Climate Change, Evolution: Here's Why We Disagree

[IDemo]

A growing body of evidence suggests that the passionate debate over public issues ranging from climate change to evolution has little to do with the facts. It has more to do with who we are, which tribe we belong to, and what we hope the future holds.

New research from Duke University, for example, concludes that the science of climate change isn't the real issue in that debate. The proposed solutions to that problem -- including bigger government and more regulations -- lead many to conclude that there isn't a real problem. And even if there is, we humans are not to blame.

In other words, people are denying the very existence of climate change because they don't like the solutions, and Duke researchers Troy Campbell and Aaron C. Kay have coined a new phrase for it: solution aversion.

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"These things have sort of become tribal issues," Campbell said, concurring with Kahan. "You look at this issue and ask, Is my tribe against this issue? And then you go with your tribe."

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/climate-change-evolution-disagree/story?id=26939619

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Oh for fucks sake Campbell commits the false equivalency canard.

"These things have sort of become tribal issues" - yes Troy, but only for one "tribe" - the Buffoonalo Tribe, the other tribes are not behaving this way, not with the sort of rigid lockstep cohesion that is exhibited by the Buffoonalos.

[lastlib]

4. K & R for Buffoonalos!!

"Buffoonalos"! . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

How perfect!

. . . . . . .

[caraher]

7. Except the research shows otherwise

They've found liberals are indeed just as susceptible to this kind of bias


Just because we're *actually* right on most issues doesn't mean we're immune! Unfortunately, the RWers are both wrong on the most consequential issues and have the ability to black and even reverse efforts to address those problems.

[Warren Stupidity]

9. I agree that the *susceptability* is the same in all tribes.

The difference is that the Buffoonalos have a built in reinforcing lockstep mechanism: they have embraced both authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism, whereas the other tribes embrace diversity of opinion, skepticism, intellectualism etc. So, despite the fact that we are susceptible, that by itself is not particularly interesting and allows a simplistic reductionist false equivalency to be constructed, one that fails to explain how the Buffoonalos could be so very wrong on so very many evidence based issues.

[caraher]

11. I see your point

In principle this distinction might hold for the reasons you mention. It's just not clear to me that it does, flattering to ourselves though it may be to think so.

It's not hard to find examples on DU where the question of whether a given poster is truly "one of us" takes precedence in the discussion over the merits of what they are saying if that challenges certain elements of "progressive" orthodoxy.

I do agree the RWers are far worse when it comes to this. My RW sister-in-law has had a lot of frightening/hilarious "2 legs good/4 legs good" flip-flops between statements before and after receiving her marching orders from Rush. The question for me is just whether we are better at concealing the process (even from ourselves) by doing it in a more sophisticated way.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Mother Jones: "Stop Pretending That Liberals Are Just As Anti-Science As Conservatives"

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/left-science-gmo-vaccines

and I note that your MJ article is not about issues. It's about ability to do math if it looks like the result will show your position wrong. But on 'issues', the points that people bring up to counter the right's tendency towards idiocy on evolution and global wamring - that the left is more anti-scientific than the right about GMOs and vaccines - turns out to be wrong.

There is a small difference in 'concern' about GMOs; but not the outright denial of science.

[On the Road]

2. The Article's Thesis is Heartily Recommended,

but I thought everybody knew this.

[MisterP]

3. there's two big angles to look at it from: the first is that it's deliberately (or not) turned into

a marker of identity: the creationism is a "spandrel," a consequence of the GOP's 70s absorption of fundamentalists and televangelists (and also of a Baptist coup, which coincided with far-right takeovers of foreign policy, the NRA, even rocketry clubs); and so much of these identity markers--from bashing on spotted owls to stuffing your McMansion with taxidermies to even supporting nuclear plants and pipe-bombings of activists--all just happen to align with corporate interests and funding; a mass movement to deny warming has less to do with our lack of 4-year plans in math in high school or our unwillingness to fund the Supercollider or the fact that around a fifth don't know the Earth goes around the sun (around a fifth of British and Germans do, too); in fact the warming deniers use glib science-speak, lists of whitecoats, high-handedness, and appeals to Galileo and Columbus as much as the subculture many of the warming defenders (though not scientists) are part of, turning the fight into one between two factions based on the same false premises

the second is that it becomes a subculture, a coddled and self-indulgent echo chamber where one nonsensical, theologically-baseless Adventist heresy (creationism) can be embraced wholeheartedly but another (a flat Earth) not; they see their culture getting attacked by the gays and the starlets, but also by people whose arguments are based on strawmen (even if they agree ISIS is da biggest threat eva); they see the medical sector sitting on half its clinical trials, they see seven decades of science, corporations, state, and army totally fused together, they see whitecoats as dirty as any cop or Mexican alcalde

this process doesn't even have to be quite so cultish: the US (and UK) has certainly long nurtured and even encouraged eccentrics (a good many of our suburbs started as sectarian communes), but for every person jettisoning science because someone with a pompadour told them to there's another who's just ambivalent--"they heard" warming and evolution were real from their HS teacher, but now "they're hearing" "strong doubts" from "scientists," and "doesn't science get to change its mind if there's new evidence?": one loosely-held belief is replaced with another similarly loosely-held one--one as good as the other; nothing will change if the only people fighting this are hollering that "there are only cold hard facts and the swine who deny them!"

[lastlib]

5. ^ ^ ^ Very good points!! ^ ^

(Opposable) Thumbs up!!

[hatrack]

6. Or, a compacted version of the same thesis:

"The purpose of building Keystone XL is not to increase domestic oil supply (it's foreign) or to increase America's energy security (it will be sold on the world market).

The purpose of building Keystone XL is to defeat those who oppose building Keystone XL."

[bemildred]

8. The High School Football theory of politics: root for your side no matter what.

Unfortunately, this approach leads to failed policies over and over again.

[Odin2005]

10. I've been saying this for a long time.