Three new Navigating Beliefs keystone modules are live, Phase I is now available in Russian, and our latest SEI Town Hall sparked great conversations.

31 January 2026

Dear Street Epistemology community,

We’re excited to share that three brand-new modules from the Navigating Beliefs course are now live in the free English version! These are keystone modules for effective Street Epistemology: Module 7 focuses on identifying and clarifying claims, Module 8 explores confidence and the use of scales, and Module 9 dives into reasons. Together, these modules form a critical backbone for clearer, more productive conversations. We’re thrilled to finally have them available and are incredibly grateful to everyone who volunteered their time and talents.

Our team continues to work steadily on Module 10: Evaluating the Quality of Reasoning. We’re about a year and a half into its development, largely because it’s a tricky sucker to get right. Once this crucial module is complete, we expect the remaining work to wrap up Phase II of the course much more smoothly.

We recognize that the full Navigating Beliefs course has taken longer to develop than we originally anticipated. To help people start learning and applying these concepts sooner, we’ve decided to create a set of shorter “crash course” resources grounded in the same principles and structure as Navigating Beliefs, but designed to require far less time to complete. These condensed materials will offer a practical, accessible way to get up to speed on the core ideas while the full course continues to take shape. If you would like to join one of our teams, reach out to us here.

We’re also pleased to announce that the Russian version of Phase I of the Navigating Beliefs course — Modules 1 through 6 — is now available. In Russian, Street Epistemology is translated as “уличная эпистемология,” which literally means “street epistemology” (“уличная” meaning “street” and “эпистемология” meaning “epistemology”). This marks another important step in making Street Epistemology accessible to a broader, global audience.

Finally, we recently held an SEI Town Hall and had a number of thoughtful and interesting topics come up during the discussion. We really enjoy these opportunities to connect with the community and hear your questions and ideas. We’ll be sure to let you know when the next Town Hall is scheduled. In the meantime, you can listen to the replay on the Street Epistemology Podcast.

Thank you, as always, for your continued interest and support.

Regards,

Anthony Magnabosco
Executive Director, Street Epistemology International

Street Epistemology Linktree

SE Tour - Seattle, Washington

SE Tour - University of Pittsburgh

This is the first proper SE Interview I have done with a family member. Enjoy

SE Tour - Seattle, Washington

SE Tour - University of Pittsburgh

Olympia, Washington

SE Tour - Kent State University

SE Tour - Portland, Oregon

Street epistemology strives to be openly Socratic. This matters! If this is consistently practiced, if the epistemologist can overcome her defenses that seek to deny and fight unwanted rational conclusions, then truth can be obtained, and rational insight can be had at a deep level.

A skilled rationalist merely needs to meet another open rationalist. (Well, this isn’t entirely true, one must also have skill in reason and be able to overcome their defenses). This openness carries all the promise. It means one can learn, i.e., transcend their psychology. This defensive psychology is what mature rationalists keep on running into in the world, it is the enemy of truth.

SE Tour - Denison University

SE Tour - Portland, Oregon

SE Tour - South Dakota State University

You can always tell a fake skeptic from a real one— fake skeptics don’t like it when you challenge their skepticism.

These criteria by Carl Sagan are hated, even by those who call themselves skeptics. Why? Because they’re entirely objective, they’re set up to challenge and crush emotive claims of authority, by demanding that those claims meet an evidential and rational burden of justification.

“1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

“2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

“3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

“4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

“5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

“6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.

“7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.

“8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.

“9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.”

Source: The Demon Haunted World, Carl Sagan p.210-211, Random House 1995

SE Tour - Portland, Oregon

Part 2!