Episode 21
· 01:11:43
Brad: Mr. Don Norman, thank you so
much for being here, and I'm just gonna
ask the first question, which is, what
has you waking up excited these days?
Don: Well, you know, Brad, when I'm really
excited, I wake up tired here's why.
Because here's how I know that I'm onto
something, is that I wake up at 1:00 AM or
maybe 2:00 AM and I wake up with an idea
and I just, I don't, I used to just try
to force myself back to sleep, but then
in the morning I wouldn't remember it.
I used to also keep a pad of paper
and a pencil, but I would discover
I couldn't read my handwriting.
So I, I run over to the keyboard and
we have computers all over the house,
so once I would type the basic idea,
well, I couldn't stop, and I would
write and write and write and write.
But, you know, whenever I'm writing
an important paper or what I think
will be an important paper or a
book, I start writing the book.
And it's really hard the
first couple of weeks.
Maybe 2, 3, 4 weeks,
nothing is coming out.
Or what comes out is dull.
And then one night I wake up at
or 2:00 AM and Got it, got it.
And I rush off.
And I know that if I don't wake up in the
middle of the night, I am not there yet.
when I wake up in the middle of
the night, then it's exciting.
And from then on, it's just wonderful.
But that's why when I finally go
back to sleep, I wake up tired.
Brad: I love that.
I love that so much.
So, there's this journey and there's
this almost this barometer or this
threshold that gets crossed whenever
you're formulating an idea or something,
something of importance and that
signal of you bursting out of bed
is the, is the, here it, here it is.
It, it has arrived and
I'm now, I'm able to work.
Don: I'm writing a book.
Let's take that.
'cause that's most common now for me.
And I sort of know what
I'm trying to talk about.
I know the items, but the first thing
I need when I write a book is a title.
not always the title that I end
up with, but the title helps sort
of guide me in the direction.
I heard a podcast with a famous
author who does biographies and
he said that he can't get started
until he has the last sentence.
Brad: It kind of makes sense though.
That's the punctuation mark
at the end of the thing.
That's the last thing
you Oh, that's amazing.
Don: for me it's the title, but even
so, unless I have the right theme, the
right story and I have to start off
with something really exciting because
so many people write these dull papers
and dull stuff because, oh, you can
understand where I'm going to say in this,
you know, the history and the basics.
Brad: Yeah.
Don: history and the basics are dull.
Brad: Yes.
Don: you have no idea why you're
Brad: Yeah.
Don: And so I like to say if I'm
writing fiction, I'll say something
like, A shot rang out so it has
you, what are you talking about?
I don't even know what you
mean, that's the whole point.
It's something, okay, tell me more.
Tell me
Brad: yes,
yes,
Don: then of course, you always have,
in fiction writing, you always have a
second person who comes into the story.
So here's how you explain to
the reader what you're about.
That's the whole point of a
second person in these stories.
And you see it in movies too, and tv.
When I explain it to the other
people, it doesn't sound boring.
It sounds very natural, but it's
actually, it's really meant to explain
through the listener or watcher.
But so for me, finding that key thread.
It's hard.
In psychology, it's called
incubation, that it's well known
that people who have a really
difficult problem in front of them.
You work on it and you work on it, and you
work on it and you can't make progress.
And you say, I give up.
And then maybe even a month later,
Ooh, could be doing anything.
And just the idea pops up in your mind.
And that's kind of what I live for
Brad: Yeah.
That's amazing.
The way that I tend to think about this is
that I call it the infinite back burner,
which is to say, I am never short on
ideas, but obviously there's only so much
time in the day, and so when new things
burst into my consciousness, often have
to put it onto the infinite back burner.
And when I find myself over
time revisiting those ideas, I
take those things as signals.
'Cause they think that a lot
of people wish them away or,
or, yeah, I tried really hard,
I didn't get anywhere with it.
Therefore the idea must
have not been a good one.
Or it's invalid for some reason.
And no, a lot of times it's just
that the conditions need to be in
place, , something needs to happen
in order to start that cascade
Don: So let me explain.
And this will get me to ai, believe
it or not, it wasn't my intention,
but it just came, re who was a famous
French mathematician of, I don't
know, a hundred, 200 years ago.
He said was.
When he works on a really hard problem,
he gives up, but the mind keeps going.
The subconscious, keeps going.
and every So.
often that will wake him up in the
middle of the night or interrupt
him in the middle of the day.
But he said, you know, what it does
is it finds something clever, it's
very good at creativity, but it can't
do arithmatic can't do mathematics.
So, so you have to check it out.
And most of the time it's
a clever idea but wrong.
But every so often it's a
clever idea and it really is.
That's the same with me.
I wake up in the middle of
the night with these wonderful
insights and I rush off and do it.
And after a day or two of trying to
fill it out, it's not the right thing.
And I'd say, well, you
know, that's what AI does.
Brad: Yeah.
Don: mind is like AI, it is
that it's filled with facts.
With information and with
my life story, everything.
And it's trying to piece it all together
automatically when it finds what's
called a low energy state, when it
finds something that's seems solid,
it interrupts the conscious mind.
And the conscious mind then has to
evaluate it and decide whether it really
is what your search is searching for.
but in today's ai, we don't
have that conscious mind.
We just, it just spits it out to you.
And that's what we call
hallucination because
Brad: Yep.
Don: together things that are very
logical and it's written in really
great English, and it's written exciting
way, but it may be completely made up.
Brad: Yeah.
Don: fiction, making it up is good.
But if you're writing, um, you know,
factual stuff, well, not so good,
Brad: Or relying on whatever is being
produced to inform consequential
decisions: does the bridge stay
up or does it fall like the, the
tolerances for the application matter?
Don: RAs had it, right?
Is that the subconscious doesn't
understand all that or just
knows this is a really good fit.
It makes,
Brad: Yeah,
Don: it all, makes health logical sense,
but, I'm not gonna vouch for its accuracy.
Brad: it does.
Get into some, some pretty fascinating
stuff of, so many of our own memories
are, did, did that really happen?
did that actually take place or is
that what I, I actually think, or,
or is that, yeah, it's fascinating.
Don: a long time, I used to
be an expert in human memory.
and not anymore, because that
was 30, 40 years ago, or more so
that, the field has changed a lot
Brad: Mm-hmm.
Don: But, uh, nonetheless, it
was always known that, that
our memories are reconstructed.
We don't
Brad: Yep.
Don: Remember the events.
We reconstruct the events in our
memory, and the more often we do it,
the more we believe the reconstruction.
I had a visitor.
another university who spent a year
with me in my laboratory and she
was doing studies of this long-term
memory and she had people write
every single day for years, what
the main events were in their life.
And then she would randomly question
them, six months later, six years
later, et cetera, et cetera.
I have to explain this to the
listeners who are too young to
know, but the president, Johnny F.
Kennedy was one day assassinated.
That was a big event for everybody.
He was very popular president
. People say, I remember exactly
what I was doing that day.
so she checked with some of her
people that had recorded that
as a big incident and she said.
do you remember the day that
John F. Kennedy was shot?
What were you doing?
And Oh, I remember said one of them, I
was in a room with my friends and, and we
just happened to have the radio turned on
and suddenly we heard it and oh my God.
And then she went on and on and on and
on, except that, she, was keeping a
diary during those times, and the diary
showed she wasn't even in that city.
She was in a completely different city.
She couldn't have been with her friends,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But she actually said,
no, that's not true.
I remember it so clearly.
She finally believed it when she was
shown what she herself had written down.
Brad: so, what do you believe to be true?
It's a question, but it just, even, even
as you explained that many times we can't
even trust our own memories or our own,
what we feel like is our own experience.
What, what do you consider to be true?
Don: It's well known that eyewitness
testimony is one of the least
reliable sources of Suppose I witness
a murder, I'm walking the streets
or something, and then somebody and
shoots the other person and runs away.
Okay, what are the facts?
The facts are that there was a murder.
The facts are that somebody did die.
The facts are he was shot, or facts
are the person ran away, et cetera.
Now if you ask me for the details,
I'll give you all sorts of details.
'cause I had, just by accident,
I was watching that area.
I would describe the person and so on.
My description is not trustworthy.
Brad: Yeah.
Don: But it isn't to say
that everything is made up.
There are facts, but
there are interpretations
It's well known that, with any complex
event, if you ask different people
who were part of that event, they'll
have different stories even though
they're part of the same story.
Brad: Yeah.
Don: so, the event was real.
But the personal experience,
first of all, you're seeing it
from a different perspective.
Second of all, you weren't really
paying full attention, 'cause
you didn't know that was where
the important part would be.
And even so, you were then biased by all
sorts of other issues that were happening.
And a bit by the passage of time.
Brad: Sure.
Sure.
Don: So one of my friends who's been
an expert on eyewitness testimony, and
she used to show that if I asked the
witnesses, she would have them watch
some movies of accidents then she would
say, uh, how fast do you think the cars
were going when they hit each other?
And she would ask others, fast
do you think the cars were going
when they smashed into each other?
And I was telling that to
a lawyer the other day.
'cause when you ask him how fast they were
going, when they smashed, you get a much
higher speed than if you say, when they
Brad: Yep.
Yep.
Don: he said, what's her name?
You did you know her work?
I said, well, she's a good friend of mine.
He says, oh, US defense
lawyers know that really well.
He, because we used to use
that technique all the time.
Brad: Yeah.
It's what you were saying there's the
facts and figures and history and the
telling of events and things, and that's
dull and wielding language and being able
to, to tell a narrative and sometimes
even intentionally, so by the choice
of words that we deploy or how we frame
something influences human behavior.
Right.
It, it, it influences how well
that medicine goes down or how
memorable that historical event was
the art of language is so powerful.
Don: you know about placebos in medicine.
Brad: Mm-hmm.
Don: It used to be that we
would give people medicine
and say, how do you feel now?
You feel better.
Wonderful.
This medicine is heroic, et cetera.
And that would be the evidence you went,
you would give it to people and they'd
be recovered and then they were happy.
But a few people were clever and they,
so they would give them the medicine, but
it wasn't, it was a fake, it was a pill
Brad: Yeah.
Don: or a pill with,
Brad: Salt.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Salt water or something.
Yeah.
Don: And, lovely unfinished
and they did recover.
It got rid of their
Brad: Yep.
Yep.
Don: Nowadays we do several things.
First of all, we always
have a control group
Brad: Mm-hmm.
Don: gets a fake treatment.
Now, you can't do that on everything
because, well, some things can't be faked.
You can't give them something 'cause
they know, you know, I get a test
marijuana and, and see how high you get.
Well, you can't fake that too much.
Or alcohol or, or for that matter.
There's other things too like
that, that, can't be faked.
But um, also if the, if the physician
knows whether he's giving the real or
the fake one, he often acts differently.
Un subconsciously he is not
Brad: Yep.
Yep,
Don: it.
Brad: yep, yep.
Don: when he's recording the results.
So we call it, it has
to be a double blind.
That is, the patient cannot know
whether it's real or, a fake.
the physician giving it, or the person
giving it cannot know which it is.
Either double blind, both
of them are blind be.
And the scoring has to be done
by somebody who's also blind.
Doesn't even know what
the experiment is about.
They're just asked.
They're looking for the following
information because, uh, We are very good
at putting things together and making a
whole coherent story out of it, but that
story may not be real, but we try to make
sense of what goes on in our lives and
that, but making sense can be so strong
that a fake drug can actually cure us.
Brad: Yeah, yeah.
And that it just demonstrates
so many interesting things.
And one of the things that has been
a theme of this show why it's called
Wake Up Excited , in certain respects,
is is that whether you wanna call it a
placebo effect or not, how your attitude
shapes your behavior and how things
like optimism and hope and a willingness
to move forward, despite it all.
How those mechanics of, of our
humanity like can be wielded.
when all you need to do is look out
into the world and find plenty of good
reasons not to, immediately be optimistic.
Don: First of all, let me tell
you the science behind it and, I
have a very oversimplified view
of the science to talk about it.
But I know it's oversimplified.
It's all has to do with
the emotional system.
It's interesting because, all those
people who say, I wanna live forever,
so all what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna
study my brain and I'm just gonna put
it into a computer and the computer
will think forever and it'll be me.
But what they're doing is they're
measuring the, what's called the
weight system of the neural networks.
You don't have to know what it is
and, uh, and the electrical signals
that go through, et cetera, but
that's not how the brain works.
The brain is chemical
as well as electrical.
If you think of the brain as a
computer, which it isn't, but
think of it as a computer and,
it's now really in a great mood.
guess what?
Being at a good mood does it
releases hormones and the hormones
change the operating system of
the computer changes the way the
brain works and about now angry.
Or tense and nervous or worried
or depressed or whatever.
It's a different set of hormones that
are now inhabit the body and they
change the operating system again.
And there are many different hormones
and they interact in different
ways and you, it can be a strong
interaction or weak interaction.
We tend to take emotions and
do a rough categorization.
There are positive emotions and negative
ones, but there's also how strong
they are and they're very complex.
They aren't just simple,
Brad: Yes.
Don: yes.
I to say when I was a designer, design
teams, what I would do is in the, we would
say we're gonna start this new project.
And, we know basically the kind of
thing we want, but we have, we really
have to be creative about doing it.
So we're gonna meet
tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM.
And don't prepare.
Don't worry about it.
And in the morning at 8:00 AM we serve
really nice food and , stuff to eat.
And we play some games and
we are joking, et cetera.
And there's, and that's
until nine or nine 30.
And then we say, okay, let's get to work.
And we're doing creative
thinking and everybody's happy.
And one of the rules of
this is you can't criticize.
It's like, um, what do you call it?
, Brad: Yeah.
Improv.
Like, like, yes, yes.
And yeah.
Yeah,
Don: whatever happens that no matter how
weird it is, you have to follow up on it.
And so you have to put an and yes with
Brad: Yes.
And
Don: APH and you have to build on it.
And that's really great creative.
Brad: yep.
Don: Now, eventually you're gonna
come up with some really good ideas.
And so somebody, usually the
head of the group says, okay,
we're gonna work on this one.
And then what you do is the next
time you have a meeting, you say,
all right, we all sort of know
what you wanna accomplish now.
How long do you think it's going to take?
And they'll say, oh, that's at
least six months, or maybe nine
months if it's a big project.
So I will say, okay, we
can't wait that long.
You said six months.
How about four months?
I'll give you four months.
And the purpose of that is I wanna give
them time, much less in time than they
thought they needed, but enough time that
I think they could really do it anyway.
I want them no longer to be so happy.
I want them to be slightly stressed.
I don't want, I don't
want them to be scared.
It has to be just the amount of stress,
though they can still live with it.
It's not a problem.
But they're not gonna be so creative.
They're going to be focused.
Because what happens when you're stressed
you is what's called tunnel vision.
You really focused, you don't see
things that are, you're not looking
for when you're happy in those early
days, oh, you're scatterbrained.
Oh, look at that.
And, you know, we, did
you see that over there?
And so on.
And if you're too happy, you can't focus.
But you have to get just enough that,
because being curious is exactly what
I need to, to push their imagination.
But once they get to work last
thing on earth, I want somebody
to say, you know, I thought of a
new, a better way of doing this.
Sorry, we have to finish in four months
and we've already spent a month of it.
The answer to your question is
that your thoughts and how you
view life a huge difference.
So you can look around the world
and say it's falling apart.
And all I see is negatives going
around, not just United States,
but across the whole world.
But.
I've just started a charity, I've
been part of this charity for a while.
It's called the Don Norman Design
Award, and we're about to say, something
called the Alliance for Humanity.
Brad: Beautiful.
Don: to do is find people around
the world who are doing the United
Nations, the list of 16 critical needs.
They call it
Brad: Yes.
Don: Development goals.
Brad: Yes.
Don: and number 17 of the goals is
actually they're so difficult, we have
to band together to solve these problems.
that's what I'm trying to do.
I'm working on these goals.
I'm trying to find people who are doing
good things to make people's lives better.
And I've now discovered many, many other
organizations doing similar things,
Brad: Yeah.
Don: the same thing that we're doing.
They're all different, but they're all
aimed at the SDGs, this sustainable
Brad: Yes.
Don: goal.
when I look at that, I
see nothing but good.
So it makes me really feel good that
so many different people all over the
world, sometimes they're non-profits,
sometimes they're foundations,
sometimes they're companies,
sometimes they're, even governments
Brad: Yep.
Don: good stuff.
depending upon what kind of
glasses you're wearing, you can
see good or you can see bad.
Brad: you tend to have a really
clear-eyed view of the problem statement.
it's the decision to kind of like dwell
there and a lot of times people tend
to fall into a, a hole of dwelling in
the problem statement staying there.
And those emotions kind of
take root and take over.
It's important to be clear-eyed about
the problems, but like you're saying,
you could understand the issues and
then get into how do we address them?
And when you know it, there's other
people on earth that, that are also
trying their hardest to address
them from where they're sitting.
You obviously have your own experience
and you've arrived at the creation
of a charitable entity that's working
towards this and define that, that
fellow company from around the world.
How does that like
experientially feel to you?
Don: Oh, it's wonderful.
It really is.
and now I'm trying to find a lot of these
organizations and bring them together
so that they can support one another.
Um,
Brad: Yeah.
Don: every, with some
exceptions, they're mostly small,
Brad: Yeah,
Don: have great trouble raising money.
but by bringing ourselves together,
we can already start to claim, we're
helping hundreds of millions of
people, literally because, my charity.
helps I think thousands, a few
thousands, but those are directly, but
Brad: yeah,
Don: impact their families and
we just impact their communities.
And if you try to look at
that, the number grows larger.
And we're working with a group
that's called Design for Good.
and that's based in London.
Do they have
Brad: Yeah.
Don: the world?
In fact, I'm going in June, I'm flying
off to London for their conference, and
we'd like them to join our alliance.
And so we're, we'll talk about it with
them when they're there and they say they
are helping like 20 to 30 million people.
Brad: Beautiful, beautiful.
Don: Uh, uh, global Commit
Global, which was based in
Romania, and to help immigration.
But what they said was, the immigrants
have real problems, but the country in
which they are have even worse problems.
They don't know how to deal with them.
They don't, they may have supplies of
food, but they're in the wrong location,
or they have this, that, and the other.
So they decided they would write
computer infrastructure that
would help keep track of where the
needs were and what was happening.
And that was so successful that other
countries said, can you help us?
So they started building it
for them, and then, they said,
well, we don't wanna build it
differently for every single group.
Let's make a bunch of modules that
we can make just one group of them,
and, and we'll install them for you.
We'll also it so it fits your culture
and fits your particular needs.
Yeah.
And then they said, but you know, I
know that you can't keep it going.
One of the problems is maintenance.
So after we disappear, so we
guarantee we will maintain it for you.
and the Dutch government, in
the Netherlands, liked what
they were doing so much.
They said, why don't you come
and have, be headquartered in
the Hague, in the Netherlands,
and we will pay for your work.
so they're now doing this
throughout Europe and they just
started some work in Mexico.
say they've hit a hundred million people.
They already help.
Brad: Goodness,
Don: And
Brad: my goodness.
Don: already have agreed
to be part of the alliance.
So, well, if we go
Brad: That's amazing.
Don: it's really great Because
people say, how come I'm such an
optimist in this horrible world?
And I say, I don't have any choice.
I were, if I, if I weren't
an optimist, what would I do?
I'd make form a little ball and,
Brad: Yeah,
Don: do nothing.
So
Brad: yeah,
Don: I, I have to see the good,
but when I'm looking for good,
I find it all over the place.
Brad: Yes.
Don: claim there are
three kinds of people.
One is, the world is horrible.
I'm gonna give up.
Or there are problems in the world.
I'm gonna try to solve them, or there
are problems in the world are so
difficult, I'm going to ignore fact
that they exist and just live my life.
Do nothing.
And I can understand all three.
Uh, and I proposed to be active
to try to do something about it.
Brad: Completely beautiful.
I could also understand and appreciate
those three different positions as well.
And the passage of time is, is something
that's also, I think, really interesting.
And when you go through really hard
things and sometimes you need to narrow
your focus and tunnel in on the acute
problems you are facing right now.
And I think that that's, that's
something that I see a lot of people
in my world fall prey to is that
they feel the weight of the world
on their shoulders and they are also
contending with some really important
and acute things at the personal level.
during those times, sometimes it is
just by sheer survival instincts,
you have to narrow that focus,
but that's not a forever state.
Right.
I One of the things that I've learned
so much from you is, to appreciate
the nuance it's never just this
or just that or just like this
forever or just like that forever.
That there, that there are seasons,
there are moments, there are times,
but provided your, your own life is
stable, you're in a great position
to be able to act on the problems
Don: let me
Brad: yeah.
Don: in your domain music.
A lot of musicians today
are really fretting.
It's fairly hard to make
money as a musician.
In fact, in the classical world, you know,
how many good piano players there are.
Do you know how many excellent
piano players there are?
you know how many of those
excellent piano players can
make a living playing the piano?
Almost none.
How many good violin players are there?
How many good this?
How many?
And that's, that's in the classical world.
But the same thing is true
of the entire world of music.
And now we have AI that is producing
music that is really wonderful,
or can be wonderful, not always.
And it's also starting to compose.
Brad: Mm-hmm.
Don: what does that mean?
Do you gonna give up?
And, uh, this is the same true
with with artists, the same with
old people worried about it.
let me tell you the story of photography.
When photography came out, the
painters were scared to death.
what did painters paint?
They mainly painted landscapes
and portraits, and there was
no problem with the camera.
The early cameras were not
very good, so that's okay.
But the cameras getting better
and better, and the printing was
getting better and better, and the
photographers were getting better.
And so pretty soon, that
wasn't where the market was.
And what did the painters do?
What do you do as an artist?
what, happened eventually
was that broke out.
They no longer had to
paint realistic landscapes.
They painted emotions.
They painted the way you perceive things.
That's where the modern
art came from, essentially.
And the they changed the nation.
What was thought of as art
Brad: Vassily, Kandinsky is
my all time favorite painter.
And pioneer, non-objective art and
just born directly out of that.
Or it's just like, okay, well
I'm not painting trees anymore.
Let me instead translate the language
of music into color and shape.
It's spent by my decades doing
that, which it is just mind blowing.
Don: It actually helps that if
you do learn the traditional tools
of art, of the traditional tools
of music and about harmony and
et cetera, but then violate them.
The better you understand it,
the better you can violate.
In fact, you have to be careful.
If you're trained too much in
this, in the old stuff, it's
very hard to then be creative.
You're stuck in the old route.
But I like to point out in the early days
of rock, what wasn't called rock yet, you
playing a guitar on stage and if you get
too close to the microphone, it starts
feedback ar And us electrical engineers
like me used to say, oh, that's feedback.
Keep away from the microphone.
And No, that's horrible.
Or you're putting it too loud.
So it's distorting at the top
edge because the vacuum tubes, the
electronics can't go that loud.
So, and guess what?
The artist said, Ooh, are new sounds.
And they started to deliberately
do it, deliberately distort the
sound, deliberately cause feedback.
And I think that's what's
gonna happen now with music.
That we'll learn to be, do different
things we never could have done.
Uh, we may do it more as collaborators
than as, as as competitors.
we'll see what develops.
it's hard.
Most people won't be able to make
the leap, but there'll be a few
people who do some clever things.
Wow, I never thought of that.
And then the field will take off again.
Brad: I went to a concert this week.
kind of a jazz fusion.
Pretty funky at times.
Just A class, just top of their
game musicians, just chops for days.
So skilled, so talented.
There's 10 of them on stage.
And, Michael League, the bass player
before their encore, he addressed AI
and he's, you know, here's this Grammy
award-winning artist, and he says,
you know, this is the year that even
my ears can hear that AI generated
music and understand it to be good.
Not just oh, that's passable.
That's kind of a rough sketch.
Like those early years of photography,
it's like, oh, this crossed a threshold
and I now recognize this as good.
And he goes, well, what
do we do with that?
And you're speaking to it already,
he just goes, it's time to get weird.
It's time for us all to
get really weird with it.
I really, I love that as a call to arms.
It's like here's this new technology
that is a bunch of averages.
And when that zigs
humanity can zag with it.
Don: Well, there's one.
There's one magical song
that kind of illustrates how
you can get weird, which is.
My next piece will be exactly
three and a half minutes long.
Okay.
And it's three and a half
minutes of utter silence.
Brad: John Cage.
Don: Yep.
Brad: It's stunning.
It's stunning.
And that's the stuff that
takes us deeper, right?
That's the stuff, the Marcel Duchamp,
you know, the plastering, a urinal on
the wall and writing his name on it.
That's hard.
No, it's not.
Don: Art.
Brad: Here it is.
Don: Art is.
What we say is art.
Brad: My daughter likes to troll
me because she knows that it gets
a rise outta me, and she goes, dad,
my friend said that there's rules
in art and she knows that I take the
bait every time and push back on it.
And that's her the game
that she plays with me.
Don: Well, I don't
think art is the object.
Art is the experience that you
have from viewing or taking part.
At uc, university of California,
San Diego, which is where I taught
most of my life, on the top of the
main engineering building, well,
there's a lot of art on campus.
And what you, what they do is they find
great artists and they say, something,
mostly sculpture, And sometimes it
takes years before the person thinks
of something to do that's appropriate.
So this one person just built a house.
And put the house on the top story.
I think it's a 20th story
of the engineering building.
Tilted, tilted off the edge.
you could walk into it and then all sorts
of illusions happen, et cetera, et cetera.
But it's sort of wonderful and
it's bizarre and wonderful.
but I was walking once with my
distinguished friend, a distinguished
sociologist famous throughout the world,
uh, who his wife is an artist and he
hadn't been on campus for a long time
and we're walking by this new engineering
building and, and what is that?
say it's art.
He says, I know what art
is and that isn't it.
And because he had rules about
what was art and what wasn't.
Brad: Yep.
Don: And is it art?
Well, I don't know, but it's delightful.
Yeah.
And when you go inside it, ' there's
lots of visual illusions that
people do to fake the, the case.
But because this was actually tilted
and actually it was sort of not really
rectangular, the illusion was even worse.
It was, it was real.
Brad: It sounds kind of unnerving
if you were to be in it if
it's teetered over so, so high.
That
Don: The one thing that it
feels very solid and, and safe.
You're not concerned that it
feels dangerous, some things
like a rollercoaster and so on.
Is that a, I don't know.
The people who make it kind of think
it is, and it, part of the goal
is that they wanna pit two parts
of your brain against each other.
One that says, this is dangerous.
Why am I doing it?
And the other is, I know it's safe.
I know, absolutely know.
They made it safe.
Brad: It's like you were saying about
the design process and it's that
intentionally kind of manipulating
people's emotional state in order
to achieve a desired outcome.
I should say.
Stunning.
So this thing right here is just a
freaking treasure, and I'm so glad
that you wrote it because I felt
like a bobblehead just nodding until
I was worried that my, neck muscles
would take me to the chiropractors
.
You've been distilling these
vast and varied and very complex
topics and do something that just
feels relatable and digestible.
I'll paint a picture and I would
love to, to get your take on what
you might say based on that picture.
So I spend my days largely as a web
designer and developer, and that's what
I've been up to for the last 20 years.
And the last 12 to 15 of them, I feel
like, have gone in a certain direction.
And as a direction of increased,
mechanization, I suppose, of the,
creative act, the creative process.
People creating Jira tickets and passing
them off to one another in linear fashion
of designers and developers sometimes
living continents away, rarely, if
ever interacting with one another.
And I've seen a trend towards
focusing on specific tools and
mastery of the mechanical tools,
the mechanical acts of design.
in this last over the last three years,
but especially now, it seems like all of
that effort towards mastering specific
tools and doing things in a specific way.
That the industry kind of writ
large has hung their hat on.
All of a sudden that all came crumbling
down and people are scared shitless
because their worth as a designer,
as somebody making something, whether
they're building websites or apps or
services or whatever feels like it's
an existential moment for this field.
A lot of people have been so trained
on that kind of tree view that
they've really lost the forest.
I think that's, that's at least my
assessment I'm curious to get your take.
For this, this couple generations now
of designer, developer, people just out
there making things for, for a living,
uh, designing things to be used by others.
what, what you got to say to that?
Don: Well, you know, a website is
sort of a very restrictive domain
What is the purpose of a website?
And I think that a lot of
them will just disappear.
there's a new concept that's floating
about in the AI world, in the
design part of the AI world, that
there's a lot of exp people who work
in the field of user experience.
Duh.
You know, that's my own, my own
word for what, what people do.
yeah, I invented it at Apple 30 years ago.
Is it needed anymore?
So suppose the website changes its nature.
it doesn't have to have an interface,
Brad: Yep.
Don: but because what's happening
and what people are frightened of is
I used to have this website, but now
the AI system, simply when you ask a
question, it goes to my website, collects
the answer and present it to people.
So what's my website all about?
And I spent a lot of money and all
this doing it and what's it about?
And people with companies say,
this was supposed to be able to
buy stuff from my website and now
no, it shows up someplace else.
Well, suppose that you just assumed
that your website was, uh, this is my
collection of my music and this is my
collection of my ideas and my thoughts,
but I'm making it available to the world.
But you don't have to come to me.
If you ever ask a question that's
relevant to what I've done the AI will
simply pick it out and give it to you.
Now, we want the AI not to cheat.
an aside.
I don't like the way we instruct people
in universities because, for example, we
force people to work all by themselves.
They're not allowed to get help from
others, but when they get a job, they
don't know how to work with other people.
And you have to work with other people.
and you can't say, I don't like John.
I'm not gonna work with you.
No, I'm sorry.
You don't have any choice
about who the people are.
But if you work with each
other and respect each other,
you actually do better work.
We
Brad: Yes.
Don: university.
So I say the university, we ought
to tell people, please use ai.
Brad: Yeah.
Don: it write your stuff.
Please ask a friend.
If I ask you to do an essay on a
topic and your friend has already
done one on the same topic.
Ask if you could take a few
paragraphs out of her work and use it.
But now in school, that's called cheating.
And why is it cheating?
Well, because it's not allowed.
So you have to lie.
And I say, no, we shouldn't.
We should encourage it.
But you must give credit to Mary
or to whoever You got the source.
And if it's done, if this
section came from an AI say so.
'cause what I care about
is what you put together.
Did you give me a new
insight in a way that
Brad: Yes,
Don: I claim that's what I do in my books.
There's very
Brad: yes.
Don: in my books, but I put it together
with a very different framework that
makes it new and novel and creative.
Brad: Yes.
Don: that's what I want.
It's hard to do that on
your, on with a website.
Brad: Well, but, but the web, the web
is exactly what you're describing here.
Here are hyperlinks that, that, stitch
together these different ideas, giving
nods to, to the appropriate places
and, and creating something richer.
Don: if, if I ask about some question
that ends up borrowing your music,
Brad: Mm-hmm.
Don: should make me much more
interested in your music and
then I'll go seek it out.
Brad: Yeah.
Yeah.
Don: so we have to do is right now,
we, it simply steals your music.
Brad: Yes.
Don: But I don't, see, that's not,
I, I think we could change that so
that it, it also publicizes your work
and lets people understand, hey, it
turns out you're giving a concert,
so maybe I'll go and listen to you.
Brad: Yeah.
We can't put the, what's been called
the original sin of how the current
crop of large language models came into
existence, which was just by scraping
everything and without permission , but
that doesn't mean that, that, that's
an inevitability for forever and ever.
Don: And the people who did it
starting to learn their lesson.
Uh, uh, anthropic is paying a couple
billion dollars back and, and open AI is,
is already in court about the same issue.
And, um,
Brad: yeah.
Don: But also everybody knows that's
not a good way of teaching anyway.
wanna be selective at what you present.
And so I think people are
already changing that.
so a few years now from
now, that may be different.
And, they will pay for or license
the information they're using.
I think there's some new opportunities.
We just have to figure them out.
I can't tell you what they are.
When I do questions a group
of students, they often ask me
questions like, this one, how?
Well, so how, okay, I see
what you're trying to say,
but how do we actually do it?
And I say, no, no, no.
I'm the person who got us into
this mess and people my age.
And so you are the young student.
It's your job to figure out the solutions.
Brad: I love it.
And I think you just touched on, a
really important theme that I think is a
pretty great through line of your work,
but also a pretty core value of mine,
which is this notion of cooperation
over competition and a lot of that
shitty behavior that we have to do these
unethical things, or we have to suck this
stuff down and train our models on that
in order to compete and all of that stuff.
And we have to win.
And a lot of the macro level issues
of the world from my perspective,
is due to that competition over
really valuing cooperation.
And I think that what you're just
describing is like, there are ways
to design the circumstances by which
it's not a win-lose, and instead
it's a win-win and that there's some
equitable value exchange going on.
Whether you're talking about the
development of AI or just international
partnerships or really anything.
So yeah, competition versus
cooperation, collaboration.
Don: There have been good
international collaborations.
Even in, in the space we've
collaborated with many other countries.
The United States and Russia
are still collaborating
Brad: Mm-hmm.
Don: a little bit in space.
Music is a real and sports.
Really good examples.
Team sports.
is obviously a competition, but
doubles is kind of cooperation
combined with competition.
But team sports in football, whether
you think of it as, you know, European
football, which is we call soccer
or American football, it's two teams
against each other, but the, within
the team, you have to really cooperate.
And on top of that, it can't
be completely scripted.
if you go to an orchestra,
that's cooperation too, but it's
completely scripted, practiced
and practiced and practiced,
the, of all, we follow a script.
It's called the musical score.
And second of all, the conductor's
job is to actually train everybody
to the particular conductor's
opinion of what it should sound like.
the conductor doesn't really have
to be there during the performance.
The conductor's work is
all before the performance.
So during the performance, the
conductor is simply showing
off, a little bit to keep time.
Think the better example might be jazz,
Brad: Yeah.
Don: Where it's very collaborative and
they themselves, especially traditional
jazz, a lot of it's getting to be scripted
now, but traditional jazz, they didn't
know where they were going to end up,
Brad: Yeah.
Don: but they all liked
Brad: Yeah.
Don: other and they allowed
each other to take turns.
And they learned not only to let somebody
take the lead, but oh, I can do it an
accompaniment, or I can do that, or
I can add to it, or I can even change
what the person's going to play because
I'd hit the drums slightly differently.
Brad: The tight feedback loop of listening
reaction, but going into something
together and, and I love how you invoked
music and, and sports specifically through
the lens of collaboration, cooperation
versus competition, because I love.
Sports for its ability
to galvanize, a place.
I'm in Pittsburgh and we're supposed to
hate the Cleveland Browns because they're
our historical rivals and all this stuff.
And it's, I'm always like, Hey,
if you live at Cleveland, you
know, please enjoy your team.
Right?
Like, I understand it for the
culturally galvanizing force that it is.
But music, music specifically
and many of the arts
who's the competition?
Nobody, nobody.
We're actually the, the performers
themselves, but also the audience.
Everyone is engaged and
there is no bad guy.
There is no other, , it is strictly there
to take everybody to a higher place.
And, and that is personally
scripted, unscripted, whatever I
think why I gravitate towards that.
And I love improvisational music.
That's what I kind came up with
through university and beyond.
There are important lessons there where
the othering it can be a galvanizing
force, like in the realm of sports,
but a lot of times that othering
crosses the line into tribalism and
all the shit that gets us into the
messes that we're still facing today.
And I think of people like,
Singer, the expanding circle of
who is considered in your tribe?
Used to be here's my band of 150
or whatever people, and then,
oh, then we formed nation states.
And then, on and on and on.
And as the circle expands, we're now
in a place that I think you touched on
really well in your book . All living
creatures, non-living creatures, the
earth itself, it's along for the ride,
human or non-human, and we have to figure
out ways to cooperate, collaborate on
behalf of everyone, not just our team
trying to win , whoever that our team is,
Don: Well, the collaboration can
win and you can feel really good
by being a member of this, this
really effective collaboration.
But By the way, wind doesn't necessarily
mean that I'm better than the other band.
Brad: What it means.
Don: Is.
Wow, that was powerful.
That felt good.
We were really in sync.
And some days you're not in sync and
you don't even know why, but you're
trying, but that's even positive
too, because you know something's
wrong and you don't quite have it.
and it's not working.
Actually, the audience may not notice,
at least experts in the audience will
notice, but not the average person.
But to the players, it can be really bad.
My piano playing musicians say the
same thing that, some days they're off.
And in fact they say if I don't
practice for a while, can tell
the difference, but nobody can.
But after another day or two, my
manager can tell the difference.
And after that, uh, oh, yeah.
So, but the feeling of doing
it well Is sufficient reward.
You don't have to be
better than another group.
You just that you all formed harmony.
Brad: Back to Design for Good and
the other groups you mentioned.
In order to cooperate at that level,
you obviously are working with
groups that have hard earned success.
A lot of good reason to be proud,
and maybe even a bit protective
of the work that they've done.
But as you're in these conversations
with them to join forces, right?
In this kind of meta level of
community, the ego or any sort
of protectivism, does that like
just give way to the greater good?
Don: first of all, we have 12 groups
that we're asking if they would join,
and they've been selected very carefully,
the groups that we know we've been
Brad: Yeah.
Don: And so on.
and we're trying to say, It's the Don
Norman Design Award charity that's going
to host it because it makes it easy.
That automatically makes the
Alliance for Humanity a charity.
but we're making it pretty
much independent of us.
And that first of all, we don't want
you to change what you're doing.
The alliance is not gonna
say what you should do or
Brad: Yeah.
Yeah.
Don: Lemme give you a longer story.
how I got there, I have a friend in India,
who runs a number of foundations in, in
India, lots of people who make a lot of
money, and they're part of their religion
and part of their growing up is that you
should return the money to the community.
So he was one, a very high executive
in Infosys, which is one of the
world's largest IT companies.
And so what he now does is, has
a whole bunch of foundations.
Mostly for societal good.
And the word societal is in many of
the names, but he has a new one called,
the Center for Exponential Change.
so his name is Sanjay Pearl Hit.
And he's, he actually really
likes to work that we are doing.
He's been to our conferences and
he also spent a whole year acting
as a judge, reading hundreds
of applications and so on.
He loves what we're doing.
And he said, you're doing wonderful work,
but you're helping thousands of people.
You know, in India, my groups
help millions of people.
But you know what, so what?
India has a billion people, 1.3 billion.
And so a million doesn't
make any difference.
It's one, 1000th of the population.
so you have to scale.
And so to have an impact
that makes a difference.
And so he said, but don't scale by
getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
'cause then you're a big
monopoly, It's, it's hard.
It's a
Brad: Yeah.
Don: monstrous thing to run and You lose
control also of what's what it does.
So he likes the dandelion model.
One, dandelion can produce 10, and then
so you start with one, you end up with 10
and then a hundred, and then a thousand.
And then that's exponential growth.
Brad: Yeah.
Don: that for a while.
And then I said, no, it's wrong.
Uh, why is it wrong?
Because every dandelion is the same.
what I'd like to do is bring
together the existing groups,
but they're all different.
We all have similar goals, but we do it.
Every one of us does it differently
aims a different kinds of work.
And so I wanna be a forest where
all the trees are different.
there's a special thing about
a forest secretly under the
ground, which you can't see it.
There's a root system.
root system connects all of the
trees of the forest, which makes
them, that makes the forest stronger.
than just the sum of the trees.
Then there's trees that get sick are
helped by the others and et cetera.
And not, not intentionally, but
just by the way that the, they
send signals to one another through
electrical impulses and chemical.
In fact, I, I always thought it was just
chemical, but recently they're saying,
no, no, there are electrical signals too.
And so that's what I want.
So that's our metaphor.
And that therefore we're
gonna have a communication
network and a database network.
And that if I have a, if I see an
opportunity, but it's too big for
me, I can can talk to my other ones.
Would you like to join up with
me have see an opportunity?
It's not though what I do, I
could pass it on to other people.
Or if I did something and I, and
I'm really happy about what would
happen, I give a make a case study.
more importantly, if I do something and
it fails, I make a case story out of it.
Because don't learn much from a success.
learn a lot from a failure, a success,
all we're just wonderful, we're just good.
A failure.
You have to think a lot about what went
wrong and what did I learn from it.
And so we wanna do that, but in
addition, we're gonna have a depository
where you have books and, and articles
and case histories, et cetera.
there are lots of libraries
like that all around the world.
But the trouble with the library is
you don't really know what's in it.
And you don't know how
to find what's in it.
You have to have the right
vocabulary to find it, and aha.
Suddenly the large language models come
to the fore because they, you don't even
have to know what you're looking for.
You can simply say, and
I've done this now a lot.
I, it's, I just love doing it.
I talk to it for hundreds of words.
In which I say, I don't know
what I'm looking for, but here's
the problem I'm dealing with.
I had this correspondence with somebody.
In fact, here's the letter they sent
me and here's the answer I gave.
And I realize there has to
be more to it than that.
And there must be people who have already
been working on this kind of problem.
Can you tell me,
Brad: Yes.
Don: and oh, by the way, before
you start, if you, if you, if
you need more information, ask
me questions before you start.
Brad: Yes.
Don: And it does.
And then when I did this for one
test, 'cause got a letter from a good
friend who said, I've been thinking
about evolution and the role it plays.
And I was thinking about cultures.
And cultures evolved too, don't they?
Do they follow the same
principles as natural evolution?
and I asked, and oh yeah, there are about
six different disciplines to study that.
I said, oh, I didn't even
know about some of them.
Could you give me a reading
list so I could learn?
So it gives me like three
or four pages of readings.
And, but the nice thing, and it
asked me first, do you want the
technical literature or should
it be just popular literature?
Oh no, give me the scientific literature.
I said, it did.
And then at the end it said,
oh, by itself, I didn't ask.
It said, I just gave you a lot of stuff.
So I recommend you start
with these four books.
And I started, and then I realized
that, uh, I may think I'm an expert
in some fields, but some of these
fields I don't know anything about.
please don't give me the
scientific stuff yet.
Give me some introductory books to read.
But the point is, I didn't
know what I really wanted.
I didn't know about the existence of
these fields, but it said, yeah, hey
look, there's this, all this work.
Well, that's what I think our,
not we're gonna call it the
collaborative hub, not a knowledge
hub, but it's the collaboration hub.
Brad: Yes.
Don: That you'll be able to ask and
say, well, I've just been asked to try
to work on this problem, and I don't
know, I don't even know what to call
it, but here's the, here's the essence.
Is there, is there anything
you can help me with?
I bet you it will give
an answer that's useful.
Brad: It's beautiful.
What you just described
was, is, use this elsewhere.
There's, there's bricks and mortar.
Right?
And we're humans in even nation states.
So whatever boundary you wanna
draw, we are very good at bricks and
there's, and there's mortar that,
that kind of is needed in order to
build a structurally sound wall.
And, and what you just described,
that's, that's what popped into my
head is it's just, here's this mortar
that just kind of oozes around these
different individual minds or entities
or whatever and can help like connect.
Stuff together in sturdy the
collective walls, I guess, as it
were, just by way of, of connecting
the dots and exposing things and,
and, and widening your, your lens
Don: That's a
Brad: as
Don: but
Brad: it's amazing.
Don: But it's kind of wrong.
That is the Eskimos build loos
out of snow with no mortar.
Well, the mortar is, is other snow.
lots of tribes build homes out
of twigs and limbs of trees.
Brad: Sure,
Don: the structure and the thing that
holds it together is the same thing.
it's not necessary to have
a separate glue from the,
Brad: sure,
Don: Go back to music.
what is it that binds the
different musicians together?
I guess I would call it harmony,
which, which could include
disharmony as well, by the way.
Which as long as it's
deliberate on purpose
Brad: Yep.
Don: and, and the timing and, That
there is a theme, even though they
didn't start, they may have started
with some theme, but they've now evolved
to a completely different theme, but
that binds them together, and that's
like the mortar you're talking about.
Brad: yes.
It's, it's what, what is
that connective tissue.
And I think that this new crop of,
of technology that we have available
to us, uh, quite, quite literally.
Just today I posted an article
talking about, calling it mouth coding
but it's the spirit like through
the lens of, these tools, right?
And through, because these are large
language models, we're now able to take a
meeting, which used to just be, you know,
a time suck that everybody was looking
forward to getting over or getting through
so that they could go back to their work.
Well, we're now in a position
where we can immediately
transcribe our speech into text.
And from that text we're able
to do whatever we want with it.
And over the course of
the meeting, we can.
Just manifest that, that website, and
we could iterate over dozens of times
and arrive at different conclusions
and include, people and voices that
are diverse and have crucial context
for the real success of everything.
That once upon a time they were,
they were boxed out from the design
and the de development process
because, oh, that's for those people
who know how to do that stuff.
Now anybody that can utter some words
and articulate what is important to them
can now participate in the very active
of design and and development themselves.
And I think that that's beautiful.
It's utterly and completely beautiful.
And we, I just did it.
My, my wife is, she is a, a counselor and
an arts therapist and her, her website,
uh, for the practice that she works at.
Needs a lot of love, right?
And so working with the owner who
is not a technical person, right?
She's there serving the community, She
was able to articulate so well, her
mission, the core values, non-violence,
you know, inclusion, all of that stuff.
And we were able to just immediately
transform that into a digital artifact,
but to help her serve her business.
And so my mind immediately goes to.
Just as you were saying, all of these,
these underfunded nonprofit organizations,
the people doing hard and important
work, we now have the opportunity to, to
actively and easily have them participate
in the creation of the, the, the digital
things that they need to be successful.
Don: Not
Brad: I It is so cool.
But
Don: your own specialty is music
and that's not some instruments
are digital, but not all of them.
You have a guitar, which
is a quasi digital one
Brad: yes.
Don: has fret, the frets makes it more
digital than a violin, for example.
Brad: I love what you are
saying about these like.
there's these different layers, and
it sounds like you're, you're now
operating at a layer where you're,
you're looking at the connective
infrastructure that connects different
organizations to, to one another and,
and allows for value and, and for
everyone to support and learn and grow
Don: they have to share the same
values and the same, the, the
methods can be different, but
they have to be similar enough.
'cause I'm pushing for a method I call
humanity centered design, which is human
centered design is sort of the common
theme that most designers today work with.
and I like to give a talk in
which I say this, this book.
You all know this book, it's
sold millions of copies.
It's used all around the world.
It's wrong.
And what's wrong about it?
Nothing.
I believe in everything.
It says I shall teach it.
What's wrong is what's not
in the book, it's doesn't.
And that's what this book, what
you mentioned is all about.
So this book is all about what
was left out of that book, it's
about taking care of cultures.
Uh, it's about having a
different economic system.
It's about why do we leave a life
where everything must be measured,
including things that can't be measured.
So people measure things they can
measure and name it by what they
are trying to talk about, and then
they forget they didn't, et cetera.
And so the, What is the
value of a human life?
Do you know?
The economist insists they have
big arguments about how you
determine the value of a human life.
And I say all those arguments are stupid.
'cause the value of my life is different
for my wife it is for say, the world.
And my life.
My, I'm probably worth more for
people in my profession than I am for
people who have never heard of me.
And so what is the value of life?
It's not a function of how much
money I make or how old I am.
it's the meaning that
I give to other people.
There may some people who may think
my value is negative, it makes,
doesn't make any sense to say, oh,
this person's life is worth $120,000.
This person's life is worth $50,000.
This
Brad: Yeah.
Don: is worth.
there was even a proposal that when
you get to be too old, you're 78 years,
we're gonna cut your value by 30%.
Well, I'm 90 years old, so I'm,
I'll cut it by, by, you know,
Brad: you do such a good job of, of
articulating like how nonsensical
that is when you hold it up to
the light in any, really, any way.
You cut that stuff, you, and you give
some really great kind of alternatives
or, or things that are trying to be
more holistic in their thinking or
more considered, but, but ultimately
you arrive at this thing that at face
value, it almost sounds like, like a cop
out or a non-answer, but I think that
you're, you're dead on with it's, it's.
Don: problem is, some people could
criticize this book by saying that, well,
yeah, I gave all the, I it was a good
book, but it didn't give the answers.
I, I have two, two responses to that.
One of them is, um, did give a lot of
answers, The real issue though, is the
way we live today, it has to do with the
way our politics run, and it has to do
with the economic systems of the world.
And I'm just reading a new book, which
I just bought about the history of
the eco of economics in the world.
And it's not a history of economics.
It's interesting, it's a history of what
it it has done, what has led to it has led
to a world where profit is important and
uh, and we destroyed the world and along
the way, but none of it was intentional.
In fact, it was a history of
capitalism and capitalism.
He said it didn't, nobody sat down
and designed capitalism and, and
there's a lot of good sense in
capitalism, but it's, there's comes
in many, many, many different things.
But of it was all meant to be competitive
Brad: Yep.
Don: and, and, uh, but we're destroying
the world and the capitalists
don't know how to react to it.
And it, it's really interesting and uh,
that's kind of how I feel that have to
change so much, but we have to change it
little by little, by little by little.
Brad: Yeah.
We have no choice but to, change
the trajectory, I think that that's
like one of the frustrations with,
with a lot of the people that come
to the same conclusions of it.
Yes.
Like the way that capitalism is,
is being run and especially just in
the US and just capitalism at all.
At all.
Cause
Don: It's across the world.
I've been, uh, in China, in South
Korea, in Singapore and Indonesia.
You still have wealthy
billionaires in all those
Brad: sure.
Don: and money still matters.
And it's, and it's unfortunate.
I.
Brad: Right.
but to, to, to walk it back is
a steering of, of an ocean liner
versus a, a light switch that I
think is what a lot of people crave.
that's, it kind of seeds what I,
I see articulated a lot, which
is just like, yeah, this is all
bankrupt and we need to like shut
it all down and, and blow it all up.
And I think what you're sort of, you do
such a great job, an artful job, I think
in, in your book of, of kind of talking
about that, changing the path it, and
Don: fast overnight.
It's, uh,
Brad: Yeah.
Don: we, you know, we have
to stop burning coal and oil.
Well, yes, that's true, but you, if you
stopped it today, it would lead to panic.
Brad: Yeah.
Yeah.
Don: it started to happen.
Uh, and to, to replace it,
it is gonna take decades,
Brad: Right?
Don: I, you know, the argument
is gonna take decades.
Says we should start right away.
Brad: Yeah, that's right.
how might we design solutions that
gets us there faster, but, but still
like a, a smooth, gentle glide or
transition versus an abrupt or,
Don: No,
Brad: scary thing.
Don: complications.
Again, part of the work is take a
look at, uh, zoning restrictions.
they're put in for mostly for good reasons
to try to make a comfortable, livable city
some of the restrictions we have
on like power lines going across
the country, uh, that could be
dangerous and could be, et cetera.
Brad: Mm-hmm.
Don: But those zoning restrictions now
prevent us from producing affordable
housing uh, each house should have
its own land and each house is to be
limited in height, et cetera, et cetera.
and it's hard to change because there
are good reasons why we had the zoning.
And if you try to get rid of it or
change it, the people will, will.
Good reasons why we shouldn't.
unfortunately, a change is going to cause
a lot of difficulty for many people,
many good people, people our friends,
Brad: yep.
Don: and in fact, ourselves.
It's so, the nimby not in my backyard.
There's now a ybi philosophy Yes.
In my backyard.
But it, but it can be dangerous when
it's in Oh, this wonderful view I have.
You're gonna put a big
high voltage power to
Brad: Yeah,
Don: right here
Brad: yeah,
Don: lawn.
Yeah.
Brad: And it's, and it, and it gets
into What's required in order to,
to arrive at a place is, here's a
considered and clear ride view of
the pros and cons of the thing.
Let's, let's not try to distill
or walk away from the nuance.
Let's just help everyone understand
and, arrive at, at some sensible
and pragmatic, you know, decision.
there's just such a reactionary
tendency to just jump into the, the
polarization machine that just goes,
all right, here's the issue at hand.
Are you on this side or this side?
And choose wisely because you're
immediately going to fall down the trap
door if you're on the, if you choose
Don: Yeah,
Brad: poorly.
Don: I mean, these are really
difficult issues, so, um,
Again, as an optimist, I can say, I
can understand why they're difficult
and why people are objecting to
things that we need to be done.
but that doesn't stop the
fact that we need to do it.
But
Brad: Yeah.
Don: do have to be sympathetic to
the people who will be hurt by it.
Brad: it seems so obvious, but at the
same time, I feel like the conditions are
in place, whether that's, uh, political
or, or technological or whatever,
that it's like any, uh, criticism
levied at, or, you know, whether it's
valid or, or not, or whatever needs
to be just swa squashed or dismissed.
And it's like, we have to get out
of that in order to like, to, to
arrive at some stuff where you
could say, Hey, this is good.
You know, you're, you're creating.
You know, this really important
technology that's, that's now
infiltrating every aspect of society.
And also that technology has some
pretty serious issues with it,
and you need to be able to, to
sit with that and just accept it.
But I, what I see is just this, this
reactionary tendency to just say, ah,
that's a non-issue, or, oh, that's
gonna be fixed in the next release.
Or, oh, that's, whatever.
And it's like, not just own it.
Just own it.
It's okay.
Don: Well,
Brad: It's all right.
Don: I've done when I've had these
problems, when, 'cause I've been,
you know, a leader of many different
groups, um, I try to get the people
who are disagreeing so strongly, to
say, uh, and I, my argument usually is,
you know what, what you person A are
saying is absolutely correct and you,
person B, you are absolutely correct.
Now, the two of you appear to be in
violent disagreement, but let's take
a look at it because from person
A. look at person a's point of view
and why you are viewing it this way.
And so from that point of view, you
were correct and this, but they say,
the thing about B I've usually been in
collaborative groups anyway, where the
people kind of liked each other even
though they were fiercely disagreeing.
Brad: Sure.
Sure.
Don: helped, they could say, oh, I see.
So it isn't that one person is right
and the other person is wrong, so, okay.
And that actually sets the framework,
but trying to find a different
approach that we both agree to, or
we'll both agree to moderate something
about our opinion, so we don't get
all that we want, et et cetera.
Brad: Yeah.
Don: understand why the other people
are so fierce in their belief.
And it's not because they're, they can
be people you really like as people.
And so why are they
being so difficult now?
Well, they have a different
way of looking at it, which
Brad: Yep.
Don: sensible and realistic view.
Brad: yeah.
Standing where they're at, living a
specific life in certain set of situations
or power structures or whatever.
What they're incentivized by, what
they get, what they get rewarded
with, or what they get punished with
Don: Mm-hmm.
Brad: impacts how they show
up in any given moment.
And a lot of times it's, it just involves
exposing that subterranean landscape
to everyone to help everybody get, oh,
yeah, well, GI given that, yeah, sure.
You know?
Yeah, that's,
Don: uh, speaking of that, I have another
meeting coming up where we're going
have this is our board meeting where
I know there's gonna be some fierce
disagreements, but once again, we all
like each other and trust each other.
So our disagreements are always
interesting because we are,
we are disagreeing with an
approach, but not with the people.
Brad: yes.
Don: and make that distinction.
Brad: That's, that's beautiful.
It's a, yeah, a admiration, mutual
respect, and, and through that,
that friction comes really good.
Heat comes really good results.
Don: it one, you know, one result
is you learn all the compromise.
But, better yet, or sometimes it is a
result, we end up with an entirely new
approach that solves all of our problems.
That's rare, but that's
wonderful when it happens.
And that's when I wake up in the
middle of the night feeling wonderful.
Brad: Very beautiful.
Beautiful.
can I, I, I just have to say, just in,
in wrapping up, like your, your book,
both the one you held up earlier, set me
on my path and I can't thank you enough.
This is, this is really a, a full circle
moment for me, and I just can't thank you
for, for setting me down a certain row.
Don: it's mutual because, uh, you
could probably tell I really enjoyed
interacting with you and talking
to you and learning about you.
I didn't, didn't know who
you were until just recently.
Brad: really appreciate that.
Take good care.
Thank you so much.
Don: Thanks, Brad.
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