Via The Corner, something I always knew deep down, but never had succinctly coalesced into a single paragraph.
In 1999, Cass Sunstein wrote an article in the Harvard Law Review entitled “The Law of Group Polarization.” Its thesis was simple:
In a striking empirical regularity, deliberation tends to move groups, and the individuals who compose them, toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by their own predeliberation judgments. For example, people who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion, to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm; people who believe that global warming is a serious problem are likely, after discussion, to insist on severe measures to prevent global warming. This general phenomenon — group polarization – has many implications for economic, political, and legal institutions. It helps to explain extremism, “radicalization,” cultural shifts, and the behavior of political parties and religious organizations; it is closely connected to current concerns about the consequences of the Internet; it also helps account for feuds, ethnic antagonism, and tribalism.
I suppose this explains why extreme measures such as erecting thousands of expensive and sometimes operating windmills that blight the landscape, are often attractive to the global warming movement.
Imagine the howling if somebody wanted thousands of natural gas well derricks on the same plot of land in California, yet they would produce far more energy and help far more people, at a lower cost.
Oblique low-altitude aerial photo of wellpads, access roads, pipeline corridors and other natural-gas infrastructure in the Jonah Field of western Wyoming’s upper Green River valley. Photographer: Bruce Gordon, EcoFlight – Image via Flickr
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There is an asymmetry between liberal and conservative thinking, I find: conservatives tend to take the view that their viewpoint results from factual information and therefore needs to be learned, while liberals assume their views are somehow natural and innate. This not only absolves them from the need to do research in order to maintain or defend their views, it also allows them to regard anyone not sharing those views as ‘corrupted’ or ‘bought’. They are the Chosen Tribes, and all the others have fallen away. The parallels with fundamentalist religious beliefs are obvious.
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AndyG55 says:
August 18, 2012 at 8:18 pm
Tim Minchin says:
August 18, 2012 at 7:03 pm
why is Atwood allowed to troll?
Because we all need someone to laugh at. Laughter is good !!!
Isn’t that the sole purpose of warmist trolls? to inject a sense of idiocy and stupidity.. and give us someone to laugh at ?
}
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Yes laughter is good but there is a more important reason. It’s called FREEDOM. Freedom to speak your mind and be heard without fear of being destroyed. Exactly what Anthony and his moderators allow.
To my mind tribalism WAS a very important phase in the evolution of the human race. It gave the group power to survive together where the individual would fail. Tribalism then evolved into various other forms of power structures which became even more effective at allowing communities to survive. The modern problem really started when armies became so powerful that they could destroy whole tribes or racial groups reaching the pinnacle of tyranny with the atomic bomb capable of destroying the whole human race!
We have to find better ways to solve problems and move forward… I submit that one mechanism that allows this is called the Internet. Anthony et al are leading the way… and finding truth wherever possible is the imperative.
Fundamentally, I think the idea can be related to optimization theory, where it is well established that a function which is defined on a closed set achieves its maximum or minimum either within the interior of the set, or on the boundary. Social interactions tend toward a stationary point. If there is no stationary point, no zero slope value to what I will call the group preference function within the closed set, then the group tends to the boundary.
Well meaning people who think life would be peachy if they could just get rid of the political opposition should take this as precautionary. If you could eliminate the opposition, then the extremists within your own Party, who want to go much further to the extremes than you, would push everyone to those extremes in an ineluctable dynamic.
This is related to Frayn’s Law (first mentioned in one of his early novels – The Tin Men perhaps).
It states:-
“The more that members of a group insist on their diffferences (“what bunch of real characters we are!”) the more similar they seem to outsiders.”
Larry in Texas says:
August 18, 2012 at 7:20 pm
“Is that picture ever UGLY! Reminds me of what Spindletop used to look like back in 1901.”
Here is Spindletop 1901 and 1903:
http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/history/spindletop/spindletop.html
There are some more pictures of early oil fields here: http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/history/pennsylvania/triumph_hill.html (1871)
“Triumph Hill held the highest density of wells in the Oil Regions. In this photograph alone, more than 100 derricks can be counted. These wells produced hundreds-of-thousands of barrels of the purest oil in the region. This photograph is an excellent example of the overproduction of many fields in the area. Years later, it was discovered that putting wells too close together actually decreases the amount of oil that can be taken from the ground.”
All the forgoing confirms that there is little evidence of polarisation here.
Interesting thing is, this debate presents a huge opportunity for study by sociologists etc, but all that seems to appear is sycophantic rubbish about “deniers” and how to “enlighten” them.
I guess, no research funding is available for anything else.
Any consensus? (I know – another useful term that’s been corrupted.)
“The majority here like WUWT ;o)”
“Those that remain unconvinced that a doubling of CO2 necessarily results in global scale catastrophe.”
“The majority here like that the data is presented to the best of the article writer’s abilities and strong presentation of real world data contradicting a position leads to a correction of conclusion rather than a banning of a poster.”
Not bad for a start. There are also the ” … world reknown physicists, engineers and statisticians … ”
Yep. Would be interesting to get an idea of the range of skills represented here. Others have said that over 100 scientific and technical disciplines are relevant to the study of “climate”.
People ask me (usually with a sneer if they are believers): “Are you an [expert on climate][climate scientist]” etc. Not easy to answer, In my former workplace, it was common for me to be confronted with “They-told-me-to-ask-you-cos-you-know-everything”. Eg “expert” as someone who knows more than you do, and if they don’t know the answer they know where to find it.
The answer I give to the climate question is something like “In what context? If the context is “climate” then – “no”. If the context is eg Mr/Ms XXX currently advising the government on climate matters, then the answer is “yes”.
daveburton, just quickly:
“Do you think those are the two “extremes,” DaveA? Really?”
No, but I did choose what I thought might be common viewpoints of those who sit at the extremes, to illustrate the point.
“…not merely ineffectual, but beneficial?”
The term effecutal is not qualitative i.e. doesn’t imply good or bad. If you think it is beneficial then you think it is effectual (effecting).
Maybe he means that the JAXA satellite’s being down for months means that people have switched to using the NSIDC satellite for the chart most frequently referenced. That’s what happened at Intrade, for instance.
I think this said it better…….. Birds of a feather, flock together.
In essence that is all that paper says…. I agree with it. But we knew it already.
Bruce Atwood says:
August 18, 2012 at 6:52 pm
Yup. That’s why deniers should read some of the actual research reports, instead of simply believing Fox.
Hi Bruce, I’m in the UK so no Fox here. I ended up at WUWT after looking at the IPCC report in 2007, and the hockey stick, and hearing people blaming all global warming on carbon dioxide (and anthropogenic carbon dioxide at that) … my bullsh!tometer went off the scale.
(I have a combined honours degree in geology and biology, by the way, in case you were thinking of characterising me as an ignorant sheep 😉 )
Hang in there, Tim Minchin. We cannot let the voices of the Closed Society win over Open Society and enlightenment values of free speech and rule of law for all.
And do more to lower Co2 emissions than building even more near useless windmills.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/18/mcintyres-talk-in-london-plus-the-uks-tilting-at-windmills-may-actually-increase-co2-emissions-over-natural-gas/
I’m going to assert the unpopular idea that the thesis is broken.
It may well be true for many folks. Perhaps even most. But there is one kind of person for whom it is not true. People like me.
I’m a “High functioning Aspe”. (Think ‘sort of a Sheldon from Big Bang Theory’ but without the ego crap.)
I’m in the camp that started off believing in AGW and “wanted to learn more”; but the more I learned the more it was just “wrong”.
While the typical person has a high social need strength and need for acceptance, I gave up on those long long ago. So I don’t care what my “peer group” has to say (and non-peers don’t even get to the question phase).
“The truth just is. -E.M.Smith”.
Due to that no amount of ‘pre conception’ nor any amount of ‘peer belief’ does squat. A proposition is either correct and demonstrable, or it is not.
I suspect one will find many more of “my type” on the sceptic side and many more of the type described in the article on the AGW side (simply because those who care about what their ‘reference group’ thinks will have had more exposure to AGW peer pressure and succumbed.)
Basically: I didn’t even KNOW there was a “sceptic” side when I decided AGW was bunk. Only later did I find WUWT and discover “I was not alone”… There was no group of folks with whom I had positive feedback. ( In fact, I started at a Warmer site and mostly got ridiculed for asking reasonable questions. Things like “If A is true then B can’t be true, and you say both are true. Isn’t that a problem?) I was just ‘seeking understanding’ and instead got abuse.
But I’m used to having folks not like my opinions and don’t need any “other” to confirm them to “feel good”. So I clearly fall outside the paradigm of the article. So does an existence proof of one invalidate the thesis?….
Oddly, it was someone tossing mud on the Warmer site ( before I had a clue who was whom ) who said something disparaging about a simple question and said I must be reading that WUWT crap that lead me to a web search that led me to this site. I figured if I had an idea that WUWT (whatever it was) had already explored I could likely be more efficient by reading the Q&A there and ‘catching up’… The rest, as they say, is history.
I started doing A/B compares of points raised on each site type vs what I knew of science and reality. The “disconnect errors” started stacking up pretty fast on the AGW side. WUWT regularly presented both sides and a clear test of each… And I learned more here.
So am I “polarized’? Not at all. Some things I accept, some I reject, in strong accord withe the scientific method. Nothing more. So I fully accept that we’ve warmed ( a lot ) from 1750. But reject that CO2 did it. I fully accept that thermometers show warming in the last 40 years. (But find most of it due to tarmac at airports and PDO phase) Why? Because someone talked at me? Nope. Because that is where the evidence leads. It ties up the most loose ends.
This is in clear conflict with the article thesis…
So “why?” comes to mind.
It is possible that as an Aspe (even if marginal and ‘high function’) I’m just not ‘tuned in’ to the social cues and dynamics of The Crowd. That I’m just not a party to “Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds.” It’s also possible that I’m “just wrong” in how I’ve read the data ( though that is highly unlikely given the nature of high function Aspe folks). It’s also possible that I’m self delusional on the point (though the data argue otherwise….)
In the end, I’d suggest that those NOT well trained in the Scientific Method; and those NOT of the Aspe sort, are much more vulnerable to the “social pressure” model of the article; but that many of us are not so afflicted. I’d also assert that more of “us” are on the Skeptic side precisely because we are less subject to the various coercions of “peer pressure” and propaganda and “attack the messenger” and …
Maybe we’re just “broken” or “tone deaf” on those social issues. (Wouldn’t be the first time). Or maybe we’re just pig headed (not the first time there, either). But what’s clearly NOT the case is that someone nattering in my ear lead me to be “polarized’ due to some preconception. My ‘preconception’ was that global warming was real, well proven, and seriously needed addressing so I’d better study up. It was only later that I realized “things didn’t add up” and there were “issues” to sort out. (Then even later to realize that it was Big Issues and a whole lot of bunk, some of it peer reviewed.)
Over the years I’ve seen several other folks post similar epiphany stories.
So I reject the notion that where you end up is where you started, only more so. It simply isn’t true for me.
Sreve says
“It explains why you use Distance-compressed shot of antique wind chargers to misreport the ones erected today.”
And probably also why warm mongers like yourself use shots of cooling towers with wisps of steam when they froth on about poisonous CO2.
I think higley7 is much closer to the truth than Cass Sunstein.
Cass Sunstein has not been one of the people I have trusted to tell me the truth up to now. I’m reluctant (skeptical) to buy into his view of the world now. striking empirical regularity perhaps to him. Perchance that is the dynamic of the groups he hangs out with?
Do you want a more succinct paragraph? “This is politics. That means Money, Power, Ego, and Sycophants for as long as we can keep the music playing and the opposition off-balance.”
I disagree with Sunstein’s statement. And I disagree on the basis of considerable evidence from WUWT itself.
Many if not most people here were, once, warmists. They didn’t polarize, they changed sides on closer perusal of the evidence.
However. The element of truth in Sunstein is that most people hate to be seen to be wrong. Better to stick with a group that says “yes you are right” than think for oneself. Problem is, under challenge, extremists who really hate being “in the wrong” take the floor in the group more and more, and find more and more plausible arguments (vide Naomi Oreskes, Skeptical Science, “failed Pres” Al Gore), and middle-of-the-road lukewarmers find themselves drawn into the brownshirts’ web.
I was once a warmist, but changed, on the basis of evidence – lost many friends but felt better inside myself. But since becoming a “climate skeptic” I’ve come to doubt even items that are generally held proven / sacrosanct here – like CO2 as even causing the supposed 33°C warming over black-grey-body temperature. Graeff showed me, with theory and evidence that knocks the socks off IPCC science, that it is gravity/pressure, plus sunshine – but that’s for another day.
Henry Clark:
Precisely! It was Michael Chricton who pointed out that environmentalism is an exact remapping of Judeo-Christian concepts of sin, the Fall, salvation, redemption and the coming Apocalypse.
I am also very wary of groupthink and the group dynamic. Most people are unaware that their beliefs are shaped largely by the group they identify with.
The reality is very simple.
Society in the West, particularly in the UK and US, is institutionalised jousting. Nothing can be done without adversarial activity, from the law courts to politics to sport (the only suitable place for it in the main) to educational theory to the best way to do agriculture to, of course, science and, in particular, climate science.
The rules are that the winning side gets the spoils and the losers get nothing.
As a result, it is strongly against anyone’s interests to change their viewpoint in any way because the other side use it to secure political and financial advantage.
The other major reason is the media and the mechanisms of communication.
There is not one single place in UK media where truthful, unbiased reporting takes place. The printed Press is in the main far right wing, with a couple of exceptions, whereas the TV is closer to the centre but referred to by the right wing press as liberal leftie claptrap, in particular the BBC. Where climate science is concerned, they have a point. Where sport is concerned, gambling heists and freebie tickets is actually the raison d’etre. That always appeared to me to be Wall Street-style mafioso criminality, but there we are.
So imagine you are a young person who starts reading the Daily Telegraph each day, knowing little about quite how distorting and biased its coverage of everything is. Some of it converges with truth, much of it does not. But all of it has an overt drive to the glorification of tax avoiding very rich people.
Imagine you take someone else who starts reading the Independent each day, knowing little about quite how distorting and biased its coverage of everything is. Some converges with truth, much of it does not. But all of it has an overt drive to say that the cause of all evil are white conservative men.
Now you try and put the young person filled with climate nonsense up against the person who’s source of climate information is Christopher Booker. What you get is a girl who wants a horny, hunky football player to screw her being offered a bespectacled, somewhat wimpy nerd. Do you think she’ll stay with him for the night or will she look around the disco and latch onto what she fancies a bit more of??
When you are young, you see, you have to take positions or become a schizophrenic. You can become Jesus or the Pope if you want, but you won’t have kids that way, the way we structured our societies. You have kids by being decisive and finding niches where you can be supported being decisive, even if what you believe in is a bit off with the fairies.
Socialists go and work as aid workers to confirm their piety and how awful living in Africa is. The brash competitive right winger goes and trades derivatives, confirming to himself that gambling on a nation’s prosperity is what becoming rich is all about. You think that socialist would trade derivatives? The big swinging dick do charidee before they’re a multimillionaire?? Get real.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is what you need to look at on a population basis.
Until you have a generation not in need of validation, polarisation will continue to occur.
If you ever got a generation who had 18 years of love, support, nurturing and encouragement, you’d find things would pan out different.
I’m not holding my breath that it’ll happen any time soon though.
I’m sure those oil fields in Texas and Alberta look just as attractive as the wind farms above.
REPLY: Yes, but as one of our resident greens, you’d protest against the oil fields and not the wind farms, which is the point. Our next story may warm your heart. I’ll bet you’ll like it. – Anthony
I would also add that the individuals who are more radical within such groups also tend to be promoted, making the groups more radical again. In other words, there is selection pressure amongst individuals within such groups which further increases group polarisation. This is a very widespread social phenomenon, and it isnt in the slightest related to scientific data or external reality.
This is also a significant reason as to why e.g. dictators arise, they are the simply the more radical, internally selected, individuals of such group polarisation dynamics. And of course once the power structures have been established by the internally selected radicalisation, their subjects then tell them what they want to hear, in order to maintain their standing and to promote themselves within such group dynamics, increasing the trend towards more and more radicalisation. In the end you get megalomaniacs who think they can attack any country and always win, like Hilter, or the current North Korea regime (which has said it would beat the US in a war 100 times over). They tend towards a total departure of reality.
Internally selected radicalisation shows up in many social circles; religious groups, political groups, scientific groups. Someone like Tim Fannery, the Australiam Climate commisioner, got the job not because he was smarter or more scientific than anyone else, but because he was more radical. Many moderates who are more correct, would not get the job.
It is a tragedy in the human social condition, that the individuals who are more moderate, less extreme, and more insightful, often are filtered out of an internally self-reinforcing social process that tends to promote the more radical individuals over the more scientifically correct or those who simply have the more common sense.
And this is also a reason that science and politics don’t mix very well, it is almost inevitable that at some point scientific ideas will be promoted to the forefront of human enquiry because it is more radical than another idea, but less true than another idea.
TimC says:
August 18, 2012 at 8:51 pm
OK – so we know that groupthink produces positive feedback, reinforcing the natural direction of travel of the group (Matt Ridley’s essay gave plenty of examples in Anthony’s earlier thread “Apocalypse Not: I love the smell of skepticism in the morning”).
But are there any known findings on lapse rates – the half-life (rate of dissipation) of this kind of falsely produced groupthink? That would be really interesting too …
************************************************************************************************************************
Unfortunately there is no half life. Sure some leave, some become weaker but the majority find someone or something to blame or live in hope. It’s not until the tribe becomes extinct when the idea dies. If the tribe has been formed around an object then it is not until the object is destroyed then the tribe will die.
As an example and I am sure many will not agree with this. In the bible, when Joshua entered Canaan, he and Israel were told to destroy ALL the people that lived there. If they had done as they were told they would have killed all the ideology of the existing peoples. However they left people groups around and those ideologies infected Israel.
As another example of the opposite. Most people agree that English football fans are fairly tribal. Even if their team gets relegated many fans stay with that team. It is not until their team folds that the hardcore group (tribe) is dissipated. In other words the object of their tribalism has ended.
Just a thought or two.
A lot of this discussion ignores the fact that Truth is a reality, and continues to be True even if, for some reason, it becomes unpopular. It just sits there, staring people in the face, unable to back down because it is what it is: The Truth.
One reason people put aside their own inner understandings is because they love others. We sacrifice, because those we love aren’t perfect, and we hope others sacrifice for us, because we know for sure we ourselves aren’t perfect. However Truth sits there, perfectly True.
Everyone, in their quieter moments, has the capacity to compare their own imperfections with that which is perfectly True. Call it your conscience, if you will.
If an individual or social group moves away from Truth things simply start to fall apart. If wind turbines are a dumb idea, then it becomes obvious. If corruption allocates money to cronies, and the cronies are a bad investment, then the pay-back is not profit. And so on and so forth, on all sorts of social levels, including even the level where loving-people-sacrifice-for-others-who-aren’t-perfect. Finally group-think crumbles, in such cases, because people say “I will sacrifice for you no longer!” The dictator looks out the window and sees many torches.
All through this process Truth never needs say a word. It just sits there, self-evident.
Interesting…As a front line manager working for a large corporation at a field station I get to live this dilemma daily. We are now consistently working toward a more structured environment where managers are there to ensure that the new standards of work are followed as opposed to being leaders and innovators. Unfortunately, the new standards are being driven from the top down with very little input from the people doing the work which is in direct contention to the rhetoric of “continuous improvement” that the company is pushing….Sound familiar?
>>Caleb says:
>>A lot of this discussion ignores the fact that Truth is a reality, and continues to be True even if, >>for some reason, it becomes unpopular.
I strongly disagree. Truth is not absolute. The Asch Effect illustrates how for most people, one’s truth conforms to that of the group. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
David Ross says:
August 18, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Very true. Unfortunately some people use this phenomenon to manipulate people. It’s called “community organizing”….
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You got it. In most cases these groups are not democratic. Just like the various science groups such as the American Chemical Society did not ask their members what their “Consenus” was on CAGW. ACS was pushing “green” as early as the 1970’s when I joined.