David Krakauer, the head of the relatively new Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (the venue for the day's discussions), then pointed out that all of us engage in our own forms of denial. For example, journalists covering the denial of climate warming et al. fooled themselves into thinking that they could change public opinion. For decades, Krakauer noted, popular films had carried the message that we ignore scientists' warnings at our peril, yet the public still had this distrust of scientists. 

Arthur Lupia, professor of political science at the University of Michigan, kicked off the session with an energetic and engrossing review of what biology and psychology had discovered about the challenges of making complex arguments to diverse audiences. The fleeting, fragmented nature of human attention and the phenomenon of "motivated reasoning" almost guarantee that people will not absorb and accept upsetting information unless it speaks meaningfully to their priorities and values.