The story quoted new poll findings by a company called Aaru, representing them as research based on the feedback of American adults. But according to an editor’s note, the piece had to be “updated to note that Aaru is an AI simulation research firm.”
In other words, Axios had failed to disclose that it was citing alleged “polling data” that wasn’t drawn from human respondents at all. Instead, it was dreamed up by a large language model —yet the latest sign of every imaginable industry trying to leverage AI, even when doing so makes absolutely no sense.
This was/is a problem, but giving up on stats because bad stats exist, is like refusing to ever eat food again because someone got you to try a sardine and spinach chocolate cupcake one time.
In fact, the first, last, and most often brought up topic in graduate level statistical analysis isn’t about getting numbers, that’s easy. The hard part is finding the flaws in numbers, even in your own that proves yourself wrong.
The vast majority of people never learn that, or learn that bad stats have been a problem as long as stats has existed. Even making it thru peer review doesn’t always mean anything.
Like, every single time an article links to a study, do the due diligence and click, so what’s going, what the numbers really say, and search who funds them.
It’s not like you’ll even know what to look for at first, but if you never try you’ll never improve.
but giving up on stats because bad stats exist, is like refusing to ever eat food again because someone got you to try a sardine and spinach chocolate cupcake one time.
I won’t die if I give up on stats.
Let me fix your analogy:
but giving up on stats because bad stats exist, is like refusing to ever read newspapers again because you once read a tabloid rag that was full of falsehoods and lies.
You really think democracy can’t possibly work without opinion polling?
It would mean a population of voters informed solely by propaganda or not at all.
99% of opinion polling is propaganda. It’s relatively easy to make the outcome of a poll whatever you want it to be, especially when most of your viewers/readers don’t (or can’t) dig into it to find the raw polling data. And even when a poll doesn’t go the way you’d like, you can just bury it or refuse to publish it and run another poll until you get the result you wanted.
First off, got a chuckle from the bot check…
This was/is a problem, but giving up on stats because bad stats exist, is like refusing to ever eat food again because someone got you to try a sardine and spinach chocolate cupcake one time.
In fact, the first, last, and most often brought up topic in graduate level statistical analysis isn’t about getting numbers, that’s easy. The hard part is finding the flaws in numbers, even in your own that proves yourself wrong.
The vast majority of people never learn that, or learn that bad stats have been a problem as long as stats has existed. Even making it thru peer review doesn’t always mean anything.
Like, every single time an article links to a study, do the due diligence and click, so what’s going, what the numbers really say, and search who funds them.
It’s not like you’ll even know what to look for at first, but if you never try you’ll never improve.
I won’t die if I give up on stats.
Let me fix your analogy:
And that’s a more reasonable approximation.
Society, especially any remaining vestiges of democracy would…
It would mean a population of voters informed solely by propaganda or not at all.
Like, I get what you’re saying.
But youre thinking about a personal level, which the cupcake example was.
Polling/democracy is a societal level, and starving there is the full on death of democracy. And all the assorted damage that comes with that.
I’m sorry I didn’t make that clearer, I thought the personal/societal jump was implied
You really think democracy can’t possibly work without opinion polling?
99% of opinion polling is propaganda. It’s relatively easy to make the outcome of a poll whatever you want it to be, especially when most of your viewers/readers don’t (or can’t) dig into it to find the raw polling data. And even when a poll doesn’t go the way you’d like, you can just bury it or refuse to publish it and run another poll until you get the result you wanted.
I mean, if you invent ones that frequently, yeah, but who cares when people who don’t know about stats make up stats?
That’s literally the point I’m trying to make here,you’re so close to getting it