Hunting The Muse

One of the things

One of the things that bugs me about politics nowadays is all the polling and statistics.

The general way it goes is, x percentage are in favor, y percentage are opposed, and 100-(x+y) are undecided. So you go after the undecided.

It just bugs me because of how reactive all the strategy is.

I believe in statistics. I believe in standard deviations, and sample sizes, and if a small sample size has the following beliefs, than the population at large will also tend to have those beliefs within so-and-so level of certainty.

But I also think it misses the whole fucking point of leadership and group emotionality. Statistics can't measure paradigm shifts, it can't measure emotional realizations. If you take a stand and invite the negative statistical reaction without waffling or pandering... then what's on the other side? I don't think that's explored near enough.

What's the statistical explanation for the child that pointed out the naked emporer? Posted by Curt at October 29, 2002 12:01 AM