11.18.11
Misleading nature of polls
What to Make of New Polling on Support for the Occupy Movement? Americans have a long tradition of holding protesters in disdain, even when they are later proven to be on the right side of history
This article raises important issues. But I think the answer is simple: polling data in their context are not the same as participatory democracy which is only the case if public assemblies record votes from people present at that assembly, and if that assembly is representative in the sense of showing members present. That situation doesn’t exist in the USA, and to think that ‘public opinion’ is a final judgment is unfair to all viewpoints. To be sure, the status of polling data should be strong: judgments might wish to show a weighting factor in their favor. But in the end they are a phantom, a hint or a probe of an unknown state of affairs. To follow polling data exactly would result in the cancelling out of all initiatives, so obviously the concept is not defined somewhere in its action.
In any case the status of public opinion in the world of Madison Avenue, Rupert Murdochs, etc, is suspect from the word go. People have been reduced to idiocy, and if they are manipulated to negate their own self-interest then an outside action is needed to reset the balance of public fact.
But in a nutshell, consulting polling data is vital, giving it its due is vital. But in the end only a legal public assembly of free citizens could realize the gesture of polling in its aspiration.
The Gurdjieff Con » Exploitation and suggestibility said,
November 18, 2011 at 1:51 pm
[...] http://darwiniana.com/2011/11/18/misleading-nature-of-polls/ [...]