– How happy are you with the time that you spend on Khan Academy
Well, if your goal is to help them finish a lesson and reach a goal that they themselves endorse, then that’s just good psychology, and I’m sure you have all kinds of points and rewards built, and that’s good psychology. It’s when you’re trying to undercut their own resolutions and trying to keep them on even longer than they’d like to be on. So if you look at the regret factor, how much are you… How happy are you with the time that you spend on Khan Academy? I would guess, excuse me. Hello.
– [Child] (Indinstinct).
– Say hello to the live audience.
– Hello, hey, okay.
– Hello So, I would guess that if you ask kids, how happy are you with time? Do you wish you spend… do you feel like you spent too much time on Khan Academy? Well, okay, If the parents were forcing them, maybe they’ll say it’s too much, but if it’s self-driven, they’d be happy with it.
– Yeah, no, I mean these conversations, we could talk for several hours, and hopefully, we can have you back on ’cause each of these threads, I think we can double and triple and quadruple click on, maybe just to kind of finish up maybe on a positive note, I know you’re above and beyond your academic research and your writing you’re involved in trying to change maybe at least not only observed, but maybe deep polarized society. We have this question from Facebook, Cathy Gifford Grans, what positive actions can individuals take to mitigate some of the negative impact of increasing polarization? So, yeah, what should we do collectively or individually?
– Oh, good. Thank you. Thank you, Cathy, for that question. So a lot of the big changes are gonna be systemic changes in elections and media and all sorts of things, but all of us as individuals, all of us are caught up in a system that makes us hyper moralize. And so to go back to the happiness hypothesis, one of the great truths is that we’re too judgmental. Is that.. Here let me see actually, wait, I actually have some quotes here. Let’s see. So this is something you hear from all over, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” Buddhists says, “Hatred never ends through hatred by love alone; does it end.” Sengstan says, “When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.”
We are so judgmental, and we also have the capacity to understand people. And when we do that, we lose some of our anger, and we can talk to them. So what I would is everybody realize we’re caught up in endless streams of outrage, and you as an individual can step out of it. Can reach out to people, can try to understand them. I recommend, especially the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It’ll give you almost a social superpower. You have the capacity to actually persuade people to actually connect with people. And social media pulls us into this conflict mindset, but you’ll be much more successful in life. If you try to understand people, persuade them, and learn to work with them. At very least it’ll help you in your own marriage and with your own children.
– And related to that, I know we’re already over time, but there’s another really good question. It also will help tie a bow on this. There’s a question from Facebook, John Hepworth, is there a way to detoxify social media? You’re having these debates. I know Facebook is struggling. Do you take off certain posts? And even if they’re from the president or not, and there’s really kind of a no-win situation, you’re gonna make someone upset, and then there’s free speech rights, but then there’s the page, there’s all these things. What would you do if you were Mark Zuckerberg, would you edit speech? Would you change the platform in some way to make it less toxic or to detoxify it?
– Yes, I think, yes. I think it’s essential that we make the platforms less toxic. There was a report in the Wall Street Journal a month ago about how Facebook had. They had studied polarization. They had thought about ways to reduce the degree to which it exacerbates polarization, and they dropped it. So I think Facebook, there’s a lot of responsibility here. There’s a lot more that they could be doing. Twitter has hardly any social psychologist on its staff. I think Twitter needs to really start studying these issues. They’ve taken a couple of steps here and there. I have an article in the Atlantic with Tobias Rose Stockwell last November, in which we laid out a few steps that could be done. One is to add friction here and there when you’re about to post something that seems to be particularly aggressive or toxic.
You can add little bits of friction, but that’s a small thing. More algorithm accountability. And the algorithm… Most people are pretty reasonable. This is wherever I go. Most people are pretty reasonable, but the algorithms give much more voice to the people at the extremes that people are not reasonable ’cause they generate engagement. We need to understand those algorithms, and there needs to be some public comment on it, some way to change the algorithms. I think the biggest bang is going to come when we find ways not to have to go after each individual post but to reward users who are civil and show some nuance and some constructiveness. And so, if I could, mark people who I think are particularly or not me marking. If if there were ways to code for integrative complexity or civility or constructiveness, if the platforms could code for things so that I could set, “You know what, I don’t want anybody who scored score zero. I don’t want trolls who just their content is very predictable. I want to cut them out so that they don’t see me. I don’t see them.” We would all have a much, much better life on social media. So I think this is one of the trends. If this keeps going on, I think our public square, our ability to talk to each other, is in big trouble. I think we’re gonna have to have major reforms to social media that makes it less nasty less, conspiracy generating, less outrage generating.
– Hey, one question, and I know I keep asking questions over time, but I mean, it sounds like some of these reforms would just be bad business for these comp ’cause. Obviously, it’s oftentimes the more extreme statements the things that are generating outrage that get you sucked in that make you wanna comment that make you click on something. And it’s not the social media, as you mentioned, our mainstream media or TV media, or print media, they’ve also discovered this business model.
– That’s right. Yes. As many have commented, the business model is such that we are not the customers, it’s the advertisers who are the customers, where the tuna fish that gets hooked on the hook and delivered to the customers in a sense. So yes, the business model will have to change ultimately, but I would put it this way. So I teach a course at NYU Stern on professional responsibility. It’s our ethics course. And one of the things that becomes clear when you look at all these cases is that in the short run, cheating often pays, but in the long run, ethics generally does pay. And so, in the long run, if people really hate Facebook and the more, we’re seeing that this month, boycotts can be extremely costly. And if there’s all kinds of people wanna boycott something, well, if someone comes up with a better product that is not as tough, that does not lead to such toxicity. Facebook would lose market share. So, in the long run, I think ethics pays. And also, most of the people I met in Silicon Valley it’s full of idealistic people who really think or want to believe that they’re making the world better. So I am hopeful that some big changes will happen, but big changes have to happen.
– Yeah. Well, Jonathan, you’ve given us so much to think about. I encourage everyone to take a look at all of Jonathan’s writing. You said, the coddling.com.
– You could go to the coddling.com, yeah, you can get everywhere else from there.
– To get some more data. But, Jonathan, thank you so much. This was extremely insightful. And you’ve given me a lot to think about.
– Great. My pleasure, Sal, thanks for all that you and your team do to educate the world. – —
– Appreciate it, all right. So thanks, everyone, for joining as always these conversations. I don’t know. I reached out to him, saying, “Oh yeah, I got maybe 10 minutes worth of questions.” And then we realized 40 minutes go by. So thanks for joining as you saw Jonathan fascinating, his research. I can spend several hours on every one of those topics we talked about. But thanks for joining this week. And I think we’re off to… Well, actually, I’m not gonna say that. I think we’re off tomorrow, but we will see. But I will see you at the next live stream. See you then.