Jan 03 2017
More Evidence for Motivated Reasoning
Before we get to the details of the study, let’s review what we mean by motivated reasoning. Psychological studies have shown that people treat different beliefs differently. Specifically, there is one set of beliefs that are core to a person’s identity and to which they have an emotional attachment. We treat such beliefs differently than all other beliefs.
For most beliefs people actually are quite rational at baseline. We tend to follow a Bayesian approach, meaning that we update our beliefs as new information comes to our attention. If we are told that some historical fact is different than what we remember, we will quickly change our beliefs about that historical fact. Further, the more information we have about something, the more solid our belief is, the more slowly we will change that belief. We don’t just change from one thing to the next, we incorporate the new information with our old information.
This is actually a very scientific approach. I would not easily change my belief that the sun is at the center of our solar system. It would take a profound amount of very reliable information to counter all the solid scientific information on which my current belief is based. If, however, I was told from a reliable source something about George Washington I never heard before, I would accept it much more quickly. This is reasonable, and this is how most people function day-to-day.
The problem comes from our special set of beliefs in which we have an emotional investment. These are alleged facts or beliefs about the world that support our sense of identity or our ideology. We commonly call such beliefs “sacred cows.”
When those beliefs are challenged we don’t take a rational and detached approach. We dig in our heels, and engage in motivated reasoning. We defend the core beliefs at all costs, shredding logic, discarding inconvenient facts, making up facts as necessary, cherry pick only the facts we like, engage in magical thinking, and use subjective judgments as necessary without any consideration for internal consistency. We collectively refer to these processes as motivated reasoning, something at which people generally excel.
In general political opinions tend to fall into the “sacred cow” category. People tend to identify with their political tribe, and want to believe that their tribe is virtuous and smart, while the other tribe are mostly lying idiots. Of course, these dichotomies occur on a spectrum. You can have a little bit of an emotional attachment to a belief, or it can be fundamental to your world view and identity. You can be a little tribal in your political views, or hyperpartisan.
Unfortunately, what appears to have happened in the last 30 years is an overall increase in partisanship. This is extremely counterproductive to the functioning of our democracy.
The New Study
The recently published study does not really change anything, but it adds a bit of confirmation to the basic understanding I outlined above. This is an fMRI study of 40 liberal subjects. They were presented with statements that were either designed to be political or non-political. They were then confronted with counterclaims to contradict those facts, some of which were exaggerated or were untrue.
An example of a political claim is that the US spends too much of its resources on the military. The counterclaim is that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is twice the size of the US’s (which is not true – Russia has 7,300 warheads to our 7,100). An example of a non-political claim is “Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb.” One counter to that claim is that, “Nearly 70 years before Edison, Humphry Davy demonstrated an electric lamp to the Royal Society.” This is true, but an exaggeration in that Davy’s incandescent bulb was not practical. Edison’s was not the first light bulb, but it was the first one with the properties necessary to make its wide use feasible.
The researchers looked at the activity in the subject’s brains when they were confronted with a counter claim to a political vs non-political opinion. When a political belief was challenged, more of the brain lit up, including areas known as the “default mode network” and also the amygdala. The former may be involved in identity, and the latter in negative emotions.
It is always difficult to interpret such studies. First, 40 subjects is a small number, and fMRI’s involve a low signal to noise ratio. Assuming the results are valid, we also don’t know exactly what they mean. Just because we can see one part of the brain light up, that does not mean we know what it was doing. The same structure in the brain will participate in different overlapping networks with different overlapping functions.
It does seem clear, however, that the brain responds differently to political and non-political challenges, in a way that is suggestive of an emotional response.
The researchers also assessed the degree to which the subjects changed their minds on the facts that were challenged. They changed them more for non-political than for political views. Again, there are lots of variables here, and no one study is going to account for all of them.
Conclusion
This new study is consistent with prior research on the topic of motivated reasoning, and also points the way to further research. Follow up studies with conservatives, with other ideologies (religious, social, historical), addressing other variables more directly, like how truthful or plausible the counter claims are, and with larger numbers of subjects would all be helpful.
The study is another reminder, however, that humans are emotional creatures. I do think it would be helpful to make a specific effort to be more detached when it comes to ideological beliefs. Factual beliefs about the world should not be a source of identity, because those facts may be wrong, partly wrong, or incomplete.
This is easier said than done. My strategy has been to focus my emotional investment in being skeptical. Take pride in being detached when it comes to factual claims, in following a valid process of logic and empiricism, and on changing your mind when necessary. It is important to focus on the validity of the process, not on any particular claim or set of beliefs.
I also think we need to remind ourselves that people who disagree with us are just people. They are not demons. They have their reasons for believing what they do. They think they are right just as much as you think you are right. They don’t disagree with you because you are virtuous and they are evil. They just have a different narrative than you, and your narrative is likely just as subjective and flawed as theirs.
54 Responses to “More Evidence for Motivated Reasoning”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Could the scale of the issue be a factor here?
Saying that Davy demonstrated a light-bulb before Edison is a simple point of fact (trivia, if you will); whereas the question of the level of US defence spending is far more complex.
Mind you, I’m only basing this on the two examples given.
Sure. I would file that under potential confounding factors. Also, some non-political claims may be more factually established than others, in the minds of the subjects. That is why they did several questions, to see if the political vs non-political variable was consistent across them. Still – that is partly why this study needs replication.
Have you ever contacted Sam Harris about the two of you doing some sort of podcast discussion, possibly on his Waking Up podcast? Most of his shows tend to have something to do with politics & societal issues, but as this paper shows you also have a large shared interest when it comes to cognitive biases & related topics of neurology..
Steve A, you are wrong, the optimal size of the US defence budget could be directly derived from empirical facts by economic experts, and people who disagree with them are budgetary science deniers…The memes such as “it’s too complex” or “values cannot be reduced to facts” are just their desperate strategies to promote motivated reasoning and science denial. Too bad you are echoing their budgetary pseudo-science…
If you don’t believe me, just connect Ted Cruz’s brain to an MRI scanner. You will see a characteristic signature of motivated defence budget inflationism:)
Ivan – optimal for what? That is where the value judgments come in. Politics is about trade offs. Money spent on defense are not available to spend elsewhere. How can you possibly separate something like defense spending from any value judgments?
There are also lots of tactical decisions in defense spending. Do we spend our money on nuclear missiles or troops? How many troops should we keep in foreign bases? These questions are tied up in policy and strategic goals.
The notion that we can reduce all this to empirical budgetary science seems absurd on its face.
Ivan.
What Steve said…
Also, I didn’t say ‘too complex’, I said ‘more complex’.
Or were you just being sarcastic?
“This is an fMRI study of 40 liberal subjects.”
Well, if that study isn’t in and of itself a blatent display of “motivated reasoning” then I don’t know what would qualify as evidence 🙂
I think an important point in the article was made in the introduction. That the “default mode network” was active and is involved in identity “and disengagement from the external world”.
Seems to confirm what I think most people have experienced, when a person gets upset, the blinders are on and further discussion is pointless.
“An example of a political claim is that the US spends too much of its resources on the military. The counterclaim is that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is twice the size of the US’s”
Another issue is coming up with the claims/etc for this type of thing. That’s only a counterclaim from a specific worldview, unless I just completely misunderstood.
There’s also a big limit to what scientists are willing to question — any political belief that’s foundational to their society is almost guaranteed to be ignored, such as liberalism (in the sense that both “liberals” and “conservatives” are liberals).
Have they tried this study on salmon, is the question? 😀
tb29607, I agree with you. However, this might be due to my motivated reasoning: my previous belief that the “default mode network” actually exists. My previous belief is not yet a properly established scientific fact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network#Criticism
“Have they tried this study on salmon, is the question?”
Have they tried this study on a dead salmon, would be a better question 🙂
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/
Steve, I completely agree with this perspective of letting the process rather than the factual conclusions be the source of identity, for the reasons you outline. As a longtime reader of this blog and of your podcast, this is not new to me. But I think it is a good thing to put up reminders of it from time to time.
However, I do suspect that for quite a lot of people, some of their ethical/moral values are a source of their identity. This is true in politics for example, as political (and religious) ideologies tend to include a value-based component as well, in addition to their factual claims. Do you think letting ethical/moral values be a source of identity is unproblematic, or do you think it is best to avoid that?
I think it is OK to have morals and ethics and to let that be a part of your identity…BUT you have to be very careful.
– You should be aware of their emotional importance to you and that this will tend to cloud your judgment, affect your narrative, and bias you. So, you need to be vigilante about this. Also be open minded when those values are challenged.
– You should very carefully separate the value judgments from factual claims. Don’t let the values determine the facts, they should accommodate the facts.
Steve Novella and Steve A
I was being sarcastic. 🙂
Ivan Grozny, Were you being sarcastic or astroturfing 🙂
I think Jonathan Haidt’s work on moral foundations provides some useful insight. There are a number of different foundations to build morals from, and we all give the different foundations different weights. So many of the divisive political issues have two opposing sides arguing (somewhat) rationally based upon different moral foundations, and the two sides weigh those foundations differently. One political stripe may find fairness and stopping cheaters to be primary, where another may consider compassion and caring for the needy to be primary. So they argue past each other, a lot like those blind men with the elephant. It’s not that one is necessarily wrong, they are building from different foundations.
A useful exercise is to try to identify the moral foundation you base your own political opinions on, and the foundation those you disagree with base theirs on. Then try to make an argument for your opinion, but based on their moral foundation (and maybe vice versa). That way, communication might be possible, or at least a better understanding of your own opinions.
vig·i·lan·te ? Really Steve?
ˌvijəˈlan(t)ē/
noun
a member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate.
No, no, no!!! I refuse that path! 😉
On the serious side, having a liberal bias, I find now that I really have to count to 10 (sometimes 100) and reflect a bit about it before engaging in a discussion with someone on a contentious topic. Especially if I get that fight or flight reaction from something rather inflammatory.
I have more than a few times stopped myself from posting a comment about half way through writing it, because I wasn’t sure that I could adequately defend my position.
Pete A,
Thank you for the link. My own bias assumes there has to be an explanation for people becoming excessively emotional and resistant to information. So I never questioned the validity of the default mode network because it was used to confirm my pre-exsisting bias.
I think for the Salmon study they should test the fishes fMRI response regarding the pronunciation of the “L” in their name.
tb29607, I enjoy eating ‘samon’ for the same reason as do bears. I have no wish to eat anything having the proper noun Salmon 🙂
Correction: Unlike bears, I have no wish to eat anything having the proper noun Salmon!
Ivan,
That was a bad move.
What does it say about you when people can’t tell your sarcasm from your motivated reasoning.
tmac57,
To me the most important part of all this is for each person to recognize their own biases like you have done.
I am not a climate scientist so I tend to focus on people’s reactions to those discussions and how they are conducted. What I notice are an excess of emotionally charged words, labeling, and creation of an “us vs them” environment that has proved hugely detrimental in the past.
To be clear, I am only talking about climate science as an example of how the scientific community has allowed itself to become so polarized. My concern is that this type of environment in the scientific community is how Soviet Lysenkoism became such a disaster for that country.
It is a concern, not a core belief of mine so feel free to disagree.
tb29607- As far as I can tell, the scientific community is not at all “so polarized” on the question of climate change, no more than the scientific community is “so polarized ” on evolution. There are outliers of course, but their numbers are small.
Now the political community…that’s a real case of polarization. But of course, that has nothing at all to do with the “science” of climate change.
tb,
“I am not a climate scientist”
That is the first thing to recognise, so congratulations.
However, the next thing to recognise is that your starting point in thinking about climate change should be the consensus view of those who ARE climate scientists
“What I notice are an excess of emotionally charged words, labeling, and creation of an “us vs them” environment that has proved hugely detrimental in the past”
To make sense of this you have to look at the history of this dispute.
For various reasons that include politcal dogmatism, corporate interests, and personal self-interest, there has arisen a motivated effort to deny the conclusions of climate scientists. The biggest push has come from corporations – aided and abetted by politically motivate media interests – that stand to lose financially if these consclusions are acted upon by politicians. Following the example of the tobacco industry before them, massive amounts of money has been made available to pay lobbyists and scientists to create uncertainty. In fact, some of the key players, including some scientists, involved in climate denial were also active in denial of the harms of tobacco smoke.
After decades of witnessing the successful campaign by climate deniers in creating uncertainty and the resulting political inaction, some climate scientists decided to push back.
The resulting “us v them” environment was inevitable.
The only way this could have been avoided is for the climate scientist to shut up, the result of which would have been far more detrimental than confronting the misunderstandins, misinformation and outright lies promulgated by the rightly named “climate deniers”.
I know you are objecting to that phrase as a label, but when the label fits…
“I am only talking about climate science as an example of how the scientific community has allowed itself to become so polarized”
This is a bad mischaracterisation. There is a consensus by climate change experts about climate change. There are climate sceptics and that’s fine. And there are climate deniers. The climate deniers have created the so called “polarisation” by their denial of the facts of climate change. Eventually, the scientiific community had no choice but to push back against this misinformation campaign
“My concern is that this type of environment in the scientific community is how Soviet Lysenkoism became such a disaster for that country”
There is no comparsion at all. Lysenkoism was politically motivated – politicians deciding the science. With climate change, politicians have been dragged kicking and screaming to accept the accumulating scientific evidence for climate change by climate change scientists. And, after decades of inaction, the politicians are finally taking some tentative steps towards mitigating it.
…sorry, that was off topic. tmac’s response was probably sufficient.
“For most beliefs people actually are quite rational at baseline.”
I am very glad to finally see an acknowledgement from a materialist Skeptic that people are basically rational. That is not what we always heard from Kahneman and Tversky.
But yes, they are tribal and emotional also, especially about politics. I am actually amazed at the complete lack of logic or self-awareness surrounding the recent election. The political tribalism keeps getting worse, and each side bounces off the other.
I have relatives who are terrified because they expect Trump to send Nazis with guns to their door any minute.
“However, the next thing to recognise is that your starting point in thinking about climate change should be the consensus view of those who ARE climate scientists.”
Yes indeed: global warming ‘scientists’ are either pseudoscientists or outright anti-scientists. Whereas the consensus amongnts climatologists is solidly based in the ever-growing volume of empirical evidence.
hardnose why you gotta try and make every post turn into a debate about materialism -_-
change it up a little
The two people I was thinking of are:
Dr. John Christy at the Univ. of Alabama Huntsville who doesn’t think that we have enough information or understanding to say that human CO2 production is definitely the major cause of climate change. He never denied anything, he agrees there is warming, his only deviation from mainstream is whether there is room for doubt regarding the relative contribution of human CO2 production to warming. This earned him the label of a “climate denier”.
Dr. Christopher Essex out of Canada who points out some very basic computer and mathematical problems with climate models. For example some of the equations needed have not been solved yet. And for time of computation requirements, climate models divide the area of global models into 100 square kilometer blocks, which means things like thunder storms get averaged into nonexistence despite there being thousands of them at any given time. For questioning the accuracy of climate models he achieved the “climate denier” label as well.
These seem like two reasonable people who know their material and have specific concerns about our ability to predict climate. Labeling and dismissing them does not seem like the reaction of a healthy scientific environment to me.
tb,
It’s all been heard before.
The consensus on climate change is solid and the political tide is turning.
Most climate scientists are now concentrating on what to do about it.
One of the people you reference is not a climate scientist and the other has a history of failed predictions on climate change and consistently negative opinions regarding the consensus. The climate scientist co-headed the UAH MSU which produced evidence that there was no warming in the lower trophosphere. For more than a decade, climate deniers referred to this data set as evidence against global warming. The data was then independently analysed exposing glaring errors in their algorithm. Subsequent adjustments to the data are consistent with other data showing global warming. I could go on and on.
If you have a little knowledge of the science it is easy to think there is a controversy when there isn’t.
BJ7,
Thank you.
And it was never that I considered it controversy. I do not.
My concern has been how people asking questions were dealt with.
But if these guys have been shown to be wrong and persist anyway, then they have earned the response they get.
tb29607- I would like to add, that there are ongoing legitimate areas of debate even among those scientists who are in consensus overall on climate change. This is counter to the feeble talking point that is often heard of ‘Climate scientists are forced to fall in line and not rock the boat for political reasons’ to paraphrase.
Here is an example of an such a contentious, yet respectful and vigorous debate:
https://youtu.be/gQpS8f66vMw
Two well respected climate scientists hashing out the data to try to come to a solid understanding of how the rapid warming of the Arctic is affecting the northern hemisphere’s weather and climate.
tb – the straw man often attacked by climate change deniers is that scientists are saying that all debate or discussion about climate change is over, the science is settled, and now it is dogma. That is nonsense. The consensus that emerged out of the last IPCC was that we are “95%” certain that AGW is happening. That means there is a 1/20 chance that conclusion is in error. That also means there is room for minority opinions that disagree with the consensus.
That is all a healthy part of normal science. There are legit scientists who do not think an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.
However, honest disagreement is different than ideologically motivated denial. The latter often exploits the former to create the false impression of more doubt and confusion than there actually is.
Further – there is a big practical implication of climate change that we have to confront. The practical question is – how certain do we have to be before it makes sense to take measures to mitigate AGW? It is pretty clear that by the time we are 99-100% sure, it will be too late. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to do anything. Acting on a 95% probability is reasonable.
There are also many analogies. If astronomers were 95% sure we were going to be hit by an asteroid, should we try to deflect it now or wait until we are more certain? (knowing that every delay makes it much harder to deflect)
If your doctor told you they were 95% certain you have cancer, would you be comfortable with a wait-and-see approach, or would you want the tumor removed?
Steven and tmac57,
I am sorry I used climate change as my example.
I am on board with consensus.
My concern was about how people who questioned the conclusions were dealt with which seemed relevant to the article.
That they have been addressed fairly in the past alleviates my concern.
Steve, I mostly agree with your first response to Ivan, but this “Money spent on defense are not available to spend elsewhere.” is mostly wrong. While politics is about tradeoffs in terms of navigating the legislative/bureaucratic process, strictly speaking it’s not the case in terms of budgeting, at least from an economic perspective. The idea that money spent on defense is not available to be spent elsewhere plays into a very common, but incorrect, view of the federal budget as essentially a traditional ledger with income from taxes and fees collected on one side and expenses for federal programs/spending on the other. In reality, taxes and fees pull money out of the economy and federal spending injects money into the economy, both with the nominal goals of addressing specific political/social issues while balanced against controlling inflation. While there is a relationship between taxing and spending, the government has the ability to create new money, so it’s not a piggy bank where money taken out simply leaves a smaller pot.
MosBen,
That doesn’t sound right. Surely there is a limit to how much new money can be created. Therefore there is still a limit on how much money is available to be spent. So it still comes down to a trade off. More money for defence means less money for other things. Also, the more money that is created, the less it is worth. Therefore if all the new money goes into defence, effectively less money is available for other things than before the new money was created. Or have I missed something?
There’s no fixed limit. The limiting factor is inflation, but that depends on a number of factors, of which monetary supply is only one. Now, it’s the factor that the federal government has the most control over, so restricting monetary supply is (usually) a good lever for trying to reign in inflation. But the amount of money created by the federal government and its effect on the economy in, say, 1998 is quite different from the amount of money created by the federal government and its effect on the economy in 2009. So while there are limits on government spending, the relationship between a particular budgetary item like the military and another item, like spending on roadways, is indirect at best, and for it to be a strictly true statement that spending on military precluded spending on highways we’d need to be at or near the limit of federal spending before inflation was out of control, and we’re nowhere near that limit and haven’t been for a long time.
Basically, if the federal government is spending a lot on the military and wants to spend more money on highways, all it needs to do is create more money unless creating more money will cause out of control inflation, but there’s no evidence that we’re at that point. That could change, of course, and in Steve’s original example the true part is that as a political question getting more military spending usually involves some kind of legislative horse trading. But as an economic question it’s mostly false and is likely to reinforce the piggy bank theory of federal spending which is very commonly held and also very inaccurate.
The “for a long time” at the end of my first paragraph is admittedly a bit of hedging. I think that the answer is actually “and we haven’t ever tested those limits”, but I’d need to reread some information on the late 70s to make sure whether those circumstances apply to the point that I’m making. I don’t think that they do but I’m not totally positive, hence the hedging.
Economics is bewildering to me, so I don’t have too much to say about it from a technical standpoint. But, having listened to economists who come from various schools of thought and political views, to me, it seems like economics is not all that well understood.
Most of the things that they see as cause and effect seem to have mainly been understood only after the fact, which would be understandable if it were a new discipline, but by now, predictions should be a bit better. But I seen little agreement (consensus if you will) from the various camps.
My uneducated guess, is that there is a very strong component of irrationality of the common folk, who are driving certain aspects (stock prices, buying habits, whether sensible or not, levels of debt, whether sensible or not etc.) of economies, so that the dreaded ‘bubbles’, who everybody saw coming apparently (but only after the fact), arise to monkey wrench what was thought to be stable systems.
I do think the economists realize these wild card factors, but they really don’t like to discuss them too much aloud, as they are sort of ‘whistling past the graveyard’ so to speak.
This make economics the perfect political ‘football’ with which partisans can beat each other over the head, and use for populist campaigns, because, really, hardly anyone can sort out the facts, due to the high uncertainty,chaos, and the ability to cherry pick statistics from a wide range of data and long stretches of history that show different effects from the same economic policies.
Take all of that with a big grain of salt, but that’s what it looks like from a outsider’s perspective.
Economics is in the same boat as philosophy–pick a school of thought and defend it–facts be damned.
Actually, maybe tribalism and emotion has nothing to do with this. I think people are rational, but they often get their information from biased sources. And those sources are biased for the same reason.
tmac57, I’m not an economist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do try to read up on it from time to time. Still, take my comments with a grain of salt as well, given my lack of expertise. I’m also politically left-leaning, so while I try to adjust for my biases, it’s not impossible that I’m missing something. That said, I think that you’re right when you say that the economics profession has been politicized to its detriment. There are still professionals in the field trying to come up with models that are a better fit for the evidence that we have, but there is a lot of ideology that’s being pushed with an appeal to authority fallacy. Furthermore, I think that the worst offenders in this regard are from the supply-siders, whose predictions since 2007 have been by and large wildly off the mark but this bad performance has caused very little reevaluation of their beliefs.
I think that there’s some interesting back and forth going on between traditional Keynesian economists and the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) people. I don’t know that either have won the debate, but both make interesting points and have writers that seem interested in actual study of the issues.
MosBen- I agree with you that there are ernest economists who are interested in an intellectually honest debate in those two camps (maybe not limited to two). It’s mostly partisan pundits and politicians who muddy the water.
I listen to the podcast Econtalk hosted by Russ Roberts, a libertarian (but not fundamentalist) economist who seems to have a real desire to understand what is going on in economics as it affects our world, while acknowledging his own bias (most of the time). I find his interviews pretty enlightening, even when I think he’s wrong. He seems pretty honest.
I also enjoy the NPR Planet Money podcast for their ‘everyman’ approach to economic and money issues. They were a lifeboat during the 2008 financial crisis for me, as they tried to bring that complex fiasco in to a perspective that even an average person could follow.
It’s a mystery to me also. Want new highways, just print more money (provided inflation is in check). Wish I could do that. I suppose the injection of new money creates economic activity – more work for more people who then spend the money they earn providing more work for others. Australia avoided the recent recession by just this means – spending money to create more jobs to stimulate the economy. The money was spent on schools and free insulation in your home – and it worked (except for the unfortunate untrained workers who electrocuted themselves putting the insulation into ceilings).
As for the uncertainty of the science of ecomomics, in Australia economists have been predicting a collapse in housing prices for over ten years. The bubble is about to burst they say, it has to they say, property prices are way over-priced they say, but the prices just keep going up. I have a friend who sold his house on the strength of that prediction, put his money in the bank, and settled into a rented property. He is still waiting for that damn bubble to burst.
> # BillyJoe7on 03 Jan 2017 at 4:38 pm
> Ivan,
> That was a bad move.
> What does it say about you when people can’t tell your sarcasm from your motivated reasonin
Well, when I read what Ivan wrote I thought it is obviously sarcastic.
I think those that took it as a serious response need to think why it wasn’t
obvious for them.
Yahouda,
Congratulations for being so much more astute than the rest of us.
But I’m amazed that it isn’t obvious to you what the answer to your question is!
After all, I’ve practically spelled it out for you in the very bit you quoted.
😉
> # BillyJoe7on 05 Jan 2017 at 8:14 am
> Yehouda,
> Congratulations for being so much more astute than the rest of us.
> But I’m amazed that it isn’t obvious to you what the answer to your question is!
> After all, I’ve practically spelled it out for you in the very bit you quoted.
I don’t think it is being more astute.
I am actually interested in the answer to the question.
You seem to believe that it is because people cannot distinguish between Ivan’s
sarcasm and motivated reasoning, but these two look very very different. In particular,
I don’t remember Ivan ever suggesting that he think that economics is a hard and settle
science, as is message pretend to say.
He also used … in it, which should have warned you that it is not “straight text”.
Yeah, I read Ivan’s post as being pretty obviously sarcastic. His use of “deniers” and “pseudo-science” seemed to me to be pretty clearly referencing skeptic arguments, particularly relating to climate change. Now, it’s a silly point badly made, and I get the impulse to try to engage seriously with what he wrote (because that at least is more interesting that what he intended) but I thought that it was pretty obvious what he was doing.
tmac57, I really enjoy the Planet Money podcast as well, though I find that they have a pretty subtle conservative bias in how they talk about economics, and worse, they don’t seem to recognize it. For most issues their bias doesn’t play much of a role, and their good, clear writing more than makes up for it. But I occasionally find myself annoyed and talking back at them when they present an issue implicitly through the lens of conservative economic theory without explaining that that’s what they’re doing.
Yahouda,
Steven Novella was taken in by the sarcasm and steveA was partially taken in but he did add “or was that sarcasm”. My reaction was more like steveA’s, and more so after reading his “or was that sarcasm”. I’m pretty sure SN would have re-read Ivan’s post after reading steveA’s and concluded likewise. After all, he’s no idiot. So why the confusion over Ivan’s post. Probably because he has a habit of commenting on topics about which he is uniformed or misinformed, so that was sort of the default position on reading his post. There is also the tendency to skim over the posts of someone who is in the habit of writing uniformative and contrary posts, especially if you haven’t all the time in the world, but that is probably a mistake if you’re actually going to respond to it. But I still think it more a comment about Ivan, than anyone who didn’t catch his sarcasm.
Dr Novella,
“tb — the straw man often attacked by climate change deniers is that scientists are saying that all debate or discussion about climate change is over, the science is settled, and now it is dogma. That is nonsense. The consensus that emerged out of the last IPCC was that we are “95%” certain that AGW is happening. That means there is a 1/20 chance that conclusion is in error. That also means there is room for minority opinions that disagree with the consensus.”
I disagree with you. Global warming is happening: whether or not the cause is anthropogenic [the result of human activity], global warming [the tiny ratio of temperature rise in kelvin] pales into insignificance when compared to the profound future consequences of anthropogenic climate change.
Please, pretty please, desist from trivialising anthropogenic climate change. The huge long-term devastating anthropogenic increase in power transfer through Earth’s environment and its ecosystems is orders of magnitude beyond the tiny ratio of increasing AGW.
I would expect you, of all people, to properly understand this vital difference. AGW temperature variations do not, and cannot, convey the problem of anthropogenic climate change to many scientists, let alone laypersons. Why? Due to the latent heat of fusion and the latent heat of evaporation of water: both of which are extremely non-linear within the temperature ranges that are essential to many lifeforms on planet Earth.
NB: Water vapour is a much more powerful greenhouse gass than is the rising level of CO₂, which is causing the increasing emission of water vapour from the oceans!
Don’t worry too much about the short-hand version. It was sufficient in context. The conclusion was that it is 95% certain that climate change is happening, that almost all of it over the past fifty years has been anthropogenic, that the consequences for the climate is likely to be of a magnitude to require preventive action, and that the sooner preventive action takes place the less costly it will be and the more likely it will be successful in preventing a tipping point.
” We dig in our heels, and engage in motivated reasoning. We defend the core beliefs at all costs, shredding logic, discarding inconvenient facts, making up facts as necessary, cherry pick only the facts we like, engage in magical thinking, and use subjective judgments as necessary without any consideration for internal consistency. ”
Sounds like Trumputin’s default modus operandi