Practical guide to impossible conversations | Peter Boghossian x Brain Bar

How can we have civilized conversations instead of never-ending arguments? Is there a way to respect others even if we totally disagree with them? Dr. Peter Boghossian has a teaching pedigree spanning more than 25 years and 30 thousand students - in prisons, hospitals, public and private schools. Be brave and let him introduce you to the art of conversation.

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[djgtikc]

It's amazing that we even have to have conversations like this. The Universities are so deeply entrenched in the idea that there is no such thing as objective reality. They truly believe that the only reality is subjective reality.

I graduated in 2019. I thought it was bad then. I can't imagine what it's like now.

[kyoglesage]

The greatest gift one of my favourite university lecturers gave our class — and one I still use nearly 40 years later — is to not take what we were told as fact until we’d sufficiently investigated and thought through an idea for ourselves.
Sounds as though universities and colleges everywhere, but especially America, would do well to use this in their halls of learning.

[henryc]

21:45 just because someone like Peter doesn’t tolerate B.S. doesn’t mean that he’s combative. It simply means he can’t tolerate the B.S.

[DennisFeinsteinCEO]

I live in Portland. I had to drop out of college (and gladly eat my student loan debt) due to the CRAZY policies in place. You're quite literally forced to speak, act, and accept their "truths" without thought or question. It's pure insanity here.

[self-defenseinnovationsinc]

if you change your mind based on facts rather than opinion/emotions then that's intellectual power.

[fifidownunda]

100% agree with Peter on this issue. Humility and not knowing is a great point from which to pivot.

[Traderbear]

Some of the looks in the audience are priceless.

[UncleMinecraft]

I've always got time for Peter. He has really helped me to question myself and really dig into what I feel is true and then extrapolate or interrogate whether it can be demonstrated as true with a sufficient level of confidence.

[KatriaThePotato]

You're absolutely right about woke neocolonialism. I was thinking about it a lot recently and I'm surprised to hear that I'm not the only one who noticed it! I'm Ukrainian and this is true for our country too. Since almost all members of our conservative, far-right, etc groups are soldiers now, our queer organizations face no fear and feel free to push their agenda. Besides a good idea to legalize civil partnership, they're actively pushing all that stuff with nonbinary-ness, neopronouns and other "progressive" things. Most of them are irrelevant to Ukrainian society. Our racism is not the same as racism in America. Our idea of gender is not the same as in America. Purely English-speaking phenomenon of pronouns as something that signifies gender identity doesn't work in Ukrainian language, which has different grammar that doesn't has any way to talk about a nonbinary person in a polite way - the only gender neutral option is to talk about them as an inanimate object, which is considered as a derogatory way to talk about a person. I can elaborate on it if you're curious, but the main point is that an idea of nonbinary gender system is inherently foreign to our culture. Yet we have to accept it and not question, just copy and paste from the west.
Those queer activist say, this is important bc we won't be accepted to the EU and NATO otherwise. I thought, our main problems with the EU and NATO are corruption, poverty and other flaws in our government's structure, not misgendering or being uneducated about genderfluids.
Western woke activists often talk about how awful it is that white colonialists forced native societies to change their vision of gender to fit their binary idea of gender. And now the same powerful people of Anglo-Saxon heritage are doing exactly the same - forcing natives to change their society to please them.
I believe, if American queers were less aggressive and didn't try to force their beliefs on others, many Central and Eastern European countries wouldn't have serious homophobia problem.

[ratsandbats]

this is so off topic but this stage/backdrop is so beautiful and relaxing. i would love to sit and listen to talks all day because of how nice it all looks.

[JonPrevost]

This is very interesting. Especially the part about asking questions being an affront. That gives me chills. I can't imagine a learning institution that gets upset with questions. Maybe I should ask questions about asking questions.

[thatgnaralooguy]

The best part about a scientific word view is that you can immediately change your position in the face of new evidence.

[MelissaKnoxwriter]

Thanks, especially for making the all-important distinction between equity and equality.

[scottbrandon]

When tenure tracked professors quit their job they most often never work in universities again. I would like to see Peter do a book and go on the lecture circuit. He has great ideas on the state of wokeness on campuses.

[natasharostova]

I love Peter. He has such a fearless heart.

[hatchetman]

that chariot-reasoning metaphor is wild. Protect Peter

[Jackjohnjay]

Sociology and any related fields are just creative writing at this point.

[OrangeCanna]

Being able to admit you're wrong or to change your mind, is humbling.

[summertime]

"It feels like a lack of equity to me..." Wow, talk about being brainwashed, and it is the perfect example of what Dr. Peter Boghossian was attempting to teach the audience about. Brian Bar refers to a policy as inequity.

[UHollis]

Changing our mind is the top human superpower we make.