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We live in a time when it's hard to know what to believe.
That's why hearing from Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, matters now more than ever.
We'll see you next time.
Let's jump in.
Let's start off with the topic of trust Jimmy, because I think this is really a fascinating place to start, especially considering everything that's happening in the world today.
So of all of the books you could have potentially written, why focus on the topic of trust?
Yeah.
So what's actually interesting is that it's not really where I started.
Not exactly.
So I, you know, I talked to David Drake, who's the president of Crown, and he was trying to persuade me to do a book.
I was like, yeah, but I I don't want to do a book like an autobiography or a memoir.
I can't write a history of Wikipedia.
I'm still in it.
And there's too many people.
I'll leave somebody out and so on.
And he said well look, have you seen Peter Thiel's book?
Zero to one, it's really, it's not even a really a book.
It's a collection of essays.
You can just do a collection of essays.
And that was like magical.
It broke the, the writer's block that I felt.
I'm like, great.
I have a lot to say.
I'm just going to start.
And then as I got started, I was like, yeah, but there is actually a theme here.
And I sort of came to it as I was writing.
And I realized like, actually the, this is about trust.
And then that kind of when that moment came.
But I realized all of these things that I had to say were in many ways tied back to trust.
Then I knew where I was going.
And we've seen this huge problem, a decline of trust in society in so many ways.
So we've seen decline in trust in journalism, trust in politics, trust in business, to some extent trust in each other.
And this is leading to some pretty dark places.
Politically, as we all know, the lack of trust even amongst the politicians means they're a complete gridlock.
They can't do anything.
Bipartisan can't cooperate, which means they're not getting anything done that even needs doing.
And so I thought you know what?
It's a great time for us to talk about this issue and to say you know what?
Actually, we have to reclaim a culture that is about trusting each other and building a more trustworthy society.
I agree.
This is the perfect time to talk about this.
And I feel like we even need to have a deeper discussion, because when we think about trust, how are we even defining this word?
Because I think it's evolved over years.
So, from your perspective, what would you say your operational definition was for the word trust as it relates to this book?
Yeah.
I mean, I think there's a lot of different elements and ways to think about trust.
But for me, the core piece is what I would call a well-considered, deliberate risk-taking of making yourself vulnerable, of saying you know what I'm going to trust in this case.
I'm going to trust that you're going to do the right thing.
I clicked a button on an app and some guy I never met pulls up and I get in the car with him like wow, like you know, I'm going to trust Uber driver and it's going to be fine.
And, by the way, the company's got some processes in place and you know like there's reasons for that trust.
But it is that you know you're going to.
You're going to say yeah, probably that person's going to be fine.
And you know what, that's the way we actually live our lives already.
And I think that's part of what makes wikipedia work, for example is that most people are basically trustworthy.
I love to give people the example because i think it helps.
You know, when you, when you think about social media and all of the toxicity of these angry people and you think oh, how can you trust them?
They're all crazy people, you know uh, and then you think you know what, every time you go into a restaurant And restaurants may be serving steak and there's people in there with steak
So you're sitting next to absolute complete strangers with deadly weapons, sawing away on some meat.
And you're trusting them that they're not going to stab you.
Nobody's going to go crazy and be violent.
We do trust people around us.
We know that basically most people are nice.
And I always say, out of every thousand people there's probably about 10 who are really annoying, but they're not super malicious.
They're just like irritating people.
There's probably one or less than one who you would say yeah, actually problematic.
Uh, you know, and those numbers are quite different from what you might think.
If you, you know, if you live your life online too much, you might think yeah, a lot of people are pretty horrible.
No, the ones that get promoted up in social media are sometimes horrible.
Uh, it's actually one of the things i really like about podcasts in general like, because podcast is a, it's a long form, uh conversation.
It isn't that reactive moment.
You don't get ahead in a podcast by just ranting at people.
You've got to have a long conversation and so forth.
You've covered a lot of things, Jimmy.
I think this is fascinating.
And one of the things I was going to push you on, but then you gave me a substantial amount of examples with you on it.
You were saying that most people are generally trustworthy and the examples that you gave are legitimate.
So we will trust an Uber driver.
We will trust just walking about, because if we think about what a complete trust deficiency would be, it would essentially be the wild wild west, where everybody's a legitimate threat to your safety.
And one thing that I've when I do my keynotes and trainings I love asking the question what is trust?
How do you define it?
Because when you talk to people who haven't put in the amount of work that you have in exploring the topic, if you talk to them and ask them about what trust is, it's something that they can feel.
They can know when it's there.
They can know when it's not, but it's very hard to articulate.
And I'd like to get your thoughts on this, because one of the things that I like to say, especially as it relates to tough conversations, is that trust is a positive bias.
A lot of times we don't process it consciously, but we just feel it.
It's either there or it's not based on our past experiences or whatever it happens to be.
So trust, it's felt.
We can understand it when it's there.
And then, like you said, it allows us to take risks.
It allows us to take action with some level of confidence.
But then when the trust is not there, even in times where we cannot articulate why we don't trust the person, the system or the framework, we just will not take action and we will make sure that we do everything but be vulnerable in that situation because we don't feel safe.
Well, we often see this and we can recognize it.
And I think we do recognize it as a personal tragedy, right?
If someone's been through a life situation where their trust has been damaged, you know over and over and over and you know they've got, they've had an abusive spouse or parent or whatever.
Again, right.
And someone in that situation, I would really say one of the things if you're a person in that kind of extreme case and this is pretty rare, I mean, all of us have, we've had our trust betrayed here and there, but most of us we cope with it and we find a way to move on.
But if it's been really bad yeah, that's what find a good therapist or find a way to work on it, try to rebuild trust, whatever.
And then You know you can say this as well, not in that kind of deeply personal context, but you know, oftentimes in a business it's really important.
If you've lost the trust of your employees, or you've lost the trust of your customers, your partners, whatever it might be.
And if you can recognize, you know what we screwed up like.
We had this situation.
We didn't handle it the right way.
It's hard right.
You've got to say, first, you've got to own up to it in your heart.
And you've got to say, yeah, we didn't do the right thing here.
It's a problem.
And then you have to take the steps to rebuild trust.
And a lot of people think and say things like, yeah, once you've lost trust, that's it.
You'll never get it back.
But I talked to Frances Fry.
She's a Harvard professor who actually worked at Uber during a real crisis of trust they had at Uber.
And She says, you know what, you can rebuild trust.
When people say that, they're mistaken.
Businesses who have fallen down done the wrong things.
They can rebuild trust, but they have to do the right things.
And she's got this three-part framework which we go through in the book.
That's about all of the pieces to say here's what you need to do to rebuild trust.
Yeah, and what's interesting is, is when you look at the science, yes, trust can be rebuilt.
But also when you look at the science, you realize how hard it is to rebuild the trust.
And you say, okay, well, maybe my number one priority should be to not lose it.
Yeah well, and on that front, a lot of this has to do with if you are too short term in your thinking, and a lot of businesses have this problem.
You're just thinking about your next quarterly numbers, or whatever.
And you see a way to increase profits in the short run.
But if it's at the cost of the trust of your customers, it's never going to work.
It's going to end badly for you.
So there's an example.
There's a company that sells backup servers.
It's a really geeky topic.
But I've been watching this.
And they decided a while back that from now on they weren't going to let you buy any old hard drives to stick in the server.
You had to buy the hard drives from them.
And they gave a reason that said, well, it's about compatibility.
We need to test the compatibility.
And all the technical people are like, well, that's complete nonsense.
Hard drives are all very compatible.
That's not an issue.
Like that's not a thing.
It just sounds like you want to increase your short-term profit, you know, because your drives cost 20 more, or whatever the percentage is.
And there was a huge pushback and the reputation really took a dive and, And you know, there was a lot of talk on Reddit groups where people are talking about buying backup servers and like don't touch that one because you're going to be locked into an ecosystem.
And they lost the trust and they were really a leading.
Well, they've just now, in the last week the only reason I'm talking about, I'm not here to rake a company over the coals but they've just now reversed that and said no, you know what?
Actually yeah, you can use whatever drives you want, because word on the street is their sales had tanked, and so on.
And now they got some work to do.
They screwed up.
They made a decision with short term potential benefits, didn't even get the short term benefits because people are like I'm out of here, you know.
And now they've got to.
Now they've got to, you know, really go out of their way to say actually, we're not going to do that again.
Like, here's why we did it.
Here's what you know, it was a huge error.
We're sorry.
And you know, even you know, I think they should open source some of their software to say, like actually we're going to open source the bit you know.
So you could always just plug in the module that lets you use whatever drives you want that sort of thing.
I don't know exactly how they should do it, but they've got some work to do.
And I think they can do it.
I just think it's going to take a little while.
That's the thing.
It takes time.
And one of the best things I've heard on trust is trust is gained in drips, but lost in buckets.
It takes a long time to build it and then rebuild it over time.
And it sounds like, when it comes to the, the impetus behind a lot of decisions that lead to a lack of trust.
It seems like there's a very interesting nexus between um emotionality and decision-making, and especially decision-making within relationships, because whenever you are making a bad decision, a lot of times it's because you're priority, prioritizing the short term of the longterm.
And a lot of times it's the short term um uh cocktail of emotions that make you just focus on the here and now.
So you might solve something in the short term, but then it caused significant ramifications down the road right.
And then within relationships too.
Our emotions can lead us to make bad strategic decisions within our interpersonal relationships.
And then we prioritize the short term.
And then as a result, it leads to a trust deficiency in the long term.
And it's really interesting when you think about this not just in the micro sense but the macro sense, because it might be simpler to understand how to get back on track within an interpersonal relationship or even within a business.
But the challenges we're seeing when it comes to trust, we're talking about the whole internet.
So how do we start to tackle that?
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a there's a lot of different levels.
I mean I, you know, I think that you know, one of the piece of advice that I have taken myself but always need to remind myself is I've largely come off of certain social media that I find toxic and not you know sort of.
If I'm getting a feeling from social media that most people are horrible, I know that's not true.
And therefore engaging in that kind of place, in a platform that, through their algorithms or whatever, creates more conflict and horribleness rather than thoughtful dialogue, is I'm out.
Like I just like it's not good for me.
It's not healthy.
I took Twitter off my phone years ago.
I still I haven't quit Twitter completely.
I do occasionally go on and I post a little bit now and then.
Partly it's an important broadcast channel.
Also, partly I've got friends on there and people I do respect and follow.
But largely it's sort of like just getting on there and arguing with idiots.
It's just not like what's the point?
It's not making my life better.
And it's quite easy, can be quite addictive.
As we know, conflict can be quite short-term attractive.
You know where you say you know there's a great comic XKCD.
It's an online web comic, very geeky comic.
And one of their real classic panels is, you know, there's two people and one person says come on honey, come to bed.
Come to bed, you're up too late.
And the person at the computer says, I can't.
Someone is wrong on the internet.
And I think we all have that.
We've all had that experience where it's like, I can't go to bed right now.
I've got to straighten this person out.
You're never going to straighten out the whole internet.
It's not helpful.
Frankly, probably the algorithms have brought you someone who's not rewarded by sort of thoughtfully coming around.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, and so on.
It's just like, no, go somewhere healthier.
Do something better with your time.
You're going to be much happier for it.
You're 100 right, and that that resonates with me very strongly too.
We've all been there, and so let's play a game jimmy, let's have fun with this.
I love it.
So i am excited to announce that you are now the king of the internet.
You make all the rules you could.
You could do whatever you want, right and when you think about the internet moving forward as it relates to the betterment of society and the human race in general, what are the biggest challenges you see, and what would you do to to solve those problems?
Yeah, i mean i, i guess um, you know, there's a, there's a lot of elements, and i i'm, i'm sort of a little bit too libertarian to be too.
I i'm not gonna make anybody do anything, but i'm so like i'm, i'm like a modern king of the internet means i don't have any power, but hopefully people will listen to me from time to time, but It's sort of like you know.
So we have this issue right now with the broad information ecosystem and people losing trust in journalism.
So in the book I have advice for journalism, for journalists, which is, you know, like neutrality is actually really important for building trust.
It's the same advice I give to the Wikipedia volunteers.
It's like we have to take neutrality very seriously because if people get the sense that your newspaper is only reporting one side of the story, because that's who your newspaper politically supports
Maybe you don't trust that reporting so much.
I remember a great example during the first Trump administration.
And I don't like Donald Trump.
I'll just be very clear about that.
And I read this article in the Washington Post who were doing great journalism during the Trump administration.
It's a great newspaper.
But this article was a rant against Donald Trump.
It wasn't on the editorial page.
It was really biased and really negative about Donald Trump.
And when I finished reading it I was like you know yeah, I liked that in a certain way because it sort of smashes him for things that he probably should be smashed for.
But I also don't feel like I got the whole story.
I don't feel like if there were some uncomfortable sort of defenses or you know other side of the story that someone sympathetic to Trump might have put forward, I didn't hear that.
Right.
I'm sure, you know, there would be more to the story.
But furthermore, I feel like actually they're just campaigning against Donald Trump.
And this may not be completely fair to him.
And actually, I believe be completely fair to him.
And that's going to do the work.
That's completely fine.
Right.
There's there's loads of this was about some shady business deal in the past.
I'm like, man, it's done a lot of shady business deals.
You don't have to you don't have to go crazy on the facts.
Just report the facts in a really straight way.
And it's going to be fine.
That's the kind of thing where my advice to people in that element of things is that.
The other thing is I think that as consumers, we should be really focused quite a lot on trying to adjust the platforms we're using.
If a platform is, by default, sending you content that's engaging and addictive but not healthy for you, and you recognize that, which a lot of us don't have been through that and do, then stop using it or change it.
I've downloaded and deleted TikTok a few times from my phone.
Don't have it at the moment, partly because it's really good.
It's really entertaining.
It's very addictive.
It's not as negative as a lot of people who don't use it think it's going to be.
Most of TikTok is silly, and that's completely fine.
But it's the kind of thing where it's like okay once I recognize, like actually if I'm, you know, if I'm sitting in the back of a taxi, which I live in a big city with a lot of traffic here in London.
So from the back of a taxi, I, you know, there's time to get on your phone and just muck around.
And if I'm, if I sit there and for 20 minutes watch a bunch of silly videos, that can be all right.
Nothing wrong with that from time to time.
But if that's it's 20 minutes I'm never going to get back.
And I like to sort of stop myself and say well, hold on.
What else could you have done?
That would have been a better use of your time.
And, you know, I've got a couple of favorite podcasts.
I'm like, I could have listened to a podcast, right?
A podcast where I learned a bit of history.
I love the, there's a podcast called The Restless History, which I love, very fun, funny guys.
And I, you know, I like their chemistry, but also like learning about periods of history that I don't know enough about. great that's a much better use of my time i feel better at the end of it and so i think as consumers that's one of the things is like let's just stop doing all this crap like it's not not doing us any good yeah i'm i'm with you and and here's the thing too jimmy for you you have self-discipline and restraint so you're you're able to sort of sort of from time to time yeah you're you're able to to recognize that you have that self-awareness and one of the things that i'm I'm finding challenging because I don't want to over-regulate.
I don't want us to be in a position where we're stomping on free speech.
Some of the things that we need.
But at the same time, I'm also wondering how do we unring this bell?
Because the algorithms are really in many ways, a collective of the limbic system of our society.
So what's interesting about this?
I can be.
You know I share the criticism a lot of people have of a lot of social media as being useless.
You know, anger inducing, fluffy.
You know it's like fast food for the mind rather than nutrition.
And I'm critical of that.
And then.
But sometimes people slip from there into what I think everybody should remember.
You know, and I'm 58.
So a lot of people my age and younger than me but you know, parents of teenagers are like oh, kids these days, all they do they're on their phone with the TikTok and the this and that.
I'm like, yeah, but I remember kids these days, they're watching all these music videos.
They're three minutes long.
They have no attention span, right?
And I'm like, all right, let me tell you something about young people today.
Yeah, they like short-form video, but you know what else they do?
They binge 16 straight hours of a really complicated TV show with a very intricate plot and they can follow it and they are engaged in it and they love it.
And so I'm like, At the same time, we're lamenting, oh, they've got no attention span.
Let's also remember they've got a huge attention span, you know, and that's humans.
Right.
We can do we can do short form.
We can do long form.
And you know, I do think you know, like one of the things you know sort of might call it mental nutrition.
Just as you teach children and teenagers, it's like, yeah, we need to eat healthy foods.
And we need to think about how that's going to help us feel, how it's going to help us function.
You know, you need to get enough sleep.
I have a daughter now who stays up too late and gets up early for school and she's really tired.
And I'm like, you know what?
We're going to have to have a... We got to sort this out because it's making you unhappy.
You need to get your sleep, you know.
We teach young people this, right?
Similarly, we don't just say, don't really get... Ah, kids... heads on their phones.
Like, you know what, actually, you know, like let's think about phone use.
Let's, let's try to, you know, there's nothing wrong with watching a bit of whatever.
And you know, like my kids are Swifty.
So they're listening to a lot of the new Taylor Swift album, which is I haven't heard yet but I, which I'm sure is great.
I'm a big fan myself and you know, that's great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Listen to music.
That's wonderful.
You know, it's not the only thing you should be doing with your time is watching Taylor Swift videos or flicking through social media posts. people hating on taylor or loving taylor or whatever like a little of that yeah fine that's part of culture that's whatever but also take the time to think about oh yeah let's actually watch you know some classical movies on a weekend let's let's also do some other things that you know what are you reading like let's find a really great book uh you know all that kind of stuff and we have to just the same way that we treat teaching nutrition we treat mental nutrition As a lawyer, this is something I saw in my clients all the time.
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Right.
And again, those are important conversations we have to have internally with ourselves.
So we need to be able to step away long enough to have that conversation and figure out what it is we truly want to do and why.
And then with the people that we care about too, because I think all of us will have different stories of how technology has interfered with human connection in some kind of way our families, our friend groups.
So I think those are conversations that need to happen.
I know like do we have the TV on or the phones around during mealtime or bedtime, those types of things.
But I think a lot of times we won't be able to come to meaningful conclusions unless we're willing to have those conversations.
Yeah, I think that's right.
And we might bring this back to trust in a minute because there is an angle here.
But with kids I mean a big piece of it is like parents.
If parents say to me oh, like You're an Internet guy.
Like, what do we do?
Our kids, you know, on their phone all the time.
And I say, well, like I say, probably the first thing to do is look at yourself.
And are you on your phone all the time?
And then they often go oh well, you know, and it's sort of like, my kids started this thing, which we do now,
Not not all the time, but we do.
We call it a phone pile at dinner.
And if the kids call phone pile on me, I'm like, you know what?
I have to respect that.
Phone Paul means we all put our phones, we stack them up on the table.
And it just means if you're going to get your phone, you know, and then you know somebody will say oh, you know, we were like oh yeah, but you know, when did that movie come out?
Somebody says that.
Okay.
If I Google it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's Google it, you know, but let's not just get sucked in.
Right.
Let's, let's sit here and keep talking about the movie that you know, that we want to watch or that you know, whatever it might be.
And that's about trust.
That's, that's, you know, to get the trust of your kids, right?
If they see you being hypocritical, if they see you saying, oh, look, you're always on your phone.
And they're like, yeah, I remember at breakfast, you just said one more email.
I got a work thing, you know?
No, come on then.
They've got a work thing too, or they've got, you know, they've got chats they need to have with their friends, or whatever.
Like that's part of life.
So we got to work together.
We've got to trust them and we've got to be trustworthy so that they can see we're walking the walk.
Brilliant.
Oh, you're spot on.
You're spot on.
And Jimmy, now I want to ask you a question that I've been getting asked a lot.
And I'd like you to answer it as it relates to right now, but also hypothesizing what it could mean for the future.
Because I think the world is confronted with the reality of how powerful AI is now, like the modern iterations of it, because it's been around for decades.
But now what we're seeing is people are interacting with it in a more meaningful type of practical way.
Not just being programmed by the algorithms.
And so one thing that I'm getting very frequently is how do I negotiate reality?
How do I have a conversation with somebody who is operating from a fundamentally different set of facts?
And when I provide different facts, they say my facts aren't real, only their facts are real.
And I think this ties back to everything that you're talking about with trust.
How do we communicate in this new world?
Yeah.
So there's some great... some great work that some people are doing that I find very interesting.
And I think there are some lessons for us.
So there's an organization called Better Angels.
And we talk about this in the book.
And what they've done is really interesting.
They have these conferences, these meetings, and they deliberately get people together who disagree about political issues.
And they get them to sit together and to talk.
And they've got some facilitation they do and things like that.
And what they find is like people are actually quite open to learning and quite open to listening to the other side.
It's a lot easier to do in person because it's kind of hard to be too much of a jerk sitting face to face with someone who you can see.
You know.
And you know, people do begin to sort of say OK actually, if I'm going to convince somebody that I disagree with, I've got to understand who they are.
I've got to understand what What is their context?
What are the facts they're looking at?
Are there potentially facts that I've overlooked?
Right.
You've got to have that kind of humility to say hold on.
Like maybe I've been in a bit of a media bubble of my own.
You know, I only listen to I only watch Fox News or I only watch MSNBC.
Maybe there's some information that I'm not getting because I haven't really looked at the other side's perspective.
And know it turns out people can do it like people can can get a lot better.
And uh, you know that's not true.
Some people are jerks.
So you know, that's it.
There's not much you can do about that.
And if they don't want to listen and they don't want to sort of have a civil conversation, i would just say don't don't, you know, don't invite them, you know, to your dinner parties.
But in general a lot of people can be, you know, quite reasonable.
And you know, one of the things that I think is really interesting is how when, like the feelings, the emotion, the anger that can come when there's a disagreement tends to be much greater in people who have less confidence in their own ideas.
So like if I've studied an issue, I know it inside and out.
I've really, you know, I'm comfortable because I feel like I've really looked at all the facts and I've actually explored the other side's views and so on.
If somebody comes and they disagree with me, I don't feel personally threatened by that.
I actually kind of can know where they're coming from and I can maybe sort of offer a few tidbits that might bring them around a bit, or whatever it might be.
But if I fear that the other side is going to say something that's going to blow up my whole worldview, then I'm more likely to feel defensive and angry and not want to listen, because you know that's Then I'm going to.
You know, I might become a communist or I might go MAGA if I listen to this person.
No, you probably won't.
You know, probably you're going to learn a little something, and maybe all you learn is that this person has no idea what they're talking about and doesn't care.
Okay, that's fine.
It's a shame.
But more often you're going to go like, actually, you know, I understand... their perspective.
And you know I live here in the UK and one of the things that was really interesting and it's sort of a part of my shaped, some of my thinking is just about so here we had a big vote Brexit to leave the European Union.
And the three major political parties were all opposed to it.
But there was a referendum and the country narrowly voted for Brexit and voted for it for reasons that, in my opinion, weren't good.
And now I think public opinion has shifted back and now we're stuck with it and so on and so forth.
But what's really interesting is that it really exposed that they, sort of the London political class, weren't listening to the public and they weren't listening to people outside London.
London voted to stay in the EU, right?
And if you think about who was it going to hurt, you know like people were angry at.
I don't know rich bankers in London would believe me the rich bankers in London are going to be fine.
You're not going to change that.
And you're not, you know, you're, you're basically causing economic damage.
That's going to hurt the jobs you wanted to have living in the industrial North cities and so on.
So all of it didn't make any sense, but basically it was like a big, you know sort of F you like that that London wasn't listening.
And people were like, well, we've got to do something.
And like, you know, my kids, there's no jobs out here.
And and yeah, London's economically doing well but, by the way, my kids can't afford to move to London.
It's so expensive there.
Like the whole thing is broken.
It's not making any sense.
We've got to do something.
And, of course, when people are in that kind of situation, they are vulnerable to populist rhetoric and so on and so forth.
You know, sort of blaming the other people, people who are different from me, or are the problem.
Um, But you know what?
A lot of, I would say what people were drawing the conclusion in London was problem is they're really racist out there in the countryside?
And it's like, you know what?
I don't think it's that they are racist.
They are being appealed to on some racist themes.
But what they really are is mad because they don't have a job.
They're mad because the future doesn't look great to them.
And solving that real problem is what we need to be thinking about.
Not calling them names like calling names.
It's not helping.
You know, I mean, some of them are racist.
Most of them are just nice people who are just like, I don't know.
This person is telling me they've got a solution to my problem.
You know, immigration is the problem.
Let's let's fix that.
OK, well, guess what?
It wasn't really the problem, but we should hear that.
Let's fix something.
It's so interesting, the commonalities between our countries.
We might change names, but the conversations are more or less the same.
And what's really interesting Jimmy, about what you said when it comes to the deficiency of trust, but also how do we negotiate.
Reality is you went back to human-to-human real-time conversations with better angels with that project.
Because we're recognizing that in many ways, the key to the amplification of humanity and meaningful connection and communication is trying to step further away from the technology and have human-to-human interactions.
And that's a phenomenon that's happening less frequently.
Yeah, I like to talk about a... There's a stereotype of sort of your crazy uncle, right?
Everybody's heard the stereotype.
I have to always say...
All my uncles were wonderful people.
But, you know, we know the type.
So Uncle Frank he comes, you know he's there for Thanksgiving dinner and he's got some obnoxious opinion.
And everybody's like, shut up, Frank.
Like, you know, whatever.
Everybody rolls their eyes.
We got to put up with him.
He's family.
And, you know, Aunt Eunice is great.
So we like to have her around.
We got to put up with Frank.
Right.
OK.
Right.
We all know that this stereotype.
And I'd say one of the issues, and you also think, well, nobody listens to Frank.
Maybe he's got a couple of buddies down at the bar or whatever.
That's about it.
Now Frank gets on social media, and suddenly Frank's got 700 followers.
So he's not like a massive influencer with millions, but he's got 700 followers.
And it's like, oh.
And then grandma, sweet little grandma, who only ever posts on social media like congratulations to the kids when they graduate and sends out birthday messages, doesn't get much engagement and doesn't get promoted by the algorithm.
And that's a big part of the problem is like that toxicity works online in a way that I think it shouldn't, you know.
And so now Frank is like, great, I've got an audience.
Yeah.
I think about it.
You're absolutely right.
You're absolutely right.
And I think about, back in the day, the Franks of the world.
They would have been kind of relegated to the outskirts of society and just been right their own.
But now it's easier because of the algorithm.
They can find the other Franks in other places.
And it might be only 700 other specific Franks.
If you, Annette, But now they're organized and they seem much bigger.
And then we forget.
Sometimes in the Internet we can be so desensitized to numbers because 700 doesn't seem like a lot.
But put a rule, put yourself in a room of 700 people.
That's a substantial amount, you know?
Yeah.
Well, you know, if you I've said this and this would be something that I think you know uh applies to social media.
I used to say it to our community uh volunteers, obviously we, we watch the news about wikipedia um, and in the early days, you know, you set up a google alert and you get an email with whatever news stories.
And what i said is like, what's really hard about that is all right.
You get three news stories, right.
This one's really fantastic, like they did a lot of research, they understood wikipedia, it's great.
This one's just wrong and this one's like attacking us for no reason, And I'm like yeah, but if that bottom one is the New York Times and the middle one's a small town newspaper, and that one's like, you know, it's like they all look the same size but they aren't, you know, and like this is a problem.
I think a lot of people have social media like you end up responding to a troll and then you look and you're like yeah, dude's got 10 followers.
Like, why am I even bothering?
Like now I've amplified that because he pissed me off.
Right.
And that's like, what's the point of that?
Meanwhile, you know, somebody with 10,000 followers is like, oh, here's a good story, right?
Here's something inspirational for your business.
I'm like, oh yeah, that's great.
I'll listen to that and respond to that.
Not the little nonsense on this, but it all looks the same size in a way.
You're absolutely right.
And again, this kind of, this takes us back to the algorithms too.
When we think about the way that the internet is developing because again, you've been on the ground floor since the for decades.
At this point, And if you're just going to hypothesize as to what the internet looks like and the role it plays in society on its current trajectory, what are you seeing?
Yeah, I mean, I think what we are seeing right now and we'll see how my prediction comes out in a few years' time is, I think a lot of the social media companies are realizing that the short-termism of chasing clicks is causing people I mean, I've said this to people at Facebook like if, if your business model is causing people to believe that you are breaking Western civilization, that's not good for your business in the long run.
Right.
If people think the problem is, you know, like social media is making my kids, you know, unhappy and sad and like all these things, it's not good for your business in the long run.
And I think it isn't good for their business in the long run.
And I think a lot of people are dissatisfied.
A lot of people are moving on.
I mean, I, I, I get, I'm a pathological optimist, I always say.
So I do tend to look at the positive thing.
I get you know, like one of the things that I find really interesting, I just saw a headline the other day about younger people, millennials.
So not the youngest young people, millennials aren't that young anymore, but millennials are.
They love podcasts and they listen to a lot of podcasts.
And I'm like, that's great.
Like, that's fantastic.
Because obviously some podcasts are better than others and all of that, but podcasts at least aren't that addictive short form content that's causing a lot of problems.
So great.
I'm on board because I am biased towards podcasts too.
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
Yeah.
I've got a, I've got a good audience here.
Yeah, you're right.
Including, including all of the, by the way, not just intelligent but very good looking people who listen to your podcast.
You know see you see, you don't miss people.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I'm going to sound like Donald Trump in a minute.
The biggest, the best people listen.
That's right.
You heard it here first.
Oh, it was great.
Yeah, it's very – I love that perspective too because you're absolutely right.
Because I was seeing it.
There's a disconnect between the revenue size and success of META and then the public perception.
The congressional hearings have not been doing them a favor when it comes to the public perception.
And you're right.
If things keep on going in that way, you don't want to be the person or the organization that is seen as the epicenter of toxicity.
Yeah.
And it's a challenging thing because a lot of people can say, all right well, I can see how social media is challenging.
But then also there's the reality of the internet addiction too.
So it's tough.
Even though people see it, they don't want to miss out.
And I think it's that fear of missing out that holds people back from actually stepping away.
And you mentioned, you were able to, from time to time, step off of these social media platforms based on whether or not how it's making you feel.
How were you able to make that step?
Because I've seen so many people do it successfully and then they they they feel so much better.
But I've seen more people try and fail.
Yeah.
And they can't disconnect.
Yeah.
I mean.
So I, I think, I always think you can think about the.
You know the way your brain works, the way humans work is short term, long term,
You know, we all understand like. you, you think you make a, uh, uh, a new year's resolution.
You think, I'm going to do this in the coming year and I'm going to resolve to do it.
And then you do it for a little while, but then the short-termism comes in and you're like, actually I you know I'm going to overeat.
I'm going to do whatever the thing I didn't want to do.
And one of the techniques is to, when you're in the rational mode and you and you know you're making a good decision, try and find a way to enforce it on yourself.
So like one of my simplest things is, um, On the phone, just make sure you don't know your password.
Use a password manager.
That's good security advice anyway.
You don't know your password.
It's too complicated, right?
Your computer knows it, but you don't know it.
And log out on your phone.
So then you're not so tempted to go straight onto that social media when you're a little bit bored and you just know it's not good.
So I've deleted TikTok from my phone.
I've logged out of Twitter on my phone.
And so, you know, when I get on my phone, I'm bored, I'm whatever.
I try to make sure that when that happens because I know what I'll do I'll go on TikTok, you know, and that's that.
And I don't really want to.
So therefore I should stop it.
I should find something else to do with my time.
And then, you know, that's a way that helps.
And, just like I've been, I have TikTok on my, not TikTok on my computer.
I have Twitter on my computer.
And I do sometimes click and go there and I shouldn't have.
And, you know, I spend 20 minutes looking at it when I didn't want to.
So it's not perfect, you know, but the phone is actually one of the it's more dangerous, at least for me.
And I think for a lot of people like when I'm at my computer, I've got work to do.
I've got things I'm doing and so on and so forth.
And with the phone, it's much more a different part of life and different time and so on.
And you can just end up wasting your time.
So just delete that crap off your phone.
It helps.
Smart, it's such a simple solution but so powerful, because you're introducing some really important friction points in the process and you're breaking that, that automatic habit where you're not even thinking.
And there's software.
I i've tried a few, a few things.
I've not found one, but i i think it's can be quite valuable.
Uh, you know like browser plugins, that where you can limit your time on certain things.
So i did use this, actually for twitter.
I should check it out, maybe turn it back on now that I think about it.
But I said to myself, you know what?
I'm fed up with Twitter and I don't think Elon's running it the right way and so on.
I can't come off completely because I do use it.
I broadcast, got a lot of followers.
It's an important tool.
So I put a time limit.
I said, look, 30 minutes a day.
That means I can get on if there's something I need to do, need to see.
I actually think I did cut it down to 50 and I found that was enough.
And then after 15 minutes, it would just like say, yeah, sorry, you've been on Twitter too much.
And I'm like, you know what?
Actually, that worked.
That did work quite well.
I think I took it off.
And so now I probably shipped it back off.
But I think that kind of thing, like put in a little bit of friction is valid to do.
You know, it's the same thing.
Like you know, I say like if you have trouble with snacking at home, It's a lot easier to prevent that by not buying the snacks.
Because I don't know if you're like me.
If the potato chips are in the cabinet, I'm eating the potato chips.
That's a fact, right?
I know that about myself, right?
Maybe I'll say I don't want to eat potato chips, but if they're there, I'm going to eat them.
It's quite easy to just not have them.
I just don't have potato chips at home.
If I want potato chips, I have to go out and get them.
Maybe we're getting people coming over and we're gonna you know, we're gonna have a few drinks and watch something on tv.
Yeah okay, get some potato chips.
Great, you know, there's nothing wrong with that.
But that, that control element, i would say, dividing that rational moment from that free moment good idea smart, it's smart and to this point, you're absolutely right in terms of completely avoiding it.
Not sometimes, it's not even just the friction, it's just like i will remove the option, you know?
Yeah yeah, yeah.
And with the time that we have left, I want to give you an opportunity to talk about your focus and beliefs about misinformation and how that's affecting the internet and society and connection as a whole.
But I wanted to add a little flair to this, because you think about in the last couple of weeks, with ChatGPT coming out with Sora 2 and everybody having access to incredible video generation to create almost anything.
I...
How has the most recent iterations of AI and text-to-video prompt, in particular, changed your approach or mentality around misinformation and truth on the internet?
Yeah, so I mean, that's an area like the question of deep fakes and things like that has existed for a while.
I actually think one of the more good things that's come out of that.
There was a very famous.
It went really viral.
It was a picture of the former Pope, Pope Francis, in a very expensive ski jacket.
And like, whatever you think of the Catholic Church and the Pope, this particular Pope seemed like a really nice guy.
And he certainly was, he was the opposite of the trappings of luxury of the job.
He lived a very simple life and that was quite a point with him.
And people knew it was fake.
Like that's really important.
And so I think that was for a lot of people the first time.
They're like wow, I didn't know you could make something that fake.
And I think people having access so you can actually sit down and make something yourself and you're like ooh wow, this changes how I think about any random crap coming across my feed, because any video, I want it to be vetted.
Who took the video?
What journalists were there?
Is it authenticated?
Because there's all kinds of nonsense.
But also, again, I'm quite positive about it.
One of the things I think about is when I was a kid, I liked drawing.
You know making cartoons, you know like a lot of kids do and stories.
I'm terrible.
I couldn't draw more than a house, you know, with a little smoke coming out the chimney and stick, stick figures and all that.
And I wasn't able to make like what I can imagine in my mind.
I didn't have the physical skills to make.
And now kids can like make amazing things.
Like you can.
You can come up with a story and and then use AI to make the pictures and so on, things that you couldn't do before and that unleashes a lot of fun, a lot of creativity, so that I think a lot of young people will find that and I'm thinking young people, I'm thinking even 10 years old a great time to say I want to make a book and I've got this story.
I want to make a comic book, and a lot of kids do, but some of them and I was one of them you just you get discouraged.
You're like, I can't, I don't know how, like I, my drawings are terrible and you know, it's not really.
And then even you know you can, you can write out your little script and you can say oh, what do you?
Can you help me make my script better?
Right.
And it might give you some ideas and some of them are stupid and you're like, no, you're wrong.
Like, that's not what I wanted to tell.
But other times it's like, oh yeah, yeah, that's good.
That's good.
You know, you fix my grammar a bit and all the kinds of stuff.
And I think that unleashing of creativity is huge.
And then, You know, we talk, there's a lot of discussion in the tech world about coding.
I think coding is going to continue to be a really valuable skill.
But the truth is you can you know, if you know, like for any amount of coding that you know, you are now able to produce something much better than you could three years ago, because the AI will help you.
Like I used to, I'm a coder, but I'm not a very good coder.
And I'm rusty.
I'm old.
I don't do it professionally.
As a hobby, I'm just going to do something.
And you know what?
I used to you know, if I started to code something because I'm rusty, and so on, I'd hit an error message.
You Google there.
You know, you spend three hours just trying to figure out how to fix your code.
Now you can use any of the AIs and just say, got this error.
And it will say, oh, well, here's what you need to do.
And like, oh, explain that to me.
It gives you an explanation.
It's really good at that.
It's like probably better at coding than almost anything.
And it doesn't mean that professional coding is gone, right?
It just means that you can learn it easier and you can build something.
Like, you know, for my kids, when they think about doing coding, like, it's so boring, right?
They're like, I mean, because what can you make?
You can't really make much, right?
I made this little program with three if statements and I can sort of do a little thing.
It's like, okay, that was kind of cool.
But like, I actually want to make a video game.
Right.
I actually want to make an app that does this and that.
OK, that's that seems so far from that first month that you're looking at coding in school.
And now in that first month, if you could actually make something kind of cool, you might go.
Yeah, actually this is fun.
I can create I can build something fun.
And I think that's really important.
I was just touring a school recently and, you know, they're using in the with photography.
Right.
They're using photography of more modern tools and they're using ai to modify the photos in different creative ways, and so on and so forth.
I'm like that's great, this is what school should be doing.
Like because the kids are like wow oh, this is cool, like this is kind of fun.
It's not just like because when i did photography in high school i, you know, snap a picture, we developed it in the with the chemicals in the lab and you're like yeah, but my picture's kind of terrible.
You know, now With digital photography you can take 20, or you can go back out the next minute and go like oh, I see what I did wrong.
You know, there's all kinds of amazing stuff.
So I think we're going to have this opportunity for a lot of creativity using AI.
That's really kind of fun.
I agree.
And I think there are going to be a lot of great use cases like that.
Because when you think about just different technologies, a lot of times there's the concern that it will eradicate some industries and it will certainly have some significant changes.
But the reality is, if you recognize that the use of generative AI, or however you're using it, is in itself a skill then, with the right mindset, amplify the level of creativity that you bring to whatever it is that you're doing.
I think about, even with my content creation and writing too.
I coach it to be my own writing coach, where I would ask it to ask me questions so I can go deeper within myself to produce a better quality work product without it cheapening my intellect in that way.
I think it's a lot like what I've said in the past is there was a period of time when you would get high school teachers saying to the kids don't use Wikipedia.
Yes.
And I was like, and now that's shifted quite a lot.
But I was like, no, no, no.
The kids, it's just like saying, don't listen to rock and roll music.
They're going to do it, right?
They're using Wikipedia all the time.
Instead, what it is, is, okay, here's how to use it.
So it's the same thing.
If a teacher says, no, I ban the use of AI in my classes.
Yeah.
Have you ever met a 13-year-old?
They're going to do what they need to do.
Instead, you've got to go, you know what?
Actually, we know you've got access to ChatGPT.
It's free.
It's huge coming technology.
It's going to impact your life.
It's not going anywhere.
But here's what's wrong with it.
Here's how to use it.
You can't use it for this because, look, it makes stuff up.
But you could use it this way, help you brainstorm.
You can let it read your essay and give you a couple of tips.
You need to be honest with me and say, I use that.
If I were a teacher, sort of getting kids to write an essay to turn into me and they're going to write it at home.
I think they also need to write in school without AI.
That's also important.
But I would say, you know what?
I know you're going to use AI.
So now what I want you to do is use AI.
Here's how I want you to use it.
I want you to come back and tell me about how you used it.
Tell me what it did for you.
Tell me what didn't work.
I want to see you grappling with this technology because that's the future.
You know you're going to get a job someday and nobody's going to say yeah, you've got to do a marketing sort of presentation for your sales call.
Don't use AI.
No, use AI.
Make a better presentation, you know, make it brilliant, but be able to explain what you did and why and how you check to make sure you know you don't want to use.
Oh yeah, I made a marketing presentation and I got the sale because of the.
AI realized the best way to make a sale was to lie about the product, right?
Yeah, no, not that.
You got to think about how you're using it, but yeah.
That was Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and one of the most influential voices on how trust and truth can survive in the digital age.
What stood out to me most was how he reminds us that trust isn't just about technology.
It's about people.
It's about taking the time to listen, to question and to lead with honesty, even when it's difficult.
If this conversation made you think differently about the Internet or about how we build trust in our own lives, take a moment to share it with a friend.
And if you enjoyed it, please leave us a five star review.
It helps more people find the show and join these important conversations.
Thanks for listening and thanks for being part of the Negotiate Anything community.
