unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

We use evidence in many areas of our world: courtrooms, scientific laboratories, and legislative bodies that create policies. But the evidence in these different arenas is used in very different ways. For example, how lawyers present evidence in a courtroom varies from how historians use evidence to write about past events. University of Virginia law professor Frederick Schauer joins Greg to talk about the different ways we use evidence and how in some situations, we are too rigid and, in other ways, too lax when it comes to evidence. His new book, The Proof, dives into the topic of evidence and how it’s used across our society. He also shares some insights from his older book, Thinking Like A Lawyer, which lays out how people outside of the legal profession can adopt some of the mindsets lawyers do (like cross-examining ideas we already believe and questioning people we tend to automatically trust). Frederick Schauer is a David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. He has previously taught law at Harvard University and the University of Michigan. He’s written numerous books about the law, ranging from the topics of evidence, free speech, and how philosophy plays a role in the legal system. Episode Quotes:Can the probabilities be reduced to numbers?20:40: Can the probabilities be reduced to numbers? One view is by reducing them to numbers, you make something appear more certain than it actually is, but there's another view. And actually, there are distinguished judges on both sides of this debate that say, "Yes, it's hard to get it exactly right," but trying to translate very fuzzy terms, like "clear and convincing evidence," "balance of the probabilities," or "proof beyond the reasonable doubt," into numbers can clarify things, however uncertain the numbers might be. Maybe they're a bit more certain and a bit more clarifying than just using the fuzziness of language. 05:59: To understand the law of evidence, you really have to understand exclusions. To understand the science of evidence, you have to understand inclusions—how everything might be relevant.Law is heavily dependent on testimony33:04: Law, except in very rare cases, doesn't do direct observation, doesn't do direct experimentation even when it could. So it relies even more heavily on what somebody has said. It's like history, but unlike a lot of science. It's unlike a lot of empirical inquiry. It's unlike a lot of experimentation.The different view of the law in criminal law15:26: One of the important issues in evaluating evidence is what turns on it. And if we have a criminal law model, what turns on it is that someone is going to go to prison for a long time or possibly even be executed. We are really worried about making a certain kind of mistake. And because of that, the law, especially in criminal law, has a different evaluation of false positives versus false negatives than other people.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of VirginiaContributor’s Profile on The Federalist SocietyHis Work:Frederick Shauer on Google ScholarThe Proof: Uses of Evidence in Law, Politics and Everything ElseThe Force of LawProfiles, Probabilities, and Stereotypes Thinking Like A Lawyer Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is free will, and how can it be both tested and defined? How do you know where the line is between what is your choice, what is compelled, and what is inevitable? What are the limits on the will, and how do you study them?Alfred Mele is a ph professor of philosophy at Florida State University. He also served as director of the Philosophy and Science of Self-Control Project and the Big Questions in Free Will Project. Alfred has written thirteen books and over 250 articles. His latest book is Free Will: An Opinionated Guide. Alfred and Greg talk about the definitions of free will, and how different schools of thought define it differently. They discuss different views on the subject of determinism, the case of Martin Luther, and about the connections between free will and willpower.Episode Quotes:Is the problem of self-deception similar to the problem of self-control?23:38: There is a connection between self-deception and weakness of will. And so, between self-deception and self-control, too, because weakness of will and self-control are two sides of the same coin. So in cases of weakness of will, you judge it better to A than B, but you do B instead of A because you're more strongly motivated to do that. So it's a kind of motivated irrationality. And it looks like self-deception involves motivated irrationality too.37:10: Behavior is in general driven by the stronger desire, but the stronger desire isn't always in line with what you think is best.12:19: If we're thinking, "Well, you're not morally responsible for doing a thing unless you do it freely," then the low bar for moral responsibility becomes a low bar for freedom too.Different features of desire18:14: There are desires that you have, and they have different features. They have a causal power, which is the power to cause a corresponding action, and then they have your ranking of it in terms of value or goodness.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Another of Alfred’s books they discuss - Free: Why Science Hasn't Disproved Free WillGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Florida State UniversityContributor’s Profile on Psychology TodayContributor’s Profile on Closer To TruthHis Work:Alfred Mele on Google ScholarFree Will: An Opinionated GuideManipulated Agents: A Window to Moral ResponsibilityAspects of Agency: Decisions, Abilities, Explanations, and Free Will Free: Why Science Hasn't Disproved Free WillA Dialogue on Free Will and Science Backsliding: Understanding Weakness of WillEffective Intentions: The Power of Conscious WillFree Will and LuckMotivation and AgencySelf-Deception Unmasked Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Does competition always make you stronger, or does it subtly shape far too much of life throughout childhood and beyond. Society is now shaping itself around newly competitive fields in school and academics while contorting students and their families in different directions to keep up in today’s environment of education.Matt Feeney is a writer whose latest book, “Little Platoons: A Defense of Family in a Competative Age” dissects the benefits and detriments that competition of all types has on our families and our children. He holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Duke University and a B.S. in English teaching from Central Michigan University. A former teacher at Duke, George Washington University, Texas A&M, and Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany, his writings have also appeared in The New Yorker online, Slate, and other publications.Matt and Greg discuss the benefits and drawbacks to putting so much emphasis on competition for children in schools and in sports. They look at ways in which families have been enlisted to raise children that suit the needs of the knowledge economy and the preferences of college administrators.Episode Quotes:The effect of optimizing your kid's competitive viability31:07: There's a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that suggests that as parenting has intensified, the children of this intensified parenting are becoming more fragile and have a hard time achieving independence. It doesn't seem the healthiest way to raise your kids, basically.17:04: Your kid is your kid. You have a job as a parent to cultivate your child's virtues and abilities. But there's a point at which optimizing that kid is an injury to spiritual integrity and autonomy.The competitive process is actively influenced by parents42:19: Parents are not passive agents of ideology or passive victims of ideology. They're more active agents of a competitive process that extracts and insights their competitive output. And it turns it into an elaborate kind of institutional system.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Matt Feeney’s Book - https://www.mattfeeney.com/little-platoonsGuest Profile:Contributor’s Profile on Basic BooksMatt Feeney’s WebsiteMatt Feeney on LinkedInHis Work:Articles on The ChronicleArticles on The New YorkerLittle Platoons: A Defense of Family in a Competitive Age Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do you motivate yourself? What works in motivating others? Do you turn to the stick, the carrot, or a combination of both? These age-old questions are at the root of humans trying to turn what they need to do into what they want to do and manage complex slates of desire and obligation.Ayelet Fishbach is a professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She is an expert in the fields of motivation and decision-making and the author of Get it Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. Ayelet’s human motivation research has been recognized via many international awards, including the Society of Experimental Social Psychology’s Best Dissertation Award and Career Trajectory Award, and the Fulbright Educational Foundation Award.Ayelet and Greg talk about motivation on all levels and from all angles. They discuss the similarities and differences between employers motivating employees, teachers motivating students, and parents motivating children. Ayelet sheds insight on what common mistakes doom the best of intentions and how to set up tasks to properly harness your natural motivational triggers and improve your self-control.Episode Quotes:The difference between willpower and self-control08:33: Willpower is the power you use to motivate yourself, get yourself to do something. But they're different in the sense that we often think about willpower in the literature, as well as in lay language; self-control is overcoming yourself as doing something you don't want to do, but you can somehow get yourself to do. Self-control is required when you have a goal conflict. When there is a goal that you want to pursue, but there is something else that stands in the way that you want to do. What are the barriers in learning from negative feedback?19:21: There are two specific barriers to learning from negative feedback. One is that it hurts. And the other one is that it's often hard, just cognitively, to learn from negative feedback.What’s wrong with avoidance goals?13:14: The problem with avoidance goals is that they make us rebels. They point to mind the things you should not do and are just not fun to pursue. To find another hobby is better than to stop obsessing on your current hobby.One of the problems with goals43:37: We set goals that are ambitious. We set goals that we don't know if we can reach this specific target. We don't know if we can do this much by that time. And we did that on purpose—the challenging target is better than the target we know we can achieve. But the problem is that once we fail on that target, we might give up.On setting goals06:21: How to best set a goal? I would say it's the same for setting a goal for others and yourself, and there are a few principles. We want the goal to be enticing, something we aspire to achieve. That seems more like a goal and less like a chore.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at The University of Chicago Booth School of BusinessContributor’s Profile on Psychology TodayAyelet Fishbach WebsiteAyelet Fishbach on LinkedInAyelet Fishbach on TwitterAyelet Fishbach on FacebookHer Work:Ayelet Fishbach on Google ScholarGet It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of MotivationThe Motivation-Cognition Interface: From the Lab to the Real World: A Festschrift in Honor of Arie W. Kruglanski Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The world seems to be moving faster and faster but there is always a need to plan for the longer arc of life. Having a strategy lets you set short goals while achieving progress toward your longer ones. Now more than ever people need to be intentional about the strategies they use in creating a career. Building these strategies in different areas of your life is what today’s episode is all about.Dorie Clark is a teacher at Duke and Colombia University’s business schools, a speaker who has given lectures from Harvard Business School to Google HQ, and a prolific author of the books Stand Out, Reinventing You, Entrepreneurial You, and her newest book The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World. Dorie and Greg talk about playing the long game, and what that means in your business life and personal life. They also talk about what it looks like to think long term in a world where short term needs are always pressing, and how to think about time allocation for the important things in life.Episode Quotes:The power of stories for behavioral change24:08: A story is a really good way to get in the side door. So that it's essentially evading people's objections because if you're telling somebody: “research says…”, "Do this or do that," there's often just a lot of backlash that people have:” I couldn't do that.” But if they're hearing a narrative, which is not, "Oh, you have to do this," but it's, "Well, here, let me tell you about somebody you know, like you, who did that thing," And they realize, it's a lot less threatening of a way to present information, and it lets it roll around in people's brains and say, "Oh, I'm not that different from that person. Maybe I could try it.’ And that can become really powerful.02:48: There's almost no one in the world that thinks that strategy is a bad thing. It's not like there's an anti-strategy contingent arguing against it. Everybody thinks it's good. Everybody pays lip service to it. But the problem is that almost no one does it.Why do we need a coach?25:38: The answer is we don't always. Sometimes a book is perfectly sufficient for what you want to do. It depends on how important the issue is to you and how detailed of an instruction you require.Overweighting our short-term thinking can be a liability17:50: If we're investing money, if we're investing our finances, everybody understands that if your portfolio is overweight in a certain asset, that may be great while that asset is performing well, but it is extremely dangerous over the long term because there probably is going to be some reversal.Show Links:Guest Profile:Instructor’s Profile on UdemySpeaker’s Profile on TEDTalkSpeaker’s Profile on WeSpeakersDorie Clark's WebsiteThe Long Game: Your Stretegic Thinking Self-AssessmentDorie Clark on LinkedInDorie Clark on TwitterDorie on YoutubeDorie Clark on YoutubeDorie Clark on TEDXBostonTrajectory MastermindHer Work:Articles on Harvard Business ReviewThe Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term WorldReinventing You, With a New Preface: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your FutureEntrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and Thrive Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Economists have been harshly criticized for their response to the recent financial crisis and the pandemic. Yet, they are willing to adapt to changing environments and take on new ideas but sometimes don't do it rapidly enough.Paul Andrew Ormerod is a British economist, best-selling author, a partner at Volterra Partners consultancy, and a founder and director of Algorithmic Economics. Additionally, he is a visiting professor at UCL’s Department of Computer Science.Paul writes a weekly opinion column on economics and related topics for City AM, a newspaper aimed at workers in Central London.  Since May 2020 Paul Ormerod has been Chairman of the Rochdale Development Agency (RDA), responsible for economic development in the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, which is in Greater Manchester.Greg and Paul discuss why misguided incentives can lead economists to turn a blind eye to shifting environments and fail to anticipate the chance of rare events which can be actually much bigger than predicted in economic risk models.Episode Quotes:Economics is not an empty box10:02: Mainstream economics is not an empty box. It does contain powerful insights. And so, the idea that agents or decision people respond to incentives is very powerful. And in particular, I think it's often caricatured that people think incentives must mean price, but in fact it could be a whole range of factors that people respond to. And if the incentive set changes, then behavior changes.06:44: Economics portrays a richer and more realistic portrait of how people behave –more grounded empirically, but at the macro level, it's really gone backwards.What’s wrong with big data?42:36: Big data, one of the problems is the way it's often used. It might be very good at fitting particular circumstances, but it may not generalize very well. That's always a problem with any form of statistical analysis.As the pandemic unfolds, economists step out14:23: Economists do dominate public policy discourse. Whether it's at the national, state government, or international bodies, everything is filtered through the lens of economics. And on this one, they said, "Oh well, you know we pass; we'll step out."I think initially, because most of them didn't know anything about the models the epidemiologists were using, and now that they have done it, it's starting to appear.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Joseph SchumpeterFriedrich HayekArmen alchianHerbert simonLeonid kantorovicGuest Profile:Professional Profile at Volterra Partners LLPProfessional Profile at Rochdale Development AgencySpeaker’s Profile on Chartwell SpeakersPaul Omerod’s WebsitePaul Omerod on TwitterPaul Omerod on TEDxLSE 2013His Work:Article on EvonomicsArticles on City A.M.Against the Grain: Insights from an Economic ContrarianPositive Linking: How Networks Can Revolutionise the WorldWhy Most Things FailWhy Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and EconomicsButterfly Economics: A New General Theory of Social and Economic Behavior Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The trauma of loss is inevitable, but there are things that can be done to consciously prepare for and deal with things we lose in life. They are also connected deeply to the concepts of discovery. Death and love both hold mysteries that have always captivated the mind.  Kathryn Schulz is a writer at “The New Yorker” and is the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error and her newest book Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness was just released this year. She won a National Magazine Award and a Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for “The Really Big One,” an article about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. Her writing can also be found in “The Best American Science and Nature Writing,” “The Best American Travel Writing,” and “The Best American Food Writing.”Kathryn and Greg talk about losses of all sizes, from the inconsequential to the greatest loss imaginable, and how loss of life is treated across cultures and time, how humans and religion have responded to the trauma of death and loss. Likewise, they talk about the flip side of the coin in finding and discovery, both the trivial and profound - specifically finding a loved one to be one’s partners in life. Episode Quotes:Having the inability to admit your mistakes can make a relationship fail31:12: How do you make a relationship work? One way not to make it work is to be unable to admit that you're wrong. And it's hard, when you're in the midst of a fight or friction with your partner. It's very difficult to not inhabit your own in that moment, extremely narrowed field of vision, your sense of woundedness, and your narrative about what happened or whatever may be going on. But you just can't. You have to develop a kind of bifocal vision where, clearly, there are exceptions to this. People are genuinely wronged in relationships as in other things, but in a basically happy relationship where that's not the case, you have to be able to, at some point, step back and say, "Well, what's actually going on here?"21:32: At the heart of existence, for whatever reason wildly beyond our control, is the fact that everything in our lives is wildly impermanent.Can we learn to be better in relationships?29:33: Your first move just has to be to pick the right person. And some of that is compatibility, but some of it is just this deep conviction that they're right for you and you love them because in stressful or difficult moments in a relationship, you have got to be grounded in this sense of this is the one.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and HappinessBeing Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of ErrorGuest Profile:Contributor’s Profile on The New YorkerKathryn Schulz’s WebsiteKathryrn Schulz on TwitterKathryn Schulz on TEDTalkHer Work:The Really Big One ArticleLost & Found: A MemoirBeing Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The behavior of business practitioners is often driven by the defunct theories of economists. But to some extent all theories and models come with limitations and both the financial crisis of 2008 and the recent pandemic have made those limitations hard to ignore.Sir John Kay is one of Britain’s leading economists. He was the first dean of Oxford’s Said Business School and has held chairs at the London School of Economics, the University of Oxford, and London Business School. His interests focus on the relationship between economics and business. His career has spanned the academy and think tanks, company directorships, consultancies, investment companies and media. For twenty years, he wrote a regular column for the Financial Times and has authored an astonishing number of books. He was awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours List for services to economics, business and finance.Greg and John discuss how to navigate a complex environment, which we can only imperfectly understand, why we should embrace uncertainty and how to create strategies that are resilient to unpredictable events.Episode Quotes:On why we're not going to get predictability in economics10:02: The world we're dealing with, in economics, business, and finance is not stationary. There are not underlying models in the way we talk about the motion of the planets, which has remained unchanged for several centuries. And not only has it remained unchanged for centuries, but actually we know what these equations are, and they're not affected by what we do or think about them; Venus does not care what we think about its equations of motion. But the people who work in organizations and financial markets do care what we think about. And that world is affected by our interaction with it.Why you shouldn’t take models too seriously05:01: To understand economics, to understand social science, we absolutely need models. The mistake is to think that the models we're building are true descriptions of the world. And they're not. I think models and economics are best regarded as parables; they're stories.An observation on how people use models14:07: You can use models to say, "This is what might happen to an unchecked pandemic." You can use a model to say, "This is an indication of the effect we might have if we introduced lockdown measures or vaccinations of the like." You can use models to illustrate scenarios and tell stories. If you think you can use models to predict, then I think you are attempting a kind of pseudoscientific position that is simply not available.Show Links:Recommended Resources:George E. P. BoxJohn Maynard KeynesBlaise Pascal“The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?” by Michael SandelGuest Profile:Professional Profile at London School of EconomicsFaculty Profile at St. John’s College, Oxford UniversityProfessional Profile on Financial TimesJohn Kay’s WebsiteJohn Kay on LinkedInJohn Kay on TwitterJohn Kay on FacebookJohn Kay on Talks at GoogleHis Work:Greed Is Dead: Politics After IndividualismRadical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the NumbersThe Long and the Short of It: A guide to finance and investment for normally intelligent people who aren’t in the industryOther People's Money: The Real Business of FinanceObliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved IndirectlyThe Truth About MarketsThe British tax system Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s remarkable,how driven we are to set goals for ourselves that we're incapable of attaining. But we're not doomed to be disenchanted; Instead, we can make some incremental and meaningful progress toward their attainment.Anthony Kronman is Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School. A former Dean of Yale Law School, Professor Kronman teaches in the areas of contracts, bankruptcy, jurisprudence, social theory, and professional responsibility.Among his books are Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, Max Weber, Contracts: Cases and Materials (with F. Kessler and G. Gilmore), Lost Lawyer, Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan, and After Disbelief: On Disenchantment, Disappointment, Eternity, and Joy.Greg and Tony talk about parallels between science, philosophy and literature, the search for an understanding of the nature and amplitude of substance and how to re-enchant the world.Episode Quotes:What causes some people to view lawyers negatively?45:10: People often have a pretty low opinion of lawyers because they meet lawyers when they need them, and they need them when they find themselves in the jaws of the law, and that is formidable. And many people experience it as an unpleasant, if not destructive power. And the lawyers who inhabit the precincts of the law so comfortably are just inevitably associated in people's minds with the awfulness of law itself.Two remarkable things about humans31:02: Here are two remarkable things about us: We set goals we can never reach, one. And two, that even though we can't reach them, we can make some incremental and meaningful progress.On illustrating progress34:52: Learning new things, adding to the stockpile of your knowledge or expertise. That is one familiar way of illustrating progress in an enterprise or a discipline.Making progress in sensibility35:51: Developing capacity to recognize and appreciate what is distinctive and worth observation and, perhaps, even close study in another human being—who you may not like all that much or feel an immediate personal rapport for, but who you can see as an individual of a striking and interesting to be able to do that more regularly, more emphatically, and with a greater investment of curiosity and patience. And even at the end of the day of fellowship or fellow feeling, that is making progress in sensibility.Show Links:Recommended Resources:“Democracy in America” by Alexis de TocquevilleSpinozaAristotleGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Yale UniversityContributor’s Profile on The Federalist SocietyHis Work:After Disbelief: On Disenchantment, Disappointment, Eternity, and JoyConfessions of a Born-Again PaganEducation's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of LifeThe Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal ProfessionThe Assault on American Excellence Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s no secret that the nature of our food has been changed quite dramatically by big food companies in the last 50 years. This is just one of the things that has contributed to a nation of overeaters. Michael Moss is the author of “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us,” and “Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions.” He is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist formerly with the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.So what has changed in those 50 years? Listen as Michael and Greg talk about the evolution of processed foods, the biological science behind addiction, how food memories develop, Lunchables, and the business of cigarettes and smoking.Episode Quotes:Memory as a tool in food industry25:26: What the food companies have realized is that the more we experience something, the deeper those memory channels are. And so the easier it is for them to use what psychologists call cues to get us excited. I mean, two people driving down the road, right, see the golden arches. And they could have completely different reactions to seeing those arches depending on what their memory bank is, what their experience is from eating. t a person's been eating there a lot and has deep memory channels for McDonald's is going to get all excited and pull off the highway as soon as they can to, to go there where the other person's going to, they're not even like seeing the golden arches if they're not somebody who eats there, doesn't have that memory for it. So, besides speed, memory is hugely powerful for the food industry to us to kind of keep coming back to its products.Speed is the hallmark of addiction8:42: Speed is a hallmark of addiction, so the faster a substance can hit the brain, the more apt we are to lose control, react, and act compulsively to that substance. Educating the young about eating habits12:21: I would love to see going back to prioritizing children, focusing on them to help them develop good eating habits before they can develop bad ones. Teaching them how to cook and schools would be a fabulous sort of thing to do, and you could do it, and you could do it in a way that's not preachy too.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Dana SmallEdward Slingerland episodeGuest Profile:Professional Profile at New York TimesProfessional Profile at Pulitzer PrizeProfessional Profile at Food Future CoSpeaker’s Profile at Harry Walker AgencyMichael Moss WebsiteMichael Moss on LinkedInMichael Moss on TwitterMichael Moss on InstagramHis Work:Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our AddictionsSalt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.