 Okay. Yeah. So, Anthony, you are in the shot. Now you're even more in the shot. Okay. Anthony, am I in the shot? Hey, I was thinking, wouldn't it be fun to do what happens when two street epistemologists meet? Sure. And we just, we go, hmm, and you go, hmm, like, hmm, what do you mean by hmm, hmm? Oh, that's interesting. It's a minute of hmms back and forth. I can definitely feel that longer. Put it on your face. So, we had a really great time. I was really great meeting you, by the way. That's fantastic meeting you. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. This is really, really cool. And I wish more people around the country knew about SE because it's just more people to connect with. I have found that I have some challenges for SE that I've ran into recently. As a practitioner? As a practitioner. There's some, like, there are some clear dead ends that won't make SE a viable option. And I think that I want to run them by you and see if you've found a way to get around them or not. Sure, sure. Okay. So, as a terms of the methodology of changing people's mind, I found that it is a strictly conversational tool. And if someone's not willing to have a conversation with you, you can't do SE. All right. That means if you're sitting down with someone and they're talking to you, but they're not answering honestly, or they want to just preach and that's it. Or they're not answering or, you know, they want to divert the topic because they're clearly putting up a wall that you're not going to get around. You can't do SE, period. Yeah, I can't really contest that. If the person doesn't want to sit down or they obfuscate, whether they're doing it intentionally or not, sometimes I think maybe they're doing it intentionally. Sometimes it could be an involuntary defense mechanism, too. Okay. What you could try to do is call attention to the behavior that you seem to be doing, don't accuse them of it, but say, you know, normally when I have conversations it's really easy to pick a topic. Or we pick a topic and I can explore the reasons why and maybe the method that they're using to conclude that those reasons are good. And yet with this situation, it doesn't seem to be happening. Could there possibly be any reasons why that might be happening? Do you agree? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another thing that you might try is ask them to question you about something. Switch the tables a little bit. Switch the tables. Say, when I like to engage where we explore what, why, how, these reasons, and I don't want to focus on the person. I want to get down to the method. Would you be willing to question me on something so that I can model the kind of conversation I'm hoping to have with you? Oh. Because they may not even... If they're still willing to that extent. They may be obfuscating in your mind, but maybe they're not really doing that. Sure. Maybe they think that that's the approach that you're expecting. So actually demonstrating them in a way, what you're hoping to achieve, the type of dialogue and where you're hoping to go, could maybe open them up to it. Now, if we're talking to a career apologist, for example, like a Cytan burden cake, for example, I've seen Raul have those conversations with them. And we were thinking about like, what's a really good way to talk to a guy like this who's clearly not interested in having that kind of approach and knows what words to say like, oh, you asked me a confidence scale. This is what a confidence scale means, guys. I'm not going to answer this question because what he's really trying to get to is like, okay, I found like in a situation like that when you're dealing with an apologist or if you're dealing with someone who is versed enough with SE to be easily offended by words for the sake of being offended so that they don't have to talk about their epistemology. It might be good to go with a completely different method rather than SE as far as getting them to understand. I like the role reversal, but if we were to switch to, I heard someone say a goal-oriented approach. It's like, okay, let's move the methodology aside as the word methodology. What is the goal that we both want to see in the world? What's good? Now that we both have something that we agree on, what's a good way to get that goal together? It's still methodology in a sense, but you're not using the same trigger words or something like that. If you're asking me what other ways might there be to get people like that? Yeah, what's some good alternatives, basically. Okay. Possibly telling a story, sharing a story where you had a conversation with somebody and it caused them to reflect on something, or maybe you yourself embarked on the type of conversation you're hoping to have and then you ended up changing your mind, lowering your confidence. That might be helpful. With folks like that, Would you suggest dipping into the counter apologetics a little bit? No. I still won't go that route. I mean, there are lots of ways to, I suppose, foster an environment where you might be changing a person's mind, telling a story, sharing some of your background. But with folks that are really dug in, sometimes I think building trust is really the best place to go from the start. Let's say, if I had to meet somebody like an apologist, and I'm actually an atheist, yeah, somebody who's dogmatic. It doesn't have to be a religious apologist. When somebody is dug in and dogmatic about their views, sometimes I think one of the best things you can do is just spend an hour just getting to know them. Find out about their background. Where do they go to school? What did they study? I get it. Because the more you understand about their background, you're going to open up trust, they're going to learn more about you, they'll see you more as a person, you'll see them more as a person. And you might actually find examples that they will relate to you. So for example, if your job was to inspect cooking vats or something like that, and you spent 30 years doing that, that might be a really great vehicle to explore some of these concepts where you're not even talking about God. When it came to coming to study the standards that are associated with that industry, how did you come about doing it? Did you embark on this training thing? How did you figure out that you were wrong? Could the standards have been wrong? You're saying it's worth time to invest even more time to get to know the person before you can bring Essie into the future? That's the thing. But see, there's a downside to it too because my time is valuable. Do I really want to spend literally days, possibly with a person who is so dug in and dogmatic, building up that trust? And will that be effective? It probably will, but I think the time commitment, my time is really valuable. And yours is too. It could be more effective for me to have a hundred conversations with individuals than one conversation in that same amount of time with one person. Multiple conversations with one person. In that same angle, instead of you getting to know the person and you having the conversation, make Essie so ubiquitous that maybe someone who knows that person very well can have that conversation with you. I've always been a proponent of trying to get as many people to learn this as possible because, and I actually talked about this in my talk, a little bit like Nibble with the Edges, because I could have a very short talk with somebody and it may have been the first time that they ever questioned anything, but if someone like you comes along who also continues that, it's going to make it easier. And by the time you come along, maybe there are 30 people in between me and you, you're the next person to come along and you ask that last question that is required for them to just completely abandon it. So this is just... I really appreciate you telling me this. This isn't just one person... This isn't... The weight of the burden here isn't just on one person. So take that weight off yourself. Have one little conversation. Make one little dent. But just recognize that one conversation could be the last bite. That's such a corny way of putting it. Yeah, definitely, definitely, definitely. All right, so I'm going to ask a question that I know I have not asked anyone yet. Or I've asked this question a lot, but never face to face. You've seen my videos of doing Etsy talks. What do you think I could do better? Okay. I noticed that you have a tendency... You're so friendly and you listen really well. And one thing that I noticed is that when somebody says, well, I guess I picked up this belief in Germany when I was there on leave and you're like, Oh my gosh. And it's great because you're bonding with them. But I think there might be a tendency to be really looking for opportunities to share more about yourself. When is... I don't know if that's wrong or not, because then they light up and you're like, Oh, we have something in common. That's great. And yet I do wonder if when I had these conversations, I try to set my stuff aside. I have noticed that. I'll tell that I have a wife and two kids and blah, blah, blah. I live in San Antonio and I don't believe. But that is literally as much as I know about you. Right. Maybe this is just a personal thing, like a personal preference where I don't think it's necessary to incorporate too much about my background or whatever. Although harkening back to the previous thing that I said, if I was going to meet a dogmatic person, I think it would be necessary for me to give a lot about myself. So I'm just saying... In Kentucky, you're going to know everything about everyone. This may be a cultural thing. Maybe it's because I grew up in Chicago and maybe I'm stereotyping here. Maybe we keep things close to the chest or reveal what you need to reveal. But that was just one thing I noticed. But that sucked up time. And also I'm like, I want to get to the method. What's the method? And it's like there's this... rapport building is great. And I'm not trying to say this to dissuade you. Let's focus on yourself and more focus on them and their reasons and their method. But that's maybe the only thing that just comes to mind off the top of my head. I mean, and I say that because I say that reluctantly because I don't want to discourage you from doing what you're doing either. Because maybe that's like the more effective way of doing these things. Maybe I would actually be better if I was like, you went to Germany, I was in Germany too. I can tell you there's some benefits. It does calm me down a little bit. Yeah, there's something to that. If I were going to say that if there was like a mental advantage is there's something called redlining that I've been saying for like Essie when it's just deep health question, deeper digging question, deeper digging question. People get exhausted from that. And when you can just be like, okay, let's back it up a little bit. What's a good way to like just take a couple of breathers before we go back down again. Just a little rapport building session where it's like now we're talking about let's dig down again. Do you think that's like a good have you found that to be effective? Have you tried that before? I'm always consciously aware I try to be consciously aware of the emotional impact of the questions that I'm asking. Because I want to walk that threshold of comfortableness and uncomfortableness with them. Uncomfortable enough to the point where they're like, I don't know if this is really true and that type of thing. But comfortable enough where they're willing to share the most personal things. So sometimes it tips over the edge and they're increasingly comfortable. They seem agitated. They're fidgeting with their clothes. They're looking around. They're looking at their watches. Right. I just did the same thing at the exact same time. And those are things I guess to look out for. If they have the business card, sometimes they just have to play with the card a little bit more. Possibly. But sometimes they need a little like a natural reliever. Like somebody walks by and they have a cute dog. And then we chat for a little bit and then we reset it again. If you don't mind, can we pick it up? And I'm always kind of asking for consent too. Because if it seems you may have noticed from my videos, I try to end it on a high point too. Yeah. They're like, man, I've never really thought about that. And we're just at the like why they think it's true and not even that method. Why don't we just end it there and we could wrap it up. But sometimes it's tempting too. It's like, I know if I ask three more questions, they're going to realize that they probably don't have a really good reason for this. So it's it's a tough call sometimes. Sure. Body language is a big deal for me. And I probably queue into it a little bit more just because of my background. But I have noticed that I will give away more from just the way how I'm talking. So it's that when I'm rendering videos, I'm like, oh, not only am I signing that out, but I can tell that I'm controlling. I'm sort of like there's a there's something called back and forth where it's like right now you wouldn't be talking. But when like actually right now you'd be saying, I want to say something Tyrone, I'm about to sign. And I'd be like, okay, let me get back into this pose. And now you sign. And now I lean back. There's almost like send and receive poses. When I change my posture, I'm showing you how to say something is a cool. And then you stop and then I start sending. And so I've noted that when I'm doing these same things, I'll lean for lean back. And then the person I'm talking to will lean for lean back too. And I'm like, should I tell more people about this? Because this is a great way to like control subconsciously conversation. Or is this like more of like a, does it start to make are all tricks that I'm noting worthwhile to share? Or are they more of like that? I don't know if that's the dark side. Is it a woo science or are we just very impressionable, like with art in terms of like what we're looking at and how we and we may have a tendency to want to make it easier to understand people. And we're just interpreting these bodies. I didn't really notice body language as much as when I started recording and looking at things. But then when I added the secondary camera. Yes. That's when I started noticing like dances going on. Oh, yeah, yeah. I was telling you about that. When you had like the, you're having a conversation with a lady who was the friend and you're questioning this person's God belief and the lady went from standing here beside you to like just slow simmering over. But our interpretation of what was happening in that video differed. Do you remember what you thought was happening? Yeah, she was standing next to her friend as you were beginning to challenge her beliefs. She's like, I don't like this person talk to my friend. I'm gonna stand here. And then she started introducing herself to the conversation. Closed body language, she's not one in the top. Oh, yeah. Okay, see I interpreted differently. Go for it. She, if I remember right, if the two ladies I'm talking about, one of them was off to the edge. It was sort of going to be my helper and then it kind of fizzled out and I was sort of more of one-on-one. I don't think she circled around to be to defend her friend. I think she wanted me to ask her questions. Yes, both at the same time. Okay, I think she wanted to talk to my friend out. I'm here now. But see, I took that as like, ask me questions now. And I think you were taking it as stuff, asking my friend questions. Yeah. I can't wait until I'm at that because then I can see the world in like that vision. I feel like that would be like this would be really great. So I'm really, really excited with SC. I think it's like, it's just been a really fun time this last year of realizing, oh my gosh, not only is this possible, but I can continue to get better at this. I think so my main goal for this is getting to the point where we do have a strategy that's good for talking to family. Because I don't think SC is ideal for families or people who know you very well. We definitely have a format that works for strangers. It's definitely almost even ideal for people who don't come into the conversation with any sort of personal baggage. But every single time I'm talking about SC in a way of like, hey you can do this. The first question is, can I do this with my mom? Can I do this with my sister? Can I do this with my brother? I don't think it's in the format where I, if it was my brother or my sister or my mother, then I could do it. But if I taught someone else to do it, maybe there's a better chance there. But what do you think is the future for that? I mean, I think it's critical that we develop SC in a way where it could be used in any situation even with family and friends. I do think it's tougher because I've actually used it with family and friends and it's tougher because you are much more invested in the relationship. There's a cost you have to meet them again next week, that type of thing. Walking ways hard. They don't see you like a person that they should take care of. You have a history with them, so they know your position on the stance. They maybe you didn't argue with them about the topic at hand. So it is tougher. I've even had some family members say now don't you use that SC thing on me now? Or they said are you using that SC thing on me now? Yeah, Ben gets that. And I said, well I'm really not. I don't think. I'm just listening to you and asking questions and you can ask me questions back in return. So maybe I do think it's a little tougher. I did write a blog post on how to use SC with loved ones where I give some recommendations where you can completely explain that you intend to be using this method with them. You can explain what it is. Maybe show them a video example and say would you like me to give this a try? That's a little artificial and awkward, but you could do that. Sure. You could wait for it to naturally come up. You could write with your data across the state or something and then the topic invariably comes up and you can engage in that. Yeah. I think the amount that you would invest into, I got to get to this goal should be walked back if you're dealing with a better member. You can play a longer game I suppose with SE. You're not under the clock maybe so to speak. Another thing too is you don't have to talk about the sensitive topics with your family but you can use the method for any claim that they make. You can even ask them, I've always been thinking about voting for this candidate would you be interested in asking me questions to see why I think that that's true? You can even choose much safer topics too. I don't have to be about politics and then teach them the method and then maybe they'll use it on themselves. Okay. Here's my last point. I don't know, is that your job? It's your vain job now. Does a job, let's define job. Does it mean getting paid doing so? It's your life, not necessarily your livelihood but it's like this is now your whether it's profitable or not your career. I've called, I'm not making a dime from it. It's maybe bordering on vocation rather than like it's maybe morphing from vocation and possibly career. What does vocation mean? I looked it up recently because I was like maybe that's more indicative of what I do. Flash it up on the screen. Or maybe we can look it up. You want to look up vocation and read it to us? It just sounds like a fancier form for hobby. It's like a passion. It's a passion, okay. But is the thing where you're like, okay, get up. What can I do with that seat today? I'm constantly feeling a suitability for a particular career or occupation. It's just a trade of profession. Like a passion about something. It's kind of morphing into a career in that I started as a practitioner promoting it developing written materials on it, that type of thing. And I think we're kind of shifting gears. We're planning to start a 501c3 4th Street Epistemology Board of Directors and I'll be the Executive Director. I think this sounds like more of a job now. It's kind of shifting. It will change the way that I introduce myself if I'm going to initiate a talk on a campus or the trail. I can no longer probably say this is my hobby. I might have to say I'm part of this organization where we go out and have conversations or wait for them to happen organically. It's kind of a tough question for me to answer right now. I've always thought that hobby is the most indicative of what it is. I think it's I think job is Job tends to suggest chore though and it's certainly not chore because I love it so much. I love my job and I've worked really hard to get the skills that I could get to have the job that I have now. It's incredibly rewarding. I know there's nothing with people who don't have good jobs but I would just say occupation seems more liberal than anything. But it's definitely something more than just a part time sort of a thing. Let's put it this way. I'm invested in it but not to the point where I wouldn't abandon it if we figured out that it was harmful or ineffective or something along those lines. I'm not dogmatically passionate about it. How about this? I can throw it on me. I have a full time career right now and I fill in that free space with SE. When I had a much different work schedule I had a lot more time available to me. I'm leaning back now. I had a much more available time for me to do this. Sometimes a week at a time none of my friends are available because they're all working regular hours. I'm just going to go to the park and talk to people because this seems like a fun thing to do. Really, really fun to do. But now that I have a full time job I'm realizing oh this is a hard thing to turn off when I'm ready to focus on work and when I have free time I can always stop work and I'm still there. How do you turn off SE? Do you understand what I'm saying? There's a train of thought where you're talking to people and you're like oh I'm finally doing SE. I'm tickling that part of my brain and it starts to become I found a new way to talk to people that's been very productive. New people, old people when I know an argument's about to come I can dismantle it or disarm it with SE. How do I have that just the regular conversation with people? How do I stop thinking about why do I say that? What's the better way to say that? Maybe I should text my friends and say how do I I don't know if there's an off switch. I don't know if there's an off switch. There may not be. There may not be. I mean I guess you could be you could just decide you know what I'm not really interested in getting to the root of why someone thinks that this is true and I'd rather just have superficial conversations with people. I suppose somebody could lose interest in it. Can you have a deep conversation with someone without having SE? Have you had, when's the last time you had a deep conversation with someone where no SE was involved whatsoever? That's a good question. I meet a lot of people who are questioning, doubting they're in the process of abandoning a view and there are times where I turn off the SE I don't ask them probing questions that might instill doubt. I can very easily shift gears in that way when the situation calls for it where they need an empathetic ear to listen to them. They're struggling. They need some resources. They need a shoulder to cry on or something like that. So it's not hard in that respect but if somebody's making a claim that their certain is true or they just make an offhanded comment why would I now want to gently challenge on that? That could actually help them if they stop promoting a position that's unreal untrue. That's why I say it's really kind of hard to turn off but there are moments where it's inappropriate so I'll just set that tool aside and I can engage with somebody and listen to them and hear them out. These are more things for me to consider. I know this won't be the first time we talk with each other. Can I ask you one more question? What time is it by the way? It's 4.51. I'm wondering what you think would be your greatest improvement since you started doing this? I stopped trying to emulate you. Huh. Yeah. I think when I first started doing this I had the the marker board. I had the mic and the camera and I was walking to churches and I was talking to people and I was what would Anthony ask here? What's the flow? What's the flow chart that you'd go through? I don't know why I was doing that. Are you listening to this folks? This is good. I was literally making myself really uncomfortable to the point where it's like I don't want it I don't even want to do SC anymore. I don't think it's worth me doing it. Is it because you were pretending to be somebody you weren't? That plus I wasn't getting the answers that you were getting so I was getting frustrated with that. I wasn't able to reach that point where I could start asking the questions you wanted to so I was forced to conversations to go to certain places because I was recording it back then that doesn't even sound like me. In fact, I'm agreeing with the person I'm talking to more now that I'm hearing it again like a week later than I am me. Why would you say that? This is not good. I'm glad that you raised that. That's a concern of mine that people might emulate or copy rather than observe, learn and then bring their own style to it but what's so good about the way that you're approaching it is that you have a distinct style. That's one of the reasons I was a little reluctant to tell you what I think you can improve on because I don't want to dissuade you from being you or to come around to being more like me but I do also want to give you feedback on things that I see because I think I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't. Right. I even had a copy of the manual for Greening Atheist but I sort of did not read it. Have you ever read it? The first couple of chapters on the audiobook and I was like, yeah, and then I stopped because I don't want to be the guy who was like, why do you believe this? Can I give you a list of names? I want to tell you why I believe it and I feel like I have enough grounds to explain why my position is rational and I'm open to being wrong so if someone can improve it, I'm totally fine with it. I'm actually thinking that I can really relate to what you're saying about your emulating something that you've seen and then realizing it didn't mesh. I wanted to emulate what I thought the book was promoting. Peter, I'm sorry, but the book has some terrible dialogue examples. If it makes you feel any better. I was in the grocery store and somebody was like, bless you. I was like, why'd you say bless you? So what I found is that the style of SE that seemed to be promoted with the book didn't really mesh with my own style. Right. I was like, I just need to be me. Right. And then I just did this. I was like, I think it was the 10 talk that I had. He's like this, just this cool dude. And I was like, it's all coming together. I feel really good, comfortable. I feel like I want to have a conversation casually and I'm going to dip into SE mode and then just work my way down and then get back to casual and comfortable. We'll go down together again. This goes to a whole other discussion about what exactly is SE. Are there standards? I wish we had 31 minutes to talk about this stuff. Because there's so much we can talk about. Yeah. We've got five minutes and we actually have to get out of here before they lock us into the library. All right, all right, all right. But yeah, I guess we're closing then. Yeah, it's unfortunate because there's a myriad of things that we should we could and should talk about. This won't be the first time we talk, I imagine. Yeah. Well, you never know. We never know. Yeah. I wouldn't say anything without some certainty with this guy. You said this won't be the first time. It won't be the first time. This won't be the first time. You said this won't be the first. This won't be the last time. Oh, this won't be the first time? Well, this isn't the first time. I can guarantee you that. This was not the first time that we talked. It is the first time on camera. Well, it won't be the last time. See what happens when you get too straight epistemologists? I'm tired. You taught a good class today. We're already good. Anyway. Thank you so much, dude. Thank you, man. Alright, keep it up. You too. Let's do it.