Timandra Harkness; Arguing persuasively, Steelmanning and the Personalized Century

Timandra Harkness [00:00:00] The South Wales and North Wales police forces, and the North Wales Police Commissioner, who is an elected person who oversees the police, was very much like facial recognition. Technology is terrible. We're definitely not gonna use it. It's awful. But the guy from South Wales, the South Wales elected police commissioner was very like, this is a great technology and we're totally gonna use it.

Vance Crowe [00:00:21] I am Caleb Zi, a precision ag specialist living in Aurora, South Dakota, and you are listening to the Vance Curl Podcast. Teandra Harkness, welcome to the podcast.

Timandra Harkness [00:00:32] Thank you. It's great to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:00:34] You come highly recommended from one of the most intriguing people in all of the world that I know. Claire Fox, who said, after she heard me talking about Steel Manning, she said, oh, if you wanna know about how to have great disagreements with people where you know, better ideas come out of it, you have got to talk to Commander Harkness. And so here we are, and I'm excited to hear about how you developed an expertise that somebody like Claire speaks so highly of.

Timandra Harkness [00:01:03] I, it's high praise, I must say. Claire is one of the people I most admire in the world, and a lot of what I know about disagreeing, well, I learn from her from doing events with and watching her do events and run debates. So we, we go way back. I guess I, my interest in, I mean I've always done like chairing, hosting, facilitating, whatever you wanna call it, like running, running arguments in public if you want. I've done that for a long time and I just kind of picked it up naturally because part of my work is dealing with ideas. I've done do journalism and radio, but also in live events. And then the other part of my work is I come from performing. I used to, at one point I was a professional standup comedian, and so I used to mc comedy clubs and, you know, keep the audience in the right mood to welcome the next comic on. And turns out the two things actually fit really well together because you're both of them, you're trying to get a good atmosphere in the room so that magic happens between people on stage and people off stage. But everyone actually, everyone contributes to the events. So that's, that's how I kind of got into it. But then it felt like the, the more that the state of public disagreement got worse, if you like the, the, the worse the state of public argument got, the more I felt this is something that we need to pay attention to in itself and try and find ways that people can have better arguments as in not, not pull back from disagreeing, but disagree in a constructive way and, and a way that respect other people.

Timandra Harkness [00:02:44] I think you can respect other people without necessarily respecting their opinions even, or certainly without agreeing with them. But there's a bit of an assumption these days, I think, to think that if someone disagrees with you, it's because they haven't really understood what's going on, or maybe even they're a bit stupid or that they're bad people. And I think that's, it's really unhelpful, but it's also just not the case. Mostly if you bother to listen to someone who disagrees with you, they have their own reasons, which to them are really good reasons. And if you want to change their mind, you really have to know why they do think what they think. And you can only do that by listening to them. So I am a bit dismayed that this, this is now seen as kind of a radical idea to, to actually say, if someone disagrees with you, that's the person you need to talk to and you need to listen to them. And who knows? I mean, maybe you are wrong. You know, I've, I've had things where I go and go, you are wrong about this 'cause blah, blah, blah. And why do you, why do you think that? And then they come back and tell me, and I go, actually, you've got a point there. Yeah, maybe I'm gonna have to rethink this.

Vance Crowe [00:03:54] Yeah. And in a way, if you can get over the ego part of being wrong, it's actually more fun to have this thing stripped away from you and then be like, now I know this new thing. You know, I, I had like the weirdest paradox happen a few months ago. I had been hired to address a college scientific group and they said, well, we're so excited, we want you to talk about it. And we got it all signed up, we did the contract, everything was ready. And then a few days before they go to print the material and send it out, the, the administrator who'd not been involved in it at all wrote me and said, I see in your title you're using the phrase steel manning and you know, with a more gender inclusive language, this feels uncomfortable to a lot of people. So I'm wondering if we could call it a different term other than steel manning. And the reason this is a paradox is because now I have to actually take the time to steal man, the argument against the idea that I should change the name of Steel Manning. What would you have done?

Timandra Harkness [00:05:01] What would I have done? Well, I would've said it's called steel manning because it's the opposite of straw manning. And if people recognize the idea of a straw man argument, then this is a starting point for a different way of thinking about it. So yeah, it's a tricky one because a lot of these things very much about context. I think that there are contexts where you, you want to say, you, you are wrong to be concerned about this because you're missing the point of what this is about. And, and I think quite often now things about language people, people get upset about a word because they assume that it's connected with another word, but actually it isn't. It comes from a completely different route. But then there also comes a point where if somebody's gonna be an obstacle to the, the subject you wanna talk about, then is it worth having an argument about? So if they're really, really upset about steel planning then, and you can think of another word that says the same thing, then you know it, then maybe call it something else. But then it's in, in itself perhaps an interesting topic to raise to say, I was originally gonna call it this and I was asked to change it because of this perception and what do people think? And you know, does it, does it matter if you hear a word that doesn't normally include you? And, and why do you think that? It was interesting actually, 'cause I've just said the RA radio series on BBC, on radio four called Steel Manning.

Timandra Harkness [00:06:34] And that was, we originally called it that radio works very, very slowly in terms of commissioning. So we, we called it that. And that was a follow up to an earlier series I did called How to Disagree, A Beginner's Guide to Better Arguments. But we, we particularly wanted to use, you know, the technique which we go and talk about the steel manning technique. So we called it that and then it, and then it went up and then it, and then the word came back down. It's like we we're not sure about the title and actually it was just because they didn't think people would know what it was about. They said, is there another title that will explain more what it's about? And so we came up with different title and then the controller VO came back and went, no, actually I, I really liked the title because I thought it was kind of intriguing. So we went back to it. But yeah, I mean it's obviously, it's not, it's not saying any men can have arguments, is it, it's saying there's this old idea of a straw man where you build a straw figure which is really weak and argue against that. And you can, you know, like you must have the three little pigs story that's not just a unique pig.

Vance Crowe [00:07:36] Yes, of course. Yeah,

Timandra Harkness [00:07:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they, well I know sometimes I talk about things and they're like, no, this is a weird British thing. We do not have that here. So yeah, it's that, isn't it, you build a house of straw, big bad wolf comes and blows it down and it's, it's that idea. You build a straw man argument and then you blow it down. Whereas if you build a, an argument out of steel to argue against, then you know that your argument is strong if you can, if you can beat that. So it's, it's nothing to do with the gender of the person arguing.

Vance Crowe [00:08:07] I really struggled with it. So I, you know, at, at first I was, I felt that emotional kind of like f you, right? Like I have precise language, this is, you know, this is what we agreed on. And then I had a friend that I, I brought it up to like my small network of people and said, what do you guys think of this? And my friend was like, well, if you go look at the Google, you know that whatever that graph is where you put in a word and you see what it's

Timandra Harkness [00:08:31] Usage

Vance Crowe [00:08:32] Is, right, the

Timandra Harkness [00:08:32] End. Yeah. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:08:33] And, and he was like, it is relatively new, so you're not actually talking about a, a term that's been, you know, endemic in the world. But the challenge that I ran up against and the reason I eventually said this is the title, and if you don't want it then that's okay, but this is what we agreed to. I just will back out was that it, I, every term I tried to use that would replace, that would lead people further away from the ideas that would help them learn how to do this. And Steel manning is actually difficult to do. Like it is one of those arts, not unlike learning how to do standup comedy or not, unlike learning how to play an instrument. Because at first you understand the concept. I'm gonna take the other person's argument and I'm gonna make it as strong as I possibly can and then argue against it. But when you get into the nuance of steel manning, it takes real practice and you're going to fail. And so if you take an idea and say, but we're gonna call it this other thing, then the very thing I've been asked to do, help young people be prepared for a world where they can push back on people that are against the science that they're publishing, then I'm not doing them any favors. So I don't know if I did the right thing, but I definitely hammered on it as hard as I could.

Timandra Harkness [00:09:46] Yeah. And did they accept that in the end?

Vance Crowe [00:09:49] Yeah, I think 'cause there was no time left. I don't, I don't think I won an intellectual debate. And, and I like, so I think that that's why your connection between steel manning and comedy is so interesting because like there's something to do with comedy where you have to be present and you have to be acknowledging what the other side is saying and thinking and, and, but it's gotta be in that moment. And so I like when you got into comedy, you couldn't possibly have known it would, it would take you to this world of, of steel manning, right?

Timandra Harkness [00:10:19] No, no. I mean, no, it's, it's gotten me all sorts of things. It also kind of led in a roundabout way to me going back and studying maths and statistics and I'm now a graduate statistician. I would never have foreseen any of that. But no, I mean I I, I got into comedy I think because I, because the bug got me and I wanted to try it, and then I found that people laughed at me and I, and I couldn't stop. And you know, basically, I think similar to a lot of people, but that's really perceptive what you said about you have to be present and you have to acknowledge because I think a lot of people when they start out in comedy, they think that the important thing is to write funny jokes. Now obviously you need funny jokes. You can't, you can't get away with indefinitely being on a stage as a comedian and not having funny jokes. But actually that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is the rapport. Rapport between you and the audience, the relationships between you and the audience. And a lot of that depends not just on you projecting yourself and coming on with an air of, I'm here, I'm funny, I'm really charismatic, you should listen to me. But actually exactly what you just said, acknowledging what is happening in the room. Because sometimes you will misjudge something and you'll, you'll make a joke or something that people it, that it goes a bit far maybe for that particular audience or maybe something else has happened in the room with that audience that you're not aware of. And so, and so something that you thought was a little light joke actually turns out to hit a nerve or you just, or you just must misjudge the mood.

Timandra Harkness [00:11:55] There's, there's a lot of variation between live audiences. I've seen a lot of comics who, like me, started off really in a, there were a lot of comedy clubs in London with quite similar audiences, city audiences, quite politically soft, left liberal. So we tend to agree on things and often the comics would be from the same background. And so I've got this wonderful actor who loves it, la la la and then you go outta London, maybe only a few miles to a small market town and do the same jokes and people are sitting there going, well, we don't find that funny at all. I remember a night after, it was after an election night in the UK and the Labor party, which, you know, the left, the left party roughly, I had just won. And so everyone in, everyone in London, everyone in in Islington North London was, was terribly happy. And, and we went out to this, again, it was a market town not that far out of London. And I just thought, you know, I am not gonna assume that all the people in this town voted for the labor government because they're quite different people. And the comedian before me went on and was all this, ah, ha ha is Nick Gray, you know, labor of one. Like really frosty, really frosty, like yeah, you can't assume that everyone thinks the same. So anyway, sorry to come back from what you were saying. So that ability to actually listen and sense and see what's going on for the other people, I think is just as important as being able to write funny things and, and the ability to acknowledge it, the ability to go.

Timandra Harkness [00:13:31] And I would've ended up talking to myself in the audience's voice. I, I used to make, I think I made jokes about some jokes about the royal family. And that would, that would always be a bit like, oh, is this, are they gonna come with me on this or are they gonna be a bit offended? And I would end up going, no teandra, we are all monarchists and we're going to take you outside and chop off your head and that would be fine. And then they would go, okay, alright, we can see that you read the room. You, you, you could see that we didn't agree with you on this. You've acknowledged that, that's fine, we can be friends, let's move on. But I, but I actually hadn't really consciously thought of that until you said that, but but you're absolutely right.

Vance Crowe [00:14:09] I mean, and I think with the steel manning and the being present in the moment, like I I often say like if you are ever in a situation where you notice the other person is raising their voice with you, it's because they're, they don't, they're not even aware most of the time that they're doing it. But it's an unconscious thought that thinks, well if they're not agreeing with me, it must be because they haven't heard me and therefore I have to get louder. I have to put more emotion. I have to, I have to tell them, alert them to the idea that you should be present here. And that steel manning allows people to feel like, okay, this guy actually really does know my point of view and so I don't have to fight through to get to, to make sure that they understand what I'm saying. And I, I've never thought about it in this comedian way because I'd never, but having that feeling and that rapport with the room is the exact same thing. If you're gonna change anybody's mind, you're not gonna do it if you don't have rapport.

Timandra Harkness [00:15:04] Yeah, exactly. You're not gonna change your mind, their mind by just talking louder. I mean this is like, yeah, it's famously the thing the English are meant to be really guilty of is traveling around the world, possibly to countries that we've invaded in the past and not speaking the local language. And when people reasonably don't understand us speaking English, we, we talk slower and louder. I mean that's, that's a joke. I hope it's not always true, but that is, that is the joke. It's like, ah, why they didn't understand me speaking the language

Vance Crowe [00:15:37] I speak, they don't,

Timandra Harkness [00:15:38] I know I shall speak louder and slower. Like it's somehow their fault that they don't understand. Yeah, that's, that's really well observed.

Vance Crowe [00:15:47] So when you're doing steel manning as a, as a production, right, you're putting together a series, the challenge is that you're doing this over a long period of time and like you likely don't have a moment or maybe you do, where you're like, oh my mind's been totally blown about this, right? Like, you come at it slowly. What was it like to try and translate the idea of steel manning into something that takes a long time to put together?

Timandra Harkness [00:16:14] Well, it was partly challenging because each episode was only 14 minutes long. So you had to compress a whole argument, a whole theme into 14 minutes. And, and obviously we recorded longer and edited down, but even so, it's quite tight. So we, we played around with different format ideas and what we ended up with was, the idea is that I would basically, I would try and steal man things that I, that I thought as in try and find somebody to disagree with me with the strongest possible arguments against what I thought on five different topics. And then, but, but then there would be a kind of a staged process where first of all we'd have an initial like sparring match if you like. Well we just kind of get the sense of what are the key points that we disagree on, but then send them away to get their arguments strengthened up even more. And then they come back with their argument strengthened to, to, you know, try and gimme a good hammering intellectually. And, and then see if I did change my mind, or even at least go, okay, I haven't changed my mind, but I can see that my arguments weren't good enough so I'm gonna have to do better. And what we ended up doing was that we would send them away to be coached by someone who disagreed with them. So it was kind of, we were putting them slightly through the same process. We'd get somebody who agreed more with me than with them to give them, and somebody, one of them said the like from behind enemy lines, giving them the insider tips.

Timandra Harkness [00:17:50] And that was quite funny. And obviously I didn't hear this at the time 'cause that would've been cheating. So I kind of have an initial conversation, send them away to get coaching, which I didn't hear, and then they would come back with the best arguments and some of 'em were really honest and said, oh well I got that argument of Kevin who told me that would work. And some of them weren't. And it wasn't until I listened back later, I went, why didn't he use this other argument? Because I would've really found that hard to answer and he didn't. So that was,

Vance Crowe [00:18:20] That's brilliant. That that's definitely like, you know, and it makes me think about the, the sensation you have when you're arguing is that I must win right now and that right now is what matters. And just to have that time delay and then to have somebody be thinking about it and then planning to come back together, you inherently would have better discussions. In fact, the person is probably more interesting the second time

Timandra Harkness [00:18:46] Mostly. Yeah. Although I think there was one person actually who was so good the first time that it was almost like she couldn't have got any better. But yeah, it's definitely, and it, and it happened over a few weeks altogether, so relatively compressed, but people certainly had at least a day or two in between to think about it. And so did I to have to think about it. And they were by definition quite thoughtful discussions because for, for me, they were all things that I had thought about quite a lot, which is why I felt like it was, I had enough of an opinion to be worth putting on the radio and then we would deliberately find the person that we thought was absolutely the best, the most informed, the most articulate person on the other side. And we were very lucky people because it's quite the, what

Vance Crowe [00:19:35] Are some of the topics that you, that you, that you hammered through?

Timandra Harkness [00:19:39] Okay, so for example, should the police be able to use facial recognition technology routinely as part of policing? And my view is they shouldn't, they should be able to use it in very particular situations, but they should be able to make a case and get a judge or whoever to, to say that it's particularly allowed on this occasion because it's proportionate. And in the UK it's, I think we're at a slightly earlier stage than you are in the states in, in discussion about this because the police have kind of started using it a bit of the quiet and then a few people have started protesting about it, but it's not really become a big issue. But the, but there is one police force that has been quite gung ho about using it. It's been quite like, this is great, we're gonna use this. And it's in South Wales because we have our, our police forces are, they're, they're all kind of separate. They, they go by area but they're kind of separate from other governmental bodies. It's a slightly weird, it's almost like a federal police force. And so there's, and Wales is interesting 'cause there's the South Wales and North Wales police forces and the North Wales police commissioner who is an elected person who oversees the police was very much like facial recognition technology is terrible, we're definitely not gonna use it. It's awful. But the guy from South Wales, the South Wales elected police commissioner was very like, this is a great technology and we're totally gonna use it and, and we're not ashamed.

Timandra Harkness [00:21:12] And, and so, and we got him, we got the South Wales police commissioner to basically come and argue with me and then to strengthen him up, we got in a guy that I'd met in California who ch now chairs the Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission. It's called Brian Hofer. He's a, he's an attorney, but he's been very active in privacy campaigning and in fact he now, so he was involved in San Francisco banning the use of government use of facial recognition technology and he's gone around and advised people, so they had to do it over zoom obviously, but so we got him to, to coach our police commissioner guy and people like that. I actually felt it was quite good of them to take it on and come on board because you're asking them in public to get involved in an argument about something that is quite important policy for them and to be very open about their, their methods of arguing, if you like, about, you know, the way they make their case. Whereas I think in the real world, people like that are more likely to go off in private and go, well we want to do this, how are we gonna put this across to the public? So it sounds fine, not even in a sneaky way, but just that, you know, that's politics is you go, we wanna make our best case in public, but the but the stuff about how we make the case, we're gonna keep private.

Vance Crowe [00:22:42] I think that's like the, the exact challenge with cancel culture, right? Like if, if you make it so people don't have a place in public for them to air out their ideas, it's not like they're gonna stop having ideas. They're only going to have those ideas around people that already agree with them or already agree with shades of what they're saying. And so the echo chamber is real, and I've definitely watched it happen to myself where you start with the kernel of an idea, but the only people you can talk about it with are people that are just like you that already agree that, you know, are not going to leak that idea out. And eventually that idea gets warped and turned and bent and it's not good. But if you try and take those ideas out into the public, you you'll be, you know, take torn apart just for trying to have them in general.

Timandra Harkness [00:23:26] Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I do think that's a real danger and, and I also, I just, I notice it with people who never get their ideas challenged because their ideas are just widely considered to be self-evidently good. So I, I've done some radio series called Future Proofing with a guy called Leo Johnson, who's, he's very into environmentalism and sometimes there'd be a program, I think we did one on the future of energy and he was very like, you know, we should just all go renewables and solar. And, and I was like, well, you know, those, those are good, but they have limitations and this is why we should also go for things like nuclear, which was actually, that was another topic in the steel manic series was nuclear power. And, and sometimes we would get into arguments and I would see that he was just not used to having to argue a particular case because he'd never met anyone who was prepared to say, I disagree with you on this. Because it was either people who just went, well, I don't like the sound of that, but I haven't really got a coherent case. Or people who were like, well I don't know, I'm just gonna keep quiet because everybody thinks this is good and I don't wanna look like the bad guy. And actually if I actually said, but you know, I don't think nature has an inherent value. Nature is valuable because humans value it. So that's why nature has a value.

Timandra Harkness [00:24:58] It's because we humans value it. And if humans weren't here, there would be no value to nature because there would be nothing to value it. And, and he was just baffled that anyone would say nature had no inherent value. He'd never, you could tell nobody'd ever argued with him on that point. And, and I just think that's, I think that's really bad because let's say I'm definitely not right on everything. I'm sure there'll be things that I will in future years look back and go, I was wrong to think that. But you, you have to test, you have to test your beliefs by having people in good faith really makes

Vance Crowe [00:25:37] Sense. Well, I I am totally in, I spent five years as a spokesperson for Monsanto. So many people view this company as pure evil. And what I would find was I, you know, thought that I had to go down to the prison gym and pump iron and become so well adapted to this argument and understand every little nuance before I went out to the public to speak. And what I realized when I encountered people was that they literally had never met anyone that was like, no, I think GMOs are, are, you know, really positive and they have these other benefits to get rid of herbicides and hear these things like never Yes. And so for them, they, they're, they literally, it was like water to them. It was, everyone knows GMOs are bad. Everyone knows that organic is inherently good. The only thing we're trying to figure out is how can we make organic cheaper and quit letting industrial companies run the world with GMOs. And, and so like anytime they encountered some different idea about that, it was almost too easy. Like I really did expect that I was gonna be like, you know, boxing and sparring all the time. And I had to realize that like my coming in that way only only made it worse. In fact, I just had to just gently be like, Hey, there's another way of thinking about it. And it would kick off all these discussions.

Timandra Harkness [00:26:53] Yeah, I can imagine. That's exactly, it's another one of those, those conversations where, I mean, you know, I think it's always been that way. Certainly I look back when I was younger, I, I thought nuclear power is terrible and all the reasons why I thought it was terrible were just, yeah, you know, you go and you hang around the right people and they, and they give you all the reasons you're like, they're good. But actually it did just come from, well that was the kind of thing that people like me believed and the people that I hung out with believed. And it, you know, and it fits with a lot of instincts, which are, you know, nature is lovely and invisible dangers are not good. You know, it's like kind of very basic things and all you have to do is plug those into nuclear or GMOs or whatever and it, and it's a, and it's a very easy thing if you don't have somebody coming back and saying, but look, what are we actually after here? Are we after providing enough energy for everybody in the world to live the kind of, you know, the kind of life that you and I live where we have electricity and hot water and we're near a hospital and we can talk to each other across thousands of miles and all this, if so then we're gonna need a lot more energy. So how do we go about getting it? And then it becomes a practical question or you know, with GMOs, are we after a world where we waste less food, we lose less of it to insects, people can make a living farming and we can all have access to tasty, nutritious food, a variety of food at different times of the year.

Timandra Harkness [00:28:25] Well, you know, if we agree on that, then it becomes a practical thing of, of how and what are the advantages and disadvantages. Of course then the interesting thing comes that sometimes you don't agree on those basics and you realize that when people say I'm against these things, what they actually mean is to me, the purity of food or the purity of our relationship with nature is more important than providing enough food for everybody.

Vance Crowe [00:28:53] Yeah. I find that that,

Timandra Harkness [00:28:54] You know, perhaps they go, well if there's, if there's not enough food for all the people, perhaps we need less people.

Vance Crowe [00:29:02] And I think that's why like, you know, there's that freeze in philosophy. Like the very first day you go to take logic class, they say the he who controls the definition controls the argument, right? And you think about like, when you start thinking about what is it that we want, however you define what that is, whatever you can get everybody or like what is good or what is, and you have these nebulous vague terms that normally don't get defined that without those definitions you will always argue at cross purposes because the, the thing that the other one side is trying to get to has nothing to do. It's totally divorced from what the other side wants.

Timandra Harkness [00:29:39] Yes. And and I think, I mean mean that's one thing I find interesting that sometimes, sometimes arguments are not the argument they initially appear to be. So sometimes they will appear to be a pragmatic argument about how you get something or what's an acceptable level of risk. And then actually when you start to pull it apart, you realize that's not the argument. The argument is what are your fundamental priorities? Is it about all human beings having plenty of something or is it about some idea of purity or, or or whatever it is. And, and I think conversely, sometimes you get arguments that appear to be principled arguments but actually are about different interests in society that you know, what's good for you isn't always good for me and so on. So I think for me, that's always one of the important things to tackle at the, at the start is to go, let's see if we can dig down and by as you said, trying to define what, what is the thing that we're arguing over. You might actually find that the agreement is one layer below that the, the, the disagreement rather is, is actually below that the disagreement is on what it is you are arguing over what is the thing that we both want? Is there a thing that we both want? Maybe there isn't, maybe we want completely different things and that's why we disagree on this seemingly.

Vance Crowe [00:30:57] And then the be the more interesting argument is the one underneath the surface. Like if you can find out what are you actually arguing about, that's when you start saying, oh, that person literally has a different worldview than I, not not just that like they don't understand the nuances of economics in the way that I do, where they don't understand, you know, how farming works in the way that I do. They they literally want something else as the end result of, of where they're going.

Timandra Harkness [00:31:22] Yeah, exactly. And, and you know, and that's always gonna happen obviously, but I think we're not always honest about that. I think we sometimes, but I guess, I mean, yeah, it's like what you just said, I guess about controlling the argument. If you frame the disagreement such that nobody is gonna question what it is that you fundamentally want, then you're always fighting on the, the, the battlefield that you choose and, and the other person is never gonna win because you fund, they have been forced to accept the goal that you had in mind.

Vance Crowe [00:31:57] Yeah, and I, so there's a concept and I I'm not sure if you've ever heard of the intransigent minority, it's the idea that Nasem Taleb talks about,

Timandra Harkness [00:32:07] No. So

Vance Crowe [00:32:07] This is, this is worthwhile to explore. So Nasim Taleb talks about this concept that we think the world changes because if, if all ideas have some like bell distribution where most people are kind of in the center, they're like, hey, whatever, you know, the we like, we wanna policies that are against climate change. And you think, well the way that that changes is that the mass of people move from point A to point B or they shift in one direction. But he says that's not actually the way that it works. The way that culture changes is that there is a small group of people that will not accept any other solution. So they will say, this is the thing that I demand and I will cause all sorts of problems if you don't agree with it. So an easy one might be vegans or anti GMO people, right? They can say, I demand that my food not have GMOs in it, I will not accept it. And so if you are, say for example, doing a, like a bake sale and you're going and you're looking at like, oh, I've gotta pick up some brownies to make for this bake sale. You pick one up that's just Betty Crocker, you make the brownies, you show up, they go to sell 'em. And the intransigent minority person is like, I will not participate in this whatsoever. If there are GMO brownies, what are you trying to kill everyone? I won't participate that they may still sell them there, right? But the next time you go to the store to make brownies for the, for the bake sale, you're gonna be like, look, if I get the GMO brownies than Sue is gonna lose her mind. So it's easier for me just not to do this. And then you shift a little bit and then that ultimately is how the, the, the tables are almost always slanted in favor of the group that absolutely refuses to negotiate at all.

Timandra Harkness [00:33:49] That's so interesting. Yeah, I I'm not sure that's always true though. I, by always, I mean, I mean I think there's a certain amount of that says something about the here and now that I think as, as societies now as certainly as kind of, you know, developed western societies, we are quite geared up to accommodate in ent minorities because we are quite geared up to say that people getting what they feel is important to them is really important and it's so important that it's reasonable to reorganize great chunks of society around that however unimportant that seems to the rest of us. Now obviously there's, there's a really good side to this, which is things like religious toleration. It's like just because only a small minority of people follow a particular religion, it doesn't follow that you should go, well tough, you're gonna have to live your entire life in ways that transgress your own fundamental beliefs because it's very inconvenient for the rest of us to provide what you, what you want and what you need. So I think, you know, in, in that sense it's a very good development that in fact we can be actively tolerant of people with quite niche beliefs and values. But, but I think there's also an unhealthy thing about it, which, which is a kind of relativism that says, well what do we lose if we all give up the, you know, if we all give up a future where we eat butter because some vegans think that that's a really important value, even though the rest of us don't actually think that really they haven't convinced us and they haven't made the case, then I, I kind of feel like we are laying ourselves open to giving up things that might be important.

Timandra Harkness [00:35:47] Whether those are freedoms or, or, or values that are more universal. If we don't actually think, well what's the, you know, what, what are you asking the rest of us to give up by this? And and are you asking the rest of us to give up? I mean, because that's the other thing is, you know, lots of people are quite capable of having their own beliefs and go, well this is my belief and this is how I'm gonna live. But you know, you, you get on with it. It's, I'm kind of thinking, I suppose 'cause one of the other steel manning programs was about whether we should all be vegans and it's got this wonderful woman to make the case that we should she called egs just really, really thoughtful and yeah, really made me actually think about the moral basis of it. And that's interesting for me because I spent years being a vegetarian. I started when I was a child, so I was a vegetarian for 18 years. And, and, and when I started out it was quite unusual. I mean certainly veganism was almost unheard of. I knew a couple, but they were quite odd. It was unusual thing, being vegetarian was unusual enough. I ate a lot of omelets for many, many years. There was not this thing where you'd go now and you'd go to absolutely any restaurant or fast food chain and there will be something from vegetarians or vegans. It wasn't like that at all. But there was no sense that just because I had got this thing that other people should rearrange their lives. For me it was like, okay, well that's fine, but you know, we're not gonna rearrange society for you.

Timandra Harkness [00:37:21] Whereas now I think there is this sense of actually this is my belief and it's not enough that you should give me elbow room so that I can live as I want, but actually you all have to live as I want you, you all have to accommodate and and value my beliefs. And of course you then get, you then get situations where two incompatible belief systems come into conflict because both of them want other people outside of their own belief group to, to live according to their beliefs. And and we don't seem to have good ways of dealing with that now. We don't seem to have any kind of idea that there are shared civic values, if you like, that we can agree on and go, okay, well, you know, toleration is important, but freedom to live as you want and not as someone else thinks you ought to live is also part of that. And therefore, you know, we everyone should have this much room but not encroach on, you know, whatever it is. We, we just don't seem to have that space for letting the tranent minority get on with it, without everybody else going, oh, oh, so do we, do we all have to give up better then

Vance Crowe [00:38:41] And, and we, and we have this like, you know, democracy is not all together different from mob rule if you don't have free speech, right? Like the, the thing that keeps democracy from being just the mob getting together and saying we've got 51% and so everybody else has to endure whatever we believe the major limiting factor there is the ability to argue and you, you did a video or I saw a video that about the personalized century and about how people are using technology and I found myself like falling down into the, i i only, I was, I had a set amount of time I could research you, but I started watching this personalized century and it was a extremely insightful because I think that some of the things you're talking about are what are guiding us down a path towards a mob ruled democracy as opposed to a robust and and exciting heterogeneous society.

Timandra Harkness [00:39:39] Oh, well I'm glad to hear that because I've got a book proposal out at the moment on that very topic. So I'm hoping that, hoping that's gonna be my next book. Yes. I think, I think that is part of the problem, I think, and it's that we, we have the sensation that the past was a mass society, so our, maybe our grandparents lives, they lived as part a mass society and everybody got, you know, same size fits all and were treated as masses and you know, healthcare and warfare and marketing and everything was, was done to people on mass and it was all a bit faceless and, and, but now it's the 21st century we've emerged as individuals and everyone can express themselves and isn't this great? But actually what I realized, right, and I kind of started from the technology and then, and then moved zoomed out and went, Hmm, well actually it, that's the sensation, but it's not actually true because a lot of these things we are still treated as part of a mass. It's just that what used to be, I mean they used to segment in about a hundred years ago, they used to segment the market so they'd go, oh, we're gonna market this to, you know, farmers in the Midwest or to factory workers in Chicago because we know that they're different sorts of people and they have different amounts of money and different concerns and different things they wanna buy. So you would be targeted, but in this very broad brush way now you are targeted according to loads of really niche things like what you last searched for on the internet or it, I mean obviously still things like your age and where you live and your income, but things like, well if you're on the internet, what device are you using?

Timandra Harkness [00:41:21] Because we can make assumptions about you based on, you know, are you using an Apple Mac computer or an old laptop or whatever. And so we get the sensation, it's all personalized, but actually it's just that, it's just mass marketing, but the niches are tiny. But but from our side of it's much worse because we're not part of a mass because we're doing all these things as an individual. We don't get the support and the solidarity that we would get from being part of a mass. So we don't, we don't get to confer with each other and go, I mean you think of the, the poor Uber drivers who Uber keep trying to say they're not workers. We, we have a, we have a free contract with them. It's like, well I don't know, you set the rates and tell 'em where to go. And so it sounds like they're workers, it's just you don't wanna pay them any sick pay or anything. But the Uber drivers, they don't all go to work in the same place. It's not easy for them to confer with each other and go, I'm getting this, what are you getting for this? Don't you think we should organize and do something about this? Because, because we're doing things as individuals. So I, I do think that's part of the problem that we are, we we're doing everything as individuals. We're quite atomized. And so if you think about how, how public debate happens, it's very easy because you're doing it through social media that you fall into a niche of people who think like you and then, but then you do, when you do encounter people who don't agree with you, it you suddenly feel like your whole identity is threatened.

Timandra Harkness [00:42:56] It's not just, oh, here's some of the different opinion. It's like, well my identity now depends on being seen as somebody who thinks this.

Vance Crowe [00:43:04] I mean that's, that's the fascinating part about social media, right? Like it turned what could have been a meritocracy or some sort of other thing to our conversations being honor culture where where if somebody besmirches my reputation, I will be, you know, people will look down on me, I may be unfollowed, I may lose social status. And when we had institutions like churches and community groups, the, the thing was you might have your beliefs but you had to moderate them because if you were gonna see this person in church next week, so if you completely obliterated them in an argument this week, then next week you've gotta see her again. You know, like, so you had to find a way to moderate what you're thinking and then that allowed you to also hear other ideas without them being threats against who you are as a, as a social symbol. And that, that to me is like, then you get into these weird kind of, exactly to your point of you're an individual, you're thinking like an individual, but you're also a part of this mass. You're being marketed in this weird way. Like I think so much about the way we are bonded together as human beings has changed in the last 20 years as to be nearly impossible to understand.

Timandra Harkness [00:44:18] Yeah, I I think that is the big, big change. I mean, you know, obviously lots of things have changed in the last a hundred years, but I, I do think that that is a massive, massive change that our collective lives have been so eroded and yet we can connect through technology especially, but it's always as individuals. So we have this completely different relationship, not only with institutions and and so on, but also with each other. It, it was interesting actually, I was at a kind of a virtual conference over the weekend and somebody was talking about their research into debate on social media and how they'd gone into the research with all these assumptions about how it's social media, that's terrible, that makes us all so angry. And what they'd actually found was that it wasn't so much that it was that the way we used social media, which came out of kind of the way society is, is, is run now. So they said, we realized that people don't go into social media either to discuss things or to have their opinions validated. They go into social media to build their identity and their identity as part, you know, as individuals and also as part of the, the group of people they agree with. And that's why the exchanges rapidly get so heated is precise, is because of that, you know, your, your identity is your opinions. So if someone disagrees with you, it it is maybe, maybe we should bring back dueling. Maybe that's the answer that if you, if you, if you are, you could only be that rude to people on social media if you are prepared to go out with maybe swords rather than pistols where it's like actually you've gotta meet and have a sword fight before you're allowed back on Twitter.

Vance Crowe [00:45:57] So the technology that I think is going to rock our world again, probably is dramatically a social media that I don't see people talking about is virtual reality. And just last night I, you know, got together a group of people. We have a, i I run a network called the Articulate Ventures Network and we have an underground bar. So if you're a part of the network, we'll send you a link and whenever you want you can pop in there with a group of people. So last night there were, I don't know, maybe seven or eight, maybe 10 people there. And you see what happens is that people break out into clusters. 'cause there's two different rooms in the bar. And if you're standing far enough away from other people with your avatar, you can hear them talking like in a bar, but you're able to carry on a conversation without being interrupted. So as discussions happen, people come and go, but you are aware that other people are listening to you and that you're, you have to give a break for air. You have to turn and talk with these other people. And it's, I don't think it's going to be the panacea or solve everything, but it is way different to have a disagreement in a virtual reality space where you can turn and look at people than, than anything you just see just blankly on your com on your phone, like through Twitter or Instagram.

Timandra Harkness [00:47:10] That's really interesting. I was, yeah, I was the, the end of this virtual conference, they did a kind of end of conference thing in a, in a platform called Gather, which was quite interesting. It's not virtual reality, but it is set up so that there's, there's a kind of, there's a very crude grid plan space. So it's more like, I don't know, not even, I think not even as sophisticated as Minecraft. People are probably like a very early computer game, but you've got little squares and you make your little avatar and you can move around the squares. But then when you get close enough to people, then their pictures pop up like a, you know, a bit like a zoom conversation and then you can hear each other, but when you move away, you stop hearing them. So it is, it's the closest thing I've seen to like being in a physical space with people where you can wander over and wander off again. And, and it does have that nice thing of you can, you know, like at a real party you can vaguely see who else is there in the distance, but you can, you can see and hear the people that you are, you're close to. But I think the virtual reality would definitely add something to that. 'cause there are, there are all those subtle, normal cues that you get in real life, like eye contact and body language that you can literally read the room, you know, like we were saying earlier, you like you, you, you can get a sense of not just the very literal, I say this, you say that, but how, you know, how's this going down? Am I making people uncomfortable? Are they making me uncomfortable?

Timandra Harkness [00:48:41] Are people interested? Is somebody dying to come in and and argue with me now? I'd be really interested to, to see that. I mean obviously I hope that, we'll we'll soon be back in real rooms with real people, but there also are advantages to the virtual connection I think because you don't have to, I mean, you know, here you and I, however many, what, thousands of miles apart and yet we're, we're having a very natural conversation and I I I think that won't go away because it's really nice to be able to bring in people regardless of distance or, you know, people who've got three kids at home and can't just up and off and travel hundreds of miles just for a couple of hours meeting can be involved in things. So that, I mean

Vance Crowe [00:49:29] That's, it's an interesting thing because I think when we were all excited about the internet at first we thought, oh well, you know, the next time somebody's making a case for the Iraq war, then I'll as a citizen be able to get on the internet and find a citizen of Iraq and we'll be able to talk and figure out like, are do you guys really have a dictator? Should we be sending somebody over? But that's not at all what ended up happening. Right, exactly. What you talked about with the personalized century and, and people being in these like clusters on their own and not actually getting out, but I actually didn't let you explain very well your kind of o overall premise of the, of the personalized century. Where do you think that the century goes if it's this personalized?

Timandra Harkness [00:50:12] Well this is, this is what interesting thing. 'cause I've been thinking about it for probably a couple of years now, and it came out of previously just writing about big data and, and technology and, and starting to think actually there's something interesting going on here, which is more than the tech. And I have to, you know, look a bit wide and realizing that there's kind of the psychology, there's economics, there's politics, all these things are converging. So I, I mean I kind of slightly schematically say you can look at, it's the coming together of three strands, which is the technology obviously makes it possible because the technology is not fundamentally different from like the, the hol earth desk that sorted the American census file cards in the 19th century. It's just much, much, much, much more sophisticated than that. But, but it is much more sophisticated and we carry it round everywhere. So we're always connected. But equally important I think is the fact that we simply have much more choice. So we have choices that our grandparents didn't have. We, we have material choice because, you know, the developed world is much wealthier, but we also have social choice because politically and socially things have freed up. So, you know, you don't, you don't have to get married to somebody of the opposite sex, have children, women don't have to give up work to look after the children and so on. It's like you genuinely can not do that.

Timandra Harkness [00:51:44] You can get married to some of the same sex in certainly most western countries. You can adopt children, you can not have children. There's, and, and those things are not just legal, but widely socially tolerated. So you really can choose how to live. But, but also the, the, the kind of, the primacy of identity as the way we understand ourselves in the world. I, I think is really key. Because sometimes I would look and at the technology and go, but now we understand so much more about all the data that's collected about us and how we are profiled and targeted and manipulated really. You know, we, we, we see, we see a menu of things to choose from, but we don't write the menu. Somebody else has pre-written the menu and we go, oh, isn't this nice? I've got choice. It's like, yeah, you've got like four choices. There's a million choices there. Someone else has decided. And I just thought, why, why do we, why do we keep coming back to this? 'cause there's obviously something in us that it appeals to. And I realize it's this thing of, if your identity is both really important to you, it's really like, you know, who am I, what's my identity? Or even what am I, like, how can I define myself in terms that other people will recognize and respond to is really important. But it's also because we have all these choices because we're not constrained by having been born in a place to certain parents.

Timandra Harkness [00:53:19] There's always that slight arbitrariness about it. So you go, this is my identity and you must, you must respect it and you must, you know, I am, I'm one of many, many in transit minorities. It's like, this is, this is who I am, and I insist that you recognize and respect me for who I am. But there's a little bit of you going, but I chose to be this person, which means that I could have chosen to be somebody else. So there's always the chance that, you know, maybe I, maybe I don't fit into this group after all. Or maybe, maybe if people don't actually recognize me as part of this group, maybe I'm not, maybe I will drift off and be, be something else. And, and, and, and so there's just that little bit of insecurity. And that's why we, I mean, that's why social media is so brilliant, because you are constantly putting stuff out there going, this is who I am. And people go, yes, we see you. That's who you are. And you go few and that will keep you going for however long. And then a bit later, later, I just wanna, just wanna check that people, oh yeah. Now people still recognize me for who I am. I think that's, that's the genius of it. And social media is the very obvious one because we are constantly putting out our a persona, you know, this is, this is me, but better this is me, but more interesting and witty and with better photographed food, you know, whatever it is.

Vance Crowe [00:54:39] I mean, that's such an interesting like, paradox that you present there because it's like, okay, if everything is up for grabs, you can choose it then, then the world is exactly what you make of it. We can change anything that nothing is immutable. Or if you go the opposite direction and say, I didn't choose this. This is just who I am. Either way that you construct that identity, they can't both be true at the same time. And yet we live in a world where they are interchangeably, like, whichever suits me better, I am who I am. This is the way that, you know, nature created me or God created me, or I can construct and be anyone I wanna be. I'd never really thought about that

Timandra Harkness [00:55:21] Hellscape paradox

Vance Crowe [00:55:22] Inside of our

Timandra Harkness [00:55:23] Brain. Yeah, exactly. It's this massive paradox. And it's, and it's, you know, I mean, we've always, we've always to some extent, I think had this thing of, I am not quite the person that other people think I am. There's a public me and then there's an enemy that nobody really understands, especially when you're a teenager. I think we all, like, nobody really understands the enemy.

Vance Crowe [00:55:42] Well, that's why Harry Potter RA relates to people, right. They're like, 'cause everybody kind of secretly thinks that they were in the wrong family and that they're wizard Yeah.

Timandra Harkness [00:55:50] I've got magical powers. Yeah. Or, or Twilight. Remember seeing the film of Twilight?

Vance Crowe [00:55:56] No. And that was,

Timandra Harkness [00:55:58] It's not a great film, but it was, it was brilliant for teenage girls because it's got, you've got this girl who actually moves to Washington State where everything's kind of moody and, and, and we, but she's very moody and she literally is like, oh, you know, all these, the, the kids in my new high school, they're all very nice, but they don't really understand me because I'm kind of more deep and, and than they are. But they, they don't get it except this one guy, this one guy who gets it, who's a vampire, and only he understands me. And yet even he, he can read everybody else's mind, but he can't read my mind 'cause I'm too mysterious. And that's why he's attracted to me. I let just watch it go. Yeah, that's totally what it's like being a certainly a teenage girl, but I suspect any teenage

Vance Crowe [00:56:42] Oh, teenage boy too. Yeah. Nobody

Timandra Harkness [00:56:44] Really understands me because I am much deeper than everybody else.

Vance Crowe [00:56:49] I can see the multitudes inside of myself, and yet the other people that I look at, I would share my ideas with them, but they're really not deep enough to understand it. I mean, I hear this, I actually hear this all the time from young people that are in college to all the way up to people that are 40, 50 years old and like, of course, right? It's that blanket that we wrap around our ego to make it so it's like, look, the suffering that I endure in this world, or the challenges I endure, I am special. And that's what makes all of this worthwhile. And you don't want people not to feel that way, but if you feel it too much to an extreme, you have really uncovered a paradox. I'm gonna think about quite a bit going forward.

Timandra Harkness [00:57:29] It's just, I think it's fascinating because it is like, it's exactly that both things are simultaneously true. It's like, this is my inner essence and this is who I am. And if you, if you do not recognize me as this inner essence, then I will literally cease to exist. But at the same time, my freedom and my self determination consists in my being able to choose who I am, which sounds very empowering. But then, okay, but then if you've just chosen that, which is great, then it's not your inner essence, is it? And, and so you shouldn't care so much whether other people affirm it and recognize it because you know, you've, you've chosen it. I I do think it's, I think it's really interesting and I, and I think we're only just starting to see how important it is as a driver of other things. Because then when you, when you see it like that, you think, well, of course, of course the personalizing stuff makes complete sense. Because if you are the center of the universe, as in, you know, there's this inner essence, which is you and who you really are, then you, you of course you want the rest of the universe to just reflect that back to you and, and only show you things that you can buy that will allow you to truly express who you are and, and only show you television programs to watch that will respond to the, the deeply meaningful and poetic person that you really are and, and all this kind of thing. And it, and it feeds that sense of being at the center of the universe. And rationally of course, we know that everybody else gets the same, right?

Timandra Harkness [00:59:00] It's like rationally, we know the universe is not organized around us, but on that emotional level, we want to feel that the universe is revolving around us. And, and that's the illusion of everything being personalized is the whole world revolves around you. It isn't that lovely. It's like being a child again.

Vance Crowe [00:59:21] Yeah. There's something that, the warm blanket that wraps around you, because human beings are the only animal conscious that they are going to die in the future and not have a sense of it. What

Timandra Harkness [00:59:31] Can they die?

Vance Crowe [00:59:32] Yeah. Right.

Timandra Harkness [00:59:32] Nobody told me that shit. How long have I got?

Vance Crowe [00:59:36] So one of the things that I think about when people contemplate things like death or who they are or their multitudes, is that like, as you get to a certain age, you start to be able to discern that there are voices in your head that are talking with you that you don't control. And you could write that off as like some form of schizophrenia. But the, the, the like root example that I use is, it's time to go for a run in the morning. And there's something inside of you that says, no, you don't have to go for a run. That's you, that's fine. You can go sit down, right? And then if you start really thinking about it, you realize there are all of these competing voices in your head for urges. Oh, let's go have some drinks tonight. Not just one, but let's have 10 or let's, you know, you should really go watch television and take a break. And then you start realizing like, I am some set of voices that I don't control, and yet they're me. Do you have this? Do you know what I'm describing?

Timandra Harkness [01:00:38] Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, I, and I kind of, it, I, I don't do I say them out loud. I possibly do say them out loud on my own. But yeah, I definitely have this inner dialogue going on between, there's, there's the me that goes, no, come on. If you don't do this, you'll be sorry later. Like, oh, it is, it is raining though. Yeah, but come on, you, you know what will happen. And I do. I don't, I sometimes I have little dialogues between past me, present me and future me. When past me, it, when present me is looking at past me and going, why did you do that? You're an idiot. Look where you've left me now, you know, thanks past me. I now have like a week's worth of work to do in two days and now it's sunny and I can't go out. And future me is going, yeah, you're talking a good game now present me, but where am I gonna be in a fortnight's time? Eh, because you're so busy talking to past me. You haven't actually sat down at the computer to start your work. So, so, so yeah, I always have, I'm projecting into the future of like what future me will look back and reproach me with as my way of trying to get myself to do things. It's almost like, it's not quite my conscience 'cause it's usually quite selfish things, but it's, it's, it's, it's like trying to go, well, where am I? What am I gonna wish that I had done today in two weeks time?

Vance Crowe [01:02:06] I, man I, this is why this is such a fascinating question to me because everyone has some different way that they're having this dialogue. And, and someone described for me not all that long ago that if you think of the Greek gods not as gods on Mount Olympus, but that Mount Olympus is inside of you, and that each one of those gods is a different voice that's within you. That was like all a sudden these people, the Greeks that I would roll my eyes at, like, how could you possibly believe in Aphrodite and Hades and all this stupid garbage? All of a sudden you're like, oh my God, this explains something so deep inside of me that I don't even wanna look at it. It's scary.

Timandra Harkness [01:02:50] That is so plausible, actually. Yeah. Oh no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be hearing things in their voices now. And and they get up to shenanigans as well and can be like, what are you guys doing in there? Stop it. Stop it.

Vance Crowe [01:03:04] Right? And all of them. And, and so the, i i, your your personalized century did this to me. This is, it got me thinking in a totally different track where you realize like it's difficult enough to be controlling these voices inside of your head. And by controlling, I mean just like figuring out which side of them I should listen to, which, which one is getting me into mischief and

Timandra Harkness [01:03:25] Sharing the meeting.

Vance Crowe [01:03:26] Yeah, right, exactly. Who's cheering the meeting and that, like, Zeus is a great example, right? Because he's supposed to be in charge, but other gods get off and do weird things and then he kind of comes in, but he also does some stuff that you're like, really shouldn't

Timandra Harkness [01:03:39] Do that. Well, he's, he's busy shagging around or whatever we call that these days being polyamorous, whatever it is, but disguised as a swan, I mean, like it, yeah, it would be like if it, if this was a company and you go and here's the, the founder and CEOs, oh, sorry, he's, he's currently disguised as a bull, having an affair down on earth.

Vance Crowe [01:03:58] You go like,

Timandra Harkness [01:03:59] Whoa, well this place needs some shaking off.

Vance Crowe [01:04:05] So the, I'm the, I'm trying to like make sure that you know that this is a reflection back to you that like your personalized century thing made me wonder is this somehow spinning that internal con conversation that we're having in, I it must be spinning us off in a direction, right? Because those voices that you have in your head, like if I read a tweet from you, it's entirely different for me to watch you look at you hear your voice than it is for me to read what you're doing because I'm not actually reading you. It's the voices in my head are somehow interpreting that. And I, I know that I sound like a schizophrenic, so it's hard to have the language to know how to discuss this.

Timandra Harkness [01:04:45] No, I think you are right then. And, and I think psychologists have actually studied this and gone, it's a bit of a myth that we are a kind of unitary consciousness that at any one time we will have different, different voices or different personalities or whatever pulling in different directions. And, and sometimes it is about can you at least get a majority vote inside you to decide to do something? And sometimes you can't. And yeah, sometimes you will continue to be divided. You get people who lead divided lives for years and years. I always find this amazing people who kind of live, live one life and yet, and then they suddenly do something and you suddenly discover that actually there's been a kind of alternate them inside all this time. But that was just in the minority that maybe, and it's just suddenly gone, no, I'm doing this now and I'm off. I, yeah, I do think, yeah, I think the psych ization of life I think is part of, of what's going on. That each of us, each of us, what's going on inside each of us individually has become very important because everything is personalized. And also, but, but then the flip side is that's why everything's become personalized, is because not only is each of us obviously very conscious of what goes on in our own minds, but now it's, it's very normal for society to be very concerned with what's going on inside each person's mind. And I mean, you know, look at the way that mental health has become a massive thing for government policies and for companies now.

Timandra Harkness [01:06:21] And obviously there's a very practical thing there, which is that, you know, a lot of people are very depressed or, you know, other mental health problems and, and it's a problem for them and it's a problem for society. So you would obviously wanna do something about it. But the idea that what goes on inside each person's mind is the business of government is quite odd when you think about it. Like, well, hang on.

Vance Crowe [01:06:43] Oh, I, I, I was working

Timandra Harkness [01:06:44] A major, how are you gonna go?

Vance Crowe [01:06:46] I, I was working at a major corporation when they started doing unconscious bias training, and I, like you had to go. And for me, this is one of those things where it's like, all right, let's really think about what we're doing here. And I went to the top legal compliance and I was like, I just want you to be aware, at some point somebody could say to you, you are allowed to test for a bias that is inside of me that I myself do not know. But now you are going to have a piece of paper that tells you about it. Let's say your test is even accurate. What the hell? Right? Do you have to know what's going on in here? Because what you're actually getting is the output of my work, not the internal working of my brain.

Timandra Harkness [01:07:27] Yeah. I think that's a really good example actually. And by good, I mean appalling. I I think yeah, exactly that the idea that it's any business of your employer, what goes on inside your mind is, is extraordinary, isn't it? I mean, one of the, one of the plus sides of capitalism, which incidentally I don't think is the perfect system, but one of the plus sides about it is that there's a clear divide between your public life and your private life, your work life and your, you know, and everything else in your life. You go in, your employer pays you for the time that you are there and during that time or everything you produce belongs to them, and then you go home and it's none of their business. And now, not only, I mean, you know, not only are a lot of people working from home, so their employer does get to be in their house, but also it's, yeah, they, they actually feel they have the right to get inside your unconscious thought processes, which is absolutely extraordinary. I mean, the, well,

Vance Crowe [01:08:29] And in the United States, you're not allowed to give somebody an IQ test, but under the guise of like safety and, and these other things, you're not allowed to find out, Hey, how does this think a person think spatially? And what's their verbal rating? And let's, let's do this. That's why the college education became as valuable as it is because we set up a system where you pay for a piece of paper that demonstrates what your IQ is, but it doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not you, you know, you're able to do that job because the company's not allowed to test that really. But now they're allowed to test your unconscious bias. It's, it's absolutely absurd.

Timandra Harkness [01:09:07] It is absurd. Yeah, it is. And and I do think it, yeah, exactly. That's the very, very dark side of this obsession with, with, with people's individual psychology. And also is this, I mean, it's this idea that that's where the answers to things lie, that you, you get a massive social problem and you go, well, you know, the answer to this is inside individual's, people's psychology. Like, is it though, really? Is it, so maybe, maybe on a government's like either it's none of your business or there is actually something you could do on a social level, but that would resolve this or at least help it.

Vance Crowe [01:09:43] So you are actually a great person to ask this for the steel manning capacity that you have. I am incredibly torn in agriculture. There is, there, there is a suicide problem. I think that the, the largest group is veterinarians. I think if you go look at the statistics, they are higher than most. And you can imagine it's because their work pressure is very high, it's very dangerous. They spend a lot of time alone, they don't get sleep because they're called out into all hours of the night. So you could say there is a problem of suicide among a certain population, but what the ag companies have done is they have figured out, hey, we can donate money to mental health programs to help the farmers because they have mental health problems. And what this in effect is doing is it's turning the mental health of your customers into a marketing campaign for you. And I don't want to denigrate it because I could be wrong. Maybe that money is helping and people need that outreach and, and I am incorrect. But to me it feels so deeply cynical to have a company donating money that their, that their customers not kill themselves. That, that we're in a dark place. So how should I steal man out of this idea?

Timandra Harkness [01:11:00] Okay, no, this is, this is really tricky because yeah, no, I'm, I'm like you, I have an instinctive thing, which is, well, is this a, well, there's two things, isn't there? This, is this, is this gonna help? Is it, is it actually effective? Is it, is it going to do anything to make the situation better? And then the other one is, are you cynically trying to look like the good guys while not changing anything that you do by donating to these, to these charities? I mean, it is really tricky because, because there is a problem and, and especially I think in farming communities, I think, I think it is a big problem, and I don't know what the answer is, but often with these things, you think there's probably very deep set reasons for this. And giving some money to charities isn't gonna address those. I mean, is the problem that it's actually really hard to make a living as a farmer? And in addition to that, you're socially isolated and the hours are really antisocial and people are moving outta your communities, so you have fewer friends and maybe you're less likely to find a life partner and things like that. Sorry, anyone listening? Don't, don't get more depressed listening to this, by the way. I think I'm really worried now.

Vance Crowe [01:12:17] Well, no, I mean, I think that the,

Timandra Harkness [01:12:19] But but, but it's like, none of those things are gonna be sold really, are they? By, by having a charity, I mean, it's important to have somebody to reach out to in your dark moment, but if, if there must be reasons why a lot of people are that depressed. And unless you actually address those reasons and say, well, you know, are we expecting too much from, from people to, to live relatively isolated lives and work really hard and still not really make an amazingly good living? Maybe maybe we really need to look into the market for food. Maybe we need to maybe, maybe we need to pay more for food. Maybe. I mean, I think it is interesting, you see in different countries, people have very different attitudes of what government should do. I can imagine the uk the government would say we need to put money into revitalizing rural communities and maybe trying to get other businesses and industries going in rural communities so that towns stay populated and young people stick around and maybe, you know, maybe small town colleges need to be places where young people wanna stay and go to and not just upticks and go to the city. And maybe those kinds of things would help. But none of those are really, you know, a mental health charity isn't gonna do those things, is it?

Vance Crowe [01:13:34] Yeah, I mean, I try not to be cynical because my belief is that the darkness can come for all people, right? Like the, the thing that that gets you down and that, and that in effect, the only way out is to have some principle, some thing that you're working towards. And so for me, like I am careful because my immediate knee jerk reaction is to say those charities are doing something cynically wrong and they're getting wealthy off of a, off of a cultural massive sad cultural change that's happening. But then at the same time, like, I don't wanna be wrong, right? Like, if this is helping people, I don't, I don't wanna mess around with something that's important. But I think that the, the biggest challenge right now is that in that world, empathy becomes the number one thing, right? People say, well, we must have empathy first. You have, you know, the, the highest virtue or one of the high virtues is empathy. And I don't think that it is, but I also don't think that a corporation has many other options other than to pay, to appear, to be empathetic. And so it's, it's just,

Timandra Harkness [01:14:41] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:14:41] They're in a tough spot too.

Timandra Harkness [01:14:43] No, exactly. I mean, you look at that and, and you go, well, what else could they do though? And there probably isn't much else they could do. I, among other employers, I'm much more cynical. I know, I know a doctor who works in the health service over here who's obviously been having a very hard time, I mean, has a hard time anyway, works in oddly works in mental health. So, you know, is constantly seeing extremely distressed people. And, and, but then when she has a hard time at work, the the answer is to give her resilience training and training in dealing with difficult people, you're kind of like, okay, but that's kind what you're kind of doing is putting the responsibility onto her. Like it's somehow her fault that she's immensely overworked in a system that can't really cope with demand and doing night shifts and this, you know, and now having to deal with coronavirus as well. You kind of think, yeah, maybe, maybe that's not the answer. It's like, and a lot of people go, oh, you know, I I'm really, their, their companies are very, oh, you know, we really care about your mental health and we want to be here for you and do come and talk to us. And they go and say, I'm, I'm just really stressed and overworked and I cannot possibly keep up this workload. Also, now I'm doing it all at home and trying to homeschool and there seems to be no division anymore between my work life and my home life. And they go, oh yes, that's terrible. Would you like a free online counseling session? Like, maybe not. Maybe what they like is a bit less work.

Timandra Harkness [01:16:16] Maybe you need to hire some more people to share the workload, but somehow that's not on offer. It's like, no, no, we'll give you counseling so you'll feel better about it. I do, I do think there is that danger of seeing the solution as, you know, it's like the mindfulness and, and and so on. It's like that obviously there are always things you can't change and you have to somehow cope with them, but sometimes there are things you can change. And what you want is not to become more serene about things that are there. You wanna become less serene and change them. And, and I, I do think that's a danger that by, by focusing internally, you actually, you, you go, okay, well I mis change myself so that I am more content with my lot in life rather than going, actually maybe I shouldn't be content. Maybe this is rubbish. Maybe we could do better. I mean, as you'd said something, it's kind of you threw something in earlier, which I think is very true, which is the best thing is to have something outside of yourself that's bigger than you. And I mean, I think that's, yeah, a, a general rule for being a good human, if you like, is to, to think in terms of something bigger than you and that will maybe go on after you've gone, but I also actually think as an individual, just for sanity and happiness, it's much better to have something outside of you to focus on. And I certainly, when I've had very dark times, that's the thing that's got me through, is not sitting thinking about how I'm feeling, but actually having something outside of me that I felt was so important that I was gonna drag myself out and go to work.

Timandra Harkness [01:17:56] Even if I'm sitting at my desk with tears running down my face, it's like, this is really important and it's more important than me. And, and you know, and then with hindsight went well, thanks person who got me in to do that because actually you really pulled me out of a hole even though that's not why you were doing it.

Vance Crowe [01:18:14] Yeah. I think one of the habits that I picked up a long time ago is that when I'm really down, like when, when the, when the darkness is all around, I try my hardest to pick out somebody that I love and just write 'em a letter or call them to be like, this is how you've made my life better. And by the time you are done telling somebody else how they've helped you, you all of a sudden are lifted up because you realize like, oh my God, there are people in my life and yeah, like I don't need them to cater to my needs or hear my problem or anything. There's never been a time where that has not shifted my gaze. And so I think the only way you keep the gods from fighting so violently inside of your Mount Olympus, of your brain is, is to find a way to, to get outside, like you were saying.

Timandra Harkness [01:19:01] That's great. I'm gonna remember that one. Yeah, I do. I I think, and I think again, this is, this is one of the reasons why I think the personalized century is, is a bad thing that it encourages us to look inward and not outward. And that even, even other people, it's like we become a bit obsessed, not with what they're doing, but with what they think of us. So isn't it the old joke, it's like, but enough about me. Let's, let's what you talk about what you think about me and, and let's no, you know, nobody ever got happy doing that because, and it's,

Vance Crowe [01:19:39] Well, it's, if the gods looking at themselves in the mirror aren't any happier, right? Like they No.

Timandra Harkness [01:19:43] Exactly.

Vance Crowe [01:19:43] They need something to build. They need something to work on. They need something.

Timandra Harkness [01:19:46] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, definitely.

Vance Crowe [01:19:49] Well, Teandra, this has been really good. I would love to have you on again, but I am certain that people in my audience will find what you're doing. Great. If, if people wanted to like, support your steel manning or your work, what could they do to support what you're doing?

Timandra Harkness [01:20:02] Oh, oh, I meant to have a SoundCloud or something. I have a, I have a website, which is just my name.com. So, and my name is spelled as it sounds commander harkness.com. And there are links there to all this stuff that I'm doing and have done. I, I don't have any, I'm not soliciting financial support. It, it's absolutely about, you know, if you, I'm all about ideas, really. If you find these ideas interesting, then you know, get out and talk about them and argue about them and, you know, feel, feel free to tell me why I'm wrong. That's how I have mostly learned all the things that I've learned.

Vance Crowe [01:20:40] Well, you have a fan in me. I am so glad that Claire Fox connected us and thanks so much for coming on.

Timandra Harkness [01:20:47] It's been a real pleasure. I really enjoyed it actually. Thank you very much for having me.