• Optional@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    You know polls are utterly unscientific tea-leaf reading right?

    57% sounds empirical and they even have cool little charts to go with it. Best case scenario it was: you got someone who doesn’t want to talk to you to talk to you for five minutes, or you set the stage for a talkative bastard to talkative bastard at you until you can break free. Neither are particularly good windows into their actual thoughts about Thing X but furthermore all the responses usually total like 0.000028% of the population.

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      You know polls are utterly unscientific tea-leaf reading right?

      Lmao

      Maths is unscientific now

      E: To any downvoters: you are stupid.

      Polling is just maths, and is very reliable so long as it’s done reasonably.

      By all means have reservations of this poll specifically, but to call polls in general or as a concept “unscientific tea leaf reading” is foolish. Disagreeing with that mathematical fact is exactly the same as disagreeing that 5 + 5 = 10.

            • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              When did I mention faked polls? You’re just making up shit now.

              You’re either a troll or stupid if you don’t think polling is mathematics.

              • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Russia polled in villages that they captured that Ukrainians actually want to be annexed by Russia. Can’t argue with math right?

                • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  Good strawman. I never said that polls can’t have a selection bias.

                  I said thinking polls in general or polls as a concept are tea leaf reading is stupid. Because it is. If you believe that, you’re a moron. You may as well say you disagree with the concept that 5 + 5 is 10.

                  • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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                    10 months ago

                    I’m saying that the JERUSALEM POST posting an articles about how Arabs think negatively about israel is not reliable.