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Unlocking Us

Brené and Barrett reflect on the "Living Beyond Human Scale" Podcast Series

44 min episode · 2 min read
·

Episode

44 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Health & Wellness, Relationships, Startups

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Artificial Intimacy: Social media creates connection illusions through follower counts rather than genuine relationships. Attention functions as an undervalued form of love, yet platforms engineer artificial intimacy that cannot sustain real needs like finding someone to feed your cat despite thousands of followers.
  • Algorithmic Moral Outrage: Social media platforms amplify extreme moral outrage because engagement algorithms prioritize inflammatory content to serve advertisements. Research on hundreds of thousands of posts reveals users perform more outrage than they genuinely feel, seeking belonging through common enemy intimacy rather than authentic connection.
  • AI Alignment Problem: Deploying AI systems in vulnerable sectors like policing, prisons, and healthcare without diverse teams risks scaling existing injustices. Building ethical AI requires ethicists, social workers, humanists, and people with lived experience at the table alongside engineers to align technology with democratic values.
  • Generation Transition Skills: Navigating technological super cycles spanning AI, wearables, and biotechnology demands neuroplasticity and nervous system regulation over coding knowledge. Leaders must develop emotional regulation capacity and embodied awareness to manage the velocity of change without becoming disembodied from human-scale experience.

What It Covers

Brené Brown and Barrett Guillen reflect on their eight-episode series examining how social media, AI, and rapid technological change exceed human neurobiological capacity, featuring experts on digital intimacy, moral outrage algorithms, and algorithmic justice.

Key Questions Answered

  • Artificial Intimacy: Social media creates connection illusions through follower counts rather than genuine relationships. Attention functions as an undervalued form of love, yet platforms engineer artificial intimacy that cannot sustain real needs like finding someone to feed your cat despite thousands of followers.
  • Algorithmic Moral Outrage: Social media platforms amplify extreme moral outrage because engagement algorithms prioritize inflammatory content to serve advertisements. Research on hundreds of thousands of posts reveals users perform more outrage than they genuinely feel, seeking belonging through common enemy intimacy rather than authentic connection.
  • AI Alignment Problem: Deploying AI systems in vulnerable sectors like policing, prisons, and healthcare without diverse teams risks scaling existing injustices. Building ethical AI requires ethicists, social workers, humanists, and people with lived experience at the table alongside engineers to align technology with democratic values.
  • Generation Transition Skills: Navigating technological super cycles spanning AI, wearables, and biotechnology demands neuroplasticity and nervous system regulation over coding knowledge. Leaders must develop emotional regulation capacity and embodied awareness to manage the velocity of change without becoming disembodied from human-scale experience.

Notable Moment

A hairstylist introduced the concept of living beyond human scale by comparing small plane flying, where pilots feel every movement, to jets requiring thinking thirty seconds ahead. This disembodiment mirrors how technology pushes humans beyond neurobiological limits into controlled flight toward terrain.

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Episode Transcript

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. At Criminal, we've made it a tradition every December to dedicate an episode entirely to animals who are really going for it. And, Tony, what happened when you pulled over? Nothing out of the ordinary until I saw the cat on the back of the roof behind the luggage carrier. Listen to our fifth annual Animals episode on Criminal wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. I'm Brene Brown, and this is a crossover Dare to Lead Unlocking Us episode. Hey, Barrett. Hi. I'm excited about this episode. We're coming to the end of an eight episode series called Living Beyond Human Scale, the Possibilities, the Cost, and the Role of Community. And the whole kind of driver for me behind this series was trying to step maybe, I don't know, back or up and look at what's going on around us. It feels you agree it feels untethering? It does. Yes. I agree. Yeah. I think the velocity of change, social media, shit show, AI conversations in every nook and cranny of every organization we're doing work in. What stands out to you as the most disorienting, if anything is disorienting? You know, I think it's interesting because between the podcast episodes events that we've been doing over the last several weeks, I think it's just the uncertainty that everybody's in and not really understanding what's next. And then, you said something the other day at an event that really has stuck in my head that we're already not on solid ground and solid footing, so we don't have a real foundation to even start to build and understand what's next. Yeah. I mean, I I think that's true. I think, by the way, if you haven't guessed yet, this is episode is gonna be just me and Barrett reflecting back on these episodes and what we've learned and kind of what our go to plan is from what we've learned and what we're still confused about, which is the biggest category maybe. I mean, I think this is the point. Like, you have AI, social media, an election year, absolute devastation and violence and tragedy all over the world right now. And it's important to understand what's happening, and it's more than I think we're neurobiologically wired to handle. Right? And so the point that you just brought up is, like, it's not like we're, hey, shit's getting ready to get real, so make sure you're grounded, you're feeling good about yourself, and well rested, well fed, well moved, you know, well connected, let's go. …

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