A paper in this week's Nature Climate Change reinforces a really important insight about the limits of our ability to reason and think rationally. It's another blow to the crumbling ramparts of the belief that the Enlightenment, as Kant put it, was "Mankind's final coming of age, the emancipation of the human consciousness from an immature state of ignorance and error." Sorry, Emmanuel but we have a long way to go.
In "The Polarizing Impact of Science Literacy and Numeracy on Perceived Climate Change Risks," Dan Kahan and colleagues demonstrate how greater science literacy leads those who deny climate change to deny it even more. And the more educated the deniers of were, the more polarizing the facts -- neutral, spin-free facts -- became! What's revealing here is not that the deniers didn't become believers. It's not even about climate change. It's how information that overwhelming shows one thing reinforces and strengthens denial of that evidence in those predisposed to see things that way. "Ignorance and error" are not resolved with more facts and knowledge.
Kahan's paper reinforces several current bodies of research that try to understand human cognition more holistically. First, it supports Kahan's own work on cultural cognition theory, which finds that though we employ facts as weapons in our battles over issues and ideas, the real war is about tribal identity and cohesion. We interpret the facts -- no matter how many of them we have at our disposal -- so that our views agree with the groups with which we most closely identify. And we fiercely defend the views of our group because our own identity, and even our personal safety, rely, to a great degree, on being in good standing with the tribe of which we are a member.
Kahan's paper also reinforces the case made by Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier to explain why our ability to reason developed in the first place. Sorry again, Enlightenment fans, but it wasn't to figure things out and get them "right." Sperber and Mercier posit that reasoning was a tool by which social animals could win arguments and persuade others to see the facts in some particular way, what Sperber and Mercier call argumentative reasoning. No, this was not so we'd all be great lawyers. Sperber and Mercier argue it was adaptive, good for our survival.
As the tribe tried to figure out some new plant or animal or way of hunting and various interpretations and ideas were offered, the most effective reasoning produced the most persuasive interpretation, which produced general agreement on the "truth." Argumentative reasoning helped bounce various interpretations off each other until one became the consensus view, and persuading everybody to get on board with that view was socially cohesive and protective, regardless of whether the consensus view matched all the evidence.
This would explain what Kahan found, that if you provide a climate denier with more facts in the Enlightenment expectation that the evidence will change their minds, it's more likely that they'll apply their powers of reasoning to reinforce and defend their tribal consensus and identity. Cultural cognition and argumentative reasoning also help explain why the stronger people feel about an issue and the more their identity is connected with those views, the more the facts only reinforce how they feel, even if those facts conflict with their views. In Kahan's study, after being provided with neutral information, the denial of climate change grew most among those who denied it the most in the first place.
This is frustrating news for Enlightenment rationalists, but perhaps there is hope in what psychologists have learned about human cognition, that there are two major components of the overall system, System One and Two. While System One subconsciously applies all sorts of instinctive mental shortcuts and emotional cues to quickly come up with how we feel, System Two uses slower, conscious, purposeful reasoning to methodically figure things out. Yes, we can think, and reason, but only so much. Paraphrasing Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, the brain is only the organ with which we think we think.
Kahan's paper reinforces the dangerous naïveté of placing too much faith in System Two. The problem is that the two systems aren't separate. They interact, and as they do, System One usually has the upper hand, or, as pioneering psychologist Daniel Kahneman recently put it, "[M]ost of the time System Two acts as a spokesperson for System One. System One makes suggestions and System Two explains them, or rationalizes them." The reasoning system often only serves to argue the case. Something much deeper is figuring out how we feel about the case to begin with.
This is not good news in our post-industrial/technological/information age, as we face complex issues like climate change or nuclear power or genetically modified food, issues fraught with important details and long-term tradeoffs that demand more careful evidence-based analysis and conscious reasoning. We seem condemned to the perils of what Andy Revkin has called an "inconvenient mind," which evolved to handle less complicated threats and challenges. But maybe in all this seemingly depressing evidence lies the answer, an answer that would please the pioneers of the Enlightenment ideals themselves.
The Enlightenment project believed that we could apply the new institution of science to answer difficult questions and make more intelligent choices, as individuals and as society. This new work on cognition is just a part of the science that can help us move toward those choices. We can use our System Two powers of reason to apply that knowledge to the challenge of thinking about things more carefully. We just have let go of the hubris of thinking that the sort of rational thinking the Enlightenment pioneers had in mind is the kind of thinking we actually do.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders: Label Genetically Engineered Food
"Gallup Poll: Americans' Views On Evolution, Creationism Little Changed
By: Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 06/01/2012 04:01 PM EDT on LiveScience
The percentage of Americans who believe God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years is about the same as it was 30 years ago, a new survey indicates.
Today, 46 percent of Americans accept this creationist explanation for human existence, a negligible change from the 44 percent who said they agreed with it in 1982, according to Gallup polls."
That's just plain scary! I'm a believer in respecting people's religion, but not such blatant ignorance!
I wonder, though what percentage elf folks are just pulling Gallup's leg? Alas, probably not that many!
If this is even close to being true, it is frightening! I've read that even substantial percentages of science teachers are creationists and that it affects their teaching and content dramatically. Sad!
"In Kahan's study, after being provided with neutral information, the denial of climate change grew most among those who denied it the most in the first place."
There is something deeply flawed here in this study. "neutral" information is the real problem...
For sure, people will exemplify confirmatory bias, especially ideologues. But there really is no "neutral" information in the global warming debate, unless it is inconsequential!
Plus, a short-term study means little. I know many people who cling stubbornly to their beliefs and even become insistent upon them when challenged with thoughtful evidence and opposing perspectives. But then weeks later, one discovers the argument and evidence registered and the person has changed their stance!!
I'm sure most readers of this essay have had that experience.
Also, what would happen if the subjects had to first read a systematic critique of the deniers' evidence and then had to write an essay logically taking a stance on the existence of global warming and explaining humankind's role in it?? I'll wager hat plenty more fence sitters or mildly skeptical folks would come around--if not then, then in the weeks after. A longer-term study exploring the impact of substantative information that is decidedly not neutral would change the outcome!
We all have a tendency to just accept what feels right when we hear it from people whose opinions we respect, but when we're challenged to accept on faith things that cannot be proven, we don't have to. People within clans don't have that freedom. They already define themselves by their membership and accept it's sentiments. Participation involves the creation of barriers that deny the process of rational thought being applied to the shared belief, so by definition believers no longer have freedom of choice - they've made theirs, and they've chosen to reject any alternative.
Belief and faith are intuitive, emotional and highly subjective, all untouchable by the arguments of objective reasoning. To the believer, other possibilities are simply delusions, their arguments based on faulty logic or faulty interpretation of the data, or, that ultimate catch-all - they're myths created and supported by a conspiracy of higher powers with evil intentions.
Faith can't be taken down by direct assault, and definitely not by argumentative reasoning. It has to be eroded by education and experience to the point it collapses under it's own inflated, over-engineered weight.
In any case, this kind of stuff is really becoming apparent these days, as more and more people retreat away from reality, into delusional paranoid beliefs about the world.
One point I would question, is that the most well reasoned argument wins. It does not, otherwise George W Bush, Ronald Reagan and others, would never have got the vote. It is the argument that makes you feel comfortable, told by a person you feel is one of you that wins so many people over. That is another one that has been a constant surprise to those who are comfortable with evidence and logic.
Many people (of which these particular religious believers are a subset) also have no generally sensible non-religious orientation regarding the future, or real abilities to plan for it, except to hope and expect it to remain relatively unchanged. For them, only the current times mean much of anything, and when you try to discuss the actual facts and how they might affect the future, it upsets them. Unfortunately, many of them are in a position to legislate against the facts.
Whatever for?
1) He refers to those like me as a 'climate denier' making it an exercise in self control to not dismiss him out of hand.
2) He assumes catastrophic global warming to be a settled fact, even thought it's not even predicted to happen for 80-100 years and that barely 1/2 of scientists polled think it will be a serious problem. EVEN IF the alarmists have it 100% right, they can't say that with the certainty this guy assigns.
3) He basically concludes that there is no truth to anyone, only what they want to believe. He doesn't distinguish between issues where bias is more likely to enter into the equation and honest disagreements without bias.
4) Lastly, and perhaps most tellingly, he finds a way to show that knowledge is bad, and that the more knowledgeable you are about global warming, the more likely you are to deceive yourself. What would Emil Faber say?
Do you deny that the Earth is warming due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere?
Do you deny that the Arctic is diminishin fast?
Then you are not a skeptic, you deny direct observational evidence - you are in fact a denier.
Your second point is further denial. Global warming has been shown to be occurring now, due to rises in atmospheric CO2. You're statement about scientists is both a lie, and a strawman.
3. His point is about the truth that is shown by evidence, being denied by people like you because of your ideological blindness.
4. You're fourth point just shows your inability to read, which goes very well with your inability to understand the issues of Climate Change. What he actually said was that if you are completely convinced Climate change denier like Style Doggie 3, then you can manage to ignore all evidence that contradicts your baseless beliefs, with much greater ease than less intelligent deniers - who find it hard to come up with the fantastic contortions of logic required to deny all plain and obvious reality.
Really?
Just where did you get that ---- from?
I mean is there no difference between deniers and acceptors? I say mankind is doomed if this is what it comes down to. But I don't accept that.
There is a difference: Deniers double and triple down in their denial in the face of contradicting evidence.
To listen to a fantastically interesting interview on this, hear Chris Mooney here:
http://aworldthatjustmightwork.com/2012/05/qa-chris-mooney-republican-brain/
I still have hope for mankind.
We have progressed in the areas you cited because the acceptors ultimately end up winning the day by making their growing evidence more acceptable -- even though it does make the deniers stronger in its denial.
And civilization progresses because of acceptors. It stalls with deniers. Fundamentalist theocratic states are examples of the latter.
We have progressed in the areas you cited because the acceptors ultimately end up winning the day by making their growing evidence more acceptable -- even though it does make the deniers stronger in its denial.
And civilization progresses because of acceptors. It stalls with deniers. Fundamentalist theocratic states are examples of the latter.
Without understanding this mechanism it is useless to try and intervene with more information and drawing conclusions from the processing of the additional information.
See James Downard's excellent piece at Panda's Thumb, http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2010/01/an-ill-wind-in.html , for an assessment of this thinking for creationists and others. The mode of thought applies to many on both sides of any debate.