Dont you Always?

Yes, Jennifer, please move on! Your constant combatant nature makes it hard to fathom being lumped into the ‘woman’ scientist category with you.

What I want to say, first, is that on the one hand there’s minimization of villainy and on the other hand there’s futility. Norms help us decide how to interpret one from the other, and without making those norms explicit, we might as well be villains full stop.

Second, the communications linked all presuppose an opened channel. There’s the other matter of how to go about opening the channel in the first place, and when dealing with an aggregate, it’s not a trivial thing at all. So when I say “the vast ocean of the diffident will go on ignoring the debate until someone like Myers grips onto their ears and demands their attention”, that’s another level in which I wish to make a case.

Finally, there’s the interaction with the authoritarian personality issue. But that’s admittedly a lot more speculative, so I haven’t really spent a lot of time on it in this thread.

An aside – remember we’re not really (or at least I wasn’t) discussing the communication dynamics between Coyne and M/K.

After that, I just want to address this:

“… and so a part of you has to always be prepared to be seen as the bad guy.”

Absolutely, and what those links to professionals who have studied communication point out that you should be careful not to feed into the idea of a being a bad guy – if only so that any third-party observers can judge that you’re blameless in the “failure to communicate.”

“TB: Actually, I organized a local Darwin Day event last February.

Jennifer : abulous! A couple of questions:
1. How did religion/accommodation factor into the event?”

It was held in an Episcopal Church basement and many of the attendees (adults and children) were from that congregation. In addition, a local rock group called “Overman” contacted us about performing their song “Evolution Rocks.” They played a short set. We served primordial soup (tasted like chicken!), had a cash bar, had a birthday cake and sang happy birthday to Darwin. For the main event watched “Jurassic Park.” (with permission, of course)
At the point in the movie where the main characters stand perfectly still and the T-Rex couldn’t “see” them, we stopped the film. I got up and explained how later discoveries – thanks to “Sue” in our local Field Museum – showed that this was wrong. T-Rex had an excellent sense of smell and the main characters would have been dino dinner.
All in all, a good time and a surprisingly good response for such a small event – we had about 50 people easily.

“Jennifer : 2. How would you compare your influence on the people who attended (specifically their opinion of science) to that of PZ Myers?”

I wouldn’t compare them – too much of an apples to oranges thing. For one, the event wasn’t about me and I only got up to speak at that one point.

“TB: the chart at the bottom of section 4, where it shows “Religious belief among scientists varies somewhat by sex, age and scientific specialty. Younger scientists are substantially more likely than their older counterparts to say they believe in God. ”

Given that this is a snapshot of scientists at different stages of their careers, do you think there might be some correlation between how long one is a scientist and how the job, over time, influences religious beliefs?”

I wouldn’t draw that conclusion but I would acknowledge that it could be among a range of results. I would support seeing this same survey done again in the future to measure how all these things change over time.

We can talk about “obstacles to communication”, and that’s fair enough. It is bad to mumble when you can enunciate, and it’s a lousy and pointless thing to assume that people are of bad faith so long as there isn’t evidence to the contrary. But when you try your best (i.e., Coyne), and people call you names — as M/K have — then there is nothing that can be legitimately said in reply, except “That’s nice — now let’s try seriousness”. And if that sounds sharp and cutting, it is because it is meant to be. If the listener feels pains for misinterpretation of that kind, thinks it is “hectoring” and so on, then these are growing pains that will hopefully abate, so long as we retain the hope that we endgame is for all of us to cope with what honest discussion requires of us.

Ultimately, there are a lot of obstacles that force communication into the gutter even when a person disagrees in the most gentle of ways. For example, in principle there is no way of knowing what strangers are going to believe is “silencing”, or has peremptory force; many people will react badly to mere disagreement (especially when it is rational disagreement), and so a part of you has to always be prepared to be seen as the bad guy. Moreover, the core of communicating is drawing attention to the objects and concerns in speech. If people aren’t listening (and they usually aren’t) then you need minimum force to your expressions to get their attention. And then, so that people maintain their attention without going off wandering and missing the point, you need to use even more force. You can do that within the boundaries of something we call “civility”, according to some communicative norms that help us get by, but the fact of the matter is that these are constructions that many people do not have, and can only be learned through hard-won exposure. And finally, the most depressing obstacle is this: a lack of motivation to engage cooperatively in communication pre-empts the very idea of communicating. The only way to deal with instances of bad faith (or absence of good faith) in communication is to look at it as if it were a game, and to be prepared to own up to the worst case scenario when it happens.

So politics is a game, of course. Sure, when you’re playing the game the way the Democrats do, in the style of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, as far as your relationship with the rest of the game is concerned you need to play gentle offense and sharp defense. But when all Democrats are playing the same role in the game, they lose. It’s like having a hockey team made up entirely of goalies; it’s just a bad idea, and it doesn’t work. So ideally, everyone should try to be a good cop, but prepared to be a bad cop.

If people really do have different goals, then they’re on different teams. That’s the typical failure of the left. But sometimes the differences are a result of what Coyne termed the Cool Hand Luke Effect: the failure to communicate. I suspect that these things could be gotten over if the editors of Intersection were a touch more philosophical and considered in their positions. But at this point, the damage is done; with this latest thing in Newsweek, Mooney/Kirshenbaum have decided to make a nebulous disagreement over blogs as some public case of mass injustice. They’re spoiling for a fight with the bad cop, without really (it seems) understanding what he’s up to. I don’t know what to make of that, except that I doubt any Republicans will care, I doubt any atheists will be convinced, and the vast ocean of the diffident will go on ignoring the debate until someone like Myers grips onto their ears and demands their attention.

I’ve given this a bit of thought, and I wonder if this is the kind of communication you mean: Something like Clinton’s “Sister Souljah” (sp?) moment, where he criticized someone with the purpose of giving his actual audience – the community at-large – an idea of the degree to which he endorsed a particular point of view. The intent being that third-party observers can choose to identify with him in a nuanced way (”Sure, I believe in this but not to the extent that it becomes that”), or disagree with his rebuke but face the choice of supporting him anyway because of a lack of a workable alternative.

In this way, I agree that a seemingly hostile or strong rebuke can be effective as a way of communicating (and in addition, we should keep the door open to all methods of communication). But, it also runs the risk of having the way one communicates get in the way of what one communicates. Clinton was a skilled communicator, and he took a calculated risk. But, he also didn’t engage in that form of communication all the time because he recognized that it walks a fine line between communicating and bullying. Personally, my reflex is to stand up to bullies – it’s not whether they have a point, the moment they become a bully their actions take precedent over their message.

Those links I provided earlier – especially the ones on verbal judo and tactical communication – discuss how things like someone’s ego or emotions can get in the way of the goal of the communication. As that article on tactical communication details this isn’t about being nice, this is about making sure that nothing gets in the way of the message, and also acknowledges that there are times when even a clear message is rejected.

And if a clear message is rejected, that’s fine. The advantage there becomes in having delivered the message in as reasonable a way as possible, and so no blame for the failure of the message to be accepted can be given to the messenger. I think it’s OK to conclude that such a thing can be viewed favorably and with nuance by third parties, and so at the very least leave those viewers with an open mind.

If we scale this kind of communication up, we can talk about how diplomacy uses multiple methods of communication. However, the end purpose of diplomacy is to achieve a goal. And that’s the problem here – the goals of the groups are not the same. One group would like religious people to at least reconcile their beliefs with science so they’re not in opposition. The other group wants to see religious people drop their religious beliefs. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but I believe the criticism is based on the view that the way some choose to be hostile to all believers unnecessarily makes them mutually exclusive.

Imagine that the intent of the “bad” cop in a good cop/bad cop routine is not to have the suspect open up to the “good” cop, but to have the suspect ignore the “good” cop and just do what the “bad” cop wants. It appears from those links that I included previously, that’s not necessarily the most effective thing to do.

All very true, especially the media’s role in the problem. Science writers in particular have a lot to answer for. But I think that a bigger problem is that it’s just plain hard to live up to one’s full intellectual potential. To actually delve into science even to a shallow depth is hard work and one needs a lot of interest to actually do it. Not to mention that adults have many more (important) things to focus on. I think your thoughts on kids are the answer and that’s where the effort needs to be concentrated. And that’s exactly where a lot of religions do the most harm. Long ago they learned that if they could set the agenda early they could keep a lot of people in their camp for life. Of course there are exceptions, but kids that are taught to be anti-science early are very difficult to sway later in life.

Imagine if science programs that discussed issues in depth aired regularly on news programs. Think of the Apollo days when people actually felt personally excited by the thought of going to the moon and the dawn of the space age. Now, too many feelthat exciement only about Britney Spears.

Kids have an innate interest in the world around them. We should encourage that interest both in school and at home. For example, my almost six-year-old nephew is fascinated by ocean life. His parents take him to acquarium visits and bought him goldfish and a fish tank. These are key points where, if kids are encouraged, they can and do get excited about science on their own. Parents, teachers, and other adultsneed to keep this going so that in six years, the same kid hasn’t replaced interest in celestial stars with interest in Hollywood “stars.”

The Pluto issue is a tremendous opportunity to hook people into astronomy. Since many feel strongly about it, why not encourage more media attention on the solar system and the underlying debate of what makes something a planet? This is apoint of potential engagement with the public. Yet too many in the scientific field look down on members of the public for their concern over Pluto, which these scientists do not see as a “real” scientific issue.

What it is is a real opportunity to engage the public about science. I may be just one person, but my objection to Pluto’s demotion sparked an entire newfound interest in astronomy that is now going on for three years.

Sorry, but that strains credulity. However, even if I grant you all of the above as indisputable fact, “someone who does stupid things” is NOT synonymous with “a stupid person”. Smart people do stupid things all the time.

We have strayed far from the original point, and I can’t imagine that anyone else here is interested in these tortured semantic arguments. I suggest we move on to more substantive and interesting topics.