Posted: 1/9/2014 4:20:33 PM EDT
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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney
...And that undercuts the standard notion that the way to persuade people is via evidence and argument. In fact, head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect, where people not only fail to change their minds when confronted with the facts—they may hold their wrong views more tenaciously than ever... Yeah, it's motherjones. It's a good article |
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Their argument is a two edged sword.
In the case of “Global Warming” there was an interesting theory which environmentalists jumped on and promoted? Why? Because environmentalists are emotionally attached to the idea that mankind is destroying the environment, if that destruction can be blamed on “big business” or “greedy corporations” then so much the better. It’s true that many religious types will automatically reject information which conflicts with their beliefs. And it’s also true that many atheists will do the exact same thing when presented with something which conflicts with their beliefs. And why shouldn’t things be this way anyway? The article assumes that we should accept the word of “scientists” as if it came from God himself. But the entire article points out how human nature makes it inevitable that people (including scientists) will skew their beliefs to fit emotionally held beliefs. Anyone who has studied the history of science knows just how wrong scientists often are. And when scientists speak to issues that go beyond the scientific their opinions are no more significant than anyone else’s. Science might be able to that Earth is warming due to man’s activity. Science can even say what man can do about it. But science can’t say what man should do about it. |
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The article is not bad, BUT it is so clear that the author suffers the same problems which he writes about.
BTW The increase of autism is not really real. It has been pointed out that the definition of 'What is autism" changed. Under the new definition there were many new cases. Under the previous definition the number of cases remains the same. The author himself is a 'true believer' of 'manmade global warming' so the facts proving fraud are to be discarded. 'Manmade global warming is the worst crap posing as science, but the author can't accept that so he says that anyone not a true believer has a problem. |
