Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Paul Zak on Applying Neuroscience in Engagement, Immersion and Brand Interactions (#031)

Transcript

Paul Zak on Applying Neuroscience in Engagement, Immersion and Brand Interactions (#031) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: But what if my phone, because I'm getting her data, goes, hey, your wife's having a really bad day.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Pick up some flowers for her on the way home, or take her out to dinner, or just be aware.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she's really just unhappy.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your fault.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's nothing to do with you.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: She's just she's had a really tough day.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um man, your your your relationships will be so much better.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's an immersion plus AI application.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Paul.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining in, and uh it's uh it's great that uh you you've accepted to be a guest in our podcast, and thanks for accepting our request.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for inviting me.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Paul, I straight away want to jump in into uh something that you are pretty well known for and probably uh a pioneer in uh you know uh across the world on the role of uh oxytocin and how uh you know it you know the kind of decision making that uh that that happens with oxytocin.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So can you talk us a little bit about uh you know the role of oxytocin and how decision-making behaviors are are actually something that has some uh you know influencing uh uh you know components as far as this kind of uh uh molecule is concerned?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So oxytocin is a neurochemical made in the brain.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh about 20 years ago, my lab developed a way to measure its acute release in human beings without drilling holes into their skulls, which is what is done with animals.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm just guessing humans aren't going to be so cool about me drilling a hole into their skulls.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what we showed over many years of research is that oxytocin is a key signal, neurochemical signal, that says that the person that we're interacting with is safe or trustworthy or familiar.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so we think about the number of factors that influence our own decisions, other people are part of that.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: We are social creatures in a true anatomical sense.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so by being able to have a mechanism to measure the brain's production of oxytocin, it gives us insight into uh essentially things like influence and persuasion and marketing, right?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: That we are influenced by social factors.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And just to go back one step, I said we're social creatures.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: No one disagrees with that, but anatomically, we have many more receptors for this neurochemical oxytocin in the brain than any other mammal species.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so we are acutely sensitive to social information.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's good and bad.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: It means we learn from each other, uh, we like working in groups, you can just put people together and they'll collaborate right away almost always.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it also means we're subject to persuasion, and that can be good or bad, right?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So um, as social creatures, we're also good at picking up people who are lying to us, pulling our leg, right?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're constantly balancing this like, oh, this guy's great.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want to hang out and talk to him, hear what he has to say with, oh, okay, this guy's really trying to put the wool over my eyes or uh sell me something I don't want.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's this kind of balance between that.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where you know uh the kind of business application of this gets quite interesting.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So so when you really talk about uh the business application of uh your research, uh what are the kind of areas uh do you uh have you seen it being applied successfully?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh my question really is uh can you really uh you know uh can this uh you know this thing called trust can it be gamed?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um yes and no.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so right.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the first things we looked at was whether uh people trust strangers or why they trust strangers, which you do all the time, right?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: We eat in restaurants and get on airplanes, and you know, we're just assuming that the humans are going to be, you know, do what they say they're gonna do and not hurt us or murder us or or be incompetent for that matter.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, we started studying this in the laboratory, and as you know, have said this around the world uh in many, many settings, uh, including in the Rainforest of Papua New Guinea, to make sure that this is really a universal mechanism.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so from a business perspective, once we have a tool to identify uh when we're influenced by others, then we can reverse engineer the process and ask, how would I make this experience say for a customer as valuable as possible?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So what we found was oxytocin alone was not the motivator that sort of just uh said, you know, this person seems safe to be around.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna absorb information from him or her.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you needed a precursor, which is uh really this attentional response driven by that another neurochemical called dopamine.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so this very unusual state we discovered in years of research, in which I'm attentive, dopamine, and I'm absorbing this information.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm actually valuing that information, uh, social information driven by oxytocin.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've called this the state immersion.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we see when people are deeply immersed in an experience, that experience is reported as being enjoyable.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they tend to remember the experience, they will act on it, for example, purchase or share.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it also generates a loyalty among individuals.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: So the brain puts so much uh metabolic energy into this experience, it goes, holy crap, this is the crazy good experience for me.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm having a great time now and I want to do it again.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So part of the pathways in the brain that are probably not worth talking about generate kind of a craving to do this again, right?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this is such a peak experience that I want to do it again.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you can see the business application starts to set up.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the argument I'm making uh a new book coming out in a couple of months, is that if we understand the neuroscience, again, we can reverse engineer that process and give customers what they want, which is a mind-blowingly great experience, and at the same time, really create an environment where those customers want to come back, they want to tell people about it.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a big win-win space here.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Again, just to be clear, if I'm uh, I don't know, showing you a commercial for Huggies diapers and you don't have an infant at home, your brain will just wash that out.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be interesting, maybe highly immersive, but it's not going to motivate behavior because it's not relevant to you, right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no sense in which understanding the neuroscience of persuasion gives you some superpower.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: What it does give you is measurement.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what we've been missing all along is asking people, do you like this ad?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: How is the customer experience?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: What's your net promoter score?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's all consciously reported, but we really want to know and where these neurochemicals are active is in the unconscious emotional response to experiences.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it just opens a new way to have a much more uh precise and deep discussion about why people um ever shop anywhere, why people um you know do anything that involves other people.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: So as a as a both as a follow-up and to set uh context, uh we've been, you know, you raised these terms and these uh words, you know, dopamine and uh oxytose and neural pathways and stuff like that, right?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to start off by just for the benefit of our listeners, uh, just to ask, you know, what is a neurotransmitter or what are neurotransmitters?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: And could you tell us a little bit about A, the evolutionary origins of neurotransmitters, if possible?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: And B, uh how do neurotransmitters really accentuate the human experience?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what would we be like as a species if neurotransmitters were not even there as part of our uh biological system?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh thanks, Vignesh.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Just such a deep question.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So let me try to get that on a couple different layers without getting too technical.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So um the brain is a chemical electrical system, and those electrical signals are essentially zero-one signals, either continue the information or don't.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can think of the neurochemicals as adding color to that zero-one signal.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: It gives you variety, right?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of being zero, one, black, and white, it adds this uh the technical word in psychology is valence.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: It gives you the kind of how good it is or how bad it is.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you it it creates a much richer experience for those creatures.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why these this electrical chemical system, which is kind of real kluge in a way, because you know, you can be short under different neurochemicals, uh, you can fatigue the system, but it's a very effective system to adapt.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the takeaways from this, uh, you know, that I only discovered by, you know, because I'm a slow person, uh, by you know, doing 20 years of research, is that for every experience we see, we have a huge variation in the way the brain responds when I when I measure 50 people in the same experience.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I call it the dirty secret of neuroscience is that we are all weird, right?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Our our brains are are behaving in a very different way sometimes than than other people's.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know it because we're just trying to fit in as social creatures.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be too, too weird if we can help it.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it also means that uh from a human perspective, we're going to expect inconsistency, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if I see Swami today, tomorrow, the next day, one of those days he's just gonna do something weird that doesn't seem weird to him because his brain's working differently, because he's tired or hungry or he ate some weird thing or he had 14 cups of coffee, or right and for for him, it's just gonna be daily life.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, that was weird.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: What was going on here?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so again, for us as individuals, it means that we should have not only tolerance but acceptance for that wide variation in behavior, including in ourselves.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And again, we're not gonna know it.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: So from our families, for our colleagues, um, and we we, you know, here's an example that has happened to me and probably most people, which is you're just cranky at work one day.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next day you you reflect on that and you go, man, I was really kind of a jerk to my assistant or whatever.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then you got to go in and apologize to go, oh, you know, hey, uh Sue, you know, I'm really sorry.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was really cranky yesterday.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, you were.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: What was going on?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, uh, you know, my dog died, or I was late for work.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm sorry.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: You have to apologize.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we understand that, right?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of things, weird things happen.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if I'm cranky, you know, every day for three weeks, okay, that's another issue.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then I got some some problem I got to deal with.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: But every once in a while, you know, having that bad behavior, not bad, but you know, unusual behavior, out of character, that's to be expected.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, second example, uh, if I'm shopping at a grocery store and I'm hungry, my brain wants more glucose.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's the fuel for my brain.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna buy more sugars and often more fats, which is a store of energy.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, from a sort of standard view in economics, you are irrational if you go to the store and buy donuts.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: But from a neuroscience perspective, that's exactly what your brain wants.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, again, if you're say trying to lose weight, you don't want to shop when you're hungry because your brain is changing this cost-benefit calculation.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, just to put a cap on that, our brains are big cost-benefit calculators, but they're imperfect cost-benefit calculators.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, when we get changes in neurochemicals, that cost-benefit calculation is going to change.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're generally not gonna be aware of that.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna behave in different ways.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so we should just accept that that we're all weird and we expect that weirdness.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: It makes life interesting, and a lot of that weirdness is driven by these changes in neurochemicals.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you brought in this very interesting concept of economics and uh neuroscience.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think uh you're somebody who really talks about neuromanagement, right?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, uh uh can you walk us through what do you mean by neuroeconomics and neuromanagement and definition and understanding of these terms?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I know Swami, you have never made a bad decision in your life, but Vignash, who you know has made 14 bad decisions last week, now what's that about?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: If we have such big brains, how is it possible that we can make bad decisions?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, around 20 years ago, myself and some others um started measuring brain activity while people make decisions to understand why people make those decisions.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we try to ask people, hey, why'd you like we talked about trust earlier?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why'd you trust this stranger with real money on the line?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the the most common answer would be, I don't know, seemed like the thing to do.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I don't know is not a way to build a theory.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a way to really understand the human condition.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think I think you know the key here is measurement.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So when we in our lab have developed tools to measure um what people's brains are doing, then you can actually go, okay, now I understand, even if that person themselves doesn't understand that.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so to me, economics is the the core of that is decision making.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if we measure brand activity during decisions, then we get an idea of why people do what they do.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And as you've said, then you can apply that to management, you can apply it to marketing, a lot of areas that uh my group has worked in.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so to me, it's it's just um I'm a very cheap guy.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to waste resources.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so to me, if I understand mechanism, I can be very precise the way I deploy this, right?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: So if I want to create a workplace where people are really effective, productive, satisfied with their jobs, that I can ask where are the neuroscience principles through which people work together?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: So one of those is I've got to be comfortable, comfortable around these individuals, psychological safety.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we can measure that physiologically.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: We have a we have a tool for that.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: The second is I'm not gonna be an effective team member unless I trust those other individuals, right?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm doing all the work and they're just free riding and not, that's not a good system, right?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: So how do I understand that these other individuals have my back, they can support me, they're reliable.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's also measurable, right?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: So again, driven by immersion.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's lots of ways to do this in which I can ask, um, gee, I what I've from measuring, I found that on Fridays uh my team's really unproductive.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I could think you know more deeply about it.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So um there's some movements that happen all the time to move from the typical kind of at least Western, you know, eight-hour workday, five days a week, to four 10-hour days.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to me, that's very testable.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I could certainly test that on whether people are happier, but I also would like to know neurologically, is that more effective?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'll give you one more example.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the largest uh subscribers to my company, Emerging Neuroscience, is Accenture, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Big global professional services company.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And they've been measuring the training they provide to their employees for about four years using our platform.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: They produce$1 billion of training annually, a crazy big investment.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And how did they assess the ROI from that?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: They would ask people after this nice offsite at some nice hotel in some nice city, did you like the training?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: How was the keynote?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: How was the lunch?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Was the lunch good?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: What did you think?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care about any of that.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do with ROI, right?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, did this information stick in your brain so that when you get back to work, you can apply this new knowledge to create value for the organization, for your clients?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they had no measure of that, or they had very poor measures of that.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: So they've been measuring um immersion, which tells you that the brain values this, and when you value it, you remember it.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they have found through measurement that people cannot stay immersed in a training for more than 20 minutes.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And yet many of us are stuck with a tyranny of the 60-minute clock.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just to me, that's just a neuroscience issue.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: How long can my brain sustain the state in which I'm immersed in this material, I'm going to remember it, before I need a break, before I need to change what I'm doing?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's empirical.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So again, you know, the key here is measurement.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And while there might be general neuroscience principles, people need sleep, people that we all sort of know, the specific principles require measurement.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And how do I optimize the workplace or um uh you know the the way I communicate to customers?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: How do I create an extraordinary customer experience?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Vic Nash, you look you got a question.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: You are dying to ask me something, I can just tell.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I was because it's interesting that you brought up the LND use case for Accenture and the way that they measure an ROI, because uh yes, there are certain frameworks that people use to measure learning effectiveness and stuff like that.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but the the the core concept that I think that you touched on was immersion, right?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: And as a as a person who likes to read uh general science and stuff like that, uh just for my clarity, if I may ask, uh what is the difference between, say, flow, which is based on the work of Miheli Chicks and Miheli and uh and immersion?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: And and what are the specific metrics-based differences between the two so we can get a deeper picture of what that chasm is, so to speak?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful question.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I should say uh Mike just sent me hi, was my colleague at Claremont Graduate University uh for about 15 years.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: He just passed away, as you probably know, about six months ago.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, wonderful guy.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so Mike came up with this with this idea uh of flow, which is a state where I lose track of time, where I'm actively doing something that's really valuable to my brain.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he showed that you know, that was um uh that state on self-report occurred a lot when people were doing really innovative or creative work.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the difference between flow and immersion, and that's an excellent question, immersion is a neurologic state.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that is, I can measure that using electrical signals coming out of the nervous system.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Immersion does not require me to report.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: So again, if I'm asking you, hey, are you in the zone right now?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take you out of the zone, right?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I can measure immersion passively with a piece of technology.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, number one.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, flow classically requires that you're actively doing something, but people can be immersed in our measurements passively.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, if you're watching a movie, um, you can you know uh be completely immersed in that movie.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: How do we know?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because Swami and I are terrible movie criers.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: We go to movies, and when Bambi mothers die, you're oh my god.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's like a you know overt, you know, behavioral signal of immersion, that this is so valuable to your brain, you've transported yourself into this world where again in flow you typically can't do that.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, having said that, I think they're they're reasonably related, right?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we do find that in states where people are immersed, um, they uh lose track of time, they are um um emotionally compelled, they find that experience very valuable on self-report, um, they find it emotionally compelling, they often find that experience unexpected, like, wow, I didn't know this was gonna happen.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Flow typically has that unexpected phenomenon phenomenon to it.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so again, I think you know, you might say simp simplistically, I would disagree a little bit, but uh immersion may be the neurologic correlate of flow.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I think that's three-quarters right.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Paul, I read a very interesting article of yours uh in HBR where you really talk about the risk of using AI to uh in you know interpret uh you know human emotions, and uh you really say that it's a very risky one and using technology, but yet you're talking about AI being risky when you really want to measure uh human emotions.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you see the uh divergence or contradictions?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Great question, and thank you for asking it in such a kind way.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I think we're getting better and better at measuring emotion.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh for immersion, again, much of that value that I'm getting, social value that my brain gets from a customer service experience or a movie or an ad comes from the emotional state.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I we individuals who want to create customer experiences, we're constantly trying to give you a positive emotional state.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: So um why not use AI to measure that?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think the difficulty of that is if we put you in a VR setting in which I can create an extraordinary experience.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And just like crying in the movies, the brain adapts to VR very, very rapidly.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: My concern is that we just some humans will just stay in the VR space forever, right?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's very interesting.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing a lot of this in Japan, that um we're seeing very, very low birth rates in Japan, right?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Below replacement rate.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that is kind of a loss of uh, in my view, and from what I've read, I've you know, I've been there many times, but that loss of the ability to interact in the real world with a human.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so my concern is that I can create an I, but you know, the world could create such compelling augmented reality, virtual reality experiences using AI.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to live outside that world.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Having said that, when we measure neurologic data, very high frequency, um, one second or even higher frequency out of the brain, and when we apply machine learning to that, we're able to predict things like which songs will be hits three months in advance, um, whether people watch a YouTube video with 95 plus percent certainty.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the neuroscience plus machine learning gives us uh almost scarely accurate predictive abilities, and that That worries me a little bit, right?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we're never going to get to 100% for neurologic reasons.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can explain in a second.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: But if I'm able to predict hit songs with 95% accuracy, what does it mean for those songs that only get 10 listens?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the band and their moms heard this stream on Spotify.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now there may be a place for that.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we create a new streaming service for songs that will never be hits, but still some people like them or whatever, like long tail, right?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I do think, you know, as I said earlier, I'm a cheap guy.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I think once we have the neuroscience measurements from the streaming services perspective, uh for music, let's just talk about that.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I can think about where to put my marketing dollars.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: I can think about how to distribute this, how to market this in a much more effective way, because I have pretty high probability of knowing which songs are going to be hits, as opposed to kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall, which is often done.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm certainly not against artificial intelligence.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that we want to be careful that we don't set the bar too high so that artificial experiences we create crowd out the in-person experiences.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, Vignish, you know, we talked about neurochemicals.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so this neurochemical that gets us into these immersive states, dopamine, is the same neurochemical that you know is increased a million fold when people take methamphetamine or cocaine.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so these VR experiences have this dopaminergic kind of reward uh value to us.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, if I hit that system too hard, just like in people who use stimulants for years, the system just burns out.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so when you look at drug addicts, particularly people who use stimulants, um, they tend to be very emotionally flat because that system has been hit so many times with the world's best experience.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: So again, I don't think virtual reality can do that necessarily, but it's a concern for me neurologically, right?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: That I'm gonna create this experience that will actually give me that almost drug-like, fabulous emotional state with avatars that are gorgeous, who fall in love with me, and my life is perfect.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got to go back in real life and talk to my wife who's cranky and talk to my kids who are crying.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I just want to escape into that world.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's some risk there.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think it's I don't know the solution, by the way.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's great for many members of society to have this discussion.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just like, you know, when when my children were little and you guys probably did the same thing, we would limit their screen time just because it's so compelling to be playing a game all the time.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit's okay.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think the same thing with alcohol, same thing with, you know, most things.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh most things of biology have this inverted U curve where none is not so good for you and a ton is bad for you, but sort of in the middle, it's okay.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a you have a glass of wine at night or two, it's not gonna hurt you.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Probably looks like it's probably good for you.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, if if you're spending an hour a day in VR and it's a fun experience and you're doing some cool quest, um, I don't have a problem with that.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I think for the what's this famous case of this?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Remember this young man in South Korea some years ago who literally, like for 36 hours, was one of these um yeah, video game cafes and literally just died playing, right?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's this system that's in overdrive, particularly this dopamine system, where you're getting so much reward from it that it crowds out the need to eat, to sleep.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's not good.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: As a follow-up, I want to know why why does this happen?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Because uh, as somebody who designs products, so the way that we've been thinking about product design in the past is hey, we've got to give customers the best experience possible.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: We want to keep them uh addicted, is the word that we would use right now, but the word that we use in the past is engaged, right?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, we want if you're on Twitter, the Twitter design team and the products team's uh intentionally would be hey, we gotta keep our users engaged at all times.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: Facebook's Instagram said it was a similar uh mantra, so to speak, right?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I think now that we've seen how dopamine really damages uh real-world connections, uh real world trust.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, do you think from a design management standpoint, we need a new set of ethics based on the lessons we've learned from the damage products have done in the past, for how technology and product design can really bring positive transformations in people and society?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of that's one of the best questions someone's ever asked me.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is such a fundamentally important question, both for business people and for society.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, let me try to answer that as clearly as I can, and it's just my opinion.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, certainly could be wrong.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um the nice thing about the brain is it has these self-limiting systems.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if we think about the most addictive, you know, experiences, think of Pokemon Go.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Crazy huge, you know, billion dollar, I'm sorry, billion uh, you know, downloads of the app.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then it kind of burns itself out after about 18 months, you know, 24 months.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so what's interesting about the dopamine system, it's adaptive, right?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we the same thing in drug addicts.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're taking cocaine at some level, you got to keep increasing your cocaine intake because your brain acclimates to this hit it's getting.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so the same thing, I think, with these experiences.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what the data look like neurologically is that people um like the new new thing, but not too new, right?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really evolving.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that from a business perspective puts a lot of pressure on us, right?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: We want to keep creating this great experience for you, but also evolving it so there's something new and exciting about doing this thing again.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so uh, I'll give you a concrete example in a second.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we want to quote keep them addicted or engaged in this experience, but we have a big prefrontal cortex.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And at some point I can go, I don't want to go to this anymore.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you a concrete example.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we measured immersion um at Disneyland.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: I live in Southern California near Disneyland.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what we found was that across uh, I don't know, a dozen rides we went on, um, they're like in the 98th percentile.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Disneyland is really, really, really good.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the I think the most surprising part.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Often the entrance to the ride, which can take a while, right?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's lots of people there, the entrance was more immersive to the brain than the ride itself.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: So this tells us about storytelling and construction and putting these little Easter eggs in and something for you to find.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been, because I live in South Lake California, I've been to Disneyland, I don't know, 80 times, maybe in my life.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've been there a lot.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I know the rides pretty well.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And still it was, and I was one of the subjects.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was very compelling to me.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we get to storytelling, we get to something a little bit unexpected, and that experience is different because we're different every time we have it.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we want to have this trade-off with giving you choice, but not coercing you.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: So as long as you have a chance to say no, I can create a great experience.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: And yet I can say, eh, for me personally, I'm kind of over Disneyland now.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: They've raised the prices through the roof.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's too many people.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've been there enough.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: I if I never go again, it's okay.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fabulous experience for people.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I have not been to Disney World very often.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe I'll do Disney World or something different.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I I've kind of reached my capacity on that experience.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And my kids are older, they don't want to go anymore.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you know what I mean?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I think, you know, we do want to be careful that we're not, this is like uh near IL's book hooked, right?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: That you know, companies are always putting these hooks in, you know and you have to.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: We want to have those customers return.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Very important.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: But again, you need to have the ability to say no, right?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: So um, and and and then finally, as I sort of suggested, but let me make clear people's people change, they age, they have different preferences.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and because of that, we're just gonna have people drop out of whatever customer experience they're, you know, we've designed for them just because they, you know, their life experiences change, or like me, they just they've had enough and they they get burnt out.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, not burnt out.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: They just they just have evolved into doing different things.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Did I answer your question well enough?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think I didn't.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think I I I got a quarter of it, and you got three quarters more you should follow up on.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, because I think it's very interesting that you've raised that the the hook model, right?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because uh when you really look at the hook model, you're basically saying action has a variable reward, right?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: But in the model, the action that you desire is a yes, and no does not have a variable reward and is not followed by an investment, correct?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: So the question then becomes if you had to flip it by saying that yes, you have a positive flow for a positive hook choice, and a negative uh if the if the customer makes no as a decision, how you know how does the model change where they're not rapidly affected, or their experience is not uh degraded, or if the services that the pro the company provides is not substandard, if a customer says, Hey, I'm not really looking into this, that you're really trying to upsell me on right now.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: How does that model change?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think it changes because it begins to branch, right?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to think about different opportunities for that customer who is not now using this this particular opportunity that they were hooked into, you know, for for some period of time.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it it really puts so much pressure on businesses to evolve their offerings within a realm, right?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to evolve them so far that you're you know kind of superficially mediocre at everything, but you want to evolve in the business lines that will continue to create value.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so uh from a business perspective, you're constantly chasing that new new experience.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very difficult.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but on the other hand, I think it's also important to realize that some you're not gonna have a customer for life necessarily.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Facebook you mentioned is a great example, in which you know everybody was on, and man, there are almost no young people using it, at least in the US.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, I think it's interesting, it's become much more of an older person product, where at first it was like college students, and the young people are maybe on Instagram or Twitter.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's okay, right?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Their product can evolve.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and Facebook, I mean, it's a huge company and they have more money than God, so they're super smart.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure they know what their core demographic is, but you know, they're not gonna get college students.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know anybody under 50 who uses Facebook.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: So so Paul, uh I'm going, I'm going to go back to one of the points that you raised on AI.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when I go back to companies today, most of the websites, most of the uh apps have these huge uh you know investments in chatbots, right?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Where uh they are continuously uh wanting to automate uh you know my uh customer service.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: And most often I find that uh you know uh they are standard automation and there is no connectivity to neuroscience, right?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh, you know, I there might be a wrong uh credit card statement that I received, but the chatbot never uh you know answers that question because it's a set of rule engines that have been built, right?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: So is there a is there a future for the merger of neuroscience and chatbots?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: And is there a direction that we see?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because most companies look at it as you know what, I don't need to have too many agents, so let's put a chatbot there.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let customers figure out because I want to save money.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, I'm unhappy, right?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: So is there a is there a divergence and do you see a convergence with neuroscience in the future?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's definitely converging.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, at least from from our uh company, immersion neuroscience, we have um call centers that use our technology to measure the emotional response that the call center agents are having.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And some of those have built pop-ups that guide the individuals to um understand the emotional state of the customer.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's interesting about immersion is it's contagious, right?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm having an amazing experience, generally you are too.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of having the customer be measured neurologically, the um customer service agent can be measured, whether in a store, on the phone.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a very small leap to capturing that data and the outcome from the customer's perspective and training AI to get better and better.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're very close to the uh the kind of Turing test type of example where I won't know if I'm talking to a real human or um you know, or a machine.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's a bad thing, right?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because humans get tired, they get cranky, you know, they all kinds of problems.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: But if I had a really good chat bot that could solve most of my problems, that'd be great.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and could do it with positive affect, with with sort of happiness.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as you know, you know, amazing amounts of data showing that just a happy, you know, cashier or customer service agent hugely impacts my view of that company, how much I buy.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's it's crazy amazing.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a client, we have a client in the luxury retail space, um, a very well-known brand that you would know.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they were able to, by measuring immersion of their salespeople, this is retail, uh clothing retail, um, they could predict with about 80% accuracy which customers were going to buy by how immersed the salesperson were in that interpersonal experience.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: So again, if I had enough data like that, then I could begin to change train a uh you know uh a machine learning algorithm to give me that same level of wow, great to see you! Welcome back, Swami, so nice to have you.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Little things using name, making eye contact.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, machines aren't going to make eye contact, but an avatar avatar could.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and also there's this uh familiarity effect.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Psychology is called the mirror exposure effect.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the more I see you, the more I like you in general, right?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: So some of those people I see a lot, then I really dislike them.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, mostly the more I see you.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so if I'm coming into an online store and I'm seeing that say I, the customer, am seeing that same avatar that knows my name, knows how many times I've been there.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Paul, welcome back.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Last time you were here, uh, you know, you were looking at shirts, and uh, would you like to see some of those again?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Man, that'd be great.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's just no human who can really do that with a couple of exceptions, right?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: So very high-end retail, you're in a database, and when you come in, they they you know, they try to recognize who that customer is if you're regular.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Four Seasons Hotel does a very good job at that when I've stayed there just a couple of times.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've had amazing experiences where they call my name, they know the last time I stayed, they know what my room preference is, right?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: They know so much about me.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's wonderful for me.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, this is awesome.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to go through my spiel.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a super tall person, so I said, Do I have a king-sized bed?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're like, hey, we've got the king bed ready for you, and uh, we know you prefer to be on an upper floor and whatever that is.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, that's awesome.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I just think you know, there are some things that machines are going to just do better than humans and certainly do better consistently.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not too worried about that, even though I am worried about the me being confused on whether this is a machine or a human.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that confusion, again, it's the whole reason we're crying at movies and you know those other things, is we kind of our our brains sort of get confused on, oh, Bambi's mother died, but my mother didn't die, right?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: I why would I be crying at a cartoon fake uh you know deer that got killed?
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really weird.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: So again, that reveals our deep social nature.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if I could have that powerful emotional experience when I walk into Gucci or the four seasons or whatever, um, that would be so great.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, imagine having a screen where you walk, let's say talk about retail.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: I walk in, I have a screen, and it does facial recognition, so it knows who I am.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Paul.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Gucci.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Last time you're here, we were looking at shoes.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Would you like to see those shoes again?
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Again, there's no human that has that much.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, maybe if he's fat, if I had facial recognition and I shot it to a human, and maybe the AI does the first couple of rounds and then the human comes in to sort of close the sale or to check in on me.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: We interview and learn from high performers so that you can apply these lessons on your journey to becoming the knowledge worker athlete you are meant to be.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: The Contraminds Podcast is available on all leading podcast players, and if you are interested in revisiting past episodes or taking a look at our show notes for this episode, please visit us at www.contraminds.com forward slash blog.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_02: And now, back to the show.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: So is there a case for therefore hybrid experiences?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think hybrid is the future for sure, just like we're seeing this with work.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say, um, what we're seeing around the world even pre-COVID was absolute labor shortages in almost every country.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so um, you know, the the even the developing countries near us, I mean high development, Mexico has had labor shortages pre-COVID, right?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and Americans think of Mexico as this high birth rate, but actually Mexico has had a quite a low birth rate for 30 years.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh is India getting to that point where is your birth rate slowing enough where you're starting to think about labor shortages?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we need machines.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't think uh I don't think our demographic dividend is uh is I think we probably will slow down a lot more later, I think.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's really how the data shows us.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: But clearly, uh uh, you know, the need for uh hybrid experiences, so which means that at some point in time, uh, you know, uh how do you how do you really measure this?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, you know, because there'll be millions of customers talking to chatbots, and you have something called uh you know neuroscience as a service, right?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, do how how do you connect that and can you tell uh tell us how have you built that platform for these millions of interactions?
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right, just just it's it's very interesting that you talk about hybrid experiences, and I'm looking at hybrid experiences as a systems problem, right?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, if hybrid experiences is the outcome you want, what's the system that's gonna deliver it?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, if you look at how technology has evolved, right, you you actually evolve from a state where uh a computer used to have only around 128 kb of memory, right, to multiple gigabytes and terabytes of memory today, right?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you moved from a computer occupying an entire room to running close to billion billion plus calculations per second uh on a microprocessor.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I was really looking at this from an evolutionary standpoint where you had computers, you had the internet, then you've sort of got a little bit of AI that's evolving.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: Again, that's a discussion because you don't know which version of AI is gonna get us that level of intelligence that we're looking at, right?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: And finally we have the internet of things, and I think the next step that's gonna get us to that hybrid experience is gonna be the neuroscience of things, right?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where the neuro the neuroscience as a service really comes in.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because imagine, like you said, you walk into a Gucci store, right?
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: The Gucci store knows that Paul has come in because his Apple Watch gets tagged on an RFID tracker somewhere at the entrance.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_02: They know it's Paul, and when they come in, they gave they go, Hi Paul, welcome back to Gucci.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, what would you like?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: And suddenly your experience is really, really personalized.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: So uh so would that be one way to look at merging complex marketing and design experiences with deep data-oriented insights based on the principles of neuroscience?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: I agree 100%.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and so the reason that customers would do that is because, as you said, you get customization at scale.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if I walk back into Gucci and I'm enabling my uh smartwatch to send data to the cloud on my physiologic state, that uh AI may know that I'm hungry or tired.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, how about coming in?
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Paul, welcome back to Gucci.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: How about a cup of coffee?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let's sit down and relax a little bit.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, that would be great.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some stores do that.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Luxury retail will offer you coffee or sometimes a glass of wine, which is really nice, or champagne.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but just to come in and have that be customized, or to look at my physiologics and go, looks like you might be in a rush today, right?
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have time?
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: Would you is there is there one thing that you really need?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because last time you looked at shoes and shirts and ties, right?
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh are those among those three things, should we just focus on one of those today?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: So again, a really good salesperson could do that.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: They can kind of read your body language, but again, we're imperfect at doing this.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I think customers will enable it.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we're back to Swami's question.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's and the way we've built neuroscience as a service platform is there's always an opt in.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's no surrepitous data collection.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like I'm pulling data without you knowing it from the smartwatch, and I'll explain to listeners how we did that in a moment.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I would do that because.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because I want to have a great experience and I want to have this company learn more about me so I can have consistently really good experiences.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I also will know objectively, unlike a subreport on a NPS or something, I'll actually know how great that experience was for me when it's over.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, man, that was awesome.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or that kind of was sucky.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I look at my immersion measure and go, oh yeah, that was a 33 out of 100.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: That was not so good.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: That was no wonder I wasn't so happy and whatever.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you can begin to learn about your own emotional states, which we don't have a lot of insight into.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: So again, going back one step, what we did over the last five years is take all this science from the lab, these giant expensive machines that are noisy, all kinds of wires.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we did a very careful mapping from the peripheral nervous system, from the particularly the nerves in the neck, cranial nerves, into what the brain is processing, um, capturing this neurologic state I've called immersion, which again is attention and emotional resonance.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: So can I use one bad word on here?
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is that okay?
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: So one of our customers called immersion the give a shit measure, which is kind of right, right?
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: How much do I really care about this?
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because my brain wants to idle most of the time.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if I can capture that, wow, this is great, which immersion does, then I've got it.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so we basically put all these algorithms in the cloud that let us, as you've said, pull data from a fitness sensor or an Apple Watch and then measure in real time the value your game brain is getting from this experience.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: And once I know that, then I know how to craft that experience for you as an individual.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think that is most effectively done at scale using an AI interface.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm learning a lot about you.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right now we have clients that use our platform and they're measuring again, everything from training to customer experiences to marketing to ads to movies.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the next phase is applying machine learning to that.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the kind of values I gave you for predicting uh you know what's what songs will be hits and what movies will be hits, those all offline, not in real time, apply machine learning to this immersion data, this high frequency data to get those predictive, uh, you know, high predictive accuracy.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: But once we can do this in real time, then I'm in the hybrid world in which I'm trying to create a great experience for you as an individual, not you as a collective.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think once we can do that, I'm gonna dig this experience.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know again what what I'm feeling that I may not even know, um, it would be fabulous.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: And here's, I want to fill up a Swami's question too, if I can take uh 90 more seconds.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Also, it's a prosthetic for us to learn about ourselves, our own emotional states, and those around us.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, in my imagined world, if my wife opts in to share her data with me, and when I come home one day from work and I'm tired and she seems cranky, and in my head I go, oh, this woman again.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: We've all done this, right?
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because we don't say it because we're nice people.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, uh, why am I here?
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just tired.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to put my feet up.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: But what if my phone, because I'm getting her data, goes, hey, your wife's having a really bad day.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: Pick up some flowers for her on the way home, or take her out to dinner, or just be aware.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she's really just unhappy.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your fault, it's nothing to do with you.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: She's just she's had a really tough day.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, man, your your your relationships will be so much better.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's an immersion plus AI application.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um we can almost do it now, actually, but uh it'd be better with AI.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: So just to help help the humans be happier.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, just to put a cap on that, most of my professional life has been developing knowledge and technologies to help people curate their lives for greater happiness.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that certainly applies in the business setting, but happiness times five, right?
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to be not just happy when you see me in my store or online.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to go, holy crap, this is the best thing ever.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love this place.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that love is, you know, uh corresponds very closely with immersion, right?
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's the value that the brain gets from a social experience.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: We call that love when it's a partner or a child, uh, but from the customer service service expressive uh sorry perspective, we often call that uh engagement, which is such a vague word that I don't, I just dislike it.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, neurologically, that seems to be immersion.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like I am sucked in this experience, I'm here, I'm present, I'm getting value from it, I'm digging it in every level, and I want to do it again.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so, again, good for the customer, good for the organization.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I would argue and have argued in this book I've come out in a couple months, it's good for society.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: When I have this peak experience, I'm happier.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that happiness has a halo effect.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Where now I'm just nicer to the other humans around me because I had such a great experience in a store or online, and I'm nicer to my spouse, and I'm nicer to my kids.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm building greater satisfaction in my life because I'm using that great um uh business experience that I have that someone created for me, and I'm carrying it over to the rest of my life.
• 49:13
  unknown: Right?
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Think about you guys.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: Remember um, I'm old enough.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: Remember like when the first Rocky movie came out, it was like, oh my God, I'm gonna work.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: You believe that movie, you were so pumped up, you know, like I'm gonna work out, it's gonna be awesome.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or the the new Top Gun movie, right?
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: So when the original movie uh came out, I was in college and in San Diego where they filmed that movie, and it was like insane.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like people are joining the Navy and everyone was gonna be a jet fighter, and you know, it was crazy from a movie.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fake movie, it's totally fake, right?
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: Just a fictional story.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that's a sense in which you know, having that profound, valuable experience neurologically does affect behavior.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and again, it could be positive or negative.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: The downside is you go to a story of a terrible experience, and the data show that one bad experience in retail, people almost like 80% of people go, I'm never going back there.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: Just because one customer service agent wasn't very nice to me, or I don't know, I didn't like them.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm done.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've shopped here for years, now I'm done.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Woo! That's tough.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: So again, once we have measures of people's neurologic state that they want to share, right?
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're going to get a better experience, and we can build that into a hybrid or in-person experience.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think the world could be a little better place with a caveat that we don't want to suck you into this experience that's so perfect and too valuable that you never come back in the real world.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: So sorry for the long uh dissertation there, but it was such a deep question.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it deserved a long answer.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely, Paul.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the question I have uh as a follow-up is uh does it have privacy issues?
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: And what do you think are the barriers for uh customer adoption?
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine uh, you know, the data that you're telling me my wife is in a bad mood, therefore I walk in, uh, you know, preempting, uh you know, uh it's almost like this uh intelligent dictionaries that I have right today.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: I man, allow me to write it, right?
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: Don't don't be so intelligent that make me an idiot.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: So where do you think is the real problem?
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: No, in fact, I I you know when you when you were talking about that optimal state of where the technology is allowing you to preempt things, I was just thinking something very similar to what is just asked, which is you know, uh back in the day before Spotify uh personalized playlists came, we would write the best songs for people to listen to.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_02: We would make mixtapes for people, right?
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh once Google Maps came, we never had to remember the routes to places.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: We would just turn maps on and we would go, right?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we would we used to remember people's phone numbers.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_02: Now we have contacts, we have WhatsApp.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_02: Now here's my question, okay.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: So when everything works great, it sounds amazing.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_02: Now imagine that there is a bug in this program.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, if I have a if I have a bug in a route direction or a navigation app, it's okay, it's solvable.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: But imagine if there is a bug that tells me that hey, my wife is absolutely awesome, you can go back home, open, open five, six bottles of beer, you know, go on the hammock, your wife's gonna get the barbecue ready and stuff like that.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, there's a bug where what data it's collected from her tells you the exact opposite.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then suddenly, just like how we have forgotten the routes to places, the the phone numbers for our friends, would we forget the way to make up with people and say that, hey, I'm sorry, hey, it's an issue with the technology, it's not my fault.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_02: How do you deal with that kind of a world then?
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's such a good question.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we actually published research on this some years ago looking at automation.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, when do people adopt automation?
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: And um one of the issues that concerns people automation is the lack of monitoring.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: So when we did experiments, we said, hey, this is a it's a task for you.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can get a helper algorithm, um, you can pay for it, it'll make you make the task easier, and you can earn some money if you do the task properly.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: If we said this algorithm's like 98% accurate, people just assume it's you know, 98% is perfect.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even 90% or 85%, they don't monitor it.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so we found is that you actually want to add a little noise into the system so you monitor.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that this gets back to also Swami's question.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that so the PII, you've got to own your own data.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing, right?
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, you might want to share it to companies to you know make your experience better, but you need to own the data yourself and decide who sees it.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first part.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and for our company, we have no personally identifiable information on our platform, zero.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can see your own data, but we all we do is aggregate the data, right?
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't know who you are.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: Very important.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think that the the example of your you're coming home with your spouse should be your wife might have had a bad day.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: You might want to do this, right?
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: We want you to monitor and continue to have these experiences.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: Having said that, there's uh an argument made by Stephen Pinker at Harvard that by reading literature, we became more empathic as a species because we started to experience other people's lives, right?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: So think of the um uh you know, the kind of um movies that have changed our lives, as I mentioned, the kind of literature you read, a book where you get insights into people's lives.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: So just having this tool that gets us out of our you know, tiny little brain that is just trying to keep us alive and conscious and you know, not tripping over our own feet, and having it help you guide you towards better personal experiences would be great.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so even in the extreme.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I use, say, immersion and or AI to train my customer service agents in person on the phone.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain is is um is laying down pathways that make that kind of positive interaction more likely in the future.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the term of art and our science is called long-term potentiation LTP.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, I set these default pathways because they're very metabolically efficient.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: So now I'm really nice to people all day at work.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: That may actually carry over to me being nicer to my family, to my roommates, to my friends.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm potentially creating a world of greater happiness, and that's really my hope.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, will that actually happen?
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think it it depends, but I think we do have to always, as you said, Big Nesh, we have to assume the machines are gonna make some errors.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and the reason we will never get 100% predictability and neurologically is that there's an underlying randomness in brain activity that's not completely understood, but probably has to do with housekeeping.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you've actually got to kind of keep the pathways open.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so you see this kind of randomness, background randomness, randomness in the brain, um, which means no matter how good I am at predicting what Swami is going to do tomorrow, uh there's gonna be, you know, there's gonna be some noise in that, in that prediction.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's never gonna be 100%.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so, and that's great.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: That makes life interesting.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: It makes us, again, monitor what the other humans are doing.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: So again, I've been married 26 years.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: I completely trust my wife.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if she comes home smelling like men's cologne, her hair's messed up, I gotta ask some questions, right?
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's never happened in 26 years, as far as I can tell, but I still should monitor her, right?
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: It would be crazy not to.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if I have a machine saying, uh, you know, hey, your wife just had the most extraordinary experience of her life, you know, two hours ago, and then she comes home looking all messed up, we should have a conversation about that, right?
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: That might be not so good.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or it could be that she went to uh Gucci and she bought a pair of shoes that she'd been dying to have for the last 10 years, and she finally said, I'm gonna treat myself to this amazing, I don't I don't know, any of my shoes, you know,$500 pair of ladies' uh high heels.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and it was an amazing experience at Gucci, and she walked out with those heels on and she felt great about herself, right?
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's and then I I come home and go, What the heck happened to you two hours ago?
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, I finally did it.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I decided to spend the 500 bucks and buy these crazy shoes.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Look how good my legs look, or whatever.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, holy crap, good for you.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: Love you, right?
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: So uh again, I think you know, um, there's no perfection in the world.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't think we're moving toward subject to even when I said about VR to a point where I'm the perfect human being, customer service experiences are perfect, every ad sells a zillion you know, units of that product.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're never gonna be there because people are, as we established earlier, people are weird, brains work differently, it's a bunch of randomness, um, and and also people change, right?
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: So um I I think uh I'm an optimist, if you can't tell.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I think people generally things get better and better.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think there's a lot of evidence for that.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that measuring immersion, measuring uh using machine learning to understand these data lead us to a happier, healthier society.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the trend we've seen for the last couple of hundred years.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I don't think there's a reason for that not to continue.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: Given Elon Musk's you know concern about AI taking over and the singularity, and you know, that's a different conversation.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a different conversation.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us a little bit about your uh new upcoming book, uh Paul.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: What are the things that are getting covered there?
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: What what is something that we can look up to as interesting concepts?
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Swami.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're very kind to ask that.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the book's called Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: It should be out in September 2022.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it is uh really deriving insights from about 50,000 brains that we've measured immersion in, everything from uh washing ads to uh live customer experiences to training to students uh in school.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so uh yeah, I think it it really uh again tries to reverse engineer that process.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you see enough of these uh of these uh experiences with neurologic data, then you can say, okay, well, what makes these experiences extraordinary?
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, no one wants to be married to an ordinary spouse, no one wants to have a blah customer service experience, no one wants to see a bad movie, and yet so much of that happens, maybe not the spouses, but you know, uh I live outside LA, 80% of Hollywood movies lose money, and that's been true for the last 30 years.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: How is that even possible?
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: Think of how many ads completely miss the mark.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: All these smart people, you know, creating advertising for stuff, and most of it fails.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that's the the lack of that is a lack of the right measurement, which is measuring these unconscious emotional responses.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm gonna message you, I should do it as well as possible.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that I developed in the book was a uh straightforward um five-stage um uh framework to uh persuade other people.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it has an acronym, CERTA, S-I-R-T-A, that stands for staging, immersion, relevance, target, and action.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: I won't go through all that, but it's a very systematic way to say each of these stages is necessary if I'm going to uh provoke you to take an action after a message or an experience.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so again, that's just you know, years in the trenches, just like you guys have been with your business, you know, years in the trenches doing this over and over and over.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then patterns starts to start to occur.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of crazy stories, uh, a lot of the um work we initial work we did to discover this neurologic state immersion was funded by the US military.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the book starts out with me uh getting my butt chewed out by a um um a member of a clandestine organization early on in the war on terror, uh, who wanted me to work a lot faster so they could get information from suspected terrorists.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: So um a lot of crazy things happen in the book.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so there's a lot of narrative in there, which I think is interesting, but also a lot of kind of do this thing, and every chapter ends with here's the five things you should have learned from this chapter.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: So try doing these things.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: So um I think it's gonna be fun to read, but also I think quite useful.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then lastly, even though it's written primarily for a business audience, if you're interested in human behavior, which I think all of us are ultimately, why are people so weird?
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's you know the secondary readership are gonna be people like you guys who are actually just super curious about humans.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, man, why are people so freaking weird?
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on with these humans?
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: And some so you're a little learn a little neuroscience along the way, which I hope makes it useful.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh Paul, what you're doing is actually uh applying your uh you know article where you talk about how the human brain responds to stories, but uh maybe that's what the book will contain, I presume.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I we're really looking forward uh to the book.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh I would like to uh move into some rapid fire questions.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my first question for you is uh what does it mean to you?
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's a rapid fire question.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think it's really um the satisfaction of doing something difficult but important and doing it in an ethical way with people that I care about.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_02: What are uh what are some of the books that have influenced you the most over the course of your life and career?
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, how much time do you have with that?
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um so many.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Zen and the Art of Marshall Maintenance, um by Persig, uh Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, Conciliance by Eo Wilson.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think the best business book I've ever read is The Experience Economy by uh Pine and Gilmore.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing book.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I'll I'll stop there.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: But um yeah, I read probably two to three books a week, so I'm just I grind them through.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's so much information.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh on audio, on double speed, you can go through a lot of books.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a tip for the listeners.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: Get your books on audio.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you're driving, when you're at the gym, whatever you're walking, you know, you can bang out information.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what would be uh your advice, Paul, to an 18-year-old who's in the university studying today?
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: The more technical skills you have, the more impact you can have um on the world and the more control you have in your life.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: So uh data analytics, math, computer science, uh you need all those things.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and know something about humans.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think the humanities give us the why, and the technical stuff gives us the what.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: And together those are a pretty powerful combination.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: Take a take an take a literature class, take a take a religion class, take a um, I don't know, psychology class, know something about the humans as well.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_02: If you could invite four guests for a dream dinner, who would they be and why?
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, good question.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I'm gonna include Elon in that, Elon Musk in my one of my dinner guests.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because he's I like that he's disinhibited.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I saw him speak um about six weeks ago at TED for an hour.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I like people who aren't are uh smart, but also are not um don't buffer themselves as much.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: He he turns off a lot of people because he just says what he thinks.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I find that really refreshing.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's see, three more choices.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: Can they be dead people or just have to be alive people?
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they can be anybody who you want.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm I'm a really big fan of Benjamin Franklin, uh, one of our founding fathers.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: Again, kind of disinhibited, a little bit of a wild man.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think he'd be great.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um try to think of the great people who would be so interesting.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, some of the great mathematicians.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a math guy at my core, so you know, Alan Turing would be amazing.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh mathematicians, people I haven't heard of.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: Leonard Euler, who is a German mathematician, probably one of the top five mathematicians in in history.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, isn't that terrible?
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting all these weird techie people.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and maybe some wonderful people, uh, the Dalai Lama.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've spent enough time with Tibetan monks uh and some of these really happy people.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew Ricard, I'm going through six people now.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew Ricard is uh is a neuroscientist, PhD and neuroscientist.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Science who studied with the Dalai Lama for 30 years to know him, uh, who I just met once and we had an intense, deep conversation, mind melt.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to spend some more time with Matthew Regard.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll stop there.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what is uh one best piece of advice you ever got in your life, Paul?
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I'm gonna give you the piece of advice that I have to explain.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the advice was from an investments class I took as an undergraduate, and the advice was pay yourself first.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now that sounds super selfish.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the the context of that was if you're investing, you have to always invest.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like uh dollar cost averaging, right?
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to like, hey, I'm not gonna invest well because of compound interest, right?
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_00: Compounding is a magical process in which, if you're consistent, you can actually almost anyone can actually become wealthy if you wait 30 years.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's the same thing of putting on your oxygen oxygen mask on the airplane before you help somebody else.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you are able to do what is necessary for you, that means you can share that with everybody else.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's not selfishness to want to do the best for yourself because it means as social creatures, we can do the best for those around us and we can bring all those together.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_00: So in my company, Emerging Neuroscience, I've had the pleasure of hiring four PhDs that trained in my academic lab, people that I love, I trust, I've known for you know half my life.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: What a pleasure that is to be able to build a company and hire your best friends.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's awesome.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: But if I hadn't taken the risk to start the company, put my own money into it, I could have never done that and hang out with these people that you know I truly am blessed to be around.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so yeah, pay yourself first, which again is not selfish to take care of others.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_02: What is something that you believe in that nobody else agrees with you on?
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's so many.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: I love to be wrong.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think being wrong is so valuable.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think we have to embrace stupidity.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: If if I make a mistake, it means I've learned something, right?
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so yeah, I think we should.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, my new mantra for building companies is I am stupid and the market is is smart.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always going to be wrong.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_00: I as an individual or maybe the small group of people in our company, but the market's always right, right?
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's crowdsourcing.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the crowd says.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: So um I love being wrong.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's great.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: We should embrace stupidity.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant, brilliant answer, Paul.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my last question is uh if you were to think of one guest that you would think uh contraminds should invite, who would that be and why?
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I I think it's very important to um for people on the planet to serve each other.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to be of service to you.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_00: Absolute best questions I think I've ever had uh in an interview.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you guys rock.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I'm completely biased by my own uh interests, um, but I'd be happy to connect you to um to Joe Pine, who wrote The Experience Economy, who's a very deep and intellectual thinker.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_00: He is uh he is a contramind.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh besides the books he's written.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's a very interesting guy.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was an engineer uh who went into basically using theater to create great customer experiences.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's a weird combo.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I'd be happy to connect you to Joe.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's see if I can do a second one off the top of my head.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I really, as I told you when we chat chatted before, I love the contra mind name.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_00: I love your focus.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's again, it's that's embracing stupidity.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_00: I want these contrary people.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'll think about that.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I say Joe Pine will be number one, um, but I um we'll we'll connect on email.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm happy to recommend some more who are contrary thinkers.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Again, Elon would be fine, but I have no way to get to him.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, thanks, Paul.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh the idea was really uh to get your sense of uh, you know, did we do a good job ourselves?
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Did we uh you know, were we stupid uh and ignorant to ask you these questions?
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's what I think the last question was all about.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_01: But uh it was a lovely conversation, some brilliant insights.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_01: It is uh it is not a linear path that you're talking about.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_01: When you want to come uh when you want to really talk about neuroscience, economics, uh connecting it to customer experience.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think what you're talking about, immersion, is probably something that we will see more of it in the future.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_01: It has given us a lot of uh food for thought and thanks a lot.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was an absolutely stimulating conversation.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one of the best I've ever had in my life.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are amazing.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_00: So um I'm truly at your service anytime.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the great invitation.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to this episode.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: For selected links and detailed show notes, visit www.contramines.com slash blog.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Follow Contraminds on social media and let us know who you would like to see next on the podcast.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you're listening to Contramines on Apple Podcasts, do share your comments and give us a rating.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_01: We are keen to know what you're thinking.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_01: ContraMinds is also on YouTube.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you're listening to the podcast on YouTube, hit the subscribe button and stay up to date on all our releases.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening and stay safe