Incubating Ideas, Human Memory, and Designing for Humanity with Don Norman

Brad: [0:11] 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: [0:20] 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: [1:11] 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: [1:32] 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: [1:55] 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: [2:21] 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: [2:28] 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: [2:44] Yeah.

Don: [2:44] history and the basics are dull.

Brad: [2:46] Yes.

Don: [2:46] you have no idea why you're

Brad: [2:48] Yeah.

Don: [2:49] 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: [3:02] yes, yes,

Don: [3:03] 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: [3:55] 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: [4:45] 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: [5:45] Yeah.

Don: [5:46] 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: [6:20] Yep.

Don: [6:20] 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: [6:27] Yeah.

Don: [6:28] fiction, making it up is good. But if you're writing, um, you know, factual stuff, well, not so good,

Brad: [6:35] 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: [6:49] 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: [6:56] Yeah,

Don: [6:56] it all, makes health logical sense, but, I'm not gonna vouch for its accuracy.

Brad: [7:05] 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: [7:21] 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: [7:31] Mm-hmm.

Don: [7:32] But, uh, nonetheless, it was always known that, that our memories are reconstructed. We don't

Brad: [7:37] Yep.

Don: [7:37] 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: [9:07] 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: [9:25] 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: [9:57] Yeah.

Don: [9:58] 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: [10:14] Yeah.

Don: [10:15] 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: [10:33] Sure. Sure.

Don: [10:33] 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: [11:04] Yep. Yep.

Don: [11:05] 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: [11:17] 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: [11:53] you know about placebos in medicine.

Brad: [11:56] Mm-hmm.

Don: [11:57] 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: [12:16] Yeah.

Don: [12:17] or a pill with,

Brad: [12:18] Salt. Yeah. Yeah. Salt water or something. Yeah.

Don: [12:21] And, lovely unfinished and they did recover. It got rid of their

Brad: [12:24] Yep. Yep.

Don: [12:26] Nowadays we do several things. First of all, we always have a control group

Brad: [12:32] Mm-hmm.

Don: [12:33] 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: [13:04] Yep. Yep,

Don: [13:05] it.

Brad: [13:05] yep, yep.

Don: [13:06] 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: [13:50] 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: [14:36] 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: [16:07] Yes.

Don: [16:08] 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: [16:29] 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: [16:57] 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: [17:05] Yes. And

Don: [17:06] APH and you have to build on it. And that's really great creative.

Brad: [17:10] yep.

Don: [17:11] 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: [19:16] Beautiful.

Don: [19:17] to do is find people around the world who are doing the United Nations, the list of 16 critical needs. They call it

Brad: [19:25] Yes.

Don: [19:25] Development goals.

Brad: [19:26] Yes.

Don: [19:26] 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: [19:45] Yeah.

Don: [19:46] the same thing that we're doing. They're all different, but they're all aimed at the SDGs, this sustainable

Brad: [19:51] Yes.

Don: [19:52] 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: [20:07] Yep.

Don: [20:07] good stuff. depending upon what kind of glasses you're wearing, you can see good or you can see bad.

Brad: [20:14] 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: [21:09] 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: [21:17] Yeah.

Don: [21:18] every, with some exceptions, they're mostly small,

Brad: [21:21] Yeah,

Don: [21:22] 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: [21:41] yeah,

Don: [21:41] 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: [21:54] Yeah.

Don: [21:54] 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: [22:09] Beautiful, beautiful.

Don: [22:10] 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: [23:28] Goodness,

Don: [23:29] And

Brad: [23:29] my goodness.

Don: [23:30] already have agreed to be part of the alliance. So, well, if we go

Brad: [23:35] That's amazing.

Don: [23:36] 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: [23:50] Yeah,

Don: [23:50] do nothing. So

Brad: [23:51] yeah,

Don: [23:52] I, I have to see the good, but when I'm looking for good, I find it all over the place.

Brad: [23:57] Yes.

Don: [23:57] 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: [24:22] 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: [25:33] let me

Brad: [25:33] yeah.

Don: [25:35] 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: [26:14] Mm-hmm.

Don: [26:15] 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: [27:06] 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: [27:33] 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: [28:55] 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: [30:06] 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: [30:21] John Cage.

Don: [30:23] Yep.

Brad: [30:23] 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: [30:38] Art.

Brad: [30:39] Here it is.

Don: [30:40] Art is. What we say is art.

Brad: [30:42] 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: [30:59] 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: [32:12] Yep.

Don: [32:13] 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: [32:33] It sounds kind of unnerving if you were to be in it if it's teetered over so, so high. That

Don: [32:38] 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: [33:04] 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: [35:54] 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: [36:33] Yep.

Don: [36:33] 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: [37:46] Yes.

Don: [37:46] university. So I say the university, we ought to tell people, please use ai.

Brad: [37:52] Yeah.

Don: [37:52] 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: [38:29] Yes,

Don: [38:30] I claim that's what I do in my books. There's very

Brad: [38:32] yes.

Don: [38:33] in my books, but I put it together with a very different framework that makes it new and novel and creative.

Brad: [38:41] Yes.

Don: [38:42] that's what I want. It's hard to do that on your, on with a website.

Brad: [38:46] 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: [39:01] if, if I ask about some question that ends up borrowing your music,

Brad: [39:06] Mm-hmm.

Don: [39:06] should make me much more interested in your music and then I'll go seek it out.

Brad: [39:10] Yeah. Yeah.

Don: [39:11] so we have to do is right now, we, it simply steals your music.

Brad: [39:16] Yes.

Don: [39:17] 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: [39:28] 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: [39:48] 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: [39:59] yeah.

Don: [40:00] 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: [40:45] 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: [41:51] 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: [42:01] Mm-hmm.

Don: [42:02] 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: [43:07] Yeah.

Don: [43:07] 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: [43:18] Yeah.

Don: [43:19] but they all liked

Brad: [43:19] Yeah.

Don: [43:20] 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: [43:33] 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: [45:49] 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: [46:04] What it means.

Don: [46:04] 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: [47:03] 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: [47:41] 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: [47:48] Yeah.

Don: [47:49] 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: [48:12] Yeah. Yeah.

Don: [48:13] 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: [49:31] Yeah.

Don: [49:32] 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: [49:47] Yeah.

Don: [49:47] 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: [52:27] Yes.

Don: [52:27] and oh, by the way, before you start, if you, if you, if you need more information, ask me questions before you start.

Brad: [52:34] Yes.

Don: [52:34] 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: [53:51] Yes.

Don: [53:52] 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: [54:06] 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: [55:02] That's a

Brad: [55:03] as

Don: [55:04] but

Brad: [55:04] it's amazing.

Don: [55:05] 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: [55:18] Sure,

Don: [55:18] 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: [55:25] sure,

Don: [55:26] 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: [55:38] Yep.

Don: [55:38] 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: [55:51] 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: [58:29] Not

Brad: [58:30] I It is so cool. But

Don: [58:32] 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: [58:40] yes.

Don: [58:40] has fret, the frets makes it more digital than a violin, for example.

Brad: [58:44] 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: [59:11] 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: [1:00:59] Yeah.

Don: [1:01:00] 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: [1:01:13] 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: [1:01:44] 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: [1:02:46] Yep.

Don: [1:02:46] 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: [1:03:03] 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: [1:03:23] 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: [1:03:33] sure.

Don: [1:03:34] and money still matters. And it's, and it's unfortunate. I.

Brad: [1:03:39] 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: [1:04:14] fast overnight. It's, uh,

Brad: [1:04:16] Yeah.

Don: [1:04:17] 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: [1:04:25] Yeah. Yeah.

Don: [1:04:26] it started to happen. Uh, and to, to replace it, it is gonna take decades,

Brad: [1:04:32] Right?

Don: [1:04:33] I, you know, the argument is gonna take decades. Says we should start right away.

Brad: [1:04:38] 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: [1:04:49] No,

Brad: [1:04:49] scary thing.

Don: [1:04:50] 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: [1:05:11] Mm-hmm.

Don: [1:05:13] 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: [1:05:40] yep.

Don: [1:05:41] 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: [1:05:58] Yeah,

Don: [1:05:59] right here

Brad: [1:05:59] yeah,

Don: [1:05:59] lawn. Yeah.

Brad: [1:06:02] 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: [1:06:43] Yeah,

Brad: [1:06:43] poorly.

Don: [1:06:44] 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: [1:06:58] Yeah.

Don: [1:06:58] do have to be sympathetic to the people who will be hurt by it.

Brad: [1:07:02] 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: [1:08:02] Well,

Brad: [1:08:03] It's all right.

Don: [1:08:03] 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: [1:08:45] Sure. Sure.

Don: [1:08:46] 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: [1:09:07] Yeah.

Don: [1:09:08] 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: [1:09:21] Yep.

Don: [1:09:21] sensible and realistic view.

Brad: [1:09:23] 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: [1:09:37] Mm-hmm.

Brad: [1:09:38] 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: [1:09:53] 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: [1:10:15] yes.

Don: [1:10:16] and make that distinction.

Brad: [1:10:17] 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: [1:10:30] 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: [1:10:50] 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: [1:11:13] 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: [1:11:24] really appreciate that. Take good care. Thank you so much.

Don: [1:11:27] Thanks, Brad.