In Between Times 9-15-2022
Airbus funding carbon capture, Why facts don't (always) change our minds, Americans want younger leaders, Cold beer - hot planet
The collaborating companies include Air Canada, Air France-KLM, easyJet, International Airlines Group, LATAM Airlines Group, Lufthansa Group and Virgin Atlantic.
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AllSides : Cognitive biases and brain biology help explain why facts don’t (always) change minds
Nobody likes being wrong. But the truth is we are wrong all the time. Some people never admit that they’re wrong, which then of course compounds the wrongness. We can all become defensive. We can all cling to deeply held notions that we know in our hearts might not make sense. We can all lack objectivity. We can all let our emotions get the better of us. And many of us can just be plain stubborn.
The above headline comes from Allsides.com but we added the “always” bit because facts do indeed change minds. It’s just that more often than not, particularly on charged topics, they don’t.
Regardless, to live honestly one needs to try to face facts even when they are hard to take, and perhaps especially when they are hard to take. Part of being honest with ourselves and others is understanding that cognitive biases can play a significant role in our understanding, or more accurately, misunderstanding of the world.
(From Allsides)
In an ideal world, rational people who encounter new evidence that contradicts their beliefs would evaluate the facts and change their views accordingly. But that’s generally not how things go in the real world.
Partly to blame is a cognitive bias that can kick in when people encounter evidence that runs counter to their beliefs. Instead of reevaluating what they’ve believed up until now, people tend to reject the incompatible evidence. Psychologists call this phenomenon belief perseverance. Everyone can fall prey to this ingrained way of thinking.
Being presented with facts – whether via the news, social media or one-on-one conversations – that suggest their current beliefs are wrong causes people to feel threatened. This reaction is particularly strong when the beliefs in question are aligned with your political and personal identities. It can feel like an attack on you if one of your strongly held beliefs is challenged.
Confronting facts that don’t line up with your worldview may trigger a “backfire effect,” which can end up strengthening your original position and beliefs, particularly with politically charged issues.
Americans want younger leaders, but elected officials are getting older
Your editor has to admit that as he gets older (I’m 46) this is less and less a personal issue. 70’s not that old. Right? Right?
People are living to be older than they did just a generation ago. Not only that, thanks to improved medical treatments the quality of life in old age has increased too. People are more able to be in Congress forever.
But this is still a problem. Do we really want people serving in Washington for 30, 40, 50 years? We at In Between Times haven’t commissioned a poll on the subject but we’ll venture to say that most of our readers would probably prefer that politicians not spend their entire lives in Washington.
(From The Fulcrum)
Recent polling by YouGov and CBS News found that 73 percent of adults believe there should be age limits for elected officials and, in an era of intense polarization, Americans are united in their preference for such a cap, across gender, age group, race and party identification.
However, they disagreed on what that limit should be.
The most popular maximum age for elected officials was 70 years old, preferred by 40 percent of respondents, followed by 60 (26 percent), 80 (18 percent) and 50 (8 percent). The age-70 option was the most popular across every demographic subgroup except one: Those under age 30 had a slight preference for a max age of 60.
The current Congress is the oldest, on average, in recent years, according to Quorum. The average age in the Senate is 64. Members of the House of Representatives are slightly younger, with an average age of 58.
Finding climate change buried in 500 million data points
This visualization is interactive and illuminating.
(From Flourish)
In this case, the spreadsheet consists of all-time min and max temperatures extracted from GHCN-Daily. This massive dataset, maintained by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, consists of hundreds of millions of daily highs and lows recorded at more than 100,000 weather stations around the world, a few of which have records stretching right back to the 1700s.
Having downloaded the raw data, we analyzed it to pull out the highest and lowest temperatures ever recorded at each weather station. As you’d expect, the resulting spreadsheet had an equal number of highs and lows. We then filtered out just the last 20 years to see how highs compare to lows in recent decades. This revealed the strong trend towards hot records over cold ones, and also reduced the data sheet to around 40,000 rows, a small enough file to visualize even on a mobile phone.
Click here for the article and interactive map.
Cold beer, hot planet
Coors (no stranger to environmental and sustainability efforts) and Corona are both incorporating more sustainable processes into their products and doing it profitably.
The attached article comes from a marketing website, but the point is that though Coors and Corona are seeking (and are getting) positive PR for their efforts, they are also making real changes to how their product is manufactured and distributed. The companies don’t want to be tagged as “greenwashers”. They are actually doing some good things.
That Coors and Corona are also doing this profitably is a great thing. Profitable sustainability is - sustainable.
(From Marketing Dive)
Both Coors Light and Corona made an effort to integrate sustainability into production prior to advertising. Coors Light has committed itself to phasing out the use of plastic rings by the end of 2025, dedicating $85 million to the push. As the phasing out of plastic rings requires a complete equipment overhaul, this won’t be limited to just Coors Light, but all brands Molson Coors distributes in North America, including Blue Moon and Miller Lite.
Corona has taken a similar approach, slowly phasing out plastic from production. In 2021, it became the first global beverage brand to have a net zero plastic footprint…
…Sustainability has proven its value for Corona, said Ambra.
Research suggests other marketers are finding similar results. Between 2013 and 2018, products marked as sustainable grew 5.6 times faster than those that were not. This was especially true when it came to CPGs, where products in 90% of CPG categories grew faster if they were marketed as sustainable.
Event
September 20, 2022
Spokesperson Training for Independent Voters
IndependentVoting.org
Location: Online
Have you ever tried to explain to a friend why you are an independent, but were not sure how?
Have you ever watched a news program where the host acts as if every American is a Democrat or Republican and felt angry and left out?
If you answered yes, register today to reserve your spot
at Independent Voting’s Spokesperson Training Program.FREE YOUR VOICE, BE INDEPENDENT!
Part educational, part performance training. Every independent has a story to tell about why he/she became independent. Join our spokesperson training to increase your skills and comfort in telling your story!
There will be three segments in the training: 1. An education powerpoint presentation (which will also be made available for your use post-training); 2. a Q&A session in which you’ll have an opportunity to dialogue w/ Independent Voting President Jackie Salit and 3. a special performance training/improvisational segment with top notch performance trainers.
Attendance is limited to allow full participation. Submit application at tinyurl.com/indytraining