Someone looking around the office, not knowing how things work, might be surprised to find — scattered among the competent, hard-working employees — several nose-picking simpletons who, for some reason, have never been fired. They are surprised because they wrongly assume that those people are there to do work, rather than to provide political cover.
“I contend,” says Simler, “that the best way to understand all the crazy beliefs out there — aliens, conspiracies, and all the rest — is to analyse them as crony beliefs. Beliefs that have been ‘hired’ not for the legitimate purpose of accurately modeling the world, but rather for social and political kickbacks.”
So as well as meritocratic beliefs, which are about establishing true facts about the world — the best time to plant seeds, the presence or otherwise of a tiger — you have crony beliefs, which are intended to win you political or social credit. Simler quotes Steven Pinker: “People are embraced or condemned according to their beliefs, so one function of the mind may be to hold beliefs that bring the belief-holder the greatest number of allies, protectors, or disciples, rather than beliefs that are most likely to be true.”
Obviously this isn’t a hard and fast distinction: it’s not that all crony beliefs are false. For instance, as Harford says, while the Montanan farmers might be ostracised for professing a belief in climate change, someone in Portland, Oregon — or north London — might be ostracised for saying it’s a Chinese hoax. As it happens the north Londoner’s belief might be objectively true, but it would still be socially unacceptable not to believe it. By analogy, you might hire the Mayor’s nephew, and then it might turn out that he’s really good at his job. But he still provides you with political cover.
Everyone has crony beliefs, on left and right; we all believe things, or at the very least profess them, because it is socially advantageous to do so. A left-wing equivalent of the climate change belief might be the claim that IQ is pseudoscience, for instance.
That said, I suspect that people differ in the extent to which they are comfortable with them — as John Nerst points out here, the social category “nerds” is defined, partly, by “a concern for correctness over social harmony”, with a tendency to blurt out socially uncomfortable facts at inappropriate moments. By implication, then, most non-nerds are concerned with social harmony over correctness, and so will be more likely to believe things that are objectively false but which make living in society easier. (This makes sense to me. One of my own very proudest moments as a nerd was when the quantum computer scientist Scott Aaronson reviewed my first book and said that it had the rare quality of trying to assess ideas on “a scale from true to false, rather than from quirky to offensive”.) Still, we all have them.
Spotting them is hard, and Simler makes a few suggestions: if you get angry when someone tries to correct your belief, that’s a sign that it may be a crony one. You wouldn’t get angry if you said “The Liverpool game kicks off at 7:45pm” and someone said “actually no it’s 8pm” — you actually need that information to make plans. But if you said “the 2019-2020 Liverpool team is the greatest club side in history” and someone replied “actually no it’s the Ipswich Town 2000-2001 team,” you might angrily defend Liverpool’s claim, if in fact you were using that belief to profess membership of a group — if it was acting as a crony. Similarly, if they’re vague and abstract, with few real-world consequences, that’s another warning sign.
A need to constantly proclaim your belief might be another point. You don’t need to go around telling people that you believe that your car needs petrol to move; that belief is boringly pragmatic, designed solely to help you get from A to B. But you might go around loudly comparing mask-wearers to Nazi collaborators, if the point of that belief was to demonstrate that you are a member of the Lockdown Sceptics tribe. (The reverse is also true. I might make loud public noises about masks being good, because the tribe of which I am a member is pro-mask. It feels like I genuinely believe that masks are good, and I think the evidence is very much on my side — but I imagine that’s how it feels to the Nazi-comparing chap I just mentioned. Crony beliefs can still be true, remember.)
The obvious question is what my crony beliefs are. But our brains have a whole array of tricks to keep us from noticing our own false beliefs; I don’t suppose I am going to be very good at spotting my own. My greatest concern is over things I’ve previously confidently proclaimed – for instance, that social media probably isn’t causing a wave of teen suicides and that there probably isn’t an epidemic of loneliness. If either of those turn out to be false, I’ll look silly, so it’s socially important for me that I continue to believe them. My repeated claims that the world is getting better and that we are generally becoming less bigoted as time goes on are the sort of things that could be cronyish, although – obviously – I do actually think that all of these things are true.
To return to the Irish TTI tweet, it seems pretty obvious, to me, what was going on. The tweet wasn’t true, but it signalled something that people wanted to express — that the Conservative government is incompetent and corrupt, funnelling money to its friends rather than trying to save lives. The belief, like Montanan farmers’ professed belief that climate change isn’t real, costs nothing or next to nothing in real terms — if you are wrong about the cost of TTI, it will make no difference to any decision you have to make. But if you hang around in left-liberal social circles, then signalling that you think the Tories are bad is socially advantageous, and saying “hang on a minute, actually” will only lose you friends. (Believe me, I know.)
Assuming you do want to believe things that are true, Harford has recommendations: one key one is observing your own feelings about some claim, and seeing whether it makes you feel angry, or happy, or vindicated, and if it does, to wonder whether you believe it because you think it’s true, or you believe it because it’s socially advantageous. Simler, meanwhile, suggests that since crony beliefs are driven by social incentives, the trick is to create social incentives for believing true things. He points to the rationalists, a group of online nerds, as one group who are obsessed with being “less wrong”, and who have created a community where you are rewarded for obeying norms of truth-seeking and debate, rather than for believing specific things.
I hope these tricks work. In a world where thousands of people can believe that the UK TTI system is 15,000 times the price of the Irish one, we need all the help we can get.
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SubscribeHere’s another one. Immunity is unlikely according to Thomas Moore on Sky news yesterday an only 4.4% of recovered people show antibodies and they are declining over time. This is a health reporter for heaven’s sake and it was presented in a pretty scaremongering way. No mention of the fact that most respiratory illnesses don’t produce antibodies and antibodies always decline over time. Test the same group over time and what do you expect to find. We immunise for Hepatitis and in almost all cases no antibodies but still immune. I swear if ICL told me it was raining today I’d at least stick my head out the window to check.
Sweden thinks is has achieved the level of ‘herd immunity’ that, over time, all societies achieve with all Corona viruses. Moreover, they have achieved this without lockdowns and without wearing masks that may well cause added Covid cases whilst also creating other health problems. Had Sweden not failed to protect care homes in March/April its death rate would have been very low indeed.
Yup. From the ONS deaths stats yesterday London had 2 excess deaths in the reporting week and the SE was -60. It begs the question as to why the London Mayor wants to be in tier 2 and also adds to suggestions that some level of herd immunity may exist in those regions. The SW may well be in the same boat. We’ll know for sure very soon. In the meantime some of the group of false prophets that masquerade under the title of SAGE (was there ever a more ill fitting title?) continue to call for a “circuit breaker”
They may have. It looks like New York and New Jersey and San Marino have.
However Sweden’s ~600 deaths per million (compared to 1200 for San Marino, ~2000 NJ) might make them herd-immune right now, but add a confounding factor that increases transmission – weather turning colder, wearing cloth masks (!) and the herd immunity threshold could change.
Sweden haven’t had a daily death number in double figures since 18th July. If this continues in this vein for a while longer I might be a little nervous if I was a government scientific adviser especially after the March no lockdown to lockdown knee jerk. Maybe a few more scientists and politicians as well! Fingers crossed!
Additionally the author of the ICL report Paul Elliott refused to reference T cell immunity in a hopeless interview on Talk radio this morning. T cell immunity is referenced in the report!
Exactly! As another baffled interviewee scientist pointed out a little later. The interviewer, Julia Hartley-Brewer, made Elliot look foolish, not by a BBC/C4-style ‘gotcha’ approach but simply by putting a reasonable question which he was clearly unable or unwilling to answer.
Yep I don’t know what is going on at ICL, but they persist in producing the most alarmist reports and forecasts whatever other institutions are doing or saying. One might almost think they are hoping for a catastrophe in order to justify their original 500,000 deaths prediction (yes, we have not forgotten that Neil).
Equally concerning to me is that a major news broadcaster should report in that manner.
In this way ICL are doing a lot of damage to their previously World class reputation. I hope this does not spill over into their rep for other sciences and engineering.
One problem is that people do not understand science — they tend to think it’s a system of authority, like a government or a religion. But science is a project based on ignorance and skepticism, one of learning, doubting, and reasoning about what you think you know. Every finding, every conclusion is provisional. People don’t like that, they want some big daddy to tell them what’s going on; so they demand that scientists, or pseudo-scientists, fulfill that role. Often, they can’t do it very well, but given the power and money on offer if they pretend to, they try to play the game, just as the witch doctors of old. If you demand a con, you’ll get one.
Science is based on peer-competition. An idea at the root of other successful systems like capitalism and democracy. No central authority and everybody can compete with everybody else.
I’m not sure their infectious disease modelling has much of a reputation. Didn’t ICL predict 50,000 deaths from mad cow disease?
I think there have bee around 180 since the scare started.
It’s now clear they were a different cohort!
You have to be careful comparing simple questions (kick off time) with complex questions (best team ever). Much of the problem is that people try to overcome complexity by simplifying it to make it manageable. That may be a better clue. Oversimplification signals a crony belief. See the current vast array of oversimplification around BLM, abortion, trans rights, etc etc. All complex and difficult questions that are routinely expressed in soundbites.
Worth noting too that the brain tends to to make incoming information make sense in terms of it’s existing views/paradigms. If you believe a lot of progressive nostrums, it may well be cognitively more easy to believe other progressive ones, never mind any social benefits that this may also have (and I entirely agree what the author is saying about crony beliefs), What might be interesting is how individuals deal with incoming information or claims that are dissonant with their existing world view, but are socially beneficial to adopt as crony beliefs. Perhaps there’s a definition of integrity to be found in that.
Agreed – and a signal to change your “crony group” before you suffer the mental health costs that come with trying to live with the incongruity ….
I think you’re right, that this is not simply about cronyism and your social group. It’s about your own world view and the psychological reasons behind that. I’m a Lockdown Sceptic because a) I’m old so don’t have much time left to spend locked down and deprived of all the things that make my life meaningful and pleasurable and b) I’m a control freak. I do not like and never have liked being told what to do or following rules. Therefore I seize upon anything that argues that the cure is worse than the illness, in the hope the government will be persuaded to let life go back to “normal”. Yesterday I burst into tears on reading that 367 people had died in a single day AND antibodies declined quite quickly over time so one could not presume immunity. I woke up every two hours and checked my mail for the daily LockdownSceptics.org email, in the hope of information that might support my desperation for the doomsayers to be wrong and this thing to be OVER.
And also, if you try to address the complexities of any of these issues, you are likely to be attacked. Another symptom.
It was Alert Einstein who put it best, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.,
That comparison of the two football-related claims made me think as well. One example was a simple fact-based statement. The other was an emotive issue that is not necessarily linked to social alliances.
I’m not so sure about that one. Didn’t that misleading tweet make you angry? Yes, we get angry when someone contradicts us about things we’re not as sure of as we’d like to be, but we also get angry when someone contradicts us about things we are completely sure we’re right about, because then we think they’re spreading obvious falsehoods. I don’t think there’s any easy way to tell those two things apart.
Maybe you tell it apart by taking a deep breath and realising you are (or should be) angry at yourself for having adopted a position (that on second thoughts) is daft .. 🤔
Sure, but that assumes that you can figure out that it was stupid by just thinking it through one more time. Most nontrivial beliefs can’t be proven or disproven through common sense alone.
True – but if you are like me – you often realise that you didn’t think it through the first time … which certainly makes me angry with myself.
A big problem here is that a lot of people simply don’t know anything. For instance, in January this year I told people that Joe Biden had told Ukraine that if the prosecutor wasn’t fired they weren’t getting the one billion from the US. This was on video, and we know the prosecutor was investigating Burisma, the energy company on whose board Hunter Biden was sitting for 83K a month. This was instantly and angrily refuted by people who hadn’t seen the video, hadn’t read the New Yorker cover story in July 2019 and have TDS.
Then a few days I mentioned the Patriot Act and all its evils to someone who had served as an officer in the British army and held down a very good corporate job for some decades. He hadn’t even heard of the Patriot Act! Nor had he heard of of Tulsi Gabbard or Andrew Yang, two very plausible Democrat presidential candidates who were shafted by the Democratic National Convention.
Of course, this ignorance is largely due to the fact that the MSM does all it can to keep people ignorant. But the consequence is that a lot of people don’t know anything, and it’s a big problem.
“Of course, this ignorance is largely due to the fact that the MSM does all it can to keep people ignorant.”
Utterly risible.
MSM (whatever that means – Daily Mail?) does an excellent job at news reporting. I have problem(s) with their editorial fine but that is very different from news reporting.
US Constitution has been around for over 200 years and most Americans can not name the 3 branches of the government – let alone what they are supposed to do! Is that the fault of MSM?
Most of the British people will fail the most basic test about UK governance! Is that the fault of MSM?
People have always been ignorant (a combination of IQ, education, life/job experience etc.), but we (as in the West) had a political system that kept them out (limited? ) their ability to directly make policy.
Hi Jeremy. Would you exclude yourself from your comments about ignorance, IQ etc?
If you think that the mainstream media do an excellent job at news reporting how would you know that?
I read the news – more than just one paper.
If you read FT, Guardian, The Times (almost) every day you should have a reasonably good understanding of the world’s affair.
If (say) you are interested in US Electoral process you have to dig a bit deeper but that information is available to everybody- simply go on line. The reality is that people visit websites (read papers) that enforces their own bias!
You didn’t answer my questions Jeremy. And why would reading those papers give you a reasonable understanding? I assume that you recognise that you too are confirming your biases?
Not true, if you read the Times and the Guardian and the Mail, apart from the fact that their coverage of many issues is woeful, their different one sided viewpoints should give you a broader idea of what people are thinking at least, even if what they are thinking is rubbish.
Not sure why you wrote “Not True”? I was asking questions not making a declaration.
“I assume that you recognise that you too are confirming your biases?”
That’s a statement with a question mark on the end of it. Given that full stop and question mark are a single key apart, I assumed that you’d made a typo.
To clarify, when I say “not true”. It clearly is true that you assume that he recognises etc. etc. But I assume is that it is not true that he recognises, etc. etc. And I believe that he’s not confirming his biases. And that’s why I wrote “Not true”?
I assume you’ll forgive me plopping question marks on the end of my statements?
You lost me a bit old chap, but not to worry. And of course you’re forgiven. Life is too short to not forgive plopping.
With genuine respect to Jeremy, he does seem to have a habit of moving to a new defensive point when challenged – rather than answering the challenge that was raised.
Give it a try Jeremy – it’s a great way of reducing the risk of cognitive bias.
We all continue to comment BTL despite knowing that we are merely feeding our ego rather than expecting a reasonable debate. It’s a sign of madness isn’t it – doing the same thing while knowing that we will have the same outcome.
What “new” position?
MSM covers the news. What major issue do you think is important right now that is not covered by MSM? Example please!
MSM covers the news.
Not really. MSM covers ‘news’ that either benefit the media’s preferred party or tarnish the opposition.
What major issue do you think is important right now that is not covered by MSM?
There is the Joe and Hunter Biden business which has far more empirical backing than the Russia narrative that persisted for three plus years.
There is the ongoing rioting that was either ignored or termed “mostly peaceful” as there is an acceptable level of violence. 9/11 air travel was mostly peaceful, too, but that’s not how the day is recalled.
Actually it was covered – google NY Times.
The story was first given to WSJ by Bannon and Giuliani. The WSJ could not prove (!!!) the clams so they refused to published it. Only after WSJ refuse to publish the story did the Trump team go to NY Post.
“Trump Had One Last Story to Sell. The Wall Street Journal Wouldn’t Buy It.”- NY times
the inability to prove claims hasn’t stopped the MSM from nonsense like collusion, Russians, and various other stories. The claims are there. That they are made sounds like a news story. That they are made on the record and involve real-live emails also sounds like a news story. Try again.
Everybody has claims, Respected newspapers MUST check sources before they publish things. That is why those MSM organizations are respected.
If you think MSM is bad why does it have such influence. After all Trump has given more interviews to “failing NY Times” than any other newspaper.
I don’t think it does have that much influence, generally speaking. The MSM have been mostly attacking Trump savagely for several years, and yet he might well be re-elected next week. According to the theory of dominant influence, that shouldn’t be possible.
“could not prove (!!!) the clams so they refused to published it”
Yet they publish the most outrageous unproven nonsense about Trump; rumours, fabrications, the lot. It happens all the time.
Recently there was a claim, presented as fact, that Trump had insulted fallen soldiers as suckers. The source “anonymous” . It came out later that no one there at the time of the alleged insult heard any such thing. There was no subsequent correction or apology, fake news presented as fact. I have no faith in the legacy media. None.
How about the Julian Assange extradition hearings?
Just google it
Covered on:
2/10/2020 – independent
08/09/2020 – guardian (also on 2nd and 6th of October)
10/09/2020 – telegraph
I replied but I was blocked or moderated or whatever .As bad as the Guardian.
I haven’t commented on “new positions” or suggested that MSM doesn’t cover important news items.
Pray tell what gave you the idea that I had ?
Or are you perchance responding to someone’s else’s point – while mistakenly tagging it to mine 🤔
LOL
It’s not that simple. To some extent, MSM create or define the news. An important event might have happened, but it’s not news unless it’s publicised.
Take an issue that is important right now!
Brexit? US election? Nagarono-Karabakh war, Covid…are those issues not covered by MSM?
Those papers have been around for a long time for a reason…you don’t have to read them. Go for DM/DT/Sun/Express.
I do read them as well as a lot of far better on-line news from independent journalists. The Grauniad used to be a mild corrective to the MSM BS, but sold its soul for the dollar.
As regards issues, as you describe them: Julian Assange’s extradition hearing was not covered. The Covid coverage is one sided – a debate between the so-called experts on both sides would be good. Brexit is a dead duck. The Presidential election is just infotainment a contest between two right-wing tribes – one lead by an arrogant buffoon and the other by a demented buffoon. As far as the press that you laud is concerned you would do well to remember what Chomsky said: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum,”
However this is all pointless as you didn’t answer my previous questions.
Your position is quite simple:
If I like it it is true and good, if I don’t like it is a lie and bad.
Go to Guardian website and search for Julian Assange. I just DID!
“However this is all pointless as you didn’t answer my previous questions.”
I did – “Those papers have been around for a long time for a reason…you don’t have to read them. Go for DM/DT/Sun/Express.”
Oh dear Jeremy. You don’t know what my position is, simple or not. A belief that you do is arrogant. I didn’t refer to good or bad, I referred to news coverage or not, You searched for Assange and what did you find?
If you want to see a proper coverage go to Craig Murray’s blog.
You keep referring anyone who differs from your rather naive view that the broadsheets you subscribe are worthwhile to DM/DT etc, which is a bit tiresome, “specially when you you read “higher class” rubbish yourself. You seem to believe that longevity is quality: a non sequitur..
As far as answering questions is concerned I’ll repeat them:
Would you exclude yourself from your comments about ignorance, IQ etc?
If you think that the mainstream media do an excellent job at news reporting how would you know that?
Point for quoting Chomsky. Wrong though he was about most things, what he was right about he was right about.
If you read FT, Guardian, The Times (almost) every day then I’m afraid you will be receiving a fairly uniform view on “news”-there may be differences in emphasis and priorities but its essentially the same narrative.You need to dig wider & deeper and more frequently and I would suggest going to the source data once in a while an dreally getting to grips with “the facts”
“You need to dig wider & deeper and more frequently ” – yes I gave you the example (read the comment again) of US Election Process.
How many people in the world have the time of day to dig deep on EVERY SINGLE ISSUE?
You are confusing news with opinion/editorial positions.
That’s what I do. When I can form my opinions on mask wearing by reading the actual scientific papers and not the political exegisis on those papers I do. And I’ve read a few. And I have a rough opinion.
On many other matters you have to rely on the media, mainstream or otherwise, and try to take account of their biases, in order to take a flying stab at what the truth might possibly be. Like looking through a fog. You’ve got to remember that whatever the reporter’s opinions are, they probably don’t know anything anyway, having got their information from a source with an axe to grind and their own incomplete information.
i read the front page of the NYTimes this a.m. and now I know the contents of Trump’s refrigerator from that of Biden’s. I am so sorry I voted early since that information from the paper of record in the USA would no doubt have changed my vote.
Google the line below:
Trump Had One Last Story to Sell. The Wall Street Journal Wouldn’t Buy It.
NY TImes and read it.
“If you read FT, Guardian, The Times (almost) every day you should have a reasonably good understanding of the world’s affair.”
One example – All three were enthusiasts for the EU and slanted their “news” accordingly.
MSM … does an excellent job at news reporting.
Thanks for the laugh. The MSM is precluded from doing an “excellent” job of news reporting because as a whole it is neo-Zhdanovite in essentials (Andre Zhdanov was cultural enforcer under Stalin in the 1930s and 40s). This means that the MSM, which is currently in the hands of the self-enobled, halo-polishing, and self-congratulatory elite of the “anointed” (to use Thomas Sowell’s word), has to present the world as the neo-Marxists would like the “deplorable lower orders” to see it, rather than as it is.
A lot of empty words sprinkled with historical references as to sound clever.
To compare MSM with Stalinist media says a lot about you.
I wonder do you really believe these things that you say..?
Stalinists propagandists had plenty of time available to them.
Get yourself a copy fo the Metro or Evening Standard. Do a rough word count of all of the articles knocked out daily by their hacks and marvel that their opinions are cogent at all. MSM is becoming poorer principly for lack of advertising funds. Advertsiing funds that now flow towards the most outrageous opinions on the internet.
Why would you do that ?
I enjoy reading the comments on Unherd. Often adds greatly to the article and contributes to understanding. Until I got to the Jeremy Smith comment. Downhill all the way from there.
I don’t know what your experience is, but in the US on every occasion when I had direct knowledge of something reported in the boss media (for example, the New York Times) it was between half wrong to entirely wrong. A couple of days ago I was reading about the torrent of lies surrounding the war in Vietnam, and of course we all know about the media treatment of Iraq 2002-2003. But the lying, misrepresentation, misleading, obfuscation and so on go down to much lower levels than international politics; it takes place wherever the important and influential people have an interest. It is true many people prefer ignorance, but that doesn’t excuse the media from encouraging and serving their ignorance.
So, who exactly was it that changed the voting requirements? Who was it that decided to let the ignorant who have no economic stake in the game vote?
Here’s a clue…It was the same people who now buy those people’s votes with gimme’s funded with other peoples tax money.
The same people who made quite an effort to convince those same ignorant voters that what we had in the US is a Democracy instead of the Constitutional Republic that we were founded as, in spite of Jefferson’s and Franklin’s vehement warnings that should our system devolve into a Democracy that the whole of our country would be lost, sold to the highest bidder paid for with other peoples’ money.
Just for the record the people that insisted that the ignorant vote are the same people that you come on to defend on a daily basis.
And a simple lack of interest in a given subject, I’d add. A lot of people simply don’t care about the workings of government.
Classic Dunning-Kruger Effect where those who know little tend to overestimate how much they know because they are unaware of so much of what there is to know
Tom,
I see you have fallen for the climate change myth – indeed you would probably call me a “denier” these days.
After all, there are those lovely “models” which show disaster just around the corner.
A bit like those models from that Prof from Imperial, all very believable, but wrong.
Here I will try another one – why are we excluding white English from jobs on the grounds of race?
I hope, people will think about these two ideas, rather than just being offended!
I’ve flip-flopped on climate-change over the years. But over the last 15 years or so the temperature has gone up and up.
On the other hand it is hard to believe in science that has such a social stigma around disbelieving it.
If people had said, you know what, you don’t believe that’s fine, I might have changed my mind a lot quicker.
But over the last 15 years or so the temperature has gone up and up.
No, it hasn’t. Over the last century, the average global surface temp has gone up by about one degree or so. That’s it. Check for yourself. NASA’s Goddard Institute is among the sources that will confirm this.
when the typical change over an order of magnitude more time is an order of magnitude smaller, that qualifies as “up and up”. here is an excellent visual, which is also well sourced: xkcd.com/1732/
Nick, Alex,
About 12 years ago my colleagues asked me if I knew whether any of the climate change science was even vaguelly accurate or just rich-hating leftie spin.
Back then the history of warm periods and little ice ages was the almost best science we had. These were strong evidence of periods of _local_ warming and cooling.
We did have one degree global warming over 100 years back then, and crucially, it seemed to have peaked and were coming back down a bit, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if we’d plunged back the other way for a few years. So I was on the maybe yes side of maybe. There was a lot of political clamour with precious little science.
Since then we’ve gone up another roughly 0.3 degrees in 10 years, a huge swing. These are recent measurement hard to fake, model or misprepresent. Various studies have all converged on smaller historical global changes than had been previously thought. These are more theoretical than simple measurement taking and a bit too interdependant, but they are for the most part solid science. So now I’m on the probably yes side of maybe.
We have to remove the social signalling around climate science, because radical action with little knowledge usually breaks something, and we have to be skeptical about all science, or it doesn’t remain science. Alternatives to oil like nuclear energy come with their own hazards, so we can’t let cancel culture shout down good science.
Politically, I’m for a balanced budget, solid court-based justice (i.e. the sort not often found in resource rich countries), and lower (though not zero) international migration. Thus reducing the UK’s dependence on imported oil and the mass migration which is always driven by climate change fits with my political views. Maybe this has coloured my thinking a rather blue shade of green.
I’m ready to change my mind as more evidence comes in.
I’m just astonished that people can worry about a degree here and there and could it be carbon dioxide? and could that be from humans? When since childhood, I agonised as miles and miles of open country were being tarred over with roads, residential developments, and shopping malls surrounded by acres of tarred parking lot. How many little creatures went extinct there? Let alone wilderness ploughed up to grow food for all these extra people? Can humans continue to multiply until there is only standing room? And how the hell does that affect the climate? Will it matter?
Don’t worry, when nature becomes over burdened with human activities it will fix the imbalance by its own methods…perhaps an unstoppable very contagious virus?
Adrian.
When I read about our history, I am told of the medieval warm period, the little ice age and that the Romans grow vines in York.
In other words the climate has gone from hot to cold and back again in 2000 years. We are now coming out of the little ice age and should expect the climate to become warmer.
The small increase in temperature, since the little ice age, should be welcomed. It provides more food for the world and personally I prefer a warm sunny day to a cold one!!
Also Tom seems to a victim to the obvious fallacy that any “climate change” will automatically make matters worse. Crops have failed since we started planting them.
Meanwhile, we’ve just recorded the world’s highest ever annual wheat yield. Reality can be a right pain in the belief system.
11 years ago Prince Charles said we have 9 years to save the World. This year Prince William says we only have 10 years to save the World.
Things seem to be improving. As New Labour might have said:’Things can only get better.’
By the way Tom, have you looked at how many people have lost jobs because of conservative views compared to socialist/ progressive views?
It looks like it is more beneficial to be on the Left financially.
Hello unHerd
Every day gets more and more depressing
Sweden averaging 2-3 covid deaths day
Despite all the evidence politicians and their unelected and very well paid masters seem intent on destroying what’s left of the economy.
They want us to buy all our “non essential” goods from China via Amazon.
They don’t, but that’s what’ll happen.
It’s not a plan, it’s incompetence.
Most politicians are good at one thing and one thing only – getting elected.
Democracy is a great system for getting rid of bad politicians, but a terrible system for getting hold of good politicians in the first place.
It’s not a plan, it’s incompetence.
You could make a better argument for the opposite – this is not incompetence, it is intentional. Foreseeable consequences do not occur by accident. Locking down large parts of society does not occur in a vacuum, and it’s an action that will cause a reaction. Among the reactions have been jobs lost, businesses closed, a spike in overdoses/abuse and likely one to come in suicides. And none of the politicians advocating this course has the genetic capability of saying “we were wrong; let’s adjust.”
It is difficult to accept that people in power can be stupid and ignorant and self-interested; and want to be liked and avoid criticism. Sweden bucked the trend, but it took moral courage and a lot of criticism and the world is poised to pounce on their smallest set-back or catastrophe with Schadenfreude. Best to do what everybody else is doing, for the fall-out is “more than my job’s worth.”
World leaders are just too busy trying to survive and they live in dread of “gotcha” interviews. It would be wrong to say a political career is just like any other, because the worst aspects of a regular career is amplified in politics. The back-stabbing, infighting, jealousies and manoeuvring is mega-amplified in politics. So forget about putting an excellent product out on the market, just make sure you’ve followed all the correct procedures and ticked all the boxes and then go stab the guy who had a new, or better idea.
We all want to believe that our leaders are put in those positions because they are better than we are: smarter, more dedicated. Nope, sorry. Great leaders come around once or twice in a lifetime and sadly not always on the hour when they are needed.
“They” could be a warning sign of a crony belief.
I believe they want us to rent all items – essential and non-essential, and have them delivered from Amazon by drone. We will own nothing and apparently, according to the WEF, we’ll be happy about it.
Sweden averaging 2-3 covid deaths day
by contrast, how many non-Covid deaths per day occur in Sweden?
“swdev perestroika” produces weekly, and quarterly updates on this. Google up “swdev perestroika SWEDEN COVID status after Q3′
If I were a climate scientist surely I would be incentivised to adopt crony beliefs about man-made climate change for fear of losing funding if I expressed a view different from the current
groupthinkconsensus.This is not how rigorous scientific enquiry works.
Watch the latest, eagerly awaited Joe Rogan podcast with Alex Jones, just released last night (Rogan #1555. 3.4 million views in just over 12 hours). Jones outlines the way in which the globalists capture/bribe the scientists in order to further their interests.
I wasn’t eagerly waiting it but watched a bit of it. I find that like Icke he has a few half truths which he then embellishes a lot. His first few comments (about Maxwell) were a prime example. It isn’t just scientists who are captured by capitalists. We all are. Jones really didn’t have to outline anything and didn’t add anything to the debate
I will def make sure to watch that. Thank you.
According to Alex Jones:
BP oil spill – false flag operation
Sandy Hook school shooting – false flag operation
Boston Marathon Bombing – false flag operation
The list goes on.
Isn’t it odd how a study that debunks the hysteria of climate is debunked if some energy company funds it, but a study funded by govt – which is even more vested in the outcome than Big Oil – is treated as gospel.
The reverse side of crony-beliefs is enemy-beliefs. A great many people badly need people to hate, or at least dislike. Or perhaps it is contempt that is in vogue now. In the past people could just hate women, Jews, Blacks, immigrants etc. Now we are reduced to hating people, ostensibly because they chose to believe the wrong things. The notion of ‘When do I get to hate other people? Never.’ now appears to be an outlier in the realm of human beliefs.
This appears to me to be a secular version of ‘Justification by Faith Alone’, except that instead of God doing the judging at the end of your life, your peers do the judging every second of the day via twitter. (Wikipedia has a nice article about Justification by Faith Alone.) Ideological beliefs have taken the place of religious ones in modern life, but people still want to be saved through their faith, not through their good works, or themselves, or because their ideology is true.
Surely this is the reason that “wokery” is so popular, as you can have all the attributes outlined above – yet be protected from accusations of believing in deity stories.
Some of my friends who are pretty intelligent indulge in hating a figure or organisation or philosophy rather than taking the time to listen to what that person(s) is saying and engaging in discussion. It’s easy and lazy.
When challenged on exactly what it is they disagree with, asking them for their evidence past the common facebook posts, they haven’t a clue. Unfortunately, this is more than common in these times.
Very astute observations about secular forms of faith, Laura. The mainstream interpretation of SARS2 and the disastrous policy measures subsequently adopted rest on just a few ‘articles of faith’ that have proven to be immune to any rational critique. At a bare minimum, these articles of faith include the closely-related claims that i) the lethality of SARS2 warrants drastic measures; ii) it makes sense to use high-cycle-threshold PCR to track a pandemic; iii) the virus can be eliminated; iv) our interventions are effective toward the goal of elimination; v) our immune systems are helpless; vi) only a vaccine will save the day. There may be one or two other items others might want to add to such a list, but what stands out is just how much this set of beliefs functions as a faith system promising salvation. I wonder if there’s more going on here than just social conformity. The durability of these articles of faith in the face of massively accumulating evidence to the contrary seems to point to some deeply embedded perception of danger. It’s like most people experienced shell shock in March and haven’t recovered. Add to that the sunk costs of supporting the faith over many months and it becomes difficult for such people to shift their views. And of course it doesn’t help that so many crusading ‘experts’, journalists and politicians have been far more interested in defending the faith than in dealing with the changing state of the evidence. It’s hard to see at this point what will break the spell. Zero excess mortality? Normal hospitalization rates? Will even those work? Or will this perverse faith continue to prevail?
Their zealotry in defending these beliefs for example that men can magically become women is akin to a dogmatic religious belief – but hardly surprising that in a secular society there are people who need to belong to such groups and are desperate to believe- even if it is based purely on a feeling
And this is why, as the Western world devolves into madness and conspiracy theories, the importance of Christianity becomes more apparent. As far as whacky belief systems are concerned (and they all are) Christianity does a good job of converting the energies of the stupid and gullible into charitable works. It has its flaws, for sure, but without Christianity as a central pillar of society we are reverting to the barbaric ignorance of pagan times.
Yep. ‘Love one another as I have loved you’ is, surely, in darwinian terms, for ‘whack jobs’ only. And yet, and yet…….
Surely you are not comparing that relative
pygmy, Christianity, with those giants of civilisation, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and many others?
I would find it far more surprising to see something that was actually true on Twitter. It’s a PR platform, with a side business in p0rnography. They have no interest in publishing the “truth”.
“-masks are good, and I think the evidence is very much on my side…”
*Links to article illustrating the perils of overconfident claims around covid*
“…the data is far from knockdown, and there hasn’t yet been time to run and publish high-quality randomised trials…”
Thomas Lars Benfield, a Danish scientist who was recently involved in one of the only RCT’s examining facemasks, in response to the question of ‘when is it going to be published?’:
“As soon as a journal is brave enough”
How I wonder what the results were…
Spanish, Czechs, Germans, the Dutch are all seeing large increases. They were doing things correctly! Following all the rules. Why didn’t this all work! Meanwhile in Sweden.
https://www.bbc.com/news/wo…
Is part of the issue that we tend to dissolve these types of questions (climate change) into yes/no answers. If I say “yes” that I believe in climate change, what does that mean… that I believe the climate does change? that humans cause change? that humans cause the majority of the change? that I support modest measures to control human impact? that I support draconian measures? Oftentimes, the framing of the question provides the answer the questioner wants.
Exactly, but the real point of this article is to let us know what Tom and his mates believe because they are of course correct and “objectively true”
I think the author misses exploring finer distinctions. Those who believe something based primarily on its social utility, and actually believe it, those who either profess belief without actual belief or conceal their belief because of the social cost it will incur, and those who believe something NOT out of social utility but who happen to disagree with the current ‘truth’, who have a different measure that is not socially based. He cites the Montana farmers, and calls it a ‘professed belief’. He himself cannot *believe* that they witness the ‘impacts’ and not conclude that they are due to climate change. It MUST be because of their self-interest and their weighing of the costs. Well, that’s his analysis. It’s because they are Republicans and the cost of denial is minimal. Well, maybe they just reject one handy narrative and use another, say the Dustbowl droughts story from the 1930s. That would be in their historical consciousness, and is not an invalid story. There was science explaining that, too, and has a rational basis, not a tribal one.
This article misses the crucial point. People have always wanted to believe what suits them. In the UK in the past, however, there was near-universal acceptance that beliefs should be tested against evidence obtained in a scientifically rigorous manner. This is no longer the case. Nowadays we are expected to accept other people’s feelings as fact. So if a man feels that he is a woman, women must let him into their changing rooms and toilets. Individuals can no longer defend their own beliefs using argument such as a discussion of x and y chromosomes or of the rape statistics. In order to defend him or herself from increasing persecution such as losing employment or being the victim of violence that the police ignore, the individual is forced to seek protection from a group who have a similar or similar views.
Quite right. I have long advocated changing the saying “Seeing is believing” into “Believing is seeing”.
That’s a lot of waffle to say that most people don’t do their due dilignce before believing and reposting ‘facts’. Most people are unable to be objective, which includes the ability to recognise when a discussion is around a subjective or objective subject such as the ‘best’ football team without agreeing on key measurement parameters.
Exactly what is happening around our government’s handling of Covid. The objective facts as in hard data are being pushed aside in favour of an ideology based on ‘facts’ as defined by the government advisors and not so ministerial ministers themselves. These ‘facts’ are then repeated without question by media and the fearful without further research and due diligence.
As for crazy ideas and conspiracy. Generally, those who feel threatened see conspiracy – and of course those who re-post having not done/refused to conduct their due diligence. The definition of conspiracy is interesting. The government handling of Covid definitely falls under the definition. Creating a credible information vacuum and ignoring hard data sucks in ‘conspiracy theorists’ who are often no more than people who disagree with the established method. ‘Conspiracy theory’ is a lazy label to dismiss the inconvenient.
If listened to, even the ‘nuttiest’ person has something worthy of taking away. Crikey, David Icke believes in lizards within people of power (my words) and because of this gets labelled a ‘conspiracy theorist’ and a nutter. Meanwhile, half the rest of the world believes in a god before which they prostrate and demean themselves, around which philosophies and businesses have been built with absolutely no evidence at all of said god. Even less evidence than facemasks working outside of a clinical setting! Now who are the nutcases?
That’s a lot of waffle my reaction as well.And the really tragic thing is that “fact” “a thing that is known or proved to be true”.no longer means this-its what the holder of an opinion asserts it to be.
I am a recluse. I smile and nod along when the people I do occasionally meet tell me their political opinions. But I have no need to feel socially accepted since I dislike nearly everyone and don’t change my mind according to anyone else’s argument. I am not really a social animal, therefore all my opinions are correct and based on ‘the facts’ ; )
I don’t accept that. (See below) We all have psychological needs and tendencies and those shape our views more than social pressures.
I assumed that Alison was being ironic. Forgive me, both of you, if she wasn’t.
“Climate change is real” – of course it is. But as stated here it contains the message that we are responsible. The writer certainly needs help.
How do you know “Climate Change” is “Real”?
Because someone told you. And you believe it.
But, but, but …. Robin Hanson and co-author wrote yet another trendy, click-bait book that explains everything — everything — about belief formation.
Anyway. Robin is a great fellow. I know him. We overlapped in grad school. But the click-bait books are a bit much.
Climate changes all the time. It is fall and a lot cooler out then it was a month ago. Greenland has been free of ice multiple times in Earth’s history. The Earth used to be a lot warmer and still maintained life. In fact I believe more life was supported during warmer periods than cooler ones.
Why do they believe rubbish? Because there is the perception of political power to be gained by pushing it. That’s been going on Stateside for months with the narrative that cops are gunning for black people. Never mind that 75% of the civilians killed by law enforcement are NOT black.
Malicious truths cannot be allowed to interfere with narratives. It does not matter what the narrative is, to include the virus.
“Crony beliefs” might also be described as “tribal signals” which are necessary for in-group/out-group identification — a necessary function in social animals that don’t rely solely upon pheromones. Their use value is not tied directly to truth value, though proximity between the two is useful for permanence and propagation, except in circumstances where a return to establishment of trust levels exceeds the costs of adherence to demonstrably false propositions (the harmlessness of which is variable, depending upon the nature of the “belief”). Because in social animals, group identification and coherence is existential — especially under circumstances of competition with other social animals. It also parallels “fitness” signaling in sexual selection, which in certain species can be costly, especially for males.
This is tied closely to the social utility of religion, and a reminder that politics matters, in ways that atheists and libertarians struggle to appreciate, in my experience.
Interesting.
Can I give a thumbs up to this. Although I wouldn’t want you to think of it as a tribal signal!
At a time when governments are using alleged expertise on corona virus to make increasing inroads on our personal freedoms, declaration of one’s “belief” in conspiracy theories comes to seem more and more like an act of political insurrection.As science and the global managerial class that fronts it feels its growing political hegemony threatened, it becomes increasingly shrill in its warnings about so-called “fake news,” and more authoritarian in its responses to it.
While I’m a lockdown sceptic, I’m not anti science as such. Your comment suggests you might be. Are you?
I consider myself a classic liberal in the old-fashioned sense. True science thrives in a climate of free expression which is becoming increasingly rare under solidifying class divides. Science is being increasingly corrupted by class politics.Science depends on freedom just as much as art does.
Truth has nothing to do with social acceptance. You are confusing truth with beliefs. This is like confusing climate change with CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. They are not the same thing.
Everyone else has crony beliefs which are clearly untrue and/or conspiracy theories , I have crony beliefs which (because my friends and I are more intelligent than you) just happen to be objectively true – Tom Chivers’ article in a nutshell
But some of us have access to facts that are more objectively true than other ‘objective truths’.
Sorry, Tom, but you fell into your own trap of believing rubbish, right at paragraph 6!
Some of your other commenters talk about climate change in Montana, but I think they miss the main point.
You base your assertion on one scare article from 2017.
If you look at actual figures for cereal yields (sorry I only found all USA) there is a steady rise from the 60’s on. 2017 ended up as a bumper year.
Sure there is variation year to year – that is called weather. I suspect any USA cereal farmer would look at rising harvests and say if this is climate change, bring it on!
https://ourworldindata.org/…
https://ourworldindata.org/…®ion=NorthAmerica
A warmer planet = more evaporation = more rainfall in most areas = more crops, on average. I don’t think climate scientists actually deny this, but it’s one of those facts it’s not Politically Correct to mention.
The main reason for the recent increase in crop yields worldwide is the increase in C02, which is essential for plant growth + sunlight + water. Surely some of you remember learning about photosynthesis at school?
For many years, horticulturalists have artificially injected up to 1000ppm of C02 into their greenhouses for this very purpose. On this basis, the idea of trying to reduce C02 is risible, especially as it constitutes only 0.4% of all greenhouse gases.
I was sceptical on the climate crisis/change/global warming idea until that day in 2015 when we all witnessed the rising seas flood the city of New York. 9 million souls lost their lives that day and I have cried every day since; mainly in public so that others might see my intense feelings.
The Montana farmers example is interesting. It’s not obvious to me that changes in crop yields in Montana, even over a period of years, provide conclusive evidence of climate change. There have always been periods, even several years in a row, when the weather was exceptionally wet or dry, with a resulting effect on crops – either locally or in a whole region of the world. I don’t dispute that average temperatures have increased over the past 100 years and it may be reasonable to take some preventive steps to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels – as much because of where they come from as their impact on the environment. But I don’t think farmers or gardeners, for example, are in any better position to have a correct view on this question, just because they think they see some direct impact of global warming on their farm or in their garden. Of course, I have not read Tim Harford’s book, so I may be guilty of having a ‘crony’ belief on the question, so I’ll try to keep my mind ajar, if not completely open.
I am not concerned about “herd immunity”. I am horrified by herd non think.
“Montanan farmers see the impacts of climate change all the time, in failed crops and bad harvests.”
I wonder if the author truly believes that failed crops and bad harvests are necessarily the result of human-caused climate change. Going by the article’s reasoning, if he does believe this, then it must surely be because of the social signalling value, rather than any particular knowledge of agriculture or climate.
People believe what they believe because they choose to believe it – not because it’s true, or makes any sense or is even rational or logical.
And then there’s Cognitive Dissonance.
Contacts Tracing for widespread nosocomial Infections is just pure madness. Good luck UK!
Mr Chivers, You repeatedly explain to me why I struggle in life, and this must come top of the list! I am very firmly one of life’s nerdy, true types, but have learnt, regretably slowly, to remain then true and crony point if different directions. Silence is usually better than truth, but not nearly so good as crony. I’ll be trouble when the revolution comes though, because I just can’t spout the mantra.
Unfortunately, I think this article is largely right. At least, what people tell others, about what they believe, is largely due to social acceptability. And that probably has quite a large effect on what people tell themselves too. Probably, almost all of us are guilty of this, at least to some extent. I would prefer it to be otherwise.
I wonder what people who are under the most extreme social pressure to believe the most obviously untrue things actually tell themselves? Do the North Koreans persuade themselves that their government tells the truth, or do they just practise cognitive dissonance? And did the Pharoahs really believe that they were divine?
Did the Nazis and countless ordinary people persuade themselves the Jews needed to be exterminated? Yes, they did.
As soon as I see the letters MSM in a post I believe that I am reading the rambling perorations of a conspiracy theorist. That of course would be my crony belief.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Labeling somebody a conspiracy theorist does not mean what they say is false.
Given the laziness and groupthink (and indeed hysteria and political bias) evident in such media brands as the BBC, CNN, the New York Times etc etc it’s difficult to use a phrase other than MSM to group them together, although I admit even I feel uncomfortable about using it. Perhaps you could suggest an alternative.
Precis of this article: most people’s ‘political’ opinions derive from a chronic lack of curiosity combined with an instinct for virtue signalling.
Tim Harford unforgivably wrote that the likelyhood of dying of C19 was the same as dying in the bath and headlines in the Express and Mail quoted this obviously untrue fact. He was amazingly unapologetic saying everyone makes mistakes. His mistake encouraged people to misunderstand the seriousness of C 19, which costs lives. Did he really for a moment think that over 40 000 died in the bath in the UK in any 4 month period?
You might be right, but as far as the question goes, I would also have to ask,” Do you really think that over 40,000 have died of Covid in that 4 month period?”
In the US there was a period there where somehow no one died of anything other than Covid.
So how can anyone trust the numbers on any of it?
Meanwhile the Government lies
Mark Dolan: “If you think you’re going to cancel Christmas, you can get stuffed”
YOU TUBE /watch?v=ZTpFFioXgwA
Mark Dolan says a national lockdown in December is the final straw.
“We’ve heard from many older listeners that they may have just one or two Christmases left to enjoy with their family. If you think you’re going to cancel Christmas… you can get stuffed”.
Mark has had enough of “fearmongering and spin” and says Barrington Declaration scientists should not be called “conspiracy theory nut jobs”.
“We’ve been taken on a damaging rollercoaster and have every right through an honest debate… to say I want to get off”.
One of the problems with belief, is who to believe. There is so much knowledge these days that it is impossible to check out everything; so one is forced to believe in things that one cannot check.
Using as an analogy, I believe that the USA exists. However I have never been there, so why do I think it exists? Most probably it is because of a general consensus that it does exist, or indeed a crony belief.
Most people on this website wish to check out facts before believing anything, but many people wish to live their lives in a different manner, and would consider it a waste of time.
So they just believe the TV or media as it is less time consuming and anyway who cares?
“Most probably it is because of a general consensus that it does exist, or indeed a crony belief.”
Countries are one of those things that really do only exist because they’re believed to exist!
Of course we all have our conscious and unconscious biases, we’re human after all, but in the modern internet age if you choose to take a position and use ‘facts’ to back it up then its incumbent upon yourself to check and further evaluate those ‘facts’ as best you can before you disseminate that view as truth.
Failure to do so makes you ‘a bad actor’.
The example Tweet regarding alluding to hugely disparate track and trace costs in the UK as opposed to Éire was clearly designed to impute and ‘prove’ a much broader point, but was demonstrably erroneous so whoever first posted that either did so out of personal ignorance (which I doubt) or with the specific aim of misleading others based on exploiting their own ignorance, inertia and biases.
Failure to question and check it and then unthinkingly share it with doubtless many like-minded others makes you complicit in that process and similarly makes you “a bad actor’ and a disseminator of what for centuries used to be called something else, but what we now choose to call, as if it’s something somehow novel, ‘fake news’
I was inclined to believe the general sentiment of the Track & Trace example. Sure, it’s literal truth or falsity may be challenged on the grounds of the wildly exaggerated figures but it still sounds to be quite probable to me that the Irish system worked better and cost considerably less. Though it’s not important enough to me to check on that.
We’ve all heard the one about how much the Americans spent on developing a pen that would write in zero gravity and how the Russians just took pencils. But does anyone remember or even care what the actual figures were? Or for that matter, whether it was even true at all?
We are all partisan and reinforce our bias by sharing news and data with likeminded friends. I always have tremendous respect for people who do the opposite. George Monbiot the Guardian’s environmental opinion writer wrote a few years ago about his attempt to cycle to a Anti Road Protest. It was an inclement day but he wore his usual Lycra and failed to eat before setting out. He collapsed with hyperthermia on a high moorland road and expected to die. After about half an hour he was rescued by an ex-military paramedic in a four by four and taken to hospital.
The author claims that “Montanan farmers see the impacts of climate change all the time, in failed crops and bad harvests.” as a plain fact, yet offers no references for us to see why he thinks this is indisputable and that any Montanan who does dispute it is giving in to societal pressures.
I claim zero knowledge as to the state of farming and climate change in this state, so I went looking and found https://montanaclimate.org/…
which appears to be a very serious report on various climate change issues. In the agriculture section. This report says “Montana agriculture has always faced variability and occasional extreme events. Wry commentary about the challenges of such variability might even be called a defining trait of rural culture in Montana. Characterizing the impacts of global climate change on Montana’s diverse and historically variable agriculture is not clear cut.” and “In other words, any effort at assessing climate impacts on agriculture faces multiple layers of uncertainty, including uncertainty that 1) accompanies all climate projections, 2)
is specific to agricultural projections, and 3) is created by adaptive actions (human interventions) that can mask a direct climate impact signal.”
So we can perhaps take away that it is highly speculative to blame any bad harvests on climate change and one also might ask why not credit climate change for any good harvests?
As to the articles title “Why do people believe such complete rubbish?”, perhaps we should ask the author “why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”.
Unherd – Italians fight back
YOU TUBE /watch?v=eS08kreDcps
Bologna – La protesta arriva in piazza, “vaffa” per Conte (28.10.20)
Very insightful. I wonder too whether we might under estimate how important beliefs, crony or otherwise, are important to our sense of identity. Someone who claims to be an anti-racist because they are anti hate, may think nothing of perpetuating hackneyed tropes about “Tory Scum”. Or how can a Biblically based Christian claim “God hates gays” when there are so many strictures about loving your neighbour? I am sure many of us have experience of these on social media. Such obvious inconsistencies can be justified or breezed over if one’s very identity is at stake. It may also go someone to explain the violent (and irrational) backlash one invites, if such inconsistencies are pointed out
An interesting subject but I believe the emphasis is not quite right. “Believing things that are true is of much less importance than believing things which are socially acceptable” and “The negative consequences of socially unacceptable beliefs are large, immediate and close” suggest that we choose to believe what guarantees our place in the herd. But what makes this subject of interest is the fact that so many people use their non-consensual position as an identifier away from the herd – the anti-vaxxers, the anti-maskers, etc who proclaim, I am not one of you, or I will not be fooled as you are, etc. The CTs raison d’être is that They Are Not Of The Herd – they are different, they stand alone, they see truths the herd does not see… They revel in the consequences of the socially unacceptable.
It can still be ‘I am one of us, not one of them’.
It’s the conformity of punk rock. In either case, an abrogation of independent thought.
Thank you. An excellent analysis.
Many like to pin the pandemic of crazy beliefs on the media, government propaganda, the evil elites, and so on, and I think there’s something in that.
But they all too often ignore this belief cronyism, this desire to hold beliefs for their social acceptability rather than their truth.
Well gollee Tom, yours is a very timely and fascinating observation.
Over here Stateside, we have cultural developments that indicate the presence of our own yank manifestations of what you call “crony” belief.
In the current Covid conundrum, an idea has emerged in some quarters about “herd mentality.”
A certain strain of folk who identify as conservative favor this condition as a strategy against Covid. The accepted logic of this group is that if enough people are exposed to the virus, a massive genetic response will generate antigens and/or antibodies to combat the disease in our bodies. So we can just go on with life as it was before the pandemic.
On the other side are the nerdy enforcers of masking and social distancing. These people believe that herd immunity is just an excuse for folk to go on with life as it was before the Covid onslaught.
The herd-immunity advocates regard these enforcement-obsessed nitpicking nerds as . . . you say, nazi-ish? Not exactly. The more accurate comparison would employ the communist demon. They are “socialists” who want us all to conform to restrictive rules to defeat an overstated disease that may not even exist because, hey! it you can’t see it . . .
And there is, on both sides, this new sociological feature: virtue-signaling. Cronies of like-mind–whether of the herd immunity strain or of the lockdown strain–can devise very clever and creative ways of signaling their allegiance to “our side.”
Another manifestation of this crony beliefism can be appraised when you ask any citizen the question of which is their primary news source . . . say . . . Fox News? or MSNBC?
Nine times out of ten, the answer to that question is an accurate indicator of the respondent’s allegiance.
Herd-mentality Herbie? or Lockdown Libby?
The bottom line in the USA is we do have our own outbreaks of Crony Belief.
Two different Herd Mentalities.
But I surmise you Brits are immune to such oversimplifications, unless you’re considering the TTI . . . or Tories and Laborites.
Reading this,I struggled to reach the end, I wonder what is the point of this piece? I have no twitter or any other social media account, thank goodnress, therefore keep well away from the madness.
A wise friend once advised me to “keep away from lunatics, for they will destory your Awarenss.”
This article would have been much better served if it had used an example other than Anthropogenic Climate Change. Besides the lack of precision using the English language (frequently used by partisans to confuse the issue) the CC issue is not binary like the question of whether vaccines are safe and effective, at least to the degree discovered during testing.
I doubt few Wyoming farmers would deny that the climate there has changed over longer time scales. 18,000 years ago a sheet of ice up to a mile thick covered the land. Anyone can go to Berkeley Earth and see that the ave. recorded temperatures in Wyoming have been increasing since 1840 when record keeping there started and well before the largest increases in atmospheric CO2. It is worth noting that the 12 month average temp in 1933 was 7.99 C (2.5 C higher than the current temp!) proving that short temperature events do not prove ACC.
So the actual dispute is what percentage of the 1.5 C temperature rise since 1840 is due to mankind and specially GH gases and where is temp going if trends continue. Sure, some will maintain their “chrony” beliefs that mankind plays no role in the temp increase (and thus would be suitable examples), but many more recognize that the magnitude of AGW and the danger it poses is not a binary true/false issue and opposing CC hysteria is not just popular in Wyoming but sometimes reasonable.
The problem with human measurements is that they are all biased no matter how much we try to be neutral. In addition, we never get told the raw original numbers they are always the “edited” numbers for publication. Couple that with multiple indicators and it becomes a minefield where anything can be “proved” depending of what is cherry picked.
My solution for climate change is to think : if the climate is changing what would happen in nature ? For example, you cannot grow Bananas in Aberdeen due to the average annual temperature. Glaciers do not exist at sea level in Africa due to the temperature. So have glaciers receded ? Yes Have flora and fauna drifted towards the poles ? Yes well I think mother nature has given us the the answer there. Next question, what is the cause ?…….I shall leave you to work out each baby step to get to the final conclusion.
A group dedicated to promoting Cliffordian values more widely would be nice but I don’t think “Less Wrong” is it.
I am surprised he didn’t mention the current mother of all beliefs that carry a serious social cost: the belief that it’s a good idea to vote for Trump.
I think you’ll find that this article is mainly about people like you. If you think about it…..
I did think about it, and you’re right. It is about me, and you, and everyone else.
Rather than Biden
There’s no social cost to declaring support for Biden. But there’s a large and invisible contingent of Trump supporters who fear ostracism from family, friends and society, even job loss. What should be a political affiliation is now treated as a moral crime deserving of punishment.
I don’t understand the thumbs down on your post. It seems to me quite obvious that there are massive social consequences for proclaiming that you are a Trump supporter. At least there is here in the US.
It’s 4 days from the election and I’ve seen a total of 4 yard signs where people would tell their neighbors who they were backing. You see, no one wants the “Black shirts” that the Marxists have deployed throughout the country to notice them.
Thanks, steve! I was a bit surprised, too. Like, it’s such a polarizing statement. It’s okay, though. Maybe they read it in a way I didn’t intend.
1) People have always believed in crazy ideas and they found other people that believed in the same crazy ideas. Technology has made it much easier for people to connect with each other and share the crazy ideas.
2) The real problem is that we have too much democracy (yes that is right, too much democracy). So crazy people (Q Anon believers) can now get elected in office.
Would you like to outline your criteria for who should be entitled to exercise a democratic vote – and who shouldn’t.
A simple bullet-pointed list would suffice …
Or maybe you”ll dodge this question … 🤔
Everybody should vote.
2) The real problem is that we have too much democracy (yes that is right, too much democracy).
that inner totalitarian doesn’t stay well hidden.
US congress is elected every 2 years, it is the most distrusted/disliked US GOV institution.
The whole US constitutional system was structured in such a way as to COOL DOWN the passion of people.
And? How does that square with your second point? And it’s ironic that such a distrusted institution has a re-election rate north of 90%.
The cool-down chamber is the Senate.
“…re-election rate north of 90%.”
We know why thanks to gerrymandering and political tribalism.
Everybody (can I say that?) complains about politicians, why/how are they elected? Or are they beamed from space!
Well, I suppose, at least, the belief that we have too much democracy isn’t likely to be a ‘crony belief’. However, I do tend to regard democracy as a precious thing.
I imagine you’re a Remainer