 for finding better methods for better conclusions or more reliable conclusions with better methods. And that's the basis of how ASCII works. The way how we can do this, and I'll break this down with Tim, who you saw in the video. Again, we have our person, we have our method, and we have our conclusion. The kind of questions that you ask are really important, and you want to make sure that you're not targeting the person, which I show in blue, or the conclusion, which I'll show in red, but the method don't agree. So if you got a question, for example, like, I know God's real because, you know, I went to sleep, and I just felt like I was touching and speaking with God in that one moment. It was a real personal experience, and I can't deny that. You can ask a lot of questions about that, but you want to make sure that you're targeting the right thing, not the person, not the conclusion, but the method. I'll show you what it looks like when you target the person. This is an example of questions that will trigger a person, make them more dogmatically closed. So for example, I know God's real because of my personal experiences. Okay, well, your personal experience doesn't make your God real. People say that all the time. Why are you any different? You're not making any sense. Like at the tip of a mountain, echoes, stuff like that. None of those questions are a great way to open up the person. You want to ask questions that continue a conversation rather than shut down the conversation. You want to ask questions that are like an open door rather than a closed door. The path to SE to work efficiently is when you will let the interview partner do a lot of the heavy lifting, do a lot of the thinking, and by asking or by making responses that cut them down or shut the conversation short, they'll be less open to reflecting on how they arrived at the belief. And then they'll be not, they won't be able anymore to question the method that they use to get to their conclusion. Let's look at what happens when you question the conclusion. It's the same thing. I know my God's real because of my personal experiences. Well, that's not good evidence. I've said that before a lot of times. It's a judgment and it's also an opinion that I'm throwing out on top of them. The goal of SE is to peel back the layers that get to the conclusion, not add more layers on them. So try to keep, if you have a bias, you know, like I, for one, I agree with the point, but it's not a good way to get the audience who is the person that you're talking to to also be with you. And if your goal is to try to help them think, don't try to shut them down. Here's some other things that I've been guilty of saying. Well, you know, with all due respect, I don't believe that we like talk about maybe something else or like, I hear what you're saying, but I'm not getting there. These are again, judgments that the person will pick up on when you're challenging their conclusion, they'll treat it as a personal attack and they won't be able to be open about thinking about the method that got them to the conclusion. That's the goal of SE. Here's another example. That doesn't make any sense. Okay, so I think we get the point now, not to attack the person, not to attack the conclusion, but the method. What does it look like when we question the method? I know my God is real because of my personal experiences. Personal experiences could, is it possible to have a personal experience that might lead you to a false conclusion? It's a fair question to ask. And you'd be surprised how open people are to talk about that when you're not challenging them or their conclusion. Is the method that they're using reliable? If it's not reliable, that's a discussion to continue to have. And it's something for them to think about. How much confidence are they putting on a potentially unreliable method? Here's another question. Is there a better way to reach that conclusion? The personal experience? Another great question. You're already, you're not making any insinuations. It's a fair question to ask. If they say no, this is absolutely the best method. That's another fair question. I mean, that's a very fair topic to bring up. Okay, so what other ways have we used personal experiences to come to truth conclusions? Is that better or in scientific world or engineering world, can I use personal experiences instead of math and science to come to truth conclusions? You might be onto something potentially really useful. We should write a paper about this. Let's get a Nobel Prize. Don't go that far. But is there a better way to reach that conclusion than a personal experience? That's a great question to ask. It's just a nice, simple way to get them to continue to think about the reasoning that they gave you. And here's another good one. Would a different personal experience affect your belief? Are you at that foundational level of their belief? Have you picked the right belief or the most important one to the interview partner? Because if it doesn't affect their belief at all, if they had a different personal experience, that's not the belief or the method that you want to talk about. You want to find out what's behind that. So if they say, no, it won't affect my belief either way, regardless of whatever personal experience I have, I'm still going to believe in the Scott. Well, then what's the real reason that you believe in the Scott? Because it's not personal experience. It doesn't seem to have an effect at all. Let's dig deeper. And that's the goal. You don't want to change the mind in one simple step, one quick phrase. You're, you're chipping away at the armor, you're peeling back layers. And what they'll be more open to do is refine a reasoning and change maybe the aspect of how they reached their conclusion rather than the conclusion all at once. So you'll say, they'll say things like, well, maybe it's not personal experience, but I do know that there's a lot of science that proves my God. So I know I came to my God belief because of science. I think there's a lot of good evidence out there. And for things like this, I generally just like to ask clarification questions. What do you mean by that? Sometimes it's good enough just to rephrase what they're saying, because when people are speaking, they aren't processing it within the same way as if they were hearing it. And so I've had people say, I believe in my God because of science. And I'll respond back. It sounds like you're saying that there's, you have, you believe in your God because of science. And they'll say, no, no, no, no, that's not what I meant at all. I meant that there's a lot of scientists that believe in my God. That's completely different thing. That's a very, very different claim. And it's worthwhile to just rephrase and get clarification because the way how people talk, sometimes they don't even hear the words that are coming out of their mouths sometimes. So it's also a nice way to just slow down the conversation and get the expectation set up that your goal is really not to like judge them to understand how they came to their conclusion and determine whether or not that method that they use to get to their conclusion is reliable. Here's another one. Is science a reliable way to test a supernatural? I typically like to ask people the nature of their God and as much as specific terms as possible before we begin. I also use something like a confidence test. I'll ask them like, so like, could you talk to me about this God? Like, you said Christian, but like, is that a specific domination? Is he like, all powerful, all this like, okay, sounds pretty supernatural. Is that fair? Yeah. Okay. We'll have the conversation. We'll get to the science plane. And I'll say things like, well, is science a good way to test a supernatural? Do we have a science detector? Like, do those things exist? Or like, do we have a means of testing that? They might show me an ad on Amazon and they'll be like, yeah, there's a science detector. I got a detector right here. I'll be like, I can't buy that. I want to see it. And if they like, again, you want to be open to whatever they're saying, if they do have a way to test a supernatural with a scientific plane, be open to it. Research it. Be an open mind. You want to be as open-minded as the person that you want in front of you. Set a good example. So be aware that, you know, shutting down, you don't want to ask questions that shut down the conversation. You want to ask questions that open the conversation. And ask me if science is a reliable way to see supernatural? Fair question. Because now you're just comparing different methods with each other. You're staying focused on the method. And again, if science is not a super, a way, a reliable way to test a supernatural, what does that leave you with? If science is limited, what's the real foundation of this belief? I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm saying there's something more important to you than science. If we can both agree that science is in a good way to test this belief, right? That's when you start to get towards the fundamental reasoning. So the fundamental methods. Fundamental methods sound like, well, without faith, I couldn't believe my God. Without X, I couldn't be just as confident in this position. I can't come here to this belief without X. Whatever that X is, typically it's faith. That's the foundational claim. And the questions that you ask at that point, once you realize that it will affect their competence, those questions trying to be a little bit different. What you want to do is clarify, again, still engage with them, still think about like how they reached it, but also ask them the questions, questions about the words that they're using, because just because I have a definition of what their foundation is, or like things like faith doesn't mean that we're sharing the same definitions between the two. We might have the same vocabulary, but different definitions. So make sure you're on the same page. If they have faith as a reasoning, ask them, you know, is faith a reliable way to reach a true conclusion? Is your X a reliable way to reach a true conclusion? Can it ever be wrong? Do other people utilize it and get to wrong conclusions? If that's the case, how reliable is it? If it's not as reliable, are there other ways that we could use to try to get to those same conclusions? And if not, how confident are you really that, you know, this being exists, or that this belief is true if we don't have a reliable way to get to that conclusion? If they say they don't know, if they say they're thinking about that, these are all fantastic responses. In fact, there's a number of really good responses that you'll get, but just asking simple questions that target the method. Some of them are like, oh my gosh, I'm thinking, I'm thinking. That's the perfect answer. You want people to think about stuff like this. That's an interesting point. I never thought about that before. I had a lady say that to me. It was like, maybe like, I won't lie like about 40 times during the conversation. It was a little weird, but it's good that they're acknowledging that the points that you're making because it shows that they're being open. And it's not necessarily a defensive statement. It's, I never really thought, I never had a chance to think about that. That's a really good point as we've seen in the video before. Well, I don't know. I don't know. In my opinion is not just an out, but one of, or by that, I mean, not just the thing that people say, but it's literally the best place to start learning from. And when you can get a person from, I'm 100% confident that this is true to, I don't know if that's, I don't know. I don't know. Pause. Thinking time to think. That's, that's, you've done your job. That's the best thing that could happen in a conversation. You also want people to think, you also want to give time for people to think. So if they are pausing, just give them the time to do so. You want to just have the opportunity for them to critically think about how they arrive at their method and determine if that method, the analogy that they're using is reliable. I want to show an example in its full, you know, form. Let's see how.