transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation. I want to let you know about a brand new season of the Planet Visionaries podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. This is the podcast exploring bold ideas and big solutions from the people leading the way in conservation. Join me in conversation with the likes of climate champion Mark Ruffalo, biologist and photographer Christina Mittermeier, and one of the most successful conservations of our time, Chris Tompkins. Join us on Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2:
[00:33] Today, on Something You Should Know, why adding more choices can completely mess up your decision making. Then, why it's so important to understand your attachment style and the attachment style of others.

Speaker 3:
[00:48] Just knowing about these attachment styles, knowing that not everybody sees the world the way that you do, that people experience relationships differently, for me, that was a revelation. It's basically what led me to get into this area, both as a therapist and as a researcher.

Speaker 2:
[01:03] Also, who you should and shouldn't turn to for emotional support, and how predictions work, and they don't work the way you think.

Speaker 4:
[01:12] If I predict that it will rain tomorrow, it will have no effect on whether it actually rains. But when I make a social prediction, that's very different because it changes the expectations of people if people believe me, and that changes that which I'm predicting.

Speaker 2:
[01:27] All this today on Something You Should Know. I am excited to tell you about the world's number one expanding garden hose and their brand new product, the Pocket Hose Ballistic. Now I'll be honest, when I first heard about this, I thought, it's a hose. How good can it be? But this one is actually different. You turn on the water, the hose grows. You turn it off and it shrinks back down. The connections are solid. There's no leaks, nothing drips. It just works. And it's super lightweight, so it's easy to move around and easy to store. Plus, and you can't say this about your other hoses, the Pocket Hose Ballistic is reinforced with a liquid crystal polymer. It's the same material used in bulletproof vests. So it's incredibly strong. I use it to water the plants. I wash the car with it. My wife wants to get another one for the backyard and get rid of all those old hoses. And now for a limited time when you purchase a new Pocket Hose Ballistic, you'll get a free 360-degree rotating pocket pivot and a free thumb drive nozzle. It is the best nozzle you will ever put on the end of a hose. Just text SYSK to 64,000. That's SYSK to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. Text SYSK to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. You think smart people make smart decisions? Not even close. That's what we're going to start with today. I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome to Something You Should Know. So you would think that smart people make smart decisions, but the fact is that the more options you give someone, even a smart person, the worse their decisions get. When you're choosing between two things, it's pretty straightforward. It's this one or that one. But add in a third option, even one that's clearly inferior, and suddenly people start changing their minds. And not in a logical way. That extra choice can actually push you towards an option you wouldn't have picked otherwise. Researchers have found that our brains don't compare choices in a clean, rational line. Instead, we evaluate things relative to each other, and that creates noise in the decision-making process. The result is irrelevant options can sway us, confuse us, and even trick us into making worse decisions. It's why marketers often include a decoy option, something designed not to be chosen, but to make another choice look better. And it works surprisingly well, even on very smart people. And that is something you should know. When you're in a relationship with someone, you're not just reacting to that person in the moment, you're following a pattern. Psychologists call it your attachment style. And once you understand your attachment style, a lot of your relationship behavior suddenly starts to make sense. You begin to see why some people seem confident and comfortable with intimacy while others worry, pull away, or struggle to connect. Why the same issues keep showing up again and again in different relationships. This isn't guesswork, it's based on decades of research. In fact, attachment theory is one of the most well-established areas in relationship science. So what is your attachment style? And how much is it shaping your relationships without you even realizing it? My guest is Dr. Amir Levine. He is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Columbia University and co-author of the book Attached, The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love. Hey, Amir, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 3:
[05:52] Hi, I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 2:
[05:54] So, you know, I've heard of attachment styles before, but it's not something like you sit around and talk about with people like, hey, so what's your attachment style? So maybe you need to explain a little bit more about what this is and why we're talking about it.

Speaker 3:
[06:08] Yeah, definitely. So it turns out, and I didn't know it myself, and when I came across it, it felt like a light bulb went on for me. There is a science of how we behave in close relationships, both romantic and non-romantic, and there's several decades of research that has gone into it, and it has to do with the science of adult attachment. It really explains to us why we behave the way we do. So really, understanding your attachment style and also the attachment styles of others really gives you a roadmap to deciphering better what's happening in a relationship.

Speaker 2:
[06:44] So I guess it's best to start with what the different attachment styles are to begin with.

Speaker 3:
[06:51] There's the anxious, avoidant, secure, and fearful avoidance. These are the four attachment styles, and it all has to do with how comfortable you feel with intimacy and closeness, but also how sensitive of a radar do you have for potential threat or potentially something going wrong in your relationship. So if you love intimacy and closeness, you can't get enough of it, but you also are very, very sensitive to potential threat in the relationship. You just notice things a lot more. Then you have an anxious attachment style. You worry more about your relationship not working out, that you're not going to be loved the way that you love. There's a lot of worry that goes into having an anxious attachment style. Then if you have a secure attachment style, you also love a lot of intimacy and closeness, but you don't have a sensitive radar, so a lot of things go over your head. You don't notice little things in your relationship. So it's much easier for you to be warm and loving, and you don't get upset that often in relationships. Now, the avoidant attachment style, it has to do more with feeling uncomfortable with too much closeness. They still want to be in relationships, but too much closeness just doesn't feel good to them, so they use what we call deactivating strategies. And we're going to talk about, there's a lot of attachment lingo that's really important to learn. They use different strategies to keep their partners and other people at arm's length. They just get this closeness overdose, and they just try to keep a little bit more a measure of distance. So these are the three main attachment styles. And then there's the fearful avoidant that's much more rare. That's a combination of anxious and avoidant. So you both, you want closeness and you long for closeness, but once you get it, you feel uncomfortable. So it's like with one hand, you motion come close, and the other hand, you motion stay away, stay away. That's the fearful avoidant attachment style.

Speaker 2:
[08:44] And do you think, well, first of all, do you think as people listen to that list, they could immediately identify which one they are or which one they tend to be?

Speaker 3:
[08:55] I think from my experience, some people are like, yes, that's it. I'm definitely anxious. Other people say, yes, I'm definitely avoidant. People know that they're secure too. And oftentimes people think, oh, I'm fearful avoidant, but actually if they look into it more, they'll see they're probably more anxious or avoidant. But you can also take a quiz, and I have the quiz on my website, and you can really decipher your attachment style. And one very important thing is also our attachment style also changes throughout our life, and it's not always, it's a spectrum. So not everyone will be like completely avoidant or completely anxious. It's a spectrum, and that's important to respect and acknowledge.

Speaker 2:
[09:35] So I would imagine that with these different attachment styles, some go together better with others and some don't work very well with others. Do we tend to work best with people like ourselves or people opposite ourselves or what?

Speaker 3:
[09:54] That's the million dollar question. So people with the secure attachment styles, I like to think of them as the universal donors like blood type O minus, because they're just so good in relationships. So if you stumble across someone with a secure attachment style and you get into a relationship with them, you basically have a built-in relationship coach that can teach you how to become more secure, even if you're anxious or avoidant or even fearful avoidant. They're just so good. Now, the problem is where the biggest mismatch is between the anxious and the avoidant, because think about it, one wants a lot of closeness, really seeking it out, but also very sensitive to the potential threat in their relationship when someone is trying to pull away from them. That's what the avoidants do often when they get too much closeness and they feel uncomfortable, they pull away. That really invites a lot of drama into their relationship and a lot of fighting. One, the avoidant think, I should be self-sufficient and you should be too. We should each take care of our own emotions and they push you away. Then the anxious, they engage in what we call active any strategies and protest behavior, which is any behavior to try to get the attention of the other person and reestablish sort of the communication. So there's a lot of volatility and drama in those relationships.

Speaker 2:
[11:14] So why did they ever get together in the first place? Or is it pretty rare?

Speaker 3:
[11:18] No, I think it's actually quite common. So I think that's another important thing to say. It's the way that is distributed in the population. Around 50, a little bit more than 50% of the population are secure. About 25% are avoidant, and about 20% are anxious. And there's just a small percentage are fearful avoidants. And when we go out into the world and we find someone that we're attracted to, we don't always check for to see what they are. We just get, we were attracted to them. And then once that bond forms, now we have to start getting along with them and whatever they bring to the table. And that's when it gets a little bit tricky.

Speaker 2:
[11:59] Yeah, I would think that if you're one of the secure types, that your radar would go off when you got somebody who was anxious or avoidant because it would not feel right.

Speaker 3:
[12:11] But you remember what I told you before, they don't have a very sensitive radar. And so they don't pick up on things you think would bother them. They're not that easily bothered in relationships. That's what's so great about them. One example that I have is someone told me who's secure when she read the book. She said, oh, I really think my partner is avoidant. But I think she was the editor of Scientific American. And at the time she said, it works really well for me because I have to travel a lot for work and I'm hardly ever at home. And he's rarely even bothered by it. It doesn't bother him. So I get my freedom to do whatever I want. So it just gives you an example of how sometimes having someone avoidant is not necessarily always bad. And because she's secure, she doesn't see it as a threat that it doesn't bother him. It actually, she can weave it really comfortably into her life. Remember, attachment is all about safety. So it's easy for secuers to do the things that anxious need in order to keep that radar from going off and calling danger, danger. That's why I said it's like having a relationship coach built into the relationship that can teach you to become more secure.

Speaker 2:
[13:23] So then it would seem that people who are avoidant or anxious would repel each other, that you would see problems with them and they would see problems with you.

Speaker 3:
[13:35] I mean, you would think so, but that's not what usually happens. Because what happens is, in a way, they really reaffirm each other's worst beliefs and ideas about the world. Because you can also think about these attachment styles. They're also called working models, which is a set of beliefs and ideas about relationships in the world. So people who are anxious think, I'm not lovable, people are not going to love me enough, they're not going to be there for me. Their relationship is very fragile and it can really dissolve very quickly. Avoidants, on the other hand, think people are too much, they're very needy, they're going to seek me out, I can never get the peace of mind that I need. So they both actually meet the expectations of the other person's worst nightmares, basically. So they reaffirm each other's worst beliefs and so it works for them. But also I think once you get into a relationship with someone, it's not that easy to undo it. So you find yourself in potentially what we call the anxious avoidant trap, where one side wants something and the other side can give it to them.

Speaker 2:
[14:41] Well, why can't people figure that out early? Are there no warning signs in the beginning that this is headed for trouble or not?

Speaker 3:
[14:50] That's one of the major things that we were trying to advocate. It's for people to learn about their attachment styles, to find ways and to learn how to figure out what other people's attachment styles are. Early on when they're actually searching for someone, if you're dating, I think it's one of the best tools that you can develop is know what your needs are and also learn to identify what other people's needs are. And it's actually not that hard. It's easier than people think. All you have to do is listen for certain things and to figure out what other people's attachment styles is. And also you have to be convinced that what they tell you is what they mean because oftentimes what happens when people date is like, oh, they will change for me. There's a lot of myths and misconceptions about love and dating that stand in the way of us being able to see if we're a good match to someone else or not.

Speaker 2:
[15:44] I want to ask you about the different combinations of attachment styles, how some attachment styles mix with others, how well and how not so well in a minute. You know something that is oddly difficult? Finding a therapist, not the idea of therapy. I think most of us agree that's a good thing. We've all had times when talking to someone could have really helped. But actually finding a therapist who is available, who is taking new patients, who takes your insurance, and is someone you'd really like to talk to? Yeah, that's a little trickier. And that's where Rula comes in. Rula is a health care company that makes it a lot easier to connect with licensed therapists and mental health professionals who actually take your insurance. You see, they work with over a hundred insurance plans, and the average co-pay for a Rula patient is about $15 a session, sometimes less depending on your benefits, which makes therapy a lot more realistic for people who've thought about it but never quite pulled the trigger. And Rula doesn't just match you with whoever's next on the list. They actually help you find therapists based on your goals and preferences and what you're going through right now. Plus, many appointments are available as soon as tomorrow. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that is covered by insurance. Visit rula.com/sysk to get started. And after you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. So please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's rula.com/sysk, because mental health care should work with you, not against your budget. This time of year, springtime, always does this to me. I start looking at my closet thinking, I don't need more clothes. I just need better clothes, fewer things, but ones I actually want to wear. Which is why I keep going back to Quince. Their stuff, it just feels easy. The fabrics are great, like their linen pieces, which are perfect for this time of year. Lightweight, breathable, but they still look so put together. I've also been wearing their pants and polos a lot. They've become my default. Comfortable, good fit, and they hold up. And then you look at the price and it's like, wait, really? Because Quince cuts out the middleman, so you're getting quality materials without paying for a name brand, which honestly makes getting dressed a lot simpler. And my wife buys almost all of her clothes from Quince too. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com/sysk for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to quince.com/sysk for free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com/sysk. My guest is Dr. Amir Levine. He is a psychiatrist and co-author of the book Attached, The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love. And so, Amir, are there different combinations of these attachment styles that go together well and others, if they get together in a relationship, they're just doomed?

Speaker 3:
[19:13] I wouldn't say that you're doomed because, you know, in all these years in my private practice, I've seen couples come in and let's say they're in that anxious avoidant trap. And then I teach them certain tools and really teach them about the logic of the attachment, neurocircuitry, and if they learn to work around it, it's not a very complicated system. It's a system that wants safety. So basically, if you learn to pacify this neurocircuitry, then you get the peace and love that you need in a much, much easier way than people think.

Speaker 2:
[19:45] Well, I would imagine that if you've been in a relationship that's struggling and this is the problem and you learn about the problem, you learn about these styles, that right there relieves some of the pressure, like, oh, well, now I understand why we're having this issue and it would make it a lot easier to fix it.

Speaker 3:
[20:05] So for starters, definitely, just knowing about these attachment styles, knowing that not everybody sees the world the way that you do, that people experience relationships differently, for me, that was a revelation. It's basically what led me to get into this area, both as a therapist and as a researcher and as a writer. But I've also seen over the years in therapy with couples and with individuals how much it can really change their outlook on things. And for example, for people who are anxious, it's easier for them to not take things as personally as much. If you know that the other person needs more distance, but it's not because they don't love you or because they are trying to push you away, it's just because they need more distance, then it gives you the opportunity to be okay with it and not take it personally, like there's something wrong with me, they don't love me the way that they could love someone else. If you know that no, that's not about you, it's more just about how their style of interacting, of attaching, and that's how it's going to be with many others, then you can take a breather and then you can engage less in that protest behavior that gives them more space.

Speaker 2:
[21:17] So where do these attachment styles come from? Is it the attachment style you had with your parents, with your mother, does that dictate what your attachment style will be later in life? Seems like that would have something to do with it.

Speaker 3:
[21:34] That's something that you see on social media a lot, that people think that our attachment style in childhood are the attachment styles that we're going to have in adulthood. But that's actually not what the science tells us. The science shows us that only around less than 10% of our adult attachment can be explained by the attachment styles that we have as it can be explained by the attachment styles that we had in childhood and that the majority of what defines our attachment styles in adulthood actually has to do more with things that happen later in life. And that I find to be very, very promising. And one of the reasons I really fell in love with this whole field is because of this promise of change, that we can and do change our attachment styles over the course of our life. And I think it can happen at any age. And it really has to do with the relationships that we find later in life and how it can really shape and morph. It's basically a working model, our belief system, what we noticed, how we behave and function in relationships. I find it to be very promising.

Speaker 2:
[22:45] So what changes it? What is it that can you point to something and go, well, see, he used to be this way, now he's this way. And this is because that happened.

Speaker 3:
[22:55] So yes, think about it this way. Let's say you have an anxious attachment style. And throughout your life, you were in insecure relationships where the other person was not consistent, available, and responsive. And you were always like, are they going to call? Where are they? What's going to happen? Is their relationship fine? Is it not fine? You ask for closeness, but they step away. You go on a trip and you're hoping to walk hand in hand together and look at things, but they walk ahead of you all the time because they need more space. And you just learn that this is life and this is how it's going to be. And then you get into a different relationship. And all of a sudden, it's very, very different. They always call you whenever you call. They never get upset. They text you on time. And initially, a lot of people actually don't even feel comfortable with it. They're like, what is this? I'm not used to this. Is this real? They get very uncomfortable and suspicious. And one of the biggest things that I do in therapy is like, no, no, this is actually good for you. Don't run away from it because that's going to change you in such a profound way. It really changes your expectations. It overwrites your belief system by simply, by having a different, like having someone behave so differently that it refutes all of those initial beliefs that you've been carrying around for all this time. So that's how some of the change happens. And also the other way for avoidance that happens in a very similar way too.

Speaker 2:
[24:25] There does seem to be, as I listen to you talk about this, there seems to be a line though, because you could be in a relationship with someone who's avoidant, doesn't not want a lot of closeness. So they never give you gifts, they never give you flowers on Valentine's Day, they never want to be around, they're very avoidant, they're too avoidant. And you can't just say, well, that's their attachment style. There is a line at which point you've got to go, well, however, we're in a relationship here, and you're not stepping up.

Speaker 3:
[25:02] Right, but the thing is what usually happens when you come and you say this to avoidance, first of all, they feel bad enough about themselves. Oftentimes they do. You think, oh, they don't care, but it's not the truth. It's oftentimes they've been the recipient of that criticism all the time. What people often don't understand is that attachment is something very simple. It's not about those big gestures. Because oftentimes, they will bring the gifts and they will do some of those big gestures. It's nice to have the big gestures, but what really matters to the attachment to your circuitry are what I've come to call CEMEs, which really stands for the seemingly insignificant minor interactions of everyday life. So we tend to think that relationships really, what's really important is those big gestures. But really what's really important, remember, it's a radar. It's constantly surveilling for the availability of the other person. So those CEMEs, the little things that people don't really give much attention to, they're actually crucial for our attachment or circuitry to keep it at bay, to keep it under wraps so we can engage in exploration. So really it's more about texting people in the morning or texting them at lunchtime. It's little gestures that don't take a lot, that then give the avoidant the space that they need. That's what I try to teach people, especially avoidants, to step up, but not in the way that you think about stepping up, in the little CEMEs stepping up, because that what really matters the most to our neurocircuitry.

Speaker 2:
[26:38] I have this sense that people who have been listening to this for the last 20 minutes, have heard in what you said, have heard something about themselves or something about the people they are in a relationship with, that explains a lot. And I think it's been really helpful. I've been speaking with Dr. Amir Levine. He is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Columbia University. And he's author of the book Attached, the new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find and keep love. He's also the author of another book called Secure, the Revolutionary Guide to Creating a Secure Life. And there's a link to both of those books in the show notes. Also, earlier in the episode, Amir mentioned a quiz that's on his website. And so there's a link to his website in the show notes as well. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[27:31] Thanks, Mike.

Speaker 2:
[27:31] All right, Amir.

Speaker 3:
[27:32] Very nice talking to you.

Speaker 5:
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Speaker 2:
[29:33] Every day, your life is shaped by predictions, and you probably pay attention to them because, well, people like and trust predictions. After all, they're based on data, science, or sophisticated technology. But what if predictions aren't really about seeing the future? What if they're actually about influencing it? Because once a prediction is made about your behavior, or your risk, or your potential, it can start to shape outcomes in ways you don't even notice. My guest says, This isn't new. Predictions have always carried power, not just to forecast the future, but to control it. Carissa Véliz is an associate professor at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford, and she's author of the book, Prophecy, Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future from Ancient Oracles to AI. Carissa, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 4:
[30:33] Thank you for having me, Mike.

Speaker 2:
[30:35] It seems like human nature to want to predict the future, and to also hear other predictions about the future, because it's something. I want to hear the weather prediction for tomorrow, because yes, it could be wrong, but it's probably not too wrong, and it gives me something to go on. But if you want to predict the winning lottery numbers, well, I'm not too interested in that because you can't do that. I mean, some things are predictable, and some things are not predictable, and the predictable things I think I want to hear about. I'd rather hear a prediction from someone with a track record of making accurate predictions than to just be flying blind.

Speaker 4:
[31:22] The only thing that is more dangerous than being blind is thinking that you can see something when in fact what you're seeing is an illusion. And often, predictions make us have the feeling of safety, that it's an illusion, and we're not seeing the actual risks. So that's something to bear in mind. I also want to make a very important distinction between predictions about things or natural phenomena and predictions about people or social predictions. If I predict that it will rain tomorrow, it will have no effect on whether it actually rains. The clouds aren't listening to my prediction, they don't have agency to do otherwise. But when I make a social prediction, that's very different. Because it changes the expectations of people if people believe me. And that changes that which I'm predicting. So predictions have a, social predictions have a tendency to become self-fulfilling prophecies or to act like magnets. They bend reality towards themselves. So if I tell a student, I think you're going to do great at this exam, it might encourage them and make them do better. Whereas if I tell them, I think you're going to flunk this exam, it might be so discouraging that they might do worse than than they otherwise would have. So we need some guidance as to which kinds of predictions are the ones that actually enlighten us and are helpful to navigate the world and which kinds of predictions might be leading us astray at best or at worst, creating incredible kinds of injustice and then covering them up.

Speaker 2:
[32:52] It also seems that the prediction, how the prediction is made makes a big difference. If it's just my opinion, that's one thing. If there's some data to support the prediction, that's something else entirely.

Speaker 4:
[33:08] That is true, but there's a lot of nuance about it. For example, in the case of making decisions about loans or about jobs, we never collect the data of the person who didn't get the job. So data can be very misleading sometimes. Sometimes, in other cases in which we're looking at events that we've never seen before, for example, climate change, there is no database about the future. Having data but not having the right data can sometimes lead us astray by making us think that we can just project the future from data from the past, when in fact we're looking at something that is substantially different from what we've seen before.

Speaker 2:
[33:50] Well, certainly most predictions it would seem, a lot of them are based on the past, that what is likely to happen in the future is probably what's happened in the past or some variation of that, but that the basis for the prediction is what has happened before.

Speaker 4:
[34:10] Yes, and for the most part, that is obviously a smart way to navigate the world. If every day the sun comes out, it seems like a good bet that it's coming out tomorrow as well, except there are cases in which it doesn't. So one classical example in philosophy is that of a turkey who is being fed every day and taken care of. And every day that passes, the turkey feels safer and safer and better well cared for. And in fact, every day that passes, he's more at risk because Thanksgiving is nearer and nearer and nearer.

Speaker 2:
[34:43] Understanding what you're saying about predictions and the dangers of them, what would be better though? I mean, it seems like it's an inexact science at best, but there's nothing better, right?

Speaker 4:
[34:57] It depends on the circumstances. So when we talk about systems of justice, when somebody has committed a crime and they're facing jail time, we might think that it's better to have very clear criteria of how many years somebody goes to jail based on what they did, as opposed to trying to make a guess about that person, that might be completely wrong and that cannot be contested. So one of the interesting things about prediction is that it's very hard to argue against it. So for example, let's say that you ask for a loan to a bank, and if you had asked for that loan 30 years ago, they might have said, look, you need X amount of dollars in your bank account, or you need this salary to get this loan. And then either you had it or you didn't. And if you didn't, you knew what to do to get the loan. And if you did have it and there was a mistake, and you didn't get the loan, you could say, well, just look at my bank account, I do have these X amount of dollars. So it's a contestable decision. But if you ask for a loan and I don't give it to you on the basis of a prediction of what I think you will do in the future, there's no way you can contest that because predictions are not facts. And so you cannot say that it's false. And that creates an opportunity for injustice.

Speaker 2:
[36:15] History is full of people who made predictions and a lot of the predictions in the past have been way off. They haven't even been based on anything. They've just been somebody's opinion or somebody's wild fantasies. And do you think that people learn from that? It seems, I mean, there are people who make predictions who are often wrong. But the media keeps going back to them and asking for their prediction again and again and again. And they're often wrong and wrong and wrong. But they're an expert, so people keep asking their prediction.

Speaker 4:
[36:53] Yes, it's very interesting. We don't pay a price to get predictions right or wrong these days. That makes us more gullible and more vulnerable towards predictions because, yes, you're right, every expert gets asked about the future, whether they have a good track record or not. And if they get it wrong, nobody remembers. We are so overloaded by information that essentially it means nothing. And then if somebody gets it right, they might gain undue attention because they probably got it right just through fluke. If you have everybody making predictions, somebody is going to get it right, even if it's not because they actually saw a glimpse about the future. And in a way, what we're saying is that maybe we should have something of a cultural change in which we rely less on certain kinds of predictions for certain kinds of things and certain kinds of contexts. And one of the things that I would like to see less of is journalists asking experts of anything about the future of whatever it is they study. Because there's very good research that experts on X field are no better than others at predicting the future of that X, whatever that field might be.

Speaker 2:
[38:13] Well, then it makes you wonder, what's the point? I mean, I remember studying in school about people that this very thing, that there are so many experts that make predictions, are dead wrong, their prediction never happens, and yet it doesn't tarnish their image. They're still an expert. Well, how can you be an expert and predict things, and be wrong, and still be an expert? It seems like you would get fired from that job. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Speaker 4:
[38:44] Well, no, because people are experts, but they're experts in the past or the present. So for example, if you ask me about privacy, I can tell you quite a few facts about privacy, about how our data gets collected, and what happens to it, and how it gets sold, and who uses it. If you ask me about the future of privacy, I have no idea. But if a journalist asks me, I might venture a guess. And it doesn't mean that I'm not an expert on privacy. It's just that there's no such thing as an expert in the future of anything at all.

Speaker 2:
[39:17] That's brilliant. What you just said is brilliant. There's no such thing as that. There is. Because you can't predict the future, and every time you try, you're very often wrong. But you talk about how predictions influence the future. I want to get more into that, because when you say predictions can influence the future, maybe an example of what that means.

Speaker 4:
[39:43] Yes. There's so many examples, and they're so interesting, from the political world to the medical sphere. And I'll start with the medical sphere, because it's so tangible. One of the things that most shocked me when I decided to write this book is that there are so many books about prediction, about how to predict, about forecasting. But there are no books about the ethics of prediction. And that is truly shocking, given that how much we rely on prediction. But the one field that has a little bit of literature on prediction is medicine. Because when people come into the hospital, and there are scarce resources, often you have to choose who do you treat first. And you often make that decision on the basis of a prediction, who has more of a chance to live. And one example comes from real life. I once knew someone who was a paramedic in Spain, and he was once transporting an organ donor. And this person started having spontaneous heartbeat. And the paramedic called their boss, and the boss said, that is not a patient, that is an organ donor. And essentially what went on there was, once you are declared dead, that is in itself a prediction. It's a prediction that you won't come back to life, that you are beyond help, and that your body has given out. And once that has been determined, you are as good as dead, no matter what happens, because the system has already allocated your organs to someone else. And the interesting thing about self-fulfilling prophecies is that they don't create error signals. They're like the perfect crime. They're like a murder weapon that disappears upon striking. Because we will never have the data on the patients that we didn't prioritize. They will be dead, and that data will never get collected. And of course, this is a very sensitive topic, because health professionals are not trying to kill people, right? They are making very, very tough decisions on the basis of predictions, with sometimes a lot of uncertainty. But it is a very good example, because it happens every day, because it's very tangible how high the stakes can be, and because it also makes it obvious how we don't have the necessary data to make sure that our predictions are not creating self-fulfilling prophecies.

Speaker 2:
[42:02] Well, we're pretty good at determining when somebody's dead.

Speaker 4:
[42:06] No, we're not. No, we're not when we want their organs. So here is the dilemma. The freshest organs you can get are from people who are alive. But of course, that would be highly unethical. So you want to get the organs as soon as someone is dead. But death is not a biological event. It's partly a philosophical decision about when do we consider someone dead? Someone who's six feet under is very obviously dead. But someone whose heart stopped 10 seconds ago, but whose brain is still functioning, is that person dead? It gets really tricky when you go in detail to the edges between life and death.

Speaker 2:
[42:46] But then the issue becomes like at what point do you stop trying to save that person? I mean, there is a point which they may not be dead, dead, but there's no way to keep them alive.

Speaker 4:
[42:59] Well, not with mechanical ventilators. So for example, there are countries like Japan, in which when somebody is on a mechanical ventilator, let's say that their brain seems to be destroyed, although we don't actually have very good methods of knowing to what extent that's true. But because they're on a mechanical ventilator, they're still breathing, their heart is beating, their nails are growing, they have hormonal response to pain, their hair is growing, if they are pregnant, the fetus is developing. And in those situations, the family gets to decide whether to treat that body as dead or alive, because essentially we don't know.

Speaker 2:
[43:37] Well, it's so interesting to think about this, because most people, as you pointed out, most people don't think about this. This is not something people talk about. We make the predictions, we follow the predictions, or we ignore the predictions, but we don't think about the process of predictions and the ramifications of that.

Speaker 4:
[43:59] Exactly. And you might think, why would an ordinary citizen want to care about this? If you're not making big decisions, if you're not a leader, if you don't own a company, well, because you're being subjected to predictions all the time. Whereas, whether it's because you're asking for a loan, or an apartment, or a job, or even if you're on a dating app, you're being classified according to predictions. Your whole life is being determined by people guessing about who you are, and more importantly, who you will become. And often when we hear predictions from experts, or especially from very wealthy people, from a tech executive, they often get reported as if they were facts on the press, and people talk about it as if it was a fact. And I don't know if you've noticed that a lot of the times tech executives describe the future that they are painting as inevitable. They say, for example, AI agents are going to be used for everything, and this is inevitable. And you can feel how that's a conversation stopper. It's telling citizens, don't question me, just accept what I'm saying as the truth and act in accordance. And what I'm trying to say is like, well, well, well, there's a debate to be had here, and we're not having that conversation, and we should.

Speaker 2:
[45:15] Well, I think everybody's had the... Well, I've certainly had the experience, when I was younger, of like applying for a loan or applying for a credit card or something, and thinking, well, they want to know... They're going to give me a credit card for the rest of my life, assuming I pay the bill, based on my current situation, which 20 years from now will be nothing like it is. But they're using today's data. You could be unemployed and apply for a loan, and you'll never get it. But in six months from now, you might have a job, and you'll get the loan. But there isn't much difference between now and six months ago, except that you now have a job. But that has nothing to do with the future.

Speaker 4:
[46:02] And what's even more scary is when banks and financial institutions use other people's data to compare you to them. So it might be that an AI finds that there is a correlation between you having, I don't know, four credit cards, and driving this way or having this car. And it's not obviously causally related to your ability to pay back the loan. And it's just because people who had that same data didn't pay back a loan, that you might not get a loan. And that seems very unfair to me. And that we are not giving people enough chance to defy their odds. And that is not only bad for those people, it's bad for society. Because when you shackle people's ability to defy their odds, you shackle society's ability to come up with creative solutions to our most pressing problems.

Speaker 2:
[46:53] I think I would assume that if you're going to make a prediction, the more data you have, the better the prediction. I think that's an assumption people make. If you have a lot of information, if you have in your head or on your computer or in a book, that your predictions will be better, right?

Speaker 4:
[47:14] Yes, that's an assumption. And it's a very wrong assumption for many reasons. Sometimes the relevant data is not there. Sometimes data is just noise. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack and adding hay. Sometimes it's not helpful. Is it the right data? Is it true? Is it accurate? Is it relevant? Then yes. But we shouldn't assume that. So the work of people like Gerd Gigerentzer, who is a social scientist in Germany, suggests that sometimes we make much better decisions with less data. There are many examples, but here's one. Imagine that you want to decide whether to become a gambler, and you try to collect as much data as possible on gambling, and you realize something astonishing, and that is that the trope about beginner's luck is true, that many gamblers at the beginning of their career do incredibly well. The more data you collect, the more it verifies this conclusion. If that were true, if it were true that the more data you have, the better, then the more data you collect that verifies this would push you on to becoming a gambler and then stopping, because gambler's luck seems to be a thing. But what's missing in the picture is all the data that we didn't collect, and that is that people who lose on their first bets don't become gamblers because it hurts so much. And so we never get their data because they're essentially not around the table anymore. And this is called survivor's bias. The same thing happens with investment funds. So you open an account, and even though you get this warning that the past doesn't resemble the future, you look at all the portfolios that you can invest in, and they're doing incredibly well. But what you're not seeing is all the investments that completely tanked and are not on the spreadsheet anymore.

Speaker 2:
[49:16] Well, I have to say, this conversation has really got me thinking, because I've never thought of predictions this way. But you, well, now you've changed the way I think about them. I've been speaking with Carissa Véliz. She's an associate professor at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. And her book is called Prophecy, Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, From Ancient Oracles to AI. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Carissa, thank you. This was fun.

Speaker 4:
[49:47] Thank you so much, Mike. It's been super fun.

Speaker 2:
[49:54] If you need a shoulder to cry on, you might want to skip your 20-something friends and go find someone in midlife. Research suggests that empathy increases as we age, often peaking somewhere in our 40s or 50s. And women tend to score higher than men on measures of empathy. One large study published by the American Psychological Association found that traits like empathy and compassion tend to rise from young adulthood into middle age. It's likely because people accumulate more life experience and emotional complexity over time. There's also a practical explanation. A lot of middle-aged adults, especially women, are simultaneously caring for children and helping aging parents. That constant emotional multitasking may sharpen their ability to read people and respond in a supportive way. In other words, it's not just personality, it's practice. So, if you want someone who truly gets it, your best bet may be someone who's been around long enough to have seen and felt a lot of what life can throw at you. And that is something you should know. A great way to support this podcast is to add your voice to the ratings and reviews that are already out there. It helps us reach more people and it would be most appreciated. So please leave a rating and review. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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