Polls and Surveys: Not often a many-splendored thing

     It seems that election season is usually the time for a plethora (so many that a person gets sick of them) of polls. Surveys happen all the time, for many reasons, but polls usually happen for elections. Why? Polls are aimed at the future. What do you want to happen in the future? Do you want a nuclear power station in your town? Do you want to vote for Candidate A or do you want to vote for Candidate B (occasionally the poll will be written such that a choice for “neither” is allowed)?

     A survey is more of a gathering of information about what is happening right now. Do you put on your left sock first or your right sock first (Japan loves surveys of this nature)? How do you feel about the economy? Do you think that your local new pattern of “100-year” storms every four years is caused by climate change? How many pets do you have at home?

     Like weather forecasts, it is often true that polls don’t get it right (surveys don’t also but that’s for a different subset of reasons). In fact, many times polls are used in the opposite manner. They are manipulated to create a desired output, recognizing that there is a “winner effect” where people have a tendency to change their minds in order to be part of the “winning” side.

     Even when a poll is not deliberately manipulated to give a desired output, there are problems.

1. The questions must be created such that there is no inherent bias or assumption

2. The polls must be filled out (or answered) by a representative group of people

3. The people answering must have full anonymity — otherwise they may not give their honest answers.

     It is more difficult than one might think to keep bias or assumptions out of questions. “How often do you beat your spouse?” is rather blatant (though I suspect it has occurred on more than one poll). “How bad do you think the economy is?” has the same inherent assumption (that the economy is bad) as the spousal question but may not be as obvious.

     Many polls are multiple choice. But desired responses do not often align completely with one of the choices. The potential answers often have their own bias and assumption. If none of the answers matches what is wanted as the reply then there is a choice — don’t answer or choose the “closest”. But if your desired answer is the opposite of all of the listed possible answers then no answer is all you can do — and the poll will not reflect your opinion.

     It is very hard to get a representative number of people. For elections, they not only need to represent the variety of people voting in appropriate percentages but they must also be people who are going to vote. Younger generations often do not use phones for audible conversations so a phoned poll will be out-of-balance with leaving out many younger people (hopefully active voters). Although becoming less a problem as the technology continues to be more established, older people may be left out of polls if the polls are done via online methods. So, do both. But then the “middle” group may be over-represented.

     Legal voters don’t necessarily all feel comfortable in thinking about more complex issues in languages other than their home language. But polls (and surveys) cannot be created in ALL potential languages and polls are more unlikely to be answered if there is any struggle to complete them.

     We have many different physical, economic, ethnographic, and other areas of the country. Each has their own history and perspective so all must be represented in the polls. Very difficult.

     Finally, anonymity. In many countries, honest answers can be dangerous if the answers can be attributed to specific people. But even in honest democracies, attributed answers may result in unpleasant results (such as being bombarded with pleas for election money) if the person can be connected with the response. The answer may not be private within the house (or other physical location) and there may be intimidation or pressure to answer in a way not truly desired.

     Surveys can have the same types of problems but, since they deal with current existing issues, can change without causing the “chicken and egg” situations.

     The bottom line is that polls can only be treated as potential approximations. Their results should not be used to guide a person’s actions or expectations. If the poll results reinforce your opinions then be pessimistic and if they are contrary to your opinions then try even harder. 

     As mentioned in my 300th blog, this blog is transitioning to a substack newsletter format. If you would like to continue getting my blogs/newsletters, please click here and sign up for a free subscription (if you have money to spare, you are welcome to get a paid subscription). Thank you for reading these. I hope they are of interest, and will continue to be of interest.

Reality: Is made of perceptions

     There were five blind people who were led to an elephant. One person stood by the ear. Another stood by the trunk. One stood by the leg. Yet another was by the tail. The final one was next to the body of the elephant. What were their perceptions of the elephant?

     How would that change if the blind people moved around? What if one felt the tail and a leg, and another a leg and the body? They would have some overlap but would still perceive a different world for the elephant.

     Let’s let those people loose — let them move all around the elephant. They now should have the same amount to be able to feel. Do they have a complete picture? Well, we know they are blind so they will not know the color. They can only feel the surface, so they do not know what is beneath the surface. Even if they could feel beneath, they cannot necessarily understand what they are feeling or the interactions between the various things that they feel.

     What would happen if someone was deliberately trying to fool, or confuse, them? Perhaps they wrap one leg with scratchy sandpaper and another leg with silk. Would this change their perception of the elephant?

     Once upon time there was a mischievous god. They decided to create some discord. There were two rice fields separated by a ridge upon which people could walk without disturbing the plants. The god put on a big hat — blue on the left side and red on the right side. Walking along the ridge, people in the field on the right side saw a person in a red hat. People in the left rice field saw a person in a blue hat. Reaching the end of the ridge, the god turned around — making sure that his hat turned on his head as he moved. Now the hat had the red side on the left and blue on the right — but, since they were walking the opposite direction the same people in the fields saw the same color on the hat that was seen before.

     At the end of the day, the workers all sat down in the communal dining room and, not having a lot of different things to talk about, they talked about the person who walked along the ridge. One group was certain that they had seen them wearing a red hat. The other was certain that they had seen a blue hat. They argued more and more and starting fighting amongst themselves. And the god laughed to see what had been done.

     Each group was certain that they had seen all of the hat — so they were equally certain that they were correct in what they saw.

     Both the god and the persons who wrapped the elephant’s legs were deliberately changing what was presented to the people — causing them to perceive something that wasn’t part of the real object. This type of deception, or fabrication, can happen — and does happen based out of many reasons.

     Sometimes, like in the stories of this god, or the First Nation stories about Coyote, the reasons are not malicious. Sometimes, such distortion and fabrication are designed to promote a deliberately flawed reality for selfish or vindictive reasons. But, even without such deliberate distortion, our ability to perceive the entirety is limited.

     The ideal end goal for perception is to know everything (and recognize when information encountered is false). This is called omniscience — and no mortal (or AI) can possibly have it. Still, the greater the amount of accurate information that can be gathered, compared, and correlated allows a more complete notion of the reality of a subsystem or global entity.

     Given that omniscience is not possible for a human, there must be a reduction in the amount of information present. The first reduction is via access. If you cannot access information then you cannot process it. Search engines indicate that between one and four million books are published in English each year. I may read 200 books per year (my wife reads more). A very small percentage. At any given time, there is information (much of an entertainment nature) streaming, or being broadcast across hundreds, or thousands, of channels at a time. I can only actively watch one at a time. While there are choices as to what books I read and what channels I actively watch, I know in advance that there are many others that I will never access.

     Some people try to examine the maximum amount of information that they can -- and potentially reach a condition of information overload. This happens when so much information is accessed that there is no longer enough ability to access, compare, or evaluate the information. Trying to do the maximum is not helpful. Determining the optimum — the most that one can access usefully — is individual and often determined only after having done such.

     You have an optimum amount of information to work with. How was that information selected? First is access. Second is sensory gating — reducing the amount of information processed to prevent overload. The third is individual discrimination. This is where individual perception can start creating artificial realities. Such realities are externally inconsistent but may artificially create an internal consistency — a circular type of affirmation. It is done by choosing information based on what you want to be true. To a degree, this is the process of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias only allows additional information that reinforces existing beliefs or knowledge already integrated.

     We all have some degree of confirmation bias. Scientists often have confirmation bias where anything that does not agree with current theorems and hypotheses is tossed out. This is useful to prevent threshing (changing opinions or reactions back and forth quickly) but can also hinder the growth of science. Almost every new technology or discovery has to go through these hurdles — some quickly and some very slowly (with a lot of posthumous acknowledgements).

     Our reality is created from our perceptions. Our perceptions are based on a limited amount of information. A reality is closer to a universal reality (one that all agree upon) when information is broadly obtained and checked, correlated, and analyzed BEFORE being accepted or rejected.

     On a personal level, I try to read as many newsletters and articles from a global community. This helps to reduce national bias. I try to study history so I have some background to help me to understand the material. I listen to discussions created by people who both tend towards my perceptions as well as those that oppose my interpretations. And I still fail to have THE “correct” view of reality because of my limitations.

     But we can try — and that is all we can do. 

    As mentioned in my 300th blog, this blog is transitioning to a substack newsletter format. If you would like to continue getting my blogs/newsletters, please click here and sign up for a free subscription (if you have money to spare, you are welcome to get a paid subscription). Thank you for reading these. I hope they are of interest, and will continue to be of interest.