Dr. Peterson’s extensive catalog is available now on DailyWire+:
Dr Jordan B Peterson and Temple Grandin discuss the pros and cons of visual and verbal thinking, as well as categorization, animal welfare, targeted activism, and the importance of hands-on learning opportunities.
Temple Grandin is a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. Facilities she has designed for handling livestock are used by companies all around the world. Her work has also been instrumental in implementing animal welfare auditing programs, now used by McDonalds, Wendy’s, Whole Foods, and many other major corporations. Temple has appeared on numerous shows across platforms, such as 20/20, Larry King Live, and Prime Time. Grandin is an accomplished author, with books such as Thinking in Pictures, Livestock Handling and Transport, and The Autistic Brain. A few of her other publications, Animals in Translation, as well as Visual Thinking, have even made it to the New York Times Bestseller List. In 2017, Grandin was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and in 2022 she was honored once again as a Colorado State Distinguished Professor.
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– Chapters –
(0:00) Coming up
(1:00) Intro
(3:00) Visual thinking and categorization
(6:32) Thinking in words, comparative invention
(8:50) Associative thinking, dreams
(12:00) Thought process
(13:00) Autism, things out of place
(16:40) Skill loss, screened out
(20:00) Two types of visual thinking
(24:50) Skillsets geared toward visual thinkers
(26:00) Grandin demonstrates associative thinking
(28:15) Dreams and association webs
(30:50) Cohen, shop taken out of schools
(33:45) Virtualization, exposure learning
(36:30) Removed from the practical
(38:00) Citations, proof
(41:30) Recommendations for visual thinkers
(46:23) Working in tandem
(47:50) Broad and pointed design
(55:40) Gap between the practical and abstract
(59:30) Competition, neuro diversity
(1:02:00) Privileging of the semantic
(1:04:00) Vintage textbooks, object visualization
(1:07:00) Mechanics are not being replenished
(1:08:30) Fragility of our power grid
(1:10:40) Behavior of cows, follow the leader
(1:16:45) Stopping cattle, novel attractors
(1:18:50) Voluntary exposure
(1:23:55) Humane slaughter, distress
(1:27:00) How the plants work
(1:28:20) Grandin on her early career
(1:33:35) Animal welfare, targeted activism
(1:36:40) Why cattle?
(1:38:34) Facing fear and backdoors
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So the Hebrews created history as we Know it Don't get away with anything and so you Might think you can bend the fabric of Reality and that you can treat people Instrumentally and that you can bow to The Tyrant and violate your conscience Without cost you will pay the piper it's Going to call you out of that slavery Into Freedom even if that pulls you into The desert And we're going to see that there's Something else going on here that is far More Cosmic and deeper than what you can Imagine the highest ethical Spirit to Which we're beholden is presented Precisely as that spirit that allies Itself with the cause of Freedom against Tyranny I want villains to get punished But do you want the villains to learn Before they have to pay the ultimate Price that's such a Christian question One of the reasons why I started working On the equipment is like the white Cattle were being handled was horrible You know electric prods on 100 I'm Falling down crashing into things people Screaming at them Uh cattle handling in the 80s was Terrible absolutely terrible and I I saw That as a something I could fix now I Talked to a lot of young people today That want to you know do activism about Some specific thing and it's way too
Broad I want Justice in the world for Example right yes yes it might be Something they would say yes yes and I Say why don't you do something more Targeted like using DNA to show that This prisoner was falsely accused you See now that's something a lot more Targeted that you can actually do yes Absolutely and I think that is a huge Problem with the way that kids are Trained morally in universities is that That grandiose vague activism replaces The actual practicalities of problem Solving that you're describing that Actually make a difference Thank you Hello everyone I'm usually excited to Have whoever I'm talking to Uh that day on my show because I pick People I'm excited about talking to but I'm particularly excited about my guest Today Dr Temple Grandin Temple Grandin Revolution revolutionized the animal Handling industry over the last 40 years And has done more for animal welfare in A practical sense than anybody that I Know of and perhaps anybody on the Planet I think you could make a case for That she's a remarkable person I saw her First in Tucson Arizona I'll talk about That a little bit in our interview she Gave one of the most compelling Presentations I'd ever seen in an Academic setting at a conference on
Consciousness and saw that about 15 Years ago and ever since then I I really Been wanting to meet her and I got to do That today so that's so exciting so I'll Just give you a brief bio and we'll pop Into the interview Dr Temple Grandin is A professor of animal Sciences At Colorado State University facilities She has designed for handling livestock Are used by companies all around the World her work has been instrumental in Implementing Animal Welfare auditing Programs now used by McDonald's Wendy's Whole Foods and many other major Corporations It's appeared on numerous shows across Platforms such as 2020 Larry King live And prime time Dr Grandin is also an accomplished Author with books such as thinking in Pictures livestock handling and Transport and the autistic brain A few of our other Publications animals In Translation as well as visual Thinking have even made it to the New York Times bestseller list in 2017 Dr Grandin was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and in 2022 she was Honored once again as a Colorado State Distinguished professor We're going to walk through her book Today and uh We're gonna we're gonna learn what she Has to say now about thinking
Let's start with visual thinking and Language so do you want to tell people About your realization about about Different thought patterns when I was in My 20s I thought everybody thought in Pictures the way I thought I didn't know that other people thought In words until I was in my late 30s now You've already mentioned how do I Categorize Well I'll explain as a child how I Learned to categorize categorizing with Individual pictures so I was a very Young child I categorized cats dogs and Horses by size because in our Neighborhood at that time there were no Cattle and there were no small dogs Then a dachshund came into my Neighborhood And she's the same size as a cat And I remember looking at the Dachshund She was a black Dachshund and trying to Figure out now what features does she Share with the dog she barks Her nose shape is the same as a dog and She smells like a dog So I had to take other sensory-based Things like smell and what the dog Sounded like to put the dachshund in the Dog Category so the way I form categories is I have to have a bunch of information Let's take the cat category Um and you look at a leopard's face a
Lion's face and even a house cat's face There's similarities Um They and they also smell all the same Too Uh if you go to the zoo you can smell How they are different so the first step For abstract thinking is put making Categories So when I finally figured out that other People did not think in pictures Uh if I ask most people visualize your Own home your dog or your car you will Do it because you're so familiar with That but one time in an autism Conference when I was in my late 30s I Asked a speech therapist think about a Church steeple and I was shocked that All the only image you saw was a very Vague two lines like this where I see Specific churches they come up like a Series of well back then 35 millimeter Slides now if you PowerPoint slides and Then I can start as I see more and more Of these churches I can put them into New England type category Stone Cathedral type looks like a warehouse And it has a little plastic steeple type I'm I can make finer categories as I get More and more specific images it's Bottom-up thinking and I learned that That's exactly how an artificial Intelligence program diagnosis melanoma Cancer
It's given a training set of two Thousand melanomas and another training Set of every kind of skin rash and Mosquito bite and infected whatever Um and then it learns to categorize Melanoma from non-melanoma And uh that was very insightful to me When I learned that that's how a simple Type of artificial intelligence programs Work Diagnosing something like melanoma So let me ask you when I'm thinking Something through now I can think in Pictures and if I'm building something Or trying to design something to build Then I tend to think in pictures but I would say 90 of the time my proclivity Is to think in words and I would say in Part that's because The my word thinking is so dominant it Just suppresses the image thinking and So a lot of my thinking I would also say Takes the form of something like Internal argumentation So I'll ask myself a question I'll think up an answer in words and Then I'll think up a bunch of reasons Why that answer isn't sufficient and Then I'll conduct an internal argument And that's occupying me Continually like 16 hours a day non-stop And it's been like that ever since I was Two years old except for those times Let's say so yeah so so how how do you
Do you conduct internal arguments or Like what what accounts for the So part of the creativity in my thinking Is the outcome of these arguments but You're thinking in pictures so you're Not having internal arguments now what's The stream of your thought like well and When it comes to things like designing Equipment I often will uh kind of uh a Lot of equipment design someone gets an Idea from something else and one of my Other books I wrote about the inventor Of velcro and he saw how Burdock stuck On his clothes Uh you know cockle Burrs on those kind Of things stuck on his clothes and That's where he got the idea for making Velcro that would be visual thinking They burdocks and velcro they've got Similarities on how they stick together In designing equipment I can just see How it operates I worked with welders That had 20 patents each that barely Graduated from high school But they could build any kind of a Machine and invent industrial Machinery They just see it in their head Right now will you see okay so I read Nikolai Tesla's bar uh biography a long While back and it was extremely Interesting and he claimed and I have no Reason to disbelieve him that Entire Um inventions machines would pop into
The theater of his imagination Detailed out to the point where he knew The angles on the screws that held the Metal together and he would try to write Them down in in something approx draw Them out in a something approximating Something that would be you know that You could make a blueprint out of let's Say in that much detail and sometimes a New invention would pop into his head so Quickly that it would obliterate the Previous one he had to work very quickly To keep up and so so there's that Incredible fluency in visualization but Then in as I said in in the verbal World I'll think of a argument and counter Arguments when you're thinking of Industrial design do you think of Um the object that you're attempting to Design and then multiple variants of it And test them against each other or does It just come to you as a solution for a Given problem it almost sort of just Pops into my head I also see mechanical Abnormalities I remember walking in and Someone made a cardboard old-fashioned Locomotive you know the wheels have Those links between them and I go that's That they drew that wrong Wheels are not going to turn Me on it was just a cartoon train for a Party But I immediately noticed that they Didn't draw it right the other thing is
Is is is my thinking associative Uh all right give me a key word pretend I'm Google for images not something not Something I can see in here with books And papers all around Um and photography equipment and stuff All around me but something kind of a Creative key word and I'll tell you how I access my memory for that keyword Start the new year off right with Black Rifle coffee Black Rifle has all the best Brewing Gear thermoses mugs and apparel designed For folks who love country and coffee Black Rifle sources the most exotic Roast from around the globe All coffee is roasted here in the U.S by Veteran-led teams of coffee experts Every purchase you make with Black Rifle Helps support veteran and first Responder causes go to Blackriflecoffee.com and use promo code Jordan for 10 off coffee Coffee Gear and Apparel or join the Black Rifle coffee Club for automatic deliveries to your Door on your schedule Save 10 with promo code Jordan that's Black riflecoffee.com promo code Jordan Black Rifle coffee supporting veterans And America's coffee So and with regards so my wife has a Very uh powerful visual imagination She's able to do all sorts of uh Remarkable things with it and one of the
Things that strikes me as highly Probable is that her capacity for visual Imagery is a lot more intense than mine Yes and so like I I was a fairly Vivid Dreamer for years especially when I was Reading Carl Jung's work in in graduate School don't seem to dream much now or Not well I don't remember them much now When I do think in pictures it's not as Vivid as seeing the real world it's Maybe five percent of that it's it's Sort of it's it's Well it just doesn't have that intensity Um what and you and you I know it's very Very Vivid and um and while I was um While you were setting up all the camera Equipment here I found on here's a whole Bunch of papers more papers I found Online supporting the a lot of the Things that are in the book I just got Surfing around and uh boy you can Sometimes find some great stuff when you Look at the citations no but it's very Very Vivid I don't know if it's completely big of It now when you mention the word Imagination I remember going to a long time ago Disney World a kind of a ride that had Imagination with people and derigibles And things like that you know then I Visited a studio where they um where Disney made a whole bunch of their stuff I'm now seeing that yes I'm now seeing a
Non-disclosure agreement so I can't tell You what I did there And uh right uh but I now I'm seeing a Very interesting discussion we had about Designing things Where where you're designing things There's the decoration part of it and Then there's then there's the mechanical Part of of a machine of course at an Amusement park you want to have Decorations but you also the rides have To mechanically work They're kind of two separate things They're kind of done by two separate Departments you you also spoke in your Book about Your ability to see things out of place And so one of the things that Characterizes autism Is the fact that at least some autistic People are not very happy When they walk into a room say that They're familiar with and one thing is Out of place so for example an autistic Child might walk into a dining room and One of the chairs is you know tilted 45 Degrees to the right or to the left Instead of being put straight in and What seems to happen correct me if if You feel that I'm wrong is that The fact that that chair is now Askew Means that the entire room is different In some important and emotionally Significant way so there's this in
Response to anomaly I don't have that Issue that's not an issue for me but um If there's one pixel off on an Electronic sign I will notice that I remember one time walking into the Airport with somebody else and the United ticket counter sign was a whole Row of Television monitors And there must have been 20 TV monitors Making the word United over and over Again and one of the screens was Scrambled the whole screen and I Immediately saw it and I said to the Person beside me did you see that that Sign was messed up No they did not see it and they were Right beside me when we walked in I immediately saw it now that it upset Me no I just noticed that the sign was Scrambled right but it didn't upset you No so yeah so so so that's that Interesting So for me I I think I can detect Anomalies Visually so for example one of the Things I learned to do when I was Setting up my house and renovating Places and setting up my offices like Arranging my local environment was to Sit in the room and become meditative in Some sense and then to feel out What was bothering me about the room Like what ugly feature might pop out What what part of it needed to be
Attended to right and and I think I was Tuning myself to detect what was Abnormal in relationship to the Underlying aesthetic or the pattern of The room But that pops out for you almost Instantaneously when when I for me Anomaly detection is mostly verbal again Is like all think up an argument and Then think up counter arguments and if One argument and the other don't Jive if They're contradictory then that pops out For me Well it's sort of like I fly all the Time to like I know when the pilots do The checklist and like we push back and We just take too long to turn I'm going uh oh we're gonna have it air Traffic controls away And I can often predict that before they Announce it And I also can I'm very conscious of um Uh on the biggest airplane when they Start the little gentle push to push it Back from the gate I can feel it on the Biggest aircraft there is Right and I and all right so now I I Just want to get over here and I'm going Oh please push back I'm But it's sort of like I don't get upset About it it's just um anything that's Not routine I instantly notice it and I Go oh crap I see a vest that says Tech Ops
We may have a delayed flight Now that brings up another thing I want To talk about in the last month I've had Okay mechanic come on a plane not twice And both mechanics had gray hair and This brings up a major issue that's in My book about skill loss especially Skill loss with mechanical things I've Been on a lot of questionable elevators And escalators lately that definitely Needed Servicing And what's happening and this is in my Screened out chapter is the kids are Getting screened out Of these trades because they've taken The shop classes out of the schools 20 Years ago and we have so many higher Math requirements that you don't need For something like fixing elevators That the kids are playing video games in The basement on an Autism diagnosis Instead of fixing elevators there's a Relationship here between what goes on With industrial things and what's going On at school which is a major major Thing that I'm interested in talking About Yeah so let's talk about that a little Bit it's it that's one of the things That popped out for me from your book so I was trying to think think that through So you make the claim as you just laid Out that Our education system and maybe our
Entire culture as it's hypothetically De-industrializing is actually working Against the best interests of those who Think mechanically those who think in Pictures and those who can do Hands-On Work and here's a paper I just dug off Of Google Scholar on visual Objectability a new dimension of Nonverbal intelligence and what a lot of Educators don't understand is that Object visualization Especially on solving mechanical Problems it is a different way of Thinking I've worked with people that Barely graduated from high school Stutterers they'd be labeled autistic Today they've been special ed But they had big metal working shops and 20 patents each for mechanically Complicated equipment that they are Selling around the world and this is Something that Educators just don't get It The reason why I wrote this book I'll Tell you what was the reason in 2019 Just before coven shut everything down I Went to four places and I realized the Magnitude of the skill loss Uh the first one was a pork processing Plant Where most of the equipment came from Holland I went to another pork processing plant Equipment coming from Holland then I
Went to a poultry processing plant where All of the specialized equipment came From Holland 100 shipping containers and Then I went to the Steve Jobs theater And the structural glass walls are from Italy and Germany then after reading More stuff I found out that the State-of-the-art electronic chip making Machine comes from Holland And that goes back to their educational System they don't stick their nose up at The high-end skilled trades and look at It sort of like a lesser form of Intelligence when the kids get to about Ninth grade they can go University route Or they can go Tech route and I want to emphasize High-end skilled trades where you're Really using that visual thinking for Mechanical devices So I was trying to think through why This might be happening so let me offer Some hypotheses to you and you tell me What you think about this so first of All we have learned and you you draw on Simon Baron Cohen where Cohen's work in Your book we have learned that there is A difference and and we can try to map This on to verbal thinking versus uh Imagistic thinking Simon Baron Cohen Talked about Systemizing versus empathizing and and He considers that something akin to the Continuum between autistic thinking and
Normal thinking so the autistic types Um are more systematizing and my Suspicions are they're also the ones who Are more likely to think in images in The manner that you describe wait a Minute Of thinking in images And there's a nice paper that just came Out relatively recently seeing and Thinking in pictures the review of Visual information processing uh that Came out 2018 I like to keep my stuff up To date now I think in photorealistic Picture Where the more mathematical type of Thinking thinks in patterns see in your Brain you've got circuits for what is Something okay so I see a dog and I go Yeah that's a dog or I've got a I've got Some China ceramic cattle on my coffee Table here okay and I just look at the Animals and name them Then the visual spatial is where is Something where are you located in space There are actually two different kinds Of visualization and I have a whole Chapter in visual thinking book about This and research to um back this up I've now the visual spatial type pattern Thinking or sort of where is something In space those kids do well in math so They're going to stem right but let me Tell you what's going on out in the food Processing plants
The people I worked with in the big Steel shops now that a lot of us closed Down we are paying the price now for Taking out those shop classes on Designed mechanically clever equipment People I worked with in me we never Worked on boilers of refrigeration we Don't understand that stuff that Requires a lot more mathematical Thinking or the load on the roof so the Factory doesn't fall down if we get two Feet of snow you see that I have seen This division of engineering labor in Every single Meat Company I have worked With they're all the same so do you do You think do you think that's a matter Of uh like let's say something Approximating focal depth so is it Possible that the the first kind of People that you talked about are deta Are dealing at the at the object level Itself so they're dealing say with a Boiler or with a particular piece of Equipment whereas the other types are Dealing with the relationship between Equipment no you don't think that's it No I think it's just real simple it's um You just see the objects and then after You work you see an object visualizer Gets better and better at designing Mechanical equipment the more things you Go out and see like when I started Working my designing cattle handling Facilities I went to every feed yard in
Arizona and I worked cattle and I go This kind of a design doesn't work this Worked so then I took all the good bits And like recombine them it's bottom up Thinking the more stuff I get exposed to Okay whether it's cattle handling Facility or maybe I'll look at how water Flows through something and then you Watch how cattle move I'd like to look At Drone footage and a lot of that Um resembles water flow and the and the Visual spatial Um they they see patterns it's actually Very different and what we're losing is The object visualizer Um that person that can just you see I'm Very aware of things like I go in an Elevator now that hasn't been serviced And it's scraping in the shaft you Better believe it right right I hear it And I go they haven't serviced that Elevator and I was at a fancy hotel Recently and um uh the bellhop goes oh It skips that floor we have to get that Floor on the way down Yeah real nice hotel major city Right right okay so let me I don't quite Understand that distinction yet so I'm Going to I'm going to press a little bit More on that so on the on the on the Visual side you have the visual spatial Types uh if I if I'm remembering this Correctly and that's the category that You fall into and then you have people
Who are what are they higher up on the Abstraction chain in some sense the ones Who can think more mathematically no but Basically object visualizers I can tell You this from experience we're good at Mechanical Devices aren't photography I Have talked to many many photographers Because I do a lot of interviews find Out they're dyslexic they're about Flunked out of school and fortunately Somebody introduced them to photography And the other thing that my kind of Mind's good at is animals then you're Visual spatial Mathematics Algebra I Can't do Algebra there's nothing there To visualize mathematics calculus I took A computer programming uh course when I Was in college I couldn't do it I had to Drop it I was exposed to the same exact Computer that Bill Gates had and he Could do it and I had to drop the class You know they uh these are the things That the more mathematical pattern Thinking mind is good at And and some of these really smart kids They can just look at algebra formulas And just see it they don't have to do it Step by step they just and that's how They think and then the teachers try to Make them do it step by step that gets The kids frustrated you know they don't Think the same way right and right and My thinking is also associative I tend To jump around but there's a logic to
Well the association and I think the Best way to illustrate that associative Kind of thinking is give me a single Keyword like on Google for images and Think up a creative keyword and I will Tell you exactly how my mind Associates Associates and how my mind can get off The subject but there is a logic to the Getting off of the subject So give me a keyword a single keyword Okay how about Rose Okay I'm seeing some rose bushes that we Had in our backyard when I was a child And uh we had a lot of thorns on them And we also like to dig around in the Grass that was back there so now I'm Seeing the grass uh behind our house When we used to go play in it and catch Some insects sometimes okay now you can See how it's jumping around I don't have That big a visual I don't have that big A visual library of roses so then how About cows I tend to then go to Something else How about cows what Cows all right now I'm seeing like um 10 cow statues right here in front of me And so obviously those are coming up in My mind uh just recently I tend to bring Up recent memories I visited with a with A Black Angus bull it was a pet and he Wasn't very happy with us because we Didn't bring him any carrots so my Friend gave him one of those disgusting
Soy protein bars and he goes I'm not Gonna eat that I wouldn't eat it no Matter must have tried to feed it to him And he was annoyed because we didn't Bring him any carrots uh Okay then I'm get uh now I'm on the now I've got the carrot word in my head and When I was in fourth grade I used my Singer so handy to sew green crepe paper So students could be carrots and I made The green Carrot Tops out of green crepe Paper So that's how I got interesting so okay Carrot so talking to you talking to you That way reminds me very much of what Used to happen in my therapy sessions When I was helping people interpret Their dreams and so dreams have the same Quality of thought that your thought had When you just put it on display there so Because the the dream tends to be an Intermingling so imagine there's a Center category and the nature of the Category is somewhat unclear maybe That's partly what the dream is trying To puzzle out but what you get is a web Of the associations some of which are Autobiographical that are sort of Circulating around a main theme and Partly what you do when you analyze the Dream is you you walk through all the Associated images you also ask the Person to let their mind loose to Generate more associations and then you
Try to use the associational web to Triangulate on the central theme and and To haul out the gist and the gist of That array of images would be something Like the interpretation of the dream if You get it right then it snaps into People they think oh yes that's Definitely what that was about but the Dream is attempting to put something Together you know that that has a Central character or sensory things Because You know I have to have some balance Issues So I often get dreams where I'm like Riding a bike down a hill that's super Steep like that and I wish I wasn't Doing that and I know that that has to Do with the fact that I have balance Issues I don't think it means anything But I'm always up on some high place That I wish I wasn't up on and I've got To try to walk down it And then I have other dreams where I can See it might have some meaning And other times where it doesn't The other thing with my thinking when I'm working on design work I can control The associations I can control them I've had before on You know there's now 3D simulations okay Let's say the company that's building us This plant wants to show off how the Equipment Works they can do a 3D
Simulation showing how the equipment Works and I can remember sitting in a Conference room we're trying to discuss How to do some conveyors and uh and and The other guys there are coming up with Ideas for the conveyors I'm going no no If you do that you're going to yank the Rails out of the ceiling oh no no no That won't work they were almost using My mind like a 3D CAD program That was animated and I could test test Run in my head on these different Conveyors Men is it time to stop mindless Scrolling time to finally gain that Higher quality of life you know you're Missing out on if this sounds familiar Then on January 9th join thousands of Men all over the world to embark on a 90-day journey together in search of a Better life it's called Exodus 90 and it Was built to help men enjoy the freedom Of becoming who they were truly made to Be Exodus 90 guides you in removing the Attachments that are holding you back From a better life and it actually works Independent research shows that Exodus 90 men report considerable shifts after The first 90 days including stronger Satisfaction rates in their marriages More meaningful prayer lives and Dramatic decreases in time spent on Their phones For the past seven years Exodus has
Helped more than 60 thousand men build a Road map for living with virtue in a Culture that offers far too many paths To self-destruction Is it time for your Exodus we start January 9th find resources to prepare For Exodus at exodus90.com Jordan that's Exodus90.com Jordan So so let's go back to to the issue of Of say taking shop class out of school So Baron Cohen talked about Systematizers versus empathizers now What Baron Collins yeah who had the Object visualizers He was looking more at the mathematical Visualization pattern thinkers I agree With them about systematizing and and And verbal but he the um object Visualize but he didn't differentiate he Didn't differentiate the systematizers Properly that should be more yeah he Didn't system monetize us would have two Categories the object visualizer and the Visual spatial and a big mistake in a Lot of perceptual studies is that They're not differentiating them and Some people Um there's some verbal people in Psychology that don't want to believe This stuff exists just while you were Setting up the cameras I downloaded Six new abstracts that aren't even in my Book on this That show that they are different
Right we've got them right here on my Lap So so Cohen also talks about gender Differences in relationship to this Continuous so we can break the continue Into two parts on the one end and it is The case that autism tends to be Preferentially a male yes disorder right Although there are females as well but So that systematizing mode of thinking That you've differentiated into the two Categories also tends to be gender Stereotype to some degree I avoid that Issue commercial because right now I um I'm interested in one thing at the age Of 75 of helping the students who think Differently get into really good careers Where they can have satisfying lives And I avoid the controversial stuff Yeah well I'm I'm not so much interested In the controversy I'm interested in Trying to address the issue of why shop Courses for example have been taken out Of schools now we do know that the the Like schools are predominantly run by Women and women are more likely to be Empathized no I think they're less like I think the reason why so I'm wondering If there's a gender issue going on that And the prejudice against a certain way Of thinking okay what's that I think That Um one of the reason they took out the Shop classes they kind of just go Well
Everybody's going to go the university Route And costs great good shop classes cost a Lot of money now people are starting to Put shop classes back in and you know What they're finding they can't find Anybody to teach the shop classes I just Heard about a brand new beautiful Welding shop built here in Colorado at a Community college and they can't find Somebody to teach it even after they Drop the university requirement and I Can tell you right now we need people That do these things before the power Grid and the Water Systems fall apart I'll tell you that stuff I care right Right right yeah well it's a okay so so You well virtualize eight now do you Think virtualization has also played a Role in this I mean the system types Some of the 3D drawings I see a draw And that's not gonna fix some of the Serious problems we got with Infrastructure right now and you need Both kinds of thinkers like one of the Things I've got in my book is um where a Bridge fell down in Minneapolis And the workers were complaining they Were worried that when they were working On the spreads it was going to collapse Well I looked up that bridge collapse And I saw all the Twisted Metal and I Had I look took one look at that and I Went it's too light it's too cheap
That was just from looking at the Pictures then I found the engineering Report on why that bridge fell down and They cheated on the gusset plates that Hold the the beams together and they Were way thinner than the spec But I had already looked at the pictures And said that bridge is too light it's Cheap Before I read any engineering report So how was it in your life that you Attained the Practical knowledge Necessary to facilitate your thinking so We're talking about how you gotta you Got outside in the vision I'll tell you How you do it it's real simple you got To get out and experience all kinds of Stuff because the more information you Put in the database the better you get And going back to teaching a computer How to diagnose melanoma I had to give It like a couple of thousand melanoma Examples and a couple of thousand Mosquito bites infected boils and Everything else examples in other words The more as I got older and I got more And more information in my database I Could think better and better and better And I could make smaller categories of Things now a lot of the people that I Worked with in construction that build Equipment for me that's used in every Large beef plant now in the U.S Some one of them started and they some
Of them would definitely be autistic uh One of them started out working on cars Another one took a single welding class And now he's selling mechanical Equipment all over the world Started with a tiny shop that then grew Into a big shop and what's happening now Is Is the little shops are not forming And that's why we're importing all this Equipment from Holland and Italy Because when you look at their Educational system and I looked it up Again recently online In Italy actually has three routes University route Tech route mechanical And art route You know like for their fashion industry And the Holland and Netherlands you can Go either University route or Tech route And that's why they're making the State-of-the-art chip making machine That we don't make Chips Right I wonder if this is also a Consequence of people increasingly Moving away from farms you know because When you're on a farm you'd have to do a Lot of Hands-On stuff you have to do a Lot of fence repair you got to take care Of your own machinery and you know as You move into the urban environment Everything in some sense even in the Real world is virtualized because you
Can always call on other people to do The day-to-day things that you need to Keep the infrastructure I agree a lot a Lot of um you know kids are growing up Today totally removed from the Practical And one of the things I talk about in The visual thinking book is Um uh uh talked to a doctor and he told Me he had trouble training interns to Sew up Cuts because the interns had Never used scissors as a young child I had a student in my class that had Never used a tape measure to measure Anything And they're totally removed from the World the practical Where those kids that came off the Farms Yes they had to figure out how to fix Things absolutely But I think what's happening now in the Schools is things are getting so verbal And that's going absolutely crazy on Math requirements Because I know people with 20 patents And they could basically do sixth grade Uh arithmetic that I could do because I Can relate that back to real things and Things like dude Do you know of any research pertaining On how the more the people who who Visualize objects might be assessed for Their ability yeah There's a whole chapter in here uh That's and I've never pronounce their
Names right blank and colva and I never Can say the names correctly but I have a Whole list of references in there where The difference between the object Visualizer and the visual spatial is Being assessed and there's a whole bunch Of references on that now I have to look These names up because I can't uh I Can't pronounce them correctly uh Let me find a reference list here for Chapter two Okay it's um blaz henkova I've got one Two three references in here from Blaise Hankova on types of creativity and then The other big um reference I have lots Of references uh Would be um Cause havnikov uh if she's got Trade-offs object versus spatial Visualization reviewing the visual Verbal Dimension evidence for two types Of visualizers that's another paper Spatial versus object visualization a New characterization of visual cognitive Style that's three papers right there Cohesnikov that are in my reference list And okay and I've got a lot of References where they are actual you Know tests were done You know when I go through the citation Lists I just went in and we're working On the children's edition of the book Right now and the one of the copy Editors had a query about a reference
And I I had to look that up and then and Then I decided to just type in uh object Visualizer and visual spatial uh into Google Scholar again and find the same Old papers and then I found some Citations it's kind of a cool paper here In the journal cognition Uh it's an old paper actually visual Object ability a new dimension of Non-verbal intelligence I know from Working in factories I spent 25 years in Heavy construction and that is something That I don't think many teachers have Done that and seen how these guys think Big complicated Cargill plants ibp Plants which are now Tyson Monfort Plants and that company is now JBS Um figuring out complicated things with Equipment it's a different type of Intelligence And I think it's uh I when I worked on The book with Betsy Lerner my super Verbal co-writer who helped me organize Things and she had someone come in to Fix a bunch of stuff in her house And after we had discussed this Betsy Was telling me well I watched how he Figured out how to fix the the stones on The chimney I had never really thought About it before but she'd watched how he Did things and then she started to Understand there's a form of Intelligence there that's absolutely not Verbal when she watched a person she
Hired to fix stuff in her house Right right yeah well you can imagine Something and this did pop into my mind Visually can imagine somebody who's Trying to put together a stone chimney Has to rotate that way to make sure that They're going like a Tetris game that's A good way of thinking about it I was Thinking then again because I'm thinking In images now that we're talking I was Thinking about my young grandson he was He's only two years old he had his Legos Played lace laid out in front of him and When I was a kid I played a lot with Legos and I played a fair bit with this Meccano set that that was like a junior Engineering set and it was certainly the Case that working with Legos was Non-verbal because you're rotating Shapes in space and having them fit into One another towards some design end and That's a nice kind of Hands-On Um Hands-On learning and and exposure to Different mechanical principles and so Do you have recommendations for people Who want to help their children uh train Their their visual spatial and object Visualization abilities let's get them Out building things the big mistake I See with a lot of kids is they're super Good with Legos they don't think to Introduce tools I was using tools myself Right I was not using a saw but I was Using hammered screwdriver and pliers I
Was taught how to use it safely I've got Another book of children's projects Called calling all mines where I Describe bird kites that I spent hours With tinkering to get them to work on To agree with parachutes to get them to Open up more easily Kids aren't aren't Kids today are totally separated in the World of physical things I'm they're not getting out and Observing stuff out in nature You know this this is part of the Problem and and um I just went to a Veterinary school where the students are So far removed from practical things That to give them dexterity skills and Surgical skills they have these plastic Tote boxes and they put children's Puzzles inside them and they've got to Just reach in and by feel but these Children's puzzles together Because when they were in kindergarten They never did this Right right right yeah well my my Parents told me that when I was four my Favorite toy was a screwdriver and that I used to take all the cupboard doors Off the cupboards in the kitchens and so I was introduced to tools at a very Early age and that there's a real Practical utility in that too because Now if I visualize a project in my house Shelving or something like that or any
Or any uh construction project of any Sort well I can visualize the array of Tools that's necessary to make that come About and then I have the tools at hand And I know how to use them it's and and And and that is a well it it's also I Really find that kind of work calming And and and engrossing We'll be back in one moment first we Wanted to give you a sneak peek at Jordan's new documentary logos and Literacy I was very much struck by how the Translation of the biblical writings Jump started the development of literacy Across the entire world The pastor's home was the first school And every morning it would begin with Singing the Christian faith is a singing Religion probably 80 percent of Scripture memorization today exists only Because of what is sung Amazing here we have a Gutenberg Bible Printed on the Press of Johann gooper Science and religion are opposing forces In the world but historically that has Not been the case now the book is Available to everyone from Shakespeare To modern education and medicine and Science to to civilization itself it is The most influential book in all history And hopefully people can walk away with At least a sense of that Well the problem is is we got kids
Growing up today totally removed from The world of the Practical they don't Use tools they don't use scissors I had a student in a class who had never Used a ruler or tape measure to measure Anything ever I think that's a problem Because if you haven't done practical Things uh then you don't understand how To fix things okay like two years ago They had the horrible mess with the Power you know like a bunch of different Power stations froze Well I never heard so much abstract Gobbledygook about that because the way I would work on fixing it would be all Right let's look at each Power Station What piece of equipment actually froze I never saw anything written in the Press to described okay what Frozen this Plan what Frozen this plant because my Inclination would be to kind of rank Them on okay a turbine Hall that froze I Can build a building over it that's an Easy one you know a whole bunch of gas Wells froze that's going to be like Really difficult to fix but you see Nothing's abstract Because okay if I'm going to try to Figure out how to fix it I I don't really want to argue who owns Some I'm not interested in politics I Would just rank the power stations on Expensiveness and difficulty to
Winterize and say exactly right piece of Equipment froze and you know how I can Find out you let me loose in there away From the managers I'll find the Maintenance shop they'll show me Everything and I know enough about Equipment that they can't BS me Right so maybe part of the advantage to That more visual form of processing is Also its association with that kind of Practical particularization I mean one Of the things On the other hand I have no idea how to Balance a power grid that's a job for The mathematicians you see this is where We need to work together And and in a complementary factor in a Complementary way and I tell people in Big corporations I've done a lot of Talks for businesses your first step is That you've got to um recognize Different kinds of thinking exists And and let's let's take another example Recently I visited two really nice Dairies up in Quebec Canada that have The robotic milking machines where the Cow can go in she decides one she wants To get milk and get fed and both dairies It actually made some good mechanical Modifications on that equipment which The equipment company uh finally adopted But one of the Dairy Producers said to Me I stop at the computer stuff I don't Mess with the program
That's somebody else's job to work on The software but the mechanical parts of The device they figured out ways to Improve it Yeah it's like a it's like a hierarchy Man you can imagine a hierarchy of Generalization with the highest Resolution lowest level being the Particulars of a given machine and you Can imagine people Might specialize to operate at different Levels of the hierarchy maybe the verbal Types are operating at the highest well That's right they they are but they lose That particularization that's right That's basically right because the Verbalizer tends to over generalize one Of the papers that I reviewed in my book On visual thinking was an interesting Study where um high school students that Came live for school specializing in the Arts another school specializing in the Sciences and another one especially in The humanities which would be more Verbal on those teams of students and Their assignment was to create a new Planet So the art students heavily visualizing They made a planet with uh crystals on It another one made a skyscraper planet And then the more mathematical science Students just painted around made a Round ball and described gravity and the Atmosphere you know kind of boring
Pictures and the verbal thinkers started To write it down and then they go oh Wait a minute we're supposed to draw the Planet so they made kind of splotchy Stuff on it but the thing that was Interesting is that the Arts Minds more My kind of mind and the mathematical Minds they had big planning sessions on How to design their planet where the Verbal thinkers and they didn't do any Planning you see this is the problem the Verbal thing will get big broad Concepts Or something we need to do right but how Do you actually Implement those Concepts Yeah right there's no detail there now In food safety we have a a thing that I Really like it's called Hazard analysis Critical control points so let's say I'm Out there in a sea of of things I can do Well I can't do all that stuff see now The critical control Point let's say in Food safety in a food factory I can't Measure microbes and bacteria on Everything in that plant I have to pick out the places where I'm Most likely to have contamination That would be the critical control Points On one of our men's doorknobs Yeah that's why some places food Factories have automatic doors because That gets rid of touching the door Yeah well one of one of the things that I always found uh a relief in working
With Engineers is that they were good And I can see it in the terms that You're describing they were very good at Rank ordering practical priorities right And that that seems to be part of this Particularization so I have this company It's a software company that sells uh Personality tests and uh and writing Programs for people to help them plan Their lives and my business partners and Engineer and although he's also very Intelligent verbally he's more Intelligent non-verbally and he knows These systems right from the from the Code Upward at every level of their Machine instantiation and so the huge Advantage to that is that if anything Ever goes wrong he knows exactly what Goes wrong and he knows exactly how to Fix it it's particularized down to the Point where that makes action possible Eh and that's part of the problem with Uh with the verbal abstraction is that It makes sense conceptually but that Doesn't mean that it's detailed to the Point where it's actually implementable And then it it's like a pseudo knowledge Right because it sounds Like you've got the picture right but When you actually try to implement it You find out that that it's really a Hollow a hollow shell of Conceptualization well I kind of look at Like um this is why when I learned about
The food safety concept of Hazard Analysis critical control points or Let's just call it critical control Points so I've got a big sea of stuff Out there what's the really important Thing okay now I I only think a specific Examples so let's take Frozen Texas Power stations the critical control Point is and I want it like in two Sentences what right piece of equipment Folks And then you can very easily figure out The ones that'll be easy to winterize And I've actually talked to somebody who Installs gas Wells and it only costs Five thousand dollars to winterize a Well when you build it to retrofits a Complete mess he also said you have to Have someone who knows how to turn the Valves he said that's me right on the I Call them the guy in the pickup and that Person in that pickup truck is not Getting enough credit he knows how to Turn those valves right Yeah so if you conceptualize that Verbally you end up saying something Like a bad winter storm took out the Texas power grid and that sort of sounds Like you've said something but it's Nothing like saying well the grid is Made out of 200 different uh like Industrial assemblies each of those is Made up of a variety of parts that's Differentially susceptible to Winter all
Right well that's still gobbledygook Because first of all it wouldn't have 200 separate power stations You know it's more like 10 something Like that and and I would just listen we'll write down the Name of the station because I don't Really care who owns it and what we used To do with meat packing plants when we Were doing welfare audits is we'd always Call them by their Town names Because you're auditing that particular Plant and I said well this um Power Station had a frozen turbine Hall that's An easy one to fix Um there's a coal-fired that froze well As they freeze up the where you have a Cold bumps in that's probably from Really easy to fix and if um you know 50 Gas Wells froze up the feed of plant That's going to be a mess to fix Um But you see as I talk about these things I see it and I happen to know what some Of the equipment looks like you see that Also makes me a better troubleshooter You know if I know what stuff looks like You see this is where you've got to put Things in my database But I but I worked 25 years out in Factories on heavy construction stuff So I know what a lot of stuff looks like Right so so it means in some sense that To solve the problem is you take the
Verbal representation so the verbal Representation is a storm took out the Texas power grid and then you say well There's 10 key components to that that's Okay power grid so that differentiates That and then you say in each of the 10 Systems there are critically vulnerable Points that are specifically sensitive To cold weather we need to differentiate And find out what those key ones are Then we have to differentiate that Further you see now okay now when I First started my work there was no Google Earth Well the first thing I do probably Google Earth and street view of the Power stations And the other thing I've learned if I Want to get accurate information I don't You don't talk to the managers you got To get down in the shop And and then the shop guys have to be Not worried about getting fired That's another right right nasty issue That I'm going to have to deal with But you know let's say I get three shop Guys together and we've okay my industry Said when we get rid of all the suits You know that's going to be the banner Right the verbal thinkers they won't Talk in front of suits they're afraid They're going to lose their jobs You know and this is something I know From all the years I've worked in this
Stuff and then they'll take you out There and show you what froze And then oh there's creative things I Talked to a guy who works at a power Plant and there was this one sensor very Important electronic sensor and it'd get Cold and when it got cold he put plastic Garbage bags over it And I'm going right well I think we need To have something a little more Permanent to keep that sensor warm than Black plastic garbage bags that's what I Told them Yeah so so that that issue that the the Guys with the Hands-On knowledge have to Worry about being fired is interesting Too because it seems like so they have This extremely detailed knowledge that That's practical about how these systems Operate and what happens is if they Bring that knowledge up the abstraction Hierarchy what they're doing in some Sense is is pointing out the manner in Which their superiors they're Hypothetical well that's the problem A very big problem I've had Is um I they're they're worried about Losing their jobs yeah and and but you Really want to solve the problem they Need to be able to talk to you freely Because they're the ones who tell you Exactly what froze Right well the question is why would Their attempts to bring their practical
Reality to bear as they move information Up the information hierarchy why would That threaten people to the point where They would be intimidated in Relationship to their job I mean why is There this Gap this psychological gap Between the Practical and the abstract I Mean you'd think that the managers would Be calling on these people all the time You got to drag those suits out of the Office too just when things are working Normally And I'm So they get a better uh understanding of What the Practical people are doing now My Animal Welfare work on one of the Things where I made some of the biggest Difference in Animal Welfare work is Auditing programs I helped develop with McDonald's Wendy's and Burger King back Over 20 years ago And in this situation we were taking Vice president level managers out to the Plant And they'd have these Undercover Boss Moments just like that show I'll never Forget the day when the McDonald's vice President saw a half dead dairy cow go Into their product and he goes yeah we Got some things here we have to fix you See before it was all an abstraction Spreadsheets numbers okay Animal Welfare Give it to lawyers give it to the public Relations department but when they came
Out of the office and they saw something Bad now it was real now they had to act It was no longer abstract anymore There seems to be a kind of pride in That abstraction in some sense I mean I've also noticed that highly Intellectual people and maybe those are Ones who think primarily in words tend To be rather dismissive of the Intelligence of more practical people Like working people and that's I Come From A working class environment so Although I've hung around verbal people Most of my life so I can see that Dichotomy do you have any sense of why It is that the more abstract thinkers Are have a well they have a potential Practical because they used to say okay The kids that are like failing High School stupid kids go and Shop Well I can tell you right now right Exactly I worked big metal fabrication Companies owned by these so-called Stupid people and what they they were Inventing equipment they had 20 patents And they were very proud of their Patents and one of them made posters out Of them put them up all over his place Um it's a different kind of intelligence And and uh it's not you know there's Things they can do the verbal thinkers Can't do and what I what I'm really Interested in is we need all the Different kinds of Minds because one of
The problems with my kind of thinker Since I'm associative is the point in a Company let's say I had a metal Fabrication shop I'd have to hire a Verbal thinker just to run the business The payroll ordering materials things All of that part of it Do you think it's a competition do you Think it's a competition for status Between different forms of Neurodiversity I mean if I can claim That my intelligence is Paramount that That increases my social status in some Sense right you can imagine there's a Competition for that broadly going on in Society what I have found is when you Got the verbal thinkers out in the field Their eyes got opened That the important thing is Um you got to drag the suits out of the Office I've done a whole lot of that and let me Tell you they changed Okay I've done a lot of work on Supply Chain management And when their supply chain disasters Like a factory burning up and a clothing Industry's disgusting industry they need To clean up a lot of stuff uh Factory Burns up a hundred uh people selling Blue jeans Well the suits didn't get out of the Office and see what was going on in These factories
Until there was a disaster the one they Should have been preventing a disaster Like that Right well yeah so once you build up Hierarchical organizations it's very Easy for the people who are operating Near the top of the abstraction chain Not to pay attention to the details and Hopefully the details are working out so Well that you don't have to pay Attention to them I mean that's in some Sense the point of building a Hierarchical organization but but what You need to do obviously the manager Can't be you know doing every job out There in a plant but they need to have Enough contact with the field and I'm Going to use the field be like the Factory floor farming you know uh Water Works any of these kind of things so They they um understand the difference They can be things bad going on but I Tell business managers and I've talked To many big corporations computer Companies steel companies Um pharmaceutical companies that the First step is realizing that different Kinds of thinking exist and that they Can work together in complementary ways And you actually you need the whole team You need the whole team because we're Kind of disorganized and associational Um I'm gonna need a verbal thinker if I Got a really big business to um
You know keep the business going So what do you think what do you think Of the suppositions and you talk about Them a bit in your book that the visual Versus verbal Modes of cognition map to some degree Onto hemispheric specialization well That the right is more oriented towards Your kind the right hemisphere is more Oriented broadly speaking towards Probably speaking broadly it dominates Your mind yeah but broadly speaking That's true you know they're except They're exceptions to some of that that Stuff done the thing that I want to talk About is is right now I'm seeing too Many kids that are dyslexic autistic Um or whatever I I'm ending up playing Video games on on a disability check When they could be photographers well I Got four person crew here right now Doing this um filming And that's an interesting career or they Could be designing mechanical equipment And they never get an opportunity to do Photography art or mechanical equipment Stupid kids Right right okay so there's a Privileging of this semantic and that's Partly because it's cheaper it's easier It's detached from the world in some Sense how do you think we should Redesign Schools for say kindergarten kids and
Elementary kids in some practical way You tend to think practically what do You what do you think would be good Start Well like in the 50s when I went to School we had all kinds of craft Projects I was learning to use little Blunt scissors probably in first grade Uh I'd be putting all the Hands-On Classes back into schools and that's Going to include theater music cooking Sewing when I went to elementary school I loved art sewing and Woodworking and If I hadn't had those classes I would Have hated elementary school and I loved Sewing And I'm when I was in fourth grade I had A singer so handy a toy sewing machine That actually sewed and it was one of my Favorite things because I could make Things with it Kids are not doing enough of that kind Of stuff today Right okay so there's a return to the There's there's a need for a return to The Practical on in some sense on both Sides of the gender spectrum of Everybody And I would now I went when I was doing A book signing for visual thinking I Went to um uh a physics lab in Harvard This room's labeled physics lab and they Had all kinds of 3D printers on there But they also had a sewing machine and
They also had a station for crocheting This is the building labeled engineering Department at Harvard maybe they're Realizing they've got to get them doing Some Hands-On things this is when I did The book signing for this it was part of The book tour the other thing I've Noticed I stayed I got into some Interesting places I stayed at this Hotel where Um where they so in Evansville Illinois Where they had uh textbooks in the rooms From the 1930s I wish I'd had more time To look at it and I pulled out an Electrical engineering book And it had a lot of math on it but it Was much more applied they'd say well This is how this the generator works This is the math that goes with it but It would describe how the generator Actually worked It was much more applied And I now the physiology book that I had In the 70s you know we'll explain how The kidney Works how the heart works and Then explain the chemistry now I look at A physiology book and it's much more Verbal a lot more math and chemistry but How does the kidney actually work I still have my old Duke's physiology of Domestic animals from 1970 and I want to Go back and compare that to the Duke's Physiology now and and it's like we're Taking the Practical out I just got an
Email yesterday uh from the UK that they Wanted to take a technology and design Course out of a high school You see I think this what's happening Now is mathematics is totally taking Over yes we need mathematics Because my kind of mind is not going to Touch boilers and Refrigeration in that Food processing plant that's a job for The mathematicians but what we're losing Is the object visualizer Right right right yeah well I wonder I wonder too if part of this is the fact That you know for a long time in our Society a lot of this practical Machinery just worked and so we could Afford to ignore it in some abstract Sense right because our cars worked and Our power grids worked and we could take All of this low-level infrastructure for Granted now that meant there were a lot Of people on the shop floors who were Busily working making sure it worked but It did mean that we had the luxury to Engage in abstract specialization and Maybe we could fall prey to the Psychological tendency to just dismiss All that Well you see when they first started About 20 years ago is when they started Taking shop classes out of the schools Well you can get away with that for a While and then the people I worked with I'm gray now
Are retiring They're retiring out and they're not Getting replaced that's happening with Elevator and escalator mechanics that's Happening with airplane mechanics And I'm seeing that more and more and More and more as I travel these are free Things that I see all the time and they Are getting gray Right right So yeah the retirement problem is going To be the retirement problem When it comes to Industry there's two Gigantic mistakes that were made Shutting down in-house engineering shops 20 years ago we had a huge metal working Shop called the Montfort Fab shop And it was part of the engineering of a Company called Montfort so no longer Exists now well that's been shut down And then at the same time we took out Shop classes now in the short run it was Cheaper for these companies to just Farm Out engineering work they needed to do In their plan yeah that works fine until The shops retire out And now what's happened like I can't go In the net give you the name of the Company but I have a client right now Where the one shop that's left is Ripping people off at five times the Price And that's happening right Do you see any positive consequences of
Computer technology for object Visualizers and for the for the people Who are working more in the visual Spatial end of things well it's Definitely useful to you know like the Visualization of stuff you can do on Computers But that doesn't replace real things let Me tell you power grid I lay awake at Night about that and that's so fragile That I'm not I'm not going to go into Any detail because it's too fragile And I'm not going to discuss the things That I visualize and lay awake at night About the power grid Because it's just okay fragile um Okay I'm curious about that why not Discuss them because I don't want to Give them I don't want to give people That have bad intentions any information On how to hurt the power grid okay okay I see yeah that's the reason Right because it's very easy and I don't Want to give out any information that Would help somebody damage the power Bridge so I don't discuss the details Here but I'm seeing them right now Right right right yeah well that's part Of that ability to think about critical Points of failure Engineering mind I know where the Critical points of failure are and I'm Not going to discuss them Right right so we can all be thankful
That you're not a terrorist Yeah I'll be thankful I'm not a criminal Yes exactly exactly yeah well I've Always often been afraid when thinking Along the same lines that you're Describing of just exactly how fragile Things are in that regard and how much Someone with a good imagination how much Damage they could do if they targeted Things properly It is really quite frightening to Apprehend well that's why there's Certain things about the power grid I am Not going to discuss and I'm seeing Three big fat critical control points Right now I'm seeing them in my mind and They make me crunch Right so so can we talk a little bit About the specifics of your work I Remember one of the stories you told at This Tucson conference was about you you Talked about cows that they would do Such things as go into a field and look At a if you look left a briefcase on the Field for example the cows would Eventually come and look at it that's Right a cow's in a in a line might be Stopped by something like a coke bottle In their path and so you used your Ability to think like animals to design Systems for animal handling that were Much more Humane so can you walk us Through that a little bit well the first Work I did with cattle was in the 70s in
Arizona uh when I didn't even know that I had was a visual thinker and other People were not a visual thinker and I Noticed that if there was a coat hung on The fence the cattle would stop Um if there was a shadow or reflection Off a vehicle so I got down in the Shoots to see what they were saying and I would take pictures down inside the Chute and people thought that was kind Of crazy but now I'm I'm like right just Recently did a startup in a really big Plant and at 10 o'clock in the morning Everything's working fine and then at Three o'clock in the afternoon a big Shadow appeared I called the spider Monster And it was just a shadow and these Cattle decided they weren't going to Walk over that so they'll have to build A roof over the facility so that the Cattle can't see the spider Monster uh The other thing I'm I show I show people How to do is what's your lead animal Your lead animal will come up and stop And look at the thing they don't like The same plant on the night shift okay The shadow monster wouldn't be there They either the guy calls me and he goes They go halfway up the shoot and stop All right what do I do I said now bring Up a nice calm bunch of cattle Watch Your Leader really carefully he'll look Right at the thing he doesn't like
And the LED light on the corner of a Building and they took that down And then everything worked fine How do you identify the leader Well there's always a leader when when All right let's say I take a 20 head of Cattle out of a pan There's a lead animal that walks out First Usually one of the more bold animals not The dominant animal the dominant animal That pushes the others away from the Feed trough he's in the middle of the Herd where she's in the middle of the Herd but the leader will come out of the Pen first and the other cat will follow And it's just the first animal and the Group's the leader it's that simple you See as we were talking about that I'm Seeing it Okay so so is that leader stable across Instances of leadership and is that Associated with this ability to find What's anomalous and to deal with well The in cattle that have lived together For a while tend to stay in the same Order you know years ago when your tags Came out that were sequentially numbered In other words you could just buy a Package of ear tags labeled one through Two hundred And they put them on their cattle and One of the things that surprise ranchers When maybe 200 cattle came back the
Following year to go through the shoots To get vaccinated and they were coming Through in almost the same order Now that's a group of people live Together Okay is there something okay so you made The observation that the lead animal Will stop and look at the thing that he Doesn't like and so are the other Animals and but also that lead animal Wasn't the physically dominant animal He's got some other characteristics the Animal is dominant at the pushing others Away from the water trough or the feed Trough but the but once the lead animal Walks the other cattle usually will Follow same thing with shape the other Animals will usually fall right so you Remove the distractions that the lead Animals reacting to and and at this Particular plant we had two things we Had to get rid of we had to get rid of The spider monster Shadow and we had to Get rid of an LED light that was on the Corner of a building So do you have any sense on of why the Other animals come to rely on the lead Animal like what's the lead animal being Selected for or is it just a first mover Well what's the number of this lead Animal you see there's different levels Of fear in animals genetically some Animals are more bold other animals are More shy or you can call those high and
Low fear and the animal that's more bold Is more likely to be the leader Than the animal that's more anxious Um and and uh It only down with a bunch of cattle have Lived together all the time you know That there'll be certain animals that Tend to be the leaders and then you've Got the great big one with the giant Horns and she shoves everybody else away From the feed trough there's something That's very profound about that because You're laying out the fact that it isn't The dominant animal that leads no and That it's the animal that's exploratory And that's right somewhat willing to Take risks that that's right but also Absolutely also that that the lead Animal will spot anomaly right like the Spider monster that you're describing And so it's not like they're they're so Bold that they're completely without Fear they're still acting cautiously in Some sense all right so you can walk the Lead animal down a chute and you can see What it's going to see and you can Actually do that because you go down There and do it but you also think that Way you gotta bring your cat up really Calmly to see because if you bring them Up at a run then the leader just turns Back and you don't know what it's Reacting to oh yeah I said to him now Bring them up nice and calm watch the
Leader come up the Chute and when he Stops he'll look right at the thing he Doesn't like and he looked at the LED Light light on the corner of the Building then they texted me a picture Of it and they got rid of that And that fixed the problem Now have you have you have you developed Some sort of picture of the class of Things that stop cats yes Okay so tell me what sort of thing I Want him to stop cattle I have pictures I have checklists of things to look for Reflections on water at this particular Plant there was a gate handle a gate Handle that jiggled and it was right by The shoot entrance I said that needs to Be fixed so this gate handle doesn't Vibrate So what's common do you Do what's common about the things that Stop cattle in their tracks or or can You extract out well let's look at let's Look at cattle's a prey species animal So you're looking for things that might Be a danger some little little bits of Rapid movement set them off And and something that sort of like Shouldn't be there like you can put a White plastic bottle in the entrance of The Chute now about shut a meat plant Down I they'll just keep turning back away From it turning back away from
Them right so they're looking for Something that doesn't fit the Environment that's right pattern and That's probably doing something like Activating Predator detection well That's right it's like that you know They they're looking for stuff that uh You know a movement in the bushes maybe That's a mountain lion or a wolf Some little movement in the bushes The other thing about new experiences if You take something like camera equipment Cattle love camera equipment you put an Expensive camera in the middle of the Pasture they will come up and knock it Over and lick it to that That's what they will do see things that Are novel are attractive when the animal Can voluntarily approach and scary if You suddenly shove it in their face you Suddenly shove it in their face then It's scary Right and so that's right that's a Introduce new things to cattle is to let Them voluntarily approach it I don't Know how many times people say to me my Horse was fine at home he went crazy at The show Well you've got a lot of Novel stuff They're like flags for example So you better get your horse used to Flags before you go there and the best Way to get them used to Flags would be To decorate the pasture with flags and
Let your animal walk up and voluntarily Approach them right right well you know That's exactly what you do in Psychotherapy when you're trying to help People overcome a phobia right so if Someone's afraid of an elevator and Won't get in it that often happens with Agrophobia what you do is you say to Them okay Um let's start by imagining elevators so That's going to make you a bit nervous But imagine an elevator at some distance That doesn't make you uncomfortable okay Okay and then you say okay well now You've done that see if you can move Yourself in your mind closer to the Elevator door And then you keep doing that but it has To be voluntary it's 100 absolutely Necessary for it to be okay so maybe you Run them through this imaginal exposure Therapy and then you say okay for our Next session what we're going to do is We're going to go out in the hallway you Know that elevator you wouldn't take We're going to go out the hallway we're Going to stand 200 feet away from the Elevator and you're just going to look At it if you can And so they'll do that has to be Voluntary and then you can get them 150 Feet away and 100 feet away and soon They'll be right up to the elevator door I was very anxious uh as you know in my
20s and I got terrified of airplanes Because I was an extremely scary Emergency landing when I was a senior in High school they put the slides down and The whole thing very very scary and one Of the ways I got over that is I had to Make Aviation interesting and when I got The ride in the cockpit of a plane Flying uh hosting heifers to Puerto Rico Uh that made it interesting you make Something scary interesting Because I know another thing they do on The elevator phobias is they show them How the safety mechanisms work that the Elevator is not going to fall down the Shaft Yeah well you you know you even compel That interest to some degree so for Example one once you get a phobic person Inside an elevator What they'll tend to do is look at their Feet And so you say to them look quit looking At your feet look at each corner of the Elevator look at all the numbers look at The display panel like you have to Facilitate their voluntary visual Exploration okay and to some degree what You're doing is you're calling out their Interest to say attend to all of these Things as if they're interesting and Then that's how they familiarize Themselves with the elevator and they Also note that well they're in there
Because you have to look at the elevator To know you're in an elevator right Literally you have to move your eyes and Point at all the different parts of the Elevator and the more that you can help People do that at a high level of Detailed resolution voluntarily the more Likely they are not not only to become Less afraid of the elevator is that that Actually isn't what happens is you Actually train them in a form of Exploratory bravery because what you Teach them is that if they use their Eyes voluntarily to scan what they're Afraid of they'll become braver and then That generalizes to all sorts of other Instances too so if you train someone to Be less afraid of an elevator they're Much less afraid of other things as well That's right and the thing that we're Seeing I'm saying right now in dogs you Know we have very strict leash laws here And there's more problems with dogs Being afraid of the veterinarian because They haven't been out experiencing Enough stuff like strange people Touching them for example just going to Lots of different places you know this Is the reason why when they train Service dog puppies you take them Everywhere so that there's almost Nothing that will frighten them Yes yeah well that that that's the same Argument you were making earlier about
The fact that to train people Practically we have to put them in a lot Of different practical Hands-On Situations and so that they can Generalize across all those instances And so experience that's too narrow is Too is too restrictive well I get Worried that we're going to have people Making policy on all kinds of important Stuff Um when they're so far removed from the World of the practical You see we need to have both because all The problem with us practical people is We're not organized enough that's where Just about every tech company has to Hire a suit eventually Just to keep the company organized Somebody's got to pay the payroll Somebody's got to pay the taxes somebody Has to make sure the rent is paid You know if they need more office space Then they've got to go out and go Shopping for Office Space You know there there's uh well and we Really do need all the different kinds Of Minds Well when I look at the ideological Solutions that are being put forward to The world's problems continually I do Wonder the same thing you're wondering About which is is this empty ideological Representation a consequence of the fact That the people who are doing this have
No practical experience at all it's like They're not thinking at the level of Detail well I think that what it's a Problem because when I worked originally This is over 20 years ago with McDonald's Burger King and Wendy's and They took the top managers out into the Field and implemented the auditing Program it was interesting to see how The Animal Welfare issue went from an Abstraction give it to Legal give it to Public relations to Something Real that They really needed to address You know half dead animals going into Your products not okay right right right Um right a broken stunning equipment is Totally terrible and not okay and that's Mainly a management problem and failure To do maintenance And and I'm and and when I worked on That in 1999 I got five journal articles Published on this on I saw more change Than I'd seen in in in my whole career When these big companies were inspecting These plants but I figured out a very Simple scoring system if you couldn't Shoot 95 of those cattle dead on the First shot you failed a McDonald's on it It was that simple some very simple Critical control points if you had more Than three percent of your cattle Bella Running their heads off when you're Handling them you failed the McDonald's On it okay so why why why did that turn
Out to be the critical issue Well they Um broken stunners were a big issue now On the handling I figured out a way to Score that that's very simple Vocalization if you're poking cattle With too many electric prods or you're Slamming doors on them or whatever They're going to be Bella running their Heads off And I better not hear any bellerin Coming out of the place where they kill Them well I hear bellerin coming out of There somebody needs to get kicked off The approved supplier list it's that Simple That's one of the critical controls Right so you used so you used animal Distress as an indication of that's Right efficiency of process okay can you Can you walk us through some of your Designs I mean you designed these these Circular Um cattle enclosures as well to to calm Them down the circular designs are Really nice but I'm also very proud of The fact there were 75 plants on the McDonald's approved supplier list only Three had to buy fancy spent expensive Equipment everybody else we fixed with Management yeah three managers had to be Removed I call that managerectomy On a lot of non-slip flooring had to go In because one of the things we measure Is slipping and falling
And lighting cattle are scared of the Dark Um training people to move smaller Groups of animals And and uh put a solid side up so they Don't see the vehicles passing by and These very simple changes we were able To fix some of the older places I'm very I used all my design ability to figure Out how to make some of the older Facilities work even though they did not Have the fancy new equipment And then we had three clients only three Plants had to do a front-end remodel That was very very expensive that's Three out of 75. I'm really proud of That oh yeah that's all a big pork Plants in the U.S Right so so tell me tell me tell me what Your goals were okay so let's walk this Through at the level of detail so why Don't you tell people about how these Cattle handling plants work broadly Speaking from from the time the cattle Arrived till the time they're processed Let's say and then how are you brought In to fix them well Unloading a truck make sure you have a Non-slip unloading ramp open the gates Up let them out you do not need to Scream at them pound on the vehicle or Stick electric prods into the holes in The side of the truck so let the cattle Just get off and they will and then they
Should walk quietly out of the truck if They go to scale weigh them on the scale And then quietly walk into a holding pen And get a drink of water maybe a lay Down then when it's time to go up to the Plant somebody should come down bring a Group of 20 out not a group of 50. And you quietly walk them up the alley To where they get to where the round Crowd pen is And the whole thing should be in a calm Walk Without slipping and falling and without Moving and bellering and And almost no electric prods That and it should all be very calm Walking is what it should be Right and and how many plants did you go Analyze We there we we had 75 plants on the on The approved supplier list and um only Three of them had to have extensive Renovations but we did have three plants Where the plant manager had to be Removed Right and so in those cases yeah why did You remove the managers Well the ones were able to get rid of The plant managers were the corporate Ones uh the plant then we had one plant That we used to call the problem child And management was family and we Couldn't get rid of it and that plant Would like you know fail an audit and
Then pass an audit and ah But management has to decide that They're going to do things right you can Have the best equipment And it's not going to work if it's not Managed in fact before we started these Audits I had a lot of equipment out in The field lots of equipment half my Clients tore it up and wrecked it and One of the what the customer Inspections and audits did is force the Plant to manage the stuff they had Either brand new fancy stuff or older Stuff And so how broadly did your Innovation Spread and how rapidly and what were the Consequences of that for the meat Handling industry in general well the Auditing program was within six months As the year of 1999 was adopted by McDonald's Wendy's in Burger King And that covers just about all the big Beef plants and I saw more Improvement Than I'd seen on a 25-year career prior To that People were no longer using broken Equipment They were moving smaller groups of Animals Uh things were kept repaired and um and Employees were better supervised and boy It made a big difference So why do you think you were able to do This I mean you obviously can solve the
Problem practically but how are you able To Um make your way in the corporate world In a manner that actually resulted a in People listening to you and B and Changes actually being made because That's that's quite a remarkable Combination of unlikely achievements all Right let's start off I started out with Equipment this was in my 20s and I found That selling equipment was much easier Than getting people to manage equipment Correctly and early in my career I made The mistake that a lot of young Engineers make I thought I could make a Self-managing cattle handling facility That is yes And I got a lot of systems out there the Other thing that helped me to get Systems out into the industry is I wrote About them and I wrote about them in the Meat industry and cattle industry trade Press Wrote all kinds of Articles just about How to do it so now I had a lot of Equipment out there Center track restrainer and lots and Lots of these big plants had one it's a Piece of equipment I developed with the Guys in the shops that I've talked to You about earlier But half my clients tore it up and Wrecked it then I worked with a lady Named Janet Riley at the American Media
Institute and I came up with this very Very simple Scoring system for evaluating meat Packing plants and we wrote it up in our Guidelines nobody used it for two years Then McDonald's approached me to implement Their Animal Welfare auditing program And it started out taking vice president Level managers out of the office they Saw some bad stuff And it started out as little training Program they already had food safety Auditors in the plants auditing them That was already being done And so I took them trained the food Safety Auditors to do the Animal Welfare Audit And within six months I saw more change Than I had seen in my whole career prior To that then Wendy's got on board then Burger King got on board and I made sure That everybody used the exact same score So it was absolutely clear it was like Right rules you know you know they Measure speeding we measured how many Vocalizations a cattle did we measured How many animals fell down those things Were measured And the plants had to make certain Numbers it was absolutely clear there Were five critical control points and They had to do all five of them to pass The audit I kind of sometimes can't
Believe I pulled it off it worked me on My wildest dreams But it was absolutely practical Right right yeah well it did it is it is Quite a remarkable thing to pull off to To be able to make that kind of change In the corporate world so quickly that's That's really quite remarkable the other Reason I was able to make change I I Practiced reverse conflict of interest I Had a lot of expensive equipment already Out in the plants I've been over Backwards in the older facilities to Figure out how to make that older Facility work without buying expensive Equipment let me tell you non-slip Flooring it can work wonders yeah we did Quite a lot of that right right but That's not that's not expensive Equipment And I'm really proud of the fact that I Took some of the older facilities and we Made them work and then we did have Three only three out of 75 plants they Had to build an expensive front-end Remodel and that was very expensive So what would you say if if you had to Put it into a few phrases You you weren't obviously pursuing mere Narrow profit at that time not that There's anything wrong with profit you You were serving some other goal I was Serving the goal of improving animal Welfare and I've been over backwards to
Do reverse conflict of interest And I tried to take some of those older Facilities right some of them a bit Shabby and make them work with simple Changes like repairs non-sup flooring Changing the lighting and free Plants Had to have the plant manager removed The problem so why why were you cons why Were you so concerned with animal Welfare and how would you define Animal Welfare why did that become Paramount in Your in your hierarchy of goals Well one of the reasons why I started Working on the equipment is like the way Cattle were being handled was horrible You know electric products on 100 I'm Falling down crashing into things people Screaming at them uh cattle handling in The 80s was terrible absolutely terrible And I I saw that as a something that I Could fix now I talked to a lot of young People today that want to you know do Activism about some specific thing and It's way too broad I want Justice in the World for example right yes yes it might Be something they would say yes yes and I say why don't you do something more Targeted like using DNA to show that This prisoner was falsely accused you See now that's something a lot more Targeted that you can actually do yes Absolutely and I think that is a huge Problem with the way that kids are Trained morally in universities is that
That grandiose vague activism replaces The actual practicalities of problem Solving that you're describing that Actually make a difference why do you Think it was that animal suffering stood Out for you is it is it partly because You you can think like animals like what Why do you think well you would how Would you like to get shocked to Electric prods and be slipping and Falling and crashing into fences and Things like that you'd be terrified wide I'm And My goal was to improve how the cattle Were treated when I talked to students About you know activism I said what I Worked on wasn't everything bad Happening to animals I worked on something targeted the thing That I'm seeing now with young people That want to make a difference they say I want to have Justice in the world or I Want to like animals are treated Terrible we got to do something about it And I'm saying you're going to be more Effective if you pick out something Relatively targeted I've worked on Cattle handling to start with that's not Everything to do with animals Yes exactly or the example of using DNA To show that this criminal was innocent That's something much more doable and Targeted that you can actually do
Right so how was it that the suffering Of animals in meat Trucking and meat Packing plants came to your attention to Begin with so you said the suffering you Found that unbearable first of all it Started out when I went out to the feed Yards handling cattle back in the 70s There's a lot of really horrible cattle Handling And I I made a mistake in the beginning That a lot of young engineers make they Think technology can solve all their Problems and I mistakenly believed that I could build a self-managing cattle Handling facility that's nonsense I know That now that's nonsense Good equipment makes good handling Better but it doesn't replace management And what the auditing program did is it Forced people to manage the facilities And why why were you at the cattle Handling facilities to begin with I mean Was this part of your academic training Or was this part of the fact that you Had grown up on a farm well I got Interested in after going out to my Aunt's Ranch and this brings up the Other things students get interested in Stuff they get exposed to It's that simple in in one of the people I profiled in visual thinking with Michelangelo Grubby little 12 year old dropped out of School
But he was running around all the Churches seeing great art And he grew up with stone cutting tools Okay that's the exposure then he started Making some stuff and then an artist Took him in as an apprentice that's Mentoring Good careers start first with exposure And the other reason why I'm so Concerned about taking all the Hands-On Stuff out of the schools is those things Like let's say theater for example Expose students I didn't care about being in the play But I loved making scenery and costumes That I loved doing now that's something That can become a career So let me we're running out of time on This segment let me ask you one more Question and then maybe I'll sum up our Discussion for everybody or try to Extract out the gist you think primarily In pictures but you're also an extremely Effective verbal Communicator I mean You've written a number of books you can Obviously talk your way into corporate Environments and help people walk Through the complex process of Restructuring say animal handling on a Pretty much on a national scale how did You how do you think you've been able to Develop your verbal ability like what What did you do to manage that all right It goes back to when I was seven years
Old in my neighborhood all the kids when They were seven when the parents had a Party you had to put your good clothes On greet the guests and serve the snacks Be little hosts and hostesses that's What you had to do Um I sold candy for charity that helped Me on talking to people the other thing I figured out very early on is back Doors into jobs and most people don't See this in the HBO movie Temple Run Brandon there's a scene where I go up to The editor of our state farm magazine And I get his card because I know if I Wrote for that magazine that would help My career That's a back door writing I did a lot Of writing this how to handle cattle how To design facilities And I was so happy when one of my very Early articles got picked up by two Other magazines You know it had made the national scene Of course this is all you know Pre-internet and then that press pass Got me into all kinds of meetings that Helped me to get into my next self-made Internship with a swift plant I recognized the back doors most people Don't recognize the back doors but lots Of good jobs are gotten through the back Door Right so you Allied your ability to Concentrate on focal details practically
With the ability and the willingness to Communicate on at all sorts of different Levels verbally you're able to bring That's getting too abstract for me I Just go okay I got the card within a Week I may have done a master's thesis On cattle behavior in different types of Squeeze shoots and I I sent them a good Article and they published it then I Went back to it and said maybe I could Just write something for you every month I just walked into the office and asked That job so I did that as a volunteer For about three or four months and then They started paying me I wasn't shy to walk up and ask Right right so so you developed a Communication communication expertise And a communication Network at the same Time that you were trying to implement Your practical Solutions and both of Those facilitated Each Other Well in the Very beginning I wasn't even designing Facilities and then I I was um just Visiting all these feed yards and Writing for the magazine and that press Pass got me into all kinds of places I recognize the value of that press pass It got me into meetings in the 70s with 600 registration fees I was no way I could have afforded that This is seven right right So what what are you working on now you Finished this this new book that came
Out in 2022 what are you doing now Well I'm very interested in seeing the Kids who think differently get into good Careers And that's going to be a major emphasis Of the things that I do now be a lot of Speaking engagements a lot of you know Interviews like this because I want to See those kids that are different get Into good jobs okay if they're visual Object visualizer Like Me Maybe an art Job maybe photography job or a job Building things if they're the more Mathematical visual spatial a good Programming job a good um uh mathematics Or chemistry job Where you need the mathematics there's Too many kids that think differently Um some of them are just kind of going Nowhere I want to see them get into good Careers and do things that will be Constructive in the world Do something constructive So we're we're going to switch over to The additional half an hour that I Produced for the daily wire plus Platform to delve into some of the Biographical details of your life Um before we close I'd like to just sort Of Wander Over the territory that we've Covered and see if there's anything else See if you think this is a reasonable Summary and if there's anything else you Want to add I've been talking with Dr
Temple Grandin today who's who's Developed a spectacular career in Modifying animal handling and also Managed a lot on the more purely Intellectual front as well in terms of Conceptualization of information Processing she's uh we talked a lot Today about the difference in in in in The ways that people think concentrating Mostly on the distinction between visual Thinkers who tend to be more practical And detail-oriented and who are can be Broadly differentiated into two Categories and those would be object Visualizers and people who think more Visual spatially and mathematically Contrasting them with people who think More verbally we talked a fair bit about The prioritization of more verbal and Abstract thinking at the cost of this Practical thinking and training in that Practical thinking we discussed how That's affected the school system and Broader culture we discussed the dangers That poses to the Integrity of our Society as we lose the people who have The Hands-On knowledge we talked about The psychological danger that poses to People who think more practically Concretely and Visually who are in School systems that are optimized for The verbal thinkers we talked about Temples Um
Career at the detail level Um ameliorating The Suffering of animals That across the like nationally and Internationally as it turned out partly Because she decided not to chase mere Generalities but to focus on an actual Problem which was the suffering of Actual animals in actual plants was Willing to focus her Um emotional concerns on something that Was practical and to marry that with a Strategy that involved particularization And visualization and verbal Communication and practical interactions With corporations and also we closed That with a discussion of the fact that What she's doing now is trying to bring To people's attention in podcasts like This the fact that we seem to be Um working contrary to our own best Interests by not Uh building educational facilities that Help optimize the ability of visual Thinkers to function but also for Society more broadly to take advantage Of the talents and skills of those People in the In Innovation and in the maintenance of The infrastructure that we already have Around us and so I think that about Summarizes what we talked about today is There anything you want to add to that That definitely you know kind of um kind Of summarizes that we need all the
Different kinds of minds and they can When we understand that different people Think differently they can work in teams Where they can collaborate and have Complementary skills I think that's That's uh something that's really Important Also right right the thing I want to one Thing I would do with the schools is I'd Put a lot of the Hands-On classes back In like art sewing Woodworking Shop Welding auto mechanics theater because These are all things that expose kids to To things that can become possible Careers too Right and those are all things that have To be done they're in an embodied sense You actually have to it's not purely Abstract any any oh it's not abstract And you are none of those things are Abstract Yeah well that's I suppose a danger of Moving so much education online as well Is that it's going to increase the Degree well that's right When I went to the this book signing for Visual thinking I told you about the Electrical engineering book in the 30s I Found in this unique hotel room but I Also got put in the office of a Professor in political science and I Looked at some of those books and it was So abstract theories about politics I I Didn't even understand it it had nothing
To do with right or left it had to do With just abstractions that were so Abstract it made no sense to me and I'm Going oh I wouldn't want this person in Charge of figuring out what happened With the power of grid You know I remember at this Tucson Conference where I first saw you speak After you spoke very practical talk very Much like the one that you you delivered Today when we were talking a philosophy Student got up because there were a lot Of abstract thinkers that this Consciousness conference and asked you Something extremely abstract and Philosophical and you did exactly what I Would expect a good engineer to do which Was to say you know I really don't Understand anything that you just said I Don't know how to associate it with Anything practical and I'm completely Unable to answer your question which I Thought was just it was ridiculously Comical and I also thought Um what would you say well targeted Because it was the case that you know You had been talking about real Practical realities your ability to Think like an animal the fact that you Had taken these practical steps to Ameliorate animals suffering and that That had been so consequential and and So of obvious worth and then you were Faced with this flight into abstraction
And and did what Engineers always did do Which is something like well yeah but I Don't understand that what does it mean Practically which is a really good Question that you know it's a question That should be asked of abstract Thinkers all the time what are the Devils in the details here that you're Overlooking How much do you know about the systems That you're abstractly representing and The answer to that is usually almost Nothing Well it's sort of like you know we need All the three different base you know Different kinds of Minds you need the Object visualizers you'll go to get the Arts mechanical and photography and Animals you need the visual spatial Mathematicians computer programmers Chemists things that require mathematics And we need the verbal thinkers uh Because uh they're going to help Organize things you see you you need Yeah all three different kinds of minds And they should work together in a Complementary fashion All right well that's a good place to End this segment I would say I'm going To go thank to thank you to everyone on YouTube and the associated podcast for Your time and attention I hope you found This discussion interesting and engaging Um and practically useful as well I'm
Going to switch switch over to the data Wire plus platform and I'm going to talk To Dr Temple Grandin a little bit more On the biographical and I want to lay Out how her her interest in the issues That she did pursue professionally made Themselves manifest in her life Hello everyone I would encourage you to Continue listening to my conversation With my guest on dailywireplus.com
