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Galef: Purely rational arguments are likely insufficient to combat manufactured doubt

Julia Galef · #8 Julia Galef: The Art of Changing Minds · Feb 20, 2016 · at 45:09

Julia Galef discusses how public health campaigns must respond when well-resourced corporate interests manufacture doubt against scientific consensus.

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“Yeah, no, I really, I think it's really hard. And I think I'm not confident that there is a good way to do it while, while adhering, you know, perfectly to the standards of, you know, just using the best arguments and evidence. I think you probably have to also You know, get charismatic spokespeople, and you probably also have to, you know, buy lots of ad time to, like, really, to use the principle of familiarity where people hear something a lot, they're, like, more likely to believe it's true, and it's not, that's, I don't feel great about that, but, you know, as long as you're staying relatively close to the end of the spectrum of integrity of persuasion it might just, you know, be necessary to try to get the right message out there.”

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