8 quotes
Peter Boghossian's techniques of friendly persuasion are not mine, and maybe I'd be more effective if they were. They are undoubtedly very persuasive — and very much needed.
How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)
Know when to walk away, even when the conversation is going well.
How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)
The most difficult thing to accept for people who work hard at forming their beliefs on the basis of evidence is that not everyone forms their beliefs in that way.
How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)
When your conversation partner is getting angry, the single best thing you can do in most circumstances is to stop whatever else you're doing and listen.
How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)
Most basic elements of civil discussion, especially over matters of substantive disagreement, come down to a single theme: making the other person in a conversation a partner, not an adversary.
How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)
Here's a heresy: "How do you know that?" is a powerful question for helping people think, but it's not the best question. The best question is, "How could that belief be wrong?"
How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)
Seemingly impossible conversations typically have one thing in common: they're about moral beliefs rooted in one's sense of identity, but they play out on the level of facts (or assertions, name-calling, grandstanding, threats, etc.).
How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)
What it means to hold a belief based on evidence is, by definition, that one is open to the possibility that evidence might be discovered that would change one's mind. If no evidence would change one's mind, then one is not forming one's beliefs on the basis of evidence.
How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)