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Thing is, and as morbid as this will sound: what’s the worst that could happen? May die. Yeah, its not like I was getting out of this life alive anyway

But Wallace-Wells’ piece was not about that. It was about what will happen if we keep on as-is.

He’s merely describing what could happen if we cease to act, which no one wants ... except one of the two major political parties in the world’s most powerful country, including the man in charge of the executive branch and military

There’s been a sort of general failure of imagination that means we’ve accepted what’s the median-likely outcome as a worst-case scenario. As a result we’ve been a bit handicapped in thinking about how much action needs to be taken.

Things stay roughly as they are” is just as improbable as the worst-case scenario he lays out, yet I’d venture to guess it is believed (or more importantly, envisioned) by vastly more people. Part of that is because envisioning the best-case scenario is easy — it looks just like now! — while envisioning the worst-case scenario is very difficult. It’s especially difficult because the worst-case scenario is treated by the very few people who understand it as a kind of forbidden occult knowledge to which ordinary people cannot survive exposure. Nobody can talk about it without getting scolded by the hope police.

it’s just weird for journalists and analysts to worry about overly alarming people regarding the biggest, scariest problem humanity has ever faced.

When there are important things that people don’t understand, journalists should explain those things. Attempts at dime-store social psychology are unlikely to lead to better journalism.

nobody really knows anything. Even if there are accurate statements about how people in general respond to messages in general, they won’t tell you much about how you ought to communicate with the people you want to reach.

Similarly, the dry, hedged language of science is not the only serious or legitimate way to communicate, though climate scientists often mistake it as such.

consciously pitched to reach and inspire some mythical average reader (as encountered in social science studies filtered through popular journalism) tends to be flavorless and dull.

engineering

a climate system that will now go to war with us for many centuries, perhaps until it destroys us.

it is another thing entirely to consider the possibility that we have only provoked it

I just try to communicate like I would like to be communicated to, frankly and clearly, as though I’m talking to a friend in a bar.

no sharp boundary between one person’s ideas and knowledge” and “those of other members” of the group

favor (or oppose) an immigration ban without knowing what I’m talking about

The farther off base they were about the geography, the more likely they were to favor military intervention

As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding,”

If your position on, say, the Affordable Care Act is baseless and I rely on it, then my opinion is also baseless.

much detail as they could, the impacts of implementing each one. Most people at this point ran into trouble

pent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views.

science is as a system that corrects for people’s natural inclinations

by researchers who have no motive to confirm them. And this, it could be argued, is why the system has proved so successful.

field may be dominated by squabbles, but, in the end, the methodology prevails

experience genuine pleasure—a rush of dopamine—when processing information that supports their beliefs. “It feels good to ‘stick to our guns’ even if we are wrong,

At this point, something curious happened. The students in the high-score group said that they thought they had, in fact, done quite well—significantly better than the average student—even though, as they’d just been told, they had zero grounds for believing this

Once formed,” the researchers observed dryly, “impressions are remarkably perseverant.”

Even after the evidence “for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs,” the researchers noted

that reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational

“confirmation bias,” the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them.

Those who’d started out pro-capital punishment were now even more in favor of it; those who’d opposed it were even more hostile.

Such a mouse, “bent on confirming its belief that there are no cats around,” would soon be dinner.

we’re quite adept at spotting the weaknesses. Almost invariably, the positions we’re blind about are our own.

ewer than fifteen per cent changed their minds in step two.

getting screwed by the other members of our group.

There was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments

roviding people with accurate information doesn’t seem to help; they simply discount it. Appealing to their emotions may work better, but doing so is obviously antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science. “The challenge that remains,” they write toward the end of their book, “is to figure out how to address the tendencies that lead to false scientific belief.