169 - Leidy Klotz on Design, Behavior, and When to Subtract

This week we talk to Leidy Klotz about his book, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less.Leidy Klotz is an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia in the Schools of Engineering, Architecture, and Business. His wide-ranging, prolific, and highly-awarded research is filling in unexplored overlaps between design and behavioral science. Nationally recognized as one of 40-under-40 professors who inspire, Leidy has taught thousands of students, including 21 Ph.D. advisees, whose designing and teaching shapes the world. He founded and directs the Convergent Behavioral Science Initiative, which brings together scholars, funders, media, and practitioners to advance behavioral science for design.We discuss the human cognitive bias to try and solve a problem by adding new elements rather than by subtracting pieces from the problem; how deeply-rooted and pernicious this is in both our evolution and our economics, and how it has contributed to the complex and compounding crises in which we find ourselves today; the implications of subtraction thinking for civil engineering, governance and collective behavior; how to communicate a subtraction strategy as a net positive without setting off people’s loss aversion alarms; whether it’s possible to “subtract” systemic racism and other structural inequalities; and in what ways the evolution of the technosphere will make for future humans both more and less than we are…https://www.leidyklotz.com/If you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and/or please rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! Patrons can gain access to two extra episodes a month, our monthly book club, new art and music, and other wondrous things.• Join the Future Fossils Discord Server and/or Facebook Group• Buy the books we talk about while supporting local booksellers and the podcastRelated Reading & Notes:Edward Tufte - PowerPoint is Evilhttps://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/HO_SNOW_2014_PowerPoint-Is-Evil.pdfNPR - To Save The Science Poster, Researchers Want To Kill It And Start Overhttps://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/06/11/729314248/to-save-the-science-poster-researchers-want-to-kill-it-and-start-overMartin Nowak, Joshua Plotkin, Vincent A. A. Jansen - The evolution of syntactic communicationhttps://www.nature.com/articles/35006635Things:optimizationsatisficingcomplex systemstrafficcognitioninteroperabilitydaylightingscience communicationpersuasionParkinson’s LawJevons’ ParadoxhoardingdeclutteringpollutionThe Anthropoceneurban designlandscape architectureentropydefund the policeinformation designthe non-euclidean curved attention landscapePeople:Joseph LeidyAndrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New WorldGeorge Lakoff & Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live byBrian Eno / The Long Now FoundationDaniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and SlowSystems researcher Tim ClancyKate Orff’s Toward an Urban Ecology: SCAPE / LandscapeMarie KondoTyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The WorldRajiv Sethi & Brendan Flaherty’s Shadow of DoubtHunter MaatsAnn BlairHerbert SimonKirell BenziRichard Doyle’s Darwin’s PharmacyChris Ryan’s Civilized To DeathPierre Teilhard de ChardinMihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s FlowMichael PhillipsAffiliate Links:I transcribe this show with help from Podscribe.ai — which I highly recommend to other podcasters. (If you’d like to help me edit transcripts for my upcoming Future Fossils book project, please let me know! I’m @michaelgarfield on Twitter & Instagram.)BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me restore the face I had before 15 months of COVID-19 burnout.If you’re looking for new ways to help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, let me recommend the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and appreciate it so much I decided to join their affiliate program. The science is solid.And for musicians in the audience, let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine and you can hear it all over my new single.When you’re ready to switch it up, here are my music and listening recommendations on Spotify.Program Info:Episode mostly edited by my amazing wife, Nicole Taylor.Theme music by Future Fossils co-host Evan “Skytree” Snyder.  Intro bed music by Michael Garfield.Cover Image c/o Jad Limcaco/Unsplash.Support this show financially:• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. 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