Building Trustworthy Organisations with Nate Kinch #12

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Strange Attractor, an
experimental podcast from CoLabs, a transdisciplinary innovation
hub and biotechnologyco-working lab based in
Melbourne, australia.
I'm your co-host, sam Wines,and alongside my co-founder,
andrew Gray, we'll delve deepinto the intersection of biology
, technology and society throughthe lens of complexity and

(00:22):
systems thinking.
Join us on a journey ofdiscovery as we explore how
transdisciplinary innovation,informed by life's regenerative
patterns and processes, couldhelp us catalyze a transition
towards a thriving future forpeople and the planet.
Hello and welcome to anotherepisode of the Strange Attractor

(00:45):
.
For this episode, we sat downwith our ethicist in residence,
nate Kinch.
Nate is a socio-technologyethicist and what that means is
that he draws from philosophy,cognitive science, systems
theory and a whole bunch ofother disciplines in a truly

(01:06):
transdisciplinary manner andhelps ambitious organizations
become trustworthy by design.
He does this through startingwith a process that enhances an
organization's capacity to doethics really well, and from
that sort of basis he works withdesign thinking to find a way
to operationalize these featuresof trustworthiness so

(01:27):
benevolence, integrity,normative confidence and then
finds ways to ensure that theseare consistently expressed to
enhance both the trust andreputation of an organization.
Enhanced trust and reputationcreates a far more favorable
social license to operate, whichis kind of necessary for any
organization that is trying tothrive and do well by doing good

(01:50):
.
As you can imagine, there's abig, big overlap between, I
guess, nate's worldview, ourworldview and, I guess, our ways
of trying to operate as anorganization in this world.
So, yeah, we love his stuff, wehighly recommend checking him
out and we actually are going tohave a series of events with
Nate coming up soon which willbe focused on, I guess,

(02:13):
practicing applied ethics.
So if that's something ofinterest, yeah, stay tuned.
You'll see that gettingreleased on our newsletter and
on socials and we'd love to seeyou at one of the events getting
released on our newsletter andon socials and we'd love to see
you at one of the events.
Anyway, let's cut to the chaseand jump into this conversation
with nate.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
All right, nate, welcome good to be here, mate
yeah, it's uh, it's been a hotminute.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
I mean, we've going through so much stuff at the
space, going through our purposeprinciples, all of these sorts
of things, um, and then it'sjust been kind of been inundated
with things and I know we'vebeen working on acacia stuff as
well, but it's it's been a longwhile since we've had this
conversation planned to have fora while talking about

(03:03):
trustworthiness andtransformative innovation.
I guess, given the fact thatthis kind of what we're looking
at doing here at colabs issupporting that transition
towards a more viable future,which is going to be based in
some part on technology,whatever that looks like, who
knows.
But then I guess the conceptbehind this conversation was

(03:25):
that there is a thread thatweaves it all together and we're
going to kind of be talkingabout what it means to design
trustworthy organizations.
So yeah, like maybe that'ssomething that we can kick
things off with.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Do you want to just start there and just get
straight into it.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Let's just get straight into it, let's do it.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
So trust is something that we just see a sort of like
preponderance of memes about.
We don't have enough trust, weneed to earn back trust there's
a trust deficit, et cetera, etcetera.
Trust there's a trust deficit,etc.

(04:08):
Etc.
And um, depending on where youlook, I think there is a
different sort of like qualityto these varying claims.
Sometimes they're a little bitmore substantive, uh.
Sometimes, uh, the intentionsbehind some of these narratives
are maybe a little bitquestionable.
But also we just have confusionand what we might formally call

(04:34):
equivocation, like where we allsay trust but actually we kind
of mean different things.
Now, I know we want to makethis particular episode
reasonably short, somethingthat's digestible, something
that people can metabolize andthen ultimately use
energetically to support theirendeavors in designing a more

(04:57):
trustworthy organization, andI'll speak very specifically to
what I mean by that in a moment,yeah, but perhaps I can try and
usefully define trust upfrontrecognizing it's of course
an approximation.
We don't have a broadly agreeddefinition.
The one that I'm working withat the moment is that trust is

(05:18):
the willingness for one party tobe relationally vulnerable to
another, based on positiveexpectations.
Now, when you actually get intothe trust literature whether
that be the philosophy of trustor the sociology of trust or
whichever field or disciplinethat attempts to study and make

(05:41):
sense of this phenomena, thatticks most of the boxes that we
think are reasonably important.
So there's something relationalabout it, like there has to be
more than one party in mostsenses.
Now we could, of course, flipit and say there's something
like a trust in self, but I'mjust not going to go there today

(06:01):
because we'd end up being Aliceand we'd dive down the rabbit
hole and we don't know whatwe'll find.
So there's something relationalabout it.
There's more than one party,there is sort of an intent to go
on a journey together.
So there's almost like a sharedgoal orientation, even if there

(06:22):
are different motives thatmight lead the parties towards
that shared goal orientation.
Often there is something like apower imbalance, which is where
we get into vulnerability.
So one party will often havemore resources, more financial,
economic, like financialeconomic, obviously,

(06:50):
technological, scientific, etc.
And that's particularly presentor prevalent when we think of
like a person to organisationrelationship, like me and my
bank.
The bank is the beneficiary ofa huge, very significant power
imbalance.
Beneficiary of a huge, verysignificant power imbalance and

(07:11):
the relationship tends to beentered into based on some idea
that life will be better, in abroad or narrow sense, as a
result of going on said journeytogether.
So that definition again, thewillingness to be relationally
vulnerable to the actions ofanother based on positive

(07:31):
expectations, that kind ofcaptures a lot of the important
stuff.
Now there's a couple ofslightly nuanced things that
I'll touch on really quickly.
That approximates trust.
It doesn't really tell us whattrust is Like.
Is trust primarilypsychological?
Is it mostly sort of emotional?

(07:51):
Could we describe it throughsomething like 4E or 6E
cognition, where cognitionitself is embodied, embedded,
enacted, extended, emotional andexacted, and I actually quite
like that way of looking at it.
So there's lots of things thatremain unanswered there.

(08:12):
A couple of things I'll touchon really quickly.
So another big concept in thetrust literature is trust
propensity, which you can almostthink of as like.
So for me as an individual,like the baseline propensity
that I have to trust others, andthat seems to vary quite
significantly from person toperson, from culture to culture,

(08:33):
to context to context, and thatmassively influences my trust
judgments.
And what seems to bedirectionally truthful about
trust as a phenomena is thatthere's lots of different things
that influence it Ourhistoricity, like our entire
past, which would includegestation, our parents' lives

(08:56):
and stuff like that, potentiallyour DNA, our cultural
narratives, context, etc.
Our socioeconomic background,the types of relationships we've
had in the past, context, etcetera.
Socioeconomic background, thetypes of relationships we've had
in the past.
And then that combines withsomething like a rational
process or process of reasoningwhere I'm attempting to assess
the trustworthiness of anotherparty, and there are three main

(09:21):
concepts that I think areimportant to understand when we
talk about trustworthiness.
The first is benevolence, andI'll describe that really simply
as that party acting in thepublic and planet's best
interests.
Integrity, that there is a tightrelationship between what
someone says or an organizationsays and what they do, and I

(09:44):
would frame it as normativecompetence, but typically it's
just referred to as competenceor ability, and that really
means like can the person ororganization consistently
deliver the value it promises?
Is it good at doing stuff Likethe stuff that it says it's
going to do.
And I add normative mostlybecause there are many ways to

(10:07):
be good at things and many ofthose things might not be
normative.
They're probably not the rightthings to do, like not what we
ought to do, because they'regood and right.
So that's kind of how I'd startit off.
I think there's lots of issues,there's lots of equivocation,
there's lots of confusion.
I think there are ways topractically define trust and
understand trust, as in havesomething like a true and

(10:31):
justified belief about trustthat can inform how we show up
in the world in almost anyrelational setting but,
importantly, can positivelyinfluence how we design our
organisations, our, ourorganizational cultures, the
tools and technologies that weuse or design for the benefit of
others, et cetera, thatprobably have some positive

(10:52):
effect out in the world.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
So you've spent most of your career kind of focusing
on what this means to designtrustworthy organizations and
how that relates to technologiesand systems more broadly.
It'd be nice to get a bit of abackground, I guess, on yourself
Very non-linear here.
Normally this would go first,but I like that.
We just went into trust, likewe trust-fold, into trust

(11:17):
straight up, which is great, andthen, yeah, I guess where you
came from, what inspired you toenter this field, and then
what's kind of what makes youfeel alive now as well so I I
spent most of my early lifethinking I was going to be an
athlete and, uh, for a number ofdifferent reasons, I couldn't

(11:44):
continue pursuing that.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Now, a little bit of a complex story.
But I was diagnosed with nervedamage between my L4 and L5,
suffered through that sort oflike repeat injury process, if
you will, from about the age of15.
And by 18 or so I just couldn'treally do what I was doing.
I wasn't getting better.
Everyone around me was gettingbetter.
I was constantly in pain.

(12:06):
I just kind of hated the thingthat I thought I loved.
When I look back on it now,given and it's probably not
something we're going to havethe time or affordance to get
into today, but the sort ofbiopsychosocial nature of
complex causality in the contextof health, well-being et cetera

(12:27):
, I actually think there wasprobably more a
psychophysiological expressionrather than some like acute
tissue damage that keptrecurring, and I'd be very happy
to rigorously qualify that, butit's just not the purpose of
today.
So I had this thing that Ithought was this injury caused
by rotation around the axis oftoday.
So so I had this thing that Ithought was this, this, um,
injury caused by rotation aroundthe axis of my spine because I

(12:48):
was a golfer.
Um, living in the states at thetime, came back home no idea
what I was going to do, likeproper identity crisis.
Who am I?
If I'm not going to be thisathlete flying around in g5 jets
hanging out, fist bumping TigerWoods, then what am I?
And um had the good fortune ofjoining three mates and built a

(13:09):
clothing label and that was funand interesting and um kind of
got me uh, interested in, Ithink, some fairly naive ideas
about entrepreneurship.
I think some fairly naive ideasabout entrepreneurship, but the
injury thing like stayed withme.
So I found myself in this kindof like recursive narrative

(13:36):
going if me, then who else?
How significant of a problem isthis?
Who's it affecting?
Like to what extent, et cetera,et cetera.
Anyways, having no idea what Iwas doing, I was like I want to
build a startup, like atechnology startup, and I was

(14:01):
probably using very basiclanguage like this at the time.
I think I was 18 or 19.
I want to build a technologystartup that, like that, helps
with that problem and fumblingthrough lots of different
mistakes, somewhatautodidactically, learning lots
of different, like listening tostuff, talking to people.
You could then argue thedefinition of autodidact and
stuff, but you know, mostlyself-directed learning, reading

(14:22):
like crazy.
I had this voracious sort ofappetite and raised venture
funding and built a companycalled Sport Performance
Accelerator and we were usingmachine learning to predict the
propensity that elite athleteshad to incur soft tissue
injuries.
So this model would give ussome type of forecast, if you
will, based on lots of differentfactors total tonnage, sort of

(14:47):
like stimulus to fatigue ratio,yada, yada, yada, all these
different sort of sports andscience and exercise physiology
concepts and, um, from there,you know, a team would sort of
intervene hey, let's decreaseyour load, whatever.
Whatever the appropriateintervention was.
And the idea was that wouldreduce the injury risk, which
would be highly beneficial tothe athlete because they can

(15:07):
continue doing the thing thatthey love, the thing that a lot
of their self-worth is wrappedup in, and the sporting team
would get the economic benefitsand other benefits of having the
athlete healthy and capable ofperforming.
Because when an athlete, let'ssay, tears a hammy or something
like that in a sport like Aussie, rules football weeks and weeks

(15:28):
that they're out for, andthat's effectively the
equivalent of a loss of likeproductivity for the
organization, which comes witheconomic correlates.
But what really interested methrough that process was the
relationship between theathletes and the teams, and
often it was very unhealthy.
It was almost like the athleteswere being treated like this is

(15:49):
a bit crude, but pieces of meat.
And I'm not saying that thatwas necessarily like nefarious
individuals, like, oh, we hatethese athletes, let's treat them
badly and make them suffer.
Not at all.
I think it was more like thesystem dynamics.
But I became became veryinterested in that and as this
sort of like very naive at thispoint maybe 20-year-old CEO of

(16:09):
this startup who was notformally academically trained or
anything like that, I startedbecoming very interested in
different social theories,different branches of philosophy
, particularly sort of axiologyand moral philosophy and applied
ethics in this particular case,and different sort of like sort

(16:31):
of social theories, criticaltheories, like all this
different, and I just go, oh mygosh, there's this whole world
of stuff out there that I'venever had any interest in.
But now, like it's the mostinteresting thing to me ever,
like I just want to, I just wantto try and understand stuff.
And um, yeah, and that started.
That started a uh, uh I don'tknow this word is so cliche but

(16:54):
like a journey, um, of trying torelate to these bodies of
knowledge and come into healthyor right relation with them and
then put them into practice.
And um, that is not one thing.
That is kind of like manythings.
It's like a mycorrhizal networkof like exploration.
It's something like that.

(17:15):
And um, yeah, I had the fortuneof um then becoming an
entrepreneur in residence afterthat, which was sort of like
both an applied research roleand, um, uh, kind of like um, a
consulting role, because we weredoing different stuff at the
time in this organization edgelabs.
So I was able to spend a lot ofdeep time learning about these

(17:37):
things and applying them indifferent contexts, um
supporting both startups andlarger corporations in doing
what we're sort of calling likeresponsible innovation, which is
kind of like applying I don'tknow something like a practical
axiology to the process oftrying to do something that's
new, that's additive, that'svaluable for society and,

(18:01):
obviously for the organisationthat's resourcing it society and
obviously for the organizationthat's that's that's resourcing
it um.
After that became a like a 2icat quite a prominent aussie
startup.
Um, uh, that was doing sort oflike personal information
management, digital identity,these sorts of things.
So it was building upon myapplied data ethics work.
I then built a services firmcalled greater than x and we

(18:21):
were doing sort of like appliedethics, um and socio-technical
design and stuff like that forlarger organizations typically.
But we worked across public andprivate contexts and also
applied research contexts, um,and, uh, yeah, it's just, it's
just been this, this sort oflike unfolding process I've
worked with.
I've worked with governments,I've worked big corporations,

(18:43):
I've worked with startups, I'veworked with vcs, I've worked
with um across pretty much everyapplied context you can think
of, other than I haven't.
I've had like no-go areas likemilitary, tobacco, etc.
Etc.
Um exclusion criteria, if youwill, normative exclusion
criteria, um, that's not to saythat you can't repurpose

(19:05):
narratives, ideas, resources etcfor something like a more
normative purpose.
But I've sort of had exclusioncriteria and now I attempt to
spend most of my time bringingtogether philosophy, cognitive
science, system science orcomplexity science to support
the process of designing moretrustworthy organizations.

(19:29):
That starts with the process ofteaching the organization to do
ethics better.
By doing and I'm happy todefine ethics if it's useful,
but by doing ethics better, wecan more consistently design and
then exhibit organizationalfeatures of trustworthiness,
benevolence, integrity andnormative competence.

(19:50):
By doing that we are far morelikely to sort of like enhance
trust, like the belief thatother people have in the
organization's trustworthiness.
Trust and reputation havesimilarities but but also
probably useful differences.
So trust is more what peoplebelieve in some uh respect and

(20:11):
reputation is more what peoplesay.
And then the combination of what, uh, people believe and say is
almost, like almost makes uplike social license to operate,
which is generally thought of aslike the level of acceptance
that the market big picture hasof the organization's practices.
And that's really what, like,boards and executive committees

(20:33):
care about, because if they havefavorable social license they
can do the things that they wantto do.
And the mistake that they oftenmake is they start there.
They're kind of like hey, youknow, let's start with, we need
to improve social license orenhance trust or reputation, and
they don't actually do almostlike the deep inner
organizational work to cultivateorganizational character that

(20:56):
can then be expressed in variousdifferent ways that people then
experience.
That in turn enhances trust andreputation and creates this
favorable social license tooperate.
So looking back on it now, Ican describe what is almost like
a linear progression.
It wasn't like that at all, itwas just a very messy, you know.
So that's the sort of 38,000foot TLDR summary.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah well, it was a really good summary.
I'm just I love it because it'sfascinating to me, because I
mean both Andrew and myselfagain similar to that, like not
necessarily academically trained, you know, did our undergrads,
but then very much had theproclivity to learn and do and
act and then reflect and thenlook at, still you know, very

(21:39):
much applied research sort ofapproach.
So it's always fun hearing andfinding other people that
similar sort of, I guess,approach, um, because there's
few and far between but um, yeah, it's.
Oh, hang on, I know we're good.
Um, anyway, I'll just cut someof this out.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
So leave it.
It's so real like is someonegonna walk in?

Speaker 1 (22:03):
yeah, pretty much looking through the little
porthole, just glanced and madeeye contact with someone I don't
know who it was.
Um, all right, well, that'sgood to understand how they, I
guess, how they like all kind ofrelate and why that's, I guess,
important for an organization.
But I guess, going back to that, um, what do you think?

(22:24):
So you've got all these thingsand they all interrelate what
are organizations currently kindof doing well and what are they
struggling with?
And when it relates to thesesort of concepts, you've said,
like, is it and you kind ofalluded to this a little bit
before when you were saying thatpeople kind of think that it's
a mechanistic, command andcontrol, top-down thing that you
can do, whereas it's probablymore emergent, relational and

(22:45):
holistic.
Don't want to put words in yourmouth, that's just what I
interpreted.
But yeah, I guess, going backto that sort of question, how
are organizations relating tothis content at the moment?

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yes, look, it's a great question.
I think the biggest difficultythat we have is and I'll try not
to use too much sort of likeformal parlance here but um, and
we can describe this indifferent ways.
So so philosophers of sciencewill sort of describe it as
something like metaphysicalassumptions, systems, folks
might say like sort of paradigm,other folks might say into

(23:18):
subjectivity or myth ornarrative, deep narratives.
Different ways we could describethis um, but sort of like the
narratives, the beliefs, theassumptions that gave rise to
the or narrative, deepnarratives different ways we
could describe this but sort oflike the narratives, the beliefs
, the assumptions that gave riseto the modern corporation are a
real hindrance on our capacityto transform such that we become

(23:39):
really good at doing good, solike we can wisely steward our
resources, such that we weoperate within ecological limits
and we distribute resources insuch a way that that pretty much
everyone can live a really goodlife, which feels like a very
normative teleology, like goalorientation, um, and I think the
story, if you're listening andyou're not really familiar with

(24:00):
this, a simple way to look at itis, um, and and please don't
think that, uh, a critique likethis is as simple as
anti-capitalist and thereforeI'm a goddamn kami, or you know
what I mean, because we havethese very binary ideas and I
think that that what we reallyneed is yet to be invented and

(24:23):
it will will require us to morehealthily relate, to, learn from
and radically accept what hashappened in the past, so that we
can ground ourselves in thepresent and act, hopefully,
towards some type of betterfuture.
But it isn't necessarily areturning to.
And it certainly won't be sometechno, instrumentalist,

(24:47):
optimist type, uh, biophysicallyilliterate sort of, and I've
written about this ratherextensively.
But um, so, if we can think ofthe basic premise as, um, humans
being sort of like radicallyindividual, so separate from one
another and I'm not going toget into Cartesian dualism and

(25:09):
these different things but soyou and I we're separate beings
and we're separate from eachother and we're separate from
the world and nature, this thing, like everything other than
humanity, if you will, or humancivilization, is out there for
us to use for our benefits,extract, exploit, etc.
And the purpose of life isbasic, like human life is to

(25:33):
kind of be wealthy and powerful.
And we know that sometimesthat's referred to as the story
of separation or the modernstory of separation.
It has no distinct startingpoint.
Many will claim that throughoutthe Western Enlightenment and
the scientific revolution that,say, rené Descartes' work

(25:53):
solidified that narrative in aparticular way.
There's a huge amount ofhistorical analysis that we'll
just have to skip over.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
More like a spectrum right.
Totally, totally, you could sayit was the plough you could.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
it was thomas aquinas and scholasticism totally yeah
but it's all slightly nudged ustowards this exactly like, like
you know, um complex causality,lots of different um causal
contributions.
There's no one point that youcan like and and sometimes we do
that for the sake of simplicitylike like oh, this was a really
significant turning point andthis is kind of what's happened

(26:28):
from there.
And that's okay in a practicalsense, as long as we don't hold
on to that too tightly.
And what that supports is thisidea that something like the
ultimate good is capitalaccumulation, is capital
accumulation, and therefore saythe purpose, the teleology of a

(26:50):
corporation, the goal,orientation of a corporation is
of course to accumulate capital,and it does that by extracting
resources, various differentproduction methods, encouraging
as much consumption of the stuffthat's produced as possible and
ideally growing that month onmonth, year on year, decade on

(27:10):
decade, et cetera.
Lots of different challengeswith that.
We know that we can't, unlesswe did something like sufficient
absolute decoupling, whichthere is not even close to
adequate evidence of.
We know we can't do thatforever.
So lots of problems here.
And you could argue that ourassumptions or, like our

(27:32):
metaphysics, the deeper beliefsthat we have about stuff are
misaligned to biophysicalrealities and therefore the
modern corporation is misalignedto biophysical realities and
almost certainly like sort oflike what I would suggest ought
to be like a normativeorientation.
And that's really hard, becausewhen I go in and talk to

(27:54):
corporations people kind of feelthis, but then with their work,
hat on, they have certainincentives and disincentives and
goals and systems andstructures and tools and
procedures and stuff like thatthat constrain their ability to
act in wiser relation to some ofthese other ideas that we're

(28:16):
talking about, and it's almostlike they're fighting against
reality itself.
We need to keep this thingalive.
We need to keep it growing,even if that's not actually big
picture.
The right thing to do?
That's really hard.
Big picture, the right thing todo?
That's really hard.
Now, that isn't necessarily topaint a binary sort of
perspective here that there isonly one way to do right and

(28:39):
that has to be done radicallyand overnight.
I don't think that is corrector even possible, but there's a
real deep tension there.
And then we have lots of otherissues like so, because of that
goal orientation, when thecorporation tries to do more
good and many of them are tryingto do more good, particularly

(29:03):
the people like because thecorporation is some abstract
entity, right it's a object.
Yeah, exactly it's.
It's like this, this organismof collective intelligence or

(29:23):
collective orientation, or thereare many ways that we could try
and describe it.
It's a hyper-object, it, butother than that.
Um, so there's many good peoplewithin these organizations that
are trying to do good, butagain, the good that they try
and do, if you think about thesomething like transformation,
is having to have a the rightdirection, the right magnitude
and the right speed.
I realize I just hit that.

(29:44):
So the right direction, theright magnitude, the right speed
, um, because of those deeperassumptions hindering the
direction, hindering themagnitude and hindering the
speed, it means that we are notmaking the type of progress that
we know we need to make,because, you know, we
computationally model this stuffand, of course, that's just an

(30:04):
approximation, it's not the realworld itself, but it gives us a
good enough, a useful enoughpicture, a sense of what
trajectory are we on, like wherehave we kind of come from?
What trajectory or trajectoriesare we on, what might we be
able to pursue?
And then we can basically lookat the gap, uh, between where we
probably have to be heading andwhere it looks like we are

(30:25):
heading, and that gap's fuckingmassive.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
That is a wide delta.
It's so big yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
And that's scary as shit as a parent, as a living
process, like it's really scary.
And look, I'm actively hopeful,like I believe in the
possibility of better and I'mliving in relation to that, I'm
trying to do my little part,whatever that ends up meaning,
and I'm absolutely not defeatist.

(30:52):
I'm certainly not pessimistic.
I'm also not optimistic.
I think we can do better.
But yeah, there are lots oftensions, there are lots of
hindrances and I think if wefail to really get into that
deeper stuff over time again,it's not going to happen
overnight, overnight.
But if we fail to get into thatdeeper stuff, if we fail to

(31:13):
reorient how we really thinkabout the world, the universe
and our role within it, I don'tthink we are going to create the
right direction.
Magnitude and speed of change.
What that ends up meaning couldbe anything from the collapse
of a complex civilization andthus much smaller human
populations, less richer in someways and I mean richer in a

(31:39):
more holistic sense not justfiscally, but some of the
existential sort of riskliterature suggests it could
mean the end of Homo sapiens,sapiens completely.
You know we've seen at least70%, but probably a little bit

(31:59):
more, of life on this planetlost within approximately the
last 51 years or 52 years, youknow, like it's really
consequential.
Maybe I can just really quicklypaint a.
So the fact that we're evenhaving these conversations, the
fact that people are aware, thefact that people are aware that
there's a tension, the fact thatwe're trying to do good, even

(32:21):
things like ESG, which you couldargue has failed in lots of
different ways, we're trying andwe shouldn't be too hard on
ourselves, like we shouldn't be,like oh fuck it, our efforts
have failed.
Therefore, we should give up.
No, that sucks, that's nothelpful.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
You know what I mean it's back into the narrative as
well, because if you have adefeatist mindset, then you may
as well just keep you know doingthe mountaintop removal and
exploitation of people from theglobal south, or what have you?

Speaker 3 (32:50):
And then just protect your own.
And you see this with thebillionaires.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
I'm just going to build a really big bunker in New
Zealand.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Not just one.
We need to hedge our bets.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Build a 40, 50, 100 million dollar deal as well?

Speaker 3 (33:04):
Oh, you don't have a bunker.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
No, oh, weird, poor you.
Yeah, exactly, I've got three.
The yeah, poor you.
Yeah, exactly, I've got three.
The new flex is not how manybillions have you got?
It's how many bunkers ondifferent continents do you have
?

Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
How are you hedging your existential bets?
Anyway, given, I guess, thetrajectory of where we're going,
all of these competing ideasand narratives and ideologies
and sort of what's sort ofhappening in the world right now
, what do you think needs to bedone for us to be able to see
these benevolent and integrousand competent organizations

(33:40):
coming into existence?
Like, I guess, if we were goingto overlay a theory of like I
don't know, like I'm sure youknow the I think it's Mervyn
Harris.
It's like the infrastructure,social structure, superstructure
, levels, like you know, is thissomething that is going to have
to have a change, you know, inthe infrastructure layer, the
social layer.
Is it a biological thing?
Is it a cognitive thing?
Is it a social thing?

(34:01):
Is it an ecological?
Like?
Where is this?
Where do you think is like aleverage point for change?

Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yeah, so, like you, you I probably look at those as
being largely interdependent andinherently relational.
I think there are many ways wecan more wisely act to increase
the probability that, uh, wehave not just a future but
potentially a really wondrousone lives that are immaterially

(34:32):
abundant but probably materiallymuch simpler, on average, for
people that live in countrieslike Australia than they are
today.
It doesn't mean we're goingback into caves or anything like
that, and actually these areoften quite radical
misinterpretations of thingslike different policies or
proposals within, say,ecological economics or degrowth

(34:54):
scholarship or whatever it maybe.
I think that there are thingsthat we can do at the level of
our almost like our inner self.
There's work that we have to doon ourselves, and that's been a
significant energetic effortfor me personally.
I think that there are thingsthat we can do in the household.
There is so much that we can doin our communities, kind of

(35:15):
like hyper-local stuff, thingsthat we can do bioregionally,
huge amount of things, and a lotof this stuff is probably going
to happen bioregionally.
There then, of course, needs tobe a coordinating architecture,
like we wrote about in responseto the Department of Industry's
science and innovationpriorities research science and
research priorities for the nextdecade or so.

(35:40):
But if you talk aboutorganizationally, the reality is
some organizations we couldcall it they need to biodegrade,
so they need to look at thisstrategically and they go all
right, like over time, whateverthat timeframe is we need to
kind of go in this sort ofdirection.
You know again, direction,magnitude, speed, and that means
we need to sort of do much lessof these types of things and

(36:03):
then transition potentially ourknowledge and networks, our
resources et cetera, towardsthis type of stuff, and I think
that's totally possible to doresources et cetera towards this
type of stuff.
And I think that's totallypossible to do.
And I think that fororganizations, one of the most
challenging things that theyneed to do is step back and
really radically and byradically I don't mean in sort
of like an activist sense, Imean going back to the root of

(36:25):
their value system.
Because even though mostorganizations and corporations
have value statements we valueintegrity or truthfulness or
excellence or whatever it may bewhen we look at the empirical
literature, there tends to noteven be a statistical
relationship for corporationsbetween the values that they

(36:47):
state and how that shows up intheir corporate conduct, how
they collectively behave, whichis a huge issue.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
So this is like the ethical intention to action.
Yes, exactly it's exactly that.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
So they sort of have good intentions, but various
different things, including thatparadigm or those deep
assumptions or whatever we weretalking about before, they limit
the capacity for theorganization to act on those
ethical or normative or valueintentions.
And I think one of the thingsthat we really have to do and
this goes back to theorganizational design work that

(37:20):
I do we have to step back and wego all right, let's be real
with ourselves, like really realAt the moment.
Our organization is a profitmaximizing machine and even the
idea of machine is inherentlyproblematic.
I don't believe that theuniverse is computational.
That's not my philosophy ofscience.
I know it's a very popularphilosophy of science.
Actually, I think we're startingto see very good, good

(37:42):
philosophy of science that isthe wholesomely pushing back
against that um and providing,uh, and still a naturalistic
account of phenomena, um, but,but that is not computated,
that's, that's, we won't go downthat rabbit hole, but um, so so
we, we really step back and wego all right, we are a profit

(38:02):
maximizing machine at the momentand and we have to just be okay
with the fact that that iswhere we are now and that's what
we have been like, that's wherewe've come from and we can't
keep playing this blame gamewith the past.
We can't fucking change thepast.
We have to accept it likeacceptance before agency,

(38:22):
acceptance before we have thecapacity to exert some type of
influence on the present, slashfuture.
Um, and then we have to do workon our value system, and there
are many different approachesthat I use to do this.
I tend to use something like anapproach to participatory
ethics, which is not thistop-down paternalistic command
control approach to hey, this isour value system, now, everyone

(38:44):
do it.
It's a much more participatoryapproach that encourages the
organization to inviteeffectively, like a
representative, sample of peoplethat represent that
organization into a process.
But we don't stop at theorganization's boundaries,

(39:07):
recognizing they're pretty darnpermeable.
We invite stakeholders fromoutside the organization.
You could have customers,suppliers, an independent
advocacy group like, say, likesomeone like I don't know, the
Consumer Policy Research Center,or something like this in an
Australian context.
You could have a regulator youcould have a representative for,

(39:27):
say, the Bureau Runk.
So one of the things that weknow is happening here in
Melbourne is there's aparticular organization that's
looking to um engage in lots ofdifferent processes with the
long-term um challenge or goalto make the birrarung swimmable.
Amazing, like very complex, butamazing um, why not have a
representative that speaks forthe bir right?

(39:48):
so now that might sound quiteabstract or esoteric for people,
but we're trying to um, uh,really open up the possibility
space and have lots of differentvalues and perspectives,
contributing to the process ofdefining a value system which is
not a uh, a sort of likelinguistic game that then ends

(40:13):
up with some written statementson a wall.
It's sort of like a living andbreathing thing.
It's almost like asocio-technical system.
It's a reference point that weexist in relation to and it
informs our work going forward.
It's not static, it's living,breathing, kind of just like us.
It's a process, and so weengage in this process of
participatory ethics.
We then describe and there aremany different ways that we can

(40:36):
describe it visually.
You know, I don't know, youcould describe it in dance if
you want.
Right, probably not a popularway to do it, but we don't have
to be dogmatic, it just has tobe words.
It can be expressed indifferent ways, ways, and we use
that to try and startredesigning different areas of
the organization.

(40:57):
Organizations don't transformeverything overnight.
You often start somewhere.
Hey, let's try and express thisvalue system over here, let's
frame an idea or hypothesis orassumption, however you want to
describe it for how we canexpress that value system and
act on it, build some neworganizational capacity or
feature or product or service,whatever it may be.

(41:17):
Let's actually then do thatthing, let's put it out into the
world, let's try anddemonstrate integrity like
verifiable integrity, and thenyou do that and then you learn
from it.
You build some type ofobservational infrastructure
that's qualitative, quantitative, attitudinal, behavioral, etc.
And you go huh, how's this?
thing working, is it?

(41:38):
Is it actually sort of movingus in the direction that we want
to see?
How do we like?
What have we learned from that?
How do we take those learningsback into the organization?
And in this way, theorganization arguably, probably
out of necessity can continuedoing some of the stuff that
it's that it's currently doing,like um, which is sort of this
um, uh, extract value mindset,because we're not going to get

(41:59):
rid of that overnight whilstit's exploring how to create
more holistic value andcontribute to more holistic
value.
And over time, if they're doingthat really well, they will be
building more organizationalfeatures of trustworthiness,
many different expressions ofbenevolence, integrity and
normative competence that thatplay out very practically like

(42:21):
they're.
They're tangible expressionslike their, their products,
their services, their policies,their incentive structures.
Right, the yardsticks prettywide here.
And over time one year, threeyears, five years, whatever that
time frame is what we hope tosee is that the organization is
doing significantly more of thatholistic value stuff than that

(42:45):
narrow value stuff, and we'veeffectively transformed the
organization through thatprocess.
We have, we have unlearned andrelearned.
We have de-skilled andre-skilled or up-skilled.
We have built like alife-affirming rather than a
life-eroding organization.

(43:05):
We are more wisely stewardingour resources, we we are
respecting people's agency, weare inviting wider boundaries of
contribution that representimportant cultural differences
and geographic differences,generational differences etc.
And we're building slowlysomething like an expression of

(43:29):
a more beautiful, integratedtogether, yet inherently
pluralistic way of being in thisworld.
And that sounds super grandiose,right, and it sort of is Like I
think we ought to have aradically ambitious vision for
what's possible in our future,but then we have to be super

(43:51):
fucking pragmatic about how weact on that daily.
Those two things are two sidesof the same coin.
They don't compete with oneanother.
In order to achieve a radicallyambitious vision, we have to be
inherently pragmatic in thehere and now.
We have to actually do stuff.
We have to do stuff differently, and I think that's an
important mistake that oftenorganizations make.
So they're like, like I oftenget asked things like what's the

(44:13):
value of philosophy or whatever, and I won't describe that
right now, but because peoplethink it's this abstract,
esoteric linguistic game thatactually has no practical way of
showing up in the world.
And Margaret Wigley once arguedthat philosophy is like plumbing
, right, actually, she's writtenvery beautifully on that, and

(44:34):
the analogy, like all analogieshas some limitations, but
practically it works really well.
And it's like Dennett's quotethat there's no such thing as
philosophy-free science, onlyscience with unexamined
assumptions.
There is no society or culturethat is free of philosophy, but
there are unexamined societaland cultural constructs and

(44:56):
principles and actions, and Idon't think that's the best
expression of humanity.
I think we want to be examined,but we want that examination to
be thoughtful, participatory,embodied, connected,
representative of a system'sview of life.
And I fundamentally believethat if we can do the practical

(45:16):
yet philosophically informedwork that I'm talking about, we
can progressively and verytangibly redesign organizations
so that their resources areutilized and directed in such a
way that they actually helprather than hinder all life.
On this, planet.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Yeah, I mean everything, I guess everything
you're saying I'm like I totallyresonate with all of that,
right, but I I guess where I'mgoing with this is that it it's
it seems like it's really bloodyhard for any.
So we managed to implement thissort of stuff because we are a
we could design this from theonset, right.
We're, we were a startup and wesort of grew all this and in

(45:59):
and this systems, view of lifeand ecological design, thinking,
all this sort of stuff informedhow we relate to others, to
stakeholders, to the world atlarge as an organization.
So we've kind of that was bakedin from the onset, which means
that it's really easy for us todo that.
We're also a small organizationand you know.

(46:19):
So I can see how scale woulddrastically impact this, and
this could be much moredifficult for organizations that
already have patterns ofprocedures and ways of doing and
being and seeing in the worldthat have been that way for I
don't know, maybe multiplegenerations, if it's like a
long-standing organization, andI can see that there could be a

(46:40):
big difference.
Or just like maybe like the thelarger you are, the larger the
inertia is and all this sort ofstuff.
And I'm wondering, from yourperspective, is there much of a
difference when we think abouthow this content and the
trustworthiness relates to thoselooking at starting an
organization versus those whoare looking at shifting an
existing organization?

Speaker 3 (47:02):
Yeah, it's a really good question and I've grappled
with this for at least the lastdecade and attempted to apply it
in various different sort oflike iterative formats over the
last decade.
I think that there areincredible advantages and
disadvantages to being aresource-rich organisation, ie a
large organisation withestablished infrastructure, ways

(47:22):
of working people etc.
And there are incredibleadvantages and disadvantages to
being a very small organisation.
I would say for a largeorganization, the biggest
challenge is like the lack of um, sort of like collective

(47:50):
flexibility, adaptability etc.
And there's a there is yeah,there is a stuckness in its way
and so we have to sort of likeenhance the progress-making
forces and effectively counteror hinder the progress, counter,
excuse me, theprogress-hindering forces
towards this sort of directionalgoal or vision, and I'm not
convinced there's anything closeto one right way to do that.
There are so many differentorganis, organizational theories

(48:13):
of change as well, and it'shard to really get a grasp on
the robustness, like therelative robustness, of
different theories of changewithin a complex organizational
context.
I think there are sort ofprinciples and patterns that
probably play out like I don'tthink the machine view, military

(48:37):
command control is anythingclose to best servicing that
possibility of transformation no, it's actually actively
hindering, I think it is in manyways, even though it's a little
bit counterintuitive for somefolks, because it feels like,
well, we just describe thevision, because it's very sort
of like um, almost likenewtonian deterministic type
approach, which even newton'swork was based on metaphysical

(49:01):
assumptions the guys are madalchemists as well.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Lots of yeah, yeah lots of people aren't.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
You know, if you haven't studied the philosophy
of science at all, you don'treally, aren't really aware of
this.
You just take that as being howthe universe is.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
Um, that's not to say that it's not highly predictive
and useful, and all of thosedifferent things incredibly
useful as a as a way, like Imean, we wouldn't have gps, all
these other things, because ofit.
It's an incredibly useful thing.
It's just acknowledging thatwhen you use this process it's
very scale dependent and youmight actually not be able.
It doesn't take into accountemergent properties, all these

(49:36):
other things.
It's really good at figuringout point for point things, but
it's not so useful with complexadaptive systems or living
systems or anything that isreally of interest.
But it can still give you anapproximation.
So that's kind of the reductivescience is really good at
approximations and that sort ofstuff.

(49:57):
Maybe not so good atpredictability and I think
that's where, like theheisenberg uncertainty principle
, all this sort of stuff comesinto it.
But yes, it is something that,um, I do see.
There is this kind of paradigmlike coonian paradigm shift,
happening very much at theforefront of science and
acknowledging that you know what.
It is way more messy andcomplex and we have to learn how

(50:19):
to embrace and deal with theunknown and even with running an
organization.
It's like you can't command andcontrol your way out of this.
It is very much like how do Iappropriately participate with
the whole that I'm embeddedwithin, acknowledging that I
really don't have that muchcontrol at all, and it's more of
like a of a how do I weigh thisor how do I steward this, you

(50:41):
know, in a way in which it'sgonna have its own, a life of
its own, let's say yeah, and youcould describe leadership as
almost like modeling slash,attempting to construct enabling
constraints or something likethat, seeding initial conditions
and then obviouslyparticipating in what emerges
from there creating theconditions for emergence.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Totally yeah, and you know that's been written about
very eloquently, I think, by anumber of scholars and authors
about the role of leadership, inkind of like leadership's role
in social change, right, andyeah.

(51:19):
So I think sometimes peoplethink that well then you have to
go to sort of like radicaldecentralization or holacracy,
or maybe that's helpful, but notnecessarily and certainly not
straight away.
I think that there aredifferent types of leadership
behaviors that can be modeledand you can become a more sort
of like contributive,participatory leader than you

(51:42):
know, just sort of like this,because the paradigm of like
outsourcing everything andscientific management and all
these different things have beenpart of, I think, hindering
some of this.
But yeah, so if you're a hugeorganization, incredible
challenges you're going to face,including those outside of the
organization that influence theorganization, ie shareholder

(52:04):
expectations, narratives inmarket, all that type of stuff.
But push that to the side for amoment.
I think the way that I describedit previously, if there is some
type of courage at the level ofthe board and executive
committees and there is a realsort of dialogos, if you will,
between those parties and thoseoutside of the organization that
are effectively funding theorganization's existence,

(52:26):
particularly institutionalshareholders, et cetera, et
cetera.
We can create the authorizingenvironment for doing that.
All right, let's define aholistic value system, let's do
it in a participatory way andthen let's progressively change
the organization through like ahighly experimental, rigorous
approach.
So again, this is not aboutlike.

(52:47):
When you start talking aboutthese ways of working people,
because of the way that we sortof like relate to ideas that
aren't, say, the predominantidea that we have about
mechanistic causality orwhatever it may be, or simple

(53:07):
causality like strongdeterminism, it's like, oh,
everything other than that'swoo-woo, it's like no, I think
this is going to be a deeplyscientifically informed approach
to what we do, we can conducteven in an organizational
setting, like good qualityexperiments to help build our
confidence, knowledge, like havethis true, justified belief, if

(53:31):
you will, about the fact thatwe are making the right type of
progress.
Um, and I think we can do thatvery well in organizations.
And it starts with, you know,seeding different sort of
conditions, recognizing that theorganization is many parts
relating to a whole, that thatwhole has something like a goal,
orientation, um, and that it'sokay to sort of like practically

(53:52):
carve out a part of that and go, hey, this part, like we can
change this part, like we canexperiment with this part, we
can see if that's working andthen we can feed learnings into
other parts and then we canfigure out how to better
integrate them.
Um, it doesn't have to be thiswhole like, oh, all right, all
we can do is sort of like tryand change the initial
conditions and then it's justemergence from there.

(54:13):
It's like it's not that.
So I think it's some type ofcourageous dialogue between
leaders of the organization andthose that are effectively
funding the organization, if wewant to think about it that way,
and this is definitelymultidirectional.
That way, and this isdefinitely multi-directional,

(54:34):
it's not just those privilegedfolks at the expense of everyone
else, but they do need to takesome type of stand or stance
that can create what we wouldformally call the authorizing
environment or favorableconditions to do this
value-sensitive sort of designor values-led work.
We describe this value systemand then we take a small part of
the business, the organization,and we try and bring that to

(54:55):
life.
And we do that experimentally.
We do that in a way that issupportive of something like
emergence.
We don't try and control itright, but we do try and observe
it, learn from it, iterate onit, improve it, et cetera.
So there's stuff there.
And then for a smallorganization it's really hard

(55:15):
because you're still playing thefinite game.
You're still playing game A,you're competing for resources.
You're getting wrapped up inmemes and narratives like
everyone's an AI startup.
Now you're competing forresources.
You know you're getting wrappedup in memes and narratives like
everyone's an ai startup.
Now I'm not even going to getinto the problematic nature of
that, but so you have reallychallenging practical decisions

(55:37):
that you have to make everysingle day and it's like well,
but if I do this, values work,there's an opportunity cost
there that might mean I can'teat next week, like kind of
literally right yeah, it's veryrelatable.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
I mean structuring our entire organization based on
optimizing for the system asthe whole rather than maximizing
return on investment means thatyou know we're pulling minimum
wage to ensure that we canprovide free space or free
support to people doingimpact-oriented initiatives.
Like yeah, you suffer.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
And minimum wage in Melbourne is fucking hard.
It's gross.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
Yeah, but it's not forever.
It's a very short-term thing,because it's just not sustained.
You have to be ensuring you'resustaining yourself to be able
to give back to others Totally.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
And I think it's a super important principle.
It's hard.
I struggled to relate to thatfor most of my life and found a
healthier relationship to that,maybe like a year, year and a
half ago.
I'm not always doing a greatjob of that, however, in many
ways, but that's a differentstory.
But what are the benefits?
Well, you don't have to do itall overnight.

(56:43):
You can try B and expression ofyour values.
You're incredibly adaptable.
You can basically evolve howyour organization operates on a
near daily basis in response tolike it's almost like niche
construction, right, think itlike the agent acts on the

(57:03):
environment.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
The environment acts on Absolutely Agent arena
relations.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
We describe this in different ways, but there's a
mutual shaping going on here andit's much easier to be in that
process and go through thoseadaptation cycles or whatever we
want to frame them as, as asmall organization.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
Absolutely Just way quicker feedback loops.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
So much quicker.
And again the same sort ofapproach, though Like you're not
going to.
It's like, think of it asalmost like the cultivation of
character, right the way thatAristotle may have described it.
So, not to get too much intoAristotelian philosophy or
metaphysics, or virtue, ethicsor anything but so virtue is
basically the golden mean, thewise operating space, if you

(57:46):
will, between different extremes, um, and the reason that we
cultivate character is to tryand live the good life, be a
good person.
Um, because often we havepersonality challenges and
deficits, and yada, yada, and anorganization has something like
an inherent personality deficitbecause of the paradigm that
gives rise to it, because of itslegal constructions, because of

(58:09):
its technocracy, et cetera, etcetera.
So we try and progressively,which is a day-by-day,
step-by-step process, cultivatethe organization's character,
and we recognize that that issomething like a lifelong
pursuit.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
It's an ongoing process, it's not a destination.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
And there's no end point, and so, oh my God, that's
actually like really stressrelieving in some ways, because
it's a process that we exist inrelation to that we commit to
daily, and for some people, Ithink there is a way to look at
that that would be sort of likestress inducing.
But I actually think that thebest way to look at that that
would be sort of like stressinducing, but I actually think
that the best way to look atthat is a way in which it

(58:49):
becomes sort of stress reducingwhich just allows you to let go
of the need for control in a wayand and I think that there's
actually some incrediblypowerful thing, because, I mean,
people go oh, how are you notstressed?

Speaker 1 (59:02):
how are you not stressed with everything?
but it's, um, it's actually notthat stressful sitting with the
uncertainty and complexity ofeverything and all of this stuff
that's going on, if you justknow from the onset that that's
what you're willingly walkinginto and that you're having to
deal with this through anemergent strategy approach and

(59:23):
it's actually kind of liberatingin a way of being like, well, I
really don't know and I don'thave to have the answers and
we'll just see what happens.
But it's not like you're doingthat from a wishy-washy way of
like let's just see where theuniverse takes us.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
Yeah, I'm just going to put an idea into the universe
and then it will.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
No, there's still, it's not that form of
manifesting it's, it's like amix between wu-wei and yu-wei.
It's effortless action, witheffortful action in some ways to
help guide it.
Which?

Speaker 3 (59:48):
is basically like a description of mindfulness.
To some extent it's almost likebeing focused without effortful
.
It's a very simple descriptionof something like a Vipassana.
I think that's maybe a nice,almost take-home message is that
we can't solve all theseproblems overnight.
The goal of being a virtuousorganization, of cultivating

(01:00:13):
character, of being verifiablytrustworthy, is not an endpoint,
but rather a process that weexist in relation to, and every
single day we do our best.
We're going to have some daysthat are better than others.
We don't want to be, we want tobe critical, but we want to be
constructively critical.
We don't want to beself-shaming, we don't want to

(01:00:34):
just succumb to the guilt of notdoing enough because these can
be like like sort of likeanti-productive and those sorts
of principles, that type oforientation, I believe, applies
at every level of civilization'sinfrastructure, down to kind of
like the deep inner self.

(01:00:56):
Um, and you know I often arguein different settings that um,
um, a world that is uh, thatfalls back in love with the
process of wisdom seeking, is aworld that has the opportunity
to not just survive through themetacrisis but potentially

(01:01:17):
thrive.
And is that some self-servingway of saying more philosophy?
Give me some money, um, so thatI can put food on the table.
Maybe it is, and if you want togive that, I can put food on
the table.
Maybe it is, and if you want togive me money to put food on
the table, I'd be very happy forthat.
But and that's that's reallychallenging as we, as we know,
and we've discussed as friendsvery often.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Especially trying to do the impact oriented work.
There is a super hard.
Yeah, it's, it's a struggle butit's.
It can become the norm.
Like I think that the balancingof environment, economics and
it can become the norm, like Ithink that the balancing of
environment, economics and likesocial good can be done.
It requires doing thingsdifferently and more people
doing things differently makethat much Totally.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
It's got to be sort of collective.
If you're going alone, it'sreally hard.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
And that's why places like this sort of exist,
totally, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
But yeah, I think we all have the capacity to within
reason.
We all have the capacity towithin reason, we all have the
capacity to cultivate ourcharacter.
And there are many differentcaveats that I could add to that
.
I'm just not going to for thesake of simplicity.
As a result of that, because anorganization is something like
an organism, an engine ofcollective intelligence or an

(01:02:21):
organism of collectiveintelligence.
It is the combination of ourideas, our contributions, our
information exchanges, ourenergetic flows, etc.
Therefore, it can cultivatecharacter too, and I think if we
do that, if we exist inrelation to that process
consistently and we do thatdaily, and there are many
different practical tools,techniques, etc.

(01:02:42):
So, if you want to talk abouthow to do participatory ethics
robustly in any context, itcould be in the context of
synthetic biology, it could bein the context of transforming
away from sick care towardshealthcare enhancing wellbeing.
It could be about responsibleAI.
There's many differentapplication contexts, right, so

(01:03:03):
you don't even have to start atthe level of the entire
organization.
You could actually start with afunctional business unit, right
?
Um, you could start with a team, you could start with one
product like it's kind of scaleinvariant.
You can start anywhere and it'llhave ripple effects totally,
totally and don't let the ideathat it is so huge and

(01:03:26):
monumental and scary andchallenging and near impossible
seeming at times, get in the wayof starting and doing a little
bit better each day.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Love it.
Nate, thanks so much forjoining us again for a
conversation.
I feel like we're going to haveto come back for around two of
this and dig into a little bitmore of maybe some like let's
really go, rubber hits the roadapplied sort of stuff.
But for this part, one thanksso much.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
I really appreciate it.
I think next time, if you, ifwe're willing to do, what is it?
What does it look like to do?
Practical ethics in anorganization of any size.
Let's do that.
That'd be so exciting.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
I'd love to do that, and we can even use sort of
collabs as an examplepotentially.
I just think it would be reallygood to, because it's people
hear this and go, fuck, yeah,that sounds great, but then they
still might be like, ah but youhaven't given me the roadmap
and part of that's purposeful,understood.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
Um, part of that's purposeful because I can't
actually do it for you.
No, like, if you bring me intoyour organization, I can help
create the scaffolding.
I can help bring methodologicalrigor to something like
participatory ethics.
Um, I can help the peopleinvolved in that process up
skill but I still can't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
You all still got to do it it's still your journey
you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
Like I can't cultivate your character for you
, but you can and and maybe Ican be part of stimulating or
seeding that process.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Yeah, the facilitator Love that.
Is there any advice for folksor anything else that you think
you'd like to end the chat with,or are we just going to put a
pin in it?

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
I would handsomely encourage folks if this
interested you or intrigued you,or inspired or motivated you,
and you're immediately just oneof those people that like, yeah,
I just want to get practical,please reach out to me, I've got
a bunch of resources.
You don't have to engage myservice.
If you want to, I wouldn't sayno, but I've got a bunch of

(01:05:23):
resources, I'll just send themto you and, honestly, there's a
lot of stuff that you can do.
That's self-service, that isdeeply practical, that has very
few opportunity costs, which isa really important thing for a
lot of folks to consider.
I'll send you anything I've got.
I'm an open book.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
Rad, and where can people find you?
I know you've got Substack.

Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
Yeah, so I publish quite regularly like on issues
of sort of like practicalphilosophy, on Substack.
I'm on LinkedIn, I'm not on anyother social and that just
feels like a necessary evil.
And then my website istrustworthybydesign.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Rad.
Thanks so much.
Appreciate it, mate.
All right, man, bye, ciao.
Thank you for joining in foranother conversation on the
Strange Attractor.
We hope you enjoyed thisconversation with Nate.
And yeah, as I said at thestart of the podcast, if any of
this interests you or issomething that you would like to
do, you would like to do ethicsor find ways to apply this sort

(01:06:25):
of concept in your organization, or just fascinated by the
concept of applied ethics?
Yeah, we have a collaborativerun of workshops coming up in
partnership with rsa, nate andcolabs, where we will be
exploring the applied side ofethics and exploring ways to
build trustworthiness by design.
So so, if that's of interest,check out the link in the show

(01:06:47):
notes.
And yeah, until next time.
Thanks for watching.

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