Cliff Kwong (6:54)

Hi, thanks for having me.

Mike Carruthers (6:56)

So what happened. What happened around World War II that brought to light this whole idea of the user experience?

Cliff Kwong (7:05)

Machines in some way had to work differently than they had worked before because of all the different technology that was coming online to help Americans fight in the war. And all that technology coming online with all these new users made people think about technology in a fundamentally different way. So I guess one of the things that people noticed in World War II is that none of the machines were performing nearly as well as people had promised they would, right? So they would come back with numbers saying the bomb should be this accurate and the plane should be flying at this efficiency rate, et cetera, et cetera. And none of those numbers turned out to be happening. None of those numbers turned out to be true. And so the army, actually, the Air Force, set about figuring out exactly why this was. And it turned out more often than not, it was that people and machines were not interacting well, right? People did not know how to use the machines in some way, and people didn't have a very good understanding of what was going on. And so this generation of psychologists were essentially tasked to figure it out. And what they realized was that it wasn't so much that the human beings weren't, quote unquote, trained to use the machines well enough, which is what a lot of people thought was the case. It was the machines, in some way were impossible to use. And in one famous instance In World War II, it turned out that there was something, almost 500 crashes within a span of 22 months, all caused because the wing flaps and the landing gear in a particular plane, the B17, were almost identical. So that when people come in to land these planes, they would, for example, hit the wing Flaps, meaning to push the landing gear and end up causing a crash. And so therefore, in some ways, the machine had to be bent around the man, as opposed to people being trained to use more and more complicated machines. And we live with that fundamental shift in thinking to this day.

Mike Carruthers (8:51)

Well, it's pretty interesting when you think about it, that more or less the world was simple enough up till then, or sort of up till then, that we didn't really have to discuss this because things were simpler. And then this new technology comes in, and then all of a sudden it's like, well, people don't really know how to use this. All of a sudden, the world started to get more complicated.

Cliff Kwong (9:16)

And what was interesting at the time is that if you were in the Air Force and the army at the time, this is actually the beginning of IQ tests in the military, which was like they were intensively testing all these different soldiers, hoping that they could fit them into exactly the perfect job, right? And it turns out that that doesn't work. It turns out that no matter how well trained somebody is, they're going to make mistakes. And unless you design machines to be simpler to use, as opposed more complex and therefore requiring more training, you can't solve that problem. And so that shift in thinking, which I call a real paradigm shift that's unappreciated, really set in motion a lot of the ways that we look at technology today. For example, assuming that things shouldn't come with instruction manuals, or assuming that things should be able to be used without you ever having to really be told explicitly how to use them.

Mike Carruthers (10:04)

And yet, when early computers came out, remember, they came with this huge book that was like the size of a bible of how this machine works.

Cliff Kwong (10:16)

I traced this change to. Back to the Macintosh computer, right? And so some 35 years after that Insight first landed in the cockpits of B17 bombers, and psychologists started figuring out this idea of bending the machine to the man. You actually get the first Mac Macintosh that Apple creates. And in those first ads, they describe it as, the computer should be taught how people work, as opposed to teaching people how computers work. Right? And so that idea is directly descended from that World War II insight. And what it produces is this machine that's actually meant to be meant to conform to our expectations about how a machine might work based on our previous assumptions about how the world at large works. So you get things like the desktop metaphor, which helps us understand what a personal computer should do, right? And so that sets us on that path to essentially eliminating the instruction manual, right? So, as you mentioned, like, there was an era in which computers came with all these instructions and all these kinds of things. But if you notice what Apple has done, and then successively with the ipod and the iPhone, is that what used to come with instruction manuals doesn't come with them anymore, because now we're building up this pattern language of previous reference. And this should work like this thing. And this is familiar because you've used this other thing. We're building on that vocabulary without us ever realizing it, so that the instruction manual essentially has gone away. In a previous era, you might get an instruction manual for something as simple as a vcr, but now you don't get an instruction manual for an app that potentially runs your healthcare, in some cases, might run an entire fleet of aircraft engines. You know, these things don't come with instruction manuals because of this revolution in thinking about the way technology should behave in our lives.

Mike Carruthers (11:59)

Well, there certainly has been a fundamental change from the days. And it used to be if you brought some new thing home, the first thing you would do is sit down and read the instructions. Today, nobody wants to read the instructions, but most things don't even come with instructions. You bring something home, you take it out of the box. Maybe there's a quick start guide, but basically, you want to take your new thing, whatever that is, and start to use it.

Cliff Kwong (12:27)

Yeah, I mean, I would trace this evolution of expectation to the smartphone.

Mike Carruthers (12:31)

Right?

Cliff Kwong (12:31)

Because, as you know, there are more smartphones than people in the United States right now. And the fact that virtually every single human being in the United States has a cell phone for them means that we bring these expectations to most ubiquitous and personal computer of all, which is the smartphone. Right. And so this idea that things have to be simple enough to be worked on this very limited screen in some sense, where you don't have, like, a full keyboard, you don't have, like an entire, you know, you don't have a mouse, and all these kinds of things, the idea that you need to be able to manage your life through this one tiny device has really shifted the expectations for everything else. And so in an era in which, you know, you can have some. Have a company like Amazon or Uber deliver to you a service with an ease that's never been seen before, we bring those expectations to all the other things in our lives because everything should be accessible right through an app or whatever. And so those expectations bleed from one arena to another.

Mike Carruthers (13:30)

And so what does this mean to people? Is this all good news?

Cliff Kwong (13:36)

I think that there are pluses and minuses, right? If you ask people today, like, oh, what would life be without your cell phone? People would say, oh, man, it'd be so hard. I wouldn't know where to go. I wouldn't be able to keep in touch with my friends. I wouldn't be able to keep in touch with work. And so there is this idea that things are now easier and more accessible to us than they've ever been before. But at the same time, when everything becomes simple to operate, you get into this world in which services like Facebook or whatever are trying to anticipate what you want before you even know what you want, before you even decided exactly what it is you're after, right? This world in which a lot of those assumptions are being intuited and anticipated by machines is a world in which we don't necessarily have to think as hard about what we want or how we want to act in the world. Instead, these things are in some ways being crafted by the interfaces around us. And that, I think, is the real challenge point, right? Because a world in which there's no friction is a world in which everything comes to you so easily that you almost don't even have to think about it, right? But friction in some ways is the path to introspection, right? Friction is the way that we decide whether or not something is really worth having or really worth wanting. And so when you take all that friction away, you can ask the question, you know, what decisions aren't we making consciously? What decisions are being made for us and how might we have made decisions differently if things weren't so easy?

Mike Carruthers (15:03)

There's also the creep factor that because this machine seems to know what I want before I want it, that kind of creeps me out.

Cliff Kwong (15:10)

One example of what you're talking about would be this really interesting experiment that's happening at Carnival, right? And what they're doing on their cruise ships is supplying all of the passengers with what they call an Ocean Medallion, which is essentially a Bluetooth near field communication device that allows your profile to sort of travel with you on the ship as you walk around the ship, right? And so your preferences, the things that you've ordered, the things that you want, the things that you've signed up for are now sort of they're invisibly trailing you as you walk through the ship, right? So that means that the crew members can say, like, oh, I see you're headed to this restaurant. Do you want to go there? But what also can happen is that the screens around you can basically say, oh, here's some just suggestions for you based on this enormous quote unquote personal genome of your tastes and history that is essentially being tracked and updated in real time. Right? And so there is a sense in which, yeah, like people really seem to respond to that. You know, they like having the things that they want presented to them in the most seamless possible way. But there's a sense in which, like, you know, if you extrapolate that example out into the real world, you can ask the question, is that something you would want to be happening with your life constantly? And that seems far fetched until you realize that, look, because of the way advertising works today, because of the way digital platforms work today, all those things happen to you almost on a minute by minute basis and certainly they're happening to you constantly through the websites you visit, the apps that you use, and all these kinds of invisible means of putting things in front of you that you may not have explicitly said that you want.

Mike Carruthers (16:45)

We're talking about the user experience and things being user friendly. And my guest is Cliff Kwong. He is a user experience designer and he's author of the book User Friendly how the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work and Play. I am definitely not a big clothes shopper and probably like you, I've bought clothes online that were disappointing. But I have a very different experience with Quints and I've come to find out that so many people I know shop Quince. So far I've gotten a couple of shirts and sweaters from Quince and well, you'll know what I mean when I say this. Every time I get something new from Quince it goes right to the top of the rotation. My Quince clothes are my go to clothes. If you don't know Quince, you are going to love their website. Quince has all the things you actually want to wear, like organic cotton silk polos like the ones I have, European linen beach shorts, pants for every occasion, really nice pants. And here is the very best part. Everything at quince is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. You see, by working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without those big markups. I've really been amazed at how many people tell me they shop at Quint's. It's become like the place to go to buy clothes. Elevate your closet with Quince. Go to quince.comsysk for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-N-C-E.comSYSK to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comSYSK we have a new sponsor and I'm really glad the timing is critical. Rocket Money. I use Rocket Money because, well, look, everything's getting expensive and, well, you know, as I do that, a lot of money, I mean, you're not really sure where it went, but it's gone now. And this is what's so great about Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending and it helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings. And you might say, well, how can they lower my bills? Well, when I first signed up, Rocket Money sent me this notification that they, not me, they could see if they could get me a better deal on car insurance. And for the bills you have, will they automatically scan your bills to find opportunities to save? Then you can ask them to go negotiate for you. They'll deal with customer service so you don't have to. If there's a subscription you don't want anymore, they'll cancel it so you don't have to. That's worth it right there for me because I hate dealing with customer service. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com something today. That's RocketMoney.com something RocketMoney.com something so, Cliff, what's your sense of how people embrace that kind of technology like you were talking about with Carnival Cruises? Do people like it generally, or is there resistance to it? Or are we in this kind of transition phase where people are resisting it? Maybe, but pretty soon it just will be part of our lives.

Cliff Kwong (20:45)

I'm not really sure and I don't think anybody is sure exactly how this is going to evolve. Right? Because like, I'll just give you an example. You know, the things that we used to find creepy like 5 or 10 years ago are now just everyday part of everyday life, right? The fact that you can go to a Maps app and have your location log there and have your favorite spots already marked on the map, for example, or your friends might know exactly where you are down to your GPS location. Those things were completely off the table 10 years ago. But what's happened in the last 10 years is we've recognized utility. And so we've made this trade off between privacy and utility, and we're making it constantly. Right. And so the question of where we draw the line ultimately is going to be decided not by governments and not by technology companies. It's going to be decided by people deciding whether or not they're getting enough utility in return for the data that they're sharing. Right. And that's a negotiation. I think that it's up to us to be conscious consumers of and be advocating for and being vocal about what we want and where we draw those lines.

Mike Carruthers (21:48)

Well, Alexa's a good example. I mean, people always feared that people could listen in what's going on in your house? Then it turns out people were listening in, but nobody really seems to care.

Cliff Kwong (22:00)

Yeah. So that's the funny thing. Right. There's a difference between what the media narrative is about. We should be concerned about this. There's a difference between saying, like people saying, I am concerned about this, and there's a difference between that and people essentially acting upon it. Right. What it tells me is that we're just not done with the debate. Part of it is that consumers don't necessarily know what the alternative is, and part of it is there's not necessarily a lot of alternatives in the market out there right now. I think what's interesting is that you're now seeing more and more of this debate being waged out in the public with other companies saying, hey, I do this, but in a privacy centric way, or I do this, but I don't record your calls, or I do this, and I don't record your location or your browsing history. And we're seeing whether or not those businesses are going to be successful. Right. We're going to see this at scale, whether or not people understand the benefits enough and whether or not the benefits are clear enough that they maybe take a chance on a smaller competitor or a smaller provider.

Mike Carruthers (22:57)

You have in your book a drawing of the Honeywell thermostat from 1953 that everyone has used, everyone has had in their home at some point in their life. It's that round thermostat that's about the size of your hand, and you just turn it to the temperature you want and it goes to that temperature. It is the most simple, intuitive thing on earth in terms of thermostats. And you compare that to, say, a nest thermostat, which certainly does a lot more, but it is not as simple and user friendly as that. Honeywell thermostat from 1953 that is still around and still in use in houses today.

Cliff Kwong (23:39)

You're making a really interesting point. And so in the case of the Honeywell round, you know, there's a good reason that that's one of the best selling designs in the history of American industrial design. And it is that like there's a one to one correspondence between everything that thermostat does and everything it's showing you in interface, right? There's kind of honesty, there's that, I think that is becoming more challenging to deliver when these machines have so much capability wrapped into like let's say a single readout. All these algorithms and learning settings and all these kinds of things that are built into these very, very, almost oversimplified readouts that sort of hide a lot of the complexity and capability of what these machines do. And that's attention, right? It's like how much you reveal to the user so that they can adjust things and have it be understood versus how much do you hide so that they can just get to exactly what the thing needs to be doing. And that is like the real challenge of design in the 21st century.

Mike Carruthers (24:37)

What I find so interesting about this whole idea of user friendly, which as you point out, really started to take hold in World War II as it related to machines. But today we kind of want our life to be user friendly. I want my phone bill to be user friendly, I want my car insurance policy to be user friendly. To read that the idea of user friendly has gone from just machines to really permeate our expectations for a lot of things in life.

Cliff Kwong (25:09)

And that's in one of the ways in which I'm optimistic about what this world of technology is bringing to us, right? We're bringing new expectations. You know, look at what's happened to TV companies and how they're being disintermediated, right? They're essentially being disrupted, intermediated because people like Netflix and Amazon and Apple are coming along with more user friendly, simpler to access, easier to understand offerings that also provide much more inventory than, let's say your TV channels do, right? And so that sort of same sense, the ways in which the cable industry is being rewired by consumer expectation is something that I expect to see. And then in fact we're already seeing in things like utilities, things like insurance, all these gnarly, complex industries that people have not changed or seen as being centers of innovation for decade upon decade are now really having to be forced. They are waking up and looking in the Mirror and saying, how do I update my service for the way the coming generations think about technology and the way those coming generations think about how services should work. Because I don't think it's tenable if you're like a giant insurance company to say, like, oh, we're going to make this generation of 15 year olds interact with our insurance company in the same way that their grandparents do. They just won't stand for it.

Mike Carruthers (26:32)

This assumption that user friendly is the way to go, is that always true though? I mean, is there value in things perhaps being better because they're more complicated and because you really need to know how to use it? And that making things really user friendly is in a way dumbing down things?

Cliff Kwong (26:50)

This is actually something that comes up in the annals of technology, right? And the example actually comes directly from airplanes once again. And I think that what you're describing is called the automation paradox. And the way this works is the following. So you add automation to the way an airplane works in order to make that airplane easier and safer to fly, right? But in doing so, the pilots now no longer have to work as hard to fly that plane. And so they make errors that they didn't make before. And so to compensate for those errors, you have to add more automation, right? And so you get into this spiral where the pilots get less and less competent and the plane gets more and more automated and therefore the pilots get less and less capable of flying that plane. And so I think that what you're describing is a world in which we're essentially doing a little bit of that ourselves, right? You can imagine, like just to take this forward in a very clear way, like driverless cars, right? What happens when our cars start being able to stop themselves at red lights, start being able to drive themselves along the highway, start being able to take exits off the highway and take lefts and rights and through the city and all these kinds of things. What kind of drivers will we be then when the machine is doing so much of it, right? And so there's this sense that you actually, you can't automate your way to the future. You actually have to keep humans in the loop, able to be honing their skills, able to making decisions so that when the time comes and it really matters, they actually have that acumen and the training to get to do something correctly, right? And so, like, I think that there's a world in which we thought that a lot of these, like driverless cars and all this kind of stuff would just like arrive one day. And it turns out that it's going to be much more messy than that because, you know, a lot of what technology should do is not just, like, take jobs away from us as humans, but actually make us more capable at the jobs that we want to still be doing. And so that tension is one that I think that we're going to be living with more and more as the pace of technological change increases.

Mike Carruthers (28:47)

But then at some point, if we ever get to, like, the Jetsons where we're all in flying cars, then maybe we do want them all to be driverless so that we're not crashing into each other.

Cliff Kwong (28:57)

Right? I mean, you know, so there's this interesting thing is that, like, it's easy when it's all on the human. It's easy when it's all in the machine. Where it gets hard is all the places in between all those steps in between where you have to negotiate who's in charge and what do you need? Like, what information does the person need and what happens when one needs to take over from the other. And so, you know, we've been negotiating that really like that fuzziness for a long time now, and I think that we're going to be negotiating that fuzziness for a long time still.

Mike Carruthers (29:25)

And when you look at what's happened over the last 80 years or so involving this whole idea of user experience, it makes me wonder, you know, what's going to happen in the next 80 years? What's this going to look like 80 years from now? Cliff Kwong has been my guest. He is a user experience designer and he is author of the book User Friendly how the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work and Play. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Cliff.

Cliff Kwong (29:55)

Thanks, Mike. It was a pleasure and it was really fun talking to you. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices.

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Mike Carruthers (30:25)

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Eleanor Gordon Smith (33:14)

Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure.

Mike Carruthers (33:16)

Sure. So it certainly seems reasonable that to be reasonable and rational is the way to explain yourself and your position. And if you're really good at it, people should see things your way. And yet it often doesn't work. So the question is why? Why doesn't it Work.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (33:32)

I mean, you've put your finger on a large part of the problem just there, which is that we have this kind of self congratulatory notion that we are reasonable, that the people who we disagree with are the ones who aren't being reasonable, and therefore we're the ones who must be being reasonable. But part of my motivation in calling on us to let go of that thought is that I think it turns out to be really much more complicated than we might have imagined to work out what it in fact is to be reasonable. So, you know, we have a lot of pretty simple slogan type ideas about what it might be to be reasonable. Things that boil off to pretty simple injunctions like you should doubt more or you shouldn't believe what you've been told, or, or you should be thinking with your brain and not with your emotions. And these ideas, I think if you push on them even a little bit, they turn out to be much more complicated than we might have imagined. And those turn out to not be necessarily the best rules for what it in fact is to think well or to change your mind.

Mike Carruthers (34:26)

Well, one of the best examples of being reasonable and trying to get other people to see how reasonable you are is the story you tell about trying to talk to men who were catcalling you and whistling at you and trying to get them to understand how that made you feel and so talk about that experience.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (34:48)

For me, the interest in how people change their minds is really quite a personal one. And it started I guess about three years ago now when I started working on this cat calling social experiment. And basically the idea was that I would go out. I'm a radio reporter in a previous life, and the idea was that I would go out and take, you know, a recorder and a microphone and a certain amount of familiar skills as an interviewer. And I would go out and I would try to interview men who catcalled me. And more specifically I would try to change their minds. I would wait for them to yell something kind of vulgar or sexual or crass or, you know, just the stupid things that men yell when they're hanging out of the windows of cars or they've had a couple drinks and I'd go over and I'd say, like, come back, tell me what you just said, tell me what you were hoping for when you said it, and most importantly, tell me what I would need to say in order to get you to change your mind about that. And this was an idea for the radio program, this American Life. We thought it would be a kind of fairly simple mission to try to get some good tape of interactions with these men. A bit of a disagreement. And it turned out to be far more complicated than I thought it would be. I have a bit of a background in, like, high school debate and critical thinking and argument construction and those sorts of, like, formal tasks where you spend a lot of time doing rigorous argument construction. So I went in honestly pretty cocky. Like, I felt like this would be fairly straightforward for someone with my kind of training to be able to pull off. It sounds like the hubris on that, as I say it now makes me embarrassed. And in fact, what happened was I spent close to six weeks walking around talking to catcallers and just having no success whatsoever. Just being unable to get them to understand that they were doing something that most women don't enjoy. And it really started out for me, this journey into thinking, like, when people do change their minds, what is it that manages to get through to them? Because everything I thought could get through to these men turned out not to.

Mike Carruthers (36:46)

And so when you ask these men who were whistling at you and saying vulgar things, when you ask them, what, what is it? What is it you're hoping to get from this? What. What's the outcome that you desire from this? What did they say?

Eleanor Gordon Smith (37:01)

They said this really weird kind of mash of things. So I actually wound up getting quite different answers to this from different guys. Some of them said that they were looking for a relationship, like they genuinely wanted to meet their girlfriend by yelling something at her in the street. Others of them were a little more, like, playful about it. They would say things like, oh, it's just, you know, like, I'm doing it for my. My mates, or I'm doing it to get a reaction, or it's just like me being silly. Others of them said it was while they granted, you know, not something that was likely to get them a girlfriend, at least it was attention. And there was some sort of camaraderie that they could get going between them and a woman that maybe then from there they could say something a little more likely to instigate a relationship. So I got this weird, inconsistent mash of motivations from them. But one thing they all had in common, which is when I said to them, do you think that women like this, like, is part of your motivation, the sense that women, too are enjoying what you're doing to a man? They all said, oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm totally confident that women are enjoying this, and I wouldn't dream of doing it if they didn't. It's so that she can have fun and enjoy the night. Which made it all the more peculiar that when I said, hey, buddy, I don't think that they are enjoying it, that they weren't receptive to that. You know, I mean, if you have a stated motivation, which is to give a certain kind of person a good time and then you find out they're not having a good time, well, by your lights, you should care about that. But they didn't.

Mike Carruthers (38:23)

Well, why do you think that they would say that? Why do you think that men. What would be their reason? What would be their evidence for saying, oh, yeah, women like this, they really get a kick out of this?

Eleanor Gordon Smith (38:36)

Yeah, I mean, I was baffled by it as well. And so that's kind of the next question that I pursued was to say, like, well, what evidence do you have for why you think women enjoy this? And it was really striking to me that the thing they all said was this kind of conclusive proof was the fact that the women that they did this to smiled and laughed. And that's striking. And it really resonated with me because I know that I smile and laugh when men do this to me. And I kind of. I don't like that about myself. It makes me feel quite embarrassed and like I'm capitulating to something that I shouldn't be capitulating to. But it's true that one reaction that women can have to feeling frightened or put on the spot is that in order to kind of de escalate the situation, you do laugh and you smile and you just do what's necessary to kind of get out of there in a relatively frictionless way. So I would try to explain this to these guys. You know, I would say, like, yeah, you're right, you are seeing some smiles and some laughs. But let me authoritatively tell you, as someone who also does these smiles and laughs, that they're in fact precisely evidence of discomfort rather than evidence of the fact that she's really having fun? And they just didn't believe me. You know, I would say this over and over to different men and they would all come back with some variation on the theme that I was particularly sensitive and that I couldn't speak for all women, which was funny because it implied that they could.

Cliff Kwong (39:53)

But.

Mike Carruthers (39:53)

Yeah, but you were being reasonable and rational in explaining that. And guess what? It doesn't work.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (39:58)

It didn't work. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I still. So since then I embarked on this project, which the book is the kind of final combination of which was I went Out. And I spoke to people who really did change their minds. You know, I went to try to find stories where persuasion works and where we are able to get people back to the truth and to, you know, better sets of beliefs, I guess. And I still have a lot of faith in the idea that we can reach each other with rational debate or with something like what I was trying to do in those conversations with catcallers. I just also think that there are a large number of missing ingredients that we can do ourselves a certain disservice by forgetting to include when we set out on these kinds of persuasive missions. You know, things like emotional things, like, what does this belief mean to you? I think something that I didn't really take into account when I was talking to these catcallers was that I was really asking them to let go of something that was quite foundationally important to the way they saw themselves. You know, it was really important to them that they were good guys. They weren't the kind of guys who would do something that was frightening or upsetting to women. And realizing that you've done a bad thing is a very tricky realization. You know, a lot of us are very resistant to revelations that would reveal, you know, that we've been in the wrong. And I think that I was not sufficiently attentive to the fact that these guys were basically standing in front of a woman in the street who was asking them to give up the idea that they were basically a good person. And that's really hard. And if I had, you know, if I had the chance to do it again, I might try to be a little more attentive to what this belief in them was doing for the way they saw themselves.

Mike Carruthers (41:34)

So what does this experience all tell you about what does work in terms of changing people's minds or getting them to see things your way?

Eleanor Gordon Smith (41:43)

So this is the lesson that I've found after spending so many years interviewing people who have changed their minds, is that the process of changing a mind is two things. One, it's really, really complicated and hard to predict. And what works for one particular person won't work for another. And there's a kind of tricky, like, sludge that you can get where you try to pick apart what was it that actually did this significant mind change, like, what was doing the work? And the same thing, aside from the unpredictability, is just how amazingly personal it is. So I spent, you know, weeks at a time interviewing these people about the ways that they had changed their minds. And quite quickly, I Started to feel like what I was doing was really quite an intimate project. I was learning a lot about what they hoped for and who they loved and how they saw themselves and the ways that they saw themselves moving through the world. And a lot of pain went into these moments of mind changing. And it made me realize that. I think too often we talk about changing a mind in a way which suggests that the mind is not tethered to the person. You know, when you hear the story of someone changing their mind, really what you're hearing is a story of someone who changed their life. You're hearing someone who radically altered the way they see themselves in the world. And that's a very personal thing. So, I mean, I can answer some of your question by saying that over and over again, what worked for these people were things that were quite strikingly emotional. Things like who you believe and who you trust and who you love and your sense of self. But I also think it's really important to remember that when we set out trying to change people's minds, you know, both the things I just said, mainly it's astonishingly unpredictable and deeply, profoundly personal. And if we forget that, then we run the risk of doing what I just did with my cat callers, Namely, just like spinning our wheels and getting more and more frustrated with the fact that we're not making progress while not in fact, changing the strategies that we're using.

Mike Carruthers (43:40)

If the strategies to use to change people's minds are so idiosyncratic and so individual, well, how would you ever know which one to use? How would you know how to do it?

Eleanor Gordon Smith (43:52)

Let me illustrate them with some of the stories. So the things that stood out to me in the research were things that were really emotional and really personal. So things like who we believe, as in, like the way that we allocate trust in the world. Things like how we see ourselves, our own picture of our own identity, the things that we hope for, the things that we wish were true. These kinds of things went into the ways that people change their minds in really quite surprising ways. One of the ones that stands out to me is the story of Dylan, who left what is functionally a cult. You know, I mean, it's a very strict religious sect that has very harsh punishments for people who leave or people who dissent in any way, or people who speak to people who are outside the sect. And Dylan had grown up in this sect. He had spent 20 something years only hearing from people who believed what this sect believed, and he ultimately left. He left the sect kind of Quite quickly, it was a matter of, like, three days when he ultimately changed his mind. And the path to him changing his mind was really striking in the way that it focused on who he believed rather than what he believed. And here's what I mean by that. So Dylan met his wife. His wife, now her name is Missy. They met when they were both working in a restaurant, and they had this astonishing chemistry from the moment that they first met. And Missy knew that she wanted to be with him. She knew that she wanted to marry him, but she also wasn't a member of the sect. And for her, the thought that Dylan was a member of this sect and would continue to be one was a really horrifying thought. So she kind of privately resolved that she was going to try to change his mind. She spent, like, close to six years doing this bizarre charade where she would pretend to him that she was a believer, that she was open to the teachings of the. The sect, and, in fact, surreptitiously trying to sow doubt in his mind and to get him to start to question some of the things that he'd taken as orthodoxy since he was a kid. And ultimately, what happened was, in fact, nothing to do with. With Missy's own project. What happened was something quite different, which was that one of Dylan's elders came to Dylan and said, you have to choose between your salvation and your wife. Like, we have thought about it, and we think that your wife is a threat to the congregation, and we want her gone. So you can either stay with her and lose your chance at eternal redemption, or you can stay with us and lose her, but you cannot have both. And Dylan had this moment of thinking, look, anyone who could look at my wife and not see a fundamentally good and loving person who is a wonderful influence on the people around her must be someone who's capable of making. Making mistakes. So for him, that moment was the domino that, you know, the first domino to tip, and then it made the others cascade on downwards. And from that phone call, it was a matter of, like, three days before he was out of the sect forever. Because what had happened for Dylan was nothing to do with an argument or nothing to do with what he believed. It was entirely to do with who he believed. And it was the situation where his trust in his wife was so great that it meant that he could realize that people who didn't like her must be capable of making mistakes. And so, ultimately, what he lost was trust in his elders. And it's so interesting to me. And so I think, like, personal and kind of beautiful. Like it's a. It's a. It's a weird love story. But I think in many ways it's a love story that the thing that saved him, the thing that made him see the truth, had so much more to do with who he believed than what he believed. And that really stands out to me as a lesson about how we can set out changing people's minds is that if we find ourselves trying to change someone's mind, like Dylan's, you know, often our best bet is to disrupt the trust allocations that people have rather than to try to present them with an argument.

Mike Carruthers (47:38)

So what I get from what you're saying is that the idea of changing someone's mind or changing our own mind about something is to change, at least in part who we are or part of who we are. And to change part of who someone is, whether it's us or someone else, that's a pretty daunting task.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (48:00)

It is a really. It's a really daunting task when people change their minds and have to forfeit the part of themselves that was connected to the old belief. There's a kind of period. It's almost like a period of grieving. It's a kind of loss. You know, they realize that they have to let go of the way that they've been seeing themselves. And a whole bunch of other things can tumble down with that. Things like the friends that you're keeping company or, you know, the ways that you structure your time. A lot of that changes when you forfeit a belief, particularly a belief of the kind that you just mentioned. Something as foundational to your identity as, like, your politics or your religion. You sort of almost have to help someone find their way to what life will look like after they've changed their mind. And that can feel really hard because, like, you don't want to help everyone to a new particular sense of self. You don't want to be the one to smooth the transition for every particular person. But I think it's often pragmatically the case that if people have other sources of self to draw on, then they don't need to rely so heavily on this particular belief.

Mike Carruthers (48:56)

So another question that pops into my mind as you talk about, you know, trying to change people's minds is that perhaps it isn't worth it. I mean, trying to change catcallers behavior, it's going to be difficult to do, as you found out. And to what end? Other than. I mean, what does it do for you? Because even if you get Those guys to stop the guys down at the next bar are gonna do it anyway.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (49:20)

For me anyway. Once I'd done all this research and spoken to all these people who changed their minds and realized just how astonishingly complicated and personal and long the process of changing a mind really is, it generates exactly this question, namely like, well, can. Can I be bothered to do that for every person who has a bad belief? And the answer is obviously no. I mean, like, we just don't have the time, never mind the patience to do that. I do think though that that's kind of a useful thing to realize in itself. You know, I mean, we have this climate of public debate at the moment, which tells us over and over again that if we only speak to each other more, we'll be able to change people's minds. And we see this played out over and over again in the political arena where we put people on stage one against the other and think that in a certain amount of allotted time we're going to be able to change the audience members minds in anything like a productive way. I think it's really valuable for us to reflect on just how difficult it is to really change a mind. And there may be cases where that's worth our patience, and there may be cases where that's worth our time. But I hope that one thing that the final chapter of the book does is to make us consider that there may be cases where it's not worth our time and where our energy would be better spent dealing with the behavioral problems that result from beliefs rather than trying to deal with the beliefs themselves.

Mike Carruthers (50:40)

And so the big takeaway from this is that it's probably a lot harder than you think it is, and it's a lot more complicated than you think it is. It isn't just a matter of, well, here are the facts. If you would just agree with these facts, then you'll change your mind.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (50:54)

I think that is the takeaway. And I think what's weird about that is that's something kind of. We all already know that deep down, you know, we all already are well aware of just how peculiar it is to change a person's mind. I mean, we know it from when we've changed our own minds.

Mike Carruthers (51:07)

Well, why do I need to change your mind? Why do people think that it's so important because someone disagrees with you to change their mind? Why can't we just live and agree to disagree and we don't have to try to change each other's minds? A. Because it's probably not going to happen. B, it's really going to be hard to do, and C, to what end?

Eleanor Gordon Smith (51:27)

Yeah, I mean, I think this comes back to the thing that we started talking about, like, way, way back at the beginning, which is that we are so convinced that we are the ones who are being reasonable. And when you think that, then every divergent belief strikes you as an affront. You know, everyone who believes something that you don't seems to you to be making a mistake. And it's very difficult to have the patience to just watch someone make a mistake and think that that's fine. But as you say, very often these things can be nothing more than futile exercises in mutual frustration. And if that's the case, well, then maybe we should give up and watch TV together instead.

Mike Carruthers (51:59)

Yeah, well, I mean, I have. And I know other people have friends who we just agree that politics is off the table because there's no point to it. It's just gonna potentially put the friendship at risk because we disagree. And rather than try to change each other's minds, we'll just agree to disagree. And. And that works just fine.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (52:20)

You know, I have close friends who have, like, weird conspiratorial beliefs, and otherwise they're completely rational and ordinary people, and yet they have these very strange beliefs about, like, the truth of the moon landing. And it's the kind of thing where you can either descend into the quicksand of trying to get them to see reason, or you can think, well, this is something which is a strange blip in an otherwise coherent person and it will waste both of our time. So try to unpick it.

Mike Carruthers (52:41)

I like that. I like that approach a lot. I think that that's going to save you years of your life.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (52:47)

Exactly. Age so much slower and you'll sleep better at night. Exactly right.

Mike Carruthers (52:50)

And go have fun and just stop. Because, yeah, you're not going to change anybody's mind about the moon landing. And again, even if you did, so what. I mean, it's a battle not worth. It's not worth the victory. It isn't.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (53:05)

Well, I think it's really hard for us to see this because we live in this climate which encourages us so often to be pursuing debate and to be thinking that debate will be effective. That is that every time we try to debate someone, we fail. It's our fault. And it means that if only we did something slightly differently, we would have been able to get through them. And that means you can kind of spend your life sinking effort after effort trying to persuade someone. And we live in like a very combative time where so much of our political media is structured around argument as entertainment. And I think it's really easy to forget in that climate. That argument is not entertaining, it's catastrophically boring, and it's very often a waste of time.

Mike Carruthers (53:45)

Well, this is really good news in a way, because it takes the pressure off. I mean, clearly trying to change someone's mind is probably a lot harder than you think it is. So you've got to pick those battles pretty carefully. And even if you do change somebody's mind, you have to ask yourself, well, is it really worth that victory? Eleanor Gordon Smith has been my guest and the name of her book is Stopped Being Reasonable. You'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks Eleanor.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (54:13)

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Mike Carruthers (54:18)

A lot of offices and workplaces are either too cold or too hot, and sometimes at the same time, depending on who you talk to. An office can be too hot for some and too cold for others, depending on where they sit and their gender. Some interesting research shows that regardless of fluctuations in the air temperature, if your feet are comfortable, then you will be comfortable. So the key to comfort may be your footwear. For example, if a woman wears an open strappy sandal in an air conditioned office, she's more likely to say she feels cold. And if a man wears heavy wool socks and leather shoes so his feet get hot, he's likely to say he feels warm all over. The answer then is to do whatever is necessary to regulate the temperature of your feet and pay attention to the footwear you wear to work. That'll have a lot to do with how hot or cold you feel overall, and that is something you should know if you were to look on the podcast app that you're listening on Spotify Apple Podcasts. There's a Share button there and it would be great if you would just click that button and send this episode to someone you know and let them give a Listen. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something youg Should Know.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (55:37)

I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times.

Mike Carruthers (55:40)

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer and director. You might know me from the League, Veep, or my non eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (55:49)

We love movies and we come at them from different perspectives.

Mike Carruthers (55:53)

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas and I don't he's too old.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (55:59)

Let's not forget that Paul thinks that Dune 2 is overrated it is. Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk.

Mike Carruthers (56:08)

About good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must sees, and in case you missed.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (56:12)

Ems, we're talking Parasite, the Home Alone.

Mike Carruthers (56:14)

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Cliff Kwong (56:16)

We've done deep dives on popcorn flicks.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (56:18)

We've talked about why Independence Day deserves a second look.

Mike Carruthers (56:21)

And we've talked about horror movies, some.

Cliff Kwong (56:22)

That you've never even heard of, like Ganja and Hess.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (56:25)

So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure.

Mike Carruthers (56:28)

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (56:30)

Podcasts, and don't forget to hit the follow button.

Cliff Kwong (56:40)

Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the magical millennial. And I'm the dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family friendly show, we count down our top 10 list of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover. On our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle what insect song is.

Mike Carruthers (57:15)

Typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched and cooler temperatures. You got this. No, I didn't. That about a wish coming true?

Eleanor Gordon Smith (57:24)

Well, I didn't either.

Mike Carruthers (57:25)

Of course.

Cliff Kwong (57:26)

I'm just Cicada.

Mike Carruthers (57:28)

I'm crying.

Eleanor Gordon Smith (57:30)

I'm so sorry you win that one. So if you're looking for a healthy.

Cliff Kwong (57:34)

Dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown. Wherever you get your podcasts.