How to escape the cynicism trap | Jamil Zaki

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Some days, it's hard to be optimistic. But cynicism -- the idea that people are inherently selfish, greedy and dishonest -- is making humanity lonelier and more divided, says psychologist Jamil Zaki. Presenting fascinating research on cooperation, empathy and trust, Zaki makes the scientific case for optimism and shows us how to break out of the cynicism trap.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective
0:11.0	You're listening to Ted Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. We have some optimism
0:15.0	for you today in your podcast feed and even better, it's Research Backed. In his 2021
0:21.2	archive talk from Ted Monterey, research psychologist Jamil Zaki shares the way's
0:26.5	human trust, cooperation and kindness have continued to shine through, even in a
0:32.0	time when it can be easy to slip into cynicism after a short break.
0:39.5	Support for Ted Talks Daily comes from Airbnb. Maybe you've stayed in an
0:43.3	Airbnb before and thought to yourself, maybe my place could be an Airbnb.
0:47.2	Perhaps your housemates going to move out and you're thinking about what to do
0:50.8	with that space, that extra room could be an Airbnb. Whether you could use a
0:56.2	little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your
0:59.6	extra room or extra space might be worth more than you think. Find out how much
1:04.7	at airbnb.co.uk slash host.
1:10.1	This is it. Here we all are together at last to talk about optimism. If this isn't
1:17.2	nice, I don't know what is. Here's the problem. It's 2021. We are living through
1:23.4	a global plague, one that revealed our worst instincts at the worst times. We are
1:28.5	so divided that public health has become a power struggle. We pioneer to
1:33.1	vaccine a moon landing level innovation and then kept it among wealthy
1:37.6	countries while poor ones suffered. Against this backdrop, isn't talking about
1:42.5	optimism like discussing pages or horse-drawn carriages? Isn't optimism
1:47.8	obsolete? Backwards and naive, given all we've been through, shouldn't it be
1:52.7	replaced with a more up-to-date cognitive technology? Well, lots of people have
	...

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