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You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.
I am your host, Chris Duffy.
Today on the show, we're going to be talking about a concept that's so fundamental to our everyday lives that I almost never think about it.
I'm talking about trust.
You know, we think about trust as just an interpersonal thing, but it's more than that, right?
I trust that the audio I'm recording right now is being saved.
I trust that Jocelyn, our producer, is going to edit this file into an intro that makes sense and that she's not going to just wildly distort my words and have me say something incredibly offensive or that she's not going to just make me say the phrase over and over, Jocelyn is the best.
Jocelyn is the best.
Jocelyn is the best.
Jocelyn is the best.
Jocelyn is the best.
Jocelyn is the best.
If we didn't have these kinds of basic trust in the way that things work, I don't think that I would be able to function at all.
And yet, sometimes these days, it seems like trust is not something that I should be taking for granted.
It's actually something very precious and very much at risk.
And one of the many ways that it is at risk is because technology sometimes feels like it's changing faster than any of us could possibly keep up with.
So I'm extremely excited to get to discuss these ideas and so much more with Rachel Botsman.
She studies trust at Oxford University, and here's a clip from her TED talk where she starts by just defining what the word trust even means.
Trust is an elusive concept.
And yet we depend on it for our lives to function.
I trust my children when they say they're going to turn the lights out at night.
I trusted the pilot who flew me here to keep me safe.
It's a word we use a lot, without always thinking about what it really means and how it works in different contexts of our lives.
There are, in fact, hundreds of definitions of trust.
And most can be reduced to some kind of risk assessment of how likely it is that things will go right.
But I don't like this definition of trust because it makes trust sound rational and predictable.
And it doesn't really get to the human essence of what it enables us to do and how it empowers us to connect with other people.
So I define trust a little differently.
I define trust as a confident relationship to the unknown.
And when you view trust through this lens, it starts to explain why it has unique capacity to enable us to cope with uncertainty, to place our faith in strangers, to keep moving forward.
Okay, if you're anything like me, Rachel has already completely convinced you that trust is extremely important and it's essential to examine and think critically about it.
And luckily, we have Rachel with us here today to do exactly that.
Here's Rachel. Hi, I'm Rachel Botsman, and I've been studying trust for over 15 years across cultures, across different areas of our lives.
I've written three books, I teach at Oxford University, and I'm just really fascinated by helping people to think differently about trust.
So Rachel, in your books, What's Mine Is Yours, Who Can You Trust?, and the new audio book, How to Trust and Be Trusted, you've been looking at this question of trust, and I think it's obviously both an evergreen topic and a very immediately relevant one to the moment we're in.
I've been thinking about this a lot because it seems like each year and every, honestly, each month, more and more technological advances come out that make us trust less, whether it's because we see people saying extreme things that we know are not true, Or, honestly, increasingly because of artificial
intelligence that shows images and presents audio that we know are actually not real.
So it's hard to know how to trust even objective facts these days, much less other people.
Do you feel like this work has become, over the years that you've been studying it, more of a daily hot -button issue rather than kind of a big virtue?
I don't think we trust less.
I think we trust differently.
So we used to largely trust people.
And that decision, it wasn't straightforward, but it was less complex.
And now it's very hard to distinguish when we're trusting a who versus a what.
So are we trusting a real human being?
Are we trusting an algorithm?
Are we trusting a piece of generated content?
And when we're trusting a what, who is behind that?
So that's why there is this very complex relationship between the truth and trust that is probably one of the most profound things affecting our lives and society.
What are some what's that we trust or that maybe you trust?
To make it really simple, right?
When I get in my car, I trust that if the car is not intelligent, I trust that the car will turn on and that when I press the indicator, a light will come on, right?
Like that's trusting the capability side of a car.
Now, once that car becomes slightly smart, right, so maybe it assists you with parking, you start to trust that car's spatial judgment more than yourself.
Now, you move the next stage on and you go to a car that is fully autonomous, you're having to trust that car's decision -making in high -risk situations.
so the degree of trust that you're placing in the what becomes much higher and in some instances it starts to replace the human trust and the thing that I find interesting you know I study humans yes I study the interaction with technology but fundamentally I love understanding how humans connect so this idea that technology
can replace human things has been very challenging to me Just to give you an example, one of the key traits of trust is empathy.
And I really wanted to believe that AI wasn't capable of empathy.
And something I've been rethinking lately is what I've realized is AI is very capable of two dimensions of empathy.
So if I write a medical question, it can identify not just sort of information, it can identify how I'm feeling.
but if I'm in an anxious state, and it can write an appropriate response.
And this is the cognitive side of empathy.
But by its very nature, it can't feel, right?
So if we're having an empathetic conversation, if I'm crying, that might prompt an emotional response in you.
And the AI can't feel that.
And for a long time, I thought, well, that's its limitation, right?
Like, how can something practice empathy if it can't physically fill something?
And then what I realized is actually its limitation is its strength.
So if you think in the context of healthcare or education or mental health support, a lot of reasons why practitioners get burnt out is because they absorb too much, right?
They take on the stress and the feeling of the other person.
So if you start to think about this and you go, right, well, actually the AI can take on the identification and the response side of empathy.
And then that frees the human up for the support and the care, which can only be delivered through human connection.
It becomes a very different trust question.
We should trust it to do certain things because actually it could do them better than a human and it can relieve the burdens from human because of its limitations.
And then that opens up the human capabilities for things that really uniquely actually require a person, whether that's physical contact, face -to -face contact, but that deep human connection.
I see the promise that you're talking about.
My only hesitation on that is that there's, I think there's sometimes this like superficial level of connection and you can get it with people too, where like they're saying all the right things and it feels like it should be good, but it's almost like, are they actually saying that?
Or did they just like read that in a little pamphlet called like how to be a good listener, you know?
Will using AI in that way push us towards the deeper, more real, more genuine connection?
Or will it push us towards being like, I'm a doctor and I'm walking in the room.
And what I'm supposed to say to you right now is, it sounds like it's very hard what you're going through.
Okay, pat on the back.
See you later. I hope it's not the second, but I don't know.
I interact with people who are studying AI very deeply, practitioners and academics.
One thing I've noticed is they are starting to speak faster and in like a more artificial way it's like the more they interact with this form of processing they are speeding up and humans the human brain wasn't designed to move at the speed of processing power so that is my concern that the identification response
piece feels very constructed and artificial what the research is showing is that patients are saying it feels more empathetic.
So, you know, they're listening and they feel heard.
And it takes into account all their previous cases because it can read history and data and pull things that a doctor just doesn't have time to process and join the dots around.
So that's where I think we have to keep ourselves very open.
And once we start to understand these lines of, yes, actually we should trust it to do this, but we shouldn't trust it to do that, that's when it can actually start to carry more integrity and start to feel like it's serving our best interests.
Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but trust me, we are going to come right back.
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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?
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Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates.
Potential savings will vary.
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Okay, we are back. I live in Los Angeles, and as we're recording this, there are still fires burning.
They're much more under control than there were before, but there was this horrific wildfires that so many people lost their homes.
And for those of us who didn't lose homes, who were in neighborhoods that were largely spared, there's still been this second order question of, is it safe to be here because what is in the air?
Did the wildfire smoke come here?
Is the air toxic only if you're in the burn zone?
Is it safe if you're two miles away?
Is it safe if you're five miles away from the active fire?
We have these tools that measure the AQI, the Air Quality Index, but they don't actually measure wildfire rash.
There's been this moment where my family and everyone in our neighborhood has been trying to figure out, is it safe or is it not safe?
And it's a very practical, big question that would change what we do.
Do we go outside? Do we stay inside?
Do we leave the city entirely?
And it's hard to get a definitive answer and it's hard to know who to trust.
And it's put me back in this mindset that I felt during a lot of the height of the coronavirus lockdowns, where it was, you kind of had to be the expert yourself.
All of a sudden, I had to be the public health expert who knew about the droplets, virus transmission through the air.
And now it's like, I have to learn about particles that are bigger than 2 .5 millimeters and wildfire, ash, wind movement.
I think that is a very modern feeling, the sense that we don't have a definitive source to trust and we have to become the expert ourselves.
And it's very exhausting.
And I imagine you must have studied this, this lack of a single institutional source of information that we can just definitively rely on.
And where do you go for information out of interest?
Well, first things that I go to, I ask other people that I'm friends with, what are you doing?
I still have a lot of deference, I think, towards institutions and especially towards scientific expertise.
So I watched a webinar that the California Coalition for Clean Air put together that had like six different PhDs talking about, and they were all air quality experts.
But again, the hard part is like, not all of the air quality experts agreed.
There were disagreements amongst them.
So it was a little bit like I was at a scientific conference where there wasn't a definitive answer.
And it was hard because I just want the definitive answer.
I don't necessarily want the like nuance of, and we need more research into this type of wind pattern and this type of particle.
So that's what I tried to do is to go to like the scientists and experts and then filter that with the help of community members.
But it's hard to not have a definitive answer.
I think it's hard to not feel like I'm just going towards what I want the answer to be.
Yes. And because in these times of extreme uncertainty, what we innately look for is control.
And part of control is reducing that uncertainty by someone telling you exactly what to do or can you go out or when will this end?
clap push -up, high -energy sprint in place for just 10 to 15 seconds.
Then stand tall, take a deep breath, and feel the energy surge.
Why does it work? Just one high -intensity move sends a surge of adrenaline, dopamine, and oxygen to your brain, like an instant shot without the crash.
And if you want to upgrade it, you can pair it with a power phrase like, I'm built for this, Let's go.
Let's do this. Whatever it is that works for you.
One explosive movement can reset your energy.
We underestimate the value of small changes and we overestimate the value of big steps.
We think if I can't get a 30 -minute workout, what is 10 to 15 minutes going to do?
What is 10 to 15 seconds going to do?
I'll tell you this.
You start doing 10 to 15 seconds and you feel the benefit, you want to do five minutes.
You want to do 10 minutes.
You want to do 15 minutes.
That's how confidence builds.
You do something that is achievable, that's manageable, that you will become the filter for deciding what is true.
And the problem with that is that you are full of motives.
There are reasons behind why you want to believe something.
And this is classic confirmation bias.
So we shouldn't ever be the filter of factual information because I don't know, but maybe you're a runner, Chris, and you really want to go out for your run, you're going to find all kinds of information that says the air quality is clean.
And we're remarkably good at that, like finding all this information that affirms what we want to believe.
So one of the things I actually encourage people to do is to really think about not what you believe, but why you need to believe something.
So like in particularly these very high stakes situations, like if you find yourself looking for information to affirm something, like ask yourself that question, why do I want to believe this?
Why do I need to believe this?
And is this influencing where I'm looking for information and challenge yourself to look in the opposite place?
It's a huge societal problem.
I'm actually doing this big piece of work in the UK around younger generations.
