I hate the word argument, by the way.

Argument always feels like a fight that never goes anywhere.

If you ever had an argument with a family member or a friend,

it always feels like you disagree until one person emotionally blows up and slams a door, and then it's over. I mean, that's basically what I think about when I think about arguments. So I hate the word argument. When I think about the word argument, I mean my position. There's another use of the word, which means the position I come from, my argument

of life, like I'm apologizing for this, or I'm arguing this point, or I'm making a belief

statement about something I believe or think. And in that definition of the word argument,

I think that most people, when they enter an argument, the reason the explosion happens,

the emotional explosion happens, is almost everyone enters that argument unprepared. They actually don't know what they think. They have a strong belief and they have some logic and they've thought about some of the things, but then the person they're in disagreement with or just trying to create understanding with, it doesn't even have to be disagreement. They're making a positional statement, hey, here's where I'm coming from. Maybe they haven't stress tested their premise. Maybe they haven't stressed tested the etymology or what they're basing this argument off of. And the person they're talking with asks a simple question that challenges that. And because they didn't bring, they weren't prepared and they didn't bring that with their argument, they feel like they lost. They feel like that other person won over them or they didn't get to win, right? They removed the ability for them to land their point and they knew their stuff right, right? I don't know if you've ever had this happen to you, if you're listening or watching right

now.

That is such a difficult and painful experience. I've had this happen so many times in my life. I thought I knew my stuff. My mind was clear. I was even kind of excited about debating or kind of talking with somebody that maybe had a different opinion. And then all of a sudden, I'm finding myself, oh, man, this isn't going how I thought I was going to go.

I feel undermined.

I feel maybe attacked on something I didn't know I was going to be attacked on.

They asked me a question I'm finding myself, oh man, this isn't going how I thought I was going to go. I feel undermined. I feel maybe attacked on something I didn't know I was going to be attacked on. They asked me a question I hadn't considered and now I look like I don't know what I'm talking about. I really want to strengthen my thinking around this. And I know that we're offering something really soon, Antonio, around this. We're going to do something about making your arguments bulletproof. I would encourage you if you're listening or watching right now to come and be part of this workshop we're going to do because, Antonio, you have NTP preferences and you're going to be bringing your introverted thinking accuracy process. This is something you refined for years. If you've ever listened to our podcast, you're listening to this video, you know how sharp Antonio's mind is when she approaches topics, but she has done a lot of work on this. Maybe you could walk through, Tony a little bit of your story. I know you had to leave a cults and reprogram your mind. I may briefly just touch on that. Why you have such a clean thinking process. It's not, it didn't just come out of thin air. Yeah. Well, first, thank you. Basically, the way that it was communicated to me growing up is that I'm allowed to ask any question as long as I come to the right conclusion and not not accurate, but as in the conclusion was already created.

So I could have any starting point I wanted, but this was my destination.

So I had to build all arguments and all logical scaffolding to make it so that I could sort of gerrymander my way to this specific conclusion.

And then when I left the religion of my youth, what ended up happening is that the single model that I used to understand reality was then removed.

And I had to discover new models in order to organize information.

Basically, it was like every piece of information I'd ever learned had been attached to this particular framework. And once the framework was gone, it was like a vacuum of information. Now, I want to stop you real quick, because this happens to a lot of people. They leave maybe a cult or religion of their youth or a political framework. They make a change ideologically. Most people do what's called a lateral move, though.

You know, they leave one political party and they go, well, I guess I'll go to the other one, or they leave one religion, they go, oh, I guess I'll go to the other one, pick another framework similar, but with a different topic, or maybe the opposite side. You made a very conscious choice not to do this. You didn't just rush into some other ideology. Yeah. And that's very unique, I think. Yeah, I just never wanted it to happen again. And there was a little bit of embarrassment that I had allowed it to happen the first time, even though I had been raised in it. So I didn't beat myself up too much. So I tried to be easier on myself around that, but I was just never going to let it happen again. happen again. I was just never going to allow some ready made off the shelf paradigm

determine what I thought. And what I noticed is that any framework that had a paradigm attached to it,

a worldview attached to it, I noticed that they all had sort of a similar dictate, which is you can

start from anywhere you want, but you have to reach this conclusion. And you can see this in almost every political or religious worldview. There are certain answers that are already there, and you've got to find your way to them. You start with the answer or not with the question. Yeah, you start with the answer, exactly. And I just wasn't going to allow myself to do that. So what ended up happening is I had to go find what I call agnostic models. And I don't mean like

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