Dr. Daniel Kruger

Thank you.

Nice to meet you.

I think it amplifies, like you pointed out, David, I think it amplifies things that we have human tendencies to sort of hang out with our tribe, get sort of climb on the bandwagon.

I think all of those things are human tendencies that at the best of times, they're the kind of things that help us build communities together.

But social media just...

Well, I think you're, you're, you're David, you're talking exactly about some of these cognitive biases that I think we, we get into.

Number one is all of our reasoning in the world is kind of motivated by things.

And so, um,

And sometimes the motivations, the things that trigger that motivated reasoning are emotions.

And so a lot of what's being activated these days is emotions.

I'm reminded of this fantastic quote that a biologist, Edward O. Wilson said that, he said that the real problem of humanity is the following.

I think we have to be a bit more insightful in terms of what it is that triggers us.

And we have to be a bit more intentional about how we engage with people in the world around us.

Now, I think in the course, we're trying to put this into a slightly bigger perspective too.

We're really trying to give students the tools and perspectives to be productive democratic citizens.

And part of that means

becoming a bit more self-aware.

Part of that means getting a better understanding of where tensions show up in our world and how we work productively with tension because our world is always going to have tensions.

And because things are so complex today, there's even more spaces that we're showing up in where tensions and conflict emerges.

So how do we prepare people for that kind of world?