I don't think these are "failed" videos depending on what your goal is. You're experimenting with something new and the idea of removing bias by not knowing the claim is really cool. It's similar to a double-blind study in a way. Even if it seems like some of the conversations go nowhere, just seeing that you do an experiment that in your opinion "failed" can be encouraging. It's honest.
I like watching the discussions of whether or not to post content, I'm sure it is productive in some instances, and counter-productive in others.
These examples didn't seem like failures to me, but that might be because I found them interesting. I think I would like to see more examples of HCSE because it does seem to have potential, and I also think SE appears so perfect that SE deserves the bulk of the energy.
I think having the participants take a Myers-Briggs test beforehand would be an interesting dataset. I'm curious if cognitive tendencies affect preferred epistemology on different statements, as the certainty of the IL varies by topic. It might help the IL feel at ease coming into the HCSE portion already considering people thinking differently in interesting ways and seeing the HCSE portion as only part of a larger exercise, rather than the main course.
While watching the HCSE, I wasn't trying to guess their claim, but my mind kept trying to narrow it down naturally (and I was wrong every time). I found that really interesting, I would need to make a conscious effort not to do that. Although I really enjoyed the surprise of how wrong I was about each hidden claim. It is like finally getting to hear the answer to a riddle that has you stumped. You get to compare your own expected claim to the revealed claim and consider similarities and differences.
It seems natural to think of one's own examples to assist in generating and thinking about the questions. If my tendency to choose my own claims while observing the exercise, is a common experience, that might be utilized. An exercise only anchored on their hidden claim, rather than focused on their hidden claim directly, might make for an interesting twist.
The SOP for the twist might look something like this:
1. Once the IL has chosen a statement and level of confidence, you could try choosing a hidden claim of your own that you would allocate approximately the same amount of confidence.
2. Tell the IL that you just chose your own hidden claim, which you hold with approximately the same amount of confidence.
3. Ask the epistemology questions in the context of your hidden claim, rather than the hidden claim of the IL.
Kind of like a blend of the outsider test and modeling the behavior one would like to see in the IL.
The only information the IL has to help evaluate the questions is that your hidden claim is something held with a certain initial confidence and the only example the IL has in mind is the IL’s own hidden claim held with the same initial confidence. It is possible the IL will think about the questions in the context of their own claim, without you having to ask them to do so. It wasn’t as easy as I anticipated to find a good way to phrase the questions, so I figured I would share some brainstorming below.
I am considering playing around with this with some friends later. I am still working on an outline to help guide the conversation by piecing together questions from your examples. While structuring questions, I am finding it helpful to establish the outsider test immediately, so that all the questions can be stated as an outsider test. My hope is that stating every question as an outsider test, and in the context of my own hidden claim, will work as a continuous rapport builder. Here is a draft of my outline so far.
The objective of this game is to think about the confidence we hold in a particular topic. The idea is to focus on the confidence level, not necessarily the topic itself. So, we are going to be experimenting with a new idea for thinking about how to evaluate the confidence we hold in a particular topic while driving the focus away from the topic itself. For the game, which is still very experimental, we will both choose a topic, but keep the topic hidden or secret from each other.
You can go first, please choose a claim or statement of a belief you hold, but don’t tell me what it is. This is going to be a secret or hidden claim. It’s important that it be a belief that you hold because we are both going to be choosing confidence levels for our belief in our hidden claims. Once you have the claim in mind, let me know…
Now that you have the claim in mind, make sure it is in the form of a positive statement.
If your claim is: Birds are not real
Make is a positive claim, like: Birds are spy robots, that perch on power cables to recharge.
Ok, all settled on the claim? Great. The next step in setting up the game, is to define a confidence level for your belief, that your hidden claim is true. This is so I can use your confidence level to choose my hidden claim. I’ll choose my hidden claim based on it being a claim that I have about the same level of confidence in.
We’ll need to use the same confidence scale, so let’s calibrate a scale for us both to use. On a scale 0 to 100, how confident are you that, if I were to drop this pen, it would fall towards the ground? (So what does 100 or 99 mean here...that there is nothing that could change your mind, or you might be 100 or 99 on a different belief about the same claim given new evidence or what?)
Now, using the same 0 to 100 scale, how confident are you that your hidden claim is true?
Ok, so just to make sure I understand your number, ## (## representing confidence in the hidden claim) would mean…? (Repeat back to them their description, trying to paraphrase it, if possible, to make sure you have it right.)
Great. Ok, give me a moment, I am going to think of a claim, that I have the same amount of confidence in… Ok, I have one in mind now too. I am going to keep my claim hidden as well.
If two random people, were discussing my hidden claim, and they were in a social vacuum: no friends, family, work colleagues, no peer-pressure, outside influence, etc. On our scale of 0 to 100, how confident are you that any two people having a sufficiently long conversation could eventually come to the same confidence level for my hidden claim? (Say one starts with a confidence level of 60 and another starts at more of a 45, how likely is it that they could discuss my claim until both of them have a confidence level of 55?)
Rather than having to continue to say, “two random people”, for shorthand, I’ll just say PB&J for the rest of the game (short for Peter Boghossian & Jiu-Jitsu Jedi Matt Thornton).
What could cause PB&J to increase their confidence in my hidden claim? (If they don’t know how to answer, you could say: For example: if they were to hear a really good argument that they hadn’t heard before, or had an experience that made them look at the claim in a different way?)
What could cause PB&J to decrease their confidence in my hidden claim?
I think that there are a lot of parallels between HCSE and qualifying leads as a salesperson. It is absolutely formulaic, but that is a feature not a bug. In this case I think that being formulaic is a sign that the person asking questions is being consistent.
You are essentially sorting ideas with broad questions in a branching way that can uncover inconsistencies in their logic if they are being honest in the conversation and the argument is faulty.
The formula of
1) write down a belief you hold.
2) write down how confident you are in that belief.
3) could that confidence be swayed by contradictory evidence?
4)why is that the case?
5)what led you to this specific level of confidence?
6)do some people believe the opposite?
7)why do you think they think that way?
8)how does this tension resolve itself?
9)would you be a different person if this one belief was different?
Idk, I guess I didn’t think the videos were failures at all.
I think I will be going to Budapest with my employees for a staff development vacation and seminar on cultural literacy.
As a practitioner of democratic capitalism, please indulge my frustration below.
The video indirectly highlights the social problems we have in the US, a culture in decline simply for its lack of basic etiquette. The worst examples are people on the left, whose critical thinking is frozen by fanatical political zeal and a self-serving devotion to the spread and maintenance of poverty and conflict. That motive is ubiquitous in the creation of many US State bureaucracies. Thus, flood the country with the world's poor, do not help them acclimate, do not solve inner city decay, do not teach ethics in every American high school, make sure to sexualize small children to delay , derail, and obstruct their mastery of the essential educational topics (mathematics, natural science, basic biology, chemistry, etc.) and you can have a career in the American kakistocracy.
MIND SKILLS, by J.A. van de Mortel. Mill City Press. 2017.
Excellent comment. Just wait until you see the Spectrum Street Epistemology videos we shot in Hungary. The differences between Hungarian youth and US youth are absolutely striking.
Here's a 2 minute explanation of why Mike Pompeo is partially right to call out Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, for encouraging dangerous trans concepts in early grade classrooms. This failure to consult her union member teachers is remarkable. Mike P gets called out for not doing his homework either, since he didn't cite the many experts questioning the "gender unicorn," a curriculum from the Arcus Foundation, a pharma-funded "charity."
I don't think these are "failed" videos depending on what your goal is. You're experimenting with something new and the idea of removing bias by not knowing the claim is really cool. It's similar to a double-blind study in a way. Even if it seems like some of the conversations go nowhere, just seeing that you do an experiment that in your opinion "failed" can be encouraging. It's honest.
I like watching the discussions of whether or not to post content, I'm sure it is productive in some instances, and counter-productive in others.
These examples didn't seem like failures to me, but that might be because I found them interesting. I think I would like to see more examples of HCSE because it does seem to have potential, and I also think SE appears so perfect that SE deserves the bulk of the energy.
I think having the participants take a Myers-Briggs test beforehand would be an interesting dataset. I'm curious if cognitive tendencies affect preferred epistemology on different statements, as the certainty of the IL varies by topic. It might help the IL feel at ease coming into the HCSE portion already considering people thinking differently in interesting ways and seeing the HCSE portion as only part of a larger exercise, rather than the main course.
While watching the HCSE, I wasn't trying to guess their claim, but my mind kept trying to narrow it down naturally (and I was wrong every time). I found that really interesting, I would need to make a conscious effort not to do that. Although I really enjoyed the surprise of how wrong I was about each hidden claim. It is like finally getting to hear the answer to a riddle that has you stumped. You get to compare your own expected claim to the revealed claim and consider similarities and differences.
It seems natural to think of one's own examples to assist in generating and thinking about the questions. If my tendency to choose my own claims while observing the exercise, is a common experience, that might be utilized. An exercise only anchored on their hidden claim, rather than focused on their hidden claim directly, might make for an interesting twist.
The SOP for the twist might look something like this:
1. Once the IL has chosen a statement and level of confidence, you could try choosing a hidden claim of your own that you would allocate approximately the same amount of confidence.
2. Tell the IL that you just chose your own hidden claim, which you hold with approximately the same amount of confidence.
3. Ask the epistemology questions in the context of your hidden claim, rather than the hidden claim of the IL.
Kind of like a blend of the outsider test and modeling the behavior one would like to see in the IL.
The only information the IL has to help evaluate the questions is that your hidden claim is something held with a certain initial confidence and the only example the IL has in mind is the IL’s own hidden claim held with the same initial confidence. It is possible the IL will think about the questions in the context of their own claim, without you having to ask them to do so. It wasn’t as easy as I anticipated to find a good way to phrase the questions, so I figured I would share some brainstorming below.
I am considering playing around with this with some friends later. I am still working on an outline to help guide the conversation by piecing together questions from your examples. While structuring questions, I am finding it helpful to establish the outsider test immediately, so that all the questions can be stated as an outsider test. My hope is that stating every question as an outsider test, and in the context of my own hidden claim, will work as a continuous rapport builder. Here is a draft of my outline so far.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The objective of this game is to think about the confidence we hold in a particular topic. The idea is to focus on the confidence level, not necessarily the topic itself. So, we are going to be experimenting with a new idea for thinking about how to evaluate the confidence we hold in a particular topic while driving the focus away from the topic itself. For the game, which is still very experimental, we will both choose a topic, but keep the topic hidden or secret from each other.
You can go first, please choose a claim or statement of a belief you hold, but don’t tell me what it is. This is going to be a secret or hidden claim. It’s important that it be a belief that you hold because we are both going to be choosing confidence levels for our belief in our hidden claims. Once you have the claim in mind, let me know…
Now that you have the claim in mind, make sure it is in the form of a positive statement.
If your claim is: Birds are not real
Make is a positive claim, like: Birds are spy robots, that perch on power cables to recharge.
Ok, all settled on the claim? Great. The next step in setting up the game, is to define a confidence level for your belief, that your hidden claim is true. This is so I can use your confidence level to choose my hidden claim. I’ll choose my hidden claim based on it being a claim that I have about the same level of confidence in.
We’ll need to use the same confidence scale, so let’s calibrate a scale for us both to use. On a scale 0 to 100, how confident are you that, if I were to drop this pen, it would fall towards the ground? (So what does 100 or 99 mean here...that there is nothing that could change your mind, or you might be 100 or 99 on a different belief about the same claim given new evidence or what?)
Now, using the same 0 to 100 scale, how confident are you that your hidden claim is true?
Ok, so just to make sure I understand your number, ## (## representing confidence in the hidden claim) would mean…? (Repeat back to them their description, trying to paraphrase it, if possible, to make sure you have it right.)
Great. Ok, give me a moment, I am going to think of a claim, that I have the same amount of confidence in… Ok, I have one in mind now too. I am going to keep my claim hidden as well.
If two random people, were discussing my hidden claim, and they were in a social vacuum: no friends, family, work colleagues, no peer-pressure, outside influence, etc. On our scale of 0 to 100, how confident are you that any two people having a sufficiently long conversation could eventually come to the same confidence level for my hidden claim? (Say one starts with a confidence level of 60 and another starts at more of a 45, how likely is it that they could discuss my claim until both of them have a confidence level of 55?)
Rather than having to continue to say, “two random people”, for shorthand, I’ll just say PB&J for the rest of the game (short for Peter Boghossian & Jiu-Jitsu Jedi Matt Thornton).
What could cause PB&J to increase their confidence in my hidden claim? (If they don’t know how to answer, you could say: For example: if they were to hear a really good argument that they hadn’t heard before, or had an experience that made them look at the claim in a different way?)
What could cause PB&J to decrease their confidence in my hidden claim?
…
I think that there are a lot of parallels between HCSE and qualifying leads as a salesperson. It is absolutely formulaic, but that is a feature not a bug. In this case I think that being formulaic is a sign that the person asking questions is being consistent.
You are essentially sorting ideas with broad questions in a branching way that can uncover inconsistencies in their logic if they are being honest in the conversation and the argument is faulty.
The formula of
1) write down a belief you hold.
2) write down how confident you are in that belief.
3) could that confidence be swayed by contradictory evidence?
4)why is that the case?
5)what led you to this specific level of confidence?
6)do some people believe the opposite?
7)why do you think they think that way?
8)how does this tension resolve itself?
9)would you be a different person if this one belief was different?
Idk, I guess I didn’t think the videos were failures at all.
I think I will be going to Budapest with my employees for a staff development vacation and seminar on cultural literacy.
As a practitioner of democratic capitalism, please indulge my frustration below.
The video indirectly highlights the social problems we have in the US, a culture in decline simply for its lack of basic etiquette. The worst examples are people on the left, whose critical thinking is frozen by fanatical political zeal and a self-serving devotion to the spread and maintenance of poverty and conflict. That motive is ubiquitous in the creation of many US State bureaucracies. Thus, flood the country with the world's poor, do not help them acclimate, do not solve inner city decay, do not teach ethics in every American high school, make sure to sexualize small children to delay , derail, and obstruct their mastery of the essential educational topics (mathematics, natural science, basic biology, chemistry, etc.) and you can have a career in the American kakistocracy.
MIND SKILLS, by J.A. van de Mortel. Mill City Press. 2017.
Excellent comment. Just wait until you see the Spectrum Street Epistemology videos we shot in Hungary. The differences between Hungarian youth and US youth are absolutely striking.
BRILLIANT❗️Truly! A novel self-examination tool doesn’t come along every day. Congratulations! 👏👏
I found it especially powerful to see it in action. Thanks so much for sharing video of your time with the students!
Thank you!
Here's a 2 minute explanation of why Mike Pompeo is partially right to call out Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, for encouraging dangerous trans concepts in early grade classrooms. This failure to consult her union member teachers is remarkable. Mike P gets called out for not doing his homework either, since he didn't cite the many experts questioning the "gender unicorn," a curriculum from the Arcus Foundation, a pharma-funded "charity."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVp2BszabSk&t=9s