Basically the results of a poll constructed like in the original post would be utterly trash
As someone who spent some time professionally as a software engineer at a market research company, I can indeed tell you that these results will be utter trash lol.
I totally get what you are saying, now.
These kind of “polls” are just simplistic versions of typical marketing surveys where the sender is trying to get the lay of the land.
In marketing, surveys are usually crafted with quite a lot more care than this.
The software that I got to work on at that company helped with building humane surveys - we had a pretty slick setup where the researchers could craft entire logic trees to handle all the different types of paths that you were listing out.
Professional, Ethical Marketers do 100x better than this utter trash poll.
edit: whoops, apologies if this violates any community rules for being marketing apolgetic, my bad
Beautiful! Yeap that’s a very clean parallel and also extremely important in that field as well.
Since this has turned into a lovely exchange I want to offer one more point for your consideration.
Where the outcome of marketing data typically intends to position a product or service in to it’s most profitable position, and the quality of the data produced can be somewhat validated by future sales/market share/market depth/etc.
Polls like the one we are discussing aren’t constrained in the same manner and may be maliciously and purposefully designed to generate biased data. Humans are inherently vulnerable to hostile psychological manipulations. If this poll specifically isn’t just an outright scam intended to get its recipient to click on some link that load a payload of malware, it is certainly designed to purposefully create skewed empirical data.
Not everyone, but certainly a small minority of people who may have not necessarily felt certain about where they stood either direction could look at the results of a poll like this and might find a tinge of doubt in the back of their heads. This sort of tactic hopes that a person will feel a paranoia that everyone else seems to know something significant that they don’t and drive social anxieties up. Again, not always, but also not uncommonly, we can find ourself doubting even deeply felt personal resolve on a topic or position if it feels like the vast majority of people disagree with us. This sort of cognitive bias warfare isn’t intended to immediately flip a persons perspective, but rather it’s designed to soften a persons resolve and introduce enough doubt that they may become susceptible to being flipped later. It’s why we need to embrace healthy skepticism and be willing to be more stoic with how we consume numbers others prepped for us.
is sort of cognitive bias warfare isn’t intended to immediately flip a persons perspective, but rather it’s designed to soften a persons resolve and introduce enough doubt
it’s almost like they have to use dark patterns because they don’t have anything actually relevant to offer?
I take it that you operate in the political field, professionally?
Much love friend, have a great day/evening!
Love your enthusiasm and kindness, thank you friend! Much love and back atcha
Your post just made my day :D
It’s past time for me to hop off lemmy for the day, but I have some further thoughts percolating in regard to the rest of your post. Maybe expect a further reply in the near future!
As someone who spent some time professionally as a software engineer at a market research company, I can indeed tell you that these results will be utter trash lol.
I totally get what you are saying, now.
These kind of “polls” are just simplistic versions of typical marketing surveys where the sender is trying to get the lay of the land.
In marketing, surveys are usually crafted with quite a lot more care than this.
The software that I got to work on at that company helped with building humane surveys - we had a pretty slick setup where the researchers could craft entire logic trees to handle all the different types of paths that you were listing out.
Professional, Ethical Marketers do 100x better than this utter trash poll.
edit: whoops, apologies if this violates any community rules for being marketing apolgetic, my bad
Beautiful! Yeap that’s a very clean parallel and also extremely important in that field as well.
Since this has turned into a lovely exchange I want to offer one more point for your consideration.
Where the outcome of marketing data typically intends to position a product or service in to it’s most profitable position, and the quality of the data produced can be somewhat validated by future sales/market share/market depth/etc.
Polls like the one we are discussing aren’t constrained in the same manner and may be maliciously and purposefully designed to generate biased data. Humans are inherently vulnerable to hostile psychological manipulations. If this poll specifically isn’t just an outright scam intended to get its recipient to click on some link that load a payload of malware, it is certainly designed to purposefully create skewed empirical data.
Not everyone, but certainly a small minority of people who may have not necessarily felt certain about where they stood either direction could look at the results of a poll like this and might find a tinge of doubt in the back of their heads. This sort of tactic hopes that a person will feel a paranoia that everyone else seems to know something significant that they don’t and drive social anxieties up. Again, not always, but also not uncommonly, we can find ourself doubting even deeply felt personal resolve on a topic or position if it feels like the vast majority of people disagree with us. This sort of cognitive bias warfare isn’t intended to immediately flip a persons perspective, but rather it’s designed to soften a persons resolve and introduce enough doubt that they may become susceptible to being flipped later. It’s why we need to embrace healthy skepticism and be willing to be more stoic with how we consume numbers others prepped for us.
Much love friend, have a great day/evening!
it’s almost like they have to use dark patterns because they don’t have anything actually relevant to offer?
I take it that you operate in the political field, professionally?
Love your enthusiasm and kindness, thank you friend! Much love and back atcha
Your post just made my day :D
It’s past time for me to hop off lemmy for the day, but I have some further thoughts percolating in regard to the rest of your post. Maybe expect a further reply in the near future!