Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Human 2.0
Human 2.0
When I worked for business-to-business software vendors, I often met companies that were simply out of date. They hadn’t caught up with the latest trends and buzzwords. They used inefficient processes and outdated business practices.
Why were they so far behind? Because that’s the way their software worked. They had loaded an early version of a software system (perhaps from my company) and never upgraded it. The system became comfortable. It was the ways they had always done it. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I’ve often wondered if we humans don’t do the same thing. Perhaps we load the software called Human 1.0 during childhood and then just forget about it. It works. It gets us through the day. It’s comfortable. Don’t mess with success.
Fixing the problem for companies was easy: just buy my new software. But how do we solve the problem (if it is a problem) for humans? How do we load Human 2.0? What patches do we need? What new processes do we need to learn? What new practices do we need to adopt?
As a teacher of critical thinking, I’d like to think that critical thinking is one element of such an upgrade. When we learn most skills – ice skating, piano playing, cooking, driving, etc. – we seek out a teacher to help us master the craft. We use a teacher – and perhaps a coach – to help us upgrade our skills to a new level.
But not so with thinking. We think we know how to think; we’ve been doing it all our lives. We don’t realize that thinking is a skill like any other. If we want to get better at basketball, we practice. If we want to get better at thinking, ….well, we don’t really want to get better at thinking, do we? We assume that we’re good enough. If the only thinking we know is the thinking that we do, then we don’t see the need to change our thinking.
So how do we help people realize that they can upgrade their thinking? Focusing on fallacies often works. I often start my classes by asking students to think through the way we make mistakes. For instance, we often use short cuts – more formally known as heuristics – to reach decisions quickly. Most of the time they work – we make good decisions and save time in the process. But when they don’t work, we make very predictable errors. We invade the wrong country, marry the wrong person, or take the wrong job.
When we make big mistakes, we can draw one of two conclusions. On the one hand, we might conclude that we made a mistake and need to rethink our thinking. On the other hand, we might conclude that our thinking was just fine but that our political opponents undermined our noble efforts. If not for them, everything would be peachy. The second conclusion is lazy and popular. We’re not responsible for the mess – someone else is.
But let’s focus for a moment on the first conclusion – we realize that we need to upgrade our thinking. Then what? Well… I suppose that everyone could sign up for my critical thinking class. But what if that’s not enough? As people realize that there are better ways to think, they’ll ask for coaches, and teachers, and gurus.
If you’re an entrepreneur, there’s an opportunity here. I expect that many companies and non-profit organizations will emerge to promote the need and service the demand. The first one I’ve spotted is the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR). Based in Berkeley (of course), CFAR’s motto is “Turning Cognitive Science Into Cognitive Practice”. I’ve browsed through their web site and read a very interesting article in the New York Times (click here). CFAR seems to touch on many of the same concepts that I use in my critical thinking class – but they do it on a much grander scale.
If I’m right, CFAR is at the leading edge of an interesting new wave. I expect to see many more organizations pop up to promote rationality, cognitive enhancements, behavioral economics, or … to us traditional practitioners, critical thinking. Get ready. Critical thinking is about to be industrialized. Time to put your critical thinking cap on.
Donald, Bernie, and Belittlement
Singing from the same hymnal.
What do Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have in common?
In addition to being old, white, and angry, they both use an ancient rhetorical technique known as attributed belittlement. The technique has survived at least since the days of Aristotle. It survives because it’s simple and effective.
Attributed belittlement works because nobody likes to be humiliated. If I tell you that Joe thinks you’re a low-life, no-account, I’ll probably get a rise out of you. What I say about Joe may not be true, but that’s not the point. I want you to feel humiliated. To accomplish that, I’ve attributed to Joe belittling thoughts about you. I want to make you so angry that you don’t even think about whether I’m telling the truth. I want to manipulate you into focusing your anger on Joe. I want to short-circuit your critical thinking apparatus.
The technique works even better with groups than with individuals like Joe. You can get to know an individual. Perhaps you already know Joe and you like him. That casts doubt on my veracity. But with a group – nameless, faceless bureaucrats, for instance – it’s easy to imagine the worst. They hate us. They look down on us. They take advantage of us. Belittlement works best when we can profile an entire group of people. It’s not logical but it’s effective.
So, let’s imagine the following quote:
They look down on you. They think they’re superior to you. They think you’re here to serve them. They think they can push you around. They’ve taken your jobs and your money and now they just want to rub your nose in it.
Would this quote come from Donald or Bernie? Well, … it depends on who “they” are. If we’re talking about immigrants and religious minorities, it seems like something the Donald would say. If, on the other hand, we’re talking about billionaires and fat cats, it’s more likely something that Bernie would say.
Note the rhetorical device. While talking to you, the speaker attributes horrible thoughts to other people. These are people who are easy to caricature. They’re also easy to profile: after all, they all think alike, don’t they? They’re also not here to defend themselves. Whether you’re Donald or Bernie, it’s an easy way to score cheap points.
By the way, I’m not an innocent bystander here. I sold software for mid-sized companies and often competed against some very big fish. I told prospective customers that, “The big software companies don’t want your business. You don’t generate enough revenue. They won’t give their best service. You’re just a little fish in a big pond.” It didn’t work every time. But when it did, it worked very well.
The good thing about attributed belittlement is that it’s easy to spot. Someone is talking to you about another group or company or person who is not physically present. The speaker attributes belittling thoughts to the third party. It’s a good time to say, “Hey, wait a minute! You’re using attributed belittlement to make me angry. You must think I’m stupid.”
Posture, Attitude, and Amy Cuddy
Power Pose.
Suellen and I went to the Tattered Cover bookstore (a Denver icon) last night to hear Amy Cuddy speak about her new book, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self To Your Biggest Challenges.
I’ve written about Cuddy before (here, here, and here) and use some of her work in my Critical Thinking class. We all have a general understanding of how the mind affects the body. Cuddy asks us to consider the reverse – how does the body affect the mind? Cuddy points out that the way we carry ourselves – our posture and body language – can affect our mood, thoughts, and performance. She introduces the topic quite well in her famous TED talk – the second most watched TED talk ever.
Cuddy writes that our posture affects our power over ourselves (as opposed to power over other people). When we adopt an expansive posture – making ourselves big – our power to manage ourselves and perform optimally increases. When we adopt a drawn-in posture – making ourselves small – we give away power over our own performance.
Cuddy has covered this ground before (here and here, for instance). So, what’s new? Here’s what I learned in last night’s talk:
- It’s not about outcomes; it’s about process – Cuddy gets thousands of e-mails from people who explain that they didn’t do well in a challenging process, like a job interview or an audition. But they’re not asking for advice on how to change the outcome. Instead, they’re asking how to perform the process better. This strikes me as being akin to decision theory — judging decision quality focuses on the process, not the outcome.
- It’s about your authentic self – when we are present, our body language and our spoken language reinforce each other. When we’re not present, our body language tells a different story than our spoken language.
- Two minutes is overemphasized – in her TED talk, Cuddy explains that holding an expansive posture – a power pose – for two minutes will change our hormones in positive ways. She explained last night that two minutes is not a magic number; even a few seconds is helpful.
- Animals helped us develop this idea … — Cuddy noted the influence of the naturalist Frans de Waal who explained, in his classic book, Chimpanzee Politics, how chimps adopt expansive postures to get what they want.
- … and we can, in turn, help animals – a horse trainer (@seriouspony) who was familiar with Cuddy’s work tried posture therapy on one of her Icelandic ponies who was suffering from “profound depression”. Here’s a video that shows the results.
- It has an impact on PTSD – Cuddy mentioned her friend and fellow researcher, Emma Seppälä, who has used posture therapy on combat veterans with PTSD. The results are encouraging.
- Gender – little boys and girls are equally likely to adopt expansive poses. But by the age of six (roughly) girls are starting to adopt more drawn-in poses while boys continue to be expansive. Cuddy suggests that, if we want to promote gender equality, we might start by changing this learned behavior.
- Imagination – it’s not always convenient to strike a power pose. Cuddy believes that simply imagining yourself in a power pose can be beneficial.
- Even the master needs reminders – Cuddy explained how an Internet troll had put her in a funk. Her husband reminded her to check and change her body language. She now carries a copy of her own book with a hand written note: “Remember to take your own advice”. Bottom line – we need to think about our body language; it doesn’t just change by itself.
- Where to next? – Cuddy’s many correspondents have noted that people on the autism spectrum and people with dementia both tend to adopt drawn-in postures. They make themselves small. Cuddy wonders if helping them learn to make themselves big would help.
Cuddy is a fascinating speaker – her body language definitely reinforces here spoken language. I recommend the book. Just remember that were you stand depends on how you stand.
How Many Friends Can You Have?
No point in making it bigger.
Three years ago, I wrote an article about Dunbar’s number and how it affects my business. To recap briefly, Robin Dunbar is a British anthropologist who studies primates and their social circles. He noted an interesting correlation – monkeys with small neocortexes (relative to the rest of the brain) also had small social circles. Monkeys with larger neocortexes had larger social circles. These findings became the basis of the social brain hypothesis – that our brains put an upper limit on our social relationships.
Dunbar plotted the correlation – it moved up and to the right on a two-dimensional chart – and projected it to larger primates known as humans. Dunbar’s data suggest that the “natural” upper limit for human social circles is around 150 people.
That correlates roughly with my consulting experience. Many of my clients are small software companies that call me when they reach approximately 150 employees. They’re experiencing growing pains and they need some help. I’m happy to oblige.
The data suggest that our brain capacity – and especially our ability to think abstractly – somehow limits the size of the social circles we can maintain. But what if there’s a simpler explanation? As we know, simpler explanations are usually better.
What if the cause is simply the time it takes to maintain relationships? It takes time and effort to maintain a relationship and keep it active. What if we could use advanced technologies to reduce the “time cost of servicing a relationship”? Would that allow us to expand our relationships and maintain larger social networks?
Professor Dunbar hypothesized that social media could reduce the time cost of managing and maintaining relationships. Thus, it’s possible that people who are active on social media could maintain larger networks than people who maintain only traditional, offline, face-to-face networks.
Dunbar also hypothesized that social media might influence the “distinctive series of hierarchically inclusive layers that have a natural scaling ratio of approximately 3.“ Previous research had shown that primates – both humans and monkeys – have concentric layers of relationships. For humans, the first and most intimate layer typically has five people in it. The next layer out typically has no more than 15 – or three times more than the first layer. Subsequent layers have 50 and 150 members. Each subsequent layer roughly triples the previous layer. (The innermost layer is often referred to as the support clique, the second layer as the sympathy group).
So, by reducing time costs, do social media: 1) increase the total number of relationships? and/or; 2) change the distribution or size of the relationship layers?
The short answers are: no and no. (The full research article is here.) Dunbar’s researchers took two large samples of British adults (using different sampling methods) and found that:
- The average social group size hovered around 150 – as predicted by the social brain hypothesis.
- The two innermost layers – support clique and sympathy group – hovered around five and 15 members, as found in previous studies.
- Heavy use of social network sites does not increase the total social group size. Nor does it appear to change the size of each layer.
- Women have larger social networks than men (regardless of social media use), “…with females generally having larger networks at any given layer than males.” The differences are small but consistent.
- Younger people have larger total networks than older people but the two innermost layers are approximately the same regardless of age.
What’s it all mean? We humans have “natural” limits to relationship networks that are largely consistent across gender and age groups and impervious to timesaving technical advances (at least in Britain). For me, this suggests that there’s no point in trying to grow our total network. It’s more important to invest in our innermost layers to enrich them and ensure that they don’t decay over time.
Mission to Haiti
Future president.
I’m happy to report that the neatest teenager in America lives just down the street from us. Rebecca Kite is 16 years old and she’s bright, cheerful, funny, capable, athletic, and very, very thoughtful. I’m sure she’ll be president of the United States one day. But first she wants to go to Haiti on a mission to help build a school. She’s been working hard in the neighborhood to raise the funds. I told her that, if she could write a good essay, I’d publish it here to promote her cause. She wrote a very good essay. Here it is.
I have a question for you. Do you remember the first time you understood a tragedy? The feeling of your eye brows forcing their way together into a heavy squint, your stomach queasy, and cold goose bumps sprouting up and down your arms?
I can remember the exact day I felt this sensation for the first time. On January 12, 2010, a massive earthquake annihilated Haiti, leaving nearly 220,000 people dead and 300,000 injured. With eyes peering through unfallen tears, I gazed at the television squinting heavily. The screams of pain and sorrow from the wounded and grieving filled the empty air of our basement.
Until this moment, I have never experienced what it is like to be an international citizen. I felt my ears get hot and my cheeks turn red, mourning for people that I have never met, yearning desperately to heal my fellow man but possessing no power to do so. That day, I learned the nature of sympathy and empathy as I cried myself to sleep.
A feeling like this does not just go away after the T.V. turns off. My sadness transformed into determination. I helped organize a school wide bake sale with my 5th grade class that raised $1000+ for the Red Cross in Haiti. I wrote an article about that bake sale that was published on 9news. I donated $50 of my money to the Hope for Haiti Fundraiser. Eventually, there was not much more a ten-year-old could do; my power was limited. I knew I was helping, but I still felt that I had more to give.
When I arrived at Colorado Academy, I found many opportunities to become an international citizen. I could spend my summer in Spain or host a Turkish exchange student.
While these are wonderful opportunities, none of them stood out quite like the “Hope for Haiti Trip in the Spring.” This project aims to build a school for the kids of Nordette, Haiti. According to the brochure, “the new complex will provide cleaner water, better sanitation, and a small medical clinic.”
The project is organized by The Road to Hope, a non-profit started by Rich and Lisa Harris who are parents of students at my school. The organization is dedicated to helping the children of Haiti have a brighter future. The ten-year-old inside me remembers that I yearn to help the people of Haiti in any way I can. Last month, I explained to the application committee how I wish to meet the people, and hear the stories of those I watched cry on television. How I wish to bring support and love to the people who suffered so intensely. How I wish to further strengthen the side of me that is an international citizen, neighbor, and friend.
I have been working for the past month to raise money for this trip. I sent flyers to my neighbors offering my services as a babysitter, dog sitter, house cleaner, and snow-shoveler. I’ve been working Fridays and Saturdays for families around town. I’m working hard and I need to raise the money before March 10th. The trip itself is March 11th to 17th.
I am asking for your consideration in helping me further develop as a citizen of the world. By donating money, you will certainly help me. More importantly, you will help children in Haiti. I would be eternally grateful if you would support my cause. If you’d like to do so, you can go to my secure Go Fund Me, by clicking here.
Thank you so much for reading this. Your support means so much to me.
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