{"id":31441,"date":"2018-02-22T09:16:22","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T14:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31441"},"modified":"2018-02-22T09:16:22","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T14:16:22","slug":"christopher-booker-gets-serious-about-understanding-groupthink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31441","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Booker gets serious about understanding \u201cGroupthink\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-headline\">\n<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/joannenova.com.au\/2018\/02\/christopher-booker-gets-serious-about-understanding-groupthink\/\">Christopher Booker gets serious about understanding \u201cGroupthink\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post-bodycopy clearfix\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thegwpf.org\/content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Groupthink.pdf\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/jo.nova\/guest\/uk\/booker-christopher\/groupthink.png\" alt=\"Groupthink, Christopher Booker GWPF. \" width=\"243\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>We toss the term <em>Groupthink<\/em> around a lot, but Christopher Booker gets serious about exactly what it is and what it means. He analyzes the \u201cClimate Change\u201d debate through the lens of the original scientific study of Groupthink as published by Irving Janis, a professor of psychology at Yale back in the 1970s.\u00a0 It\u2019s uncanny\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Obviously we need to understand it so we can <del>prevent<\/del>limit it.\u00a0 But <em>Groupthink<\/em> is also ripe fodder for driving Eco-worriers up the wall as we list the ways \u2014 to a T \u2014 that they are The Textbook Example. There\u2019s a useful strategy that flows from this. The core tenet is that because believers hold a shaky, fragile idea, they must be aggressively hostile to protect it. So put the boot on the other foot. Let\u2019s ask Believers how they <em>don\u2019<\/em>t fit the Groupthink mould. Do they welcome debate \u2014 go on, <em>prove it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Richard Lindzen\u2019s introduction:<\/p>\n<p>[Booker] asks how do otherwise intelligent people come to believe such arrant nonsense despite its implausibility, internal contradictions, contradictory data, evident corruption and ludicrous policy implications\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The phenomenon of groupthink helps explain why ordinary working people are less vulnerable to this defect. After all, the group that the believers want to belong to is that of the educated elite. This may have played a major role in the election of Donald Trump, which depended greatly on the frustration of the non-elites (or \u2018deplorables\u2019, as Hillary Clinton referred to them) with what they perceived to be the idiocy of their \u2018betters\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Booker himself:<\/p>\n<p>\u2026I kick myself that I did not discover the book that inspired this paper until 2014. When I finally came across Irving Janis\u2019s seminal analysis of \u2018groupthink\u2019, I realised just how much more it helped to explain about the story I and many others had been following for so long.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christopher Booker gets serious about understanding \u201cGroupthink\u201d We toss the term Groupthink around a lot, but Christopher Booker gets serious about exactly what it is and what it means. He analyzes the \u201cClimate Change\u201d debate through the lens of the original scientific study of Groupthink as published by Irving Janis, a professor of psychology at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[18849,5524,18850,17410],"class_list":["post-31441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-christopher-booker","tag-groupthink","tag-irving-janis","tag-jo-nova"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31442,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31441\/revisions\/31442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}