Motivated reasoning is only a serious problem when it is on the part of people with centralized control and coercive powers to shut down disagreement. Also, if everyone was "perfectly reasonable" (whatever that would mean), they would let go of their view instead of pushing to make sense of it. Many possible views would die early, even though they could be the right one.
Authors like Michael Polanyi, Alfred Korzybski, and Karl Popper taught me, to quote my husband Leif Smith, that it is more important to see truth(s) than prove one is right. Thank you! I think it is most important to be intellectually ruthless, about one's own beliefs and those of fellow travelers, even if it ticks some people off.
I try not say "you're wrong" and instead say something like "your view is incorrect/mistaken." Separate the person from the proposition. By making your disagreement less personal you probably make it more likely that the other person will listen. Like you, I learned from Popper and others to see a virtuous self as one who orients themselves toward learning and not as being right.
As Francis Bacon said, "Men more readily believe that which they wish were true." In other words, we're prone to wishful thinking. We're also prone to confirmation bias, so that we tend to notice evidence that supports our beliefs and overlook counter-evidence. Some traits that make one more likely to get at the truth are a tendency to value truth so highly that one prefers an unpleasant truth to a pleasant falsehood, a tendency to be skeptical of one's own opinions that may arise from the realization that one is both ignorant and fallible, and a habit of considering both sides of every issue and taking the side one can best defend against objections. Highly intelligent people are better able than most to present convincing arguments defending their biases.
Science is the new religion, and scientists are the new priesthood. I accept that science has made new discoveries, but scientists are as prone to making mistakes as the rest of us. They may be more disciplined, but they are not some new pathway to truth--to technologies, yes.
No one doubts that climate changes, but that is not the same as what's called climate change. That is part of the religion that demands behavioral change to the dictates of experts. It is well documented (not to the satisfaction of climate experts) that climate record reporting is biased against carbon based fuel to the point of performing selective record keeping to bolster their theories, retaining higher temperature readings and discarding lower readings.
Average temperatures, world-wide and yearly, have recently been rising. But over centuries and millennia temperatures have gone through cycles of higher and lower temperatures. This has been observed both world-wide and regionally. Most of that is caused by variation in the temperature of the sun and other natural causes.
Human action, even during the industrial explosion, has produced pollution, but it hasn't amounted to that produced by nature--volcanoes, animal gases, etc. That does not mean that we should not act more responsibly about the use of natural resources, bot no matter how much less carbon we release into the atmosphere, the impact on global climate will be minimal. The economic impact of "climate" activism is incredibly more destructive to us than carbon release from burning coal, oil, and natural gas. "Climate Change" is not based on science but on scientists' anti-humanity biases. It is closely aligned with the eugenics movement and other over-population nut cases.
It is wrong-thinking to hold that scientists are less biased in their reasoning than the rest of humanity. If anything, they are biased in their belief that they are less biased; they will not even entertain the notion that they are not a step of some magnitude of evolution over the rest of us.
Agreed on the "climate change" nonsense. However, I would not say "science is the new religion" unless you capitalize it as "The Science." The Science, of course, is not scientific.
Motivated reasoning is only a serious problem when it is on the part of people with centralized control and coercive powers to shut down disagreement. Also, if everyone was "perfectly reasonable" (whatever that would mean), they would let go of their view instead of pushing to make sense of it. Many possible views would die early, even though they could be the right one.
Authors like Michael Polanyi, Alfred Korzybski, and Karl Popper taught me, to quote my husband Leif Smith, that it is more important to see truth(s) than prove one is right. Thank you! I think it is most important to be intellectually ruthless, about one's own beliefs and those of fellow travelers, even if it ticks some people off.
I try not say "you're wrong" and instead say something like "your view is incorrect/mistaken." Separate the person from the proposition. By making your disagreement less personal you probably make it more likely that the other person will listen. Like you, I learned from Popper and others to see a virtuous self as one who orients themselves toward learning and not as being right.
As Francis Bacon said, "Men more readily believe that which they wish were true." In other words, we're prone to wishful thinking. We're also prone to confirmation bias, so that we tend to notice evidence that supports our beliefs and overlook counter-evidence. Some traits that make one more likely to get at the truth are a tendency to value truth so highly that one prefers an unpleasant truth to a pleasant falsehood, a tendency to be skeptical of one's own opinions that may arise from the realization that one is both ignorant and fallible, and a habit of considering both sides of every issue and taking the side one can best defend against objections. Highly intelligent people are better able than most to present convincing arguments defending their biases.
Science is the new religion, and scientists are the new priesthood. I accept that science has made new discoveries, but scientists are as prone to making mistakes as the rest of us. They may be more disciplined, but they are not some new pathway to truth--to technologies, yes.
No one doubts that climate changes, but that is not the same as what's called climate change. That is part of the religion that demands behavioral change to the dictates of experts. It is well documented (not to the satisfaction of climate experts) that climate record reporting is biased against carbon based fuel to the point of performing selective record keeping to bolster their theories, retaining higher temperature readings and discarding lower readings.
Average temperatures, world-wide and yearly, have recently been rising. But over centuries and millennia temperatures have gone through cycles of higher and lower temperatures. This has been observed both world-wide and regionally. Most of that is caused by variation in the temperature of the sun and other natural causes.
Human action, even during the industrial explosion, has produced pollution, but it hasn't amounted to that produced by nature--volcanoes, animal gases, etc. That does not mean that we should not act more responsibly about the use of natural resources, bot no matter how much less carbon we release into the atmosphere, the impact on global climate will be minimal. The economic impact of "climate" activism is incredibly more destructive to us than carbon release from burning coal, oil, and natural gas. "Climate Change" is not based on science but on scientists' anti-humanity biases. It is closely aligned with the eugenics movement and other over-population nut cases.
It is wrong-thinking to hold that scientists are less biased in their reasoning than the rest of humanity. If anything, they are biased in their belief that they are less biased; they will not even entertain the notion that they are not a step of some magnitude of evolution over the rest of us.
Agreed on the "climate change" nonsense. However, I would not say "science is the new religion" unless you capitalize it as "The Science." The Science, of course, is not scientific.