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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Lee McIntyre
Read between
February 21 - March 9, 2022
For all of their protests of skepticism, most conspiracy theorists are in fact quite gullible.
A more popular consensus seems to be that conspiracy theories are a coping mechanism that some people use to deal with feelings of anxiety and loss of control in the face of large, upsetting events.
The human brain does not like random events, because we cannot learn from and therefore cannot plan for them. When we feel helpless (due to lack of understanding, the scale of an event, its personal impact on us, or our social position), we may feel drawn to explanations that identify an enemy we can confront.
There is also the fact that many are attracted to the idea of “hidden knowledge,” because it serves their ego to think that they are one of the few people to understand something that others don’t know.
the point of science denial is to create a counter-narrative to challenge the scientific consensus on matters that clash with their preferred ideology.
The point is not to change the minds of actual scientists but instead to lobby for attention from the audience for scientific information, which often cannot tell one expert from another. The goal is to make it look like there is a debate, even when there isn’t one. When science seems equivocal, or a result looks controversial, denialists win.
It is a self-stoking cycle. The fake experts provide cherry-picked (or simply made-up) “evidence” that is used to question the consensus of scientific reasoning.
Scientific disputes begin to resemble political ones, in a war of “us against them.” Once the other team has been demonized sufficiently, it is easy to look for clues that—to a certain mind—might suggest a conspiracy, which further justifies reliance on one’s own experts as opposed to any other.
most basic to science denial reasoning include the following: straw man, red herring, false analogy, false dichotomy, and jumping to a conclusion.
The only people who insist that science must be perfect are those who have never done any science.
Given the nature of inductive reasoning, there will always be some residual uncertainty at the base of any scientific hypothesis.
No amount of evidence could possibly convince a science denier to believe something that they do not want to be true; they will insist on proof. Yet little evidence is needed to convince them that their own hypothesis is credible, for they trust their own sources.
In science, there is such a thing as “warrant,” which means that if there is enough evidence in a theory’s favor—and it has been rigorously tested to see if it can be refuted—then there is rational basis for believing it to be true even if we must always hold out the possibility that some future evidence may later overthrow it.
the concept of warrant is rooted in the idea that one’s belief in a scientific hypothesis is proportionate to the evidence in its favor.
The five tropes form a strategy that was deliberately created by those who had an interest in getting people to deny selected findings of science that threatened their beliefs. This was then copied in subsequent campaigns and used against different scientific findings, until it is now a battle plan that can be used to “fight the science” on just about any topic.
Science denial is not an error, it is a lie. Disinformation is intentionally created.
the executives of the largest tobacco companies joined forces and hired a publicist to devise a strategy. Fight the science, he advised. Manufacture doubt. Create as many reasons as you can for thinking that the scientists might be biased and telling only one side of the story. Then get your side out. Hire your own experts. Come up with your own “scientific” findings. Take out full-page ads in the popular press to call the scientists’ findings into question. Insist that any alleged link between smoking and lung cancer must be proven.
Motivated reasoning is a powerful psychological force, whereby we are more prone to look for information that backs up the things we want to believe, as opposed to facts that might cause us psychic discomfort.
We lie to ourselves as a means of more efficiently lying to others.
our beliefs and behavior are formed in a hothouse of self-opinion, as reflected back to us in the opinion of others.
our empirical beliefs are ripe for manipulation, whether from our own interests or someone else’s.
when exposed to ideas that threaten their beliefs, conservative partisans experience more activity in the amygdala (fear-based) part of their brain than liberals do.
There has been a decades-long, gradual erosion of trust in the scientific community among conservatives—but not liberals—since the 1970s.… This erosion of trust has coincided with the emergence of multiple scientific findings that challenge core conservative views, such as belief in the importance and beneficence of unregulated free markets.… In summary, the rejection of specific scientific evidence across a range of issues, as well as generalized distrust in science, appears to be concentrated primarily among the political right.
A conviction is a belief that takes on the mantle of commitment—a call to action—because it reflects our self-identity. It reflects the kind of person we aspire to be, and the kinds of groups and tribes we wish to belong to. That is why attacks on our convictions seem like attacks on our identity—because they are. But that is also why we often ignore evidence against our convictions; to give them up would be to change who we imagine ourselves to be.
the driving factor behind political polarization is not any of the “issues” we might think of as typically liberal or conservative but instead the mere fact of having a partisan label that gives one an identity.
the strength of a person’s affiliation with a political identity was a much greater predictor of how they felt about the “other side” than the ideological content that might lie behind the identity.
Is this perhaps why it is so hard to change a science denier’s mind with evidence, because in some sense the evidence isn’t really what their beliefs are about? The content of the belief may not be as important as the social identity it affords.
Science denial is not based on lack of evidence. Which means that it cannot be remedied just by providing more facts.
No amount of evidence is ever going to change the mind of a science denier, if we do not appreciate the role that their beliefs play in reinforcing their social identity.
to ask disconfirming questions like, “What facts or evidence would change your mind?”
Remember that when you challenge someone’s beliefs, you are challenging their identity!
Science deniers are not just ignorant of the facts but also of the scientific way of thinking. To remedy this, we must do more than present deniers with the evidence; we must get them to rethink how they are reasoning about the evidence. We must invite them to try out a new identity, based on a different set of values.
subjects who were the least informed tended to be the most confident that their views were correct.
The preservation of one’s identity, and the reduction of any cognitive dissonance that would threaten it, are two of the most foundational ideas in social psychology.
When we encounter information that is at odds with our preferred beliefs, it may cause us to hold those beliefs more strongly for a while, but anxiety eventually increases to the point where something has to give. If the negative information is bad enough—and repeated often enough—researchers hypothesized that we would eventually reach a tipping point at which we would accommodate the disconfirming information and update our beliefs.
Nyhan and Reifler are likely right that belief formation and change are not just a matter of having correct factual information, but of the emotional, social, and psychological context within which beliefs are formed.
The very fact that such an otherwise dry scientific issue as whether the Earth is warming has been made into a matter of partisan disagreement reflects the power of politics to shape empirical beliefs.
with the right motivation (and misinformation), even factual matters can be polarized. As a result, some truths can be made to threaten our identity or membership in a particular group.
It thus matters a great deal not just what the facts are but how they are presented and by whom. Can I trust the source? Do they have a political interest in showing that I am wrong?
how to convince people: keep emotions out of it, don’t attack, listen carefully, and always show respect.
providing no response to misinformation was the worst thing you could do; with no rebuttal message, subjects were more likely to be swayed toward false beliefs.
“people acquire their scientific knowledge by consulting with others who share their values and whom they therefore trust and understand.”
Perhaps the goal in talking to a science denier is not merely to give them the facts to make up their mind but to get them to trust scientists again.
if we are trying to convert the beliefs of a committed science denier, we must commit to the work of trying to change their identity—probably in person—by trying to build trust through a personal relationship.
It comes naturally to all of us to respond favorably to someone who listens, shows kindness, treats us well, and appears respectful.
to change someone’s beliefs we do not merely have to fill an information deficit but we have to try to reshape their identity.
Algorithms just show you more of what you’re already looking for. If you start searching anti-vaccination stories, that’s what starts popping up on your tagline. You start to think, “Oh, my God, there’s all these people and there’s so much going on.”
An analysis of over 2 million comments on the subreddit site r/conspiracy found that while only 5% of posters exhibited conspiratorial thinking, they were responsible for 64% of all comments. The most active author wrote 896,337 words, twice the length of the Lord of the Rings trilogy!
virtually every account I’ve read, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, or other ideologues who have changed their minds have done so on the basis of face-to-face encounters, where evidence was presented by someone with whom they had a trusting relationship. Kindness, empathy, and listening work. These are the keys to helping someone to change their beliefs because they are the route to helping them reshape their identity.
In a 2004 study, Naomi Oreskes examined all 928 papers on the topic of “global climate change” published between 1993 and 2003, and found that exactly none of them disagreed with the consensus scientific position on global warming.28 In a 2012 follow-up, James L. Powell found that of 13,950 peer-reviewed articles on climate change from 1991 to 2012, only twenty-four of them (0.17 percent) rejected the idea of global warming.29 In a 2014 update of 2,258 more articles, Powell found only one additional paper that challenged the scientific consensus on climate change.
