User:DouglasHDean/sandbox

Transcript of the YouTube video Learning SE with AronRa

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00:00: AronRa: Hi this is AronRa, wearing my Tony Stark heart monitor.

00:05: ANTHONY: Yeah, it's a got a GoPro strapped to your chest. I've been doing this for about three years where I’ll put a GoPro on - initiate conversations with people. I started off in front of the Alamo talking to street preachers. Then I moved to college university and I've been at this trail for like the last eight months.

00:21: ANTHONY: In all cases though I just initiate a conversation with somebody to see if they have a belief they want to talk about. I usually time for five or ten minutes so I'm not taking a lot of their time and I'm practicing Street Epistemology, which is - It comes from Dr. Peter Boghossian’s book, “A Manual for Creating Atheist” and I thought well let me give this a shot.

00:40: AronRa: Well how do you start conversations without sounding like,”Hey let me tell you about God's message for you.” There is none. Haha!

00:49: ANTHONY: You know my style has evolved over the last, over the years that I've been doing this. When I first started it was rough. Usually one of the first things I wanted to tell people that I was an atheist. I'm an atheist, I don't believe in any gods and I want to find out why you do. But when you approach people that way the walls go up. They're less likely to be open and honest with you. You can see them - that their body language changes. They take a step back. So my little intro line, I suppose, has changed a little bit.

01:15: ANTHONY: I also say something like, “My name is Anthony. I have a hobby where I like to talk to people about their beliefs. We talk about karma, god, ghosts, magic, whatever. And I want to understand why you believe it. Why do you think the belief is true? Can we spend five minutes talking about it?”

01:32: ANTHONY: And, usually, most people say “yes,” which is really interesting, when, because I am out here with a camera. So you would think people will be more reserve, but it seems like people are interested in talking about some of those taboo topics that they're not usually allowed to talk about.

01:50: AronRa: I run a crapshoot when I talk to people on the street, you know, if I ever want to start these conversations. And one of the failings that I have is that I realized that I tend to profile people, and I'm I not happy at the fact that I do that [hmm], but at least recognized that I do that and I'm trying to minimize that. I may make judgments based on appearance or, or, slang terms or whatever, you know. And it to gauge whether somebody actually knows anything or not and I'm, I keep being surprised. I keep being wrong. So I tried to log that in my memory about how often I judge people and this way I try not to. But it's a…

02:28: ANTHONY: I do find myself profiling people too. They could be walking up, if not walking really fast and they have their ear buds in, well they’re probably not going to want to stop and talk with me. But if they, if they're walking towards me, and are smiling, and they might wave, and they demonstrate that they’re kind of being friendly and open, then I think they're more likely to stop and talk.

02:26: ANTHONY: That being said that might, in itself, be somewhat of a selection bias for the videos that you do see. Maybe the people that I'm talking to are a little bit more open, more friendly, because of that reason it's hard to say. But I do think that they're profiling me too. It's one of the reasons why I try to appear as non-confrontational as possible.

03:04: AronRa: I don't need to do that. .

03:08: ANTHONY: That’s where I think, yeah probably, yeah, I think we have a little bit of a different style. So certainly…

03:13: AronRa: Well, I mean, I don’t want to piss people off. I don't want to seem controversial all the time. Even when, as I mentioned to you before, even when I'm trying to be, you know, appreciative of something somebody's doing for me I'm still going to piss them off eventually. Just as a matter of fact. Something else I’m working on.