So You Think You Can Think? Think Again!
David Ropeik
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.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-ropeik/so-you-think-you-can-thin_b_1561226.html
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Biased.
Even here most people think "critical thinking" is all about being critical of their lessers, the inferior subrace of Homo called "Republicans." In so doing they often spout inanities, and thus establish that are truly equal to their foes. If they turned their enormously well-developed critical thinking faculties on their own positions, basking in the glow of the 0.3 A neon bulbs, they'd probably realize this. They may already realize it, and that's why they carefully keep their batteries safe and out of sight.
If you fight somebody you make them more entrenched. The polarization of the climate science debate, in which the weaknesses of the AGW argument must be denied by its defenders and its strengths forced down AGW-deniers' throats at law-point is amazing. And precisely wrong. Trying to argue that the weaknesses utterly demolish the main AGW arguments and denying that there's more than a grain of truth to it is also precisely wrong. Everybody's an advocate, and advocates have no use for truth.
Nobody wants to have their honor and their cherished beliefs trashed over a point of fact. The facts are less important than honor. So we fight. It's silly. Best to lead people to unravelling their own belief systems. Takes time--and works far less than 100% of the time. Moreover, it takes showing good will and empathy--and when it comes to their lessers, (D) are anything but in favor of empathy.
Most of the "
R) are biased, here's a study that shows it" studies find a point of contention that's broken down along political/ideological lines. So they rediscover confirmation bias and mask it with a partisan label. Also silly.
The human race is flawed. Yet we've managed to get past a lot of stupidity. It's just that the more entrenched and vitriolic the fighting, the more the chances of bloodshed or the need to wait for a change in generations before the old false is replaced by the new true. (Which often enough becomes the old false in turn.)
Being a long-time DU member I get the impression that I'm supposed to never find fault with anything (D), but the fact is I see many of the same types of "reasoning" here that I see on Free Republic, and I even see many of the same types of phrases and even the very same words used on both sides of the left-right divide. But whenever I point out such unjustified claims based solely on left-wing bias rather than fact I get slammed for being a mole for "the enemy". (Just wait. Somebody will reply to this post with "WHAT unjustified claims? Name one? We only speak the unbiased truth here on DU."
It really is kind of comical watching DU people use FR-style reasoning against FR claims in response to the FR people using DU-style attacks against the DU claims. But neither side will ever see it in themselves, even though they see it clearly in "the other".
Of course in some cases, like Global Climate Change, Mother Nature's vote will trump all arguments, and when the whole state of Florida is under water, deniers will have forgotten that they ever doubted it.
