{"id":798,"date":"2004-05-31T16:17:00","date_gmt":"2004-05-31T16:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/2004\/05\/31\/lets-stop-nonsense-now\/"},"modified":"2016-10-29T05:51:29","modified_gmt":"2016-10-29T05:51:29","slug":"lets-stop-nonsense-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/2004\/05\/31\/lets-stop-nonsense-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s stop the nonsense now"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m starting to sound like a broken record, I know. My plan was to be posting items that cover a wide range of ideas and possibilities that affect us in our day-to-day lives. Or as I put it in the title of this blog, \u201cA look at the events of Dave’s world, updated as circumstances warrant.\u201d But it seems I can\u2019t quit writing about this gosh-darned federal election. So just a short one this morning.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, I saw a few stories about polls and their influence on the election. Is there any doubt that they affect the outcome? Call me grumpy, but I side with Dr. Foth<\/a> on this issue. The media now is trumpeting the fact that the Liberals are sliding. They\u2019re into a minority government, perhaps even moving to a Conservative minority. These predictions are given as fact. Then the question becomes, how will the parties handle this new reality. The media and the polls have completely hijacked the democratic process, as far as I\u2019m concerned.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t like statistics, and polling. But I think it\u2019s dangerous to start talking about the results as if they were \u201cobjective\u201d or somehow represent reality. They are no such thing. For example, suppose a reputable polling company went out and polled 1200 voters randomly on election day, then extrapolated those results and compared them to the reality of the actual results? Does anyone seriously believe that they\u2019d be right? Or even close? Do you really believe that the pollsters would be right 19 times out of 20? I don\u2019t think so. Think about it.<\/p>\n

I remember learning in high school about a theory that the very act of observation affects the outcome in a scientific experiment. I don\u2019t remember who first put forward that idea. More recently, quantum physicists have discovered that the act of observing causes a change in any action. This could have profound effects on how we transmit and verify secure information, among other applications. <\/p>\n

More relevant for me, this also means that the very act of reporting poll results affects the outcome they are supposed to be predicting. People are affected by hearing what is supposed to happen. It\u2019s inevitable that hearing about polls will affect the outcome. So although some might argue that as individuals we have the right to know the results of these polls, I submit we should ban the publication of the results. If the various media outlets would agree to stop commissioning these polls and publishing the results, our democracy would be a much more interesting place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m starting to sound like a broken record, I know. My plan was to be posting items that cover a wide range of ideas and possibilities that affect us in our day-to-day lives. Or as I put it in the title of this blog, \u201cA look at the events of Dave’s world, updated as circumstances […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p88Hib-cS","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1785,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/1785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}