David McRaney's 2022 book How Minds Change unfortunately feels fluffy-anecdotal as it discusses, in ~300 pages, important philosophical issues of metacognition and belief. There are plenty of stories and lots of name-dropping. The bottom line, however, is a gem hidden in the midst of Chapter 9 ("Street Epistemology"), a path to help people think better, via one-on-one conversation:

1. Establish rapport. Assure the other person you aren't out to shame them, and then ask for consent to explore their reasoning.
2. Ask for a claim.
3. Confirm the claim by repeating it back in your own words. Ask if you've done a good job summarizing. Repeat until they are satisfied.
4. Clarify their definitions. Use those definitions, not yours.
5. Ask for a numerical measure of confidence in their claim.
6. Ask what reasons they have to hold that level of confidence.
7. Ask what method they've used to judge the quality of their reasons. Focus on that method for the rest of the conversation.
8. Listen, summarize, repeat.
9. Wrap up and wish them well.

The beauty of this approach, developed by Peter Boghossian, Anthony Magnabosco, and others (going back to Socrates and beyond!) is that it can help "promote critical thinking and respectful dialogue" – good throughout life, not just for politics, medicine, religion, technology, science, or other realms. As McRaney summarizes:

... street epistemology is about improving people's methods for arriving at confidence, not about persuading someone to believe one thing more than another. Maybe in the beginning it was, but today there's no belief they are pushing, no agenda, no policy on which they want people to vote yes or no. After all, if they've learned anything from the method, it's that [Anthony Magnabosco] or or anyone else in the community could be wrong.

That's intellectual honesty!

_{(cf Metacognition and Open Mindedness (2015-11-15), Seeking Negative Space (2016-04-21), Teach Yourself How to Learn (2018-03-05), Metacognitive Awareness (2018-05-19), Metacognitive Classroom (2019-09-06), Metacognitive Reading (2021-10-21), Metacognitive Experiences (2022-03-29), Clark Glymour on Epistemology (2022-07-21), ...) - ^z - 2024-05-21}