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
David Ross says:
Very true. Unfortunately some people use this phenomenon to manipulate people. It’s called “community organizing”.
Identify an issue most people will agree on (e.g. something small and local, problems with garbage collection, anything).
Organize a group to discuss it.
The group must not fix the problem themselves.
Steer them towards lobbying the authorities to do it, with protests etc.
If they force action from the authorities the group feels empowered and bonds.
Now you’re ready to steer them towards other issues -issues which many members would not have cared about before joining the group.
Keep control of the group. Isolate any members that strongly oppose your take on the new issues or don’t show sufficient signs of groupthink. Have some members shout them down, encourage them to leave the group.
I don’t think this always involves concious though on the part of the people involved. Especially where those opposed to the new issues include “founder members”. (Even an actual conspiracy to “hijack” such a group may not be present initially.)
It’s also likely that a lot of people would leave once they felt the issue had been properly addressed (including by some sort of “compromise”) or things they didn’t care about started to be raised.
Cass Sunstein is a smart guy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein
Wait, I take that back. SUNSTEIIIIIIN! You told the enemy our evil masterplan! The first rule of supervillainery is: Keep the plan a secret!
Bruce Atwood says:
August 18, 2012 at 6:52 pm
Ok. Good advice. Let’s see. What does the IPCC have to say about climate models?
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/279.htm
The IPCC says the climate models can’t simulate the QBO. Wait a moment. Checking the URL… no, looks right…
I’ll find out what’s wrong and come back to you in a minute…
Louise says:
August 19, 2012 at 2:07 am
“I’m sure those oil fields in Texas and Alberta look just as attractive as the wind farms above.”
Louise, the energy density is orders of magnitude higher for gas. You won’t believe me but a few natgas pipelines easily carry 10 times more Joules across your states borders than all the high voltage transmission lines together. And the best part is – while electricity is very expensive to store, natgas or other chemical fuels are their own storage.
Only a seventh of the primary energy consumed by Germany, for instance, is consumed in the form of electricity.
Realtime energy im+export for Denmark; electricity connectors and natgas pipelines:
http://www.energinet.dk/Flash/Forside/index.html
Dr Burns says:
August 19, 2012 at 2:56 am
“I strongly disagree. Truth is not absolute. The Asch Effect illustrates how for most people, one’s truth conforms to that of the group.”
Ah, a PNS proponent. Please apply your theory to mathematics. Maybe you can prove Legendre’s conjecture if you redefine truth enough.
Dr Burns says:
August 19, 2012 at 2:56 am
>>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.
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Dr Burns – I disagree. Depending now what one calls “the truth” – I understand from Caleb’s pov to be the “objective reality” and not the “by the group accepted truth”.
Interesting to see that the experiment have been redone with some variances – the bigger the group the greater the conformity, however if dissent voices were allowed the conformity decreases.
So I would understand that most people see the truth but not always are ready to engage for it – depending on various reasons.
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.
REPLY – Do you really think we have not “read some of the actual research reports”? ~ Evan
____________________________
Fox who? you really need to be more specific.
Nah, it’s a lot simpler than that. Power-loving people want high status. When Position X is identified with high status and Position Y is associated with low status, power-loving people will assume Position X.
As with most destructive processes, positive feedback is involved. After a few Trend Leaders start spewing Position X, it becomes even more attractive to power-loving d-heads.
No real solution except collapse. The Carbon Cult has gone way way way way beyond any previous ideology in gathering powermongers. Islam in 1100, Christianity in 1800, Marxism in 1960, didn’t come anywhere near the Carbon Cult’s universal power.
wendellwx52 says:
August 18, 2012 at 7:14 pm
The problem with this thought process is this. Most people are sheep, they are followers, they are lead about by whatever they are told, by whomever tells them, without ever questioning the validity of what they are being told.
________________________________
Correct and the MSM propaganda machine is in place to do the leading. Do you think “Animal Rights” would be anything but an extremely small weird cult without the help of all the publicity?
The MSM not only spreads these cults it gives them legitimacy. “I read it in the Huffington Post so it must be true.”
I love reading people’s comments of what truth is, it shows how much they have been sucked in by post modernist and post normal science where truth is merely consructed by a social consensus and verification as validity is looked down upon. Indeed verification is thwarted by such people via their refusal to publish data or even the code for their models and their demands that qualitative data should always outweigh quantitative.
I would like to point out that many famous people have also made the observation that you can not get a fellow to see an obvious truth if by seeing that clear and plain truth it would hurt his livelyhood. (lose my grants? heaven forbid!)
george e smith says:
August 18, 2012 at 10:36 pm
“””””…..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……”””””
Who the hell is Fox ?
Why all of a sudden does WUWT want me to sign in every time now ?
=========================================================
The FOX reference is to FOX News.
Demonizing FOX News is one of the most imbedded tenets of leftists today. (an incredibly unhealthy obsession really)
Have to sign every time?
Most likely a WordPress “upgrade”. Happened to me months ago too.
Bruce Atwood, I had firmly accepted all of the science of AGW. Until that is, I read the IPCC AR3 after it had been released in 2001. That was the document which finally turned me completely off the theory, because what was in it was such transparent nonsense.
I guess the irony of posting that quote on a site that is possibly the ultimate magnet of a movement coalescing around a mistaken belief is somewhat lost…
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”
Classic example of group think, although we used to call it brainwashing.
Intravenous Transfusion – Vehicle for transportation-Czars. Outside of government, paid by government, not responsible to government. Digital video sequence – far more powerful than sugar to wet the appetite.
Dr Burns says:
August 19, 2012 at 2:56 am
>>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
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First and foremost a lie, one’s perception or an opinion is not a fact. (I know about Dr Mann)
No facts were changed.
And that’s a fact.
@ur momisugly E.M.Smith says:
August 19, 2012 at 1:27 am
Pretty much my story.. darn, I even did some work for a “climate action” group before some idiot said “the science is settled'”.. red rag stuff to me !!!
I hadn’t really looked into it much before then, just went with the flow, helped out some greenie mates..You know how it is..
But as soon as you start looking at the science… oops.. something ain’t right with this cAGW stuff !!
And daring to ask simple questions on a warmist site.. the responses I got really got my hackles up !!
So, in my opinion, it is the totally arrogant and dismissive attitude of the warmist bletheren that made me look deeper, and realise just what a farce and a fraud the whole thing is. !!
They have created the polarisation by their very own actions. !!!!
“Wind farm at Tehachapi, CA”
I see no evidence of farming in that photograph.
[/snark]
Edwin T. Jaynes formalized the mathematical logic of polarization wonderfully in ‘Converging and diverging views’, Section 5.3 of Principles and elementary applications, Part 1 of Probability Theory: The Logic of Science, his textbook on Bayes applied to physics.
In a word, the listener is driven towards or away from the narrator by his belief or disbelief and the narrator’s vehemence.
This passage is the gem of all that I have been able to understand in the book and that will drive me on, even though my maths are wholly inadequate. Note that Section 5.6, a few pages later, is ‘Horse racing and weather forecasting’ that draws on an example from Richard C. Jeffrey (philosopher, Princeton 1983).
I was driven to Bayesian inference/Jaynes by comments by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that damn our ignorance of forecasting of all sorts.
Thinking person is necessarily alone. Thinking person will also necessarily make mistakes.
Regarding truth, it seems pain is required.
I love Kippling’s Copybook Headings:
[…]
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm
This goes for the next article poo, I mean, too.
Daveburton said “I don’t think I’m an extremist on climate issues. I’m a “lukewarm-ist.” I do think that it’s warmer now than it was in the 1700s, and I do think human activity affects climate, so If I’d taken the Zimmerman/Doran survey, I’d have been counted among the 97.5% whom Doran characterized as agreeing with what he called “the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.”
That is probably a very common view even here despite the very vocal purveyors of selective physics. You (in general) are the reason why the people at SkepSci have to lock horns and attack any suggestion that we have a 100 years to burn (carbon fuels) before technology will easily solve any consequent problems for us, that “extreme” weather is a relatively trivial concern along with one inch per year sea level rise. You are the reason that SkepSci people largely fail to debate in depth here except to (quite properly) debunk the selective physicists.
SkepSci mentioned polarization in a recent thread: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Kahan.html but like many such topics failed to generate the kind of illuminating debate found in the comments here.
If they showed video of the wind farms you would see that most of them do not run, maybe 1/3 or less might be operating. Same with the farms outside the Bay area in Altamont pass.
DennisAmbler says:
“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)”
It would be interesting to see what those two spots look like today!