017 - White Belt Curriculum (Part 2): The Tao of Socrates

In episode 017 I give an update on new content at the Argument Ninja website (), and I finish reviewing the white belt curriculum for the Argument Ninja Academy program.
The third and fourth learning modules in the white belt curriculum are titled "Socratic Knowledge" and "Socratic Persuasion".
In this episode I have an extended case study of a challenging persuasion case over the following issue: Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?
In This Episode:
- Preparing for an upcoming talk on cognitive biases and causal reasoning (2:47)
- The Feynman Technique (5:10)
- Why the Argument Ninja podcast is like a novel, and the Argument Ninja Academy is like the movie based on the novel (7:00)
- I wrote 14 new articles for the Argument Ninja website (10:10)
- A working draft of the Argument Ninja Academy curriculum (10:45)
- All my recurring supporters on the Wall of Thanks (11:29)
- My steering committee (12:10)
- Relationship of the Argument Ninja program to themes often discussed in other podcasts -- martial arts for the mind (Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, Bryan Callen and Hunter Maats, Sam Harris, Jocko Willink) (12:57)
- Mixed Mental Arts (15:30)
- Socratic methods (18:30)
- A typical Socratic dialogue (18:53)
- Socrates as the first moral epistemologist (22:00)
- Why Socratic knowledge is valuable (22:30)
- Socratic knowledge as knowledge of argument structure; Socratic questioning as a tool for building this structure (27:00)
- Socratic knowledge is compatible with saying "I don't know" (29:00)
- Socratic knowledge and training within the dojo (31:40)
- Socratic methods as a tool of persuasion (33:20)
- Simple mental models to help us think about persuasion strategy (35:10)
- Hard styles versus soft styles in martial arts and persuasion (36:00)
- Socratic questioning as a soft style (37:30)
- The core belief network model (38:52)
- Persuasion strategy based on the core belief network model (40:53)
- Socratic questioning as a tool for mapping the core belief network (42:30)
- The bank heist model (44:30)
- The Indian Jones swap model (45:35)
- Case study: "Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?" (47:00)
- Why the best tool for guiding a Socratic conversation is Socratic knowledge -- i.e. knowing what you're talking about (50:33)
- Arguments against the claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God (51:25)
- Arguments for the claim that Christians and Muslisms worship the same God (52:50)
- Thinking about the "emotional resonance" of these arguments (57:45)
- An example of an "Indiana Jones swap" (59:27)
- Why I initially titled this module "Street Epistemology", and why I changed it (1:01:40)
- Origins of the Street Epistemology movement (1:02:34)
- Why the Argument Ninja Academy is non-partisan with respect to ethical, political and religious beliefs (1:05:37)
- Thanks to new monthly supporters on Patreon! (1:07:32)
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