Ep. 054 - Pia Lauritzen - Designed to doubt
In life, at work, we’re often valued for our ability to provide answers and concrete outcomes. But our ambition to always provide clarity might have us missing out on the learning, connection, and evolution that we so desperately need as humans.
With Pia Lauritzen we explore what potential and pitfalls a question holds, how questions are what makes us unique in the face of AI and what is needed in us to fully leverage the power of both our doubt and our curiosity.
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About Pia
Pia Lauritzen, a Danish philosopher and tech entrepreneur, is the inventor and founder of Qvest and Question Jam.
She holds a PhD in philosophy and has published five books, including Questions (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). She is a regular contributor to strategy+business, and in 2023 she was selected for the Thinkers50 Radar list for “providing powerful proof that questions, rather than generic answers, will shape our futures.” Her 2019 TEDx Talk is titled "What you don’t know about questions."
Want to connect with Pia
linkedin.com/in/pia-lauritzen
Website
www.pialauritzen.dk
EP. 054 Transcription
Hi, Pia. Welcome to the Experience Designers.
[00:01:18] Pia: Hi, Shani. Thank you very much.
[00:01:21] Shani: So I had a look back at your CV after we had a first conversation and you have spent an impressive 20 years researching the power of questions, which I think is fabulous because I myself am a huge lover of questions. So I'm really looking forward to where we're going to go with this.
[00:01:41] But you also run a digital platform that is designed to empower people to share responsibility and ask more and you framed your mission as democratizing the power of questions, which is such an amazing phrase. And that leads me to my first questions, which is actually, I want to start with you. What, what led you to choose this thing and stick to it?
[00:02:11] for so long?
[00:02:13] Pia: That's a wonderful question. I especially like the stick to it. because there are so many things, you know, that we can, uh, we fall in love with and we spend time on, but, but it is actually a bit, also unlike me to stay with, with, you know, the same topic for so long. I think it's because questions turned out.
[00:02:36] It took me a long time to realize that, that I, that it was questions that, that I was so excited about. But when I realized that I also, It also became very clear to me very, uh, very quickly that, that it's, you know, you can, you can study that for several lifetimes. It's not, it's not like you, you, you feel, well, now I know what I need to know about questions.
[00:03:02] It's just, they keep surprising you. They keep coming up with another aspect of themselves. They keep, you know, telling a different story. And everyone around you keep demonstrating. Different ways of relating to questions and I'm using questions. So it just felt like, well, I will not have enough time in, in this life.
[00:03:22] But I can spend, uh, all I have, exploring this and combined with the fact that I realized in my, in my research, um, at the university that, that not many people have. Dedicated time to, to researching questions. And if they have, they have a very narrow perspective on questions as a tool, as a technology or, you know, something that is designed to help us get to the answers.
[00:03:50] But not that many people throughout history has actually spent the time focusing just on the questions for the sake of questions. So, so it feels like an, an, an okay thing to, to spend your life on.
[00:04:05] Shani: I like that. And also the point that it. Provides us with sufficient variability to keep it interesting, which I can imagine.
[00:04:14] I guess that's why I also like questions that you don't really know what's going to come out the other side and what you're going to discover. But that also makes me curious because you've spent a lot of time on this. Why do you think questions are so important to us? To us as humans and to our experience as humans,
[00:04:38] Pia: I think they have this magical power of placing us, kind of at a, at a, on an edge.
[00:04:45] You know, we know that with questions comes answers. We know that questions, you know, in the basic nature, there is a yes and a no. So, and, and that leads us to, there's a good and a bad question or good and a bad answer. Something can be right or wrong. So, so all these, you know, um, basic choices.
[00:05:09] Build into the essence and the nature of questions, so to speak. So, so question is, it's, it's, it's never done. It's, it's always, you know, prompting us, to, to evolve somehow, to, to learn something new, to connect with other people, um, because maybe they have some of the answers that we don't, and, and maybe they have some questions that we can help shed light on.
[00:05:33] So, so it's kind of like, you know, being on team question is evolving. It's developing is, uh, connecting with other, human beings, but also connecting with the world around us. You know, most people have had an experience, maybe several experiences of nature, wanting something from them, or, you know, of being going
[00:05:57] going on a walk in the forest or something, and then you feel connected with, with something that's bigger than you and make, it makes you wonder, or it makes you curious, or, you know, it, it, or it can do the opposite. Maybe you, you, you know, you start to doubt something, or you, you're skeptic about something.
[00:06:16] So, so it's connected with a lot of very, very basic human feelings, about being part of something bigger than themselves. I really like that. Mm.
[00:06:32] Shani: You said a word here that I think is interesting, because often when we talk about questions, we focus on curiosity, and it being this more inquisitive quality, but you talked about doubt.
[00:06:47] Mm. I love doubt. About it? What about
[00:06:50] Pia: doubt? What about doubt? Well, I think it's spot on what you're saying. You know, we love focusing on curiosity. Another family member, so to speak, of questions is creativity. We also like her, you know. These are the fun twins of the question family, right? We want them in our lives.
[00:07:12] But we don't want Doubt and we don't want uncertainty and we don't want skepticism. Uh, you know, they are kind of annoying. It feels like they are slowing us down. It feels like, you know, they are not helping us move forward. But that's not true. Doubt is extremely important and, it helps us, uh, distinguish.
[00:07:37] You know, as I mentioned before, distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad, basically true and false, you know, um, am I actually talking to another human right now? Is Shani a machine? Uh, very beautiful machine, very wise machine, but is she a machine, right? You know, asking these questions is what helps us distinguish between What is worth my time and what is not worth my time, what is important and not important, relevant and irrelevant.
[00:08:09] And that's about helping us making these distinctions. Curiosity cannot do that alone, but for us, so for us to use our curiosity and our creativity in a valuable way and not just running around, you know, doing all kinds of stuff and being very busy. We need the doubt. We need the doubt to, to make sure that we spend our limited time.
[00:08:33] And, and we, we don't even know how much time we have, you know, uh, God forbid it, but you know, within the next few days it could be over. Right. So it's very important that we spend our time wisely. Um, so we need the doubt a machine doesn't because it has endless. Time and list capabilities, but I don't, you know, if I spend my time with you now, I'm not spending my time with someone else.
[00:09:00] Um, so I have to make that decision and saying, but, but you are the one I want to spend my time with right now. So, so I think it's a big mistake to, to try to minimize or avoid a doubt. Uh, it's a very important guide in our lives.
[00:09:17] Shani: I really like that. And it just makes me think also. If we look at the space of work in particular, then we often reward clarity and we almost demonize doubt.
[00:09:34] Yeah,
[00:09:35] Pia: I
[00:09:35] Shani: agree. And, and actually, I just find it, it's a weird irony because you said doubt and then that helping us spend our time wisely. What does it then do to us if we aren't? spending time with our doubts. I think that for me, it's like a, it's a really big thing and how, maybe, why do you think, why do you think we avoid it?
[00:10:06] Pia: I think that, um, that's why I love spending time with questions because if we just, you know, there are a lot of people, Being experts in curiosity or writing and talking a lot about curious and I love curiosity too, but broadening The game so to speak and saying no, it's not just curiosity. It's questions.
[00:10:28] Then we get And then then we get acquainted with The bigger context of questions and, and just like most other things, they have, you know, a front and a back, and we really love, the front of questions, but the dark side, so to speak, you know, the back, uh, we tend to forget. And we tend to forget that with every question, it's not only opening up something, it's also closing down something.
[00:10:55] So when I ask a question or when you ask me a question, you kind of invite, both of us to focus on something and not something else. And all the things you leave out, uh, we will not discuss and we will not, you know, we will not explore and we will not Become wiser on all the things you leave out and that's a good thing.
[00:11:17] You know, you make that decision. This is your podcast That's how it's supposed to be But but if we always have the same people asking questions and the same people responding. Then it goes without saying that we have, you know, a power, um, a constitution where some people and their perspectives and their curiosity and their doubts or their creativity is being left out of the equation.
[00:11:46] And, and that can be, you know, It's so much easier to ask the questions yourself. So you decide, and we see that in companies, you know, we do surveys, we do interviews, we do coaching. So we have these people, a few people actually compared to, to the whole amount of people working in an organization. Few people asking questions and the rest of, of the people working in an organization and the customers, um, in customer satisfaction service, surveys and stuff like that, they are being turned into respondents.
[00:12:21] So, so they are supposed to react. They are not supposed to be proactive and they're not supposed to interact with each other about what's important. They're just. Supposed to react and be respondents. And that means that we, and that's back to, you know, the democratizing aspect of my work, what we're doing is that we are monopolizing the power of questions.
[00:12:45] We're saying that some people and their perspectives. are more important than other people's perspectives. Um, and it's the minority that has the power to ask questions. Whereas, whereas the majority are supposed to just react. So there are, there are power structures involved with questions and, and we. We kind of forget that we forget that we are not only questions are not only powerful in the sense doing good, they can also when they are being monopolized, do bad, and they can leave out important perspectives, but but we We don't think about it that way.
[00:13:26] We don't talk about it that way. And if we do, it kind of feels more safe to just continue doing what we're used to doing. So, so the, the questions and the, the variety of questions, not only being about curiosity and creativity, but also being about Doubt and being about exclusion and being about, um, it's sorting people into two kind of people, those whose questions we care about and those whose questions we don't care about.
[00:13:58] They are just respondents. These are all the dark sides that comes with questions. And so, so it's kind of like, you know, either people forget that the questions are powerful. Or they don't have an interest in sharing this power with others, because it becomes more difficult, the more people asking questions, the more diversity, you know, in the conversation, but I strongly believe, and I've seen it again and again and again, that it's definitely, not a waste of time making room for other people's questions, because the second you do that, the It turns out that you can move much faster afterwards because now people know what's important to us as a group instead of just what's important to you or me.
[00:14:51] I'm actually not sure I answered your question there.
[00:14:59] Shani: No, but you know, sometimes conversation also flows in different directions and I'm always open to that. Uh, and I don't even know what my initial question was.
[00:15:10] Pia: Maybe I, Why we didn't want that? Maybe that's, that was your question.
[00:15:17] Shani: I'm not sure. Maybe that was my question.
[00:15:19] I don't know. I was following your train of thought here and I was, and I was really fascinated by this thing that you were talking about, which is questions. As a mean of distributing power and responsibility, and I can really recognize this dynamic that you talk about in terms of there being one group that gets to ask, and then the other one that always is answering, but where we're not answering.
[00:15:49] We're not asking them for their questions, we're asking them for their answers, we're not asking them about their doubts or their, um, insecurities or whatever it is that they're, their discomfort is, we're, we're just asking them to answer. As you say, we're already narrowing down the field and I can see that also when we, in, in working with experienced design, we always say, don't ask people for wishlists.
[00:16:19] It's like, that's not what we're doing. That's too narrow field, say. Tell me what the solution is to this exact problem. No, don't tell me that. Tell me. What is the challenge surrounding this for you? What are the questions and doubt actually like asking people about what are the questions that you have around this issue or around this train of actions that you are taking part in or in different ways, kind of inviting that conversation.
[00:16:48] And ironically, I think. It creates a lot of insecurity for the people who have to drive that dialogue. So, I'm wondering also, like, what have you found, how do we equip ourselves to make more space for doubt and questions, rather than just curiosity? Because as you say, curiosity is very positively geared, which is maybe something we kind of feel more inclined to, whereas doubt can be Uncomfortable.
[00:17:25] And it's, there is more unknown. Well, there is a lot of unknown and curiosity as well, but this is somehow coming from a very different angle. So how, what, what do we need to, what do we need to practice ourselves?
[00:17:41] Pia: I think you're, you're, you're really, You answer something really important there when talking about the unknown, because, you know, there's a German philosopher, Gadamer, Hans Georg Gadamer, who said, and he's actually one of the few, who, who did spend, uh, some time on understanding questions for the sake of questions.
[00:18:01] And, and he said that there is no such thing as a method for learning how to ask questions. And that's kind of interesting because everyone, when they learn that I have spent two decades, exploring the power of questions, that's always the first thing they ask me, okay, so how do I get better asking question?
[00:18:20] And what is a good question? How do I, how do I get, and how do I help other people ask good questions? That's typically also a question I receive. And, and that means that. Most of us assume that we can learn how to ask good questions, and, and there's a method or they can, I can tell them, Oh, we'll do this, this and that.
[00:18:40] And then, you will ask good questions. But what Gadama says is that, there's no method. What it comes down to is knowing that we don't know. sO it's tapping into the unknown, as you mentioned, is accept, accepting the fact that here there is something that I don't know, and I'm okay with admitting that I don't know it.
[00:19:02] So I have to be there, you know, I have to be willing. To share the first step is to share it with myself to realize that that is actually here. There is something that I don't know, and then I have to be willing to share it with others too and say, I know you would maybe you would expect me to know this.
[00:19:24] Um, but in fact I don't and, and that's a good thing because that means that now we can learn together. Now, you know, we can explore this together. So, so being willing to tap into the unknown is crucial in, in asking questions, in, in guiding your curiosity and, and not just being curious about everything.
[00:19:45] You know, that, that's okay. You know, you can be curious about everything and most children are. Um, and, and then we start to, either we become more curious about something than, than something else, but we also start to develop our curiosity. We find out that curiosity is just not, it's not just one thing.
[00:20:05] It's several things. And, and at this stage, I'm curious in this way and in this stage, I'm curious in another way. But if you, if you're not willing to, to take it from a place where you don't know, yeah, then it's just, you know, it will be limited how much you are, you can learn and how much you can grow.
[00:20:26] Based on that. And I think that is really also, an extremely important part of the answer. If your question before was, why don't we want the doubt? I think, uh, an answer to that question is because we are raised in a way and we are, you know, Put into this world in a way where we are kind of have the feeling that we're supposed to know.
[00:20:49] You know, even back to Adam and Eve, you know, we, we want that apple, we want to know. so, and, and we tell each other that it's the people who know who will get the promotion. It's the people, you know, to get an education, you need to know a lot of stuff. Um, so, so there's a lot going on with this knowledge.
[00:21:08] Knowledge is a good thing. We even say knowledge is. Power. And we want the power. So, so being familiar and okay. Being around the unknown, it's not what we were taught to do. But it's extremely difficult doing valuable science and valuable research without tapping into the unknown. That is impossible.
[00:21:30] Every scientist know this. But some. And somehow, uh, among some, you know, teachers and leaders and, uh, project leads and stuff like that, it gets lost. And it becomes what we know that's important rather than, than what we could know. Yeah. I
[00:21:48] Shani: like that. And it reminds me of something that I've heard you talk about before, which is also that we guide our questions with assumptions rather than with the, I don't know.
[00:22:01] And I see that too as well in, in, in the practices that we do with designing as well. It's, it's so very easy to come into a space with an assumption of what it is going to be. And I've seen it a thousand times. And then all the questions go towards proving that one assumption, but actually you didn't find anything out.
[00:22:21] You're just proving or disproving your assumption, but you didn't actually explore anything. You didn't actually. You didn't learn anything. You didn't actually evolve based on those questions because all you did was create a very, very narrow path for, for exploration. Um, And so yeah, I think I, I've, I heard you say kind of, there's no right way to work with questions, but are we getting something wrong as we're doing it now?
[00:22:50] What are we, because I've heard you talk about this kind of the assumption basis and the starting from this point of I, I have to know, or I have all the knowledge. Is there any way of doing it really badly?
[00:23:07] Pia: Isn't it interesting that you're the first person on earth asking me that?
[00:23:10] Shani: I'm not
[00:23:14] Pia: surprised, but yeah.
[00:23:18] That is really interesting. Yeah, but it's not, it's not, you know, I don't think it's. It's, it's what we would guess it would be, you know, the wrong way of doing it. Uh, and it doesn't necessarily have that much to do with what we're, with what we're doing, but more with how we're feeling when we're doing it.
[00:23:43] And it's not like you can have a wrong feeling, but you can, you can definitely, I think we can feel insecure about the wrong things. I, because I haven't been asked this question before, I haven't thought about it before, but I think that would be, my first step in trying to answering it that I think sometimes we, we feel insecure about things that, that we shouldn't feel insecure about that we should, you know, feel okay with being insecure about, because it's kind of like, that's what we have in common, you know, not knowing.
[00:24:22] How to connect good with each other on not knowing how to feeling insecure on how to learn something new. That is kind of the basic, that's what we have in common and we should make sure to share that. We should make sure that every time we feel unsure. We share it because that's when it's easiest for us to connect with each other.
[00:24:46] When we, when we, uh, explorative ourselves, when we are doubtful ourselves, when we are curious ourselves, other people, it's so much easier for other people to take an interest in us and to care about us. Um, so when we don't share that, It's kind of wrong. Um, but, but I know we have good reasons to do that.
[00:25:09] It's because we're afraid, you know, we are afraid of being, perceived in a way that, that makes us look, uh, not wise or not, I don't know, capable or not competent. So we have all these good reasons to be insecure, but that's. Listening to those reasons rather than the insecurity itself can be a wrong decision.
[00:25:33] Um, I don't know if it makes sense.
[00:25:38] Shani: No. I mean, what I'm hearing is when we kind of are not meeting in our doubts, When we are meeting from a point of view of, how do I put this we're meeting from this point of view, you talked about insecurities and and grounding into our not knowing. So if we're if we're if we're meeting from a point of arrogance or assumption or in some way not being authentic with where we are when we're asking the question, then that might be a way to you.
[00:26:16] To go down a not desirable path. I don't want to say it's necessarily bad, but maybe it won't bring you as far as he could have gone if you, if he chose to anchor in your doubts.
[00:26:27] Pia: Yeah, and I think I'm thinking about an example. My daughter, recently started at her first job, um, and, and it's, you know, it's in the service, in the service industry.
[00:26:38] So she's, uh, having a lot of people passing by and she's helping them, you know, in a supermarket and, and, and, and a lot of. You know, in the beginning she has to learn a lot and, and she, of course she makes a lot of mistakes and, and, and she has, you know, she's coming home telling me about her experiences.
[00:26:58] And I think she's been at work twice or something like that, two times, I think she, she, she went away and she came back and then she. Then she realized that if she just immediately after she makes a mistake says, well, that's my fault. I'm sorry, uh, everything, I will do whatever I can to fix this. Then it's almost impossible for people to be mad at her.
[00:27:22] You know, they, they, they don't, they, they, they're not even, uh, not even annoyed. It's kind of like, Oh, you couldn't, it's not your fault. It's okay. You know, everything. Whereas if she just waits 10 seconds. To say, well, that's my fault. I'm sorry. Then people get annoyed and kind of, you know, and it becomes then it's so much more and more work afterwards making it good again.
[00:27:46] So, so it's kind of like, and I think it's the same with doubt and insecurity. If we. Start out by communicating from a place of, of course, I don't know everything. You know, I, I was never asked that question before. Give me some time to, you know, find out where I want to go with this. And, and I'm still learning over here.
[00:28:08] Then we, then you help me and you say, I think could it be this and what I hear you're saying, and then we can help each other. So if we start out about sharing that. It becomes so much easier to connect and it becomes so much easier to learn. Um, if we have to do it later, if I had spent 30 minutes telling you, I'm the expert here, you know, I know everything you want to know, you just ask and I will give you good answers.
[00:28:36] Then we would probably, I know I would not learn as much at least. No,
[00:28:42] Shani: I think that's interesting. It's also that we miss out on the exploration when we come from this absolute perspective. Yes, yes.
[00:28:51] Pia: On both parties, right? It's not like only I miss out on the exploration. We both kind of miss something, right?
[00:28:58] Shani: Um, yeah, no, I like that for me. It also ties in. What resonates for me when I'm listening to you is that questions are an invitation as you're, as you were saying before, to share responsibility, to create something together. It's not about who has the answers necessarily. Actually, it's about how we can use the questions as this kind of ping pong to going back to what you were saying in the beginning, like to evolve and learn and relate and that that's, that's the thing we want to achieve, not the answers.
[00:29:32] And I think just like following our train of thought and our conversation here, and it just, what lights up in me is I'm thinking, yeah, that's what I like about questions to myself is that it's this, it's this playground for, for something you can do together. It's, and, and why, maybe, and that's my personal bias, I always feel like when it is that one sided, as you describe it, when there's only one asking and the other one answering, then it feels kind of shut down to me, it feels a little bit flat, and there is no real exchange, it's just the it's more transactional.
[00:30:22] There's not like it doesn't, it's not mutual. So yeah.
[00:30:26] Pia: I think what you did there is you actually just described the, um, the basic difference between human interaction and, interacting with AI. Um, and let's go down there because, you know, you can, you can design Computers to, to ask you a question. You know, how are you, how can I help you today?
[00:30:49] And you know, a lot of chat bots are designed to, to interact. But the exploration part you just talked about, you know, are machines curious? Do they doubt anything? Do they ever know that that's something they don't know? Um, if they do, I would say they're doing a really good job covering it up, but of course they don't, they don't know.
[00:31:15] They don't know. That is a human condition. Um, and that's what makes us ask questions from this explorative place. That's what makes us doubt ourselves. That's what makes us, um, skeptic, you know, when, when something say someone say something and we're kind of like, Hmm, is that really the case? You know, asking those kinds of questions, it can be extremely annoying, but it's extremely valuable as well, because that's where we kind of insist on quality, you know, it's not like, I don't want anything from anything.
[00:31:51] I want something from someone. So, so I think, you know, the aspect that you're bringing in here on if, you know, if the really valuable aspect of question is the exploration and the interaction and, and the taking turns as you, you kind of demonstrated before, you know, I say something, you say something, you ask a question, I pick something up and what you're saying and, and, and turn that into some kind of question, you know, this taking turns.
[00:32:22] Thanks. iT's extremely important in understanding, uh, the power of questions, that it's not just about technique. It's not, and that's also what Gautama said. This is not something you can be taught. This is not following this A, B, and C, and then you will be able to D. No, that's not how it works. It's something else.
[00:32:41] And you know, I have, I have actually no doubt, uh, that we will not be able, and we should not strive at. Designing machines that can, mimic that, because that is what makes us unique. There's ability to put ourselves in another position and saying, okay, so now, now I have been asking all the questions.
[00:33:06] I wonder what that feels like to Shani just being, you know, showered with questions and never being able to ask her own questions. If it was me, I probably wouldn't feel it, I would feel it a bit, well, I don't know what the right word is, but I would like to, to make this into a dance. I would like to dance with her.
[00:33:29] I just don't want to stand here and she's doing all the work. You know, I want to, I have some ideas too. anD, and, and that's, that's something extremely valuable and, and I'm not sure why we try to. Make it less than it is by saying that a machine can be intelligent and it can interact. And I'm, I'm really not sure why we're doing that.
[00:33:52] Um, I don't know, maybe you have an idea.
[00:33:57] Shani: I don't know. I, I feel like there is so much, I don't know is my first answer. Um, but, but where my thoughts go is, um, I feel like there's a lot born out of. This need for efficiency and speed and yeah, it's just this desire to
[00:34:24] enhance
[00:34:26] and I think when it comes to AI and technology, admittedly, I'm very much a person who is, I'm not, I'm not a first adopter, I'm not the person who runs into those things, I think I'm, I always sit on the fence and I wonder, okay, how can I approach these things from a place of wondering how it will enhance and enhance, not dehumanize me, but enhance me and not dehumanize other people, but enhance them.
[00:34:55] And I think that's where my, that's where my questions are at the moment with, with these things. And yeah, I don't, I find it hard to say like why we think we need it. Um, personally can feel like it's a little bit, it can send us down a hole of being very disconnected from ourselves and actually being disconnected from all of these things that we talked about, our doubts, our insecurities, our dance with other people.
[00:35:30] And Yes, I think where I am wanting or trying to explore this is rather okay, how can I understand this? And how might I see how we can use this to enhance these things about ourselves instead? That would be my hope and wish for it. But then, yeah, that said, you know, as I'm on the fence, I'm not necessarily the one with my head deepest into it.
[00:35:57] So yeah, it's that's a that's a, but I think that's
[00:36:01] Pia: also what I'm Trying to do in the sense that instead of asking, you know, how can I use this technology? I'm very, very curious about when, what, what can I learn about human beings, by observing what they expect and what they assume they can use a machine for, you know?
[00:36:24] So, because it's so easy to be fascinated, you know, being a tech. Uh, entrepreneur building technology myself. Of course, I'm fascinated by all these things. And I have been involved in, in a, in a project, where we explored and designed AI features, in the quest, for the quest platform. Um, but I, we.
[00:36:47] We never ended up doing it. And, and that was because I could see, I, I was not able to, to find a way where I could use AI to help and enha enhance, as you say, you know, and, and, and actually help people be better at what they're doing without them giving away, responsibility that I, uh, think is extremely important.
[00:37:10] So every time we wanted to help, you know, the user, uh, with ai. We realized that we would prevent them from doing something else and that the thing we were preventing them from were more important than the help we would be able to give them. So making basic decisions about what is important in this data set, you know, how do, and that's back to what we talked about before.
[00:37:33] Every time we ask a question, we look at something and not something else and you cannot design anything. Uh, technologically or anything else without asking questions. But when you, when you build technology based on your own questions, then you make it even harder for the people using this technology to ask their own questions.
[00:37:53] Yeah. So, so I, I realized that, you know, with this kind of technology that I'm building, because I Think that's what the world needs. They need technology that helps them be more curious, be more doubtful, be more connected and, and, um, collaborating on solving important problems. That's kind of the, the mission of the technology I'm building.
[00:38:15] If that's what I want to do, AI is not an option. And, and then that's. That's the, uh, that's the foundation for my observations at the moment to see how come so many people are not asking these kind of questions when it comes to technology? How come so many people are not asking what am I prevented from doing right now by using this technology?
[00:38:38] Um, so I, Yep. I can see how it promotes something, but I cannot see what it prevents. That's kind of, that seems to be the blind spot or the, in, in how a lot of people engage with technology. Hmm.
[00:38:52] Shani: I really like, I really like that angle. It makes me think of, I have kids five and eight, and they're obviously growing up in this on demand era of everything.
[00:39:06] And It's really interesting, because when you're asking this question, what is it preventing, and I keep observing this, I remember when I grew up, it was, you know, quarter past six, every day was the kids show on TV, you sat down, whatever it was, something you liked, something you didn't like, that was the time, that was the place, that was it, there was nothing else, and now, they have so much choice, and it's, At their fingertips and I sometimes feel like actually what it's preventing them from doing is a making decisions but actually back to my initial question is sticking to them and like sticking something out and seeing them like watch a full episode of something.
[00:39:54] They can just stop, they can fast forward, they can do whatever they want and quite often, and I talk to other parents and they go crazy, they say, we all say like, they're watching these five minute things and you keep hearing the jingle every five minutes and then they watch 10 episodes and it's the same jingle or they're watching this movie and they're fast forwarding through things that they don't like or, and so yeah, I, I love that question because I see it with a lot of technological interaction that sometimes is, Even me, like, I find myself unable to make decisions about things because there is so much choice and let alone them, they're still small.
[00:40:33] But yeah, I really, really like that angle. What is it actually preventing us from doing? And is that a capacity that we would like to have as humans? And I kind of think my decision making and my resilience and my ability to stick something out is,
[00:40:52] Pia: Yeah, but I think you're putting your finger at an extremely important aspect. And again, extremely basic human. You're talking about time and place. What digital technology and artificial intelligence, what, What it is doing to us is that it, it, it kind of tells us that we don't have to be conditioned by time and place.
[00:41:14] It kind of tells you, you know, you can watch whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you are. Um, and. And, and that's a lie, you know, that's just not how it works. We are conditioned by time and place, you know, I cannot see what's going on outside my window right now because I'm looking at you.
[00:41:33] And you know, I cannot spend my time with other people. Being in London right now because I'm in Copenhagen talking with you. Um, so, so we are, we are constantly limited and conditioned by time and place. That's part of being human. Again, unlike machines, they are not. They can be several places at once and they can do several things at the same time.
[00:41:59] But we can't. So, so this promise from digital technology and artificial intelligence in particular, it's a big lie. And I'm really, truly worried about the kids growing up being told that lie all the time, because it makes it so much difficult, more difficult to deal with the things that, that cannot, you know, that You know, they are growing older and they, they, they do, you know, they do have a body that they need to take care of, or they, it will hurt.
[00:42:33] Uh, and, and it will, you know, they, they, there are so many things that we cannot just outsource or, pretend that is not the case. It, it makes it more difficult to be human that it needs to be. So, so asking these questions, what does it prevent, prevent me from doing? What is truly important to me that the things we talked about earlier, you know, without the distinctions between what is important right now, how do I want to spend my time asking these questions?
[00:43:05] It is essential for us to stay human, in a tech obsessed world. And, um, and what we tend to forget, and this is another German philosopher, called Martin Heidegger. He actually wrote an essay or he, he gave a talk and then it was written down and now it's an essay, about technology. And, and, and his, uh, it was in 1954.
[00:43:28] It's his very important point. Unfortunately, only a few people heard, uh, was that it's part of the essence of technology to prevent us from asking these questions. So technology doesn't want us to ask these questions because when we ask these questions, can I really use a technology for this? Then there's a risk.
[00:43:53] We won't use the technology and that's not in the interest of technology. So this is not about the technology being conscious, conscious or anything else. This is simply about, you know, technology is designed to be used by a user. If the user is not interested in using it, it loses this, you know, uh, value.
[00:44:12] So it's part of the essence. It's the essence of technology to prevent us from asking these questions. So we need to help each other do it because we are all that's, you know, we are all we have.
[00:44:28] Shani: Mm. This makes me think of earlier this year, I had another guest on the podcast. Her name is Karina and she's an oncologist and a psychiatrist and she works in palliative care.
[00:44:41] And I just recently spoke to her this week and she's working on this project around what they're calling existential well being. And. I think she touched on a lot of the things that you are talking about, too, of this recognition that, you know, we have this body, we have this life,
[00:45:04] and we're all,
[00:45:08] like, we all have these existential questions, these separation, these little deaths and big deaths in our life, and things that prevent us from actually recognizing that and building our resilience around it.
[00:45:22] They're not that good for us necessarily. They are not that good for our bodies. They're not that good for our mental state, for our spiritual well being, or however we choose to define it. But,
[00:45:35] um, yeah,
[00:45:37] she, she, when I spoke to her, she also brought it back to a lot of the things that, We've been talking about and you've been highlighting around creating connection and building relationships and being connected to ourselves and our own doubts and insecurities and being connected to that and other people and how important that is for our Not just existence, but our thriving within that existence and feeling well and good and actually enjoying our life as it kind of passes and we go through it.
[00:46:17] So yeah, I hear a lot of this and I love, I love the point that you're making around, around really asking ourselves. What's it preventing us from doing and, and how, yeah, I think there, there, how might we be human? Yeah. , .
[00:46:35] Pia: I, I think there are three, very big areas of, you know, I've kind of made it my, at the moment I'm, I'm, um, I'm writing another book and I'm very much focusing on, I, on what I would call, you know, the questions that.
[00:46:50] Uh, that cannot be answered by a bot, you know, so, so we have these, uh, questions as human beings that are, you know, no matter what we do, no one can answer them for us, you know, at least of all the machine. But you cannot answer the questions for me either. And these basic three categories of questions, I call them the three big E's is the existential questions that you just mentioned.
[00:47:15] It's the ethical questions. Uh, typically when we talk about AI and technology and people talk about ethics, it becomes something about regulations. It becomes something about, you know, how to use data and how not to use data. That's not all of the ethical things we could be discussing. You know, we could be discussing what is this, what is it doing to our relationship with each other, each other, our ability.
[00:47:41] To make good decisions and respect each other and, and stuff like that. We should be discussing that within the ethical department as well. And finally, there is the epistemological, you know, the things that has to do with how we know what we know. And that's extremely important when we're talking about doubt, you know, that, that we actually make room for us to say, am I sure that this is something I know?
[00:48:06] Is this just an assumption? Is this just something that, uh, is this a bias? Is this something that, you know, I guess I think I might have heard I know, or is this something where I should ask more questions? And these three, you know, the three big E's as I call them, I think we should really work very systematically with them within our own lives and in organizations and in society and really acknowledging these kinds of questions.
[00:48:37] It's, it's kind of like they are what makes us human, uh, is our ability to ask these questions and to help each other come up with answers, not necessarily, or typically, or maybe never, it would be answers that last for a lifetime, but they, that, we should ask them anyway, or maybe that's the reason we should ask them, because they change all the time.
[00:49:00] The questions asked and the answers asked, uh, change, and that's why we need to, to continue asking them. Um, so I think it's a, it kind of feels like people get stuck in one of them sometimes, you know, so some people talk about the existential question, some people talk about the ethical, and some people talk about the epistemological.
[00:49:19] But in fact, they are, you know, they belong together, at least when it comes to being human, that's, uh, that's the questions we need to ask ourselves and each other. Hmm.
[00:49:30] Shani: I really like this distinction that you're bringing in the different facets. And also what you said about this. Most things are true now and in this context, and then we have to be willing to ask the questions again and come up with different answers somewhere down the line, and sometimes down the line is five years, but sometimes down the line is five days, or
[00:49:53] Pia: five minutes.
[00:49:54] We don't
[00:49:55] Shani: know. Um, yeah. And, you know, sometimes what we. Think is a sure thing is, is not, um, yeah, personally, I, I try to practice that with myself, like openness to that things can change. And even when I try to entertain a lot of options. I try to listen to things that seem really out of, out of my like context or theories that I'm like, ah, I don't know if I connect to this, but then sometimes you listen to go, yeah, you know what?
[00:50:35] I don't know. Maybe in five years, somebody is going to come and say, yeah, this is everyone's saying this is the truth because it is, it's happened so many times in history that we've done this. Um, but yeah, it just leaves us with a lot of
[00:50:51] Pia: doubts all the time. Yeah, but, but then again, you know, um, you can look at it in two ways.
[00:50:57] I think, you can look at it as, you know, everything is floating and everything is, uh, you know, a doubt. And, and, and you will always, you know, you will never be sure. And that's one way of looking at it, but. But that's again, why I really love the idea of questions instead of uncertainty, you know, you, I could work with curiosity.
[00:51:18] I could work with uncertainty. I could, but I insist on working with questions because, uh, they are the broadest, it's the broadest way of, of dealing with some of these basic human features, I think, but also because, I think questions and their connection to answers helps me understand that, you know, I'm supposed to ask the questions, I'm supposed to come up with my answers, and every time I come up with an answer, it feels like now I'm certain.
[00:51:50] Now I know, right? And, and even though that's just maybe for five minutes or for five minutes, Five days or for five years, the, the period of time where I feel, I know is an important aspect of it. And it's not like everything is always moving. That's, that's not how we are. You know, we know how to take one step in front of the other.
[00:52:12] We know how to do this instead of that. So we are not these uncertain, insecure creatures, always shaking, always being, you know. Oh, now I don't know. Now I don't know. Now I don't know. You know, a lot of the time we actually do know and we need to help each other trust ourselves when that is the case. So it's not about, you know, my passion for question.
[00:52:37] It's not about saying, Oh, you should always question everything. No, it's just not being too certain to. Learn something new. So, so it's like they come and then we're back to the bands, you know, they come in pair. We ask a question. We are curious. We explore something and answer presents itself. So, well, that might be a good answer.
[00:53:01] You know. Uh, in this conversation, both of us several times have said, Oh, that's interesting. What you said there, or, you know, that means we're feeling that we're getting closer to an answer that we can use for something. Um, so, so we, we should really help each other not to neglect that and not to distrust.
[00:53:22] Everything because there is a lot to trust. There's a lot of, yeah. Feeling connected and knowing I know things without knowing why I know them and that'ss enough. That's, yeah. You know, that's good. .
[00:53:36] Shani: I, ah, I really, I really like that you brought that in, that that dynamic between the question and the sense of knowingness and sense of certainty, and I think.
[00:53:53] I can only draw a parallel here to like, working on personal growth or, you know, if you're trying to build a new habit, then first you're exploring like, what would make me feel good? What, you know, what type of thing? Personally for me, I think there's this period of curiosity about something, which is like, it's not as much a question, it's more, is this what I thought it would be?
[00:54:16] Like, I'm more checking it against. My initial certainty, and then there's a period of trust, but then there still has, as you say, then we kind of loop back to, is this really still serving me this purpose? Maybe I need to be asking a different question. Maybe I need to unravel a new layer here and it leads me to, to make, to refine something, to make a different decision.
[00:54:40] Um, I really like that because as you say, if we, if we can never trust them, we can never go anywhere either. Also. Always, uh, did I put left or right first? Where, where do I go? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um, I have had so many interesting thoughts during this conversation, but I think Here's how I'm thinking. I'm curious about two things. How do, how do we empower? What's, what's something we can do to empower other people to ask more questions and, you know, whatever comes to mind for you. Um, but then also what, what's something we can do on a personal level? What's something I can do to be, to use questions in a more empowering way in my life.
[00:55:35] What, what, what are some of your practices? Yeah.
[00:55:39] Pia: The first one. I have had, I think, you know, I've spent a lot of time on that because when I realized that, that this monopolization is going on, um, I was really, and, and that I had the monopoly somehow, you know, being a consultant, being a mother, being. You know, just the person that talks a lot, you know, I am, I am definitely one of the person that people having, taking this monopoly, being a philosopher, you know, being brought up by Socrates, asking all the questions all the time.
[00:56:17] Um, when I realized that I really, really wanted to find out, you know, how this. How this fascinating, how this empowering feeling of, of, of being curious and being doubtful of being, you know, all these things, how I could share that with others, you know, how I could democratize it. aNd, and I, I think it's been a tough journey actually.
[00:56:40] Um, because, I couldn't, you know, it's like change, you cannot ask other people to change, you can do that, but you, you don't, doesn't change anything. Um, and it's the same thing with, with questions. You cannot just say, you know, be more curious or ask more questions. yoU have to do something else. I actually talked with Amy Edmondson about it at some time, about this, you know, the connection to psychological safety.
[00:57:09] And, and I think she also wrote about it, you know, with, with questioning that, that to create an environment, to cultivate an environment where people feel comfortable asking questions. It's crucial, you know, because they know how to do it. Everybody knows how to ask questions. So that's not the, the issue.
[00:57:28] And, and even if they didn't, we know from Gadama that we wouldn't be able to teach them. So, so it's something else. aNd that something else has to do, from my perspective, it has to do with trust. It has to do with creating situations where you trust the people you're with enough to be silent.
[00:57:53] Long enough for them to come up with their own questions or it doesn't have to be questions, but just, you know, communicate what's on their mind. So the best thing you can do in order to help other people be more curious or ask more questions or share more of their doubts and uncertainties is simply to trust that they will if you shut up long enough.
[00:58:21] And if you demonstrate, rather than telling, if you demonstrate that you will be here for whatever questions they have, for whatever uncertainties they want to share, you will take the time. You will be patient. And you will trust that they know what's important for them to bring up. And that is counterintuitive for many talking, monopolizing people like myself.
[00:58:50] It's really counterintuitive. I would ask a lot of questions instead, or I would comment all kinds of things because I want to show you, I really care about you. And I think a lot of people are thinking, nice, but I'm not going to say anything. Then, then you can just, you can dance, right? Um, so yeah, I think that's what I have for the first one at least.
[00:59:17] And maybe it's the same, you know, with the second. Actually, you know, what can I do myself? Well, I have to practice being silent in order to hear my own questions. You know, what is actually going on right now, what is, as you mentioned before, what are the important questions right now? I have to be silent in order to hear that.
[00:59:42] Um, but also in order to hear what could be questions coming from outside, coming from my kids, coming from nature, coming from my husband, coming from my colleague. I, I hate it is so difficult, but, but it really, it is. It is difficult, you know, and if someone said, I have, I have built an AI that can make it easy.
[01:00:09] I would say, then you didn't build an AI for that. You build an AI for something else because it's not easy. And everyone and anything that tries to make it easy has misunderstood what it's all about. It's about embracing the difficult, the uncertainties. the doubt, the unknown. And you know how to do it.
[01:00:32] Everyone knows how
[01:00:33] Shani: to do it. Yeah. I mean, I'm a firm believer. We've a lot of things that we know we, we forget in the way that we're set up in our society, in our workplaces. But I, I totally agree. I think we have much more capacity to connect, to, to be with our discomforts, to be with our doubts than, than we are making use of.
[01:00:59] Yeah. Quite often when I get tech questions, I'm like, I usually just turn around and point at people and say, I think this is the most advanced tech you have in this room. Are you, are you aware? I, and I humbly say, I, I'm figuring this out even on my own level. How do I make use of the potential that exists within myself and explore that with a lot of questions, but, but definitely.
[01:01:29] Um, and yeah, and also like we were saying about ease, I think we're always looking for easy and maybe that's not the question. Maybe it's about making it manageable
[01:01:41] Pia: or. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and navigating the uneasy, right. And, and being okay. So, you know, trusting that, that, uh, just because it's not easy, it doesn't mean it's wrong.
[01:01:57] Um, And what am I supposed to learn here? You know, when I, when I tell people that I'm writing another book, they always, you know, asking a lot of them are asking, are you using chat GPT or another, you know, I'm kind of like now, because I'm not writing the book to write a book. I'm writing the book to learn something, to think, uh, and you know, to, and I wouldn't do that if it, I outsourced it, um, to machine.
[01:02:23] Uh, then it would probably learn something, you know, in the way it is learning, but, but I want to learn that, you know, that I learned by the struggle of, I've been writing the same introduction to the same article for the past week and it's still not done. And I love that I can't figure it out. I hate it too, you know, but I also love it.
[01:02:48] And I don't want anyone to take that away from me. Um, and that's just an example, but I think there are tons of examples like that, that if we really just, you know, asked ourself, why is it that I am doing this? When I hate it so much, we would realize it's because we also love it and because it's doing something for us, you know Mm hmm.
[01:03:12] Yeah. Yeah,
[01:03:14] Shani: I like that. It made me think of this summer I had the privilege of sitting in an ayahuasca ceremony with a tribe from the Amazon the Awanawa. Okay, and they They chant throughout the night so every song and It's, it's a pretty intense physical experience. I can imagine. Um, but their, their approach in it is like, before every song, they're like, hold on tight, like hold on to yourself here.
[01:03:47] And then whatever happens to you, happens to you and your body and your mind. And then towards the end, they go, you.
[01:03:55] Pia: And I
[01:03:55] Shani: remember this feeling of like, actually, like, yeah, that was hard, but it was also amazing. It And I kept thinking I should do that more often in life when I've had this. As you're saying this week or however long time you're sitting with something that you're simultaneously loving and hating and just go, whew, okay, wow, like that was a, that was a trip.
[01:04:17] That was something amazing. And we kind of get stuck in the hardness of it, but actually it's. It's that, like, the ease, and there's fun in that experience too, and you get to, like, you get to finish on that note if you want to. So I kind of, it reminded me of that, and it was a good reminder, thank you. I need to pick that back up into my life.
[01:04:42] Also, like, celebrate that. That friction a little, I think, and that you sit through it and that you go through it and, yeah, it's, it's all a process. Oh, we could go on. And maybe we'll have more conversations, quite simply. I've super enjoyed talking to you and digging into two questions with you, Pia.
[01:05:03] Thank you so much for being here. Thank
[01:05:05] Pia: you so much for inviting me. It was a pleasure. Thank you for listening to our exploration and dance with questions and doubts.
