YouTube Transcript: Why "Solutions" Fail | Dave Snowden
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Core Theme
The core theme is that effective societal change, particularly in addressing complex global crises like climate change, requires shifting focus from top-down, ideologically driven solutions to bottom-up, interaction-based approaches that resonate with people's daily lives and local realities.
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If you're educated, you're aware of the
problems the world is facing. You have
views about that. You stop listening to
the street stories. You think everything
is a rational, logical decision.
Actually, it isn't even for you, but you
think everybody else should be. So, the
solution to these problems is to tell
other people why they're wrong and why
they should think like you. And that
isn't going to work. You you've got to
find resonance points in people's
dayto-day lives which will allow them to
Hello and welcome to Planet Critical,
the podcast for a world in crisis. My
name is Rachel Donald. I'm a climate
corruption journalist and your host.
Every week I interview experts who are
battling to save our planet. My guests
are scientists, politicians, academics,
journalists, and activists. They explain
the complexities of the energy,
economic, political, and cultural crises
we face today, revealing what's really
going on and what they think needs to be
done. These are the stories of the big
picture. Go to planetcritical.com to
learn more and subscribe. My guest this
week is Dave Snowden. Dave is the
founder and the chief scientific officer
of the Sinifen company and the founder
and director of the Sinifen Center. His
work covers government and industry
looking at complex issues relating to
strategy and organizational
decisionmaking. In short, Dave is a
complexity scientist and that's what he
joins me today to discuss. We begin with
a conversation about complexity, what it
is, and how complexity science differs
from systems thinking. Dave then
explains the main fallacy within North
Atlantic, i.e. western climate thinking,
that we can change the world by deciding
what we need to do within a room and
deliver it to a planet full of 8 billion
people. Dave gets into the nitty-gritty
of why this approach obviously doesn't
work, explaining that we cannot change
people's minds, but we can change their
interactions. And it is only through
changing their interactions that people
will begin to reinterpret their stories.
This means that we can create the
starting conditions for societal change,
but we can't force it down people's
throats with good arguments, emotional
pleas, or and perhaps especially guilt
laden accusations. And the rest of the
episode is more of a conversation about
different things that work that can't
work. Uh what we've both seen from being
out in the field and working with
communities. I challenge some of the
things that Dave thinks we need to
employ and keep asking more and more
questions to get to the bottom of how it
is that we establish what to do together
and then how do we get about doing it. I
hope you all enjoy the episode. If you
do, please share it far and wide. And if
you're loving the show, become a patron
on Patreon or support Planet Critical
with a paid subscription at planetcritical.com.
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Critical community who are full of
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Planet Critical wouldn't exist without
the direct support of the amazing
community. Thank you so much to all of
you who keep the project going every
week. Dave, welcome to Planet Critical.
It is a pleasure to have you on the show.
show.
>> Pleasure to be here.
>> So, I've invited you on to demystify as
it were some of the big terms that float
around the poly crisis or the meta
crisis or however you want to define it.
And I think we should start with uh
possibly the most common which is
complexity which seems to get used as an
excuse or a reason or evidence for a lot
of why things go wrong and we can't make
sense of them. Um but it's a hard word
to make sense of. So could you start us
off there? What is complexity?
>> Yeah, it's probably worth starting by
the sort of classic comparison between
complex and complicated which a lot of
people see as synonyms. And a lot of
people particularly in the safety and
engineering communities just see complex
as a description for something which is
very very complicated which it isn't. So
the root word for complicated is
something which is folded
and something which can be folded could
be unfolded and folded again and doesn't
change in its nature. The root word for
complex is something which is entangled.
>> Everything is entangled with everything
else. And it's like I mean Alysia Kuraro
has a wonderful phrase for this. She
says a complex system is like bramble
bushes in a thicket.
>> And anybody who walks a lot knows that
you can't pull one branch without
something else hitting you. So I think
the key thing two or three things to
understand about complex systems. First
of all, complexity is a science. It's
not a way of thinking first. And there's
a big difference between systems
thinking and complexity science. And
probably the clue is in the second word. Mhm.
Mhm.
>> And complexity science originates in
mathematics, in biology, in chemistry
and physics. It doesn't and it has a
much more complex theory of information
than systems thinking which goes back to
Shannon and Ashby kin with computers and
everything else sort of data.
So for example, in human systems, we
pick a lot of signals from multiple
sources. Ferrronomes help determine
whether we trust somebody or not. It's
not simply a transactional type relationship.
relationship.
So a complex system is one in a human
complex system is one where everything
is entangled with everything else. The
only thing you know with absolute
certainty is that anything you do will
have unintended consequences. And that's
one key principle. The second is the
principle of emergence which is used by
lots of disciplines but has a very
specific meaning in complexity.
It's the property. It's not that the
properties of the whole are greater than
the properties of the parts. That's a
sort of mechanistic way of describing
it. It's as all of these things interact
with other things, properties emerge
from the interaction which can't be
interpreted or forecast from the
properties of the things which were
interacting and deliberately avoiding
that means that I can inherently not
tell you what will what the future will hold.
hold.
Basically the one thing we know with
absolute certainty about complexity is
that whatever happens will not be what I
forecast. Now at a macro level doesn't
mean that we can't for example forecast
the impact of climate change
but human reaction to that that's a
whole different cattle of fish because
you've got lots of human actors you've
got lots of variation in the system and
that's one of the areas we work. So
unintended consequences is one and
emerging properties is is a second. Um
the other is that there is actually a
science to all of this
and and a lot of people use complexity
as an excuse. They say it's complex
therefore we can't determine the future.
Well no you can't. But you can
understand the present and you can
understand what will not happen in the
future and you can understand what is
more likely to happen in the future. And
this is probably the most important
thing for this podcast. Once you've
mapped what the present is, you can
start to try and influence it. It's more
likely to develop in favorable
directions. But what you can't do is
>> What do you mean by decide what it
should be?
So one of one of the ways that you see
this and sorry I'm getting quite angry
about some of this these days a whole
body of moves for example on how we
handle and I don't buy meta crisis it's
a poly crisis
um the one ways we handle this is to
change how everybody thinks well that
isn't going to make any difference you
know gathering 8,000 middle class people
together to have a conversation how the
world would be better if everybody
thought the way they do isn't going to
change the world it's yeah
>> but that Is it actually changing how
everyone thinks? Sorry to interrupt, but
that that's a focus group or a
conference. That's not
>> that's my point. What is it's stating
how things should be. >> Okay.
>> Okay.
>> And then it's trying to close the gap.
It's saying if only everybody thought
like this world would be a better place.
>> First of all, that's not going to make
any difference. And secondly, it's a
form of what you know, Homer called
lotus eating. It's a withdrawal. You're
now with comfortable people who are
comfortable like you are. And therefore,
you can feel safe. Yeah.
>> And I said this at a conference recently
in Scandinavia. You couldn't say any of
these things if you went onto the
streets of the town outside.
>> And until you can have this conversation
on the streets of people's day-to-day
lives, you're not going to change the
way that people think about the world.
You've got to change what's called the substrate,
substrate,
the dispositional state of the
population. Yeah. And that doesn't
happen by people deciding how other
people should think, even if they're
right. I'm trying to say whether they're
right or wrong, but it's not the way you
achieve change. As it's an example with
the growth of populism, if you
and I just come back from Washington, I
might going back there in a couple of
weeks time and be doing work in Germany
lately. The reality is if if you're
educated, you're aware of the problems
the world is facing. You have views
about that. You stop listening to the
street stories. You think everything is
a rational, logical decision. Actually,
it isn't even for you, but you think
everybody else should be. So, the
solution to these problems is to tell
other people why they're wrong and why
they should think like you. And that
isn't going to work. You you've got to
find resonance points in people's
day-to-day lives which will allow them
to make those dispositional changes.
>> Who exactly are we talking about here? because
because
>> population at scale.
>> Okay. Well,
but I have seen people sort of attack,
if you will, this problem of of the
world and the state of the world and not
going down the route that you're saying.
And admittedly they are often they're
very often not from the west uh not
white um and not privileged have very
few resources to their name and they
take very very different routes when it
comes to actually sort of managing
problems if you will and envisioning
what could be and the thing that I
always find really interesting is that
contrary to the tendency of Brits in
this space or Americans in this space um
the people I've been working with in
Latin America focus on their space, not
the whole country, not the whole world.
They think about what what what do we
want to make in our corner of the world
>> and that's precisely the point I'm
making. Yeah. Although not directly
similar. So I've done a lot of work with
indigenous communities around the world
over the years. All right. They're
deeply scientific. They just don't use
North Atlantic scientific language. I
don't use western. It's North Atlantic.
We need to be more specific. and they
deal with day-to-day pragmatic issues or
problems. Yeah.
>> And that's my point about the
dispositional state. Yeah. If we're
trying to deal with climate change as a
macro problem is is a macro problem, but
until we make it a micro problem, still
people until people start to change at a
micro level, the positions aren't going
to be enable us to make the big changes anyway.
anyway.
>> And I wrote a blog post on this some
time ago called Little Acorns. Yeah.
which was about small sacrifices.
Until people realize the implication of
climate change for their village pond,
they won't support politicians who want
to make sacrifices at a local level. And
a lot of our work is how do we understand
understand
that micro dispositional state, the
street stories, the stories of the
school gate, the stories of the pub
after work because that's where change
will happen. It won't change in
privileged people talking about change.
>> That has a different role. Mhm. Do you
think that there's a generational
difference? Because the examples that
you just gave, the pub, the school
gates, the water cooler, these are
physical interactions. Whereas we have a
whole generation now of children,
teenagers, and young adults who do the
vast majority of their interactions
online now with one another
>> and that is a major problem. And I think
there's ways around that. The major
problem is that if you if you limit your
communication to text
then you are getting 95% of human sensory
sensory
>> um and also that's the point I mean this
is my long-term statement about AI the
danger isn't that AI will exceed us in
intelligence but we're dumbing down our
own capability
yeah to the point where it can I we're
meeting it halfway.
>> Mhm. So one of the ways if you want to
do this you've got to get people back in
we're talking about climate change
people have got to feel the country not
as a textbased transmission
but as something which is real to them
in their daytoday lives. Yeah. And I
think that is a problem for us at the moment.
moment.
>> And yet I'm also thinking of how
Israel's slaughter in Gaza has
galvanized and radicalized a huge number
of young people around the world no
matter their creed. And that's not
because they're there, but that's
because they've seen it and they've been
able to talk about it together and in
that way experience it together. So how
do we fit that into this?
>> And when they get on the streets and
when they protest about it and when they
go and try and do something, it's I grew
up in liberation theology, right? That's
my background and that's a sort of
similar context. So yes, you can use
electronic forms of communication. You
can pass messages around whether it's
the newspapers, whether it's television,
whether it's social media. The problem
is increasingly you can't trust what
comes out of social media and that's
going to become even more so as we go downstream
downstream
and so in the general population it's
kind of like well so what
yeah is very easy to create fraudulent
videos etc. trust goes down which
trust is is very much based on human
interaction. You can't have trust in a
third party social media type
environment though if people do that's
quite dangerous. So I think
let me give an illustration of some of
the work we're trying to do on this.
>> Sorry I'm sorry I'm going to have to
pause you because you haven't quite
answered my question. Um which is that
is there not a generational difference?
We are seeing young people interact
differently online. When pe young people
now search, for example, about
something, they're not going to Google
like my generation. They're going to Tik
Tok to see what their peers can explain
about a thing. So I would it does seem
that there's a pretty high level of
>> I'd be cautious about calling it trust.
But yes, if that's where they go for
communication, then that's where they
find themselves most comfortable. and
feeling most comfortable is not the same
thing as trust, I don't think.
>> Sure. Sure.
>> Um, and what I'm pointing out is that is
a real problem because it's very easy to
manipulate them in a Tik Tok
environment, whereas it isn't easy to
manipulate people if they have the
day-to-day encounters.
So, for example, if you want to counter populism,
populism,
>> you've got to get you've got to increase
empathy between people who in a Tik Tok
environment will think they should hate you.
>> Yes. Yeah. I follow that and I agree
with that. Um, I am also thinking though
about, you know, the the island that we
both hail from from the United Kingdom,
uh, being swept up in right-wing
populist rhetoric on the streets now,
including these protests. Um, no doubt
of which have been exacerbated, if you
will, by the kind of messaging that can
abound on the internet, but have also in
first of all been flamed by the lungs of
communication that have existed for a
long time. on newspapers.
>> Um, yes. So, they're more balanced than
what you actually see on social media. I
mean, if you look at what happened, I
mean, I was looking at some of the
conspiracy theories on the stabbing on
the train yesterday
and people have just they're still
running with the fact that two people
are arrested. They haven't really, you
refusing to accept the fact one person
wasn't. So, then it becomes two people
couldn't come. It must be a conspiracy.
Bang, bang, bang.
And I think that's the problem we're
having with internet communication. The
speed of communication and the speed of
interaction very very fast. Now there's
a good illustrating a friend of mine in
the Canadian Mount who's said this years
ago. He said it used to be that every
village had an idiot and it didn't
matter because people knew who the idiot
was. But now the idiots have banded
together on the internet to legitimize
idiocy. And I can get more
sophisticated. This is delusian
epistemology. So I tell a story. I
listen to stories I like. Those stories
gradually accumulate to the point where
they become what's called an assemblage
which has material reality. Then I can't
escape from those stories. This is
called territorialization. Again a big
area of artwork. So if the populists
have territorialized social media, which
they have, then it's almost impossible
for people to escape from those
assemblages, from those territories.
Yeah. And that's a big problem for us.
>> Again, let me give an illustrations
and this is kind of like the big project
we're involved in at the moment. We've
been specializing in using children as
ethographers through schools and sports clubs.
clubs.
>> And what is an ethnographer?
>> Somebody who goes into the community and
observes it and ask questions.
But rather than having somebody from
outside do that and it's probably one of
the only valid forms of research
actually in terms of reduces bias but it
requires normally in anthropology you
have a decade of deep immersion before
you can do it properly. So the thing we
said is why not make young people from
the community ethnographers to their own conditions.
conditions. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> Right. So young people asking questions
of older people from school. It's much
more effective than somebody coming in
from outside or from ping or a focus
group. So we use children at scale. They
can gather stories every week. We can
then look at patterns in those stories
algorithmically. And by the way, the key
thing we do is people interpret their
own story. It is not interpreted by an
algorithm or by an expert. And that's
called epistemic justice. Yeah. The
right to interpret your own experience.
>> Mhm. We can then look at patterns in
those stories which represent a highly
local but common problem between people
from different political backgrounds and
we can algorithmically allocate small
funding to them if they'll work together
on that problem. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> So what we're looking to do is to
increase the personal and the physical
empathy between people not by talking
about the bigger problem but by changing
the way they interact at a hyperlocal
level. And that's pure complexity
theory. If you want to change something,
you change interactions. You try and
change the people.
>> Now, that's based on work I did way back
in the 1970s. Was only part of the team
on this because I was in my early 20s.
And we were looking at peace and
reconciliation in Northern Ireland at
the height of the troubles. And there
were two approaches to this. One was
Cora, which would get everybody together
in a big room, and everybody agree that
by the end of the workshop, everybody
would agree they're going to be nice to
each other.
This was wonderfully satarized in
episode one of series two of Derry
girls, right? Where the Catholic girls
are forced into a peace and
reconciliation process with the
Protestant boys. It ends up with a pitch
battle over a misunderstanding. It's a
brilliant episode. We took a different
approach. We took two Catholics and one
Protestant or vice versa and we dumped
them into the slums of Latin America for
3 months
>> and they discovered pretty fast they had
more in common than they realized. and
they talked about their differences in
the context of working together without facilitation.
facilitation.
This is work we've been trying to carry
over. We carried over already into
refugees, for example, in Sweden, but
also into climate change. that I've
talked about with Tyson about creating a
peace and reconciliation process between
people and the planet
>> is basically creating hyper local
interactions between people and things
outside of the ideological context
because that will change the basically
the substrate the underlying attitudes.
So if people start to make sacrifices
consistently as a local level it will
enable politicians torifices at a
national level.
But until people see the need for that
sacrifice at scale,
politicians won't do it and the populace
will gain structure.
>> Sorry, that seems a bit of a jump for
me. Why? Just because people are making
sacrifices that politicians then will.
>> Oh, because if the people who vote for
them are actually making small
sacrifices around the environment in
their local communities, they've started
to understand the need for sacrifice. a
wonderful book by Terry Eaggleton on
this, by the way, called radical
sacrifice because in order to deal with
the poly crisis, people are going to
have to sacrifice a lot of the things
that they currently value.
>> No, I understand that. It just to me it
seems to erase the corporate capture
that we know um happens in government,
the affiliation between politicians and
industry um and certainly between
>> but that politics and economics.
>> Yep. Who gets
I mean okay yeah Europe at the moment is
probably the only bastion of democracy
still around and we're not very >> well
>> I can count some exceptions but all but
I'm talking about here is about the in
fact the the model of democracy we
normally talk about is a model of
democracy which evolved in Britain you
know post enlightenment what we're talking
talking
>> right that's the dominant one that's the
only form of doing democracy >> no
>> no
>> or or engagement at scale then there are
different ways around the world in terms
you do it but if you've got to vote
every four years which is where the with
the China most of the polluting nations
come from politicians will not do things
that actually basically involve
sacrifice unless people are prepared to
vote for it that's the key principle
>> I understand that I just think that it's
I do think it's more complex than that
given that essentially
governments get their power from from
state power. They represent state power.
State power gets their actual power from
energy dense fuels. Energy dense fuels
are sourced by having relationships with
corporations or other big states. And so
I I don't think that this is an
ideological problem of if they sacrifice
then we will sacrifice or vice versa.
>> It's not the total but equally it's not
it's equally not the case that is all
down to corporate greed and corporate
capture. No, but I'm not saying it's
about corporate greed or corporate
capture. I'm talking about the mech like
the mechanisms by which a state a nation
state runs which is that it needs an
energy input and a material input.
>> It is populist wouldn't be taken.
>> Why not?
>> Because populists rely on people voting
for them independently of that capital.
It's not necessarily in capital's
interest for populist over. >> Well,
>> Well,
>> we could go down a rat hole on this.
>> Well, no, but but but hang on. I I
disagree. I think is vastly with it.
Well, I suppose it depends, but I think
that there's been two capital orders
created essentially with the rise of
people like Donald Trump whereby there's
an exclusive capitalist cast class and
then the original capitalist class. And
so for Trump and his cronies, and this
is how crony capitalism works around the
world, it's very very beneficial to them
that he get in because he will be
funneling more money to them.
>> Not so much for traditional capital,
which is an interesting contrast. And
that's something we can exploit. But
Trump couldn't get in if he didn't get
voted for by effectively people on the
street. And what populists have always done?
done?
>> Yes, they do. That's Hitler did the
same. Lots of people do the same. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> The point is that as long as if people
had it's the classic error, and this is
I don't mean it quite the way I'm going
to say it. >> Okay.
>> Okay.
>> If you end up with a distressed white
workingclass male, you've got to >> Yes.
>> Yes.
>> Because that's what the populace will exploit.
exploit.
>> Yes. Of course.
>> Yeah. And that's what Trump did. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> So that's my point about you have to
change the way the thing works at a
local level so that those people aren't
in isolation.
They're not feeling distressed. All
right. They feel they understand the
problem in ways that they can understand
it. That's my point about the village pond.
pond.
>> Mhm. Mhm. The language of discourse has
got to change from the language of the
elite talking about meta crisis into the
language of people talking about their
local environment, the things that
matter to them, the things that work. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> And that's that's the kind of point I'm
making. Until that changes, populist
will be able to get a grip. M
>> I think the other thing
that there's again my pet pet problem at
the moment at the moment one of the
problems we got is those people are
aware of the climate crisis and
regrettably it's not the percentage it
needs to be are trying to solve the big
problem now there's lots of things we
could do on a contingency basis so for
example former chief scientist in the UK
at Cambridge has finished done the work
on what it would the basic science
behind refreezing the poles
>> is They're an engineering problem as
well as a science problem. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. I've been trying to persuade
people in two of the big oil companies
to let their engineers spend time on that.
that. >> Interesting.
>> Interesting.
>> Because actually that would give us more
time. And at the moment what we're doing
is there's this really strong manician
tendency in North Atlantic thinking is
we're demonizing people who need to be
star of the problem. I'm no fan of big
oil, but big oil has got to be part of
the solution as well as part of the
>> Well, I have to say I agree. I think we
should be taking money off of them,
taking expertise off them, inviting to
them to the table because they are far
too big uh and powerful to ignore. I'm
curious though about this. Essentially,
what you're talking about is
geoengineering with refreezing the
poles. Uh you said that with complexity
science essentially what will happen is
always something that you cannot
forecast. consequence.
>> Yeah, but the problem we got at the
moment is we're beyond the point in the
planet tipping points where we can avoid
geo re-engineering.
>> The problem is who does it? The thing
really scared is one of those hyper rich
people just decides to do it on their
own accord without control. Must can do
it tomorrow.
>> But how do we know
>> what would happen? How do we know that
refreezing the poles would be a good
thing and not that it would further tip
some other point of Earth's systems out
of balance?
>> Something else, we don't know. But we
got to do something. Ooh.
>> But if you there are some things which
are really high risk in terms of
probability. So for example, scattering
aluminium in the sky which
>> they say must could do tomorrow if you
fancy it. That's really high risk.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Refreezing the poles is a gradual
change. And again what complexity
teaches you I call this the Frozen 2 strategy.
strategy. >> Okay.
>> Okay.
>> Which is getting to cross. You watch
Frozen 2 yet?
>> Oh, you mean the cartoon? No, I haven't seen
seen
>> I mean movie
>> compacting movie. It's actually a really
good environmental movie is is Frozen 2
as well.
>> But in the middle of it, the the real
heroine of the the series is the young
sister without the magic sings all I can
do is do the next right.
>> That's complexity science.
>> So what you want to do is identify what
Stu Kman called the adjacent possibles.
Where the things we can go to which
might improve things, move there and
look again. So what you don't want on
geoengineering is something which is a
massive one-time magic solution
intervention because the unintended
consequence would be massive. You want
to start doing geo re-engineering which
is changes the environment. Let's give
you another
focusing on replaceable batteries is
more likely to get the old companies on
board than focusing on traditional batteries.
batteries. >> Why?
>> Why?
>> Because then effectively they can sell
the battery replacements and they sell fuel.
fuel.
>> Okay. If I can drive into a garage and a
machine replaces a battery in my car
replace with another, you've got a
better economic model for
>> right. Gotcha.
>> And this is the thing we're not thinking
about when because we're starting off
with these idealistic positions where we
should be. We're not saying not only
where are we but where is everybody else
and where are their adjacent possibles.
So you have to identify for corporate
greed what are their adjacent possibles?
What are their fears? What are their
concerns? You got to do it for people in
the streets worried about whether they
can feed their children a lot who do not
want to pay the amount of money they got
to pay for power and therefore we'll
accept the compromise.
>> I completely agree with your pragmatism
and your messaging around all of this.
The thing that I worry about say with
regards to geoengineering is that I'm
not sure what buying us more time would
achieve apart from more corporate
looting of the planet because it's been
how many years now of these COP
conferences um at least 30 years. There
was the Kyoto protocol in the '9s. It's
only gotten worse. There's been more
extraction, more pollution, more waste.
And so there's there's no reason I think
to believe that buying an extra five
years would then be the five years in
which suddenly the world turns around
and does something.
>> Not if we carry on the way we're
carrying on. I mean I I said at the time
of the Paris Accord this is the wrong
way to go forward. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> Because we're not making it a problem
for people. We're making it a problem
for them at their big meeting.
>> So how would refreezing the ice caps
make it a problem
>> and given it as when it what it would
do? it would give us some more time but
it starts to move into this and you say
the argument I'm making to two of the
big oil companies because they have
difficulty in retaining staff because of
what they do
>> is well let them spend you know one day
a week on this environmental project
which is for your benefit anyway
you've got to find out where people are
and make these small increments from
where they are next
the or international agreements really
had never meant anything anyway with you
really since the end of the first world
war those were the last ones to be very effective
effective
>> led by Lord George so fundamentally what
international agreements do is it means
people say well it's their problem it's
not my problem
>> that you've got to make it everybody's
problem at scale including the people
who work for those big companies and
I'll tell you now from work I've done
people who work for our companies do
worry about it yeah that an angle that's
a leverage point
and as long as you demonize them, the
oil companies will go in. There's a big
difference between European management
in oil companies and American management
in oil companies. Huge difference in
terms of their attitude. So again, if
you want to change things, you start
with where things are and you move to
the next next station. That means you've
got to map that at scale and that's what
we're doing with children.
And children are very effective this by
the way. you know, young children 16,
18, the Tik Tok generation, if you want
to put it, they can engage in this. The
if you don't know and brain plasticity,
the human brain tends to lock down early
20s female, mid20s.
You're working with people who are much
more open and we use a thing called the
transgenerational pair.
>> What's that?
>> So, we use okay, brain plasticity sort
of locks down 20s, right? It opens up
40s, 50s.
Um, so there's a thing I call the
grandparent syndrome in that
grandparents will tell things to
grandchildren and vice versa that
neither will tell to the middle generation.
generation.
And for the vast majority of our
history, grandparents have been the
primary child carers and the primary
teachers. So there's an evolutionary
argument on this. So and it's also
called young driver syndrome in that
young drivers see things that
experienced drivers don't.
So for example, we've done this in
Wales, we've done it in elsewhere. You
put teenagers together with people from
their grandparents generation, together
with somebody from the local authority
who can make things happen and you throw
those trios at solving problems in the community,
community,
right? Rather than have a grand plan
decided by government after 3 years of
research and a lot of publicity. So you
generate lots of micro changes at scale
based on local knowledge rather than
trying to generate the big issue. But
then you're building those bridges,
you're building those connections,
you're building that interaction, and
you're be building people's interaction
with the planet itself. You're moving
away from a purely virtual exchange to a
physical exchange.
>> Okay. So there's a lot of your work
essentially around then
what we're do what us as the middle
class talkie-talkie people are doing
wrong why it won't change anything and
why all of this has to come from the
ground up essentially
>> you know I'm a middle class talkie
person I do a lot of it I got no problem
with it it's a very good thing to do but
it's inadequate
>> you know to use Lincoln's phrase it's
late it's inadequate to the stormy
>> huge amount of our work is to remove
middle class expertise from the
situation and let the expertise grow
bottom up. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> And to learn to live with where people
are rather than where you would like
them to. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> That's a key principle. And if you look
at what happened with the populist
elections, you had major argument on
this in the states a few years ago that
got backed up by the Georgia Democrats
because they delivered Georgia for black
by going on the street and talking with
people, not by trying to out compete out
competing social media. M
>> and sorry about this but social media is
controlled by the big bad guys not by
the good guys.
>> Mhm. Mhm.
>> And don't assume it won't be used that way.
way.
So again it's this change the dynamics
right get the system to reveal what's
possible then then it's called the micro
nudge. I mean nudge economics has been
mostly discredited if you look at the
but micro nudge is very different. It's
getting people to do small things in the
present which shift things in the right direction.
direction.
And once you get a certain scale on
that, then the thing starts to rise exponentially.
exponentially. >> Exponentially.
>> Exponentially.
>> Oh yeah. It's called the button
threading problem.
>> Once you get a certain amount of
interaction change, the interaction
magnifies very quickly.
>> It works against us as well as for us.
If you look at the speed of the growth
of populism, that's an example of that
phenomena. So we need to understand the
science of that and work with it and
that's but the irony on this is and in a
meeting tomorrow about it as it happens
is you can get five or 10 million to get
a lot of people together to talk about
how things should be but you can't get 5
or 10 million to build something which
will work worldwide at a micro level
because people can't see the benefit.
They're so used to the talking therapy.
>> Yeah. Also on that though it's that you
cannot build a model that can be scaled
out worldwide because every single local
will be different and people will be
different and they will have different
needs and this is slightly what concerns
me about the leftist literature coming
out of the academy right now looking at
you know
>> yeah and it's like a one side
>> I was part I was part of that in the 70s
all right I mean we I used to cross the
wall in balloon every week eight weeks
until the start finally picked me up all
right and you'd ferocious arguments in
beer Kellers on the coup dam which was a
frontier street in those day
>> about which type of Marxist were you we
even had songs about
>> and that is a problem
>> actually that's not what I'm talking
about I'm talking about the fact that
there's a one-sizefits-all approach
coming out now from certain and
essentially modeling if you let me
finish modeling how we could live
sustainably 10 billion people on the
planet or 15 billion people on the
planet and this is what every single
person will have access to and whilst
it's good to show that we have adequate
resources I I think it's very North
Atlantic to presume that everyone will
have the exact same needs as dictated
from this side of the world
>> and that was my point in the 70s we were
having a fight about whose view of what
that future should be and I can see the
same now >> right
>> right
>> and the reality is situations will be
very different
education is more or less a universal
which is why we go through sp school
sports clubs are really good as
>> they get to people other systems won't
and to start to find the solutions which
will work. Then just use small
investments to magnify. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> And again that's that's a pure
complexity science approach until the
dispositional system changes what are
called pervert assemblies. Perversion in
theian sense in the sexual sense. Um,
sorry, I just thought I'd make that
clear is that basically pervert
assemblies will dominate because the
energy cost of staying in that assembly
is less than the energy cost of
>> and and what what is a can you define
that in the Lanian sense?
>> Yeah. So the famous thing on like there
was a good example right friend of mine
is good the Lania society gave an
example on this. You remember that
conservative politician who sued the
Guardian for liel on the on the last day
of the trial? A receipt was found in
Paris which proved he'd lied all the way
through the trial and he went to prison. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> And my friend phoned me up after that
and she said, "I guarantee you within
the next year that he will find God."
>> Oh, interesting.
>> Because she said it's a perverse we
the only reason for him to go to prison
is God selected him to go and convert
prisoners. And she was absolutely right.
That's called that's a type of
perversion where whatever happens gets
reinterpreted to fit what you actually
need. Yeah. Again, this is what Deloo
talks about territorialization. And our
work is to say that delusion assemblages
are the same things as what's called a
strange attractor in
which is a pattern which forms which is
difficult to escape.
Now one of the ways you've de
territorial is to reduce the granularity.
granularity.
So small things can reassemble in novel
ways big things can't reassemble. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> One of the ways you rid of prejudice is
actually increase interaction at a local
level between people from different backgrounds.
backgrounds. >> Yes.
>> Yes.
>> I find the green solutions are the way
you derritorialize and that's what we're
doing with the children project.
>> Have you heard patterns? Have you heard
of um Ambition Lawrence Western?
I don't
>> think so.
>> So, it's it's an amazing project and I'd
encourage you to look into it because
it's doing everything that you're
saying. It's one of the most deprived
areas in the UK just outside of Bristol.
Um and they lost everything in a really
short period of time. They lost their
local supermarket. They lost their local
um library. They everything. um and they
realized that they were going to have to
do something about this themselves
essentially rather than be waiting to be
saved. And so a small group of them got
together in the pub and then went and
knocked on every single door in the
neighborhood and asked three questions.
Uh what do you like about Lawrence
Western? What don't you like? And what
do you think could be better? And from
there they made a plan for the
neighborhood. and they have just done
the right thing at every step by doing
these sort of mass surveys and they have
now they now own the largest onland wind
turbine in the UK. Uh they've got a
supermarket back in town at really
really cheap prices. They are
reinsulating their homes. I believe
they're building another 3,000 new
energy efficient homes for low-income
households in the area. It's
extraordinary and they have done it all
themselves just by talking to each other.
other.
>> I mean that's really powerful and you
can see the same thing with say with the
cooperative movement in northern the
context stimulates people to do things
differently. Then it becomes its own assembly.
assembly. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> But the big mistake people make and it's
a northern mistake is to assume they can
replicate the outcome of an emission
process rather than the stunting conditions.
conditions.
>> Okay. Go on.
>> And that's the point. So what they did
in Bristol, you can't necessarily do
somewhere else. Again, what we're trying
to do, and you can't do it with curation
either. This is a massive problem with
people's use of narrative. The experts
want to curate them.
>> In Bristol, they created their own
stories. That's critical. That's called epidemic.
epidemic.
to do this at scale around the world.
That's what we're working on because
there are lots of examples where around
the world where communities have done
something and made a difference. But
there aren't enough of them to really
change the overall study. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> And so what we're trying to say is how
do you create conditions in which there
will be more and more cases like the
Bristol cases because they arise because
you've created the right infrastructure,
the right substrate. One key principles
in complexity is that people resp
complex system responds to things which
are proximate not things which are different.
different.
People actually did lockdown during
COVID because the threat was proximate
but they won't accept a less effective
climate change because the threat is distant.
distant. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> So people don't respond to things which
are distant. They respond to things
which are immediate. Uh-huh.
>> And those are where the cases come from.
>> So that's a problem. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> Um if you look at bees swarming, this is
the latest thing we've been working on,
then interestingly insect behavior to
migration happens and novel solutions
are found because they don't have a
direct intelligence.
So when the bees temperature reaches a
certain level and high, the bees will
hatch out a new queen. They'll form a
swarm. All the individual bees go and
try and find a location and then they
come back to the swarm and they do
what's called the waggle dance which is
a figure of eight dance on the swarm in
which the plane the angle of the plane
of the dance to the sun says where the
location is and the intensity of dance
says actually how good it is.
>> Oh wow.
>> And some bees at random disrupt the
dance of other bees which if you know
your statistics is really important.
Then two or three days afterwards the
whole swarm goes to a new location. It's
always the best of all the ones that
they've actually invested
fail that's actually been researched.
Now we're now working on that and we're
hoping to do an experiment in a city
before too much long. So we can present
a problem to a thousands or millions of
people. we can get them all to interpret
that problem not in terms of solution
because what you're trying to understand
is people's aptitudes and beliefs about
how they should be not the specific solution.
solution.
We can then go through multiple
iterations equivalent to the wagle dance
until we know what consensus is possible
and we know what that might be.
We reckon we can do that in two or
three. Now that's a radically different
approach to things like systems of assemblies
assemblies
because it allows things to move very
quickly so that you can actually move to
reinforce things which are moving in the
right direction and that's the sort of
things we're going to have to start
thinking about now because we need much
faster feedback loops.
>> But what will the
>> less facilitation?
>> But what will the outcomes of that be?
If you're asking a million people in a
city, what is it to do? Is it to figure
out what the city needs? now is to
figure out people's attitudes and
beliefs and what they value and what
they don't. So I'll give you an
illustration of a failed project.
>> So when Obama got elected to the White
House, I got dragged in. I'm sorry. I
worked with quite a few interesting
people in Washington, both Democrat and
Republican, and they're all evil because
you're all there evil when you're that
level of government. So I got hyped in
and Obama had this bright idea by which
he would go to the whole population of
the United States and they would all
come up with ideas and the best would be
funded and we said that's a disaster
waiting to you shouldn't do >> why
>> why
>> well well they did it all right then
they had more ideas than they could fund
so they set up another system to decide
which were the best ones on the voters
then the lobby industry got hold of that
and they ended up with 90% not getting
funded and totally pissed off with the Mhm.
Mhm.
>> And nothing really changed. We had a
different approach. Well, why don't we
get the schools to gather the stories
that look at the attitudes. Then we run
initiatives in where we know that
they'll be supported by those attitudes
which we know are more likely to succeed
to change things. You do is you use your
limited resource or the wider thing. If
you can actually get people together and
you can do something small, you'll get
some funding. Yeah. is you've got to
actually start with those underlying
attitudes, beliefs, and dispositional
states, not with solutions. They're
working on this on citizen juries
because people in the world go from
citizen. It's better to downvote your
competitor than to actually say what is the
the
>> why think because you're more likely to
win your project, >> right?
>> right?
>> People are canny.
Anything explicit will be gained.
And look at the way citizen assemblies
were used by the British government on
climate change. They held them to tick a
box, but it hasn't made any difference.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um I
want I don't understand exactly why that
idea of Obamas did fail. Um because I'm
thinking of the a similar example in
Taiwan during CO in which they set up
this alternative government web page.
actually it was set up by hackers
originally and then the government
decided it was a great idea and did the
same um and people could send in ideas
about how to manage the pandemic and
manage um the the response to it
essentially and lots of these ideas were
taken up um and implemented and Taiwan
came out far ahead of the curve when it
came to managing the pandemic
>> but that's not the same thing as the
Obama thing so people are coming up with
ideas if your idea gets picked up you
feel good about it in this case it was
proposing in projects which required
created the problem
because it meant that there were too
many to be actually funded and what the
Taiwan thing is ideas at the much lower
level of gran
is also one of the interesting features
of complexity science all right which is
a biological process called exception >> no
>> no
>> it's critical for anybody in climate
change to study earth
dinosaurs feathers and we I know that
all dinosaurs have feathers, which is
cute, and they were very colorful.
So, they evolved obviously for sexual
display. The only reason for lots of
colored feathers is sexual display. One
type of dinosaur evolved over time, a
sort of skin flap under its arms so it
could better display its colorful
feathers. And when those dinosaurs ran
very quickly to escape predators, they
started to glide. And that's how we got flight.
flight. >> Right?
>> Right?
If dinosaurs had thrown themselves off
cliffs in the hope of evolving feathers
before they hit the ground, it wouldn't
work. His go's works. Acceptation is the
biological process by which a trait
which evolves for one function and the
conditions of stress it doesn't adapt.
It accepts for something completely different.
different.
>> Okay. So the betarabalam at the base of
your brain evolved in higher rates to
manipulate muscles in fingers and you
can see the reason for that to better
get food. It acts in humans to manage
grammar in human language. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> Grammar is far too complex a thing to
just evolve in a linear way. It requires
this nonlinear lateral. It's called
radical repurposing in the euphemism.
>> Mhm. Yeah, in technology terms, when
somebody realized the significance of a
chocolate bar melting in their pocket in 1945,
1945,
when they were maintaining the magneto
of a radar machine, they then put a
metal box around the mag. We got
microwave ovens. >> Okay.
>> Okay.
>> The huge history of human technology is
adaptive, not adaptive. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
We know that art either comes before or
in parallel with human language in
evolutionary terms.
>> Do we for sure?
>> Yeah. From the fossil record. The only
argument is does it come first or not?
And I think it comes before language.
Other people would say afterwards, but
it's really part of the early language
development. A huge amount of our words
abstract concepts rather than physical things.
things.
And we think one of the reasons for that
is actually abstraction is the way that
you see novel patterns. It also makes
you prone to conspiracy theories. It's
called abductive logic if you want to go
into philosophy. So what art does is it
takes you away from the material world.
So you see things differently. And you
can see that in dance, you can see it in
art, music and everything else. What
that does in humans, it makes us hugely
adaptive because we see these novel connections.
connections.
One of the things I was talking about
recently which we made a project on
which we'll call the swords and
plowshares projects
right you know they shall turn their
swords into plow shares so the massive
investment in of technology into
military we need to make that investment
such for technologies which could be
used for peace as well as for war
>> actually military doctrine is going
towards at the moment anyway
>> is it
>> aircraft car an aircraft carrier for the
compared with what he is elsewhere. So
military technologies go into this more
finely great level.
>> Sorry. And how can drones be used for
peace as well?
>> Well, dr they used for farming, low
impact farming. >> Okay.
>> Okay. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. >> Okay.
>> Okay.
>> We got to do is to find ways in which
existing technologies can be repurposed
to help us on climate change. Haven't
got time to invent the primary ones. You
can see this in some the battery
development. getting batteries to the
point where you can literally plug them
in and out of is pretty close.
>> But we're not working at scale to say
what technologies are we developing
which can actually be used in radically
different ways not for what they were
purposed. We rely on accidental discovery.
discovery.
Most drug development is based on
accidentally noticing side effects
>> and we've only recently started to try
and capture side effects. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
We rely on medical staff to spot the
side effect. Some of our work is to get
patients to report their own side effect.
effect.
Yeah. I call this small notice. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> You got to find ways in which people
notice anomalies very quickly so that
they can repurpose. And I'll give you an
example. This was a commercial project
and we were working with one of the big
lighting companies
and they wanted to have lights to light
gardens. Yeah, that's how people used
it. But they actually thought
commercially if people use lights, use
rocks and flowers as a garden feature,
it would be a whole new market.
So we gathered stories about people's
gardens, take a picture of a garden you
like. And the thing we developed a long
time ago is called high abstraction metadata,
metadata,
which uses abstract language or symbols.
So you don't not unlike a questionnaire,
you don't know what the purpose of the
interpretation is. That's deliberate.
And then we took all of the technologies
they had interpreted into the same
framework. Can we match the metadata
structures to them and said why are
these consumer stories linked with these technologies?
technologies?
And that stimulated people to think it
ended up with a product which I appalled
to be honest or this plastic rock which
changes lury primary colors based on
water flow and human w proximity. It's
totally tech
but it's entirely based in a technology
originally designed to handle urine
saturated staircases in a football stadium.
stadium.
>> Okay. Okay.
>> That's and that's working at what we
call acceptation at scale and that's the
other big project I think we need to
start to work on is how do we find the
technologies which we are already
capable of
>> which can be reused for novel purposes.
I've been in the Ukraine and going back
read that's what they're doing. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> It's like your Bristol case where human
beings get hugely stressed they get
hugely inventive and they find solutions
with climate change by the time we get
stressed enough it's going to be too
>> how do we create those micro stresses
and those micro opportunities now I
think is key. H that's a very sort of a
grim picture of
human advancement. I don't really want
to use that term or progress, but this
idea that it's it's under stress uh that
we come up with with ways to
>> regrettably it's true. We we invent more
things during wartime than we do during
peace time.
uh when we let people go across the
Atlantic and accepted 80% casualty
rates, people discovered things they
didn't do before.
What we're saying is that this I'm a
Catholic, right? So to give up hope is
is a mortal sin. But it doesn't require
me to be optimistic. M
>> and I think what we need in the
environmental movement is a lot less of
this wild optimism and this this
ideological approaches and far more deep pragmat
pragmat
about working with how things are and
the human condition is such we respond
to proximity we invent more under
stress. That's what we are as a species.
So let's work with it rather than try
and pretend it's not not the case. I
>> I agree with you about the wild
optimism. I have to say though, some of
the things that you've said to me sound
like wild optimism, like with regards to
um co-opting military technologies or or
even the idea of replaceable batteries
being that which the way in which we get
the oil companies on board because if
when I speak to geologists, they say,
well, we just don't have enough
resources essentially to ensure that
everybody gets a car to replace the car
industry with electric cars. we are
going to have to look to massively
reduce the amount of materials that
we're consuming and the energy that
we're consuming to do it with.
>> So I'm giving that as an example, right?
That's my point of adaptation. We're
going to have to find completely novel
ways of doing things.
>> Ironically, one of the things that big
tech is doing by driving these massive
technology, you know, the huge energy things
things
>> at massive cost is we're finding new
ways to provide energy a lot cheaper.
Yeah. And that is the cost of that is
very high. But there's some good stuff
coming out of it which we need to recognize.
recognize.
>> Now my point is this that you're not you
can't start the enlightenment approach
and that's a problem with in fact
thinking. If only everybody had the
right education and the right attitude
they would make the right decisions and
if only we had a rational. It's not like
that. We actually need to do is to find
things we're already very good at and
find new ways to use them. And that
includes social processes
and we need more ideas to spread
horizontally. So for example, in some of
the work we've done using chunken as
capture. Yeah. An idea about a farming
innovation in Colombia can move
horizontally to Africa without the need
for mediation by a development agent. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> And we're not we're using technology for entertainment
entertainment
or to connect people in perverted ways
because that's what technology does. It
doesn't connect people in good ways.
concentrate these rankings of evil, you
know, buggies. We're not using it to
actually connect or distribute things on
a horizontal >> data.
>> data.
And I'm hopeful because there are new
ways of doing things. Yeah, I'm
pessimistic because
guys who couldn't care less about the
planet to doing what they want to do.
And the pair want everybody to be like
them before change will happen.
>> So, how would you sum up, Dave? Why why
is the world in crisis?
Because we are what we are as a species.
Because things grew at the pace they
did. And I'm not idealistic about
indigenous communities because if they
got power before they'd just be the same
as us. All right. Human beings. There is
one thing I say to let me this is the
the f recent work on
on um anthropology which came out is the
evidence is growing that human beings
corporate competed in summer and
cooperated in winter.
I've I've heard I've heard that in
certain places around the world, not all
places because not all places have
summer and winter obviously
>> that but this it gives us a model. All
right. So the reason for monument
building is fundamentally you don't get
people to work together when they're conflicting
conflicting
because you tell them and have a
workshop and tell them how they should
be close to each other. You get make
them move massive bloody stones around
That's what we're building on on these
concepts like if you get people to work
together on something Yeah.
>> then they will see the other person as a
human being.
>> Think you could almost say that
capitalism works in summer and socialism
works in winter.
>> To mistake it, winter is coming.
>> Well, it does. If you got infinitely
available resource and no impact, then
you can have competition. That's how we grew.
grew.
>> But that's not the world that we live
in. So we need we need the winter thing
which is cooperation and cooperation
will come by small groups of people
working together and things which they
already agree are important
>> rather than things that the middle class
elite think they think are important.
>> Okay Dave this has been very
interesting. My final question for you
is who would you like to platform? >> Oh
>> Oh
I think there's a couple of people I've
looked at. One is Alysia Gerard. No,
No,
>> she's very good.
>> The other is to be honest two or three
members of my team because they do most
of this work and yeah, they're young
women in their 30s, PhDs and bastard's
degrees in anthropology. They're deeply
rooted in practice and they've got sound
theories. Getting two or three of them
on together would be interesting.
>> Okay, great. We'll look into that. Dave,
thank you very much for your time today.
This is great. If you want to learn
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