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00:00:01
Dr Ming Ming Chiu: Why Fake News Works So Well
11 Plays1 hour ago
In this episode, Eric talks with researcher Dr Ming Ming Chiu about fake news, AI generated deception, creativity, and the hidden patterns inside human communication. Drawing from decades of work across education, statistics, online behavior, and computational analysis, Dr Chiu explains why misinformation spreads so effectively and why the future of trust may become one of the defining challenges of modern society.
What began as research into how children learn mathematics eventually led Dr Chiu into studying online predators, extremist recruitment, fake news networks, and deceptive communication itself. Along the way, he developed what he calls “Deceptive Writing Theory,” a framework that attempts to identify falsehoods not by checking facts directly, but by analyzing the language patterns people use when they lie.
The conversation explores why fake news works in the first place. Dr Chiu argues that deception succeeds because most people are generally honest and cooperative in daily life. Humans are wired to trust. That trust becomes exploitable when large organizations, political actors, or AI systems learn how to manipulate emotion, identity, fear, and social sharing dynamics at scale.
Eric and Dr Chiu also discuss how different cultures experience misinformation differently, why AI may dramatically increase the scale of manipulation, and what happens when societies retreat into isolated “truth bubbles.” At the same time, the conversation turns toward creativity and scientific discovery itself. Dr Chiu explains why most of his ideas fail, why failure is central to innovation, and how creativity often emerges by connecting patterns across completely unrelated fields.
At its core, this is a conversation about trust. About how humans decide what is real. And about whether societies can maintain shared reality in a world increasingly shaped by algorithms designed to manipulate attention.
Topics Covered
- Why humans are naturally vulnerable to fake news
- How “Deceptive Writing Theory” attempts to detect lies
- The language patterns common in deceptive communication
- Why fake news spreads through emotion and identity
- The role of Russia, China, and large scale disinformation campaigns
- Why AI could dramatically increase manipulation online
- How scammers intentionally target vulnerable people
- The relationship between trust and misinformation
- Why different cultures respond differently to fake news
- Echo chambers, polarization, and collapsing shared reality
- Why most scientific ideas fail
- Creativity through pattern recognition across disciplines
- How Dr Chiu moved from computer science into education research
- What children’s conversations revealed about human behavior
- Why large tech companies may be the only groups capable of addressing fake news at scale
- The tension between optimism and pessimism about humanity’s future
Episode Links
- Dr Ming Ming Chiu on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pY0PJVsAAAAJ&hl=en
- Dr Chiu at The Education University of Hong Kong: https://www.eduhk.hk/en/experts/professor-chiu-ming-ming
For more episodes: https://unfoldingthought.com
Questions or guest ideas: eric@inboundandagile.com
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Transcript
00:00:02
Speaker
Doctor, thank you for joining me. Where does today's recording find you? I'm in hot Hong Kong where El Nino is hitting us pretty hard. You earned a computer science degree from Columbia, a master's in education from Harvard, and a PhD from Berkeley. And along the way, you've researched a lot of things, which I was kind of surprised to find given...
00:00:27
Speaker
some of the initial things that i found and was really interested in about you. So some of those things are, that you've researched, are teaching and education, fake news and corruption, collaboration, creativity, online predators, and how ideas spread.
00:00:45
Speaker
and Along the way, you've published hundreds of papers and you've been awarded tens of millions of dollars in grants. So hopefully you'll give me a little bit of introduction as well. But as you go through that, I would love if you could tell me, is there a common thread that has driven a lot of your career or your research?
00:01:09
Speaker
Yes, for a long time, people around me focused on tradition and they talk about old ways of doing things. And I often felt that that wasn't quite right. It's hard to really argue against, especially older people.
00:01:21
Speaker
And then i discovered data. Like there's a lot of data out there, information, and you could use that to your advantage. So when I see like important problems, I look around and see if there's data available. And then I get the data, I analyze, i understand the problem better.
00:01:34
Speaker
And I try to devise solutions using that data. And so on the way, sometimes have to invent new statistical methods to do that. So I'm really lucky to be living at this moment in time when we're literally swimming in data. It's all around this, internet's everywhere.
00:01:47
Speaker
When you talk about an interest in data, for example, or leaning toward data, how did one thing lead to another?
00:01:58
Speaker
So my parents had very little education. My dad finished sixth grade. My mom finished fourth grade. And so i went to high school and then this time go to college and didn't really know how to advise me. And so wasn't that familiar with the system. So talked to a counselor and he said, oh, you're pretty good science. you should think about computer science. So that's almost kind of like an accident.
00:02:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah. OK, computer science, whatever that is. But then I started doing it. was like, oh, this is really cool. You create simulations. And so when I was at Columbia, I was thinking, oh, I can do a simulation of a child.
00:02:32
Speaker
I can like have a computer that simulates how a child works. And I realized after playing with kids, Computers are nothing like children. Children know so much more. And so like, that's a really bad project. Like now it it seems very interesting, but back then it was terrible. So that's how it was my transition into focusing on real kids as opposed to simulations of kids.
00:02:54
Speaker
And so they ended up volunteering as a teacher in local schools. And then ended up like getting my degrees in education. Is there a topic that interests you most at the moment?
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, right now I have a five-year grant to study fake news, to figure how to detect it. And so I created something called deceptive writing theory. And so if you think about like COVID in the early days, we didn't actually know what was going on. Even scientists didn't know what was.
00:03:20
Speaker
And so if you don't actually know the truth, how is it possible to detect fake news? And so I had the idea that, okay, we can't look at the truth because we don't know what it is. So let's look at the fake news author who's spreading lies.
00:03:32
Speaker
And so we're accustomed to truth to the people around the world around us. We basically live in the truth. So telling lies actually not very easy. And so fake news authors, even though very bold, like Putin lies all the time, but he's still in his hesitance. He tries to hide it and he tries to avoid responsibility.
00:03:48
Speaker
So we look at like what people say, particularly words they use. And so let's take word you versus i When I use the word you, it places more responsibility on the audience. If I use the word I, I'm taking more responsibility myself.
00:04:02
Speaker
So, fake news authors, they're hesitant about lying. So they use a lot more you, a lot less I. So for instance, if you see a message, a text message that has you in it, it's 21% more likely to be false.
00:04:14
Speaker
Whereas if a message has I in it, it's 21% more likely to be true. And so there are other things like um like questions and hedges. People use to avoid responsibility. They often use complicated words and sentences to hide their lies.
00:04:28
Speaker
And they'll also activate your emotions so you can't think clearly. How did you get into studying fake news? This is really roundabout. It's three conversations between kids doing mathematics.
00:04:39
Speaker
And so i was interested in how they talk to each other. and so I was thinking about, okay, when I listen to them, they'll be talking lots of mathematics. So I go to classrooms, I listen to them, I realize realize actually they don't talk about math most of the time.
00:04:51
Speaker
And so this like one of those things where you expect people to be like, be on task and doing the work. No, most kids are not actually doing math in math classes. And so along the way, I thought, okay, I should probably model how they're talking. So, okay, I'm gonna invent a statistical method to analyze conversations.
00:05:07
Speaker
And so I talked to statisticians, they're like, yeah, actually that's really, really hard. So I spent like 10 years, like figure out how to do it. Fortunately, I had job by then. And so once invented it, it basically had to solve 16 different statistical sub-problems in order to actually create this method.
00:05:23
Speaker
So initial thought was, okay, ISIS has recruited people on the internet in the States. So like I can all analyze conversations and like detect ISIS recruitment. So I went to the FBI website And it turns out out of 330 million people in United States, there only like 80 cases and really maybe 20 real cases.
00:05:43
Speaker
And like, this is like not a real problem. Like there's tons of money being spent on this, but it's not a really serious problem. but Along the way, let's look at the crime statistics. Every day, 750,000
00:05:54
Speaker
people are trying to have sex with children on the internet. I'm like, wow, this is a really serious problem. And so that's how I got interested in figuring out well how to do about that. And so fortunately, there are forums, there are online forums. You can actually look at people trying to get kids.
00:06:11
Speaker
And so i looked at the conversations, like the words, and like, oh, these words are telling us they're using particular strategies. is They're trying to bond with children. And so they targeting children who are very unhappy, don't like their parents, have no friends.
00:06:25
Speaker
So they'll often say, oh, I'm unhappy about something. Kids naturally reciprocate, like they feel unhappy too if someone understands me and they you know slowly build trust. And then after a while, often the guy will ask them to say, oh let's meet that's where I'll buy you some ice cream.
00:06:39
Speaker
So that's why you're interested in the words, looking in detail about what people are saying. And then it's like very small cues actually tell you a lot what's going on. that's how get interested. So that's a really long roundabout way of getting to it. But it kind shows you how I jump across topics, looking for patterns.
00:06:55
Speaker
It seems to me that a primary driver around the the development of fake news is getting people to share it because sharing either allows one group or another to mask the truth or to distract or whatever else. But I guess, do you have the same sense given your work that sharing is either a primary driver, a primary motivator to creating fake news, or maybe is, are there other things given the research that you've done that motivate the creation of fake news?
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's part of it. But we go back a step, we should think about why does fake news work in the first place? And it works because we basically trust people. We're usually around our friends, family, and we trust people. We expect them tell truth. We don't expect people lie.
00:07:48
Speaker
And so that's quite normal. And because we expect people tell truth, when people lie to us, we're more likely believe it. and Because you can imagine the opposite. If we live in a world where we expect everyone to lie, we're surrounded by enemies, that's really a horrible place to live. So no one really wants to live there. So we try to pick people around us who we trust and will tell us truth. Otherwise, we're constantly spending time to figure out what's what's false.
00:08:11
Speaker
So given the situation, this is why most people fall for fake news. Most the time, we get the truth. And so when we hit with a lie, it's quite easy to believe it because we're not expecting people lie to us.
00:08:24
Speaker
So then let's go to like, why do people do fake news in the first place? And so I think there are three major reasons, money, politics, and power. So money is simple. You can like, ah if you advertise, you can write a clickbait and people click on on your story and then People advertise to give you money.
00:08:43
Speaker
So that's really straightforward. Politics is a little more interesting. There's a little bit of people you know saying things for political reasons, but mostly these are really enormous organizations. So Russia's Internet Research Agency is flooding the US s with fake news. China is camouflaged, just trying to do the same thing.
00:09:00
Speaker
They have like hundreds of people who are thinking about how to givep feed fake news into United States and get people believe it and then continue. And the last one is power. Some people just enjoy the idea they're deceiving other people.
00:09:15
Speaker
You I make up something fake, someone believes it, I feel great about because I just enjoy the power. But it only works if, like you said, people spread fake news. If like people read it and don't spread it, just won't work at all.
00:09:27
Speaker
So people might spread it for the same reasons, clickbait, politics, or power, but they also could spread it for other reasons. So they might just think it's funny. and like, oh, this is entertaining.
00:09:37
Speaker
Let me share with other people. This is my map for a fault. The whole point is it's funny. They might also hear news that seems suspicious, but if it's attacking an enemy of theirs or someone they don't like, they also enjoy that too. it's a little bit of money, little bit of being funny, a little bit of power.
00:09:51
Speaker
And so they'll typically not pay too it much attention whether true not. Other categories, things are really scary and they're not really sure it's true or not, but then by sharing it, they get other people to weigh in on it. And then together they can figure out like what to do, but whether it's true or false.
00:10:06
Speaker
And so because spreading is so much more important, Russia's research agents actually change their tactic. They've actually stopped creating fake news. They look around America. There's so many people doing already, like Donald Trump or other politicians. And they're like, oh, we could just use that. So instead of creating fake news, they mostly find what's fake and then spread it through lots of channels.
00:10:26
Speaker
And so they'll, for instance, send information about, let's say, blacks committing crimes to states with a lot white people. And they'll also send stories about Christian nationalists to black communities. So they're trying to antagonize communities against each other.
00:10:42
Speaker
Is fake news more or less effective depending on, i guess, cultural standards or maybe even the differences between languages that maybe affect trust? As in if you live in a lower trust society, is fake news less likely to be spread or otherwise be effective?
00:11:04
Speaker
It makes a difference, but it depends on specific situation. So let's take America. It's a very individual society. People tend to have less trust of other people compared to, let's say, Scandinavia or China.
00:11:17
Speaker
And so in that case, people are less likely to be fooled by lies by strangers, but they're more likely be fooled by lies from their friends or family. So they basically have a small, tight-knit circle and they trust them more.
00:11:30
Speaker
Whereas in China other places, they tend to trust strangers little bit more. And so they're more likely fooled by that, but then they're less susceptible to fake news from their family. in a society where I have less trust of, you know, somebody from the next town over or from a different community, but I do have higher trust in my family or my immediate neighborhood, people who are close to me, then for fake news to be effective,
00:12:00
Speaker
it really has to get into a connector type person in any, every community, somebody who is a spreader of ideas or a connector of people. And yet,
00:12:14
Speaker
It seems to me like all things being equal that in a lower trust society or where trust is not as, you know, shared as easily, let's say, it seems to me like fake news would still be harder to spread. So then given what you said, like fake news would be more successful, I guess, in Scandinavia or China potentially than in the United States.
00:12:39
Speaker
It depends on, like, the situation is really important. So you don't actually need a connector in your community. You just get into a community. And then because the level trust is so high, it'll spread very quickly.
00:12:50
Speaker
So if you're from the outside, you just get someone in the community to say something like that, and people just tend to believe it. It's much more accepting. Whereas like when you're in, let's say, like China, it's more collective society.
00:13:03
Speaker
There's greater a punishment if people are telling lies. So there's less of that. But then at the same time, once you're inside, they tend to have larger groups. So you also have more people checking and discussing things.
00:13:13
Speaker
So in the US, s you have smaller circles. In China, you have larger circles. So overall, what determines like the size of the problem is actually not so much the people, but the attacker.
00:13:25
Speaker
So the United States faces a big problem, partially because there's lot inside, but also it's being attacked by Russia and China. So for instance, COVID, 88% of all tweets at the beginning of COVID were lies.
00:13:38
Speaker
Whereas in France, only 25% were lies. And that's largely because France not being attacked as much. right So chat box is really powerful force. I was thinking of this in terms of you know the difficulty of distribution, or sorry, not difficulty of distribution. I was thinking of it in terms of the distribution model.
00:13:59
Speaker
So if I had a product to sell and I have to go through multiple layers of distribution, I manufacture in one location, then I send out to a couple of warehouses or resellers, and then they send out to local stores and then the local stores do you know distribute somehow. I have multiple layers there and there's a lot that could go wrong.
00:14:22
Speaker
And if I'm trying to reach with my product, let's say if I'm trying to reach 10,000 people and at the lowest level, one of these stores or distributors can only reach 100 Well, if something goes wrong, that's only what is that 1% or whatever of the people that I miss out on.
00:14:44
Speaker
But there are a lot of places where distribution of my product can be derailed, much like, as at least as I'm thinking about it, fake news. But...
00:14:55
Speaker
there's a push and pull sort of aspect to this. Like you said, the punishment in a society where there's higher trust or more collectivist or whatever the right terminology is here, then you're much more hesitant to spread a lie.
00:15:14
Speaker
Whether you believe it or not, you're just, I guess, more likely to check your facts or have people close to you tell you hey you might not want to do that that there's more career there's more opportunity for correction is what i'm hearing that's right if you're like russia you don't need to persuade like 100 of the people you you might just need pers persuade people people well for instance if you need someone to like start shooting up someplace you don't need like you know 100 people just one is fine
00:15:45
Speaker
So you don't need to get lots. You could just, if you could target one person, that's much more effective. So in fact, like ISIS improvements, other types of improvements, they don't actually try to get everyone.
00:15:56
Speaker
Like sexual predators, they don't try to get every child. They look for particular types of children that they will likely have a greater sense chance of success, target them and use particular strategies.
00:16:07
Speaker
That's why they talk about being unhappy. Most kids are pretty happy. They're not going to fall for that. So they're targeting sorts of children are vulnerable. with the the sort of the stereotype of these email scams that people used to get, you know, I'm a a prince from Africa and I have some money that I need to, you know, transfer. And so I need your help or whatever these email schemes are that as I have heard it One of the reasons that there are misspellings in the emails and that there are things that are just generally not believable is because it's actually, if you're the scammer, it's actually not that bad for you to get
00:16:53
Speaker
people who are unlikely to trust you, who are unlikely to follow through, you just want them to select out quickly. And as you're saying that, what came to mind is the idea that, you know, we put something out there and we we let people sort of raise their hand or find us in so in some ways, maybe. And that's really interesting.
00:17:19
Speaker
That's also, I think, gets back around to The idea of, I think you were referring to it as the size of the attacker, that with personalization, with, if we want to talk about advertising or content, hyper-targeting, that we can have, we can produce a hundred fake news articles all on completely different topics or from completely different points.
00:17:45
Speaker
And i guess if we have, if it's quote unquote effective, if it's if it's well formulated, We'll have some amount of people find each one of those articles and be willing to share it.
00:17:58
Speaker
Getting back to his scams, if you can imagine AI is so much worse, you could have AI look at the person's profile, design for it, and then you can have to just track everything.
00:18:09
Speaker
So you don't need to track everything anymore. So it's better, it's more productive, attack for people. It's very scary. Are you aware that fake news or scams or anything like that is getting worse because of AI?
00:18:26
Speaker
So if you just look at traffic flow, just like people using internet, it's it's like tripled in ridiculously short amount time. I think within, I think the exact time, it's like look a year.
00:18:37
Speaker
And so it's not like you know three times more people online. It's that there's three times more traffic because of AI almost certainly. What do you think is the outcome of the path that we're on with fake news?
00:18:49
Speaker
So I think there are two possibilities. One is that we just live in echo chambers. We just don't trust people anymore. we don't trust outsiders. And we only read news that we like.
00:19:00
Speaker
And you see that happen to some extent already. So there's information. They choose a news source. They choose who they talk to. They choose her their Facebook friends or family. And they only listen to them.
00:19:12
Speaker
And the things that like outside of that, it's not pleasant. don't want to hear about it. I'm not going to read it The alternative is that someone actually does something about fake news. And pretty much the only people can really do something about it are large tech giants like Google and Facebook because have the money, they have the data and the expertise.
00:19:30
Speaker
So they're the only ones who can really fix this problem. And so what we need to do is i push our governments to make them identify fake news and then address it. And so for this, you we need to talk to people, organize, vote to suit of people and then pass laws and enforce them.
00:19:45
Speaker
So I think those are like the two possibilities. Do you think one is more likely than another at this point? I think we're living in number one, but people are realizing problem, hopefully moving toward number two.
00:19:56
Speaker
It feels to me so much more likely that we end up in a dystopian future. You know, maybe it's what humans naturally do as we age or whatever.
00:20:09
Speaker
I'm just looking at the path that we've been on over the last 20, 30 years yeah and thinking, can't imagine how it gets better. so you look around the world, there's some places that do it really well.
00:20:21
Speaker
Taiwan is fantastic at this. They have a minister, I think, of digital technology. And they basically create democratic policies and forums. And if you're interested in looking this further, look them up.
00:20:35
Speaker
ah I'll send you a link later through emails, but like they're doing really well. So I think this is true the history humanity. If there's one empire, like it would just be terrible. But fortunately, there are lots of countries around the world. Everyone's doing something differently. And often, best ideas went out.
00:20:52
Speaker
So people suffer along the way, but often, like really good ideas, to innovations spread, and then people pick it up. So I'm hoping that'll also be the case. I think it an argument that pessimists will often come back to is sort of that size of the attacker issue that if there is more fake news, there's more personalization. If the cost of chips and processing and power go down,
00:21:21
Speaker
then you Ming, or I might just be getting hit by so much fake news that we can't tell the difference anymore between what's real and what's not.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's why we need tools to help us. So like right now, i get so many emails that I actually couldn't read it I actually like looked to it. So unfortunately, i use Gmail. I'm not plugging Gmail, but lots of email systems, they filter out spam.
00:21:49
Speaker
And so because they do that, i might be looking at only like fraction of percents of the email I get. And so people invent tools, little tools help us. And people suffered before that happened. I suffered before that happened. But you know eventually, hopefully someone figures solution and that solution spreads around the world.
00:22:08
Speaker
There's this is really cool New York Times article about dictators and how the regime survived. So in Argentina, they had dictators for a while and they need people to torture other people.
00:22:20
Speaker
And most people are very smart, successful. They're not willing to that. There are other ways to make money. So you get mediocre people who won't get promoted otherwise. And then they're told you torture people, we'll promote you.
00:22:30
Speaker
And lot are willing to do that. And so what happens your whole entire regime is filled with mediocre people because these are people are willing to obey you and serve you. But that also see contains the seeds of its own destruction. For all the people around your mediocre you your regime is probably going to collapse. You might last decades before collapses, but this why dictatorships typically don't last that long, usually not beyond the lifetime of the dictator.
00:22:52
Speaker
You mentioned Google, Facebook, or some of these other larger businesses having the power to some extent. Obviously, Gmail, Google, wants to keep me happy if I'm a user.
00:23:06
Speaker
And so there's certainly incentive there. There's tension with advertising dollars, whether we're talking about Meta or Google. So...
00:23:18
Speaker
There's also plenty of discussion, at least in the United States, about how these big tech platforms should be compelled to do certain things.
00:23:30
Speaker
and one I'm curious about, do you do you think that there is or will be sufficient motivation for a Google or a Meta to help, you know, cut down?
00:23:45
Speaker
on the the impact of fake news? And or do you think that they should be compelled by governments to do so? I think they have to be compelled because they're not doing on their own.
00:23:57
Speaker
They're making lots of money. And so they're not going to So you see like the European Union they They have, I think, a minister digital economy or something like that. She's heavily involved in setting regulations. This is why like all these companies around the world are asking people's permission now because they say a rule, if you want to in the EU, you have to follow the rules.
00:24:16
Speaker
And then once you have to follow the it kind of spreads around the world. Also, governments punish companies like Google and and Facebook for breaking laws, right? So violations. So that basically, all those punishments are really helpful because when Google is losing money, they start paying attention.
00:24:32
Speaker
Another example is the social media bans for 16-year-olds. So if you're 16-year-olds and younger, like in Australia and a few other countries, they're not allowed use social media.
00:24:42
Speaker
That is a huge cost to social media companies because if they're not on social media, they're not making money. So you can see that governments are pushing back. you know Here and there, it's not very coordinated, but they're moving and companies are paying attention.
00:24:56
Speaker
Earlier, you talked about if, if an article, a tweet, whatever it is uses the word you versus the word I, that there's a higher likelihood of it being fake news.
00:25:09
Speaker
That seems like something that I can look for, you know, just try and remind myself as I'm reading an article, you know, maybe even I could have a browser extension or plugin that would help me identify things. But I'm,
00:25:25
Speaker
Wondering, are there questions I can ask myself or things that I can do to sort of wake myself up and help myself realize or or question, might this be fake news?
00:25:39
Speaker
identifying these particular words that does help you. It's like, like in some points it gun at you, you start paying attention. And so you start paying attention to particular words and like, if something seems really complicated and hard to understand, know, maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe it's intentional.
00:25:54
Speaker
So I think once you start noticing it, it becomes semi-automatic. So it's just like paying attention, like, oh, this seems odd. It's not easy to understand. It's not smooth. It's not clear.
00:26:05
Speaker
Or why they trying to make me angry? So like these are like pretty simple heuristics that if you start feeling the same way or you start being confused, you could take that and just like remind yourself, oh, there are reasons people do this.
00:26:18
Speaker
So I'd imagine that like in the future we'll put this in the curriculum, like let's say in like current events or maybe English, you'll just be part there'll be lessons like this and they'll try it and in they'll like learn in school.
00:26:30
Speaker
And like you said, it also could be on internet browsers, like everyone's can install it. So think those are a couple of steps Thanks for being done. I really like that idea of putting this into a curriculum.
00:26:43
Speaker
What I thought of when you said that is that I can recall people that I grew up with or that I went to college with that were sometimes very frustrating, but I had a lot of respect for them because often, at least as it relates to this, these people were very skeptical.
00:27:01
Speaker
And so someone would say something and they'd be sharing a story or making a point. And one of the these people, this group, you know, would say, why? How do you know that's true?
00:27:13
Speaker
That doesn't make any sense. And I might very well have been the person who's nodding along, just saying, oh, that's really interesting. And hu i would love to think that I am...
00:27:24
Speaker
a a reasonably intelligent person, but there are also a lot of times where I am am trusting what you're saying, and I'm also looking for commonalities when we're talking, and So maybe it's a behavioral trait. Maybe it's, I'm sure for some people it is a behavioral trait, but also I suspect for some people that sitting around the dinner table with their family or maybe being exposed to one just really important teacher, they developed this habit of not accepting things quite as quickly as I or the next person would.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yes, in fact, Jewish culture in in some communities, I think when you turn like 14 or 16, you actually get paired up somewhat and you discuss the Torah and you you you basically disagree with them all the time. So you practice disagreeing.
00:28:20
Speaker
And so it's just kind of a habit, just how you approach things, that you you question. And that's just part of your job to question. Like even like the Torah, like the God's book, you're supposed to question that. So that tells you something about that culture.
00:28:33
Speaker
And there's also personality too. Some people are more agreeable, some people more disagreeable. and But there's definitely inclination we around other people. You want people to like you, you want you want to like them, and so it makes sense to agree.
00:28:46
Speaker
And so i think part it is like nice people tend to agree more often. Right. where Where does your research stand right now? Or you know are you in the middle of a study? Are you publishing papers? What's next, I guess, for this research? Oh, so yeah, I'm like all the above. So...
00:29:07
Speaker
I'm on 54 different projects at different stages. And so I work with lots of really smart people. They're really capable, they're pretty much independent. So i just sort of chip in when I need to. The Fing News study, we're in our third year.
00:29:20
Speaker
So we've analyzed four languages, Chinese, English, Korean, and French. We published a few papers. And next year, we're gonna start working on a dashboard that takes all this information and makes it easier use for a high school student or a government official.
00:29:36
Speaker
When you say a dashboard, you are, is this something that would help me understand in the aggregate, you know, what what fake news news looks like? Is it a daily news ah analysis tool?
00:29:52
Speaker
So it's basically like kind of a filter. So you you feed it information like about tweets. It analyzes like how many people have looked at this, how far it's gone, how replies, things like that.
00:30:04
Speaker
And they'll analyze each word tweet. So it uses different colors. So for instance, like the I versus U, whether you use red or blue. Complexity, it uses gray. So the colors tell you what are it indicators of fake news. And just by looking it, there are lots of colors.
00:30:19
Speaker
There's a good chance to see. If it's like all simple black, it's probably fine. fine You have researched creativity and collaboration. so And one of the things that has come up in your research that seemed really noteworthy to me is politeness.
00:30:39
Speaker
And so can you tell me how politeness affects creativity? Yeah. So creativity is about exploring ideas, trying out new things. And when we're in conversation, we're being polite. It means we're respecting the other person.
00:30:53
Speaker
And so that means we're taking the ideas seriously. We're thinking about those. It makes sense. And we can try build on them or do the opposite you know and try and go to that direction. And either way, we're thinking about the ideas and we're trying to expand.
00:31:06
Speaker
And that makes us more creative. Whereas if we ignore their ideas, we disrespect them. We don't have as much material to work with. When I came upon politeness in some of your work, one thing that I thought about was, you know, the clashing of ideas or viewpoints.
00:31:26
Speaker
And I think what you're saying is we can have both. We can have two ideas that challenge one another, two people at the same time. Politeness is important for someone who's sharing an idea to feel like they're being heard.
00:31:40
Speaker
That's part of this exactly Yes, and And then when I challenge you, when you have an idea or you're espousing a viewpoint and I say, I don't know about that, for example, you demonstrate, given sort of how you've characterized things, you demonstrate politeness by taking my challenge or my question seriously.
00:32:03
Speaker
That's just one aspect of this. Yes, so I might say, tell me more about that. why Why do you feel that's not quite right? And I think this goes back to the idea of emotions, right? if you If people are very emotional, it's harder to think. Like your amygdala is is like, know, firing and the rest of your brain is is too focused on that. So if you kind of calm down your emotions, you can use the rest of your cerebral cortex and actually think about the situation. And so because if you like movies, like they try to drive your emotions, right? They try to make you feel something strongly.
00:32:34
Speaker
And sometimes that's useful, but sometimes it gets in the way. So politeness also tones it down a little bit. We talk about justifications. Why is it like this? They focus the idea and not on the person so much.
00:32:45
Speaker
A simple question that I use is, what is this person saying that I think is right? Like they might say lots of things. Probably some part of it it is probably right. Let me start there.
00:32:56
Speaker
And so this way I'm still focused on the idea, but by doing that, I'm implicitly being polite because I'm basically going to say what you just said that I think is correct. That shows I listen to you, i respect your idea, affirm that there's some part of it that's correct.
00:33:10
Speaker
Then I get onto the parts that wrong, but always start there. This way we have like some common foundation, we both agree on this part, and we can move on from there. So that initial agreement, it has to be genuine. You really have to find something. If something's like totally wrong, you can't do that. But that's very unusual. Usually they're right about something. And you start there, and that's a common foundation build on.
00:33:30
Speaker
So I think it's like one simple thing, it's not exactly about politeness, but by thinking that way, you tend to speak more politely. in the improv comedy space, there's an idea that, you know, instead of saying yes, but you say yes, and, and so Ming, you give me an idea and I might think it's the worst idea possible, but rather than,
00:33:54
Speaker
saying, yeah, but what about this? Or we should do that instead. You know, anything that effectively it it says, communicates, let's not do that thing.
00:34:05
Speaker
Or, you know, that's a bad idea. And instead demonstrates, I've taken that idea in. Yes. And now I might say, okay,
00:34:16
Speaker
given what you just said, I have a couple of questions. and so And I feel like you're sort of saying the same thing is that a demonstration of I've listened to you, right? You've more or less said that and that I'm taking it seriously is important.
00:34:35
Speaker
So, okay, that's it that's a ah good practice and not natural for some people, especially depending on who it is that is working together.
00:34:47
Speaker
Are there other things that you advise that people do in order to be effective in creative collaboration? I think slowing down helps too.
00:34:57
Speaker
So slow down, listen to a person, because people have immediate reactions. When I hear something wrong, I'm really like, no, that's wrong. And it's very easy to say that because like that's your focus. And you feel like it also it feels good. Like I'm better than you. I saw that you made a mistake and therefore I'm going to jump out and say it.
00:35:16
Speaker
So slowing down also helps. right So if i if I need to find something that's right, i need to listen to something. your entire explanation your entire idea it's supposed like cutting you off and say no this is wrong are there things that i could do as a leader to to get people to begin to really acknowledge the idea and listen for what i think is right and so on so as of so many things relationships is what we need to deal with first So the first thing I do as leader of any organization I go to is have birthday parties.
00:35:49
Speaker
Every month, no matter many people have, like 10 people, 100 people, everyone has birthday that month, we celebrate their birthday. And so people feel they're happy, recognizing them, and it's like their particular day,
00:36:01
Speaker
And so one thing we do in missions like the party, the games, the food, we play it we play games. So most people don't like professional development. So this is how i do professional development. We play games. The games are our professional development.
00:36:15
Speaker
And so games are always really hard, like almost impossible for a single person to do. You always have to work in teams. And then by and it's usually competitive, like multiple teams. And so you have to beat the other team in some way.
00:36:27
Speaker
So it's really stressful, it's really difficult, it's probably something you've never done before. And you work with people you don't know that way, especially the first time. But know, it's a game in the end. In the game, like you lose, it's not terrible. But in while you're playing the game, people are really immersed.
00:36:41
Speaker
And so they're like, try do the best they can. And so in that process, they learn to work with each other. They learn to work on the stress. They learn to deal with different problems. So instead of like telling people, be creative, we force them to be creative to solve a problem.
00:36:56
Speaker
In this case, to win a game. Win games, you to be creative. this what we practice. And so we practice in a way that is not obvious, right? if yeah If you ask my staff, a lot of people probably wouldn't even notice who are doing professional development.
00:37:08
Speaker
We're just playing games. And so sometimes this indirect way is a better approach than just like going directly at creativity. So we create the situation, we create the games and where to be successful, have to be creative.
00:37:21
Speaker
And then you have all the people working together. It's like you're yeah doing alone. Another thing we do is we have a best idea prize. So every month we have birthday parties, we also have best idea prize. And so it's basically a suggestion box, but we we tweak it a little bit.
00:37:37
Speaker
So first, this is actually stolen from Japan. The most profitable mid-sized company in Japan, they have this every single week and they have three prizes. And I think the first first prize is 100 yen or like less than a dollar. Second prize is 50 yen.
00:37:50
Speaker
Third prize is 25 yen. So we actually give like coffee certificates. And so people have to think about idea in a particular way. What is the problem that our organization faces?
00:38:02
Speaker
And then then they have solutions to it. And in those solutions, they should think about how many people is it help? How does help each person? And how much does it cost to implement it?
00:38:14
Speaker
And so then the ideas get posted, but then we discuss them in meetings. We have a Google Doc or the table and every idea has its own table. On the left hand side are problems. What might go wrong with this idea?
00:38:26
Speaker
On the right hand side solutions. So first, let's say 15 minutes, you go through all the ideas and you've listed all the problems. And then you spend another 15 minutes, you go through all the problems, see if you have solutions them.
00:38:38
Speaker
And so this way you really systematically examine each idea carefully. So it's kind of practice for creativity. And it's also a way of like implementing collaborat creativity. And we actually get things that we actually improve in organization this way. So for instance, the first time we did this, I remember we had a PhD student who this crazy idea that he wants to like make like advanced statistics into computer programs for high school teachers to use to evaluate students better, understand better, and adapt to teaching.
00:39:05
Speaker
And so she knew statistics, but she had no computer science. She'd never taught before. Like, this is crazy. It's not to work. So sure enough, there are 10 major problems with that idea. But then there are also 10 solutions.
00:39:18
Speaker
So i asked, like, who wrote solutions? We got together. we applied for grants. We got $1.4 million, dollars and we made that software. So that itself was, like, worth it. That one meeting was worth a lot of money.
00:39:31
Speaker
And I like that you gave two, you know, ideas here or improving collaboration and creativity, because had you only given the first one immediately, my question would have been, well,
00:39:49
Speaker
that is a bit harder if we're playing games it's a little bit harder if we're not all physically present not that's not to say it's not impossible right but there is i think we all know especially after covid that it's a richer experience when we're physically present though we can't do you know games online over Teams or Zoom or whatever.
00:40:11
Speaker
and But then, you know, with the you know best idea as an example, that's something that could be done regardless of whether we're physically present or not. And I'm sure that there are plenty of other approaches.
00:40:26
Speaker
But so one, I like that the that there are several different ways to go about this. And two, One thing that you remind me of is that, you know, if you take people who are different from one another, whether they have different political views, they have different skin color or whatever it is, if they don't already feel they're a part of something together, that's something that's meaningful together, then when you just, when you put them next to one another,
00:40:58
Speaker
they often will not interact enough in order to recognize that they share something. You know, if we work in a company and we feel like, well, you're part of accounting and I'm part of marketing and yeah, we're two men or we're part of the same company, but you know, you're one of those people, then okay, we we go to happy hour maybe, or we, you know, sit in a meeting together.
00:41:27
Speaker
But, We're not interacting deeply enough in order to break down or give us enough opportunities to see through existing biases.
00:41:37
Speaker
But if you give people something that feels meaningful to work on together, then they start to look toward how they deal with that challenge.
00:41:51
Speaker
rather than how a person like you deals with this challenge and how that's different from how I would deal with the challenge. and And it's interesting, like finding that if you're playing games, for example,
00:42:07
Speaker
finding something that is low stakes enough that if it fails, you know, we can still look toward why it was worthwhile versus if we do something that's so low stakes that we feel like it's just a waste of time. Like we don't actually put our our effort into it.
00:42:30
Speaker
And finding that balance where feels meaningful it feels meaningful and yet not so meaningful that I'm not willing to open up and take a chance seems really difficult. Have you, I guess, let me ask a question then.
00:42:48
Speaker
If you walk into a situation cold, you walk into a new group cold, do you say, hey, I have five options. Let's try one of these. So we actually survey when people come to a company or come to an organization, we survey them what they like.
00:43:03
Speaker
So we actually take what they like, and then find games that are like that, or even take the games if it's suitable. So it's never just like random games. We try to cater to people's interests because part of it being your birthday is we're doing things that you like.
00:43:18
Speaker
right So we're trying to cater people and it's showing like, you know i care about you. i thought about this enough to like get a game that we're going play that you actually like. and so ah but okay But to answer your question, there are ice breaking games I think are are quite good.
00:43:32
Speaker
So a simple detective game is two truths and one lie. So everyone says three statements, two true, one's false. And you talk to each other and you try to figure which one's true, which one's false. so We have like different awards. We have the best detective award, orton yeah who gets the most right.
00:43:48
Speaker
We also have other awards. We have the most honest person award or the transparent person award. So the yeah that's everyone guesses that person's answer. We also have one like the secret agent award, where like no one guesses like you which which is your lie. So we try to try to have different types of awards, different things. So it's not only that it's a game, but there are multiple ways to be successful.
00:44:09
Speaker
The reason why it works is that it is very stressful. It is really, really hard. like like one One example is, okay, there's a 100-piece puzzle, and it's all black. It's just black. gets is like You have your group to do it, and people are like, wow, this is crazy. like How do you do this?
00:44:25
Speaker
So it's actually important to stress it because the team works when you're under the stress. Like people are counting on you. Like it seems impossible to I really need to chip in if we're going get this done. So the task has to be really hard. It's just seem impossible for one person, but maybe possible for the entire team.
00:44:42
Speaker
And then people are relying each other. Like now I put you together on as a team. You have to work with other people. Otherwise you can fail. And you know even though it's not terrible, there's no real stakes, it's still public, right? you You know that you weren't able to do it And so there's still something there. And then even if you don't win, by working together, you learn about each other.
00:45:01
Speaker
You understand what stresses people out. You understand how to calm people down. And you get to watch all these reactions. So the entire process is really helpful to forging stronger ties among my teams.
00:45:13
Speaker
Bing, in all of the work that you've done throughout your career, has there been anything that you've worked on that really genuinely surprised you All the stuff I told about collaboration, I didn't believe any of this when I started out.
00:45:28
Speaker
When started out, like I didn't think it was important to be polite. actually like had i had like a person of different people, some people who were right but rude and other people who were wrong but polite.
00:45:40
Speaker
I for sure thought that being right was the most important thing. I couldn't believe how wrong I was. like It was not only that I was wrong, but it was like such a huge, powerful fact that being polite was way more important than being correct.
00:45:52
Speaker
So like, wait, I don't understand the world at all. Like, it's not about being right. Actually, like being polite is way more important. I had to like, wait, why is that? So I came to it from a different perspective. And I actually spent a lot my career rethinking about what I don't understand about people.
00:46:08
Speaker
I suspect that a group that is, if we have 10 people and in a group, two groups, two groups of 10 people and one group,
00:46:22
Speaker
the majority of the people are wrong about something, but they are polite, at least in the ways that we've described. I suspect that that group is more likely to end up with the right answer or end up with the truth than group that is not effective around politeness, but has a higher percentage of people who already hold the right idea.
00:46:52
Speaker
Yes, yes, because if ah some people disbelieve it, they not interact in the community well. Whereas the first group, if they're respectful and think about each other's ideas, they are trying to work on it and they'll probably identify flaws in each other's ideas.
00:47:06
Speaker
And that's okay. And they'll try, okay, we need to rework it. Whereas like if one group, let's say one person is right and the other people are wrong and they're not able to bring them along, they're just like, well, I'm right and you guys are stupid.
00:47:18
Speaker
That has been me at far too many points in my life. This is what we learn as we get older. If you could put an idea in people's heads and it would have a meaningful impact on the world or their work, that they would start to see collaboration, for example, a different way, or they would start to see fake news a different way and they would make change as a result.
00:47:44
Speaker
Is there something that you would want people to know or begin believing? Yeah, so we're all humans living on one planet. Our planet has lots of problems. Climate change, wars, droughts, artificial artificial intelligence threats.
00:47:57
Speaker
And so one person is not going to solve all these problems. We have to work together. In order to work together, we have to respectfully listen respectfully listen to one another, take each other's ideas seriously, and then use that to create innovative solutions that help everyone.
00:48:12
Speaker
So this is not like a big solution. It's a little piece that everyone tries a little bit, I think they will make the world around them a better place. Where should people go if they want to learn more or follow you or contact you or anything else of that nature?
00:48:28
Speaker
You can just ask AI. Google AI mode, just like look look my name. It'll tell you more than you ever want to know about me. Well, your name will be in the show title and the show notes. And so that is where we will direct people. Ving, I really appreciate you being here. i was very glad that you said yes and you responded so quickly. So thank you for joining me today.
00:48:52
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. This was fun.