The idea that deniers live in their own topsy-turvey, through-the-looking-glass world is not exactly new. And that they are capable of holding mutually exclusive ideas is something Stephan Lewandowsky first outlined almost a year ago. The concept that deniers claim opposite positions at different times- for example, that CO2 doesn’t drive temperatures but that CO2 keeps the planet warm, or that temperatures can’t be measured accurately but that warming paused- has now been fleshed out into a full peer-reviewed paper, The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism.
Building on the initial observations, Lewandowsky and co-authors explore how the tendency to embrace conspiracies instead of science is the hallmark of denial. They entertain the idea that it may be different individuals within the larger group who make contradictory claims, but then show multiple instances of a person who will erratically and unpredictably CHANGE PLACES(!) on these scientific issues.
And unlike legitimate science, where disagreements are hashed out and undergo a self-correcting process, deniers rarely, if ever, turn their self-described “skepticism” to their own kind. This leads to a sort of echo chamber and a loss of true meaning- like Humpty Dumpty tells Alice, for deniers, when THEY use a word or argument, “it means just what [they] chose it to mean- neither more nor less.”
This lack of self-correction functions means that it’s basically impossible to expect any corrective change in the inhabitants of denialand. Instead, the little oysters will continue following the Walrus and the Carpenters of paid pundits and ideologically-motivated demagogues. (No one tell them that the Walrus and the Carpenter feast on the unsuspecting oysters!)
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