Denialism

In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event, when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality.

In the sciences, denialism is the rejection of basic facts and concepts that are undisputed, well-supported parts of the scientific consensus on a subject, in favor of radical and controversial ideas. The terms Holocaust denialism and AIDS denialism describe the denial of the fac
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How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason
The Death of Truth: How Social Media and the Internet Gave Snake Oil Salesmen and Demagogues the Weapons They Needed to Destroy Trust and Polarize the World – and What We Can Do About It
Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public
The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
Industrial-Strength Denial: Eight Stories of Corporations Defending the Indefensible, from the Slave Trade to Climate Change
Summary and Analysis of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer by Leopard Books (2016-03-21)
Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things
Summary and Analysis of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right: Based on the Book by Arlie Russell Hochschild (Smart Summaries)
Anti-Science and the Assault on Democracy: Defending Reason in a Free Society
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
The Triumph of Sociobiology
Beyond Contempt: How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide
Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition
The Epistemology of Fake News (Engaging Philosophy)
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh's Assault on Reason

Jared Diamond
Consider a narrow deep river valley below a high dam, such that if the dam burst, the resulting flood of water would drown people for a long distance downstream. When attitude pollsters ask people downstream of the dam how concerned they are about the dam’s bursting, it’s not surprising that fear of a dam burst is lowest far downstream, and increases among residents increasingly close to the dam. Surprisingly, though, when one gets within a few miles of the dam, where fear of the dam’s breaki ...more
Jared Diamond

Like any pseudo scientific thinking, denialism begins with a desired conclusion. Rather than supporting a controversial or rejected claim, like many pseudo sciences, denialists maintain that a generally accepted scientific or historical claim is not true, usually for ideological reasons. Denialists then engage in what is called motivated reasoning, rationalizing why the undesired claim is not true or at least not proven. They therefore are working backwards from their desired conclusion, filling ...more
Steven Novella

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