0:15:19 - 0:15:19 . 0:00:00 - 0:00:23 So recently, I was um brought into, I guess as a third party, some stories of uh that that folks shared with me about some attempts to persuade people in their lives about beliefs that they have or whatever, just sort of making this very general. Uh The details don't particularly matter. And it occurred 0:00:23 - 0:00:44 to me that, that a pattern emerged across the several people who just so happened to talk to me about this sort of thing uh recently. And I wanted to share some thoughts that may or may not be super obvious, but I hope are quite helpful and uh I'll try to keep this pretty brief. So when you're trying 0:00:44 - 0:01:09 to persuade someone of something, you always want to lead out with your strongest arguments, it's the strongest arguments. Now, what we want to do is we, we, we will naturally want to share everything we know about it. Now that will include all the murky stuff, all the things that don't really matter 0:01:08 - 0:01:36 a whole time and all the things that, that have weaker arguments and so on. Now, the reason you wanna lead out with your strongest supported beliefs is um that you wanna focus the conversation on those things. You really wanna curate an argument where they have to address those points. Um It's not just 0:01:36 - 0:01:56 a matter of the strength of the argument. You wanna keep it focused. If you include all these extraneous ideas and arguments that aren't so strong, there's a tactic. Uh It's not, it's not very honest but it is commonly used and people will do this. They don't have to be masters of rhetoric to do this 0:01:56 - 0:02:19 . It's, it's a natural thing that people figure out and they do it without thinking about it. They will target your weakest argument, they will um they will present counter arguments to, to make it even weaker, maybe even contradict it and then pretend like that's sufficient to dismiss everything else 0:02:19 - 0:02:42 you said no matter how strong it is. So, um when I was writing this book, teaching for doctrines, the Commandments of Men, tradition and modern Mormonism. One of the things that the Lord taught me is what I just shared with you. And so I took a list of what could have been many, many, many topics. I 0:02:42 - 0:03:04 boiled it down to the the shortest list I could come up with of things that we really needed to talk about in order for me to make a case that, that things were not quite right in the L DS church. Now, um That being said, I, I do want to say my objective in the book was not to tell people what to think 0:03:03 - 0:03:33 it was to present all the evidence I could find for all sides of the argument uh across those topics that was really important. Um However, I tried very hard to keep it focused. Now it's long, it's almost 400 pages. About half of that is footnotes. Um Because one central purpose of the book was to bring 0:03:32 - 0:03:58 into one place, all of the supporting evidence for all the points made in the book, almost like a, um, like a topical guide of books that people would, would definitely not read otherwise history books, uh primary sources and, and such, um because it, it spanned a bunch of books that are really hard 0:03:58 - 0:04:19 to get your hands on and no one's gonna take the time to, to read them carefully and then collate the notes, um like an index across multiple books is what it is. So, um so even though it's long, it's, it's actually, it's very focused. And so if you, if you are to read one of the chapters and it doesn't 0:04:19 - 0:04:44 matter what the topic is, but you'll find quite a bit of pertinent um content across that topic. And, and, um, that was one of the purposes of the book. So anyway, when you're making an argument to someone, you wanna try to stay away from the things that don't actually, that aren't actually required 0:04:43 - 0:05:07 to make the argument. Um The other thing you wanna do is take some time to think about the other person's perspective. What I mean by that is what you're sharing aren't necessarily the reasons that you believe what you believe. They don't care about that. So, um what you want to do instead is to share 0:05:07 - 0:05:32 the reasons they should believe that's very different, that's very different. So let me give you a contrived example. Let's say that you're a trained seismologist, you study earthquakes and uh based on your professional opinion, you know, you, for 15 years, you researched this theory about earthquakes 0:05:31 - 0:05:54 co occurring on different sides of the world, let's say, and you're convinced that that's the case. And so you get called to be an expert witness in some trial that has something to do with earthquakes and you just start spouting off on your theory about earthquakes happening at the same time on different 0:05:53 - 0:06:17 sides of the planet. Well, no one in that room has spent 15 years researching what you have and probably there aren't any people in the room who are even seismologists. So you can't draw on that vocabulary. You, you have to adopt their perspective using what you know, to help them see from their perspective 0:06:16 - 0:06:38 . There's a reason they didn't do what you did. There's a reason they don't know what, you know, your job isn't to just vomit up what, you know, you have to come up with a representation that fits what they understand. And so that's the challenge so keep it focused and put it in their perspective and 0:06:38 - 0:06:59 stay away from the, the things that you might feel passionate about. But, you know, they're not gonna care about and stay away from things that don't need to be said because they're not central to the argument and the things that maybe aren't the strongest supported finally before this gets so long that 0:06:59 - 0:07:29 it's ridiculous talking about uh keeping focus during an argument. One thing we, we need to talk about before we go here is, um, so I totally lost my train of thought. I'm not gonna lie. Just give me a second though. It was important and I don't want to make a separate video. Ah, got it. Hope you hope 0:07:29 - 0:07:56 you stayed. I got it. Ok, let's, when you're trying to persuade someone to change, you have to face head on, you have to face head on the, the paradigm of value. And I'm gonna explain exactly what I mean. People don't believe things just for funsies, they believe things because it makes them feel good 0:07:55 - 0:08:25 . That is the, the dominant reason. It makes him feel good. They sense that there is value in what they believe and what it leads to. If you're going to try to interact with that and cause a change in what people believe. You need to work within that framework, which means you have to address the value 0:08:24 - 0:08:51 head on. So let's talk through what that means. Let's say that I have a bicycle and, um, I have to travel a certain distance every day and I use that bike because I don't have a car and it works great. It's beat up, it's old, but it works great. It does what I need it to do. And mentally, I do not see 0:08:51 - 0:09:11 this as a problem when I'm worried about what I need to worry about. The bike is not on the list. Ok? And you come up to me and you say, you know that bike was made with slave labor and I'm looking at the bike and it's like 50 years old. I got it out of a trash heap somewhere. I didn't even pay for it 0:09:11 - 0:09:32 . Ok? And I'm like, all right, but I don't really care. I mean, I'm just using this to get to work. I didn't buy it. I did, I wasn't in the factory. I didn't know anything about this till you told me. And I really don't need this stress in my life. This isn't on my list of things to worry about. Do you 0:09:32 - 0:09:56 get where I'm going with this? So how could you rephrase this so that it fits into my value paradigm? Well, you'd have to restate your case in the terms of the value that I find I don't ride that bike because I'm making a statement against slave labor or for it's irrelevant to why I ride the bike. I'm 0:09:56 - 0:10:20 trying to get to work or what or the store or wherever I gotta go. And so if you want me to change my behavior, you're gonna have to find ideas that intersect with that value. And in that case, it's gonna be really hard for this contrived example. OK? Now what if you're talking religion? What if you're 0:10:20 - 0:10:47 talking religion? So suppose for example, you're talking to an L DS person and they're all about temples, temple, temple, temple, temple, temple, OK. You have to address the value that an L DS person finds in temples in L DS temples before they will ever be willing to consider that there is something 0:10:47 - 0:11:09 out there that might be better than the L DS religion. It doesn't matter if Jesus Christ himself walks into the room and starts teaching and doing all these magnificent things that lie beyond whatever they have right now, all their mind is gonna be saying is temple, temple, temple, temple. What does 0:11:09 - 0:11:35 this mean about the temple? And if you don't diffuse that bomb, nothing Jesus himself says is going to move them. So what chance do you have? So you have to find out why it is, they care so much about their temples and then you have to address that and you have to show them that what they think they're 0:11:35 - 0:12:03 getting out of that is not actually what they're getting out of that. And that if they really want what they say they want in those temples that there's another way to get, at least that for real, not just pretend. Do, do you get what I'm saying here? So, so let's roll with another application. I've 0:12:03 - 0:12:23 heard recently from a few people who are talking to their church leaders, uh kind of honestly fessing up about how they feel about things, which is great. We should all be honest about what we feel and why, especially with relevant stakeholders. You know, I'm not a big fan of keeping things secret from 0:12:23 - 0:12:44 your spouse or they have to do with your spouse or church leaders that have to do with your church stuff or your employer, if it has to do with your employment, whatever, be honest with people. So that's good. But when they go to have these conversations instead of talking about what those folks actually 0:12:44 - 0:13:06 value, they'll, they'll pepper them with all of these sort of bolt on, you know, child slave labor analogy, things with a bike example. And they'll say, oh, did you know that this uh this historic L DS church leader? You know, one time he stole a nickel from a little boy and this other guy kicked someone 0:13:05 - 0:13:30 in a wheelchair. Once your, your church is evil, you're not going to persuade anybody of anything with that kind of stuff. I if it's important to you, ok, fine, whatever. But when you share your reasons with people, you have to look for reasons that they care about. Not things that you care about, they 0:13:30 - 0:13:49 don't care about what you care about. They care about what they care about. That's how people are. So you have to frame it in terms of what they care about. So they're gonna care about the temple. If they're L DS, they're gonna care about. Uh maybe they care about Joseph Smith. Uh A lot of people don't 0:13:49 - 0:14:12 in the L DS church anymore. But um, so you can talk about these things, you could talk about heaven, you could talk about, um, repentance, you can talk, I, there's a list of stuff in this book that you could talk about and you could come up with your own list. Ok. But don't just go in there and, and 0:14:12 - 0:14:34 rattle off a bunch of things that first off that they don't care about and second off, that just might not be very strong arguments. I mean, anything that you're appealing to that's historically interpretable. I would just put on the do not allow list because if your argument relies upon your correct 0:14:33 - 0:00:00 historic interpretation, I mean, on almost any of those things, there are going to be books written by intelligent people on both sides of the issue or all sides of the issue, you could say however many there are. And so it's just one person's opinion against another. Now, maybe one person is right. 0:00:00 - 0:15:19 Totally possible. Could be that they're all wrong. That's the other possibility. But why not stick to the things that are much more clear cut and much harder to argue against, keep your argument focused and uh and help them process this as efficiently as possible. So, those are some thoughts on that