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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| pietillidie wrote: | | Tannin wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | | Tannin wrote: | | Just so, Mugwump. Further, it is a disgrace of a survey. The real fool here is the writer of that moronic question. |
Sorry, it's a technically reasonable survey as it stands. It is not investigating some "ontological truth" and depriving people of the right to be "truthful" because that's its interest. Rather, it's investigating human beliefs under pressure. The use of the comparative form /~er/, however, means it is not even completely binary, though it provides about the right degree of pressure I reckon.
There's nothing ostensibly technically wrong with it, even if the pressure makes some people feel a loss of control.
You would have to combine it with other evidence if your interests differ from that of the author, but as it stands there is nothing rationally untoward about it.
It is often much better to approach an emotionally-charged topic with a dichotomous question to avoid socially-adjusted neutral answers, which in turn require another dozen questions with a whole new scale of their own in order to test if the neutral answers are genuine or socially-modified.
These respondents have consented to expressing a preference. If the population sample is not biased and the research as a whole has validity, that expression of belief has empirical merit.
Survey instruments are not designed to satisfy other people's personal desires and wishes; they're operationalised tests of hypotheses and may not have anything to do with other people's perceived interests.
Edit: Cleaned up the expression! |
^ Complete rubbish. Good lord, I have always assumed you were smarter than that. Providing respondents with two palpably untrue statements and no further option is simply a form of push-polling, and the results have no validity whatsoever. Designing a survey like that would get you an automatic FAIL in any course teaching survey research methods. |
Sorry, wrong. Push polling is about mischievously planting ideas in people's heads before an election or purchase or such. Surveys, if they're part of proper research, are about testing an hypothesis. Your paranoia about being manipulated is not the researcher's concern; that's what researchers do to elicit information. To critique the question you need to critique whether it is a sensible operationalisation of the construct under investigation, which you don't know on face value.
Carry on all you like, but there's nothing ostensibly wrong with it and you've conducted no validity tests on it at all. I'm afraid it's you who would fail research methods because you're talking rot. I'm not going to teach you just so you can pretend to know, but if you want more than a defensive Wikipedia understanding I can. |
Mate, I have a fnucking degree in research methods. I dabble in a lot of different things, but on this topic I really do know my stuff.
If you read a bit more carefully, you'd see that I said "a form of push-polling". Here, the "researcher" (not a researcher's bootlace, but I'll use the term broadly) isn't trying to elicit information or learn what people believe, he is trying to find some psudo-scientific "data" to support a preconceived point, and doing so in a way that precludes honest answers from any but the most terminally ignorant respondents. That is why I called it a form of push-polling: you may choose to narrowly define it otherwise, but it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, and it fartz like a duck: ergo for all practical purposes it is a duck.
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^That's probably more journalistic context which makes it look like that. Time and again these things are investigating reasonable constructs. For others such as David or Jezza, all they're seeing is your bagging of the item, when it could easily be reasonable and valid. Qualifications lest ye turn people off conducting research, please!
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| pietillidie wrote: | | ^That's probably more journalistic context which makes it look like that. Time and again these things are investigating reasonable constructs. |
What you are talking about here, I imagine, is the sort of psychological "research" which deliberately throws a whole list of loaded, unreasonable questions like the dumb example one we started with at people, then counts up many dozens of forced-choice answers by many dozens of different subjects and does a bit of statistical analysis of them to find out whether a statistically significant significant greater proportion of (say) academic under-achievers is more likely to pick one vague cluster of wrong answers as opposed to the other cluster of wrong answers.
You see this sort of dumb-arse method used all the time in certain, typically rather useless, fields of psychology, such as for example low-quality personality testing for (mostly) nakedly commercial purposes, or HR department boondoggles. It occasionally stumbles over something useful, but these pop-psy methods practically never discover anything much worth knowing. At best, they discover vague statistical correlations which are often of little use because the basis of the test questions is so highly contextual that they translate poorly to other times and cultures, and the actual meaning of the results is anybody's guess. It speaks volumes for this sort of methodology that by far it's most successful and replicable variant - well, more a distant cousin than a variant - is the vexed and eternally controversial field of intelligence testing.
(They can, however, be an adjunct to serious research when used sparingly and with intelligence as a small part of a much larger whole.)
^^^ Be all of that as it may, the key point here is that responses to this shallow, forced-choice question, if they are of any use at all, are only of use in combination with responses to a whole series of other similarly daft questions, typically 50 or more, and even then the results tend to be both quite unreliable and very difficult to connect meaningfully with anything much in the real world.
Note especially well that if this question is to have any validity or utility, such utility only applies to the aggregated results of the whole series.
Finally, note that this type of question is (when it is used for any valid purpose at all) used to elicit information about aspects of individual personality make-up. It is not used for or useful for learning about social beliefs and values - which is the actual question here - and any attempt to abuse it by doing do so is doomed to shallow and misleading irrelevance.
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^Curse as many hypothetical bad studies as you imagine, or misuses as you can muster. But if the hypothesis is fine, the operationalisation reasonable, the validity and reliability check out, such instruments are fine lines of evidence. Which I see you at least finally see fit to tell people.
Nick's has approximately no people who understand research, but everyone is sure all research which makes them uncomfortable is wrong. The problem is not people believing bad research, it's people not knowing how to assess the validity of any research, blindly accepting or dismissing it at whim. The problem is not with correlations, it's with poor uses of correlations. All manner of science begins with correlation; that's what gives rise to most hypotheses to begin with.
Take the misunderstanding of the question. One can immediately see the researcher is testing the prevalence and association of what he or she believes to be dominant discourses pertaining to the topic. That may be an intuitive position, or it may preferably be based on prior content analysis. But the Nick's carry on has missed the boat and is critiquing the question as if it's surveying ontological, "actual" reality. That very criticism of the question is so far off base to start with it's not funny.
The devil is not in the question or the method, which as I say are ostensibly fine; it's in the background rationale and subsequent usage of the question which might well be completely reasonable. But at least check it out before carrying on like a pork chop.
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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I quote this just to bring it on page lest our research debate gets in the way...
| pietillidie wrote: | | 1061 wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: |
If you think Christianity as a religion preaches violence in it's current form, would you care to provide an example of that, and I don't mean a fkn bible quote. |
He wouldn't for me, so whats make you think he will for you?
Are you special or something. |
Christianity has evolved with the societies in which it has been predominantly embedded. So much of it as an institution or sub-culture has supported violence of all kinds and still does. E.g., a good percentage supported the Iraq War. That was unbelievably violent. A certain number run misinformation campaigns against global warming, doing great violence against the environment and therefore those vulnerable to it. Others oppose the legalization of prostitution, enabling massive violence against women. Latin America, as explained, is 90% Christian and has horrific homicide rates, which, if you're ignoring social context, should count. And let's not start on the astonishing, flabbergasting institutionalised child rape and cover ups, and persecution of the gay community to the point of extreme violence in many countries.
So, you're ignoring the goal posts if you think it's about behaviour only, and are overlooking such inconvenient facts. Now, just imagine those nutters without the law, order, historical stability and economic incentives that sane folk have embraced which now fence them in. Okay, that gives you ISIS.
I'm not attacking any religion here, just pointing out your two sets of rules. |
Moreover, this reveals just how subjective these things are. No one puts the violence of the Iraq War on the doorstep of Christianity, despite its commander-in-chief being an avowed Christian who claimed god helped guide him! How many Christian churches across the US and the rest of the world helped push the party line, directly in some highly-publicised cases, and indirectly?
But this is not mentioned because to condemn it is also a point of self-condemnation given plenty of average folk around us supported the Iraq War. So, when we commit an act of violence not incomparable in impact to what ISIS is doing, we dismiss and excuse it. Zero of its evil is apportioned to anyone at all because they had good intentions and wear suits and don't release macabre videos! When ISIS engages in the same sort of destruction, the whole lot is apportioned without hesitation or complication and even then often enough to non-ISIS Muslims! Yes, plenty of religious folk are nutters, but they're also contextually-created and embedded nutters as we all are to greater and lesser degrees largely through the arbitrary fortunes of birth.
This is how the innate delusions of the the brain work. Those people are evil, and me and my group are wonderful. It takes conscious effort and courage, not defensiveness and self preservation, to ignore that and provide fair analysis. Those who do confront it plainly are bearing a cost to their personal and social selves unfairly because everyone else is in gutless denial. You've got to have the knackers to view the world as it is for the good of greater progress sometimes, even it does little to boost your salary or it upsets the popular people at the barbecue.
There simply is no good-and-evil thinking that will work anymore on this compressed planet. Give it up; it's bad for everyone's health! Yes, ISIS needs to be dealt with, but rationally and in context.
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ i get bored saying it but it has to be said again... How many of the dead in iraq were killed by Us bombs and how many by Islamist sectarians ? This is really playing Al Qaeda and Is's game... They kill people and blame the West, and to buy into their relativism is really a kind of fellow-travelling.
The sectarianism was unleashed by the Iraq War, which was a dumb idea, but it was there already as a result of the unreconciled sectarian and tribal hatreds and resentments of the Arab world It exploded in Syria without Western intervention, amd it would probably have exploded in Iraq after the Arab Spring. You can read books about it (there are many - Bernard Lewis's the Crisis of Islam is a good one) or simply see it in the news.
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| Mugwump wrote: | | ^ i get bored saying it but it has to be said again... How many of the dead in iraq were killed by Us bombs and how many by Islamist sectarians ? |
If you start an aggressive, interfering war without due caution or planning, you bear the blame for the hell you unleash, just as much as a drink driver does for killing someone. Stop sliming out of it through some cheap advertising effort to smear the most basic element of justice by childishly claiming "But that's what the terrorists say, too!", like some drunk bum at the pub.
You start a war, you are implicated in all that follows, as Nuremberg rightly found, and Chomsky correctly, if annoyingly, repeats ad nauseum.
No one with half a brain missed the obvious, clear, practical risks of entering Iraq, and most certainly in a half-arsed, sloppy, arrogant, deceitful way. No one. It was grotesque war mongering negligence of the highest kind and nothing more, so stop pretending responsibility gets waved away with a magical PR wand just so you can get off on the idea that you're part of some Enlightened race charged with punishing evil.
Grow up, Mugwump, and stop looking for institutional bum slaps; have the wherewithal to say something insightful regardless of what the cool kids at the conference tell you is acceptable.
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| pietillidie wrote: | | You start a war, you are implicated in all that follows, as Nuremberg rightly found, and Chomsky correctly, if annoyingly, repeats ad nauseum. |
Not to completely derail the thread (I'll sort it out later, lol), but by this logic, does Winston Churchill deserve the bill for every World War 2 casualty?
I don't know if we can necessarily afford such simplistic narratives. What if, in some crazy parallel universe, Iraq II had been justified? Would Bush still wear the blame for the deaths of Iraqis killed by Iraqis?
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| David wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | | You start a war, you are implicated in all that follows, as Nuremberg rightly found, and Chomsky correctly, if annoyingly, repeats ad nauseum. |
Not to completely derail the thread (I'll sort it out later, lol), but by this logic, does Winston Churchill deserve the bill for every World War 2 casualty?
I don't know if we can necessarily afford such simplistic narratives. What if, in some crazy parallel universe, Iraq II had been justified? Would Bush still wear the blame for the deaths of Iraqis killed by Iraqis? |
Ha? That makes no sense. Nuremberg investigated that question and found the complete opposite. Churchill did not launch a war of aggression.
Of course **he bears the blame. Call it "manslaughter" or "gross negligence" instead of "murder" if you will, going back to the drink driving analogy. Do you think it better for any nonsense PR claim to be a sufficient defense for causing mammoth destruction? Is it more reasonable to assume no one is to blame for invading another country, "It's just one of those things."
Your position lacks any foundation in any known system of justice.
Edit: That "he" is Bush et al. as per the original subject of this line of discussion.
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Last edited by pietillidie on Fri Feb 06, 2015 11:17 am; edited 2 times in total |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| It makes sense to me though. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| pietillidie wrote: | | Mugwump wrote: | | ^ i get bored saying it but it has to be said again... How many of the dead in iraq were killed by Us bombs and how many by Islamist sectarians ? |
If you start an aggressive, interfering war without due caution or planning, you bear the blame for the hell you unleash, just as much as a drink driver does for killing someone. Stop sliming out of it through some cheap advertising effort to smear the most basic element of justice by childishly claiming "But that's what the terrorists say, too!", like some drunk bum at the pub.
You start a war, you are implicated in all that follows, as Nuremberg rightly found, and Chomsky correctly, if annoyingly, repeats ad nauseum.
No one with half a brain missed the obvious, clear, practical risks of entering Iraq, and most certainly in a half-arsed, sloppy, arrogant, deceitful way. No one. It was grotesque war mongering negligence of the highest kind and nothing more, so stop pretending responsibility gets waved away with a magical PR wand just so you can get off on the idea that you're part of some Enlightened race charged with punishing evil.
Grow up, Mugwump, and stop looking for institutional bum slaps; have the wherewithal to say something insightful regardless of what the cool kids at the conference tell you is acceptable. |
I really don't intend to descend to replying in kind to that ugly and personal nonsense. It does you no credit, and shames your argument.
Germany started the war on the Soviet Union. It does not make
Germany responsible for the Russian treatment of Eastern Europe or the Russian invasion of Korea. It's nonsense, and I suspect you know it's nonsense. <snip - let's stay on topic and play the ball, please.>
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^Wrong. You have already descended <snip - please refrain from name-calling.>. Go back and read what you wrote. You likened the legitimate assignment of responsibility for committing mass violence through invasion with something that terrorists claim, as if that's a rational argument. Get your own ethics right and stop hiding behind pre-scientific, cultural delusions.
As if you aren't aware of the Nuremberg finding on wars of aggression. No one thinks guilt for wars of aggression precludes other forms of guilt. David, that also applies to what you were saying. You're both reading the Nuremberg findings in that regard too literally if that's what you think they mean, possibly to find some angle to argue against what I'm saying just for the point of it. Distracting silliness.
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^I mean, after all this time being annoyed with Chomsky's droning repetition, hasn't anyone bothered to check the original materials for themselves? You can't just automatically apply some negative algorithm to his words to reach insight, for goodness' sake!
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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Ok, i think you misunderstood what I meant (which is probably my fault, i don't know). My point was not that it's thinking like a terrorist to say that the
Iraq War was stupid and wrong. I've said that myself, and that'd be a daft argument.
My point was that in the aftermath, the Islamist monsters and sectarians want us (and even more so, the wider Muslim world) to blame the US/UK for their mayhem. It's why they do it, part of their military strategy. I see no reason to help them, as I do not accept that their murders are the US/UK's responsibility, when the uS/UK troops that died and lost limbs etc were mostly killed trying to contain the sectarianism.
Now flame away if you will.
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| Mugwump wrote: | Ok, i think you misunderstood what I meant (which is probably my fault, i don't know). My point was not that it's thinking like a terrorist to say that the
Iraq War was stupid and wrong. I've said that myself, and that'd be a daft argument.
My point was that in the aftermath, the Islamist monsters and sectarians want us (and even more so, the wider Muslim world) to blame the US/UK for their mayhem. It's why they do it, part of their military strategy. I see no reason to help them, as I do not accept that their murders are the US/UK's responsibility, when the uS/UK troops that died and lost limbs etc were mostly killed trying to contain the sectarianism.
Now flame away if you will. |
That's fine; that's not a dismissal! But it's not connected to the issue at hand, which was about the inconsistent judgments applied to the self and others. "They" do something, blame assigned with immediate and full force. "We" do something, it has "reasons" and "complications" and "nuance". Everyone has reasons and complications and nuance; it's part of being human, no matter how brutal the context. Okay, as I have argued in the past, some contexts lead to a sort of "temporary or effective psychopathy", but if so then you have to deal with "temporary or effective psychopathy" for what it is. The racial and religious generalisations just don't come into it either way.
I don't care what defenses apologists use; that's not my concern. I care what makes best analytical sense of a problem on a very small planet [ http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=2856 ]. Over-personalising on the one hand, or dehumanising on the other are both sub-rational as agreed in the other thread and beyond that highly distracting.
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Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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