Suspending Disbelief

Anticipating challenges and asking your audience to suspend disbelief can be a powerful method for fostering open-mindedness. I've tried to employ this when presenting a controversial topic. Kevin Kelly turned me on to the Long Now foundation and I recently listened to a recording called Power to Save the World on the topic of nuclear energy. Gwyneth Cravens commences the talk with a plea for the audience to suspend disbelief. She describes her staunch leftist beliefs and history of protest, including the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant. She then proceeds to describe her personal transformation to nuclear advocate. She describes her extensive firsthand research and investigation and makes a very compelling case for nuclear energy. She effectively disarms dissent by starting each topic with "I'm sure you're thinking 'yeah, but'..." and systematically dismantles counterpoints. She is a very dry and boring presenter, but the talk was moving nonetheless.

Anyway, I'm trying to make two points: 1. anticipating challenges and acknowledging them up front is a great way to encourage a hostile audience to keep an open mind and 2. for baseload power, it almost seems that nuclear is inevitable.