14 – Street Epistemology

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14 – Street Epistemology

Steve (@youngidealist on twitter) talks to us about Street Epistemology

The Street Epistemology website, which has been significantly updated and expanded since we recorded this episode. Looking nice!

The Street Epistemology book – A Manual For Creating Atheists

Short text interview with Peter Boghossian by Sam Harris

Practice and/or learn at blab.im (none of the Conspirators have used this, we’re taking Steve’s word for it 🙂 )

Is That Your True Rejection?

Steve’s mother may have been practicing the art of Epistemic Learned Helplessness (better than it sounds)

Clifford’s The Ethics of Belief. Summarized in one sentence: ““It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence.”

Steve’s Top 4 recommended Street Epistemology videos:
What is Street Epistemology?

Kari | Examining Cardinal Beliefs

Nerville | An Alarming Realization

Kiana | Karma and Concrete Facts

From the Feedback section:

Affective Death Spirals

Things Probably Matter (re: happiness)

Scrupulosity, and Scott’s argument for the Giving What We Can pledge

Giving What We Can itself

Mad Props to Jess Dickey for the new logo! Thanks!

4 comments

Kevin MacFarlane says:

August 10, 2016 at 11:05 pm

Hi guys, just discovered your podcast this week in the trending section of my app. (Podcast addict BTW).

After listening to number 14 – Street Epistemology, I had a question… On one hand you espouse rationality as a goal worth pursuing (I do too) but then you spoke of the goal of increasing happiness. No doubt you have found happiness through your skeptical and rational friends, but I have generally laid down my quest to de-convert in the realisation that most of the people who are deeply religious in my life are themselves in families and communities that are religious. For them to reject religion would bring them possibly the greatest suffering, because their family, friends and community would feel rejected and that their beliefs were being attacked by the rejection. So de-conversion is hard and usually produces immediate un-happiness that I’m sure you’ve experienced. Where would each of you say you lay on the spectrum between choosing rationality and happiness if they were mutually exclusive? (They don’t have to be, but lets make this a thought experiment….)

Thanks, look forward to listening to more good stuff.
Austin says:

August 14, 2016 at 1:17 pm

blab.im shuts down right after this goes live. Coincidence? I think not. Now try to convince me otherwise.

For real though….I was looking forward to looking into this. Has the blab community picked a place to migrate too?
Pierre Thierry says:

September 20, 2016 at 11:37 am

I am so glad you made that episode! Street Epistemology is such a needed endeavour and I needed it so much right now, after having had a few unproductive and alienating exchanges with people about their irrational beliefs.

About your listener feedback, I wonder why it was said that we are not happier than our ancestors. We may have a different baseline anxiety level, free time and access to a huge variety of informations and hobbies that do make it possible to tap a previously unused potential for happiness.

Also, we right now might very well not be at the human maximum for happiness, because some of our current advantages might be offset by some of the problems of our culture, like putting work or social success before happiness, less carefree childhoods and so on.

But I bet we have a lot of potential to attain what noone before did, what with digital culture, rationality, various inclusivity movements and education methods that take the child well-being truly into account, to name a few.
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14 – Street Epistemology

> 14 – Street Epistemology

14 – Street Epistemology