Humans Are Underrated

The stories in any form that have the best chance of influencing us are those from tellers we already know and trust based on a preexisting in-person relationship.

The challenge is that in today’s world, especially in the developed world, many people just aren’t very good at it.

Even in the information age, physical proximity exerts a special power.

We’re always more engaged when there’s a real person involved.

We’re always more engaged when there’s a real person involved.

Growing numbers of companies have discovered that the supposedly ineffable, intractable, untrainable skills of deep human interaction are in fact trainable.

In the deepest possible sense, you’ve already got what it takes. Make of it what you will.

Building empathy in adults is surprisingly similar to building it in children but harder, because adult brains are more difficult to alter.

One of the simplest and most effective ways to build empathy in children is to let them play more on their own.

Stories, especially fiction in which authors richly describe characters’ thoughts and feelings, help kids appreciate how others respond to events.

Many researchers recommend that parents spend more time reading aloud to children.

The challenge is that in today’s world, especially in the developed world, many people just aren’t very good at it.

We are designed to empathize. But in developed economies we live in an environment that has become hostile to empathy.

Empathy is the foundation of all the other abilities that increasingly make people valuable as technology advances. It’s inevitable.

We want to negotiate important agreements with a person, hearing every quaver in his voice, noting when he crosses his arms, looking into his eyes.

We assume that a perfect mechanical imitation of a human being does not exist in our or our grandchildren's lifetimes.

When you change perspectives and look inward rather than outward, you’ll find that what you need next has been there all along.

Social interaction is what our brains are for.

Psychologists have long puzzled over a question that definitely does not occur to most of us as we go through our day, which is why people are as smart as they are.

We cannot begin to understand the changing nature of high-value skills without appreciating the hardwired power and importance of human interaction in our lives.

The power of computers to sense human emotions means, inevitably, that a machine can outdo us even in detecting our own emotions.

Even the mysterious human ability to read another person’s emotions turns out not to be all that mysterious. Computers can do it too.

The skills of physical work are not immune to the advance of infotech.

In cases around the world computers are reading millions of documents and sorting them for relevance without ever getting tired or distracted.

Each time, those who didn’t recognize the shift, or refused to accept it, got left behind.

Some people have suffered as technology has taken away their jobs, and more will do so.

The nightmare future is not inevitable.

Computers become so capable that they’re simply better at doing thousands of tasks that people now get paid to do.

The mind-bending progress of information technology makes it easier every day for us to imagine a nightmare future.