Any married man who, A) is running for office and B) has a woman problem needs to remember Mr. Clinton and forget Mr. Hart, Mr. Cain, and now, Mr. Gingrich. We now await the release of an ABC News interview with Mr. Gingrich’s second wife (pictured on the right) while Mr. Gingrich does nothing but wait with us. Something about a choice between divorce or open marriage (with the woman pictured on the left).

There’s only one persuasion way out of this and it is not hope and change. It’s called Inoculation and Mr. Gingrich needed it last week.

I will credit President Obama for his openness to new media experiences. He will try anything at least once if it runs through some kind of iGizmo. Sure, it doesn’t always work very well the first time out of the gate, but he fails on small issues as he learns the communication technology. Consider the latest.

There’s no shortage of ways to connect with President Obama these days. He’s on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. His public events are live-streamed on the White House website. He gives media interviews, holds press conferences and televised town hall meetings. Soon Obama plans to launch a bus tour through the Midwest. But the president and his re-election campaign proved Wednesday night that they are still interested in pushing their outreach to the technological edge, for the first time publicly showcasing a new video teleconferencing tool that exclusively connects Obama and his aides with thousands of supporters all across the country.

The real time screen during this event looked something like this.

The technology blends image, voice, and text from multiple sites in real time. Plus, it employs a password protection scheme that permits some control over access. Obama used this to talk with supporters during the Iowa caucuses. Notably, Obama made no public mention of this event prior to it and did not record the interaction for later public distribution.

Let’s start with the bad persuasion news. Sure, he reached a very small audience of supporters who will probably die fighting for him. He reached few and persuaded no one. And there were some technical glitches as the signal was dropped or sites fell out briefly.

Now, the good persuasion news. It actually worked. Obama created a new method that mashes up existing hardware and software into a live communication technology that links potentially millions of people in a limited two-way feedback system. He can control access into it. He can control the content. Think about that.

He could stage his own debates and townhalls with various parties and never leave his office. You need to read about Richard Nixon’s 1968 and 1972 campaigns to get a sense of the possibilities here. Nixon found ways to evade a hostile national media to present his message to millions of people without that media filter. Obama is doing the same thing with his various forays into Web 2.0.

This will aid fundraising enormously as he can engage grassroots donations in cheap and fast events while still doing traditional fat cat funding. He can distribute Talking Points and Counter Arguments instantly and face-to-face with his supporters. Potentially, it is one helluva thing for communication. One person with one controlled network that accesses millions of people.

Imagine if Al Gore had built this in 2000 and was now using it for Green Gore. Imagine Bill Clinton with this after office. Imagine what Mr. Obama can do with this network after office.

Now.

Imagine how you can build this for yourself.

A consistent and widespread persuasion play in the Climate Change Wars is the Authority Consensus Play. The Play is based on the combination of two strong elements: Relevant expertise and widespread agreement. Each alone is simple. With Authority you get, If An Expert Believes It, So Should You; with Consensus, If Everyone Believes It, So Should You. Combine them and you get If All The Experts Agree, So Should You.

Authority works through your acceptance and trust of another person’s competence, knowledge, and experience. We grow up believing the first authorities, our parents, then transfer that learning to teachers, preachers, and others who know what we don’t and wish we did. The persuasion play operates as a simple Low WATT shortcut and is often true, safe, and effective.

Consensus touches the persuasion principles of Norms and Comparison. We learn to trust the group, the majority, the team and follow their rules for our survival and success. We then use Comparison (If Others Are Doing It, You Should, Too) to judge Us versus the Valued Others, note any discrepancy, and then move to close the difference. Consensus operates as a special case of Norms and Comparison. With Norms and Comparison you do not need Everybody’s Agreement, but just Most People or the Right People. Realize that Consensus makes the wide avenue of Norms and Comparison into a social tightrope – virtually All People Agree.

These elements most often operate as persuasion Cues from a Dual Process Model perspective. They are simple cognitive shortcuts smart people employ and most of the time they work. Amble along the Peripheral Route with your cup of Starbucks coffee, an iGizmo app’ed to a news feed, and when you find All Experts Agree, you nod along. Take another sip, WATtap another app.

I believe this persuasion play is so obvious in Climate Change advocates that I will not document it with outside sources. Anybody who reads the popular press should see this for themselves. It is a claim that proves itself to anyone with eyes and ears. If you accept this, let’s now move to a persuasion analysis of the play.

A predictable problem with Authority Consensus arises when Disagreeable Experts speak out. Disagreeable Experts blow up the Authority Consensus in two unique ways. The most obvious is the refutation of that Consensus element. The second is less obvious, but more deadly: Disagreeable Experts can turn the WATTage switch and make everyone hit the Central Route. Let’s consider each. Begin with two examples ripped from the recent digital headlines, published within four days of each other in November 2011.  Start with the Climate Change advocates.

“It is no accident that so many Americans misunderstand the widespread scientific agreement about human-caused climate change. A well-financed disinformation campaign deliberately created a myth about there being lack of agreement. The climate science community should take all reasonable measures to put this myth to rest,” said the director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.

This is just the press release quote from a letter published in a new peer review journal, Nature Climate Change. You can read the details that document this assertion of the “widespread scientific agreement” here.

You can see the Authority Consensus Cue that drives this quote. The speaker is telling you that All The Experts Agree and if you are properly Low WATT, the rest is persuasion gravity. You fall off the log and nod your head. Sip and tap.

Now. Read this.

Assuming paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future as predicted by our model, these results imply lower probability of imminent extreme climatic change than previously thought.

This the key statement from a research paper in the peer review journal, Science. These scientists report data from a wider time scale over 20,000 years compared to most of the research in climate change that focuses upon the last 200 years. This new research conflicts with the simple Climate Change advocacy and suggests the science is complicated, not settled.

Thus, in just this one recent case, we see the persuasion threat to the Authority Consensus play. Presumably, one should count the authors of this conflicting report as Experts and their evidence therefore disagrees with the assertion from Climate Change advocates that All Experts Agree. If people publishing Climate Change research in a peer review journal are Experts and these Experts are disagreeing with your Experts, then obviously the Authority Consensus Cue fails. You may now take a pull on your coffee while shaking your head disagreeably. Tah! No Consensus here! Sip and tap.

Now, consider the second and more deadly problem with Disagreeable Experts. You may now go High WATT on the issue. Instead of skipping along the surface of controversy like a tossed stone, you are now an independent thinker. All of those past Cue-based experiences from following the Authority Consensus Cue now burst into WATTage switches, flipping your willingness and ability to think from Low to High. Hey, I thought All Experts Agree and now we find These Experts Disagree! That surprise delivers the cognitive resources needed to think, reason, and evaluate for yourself. You begin a search for Arguments, not Cues. You want information that bears on the central merits of climate change, expertise, advocacy, and policy. No tossed stones propelled with Authority Consensus.

When people independently go High WATT on you, you’ve lost whatever control you have.  They can now ask and answer any question that comes to mind.  You’d hope that would only concern the science, but since you’ve been making claims about myths, well-financed propaganda, or secret campaigns, the Other Guys might start asking about your myths, propaganda, and dark plans.  Hey, where’s your money coming from?  Is there a revolving door of people between “independent” associations, groups, or institutes?  Are you talking among yourselves, making public plans behind private doors?  The Other Guys are now thinking for themselves and asking questions which is exactly what the Authority Consensus Cue blocks, hinders, or distracts. Hey, All Experts Agree, So You Don’t Have To Think, right?

When you run a Cue like this, you open yourself to these two lines of attack.  First, you’d better have the Arguments to back the Cue because if you don’t, you get killed. Second, you open yourself to non-topic attacks; instead of discussing only Climate Change and the scientific merits of that topic, we can now consider bias, funding, and secrets. See the devastating impact of the Climategate emails as an example. Those emails had and have little to do with the science and everything to do with Cues. People can now form attitudes and beliefs based on information beyond the control of the Climate Change advocates.

As an old guy with some experience in these issues from my Fed days, I’ve been constantly surprised that the Climate Change Chorus has lasered on Persuasion Cues in general and this Authority Consensus Cue in particular. If you’ve got the science and the Falling Apples, the communication problem aims at properly presenting technical information to the general citizen. Hit the Arguments! You can mix in Cues to help with various stages of the Cascade, but you make persistent, resistant, and predictive change on the Central Route with well presented Arguments all the Other Guys can process. Yet, the Climate Change advocates persistently persuade with Cues.

You can also see the painful effects of Cue reliance on all the public opinion polling on the issue.  Attitudes are variable and shift with the winds or the temperature of the room or the latest headline.  That variability marks Cue-based processing compared to the more stable outcomes produced from Central Route, Argument-base processing.  Why on Earth this focus on Cues given their proven weak and tricky effects?

I suspect this occurs because the science on climate is unsettled and we don’t know enough to be talking the kind of policy change suggested from the UN IPCC. Climate obviously varies, but to say we’ve conclusively demonstrated the link between human activity and climate variability AND that the suggested UN IPCC policy changes will produce desirable outcomes is way beyond the state of the art with these Falling Apples, in my estimation. If I’m right, then as a maven running a CCC campaign, I’ve got to go with Cues because an objective, dispassionate consideration of the science won’t win the election. Too much doubt, uncertainty, and error for now. Maybe later. Not now.

So, we get Cues. They work effectively as long as the Other Guys remain Low WATT and don’t think carefully and effortfully about the issue. Of course, if you are a Climate Change advocate, you think you are running with the science and can only explain the failures of your campaign with a conspiracy theory that produces myths against your memes, disinformation against your truth, propaganda against your reason.

Please remember the Rule: Great Persuaders Don’t Need Rich Uncles, Kindness from Strangers, or Third Party Vote Splitters. While the Rule is stated to show that mavens don’t need help, we can turn this diamond and see the light through a new facet: Mavens overcome all barriers.

That’s what makes them mavens, muggles. Complaints about competitors or recalcitrant Other Guys only marks the advocate, the homer, or the zealot.  The issue merges with your self concept and what you gain in Sincerity, you lose in Effectiveness. Whatever the science may be, the policy goals for Climate Change advocates remain just out of reach and always will given this artless and Sincere reliance upon Cues.  Or as stated more gracefully with Nick Carraway in the Great Gatsby.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

P.S. If you want the great weariness of comparing Experts Who Disagree to Experts Who Agree, check out Climate Audit. They beautifully demonstrate the contrary, solitary, and ornery side of science. You might enjoy this pdf on the Hockey Stick and Hide the Decline. Hey, if you wear out on this, you at least learn whether you want the Arguments or the Cues on this issue.

P.P.S  Note the interesting similiarity here to the bad science of the Food Police who proved that calorie counts on menus would reduce obesity.  So we get a new law in Health Care Change We Can All Believe In.  Yet, as predicted by persuasion theory and painful professional experience, those calorie counts don’t work in practice.   When you make Falling Apple claims, folks better be covering their heads.

Let’s begin with a quote.

“If you’re able to come up with a very sexy sounding hash tag like we did for Occupy Wall Street, and you come up with a very magical looking poster that seems to have something very profound about it, these devices push these memes, these meta memes, into the public imagination in a very powerful way,” he said.

This from a NYT article and Kalle Lasn, the public face of the match that lit the OWS fire. Lasn claims that he invented a twitter hashtag, #occupywallstreet, an image of a ballerina on the Wall Street bronze bull, and the rest is persuasion history surfing on the ocean of change with a meta meme. Sexy hashtags . . . Magical posters . . . Meta memes.

You should never underestimate the Humpty-Dumpty facility people possess with their ability to name things whatever they choose. Lasn believes he motivates meta memes (mere memes move away!) with photoshop and hot hashtags while he’s only attracting black shirt puppet master anarchist adolescents who then present a photo op for eye-and-ear hungry journalism, traditional or digital, zealot or profiteer and talking points for professional political agitators.

Where’s the beef with meta memes? Clogging local courtrooms with nuisance arrests. Banging drums to annoy nearby adults. Sharing a Cheese It The Cops! App on iGizmos. This is so transparently goofy one wonders why the New York Times wasted the time on a phone interview with Lasn.

The persuasion consequence of peace and prosperity is that nowadays Everyone’s A Maven. The living is so easy that even lamers, lightweights, and weasels like Lasn can fail and still make money, attract attention, and maintain delusions. What’s the worst consequence Lasn in particular and OWS in general sustained? A clogged 4G network.

No. The worst consequence is being played as a Useful Idiot for real mavens. Journalism gets to play Eyes n’ Ears R Us and actually make some money for a change. The Professional Left and the Professional Right both receive large stockpiles of cannon fodder for their stage managed zealotry. Meanwhile any chance for practical change get killed.

If You Can’t Succeed, Don’t Try.

Do you see how bad persuasion kills useful change? In all the zealot cries you can hear the faint strains of Truth or Justice. We do have lifestyle problems in the US that harm health, but the Food Police make it much more difficult to solve them. New sources of energy beyond carbon would be a huge boon to civilization, but the Greens block useful progress with their persuasive science and sincere desire for power. A persuasion analysis of ardent advocates in lifestyle, energy, economics, and environment demonstrates not only their continuing failure, but better still, explanations for that failure.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.

If You Don’t Count It, You Haven’t Changed It.

Great Persuaders Don’t Need Rich Uncles.

And on and on.

But, mostly it is that Sincerity thing. When your self concept includes the change, change is the last thing that will change because your self concept will not.

Science is boring, tedious, and disconfirming work, the slow accumulation of pieces for a puzzle that is never quite complete and just when you think you’ve solved it, your science will find new pieces that don’t fit, and more interesting still, will suggest a new puzzle.  Thus, whenever you read a description of science that is complete, triumphant, and exalted, you can be certain the description is not of science, but only seeks to persuade you of science.  Consider this point in, of all sciences, history.

Of course, history is not like physics, molecular genetics, or even persuasion, but you can pursue history with a scientific method that values the accumulation of pieces over the quick and easy completion of the puzzle.  But, that don’t feed the bulldog which accounts for persuasive histories that have no science, but sell better as described in this review.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto provides an entertaining and penetrating analysis of four recent histories aimed at the Age of Exploration with a focus upon Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and John Cabot.  The four histories are good reads, but . . .

Shallow thinking gets our authors into deep water. Ms. Delaney is simply mistaken in her basic assumptions: The Middle Ages were no “age of faith” but were full of secular values as well as religious ones. There is no evidence that Columbus was particularly religious until—like so many people—he turned to God following the failure of his worldly ambitions. Mr. Cliff’s never-ending war between Christendom and Islam is a figment of contemporary imaginations: In reality, the violence that historical writers so love was intermittent between civilizations more usually in collaboration than conflict. Mr. Hunter’s striking suggestion that John Cabot (who was a Venetian, Giovanni Caboto) was actually with Columbus on his second voyage is a valueless speculation unsupported by any acceptable evidence. Mr. Bergreen’s conclusion that “Columbus forever changed the idea of what a European empire could be” has no direct relationship with any idea Columbus ever expressed and bears no relation to the rest of his book, which has little to do with comparing empires before or since.

Fernandez-Armesto provides more details of the scientific failures of each book and also thoughtfully provides more rigorous alternatives for each book he criticizes.  What I find interesting is Fernandez-Armesto explanation for these books.

Academic historians tend to welcome recruits from other ranks, like owls nurturing cuckoos, and applaud the intrusions of neophytes with a glee that physicians, say, would never show for faith-healers or snake-oil salesmen. I am afraid it is time for historians to wipe the smiles from our jaws and start biting back. If escape from the poverty of your own imagination is your reason for exploiting the stories history offers, or if you are taking refuge from another discipline in the belief that history is easy, without bothering to do the basic work, you will deserve to fail.

Huzzah!  I couldn’t agree more and would apply the same argument to other fields.  Scientists in all fields do not police the standards of their professions and allow pretenders to play in public . . . I’m not a doctor, but I play one at University and the only pill I recommend is . . .

Yet, I think there’s a deeper cause that is the solution to its own problem.  Democracy and science are antipodes.  Science is the loner’s game, the true Army of One, that doesn’t give a hoot in hell or a tinker’s dam about what any or all Other Guys think.  Democracy, by contrast, is the ultimate group game that invites all players and factions together at the Table of Brotherhood in a rule-bound game of give and take.  Science never tolerates Democracy and could not survive with it.  Democracy run like Science becomes the Dictatorship of the Truth and brooks competing voices.

You may have a different take on the tensions here, but I think you’d enjoy reading Fernandez-Armesto’s bright and beautiful review! I’ll close with his opening.

History is the people’s discipline—the only academic subject that demands no special professional training. Some of my favorite history books are by lawyers, journalists, scientists and nuns. To write well about history you do not need a Ph.D., just a few rare but accessible qualities: insatiable curiosity, critical intellect, disciplined imagination, indefatigability in the pursuit of truth and a slightly weird vocation for trying to get to know dead people by studying the sources they have left us.

Affirmation!  Then persuasion!