Michael Shermer with Peter Boghossian — How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide

my insulin podcast I'm your host Michael Shermer this week's guest is Peter Bogosian his new book is how to have impossible conversations a very practical guide indeed it is I really enjoyed the book it's it's a very kind of outline ish point by point very useful practical guide for and not just debating god or politics or whatever but just for talking to anybody so a lot of what I've been doing for the last 25 years I've kind of stumbled along and maybe that's a third of the points in the book and the rest was new so really helpful on that we so we get into that we talk about atheism and secularism politics social media and all this rather intractable platforms where it's very difficult to have a conversation so if you enjoyed the podcast please give us some support at skeptic comm / donate or at patreon thank you and here is Peter Bogosian welcome to the podcast Pete and congratulations on the new book it is how to have impossible conversations a very practical guide indeed in fact I was really happy to read this because a lot of the stuff is things I've kind of developed by accident just by trial and error in terms of engaging people from you know creationists and Holocaust deniers to psychics and 9/11 truthers and and all that and so it's nice to have you know in one package like here's how to do it and here's the research showing why this works and that doesn't work some of which I kind of figured out on my own a lot of which I didn't know and gave me a lot of good stuff to try out and I loved the opening story about yeah hang on hang it's a you know conversing with an and I'm reading this going who is this and it turned out it's you so it's kind of nice that you're self-deprecating in the sense of admitting you know that any of us could be an in fact I'm sure we all have been I know I have yeah I've made a lot of mistakes over the years but firstly thank you very much for having having me on the podcast the book is my life's work and it picks up from nobody had synthesized up to this point first bodies of literature and taken what works in hostage negotiation and then and everything from applied epistemology and psychology drug and alcohol treatment counseling cult exiting hostage negotiation so though it's all there and and I was really motivated to do this book by Donald Trump and what I saw happening - just what I started happening in the society and how we've lost friendships we don't know how to speak cross divides and it's the exact opposite thing is being modeled for us on college campuses so hopefully this is going to make a contribution to that yeah there are stories about people getting divorced over Trump right I mean it seemed I mean that's crazy I mean politics is important but it's not that important giving up spouses and friends but a lot of people have yeah and I think that's a lesson from the book as well so let people be wrong excuse me too often we just I don't know I mean is it me or is this a more recent phenomenon that we're not willing to let things go or let things slide or we viciously attack people who share the vast majority of our beliefs but have some ideological deviation think Freud said that about when people look differently than you if they look just a little differently you dislike them more but but I think this recently there is there really is a crisis of communication and people aren't talking to each other and I think part of it's because they don't know how because what they're getting modeled for them in the universities is they never hear this they never hear the other side like Lindsey Shepard or they're never even allowed to voice an opinion that's divergent and then the consequence of that is other people don't hear that yeah I think it is worse from what I've seen from some research on this in terms of the polarization of the left and the right that is the number of people that self-identify as far left and far right have grown the people that have self-identified as being centrists have shrunk that middle portion is shrunk they've gone to the two extremes Jared Diamond has a discussion in his new book upheaval I had him on the podcast and he was talking about the time that congressmen spend with each other you know with with the opposite party members has shrunk since the 90s you know there's people that measure this sort of thing like how much time does a congressman span in Washington DC versus at home and they're spending far more time at home now fundraising for example because there's so much money in politics now that they have to raise money so basically they just work money through Friday they leave early Friday they go home and maybe have a long weekend and and they don't have lunches with people in the other party they don't you know go to the softball game with their kids with people at the other party they spend less time and in part I think this is my own opinion on this is in part polarized by conservative talk radio and television you know it's not these people are not just different in their opinions of course we expect that Democrats and Republicans are two different parties with two different platforms so you would expect them to be different but they're not just different they're wrong and they're not just wrong they're a morally wrong devil evilly wrong right and as Lindsay and plumbers have said they represent an existential threat so in Plato's Republic are in and the theaetetus he talks about so just a one taking one step back so Plato wrote in Socrates as a character and those dialogues and he talked about how people don't knowingly do or believe bad things it's just that they're lacking a piece of information and if they just had all of the information they wouldn't believe what they do and I think that's a very helpful to a certain extent it's a helpful heuristic to think about think about it but the promise that we trap ourselves into thinking oh well if Canham just had this piece of information he wouldn't be in the epistemological mess he's in what's not true it actually doesn't work like that it's not like you can just give someone particularly a piece of data and that would change their mind but but I do think that people look at other people now not that there's an epistemological problem that is how they conceptualize problems but they look at people on the other side as bad people and once you do that it's even more difficult to have those conversations across divides yeah Dan kahan just published some research last year showing that there's almost no court no correlation between knowledge of climate science and your position on you know global warming you think it's real or you think it's a hoax what did correlate it with is party affiliation yeah in the in the ways we all know and so they're you know when people signal on particularly on social media their opinion on climate change they usually know nothing about it and even if they do it's irrelevant basically they're signalling to their fellow party members or their tribe you know I'm such a good reliable tribal member I doubt climate change I'm willing to say I think it's a Chinese hoax that's how crazy left or far right or whatever your position is I am so we talked a little bit about that in the book it's a variation of the dunning-kruger effect and the dunning-kruger effect is again when you're so ignorant you don't understand your own ignorance and it comes from the idea that when two men robbed a bank and they when they put lemon juice on their face and they were astonished they were incredulous that the cameras picked them up the researchers had the insight that they were too stupid to know that they were too stupid to rob a bank but there's something we talked about in the book it's called the unread library effect in which in the late 90s early 2000s researchers looked at they asked people questions about the inner workings of toilets and they found that most people thought that they could describe in detail how a toilet works or they understood the mechanisms of toilets but when they actually asked them to do that and then post tested them numerically to rate their knowledge of how toilets work they were much lower and subsequently they found that that that effect can moderate political beliefs so in conversations we found that there we found in my own interactions of people that's borne out by the literature is you just have to ask as many details as possible like oh you're for mass deportations which is something unfortunately we're hearing from the Trump administration right now well who would pay for that how would that work what would that look like tell me the logistics of that where would they be stored how are they and you'll find it - more details you ask people it exposes that effect and the idea is that the somebody knows it the cousins and dunning-kruger effect because somebody knows it I must know it like that information is out there and it's kind of seeped down to me mm-hmm so just from asking details about that it can expose that effect the problem though is you know as Jonathan hight and others have talked about hiding the righteous mind it's that morality binds and blinds and so the moment people think that they're better people or having a particular belief it's either they think it's a moral reason or it has an identity level salience so the moment that happens it becomes more difficult for people to revise their beliefs and those conversations become more difficult yeah our next issue of skeptic is the cover story by Steve Pinker and are we living living in a post truth world he says we're not and he it actually opens up with the with the question is the question are we know is the statement we're living in a post truth world true right course if it's true then it can't be true anyway but he points out there that that you know of the many tools we can apply to show how reason can work is to simply ask somebody to articulate what it is they think sane AFTRA is some because I'm against Natura well what is Natura uh I don't know you know it's like most of us don't really know the details of climate science and trade agreements and tariffs and things like that so what one tool is it well just please tell me what you think it is no I don't how to do that without sounding like you're challenging somebody's intelligence uh so in the book we talked about that so people will have very well-rehearsed excuse me they'll have very well rehearsed defenses of a conclusion but very poorly rehearsed defenses of an epistemology and that was my first book a manual for creating atheist that honed in on somebody's epistemology asking people how they know what they know and subsequent to that and this is again the book is very well researched and it's also based upon my experience I now have changed that and I immediately start those questions they with the goal of being not to invoke a defensive posture so someone doesn't become defensive is can I published a piece in skeptic about this is immediately asked a dis confirmation question in philosophy you call it the feasibility so a dis confirmation question echoing copper would be oh okay well how could that belief be wrong so someone believes you know whatever neighborhood the federal government should crack down in Maryland ethical government shouldn't correct doesn't matter what it is the you front-load the question so it's there are all these little templates in the book so one is that Rappaport's rules you will you listen you understand you repeat it back to them and then I immediately hit them with a dis confirmation question don't question the conclusion at all how could that belief be wrong so when you do that not only it offers people opportunity to reflect on their beliefs because usually people challenge a conclusion they have or they bring a counterexample and here's a heresy for you I no longer ask people for evidence for their beliefs mm-hmm because I've found that when people tell you the evidence for their beliefs and then they listen to themselves telling you the evidence for their beliefs it becomes more difficult to instill doubt and dislodge those beliefs hmm so is that it instead of asking for any evidence I immediately asked for this confirmation question yeah I think the way you phrased it was what would it take to change your mind that's something like that right yeah so you're not challenge you're not threatening in a more challenging their intelligence or anything like that you're just if you got to ask it the right way though like you're not bad an you just curious you're asking them well so that's that's the template again the first template is you know you you build rapport you ask questions whatever basic questions and for that not you know what do you do because most people don't either they don't like to talk about what they do or but what do you do when you're not working so then you then you could that's a good rapport building question and then when you find a topic or an idea you just ask them you want to do indented talks about this intuition pumps you you want to ask them in such a way that they say yeah I wish I could have expressed it that clearly in Hajus negotiations the goal is to get them to say that's right so when you get to say that right you know that you've really you've articulated that back to them and then again just to save myself time immediate dis confirmation questions oh that's a really interesting not your belief right how could your no no there's no you in this it's just that belief how could that idea be wrong like what what evidence and I'm not saying I have that evidence I'm just curious what evidence could you be presented with it would cause you to revise that belief yeah I start to see this book as a sequel to your previous book the street I like the Street epistemology concept which is yours I think that you just you just in kind of a Socratic method you just ask a lot of questions like I'm just curious how did you come to this belief or you know that kind of thing I think of you as sort of a Columbo remember that television series yeah yeah excuse me I just have one more question this is just one last little thing has kind of been bothering me right before you know what the guy's confessing to the crime the other thing is it's remarkably easy to do this it's not a Jedi mind trick it's not and people would say to me how don't you think this is unethical or I I don't see it's like I was thinking about the the thing that you said to me about Senators not speaking with each other I don't see how it would be unethical to talk to somebody and help them realize that what they don't know what they think that they know and as long as you are also open to the fact that you could be mister we could all be mistaken about something yeah I'm just as an aside I I was approached by a Christian University it was in conversation with with Christians about teaching at their university and one of the things that they said to me is the reason that I'm not qualified as unless I wanted to sign a statement of faith and I said not only could I not sign a statement of faith but I could also not sign a statement of unfaith and reason for that is that I would have to be willing to revise my belief if sufficient evidence came came along the way so if I were convinced of some argument ontological whatever they aren't cosmological whatever the argument would be I couldn't even sign a statement of non belief and I think that there's something key in that idea of the being willing to revise your belief you know that's the and philosophical associations Delphi report on the idea of critical thinker and so helping people to be more humble and critically think about what they believe and giving people the tools because I don't think these things are systemic in terms of talk-down I think you can legislate these things but I think if we have enough people asking the right questions we can re-inject civility into our discourse mm-hmm yeah so let's go through your beginner level will go beginner intermediate advanced let's do it and then super advanced but nine ways to start changing minds now the presumption is you're talking to somebody who is in disagreement with you about some particular issue you're pro-life I'm pro-choice or whatever and we're gonna we're gonna talk that through so you go through this modeling words ask questions acknowledge extremists navigating social media don't blame do discuss focus on a custom ology learn and what not to do so let's start modeling what what does that mean you're asking me to give away the whole book okay well no it's just give us a few bullet points I'll give you a little thing so you you want to model the behavior you want to see in others here's a great trick from that section I don't really like to think in terms of tricks this is a great trick let's say you're having a conversations with someone and they simply refuse to answer the question you're asking just say to them could you please ask me the same question mmm and they say well I say no just just ask me that and I had that when I was speaking with someone who in Australia a Muslim community leader who believed that the that women should be stoned to death for adultery and I kept asking them a question they kept off you skating and I said well just ask me the question so finally this individual said do you think women should be stoned for adultery and I said no do you think women should be strong for adultery and he said yes so it's a modeling behavior that you can use that's one you mentioned calling out extremists on your side that's a great little technique that you can use so just identifying some extremists who are on your side and then just call them out and what that does is most people know more about their the extremists on the other side than they do the other side so they know more about Islamic extremists whereas they couldn't possibly tell you the first thing about the difference between Shia and Sunni Islam among that the succession of Muhammad but the idea is that they're so familiar with the crazies on the other side and it's a really good way to build some conversational and even moral currency by criticizing your own extremists yeah how do you determine when's the right time to have these kinds of conversations you know at the dinner table or at the ball game or or you know you're sitting down at a dinner party or something and you know do you bring it up or not that's a good question it depends on the book we write about goals you have to figure out what your goals are sometimes you may just want to wait until you're approached and then practice some techniques sometimes you're more or less held hostage by the situation so your Thanksgiving our family dinner and you just can't get away or you were that you were they not just uncle so if you you know that's from the seven Habits of Highly Effective People you think you begin with the end in mind and then you work back so you figure out what you want your goal to be and then you adopt accordingly so maybe you just want to just get through the meal so you just you know say okay my goal is to get through the meal and to not have anybody become incendiary and not have you know the turkey thrown around the room and so you know you just listen and the book offers templates for exact questions to ask yeah I remember when after Dawkins The God Delusion came out in 2006 the Atheist community got somewhat divided over how militant should we be and you know him and hitch in particular were you know that sort of pit bulls of of the movement and you know they had a lot of people saying yeah that's what we should we should all do that you know like make fun of these people for being delusional and that'll really turn it around and and my feeling was well I don't think some you tell somebody they deluded you know that you know the wall goes up they're not listening to you anymore it just pisses them off and so maybe a softer approach it works well but then of course Dawkins has lots of letters saying you know I read your book I changed my mind I'm now an atheist you know I remember when he was on Bill O'Reilly show and you know Riley says how do you know your approach works he says I have a thousands of letters and Bill O'Reilly goes I have tens of thousands of letters so right you know I can't just count up letters I guess but you know how do you again how do you know what's the right approach for those kinds of it's controversial issues I'll throw this out I'll divide it into micro and macro on the macro level it does seem that possibly they're calling people out on the delusion thing would work the Bill Maher approach the Dawkins approach the Hitchens approach but on the micro level there's simply no evidence for that in fact most of the evidence is is against that now that doesn't mean that there aren't exceptions to that like you know Penn Jillette's a famous example of working with acidic Jews Senate cetera tells the story the hamburger but I don't know that story that what did Penn do oh you should actually get it from him I think he I heard it and then we did a podcast together we did a an event in Vegas he was telling me about it but basically he called somebody out III shouldn't tell ya it's okay yeah yeah it's alright oh it's always been about that yeah so the I think that the idea is I don't think there's any one approach I think the tent is big enough but in micro interactions one-on-one calling people there's just no evidence that it works yeah yeah I mean my answer the question is it you know it depends there's not one right answer sometimes humor works sometimes assertiveness work sometimes softness works and do you really want to be that guy who's a dick no do you really want to be that guy oh you know want to talk to Shermer he's just an no I mean you know you want to I mean I would think it would be more beneficial if people perceived you as someone with whom they could speak honestly and openly rather than someone who's going to call them an idiot and delusional and a crea Turin etc and I don't think I've ever given anybody that a little bit few years after this whole affair started in 2006 at Tam the amazing meeting Phil Plait gave a lecture called that by that title don't be a dick I mean it was just so obviously true but unbelievably it was controversial like that's controversial there are a lot of people in the skeptics movement along with the atheist movements that you know they're angry about the effects of people having delusional beliefs you know flying planes and buildings are blowing up abortion clinics or whatever we got to fight back aggressively see I think that's one of the reasons that caused the schism and the downfall of the whole thing I think the part of the schism was people like me you know not gay I'm straight I'm not a minority really of any kind brackets out a little bit but for the most part I'm not uh I never felt any injustice personally I just thought the whole thing was ridiculous and silly and so many people however who did feel acute and justices more or less rose up to the social justice side of atheism and skepticism and I think that was one of the things that caused the divisions including atheism plus in this idea that you can't just have no belief you have to have positive values that go with that but the Atheist plus movement was not good for the overall big-tent approach I mean we are already small a number as it is to give people a list of like these are the dozen things you have to believe politically and culturally and socially and if you don't you're not one of us oh boy big mistake the humanist movement kind of did that in the 70s and 80s and I remember thinking well you know I'm kind of a libertarian classical liberal I took maybe half the boxes or three-quarters of the boxes but the couple over here in my end all right am I not in every every time every time you add a conjunction to that you know something and something you just diminish your pool but even beyond diminishing your pool there's those values while they may be rationally drivable they have nothing to do with not collecting stamps you know like if you're an atheist you just there is no as some someone just the other day said well which the Atheist world there is no atheist world I was tweeting about that oh yeah because well I've been saying this for forever is that you know what are you atheist believe okay just drop that's the wrong question you know what do secular humanists believe what do people who believe in civil rights believe or whatever you have to define yourself by by what you do believe not by what you don't believe but you know that meme atheists as a worldview thing has you know pretty much been promoted by theists I think you know you atheists are all like this it's it's you know sort of a cognitive shortcut so they don't have to think and you know I do a lot of debates where people will quote Dawkins or or Harris or they'll say like Sam Harris is a determinist so Shermer how do you square determinism with this like but I'm not a determinist oh you mean you guys differ from each other yeah we do so that's why after I usually like when I teach the atheism class when I give the nonstampcollector idea I'll say something like all I saw were the way I define atheist is a person who who doesn't believe there's sufficient evidence to warrant belief in God but if he were or she were given the evidence they would believe and I think that nullifies a lot of the nonsense to come only Victor Stenger and such were just hardcore like there was evidence against the stuff he talked about that and in actually a few of his books if the god hypothesis I think the fallacy of fine-tuning to but you know I'm not sure I'm a hundred percent he changed my mind thinking about that a bit if the universe if God exists the universe should be a certain way it's not that way right that may be a test I know Jerry Coyne agrees with that to me it seems it could be one of these mysterion mysteries like there's no experiment we're gonna run or set up data we're going to collect and we go look there it is you know 95% confidence level that God exists something like that because this is you know my thought experiment that any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence would be indistinguishable from God you know something like a technology like like what we have technological civilization just extrapolate that forward fifty thousand years or five hundred thousand years and you know you could create life-forms probably geo engineer planets and so on the kinds of stuff we attribute to gods so anything you would throw out at me is like well that little thing right there that would be evidence of God it's like yeah but a far future human or AI is gonna be able to do that yeah I didn't know that I didn't do so well you don't you did you come up with that I didn't know you came up with that yes I wrote I wrote a scientific American column called schirmer's last law you know it was sort of a tongue-in-cheek I was playing off of arthur c clarke famous three laws the third one of which is any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic well i just played on that and said it needs any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from god you know same same principle but you know so for example the example I use is there's that that quadriplegic who has a chip in his brain that allows him to move the cursor on a key on a computer and he can turn on the music or you know pour himself a glass of water or whatever with the artificial hand just by thinking now if you didn't know he had a chip in his brain you'd think well this guy has telekinesis look he just thinks the music and the cuttin music comes on he thinks I want a glass of water and the water appears but once you know that there's a chip in there you think oh it's just technology so yeah what what do you think a God could do I would say to it I say to a thesis the theist that any sufficiently advanced technology could couldn't do yeah you can't answer the can answer the question that's Krause's idea you know if you walk outside and the stars were aligned you know I am God believe in me and that was my response but now I'm gonna quote it attributed to shomers last law is you would have to be able to rule out alternative possibilities you know you'd have to be able to rule out an alternative trickster culture or be I mean I admittedly I would say holy like yes what's swear no no no it's okay this is this is the podcast we could sign it anyway holy that's that's something but you but again I don't know if that's sufficient evidence to certainly wouldn't be sufficient evidence to warrant my belief it might be sufficient to nudge me so this your thing it's like we start in society with the default of maybe like well come on like you know maybe maybe there goes well okay well maybe there aren't you know you you need to sufficient evidence to get to a maybe and so we need to recalibrate our mechanism of belief formation our epistemic humility if you will you have - we have to recalibrate it toward the - one or two you need evidence to even get to a - as opposed to you know saying maybe yeah like in in terms of Humes analysis of miracles it's even worse now because if you say well you know the limp regrows or this happens or that happens that's just unbelievably improbable first I want to know it our Penn & Teller in the room or is David Copperfield here you know because these guys can make stuff happen that is truly miraculous you've probably seen the commercial Penn & Teller did we're tellers walking on water and turn he turns water into wine and you know all the kind of stuff we think of his miracles biblical type miracles you know any good stage magician can do so again you know just how do you know you know the response to that it's amazing the mental and intellectual gymnastics people have to do the response to why doesn't God heal amputees among apologist is if he did then you wouldn't need faith right sorry to take an IQ point away from you from that but but that that is an astonishing gymnastic that you have to perform to keep your early system intact yeah I've heard him make that argument of course that but then they're glad to give God credit when something else happens that they think was improbable therefore God stepped in so right yeah it doesn't really make any sense okay continuing let's move to the intermediate level let friends be wrong I think this is super important yeah we we talked about that a little bit but you you don't need to correct everybody all the time but everything which that the marriage addict and the adage if you might you can be right or you can be married is how it is so the idea of that haven't heard that too sometimes you just have to let things go and seeking ideological purity is one of our problems now we don't really care I think I wrote in the book you know got this from my I held both of my parents hands when they were dying and who really cares you know if someone's a different political try but what difference does it make does really make any difference right yeah yeah when I was growing up my parents when was a Democrat when was a Republican and they sort of joked about like we're gonna cancel each other's vote tomorrow you know but it didn't lead to divorce let me ask you the techniques when you were a kid did your parents have friends and different political affiliations I think so yeah my parents did too I see all maybe it's because I live in Portland but even among my friends I've been asking that questions and and more off far more often thought they say no we don't know any in my cases you know liberals like we don't know any Republicans we don't know it that's a huge problem he problem yeah and what was that Cushing and Dunning book the big sort you know we sort ourselves out according to you know tribes at this point and it's easy not only online but it's easy physically how to do that as well and then we segregated in communities and the problem with that issue other everybody's and other some that they have a different beliefs and that's a huge problem it's again one of those things we just not talking to each other yeah I remember in night I think it was 79 that prop 13 passed in California property tax in California was 4% which is huge and so prop 13 changed it to 1% and remember my dad was very glad about this because he had to pay property tax on his house and that was a lot because he didn't make that much money but at the college I was at professors were saying I don't know anybody who's gonna vote for prop 13 not no one's gonna vote for this this will never pass and then of course it passed overwhelmingly because you know these they in the Academy they're in this bubble where you know no one's gonna vote for that though if you don't know anybody that's gonna vote for X and half the country is going to vote for X or half the state and you or you know you're in a bubble yeah and I would also suggest you need to expand your circle of friends yeah how do you do that I don't know I mean I it's hard if you live in a place like rural Oregon or even Portland I would I don't really know how you do that and I don't mean online friends I mean actual people you sit down and have dinner with I don't really know I mean find a hobby talk to people yes I think hobbies and sports I mean I run into a lot of people bike racing they just bike bike riding every day because these are kind of just anybody who shows up at eight o'clock at the if the dolphins there at the pier in Santa Barbara we just go right and it could be 10 people 100 people five people whatever and who knows what they believe there's no sorting by beliefs and so yeah I get the you know the political spectrum so in that case you kind of have to be careful you can't make a Trump joke just in case there's somebody that's a trump supporter and there are some you know even in jiu-jitsu I found in within this city it's broken up tribally they're usually they do yeah so you know our mutual friend Matt Thornton he has a gym straight question and people with a certain type of mindset go there and then there's other gyms the kind of aunty Fay gems when people get there so even then you have to be careful because those groups are self selected speaking of antifa jeffrey miller's podcast conversation with that and Tifa member in albuquerque yes I mean it was like he read your book I mean he followed the rules perfectly and this guy just opened up and Jeffrey was just super curious like well how does it work or you know what were you thinking when you were doing that or why do you guys all wear black I mean that's so interesting why do you do that and and this guy because Jeffrey is such a non-confrontational solemn speaking guy he follows a lot of your rules just by temperament I think friendly open curious it's such that people want to engage with him and this guy you know just said well look it's big fun to put on the uniform and get out there and mix it up and and you know cause some with some some of the proud boys you know it's a reminded me a little bit on a sort of a side note of you know part of the problem is that a lot of these young men they're not gravitating toward sports and the military is not cool to be in anymore really so what do they do you know they're they're looking they're you know high testosterone they want to get out there and be physical and do something that you know part of a band of brothers and they're not into sports or whatever they don't go in the military so they end up finding some cause if they believe in you know we're gonna fight not neo-nazis and fascism so I'm gonna join this group or the proud boys the same thing and that seems to be a problem yeah so two things Jeff Miller I've spoken him many times but I've never met in person so that's on my my to-do list next time my wife's family's from the Mexico he did a great job on that and that what you said gets back to the morality and I didn't need level salience right so they have a sense of identity they have a sense morality the fastest the Nazis the problem was what have you and then and then they walk into and there's a whole line of literature on religious psychology in this day walk into a morally supportive community an ideologically motivated moral community and all of those things the suite of that thing of those factors make beliefs difficult to revise so I don't want to necessarily jump to the chapter 7 but it does make you know when someone believes that's Dan Dennett idea from breaking spell when someone believes they're a better person because they hold a belief then you did very very difficult territory yeah yesterday I was in conversation you're gonna find the name in this book was uture man do you know this book future man note a Netflix show or Hulu show yeah the guy Tim I don't like nothing yesterday and now it's escaping my my my my family in memory but but basically it's it's sort of tracking the problem men are having today now you know this is sort of a dicey conversation we had cuz a couple of white guys complaining about the world is you know no you know basically a lot of people's you know thank you just shut the up and let women have their say now he's like yes okay that that's right but on the other hand you know men comprise you know like 93 percent of prisoners what you know like 70 percent of the suicides and so on I mean and part of the problem he thinks is is what I've just kind of articulated is that you know men young men need some cause and needs to belong to something particularly that you can get out and be physical those sports is a great outlet but like so he has a section on Isis where he discusses what's the motivation for these young men to join Isis I mean this is like one of the worst things you could possibly do but for them it's a you know once you buy into the ideology like we're fighting these evil satanic Americans you know and the Jews or whatever it is they think they're fighting that then you know so Bill Maher oh he shows the the funny videos of these guys on the monkey bars like you know haha these idiots are out there training and the monkey bars like this is a big thing well but that's what young men want to do they want to get out there and mix it up and and train and become strong with their fellow brothers and then go fight some cause and again we're kind of still a little bit of a sidebar here on the subject but but but this you know recognizing what's behind what somebody is doing why are they out there doing that so and to bring it back to your book so if you if you're in Portland and there's the proud boys and the antifa lining up you know it's like your book is not really relevant they don't want to talk they want to fight I mean that they're not interested in having a conversation yeah so at that that's the other thing we're talking about in the book is to know when to walk away which is but and to know when not to engage internet trolls which is increasingly becoming a problem I've actually deleted my facebook account because of severe harassment is actually one of the best things such a time sink but even on Twitter you know and just the other day someone impersonated me and they put up a fake account yeah but you have to know when to walk away and you have to know there are some people you can have a conversation with even there if they're zealots and ideologues and then there are some times where those conversations are dangerous it just you just have to have the tools which we talked about in the book to figure out what to do that and you know you're not owned a response by anybody on social media right yeah yeah I noticed one tool is just ignore the people don't respond yeah I know it and that's really difficult for a lot of people to do ah I'll have to kind of I have a hard time doing it's like I get pissed off like I'm gonna nail this guy and then I'm like look count to 10 walk away the Streisand effect though every time and people say the crazy stuff about me but if I were to respond to those things that would just give them that would just raise that it would just give them a voice we've given the platform and then that would encourage more people to do that as well so it's counterproductive you just have to use common sense and figure out what to do that which is more often than not not at all yeah so in terms of your one of your three points of what's your goal and having the conversation you know if you talked to an antifoam member or proud boys and say let's all sit down and find some common ground that their response is probably going to be we don't want to have common ground we want to kick the kick these people's ass and and that's the point of why we're here so I I think there that's right you have to walk away all right be willing to change your mind on the spot so you know yeah so how do you deal when you just say look I'm willing to change my mind make make the argument for me or something I've done this before in conversations and people have been absolutely flabbergasted so it this is I think that we put that in the expert skills I camera but it certainly wait late much later in the book so the book goes from difficulty its fundamental beginner intermediate advanced expert and master and each of those increase in difficulty and change her mind on the spot is I had to have bit rate myself to do this if I'm in that Rappaport's rule stage of really trying to understand what someone believes listening and then repeating it back to them and if if something they said I didn't know I'd say well like I didn't know that I was just in a conversation I did an impossible conversations serious with someone now I'm gonna get 5,000 emails of hate saying this 10,000 tweets that I'm a bastard Nazi fascist but I I was speaking to somebody who was pro-life and we were inevitably as these discussions ago talking about how to define life and she said something that I never considered before and my immediate philosophical training was to hit counters have contracts and for example but instead I used a technique in the book and I changed my mind and what she said is that if you were to find if you were to go out in outer space somewhere and find some asteroid you know the Japanese just laying or what you know whoever lands some whatever a rover or something on an asteroid and you were to take back samples and you found we just got started sorry Bert oh yeah I saw your tweets about your dog listen there he is walking away he's walking on his own now it's uh anyway if you were to find that and the soil samples showed that that was that that was you know carbon and it was and it was sufficient so that independent observers agreed that that's life you would say that that's life so why is that any different from a fertilized egg like if you were to find a fertilized egg in space but oh my god that's life and I thought to myself it gave me the Greek aporia you know wonder and I thought to myself you know what if I really want to be honest with myself rather than just defending a previous belief I would have to say you're right I never thought about that I've changed my mind on there yeah and I and her reaction was rather startling because people don't do that especially in real time and the other thing is I can think of no better rapport builder than that yeah so just be completely sincere and honest and if someone says something you didn't know and they changed your mind just acknowledge it it's extremely hard in real time and that's the other thing from hostage negotiations is that in literature and communications is that you want to build bridges you want to always allow people to save face but if you can get over that idea of saving face on your part not you want to build bridges and a lot other people to say face but if you can just say to someone right in the middle of kabah you know I didn't I honestly never thought about that before I think I've you know I've got to think about it but that might have changed my mind that's an amazing report but and people will respect you they'll be utterly blown away about you yeah and it also shows you're listening to them yeah instead of just instead of just waiting to make your next point which is important your since you're in choir or two I use that with on the and the abortion issue I the last two years or so I've taken up to showing my students ben shapiro videos on on his pro-life arguments i cannot even fathom the consequence for me if i did that well most of my students are pro-choice and their first year students and i'm teaching them how to you know have these kinds of conversations and how to be open to other arguments and so on but i also make the point about the free speech point that John Stuart Mill said you know if you if you you he who knows only his own position doesn't even know that so if you're pro-choice argument in your you're strongly pro-choice and I say well what do you think the pro-life arguments are well they just hate women no no that is not one of their arguments you know what you try to think of something else and that's a version of the unread effect and it's the idea that what's the best argument against the position so even saying that causes people to think or tell me to people who again you have to calibrate this to the person with whom were speaking but tell me to people who really articulate good arguments against that point and what are they most people have no idea yeah they couldn't possibly tell you some people will and in that case it's great you got a good lesson right you learn something I think a lot of it and those particular issues that they're not resolvable in through conversation or debate there because their conflict say in this case conflicting rights you know I I believe in the rights of the woman I reckon I recognize that a fetus is not just a tissue it is a human it's not legally a person until the third trimester so for example if a woman is murdered and she has a fetus in the third trimester it's a double homicide right so legal so make it a stage between a human from a biologist point of view and a person from a legal point of view making that distinction helps people go oh okay I see you know I'm thinking of it this way and you're thinking of it that way and we may never resolve it because we're just talking about it at different levels yeah so so that works my own belief when we could unpack this if you want is that it is possible to hierarchically prioritize competing rights and I think that there are existing tools in the philosophical literature like John Rawls theory of justice that enable us to do that and there are mechanisms by which we can adjudicate those claims but in order to have that discussion with someone they have to be more educated and thoughtful to begin with so you wouldn't use any of the big words I just use yeah yeah yeah no I I do use Rawls's ideas a lot in kind of rephrasing it says it is a good tool but the point here is just just to acknowledge that there are differences to the other person you're talking to that you know I'm open to what you have to say although we could be speaking at different levels and and so we're we're not going to resolve this or like free will and determinism well what do you mean by volition and free will is right everything is going to turn on how you define those terms and we're defining them differently then we're not going to resolve it through conversation or debate or anything else and you know to me it seems like there's a lot of issues like that I largely think like a lot of moral issues are resolved Obul through facts just more correct facts but some of them aren't like for example if you you're in favor of a flat tax I'm in favor of a regressive tax and this guy over here's in favor of a progressive tax and there's no way to find out which is the right answer it depends on what the goals of the society are we want to do this or we want to do that we want to encourage more profits in business or we want to help the people that you know or have fallen through the cracks it depends what we're talking about and there I think I think you know acknowledging that that it's not resolvable but we can have a friendly conversation about it helps yeah I think that's right in in those cases - one of the things we talk about in the book is to take a lesson from Socrates and always orient your conversation along the lines of a specific question and you can move in and out of questions and change questions but it helps you keep focus it helps other people who are listening to the conversation focus in and be potential contributors to so focusing on a question defining words upfront like some words are no tourists and Slipper slippery like faith or now the word woman actually and so having those cars making this definition sautron yeah right okay yeah faith I like your definition I think this is thinking you know something when you don't it was that yeah how you defined it or yeah teni know things you don't know or there there are a lot of a Loftis John Loftus calls that an irrational leap over probabilities there are so many but it's very difficult now when we've made this subjective move the turn away from objectivity and towards subjectivity and you know we see that in standpoint epistemology the idea that there's somehow a primacy in your lived experience and without complicating it too much you know you're the more oppression variables you have the more you you clearly you see reality so we have additional impediments to conversations you know and you said before you're talking to so it's like two white guys complaining to each other how do you is a section in the book in which something I've heard more than once now at Portland State University if a white man told me two plus two equals four I wouldn't believe him so how do you have conversations with such rampant identity politics and so conspicuous so unabashed yeah so we talked about that's in Chapter six you know that's actually my favorite chapter in the book oh six expert skills to engage the closed-minded yeah synthesis help vent steam what's that help help venting steam we mow roadblocks yeah yeah sometimes people often when people ask a question they don't really want to know the answer maybe they ask because they want you to know they're listening maybe there's a attractive remember they someone they want a date so you don't really know why and so they're just maybe they want you to know that they know so they want that's why they're asking the question so you don't really know but sometimes people just want to talk and be heard and letting people vent steam that's why we put it in the advanced skill we talk about exactly how to do that you know techniques from hostage negotiation like I hear you and really sincerely listening and not you know only following the first two rules of rap reports rules you know listening and asking back but not refuting or so that's part of it you know the other thing is very very I don't really know any manuals so so it was amazing to me in my first book all of the I mean so much literature videos etc about how to talk people into faith nobody ever wrote a book of a lot of people how to talk people out of it and then what was so striking to me about this is nobody really wrote a book on how to truly intervene in someone's cognitions and instill doubt and how to do that across divides and how to you know synthesizing these vast bodies of literature but then I really thought to myself well what do you do if someone wants to intervene in your beliefs and so that's part of chapter six we talk about what do you do and there are three things you do the thing that we most recommend is that you should just go for it you should let those individuals attempt to intervene in your beliefs and if they do so and you become more humble about something you thought you know it's only a good thing and that was some of that was a reaction to Street epistemology because many in the Christian community in the evangelical community in particular in the Muslim community and they were livid about this idea that you would talk to people and ask targeted questions to help them really ask themselves if they know what they think that they know but why not go for it you'd go for it with anything you'd go you'd certainly go far with empirical questions so why wouldn't you go far with moral or epistemological questions yeah I tried this technique that sometimes were debating with you know atheists and people of faith is something like you know if everybody in the faith community was like you I wouldn't be worried about it I wouldn't even bother with any of this stuff I'm worried about the people that fly planes into buildings and blow up abortion clinics and you know who are driven by these beliefs and you know and therefore you take them out of you're not one of the bad guys you're one of the good guys but it's thought that's also in the book sorry I think there's a delay a lag but yeah that's also in the book as alter casting and we almost put that in there because it's we describe as ethically murky and maybe almost bordering on an unethical as you cast somebody in a role and then they live up to that role and we advocate two methods of alter casting one is to oh you seem really seem like the sort of person who's good at discussions and can have civil discussions and so they live to that role and then the other one is you just take their favorite solution off the table but like an example of altar casting is if you say to someone oh wow you're really fast text good then you've cast them in the role of fast texter and then they want to text quickly to show that they can live up to that role so it's it's we almost didn't put it in there because you could cast people in negative roles as well but it's a remarkably effective technique if the conversation is getting right before it starts to get eaten yeah yeah a lot of these are I guess must come from experience where you don't have to think you know step three or whatever but the hostage negotiations I really found that section super interesting I mean it's unlikely any of or anyone listening to this podcast is ever gonna have to do this but and what can we learn from what hostage negotiators do and what do they do boy the so I listen to a lot of transcript a lot of record audio and I read a lot of transcripts and then I read the and and my corner change Lindsey did as well a lot of material on this and we synthesized it into I don't know ten points so one of them I already said is try to elicit that's right minimal and use of minimal encouragers it's a way to communicate back to let people know you're listening there are so many small things and again you know obviously I hope no one has ever in that situation but if they are these are very simple techniques to use that cost you literally nothing I don't have page numbers on mine so I gotta hear like what like the person says I'm just so sick and tired of people pushing everyone around and trying to get their way and you say get their way and this kind of opens the door like please tell me more yeah so that's that gets back to the idea we talked about in the book for kids it's from hostage negotiations this is the vital technique about calibrated questions so calibrated questions don't you know do you think this is true that is we'll just let itself two years or no but how questions and why questions are calibrated because they don't lend themselves to yes or knows so they give you more to latch on to so it's very difficult to intervene it's possible to intervene in someone's cognitions with us or knows but it's much better other beliefs or have had those kinds of conversations that are very difficult it's much easier if you have something to latch on to and you keep talking to them and that you you keep you keep you keep the conversation flowing yeah I like this one allow the person to saves face that's super important build a golden bridge what do you mean by that that's basically safe facing you know saying things like you know boy I had that exact set of beliefs and then I found this out so right you're like yeah I put it on I do that with and I do it honestly when I talking to climate deniers I'll say you know back in the 90s I right there with you I totally thought it was all a bunch of remember when I was in college in the 70s they said oh you know overpopulation the rainforests gonna be gone Peak Oil it's all gonna come to an end it's you know the world's gonna be you know just terrible by 2000 and it never happened so I thought oh come on this is a bunch of you know so I totally get why you think that you know but then you know I started reading this and I started thinking that and some more evidence came through and I kind of walk them through how I went from their position to my position you just built a Golden Bridge that's that Ridge right right right there's some an opportunity to say a face and don't we put in the book don't put a toll on the Golden Bridge like you know sometimes people if they if you think they're starting to change their mind or they've been reflecting on who kind of took you long enough right I get that actually on the climate thing because I think my article in Scientific American was like 2006 or 7 where I said I'm a flip-flopper you know what took you so long Shermer idiot ideologue and so on I don't know when I wrote even when I wrote a column saying you know my previous libertarian position has not really served me too well I remember yeah yeah yeah yeah so I mean a lot of people say well that was brave of you that was courageous and intellectually honest but a lot of people's like it just really upgraded me for that like huh how could you have been so stupid to ever think that was the right position right and so I just I just heard an episode of the most recent episode Caitlyn Flanagan I think in and I can't remember but she talked about how we have a we've created a culture in which saying you're sorry for something is is like a any kind of admission of guilt like that you get cancelled you're subject to cancel culture there's no coming back yeah it's it's such a dysfunctional time right now and it seems as hiding others have said you can really pin it to the last five years the whole social dysfunction has started and I think it exacerbated under trouble yeah that's made it worse yeah a lot of what we're going through now I do wonder because people are describing it like it's this trend that's been building for years and now here we had had Hillary won which could have easily happened just by the quirkiness of the electoral system the electoral college system you know what people be saying boy things are bad and you know Hillary is just a blip on the good side no it would be like well we had our first black president now we have our first woman president things you know in other words moral progress is continuing as it has been for centuries I do think there's a kind of a lot of hindsight bias that you know okay so Trump won now look the pattern has been building for years well has it you know in other words is this a long-term trend or is it just a little blip in in what we're experiencing well I'm just kind of it's sort of a rhetorical question I know it's it's because there's no way to entrance so that's why don't say anything yeah how to converse with another master level how to converse with an idealogue this is really hard because here you're not just talking about like I have a position on abortion and yours is different or tax rates or something like this but but with an ideology I mean Jonathan Knight makes this point about you know these moral foundations that people hold or the point I always make you in your debating and creationist or theist if you say you have to choose between Jesus and Darwin you know well guess who's not going to be picked I think you know because Jesus represents a whole worldview and Darwin's just a guy science first so you have to take that the ideology out of the equation and just say look we're just talking about this one little thing right here you know I always say something like maybe evolution was God's Way of creating the diversity of life so you can keep your God if you want because they're not going to give that up yeah and that that chapter was that's the culmination and and when if you listen to the audiobook or folks read the book we urge people not to jump ahead in any of the book or skip sections if they think they know it all because they really all build on it on on each other and once you become really proficient in these techniques it's not like you're using one or two you're just into weaving them together and chapter 7 builds on Heights moral foundation theory it builds on just really really truly diverse types of literature and apply to pista mala ji moral or pista mala G so epistemology is how you know you know in morality and its moral epistemology is just a combination of those how do you know what you should do morally and most people they don't have a pathway they don't have clear pathways because their moral mind overrides their rational mind and so that they have all these moral beliefs that they have worked from either backwards or they've you know desirability bias or confirmation bias and so it is a very very tricky business to navigate that but those to me I've always found those to be the most interesting conversations personally yeah I remember a public talk I gave at a Canadian university I don't know maybe about 10 years ago and my Canadian buddy was there with me a Greg and it was just my general why people believe where things talk in the Q&A a professor was there and he stood up and he went on and on about 9/11 truth ISM and the Bush administration and you know the building seven and he had all these very specific things and I could address most of them but but then my buddy was he kind of intervened a little bit and said okay what is it that you're really after what's bugging you I mean is it really building seven or what what's behind this did this was after when the guy came up when we were just talking and it really had nothing to do with 9/11 it was you know capitalism has corrupted civilization you know there's too much greed and and graft and and so in other words 9/11 and this was just the tip of the iceberg you know that the Bush administration is doing all these bad things over here and this is just something I'm gonna focus on for the moment so what what we he was really bothered by was you know private ownership of land corporate greed the profit motive that's what he was on about and so what's interesting there is that those beliefs appeared to be held on epistemological grounds right well what about this building or what about this future but so those so there's no data points that you can give somebody for moral beliefs like that so that their hope their beliefs are really held they're actually held for moral reasons not launched reasons but you're answering the epistemological reasons doesn't get to the core which is the moral reasons which is why you have to look to add moral epistemology to answer those questions and the and then even within that this is so complicated even one than that that's why we try to break it down the book to just give people a very strict template like literally you say this you say this you say this you say this and to make it as straightforward as possible because when someone holds their beliefs for moral reasons those conversations are invariably more difficult but almost I wouldn't say almost all maybe even most beliefs the surprising number of beliefs are held for moral reasons and Nauticus upon epistemological or empirical grounds yeah mara when I drove into the whole GMO controversy to write about it for scientific American's it wasn't long before I realized this really isn't about GMOs this is really about because Monsanto kept coming up every article ever read Monsanto Monsanto Monsanto like this is really about corporate greed and charging for something that seems natural you know like how can Monsanto own or patent a life form and then charge these little farmers you know every season and they're not allowed to you know to breed the seeds or whatever farmers do and that that melon santos' after them so it was really really came down to you know corporate greed and capitalism you know and that's what was behind that so arguing like well but but but in a GM owes feed poor people or you know gold and rice or you know there's no evidence that it affects human health well maybe it does but it also affects the environment but all that was like secondary behind that was there's something deeper wrong with Western civilization and that's GMO thing is just emblematic of the problem with capitalism yeah and this is the most contour intuitive thing in the book and this is a heresy among the circles in which we travel but it is borne out by the evidence over and over again as I'm sure you're familiar with the backfire effect we advocate not providing evidence not offering evidence unless you're explicitly asked to do so and only that right and I know that that seems counterintuitive but the literature is crystal-clear people do not change their beliefs in the basis of evidence it doesn't matter if they did like you said with the climate change in repeal and different political parties that wouldn't happen to be more like a pontil ISM painting right people with beliefs wouldn't correlate to anything but yet that they'd be some clear picture and aggregate I like this tweet you have from Thomas soul one of the most pathetic and dangerous signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason right right and that's the other thing we talk about in the book is we're in a crisis now where everybody assumes that everybody else has poor motivations right as opposed to just thinking again like the theaetetus little stereo tears that they just don't have a piece of information but rockin that line of offering that information which is it which is a mistake but yet asking them to diss confirmation questions okay what could I what evidence could I provide you with so you're not providing them with the evidence because the evidence that persuaded you might not be the evidence that persuaded them right so you're asking them what it would take and then steena and then even then it's broken down further you know there is no evidence if someone says well there's no evidence then the response to that is then that belief is not held on the basis of evidence because to hold the belief in the base of evidence by definition means there must be some evidence that could come in that would cause you to revise the belief and that's why I couldn't not only sign the statement of faith but the statement of non faith right because I hold my beliefs in the base of evidence and so so that's the first thing and then someone could give a wildly implausible this confirmation condition and since we've been talking a lot about atheism you know one would be the bones of Christ what would cause you to deny the resurrection of Jesus while the bones of Christ because then he couldn't have the same if they have it so everybody knows that that you cannot supply of someone with the bones of Christ but what's interesting about this I talked about this I think in 2012 and my Freedom From Religion conference is that if you did present somewhat the bones of Christ they would do everything that they could to show that those were not the bones of Christ they take them to specialist universities etc but that shows you that there's not a global problem what they're thinking right because if there was they wouldn't know to do that hmm this thinking is damaged in one particular area and again it's the whole the idea the moral mind is conflated or has a oh it overrides their the way they rationally process problems so then so there you go again the three things for dis confirmation well here's the evidence it would take and they tell you and then you see if you had the evidence it's those are usually pretty civil conversations there is no evidence and then you do what I said about what the beliefs not held in the pace evidence there are only so many things that people can say to that you know yes no or maybe and then they offer a wildly implausible this confirmation condition I was at a conference with Richard Dawkins and Ken Miller there's a bunch of other speakers too but Ken Miller is a Catholic and he accepts the existence of Jesus the crucifixion of Jesus the resurrection of Jesus and that Jesus died for our sins now he is also one of the leading biologist who debunked the intelligent design creationists and so he's written several books about this and he kind of makes this shift from you know empirical scientist - that's my faith tradition and I remember Dawkins was asking him okay what if we found a piece of the true cross you know really it's really the true cross and on it there was a little bit of flesh and we could extract some DNA and what do you think the DNA of Jesus would be you know because of course he's born of a virgin and it doesn't have a but biological father and so on and you know and Ken was like this is not the level that I believe on I'm not claiming I know empirically that Jesus existed was resurrect and so on it's my faith tradition or it's just what I believe sort of metaphorically he's not super clear about that I think or maybe I'm not remembering it's how he said it exactly but it's a little bit like in my discussions with Jordan Peterson you know where he talks about you know if you say you know Shurmur do you believe in God I say no and you know Jordan do you believe in God well it would take me 40 hour to answer that okay well how can it take that long because I'm talking about the metaphor of God or or you know did Jesus was Jesus really resurrected well we all have our cross to bear because life is hard and we have to you know forgive ourselves or others in whatever so I think you know if you're if you're speaking at two different levels what do you mean by true you know metaphorically true empirically true in that example of Dawkins and Miller they're just really talking about two different things now for me it's not acceptable to just say well that's my faith tradition I just want to believe but I have plenty of friends that are like that Martin Gardner famously I don't know how much you know about Martin Gardner but he was one of the early founders of the modern skeptical movement himself James Randi Paul Kurtz Ray Hyman and a few others founded the psyche cup now of CFI skeptical inquirer this is in the 70s when Raquel er was very popular any case and then you know the the New Age movement the astrology psychics all that stuff and and you know they were they were great just debunking all these crazy claims but then in the 90s Martin you kind of made it clear well I'm a fattiest along the lines of William James and the Spanish guy you know Momo the Spanish philosopher that you know with certain beliefs that are not cannot be determined one way or the other and in the tooth the two big ones are God's existence and free well determinism it's okay to make a leap of faith if it works for you pragmatically if it if it affects your life in a positive way this was William James's argument and then so Martin Gardner kind of adopts this and it was an interesting response because the skeptical community atheist community they loved Martin Gardner for all the debunking he did but it's like wait wait you believe in God yes well why I don't know just I don't have any good arguments for it I think the atheists have slightly better arguments than the theists have but it works for me and I pray and I think maybe there's an afterlife and you know I believe in free will and so on I can't defend any of it so the question is what do you do with that and one answer is nothing there's really nothing to do with it it's like kind of the end of the conversation it's like okay is in a way when you say it's just my belief I have I can't defend it it's kind of a way of just sort of closing the conversational door saying well then there's nothing more really to discuss yeah I guess it depends what your goal is you can let friends be wrong you can try to induce doubt I guess it just it just depends what your goal is increasingly as I get older I don't know you know that's Harris's idea that those in the middle give cover for the extremists and I think that there is something something to that were you friendly with Martin guard yeah oh yeah yeah yeah no I liked him very much and respected him very much and even that position again I I wasn't upset about it's like okay but you know the arguments for the atheists are stronger right that's what you just said yeah then why aren't you an atheist does yeah you know I I just don't want to be anything all right it really it's kind of the end of the conversation there I just chose to let friends be friends yeah there's something though that there's something that is more honest about admitting that than saying well I think that the evidence is persuasive when you know the evidence is not persuasive yeah so there's something more honest about well it gives me comfort or I just choose to believe this or I'm still not sure why the default would be if you don't know how to choose to believe I mean I don't know a lot of stuff but I don't choose to believe it but but it again it just depends on your goal and the kind of relationship you want to have I don't think there's a right or wrong answer then another thing I was thinking when we were talking is we're talking on the day that the Jeffrey Epstein story about the cameras in the jail of two of them both failed you know this to me was the tipping point on the conspiracy thing I'm skeptical of the conspiracy thing and it's like you know there's a certain amount of there's kind of a tipping point when you get to these kinds of issues that are very difficult to defend one way or the other and so you take the default null hypothesis it's not a murder it's accept the the given explanation until something happens well for the last two weeks I've been tweeting out the video the video footage will decide you know if there's a all way and you see somebody walking up there and going into the cell done obviously there was a you know a conspiracy to kill him and if not then not well now the video cameras not doesn't work oh great you know so there then I think it's it's reasonable to think well something else now we can't conclude murder but we can conclude something very fishy is up yeah and that was the point to me that pushed me over to and I didn't really understand why all these people were talking about oh I know it's a conspiracy it's not a conspiracy it seemed like an idiotic thing to talk about just wait until the tape comes out why even speculate what's the point but when the tape came out I was totally with you up until that point and then the two came out and I'm like wow and then that that changed my mind and then you came out on Twitter after I changed mine or maybe before I don't know maybe they just didn't see it and then I thought to myself okay this is really interesting because at what point do we change their minds about things so in that case we had no moral motivation it wasn't related to our sexual or personal or social or psychosocial identity we're just looking at it as interesting cultural case and it is a cultural case but it's sition at what point do people change their mind and the both video camera speeds being you know going down or what-have-you that was more often than that what's the most likely thing for this vast confluence of things ok now it's something oh yeah well Peter I want to be mindful of your time and I have to sign off here at the studio so again congratulations on the new book how to have impossible conversations great reads super useful for everybody and so thanks for coming on thanks Michael I really appreciate it and I have nothing but sincere admiration you were the person who got me into skepticism and critical thinking and rationality to begin with so I okay I hope that's a good thing all right Pete thanks for coming on all right bye-bye

Channel: Skeptic

Views: 27,623

Keywords: Michael Shermer, climate change, conversation, Doubt, gender equality, gun control, human rights, open-mindedness, politics, reason, religious beliefs, Science Salon

Id: 8fb-jhdn118

Length: 75min 18sec (4518 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019