++Inside the wild world of AI doomsdayers. +
++If youâve followed the news in the last year or two, youâve no doubt heard a ton about artificial intelligence. And depending on the source, it usually goes one of two ways: AI is either the beginning of the end of human civilization, or a shortcut to utopia. +
++Who knows which of those two scenarios is nearer the truth, but the polarized nature of the AI discourse is itself interesting. Weâre in a period of rapid technological growth and political disruption and there are many reasons to worry about the course weâre on â thatâs something almost everyone can agree with. +
++But how much worry is warranted? And at what point should worry deepen into panic? +
++To get some answers, I invited Tyler Austin Harper onto The Gray Area. Harper is a professor of environmental studies at Bates College and the author of a fascinating recent essay in the New York Times. The piece draws some helpful parallels between the existential anxieties today and some of the anxieties of the past, most notably in the 1920s and â30s, when people were (rightly) terrified about machine technology and the emergence of research that would eventually lead to nuclear weapons. +
++Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. As always, thereâs much more in the full podcast, so listen to and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday. +
++
+Sean Illing +
++When you track the current discourse around AI and existential risk, what jumps out to you? +
++Tyler Austin Harper +
++Silicon Valleyâs really in the grip of kind of a science fiction ideology, which is not to say that I donât think there are real risks from AI, but it is to say that a lot of the ways that Silicon Valley tends to think about those risks come through science fiction, through stuff like The Matrix and the concern about the rise of a totalitarian AI system, or even that weâre potentially already living in a simulation. +
++I think something else thatâs really important to understand is what an existential risk actually means according to scholars and experts. An existential risk doesnât only mean something that could cause human extinction. They define existential risk as something that could cause human extinction or that could prevent our species from achieving its fullest potential. +
++So something, for example, that would prevent us from colonizing outer space or creating digital minds, or expanding to a cosmic civilization â thatâs an existential risk from the point of view of people who study this and also from the point of view of a lot of people in Silicon Valley. +
++So itâs important to be careful that when you hear people in Silicon Valley say AI is an existential risk, that doesnât necessarily mean that they think it could cause human extinction. Sometimes it does, but it could also mean that they worry about our human potential being curtailed in some way, and that gets in wacky territory really quickly. +
++Sean Illing +
++One of the interesting things about the AI discourse is its all-or-nothing quality. AI will either destroy humanity or spawn utopia. There doesnât seem to be much space for anything in between. Does that kind of polarization surprise you at all, or is that sort of par for the course with these kinds of things? +
++Tyler Austin Harper +
++I think itâs par for the course. There are people in Silicon Valley who donât have 401(k)s because they believe that either weâre going to have a digital paradise, a universal basic income in which capitalism will dissolve into some kind of luxury communism, or weâll all be dead in four years, so why save for the future? +
++I mean, you see this in the climate discourse, too, where itâs either total denialism and everything is going to be fine, or they imagine that weâre going to be living in a future hellscape of an uninhabitable earth. And neither of those extremes are necessarily the most likely. +
++Whatâs the most likely is some kind of middle ground where we have life like we have it now except worse in every way, but something short of full-scale apocalypse. And I think the AI discourse is similar, where itâs a sort of zero-sum game: weâll have a paradise of techno-utopia and digital hedonism, or we will live as slaves under our robot overlords. +
++Sean Illing +
++What makes an extinction panic a panic? +
++Tyler Austin Harper +
++Extinction panics are usually in response to new scientific developments that seem to come on suddenly, like rapid changes in technology, or geopolitical crises, when it feels like everything is happening too fast all at once. And then you have this collective and cultural sense of vertigo, that we donât know where things go from here, everything seems in flux and dangerous, and the risks are stacking up. +
++I compare extinction panics to moral panics, and one of the defining features of a moral panic for sociologists is that itâs not necessarily based on nothing. Itâs not always the case that a moral panic has no basis in reality, but rather itâs blowing up a kernel of reasonableness into a five-alarm fire. And thatâs how I view our present moment. +
++Iâm very concerned about climate change. Iâm concerned about AI a little differently than the Silicon Valley folks, but Iâm concerned about it. But it does seem that we are blowing up super reasonable concerns into a panic that doesnât really help us solve them, and that doesnât really give us much purchase on what the futureâs going to be like. +
++Sean Illing +
++For something to qualify as an extinction panic, does it have to be animated by a kind of fatalism? +
++Tyler Austin Harper +
++Thereâs a kind of tragic fatalism or pessimism that defines an extinction panic where there is a sense that thereâs nothing we can do, this is already baked in, itâs already foretold. And you see this a lot in AI discourse, where many people believe that the train is already too far down the tracks, thereâs nothing we can do. So yeah, there is a fatalism to it for sure. +
++Sean Illing +
++We had a major extinction panic roughly 100 years ago, and there are a lot of similarities with the present moment, with plenty of new and repurposed fears. Tell me about that. +
++Tyler Austin Harper +
++Right after the end of World War I, we entered another period of similar panic. We tend to think of the end of World War II with a dropping of two atomic bombs and the ushering in of the nuclear age. We tend to think of that as the moment when humanity became worried that it could cause its own destruction. Those fears happened much earlier, and they were already percolating in the 1920s. +
++Winston Churchill wrote a little essay called âShall We All Commit Suicide?â And that predicted bombs the size of an orange that could lay waste to cities. And these werenât fringe views. The president of Harvard at the time blurbed that essay Churchill wrote and called it something all Americans need to read. +
++There was a pervasive sense, particularly among the elites, that the Second World War might be the last war humanity fights. But even concerns about a machine age, the replacement of human beings by machines, the automation of labor, those appear in the â20s, too. +
++Sean Illing +
++In their defense, the people panicking in the â20s donât look that crazy in retrospect, given what happened in the following two decades. +
++Tyler Austin Harper +
++Absolutely. I think thatâs one of the important pieces of what Iâm trying to get at, is that panics are never helpful. It doesnât mean that the fears arenât grounded in real risks or real potential developments that could be disastrous. +
++Obviously, a lot of things in the 1920s were right, but a lot was wrong, too. H.G. Wells, the great science fiction novelist, who in his own day was actually more famous as a political writer, famously said, âOn my tombstone, you should put, âI told you so, you damned fools.ââ And he thought as soon as we had nuclear weapons, weâd be extinct within a few years, and yet weâve survived eight decades with nuclear weapons. Weâve never used them since 1945. +
++Thatâs a remarkable accomplishment, and itâs one of the reasons why Iâm really resistant to this notion that we have an accurate sense of whatâs coming down the pipeline or that we have an accurate sense of what humanityâs capable of. Because I donât think many wouldâve predicted that we could semi-responsibly have nuclear weapons without another nuclear war. +
++Sean Illing +
++You wrote that something weâre seeing now, which is something weâve seen before, is this belief that the real threat posed by human extinction is nihilism. The idea that to go extinct is to have meant nothing cosmically. What does that mean, exactly? +
++Tyler Austin Harper +
++Thatâs at the core of longtermism, right? This sense that it is the universe or nothingness, that humanityâs meaning depends on our immortality. And so they start from this almost Nietzschean view of the universe that thereâs no meaning, life means nothing. But their twist is to say, âBut we can install meaning in the universe if we make ourselves permanent.â +
++So if we achieve digital immortality, if we colonize the cosmos, we can put meaning into what was previously a godless vacuum, and we can even become kinds of gods ourselves. So the question of nihilism and overcoming nihilism through technology and through digital immortality is shot through contemporary extinction discourse. +
++Sean Illing +
++There does seem to be something deeply religious about this. I mean, religious people have always been obsessed over the end of the world and our place in the cosmos, and this strikes me as a secular analog to that. +
++Tyler Austin Harper +
++You know, people have been telling tales about the end of the world for as long as there have been human beings. You do see a shift in the late 18th, early 19th century to the first naturalistic, non-religious imaginations of human extinction. By naturalistic I mean human extinction not from a divine cause, but from a natural event or from technology. And yet even as that conversation becomes secular, thereâs all sorts of religious holdovers that are suffused throughout this discourse. +
++I do think thereâs a way that longtermism has become a kind of secular religion. I mean, the stakes are as large in their telling as the stakes in something like the Bible. Both are dreaming of cosmic afterlife, of immortality and paradise and great things. And there is this sense of regaining the garden and creating a paradise that I think is deeply embedded in Silicon Valley, and also the alternatives of damnation in hell, extinction, or slavery from AI overlords. So thereâs a lot of religious resonances for sure. +
++Sean Illing +
++Another point you make is that extinction panics are almost always elite panics. Why is that the case? +
++Tyler Austin Harper +
++Yeah, I think they tend to reflect the social anxieties of elite folks who are worried about changing positions in society, and that the future might not be one catered to them. So if you look at something like climate change, which again, I canât emphasize enough, I take really seriously. But itâs hard to avoid noticing that for a certain kind of person, the panic of climate change is that Iâm not going to be able to live in my suburban home with my two cars and my nice house and my vacations. +
++And so it is kind of a middle- and upper-class anxiety often about changing fortunes in that theyâre not going to have this luxurious lifestyle theyâve enjoyed thus far, even as the global poor are the primary victims of climate change. +
++And thereâs something similar with AI discourse where these elite tech bros are panicking and not buying 401(k)s and convinced weâre going to go the way of the dodo bird. Meanwhile, the people who are most impacted by AI are going to be the poor people put out of work after their jobs are automated. +
++Yeah, it is elites that tend to shape the discourse, and thatâs the language I would use â âshaping.â Because itâs not that thereâs no basis in reality to these concerns, but the narrative that forms around them tends to be one formed by elites. +
++Sean Illing +
++It seems like your basic advice is to worry, but not panic. How would you distinguish one from the other? What is the difference between worrying and panicking? +
++Tyler Austin Harper +
++Yeah, itâs a great question. I would define panicking as catastrophizing and adopting this fatalistic attitude. I think panic is predicated on certainty, the sense that I know whatâs going to happen. When the history of science and technology tells us thereâs a lot of uncertainty like there was in 1945, so many people were certain that the world was going to end in thermonuclear fire, and it didnât. +
++And so I think worry is having a realistic sense that there are real challenges for our species and for our civilization, but at the same time, maybe I should invest in a 401(k). And maybe if I want children, I should think about having them. And not make sweeping life decisions at the individual level predicated on your certainty that the futureâs going to look one way or the other. +
++To hear the rest of the conversation, click here, and be sure to follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you listen to podcasts. +
++No one is coming to save US democracy, except for ourselves. +
++The Supreme Court has ordered the most important of former President Donald Trumpâs four criminal trials to be put on hold indefinitely. Itâs an extraordinary victory for Trump and a devastating blow to special counsel Jack Smith. The Courtâs decision also raises serious doubts about whether these justices will allow a trial to take place before the November election. +
++Many Court observers, including myself, were shocked by Wednesdayâs order because it appeared to rest on the flimsiest of pretexts. The ostensible reason why the Court ordered Trumpâs trial paused is so the justices could spend the next few months considering Trumpâs argument that he is immune from prosecution for any âofficial actsâ he engaged in while he was still president. +
++This is an exceptionally weak legal argument, with monstrous implications. Trumpâs lawyers told one of the judges who ruled against this immunity claim that a former president could not be prosecuted, even if he ordered âSEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival,â unless the president was first successfully impeached and convicted (by lawmakers that, under Trumpâs argument, the president could order killed if they attempted to impeach him). +
++There are, of course, historical examples of the Supreme Court behaving less deferentially toward presidents who thumb their nose at the law. The most well-known is United States v. Nixon (1974), the Courtâs decision ordering President Richard Nixon to turn over tape recordings that implicated him in a crime, eventually leading to Nixonâs resignation. +
++The decision to halt Trumpâs trial, however, fits within a different judicial tradition, which is no less robust and no less prominent in the Supreme Courtâs history. The judiciary is a weak institution, staffed by political officials who are often reluctant to stand against popular authoritarian policies or movements. Indeed, the justices themselves often belong to those movements. +
++This is the tradition of Korematsu v. United States (1944), where the Court stood side by side with a popular, wartime president who ordered tens of thousands of Americans sent to internment camps for the sin of having the wrong ancestors. And of Debs v. United States (1919), where the Court condemned a prominent union leader and political candidate to 10 years in prison for giving a speech opposing the draft. +
++And it is the tradition of the Civil Rights Cases (1883), where the Court, at the very moment that white supremacists were consolidating an authoritarian regime that would rule the South for generations, declared that Congress had done too much to protect Black people and that they should no longer treat freedmen as âthe special favorite of the laws.â +
++A written Constitution and the courts that are supposed to enforce it are weak guarantors of a liberal democratic society. The Supreme Court of the United States does not always align itself with authoritarian policies and movements, but it does so often enough that it cannot be counted on as an ally in a conflict between constitutional democracy and something more sinister. +
++And the Court is particularly ineffective in standing up against figures like Trump, who enjoy broad (if not necessarily majoritarian) political support. +
++Constitutional rights and other legal safeguards are worthless in the face of a sufficiently powerful political movement +
++For 49 years, the right to an abortion was a constitutional right, affirmed over and over and over again by the Supreme Court. And then, one early summer morning, the right disappeared. +
++The American people woke up on June 24, 2022, with their right to an abortion intact. Before noon, it was gone. +
++This did not happen because of any substantive change to the Constitution. The Constitution in 2022, when Roe v. Wade was overruled, was identical to the Constitution in 1973, when Roe was first handed down (save for a minor, irrelevant amendment concerning congressional pay). +
++Rather, Roe fell because the minority of Americans who oppose abortion organized. They took over one of Americaâs two major political parties. And then they installed their operatives on the Supreme Court of the United States. +
++In fairness, one plausible explanation for Roeâs fall is that it rested on a debatable interpretation of the Constitutionâs text. The Constitution protects both enumerated (meaning that they are laid out explicitly in the documentâs text) and unenumerated rights, and the Ninth Amendment explicitly forbids courts from construing the Constitution to deny the existence of unenumerated rights. But the fact that the Constitution does not specifically mention abortion has always given Roeâs opponents a powerful rhetorical argument against it. +
++Do not think, however, that a right is secure because it is explicitly protected by the Constitution. Certainly, nothing in African American history supports this Pollyanna-ish assumption. And the Supreme Courtâs history is riddled with cases giving the back of the hand to rights specifically enumerated in the Constitution. +
++The 15th Amendment, for example, was ratified in 1870, five years after Union forces defeated a separatist rebellion dedicated to the cause of slavery. It provides that âthe right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.â +
++But this amendment ceased to function the minute popular support for Reconstruction faded. Black peopleâs right to vote, at least in states that were determined to deny them that right, lay dormant until 1965, when Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. And in the long century between these two legal reforms, the Supreme Court often made itself complicit in white supremacy by giving its blessing to Jim Crow voter suppression. +
++Indeed, the Court aligned itself with Southern racists even before Reconstruction collapsed as part of a corrupt deal to install President Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House in 1877. Two years earlier, in United States v. Cruikshank (1875), the justices tossed out the criminal convictions of several members of a white supremacist mob that used guns and a cannon to kill a rival Black militia defending the right of freedmen to elect their own leaders. +
++Black people, the Court said in a decision that should send shivers down the spine of anyone familiar with the history of the US South, âmust look to the Statesâ to protect constitutional rights such as the right to vote or the right to peacefully assemble. +
++Nor is the Supreme Courtâs haphazard approach to constitutional rights limited to the rights of Black people. The Constitution says quite explicitly that no one may be denied âthe equal protection of the laws,â and it forbids âunreasonable searches and seizures.â That didnât stop Korematsu from holding that American citizens could be incarcerated solely for having Japanese ancestry. +
++Or witness nearly the entire history of the First Amendment, which was often powerless, not just against federal suppression of wartime speech, but against something as mundane as people who donât like nude art. For much of the late 19th and early 20th century, art and literature depicting human sexuality was a frequent subject of criminal prosecution under the federal Comstock Act â a law, it is worth noting, that is still on the books â or under similar state laws. +
++In one case, an art gallery owner was successfully prosecuted for selling reproductions of Alexandre Cabanelâs masterpiece The Birth of Venus. +
+/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24577369/Alexandre_Cabanel___The_Birth_of_Venus___Google_Art_Project_2.jpg)
Public domain via Wikipedia
++So the idea that Donald Trump, and the MAGA movement he leads, would crumble simply because thereâs a law saying that his actions are forbidden was always naĂŻve. When powerful political movements conflict, the Court honors the law maybe some of the time. And it is just as likely to align itself with an authoritarian faction as it is to choose the rule of law. +
++Itâs not even clear that the Supreme Court is capable of standing up for the rule of law in the face of a sufficiently determined opposition +
++Even before the US Constitution was ratified, one of the early Republicâs greatest statesmen saw that the courts are a paper tiger. The judiciary, Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers, âhas no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever.â It doesnât even have the authority to enforce its own decisions, and âmust ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.â +
++The Courtâs two most famous decisions â one its most celebrated, and one its most reviled â confirm that Hamilton was correct. The courts are weak, and it is far from clear that they can stand up to a strong political movement even when they want to. +
++Consider Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), the odious pro-slavery decision that declared that Black people are âbeings of an inferior orderâ with âno rights which the white man was bound to respect.â This decision is now widely viewed by scholars as an attempt to resolve sectional tensions over slavery by handing down a sweeping, comprehensive judicial declaration of the rights (or lack thereof) of enslaved people. +
++And wow did the Court fail in this mission. As the historian Robert McCloskey wrote about the period following Dred Scott, âthe tempest of malediction that burst over the judges seems to have stunned them; far from extinguishing the slavery controversy, they had fanned its flames and had, moreover, deeply endangered the security of the judicial arm of government.â +
++In the very next presidential election, the nation elected President Abraham Lincoln, a man whose commitment to abolitionism developed only gradually, but whose contempt for Dred Scott was apparent in his very first act as president. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln revealed his intent to openly defy the Courtâs decision: +
++++[I]f the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. +
+
+And Lincoln followed through on this threat. His State Department issued a passport to a Black man, flouting the Courtâs declaration that Black people cannot be citizens. More significantly, he also signed legislation banning slavery in US territories, mocking Dred Scottâs conclusion that enslaved people do not escape from bondage after entering a free territory. +
++It should go without saying that Lincoln is the hero in this narrative and the justices who joined the Dred Scott decision are the villains. Elected officials should not have deferred to such a monstrous decision, and the American people were right to elect a leader who would defy it. Rather, my point is that, when the judiciary took a firm stand on the most contentious issue facing the nation in 1857, it had no ability to sustain its decision against a powerful political movement that found that decision repugnant. +
++A similar narrative played out nearly a century later, with the Supreme Court taking the opposite side. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court famously held that racially segregated public schools are âinherently unequal,â placing a unanimous Court in opposition to the Southern racial apartheid that characterized that region ever since the 15th Amendment ceased to function. +
++But Brown was enforced unreliably in its first decade on the books, and enforcing it required extraordinary resources that were far beyond the judiciary. President Dwight Eisenhower had to send the 101st Airborne Division to protect Black students attending a historically white high school in Little Rock. +
++At least initially, moreover, Brown accomplished virtually nothing in the states most determined to resist it. As legal historian Michael Klarman has documented, only 40 of North Carolinaâs 300,000 Black students attended an integrated school five years after the Courtâs decision. In Nashville, just 42 of the cityâs 12,000 Black students were integrated six years after Brown. By Brownâs 10th anniversary, only one in 85 Black children in the South attended an integrated school. +
++Brown most likely made life worse for African Americans in the South, at least in the short term, by reinvigorating terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. A major reason why no one even filed a lawsuit seeking to integrate a Mississippi grade school, until eight years after Brown, is that anyone who agreed to be the plaintiff in such a lawsuit risked being murdered. +
++The landscape did shift in 1964, but not because of anything the Supreme Court did. That was the year Congress passed legislation permitting the Justice Department to sue segregated schools, and also permitting the federal government to withhold funds from schools that refused to desegregate. Two years after this bill became law, the number of Southern Black students in integrated schools increased fivefold. By 1973, 90 percent of these same students were in desegregated facilities. +
++So the Court was unable to achieve integration in the face of a powerful white supremacist political movement in the South. It was only after a more powerful movement gained the sympathy of the federal government, and enlisted Congress and the Executive in the fight against segregation, that Jim Crow began to crumble. +
++There is a lesson here for all who hope to defeat Trumpâs authoritarian movement. +
++No one is coming to save us from Donald Trump. We have to do it ourselves. +
++Itâs sometimes difficult to look at the rematch lining up this November without despair. Trump literally incited an insurrection that attacked the US Capitol and tried to overthrow the nationâs democratically elected government. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, is an 81-year-old man whose polls suggest that he could lose to Trump. +
++And so we are now hearing a cacophony of calls for some kind of deus ex machina â or, at least, some way to up the odds that American voters will not make the kind of mistake that is not easily reversed. +
++What if the Democrats simply replace Biden at the DNC, presumably with some as-yet-unidentified savior who is simultaneously younger, more popular, and more capable of uniting the partyâs disparate factions? Or maybe the 14th Amendment, with its provision forbidding insurrectionist former officials from seeking high office, will neutralize Trumpâs candidacy â as if the 14th Amendment has ever been a reliable bulwark against autocracy. +
++Or perhaps Trump would be criminally prosecuted, and a conviction would so disqualify the former president, in the eyes of the electorate, that democracy would be saved. But after the Supreme Courtâs decision on Wednesday, we canât count on that outcome either. We canât even be sure that there will be a trial. +
++No one is coming to save us â not the courts, not the Constitution, and certainly not a process for choosing candidates that has not been used since the 1960s. +
++Donald Trump will be defeated, if at all, in November at the ballot box. The only thing his opponents can do to make that happen is to vote for Joe Biden, and to encourage others to do the same. +
++There is no other solution. +
++A guide to having actually interesting conversations with strangers. +
++Andy Lowe was not naturally blessed with the gift of gab. But even he, a self-described shy, introverted person, understands its functions. Lowe works at a technology public relations firm where chitchat with clients and journalists is just another part of the job. As a previous user of dating apps (Lowe is happily partnered now), he realized banter reigned supreme. He also plays bass in bands in Seattle; meeting other collaborators involves some amount of introductory small talk. +
++So he decided to get better. To improve his small talk, Lowe says he paid closer attention to his conversation partners to discover âwhat makes them tick, what drives them,â he explains. Heâll ask what books people are reading or movies or television they enjoy. âThen just making sure that when you go into those situations,â Lowe says, âyou are more interested in the person that youâre talking to than talking about yourself.â +
++Small talk gets a bad rap for being too surface-level, too rote, a throwaway filler conversation. But casual chat can be the on-ramp to deeper connection. After all, most of us wouldnât introduce ourselves to a stranger with a question about their biggest fears. Small talk is an opportunity to build trust and to learn about others, and to become a more curious person, says Georgie Nightingall, a conversation specialist and human connectivity researcher. âBeing genuinely curious, that always helps,â she says. âYou can actually realize that you do want to know more rather than having that sense of like, Iâm just asking for the sake of asking.â +
++Even if you find your small talk game lacking, with some practice you can improve. To ensure youâre leading with curiosity, experts and small talk enthusiasts offer their best advice to strike up a conversation with strangers and familiar faces alike, without relying on stereotypical openers. +
++View small talk as an opportunity, not an annoyance +
++Many people bemoan small talk because they âget stuckâ in it, Nightingall says, without moving on to deeper conversation. âOne of the key elements of small talk,â she says, âis having the mindset that actually this is not where weâre going to end up.â Consider all the relationships that began as banter or the job opportunities that came from acquaintances. There is potential for small talk to bloom into something bigger. +
++However, you should avoid viewing chitchat as solely transactional. Research shows people enjoy and appreciate talking with strangers or acquaintances, and these brief interactions contribute to well-being. While these conversations have the potential to be awkward, Gillian Sandstrom, a senior lecturer in the psychology of kindness at the University of Sussex, has found in research that most introductory small talk with strangers does in fact go well. As people engage in these chats with greater frequency, the more confident they are in their abilities to talk to strangers, according to the study. âThatâs enough to allow you to be in the moment more instead of in panic mode,â Sandstrom says. +
++What to talk about instead of your job +
++Popular scripts dominate small talk: comments about traffic and the weather, the questions âSo, what do you do?â and âHow are you?â Often, people give unengaging or throwaway answers that donât give the other person much to respond to. Instead, lead with inquiries related to your interests, says Adam Smiley Poswolsky, a workplace belonging expert and author of Friendship in the Age of Loneliness: An Optimistâs Guide to Connection. Consider asking a barista at your neighborhood cafe about their favorite beverage or if a friend of a friend at a party has also watched the newest season of Love Is Blind. If you want to feel a little more prepared, Poswolsky suggests having a list of five or so questions at the ready that are topical and feel authentic to you â just be sure to refresh your list every few weeks. Maybe your talking points include asking if someone has an upcoming vacation or if they tried any new restaurants recently. +
++Or instead of questioning your conversation partner, try a statement or observation. Something as simple as âThis line is taking forever,â or â[Mutual friendâs name] makes the best cheese boards,â or âYou have the cutest dog I have ever seenâ can be an effective entrĂ©e to small talk. Research has found that making an observation about a product or item another person has chosen to display â like a band T-shirt or a colorful hat â is a better conversation starter than discussing the weather. Initiating a chat with someone wearing a shirt from your alma mater is easier than attempting to find common ground with nothing to go on. âThose conversations tend to go better,â says the studyâs lead author, Hillary Wiener, an assistant professor of marketing at the University at Albany, âbecause itâs on something that both people involved might actually care about.â The products that were most successful at launching a conversation âsuggested a point of commonality between the asker and the person wearing, using a product,â she says. For example, try approaching someone in a Taylor Swift shirt if you too love Taylor Swift or sharing a hiking story with someone who is drinking out of a water bottle from Yosemite National Park. +
++However, donât feel like you must write off meteorological small talk. Discussing the weather is ample conversation fodder for my colleague Miles Bryan, a senior producer and reporter (and the self-appointed Philly Bureau Chief) for Today, Explained. âItâs such a shared experience between everybody Iâm talking to,â he says. âItâs a way to connect with somebody else without a lot of pressure on the conversation.â Luxuriating in small talk is thoughtful, Bryan says: âSmall talk is empathetic.â +
++To be better at small talk, actually listen +
++Making the most of small talk â and elevating the conversation to large talk â involves active listening. If someone mentions the city they grew up in, you can use that detail for follow-up questions. What did they like the most about that city? What did they dislike? Why did they move? You can even offer a personal anecdote, Nightingall says, maybe mentioning a trip you may have taken there. âWhenever someone shares anything with you, theyâre sharing a tiny dot in a web of hugeness,â Nightingall says. âOur job is to find out what makes this person different, interesting. What makes their life unique?â +
++The more curious you are about another personâs experiences or perspectives, the more likely the other party will be interested in continuing the conversation, Poswolsky says. The other person, in turn, will readily offer more information, furthering the discussion. +
++Just donât make it weird +
++With any interaction, there is a risk of coming on too strong or rubbing your conversation partner the wrong way. For small talk with strangers, especially, a well-meaning question may not be taken as intended or they may suspect you of trying to flirt with them. Small talk is warm and introductory, with no ulterior motives. It can surely blossom into a more flirtatious exchange but you should lead with curiosity and friendliness. âYou canât realistically be sitting next to someone on the plane and say, âHi, whatâs your favorite superpower,ââ Wiener says. âThat doesnât work on a human interaction level.â Starting with an observation about how packed the flight is or asking whether the person is traveling for work might be more of a context-appropriate introduction. +
++Wiener also suggests avoiding making small talk about someoneâs physical appearance or religious wear. Never make assumptions about or comment on someoneâs background, income level, sexuality, political stance, or other personal identifier. +
++Try not to sound accusatory either, Sandstrom says. One of her go-to opening lines is âWhat are you doing?â âI saw someone who was leaning over a bush and lifting up a leaf,â she says âand Iâm like, âWhatâs going on here?â They taught me some stuff about bugs.â But do your best to keep the mood playful â youâre asking out of curiosity, not suspicion. +
++Every once in a while, someone might bristle at your attempts at small talk or appear confused as to why youâre talking to them, and thatâs okay. Sandstrom finds explicitly stating âIâm just being friendlyâ helps ease some of the awkwardness. +
++What to do if you get stuck +
++Every conversation, including small talk, inevitably encounters roadblocks. Whether you find yourself giving one-word answers or the discussion veers toward potentially contentious territory, there are ways of deftly navigating. For chats that are veering on boring, feel free to direct the conversation to another topic or ask a random question. (Conversations arenât linear anyway, Nightingall notes.) +
++If you find the discussion isnât going anywhere after a few exchanges, donât force it, Poswolsky says. Either politely excuse yourself (âIâve got to run to the bathroomâ is a great exit) if youâre at a social gathering or simply drop the chitchat if youâre mingling with a stranger on public transit. For talks that become prejudiced or offensive, Sandstrom suggests saying âThis conversation is making me uncomfortable.â Just remember, both people need buy-in for small talk to be productive. +
++âIf zero people are excited, itâs over,â Poswolsky says. âIf one person is excited, you can see where youâre heading. What youâre looking for, and this is rare, is when two people are [having] a back-and-forth. Thereâs active listening happening on both parties. There are decent questions happening.â +
++Small talk is what you make it. It can be a delightful way to spend a few minutes with a stranger while in line at the grocery store, it can be your superpower at a party, or it can lead to your next career move. Or, if youâre like Bryan, it can simply be uplifting banter about precipitation. +
++âIf it looks like rain, and youâve got more to say about it, and youâre interested in what your partner has to say, just stay with it,â he says. âThe big stuff will come. But you donât need to rush it. Itâs okay to stay small.â +