I publicly renounced my allegiance to the theology of standards, tests, and choice in 2010 by publishing “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” It caused a stir, and I was asked again and again, why did you change your mind. I thought I had answered the question in my book, but nonetheless people asked again. I was interviewed by Kathryn Schultz, who is now on staff at The New Yorker, because she had published a book about what she called “wrongology,” and how people come to admit their errors in big things.
So whenever I learn of someone who changes course and says so in public, I am interested in learning what persuaded them.
Here is a man who was in the forefront of climate change denial. He changed his mind.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“In our business, talking to Republican and conservative elites, talking about the science in a dispassionate, reasonable, non-screedy, calm, careful way is powerful,”
Despite the rhetoric we hear from the ideologues labelling scientists “alarmists”, “talking about the science in a dispassionate, reasonable, non-screedy, calm, careful way” is what most climate scientists have been doing for decades and, unfortunately, as a strategy to convince the public, it has been a failure.
People who are ideological only listen to what they want to hear. Science is looked at not as a way to decide the truth, but a way to obscure it, eg, by overemphasizing “uncertainty” (an inherent part of all scientific results).
It’s hard enough for most people to admit they were wrong, but admitting that they were actually disingenuous is nearly impossible.
I suspect the latter is actually why so few “change their mind” on the climate issue or Deform issue. They have backed themselves into a corner of their own making.
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The strategy of “just the facts, Ma’am” has been a failure on the climate issue precisely because of the efforts of the ideologues to sew uncertainty and doubt, very similar to how it was sewn on the issue of cancer and other health problems associated with tobacco.
And Deformer have used the same tactic: to sew uncertainty and doubt about the public schools.
These people are not at all creative, but they do recognize when a tactic works.
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Your last sentence, SDP, is quite true.
Hmmm, I wonder what seeds of doubt we could plant to deny your thought?
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SomeDam Poet: if you would allow me to disagree with you a little, while you make a very good point, I think we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that many [probably most people] are not overcome with skepticism and disbelief to the point that they surrender to climate deniers or rheephormsters and the like.
Leave aside the small numbers of the faithful that treat climate change as a quasi-religious belief or those that think the “magic” of competition and “creative disruption” by the “new civil rights movement of our time” ensures quality teaching and learning in charters.
IMHO, the most important audience that they direct their messages of passive hopelessness and submissive denial at are—
US!
They want us, and everyone that isn’t prepared to give a mulligan to Trump and climate change deniers and corporate reform scammers et al.—to just give up, go home, and let them smash and grab and collect their loot.
And the success of those employing variations on Rheeality Distortion Fields? Remember the Divine Right of Kings? The righteousness of chattel slavery? The obvious correctness of not letting women sully themselves with the right to vote?
Their list of failures is yuuuuge even when their scams are directed by, like, really smart stable geniuses…
😱
Respectfully, that is how I see it.
😎
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KrazyTA
I have actually been following this issue for a long time (and posting poems, of course ) and unfortunately, it’s not just a small number who see climate change as a religious belief on the part of environmentalists and other climate “alarmists” (their word)
Not coincidentally, it is many of the same Libertarian types who also don’t like public schools.
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Another commonality between the two issues: economists weighing in on the science of the two issues, something they know nothing about.
Not on just the economics, but on the science.
In the case of climate science economists like Ross Mckitrick have been muddying the waters of climate science with their mathturbation just as Raj Chetty, John Friedman and others have muddied the waters of education with their own mathturbation
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I think this is the key point:
“I also make the conservative case for climate change. We don’t call people conservative when they put all their chips on one number of a roulette wheel. That’s not conservative. It’s pretty frigging crazy. It’s dangerous, risky. Conservatives think this way about foreign policy. We know that if North Korea has a nuclear weapon, they’re probably not going to use it. But we don’t act as if that’s a certainty. We hedge our bets. Climate change is like that. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. Given that fact, shouldn’t we hedge?”
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The uninformed position of gun fetishists on the 2nd amendment also falls into this category.
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Define gun fetishist please. What makes one a fetishist over let’s just say a gun enthusiast?
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I never heard of a foot enthusiast.
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What? Never heard of a “pediphile”?
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“We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. Given that fact, shouldn’t we hedge?”
Taylor does not realize how ironic that is.
One of the meanings of hedge is hedge is to try to avoid giving an answer or taking any action.
Though that is not what he meant, that is precisely what Taylor’s like have been doing for the last 20 years, hedging. And “We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen” is basically the rationale they have given, essentially ” because we don’t know precisely, we don’t know at all, a delaying tactic that plays on the uncertainty inherent to all science.
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I think Taylor’s point is that that behavior is fundamentally insane.
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I know what his point is and it’s not even a new or original point.
Scientists have been warning for a long time of the large risk associated with a climate sensitivity distribution that has a “long tail” on the high temp side.
In other words they have warned about low probability scenarios with a high temperature change associated with them ( with all the rest that that entails: increased droughts, heat waves, high sea level rise, etc)
I just thought it was funny that Taylor does not even appreciate the irony in his statement.
The fellow is clueless.
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Fair enough. It may not be a new, but I think it’s a very important point. We’ll have to agree to disagree that he’s “clueless” just because he used a verb that has an alternate meaning than the one he intended.
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He and his brother are twits, not worthy of being given the time of day.
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It’s not just that Taylor was clueless. It’s that he was dishonest. He even admitted that after he “understood” that Hansen was correct on his main scientific points, he (Taylor) simply switched gears to making an economic argument for not acting and pursued that until he had yet another “epiphany” based on the risk argument made by someone at Goldman Sachs (which scientists and even insurance adjusters at places like Munich RE have been making for some time now)
Forgive me for being unimpressed with his “change of heart” (and it is still unclear how much of the science he now accepts), but I find it unfortunate that someone who has basically been lying for over a decade suddenly gets a platform simply because he has “discovered” what scientists and other honest people have been telling him for a very long time.
In my opinion, these sorts of people should simply be ignored. They have no expertise on and know nothing about the issue they are weighing in on .
So, they now recognize the basic science and basic risk assessment. Big whoop.
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A gun fetishist is one believes that the right to bear a firearm takes precedence over or negates every other fundamental human or constitutional right. A gun fetishist will ignore and refute any pragmatic evidence that runs counter to his or her ideological beliefs. A gun enthusiast recognizes that there are limits to owning or using guns. A gun enthusiast who believes that hunting (or target shooting) is a fundamental right and understands that there are reasonable limits to what individuals can and should be able to do with guns and ammunition. Gun enthusiasts are not prevented from hunting or target shooting in European nations. They do, however, have to submit to regulations to ensure individual and societal safety. And they do not have tens of thousands of their citizens die every year due to gun violence. See the recent legislation in Wisconsin, for example. Those who would eliminate any age and safety requirement to use guns are fetishists. Based on what I know about you, Duane, I consider you an enthusiast, not a fetishist. But it does scare me a bit that you would ask me what the difference is. I would hope you would have known that.
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Sent to my brother-in-law who loves Trump and think climate change is a fraud. He often enlightens me with updates from Breitbart.
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tultican: I won’t even talk to my brother about climate change. He says God determines the weather so there is nothing we can do about it. Try talking to someone who knows that God is causing all the bad weather.
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“If God determines whether”
If God determines whether
Then worshipping is moot
Cuz rain and snow together
Are worthy of the boot
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I have difficulty understanding people who say that God does everything and it is always for the best because too many tragic things happen. Why would God order genocides?
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Or care about the outcome of a sporting event?
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We all have relatives like that.
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I found a TED talk by Kathryn Schultz https://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong#t-810119
I have read books by and listened to TED talks by Jonathan Haidt who is a moral / social psychologist who explains why we stick to our often wrong beliefs so tenaciously
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Entertaining TED talk by Jonathan Haidt about liberals and conservatives
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Interesting thoughts by Schulz. Thanks for sharing, marynwill!
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I was interviewed by Kathryn Schultz about why I changed my mind. She wrote a book about people who said they were wrong. She now writes for The New Yorker. She says she is a “wrongologist.”
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Sorry. https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind
This is the Jonathan Haidt TED talk link
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I shouldn’t be, but again I am speechless.
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While there have been some excellent points made on this thread, when dealing with real live human beings—
There is no one-size-fits-all way of convincing/getting through to every single one of them about any major issue.
We just need to try our best using whatever legitimate and moral means are at hand.
That’s how I see it…
😎
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Like!
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Good to see you back KrazyTA.
You missed the Rheeform Rheecovery fRheeforall
I was thinking of you, though.
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Duane E Swacker and SomeDAM Poet:
Your kind words are much appreciated.
😎
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“Donald Trump clearly has lightly held views about climate, which means they can be easily moved. He has no ideology whatsoever, so the last person in the room who talks to him is the guy who wins the policy debate.” — Taylor
“Last one in the room wins the debate!”
When everyone is gone from room
The Donald will remain
To talk against the coming doom
And keep the rain in plane*
*The rain in Spain, stays mainly in the plane. …By George, I think he’s got it!
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Just landed in LA. Nice not to think about the Orange One fro a few weeks.
Trump allegedly has no ideology but we can count on him opposing regulation, not believing in climate change, opposing gun control, and fervently opposed to abortion. He is the Evangelicals’ guy, period, and all contrary views are null and void.
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You still have enough time to get some anti-nausea medication before the Orange One’s “State of the Union” address.
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“State of the Bunion”
State of the Bunion
Covered but showing
Just like an onion
Layered and growing
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We can all enjoy it when someone changes his or her mind in public. This has to be embarrassing when it happens in public.
Tonight in his annual address to the statehouse, gov Bill Haslam claimed that 74% of Tennessee teachers said the present evaluation system has made them a better teacher. If this is true figure, it is the result of required on-line surveys we all have to take. They are worded so that a negative response will fall on someone whose tree we do not want to shake for one reason or another. Thus his figure is cooked up for the speech, vacuous in essence.
We have all been cuckoled by statistics. That is why changing your mind based on statistics is a thing resisted.
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Roy: ” 74% of Tennessee teachers said the present evaluation system has made them a better teacher. ”
I remember when working at the International School of Kuala Lumpur that we were asked to give online evaluations on our superintendent. He was a monster and we teachers were afraid of him. We would either not do the evaluation or lie and do a positive one. Nobody wanted their job to be at risk. Sounds like a similar situation.
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This part of the interview makes politics a very questionable profession
SL: I frequently hear about Republican lawmakers who don’t believe their own climate denials. Do you know many people who are in that camp?
JT: I have talked to many of them in confidence. There are between 40 and 50 in the House and maybe 10 to 12 in the Senate. They’re all looking for a way out of the denialist penitentiary they’ve been put into by the Tea Party. But they’re not sure what the Republican response ought to look like exactly and when the political window is going to open.
I bet that many people consider this behavior normal part of politics.
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Easy to blame it on the Tea Party when the reality is that their own (primarily Libertarian) ideology boxed them into the corner.
Climate change denial preceded the Tea Party by over a decade.
But these people obviously never learned about such scientific concepts as cause and effect.
They would not recognize science if it flooded their beach front property.
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DAM Poet: “They would not recognize science if it flooded their beach front property.”
I understand that Trump’s property in Florida will be flooded. I wonder if he’ll blame the FBI, CIA, Warren, Hillary or Obama if/when that happens.
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“Climate Libertarianism”
The flooding doesn’t matter
Cuz one can build above
The level of the water
With handouts from the gov
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