Antonym: The Brain Changer Edition

Your sexist subconscious, how to SELL a Christmas tree, and a glut of TV recommendations.

Dear Reader

A guide to (really) changing your mind

…if we want to change the world, and our place in it, we’re going to have to break away from the ease of the old operating system and try something new.”
— Chantel Prat, “Breaking the Brain’s Chains”

Our minds are not open, even when we say they say they are.

Even the most determined maverick among us have hard borders to their belief about what is possible, about how the world works.

When the world is changing as rapidly as it is right now, that can be a problem. A career limiting problem. A humanity limiting problem.

The frames through which we see the world are sturdy, built-to-last contraptions. We may be naturally curious, always interested in acquiring new knowledge that may help us survive, but we are emphatically not open for new models of the world, whole new ways of seeing it.

The prospect of “a whole new world” disturbs our brains for all sorts of evolutionary reasons; among them not wanting to ditch worldviews that have kept us alive for so long the first time a new idea pops up, and the base survival instinct to remain a part of a tribe and not risk rejection (going round telling everyone they are wrong not being an endearing trait).

Recently the neuroscientist Dr Chantel Prat wrote candidly about her surprise in discovering that she was measurably more sexist than her husband (subconsciously at least).

She discovered this when they both took something called the Harvard Implicit Association Test which shows how instinctively your brain prefers one way or another of thinking about gender, race and other markers. Consciously, outwardly, she is a feminist; but culture and norms have had their way with her subconscious and, for example, she might associate traditionally male domains like the workplace with men than women.

Being a neuroscientist, and not one to accept her cognitive biases as fate, Dr Prat has three steps she intends to take to change her mind. If you want to follow her lead, here’s a brief guide (though I urge you to read her brilliant Substack article on the subject, and for that matter her book The Neuroscience of You, which we have mentioned several times before).

One: Be careful what you put in your brain.

You are what you doom-scroll. So maybe don’t, or at least put a limit on how much you are indiscriminately shovelling into your attention.

If you’re letting an algorithm do the choosing for you too much, then you’re not in control at all of what you’re seeing. I was reminded of this when I watched a YouTube short about a sitcom writer talking about being cancelled by UK comedians. The YouTube Shorts algo doesn’t know me very well, because when it saw me watching this culture-war hot button video immediately it followed up with a video where a white male podcaster was trying to trick a “woke black woman” (as his video’s caption had it), into saying things he could quote out of caption. If you’re interested in a cancelled gender critical comedy writer, you’ll probably enjoy posh racists content too, is effectively what the algorithm is saying.

I know that radicalisation by YouTube isn’t news, but it’s still shocking when it tries the trick on you. I have spoken to elderly people who have been pulled into weird anti-BBC and vaccination ideas with the same drip-drip of slightly-madder-than-you-just-watched content, so don’t think that this is just a scourge of the impressionable young.

Two: Don’t trust your gut.

The subconscious doesn’t speak. It sends us vibes, feelings, and dreams. When we don’t want to do something, we should think critically about our own subconscious reaction. Challenging it may be key to opening new possibilities.

Dr Prat says:

…we need to understand that our brains have two systems for navigating decision-making spaces: the subconscious-sense-making systems we’ve been discussing, and our conscious, value-driven belief systems which allow the frontal lobes to override our more automatic operating systems. [….] When your instinct or gut feeling push you toward or away from an option, you might ask “What about my previous experiences is shaping that feeling?” before choosing whether or not to follow it.

Constantly indulging the subconscious’s aversions, if they aren’t appropriate or helpful, just strengthens doubts into fears and fears into phobias.

Three: Get comfortable with being wrong.

We hate being wrong. It’s embarrassing and feels rubbish. Why?

Our brain’s definition of success is built, in large part, on its ability to predict the future. It works tirelessly to prune a set of nearly infinite possibilities down to short lists of things that are most likely to happen based on our personal history, and to push us in the direction of choices that have worked for us before. But if we want to change the world, and our place in it, we’re going to have to break away from the ease of the old operating system and try something new.

So we like lists, do we? And we like thinking we know what is about to happen. That must be why all the predictions decks come out in the run-up to Christmas.

Changing the mind of a team

One further build on this idea of changing a mind…

Changing your mind isn’t something that happens on a whim, not with really big changes. Understanding how hard it is could also help us have empathy with others and appreciate how long change in a team can take. As I’ve discussed in Antonym in previously, one of the most common things we hear when helping teams work with AI is someone, often a leader, saying “I don’t understand why everyone isn’t using it!"

Cultures are collections of individuals’ ways of doing things. A mass of complex people with mindset, frames-of-reference and habits that even with the best will and most exciting, inspiring training programmes are not going to change overnight.

“Why aren’t people using it?”, exasperated AI boosters ask.

It’s as if people should be able to articulate why they aren’t rushing to adopt a weird technology that seems to talk like a human but (probably) isn’t thinking. A new kind of computing system that can do some things better than you but then appears not to know what day it is or be able to count the letters in “strawberry”. Something that – they keep hearing – is about to turn the world they know on its head and change all the rules that they had maybe just got the hang of and were hoping they might get a promotion by following.

Puzzled by why anyone would not rush to start embracing AI? Try a little empathy.

Marketing masterclass from a Christmas tree delivery man

For a copy editor, teach or basically literate person seeing “its” and “it’s” and “your” or “you’re” mixed up is torture.

The professional marketer’s version of this twitch is when you see someone selling features when they should be showing benefits.

So I was delighted by an example of perfect promotion that came through my letterbox this week. I have literally been showing clients and colleagues as a rare example of selling done well.

It’s a masterclass:

There’s a lot going on here, but it’s all good. The BENEFITS are writ large: time, fuel, hassle, and sanity will be saved by having Ben GC come round with your Christmas tree.

Rival Christmas tree seller leaflets tend to lead on the “sustainable”, “ethical” and “locally sourced” nature of their trees, the rate at which they will drop needles or not. Ben GC has all this table-stakes information in the fine print, out of the way, because they are features and people only need those once their attention has been captured and they have decided to buy.

Other marketing excellence exemplified:

• Simple pricing. Delivery included. No snag in the decision-making.

• Product options. Five - all size based. Which one shall we have?

• Branding. We aren’t that interested in the brand for our service, but with a picture and a couple of bits of copy Ben GC shows us that he seems like a nice chap and has been doing this a few years.

• Call to action. You got your QR code, website and WhatsApp/mobile taking up a reasonable amount of space. It is going to be easy to get this done.

I’m literally going to order one now.

Here’s the fun game of the week: asking your AI what it knows about you.

“Hey, ChatGPT – what do you know about me?”

This week, a colleague asked ChatGPT to write their job description based on what it knows about them. It was spot on. I tried it too. Yep. Excellent.

Really blummin’ useful, and a bit weird. If you have ChatGPT on a paid plan it is getting better and better at knowing who you are and what you need from it.

Some people on socials are asking it to draw a picture of where they are.

I’m game:

That’s not bad. Not accurate, but a nice caricature.

This is like a dream Brighton – it doesn’t exist in this layout but it does feel like Brighton. I can see the sea from my house, but it is two miles away whereas my house seems to have nice view of Madeira Drive. The Royal Pavilion has been relocated to the cliff, which is nice. I do have two desks in my study and lots of books, and pens and computers and some historical photos (a friend bought me a portrait of Ulysses S Grant which I particularly love) and there’s also a portrait of Thomas Cromwell somewhere in the mix.

Recommendations

Bird (Cinemas, MUBI 23.Dec.24)

I loved this film and have been thinking about for all of the three weeks since I saw it, helped perhaps by the amazing soundtrack which features “Dad music”, Drill and a lot of the fantastic Fontaines DC (listen on Spotify, caveat Cotton Eye Joe you can skip, if you like).

Say Nothing (Disney+)

There was a time when American money made stories about the Troubles that were simplistic good guys (Catholics) vs. bad guys (Brits, Protestants). This is a story has much more nuance and ambiguity. The shabby reality of sometime heroes reared on myths that grow old and have to face the consequences of their actions, and the naivety of the myths they were raised on.

The centre of the story of the Price sisters, Dolours and Marian, who join the IRA in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, who go from daring bank robberies to drivers ferrying condemned people to their executions south of the border.

Each episode ends with a reminder that Gerry Adams denies he was a member of the IRA and had nothing to do with the disappearance of a single mother of ten children from her council flat. We’re too jaded these days to be shocked that a Nobel Peace Prize Winner might also be a war criminal – sometimes that’s the point.

It’s a difficult watch at times, as it should be, given the horrific things it deals with. It is a story written by and directed by women that doesn’t flinch from looking at the crimes, compromises and uncertainties of a bloody war.

The Mirror and the Light (BBC iPlayer)

Thomas. Crum. Cremuel. Haunted by the past with the future closing in on him,

The discontinuities of different actors in roles takes something away from the production, but there’s so much genius in the text, acting and production of The Mirror and the Light that I want to applaud as the titles go up at the end of each episode.

The Decameron

A nutso farce set in plague-era Tuscany that is frequently hilarious. Worth watching an episode for the title sequence alone. Or just watch it here:

That’s all for this week, folks…

Thank you for reading and please click the 🤍 below as you leave.

Antony