I don’t really know how one can effectively promote a new kind of identity, but we should probably take lessons from marketers and other people who appeal strongly to emotions.
I can’t find the blog post right now, but I’m pretty sure economist Bryan Caplan has written that when he’s lecturing on some point of economics that counters a widely-held economically-illiterate bias, he frames it like “people in this room are smart enough to understand X, unlike the economically illiterate laypeople outside”. So it helps to have an out-group. The Robbers Cave Experiment is similar, as is the story from Dan Ariely’s TED talk, where people cheat less if they see people from a rival university cheating.
So a way to encourage people to embrace a rationalist identity might be to choose some out-group we already hate (maybe terrorists) and emphasize that we are not like those dangerously irrational lunatics who like blind faith and persecuting heretics; we like science and evidence and listening carefully to intellectual criticism.
So a way to encourage people to embrace a rationalist identity might be to choose some out-group we already hate (maybe terrorists) and emphasize that we are not like those dangerously irrational lunatics who like blind faith and persecuting heretics; we like science and evidence and listening carefully to intellectual criticism.
This might in the long-run have bad side-effects if it demonizes the out-groups too much. Also, it requires making potentially false statements about the outgroup. Finally, note that this strategy has been more or less implicitly tried in American politics with some trying to portray the left-wing as “pro-science” and critical thinking, yet many forms of irrational beliefs, such as a lot of alternative medicine claims and anti-vaccine claims, are primarily on the left (anti-vaccine issues have become more common among the religious right post the HPV vaccine but it is still a primarily left-wing phenomenon). So in practice this doesn’t seem to work well.
a lot of alternative medicine claims and anti-vaccine claims[] are primarily on the left (anti-vaccine issues have become more common among the religious right post the HPV vaccine but it is still a primarily left-wing phenomenon).
Well, in fairness, the religious right opposes the HPV vaccine based on a value difference, not a factual difference. They oppose it because they think it will promote sex, but they don’t challenge the scientific facts about the vaccine.
Actually, while they in part have a value difference here, they’ve also used it as an opportunity to pick up a lot of the standard anti-vaccine claims. See for example this World Net Daily piece, this Conservapedia article, this Conservapedia HPV FAQ. In this particular case, as frequently happens, people try to adjust their perception of reality so that their ideological beliefs and reality happen to conveniently agree.
Well, in fairness, the religious right opposes the HPV vaccine based on a value difference, not a factual difference. That is, even if all the facts about the vaccine and its effects on sexual behavior are agreed upon, there is still a value dispute about how society should deal with sex. Many on the religious right oppose the vaccine because they don’t believe in treating the risks of sex as medical problems that can be prevented, even though they don’t challenge the scientific facts about the vaccine.
I can’t find the blog post right now, but I’m pretty sure economist Bryan Caplan has written that when he’s lecturing on some point of economics that counters a widely-held economically-illiterate bias, he frames it like “people in this room are smart enough to understand X, unlike the economically illiterate laypeople outside”. So it helps to have an out-group. The Robbers Cave Experiment is similar, as is the story from Dan Ariely’s TED talk, where people cheat less if they see people from a rival university cheating.
So a way to encourage people to embrace a rationalist identity might be to choose some out-group we already hate (maybe terrorists) and emphasize that we are not like those dangerously irrational lunatics who like blind faith and persecuting heretics; we like science and evidence and listening carefully to intellectual criticism.
This might in the long-run have bad side-effects if it demonizes the out-groups too much. Also, it requires making potentially false statements about the outgroup. Finally, note that this strategy has been more or less implicitly tried in American politics with some trying to portray the left-wing as “pro-science” and critical thinking, yet many forms of irrational beliefs, such as a lot of alternative medicine claims and anti-vaccine claims, are primarily on the left (anti-vaccine issues have become more common among the religious right post the HPV vaccine but it is still a primarily left-wing phenomenon). So in practice this doesn’t seem to work well.
Well, in fairness, the religious right opposes the HPV vaccine based on a value difference, not a factual difference. They oppose it because they think it will promote sex, but they don’t challenge the scientific facts about the vaccine.
Actually, while they in part have a value difference here, they’ve also used it as an opportunity to pick up a lot of the standard anti-vaccine claims. See for example this World Net Daily piece, this Conservapedia article, this Conservapedia HPV FAQ. In this particular case, as frequently happens, people try to adjust their perception of reality so that their ideological beliefs and reality happen to conveniently agree.
Whether the vaccine will promote sex is an empirical matter.
Good point. Let me fix that:
Well, in fairness, the religious right opposes the HPV vaccine based on a value difference, not a factual difference. That is, even if all the facts about the vaccine and its effects on sexual behavior are agreed upon, there is still a value dispute about how society should deal with sex. Many on the religious right oppose the vaccine because they don’t believe in treating the risks of sex as medical problems that can be prevented, even though they don’t challenge the scientific facts about the vaccine.