Merchants of Doubt and the Supremacy of Emotive over Rational Reasoning

I had previously watched "Merchants of Doubt" (2014) before participating in this course, and found it very enlightening. There has been a disturbing trend among corporate America, driven by short term thinking and desire to deliver profits and dividends to shareholders at all costs, to forego honesty and public health concerns and hire public relations firms. Their charge is to create doubt relative to scientifically proven dangers of products manufactured by private interests. The most infamous example, brought forth by lawsuits, was a Phillip-Morris internal memo which indicated "doubt is our product". Similar tactics, including use of ideologically sympathetic "experts" and literally copying the layout of scientific reports to bolster pseudoscience that just happened to find industry blameless, have been used by the fossil fuels, flame retardants, and tobacco industries.

This trend is an expected result of relatively unbridled capitalist culture. Especially concerning the climate change and fossil fuels debate, the United States population has far higher levels of doubt than societies in Europe with comparable levels of education and similar, if not identical, liberal democracies. The difference comes down to capitalist culture, which is less restrained in the US. European liberal societies have market economies, whereas the US has a market society with liberal (and neoliberal) government structures. . In many ways, culture is elucidated through values, and the US greaty emphasizes free market, neoliberal and materialist-cosumerist values versus European commutarian values that yield stronger welfare states and greater scrutiny of the private sector to protect public health and economic equality.

I felt very vindicated by the cognitive discussion, "The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science". In my 9/22 blog post "Convincing Climate Change Deniers?", I argued that it is largely a waste of  time to try to convince invested, educated adult deniers of ACC, who usually have a political or economic interest in the debate that prevents them from coherently accepting ACC and/or the policy changes its logic requires. This article further supports my argument in that it shows that rational arguments do not change peoples' minds. In fact, emotive reasoning that involves being part of a team or tribe rallied against the "other" is far faster-acting than logical reasoning. Therefore, it is definitely a waste of time to attempt to persuade educated, invested ACC deniers. You only have a chance to convince them, as the article mentions but does not quantitatively demonstrate, when you associate ACC and responsible climate policy with conservative-friendly values.