Scrutable

They wanted to increase the expertise of others in scientific thinking, especially community leaders.

That is the crux of it, I reckon. Showing people how to think for themselves works much better than telling them what to think.

Tessa K wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 11:07 am

I'm absolutely fascinated by this idea that emotions are "bad" in some way, and get in the way of "rational analysis

It's very Spock, isn't it? Or early Spock at least. The emotion versus reason argument was used for a long time to denigrate women's thinking; we're all emotion and men are all reason. Or put another way, we're nature and they're culture (in the widest sense) That's another reason I dislike the discounting of emotion. I'm not saying that people here are being sexist in any way but that view is a cultural artefact that may colour thinking without us realising.

Yes and in reality - early Spock would have been utterly unable to function. Why was he so loyal to the ideals of the Federation? Data might have had a way out with that, but not Spock.

Stephanie wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 9:02 am Hilda Bastian talks a bit about this:
https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2017/0 ... -evidence/

I didn’t change deeply held beliefs because someone convinced me in one discussion, or even a few. It was a process over years. The scientists and others who influenced me weren’t cheerleaders for the establishment. They were critical of weak research and arguments, regardless of whose interests it served. And they didn’t just expect people like me to believe them because they were experts. They wanted to increase the expertise of others in scientific thinking, especially community leaders.

I had been defending my community’s side in a heated controversy for years. When I changed position, it was a major upheaval. But I was still a member of the community, with many long and very deep ties. It was a two-way street – a lot of reciprocity (another form of social capital).

Being an insider made it harder for people to dismiss me, although some saw me as a traitor and cast me as one of “them” now. Being well-known and still in their midst made it harder for that to gain traction.

Thanks for this.

I think the 'bonding' vs 'bridging' terminology/concept is very useful. I've sometimes thought that there is a quite apparent difference between the way some activist groups seem to function - some are very focussed on 'bonding', uniting activists in their cause, providing resources and support, helping to organise - and others on 'bridging', making big efforts with outreach to the public, or involving policymakers and industry.

Often there's tension between the two. Greenpeace, for example, are good at bonding but actually turn off a lot of the less-convinced, whereas say the RSPB are very good at working with scientists and government, but sometimes the conservation community gets a bit cheesed off with what appears to be an overly conciliatory, softly-softly approach when the evidence is clear.

I think the scientific community's activity is largely best described as 'bonding', focussed on generating lots of studies to flesh out scientific paradigms, but without (at least in fields I'm aware of) much success in helping policymakers to accomplish legislation towards their (publicly stated) ends, or communicating with the public. I'm sure I've noticed a trend with more scientists taking this more seriously, and some people and organisations are doing really great stuff, but I know a lot of us (myself included) are pretty crap.

That blog lead me onto another one of hers: Post-Truth Antidote: Our Roles in Virtuous Spirals of Trust in Science, which is worth reading as it contributes some ideas to the theme of this thread about how we can change minds. To quote the first point:

1. Be serious about your spheres of influence – even small ones.



What we share and what we say to others could have an impact that’s bigger than we realize. We hear a lot about bubbles that we’re living in. But everyone isn’t living in only one bubble. Small circles of people are connected to other circles by members in common and those who are just plain good at connecting groups. Those people form bridges and can be conduits of ideas and information.

I find thinking of this in social capital terms useful – 2 types of “glue” between people. Bonding capital builds up inside a social group; bridging capital builds between them.

When we’re communicating, we could be strengthening bridging capital even when we’re in our bubbles, because of the “bridgers” among us. But we could be weakening it, too. There are all sorts of ways of firing up people who already agree with us. It’s very bonding. But how we do it is one of the things that will affect who trusts us – and how much effort is required by a “bridger” to translate or explain to others.

Now for example, this place (or, say, the Bad Science forums) play an obvious role in 'bonding' a certain community of, if not 'skeptics' at least connoisseurs of evidence. We discuss things, try to align our positions (which I think is perhaps what we should be aiming for - agreement, rather than the 'changing minds' phrase which implies that my mind is right and I need to change others'; anybody familiar with my mind can confirm that this is rarely the case), and share evidence and resources to help persuade others.

It's always great to hear when people have achieved some 'bridging' - for example, explaining some evidence to family/friends that's been misrepresented in the press. I wonder if there's some kind of fundamental tension between bonding and bridging: can any community be highly successful at both? And if not, are we perhaps faced with a choice we can actually influence - do we think there's sufficient diversity within this community for much significant bridging to occur here and be worth working on, are are we more useful helping each other refine their positions, but accept that sometimes we'll run up against fairly insurmountable differences resulting from, say, different value systems?

There was a nice paper a few years ago looking at bonding within the 'Bad Science blogs' community. From the abstract:

Riesch and Mendel, 2013 wrote:A functioning and diverse online community (with offline elements) has been constructed, with a number of non-professional and anonymous members and with boundary work being used to establish a recognisable outgroup. The community has developed distinct norms alongside a type of distributed authority and has negotiated the authority, anonymity and varying status of many community members in some interesting and novel ways. Activist norms and initiatives have been actioned, with some prominent community campaigns and action. There are questions about what science blogging—both in the UK and internationally—may be able to achieve in future and about the fragility of the ‘badscience’ community. Some of the highly optimistic hopes which have been associated with science blogging have not been realised. Nonetheless, the small group of bloggers focused on here have produced significant achievements with limited resources, especially when one considers this in the context of community values as opposed to some of the expectations attached to science blogging within scientific cultures more broadly.

Science Blogging: Networks, Boundaries and Limitations

If I'm interpreting the results correctly, the authors found that the group of bloggers started (or perceived?) a community with defined boundaries - particularly with respect to the distinction between 'good' and 'bad' science - and used the community thus formed as a springboard for bridging to other communities, sometimes by persuasion (e.g. through blogs) and sometimes by 'force' (e.g. Advertising Standards complaints).

I think the paper's worth a re-read (free pdf here), not just because it is describing the Ur of this community. It was also really nice to be reminded of a simpler time when we were all angry about chiropractors, and to re-read the famous "CFNB" reference.

Even if we're not all formal bloggers - though Stephanie especially has been working hard on setting one up for us - we probably do all pass on perspectives to others that have been informed by our interactions here. I think the almost-point I'm waffling towards is that maybe this is mostly more of a 'bonding' community of likeminded communites, and we see some dysfunction when we turn inwards and try to change each others' minds.

Tessa K wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 11:07 am I'm absolutely fascinated by this idea that emotions are "bad" in some way, and get in the way of "rational analysis

Emotions are not bad: they're essential. They are the roots from which everything grows. Your emotions tell you what you want: your rationality tells you how to get it.

But your emotions are not my emotions. Emotions are subjective. Arguing from emotion is telling people how they should feel (or telling people that you are more important than them, so your emotions count for more than theirs).

But while arguing, your own emotions can weaken your arguments. Emotions push for something and can be a distraction. One of the things that people, compared to animals, do very well is take a long term and broad view of the world to make that push effective, but too much emotion can shorten and narrow the view. It's a bit like a dog and a wire fence they want to cross. Some dogs just keep pushing and jumping at the fence, while others run off to the opening and get through there. People are much better than dogs at that sort of thing, but get worse when under stress. When people are trained for a job that much be done under stress, one of the most important things they learn is fixed routines and habits to use under stress because they might intellectually know the right thing to do, but in the heat of the moment they are too narrowly focussed and liable to be distracted.

Emotions are subjective, but facts are objective, as are rational deductions from facts. By sticking to facts and their consequences we argue in a shared arena.

Millennie Al wrote: Sun Jul 12, 2020 2:59 am

Tessa K wrote: Fri Jul 10, 2020 11:07 am I'm absolutely fascinated by this idea that emotions are "bad" in some way, and get in the way of "rational analysis

Emotions are not bad: they're essential. They are the roots from which everything grows. Your emotions tell you what you want: your rationality tells you how to get it.

But your emotions are not my emotions. Emotions are subjective. Arguing from emotion is telling people how they should feel (or telling people that you are more important than them, so your emotions count for more than theirs).

But while arguing, your own emotions can weaken your arguments. Emotions push for something and can be a distraction. One of the things that people, compared to animals, do very well is take a long term and broad view of the world to make that push effective, but too much emotion can shorten and narrow the view. It's a bit like a dog and a wire fence they want to cross. Some dogs just keep pushing and jumping at the fence, while others run off to the opening and get through there. People are much better than dogs at that sort of thing, but get worse when under stress. When people are trained for a job that much be done under stress, one of the most important things they learn is fixed routines and habits to use under stress because they might intellectually know the right thing to do, but in the heat of the moment they are too narrowly focussed and liable to be distracted.

Emotions are subjective, but facts are objective, as are rational deductions from facts. By sticking to facts and their consequences we argue in a shared arena.

True, but I see nothing wrong with truthfully emphasising those facts that have an emotional impact.

Don't think its worth getting too hung up on the word emotion here (he says having introduced it in the first place). First, there's a 2.x thousand year language gap between what Aristotle wrote and what we hear, second this is of course not the last word on all this.

In general, the persuasiveness of a message will depend on several factors, message content, messenger authority and situational context of the message. The situational context, the pathos and kairos if you will, don't necessarily have to be "emotions", but include other things such as background views, knowledge and convictions that are used by the message receiver to make sense of it. And the general value system of the receiver.

Of you think x is an unmitigated good, then an argument of "y leads to x" will be more persuasive than when you have doubts about the moral value of x. There's nothing emotional about it as such

I've just been listening to Thinking Allowed on Radio 4. One of the guests was Mikael Klintman who was talking about Knowledge Resistance (also the title of his new book). One of the things he mentioned is how resistant we are to knowledge from individuals or group who are not One Of Us, which fits with some of the discussion here. And other interesting stuff.

Worth a listen https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000ktyc