The Importance of Open Disagreement to Science, and Why Mean Tweeters Like Mann are Missing in Forest Science

The Mann trial was supposed to be  part of Roundup #2, but as you can see below, I got a bit carried away.

I read an op-ed this week by Loolwa Khazzoom, who said:

We are all pieces of a highly complex puzzle. When we listen instead of project, discuss instead of argue, and have a goal of learning instead of winning – approaching dialogue with an attitude of curiosity and discovery – we can benefit from the unique life experience and thought process that we each bring to the table.

Which is my belief as well. Otherwise I wouldn’t spend so much time on The Smokey Wire and similar efforts. Also this week, I followed along on the highly entertaining podcast Climate Change on Trial presented by the Unreported Story Society. I think it’s safe to say that Michael Mann, the climate scientist and plaintiff in the defamation lawsuit against two bloggers, Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, would not agree with that statement on the utility of listening and “approaching dialogue with an attitude of curiosity and discovery.”

At first, I thought the trial was a bit ridiculous. As if what two random bloggers wrote could actually defame Mann any more than a cursory examination of his Twitter feed, and that that would effect his financial remuneration in terms of research grants. Were they kidding? Then it turned out that this defamation biz had been going on for 12 years (!), and no one knows who is paying Mann’s court fees. My view is that in a just world, the jury would have awarded the past 12 years of legal fees to Steyn and Simberg. Of course, as a random blogger myself, maybe I’m being too sensitive. But it was OK, I guess, because according to the Hill, these guys are “right-wing” bloggers and I’m not.

So, at first, I was glad that scientists in our forest fields generally don’t behave that way. And I wondered if a podcast on some of our fuels treatment court cases with key parts being reenacted would be as entertaining. But as we delved into the Mann Tweets and emails, I wondered “how could that level of meanness be tolerated?” and “why was it OK for him to do what most of us would never consider doing?,” and “whose job is it to keep our convos civil, if anyone?”

The story of how all this developed was fascinating, at least to me. For those of you who don’t know, Mann was famous for the hockey stick graph, splicing together various measures of past temperatures including our very own tree rings. When someone asked for the data, he was unwilling to part with it, at least at the beginning. He clearly wasn’t a fan of FOIA either, forwarding a message to others to delete emails. The release of the Climategate emails was not a good moment for him.  If you were to ask him, I’m sure that he saw these as efforts to impugn climate science, and (thus, naturally, to him) he became combative in its (his own) defense.  It became a “good guys vs. bad guys” thing, with him, naturally, on the self-defined “good guys” side.

At the same time, you or I could also say that science should stand up to independent scrutiny, and that if someone wants the original data, they should be able to access it. I don’t think that that would be a big problem in forest science world. So what happened here? Perhaps Mann felt that the stakes were so high, it makes usual scientific practices and conduct obsolete. Some of us might say that that correlates at .99 with his self-interest, so.. But on the other hand, billions of dollar have been spent on climate science and Mann is just one of millions of climate scientists around the world, so the hockey stick is not all that important at the end of the day. But that’s today, and perhaps not when the posts were posted.

I started to think “what went wrong here?” and “are there lessons for us in less-favored and financed disciplines to learn?” Many of us belong to scientific and professional societies, universities and agencies, with codes of conduct that incorporate ideas like collegiality and respectful communications.

Dr. Curry (she of Mann’s so-called “slept her way to the top” email to Gavin Schmidt at NASA) drafted a complaint which she never sent:

“This defamation is affecting my academic reputation and my ability to conduct business. I note that I am far from the only person being attacked and libeled by Dr. Mann.
Penn State Policy AD47 (General Standards of Professional Ethics) states that professors have obligations as members of the “community of scholars” and are required to “respect and defend” free inquiry by other members of the community and to show “due respect” for the opinions of others:

IV.As colleagues, professors have obligations that derive from common membership in the community of scholars. They respect and defend the free inquiry of their associates. In the exchange of criticism and ideas they show due respect for the opinions of others.

“The policy also states that researchers are required to be “open-minded when evaluating the work of others” even if that may “contradict their own findings”:

III…. As open-minded researchers, when evaluating the work of others, they must recognize the responsibility to allow publication of theories or experiments that may contradict their own findings, as only by free inquiry and dissemination of all facts will the fruits of the labor of the whole community be allowed to mature.

Policy HR64 says (my bold) that faculty members have “special obligations” as persons of learning and as educators and are obliged to “exercise appropriate restraint” and “to show
respect for the opinions of others” Faculty members are citizens, members of learned professions, and representatives of this University. When the faculty member speaks or writes as a citizen, the faculty member shall be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but the special position in the community held by the faculty member imposes special obligations. As a person of learning and an educator, the faculty member is expected to remember that the public may judge the profession and institution by his/her utterances. Hence, the faculty member agrees at all times to be accurate, to exercise appropriate restraint, to show respect for the opinions of others, and to make every effort to indicate that he/she is not an institutional spokesperson.”

Curry didn’t send it to Penn State because, as she says in her post .

“after all, the damage to my career was already done and I wasn’t clear where this would lead or whether it would have any effect.”

I wonder how Mann could have acted against these rules for so long with no one calling him on it.  I wonder if the folks he emailed (work emails) ever said, “hey, I’m not interested in gossip about our colleagues’ sex lives”,” or “maybe you should tone it down on  Twitter” or “I’m not sure we should try to evade FOIAs and delete emails.” From the court records, it sounded like a few people did.  If more had done so, could this all have turned out differently?

And how did he get awards from prestigious organizations for “science communication?” Was anyone reading his Tweets?

“I am truly humbled to receive the Stephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communications,” said Mann. “While none of us can fill the very large shoes Steve left behind, we can honor his legacy by doing our best to inform the public discourse over human-caused climate change in an objective, clear and effective manner.”

I don’t blame Mann for all of this.   People don’t always behave well when left to their own devices. This is a fact of human nature. That is why we have laws, law enforcement, codes of conduct and enforcement protocols.  It is the role of institutions to enforce their own rules.  And yet they apparently are not, at least in certain cases.

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Having listened to the podcast of the case, I was amused by this NPR story:

In a D.C. courtroom, a trial is wrapping up this week with big stakes for climate science. One of the world’s most prominent climate scientists is suing a right-wing author and a policy analyst for defamation.

The case comes at a time when attacks on scientists are proliferating, says Peter Hotez, professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology at Baylor College of Medicine. Even as misinformation about scientists and their work keeps growing, Hotez says scientists haven’t yet found a good way to respond.

“The reason we’re sort of fumbling at this is it’s unprecedented. And there is no roadmap,” he says.

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Imran Ahmed, chief executive at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, says any response has to include social media companies, as that’s where attacks on scientists happen every day. Research finds that social media platforms can encourage the spread of scientific and medical misinformation.

Hotez says he and Mann are working on an upcoming project, collaborating on what they see as overlap in attacks on climate science and biomedicine and how to counter it.

Was NPR even in the room? I guess you don’t have to actually observe things when you can just ask your friends what they think.

With all due respect to Hotez and Mann, having discussions and disagreeing is what science is about in the pursuit of truth; actually even outside of “science,” as in Khazzoom’s quote at the top of this post.  Characterizing people who disagree as “attackers” with “disinformation” who need to be throttled down is bad for discourse, bad for the public trust (yes, that public, the ones who vote for research budgets) and bad for science.  I’m curious as to why, of all the disciplines and subdisciplines in science and engineering, only these two fields (climate and Covid) seem to have this problem highlighted? Perhaps they have bought into a form of politics-science mutualism.  In the same way that a phone call changed the views of the virologists and led to the Proximal Origins paper on Covid origins, in the Mann case a discussion with the President of Penn State led the inquiry team to change its findings on censuring Mann.  Where disciplinary self-interest, institutional self-protection and larger world politics meet.. is probably not a good place for the rest of us, nor for any truth to come out.  And it’s definitely not “science.”

Aren’t we fortunate that we don’t have these issues in forest science? Do we manage it better, are the stakes so low no one cares for high quasi-political drama, or are we just lucky as to the character of our scientists? What do you think?

Chag Sameach and Happy Easter!

I may have posted this on a previous Passover, but this  video about the schools of Hillel and Shammai and arguments “for the sake of heaven” is one of my favorites. It’s done by the Pardes Center for Judaism and Conflict Resolution.

According to a source cited in Wikipedia (who knows?) Hillel worked as a woodcutter while studying the Torah.

For Christians, some people see that Jesus’ teachings were reflective of the Hillel school.  There’s actually a spendy book from 1997 on this topic called “Hillel and Jesus: Comparisons of Two Major Religious Leaders“.

In another part of the New Testament (Acts 22:3) Paul claimed  that he had been a student of Gamaliel, who was Hillel’s grandson.

Anyway, wisdom is wisdom and Hillel and Shammai both had it. Plus humility.  Virtues still needed today. And this reminds me a bit of TSW discussions.

Mordcha: Why should I break my head about the outside world? Let them break their own heads.
Tevye: He’s right. As the Good Book says, “If you spit in the air, it lands in your face.”
Perchik: That’s nonsense. You can’t close your eyes to what’s happening in the world.
Tevye: He’s right.
Avram: He’s right and he’s right? How can they both be right?
Tevye: You know, you’re also right.

Chag Pesach Sameach! and Happy Easter!

We’re #1! Reforestation as a Bipartisan Climate Solution: Matt Burgess (CU) Video with Some Ancient Wisdom

I’m sure that many of you are suffering from the seasonal influx of Obnoxious Political Ads. Last week, I ran across this video by a Professor Matt Burgess at University of Colorado who is studying polarization, with an eye to understanding and decreasing it. I thought it was super that an academic was looking into this instead of fanning the flames (I do see quite a bit of that), so here’s a shout out to Matt!

Check out his video on climate change polarization and what people agree on. I took some screenshots of some slides. They looked at climate policies that people broadly agree on.

Here’s an important screenshot for forest folks:

It’s particularly interesting as in President Biden’s Executive Order has different prongs.. MOG, wildfire risk, reforestation and economic development.

Here’s the reforestation part.

(d)  The Secretaries, in coordination with the heads of other agencies as appropriate, shall within 1 year of the date of this order:

(i)    develop a Federal goal that charges agencies to meet agency-specific reforestation targets by 2030, including an assessment of reforestation opportunities on Federal lands and through existing Federal programs and partnerships;

(ii)   develop, in collaboration with Federal, State, Tribal, and private-sector partners, a climate-informed plan (building on existing efforts) to increase Federal cone and seed collection and to ensure seed and seedling nursery capacity is sufficient to meet anticipated reforestation demand; and

We haven’t heard as much about this part of the response to the EO. Perhaps because it’s not controversial. But shouldn’t we talk about the non-controversial parts just as much?  Perhaps controversy is interesting in a way that mutually moving forward in a positive direction is not?

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Discussing With Those Whom You Disagree… Burgess’s Take:

Here are a few of his slides about conversations with those people you disagree with.  Some old ideas and some new ones for us who have been doing this work. This discussion is about 45 minutes in.

Burgess explains that “steelmanning” instead of “strawmanning”  is that you want to understand the best argument for the other side before you argue for our own side.

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If this reminds you of Hillel and Shammai, as well as our friend, the author of the book of Kohelet in the Hebrew Bible – “there is nothing new under the sun,” well, maybe those ancient folks knew a thing or two.

[The law is in accord with the School of Hillel] because they were kindly and modest, because they studied not only their own rulings but also those of the School of Shammai, and because they taught the words of the School of Shammai before their own.  Eruvin 13b.

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Good Argument: Essay by Patty Limerick

As many of you do, I’ve spent a great deal of time on The Smokey Wire in the last ten years. I’ve found it difficult to explain why I should feel such an admittedly peculiar calling. Frederick Buechner once said “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” People are willing to accept that it gives me deep gladness, but I’ve had trouble articulating what utility TSW brings, or might bring, to the world.

Fortunately, the highly articulate Patty Limerick has written an essay that explains her wild dream, which is also my wild dream, in the sentence I bolded below.

I did learn to love a good argument and to embrace that opportunity without an ounce of dread; that part is certainly true. But this change in attitude has left me with more time and energy to devote to worrying: about drought and fires in the American West; hurricanes on the Gulf Coast; the grim rates of unemployment and the failure of small businesses; the many obstacles lying in the path of the creation and deployment of a Covid-19 vaccination; and the terrible polarization of the United States.

In an odd twist, it is exactly that accelerated commitment to worrying that gave rise to the wild dream that drives this essay, namely:

If I could persuade some percentage of my fellow citizens to share my enthusiasm for good arguments, the polarization would drop in intensity, and we might be able to get somewhere in dealing with all those other worrisome problems.

OK, let’s put that wild dream aside for the moment, and return to reality.

This nation’s capacity to engage in good arguments has reached the vanishing point. In the all-too-near future, the nation’s sorriest ritual—that miserable performance called “a presidential debate”—will provide unmistakable evidence to support that assessment. As millions of Americans have arrived at the conclusion that arguing is inevitably sterile and pointless, we are left with only shouting matches, blame fests, fruitless data disputes, or embittered silence. This is the bedrock problem that deepens and enhances every other dilemma we face.

Over the last years, pundits of various stripes have gone into over-production of a certain form of pep talk. In an endless loop, these people keep telling us that, to do our part to redeem our polarized society, we must take every opportunity to listen to those with whom we disagree.

Once you have listened, what can you do?

You can write a commentary of your own, telling other people they should listen, particularly to you.

The commentators telling us to devote ourselves to listening have come to resemble a sad group of recipe-writers, who have convinced themselves that the act of writing a recipe begins and ends with instructions to go out and acquire some ingredients. After the command, “acquire groceries,” these aspiring kitchen gurus skip the part of telling us what to do with the ingredients we have assembled.

To depart from analogy and opt for directness: today’s exhortations to listen go nowhere and still take a long time to reach that destination.

Here’s a better alternative.

By all means, listen. But once you have listened, and once you have reached an understanding of the ideas that other people hold and why they hold them, then invite those folks to join you in a good argument.

We should listen so that we will have all the ingredients we will need to win arguments in the only sense that matters: emerging from the exchange smarter and better oriented to life.

One way to get the right take on winning and losing arguments is to repurpose and redeem that platitude, “We will have to agree to disagree.” Understood as a passive submission to the recognition that two people are not of one mind, this unfortunate platitude has lumbered through life with the wrong meaning.

Set free from this sad message of defeat, and inevitability, those words get a new lease on life. “We will have to agree to disagree, and so we are off on adventure! We will put everything we have into taking part in a good argument, and the friendship between us will not only endure, it will gain in strength.”

I think the whole essay is worth reading. She has a concern about academia as a place for argument, which I share, based on my own experiences. If any of you currently in academia have programs to encourage and improve arguments, please post in the comments below.

You may also be interested in the Center of the American West discussions at “Lunch with Limerick,” as well as others of her “Not My First Rodeo” blog posts.

Reducing the “Bad Blood” Factor in Conflict Management: from Peter Williams

I thought I’d repost this because Peter has much experience in this area. It originally came up in the context of “what is privatization” and “why do all the big Monument designations happen in Utah? What are the dynamics of some folks picking Utah as a target, and then attacking them for reacting? What’s behind it? Brian mentioned bad blood of longstanding duration between different political figures.  But what to do when there is bad blood, lack of trust,  or past negative interactions?  If you’re in partisan politics, or the media sources that echo them,  you seek to inflame them to make yourself look better, to get more clicks or to advance your narrative. But is there an alternative path of joint story- telling, compassion and peace-making (hmm. is this touchy-feely?)

But Peter Williams has experience in trying to work through conflicts and here’s what he thinks:

What to do about “bad blood” is an interesting question in this discussion, as well as a crucial challenge in any collaborative effort. Brian Hawthorne, Sharon, and Jon all touch on it. In my experience, which I assume others can attest as well, not only can there be bad blood, there can be different stories about why it happened. And Sharon reminds us of another related problem, which is that folks may not ever talk with you about those past issues. Some call those “the undiscussables,” a pretty apt name.

This thread has strong examples of the challenges of bad blood. Taking just one, we can look at how Utah residents and others have been affected by the Utah Wilderness battles, the subsequent declarations of National Monument status, and, twenty years from when it flared up, the boundary changes and subsequent business reactions of some in the outdoor recreation industry. And that doesn’t even get into the background history going to the 19th century at least.

Maybe a question is how to find a way forward when history is hot, alive, and emotional. From a collaboration perspective, combined with ideas from conflict management, I find it helpful to recognize as early as possible what I call “competing histories” because finding a competing history tells me I need to look for the frames or lenses through which people receive their story, their version. Those frames are the source of the bad blood and, with the right approach, folks will tell you enough, even if most of the story is still largely undiscussable. If successful, I also know I reached the stage of “sufficiently trusted outsider”, not always easy, sometimes not even possible, always worth trying.

Then I do at least two things with those competing histories. First, I find ways to acknowledge those in my discussions with folks, to speak to the undiscussables myself so they don’t have to, because, as a sufficiently trusted outsider, I can do it with less emotion, less baggage. This is all part of what I call “re-humanizing” the discussion, getting beyond caricatures and stereotypes enough to have a conversation about a joint future. Folks who do collaboration work, like me, sometimes need to take on a “third-party” role of sharing what we’ve heard–with permission–because that relieves the actual participants from doing it themselves with all the emotion that can conjure.

Second, I find ways to document the history, like in presentations or documents, which acknowledges it has been heard and, where possible and needed, gets at facts instead of stories. This is a way to use validation to accomplish some needed de-escalation.

Let me leave you with this idea: Finding ways to distinguish “bad blood between people” from the history of events that produced that bad blood may give the people a better chance of finding a way forward. With hot issues, like debates about privatizing public lands, this could be helpful because you can create space between undiscussables and whatever really needs discussion.

Sierra Club Comments

I have seen a trend in postings from the Sierra Club, on their Facebook page. Online petitions have been popular with eco-groups but, those petitions really don’t do anything. They seem to be a way of riling up their followers, gathering personal information, and receiving donations. There is also a sizable amount of people commenting who do not side with the Sierra Club.

The particular posting I will be presenting regards the Giant Sequoia National Monument, and how the Trump Administration would affect it. The Sierra Club implies (and their public believes) that Trump would cut down the Giant Sequoia National Monument, without immediate action. With over 500 comments, there are ample examples of what people are thinking.

 

“So much of the redwoods and Giant Sequoias have already been cut down… the lumber trucks involved had signs which read ” Trees… America’s renewable resource”… and just exactly how to you “renew” a 2 thousand year old tree??? When a job becomes even remotely scarce, one must find a new occupation. Having cut down the redwoods,(RIP Pacific Lumber and the “Redwood Highway”) and when they’ve cut down the national forests (public lands), are “they” going to insist on the right to come onto my land and cut down my trees as well… to provide jobs for the lumber industry? The National forests and Monuments are public lands, and no one has the right to turn them over to private interests for money making purposes. When are they going to see that there is a higher calling here? The forests provide for much of the fresh air we enjoy… they take in the carbon monoxide we exhale, and they exhale the oxygen so necessary to us. They each also take up 300 gallons of water, so provide for erosion control, and I could go on forever with the benefits of trees… but there will still be short sighted detractors who are only able to see the dollar signs in this issue. If providing jobs is the object… bring back our manufacturing jobs from overseas, all you big companies… your bottom line profit will be less, but you will have brought back the jobs to the USA, and you claim that is the object…???? Investing in the big companies in order to get rich does not make the investing noble or honorable when it is condoning taking jobs off-shore to enrich the few. … at the cost of the lost jobs for our people. Love your neighbor..”

I think that statement speaks for itself. Well-meaning but, misinformed.

 

“Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Keep loggers out of National Giant Sequoia Forests. Forest rangers and the National Parks already do controlled burning when needed to protect forest ecosystem health. The idea that commerical logging companies can be trusted with that task is preposterous.”

I wonder if he had noticed all those dead trees inside the Monument. Another example of not knowing who is taking care of the Monument.

 

“No such thing as controlled logging look at the clear cut coast. Once you let them in they will take it all and say Oops. A long time ago Pacific lumber clear cut thousands of acres illegally and Department of forestry did nothing. Things have not changed.”

Yes, things have changed. Logging IS controlled in Sierra Nevada National Forests… for the last 26 years.

 

“Destroying over 200k acres of sequoias and leaving ONLY 90k acres is NOT “CONTROLLED LOGGING “. OUR planet needs trees to produce oxygen and just how long do you think those jobs will last?”

Someone thinks there is a HUGE chunk of pristine pure Giant Sequoia groves. Thinning forests is not destruction, folks.

 

“I went to sign this and put my address and what not but then I skipped over my phone number and it won’t let me sign it! Unless you give your phone number it’s not going to San. I will not give out my phone number. Is there another way to sign for this?”

There were many comments like this one.

 

“They are both classified under same genisus of Sequoia, It’s their enviroment that makes them different. The Redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens) along N Cal coastline and then the Sequoias trees (Sequoiadendron giganteum) found in the Sierra Nevadas mountain regions are the same yet very different trees because of the chactoristics. Both trees share their unique and acceptional height and massive girth size, they share the same red wood tones.”

Someone thinks they are an authority in tree Taxonomy.

 

“As someone who works in timber, don’t blame it on us! Many foresters care about sustainable forestry. I hate Donald Trump just as much as anyone who cares about the environment”

Well, that is sure saying something, eh?

 

“The forests are being burned down by all these un-natural wild fires that are created by the powers that be to carry out agenda 21/30. It’s not a secret but most people don’t want to see it & the common mentality is if we don’t see it, or address it, it will go away. Right?”

There’s more and more loonies out there saying this stuff, and blaming “Directed Energy Weapons” for starting all the wildfires.

 

“There will be no more forest in America, it will be a big cacino and golf courses.”

And there’s other conspiracy theories out there, too!

 

“The most deushiest thing ever! Poor Trees “

People do believe that Trump would clearcut the Giant Sequoias.

 

“Oh yes look what tree hungers did to Oregon”

I love a well-mispelled insult!

 

“No More RAPE AND MURDER OF OUR TREES”

I wonder what real violent crime victims think of this comparison. Should we let those trees be horribly burned alive, or eaten by insects, resulting in a long and slow starvation death? *smirk*

 

“Wth…. He truely is satin”

Soooo smoooooth!

 

“Drop big rocks on their heads. Something like Ewoks from Return of the Jedi all those years ago. Ewoks were “original” monkey wrenchers.”

That’s a lovely solution! Violence will fix everything!

 

“I think you could stand to be a bit less adversarial in your comments. Oil has nothing to do with this subject and devalues your argument. There is no reason why the land cannot be managed without giving it away to unregulated for-profit companies. That is the right answer.”

Yep, there just might be oil underneath those giant trees. Yep, gotta cut em all down to make sure! Misguided but, kinda, sorta, on the right path.

 

“The devil could burn it all down there because most of the state is so ungodly. Trump isn’t your problem. Godlessness and son keeps your minds and state in a state of anarchy. Poor people. I will keep praying you will find out that you all need to pray to the living God.”

Yep, because…. ummm, …. God recognizes where California’s boundaries are???!!??

 

“Try direct energy weapons”

Certainly, the Reptilians and Nibiru are to blame, fer sure, fer sure.

 

“Because of Monoculture”

Blame the old clearcuts!

 

“Anyone cutting a tree should be SHOT!!!!”

And another violent solution.

 

“The lumbar goes to China and else where, not used used in USA, great loose loose thing.the logs get shipped out of country destroys old growth forest well some one will make $$$$$ of it but it won’t be you”

Dumb, dumb!

 

“Its not about forest management its about trumps business buddies being allowed to buy the land and develop it”

And even another conspiracy theory. People love to say “I wouldn’t put it past him” when promoting such stuff.

This American mindset, on a world stage, is troubling. People proudly display their ignorance and stupidity to fight a non-existent issue. America doesn’t believe the truth anymore, and the Sierra Club, and others, are spreading misinformation through phony petitions.

 

 

Ugly Americans get involved in travel planning

“The debate over snowmobile access in the Tahoe National Forest has taken an ugly turn with a spate of emails, social media posts and online comments filled with foul and abusive language.

Several people pushing for more restrictions on snowmobiles in the 800,000-acre forest that straddles the Sierra Crest have been the targets of online abuse.

The problem has gotten bad enough that Forest Service officials disabled a portion of the online comment system when they suspected people used it to target other commenters with nasty emails.”

This is a symptom of a much bigger problem in this country right now, but the problem it causes federal agencies is that they will have to start questioning the results of the public comment process where there is any indication that people have been intimidated from participating.

Dueling Ladders of Inference: Are the Ds and the Rs ever again to find common ground?

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts. …Salman Rushdie

Democratic operatives and pundits, the Ds, talk as if Republican power players attend to three things: God, Guns, and Gays. The Ds will sometimes expand the three to include Anti-environmentalism or what I have called a Republican war on Nature. What else?

Republican operatives and pundits, the Rs, talk as if Democrat power players attend to Socialism, Collectivism, Paganism, Atheism, Intellectualism, Secular Humanism. What else?

Meanwhile Rs talk about themselves in terms of family values, religious faith, individual freedom and exceptionalism, economics of free markets. What else?

Meanwhile the Ds talk about themselves in terms of community, consilience, connectedness to nature, critical inquiry, democratic traditions, economics of markets as part of political economy. What else?

I sometimes wonder whether these political power players can talk with one another. Have their “identities” and “narratives” become so divorced from one another as to make meaningful conversations unlikely or even impossible?

Notice that I implicitly introduced the notions of in-group and out-group above. I also introduced the idea of stereotyping. This will prove helpful because we are going to use both when we get into two books, The Trouble with Reality, and Demagoguery and Democracy. For now, though, let’s muddy the waters a bit by suggesting that the Rs and the Ds don’t even approach their party identity the same way. Consider, Republicans and Democrats Can’t Even Agree About How They Disagree (Washington Post, 9/7/2016)

… The Republican Party defines itself in ideological terms as the vehicle of symbolic conservatism. The Democratic Party, in contrast, is organized as a social group coalition. …

Republican leaders have a strong incentive to frame electoral choices in broad ideological terms: conservatism vs. liberalism; small government vs. big government; cultural traditionalism vs. social radicalism.

Democratic candidates, in contrast, prefer to emphasize disagreements over individual policies….

[P]olitical elites reinforce these distinct party identities when they communicate with the American public. Republican Party leaders encourage their voters to see the GOP as standing for a set of broad traditions and values. Democratic Party leaders push their voters to focus on the discrete interests of each social group within the Democratic coalition.

I suspect that both parties aren’t quite like depicted above. The Ds are probably more ideologically oriented and the Rs are more oriented around social groups. But both parties retain some of the identities identified by Grossmann and Hopkins. Muddied waters!

One way out of our current political mess would require that both the Rs and the Ds reflect on what they have become in terms of identities, narratives, speech (conceptual framing, rhetoric, propaganda, etc), and actively seek means to find common(er) ground upon which to deliberate and effect the work of Democratic Governance.

It seems to me, though, that neither the Ds nor the Rs have the interest or desire to try to learn from one another or to learn how to jointly craft law or policy. And there is no one to compel them to better behavior. Maybe they are just trapped in a socially-constructed quagmire that disallows them from speaking or acting differently. They act-out; shouting at one another, grandstanding, and playing muscle ball with each other, trying to gain favor for themselves and their party in a winner-take-all contest. The potential harms to our democratic traditions are large, including continued gridlock and impasse, but also opening the door for an authoritarian takeover. Whoa! (Liberals in-group bias warning: Robert Reich’s Fifteen Ways to Spot a Tyrant, Newsweek, 1/3/2017,
Bob Altemeyer’s life-work on Authoritarianism, Wikipedia)

But this story is not really about politicians. It is about us. We, the constituents who have the very same trouble. We, who pretend to be above the fray: “Surprise: we are in this together.” And we won’t get out of any of it unless we learn to change ourselves. Only then can we demand better behavior from our elected leaders. If any here believe that stereotypes are just rhetoric that politicians sling like arrows at one another, think again.

The Trouble with Reality

In The Trouble with Reality: A rumination on moral panic in our time (liberals in-group bias alert), 2017, Brooke Gladstone reminds us that we construct the reality we see, based on stereotypes:

… Our worldview is built on a bedrock of stereotypes, not just about people, but about the way things work. The power of those stereotypes—vital to survival in this unfathomable world—is as profound as it is inescapable.

Stereotypes, [Walter] Lippmann found focus and feed on what is familiar and what is exotic, exaggerating each in the process: “The slightly familiar is seen as very familiar and the somewhat strange as sharply alien.” They are refreshed continually, both by close observation and false analogy.

True or not, they carve neural pathways, sluices that stem the torrent of conflicting impressions and ideas churning through the umgebung [environment, surroundings, neighborhood].

In the end, stereotypes create the patterns that compose our world. It is not necessarily the world we would like it to be, he says, it is simply the kind of world we expect it to be. … (pp. 8-9)

Periodically, these stereotyped realities get smashed. A paradigm shift, is an example, when applied to professionals. Smashups are infrequent, and often repelled since we find them too threatening. Many (most?) people cling on to former belief systems or stereotypes, choosing to avoid the pain of threats to their umwelt, their self-centered “worldview.”

Those who do alter their worldview, only change it enough to allow them to move forward, retaining or clinging onto as much of their old worldview as possible. Seeking safety in the comfort zone.

Note: For any who may be disinclined to buy into the stereotype model, another way to frame this phenomenon is to use a construct developed by Chris Argyris called a “Ladder of Inference.” It is most often used a a part of problem solving in a double-loop learning system (pdf, or cartoon-video TED lesson).

Chris Argyris’ Ladder of Inference is represented by a series of steps, beginning at base with observable “data”and experiences, then ladder rungs: 1) selected “data” from personal observation, 2) added meanings ( personal and cultural), 3) assumptions made based on added meanings, 4) conclusions drawn, 5) beliefs adopted or altered about the world, 6) actions taken.

If we use Argyris’ Ladder only to stand on the top two steps and brow beat others with our own versions of reality and rightness and wrongness, and if others do the same, then we set a stage for demagoguery. If, on the other hand, we use the “Ladder” to reflect on our paths to discovery and to continually reassess our worldview, and to cross-compare with others on their life-journey, then we set a stage for civic discovery and effective public deliberation.

Whether we use the model of Stereotypes or the model of Ladders, in the worst case we get to the same end with Ds and Rs standing atop their separate Ladders of Inference, operating on pre-formed beliefs about the world and the perception of the world held by others, often leaping to conclusions or actions that would not happen if they were more reflective and open to change, and if they were to allow that prospect for others. Mostly they do not, setting the stage for ever-more intense conflict and ultimately even war. Is this where we stand today?

Are “we” better than our politicians? Mostly not, sorry to say. Just take a look at some of the trailing comments in this blog. Other discussion blogs get even nastier.

Demagoguery and Democracy

Standing high up on Ladders of Inference and lobbing projectiles at supposed rivals and adversaries is stage-setting labeled as “demagoguery” in Patricia Roberts-Miller’s book Demagoguery and Democracy. 2017. Since Roberts-Miller has a blog I’ll grab a definition of what demagoguery is and what it is not from there:

I’ve argued elsewhere that we’re in a culture of demagoguery, by which I mean that there are certain widely-shared premises about politics and public discourse:

  • Every policy/political issue has a single right answer, and all other answers are wrong;
  • That correct answer to any political question is obvious to people of good will and good judgment (that is, to good people);
  • The in-group (us) is good;
  • Therefore, anyone who disagrees with the in-group or tries to get a different policy passed isn’t just mistaken or coming from a different perspective or pointing out things it might be helpful for the in-group to know, but bad, and
  • Deliberation and debate are unnecessary, and compromise is simply making a good policy less good.
  • So, in a perfect world, all policy decisions would be made by the in-group or the person who best represents the in-group’s needs,
  • And, therefore, the ideal political candidates are fanatically loyal to the in-group and will shut or shout down anyone who disagrees.

[By in-group, social psychologists don’t mean the group in power, but the social group of which one is a member. So, for some people, being a dog lover is an in-group, even (or especially) in the midst of a culture in which that identity is marginalized.]

This is not the conventional way of thinking about demagoguery—if you look at a dictionary, it will probably define demagoguery as speech by demagogues (in other words, it reduces the issue to one of identity—a demagogic move).

In common usage, demagoguery is often assumed to be obviously false speech that is completely emotional, untrue, and evidence-free on the part of bad people with bad motives.

That’s a useless definition for various reasons (including that it doesn’t even apply to many of the most notorious demagogues); it’s also actively harmful in that it impedes our ability to identify in-group demagoguery—that is, demagoguery on the part of people we like. And it does so because we can tell ourselves this isn’t demagoguery if:

  • we think we are calm while reading the text, and the text (or rhetor) has a calm tone
  • we believe the claims in the text are true
  • the claims can be supported with evidence
  • we believe the people making the argument are good people
  • we believe they have good motives

One of the things I want to suggest in this talk is that teachers of writing are often unintentionally engaged in reaffirming the premises on which demagoguery operates, and we can do so in two general ways: first, by teaching criteria of “bad argumentation” (or demagoguery or propaganda or whatever devil term is in question) that don’t productively identify the problems of certain kinds of public discourse, thereby giving people a false sense of security—as in the above criteria. We can feel comfortable that we aren’t consuming or producing demagoguery when we are. Second, a lot of writing and especially argumentation textbook appeal to the rational/irrational split, assume a binary in epistemologies (so that one is either a naïve realist or relativist), require that students engage in motivism, and rely on a modernist formalism about what constitutes “good” writing.

For instance, if you look at the criteria for determining demagoguery, you can see the standards often advocated for a “good” argument.

If, as I’ll argue, that isn’t a helpful way to think about demagoguery, then the consequent way of teaching argumentation not only ends up reinforcing demagogic premises about public deliberation, but puts teachers in a really difficult place for talking productively about issues like bias and fairness.

So what might we do about our tendencies toward demagoguery? Roberts-Miller gives us hope but no simple answers. From Demagoguery and Democracy:

…First we can try to reduce the profitability of demagoguery by consuming less of it ourselves, and shaming media outlets that rely heavily on it. Second, we can choose not to argue with family or friends who are repeating demagogic talking points, and simply give witness to the benefits of pluralism and diversity [without condoning naive relativism’s anything goes]. Or third, if it seems interesting and worthwhile, we can argue with family or friends who are repeating demagogic talking points. Fourth, we can also support and argue for democratic deliberation.” … (p.94)

… Earlier I mentioned concepts particularly helpful for democratic deliberation: inclusion, fairness, responsibility, self-skepticism, and the “states.” Those can be turned into four basic principles.

First, because demagoguery depends on us and them being treated differently, simply insisting on fairness can go a long way toward u undermining demagoguery. Rhetorical fairness means that, whatever the argument rules are, they apply equally to everyone in the argument. … Second, Fairness, connects to responsibility is that the responsibilities of argumentation should apply equally across all interlocutors, so that all parties are responsible for representing one another’s arguments fairly, and striving to provide internally consistent evidence to support their claims. Third, the people arguing should strive to be internally concocting in terms of appeals to premises, definitions, and standards. … Finally, the issue is actually up for argument—that is, the people involved are making claims that can be proven wrong, and that they can imagine abandoning, modifying, and reconsidering. … (Pp.124-126)

Roberts-Miller concludes Demagoguery and Democracy:

Good disagreements are the bedrock of communities. Good disagreements happen when people with different kinds of expertise and points of view talk and listen to one another, and when we try, honestly and pragmatically, to determine the best course of action for the whole community. Our differences make us stronger. Democracy presumes that we can behave as one community, caring together for our common life, and disagreeing productively and honestly with one another. Demagoguery rejects that pragmatic acceptance and even valuing of disagreement in favor of a world of certainty, purity, and silence of dissent.
Demagoguery is about saying we are never wrong; they are. If we make a mistake, they are to blame; we are always in touch with what is true and right. There is no such thing as a complicated problem; there are just people trying to complicate things. Even listening to them is a kind of betrayal. All we need to do is what we all know to be the right thing. And it’s very, very pleasurable. It tells us we’re good and they’re bad, that we were right all along, and that we don’t need to think about things carefully or admit we’re uncertain. It provides clarity.

Democracy is about disagreement, uncertainty, complexity, and making mistakes. It’s about having to listen to arguments you think are obviously completely wrong; it’s about being angry with other people, and their being angry with you. It’s about it all taking much longer to get something passed than you think reasonable, and taking a long time resisting some policy you think is dipshit. Democracy is about having to listen, and compromise, and it’s about being wrong (and admitting it). It’s about guessing—because the world is complicated….

Democracy is hard; Demagoguery is easy. … (pp. 127-129)

What, if anything, ought we to do? If we and others do nothing might we be headed for a social, cultural,economic, political catastrophe? Or am I just being overly concerned about something that is “fake news” or just a passing phase? Finally, what does any of this have to do with forest policy?

Trump Reportedly Wants to Clearcut Giant Sequoias

As per the Sierra Club

“Logging companies are lying in wait, chainsaws ready, for Trump to chop the protections of Giant Sequoia National Monument.

Don’t let Trump give loggers free reign to fell majestic trees. Become a monthly donor to save this precious ecosystem: http://sc.org/2upyrE6 ”

Leave no funding opportunity left unexploited!