The Way Forward | Peter Boghossian

[Music] approximately 2,400 years ago Socrates was put on trial for corruption and impiety the charges were false but no matter socrates was found guilty and sentenced to death the penalty for his crimes was death by hemlock but Socrates was given an opportunity to suggest an alternative penalty he argued that because the penalty should be deserved and because he's spent his life offering free services to the city he deserved free meals for the rest of his life after his conviction Socrates stated that he might have won his case if he appealed to the judges emotions in other words if he had practiced sofa Street but he chose to speak truth specifically he chose Paradiso to speak truth in the face of danger or in his case death and he was subsequently put to death jumped to Pakistan in 1997 the Molalla was born malala's father was a teacher and ran a school for girls in her village a few years later the Taliban took control of Swat Valley and her life changed radically among the draconian changes like banning music and television in in 2008 at the age of eleven the Taliban forbid Malala to go to school in 2012 she began speaking out publicly about the rights of girls to learn and to attend school in October of 2012 a masked gunman boarded her bus and asked who is Malala and then he shot her in the head she survived underwent months of surgeries and now he lives here in the UK she's an outspoken advocate for girls education Malala co-authored the memoir entitled I am Malala the story of a girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taliban which was accurately scribed as fearless Malala is the living embodiment of para he's iya speaking boldly in the face of danger Socrates and Malala are stark ideal examples of para he's iya but there are also everyday examples here's just one Israel Morales is the owner of a restaurant where I live in cata Portland katja by the way is Belarusian and Ukrainian for the word duck in case anybody was wondering in 2018 a customer is eating in Katja Cox Chuck I don't speak Belarusian and wearing a t-shirt with the words Luftwaffe which means Air Force in German another customer Devon snoke was dining in a nearby table when she noticed the shirt thought it had Nazi imagery and complained to the owner Israel Morales incidentally the owners of the restaurant are of Mexican and Jewish Jewish Jewish heritage in response to snoke's complaint Morales said freedom of speech and according to journalist Katie Herzog he seemed unconcerned Hertzog wrote Snoke later posted her experience on Facebook I was asked to leave Kafka tonight for calling this Nazi out Snoke wrote including the photo of a man in the shirt remember his face remember the symbolism on his shirt yell as loud as you can the post was shared over 500 times and people began flooding the restaurants Facebook page with one-star reviews including this gem I often try new cuisine in the Portland area I can assure you I'll never set foot in the establishment that defends Nazi paraphernalia and decides to throw out a patron that calls attention to it terrible for business I hope this spreads like wildfire no safe spaces for Nazis in the pnw pmws Pacific Northwest Israel Morales did apologize and he called out inaccurate and libelous comments on social media the example of Socrates in Walhalla involved death and israel morales involved potential destruction of his livelihood these examples demonstrate of an ancient virtue called Paradiso of which speaking truth in the face of danger of which I spoke in my talk earlier today para he is speaking without obfuscation or concealment it's being clear direct and sincere Socrates and Malala called out bad ideas and they responded when they were called out they risked death they were forthright in their speech and they didn't bow to thugs and bullies and they paid a price Malala was shot in the head and barely survived Socrates Socrates was imprisoned sentenced to death and killed by the state he could have apologized but did not Socrates could have also escaped but did not for Socrates not being forthright and not speaking truth was a type of complicity it was a collaboration with injustice para he is the refusal to collaborate with injustice and it can be deadly para he Jie is kryptonite to social justice ideology and para he is indispensable for the road ahead social justice adherence and all others who traffic in sophistry rely upon your silence they will bully you they will call you names they will intimidate you and they will attempt to smear you there is an army of social justice fanatics most of whom are either hiding behind keyboards or holding academic positions they will try to silence and prevent discourse para he is their greatest fear today we are building an army our army believes in free speech cognitive Liberty challenging each other's ideas and good faith we value open disc and intellectual diversity in our army ones conclusions whether you're for or against brexit or immigration or abortion or carbon tax are irrelevant what is relevant is whether or not you're willing to engage dialogue and openly discuss and defend your ideas our army has a code of conduct there are rules of engagement we don't inflict violence on people with whom we disagree or throw milkshakes on them or shout them down we civilly engage and challenge people's thoughts and ideas even and perhaps especially those in our own army and if their conclusions and the methods that got them there or there are correct then we revise our beliefs we are building an army that understands the importance of discussion civil disagreement and belief revision this is very very different from the social justice army their army is univocal they demand agreement and conformity to their tenants and broker no dissent and they silence those they perceive as heretics and blasphemers there are no heretics and no blasphemers in our army we engage the rules of civil disagreement no matter how much we bitterly disagree with someone's conclusions they are never tossed out but we can't just run into this war unequipped we need the tools to have difficult conversations across seemingly unbridgeable divides there are specific techniques and strategies that allow para he's yet to flourish and many of these techniques take place in dialogues over what seemed to be unbridgeable gaps in fact two people are here today they've flown in from the United States Anthony Magna Bosco and Reid nice wonderful they have impossible conversations with strangers about highly contentious topics and they are experts in having civil discussions across political moral and religious chasms Anthony and Reid give the exhausted majority the tools to elevate their voices one of the most striking feature after their car safe ins is how incredibly grateful people are for having spoken to them and having having had an opportunity to be honest with them and be forthright in their speech there are many tools and strategies for combating social justice ideology in this talk I'll focus just on a few that relates at perihelion and conversation more broadly how do we speak the truth in the face of danger during seemingly impossible conversations and what principles strategies and techniques should we use the approaches I'll now discuss come from our book with James Lindsay how to have impossible conversations it details 36 techniques to help people have just that conversations that they think are not possible against deep deep gulfs political religious metaphysical - etc I'll cover ten techniques that lay the groundwork for para Hiva and you can immediately use these to have better conversations okay let's do it one thing you can do immediately is you can start by listening it is vital to so at the end of this my goal is that every single person walks out of here and has a very good understanding of how to immediately begin to improve their conversation you should be able to use the stuff immediately you start by listening every single body of literature is the same that talks about the sales marketing persuasion anything you have to understand what someone's talking about the best way to understand what someone's talking about is to genuinely listen to them here are three specific techniques that can help you listen to them have you ever gone to a situation I'm sure every single person in this room has will you go to the door with someone at the same time don't rush through the door step physically step back and motion the person with your arm to go through the door we call this in the book go no you go so if you speak at the same time with somebody else you say go ahead don't rush in to fill that gap go ahead the second thing in and I use this in my classrooms all the time and I use this when I taught in prisons it's very very effective you place the burden of understanding on yourself so if you're in a conversation you're having a conversation with someone say I'm not sure I understand I'm not sure I understand can you explain that as opposed to that's unclear it's not necessarily bad but you're unclear is bad so you want to always place the burden of understanding yourself I'm not sure I understand that can you explain that to me the third thing you can do to immediately improve listening and remember you cannot intervene in someone's cognitions you cannot give them the gift of doubt unless you understand their position and what you're attempting to instill doubt within this is from the literature on hostage negotiations in cult exiting say I hear you it's an incredibly powerful technique I hear you it's so simple but you have to mean it so you're having a conversation with someone you can just say I hear you you can also use minimal encouragers which is you take the this again from hostage negotiation you take something somebody said oh I had a bad day at work today as something something Oh at work that one simple thing lets somebody know that you're listening to them often I found that when I have these conversations with people many people just want to be listened to they just want to know that someone's listening to them and so you you have to develop the facility and the skills to let people know you're listening and there are three go no you go place the burden of understanding on yourself and say I hear you okay the next thing you can do to immediately improve your conversation is use Rappaport's rules today I'll just talk about the first Rappaport's first rule Anatol Rapoport was a Ukrainian born American Mathematical psychologist okay Dan Dennett stayed stand and his American philosopher from Tufts he states it as follows you should attempt to reexpress your targets position so clearly vividly and fairly that your target says thanks I wish I thought of putting it that way there is no criticism there is nothing until you can restate something back to somebody and the goal again from hostage negotiations is to get I hear you you get that you know that sorry that was my other one that's right someone says that's right you've nailed it that that signals to you that you've understood what they're talking about so someone says something you're in a conversation you want to really listen to them you want to attempt to restate back to them what they've said to you but you want to do it in such a way that you get specifically the two words that's right that lets you know that you've understood exactly what it is they're talking about there's no criticism there's nothing until that's the that's the case if you notice on Twitter it's almost opposite land it's always misconstrue what someone says then attack them savagely okay next thing it's the only big word you need today epistemology how you know what you know the problem in most conversations is that people look at each other's conclusions and not their epistemology how you know what you know they don't look to how they got there they look to conclusions so we see this conclusion this conclusion all of these conclusions in combat with each other as opposed to thinking about jeez how does somebody know that and if someone knows something you don't know you should want to know it too so you simply think to yourself you've listened you've now restated it back they've said yeah you've got that that's correct uh-huh clearer than they could have expressed it then you ask how they know it other methods they use reliable well how do you know that well I sacrificed and go to the hood of my car okay so that's not a reliable method and the moment that you say as in James's talk the moment that you say there are unreliable ways to come to knowledge that by definition means that there's a more reliable way to come to knowledge if you know that sacrificing a goat on the hood of your car is not going to help you design a CPU then you know there must be a better way so you have to focus on epistemology and how someone knows something and relating to social justice that's one of the toxins here if people can deny anything external them stuff I invented my own epistemology oh yeah how's that working out how's that work nobody really invents their own epistemology it's in there it's it's it's a form of make-believe land to buttress themselves from the truth or as he said in his last talk James said reality okay so you've listened use some of the techniques repeated it back they said yes you focus on how they know what they claim to know two things that you might not have heard these are an incredibly effective tools one thing that I love doing is a scale I asked somebody to place their belief on a scale skills are unbelievably powerful and when you combine it with the next technique it's it's amazing what you can do so here are some examples of scales you're having a conversation with someone you listen you don't ask them for a scale until you've understood what it is that they believe now you figure out it well should transwomen be in women's sports brexit which does it makes no difference what it is how confident are you and that on a scale from one to ten how how sure you have that belief oh I'm eight okay boom eight now once you have that number or they can say well I don't like that scale someone's very rarely will someone say that and and if they do say okay how about one to five or one to 100 some of those people will say it very rarely will someone say I'm not going to put my belief on the scale so if they don't you can't use it but if if if they say they don't like the scale offer them an alternative scale or have them give you a scale maybe they want a letter scale okay so now you know how confident somebody is in their beliefs once you have this piece of information the whole world is open up to you first thing you can do with this is the end of your conversation you can again repeat the question them all well how confident are you now that we'll see how effective you are giving someone the gift of doubt pretest in science we call that a pretest and a post-test figure out how confident they are in their belief before the conversation look at the conversation as a cognitive intervention in some cases and then post-test that this will work best if you also do this with your own beliefs all of this stuff also does this as I'll talk about later if you're willing to revise your beliefs if you're willing to revise your beliefs there is literally no limit to what you can do and then the third way you can use scales is you can ask a comparative question as we write about in the book if someone says something that you might consider to be bizarre we live in a patriarchy okay how much of a patriarchy do we live in on a scale from one to ten if Saudi Arabia is a nine where's the United States now let's say they have no idea where Saudi Arabia's what Saudi Arabia is they have no clothes okay well what about in the 1950s if in the 1950s we were an eight where are we now in - 2019 where are we then then you'll know what they say if they say well we're a nine okay well now we know what they believe we don't know their epistemology we don't know why they believe it but we have a very good idea of what they believe once you have that you can understand the mechanisms behind their belief formation so scales are very very important but when you combine scales with what I'm going to talk about now it is a wrecking ball of belief disc confirmation questions okay a disc confirmation question you ask somebody it's this it's so simple under what conditions could your beliefs be wrong under what conditions could your belief be wrong you're not telling them that their belief is wrong you're asking them what the conditions are what you don't want to do in these conversations is you don't want to deliver a message you deliver your message they deliver their message then it becomes a message delivery service always a mistake what you do is okay that's really interesting under what conditions would that be wrong there are only a few things people can say to this I see other thing when you really start having these impossible conversations with people there are only a few things that they can say among the things they can say is well it can't be wrong sometimes well my belief can't be wrong then their response is oh that's interesting then it's not formed formulated in the basis of evidence and if they say something like what do you mean to formulate a belief in the basis of evidence means by definition that there could be some piece of evidence that would come in that would cause you to revise your beliefs but if there's no evidence that would cause you to revise your beliefs then your beliefs aren't formulating the basis of evidence which is fine but now you know that their beliefs aren't formulated in base of evidence but more important than that now they know that their beliefs aren't formulating the base of evidence maybe they're formulating the basis of how they feel not necessarily anything wrong with that we've done that with significant others and partnerships and oh you know we've won food preferences we have but now it's a way to help people understand if their beliefs are formally in the base of evidence maybe they say to you well this is the evidence it would take this is why you do that you do that because just because you think there's a piece of evidence that somebody should have that would cause them to change their mind that doesn't mean that they're gonna buy it it just means that you think that that's sufficient evidence to change your belief you need to know from them what's sufficient evidence to change your belief so it's very very simple it's a dis confirmation question in Greek if you do this right and Greek it's called aporia more like kind of like wow we wonder and you'll see it you'll see these calm in these conversations people will literally sometimes they'll physically rock back the trick then what you do is you don't fill that that conversational space with it you don't say anything you just let it simmer you just let that pause linger that's the space in people's cognitive in the way they view reality it's in that little space that gives people an opportunity to revise their beliefs and think about it most people are never asked under what conditions would you revise your beliefs they're only asked but what's your evidence for that the the problem with asking someone ultimately there's no problem with that we have to do that at some level but the problem with asking somebody what's your evidence for that is when they listen to themselves they listen to themselves give their own evidence which recalibrates their confidence on that scale higher up then it would have been if you didn't ask the question in the first place so even asking someone to provide evidence for things causes them to become more confident in the belief they already hold so I almost never asked anybody for evidence unless I'm trying to in the very early part of the conversation when I'm trying to understand their epistemology how do they come to this belief okay when you couple scales and dis confirmation questions it is incredibly powerful because now you have a way to assess what someone's belief is how strong they believe it under what conditions that belief could be dislodged sometimes very rarely but sometimes what I'll do is I'll ask somebody a question never telling them anything but I'll ask them a question to help facilitate that process of doubt here's one of my favorite questions in the context of social justice this is not my question this is Eric Wine science question quote assume that the fields of Gender Studies and biology came to disagree on a matter of gender / sex which would you be like which would which would you be likely to believe more I'll repeat that one more time assume that the field of gender studies and biology came to disagree on a matter of gender / sex which would you be likely to believe more this 25 word question is a litmus test and a bug spray for ideologues okay so now you've listened you've understood it comes back to you you hit scales boom the feasibility boom now everybody's playing now we know what's going on we hear it you're not telling anybody anything the key idea for somebody to change their you have to have a non defensive posture if they have a defensive posture the likelihood that someone will revise their beliefs is not only a zero you know for a fact normally but they not revise it is that they actually recalibrate their confidence you know up and become more confident and whatever belief they've started with okay this is tough I get this I do this constantly it's a mistake I'm trying to weed it out of myself this technique is called yes and and it comes from the comedy circuit so when someone says something to you the moment that you say but that denies every single thing that they said that came before that so we're having a conversation and then I say yeah but so you just invalidated everything someone said you've also invoked a mini defensive posture in them and that many defensive posture means they'll be less likely to revise their belief it's the simplest thing in the world all you do is you just and again i've simple we know what it is but it's very very hard to do yes and yes acknowledges what they say and some additional piece of information you want to consider some additional reason reasoning you want people to think about yes and all right build golden bridges in Hajus negotiation in common parlance this is called saving face you always want to give this the other reason that I'm against cancel culture you always want to give people an opportunity to come to the other side a golden bridge that enables them to walk across it this is not a Golden Bridge took you long enough that's not a gold oh here's a golden bridge oh you know this is a really complicated issue and when I started thinking about that I thought exactly like you did but now I have this data point I have this information and I've revised my beliefs I changed my mind don't make people feel small or penny for revising their beliefs belief revision is a key virtue which I'll type talk about in a minute don't apologize I apologize for something you've said or done only if you're actually sorry not because you're sorry it hurt someone's feelings or because it offended someone or because you were subjected to personal criticism or because you were bullied social justice feeds on capitulation never apologize if someone accuses you of offending them as long as you're criticizing and this is vital as long as you're criticizing ideas ideas and not immutable properties of people like skin colour or height or sex someone's offense should mean absolutely nothing to you never apologize don't also don't mumble don't mumble don't obscure don't talk baby talk don't tone it down in the defense of reason don't apologize next be sincere in all of your comments your conversations you have to demonstrate paradiso and one thing I've learned for doing this for so long with so many conversations is people respect you more if you're forthright and not less people don't like people who barricade are people who obvious gay people like people who are clear and direct and honest if you speak clearly you will know what you mean and others will know what you mean don't equivocate and don't sugarcoat speaking and unclear language which the postmodernist excel at is a type of self-deception it can hide the fact that you don't understand or even believe what they're saying Aristotle wrote that the highest form of friendship is between two virtuous people be sincere and engage in Paradiso not just to stop stop social justice but do it for yourself do it because you can have relationships that matter if you say what you mean and someone else says what they mean that the only way that you can know what somebody actually means there's no other way and you can't be friendship you can't have develop a relationship with someone if you have no idea what they mean and we are creating cultures now that make it impossible for anybody to figure out what anybody else means because they won't say what they mean because they're afraid this is exactly the opposite of how we should live our lives finally and most importantly be willing to revise your beliefs this is a core principle underlying this whole thing being willing to revise our beliefs prevents us be from becoming ideologues and it prevents us from morphing into the thing that we're fighting the gateway to belief revision is being willing to say I don't know if you're having a conversation with someone and they say something you don't know say I don't know Thanks I didn't know that interesting it's not a point of shame or weakness to say that you didn't know something you don't know in fact quite the contrary it means you're unashamed and have the strength to be honest to speak truth in the face of danger ridicule or attempts to embarrass you being willing to revise our beliefs and min or admit our ignorance it is a safeguard for paradiso there is no better way to fight dogmatism than to fight it within ourselves and to be genuinely willing to change our beliefs Helen's talk hit on that as well their willingness to revise our beliefs and say I don't know is the key difference between our army and social justice ideologues okay so a lot more techniques that we have in the book etc but here are the ten that I covered very briefly listen you want to always listen to what someone says to you and you want to make sure that you understand what they say - you want to do rap reports rules we did Rappaport's first rule never ever criticize someone until you know your name criticize someone you criticize their ideas until you understand what that idea is and also along with that is you never criticize an immutable property of a person off-limits total limits anybody's idea ideas fair game focus on epistemology how did someone know that here's something I didn't mention in the talk but it's very very helpful when you have a conversation with someone if you focus on a question as opposed to a topic it will keep the discussion focused it will also make it so that if somebody else is listening to the topic to the conversation they can understand much more readily so when you talk about epistemology you don't use the word epistemology ever but when you're when you're trying to figure out someone's epistemology and asking them how they know what they know make sure you try to stick to the conversation topic you can go to other topic that's fine that's not a problem how do you know this what's the question being examined we talked about scales which is very important scales will give an idea of what how confident someone is in their beliefs when you figure out that you can figure out successive questions to ask somebody you can also figure out your effectiveness remember but Fineman said the easiest person to fool is ourselves you can think that you're really good conversationalist etc you can think that people are enjoying the conversation you can even ask oh hey you know you can ask a scale about anything did you enjoy our conversation some people will say yes no but the key is in all of those cases you need to ask questions you need to be sincere ask people to put it on a scale immediately a dis confirmation question at the moment that you have a scale how could that belief be wrong I'm not saying it is wrong I'm just curious what evidence would cause you to change your mind then you can talk about the role of evidence and belief formation yes and don't say but because that alienates someone that invokes a defensive posture build golden bridges give people a chance to revise their beliefs congratulate them for revising their beliefs we have to make belief revision of virtue and it's not and social justice is one of the main causes of this toxin don't apologize in the defense of reason or don't apologize some if someone says that they offended you be sincere always be sincere with people don't lie don't be afraid be willing to revise the beliefs all right those are the ten if you just do those things not only were your conversations improve but the social capital that you have that will come along with those conversations will improve I wanted to say one more thing before I close I am confident that sooner or later we will defeat social justice ideology part of the reason for my confidence is that social justice does not have a built-in defense mechanism it has no apology apologia is an ancient Greek word used by a legal defendant who replied with an apologia or a defense that defense rebutted charges against the accused for example in Plato's apology Socrates provided an apologia that is a defense against the charges that were levied against him which if you remember from the beginning of the talk they were corruption of the youth and piety Christianity has a robust built-in defense in 1st Peter 3:15 always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you and to give the reason for the hope that you have but do this with gentleness and respect without question this single passage was the main contributor to Christianity's longevity because it created resilient believers capable of intellectually engaging attacks against its core principles not only does social justice have no apologia it cannot its adherents cannot defend its fundamental principles because even doing so would counteract social justice tenants here I'm reminded of the British philosopher John Stuart Mill's dictum he who knows only saw his side of the case knows very little of that social justice ideologues know only their side of the case they are unable to refute the other side because they don't know what it is that's why people won't have conversations with us that's why they won't engage in debates whether it's the ancient Greece or biblical times in the Middle Ages or today tomorrow to defense against a position you must know its weaknesses and the primary arguments of its most thoughtful detractors social justice ideology has a built-in defensive mechanism to prevent any kind of self-reflection or challenges to its assumption for example what role if any does biology play in human development to mount such an ideological defense one would also need a dialectic which is another Greek word meaning reason argument and counter-argument this is the Achilles heel of social justice and it's why and how Paradiso will be the implement of its destruction without an apologia a defense of fundamental principles social justice will burn itself out apology is the perihelion is the fuel it's the mechanism that can drive this ideology right out of existence social justice ideologues will try to slap you around do not bow reason and rationality have endurance they don't evaporate the moment you get slugged and you will get slugged don't be held hostage to the delusions of others timidity and Bivins and fear will be perceived as a weakness do not be weak stand up and fight reason is worth fighting for liberalism and enlightenment values free inquiry free expression cognitive Liberty democracy are worth fighting for it begins with Paradiso it begins with courage it is speaking truth in the face of danger and it begins with you I asked you here today to join us to not tolerate this nonsense anymore it has gone on far too long thank you [Music] you

Channel: New Discourses

Views: 67,693

Keywords: New Discourses, peter boghossian, Socrates, parrhesia, Malala Yousafzai, impossible conversations

Id: LiymUd9FjHA

Length: 37min 29sec (2249 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 26 2020