Considering the name of this instance, this seems like the right place to ask. Is anyone here into street epistemology?
For anyone who hasn't heard of it, it's a conversational technique used to examine beliefs that is similar to socratic questioning, but you focus *just* on the method(s) used to reach a particular belief. An outline for how it goes: https://streetepistemology.com/publications/street_epistemology_the_basics You essentially act as a sounding board for someone else to reflect on how they reached a particular belief, and you keep your own beliefs out of it to avoid turning it into a debate. Hopefully useful for the person reflecting on their belief, but also good for the SE practitioner to get to know the other person's thinking better (and maybe shed themselves of straw men in the process?).
People primarily seem to be using it for supernatural/religious claims at the moment, but it seems like a useful tool for constructive conversations in all kinds of contexts. There are tons of videos on youtube of SE-based conversations.
@shakha I'm very interested in this.
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For me, your post is a timely discovery, a welcome opportunity. Thank you.
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The formatted SE process seems clear enough, reasonable; but is it workable in the context of a Mastodon instance?
SE = STREET EPISTEMOLOGY -- see https://streetepistemology.com/publications/street_epistemology_the_basics
1: Build rapport with your interlocutor
2: Identify the claim
3: Confirm the claim
4: Clarify definitions
5: Identify a confidence level
6: Identify the method used to arrive at confidence level
7: Ask questions that reveal the reliability of the method
8: Listen, summarize, question, watch, repeat
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QOTO = Question Others to Teach Ourselves?
@chikara Also, just a thought, you don't need to be able to carry out the whole process to have a good dialogue. Keeping some of the principles in mind can already make a difference.
Clarifying definitions to ensure that you aren't talking past each other is important in any conversation, and avoiding debate in favour of examining one side in depth can already be quite powerful.
I thought of this conversation, which didn't follow SE properly but the interviewee actually changed their mind through the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS8weFKmobo
Also, I should have shared this earlier, but here's a proper SE conversation from a really great channel that also posts other videos about the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWmUYZ29y98
@chikara I think it can be, but I'm not sure. The biggest challenge I've found is keeping the conversation focused, because you need that to be able to examine a belief in depth, and the person whose belief you're discussing should have the time and space they need to think through things.
This could be difficult to do on any social media if several people are chiming in to the same conversation, or if you're both just checking in while doing other tasks, because the person doesn't necessarily have the time to reflect on things before answering.
It's also difficult to do this if someone wants to talk about multiple claims all at once (e.g. with religion, if they want to talk about several things they believe are true about their god, or if they take issue with people who hold an ideology, multiple complaints about those people and what they do), and you have to narrow it down to one to be able to discuss examine in depth. I've sometimes had trouble getting to just one point in person, or maybe you need time for someone to also let everything out first.
Then again, maybe the flexibility you get from social media (vs. in-person chats) to reply only when you've both had time to think about things could be helpful.