← Something You Should Know
Something You Should Know
What AI Is Really Good At & That Feeling You Get When You Don’t Fit In
00:48:02
What AI is really good at, why you sometimes feel like you don’t belong, and what makes something attractive.
Loading summary
Transcript68 lines
- [00:01]
Claude Steele
I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation. I wanted to let you know about a brand new season of the Planet Visionaries podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. This is the podcast exploring bold ideas and big solutions from the people leading the way in conservation. Join me in conversation with the likes of climate champion Mark Ruffalo, biologist and photographer Christina Mittermeier, and one of the most successful conservationists of our time, Chris Tompkins. Join us on Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:29]
Mike Carruthers
Foreign. Something you should know what makes someone attractive? The answer will surprise you. Then the very latest on AI what's new, what it's good at, and which AI tool is best for you.
- [00:48]
Christopher Mims
The one that is best for you often is the one that you are already devoting the most time to, and that's because of context. These AIs become a lot more useful when they just know more about you, what it is you want to do, what your preferences are.
- [01:04]
Mike Carruthers
Also, should you leave your computer on all the time or not? And certain interactions with people who are different than us can feel tense. That feeling is called churn.
- [01:16]
Claude Steele
Churn is my term for the tension that we can all feel in diverse settings, classrooms, workplaces, you know what to say and what not to say and how to behave.
- [01:27]
Mike Carruthers
All this today on Something you should Know.
- [01:33]
Hilary Frank
Hey, it's Hilary Frank from the Longest Shortest Time, an award winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. We talk about things like sex ed, birth control, pregnancy, bodily autonomy, and of course, kids of all ages. But you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, the longest, shortest time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or@longastshortesttime.com
- [02:05]
Christopher Mims
Something you should know, fascinating intel, the
- [02:08]
Mike Carruthers
world's top experts and practical advice you
- [02:11]
Christopher Mims
can use in your life today.
- [02:14]
Mike Carruthers
Something you Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Have you ever wondered what makes someone attractive? It may have less to do with beauty and more to do with your brain, and I'll explain what that means as we begin this episode of Something youg Should Know. Hi, I'm Mike Herbrothers and thanks for being here. So, research shows that we tend to prefer faces and find them attractive if they're easy to process. What scientists call processing fluency. That usually means faces that are more average, more symmetrical, and less visually complicated. We see that as attractive. Why? Because your brain likes things it can understand quickly. When something is easy to process. It actually feels better. And we interpret that feeling as attractive. And this doesn't just apply to people. It's why simple logos like the Nike Swoosh or Coca Cola's script are also very effective. They're easy for your brain to recognize and remember, so you like them more. So when you find someone attractive, at first glance, it may not be because they're objectively more beautiful. It may be more about how hard your brain has to work when you look at them. And that is something you should know. AI is everywhere. You hear about it constantly. We've addressed various aspects of AI on this podcast, about how it's going to change work and creativity and everyday life. But how many people actually use AI in a meaningful way? Beyond the headlines and the hype, what is AI really good at and where does it fall short? And if you want to use it, how do you use it without wasting time or getting misled? Because for most people, the challenge isn't access to AI, it's understanding how to use it effectively. My guest has been thinking about exactly that. Christopher Mims is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal who covers technology, and he's developed what he calls 24 laws of AI practical guidelines to help people make better use of it. He's author of a book called how to AI Cut through the Hype, Master the basics, transform your work. Hey Christopher, welcome to Something youg Should Know.
- [04:43]
Christopher Mims
Hi Mike, thank you for having me.
- [04:45]
Mike Carruthers
So if you were to take a snapshot of AI usage today, where are we? How many people use it? How many people are afraid of it? What do they use it for? What's the status quo?
- [04:59]
Christopher Mims
Right now, roughly more than half of people are using it regularly in work and in their just regular day to day life. But an equal proportion are concerned that it's going to be worse for humanity on balance than it's going to be a boon.
- [05:19]
Mike Carruthers
And the people who are using it, what are they using it for?
- [05:24]
Christopher Mims
People are still mostly using AI as an answer engine. So I think this is one reason ChatGPT is, you know, the Kleenex or the Xerox of the field. Right? You say AI, that's the first thing people think of. Obviously Google has made it available by default in their search results. People are mostly treating it as an oracle, a source of truth. But you also see a lot of folks poking at it as a reasoning engine. They'll say, what do you think of X? Is this image a fake image? For example, is this image an AI generated image? Or increasingly they Will say, here's my tax return. You know, where are some areas I could save money? Or I want an alternative to QuickBooks. Help me generate a spreadsheet, right, to run my life or my finances.
- [06:22]
Mike Carruthers
And when people use it to say, look at my finances and tell me what you think, you know, my concern is always when I use it, it's always very encouraging, always tells me how smart I am. And it also seems very confident in its answers. And yet we also hear that it can also make up things, it can lie, it can hallucinate and it will do that confidently. So I don't know how accurate it really is.
- [06:55]
Christopher Mims
Absolutely. I mean, my favorite day to day reminder of this, when I was writing my book, I used software called Otter to automatically transcribe all of the interviews that I did. There's lots of AI transcription software. It all works approximately the same at this point. And it's very funny and a little bit strange to read the transcript of an interview you've just conducted and in the AI generated summary of the AI generated transcript, see a very confident and obviously wrong statement. And, and it's really interesting how sometimes you can even kind of guess how it arrived at that incorrect conclusion. You know, it's close to what was actually in the transcript. But anybody who works, you know, with AI regularly, whether they're using it to generate code or populate spreadsheets or give answers, knows that it's just ineradicable. These so called hallucinations that it has.
- [07:54]
Mike Carruthers
And I understand from talking to people and I've read that the whole hallucination and lying thing with AI is getting better, right? That the technology is improving and it lies less than a year used to,
- [08:08]
Christopher Mims
that's true, but we have to keep in mind that it used to be hallucinating constantly. So if you go from hallucinating 20% of the time to 5% of the time, that is a significant improvement. But has it improved so much that it opens up, you know, applications where you can trust the AI completely? Definitely not.
- [08:29]
Mike Carruthers
Is there a difference between the different chatbot things like chatgpt and Claude? There is this sense that they're kind of all the same. But you also see ads that like this one's better for this application and this one's better for writing and this one's better for whatever. And do we have any really good guide for that?
- [08:55]
Christopher Mims
I can tell people on any given day which AI they should be using for which application. The problem is two months from now I might have to give them different advice they are all in an arms race with each other to match each other in terms of features and capabilities. As of April 2026, if you want to write code, you're going to use OpenAI or you're going to use Claude. If you just want to get questions answered. Gemini is great because it taps into Google's, you know, entire search database. Although of course ChatGPT also taps into that database, but in a way that Google doesn't like, but can't stop because Chat GPT and others are paying companies to scrape Google's search index. Don't use Cowork for most things. I mean, Microsoft's kind of having a challenging time right now. Cowork just doesn't. It's not competitive with those other options. If you want to use a chatbot that's pretty good, with Excel, you would go with Claude, although Gemini and ChatGPT are catching up. So it really depends. But the bottom line is that if you play with them or you read around on the Internet a little bit, you'll quickly determine which one is right for you. And often the one that is best for you is the one that you are already devoting the most time to. And that's because of context. So whatever their abilities, these AIs become a lot more useful when they just know more about you, what it is you want to do, what your preferences are, what your writing style is, what you're working on these days.
- [10:56]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah, well, that seems like a big issue because, you know, I use ChatGPT for a lot of things and there might be a better one, but ChatGPT knows so much about me that seems like starting over would not be beneficial. Yeah.
- [11:13]
Christopher Mims
With chatbots, my advice is the same as when people ask me, should I switch to, you know, a new desktop computer OS or phone operating system or something, I just say no. You know, the switching costs are always so much greater than whatever you're going to gain. You know, it's really a love the one you're with type of situation. People who are really invested in Chat GPT been using it for years, they should stick with Chat gbt. If you're relatively new to this, but you use Gmail and Google Calendar and Google Docs, then Google's personal intelligence and a, you know, $7 a month Gemini subscription is going to do wonders for you if you are already really bought in on perplexity. For example, I know somebody who surprised me recently by saying, you know, I love, I love their Chatbot. That's the one I use all the Time, should he switch? No, because that's where he's invested all of his time and energy and it knows so much about him. So we are really entering this age of personalization with AI, where that matters more than anything in terms of what they can do for us.
- [12:26]
Mike Carruthers
So, generally speaking, what is at this particular moment in time, what is AI good for and what is it not good for?
- [12:36]
Christopher Mims
Generally speaking, AI can be great at basic tasks like helping you edit a document, generate a presentation, right? Bouncing ideas around. That's what these generative AIs, these chatbots that we use, are great at. There's, of course, a vast universe of, you know, what I call classic AI, all the AI that came before the ChatGPT moment, when it broke onto the scene in November of, what was that, 2022 now, but those tend to be the kind of things that get used by scientists or, you know, Meta or Google. You know, these are the classic machine learning and deep learning systems that are populating our social media algorithms and giving us directions in our mapping app of choice. So we're using that kind of AI all the time, right? So AI is really great at helping us find things that we might want to consume or getting us to our destination. But that kind of AI is invisible. And so when people ask, you know, what is AI good at? I tend to interpret that as what is modern generative AI good at? And one reason that question's a little bit tricky is its abilities are expanding every day. Partly that's because the models are getting quote unquote smarter. But in no small part, it's because these chatbots are becoming a default interface for existing software. So if you ask Claude, for example, to do something for you that involves or requires a calculation, a couple of years ago it would have confidently answered using its large language model, its language based brain, and it would have been wrong. Today it will write some code which will actually do the math and it will give you an answer that is much more likely to be correct. So these chatbots are becoming more capable in part because they are getting better at using existing software on the Internet, writing their own little programs to answer our questions, that sort of thing. They're becoming tool users, right? Just like us.
- [14:59]
Mike Carruthers
As good as AI is, it's not good at everything. And I want to ask you what you think AI is not good at in just a moment. So, Christopher, as amazing as AI is for what it does well, what does it not do so well? What is it bad at?
- [15:19]
Christopher Mims
Well, there was a brief vogue where people would show off on X or someplace like that, using something like ChatGPT's mobile app, and they would show it a picture. You know, they would say, yeah, you know, here is, you know, a valve in this pipe in my house that broke. How do I fix it? And sometimes they were really surprised by its ability to not just reason with language, but to see, to look at an image of something and identify its contents or suggest ways to solve a problem. You know, I mean, Google has had a, an image recognition feature in its Google app that'll help you identify plants or anything for years. But the truth is, when you really kind of poke into the guts of it and you start to try to trick it. Today's large language models, even the ones that are called vision language models, which means they have the ability to parse images as well, they're so bad at seeing that they kind of border on being blind. Like, there's basic tests, you can hold up two pens or something, and it's not that hard to trick it into saying, oh, I see three, or I see one, or I see no pension. That's something these models are pretty terrible at. Another thing that they're bad at is anything that is outside of their training data. In other words, a human being. We have in our head, you know, a model of the world. And we don't really know how we construct this model, but it's separate from our language faculty. We do know that from modern neuroscience and brain studies. So we are able to learn in one context based on very limited data and apply that in many other contexts. But today's AIs, if you show them something that is just completely outside of anything they've ever seen, they just break because they're just statistical prediction machines. Or if you show them something that they rarely see, they break.
- [17:27]
Mike Carruthers
But you said that you give it something that it doesn't know and it breaks. But my sense has, and my experience has been if you ask AI something, it never says, I don't know, it always comes up with an even a nonsensical question will get an answer.
- [17:45]
Christopher Mims
That's true. They are, to their credit. I think Google especially is getting a little better at having their, their AIs answer in the negative if you ask. But generally, the way that AIs work, fundamentally, they're just going to kind of go with whatever you feed them. And they certainly have no ability to evaluate the truth or falsity of a statement the way a human would.
- [18:13]
Mike Carruthers
Where do you think it's headed, in other words, with so much Technology, you can look back and say, God, I can't believe it was so archaic back then. What are we going to be saying? And I know it's not fair to ask you to predict the future, but. But what in 10 years, 20 years, are we going to look back at today and go, oh, my God, can you imagine how archaic chatgpt and all these large language model things were?
- [18:43]
Christopher Mims
Well, I think in 10 years we're going to have many more examples of AI being given too much latitude and too little supervision and doing things that are disastrous. And so we're going to look back and say, wow, I can't believe we ever trusted such primitive systems to, you know, automatically target and engage certain types of enemies on a battlefield. And look where that got us, for example. I also think that potentially in the next 10 years, there could be a breakthrough that is on the same level as what happened when ChatGPT broke onto the scene. And that's going to require a new kind of fundamental underlying system for that. Artificial intelligence, the one that underlies ChatGPT and all large language models and many other things besides, is called a transformer architecture. That's the real secret of modern generative AI is that at Google, somebody invented a thing called a transformer architecture. Google didn't know what to do with it. OpenAI figured it out. The rest is history. We could have another breakthrough, another new fundamental kind of architecture that will get us to the next level of reasoning and AIs. Perhaps they'll start to be able to reason abstractly. Perhaps they'll be able to learn from just a single example. That would be a huge breakthrough. Right now, if you want to train an AI, of course you got to have thousands of examples of something, and that's very inefficient. But humans are amazing. You can show a human something once, you can show an octopus something once, and they'll repeat it. Imagine if AI could do that.
- [20:41]
Mike Carruthers
You know, I wanted to ask you because when I use ChatGPT, I don't use the voice thing. I type. And the reason I type is because I think you have to be a little more thoughtful when you type. But I also worry too about whether it would really understand what I was saying. And what about that? What about ChatGPT and the others and their ability to understand voice and to talk back?
- [21:09]
Christopher Mims
The voice recognition is outstanding and the voice synthesis is really good, almost uncanny. So something that I've written about is these incredible leaps and bounds we've made in both understanding and in production of speech by Computers, for some folks, are leading us to a world where they barely type anymore. I mean, you go into certain startups and at every desk there's a gooseneck microphone. People are wearing headphones, they're whispering into those microphones, prompts for their coding agents rather than typing out code. It's pretty remarkable.
- [21:46]
Mike Carruthers
I guess my concern about having a conversation with AI where I'm just talking off the cuff is if I say something that maybe I didn't mean to say, or it hears something and we end up going down a rabbit hole that I never intended to, but. But if I type it out, I'm a little more thoughtful and careful.
- [22:07]
Christopher Mims
Well, the thing about having a conversation with an AI which makes up for the fact that you're just speaking off the cuff is that it can be iterative. So when I'm typing, if I'm typing a specification for an AI that's going to create a program for me, I'm sitting there doing all the mental labor myself. You know, I've got a. I've got the blank page in front of me. The most daunting thing in the world when I'm conversing with an AI, I can be like, hey, you know, I got this rough idea. Help me think it through. And of course you're going to go back and forth. Now the difference is the AI is going to influence your thinking. You have to be okay with that.
- [22:50]
Mike Carruthers
Okay, so you're a tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and you know a lot more about this than I do, than most people do, I think. What's one thing you really think people need to get about AI today?
- [23:04]
Christopher Mims
Here's the most concrete, most practical advice I can give anyone about AI today. If you're not paying for AI, you are not experiencing AI as it exists today. The free versions keep getting better. But when you start to pay for doesn't matter. Claude chatgpt Gemini, you are tapping into their best models. You are always logged in. So you are building the database that the AI has about you. It's memory of what you're up to, and you're able to start to connect it to other things on the Internet. For example, if you activate personal intelligence in Google and you're paying for a pro subscription, when you're having a conversation with it and you're starting to ideate, it'll say, oh, you know, is this related to this thing that you're working on that I know about? Because I can see every single one of your Google Docs and frequently my answer is yes, thanks for reminding me. That is a whole other level of utility for AI. So you have to pay for AI to get the full value out of it. You don't have to pay a lot. $20 has been the standard. You can pay less if you go to Google. There's even like a seven or eight dollar subscription now which will get you Gemini Pro.
- [24:38]
Mike Carruthers
Well, you know, we've talked about AI several times and yet we always come at it a little differently with different people who have a different perspective. And I really appreciate yours. I've been talking with Christopher Mims. He's a col for the Wall Street Journal and the name of his book is how to AI Cut through the hype, Master the basics, transform your work. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. And Christopher, thank you so much for explaining it the way you did. I really enjoyed it.
- [25:07]
Christopher Mims
Yeah, Mike, this was a lot of fun. I appreciate your really thoughtful questions. Sometimes with these interviews it can feel a little rote, but I feel like the questions you asked challenged me in ways that I found really rewarding.
- [25:27]
Mike Carruthers
Have you ever had an interaction with someone or a group of people and it just felt tense? Nothing obvious was said, no one was trying to start an argument, and yet something in the air made the conversation feel uncomfortable, guarded, even a little stressful. We usually assume that tension is personal or political, or that someone did something wrong. But what if that feeling is actually a psychological response, something that happens automatically when people perceive identity differences between each other? My guest calls this feeling churn, and he says it shows up in all kinds of everyday situations. At work, in the classroom, even in casual interactions, often without anyone realizing what's happening. Claude Steele is a social psychologist at Stanford University and one of the leading researchers on how identity and perception shape human behavior. He's author of a book called the Tension that Divides Us and How to Overcome It. Ike Lodd welcome to Something youg Should Know.
- [26:34]
Claude Steele
Hi Mike, It's a great pleasure to be here.
- [26:37]
Mike Carruthers
So I must admit I'd never heard the term churn before. So explain a little more what churn is and where it shows up.
- [26:47]
Claude Steele
Sure. Churn is my term for the tension that we can all feel in diverse settings, classrooms, workplaces, boardrooms, et cetera, athletic teams, when they're diverse. And it's a tension over what to say and what not to say and how to behave and generally how our particular identity will affect our experience in that setting and our how, maybe even how fairly we will be treated in that setting. So that's what I mean by churn. It's that tension. And I offer a new understanding of this tension, one that assumes it has less to do with prejudice and bias, which I think is the more typical way of thinking about this tension and more to do with just the simple effect that our identities can have on our ability to trust each other.
- [27:35]
Mike Carruthers
So as you were just talking now and describing what churn is, I remember when I was in college, I took a class in, it was Middle Eastern history. And when I walked into the classroom the first time and subsequent times, I was the only non Middle Eastern person in that room. And I got this weird feeling. It was nothing obvious. It just felt like I don't really belong here because I'm not like them. And that feeling, that's churn, right?
- [28:14]
Claude Steele
That's churn. When you have that kind of feeling, that's what that term is referring to.
- [28:20]
Mike Carruthers
Well, and I'm glad you said that. There's not necessarily any prejudice involved because I didn't feel any prejudice. I just felt different. Like I didn't belong as part of their group and they were the majority of the group in the room.
- [28:36]
Hilary Frank
But.
- [28:37]
Mike Carruthers
But there was no judgment attached to that. It was just a feeling of being different.
- [28:42]
Claude Steele
Exactly. I mean, I think we're so used to thinking about the term diversity in the context of prejudices. We have this sort of assumption that if we could eliminate prejudices and what would the problem be? But interestingly, churn is something different than that. It's something that happens to both the prejudiced and unprejudiced alike. It's just the tension you just described. I'm not one of them and they're not one of me. And how's that going to work out here in this situation? And as a, you know, a society that is very diverse and probably getting more diverse, this, this can be a significant factor in, in the important settings of our lives. I don't, I don't mean, you know, sitting on a subway or something, or on a bus, but, but, you know, in a classroom or in a workplace, a doctor's office, I think in those real life important situations where, you know, we're pursuing our goals and the like, this churn can be a factor that can sometimes, you know, make us want to avoid situations and avoid conversations and it puts a tension between us.
- [29:51]
Mike Carruthers
Well, it seems to me that in a lot of cases this problem will fix itself if you are with the same people for a while. I have an example of like, extreme churn that happened to me when I was young. When I was 12 years old, my family moved from the United States to the UK and we lived in a small town in the middle of England, Leamington Spa, and went to the local school there. And I walked into that school literally not knowing a soul. It was the scariest thing I've ever done. And I still think about it. But it didn't take very long before I felt accepted as part of the group and the churn disappeared for the most part. I mean, I still always felt a little different because, you know, my accent or their accent is different than my accent. But mostly I just felt part of the group. Eventually, yes.
- [30:52]
Claude Steele
If you have that opportunity in a setting, you know, a classroom. I teach a class over the course of a quarter, you know, what is that? About a quarter of a year? And the students there do, you know, pretty soon, as you describe, they get comfortable with each other because they've all said things now and they've all learned that in this particular class, we're not going to go into this hyper judging of each other mode. We're going to trust that people, that people have good intentions and people are going to try to see the best in the situation. So as that atmosphere takes over, churn lowers and gets manageable, and then the differences between us become interesting and sources of enrichment. Lots of good things happen as this apprehension recedes and we begin to see the opportunity in diversity.
- [31:46]
Mike Carruthers
You know what I find interesting about this is the churn that you're talking about. I wonder if in a lot of cases it's in your head, but it isn't real. And here's an example. If you're someone who's never been to the gym, you're out of shape, but you've decided to start going, and you go to a gym that's full of people who are beautiful in shape, people, you're going to think, I'm very different. They're judging me. And my sense is as somebody who goes to a gym pretty regularly, people aren't thinking that at all. They're not judging you because you're out of shape. They're probably more into what they look like than what you look like in the first place. And if they think anything about you, they're probably thinking, good for you. I mean, that's great. I'm glad you're here. Welcome. I don't think people judge the way we think. They judge us. As I said, it's in your head.
- [32:47]
Claude Steele
Yeah, that's a good example of churn, I think, you know, it could be there a little, there could be judgments that are being made by other people, but they're, they're really not important. And probably more fundamentally, the people that may make a passing judgment like that really are, as you say, impressed with your effort to, to deal with the situation. They're, they're happy you're there, they want to be supportive. I think you've got a good example of, of what I mean.
- [33:18]
Mike Carruthers
But in those cases, in those higher stakes cases like at work, if you're feeling like you don't belong there, that weird feeling that you get inside that you're being judged and maybe ostracized, what are you supposed to do about it? Because people have their prejudices and they're going to make judgments about you and treat you differently. That's them. Nothing you could do about them. So what are you supposed to do?
- [33:45]
Claude Steele
Ah, what I propose is a relatively new suggestion for what to do in that situation. And that suggestion is to focus on building trust in the situation through your own behavior. I'm trying to really get elemental here. I'm not advocating that you learn about every other culture and all of its details. I'm not advocating that you, you learn how to get rid of all your prejudices and biases and so on. I, I, what I'm advocating is that you focus on, on being a trustworthy person in that situation. Be responsive to people, listen to them, listen to them again, try to, try to help them function well in the setting. So to support their functioning in the setting, be, have a bit of a service orientation, if I might put it that way. That that combination of things and a focus on that kind of things builds the trust that lowers the churn is that it is a lot simpler than maybe we've made it out to be.
- [34:48]
Mike Carruthers
Can you give me an example of that? Yes.
- [34:52]
Claude Steele
I have a story about Miles Davis and Gil Evans who are two great jazz artists of the 20th century. Miles Davis is a cool, hardened African American trumpet player, prob best in the, of that century, if you want my opinion. Gil Evans is, is from rural Canada, a band leader, white, tall, skinny guy. He's, he's kind of square, he's, he's eating radishes out of a bound brown paper bag in a, in these sophisticated jazz clubs in the, in New York City. But, but they really became absolute best friends. And that friendship was, is, is rooted in the concrete, a connection that they're both very open to their shared humanity even though they're very different kinds of people and come from very different Backgrounds with different orientations and have. Maybe even have different interests, maybe even have conflicting interests. Miles Davis is very concerned about. It's a sort of propriety about the employment of African American jazz musicians at the time. Gil Evans is not African American. And so. But they jump over those differences because they're not trying to prove to each other that they're not prejudice or they're not distracted by those things. They really want to help each other in their goals and in their careers. And that attitude of listening closely to each other and trying to be responsive to each other's needs establishes a profoundly close relationship between. Between the two. But I also think a lot of us Americans have relationships that go across identity divides that one might think of as prohibitive, but that we learn to just connect very elementally to each other, to listen to each other. That formula, focusing there on that kind of behavior, returning to emails, being timely, trying to those things just wipe aside these identity differences and the worries that make up, churn those elemental behaviors that connect us to each other. Like I like that guy. That guy. That guy hears who I am. He's here. He hears what I'm concerned about, and he's trying to help me deal with it. That is more powerful, I think, than we have recognized. We have seen this challenge of the diverse society that we have, this challenge of bridging differences as more complicated. Somehow we have to get past prejudices and biases and misunderstandings and mistrust complicates things and gets us down very difficult paths. I'm trying to reorient or refocus us on simpler things.
- [37:55]
Mike Carruthers
And so what would be some examples of things I could do to do that?
- [38:00]
Claude Steele
Well, I do think listening the, the. The really trying to see what the other person is concerned about, that itself engenders trust in the other person. That person begins to trust you when you show that kind of interest in them. So if I'm a teacher with a student, if I'm a doctor with a patient, if I'm a lawyer with all these circumstances, I'm proposing this focus on simple things first. Really, really listening, asking questions. I can give you an example of an experiment that I think that we did some years ago that illustrates what I'm talking about here.
- [38:37]
Mike Carruthers
Sure, yeah, I'd love to hear it.
- [38:39]
Claude Steele
We were interested in what would enable people across the racial divide to have an honest conversation about difficult topics. So we had white male Stanford students come into the lab one at a time, and they were told they were going to have a conversation with two other Students on the table in front of them are photographs of the two students they're going to talk to. And for half of these participants, the two photographs were of two white guys, and for the other half, they were of two black guys. And then they find out that they're going to talk either about something easy to talk to anybody about love and relationships in college, or they're going to talk about something kind of challenging, racial profiling. So that's the setup. They're white guys. They're going to talk to either two black guys or two other white guys about either love and relationships or racial profiling. Then the experimenter says, I'm going to go down the hall and get your conversation partners. And while I'm gone, would you arrange these three chairs for the conversation? Would you rank, pull them together for the conversation? And that's kind of what we're interested in. Depending on the condition of the experiment that they're in, how do they arrange those chairs? And you wouldn't be surprised to learn that when they're going to talk to two white guys about either topic or to two black guys about love and relationships, they put the three chairs very close together. But when they're going to talk to two black guys about racial profiling, there's a tension in the room. There's churn going on. I don't want to say something here that would, you know, get me seen as racist or something. So they, they distance themselves in that condition. So how do you overcome that? That is really the central question of this work. And the. We tried a number of things. We, we tried some of the wisdoms that come out of diversity training that didn't really work very well. Sometimes it even backfires. But eventually we found something very simple that worked. And that's kind of what launched our thinking in this direction. What worked? And by work, I mean what enabled those white participants to move their chairs close together with two black conversation partners talking about racial profiling? What frame of mind reduced their churn enough to do that? And what it was, was we simply said, look, you know, these are difficult conversations. Nobody really knows how to, to, to have them be perfectly smooth. So we. Part of our societies, our history. So look, just, just relax and view this as an opportunity to learn about somebody else's experiment, experience. And when you're in doubt, don't try to prove that you're not biased or, or prejudice. Don't, don't, don't do that at all. That could be a red flag. Just relax and ask questions. When in doubt, ask questions. And with that instruction, with that mindset, so to speak, they moved in close for. They put their chairs close together to have a conversation with two black guys about racial profiling. That says a number of things. They really did want to have this conversation. They were interested. They just didn't know how. And the churn that they felt in this situation was, you know, made them initially just want to avoid the conversation, to not really have it. If they didn't have to, they would have left. But with a simple shift of mindset, one that said, look, just relax, listen, ask questions, use it as a chance to just learn about somebody else in a situation like that. That reduced the churn, lowered it enabled them to move in close for these conversations.
- [42:34]
Mike Carruthers
Well, it's an interesting topic in the sense that it's, you know, you've really simplified it. You've made this, like, a lot easier than. People get all twisted up in knots about this, and maybe we don't have
- [42:45]
Claude Steele
to, you know that you're putting my aspiration in good words there. I mean, I think that is the aspiration that, you know, it's a lot easier than we think.
- [42:57]
Mike Carruthers
Well, this is one of those things that I think everyone has experienced and thought about, like, you know, what should I say? Did I say the right thing? I hope I didn't offend anybody. And nobody ever really talks about it, so it's good to get a perspective on it from someone who's really studied this. I've been talking with Claude Steele. He is a social psychologist at Stanford University and author of the book the Tension that Divides Us and How to Overcome It. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Claude, I appreciate you being here. Thank you very much.
- [43:30]
Claude Steele
Okay, thank you.
- [43:35]
Mike Carruthers
Since people started using personal computers, there's been this debate of should you shut the computer off completely for the night or when you're away for long periods of time, or leave it on? Maybe just put it in sleep mode? But with modern computers today, there's really not much debate. Sleep mode is designed to be safe and efficient. Your computer uses very little power and can wake up instantly. So for short breaks, sleep mode is usually the smarter move. But here's what most people don't realize. If you never shut down your computer or never restart it, performance can slowly degrade over time. Updates don't fully install, memory doesn't fully reset, and small glitches can build up over time. That's why tech experts now recommend a simple sleep mode. When you're stepping away, restart or shut down your computer at least every few days. So it's not one or the other, it's knowing when to do which. And that is something you should know. You know, our most consistent source of new listeners is when people like you tell somebody or share an episode and and talk up this podcast and get those other people to listen and then they become listeners. It is. Well, it's word of mouth. It's very effective and we appreciate it if you'd help spread the word. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. I know you like interesting and thought provoking conversations and ideas because you listen to something you should know. So let me recommend another podcast I know you will enjoy. It's the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan has a real talent for getting his guests to share stories and offer thought provoking insights. Over the years I've sent a lot of people to listen and I get feedback from people who are so glad I introduced them to the Jordan Harbinger show. Recently. He discussed Scientology and the children who are raised in that organization. It's a fascinating conversation and he talked with Dr. Rhonda Patrick about how to protect your mind and body from the modern world. And it's tougher than you think. I've gotten to know Jordan pretty well. We talk frequently and I tell you he is a very smart, insightful guy who does a hell of a podcast. Check out the Jordan Harbinger show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [46:07]
Hilary Frank
Hey, it's Hilary Frank from the Longest Shortest Time, an award winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. There is so much going on right now in the world of reproductive health and we're covering it all. Birth control, pregnancy, gender, bodily autonomy, menopause, consent, sperm. So many stories about sperm. And of course the joys and absurdities of raising kids of all ages. If you're new to the show, check out an episode called the Staircase. It's a personal story of mine about trying to get my kids school to teach sex ed. Spoiler. I get it to happen, but not at all in the way that I wanted. We also talk to plenty of non parents so you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, the longest, shortest time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or@lostestshortesttime.com.