"The plural of anecdote is not data" [a thread about the illusion of verifiable data in the "information age," based on a quote from Nancy Pelosi]

[NotHardUp1]

While watching a CNN interview of Nancy Pelosi about the midterm elections going better for Democrats, and whether the Speaker believed the attack on her husband, or the lack of condemnation by the GOP, resulted in voter backlash. She demurred repeatedly, stating she had been told by many who spoke to her that it had, but she quickly owned that her experience was anecdotal, and then quoted the phrase in the title of this thread.

Whereas it was a very generous and gracious way for her to maintain that her inherently subjective view would make it inappropriate for her to generalize about the electorate, the quote was so good that it sprang to life and made me think of the many areas where we have no objective an independently agreed database of facts for varying viewpoints to rely on. The following woudl be just a few of the questions we cannot get hard, broad, and unbiase data to use:

How many gay men are there in the U.S.?

Have more gays come from broken homes than from whole and healthy homes? Is there a correlation?

How content or happy are uneducated people vs. educated?

What is the correlation of religious belief with clinical depression, if any? Ditto for Atheism.

How much greenhouse gas is generated by natural forces by volume (volcanoes, forest fires, biomass, etc.)?

To what degree has urbanization and coast population centering contributed to pollution, global warming, crime, and industrialized agriculture?

How much has the explosion of the pet industry in the West contributed to overharvesting oceans, and expanding meat production on land, and contributing to global warming?

How much energy is wasted in various forms of transportation, including mass transit, for the transport of empty containers, or minimally filled carriages?

How many guns are there in the U.S.?

How many guns in the U.S. have never been fired at a person?

We smugly label our times as the information age, yet we too often cannot get real data about matters that directly affect our lives.

 

[rareboy]

Pelosi is the consumate actor on the stage.

A purely political animal.

I am sure her husband hates her.

But she is effective.

 

[Thad1527]

^Purely political? Hardly. She's a grandmother

 

[Latimer]

Pelosi is the consumate actor on the stage.

A purely political animal.

I am sure her husband hates her.

But she is effective.

What evidence do you have that her husband hates her? There are many reasons for him to be very proud of her, and she of him. I would assume they believe they are a great team and have an abiding love for each other. I have a couple of friends who are tied into the SF liberal political establishment/aristocracy and are happy to gossip, and I've never heard otherwise. I'll keep you posted.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Although not the stated topic of the thread, comments about Pelosi are not exactly off-topic either. My only reason to eschew them is that this topic is not a political topic. It's one about data we cannot get, so cannot truly defend debate positions with facts over opinions and biases.

But, back to Paul Pelosi. I have no idea what the relationship is between the married couple, but the demonstrate teamwork in public, which is more than many straight and gay couples do. They appeared just days ago at the Kennedy Center Honors Awards together, where Paul (and Nancy) received a standing ovation that lasted quite some time. Paul's presence didn't suggest he hates his wife, not even after having his skull bashed by an assassin hellbent on killing her.

I don't think it apt to criticize politicians for being political. The Flying Nun is fiction. It takes wise political animals to get bills passed, both from the Whilte House and the Congress. LBJ is a classic example. It's all well and good to carp about his flaws, but he got civil rights legislation passed after his golden boy predecessor was all too happy to sell blacks down the river as politically expendable. It was through LBJ's shrewd, and probably ruthless, politics, that progress was made. He by aalso did the honorable thing by accepting the failure of his Vietname policy and the disruptions it caused, and leaving after one term.

Nancy Pelosi has had to exercise the same grit to navigate insanely difficult waters with the bankrupt ethics of the GOP that have prevailed ever since Bill Clinton's terms. Additionally, she had to fight off reformers from within who were well-intentioned, but whose strident voices have given the right the ammunition it needs to rally its base.

All that said, the data is the topic.

 

[Peloso]

All that said, the data is the topic.

This is a lounge forum, not a final exam. People tend to extrapolate whatever they wish from the topic and then go off on their merry ways. Besides, your topics are frequently too abstruse for the posters here, myself included, who are frequently confronted with them at six AM or at three in the afternoon when anyone with an iota of common sense is napping.

That said, the data we have is the data we deserve and in many cases, don't need. Data that doesn't serve industry and big business is suppressed because industry and big business control the data.

But because I know literally everything, I will answer your questions.

How many gay men are there in the U.S.? Forty seven.

Have more gays come from broken homes than from whole and healthy homes? Is there a correlation? Sexuality is too abstract and personal a topic for many people, so the data is likely to be skewered. My guess is that there is no correlation. Nature, not nurture.

How content or happy are uneducated people vs. educated? Moreso because they have their conspiracy theories and in many cases, religion to fill all those nooks and crannies of ignorance. A better question would have been are intelligent people more content and happy than idiots?

What is the correlation of religious belief with clinical depression, if any? Ditto for Atheism. Good question. But as above, religion is too slippery a topic. Who knows: people get so tangled up in the web of lies they tell themselves that they might accidentally answer a poll truthfully.

How much greenhouse gas is generated by natural forces by volume (volcanoes, forest fires, biomass, etc.)? idunno. Is maybe a teeeeensy bit of greenhouse gas necessary for the environment? This would make sense because nature is perfect and balanced.

To what degree has urbanization and coast population centering contributed to pollution, global warming, crime, and industrialized agriculture?


How much has the explosion of the pet industry in the West contributed to overharvesting oceans, and expanding meat production on land, and contributing to global warming?
Probably not much. A lot of pet food is made from the shit we don't want on our plates. Besides, the point is moot when you consider how much perfectly good meat is wasted by retailers and consumers. How much is this exactly? We don't have the data. What is your beef with the pet industry, anyway?

How much energy is wasted in various forms of transportation, including mass transit, for the transport of empty containers, or minimally filled carriages? Knowing these figures wouldn't do much to serve industry, would it? *whisks HardUp away in a black sedan with a burlap sack over his head*

How many guns are there in the U.S.? More than there are citizens, I've read.

How many guns in the U.S. have never been fired at a person? Probably a lot. How many purchased dildoes have never rubbed noses with a prostate gland?

We smugly label our times as the information age, yet we too often cannot get real data about matters that directly affect our lives.

We know what kind of shoes Jennifer Lawrence just bought in LA yesterday. What more do you want?

 

[Masaki]

For the religious thing, I am an atheist btw, the belief in the religion isn't usually a source of depression. It can be when you're something the religion regards as bad, but from most research I've seen on the subject almost all depression and anxiety and such are usually results of how the religious community treats the person. We probably won't ever have unbiased data, but we certainly have plenty of evidence floating around any corner of the net that unbending judgement on the part of the church has caused many suicides and depressive episodes.

 

[NotHardUp1]

To the religion and depression question, that is an extension of a data point I read when studying Mormons about 20 years ago. It began when I became aware that one of the young missionaries in my town from LDS was on medication for depression as was his mother back in Utah. I read up on it in general, and at the time, Utah had (allegedly) a much higher rate of clinical depression than the general population. I initially wondered if it might be from the intensively legalistic aspect of LDS, but also
likely as a product of the subjugation of women into domestic servitude.

Ironically, I'd think it just as probable to come from the amplified middle class guilt on the left, including atheists and in non-Fundamentalist churches, for the social justice causes.

 

[Vannie]

Shady Pines is calling.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Shady Pines is calling.

Hurry back when you can visit longer.

 

[opinterph]

we too often cannot get real data

Measurement can never be entirely accurate, but that limitation doesn’t make data from such an attempt “unreal.”

 

[NotHardUp1]

And that would be a way of seeing it. Unquantified data is inherently an opinion. Too much of what is cited online is justly demeaned as selective.

Real data is independent, expansive, or at least authoritative through parties not in the business of pushing an agenda.

 

[opinterph]

Is an opinion more valuable than ignorance?

 

[NotHardUp1]

False dichotomy. Data is data. You pose an alternative of accepting bad, incomplete data, as if it somehow remediates ignorance. It does not.

If you're goal is to gather opinions, then yes. If you're trying to gather facts, then no. History proves that you'll be affected by confirmation bias and find opinions in agreement with your biases.

 

[opinterph]

I am assuming the process to render an opinion involves a relative preference for cold, hard facts.

 

[NotHardUp1]

You sound like HAL, using absolutes instead of real world assumptions. A great swath of the population won't watch any news at all now because of the rampant biases on the right and the left.

And those that aren't watching the news aren't trying to learn facts anywhere. They're just trying to defend the status quo or reverse it in many cases.

Your statement assumes rationalism as a default. Most people I meet are not particularly rational, even the degreed ones at work. The minute you introduce a contradictory data set, they step over it as an inconvenient truth, if they even accept it as true.

Half of your voters just voted for an ex-football player that none of them would even trust dating their daughter, much less making life decisions of the highest order in the Senate. They didn't form an opinion of him based on ANY cold, hard facts. They based their opinions of him based on who endorsed him. The majority of my state elected a football coach to the Senate, not because he had ever served the public in any way, not because he had proven himself any kind of leader off the football field, but because he was endorsed by Trump. The only cold, hard fact they cared about was he was anti-Democrat.

Those are glaring examples, but the less obvious questions still have those innate biases, and people doing research and polls and collecting data sets today are rarely objective.