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
Larry Sheldon says:
August 19, 2012 at 3:18 pm
Distance-compressed shot
What does that mean?
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If you use a telephoto or zoom lens to take a photo of a group of objects from a long way away you get the effect seen in the wind farm picture. Measured along the line of sight the windmills are actually spaced well apart, but the false perspective generated by the lens makes them appear much closer together.
@ur momisugly Entropic..
regardless, they are ugly as.. and will they get taken down when they are dead.. I doubt it.,
just left as a blight on the lanscape
at least coal mines tidy up after themselves.
Why not print what i said and let others decide…
“As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.” Socrates
It would be tough to find a gas field with more surface impact than Jonah. It has some oil and NGL, requiring extra surface facilities, and there are 16 wells per square mile. Many gas fields have no liquids and can be developed with one well per square mile. You can drive through the field and not even notice it.
Well, if the first discussion of this was regarding “group think” (and apologies right off the bat if your name is “Johnson”), then I believe that cinematic classic Blazing Saddles says it best when all the Johnson’s were agreeing with Gabby Johnson during the need for a new Sheriff in town. It takes a hot head to organize a lynching; it takes an incident to justify a war.
TimC says: August 18, 2012 at 8:51 pm re half-life of erroneous groupthink.
It is not needed to decide if there is any half life, or what form it has, or its value. The amalogy I sue is more like the math of predator-prey relationships, where each knows that excessive zeal leads to self-destruction. There had been a group of people for all of my thinking years, that cries global catatrophe and tries to make moey from it. Others have lists of the main themes. I can’t recall a time when the ordinary person could sit back and relax, saying “Whew, nothing to worry about for a while now. The major problems have been solved.” To the contrary, there is an series of coexisting industries that aim to cause worry and they have an effective duration that depends on how many and which decision-makers they can convince.
One key is to remove the ability of decision makers to profit from involvement. Much improvement is needed in conflict of interest tests in public policy.
They are an old and inefficient design., probably well into their design life, so they may not last all that much longer. As for leaving them, think of the scrap value of all those steel towers. And all that copper!
Geoff Sherrington says:
August 20, 2012 at 1:06 am
TimC says: August 18, 2012 at 8:51 pm One key is to remove the ability of decision makers to profit from involvement. Much improvement is needed in conflict of interest tests in public policy.
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In the United Kingdom most decisioins are made by ministers, usually elected as Members of Parliament and then appointed to their ministerial post by the Prime Minister. Any financial activities or interests outside of their public duties are listed in a Register of Members Interests.
As part of our custom-and-practice unwritten constitution any minister with a financial interest in the outcome of a decision is expected to say so, and take no further part in making that decision. Failure to declare such an interest is regarded as grounds for immediate resignation.
Your system has unelected Secretaries appointed by the President, subject to approval by Congress. Perhaps a Register of Interests could be brought in for appointed decision-makers, and elected Senators, Representatives, Governers, Sheriffs, DAs etc.Whether enforced formally, or through custom and practice, they would be expected to distance themselves from any decisions in which they might be perceived to have a financial interest.
No, my post isn’t a satire. Just pick up your local newspaper and read the “global warming is real” editorials and read what they say.
Look, anybody who claims “scientific consensus” as one of the reasons supporting the AGW argument is engaging in groupthink, not to mention scientific ignorance.
I’m willing to bet many of the commenters to this article are unaware of the self-referential irony. I think by most definitions that makes the post itself a very successful, if subtle, troll. Well finessed, even if it may not have been intentional.
Nice discussion. I was kind of wary of the alarmism maybe 7 years ago, but held off on making an opinion. I had talked to someone helping develop democratic party strategy on energy. The rhetoric started at the point of: “the science is settled,” then advanced to analyze pros and cons of energy sources. I was pretty sure the author was just using “the science is settled” as a jumping-off point, and had not actually looked into the issue.
I decided at that time to start reading up on the issue. After reading a few things, it became clear that MBH98 and a few other articles were central.
I read MBH98. Well, that was a pretty good start for believing those who were saying the AGW story was full of holes. There is an awful lot of handwaving in MBH98.
From there, my story is like others’ stories: I was reading up and thinking for myself. No, I do not get my info from Fox News. I download pdf’s, and look at data websites.
I am a democrat because I believe there is a role for govt in some things – those things the “market” does not do well. Like fire, police, roads, public health, and public education. Also, protecting the environment from “tragedy of the commons” type destruction. At the same time, I believe in free enterprise, free speech, and the rest of the Constitution.
The marxists have jumped on the good intentions of people like me and gotten us to accept a great range of ideas. I figured that out and got more independent-minded than ever.
It is easy for me to consider and investigate the unintended consequences of polices that, on the face of it, seem just fine.
Cass Sunstein has an endgame. He wants everyday people, and liberals, to be comfortable with a group of like-minded elitist intellectuals engineering society. Go glance over his essays and books.
The groupthink idea is part of the rhetorical basis for writing off major groups that don’t think like him.
I have never heard so much vilification of conservatives in a prez campaign, and I campaigned for McGovern. The first time around.
It is total bash-white-male season. Are there bad white males? For us to even be asking that, and considering that, is ridiculous.
Read some of this Sunstein stuff, and you decide whether his end-game is to have a seemingly beneficial role for govt in controlling a great deal of our lives, and the mechanisms for this.
Nudge. Conspiracy Theorists. The Partial Constitution.
WUWT readers: go explore a bit what this Harvard-Lawyer Regulatory Czar advocates.
Then go read “Walden II.”
Sunstein has just recently left his Regulatory Czar position at the White House. I cannot find a reason why. Does anyone know more?
polistra says:
August 19, 2012 at 4:16 am
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….
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I think you have it.
I was trained as a “Juran Facilitator” and lead group discussions. In a group all you get is a consensus with the most dominant personality in the room. After the meeting I hunted down each individual and talked to them one-on-one. There was a lot more ideas and information in the heads of those people that never ever came out in any of the meetings.
The elite know this and that is why they use the Delphi Technique and it works so well. Everyone thinks they are the only one with a contrary opinion. Anyone with leadership ability is shut-up or made fun of [called flat earthers, denier…] Here is a video of an attempt to circumvent the Delphi Technique.
USDA listening (snicker) sessions also used the Delphi Technique but it did not work after farmers were alerted. Wendell Berry gave a rousing speech declaring that this was the first meeting he’d been at with USDA, after decades of activism, where USDA brought armed police to protect itself…. participants continued to speak out against the implementation of NAIS in any form, even as the facilitator kept trying to elicit comments about how the program could be improved.
We are told there is a “Consensus” on the science but we know there is not. We are told this is what “The People Want” using deceptive polls. Now Cass Sunstein is trying to tell us why there is polarization on the issue without bothering to mention that the polarization was contrived from the very start.
Sounds like divide and conquer from the inside. While we fight over a couple of degrees in temperature “They” revamp our entire world.
Thanks Gail Combs. WUWT is all about looking at evidence. So, for anyone who thinks that my description of “community organizing” (see above) is inaccurate, here is an account from a skilled practitioner.
“Community organizing” is all about power, not about helping people solve important problems. Tough issues are avoided. “Winnable” issues are chosen to make the organizer look good and the group feel good. Using this rationale, addressing gang-crime has a lower priority than forcing “the neighbor who refused to mow his lawn” to submit to the will of the group and mow his lawn. Power is a drug.
The big issue Obama finally steered his flock towards was his own election.
Extremism leads to policy overreach which leads to unsustainable positions such as policy decadence. Gov. Brown is a fascinating look back into the mechanics of the fall of the Roman Empire. The sources of revenue probably began to slow around the Empire before the spending ever did.
“papiertigre says: August 18, 2012 at 7:20 pm
cui bono says:
August 18, 2012 at 6:44 pm
Quite right, Anthony, and those windmills look like something out of a SF/horror movie – ugh!
We could use that to our advantage. Instead of an adorable little clown fish, we could have a cartoon sparrow, bobbing and weaving, through the propeller field. Will he make it through alive?
A message so simple even a child will understand.”
Great idea; the game player chooses what migrating bird he wants to be and the challenge is too fly through the windmills as flocks of other birds are ground into puffs of feathers and gore all around our hero, who can also get chopped up. For those that finally make it through the windmills, they land on the ground totally exhausted and unable to fly any further where they are promptly eaten by a coyote. The end.
highflight56433 says:
August 19, 2012 at 1:40 pm
…dido…some folks can actually formulate their own independent thoughts and conclusions from sources not found mainstream TV drama. Maybe the rest are lazy, or are liken to follow the heard over the cliff. Sheep need us dogs to protect them from the wolves; however they do not recognize they are sheep.
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They also do not see the wolves for what they are. The “Fabian’s” coat of arms is a wolf in sheep clothing standing on a Tortoise. The Theme is slow undetectable progress with careful attention not to create any unwanted “galvanizing” events Close up of Fabian Society coat of arms
This Conspiracy Theorist has this point correct.
From the London School of Economics website
Tony Blair says “…a lot of the values that the Fabians and George Bernard Shaw stood for would be very recognisable…”
So here are George Bernard Shaw’s ideas in his own words:
Blair says we can see those ideas at work. Do you think he means this?
The Liverpool Care Pathway (or Death Pathway) allows doctors to withhold fluid and drugs with the aim of hastening the deaths of terminally ill patients. A number of doctors claim hospitals may be implementing the scheme to reduce costs or if you are old and too much trouble.
Tens of thousands of patients with terminal illnesses are placed on a “death pathway” to help end their lives every year. However, in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, six doctors warn that hospitals may be using the controversial scheme to reduce strain on hospital resources: Tthe Letter
The other side: Terminally ill patients are receiving good care, says National Audit however the comments seem to say otherwise. Note the commenters say they were unaware their parents were on the Liverpool Pathway. The Department of Health (DH) has denied claims that hospitals are putting increasing numbers of elderly patients on a ‘death pathway’ to hasten their demise and save NHS funds….”The decision to use the pathway should involve patients and family members, and a patient’s condition should be closely monitored.
Note the word SHOULD we know all about weasel words like “should”
I love this one from Huff & Puff. Where were they on this issue when Obamacare was being debated? Denying anything like this the “Liverpool Pathway” even existed as I recall.
Doctors: U.K. Hospitals Expediting Deaths To Reduce Hospital Costs
Getting back to the topic… I find the picture of the Jonah Field equally as horrifying as the wind turbines. But thank you WUWT for publishing it. I was wavering in my opposition to Shell’s plans for fracking in the Karoo but now I can see what a disaster it will be.
oldfossil says:
August 20, 2012 at 11:02 am
“…I can see what a disaster it will be.”
Yes, a disaster. With no benefits to offer, nor penalties for foregoing. The computer on which you typed your message itself is powered cleanly and effortlessly by Earth-friendly pixie dust and unicorn dung so hey, why worry?
Drove through the Tehachapi area in June of 2011. Absolutely horrible looking landscape. I was amazed at the ugliness people will put up with to be “green”. A couple of gas fired power plants could have been installed with a small fraction of the footprint. I grew up driving along the refinery/chem plant corridor on the NJ Turnpike in the ’60’s (kids: eww, it smells! Dad: that’s the smell of money!) and I think this looks worse than NJ ever did.
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.
Oops, I guess poor Cass was never exposed to those much hated old Western Cowboy movies with their deliberative Lynch Mobs? So that he thought he was really onto something original? And perish the thought he would suddenly discover the cure, the…shudder…individualistic thinking American Cowboy himself! Or perhaps more generally, even many people’s preferred use of real science and rational principles to come to a judgment about events? Nah, to him we’re all just groups of irrational groupthinkers. Except, of course, for Cass and his own merry group of self-anointed superiorists.
Quite a treasure-house! Thx. Unfortunately, I see he died last October. From the obit:
Sunstein’s article is interesting. I’m not sure it explains the “reason” for polarization of the global warming issue. Since the IPCC politicized global warming and brought with it substantial funding for global warming research, the science of global warming has run off the rails into an extreme of confirmation bias.
That others less qualified and less well-funded (ie blogosphere, WUWT, etc) might demonstrate flaws in the accepted wisdom is threatening to climate scientists. That other qualified scientists outside climate science might also demonstrate flaws in the accepted wisdom is challenging. That some climate scientists are prepared not to defend the accepted wisdom is treason.
Yet the defence of the currently accepted AGW “wisdom” fails to satisfy those who challenge the basics of the science underpinning the “greenhouse” and nobody seems game to have a proper scientific discourse in the experimental physics lab.
As EM Smith said, above, “the truth just is”. I’m still waiting to find out the truth of climate science and would love to see some real experiments in a physics lab to clarify questions like:
1. If IR absorbing/emitting gases can thermalise IR radiation outside of an IR reflecting measurement chamber.
2. If *any* known physical property of any material can be used to change equilibrium mean temperature when subject to alternate heating and cooling effects over day-length cycles.
3. If presence of IR absorbing/emitting gases accelerate or retard thermal mixing of gas mixtures of different temperatures (especially when conduction and convection can be excluded).
Lonnie Schubert quoted KIpling. I prefer FitzGerald’s version of Omar Khayyam:
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by that same Door as in I went.
The rest of the poem is an inspiration to those sceptics of nihilistic inclination who think that truth may prove elusive even if people are honest.
[Sorry if I left a capital I in Kipling. Perhaps you could correct it! Thanks]