The Opposite of Critical Thinking is Gullibility

People leave comments on my writing. An example is this, from a guy named Tom Hammer:

If climate change and the greenhouse effect of CO2 is such a hoax, all the thousands of scientists and experts have done an absolutely stunning job of creating such a scam that governments of well over 100 countries are going to great lengths to reduce CO2 emissions. An amazing job of pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. Except for a few enlightened folks such as the author.

This is typical. I’m saying the world is being taken over by groupthink, and people say I must be wrong because the herd disagrees. No one ever challenges my data, figures, or logic. They can’t see the thousands of other people I communicate and work with, because our voices are drowned out. In this essay, I’m going to argue that Jordan Peterson’s new video is extremely important, and that he’s wrong about root cause of the problem. I believe the true problem lies with gullible people like Tom Hammer and others who have outsourced their thinking to large institutions and famous people who make the most noise.

I’ll break it into three short parts:

Part I: The Tyranny of Kleptocracy

By far the most common form of governance in the world is kleptocracy. Whether in China, Russia, Sri Lanka, France, or the United States — the game is set up so that a small number of people reap most of the rewards.

Jordan Peterson’s Video

A few days ago, Jordan Peterson released an important video. I don’t subscribe to everything he promotes, but in this video he makes it clear that humans are making a grave mistake, that governments, consulting firms, and the Davos/Tesla elites are leading their herds into a globalist bargain that is bad for humans and bad for the environment, while enriching and enfranchising themselves. I want you to hear his words first:

I don’t expect many people to believe Peterson. I expect them to wave him off as a crank and leave their usual comments attacking the messenger, not the message. In this essay, I want to show that he’s right about climate but wrong about who is to blame.

Neil Oliver on Tyranny

We are talking about tyranny. In this video, Oliver instructs people to wake up and realize that our leaders may not have our best interests in mind:

Part II: The Science of Climate Change

Contrary to what you’ve been told, climate scientists do not agree that the world is warming dangerously, that it’s caused by humans, and that we must decarbonize to save the world.

Richard Lindzen on the Climate Industrial Complex

To go deeper into this topic, I ask you to watch Professors Will Happer and Richard Lindzen talking with Joe Rogan:

Lindzen and Happer are right. The actual IPCC reports are getting less and less alarming, the model projections of future temperature are finally starting to come down from their consistently impossible highs, while the political summaries for policymakers are getting more and more alarming.

Climate Science 101

In one of my many videos on climate, I show that if an increase in CO2 is supposed to warm the atmosphere then it should warm Antarctica’s atmosphere, and that hasn’t happened:

Part III: Why Peterson is Wrong

I believe Peterson is wrong on one count — and he may well agree with me — that elites and institutions don’t purposely try to control the masses. Rather, these people are the lucky winners of a popularity contest that gives them what they really want — money. A side effect is that they have power over institutions and the mainstream media, which helps get them more money. They were not born to rule or even to influence. They are opportunists who were at the right place at the right time — think of a species of frog that just happened to be on the right log that floated through a storm and landed in Hawaii. While most of the rest of their peers perished, they took up residence in the new environment and got fat and happy on all the riches there. Consultants, as well as politicians, think tanks, and government institutions simply follow the money. If it’s not Deloitte, it will be another consulting company. If not the World Economic Forum, then some other group of elites. If not Donald Trump, then Joe Biden. If not Putin, then another kleptocrat from the Russian Economic/Defense/Government complex.

Societies crave leadership. They abhor a leadership vacuum. Various groups and individuals fight for territory, and once that is settled, they proceed to take advantage of the machinery in place to “save” the citizens from whatever “dire emergency” is on the menu. If an emergency fizzles, it’s not hard to create a new one.

History is full of opportunists. Eventually, people like Machiavelli wrote playbooks on how to seize control of and steer the ship of most countries. It’s been done so many times in the past that legitimate democracy is the exception, not the rule. In fact, studies have shown that it’s easy to predict the outcome of a presidential election simply by showing a portrait of the candidates to a bunch of 12-year-olds and asking them which one looks most like the captain of a ship.

The UN is a perfect example. The UN is a huge, corrupt organization with an ever-expanding budget and strong messaging about being in control of the situation. If everyone will listen to them and comply with their demands, they will save us from ourselves.

So we give it to them. We do it by outsourcing governance and decisionmaking to others, because we don’t want to get involved. We want to vote once in a while, to feel like we live in a democracy, but in fact democracy, socialism, and communism are all much more alike than they are different.

The press is easy to manipulate.

The press will always go for alarm, because alarm sells.

Image courtesy of realclimatescience.com

No publisher makes much money announcing that things are actually going pretty well. We can assume the press has a 90-percent alarm bias in general, because that’s their business model. It’s news when a storm might destroy a city, and it’s news again when the city is miraculously saved from the savage storm. With science stories, watch for the word “may” — it’s their favorite way to paint a bleak picture of disaster. Since humans have very short-term memory, news organizations can play this trick over and over and over with the same results every time — more money. Sensational titles and headlines sell, so everyone uses them, including academics.

Groupthink

Many people who are concerned about the environment and the future believe humans are destroying the earth in many ways. They get their information from headlines, government agencies, NGOs, and others who repeat the same message over and over. I’ve written many times about how this happens. Here I will list a few groups outsourcing their thinking to elites who should know better:

Effective Altruism, a group started by Will MacAskill. They don’t tolerate any debate. They assume that CO2 is changing the climate. They listen to a climate researcher tell them that the risk of climate change isn’t that great, but they confuse pollution with CO2 and think it’s just a good idea to get rid of fossil fuels soon, even though it’s impossible. No cost/benefit discussion, no consideration of the tradeoffs.

80,000 Hours lists climate change as a top priority, saying the IPCC report is the best source of information and that “Yes, climate change is scary.”

Scientific American has become an advocacy group, with no discussion of alternative scientific views allowed. They unfairly attacked Steve Koonin and his book, and didn’t allow him a chance to defend himself.

The International Energy Agency has become an advocacy group, with no mention of the benefits of fossil fuels. They paint a happy picture of NetZero by 2050, based on unreliable energy that has no chance to power the world.

The Intrinsic Exchange Group’s goal is to fix the financial system to take better care of the environment by serving the UN IPCC and the Paris Agreement.

In his book, The Signal and the Noise, statistician Nate Silver did the only thing he could think of when assessing the risk of climate change — interview Michael Mann, a poor excuse for a scientist who fabricated the famous hockey-stick graph that Al Gore and the media used to spread the doctrine of alarm. This is not how you assess a scientific claim.

Al Gore used vacation memories and interviews with a small number of scientists to fabricate his story of future climate doom. By telling stories and carefully cherrypicking data, and by tirelessly working the media, he got himself a Nobel Prize and became very wealthy. He predicted temperatures would increase. They did. He predicted temperatures would increase dramatically. They didn’t.

Planting and growing seeds

In his research paper, How Gullible are We? A Review of the Evidence from Psychology and Social Science, Hugo Mercier concludes: “Finally, it is also argued that most cases of acceptance of misguided communicated information do not stem from undue deference, but from a fit between the communicated information and the audience’s preexisting beliefs.”

This is a multi-step process. First, a seed must be planted. The Climate Industrial Complex began with deep ecology — a series of well-meaning papers and books claiming that the natural world has its own rights to flourish. Most of the foundation came out of California. In the 1970s, there was Earth Day, founded by Dennis Hayes, who said “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.” Paul Ehrlich famously predicted “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” Al Gore’s 1992 book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, was number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

It takes time. It starts with some academic research that makes a sensational prediction. The invisible threat must be rendered visible and explained in simple terms, so even the average person can understand it. Then, forward-looking people endorse the threat, there is a race to provide solutions, built on top of people’s pre-existing beliefs. The winners guide resources to themselves and their groups, establishing a power structure, like the IPCC or the World Economic Forum. They carefully craft a relationship with the press, who willingly amplify the message. And then the entire belief system becomes mainstream.

Eisenhower explained it when describing the Military Industrial Complex. Bryan Caplan explains that the education business produces gurus but very little value. Richard Dawkins explains that organized religion is nothing but a power grab.

It starts with the tooth fairy. Then Santa Claus. Then communists. Then capitalists. Pretty soon, more and more people believe “we’re all fucked.”

To be fair, not everything is rigged. Occasionally, honest people come along who are able to change their minds. Occasionally, people understand that the goal isn’t to be right but rather be less wrong. Occasionally, we realize we’re in a trap and learn our way out. But Peterson’s message is that it’s not that difficult to hijack an entire generation if you play by the established rules.

Summary

These are just a handful of examples of how people go along with a shared delusion and profit from it. From religion to government to science to education to business to war — people look for figures of authority to lead them. They naturally support prophets like Al Gore, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Elon Musk. There is no uncertainty. There can be no challenge of authority. There can be no debate. The threat is existential. There is only one way forward. Our brave leaders actually believe they are doing the right thing. They believe they are saving the world. But they are not Gandhi. You can tell from the size of their beach-front mansions. They are con men. They turn their crusade into a religion in which average people must suffer for the greater good. They always find a way to make sure the money and resources flow through them. It has happened since humans began to build cities. It happened in Germany in the 1930s. It is happening again today.

It is our fault. We naturally look for people to fill the void. We give them power. We willingly give them our votes, our freedom, and our money.

I propose a solution, one that won’t make me rich. Who wants to join me?