Todd Rose — Are We Living in the Truman Show? (EP.270)
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Hi, I'm Jim O'Shaughnessy and welcome to Infinite Loops.

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Thanks for joining us. Now, please enjoy this episode of Infinite Loops. Well, hello, everyone. It's Jim O'Shaughnessy with yet another Infinite Loops. I have been so excited for today's guest. I spent some time with him. He is an absolutely fascinating researcher, man, philosopher.

Co-founder and CEO of Populous, a nonpartisan think tank committed to a positive some world. Amen to that, Todd. Where everybody can have the opportunity to thrive in society. A professor at Harvard where he founded the Lab for Science of Individuality.

I was introduced to him through his writing, his bestsellers, Collective Illusions, The End of Average. I give you none other than Todd Rose. Todd, welcome. Hey, Jim. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you again, buddy. You are such an impressive guy, man. I mean, like my first question is just getting ready for this. I just kind of had to say, OK, Todd.

Have we been living in a collective illusion, a la The Truman Show? Are we all Truman in this scenario? It sure feels like it, doesn't it? It just feels like when we start digging into this topic, you realize that so much of what we think, especially in the social environments, that we think that we all believe. And so we're all doing things that we don't want to do. It just turns out to be a lie.

And that's a little frightening when you first start to encounter it. But then when you look past it and you start to see the underlying truth, things get kind of exciting and a lot more hopeful. Yeah. I came across a quote that I loved from Boris Pasternak while I was preparing. And I'm just going to read it to you because it really hit home for me. And the quote goes, the great majority of us are required to live a life of constant duplicity.

Your health has to be affected if day after day you say the opposite of what you feel, you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Wow. Okay. So first of all, I got to remember this quote. I'm going to borrow that. Yeah, please do. There's so much to it, right? It's speaking exactly to the moment we're in as Americans where, you know,

At my think tank populace, we're probably most famous right now for our work in private opinion research, which is just no one's telling the truth about what they think. And so we've used methodologies that get around distorting effects of social pressure to reveal what people really think and feel and want and fear. But this is so true, right? So first of all, what we find right now,

roughly two thirds of Americans are self silencing on things that matter that really matter to them. They just don't think like, I believe something I care about something, but I don't think I can actually express that publicly. That's dangerous. What's worse is in that need to sort of belong to,

it can lead you not just to say nothing, but to actually misrepresent your views, right? As we see in the quote. And we see that like, no kidding. Last year, we did the largest sort of truth serum, if you will, study looking at people's private beliefs and then what they say out loud. And we covered 60 some odd of the most controversial issues in the country, 20,000 people plus in the sample. And what we found was every single demographic, right?

is outright lying about their views on multiple issues and lying to the point where the sort of consensus in public does not represent their consensus in private. And, um,

If you think about something else in that quote, right, that there has to be health consequences. Well, we actually know that's true. Research has pretty conclusively shown that consistent self-silencing actually has cardiovascular consequences, elevated cortisol levels, these kind of things. And the study I'm thinking of actually tracked women in particular, but it showed like actually predicts pretty bad cardiovascular outcomes for

Also, an interesting thing was that a lot of the gender gap that we see consistently in mental health, other kinds of health issues, when you include self-silencing as a variable, it completely eliminates the gender gap. Women were just self-silencing more and it's costing them.

And so whether it's the health and personal consequences, also though, listen, people that self-silence actually have lower levels of perceived self-worth, right? Because you just know. It's like, I'm not even telling, I'm not even saying what I think. They have diminished life satisfaction for all the reasons. You're making choices about things that make you miserable. And what I think is even worse is as it ladders up to the interpersonal and then the social level,

It leads to declining levels of social trust. In fact, in our research, we found that social trust is probably the best predictor of the health of a free society. I mean, it's like just your gut feeling whether most people can be trusted, which means I don't need to control you. I can let you make your own choices.

Well, we already knew that in the US, so privately only 38% of people think most people can be trusted. That's dangerously low. But what was fascinating is when you cut that by whether you self-silence or not, the people who are self-silencing, only 30% believe people are trustworthy. That's like third world level of social trust. It's so dangerous. The positive side was for the one third of Americans who don't feel like they have to self-silence,

They have 52% level social trust, which is actually really great. The flywheel starts to work in your favor then. That's like Scandinavian level social trust. So, you know, the last thing I'll say is then you lead to this consequence of what we can talk about around collective illusions where, you

Because we're not speaking up, only the vocal fringes are the ones dominating the conversation. So we come to believe that our communities believe things they don't. And that ends up with this false polarization where I'm telling you right now, it feels like we're so divided as a country. And in public, we are under the hood, not even close.

But it's real in its consequences, right? Like if we believe we're divided, then we start to act that way. And, you know, like if I was devising a way to destroy this country, you couldn't think of a more clever and borderline evil way to do it than to convince us that we, the people, are no longer we, the people. That we don't share values. We don't share aspirations. Right.

So therefore, we're not trustworthy. Right. And you will do great harm to society that way. Could not agree more. And it fascinates me like this is nothing new. We both know that. Right. Like Lennon called all of the Western press and intellectuals useful idiots. They built Potemkin villages, which were fake villages that the Western journalists would be driven past. Just false fronts like a movie studio. Yeah.

And like, it goes back to like our own revolution, the Federalist Papers. Everybody had their own newspaper and it was basically propaganda. But now I think what's different is at least now,

from the way I'm seeing this unfold is we now have a global brain, right? Yeah. And social media where essentially people can, you can gaslight people all day long,

And it's propaganda at scale, right? Like I know you know about Eddie Bernays, who I call that fucking guy, because like what he did was horrible. He literally, he was really good at it, though. He was the guy who rebranded propaganda to public relations. Brilliant reframe. But so as we're looking to disentangle and disambiguinate this world,

you know, people's real beliefs, real opinions versus the stated opinions. Like what is a, what's the methodology that you can get people to in quotes, say the unspeakable. Yeah. What, for example, what's the hardest single hardest private belief to elicit in

with current methods that you're using, which I know are very different than traditional polling. Yeah. And how do you capture that? How do you get that out of the person? That's great. So we get to nerd out here. So you can cut it up if this is too, like, those would be a big cut in the interview. We have a very nerdy audience, so they'll love it. So all private opinion methodologies have

two things in common. They create the perception and reality, but the perception is important of both anonymity, like

Like you, you can't know that it's me saying this. I know you can't. And then plausible deniability. And it's really funny that when you look at the, this is true for all polling, not just private opinion research, like people, first of all, are always aware of like, someone's going to know that I said this. And so it's, it's like, yeah, okay. Anonymity. But then they literally imagine if you're taking a survey and,

And you answer a question on a screen that someone might burst in, aha, I just saw what you pushed. So, you know, the secret with these methodologies, I'll give you the hardest one, which is called the list experiment or item count technique, the two names for it.

And this is what you have to do to get to it. And this is why right now we have more private opinion data on the American public than any organization, in part because it's like you have to really want to do this. You have to know why you need to do it. It's more expensive, more time consuming and has a level of expertise. It's just different than polling. So here's what you do. And I'll tell you, in terms of the class of statements that they're really good at getting the the the truth out of it.

It's perfectly good when it's stuff you wish you could say, but don't believe that you can. And so, you know, in politics, you remember the shy Trump voter back in the day, it's like, man, listen, if I could tell you, I would, I'm not ashamed of it. I just, you know, it's a little harder when it's stuff you don't want anyone to know, but it's, it, these methods do tend to work there. This list experiment method is what the IRS uses to estimate who cheats on their taxes. You know,

I don't know anyone who's wanting to tell people that, but luckily we're in this space. Except maybe Trump himself, right? Yeah, somehow he's been able to turn this into a virtue, right? Only a fool pays taxes. Look at me. So the way this works is, okay, for public opinion, straightforward. We will engage in the same polling methods. So let me take a statement like this.

you know, I support defunding the police, which is one we've actually studied quite a bit. Okay, well, if you're a Democrat, there's definitely, or there was, definitely a right answer. And if you really thought it through, it's like, really? You just want to get rid of police? Like, that's...

Okay, so public opinion, we would just, we literally would just survey. We'd go to like YouGov, get to a panel and say, here's a statement. Do you agree or disagree with this? You know? Okay. So that's got all the social pressure. Like, I know what your answer is. Anyone could tell. Okay, to get to private, this is what you have to do. So you're going to embed that controversial statement into a set of non-controversial statements. And so first you have to build that, what's a control group.

And that control group, instead of seeing that sensitive issue of defunding the police, they'll get three statements at a time. Like, recessions are a natural part of an economy. Like, people can disagree, but no one's like, I can't tell you what I think, right? And all you ask is, how many of these three do you agree with? Okay, easy to do. Now, here's the secret with this. They're engineered so that nobody ever agrees with all three statements.

And no one agrees with none of them or disagrees with all of them. So it's always going to be like one or two. But what's powerful about that is when you're taking it, you're like, I agree with one of those or two of those. You know for sure that there's no way if I came in and said, aha, Jim, I just caught you saying two. And you're like, but you don't know which of these two that I was saying. So there's a real confidence there. Okay, that's your control group.

Then for the experimental group, you take that. So those same three like soft statements, only now they get a fourth. I support defunding the police. And they're asked, how many of these four do you agree with?

And then you do some, you know, combining that you, you compare those two groups. There's some, there's some math behind it. That's a little more sophisticated and you can create an estimate of the aggregate view of this, right? I will never know what you Jim believe on that. Like there's no way to reverse engineer that. So I'm trading precision in terms of individual responses and,

for precision in a private view in the aggregate. And we have the same, there's different ways to measure, you know, that confidence interval around the estimate and things like that. But what's really powerful is these kinds of methods. You're like, well, how would you know that you're right?

You know, like that's a fair question right now. We've been at this long enough when we first started, it's been about eight years where media was like, we don't know what this is. We use this list experiment. The other one's called conjoint, which measures private trade-offs, which is also really good when that's called for. They're like, how do you know? And it's like, I mean, look at the history of this, but that wasn't good enough. So we got it going. And then pretty soon the stuff we've, we've measured, if I don't,

So myself, like has turned out to prove, prove out. We predicted the collapse of college as the goal of education five years ago. And we saw it change in private because things always change in private for the change in public. I'm sort of allergic to politics, like the partisan politics, but the thing where you get the most attention now, which is like a blessing and a curse is last year we did that social pressure index, right? This biggest study of the, using this list experiment, uh,

And we included the statement around whether you're going to vote for Trump or Biden, like your willingness to vote for Trump or Biden. Turns out we predicted Trump's final vote percentage within a half a percentage point publicly six months before the election.

And it just turned out there were subgroups who specifically felt a lot of pressure not being willing to say whether they'd vote for him. So now that happened, now everyone's like, okay, what else is going on? You know, but it's hard to keep, but we don't care about politics, right? But you asked about it, right? So...

Yeah. And when we spent the day together, you also gave me a couple other ones. Share some of the more fascinating ones that we talked about. Any new ones that you've learned since we were together? Because you literally blew my mind with some of them.

Well, here's the unfortunate part is there's so many of them that like, even as we're sitting here talking, I'm like, you'll have to remind me which ones blew your mind. Cause like, I'll give you a few of my favorites. I want to come back to this defund the police because this has a, it also, you know, we actually interacted when, uh, with the Biden administration off of this issue, because it was right when the Ukraine crisis was blowing up, there was a state of the address. They reached out and said, we'd read the book. What like, we think this might relate to some things. And, uh,

At the time, like there was 60 some odd percent of Democrats were publicly saying they were in favor of defunding the police. And what we found in private, it just wasn't true. Back then it was 9%.

And so really had to show them the methodology, convince them they're right. And they kept saying, well, but yeah, I mean, maybe in general, but we're hearing from a lot of people. I'm like, who, who are you hearing from? It's like, we got phone calls and you're like, yeah, no, right. Like it's like 17 people in their parents' basements calling you all the time, but like, it feels like everybody, but we did convince them of that. And we got a line in the state union address that said it was, it's not defund the police. It's fund the police. But I use that example because we,

These illusions can have consequences. You think about the cities that went all in on that idea, you know, Seattle, some places in California where it's not my opinion, they've reversed course already because of how disastrous it was. And it's like, it would be bad enough if that was because that's what people really wanted and it was still foolhardy. But it's pretty tragic when it's based on an illusion that no one really wanted.

And so these kind of issues, like I think one of the ones that has really been interesting to me and something that's been important is has to do with Hamas Israel. And, you know, right after October 7th, there was a Harvard Harris poll that said like 62%, I believe it was in the low 60s of Gen Z believe Hamas was justified.

Like not that they care about innocent people, that this terrorist organization was justified in the rape, murder of innocent people. And as you and I talked about, I got called to go to Israel because they were really worried about that. And they thought they had discovered some things about the origin of it. But so we did our private opinion, not even close. It's not even close. It was single digits of Gen Z. But when you ask them, what do you think other of your peers think?

They thought 87% of Gen Z believed Hamas was justified. And so they want to fit in. They go along with things that they don't really agree with. And pretty soon the media narrative spinning, look at all this. And, you know, they put those kinds of polls out that reinforces the illusion that

And now people are streaming out in protest of things that they don't even understand and genuinely don't agree with. But here we are. And, you know, so you can go after everything from in most things in politics have these illusions. But what's really wild to me is it's one thing for these really contentious political issues to feel that pressure to not say what you think.

But we're finding it in some of the most personal spaces of all. Like, for example, we did this, what we call a success index and around the American dream. What is your view of a good life, a successful life? And we use the conjoint methodology to look at trade-offs because it's time and money. You can't have everything, right? What do you really prioritize? And you can't game this methodology. It's really powerful.

And what we found was just shocking. The first time we did it, we used 72 different attributes that could go into a successful life. Everything from being the richest person you know, to having a family, having good character, everything in between. So when we, we always say, have them do the instrument for themselves. And then immediately after each question, it's like, what do you think most people would say to this? So you're building, you know, your perception of the majority and your own personal view. Well, yeah,

People believe that the number one trade-off priority for a successful life for other people is to be famous. Like that's it in private. It was dead last, like as crazy. And like the in private view of a good life is pretty remarkable. What we have in common as a people, there's no kidding in private. The number one trade-off priority is that I want to do work as a positive impact on other people.

That's pretty great. If you if you realize that most of your fellow Americans see that as success, that kind of warms my heart. Right. Me too. Me too. That was wild as well. In the most recent one we did beyond wanting to contribute. The idea of being involved in your community was a top 10 priority for every single demographic in the country.

Now, of course, they don't believe anyone thinks that, right? Right. So here we have a bunch of people who define success in terms of like contribution, community, relationships, family, right? Like, yeah, they want to achieve, but they don't see it as a zero-sum game. They don't want to chase the trappings of fame and wealth for their own sake. But we think everybody does. And it's what's funny about the community one, which just blew my mind. We also measure...

The perception of how are we doing on these things? How are you doing? Right. So if you say, I want to, you know, I want to be a good person. Well, do you think you're a good person? So we can measure achievement on all these attributes. Being involved in your community was the lowest achieved attribute in the top 10 of any attribute for people. And there's no kidding. More people reported being debt free than involved in their community at the level they want to be.

So it's just wild. And we can talk about this, but like a couple of things I think are worth sharing real quick, because if you don't mind, I'd love to, because we'll talk about this idea of a collective illusion. It's probably worth defining it. I'd love to share a little bit about how we got, how you get to those things. And then we could talk a little bit about, if you don't mind, like what do we do about it? Right. Because this is pretty scary. But so just to put a definition to it, right. When we say collective illusion, it's really just groupthink, but you're wrong about the group. Right.

If you can sink in, right? Like group things bad enough as it is. You're just going along with the crowd. But what if you were wrong about the crowd to begin with? So you're conforming to something that really no one wants. And that's what it is. There are these social phenomena where most people in a group go along with something they don't privately agree with because they incorrectly think most people in their group agree with it. And so as a result, entire groups end up doing things that almost no one actually wanted to do.

Now, what's wild is you think, how could that happen? Like, how could we be systematically wrong? Because it's one thing, you know, you hear this like, oh, Republicans are wrong about Democrats. Yeah, OK, that's all good stuff. I'm talking about you're wrong about your own tribe.

Right. Like the group that actually matters to you, you're wrong about. So here's what's kind of cool, because we'll get to we'll talk a little about the way that bad actors have figured this out and are manipulating us. And I do think it's the new form of propaganda manipulation, not disinformation. So but without that, it's pretty simple for how we arrive here. And you just have to know two things about your brain.

First is we all have what I might call conformity bias, right? Like, and that just means not like blind conformity. It's just that all else equal, we're hardwired to prefer to be with our groups, not against our groups. Makes tons of sense. Good for survival. Hey, since we have a little bit of time, I'm going to give you, I got to share.

When I say conformity bias, I got to show this one. The best study ever to show this, because a lot of conformity studies use these sort of like arbitrary or artificially contrived situations. So a colleague of mine in the Netherlands decides he's like, yeah, but really, how hardwired is this? How far does this go? He did the best study ever. I cannot believe he got money to do this.

Cause he's like, what could be the most personal thing I could think of? So he arrives at like who you think is good looking, like attractiveness. It's eye of the beholder, right? Like we, like beauty is not the beholder. So he gets money to create a scientific version of essentially hot or not. Right. Like he puts people in a scanner and he shows them a couple hundred pictures of faces and

And all you got to do is rate with each face, hot or not, right? On a Likert scale, five being like super hot, you know, one being no thank you, never in a million years. And I think it's funny because it's like, if I did that on the street, I'm a creep. If I do it in an MRI scanner, I'm a scientist. So it's great. So super clever. You're in there right now and you're taking this study. So you just rated a face, say a three, right?

immediately after you respond, there's a little line on the screen, it shows you what the average of everyone who's taking has done the study before you. What is that response? So it represents a group. What's cool about that is it's a group of people you've never met and frankly don't care about. So it shouldn't have that much pressure and yet. So it was actually rigged so that those numbers were made up. There was no other group. But on a subset of the time,

it would ensure that it looks like you and the group are exactly the same, right? You're with your group. And on about a quarter of the time, it would make it extremely different. So if you said five, it says one. Okay. So you're doing that. And then meanwhile, they're recording your brain activity while that's happening. What's super interesting is what happens when you're told that that group agrees with your opinion on who's good looking is

it triggers a dopamine reward response. Remarkable. Same reward response that hard drugs activate. Yep. Yeah. Now, when it looks like you are way opposed to your group on the subjective idea of who's hot, it triggers this cascading error signal, which disrupts memory and attention. It's evolutionarily meant to say, stop whatever you're doing. Something's wrong. You could be in danger. Figure it out. Okay.

Now, here's the clever part. They get done with that wave of the study, and then they literally tell the people over the intercom, oh, shoot, shoot, shoot, sorry, sorry. For whatever reason, your responses didn't register. If we give you a little more money, would you mind just quickly going through the task again? We won't show you what else. We need your responses. No problem. Then they randomize the 200 images so you wouldn't even have a sequence effect. And lo and behold...

The vast majority of people move their subjective perception to align with the group. And by the way, then you interview them after that. Like, oh no, definitely. I didn't. They really don't think they did. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So when I say that first step, we have a conformity bias. That's what I mean. Okay. It is hardwired, but for conformity to work, you have to know what your group actually thinks. Otherwise, what are you conforming to? And this is the funniest thing. The way that your brain estimates group consensus, this is no kidding.

It assumes the loudest voices repeated the most are the majority. Now, it must have worked back in the day when we had smaller groups in real life. You kind of knew people. But when you put that mechanism into a social media environment, this is where the problem starts. If you look at just what is X now, but was Twitter before.

The research there shows that roughly 80% of all content on that platform is generated by 10% of the users. 10. That's it. And it's probably even lower than that now. It's crazy, right? And Pew Research has studied those people.

And it turns out they're crazy. That's not that wasn't that was my interpretation. Let's just be clear. I think it was they are socially extreme, right, on on almost every issue. But you can see the problem, right, without any interference here. If only 10 percent of Americans believe some idea, but you think it's 80 percent.

and you disagree, unless you're willing to go against your group to trigger that error signal, right? Then you'll self-silence. If you can, just keep your head down. Don't say anything. Or if there's incentive, you'll just outright lie. You'll actually say what you know you need to say to be close to your group.

And that now we're back to what we just talked about. Two thirds of Americans right now, self-silencing every demographic outright lying about multiple issues. We are in that environment. And that's just that's just without any bad actors. And you and I talked about this before, but like what we've seen in our work now is that there are state sponsored efforts by China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Iran.

to build bot armies that do this across every platform. Now, it turns out on social media, if only 5% of your interactions are with bots, but those bots are well designed, they can guarantee what consensus emerges. It's unbelievable. The downside here, though, the bad news here is that conservatively, 18% of all your interactions on social media are with bots. And that's super conservative.

So, you know, there's an older book called The Guns of August, which is a really incredible book by Barbara Tuchman, a historian that talked about World War I and why it was so awful in terms of the loss of human life. And her thesis was that it was uniquely awful because...

The technology for war had changed exponentially, but the mindset about war had not. So you're digging trenches, you're fighting over small amounts of land, but now you have machine guns and chemical weapons and things like that. And I think we're living in a similar Guns of August moment right now, which is when it comes to propaganda and manipulation, the narrative is that it's about disinformation. And look, that exists.

But it's not that effective. The real name of the game now is the ability to manufacture a false consensus.

The ability to for, you know, China to use TikTok, which it does. And I mean, it's a matter of fact around to generate anti-Semitic sentiment amongst Gen Z. Right. I can literally get young people in this country to endorse things they don't agree with that are anti-Western, anti-U.S., anti-free society and get them to behave in ways that they wouldn't behave otherwise. Right.

And, you know, it's funny if it weren't so evil, it's it's it's quite clever. Right. You know, my friend and I know, you know, too, like Mike Milken always tells me like, yeah, because we ask, like, why would they do this? And he's like, well, look, if you're China and you can't beat the U.S. militarily or economically, you're

The clever thing you do is you destroy the human capital. You destroy the social trust, right? You create the perception of division and you get us seeing each other as enemies. It's very clever. And so, you know, my dear friend, Michael Davis, went a term that I use all the time, which is like, you know, we're losing a war. We didn't know we were fighting. I mean, that's the last thing. And I really genuinely believe that collective illusions represent the

the greatest invisible threat to free society that's ever existed. Amen. And I agree, as you know, entirely with your thesis. And yet, like going into the experiment with the MRI or the super fast MRI, we are battling biology here, right? We are battling our hardwiring and it's not just us, right? If you look,

at ants, at bees, at termites, guess what? Same percentages. 5% of the bees are the explorer bees. 95% are drones. That's right. And, you know, it is in every aspect of the evolutionary chain.

And Tuckman's book, I love that book, by the way, because it really clearly shows the example of where we are now. Our technology has grown so rapidly that culturally we're like not able to catch up. That's right. And you know, I mean, you're at the forefront of what's next, right? The work you're doing, and I was fortunate enough to see under the hood a bit, just I

unbelievable in the space of AI, which is going to make the consequences of social media seem like child's play. I mean, absolute child's play. So it does bring us to this place of like, you know, I see AI as this fork in the road moment where it really could become the greatest engine of prosperity and self-determination ever created.

or it could completely destroy us. And I don't see it as a technological issue so much as a human issue. And in this case, it's funny because you think, well, what do you do? And we can talk about some of the stuff we do. There are ways to deal with illusions and they're very different. And I would love to talk about that, but I'll jump to the end and say, what's really funny is

To your point of we're battling biology, well, part of the answer is what classical liberalism figured out a long time ago, which is, well, wait a minute. What would really matter then is that the norms of things like tolerance and free expression and individual rights and equal treatment and these things that are the bedrock principles of human progress and free societies...

They're there for a reason, right? Because if the norms of what it means to be an American is, you know what, I might not like what you're saying, but I'm going to defend your right to say it. Well, now, like, the illusions have no room to hide because to silence someone is unacceptable, right? So you've got to get that need to belong to work in favor of

of free expression and pluralism and things like that, right? That was probably one of the greatest wins of the liberal tradition throughout history, right? And even the concept of tolerance came out of the religious wars, right? Where it was like, no, we're fighting over literally existential ideas that if you believe them, why would you broker any compromise?

But it was like, we keep killing each other all the time. No one would, hey, how about we just, like, just stop, okay? So it worries me when these very same mechanisms start to go after the norms themselves. And that's happening. So, for example, under free speech, we see this where actually in private, like, every demographic is solidly in favor of that. But, like, the left, for example, does not believe that the left is in favor of it anymore. Right.

They are. And that's really dangerous, right? So, you know, the long game is, it sounds simple, but we shouldn't overlook it. We will win when we find the moral courage to be honest with each other and the civic courage to make it safe for other people to do the same. But in the meantime, we've got a fight on our hands. And I'll say when it comes to collective illusions, the bad news is

They're self-fulfilling. So we can look at it and go, well, no one believes in defund the police. Well, they think they do. And then policies get implemented and da, da, da, da. Okay. The good news is they're fragile because they're lies. And if you shatter them, history shows that you can unlock a level of social change, a level and pace that's just unimaginable otherwise. But, and this is really important.

The strategy is completely different than if it's privately held beliefs. If it's private, you got to persuade people, right? Turns out under illusions, if you try to persuade, you actually entrench the illusion. And I'll give you what I think is my favorite example of what not to do. You remember the say no to drugs campaign? We joked about that when we were together. That's right. So for the viewers and listeners, like,

Yeah, we all remember it, right? Okay, that campaign was born out of a small uptick in first-time marijuana use amongst teenagers in the U.S. The government, in response, brings together the best ad agencies in the country and spends over a billion dollars to create this campaign.

From an advertising standpoint, it was actually remarkably successful. I believe the typical American teen saw, I think it was three ads a day for six years, right? Which is kind of amazing. If you're an ad company, you're like, guess what? We literally got our audience three, we interacted three times a day for six years with them on this idea. Amazing, amazing. Problem was,

The assumption the government had in terms of why kids were trying drugs is that they just assumed that they were doing it because they were curious about drugs. But back then, private opinion did existed that said that wasn't true, that they were skeptical about drugs, but what they cared about was fitting in.

And they were back then American teens were under the collective illusion that most teenagers did drugs, which is kind of amazing. Like you think you're just like one out of two. Every other person you run into at least is high. Well, if you're in New York, that might hold. That's right. So into this illusion, you blitz them with a billion dollars of ads trying to scare them straight.

And what they took from the ads was this must be what we're doing because why would adults try so hard to get us to stop? And the result of the campaign, no kidding, was that campaign directly caused an increase in drug use for adolescents. Like, so we're not doing that.

With collective illusions, it's so much more about social proof. It's about revealing shared beliefs, not persuading. And so that's pretty simple. It's people you admire.

It's people who are like you, like neighborhood people. So this is the danger when we're self-scienting, we're not hearing from people like us. It's really dangerous. And then it's passive content, entertainment. So we have some pretty cool projects and you and I, we're going to figure out something to do together on this too. Yes, we are. It is the ability to embed private opinion in the TV shows we watch, the music we listen to, the things like that has such an asymmetric effect.

in terms of its ability to shatter illusions and reveal shared values. And we've got some work we're doing in Hollywood on that. Because just saying, you're not manipulating anyone. You're telling stories that resonate with people's private values. And in doing so, you're creating transparency in our culture. That's the game. That's it. But so we've got to deal with the social proof mechanisms now. Play a little whack-a-mole with some of these illusions that are the most pressing. But

But ultimately, because illusions are generated by the people themselves, only we, the people, can actually deal with this. And so we get back to that idea of these tried and true principles, right, of a free society matter more now and will matter even more as AI comes to be a fundamental part of all of our lives. And we cannot give up on those. We have to reaffirm our commitment to them.

Again, you had me at hello on that one. Like literally the entire organization of O'Shaughnessy Ventures is dedicated to that very thing.

That's why we have a book publisher. That's why we have the infinite media. That's why we have infinite films, because I have six grandchildren. I do not want them to live in a world where the panopticon of the ability to control that stuff at scale, that's where AI comes in. And hey, I am incredibly pro-AI for the right use and the way...

way it can help us retain and return to all of that sort of stuff. But, you know, it did not take a genius to see, like, I think we talked about the movie Rudy. That's right. People hadn't seen Rudy. It's about this underachiever kid. You know, one of the lines of the movie is a guy looks at him and he goes, you know, you're five foot nothing, you weigh a buck nothing, and you want to start for Notre Dame. You're crazy, kid, right? And it's this incredibly inspiring movie because he

doesn't become a football star. He gets to dress and he get they put him on the field. Yeah. And it was just through his sheer determination, et cetera. But it's a great movie that encourages kids to try those kinds of things. And if that changed just a couple of minds, right?

That was for the good. And I just noticed they weren't making any of those movies anymore. TV shows, same thing. It was all just gloom, doom, you know, sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt. And what's funny about that is, I mean, you're so true. And when we've met with studio executives and creators, we've

their view is, listen, we're just giving people what they want. Right. They themselves are victims of the same collective illusion illusions. And so if you think like, Hey, I'm just trying to sell a movie. Right. And like, yeah, I, I, I'm writing stuff and I'm like, well, wait a minute. If I need to show someone as really successful, I,

well, I kind of think I know what people think is success. And I don't think it's Rudy. Do you know what I mean? I don't think it's about character and trying and effort and camaraderie and like, no, I don't think that's naive. I think it's going to be fame and wealth and status and like this. And so you'll inadvertently propagate these illusions. And, you know, it's, it's funny, you know, coming back to some of the ones when you asked about some of these bigger illusions that I, I find remarkable is,

You know, last year in this massive one we did, a social pressure index, one of the things that was crazy to me is Americans across every single demographic reject almost everything about DEI. Like wholesale, like college admissions. There wasn't a single demographic that privately is in favor of affirmative action.

Even two thirds of African-Americans are against it. Because listen, they want a fair shot as they deserve. Yep. Right. But like, and it's true in how we hire, how we promote, how we treat marginalized groups, like you name it. Okay. In private, overwhelming consensus. In public, not so much. Right. Now, what I think is really important is where I think private opinion gives a nuance that I think is really valuable is

You can't understand that data without understanding that Americans still hold an incredible commitment to diversity. Like they still deeply believe that

In fact, one of the statements we tested back then was the idea that more diversity would be good for America. So not even that they're okay with how much we have now. An overwhelming super majority of Americans privately agree with that statement. So there are the fringes on both sides who have a vested interest in bundling this stuff into a binary, you're either with us or you're against us. And it's like, no, Americans are actually more nuanced than that.

They deeply believe in diversity. They deeply believe in a fair shot and an opportunity to earn your own success. And the assumptions behind how that was being done in the name of DEI are antithetical to American values. Like, those are all true statements. So I say that because it's a cautionary tale of like, you saw the collapse of DEI really quick, which was easy to see coming.

But if we go too far the other way and act as though we don't care, that we don't recognize that some people may not have a fair shot and that there has been discrimination and things, and we just pretend like none of that matters, we're going to be back in the same place. What Americans care about, again, diversity, a fair shot, but there is a principled way to do that. And so let's get on with that. Similarly, in the case of immigration.

A majority of Americans privately think immigrants are really great for the country. Yep. They want more of them. They believe they add more than they take. And at the same time, they believe if you came here illegally, you should leave.

Those are not mutually exclusive. But again, both sides have vested interest in bundling that. Like, if you're not okay with open borders, you must hate immigrants, you know, or like vice versa. So it's like, no, Americans are actually pretty sophisticated on this. And if we can get out of their way and listen to them and get to the place where we understand what they really believe, it's quite instructive. And again,

Quite hopeful. Like, we weren't looking for good news. We just wanted the truth. It just so happens that private opinion is more good news than it is bad news.

Yeah. And that was the thing that always fascinated me was this idea that like your average American, even though we both agreed that the average is over, but, you know, go anywhere in, you know, pick a state, Ohio or my home state of Minnesota, right? If your car is broken down on the side of the road, chances are

that within five or 10 minutes, somebody is going to pull over and offer to help you. That's right. I've witnessed that. I've seen it. You know, it's the way Americans do things. And yet, if you are, you know, blinded by these collective illusions, like I, you

you would be living in terror. Oh my God. And especially if like the, uh, uh, villainization of the police, if a police car pulls over behind you, you're terrified. Right. And that's just not right. That's right. And, and the thing that's why these, they become self-fulfilling because,

You know, like it's so sad because, you know, the single best predictor of social trust is perceived shared values. Like I knew before you and I got to be friends, it's like, I knew we shared some values. So like I instantly, but you know what, until you prove otherwise, I believe you're trustworthy. Right. Like, and it's like, what's sad to me is, and I guess it's also hopeful because then we have a way out of this is like, again, it's,

If the country was the same as the people who aren't self-silencing, we would have levels of social trust that we've never had in America before. Like that group has the highest level of social trust ever recorded.

in America right now. And that's still, by the way, that one third is still bigger than most Scandinavian countries. So this is a big, big group. And it's like, yeah. And when we start to feel like we live in a society where we can't be honest about our views with each other, and then therefore I start to perceive my neighbors as holding different values, then why would I trust them?

Why would I like even reach out? Right. It's just, and it just starts to spiral and that's the bad news. But again, the good news is this can end today. Like every one of us has far more power than we realize to play a productive role in this.

Yeah. And that's what I am interested in. You know, what actions can people take? Like right now, people listening to us are watching this and they're like, and they're furiously nodding their heads, right? They're like, yeah. They both have experienced silencing themselves. And then they're here. Wait a minute. I'm

I'm wrong about the group that I am pledging allegiance to here. What can the people listening to us right now, what can they do as individuals? So there's kind of three things in the long run. One is going to sound unbelievably self-serving, so I'm going to start with that one. Okay, great. Even appreciating the concept of collective illusions, right? Having a name for this thing. Because, like,

absent being aware of the phenomenon, why in the world would you think you can't trust your brain to tell you what your group believes anymore? And so people, you have to intellectually get there because it feels real. And so the more that we introduce this concept to people, and again, we have a shared vocabulary for it, we now can call it when we see it.

And we can show that is really quite important. And, and again, it's self-serving, right. As the person that wrote the book on it, but like, you know, it's a great book, however, but it's like, you know, it's just, if everybody knew, then we could have that conversation. And, you know, the number of times I get people saying, you know, I almost self-science and I thought, wait, is this a collective illusion? And in the book, I lay out ways that you can actually detect whether you're

what you're whether this is really the group's view or not so you can make a decision for yourself if you want to conform by all means conform there are reasons to do that sometimes for social learning and things like that you want to go against the group go against the group the only truly bad decision is when you conform to something your group didn't even want because you're miserable and you're destroying the very group that you're that you're being miserable to be a part of so you know being aware of that it's important

I'm going to come back to this idea. Again, it seems so simple. When I say have the moral courage to be honest, that's easier said than done, right? I think a fair response is, well, yeah, like if it was that easy, I wouldn't have lied, right? So in that space, listen, I would say once you realize, like if you just look at all the data we have and it's all public, right?

It's like, it's like a 50, 50 coin toss, whether name any important issue, whether you're right about your group or not. Okay. So even just appreciating that, that while right now I'm feeling like I should go along, you know, it's, it, I, what if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong about the group? Right. And so, so engaging in some of these things, like, like in the book talked about the power of why it's amazing. If people, if you're in this, you're like, oh, sorry. Like what?

Like we all know this is it. Oh really? Why? And so someone that is also just propagating illusion that's going along, doesn't have an answer for that. They'll literally be like, well, cause we obviously it's right. What do you mean? Why? I mean, they'll make, they'll call you names or they cannot give you an answer. And at least you now know that this thing you're feeling is not based on private views of the group. Um, and so you should feel free, man. Cause when that, when it's an illusion, um,

All you have to do is you can go right after it. You can say, I don't agree. But if you don't want to risk that, just inject uncertainty. It's unbelievable. So if someone's like, oh, who are you going to vote for? This is obviously the best candidate. If all you say is, and you disagree, but you don't want to challenge it. You know, I haven't made up my mind yet. It's kind of remarkable. So groups never punish you.

for not having made up your mind yet. That's a phenomenon in social psychology. They might punish you when they really disagree with you, and they do, but they'll actively try to convince you. So if you're just like, you know what, I'm not sure yet, and then ask questions of the people. And when people say, or you say, I haven't made up my mind yet, you know, on the one hand this, on the other hand that,

And what's really remarkable is you will start to hear other people imitate that so quickly. Yeah, I haven't made up my mind either. You know, that's true. It's like they're dying for the escape hatch. Okay. So there's a lot of lower risk ways that you can help to shatter those illusions. But then I'll come back to that third point, which is by far the most powerful.

is in all the conformity studies throughout history, all the way back to Solomon Ash and these things, which are some of those famous ones. All it takes is one other person in the room. One other person. It's when you are isolated that you feel the most pressure. Okay? So you can be that person for someone else. And you don't have to agree with them. But if all you say is, well, hold on, let's hear him out.

Like, I'd love to hear this. It's okay. Like, let him speak. Right? I actually don't agree with you, but I want to hear what you have to say. Like, you're pretty safe there. You're not getting punished simply for letting other people speak.

And so it's that you become that extra sort of Confederate, right? The person that actually allows. So Jim says, you know, I, Todd, I don't really agree with you, but man, you should be able to speak. Tell me what you tell me more. I'm going to tell you my honest views now, because I know it's safe because I know the person who even disagrees with me, it wants me to be able to speak up. So I promise you, I mean, the studies are crystal clear on this. You play that role, that civic courage, right?

to say and not just the people that you agree with that's always like the free speech thing right it's not right it's not the free speech defender when it's like i agree with you so speak up so we've always known this it just matters even more under collective illusions so again you know everybody buy the book no or at least hear the concept right it's okay if you don't buy the book just be aware of the concept and make sure if we all have that shared language that goes a long ways

If we find those ways to have the moral courage, if we don't dare to confront, at least do these things like injecting uncertainty, that kind of thing. Right. But then back to that civic courage where we're like, be that person, be the Confederate that actually allows for space for someone to be able to speak up and you'll start a chain reaction. It's remarkable.

Yeah. And I do something that is at least thus far, I found it to be incredibly successful at getting a third party who I don't know in it to hear what they really think. And the easiest way to describe it is you and I are in an Uber together. Okay. And instead of asking the driver a question, I turn to you and I say, Hey Todd, did you read that satisfaction survey? And

that it blew my mind, man. It said Uber drivers were the most satisfied with their jobs. And then you're like, no, you're kidding me. I can guarantee you, Todd, he's going to turn around and say, that is bullshit. And then really, you mean the survey was wrong? I can, boom, they just go and they list all of their grievances or whatever. And it works both ways.

You can say, you can alternatively go to the other extreme and say, hey, Todd, man, I just read this survey that like Uber drivers are the most angry and they hate their company. And...

the same guy who would list all of the grievances will turn around with the need to correct. You know, that's mostly right. But I got to tell you, here's what I really like about being an Uber driver. And it's like magical. And it actually works. I try it all the time whenever I'm in an Uber. That's amazing.

And I'm trying that. It goes along with your idea of that being the one person who is like, no, like it's safe to express yourself here. And when you do it in that way, too, you're not even asking. You're not like saying, hey, you tell me what you believe. Yeah, you're just saying it. I'm saying it's my friend Todd in the backseat. And like that engages them instantly.

That's so great. The other, I like your idea too of having the language to describe it. Like my friend Rob Henderson wrote a book, but he became called troubled about his upbringing in foster care. Yeah. The too long didn't read. Ouch. It's rough.

But he went to the Air Force, got a scholarship to Yale, got a scholarship to Cambridge and got a PhD in psychology there. But what he's like best known for is he invented the term luxury beliefs. Right.

And like, it just took off like wildfire. And I cannot tell you the number of people who I now am talking with who don't know that I know Rob, right? They'll say, well, yeah, no, that's just a luxury belief. And, and it, but the point is it gives them a linguistic framework that

to go there, so to speak, right? Yeah. And I agree with you entirely that you got to do it, especially for things you do disagree with, right? You got to say, you know what? I really don't agree with that, but hey, tell me more. Go ahead and explain. Yeah. And what's really cool about that too is the remarkable thing about engagement. So

We often think that everybody just wants everyone to agree with them. Now, of course, we don't, we like it when people agree with us. That's totally true. But actually what's under the hood there is the need to be understood and

And it turns out that the same psychological benefits, interpersonal benefits, trust, friendship come from now. You know what? You and I talk and talk and we don't see eye to eye, but I walk away feeling like, but you did listen. You really did. You do understand where I'm coming from. Like that's what people actually crave more than anything. And so the ability to say, listen, I don't know. I don't agree with you at all. How did you arrive at those beliefs?

Like, where'd that come from? It's so humanizing. It's so, because what I have found, I started doing that mainly as a way to actually try to do what we've been talking about. One of the surprise effects for me is how often what I think I'm certain about, right? Like I've actually created space to have my mind changed in big and even small ways, right? Like, you know, at a bare minimum by hearing the person's why, right?

I'm like, you know, I still don't agree with where you arrived, but I totally see how had I had those experiences, I would probably be right where you're at. Right. And that empathy that's created does wonders. And once again, sometimes I'm just wrong. I don't ever think that, but it turns out it is true. Right. And it's just like, so like that, that willingness to, to,

See another person's dignity and just be like, yeah, I don't agree with you. But whether it's because what's worse than us disagreeing is this society we've created of these illusions and the self-silence. That's so much worse. Or actually, I just want to know you better.

I want to understand where you're coming from. It's incredible. Like the studies on, on ask, like understanding people's why is it is an instant boost of trust. Like it is unbelievable. It works particularly well across, uh, perceived demographic psychographic differences, right? Groups that are supposed to be at odds, right? Outgroups. Um, you, you can melt that so fast just by, by being serious and being curious that way.

Yeah. And I think it also is, you got to lead by example in those things. Like I'll talk to anybody and because I, I find people interesting and I like, why are certain people the way they are? Yeah. And I had this experience when we were down in Miami, I think I may have even shared it with you when we were together where we're walking around Miami and I see this guy, basically the, the door bouncer, uh,

at a club and he is like, he looks like he just came off of, you know, the Hell's Angels reunion. He's got the leather vest. He's got the chain. He's all tatted up and everything like that. But he's vaping. This is many years ago. And we're walking along and I go, I got to go ask that guy why he's vaping. And my wife is, Jim, don't do that. Anyway, so I go and I end up having a conversation with this guy.

And he was the most delightful person. We talked for like half an hour.

He, you know, he looked like this rough, like, don't go there. And the first thing I'm like, so why are you vaping as opposed to cigarette? And he goes, because I love my old lady, man. And I went, well, me too. And then we just got into this, like, really fascinating discussion. And it turned out that, like, we come from very different places in the world. And yet we agreed on a ton of stuff, right? Yeah.

And if you're just willing to take that first kind of step, and I love your way of making space, right? And another thing that I do that I've gotten into the habit of with AI is I long ago realized that I'm probably wrong, probably more than I'm right. Right.

Because I did a thought experiment and was like, you know, if I went back 500 years in time and I found the smartest people, like the documented smartest people of that time, they're probably wrong about everything, right? Like, they're Ptolemy. They're not Copernicus either, right? And so the more you start doing that, the more you're like, well, why am I suddenly the only exception here? No, I'm

probably wrong too. So one thing that I do with AI is when I see something that I really disagree with, I go to the AI and have it steel man that argument for me. And when you do that, you realize, you know, they actually do have some points. Yeah.

You know, what I love is one of my absolute favorite philosophers was Karl Popper, right? It changed how I thought about being a scientist. Me too. What I meant is amazing. But his approach when he would write was he would take the argument he was about to dismantle

And he would write the still man version of that argument. And you'll see it in his books. Like here it is. And he would send copies of that to people who believed in it. Does this represent your views? To the point where the positivists were one of the people that he was taking down at the time, literally wanted to publish the thing. Oh, this is, yeah, you're one of us. He was like, no, no, I just want to make sure am I getting it right? You know?

And then systematically go after it. And, you know, there's a discipline to that. It's not easy. Like it's so much easier to straw man things and go after it. But like, you know, it's especially, and again, I'm talking to one of the experts here, in a world of AI, like, my goodness, if you start to see it as the oracle or look to it to simply be an echo chamber of your priors,

Boy, it's going to feel good for a minute and we're going to be in really big trouble. And so, you know, one of the things I learned from you and I tell anyone who will listen is like, especially with AI, there are choices being made, right? It's like, it's AI is just technology. It's not like it's, so what is it going to be for? And what do we value? And then that literally is encoded in, in, in the technology itself. And so does AI, you know,

Is it built to promote Socratic dialogue? Is it meant to help you think for yourself? Or is it meant to pretend it's the Oracle and that it knows all the answers? And if we go that way, oh my goodness. Like, talk about manipulation at a scale and it'll be so undetectable because you'll actually think it's just personalized and you'll probably think it, right? It's not bad. Yeah.

It is literally weapons-grade persuasion, and it is Promethean fire. And fire is both incredibly useful. It created our prefrontal cortex when we started cooking our food, and it's incredibly dangerous too. So that's why we, after inventing how to control fire, we...

We had to invent fire departments, fire alarms, fire exits, fire, right? That's right. It is a dual-use technology, and you can use it to create a panopticon that sees everything, that makes you think you are the best thing since sliced bread, and it absolutely controls you.

Or it can be used as intelligence amplification, ability like idea amplification, imagination amplification, all of those things, same technology. That's right. Same technology. And we tend to anthropomorphize tech to a point where, you know, people will have conversations with an AI that they

never have with another human being. That's right. Right? Like, like one of the reasons why a therapeutic use case done properly, let's underline that, done properly, AI could be enormously helpful to human beings, but it can also be the opposite. And you've just got to understand that. That's exactly right. And I, and I think, you know,

I mean, again, that's why I'm so excited about what you're doing, because there's only a small number of people that I know that truly are betting on human beings and self-determination and that sort of bottom-up empowerment view of the technology. And I think it's, you know, it's that age-old fight between self-determination and paternalism. And, you know, the reality is, I believe you're taking the most...

I think you're going to make the most money in the long run, but the short game is to protect it. Like is to feed the incumbent kind of like paternalistic, like the algorithms, like there's a short brass ring that you could grab onto. You just see a lot of people doing that. And there's like an incentive to be able to, to position it that way.

The longer game is I'm betting on humanity and I'm betting on individuals and their potential and this technology to amplify and augment in ways that actually...

allow us all to live a version of the American dream that our ancestors would think is science fiction. Exactly. And like that, that is the, you gotta take the longer view, but you know, like literally that is the truth in almost anything, right? Like we are hyperbolic discounters by our nature too. And the bird in the hand worth two worth a dozen in the bush is

And so you get this short-termism and that is the way for those kind of quick dopamine hits, but you're going to lose the war. You might win a battle or two, but you know, again, I'll confess, I spent most of my life as a quant asset manager and I've always like kind of looked at AI and thought there's a lot of alpha to capture because you can systematically, for example, you

imagine the alpha you capture from using the methodology that you learn people's private opinions by, and then front running it, so to speak, right? Like, Oh,

look, the vast majority. And I don't feel like we'll do that as part of our books, as part of our movies, because like if people like if 80 percent of people believe that, you know, we should do things this way and there's like zero books or movies or podcasts about that, that's a classic misfit and a huge arbitrage opportunity. That's right. And

And that's why I find this so fascinating because all of these things exist. You have proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Now you have something to work with. Now you're like, wow, 80% of people in this country or even worldwide share this belief. And yet there's nobody writing about it. There's no books that celebrate it. There's none of that. Like, hello. And what's so cool about this moment is that

Essentially, if I were just thinking about the social effects, that social proof mechanism of artifacts is so important. We tend to believe artifacts tell us what we believe. And anthropologists and other people can reverse engineer what societies believed that are long gone by the artifacts they created. We do the same thing with our own societies. And so when there are no more Rudis being told...

Then I'm like, yeah, I don't think we care about that. Right? Like, it doesn't matter what you say. Like, I'm looking around and I know what we believe. And so what's so funny about that is the distorting artifacts. You know, it's funny. One of my colleagues was part of creating a lot of the Marvel movies. And he actually left and started a new studio because he said, I thought I was doing good. But think about what Marvel stories tell us. We are impotent.

It requires these supernatural people to save us. We can't do, you know, it was like this and it kept taking this darker and darker turn. And he's like, I don't think this, these are the stories people want to hear. Like, and he was right. You bet on, you know, telling better stories, but it's like, I think there is, it's funny when you think about the media landscape and entertainment landscape, when you just look at private opinion, I'm like, it's like this donut. Like you're telling all these fringe stories and,

And people will watch some of them cause they want to be entertained. There's this massive middle of just empty space. Wait, this is just like bad, bad free market. Like there is a need that's not being met for which you would be compensated as you should. And you're not doing it because you don't think it's true. Like this is crazy. And so I love that because it's one of those moments where if I just wanted, uh,

Folks like you to do Oh do the right thing as I understand it right for collective illusions I would say tell those stories But if I just said you know what I want to advise you on how to make the most money tell those stories like this sort of quote-unquote right thing to do and the profitable thing to do right now have converged and That's great news. And so and the cool thing is is like again in this sort of how do we get out of this mess? well

The books that you're producing, the movies, the content like this stuff that are aligned to our shared values will do more than just about anything to convince us that we believe things that we really believe. It's remarkable. The funniest thing about why that works is if you take your favorite TV shows or books, things like that, your brain treats characters differently.

in those things as part of your in-group, even though you know they're fiction. And so the things that are said, even in the background of these things, are read by your brain as, oh, no, that's what we believe. It's amazing. It is crazy. And like when I was in college, I wrote a term paper on TV and

one of the, one of the points that I still remember to this day is that there was a popular TV show that was a spinoff of Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda and, you know, Rhoda moved to New York and got married and all these things. But something happened that the T she was having a fictional, her, her fictional character was having a birthday and thousands of gifts arrived at the network and,

that produced the show people took the time this is just underlining your point thousands of gifts that people took their time treasure and everything else to go and do that and send a gift to somebody that you would think they knew was a fictional character

Our brains don't distinguish. No. And that's why fiction is so important. Yeah. We have coming out soon a book called White Mirror, right? Because Black Mirror is what everybody is like, you know, being inundated with. And

if you like read the older science fiction stories, et cetera, they were very positive. They were very forward looking. They were like, we can do this. Right. And just like, we're telling a, we're doing a documentary on bell labs, the idea factory. Right. And we're working with the author of the idea factory to make the script for that movie because like people are starved for seeing that. Yeah. Then, and I talked to like people and they say, what, what are you making?

And I tell them and I would say, and did you know that they did that? And they're like, that is so cool. And you can literally watch them get excited because it's going to kind of those private beliefs that we know are there and nobody is making anything for them to enjoy or watch. That's right. And we're going to do it. And to your point, I love this. And to your point, like the science fiction done right, like the sort of white mirror variety of it has historically been

we relate and it broadens our horizons of what's possible. And it's pretty shocking historically how much science fiction front runs

the technologies that eventually get created in our society. Like it's pretty remarkable. And so it's like those things actually end up being pretty reliable narrators of our future in ways that like, once you realize that it really matters, the stories we tell. It really, really does to a point where I always believe that, but now after doing all of the research and looking at things like, like all of your work, et cetera, it's,

I now understand that it matters more than what laws we're passing. Like literally, if you want to destroy a society, destroy their stories, destroy their trust in each other, have them just wallow in fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and there you go. It's exactly right because –

Everything is downstream from culture. Everything. Yes. Institutions are, policies are, politics are, and we've inverted that. Now everything is political and we believe every solution has to have some federal policy and it's just not true. And when we lose the shared values, the shared aspirations, the shared beliefs, then

That's the those shared things like culture is what we believe we believe right and what we believe we believe Creates the norms about the way we interact with one another it creates the expectations for our institutions

that's how it's supposed to flow, right? That was one of the geniuses of how we've structured our system in America. And so getting back to that, right? And it seems like such a big lift, but I'm like, listen, at the end of the day, because so much of our problem sits under these collective illusions and because there are lies and they're fragile and because the profit incentive and the moral incentive are aligned in the ways that entertainment works, right?

I think we're in good shape. I really do. And, you know, I actually think that it feels like the bottom's falling out. And I'm like, I just, I don't think this is true. I actually think we're going to look back. Yeah, there was an interesting transition, had some bumps, but I think we're, we have the chance to enter an era of unprecedented prosperity. And I don't just mean materially, but I do mean materially, but what was the point of material abundance in,

than flourishing, than living a good life,

And that I think is the frontier. When you and I talk about our shared belief in positive sum societies, we mean that both materially and psychologically, right? Like the ability for your success to not just benefit me materially or whatever, but actually to add some value to my life as I understand it is so powerful. I mean, that's what's on offer. That's what AI enables done right.

But we've got to address the challenges in front of us right now. And from my standpoint, the self-silencing, the preference falsification, and the collective illusions that have formed as a result are the biggest thing standing our way between here and a future that we all really want.

Could not. I mean, absolutely simpatico on that and all of these other ideas. And the other message that you give that I really want to underline and amplify is you, our listener, our viewer, everyone can make a difference. You are not powerless. You have much more power than you know you have.

And if it only means taking your advice and saying, you know, I'm not sure about that. I really probably disagree, but tell me why, right? That ability for a person who feels like

boxed in by what they believe other people believe and then just one human being saying to them you know what i don't agree but tell me more right yeah and suddenly they're like oh my god like wow and here's the thing here's the thing so 100 like we have so much more power than we realize and so

It is not something that requires some collective action. Nope. It is not ever going to change that way. It is one person at a time. And if all you said was, I could talk to my neighbor, I could talk to one of my neighbors, I could have that one conversation. If we do that,

Like it will change. And it's just, it's remarkable how easy this goes. We've just lost the muscle right now. And the dirty secret of all collective illusions is they don't hold up when we have authentic conversations. They don't.

Exactly. And it's, I mean, there's even the children's story about the naked emperor, right? That's right. The minute, and I always found it interesting that he made it a child who called out the emperor. Like, uh, excuse me, adults. That's right. He's naked. Because what I loved about it is, you know, and you read the backstory on that parable, is like that the child had no status.

status. Like everybody around the emperor had something to gain for maintaining the illusion. Yeah, exactly. No offense to my politician friends. Politicians often have a reason to maintain the illusion. Of course. The division serves some of them quite well. You don't. Your neighbor doesn't.

And here's the thing, all the bad actors, like the state sponsored efforts to destroy us from the inside out, they don't want you to have the conversation. Exactly. That's the last thing they want. Like that is just so like, to me, that act of defiance is,

is to just have the conversation. Yeah. Like, yeah. And it's, and the thing that I like to stress and that you do such a great job of convincing people of, it's not this huge heroic effort. It's,

It's not. It's literally just have the conversation. Yeah. It doesn't matter what happens. It doesn't matter if it just have it because as you say, these are very brittle things. These collective illusions snap, right? The minute, the minute anyone just is like, Hmm, I smell some bullshit here. That's right. And I mean, history is littered with this, uh,

of the incredible societal transformations that happen from the bottom up one person at a time when you recognize and diagnose the problem as a collective illusion and you pursue the right strategy. And that's true from things in the US like the marriage equality movement, which harness this like no one's business.

all the way to the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, where the only time that an authoritarian communist regime was overthrown without anybody losing their life. Yep. At the same time, Hungary and other places had bloody suppression of this. And if you, I would say, if you want to read what I think is one of the most remarkable little pamphlets on something, go read Václav Havel, who was the originator of that Velvet Revolution, who said,

No military background, wasn't a politician. He was a poet and a playwright. Right. But he writes, he wrote a manifesto called the power of the powerless. It's free online. Brilliant. Brilliant. I've read it. It's amazing. And you'll see where he describes how he detects the illusion at the heart of communism. And he realizes if that's the problem, if the problem isn't that people believe, but they believe that they believe, um,

then the answer isn't military. He called it authenticity and personal responsibility. Yep. And they set up an entire effort all over the country at these small works that were just meant to get people more comfortable living in truth in small ways because they were so used to living in a lie. And they made fun of him. They literally said, you're going to overthrow communism. You're going to overthrow. They have all the guns. You're going to do that with authenticity, truth,

And it was funny, even Havel, like nobody saw the Velvet Revolution coming. Nobody. No. They missed it. The KGB missed it. Even Havel, right? A few months before the student protest that kicked off this thing that ended with, you know, he's interviewed in an international magazine and he's like trying to rally the troops for, you know, stick with it. And he said, look, I am committed to this.

to the rest of my life, but it's going to take a while. And let's be clear. I won't, I probably won't be alive to see the end. Three months later, he was the first democratically elected president of a free Czechoslovakia. Yeah. Like I always think, look, if a poet can overthrow communism because of collective illusions, then,

I think we'll be okay. Just think what we do. Again, wow. My producers are now buzzing me because we've gotten to our 90 minutes. This is part one. Yes, this is definitely part one because I haven't gotten to like half of the other cool stuff that your research and you and your team have uncovered. Todd, this has been even more enjoyable than I thought it would be. And I had very high expectations. Yeah.

Me too. As you might know, our final question, since you're going to come on again for part two, you're going to get four bites at the opera instead of just two. But we make you the emperor of the world. You cannot do anything like so collective illusions to fade so that everyone leaves you as the emperor of the world. You only get to position for one day. You

You can't kill anyone. You can't put anyone in a re-education camp. But what you can do is we're going to hand you a magical microphone and you can say two things into it. And what will happen is you will incept the entire population of planet Earth into

Whenever their morning happens to be, they're going to wake up the next morning and say, you know, I've just had two of the best ideas. And unlike all the other times, I'm going to act on both of these starting today and to continue. What are you going to accept into the world's population? The first is they get two. Is that what you said? Two. Two ideas? Yeah. The first, and we touched on this a little bit, but it's the trust. Yes, there are bad people in the world.

And those small number of people who will take advantage of that are not sufficient to warrant the lack of trust we have in each other as a people. We are a good people. I think human beings want to be good out of fear. We often operate otherwise. But a world that is awash in trust is a world that is capable of achieving the second thing that I would say, which is there is enough.

There's enough. Our brains have been hardwired over a long period of time to assume scarcity. We operate as though the world is zero sum because that is the way the world was for a very, very long time. Thanks to people like Adam Smith, that is not true now. It is not true. And so our ability to operate with an abundance mindset that there is enough,

And that we can grow the pie, not just economically, which we've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, but also psychologically. That we can all be happier, healthier, and more prosperous together. We really can. And those two things, I think, go hand in hand. I could not agree with you more.

And that's another one of my little soap boxes. You take any ideology, take any religion, take any political belief and compare it with free markets and free markets delivered in 300 odd years, much more than they, all the promises that they were making, right? Promised land and you know, the land of milk and honey. And guess what got us there? Uh,

Free markets and people trusting each other and working together. Isn't that great? And you go back and read Adam Smith, not just Wealth of Nations, read his Theory of Moral Sentiments. He was a moral philosopher who cared a lot about everyday people and how to lift all boats. And free markets were his answer to that. And yeah, I mean, that's just we have to overcome that bias to see the world as zero-sum.

And if we can get those two things, I was going to say, I just felt a little less substantive. If we could all be new England Patriots fans, this would be so much better. It's if you could all just join in, it might be the world's best religion. I'm just saying, you know,

All right. I, I, even though I live in new England, I'm going to disagree with you. Hey, and you know what, Jim, I want to make the space for you to be able to disagree with me. Right. Perfect. Why you have such bad taste in football. Yeah. Touche. I love it. All right. Well, Todd and tell part two, wonderful conversation and can't wait to talk again. It was great to see you, man.