unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

According to today’s guest, “ You can't study anything involving any creature, let alone human beings, let alone human beings in a business setting, whilst pretending that the biological forces that shape our behavior are somehow non-existent.” 

Dr. Gad Saad is a professor of marketing at Concordia University and the author of the books, The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature and Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. His work applies evolutionary psychology to the fields of marketing and consumerism. 

Gad and Greg discuss resistance toward evolutionary psychology in academia, practical applications of the field in marketing and business, and finally, the implications of parasitic ideas on society and the balance between empathy and scientific truth.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

The animus against evolutionary psychology

[06:10] Maybe I could mention just a few reasons why people have such animus towards evolutionary psychology. So, number one, there's something called the human reticence effect, which exactly purports that evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology should be applicable to every species, but human beings transcend those forces, right? Or it might explain why we have opposable thumbs, but surely don't use evolution to explain everything that's above the neck. Okay? In some cases, people could be a bit more flexible in saying, well, it explains very primal urges why I want to eat a juicy burger, but it surely can't explain higher-order reasoning. What do you mean? Where do you think our cognition comes from? And so, even though I'm completely used to, at this point, facing all the animus, it still surprises me because, to me, it should be banal and trivially obvious that, of course, evolutionary psychology explains our human behavior.

According to Dr. Saad, a good marketer is wedded to a solid understanding of human nature. 

[15:16] A marketer who decides based on their understanding of the human mind, they will create product lines. If it’s not weathered to evolutionary psychology, it’ll fail. 

On why people hate evolutionary theory

[20:52] There's a deeper reason why people hate evolutionary theory. I think it's because in many cases it attacks people's most foundational ideological commitment. 

Parasitic ideas that emanate from academia

I will be focusing on specific set of parasitic ideas that emanate from academia. And as it so happens, since academia is astonishingly leftist, those parasitic ideas happen to be originating, their genesis from the left. That doesn't mean that people on the right can't be parasitized. 

Recommended Resources:

• Richard Lewontin
• Stephen Jay Gould
• Homicide: Foundations of Human Behavior by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson
• Multitrait-multimethod matrix
• That’s Interesting! by Murray S. Davis
• Robert Trivers
• Popperian falsification
• Asch conformity experiments
• The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber
• Hugo Mercier on unSILOed

Guest Profile:

• Professional Website
• Profile on LinkedIn
• Profile on X
• The Saad Truth podcast

His Work:

• The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature 
• Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense
• The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life

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Why would religion be necessary for a liberal democracy to function fully as intended? What benefits does Christianity provide to society in tandem with democracy that would collapse if either of those pillars failed? 

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and also the author of several books and articles across various publications. His latest book is titled Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy.

Greg and Jonathan discuss the declining influence of Christianity in America, the historical symbiosis between religion and liberal democracy, and how that relationship has shifted over time. They explore the rise of alternative spiritual movements and the consequences of shifting toward a more secular society. Jonathan explains his concepts of thin Christianity, sharp Christianity, and thick Christianity, and the benefits of thick Christianity as exemplified by the Latter Day Saints. They also examine the political polarization within Christianity and the effects it is having on the makeup of the church.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

The core message of Jonathan’s book

[15:10] You've probably seen this in academia. They look at religion as the sum total of sociology plus demography and political leanings. Those things matter, but theology matters more. The Bible matters, and that remains within Christianity, a fundamental groundwork that it's hard to shop your way out of. I mean, you can. Of course, there's some pretty wackadoodle Christianity out there, but most mainstream Christianity is rooted in certain teachings, and those do provide some important ethical principles. The core message of my book is that the three most important central principles to Christianity, according to Christians, are also three core principles of liberal democracy. And you don't have to believe in Jesus to see that they're true and to see that they're important.

Is America ungovernable without Christianity?

[04:47] Religion is fading as part of American life. And that's great because religion is divisive, and it's dogmatic, and we'll just all get along better without it. I have never been so wrong. It turns out the founders told us this, but I forgot it, that Christianity, religion generally, but in the US that means Christianity- that especially means white Christianity, is a load-bearing wall in our democracy. And America is becoming ungovernable in significant part because Christianity is failing.

The crisis of authority

[36:22] Barna, which is a Christian research group, did a big survey of pastors a couple years ago. They asked if pastors had seriously considered quitting in the last year. 42% said yes. And the number three reason after, I can't remember number one and two though, were obvious, like low pay and high stress.Number three was politics.

Why Christianity and liberalism need to support each other.

[39:29] Liberalism needs that sense of rootedness and groundedness, that attention to higher transcendent things and core values and scriptures that are 3000 years old or 2000 years old, depending. It needs those things precisely because it is always changing and always churning.

Recommended Resources:

• Christianity
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World
• John Stuart Mill
• Alexandre Lefebvre
• Immanuel Kant
• Christian Nationalism
• American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order
• Louis P. Sheldon
• Family Research Council
• Barna Group
• Evangelicalism
• David French
• Equality Utah
• Russell D. Moore
• Tim Keller

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Brookings Institution
• JonathanRauch.com
• Profile on Wikipedia
• LinkedIn Profile
• Social Profile on X

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy
• The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
• The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50
• Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought
• Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul
• Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America
• The Outnation: A Search for the Soul of Japan
• Index of Articles

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The AI transformation of our world has already begun, and Silicon Valley has positioned itself to be home base. But how did the AI takeover happen so rapidly there? Who were the founders and investors who opened the floodgates? 

Investigative journalist Gary Rivlin has more than two decades of experience writing about the tech industry. In his new book, AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence, he gives readers an up-close look at the players behind AI’s dramatic rise to dominance in the tech world. 

Gary and Greg discuss some of the key moments in AI’s recent history, the role of venture capital in tech, how Silicon Valley's unique ecosystem lends itself to AI innovation, and what the future could hold for artificial intelligence. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Why startups find themselves working for big companies like Google and Microsoft

[04:19] I started this book thinking I'm just going to follow the startups, right? What company's going to be the next Google, the next Facebook? And by this time I was finished, I realized that the next Google was probably going to be Google. The next Facebook was going to be…Meta, this stuff is so expensive. So, the start of 2023, you needed tens of millions of dollars, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars to train, fine tune, and run these models. By the end of 2024, you needed billions, if not tens of billions. And how does a startup raise that kind of money? There are a couple that have, I mean, openAI just raised another $40 billion. Anthropic, I think, has raised about $20 billion, but they still have to raise more money because they're not profitable yet. And they're looking at several years without profit. I worry that these really innovative startups doing incredible things are going to have to be gobbled up just to survive.

Can an army of AI help you build a billion-dollar company?

[13:18] Something to understand I think that people don't get about AI is, it's not like it's going to do it for you. It's your copilot. It's your assistant. It's a really powerful tool that you could use just like a computer or a calculator or a camera is a tool. It doesn't give you much unless you give it a lot. So the way I find it to be effective is I'm almost stream of consciousness. Here's what I wanna do, here's what I'm thinking about. Here's my idea, here's how I want to frame it. And that's when I get a good answer,you know. Write a book about AI would be awful. But if I start giving it, quotations and describe characters and all that, it'll be something much richer. So getting back to the example, you still need a marketing person or two, you still need salespeople. I don't think people are gonna be persuaded by some bot saying, Hey, will you buy our product? Here sign up, a million dollar contract for three years. There still needs to be humans in the loop.

AI has been part of people’s lives for a long time. 

[18:04] AI has been part of our world. It was different in 2022, the end of 2022 when Open AI released chatGPT. It was a product that you can talk with and like you could feel the AI. And so suddenly it was much more real. It wasn't behind the glass. It was something that you could converse with.

Dual edge of AI

[26:35] A powerful tool for good is also a powerful tool for bad. And, you know, many people have lots of concerns. I'm not a doomer, but the use of AI weaponry using AI for surveillance, these things reflect the biases we have. So using AI to predict, [or] determine someone's sentence, whether or not we interview them for a job, that scares me.

Recommended Resources:

• Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World by Cade Metz
• Reid Hoffman
• Mustafa Sulyeman
• Michael Moritz
• The Social Network (2010) 
• Christopher Manning
• Marc Andreessen

Guest Profile:

• Professional Website
• Professional Profile on LinkedIn

His Work:

• AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence
• Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.—How the Working Poor Became Big Business
• Saving Main Street: Small Business in the Time of COVID-19
• Becoming a Venture Capitalist

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What is the benefit of adventure, the role of adversity, and the importance of narrative in shaping one’s experience of happiness? What are the larger areas of fulfillment that round out one’s well-being and shape one’s life experience? 

Shigehiro (Shige) Oishi is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and the author of the books Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life and The Psychological Wealth of Nations: Do Happy People Make a Happy Society?

Greg and Shige discuss the evolving field of subjective well-being, distinguishing between happiness, meaning, and Shige’s newly proposed third dimension – psychological richness. He discusses how these dimensions can sometimes conflict but also complement each other. They also delve into how culture, personality, and life choices like exploration versus stability affect psychological richness, and offer practical insights on how both individuals and organizations can cultivate a richer life.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

On why there’s a need for a third dimension to a good life

[12:01] Some people really don't like structure. Some people really don't like routines. Some people really like to explore the world and find something interesting, something new. So when you, for instance, look at the big five personality traits and which traits are correlated with the happy life and meaningful life, and actually one big part of the big five traits, openness, the experience, it's not really correlated with happiness or meaning either. So, given that right, a lot of personality psychologists think that there are five global traits because they are useful. They're functional. Maybe there's an evolutionary reason.

Sensation seekers struggle with reflection and growth

[24:38] If you are [a] boredom-prone person, then obviously I think you have to do something new. But when you do something new, I think one thing you can change here is the reflection. I think what sensation seekers do not tend to do is that just after having this adventure, [is] sit down, reflect upon, and savor their experiences. If you do that, I think the boredom, at least the frequency of the boredom will be reduced.

What is the optimal amount of psychological richness?

[27:51]  I think you could definitely pursue psychological richness too much, right? I mean, some people may think, "Oh, I have to do something new every moment, every day."But as I said, unless you can just reflect upon [it] and add it up in your psychological memorabilia or portfolio, it is not really adding up. So essentially, unless you can just reflect upon and remember these experiences, it doesn't work that well. I think too much richness is the situation where, given a short period of time, you experience too much that you cannot really process and remember.

On the human tendency toward familiarity—and its hidden costs

[16:21] Looking at all kinds of cognitive bias literature, I think there's a huge familiarity bias. I mean, Bob Zagonc found this mere exposure effect in the 1960s, and essentially we like familiar things, right? And also, loss aversion is a huge example.The endowment effect is the same thing. Once you own it, you think it's more valuable than the new thing, right? So I think all these things are biased towards the familiar and sure gain. And if you're trying to maximize happiness, that's great. That's the strategy you should take actually. BuEt that has a downside, such as we said, you don't learn anything new. Maybe your curiosity is not fully met and you're not adventurous enough to discover something.

Recommended Resources:

• Jeremy Bentham
• Subjective Well-being
• Happiness is everything, or is it?
• Eudaimonia
• Jiro Dreams of Sushi
• John Stuart Mill
• Blaise Pascal
• Marcel Proust
• Bob Zajonc
• Nick Epley
• Ed Diener
• Carol Ryff

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at the University of Chicago
• Profile on LinkedIn
• Social Profile on X

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life
• The Psychological Wealth of Nations: Do Happy People Make a Happy Society?
• Google Scholar Page

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What does it mean to belong to a tribe? How does cultural psychology offer insight into politics, organizational behavior, and leadership? How does tribalism distinguish humans from other animals?

Michael Morris is the Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership at Columbia Business School and also serves as Professor in the Psychology Department of Columbia University. Michael is also the author of the new book Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together.

Greg and Michael discuss the concept of tribalism, its historical and modern connotations, and how our evolved group psychology can both contribute to and resolve contemporary social conflicts. Michael emphasizes the importance of understanding cultural instincts like the peer instinct, hero instinct, and ancestor instinct, and how leaders can harness these to steer cultural evolution in organizations and societies. The conversation also explores real-world examples of cultural change, the pitfalls of top-down and bottom-up change strategies, and the critical role of managing cultural identities in fostering cooperation and successful adaptation.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

What makes us human is our tribal nature

14:22: We are the tribal animal. If we want to understand what distinguishes us, our brains are not that much bigger than chimpanzees'. Our brains are not bigger than Neanderthals'; they're smaller than Neanderthal brains. But what distinguishes us is that we have these adaptations for sharing culture that enable tribal living, and this wonderful force of tribal inheritance, of wisdom accumulating like a snowball across the generations. And it can be the generations of a nation, but it can also be the generations of a corporation or the generations of a motorcycle club. Generations don't have to be referring to the human lifespan. And so, that's our killer app. That's what makes us who we are. That's what made us the top of the food chain and the dominant species of the planet and solar system. So, we should not renounce our tribal nature. We shouldn't pretend that what makes us human is rationality, or ethics, or poetry, or something like that.

Why tradition is actually a change maker's secret weapon

19:02: Tradition can seem like an obstacle to change. And the traditionalism in our mind can seem like an obstacle to cultural change, but it's a change-maker's secret weapon.

How we learn from our community through peer, hero, and ancestor instincts

16:39 There are social learning heuristics, and I kind of label them in a way to try to make them more concrete and more accessible. I label them the peer instinct, the hero instinct, and the ancestor instinct. But I'm aggregating decades of research from evolutionary anthropologists and from a cultural psychologist about the fact that we tend to learn the culture that nurtures us, in part by paying attention to what's widespread. And that's peer instinct learning, by paying attention to what carries prestige. That's hero instinct learning. And by paying attention to what seems like it's always been the distinctive mark of our community, traditions, and that's ancestor instinct learning. And so we're sort of wired to form maps of our community in those three ways.

Recommended Resources:

• Tribalism
• E. O. Wilson
• Cesar Chavez
• Philip E. Tetlock
• Multiculturalism
• Polyculturalism
• Syncretism

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Columbia Business School
• MichaelMorris.com
• Wikipedia Profile
• Social Profile on X

His Work:

• Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together
• Google Scholar Page

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The term “woke” might be modern, but woke movements have been going on throughout history. And while an “awokening” is meant to further equality among systemically marginalized groups, they often can exacerbate existing social inequalities. 

Musa al-Gharbi is a sociology and assistant professor of communication and journalism at Stony Brook University. His book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, examines how professionals in the so-called symbolic capitalism space like media, nonprofits, and education have gained elite status through woke culture, and in turn, benefit from some of the inequalities they are morally aligned against. 

Musa and Greg discuss the origins of woke movements throughout history including what factors in society can lead to “awokenings,” how symbolic capitalists have become the new elite, the role of cultural capital in today’s world, and why the elimination of DEI programs and pushback against woke culture can sometimes accelerate a new “awokening.”  

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Can we be committed to seeking social justice and elite status at the same time?

12:52: It’s our desire to be an elite that often ends up winning out and kind of transforming how we pursue these social justice goals, so that we mostly try to pursue them in ways that don't cost anything for us, risk anything for us, require us to change anything about our lifestyles and our aspirations, and the aspirations of our children, and all of that stuff. And so that mostly pushes us into pursuing these social justice goals in largely symbolic ways, on the one hand. And on the other hand, it often leads us to expropriate blame to other people, who often benefit far less from the system than we do, and exert a lot less influence over institutions and so on than we do.

Has diversity become a status symbol instead of a value?

46:01: Diversity is great as long as its fellow affluent, highly educated people. But God forbid, if they want to build affordable housing in your neighborhood, that's a hard no.

On competition over status

18:41: One of the things that's interesting about competitions over status and cultural capital and things like this is that status—one—it’s actually more of a zero-sum competition.

So, for wealth, it's possible for everyone in a society to have a decent amount of wealth or a high amount of wealth. But for status, that's not the case. A situation where everyone had a high amount of status—the same status—would be a situation where nobody had any status. Status is more zero-sum. You actually can't give more attention, more time, more deference, and whatever to one person without actually taking some from someone else, because our attention is finite, et cetera, et cetera. And so status is actually more of a zero-sum competition.

Recommended Resources:

• Pierre Bourdieu
• Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern by Bruno Latour 
• Andrew Abbott
• Social Gospel movement..
• Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Stony Brook University
• Professional Website
• Professional Profile on LinkedIn

His Work:

• We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite

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What does a workplace look like where everyone can thrive and flourish? Once we know the makeup of that space, how can companies work to achieve it? When is it smart to rely on numbers and when will strict adherence to data lead you astray in the quest for equality?

Iris Bohnet is a professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard and the author of the books Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results and What Works: Gender Equality by Design.

Greg and Iris discuss the concepts of workplace fairness, representation, and the indicators of a fair work environment. They delve into implicit and explicit biases, systematic interventions like structured hiring and promotions, and the effectiveness of diversity training. Iris emphasizes the importance of focusing on systemic changes rather than trying to 'fix' individuals. They also touch upon the necessity of role models, the impact of organizational culture, and the balance between fairness and business objectives. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

We should stop trying to fix people and fix our systems

09:17: We should stop trying to fix people and fix our systems. And this goes way beyond bias in terms of gender, race, or anything other in terms of demographic characteristics or social identities, but just general in behavioral science. We have by now identified more than 200 different types of biases. It's incredibly hard to unlearn them, and so that's why many behavioral scientists, again, beyond the question of fairness, now focus on changing the environment. So basically making it easier for all of us to get things right.

Meritocracy and the need for fairness

15:01: There is no meritocracy. Without fairness, we have to have that equal playing field to allow the best people to end at the top. And so, I think meritocracy is a valuable goal to have. I don't think we have ever lived in a meritocratic world.

Representation as an indicator of fairness

02:14:  Representation is not a dependent variable per se, independent of anything else. But, as you said, it is a bit of an indicator of whether what we're doing truly creates a level playing field where everyone can thrive.

On the value of larger diverse talent pool

16:07:  We now benefit from a larger talent pool. And that's the argument behind it—the larger talent pool has two implications. One is we literally have a larger talent pool, so we can draw from more people, and it goes back to the quote that you offered earlier: we're more likely to find the right person for the right job at the right time. And secondly, and that often is overlooked, we can also allocate that work better, that, in fact, Sandra Day O'Connor finds exactly the job for which she excels. And that fraction of GDP protector growth is about 14%. So I think that's the macro business case that I always have to remember—that, in fact, more talent is just good. And giving the talent the chance that they deserve and that our organizations deserve is both the right thing and the smart thing to do.

Recommended Resources:

• Intersectionality
• Claudia Goldin
• Proportional Representation
• Harvard Kennedy School

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at the Harvard Kennedy School
• Profile on Wikipedia
• Profile on LinkedIn

Her Work:

• Personal Webpage
• Amazon Author Page
• Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results
• What Works: Gender Equality by Design

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Are the algorithms that exist in our daily lives getting so smart that they know us better than our parents or our spouses? How do we balance the convenience and efficiency of this technology with privacy and consumer protections? 

Sandra Matz is a professor at Columbia Business School and the director of the Center for Advanced Technology and Human Performance. Her book, Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior examines the link between algorithms and psychology. 

Sandra and Greg chat about the bright and dark sides of psychological targeting, its applications in marketing, politics, and mental health, as well as the ethical considerations and future implications of using algorithms for personalized interactions.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Even the smartest algorithms slip up

24:01: When we talk about these algorithms, and I'm guilty of that myself, it always seems like, well, yeah, if they can predict your personality with high accuracy, that makes sense, but it still makes mistakes, right? So, accuracy is always captured at the average level. So, on average, we kind of get it right most of the time. But that still means that, at the individual level, we make a lot of mistakes. And those mistakes can be costly for the individual, right? 'Cause now you are seeing stuff that is completely irrelevant. Also costly for companies, 'cause now you are optimizing for something that's not actually true. So, I think if you can really think about application—I think the more you can turn this into a two-way street and conversation, the same way that this works in an offline world, right? If you kind of suddenly start talking to me about topics that I care nothing about, you're going to get that feedback, 'cause either I'm not going to see you again, or I just tell you we just talk about something else. And companies oftentimes don't get that because they don't allow users to interact with some of the predictions that they make. And I think it's a mistake, not just from an ethical point of view, but even from a kind of service, convenience, product point of view.

Are algorithms making us boring?

11:09: There's something nice about having these algorithms understand what we want, but I also do think that there's the risk of us just becoming really boring.

The trouble with signing away our data

49:29: The way that we typically sign away data is, we consent, but not because we understand it. And I think some of it is just that technology moves so fast that just keeping up with technology is almost impossible. So I think about this 24/7, and I have a hard time, and you also have to have this understanding of — not just in the here and now — like, a fully rational person would say, "Here's all the benefits, and here's all the downsides." And now I kind of make this rational decision that kind of maximizes utility. But we don't understand the downsides.

Recommended Resources:

• Big Five personality traits
• Cambridge Analytica

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Columbia Business School
• Professional Website
• Professional Profile on LinkedIn
• Center for Advanced Technology and Human Performance

Her Work:

• Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior

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If critical thinking is the equivalent to daily exercise and eating a good diet, then today’s guest has the vaccine for misinformation viruses. 

Sander van der Linden is a professor of Social Psychology in Society at Cambridge University. His books, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity and The Psychology of Misinformation delve into his research on how people process misinformation and strategies we should be arming ourselves with to combat it. 

Sander and Greg discuss the historical context and modern-day challenges of misinformation, the concept of “pre-bunking” as a method to immunize people against false beliefs by exposing them to a weakened dose of misinformation beforehand, and the importance of building resilience against manipulative tactics from an early age through education and awareness. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

How misinformation spreads like a virus

24:25: A virus wants to replicate, right? It wants to replicate itself. So, misinformation isn't a problem—you know, if it can't spread. But it has to find a susceptible host. So, for me, the viral analogy is that misinformation wouldn't spread unless it can find a susceptible host. There's something about human psychology that makes it susceptible to being infected with misinformation, and then our desire to want to share it with others. And so, that's kind of where it aligns for me.

Misinformation is about more than just obvious falsehoods

02:26: Misinformation is about more than just obvious falsehoods—it's also about misleading information. So, in a way, it's designed either unintentionally or intentionally to dupe people because it uses some kind of manipulation technique, whether that's presenting opinion as facts or presenting things out of context.

What is the antidote for misinformation?

12:20: Ideology correlates with cognitive rigidity, right? The more ideological people are, the more rigid and the more closed off they are. So, in some ways, the antidote to misinformation and conspiracy theories is being open-minded about things—not attaching yourself to a motivated sort of hypothesis—and that does strongly predict lower susceptibility to misinformation.

Why misinformation goes viral while facts don’t

27:15: So, research shows that misinformation explodes moral outrage. Specifically, for example, misinformation tends to be shocking, novel, emotionally manipulative, highly moralized, and polarized; it uses conspiracy, cognition, and paranoia, right? Whereas factual, neutral news uses none of those things. It tends to be boring, neutral, with no loaded words, right? And so, that tends to not go viral. Most people don't engage with fact checks—that's why fact checks don't go viral. So, in the cascades, when you model these things, there are clear differences in the virality of misinformation and the virality of neutral, objective information. And so, the infectiousness of these two things is very different.

Recommended Resources:

• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Pizzagate conspiracy theory 
• Asch conformity experiments 
• Robert Cialdini
• William J. McGuire
• “Wayfair: The false conspiracy about a furniture firm and child trafficking” | BBC News
• South Park
• Cognitive reflection test
• Actively open-minded thinking

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Cambridge University
• Professional Website
• Professional Profile on LinkedIn

His Work:

• Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity
• The Psychology of Misinformation

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What are ‘untimely questions’ and why do they become common blind spots in philosophy? Why is philosophy a team sport?? How does Moore’s paradox highlight the differences between truth and belief?

Agnes Callard is a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and the author of the books Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming, The Case Against Travel, and On Anger.

Greg and Agnes discuss the essence of living a philosophical life through the Socratic method. Agnes emphasizes inquiry, human interaction, and rigorous thinking as processes that require effort and dialogue. Their discussion touches on the distinctions between problem-solving and questioning, the complexities of human preferences, and the societal tendency to convert deep philosophical questions into more manageable problems. 

Callard also reflects on philosophical engagement within various contexts, including education, relationships, and ethical frameworks. The episode highlights the value of philosophical inquiry not just as an academic pursuit but as a fundamental part of living a meaningful life.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Philosophy concerns itself with problems not questions

05:41: I think philosophy concerns itself not with problems, but with questions. Where the thing that you actually want is the answer to the question, and you're not trying to answer the question so that you can get on with something else that you were doing anyway. That's what you were doing—you were on a quest. And both problem-solving and question-answering are, kinesis, in Aristotle’s sense? They're emotions; they're processes. So they're similar in that way, but t hey're different in that, with a question, there's a sense in which the process leads to a sort of self-culmination, where the answer to the question kind of is the culmination of the process of questioning. And it's—we can almost say—you really fully understand the question when you have the answer, so that there's a kind of internal relationship between the question and the answer. Whereas, with problem-solving, anything that gets the problem out of the way is fine. You don't need a deep understanding of the problem. Like, if you were trying to move the boulder and someone else is like, "Look, you could just go around it," then that'll be fine.

Philosophical training means simulating an opponent

29:27: What philosophical training is, is training in simulating an interlocutor who objects to you—right? That's what you do in philosophy.

What gets you to the top won’t always keep you there

33:38: I think answering requires less training than asking; it requires less kind of experience in philosophical activity. And so Socrates had to relegate himself to the Socrates role because he was dealing with a bunch of people who didn't know how to do philosophy yet.

Why the Socratic approach matters in philosophy

39:54: Your philosophical, ethical system is going to constrain how you live your life. That's kind of the whole point of an ethical system. But I do think that the Socratic approach is one that can be inflected as a way of doing—a lot of what you were doing in your life. The Socratic approach says, do all that same stuff inquisitively. Now, there may be some things you can't do inquisitively—don't do those things. Or it may be that there are some things that you can't do inquisitively, but you simply have to do them to survive or something—like, as long as they're not unjust, that's fine. But the thought is like, well, let's take romance or something. Let's take politics. Let's take death, right? So those are the three areas I talk about. Can you be a philosopher and be doing those things? And Socrates, I think, goes out of his way to try to say, yes, that is, it's not just that those things can be done philosophically, but they're done best philosophically.

Recommended Resources:

• Socrates
• Socratic Method
• Aristotle
• Turing Test
• Large Language Model
• Moore's Paradox
• Parmenides
• Utilitarianism
• Kantianism
• John Stuart Mill
• Jeremy Bentham

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at The University of Chicago
• Profile on Wikipedia
• Social Profile on X

Her Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life
• Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming
• The Case Against Travel
• On Anger

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