Latest / psychophobia* podcast / Episode 07: Use It or Lose It - The Brain, Lifelong Learning, and the Courage to Stay Curious

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Episode 07: Use It or Lose It - The Brain, Lifelong Learning, and the Courage to Stay Curious · psychophobia* podcast

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What if the institutions designed to help us understand the
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human psyche are
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SPEAKER_00: actually afraid of them?
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Hosted by Dr.
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Michael Montgomery,
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this podcast explores the uncomfortable questions.
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Together we'll examine how the mental health systems meant to
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heal us instead
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SPEAKER_00: perpetuate cycles of dependency.
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SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Psychophobia Podcast.
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SPEAKER_02: My name is Dr. Michael Montgomery.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm here in Minneapolis.
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It's 8.30 in the morning and in a few hours I'm going to go to
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Orpheil Labs and I'm
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going to attempt to break the unofficial world record for
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sitting in an anochronic
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SPEAKER_02: chamber.
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SPEAKER_02: The Orphe Labs is famous for being the most silent place on earth.
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The idea was to go into the chamber because there's a sort of
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urban myth around
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SPEAKER_02: people losing their mind.
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Due to the perceptual changes that they experience as the mind
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tries to make sense
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of being in a silent space and also making sense of noises that
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it's not familiar
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SPEAKER_02: with,
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like the blood running through the body or their bones sort of
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creaking or their
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SPEAKER_02: heart beating.
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So often the mind can try and make sense of things and kind of
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hallucinate to try
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SPEAKER_02: and make sense of that.
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SPEAKER_02: So the idea was to sort of walk the talk.
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SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of a moment of no turning back.
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SPEAKER_02: So I'm excited and I have some degree of trepidation.
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SPEAKER_00: Three, two, one.
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SPEAKER_02: I wanted to jump on that, on the word peace.
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SPEAKER_02: For me, the two most important words are love and peace.
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SPEAKER_02: Okay.
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SPEAKER_02: And I noticed that you and Emma both sign off with the word peace.
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SPEAKER_02: Where does that come from for you?
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Well,
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I started doing it because I didn't particularly like the word
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best or the word regards.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to do something that was gentle.
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SPEAKER_01: And I think peace is what we're about.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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And I think we're about trying to help people and about trying
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to get inside of
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SPEAKER_01: people's heads and about figuring out what we can do to be Islam.
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Peace comes into that and I have a 50 year background in
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studying comparative
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religions and all the different faith traditions and I have a
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great respect for all
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SPEAKER_01: of them.
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SPEAKER_01: You know,
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and I grew up Catholic and I belong to the most liberal
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Catholic Church in America,
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which has 105 zip codes of people who come in from five states
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to listen to an
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SPEAKER_01: adult Catholic Church.
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70% of the congregation is Catholic and 20 some percent is
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Protestant and the
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SPEAKER_01: remainder are Jews.
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And the priests don't talk down to anybody,
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they give you intellectually strong presentations.
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SPEAKER_01: And I like that.
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SPEAKER_01: I've always been a guy who wasn't much good at small talk.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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I do a lot of work in Ireland and Belfast and peace and
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reconciliation so I was
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SPEAKER_02: fascinated by your use.
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I ran a conference a few years ago and an ex-terrorist said to
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me you should have
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called it a war conference and not a peace conference because
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people aren't
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interested in peace and it doesn't sell well peace and neither
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does silence I find.
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SPEAKER_01: Nothing that's really deep sells well.
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SPEAKER_01: It's not about selling well.
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It's about convincing people that they need to move out of
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their pattern and they
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SPEAKER_01: need to change.
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As I do my consulting,
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I don't wait for my client to tell me what they want me to do.
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I find clients who do what I'd like to do because I know that I
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can get them a lot further.
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SPEAKER_01: if they can accept real science and if they can accept real psychology,
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SPEAKER_01: and if we can work with emotions rather than in life.
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SPEAKER_02: But this fascinates me because having spent time with Emma and now you,
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SPEAKER_02: like me,
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SPEAKER_02: you seem to have a foot in solid science,
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SPEAKER_02: but also there's a real spiritual vibe
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SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, I think that's right.
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And I have a great admiration for the Indian culture because
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they believe that
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SPEAKER_01: religion and science and everything else mixes.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
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And I had a call,
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not a call,
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I had a LinkedIn contact from Switzerland two,
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three years ago.
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SPEAKER_01: And it was a lady who was a obstetrician and she ran a polymath group
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SPEAKER_01: And she sent me a note and she said,
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SPEAKER_01: she says,
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SPEAKER_01: Mr.
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SPEAKER_01: Herfield,
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SPEAKER_01: she says,
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I want to get in touch with you because I've been reading what
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you write and you
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SPEAKER_01: are the most extreme polymath I've ever seen.
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SPEAKER_01: And I said, what's a polymath?
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SPEAKER_01: Then she told me and I said, that's right.
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SPEAKER_01: I don't have any boundaries.
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SPEAKER_01: I study everything.
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And the cross connections between things are the things that
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give me most of my insights.
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So yeah,
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I was reading recently,
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the greatest innovators,
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what was the term you used?
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SPEAKER_02: Polymath?
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SPEAKER_02: Polymath,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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the mix of- Polymath means that you have an extremely broad set
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of interests.
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SPEAKER_01: And if you're academic,
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SPEAKER_01: which I meet every two weeks with these people on Zoom,
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SPEAKER_01: there's probably 15 or 20 of them,
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SPEAKER_01: most of them are from Europe.
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SPEAKER_01: And most of them are academics.
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SPEAKER_01: And they're academics who go outside their fields.
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And I've hired a bunch of academics and I've worked with
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academics all my life and
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SPEAKER_01: most of them don't.
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SPEAKER_01: Most of them,
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it makes them nervous to think that they got their doctorate
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and that they still
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SPEAKER_01: need to learn anything.
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SPEAKER_01: Fascinating.
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SPEAKER_01: Fascinating.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm drawing more and more from literature,
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SPEAKER_02: particularly Irish literature in my own work and Russian.
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SPEAKER_02: Actually, it's illuminating.
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SPEAKER_02: to the understanding of the human being.
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SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, I think it is.
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I think we all learn incredible amounts by stepping outside of
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our culture.
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I spent 25 years of my life studying invisible disabilities,
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studying dementia,
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autism,
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SPEAKER_01: mental illness,
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SPEAKER_01: sensory processing disorder,
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SPEAKER_01: blindness,
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SPEAKER_01: deafness,
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SPEAKER_01: and we have the only multi-sensory specialty in the world,
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SPEAKER_01: and we've developed the only standards in the world in those fields.
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And I can't tell you how much I've learned,
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particularly from the autistic folks.
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It's charming,
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and I've got probably a thousand autistic friends on LinkedIn.
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SPEAKER_01: And it's wonderful to watch the mechanism
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SPEAKER_01: of how they put something together versus how I do.
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SPEAKER_01: And I learned from it.
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So I always go to other cultures with the assumption that I'm
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gonna learn from them.
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SPEAKER_01: And I was talking to a psychologist friend of mine years ago,
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SPEAKER_01: and I said,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: everybody in America likes to use the Myers-Briggs test.
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SPEAKER_01: And I said, I can't stand it.
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And I said,
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I need a personality test that talks about need for innovation.
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And he said,
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well,
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you want the psychologist test,
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which is the big five personality inventory.
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SPEAKER_01: And he said, that's got a continuum for exactly what you're asking for.
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Because my life is expressed more than anything by a need for
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innovation,
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by a need to learn.
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SPEAKER_01: And it's nothing that I choose to do.
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SPEAKER_01: It's just how I'm wired.
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SPEAKER_02: Because I had the pleasure of reading,
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SPEAKER_02: I think it was maybe six articles that you sent me and I was wondering,
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SPEAKER_02: how do you hold all those different disciplines?
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SPEAKER_02: I mean,
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SPEAKER_02: how do you not get overwhelmed by,
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SPEAKER_02: I mean,
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SPEAKER_02: even the range that you described there of different people?
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SPEAKER_01: Well,
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SPEAKER_01: I think you can think of them as different disciplines,
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SPEAKER_01: or you can think of them as different sides of the same discipline.
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SPEAKER_01: In other words,
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SPEAKER_01: if I'm studying lighting,
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SPEAKER_01: the first two things I taught myself were lighting and acoustics,
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SPEAKER_01: neither one of which I studied in school.
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SPEAKER_01: And so I bought test equipment and I bought textbooks.
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And I'd read through the equations and then I'd run the
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equations and I'd see if they worked.
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SPEAKER_01: Most of them didn't.
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But what I was doing was teaching myself test methods and
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something about research methods.
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And I was finding that I was learning a lot as soon as I
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stepped outside of the
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SPEAKER_01: rules of each of the fields.
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But the other thing I found that was interesting is the
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metaphors for lighting are
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SPEAKER_01: different than the metaphors for acoustics,
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SPEAKER_01: but they mean essentially the same thing.
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So once you understand one area of physics,
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you understand all areas of physics.
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SPEAKER_01: It's all waves, it's all particles, it's all
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They all have different languages and they all have interesting
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and illuminating
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SPEAKER_01: ways of expressing,
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SPEAKER_01: but it's all the same thing.
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I think I need you to get to meet my teenage boys to try and
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engender some innovation in them.
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SPEAKER_02: What did you discover from,
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SPEAKER_02: you mentioned the autistic community,
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SPEAKER_02: what did you learn from them in terms of how they put something together?
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SPEAKER_01: Well, for example, there's a
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SPEAKER_01: An autistic young woman I know who's in her 30s and she's an artist.
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SPEAKER_01: And she does what she calls sensory gated art.
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In other words,
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she does art so that it can be seen more clearly by autistic
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folks.
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And one of the things she did was to imitate some of the master
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paintings of famous
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SPEAKER_01: modern painters.
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SPEAKER_01: And I've got a piece over there
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SPEAKER_01: That was Dolly's persistence of time, but done in her way.
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SPEAKER_01: And what she was explaining to me is that she didn't use the word,
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but she's essentially saying that when an autistic person comes
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up to a piece of
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SPEAKER_01: art,
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SPEAKER_01: they see it as a gestalt piece of art.
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SPEAKER_01: They see everything at once.
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SPEAKER_01: They have a very hard time focusing in on an area of the art.
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SPEAKER_01: They don't see it as divisible.
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SPEAKER_01: They just see it as too complicated.
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SPEAKER_01: And so her art always has lines in it,
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SPEAKER_01: it always has geometric shapes in it,
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SPEAKER_01: but it gives you a territory you can look at.
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And I want to interview her about a dozen times because I think
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she could teach me
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SPEAKER_01: a lot about how she's processing.
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SPEAKER_01: But I thought that itself was fascinating.
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SPEAKER_01: When I was doing my two years of study on autism
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SPEAKER_01: I interviewed 24 Asperger's folks from around the world.
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Many of them were professors,
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many of them ran major businesses,
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things like this.
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SPEAKER_01: And it was absolutely interesting to hear how they characterized things.
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SPEAKER_01: But one of the skills that they had was that when I said to them,
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SPEAKER_01: what about your work do you like?
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SPEAKER_01: So keeping in mind that I wasn't interested in their diagnosis.
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SPEAKER_01: I understood their diagnosis,
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but I was interested in what we could do with buildings to give
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them a better
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SPEAKER_01: quality of life.
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So I wanted to understand what buildings engendered in them and
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companies engendered in them.
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And what they said to me just about universally was,
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I like my work and I like to be left alone.
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SPEAKER_01: But I hate going to meetings.
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SPEAKER_01: And I hate going to lunch.
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SPEAKER_01: Because if I go to,
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SPEAKER_01: and keep in mind,
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SPEAKER_01: everybody I interviewed was self-diagnosed in their 30s or 40s or 50s.
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SPEAKER_01: They went through their childhood not knowing they were autistic.
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And they learned to do something that's called masking in the
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autistic field that
13:07
SPEAKER_01: you've,
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SPEAKER_01: I'm sure,
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SPEAKER_01: heard of.
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SPEAKER_01: So they learned to pretend they were neurotypical.
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And they were encouraged in a lot of the therapy to pretend
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they were neurotypical.
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SPEAKER_01: So they learned the things.
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SPEAKER_01: But as they had a bad experience going out to lunch,
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SPEAKER_01: let's say,
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they'd come back to their office or their cubicle and they'd do
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what they called a
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SPEAKER_01: replay.
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And in the replay,
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they went through second by second what had gone on at that
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lunch.
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SPEAKER_01: And then they'd stop at a certain point and they'd say,
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SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's where I made my mistake.
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SPEAKER_01: That's why I wasn't masking.
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SPEAKER_01: And of course, most of them cannot interpret expressions on a face.
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SPEAKER_01: So if you're smiling, they don't know why.
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SPEAKER_01: They don't know how to emotionally parse.
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SPEAKER_01: You know, they don't know how to interpret.
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SPEAKER_01: And a fair number of autistic people are face blind,
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SPEAKER_01: meaning they cannot even recognize your face if you were married to them.
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SPEAKER_01: Okay,
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SPEAKER_01: so what they're trying to do is,
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SPEAKER_01: with an incredible amount of brain power,
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SPEAKER_01: they're trying to process being a different creature.
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SPEAKER_01: And it's incredible.
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SPEAKER_01: And they're good at it.
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SPEAKER_01: They're damn good at it.
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SPEAKER_01: But they're sad.
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SPEAKER_01: And so,
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SPEAKER_01: as they self-diagnosed later in life,
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SPEAKER_01: each of them spent about five years going through a self-diagnosed
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SPEAKER_01: A self-directed reanalysis of their entire childhood.
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SPEAKER_01: Because during their childhoods,
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SPEAKER_01: they were all treated as stubborn children,
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SPEAKER_01: as undesirable children,
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SPEAKER_01: as children with an attitude,
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SPEAKER_01: as children nobody liked.
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SPEAKER_01: And their brothers and sisters didn't like them.
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SPEAKER_01: The parents weren't that fond of them.
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SPEAKER_01: And so they went through their whole childhood
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Knowing there was something wrong and having no idea what it
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was and having no idea
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SPEAKER_01: that they had a diagnosis.
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SPEAKER_02: Okay.
15:13
So they spent an average of five years trying to reconstruct
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things so that the
15:19
SPEAKER_01: reconstruction was more satisfactory than the experience.
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SPEAKER_02: So where I am at is you describe perfectly the people that I'm seeing,
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except that stubbornness and dislikeability and all the rest is
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being framed as
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SPEAKER_02: mental illness.
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SPEAKER_02: Of course.
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SPEAKER_02: By both they, their family.
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SPEAKER_01: As you know better than most,
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SPEAKER_01: what's the first thing you target with people in psychological sessions?
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SPEAKER_01: Mental illness.
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SPEAKER_01: I've got a brother who
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who was at the South Pole in Operation Deep Freeze and got a
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traumatic brain injury
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SPEAKER_01: and in his late teens he was diagnosed as schizophrenic.
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And he lived by himself in his house for probably 30 years
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where the family made
16:11
SPEAKER_01: him food and brought things over and tried to help him.
16:14
But he's severely schizophrenic and paranoid and now he lives
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in a veterans home
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SPEAKER_01: and I'm his guardian.
16:22
And so I've spent 50 years of my life trying to understand
16:26
schizophrenia.
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And I'm still at the point where I'm just trying to form an
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experimental method to
16:36
SPEAKER_01: learn some things because it's so complex.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: You know,
16:42
SPEAKER_01: first thing you do is you say somebody's mentally ill.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: Second thing you do,
16:46
SPEAKER_01: if you really want to beat your head at them,
16:47
SPEAKER_01: you say they're schizophrenic.
16:49
Because schizophrenic is always thought of as the worst
16:54
condition in mental illness.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I mean, I don't give much weight to the term anymore.
17:02
SPEAKER_02: I think it's lost its validity,
17:04
SPEAKER_02: but I think if it speaks to anything,
17:06
SPEAKER_02: it's a way of,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
17:10
SPEAKER_02: professionals
17:11
SPEAKER_02: Indicating somebody is severe?
17:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's that, but I think it's also something else.
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I think it's indicating that someone is living in a life that
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verges between
17:23
SPEAKER_01: reality and hallucinations.
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SPEAKER_02: Is that half of America?
17:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, but many of us are a little bit more aware of it.
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SPEAKER_01: There's a recent study in psychology that talked about how
17:42
This particular research team was discovering that when your
17:47
sibling was talking to
17:50
SPEAKER_01: himself as a schizophrenic,
17:52
SPEAKER_01: he was saying what we would be thinking but not saying.
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SPEAKER_01: In other words, it made sense.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: And my brother,
18:00
SPEAKER_01: when I see him sometimes,
18:01
SPEAKER_01: when I'm driving him over to my house for dinner,
18:04
SPEAKER_01: he'll be talking to himself.
18:06
And he knows that I'm comfortable with him and he knows that I
18:09
would never
18:10
SPEAKER_01: Don't give him any garbage for anything he does.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: But it's amazing to me that we can get so deeply into things like AI,
18:23
SPEAKER_01: but mental illness,
18:24
SPEAKER_01: we don't seem to have a very good sense of how to approach.
18:28
SPEAKER_01: For example,
18:28
SPEAKER_01: in the autistic field,
18:31
the DSM definitions that are being used most recently are just
18:34
making everybody
18:35
SPEAKER_01: furious.
18:37
SPEAKER_02: I think that, for me, I believe the paradigm's wrong.
18:41
You know,
18:41
I think we often use the medical model in a way that negates
18:47
the humanity.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: I think there's some truth in that.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: I had an interesting experience when I started looking at disabilities,
18:54
SPEAKER_01: and that was 25 years ago.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: I come from a background of philosophy of science and psychology.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: So I studied philosophy of science.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: under two of the seminal figures in the world in philosophy of science.
19:07
The University of Minnesota had the best philosophy of science
19:10
department in North
19:11
SPEAKER_01: America,
19:13
and the two people who headed the department were
19:17
world-renowned philosophers of
19:18
SPEAKER_01: science.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: And then my minor was in psychology,
19:21
and the University of Minnesota had the best psychology
19:23
department in the country,
19:24
and it's where most of the personality tests came from and all
19:27
that sort of thing.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: It was one of the first psychology departments to go scientific.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I found that this was really absolutely fascinating stuff.
19:39
But my first question on disabilities was,
19:43
do I believe in such a thing as a disability?
19:48
SPEAKER_01: And what I didn't like,
19:49
SPEAKER_01: what was causing me to ask that question,
19:51
was that disabilities are so much a form of brutal
19:57
characteristic of the parties.
20:01
Once you say somebody's autistic,
20:04
you seem to be saying that's all they are.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: And of course we know that everybody's got multiple diagnoses,
20:12
SPEAKER_01: and we know that many diagnoses like ADHD are often misapplied,
20:18
SPEAKER_01: because they're really just ADD or they're really just HD.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: And I remember my daughter Angela,
20:25
SPEAKER_01: the clinical psych,
20:27
she called me one day when she was doing her doctoral
20:30
internship in Portsmouth,
20:32
SPEAKER_01: New Hampshire.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: And she said,
20:34
SPEAKER_01: Dad,
20:34
I want you to take out this book from my shelf and turn to page
20:39
73 and 74 and read
20:40
SPEAKER_01: these two lists.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: And it was a book about ADHD.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: And she said, that's you, isn't it?
20:48
SPEAKER_01: I said, she sounds like me.
20:49
And she said,
20:51
what do you think of your daughter calling you and diagnosing
20:53
you?
20:53
SPEAKER_01: And I said, I couldn't be more delighted.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: I thoroughly enjoyed it.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: But I'm not going to accept it until I do some experiments on it.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: And so I said, I want you to get me a therapist.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: And I want to sit in on at least a dozen therapy sessions with groups.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: And I want you to get me a psychiatrist.
21:14
And I want to sit in with a psychiatrist and have some in-depth
21:17
discussions.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: So I sat in on the therapy and everybody in my therapy sessions was ADD.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: It was clear to me in a microsecond.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: They couldn't remember where they put their keys.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: They couldn't remember to get to work on time.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: They couldn't remember to pay their bills.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: And I had none of that.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: I was about somebody who could never stop their level of energy.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: I was HD completely.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: And so I asked the psychologist about it and he said,
21:54
SPEAKER_01: well,
21:54
SPEAKER_01: I've had some patients who are a little bit like you,
21:58
SPEAKER_01: but not much.
22:00
Then I asked the psychiatrist who'd spent 20 years of his life
22:03
working on ADHD,
22:04
SPEAKER_01: and I said,
22:05
SPEAKER_01: point blank,
22:06
SPEAKER_01: I said,
22:06
SPEAKER_01: have you ever had a patient anything like me?
22:09
SPEAKER_01: And he said, no.
22:10
And so I went back to Angie and I said,
22:12
what we need is a fractional diagnosis.
22:17
So I'm HD,
22:19
and I think,
22:20
like autism,
22:21
I'm ASPE,
22:23
meaning I'm hyper-focused,
22:25
okay?
22:26
SPEAKER_01: But I have no ADD, at least that I can tell.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: So I'm somebody who is an absolutely fascinated observer.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: So when my grandchildren are little and my children are little,
22:41
I was always conjuring up what they were thinking in their
22:44
heads and what their
22:45
strategies were and what they were trying to do as they
22:48
approached me with things.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: Because everything to me is a game.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: And most of the best part of me is child.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: And so I'd always just try to analyze what they're doing.
23:01
And they'd come up to me and they'd get angry about something
23:04
and they'd start to
23:05
SPEAKER_01: tell me they're mad about something.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: And I could see the strategy behind it and I'd start to laugh.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: And after I laughed for a while, then they'd start to laugh.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: Because they knew that they'd been caught.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: And they loved it.
23:21
SPEAKER_02: Well, it has the flavor of a superpower.
23:24
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry?
23:24
SPEAKER_02: It has the flavor of a superpower.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
23:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
23:27
SPEAKER_01: that's a word that floats around autism all the time,
23:30
SPEAKER_01: and lots of people hate it,
23:31
SPEAKER_01: lots of people love it.
23:33
But to me,
23:35
having a linguistic philosophical background,
23:38
I prefer to keep it in common language.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: You know, I prefer to say, we have these tendencies.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, when I was in philosophy, I was
23:50
SPEAKER_01: I was always a student who everything came easy to.
23:55
I was always on the honor roll and I didn't want to be because
24:00
I was an extrovert
24:01
SPEAKER_01: or an introvert.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't want other people to be giving me credit for education.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to get what I could get out of education.
24:11
And when I went to the university I tested in very high and
24:14
they wanted me in an honors program.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: I said no.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: They said I just need to find my own way.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: And that's what I did.
24:21
And they tried to make a philosophy professor out of me because
24:27
they realized that
24:29
SPEAKER_01: I fit in very well in that analytical model.
24:34
I could figure it out and understand it,
24:36
write about it,
24:37
and it was very clear to me.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: But I was just getting married, my wife was pregnant, and I
24:47
I had enough pride that I wouldn't go to my parents and ask
24:49
them for money to go to
24:51
SPEAKER_01: four years of school,
24:54
SPEAKER_01: because we came from a very independent family.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: And so I went on and found this field that I'm in.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: But essentially, everything I do in this field is from that education.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: And I taught myself acoustics,
25:12
SPEAKER_01: audio,
25:12
SPEAKER_01: visual,
25:13
SPEAKER_01: lighting,
25:13
SPEAKER_01: daylighting,
25:13
SPEAKER_01: thermal comfort,
25:14
SPEAKER_01: indoor air quality.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: Laboratory quality equipment in all the fields.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: I measured in all the fields.
25:21
And to this day,
25:24
50 years from when I started doing this,
25:27
nobody's doing it.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: So I don't think anyone's got your range.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: And hardly anybody has my range and nobody wants it.
25:38
SPEAKER_02: So where did it all begin?
25:40
SPEAKER_02: You were here in the lab, we visited the chamber.
25:44
SPEAKER_02: When did it all begin for you to focus in on this?
25:48
SPEAKER_02: Focusing on what?
25:49
SPEAKER_02: On the lab itself.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, I had a storefront over a couple of miles from here.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: I bought a building with four storefronts.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have any business training.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know if my business would succeed.
26:09
And my total history of employment was trying to work for
26:13
somebody for six months
26:14
SPEAKER_01: and realizing I could never be an employee.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: So six months after I got married at age 21,
26:22
SPEAKER_01: I started a company in the basement of a duplex I lived in.
26:26
And it was the inception of the open plan office and nobody
26:32
knew how to do it scientifically.
26:35
So when I was consulting to two open plan office manufacturers
26:39
along with a lot of
26:40
SPEAKER_01: clients,
26:42
SPEAKER_01: and I said,
26:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:43
SPEAKER_01: you guys have told me that people have speech privacy in these spaces,
26:47
SPEAKER_01: but they don't.
26:49
You told me that the lighting will work fine in these places,
26:51
but it doesn't.
26:53
I said,
26:53
so let's go hire some experts and figure out what the hell's
26:55
going on.
26:57
And we couldn't find anybody in the United States who would
26:59
stipulate that they
27:00
SPEAKER_01: knew what they were doing and that they could solve the problem.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: So I went to the Europeans, where the open plan office started.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: It started in Sweden and in Germany.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: And I started looking at what the Europeans were doing.
27:14
And then I went to the communications field for intelligibility
27:18
and started
27:19
SPEAKER_01: learning about intelligibility testing.
27:22
And pretty soon we were doing fairly exotic testing in my
27:25
little storefront.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: And things are going great.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: And so in 1980, I started my company in 71.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: In 1980, we had the first recession of my career.
27:39
And we were working just in architecture,
27:41
in acoustics and lighting and AV and things.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: And architecture died.
27:47
SPEAKER_01: And so I said, well, what am I gonna do here?
27:50
SPEAKER_01: So I decided that we had all the fancy test gear,
27:53
SPEAKER_01: so we might as well take on product development.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: And so we did.
27:56
And my first client that I ever took on was Maytag Corporation,
28:00
the huge appliance company.
28:03
And they were sort of dumbed on it because they'd be coming to
28:06
my storefront and
28:07
SPEAKER_01: I'd have millions of dollars for the test gear to measure their stuff.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
28:13
SPEAKER_01: And they said,
28:13
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:13
SPEAKER_01: they said,
28:14
we'd like to work with you and we'd like to have an exclusive
28:16
relationship with
28:16
SPEAKER_01: you,
28:17
SPEAKER_01: but why don't you buy a bigger building?
28:19
SPEAKER_01: A more corporate building so we can bring the execs here.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: And I said, okay.
28:26
This building was originally in a recording studio and they
28:32
opened in 1970 as the
28:34
SPEAKER_01: first major recording studio in Minnesota.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: And in 1975 they became my client.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: They needed help in acoustics and lighting.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: So from 75 to 85 I consulted to them.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: In 85 the two main partners decided to go their separate ways.
28:52
And they had just completed the first recordings that Prince
28:56
had ever done.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: And Prince offered him to buy this building.
29:02
And they decided they were going to counteroffer him because
29:06
their third partner
29:07
SPEAKER_01: was a lawyer who never wanted to just do a deal.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: He always wanted to push a deal.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: And so he said, if Prince will pay you this much, he'll pay more.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: So they counteroffered Prince and he walked.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: And then five years after that,
29:21
SPEAKER_01: in 1990,
29:22
SPEAKER_01: when the Wall Street Journal was running headlines saying,
29:25
SPEAKER_01: real estate will never again be a good investment,
29:28
SPEAKER_01: I bought the building for half of what Prince offered.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: And it had no laboratory on the back.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: So I had, before I bought this building, I bought that anechoic chamber.
29:42
Not because I knew what I was going to do with it,
29:43
but because I wanted it.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: I hoped I could use it.
29:48
and it's a million dollar chamber and Sunbeam in Chicago was
29:52
closing their research
29:53
center and their condition on selling their test gear in their
29:58
chamber was whoever
30:01
you sell it to must be sold within two weeks paid for and moved
30:05
in two weeks and
30:07
Motorola cell phones wanted it and IBM computers wanted it but
30:11
neither one of them
30:12
SPEAKER_01: could move quickly so I flew in
30:16
SPEAKER_01: Offered him a lowball offer.
30:19
SPEAKER_01: And my brother was teaching.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: He was a professor at the University of Chicago at the time.
30:24
And I had him put me in touch with the Chicago football team
30:28
through the coach.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: So I needed laborers to take this thing and take it apart.
30:34
And I sent a supervisor from Minneapolis,
30:36
a contract supervisor from Minneapolis.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: And they loaded this anechoic chamber into three semi-trucks.
30:42
We brought it to Minneapolis and we put it in rental storage
30:44
because we had no building.
30:47
Then in 1990 when we bought this,
30:51
it took me five years to conjure up what I wanted for a lab.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: And then I worked with an architect friend and we designed that lab,
30:59
SPEAKER_01: which was the 3,500 feet in back with all the chambers.
31:05
Because I knew if I was going to get deeper into product
31:08
research and things like
31:09
SPEAKER_01: that,
31:10
SPEAKER_01: I needed standardized facilities.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:15
And I figured I've already got the most expensive thing,
31:18
which is the anechoic chamber.
31:20
And so we spent a year having a guy come in and assemble that
31:24
chamber and get it all wired up.
31:27
And then we had the contractor who built the addition do the
31:30
reverb chambers.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: And we went into the business of becoming a standardized NIST lab,
31:38
SPEAKER_01: National Institute for Standards and Technology.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't anything I'd planned to do.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: It was, I see things as opportunities.
31:47
And so when I saw a good friend of mine from Berlin care in
31:50
Denmark called me,
31:52
SPEAKER_01: he said,
31:52
SPEAKER_01: there's an anechoic chamber at Sunbeam in Chicago.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: And he said, you're one of the few people I think might want it.
31:59
Because an anechoic chamber is not so much about standardized
32:02
testing,
32:02
it's about research.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
32:06
SPEAKER_01: And what I don't want to do is just make money doing repetitive testing.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: It's boring.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to learn.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to use the chamber to learn.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: Had no idea how I was going to use it.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: But I figured I'd figure that out.
32:21
SPEAKER_02: Big investment not to know what you were going to... That's right.
32:24
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
32:25
SPEAKER_01: But my rule was I didn't invest except with money I already had.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: So as I started my business in 1971,
32:34
SPEAKER_01: I was saving money.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: Every time something big happened, I saved some money.
32:40
And I saved enough money after one big business project to buy
32:44
another building.
32:46
And they bought another building down the street where my wife
32:48
ended up being a
32:49
SPEAKER_01: lawyer for 30 years.
32:53
But I never learned,
32:55
I had parents who said,
32:57
whatever you think you can do,
32:58
you can do.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: Period.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: Pretty good parents?
33:02
SPEAKER_01: Pretty good parents.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:04
And I gave a talk to the Florida Council on Aging years ago
33:09
because the three heads
33:10
SPEAKER_01: of aging for Florida came up and spoke at a seminar that I held here.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: And they asked me,
33:16
SPEAKER_01: they loved what we did,
33:17
SPEAKER_01: and they asked me if I'd come down and they said,
33:19
we'll give you a hundred non-profit leaders if you'll come down
33:23
and do a one-day
33:24
SPEAKER_01: seminar.
33:25
SPEAKER_02: And so we did.
33:26
And I went down there and,
33:28
you know,
33:28
in the south,
33:30
they're not fond of northerners.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: They're not fond of liberals, and I'm an absolute liberal.
33:38
They're not fond of Catholics,
33:39
they hate Catholics,
33:40
and I'm Catholic,
33:41
I'm a liberal Catholic.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: And I said,
33:44
SPEAKER_01: I come from a background as a liberal Scandinavian Catholic,
33:49
SPEAKER_01: and none of my subgroups wants me.
33:52
And they just roared,
33:53
because to a large degree,
33:57
they agreed that my composition
34:03
SPEAKER_01: Didn't make any sense to them.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing I said is I said,
34:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
34:09
the most important decision I ever made in my life was to
34:11
select my parents.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: I said, I'm a smart guy, but I get no credit for it.
34:20
SPEAKER_01: That's what I came with.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm not about being a hero in any way,
34:28
SPEAKER_01: because if I'm a hero,
34:30
SPEAKER_01: it's gotta be that I'm a hero to myself.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay, because I'm internally motivated, not externally motivated.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: And I've had offers to buy out in my company,
34:41
SPEAKER_01: I've had offers to do this,
34:43
SPEAKER_01: I've had offers to do that,
34:44
but I've lived this wonderfully serendipitous life where I've
34:49
taught myself many,
34:50
SPEAKER_01: many things.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: And in my 70s, I can learn twice as fast as I could in my 50s.
34:57
SPEAKER_01: Well, why is that?
34:58
SPEAKER_01: That's because when you study the brain, you find that
35:02
Every area of the brain that you use heavily gets larger,
35:07
gets more capable.
35:09
So if you're using your forebrain intellectually very hard,
35:18
it'll get better at what it does.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: Just like if you've got poor hearing and you don't get hearing aids
35:30
Your auditory cortex starts to shrink because it's processing
35:35
less information.
35:37
If you don't see well and you don't get your glasses fixed,
35:41
your visual cortex starts to shrink.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: So what we used to think we knew about the body,
35:46
SPEAKER_01: which is use it or lose it,
35:47
SPEAKER_01: we now know about every aspect of the brain.
35:51
So whatever parts of the brain you really focus on,
35:55
let's get better and better.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
35:58
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know this early on when I,
36:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:01
SPEAKER_01: I just knew that my personality was that I needed to learn.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: But I was delighted to find,
36:06
SPEAKER_01: when I studied dementia,
36:08
SPEAKER_01: that I had a good friend who was named Sandy Halpern,
36:15
SPEAKER_01: Jewish guy.
36:17
And Sanjay Gupta was interviewing him because he had early
36:21
onset dementia.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: And he was doing a feature on him about once a month.
36:30
Sandy was reading my stuff on LinkedIn and he had 30,000
36:35
contacts on LinkedIn,
36:38
SPEAKER_01: far more than I did.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: And Sandy contacted me one day and he said,
36:43
SPEAKER_01: I've been reading your stuff and I'd like to talk with you.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: And so we started a friendship that's now at least 10 years old.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: And Sandy was a professor of dental orthodontics at Harvard.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: And he was considered the favored professor in that field at Harvard.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: And he could do a two-hour lecture with no notes.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: Bright as hell.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's what caused me to be frustrated with Sanjay Gupta.
37:17
SPEAKER_01: That's because I talked to his producer.
37:19
SPEAKER_01: I asked Sandy, could I talk to the producer?
37:21
SPEAKER_01: And I talked to Stephanie,
37:22
SPEAKER_01: and I said,
37:22
SPEAKER_01: Stephanie,
37:23
SPEAKER_01: you're doing features on Sandy which are features about his decline.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: Why are you doing that?
37:29
SPEAKER_01: Why can't you do a feature about,
37:31
SPEAKER_01: here's a guy who's smart as hell,
37:33
and 10 years into dementia he sounds better than many people
37:36
who don't have it.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: So why don't you celebrate that?
37:40
SPEAKER_01: And they refused to do an optimistic view of someone with a disability.
37:45
SPEAKER_01: Oh, if it bleeds, it bleeds.
37:47
SPEAKER_01: Pardon?
37:47
SPEAKER_01: If it bleeds, it bleeds.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so Sandy's still a friend, and his wife is a friend.
37:57
I've met so many people who have changed my thinking about all
38:02
these different things.
38:03
But anyway,
38:03
so back to the idea of disabilities,
38:05
I decided I didn't believe in disabilities.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: And I said, I need a different concept for my own thinking.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: And so I said,
38:14
what I really would like to do is talk about filters and say
38:19
that if you're
38:19
SPEAKER_01: autistic,
38:20
SPEAKER_01: you have a social parsing filter,
38:23
SPEAKER_01: you have a repetitiveness filter,
38:24
SPEAKER_01: you have a hyperfocus filter,
38:28
SPEAKER_01: But in other ways you're normal.
38:31
SPEAKER_01: So I don't want to call you autistic.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: I want to say you're normal with a set of filters.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: If you're mentally ill, you probably have an anxiety filter.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: You may have a depression filter.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: You may have a bipolar filter.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: But mostly you're just a person.
38:47
And so I believe,
38:50
first of all,
38:50
that all appropriate diagnoses are compound.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, I believe that we all have them.
38:59
SPEAKER_01: We all have filters.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: And it's not those who are ill and those who aren't.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
39:05
when I did an aggregation of how many people have invisible
39:08
disabilities in North
39:10
SPEAKER_01: America,
39:12
I found that the minimum number I could come up with was 50% of
39:15
everybody.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: But in my own parsing of that same issue, it would be 100%.
39:22
SPEAKER_01: At least none of us are normal.
39:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I definitely agree.
39:30
SPEAKER_02: With the language of filters, has that worked?
39:34
SPEAKER_01: People,
39:35
many of the psychologists that I deal with love it because they
39:39
see the same damage
39:40
SPEAKER_01: being done by taking somebody who's autistic but bright as hell and,
39:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:49
SPEAKER_01: autism is all kinds of myths.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: Autism says you can't be emotional.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: Autistic people are incredibly emotional.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: My thinking is that it's so much easier to put people on par.
40:03
I've had autistic people come in and sit at my desk and burst
40:07
into tears when I
40:08
SPEAKER_01: tell them they're normal.
40:11
SPEAKER_01: I don't say by saying you're normal, I don't mean you're diagnosable.
40:16
SPEAKER_01: I just mean that in my mind, you're normal.
40:20
SPEAKER_01: So the issue I have is
40:22
I see all,
40:26
when I look at what people would call an illness,
40:28
I see it as natural ways to cope.
40:34
SPEAKER_02: And it's on a spectrum.
40:35
SPEAKER_02: But when I've been working with people who I think have a diversity,
40:39
SPEAKER_02: autism or whatever,
40:41
SPEAKER_02: they often
40:43
SPEAKER_02: I would use languages, perhaps how you organize the world.
40:45
So what I see is great conflict in their life with themselves,
40:48
with family.
40:49
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, because they're trying to be somebody they're not.
40:53
But there's a resistance to going with the language of
40:59
filtering of your normal and
41:03
SPEAKER_02: you have a way of organizing the world that may be different.
41:06
SPEAKER_01: And it's causing conflict because you can't- Well,
41:09
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what your experience is,
41:11
SPEAKER_01: but in my experience in talking to professionals,
41:14
SPEAKER_01: I get no resistance.
41:15
SPEAKER_01: People start to smile, they like it.
41:18
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm talking about the individual.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: Well, the individual, sure.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: And to me, of course, this is a black box construct.
41:26
It's a way I need to think so that I don't bias myself against
41:30
one quality that this person has.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: Now,
41:34
SPEAKER_01: whether I use it on those people and whether it's politically acceptable,
41:39
the problem in autism is there's about 12 different subsets of
41:43
people who are
41:45
SPEAKER_01: pissing and moaning about some aspect of the definition of autism.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: So,
41:50
SPEAKER_01: for example,
41:51
SPEAKER_01: when I started out designing autism buildings,
41:54
SPEAKER_01: the American Institute of Architects said,
41:57
SPEAKER_01: well,
41:58
SPEAKER_01: you could design very sensitive schools for autistic kids.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: But then you couldn't mainstream them, which is completely wrong.
42:08
SPEAKER_01: Because autistic kids,
42:11
from the time they get into first grade to the time they're in
42:13
sixth or seventh,
42:14
SPEAKER_01: that's their developmental period.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: And during that period, they need perceptual sensitivity.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: Beyond that, if they've been educated well, they'll do fine.
42:24
SPEAKER_01: Many of them.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: Because the vast majority of autistic people aren't severe.
42:32
And of course the severe ones you've got a whole different set
42:35
of problems with.
42:36
But the vast majority of autistic people don't need to start
42:42
out in a loud school
42:43
SPEAKER_01: so that they can learn later to be in a loud school.
42:46
SPEAKER_01: That's complete nonsense.
42:48
SPEAKER_01: That's a failure to understand the developmental period of the brain.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: And so what I've argued is the opposite.
42:57
SPEAKER_01: When we did our first major autism building for Fraser in Minnesota,
43:03
SPEAKER_01: Fraser is the largest autism provider in Minnesota,
43:05
SPEAKER_01: and they have five other psychological clinics,
43:09
SPEAKER_01: and we designed their sixth.
43:11
SPEAKER_01: But I didn't go to the architect to do that design.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: I went to the CEO.
43:17
SPEAKER_01: These architects are so damn conservative about science.
43:21
SPEAKER_01: And CEOs are fine with it.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: If you can prove that it works, which I can,
43:27
SPEAKER_01: They'll do it.
43:28
SPEAKER_01: So I went to the CEO,
43:30
SPEAKER_01: and her name was Diane Cross,
43:32
SPEAKER_01: and she has 1,500 employees,
43:34
SPEAKER_01: and I had her out to lunch.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: I said,
43:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
43:37
SPEAKER_01: I run a design research lab,
43:39
SPEAKER_01: multi-sensory design research lab,
43:40
SPEAKER_01: a couple miles from you,
43:42
and I've been working for two years on developing an autism
43:45
standard and just had
43:46
SPEAKER_01: an international conference on it.
43:48
And all the people who disagreed with me about whether you
43:50
could solve the problem
43:51
SPEAKER_01: now agree that you can,
43:53
SPEAKER_01: because I did.
43:56
SPEAKER_01: She said, sure, I'll come over.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: And she came over and I said,
43:59
SPEAKER_01: you know,
44:00
what we need to do is we need to start thinking correctly about
44:05
autism because I
44:07
SPEAKER_01: had been working with Autism Speaks,
44:08
SPEAKER_01: the world's largest charity.
44:10
SPEAKER_01: They'd been referring me to all kinds of experts.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: And so one of the things I asked Peter Bell,
44:17
SPEAKER_01: their spokesman to do,
44:18
SPEAKER_01: is refer me to the 10 best autism schools in the United States.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: And he did.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: And so I got in touch with the heads of each of those schools,
44:30
SPEAKER_01: and I got in touch with the architect who designed each of those schools.
44:34
And most importantly,
44:35
I observed on the web what these schools looked like.
44:39
And it was clear to me that the architects didn't know what
44:42
they were doing,
44:43
but the result of what they were doing was they were designing
44:47
for sensory seeking
44:48
SPEAKER_01: kits.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
44:50
But you can't design for sensory seeking kids because it's a
44:52
therapeutic method and
44:54
SPEAKER_01: they're all seeking different things.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: So you can never design a building for sensory seeking people.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: But architects liked it, my assumption is, because it's more exciting.
45:04
SPEAKER_01: More colors, more oddity, more cubbyholes, more things they can design.
45:10
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
45:11
I mean,
45:12
really good buildings for disabled are boring because they're
45:16
simple,
45:16
they're Zen.
45:18
SPEAKER_01: Okay,
45:18
SPEAKER_01: so what I did is,
45:21
SPEAKER_01: when I had my conference,
45:22
SPEAKER_01: which was the world's first conference on design research for autism,
45:26
we had the University of California send in three
45:29
neuropsychologists who were from
45:31
SPEAKER_01: the Mind Institute,
45:32
SPEAKER_01: some of the best people in the world.
45:34
We had the founder of the Sensory Processing Disorder Center in
45:37
Denver come in and give a talk.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people who,
45:41
SPEAKER_01: two years ago when I first contacted them,
45:43
SPEAKER_01: told me I couldn't solve these problems.
45:47
My goal was over two years to work through them and to convince
45:51
all these people
45:52
SPEAKER_01: who were famous that they needed to be on my side.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: In the end,
45:59
I finally got into a friendly argument with the head neuropsych
46:06
at the Mind
46:06
SPEAKER_01: Institute,
46:07
SPEAKER_01: the most prominent autism research center in the country.
46:12
SPEAKER_01: He said, Steve, you're not going to be able to solve this because
46:17
SPEAKER_01: There's too much variability on the spectrum.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: And he's a world-famous neuropsych, runs the Mind Institute.
46:24
And I said,
46:25
you know,
46:26
I'm beginning to think you don't believe in science.
46:30
SPEAKER_01: He got off this stuff, which was what I was trying to do.
46:35
SPEAKER_01: And he said, why do you say that?
46:37
SPEAKER_01: And I said,
46:37
SPEAKER_01: well,
46:38
SPEAKER_01: you tell me that there's so much variability on the spectrum,
46:40
SPEAKER_01: is there any less variability off the spectrum?
46:43
SPEAKER_01: And he thought for a couple minutes and he said, no, it's the same.
46:47
SPEAKER_01: And I said,
46:47
SPEAKER_01: well,
46:47
then I want you to get off of this false notion and acknowledge
46:52
that we can solve
46:53
SPEAKER_01: these problems because they've got the same general characteristics.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: And he agreed.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: And he spoke at my conference,
47:02
SPEAKER_01: very friendly,
47:03
SPEAKER_01: and we pulled him across the line with reason rather than abuse.
47:09
SPEAKER_01: No sin.
47:10
SPEAKER_02: So of all the different innovations and things you've worked with,
47:15
SPEAKER_02: what do you think is your biggest contribution?
47:18
SPEAKER_02: What is the one that's even surprised you in terms of its efficacy?
47:24
SPEAKER_01: A couple of them.
47:25
One was not as emotionally important and that was the fact that
47:32
we were working at
47:35
SPEAKER_01: the very beginning on fixing open plan offices for people who hated them.
47:40
SPEAKER_01: And ours always, they loved.
47:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and so we changed that field.
47:46
SPEAKER_01: And we changed a lot of people in that field.
47:48
SPEAKER_01: The most important thing is disabilities, absolutely.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
47:51
SPEAKER_01: because many clients like what you do and are happy with what you do,
47:57
but there aren't that many who are emotionally wrapped around
48:00
what you do.
48:01
SPEAKER_01: In the disability field, they are.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: Like in the dementia field, they are.
48:08
So it's much more rewarding to work with people where they get
48:15
what you're teaching
48:16
SPEAKER_01: them because what we do is we don't market to people,
48:18
SPEAKER_01: we teach people.
48:20
We bring them in and we bring them through all kinds of
48:21
demonstrations so that they
48:23
SPEAKER_01: can understand visual and acoustical and all this stuff.
48:26
And then we explain to them that we're going to design a
48:28
dementia home for your
48:29
SPEAKER_01: people that's going to look so boring to an architect.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: They'd say, this is just plain ugly.
48:35
But it's gonna have all the technical specifications so that
48:39
you don't need to
48:39
SPEAKER_01: visually adapt in the whole building.
48:41
SPEAKER_01: It's all at the same brightness level.
48:43
SPEAKER_01: You don't need to adapt to sound because everything is so quiet.
48:47
SPEAKER_01: You can hear twice as well as you can in the real world and on and on.
48:51
And when we built our first dementia center,
48:57
we designed a space that we called
49:01
perceptually quiet and in all areas of sensation we determined
49:06
a number a target
49:07
number quantitatively that we believed would cause the dementia
49:14
residents to
49:16
SPEAKER_01: operate as if they were 10 years younger because you can't improve their
49:22
sensitivity but you can take down the noise and taking down the
49:27
noise is the same
49:28
SPEAKER_01: as increasing the signal
49:30
SPEAKER_01: Okay,
49:30
so we took down the noise in this building in every area of
49:33
perception to less than
49:35
SPEAKER_01: half of anything that had ever been done before.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: And we predicted that people who weren't engaging would start to engage.
49:42
SPEAKER_01: People who weren't active would start to be active.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: People who didn't socialize would start to socialize.
49:48
SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what happened.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: And we submitted that.
49:52
SPEAKER_01: I don't submit my own projects because I think it's egotistical.
49:56
But we submitted that to the International Dementia Conference
49:59
in England.
50:00
SPEAKER_01: The biggest conference in the world.
50:02
SPEAKER_01: And the head of that conference was Dr.
50:05
SPEAKER_01: June Andrews from the University of Stirling in Scotland.
50:09
And she runs what's considered the most respected dimension
50:12
design center in the world.
50:15
SPEAKER_01: And she asked me to come to the conference.
50:17
SPEAKER_01: I said, I'll come if you can tell me that I'm going to win.
50:22
SPEAKER_01: It's expensive and time consuming.
50:23
SPEAKER_01: And she said, no, I can't do that.
50:25
SPEAKER_01: But she called me one morning after the conference awards and she said,
50:28
SPEAKER_01: Steve,
50:28
SPEAKER_01: she says,
50:29
SPEAKER_01: I hope I didn't wake you up,
50:31
SPEAKER_01: but you guys won the top research award worldwide.
50:35
SPEAKER_01: And she said,
50:35
and I told them you should have it because what you're doing in
50:39
Europe is a lot
50:40
SPEAKER_01: better than the United States,
50:41
SPEAKER_01: but what you're doing is a lot better than Europe.
50:44
And so it was amazing that the very first project that we did
50:49
with that standard
50:51
SPEAKER_01: We were dead on.
50:52
SPEAKER_01: How did you know?
50:53
SPEAKER_01: How did you have that worked out?
50:57
SPEAKER_01: It's very logical.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: Signal to noise is about everything you see, hear, feel, whatever.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: You detect what's above the noise.
51:10
SPEAKER_01: As you get older,
51:11
SPEAKER_01: as you get into your 80s and you have dementia,
51:12
you're operating at about 10% of your sensory efficiency
51:16
compared to your 20-year
51:17
SPEAKER_01: baseline.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: So we know you're operating in complete sensory deprivation.
51:23
SPEAKER_01: So if we can bring down the noise to half of what it was,
51:28
SPEAKER_01: we know it's the same as bringing your sensory age to 10 years younger.
51:35
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of mind-blowing.
51:36
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of mind-blowing, but it's very logical.
51:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, when you know, it is when you know.
51:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
51:40
SPEAKER_01: and our standards were not narrative standards,
51:43
SPEAKER_01: they were quantitative standards that we can put in computer programs,
51:46
SPEAKER_01: we can measure them,
51:47
SPEAKER_01: everything else.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: Real, real scientific standards.
51:51
SPEAKER_01: And I was delighted when this occurred to me.
51:56
SPEAKER_01: I sit out in the porch that you'll have dinner in tonight,
51:58
SPEAKER_01: it's all glass floor to ceiling in a traditional house,
52:01
SPEAKER_01: but I put a 15 by 20 foot,
52:03
SPEAKER_01: all glass room.
52:05
SPEAKER_01: And I sit out in this room and just think about things.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: And I look out and on one side there's a park and a lake,
52:13
SPEAKER_01: one side there's a bunch of birdhouses,
52:16
SPEAKER_01: and one side there's our garden.
52:19
And I find when I'm alone and not overly focusing on something,
52:27
things come to me.
52:30
SPEAKER_01: As I think they do to many people.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: And so I just absolutely love that.
52:35
SPEAKER_01: And I can't work on teams.
52:39
Because teams are usually a whole bunch of stupid people who
52:43
are standing.
52:49
SPEAKER_01: It's much like people who want to build an autistic school.
52:53
They want to have a meeting and they want to bring in the
52:56
parents and they want to
52:57
SPEAKER_01: bring in the teachers and they want to bring in some autistic
53:00
SPEAKER_01: And they want to have everybody in the community have a say.
53:04
SPEAKER_01: And then they'll ask me to come.
53:05
SPEAKER_01: And I said, I don't come to those.
53:07
SPEAKER_01: I said, I don't come to Kumbaya meetings.
53:10
SPEAKER_01: I said,
53:10
SPEAKER_01: having a bunch of people who don't know shit around the table,
53:14
SPEAKER_01: giving their personal opinions is a waste of my time.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: I said,
53:19
SPEAKER_01: if you want to have a meeting that I'll come to,
53:21
SPEAKER_01: let me pick people who are smart as hell,
53:24
SPEAKER_01: cover bases and can teach people.
53:27
But I'll be damned if I want to sit around a table just
53:31
listening to opinions.
53:33
SPEAKER_01: It's nothing I have any interest in.
53:38
SPEAKER_02: That's so quotable.
53:40
I spent time talking to Emma and she highlighted some of the
53:48
future facing projects
53:50
SPEAKER_02: and how exciting.
53:51
SPEAKER_02: What are you most excited about in some of her portfolio?
53:56
SPEAKER_01: Well,
53:57
SPEAKER_01: Emma is interested in healing,
54:00
SPEAKER_01: as you've gathered,
54:02
SPEAKER_01: and that's been kind of a surprise to her.
54:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, she told you about the veteran's study.
54:09
SPEAKER_01: The veteran's study,
54:10
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if she told you how it came about,
54:11
SPEAKER_01: but the veteran's study is something I've wanted to do for a long time.
54:17
And the head psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota
54:20
Medical School is a friend of mine.
54:22
SPEAKER_01: because I've encouraged those people to come out and visit with us.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so his name is Calvin Lem, he's a Chinese guy.
54:32
SPEAKER_01: He's bright as hell.
54:34
SPEAKER_01: And I've harassed Calvin for two years.
54:38
SPEAKER_01: He had no thought of doing this study, it was all my idea.
54:43
SPEAKER_01: And so I harassed him for two years and he finally said, okay.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: And then he brought, he got the veterans hospital involved.
54:51
SPEAKER_01: Two psychologists from there.
54:54
SPEAKER_01: And now the three of them and Emma and I are working it through.
54:59
SPEAKER_01: And Emma's beginning to see the medical possibilities.
55:04
SPEAKER_01: I've also been doing a little study on polyvagal theory,
55:10
SPEAKER_01: reading the classic book that was written by the guy who invented it.
55:14
SPEAKER_01: What are your thoughts on that?
55:17
SPEAKER_01: It's somewhat controversial.
55:18
SPEAKER_01: And so my view is that
55:22
SPEAKER_01: I want to experience it.
55:24
SPEAKER_01: I want to get some systems in.
55:26
I want to go through some polyvagal training because there's a
55:29
company in the US
55:30
that does a major job of training on polyvagal things and cells
55:35
recordings and all
55:35
SPEAKER_01: kinds of things.
55:36
SPEAKER_01: I want to measure what it is their stimuli is.
55:39
I want to get my arms around it and find out whether I think
55:41
it's really doing
55:42
anything and then I want to read some studies that are well
55:45
done studies that prove
55:48
SPEAKER_01: that it's beneficial for X number of people.
55:51
SPEAKER_01: So I want to put it through a science test,
55:54
SPEAKER_01: and part of that is an experiential test in my case.
56:02
And we've also had a Chinese company who sends us Chinese
56:07
meditation devices.
56:10
On my desk I've got a glass pyramid,
56:14
and they've had this big business all over the world
56:18
I'm interested in giving these talismans to people and telling
56:21
them to use them in
56:22
SPEAKER_01: a certain way.
56:22
SPEAKER_01: Some of them are electronic, some of them are that.
56:25
I'm interested in trying a series of things to see just what we
56:29
can honestly do and
56:31
SPEAKER_01: claim so that we can offer some other things.
56:34
SPEAKER_01: The other thing I told Emma that I wanted to do,
56:37
SPEAKER_01: and so we've wired up for that now,
56:40
SPEAKER_01: they said,
56:40
in addition to going into the anechoic chamber and having quiet
56:44
experiences,
56:45
SPEAKER_01: I want to wire it up.
56:47
so that we can play whale songs in there and put people in the
56:51
dark with a whale
56:54
SPEAKER_01: over them,
56:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
56:56
SPEAKER_01: and things like that.
56:57
SPEAKER_02: Well, that fits well with your artwork?
56:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
57:00
SPEAKER_01: well,
57:00
SPEAKER_01: the artwork actually comes from the fact that Carl Beam,
57:04
SPEAKER_01: who's the most famous modern Native artist in Canada,
57:08
SPEAKER_01: he's got a room set aside at the National Gallery in Ottawa,
57:10
SPEAKER_01: and he was a friend of mine before he died,
57:13
SPEAKER_01: and his wife was a friend before she died,
57:15
SPEAKER_01: and his daughter's still a friend.
57:17
But I saw Carl's work at the American Indian Center Gallery in
57:23
Minneapolis in 1992.
57:28
SPEAKER_01: And I said to the curator there,
57:31
SPEAKER_01: and it's a poor neighborhood,
57:33
SPEAKER_01: Indian neighborhood,
57:34
SPEAKER_01: but a nice building,
57:35
SPEAKER_01: and I said to the curator,
57:36
SPEAKER_01: he said,
57:37
SPEAKER_01: who the hell is this guy?
57:38
SPEAKER_01: And I said, I usually come in here and see poor quality Indian art.
57:43
SPEAKER_01: This guy's great.
57:44
SPEAKER_01: And she said, oh, he's
57:46
SPEAKER_01: He's respected by the Canadians,
57:48
SPEAKER_01: he's got a room set aside at the National Gallery for his work,
57:54
and he's well known for being the first crossover artist who
57:59
the National Gallery
58:00
SPEAKER_01: is displaying,
58:01
SPEAKER_01: not because he's Ojibwe,
58:02
SPEAKER_01: but because he's a great modernist.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: They had about 15 of these paper works that you've seen out here.
58:17
SPEAKER_01: at the gallery that I saw.
58:19
SPEAKER_01: And so I asked, I said, who represents him in Canada?
58:23
SPEAKER_01: And so they gave me the gallery in Toronto.
58:26
SPEAKER_01: So I called the gallery and I said, I'd like to buy a couple of these.
58:29
And I said,
58:29
I understand that the bill of lading shows that they're $5,000
58:33
a piece.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: If that's the price, I'm willing to pay it.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: So they said,
58:38
SPEAKER_01: well,
58:39
SPEAKER_01: with Carl's work,
58:40
SPEAKER_01: it travels around the world and then it is sold afterwards.
58:43
SPEAKER_02: I said, well, you know, tell me if you change your mind.
58:47
SPEAKER_01: About two weeks later, they called me.
58:50
SPEAKER_01: And I got the sense that they weren't doing that well.
58:53
And they said,
58:54
we'll sell them to you,
58:55
but would you leave them in the exhibit?
58:58
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't trust them.
58:59
SPEAKER_01: They sounded really flaky to me.
59:00
SPEAKER_01: So I said, I need them right now for a certain purpose.
59:05
SPEAKER_01: So they sold them to me out of the exhibit.
59:07
SPEAKER_01: And then they had a big boat
59:11
SPEAKER_01: that was part of the exhibit 20 foot boat that Carl had done.
59:14
SPEAKER_01: And they abandoned that in a warehouse down the street from us here.
59:20
SPEAKER_01: And I paid for two years the storage fees.
59:25
And then I brought the boat into our labs here and stored it
59:29
for 10 years.
59:31
SPEAKER_01: And at the end of 10 years I gifted it to the National Gallery in Ottawa.
59:36
SPEAKER_01: And now it sits in that room and it's this beautiful thing.
59:40
SPEAKER_01: And my feeling was that it's a Canadian icon and it belongs there.
59:46
SPEAKER_01: And I think I'll buy a lot of art in my life.
59:49
SPEAKER_01: Some of it I'll sell, much of it I'll give away.
59:53
SPEAKER_01: But I feel like the Indians, that you don't own anything.
59:58
SPEAKER_01: You go through life and you experience things.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_01: And I think that
1:00:04
SPEAKER_01: Many of my works of art are extremely important works.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_01: Like if you see the big whale in the auditorium,
1:00:10
SPEAKER_01: that's probably a half a million dollar piece of art now.
1:00:16
I bought it for probably 10% of that because I set up a
1:00:21
non-profit art gallery so
1:00:23
SPEAKER_01: that I could be an art dealer,
1:00:24
SPEAKER_01: so that I could buy art for half price.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_02: So what was your hope?
1:00:32
What did you hope to learn from potentially putting whale
1:00:35
sounds in the chamber?
1:00:39
I wanted to see what kinds of perceptual experiences we could
1:00:43
give people that in
1:00:45
SPEAKER_01: some way seem therapeutic to them.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_01: And of course whale sounds a lot more complicated than
1:00:54
sitting them in the chamber or putting them in a float tank or
1:00:57
something.
1:00:58
So what I wanted to do is I wasn't afraid to mix the art and
1:01:02
the experience.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_01: I just wanted to be able to measure it.
1:01:06
And my one condition is anything I'm doing I want to be able to
1:01:09
measure accurately.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_01: So if I happen to find,
1:01:14
SPEAKER_01: and I don't know that I'll find,
1:01:15
SPEAKER_01: it's totally serendipitous,
1:01:17
if I happen to find that people want to come back much more
1:01:20
often because of those
1:01:21
SPEAKER_01: whale sounds
1:01:23
SPEAKER_01: and that on our semantic differential tests that we give people,
1:01:27
SPEAKER_01: that the rankings start climbing,
1:01:29
SPEAKER_01: then I realize that it's more than whale sounds,
1:01:32
SPEAKER_01: it's a therapeutic method.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_01: But I have to prove that first.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_01: So if you can't measure it, does it exist?
1:01:41
SPEAKER_01: Sure it exists.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_01: I don't believe that measurement causes things to exist.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_01: Measurement causes you to be able to predict things.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_01: Measurement's only about one thing and that's prediction.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_02: So,
1:01:54
SPEAKER_02: Emma and I talked about this a little bit,
1:01:55
SPEAKER_02: what are your thoughts about an objective reality?
1:01:59
SPEAKER_02: Versus a non-objective reality?
1:02:03
SPEAKER_02: Well, in the sense of, so we can have a consensus that this is a table.
1:02:13
SPEAKER_01: By the way, it's a pocket table.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_01: It's the same people who made the couch.
1:02:17
SPEAKER_01: And this used to sit in the Louvre at one time.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
1:02:24
SPEAKER_01: As did that table I sit at there.
1:02:26
And the chair you see over there is a British chair that was
1:02:29
Prince Charles prize
1:02:32
SPEAKER_01: for the best product made in a given year.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_01: So you do the very best industrial design prize or product,
1:02:39
SPEAKER_01: which in that year in the 70s was called Playplex.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_01: It was a toy.
1:02:44
And the designer of plate plaques got to pick a designer to
1:02:46
design whatever he
1:02:48
SPEAKER_01: wanted just for him.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_01: So he picked a designer,
1:02:51
SPEAKER_01: Frederick Scott from England,
1:02:52
SPEAKER_01: a famous designer,
1:02:54
SPEAKER_01: and had him design that chair just for him,
1:02:55
SPEAKER_01: for his exact size.
1:02:58
SPEAKER_01: And I was doing some importing of furniture back then,
1:03:01
SPEAKER_01: and I called the company,
1:03:04
SPEAKER_01: I called the guy who won the prize,
1:03:06
SPEAKER_01: and I said,
1:03:06
SPEAKER_01: are you going to
1:03:08
SPEAKER_01: Are you going to try to license this out and produce it?
1:03:10
SPEAKER_01: And he said, I'm thinking of it.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, if you do, why don't you give me the American agency?
1:03:14
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm the American agent for Plunkett.
1:03:17
SPEAKER_01: And he did.
1:03:19
And they brought that chair as a demonstration to a conference
1:03:22
and left it with me.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_01: But then they found out they could never make the chair.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_01: It was too expensive.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_01: So there's two of those chairs that exist in the world,
1:03:30
SPEAKER_01: both handmade,
1:03:32
SPEAKER_01: one in England and one here.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_01: And eventually, I assume that'll go into a museum.
1:03:38
SPEAKER_01: But it's probably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: But to me, it's just the delight of having good design around.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_01: The delight of having things that speak to me.
1:03:54
SPEAKER_02: So, the table.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_02: So we can agree it's a table.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_02: But what if he says it's a frog?
1:04:03
SPEAKER_02: What about it?
1:04:04
SPEAKER_02: So who determines what's beyond
1:04:09
SPEAKER_02: each of our perceptual interpretation.
1:04:12
SPEAKER_01: Well, are you talking about he thinks it's a frog or he says it's a frog?
1:04:20
SPEAKER_01: He believes it's a frog.
1:04:21
SPEAKER_01: He believes it's a frog, okay.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_01: Well,
1:04:24
then we know that for some reason what he's perceiving is
1:04:31
different from what we're
1:04:32
SPEAKER_01: perceiving.
1:04:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:04:35
SPEAKER_01: Well,
1:04:35
SPEAKER_01: so if we're going to do some science about it,
1:04:37
probably we'd bring in 30 subjects and see how many of them saw
1:04:43
it as a frog.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_02: So, what if 30 people come in and say, it is?
1:04:54
SPEAKER_01: It would be surprising.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_02: Well, if you...
1:04:58
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to get political,
1:05:00
SPEAKER_02: but you could make that point about politics,
1:05:03
SPEAKER_02: that half of America think they're right,
1:05:06
SPEAKER_02: and they think the other half are wrong.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, or more accurately, half of America doesn't think.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's that too.
1:05:12
SPEAKER_02: So let me put it another way.
1:05:15
SPEAKER_01: If I was to- Just as an aside, I'm not afraid of calling a spade a spade.
1:05:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:05:23
SPEAKER_01: And I don't dignify ignorance.
1:05:26
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
1:05:26
SPEAKER_01: With less than obvious terms.
1:05:29
And what we have in America right now and what we have all over
1:05:31
the world.
1:05:32
Because whenever America goes very right wing,
1:05:35
the whole world goes right wing.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_01: Because they're stupid enough to imitate our worst qualities.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:05:41
But I think in order to have any honesty,
1:05:46
you have to do what Trump's doing,
1:05:49
but correctly.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: You have to call out the dishonesty.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: Now Trump's lying about everything, but you have to tell the truth.
1:05:58
SPEAKER_01: And so I think you have to call it the dishonesty,
1:06:01
and I think there's nothing wrong with insulting the
1:06:04
intelligence of people who
1:06:06
SPEAKER_01: don't have any.
1:06:11
SPEAKER_02: So if I die, will you still be sitting here?
1:06:14
SPEAKER_02: Not for you.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_02: Not for me.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_02: But you think that
1:06:22
SPEAKER_02: There is an objective reality that is beyond both of our perceptions.
1:06:26
You know,
1:06:27
coming from philosophy,
1:06:29
I need to know what you mean by objective reality.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_01: So what's your construct?
1:06:34
SPEAKER_02: So in the sense of,
1:06:38
SPEAKER_02: there's your perceptual construct of this,
1:06:41
SPEAKER_02: there's mine,
1:06:42
SPEAKER_02: but is there one that's beyond yours and mine,
1:06:45
SPEAKER_02: in and of itself?
1:06:47
I'm sure to other creatures of other sorts,
1:06:51
which one day we might meet,
1:06:52
there is.
1:06:54
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
1:06:55
SPEAKER_01: And of course we know that if visually,
1:07:00
SPEAKER_01: if we miss our developmental period and are blind as children,
1:07:05
SPEAKER_01: we'll be able to form an image of this in our visual cortex,
1:07:10
SPEAKER_01: but we won't be able to see it.
1:07:13
Because we'll have moved past the period where you develop
1:07:16
sight and recognition.
1:07:21
SPEAKER_01: And of course, you've heard of blindsight, I assume.
1:07:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:07:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_02: And something interesting going on there, too.
1:07:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, most things are mystery.
1:07:30
And most of us in 30,
1:07:35
40 years will be thought of as a profoundly ignorant
1:07:38
population.
1:07:41
But some of us will have been thinking about things to the best
1:07:45
of the ability of the times.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_01: And that's all you can say.
1:07:49
I mean,
1:07:50
we look at medicine now,
1:07:51
50 years,
1:07:52
everything we're doing will be a joke.
1:07:56
And most everything will be genetic and we'll be repairing
1:07:59
people and we'll be
1:08:01
SPEAKER_01: running them up for two,
1:08:02
SPEAKER_01: three hundred years.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_01: You know,
1:08:04
so I think it's really a question of thinking of a slice in
1:08:09
time and saying,
1:08:11
SPEAKER_01: so what do we make of this?
1:08:12
SPEAKER_01: But objective realities are kind of like saying,
1:08:16
SPEAKER_01: okay,
1:08:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm a liberal Catholic,
1:08:19
SPEAKER_01: okay,
1:08:21
SPEAKER_01: and I believe in God,
1:08:22
SPEAKER_01: but I don't know there's a God.
1:08:26
SPEAKER_01: That's the whole point of what's called faith is I believe it.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_01: And I believe that most everything we care about,
1:08:37
SPEAKER_01: if not everything,
1:08:40
SPEAKER_01: is driven by unconscious emotions.
1:08:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
1:08:45
SPEAKER_01: And that we know perfectly well that we're not good self-reporters.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_01: I even tested the autistic folks on that to see if they were as bad as
1:08:55
SPEAKER_01: neurotypicals at self-reporting.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_01: And they were precisely as bad.
1:09:01
SPEAKER_01: But I think we have to give things a series of relative frames,
1:09:09
SPEAKER_01: otherwise we can't meaningfully talk about them.
1:09:13
And at that point,
1:09:15
I can say I believe in God and you can say you don't,
1:09:18
let's say.
1:09:20
SPEAKER_01: And we both know that within X number of years, we'll find out.
1:09:31
SPEAKER_01: But you quantified it by saying you acknowledge that there's faith?
1:09:35
SPEAKER_01: I can't tell anybody that there's a God because I've never met him.
1:09:42
SPEAKER_01: I've never met him.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_01: I've never heard his or her voice.
1:09:49
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is much like meditation.
1:09:53
SPEAKER_01: It's an exercise where I hope there's a God and I hope he's listening.
1:09:58
SPEAKER_01: But if he isn't, it's meditation.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_02: But how do you reconcile that with your focus on science?
1:10:04
SPEAKER_02: Even,
1:10:05
SPEAKER_02: I picked up with Emma,
1:10:06
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:10:07
I live in a world where I feel the unconscious and the concept
1:10:10
of the unconscious
1:10:11
SPEAKER_02: is under assault,
1:10:12
SPEAKER_02: along with interiority.
1:10:14
SPEAKER_02: But here,
1:10:14
SPEAKER_02: both of you very much speaking in the language of science,
1:10:18
SPEAKER_02: but yet most scientists would think the unconscious is unscientific.
1:10:24
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, in every field there's
1:10:28
SPEAKER_01: The philosophy of the field.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_01: So I studied the philosophy of psychology when I was in school.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_01: You can study the philosophy of mathematics.
1:10:37
SPEAKER_01: You can study the philosophy of engineering.
1:10:40
SPEAKER_01: And the philosophies are the basis of all the fields.
1:10:46
SPEAKER_01: So you can either just operate at a very conscious level and just say,
1:10:53
SPEAKER_01: what I see is what I believe.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_01: Or you can say,
1:10:57
What's the philosophy behind this field and then how does that
1:11:01
tend to push me
1:11:02
SPEAKER_01: toward that issue,
1:11:03
SPEAKER_01: you know?
1:11:04
SPEAKER_01: But it's not being taught, this is the problem?
1:11:07
Of course it's not being taught because what we're trying to do
1:11:09
is we're trying to
1:11:10
SPEAKER_01: stupidify our populations.
1:11:14
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to say you don't need to learn why anything.
1:11:18
SPEAKER_01: You don't need to learn how anything unless you're putting it together.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_01: So we're jamming kids full of useless knowledge.
1:11:27
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's insane.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_01: I am a great believer in liberal education.
1:11:34
When my older daughter went to St.
1:11:37
Thomas University,
1:11:39
I said,
1:11:39
you can go there.
1:11:40
I'd rather have you go to the university,
1:11:43
public university,
1:11:44
but you can go there.
1:11:45
SPEAKER_01: I said, what do you want to major in?
1:11:47
SPEAKER_01: And she says, business.
1:11:49
SPEAKER_01: I said, I'm not paying for that.
1:11:51
SPEAKER_01: I said, you can learn a trade after college.
1:11:54
SPEAKER_01: And business won't matter to you.
1:11:56
SPEAKER_01: As a guy who's been in business all of your life,
1:11:59
SPEAKER_01: business won't matter to you until it has some impact on you,
1:12:02
SPEAKER_01: you know?
1:12:04
So I said,
1:12:05
if you go to St.
1:12:07
Thomas and you own business,
1:12:08
then you pay the 20 grand,
1:12:10
you know?
1:12:12
And if you want to go into liberal arts and get a real
1:12:14
education,
1:12:14
I'll pay it.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_01: And so she went into political science, she became a lawyer, and she
1:12:23
SPEAKER_01: She got out of law school.
1:12:25
SPEAKER_01: She's a very bright girl and a very caring girl.
1:12:29
SPEAKER_01: But she got out of law school and she didn't know what she wanted to do.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_01: She didn't know what part of law she wanted to get into.
1:12:35
SPEAKER_01: So she was sitting around,
1:12:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:12:38
SPEAKER_01: kind of drumming this through her head for three or four months.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know, this is silly.
1:12:46
SPEAKER_01: And so I took
1:12:51
SPEAKER_01: I took her out to lunch and I said,
1:12:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:12:54
your mom's running a law office and she badly needs some help
1:12:58
and why don't you go
1:12:58
SPEAKER_01: help her?
1:12:59
SPEAKER_01: And I took my wife out and I said,
1:13:02
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:13:03
SPEAKER_01: your daughter needs a job and needs to get something to focus her.
1:13:07
SPEAKER_01: So why don't you invite her in and help her?
1:13:10
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't tell either of them that I was talking to the other one.
1:13:14
So they got together and for the first two or three months they
1:13:17
were mad at me.
1:13:19
SPEAKER_01: And then they loved it.
1:13:21
SPEAKER_01: And now they're both,
1:13:22
SPEAKER_01: my wife is retired now,
1:13:23
SPEAKER_01: but they're both for years doing elder law,
1:13:28
SPEAKER_01: helping old women to manage their estates.
1:13:32
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, what a great thing, but I'm about outcomes.
1:13:37
I'm not about thinking about things where I don't care if
1:13:40
something happens.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_01: And as I looked at my daughter, she needed an outcome.
1:13:47
SPEAKER_01: And I know my wife, coming from an Irish background,
1:13:50
SPEAKER_01: was kind of scattered about it.
1:13:54
Because the Irish are more about the emotional rather than the
1:13:58
intellectual side of
1:13:59
SPEAKER_01: lots of things.
1:14:01
And although my wife is smart and charming,
1:14:04
she just wasn't going to get the job done.
1:14:07
SPEAKER_01: Because she didn't know there was a job to get done.
1:14:10
SPEAKER_01: And so I jumped in and started pushing them both without telling them.
1:14:16
SPEAKER_01: And it worked.
1:14:18
SPEAKER_02: So when you refer to people and people being dumbed down,
1:14:22
SPEAKER_02: how do you think AI will impact education and learning?
1:14:25
SPEAKER_01: I think AI will strongly harm people's linguistic abilities.
1:14:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:14:35
SPEAKER_01: There's a good side to AI,
1:14:36
SPEAKER_01: like medical diagnosis,
1:14:38
SPEAKER_01: where instead of using large language models,
1:14:41
SPEAKER_01: you're using calibrated language models with real information in them.
1:14:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's wonderful.
1:14:46
SPEAKER_01: But I was listening to a program on public radio,
1:14:51
and one of the top professors in AI in the world was talking
1:14:54
about his top PhD
1:14:55
SPEAKER_01: student.
1:14:58
And he said,
1:15:00
you know,
1:15:00
he said,
1:15:00
the other day I was talking with my top student.
1:15:04
SPEAKER_01: And he said, and he seemed to be having a hard time finishing sentences.
1:15:09
SPEAKER_01: And then I finally said,
1:15:11
SPEAKER_01: Bill,
1:15:12
are you beginning to have a hard time with the language of
1:15:16
finishing sentences?
1:15:18
SPEAKER_01: And Bill says to him,
1:15:18
SPEAKER_01: he says,
1:15:19
SPEAKER_01: ever since I've been so intensely into AI,
1:15:22
SPEAKER_01: AI finishes my sentences,
1:15:23
SPEAKER_01: and so I sort of forget.
1:15:25
SPEAKER_02: Wow, that's fascinating.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so what we're doing is we're degrading his linguistic capability
1:15:32
SPEAKER_01: by allowing AI to take it over for them.
1:15:34
SPEAKER_01: So if we're substituting capabilities to AI, that's a terrible thing.
1:15:40
SPEAKER_01: If we're using AI mechanistically to solve problems, that's fine.
1:15:46
SPEAKER_01: But the fact is,
1:15:48
SPEAKER_01: AI has only been developed by all these big companies for one reason,
1:15:53
SPEAKER_01: and that's to sell advertising.
1:15:56
SPEAKER_01: Because Google has 100 companies.
1:15:59
SPEAKER_01: They only have one company that makes money, and that's the browser.
1:16:03
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:16:04
And all these young guys who founded these companies and used
1:16:08
to be liberals,
1:16:10
SPEAKER_01: they're all nut job conservatives now.
1:16:15
SPEAKER_02: Trying to keep them off Trump.
1:16:16
SPEAKER_02: It's great.
1:16:18
SPEAKER_02: I wanted to say, this has been illuminating.
1:16:22
SPEAKER_02: I thoroughly enjoyed it.