“Psychology is no longer just about diagnosing or fixing us, it is now about socially engineering and shaping us. If you don’t control your mind, someone else will.”

Dr Patrick Fagan, behavioural psychologist, University of London

The relationship between psychology and your average climate sceptic is a strange one indeed. On the one hand psychologists are reputed to have generated a “dramatically growing body of research” that demonstrates how our inability to think critically leads to conspiracist ideation. For example, our cognitive failings are presupposed to lead us to think that the public is being unwittingly manipulated as part of some government masterplan. But, on the other hand, it is open knowledge that psychologists have been responsible for developing techniques of behavioural science that have been extensively used by governments to surreptitiously manipulate public opinion. They even have a cute name for the departments involved – they’re called nudge units. So it seems that psychologists are not averse to aiding and abetting social engineering whilst simultaneously pathologizing those amongst us who might suspect them of it. Indeed, it may be that the pathologizing is all part of the surreptitious manipulation, since the discrediting of the sceptical voice is important for the nudging to go unnoticed.

Well, I’m sorry, but it has been noticed and no amount of accusatory psychobabble is going to stop me from saying so. It wasn’t my conspiracist imagination that led me to observe the IPCC openly advocating for such manipulation in AR5, WG3, Chapter 2, when it spoke of using “social cognitive theory to develop a model of climate advocacy to increase the attention given to climate change in the spirit of social amplification of risk”. And doesn’t AR5’s talk of “entry points for the design of decision aids and interventions”, “choice architecture”, and “other ways to frame climate change information and response options in ways consistent with the communication goal and characteristics of the audience” all sound a little bit nudgey to you? And what about AR5’s call to “Characterize the likelihood of extreme events and examine their impact on the design of climate change policies”?

Is it really a failure in critical thinking to note that there has been a near hysterical level of reporting of extreme weather in the wake of the IPCC’s AR5 recommendations? Are we supposed to swallow the line that attribution scientists looking at extreme weather patterns suddenly realised that it’s worse than we thought, and so we should no longer see climate change as a purely future risk? My conspiracist mind would find this narrative of a scientific advancement much easier to accept were it not that the scientific ‘revelations’ of a present day risk had been preceded by the AR5 edict to reach out to the public in order to promote that very idea. And it would be a lot easier to accept the narrative had its promotion not been proposed as a good move by behavioural scientists. Whatever the case, every episode of bad weather is now confidently offered as clear proof of the devastation already being wrought, and few in the media seem interested anymore in talking about the essentially statistical nature of climate change’s contribution, nor the uncertainties behind such statistics.

But if you thought that the IPCC’s behavioural scientists were hiding in plain sight, that is as nothing compared to the UK government’s nudge unit — the euphemistically titled Behavioural Insights Team. They even have their own website upon which one can find a number of handbooks going under titles such as ‘Target, Explore, Solution, Trial, Scale’, ‘MINDSPACE’, and ‘Four simple ways to map and unpack behaviour’. It’s as if the magic circle had a website telling you how each trick works. I’d love to indulge my conspiracist ideation but these guys are doing me out of a job. And yet, what can you do when the government itself says on its ‘Behaviour Change’ website:

“Behaviour change is one of the primary functions of government communications – helping change and save lives, helping the government to run more effectively as well as saving taxpayer’s money.”

Government improvement and saving the taxpayer’s money sound laudable enough goals until one realises that methods of behaviour change can also be used for any social engineering of a government’s choosing. These techniques do not come with a moral compass. Take, for example, the techniques that can be employed to ensure public acquiescence in the face of measures designed to remove basics such as free speech and liberty of movement. Just how effective could such measures be? Well, let’s take a look1 at our Covid-19 experience.

One strategy developed by behavioural scientists sometimes goes by the name Deny, Debate, Demand. It’s a three stage process designed to improve the chances of the public’s acceptance of a radical new measure. Firstly, the unthinkable proposal is ‘accidentally’ leaked before then being denied. Even though denied, it is now thinkable and, as such, can be debated. The government could even portray itself as accommodating a public interest by ‘allowing’ such debate. And before you know it the government is demanding what they claim the public wants. A case in point was the introduction of vaccine passports, as proposed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Nadhim Zahawi. The existence of such a proposal was denied no fewer than 11 times before Zahawi finally opined, “it would be completely remiss and irresponsible” not to at least allow debate on how such passports might work in practice. Not long after that phoney debate we were all dutifully applying for such ‘passports’ in order to enter nightclubs and other events. There is no way of proving that Zahawi was dancing to the beat of behavioural scientists, but it is a fact that SAGE had its very own Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) to advise the government on how best to enable the introduction of such measures.

Also, one should keep in mind that those who seek to socially engineer are usually playing the long game. Vaccine passports have now been dropped in the UK, but the point is that the Covid-19 experience has primed the public for the next Deny, Debate, Demand sequence, this time to be applied in the furtherance of the longer-term objective: the proposed introduction of mandatory digital IDs. It’s a case of achieving a long-term goal through a deliberate strategy of two steps forward and one step back. That is what your behaviourist would advise. And I have to say, as an experiment in the effectiveness of the precepts of behavioural science in persuading us all to implement dangerous nonsense, the ground gained during the Covid-19 pandemic must have shocked even the most optimistic of behavioural scientists.2 Any strategy for manipulation that could get us all wearing a mask whist walking to our restaurant tables before taking it off, only to put it back on again when going to the toilet, strikes me as potent beyond measure. And this matters because, even as I type, the same behavioural scientists are busily advising the UK government on the implementation of Net Zero.

The Behavioural Insight Team’s methodology (one might say, its manifesto) for nudging us all down the Net Zero road is detailed in their handbook, ‘How to build a Net Zero society: Using behavioural insights to decarbonise home energy, transport, food, and material consumption’. I could go through it in detail but I think the only point that needs making here is that it was written by people who are self-proclaimed experts in manipulation. Therefore one must expect the document itself to be a masterly demonstration of the nudger’s art. To illustrate this point I will focus upon a single sentence used by the group to introduce the document and to set the scene:

“Tackling climate change is not only a moral and legal obligation in the UK, but is also the growth opportunity of the 21st century, and is backed by huge public support.”

How much nudging can one possibly pack into a single sentence? This is not so much a sales pitch as a religious exhortation. Dare you be the one to flout moral authority? Do you really want to be the one to deny us all of the abundance of a promised land? Dare you stand up against the rest of society? The Behavioural Insights Team is not making a statement of fact here but offering a masterpiece of their art, employing just about every coercive trick in the book.

But I’m afraid the nudging is not just evident in the quasi-religious proselytising of a government agency’s handbook. The real-life consequences of such nudging surround us all and have already deeply penetrated our society. Every time your child comes home from school and asks why you are not doing more for the environment, you are being nudged. Every time you switch on the BBC’s Countryfile, you will be nudged. When your favourite soap opera runs with a climate change storyline, you are being nudged. Every fact-check is a nudge. Car adverts that exclusively promote EVs are nudging you. Emotive terms such as ‘denier’ and ‘global heating’ are nudges. Employing comedians to translate already simplistic science into skits designed for your average ignorant human is a case of nudge-nudge-wink-wink. All references to scientific consensus and protests of ‘false balance’ are designed to nudge out debate. And when your government sets up a website claiming that all their nudging is benign, don’t forget that they are nudging you. In fact, just about every vector for the promulgation of ideology has now been infiltrated by the merchants of nudge.

But amongst all of the manipulative trickery, perhaps the most impressive has been the portrayal of the suspicious sceptic as a conspiracy theorist. Boasting on their own websites that they are experts in manipulation and coercion, whilst simultaneously branding as conspiracy theorists those who suspect the manipulation to be taking place, has to be the behavioural scientists’ finest triumph, matched perhaps only by their success in convincing the public that only a cognitively challenged conspiracy theorist could possibly suspect them of such an achievement. Nudging us all into the idea that the greatest risk to democracy is a dark army of conspiracist misinformers, each with their nudge playbooks, is perhaps the greatest risk to democracy.

These government advisers are very good at what they do. They are very, very good. Underestimate them at your peril, and certainly don’t take your government’s good will for granted. We were all placed on this Earth to want something, and rest assured that there is much more at stake here than government improvement and the taxpayer’s money.

Notes:

[1] For this particular insight I am indebted to Laura Dodsworth’s and Patrick Fagan’s book ‘Free Your Mind’.

[2] But not, it seems, Prof David Halpern, Director of the Behavioural Insights Team. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, he quite openly talks about needing to use fear to ‘recalibrate’ the public and feels confident we are now all ‘drilled’ for the next time.

31 Comments

  2. Boasting on their own websites that they are experts in manipulation and coercion, whilst simultaneously branding as conspiracy theorists those who suspect the manipulation to be taking place, has to be the behavioural scientists’ finest triumph, matched perhaps only by their success in convincing the public that only a cognitively challenged conspiracy theorist could possibly suspect them of such an achievement.

    Reminded me of

    Nobody ever believed he was real. Nobody ever knew him or saw anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Söze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

    Kevin Spacey as Verbal in The Usual Suspects via Quote Investigator and ultimately Baudelaire

    I was also reminded of something I read on Spiked the other day by Patrick West.

    Intrinsic to Heidegger’s philosophy was a belief in authenticity, which, in his own idiosyncratic German, he called Eigentlichkeit. We are ‘thrown’ into the world at a time not of our choosing and our time here is finite. This is the primary source of our angst, says Heideigger. In this finite life, we are necessarily faced with having to make individual choices, which, by implication, are moral choices. It is a terrible but inevitable predicament to be authentic, to be oneself, to decide one’s destiny.

    For Heidegger, the opposite of Eigentlichkeit is being beholden to das Man. In English this is translated variously as ‘They’, ‘People’ or ‘The Public’. This is the tempting, easy, inauthentic option. To conform to what ‘They’ expect means not having to make up your own mind or take responsibility for your actions. It means you are not oneself but part of the ‘they-self’.

    Before the quoted section, West talks about how difficult it is to say we disagree these days. And to me, that seems to be the case, even if the proposition with which we disagree is absurd. Life would go much smoother if we just become a hive mind. If we just, in effect, believe what we are told to believe.

    The Nudge Unit seems to lead us to a dystopian future where disagreement, even scepticism, becomes an act of rebellion. Will we end up self-censoring, or even be unaware that there is another valid position to take?

    Liked by 2 people

  4. Here’s a researcher from a Norwegian nudge unit (CET) nudging children into horror about climate change at a ‘research fair’ in Bergen that, in the researcher’s own words, ‘targeted young school kids’:

    https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/2024/02/06/start-involving-children-in-climate-decisions-reflections-on-intergenerational-justice-from-norway/

    The whole children’s fair was probably a nudge event. CET’s stand at the fair – ‘Bli en klimamyteknuser!’ or ‘Become a climate myth buster!’ – certainly was and its nudging went quite well, but some segments did require some prodding too – but even that didn’t always work. For example, prodding couldn’t get the children to blame fossil fuel companies for the climate crisis. Most of them still thought that individuals, not companies, are mostly to blame.

    But prodding did work with this one: ‘The current climate crisis is not dangerous’.

    There was, however, one myth that many had trouble debunking. “The current climate crisis is not dangerous”. Most kids agreed with the statement, and my colleagues and I had to tell them that unfortunately it was as false as it could be, and then explain why. … The climate crisis hit Norway with a bang, and these kids were well aware of the crisis situation. The storm [Storm Hans] and its adverse impacts were all over the news as well as general conversations as chaos ensued in the southern part of the country. When my colleagues and I used these very recent events to showcase how dangerous the impacts actually were, I witnessed how the curiosity on their faces got replaced with shock and horror. Surely one can imagine the expression on the face of kids as young as 8-year-olds being told that their present is grim! And we refrained from stating anything about the future.

    How very stunning and brave of you, Ms Shrestha, to not scare the children even further.

    ===
    CET:

    https://www.uib.no/en/cet

    The centre’s goal is to produce actionable knowledge that can inform policy and practice about how to achieve rapid, just and deep transformation of society to mitigate climate change.

    CET has links to this nutty Oreskes/van der Linden et al nudge unit:

    https://www.tisp-manylabs.com/

    Nutty? It seems to say that Ed Maibach is Batswana and Emily Shuckburgh is Indian and Ethiopian as well as British. Plus its sole multi-multi-multi-multi-multi-authored publication doesn’t include any explanatory data, AFAICT. Nor does it bother to define what it means by ‘science-related populism’, although it obviously doesn’t mean the populist sciencey doomwank of people like Roger Hallam.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Stephen McMurray published at Net Zero Watch The Climate Change Cult and the War on the Mind

    https://static1.squarespace.com/static/656f411497ae14084ad8d03a/t/65aceea69b70c86c1b471be7/1705832102994/McMurray-MindWar.pdf

    Some excerpts:

    1. The Climate Psychology Alliance wishes to use their expertise in the field of psychology to nudge people into believing in their worldview of impending climate-induced doom. Their website states:

    It is now widely accepted that facts and information about the risk of climate change, taken, alone, do not promote change. There is a growing acceptance that the climate change movement could be enriched by incorporating deeper psychological perspectives. But mainstream positivist psychology is often part of the problem, especially when it reduces the human being to an object to be measured, controlled and then harnessed to the profit-making machine that now threatens our collective future.21

    The group is overtly stating that ‘facts’ aren’t really persuading people that the climate crisis is real and that they need use psychology to pressure us all to become true believers. Most telling though, is when they say it can’t be ‘positivist’ psychology, based on empirical evidence, but that a deeper type of psychology is to be used. In other words, ignore the facts of the situation and use mind manipulation techniques and fear to convert the non-believers. They even say that climate anxiety is a good thing.

    2. Indeed, there is direct evidence that the government is using the tactics they developed during Covid to coerce us all into believing the climate crisis narrative.

    On October 12, 2022 the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee published a report entitled In our Hands: Behaviour change for climate and environmental goals.

    It is a sinister document, in which the government openly state that all aspects of our life need to
    be managed to lessen the impact of climate change, and that mind control techniques, very similar to the ones used to force the public into acquiescing to Covid lockdowns, need to be used
    against the population. Sir Patrick Vallance, one of the architects of the disastrous Covid policy, was a witness. He told the committee: ‘The reality is that behaviour change is a part of reaching Net
    Zero. It is unarguable.’

    Liked by 2 people

  6. Ron,

    That House of Lords Committee report was discussed by me here:

    https://cliscep.com/2022/11/23/big-brother-is-nudging-you/

    You and John are right to draw our attention to the powers that be using their powers very determinedly to nudge us. I appreciated the whole of John’s article, but this was the paragraph that resonated most with me:

    “But I’m afraid the nudging is not just evident in the quasi-religious proselytising of a government agency’s handbook. The real-life consequences of such nudging surround us all and have already deeply penetrated our society. Every time your child comes home from school and asks why you are not doing more for the environment, you are being nudged. Every time you switch on the BBC’s Countryfile, you will be nudged. When your favourite soap opera runs with a climate change storyline, you are being nudged. Every fact-check is a nudge. Car adverts that exclusively promote EVs are nudging you. Emotive terms such as ‘denier’ and ‘global heating’ are nudges. Employing comedians to translate already simplistic science into skits designed for your average ignorant human is a case of nudge-nudge-wink-wink. All references to scientific consensus and protests of ‘false balance’ are designed to nudge out debate. And when your government sets up a website claiming that all their nudging is benign, don’t forget that they are nudging you. In fact, just about every vector for the promulgation of ideology has now been infiltrated by the merchants of nudge.”

    Sinister times.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. Jit

    “Will we end up self-censoring, or even be unaware that there is another valid position to take?”

    I think that is the ultimate goal of the nudger. The art of nudging is to persuade without the target knowing what is going on or, indeed, being aware that there is a decision to be made. It will seem to the target that they are just getting on with their lives.

    Liked by 2 people

  8. Energywise,

    I must admit that I had toyed with using the title “Behaviorists, behave yourselves!”

    Like

  9. Vinny,

    The account of the CET guy ‘debunking’ the ‘myth’ of climate change not being responsible for every storm is indeed an account of solid gold nudgery taken straight from the pages of AR5, WG3, Chapter 2. And it is very sad, because the person responsible seems genuinely pleased to have frightened the children with their nonsense. No doubt they will be thinking “there is another child now whose anguish will serve to nudge their parents into doing the ‘right’ thing”. Job’s a good’n.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Ron,

    “…enriched by incorporating deeper psychological perspectives.”

    An interesting use of the word ‘enriched’ there.

    Anyway, thanks for the link. The Climate Psychology Alliance indeed. I’m even more depressed now.

    Like

  11. Mark,

    I was inspired to write my article after coming across this:

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dear-behavioural-science-what-went-wrong-patrick-fagan

    It’s an open letter written to Behavioural Science by someone (actually the guy quoted at the head of my article) who has been very much a part of the rise in the use of behavioural science to manipulate (e.g. he used to work for Cambridge Analytica). This is my favourite accusation his letter levels against his colleagues:

    “You used to be so humble too. ‘We’re all irrational,’ you used to say. Now you say, ‘Everyone is irrational but me.’ You think you know what’s best for everyone, and dissenters are just ‘science-denying conspiracy theorists’. You attack ‘misinformation’ without a shred of humility, or self-reflection – even though your most esteemed acolytes seem to get busted for data fraud every other week.”

    I rushed out and bought his book “Open Your Mind”. I heartily recommend you do the same. It’s actually quite brilliant. For example, the Deny, Debate, Demand insight came from it.

    Liked by 4 people

  13. About the incidents of being nudged. I would make a firm distinction between deliberate/planned nudging and that which occurs throughout our lives. From birth we are nudged to conform and behave, by parents (from infancy), school and acquaintances. What is being described and abhorred here is something deliberately planned and not necessarily to our advantage (but some just might be).

    Liked by 3 people

  14. I wrote the bit about Trust in Science and Science-Related Populism from memory, forgetting that I’d found a second TISP website (the linked one) that does define ‘science-related populism’. My bad.

    (Thanks for freeing my comment from spam, Mark.)

    Like

  15. a

    Ain’t misbehavin’

    It’s what behaviourists’

    Call persuasion,

    Sometimes water boardin’

    Or sometimes the rack

    Are called for – as

    The Govt proclaims

    It’s their Govt role

    To persuade and control. *

    *‘Behaviour change is one of the primary functions of government communications ‘

    Liked by 3 people

  16. It all does remind of Fahrenheit 450, in which future fire departments start fires instead of putting them out, focusing on burning books lest someone become enlightened by reading and find joy and purpose in living.

    Like

  17. Alan,

    I would make a firm distinction between deliberate/planned nudging and that which occurs throughout our lives.

    And you would be so right to do so! Patrick Fagan is at pains to make the same point on the very first page of his book when he writes “Persuasion and propaganda are as old as democracy” but then states:

    Of course, persuasion and propaganda are no doubt older than democracy because they are integral to being human. We are always trying to persuade one another. To live with each other is to influence each other, from wishing your neighbour a nice day to educating children, from writing a business proposal to punishing criminals.

    So there is nothing inherently wrong with manipulation. As I say, the problem is that the techniques of manipulation do not come with a moral compass. This problem seems somehow more significant when part of the manipulation involves the demonising of those who try to shine a light on the manipulation. It suggests that something is not quite right.

    Liked by 5 people

  18. John and Beth: Well done for mastering the new comment regime. Well, if not mastering, taking small steps of value in the manner Tom Gilb has advised for more decades than anyone. (Tom the good friend of Norman Fenton. That was something I didn’t know till December.)

    Throwing out allegations of conspiracy theory to try to shut down, or at least distract from, valid debate comes in many forms, some less academic than others.

    That’s a really tragic case. GC stands of course for gender critical [people]. Montgomerie says on his profile that he’s a ‘Trans Identified Female’. For me he’s a victim of one of the worst of all the nudge enterprises in our culture. As well as himself nudging horribly here, if you want to call it that.

    But how does the behavioural science/nudging frame fit with the pseudo-religious one?

    Long experience has taught me that people who believe themselves possessed of almost saintlike righteousness are capable of blocking out almost any evidence that contradicts their world view.

    — JK Rowling later in the same X thread

    Asking for a friend.

    Liked by 3 people

  19. I think I’ve developed a natural immunity to the nudge mob – I actively dodge their arenas, ridicule their adverts and drama plot lines etc
    I am all too willing to challenge anyone peddling climate doom, or net zero nonsense and to be fair, I’ve grown to like it – word combat is quite invigorating, particularly when you can easily demolish the nudges via empirical science, data and subject competence

    Liked by 1 person

  22. It’s a bit pointless, perhaps, but I have belatedly added a couple of footnotes that I think are important.

    Like

  23. Ben Pile has published a very interesting, detailed and relevant paper in the Daily Sceptic this morning:

    Behavioural Scientists Aren’t Just Wrong About How to Win Over Electorates to Crackpot Progressive Policies; Their Evident Contempt for the Masses Has Contributed to the Global Populist Revolt

    That remarkably lengthy heading is a useful summary. An extract (from a lengthy piece):

    Extremely limited evidence underpins behavioural scientists’ claims. The classic example of ‘nudge’, for example, is the discovery that the image of a fly painted onto a urinal helps men to take better aim, thereby leaving conveniences in better condition. Away from the toilet, psychologists discoveries are difficult to quantify in wider society. Some psychologists, observe their critics, have used exotic and inappropriate statistical methods to report greater effects than can realistically be detected and expressed in conventional terms.

    Good stuff.

    Liked by 3 people

  24. Robin,

    Thank you for the link.

    It’s not that I disagree with Ben’s numerous observations so much as I disagree with the conclusion he draws from them. Yes, much of the nudging literature is founded upon highly dubious experiments that have proven difficult to replicate; Patrick Fagan will tell you as much himself. And, as I have written several times on this blog, the arguments for the existence of cognitive biases that are unique to right-wing or sceptical thinkers is also bogus. Once again, Fagan emphasises the same point, saying that cognitive biases are ubiquitous, and yet only attributed to the right-wing because the behavioural sciences are dominated by left-wing academics in the ratio 15:1. And of course the imperatives of basic human needs will ultimately place an upper limit on how far one can get with nudging alone. There is plenty of evidence that we are beginning to see a growing awareness amongst the public that such needs are under threat. However, I think Ben is too dismissive of the impact that nudging has already had. He talks about bullying during Covid-19 but society’s reaction was so much more than that of the bullied. I, for one, was quite impressed with how much we were all prepared to tolerate in response to little more than institutionalised gas-lighting. I firmly believe that we are all much more susceptible to nudging than we tend to appreciate and we would do well to take that into account before dismissing the whole thing as over-hyped junk science. Besides which, the behavioural scientists do not need to successfully nudge the public in order to see the implementation of ruinous policies. For that, they only need to successfully nudge the politicians — which they have done with some panache.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. The high water mark of ‘nudge’ politics was more akin to a sledgehammer applied to the hard heads of the masses in order to crack them wide open – and it was amazingly successful. That of course was the Covid fear-based psyop which convinced most of us to ‘stay at home’, 99% of shoppers to wear useless face nappies in supermarkets and 80% of adults to get jabbed with an experimental gene-based ‘vaccine’ which could never have been properly trialled and tested for safety and efficacy.

    But the fallout from that effort has been immense and it has alerted huge and growing numbers of people to the fact that governments do not have our best interests at heart, that they are in fact willing to lie to us, massively, and indeed hurt us, in ways which we would never have imagined possible even just a few years ago.

    I believe this is why there is a growing cynicism towards Net Zero (that and the fact that it IS actually starting to hurt people) and the increasingly fantastical claims of the ‘climate crisis’ fraudsters. By using a sledgehammer to crack the Covid nut, I think the communist behaviourists have blown it – at the very least, they’ve blown their cover.

    Like

  26. Jaime,

    “By using a sledgehammer to crack the Covid nut, I think the communist behaviourists have blown it – at the very least, they’ve blown their cover.”

    Well I certainly hope so, but time will tell. Prof Halpern, head of the UK’s Nudge Unit is very confident that the public will be even more easy to handle next time around, and that Covid-19 has softened us up for Net Zero. I’m not sure about that but it certainly opened my eyes as to just how easy it was to herd us into their pen.

    P.S. For an example of the kind of ‘scientific’ guff that Ben was alluding to there is this recent posting:

    https://theconversation.com/your-brain-can-reveal-if-youre-rightwing-plus-three-other-things-it-tells-us-about-your-politics-226175

    I saw fit to parody this sort of thing many moons ago:

    https://cliscep.com/2018/06/06/the-neurobiology-of-climate-change-denial/

    Liked by 2 people

  27. Here’s another interesting article giving a perspective on the Nudge Unit, this time from one of its co-founders:

    “Will nudge theory survive the pandemic? State propaganda can flourish in times of crisis”

    https://unherd.com/2022/01/how-the-government-abused-nudge-theory/

    As you might expect, it is generally supportive of what the Nudge Unit does and is boastful of what it has achieved. However, it is also defensively candid regarding the potential pitfalls. For example:

    “Though I don’t think it’s fair to blame behavioural scientists for propagating fear (I suspect that this was more to do with Government communicators and the incentives of news broadcasters), it may be worth reflecting on where we need to draw the line between the choice-maximising nudges of libertarian paternalism, and the creeping acceptance among policy makers that the state should use its heft to influence our lives without the accountability of legislative and parliamentary scrutiny. Nudging made subtle state influence palatable, but mixed with a state of emergency, have we inadvertently sanctioned state propaganda?”

    To answer the author’s closing question, I think the answer has to be, ‘yes you did’. In fact, I think the author should also be asking whether even ‘libertarian paternalism’ is okay. Also, there is this admission to behold:

    “In fact, it is the proponents of evidence and empiricism, our best and most educated elites, who are now often the least willing to hear information that challenges their worldview or runs contrary to their identity. Many have written about this trend on university campuses. Even at the Nudge Unit, an organisation designed to make others aware of biases, where Jonathan Haidt has lectured staff about his work unpicking the routes of cancel culture, an academic speaker was cancelled for an innocuous, historic tweet.”

    Finally, I was most interested to read that fewer than 1% of the Nudge Unit’s staff supported Brexit. Well there you go.

    Liked by 3 people

  28. John – thanks for the link & as usual the comment rabbit hole below is worth a read

    Will just quote 1 from many –

    “Scott S 2 years ago

    Where to start with this Government, The Nudge Unit, our MSM and establishment?? I can’t think of a good word to say about any of them, except that I will never trust any msm or government message again, without further investigation. I have always been suspicious of authority, and that healthy mistrust has kept me in good stead over the last few years. It was obvious info was being held back and figures manipulated. All this coupled with people and views being demonised for daring to question the narrative, from the origin of the virus to the over arching benefits of lockdowns and everything else in-between, signalled to me there was something not quite rght going on. I must also state I am not a conspiracy theorist, and I approach everything with a critical eye, but this unfortunately seems a dated approach, and the world will suffer for ‘this get on board whatever the cost’ approach. For anyone seeking to avoid the nudge I would recommend C Jung’s The Undiscovered Self (Present and Future), which gives personal (not organised) religious faith as the counter to authoritarian regimes and ideas. Whether you are religious or not, it is still an essential read, for anyone seeking to avoid the ‘Hive Mind’.”

    Like

  29. Something else from our favourite Norman:

    The Nobel prize-winning economist and behavioural science expert Daniel Kahneman died yesterday aged 90. As one would expect for such a major academic figure of the last 60 years, the glowing eulogies have been pouring in. But it is important to note that his ideas and theories were more controversial and contested over than would ever be known unless you were in a particularly niche part of the world of academia.

    — Dr Fenton, On the death of Daniel Kahneman

    I didn’t follow all of it!

    Liked by 1 person

  31. Richard,

    I have now posted a comment at Fenton’s blog, which I repeat here in full for convenience:

    That’s very sad about Kahneman. I am one of very many who read and enjoyed his book on System 1 and System 2 thinking. However, I agree with you that, regardless of the insight, it isn’t a particularly useful categorisation since it is often difficult to say where any particular thought lies on the scale. Indeed, the very concept of a ‘thought’ can get very squishy once subconscious mental activity is involved. However, even worse, in my opinion, has been the habit of claiming a superior status for System 2 thinking primarily because it is the intelligentsia’s party piece. This good/bad thinking dichotomy lies behind a lot of the cod psychology that strives to characterise sceptical thinkers as lacking critical thinking skills and being more prone to cognitive bias. The fact is that both thinking styles have their strengths and weaknesses, and everyone is equally prone to cognitive bias. It’s just that the intelligentsia can’t see that in themselves and are too busy trying to exploit and manipulate we hapless System 1 thinkers (as is proposed by modern day nudge units and, in particular, by the authors of the IPCC’s Assessment Report 5, Working Group 3, Chapter 2).

    Also, I have to say that my regard for Kahneman took a hit when I read his book ‘Noise: A flaw in human judgment’. It is an attempt to analyse human subjective judgment in entirely aleatory terms by using measurement theory as the basis for treating judgemental uncertainties. This is made very explicit in the chapter, ‘Your mind is a measuring instrument’. Even when dealing with value judgements, for which there is no correct, objective variable to be assessed, he manages to stretch the aleatory point by claiming that the average of the subjective judgements can be taken as an objectively correct one. It’s not a completely bad book but it is an unnecessarily difficult one to follow due to his insistence on completely ignoring Bayesianism when dealing with what is essentially epistemic uncertainty. All the way through reading it I was thinking to myself, ‘What would Professor Fenton think of this?’

    Incidentally, the problem of complexity alludes to the paradox of human judgement that says more information often leads to poorer decisions. It is an empirical observation that says more about our capacity to deal with complex mental models. It says nothing about a computer’s capability to handle sophisticated models furnished with good quality data. In general, knowledge and data cannot help but reduce epistemic uncertainty; you just need something like a properly constructed Bayesian computer model to put this principle into action.

    Liked by 2 people

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