The Ministry of Public Enlightenment is pleased to deliver us all the way into (and out-of) the voting booth. – but why? – Come and join the feast of Fools!
“Today’s pollsters have become our secular priests, and politicians and journalists flock to them for guidance.
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Susan Herbst has offered a timely and sophisticated analysis of the history and meaning of public opinion. Herbst’s central argument is that the method for measuring public sentiment profoundly shapes the expression and meaning of public opinion. Herbst convincingly challenges the prevailing treatment of polls as simply a neutral measuring mechanism for producing a clear, objective rendering of the mass public’s attitudes. Instead, she argues that public opinion is a constructed category and a mechanism that politicians and others use to control or domesticate the mass public.”
“Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.” ~ Tim Berners-Lee
Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped … Politics.
The Privatizing of Public Opinion
Manufacturing Consent
The Asset Striping of the Credit Unions
List of cognitive biases
100 Systematic Thinking Errors (mp3)