Navigating Misinformation with Empathy: Misbelief with Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely 

 

Navigating Misinformation with Empathy: Misbelief with Dan Ariely

 

This episode features Dan Ariely, author of 'Misbelief, what makes rational people believe irrational things', focusing on the psychology behind misinformation and belief in conspiracy theories. 

 

Ariely discusses how stress, personality traits, and social dynamics contribute to the spread of false beliefs, emphasising the importance of resilience and trust in combating misinformation. 

 

He shares personal experiences, including being targeted by disinformation, and highlights his role in the NBC show 'The Irrational' that combines social science with solving crimes. The conversation touches on various psychological concepts, the impact of cognitive biases, and the role of social context in shaping beliefs. 

 

Ariely proposes empathy and understanding over conflict in addressing belief in misinformation and discusses the broader implications of trust erosion in society.

 

00:00 Unraveling the Web of Misinformation

01:12 Welcome Dan Ariely: Exploring Misbelief

02:15 The Making of 'The Irrational': A TV Show Inspired by Real Science

06:13 Embracing Imperfections: The Philosophy of Kintsugi

12:22 The Personal Impact of Misinformation on Dan Ariely

18:39 The Psychological Journey into Misbelief

22:08 Navigating the Flood of Misinformation in the Digital Age

26:42 The Role of Stress in Cultivating Misbeliefs

33:49 Challenging Cognitive Biases and Misbeliefs

40:01 Navigating Societal Divides: The Abortion Debate

40:59 The Power of Uncertainty in Dialogue

41:25 Innovation and the 'Us vs. Them' Mentality

42:33 Exploring the Dunning-Kruger Effect

47:15 The Role of Memory in Shaping Beliefs

49:02 Personality Traits and Susceptibility to Misbelief

52:07 Social Dynamics: Ostracism and Its Effects

01:01:38 Understanding Cognitive Dissonance

01:07:13 The Importance of Resilience and Trust

01:15:52 Concluding Thoughts on Misbelief and Social Change

 

Dan Ariely, Behavioral Economics, Misbelief, Misinformation, Social Media, Conspiracy Theories, Political Affiliation, Psychology, Fake News, Empathy, Cognitive Bias, Trust in Society, Resilience, Stress and Misbelief, Cognitive Dissonance, Shibboleth, Secure Attachment, Dunning-Kruger Effect, Innovation, Identity and Belief, AI and Misinformation

 

Find Dan at www.DanAriely.com

Episode Transcript

Aidan McCullen (00:00):
Misinformation affects us daily.

(00:02):
From social media to politics and evenpersonal relationships, policing social
media alone cannot solve the complexproblems shaped by partisan politics
and subjective interpretations of truth.
Today's book explores the behaviorof misbelief that leads people
to distrust accepted truths andembrace conspiracy theories.

(00:24):
Misinformation taps intosomething innate in all of us.
Regardless of political affiliationby understanding the psychology
we can mitigate its effects.
Grounded in research and our guestspersonal experience as a target
of disinformation today's bookanalyzes the psychological drivers
behind adopting irrational beliefs.

(00:47):
He reveals the emotional cognitivepersonality and social elements
that drive people towardsfalse information and mistrust.
Despite advanced AI generatingconvincing fake news our guest
offers hope and awareness of theforces fueling misbelief that makes
individuals and societies more resilient

(01:07):
. Combating misbelief requires empathy not conflict.
It is a huge pleasure to welcome theauthor of "Misbelief,, what makes
rational people believe irrationalthings", Dan Ariely, welcome to the show

Dan Ariely (01:23):
Lovely to be here.
Thank you so much.

Aidan McCullen (2) (01:26):
it's so great to have you and you can see for those watching us.
Behind me there i have many many ofdan's books behind me on the library
there but the focus is his latestbook this book misbelief and before
we even get into there i want to saycongratulations on your tv show, i
was thinking you're like the socialscientist version of murder she wrote

Dan Ariely (01:51):
It is.

Aidan McCullen (2) (01:53):
i was sent to when i was a kid i used to say to my parents
you know the innocent things kids say.
Is that shows on tv all time is goin'if Angela Lansbury came to my town i get
the heck out of there and somebody'sgonna die for sure if she's in town
maybe you'll tell her audience a littlebit about that show particularly cause
a lot of audience Dan, are in the us,

Dan Ariely (02:15):
Yeah.
So, this is a show called TheIrrational on NBC and Peacock,
which is their streaming platform.
And, the hero is a professor.
He's a professor at theInstitute for Advanced Hindsight.
My research center at Duke is calledthe Center for Advanced Hindsight.

(02:35):
So it's a little similar,it's a little different.
And he also has scars, although he, he gotinjured in a different setup than I did.
And he basically teaches social science,behavioral economics, and solve crimes.
And the origin for that story is, is real.

(02:57):
I was approached by some.
law enforcement agency generallyto, to help figure out some
things about human nature andthe way it interacted with them.
And it was interesting and fascinatingand complex and challenging.
. But it's been it's been an unbelievabletreat because the team that is working

(03:19):
on this are absolutely committedto the science being real science.
So, things happen quicker and soon, but the science is the science
and every episode there's an elementof human nature that is revealed.
So it's very nice.
And , the first episode weaired I went to the party in la.

(03:42):
To, to air it and there's a scene inthe end of the first episode where
Alec, the guy who's playing me, ismeeting with this veteran that had
PTSD and he gives him some advice.
And I talked to the actorwho, who got this advice.
And I said, I, I wrote thisadvice thinking of your character.

(04:06):
I, this is like, like myreal psychological advice to,
to somebody in your thing.
And, and he said, it was such good advice.
He said.
He was, he was kind of touchedto, touched to get that advice.
It's not just an advice for hischaracter, but, but in general.
So anyway, it's, it's a real, it'sa real treat a huge adventure and a

(04:28):
huge treat to do something like this.

Aidan McCullen (2) (04:30):
It's amazing how life gives you these opportunities
by you putting yourself out there butunfortunately putting yourself out
there also means you can be the target.

, Dan Ariely (04:39):
you're absolutely right that putting yourself out there gets
you to do positive and, and negative.
But, I know that, that you're, thatyou generally you're interested in,
in innovation in all kinds of ways.
And I think that one of the thingspeople don't think about enough
in the role of innovation isthe role of trying more things.

(05:03):
So, when, when you look at the questionof, are there people with more luck,
the answer is yes, but the answer isthat the people who have more luck do
two things, they start more things.
And they stop them if they seethey're not going anywhere.
So imagine life is a basketball.

(05:25):
And imagine two people.
One that waits until they're 100percent sure they'll make a basket.
And one shoots when they have 50%.
The first one maybe willhave two baskets in the game.
The second one might have 20.
but baskets are binary.
It's either in or out.
Life is not binary in life.
We start lots of things and we seewhat works out and what doesn't.

(05:49):
And it turns out that people who arelucky, first of all, try more things.
They don't wait and wait and wait.
And then the other thing thatthey do is they see something
is not working out very well.
They stop putting too much energy into it.
They cut it and, and try more things.
So I'm certainly in the, in thecategory, the, the adventurous

(06:10):
category that, that tries a lot.

Aidan McCullen (2) (06:13):
for saying that and you know it speaks to something that is
very much at the heart of the show andyou talk about how we all have frames or
biases or heuristics through which we seethe world and one of the ones that i've
tried to force into place for myself iswhat i call Kinstugi thinking and it's
based on this beautiful art of Kintsugiwhere you repair the cracks but instead

(06:35):
of disguising them you celebrate them soyou paint them with golden lacquer and.
The heart of that is an innovationthat you're going to try things.
They're going to fail, but it'swhat you learn in the effort.
And the thing that comes out of thisis there's always assets in the ashes.
And the reason I share that is that youhad, you mentioned a severe incident as

(06:57):
a child you went through some severe painfor a long long period of time and for a
while you did try to disguise those cracksbut now you actually see as leonard cohen
said that "there's a crack in everythingthat's where the light comes in."

Dan Ariely (07:12):
Yeah.
So first of all, I, I lovethis kind of art and I actually
bought, I bought some today.
And most, most of the Kintsugi art,it creates whatever the vessel back.
So, so you could see the cracks, butall of the pieces are, are there.

(07:32):
And and you're right in everything you'vesaid, but, but the piece I bought today is
a piece that they're still missing parts.
So it's, it's, I'll send you apicture later, but there's still,
there's still missing part.
And there's something about thatthat looks to me is a, is a both
emotional, both negative and positive.

(07:55):
Reminder, but because you mentionedit, so I'll, I'll say that.
So, obviously I have half a beard , andthe reasons for these half a beard is
that many years ago I was badly burned.
So.
This side is full of scars.
Just hair doesn't grow, grow here.
And for a long time, indeed, I, Ishaved and when I shave it's less stark.

(08:17):
Yes, you can see that it's redand you can see , it's a scar,
but it's , not as strange looking.
And a few years ago I went on a monthlong hike and I stopped shaving.
And when I finished thehike, I looked like this.
And then I look in the mirror.
I didn't like myself.
It's a very strange look.
Just imagine that you wouldlook like this one day.

(08:38):
And and I thought I'll shave it, but Ithought I'll wait a few weeks until the
memory for the, it kept me some of thememory from the hike keep in my mind.
But two very interesting things happened.
The first one was that I startedgetting notes from people who
thanked me for the half a beard.

(08:59):
And why did they thankme for the half a beard?
These were people who werestruggling with their own injuries.
They felt they were hidingsomething themselves.
And they said that if I'm so outwith it without care, maybe they can.
hide it a little bit less as well.
So I decided to keep it for longer.

(09:20):
And then the really surprising thinghappened about four months later, when,
when all of a sudden I felt betterwith my scars, I have lots of scars.
My hand don't, a lot, lotsof things are wrong with me.
But but all of a sudden I felt, Ifelt the scars in me were the same.
I did not feel the separationthat it's me and my scars.

(09:42):
I felt more connected to my injury.
And I started wondering what happened.
Why?
Why now?
And I think that what happened isyou think about somebody like me
shaving, I start the morning smoothhair, stubble hair, and then I
half shave and smooth and smooth.
I, the act of shaving for somebody likeme is also the act of reducing asymmetry.

(10:08):
In, in fact, the act of shaving is exactlywhat those people told me that they
wanted to stop doing, which is to hide.
And, and stopping shaving, I think was avery healing process of self acceptance.
And, and by the way, because we talkabout new things and understanding
and where do ideas come from?
I have to admit that I didnot predict that having a half

(10:31):
a bill would be good for me.
And this is an interesting thing, right?
If you asked me, before I had thehalf a beard, if you asked me, Dan,
how would half a beard feel like?
I could tell you dayone would not feel good.
People would ask questions, kidswould point, some people would laugh.
And if you ask me, but yes, buthow would month four look like?

(10:54):
I wouldn't be able to tell you.
Because this process of psychologicaladaptation and acceptance is not
something we have a good intuition about.
We have a good intuition aboutday one, how would other people
react, but we don't have a goodintuition of how we would change.
slowly to something.
And I think those are some of thebarriers for human progress that

(11:18):
we have a hard time imagining howthings would be in the long term.
And, but they also were socialscience is supposed to be helping.
Here's some insights, right?
I don't expect everybody to go throughthis process, but here's an insight
about something about self acceptance.
Yes, hiding has its functions, but in longterm, it might actually impede progress.

Aidan McCullen (2) (11:42):
i'm so glad you did it and you know it's a reminder of
sincerity you know that i found out thebeautiful origin of the word sincerity
comes from, Sin Cere which means withoutwax and it was from a time where the
sculptor used to hide cracks in thestatues with wax, i just love that and

(12:03):
also reminder of the contrast in lifethere's always highs and lows you know
that this is life because i say that tosay that, Maybe as a context setter for
this book and why you wrote this book andall the research you put behind it and the
real pain that is in this book as well.
Is a signal of that as well.
It's a, it's a symbol of thatbecause at a very peak moment in

(12:26):
your career, all of a sudden you wokeup to a faithful morning when you
were just attacked in , many ways.
Maybe we'll share that asa context for, the book

Dan Ariely (12:37):
Sure.
So highlight of my career.
You're absolutely right.
So roll back the time, earlyCOVID days, the world is crazy.
And all of a sudden everybody realizeshow central social science is.
And I get questions from governmentand people all over the world.

(13:01):
What do we do with distance?
And what do we do with distant education?
And what do we do withreleasing prisoners?
How do we decrease domestic violence?
How do we get people to adopt thiscrazy thing of wearing a mask?
Just the number ofquestions were incredible.
And if we give people money onfurlough, how do we give it?

(13:24):
Should we give people fines if theymisbehave or do something else?
Anyway lots and lots of questions and Ifeel I'm the most helpful I've ever been.
I have two phones and my,and I, I just work all day.

Aidan McCullen (2) (13:39):
they're listening they're finally listening

Dan Ariely (13:41):
that's right.
That's right.
That's right.
Not, not only do they finallylistening, not everything I had data
on something that I tried to get datavery quickly, but, but I felt that,
we, we talked a little bit about thisin a different context before the show
started, the generally life is smooth.
People don't doubt their assumptions.

(14:01):
Why would you by the way, I'm digressing,but one of my standard approaches
, when they go and talk to companies.
Is to ask them, what if people areamateurs in whatever it is you're doing?
So let's say we have a companythat does financial education.
I said, what if people are amateurin that we have an organization that

(14:22):
help people with couples therapy?
What if people don't knowhow to live together?
And it's about the fact that we, it's soconvenient to keep on with our standard
assumptions about what happened yesterday.
And sometimes it's veryhealthy to break them.
COVID was a time when those assumptionswere broken and all of a sudden people
realized like how much we don't know.

(14:44):
By the way, with education, it was anopportunity because, we didn't know much
about education before, but all of asudden it became clear how little we know.
Anyway, so I'm very, very feeling veryhelpful and being as helpful as I can.
And all of a sudden I get this emailthat says, Dan, how have you changed?

(15:09):
How have you become that person?
I don't think much about it.
I say, how have I changed?
I don't see any way.
And I get the long list of links.
Among them is a link that I'll justdescribe one that shows pictures of
me from my early days in hospital.
badly burned, all kinds of bandages.

(15:30):
And then it's describedit's, I was badly injured.
70 percent of my body burned almostthree years in hospital, true and true.
And then it says that because ofthat, I started hating healthy people.
And that's why I joined Bill Gatesand the Illuminati to create COVID
and to create the vaccine thatwould kill, kill more people anyway.

(15:53):
There were many, many videos, manycomments, all kinds of things.
And I, my first instinct wasto defend myself and I tried.
I said, how can thesepeople think about this?
I'm waking up every day, workingfor free for everybody's benefit,
just doing good in the world.

(16:14):
Like how, how can they think about this?
Anyway, I tried to convincethem terrible, terrible.
I only made things worse.
Like I could not convince anybody.
And we, we all heard about people whobelieve the earth is flat or all kinds
of things that, but when somebody sitsacross from you on zoom or telegram

(16:38):
or something, and they tell you.
that you have done somethingyesterday and you say no.
There's something extra eerie about that.
It's not about somethingthird in the world.
The earth is right.
It's about, it's about me.
These people felt they know me betterthan I knew myself and no matter

(17:00):
what I showed them, no matter what Ithought, I could not convince them.
Now I tried for about amonth, very tough month.
Lots of nightmares, lots ofdifficulty during the day.
We all hear sometimes like theping of email or something coming
and we don't know what it is.

(17:22):
But if you add to the mix expressionof hate and death threats, all of
a sudden you hear this vibrationor ping and you say, oh, is,
is it another one of those very
Anyway, after about a month, Irealized I'm making no progress.
I took a step back, and Idecided to study the topic.

(17:45):
I, I decided this was an important topic.
That there is somethingvery strange about it.
Something I, I don't understandas a social scientist.
I think we as social scientistsdon't understand well enough.
And I have to study this.
So for the next two years, I, I dida combination of, it's, it's, it's
different from my other books becauseI'm more of an anthropologist here.

(18:10):
I talk to many mis, misbelievers.
I described some, some research aswell, but I'm trying to understand the
psychology of somebody that five yearsago, we looked at them and we say, Hey,
me and this other guy, we're the same.
We look at the world in the same way.
And now we look at them and we say,Hey, Something is really wrong inside.

(18:32):
Something is really wrong inside.
I don't understand how me andthis other person are seeing
the world in a, in the same way.
And, and the book is, is helping us seewhat is the process they went through.
They're not different.
It could have been us, but there was somethings that happened along the path that
got them to go in this, in this path.

(18:54):
And, and I think the main lesson from,from the book, there's a lot of lessons
about the psychological path, right?
But for me, the main lesson isnot to discount the people and
not to discount their beliefs.
Yes, they're wrong, nobody wakes upin the morning and says, I'm going
to start believing that there's G5chips in the vaccine and they're

(19:19):
going to kill me and my kids.
These misbeliefs are, it'slike a bad autoimmune response.
It's a, it's a response to a real need.
There's a real psychologicalneed for these misbeliefs.
They answer, they answer a need, right?
In the same way that the cookie answersa craving for sugar, fat, and salt.

(19:44):
And in the same way that somebodydesigned the cookie to make us want
to eat one and then want to eat againin, and like more and more and more.
The, the funnel of misbeliefanswers a real need.
And then and then it gets uspeople to consume more and
more and more, more and more.
Now, that doesn't.

(20:05):
Solve the problem, of course.
Understanding the funnel of misbelief, andI say it's a real need, doesn't solve it.
But it does mean that it's a problemthat could have attacked all of us.
We can't just say us versus them.
And it also means that we need toapproach this with the empathy.
These are, people have notchosen that, that path.

(20:28):
They psychologically got, got thatpath, but it's not good for them.
It's not good for us.
And then the last thing I wouldsay is that if you asked me 10
years ago about what are thebig challenges facing humanity,
disinformation would not be there.
Misbelief.
Now it is.
If you think about all of our challengesnow, I think disinformation, misbelief is

(20:55):
it's the, the, the bottom of all of them.
Whether you're thinking about the war inUkraine, American elections, you think
about geopolitical issues in Europe, youthink about Israel and Gaza, whatever
you think, these questions about whatinformation do we trust, who do we trust,

(21:21):
what are the, The ways we talk aboutthis, how open are we to conversation?
What are motives for believingmisbelieving and so on?
All of those things arebarriers in everything we do.

Aidan McCullen (2) (21:38):
well said and it's one of the things i was telling you my son
who's fourteen loved the book you listento in the car as i drove him here and
there and everywhere as you do these days.
And i was so pleased with the way thatit's so empathetic the book and i want
to say that if you are somebody who is.

(21:58):
A misbeliever , this is not an attack.
The book is not an attack actually,as somebody who maybe doesn't
believe with you or ostracizes you.
It asks you to be more empathetic.
And this episode is not going to be anattack on misbelievers as well i want to
say that and i just based on somethingyou said there i know Yuval Noah Harari

(22:19):
endorsed the book but there was a quote byhim that i thought was so relevant to the
book he said that "censorship no longerworks by hiding information from you.
censorship censorship today worksby flooding you with immense amounts
of misinformation of irrelevantinformation of funny cat videos until
you're just unable to focus anymore."
And that is one of the hugeproblems we face in this age.

(22:42):
And we're only at the start of itwith AI and chat GPT, et cetera.

Dan Ariely (22:46):
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
Yeah.
Lots of people are worried about AIin terms of flooding more information.
I think that's one fear.
There's another fear of what's calleddeep fake that there'll be a video and
you wouldn't know who it really is.
But my big fear is actually thatif there's a system that understand

(23:09):
each of our psychological weak pointsand these tailored to our particular
unique weakness, then it's a pieceof information that can change us
in a, in the most dramatic way.
I, I try sometimes to use the termcorrosive information because when,

(23:31):
when people use misinformation, itseems that the solution is simple.
Just show the real information.
There's missing, the antidote seemsseems simple, but the moment you think
of it as corrosive information, Thenyou're saying there's no way back.
Corrosion is very hard to take away.
And I think that if there wasthis engine that would figure out

(23:54):
our psychological weak points andattack us specifically, that would
be very hard, very hard to escape.

Aidan McCullen (2) (24:02):
I read Dan, about Mattel, the toy company created this
product called hello barbie this isbefore the barbie movie and it was
basically a barbie doll that couldcommunicate with the child, And the
challenge became then and this isunforeseen challenges that what if the
child shares intimate secrets what if itshares abuse whatever who owns that data.

(24:24):
Because it has to be storedsomewhere in order for the Barbie
doll to be able to interact.
And it got me thinking exactly toyour point that this is coming.
It's already here.
I don't know if you use ChatGPT, but if you use the voice
one, it's absolutely incredible.
The latest one and the accuracyof how it communicates to
you, it adapts to your style.

(24:44):
It's absolutely phenomenal.
As I mentioned, we're at thestart of this exponential jumps
that we're going to see in it.
I think that's why thisbook is so important.
So much so, that i really think thatchildren should have a module to be
taught about being able to filterinformation these days because this is

(25:05):
gonna be a huge problem for them andeven for their education going forward.

Dan Ariely (25:10):
Yeah.
So, so let's, let's, this bookreally reads a little bit like an
introduction to psychology bookbecause the funnel of misbelief
really attacks all of our psychology.
Yeah.
Right.
If we think a cookie goes for salt,sugar, and fat misbelief attacks

(25:32):
almost every aspect of our psychology.
And very quickly it, it startswith emotions and stress, then
it goes after a cognitive system.
The way we process information andreason then goes after our personality.
Some personality are moresusceptible, less susceptible, and
then it finishes with the, withthe social structure and the social

(25:55):
structure kind of seals the deal.
It, it both the ostracism you mentioned,but also the affinity groups and
things like social media and so on.
Now, if you think about that emotion,stress, cognition personality
and, and social, it's basicallyalmost every aspect of our.

(26:16):
Psychology and every after, ourpsychology needs to defend in a,
in a different way and we need tothink about it in a different way.
And for kids, for all of us, but forkids in particular, I think the, the,
the cognitive parts of how we processand think in information and the
social parts are, are things that arerelatively easy to do something about.

(26:39):
But, but maybe, maybe to start with,let's actually go back to stress.
So, so stress in my mind is thenecessary condition for misbelief.
Why is stress a necessary condition?
So consider the following example.
Consider two tribes.

(27:01):
One is fishing in the deep ocean.
One is fishing in the lake and askyourself who has a more predictable life.
The answer is the lake.
No storms, no currents, lake,ocean, very unpredictable.
Which one of those two types oftribes develop more superstitions?

(27:24):
Obviously the ones in the ocean.
We have a need.
To seek a sense of control withsuperstitions don't really help.
They don't really createcontrol, but a sense of control.
Now think about the period of stress.
Think about the period of stress.
COVID is a good example.

(27:44):
Tremendous amount of stress.
What is this virus?
Where is it coming from?
What is happening in China?
Quarantines the worldover people are dying.
What's happening in Italy?
Just tremendous amount of.
Just how to understand wherethings are coming from, where,

(28:05):
where, where it's coming from.
And people want a story.
And they don't just want a story,they want a story with a villain.
Why a story with a villain?
Because now it's not our fault,it's somebody else's fault.
So we want a story with a villain,and interestingly, it's also
beneficial if the story is complex.

(28:28):
Why is it good?
Is the story complex?
If I feel that I'm an underdog, thepeople are looking at me and say, Oh, Dan
doesn't understand what's going on, andso on, he's lost his job, he's not doing
so well, all kinds of things like that.
If I now can say, Oh, you think I don'tunderstand things, but let me tell you,
it's really Bill Gates with G5, andhere's a whole nother story with the

(28:51):
World Health Organization, and so on.
People all of a sudden feel in control.
So, so the first, the first insightIs that stress not stressed?
Oh, I'm so busy stressed of the sortthat says, I don't know where things
are going, and I'm really worried andcreates the conditions for a story

(29:15):
with the villain and a complex story,by the way, when we look at the world
now, I think COVID was a time ofunprecedented stress up to that moment.
Again, virus, financial and so on.
I, I think that even now, fouryears later, we're not out of it

(29:41):
in terms of the emotional turmoilof that stress and loneliness and
all the things that came with it.
And I think that now we are at even higheramount of stress than we were in COVID.
Think about the Houthis.
Where did they come from?

(30:01):
Why?
Like, if you think about that, right?
It's like you have to besaying, Where is my world view?
What happened?
What are they doing?
How is Iran exactly fueling them?
And why?
And what's happening with Russia?
And why are American basesin Syria being attacked?

(30:25):
So there's a whole sense I thinkabout the instability Of, of the
world stemming from the Middle East.
That is incredibly unsettling.
You look at all the the uprisingof pro Palestinian students

(30:47):
in American universities.
I think this surprises everybody.
I think it surprises thepeople from the right.
It surprised the people from the left.
How can it be that Harvard students arelooking at the problem 3, 000 miles away?
And rather than talk about it and try tobe creative or propose solution and so

(31:11):
on they harass other students in campus.
Like it's, it's very unsettlingand AI is adding a lot to the
complexity for young people.
I can't tell you how many studentshave approached me and asked me,
what do I think would be viablejobs 10 years from now, like, if

(31:31):
you think about some professions.
This is like shaking them.
I don't know which profession youthink would suffer the most, but let's
assume that lawyers will suffer a lot.
Lawyers basically write verysimilar contracts all the time.
Yes, the nuances are important and so on,but lots of things are very, very similar.

(31:57):
All the things that are verysimilar could easily be replaced.
And even some of the things thatare not that similar, Now, would
lawyers go away from the world?
No.
But would one lawyer be able todo the work of many, many, many
lawyers with, with technology?
Most likely.

(32:18):
Think about somebody that studies law.
They're in their lasttwo years of college.
They want to go and do amaster's and then be a lawyer.
It's a long, painful path with lotsof education and complexity and so on.
And then they say, whereis this profession going?

(32:40):
It looked like almost ina day, a rug was removed.
Taken from, from them.
Like, where would it be?
And it's not just that.
And ChatGPT very quicklypassed the medical exams.
Where exactly is it going?
We don't know.
And, and those of us who have already acareer are less worried, but those of us

(33:03):
who in the beginning, Of that, of thatcareer, like, where's it coming from?
I didn't, I didn't see it coming.
It almost, it almost came in a day.
So anyway, so all of this is to say thatwe are living, I think in a, we haven't
finished the recuperating from COVID.

(33:23):
And we have these geopoliticalsocial polarization, American
elections plus technology.
challenges that are creatingthis tremendous stress.
So if you ask, are we in anenvironment now that it's easy
to create more misbeliefs?
The answer is, the answer is yes.

(33:45):
. The story doesn't end with just stress.
Now our cognitive system comesto play and there's a couple
of things that we all know.
So for example, we all know there'sa huge selection of information
to watch from the right to left.
And we get to choose what we watch.
And I don't know about you, I, I tryoccasionally to watch information from

(34:13):
the other side of the political spectrum.
But even though I try.
It's a small percentageof what I, what I try.
Mostly you wake up and you want to seeinformation that supports our beliefs.
So, so there are things in the cognitiveside that ranges from confirmation bias.
Let's just look at the thingswe know and believe already.

(34:34):
And then of course it becomesa stranger and stranger.
And one of the strangest ones is, iscalled the illusion of explanatory depth
And the illusion of explanatory depth,I, I demonstrated it with a toilet.

(34:54):
So imagine I say, do you understandhow a flush toilet works?
You say, yes.
Great.
On a scale from zero, I don't understandat all, to ten, I understand very well.
Really well.
Great.
Luckily for you, We have all the pieces ofa flush toilet here, please assemble one.

(35:14):
Of course, nobody managesto assemble those things.
And then we ask them, and how welldo you understand the flush toilet?
And they say, not so much.
Now if you think about what it does,it's usually when you try , to change
somebody's opinion, we attack them, right?
I come to you and say, oh, you don'tunderstand this, here's another

(35:34):
piece of information, here's anotherpiece of information, we attack.
Ha, ha.
But, but do the following reflection.
In the last three years, how manypeople have you truly convinced?
How many discussion ended up with somebodyon the other side saying, you know what?
I never thought of it this way.
Thank you very much forspending all this time with me.

(35:56):
I completely changed my mind.
You're absolutely right.
And I really appreciate youchanging my mind so deeply.
Doesn't, doesn't happenor happen very early.
And, and, and the other side, andthe other side also doesn't happen.
It also doesn't happen that we go topeople and we say, Oh, you convinced me.

(36:21):
So thank you so much for changing my mind.
Now, what happened inregular conversations?
. In, in regular conversation, we,we, we fight, we fight with people.
And what we often don't admit, but it'strue is when they argue with us and they
develop an argument, we pretend to listen.

(36:42):
But what we actuallydo is counter arguing.
From the second word that theyutter, we already think about what
argument we're going to come withto completely demonish the argument.
So they, we think that we'vebeen listening for half the
time, but no, we've been onlythinking about their own position.

(37:03):
When we talk, we talk about our position.
And when they talk, wethink about our position.
So we end up at the end of the hour,even more convinced than we started
because we spent the whole time.
Thinking about their own positionand defending it and attacking
it and building an argument.
We did not spend the whole timethinking about maybe we're wrong.

(37:24):
What's the real argument?
Now the illusion of explanatorydepth proposes something else.
It proposes that there's a gap betweenwhat people know and what people believe.
This kind of metacognition, right?
What is our knowledge about our knowledge?
The idea is that we don't knowthat much, how it flashed or

(37:45):
it works, but we think we know.
And that's an interesting gap.
So what the illusion of explanatorydepth says, you know what?
I come to you and I say, you know whatwhat is your opinion about X zero?
And I don't attack.
I come from your perspective.

(38:06):
I say, help me understandhow exactly would it work?
You tell me, imagine a very complex topic.
We're talking about.
Israel and Hamas and you say that,that you want an immediate ceasefire

(38:30):
and you want Israel to get out of Gazaand we know already arguing doesn't,
doesn't work, but, but imagine insteadI say, help me understand your position.
What now?
And you say, what, whatdo you mean what now?
I say, we know Iran is in the picture.

(38:50):
Do we, do we let them helpHamas with nuclear weapons?
And he said, no, no, no, not that.
And I said, do we allowthem to have an air force?
He said, well, maybe not.
What if there's anotherattack like October 7th?
What, what then?
And, the point is that in almostevery argument around the world,

(39:15):
there's no right side and wrong side.
There's usually two wrong sides.
And, and two offended sides, andthe picture is complex and difficult
and figuring out the path forwardis, is always, always difficult
and complex and painful and so on.
And, and the way to, to get peopleoff their, I'm-a-hundred-percent-sure-

(39:40):
horse is to basically say, you tellme how your approach would work out.
And then people wouldsay, I'm just not sure.
And really that's what we wantas a starting point, right?
What we want in any healthy society iswe want people who are not a hundred
percent, not a hundred percent sure.

(40:01):
Right?
So think about something as difficult asa discussion in the US about abortion.
The reality is that there are peoplewho are pro and there are people who are
against, and we have to live togetherand we have to move forward together.
And, and there's a way to lookat the other side as an enemy.

(40:22):
They're just broken.
They're not seeing the world as it is.
But what we really need is to,is to come up with solutions.
And, and the attackapproach is not helping.
It's not helping.
Like, nobody gets convinced.
Like, okay, if, if, if peoplewould get convinced, I would say,
okay, let's, let's go for it.
But the reality is that we,We have to work together.

(40:44):
We have to live together.
We have to collaborate together.
And we certainly don't want the systemthat it's like an arm wrestle between
who has 51 percent of the votes andthey get to to dominate a much, a much
healthier approach is basically say.
Help me understand your view ina, in a deeper, in a deeper way.

(41:04):
And once people are not a hundredpercent sure, everything gets better.
Everything is not solved,but everything gets better.
So, so we said we have thecognitive component, of course,
there's lots of nuances and so on.
It's fascinating part.
Then, then the next part is personality

Aidan McCullen (2) (41:25):
Before we go there, would you mind, I just wanted
to slip in there because this, thisis a huge problem in innovation
because a feeling of us versus them.
If i'm working in transformation, you're,you're driving change in a university, you
feel like you're against the dinosaurs.
This is the kind of us versus them.

(41:45):
Oh, they will, they'll never cop on.
They'll never change.
That a lot when somebody in, in yourwork is trying to change a paradigm.
You're trying to, the max plank thingwhere science changes one funeral
at a time, you're trying to avoidthat, , and , throughout the book, Dan
introduces these little columns calledhopefully helpful, which are ways to, in

(42:06):
a way, excuse the pun, given the topic,inoculate a certain way of thinking.
And i thought that was really importantand there was a quote here you quoted
my fellow countryman WB Yeats i lovethis quote in the second coming he
said, " we need to avoid a world wherethe best lack all convictions while the

(42:27):
worst are full of passionate intensity."
Absolutely, brilliant quote.
And I thought maybe you might justshare before we go on to personality
traits, which is another huge part ofthe book, the Dunning Kruger effect,
because , the Dunning Kruger is linkedto the illusion of explanatory depth,
but it's something that shows up a lotof this is like, I've read a little

(42:50):
bit, so therefore I think I know a lot.
So I mentioned to you, I saw,I spotted this in my son.
I said, that's very dangerous.
Because you saw a Tik Tok videoand you think you know it.
And there's a whole lot there's a wholetome of work behind that and one of
the great things there's a japaneseterm for this i don't know but when
you're surrounded by books like i amhere it just reminds you as newton is

(43:14):
it's a portion it's a credited newtonthis quote what we know is a drop it
reminds me that i know it's so littleand this is the dunning kruger effect.

Dan Ariely (43:23):
Yeah.
So the Dunning Kruger effect isalso a very important metacognition
effect, and it's an importantissue about this gap between what
we know and what we think we know.
But it says that this gap changesacross our real knowledge.
So there are some things that we'reignorant about and we know we're ignorant.

(43:46):
Me and string theory.
I went to hear a fewtalks, don't understand it.
Okay.
So with string theory, I'mnot a danger to myself.
Why?
Because I don't know muchand I know I don't know much.
Now on the other side of thespectrum, let's talk about things

(44:08):
like I do a lot of, I've done alot of research on dishonesty.
I know a lot about dishonestyor the psychology of money.
I know a lot and I knowI know a lot, right?
So I'm also not a danger to myself.
But at the middle level, the DunningKruger effect is showing that that's where
we are at the most danger to ourselves.

(44:30):
Why?
Because that's where we thinkwe know, but we actually don't.
And, and I think the world isbecoming more and more of that.
That's part because I think that some ofthose you said TikTok videos, but just
as a metaphor of a TikTok video, I thinkthey create a higher level of feeling of

(44:53):
knowing without the real knowing, right?
So there's all these amazingpeople who create these videos that
give you the sense that you havejust learned something, just know
something, you understand something.
It's a, it's a tribute to thepeople who've done the videos,
but they also make people people.

(45:14):
I, I use this example in the book.
I said that I went for like adriving school for two days.
We, we went to drive these cars andall kinds of difficult races and in, in
rain and, oh, it was amazing by the way.
So, so you do these laps with this.
Car and then you sit next to aprofessional driver and they do

(45:39):
the laps and like day and night yousay I thought I Knew how to drive.
No, no, there's a whole like, butbut anyway after two days of They
do it in the beginning and you geta little bit better in these two
days But after those two days, Ithink my confidence increased more.
No, not think I know now that the increasein my confidence was higher than my

(46:03):
increase in my real skill And then a weeklater, I got into a car accident, I'm,
I think, I think what happened is that,that's, that's what confidence does.
And by the way, when I've been talking tosome of the the misbelievers about COVID.
I sometimes, when they would talk tome about the virus and they would talk

(46:24):
to me about the vaccine and so on, Iwould say, but my PhD is not in biology,
so I'm not an expert in those things.
And you would expect that they wouldsay, well, I never, I don't have
an undergrad in biology either.
Last time I took a classwas in high school.

(46:44):
Often, I wouldn't getthat very often, right?
But, so, so I think, I think, forexample, with, with this particular
issue, I think lots of people felt thatthey understood ivermectin, mRNA, that
they understood all kinds of thingslike that, but not, they didn't really.

Aidan McCullen (2) (47:06):
Dan, on that you mentioned and this is
i think it's really important andhasn't been talked about much and
really builds on the whole idea of.
Know what you don't know is that peopleremember differently as well you mentioned
for example the studies on alien abducteesand this kind is a nice bridge for
personality traits as well that oftentimespeople will be doing their research

(47:31):
and when you go digging and go did youactually read that or did you imagine
that and that's not a criticism of thesepeople it's just a personality trait.

Dan Ariely (47:43):
so first of all, it's a feature of memory in, in the first
episode of the irrational, one of myphrases was memory is the great conman
of human nature, Alex says that in the,in the show and, and, and it's true and
it's true exactly for those reasons.
Why, why is memory the greatconman of human nature is because

(48:07):
we trust it when we shouldn't.
Right.
When, when we have a memory of something.
We feel that we really have thatmemory, but the reality is not so much.
It's very easy to plant memory tous, very easy to distort memories.
Memory is not that reliable, butthe trust in memories is incredible.
So if memory was tryingto, do a con game on us.

(48:31):
It will be very, very successfulbecause we, we over, we overly trust it.
But, but when we move this to, topersonality, if we think about things
like stress and connecting dotsand all of those, And, and too much
confidence and all of those things.
Some people are higher inthose things than others.

(48:51):
It's just not the same for everybody.
And the people who have a higher tendencyon those things are just more likely
to go down the funnel of misbelief.
So let's take one, one example.
There's a little math problemwe call the bat and the ball.
Okay.
So ready?
It's a little math problem.

(49:12):
I know, you know it, but okay.
So how does the math problem goes?
A baseball bat and a baseballball cost together $1.10.
A baseball bat and a baseballball cost together $1.10.
The bat cost $1 more than the ball.
The bat cost 1 more than the ball.
And now the question is,how much does the ball cost?

(49:32):
And for most people, the vastmajority, the first thing that
pops to their mind is 10 cents.
And some people say, 0.
10.
You sure?
Yes.
You want to change your mind?
No.
10 cents.
And some people check themselves.
And they say a baseball bat anda baseball ball cost together 1.
10.
The bat costs 1 more than the ball.

(49:54):
It sounds like 0.
10, but is it true?
Well, if the bat costs 1 morethan the ball and the ball is
10 cents, the bat will be 1.
10.
So we'll have 0.
10 and 1.
10.
But a baseball bat and abasketball ball cost together 1.
10.
No, together they're 1.
20.
Doesn't work out.
Oh, so maybe it's 0.

(50:14):
05 and 1.
05.
Yes, that works.
Okay, so this is simple math.
Everybody can do it.
If they get it wrong, everybodyunderstand that they, they got it wrong
and they can figure out the answer.
It takes a couple of seconds.
What's the difference between thepeople who say, yes, it's 10 cents
and the people who test themselves.

(50:36):
The difference is whether when somethingfits our intuition, We, we trust it
without question, or whether we testourselves, by the way, no, this is
a general strategy for life, right?
We have intuition about lots of people.
You meet somebody andthey offer you a deal.

(50:56):
You have intuition about them.
You meet somebody onlineand they tell you to.
Post something for themor buy something for them.
We all have gut intuitions.
That's fine.
The question is, do we trustthose gut intuitions or not?
And it turns out that people whotrust their gut intuitions are much
more likely to be misbelievers.

(51:17):
Why?
Because there's all kinds of thingsout there that are designed to make
sense to us, to our intuitive self.
And the people who say, yes, let mego for it, are more likely to do it.
Of course, there are other, otherinteresting elements to personality,
but it's important to understandthat if somebody has failed the bat

(51:38):
and the ball question, it doesn'tmean that they'll be a misbeliever.
And if they got it right,it doesn't mean that you can
think about it as a lubricant.
If you have the personalitytrait, if you, Connect dots.
If you are more likely to get stressed,if you're more likely to trust your
intuition, if all of those thingshappen, you're more likely to go down

(52:02):
the funnel of misbelief, but it's not theguarantee and it's not the protection.
Okay.
So we have personality and lots ofinteresting things there, but the last
component and a very important one isthe social one and the social one starts
with ostracism and, and I saw that amoment before we got on the call, I

(52:24):
saw that you sent me something about.
But I didn't get to read it

Aidan McCullen (2) (52:29):
No worries it was about goldfish where populations of
goldfish live in a proportion of the.
It's like a packing order and if theygrow above the next in the packing order
they'll be ostracized and they'll becast outside the little tiny group it
was work by a lady called dr marion oneanyway i thought it might be interesting

(52:51):
for your work if you haven't seen it.

Dan Ariely (52:53):
I'll have, I'll have a look.
So, so ostracism is very interesting.
And the thing that is so interestingabout ostracism is that to feel
ostracized is incredibly painful.
It's incredibly painful.
And almost everything good about humanitygoes away when people feel ostracized.

(53:14):
And the guy who did most of thework on ostracism has this very
beautiful beginning to his, his work.
He says how he walks in thepark with his dog and he sees
two people playing frisbee.
Just so happened the frisbeefalls next to his feet.
He picks it up and throws it to oneof them and they throw it back to him.
And for a few minutes, thethree of them play frisbee.

(53:37):
And all of a sudden they stopthrowing it to him and they just
throw it between themselves.
And he felt ostracized.
He felt terrible.
Why did they stop?
Am I not good enough?
Don't I play well?
I'm not a nice person.
Anyway, he replicated this study.
He basically did something very similar.
Somebody came to the lab, waited outside.

(54:00):
Two other people that they didnot know that played, that worked
for the experiment, showed up.
And in half the cases, one ofthem picked a ball, and the three
of them played for ten minutes.
In the other half of the cases, oneof them picked the ball, the three of
them played together for five minutes,and then for five minutes they stopped

(54:21):
throwing it to the real participant.
So in half the cases, the real participantcame to the lab after playing for
ten minutes with two other people.
In half the cases, they played forfive minutes with two other people
and being ostracized for five minutes.
Again, everything good abouthuman nature became worse.

(54:42):
Less optimistic, less supportive.
People were less likely to help, morelikely to lie, give less money to charity.
Everything that you can imagine.
And in brain imaging, they showthat the effect feels like pain.
Looks like it's in the same centersof the brain that process pain.
Now, here is something that I, I have toadmit that when I started thinking about

(55:08):
ostracism, I, I re I realized that I'vemade some big mistakes and the mistake
I've, I've made is that I had this phraseof what color is the sky in your world.
So when somebody started adopting,somebody from my circle would start
adopting some strange belief, Iwould use that phrase and I thought

(55:31):
it was slightly funny and I'msure they found it very offensive.
Imagine somebody who is just startingto play with some alternative views and
the most likely stress things are notgoing well, they're trying to explain
the world to themselves and they'restarting to play with some alternative

(55:53):
theories about what's going on.
And what do you want at thatmoment from your social network?
You want support, love, caring, and so on.
But it's very, what I did is verynatural and very human is to.
It's to ostracize, right?
Is to basically say,snap out of it, right?

(56:15):
What, what, what are you doing?
We have, we have these really crazy wayto, to approach the human psyche, someone,
somebody wrote me a while ago and saythat I'm lucky that I have half a beard.
And what they meant by thatwas this was a person who was
suffering from a mental challenge.
And when it's true, like when you havea physical disability, Other people

(56:41):
can see and watch and have empathy.
Like I show you, I say, look, this is myhand and this is the only movement I have.
And now you can imagine all thethings that are very difficult for me.
You can imagine the pain, you canimagine the difficulty and so on, right?
It's, it's very easy.
But, but when we have people with mentalissues people say it's only in your head.

(57:06):
Nobody, nobody tells to me,Oh, it's only in your head.
But, but, but we say thingslike it's only in your head.
Get over it.
Now, now the reality is that when, whenpeople are starting to develop these
needs for alternative theories, it'sthe time that they need help the most.

(57:27):
Somebody helped the most and, andanyway, I, I've made this mistake, right?
I've made this mistake of, ofbasically, Making this not so great.
It's also not very funny,but, just a little funny, but
probably very offensive to them.
And now what happens when people, whathappens when people feel ostracized and

(57:51):
they want to fix it, how do they fix it?
They find a group that wouldshow them nothing but love.
And thanks to what's happening online,it's relatively easy to find those groups.
Okay.
So, so we get.
ostracized and we, we start findinga group that we could identify.

(58:14):
But now we're in this group that wecan identify with and we want to show
up above the fault to be leaders.
We don't want just to be there in the,in the shadows and in the corners.
So what do we need to do?
We need to say things that are extreme,that people would notice us and like us.

(58:36):
And here's a, it is a termthat is called shibboleth.
And Shibboleth is a term from the Bible.
And it's a story about two,two tribes from the Bible
that had a very difficult war.
They settled at the end of thewar on the two sides of the river.
And now they would walk around andthey would try to figure out if

(58:57):
the people that we meet are fromour tribe or from the other tribe.
Now these two tribes pronouncethe name of the plant,
Shibboleth, in two different ways.
One of them said, Shibboleth.
And one of them said, Seabullet.
So imagine now I'm from thetribe that says, Shebullet.
I would walk around and I wouldmeet you and I would say, Hey,

(59:19):
you, how do you call these plants?
And if you said, Shebullet,like I do, we're brothers,
everything is fine, we hug.
If you said the way that the othertribe is saying it, now I try to chase
you away or kill you or do something.
And we use the term Shebulletnow as a social science term.

(59:42):
For a speech that is not really aboutthe fact, but it's about identity.
So when I show you the plant,do I care about the plant?
No.
I care about which tribe do you belong to.
And I think that if you, if youlook at a lot of speech these
days, you would find that it's notabout, it's not about the facts.

(01:00:07):
It's about a sense of identity.
So, I, I think for example, I see a lotof kids in American university now saying
from the river to the sea, and you'veprobably seen the statistics that many of
them don't know which river and which sea.
Is it question or, or what itmeans, it's fun to make fun of

(01:00:31):
generation, whatever, but I don'tthink it's generation, whatever.
I think it's, it's just a part of thespeech these days in other places to
including my generation in which a lotof speech now is a speech about identity.
And not a speech about facts.
We do virtue signaling.

(01:00:51):
There's lots of things about it.
And, and by the way, it's very easyto look at our side of the political
aisle and to say, Oh, we don't do it.
It's the other side.
But the reality it's,it's both sides, right?
Both sides exaggerate.
Both sides have identity.
I think gender issues,environmental issues.

(01:01:16):
All of those things have a lot, a lotof those elements that are basically
signaling and they're not about the truth.
And then anyway, so there's a coupleof, of, of social elements that we
said ostracism, we said finding likeminded people shibboleth, which makes
things more aggressive and more extreme.

(01:01:38):
And then the last component is,good old cognitive dissonance.
Okay.
And, and we use cognitive dissonance alot, but sometimes we forget the basics.
So indulge me for a few minutes.
So the original story with Festinger isa story about this woman who said that
on a particular day, the earth will bedestroyed, but aliens would come and

(01:02:01):
they will save her and her followers.
, and Festinger assumed that the earthwould not be destroyed and he wondered
what would happen to her followers.
Now, think in simplistic termsabout two types of followers.
Die hard followers, all in,and on the fence followers.
The die hard followers soldtheir homes and said goodbye to

(01:02:23):
their families, did everything.
They're ready, they're withsuitcases ready for the aliens.
The on the fence followersdidn't do anything.
They didn't say goodbye,they didn't sell their home.
They just showed up, they said,maybe it will happen, maybe not.
Who would get more disappointed?
That's it.
And common sense would saythe people who gave everything

(01:02:46):
would be the most disappointed.
They lost so much.
They said, why did we sell our homes?
Why did we say goodbye to our families?
Why did we convert everythingto gold or whatever?
But Festinger thought theopposite would happen.
He thought that the diehard followerscould not admit disappointment,

(01:03:07):
that they would have what hecalled cognitive dissonance, which
is the idea saying we investedeverything we could in this woman.
We trusted her fully.
We sold our homes.
We said goodbye.
We did all of these things.
And now nothing happened.
How do we reconcile this?
Now we can't change what we've done.
We can't say we didn't sell our homes orwe didn't give up our property and so on.

(01:03:30):
So what they would do is they wouldsolve the cognitive dissonance
by saying, Oh, she's amazing.
Even more amazing than I thought.
And that's actually what happened isthat we are so unable to admit that
we're wrong, that when things show upin, in a, in an opposite way from , what
we act toward, we change our beliefs.

(01:03:52):
So , the on the fence followers left.
But her diehard followers the nextday were even more committed to her.
They tried to recruit more people,raise more money, and so on.
And the same thing is true for, thesame thing is true for, for COVID,
as it was more and more clear thatCOVID is basically over, that the,

(01:04:16):
the ideas of, Hundreds of thousandsof people with vaccines are going
to be dead on the streets and allthese people with heart attacks.
By the way, there were lots of COVIDonly dating websites because they
thought that it, it hurt fertility sothat you not want to, they still exist.

(01:04:42):
Anyway, could people at the endof this say, well, we were wrong.
Let's just go back.
The answer is no.
And actually the answeris no for two reasons.
The first one is once like cognitivedissonance, once somebody has been
invested so much effort and time intosomething, they can't just give up.
They can't, Oh, it turns out I was wrong.

(01:05:04):
Not human, not human to ask that.
So what they do, they say,Oh, we were really right.
We were not wrong.
We were really right.
It's really the alumni in theglobalist agenda, but guess what?
What they're really after is oil.
Now, you see what'shappening in the Middle East?
You think it, no, no, no.
It's all the, the oil pipe fromRussia and the globalists who are,

(01:05:27):
so, so part of it is to say we wereeven more right than we thought.
But the story is not covid.
The story is trying to control peoplewith oil and, and but the other thing
is, I use, I use the term misbelief,and for me misbelief has two components.
It has the component of believingsomething that ain't so but

(01:05:49):
it also has the component oftruly adopting that as a belief.
And that is now used as a lens fromwhich to view the rest of the world.
So, for example, you could saywould you date somebody that
believes the earth is flat?

(01:06:09):
And you can say, well, it's an innocentbelief by believing the earth is flat.
You don't change the earth.
You just believe this or that.
On the other hand, if you believethat COVID is a hoax that can change
the people who are next to you.
But so you might say, Oh, I don't careso much if, if I date somebody who

(01:06:31):
believes the earth is flat, but again,so believing something that ain't so, but
it's adopting it as a central tendency.
And the people who believe the earthis flat believe that NASA is lying to
them and the US government is lying tothem and that every government in the
world is lying and every pilot knows it.

(01:06:53):
And that every space program is a hoax.
And, just think about the range ofthings that people don't believe.
And now it's a lens from which toview the rest, the rest of the things.
And this is why it doesn'tend with one misbelief.
It becomes a bigger issue.
So, so I want to end with talkingabout two big principles that

(01:07:18):
we haven't mentioned so far.
One of them is resilienceand one of them is trust.
So first of all, I want to saysomething about resilience.
When we, we started talking aboutstress, why, why is stress so important?
And, of course it would be great to reducestress very hard because, stress exists

(01:07:39):
and the world is AI comes along, right?
There are reasons to createstress, but our standard antidote
for stress is resilience, right?
And they're two, two Waysto think about resilience.
The standard way of thinking aboutresilience is you go around life
ups and downs, ups and downs, andthen boom, there's a huge reduction.

(01:08:01):
Something really bad happened.
Injury, tragedy, something.
And then resilience is do you bounce back?
You bounce back above to where youwere below where you were and how
long it takes you to bounce back.
So one way of thinking about resilienceis to, is to characterize this part.
Of the, the bouncing back.

(01:08:21):
But the other part of resilienceis how do you walk around the world
before something bad happened?
And, and there's a, there's aconcept called secure attachment.
Imagine you have a kid,the kid is four years old.
You take the kid to a playgroundand you say, kid, go to the swings.

(01:08:42):
The kid goes to the swings.
They come back 45 minutes later.
You've been successful.
You have a kid with secure attachment.
On the other hand, if you say, kidgo to the swings, they go, but every
90 seconds they look behind theirshoulder to see if they're still there.
Not so successful.
And resilience in that periodbefore something bad happen

(01:09:05):
is like secure attachment.
Is how do we walk around in theworld and do we walk around in the
world believing that if something badwill happen, somebody will catch us.
And for me, this is essential.
If you walk around in the worldwith a feeling of trust, feeling
that, I have friends, I can takerisks that's an amazing feeling.

(01:09:29):
By the way, it's the feelingthat we should all give our kids.
I, I, I say as a, as a, as a metaphor,I recommend to people to be the
venture capitalist for their kids.
Think about what venture capitalists do.
They say to a youngentrepreneur, take a risk.
You're taking a risk with my money.
Feel free to take more risk.

(01:09:49):
It's my money.
If, if it was the, the entrepreneur'smoney, they would be very afraid, right?
But the venture capitalist says,look, I have lots of money.
Take some of my money.
Be risky.
Go ahead and be risky.
And I think that's whatwe want to tell our kids.
We want to tell our kids,take risk, take risk.

(01:10:10):
If something bad will happen, I'm here.
Don't worry about it.
But, but that's what we want.
So, so I think we are at the, atan all time low of resilience.
And we're all time low ofresilience for all kinds of reasons.
One of them is income inequality.
They showed it as, as income inequalityincreases we have less resilience.

(01:10:32):
Why?
Because even if a level of aneighborhood, If income inequality
increases, you're less likely toask for help from other people.
Our knowledge of other people,our deep friendship has eroded.
We know more people online, butthese are not necessarily people

(01:10:53):
who would bail us out if needed.
We spend more time with our nuclearfamily, but less time with our friends.
All kinds of things are happening that ourresilience is, is at an all time low, and
that's an important antidote for stress.
So I think we have all kinds ofreasons for stress is increasing, but

(01:11:14):
all kinds of things are happening.
reduction in resilience that that make usless able to handle the increased stress.
So, so, so that's, that's akind of an important, I think,
social, social issue to solve.
And of course, social media isconnected to it, less face time, less

(01:11:37):
time with other people and so on.
But, but it's not just thatthere's lots of other things
that are happening as well.
And, and, and the good news isthere's things we can all do to
fix it a little bit for ourselves.
Right.
Just imagine I said, look, go ahead andfor the, for the rest of 2024, invest
in your resilience, what would it belike, you would find things to do, right,

(01:12:01):
probably more Guinness with friends.
Having deeper discussions.
Perhaps

Aidan McCullen (2) (01:12:06):
Less Guiness with friends

Dan Ariely (01:12:10):
um, No, I think, I think, every time I've been to Ireland, I
think that the time in the pub isvery important and especially the
people that I call friends in Ireland,alcohol is a social lubricant.
Like if you ask to what extent wouldpeople share deep, complex topics,

(01:12:35):
So there's a limit, of course, but,but yeah, but I think, I think,
I think this is anyway, I'm notjust recommending getting drunk in
the pub, saying invest in your own

Aidan McCullen (2) (01:12:44):
We have to be careful about that.
After your Jonathan Swift moment be

Dan Ariely (01:12:49):
Yes.

Aidan McCullen (2) (01:12:51):
I let I let people read the book to
find out what that's about

Dan Ariely (01:12:54):
But the second big, big part is we said that, that
misbelief is about a worldview.
And it's a worldview inwhich trust is eroded.
And if you think about it, it'sreally hard to imagine living
in a world without trust.
We trust so much.

(01:13:15):
We trust that we put money in the bank.
It will be there.
Just think how crazy is that?
We trust that when we go into an elevator,somebody has inspected that elevator.
We trust that somebody has washed thelettuce that we buy in the supermarket.

Aidan McCullen (2) (01:13:32):
Their hands

Dan Ariely (01:13:34):
Wash their hands in, in, in restaurants.
Like the amount of trustis just incredible.
Think about it.
We get into a car, we drive at acrazy speed that could kill us.
And we trust that thatcar is built well enough.
Planes, you name it.
Like, every time you look at it andyou say, how much do I trust it?

(01:13:55):
Some, lots of people havedone their job correctly.
And the moment trust is eroded, you don'ttrust the police to the same degree.
And you don't trust, we don't trustthe government to the same degree.
And we don't trust the healthcare systems.
Think about what happens whenyou're sick and you go to your

(01:14:18):
doctor and you trust them.
And think about what happens when you goto your doctor and you just don't trust.
Being sick and scared.
is much, much worse than beingsick and knowing that you're on the
right medication and in three weeksfrom now, things will do better.

(01:14:39):
If you don't trust very, very tough.
Anyway I think that the other componentof all of this is that we are living
in a world in which trust is erodedand the reality is that as people
adopt this perspective of misbeliefand they lose trust, everybody loses.

(01:15:03):
Think about elections in the U.
S., there is no question that lotsof, lots of Republicans have lost
trust in the American elections.
Where are we going in the next election?
Are we starting from zero?
Or are we starting from whenwe left the last election?
I think we started from wherewe left the last election.

(01:15:26):
Not so good, not so good.
So, so we really need to think aboutthe the little details, how we redesign
social networks, how we don't doostracism, how we get people not to
either watch NBC or Fox News and not beaware of other people, but we also have
to think about some big social topics.

(01:15:49):
We have to think about resilience.
We have to think about trust.
We have to think about misinformationand maybe, maybe as a one final, final
thought I love freedom of speech.
I think it's a tremendouslyimportant right.
But I think that when freedom ofspeech was invented as a principle
We did not necessarily understand thedownward consequences that could happen.

(01:16:14):
Some of the costs, I don't thinkwe thought about bullying, for
example, we did not think that kidscould not see a reason to live
being so hated by other people.
I don't think we understoodpolitical polarization.
I don't think weunderstood corrosive news.

(01:16:36):
So I think there's lots of conceptsthat in this new technological world We
really have to re examine, not sure whatthe answer is, but I think we have to
understand that these topics are some ofthe most important topics that we need to
deal with, and we have to elevate them,think about them, and deal with them.

Aidan McCullen (2) (01:16:56):
Beautiful Dan, nothing to add to that I had loads
and loads more questions because we.
We probably got through the spineof the book if we're lucky and one
of the things that i absolutelylove in the book is that.
There's lots of little hopefully helpfulsections to inspire your own thinking
for example how to live in ambiguity.
Think about it you've done it before soyou can do it again and to build that

(01:17:20):
as a muscle for both yourself and forchildren and you mentioned about where
the world is going with jobs etceterai think the thing we need to build
is the muscle to reinvent ourselvesand know that we can do that we don't
have to overly identify with a job.
Dan, before i close where is thebest place to find you for people
who want to reach out find out moreabout your work your books etc.

Dan Ariely (01:17:42):
My website online www.
DanAriely.com
com, and I'll only also mention thatI posted eight episodes of a podcast.
Where I went to talk to people whosuffered tremendous injuries and I tried
to find out , how did they find happiness?

(01:18:04):
So it's also on my website.
It's only eight episodes.
But if you're thinking abouttrying to figure out your own
resilience, have a look at that.
It might, might be interesting.

Aidan McCullen (2) (01:18:16):
Author of misbelief what makes rational
people believe irrational thingsDan Ariely, thanks for joining us.

Dan Ariely (01:18:24):
Thank you.

Aidan McCullen (2) (01:18:25):
nice one brother.