BK 7: (Jan 8, 2019) Don't Even Think About It - Why Our Brains Are Wired To Ignore Climate Change

Hi Everyone...

Our Jan 8th discussion will be on the book Don't Even Think About It - Why Our Brains Are Wired To Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall (Aug 18, 2015)

With 242 pages it is approximately 8 pages a day.

Check out the Bio & Videos below...

"From the founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network, a groundbreaking take on the most urgent question of our time: Why, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, do we still ignore climate change?

“Please read this book, and think about it.” --Bill Nye

Most of us recognize that climate change is real yet we do nothing to stop it. What is the psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall's search for the answers brings him face to face with Nobel Prize-winning psychologists and Texas Tea Party activists; the world's leading climate scientists and those who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovers is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake.

With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different, but rather in what we share: how our human brains are wired--our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe. Once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. Rather, we can halt it if we make it our common purpose and common ground. In the end, Don't Even Think About It is both about climate change and about the qualities that make us human and how we can deal with the greatest challenge we have ever faced."

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This is what we discussed at the meeting...

* Separating what we know from what we believe

* How do we ignore something even with overwhelming evidence, even from our own eyes

* Confirmation Bias

* Availability Bias

* Rational scientific data vs emotional stories

* Experts vs valued friends/family

* Values Politics & Lifestyle

* Pluralistic Ignorance

* Conditional Cooperation

* Transformational Leadership

* Self-Categorization Theory

* Inversionism

* Carl Jung Internal Child

* Daniel Gilbert 4 Key Triggers PAIN (Personal, Abrupt, Immoral, Now)

* Seymour Epstein Analytic and Experiential Processing

* Paul Slovic Dread & Unknown Risk

* Daniel Kahneman  Threats (Concrete, Immediate, and Indisputable) & his Experiment

* Optimism Bias

* Cultural Cooperation

* Volunteer perspective

* "Uncertain" vs "Unsure"

* Frank Lutz & message to Republican party

* Dick Cheney & "certainty"

* Finite pool of worry

* Powerless leads to helplessness leads to depression

* Inattention vs disattention

* Parallel thinking - Live in one way & think in another

* Ignorance vs. Denial vs Disavowal

* How we define & value "scientist" (Tobacco Industry etc)

* Cause & Effect problems

* Michael Crichton book Bush presented as "Evidence"

* Information-Deficit Model

* Cultural differences (Chicken cleaning in Fast Food Chains in China represents Cleanliness & Modernity)

* Polar Bears and Proximity Cognitive Bias

* When Threatened people adopt strategies to diminish Fear: Denial, Uncertainty, playing down, Fatalism, Anger

* Desensitization

* Chicken Little actual story

* Hypocrisy of Shell oil and accidents at plant vs environment

* Tragedy of Commons & We are harming ourselves

* Cognitive Dissonance

* Single Action Bias

* Personal Justification

* Moral License in other areas (less water but more electricity); less guilty to of flying

* My example of Classroom Trash Cans with signage & type

* Projecting on to others

* Researching vs Practicing

* Ernest Becker Fear and Denial of Death "Death Salience"

* Religion

* Personal Self-Interest vs Social Identity

* Ingroup vs Outgroup Loyalty

* Framing

* How we should Proceed