Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winning author of Thinking, Fast and Slow was a guest on the 100th episode of the Hidden Brain podcast. The host, Shankar Vidanta had asked Kahneman why it was so hard to convince people about the reality of climate change. Why didn’t presenting more evidence seem to help? I was stunned by Kahneman’s reply.

Here is my own transcription of the reply.

“I think scientists, in a way, are deluded by the idea that there is one way of knowing things. And that you know things when you have evidence for them. That’s simply not the case. People have religious beliefs or strong political beliefs. They know things without having compelling evidence for them. And so there is a possibility of knowing things which is cleared determined socially. We have our religion and our politics and so on because we love or used to love and trust the people who held those beliefs. There is not other reason to explain why people hold to one religion and think that other religions are funny. Which is really a very common observation. So the only way [to help people believe in climate change] would be to create social pressure. So, for me, it would be a milestone if you manged to take influential evangelists, preachers, to adopt the idea of global warming and to preach it. That would change things. It’s not going to happen by presenting more evidence. That, I think, is clear.”

This remark by Kahneman got me thinking about how our determination of “what is true” is influenced by our love of and trust in others who also hold those beliefs. When I am asking students to engage in conceptual change, I am first of all asking them to trust me. Not to trust the logic of what I am saying – but to trust me, as a person.

The ancient orator and noted teacher Quintilian, born in the year 35, wrote something similar almost two thousand years ago.

In an era that practiced systematic beatings, Quintilian rejected violent punishment in education. He believed that praise was more effective than violence, as was a love of the teacher, which little by little would be transformed into love of the subject.

Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo. Translated from the Spanish by Charlotte Whittle. 2022. Knopf. page 343.