Rhapsody and Scientific Reality

Is this the real life?  Is this just fantasy?

Caught in a landslide, No escape from reality.

Open your eyes,

Look up to the skies and see.... 

 - Freddie Mercury

Belief In Climate Change Hinges On Worldview

When it comes to climate change, some look at the facts presented and see a coming catastrophe, others see a hoax. This difference in interpretation, social scientists say, has more to do with each individual's existing outlook than the facts.


Having read/seen the above, I fear I am teetering on the brink of another "people are stupid" diatribe.  But I will try to resist.  NPR provides a synopsis of research showing how people delude themselves into interpreting facts in such ways as to support their own private world view.  In some ways this world view is not so private because a lot of the biases that lean people towards one interpretation over another are derived from their cultural background.  And cultural background is not limited to whether you are of Polish, or English, or Central American descent, or whether you fly the Confederate flag in your yard.  Cultures are created within businesses, schools, neighborhoods, churches...you name it.

I exchanged blog comments recently with a learned person about the bias in regulatory types toward requiring permits for activities that are, in the bigger scheme of things, relatively benign and that have socially redeeming characteristics.  Ideally, relatively benign actions that are socially redeeming ought to be easy to take.  However, because the topic of discussion (greywater) involved something that is a subset of a regulated substance (sewage) and because of the culture in which regulators grow up (writing permits and enforcing rules), they have a career-long bias towards wanting to actively regulate a population or a series of actions, even when that regulation cannot be practically achieved because they charge fees too low to cover the so-called service.

It calls to mind that old game show, "What's my line?" and makes me wonder if it is actually more effective to have an in depth understanding of an audience's biases than to actually have facts at hand.  Are we really that shallow as a society?  Or should I ask, are we really that shallow as a set of societies?  How do we bridge the cultural biases to promote actual, productive movement on the polarizing issues of the day?