Conservation Comprehension Challenge: What Are They Trying To Say?

Here’s a tip I received from a reader about some serious heavy duty shop talk. Click here and read this letter that 12 (!) green groups sent to the editor of the Madison Capital Times in Wisconsin. Then drop a note into the comments and share what you think they are trying to say.

If you ever wonder how we come up with this incomprehensible spew, there’s a scientific term that explains it, which is: Too many cooks in the kitchen. Here’s a academic take on the phenomenon:

Although it has received little attention in law and political theory, group polarization is one of the robust findings in social psychology. The central point here is that the outcome of a group deliberation tends to be a more extreme version of the initial predisposition of group members. Deliberating groups thus move not toward the middle, but toward within-group extremes. For example, a group of people who tend to oppose affirmative action is likely, after discussion, to oppose affirmative action with more vehemence than before

Source: Under the Radar and Over the Top, Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet

It’s my experience that the “group extremes” the authors refer to includes the amount of shop talk, not just the relative intensity of the views expressed. And the moral of the story is that the more of your expert peers get involved in writing something, the more challenging it becomes to produce something that an everyday citizen might understand.

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