The Sixth Estate:
If the press is the 4th estate, and Hollywood the 5th
(DIO 8 [1998]
‡5 §H10 [p.51]), then are not pollsters the 6th branch of gov't?
Pollsters provide a politician's probe into your brain (to help him fool you)
— but only
if you are naïve enough to respond.
(DIO 2.1 [1992]
‡1 §F2 [p.6].)
[Is the public bored with the lack of surprises on Election Night?
Well, if
citizens aren't smart enough to yank out the brain-probe by refusing to
say ANYTHING to pollsters about how they intend to vote on Election Day,
then that night's string of non-surprises will be:
just one more non-surprise.]
Bottom line: if voters answer pollsters before elections,
they are helping the side with the most money (whose cash will enable him to
hire
the most pollsters) to win the election.
Guess why
TV 'snews doesn't tell you basic realities like these.
Is prez-polls' PURPOSE to keep the US demockratic elections safely establishment-bounded into a controlled two-party “race”?
DIO 4.2 [1994]
has both of the following
(‡9 §I1 [p.81] & §I4 [p.82], resp):
Shark Repellant:
If someone recommends a folk-lore method for how-to-ward-off-shark-attacks,
consider that there may be a touch of sample-bias here: true, everyone
you talk to who tried it says it worked for him, but
— if there have been other parties, for whom
the same method failed, then: good luck in interviewing them….
The Ultimate Sampling Bias:
Suppose that staying alive is irrational. Then all our advice (on work,
heroism, suicide, or anything else) will be that of irrational folks….
DIO 9.1 [1999]
‡3 n.6 [p.32] has the following: The legendary secrecy of
ancient science (or pseudoscience) has been knowledgeably ridiculed
by Neugebauer (op cit 566): “all these ‘secrets’ were
eagerly written down and have survived in countless copies….”
But the inherent sampling-completeness infirmity
[DIO 4.2 [1994]
‡9 §I4 [p.82] of this reasoning reminds one of
Count Fosco's retort to the confident notion that crimes always out:
“Yes — all the crime you know of. And what of
the rest?” (Wilkie Collins The Woman in White 1859-1860.)