#818 Emotion & Insight

Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What role do emotions play in gaining insight? That’s the question we explore in Room #818 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Insight (and gaining it).” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…

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, a very warm one. Today we’re talking about emotion and insight, just as we already announced yesterday. And I think this is going to be really exciting too, to take a really close, intensive look at the role emotion plays in the context of insight and gaining insight. Yesterday, when we talked about experience, we already noticed that feelings seem to play an important role there too. And in many contexts we’ve repeatedly recognized, and talked about, the significance of emotions. Regardless of whether it’s about insight or other topics, emotions play an absolutely essential role for us as human beings. So naturally they’re also relevant when it comes to insight and gaining insight, and that’s why I find it really exciting to look at this from that angle today — what role do emotions actually play in this? And tomorrow we’ll build a bridge from emotions over to talk about experience itself. For now, today, I’m really curious. I noticed earlier — yesterday I posted something on LinkedIn about an article I wrote on ChatGPT, and I invited people both to read the article and to share their feedback and so on. And this morning I discovered that more comments have come in since then. And I always find it fascinating to see from what perspective these comments are actually made. In this particular case it was specifically about the topic of writing a book. You can already tell the impulse keeps going in that direction, but amid all the enthusiasm you have to be careful. I’m not saying it isn’t true, but it’s interesting to see the perspective the responses, the comments, come from — things like, well, but especially when writing a book, there’s this thing, I’ll call it the author’s charm, the author’s style, that plays an essential role there too, and so on. And especially with ChatGPT I find it really fascinating, because the AI is actually able to learn our own style. That means, if I’m an author and I feed in texts of my own, then, through that training, ChatGPT is subsequently able to actually adopt that style — meaning, for certain tasks I feed in, it produces and delivers completely different texts as a result than it would if a different author had done the same thing, provided, as I said, that I’ve actually taken the time to train the AI on that. So what does that have to do with our topic this morning? I decided very last-minute to bring this in, because here too it’s quite obvious that these emotions keep playing a role. That is, whether or not I even engage with a tool like this in the first place, and if I have some kind of feeling, in a manner of speaking, of not quite being sure whether I like the taste of it, so to speak, that can potentially lead to certain feelings like discomfort creeping in, certain fears coming up, worries that might mean I never engage intensively enough with something new in the first place. I might approach the whole thing from the outset with a certain distance, a certain detached stance. And because of that, I might end up with completely different insights — or a lack of insight. Question mark. So that’s maybe a good first impulse to start with, and you’re warmly invited, as every morning, to join the round. As I said, today isn’t actually about ChatGPT, that was just because it happened to come up with those comments, and I thought I’d use it as an impulse to kick things off. So today is about emotions and insight and gaining insight, let’s take a look at that together. Maybe you have some nice examples of your own you can bring in too, from your own life experience, business experience, that we can pick up on here, to turn our attention to this aspect of emotions. And in parallel, I’d like to quickly point out again that I decided, at fairly short notice, to join in on the last remaining spots here myself too. Tomorrow it’s finally happening — Neuroscience for Practice. I’m really, really looking forward to it. I’ve brought the link along again for you. Tomorrow it runs from 2 to 5pm, and on Friday again from 2 to 5pm. We’ll dive into findings from brain research and their relevance for business and practice, and work out the corresponding practical applications. I’m really looking forward to it. Preparations are still ongoing, I think the last preparations won’t actually be finished until sometime later today. For those of you who’ve already booked a ticket — just a quick heads-up, an email with the access details will go out later today, so don’t be surprised. We’re doing that fairly last-minute, because it’s actually more convenient for most people, so they can find the email again more easily and so on — otherwise people sometimes forget where they filed or saved it, and then we get all sorts of follow-up questions. So that’ll go out later today, don’t be surprised if you haven’t received any access details yet. And just as a side note, it’s a very small, exclusive group. So anyone who’d like to dive deep into these topics, into the latest findings from brain research, and what you can actually do with that in terms of business and practice, is warmly invited to click the link I’ve pinned above and grab a ticket. Right, and with that I’d like to take a look at the hand-raises. Layla has her hand up, so let’s bring her in directly. Just a quick reminder that we’re recording, so if anyone raises their hand and wants to join, you’re generally warmly invited, provided you’re okay with this being recorded and subsequently published. And then we have three small rules to follow: a profile photo in which you’re clearly recognizable, your first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. If you don’t want that for whatever reason, feel free to use the chat instead and share your thoughts there, and I’ll take that into account, provided it fits the topic well. Layla, a very good morning to you. What do you have to say about the topic of emotion and insight?

Good morning, Yasemin, a very warm one. Well, first of all, the emotion I’m feeling right now is actually sadness, because I can’t take part tomorrow. Hope isn’t really — well, I’m actually wondering whether hope even counts as a feeling — but I do have hope that the event will be repeated at some point. Unfortunately I have a work appointment, so I won’t be able to attend. Other than that, I’ll be ordering your book — and I’m not saying that to advertise for you, just because I genuinely think it’s good, and if that ends up being advertising anyway, that’s fine by me. And the other thing is, maybe you could tease a little whether it’s going to be repeated at some point. As for the topic you brought up, I found that really interesting just now, because I think the feeling of fear plays a big role there too. I’ve always been a fan of digital tools, ever since very early on. Back in 2014, for instance, I tried to push digitalization forward — I’m not exactly a pioneer of digitalization, but together with a colleague I thought about the fact that there are so many portals you can also use online. What got me onto it was the Hamburg spelling test we use, which is done to diagnose dyslexia — it’s a completely normal test you can administer. It used to be evaluated by hand, which I thought was great, but very cumbersome. And then I thought, there must be another way to do this. And then I realized, well, you could also evaluate it online. So I said, we could do this online too, and so on, and brought that in as an idea. It did end up getting implemented, but I noticed that in that context there was a lot of apprehension around digitalization too. I don’t want to bash teachers here, because plenty of teachers do embrace this — I’m just talking from my own personal experience. And my personal experience was that there are a lot of apps out there that enable digital learning, with structured programs. Klett Verlag has something like that, other publishers too, Cornelsen and so on, and also Sofatutor, which I found quite good in that context — there are others too, and by now there are also free portals. Back then I worked with a colleague on Sofatutor specifically, and we tried to show the school and our colleagues the advantages — you can set up year-group access and so on. We gave a presentation about it, explained this and that, and then sentences came up like, “well, then I could just let the video run instead of teaching my lesson.” And I thought, no — because I really do like using tools like that in my own teaching. It’s free for teachers, which of course is also a marketing strategy, they do advertise for it that way, and it is free. Studyflix, for instance, has made it their whole thing to explain something in five minutes — I’m just mentioning that so it doesn’t come across like an ad. Anyway, back to the point. I never really understood that fear, because sure, there are good and bad videos out there, but there are also good and bad textbooks, and good and bad materials you can choose from. Not everything with a textbook publisher’s name on it is automatically good either — and this isn’t against the textbook publishers, but if it literally says “read the text” using the wrong grammatical form, I as the German teacher want to write straight to the publisher and point out that the correct imperative is “read the text.” Anyway, back to the topic. What I noticed is that this has a lot to do with fear. Teachers are kind of hunters and gatherers when it comes to materials, and people are maybe a little reluctant — I’m not speaking for all teachers — to let others look behind the curtain, because criticizing is always easier than doing it yourself, that’s something I’ve noticed for myself. And so of course it’s not nice when someone uses your materials and then claims credit for them. That happened to me during my teacher-trainee year too — someone said, “look at this lovely worksheet,” and I thought, that’s mine, I made that. But I won’t say anything more about it. So yes, there’s a lot of fear involved there. And as for ChatGPT, I have to say I’m not afraid of it at all — not even of it adopting my style. I’ve actually been thinking about writing a book myself for a while now. But I think here too we run into that same problem of fear — the fear that people might think I’m being replaced by something better, that someone is imitating me, intellectual theft. Maybe it can do it better than I can. Is it still my own work then? Is it even good if it was artificially produced? Then it’s not really human anymore. And that’s where we really get to this idea of “we all consider ourselves the center of the world.” I don’t know if that’s true for everyone, but let’s put it that way. The ego makes us think about ourselves and take care of ourselves, but that alone isn’t egoism yet. I think there might be a problem hiding in there. Because I would actually love to work together with AI, since it’s still my own thoughts that I’m feeding into it. Sure, it imitates my style — but it’s imitating my style. And I once heard that the greatest compliment you can give someone is plagiarism, because it shows that the idea was good. Well, that’s my opening thought.

Wonderful, thank you so much. Let me first pick up your initial question about the event — I honestly can’t tell you whether it’ll happen again or not, because it came about through a context that wasn’t actually planned at all in the first place. Originally there was supposed to be this big online conference on neuroscience, which then got cancelled, and after some short-notice weighing and thinking, I decided that the event would still take place in a smaller circle, and we switched over to that format. The content itself, of course, still gets presented elsewhere too, more in a corporate context, for instance, where companies normally pay tens of thousands of euros for it — so we’re talking about that kind of scale here. This was basically a kind of gesture, in a manner of speaking, toward this community, to say — I really think it’s a shame this event got cancelled, I think it’s a fantastic opportunity to actually work together in a smaller group here. And it’s something quite different from this audio format we use every morning, because there we’ll be working with visuals too, not just audio, which opens up completely different sensory channels and ways in. So I can’t give you a final answer to that question, because this simply isn’t the segment of public events that I normally operate in. I can’t rule out that some context might arise that leads me to decide to repeat it, but it’s not currently planned, since these public events aren’t usually how I run trainings — I typically work in a corporate context instead. Just some background on that. And yes, on the emotions — whether it’s technical tools or other contexts, I’m completely with you there. It has a lot to do with exactly these kinds of questions, and you get into it pretty quickly — this feeling that I might get replaced. You brought in the term “intellectual theft,” and it was also about, well, did I actually write this book myself then, or not. And that’s exactly the question that comes up for me too. I loved it recently when Wolfgang was here and mentioned that video, “Everything is a Remix,” which is worth watching on YouTube — I’ll happily bring that up again here, go check it out. Because no matter what field we look at, we always tend to think, in a manner of speaking, that humans are just so creative. And we are, in a way — though the question is, what do we actually mean by creativity? But if you look at art in general, and this is exactly what that video shows, “Everything is a Remix,” you’ll find that the greatest works and the most successful songs and so on always originated from some inspiration that came from somewhere else, that got picked up and developed further — hence the term “remix” — and something new got created out of that. And that’s essentially exactly what ChatGPT does too. And that’s really just standing in for many other tools that can do the same thing by now — ChatGPT just became relatively well known because of its market penetration, since it was made available for free at first, and that’s what it does here too. And that brings us right back to this point about socialization. At some point in school we learned, you’re not allowed to copy. The question is, should we perhaps start unlearning that here too, and letting go of it, in the sense of — who actually says so? Sure, in terms of authorship, I do think it’s important, even without technical aids, that if someone takes something from someone else, they should at least acknowledge the origin — we’re talking about citations and things like that, that you at least name and acknowledge it. But on the other hand, if everything we do is always some kind of further development anyway — we’ve talked about the topic of inspiration before too — that means we always need some kind of input from outside in order to even come up with the idea of doing something with it, creating something new, developing it further. So in that sense we always have some kind of reference back to something, in some form, and if it’s a bird in flight — someone mentioned this in the room recently — you look at that and think, maybe we could fly too, and that’s ultimately how airplanes came to be. So we need that inspiration from the outside, and the question then becomes, isn’t it actually completely unfounded to draw a hard line here — even in other contexts? Maybe we should start unlearning this, and stop approaching it from the assumption that we’re not allowed to copy or build on things. Maybe that’s simply something we learned as part of our socialization, and that’s why it feels strange to us, independent of the fears that also play into it, this “I’m being replaced.” But if we seriously look at it, isn’t this true of every technical tool, really? Whether I use a tool like Canva to create posts faster, or anything else — in the past, people used to hire other people for that, who made money doing it. Those people still exist today too, maybe they can work faster now, maybe they had to rework their service offering, offer other things, maybe it got cheaper because they can produce things faster, in a manner of speaking — but it hasn’t led to that service disappearing completely. On the other hand, there are certain things where we can observe that certain services have completely disappeared, because people simply don’t need them anymore today, since they have technical tools that can do it instead. But that doesn’t mean those people have become permanently, categorically unemployed — they’ve also been able to discover new tasks for themselves elsewhere. So if you really look closely, analyze it, the world always keeps developing in these kinds of movements anyway. Decades ago — we actually had Dr. Mario Herger at our Authors’ Breakfast, for instance, and that was about how people reacted to what a mirror does to a person, which wasn’t even in the technical realm at all. Or when the automobile was invented, the coachmen weren’t happy about it either, and assumed it would never catch on. Today, I think, you don’t see horse-drawn carriages on normal roads anywhere anymore — I don’t know, maybe someone will contradict me on that. Today it’s completely “normal” for us, in line with the norm. And that means, whenever new things come along, emotions really do play a role. And that’s exactly the opening question I posed too — here it’s important to look at whether I can, or want to, consciously acknowledge these fears that come up, and then — I’m looking for the right word — not skip over them, but actually walk through the fear, so to speak, take that step through the fear quite consciously, with a deliberate decision, in order to generate insight, for instance. Because often, whether it’s ChatGPT or other topics, I notice that people get really heated discussing certain things without having actually tried them out for themselves at all. That means we talk about things, the same way we often talk about people rather than with them. And that makes a really crucial difference here, in terms of actually gaining insight, or allowing insight to happen, so that I can then, based on that, actually make decisions for myself again. What do you think about that, Layla?

That really makes me smile, because I looked at a few examples from my own life. For one thing, I studied philosophy, and I once heard that there’s no thought that hasn’t already been thought before. On one hand that’s depressing, but on the other hand it’s simply true — there were people before me, and before all of us, entirely different people who had wonderful ideas. That’s true of that whole nature-inspired angle too — if you think about the lotus flower, which is where we got the idea for water-repellent materials and things like that, that goes into technology too. The coachman was a really nice example, actually, because it reminded me that schoolbooks still often talk about “new media,” and I always think, that’s not new at all anymore, I mean, that’s already been around, why are you still calling it new media? Everyone must think you’re terribly old-fashioned, I have to say. And I think, beyond this fear of being replaced, there’s probably also this feeling of uniqueness playing into it. If you look at music and fashion, for instance — with fashion, I’ve had a good laugh the last few years, and this year is no exception, because I’m delighted that a lot of things I used to wear I can wear again now, since they’re back in style. I really had to retrain myself back then, switching from bell-bottoms to skinny jeans, that was almost impossible for me. Now I have to retrain myself again, switching back from skinny jeans to bell-bottoms, and I don’t think I’m going to follow that trend this time. I’ve made my decision for this year. And on uniqueness — sorry, I wanted to say one more thing about music too, I find this quite funny, because I actually listen to — people wouldn’t expect this of me — but I actually listen to rap music, and pretty current stuff too, even though with some of the lyrics, let’s just say, my mother would have washed that person’s mouth out with soap. Don’t get me wrong, but that’s just how it is.

Layla, just a quick note — there’s quite a lot of rustling coming through in the background on your end.

Oh, thanks for the heads-up. Is it better now?

It’s great now.

Sorry, thanks. Anyway, I just wanted to say one more thing about music quickly, I’ve got a lot of ideas floating around in my head. On the music point — if you look at these rap lyrics, and compare them to what musicians were doing in the 60s and 70s, a lot of that American rap material, you find so much of it again in there — a lot of the beats, a lot of things, a lot of lyrical structures, you just find them again. And there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s simply a remix. And that made me smile on the uniqueness point too, because it reminded me of Nadine in sixth grade. I have to say, I’m really, really good at imitating things, and I pick it up pretty fast. I thought her handwriting was so beautiful, and at some point I started writing exactly like her. She noticed, because she sat right next to me, and it really didn’t sit well with her — she actually put her arm in front of her page to block my view, and I kept writing like that for a while afterward, but not for much longer after that. And that’s what I mean by uniqueness, because Nadine didn’t mean anything bad by reacting that way, and I didn’t mean anything bad either, I just genuinely thought her handwriting was pretty. And I think this whole idea of being unique is something we’ve really made our banner cause — we live in an age of individualism, and every one of us wants to be unique. On that point, I’d like to quote my brother briefly, who’s also an entrepreneur, he once told me, you know, Layla, if someone steals an idea from me, wherever that idea came from, another hundred will come from the same place. And I understood that, because it’s a really reassuring feeling, being able to collaborate with people without thinking, you’re taking my uniqueness away from me — because I want to work together with people, and so does my brother. And you do have to talk about things like that. And maybe we should push this fear of someone taking our uniqueness away from us a bit into the background — not that no one ever does that, and not that it’s okay to steal someone’s ideas, to take something away from someone. It just means, wherever an idea comes from, a hundred more will come from the same place.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And someone in the chat just brought up the point about deepfaked text and voice too — that this carries a real risk of abuse, identity theft, and how would you even prove that it was really you, or wasn’t? Yes, absolutely valid. And these are exactly the kinds of topics that are being worked on in the relevant places, whether that’s an ethics council or something similar, keeping an eye on it. And it’s important that we do keep an eye on it — that’s not to say we shouldn’t, because of course there are real dangers here. And I find this genuinely fascinating — I’ve mentioned this before in some context, but I once came across a video, this is a few years back now, of Elon Musk, and I found it really interesting that, back when AI was just starting to make the kind of progress where you could already tell which direction it was heading, he actually reached out to the US government, for instance, specifically to talk about it and to warn them, so to speak. And nobody listened. They just let it run its course. You wouldn’t necessarily expect that from Elon Musk of all people, since he’s one of the pioneers in this exact space, with his fingers in pretty much everything related to it. And that brings us right back to this point — in many cases we simply don’t have the ability to stop technology, in a manner of speaking. And the question, which keeps coming up, is whether we should ban it, or regulate it — we’ve talked about that before too. Ultimately it all just comes down to a feeling of security, in a manner of speaking, but there’s no such thing as absolute, final security. We have a need for security, and whenever we do certain things, it feeds into that need for security. That doesn’t mean we don’t need a certain minimum of it — we absolutely do — but we also tend to over-regulate to some extent, so to speak. Through the discussions coming up around this, I actually had a conversation just yesterday evening where people were saying, well, let’s see, and considering whether something like this should maybe be blocked in Germany or wherever, and I said, don’t worry, wherever there are restrictions, there are always ways around them, and you can think about that once it actually happens — humans are, in a manner of speaking, creative, and they won’t let that chance slip away. And of course the people making decisions about this know that too, which means people will find a way around it, in a manner of speaking, since it’s not going to be banned worldwide or anything like that — there will always be ways and means. And that’s true whether we’re talking about technological progress or any other kind of progress. Which means this risk of abuse doesn’t just disappear because a country like Italy or Germany blocks some tool — it’ll just get used elsewhere instead, and the risk of abuse remains just as present, and at the same time we’re taking opportunities away from ourselves, which is the really dangerous part. The gap just keeps growing wider in that moment, which is exactly why I personally can’t endorse something like that at all, and it doesn’t matter what tool we’re talking about — if we say, we’re opting out here, that’s not simply a matter of protecting ourselves. No, we’re not protecting ourselves by doing that, because everyone else just keeps going anyway, and at the same time we’re taking away our own opportunity. Which means we need other ways, means, and solutions to handle this new technology sensibly — whether that’s actually teaching in schools how to use this new technology responsibly, or whether it’s having some regulations in place that actually put a penalty on this kind of abuse, for instance — which still doesn’t mean it won’t happen. But let me bring in a different example — document forgery existed too, we use passports or ID cards, for instance, and those weren’t abolished just because there’s also identity theft or abuse of them, that already happens today too, or take money as a means of payment — we have counterfeiting there too. What did people do? They just kept developing it further, making it, in a manner of speaking, increasingly difficult for that kind of thing to happen. And here too there will be ways to figure out how to handle it, how to put certain things under penalty and so on. That doesn’t ultimately mean we’ll reduce it to zero percent, there will still be abuse. But we might be able to contain it to a certain degree through how we handle it. And yes, new forms of crime will emerge in this context too, but only through a new means — identity theft already existed in the past, it might just become easier now, in a manner of speaking. And those are legitimate worries or fears too, that are important to look at and find solutions for. But I have to be completely honest — from my perspective as Yasemin, as an entrepreneur, that’s simply not my perspective, other people are welcome to deal with that side of things. My stance is, I just use it, and I think it’s fantastic what I can do with it. We’re constantly trying things out, doing, and observing, and we’re learning something new all the time right now, and I find that genuinely fascinating. It’s like when you order a new device and just unpack it and start exploring, what can this thing actually do? I find it really exciting to approach it with a certain curiosity like that. And at the same time I can completely understand that these fears come up too — they’re not unfounded. And at the same time, the question becomes, how can I consciously step into steering this, regardless of whether it’s about technical tools, new achievements, some revolution taking place, or anything else — to consciously notice it, again and again. Maybe my own innate emotions are actually standing in my own way right now, when it comes to being able to gather insight. Layla, what do you think about that?

First of all, I’d like to ask whether I’m rustling.

Not anymore, that’s lovely.

Also, I wanted to quickly mention, I had some background noise coming through on your end just now, I didn’t find it unpleasant, I just wanted to let you know. And what you just said, I can only underline that. Look, as a civil servant myself, let me actually praise the state of Baden-Württemberg here, because you can absolutely put this to positive use. For instance, next week I’m doing a training on how to use AI in the classroom, because we can’t really protect ourselves from it anyway. Or, well, what does “protect” even mean here? I want to work with it, I don’t want to protect myself from it. I resisted having a mobile phone for a really long time too, and my students kept saying, so what can your phone actually do? And I thought about it, and I actually told them, make phone calls — and I was quite proud of that at the time. Now I’m really glad I have a phone that’s very digital, that lets me do all sorts of things, play background music, pair it with other devices when needed. I think it’s wonderful that I’ve now got an iPad I can work with in the classroom too, also from the state of Baden-Württemberg. So that’s something positive. This danger that gets brought up, I understand it, but what you just said, I can only echo. Whether I have an email address, whether I’m a fully transparent person online, whether identity theft is being committed — funnily enough, I saw something about this recently, because I watch YouTubers quite a bit, shout-out to Rezo and Gnu, and it was about this thing, I think it’s called deepfake, where you can replace faces in videos. So you take completely ordinary footage — well, “ordinary” isn’t quite right, in this case it was about pornographic content where the faces of celebrities or YouTubers get superimposed onto it. And with AI you can do that too. One YouTuber did an April Fools’ joke about this, because with AI you can also generate images — the picture that’s currently showing for me is actually an AI avatar too, meaning I fed in photos of myself, it looks quite a lot like me, I picked the one that resembled me most, though I don’t actually have green eyes, and in this picture my eyes look quite green, which isn’t accurate at all. Anyway, back to the example — someone was shown kissing someone else, and it was immediately claimed that this meant there was a relationship, and the comments went through the roof. What did I take away from that? I noticed, yes, there is abuse, yes, that’s not good. And yes, you can do a lot with voices too. But whether I turn to psychology, or use NLP — if I want to, I can use my voice deliberately too, I know exactly that if I speak slowly, the information lands better, I know exactly that if I place a piece of information at a certain point, it’s more likely to reach the listener, the recipient. Those are tactics that are already being used, things that are already being applied. And that’s exactly why I’m in favor of actually using these tools, because what you said — that we might fall behind while others just keep going anyway, and we get stuck in our German Angst and say, well, we’re not going to do that, and this goes for other countries too, we’re just not doing it — that doesn’t mean you have to do absolutely everything, that’s exactly why we have an ethics council. I mentioned Hans Jonas and his principle of accumulated consequences before, someone thought this through a long time ago, and that’s exactly what it’s there for. But that’s no reason not to do it at all, because it’s going to happen anyway. Gnu actually talked about how, on Reddit, genuinely pornographic depictions with her face, including in video form, get shared, and things like that. So this already exists, and it’s not okay for anyone to do that, which is exactly why we have a criminal code. The real risk is that, as far as I know, internet crime isn’t yet fully in focus in terms of actually being prosecuted, in a way that’s, how should I put it, actually deterrent. But there are plenty of things, let’s take trolls, let’s use Clubhouse as an example, where people dare to say god-knows-what to someone else, and I think to myself, you wouldn’t say that if you were standing right in front of them — and then people say, oh, you’re taking the internet far too seriously, I’m just under a pseudonym here, and I think to myself, well, I’m under a pseudonym too. For everyone — with Gnu, it was really interesting, because the people who made those pornographic depictions actually got leaked, the guys and girls who did it, and that’s now being reported to the police too, and there’s real momentum building there too. And I mean that in a really positive way, because we’re actually on a good path here. But there does need to be regulation in place there too, so that it can all be used properly. So, that’s my overall stance on the whole thing.

Thank you so much. And this also lets us note something, based on the observations we keep making — that when it comes to laws, or things along those lines, the wheels really do turn very slowly there. That’s actually a recurring realization we keep arriving at, no matter what topic we look at. Legislation, for instance, tends to take quite a while, before anything actually gets developed, before there’s any real action, and so on — whether that’s in a technological context or elsewhere. What’s clear is that, with the increasing speed we’re seeing, especially in the context of technological progress, it’s really important to move into “action” faster in certain places, without over-regulating, so to speak, but still finding a certain balance and not taking too long. And progress, in whatever context, simply can’t be stopped, per se — and I think this point is really, really important. Of course we’re allowed to ask ethical questions, we’re allowed to discuss, we’re allowed to see the dangers. But that shouldn’t lead us to hold ourselves back from certain things, in a manner of speaking — instead we should learn how to handle it and figure out how to get the best out of it, because ultimately, no matter what topic we look at, everything has advantages and disadvantages. There’s never just one side, everything has its two sides, in a manner of speaking. We’ll always be able to find pros and cons in any topic. And it’s about consciously recognizing them and handling them responsibly accordingly, or maybe even introducing certain minimum regulations to help prevent one or another form of abuse. Still, and I think this is really important, we won’t be able to completely prevent it, just because it’s been made a punishable offense. Any form of crime, everything covered in the criminal code, isn’t actually prevented just by being made punishable — it might be reduced, or it might not be, maybe it just leads to punishment after the fact. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but this need for security we have, it’s something we have to keep consciously recognizing, again and again. And I still keep meeting people, plenty of them, who say, for instance, that they don’t like flying because they’re afraid of it. And if you look at that rationally, it’s relatively unfounded, in a manner of speaking, because by that logic I shouldn’t get into a car either. They get into a car five times a day and drive from A to B, but not onto a plane. And that’s really where we get to this issue of emotional regulation. I think that’s another really important aspect I’d like to come back to toward the end. On one hand, human beings are social creatures, and emotional creatures. And these emotions exist, they’re there to protect us in the sense of securing our survival, and that’s exactly what our brains are wired for. Which means, whenever we enter into an encounter with something new, so to speak, we automatically bring in, based on prior experiences, based on fears, based on our need for security and so on, certain feelings — fears, worries, but also joy. Positive feelings can certainly come into play here too. And even positive feelings, if things get too euphoric, for instance, can also carry a certain risk. So I want to explicitly emphasize that this positive side can definitely present a risk in certain places too. Which is why it makes sense, again and again, and we’re actually capable of this as human beings, to notice these emotions and feelings, to look at them mindfully, and keep asking, is this justified or not? Or how can I, through deliberate steering, take these emotions I’m feeling and, through reframing, shifting focus, or whatever, actually move into a conscious steering process, to handle it differently? Because, factually speaking, is it even justified for me to react with this much fear, or this much joy, in the first place? And to move into that steering accordingly. And that’s really the brilliant thing about it — that we, as humans, actually have this ability, to notice this quite consciously and to consciously move into steering it, provided I know how certain basic elements of the body’s functions actually work, so I can pick up on it and put it to good use for myself. I also find Marc’s comment really interesting here — humanity has to learn to live with the loss of certain truths, and that’s only possible through education, and he sends his warm regards from Italy. Yes, I think that’s wonderful. So that actually brings us back to the topic of education again, the circle closes here too. We talked about education before — what is the actual educational mandate? Education, in a manner of speaking, is something different for me, I like to differentiate this. It took me a long time to understand it myself during my studies, and honestly, only during my doctorate, not during my studies. The educational mandate is really about self-determination and self-efficacy. That’s actually also what school is ultimately supposed to contribute to, but the way school is actually lived out for us today, unfortunately, doesn’t really support that. So school does have that educational mandate, but in practice, given how the system is set up, it isn’t necessarily fulfilling it. Which is why I don’t want to equate the term “education” with “school” here — I deliberately underline and differentiate this, so that when I talk about education, people don’t automatically think of school and end up with a lot of question marks. The educational mandate is very, very clearly formulated, and it traces back to a certain origin. And here we’re back at all these philosophical questions again — there’s no thought that hasn’t already been thought before. In that sense, if you look back historically, there were various developments, and when it came to breaking out of one’s own social class and so on, questions came up like, well, now we have people who can choose their own professions and so on, but they never actually learned how — how can someone lead a self-determined life? How can someone actually get to self-efficacy? And that’s exactly where the origin of the educational mandate comes from. And this educational mandate represents a foundation, and it’s really, really important, no matter what context we look at. And when we look specifically at these technological developments, this educational mandate is still exactly the foundation here. And the question is, how can we actually accompany people, students, children, and so on, whether that was the internet before, or ChatGPT today, or other tools and technologies, so that they can handle it responsibly and with self-efficacy. And to be able to actually make use of these tools and technologies and this innovative progress for themselves in a positive way, while also recognizing the dangers — but not out of fear, not letting the gap grow too large, especially when you think not just individually but also as a society, as a country, in terms of competitiveness and so on — while at the same time accompanying this process accordingly, both through education and awareness work, and also through practical guidance like, how do I actually handle this? What can I actually do with it? And here I do see a real mandate for schools, in a manner of speaking, and for teachers too — something the ministry of education would probably need to address accordingly, so that it actually gets broken down and brought into the classrooms, to really support teachers more with this too. Because teachers are ultimately human beings too, who are also allowed to deal with their own emotions here — not to be at their mercy, but to consciously notice them, to be attentive here, to be made aware of it, and not to be left alone with it either, but to actually be supported, so that they themselves are put in a position, in the first place, to responsibly pass this on to our children, in a manner of speaking. Layla, what do you think about that?

To that I’d say, criticizing is always easier than doing it yourself — and I say that as a teacher, from the bottom of my heart, because people always think I only work in the mornings and have the afternoons off, which isn’t true at all, and the same goes for my colleagues, we all work hard, or a lot of us work really hard. And I also wanted to say quickly, about this democratic process — it is a democratic process, and with such fast developments, it’s understandable that initiating new laws doesn’t happen quickly. I get that, because here you’re really dealing with a different set of regulations altogether — and as a teacher, I have my own set of regulations too, that I simply have to pay attention to. And of course I’d love to move mountains for my students, but at the same time I have to stick to certain guidelines, and it’s actually good that these guidelines exist, so not everyone can just do whatever they feel like on a whim. So I understand that too. I actually have another question about these emotions, Yasemin. I believe humans have two things — and I didn’t come up with this myself, Dieter Lange said this before too — moving away from, and moving toward. And I think this “moving away from” is what we do when we’re afraid of something, when we see that saber-toothed tiger, so to speak. I actually tested this out practically on myself yesterday, because I’m going to grant myself a noble title here — I consider myself the Queen of Procrastination. Though I have no problem at all if someone else wants to take on that title too, be the King, or use whatever gender term they prefer, that’s completely fine by me. Anyway, yesterday I noticed I was procrastinating. Since I now know I have ADHD, I’m gentler with myself about it these days and don’t beat myself up over it as much, because I know that this is actually a real part of ADHD — though that’s not meant as an excuse either. So I thought to myself, okay, what are you actually moving away from right now, and where do you actually want to move toward? And then I looked at my emotions and thought, right, I’m afraid, and that’s why I’m procrastinating. Yes, it also bores me, there’s a real reluctance in me too, that’s also a feeling. But which feeling is actually bigger right now? And then there’s this ambition to get it done, the joy of having accomplished it. And that’s where we get into visualization and things like that — people always say, picture it, make yourself a poster, hang it up somewhere. I did that in my head instead, I thought, which feeling is actually stronger? So I didn’t visualize anything, I just asked myself, which feeling is stronger here? And in this particular case, I realized it was anger, because it was about a legal matter, and I thought, my anger at this injustice is bigger than my fear of doing something wrong, or not knowing how. And then I actually tackled part of it. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do again today. So I wanted to ask, do you think that’s a good tactic? And how do you actually deal with these kinds of feelings? Because I worked this out on my own, but surely someone has thought of this before too, Yasemin — looking at your feelings and checking which one is actually stronger. What do you think of that?

For reflection purposes, I think that’s definitely a good approach, in the sense of genuinely becoming aware, in the first place, of which emotions are actually behind something, and then also checking which feeling is actually stronger. The next step, from my perspective, to really arrive at conscious decisions, in a manner of speaking, rather than decisions that are unreflected or only partially reflected on, would be the question — just because anger is the stronger feeling doesn’t necessarily mean, especially since you mentioned a legal context, let’s say, that you should go to court, for instance. It can actually make a lot of sense here to also look at where these feelings are actually coming from. What contributes to this feeling, anger for instance, being the stronger one? Because here too something can be justified or unjustified — it might have something to do with prior experiences, it might have something to do with fears. So it’s really worth looking at that again too. And with any kind of behavior change, there are these two directions — when we talk about “moving away from,” we’re talking about suffering, fear, and so on, that’s what underlies it, for instance, whereas “moving toward” is joy, confidence, and things like that. And those are the two main poles that drive us into change, that turn a motive into an actual motive, and decide whether we move, in a manner of speaking, or don’t move — the question of how attractive something actually is, that’s one part of it. But taken as a whole, it’s a bit more complex when you really look closely, because for any behavior change I want to pursue, I could just say, well, I’ll simply make it enjoyable — imagine, for instance, making the destination attractive, picturing it and so on, and then I’ll get there. But psychologically it’s a bit more complex than that, because we have our own value structures, we have beliefs, we have behavior patterns, we have values we may have adopted from outside ourselves. There are inner parts — one part is in favor, another part is against it, maybe has worries. So it’s often the case that just because something appears attractive to us, or I imagine reaching that goal as attractive, that alone doesn’t necessarily mean I actually end up developing that motive, or having the motivation to actually move in that direction. And breaking down this complexity, step by step, is really best helped, first and foremost, by this kind of reflection, to look at — and here we’re back at the opening question I posed — where does this stronger feeling actually come from? First noticing what these feelings actually are, then looking at where this feeling comes from, is it justified, is it unjustified? It might have certain roots, for instance something like, “I experienced something in my childhood that’s the reason this anger even arises in the first place.” But is that anger actually helpful in this particular context? So really establishing that contextual connection, and then, against the backdrop of these considerations and reflections, ultimately making decisions that fit for yourself and for the specific context, based on all of that. I hope that helps.

That really helps me a lot, because I’ve actually already looked into exactly these points myself. And that book you recommended to me, “Games People Play,” actually helped me with that too, because I found myself asking, which part of me is actually speaking right now? Is that my Parent ego state? Is that my Child ego state? Or is it my Adult ego state? I really thought about that a lot, thinking, why does this liability case bother me so much, it’s just excessively high — I don’t need to go into the details, but it’s simply unjustified. But what I’ve been thinking about now for myself is sustainability. That’s actually a point I’d still like to touch on, I don’t know if we still have time, it’s already 8:59, whether we could still get into how you actually achieve sustainability with this. Otherwise I’d just research that on my own, because I once had this book called “Limbi” — I’d have to check who wrote it, I believe it was Mr. Köstner, who also wrote “Simplify Your Life,” I think, I hope I’m quoting that correctly. And he talked about trying to outsmart the limbic system a little bit, essentially. And in that context I once heard that you shouldn’t try to outsmart it, but rather try to actually change it. But I don’t know, I think sometimes you simply are the way you are — that doesn’t mean you can’t change, but knowing yourself, I think, is quite valuable in that context. And that’s why sustainability — that would still be a point I’d want to bring up, but it’s already nine o’clock, which means we don’t really have time for that, since you’re probably going to want to do the closing comment now, because we all still have things to do.

Oh right, yes, absolutely. But let’s maybe just park that keyword, sustainability, for tomorrow. We’re continuing tomorrow with experience and insight, and maybe we can actually use that as an impulse to kick things off. Maybe tomorrow morning, if you’re there, we can pick this up again and you can explain a bit more what exactly you mean by sustainability in this context. That would be great, I’d like to postpone that to tomorrow, so to speak. And I’d also like to pick up one more closing comment here. Someone wrote: it also helped me to actually engage with the pain — once you realize you’re going to feel it anyway, in parentheses, bureaucracy, you can make a more conscious decision to just get it over with, subjectively speaking. Yes, let’s just leave that as it is, I wanted to bring that up too. And as I said, these topics really do build on each other, they’re all interconnected, we keep coming back to individual aspects, we keep building bridges between them. So I think we can pick these aspects up again nicely tomorrow, continue on, and see how these rooms keep developing further. Tomorrow we continue with experience and insight, so of course you’re all warmly invited to join again and bring in different perspectives. And we won’t be looking at experience and insight in isolation either, we’ll naturally connect back to the rooms we’ve done in the past, and the connection to emotions is immediate today too — when we talk about experience, we’re already right in the middle of emotions too. I’m really looking forward to that. Before we move into the closing round, just a quick reminder — I’ve brought the link again today, Neuroscience for Practice. So if you’re spontaneously free tomorrow and the day after, 2 to 5pm online, and feel like diving into the world of brain research, you’re warmly invited to grab a ticket. It’s a small, exclusive group, I mentioned this before — originally there was supposed to be a really big online conference on this topic, which the organizer cancelled for various reasons, and that led me to decide to still offer it in this small, exclusive circle, to make it possible for those who were already looking forward to it. It’ll be about findings from brain research, I’ll show what relevance that has for business and practice, and how we can actually make those practical transfers. We’ll dive into change processes, we’ll dive into learning processes, we’ll cover happiness and health, and so on — various aspects of neuroscience findings, and then, rather than staying in theory, really look very practically at, what do I actually do with this information? How can I actually work with it, and how can I put it to use for myself, whether that’s privately or professionally, and accordingly also look at best practices in that context. And because it’s a small group, we’ll actually be able to work very concretely with examples and so on, and really go into a deep dive. And it won’t just be audio — and that’s the wonderful part about tomorrow and the day after — we’ll actually have video too, and accordingly be able to work with completely different tools and techniques. I’m really, really looking forward to it. So if you have the time and feel like it, you’re warmly invited to grab your ticket through the link. And with that, I’d like to move into our closing round for today. Layla, what were your highlights from the room, or is there anything you’d like to underline once more to close things out today?

Emotions matter. Insight matters. Insight into emotions, I think, matters a great deal too, especially into your own emotions, and other people’s. I’m a bit sad right now, because I won’t be able to join tomorrow, but I’m already looking forward to the room. I’m also glad that I’ll be listening to the 1% Method again this afternoon, at least parts of it, and then I’ll listen to “Eat the Frog” again too, and then I’ll listen to my own “life list” again as well. Those are ideas from other people, and I’ll build something of my own out of them. I don’t consider that intellectual theft, I have to say — I’m not looking for someone else’s exact recipe, I’m looking for a solution for myself, and maybe for others too. And until then, I’m going to go admire my retro lamp that I bought yesterday. It would have cost 270 euros, but I got a real bargain, I got it for 45, and I actually managed to carry it home on foot and by train, all the way into my apartment, without a single one of those little glass globes breaking. And I’m feeling really, really happy about that right now, it’s just lovely, I really enjoy looking at it. And with that, I’d like to close. Thanks for listening.

Wonderful, thank you so much. I think some really fascinating perspectives came together again today. Dear all, just a quick appeal to everyone else too — take the opportunity to actually come up and open up further perspectives, this room becomes so much richer through all the different perspectives we get to hear. Of course it’s wonderful running the round here with Layla, in a manner of speaking, and that’s genuinely valuable too, you take away impulses just from listening, even if it’s only two perspectives, Layla’s and mine right now. But the more perspectives we have, the more facets we get to explore. So do take a moment, I know it doesn’t always work out, but whenever it does, whenever it’s possible for you, try not to think, well, this thing I’m thinking about right now probably isn’t important enough to bring up. We never know what it might lead to, because especially in exchange, in dialogue, it’s often exactly these small terms, these individual words, that suddenly pop a memory for someone else, that suddenly pop a thought for someone else. And then this exchange can head off in a completely different direction than we might have assumed in the moment, when we’re wondering whether our own contribution is important or unimportant. So let go of that evaluation too, there’s no right or wrong here, it’s simply about coming up and genuinely sharing your experiences and perspectives with us, so we can pick them up and make this room even richer and more multifaceted. With that, I wish you all a wonderful day, whatever you have planned, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning at 8am here again at Deep Talk. Until then.