The perils of mindreading (E)

0:00Pema Chodron was at a meditation retreat. It was a silent meditation for several days, and she was sitting a few cushions away from a guy who kept making a clicking sound. Every couple minutes, he would click. It was driving her crazy. She couldn't concentrate. She couldn't find her breath. During a break, she stood up to go over to the gentleman to give him a piece of her mind. As she walked over, she realized that there was a radiator right next to him, and he hadn't been clicking at all. It was the radiator that was clicking. As you could probably guess, the rest of the day went just fine, without incident, because Pema didn't mind that the radiator was clicking.

0:52Hi, it's John from Glasgow in Ecosse. And you're listening to a special episode of Akimbo's archives.

1:22game because I understand what the computer is doing. All it's doing is going through the dictionary and laboriously matching whatever words it has against whatever spots are available. Chess, on the other hand, is different. When the iPad moves against me in chess, I say things like, oh, he wants me to move my knight. Who's he? Does it really want me to do anything? Once it is complex enough, we imagine that there's a voice inside. Human beings evolved to be mind readers, and sometimes it's really helpful, and other times it gets in the way of the culture we seek to build. We are mind readers the way a poker player has to be a mind reader.

2:12It is impossible to drive a car without having some ability to guess what the other drivers are about to do. And this is a short rant about how we imagine that other people or other things might be thinking. When the iPod first came out, it had a button on it called Shuffle. And shuffle was a pretty big deal, because as Gary Goleman has pointed out, shuffle on a CD player was sort of useless. Get the shuffle. You do not know what in the Sam Hill is coming up next when you hit shuffle on a disc. Every time a song ends, cliffhanger. Oh, which one of these songs is going to pop up next? Which one of these ten songs?

3:09The idea that you could shuffle among eight or ten songs. But once you had a hundred or a thousand songs, shuffle was really powerful. But the thing is that random means random. And if enough people are using the shuffle button, some people are going to hear a song a couple times in a row. That's inevitable. And so when the complaints came in, people saying, well, the iPod knows something about what I like. it's trying to guess what I want to hear and it's playing something over and over again, it's broken. What Apple ended up doing was breaking the random feature and making it sort of random instead.

3:51Because we couldn't help but imagine that there was a little man inside, a homunculus. It might be a little woman inside, but homunculus translates into the little man inside. When most people describe how their brain works and thus imagine how everyone else's brain works and how the brain in the computer works, what they usually do is say, there's a little person inside and that person decided to do X, Y, or Z. So we're begging the question. We keep pushing it one level back. It's not my brain that did it. It's the little homunculus inside the brain that did it. And the answer to the question, well, what's inside the little homunculus is left undiscussed.

4:41But what we know after hundreds of years of philosophers arguing about this is that there is no little person inside each of us. And there is definitely no little person inside my iPad playing chess against me. All there is is code, just software. If it's in our brain, it's wet software. If it's in the computer, it's dry software, but it's software nonetheless. And so this voice we have in our head, this voice is something that is happening after we are choosing to do something. Professor Adam Zeman has done some fascinating work. on a condition he calls aphantasia. Aphantasia describes a person who is unable to have a mind's eye, who can't visualize.

5:35If you said to somebody, imagine a sunny day at the beach, well, you and I can probably visualize a sunny day at the beach. Even if you've never been to the beach, if you've simply seen a sunny day on the internet, we can imagine it. But some people, maybe 1 % of the population, can't. These are high-functioning people. Blake Ross is the co-founder of Firefox. He used to be one of the heads of product at Facebook. Blake Ross, when he turned 30, realized that when people were talking about visualizing stuff, it wasn't just a figure of speech, that everyone but him could do it. And he has never been able to do it.

6:22It's just missing from his internal vocabulary. And in the same way, it's entirely possible that there are humans, not just computers, that don't have a chattering, endless narrative in their head because we don't need that narrative to make decisions. We make decisions, and then we have the narrative. If you encounter a great athlete, it is certain that they are not saying to themselves, rack it back, follow through, I wonder what they're going to do next, I need to do this, I need to do that. That's not what great athletes do. Great athletes are present. They simply hit the ball. The Inner Game of Tennis is one of the best nonfiction how-to books I have ever read.

7:15I don't even play tennis. But what it does is it helps the reader drop the narrative. So back to our insistence that we can read other people's minds. So here's the thing. What we do when we read other people's minds is we are imagining that we are them. So, for example, well, if I wanted to get a job, I would do X, Y, and Z. Since this person isn't doing X, Y, and Z, they must be lazy. They must not really want to get a job. Or we reverse engineer it. This person just did that to me. Well, if I was out to get me, that's what I would do. So, therefore, they're out to get me. We've invented this entire narrative about the voice in their head that may or may not be there.

8:12If we seek to market to people, if we seek to make a change happen, we must begin with practical empathy. And practical empathy means I don't know what you know. I don't believe what you believe. I don't want what you want. And that's okay. Because if we can't add, and that's okay, then we have no chance at all of finding common ground, of earning attention and respect, of being able to interact with other people. If, on the other hand, we can realize that people come with their own stuff and that they may or may not have a voice in their head the way we have a voice in our head, and that that voice in their head may very well be saying something completely unrelated to you and to what you're about, then we don't spend a lot of time getting hung up on imaginary mind reading that isn't particularly accurate.

9:14Here's another way to think about it. Chess is a very structured environment. If someone makes a move in chess, within the rules of chess, you can make some very accurate guesses as to why they did that. and over the course of a game, a successful chess player will act in a way that is somewhat predictable, at least a move or two ahead of time. Compare this to what happens if I say to 20 people on my team, let's all get to Cleveland the best, most direct, most efficient way we can. Go. Assuming enrollment, assuming good intent, assuming domain knowledge, will all 20 of them go exactly the same way?

10:02Will all 20 of them leave on the same flight from the same airport? Will some of them drive? Will some of them reinterpret the instructions in ways that are totally valid but different from what I would have done? What if it's not, let's get to Cleveland as fast as we can? What if it's, let's publish a book that becomes a bestseller a year from now? How many pathways forward are there for that? The more complicated the world we live in and the more amorphous the goal, the more likely it is that new tactics will arise, new strategies will surface from well-meaning people enrolled in exactly the same journey.

10:45Because there's always new decisions to make, and we make those decisions based on the culture as we see it, based on the definition of the problem as we see it. So there are people trying to read our minds, trying to make a product they're sure we're going to buy. But they're not us. They don't see what we see. They don't want what we want. There are politicians running for office who are making promises to everyone. Some people hear those promises and they say, that's exactly what I was hoping for. And other people hear those promises and say, what, are you kidding me? And so the distinction that we have to be able to work with as people who seek to change the culture is pretty simple.

11:31Your mileage will vary. Your mind-reading skills are weak. Everyone's mind-reading skills are weak. We are pretty good with a certain group of people with whom we have experience of figuring out in the next five minutes what do we expect a certain kind of person will do. But once you try to explain how people will act an hour from now, a week from now, a month from now, when they are part of a heterogeneous population, you will be wrong. You will be wrong because we're not that good at mind reading. Alex Rosenberg, in his book How History Gets Things Wrong, talks about this in enormous amounts of detail.

12:18It's a much bigger issue than history. That what we have to understand is that mind reading came along after our ability to function as organisms. that mind reading isn't effective against masses of people who are organic. And now that computers have become sufficiently sophisticated, it's not even effective with them. What does Google want when it does a search? Well, we have a guess, but there is no wanting. It is simply the work of 3 ,000 engineers feeding an algorithm that none of them take responsibility for anymore. It doesn't want anything. It simply is. Why did the sunflower turn to follow the sun?

13:07Well, you can say because it wants more sunlight. The actual answer is because it evolved so that when certain chemicals are released by photosynthesis on certain parts of the plant, other parts of the plant extend in a way that causes the sunflower to shift. The sunflower has no idea what sun is. There's no narrative going on in its head. Why does the dog run to the door when you come home? Well, you could argue the dog truly loves you, loves you the way you would love you if you were a dog. Or you could argue that neurons in its brain fire in response to the sound that's coming from the door opening, and those cause it to salivate, because usually when you come home, you feed him some dinner.

13:55It's Pavlov. Ring a bell? And you don't know that the dog has a narrative because the dog doesn't speak English, and we don't know what language it would be talking to itself in. There's an important distinction to be made here then, and it's this. That smart marketing strategy often uses sentences like, people who believe X are more likely to engage with an idea that makes them feel Y. So, for example, if you grew up looking for a strong, certain leader, then a politician who waffles and says, well, we'll need to study that, is unlikely to get your vote. That's a form of mind reading. However, it's based on the action that we expect the person to take, not the narrative that they actually have in their head.

14:51And that distinction is super important because the narrative in your head is irrational, repetitive, sort of loopy, and you would never be able to write it down. And yet, once we've listened to it enough times, we assume that everyone's narrative is organized and thoughtful and rational and strategic. That's just not true. Our narrative is simply the babbling of a play-by-play announcer trying to keep up after we've already made a decision. So what we're getting at here is this. You need to practice your mind reading as long as it is working for you. To be able to make assertions about how people who have acted in a certain way in the past are likely to be motivated by a certain action or story or situation.

15:41But if that mind reading isn't working, don't blame the person you're trying to serve. Realize that what you have failed to do is understand with empathy who they are, what they believe, where they're going, what their history is, and most of all, what they want. Because we have the ability to bring the right story to the right person in the right way to help them get to where they're going. What's the narrative of someone who is born without the ability to hear? Do they have a voice in their head? We're not sure. Probably not. Certainly not the voice you have in your head. So mind reading is great in the sense that it works.

16:27But when it stops working, which is most of the time, we need to set it aside. We need to look at what people actually do, what computers actually do, what systems actually do, instead of imagining that there's some sort of intent behind it, that there's someone who means well but just made a mistake. There's someone who's truly evil and now they are showing their true self. Both of those behaviors might be exactly the same. All that's different is that we were wrong about our mind reading and now we're coming up with an excuse as to why we predicted incorrectly. This prediction thing, it's getting in the way of us doing our best work.

17:11And our best work doesn't involve trying to guess what the bluffer across the table who doesn't know they're bluffing, who can't predict their response or reaction a week from now anyway. We don't need to spend a lot of time on that unless it's helpful. And the minute it stops being helpful, helping us help them, then we need to put it aside and instead do the work we are simply proud of without the narrative. Hey Seth, it's Maria. Hey Seth, my name's Kyle. Greetings, Seth. This is Stephen out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here. Hi Seth, this is Anupam. Hi, this is Caitlin.

17:48Hi Seth, warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Seth, this is Rex. Hey Seth. Hi, this is Vasilis from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is... And that completes my question. Thank you so much for submitting your questions. We love to get them. If you visit akimbo.link, that's A-K-I-M-B-O dot L-I-N-K, and click the appropriate button, you can submit your question, and I'll do my best to get to it. This week, a really juicy one about giving people the benefit of the doubt. Hey, Seth. This is Victoria in Atlanta. I can't thank you enough for describing this problem so brilliantly and challenging all of us to participate in its solution by more consciously choosing to give others the benefit of doubt.

18:39Besides leveling up, finding the others, earning trust, and all the wonderful things we Akimbo alums seek to do, I'm curious what other authentic signals we can send to people when we don't fit their stereotypes. What else can I do besides change my name to Victor or acquire a posh British accent? Thanks. It begins with this. We can either assume that we are getting more credit than we deserve, or less credit than we deserve. That we can go into a situation saying, people will have high expectations. I hope I don't let them down. Or we can say, I deserve more of a benefit of the doubt. It's not fair.

19:26It's not right. But it's really common, really common for lots of people to be overlooked. So if I know that I'm not getting the benefit that I think I deserve, what to do about it? I think the answer might be, once you begin from that position, what signals can I intentionally send that will help me get that benefit? So for example, if you are pitching a proposal to somebody, I don't know, in the construction industry, it shouldn't matter whether or not you have good handwriting. It shouldn't matter how your proposal is delivered. That often when we criticize marketing, we're talking about the surface trappings and how ridiculous they can be.

20:18But people will judge. We all do. We judge everything. We judge a restaurant by how clean the counter is. Wait, you're not eating on the counter. We judge a barber by how good his haircut is. Wait, he didn't cut his own hair. We judge. We judge all the time. So you will be judged. The question is how. If you have a hotmail address, then yes, people who get your email may judge you. They may judge you as an old school stalwart, or they may judge you as a Neanderthal who is behind the times. Your email address is up to you. When you go to an interview, how you dress will cause you to be judged. Nancy Lublin's original charity Dress for Success was all about helping people who didn't have the money to get nice clothes for an interview, to get the clothes that they needed for that interview.

21:18But it's more than these obvious things. It's all of the little shortcuts. A friend of mine got turned down for five jobs in a row. She was young and she looked younger. So I persuaded her to get a pair of glasses with flat lenses. The lenses didn't do anything. The glasses were a typeface that she could wear on her face. It was a signature look. Well, maybe it was the confidence. Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was the glasses. All I can tell you is that on her next interview, she got the job. But I think it goes way beyond these surface trappings. If you show up, not with a resume, but with 18 pages of references from people the person you're trying to pitch has heard of or heard from before, that will change the benefit of the doubt.

22:14If before you even get there, the person hears from two or three people they know of who vouch for you, that will change things. If your LinkedIn page is well-groomed, if your GitHub is filled with examples of code you have actually written and submitted, if you have left behind a history of generous contributions to the organizations you work with. Looking for an entry-level job as a marketer? Well, why not demonstrate how good a marketer you are by first raising$50 ,000 for a charity you care about? You don't need anyone's permission to do that. You get to exercise your marketing chops and demonstrate to people that you've got them.

23:05When you say it this baldly, it seems even more inherently unfair than it is. but let's broaden it out a bit. The whole idea that marketing presentation is about the empathy of understanding that others don't want what you want, don't see what you see, don't believe what you believe. If you're running for president, it doesn't make sense that you're judged by how tall you are, but you are judged by how tall you are. It doesn't make sense that you have to wear a suit or if you're a woman that people are judging you based on how you dress. It is not relevant to how you do your job. And yet, if you want to get elected, there aren't a lot of choices.

23:48That the nature of choice means that we pander all the time. We don't assume that people are going to make a rational, fair decision. We simply have to go forward seeking to make things better, seeking to change the rules at the very time that we have to be engaged with for who we are and what the other person is seeking. So it makes me uncomfortable to say that, yes, in fact, it works better in our Western economy if your email looks a certain way when you are trying to approach a new person, because we are all being judged all the time. I'm not sure what the alternative is. I think that the way we change the culture is through our actions.

24:37When people see that women, people of color, people who have been traditionally overlooked are leading, are changing things, then the culture changes, not the other way around. Sad but true. We have to work with what we've got, which is to create an opportunity. Justice always comes too slowly. But I think the way we get to justice is by acting as if, by demonstrating performance, by making positive change in the small, so that the culture, which is always a little bit behind what's actually happening, comes to the conclusion that giving the benefit of the doubt to someone who they might not have given the benefit of the doubt to before is actually the smart thing to do.

25:26So the benefit of the doubt unfairly gives credit to people who don't deserve it. But people who do deserve it, if they are willing in the face of this unfairness to over-index on other things that lazy people aren't willing to do, we can start to level the playing field. And one last thing, two people I have worked with have shortened their names so that they actually don't sound like women when they're sending email. and I know this isn't right, but it works. We've demonstrated again and again that it works. And until people who are missing out because of their prejudice start to realize the cost of it, it's going to keep working.

26:17So I'm in favor of figuring out how to be seen for the work you are capable of doing. And if that means putting on a show, well, in the short run, it's going to help you get to the long run that we all seek. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.