June 12: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

We dream of living in a world where everyone can flourish in ways that are meaningful to them without ruining it for others. When tension in our competing perspectives arises, we imagine working it out with empathy, respect, and rational discourse. But sometimes in practice it's hard to appreciate the other view—it seems like only someone ignorant and irrational, or someone with their head stuck in the clouds, could genuinely endorse such a stance.

One surprisingly helpful toolbox is found where few would suspect: in our proverbial math cabinet. The fascinating interplay between our understanding of humans and math has evolved remarkably over the past 80 years. From behavioural economics and statistical psychology to artificial neural networks and reinforcement learning, understanding humans has inspired us to create new math frameworks, and understanding math frameworks has shed insight on our understanding of humans. I like to call the various components developed in this symbiotic exchange the human-friendly math toolbox (to distinguish it from the math toolboxes many of us prefer to forget, like the trigonometry toolbox and others too scary to mention).

The premise of this presentation is that we can use this human-friendly math toolbox to frame and understand the landscape on contentious topics and then articulate that landscape without explicit reference to the math tools that informed us. When we use this process, we sometimes find that there is no need for a bridge at all—that everyone cares about the same thing, and they are just zoomed in on different levels of it (I will use equity vs. equality and targeted vs. merit-based hiring as examples). In other topics we find that people really are talking about different things, and that there are creative solutions both sides might appreciate once they’ve seen within the broader landscape how both sets of values can be achieved.

The talk will introduce some basic tools that can apply to many conversations, which are all mathematically founded but with minimal references to math. It will use examples to illustrate how those tools can frame and inform contentious conversations. And finally, the talk will end with a dialogue brainstorming other contentious conversations to which it can be applied; possible pitfalls with the approach; and a collaboration call for a future book using the technique to move the conversation forward across a variety of contentious topics within society.

Presenter: Jon Sensinger

Dr. Jon Sensinger is the director of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of New Brunswick, situated on the unceded and surrendered land of the Wolastoqiyik. Trained as a biomedical engineer and as a clinical prosthetist and licensed as a professional engineer in the province of New Brunswick, he has worked in Chicago and Thailand and cofounded Coapt LLC, the first company to successfully market artificial intelligence in prostheses. His research focuses on prostheses, exoskeletons, human-robot interactions, and applying optimal control theory to complex systems such as spinal cord rehabilitation or public health policies. He leads a team of professors, scientists, engineers, clinicians, and students who all share a common goal of making an impact in the lives of others that extends from our neighborhoods to the international community. Dr. Sensinger is a generally curious person who values integrity, wonder, and future generations, and his personal interests include learning more about the Indigenous cultures of Turtle Island, Taekwondo, instrument-making and playing, Ultimate Frisbee, and reading/recommending books.