How to Have Impossible Conversations when Facts Don't Matter! Peter Boghossian

27:54I need a ride. And, uh, I have Crohn's disease. So I have this huge scar on my stomach and I lifted up my shirt and I said, I would give you a ride. But the last time I gave a woman a ride home, my wife stabbed me and she looked at my stomach. She's like, Oh, okay. Um, but that's a good, intelligent response. Well, well, yeah, but if you do this, it's this, again, this is, it's like jujitsu. It's if you do it enough, you get good at it like you don't need if you care about this and you follow the template in the book you will be excellent in no time so that's the other thing so i watched this i started this uh thing called street epistemology from my first book a manual for creating atheists and somebody popularized it named anthony magna bosco and you can see his stuff on youtube it's he's phenomenal oh and you have you have one of his conversations in here about um specifically noah's ark he's the one arguing about Noah's Ark, right?

28:48Yeah, I mean, we are, well, not arguing, but conducting an epistemological intervention, like asking people how they know that, figuring out their beliefs. And you can watch his stuff at YouTube, Anthony Magna Bosco, M-A-G-N-A-B-O-S-C-O. But one of the things that is interesting, why did I start talking about that? I totally spaced why I started talking about that. Well, you were talking about the woman who came up to your car and how it's like a muscle. Oh, yes, yes. Yes. Okay. So, so here's the thing, because you asked that has to be, you have to be intelligent to give that response. Not really, because I've, he, since that book came out on what, 2012 or 13, his videos came out, read nice wonder.

29:29Now there's like thousands of people all around the world doing this. And every once in a while, I watch a bunch of these videos and I'm thinking to myself, holy shit, these people are like, they are just as good at this as I am. And I do this all the time. And so what they did is that they just stood on the shoulders of giants and they just got everybody just got better and the thing about this is the learning curve is not that steep but what you do is here's what i would do the book is written in sequential order i say repeatedly don't just jump to the latter chapters start and start like it's it's fundamentals beginners intermediate advanced expert master something like that so start and work yourself up and if you do this just a little little bit every day and maybe watch some videos that come out with it.

30:13I actually put videos of, I've set up a booth in the table when I was in LA. People have impossible conversations with me and I put out the bad videos too. They're mostly bad videos where I make mistakes. That's when people learn the most from that, right? When they see me make mistakes and other people make mistakes, say, oh, Bogosian did this, maybe we should do this. But honestly, I'm telling you, there's nothing particularly special about me or this. It's just sticking to the template and doing it.

30:44Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at altitra at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

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33:40Plus, new members will receive a welcome bonus after minimum qualifying purchases. Just go to Rakuten.com, download the app, or install the browser extension. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Terms and conditions apply. Even though you just said don't skip, and I agree with that because there's a lot of good advice in the early chapters. I do want to skip in the advanced skills. You talk about vaccine deniers, and you say, first, do no harm. And the reason I bookmarked that is one time I did have a conversation about vaccines that got really out of control. It started out as a Facebook thread on my personal page and ended up with thousands of comments.

34:17And I was neck deep commenting until a friend of mine finally called me and said, shut down the computer. You need to remove yourself from Facebook. But, and then I was talking to another person who writes about conspiracy theories. And he was telling me that basically people believe something, whether it's anti-vax or, you know, belief in huge conspiracy theories, people believe something if some large institution they feel has betrayed them at some point in their life. And then they don't trust any institution after that. And so that's often a source of these impossible conversations. Like, how do you deal with that when they're just never going to change?

34:55Boy, that is a great question. It's a great question given the particular context of our age where I've written about the fact that I think we're in a legitimacy crisis right now. I think there's a large scale crisis of trust in our public institutions, in our judiciary, in our, certainly in our university systems, the ACLU, the SPLC, the police to a certain extent among particular elements of society. So it's really difficult because usually we would have ways, you know, people we could go to, trusted sources we could go to. You know, when I grew up I'm 54, almost 55, we had Dan Rather, CBS, Tom Brokaw, we had ABC, CBS, NBC.

35:38And those were trusted, we trusted those, but we don't really have that anymore. We have highly politicized, fractured news, which acts more as a media echo chamber to push a particular narrative. So operating within that paradigm is so difficult. And that's why I would claim, I would argue that it's actually more important to stick to how people know things and where they get their information from. And one of the best techniques that I use, and the older I get, if there were such a thing as a unified field theory of rationality, I would think that this would be a constitutive element of that.

36:16It's called defeasibility, but my publisher wouldn't let me put that in there. They made me change it to disconfirmation. So disconfirmation is basically the idea, defeasibility is the word that they use in philosophy. Disconfirmation is the idea that how could a belief be false? Like we do that in science all the time. We try to falsify scientific propositions. With disconfirmation, how could a moral belief be wrong? Like, oh, I think, you know, we should let in immigrants. Or I think trans women, no trans women in boys sports. Or I think, you know, nobody should own a gun. Or everyone should, whatever the claim doesn't make any difference.

36:55You have to ask someone, under what conditions would you be willing to change your mind about that? Like, what would the world have to look like? What would you have to see? You know, what would you have to, oh, I hate Joe Biden. Okay, what would he have to do? And then someone usually tell you something crazy, like, you know, bomb Toronto, whatever. But once you know the disconfirmation criterion, you're good to go. Like, you can then navigate that conversation with so much ease. And they're - But what if they say nothing, like that guy about Noah's Ark did? Okay, so there are only four, so this is the other thing.

37:28There are only four things people can say to you. there were literally four things i suppose someone could just start seeing the alphabet but there are only four responses that could hitch to that one is the best one which is the ideal oh here's here's the disconfirmation criteria and they just tell you that uh the second one is they can say oh there is no there is i will not change my mind on this like abortion would be a common i just won't change my mind the response to that is oh that's really interesting again do you see how i propped up the claimant, right? It's like Tyrone Lannister says in Game of Thrones, the only thing that matters is what came before the but, right?

38:05You always want to just encourage and push up. You never want to but someone. You want to and somebody. And I say, oh, that's interesting. So there's no condition. There's no information that would cause you to change your mind. No, nothing. Oh, that's interesting. So then the belief isn't formulated in the basis of evidence. Well, what do you mean by that? Well, I mean, to form a belief in the basis of evidence means by definition that there has to be some evidence that could come in that would cause you to change your mind. But if there's no evidence, then the belief isn't formed the basis of evidence and formed the basis of something else.

38:38Okay. And so what, what if they say? Okay. So that's, that's true. Let me give you, remember I said four. Okay. Let me just run through the other two. So again, there's only so many things people can say to you. They say, here's the evidence. They say, there is no evidence. They say, geez, I don't really know what the evidence would be. Those are, in my opinion, those are the most interesting conversations, but okay. And then they could, they could give you a wildly implausible disconfirmation condition. Those are interesting. In religion, I used to get, when I asked people under what conditions would you be willing to revise your beliefs about Jesus being the son of God, people would, the stock answer that fundamentalists give is the bones of Christ.

39:19If you presented me with the bones of Christ, that would mean that Christ didn't rise to heaven. So you show me the bones of Christ and I'll stop believing. Now, they know that I cannot produce the bones of Christ. With all due respect, neither can you produce the bones of Christ. But no matter what category they fit in, again, it's a roadmap for the future questions you would ask. I see. So, but again, if they say nothing, oh, but then you ask, you know, really, there's no evidence at all. And at some point they get confused because like you said, people are more about the goal rather than what led to their belief.

40:01Hold on, hold on. Not confused, perplexed. Right. Now, the goal of that line of questioning is not to make people become perplexed, but perplexity is a consequence of the line of questioning. Right. It's, it's, it's interesting. I mean, I'm sure people listening to this could think of so many conversations that they've had with their friends and neighbors that fit this category. Yeah. Let me, let me, let me give you a quick example. So I wrote, I published a paper about this. I used to teach critical thinking and, and, and I don't know if you knew this or not, but this is true. This is testable.

40:39You can take an egg as long as it's not one of those thin-shelled eggs, and you can drop it out a two - or three-story window. And as long as it drops onto grass, it won't break. Buckminster Fuller designed a geodesic dome after this. And so I would take an egg, and I would ask people if they thought it was going to break when I dropped it out the window, and they'd look at me like it was a fucking lunatic. And then I'd drop it, and they wouldn't break, and they would be perplexed. But my goal was not to make them perplexed. My goal was to show them that dropping an egg out of a window, as long as it doesn't drop on the concrete, is not going to break.

41:17Yeah. Okay. So you're making them, so the perplexity is a consequence. It's not a, you're not trying to make them confused. In fact, it's quite the opposite. You're trying to make, you're trying to help them understand what they believe and make it clear to themselves to see if it's justified. But you're playing the role and authentically you're giving them the benefit of the doubt that they know what they're talking about so that they can answer these questions without feeling stupid. Right. Because the whole, the, the ultimately this is a selfish endeavor and the selfishness is if they know something that I don't know, I want to know it too.

41:54I just need to make sure it's vetted. That's why the other technique we give in the book is change your mind on the spot. Yeah, so a lot of people don't do that, but I find it very effective when I do change my mind in the middle of conversation because people are surprised. Yeah, surprised would be one way. Blown away would be another thing, especially if it's in real time. You'll just, people will be utterly blown away by that. And the more moral it is, the more blown away there will be that you change your mind. So there's one point in the book or a couple of points where you say, you know, give the other person some outs, Like make sure they're not a fool by the end of the conversation.

42:33Right. That's one of the golden rules in hostage negotiation. And it should be a golden rule of any conversation. We call it from the Harvard Negotiations Project, build a golden bridge. And a golden bridge is an opportunity for people to cross over and revise their beliefs. So here's the opposite of a golden bridge. You freaking moron. It took you long enough. right no and then people people are going to invoke a defensive posture you want to make sure that everybody nobody ever has a defensive posture that's key in practice how would you do it like let's say you're having the let's say you're pro-life and you're having a conversation with someone who's pro-choice yeah and you want to give them even though you're strongly believe in pro-life like this is coming from your belief in god it's it's it's your family's belief it's your generations of belief how would you let a pro-life person a pro-choice person have an out oh well you you you usually it's uh i'd say something like you know this is a really difficult conversation oh i want to just add one thing to that um almost nobody will change because you mentioned saving face almost nobody will change their mind if they're with a friend or someone from their moral community because that's why mormons go to the doors in twos right That's why people don't change their mind.

43:55That's why cult indoctrination and cult exiting, they grab them as one person and not a group of people. That's what keeps people in cults, and it helps remove people from cults. So an example of a saving face would be – and again, this is even more important to clean up if it's two people. But if you do this, it's always one-on-one is best. is, wow, you know, this is super, super complicated, like crazy complicated. And I know I thought exactly like you did until I had this information. I was like, oh, wow. Like I had this thing and I realized this. And then you tell them what you realized. So that's a way to build a golden bridge.

44:36They could, well, I won't feel stupid because he believed it too. So he'll be empathetic to me. Oh, I love this. Use outsourcing to bring outside information into the conversation, which is basically, you've discussed that, but you're basically kind of outsourcing to the person, tell me what I should know to get your confidence level. So that's the outsourcing technique. Yeah, well, yeah, it's more than that as well. I mean, we talk about, there are lots of things that you can do and it depends on the intelligence of the person with whom you're speaking. So if it's a complicated thing like healthcare or socialized mess, something complicated, You say, oh, well, give me the names of three people you consider to be experts on the other side.

45:20And what are their arguments? Most people won't know three. If they do know three, then that's really interesting that you can get a nice lesson. And then you can say something like, well, that's interesting. And so you would not say, well, if you don't know three experts who hold different beliefs than you, then it's unclear that you can even know what you're talking about. because that will invoke a defensive posture. They won't revise their beliefs. But you could say, well, I'm thinking about myself and I'm thinking about if I personally don't know experts who disagree with me and what those arguments are, I hold my belief in less confidence.

46:04I'm less confident. And that gets back to the scale thing again. Is that reasonable of me? But you're not really asking them if it's reasonable of you, which seems reasonable to me that it's reasonable to you. You're asking them if it's reasonable to them. Right. So in other words, if they don't know it, shouldn't they be shouldn't they hold their beliefs with less confidence? I mean, look, dude, doesn't it bother you that people walk around cocksure of the stuff they believe in? That everybody has a grossly over an estimated confidence in their beliefs. No, but it's true. And the fact that they can't validate those beliefs bothers me even more, as I'm sure it does you.

46:48That's why you wrote this book. Like I was having a how would you deal with this? Like I was having a conversation with somebody about a particular election, not not the most common election that we're thinking of. But I said, okay, you hate this one candidate so much. Tell me three laws that he's passed or three things he's done in office that were bad. Because he was just going on and on, trashing this candidate. And he couldn't give me one. And I said, if you give me one, I will completely change my vote. And he couldn't give me one at all. Even though he was just trashing this person nonstop as a politician and as a leader.

47:28So if that were a personal friend of mine, I would say to them, and I wouldn't do this for any other conversation unless it's a friend of mine. I would say, do you think it should bother you because you can't name a particular policy proposal that you feel so strongly? Do you think that there's a disjunct between your feelings and the evidence? and you know, in the Republic, Plato talks about how reason should be the kind of chariot with the horses, you know, reason should always be the lead horse of the chariot and desire, emotion, et cetera, behind that. And as long as reason's the first horse of the chariot, you're good to go.

48:08But maybe, maybe it is reasonable to not know anything. Like you could simply say, listen, I know a lot of people who know a lot more than me and they all hate this person so i'm just going along with them yeah but other people know people who know a lot more than them who look at an opposing candidate and have the same feelings so how does an independent person adjudicate between those things because even in that case it would seem to me that the confidence you have in this belief is not justified but what's important for our relationship i would think you know aristotle talks about the highest form of friendship between being between two you virtuous people, I would think that you'd be the, this is a little alter casting from the book.

48:50You would be the type of person that it would, that would bother you. It would bother you that your beliefs are out of alignment with reality. Yeah, so that makes sense. Again, I wish I had these techniques for like half the conversations I've had over the past five years or probably 90%. You're a young guy and you got him now. No, young guy, I'm the same age as you. Are you kidding me? I mean, you're a young guy then. So see how stupid I am? I just accuse you of being old when I should have been. I should have said, no, you're as young as me. Are you 54? 53. No shit. And a half. Wow, you look awesome.

49:30What, just a lot of vegetables? I mean, you don't even have any gray hair. No, I have gray hair. Just for some reason with the sun in back of me, I don't know, people say that when I'm on squad cast here that, But I have like about, when I look at the mirror, it's like 50 % gray about. Well, not what I've seen. There's so many bookmarks here. Okay, you say this thing about don't shoot the messenger. Or it's a well-known fact that people shoot the messenger, so you don't deliver a message. Correct. And you define what a message is. And I think I'm guilty of delivering messages often. We all like I'll rationally make an argument.

50:11I'll say for something, for instance, like nobody should go to college and I'll present a rational argument. And I believe that as well. Well, there you are. You're a professor. So that's that's saying something. So and unfortunately, I have kids going to college, so it ruins my argument a little bit. But I also don't I believe that my kids will need me more later and I don't want them to hate me now. But that's another story. But I think I was the messenger and I delivered a message. And no matter how rational it was, and no matter how much just math and finance knowledge and whatever I used, if people had the opposite view, i.e.

50:48if they had gone to college, so they have a cognitive bias to, you know, confirmation bias is what they're looking for, not an argument. I mean, what is a message? Define message. A message is your personal truth that you give to somebody. Usually people speak in terms of conclusions. Right. So if you're writing an article and I'm writing an article where I have what I view as a rational opinion, I will present the I will present the arguments against me because that's a good technique for writing is present their arguments before they do and answer them. So I do all this, but I'm still delivering a message and I might even have a story in it about my own experience.

51:32A message is a message in an article. Isn't the conversation. I see. And if you want people to be more receptive to the message that you're going to deliver, give the most charitable spin and say, this is where they're right. Yeah, I see. I think I've been, I've definitely been guilty of delivering messages in articles and then people will comment, oh, you're just trying to be controversial. And I'm like, no, I, I have actually very few opinions, but. So talk about Rappaport's rules, cause I like this as well. And again, this is, I feel like this is out of couples therapy, Rappaport's rules. Yeah, what page you on there?

52:13Well, you mentioned Rappaport's rules in a couple of different sections. I think the first time it might've been - It's chapter five, I think. Yeah, five advanced skills. Yeah, so I learned about Rappaport's rules from Dan Dennett's book, my friend Dan Dennett, Intuition Pumps. So Rappaport rules are, they're just fantastic. This is one of the few things we should actually read in the podcast. One is attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, thanks. I wish I thought of putting it that way. And also it shows that you're listening to them.

52:47Correct. And in hostage negotiations, people have written a whole book about the phrase, that's right. You're looking for that's right. So if someone says, so let me just be clear about this. I just want to make sure I know what you mean. And then you restate their position and you get their go ahead. That's by far, in my opinion, the most important of Rappaport's rules. Second, you list agreement. Third, you mentioned what you learned. And fourth, only then do you have rebuttal or criticism. That's the Rappaport's rules. And the rebuttal or criticism is still, you know, epistemological, as you might say in the book, where you're asking questions, you know, well, what's your confidence level?

53:29Correct. What's the evidence? So it's always about questions. You read Paul Johnson's biography of Socrates? No. It was very good. That's how I learned about Socrates. Paul Johnson's the historian is very good. Yeah, yeah. Right. And then I feel like, you know, ultimately a lot of these skills, you're getting more and more technical about how to apply them. Like the principles are the same, which is listen, repeat back. Don't be contentious. Don't call someone a moron and figure out kind of like more subtle ways to bring up your topic. Here's a difficult conversation I had. So Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

54:15was on the podcast. And as you probably know, he says he's pro-vaccine, but his message is very much anti-vaccine. And I did not want to get into that topic with him on the podcast, but he got into it and it was about a 20 minute just spiel about his stance on vaccines. And he's someone who lost his trust in institutions. He saw his uncle get shot. He saw his father get shot. He assumed it was by the FBI. And so after that, he was all conspiracies all the time. And how would you, and here's the thing, I don't know the information about vaccines. I don't know anything. So even though I'm kind of like pro vaccine, I didn't know how to respond to them at all.

55:01Yeah, and that's 100 % fine too. So here's one of the things you could do. If it's a podcast, I mean, again, so these are different than conversations. The question is, what should you do in terms of a conversation. Here's what I would do if I were you. Michael Shermer from the Skeptic Society is one of my best friends. I can connect you two and you can have him on. Oh yeah, I love his stuff. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, I'm more than happy to have so. Someone can come on and they can give their opinion. It's an unlettered opinion. I don't think he has any particular skill set in vaccines. I don't really know anything about Mr.

55:37Kennedy, but you can offer somebody who actually does know about it on the other side an opportunity to speak with you you wouldn't have your audience listen to that. Yeah, yeah, I thought about doing that. That was a good idea. And you know, I also like this idea that you have about kind of zoom out is the way I would put it, where you kind of say, okay, well, obviously we care about people, we equally care about people's health and we want people to live longer and we don't want people to get serious diseases. Right, commonalities. You just call commonalities, correct. So I think that's very, very important.

56:14And I do like the idea of when they give evidence of at least acknowledging what you didn't know and thanking them for that. So for instance, in Robert F. Kennedy, in his conversation with me, he said something, which is that, you know, maybe one vaccine might be good here and there. He doesn't know, but when you have to take 37 and they never studied the interactions between them, it makes it confusing the whole issue of vaccines. And I agreed with him on that. Like that was something I didn't know that they don't really test the interactions. Wait a second, wait a second. It's not something you didn't know.

56:51It's something you hadn't thought about. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. What's the distinction though? Like if I hadn't thought about it, I don't know it. But knowing it assumes that there's something true about it. You don't know enough to know that it's not true. Right, I see. So maybe they do test the address. I just gave it one way or the other. Right, yeah. I don't mean to be pedantic when I do that, to be pedantic, but I think that the words we use are really important because they trap us in ways of thinking or not, you know? So I think it's like, when you said that it was accurate, but not precise.

57:28Right, so I think that's very important. So, and this is like your master techniques, the moral reframing, like bring it back to a moral stance And because you both, everybody assumes they're moral. So you're both at some level, which you'll find where you're both the same. And starting from that, you could kind of build up knowledge or at least know what they think and understand a little bit more about what you think. Yeah, that's correct. And as Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist says, people don't knowingly do wrong. Nobody gets up and I'm like, you know, I'm a horrible person. I'm going to fuck over it.

58:05you know, I'm going to genocide a bunch of people that, no, nobody gets out. Everybody thinks that they do something because they're good people. Yeah. So, so, okay. Now, if you actually, if your goal is actually to change their mind, what? So, and the other question is why would you want to change their mind? Like, why do you care? Well, well, if you, if a couple, let's take a cup, a look at that. I don't think it's about changing someone's mind. I think it's about instilling doubt. I think it's about giving someone the gift of doubt. And I can think of very few circumstances where it's not a good thing to be more humble about what it is that you claim to know.

58:49Although I certainly can give you those exceptions if you want. But it's a really good thing for people to have their beliefs in alignment with reality. And it's a really good thing for people to be more humble about what it is that they claim to know. Because we live in a democracy. We all vote, right? We all participate in the society at some level. I actually don't vote. Well, then you're subject to the votes of other people. In fact, I might even say you're held hostage to them. So we live in a society which we have daily – even in a pandemic, we have interactions with other people who make laws.

59:28So it would be a really good thing if we formed, to the best of our abilities, we had accurate information coming in, which we do not. But again, if I could wave a wand and say, what would it, what some of the things I'd like? Well, obviously I would like no disinformation or fake news or what have you. But when information comes in, we formulate our beliefs on the basis that we make our decisions on the basis of that and then we act accordingly. So I see. So a lot of this is really about creating a skeptic as opposed to creating a changed mind. Yeah, it's about creating a person or help. No, it's not about creating.

1:00:08It's about helping people to live, to do Socrates' question, the unexamined life is not worth living. It's about helping people to live more thoughtful, examined lives. And also, it seems like it's also a emotionally safer way for you to have conversations with people that you otherwise might be angry at. Correct. Yeah. I want to piggyback off of two things. It's also a way for you to lead a more reflective and examined life. Right. Right. Because ultimately, this whole this whole thing really is a selfish endeavor. But even beyond that, so what you just said before, repeat what you said because I really liked it.

1:00:53It's a way for you to have an emotionally safer – you won't be angry all the time at these people. And when you begin your conversation and wonder, thinking like, wow, that's – like why would someone believe – that's really interesting. Like what – why does someone believe that? Like I genuinely want to know why someone believes that. and start asking questions about why people, how they came to that conclusion. That's a pretty remarkable and intimate interaction.

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1:04:05Here's a question. there's not a lot of crime in Texas say is because everyone has a gun, you can't get away with it. But other people might say there's a reason there's a lot of crime elsewhere is because everyone has access to a gun. And they're both right. They both have correct set of facts, but they're just, they're using a different. Isn't that awesome? You just got a lesson. Yeah. You just got a free lesson and then it gives you things to think about. Maybe read about it. Gives you stuff to ponder. next time you have a conversation it'll be easier for you because you would have already heard those arguments it's a win-win you'll lose nothing but but i feel like what if you want to press the point further like let's say you're you're pro-gun control and you say but could you say but what do you think of the fact that where there's free gun where guns are everywhere uh and easy access to guns that there's actually less crime what does that mean to you could could you yeah yeah you You could.

1:05:00I mean, the first thought that came to my mind was Somalia. There's guns everywhere, easy access to guns, but I'm quite confident that the crime rate, well, maybe not the crime rate, but the general murder rate. Nigeria would be another place. Nigeria has one of the, the whole country is basically an organized crime syndicate. But yet when Nigerians come to this country, they exceed, they're one of the most successful groups of Americans along with Cubans, et cetera. But so it's, it's not clear to me that that's always the case. So in that example, what I did was I took what you said and I thought of a counter example.

1:05:36Can I think of an instance of a thing that would make that false? So it's a way of habituating yourself when someone says something. And again, this is nothing special about me. You just follow the template in the book and you'll be fine. So, so in that case, you're disagreeing with yourself a little bit by bringing up the, the counter example. Maybe you're saying in this discussion about gun control, maybe you're saying that there really is no stable set of evidence that could prove either opinion. Or maybe you're saying like, wow, I was harboring a belief that was false. Good thing I ran into this person, had a conversation with them.

1:06:15Now I won't have to believe something that's not true. Right, right. Right. And so what are some other difficult conversations that you've had? I've been telling my difficult conversations. What are difficult conversations you've had? That's a really good question. Emotional relationship things are somewhat different because you bring in so much history. Conversations with kids could be difficult. I find the most difficult conversations with people who are rooted in this new moral orthodoxy that has come up um in which they believe that race or gender or skin color determines your access to truth um okay let me let let me let's let me question that because sure you know and this your co-author james lindsay had an excellent book um uh cynical theories yeah cynical theories where he discusses a lot of this and uh you know if someone is a female black lesbian yes then in you know there's there's civil rights but then there's intersectionalism where there could be civil rights to uh black people like oh you can't have separate this or separate that right but that still doesn't get to the heart of the problem when you have an intersection of minority of minorities and you go for like the lowest, in some hierarchy, there's the person who's the most, there's the intersection that's the most oppressed and they're allowed the loudest voice.

1:07:47And so that's the difference between thinking about equality as opposed to thinking about intersectionalism. And those are very hard discussions. Like people are very firm on those things. And he wrote an excellent book about this and - Should be required reading if people haven't read it. with Helen Pluckrose was the first author of Cynical Theories. Phenomenal book. And so, again, like sometimes you do want to change people's minds and you do want to point out. So, okay, you were saying, you know, you've had discussions with this new moral orthodoxy and I could see either points. Like maybe someone who is a black male might not understand the problems of a black lesbian.

1:08:33and so do you change the laws accordingly or no i i think i want to go back to your comedy again about changing minds it's really not about it really isn't about changing minds i don't know i actually do know some techniques to change people's minds so i didn't put them in the book because they're so unethical one we put in was ultra casting we call it ethically murky but the book isn't about changing anybody's mind the book is about increasing someone's on this confidence on the scale of confidence it's about decreasing their confidence levels it's about giving them instilling doubt helping them become more doubtful about what they believe and so back to the intersectionality thing yeah sure there are experiences of people to it like a black trans uh lesbian in a wheelchair i don't have those i was trying to think of another uh someone who detransition i was trying to think of another oppression variable it's my friend and they're an astronaut yeah they're natural well that's not that's not an oppression variable my friend why you have to put them in a room you have to put them you lock them in a room floating in space that's right that sounds pretty impressive yeah that's that's especially if it was against their will so the the prerequisite for any so okay so even let's take a step back it depends on your you talk about this in japan too what's your goal in the conversation you should really try to clarify that up front.

1:09:56And you can change that as you go along. But often the goal is not to, you know, is it to just kill time? Is it to impress someone? Is to, you know, you like a girl or a guy or she likes you? Or, you know, in classes, I found that people don't ask a question because they want to know the answer. They'll ask a question because they want you to think they're paying attention or they're up with what's going on or how smart they are. So you have to figure out what you want out of that conversation. And once you get that, you can work backward. And so one of the things that's difficult about those conversations about critical race theory intersectionality is that they start from points of view that are fundamental departures from the norms of rationality.

1:10:41And when you do that, you're dealing with an individual who does not participate in either norms of civil discourse or rules of logic that have traditionally applied from the pre-Socratics up to the present day. Right. So, and let's say this is happening on social media. This is one of the reasons why you can't argue with social media. So you say, don't have these, don't have important conversations on social media, which is where most of these conversations take place. Well, we say, so we talk about knowing the platform that's important people often post on social media not because they want their views rebutted but because they want them confirmed so know why like when you said your friend called you because you were going nuts on facebook like what is your goal with that was it to change people's minds was it to let people know how smart like what what like once you figure out my goal my goal was not to prove how smart i was my goal was to prove how stupid they were yeah okay so so the if you want to do that uh that so you're already talking about i'm not sure about the validity of the goal of the the meritoriousness of it but let's say that that is your goal and you want to know how to proceed that's all the more important to not deliver a message yeah anytime you deliver a message in that it's going to backfire and make you look like you're stupid plus the other thing is that one more thing on that let's say that they are really stupid and that you're engaging them what kind of a person engages with stupid people i think i think you're quoting obi-wan kenobi right there oh am i i don't know i'm not a star wars fan but who's more the fool the fool or the fool who follows him so you can say who's more the fool the fool or the fool who argues with him right right so probably not a good use of time and you strike me as a smart guy so so so here's here's my problem though is that maybe once every two years, I'll have an opinion and I'll write an article about it.

1:12:41And I won't think much about it, but it'll stir some controversy. Like a lot of people won't like that. And I get a lot of heat on social media. And like you say, an article is not a conversation, but then suddenly a million people want to have a conversation with me about it. Then what do you do? And by the way, so this happens a lot, like Jordan Peterson, this happens to even much more than me. Yeah, sure. Okay. So, So this is something that I find particularly interesting. So in order to help us keep our beliefs tethered to reality, we need feedback about what we believe. We need to hear the best arguments against it.

1:13:19You know, when I was talking to the sound engineer, Jay, before we went on, he said, you're a very hated man. And I had to really chuckle about that. i'm called a nazi 10 times before breakfast in the morning or or some kind of heinous thing because of a position i've taken and so you have to kind of figure out whose voice is not worth listening to is the and and the answer to that is if by definition most people are average in something then by definition they're not worth listening to so like if if i if i just to keep keep it on people's names we mentioned like so if i wrote something and schirmer calls me or richard dawkins calls me or um you know peterson i've become friendly with someone calls me or my friend gad sad calls me and they said whoa bogosian like what the like what this is like you've really okay that means something because i i respect them they have an intellectual gravitas etc But if a random, you know, 6969 retard or whatever on the internet, you know, the username comes and they start criticizing me about something, why should I listen to them?

1:14:31What substantive contribution do they have domain-specific expertise? They're like an anonymous guy with a vulgar Twitter handle. Like, why should I listen to them? Right. So let's say there's three types of people who argue with you on Twitter. There's the trolls and random people who you don't care about. And then, but then there might be the, the experts who you do, they don't know you, but you do care about their opinion. And then I find the most painful category is the people who do know you and they're, and they're addressing you like in the third person, like, oh, I know him. He's wrong all the time or whatever.

1:15:08How do you, how do you personally deal with that? Well, two things. So, you know, when we wrote this book, I sent the last chapter, which is based on John Height's work to John Height. And I said, how is this? He said, yeah, it's great. Works, works really well. At this point, I almost listened to nobody anymore because I have no mechanism to weed out the lunatics from the non-lunatics, you know? And the thing is, when we did the grieving study stuff in 2018, I just got hit piece after hit piece after hit piece. I mean, it was, it's at one point it was like they were coming out daily. And at first I started, you know, I wrote to Salon.

1:15:43I emailed Salon. I called Salon. Slate. I wrote to them, called them. I called all these. Can I come on? Can I have a plan? Can I rebut these? Nothing, nothing, nothing. Not one. So, you know, and my colleagues at work who have a pathological hatred and disdain for me, they just, their opinion just doesn't matter. It's totally wrong. Why should I listen to them? Who cares about it? I couldn't possibly care. What substantive accomplishments do they have? Now, there are rules of the game that we play by. All right. So there are certain, like the coin of the realm in academic publishing is my friend Bruce Gilley is doing this now.

1:16:22he wrote the case for just Dr. Bruce this morning. He's the guy who wrote the case for colonialism after Third World Quarterly, and the journal received credible death threats. They wanted to take his PhD. They wanted his job. They had a petition circulating about him. I tell Bruce all the time he's the second most hated man at Portland State University. And so what they should have done in that situation, there's no need for any of that name calling, infectives or anything. What What they should have done is say, you know what? Bruce Gilley is wrong. I'm going to humiliate him in the public square or his arguments, and they should have rebutted his arguments.

1:16:59But they did not do that in Third World Quarterly. They did that in other journals. And then Bruce wrote a response to that. That's how we participate in civil – that's how civil societies advance the knowledge base. That's also why I said there's a legitimation crisis, because we have a lack of trust in our institutions. So now if someone makes an argument, you find odious, you have a mob come after them and threaten to take away their PhD as opposed to doing the intellectual work to engage their arguments. But how I. Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. No, you go. No, well, how do you personally deal with that?

1:17:32Yeah. Okay. Did you see what I did right there in our interaction? Yeah, you said, and this was in the book, you said you go. Yeah. And then I said, I started to say you go, then, you know, you go. And I know that exact conversation happens in the book. There you go. That's one thing people can take away from this. If you speak at the same time and say, go, no, you go. Almost everyone will go, but you told me to go because you read the book. So now I'm going to go. So I think I just wanted to linger on that because I think that's, again, something people can use. It's like when you walk into a door at the same time and you bump into each other, you should step back and just let the person pass through.

1:18:05The way that you deal with that is it depends what your goal is. Like what's your goal for engagement? At this point, I almost engage. I went around the world repeatedly, and I had talks in front of actual people, not people from the audience. You can see these. I don't even know how many of these are on YouTube at this point. And I would always say in the talk always, if you disagree with me, you go to the front of the line, and I want to hear from you first. That's good. I take those, and I would urge other people to do this. I don't want an echo chamber. I want a challenge. That's the only way that I can make sure that I can have justified confidence in what I believe.

1:18:44Oh, that's the other thing that you said before. You used a phrase. You said – gosh. You said confident – I can't remember. But the word should have been justified confidence. But anyway – sorry, I shouldn't. Jay, just cut that part out right there. But okay. So let's say my goal is my, my goals are mixed in that I have an opinion that I want to be able to express. And I usually research my opinions pretty thoroughly when I, when it's sufficient enough to write them, doesn't mean I can't be wrong, but I'll have more research than the next, the average next person. Right. But so that's what my one goal is to express an opinion freely and to convince people that my opinion's right.

1:19:32The other goal is I don't want to lose friends and those goals don't don't match very well okay so i am going to suggest something to you i don't know you very well i think uh how well do you know brian by the way pretty well i mean we've we've had you know a couple dozen conversations oh okay we've known each other over the past year so i i would feel confident saying this to brian i don't know you very well but i'm going to suggest something that may be radical i would suggest that i i let me rephrase that i would question whether or not those friends are authentic friends to you that's what everyone says like oh if they're gonna abandon you on just this they weren't really friends to begin with and that might be true but i just have a hard time believing that well it's a testable hypothesis well okay how do you test if someone wasn't really a true friend to begin with well you just be genuine and authentic in your relationships and say what you mean yeah all right yeah and if if someone's like i can't believe you believe that now people take authenticity to mean a whole a bunch of things that it doesn't mean like if you're attracted to your friend's wife you know you don't say to her i want to sodomize you with a cucumber right so you you have to have some kind of a being authentic doesn't mean just brain dumping every single vulgar impulse that you have right every base desire it means being honest with yourself and others and speaking in a forthright and clear way the greeks called that parahesia speaking truth in the face of danger i would argue to you that if you began this immediately and you started weeding out your friends you would have some you would know almost immediately who your friends were and who they weren't and that your the quality of your life personally would go up dramatically I believe that.

1:21:20I guess it's just the surprise factor when yet another person sort of reveals who they are as not being, you know, what I thought they were. But isn't that only better for you that the sooner people reveal themselves to you as not your genuine friends, the better. So that's even more a reason that you just should start immediately. Yeah, no, you're right. That's absolutely right. I mean, my solution was to basically get off social media pretty much completely and to kind of hide a little bit which and and that's worked as well but that's not as good an answer as your answer well i don't know i mean what's your what's your goal and do i mean is your goal to is this how you make your money uh through the podcast no but i like i like to do it because i do have very strong beliefs about about many things not as many as like the full Democrat or Republican platform, but you know, a few things that are important to me about living a better, more peaceful life, which is important to me.

1:22:25And some of that actually involves not having opinions about some things. And some of it is about, you know, don't make a bad financial choice with college. If you're, if you're feeling strapped or if your kids are feeling strapped, uh, you know, so there's the, I want to, my goal is really to help people with these opinions but when people disagree particularly because of some cognitive bias they have they really disagree and i've lost friends over the college thing right and that's okay too if they disagree but what i don't i guess what i don't understand is why why would that cause you to them to not be friends with you anymore i don't know like i'm now i'm thinking about it and i'm sorry this is about all about my losing no don't be sorry it's important like i like i wrote an article.

1:23:10I wrote several articles about, and even a book about why kids shouldn't go to college. And here are some alternatives that could be even more valuable in your life and so on. And I had one set of friends who had went to a very good school and they, you know, didn't agree with me. And maybe I became too much the messenger instead of, I mean, I bet if I had used your techniques, I probably would have still been friends with them. But then I noticed at one point that they had unfriended me. Yeah, but that's the thing too. Do you really want to walk on eggshells around your friends? Yeah, no, that's a good point.

1:23:47And you're right, but it's hard to switch. It's not like you're making it seem like a light switch. Like, okay, I'm turning that friendship off. I'm turning it on. No, no. There's like a lingering light. If I gave that impression or if I articulated myself unclearly, I apologize. It's not that. It's just that like I have a like I have a friend like Matt Thornton is a good friend of mine. He's my jujitsu coach and we play Dungeons and Dragons together. And he was the guy I went out with with John Frankel the other night. And I have pretty substantive disagreements with him. And I feel that I can completely voice those and that the our friendship is never in danger because we disagree about some thing like some stand like.

1:24:36And I go ahead. You have a thought. I think that's, and I will take your invitation to go ahead. I think that's the critical thing is that when you don't feel like, no matter what you express, you don't feel like you're in danger with that friend. And maybe before I qualify someone as a friend, I should first have that feeling. Yeah. So maybe they're a friendly. Yeah. So you're married. Yeah. To a woman. Yes. and uh you know in in your relationship you need to be honest and authentic and you need to not be able to feel like you're walking on eggshells but you also have to be careful to a certain degree it's a it's a thread the needle thing right you have to give a little bit of thoughtfulness to how you articulate yourself to you know sometimes we have a tendency to become so comfortable we just pour things out instead of thinking about someone's feelings.

1:25:32I mean, again, I think some people think that being authentic means you can be an asshole because that's your true self. Right. That's like the radical honesty version of authenticity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it's all interesting. And look, you're, the techniques in this book are really going to change the way I, I have conversations with people. And by the way, if you're, if you enjoy debates, These are also great debating techniques. I wonder if you've thought of this one technique, which has come up a lot for me in, particularly in debates or intense conversations. It's a technique I call labeling, which is, let's say I'm arguing about voting.

1:26:12So the main reason I don't vote is I like to be really neutral. I have a podcast. I want to have Democrats and Republicans on my podcast. So I try to be neutral. And I think when you vote, it gives you a bias towards whichever party you vote for. And I don't want to have a bias. the other reason is i know my vote doesn't count because 100 you know 150 million people vote so it's easy for me to buy my neutrality without it really affecting the election in some sense but i had a debate with someone who was very much who basically thought it was very un-american to not vote and and he and at some point during the debate and it was an official debate like people were watching it and at one point during the debate he said you know in this election in particular, if you don't vote, then you're a racist or you could be thought of as a racist.

1:27:00And, and so I, I have this technique I call labeling, which I said, look, are we, are we debating racism in which I'm happy to debate about, but that's a different topic. Or are we debating the 250 year old institution of voting, which is a different topic. So I labeled his comment as not relevant to the conversation. It was a comment about racism as opposed to about voting. Correct. And I find that useful. Yeah, it's really good. In the book, we also, from hostile negotiations, they call it emotional labeling. And you don't ever want to say, oh, I can see you're upset or I can see you're angry.

1:27:40You would say, that must be so frustrating. and even capturing that in that and that word frustrating can be helpful it's a it's also a type of empathy but you can capture it emotionally capture as if you want to say label you can emotionally label um things to help better guide you through that conversation but again the whole point of this is that you can have better relationships you can clean up your belief life, or at least have somebody have people to bounce it off. And if someone knows something, you don't know how freaking awesome for you, right? That you just, you get to not live in delusion any longer than you have to.

1:28:19I mean, it's really a win-win for everybody. No, it's, it's great. I mean, this, one thing that's an idea that's related to this, the topics in your book is the concept of steel manning your argument. So you should know your opinion or your stance so well that you could argue the opposite side better than they can. Yes. And I find that to be very useful as well. Yeah. And that's the one thing I think that we're sorely lacking in almost all of the humanities today. People don't know, they look at the university as some kind of a great big Catholic catechism where you go in with questions and you You have pre-recorded answers that you kind of regurgitate.

1:29:01And you have to know the other side of an argument in order to know, in order to be justified in the confidence you have for your own position. Well, all this has been so interesting. Peter Boghossian, you wrote this with James Lindsay. He's also one of my favorites from his Cynical Theories book. How to Have Impossible Conversations, a very practical guide. My guess is everyone listening to this, the couple hundred thousand people listening to this, have all had many impossible conversations this past year about economics, politics, pandemics. I always find on social media that everybody suddenly brings out, I didn't even know that this local gym teacher has a PhD in epidemiology until I read his comments on Twitter.

1:29:47everyone's an expert on they're either a general or an expert on the royal family or all of the above right and uh you know i think this is really valuable advice because not necessarily to have a great conversation with somebody although that will be the result but to also just feel better it's better to not be agitated in the middle of a conversation yeah i think so and so i i hope that the book you know we again as my first book we went right to paperback. So there's no hardcover. It's not about making the cash. I just want to move society in a better direction. And hopefully that will help.

1:30:24I hope you do. And again, there's very practical techniques. These are techniques you can literally use like an hour after you read this book. I'm going to go talk to my wife right now and start an argument and then use these techniques to make everybody feel better. Well, thank you. I'm innocent in that. Well, I appreciate you having me on. Thank you, James. I really appreciate it. Yeah. And Peter, next time you're on, let's find something to argue about and then we could use your technique. We could both use your techniques. Oh, I see what you're saying. It's a win-win. Yeah. All right, Peter.

1:30:56Thanks so much. I really appreciate you coming on. My pleasure. Thanks.

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