Stephen Dubner

internally, but then externally too.

And when your first response is to judge something as literally on a spectrum, positive or negative, versus...

And this is what I try to do, but don't always succeed.

Just observe and figure it out.

Because I'm a writer and because I was very shy as a kid, I've always been very comfortable just being on the edge of the back wall and just watching and listening and taking it and trying to figure out who loves who, who hates who, who's mad at who, who's trying to impress who.

And I feel like if you do that, at the very least, what you're going to do is you're going to start to empathize.

And by empathize, I don't mean sympathize.

I mean, you can feel yourself in that person's position a little bit.

And that, for me, at least changes the calculus.

I agree.

Yeah, I do.

Can I just say, though, I love this conversation.

It's really exhausting.

No, no, no.

But I mean, in a good way.

You're kind of just getting to the core of what it means to be a human at this place in time.

And we're all narcissistic and we all think no other humans have ever felt like that.

It's totally baloney.

And you could argue the fact that we are so distressed about the things that are bad is a good sign because the human species is always trying to improve.

And the only way you can improve is to take on the problems, right?