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Star Trek and Empathy Stereotypes
50 Plays2 months ago
Andrea and Ray explore perspectives of empathy in the pop psyche through the portrayals of characters Deanna Troi and Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation!
LINKS
- Jamil Zaki on the Roddenberry Hypothesis
- SWE-Agent paper reading on Nopilot
HOSTS
- Andrea Goulet LinkedIn | andreagoulet.com
- Ray Myers LinkedIn | Mender.AI
ABOUT EMPATHY IN TECH
Empathy in Tech’s mission is to accelerate the responsible adoption of empathy in the tech industry to help humanity solve our most pressing and complex problems. We do this by focusing on three key areas:
- Technical Empathy - Close the empathy skills gap in the tech industry by leading a scientific revolution that embraces new research.
- Ethical Empathy - Ensure empathy is used for social good through ethical, equitable, and responsible choices.
- Actionable Empathy - Build a thriving community that makes effective empathy training accessible, affordable, and widely available.
Learn more at empathyintech.com
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Transcript
Welcome to 'Empathy in Tech'
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Empathy in Tech, where we explore the deeply technical side of empathy. And the critical need for empathy in technology. I'm your host, Andrea Goulet. And I'm Ray Myers. All right, Ray. What'd you learn this week?
Autonomous Dev Tools with Ray
00:00:18
Speaker
Well, I've been prepping to launch a new ah channel for my new website, no pilot on autonomous dev tools, which are our next evolution of a coding assistant, as you know. And this week I've been brushing up on some of the contenders here. Sweet agent, which was put out by Princeton, has just put out their preprint paper.
00:00:43
Speaker
So I read that a few times. I actually got ah a video coming where I just read it if you'd like to listen to things like I do. It's a fantastic paper. Like I think it's going to influence how we see ah coding agents and maybe other kinds of AI um infused agents in the future actually. Then Back to back with that open Devon, probably the the if Princeton has the academic lead in this area right now, then open Devon maybe is the is the open source, you know, gooey lead. And they have just put out a big update today and they just did ah a presentation that I attended as well, a webinar. um So
00:01:20
Speaker
I learned a lot about how these two different things are constructed and both of them are achieving like really impressive performance right now. But what's really surprising is they're doing it in very different ways architecturally. And so that's that's been a lot of my learning this week is ah is what are the different approaches in play right now for for these new wave coding agents.
Adapting to Technological Change
00:01:40
Speaker
so Nice. I'm so glad that you're keeping on top of that because it feels like it's changing hourly.
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah. it might Is that just me? And like, no, I mean, just the whole community is saying this almost constantly. like Like I've got whiplash. Like it's it's just because you're trying to build something based on the pieces on the board as you understand it. And then something happens. It's like.
00:02:04
Speaker
Well, I need to rethink my whole direction. You know, like you're actually even trying to contribute to the ecosystem. It's so disorienting at this point, right? To where you almost have to just plug your ears is like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna build in this direction and come come up for air in a month. Cause otherwise you're just pivoting constantly. So what did you learn?
Andrea's Plasma Physics Lecture
00:02:24
Speaker
Well, it's funny you mentioned Princeton. I was actually there this week. Oh, wow. Yeah, I was giving a lecture. I was invited to speak at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. So I got to hang out with a bunch of folks who are ah doing real cool stuff with nuclear energy to like help us develop clean energy. And I just love working with scientists who are collaborating on these really, really big initiatives because I think it is so critical. like It is the thing that humans evolved that enables us to collaborate and solve complex problems.
Understanding Entropy
00:03:00
Speaker
And I was there specifically talking about entropy because in the research I've been doing, entropy comes up all the time as this really important thing, but we don't really understand it. So I was like really excited to go speak to a bunch of people who really understand entropy.
00:03:20
Speaker
And what I learned was that there's actually a couple of different types of entropy. And it's super subtle. And we see this all the time in different domains. So there was some confusion around like, what does this term mean? So physical entropy is like in a physical system. And clearly physicists were very familiar with that. It's based on you know equations from I think Boltzmann and Maxwell and things like that.
00:03:46
Speaker
so then there is information entropy, which is based on the same equations, but just slightly different. So we were sitting there like looking at the formulas and how is this different? And information entropy is based on the work of Claude Shannon. yeah bill you know his His research is the foundation of us being able to transmit bits and bytes all over the place. Also did work at Princeton.
00:04:14
Speaker
and basically founded information theory, right? Like produced most of the results in that entire field. Yeah. And then also talked about how there's a slight difference between information theory and communication theory. People who love physical systems, they want to measure everything, right? We want to be able to move everything down to its like true or false statement. And ah Claude Shannon in his paper was very clear that he was only focused on the technical problem.
00:04:41
Speaker
That's what he calls it. How do I get whatever that message is, whether it's a sound wave or you know a bit or something from one point to another? But Warren Weaver in the 1960s picked up on this. He was a government administrator, collaborated very closely with Claude Shannon, and said, there's actually two other problems. We can extend information theory to human systems. But there's two problems that Shannon doesn't cover, and that is semantics.
00:05:10
Speaker
Which is, do you actually understand the meaning of the words or the message that I'm sending? And then effectiveness, which is, does that message then influence a behavior in the way that I was hoping? Those two problems are way less measurable.
Entropy's Role in Communication
00:05:28
Speaker
And so we were exploring kind of why and how, and I loved digging into the nuance. So yeah, I think entropy is something that I'm trying to wrap my brain around. The research that I've been doing is leading me to this is a really, really, really critical concept. And I should probably just define it. It's essentially statistical disorder within a system. And in terms of how we relate to each other, It's the ability to predict misunderstanding. And that's so critical and our ability to empathize is a tool to help us with that prediction. So when there's more entropy, there there's less ability to predict?
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a bunch of things that can contribute to, so in high entropy environments where there's a lot of disorder, right there's a lot of chaos, it's hard to communicate. So think about, there's different things that can contribute to this noise. So if I'm speaking in a crowded bar or restaurant, it's going to be harder for you to understand what I say. right But there's also, like you have a different experience for me. We might use a term and Different domains one of the examples that i give is that clod shannon outlined in information theory how there's a reverse like there's an inverse relationship between entropy and compression so in low entropy environments we can compress information without losing the intent of it right. We see this in lossy versus lossless files, depending on whether you need it. like You can compress it down. 72 DPI is fine for the web. But if you're going to blow it up on a billboard, you don't want to do that. I also use ah acronyms as a good example. So when I go to a software conference, especially if it's around testing, I can use the term TDD and predict with pretty good certainty that most of the people there know that I mean test-driven development.
00:07:22
Speaker
But if I go to a holiday party and I meet someone, and they tell me they're a nurse. and I say, oh, I do TDD, because we're in different industries, it's very unlikely that that person's going to know what I mean. And it's very likely they're going to misinterpret it because in that domain, TDD means targeted drug delivery. So then we're we're using the same words, but the meaning is totally different. And so then we end up just being confused. So in certain certain circumstances,
00:07:52
Speaker
you being able to identify these principles of entropy and kind of computationally how it works. And then you can add structure. So when do you add system process, but you don't want too much process because then it's bureaucracy. So it's finding that really nice balance between structure and surprise. And so I had a lot of fun just nerding out with physicists around kind of the mathematics behind this. so It was fun because I am less fluent in advanced mathematics than, you know, people who have degrees in physics. So now I've studied compression algorithms a bit at uni, you know, and maybe at some point we'll we'll geek out more on that because I would love to understand how it factors into just sort of this interpersonal dynamic because like just sort of scratching the surface of it. It is have there's some logic to it.
00:08:44
Speaker
I just um yeah, I think you're at least one of the first people I've seen to really draw some of these connections. But I I think there is something there. I think it is very valid. and Also, this physics connection is something that, again, i've I've I've seen referred to. And this is kind of under people's radar. But I was just on John Willis's podcast. Attention is all you need, which has been off of his podcast on Deming's profound knowledge. system of para knowledge, which was a management methodology by Edward Deming to be. Yeah. Oh, we can do a whole episode on Deming, too. We'll do several, I'm sure. But he pointed out both Ellie Gullratt and Deming were, in some sense, physicists, Ellie Gullratt of theory of constraints. They may not have practiced it professionally, but they both had a background studying it. Right. That um is not something you generally think of when you imagine management gurus.
00:09:38
Speaker
is that they they developed their ideas while studying physics. Yeah. People say, you know, what you're trying to correct, that people are just inherently unpredictable and you can't model it. You know, there's nothing mathematical about this. We're just far the soft, fuzzy thing. And yet we organizational dynamics like I have come around to this point of view. Actually, this is physics.
00:10:01
Speaker
This can be predicted to the level of physics because while a given person's behavior on any given day is somewhat unpredictable, people's behavior in ah in a system with incentives over time aggregated. I mean, it's physics.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a curiosity of trying to understand the world around you and looking at things in ecosystems. And that's something I've always done. I took organizational behavior in college. I have a degree in business and marketing, and I loved my organizational behavior courses. They just made so much sense.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it's interesting, like I don't have a degree in physics, but I've had, I love watching physics documentaries. Like I will eat up and I have a ah subscription to a platform called Wondrium, which I lovingly describe as Netflix for nerds because it's straight up college lectures. And I will watch the ones on like, you know, quantum theory. And I i barely understand what's going on in the math behind it, but I watch them and I'm just like, this is so fascinating.
00:11:04
Speaker
So I think it comes down to this curiosity of the world around you and trying to understand and predict the world that you're living in. We have less certainty with systems, but we can still understand them and make them useful in our day-to-day interaction. So that's that's really like where I'm trying to nerd out and create some work around how do we do that.
00:11:30
Speaker
But today we're really going to
Star Trek's Empathy Lessons
00:11:33
Speaker
nerd out. Yeah. Because our topic is data and Deanna. Yeah. ah From Star Trek The Next Generation. Best series ever. I love it. I'm a DS9 fan.
00:11:49
Speaker
DS9 was good, but I mean. TNG was my first love, though, you know, I sometimes feel like I watched the ah TNG g probably two or three times and I'm really good at like high level arcs. But don't ask me about like the specific episodes. That's not where my my memory is good at consolidating. But I feel like the leadership themes in that series and the character arcs like yeah it is a high functioning team.
00:12:15
Speaker
And it's just so awesome to watch around how they debate and they have conflict and they don't always agree, but they respect each other and they respect each other's differences. And I think that is something that I'm really excited to nerd out with you today, because when I was growing up,
00:12:31
Speaker
I identified as Diana, very much so. I was told I was an empath. I was told it was my superpower. I was told I could just walk into a room and kind of know how people were feeling. I also have struggles with emotional regulation sometimes. And you can see that like Diana, like, well, you know, I remember there's this one episode where she has this, you know, there's this vague alien kind of energy And she just gets overwhelmed and kind of has to take a seat and then has to go to sickbay. And like that is me. Like I just feel very I feel things in a very energetic way. And so for a long time, I was like, oh, well, I just navigate the world and I know what people were thinking. And I assumed like most people, the empathy is kind of the pseudo psychic ability, because that's what you see in tropes, especially in the superhero genre and in science fiction.
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah, and when you're growing up as bad as I am at reading the little cues that aren't directly in the words people are saying, it does look like a superpower when people even just know what I now just call, hey, read the room.
00:13:41
Speaker
When people don't read a room, right, or don't just know the social context behind something, they're just like, oh, yeah, the convention here would be blah. Like, it looks like they're psychic. If you're if you can't, if you don't know how to read those things and you don't have the context, even though that was like a fictional setting in which they had made that literal, they were capturing something very real about how it appears to us that don't have it. And then they brilliantly contrasted it with the data character that literally just couldn't understand human emotions no matter how much he tried. Again, that was, you know, like, I mean, we feel that way on some days, you know? And so they did some amazing things with those those character arcs. I think maybe data got a little better treatment on on developing that than Diana.
00:14:30
Speaker
I think that is actually a really key part of why it was a high functioning team. Because our stereotypes tend to be, oh, if you can't walk into a room and read it like Diana, then you have no empathy. And there's a researcher, Jamil Zaki out of Stanford, who has actually coined this as the Roddenberry Effect.
00:14:52
Speaker
where we associate with either Data or Diana, and then we assume that our empathy levels are fixed like adult height, and they don't change. So like, oh, I'm an empath, I have lots of empathy, and oh, sorry, you can't come in and read a room, you have low empathy. And this has been really detrimental, like culturally,
00:15:11
Speaker
um And that's not how empathy works. And one of the things that I think works really great is that the teams support each other and they're not trying to make data somebody who he's not. They meet him where he is and they help him understand the world. And when he asks interesting questions,
00:15:32
Speaker
It's seen as like, wow, I didn't think of it that way, right? And what I love about Data too is that he is so intensely curious. And I think that is something that is, and he's also humble in saying, I don't know this.
00:15:50
Speaker
And I love data as a character. He's probably my favorite. um Another really interesting thing to contrast with empathy is the data versus lore. So lore was Data's brother, in quotes, right? Yeah, that is certainly how they addressed it. Right. Even biological entities, they referred to their creator as their father. Yup. And so Lore had the emotion chip and so was able to read, but he got really manipulative. And I think that is such a great example of how you can walk into a room and read everybody, but that kind of empathy can be weaponized.
00:16:33
Speaker
And it can be used in ways that are really detrimental. So a lot of it depends on your intent, whether or not you're coming at it from compassion, which is, I want to help. I care. I don't want you to suffer. Or if you're coming from self-motivated, you don't consider the needs of others. You just consider how understanding others can serve your own purposes.
00:16:59
Speaker
I think there's also an interesting arc. um In season two, there's Dr. Pulaski, who comes in. She's only there for a short time. Yeah. But she doesn't treat data as a human, right? She doesn't treat him as a full member of the crew. And there's- Invalidating. Yeah. And uses it as the you know pronoun. I think this is such a great allegory now for misgendering and like how much harm that can do.
00:17:27
Speaker
But I think her thing that is that she was unwilling to see beyond the empathy stereotype. She thought, this is this one way and data doesn't show up like everybody else, so therefore he can't possibly have empathy. And I think there's a lot of empaths who operate that way and it's it's kind of hubris.
00:17:51
Speaker
Right. So we need to call out the empaths just as much. I ate a big slice of humble pie when I was doing all this research. Because Pulaski wasn't on the show that long, the ear her arc is pretty pronounced because they had to like wrap that up. But yeah, they ended up bringing back Dr. Crusher on a first viewing. You don't like Pulaski much. A lot of people didn't. And and honestly, they you know, they didn't write her in a very likable way.
00:18:17
Speaker
I feel like there is ah the lore is ah no pun intended that there was a kind of a filled angle they were going for of like how ah Bones, Dr. McCoy, an original series and Spock would joust. Right. And yeah but the problem was because data was not just a Vulcan, but was actually like, you know, just kind of like a machine limited to that point. It's like you're just picking on him.
00:18:41
Speaker
you know just the dynamic didn't work they're trying to set up and so it ends up making her look just mean but to to their credit right i feel like they developed it really well because she still had that curiosity i mean she started out with a bias which is understandable cuz data is just a complete unique life form in their universe right like but Then she still went, oh, yeah, well, can he really do this? Can he really figure a new thing out? Like, well, let's see, I'll show up. I'll dress up. I'll go to the holiday with you. You know, even though I don't think you're going to win here, you know, and then it's like over time, she's like, actually, this guy's got some skills. I have to acknowledge this. And she's kind of ah won over. This is goes back to your saying curiosity is the
Empathy Skills: Reappraisal
00:19:22
Speaker
superpower, right? And that's I mean, that was a fiction arc, but I've seen that play out if people really have
00:19:27
Speaker
enough curiosity, they're able to meet and reach an understanding. And the people who came in with a bias and no curiosity, they're who won't change. Yeah. And I think that that is something that we can feel threatened by people who aren't, quote, like us. It's called the intergroup empathy bias.
00:19:46
Speaker
So we tend to have more empathy and identify with people who we consider our in-group. And when we see somebody who's different, our empathy levels actually lower and go down. And so this is what you see in polarized places.
00:20:03
Speaker
where one group really identifies and they become so strongly attached to that identity that then they kind of, um, like if it's positioned as a rivalry or something. So, you know, see this in politics and sometimes sports teams and, you know, in the software industry, sometimes it's like the business versus, you know, engineers. We started on the phrase, the business no business. I know that's another one we can go into is like the linguistics up there. What if we were part of the business the whole time?
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah, I sometimes tell people I'm like, I am the business. I'm sorry. I still belong here. I promise. But I think that's the key is that when you are able to form a diverse team with a diverse perspective, and Scott Page um has done some great work on this. He's got a book called The Diversity Bonus that talks about in complex systems, you have to have diversity of thought and experience in order to innovate.
00:20:58
Speaker
And if we're not able to get out of our little boxes, and one place that I had to have some personal growth was taking everything as a personal attack.
00:21:09
Speaker
A lot of times, you know, engineers, Scott, for sure, my my partner, he will like, I'll be sharing an idea and he immediately points out a problem with it. And it can feel like he's just popping a balloon and it is very disorienting and kind of deflates.
00:21:30
Speaker
And one time he told me, he's like, well, I'm doing that because I care and I see this thing and I don't want to see your project that you care about so much go off the rails because I saw this thing and you didn't see it. So as soon as it took, it's taken me a long time, but now I've learned to not only reframe that, but actually seek it out. So for example, this week when I went to Princeton, it's like, I have no idea, physicists, please. I know you're going to tear my work apart.
00:22:03
Speaker
And that's how we're going to get better work. Learning to not be as defensive when people who see the details first are not as aligned to the happy path. great We'll see some of the outliers first. Learning to work together and how that's a strength. And I think you see that a lot in TNG.
00:22:25
Speaker
When people critique each other, at least among the you know the core members there, they, you're right. I think they have a very big awareness of the relationship they have and the understanding of mutual respect they already have. And some people just jump into this nitpicking thinking they're just telling it like it is, but they don't have that relationship. They don't have the credibility built up mutually between them. When I do code review and stuff, I try to be very conscious of this because like I have been around the block a while.
00:22:54
Speaker
And I do notice a lot of little stuff and I do have reasons why, you know, developing a mutual understanding of we do all these little things this way, the process of getting to that mutual understanding, that will be good. But if we're not on the same page already about what we're trying to do, establish these norms or whatever, it would just seem like I'm coming up and grabbing on you. You know, like, so I definitely sort of tiptoe into it knowing, well, what's my relationship with this person? where are we in that stage of understanding, right? And some people I think just they just take out their red pen and they they have no consideration for what is the relationship being built here. And when I'm on the receiving end of that, that's where I have to again, turn on my empathy and be like,
00:23:36
Speaker
OK, they don't understand what we're trying to do here. Let's try to, you know, make up for their lack of relationship building skills. And yeah. And I think that that is a great example, too, of that is a specific skill called a reappraisal. And so you are doing a reappraisal. This is actually another key piece of the book. ah I didn't know the name, but I do practice that pretty hard. So that's good to know the name.
00:24:03
Speaker
So reappraisals are really important when we're thinking about people and how we interact with them. And a reappraisal is essentially pausing to consider our first instinct. That's all it is.
00:24:18
Speaker
Even if you don't do it for anybody else, even if you just do it for yourself, there's so many benefits. It reduces stress. You tend to get better social connections. like there's There's a lot of personal benefits. If you just pause, I've heard Tara Brock call it a sacred pause.
00:24:37
Speaker
Rolo May has a quote about, so what you're doing is called a reappraisal, and it's really important from a psychological standpoint, and it's essential for empathy. And so what it is, is it is a pause to just reassess your first instinct.
00:24:55
Speaker
And it's a habit. It's something that you can get into. So similar to how I like over time was was like, wait, wait, I'm going to reinterpret your criticism as compassion. Right. My first instinct is that you're trying to tear me down and make me feel stupid. Are you? No. Okay. Especially with Scott, you've told me that this is your intention. Right. And then that puts you in a state where you're more calm.
00:25:21
Speaker
um And so the research shows that people who habitually pause and reassess their situations, they tend to experience more positive emotion, better wellbeing, higher levels of life satisfaction, closer relationship with your peers. They're more a liked by others and more social support. so like Just doing what you're doing is good for you, but it's also essential for empathy because first you have to anchor yourself. The process that I've outlined in my book is collect, connect, communicate. So in that reappraisal, these are the reappraisal rules, if you will, they're kind of the things that you're paying attention to. So you pause, you're doing a code review, right? And you just think, okay, what do I want to say? How might it be interpreted?
00:26:07
Speaker
Given that relationship and given how well do I know this person, what biases might be coming into play, what's my energy levels, what data do I have to draw on, what's my next step? What's the best message that I should communicate? Sometimes it's a question, like a reappraisal would be, you just want to fire off an email being like, you're a jerk, but you pause and you don't hit send, right?
00:26:33
Speaker
so And I think that's a skill. like That is a very measurable skill, is teaching people how to do reappraisals. And I think that's a really important part of empathy. so And that's an example of how you can just write off somebody who doesn't do that practice as like, oh, they don't care. They don't have empathy. And a lot of times it's like, no, it's actually a skill that we can learn.
00:26:51
Speaker
We can learn the idea.
Is Empathy a Changeable Skill?
00:26:53
Speaker
It's a superpower. The idea you can't learn it like we've already explored ah with the allegory of Star Trek, what some of these misunderstandings are. I wonder if if we could talk about empathy versus compassion real quick before we yeah wrap up as well, because I think you have I think a disparity in in who has I mean, Diana certainly has both empathy and compassion right in spades. Yeah. You can correct me if I'm getting this wrong here. My understanding of the concepts is data is is challenged on empathy, but has just is overflowing with compassion. I would agree. And then the law, you know, at least to the point where he has the emotion, ship and so on. Right. He has all the empathy and zero compassion. He's malevolent with it. Yeah. Right. So is that is that right on how these video game character bars? I know you've said there are multiple kinds of of empathy, but in terms of compassion, where were you at on that?
00:27:48
Speaker
Yeah, so that was actually one of the things that was really hard is just kind of coming up with these definitions. Compassion is a motivation factor, right? And the easiest way to think of it is, am I motivated to help or am I motivated to hurt?
00:28:06
Speaker
And compassion is the genuine desire that often comes with very heartfelt, like warm feelings that courses through our veins to help us generate more compassion and motivate us. There's chemicals that you know help us with that in our biology and neurology. But essentially, it's this desire to help.
00:28:28
Speaker
It's also called empathic concern in the research, which is unfortunate because it has the term empathy. So empathy works best when it's grounded in compassion, but compassion is also defined by empathy. And so, you know, those ah kind of circular dependencies are like, ah, yeah, compassion is a motivation factor. One of the biggest benefits of compassion is that it grounds you against distress.
00:28:55
Speaker
So if you're going in into learn more about somebody and you're going into it and it feels like like you don't like them or you're you're spiteful, then you're actually going to probably do yourself and the situation a disservice because anything you learn, you're going to put through that filter and then your actions are more driven by self-preservation.
00:29:22
Speaker
than it is actually resolving the situation. So compassion motivates you to help others, but it also guards your energy from when you can get hurt. There are people who, like I would say this, that if you are so drawn in by compassion,
00:29:41
Speaker
that you can be easily manipulated, right? And that's where that balances. So in terms of empathy, um I'm a big fan of Jean Decides' work and his work on the functional architecture of human empathy. So how does empathy show up in our brains? And it shows up in four different ways. So its abilities to emote like there's an emotion component to resonate with the emotions of others to express emotions ourselves reason so there's a cognitive aspect so imagining somebody else's point of view being able to take in new data being able to predict all of that ah for mental models um emotional regulation which is a
00:30:22
Speaker
big one that like when I uncovered that, I was like, oh, because you can't listen unless you are like in a state where you can listen. And that's one of those ones that seems so obvious. And then the last one is motivation. And so the the compassion piece, the empathic concern is a component of that motivation. It's not everything, the situation that you find yourself in, whether or not you have time, whether or not you see empathy as beneficial, whether or not your culture is one of competition or compassion.
00:30:52
Speaker
There's a lot that goes into the cost-benefit analysis of whether or not we're going to use empathy or not. But those are kind of like the four aspects of empathy that we're constantly weighing up and down depending on our context, which is why empathy really is not you know getting back to this adult height. Jamil Zaki, he also worked on the motivated theory of empathy. So ah being able to assess like, no, we don't always empathize all the time and we have different levels and people who don't conform to the stereotype of empathy, they still empathize. And um so there's some some interesting things there that we can look to these characters, I think.
00:31:36
Speaker
is like, oh, I see, I see me, right? I see myself there. But you're not fixed. And I think the most important thing to take away is that it is really good and in the benefits of empathy come the most when we learn to collaborate and create environments where we can collaborate with people who aren't just like us.
Psychological Safety in Teams
00:31:59
Speaker
And that's what I see in NextGen. It's just, it's really like it a lot.
00:32:04
Speaker
I mean, it it is fantastic. You know, we'll maybe do another one about deep space nine later, but there's no more perfect archetype than, than these two for, for the topic of this show. Go on. I also want to briefly mention that I think another reason that it works on that team is that there is a lot of psychological safety and there is a lot of pro-social behavior in terms of they know how to support each other.
00:32:34
Speaker
they ah But then also, there is a very clear decision-making process. So, Picard will gather information, but he's the one who makes the decision. right and so And there is a sense, um so in the ah psychology of this, it's called ah perceived justice. So on a team, do you feel like you're being treated fairly?
00:33:02
Speaker
Do you feel like you know the rules are being equally applied? And a lot of times this comes down to boundaries and expectation setting. um Oh, Janeway.
00:33:15
Speaker
on ah Voyager does a really good job with this too. So yeah, yeah but it doesn't always show up as empathy because you think you see somebody setting very clear boundaries and then you think, Oh, that's not empathy. Especially if you see like Janeway who you know should look like somebody who expresses the Diana stereotype of empathy, but doesn't.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah, well, Boundaries is another episode, probably. It is. It's such an important concept as well. Yeah. But you absolutely see really strong leadership, like leadership while listening in next gen, just laid out so brilliantly on a writing and an acting level ah for sure.
00:33:55
Speaker
and i want to and I know we're trying to keep our episodes to around 30 minutes. At the same time, I really want to make sure that we hear your perspective and you identified as data what's been your personal journey in relating to data and where you are now. You know, and i'll in due time, we'll get to expand on that.
00:34:15
Speaker
No, this is the episode where we talk about this. Come
Empathy in Tech's Mission
00:34:18
Speaker
on, Ray. I'm really happy with the ground we covered today, but why don't you tell us about the empathy and tech mission and we'll put a pin in this one.
00:34:29
Speaker
All right. Well, thanks, everybody, for listening. And empathy in tech is on a mission to accelerate the responsible adoption of empathy in the tech industry. In several ways, we're looking to close the empathy skills gap by treating empathy as a technical skill, teaching technical empathy through accessible, affordable, and actionable training, building community and breaking down harmful stereotypes and tropes, just like we have explored today, and promoting technical empathy for ethics, equity, and social justice.
00:34:59
Speaker
So if you found this conversation interesting, head over to empathyintech.com to keep the conversation going, and you can join our community of compassionate technologists. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.