James Clear is one of my favourite new writers, for his scientific focus on the psychology of habits. He writes a highly informative blog on topics such as good habits, motivation and persuasion. His book due out in October, Atomic Habits, promises to be superb https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
This blog post, Facts Don’t Change Minds provides a simple explanation of why people are so irrational, and why changing people's minds is so hard. Basically, you can only convince somebody of something if they are already predisposed to trust your opinions.
James Clear makes the point that the human desire to belong to a community constrains our willingness to listen to others, because connection is more useful than truth, as Stephen Pinker has explained. Changing minds can mean changing tribes, showing that friendship is the basis for convincing anyone of anything.
His key argument in the blog linked above is that
Reflecting on this point leads me to an insight on politics. My basic view is that climate change is the primary security problem facing our planet, but the people who most need to be influenced on this are not those who are already active on climate change.James Clear wrote:“The people who are most likely to change our minds are the ones we agree with on 98 percent of topics. If someone you know, like, and trust believes a radical idea, you are more likely to give it merit, weight, or consideration. You already agree with them in most areas of life. Maybe you should change your mind on this one too. But if someone wildly different than you proposes the same radical idea, well, it's easy to dismiss them.”
Think of the population divided into seven social groups along the political spectrum. One way to present this might be 1 Radical Left, 2 Reformist Left, 3 Centre Left, 4 Centre, 5 Centre Right, 6 Reformist Right, 7 Radical Right. I will use these numbers as shorthand for these social groups. It would be possible to expand this typology through description of each group, assuming they fit along a statistical bell curve.
On this spectrum, Clear says people will only listen to views that are in their part of the spectrum, on their number or adjacent.
Against this social framework, my view is that the most important change of thinking on climate security needs to occur in groups 4-6, not groups 1-2. My reason for this targeting is that the strategy advocated by groups 1 and 2, decarbonising the economy, has no hope of delivering climate security, whereas the more practical solution, removing carbon from the air, can be accepted by the political right if presented by people they trust.
That analysis means climate security must be completely separated from radical politics, in order to present climate action as a safe and incremental and affordable practical reform with no hidden agendas.
It is precisely because I think climate security is so important, based on the science which is agreed by the left, that it is essential to present these arguments in ways that the right can trust and engage, that is within the framework of a conservative view of economics and society. Accepting the primacy of the market over the state, celebrating achievement, respecting traditional morality, are ideas that many left wing climate activists are sceptical about. Perhaps an attitude that proposes climate action from within these values could gain more political traction?
James Clear’s 98% rule means that when you target an audience and aim to change their view, you must first validate and support most of their opinions. Change can only occur if you are just trying to open a conversation about something that makes sense in that context.
Evolution only happens in small steps, not big jumps. The Darwinian law of cumulative adaptation applies to memes just as much as to genes. In this context this law of evolution means a political reform has to be broken down into components, so that proposed changes can be understood and accepted, applied incrementally building on precedent.