How Do You Actually Convince a Climate Denier, Vaccine Skeptic, or Flat Earther? (w/ Lee McIntyre)

Current Affairs

Comedy, Government, News, Culture, Politics

4.4 • 645 Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

Lee McIntyre is a philosopher of science who serves as a research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. His new book, How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason, is about how we can actually successfully talk people out of dangerous erroneous beliefs. Lee recognizes that merely providing people with correct facts does little, but also believes it's a terrible idea to let bad ideas go unrebutted, or conclude that there's "no point trying to reason with people." His book discusses the importance of building relationships and trust as part of the process of getting people to be open to new ideas, and shows why it's essential in an age of vaccine skepticism and climate denial that we learn how to effectively defend scientific truths. He joined Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson to discuss what works and what doesn't when it comes to talking people out of irrational beliefs. Nathan's article on QAnon is here. The story of the QAnoner who gave up his beliefs is from the Washington Post. The George Orwell piece about flat earth beliefs that Nathan quotes is here. If you enjoy the Current Affairs podcast, consider subscribing to our glorious print magazine. Current Affairs is entirely funded by the donations and subscriptions of readers and listeners, and depends on your support to survive.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good evening, current affairs listeners. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-chief
0:17.1	of Current Affairs Magazine, and I am here tonight with the philosopher of science,
0:23.6	Lee McIntyre. He is a research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at
0:28.4	Boston University, an instructor and ethics at Harvard Extension School.
0:32.8	He is the author of a number of books, including the scientific attitude, post-truth,
0:37.2	respecting truth,
0:37.8	and most recently, How to Talk to a Science Denier, available now from MIT Press.
0:46.1	Lee, nice to be with you.
0:47.9	Well, you as well. Thanks for having me on.
0:50.6	Well, I'm so excited to talk to you about how to talk to a science denier because it is a
0:55.5	very practical book and it is also a fun book in some ways, especially at the beginning,
1:01.7	because we're going to start by asking you about this flat earth convention that you went to.
1:07.5	But this book is about the very, very difficult question of what we actually
1:13.9	do in response to science denial. We know that, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic and
1:22.7	with climate change, there is a lot of misinformation, a lot of lies out there, and a lot of people
1:28.0	lament this.
1:29.8	We often talk about the epidemic of post-truth, the fake news.
1:35.0	But you've really tried in this book to deal with the question of, well, how do we talk to,
1:42.2	is there a way to actually practically fight these things?
1:45.7	What do we know works? What do we know doesn't? What is just speculative?
1:50.5	But I want to, I do want to start because you start this book by going, you went to the heart
1:56.5	of science denial, by going where I don't know, by going boldly where no philosopher of science
	...

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