Re: [ba-ohs-talk] Fixed ideas and polarization
Great post, Kevin. (01)
"Pre-negotion" squares, I think, with the notion of story telling first,
the whole notion of creating a concrete context on which the debate can
proceed. (02)
What's really interesting in the climate debate is something that PBS has
been airing footage on for some time now: some undersea currents that might
just promote another ice age. Discover mag just picked it up:
http://www.discover.com/sept_02/featice.html (03)
Not that there is a scholarly consensus on that issue either! (04)
I just had lunch with Kent Cullers, the fellow on whom the person Kent
Clark was modeled in Contact. Kent is the physicist (PhD Berkeley, blind
since birth) who designs signal detection receivers used in Seti. What I'm
getting from him is the extreme difficulty in finding signal in noise. It's
really hard to tell just how much signal humans contribute to a spectrum
that is home to geophysical, astrophysical, and other signal sources
(animals, insects, etc). My view: it's really hard to see how debate can
settle in such a "wicked problem" space. (05)
Jack (06)
At 04:28 PM 9/14/02 -0700, you wrote:
>Yankelovich expanded on this point, elaborating on the difference between
>debate--which typically increases polarization--and dialogue (yes, as in
>Socratic)--which when successful builds understanding, trust, and respect.
>He has a nice summary table of contrasting characteristics on the web at
><http://www.viewpointlearning.com/dialoguefs.html>.
>
>He thus calls activities such as those of the IPCC a "pre-negotiation
>dialogue", whose aim is to frame a subsequent debate over prospective
>options, with understandable pros and cons, rather than an unproductive one
>over questions of (scientific) truth. (07)