Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love and sympathize with your comment heavily. As far as 47% support I think it because: Trump = Good Something Trump ordered = Good
Also, their only news source told them it was a good thing.
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Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can
71–80 of 104 posts
Re: Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can
#72Huge majority of them was decently close, what's wrong with that?
Re: Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can
#7347% supported the strike? How could they possibly have had enough information to support it? Iran = Bad Man from Iran = Bad Kill Man from Iran = Good???
The real question is how could anyone not know the US and Iran have been at each other's throats for over a decade and that things were always a hairs breadth from exploding into outright warfare?
Re: Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can
#74How the heck someone put Iran in South America? Just a little exposure to everyday media should give you enough to rule out that completely. That's such a basic geography understanding. This completely blows my mind.
With any public opinion survey there's going to be a certain amount of "noise" results. You can't _force_ people to give serious answers. But if your methodology is sound (Morning Consult's certainly is) then they will tend to cancel each other out.
You can't force people to give serious answers, but you can incentivize them to do so. My guess is that the results would be dramatically better if the respondents were paid for correct answers.
Re: Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get the impression from the map of responses that many respondents were taking the piss. Who really thinks Iran is Greenland?
Clearly. So many also pointing right in the middle of the US, Brazil and Australia. I’m not sure if the poll was portrayed to be serious. Also, as someone who was in the US for quite some time, I found that (very much contrary to national stereotypes), Americans were quite knowledgeable about geography and global current affairs. This was evident from the multicultural societies where people knew about their friends,…
> I’m not sure if the poll was portrayed to be serious.
Indeed, Politico used a survey company that claims they apply "rigorous scientific methodology, trusted by leading organizations across business, policy, media, and tech."
But I find it very difficult to believe that someone identifying Iran by pointing into the ocean, Greenland, or the USA is taking the survey seriously. I mean, American education is certainly horrible, but come on!
https://morningconsult.com/product/survey-research/#section_...
Re: Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can
#76I would take the results of this poll keeping "Boaty McBoatface" in mind.
Re: Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer edit: it's easy to read this pridefully yourself ("i have other things to be proud of and therefore i'm immune from such petty things"…
> if nationalism vexes you then i challenge you to reflect on your own loyalties/commitments. I agree, but just because the psychological mechanisms that give rise to both humanism and nationalism are related, doesn't mean that we can't make reasonable judgments about which is better than the other, especially when the nationalism is of an ethnic or racial variety.
>doesn't mean that we can't make reasonable judgments about which is better than the other
i'm not advocating for reserving judgment. i'm simply saying that being proud of yourself for not being nationalist is pointless and if you want to understand nationalists (to whatever end -- even eradication of nationalism) then study yourself in analogy as a proxy for the other.
Re: Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can
#78Maybe unpopular opinion: Most people don’t have any reason to look at maps beyond local area and it doesn’t automatically mean they’re stupid.
Middle east is not a continent and if you look at a global map without country lines then you might not notice it in relation to any point of reference, and as such have trouble locating it.
Knowing where a place is on map is not necessary to participate in democracy. Most people vote instinctively and just have a mental map that there’s a potential external threat and how should we respond to this threat. It’s about liberty vs. safety. Maps offer no help in this whatsoever.
Re: Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get the impression from the map of responses that many respondents were taking the piss. Who really thinks Iran is Greenland?
Yeah. They probably paid for completion of the poll, and completing the poll required some selection of a location, so a ton of people did exactly that without even reading what the question was.
Yup. Why is this even posted on HN? Seems really low brow, honestly. I see this as the exact sort of click bait, anger inducing content a lot of people here want to avoid.
Why do we trust the poll if it doesn’t publish the survey contents and describe the methodology for participant selection? Survey design is extremely important, it’s like Stats 101. 2% margin of error, oh I’m sure.
Fun anecdote time: my high school was selected to take a survey on extracurricular activities. It was taken over a couple of days in the period before lunch and took like 2 hours total.
My memory is that everyone in the school used it as an exercise in creativity, with lots of people making themselves out to be drug abuser or gang members on paper, just for the novelty. I distinctly remember being surprised because so many people I didn’t expect(because they were typically honest, straight and narrow type folks) were laughing at their made up character who took meth every day before school and did heroin on the weekends, or whatever. Maybe it’s for this reason that the extreme importance of test design and method has stuck with me, but it seems like most people forget it after they pass Stats? hmmmm.
Re: Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can
#80There are a lot of comments here relating this to the escalation in tensions in the region - making very strong arguments for and against the idea that because 77% of the US could not place Iran on the map it is ridiculous that they should consider going to war.
Let me clear this up: it is ridiculous regardless of this statistic. Sure it might be a little embarrassing for Americans that there are so many people fired up to declare war on a country they know precious little about, but war with Iran would still be terribly wrong even if they could pinpoint Iran on the map and draw a little dot exactly where Tehran is.
And for those suggesting that this exercise is like asking Iranians to pick out Wyoming or Missouri on a map ... I really don't think you want to open that can of worms.