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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2794 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 28, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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As @Meriadoc says:

There's no way 92% of Americans actually think that way, or even half of them.

This doesn't pass the sniff test so badly, that you don't even have to think that the results can be interpreted straightforwardly. (Which is itself a metacommentary on the usefulness of straightforward readings of written facts. Do the authors comment on that?).

Go ask 5 friends in plain terms whether they think this is a reasonable use of the credit card in a way that you are sure they understand your straightforward intent of the question.

I know it's not quite independent, but for simplicity, if zero of them say it's reasonable, then the probability of that happening is 0.08^5 or .000003. Do you think it's that unlikely that 5 friends of yours would find this unreasonable? If not then you must concede that this question is clearly not actually producing a view of whether Americans find this reasonable.

So what is it telling us? Who the fuck knows. In cases like this, surveys without cognitive interviewing are less than garbage. Especially paid online surveys.

I can guarantee you that 92% of Americans don't find this reasonable in plain terms. If you want to pivot to an argument about some semantic interpretation where it's technically true, then look at that, you've made Justice Barrett's entire fucking meta point for her by showing how autistic readings of data out of context are often clear misinterpretations of they actually mean.

Are the authors of this study self-aware enough to reflect on that?

if zero of them say it's reasonable, then the probability of that happening is 0.08^5 or .000003

Drawing from your social contracts is not at all the same from randomly drawing from the general population. Just by polling people from here I'm certain I can create tons of impossibly unlikely results. (not that I disagree with your assessment that it's is implausible)

100% agree with this analysis.

But I would say, that in my experience, adherence to "letter of the law" tends to be surprisingly anti-correlated with intelligence. By this I mean that lower IQ people tend to have an affinity for nitpicky rules lawyering.

This is just my feels though.

It's an easy way to exercise great power. You get to exercise your own judgement, pretending that your interpretation of the law is the law and has the law's authority.

It sounds a lot like the "no vehicles in the park" quiz, which raises some interesting definition questions. When I've posed it to friends, I often get disagreement about whether she examples are violations, but also which violations are okay. Does the rule prohibit ambulances responding to emergencies? Even if it does, we should just allow the violation. "Not against the rules" and "against the rules, but an acceptable violation" are in practice rather equivalent.

The letter and actual implementation of the law can differ, for better or worse. Similarly, "you can use the credit card" is subject to some implicit reasonableness criteria, just like "no vehicles in the park".

The article misrepresents the study, which does not say that 92 percent think it is reasonable. 92 pct say that it does not violate the rule. The assessment of reasonableness is different, as OP mentions.

The assessment of reasonableness is still quite high.

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