I reject reality and substitute my own

[7Wannabe5]

I agree that reality has become absolutely fractured. I am regarded by some as kooky because I don't think it is a good idea to process tons of toxic waste from fracking within a heavily populated urban area and then dump the effluent into one of the largest potable water supplies on the planet. When I was marching in protest of this plan with some other kooky people, including a female Baptist minister and a Catholic nun, we passed one large group of young people who read our signs and immediately burst into applause. Turns out they were visiting from Europe.

I also recently found myself having to explain to a very multi-cultural group of third graders that human beings were mammals, just like the anthropomorphized baby seal and polar bear in the book they were reading. Also, had to set the record straight on the fact that every mammal has a Daddy even if some Daddies (all polar bears, some humans) do not live with their children. The sad thing is that I was slightly worried that I was breaking some rule by doing this.

[Riggerjack]

Jacob, I'm just going to lay this out there. You are a climate change alarmist. Nothing wrong with that, I'm a Federal debt alarmist. You have more expertise in CC than I in FD, but what it boils down to, is you see a problem, clearly, and think SOMETHING SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT THIS.

That is where expertise in CC stops being relevant. At that point, it really is a political problem, not a science problem. And conflating the two doesn't help you, or your cause.

As with saver vs consumer, you make your point by living the example.

As an alarmist, you naturally oppose CC deniers, and tend to think there is some line in the sand. Most folks really don't care. And the more they know about CC, the less they care. The problem is too distant, and too dispersed to register on most folks' radar. That is why it is sold as such an emergency situation, because when people really see the scope of the problem, they lose interest.

The problem in your NPR article isn't Republican problems with science, that is just more NPR flag waving. An article built on the premise that the smart people agree, and you agree, right? The problem is that the author believes that science should guide us in political decisions.

It's a nice idea, that goes back to Plato. The wise should choose the wisest among them to be the benevolent dictator. Then of course the problem is you have a dictator...

The fact is that there are plenty of folks not interested in facts. The cool part, is they also don't stop watching TV and FB long enough to vote, so stop worrying about them, they certainly aren't worried about you, and their interest in CC is mainly about what bumper sticker to display.

I hope that helps.

[jacob]

@Riggerjack - I prefer the term realist, not alarmist. Alarmist implies that the threat is exaggerated(*). My point [with the thread] was that realism/reality in many ways has become irrelevant because it is indeed "too distant and too disperse to register". However, relative to the "unaware position", reality certainly is alarming.

(*) Because of the conservative assumptions underlying the scientific theories, there's some demonstrated post hoc indications that the threat is actually understated. But whatever ...

In philosophical terms, my epistemological model is that an objective reality exists. That is, I believe in the existence of a real world with real facts that has real consequences. IOW, I believe that if I have two apples and add two more then I have four apples and on top of that I believe that anyone else who has two apples and then add two more apples ALSO have four apples.

My belief in this is due to my belief in a shared objective reality which is also what the NPR author believes in.

It is not because I belong to the "Mutual Admiration Society of Smart People" which you seem to suggest, it's because I can count.

I would guess both of us astrophysicists suggest that reality should guide political decisions and that science is a good guide to reality, at least I do. Thus WRT climate change, the proper debate should be about what if anything we should do about it which is a political debate. Instead we have essentially have a debate on whether reality is real which strategically serves to keep us from having the political debate.

The lamentation [here] is that for many people objective reality has become irrelevant (which functionally speaking is true for many cases ... especially those that are distant, far away, or rare). If people or the culture no longer operate with a belief in a shared objective reality, then it's easy to see how epistemology (how to know what's true) becomes a simple matter of rhetoric. In such a world, real facts, like how many apples there are, are demoted to a rhetorical device on par with any other rhetorical device. E.g. "you say that you have four apples because you counted them, well that's your argument, but I disagree because I have an expert here who says there are five apples, and that's my argument and I don't see how my argument is any worse or better than yours". Conversely, I say that an objective reality exists and that facts override any kind of rhetorical device which means that my position is that anyone who disagrees with objective reality is de facto ignorant or delusional.---And that being ignorant/delusional is made easier by the bubbles we increasingly inhabit.

In some way it's as if society is splitting into eloi and morlocks with the eloi representing subjective/rhetorical reality, and morlocks representing objective reality.

[BRUTE]

brute would like to suggest that the phenomenon of shared reality has not recently "become irrelevant". if one assumes there is a shared objective reality, and that it is infinite and can only be experienced to a finite degree, it's better to speak of something like a degree of overlap between different humans' experienced reality.

lack of overlap in humans' experienced realities is not at all new. in fact, it was likely the status quo until the invention of radio/television, and since the invention of cable and the internet it has gone back down.

before centralized propaganda/media, two humans that didn't ever meet were unlikely to ever experience the same reality. the only shared reality humans could experience where when actually sharing a moment in physical space and time. with the advent of life-like mass media like radio, TV, and the internet, it happened so that a large quantity of humans were experiencing the same reality (e.g. radio and TV programs) at the same time, for the first time ever. but only because the selection was so limited, yet the reach so vast. since there is now a channel or website or talk radio show for every conceivable opinion on every conceivable dimension (politics, religion, ..) this shared reality is fragmenting again, since humans can tune out opinions they don't want to hear.

brute is not convinced this is necessarily worse than every human sharing the same reality. there are certainly some problems better addressed by many humans sharing a similar view of the same reality, but there are others where this is not true: school, anything creative, work, play, culture, maybe politics, certainly religion (or lack thereof). it's basically tragedy of the commons vs. central planning fallacy. one cannot exist outside of the spectrum, and therefore has to decide which problem one prefers to solve.

maybe humans have inadvertently made a trade between being clones, all experiencing the same reality, and the advantages that brings, and being individuals with all the advantages that brings. is climate change worth giving up individuality, creativity, and diversity?

it will depend on each individual human's value system. brute for one is long meteorites.

[jacob]

@brute - If you want to be philosophical about it. Yes, there are as many sets of experiences as there are humans. However, these sets of experiences should be described by a much smaller number of patterns. We call those patterns laws of nature. For example, even if I experience "two apples and then two more apples" in the form of Golden Delicious apples on this fine Tuesday and you experience "two apples and then two more apples" in the form of Fujis on a Wednesday, objective reality says that we share the [abstract] concept of 2+2=4 [i.e. counting]. Indeed, if you say there are 5 apples, you're delusional insofar objective reality exists. Similarly, if you don't understand 2+2=4, you're ignorant insofar objective reality goes. IOW, in terms of the concept of counting, there's really only one single way to do it that makes sense.

However, there are, as you state, things like school, creativity, play, work ... where there doesn't seem to be any patterns ... here subjectivity rules.

I think the problem is that subjectivity has become so popular (I'm looking at you liberal artists and computer game programmers) than people now think that subjectivity now applies to every reality.

[jennypenny]

I see what you did there.

+1 to Tyler's post. The "Mutual Admiration Society of Smart People [who also happen to be liberals because conservatives get all the factual stuff wrong]" comes through loud and clear in that NPR article. If he/anyone concerned about climate change wants people to focus on the factual reality of the situation, then they should stick to the facts and skip the derision.

[Ego]

If he/anyone concerned about climate change wants people to focus on the factual reality of the situation, then they should stick to the facts and skip the derision.

It's funny... this is an opinion I see here quite often. It goes something like... if you want to convince people of your position, the first thing you've got to do is treat both them and their arguments with respect. You can disagree, but you must do so respectfully.

That position ignores the fact that mockery, derision, and ridicule have a long history as a social corrective. By treating with respect someone who makes boldly preposterous claims, claims that may lead to policies that influence us all, are we not doing a disservice to the community?

At what point does a boldly preposterous claim become an invitation to derision? Never?

[Dragline]

Oh, so we are turning into SUPER-Ego now, aren't we?

(Sorry, I just couldn't resist.)

[Ego]

If I didn't live up to my name I'd be a liar.

But seriously. I believe that Prahlad Jani is the best example of ERE so we should all follow his way of life. What of it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prahlad_Jani

[jacob]

@jp -

Obviously sticking to the facts is not going to work when everybody feels entitled to ignore/substitute facts whenever they disagree ideologically.

A reality-based fact does not change just because it is delivered by a messenger who disagrees with positions that one personally agrees with. Nor is there some kind 50/50 law of being factually wrong about reality(*). There's no reality-based law that says that a statement is correct/wrong according to who delivers it. There's also no reality-based law that says all political ideologies have to be equally wrong/correct about reality. These beliefs seem to originate in some kind fairness/equality doctrine equivalent to how we must give equal air time to "both sides" even if one side has an overwhelming amount of facts on their side. Ditto, they arise in the idea that everybody is equally smart. In short, it's some kind of weird belief that knowledge about reality and thus reality itself can be established by democracy.

I actually used to make this last point when I was TA'ing. I would pose a question on the blackboard, e.g. "Does the presence of CO2 in the air lower the pH of water?" If no student volunteered to come up and solve it, I would hold a democratic vote: "How many believe it does/does not?" We'd tally the answer and I'd announce something to the effect that "Aha! Democracy works" or "Sadly, democracy failed". To us it was a joke because of course the answer does not depend on ignorant students voting. However, this seems to be exactly the way certain scientific questions are being treated in the public these days. "Do you believe that humans contribute to global warming?" This is not something one votes about. Nor does the correct answer depend on how the TA votes in political elections and nor does it change if the TA points out that certain students have been wrong about other scientific questions. You might as well be asking people to vote on whether "2+2=4" or whether "the moon exists". If 25% vote that 2+2=5 it doesn't mean that there's a 25% chance that 2+2 is 5 ... it simply means they are wrong. If some correlation is noted that certain people tend to be bad at math, it doesn't mean that the teacher is biased nor that the math is biased no matter what those students think.

However, it's certainly a fact that students will tend to take this position insisting that it [that reality] is an issue of beliefs.

(*) Indeed, only in the US (and certain other English speaking countries) is there a disagreement on the reality of climate science (and evolution) that's predicted by political orientation. Indeed, in the US there's no disagreement on the reality of e.g. thermodynamics or geology.

And yet we're in the weird situation where such voting has become normal for certain isolated subjects that have political implications. Instead of accepting reality and voting on the political response, people are astoundingly voting on reality as if voting against reality will change it some way. Indeed, some insist that we somehow change reality to reflect their personal beliefs... but that's not how reality works.

The independence between the messenger and the answer and the independence between the ideology of the person and the answer is the very foundation of scientific inquire and yet you guys seem to insist on some kind of "fair and balanced" dependence. That the correct physical answer must be such that the students tend to vote around 50/50 in their elections and that we always need to bring in a second TA to present an opposing argument. That if one group of students is consistently wrong, then reality or the messenger of that reality is somehow biased against them.

[jacob]

If he/anyone concerned about climate change wants people to focus on the factual reality of the situation, then they should stick to the facts and skip the derision.

It's funny... this is an opinion I see here quite often. It goes something like... if you want to convince people of your position, the first thing you've got to do is treat both them and their arguments with respect. You can disagree, but you must do so respectfully.

That position ignores the fact that mockery, derision, and ridicule have a long history as a social corrective. By treating with respect someone who makes boldly preposterous claims, claims that may lead to policies that influence us all, are we not doing a disservice to the community?

At what point does a boldly preposterous claim become an invitation to derision? Never?

I suspect there's a transition in stages both on the individual level and on the public level and that it's fairly independent of whether it comes to climate science, evolution, GMO-safety, nuclear power, investment decisions, or whatever ... Insofar it's a reality-based question/answer and not a political one, disagreements and respect or lack thereof are understood more or less in the following sequence:

Step 1) First it is believed that the disagreement must be due to an ignorance of the facts. The facts are thus made available to everybody. The assumption here is that when people have all the facts they will reach the correct answer. (This is where climate change was in 1995.)
Step 2) It is observed that people are being selective about the facts only accepting those they agree with while ignoring the ones they don't agree with. Attempts are made to show which facts are missing in such conclusions. The hope is that when people see how they were underinformed they will understand the correct answer. (This is where climate change was in 2005.)
Step 3) It is seen that these logical arguments don't override pre-existing beliefs. Efforts are now made to find a psychological explanation and methods to overcome it. The hope is that if one can show how pre-existing bias influences the logical conclusion when it shouldn't people will be able to reach the correct answer. (This is where climate change is now).
Step 4) It is seen that knowing about bias does not override bias much like it is hard to convince a delusional person that they delusional. Since "we" are pretty much out of rational arguments at this point, the strategy becomes emotional. Mockery seems to be the first attempt. For example, the church of the FSM was started(*) when the Kansas school board didn't take to rational arguments and it seems to have proven much more effective. Satire has proven very effective in other ways. (This is what climate change is moving into.)
Step 5) If satire doesn't work, the next move is derision or ridicule. This is the land of moon landings, flat earthers, and anti-vaxxers.

(*) Specifically by taking the religious position that all beliefs must be taught equally in science class (50% evolution/50% creationism) to its extreme logical conclusion, i.e., that if so, then FSM had to be taught as well (33% evolution, 33% creationism, 33% FSM).

I think this progression is constant and inevitable. There might even be a stage 6 in which the particular issue is considered a fully fledged DSM delusional disorder. It's pretty hard to backtrack on the public debate and at this point there's no way the public discussion is going to go back to the facts (step 1) since the failure of that approach has been amply demonstrated. Individually speaking it is of course still possible to go back and start with the facts. However, unlike the public debate, it's also pretty easy to fasttrack forward through the steps insofar they are available. And at this point, steps 4 and 5 are certainly within reach.

[Tyler9000]

One is free to ridicule whoever they please, perhaps rightfully so, but they should not expect the subject of such ridicule to thank them for it. When derision becomes more important to you than influence, you have sacrificed all power to make a difference in the name of selfish identity politics.

There's a reason INTJs make poor leaders. You don't have to deny your beliefs or treat every claim as equally true. You just have to not be a pious asshat, as that's the absolute fastest way to get tuned out. Sadly, too many people just can't handle that part.

[jennypenny]

sigh ... are we really having this debate again?

It's funny... this is an opinion I see here quite often. It goes something like... if you want to convince people of your position, the first thing you've got to do is treat both them and their arguments with respect. You can disagree, but you must do so respectfully.

I didn't say you had to necessarily respect or give credence to the opposing person's viewpoint, just skip the wise cracks. If you want someone to listen to you, don't piss them off first--not the best strategy.

@jp -

Obviously sticking to the facts is not going to work when everybody feels entitled to ignore/substitute facts whenever they disagree ideologically.

A reality-based fact does not change just because it is delivered by a messenger who disagrees with positions that one personally agrees with. Nor is there some kind 50/50 law of being factually wrong about reality(*). ... In short, it's some kind of weird belief that knowledge about reality and thus reality itself can be established by democracy.

That's how it has always worked. It's not some personal affront to climate scientists. Were there a majority of people pushing for seat belt laws or tighter drunk driving standards? Did the majority want trans fat removed from foods or soda removed from schools? Was there a majority pushing for the clean air act? How about the ban on DDT? Those issues were solved through legislation and challenges in the court system. Blame Washington impotence. And don't just blame one side of the aisle. The contentious atmosphere is prevalent on both sides. I thought Trent Lott and Tom Daschle had some interesting comments on the change in relationships in Washington during this interview with Judy Woodruff. (jumps right to relevant part)

[jennypenny]

@Jacob--You know I agree with you about climate change, but your last post is a good example of why I would never refer someone to you if they wanted to find out more about the science of climate change. It's the same reason I never send them to that skeptical science site. No one wants to be made to feel stupid or mentally deficient.

Tyler's comment made me think of the proverbial tree falling in the forest. If an INTJ makes a factual statement but no one will listen to them, were they still right?

[Ego]

I didn't say you had to necessarily respect or give credence to the opposing person's viewpoint, just skip the wise cracks. If you want someone to listen to you, don't piss them off first--not the best strategy.

But what if you know from experience that no matter what you say they will never hear you? What then? The only hope is to influence the opinion of new minds. How, when they are growing up inculcated?

FSM has done exactly that. So has the Cosmic Teapot. Crass? Sure. But they are working in part because they break down the locked doors of politeness.

People don't like:
1. to be laughed at
2. to not understand what's so funny.

Satire, mocking, derision.... it plants the seed of curiosity in the satirized, mocked and derided. It causes them to try to work out why they are the butt of the joke and how to counteract it. That curiosity opens doors that would otherwise remain firmly closed.

I say that knowing that I have some kooky beliefs (pets ownership, sports-watching, mind-body, fecal-transplants, extreme scrounging, unusual diet & eating habits.... what else did I forget?) . I put them out there in the hope that they will be mocked and maybe I'll learn something new.

[jennypenny]

@Ego--You're basing your argument on how people on the forum learn new things. We're not like most people.

And I gotta say, if I ever walk away from the forum, it will be over the religion comments (not just yours). I have no problem accepting how you and others feel about it, but the negative undercurrent is always there and makes me feel like my faith is 'tolerated' but not respected. It's patronizing. So I guess that's why I'm sensitive to the attitude regarding climate change.

[BRUTE]

@jacob:

brute wasn't really talking about abstract "facts" like 2+2=4 in fuji apples. is that even a fact? it certainly doesn't seem empirical.

brute meant that "humans drive cars => climate goes to shit" is literally not part of many humans' reality. maybe none. the alleged causality is outside of any single human's experience reality. for any human to accept "humans drive cars => climate goes to shit" as true, that human has to believe what other humans have told him/her. this includes scientists, unless they do every single piece of research along the chain of causality themselves. if a scientist read it in a scientific journal, he/she is still believing what somebody else said.

so humans can chain themselves to build a set of humans who encompass the entirety of the causality chain between driving the car and the climate going to the shitter, with bits of overlap between individuals to form this chain.

what's basically happening is that some humans are discovering that there exist phenomena in reality which they or their subset of humans encompass in their daisy-chained shared reality, but that other subsets of humans do not share this reality to a large enough degree to act in the way the first group of humans wants them to.

in other words, since reality isn't experienced directly by humans outside of their senses, and their senses are terrible at detecting climate change directly, for many humans climate change is literally not part of (their) reality. the same is the case with any threat/phenomenon that is hard to detect/verify by an untrained individual in 5 minutes or less.

the only way to convey these phenomena to these people is to brainwash them with propaganda. even if jacob is "right" in a factual or moral way, the only way he will get them to share his reality is to use the same tactics that evil/wrong people will use. because the problem isn't about the facts, it's about communicating subjective reality.

one might call it the limit of righteous and truthful good will. at one point, being right and being the good guy just isn't enough any more.

[jacob]

Derision IS effective. For example, it's pretty much MMM's defining blogging strategy in the world of personal finance. Judging by his success, it also works much better than equations, graphs, and logical arguments. First and foremost, the purpose of mockery is not to win over or make/stay friends with the hardcore believers. Those guys are considered a lost cause and thus good relations are sacrificed turning them into foils where the goal is to win the middle/undecided using "underhanded" emotional trickery. Putting on colored shirts is much more fun for most people than it is plough through logical arguments. Someone like John Oliver has convinced far more people by ridiculing deniers for 10 minutes because there are more people susceptible to that form of arguing than there are people who can be convinced to not only read through 1500+ pages of scientific IPCC reports but to set aside their prejudices to accept the logical conclusion of the facts even if they don't like it. How many people did publicly come in as skeptics in that almost legendary climate change thread, read through the IPCC reports or the skepticalscience site and changed their beliefs accordingly. Two! You(jp) and Riggerjack. All that effort ...

Look, I'm not saying that mockery is a nice strategy or one that I personally enjoy or even engage in to any large extent (I prefer to focus on things that I can still control such as regional impacts.) I'm just saying that mockery is inevitable because there comes a point where the evidence has reached a critical mass in terms of being well-known and widely-known that maintaining the opposition and so here we are. "If a person is not willing to listen to reason, what exactly are the willing to listen to?" Like BRUTE said, we're at the proganda stage now. Those who are capable of being convinced by facts and scientific arguments have already been convinced. Now we're using other forms of argument to convince the rest. The methods are dirty alright, but no more dirty than the obfuscation campaigns of the deniers.

The beauty of ridicule as a strategy is that it's one-sided. It works in the favour of reality-based arguments because even if they aren't obvious now, they will be eventually. In other words, if an INTJ makes a factual statement, it is still true even if nobody listens. Facts do not become true according to how many people are listening to them. (That is the very point I'm trying to make) This is also why INTJs are natural (they're almost always right) but rather reluctant leaders (they hate convincing others that they are right, so it's only when the wrong worldview falls apart that they step in).

PS: I note that all the examples above (seat belts, DDT, trans fats) were political questions.

Science: Trans fats have the following negative side-effects! (This statement is not something you challenge in the court system. It's something you figure out in a laboratory. The result is not up for democratic debate.)
Politics: Should we remove trans fats from schools? (You can debate this all day long and challenge the vote in court.)

Science: Seat belts save lives. (This is something you figure out in a crash lab or by looking at statistics.)
Politics: Should seat belts be mandatory. (This you can debate, challenge and vote about.)

So in terms of climate change... maybe we should start debating whether or not we should do anything about it? THAT is a political debate.

[jacob]

We're not like most people.

Wait what?! We aren't?! How do we know that to be true?

To take one out of Kahan's book, maybe we're so smart on one level that it makes us dumber on the next level and thus less able to see that next level or more accurately the previous levels? I actually think that this thread's evolution is a rather remarkable and ironic demonstration that we're exactly like most people.

It appears that the smarter the people, the more inclined they are to put on ideological glasses when it comes to objective reality. Maybe if we ask someone in another forum whether the rock in my hand is real, he'll say it is and think no further of it. Whereas here we seem so far removed from the reality of the rock that we immediately start discussing the rocks existence in terms of the ideological bias of other people who saw the rock. Indeed, we're smart enough to take it even one level further away and discuss how to conduct said ideologically-based disagreement so that people may be convinced nicely or not so nicely according to what is more effective.

We are essentially too smart to just go pick up the rock ourselves.

[Ego]

And I gotta say, if I ever walk away from the forum, it will be over the religion comments (not just yours). I have no problem accepting how you and others feel about it, but the negative undercurrent is always there and makes me feel like my faith is 'tolerated' but not respected.

I dare say, I have a few characteristics that you tolerate but do not necessarily respect.

Respect is a feeling. You are demanding that I respect your faith?

Look at the title of the thread. Your faith is your business. You don't get to decide how I feel about it.