 building sets our erector now she talks about group language to sing the director of communications for the James Randy educational foundation group perhaps you've heard of I get the slides oh you can see them oh I just can't see them all right so you can tweet at me during this talk if you like it carry poppy yes you can tweet at my show at ono podcast and you can tweet at the J ref at J ref don't tweet at carry poppy she is an egg and she doesn't respond to her tweets where I tell her that she's a bad person for taking my name all right so I used to be a believer I was a believer in a lot of things I was very religious I practiced alternative medicine I used energy healing I once performed an exorcism I believed I had psychic powers I pretty much went through every wooey belief you can think of and I'm going to tell you two of my most profound experiences with belief and one is when I was really truly a believer and one is after I became a skeptic and I started investigating claims from a skeptical point of view and I want to examine two things what made me leave a belief in my case it was the belief that homeopathy was effective and what pulled me into a community a spiritual community in my case and I'm going to talk about the Mormon Church which I investigated with my co-host last year I want to think about how my experience mirrors other believers experiences and how we can use these lessons to reach out so like all great new age types I dabbled in pretty much every form of alternative medicine but one of my favorites was homeopathy so the first time someone actually told me what homeopathy was I was completely floored I felt like I had been duped this whole time to believe that this worked and it doesn't really and I thought okay I've been suffering from chronic headaches my whole life and I've been waiting for these things to work for hours and hours and they usually finally did does this mean that does this mean it had nothing to do with the medicine I just felt so taken advantage of but people had actually been telling me this for years if you're a believer in alternative medicine you're constantly told that that doesn't have science behind it but you don't listen so what is it that made me listen to this person and finally take it seriously but I know why it was my boyfriend at the time his name's Evan and he said oh my gosh Kerry I have to show you this video okay so there's this guy named James Randi he did this video about what homeopathy actually is and it's nuts so why did I listen to Evan well Evan was my people he was a weirdo so he he was totally like me we shared this sort of common viewpoint and I mean look at this guy he was he he was like me in every way as you can see this is him playing a minstrel in a children's show and in he was my in group I didn't have to do much to relate to Evan and so when he came to me with this information I felt like he's not trying to manipulate me he's not calling me stupid he's he's just like me so when others were telling me what was wrong with alternative medicine what I was really looking for was whether they were in group I needed to know if they were progressive like me if they rejected corporate greed when it manipulated people if they valued health like they like I did and if they cared about people more than the bottom line or if they just dismissed atypical ideas for being atypical and of course at the time I wouldn't have told you that that's what I was looking for but I don't think I even knew that's what I was listening for when you're talking to someone you don't realize you're listening for this in-group language but most of the time you are and unless you're a sort of perfect information computing machine you're probably like me too at least a little so let's examine for a second how you feel listening to some thoughts from people who are your in group versus out group so here's our friend Carl Sagan walk with those seeking truth run from those who think they've found it in contrast that with how you feel just reading a quote from Deepak Chopra perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship or how about how about Julia Sweeney she says we find that people today need to satisfy their intellect in addition to their beliefs when traditional religions don't address the issue and contrast that with how you feel just hearing from our friend Sylvia Brown saying happiness is a byproduct of having purpose and meaning it isn't a goal so if you're like me you read these quotes and you say you know they're they're all like a little insightful but even just hearing from Sylvia Brown or Deepak Chopra kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth but consider that I actually switched the quotes it was Deepak Chopra who said walk with those seeking truth and run from those who think they found it it was Carl Sagan who said perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship Sylvia Brown who said we find that people today need to satisfy their intellect in addition to their beliefs when traditional religions don't address the issue and it was Julia Sweeney who said happiness is a byproduct of having purpose and meaning it isn't a goal so it might be that when we listen to these points from other people we bring in our emotional baggage of what we already think of the speaker and that's fine I mean we can't sit and analyze every single point that a person's making and make sure that they have pure view behind every single statement we do tend to generalize based on that person's prior opinions and that's part of being a human being it's not unreasonable to take that into account but since we know this about ourselves how come we use it to reach out to those who aren't already a part of our community so let's think back to my homeopathy example once I given up homeopathy for good I started talking to people about it and I told pretty much anyone who would listen so some people were completely shocked to hear what it was all about and they seem to genuinely think they shouldn't buy it again but a lot of people just basically insulted me they told me I didn't believe in mystery anymore or I was a cynic or that you know we just have to agree to disagree and they far outnumbered the people who actually took me seriously and I think that's because as I was reaching out to others not so well I had completely forgotten what had persuaded me or maybe I didn't even know what had persuaded me so who were the people who listened to me well my friend Claire listens Claire is my best friend and you can see from the photo that wasn't hard for her to consider me in group she she knew about homeopathy actually she had known since she was a child that homeopathy was made of these highly dilute substances in water and she just thought it worked anyway that water had memory and that it could cure various ills so what it took for her was someone who was in group me coming to her and saying well okay but Claire like you know that I would love this to be true I mean I've been taking homeopathy my whole life too and it would be so great if this medicine that doesn't have any side effects could do what it claims to do but dude did you see this James Randi video she already considered me in group so it was very easy for her to take me seriously now here's someone who didn't listen to me about homeopathy I don't want you to you know pick on her if you ever find her on the street so what's what's interesting about her I'll call her Lola and she is a really genuinely sweet person but she told me to suck it because when she told me that she took homeopathy and she was using it for allergies I just didn't even think about it I just started telling her like all the reasons that homeopathy is bullshit okay here we go and I just started listing off point after point you know do you know about like yours like and just you know giving her this long long list of scientific points I didn't start from a baseline understanding of the of what her concerns were I didn't show her I was in group that we shared our most basic world views I just started talking assuming that the facts would set her straight and not only did she not buy it but she told me that I clearly didn't care whether corporations manipulate people I obviously don't care if people get sick from from medicine I don't care about a long list of abuses come committed in the name of scientific progress and none of those things are true but I can't blame Lola because I hadn't shown her that I was her people before I spoke she didn't know if we shared common ground so I do this podcast it's called ono Ross and Kerry my co-host Ross Blotcher and I we investigate all sorts of unlikely sounding claims and we join fringe groups and we generally put ourselves in the position of the new believer and see what happens behind closed doors so we've hung out with the cabalists Ross has gotten near-candled I refused we hung out with the seeks we got acupuncture we've been hypnotized we've overdosed on homeopathic medicine and then chased it with wine that's that's how the sugar crashed by the way we delved into tarot or tarot if you prefer we joined the pan Africans we joined a couple creationist groups we have my dogs psychoanalyzed by a pet psychic I did the master cleanse Ross was colon hydrotherapy we spent six months undercover becoming Mormons and we spent five months undercover becoming ralions a UFO cult so our goal has always been to reach beyond the skeptical circle and of course it's it's nice to appeal to skeptics and it's fun but preaching to the choir can be just a nice way to make a lot of very pretty masturbation music so from the beginning we've asked ourselves what we could do to avoid being pegged as skeptics to believers and wanted to help believers and the sort of undeclared to see us as their own in group which in a sense we are both former believers we both would be very happy to adopt these claims if they're true so here's what we tried we don't call ourselves skeptics on the show we never tell anyone that they're wrong we just ask good questions and see what they have to say to depend their beliefs and we emphasize our shared history instead of differences in our current perceptions and it worked so since we started the show which is only about 15 months ago now I think we've heard from hundreds of listeners and lots of them are current believers or people leaving their their beliefs people are questioning what they were taught and we also hear from people who are kind of on the fence about unfounded claims and and a lot of these people say I just don't get this anywhere else you know I talked to my believing friends and they just tell me to pray more or they you know if they're into pseudoscience their friends tell them what we do can't be calibrated by the scientific method and things like that and we also hear from people who hate the show of course people who say we don't give them a fair shake and that's fair we have to at some point close the investigation and say what we think of it but it's clear but clear from the feedback we're getting that the overwhelming response from believers is is very positive and it's interesting that so many people say I don't get this anywhere else I mean how is it that no one is just gently talking to them about their beliefs and I think in a lot of our exchanges with believers myself included we tend to just give them this message well I care about evidence and you don't seem to and that just makes them tune out because they think I do care about evidence so obviously you don't understand me now of course I'm not making an argument against aggressive activism I really believe that movements take all kinds of activists but my plea here is that when we're talking to our friends and our colleagues one-on-one and we want to understand their point of view and them to understand ours that we consider that we're talking to human beings and human beings are tribal animals so we need to show one another how we are in their tribe so what do you do if you have nothing in common with the person you're talking to well I would suggest that you are not the person to outreach to that person and that's okay there are other people who can do that but if you're talking to someone and you think okay I really I'm just not even on the same wavelength as you then they're not they're feeling the same thing and they're not going to be able to hear your message so you might just be digging yourself in a hole think about how much it would take for you to take life advice from Sylvia Brown or Deepak Chopra you know we'd all like to think oh well if they made their claims really well maybe I would but it would be really difficult right and few of us have enough time to wade through each claim from beginning to end and make sure that it's scientifically supported so likewise if someone sees you as functioning on a completely different way wavelength than them they're probably not going to listen to you but if you can find that common ground if you can find a place in yourself that agrees with them then start there so for me now when I talk about homeopathy I say things like yeah you know I used to take that stuff it was so reassuring to me that it had no side effects that it wasn't going to hurt me it was completely natural I totally understand why you prefer it but hey did you know it's actually not very effective and using those direct pleas of personal experience it doesn't take the place of science but knowing that personal experience is the primary way that people communicate we ignore that at the expense of science so having learned all this from trial and lots of error this year I tried something I'd never done I made an outreach video which was a tall order for me I barely know what YouTube is but I wanted to share a personal experience with alternative medicine and I wanted to use myself as the guinea pig and I also wanted to see if homeopathy would still have some effect on me even though I know it's placebo I was open to the idea that even though I know how it works it still might have some effect on me so I got tonsillitis which I do a few times a year I really need to get those things out and I decided that I would try homeopathy out again and I would document it this time I wouldn't let it go to waste and I would try to make an outreach project out of it and this is what I came up with oh no well it's a great video so I made this video about me taking homeopathy while I have tonsillitis and and as I as I increasingly am just getting worse and worse I finally called poison control and said hey you know I took just slightly too much of this homeopathic medicine and and I was wondering if I should be worried and the poison control center doctor said oh no that stuff is totally bogus and so so I got that I got that on video it's great you should see it and then and then and then I called boy Ron homeopathic medicines which made my medicine and I called them every day for about six days and they didn't call back finally they called back and I got them on tape and said hey I'm not seeming to get any better I feel really really sick and I called poison control one day because I took too much of your medicine and they told me not to worry because it's fake do you know anything about that and and the person at boy Ron literally read me you know a sound bite from her sheet and said well homeopathic medicines used dilute substances to cure I said well right right but it seems like you know after I found out about this I started looking it up on the internet and I couldn't find any really reputable studies saying that this works better than placebo do you know about that and she said well I think that's everyone's own opinion so so then at the end of the video I wrote to boy Ron and ask for my money back it's on the YouTube's oh so okay so the good news is I did get my get my money back they they sent me a refund check a few days later so I didn't line the pockets of boy Ron you'll be happy to know and you can see that video at youtube.com slash on a podcast so of course the video was really popular among skeptics which is great but more importantly it serves its purpose I shared the video with some friends at my former work and those who used or at least supported homeopathy all have lots of questions with the exception of one person who said he would still take homeopathy over conventional medicine everyone said that they would now question the the efficacy of homeopathic medicines which is kind of weird if you think about it because I don't say anything about the science in that video except this guy at Poison Control said it's fake I don't go into like yours like it I'll go into dilution none of that it's purely anecdote and you know that's the thing the sort of thing that's supposed to make skeptics cringe but because the science does back my experience up and because I can use my experience in good conscience why not appeal to the human side of the issue you know it's it's not hard to find common ground with someone who's coughing and sneezing because we've all we've all been there so we know that finding common ground with the person we're reaching out to is important and we know that telling personal stories tends to be more effective than listing off scientific points so what else can we do to help people find and want to stick with the critical thinking community well I suggest we be more Mormon now stick with me here I know it sounds a little weird most of us have strong associations with religious and spiritual groups and many of us would find their outreach tactics manipulative or exploitative and I certainly wouldn't suggest that we pray on people when they're feeling weak or that we exploit people's deepest fears and certainly we shouldn't ever deceive people but there are a lot of things that religious communities get right and they're generally masterful at creating and keeping communities of emotional support and and and and getting people to stick with them and I so I spent six months undercover in the Mormon Church as I mentioned and in that investigation I learned just how amazing the Mormons in particular were at drawing me into their community even when I didn't believe a word of their doctrine they were these incredible outreach experts and I think we can learn a lot from them so first of all they never made me feel like an outsider at every class and sermon I would gently disagree with virtually everything they said and they would politely tell me things like you know my godly role was to create children and I should just defer all that pesky decision-making to my future husband and I would tell them you know I find that completely opposite my Constitution and they would talk about the sins of homosexuality and I would tell them I I really can't believe that it's a sin to love somebody I have tattoos I would wear short skirts I accidentally drank coffee in their lobby one day I habitually cursed I don't want children I confess to not being lifelong chased and I told them every week that I I still don't consider Joseph Smith a true prophet but they never once made me feel like an outsider they invited me to potlucks they gave me gifts they would call me to check in they would offer to take my dogs on walks on particularly long workdays they complimented my intelligence they praised my dedication and they told me what a good contribution I would make as a church member and I think they meant it we can call that emotional manipulation but if they genuinely wanted me as part of their community I think they have every right to say so and I think that's a testament to something that other communities and particularly spiritual communities do right sure they saw the differences between me and my co-host Ross and them but they valued us uniquely as unique persons and they pointed out cleverly but earnestly where our similarities were like us they cared deeply about social service and charity they valued study even if they had different reading material and they enjoyed long-winded conversations about philosophy and ethics and the root of belief so it was easy to see us in them because they quickly found themselves in us and let us know and before we knew it Ross and I were getting baptized and there's Ross is Ross in the audience not wearing his baptismal robes but but it was easy actually we we didn't have to lie really in our baptismal interviews because we meant it we were really excited for the day to come because it was going to be this lovely wonderful celebration of the family we joined and you know I mean never mind that we were investigating them and never mind that we disagreed on fundamental tenets of their religion we were excited to sing songs and listen to readings but but most of all we were excited to be invited into their family by our new brothers and sisters sorry about my confusing hair color changes now if the Mormons as one example can win over a couple of die-hard skeptics like me and Ross not to their beliefs per se but to their community then I think we the skeptical community can do one better because after all we have the facts on our side so I urge everyone here to think about how we can reach out to our in group who isn't yet in group that is everyone who cares even in iota about facts and about truth and that might be your neighbor who has a chakra chart on her door and it might be your staunchly Baptist aunt and it might be your co-worker who takes homeopathy though please do a better job than I did so you don't get told to suck it but whatever we do the last thing we should resort to is making them feel out group it feels good for a few minutes but by and large it means abandoning all hope for that person in favor of you feeling right right now truth without compassion makes you right but it makes you lonely so when I was confirmed in the Mormon church this circle of young handsome men stood around me and put their hands on my head and invited the Holy Spirit to enter my body and give me wisdom I could get nowhere else and I didn't feel anything supernatural but I remember how it felt I remember being surrounded by my people people who shared many of my passions even if I also thought they perpetuated evils and believed lies how powerful just a little love and compassion and in group language can be so when Ross and I told the Mormons we didn't believe in their faith and that we had joined the church as an experiment for a show they were surprised and they were sad but they looked us square in the eye and they said well it doesn't matter what brought you here we think God brought you here but you're always welcome here and I would hope that the skeptical community would have the same kind of compassion and forgiveness and that we would be savvy with our words remembering that seeing yourself in someone else is not just the first step to understanding them but the first step to them understanding you and I hope we would always have the courage and the patience and the wisdom to say you're always welcome here thanks very popular well said