Openness As Mindfulness: Exploring Consciousness & Curiosity

In this episode, Dr. Diana Hill and Dr. Jonathan Schooler explore the difference between openness and mindfulness and how cultivating openness can deepen our inner life. You’ll hear about the creative potential in “mind wandering” (wandering of a curious mind) and how it contrasts with conventional mind wandering.

The conversation touches on how openness, curiosity, and resonance shape our thinking, awareness, and connection. Expect rich insight into how shifting your mindset toward openness can influence creativity, empathy, and personal growth.

Transcript

How can we be more open?

That's what we're going to explore today with Dr.

Jonathan Schouler on the Wise Effort Show.

Welcome back.

I'm Dr.

Diana Hill.

Openness is what we're talking about today.

Heart opening,

Mind opening,

And how we can open up even more.

We're talking with Jonathan Schouler,

Who is a cognitive psychologist at UCSB.

He's a distinguished professor in psychological and brain sciences.

He's known for his research on consciousness and mindfulness and mind-wandering and the relationship between language and thought.

He explores this sort of bridge between empirical science and philosophical questions,

Which you will hear in our conversation.

And he's just super open-minded.

We talk about things like mind-wandering versus mind-wandering.

We talk about curiosity.

We talk about consciousness and his theory of consciousness,

Which is kind of mind-blowing.

And we get into this synchronicity that can happen when you are just in a state of openness.

And opening up is actually the second step in the wise effort method.

The first step is to get curious.

The second step is to open up.

How can we open our minds?

How can we open up our sense of self?

How can we open up to feeling all the big feelings that we have?

And then how can we open up to change?

You're going to enjoy this conversation with Jonathan Schouler as much as I did.

I'm teaching a class with him out at UCSB in the spring on climate resilience.

And I was really interested to hear that the more open you are,

Actually,

The more you feel drawn to caring for our planet and caring for others.

So this is a good thing to practice,

Practicing opening up with the very open Jonathan Schouler.

Enjoy.

Welcome,

Jonathan Schouler.

I disclosed to you when we were on a very short meeting a couple weeks ago that,

Well,

I didn't disclose this,

That I had an academic crush on you and you broke my heart.

Oh,

No.

I get into people's research,

And then I read all their stuff.

And then I email them and say,

I had this with Erin Westgate,

I had an academic crush on her.

I don't know if you're familiar with her work.

I do know her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She's great.

She researches boredom.

And then I reach out to them.

And then it was crickets,

No response from Jonathan Schouler.

So I'm glad to have you here.

I got you on the show,

But through a different means,

Which is usually more effective,

Which is just getting to know you personally.

I've hit or miss on email.

It's one of my many foibles.

Yes.

I know.

We have many of them.

So I want to talk about all the things that you're up to.

And the first thing is this concept of openness.

Because I think openness is the new mindfulness.

You're changing the name of your lab,

Potentially,

From mindfulness to openness.

Describe a little bit about that,

And then we can explore more from there.

Sure.

I'm not changing the name of the lab.

The lab will still be the Meta Lab,

But we have a center,

The Center for Mindfulness and Human Potential.

And that center,

We're going to change to the Open Center,

Where open is spelled O-H-P-E-N for openness,

Human potential,

Experience,

And neurocognition.

And the basic idea is that openness has been well appreciated in psychology for many years.

It's one of the big five personality traits,

Along with,

You can remember the big five through the acronym OCEAN for openness,

Conscientiousness,

Extroversion,

Agreeableness,

And neuroticism.

So it's the first of the big five.

And it's associated with many things that are really valuable,

Including creativity,

Curiosity,

Intellectual humility,

Conceptual expansiveness,

As well as things that you might not appreciate,

Such as concern for nature,

Concern for the future of humanity,

And a general political tolerance for perspectives other than one's own.

So it's this wonderful quality,

But it's typically been treated as a personality trait that you just either have or you don't.

And what increasingly we're finding in our lab and in some others is that it's also a trait that can be cultivated,

And it's also a state.

There are states of openness,

And the way to cultivate the trait of openness is to have more and more opportunities for states of openness.

So we're very excited about cultivating openness and see this as a real opportunity to help humanity in many of the things that it's most dearly needing.

So how does openness differentiate from mindfulness?

I mean,

I think the way that I think of mindfulness is,

You know,

Being whatever,

Kabat-zins,

Being present without judgment.

Sometimes we can have a concentrated mindfulness where we're focused.

Sometimes we can have an open mindfulness where we're in sort of more of the open awareness,

But how are you making the distinction there?

In sort of Buddhist approaches,

There's sort of two different kinds of,

There's multiple kinds,

But there's two very widely used kinds of meditation.

There's the breath-focus meditation,

Which is a concentration focus where you're just really sort of focusing on the moment,

On a particular grounding.

And then there is open monitoring where you're sort of opening it up and attending to everything.

And mindfulness really sort of,

It's been sort of focused on this breath focus,

On the just sort of being present in the moment.

And it hasn't really,

When it's been westernized,

Hasn't really fully endorsed the whole open monitoring element as a way of being.

So there actually is an element in the sort of Buddhist tradition that really does map on to openness.

But openness also has a lot of qualities that go beyond mindfulness,

Things like trying new experiences.

That's not necessarily a sort of an embedded part.

Curiosity,

Sometimes curiosity is an element of mindfulness.

Judd Brewer has certainly been promoting curiosity as a component,

But it's not necessarily a component.

So really exploring one's curiosity and in general,

Intellectual humility,

An appreciation of the value of alternative perspectives.

These are things that are potentially aligned with mindfulness,

But not necessarily the same thing.

And when we look at the correlation,

For example,

Between people who score high on mindfulness scales and openness scales,

There's a small correlation,

But it's not,

It's nowhere near the same thing.

Yeah,

Not always.

And if you're talking about that trait,

Personality style of openness,

I teach a little Sangha here in Santa Barbara,

And I was giving them,

Inspired by this conversation with you,

I was giving them some questions that people could ask themselves to see where they land on this trait.

So questions like around imagination,

My imagination can keep me entertained for hours or artistic interests.

I'm fascinated by art and music and literature.

There's openness related to adventurousness,

Which is like I enjoy trying out different things or intellect and ideas.

And I found that when I was answering those by just sort of like my personality style is not super open.

I mean,

I think growing up,

I wasn't open.

I wasn't interested in trying new adventurous things,

But I've been working at it.

I've been working at it.

I want to be more open.

And I'm curious what you are doing with folks to facilitate greater openness because it is linked to all these other things,

Linked to creativity,

Linked to wellbeing.

It may be some of like our secret sauce to also,

I think,

Navigating distress and uncertainty is if we can be in a space of openness.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

One of the things that we see as central to openness is curiosity.

And many times the curiosity and openness,

Those scales overlap very dramatically.

Asking questions.

I think that's an aspect of curiosity that I'm sure and of openness that I'm sure you do have.

And that element is so important because people who are intrinsically curious,

Who are asking questions,

They're taking in more information.

So they know more and that makes conversations more interesting.

And they also genuinely care about what they're talking to the other person about.

I mean,

They care about what the other person has to say.

They're generally interested.

And so they're asking,

Probing questions that extract interesting answers and keep things alive.

So by cultivating curiosity,

By focusing on asking questions and looking at things from different perspectives,

You can enter more frequently states of openness.

Okay.

So here's a probing question for you.

When recently was there a time that you did that where you did something new and different and it facilitated more openness?

Well,

Yeah.

So we went to Vietnam,

Excuse me,

Not Vietnam,

Thailand recently and went to an elephant preserve there.

And I was a little bit nervous because the elephants are actually right there.

There's nothing between you and the elephants.

And I got in a pond a little bit apprehensively and helped to bathe the elephants.

So yeah,

That pushed the envelope a little bit,

But it was well worth it.

And we actually got to pet a three-month-old baby elephant,

Which was always been a dream of mine.

So that's one example.

A lot of times traveling provides the opportunity,

But there are also things one can do in one's daily life as well.

Right.

That's what Oishi and Westgate write about when they talk about psychological richness and how travel is not always,

It doesn't always involve an enjoyable,

Pleasurable experience,

But it increases that sort of openness,

Trying new things,

The richness of life.

What did bathing an elephant open you to?

I think it just sort of encouraged me to recognize that that was something that was in my wheelhouse,

Whereas I was thinking that might be something I'd be scared of.

Another example recently I did is a cold plunge,

Which I really felt like that was just too cold and I wasn't up for it.

And it also gave me sort of a sense of I can push myself to do things that I wasn't sure I'd be able to do.

So there's a certain sense also of confidence in one's ability to push the envelope.

Well,

There's confidence in your ability to override your mind.

Exactly.

So the mind,

I think the tendency of our mind is not always wanting to be open.

Our mind wants to stay closed and inflexible and safe and don't go up to a giant animal that could step on you and squish you in a minute and don't go in cold water that could kill you and all the things that our mind evolved to protect us from.

And in order to expand our horizons and our mindset,

We have to override it.

Our mind can tell us all sorts of things and then we can wisely override.

In a lot of my research,

I'm kind of on the one hand,

On the other hand.

You're a both-ander.

I'm a both-ander,

Yeah.

I think it's important to be open.

But one of my favorite expressions is,

Don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out.

You can be too open.

And that actually happened to me recently.

I had a skylight that had a dysfunction thing and I got my ladder out to go to it.

I set it up and then I realized I was being too open-minded,

Thinking that climbing way up this ladder was a good idea.

And I decided to call the handyman to take care of it.

So sometimes you need to balance being open-minded with not being so open-minded that you put yourself at risk.

It's important to balance that out.

Okay.

This maps on to Buddhist meditation.

In terms of open mind,

Focused mind.

So when you're doing the concentration practices,

Even with the openness practices,

They often start with concentration practices.

They're called the rope of mindfulness.

And if you look at some of these Tibetan drawings,

It's often an elephant path,

Which is interesting to talk about elephants,

But the elephant and the rope to the elephant.

So the rope of mindfulness is the concentration practice,

Which may focus the mind and it's necessary to do that from time to time.

And then there's the openness practices,

The awake awareness,

Open from the back of heart,

No self kind of practices when you're just out at sea,

Right?

And those are important practices to learn as well,

But it's always both that you can always go back to that rope.

And that's the harnessing of our minds.

Whether you take a psychological angle or a spiritual angle,

I would say it's,

Yes,

It's always a both and.

Which sort of relates to this real nuanced thing that you're doing around mind wandering versus mind wondering.

And many people on this show will have heard the Killingsworth study where wandering mind is an unhappy mind and then we're all like,

Oh no,

My mind is wandering.

I'm going to become unhappy.

But you've really added to this concept of mind wandering that it's not all bad,

Folks.

So if you have a wandering mind,

It's not necessarily an unhappy mind.

It may be a creative mind.

It actually may lead to aha moments.

Tell us a little bit about this distinction and your research around that.

So it is true that on average,

When people are mind wandering,

They're less happy than when they're in the moment.

It's also true that when people are mind wandering,

They're not doing whatever task,

If they're,

Say,

Reading or if they're in a conversation or anything like that.

If they're mind wandering about something unrelated,

It's going to disrupt performance.

So there really are costs to mind wandering,

And I've certainly documented those.

That's on the one hand,

But on the other,

There's also some really interesting benefits.

We have a paper that came out after the Killingsworth and Gilbert paper called The Silver Lining to the Mind in the Clouds.

And what we found is that if people are mind wandering,

Again,

On average,

They're less happy than when they're on task.

But if they're mind wandering about something they're especially interested in,

They're actually happier than on their average when they're on task.

So it really depends on what you're mind wandering about.

And we find that curious mind wandering,

Mind wandering about things that you find genuinely intriguing,

What we call mind wandering,

That that can be associated with real creativity.

We find that creative writers and creative physicists,

About 15 to 20 percent of the ideas that they have happen while they're mind wandering,

And these ideas are specifically associated with ahas,

The sort of Eureka moments,

And with overcoming an impasse.

So the kind of ideas that you need to sleep on,

Those are the ones that are good to mind wander about.

The kind of ideas you need to sleep on.

There's actually a little trail of,

I don't know how it got me down this trail,

But somehow I found myself reading about Edison,

Who would,

He would hold an object in his hand when he was falling asleep until it dropped.

And then when it dropped,

It would wake him up.

So you're just in that sort of like daydreamy kind of part of sleep.

It would wake him up,

And then that would be a creative moment for him.

And I experienced that when I was writing my book,

Wise Effort.

I would wake up like at 4.

30 in the morning,

And I would have the most creative ideas.

And I kept,

I also,

Cardinal sin,

I kept my phone by my bed,

And I would like sit there with my thumbs.

I mean,

I was writing a book.

I had to take it when it came.

And I would write down the ideas.

That was sort of a mind-wandering.

And then when I'd go running,

That's when the other time all these ideas would come to me,

And I would just voice my moment.

It's almost like Elizabeth Gilbert talks about,

Just sort of the grace that comes to you in those aha moments.

But we have to be in a sort of that mind-wandering space.

It's not necessarily when you're sitting down to work on it that it comes to you.

Yeah,

There's a certain kind of receptivity that seems to sort of enable these ideas to come to pass.

There's something that's well often discussed in creativity research called the incubation interval.

So when you're trying to come up with something,

Oftentimes it's almost like you're going around in circles.

And we all experience this with the tip of the tongue,

Right?

You're trying to come up with that name or that word,

And you just can't get it.

You stop,

And as soon as you stop,

It floats to mind.

So there's certain situations in which effort actually is counterproductive.

And the best thing to do is just to kind of let the mind sort of naturally unfold.

And it's very plausible that there are some low-level,

Below-the-threshold-of-conscious processes that are taking place.

And that's why when you enter the hypnagogic state,

As Edison did,

And incidentally Salvador Dali did the exact same technique,

Although I think he used a spoon instead of a ball bearing.

And many of his really creative artistic pieces were inspired by that same approach.

So when you sort of let the mind drift and let the undercurrents,

The unconscious processes sort of bubble up,

Oftentimes that's a great source of creative inspiration.

So what's your mind wandering to these days,

Like when you're in that state?

Oh,

My mind wandering is all over the map.

It's almost like I've got,

You know,

Six different trains of thought going simultaneously.

I have been increasingly thinking about this idea.

We call it nested observer windows or nets.

Oh gosh,

I watched a video of you on this.

It blew my mind.

Okay,

I'm so glad you're bringing this up.

Okay,

Yes.

So basically the idea is you can think of the metaphor of a mosaic photograph where every pixel of the photograph is itself a photograph.

And then you can imagine every pixel of that being a photograph and so on.

There may not be quite at every level,

There may not be as many pixels as we have in a photograph.

But the idea is you've got these multiple lower levels that are then integrated into a higher level,

Integrated into a higher level.

And you essentially,

What you call you,

Reside is what we call the apex window.

And that apex window is rotating,

Looking at lower level windows,

And they in turn are looking at lower level windows and so on.

So the lower level windows,

Each one may be having its own sort of stream of consciousness going on.

So one of the reasons why these things bubble up is that lower level windows are doing their own mind wandering potentially.

And that produces these multiple streams.

You may have heard of internal family systems.

And this is very consistent with this idea that we sort of have these different sort of personas in our minds that are all potentially sort of vying for attention of the apex.

And one more thing just to get a little bit woo-woo,

Because I like to get metaphysical sometimes,

Is that this metaphor also raises the possibility that each one of us could be a pixel for yet a higher level window.

So it raises the possibility of some sort of collective consciousness.

But that higher level window shouldn't get too full of itself because it could be a pixel for yet a higher level window.

So it creates this sort of hierarchical structure up and down.

And so a lot of my mind wandering,

Or one of the topics of my mind wandering is this nested observer window and trying to notice the different windows that may be mind wandering in my mind simultaneously.

So this is a theory of consciousness that you're describing here.

And it's sort of an out-of-the-box theory of consciousness,

A very creative theory of consciousness where,

And correct me because this is just my interpretation of what you said.

So our consciousness is the apex,

The peak of a window within which there are smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller windows of pixels.

And each one of those could be doing its own thing independently,

But we're only conscious at the very top of it.

But then can we look into those windows and then be conscious of them from time to time?

Those windows may have their own stream of consciousness,

Which when we sort of turn our apex towards those,

We sort of enjoy,

We experience what that particular window's consciousness is having.

So,

And that's why we can be so conflicted,

Right?

Because we've got these lower level windows,

Each one has got,

You know,

One wants to do one thing,

The other wants to do another.

They all are sort of vying for their perspectives of cognitive dissonance and all these different things sort of arise because we do have an apex.

So there is sort of a top,

But we're not a singularity in the sense that there are these multiple potential streams that are all going on at multiple levels.

And you kind of can feel this,

For example,

I think the tongue is a really nice example of a lower level window.

I mean,

The tongue,

It's kind of got a mind of its own,

Right?

It can be sort of like cleaning,

It's dodging your teeth and it's moving all over the place.

It might be cleaning,

You know,

Finding some little thing it's picking at.

And it's integrating all the taste buds,

So it's integrating all these different things.

When you tune into it,

You can really notice it and sort of see how intelligent it is,

But you can ignore it and it does its own thing.

And it's very possible that a lot of our organs may have,

It's possible that the gut may be its own window.

The heart may be its own window.

And then brain regions such as the amygdala,

The emotional center may be sort of its own unique window.

And then there are other more temporary windows which may emerge and then dissipate as patterns of activation vary.

So some of these windows are sort of part of the,

I guess they're sort of like the autonomic nervous system that we can bring a breathing or something like that.

We can bring our attention to back to mindfulness and open that window up and have awareness of that window.

But then sometimes it's just operating completely independently.

And this,

Okay,

So I'm making a connection here because you've also written on something called resonance,

Which is sort of like when you're,

You kind of know something.

And is that related to these nested windows?

Very,

Very much so.

Yeah,

Like intuition kind of.

Yeah.

Well,

Yeah.

And in general,

The way that the windows communicate with each other is all through patterns of resonance.

So the windows,

An individual window is defined by synchronization.

So it's absolutely everything in it is essentially vibrating at one time.

And that's what gives it its coherence.

And then individual windows at the same level go through coherence,

Like a back and forth.

So you and I are like two windows that are going back and forth through coherence.

And then lower level windows interact with higher level windows through cross-frequency coupling,

Which is kind of like harmonies where there are these patterns where they're synchronized,

But in different whole scales.

So the whole notion of resonance really maps on to the notion of the nested observer windows.

And I'm sort of one of the curious person where I have multiple theories that sort of overlap and don't entirely,

And I don't entirely necessarily endorse every aspect of my theory.

I have a motto,

Which is entertaining without endorsing.

So I also have a theory with the nested observer window models with Justin Riddle.

And it's sort of more of a meta theory with a lot of things that are unspecified.

And then a much more tightly specified model with Tam Hunt,

Where that's a purely panpsychist model where it goes all the way down.

So the notion is that even possibly something like strains or some very,

Very low level elements may have consciousness and it goes all the way up.

Whereas with the Riddle model,

We are more circumspect about exactly how far down these resonant systems go.

And then the one with Hunt also has a lot more sort of details about specific assumptions about the way in which resonant patterns operate in terms of electromagnetic fields,

Which again,

I entertain,

But don't necessarily endorse.

And I think that it's a really curious thing that people feel so committed to their theories that they certainly wouldn't be critical of their theory at all.

And if you're critical of your theory,

They feel like it's a personal attack,

Where my view is try this idea on.

I think this is sort of interesting.

I like to play with it.

See what you think.

Well,

This is one of the reasons I was trying to introduce you to Stephen Hayes,

Because he is very skilled at criticizing his own theory.

And so it's this like huge,

Massive following that are all now very attached to his theory around ACT.

And then now he is in the process of dismantling the theory,

Right?

So he's like,

You know,

You all think that part of Hayes' model is that there's six core processes that contribute to psychological flexibility.

So things like practicing acceptance,

And being present,

And being able to step back from your thoughts,

And knowing your values.

And now his research is showing that some of those things that we thought were contributing to our psychologically flexibility can actually make us inflexible.

And so he's kind of going down to the individual.

But absolutely,

You have to be willing,

This is the nature of science,

Right?

You have to be willing to disprove yourself,

And then hold and entertain many different things at a time.

Just going back to resonance,

The term resonance,

Which we didn't define,

The way that I was interpreting resonance is similar to how I interpret intuition.

Sort of like the answer isn't necessarily coming from our head,

But it comes from somewhere else.

It comes from our body.

It comes from a knowing.

And we have,

Is that the definition?

I mean,

Actually,

Resonance,

I would say that that phenomena could arise through resonance.

Okay.

But the definition of resonance really has to do with oscillations.

Resonance has to do with the oscillations and the degree to which one set of oscillations is overlapping with another.

So a classic example is if you hit a tuning fork and project that sound out,

Anything which has the same frequency as the tuning fork will also potentially resonate,

Because things just tend to resonate together.

And then you'll also see fireflies.

They tend to,

If you put a bunch of fireflies together,

They'll start blinking together.

So it's that,

It's the.

.

.

Synchronicity.

Like a harmony.

Yeah,

Harmony.

I resonate with my husband's breathing at night.

There you go.

Or early in the morning.

Yeah.

Just to bring it back to your intuition point,

The idea is that what may be happening is that there may be some lower level window,

Which has sort of come to some understanding,

And it's producing a sort of a frequency of resonance,

Which then your apex is picking up on.

So you're getting sort of the overall sort of sense of that understanding without necessarily seeing all the details.

So you can imagine that that pattern of actual vibratory synchronization could well contribute to intuitions.

Yeah.

So this is interesting,

Because I often will talk with clients about being a tuning fork and can you tune into,

And I guess it would be resonate with,

Can you tune into right now,

Like in couples therapy?

Can you tune into your partner?

Can you be a tuning fork for what they're communicating to you?

Or can you tune into your own intuition,

That actual.

.

.

And then the other week,

Actually,

My yoga teacher brought a tuning fork in to our class,

And it's a tuning fork that tunes to the resonance of home.

And then she hit it against her hand,

And then she put the back of it right next to my,

On top of my heart.

It was phenomenal.

And then she hit it against her hand and put it against my ear.

So the tuning,

Like there's resonating even just to sounds,

That kind of vibration I think about in a meditation when we all do the sound of OM together.

There's sort of a resonance.

Yes,

Is this similar?

That's exact.

That's fine.

So we have a study,

This is still in preparation.

My graduate student,

AC Young,

Has been leading this,

In which we've been looking at people's ability to recognize their own heartbeat.

So it's basically sort of something known as interoception,

And it's basically sort of coming in tune with your own resonant heartbeat.

And then what we're finding is that people who are better at recognizing their own heartbeat are also better at recognizing other people's heartbeat and are more effective at empathy for other individuals.

So there really is a way in which coming into sort of appreciation of your own resonant frequency may help you come into connection with other individuals' resonant frequency and may then help you to really sort of share in an understanding of what they're experiencing.

So some would make the argument that in some ways our technology can be disembodying us,

Can be leading to us to tune out from our own bodies.

People who listen to this show know that I have a sweet spot for interocept awareness.

This is what all my master's,

My master's thesis was in interocept awareness,

And then my doctoral thesis was in part around interocept awareness of hunger and fullness signals and combination with mindfulness.

But when we look to a watch to tell us to breathe,

Or when we get a,

My husband now has this thing on his screen that flashes a little eye,

And when it flashes,

You're supposed to look up,

And then when it has an arrow pointing up,

You're supposed to adjust your posture.

Are these forms of technology supporting us in paying attention to our bodies,

Or are they pulling us away,

Or is it some,

Probably for me,

It'll be a both and.

But yeah,

So what do you think about all of this?

Because I'm really mixed on it.

I'm like,

It's good,

Yes,

I do need to look up from my screen,

I'm looking up right now.

And if I were tuned into my body,

I would notice that my eyes are strained,

And I need to look up.

Yeah,

I mean,

I think that it's,

My answer is totally predictable,

Right?

It's gonna be a both and.

And it's really all about finding the balance,

As in so many aspects of life.

I mean,

For me,

My Apple Watch,

I look at it all the time,

And that may be distracting if I'm in conversation or something like that.

But it also gets me outside to close my rings and complete my exercise.

You're a ring closer,

Okay.

I'm a ring closer,

I try,

At least.

And so it really has that important benefit,

And I'm sure that I exercise more now that I'm tracking that level of exercise.

So I have an idea for an app that,

And if someone steals it,

Great,

Because the world really needs it.

I mentioned that asking questions is really,

Really valuable.

It's a sort of key element of curiosity.

Well,

You could create a app that just listened to your intonations and measured when you had an inflection that indicated a question.

It could count your questions,

Right?

And so on the one hand,

That's one more thing,

You're tracking yourself.

But on the other hand,

I think this would be supremely helpful for encouraging people to engage in question asking,

Tracking their question asking,

And recognizing that on days in which they ask more questions,

They had more fulfilling conversations and so on.

So you can,

There's so many ways in which you can take technology and integrate it into everyday experience in a way that potentially can make it fuller.

So technology is here to stay.

I think it's great to just put your phone and your watch away sometimes and just completely enjoy nature and so on,

But it's also valuable to take advantage of the affordances that they can provide.

Yeah.

That question answering,

That question asking aspect,

I think,

Is another one of those both ands because there's a sweet spot in conversation.

Maybe if you were tracking with that app,

The questions that you ask in a relationship,

We've all encountered the too curious person that just slams you with question after question after question after question and never talks about themselves.

And then we've encountered the too talking about themselves person where they don't ask enough questions.

So I would imagine that every person would find the point where you're asking the Goldilocks questioning.

You're asking a lot of questions,

But then you're also reflecting as well,

Sort of integrating and connecting in conversation.

Yeah,

I think that's right.

And this is a perfect example of where more research is needed.

I think I tend to encounter more of the not asking enough question people than the people who ask too many questions.

And my guess is that many of us could benefit from a little less holding court and a little bit more really deeply inquiring into other people.

And I oftentimes find that I kind of like to think of it almost like a divining rod.

Everybody's got some really good material,

Some really good stories.

And if you just keep sort of reflecting and asking questions,

There's invariably a lot of richness.

So people who find other people boring,

They're just not asking the right questions.

Oh my gosh,

There's no boring human on this planet.

No human is boring.

Every human has a history and a story that's fascinating.

So this relates to questioning,

Which is one place where people are going to ask a lot of questions and where curiosity could pan out is with AI.

And I think people are experimenting a little bit more with asking questions and using AI as a sort of a self-inquiry tool.

And I'm curious about that,

Like how mind-wandering in the AI world may be another avenue for this wondering curiosity.

I think that's what got me to the Edison thing.

Yeah.

I mean,

I think AI is just such a game changer in so many ways.

And of course,

Like everything else,

It's got this on the one hand,

On the other hand kind of thing.

But exploring your curiosity with AI is such a fulfilling thing.

AI is able to really engage in a curious exploration to a remarkable degree.

It can just be a really wonderful opportunity for exploration.

One thing that I'm curious about is the curiosity of AI itself.

And this is something that I'd really like to sort of see.

That may be what AI doesn't.

.

.

I mean,

It kind of asks questions,

But if you try to engage AI,

It doesn't really care or seem to sort of follow up or change or like,

Oh,

This reminds me of it and go in that direction.

And it seems possible that this may be one of the big differences between us and AI is that somehow conscious beings have this intrinsic curiosity.

This may be just one of the imperatives of life.

And it's interesting that animals will engage in curious behavior,

Even if it doesn't necessarily,

Even if they're well-fed and everything else,

They're still extraordinarily curious.

And so I think it's a conjecture I have is that curiosity,

Maybe intrinsic curiosity,

May be one of the things that currently distinguishes us from AI.

Another one may be self-preservation,

Although both of these could be just around the corner for AI,

Which could have some potentially beneficial and potentially frightening ramifications.

Yeah,

Yeah.

AI seems to be,

When I interact with it,

Quite certain about its answers,

Even when it's doing its little hallucinations and it's throwing you something totally out of nowhere,

But it feels very certain,

So we follow it.

And I could see how that AI lacking curiosity could be that connection barrier.

I mean,

People feel like they're starting to develop a little bit of a relationship with their bot that go and ask it questions and get answers and sometimes get a very warm response.

And no matter what question you ask it,

It says things like,

That's a great question,

Even though it's a stupid question.

And so we feel very validated,

But maybe we don't get that curiosity back,

Which is,

Someone's interested in me.

Someone wants to know more about me.

And that's very satisfying to receive someone's curiosity about us and then opens our minds because someone may ask you a question that you weren't thinking about.

And then you're often to another place,

The collective mind wandering that we can have.

I would much rather have a curious response than an ingratiating response.

I find it much more rewarding when you can see them really engaged.

And it's actually interesting,

When they look at the quality of conversations,

People are warned about interrupting,

That this is considered rude and so on.

But routinely,

What's found is that in conversations where the other person is interrupted on the same topic,

That actually is the sign of a good conversation.

Because really what's happening is they're just so engaged.

There's,

Well,

What about this?

You know,

They want to ask that next thing.

So I think that level of engagement and the timing of connection is way more satisfying than,

Oh,

What a brilliant point that was,

Kind of comment.

Yeah,

There's much more positive relational energy exchange,

Resonance,

Maybe,

Who are oscillating when we're doing that kind of conversation.

And you feel it in your body when you're engaging with someone that way versus when it's very back and forth or ingratiating.

Okay,

So we're closing up on time.

I could talk to you,

Now that we're jiving,

We could go for a while.

But what question didn't I ask you that maybe would be a great question to ask Jonathan Schooler while I have you at it?

There's so many different things.

I'll mention one other thing,

Which is,

You mentioned intuition.

And I definitely think resonance is one part of it.

But another thing that's been a longstanding interest of mine is something that we've referred to as verbal overshadowing.

And verbal overshadowing is the idea that sometimes when you try to translate intuitive,

Nonverbal knowledge into words,

It can actually distort it.

So one of the original findings was people,

A witness to bank robbery,

And then subsequently were asked to describe the appearance of the face.

And you typically would think that describing a face would be helpful because it's going to be a sort of act of crystallization and rehearsal.

But in fact,

What we found is at least under some circumstances,

It interfered with their later ability to recognize it.

And this has been shown also with colors and tastes.

So when you taste that wine and you describe it in all those highfalutin terms,

You may actually lose your representation of it.

So it's another one of those sort of on the one hand,

On the other hand kind of things.

Language is this incredibly useful element,

But there are some circumstances in which actually just sort of letting it sit in its more ineffable form may be closer to the heart of it.

Right.

This is why so many of us are turning to somatic therapies and not using so much language and questioning.

And all of a sudden we put it in a box and there's these associations that get made with the color red,

Right?

And the color red is so many reds.

There's a million reds.

Any artist knows that,

But as soon as you put red on it,

The language kind of confines it.

And so maybe we want to sit in the nonverbal a little bit longer before we put words to things,

Words to experiences.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Well,

That's a great way to end this conversation.

I'm looking forward to getting to know you maybe a little bit more through the class that we're teaching together.

You're kind of not really teaching it,

But you're the instructor on record.

Okay.

I shouldn't put that in.

I'm really looking forward to the class that we're teaching together at UCSB and to learning more about your app.

I'm going to come to whenever that opens,

I'm going to come and see it in action and certainly share it with people as it becomes available.

Because I think the more open our minds are,

The more open we are,

The more possibility for good things and problem solving and connection.

Thank you.

Hear,

Hear.

Well,

I'm glad we finally got to chat again.

Apologies for missing your email in the past.

And to anyone else whose emails I've missed,

A group apology.

I'm actually just going to use.

.

.

I just saw there's an AI that can help with email.

Send it my way.

Yeah.

Someone told me I should.

.

.

Hopefully it won't just answer the emails without.

.

.

I have to make sure that it doesn't keep me out of the loop on these things.

Yeah.

No,

You just need to get it to flag the ones and remind you.

I do have a little bit of that reminding you,

But someone was telling me I should declare email bankruptcy,

Which is another idea where you get to start again at zero and no fault of yours.

You're like,

I'm sorry,

I declared bankruptcy last week.

I didn't email you back.

I'm free of it.

So yeah,

I have over 1,

300 in my inbox right now that I'm looking at.

Apologize.

I can talk about my number.

Yeah,

We don't have to compare.

Okay.

Thank you,

Dr.

Skoller.

So wonderful to spend the hour with you.

And I'm sure that folks will get a lot out of this.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Wise Effort Podcast.

Wise Effort is about you taking your energy and putting it in places that matter most to you.

And when you do so,

You'll get to savor the good of your life along the way.

I would like to thank my team,

My partner in all things,

Including the producer of this podcast,

Craig,

Ashley Hyatt,

The podcast manager,

And thank you to Van Gold at Bell and Branch for our music.

This podcast is for informational and entertaining purposes only,

And it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health.