It’s December 30th 2010 and I thought I would end this year on our blog with something a little different. It’s deep. It’s a little scary. It’s even a little crazy…or is it? Happy New Year my loyal readers and I hope you enjoy something a little different from this blog. Consider the rest of this article the ramblings of a man who tries to live in the future as much as possible.
Last night while many of you were partying and celebrating the coming of the New Year and the ending of the old by going to parties with friends and family, I was up long past midnight after a long day of celebrating myself. I found myself listening to a segment of a podcast I subscribe to by the Long Now Foundation. In brief, the Long Now Foundation looks at virtually anything from a super long term view ranging from such social endeavors as art, music, and human quality of life issues over the next several thousand years and also such pursuits as the creation of a clock that will stand the test of time for perhaps the next 10,000 years. Please accept my apologies for this article being so long, but the topic matter at hand deserves more than a three hundred word blog post.
I have spent many hours listening to Long Now lectures and discussions and find many of the concepts fascinating. Last night I heard one that I find really interesting when thinking about the whole concept of surveys being used to poll the opinions of consumer groups in order to get the market research results that so many businesses need to provide our society with the goods and services that not only we want, but those we are willing to pay for as well.
Forgetting the importance of finding goods and services that are necessary to increasing the quality of life for our society as a whole through the process of subsidizing cost through social funding methods such as taxation and charity, market research is essential to any startup company that cannot afford to make the costly mistakes that well established businesses occasionally make for reasons both beyond and within their control.
Simply put, in this time of economic uncertainty, our new crop of business leaders need as much information as is humanly possible to figure out a plan to help them and us survive the massive disruption that technology and digitalization has created within our cultures at this particular point and time in our history.
During the podcast I listened to last night, a comedian by the name of Emily Levine mentioned that she questioned the results of any public poll because no matter what the question was that was asked there was usually two percent of people who answered the question with the response “I don’t know.” She used an example of a poll that was done asking men if they had ever had sex with a woman they really didn’t like. Common sense would assume that virtually anyone having sex with another person would know for a fact if they liked or disliked the person they were having sex with, and yet two percent of the men responded to the question with a ‘I don’t know’ response.
As funny as the podcast and the example was, it is important that you understand that this comedian also works as a scientific critic in that she critiques science in order to improve it, not to debase the case for science as a beneficial addition to the advancement of our understanding of the multiverse we live in.
All in all, if you take this tidbit of information being discussed by scientists you could come to the conclusion that surveys and polls are not a great way to gauge public opinion but you would be wrong. Focusing on the two percent that for whatever reason did, could, would not answer the question is ignoring the ninety-eight percent of the people who did give the data that the poll was seeking. Thus anyone needing this information for such far ranging angles as research and development to marketing and promotion has a detailed picture of what ninety-eight percent of the people surveyed have to say about the topic surveyed.
Even though the science of survey taking is all about statistics and numbers, one should never forget the human element. The psychology of humans and the many diverse ways we choose to hide or share information and the reasons for our doing so have to be taken into account for anomalies such as the 2% factor mentioned in the podcast by Emily Levine.
One such anomaly that we Americans can really identify with is the hugely successful Tea Party movement in the 2010 elections. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, almost a quarter of voters in America consider themselves to be associated with or believe in the values purported by the grassroots movement known as the 2010 Tea Party.
Twenty-one percent of people polled identify with the Tea Party but would they continue that association if they really understood what some members of the Tea Party stand for. Examples include disallowing African Americans and women the right to vote, the repeal of the healthcare program so desperately needed by the fifty million Americans who cannot afford healthcare in the current economic environment, and the doing away with the national education system. There was even one Tea Party candidate who suggested we would be better as a nation if we went back to practicing slavery.
This isn’t surprising to many younger adults since only eight percent under the age of thirty identify with the Tea Party and ninety two percent of Tea Party members are of Indo-European decent otherwise described in the survey field as white in the racial category. I’m not sure where this fear the white race has comes from, but it has the potential to set back the human rights movement by a hundred years or more if a particularly long and bad string of events were to occur in our nation over the next couple of decades. The Tea Party movement could even cumulate into an American purist dictator similar to Hitler in ideology and goal that the rest of the world would be forced to deal with in the quickest way possible, with would lead to a third world war the likes which has never been seen on this planet during this session of modernity.
Scott Rasmussen states in his recent book In Search of Self Governance that “the gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and politicians who want to rule over them may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.” And added that “the American people don’t want to be governed from the left, the right, or the center. They want to govern themselves.” Self-governance only works when the individuals in question are of sound mind and think rationally in their attempts at governance. A concept which I believe is beyond many of the people in this great nation of ours. The majority of self government attempts have led to nothing more than petty dictators lording over others around them through the use of force if the principles of political leadership fail them.
I also question any attempt at self governance by the people of my nation when the majority of our public water system is contaminated with pharmaceuticals known to have a psychoactive effect upon anyone who ingests them. Clean drinking water is critical to a functioning and rational culture and yet nothing is being done to filter these psychoactive substances from the public water supplies. In fact many places go out of their way to introduce substances such as fluoride into the public drinking water even though science tells us that fluoride can increase incident of mental retardation as well as increasing the number of children who test low on general IQ tests.
With all this talk about self-governance, I am glad that we live in a Republic based on a set of values which are considered inalienable and virtually unchangeable by even a massive majority of the people in the nation. Sure a constitutional convention could be called and the constitution changed in a rather rapid manner but the majority of people who want to take advantage of such an occurrence fear that it would spiral out of control and we would lose what makes us a Republic in the process. All in all I think if a marketing research poll was done concerning the holding of a constitutional convention, it would show that a majority of people would not want it to happen. But you would still have that niggling two percent of people who do not have a clue about anything.
So what does all this have to do with the uncertainty principle and market research polls? Maybe something, maybe nothing. If you get it then you already know. If you did not then nothing more I write could help you to understand.