Dr. David Eagleman

And so I do feel that really learning the skills of dialogue with our fellow humans, where we listen to what they're saying and try to better understand what their internal model is.

It's not equivalent to agreeing with them, but it is saying,

hey, somebody is coming from this perspective.

Let me see if I can understand that.

I think that matters a lot.

And I also think that because we're so highly predisposed for in-groups and out-groups, it's really useful to figure out how to complexify those relationships.

Meaning, how do you figure out all the things that cross-cut in the relationship so that you say, hey, you know what?

I shouldn't dismiss this person as a member of my out-group right away because actually...

They belong to the same group I do.

And they love surfing as much as I do.

And they love golden retriever dogs.

And they grew up in my hometown and whatever.

Like finding those things explicitly helps the brain to keep these circuits on that are involved in seeing another person as a person.

We have all the social circuitry that is all about understanding other people.

And when things get dehumanized, that actually gets dialed way down.

When we look at, you know, let's say a homeless person or a drug addict or someone who we think of as our enemy or an outgroup, that gets dialed down.

So we don't think of them as a person anymore.

We think of them as an object to get around.

So this is what I think is really important is figuring out what we can do to keep that social circuitry still going, which includes the things like,

eye contact and conversation.