Here's a good reason why the message of ecological danger isn't being absorbed. [View all]

[GliderGuider]

Based on a careful poll of Myers-Briggs typologies of visitors to his web site, Tom Murphy of "Do the Math" fame has concluded that most personality types simply aren't wired to be receptive to the message.

Programmed to Ignore?

Rather than trying to predict a dire future, my goal in “Did the Math” was to build a plausible case for things going off the rails in the desperate hope that recognition of this possibility would spur action now to steer clear of this potential pitfall (thereby making me wrong, in a happy way). It’s trying to expose a blind spot—a sleeping dragon.

But that blind spot may be stamped into human nature. So what about this survey?

The survey asked people to indicate their personality type as classified by the Myers-Briggs mechanism. Keep in mind that these are people visiting the Peak Prosperity forum. We’ll call these people “receptive to the cautionary message.” Or at least engaged in the issue—be they supporters or detractors.

The result was pretty stunning. Of the 114 responses, site visitors were dominated by INTJ types (43 in number, or 38%), even though this group constitutes about 2–3% of the population. The website appears to be highly selective. It’s as if you called a meeting in San Diego to discuss drill bits and almost half the attendees were red-heads. If accurate, the implication is that less than 8% of the entire human population is likely receptive to the cautionary message on Peak Prosperity (and by extension, Do the Math—the numbers from which suggest an even smaller number). That’s a small fraction of the population, and likely well short of a “critical mass” for preventive action. So we may be committed to crisis.

In the graph above, the overlapping red and blue bars are the distribution of the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types in the general population, as reported by two sources. The blue outline is the personality distribution of visitors to Do the Math. The visitors can be assumed to be receptive to the message. They strongly represent only two personality types out of 16, or less than 5% of the whole population. And not even all of those in the general population will be receptive. Tom goes on to say:

The result is noteworthy. Even if off by a factor of two due to some systematic problem (explored below), the upshot is that we probably don’t have a high enough fraction of people with the disposition to take the cautionary message seriously, in advance of evident crisis. If 5% is too low to be a critical mass (as I suspect it is), then this could spell our doom: human nature is not up to the challenge.