Why you should be suspicious of "people on the street were more ignorant of X than Y" stories

[mmcirvin]

I missed this in March: Mark Liberman of Language Log takes apart the "more people could name the Simpsons than First Amendment freedoms" story.

The people who could correctly name N First Amendment freedoms (I assume they didn't split freedom of religion into the establishment and free-exercise clauses) decreased monotonically with increasing N, whereas the Simpsons distribution was bimodal, with more people ignorant of even one Simpson than of one First Amendment freedom, but also a fairly large population who could name all of them. From these numbers it is possible to extract just about any message you want, especially if people repeating the story are inclined to garble the result in the desired direction.

Comments

[twillis.livejournal.com]

Also, I like pie.

[piehead.livejournal.com]

I would also like to declare a liking for pie.

[twillis.livejournal.com]

I propose that we all take a pledge that if we are asked survey questions on the street that we will always respond with "I like pie".

Mostly because it would be interesting to read Matt's analysis of the survey response.

I like the Wizard of Oz.

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

I like the Tin Man.

Re: I like the Wizard of Oz.

[twillis.livejournal.com]

NOOOOOOOOOO! You are wrecking the curve!

Leave me alone, kid.

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

I'm, I'm thinking.

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

No! No no no! You're all WRONG! No! Stop that!

It's MITTENS! MITTENS I TELL YOU!

YOU LIKE MITTENS! AS DO I!

(SSC: I introduced the "I like mittens" meme on this web BBS of stupidity, and it took off like nothing else. The background image there is mittens nowadays.)

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Those links are brilliant! Especially:

And the most shocking statistics in the report, in my opinion: only 51% identified Homer, and only 43% identified Marge. Barely half of Americans can remember that Homer is a Simpson?!? Fewer than half can remember Marge?!? I mean, talk about burying the lede. An emergency educational initiative in Simpsonology is clearly required.

[manfire.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you'd think everybody could remember Homer and Marge and, you know, their two children.

[piehead.livejournal.com]

Their two children Bart, Lisa, and "expecting".

[bottlroktt.livejournal.com]

uh oh, jay leno's in trouble!

That should have said

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

"decreased monotonically with increasing N for N>0".

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I certainly can name the Simpsons but I must admit I'd do quite poorly on First Amendment Freedoms.

I guess America is far more effectice in exporting your brand of entertainment than your brand of democracy. Honestly, that's something to be proud of.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I have terrible trouble remembering the numbers of the amendments dealing with unreasonable search and seizure, no forced quartering of soldiers in private homes, the right to jury trial, etc. (I know that freedom from self-incrimination is in the Fifth, because everyone who's watched an American courtroom drama knows that.)

I know that those rights are in the Bill of Rights, but a survey of this type would probably flunk me for forgetting which number is which.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

For this same reason, I'm not at all impressed when people attempt the same sort of Gotcha! by asking bible-thumping politicians to identify particular commandments, or summarize the famous 10.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Well, there are actually a few different issues there. Actually asking someone to get the Ten Commandments in order is ridiculous because, for one thing, different religious traditions count and group the Bible verses differently; the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant Ten Commandments are different.

But the Ten Commandments Gotcha usually has an element of exposing hypocrisy to it, because the Bible-thumping politicians in question tend to be the same people who go on about how everyone should constantly be reminded of the Ten Commandments and that they're the basis of all law and morality.

The other useful point of that exercise is the reminder that, contrary to the strangely common belief that the Ten Commandments are universal moral precepts reflected in all civilized law and appropriate for a secular courthouse wall, approximately the first four or five of them (depending on your count) are all explicitly religious and even sectarian; the sensible moral precepts don't start until after that. Jews don't even believe that the Ten Commandments apply to non-Jews; only the earlier, less detailed Noachide commandments are for the gentiles.

[cpr94.livejournal.com]

In addition to Matt's point about hypocrisy:
Being unable to recall the contents of the Bill of Rights is considerably more forgiveable for the man on the street than it would be for a federal politician.

And yes, I'm always amused when people pretend the 10 Commandments are universal and moral, when the first three (in the Bible I have) are all, in essence, "Who's your Daddy?".

Oh, and they never mention that the Bible's prescribed punishments for breaking the 10 Commandments are usually death. In some cases, it could be metaphorical (though there's plenty of reason within the Old Testament to support a literal reading), but some are explicit e.g. if your husband or sibling comes home saying Let's worship other gods, you must be the first to stone said loved one.

rounding out the thread

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Hunh. So I was wondering which was which myself (though I recall that the 4th is the search-and-seizure amendment, and of course you probably recall the contents of the 2nd amendment as another famously controversial one), and so I searched for a copy of the Bill of Rights (http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/funddocs/billeng.htm).

I hadn't realized that the right of a jury trial was spread over two amendments-- 6 covers the right in the case of criminal prosecution, and includes the right of a speedy and public trial, impartial jury, confronting one's accusers, etc. 7 covers civil law, which creates a right to jury trials for matters where $20 or more is at stake.

3 is the quartering of soldiers. 4, as I mentioned is about reasonable searches and the causes for warrants. 8 is about bail. 9 is "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." which seems like something one can take for granted these days, and 10 about the powers not delegated in the constitution to the Feds or the States belong to the states or the people, respectively.

Re: rounding out the thread

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Somewhere recently (was it Rone's journal?) I was reading a thread about that twenty-dollar minimum on civil suits, and a bunch of lawyers pointed out that in practice it never comes up today; there are various statutes that effectively set a higher bar than that. The reasoning by which they are considered constitutional is somewhat above my head (though I suppose it's fortunate they are; $20 in 1789 was a lot of money, but not so much today).

[eb-oesch.livejournal.com]

Some other bozotic poll archetypes --

"Can you hunt a haggis?" If somebody asked you this, could you bring yourself to say no?

"Do you support eating roasted babies?" Five percent of poll respondents will say yes to anything. What can we do about America's estimated 15 million baby eaters?

Oh, and right now there's another "Fewer Americans than Europeans believe in evolution" poll making the rounds, which gets routinely distorted into "Most Americans don't believe in Evolution", even though the poll indicates the opposite. Yes, Europe, we know. American religious attitudes are usually somewhere between European attitudes and attitudes in, say, Mexico. (Part of the explanation is that there are a lot of Mexican and Hispanic immigrants in this country -- a small part, granted, but sufficient all by itself to explain some of the narrower gapes, such as between the most religiously conservative European countries and the United States.) I don't mind making fun of anybody for their silly beliefs, but let's be fair. The French have homeopathy. The UK has UFOs. South Koreans have ... heck, I don't remember, but it's weird. America's got astrology and creationism. Big diff. Countries with worse educational systems generally have more of the same, along with occasional really dangerous superstitions like AIDS witch-doctoring, Lysenkoism, or witch hunts, but superstitions that are very self-destructive tend not to become too prevalent for too long. (Then there's religious/ideological wars, but that's a different category.)

Not only is a weak science education a direct cause of greater superstition, but universal chauvinist tendencies (even if the bias is manifested as "We're internationalists, and that makes us better than you") tend to accentuate these differences. Patriotism only works in science's favor in countries that are good at it. It's facile and stupid to say that science is just another kind of prejudice, but prejudice can work in favor of a scientific viewpoint, and that's more likely to happen in Germany than the Congo. Unfortunately, chauvinism depends on relative and not absolute achievement, and not everyone can be at the top or, practically speaking, even believe that they are, so there will always be groups for whom the chauvinist impulse is anti-science.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

From what I remember the last time I looked into this, American polls about evolution/creationism get markedly different results depending on how you word the question, and markedly similar results from decade to decade. There sure are a lot of creationists in the US; biblical literalists are probably a large minority, but people who will say they're creationists if you phrase the question so that the alternative sounds like atheism are probably a majority.