Protecting our forum from propaganda, polarization and failed communication

James Hoggan wrote:I think understanding how propaganda works is helpful. Certainly propaganda can be deceptive and thats a problem but sometimes propaganda is sincere. The bigger problem is the relationship propaganda has with flawed ideology. It is this relationship that makes the victims of propaganda so resistant to evidence and facts. I think we defend ourselves from propaganda by thinking through our own values.  

Neil Layton wrote:I've never made any secret of my difficulties in communicating with other(?) humans, and have given this much thought over the years. It appears that James Hoggan has been doing much the same, and has identified similar issues.

It seems to me that people go through a series of phases in the way they understand evidence.

1) Most of us start off from a position in which there are simple established "facts".
2) Later, usually by adolescence, we learn that people disagree on these "facts", leading to a position where there are no "facts" and merely "opinions" of equal value. This is a viewpoint fostered by the media, because it allows them to present two or more "sides" to a story, which sells papers and advertising. It seems to me that most people (I mean generally, not specifically on this site) are stuck at this phase. It encourages fact-free discourse in many areas - for example the recent Brexit campaign here.
3) Some of us learn to move on to a position where we realise that while there may be two or more viewpoints on a subject it's possible to evaluate the evidence that supports those competing viewpoints. I recently engaged in a discussion, on this site, where it was suggested that if someone were to label something "science" that would enable that person to make me his "bitch" (my interlocutor's word, not mine). I pointed out that this seemed to reflect a misconception of how scientific discourse worked and that I would seek out the evidence to support the assertion, and draw my own conclusions.

I think this gives us a clue about how we may be able to depolarise our discourse. My understanding of the rules here is that asking for evidence is seen as an attack on the other person's credibility. That's not how I see it. When I seek evidence, I'm interested in evaluating it for accuracy and reliability. It's not something limited to agronomy: it's a process I go through in many fields of my life, and I admit to getting very pissed off when someone presents something as "fact", or even strongly supported belief, when the supporting evidence turns out to be very weak. I recommend the work of Ben Goldacre on this subject.

To me, this is about taking off the blinkers to which Burra refers.

It goes back to the quote Burra gave above: "Why isn’t public discourse on the environment more data driven, and why are we listening  to  each  other  shout  instead  of  listening  to  what  the  evidence is trying to tell us?"

The thing is, the skills to evaluate evidence and to think critically can be learned. I conclude that it might benefit all of us if more people (I don't just mean here: I mean in general) learn the skills to evaluate evidence.

Here is a good introduction: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-train-your-mind-to-think-critically-and-form-you-1516998286
Here is another: http://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/critical-thinking.html
This is more academically oriented: http://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/postgraduate/taught/learning-resources/critical
This site may be too heavy for some, but might be worth a look: http://www.criticalthinking.org/

This process is complicated, and I've had to spend many hours learning how to identify even the more common formulations supporting uncritical thinking. It's not, and I'd like to emphasise this, about intelligence, but about a learnable skillset.

With that said, in order to evaluate the evidence, it's crucial to have the evidence in the first place. I have often wondered whether this is a place where the rules on this site inhibit us from doing this. I've said this before, but I think it bears reiterating: a request for evidence is not a personal attack (or, at the very least it should not be construed as one when it comes from me) but a request for data to evaluate. In effect, we are discouraged from asking for the evidence.

May I propose that agreed forms be developed that allow us to request such evidence without it appearing as a personal attack? The skills for evaluation and synthesis seem to me to be key to depolarising many of the debates we have on here, which often seem to me to degenerate into one person's opinion (often given without substantiation) against another's (to which the same often applies), but we need the data to synthesise first.

I understand that for many users interpreting the rules is an intuitive process. This is not a skillset I share, and I've had to ask for guidelines in interpreting those rules on several occasions, but have generally just been referred back to the rules in a circular process. I think this is one case where I, and perhaps others, might benefit from improved clarity. How do we, for example, call someone out on the use of propaganda? How do we avoid inadvertently doing so ourselves?

Why is our discourse not more data driven? I suggest that two (of several) reasons may be that we are discouraged from seeking the data and that many of us lack the skills to evaluate it when we are presented with it. I hope this post will go some way towards overcoming those barriers.

I remain very interested in understanding the communication skills that allow us to overcome the other issues blocking us from data-driven discourse. I think that effective permaculture could benefit from this.

James Hoggan wrote:

Bruno Latour suggested that we shift from debates about facts to discussions about concerns. Facts and evidence are important but they are tricky and are often used to shut down discourse. Latour is an advocate for continuing the conversation. Paul Slovic has written about the role of facts in his research on risk communications. He makes the point that experts see their facts as objective and public opinion as subjective but that even the facts of experts have a subjective element. So I decided for me to shift from debates about facts to discussions about of values.  

R Ranson wrote:

James Hoggan wrote:I think understanding how propaganda works is helpful. Certainly propaganda can be deceptive and thats a problem but sometimes propaganda is sincere. The bigger problem is the relationship propaganda has with flawed ideology. It is this relationship that makes the victims of propaganda so resistant to evidence and facts. I think we defend ourselves from propaganda by thinking through our own values.  

I have a lot of trouble telling when the person is intentionally spewing propaganda or if they honestly believe what they are saying is true and are just parroting what they have been taught.  Are there ways to tell this apart?  Especially in a forum setting like this, but also in real life interactions.

Neil Layton wrote:

R Ranson wrote:

James Hoggan wrote:I think understanding how propaganda works is helpful. Certainly propaganda can be deceptive and thats a problem but sometimes propaganda is sincere. The bigger problem is the relationship propaganda has with flawed ideology. It is this relationship that makes the victims of propaganda so resistant to evidence and facts. I think we defend ourselves from propaganda by thinking through our own values.  

I have a lot of trouble telling when the person is intentionally spewing propaganda or if they honestly believe what they are saying is true and are just parroting what they have been taught.  Are there ways to tell this apart?  Especially in a forum setting like this, but also in real life interactions.

I wonder whether there is even a clear distinction to make. I'm sure there are trolls and hired shills around, and I've engaged in discussions where I've played Devil's advocate as an intellectual exercise, but in the latter case it's always been clear that's what I've been doing (if not always to people overhearing the conversation...!). With that said, it's perfectly possible to propagandise while fully believing what one says. There are whole books on the dark arts of persuasion, and whole courses on identifying and countering propaganda: the video I linked to above comes from a course the material from which is just as relevant when tackling a hired oil company shill as it is when arguing with Uncle Jack at the dinner table. I suspect some of the shills believe what they write just as much as Uncle Jack does, and both may well be acting from the same sense of motivated reasoning (and the prospect that I might be doing the same is one I at least try to be aware of).

Neil Layton wrote:

James Hoggan wrote:

Bruno Latour suggested that we shift from debates about facts to discussions about concerns. Facts and evidence are important but they are tricky and are often used to shut down discourse. Latour is an advocate for continuing the conversation. Paul Slovic has written about the role of facts in his research on risk communications. He makes the point that experts see their facts as objective and public opinion as subjective but that even the facts of experts have a subjective element. So I decided for me to shift from debates about facts to discussions about of values.  

Okay, that's very interesting.

I make a clear distinction between facts and evidence. One is completely settled; the other is a matter of a balance of data, on which it's often possible to come down firmly on one side of the other, but where there is often nuance to be discussed. Facts are pretty rare, although there are plenty of issues where consilience can lead us to a position where balance of evidence can lead us to treat some propositions as facts for most practical purposes.

I am aware of some very interesting studies that show that the positions people hold on issues where the science, for example, points very strongly one way, but the values of the people examining and interpreting it (or just ignoring it or applying other forms of denial) are linked to a value set, and that's linked to social connections. Climate change is, as you probably know, a key example of this: the Lewandosky studies are relevant (including perhaps the greatest non sequitur in scientific publishing!*), but see also doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.06.003 and doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.03.001.

If these issues then become proxies for values, which I'm willing to accept, and we then discuss values as you propose, how does one then go about addressing the issues? It makes complete sense to me to then give people options that subscribe to their values and do not threaten their worldview. See, for example, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1981907

My problem with that is that even if we can tackle one or two specific issues in that way, such worldviews are often supportive of a whole other set of social and economic propositions that I also have issues with. I take a position that the broader environmental situation that we are now in means that everything has to change, and that will face resistance from vested interests and people with value sets that support them. In the case of the Kahan paper, for example, my reading suggests that geoengineering could be as bad as the disease it intends to cure, regardless of whether some groups would support it.

What are your thoughts?


* NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science (doi: 10.1177/0956797612457686)
I think we need to have that big moral conversation and I agree we need to change everything and there is big resistance. I think we need pluralistic narratives and advocacy that explore the change that is possible. Many of the solutions are waiting for us on common ground. The way we are going at it now is leading to increased gridlock. I'm not opposed to polarization but without an effort to find common ground we end up where we are now.  

Tyler Ludens wrote:Who gets to decide which value set should be open to modification?  If someone else's value is that I am a lesser person by virtue of my gender, and should therefore have fewer rights, am I obligated to be open to the modification of my value of myself as a full human being?  I may feel that the mysogynist racist arsehole needs to be open to modifying his value set - I also realize that he may feel just as strongly that I need to be open to modifying my value set.

How do we move beyond this impasse?

Tyler Ludens wrote:Yeah, sorry, I guess I was off-topic, and thinking about the larger public sphere...

Burra Maluca wrote:

Tyler Ludens wrote:Who gets to decide which value set should be open to modification?  If someone else's value is that I am a lesser person by virtue of my gender, and should therefore have fewer rights, am I obligated to be open to the modification of my value of myself as a full human being?  I may feel that the mysogynist racist arsehole needs to be open to modifying his value set - I also realize that he may feel just as strongly that I need to be open to modifying my value set.

How do we move beyond this impasse?

'you cannot claim that your own viewpoint is The Truth, only your opinion'.

in the case of this forum, the owner of the forum, ie Paul, gets to decide

Trying to avoid  getting into a debate about epistemology (although I wonder if there may be a place for it),

Secondly, let's take a purely hypothetical situation, in which Paul thinks that Tyler's value is that she is lesser by virtue of her gender (I'm sure he doesn't think this: this is by way of a thought experiment). I'd fully expect Tyler to take a counter position, and expect an attitude adjustment, and I'd feel morally obligated to have her back should she ask for it.

Tyler Ludens wrote:I think there are people on the permies forums whose values are genuinely in conflict on some topics, I've seen it happen.  I've even been afraid to express myself on some topics because of thinking my values are different from the majority.  How do we deal with this situation here on permies?  

Gilbert Fritz wrote:
I think this is actually a good thing; we can all discuss the many issues that will not cause things to explode, while avoiding the few that will.

Tyler Ludens wrote:

Gilbert Fritz wrote:
I think this is actually a good thing; we can all discuss the many issues that will not cause things to explode, while avoiding the few that will.

How is it a good thing that people with minority opinions feel unable to post about them, whereas those with majority opinions feel free to post?  

Neil Layton wrote:Okay, supplementary question, mostly addressed to James, since you've obviously done much more research on this than I have, and probably know much more than I do:

Let's agree that talking about values makes more sense than talking about the alternatives. My reading of the evidence, some of it cited above, suggests that those values do not exist in isolation. Lewandowsky seems pretty clear on that.

I'm not sure, then, that discussing values necessarily helps. Let's say that x has a value set that allows him an absolute, inalienable right to free speech. I think that right is limited well before misogynist, racist arseholery winds up in Leslie Jones's Twitter account, to cite a timely example. Not only that, but misogynist, racist arseholery is often linked to viewpoints and opinions as well as values that, when the day comes, I'll be on the other side of the barricade from. Regular readers of these forums will probably be able to infer my predilection for a good barricade when circumstances dictate: I'm willing to take sides when I think I have to.

With that said, I'd much prefer to have a sensible discussion over coffee in the public square than shouted comments followed by a mollie over a barricade. I don't want to have to fight: I just recognise that sometimes it becomes a last resort when other methods have failed: misogynist, racist arseholery has to be stopped. I'm not sure that it's necessarily worth throwing mollies over, but I say that as a Caucasian male. When you add up the views that stem from the value system that leads to misogynist, racist arseholery that becomes even more nuanced. One reason I'm engaging in this discussion is that I don't want to have to go there.  What I don't see is how a discussion of values prevents us going from coffee al fresco to mollies at dawn.

James Hoggan wrote:

Neil Layton wrote:Okay, supplementary question, mostly addressed to James, since you've obviously done much more research on this than I have, and probably know much more than I do:

Let's agree that talking about values makes more sense than talking about the alternatives. My reading of the evidence, some of it cited above, suggests that those values do not exist in isolation. Lewandowsky seems pretty clear on that.

I'm not sure, then, that discussing values necessarily helps. Let's say that x has a value set that allows him an absolute, inalienable right to free speech. I think that right is limited well before misogynist, racist arseholery winds up in Leslie Jones's Twitter account, to cite a timely example. Not only that, but misogynist, racist arseholery is often linked to viewpoints and opinions as well as values that, when the day comes, I'll be on the other side of the barricade from. Regular readers of these forums will probably be able to infer my predilection for a good barricade when circumstances dictate: I'm willing to take sides when I think I have to.

With that said, I'd much prefer to have a sensible discussion over coffee in the public square than shouted comments followed by a mollie over a barricade. I don't want to have to fight: I just recognise that sometimes it becomes a last resort when other methods have failed: misogynist, racist arseholery has to be stopped. I'm not sure that it's necessarily worth throwing mollies over, but I say that as a Caucasian male. When you add up the views that stem from the value system that leads to misogynist, racist arseholery that becomes even more nuanced. One reason I'm engaging in this discussion is that I don't want to have to go there.  What I don't see is how a discussion of values prevents us going from coffee al fresco to mollies at dawn.

I believe that values add a deeper meaning to facts and build greater support. It is the same in debate and in dialogue (barricades and coffee). Facts with a weak moral context or an overly aggressive partisan meaning aren't as effective. On their own they don't touch people the way emotions and values do. A good example of a more pluralistic moral narrative is the Pope's encyclical on Climate Change. Polarization (debate) and cooperation (dialogue) are both part of social change. As you point out polarization is tricky because if you don't do it you likely won't have change at all, but if we over do polarization we may end up helping the folks who are resisting change. Either way we need the best answer we can possible muster for the "whats this about" question.

R Ranson wrote:What about external threats like propaganda?  Is there anything we can do to help prevent that from sewing the seeds of discord in our forum?  

Neil Layton wrote:

If I write something, backed up by multiple independent (or otherwise) analyses, on why meat eating is unsustainable, and thus logically incompatible with permaculture, which must be sustainable by definition, is that the provision of information, an opinion piece, or vegan propaganda?

"Propaganda" is information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicise a particular political cause or point of view. Propaganda is often associated with the psychological mechanisms of influencing and altering the attitude of a population toward a specific cause, position or political agenda in an effort to form a consensus to a standard set of belief patterns.[1]

Propaganda is information that is not impartial and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively (perhaps lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or using loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information presented.[1]

Today the term propaganda is associated with a manipulative and jingoistic approach, but propaganda historically was a neutral descriptive term

Neil Layton wrote:
One person's "propaganda" is someone else's opinion piece is someone else's information service.