tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8076290.comments2021-08-17T14:43:44.587-07:00Searching for MindJaredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00070348413189414940noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8076290.post-86767050050476155462013-04-22T04:49:23.876-07:002013-04-22T04:49:23.876-07:00I don't even know about this app until now. I ...I don't even know about this app until now. I agree, the app might just be causing a placebo effect and will only work for people who don't really have serious or real depression.Davidhttp://proceraavhreviewed.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8076290.post-74039498712756824702011-09-14T22:53:29.731-07:002011-09-14T22:53:29.731-07:00I always beleived that games just increased memory...I always beleived that games just increased memory and that is just it. I was amazed that my 4 year old was playing games that the older kids were playhing. until I realized he was just memorizing the buttons and what each button did. He can't read.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16315286593836477991noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8076290.post-14253962167326129682009-08-13T13:49:21.438-07:002009-08-13T13:49:21.438-07:00No - just time difficulties. I have a backlog of t...No - just time difficulties. I have a backlog of things I want to post, so I'm just burning through them. Expect more of the same tomorrow.Jaredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00070348413189414940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8076290.post-40815919104499984592009-08-13T11:42:48.811-07:002009-08-13T11:42:48.811-07:00Heads up - I subscribed to the feed for this blog ...Heads up - I subscribed to the feed for this blog months ago and no posts ever came through. Then today, there are 60+ of them within minutes of each other. Technical difficulties?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17064214259207663217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8076290.post-55860728153134856682009-01-01T12:15:00.000-07:002009-01-01T12:15:00.000-07:00Well, I would say you don't follow very closely wh...Well, I would say you don't follow very closely when you read things. The article says these rural American view their communities as unfriendly to exercise. That would indicate that these rural Americans need more opportunity to exercise. It is a poor headline, but judging a study by the headline the media uses is a little silly.Dameocrathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08697717088521051559noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8076290.post-27865199257622747742008-11-18T11:06:00.000-07:002008-11-18T11:06:00.000-07:00Ok, my interest is peaked - I'm ready to read the ...Ok, my interest is peaked - I'm ready to read the article on Nurture.Kathyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11778371837095795780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8076290.post-63147833121923094222008-07-02T03:12:00.000-07:002008-07-02T03:12:00.000-07:00Thanks for noticing. I agree that public schools h...Thanks for noticing. I agree that public schools have a place, but that place in in a competitive environment of vouchers and much more accountability.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8076290.post-1146221458033404292006-04-28T03:50:00.000-07:002006-04-28T03:50:00.000-07:00It would be very good to have an anotated list of ...It would be very good to have an anotated list of sound gender-difference research.<BR/><BR/>On the face of it, this piece doesn't qualify. Did it occur to these people that one real (average) difference between men and women is their vulnerability to physical attack? "Just shut your eyes and relax" -- oh yeah? If they were not alone behind a door they had bolted and barred themselves, then they were not in an equivalent situation. What do people think about when they "relax"? Did the investigators control for the length of the list of items needed from the supermarket later in the day, the sexiness of the staff who the subjects interacted with ... (OK, sexist asumptions in those choices!)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8076290.post-1142730654970365132006-03-18T18:10:00.000-07:002006-03-18T18:10:00.000-07:00JaredOnce again, I trust that's it's OK to reach y...Jared<BR/><BR/>Once again, I trust that's it's OK to reach you through your blog. You can reach me through my "public" email address, [to_swc@yahoo.com]. As I sometimes only check this once a week or so, delays are natural. This post has been put together over several days in snippets of time, so I hope it coheres.<BR/><BR/>I notice that George at the SciAm blog has closed out the comments and started a new topic with his summary of the questions raised. I'm curious about that and the reactions to it.<BR/><BR/>I'm a writer, so I have skills -- no reason why they won't fit under the rubric of psychomarketing -- to express myself well in print. For example, the "economic reality" that was in my mind at the time was simply that our economies are poor at discounting costs that are a century ahead, and the same for counter-intuitive feedback loops, both of which will likely apply. I don't have any solution, just the likely problem. I guess the same applies to our social decision making processes. You probably know more about economics than I do.<BR/><BR/>I rarely read the research directly, but via the science press, and the techniques used come from all over the map anyway. And I'm not certain what you're referring to, "I've seen some research about it, but have never encountered any literature on the actual science of deliberate subconscious reality construction." I myself would like to see such research. I do know that it's done, perhaps prosaically, but done nonetheless.<BR/><BR/>For a flavor, I can give you a research quickie. It's in the category of "potential" psychomarketing technology. Researchers have been creating very simple false memories in subjects in the lab for years. A few months ago one of their research papers made the mass media. It probably came to your attention. Researchers planted a false memory about a [false] childhood incident of an illness-type reaction to a specific food. Strawberries, or strawberry ice cream, sticks in my mind. This was the subject's favorite food before the experiment. The researchers, using this technique, created an aversion to the food post-experiment. No hypnosis, etc., just using words, if it followed the false-memory research I've already read <I>about.</I><BR/><BR/>Actually, now that I think about it, a type of false memory construction done in the lab is directly applicable to psychomarketing. I can explain this, if you'd like.<BR/><BR/>Wednesday, no, now Friday, was my last gasp commenting on blogs for awhile. I said that when I posted to the SciAm GW comments also, but reality is rearing it's head. My blog comments I've linked to here outline basics of psychomarketing and the last 5-6 months that led me to so much recent writing. I just recently had the time, energy, and exposure to science blogging to get some writing done. Last fall I wrote a very long draft in response to Grist's [Grist.com] voluminous point/counterpoint on "Death of Environmentalism". Most of what I've been writing on blogs is repackaged pieces of that, in some form.<BR/><BR/>My knowledge of psychomarketing is not as thorough as it sounds although I have numerous examples I analyze. In the draft last fall I tried to come up with a name for it and a method for explaining what's really a hodgepodge of research and applications. But, and right here's an example of dealing with "subconscious reality," I wanted to avoid terms like "advertising" etc. While they're not accurate in this case anyway, these words evoke "frames" that then allow people to pigeonhole what I'm saying and so easily dismiss or accept. I wanted people to think. Also, I'm completely convinced that psychomarketing is hidden from almost everyone except the professionals doing it, so I wanted a new word to help create the feeling of discovering new knowledge in my reader. In the draft I even do a bit of analysing of my psychomarketing approach to choosing the term "psychomarketing".<BR/><BR/><BR/><BR/>Linguist George Lakoff's approach to analyzing political communication, "framing", stresses using the right language to activate existing "subconscious realities" and, over time, to build them. I don't know if he calls it that -- I doubt it -- but that's what it's about. He's using the analytical tools and vocabulary of linguistics to do this.<BR/><BR/>Republican psychomarketing "word researcher" Ed Luntz is famous/infamous for changing "Estate/Inheritance Tax" to "Death Tax" and "Tax Reform" to "Tax Relief". Lakoff, somewhere on the net and probably elsewhere, gives a great explanation about the latter, why such a simple change, disseminated via disciplined media work, can change <I>everything</I> about the issue over time.<BR/><BR/>I give more detailed examples of a psychomarketing approach, Lakoff and Luntz and another guy are mentioned, and I point a commenter to more info in 5 comments on this <A HREF="http://scienceblogs.com/nosenada/2006/03/words_of_wisdom_for_antiid_edu.php" REL="nofollow">No Se Nada</A>. On the immediately following <A HREF="http://scienceblogs.com/nosenada/2006/03/exactly_my_point_the_public_do.php" REL="nofollow">No Se Nada</A> I make a long comment from which several paragraphs were lifted for my SciAm GW post. In the first No Se Nada post, I'd recommend you go to the 2 PBS websites. There's much material and some of it, especially the interviews if I remember correctly, can provide [indirect] avenues into the science involved.<BR/><BR/>I discuss the cluelessness of the environmental movement in a passage from that draft that include words from Ed Luntz on Nisbet's <A HREF="http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=19454090&postID=114115679878987352" REL="nofollow">Framing Science.</A> In his "famous" briefing book for Republicans, Luntz emphasizes "Facts only become relevant when the public is receptive and willing to listen to them..." and proceeds to tell them how to do that. This is exactly "actual science of deliberate subconscious reality construction," because he uses scientific methods to figure out what words <I>do,</I> not might, activate the "frames" already determined to be appropriate.<BR/><BR/>Here's my attempt to apply a psychomarketing analysis to the specific, recent issue of the <A HREF="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/03/catholic_church_refuses_gay_ad.php" REL="nofollow">Catholic Charities of Boston's closing it's adoption services</A> rather than comply with a state policy requiring that gays be allowed to adopt children. I got called on my analysis, at least I think I did. But, even if my source on the facts was incorrect in this case, my comments are a mini-tutorial on the way interested parties can, and do, use a psychomarketing approach.<BR/><BR/>And for a change in the reading material, this long journalistic-type comment of mine on artist <A HREF="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/03/i_dont_think_anybody_here_fits.php" REL="nofollow">Thomas Kincade's</A> fakery is just barely on-topic here because I do make a political connection in the last sentence.<BR/><BR/><BR/><BR/>And as for it being one-sided, there's a paragraph in my Faithful Progressive comment [link below] about the right's <I>process manipulation</I> research into and use on the press and on this <A HREF="http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2006/03/who_says_global_warming_books.php" REL="nofollow">Chris Mooney</A> post, a small bit about the right's <I>process manipulation</I> of bestseller lists. To complete a triplet there's my analysis of a non-political bit of <I>process manipulation</I> in a <I>Seed</I> story about atrocious local TV news coverage of health care research on <A HREF="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/03/the_history_carnival.php" REL="nofollow">Respectful Insolence.</A> The specific "subconscious psychomarketing visual tricks " I mention in the latter are quite obvious, once they are pointed out. But otherwise, they are so much a part of our unconscious, daily media background nobody notices. Except for the "PR flacks" who have to think through and construct the image that goes out. You can see by the dates on those blogs that my writing spurt has become a bit of a addiction problem.<BR/><BR/>As far as I know, excluding private industry advertising and marketing, no one else but the far right has even figured out this approach.<BR/><BR/>To particularize "process manipulation" to GW for a moment, it's one thing for Exxon to place full page ads in newspapers, etc. But once they start surreptitiously funding/buying GW critics, often scientists, who never make clear the connection, Exxon is no longer participating in any sort of overt debate. This, in turn, allows Exxon to <I>lie</I> about the science, something it's advertising, and particularly it's legal, departments would have a coronary over if it actually did so itself. While a journalist I came across this type of manipulation. The public is, and will generally always be, clueless about this. <I>No one</I> has the resources to figure out who's legit and who's not, <I>including the media.</I> Sad, but true. If you're a brain researcher, you understand the limits that scientists' pronouncements need to stay within. Exxon's techniques get around these limits, and they are <I>primarily</I> designed to <I>stop the <B>science</B> from getting to the public.</I> If they can do that, the debate about is GW happening and what to do will take care of itself.<BR/><BR/>I think the SciAm comments section is an excellent example of this. The are many, many questions on that page that are elementary, not even in dispute, and the answers are readily available.** I guarantee you that, somewhere deep within the psychomarketing and oil industries, is a carefully researched and selected list of, call them "talking points" because I don't know what nomenclature these people use, and plans for getting them into people's heads. No doubt many of these "talking points" appear repeatedly on the comments page. I also have no doubt that the psychomarketers whose client is Exxon [and others] are carefully monitoring that page and will analyze it all for both future use and as a metric to help judge how well their campaign is going. This is the way contemporary America functions. There's just too much money involved to approach this in any other way. How much money? <I>Exxon has been forced to start a psychomarketing campaign to alter the way Americans perceive it's recent, record-setting profits!</I> Normally it would <I>avoid</I> bringing up profits at all before the general public.<BR/><BR/>Let me point out I'm not dissing Exxon for freaking out about carbon curbs, etc. That's part of its job. I'm saying that it [as an example of others and wider issues] is using psychomarketing technology to short-circuit the democratic process <I>in voter's minds</I> long before a "debate" process begins. Basically, except for our personal and work lives, we live in such a complex society that virtually every citizen only learns about it through media. The science behind psychomarketing, like all science, gets better over time. I'm very concerned that if one point of view, political, economic, whatever, is the only one in the U.S. using these tools, democratic institutions can be manipulated into meaninglessness. I have no doubt that only one side <I>in politics</I> is currently using psychomarketing now. The evidence is abundant and ongoing.<BR/><BR/>One quick illustration -- the selling of the Iraq war. A White House senior staffer telegraphed, early August 2002, that the upcoming "debate" about invading Iraq was actually going to be a sales/marketing campaign. It was, and it worked. I watched, multiple times a week for five or six months, the President and the Vice-President use a technique I call <I>proximity soundbites</I>.<BR/><BR/>By now, many, many critics have accused them of equating Saddam with 9/11. They certainly did, but they left no fingerprints. No one can find any statements they made equating the two, because there aren't any. On paper/video. No grammatically logical connections -- because the technique is not rational, but subconscious. They did it by appearing scores of times in public, media in tow, giving stump speeches [I'm oversimplifying a multi-faceted psychomarketing campaign]. And <I>simply by the way their speechwriters <B>structured</B> their speeches</I> were able to get onto TV news broadcasts the appropriate sound bites that <I>subconsciously restructured citizen' mental landscape</I> about Iraq. Before this campaign began, about 1/3 of Americans thought Saddam was involved in 9-11. Afterward, just pre-invasion, that number was over 2/3. Almost no evidence was ever presented to the public about this, so what changed their minds? <I>Proximity soundbites!</I><BR/><BR/>I have a related item from a Charlie Rose show analyzing John Kerry's convention acceptance speech, where a commentator illustrates that the <I><B>actual</B> role media plays</I> in Americans' lives determined how Kerry's speech was <I>written.</I> The example, however, is not at the level of sophistication of the Bush administration in the previous paragraph. In fact, I can also give you an analysis of the "Swift Boat Ad" brouhaha that clearly illustrates, on a level much more fundamental that I've seen discussed anywhere, how inept that campaign was about psychomarketing. And press reports have the Democratic party still split 50/50 over whether the next election cycle should be about "framing" or "programs and policies". That's a hopelessly moronic and ignorant debate to be having at this late date, which indicates to me this party is at least a decade behind. I'd bet two decades or more.<BR/><BR/>That might have been <I>two</I> examples.<BR/><BR/>It's been very frustrating watching this kind of technology being used and the other side, in whatever form that's defined, be so totally clueless about what's happening.<BR/><BR/>The long draft I wrote last fall was different for me in that I copped an attitude to emotionally convey my frustration. Hoping to burn my bridges behind me, I think, I posted a small pastiched/collaged sample of this, along with the attitude, to <A HREF="http://faithfulprogressive.blogspot.com/2006/03/im-not-sick-of-atrios-or-digby.html" REL="nofollow">Faithful Progressive</A> last week. If you read any of my posts, read this last. It doesn't reflect my actual personality. [Yikes! I just added another post like that one, late Friday night, to Carl Zimmer's third look at the "dodos" film, <A HREF="http://loom.corante.com/archives/2006/03/17/hipster_dodos.php" REL="nofollow">Hipster Dodos.</A>]<BR/><BR/><BR/><BR/>Here are two examples lifted directly from that draft essay, in the state of finish they are currently in.<BR/><BR/><I>The first</I> is ancient history, and perhaps anti-climactic, but it definitely is research into how humans process information, and helps create an emotional response to a product before it's even used. [Related to this is a mention about the color of broadcast news sets in the Faithful Progressive post.] Quote --><BR/><BR/>Here's a paraphrase of early psychomarketing intelligence I used teaching college freshman 35 years ago. In the 50s, when synthetic soaps, i.e., detergents, were initially coming on the market, a large firm identified a new detergent product/market it wanted to sell. Being scientific in its approach, it put together a team of experts, including psychologists, to design the packaging. At one point it hired a firm to test the color scheme the team proposed.<BR/><BR/>Housewives were enlisted off the street to test this new detergent for a few weeks and then contacted for their opinions. Each was given one of three different package color designs. All had the same detergent inside. One box was bright reds and oranges, one was pastel blues and greens, and the third was the color scheme recommended by the design team. When the women were contacted, the ones with the red and orange box said, "Cleans great, but it's too harsh on my clothes." The ones with the pastel box said, "Doesn't get my clothes clean." The ones with the target colors loved the product and wanted more.<BR/><BR/>It's extremely difficult to defend ourselves when attacked on a subconscious level. These women had no way to know they were testing package color, not detergent, and no objective way to judge "clean" and "harsh". I'll also note this rather mundane example, from planning through data acquisition, is about lies.<BR/><BR/><BR/><I>The second</I> I'm showing you because it's an example of psychomarketing being used right in front of me without my being able to deconstruct how it's succeeding. This is one of the ways psychomarketing is "sophisticated". Quote --><BR/><BR/><B>COX2-inhibitors</B> -- I've been unable to deconstruct the COX2-inhibitor psychomarketing advertising to figure out how they did it. But do it, they did. Over and over as I watched television. These guys were good. And, parenthetically, because these drugs were so lucrative, the manufacturers bent every rule they could and we now have the spectacle of three drug manufactures having caused 50,000[?] heart attacks in __ years[get accurate #] and facing thousands of 7- & 8-figure product liability law suits. But my point is these pharmaceutical firms were able to convince <I>tens of millions of Americans something false involving their personal health</I> without anybody except psychomarketing professionals being able to retrospectively point to how they did it.<BR/><BR/>COX2 inhibitors are alternatives to NSAIDs [aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxene sodiuim], which cause gastric damage in many people. COX2 inhibitors where designed to be more specific-acting to avoid this. They are no more powerful than NSAIDS, yet millions of Americans came to believe COX2 inhibitors were stronger than OTC analgesics without any risk of addiction.<BR/><BR/>The manufacturers' psychomarketing campaign, especially the billions [?] spent on direct-to-consumer advertising, was able to overwhelm the medical "best practice" of tens of thousands of physicians across the country. Doctors had patients coming to them specifically asking for these meds. Physicians initially tried to educate patients, explaining the drugs' inappropriateness. But eventually doctors were overwhelmed. Physicians literally didn't have the time for such education, and under the relentless psychomarketing of the manufacturers, they gave in and started prescribing. <I>Understand the power of this.</I> These drugs, enormously expensive compared to NSAIDs, became over prescribed by a factor of millions. The manufacturers spent billions on marketing, but reaped billions in profits. Millions of prescriptions per year were written. This added tens of billions of dollars to the nation's health care bill with zero effect on health outcomes. [check -- ballpark numbers. no need to exaggerate]<BR/><BR/>Finally, the manufacturers insist this psychomarketing campaign was about consumer education. <I>I'm amazed</I> they're allowed to say this with impunity. How is it they run this massive "consumer education" campaign and consumers end up misinformed? What's the business rationale for continuing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on an education campaign that's "failing"? Obviously, it was <I>designed</I> to misinform.<BR/><BR/>What's not so obvious is that part and parcel of this psychomarketing campaign was the inability of public stewards of any stripe to stand up and point out this fundamental absurdity. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," someone says, and we say, "OK," and avert our gaze.<BR/><BR/><BR/>At the last minute let me add that your post <I>Brain-scanning technology reveals how we process brands and products</I> is exactly what I'm talking about, but isn't new stuff. Here are some sources on <A HREF="http://neuroeconomics.typepad.com/neuroeconomics/" REL="nofollow">neuroeconomics,</A> <A HREF="http://www.csbmb.princeton.edu/smcclure/" REL="nofollow">dopaminergic reward processing in the human brain and how hyperbolic time discounting in economics is related,</A> <A HREF="http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.aspx?coid=CO160411472276" REL="nofollow">new work on "facial action coding system" (FACS),</A> and two different critical looks at the "Brighthouse-Emory University" neuromarketing dust-up of two years ago <A HREF="http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/Rushkoff_Neuromarketing.html" REL="nofollow">here,</A> and <A HREF="http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/neuromarketing_ajc.html" REL="nofollow">here,</A> and a watchdog group's resource list on it <A HREF="http://www.commercialalert.org/issues-landing.php?subcategory_id=82&category=1" REL="nofollow">here.</A> I'd be surprised if there wasn't more research extant on fMRI, etc. used in a similar manner. You'll see a paragraph-long list in my Faithful Progressive post that includes fMRI.<BR/><BR/><BR/><BR/>** Note. I've been spot reading the SciAm comments at a more leisurely pace and to be honest I'm really appalled at what people are talking about. Not the fact that they are skeptical or ignorant, though ignorance always bothers me. It's the fact that they are -- lots of words come to mind but I'll use the most provocative -- lazy. And, at a fundamental psychological level, George isn't going to be able to satisfy many of them because of that. Most of the kinds of questions being asked are easily figured out. If they can get to the SciAm website and post a comment, they have the wherewithal to answer their own questions, so I question their subconscious motivation.<BR/><BR/>Also, many of the questions betray a profound misunderstanding about how science functions and, even worse, in order to be logical and rational, must assume climate researchers, and all the many other scientific specialists now involved in finding answers about this problem, can't tie their own shoelaces. I just did a search of the comments section [as of 3/16] on "fund". Results: 1 duplicate [me] and 14 hits [3 in 1 sentence]. Of those 14, 11 accuse scientists of falsifying/bending results and, to a lesser extent, hyping their findings <I>in order to keep their funding streams going.</I> No one presents <I>any</I> evidence for such slanderous accusations. To touch on my point about the "increasing rate of the increase of data", there must be tens of thousands of gravely concerned, often skeptical, scientists reading the GW research being reported by thousands of active researchers. To believe scientists could run complex scams in an environment with this much oversight belies a "fantasy mental landscape" no amount of facts or reality will change.<BR/><BR/>Given the level of social, political, and media concern about GW over the length of time its gone on, <I>if,</I> people are still so, well, clueless again, I don't understand how anything George, or any other individual, or lots of individuals, has to say to them is suddenly going to banish the cobwebs. Perhaps I'm being overly harsh. But I see this as just an extension of a culture, so incredibly complex and technology- and science-dependent, in which much of the population is running the other way and increasingly phobic about these things -- whatever the reason. Go to the National Science Foundation website and look at the results of their yearly polling on Americans' science literacy.<BR/><BR/>I have to add there were many insightful, well-informed, analytical comments posted also. I just think they're overwhelmed by the nature of the others.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Jared, I hope this is intriguing enough for you,<BR/><BR/>SkookumPlanetAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8076290.post-1142384528098359742006-03-14T18:02:00.000-07:002006-03-14T18:02:00.000-07:00JaredI just posted this on the SciAm GW Skeptic co...Jared<BR/><BR/>I just posted this on the SciAm GW Skeptic comments section. I was a little surprised when I got to your blog. It looks like you might be a brain researcher. A contributor to psychomarketing that's growing in importance is cognitive science. I looked for a way to get this to you other than posting it as a comment but missed seeing one, if it exists.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Jared<BR/><BR/>Basically we don't disagree about much. But you did read a few things into what I said that, at least, weren't intended. If I may .....<BR/><BR/>Your first paragraph, minus the "one sided" reference is right on.<BR/><BR/>Paragraph 2. I didn't speak to the amount of <I>evidence,</I> but the amount of and breadth of the <I>data.</I> This was a comment on the narrow range of issues posters' brought up, and the elementary level of those concerns. Same with abrupt climate change. It got a single mention in 140 or so posts. I <I>inferred</I> lack of scope was behind this, and you obviously are aware of both points. And yes, both sides are in the politicization game. I'll mention "propaganda" with "one-sided" below.<BR/><BR/>Paragraph 3. Yes, the debate is unresolved. I wasn't trying to provide evidence pro or con, or even take a position on the issue, per se. Again, my point wasn't "evidence" but the <I>increasing rate of the increase</I> of data.<BR/><BR/>The last 2 paragraphs aren't germane to my point, nor does it seem they were aimed at my post. [Although, I think you overlooked something in your final paragraph about economic realities being adequate to handle GW. But my post didn't concern that.]<BR/><BR/>What interested me was George Musser's original post about the <I>changes</I> in timbre he'd noticed in discussions about science. <I>"I've been increasingly worried that discussions about science are</I> infected <I>by a certain style of political debate,"</I> is how he put it. That, and his examples, I took to mean he was witnessing a change, and not just on the issue of GW. If so, I'm not surprised. I've witnessed a similar change in the country's general political culture, and have tried to understand the dynamics behind it. My post was simply sharing my "insights" into the why and the how of these changes with him in the hopes it might be useful. GW just happened to be the issue under immediate discussion.<BR/><BR/>For the last 6 months I've been absorbing, first, the discussion inside the environmental movement about "The Death of Environmentalism" paper presented over a year ago, then much discussion on science blogs about the emerging political issues facing science. I've seen ongoing evidence that almost everyone involved analyzes the cause of and solutions to these sociopolitical issues in outdated and generally ineffective terms -- from my comment on <A HREF="http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2006/03/review_of_the_weather_makers_b.php" REL="nofollow">Cognitive Daily.</A><BR/><BR/>Ideas like "propaganda", "taglines", "information dissemination", even "debate" are some of these outdated and generally ineffective terms.<BR/><BR/>You said, <I>"Don't fool yourself into thinking it's one sided. <B>If you agree with the issues being presented you will see them as correct and logical - if you don't you'll see them as unfair and emotionally driven."</B></I> That was partly my point. But this "pre-agreeing" with issues side-steps the question. There's a technology available for <I>"subconsciously</I> building reality in peoples minds." What people <I>perceive to be reality,</I> not actual reality, is what mass decision making is based on. I'm not pointing to some sort of conspiratorial angle, just highly science-based method[s] that many fields over many years have contributed to, methodology being used in many areas every day. The key is that it's long-term and it's sub-conscious. And of course, it doesn't work on everybody, nor everyday, nor always -- it's for <I>mass</I> communications. A critical mass is the target.<BR/><BR/>My claim that it's one-sided is referring to the American political arena [GW is a small slice], where literally only one group has been doing it. I've been actively looking for evidence that other political players <I>grasp what's going on,</I> but neither in the actual, overt wholesale political arena, nor at the backroom, tactical level, nor in individuals addressing various issues one-on-one have I seen evidence they do grasp this. Indeed, except for a very few partisans and a few thinkers, I've seen <I>ample evidence that this isn't understood.</I><BR/><BR/>The specific example I used about a big oil company "selling doubt" was just that, an example, from the current topic under discussion. An obvious one I had hoped. My close wasn't addressed to GW, but to other recent developments concerning science in society which many, including scientists, label as "anti-science" and profess to be puzzled about.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com