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[Edited January 2 2019 -- to remove or replace dead visual-links] Long ago Jonathan and I got some good traction out of a tangle of issues related to Global Warming slash Climate Change. I think we are slated to renew or refresh our earlier exchanges. I am going to poke in links to some he-said/he-saids from a few different threads at different times. One feature of the updated software is an automated 'sampling' of a link posted raw. See below. So this blog entry will be kind of administrative-technical while being built and edited. I haven't figured out if Jonathan and I should impose some 'rules' going in, so your comment may be subject to arbitrary deletion before the field is ready for play. Fan notes included. Adam, see what you think of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, especially the revealing map-based representations of opinion. You can drill and zoom down to state, county, district level to track data across a number of survey questions, where some of the answers are surprising. On some measures at least, the thing it is not found only in the UK, Quebec, Canada: Here's a snapshot of several maps which do not always show an expected Red State/Blue State pattern; [images updated January 2 2019; click and go images] [Deleted image-link] Edited 4 May 2015 by william.scherk Plug my How To Get Where I Got book of books, Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming. Insert link to Amazon, Library link, and to the intro chapter of Weart's companion website to the book. Make sure you include a link to Ellen's mention of a book review. Bob Kolker's June 3 comment is a good hinge. What do we (J and I) think we know about the mechanism Bob sketches? What can we 'stipulate' or what can we agree on, for the sake of argument?

Well worth a listen are two recently-uploaded visual-radio pieces from ARI's Youtube channel. I wish a few of our founding-people regulars were still around to masticate this lecture. My first impression was that Binswanger is both precise and sloppy: the lack of 'show notes' or references makes it cloudy where exactly he is relying upon someone else's work. He implicitly invokes both Plutchik and Ekman, but does not say their names, rubbishing one, but basing his next ten minutes on the other. The oral-aural culture is weird in the Objectivist traditions. One of the not-so-unfair criticisms of Ayn Rand's occasional essays are the lack of citation where they would really help: who is she talking about? Same with Peikoff in OPAR, which is in part why I think that one hit the wall several times before I could finish reading it. So with these two, I build up a charge of questions for a Q & A that doesn't happen ... yet. Since Binswanger usually operates from a subscriber-maintained walled garden, it is interesting for him to put his wonk out for general feedback -- instead of within his Loyalty Cult. The ARI channel doesn't seem all that well-visited, but it has open comments. I'd love to get Marsha Enright and Steve Shmurak on a five-way discussion via Skype one day discussing these Binswanger tapes; I think they likely have paid the five bucks at an earlier time for a three-hour MP3, or and that the lecture has already had a round of critiques. Lazy me hasn't noted yet when it was first struck as an independent essay or reading or whatever we might call this genre. So, Enright, Shmurak, Boydstun, and I think Robert Campbell. I would be not other than host and sound-board monitors, at most a compere, so that leaves one other person I am missing. Who am I missing? [ADDED: I put out feelers to the trio above on Facebook, with a query about how old this item is. I could probably look that up myself, but why not be social?]

Scott Adams on Persuasion This thread is a placeholder--a place to throw tidbits of information Scott Adams dribbles out about persuasion. It's kind of a reference thread. I've felt the need for a place like this for some time now. So here it is. For people who don't know, Scott Adams is the author of the syndicated cartoon strip, Dilbert. He also dabbles in persuasion. During the Trump campaign, he identified the future president as a " master persuader" and wrote a series of blog posts dissecting the techniques. He made a series of predictions that came true while the mainstream predictions turned out to fizzle, one after another. That led to guest appearances on mainstream TV news shows and a bestselling book: Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter. His blog: Scott Adams' Blog. I have frequently made reference to Scott here on OL. Over time, I'll see if I can bring some of those comments to this thread, too. He's one hell of a smart cookie. To start things off, here's a lesson by Scott on how to recognize cognitive dissonance in people and in yourself. Really cool... Michael

Searching the site, I see that MSK and others have been following Scott Adams's tweets for several years. Also, MSK and others know this book. However, no review has been put up here. Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter by Scott Adams (Penguin, 2017) is a tribute to Donald Trump. It is also a tribute to Scott Adams. The author of Dilbert has been popular online for decades; and he had tens of thousands of readers when, back on August 13, 2015, he began predicting Donald Trump’s victory. Throughout the book, Adams gives himself a lot of credit for that. Adams calls Trump a Master Persuader (in capitals). Trump won because facts do not matter. People make up their minds based on emotion and then cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias provide them with “reasons” to justify their choices. Adams says that Trump could have run on any platform, even Bernie Sanders’. One of Trump’s most successful tactics as a Master Persuader is intentional wrongness. He makes a grandiose claim, such as building a wall along the border. People point out the errors. He might modify his position – he does that often – but it remains that he has framed the discussion, defined the terms, tilted the debate in his favor. Everyone talks about what he wants them to talk about. The border wall, banning Muslims, global warming, Syria, North Korea, whatever the issue of the moment, Trump made huge statements that grabbed headlines, then slowly shifted away from the hardline stance, often to no specific proposals at all. All the while, everyone talked about what Donald Trump told them to talk about. Another way that Trump achieves that control and neutralizes his opponents is by flooding the news. He issues so many statements in so many media and so often provocative that news agencies can only report them all and yet be unable to actually focus on any one or a few of them. He did this in the campaign and it made him the most newsworthy candidate in the race. Among the many failed strategies of the Democrats was their campaign called “imagine President Trump.” It was supposed to turn people against him, of course. People who consumed news were supposed to be shocked and disgusted by the picture and thereby vote for Hillary Clinton. In fact, all the Democrats achieved was to plant the vision of President Trump in millions of people. The Democrats did Trump’s selling for him. “Love Trumps hate” was another failed campaign slogan. All it said was “Love Trump…” And apparently, very many people do.

I came across an entry at the place called "Rational Wiki." The biases of the wiki are evidently left-wing, if not progressive, if not evul. Ostensibly ... Here's the loaded language page header (click through). One of the more fraught uses of 'prejudicial language' is identified as "snarl words." Isn't using 'snarl words' part of the fun of online discussion? -- surveying the Wiki site's entries, it made me think of a kind of weight in Ayn Rand's language in both fiction and non-fiction. Is there anything objectively wrong with using heavily-laden emotive words in argument? Doesn't using so-called loaded language offer a short-cut or end-point of a long line of reasoning? Why not 'snarl' at ideological 'enemies'?

Since you think Rand would ideologically support Cruz after deriding Reagan on abortion, I have to consider you not to be much of an authority on her. It is very easy to analyze the 2016 campaigns and campaigners but very hard to actually observe what is going on and all projections are arbitrary. I've never seen anything like this is presidential politics. If Cruz drops out it will be because of his up in the air citizenship status. He may be the citizen of no country at all because he renounced his Canadian citizenship (2014). His parents declared him Canadian at birth. By Canadian law there is no such thing as dual citizenship. Nor was any paperwork ever filed with the US Government to the contrary. His mother was a US citizen. That's the only thing going for him. He may even be illegally a US Senator. Regardless, it looks like Drumpf will get enough delegates for a first ballet win. --Brant Peter, You've said this before and now, through repetition, you are treating it as if it were a fact. Where has Drumpf bragged about the women he has bedded? Michael Peter, As your man said to Donald, breathe. Calm down. Take some deep breaths. You can do it... Drumpf tends to have this effect on people when they think he's toast, except he doesn't know it, then they discover he actually won. Besides, after the dust settles, I wager you will start seeing Drumpf's virtues again. It's all good... Michael Is that interesting?