This morning, I am thinking about polls. Not “the Poles,”
who are the people of Poland, but these pesky things asking for our opinion.
I have just gotten yet another of these spam emails asking
me to answer a survey, a.k.a. pole, on what I think of this, that, and the other.
I labeled it SPAM and onto the great ethernet it went unanswered.
Unless you have turned off and unchecked all information in
the last few decades, you’d know that opinion polls have become unreliable as
far as election results are concerned. My sense is that they were never
reliable as far as anything and everything is concerned. The so-called
“science” of poling just isn’t scientific.
We’ve heard the analysis and excuses that go something like
this:
Polls are conducted via landlines, and people with landlines
no longer reflect the population.
People lie because some answers are deemed “uncouth.”
The pollsters asked the question in the wrong way, either
ineptly or deliberately.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the above. But there’s the uglier
reality that most polls are bought and paid for by interested parties and are
meant to be used not as information but for persuasion.
Why is this “ugly” you might ask?
Because the underlying reality of our species is that most
of the time most of us go with the majority opinion. If most people think thus,
barring any true knowledge to the contrary, we go with what most think.
Herd mentality is part of most species. Ours is no
exception. Individuals lack expertise regarding most public matters. How many
of my friends have the expertise in climatology or energy science or economics?
Yet they seem to hold strong convictions on climate change, nuclear energy, and
the best way to do the most good for most people.
How did we come to our convictions?
We went with what most people say.
How did we know what most people say?
We listened to the polls.
How did the polls know?
Because we told them.
It gets worse: we penalize individuals who think for
themselves. It’s safer in a group, and those who are not joiners are a threat.
So, yes, I’m thinking about polls. I’m a conventional
person, not a rebel or a prophet. But I don’t answer polls anymore and I pay
little attention to media when they insist on quoting approval polls or polls
that measure beliefs.
