John Cook at AGU

Master Debunker from DownUnder - John Cook of SkepticalScience dot com discusses the challenge of informing the disinformed, and de-programming the victims of climate denial mind control.

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Science & Technology

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[mphello]

@SkepticalScience If endlessly repeating a lie can make people believe it,

then endlessly repeating a fact can make people believe it,

because in either case, the actual information content does not matter to people.

There is nothing inherent about a "lie" that makes its repeated exposure to people believe it.

[mphello]

@mphello I guess one of my point is that when you say

"emphasize the fact", well, that could mean either:

FACT, fact, fact, fact, myth, fact

or

fact,fact, fact, fact, myth, fact

Obviously, your conclusion is that the former, not the latter, emphasizes the fact. But, mathematically, in either case, the facts outnumber the myths.

[mphello]

@SkepticalScience You're welcome, and also thank you for acknowledging what I had to say. I have always taken into account the Familiarity Backfire Effect when I taught (math) but also in non-formal situation (most recently when I'm in a flame war on the internet), even though I had never given it that name. I always figured it out logically from the fact that there is a small finite number of ideas a human mind can hold in itself, and that they are like a computer stack (order matters).

[ClimateSightful]

Thanks for posting this - I missed John's presentation at AGU so I'm glad to see it now.

[jimbills]

Great stuff here. Point 4 at 7:20 is the most common response I see, too. A point that can't be adequately refuted is rapidly dropped and ignored, and another springs up in its place. It's a Hydra effect.

Thank you for this and the reference to "Made to Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath.

[SkepticalScience]

mphello, the fault there is not the psychological studies but the style choices I made when I created that graphic at the 4:30 mark (with lots of facts responding to the myth). Before giving this talk, I did contemplate editing that graphic to not have so many facts in order to avoid the kind of confusion you're now exhibiting - your comment has convinced me to do so for future presentations. Thanks for the feedback.

[mphello]

Problem is: all these psychological studies of cognition contradict each other in one situation or another. So, they're of no use. e.g. 4m33s Show a lot of facts, barely mention the myth: causes people to remember the facts. But 5m30s Show the one myth and a lot facts: causes people to remember the myth.

Hence, you cannot rely on any of these psychological studies for anything. Unlike climate science itself, these psych experiments and their conclusions are not rigorous!

[pendantry]

Interesting stuff! Thanks for all you do, John :)