Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How does the way we think actually shape the decisions we make? Dr. Yasemin Yazan and Marc dig into confirmation bias, the availability heuristic, and why emotions may drive up to 100% of our decisions before reason ever gets a say — from a “neuro-signature” theory that predates any decision at all, to parents recommending yesterday’s safe careers, to why the German and American debates about AI look so strikingly different.
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
Good morning, everyone. Today we’re continuing with thinking and decision-making. How does our thinking process influence our decision-making — that’s the question we want to explore today, and I’m curious what impulses, thoughts, and experiences will come together, and what insights we can capture and generate together in the room today. So you’re all very warmly invited to join in and step into the exchange. We record the room for the entire duration, meaning anyone who joins automatically agrees that it will be published. We have three small room rules: a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, your first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio — and if you’d rather not for whatever reason, you can of course also use the chat. With that, I’ll mute myself and see who wants to take the first step with me this morning. Good morning, dear Marc.
Good morning, everyone. I’d like to start differently today, and I need your help for this — even if you don’t want to come up on stage. We always look for a reason why something interests us, or why we should do something, and the main reason is always, what’s in it for me, what do I get out of it? So let me just ask you all — and you can support me here with a show of hands, this is already an assumption of mine — do you also think that when we feel good, we humans tend to… that we feel better, that things go well for us, when we feel good? Who among you wants to feel good? That would be my concrete question. Who feels better when they feel good? Or who doesn’t care either way? Who’s happy when they feel bad? So if you think you feel better when things are going well, please give some sign, whichever one is fine.
That’s… thank you, dear Sabine. I haven’t gotten a sign from anyone else yet — maybe that’s because when someone asks me something at this hour, I sometimes don’t even know what planet we’re living on. What I’m getting at is that today’s topic is thinking and decision-making. And if we know what power our thoughts have, our feelings, then it makes sense to engage with this topic. Otherwise, if it has no relevance to our lives at all, why should I spend time on things that only drain life energy and life time? And I’ll repeat a quote today that I’ve always carried with me — these were the first thoughts that came to my mind on the topic of thinking and decision-making: “Assumption is the enemy of truth.” You can’t really do much with that at first — assumption is the enemy of truth, what does that even mean, what’s that supposed to say? I’m always a fan of practical examples, because then I can check against my own environment, professionally and privately, whether I can actually do something with this information, what it’s good for.
So again: assumption is the enemy of truth. And this “assumption is the enemy of truth” comes from the fact that we misinterpret things, because we have selective information intake, due to the structure of our brain. And I’d like to give an example for that too, so it’s not just a pile of points I’m throwing into the room. Assumption is the enemy of truth — one example is confirmation bias. So I thought of an example for you that can affect all of us, regardless of profession or private life. We all want to be noticed, we all want to be liked, we all want people to see us. If we live in a neighborhood and have the feeling — and now we get to confirmation bias — that a neighbor doesn’t like us, or the new boss doesn’t like us, or some colleague doesn’t like us, and I walk into the company with that thought already in my head, or into my building’s hallway, and say a friendly “good morning” to them — or to the new boss who just started, I say a friendly good morning — and he doesn’t even look up, doesn’t respond. That’s exactly confirmation bias, and it’s important to know this, because otherwise I feel bad for the whole day. He doesn’t respond at all, and I keep walking and think, what an idiot that stuck-up guy is, why doesn’t he respond? Or I think, I knew it, I already told my friend yesterday, I think the new boss doesn’t like me, I think the neighbor who just moved in doesn’t like me, he doesn’t talk to me — and I get exactly the confirmation of what I assumed.
And this is where it gets interesting, why I find this room so fantastic — the possibilities we have when we know how our thinking works and which decision we arrive at. This confirmation bias exists because I made an assumption, without knowing at all — an assumption made through selective information intake, and I only see that he’s looking grim. But he could be looking grim for all sorts of reasons — maybe he just had a fight with his wife, maybe he just lost his job, maybe he has to move out, or maybe my new boss just got chewed out by his own boss one level up. And that’s why this topic of thinking and decision-making is one of the most fascinating topics we’ve ever had in Deep Talk Club, because unfortunately I only came into contact with this topic of the brain and thinking, and how we can influence our thinking, fairly late in life. I could have had 20 or 30 more fantastic years if I’d known about these processes earlier. So that would be my first contribution to this topic — how thinking influences our decision-making: confirmation bias, where we assume things without questioning or reflecting on them — we’ve covered all these topics before — and then potentially feel bad all day, even though, through our very selective information intake, completely different reasons might lie behind other people’s behavior — people we come into contact with. Thanks so far.
And what does that mean for our decision-making, then? Can it be positive, negative? How does that connect to this decision-making process?
Well, now comes the second part — thank you for your question, Yasemin. Now emotions come into play, and this happens to me again and again too. I notice that I can talk cleverly and even support my girlfriend with the knowledge I’ve gained from you, dear Yasemin, in Deep Talk Club — but all that knowledge gets swept away really fast the moment I get emotionally triggered myself. When I end up in a situation where I feel treated unfairly, where I feel unseen, where I think, how can they say something like that, how can they treat me like this — and now, thanks to this knowledge, I can take a breath, I can hit the stop button and say, okay, this decision you’re asking about — it’s like this: if we work together and my first encounter with you, as my supervisor, happens on a day when you’re having a bad day, and I jump to the assumption that you don’t like me, or that you want me out of the department, or that you see me as a threat — that decides the whole future process of how we can even work together going forward. And with that I’m already setting the course for myself and possibly blocking off a lot of great situations that could unfold between us. So the decision for me is first to say, I’ll give you another chance. I’ll look more closely behind it. I’ll wait and see whether you say something to me on Tuesday, tomorrow, Wednesday, or Thursday, instead of giving up immediately. And above all, I won’t put you in a box right away — because once you’re in a box and I close that box, it’s very, very hard to open it again. That’s why this decision, for me, is first about not jumping to any assumption yet, and staying value-neutral — which is really hard. I find it hard too, to deal with a situation in a completely value-neutral way, without attributing anything to you or judging you right away. Because, due to selective information intake, as we’re now aware, I might be missing really important knowledge, really important information, to be able to judge the situation objectively at all. What I can do first is look at my own feeling — that’s the first thinking process. How do I feel? And then I notice, I don’t feel good. And then I ask, why don’t I feel good — I can answer that immediately. And then I arrive at the realization: well, I don’t actually know the answer. I’m not assuming anything about you now, and I’m not putting you in a box — bad boss, nice boss, good person, bad person. And that alone helps me get through the day with a better feeling, and do my job better overall, because then I’m not preoccupied all day wondering why Yasemin didn’t acknowledge me, or why Mike didn’t greet me. And if I feel better because of that, that was already a good decision for me — because humans are pretty self-interested, and if I already feel good, then I’ve at least had a great day.
Yes, thank you so much. If we try to sort this a bit and build the bridge between thinking and decision-making, the aspects I’m picking up from what you brought up are: first, we could say that thinking, viewed as a process, comes before decision-making, or that the thinking process is upstream of arriving at a decision. And certain things happen along the way, so to speak. On one hand, information is available to me in a certain sense — you brought up the point about selective perception again here, meaning the information available to me might not be comprehensive, but rather considered from a particular perspective. Then emotions play a role — and with emotions, we’re of course directly connected to the experiences or prior experiences we’ve had, which play a role here. And ultimately, in decision-making, there’s the aspect of deriving options, so that afterward, from the various options available to me, the ones I recognize as options, so to speak, a choice — I can then derive a decision accordingly. And following that, we’d move into the next step, which we’ll set aside for today, or just touch on briefly — moving into action. Does that fit, Marc?
Yes, wonderful. Great, thank you for summarizing that so well.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Now you’ve touched on various aspects with selective perception and so on — meaning our decision-making happens against various parameters and weighings that then get carried out accordingly. What can I do, for example, if I know that my perception is selective, that I might only have certain information available, or only want to see certain information that might have an influence? And we’ve already touched on this in connection with emotions — that decisions are made emotionally per se, to the point that neuroscience isn’t a hundred percent in agreement yet, but there are even theories floating around asking whether decisions are made a hundred percent emotionally, whether there’s anything at all that’s done rationally afterward, or whether it’s actually the case that emotions decide first, and afterward, on an abstract level, we try to justify the decisions we’ve made based on various arguments we assemble — arguments that fit emotionally for us. So we’ve said that emotions play a huge role in decision-making, possibly up to 100 percent. What do you say to that, Marc?
Yes, exactly. And what can I do about it, dear Yasemin? You mentioned at some point that all these rooms we do, if we don’t constantly repeat or practice them, or have a routine like a pilot, then this knowledge doesn’t help us, because we can’t apply it in the concrete case. And what was really a learning process for me — we had the topic of self-reflection, observing yourself. And when I notice — and we notice this immediately — that I’m entering a state, whether professionally or privately, through information I’ve received, where I’m emotionally triggered — that’s really the hardest challenge for me too, I fall into this trap as well, these feelings take over so strongly — but with this knowledge, like a checklist for a pilot when flying, “attention, you’re strongly emotionally affected right now,” and then immediately having an inner dialogue with myself: do I have all the information, why am I in this emotional state, do I have all the information, and immediately asking myself, do I know the hundred-percent answer for this behavior, or do I know for certain that this is right? And that helps me, at least for a moment — not immediately, not within a minute, but over time it helps the emotion to weaken again.
And I have another example for you that I also found really interesting — I had to look it up so I could explain it properly, namely the availability heuristic. This works in a way where people tend to make quick decisions based on the information we have, through probability, even though that information — and we fall back on the information that’s most readily available. I brought an example for this too, because otherwise this all sounds so scientific. It’s about overestimating probability — take airplane crashes, for example. The probability of a plane crashing is very, very rare. Yet an enormous number of people are afraid of a plane crash. That’s because of selective information intake — when a plane does crash, which really is very dramatic because 300 families are affected, the newspapers are full of that plane crash for weeks. That reinforces people’s fear — and mine too — of getting on a plane: “I wonder if they have a good mechanic, where do they service the planes?” And automatically, based on the information I then get from the press — this can happen in political contexts too — I get flooded with a certain field of information and can’t even evaluate all of it. There’s simply far too much information today. But with this knowledge, I can hit the stop button and keep asking, wait a moment, is that really true? I can keep going back into rationality, from the emotional state into rationality. And that helps me evaluate things differently in the rational mode. And that’s the challenge in my life — managing, again and again, to move from a very strongly self-involved emotional state into rationality. I can do this wonderfully when I talk with my partner, where I always say, let’s look at this from a helicopter perspective. But as soon as I’m personally affected myself, this knowledge sometimes doesn’t help me — I first have to become consciously aware of the knowledge I have, in order to regulate myself. And then I have to smile at just how powerful emotion is, that emotion, even learned and applied knowledge, gets swept away within a split second, and I have to get back into self-regulation, into self-control, through the stop button.
Wonderful, thank you so much. And we phrased the question not as how do our emotions influence decision-making, but how does our thinking process influence our decision-making. And you’ve basically already connected to that just now — the moment I perceive certain things happening, processes that occur automatically, so to speak, to question them again. You expressed that as “is that really true?” Then you used the term “helicopter perspective.” So we could say that’s essentially the meta-level — going to a higher observer level and trying to look at the situation with a certain distance, which also connects to emotion regulation, regulating yourself, as you called it. And I also love the image of the stop button — stepping back a bit and moving into the observer perspective, and from that perspective, with a certain distance, trying to look at the whole thing again. On one hand, our perception plays an important role, maybe even just observing ourselves for the first time — what’s actually happening right now, how does this feel, what emotion am I having, what’s going on — and then we’re at this concept of mindfulness, which you brought up again too, I don’t know if it was yesterday, where it’s partly about noticing what’s even happening in the first place. And from this observer perspective, this bird’s-eye view, this meta-level, however you want to call it, looking at it again and not immediately jumping into action, but maybe also taking that time. Marc, would you like to add to that?
Very gladly, dear Yasemin. I don’t know if we have people in the room who come from sales. I have to tell you this because I find it so fascinating — anyone in sales has probably done a sales training. And what I’ve heard before, of course, is that there are different personality types — the yellow type, the communicative type, the blue type, the green type, and so on. And just last week I read a report about a woman — a neuroscientist named Helen Fisher, I don’t know if you know her, Yasemin. I already knew from sales that people tick differently and that we need to address them differently. But the word that really struck me, and I find this so fascinating, is that we all have a “neuro-signature.” A neuro-signature, I thought — and this knowledge, and this report was about how, regardless of whether you’re a woman or a man, there are people who are more dopamine-driven and people who are more serotonin-driven. Unfortunately I can’t explain every characteristic — I couldn’t write fast enough. But what I found really fascinating, and wrote down, is that the serotonin type is a more reserved type. And when you know that we might not just be influenced by our thinking, but that we humans have a neuro-signature that’s already genetically predisposed — and someone who’s predisposed to be reserved from the start, maybe also coming from a family where people always said, “hey, don’t push yourself into the spotlight, better hold back, that’s better, you don’t always have to be up front” — that naturally comes out at some point when I’m in a team, at work, or moving in some group. And this knowledge, this connection from sales that people tick differently — knowing that, and accepting that we all have a neuro-signature, and then listening inward and asking, what type am I actually? Am I more the numbers type, or the other type? Then we understand ourselves better. And that also makes it easier for me to understand my fellow humans better — not necessarily for sales purposes, to influence people or gain a business advantage, but because I’m always dealing with people, in my partnership and professionally. And when I know that some people are genetically predetermined through a neuro-signature, that also helps me laugh again when I’ve been annoyed at someone and think, well, they sometimes just can’t help it. I still don’t necessarily approve of their behavior, because our values don’t align and so on — but it helps me, when looking at that person, to remember that part of them is also genetically shaped, so I can say, okay, you’re not a bad person, not a worthless person — part of your behavior is determined by something already built into you. And that also helps me rethink things more easily, regulate my emotions again, and feel better afterward.
Yes, thank you so much. Maybe we can look at this a bit more — maybe some of you would like to come up and add perspectives and examples too. The question is, we’re back at this aspect: we tend to think in stereotypes or boxes to some extent, because it gives us orientation, and that’s not inherently negative. But we have this exact aspect in many other contexts too — you know this classically, for example, with learning types and things like that. But we have to be careful not to overvalue it, so to speak. Because regardless of what type I think I lean toward — say I think I’m more the visual type or whatever — it’s always context-dependent. Let me give an example: even if I might categorize myself as a visual type, that doesn’t mean, while driving, if I’m the one behind the wheel, that watching a video would be suitable in that context, because it would simply bring completely different dangers with it, and I couldn’t focus on it 100 percent — whereas in that same context I’m quite capable of listening to an audiobook. And then, possibly against the backdrop of being a visual type, I might still form images in my mind’s eye, so to speak. So certain aspects can of course be genetically pre-programmed to some degree, but we should always be careful not to just accept that as a given, as fixed, or say “it can’t be otherwise because it’s genetically determined” — because context always plays a decisive role too. Another example in this context: we now know, for instance, that something like our internal clock — whether I’m a lark or an owl — also has a genetic disposition. Partly it has to do with something missing, or set up differently in some people, leading them to be more the owl type. So we could say here too that per se, forgetting the whole morning thing — I’m the classic owl, and yet I’ve managed to do 988 shows here on Clubhouse at 8 in the morning. That means motivation plays a huge role here, which ultimately decides whether I do it or not. So we always have to be very, very careful with these blanket statements, because there are different influencing factors that ultimately decide — and now we’re back at decision-making — that ultimately decide how I act, so to speak. Marc, what do you think?
Yes, I can underline that 100 percent, dear Yasemin, and I’d like to bring in another point, because I encounter it every day in politics and society, namely social influences. You’ve brought up this topic often before too. I always observe that we humans define ourselves through our values and our moral beliefs. And now emotions come into play again — there are certainly people who have been guests on your show as authors that I don’t necessarily like and whose values I don’t share. But that shouldn’t matter. I think that even for people who don’t share my values, who don’t match my moral beliefs, or my ways of acting, I still want to think about what I can learn from them. Since we define ourselves through our values and moral standards, and through our social influences, it can happen that I don’t take in certain learning processes, certain information at all. Because it’s entirely possible that someone can be a bad husband but an outstanding entrepreneur. That someone can be a bad father but an outstanding entrepreneur. And my job as an entrepreneur is that I want to be an outstanding entrepreneur, so I look at outstanding entrepreneurs, evaluate them, and look at them — can I learn something from him? Can I apply something from his company to mine, without first judging him as a person? And I notice that this is a very, very difficult task for me — I can’t speak for everyone, but for me it’s a really difficult task. And these social influences — you described this from your own family context, dear Yasemin — I believe there’s someone in your family in caregiving too, where, let’s say, if someone comes from a right-wing milieu politically, they can still take really good care of my father, and I have to judge that separately. Of course I could say I don’t want anything to do with that person and refuse the caregiver, leave my father alone rather than have him cared for by someone with right-wing views. But that person can still be incredibly gentle and kind to my father, giving my father a good feeling. In that moment, my father needs attention, he needs care — that’s what he needs. It’s not about what political views this person has, but whether this person gets help — while also becoming aware that our social influences shape our thinking too, along the lines of “we don’t do that, we don’t want anything to do with that person, that doesn’t fit our family” and so on. And that’s why I find it hardest to question my own parents and my own family, because I’m shaped by my family too, and I’ve lost a lot of money as an entrepreneur because I didn’t question things, because my social environment had already told me — certain values were attributed to family members, values like “he’s a successful entrepreneur” — but successful entrepreneurs, as a counterexample, make mistakes too. And if I don’t question things and don’t think things through, I can simply arrive at wrong decisions, because I do what someone I trust does. In this case it’s a family member giving me information. And that’s also part of thinking and decision-making — that we really stay open and keep questioning. I’m often asked, if you question things, even from your partner or your family, don’t you trust them? I think this has to be said too — questioning has nothing to do with distrust. For me, questioning simply has to do with: after questioning, do I arrive at the same assessment again, or do I get new information that wasn’t selectively available to me before?
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And there were so many aspects in there again that I’d like to underline. For one, you spoke about different roles — you said, for example, bad husband but outstanding entrepreneur, and so on. We’re back at the fact that as humans we’re always operating in different roles, and here too it’s important to consider what context this is — in which context am I, say, getting advice from someone, and is that person even the “right” one for me given their expertise and experience, how I evaluate and categorize that. Then there’s definitely also this differentiation — is this a family member, a stranger, someone with maybe different values or beliefs — and at the same time, especially on this second point, another reminder: we’ve talked before about how we like to take things from people who are close to us in mindset, or where we have a lot of overlap, similar interests, hobbies, whatever. That means we feel comfortable there, so to speak — but especially when we look toward selective perception and things like that, it makes a lot of sense, particularly for something like a thinking process we want to steer, given that it’s about a decision, to even quite deliberately exchange with people where we can probably already assume from the start that things might come up that I might not initially see that way.
Because that’s where we’re back at this aspect of emotional decision-making — if we know that we make decisions emotionally and then rationally search for justifications afterward, we also often exchange with people to support our own argument, so to speak, and we’re happy when we get confirmation. But it might make sense to quite deliberately seek out exchange with people where we maybe don’t necessarily hear what we’d like to hear, to open up that other perspective.
And I’d like to draw out another point from this. You might know this from personal development — and you’ve probably experienced this yourselves — that there can be changes, for example regarding how you rate or assess a person in your circle. Maybe there are people in your circle whose arguments, statements, or advice you once held in very high regard, and then some time passes, you develop further yourself, and you meet again, and situations come up where you’re almost surprised or even shocked, because maybe you once saw this person as a role model or admired them, and suddenly things come up where you notice something has changed — or I’ve developed further somehow, and now I suddenly discover sides of this person, of their attitude, stance, or argumentation, where I notice it just doesn’t fit together anymore. And being able to make corresponding corrections for yourself, based on the fact that you even realize this, differentiate, look at it, go to the meta-level, and actually observe what’s happening, and accept that something has obviously changed here. The other person may have changed in the meantime too, but very often it also has to do with your own personal development. This is very common with children — we have a small world we move in as children, meaning we glorify what our parents say, to some extent. From the moment the child develops further, gets older, enters puberty and so on, and suddenly starts discovering the world out there, there comes a point where the child realizes, oh, that’s not all true, or not everything my parents say or do or make is right. And you can imagine it similarly here — it’s not just the case with children, but personality development happens throughout, so that over many years we keep having encounters in hindsight where we find that something doesn’t fit anymore, or where I’ve obviously developed further or differently. I don’t want to say the others haven’t developed, or developed badly, or stood still — but that suddenly there’s, I’ll call it a fork in the road, and you’re allowed to notice that and look at it more closely. Marc, would you like to add to that?
Dear Yasemin, I want to hug you — that would have been my next point. Something else, where you mentioned parents. A central problem, as I see it, that we currently have is exactly this — we now have parents who come from a certain generation. I don’t know, some of you might have experienced this too. When I was little and went to school, it was like, hey Marc, if you pay attention and study, education is important, but dear Marc, if you study or pay attention in school, you can become a bank clerk. And bank clerks will do well, they earn good money. Or you can become a lawyer — honestly, lawyers also earn good money, they’re always needed. Or, still respected today, you can become a doctor — doctors are good too, and earn a lot of money. The background of our parents is simply that they think what they had was right, and want us to have it better than they did. And I’m deeply convinced that this “you should have it better than we did” has led to… we all talk about education, and I find education incredibly important, everyone should support education everywhere. But the question I have to ask is, do we still need bank clerks in the future? Do we still need lawyers, doctors? Yes, of course we still need them — how many is a different question. And my question as a parent today would also be, if my child is really talented with their hands, to at least ask myself — can my child also make money as a successful carpenter? Can my child also earn money as a successful construction contractor? He can still go to university and study too. But this is something we take over from our parents — and they don’t mean it badly, that’s an important point — our child should have it better. Because for a very long time it was unshakeable: whoever got a good education, studied, always had a good job. Meanwhile, China — I’ve mentioned this before — has a flood of college graduates with top grades, highly qualified people. What’s happening there right now? There aren’t enough jobs anymore. We at least have to play with the thought, are there even still enough jobs for doctors, for lawyers? Will AI at some point take over work that lawyers used to do? Will AI partly take over tasks from doctors, where a doctor no longer has to evaluate an X-ray himself? The doctor still makes the decision, but AI will take over a lot of tasks. And this isn’t a doomsday scenario for our future, it’s simply the question, to ask now too — the path we’ve always taken, professionally and privately, if we recommend that same path to our children, it’s dangerous if we don’t go into reflection and ask, is this path still right in ten or twenty years? But what do we children do? We trust — and that’s completely normal — we trust our family and our parents, and that’s good, because I’d claim there’s no father and no mother who wishes their child anything bad. Nobody would do that intentionally — unless they’re disturbed or ill. But purely from intention, we all want our children to do well. It’s just that with this thinking we’ve had, which also goes along with confirmation bias — that it was right in the past — we also make the decision for our children’s future that was right in the past. And here I’d like to quote Andreas Wollermann again, who said: we make decisions today with experience from the past, without knowing whether it’s right for the future. And you, dear Yasemin, I also learned this word from you — only in hindsight will we find out whether this decision was right today for the future.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And I’d like to transfer that to the corporate context too. We’ve talked before about the various cultures and subcultures that exist there, representing written and unwritten rules that develop over time — from the founding of a company to its establishment, we then have a culture that develops over time. And that means we have a culture that manifests against the backdrop of certain experiences. And yes, you can say those have proven themselves in the past. And at some point they’re just “followed,” so to speak, often without questioning. At some point they become a matter of course, so that even when new employees join a company, new ideas are often not accepted — along the lines of “that’s just how we’ve always done it” or “that’s simply the way we do things.” That means the new employee is often expected to simply adapt to the existing rules, written or unwritten, otherwise things suddenly don’t work properly and friction arises. And this is exactly where we have this aspect too — whether in the family, personally, or professionally — that we keep falling back on things that have proven themselves in the past, experiences we have from the past, which are indeed useful, not to be constantly replaced, but to be questioned, to keep looking at them, and where necessary to make corrections in various places — because we’re not a closed system entirely sealed off in itself, but always in interaction with the outside, and things like digitalization, technical progress, and so on, all sorts of aspects coming together from outside, also lead to changes in market conditions, competitiveness, and so on. Many factors coming together here require that I don’t just question things but also make corrections where needed. That doesn’t mean everything old is somehow bad, but against the backdrop of external changes, to show a certain adaptability, in order to at least remain viable in the future — I’ll call it that. Even if we might not always know exactly whether it’s the right direction, but again, against the backdrop of various considerations, taking certain tendencies, weighing probabilities, best-case and worst-case scenarios, and so on. But still, at least not glorifying everything that was done or lived in the past, but always going back into self-examination. That applies both in private and in professional contexts. Sabine, I’d like to bring you in first now.
Good morning, everyone. Yes, good morning. Unfortunately I couldn’t join earlier because mornings are a bit hectic here. Yes, really great, Marc, what you just said — I recognized myself in that, where the parents kind of said, do something sensible now, go work at the bank. And that was actually quite instructive for me too, so much so that I said, I won’t do that with my kids. Exactly what you just said — the world changes. And on that front we also have to look at what’s changing, and what’s even worse — we might try to change ourselves, but we’re still the previous version, the previous generation. The next ones will already grow up within it and generally have a completely different mindset. So for me the top principle was always, help the kids, support where you can, but they should make the decision themselves. And I wouldn’t interfere with that today either. Of course the kids call to discuss things, and I think that’s fine — but ultimately it’s their future, and they should figure out where that is. Of course they probably need a discussion for decision-making sometimes, but then they come to me, and that’s the difference for me. Back then I didn’t come and think, I’d like to discuss this — instead it went more in the direction of, well, if they do something different later, that’s okay, but first do something sensible, go to the bank first. And I think that’s a completely different process.
Regarding what’s coming in the future — I was at an event yesterday with a speaker from the Fraunhofer Institute on AI, and it was discussed quite intensely. Not how it works — that was explained really well, I found it very exciting. He also had a junior professor with him who contributed a bit too. But where are we actually headed with this? And you could see a lot of shrugging from his side, saying, I can’t tell you that either — there are a lot of risks right now. There was this interesting question: will AI eventually take control from us? Because if you already have a program write something today — I don’t remember exactly what he said — but something like “just prepare the next war,” and it could become self-running. And then came the interesting question: could anyone even stop it then? And he said, I can’t say that today either, because that’s the future. I just wanted to mention that regarding decision-making — we’ll certainly handle that differently. But will AI eventually seize decision-making and take over from us? What do you think, Yasemin? You’re a professional in this, aren’t you?
Yes, thank you so much. What should I say to that? First of all, I don’t really like answering that question — I’d rather approach it completely differently. And I think you know this about me often — the quality of the questions determines the quality of the answers. I’d say it’s simply not the right question, so to speak, which is why I don’t engage with this question at all. And it has a lot to do with, do I even have any influence over it? And from the perspective of an entrepreneur, I like to look at what opportunities AI offers me. I’ve mentioned this in various places before — of course there are always at least two sides, and there are negative aspects too, it brings dangers with it. I just find it very, very interesting that so many people who have absolutely no influence over it are currently engaging with these questions. I’m not talking about an ethics council, whose job it is to engage with such questions — I think that’s good, that it exists. But so many people fall into what I’ll call the emotional trap, so to speak, of thinking about something they have no influence over at all. And for me, the only question that’s currently relevant in this context, from the perspective of an entrepreneur, is really to ask, what does this mean for me now? From a personal perspective, I could of course also look at it to decide, do I want to play along with this whole thing, how does it work with all the data and so on — from that perspective I could of course look at it again too.
But here too, we’ve already realized in many places that we have relatively little influence, so to speak, because we’ve already done a lot in the past that exposed our data, where data gets collected and so on. So raising awareness here is important, and thinking about how I want to handle it is important too, in my view. But not falling into the trap of thinking I have a big influence over it, but actually looking at how I might use it as an opportunity for myself, to do something with it. And when I look particularly at the Anglo-American space compared to the German-speaking context, I keep being shocked to notice the differences in the kind of discussion taking place. Because on one hand we have people who are developing incredible amounts right now, who’ve discovered the potential and are starting to use it, to the point of realizing, I have to completely change my thinking, a huge rethink has to happen here. We discuss how to prevent plagiarism, how to make sure students’ essays aren’t copied and so on — whereas from my perspective, those simply aren’t the discussions we should be having. That’s my very personal opinion, because I don’t think they’re productive, and partly they’re had against the backdrop that people simply don’t understand what’s actually changing through AI and what that actually means for our world. And of course I could shut myself off as Germany and say, I’m not participating — let me make a leap now into a completely different direction, similar to the discussions we have about whether to keep nuclear power plants running, or what we do regarding climate, whether we implement new pumps and new heating systems — what does that actually mean in context, what effects does it actually have if Germany acts differently here than other countries, while the others continue completely differently. So here too, grasping the topics in their complexity again and again, and looking at it against this backdrop. I can of course have such discussions myself, just as a thought experiment, but none of us actually has an answer to it.
Sabine, what do you think?
Yes, he reacted similarly, and he said quite literally, the direction this discussion is taking is so German. But that question didn’t come up out of nowhere — it’s actually been building for a while. I had someone sitting next to me who’s a designer, a web designer, and she thought, I’d say she said she saved 30 percent because she uses AI — she thought she could take on 30 percent more work. So for her that’s already really great. But she also sees what’s happening, and she gave a few examples, saying, I’ll get something from AI, but I always have to be aware that everything I get from AI has already appeared somewhere before. And she gave an example — if I upload an image and someone particular is recognizable in it, that will already be an image someone else made, and that could be an infringement. But I agree with you, we’re all a bit like that today — we want everything covered, with all the risks and yet as little risk as possible, but we want to see the risks, and we can’t do that today. That’s certainly no reason to say, there are risks, so I won’t engage with it and just stand still. I agree with you completely on that.
I have a bit of a different question. We have thinking and decision-making now — decision-making doesn’t yet mean decided, or however I’d phrase that. So I can decide something, but I haven’t taken the step yet. Do you want to say something more about that?
Yes, so decision-making doesn’t yet mean I’ve decided. And if I’ve decided, that doesn’t yet mean I’ve moved into action. I’d actually like to set this aspect aside a bit, because we’ll successively be switching now from thinking toward… So in the thinking process, we first set the course for the decision-making process, in order to then arrive at a decision. And following that, it continues with the aspect that just because we’ve made a decision doesn’t yet mean we move into action. We actually have topics and rooms coming up where we’ll look at these aspects too, and in the final week we want to bring these aspects together again, and we can look at that then too. So you’re welcome to start making the first connections already, that’s no problem at all. But it’s clear that decision-making is an upstream process, so to speak — it’s the prerequisite that I have various considerations here, that I work out various options and so on, in order to even have the basis for making the decision in the first place. And maybe you’d like to go into that again in a moment.
I’d like to say one more thing regarding AI. This makes the different approaches very clear, and that’s relevant for these thinking processes ultimately. That means the thinking processes too — today’s question is, how do thinking processes influence our decision-making? And we can transfer that to AI now. Depending on how I steer my thinking processes, I derive my decision-making from that. And interestingly, we’re very close to the Anglo-American space, we’re already deep into it in the training programs and so on — it’s really crazy what’s happening there. And while some are discussing whether AI might replace us at some point or whatever, and speculating, the Americans, for example, are looking at it and saying, okay, now we have various tools, but there are certain disadvantages, for example with ChatGPT — ChatGPT can’t do certain things, or only picks up on certain things. So they’re already developing, or have already developed, the ability for us to store our own knowledge base in the background, to ensure that the connection between ChatGPT and this tool is able to draw on this own stored knowledge base to derive results from it. Can you imagine what kind of potential that is right now? That means, while in the German-speaking world we’re discussing whether it’s going to replace us at some point — and none of what’s being developed there is actually new, because it’s all essentially already there, so to speak — you could also have the discussion, what’s actually new, because we’re connecting to what we’ve learned too, and are we actually developing anything new, or are we simply combining information and knowledge? You could have that discussion too. On the other hand, there are now people who’ve discovered where the weaknesses are, and tools are being developed to steer exactly these weaknesses, from which disadvantages can arise, in the right direction. Namely, saying, hey, in the future we won’t just rely on what ChatGPT or other tools provide as information from the web or elsewhere — no, if you’re an expert in a certain field, then make sure you bring in various pieces of information, various knowledge, your expertise, and build a knowledge base in the background, where you feed and train ChatGPT — or this tool in connection with ChatGPT — to work with your very own expertise knowledge base and draw on it when you formulate questions or similar. I find that absolutely brilliant, by the way. But it shows that the way, or the steering, of the thinking process significantly contributes to which direction the decision-making processes then take afterward — namely, what do I do with this now? Always this “what do I do with this now?” question. I don’t know if that sparks another impulse. Sabine, what do you think? Sabine, go ahead.
Yes, gosh, Yasemin, you’re so smart. The guest went in the same direction. He said a connection with the internet is coming up, so that they’ll get a completely different volume of data in the future. And he also said, on the other hand, today they already work a lot with GPT, but they make a closed system. So the idea, whether it’s ChatGPT or something else, doesn’t matter — the system itself, we’re already somewhat at the mercy of the Americans there. There’s only Aleph Alpha in Germany, which apparently handles this reasonably well. But he said, going forward, we can do this with what he called “encapsulation” — where they simply say, we’ll push our own knowledge in behind it, then it just draws on that, learns from that, and the data doesn’t go back across the ocean either. I found that great too, everything that’s happening in the background there. We’re a bit at the outer edge, I’d say, of what’s happening inside there. Incredible.
Wonderful. I’ll say goodbye in a moment because I have to leave — great topic though.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Marc, would you like to add anything too, before you share the closing word for today with us?
Sorry, I don’t want to just add something — I have a concern that’s very, very important to me, and here it comes. The topic is thinking and decision-making, and I’m a supporter of democracy, and I’d like to bring the word emotion back in. I started this morning with the fact that there’s selective information — we can only take in information selectively, and we can also only give out information selectively. I was sitting in the car yesterday and fell into the emotion trap, listening to a report — without judging any party, just looking at the processes happening there. Mr. Söder had said it can’t be that asylum seekers are sitting in our doctors’ offices getting dental work done while regular people can’t get an appointment. And I got emotionally gripped and thought, yes, I understand that this moves people. It took me a while, but thankfully right after that segment came another piece of information — because this information had been given out selectively — where it was explained that first, Söder himself is privately insured, so he’d never have to wait for a doctor’s appointment in the first place, and second, they’re not getting their teeth done, the law only allows treatment in emergencies. Of course, if someone is in pain, they get their pain treated — that’s something completely different from claiming someone’s sitting there getting all their teeth done. And since this happens in so many areas — and the political arena is especially important to me here — when the topic is thinking and decision-making, we also need to become aware that we only get selective information, and always go into verifiability, always ask, is that really true? And what personally bothers me — and this has nothing to do with whether I’m a fan of any particular party or not — is that when people are steered by emotions instead of truths, self-determination requires recognizing what the person giving me this information actually wants. In this case, I know they want to win the next election. Everyone should have the chance to win an election, but please with truth, not with populism and not with emotion. And just recognizing this, recognizing these processes, in every party and every political direction, helps us live a self-determined life, and afterward steer the thinking-and-decision-making process objectively again. Sorry for going off on a tangent, but I observe this so much, and it really troubles me when I see how omitting information is used to trigger emotions, leading us to wrong decisions. Thank you.
Oh, you put that so beautifully. Wonderful. Let’s just leave that to sit and resonate — everyone can take that with them and let it work on them. I think we’ve had a really colorful bouquet of different aspects again today regarding thinking processes and decision-making. So, how do thinking processes influence our decision-making? They have a huge effect. To differentiate further, there are conscious and unconscious processes taking place — the unconscious ones happen regardless, and the conscious ones we can, against the backdrop of information and knowledge, steer quite deliberately and consciously, to a certain degree. And let’s not forget, unconscious bias still plays a role, so to speak — all the more reason to stay sensitized to it, to keep directing our attention there, possibly setting up structures and processes to ensure we don’t unknowingly fall into the trap, so to speak — because none of us is immune to it, and I don’t exclude myself either. That means it affects all of us. But every time we become aware of this and keep going into self-examination, we might not be able to eliminate everything, but at least we can set a course of correction, with the intention of steering certain directions and having an influence on them. And that’s in any case better, so to speak, than having no influence at all. So every correction loop, every check — and it doesn’t always have to be a correction, it can also just be a check, to say, yes, that’s exactly how I’ll do it — every loop we pick up here in the thinking process, and take another look at, is worth its weight in gold, so to speak, and then everyone can decide for themselves what to do with it. So I found this really wonderful, and we built a lot of bridges. Tomorrow we’ll continue, actually heading a bit more toward practice — the room tomorrow is called thinking training, how can we train our thinking. So maybe there too, some methods or similar experiences you have, what you use for thinking training — what can we pick up on here? Let’s gather together and see, to maybe give a few tips too, for how we can consciously train our thinking after all. With that, I’m looking forward to welcoming you back here tomorrow morning at 8, if you have time and interest. So I wish you a wonderful day for now, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning. Until then.
