has clearly that rational part, and then on top of it, obviously, has that amazing rhetoric. 01:08:32.46So, you have the two components working with each other.

José Maria Pimentel 01:08:35.52That's right. 01:08:36.16And I think we're not always going to get that. 01:08:38.56You know, we're talking about one of the greatest orators in modern history. 01:08:42.76But it's okay, I think, to look at these examples and realize that it's possible to aspire to say something concrete and meaningful and challenging, to throw down an actual challenge to people that we, you know, rather than just to play it safe. 01:08:59.00Yeah. 01:09:00.04Tom, you have a new book out called Wise Animals.

Tom Chatfield 01:09:03.66Let's talk about it. 01:09:05.26I meant to talk about it earlier in our conversation, but it's your fault you were too interesting talking about this topic. 01:09:11.24So, I only arrived at it now. 01:09:14.64Well, it's better that I asked you to pitch the book. 01:09:16.48You'll do it better than me.

José Maria Pimentel 01:09:17.66Well, it's a book I loved writing because, in a way, it's just about a lot of things that fascinate me. 01:09:23.10It tells the story of how human technology evolved alongside humanity and how the human story is entwined with tools and technological artifacts from before the beginning of our species, of how fire and flint tools and then much later language and then much later literacy and so on. 01:09:46.30These are not just sort of optional extras. 01:09:52.20These are absolutely entwined with our humanity. 01:09:52.92And the key lesson for me could be really summed up by the idea that there's no such thing as a neutral tool, that the technologies we collectively make and use and develop have all kinds of biases and potentials and properties that push us towards certain kinds of action and understanding that shape who we are and how we understand the world. 01:10:18.18So, when it comes to things like artificial intelligence and autonomous systems and, indeed, social media, we need to ask ethical and imaginative questions about what we want from these systems. 01:10:33.80We need to ask what it means to build systems that serve the best in us, that elevate our decision-making speaks to the themes we've been talking about so far. 01:10:44.32And the message for me is that technology doesn't determine our fate, that collectively, over time, we have control. 01:10:53.46We get to shape and choose between different possible futures. 01:10:57.62We get to build technologies that serve different ideas and purposes. 01:11:01.44So, what does it mean for technology to serve rather than subvert democracy? 01:11:06.20What does it mean to build systems that help us make better and more informed decisions rather than trapping us in intense emotions and delusions? 01:11:17.00What does it mean to build infrastructure and cities that are beautiful, that are livable, that are compatible with the health of our planet rather than destructive of it? 01:11:28.44So, in a funny way, it's a bit of a crazy book. 01:11:30.62It's a very personal book. 01:11:32.58But it's a book about technological humanism and what it means to talk about technology richly in terms of emotion and cognition and philosophy and aesthetics as well as just engineering.

Tom Chatfield 01:11:46.88And I'm very curious to hear your opinion on these topics because, like me, you've not only thought about these topics but also done the research on the history of our relationship to technology. 01:11:59.52And you have this interesting expression that we co-evolved with technology, which I think is quite beautiful, especially in that broad sense in which you interpret the meaning of technology. 01:12:09.56There we go again about concepts, right? 01:12:11.40So, that's a concept in which the meaning you give to it includes also the early tools we've used and even language. 01:12:20.24That would be enough for a whole conversation or even more than one, so we don't have time for it. 01:12:24.48But I'm curious to know your view on two big topics and two big challenges I think we have nowadays. 01:12:29.98One is the challenge digital media and social media brings to democracy with tribalism that you mentioned earlier on, populism, polarization and so on. 01:12:42.02And the other one has to do with social media and children and specifically advice for parents like us who have to deal with children growing up in this age. 01:12:52.66But let's start with the first, which is a topic I'm very curious about. 01:12:57.84I even wrote a book which is partially about this, about the impact of fake news, populism, tribalism and how to deal with it. 01:13:06.72And to be honest, I don't know the answer. 01:13:07.88So, I know that it's clearly a challenge that democracy is facing. 01:13:11.10So, the old model of democracy was not prepared for the world of social media. 01:13:16.14So, that's clear. 01:13:17.54I don't know yet what the future will look like and especially how the transition to that future will look like. 01:13:22.98So, if you can enlighten us, Tom, that on the path and the destination, I'd be very helpful.

José Maria Pimentel 01:13:30.82The one thing I feel fairly confident about is that it's a mistake to focus on technology in the abstract, that actually talking about social media doing things to society as though it's a sort of force out there that just makes stuff happen, is the wrong way of thinking about it. 01:13:49.36We need to see how any technology is embedded in a particular society. 01:13:54.54So, technology like social media is obviously where people can be polarized, can find like voices, can be deceived, can be manipulated, it can be used by populists, it can be used as part of vast structures of surveillance. 01:14:07.66It can also be used for great, great good and education and so on. 01:14:11.20But all of these things are embedded in particular societies, in particular ways. 01:14:17.08And when we talk to people about this, we find again and again that not that many people just have their minds changed by social media. 01:14:24.86It's more that the things that they already want to believe or fear or encourage to believe, they then seek out in social media and it maybe amplifies these. 01:14:34.18So, I think you need to talk about it in the context of people's jobs, people's security of earning, the levels of equality and exclusion within a society, it's education and so on. 01:14:49.10To some degree, you also need to talk about the regulation of technology companies and the ways in which monopolies are or aren't allowed to exist and the ways in which certain public goods and assets are or aren't exploited or undermined. 01:15:05.48So, ultimately, and this is a bit of a non-answer, it becomes a question of sort of governance and what a society believes itself to be and what it prioritizes and the ways in which it regulates and the ways in which social media, ultimately, I think, social media can be most useful when it highlights deep sources of discontent and division and exclusion. 01:15:28.36We look across Europe, we see the rise of xenophobia and isolationism, we see a lot of fear about the future, we see a lot of despondency, we see a lot of disinformation and misinformation, but of course, for me, I actually think it's a mistake to empower governments to legislate for what is or isn't true. 01:15:51.00That seems to me to be very dangerous, it seems to me a tool that would probably backfire, that is in itself tending towards the totalitarian. 01:15:58.78What does it instead mean to reinforce structures of scrutiny, to reinforce tolerance on a societal level, to have an education system, to have social safety nets, to have systems of justice that address the concerns underlying these fears? 01:16:21.94If people worry about their jobs and their incomes and their future and their planet and their society, they're telling a government something very important, but you can't fight that battle in the realm of social media. 01:16:34.04And I think, actually, I almost end up thinking that the excessive focus on technology is a red herring, is a distraction from the deeper issues. 01:16:46.64So this is often my answer when it comes to technology, that we have to be a little suspicious of the idea that the technology in itself can either fix things or make them worse and make them terrible.

Tom Chatfield 01:16:58.22Interesting. 01:16:58.22I have a different view there, I'd say, because, of course, we don't have the counterfactual here, so we don't have the parallel universe in which social media was not invented. 01:17:09.46But I find the changes that we have had in society and democracy so big that I don't find any other cause than the impact of social media. 01:17:19.96And when I say social media, I'm including also other platforms of internet, and I'm including WhatsApp and so on. 01:17:27.12Of course, again, I don't have the counterfactual, so I cannot prove this. 01:17:30.42But I find, for instance, I don't know what you think of this, but I find the parallel with the invention of the printing press quite persuasive. 01:17:36.96Because, as you know, when Gutenberg invented the printing press, suddenly what it meant in practice, it was not actually that sudden, because back then things took a bit longer to have their effects. 01:17:47.84But with a few decades, suddenly books started being printed out, and so the readers of books started becoming much more in number than they used to be. 01:17:56.12So the previous elites that were basically a few hundred or a few thousand people that had access to knowledge, no longer had the monopoly of that knowledge. 01:18:04.26And suddenly you had a lot of people reading, which was not, of course, the masses, but much, much more people than before. 01:18:11.04And that changed, that had a huge impact in society, and it led, for instance, to the religious wars. 01:18:16.78And then, after the religious wars, we actually got enlightenment, which was much better than what we had before. 01:18:21.24But we had to go through the religious wars, and I feel that we are kind of living through.

José Maria Pimentel 01:18:26.54So here, I would agree with you here, but I think the societal change is the rise of mass interactive media in general, not social media in particular.

Tom Chatfield 01:18:36.54Social media is very significant, but I think... 01:18:38.60So again, the concept was misleading again.

José Maria Pimentel 01:18:41.82But yes, but I think the analogy with Gutenberg is very close in some ways. 01:18:45.30You know, and mass interactive media, the mobile phone as a technology, absolutely, you know, Gutenberg printing transformed the relationship of the majority of humanity with written history and records. 01:18:59.60It had been the province of the elite through most of history, through most of geography, and it became, over a few centuries, the province of the majority. 01:19:09.98And now, the creation of mediated records is becoming, everybody does all the time. 01:19:16.44And not only that, but also, now the creation of records of media is arguably becoming the province of machines, of machine agents, of AIs, and so on. 01:19:29.68So this is huge. 01:19:30.66Yeah, this is huge. 01:19:31.84I just don't want to focus too much on social media in particular, but it's an immense revolution, and I don't think we can fully understand it. 01:19:39.88I do think that social media can point us towards some of the dangers, of course, which is about the spread of emotionally impactful information at the expense of truth, of tribalism, the undermining of common bodies of knowledge and understanding, you know, the empowerment of dictators and manipulators and surveyors of all stripes. 01:20:01.88So, yes, these are huge social trends, but I guess I would want to sort of focus upon the bigger picture and the mutual relationship. 01:20:10.46So, as you say, Gutenberg is interesting partly because existing religious institutions tried to use the Gutenberg press and presses to spread the truth as they saw it. 01:20:19.94And then, you know, Luther and others tried to spread their truth greatly to the shock of the Catholic authorities. 01:20:25.22You know, it was the channeling of old conflicts through new channels. 01:20:29.24And I think it's this combination of the old and the new. 01:20:32.14So I wouldn't dispute the…

Tom Chatfield 01:20:33.94Which is arguably what we are witnessing. 01:20:35.82Yes, it is. 01:20:36.46As we speak, right?

José Maria Pimentel 01:20:37.32Absolutely. 01:20:38.36And I guess this is the thing, you see, I don't have, I guess, a kind of a single answer to it.

Tom Chatfield 01:20:44.44You are a proper philosopher. 01:20:45.62You have questions, not answers.

José Maria Pimentel 01:20:47.28I have questions. 01:20:48.20This is what philosophy does. 01:20:49.24We try to get people to ask better quality questions. 01:20:51.22Although, ironically enough, I do greatly enjoy trying to provide concrete policy advice and, you know, concrete ideas. 01:20:57.62I think it's very important to come up with specific recommendations.

Tom Chatfield 01:21:01.72Last question. 01:21:03.22What do you think of the impact of social media on mental health? 01:21:06.96As you know, there's a big discussion around this about the… 01:21:09.24Some people call it the mental illness epidemic. 01:21:11.82Jonathan Haidt, who you might know, is a social psychologist. 01:21:14.80He has a new book out called The Anxious Generation. 01:21:17.92I was listening to a podcast with him the other day. 01:21:20.04And he has these, I mean, these troubling numbers that show that mental health has deteriorated a lot, especially since 2012, which is basically the turn when social media really got big. 01:21:32.80And it impacts especially girls. 01:21:35.42And I have two girl daughters, although they are still too young for that. 01:21:38.44But I talk with friends who have children, especially those who have girls. 01:21:42.40When they get, even sometimes preteens and they want to have their mobile phones, it's a big challenge. 01:21:47.80They don't, they actually don't know how to manage it, whether they should give it to them, they should monitor. 01:21:51.70Then sometimes they want to do things in a certain way. 01:21:53.90They want, let's say they want to be more restrictive, but her friends, their friends are not, or their parents' friends are not being equally restrictive. 01:22:01.16So they have no option then to adopt the same behavior. 01:22:03.94It's a big challenge, I feel. 01:22:05.60As a parent, I struggle with this.

José Maria Pimentel 01:22:07.68I think it can be very, very disconcerting to battle with your children from a young age over something that you feel may be making them less safe, making them less, less well, that may be powerful in ways that they are ill-equipped to deal with. 01:22:23.96One of the great challenges, I think, of parenting and education is to try and help young people grow into, you know, sort of happy digital citizens who can use technology well, who can find balance. 01:22:36.44I think the evidence is perhaps more equivocal than Haidt's argument suggests. 01:22:41.04I think there's real evidence there. 01:22:42.52I'm fairly familiar with it. 01:22:44.12He makes a very strong case. 01:22:46.02People like Talikau and others have pointed out that some evidence around...

Tom Chatfield 01:22:49.44Oh, you heard the same podcast then.

José Maria Pimentel 01:22:51.42Yeah, you know, around global suicide rates and country to country and so on, means that, you know, the big picture is unclear. 01:23:00.28I think very broadly, there's a very strong case for caution. 01:23:05.06There's a very strong case for schools and governments helping parents to put more limits and barriers around use of technology and to understand it better, to be less afraid. 01:23:16.38I think what every parent wants is to have good conversations with their children about what they're doing. 01:23:22.04To keep children safe, of course, you need to know what they're doing and they need to trust you with that. 01:23:27.80And I think one of the simplest and greatest dangers is just children having lots of private time on devices, unscrutinised by their parents with unfettered access to the internet. 01:23:37.90Not because phones are inherently evil or bad, but because the amount of danger, influence, manipulation and so on that can come at a young person through the screen of a phone is enormous. 01:23:51.74And for me, perhaps the most powerful point that Hype and others have made is that very broadly, it's easy today to give children far too little risk and independence in the real physical world and far too much risk and independence in the digital world. 01:24:08.24But this balance is wildly out of kilter, that children should be spending more time, you know, exploring on their own, physically taking some risks, doing stuff in the world, you know, in their towns, in their neighbourhoods, and should be spending much less time going into risky, unsupervised areas of the internet and being left alone for hours, you know, with unfettered access.

Tom Chatfield 01:24:32.34But how, how do you do that in practice? 01:24:34.30Because exactly, I haven't reached that phase yet. 01:24:38.06But is there a way in which you can give like, partial autonomy or partial privacy to kids? 01:24:43.22Because if we look at our the time in which we both grew up, obviously, there's there was much less that we could do with the internet, but we had full privacy, at least I have full privacy in practice, I could whatever I wanted, in some part, because my parents didn't exactly understand, at that point, how computers and internet work. 01:25:00.32But nowadays, as I said, you can either give kids a mobile phone, or give them a mobile phone and see what they are doing, or give them a mobile phone and not see what they are doing. 01:25:10.12So you cannot give them like, partial privacy. 01:25:13.48So you can either monitor them or not monitor them. 01:25:16.50Maybe I mean naive, but or...

José Maria Pimentel 01:25:18.20No, I don't think you are. 01:25:19.10I think it's incredibly difficult. 01:25:20.34And I would just be lying if I said I had a perfect answer. 01:25:23.34My imperfect answer is that a mobile phone is a physical object. 01:25:27.64And very broadly speaking, you know, children can have it for some time, for some apps, but not all of the time and not for all apps and not for all services. 01:25:38.22It gets harder as children get older.

Tom Chatfield 01:25:40.82What's your concrete advice, basically? 01:25:42.60So in terms of age, so let's say, let's say I was a parent, let's say my oldest daughter was turning 12, and she wanted a mobile phone with access to social media. 01:25:51.96Would you advise that? 01:25:53.10Would you say I waited until she was 14 or 15? 01:25:55.52I would try to suggest a mobile phone with no access to social media.

José Maria Pimentel 01:25:59.32I would try to suggest doing a lot of stuff on shared screens and shared spaces, even on tablets. 01:26:04.48I play video games with my kids and so on, who are 8 and 10. 01:26:08.84But already, you know, it can be a losing battle, things like that. 01:26:12.68And I think trying to have very clear time boundaries and space boundaries around it. 01:26:17.86I don't like the idea of private screens in bedrooms. 01:26:20.48I don't like the idea of there being just, you know, a lack of variety in time. 01:26:26.40I think it can be really hard to resist peer pressure. 01:26:29.86I just try to keep talking to my kids about what's going on and taking interest in it and having conversations. 01:26:35.96But most importantly, I think the ideal for me is working with them to find kind of rules and boundaries, to understand that it's a contract, that you're not enemies, that you're just trying to find a way to balance the positives and the negatives and make sure that if there's bad or worrying or upsetting stuff, they come to you. 01:26:55.32But also that the home and the family can be a place of safety. 01:26:59.52Because one of the great dangers of a phone for all of us can be that there's no time and no space in which we are off and safe. 01:27:07.54Perhaps the best concrete advice, which is hard to take, is to model the behaviors yourself that you want to see. 01:27:13.26Is to yourself, you know, put your phone away, turn it off, put it in a box, don't sleep with it in your bedroom. 01:27:19.88You know, use different technologies. 01:27:21.40And I try and I often fail to say, you know, drive out the bad with the good, so to speak. 01:27:25.84I try to buy great video games for my kids. 01:27:28.22You know, I buy the Zelda games, the Mario games. 01:27:31.76Minecraft is a wonderful game. 01:27:33.94Try to celebrate that rather than games that are very exploitative based on, you know, kind of freemium models. 01:27:39.80I try to get them kind of reading on Kindle and using interactive books and playing, doing coding rather than just being on YouTube the whole time. 01:27:48.32But I also get it wrong and I just desperately hope that I can provide enough balance and love and support and options and opportunities that my children will come to me when they are worried or sad and that their home and their life will have enough space and time and safety in it that they can do the learning they need to do.

Tom Chatfield 01:28:13.84Yeah. 01:28:14.44Tom, I'm mindful of your time, so I'll let you go. 01:28:16.66It was a great conversation. 01:28:17.56Thanks. 01:28:18.40I mean, I wish you all success for all your endeavors, and especially your book, Wise Animals, so everyone who's listening, I encourage you to read. 01:28:25.64I mean, as you understood already, Tom has a very sharp mind, so that's my recommendation. 01:28:31.28Thanks, Tom. 01:28:31.84Thank you so much.

José Maria Pimentel 01:28:32.64It's been my very great pleasure.

Tom Chatfield 01:28:46.80Thank you so much. 01:29:00.26Thank you. 01:29:00.58Thank you. 01:29:00.58Thank you. 01:29:00.90Thank you.