Ep504 - Maggie Jackson | Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure
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Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Kyle, bringing you this week's episode with author Maggie Jackson. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. Every episode is taken from a video that can be seen at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Award-winning author Maggie Jackson joins us to discuss her latest book, Uncertain, The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure.

In an era of terrifying unpredictability, the swift, sure answer often seems right. We race to address precarity and complexity with neat algorithms, crisp bullet points, or hurried tweets. Who has time to dally in the wilderness of being unsure? How could we find the clarity and vision so urgently needed today by not knowing? This book is about the unsung triumph of doing just that.

Far from luring us into inertia or defeat, uncertainty powers good judgment, cognitive flexibility, creativity, curiosity, and even resilience. A state of mind critical to human achievement yet until recently little understood, uncertainty is the portal to finding the humanity in your enemies, the linchpin of superior teamwork, and the mindset most needed in times of flux.

A scientific adventure tale set on the front lines of a volatile era, this book explores uncertainty's positive role in the life of the mind and in contemporary society. What is a good daydream? Why is being unsure now seen as a healthy form of stress? Why do AI's top leaders see uncertainty as the key to keeping humanity safe from increasingly unstoppable AI? By learning to wield uncertainty with skill and care, we can recapture realms of good thinking sidelined in an era of push-button thought.

We can discover all that the human mind can do at the peak of its powers in the most difficult predicaments and learn how uncertainty is not weakness, but wisdom. Moderated by Mike Abrams, here is Maggie Jackson, the wisdom and wonder of being unsure.

Hi, everybody. My name is Mike Abrams, and I'm excited to host today's Talk at Google. I'm very excited for our guest today, who is Maggie Jackson. Maggie is an award-winning author and a journalist, a former longtime columnist for the Boston Globe. Maggie has contributed to the New York Times and many other major publications worldwide. Maggie also has a fun Google tie, as she was one of the first external speakers that came to our Google I.O. conference back in 2018. And she is here today to talk about her book, Uncertain.

So welcome, Maggie Jackson, and thanks for joining Talks at Google. Thank you. It's so wonderful to be with you today. I'm excited to have you here. I loved reading the book, and there's so much thoughtful points and topics I want to get to. But I think an important part for anybody who hasn't read this book yet, and I encourage everyone to...

is can maybe you establish a baseline for us up front on how you would define uncertainty? Because it's such an important part, I think, of the themes we're going to go through today that I want to make sure everyone watching this has the same definitions as you can provide for us today.

Right. I think it's very important. Yes, because uncertainty is so often considered as something, a monolithic, swampy kind of negative thing. And it's good to put a little structure there at the very beginning. And so generally experts agree that there are two major kinds of uncertainty. And the first is called aleatory. That's basically what we might say, you know, call the uncertainty. So, you know, we see a headline, uncertainty roils the stock markets. That's

What humans can't know. That's the unpredictability, volatility of the world. And despite our probabilistic reasoning and mathematical models, we don't know if the stock market will open up or down next Tuesday. There's so much we don't know. So that's one kind. The second major kind is our

uncertainty. So psychological uncertainty, that's called epistemic uncertainty. And that's in brief, just the human response to the unknown. So anytime we meet up, you know, as living organisms, we meet up with something new or unexpected or ambiguous,

we, there's a certain point where we get the chance to recognize that we reached the limits of our knowledge. You know, we're basically caught short between our assumptions and expectations that drive our days and then a new reality. So you might be, you know, barreling down the highway on your way to an important meeting and there's this unexpected traffic jam. And so, you know, the app

might show you the better route or maybe not. You might make it or maybe you won't. You're caught short, but yet there's a sense of it could be this, it could be that. That's unsureness. That's uncertainty. There's a sense of possibility there as well. Yeah. And so as you're explaining this, it's so interesting. How did you decide to tackle this as the topic for the book? Was it a moment that you said, I got to dig deeper or how did you end up with the book Uncertain?

Yes, and it was actually before COVID. And why would anyone want to spend years immersed in this murky topic? Well, I actually kind of fell into it or backed into it because after I wrote a book called Distracted, which is about attention in our society and the good and bad of multitasking fragmentation of our attention, I wanted to write a book about thinking because that seemed to go hand in hand with attention.

as a super important human faculty. And the first chapter in this new book about thinking in the digital age was about uncertainty because mainly I felt as though it was something that we need to eradicate, you know, state of bafflement, get it over with, get into the meat of good thinking. And I couldn't have been more wrong. So, you know, three things happened. First, I discovered that this topic was, believe it or not, highly,

understudied until recently. It had been overlooked. We live in this efficiency-oriented, outcome-oriented, particularly in the West, culture. And so even in psychology, scientists were more interested in whether you got the right or wrong answer when you're sitting in the scanner, the MRI scanner, rather than the process that includes uncertainty. And so it was really swept under the rug. Even Daniel Kahneman didn't really address it head on.

The second thing was there. I did discover an explosion of new research, this new science of uncertainty that really kind of proves that our popular assumptions about uncertainty is weakness and, you know, inertia are wrong. We're really wrong, you know, because uncertainty plays a

Now, the scientific findings are showing that uncertainty plays a really critical role in curiosity and also drives human adaptability. It's a foundation stone of your ability to adapt to change, as well as creativity.

And counterintuitively, it's extremely essential. How we navigate uncertainty is extremely essential for mental well-being and resilience. Couldn't be more important today. And finally, it's the sort of secret, overlooked, you know, hidden, wonderful aspect of a superior collaboration. So, and also I'll note, these are the skills that we need in

a time of volatility. These are exactly what you'd pick if you wanted to equip yourself. And then finally, I'll just say that, you know, we are all

Psycho, you know, in innately aversive as a psychologist say to uncertainty, we want to know and that's and that's natural and that's right. We need and want answers to survive. And so I'm not saying and no one's definition of the good life would be to remain in uncertainty, but.

I think after years of immersing myself in this topic, that we're approaching a kind of cultural and individual allergy to uncertain, which we urgently need to push back against. You know, our definitions of leaders as being, you know, constantly ultra decisive with no other tempo. You know, data needs to be crisp and neat and that often decontextualizes it, you know,

And so, you know, I can go on and on, but if we begin to expand the space between question and answer, which is the practice of uncertainty, of wielding uncertainty skillfully, then we can face life with wonder and curiosity and not with fear and closed-mindedness. So there's so much potential in uncertainty, and it's just beginning to be mapped out. And I was really lucky to fall into this rabbit hole. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, let's go into the rabbit hole on a couple of different topics because I love the, you know, you've kind of defined it a little bit for us, but I want to go into the neuroscience behind it. And especially, you know, there's a little bit in the book about anxiety. And I think there's a little bit of the anxiety and uncertainty can be hand in hand at points. And so can you talk a little bit about the neuroscience that you, you know, that you wrote about, but then also how

as a society that has more anxious moments and a lot of that stems from uncertainty, how your research kind of found how those two things, uh, relate. That is, that's so important. It's such a great question. And actually, as I travel around speaking about uncertainty now, I'll ask audiences, what's the first word that comes to mind when I say uncertainty? And the first responses, multiple responses actually that they come are from people who say anxiety, uh,

angst, worry, you know, that and actually linguistic studies show that our language in and around our metaphors and around uncertainty are highly negative. So it's really important to understand that, you know, that let's that we should take a closer look at.

at this, you know, idea that there's a direct link between uncertainty and anxiety, because there's a more complex story here. And it's actually pretty surprising and interesting. So when we meet that new, unexpected, ambiguous, you know, thing, encounter, the traffic jam, or a memo from the boss, what occurs is that we get a stress response. You know, we, our heart

or our cortisol levels go up. You know, classic stress symptoms related to hormones and neurotransmitters cascading through our body when we meet something new. But now the new science of uncertainty is beginning to dissect what happens in society

the brain, your brain on uncertainty. So actually when you're unsure in that moment, your working memory is bolstered, your brain becomes more receptive to new data at the neuronal level, and also your focus sharpens and broadens. So this is akin to what scientists call curious eyes. There's studies out of the University of Washington of emergency room physicians who

When they're in a sticky clinical situation and they report being unsure, that's when they also report having heightened attention, which is equipping them for that moment. So as you can see from what I'm describing, uncertainty actually is good stress. It's positive.

It's putting you on your toes. And one neuroscientist told me this wonderful, you know, pithy little description of what's happening. Joseph Cable at the University of Pennsylvania, who studies learning in dynamic environments, said uncertainty is when your brain is telling itself there's something to be learned here. I love that.

Because it really boils down to it's a signal. It's a signal that the routine won't do anymore, and then it's time to pivot to new modes related to updating our understanding of the world. And so just to link it to anxiety, basically

Basically all of what I'm talking about, which is called arousal, is distinct from the fear response. They actually utilize different nervous systems. So if you're afraid of the unknown or what your boss is going to say in that meeting, if you're just plain afraid, you're going to get a physiological and neural response more related to a kind of shutting down.

So you're going into survival mode, not performance mode. So even just one example is your blood in the fear response, your blood begins to circulatory system begins to funnel blood away from the extremities and toward the core, you know, makes sense for survival. But the extremities include the brain. So that's

not where you want to go. And just one other little, well, you know, one strategy that we can use to

avert fear and lean into uncertainty to, you know, harness this arousal, which is so helpful in moments of challenge is something called, you know, to dial back on something called outcome fixation. So in a nutshell, you know, we are in a challenge, like giving a public presentation really matters. You so often either leap or

to fear of failure, oh, I'm bombing, or perhaps thinking of the reward at the end of the day, I'm going to get this paycheck. And that kind of focus, I mean, we all need goals. We all need to know where we're going. But fixating on outcome actually diverts your cognitive resources and that signal of uncertainty away from the

process that gains you the good outcome. So you're putting the cart before the horse. And studies after studies in so many different fields show that this actually undermines our performance. And so one study I love, which came out of professional sports, was an analysis of 100%

top professional tennis matches on the level of Wimbledon, US Open, et cetera. During the finals, if the trophy is displayed prominently on the court, the favorite, the champion begins to struggle and lose points.

outcome fixation. And so one way, a really granular, tiny little way we can use to dial back on that outcome fixation is to use something also borrowed from professional athletes called Q words. And so you could see at the Olympics, sometimes our

the athletes would be kind of muttering to themselves. And very often they're using keywords, which is a personal mantra designed to keep them in the moment, in the game, in the play, something like be now or focus here. And we can all kind of use that really helpful self-talk to lean into uncertainty. And it's an easy, effective way to do it. So this is all, you know,

The neuroscience of uncertainty kind of gives us the conclusion that the unease of uncertainty is actually a gift if we can wade in there and make use of it. Yeah, it's a little bit too of what you wrote. I remember I really liked the part about the surgeon who's overconfident because it's routine and the cue words of being able to have something done.

something there that can allow to bring you back to that. Okay, hold on. There's there's there. It also makes me think a little bit as someone who watches the NHL a lot, the, the, the Stanley cup playoffs when the cups in the building, it's a lot harder to win. And that's very similar to the Wimble Wimbledon example.

I didn't know that. That's perfect. Yeah, exactly. I love that. I'd love to pivot a little bit to talk about the digital age because obviously you're speaking here on YouTube at Google. This is going to go out to a wide audience, but also to the employees. And there is a little bit that you wrote about with information and search, but then also AI, which is something that's being talked about a ton right now.

And so can you speak a little bit about how you view uncertainty in this digital age and the evolution of the digital age, you know, that's constantly evolving?

Right. No, a big, big, big, big topic. But I'll offer two observations about uncertainty and living in the digital age. And one is on a personal note. One is more of a kind of meta view of what's coming down the road and actually why I'm very hopeful about uncertainty, especially in A.I.,

believe it or not. So I think it's important for all the wonders that our technology offers us, the devices we're so wedded to, so the information, the relationships, the connections that we can gain. I think it's still important to be wary of elements of digital living that undermine or obscure uncertainty's potential.

because even the aesthetics of what we see online is, you know, neat, pat, quick, sure. And in fact, the instantaneity and the effortlessness actually speak to or fuel one cognitive side of ourselves, which is the heuristic reactive thinking. And, you know, even the fact that

As you know, users tend to take the very first search result of the very first page and don't look further. And Daniel Russell, the lead of search quality at Google, has warned against this again and again. And people take that first search result and see it as correct.

You know, this links back to the fluency of what we're doing online. Search also, according to a decade of studies, online search fuels a kind of, you know, a little bit of a hubris. So basically,

Basically people come away with thinking they know more than they do. Study after study shows this. They think they're going to do better on an information test after searching online. Well, you know, why not? Because, hey, we are melded to this vast information bounty, this smorgasbord forever going on forever.

It's really important when you lose sight of what you don't know. When we're melded with supreme boundarylessness of information, we still need to know the boundaries. And that's where uncertainty comes in, as I've been talking about. And secondly, in the realm of memory.

And I might even just say that word and people would say, hey, why bother? I mean, of course, technology is an aid to memory throughout history, the book, the post-it note, et cetera. But there are scientists now growing increasingly concerned about technology interfering with the natural function of memory. And in particular, surprisingly, with robotics.

our ability to forget, to misremember, and the kind of stumbles of memory that which are, believe it or not, really important and are a form of uncertainty in action, definitely. So by outsourcing memory to us,

a great degree, you know, we always will do it, but to an extreme degree, we're sidestepping often the practice, the skill building needed to allow the meaning making of memory to occur. So not just encoding, but remembering, but also keeping our knowledge architects, our branching tree-like architectures of knowledge, like help

and alive and evolving, which is what they're meant to do. But by not utilizing our memory, we're actually impeding, for instance, the slow, messy process of abstraction. If I do a certain project many, many times and then particularly

in the quiet times of sleep and rest, you know, I am, you know, putting that work aside. I usually, after that fallow time, I call it, will often come up with insights due to abstraction. I'll come up with sort of hidden rules or, oh, that's what connects this work I've been doing. Ah,

That's why the impressionists are called the impressionists or what have you. This is a kind of curation that's really important to, you know, so in essence, kind of putting down our devices and going within, which is uncertainty in action, a form of suspense is important. Even a failure to remember something, which entails a struggle to recall, actually activates

activates synaptic connections in and around the information that you're trying to remember and strengthens your mind. So those are ways in which we should be wary that we're not undermining, you know, the work of uncertainty in knowing. But

Back to AI, I'm very, actually very interested, and I think this should be on everyone's radar screens, frankly. If digital living inhibits skill in harnessing uncertainties, powers, well, AI offers hopes because there is a new movement led by some of AI's topmost leaders, such as Stuart Russell, Yasuo Bengio, people listening might have heard of this, to create basically

unsure AI, to create AI robots and models that are unsure in their aims. And, you know, again, as people might know, AI is founded on a definition of intelligence, which is rationalist, you know, simply the idea that you pursue your goals however you can, you know, and that's why AI has been so wonderfully and achieved so much, but it's also, you know,

also sometimes has this alignment problem away from human needs and wants. So the new AI is really basically using many of the same probabilistic means to actually, you know, but also is more honest and transparent and reflective about, you know, multiple options toward the goal or

admitting to the human that it is 30% unsure. A cop robot chasing a suspect down the street with a human partner under this new AI will admit that it's 30% unsure that that is the actual guilty party. Today's AI will just say, shoot. And so it's really important to

to understand that also beta user studies show that unsure AI is actually seen as more intelligent, cooperative, and a better performer than traditional AI. What's interesting to me is that we all know how influential technology is. It changes what it means to know, how we interact with others, et cetera. Well, the people who are at the forefront of making these whole

humble, honest systems have told me again and again that this working with unsure AI is helping them to cultivate qualities within themselves, these similar qualities within themselves. And so therefore, if we can, you know, bolster this movement, perhaps AI, you know, unsure AI will hold up a kind of mirror to ourselves and, and,

allow us to, you know, see an example of some entity that's actually, you know, using the power of uncertainty. I think that's very important. You know, we're not a brain that's alone on earth anymore. And so unsure AI could be a real help in digital living.

Yeah, I love hearing you talk about that because it is, as you said up front, it's not always an outcome or right or wrong. There is somewhere in the middle at times, and that's healthy and valuable. Can you talk a little bit before we get to some advice? I would love to hear a little bit about your thoughts on how this impacts the workplace and with teams because obviously we've talked about it social, we've talked about it with teams.

professional athletes, but a lot of us aren't playing for Wimbledon. And so we're, how can we think about this from our own workplace, our own environment or other parts in our own life?

Yes. I think that's really important. There's a social side to uncertainty. It's not a solo act. And I have talked about the wakefulness of uncertainty, but also the second pillar of uncertainty's wisdom. Uncertainty is a spur, a provocation. It puts us on our toes. It readies us to learn and to perform. But as well, uncertainty isn't something to eradicate after that. It

It is basically an accompaniment, an ally to good thinking, to curiosity, creativity. In fact, I write in my book about eight different modes of uncertainty in action. You know, the surgeon deliberating in the crowd.

who is the superior performance will know when and how to be unsure. And then on the flip side, I think that we all should know how to be uncertain together. So especially this is important in an era of polarization because I write in the book about

the importance of using uncertainty and proven strategies of open-mindedness, essentially, to bridge to the other side, to people you disagree with. But equally important not to overlook are strategies related to uncertainty that

You know, vis-a-vis our side. So that means, you know, our team, our group, because combating the complacency of our bonding, of our agreement is one of the foremost challenges of working together. And in fact, agreement is actually a kind of opiate to a team, even if as diverse as they can be.

So I did a deep dive into the Mars exploration rover team, the people who across many years put the rovers on Mars, those multimillion-dollar, hundreds of multimillion-dollar robots on

And they are considered one of the most innovative teams in space exploration history, as well as being they are one of the most studied. I mean, really studied under the Microsoft because of their success. And one little story that factors in here is that years ago, someone on the team actually

uh, uploaded faulty commands to one of the rovers jeopardizing the mission. And so you would think the project leaders at that point would say, Hey, get back on the same page. And, you know, Oh, for one, what are we? And instead they did something completely contrary, uh,

and very surprising and a surreal lesson. So as I mentioned, agreement is a kind of opiate. When groups are in agreement, they think they're more similar than they really are. They lose sight of diversity amongst themselves. They grow less accurate. They grow less creative. And they also, as their performance declines, they actually think they're doing great, which is amazing.

Discord, on the other hand, does all the opposite effects, intensified discussions, unearthing what's called the hidden profile of diverse information that often gets overlooked in the rush to accord. And this happens from Supreme Court to sororities on campus to workplace teams and Mount Everest climbing teams. Now, the real core of what is important here is how.

How does disagreement fuel superior performance? And of course, we might think that, well, the right side in the disagreement wins or the dissenting voice raises the right answer and we all follow behind. And that's actually not how it works as scientists are beginning to understand. It's because the dissenting or disagreement voice, even if flat out wrong,

If their point is wrong, they're still actually going to bolster group performance because they create a new dynamic based on sparking uncertainty, which is skepticism and questioning and listening.

learning the limits of your knowledge and all of that great stuff. They become curious, more curious. So in the MER team, the Mars Exploration Rover team, one in five conversations were micro conflicts, you know, respectful, of course, but also all of those involved expressions of uncertainty. So they'd say, maybe, I've read the transcripts, many of them, and they'd say, maybe, I don't know, I'm not sure, but you know, maybe...

That kind of thing, gentle but disagreement that sparked this better kind of conversation. And we can do that by using hedge words like maybe, which are seen as weak, but actually signal that you're receptive to others and signal that there's something more to know.

And the MERS team also had a listening ritual where every meeting ended with a call for countering voices, disagreement, or I don't know. And that's what the leaders at the MERS team after the faulty command story, that's what they call exhorted the team to do to get back to the place of question.

And that's how that's why they were successful, according to many different scientists. So, you know, it's called by one more scientist holding on to doubt.

It's fantastic. I love that. Well, let's close this out here. Everyone should pick up the book because there's so many more stories and a lot more to take away. But what's for anybody watching? What would be your one piece of advice or biggest kind of takeaway that you want them to leave today remembering? Sure. I think that...

The idea that uncertainty can be skillful is probably the most important. You know, we can gain skill. We can educate ourselves about the workings of uncertainty and your brain on uncertainty. But there are really simple strategies. I've talked about outcome fixation and, you know, being wakeful, you know, knowing, leaning into uncertainty, it's good stress and the power of a maybe, things like that. But also there's one, you know, area we can work on is thinking

Basically, our own sort of approach to uncertainty related to there's a personality trait called tolerance or intolerance of uncertainty. So in very brief, people who are intolerant of uncertainty are more rigid thinkers, jump to conclusions, you know.

Black and white thinkers, they see uncertainty as a threat. During the acute pandemic, they actually were more likely to use denial or avoidance or substance abuse in order to deal with this threat. Whereas people who are tolerant are more curious, flexible thinkers, and they see uncertainty as a challenge.

You know, not a picnic, but a challenge. And so today there's a lot of work in medicine and psychology on laser targeted interventions and tools to bolster your tolerance of uncertainty. And it's proven to improve resilience. And also to actually be, it's being used as a treatment for anxiety because it's the

fear of the unknown. It's not the uncertainty that holds us back. And so simple, simple, simple strategies such as delegate more at work. Uh, that's a proven tool. Um, try a new dish or go on a, go to a country where you don't speak the language. Uh,

And even with high school students, they're now training them to bolster their tolerance of uncertainty by answering their phone without caller ID, which some younger person actually told me is terrifying for their generation. And to end on a personal note, I, you know, during COVID, I'm a swimmer, the pool's closed. I took to the ocean because I moved near the shore. I spend a lot of time now. So when I'm in town, I swim in the Atlantic often.

the coast of Rhode Island, all four seasons, you know, cold, rain, fog, whatever. And I thought, why is this so strengthening? You know, it's exercise. It's a little social because we do it together. But I finally realized that deep down, it's my daily dose of uncertainty because you don't know what the ocean is going to present you with, even if you have the app, you know, even if you know the beach. And I just love the fact that we can

bite off a little more of the unknown each day and so become more skillful at this, you know, aspect of the human condition that we often try to retreat from. We can really learn about uncertainty and then the world opens up. Many people have told me when you start to learn about uncertainty positively, productively, it's liberating.

I love it. I commit to answering my next unknown number as my challenge here. This has been amazing. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing about your research and your book and everything that you've, all the stories you've shared. Well, thank you. Thank you to the whole Talks at Google team. And thank you, Mike, for such a great conversation. Amazing. And thanks everyone else for watching. And be sure to check out Maggie's book, Uncertain, wherever you get books.

Thanks for listening. To discover more amazing content, you can always find us online at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Talk soon.