underlying assumptions

[gaiasdaughter]

I'm new to all of this so if I violate some protocol, please forgive.

I have watched all of the wonderingmind42 videos and found them highly informative and well-laid out. But then, I was convinced before I ever started. I've been concerned about global climate destabilization for decades. As sympathetic as I am, I still found one huge underlying assumption which I fear may be false. Greg is assuming that most people base their beliefs and opinions on logic and rational thought and that they can therefore be persuaded by logical and rational arguments. From my conversations with reasonably intelligent, college-educated, middle class Americans, the average Joe's beliefs and opinions are based on emotion and not thought at all. Most people don't even recognize and logical, rational thinking when they see it. Most people seem to base their opinions on wishes and fears and not much of anything else. People wish that global climate destabilization were not true so they grab any flimsy excuse to dismiss it. They want business as usual. Don't bother them with the facts, they simply aren't interested. So one can argue till one is blue in the face and relatively few will change their minds. If logic and rational thinking won't change peoples' minds, what will? Fear. If the warnings get loud enough and the warmers get vocal enough to instill fear in peoples' hearts, they will begin to listen. That's why skeptics are so quick to cry, 'alarmist;' it is the easiest way to deny that creepy fear that threatens to disrupt their status quo. Now being an alarmist when there is truly something to be alarmed about, as in this case, is a legitimate course of action and one that ought to be pursued, but it is not the only option. The other option is to appeal to peoples' wishes. We wish to be less dependent on foreign oil. We wish for high tech gadgets that save us money and make life easier. We wish for a clean, beautiful environment in which to raise our kids and live our lives. We wish for a robust economy. It's the carrot and the stick. Offer people a better way to live that will at the same time save them from any suppressed fears that the scientists may have gotten it right after all. Don't stop arguing with the skeptics, but don't assume that arguments will necessarily win them over. People are how they are and they are not going to change just because we wish they would.

[agingtree]

Welcome to this discussion, gaisdaughter,

I agree with your perception that most people form their opinions from their life experiences and emotions, and then grab at whatever "logic" supports their views.

But I do not agree with you that fear is the better option. Fear tends to make people regress to old options that did not work, but are familiar. I think we can make a much stronger case for helping people connect with their own vision and deepest hope.

My underlying assumption is that what looks like "greed for unending amounts of stuff" is at heart an ineffective effort to fill an emptiness that is the basic human hunger for better connections with each other and with nature. This is based on Maslow's hierarchy of human needs and Rosenberg's concept of nonviolent communication (cnvc.org) If the most basic life energy is for collaboration and a meaningful life, then that should be the most useful energy to activate. What world do we want to give to our grandchildren? Or connection with nature - as those in deep ecology would say - Not that I must save the rainforest because it is my moral duty, but that I am a creature who evolved in the rainforest for hundreds of millions of years. I am an extension of the rainforest - I must save myself.

I am interested in hearing other opinions on this. aging tree

[gaiasdaughter]

Aging tree, thank you for your thoughtful response. One of the reasons I joined this forum is that it gives me the opportunity to clarify my own thinking through dialogue such as this one. In rereading my post, I realize I was not entirely clear. I did not intend to suggest that creating fear is the better way to approach the issue of global climate destabilization, I was just making an observation. People, or at least the ones I know, seem to base their opinions mostly on wishes and fears rather than rational thought. I'm not saying this in a critical manner, I'm just coming to it as a realization. I've been arguing the facts for years and it hasn't made a dent. Now I understand why. And now that I understand where people are coming from, maybe I can communicate more effectively and with less frustration on both sides. While I'm not advocating fear mongering, neither am I going to shy away from presenting the very real consequences of continuing a course of no action. The people I know are all loving, caring parents yet they are, in their cavalier dismissal of the very real threat of global climate destabilization, leaving a legacy of hardship to their children, their grandchildren, and their great grandchildren. I've always thought we should leave the world a better place than we found it, and in that mission, my generation has failed woefully. It doesn't have to be that way. So I am suggesting that we be pragmatic about all this while there is still time. I am suggesting that many people out there are not going to be swayed by facts and logic because they don't base their opinions on facts or logic. They are skeptics not because they have researched the issue and found evidence to support their thinking, but because they don't want it to be true. If their beliefs are to be changed, they will need to be persuaded through their emotions and not their minds. Showing them that the world could be a better place is an option I highly recommend, but I think we also need to show them what could happen if we continue on this course of non-action.
Respectfully, gaiasdaughter

[Tempest Stormwind]

A bit of theory, if you will.

There are three types of rhetoric, according to Aristotle: pathos (appeal to emotion), ethos (technically translated as 'appeal to authority', but more appropriately it's an appeal to moral competence or expertise), and logos ('appeal to reason' is a fair enough translation).

A quick summary:

• Ethos involves showing that you've done your research and are qualified to speak on the subject; it also involves showing that you are fair-minded without vested interests, and/or you have everyone's best interests at heart. I can argue that Gandhi is the best example of this that everyone knows. (You may note that this is the criteria Greg uses for forming his "credibility spectrum"; that is more or less ethos' exact purpose.)
• Pathos involves stirring the audience's emotions. This is arguably the least defensible of the three, but also the one with the most potential for motivation, particularly if the speaker's naturally charismatic. It's interesting to note that both Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous I Have A Dream speech and the vast majority of Hitler's oratory are almost pure pathos, and look at how those influenced their listeners. An argument without pathos is a dry argument that tends to avoid lingering in memory; good teachers manage to mix in pathos to dry topics to try to circumvent this. (Physics teachers are notorious for this; projectile motion calculation becomes so much more *real* if the teacher brings in a catapult.)
• Logos is the easiest of the three to defend: as the name implies, it's based around logical axioms and reasoning. Since it's based around formal logic and objective data, it's nearly impossible to refute, although it's typically used sparingly when speaking to lay people (it's much more common amongst peers with similar backgrounds). Logos is the preferred method of practically all scientific reports, which is partially why they're so hard to follow by lay people. In theory, scientific reports try to avoid even ethos; the classic example is Einstein, who was literally a nobody (no publications = low ethos) until he published his five "miracle year" papers, which passed muster on their logos alone. (In practice, ethos does matter -- this is why the Royal Society and Science are so much more authoritative than the "Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine" and Energy & Environment.)

There is no 'best' one of these (although some have argued that without ethos, there can be no persuasion; I'd be inclined to believe this, but I leave arguing about it to the philosophers). Ideally, you want a combination of the above: Ethos demonstrates your expertise and motives, logos enhances this and fortifies your position against critics, while pathos delivers the argument powerfully enough to breach even the most cynical shell.

Your argument amounts to a subset of this: People prefer pathos and shun logos. In a more general (and accurate) form, it would be: Logos doesn't reach as many laypeople as effectively as pathos. This is correct -- however, that doesn't mean you should avoid logos. In fact, the typical denialist arguments are a combination of attempts at ethos and a flood of pathos, often in defiance of logos, for precisely this reason. (For example, Tim Ball inflates his credentials and hides his oil funding to establish ethos, and then makes pathos-ridden statements that "sound good" ('global warming stopped in 1998', 'it's just a THEORY', and so on), all the while ignoring that the relevant facts destroy all pretense of logos that he had.) This is why skeptical arguments are easy to destroy but tend to linger for so long -- low logos, high pathos, illusion of ethos.

The Most Terrifying Video had a strong element of pathos to it (not the least of all being its name), which may be why it went viral in the first place, but lacked the logos to back it up. How It All Ends has the logos, but shifted the focus to ethos (these two together lead to the argument's robustness). What it has left for pathos shows up in the 'skeptics' videos.

Your suggestion is valid, then: Amp up the pathos. The trick is trying to figure out a way to do this in under 10 minutes.

Out of curiosity, though, have you seen Operation: Saturation? He seems to be trying to do just this.

[gaiasdaughter]

Wow, I love this forum! It's wonderful to have the opportunity to discuss issues in an intelligent, informed manner -- and I really appreciate the thorough responses.

What started this line of thought for me was Greg's suggestion that we email his video link to ten friends. I mentally reviewed the people I know and could not come up with ten who would take the time to view even one of the videos. I couldn't come up with five! The two or three that might be interested are already convinced and don't need further persuasion.

Over the last few years, I've been really frustrated with the total lack of concern that I've personally encountered. This past year, I have found only three people who were willing to discuss the issue at all; the others just rolled their eyes and walked away. Now understand that I had only mentioned global warming casually. It's not that I had been hammering away at every opportunity. What discouraged me most was that the three who did engage in a discussion seemed to be pulling their opinions from thin air: "I've been hearing about it all my life and it hasn't happened yet, so I doubt it will," "they said we're running out of oil and we haven't; they're always predicting things that aren't true," "nobody knows what's going to happen in the future and even if it's true, it's too late to do anything." I spent a lot of time just listening to these people because I genuinely wanted to understand their thinking. But their thinking didn't make any sense and they couldn't see that. Now all three of these people are college-educated and two of them are engineers. And they are the ones who would at least discuss this issue and not walk away. So the question I've been asking myself over and over is how can smart people be so stupid? What makes them think they, who know nothing about the subject at all, have a better understanding of a complex issue than the scientific experts who have been studying this problem for decades? It was this frustration that led me to the conclusion that people, at least the ones I know, base their opinions on wishful thinking and not rational thought. If they are not thinking rationally, then rational arguments will not change their minds.

All right. So my population sample is statistically minute in the extreme. But my guess is that these people are more typical of your average Joe than those who debate this issue online. Those who debate the issue, pro or con, are at least engaged enough to offer arguments to support their opinions. Remember Greg's little action figures he used in one of the videos? He had Information Warrior versus The Skeptic with average Joe listening to the arguments as they went back and forth. Greg is assuming that average Joe will stick around long enough to hear the debate and not roll his eyes and walk away at the opening salvo. He is also assuming that average Joe recognizes an irrational argument when he hears one. I am sure there are people out there that do listen and do recognize folly when they hear it. I'm just wondering how to get through to the average Joes that walk away. I am afraid that there are enough walk-away Joes in this world that we can't win this debate without them.

Any ideas?

[Clementine]

I think the goal of the exchange is not to debate the science of climate change (if they want it, the information is out there), but to be part of a critical mass of believers who are weaving the concern of this issue into discourse.

So, in that instance, I would echo your thought about the fear factor, but turn it more on the idea that if enough people are talking about climate instability then, there must be something to it. But, really, "Climate change" just sounds so damn nice - especially in the winters of my locale.

Even for people that face the issue head on everyday through communications and institutional changes, it is really difficult to grasp the scope of the problem...the consequences.

The IPCC have conceded that if the international community were to meet Kyoto reduction targets today, we will still see a warming of .5 degrees by 2025. From that point feedback loops are left to the imagination in terms of the degree of certainty for climate conditions thereafter.


With this sort of information pointing at such an ecological crisis, it almost seems to me at times....should we not be doing more than merely talking? While Greg did.. and many others, and organizing is great and essential like here on this forum, it pales in contrast to it's intended purpose - to steer off a full fledged collapse.

But as the message stands, do we as a society have the luxury to organize to the degree that is required? This not wanting to damage the economy is literally killing us. But who's economy is this? There seems to be more concern for lattes than for lives even in the most conscientious of circles.

And as much as Ghandi has become an icon for social justice and environmental sustainability, he had to leave behind the most basic comforts to spread that message. I don't even see the greatest advocates willing to really sacrifice those comforts. Those who can live almost arrogantly boasting that they are doing what they can - drivin' the hybrid, installing geothermal, buying organic, all of which average people cannot afford.

On Vancouver Island, British Columbia, a beautiful Old Growth Forest was saved in 1996 ( I could be a couple of years off) Not because people tried to explain away the purpose of preservation, but because they acted on it. They stood in front of bull dozers day after day.

Okay, so that is Green Peace style. But that is bold. And from what I have seen people want bold.

If you are warning them of a problem such as is with the spoken magnitude of Climate Change - I think you gotta be prepared to back it up. Perhaps I have been getting too many news feeds, but asking people to wander around like Macbeth, with oil mixed blood on the hands is one thing - getting them to see this:

"Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out.
Do something.
You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet."
~ Carl Sagan

Is another.

[776281]

It seems so many people are not aware of global warming in any meaningful way. The media seem to downplay the issue, record summer Arctic ice melts last year rated a tiny article in the middle of the paper ( here at least anyway).

The science is out there? Just when will the Arctic be ice free in summer 2080, 2040, 2015, 2012 every time I see a new estimate it gets closer and closer. At this rate when will the Arctic be effectively ice free in winter?

Tempest stormwind doesn't appear to want us to discuss the science, but if we don't discuss the science how do we recognize the bulls@@. The scientists talk in ways I don't understand, the media services talk to us as though we are 2 years old.

Wouldn't this be an ideal forum to discuss the science to test and improve our understanding.

[Tempest Stormwind]

You misunderstand -- we should talk science. We just need to be aware that science alone gets relegated to the middle pages because it's not going to reach people.

You'll note WM42's vids, for instance, encourage thinking for yourself and finding evidence on all sides (an ethos statement), but contain primers on the science (the logos I mentioned). The videos are so effective because they have the ethos -- but that only works with the proper logos.

The only time I would advocate for *not* speaking science is if we hit an area we don't understand -- and that's more about academic honesty than anything else.

[776281]

There are so many holes in our collective knowledge, and so many more in mine.
Things are changing, our knowledge is changing and the available data is increasing. It is sometimes hard to work out what has changed, what is happening or what we understand of what is happening.

Alternative reliable sources give different answers to the same question. The speed of sound in the stratosphere is constant, the speed of sound in the stratosphere increases with height.

The climate/weather theory of today has many differences from the theory of 10 years ago. When I know something is different and see a change in the theory, it is too easy to reach the conclusion that the reality has changed not just the theory (of course maybe it has)

Scientists sometimes seem to take forever to come up with the blindingly obvious. Although better that, than accept what everybody knows when everybody is wrong.

By discussing what I think I understand, I get a grip on what I really do understand. The framework of my knowledge is sometimes on shaky ground, sometimes it is hard to tell what is solid and what is not.

[zephyrr]

Let's be clear - *we* are not in a position to influence the large majority of "ordinary joes". We don't need to tune our message to them, because we don't have their attention anyway. The only thing that can reach the masses on an issue like this (which people naturally resist, so it's hard to go mass viral) is the mass media. We just are not going to *directly* reach the majority no matter how we refine our message - logos, ethos, or pathos. This forum would be ecstatically happy with 10,000 readers - but it's not going to reach 100,000,000. The YouTube videos are a notch better - but still will reach only a really tiny fraction of the population.

Far smaller than the number of people who believe that Elvis is still alive, most likely :-/

Noam Chomsky used to make the point that the then Soviet Union was amazed at the efficacy of western control of dissent. There is no need here for police to barge in and arrest people printing up leaflets that dispute the official story; here the activists usually can be allowed to do as much peaceful agitating as they like, so long as the evening news frames the events of the world in ways that keep the majority in line (within an acceptable envelope). The internet has since only chewed strongly at the edges of that dynamic, not overturned the paradigm entirely. Fox news is still *far* more important to mass opinion than all the GCC forums combined.

So what CAN we do? A key word in describing our limitations in reaching the masses was "directly"; we need to work for indirect influence. We can potentially influence opinion leaders and makers. We can help persuade some of the people who do have larger bully pulpits than we do, who can reach the 100,000 and the 1,000,000 and upward. It doesn't even have to be in one step - sometimes we will reach more of the intermediate level influencers who can reach higher level ones.

This is not to discount the consideration of pathos/ethos/logos, just to focus that our target at this time is not the average joe, but the people who *can* influence the average joe. Including some people who are *relatively* more susceptible to logos and ethos than joe average is. None of us (present company included) is as rational was we'd like to think, and pathos is a big part of almost everybody's psyche to be honest - but the proportions do vary, and some of the key players do listen to logos as part of the mixture.

Think of journalists, teachers, politicians, bloggers, academics, govt employees (planners), etc. At all levels - the city water planner, the jr college economics instructor, the city alderman, the high school science teacher count (to pick some non-random examples). Obviously we also want to influence high level folks - presidents and anchormen and big CEOs - if we happen to have enough access to influence them.

Gaiadaughter's point is really crucial here tho. Let me focus that a bit more. The assumption that wm42 presents that we need to rethink is the model that we can expect to use viral type exponential growth to get the message out - you tell ten friends who tell ten friends who tell ten friends and in no time we'll have millions. The model is that each infected host will spread its essential memes to 10 others. In practice, we know the multiplier is far smaller than that, often less than one.

This message is not an epidemic sweeping a highly susceptible population with no immunity; the population are already HIGHLY resistant. Virtually everybody has been exposed to a weakened or variant form of these memes and has developed strong emotional and intellectual antibodies already. Some of that is about the FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) factor spread by denialists. A lot is just several flavors of overwhelm (information and emotional and empathy and adrenaline) and increasing distrust of all authorities. Some is anti-rationalism and magical thinking.

We need to overcome that resistance among opinion leaders, and then let them influence the deciders and the masses. They are good at that, we are not.

I know this goes against the populist model dear to many of us (me included) of hoping for a mass movement from the bottom forcing the leaders at the top to make a change. (... and eventually the leaders will follow). But seeing the world as it is rather than as we'd like it to be is one of our key tools, right? I'm saying that we need to focus our limited efforts more on the middle and top of the memetic pyramid, rather than the broad base.

Some of that base will begin coming along too, as the message gets out.

By the way, I don't mean that we ignore the "hoi polloi". Many of our leaders will come from ordinary folks rather than the top of academia or industry - like the young alderman, or me or you or wm42. But they will be self-selected rather than typical - and they will often come from the minority who DO pay attention to logos. So logos isn'nt wasted just because it doesn't reach the majority directly.

It's not that our message doesn't reach anybody, it's that (as gaiasdaughter points out), it's not going to (directly) reach MOST of the ordinary folks, so that should not be our criteria of success. We do need the support of the relative few it does reach tho. Reaching even 1% of them would greatly swell our ranks!

More on this later.