 Choice architecture is about really creating the environment that gives you a good flow that's supporting your well-being. Yes. Because any setup in the environment is already a choice architecture, whether it's a good one or that one. It's just that we need to be mindful that anything, you know, if I have some healthy snacks here, I'm going to eat it. If I have some unhealthy snacks here, I might also end up eating it. They are triggering our decisions. 70% of our decisions are very much guided by autopiloting. It's not too reflective and that we need to be responsible in being mindful of that influence. Yeah. What's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sakyam. We're on site at the beautiful Transformative Technology Conference for our second partnership with them. We're now going to be speaking with Dr. Ting Zhang. Hi, Ting. Perfect pronunciation. Thank you for coming on our program. Honored to be here. Yeah, and the perfect outfit for the program as well. I love it. Yeah? Yeah, I do. Colors. Colors. Colors. Flowers. That's right. Nature. Yeah, always. Yeah, I have the leaves. You have the flowers. Exactly. Perfect. I love it. I love it. I'm so pumped for this. Before we get into all of your stuff that you're doing, let's talk about are we really all one? Right. We're two people here. So tell me what you mean by all one. That's your job. To tell us what my question means to you. What do you think? What do you think? I'm curious to hear about yours first. My answer is yes. Okay. Why? So my answer is no. Why? Your why first. We all come from the same source. We all have two sides of things. But it all comes from the same source. Having two sides doesn't mean that we have to necessarily be one. Okay. Can we move to the next topic? I like where you were going with this though. Why do you bring up having two sides to the same thing? It's interesting. So for a long time, we have been very curious about why people resist behavioral change. And I think one key barrier is failure. So when we acknowledge that we want to change, we also acknowledge that we are not yet perfect. And that's really hard. Right. So I think the two sides of things allow us to be always a bit more open to failure also means that you can learn, you can grow. So it's not just one way to look at it. There's always these two ways. And I think human flourishing is about growth. It's not about where you start with. It's about how you can grow over time. And it's important that we are open to different perspectives. I mean, impossible. I would love to say multiple perspectives. But at least starting with two is great because it balances. Classic Yin and Yang. Very tough because you're right. We start off with wanting to think this is absolutely perfect. This is the absolute Dow. This is exactly where it's supposed to be. Yet we also want to say that we're flowering. We're in the process of blossoming. There's always room for improvement. We're always growing. This is the point of creation. It's the process of evolution. And also in the Chinese saying, you have to be... When you are really in the position of picking up, you have to be mindful that that's not going to last for long or that's not the only side of the story. And then when you are at the bottom, when you feel like it's almost the end of the world, you understand that there's also the upside for that journey. So I think that sort of being aware of the counterfactual and also the other side and being aware of the dynamic, it's great. Now have you had feelings of deep, profound interconnectedness or ego loss or unconditional love or deep presence? Tell us about your experiences with that. There was this moment in life where it really changed my perspective. When I was in Kenya, I was visiting the slum. And of course, you know, by appearance, you can notice the colors, difference and all that. But I fell home in Africa, which was really weird. And there was this little kid. So I flew in from Amsterdam. I had this Dutch cookies and I was, you know, of course walking around and feeling really sad about how terrible their situation is without, you know, access to clean water. Everything's dirty. They're in poverty. And I was just sharing my little cookies with the little kids. And everybody was happy. But there are two things that shocked me. One is everybody didn't want to take a second bite. They would share after they take the first bite. I only had like two. I wasn't prepared. So it was like really like just two small cookies up. Wow. What a protocol. So as soon as you take the first bite, they try to bring the other kids, they try to share. Then there was this little kid who rejected my cookie because he didn't have time. He was carrying, he was like five year old. He was carrying a water just taller than his knees. Okay. He had to take a break every 10 steps because it was too heavy. And he looked at me and he smiled. And then he picked up his water and he walked home. He didn't take the cookie. And at that moment, I don't know. I was touched by how often, I felt I was having a hard time. Sometimes you were like, oh gosh, this is hard. This is tough. But knowing how privileged I was, I mean being able to see the contrast and being able to say, okay, I was born so lucky and they were born unlucky. But yet, they persisted and they were still so optimistic about life. Or maybe people in metropolises are born unlucky and people born in wilderness are born lucky. Yeah. Depending on how you view it. Right. So yes. So there's wealth not just in money and there's lots of other dimensions to wealth. This is a very interesting story. When were you in Kenya? This was two years ago. Two years ago? Yeah. Wow. And this is also very interesting because it gives you that same thing that you were talking about these multiple perspectives on given situations. It gives you like trying to get behind the eyes of someone that's trying to carry water probably to their family. Or someone that was born with this idea that you take a bite and then you pass it. I can't be happy if you're not happy. So why would I ever take this cookie and try and then sell you half of it? Yeah. Or whatever the other philosophies are. Or like all then where indigenous tribes still go and whichever tribe comes back with or whichever family comes back with the hunt shares it with the rest of the tribe rather than tries to the questions always asked well why don't you go and store the meat and preserve it instead or what you've gathered? Well because the best place to store it is actually in your stomach, in my friend's stomach. Yeah. So if you come back to the question are we one? I think, I felt they are one there but the sad thing is the world of the poor the world of the rich in whatever dimensions in health, in wealth, in spiritual it's in some way not one at the moment. Yes. We are divided and the question is why and how can we bridge them together? Yes. So I ended up doing a lot of behavioral interventions on them because I felt deep inside us maybe we felt they are different but they are so much the same and when I brought a board game that was supposed to help them overcome myopic decision making tendency the first time when they played it they've never played a game in their life it's not like us, we play games all the time we train ourselves, we all kinds of supported materials they sucked at it they couldn't do strategic thinking they couldn't think multiple steps ahead of time they couldn't even strategize within one round let alone a few rounds ahead of time but then the second time when they came back I was shocked they were strategizing like crazy they were growing like, you know and when we looked at them and when we wanted to help I think a lot of time we helped out of warm glow thinking that we, you know out of charitable feeling, out of empathy but really I think we need to help them out of respect out of respect of the potential human potential in them and sort of more like invest in like it's wasted this person could become Obama this person could become somebody wonderful doing a lot of amazing things for the world and we're just not making the best use of it and it's the cheapest way to invest because even just a little bit of help there they could, yeah they could get out of poverty and just take a very different path I'm very interested in even as we're talking about this what is the most upstream root of the big issue that you also hinted at earlier where there's this disconnect between what's happening and the metropolises and what happened indigenously and I do think that it's interconnectedness I'm curious to hear if you think it is is it, is interconnectedness is these feelings of unity, of oneness are they what's missing in our metropolises are they the thing, the idea that we are there is separation is that the most upstream issue of our world today if we look at well-being I think if we look at the top ten causes of death of developed countries versus developing countries you see chronic illnesses heart attack, cancer and a lot of these can be prevented and cured with better lifestyle lifestyle change and if you look at lifestyle one key factor is stress and if you look at stress one key remedy actually is social connectedness so loneliness is terrible for stress but being able to have a social group social support is wonderful and if you look at loneliness like how big is the problem if you look at suicidal rates what's the trend I do think that we have a fundamental problem of coming back to the fundamental human need if you think about what makes you happy a lot of times even having a good social connection a social relationship being able to have a good love relationship can make you so happy but if you have a fight with your colleague at work it can make you want to quit your job and all the time when we're stressed about not meeting deadline it's because we feel bad not meeting the expectations of other people we're intrinsically social we're such a human species it's a social species so I do think that it's something that can give us a lot of life satisfaction where we might overlook how important we might underestimate how important it is yes yes you were hinting at this a little bit ago we can dive deep into this this is fascinating you used this word choice architecture with me earlier you were talking about myopic thinking so extremely near-sighted I just want instant gratification or rather than maybe long-term goal-oriented thinking strategic chess style 12 moves down the line thinking this is fascinating feel to many people we talk about this on the show quite often what are you uniquely blueprinted for what is the gift that you can bring to the world how do you strategically bring that gift to the world but at the same time isn't there like just just being what about just being if it is just that maybe it is just maybe it is I don't want to learn more about your choice architecture because I just want to just be in the middle of nature in the middle of my tribe out in the wilderness or whatever it be so choice architecture works for maybe extremely like goal-oriented trying to bring something into the world but to teach at least that that exists could be like the point is like hey this exists if you're interested but at the same time maybe people that have super goal-oriented need to learn how to just chill the fuck out and BE instead how do you feel about that first of all what makes you want to be just in the middle of the nature why does that come as being and not like being next to you being among other people is that not being you're right that it is also being but this style of being has agenda and the other style of being has no agenda okay so people don't drink enough water is essential for life so we have some agenda about needing to drink water to live of course you can say well let it be I'll just not drink enough water I can let it be but it's also not terrible if we drink enough water and actually can feel more when we are being ourselves we have enough brain power to be mindful be more mindful when we rest well, when we sleep well we're so much more relaxed and yes there's an agenda to sleep better but I think it's not incompatible with the concept of being so I think choice architecture a lot of time it's actually about taking away some of the decisions that are really not that fundamental for you to reflect on to spend a lot of energies on because it's like Google Calendar help you know when you're up for certain appointments we can memorize it ourselves but we don't need to right and then it frees up your cognitive capacity to really think about meaning of life to really be right so I it's not necessarily bad of course and also there's again it's kind of the same first principle of upstream question around why even use that in the first place regarding just needing planning whatsoever having no agenda whatsoever just being in the state of constant interconnectedness with the experience of consciousness I find this conversation to be really interesting but it's also I find what you're doing to be extremely important because you're showing people that if you have something that you feel like is a gift that you want to bring to the world if you are uniquely blueprinted to bring even some sort of a butterfly effect style change around the flowering of consciousness over time then having 12 moves ahead of time framing or offsetting some of your cognition to Google calendar ever know blah blah blah is actually extremely useful for your productivity and for your ability to bring that gift forward and let me maybe mention that we do like to increase the flow moments of human beings because that's when they feel really well right immersive being immersive in life and choice architecture it's about really creating the environment that give you a good flow that's supporting your well-being because any setup in the environment is already a choice architecture whether it's a good one or that one it's just that we need to be mindful that anything you know if I have some healthy snacks here if I have some unhealthy snacks here I might also end up eating it that they are triggering our decisions 70% of our decisions are very much guided by autopiloting it's not so reflective and that we need to be responsible in being mindful of that influence yeah and in order to create sort of the better human experiences what are the most important things for example for when I do want to bring something that I'm uniquely blueprinted to bring to the world or a gift that I want to bring to the world what are the things that you're seeing and studying in choice architecture this is at the center for advanced hindsight at Duke what are you guys finding as like these most first principle things that's a great question I think creativity getting people to get into a creative mode is something that of course everybody would be unique in those moments so you can try to create for example blocking time we're starting to make Friday non-work it's not that unique everybody's not doing it no cell phone Sunday it is in itself still a choice architecture in a sense of it blocks the time for you to connect or it blocks the time for you to go for your deep work to worry about the typical kind of work so give us more of these these aren't very cool what else oh we have maybe I can yeah show us we love these we love demos on the show I love these what personal trait do you have that annoys your coworkers we gotta show this okay hold on oh conversational decks no small talk I love that no small talk okay everyone ready what does that one say what are you embarrassed about so that's an interesting question what else do we have here ooh this is a good one what personality trait are you most proud of okay ooh what do you value most in friendship interesting there's even questions like who do you like more your mom or your dad ooh yeah and it's hard what's the most touching gift touching or inspiring gift given to someone yeah this is so good and some of the questions are given for my best friend or husband I actually didn't know the answer if I have to guess so I think it's kind of the a new kind of product feature or products or architectural space design that would trigger all of these good habits and good rituals that we can have to get to know each other more to be more in a moment to be more productive to be anything that is less robotic yeah interesting so can we use interventions like conversation decks to break through small talk get to the depths of the psyche and get to these questions that we maybe have never even thought of answering ourselves so like interventions like these are actually really paramount for us trying to do things like better understand who we really are at the depths of the psyche and also try and and guide ourselves more towards what we can potentially be uniquely gifted for that we didn't even know the blueprint what are the other interventions these are great so far we have conversation decks what was the first one as well that you mentioned oh the no typical work Friday that we now have yeah the no work Fridays yeah I recently picked up a ritual with my mom to share things that I'm most excited about for my day something that brought me deep meaning and joy and I was surprised to find out to learn about hers since I have lived abroad for 20 years now so we have with my mom we would call once a week but I don't get to experience her life on a daily basis and also sharing something just positive right and every time when I reflect on my day I realize the kind of things I'd like to share with her and write about it that I'm joyful about it's actually not those that I would guess that would be the one on top of my mind that are too much work related or like there are moments where I'm connected with another person or even a stranger oh that was actually a very wonderful moment something worth memorizing and same for my mom so I think even just with now we have been doing it for a week we just recently started I felt so much deeper connected with her what a beautiful ritual interesting okay so then I guess a good amount of what you're doing is figuring out how to design do you guys crowdsource these ideas do you like have people submit their rituals and you guys analyze them to see how much it helps with well being that's a brilliant idea I do think that would be a really great idea to crowdsource we haven't done that if you have a way to help us to crowdsource that we would love to get suggestions that's why we do this show we play these games of tennis we come up with good ideas and then we tell everyone that's watching hey so we have a link in the bio below you guys can submit submit your eye ritual ideas please there was one that was shared with my friend Mickey who was the founder of Maya Design who tried this in their workplace that to ask everybody to bring something a little bit personal to workplace and they would misplace it they would probably job it and you have to find like you find toilet paper in the middle of the hallway or something who does this belong to you find like a little like a little toy of some sort or a little item of some sort from a given culture in the middle of somewhere it's not supposed to be in the kitchen in the sink or something and you have to find and know who it could be at the workplace that actually owns that item that's a cool game I love that game because then you have to get to know people better but it should also be that everybody has to go and at least find an item not like one person's going and like playing the game and everyone else is just you actually get an item everybody gets an item on their desk and this item doesn't belong to them oh it's on their desk oh I thought it was like you can go place it anywhere in the workplace and then wherever you find a random item oh it's on their desk it's more controlled in that sense so then everybody has to participate I like that oh that's interesting okay I like that one do you have any in your own life um let's think I mean some of the first things that come up for me are just rituals of giving what is available when people come in as like guests into the home for the shows just always wanting to you know to be hospitable in some way and just give whatever you know there's this culture around the world that I forgot which one it was that if someone points at something when they're visiting and says oh that's very beautiful they just give it to them right away so I guess my answers I would need to spend more time analyzing myself this is hard to try and compress my life into something that um I have some sort of a ritual like what you were describing but um there are likely some that I could that I could pull but that help you feel more present just the deep depth into the interconnectedness of all and that usually just comes from a meditation yeah it's a very contemplative um it's very meditative it's but it's also deeply scientific it's not just spiritual to me it's marrying the two sides of the same coin so I constantly think about the interconnectedness of everything on a scientific level as I do on a spiritual level so and when I you know think and feel and experience that feeling that to me is I guess thanks for bringing that up that's probably my best ritual but it's such a personalized one there's other people that I practice this ritual with like the co-producer of our show Ori um he's someone that I practice this ritual with on just like a sometimes we'll just um be so meditative e together and he's just so meditative e himself that I get triggered into the interconnected state just by um being around him and stuff like that so the more that someone in a sense is unconditional lovey and present the and etc the more you get vortexed into that yourself but when you're such a future builder that's what I'm so ops and architecturally oriented that um I spend a lot of my time actually building that future world um and that's a hard thing to figure out yeah exactly like um like like I guess I don't necessarily think that the future can be built by just meditative feeling and yeah um yeah but some people counter that point and they do say that you can actually just be super present and they'll build it and I'm like I'm still trying to figure that out but go ahead yes you're saying yes so let's think about the workplace lots of people spend you know eight hours let's say at the workplace right that's a lot after taking out like sleep hours and all of the necessary you know things you have to do with your time um what's like what's the best way to design the office like forget about how they are designed now how would you design the workplace in a different way that you would promote the most aggregate well-being of everybody in there yeah yeah I love this question we actually just talked about it on an episode with Brandon just a little bit ago on the show earlier today where we gave the example of if if we were architecting our our built environments with the first principle of interconnectedness there would be much more natural light there would be much more plants animals it would be like basically if you took like computational modernity and brought it into the middle of forests and beaches and stuff like that that's what we came up with and as a as a scientist I would start with um diagnosis of um what's the biggest contributing factors to people's well-being during the day I would actually say taking a daily nap could be very helpful for their mood more than having plants around now plants might be necessary but if you would measure the impact of like how much does it how much do you feel um satisfied about life and if I would compare the two interventions having 10 plants around him or getting him to take a daily nap I would bet on the daily nap in that particular outcome life satisfaction or mood or even house outcomes now how do you get people to take a daily nap we have some tech companies who are actually endorsing this idea but did they approach in a scientific way of like in order to make 80% of their employees acquire a napping habit to do how do you need to design your space how do you need to design the napping facilities so that they actually do that it's not a simple question it's not about just having some napping rooms around because people might not do it we always know the behaviour uptake is more than just you know offering the product right what about retention maybe they try the first few days and then they drop out yeah yeah what about the image social image social norms you need to intervene something right so that becomes the true sides of these these actually it's full circles as to what we were very initially talking about which is when you are given this super goal oriented behaviours versus the just take a nap let your body like just relax during that is that the internal internal world and then the external world right it's the two and they both need to come together to support and the external world I think can be more scientifically designed almost like the environment as medicines for supporting you like you know that it's a good idea to take a nap but you need or you know that you're having more vitamin or whatever it is but you still need to take that they need to be available for you so another quick example is a work break like in between your meetings etc break is amazing for productivity now how do you make sure that people take that five minutes break with the most relaxation that they need it's not easy to be like just sitting around having seeing all of your colleagues with the open space concept you don't have any privacy you can't just like you know shut down for five minutes right so we might end up just checking social media so one thing that we were brainstorming with our architects in China is can you create an enclosed pathway to the toilet because you take you know you take toilet break and they happen to coincide with your work break so if I make it in clothes if I play meditative music in this channel right I can decorate it with all the green you want in all days you know even green color sometimes can substitute I mean you cannot replace plants ideally just plants but if you want a low cost version right and you let them walk back from the toilet as if they walk back from a forest walk try to simulate that stuff like that stuff like that it's not it's fully compatible with you know your then you have the multiply effect so you have the environment you have the intention of course you still need to work on the self-awareness it's crucial but then it's two parts of the puzzle yeah yeah interesting this is given the the limitations that we have today to be able to make the interventions right now that was a good example okay and then I must ask you this because you know we just came back from doing interviews in China we love the philosophies of the east the philosophies the west are somewhat different the two sides of the same coin marrying is very important how do you feel about how to best collaborate geopolitically between China and the US yeah huh that's so interesting I think the world you know it's so difficult it's so easy to like someone who thinks like you it's just not easy to like someone who disagree with you by by nature like we are all in group oriented sometimes we're still having our tribal instinct so there's the effect called homophily effect if I find out that you were born in the same day or there's certain you know similarities all of a sudden I trust you more yeah it turns out there's an experiment if you tell them like hey you two actually share you know the same fingerprint and it's rare it's not common I'm much more likely to help you out with like a favor that you ask afterwards right so um but the beauty of modernity is about going beyond this tribal instinct of liking your in-group and it's about having that universal love I mean the economy of impersonal exchange and having trust with all of these strangers I mean it makes all of these wonderful beautiful things happen and make the entire human species as one as you put it so how can we learn from um I think you know how can we marry two different cultures I think if we would practice if we would find out some good tricks to even get ourselves to like people with different opinions and people will not like us I think we would be getting closer to think about cultural collaborations yeah I like that a lot yeah that was a great way to put it um do you think that would be a bootloader for digital superintelligence so I mean it's such an amazing world that we live in now with all of the technologies making so many things possible um I was I cannot help thinking about this metaphor about the hammer and the nails I think for one I think humans are the one deciding what nail the hammer should be hammering on um and we need to have the intelligence to know what we want the wall to look like what do we want to put on a wall and which nails to hammer um instead of just sharpening our hammers um I think we have enough sharp hammers it's important as well but I think what we are losing is some of these more fundamental questions and I think even some of the questions like meaning of life it's true that we cannot be accurate about it but it doesn't mean that having an inaccurate um non-precise answer is not important for us to have an answer and it doesn't mean the fact that it cannot be fully quantifiable right and I think there could be some indicators that can um at least the proxies good foxies of that um it being able to track progress towards those fundamental goals and it is crucial for us to be you know keeping our um either control or confidence above the um digital world so um yeah so I think the emotional intelligence um it's um yet to be um I think the we certainly can outsource our um IQ anything that is just about computation and the other kind of intelligence we don't need to be mastering those but we need to be mastering EQ and then what do you think is the most beautiful thing in creation? some of the most beautiful things tend to be also the most intangible if you think about love if you think about art and the world do pay attention to and our attention do get drawn to quantifiable factors so I don't have in concrete um definition um but I do know they tend to be things that would that we can feel you know deep inside our hearts and that we cannot explain why we feel so in all with it um yeah yeah yeah Ting I feel so excited and lightened thank you so much for coming on our program thank you Alan thank you thank you thank you thanks everyone for tuning in we greatly appreciate it we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode let us know what you're thinking also check out the links in the bio below this is again the center for advanced hindsight at Duke University you can find that link in the bio below also other links to Ting's work as well also check out the links in the bio below to the transformer technology conference you can find all of those links in the bio below you can check out the links in the bio below to our show as well support the artists the entrepreneurs the leaders in your communities that you believe in you can find our paypal Patreon cryptocurrency link as well as our design code where to get paid all those links are below and go and build the future everyone manifest your dreams into the world we love you very much thank you for tuning in and we will see you soon peace