The Art of Manliness - The Vital Skills We’re Losing to Technology (And How to Reclaim Them)

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.040 would you get lost while driving downtown if you didn't use gps do you find yourself

00:00:15.880 struggling to read a book for more than five minutes without checking your phone

00:00:18.600 would you have trouble writing a grammatically correct email without google's auto-suggested

00:00:23.040 corrections do moments where you run up against your dependence on modern technology get you

00:00:27.420 wondering about the way some of your personal capabilities seem to be atrophying graham lee

00:00:31.800 has spent years thinking about this idea while he's a digital skills educator who appreciates the

00:00:36.300 way technology can enhance our abilities he worries that our ever-increasing reliance on algorithms and

00:00:40.860 artificial intelligence may be robbing us of elements that are vital to the core of who we are

00:00:45.160 lee is the author of human being reclaim 12 vital skills we're losing to technology and today on the

00:00:51.180 show we talk about some of those dozen endangered skills including navigation reading writing

00:00:56.920 craftsmanship and solitude lee offers case studies on how these skills enhance our humanness

00:01:01.740 why their loss matters and how we can reclaim these capabilities in a greater sense of satisfaction

00:01:06.380 and self-efficacy after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is human being

00:01:11.480 all right graham lee welcome to the show thank you so you are a digital skills educator what sorts of

00:01:29.720 digital skills do you teach so over the years i've taught in all manner of different digital skills

00:01:34.980 from the likes of digital marketing to various digital technologies and how to use them things

00:01:41.900 like analytics data science ux design various aspects like that okay so what's interesting though

00:01:47.960 despite being a digital skills educator you wrote a book called human being reclaim 12 vital skills we're

00:01:54.420 losing to technology which is about how our reliance on technology and digital tools that you teach

00:02:00.560 is making us less human so how did a guy who teaches digital skills end up writing a book about how our

00:02:08.700 digital technology is robbing us of our humanness yeah no good point i mean i was finding in training

00:02:15.840 people i think just through that process that i just began to get a sense of something going missing

00:02:24.020 that with people spending just the type of people we work with where typically they're in roles so they're

00:02:29.680 very digitally orientated a lot of screen time i just began to to notice and i began to read up on the

00:02:36.200 topic there's a lot of technology criticism literature out there and i dug quite deep into it got very

00:02:43.980 interested but but found that a lot of it was doom saying and didn't really offer any practical

00:02:51.900 guidance as to what to do about any of these aspects of whatever might be negative about how we interact

00:02:58.620 with technology today so i began to think well what can we do technology's not going it clearly is here

00:03:05.100 to stay and if anything is just becoming increasingly a part of our our lives so i just began to think well

00:03:12.160 what's the middle ground how can we enjoy the benefits of it while also mitigating the negative

00:03:18.080 sides that can happen how did you select the 12 skills that ended up in your book

00:03:23.140 yeah i mean that was through a lot of careful thinking one of the the chapters is reading which touches on

00:03:32.220 commonplace books which was a discipline that people back in sort of the 18th century and beyond used to use

00:03:41.580 and if they were ever studying a topic they would have different headings in a book that often were just a

00:03:47.360 simple word and i used that process so i i sort of delved into across this literature where i felt

00:03:55.060 skills were being impacted and i whittled down eventually to these 12 but what i found really was

00:04:01.460 they touch on almost every part of of our lives and some of the most fundamental things that we do

00:04:06.280 day to day so someone might hear the the theme of your book and retort well do we really need to be

00:04:12.820 able to do things like navigate which is one of the skills you talk about or memorize things if

00:04:17.540 technology can do them faster and better i mean can't offloading things to technology allow us to do

00:04:23.300 more of other things what's your response to that argument yeah i mean i think there's certainly some

00:04:29.220 things that it's really handy and pleasant and useful to offload to computers there's certainly no doubt

00:04:35.660 about that but there's some critical abilities whether they're learned or innate that are very

00:04:42.420 much part of who we are as human beings and when we begin to offload those it is to the detriment of

00:04:50.540 our own personal capabilities and those capabilities often spin out to other aspects of of our lives

00:04:58.280 so my principle really and this of the key thread that i run through the book is we're at risk of

00:05:05.200 losing really key parts of of us and important notions of what makes us capable and able in

00:05:12.860 different parts of our lives yeah um something i think about is whenever we rely too much on

00:05:20.560 technology we reduce some of the joy we can experience as human beings some of these skills

00:05:25.960 you talk about like navigation one of the things i find incredibly satisfying i mean i use gps all the

00:05:31.440 time to you know if i'm going to a restaurant i've never been before in town i'll just pull it up in

00:05:36.660 google maps and just get there as quickly as possible but i've noticed one of the things i

00:05:41.200 enjoy i get a lot of satisfaction out of is just navigating on my own trying to figure things out

00:05:47.800 looking at the lay of the land and using my own innate sense of direction to figure out well

00:05:51.940 i know this restaurant's in this location how can i get there and sometimes you get lost that's part of

00:05:58.460 the fun of navigating on your own as well because you learn about your learn things about your city

00:06:03.820 that you didn't know about so whenever i rely on google maps i miss out on that true yeah no exactly

00:06:10.480 i think what you miss out on is there's a loss of awareness of your surroundings the attention that you

00:06:17.640 have to focus outwards when you're trying to make your own way and learn environment around you

00:06:24.040 versus having your head down and just being guided so that's the the prime difference really

00:06:29.100 and the other thing too i've noticed too is when i rely too much on technology when the technology

00:06:33.640 doesn't work i end up being helpless so everyone's probably experienced that when they're using google

00:06:38.480 maps there's construction and the maps hasn't updated for that construction and you're like well what

00:06:44.960 do i do now or you take the turn that google tells you to take and actually that's not the most

00:06:51.140 efficient or effective way that's right i mean there can be those moments where you suddenly

00:06:56.200 feel a bit hapless or there's a gap you stumble a bit mentally and i think those are the times to

00:07:03.260 look out for whether it's navigating or whatever skill it might be i often find those are the prompts

00:07:08.980 that show you that something's going missing and that can help to alert you and something too i've

00:07:14.420 noticed i'm not against using technology i use a lot of technology to make my work more efficient

00:07:19.340 but one thing i've noticed is that by knowing how to do these things we'll call it manually like in

00:07:26.660 my head without using the technology i'm better able to understand how the technology works and

00:07:32.220 actually make it work for me so here's an example going back to my law school days so in legal research

00:07:40.400 when you're researching a case on how to you know argue for it write a memo or write a brief you have to

00:07:45.960 look at case law so you have to look at previous cases to bolster your argument for your case and

00:07:51.600 when we were in law school one of the things we did that first week we learned how to find case law

00:07:59.120 using these books west law has these series of books that you can use to find cases and it's uh they

00:08:06.800 had this elaborate keyword system so you have to like know the keyword and then you can find the

00:08:11.120 keyword and from the keyword you can find the cases in the case books and they spent a you know

00:08:16.680 a week or two teaching us how to use these physical books to find case law but the thing is you can west

00:08:24.120 law has like an online thing where you just like type in your legal issue and it'll bring up the cases

00:08:28.360 but the legal research and writing people said well the reason why we tell you how to use this tactile

00:08:33.560 system is that you're better able to understand how the law is organized so that whenever you go and

00:08:40.080 you just use the the search feature you'll understand how you got the result and maybe

00:08:44.900 the search feature didn't give you all the results that you know you needed maybe by going through the

00:08:51.200 books you're able to serendipitously find things you otherwise wouldn't find and i've noticed that

00:08:57.020 with when i use tools like grammarly for my writing to edit because i've spent so much time learning how

00:09:03.280 to write you know in college and in law school sometimes grammarly will give you suggestions and you're

00:09:07.880 like that's actually not good i don't like that suggestion so i'll ignore it and i imagine someone

00:09:12.400 who didn't go through that experience you didn't have that scaffolding and the elements of good

00:09:18.120 writing they would just think well you know grammarly says do it like that so i'll just do what it says

00:09:23.280 and it might actually not be the best option yeah yeah so i think what you're you're saying there is

00:09:30.480 that any guidance on how to help with a skill or whatever you sort of have to test out yourself

00:09:36.820 and give it a go and work out what works best for you yeah i totally agree with that yeah so let's

00:09:42.800 dig into some of these skills the first one you talk about is navigation so we've talked about today

00:09:47.660 most of us use google maps or apple maps to get around but you highlight that humans have long been

00:09:53.560 able to navigate great distances without the use of technology so what can we learn about the human

00:09:59.100 ability to navigate from polynesian seafaring that's right well so polynesian seafaring

00:10:05.940 is one of the only ancient forms of seafaring that actually was recorded in the last strands of

00:10:15.680 people still exhibiting and showing how they use these abilities in particular there was a british

00:10:21.600 sailor called david lewis who went over to some of these far-flung islands and spent time with them

00:10:27.380 he himself was trying to learn it he was a sort of around the world adventurer so he spent time there's a

00:10:33.640 a fantastic book that he wrote there's a couple of others that in detail goes through all the

00:10:39.840 different methods that these sailors would use when navigating in the open sea and it's particularly

00:10:46.100 interesting if you think about navigating in the open sea versus in a city or with landscape around you

00:10:55.080 it's far harder because there's very few signs to actually follow yet they would get from point a to point b

00:11:03.360 exactly as they needed to and how they did it put simply is purely by paying attention so they were far more

00:11:10.660 observant of their surroundings they knew what to look out for they really closely studied different aspects to give

00:11:18.960 them an indication of whether they were going the right way or whether to make any adjustments and that was

00:11:24.420 the key thing i found and another took away from it that it's a deployment of your your attention

00:11:30.780 to the world around you and almost gives you a bit of a handle on your your circumstances around you

00:11:36.600 that's the main difference yes if you've seen the movie moana the disney movie moana you see a little

00:11:41.740 bit of that polynesian seafaring so they pay attention to things like the stars yeah and they would

00:11:47.120 have stories that they would pass on orally it's basically they're telling themselves a story as

00:11:52.640 they're going from point a to point b that's how they remembered okay i gotta look for the star in

00:11:56.660 this point in the sky they'd pay attention to things like water temperature they put their hand in the

00:12:01.240 water and you know based on the temperature they well we're close or far to land they pay attention to

00:12:06.800 animals they'd see animals i guess the phosphorus in the ocean sometimes it lights up it creates sort of a

00:12:12.920 runway for them absolutely absolutely yeah exactly and the the color the the certain hue that might

00:12:19.760 appear in clouds might indicate that they're over land or they're over a reef and even the difference

00:12:26.420 of movement of clouds they'd spot that certain clouds would slow when going over land versus sea

00:12:33.360 almost as if it's held by a kite line and so little you know small traces of hints or clues

00:12:40.700 that the the person myself they wouldn't be so well versed and they certainly wouldn't notice them

00:12:47.940 you see this in other indigenous people i know in australia aborigines to navigate they tell themselves a

00:12:55.500 story they just kind of recite a story to themselves that allows them to get from point a to point b

00:12:59.960 and it part of that story is you have to pay attention to these small details in the landscape

00:13:03.980 i also know the inuit right in the arctic where it's it's sort of like the sea it's just sort of this

00:13:09.680 yeah landscape that there's not a lot of difference in how things look but because they pay attention to

00:13:15.680 really small minutiae like maybe the snow is a little bit different the wind is blowing differently

00:13:19.740 they're able to navigate vast distances without getting lost yeah exactly no there's actually quite

00:13:26.500 a similar example in this sort of white blanketed environment similar to the sea you're quite right

00:13:32.680 so what are the downsides or the unintended consequences on ourselves in our modern people

00:13:39.800 over relying on gps to get around so i would say two aspects so one the more we use gps the less

00:13:48.820 we're studying our surroundings and focusing and paying attention on them so i think there's just

00:13:54.100 something you lose a sense of place i suppose is probably how i how i describe it a grounding

00:14:00.800 in your environment but secondly the more you use your your your navigation abilities it does fine

00:14:09.700 tune your memory your spatial awareness there's certain strengths of mind that it gives you

00:14:16.360 which undoubtedly carry with you in other parts of your your life and the less you do that there's

00:14:24.160 something that just weakens that gets lost that i'm sure then impacts you in other parts of your

00:14:29.800 your life and particularly your memory is totally entwined with your your navigation abilities

00:14:34.500 yeah so something scientists have found is we the way we remember things it's we actually create like

00:14:41.780 a geographical map in our brain and one of the things that scientists they're concerned about

00:14:48.120 they're researching this is that our over reliance on gps because we use gps we don't have to create

00:14:54.420 that mental map in our head as you said it might have unintended consequences on our memory overall

00:14:59.320 and one thing that they're concerned about is it might increase the chances of alzheimer's as we get

00:15:06.040 older because since we're relying on gps to do this navigation for us we don't have to remember or create

00:15:11.400 this mental memory map in our head that might affect us later on and actually hurt our brain health as we get

00:15:18.300 older yeah exactly um there are there have been quite a number of studies that do confirm this

00:15:24.800 the practicing navigation abilities really does have quite an effect on your brain it's been seen to

00:15:32.020 actually cause brain matter to develop and grow and equally diminish if we're not using those abilities

00:15:37.300 so definitely something that's been proven so what are some things that people can start doing today

00:15:42.620 to reclaim our natural ability to navigate yeah i mean one quite clear one is to just seek to reduce

00:15:52.500 the amount you're using sat nav and an easy one to try is when you make a trip try and use it on your

00:16:00.260 outbound trip and then on your return journey rely on your own abilities and by doing that you can find

00:16:08.260 your way somewhere you know simply using this sat nav but because you know you're going to have to do

00:16:14.280 it on your way back you have to pay more attention and you'll notice in doing that you're suddenly

00:16:19.740 you're scrutinizing road signs you're looking at the fields you're passing whatever it might be

00:16:24.440 to just give you an indication of how to get back so straight away you notice that you're just more

00:16:29.340 alert you're more switched on to what's passing you by some other action points you provide use a printed

00:16:35.400 map so buy a printed map of your area and if you have to navigate instead of using your google maps

00:16:41.480 look at the printed map first and chart out your journey on the printed map because what you're

00:16:46.460 doing is you're adding an extra step in your navigation process like you have to use your brain

00:16:50.780 to transfer the the information on the map and actually navigate with it that's right yes maps are

00:16:59.380 fundamentally different to gps i mean with a map if you're out say on a hike you've got to turn and

00:17:07.160 orient orientate that map to match your surroundings so you're going for a mental process to almost

00:17:13.520 overlay it and make sense of it and read it and apply it to your surroundings where sat nav there's it's

00:17:20.180 guiding you step by step you know it's switching to your perspective and it removes those mental leaps

00:17:28.080 and the mental work that you have to do if you're using a map so they're actually very different

00:17:32.280 another tip i'd recommend take an orienteering class if one's available in your area that's been

00:17:38.700 one of the most fulfilling and satisfying things i've done is learning how to orient myself with a

00:17:44.120 mapping compass and there's all these cool tricks like math tricks you use to triangulate where you're

00:17:50.360 at and it's cool you just look at a map and look at your landscape and use your compass and pinpoint

00:17:55.680 exactly where you're at yeah absolutely you know it could be very rewarding i think something that

00:18:00.240 really pays back and i'm quite sure gives you it's something that can be intangible in some ways but

00:18:08.080 certainly a more connection a deeper connection with the area around you and you can test yourself

00:18:13.700 and branch out further and it really does wide i think it widens your perspective okay so don't rely

00:18:20.360 rely on gps all the time maybe use it only in certain situations another skill you talk about is

00:18:26.040 movement how is movement a human skill and how is technology atrophied our movement skill yeah so this

00:18:31.900 was one perhaps most enjoyed researching because it really did open my eyes to how little we move

00:18:40.320 when we're at a screen for all intents and purposes we practically stop moving the way that a screen

00:18:47.100 catches our attention so if you're watching tv or you're in the cinema it really does pull you in

00:18:54.160 so it's commands your focus naturally if you're sat at a laptop even more because you're actively

00:19:01.180 engaging with it you're moving your hands a slight sway of your shoulders and that's it now if you

00:19:08.580 actually begin to look at the number of hours that a typical person is doing that they're surprisingly

00:19:15.340 high i think we all would think that they're of a certain level but the number of hours were

00:19:20.980 immobilized because of using screens is huge in everyday life nowadays and if you then compare that

00:19:29.360 to our evolutionary past and what's led us to have the physical form that we have as human beings

00:19:37.260 there's a total mismatch we evolved primarily to walk and run we're one of the few species that is

00:19:46.680 bipedal you only can look at say kangaroos or birds there's very few other species that stand on two

00:19:54.520 legs and we evolved to do that predominantly as a method of hunting has been found where we were in packs

00:20:03.020 would hunt down prey and our main strength has been endurance that we're able to cover long distances

00:20:11.820 in ways that a lot of other species simply can't do and our bodies basically are primed to walk and

00:20:19.940 run we have the most fantastic ability and all aspects of our bodies are attuned to allow that to

00:20:27.120 happen and that's what we're built to do so when we stop doing it when we're static sat down or laid

00:20:33.960 down on the sofa our muscles degrade our bones equally suffer and so many of the the health

00:20:43.100 issues that people face today the biggest source is lack of movement sedentariness rather than diet

00:20:52.260 alcohol smoking it supersedes all of these there was one study i came across it was a substantial

00:20:58.320 study of 300 000 people across europe and it found that lack of exercises is the absolute top cause of

00:21:07.000 early death rates so it is very important yeah we had a guy on the podcast herman poncer who studies

00:21:14.420 metabolism and he's done a lot of studies on indigenous like hunter gatherers the big takeaway i got from that

00:21:19.840 episode is that as you said human beings are designed to move we have to move we don't move then we

00:21:25.400 easily put on body fat but if you look at other primates they can just like not move at all and

00:21:31.180 they'll eat and instead of their bodies turning that into fat tissue they just turns into lean tissue

00:21:36.000 humans are the opposite if we consume calories and we don't move our body just naturally turns that into

00:21:42.800 fat and that causes all these other health issues so i think we're saying here our technology

00:21:47.860 causes us to be more sedentary so we have to be proactive about moving more and so that's something

00:21:53.320 i've tried to do take walks in the morning and get up from the the screen every you know 30 45 minutes and do a

00:21:59.880 little movement break yeah exactly exactly and what i found illuminating is just considering how much more

00:22:07.960 people walked and ran in in the past one thing i i came across was a look at native american

00:22:15.020 running abilities so much like polynesian sailing is one of the last reported examples of that

00:22:23.200 fundamental skill that we've had as humans native american running is another example of that for

00:22:29.140 how much we used to move there was a book an article at one stage that stuart brand the founder of the

00:22:36.300 whole earth catalog and now more recently the long now foundation in san francisco and he asked a writer

00:22:43.400 to compile an analysis of of native american running abilities and this eventually took shape as a book

00:22:51.020 that you can still get now it's called indian running i think it came out in i think in the early 1980s

00:22:56.560 and it's fascinating to see how much people ran across all age groups i mean this is an ability we take

00:23:05.780 late into life so endurance sports is one aspect that actually you can follow into your 70s and beyond

00:23:13.380 as long as you keep that up and trails and furrow fares when first sort of arrivals got to north america

00:23:21.400 south america trails and furrow fares were found across the whole span of the american continent

00:23:27.320 people quite obviously it was their own only method of transport and that that that's how they got around

00:23:33.800 obviously now we have cars we have public transport and we're sat down a lot of the time

00:23:37.760 so there is our way of living is fundamentally different so that does need a bit of proactivity

00:23:44.620 to just remind yourself and prompt yourself to just get out and get moving again but the difference

00:23:49.920 that it can make for your health and well-being physically and mentally is substantial we're going

00:23:55.600 to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:23:57.220 and now back to the show so another skill you got is reading how has technology atrophied our

00:24:08.300 reading ability arguably the internet has only increased the amount we read we're constantly

00:24:12.060 reading text messages social media updates blog posts online articles so how has technology

00:24:17.680 made us worse at reading yeah i mean technology i think it's fair to say has changed how we read

00:24:24.620 and it's a strength often we become highly capable at scanning vast quantities of text just because

00:24:32.400 of the abundance of information textual information online we're very good at quickly working out if

00:24:38.600 something's relevant to us but i find that we often we sift to almost work out what to disregard

00:24:44.160 rather than what to really closely attend to um and i looked at periods in our past where we read

00:24:52.120 actually very differently and the renaissance was a time when reading abilities were probably at the

00:24:57.860 highest level as humans and at that time reading was very much an active pursuit so people would would

00:25:06.320 sit down and they actually would very typically annotate as they read so they would mark up underlining

00:25:14.360 writing in the margins what became known as marginalia so books from that period have scrolls and

00:25:21.220 scribblings all over them they really were made their own they also used commonplace books i just

00:25:26.660 touched on before where they would note take and take out the key pieces of information that were

00:25:34.040 relevant for them and write them in their their own notebook that they took away with them and that

00:25:38.420 active process where you're really focusing and intently involved in the reading process make sure that

00:25:45.580 you take away a lot more with you it becomes part of you it is far more easily memorable versus

00:25:52.140 the sort of in attention in some ways of just flitting between one thing and the next not really

00:25:58.760 taking the time to focus and an online medium just isn't so disposed to that physicality of marking

00:26:05.560 things up and almost sort of getting a handle on things and interestingly in the renaissance so many

00:26:11.180 words that were used at the time to describe some of the different aspects of reading related to the

00:26:17.580 latin word for hand manis so we have like manuscript manual and and funnily enough in the marking up that

00:26:24.580 people would do at that time they'd often use what was called a manicule which were little pointing

00:26:29.240 fingers that people use to indicate aspects of the text which were most interesting and today that's

00:26:35.420 more commonly we'll see that on a cursor that we're moving across on the screen so it's quite different

00:26:39.680 okay so to improve your reading make reading more physical it sounds like yeah make it yeah and more

00:26:46.540 active so i i actually used this method for researching my book so i i only read physical books

00:26:53.760 i highlighted uh underlined wrote in in the books which i really now enjoy i feel that they really do make

00:27:01.660 them your own you know you've got your own thoughts and learning process it's there on the page

00:27:06.700 i hand wrote all my notes i did then digitize it and and use it just so it was a bit more searchable

00:27:13.300 afterwards but i found going through that process it allowed me to make the topic my own and for me to

00:27:19.200 interrogate it really closely and in a lot of detail and sort of you know it can be harder but that's just

00:27:26.460 the way it is that i think any proper learning or mental work is an exertion but that exertion pays off

00:27:34.380 with the information that you gain and the wider sort of learnings and outlook yeah i prefer physical

00:27:40.360 books over digital books i use both in my work but i find that i i absorb more and can remember more

00:27:47.080 when i use a physical book with physical books i think there's that connection between memory and

00:27:53.120 physical location like when i read a physical book when i open the book up i have an idea of like well i know

00:28:00.020 it's like towards the front of the book and in the upper part of the left hand page that the bit i'm

00:28:07.020 looking for you can't do that with a kindle book because everything's just flat there's no no place

00:28:12.520 to orient yourself yeah that's true that's very true it's it's interesting because you're you're

00:28:17.260 actually using some of the same aspects of your navigation abilities and in some ways sort of

00:28:21.900 spatial awareness and that's connecting into your memory and your ability to comprehend something and

00:28:28.160 carry it away for later and something else i've been trying to do more of is making time for

00:28:33.140 dedicated reading well where i'll read for maybe just try an hour non-stop and that can be hard if

00:28:39.280 you know your reading has been just in five minute spurts so maybe set aside like i'm going to really

00:28:45.700 push myself get a really dense novel or dense non-fiction book i'm going to try to read it actively

00:28:51.660 for an hour and you'll you'll find yourself you'll you'll be pooped after that yeah it's very true it's 0.95

00:28:57.220 certainly a skill that you hone that you get increasingly able to handle more text as you go

00:29:03.500 but as i say try and read with a pen in hand you know if it's non-fiction or something that you're

00:29:08.160 you're trying to study to take away whatever it might be something to do with work or maybe you're

00:29:13.380 learning you know how to build a shed or something reading with a pen in hand just gets you more involved

00:29:18.980 and i find that really does help the learning process yeah i do that too so i've got my own

00:29:24.200 little note-taking system that i use when i read a book and prep for a podcast conversation and then

00:29:29.680 i'll sometimes if i need to i'll write notes at the end of a chapter kind of summarizing the the key

00:29:36.960 takeaways i got from that chapter that so when i go back i can just pull that easily and also i mean

00:29:42.620 just the act of summarizing helps me understand the material better well funnily enough that's something

00:29:48.000 that a lot of people did in the renaissance and montaigne the french philosopher he did exactly

00:29:51.580 that he summarized at the start of his books the key outputs so there's certain habits that just

00:29:57.420 make sense and naturally you know work so there's three skills you highlight in the book art writing

00:30:03.240 and thought that have recently been encroached upon by artificial intelligence so you can use chat gpt to

00:30:08.640 create images get ideas and you could spit out some pretty well-written articles in just a matter of

00:30:14.400 seconds and i want to talk in particular about writing because as someone who makes their living

00:30:18.820 writing i think a lot about what these large language models like chat gpt are going to what

00:30:25.680 effect they're going to have on the profession of writing and even if and how the fundamentals of

00:30:29.520 writing are going to be taught to kids in the future we've already touched on this a bit earlier

00:30:33.560 but what do you think we miss out on when we don't engage in writing and just let artificial

00:30:38.780 intelligence do the writing for us yeah well i think we miss out on a lot so in the book i look

00:30:46.860 at winston churchill who although most people think of him naturally as a wartime leader his second

00:30:53.400 profession was as a writer the existing words that were written by him total around 20 million words

00:30:59.900 that appeared in his public published books his speeches his memos and various documents he created

00:31:07.060 through his career so it's hard to find any other leader of such you know well-known notoriety that

00:31:14.760 wrote so much so it was very much something that was part of who he was and helped him untangle his

00:31:22.020 thoughts and clarify the direction he wanted to go on on any topic and he dictated a lot he dictated in

00:31:29.520 the car the bath one of his assistants would use a muffled typewriter to try and make sure that she didn't 1.00

00:31:36.340 disrupt his thoughts as he spoke so he found that the act of speaking equally helped helped his his

00:31:42.980 thinking and there is i think a fair argument to say that that that nuanced approach to assembling and

00:31:50.000 structuring his thoughts allowed him to have a far more ready appreciation of the risk that hitler and

00:31:58.420 the nazis showed before the start of the war and he was ahead of everyone else in parliament in the uk

00:32:05.460 in indicating that there was a substantial risk but if you compare that to text being assembled for you

00:32:13.180 clearly you're not involved in the creation so you're not having to structure your thinking to

00:32:20.800 assemble your own logic and thread of thought and that's a key difference and i think something that

00:32:28.080 really will if you you allow that to happen too much will impinge on your ability to think through

00:32:34.620 naughty complicated problems yeah something that i've noticed is you know this is why we generally

00:32:40.520 have authors as guests on the podcast and why we typically focus on talking about books something i've

00:32:44.960 noticed is that when someone has only offered their thoughts orally like they've just done coaching

00:32:49.860 videos podcasts things like that they often have trouble articulating their ideas in a sustained

00:32:57.320 way like they have these good nuggets of thoughts but they haven't synthesized them yet and writing

00:33:03.240 forces you to do that so i like talking to authors because they've already gone through that difficult

00:33:07.560 process of synthesizing their thoughts so usually what they have to say is a little more organized

00:33:12.780 and coherent than someone whose thoughts have just been bouncing around in their head so basically what i've

00:33:17.800 observed is that writing improves thinking i think absolutely writing i think is a way where you can

00:33:25.260 structure and organize your thoughts on the page i mean it's interesting if you think about it that

00:33:31.680 these large language models they have come about through the organization of text you know they're fed

00:33:39.860 huge reams of text from across the internet it's textual based and that's what's led to intelligence

00:33:46.320 and the form of ai that we now understand today that that in itself shows the value of our relationship

00:33:53.500 with text and you also talk about you know the chat gpt and these other large language models they're

00:33:59.280 impressive like you can just give it a prompt and it can write something that just it's amazing like

00:34:04.960 it's really good but you argue that there's some things that chat gpt can't capture that human writing

00:34:12.300 can what do you think ai can't replicate in human writing and thought well i think one of the the

00:34:17.540 fundamental aspects is however intelligent ai gets so there's no doubt that certain human abilities

00:34:25.360 ai is already beginning to match and and obviously it surpasses us in in certain areas it can scan

00:34:33.780 volumes of data that we would never be able to do and quickly churn out text at a speed that we just

00:34:39.740 couldn't match so it clearly surpasses us in certain areas but there's other areas where it just can't

00:34:44.680 match what we do um it doesn't exist in a physical world so it doesn't have a way to empathize and

00:34:52.940 understand someone else's perspective it basically doesn't have a perspective it doesn't have its own

00:34:58.900 viewpoint on the world it's just fed text that's been created by humans or increasingly also other ai tools

00:35:07.500 so you can't bring in that subjective experience yeah yeah and i think that's a key aspect i mean

00:35:13.740 if you think about winston churchill and the decision making he would have had to have made

00:35:18.900 during some of the most hotly difficult periods in the second world war he would have framed any

00:35:24.440 decisions based on his own life experiences and his acknowledgement of how other people operate in

00:35:30.980 the world and that it would have been grounded in his own real world experiences and a computer

00:35:37.020 simply doesn't have that is it possible to use ai as a supplement to your writing and thinking

00:35:42.900 absolutely absolutely so so my view certainly is not a wholesale negative on ai at all it's immensely

00:35:52.160 powerful and can be really really useful when i was researching this and really playing around with

00:35:58.780 ai tools in writing the book one thing i sort of came back to is often in philosophical thought

00:36:06.800 there's an interrogation the socratic method in particular is questioning is asking questions of

00:36:15.080 thoughts that you or someone else might have and trying to get to the core of the matter and you can do

00:36:21.400 that with ai so you might have a problem you're wrestling with or a dilemma and naturally it's great to talk

00:36:28.580 about that with a friend or someone in your family but equally with ai you can you can now because

00:36:34.620 it's it's it's human language based you can critique your thoughts and compare them to the human record

00:36:41.980 to just the swathes of information that exist online and zero in on that to get some feedback on your

00:36:48.360 thoughts so that's immensely useful yeah i've been exploring different tools that are out there now i know

00:36:54.420 google just launched this thing called notebook lm okay where you can upload text that you're you know

00:37:00.480 you're using for your research and then you can just start asking the ai questions like well are there any

00:37:06.160 connections between this concept and this concept and it'll go through all this research and help you find

00:37:12.760 that it's basically like having a research assistant like a human research assistant yeah

00:37:16.420 um and i think yeah ai can be useful in that sense but then actually figuring out the best way to express

00:37:23.820 that you leave that to yourself yeah i mean one thing i look at in the book is um that churchill had a team

00:37:32.060 of assistants so he had assistants that would uh note down when he dictated but he also had great minds

00:37:39.400 and thinkers of the day so one guy that went on to head up the un various sort of oxford and cambridge

00:37:45.560 graduates that compiled fresh new information for him that he then assimilated into his writing and

00:37:52.480 his thinking processes he was a man with resources and in his day it would be very difficult for most

00:38:00.440 people to arrange such a setup today actually you can achieve that with ai tools so there's huge

00:38:07.860 power in that and it sort of levels the ability for us to operate in a similar way okay so use ai to

00:38:14.840 help you with your research maybe find connections and then going back to this idea of you should

00:38:20.020 still learn the rules of grammar and how to write because yeah ai can do that but there's instances

00:38:27.000 where i think ai gets it wrong so i use grammarly but as i'm going through the suggested changes that

00:38:33.460 grammarly makes sometimes i'm like no grammarly i don't think that's good actually i want to end that

00:38:38.620 sentence with a preposition yeah even though it's not grammatically correct it just sounds better

00:38:42.600 so if you have that that ability innate ability to write you can make better decisions with ai

00:38:48.260 yeah i know i agree yeah um so another skill you talk about is craftsmanship and you talk about what

00:38:54.220 we can learn from watchmakers on how the power to craft can make us human so what can we learn from

00:38:59.760 watchmakers well so my thought with craft is it's anything where you're making things with your hands

00:39:08.220 so there's a physical intelligence that too often today gets lost in the screen work we're doing

00:39:15.560 where as much as we talked about the benefits of dealing with text etc there isn't a physicality to

00:39:22.380 it and if you think back to any diy projects you might have done recently or maybe projects at school

00:39:32.460 sometimes we have to go back quite far to find examples of it because sadly it has gone missing

00:39:37.200 in a large number number of our lives the process of working with your hands and learning how to do

00:39:43.840 something certainly is a different type of intelligence you you're actually thinking with

00:39:49.740 your body motion to get around something and work out how to do it and that that was something that

00:39:56.740 we used to do a lot more of so in the book i i look at a particular watchmaker called george daniels

00:40:02.840 who passed away only a few years ago but he himself learned i think it was something like 140

00:40:10.040 different what used to be individual crafts so skills that people worked on in the clock industry

00:40:17.180 in europe he mastered all of them and handcrafted his own very very sort of top quality watches so i look

00:40:26.140 at how the process he went through learning those skills and actually in the process of doing it

00:40:32.400 he ended up innovating and creating a new watch movement uh it's called the escapement the sort of

00:40:39.200 the the ticking element in a watch which controls its time he actually invented a wholly new method

00:40:45.520 eventually was purchased by omega and still used today so that physical physicality of work actually

00:40:52.840 allowed him to really innovate and uh find new ways forward yeah and you make the case that at the

00:40:59.020 time there's technology like there's computer design tools that you know watchmakers use to design watches

00:41:05.240 and you make the case that these design tools probably couldn't have made that innovation

00:41:09.280 because they're not in the physical world it took this guy being like actually working with this stuff

00:41:15.720 physically to see oh i can make i can do this differently and it will work because he's able to test in real

00:41:21.640 time able to learn through his body you couldn't do that with a computer exactly those sort of clinks

00:41:27.060 and clanks of just dealing with the reality of the world where things don't work versus moving things

00:41:34.120 around on the screen and and watch designers now there are a certain number of software tools that they

00:41:40.100 use and a lot of the steps that george daniels would have had to painstakingly have gone through

00:41:44.760 himself to learn and understand the very working mechanics of a watch it's just click of a button

00:41:50.980 or a drop down to just do that add this and you know so naturally the the actual full understanding

00:41:57.440 gets lost because you're just selecting options rather than actually going through the process

00:42:02.480 yourself why do you think people who might not engage in craft for a living someone who's not a

00:42:08.140 watchmaker or a carpenter maybe they just sit at a computer all day managing spreadsheets why should

00:42:15.160 they incorporate craft in their lives well one it's it's very enjoyable and it's rewarding again if you

00:42:22.940 think of it try and if you try and think of something you've done recently that was more of a physical

00:42:27.900 challenge i mean sometimes it might be like assembling flat pack furniture something like that actually it's

00:42:33.580 quite rewarding and the process you go through the challenge of it all feels different it feels

00:42:40.340 different to working on a spreadsheet say and you're using sort of your own your whole sort of bodily being

00:42:46.620 to tackle something and that yeah is is fundamentally different so i think if you are overly screen-based

00:42:53.520 and a lot of us are trying to find opportunities to do that whether it's certain tasks in the house or the

00:42:59.340 garden just ground you a bit i think and pulls you out of your head and into more your physicality in

00:43:05.540 the world around you and i think also can help improve your work in that digital realm yeah so

00:43:11.740 going back to winston churchill he was a wordsmith his work was thinking and writing but he had hobbies

00:43:17.900 that weren't thinking and writing they were very tactile so he painted something he did i also know he

00:43:23.880 he laid brick at his his estate he did some landscaping as well so he made time for that

00:43:30.820 and i think it actually improved his writing and thinking because i'm because when you're doing the

00:43:35.360 sort of like manual tactile things sometimes you're often just thinking about work or maybe a problem at

00:43:40.740 work and having that physical thing kind of distracts you a bit and you're a little bit more unfocused

00:43:48.020 i mean when you're in that unfocused state you're able to make connections you otherwise wouldn't have made

00:43:52.360 that's right i mean he suffered from depression he called it his black dog of depression and uh he

00:43:59.420 would build walls as you mentioned and yeah i think that was a way of dealing with his thoughts

00:44:05.500 ruminating and you know trying to sort of work through difficult stages absolutely so it can be

00:44:12.000 good for that i mean it has been found to be good for our mental well-being there's no doubt about that

00:44:16.340 that we get a boost from doing physical tasks so it's certainly something to look at all right so

00:44:22.340 find a hobby where you have to use your hands exactly yeah could be carpentry could be you know

00:44:28.200 pottery whatever find that one more skill i want to talk about is solitude how is solitude a skill

00:44:35.340 yeah so what i look at with with solitude is the fact that today we're so connected with our devices

00:44:44.480 always switched on really whether that's receiving emails texts checking online for news etc and if you

00:44:54.160 compare that to most of our past we gravitated between whole total engagement in physical conversation

00:45:03.920 and then lots of time on our own um switched off which is where we could really explore our own

00:45:10.500 thoughts daydream and just be grounded in who we are as a person in the book i look at an example

00:45:18.560 of alexander selkirk who was a castaway on an island just off of chile and actually robinson crusoe

00:45:26.380 daniel defoe's book was based on him so there was a real world real life robinson crusoe and he was

00:45:32.340 he was cast away for four and a half years he was a difficult character who almost caused a mutiny on

00:45:39.260 board a ship that he was on and he was thrown off by the captain to this island but through the course

00:45:45.400 of his stay there he changed he became more at ease with himself and in the book i sort of look at well

00:45:52.420 when we spend time on our own what is the value of it what can we achieve and there's it can be quite

00:45:58.980 nuanced but very deep and actually the the effects can be really quite changing for us i mean any any

00:46:07.080 form of religion or spiritual viewpoint tends to consider that it's time alone where we can fully

00:46:16.040 begin to comprehend our relationship with the world and the universe and our place within it

00:46:21.760 so it's why the likes of monks or dervishes whatever it might be have always sought out time away

00:46:27.740 to try and just work through that that that thinking so alexander selkirk inadvertently found

00:46:35.060 himself in that position not of his choosing but he benefited from it and actually when he was saved

00:46:40.320 and brought back to london eventually he was found on board the ship to be a be very much a changed

00:46:47.240 character he was given responsibilities to lead the ship but when he got back to london he sank back into

00:46:53.080 his old ways um drinking too much violence so the benefits he found when he was alone were lost back

00:47:02.920 in success society and human societies often wrestled with that notion of how do we take so much of the

00:47:12.660 benefits that we have when we have time alone to really sit and be in our own company into the busy

00:47:19.680 throws of our social life how can we match the two and i my thinking is that today in in our digital lives

00:47:26.980 that there's even more of a need for that how do we remain grounded in our own sort of viewpoint and

00:47:33.920 being when we're bombarded with information and drawn this way and next and our attention direct and

00:47:39.740 in all manner of different ways how do we keep a control of who we are so that that's when i talk about

00:47:45.780 a skill of solitude it's what abilities can you hone so you sustain that through your life and all

00:47:54.400 notions like um or exercises like meditation or physical practices like yoga or qigong which are

00:48:01.860 becoming increasingly popular seek to do that mindfulness you know it obviously has become a

00:48:07.940 popular discipline aspects like that i think are more and more relevant for our digital world to keep us

00:48:15.000 grounded well graham this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more

00:48:18.640 about the book in your work well you can find the book anywhere really where you would hope to to

00:48:23.060 find it yeah so that that's what i'd suggest any retailer and i hope anyone who reads it finds it

00:48:27.780 useful fantastic well graham lee thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thanks a lot my guest today

00:48:32.440 was graham lee he's the author of the book human being reclaimed 12 vital skills we're losing to

00:48:36.720 technology it's available on amazon.com check out our show notes at aom.is slash human being

00:48:41.620 where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:48:44.260 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:48:55.380 artofmanlies.com where you find our podcast archives and while you're there sign up for

00:48:59.300 our newsletter we have a daily option and a weekly option they're both free it's the best way to stay

00:49:03.540 on top of what's going on at aom and if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate if you take one minute

00:49:07.540 to just read off a podcast or spotify it helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you

00:49:11.260 please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member you think we're something out of it

00:49:14.940 as always thank you for the continued support until next time it's brett mckay

00:49:18.320 reminding you to not listen to anyone podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - July 29, 2024

The Vital Skills We’re Losing to Technology (And How to Reclaim Them)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript