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First off we have to accept that there is an external world – a world external to our own experience of our mind. Getting past that one, we have to accept that there we are one of the objects that exist in this external world and that we interact with other objects in that same world. We are a mind/body unit interacting within this vast universe where we live on a planet that we call the Earth. We perceive objects that have certain characteristics – properties that we associate with those objects that we experience. We can pick up an object, such as an apple and we can describe that object by means of describing its shape, weight, and texture. We can share this object with a companion and come to an agreement about these properties that we agree the apple has. Now, what about the property of color? Is the apple green in the same way that it has a noticeable smooth texture when we feel the outer skin of that apple? There has been a long-standing agreement that all objects have two broad categories of properties, so-called primary properties which are ‘objective’ as in adhering to the object, and secondary properties which are ‘subjective’ and thus more a product of our mind. From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary/secondary_quality_distinction The primary/secondary quality distinction is a conceptual distinction in epistemology and metaphysics, concerning the nature of reality. It is most explicitly articulated by John Locke in his Essay concerning Human Understanding, but earlier thinkers such as Galileo and Descartes made similar distinctions. Primary qualities are thought to be properties of objects that are independent of any observer, such as solidity, extension, motion, number, and figure. These characteristics convey facts. They exist in the thing itself, can be determined with certainty, and do not rely on subjective judgments. For example, if an object is spherical, no one can reasonably argue that it is triangular. Primary qualities as mentioned earlier, exist outside of the observer. They inhere to an object in such a way that if the object was changed, i.e. divided, the primary qualities would remain. When dividing an object, “solidity, extension, figure, and mobility” would not be altered because the primary qualities are built into the object itself. Another key component of primary qualities is that they create ideas in our minds through experience; they represent the actual object. Because of this, primary qualities such as size, weight, solidity, motion, and so forth can all be measured in some form. Using an apple as an example, the shape and size can actually be measured and produce the idea in our minds of what the object is. A clear distinction to make is that qualities do not exist in the mind, rather they produce ideas in our minds and exist within the objects. In the case of primary qualities, they exist inside the actual body/substance and create an idea in our mind that resembles the object. Secondary qualities are thought to be properties that produce sensations in observers, such as color, taste, smell, and sound. They can be described as the effect things have on certain people. Secondary qualities use the power of reflection in order to be perceived by our minds. These qualities “would ordinarily be said to be only a power in rather than a quality of the object”. They are sensible qualities that produce different ideas in our mind from the actual object. Going back to the example of the aforementioned apple, something such as the redness of the apple does not produce an image of the object itself, but rather the idea of red. Secondary qualities are used to classify similar ideas produced by an object. That is why when we see something “red” it is only “red” in our minds because they produce the same idea as another object. So, going back to the color of the apple, it produces an idea of red, which we classify and identify with other red ideas. Again, secondary qualities do not exist inside the mind; they are simply the powers that allow us to sense a certain object and thus ‘reflect’ and classify similar ideas. According to the theory, primary qualities are measurable aspects of physical reality; secondary qualities are subjective.
Now, I think that this split between primary and secondary is not as important or accurate as they seem to think. I propose that all those properties are part of the object and our interaction with that object. Let’s take color. It is the one most picked on by philosophers and scientists as being the most subjective – not a ‘truly real’ property of any object. Color is created by light hitting an object and then coming at our eye at a certain wavelength which is registered in our mind as being of a certain color. The light hitting an apple we end up seeing as reddish or greenish, depending on the apple we are looking at. Now, if Eve holds out an apple to Adam, they can both come to an agreement on what color to call that apple. Thus there is persistence and consistency between multiple observers and the object being observed. That is what all the characteristics of that apple have – its shape, texture and even its color are an agreed term for what we experience when we examine objects. The apple has something that gives rise to that agreement of description. Thus the apple ‘has’ those properties, whether they are shape, texture, and even color. Neither the shape, texture nor the color fluctuates from moment to moment. It is agreeably stable and both Eve and Adam together can contest to those descriptive terms as being reliably useful as a means to describe that apple that they are sharing together. Our bodies interact with that object and by the means of the interaction, we come to describe and know that action. All that interaction is ‘objective’ in that it is derived from our interaction with the object. Color is as real as taste and any other property. It is a shared property of objects and observers like any other. Any artist knows that. She works hard to mix just the right pigments to get exactly the color she desires. As William James would remark color has a pragmatic and literal cash value in our world. Color is real and it is the stuff of important legal and business decisions. The whole of the entertainment and advertising industries depend on objects having the proper and consistent colors needed for their businesses. People are paid cash to get those colors right and lawyers can sue if printers or manufacturers fail to get those colors to match to the legal trademarked Pantone color that the corporations require! So all those businesses understand that color is real and part of things that have to be manipulated just right in the world to meet their needs and requirements. They understand that color is a real thing, a real attribute of objects. Pantone LLC is a limited liability company headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey. The company is best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, notably graphic design, fashion design, product design, printing and manufacturing and supporting the management of color from design to production, in physical and digital formats, among coated and uncoated materials, cotton, polyester, nylon and plastics. Pantone began in New Jersey in the 1950s as the commercial printing company of brothers Mervin and Jesse Levine, M & J Levine Advertising. In 1956, its founders, both advertising executives, hired recent Hofstra University graduate Lawrence Herbert as a part-time employee. Herbert used his chemistry knowledge to systematize and simplify the company's stock of pigments and production of colored inks; by 1962, Herbert was running the ink and printing division at a profit, while the commercial-display division was US$50,000 in debt; he subsequently purchased the company's technological assets from the Levine Brothers for US$50,000 (equivalent to $430,000 in 2020) and renamed them "Pantone". The idea behind the PMS is to allow designers to "color match" specific colors when a design enters the production stage, regardless of the equipment used to produce the color. This system has been widely adopted by graphic designers and reproduction and printing houses. Pantone recommends that PMS Color Guides be purchased annually, as their inks become yellowish over time.[7] Color variance also occurs within editions based on the paper stock used (coated, matte or uncoated), while interedition color variance occurs when there are changes to the specific paper stock used.[8] Pantone colors are described by their allocated number (typically referred to as, for example, "PMS 130"). PMS colors are almost always used in branding and have even found their way into government legislation and military standards (to describe the colors of flags and seals).[13] In January 2003, the Scottish Parliament debated a petition (reference PE512) to refer to the blue in the Scottish flag as "Pantone 300". Countries such as Canada and South Korea and organizations such as the FIA have also chosen to refer to specific Pantone colors to use when producing flags. US states including Texas have set legislated PMS colors of their flags.[14] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantone ) Now it is true that an artist can adjust the amount of light or even use filters over the light source or different light bulbs all in order to alter how one observes the object in those altered lights. But note that the artist can deliberately and in a controlled manner take these actions to yield a result that the artist chooses. Now, altering the illumination on an object doesn’t change the object's shape or weight, hence why the classification schemes of primary and secondary were made up. We cannot alter an object's shape, weight, and those other so-called primary characteristics. So there is something different about the shape of an object and its color. However, there are still some attributes that are inherent in the make-up of an object that the illumination that impinges on it and is the means for the observe to see the object can be manipulated in a controlled and repeatable manner yield similar end results. Thus, the object has to have a fixed property that can so be perceived consistently on repeated specific illuminations. Thus, the object has to have those properties as part of its make. It is not merely in our minds. If color was not a property that could be controlled and made according to chosen specifications then so many industries would have ceased to exist. Therefore it is foolish to claim that color is a purely subjective property. All sorts of objects are made to have a certain color and thus it should be recognized that color is as real an attribute of some object as its shape. Objects have properties that give rise to consistent and agreeable descriptions between observers that is the very definition of an object's attributes or properties.
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A quick search of the ‘the history of the scientific method’ yielded this article in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#Emergence_of_inductive_experimental_method “There is was stated that the first uses of that method in Western civilization were done by the Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) who used experimentation to obtain the results in his Book of Optics (1021).” “The Persian scientist Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī introduced early scientific methods for several different fields of inquiry during the 1020s and 1030s. For example, in his treatise on mineralogy, Kitab al-Jawahir (Book of Precious Stones), al-Biruni is "the most exact of experimental scientists", while in the introduction to his study of India, he declares that "to execute our project, it has not been possible to follow the geometric method" and thus became one of the pioneers of comparative sociology in insisting on field experience and information He also developed an early experimental method for mechanics. Al-Biruni's methods resembled the modern scientific method, particularly in his emphasis on repeated experimentation. Biruni was concerned with how to conceptualize and prevent both systematic errors and observational biases, such as "errors caused by the use of small instruments and errors made by human observers." He argued that if instruments produce errors because of their imperfections or idiosyncratic qualities, then multiple observations must be taken, analyzed qualitatively, and on this basis, arrive at a "common-sense single value for the constant sought", whether an arithmetic mean or a "reliable estimate." In his scientific method, "universals came out of practical, experimental work" and "theories are formulated after discoveries", as with inductivism.” “In the On Demonstration section of The Book of Healing (1027), the Persian philosopher and scientist Avicenna (Ibn Sina) discussed philosophy of science and described an early scientific method of inquiry. He discussed Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and significantly diverged from it on several points. Avicenna discussed the issue of a proper procedure for scientific inquiry and the question of "How does one acquire the first principles of a science?" He asked how a scientist might find "the initial axioms or hypotheses of a deductive science without inferring them from some more basic premises?" He explained that the ideal situation is when one grasps that a "relation holds between the terms, which would allow for absolute, universal certainty." Avicenna added two further methods for finding a first principle: the ancient Aristotelian method of induction (istiqra), and the more recent method of examination and experimentation (tajriba). Avicenna criticized Aristotelian induction, arguing that "it does not lead to the absolute, universal, and certain premises that it purports to provide." In its place, he advocated "a method of experimentation as a means for scientific inquiry." Earlier, in The Canon of Medicine (1025), Avicenna was also the first to describe what is essentially methods of agreement, difference and concomitant variation which are critical to inductive logic and the scientific method. However, unlike his contemporary al-Biruni's scientific method, in which "universals came out of practical, experimental work" and "theories are formulated after discoveries", Avicenna developed a scientific procedure in which "general and universal questions came first and led to experimental work." Due to the differences between their methods, al-Biruni referred to himself as a mathematical scientist and to Avicenna as a philosopher, during a debate between the two scholars. Robert Grosseteste During the European Renaissance of the 12th century, ideas on scientific methodology, including Aristotle's empiricism and the experimental approaches of Alhazen and Avicenna, were introduced to medieval Europe via Latin translations of Arabic and Greek texts and commentaries. Robert Grosseteste's commentary on the Posterior Analytics places Grosseteste among the first scholastic thinkers in Europe to understand Aristotle's vision of the dual nature of scientific reasoning. Concluding from particular observations into a universal law, and then back again, from universal laws to prediction of particulars. Grosseteste called this "resolution and composition". Further, Grosseteste said that both paths should be verified through experimentation to verify the principles. Roger Bacon Roger Bacon was inspired by the writings of Grosseteste. In his account of a method, Bacon described a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification.[citation needed] He recorded the way he had conducted his experiments in precise detail, perhaps with the idea that others could reproduce and independently test his results. About 1256 he joined the Franciscan Order and became subject to the Franciscan statute forbidding Friars from publishing books or pamphlets without specific approval. After the accession of Pope Clement IV in 1265, the Pope granted Bacon a special commission to write to him on scientific matters. In eighteen months he completed three large treatises, the Opus Majus, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium which he sent to the Pope. William Whewell has called Opus Majus at once the Encyclopaedia and Organon of the 13th century. Part I (pp. 1–22) treats of the four causes of error: authority, custom, the opinion of the unskilled many, and the concealment of real ignorance by a pretense of knowledge. Part VI (pp. 445–477) treats of experimental science, domina omnium scientiarum. There are two methods of knowledge: the one by argument, the other by experience. Mere argument is never sufficient; it may decide a question, but gives no satisfaction or certainty to the mind, which can only be convinced by immediate inspection or intuition, which is what experience gives. Experimental science, which in the Opus Tertium (p. 46) is distinguished from the speculative sciences and the operative arts, is said to have three great prerogatives over all sciences: It verifies their conclusions by direct experiment; It discovers truths which they could never reach; It investigates the secrets of nature, and opens to us a knowledge of past and future. Roger Bacon illustrated his method by an investigation into the nature and cause of the rainbow, as a specimen of inductive research.” Therefore it seems that the scholar's Ibn al-Haytham (1021), Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (1020-1020), and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (1025, 1027) were the first to create the concept of this methodology and did it before Francis Bacon (1256) laid out that methodology. My old textbooks referred to Francis Bacon as the ‘first to establish the scientific methodology. So we can now say that the scientific method is around one thousand years old, at least as far as the records for Western civilization. Nowadays almost all of us own and use such devices as radios, televisions, computers, and smartphones. Most of us own or have ridden in an automobile or a bus, or a train, and perhaps even an airplane. These modern-day marvels are treated as ordinary objects and are taken for granted without a moment’s hesitation. They are just accepted as part of the common stuff of the world we live in as ordinary as plants, trees, clouds, the sun in the sky, cats, and dogs. Yet there are many people who use those technological devices without questioning them – TV, radios, cars, smartphones, and computers. Yet there are many people who don’t accept the idea of global warming. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-views-on-climate-and-energy/ From that essay: “Overall, about half of Americans (49%) say human activity contributes a great deal to climate change, and another 30% say human actions have some role in climate change. Two-in-ten (20%) believe human activity plays not too much or no role at all in climate change.” So what are we to make of this? What do we say to people who doubt the reality, the truth of climate change? We can say that they are fools. That they are ignorant of how things work. The reason we have cars, trains, TVs, radios, computers, and smartphones is that they came about through the use of the one thousand-year-old scientific method. Hundreds, if not thousands of scientists and technicians used that method to establish how to make those devices. All of them are not dropped from the heaven by fairies or elves or angels or God. All of those things were made by people who learned how to do that by making use of that thousand-year-old scientific method. If those doubters use a car or a computer they can only do so because of the work of scientists using the scientific method. These doubters are ignorant fools, by definition of that term. They are someone who is ignorant of how human technology came to be made. And they are fools when they accept the one – the technology that gave us smartphones but deny the other, global warming – when the same methods were used by scientists to build and prove them both. Only an ignorant fool would use a computer that only came into existence because of the scientific method being applied and then doubts it when that same community of scientists uses the same methods to demonstrate the reality of global warming. A person is an ignorant fool who doesn’t understand how things came to be and denies the results of scientific studies that show how we humans are changing for the worse our climate. The very thing that gives them the lies that they read or listen to on their computer or smartphone by so-called ‘reporters’, ‘experts’ or talk show and blog posters who offer up ‘evidence’ against global warming. Those people who are offering up so-called evidence against global warming are doing it on those machines that only came about by the same methods that the scientists are using to prove global warming. If global warming wasn’t real – then there would not exist cars, trains, TV, radios, smartphones, and computers. Since those technological devices do exist that proves that the scientific method works and therefore proves that there is global warming. The same methods that gave us those technological devices give us the experimental results that prove global warming. Peter Gunn 1958 - 1961 TV series.
It was a stylish 'film noir'-ish half hour detective series created and directed by Blake Edwards. It turned black & white filming into a high art form of slick sophistication unmatched then and certainly still unmatched for timeless visual beauty of cool sophistication. A simple idea of the rich man-about-town private eye played straight and effortlessly by Craig Stevens. It harkens back to another stylish and sophisticated tv series, Have Gun-Will Travel. This detective doesn't have the witty patter of Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlow, nor the world-weary tough guy persona of Dashiell Hammet's Sam Spade. Peter Gunn is just a suave guy in expensive tailored suits with crisp white cuff linked shirts, ebony polished shoes, who stand out by not wearing a fedora, yet manages to fit in with everyone, from Hobos, to Beats, to Jazz musicians, to his wealthy clientele. He never seems out of place in his expensive suits wherever he goes, and all feel comfortable with him as his open dead pan mirror-like persona puts everyone at ease since they see themselves reflected in his engaging pleasant, good looks. Steven’s Peter Gunn is the perfect urbane trench coated WASP PI who finds the perfect foil in the Jewish world-weary Lt. Jacoby police officer of the 13th precinct played by the fedora and trench coat wearing Herschel Bernardi. The stories were all tight and straight forward, packed with as much intrigue and surprises as can be fitted into a mere 25 minutes and still give time to indulge in a cool Jazz pieces often song by the lush sultry sounds of the actress Lola Albright, playing Edie Hart, his Jazz club singing lady love. The show was both hip and cool, and just barely managed to skirt the razor's edge precipice to avoid falling into parody. Then there is the hypnotic addictive music - cool hip original Jazz produced by Henry Mancini. The opening theme is relentlessly transportive and unforgettable. It was played over abstract painted art sequence of the opening credits that lets you know that this is going to be a dark journey into a classic period piece of stylish art. It remains must see entertainment, too good to be believed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD1fsV0817g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lztZMFzl9fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIKSQT-oXfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbvy2R0LLrc 67omertawrote: Recorded on August 26, 1977 at the Olympic Stadium, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, album released in 1979. Similar to most live albums, In Concert featured fan favorites of previously released material. However, "Peter Gunn", ELP's take on the classic TV themed song, was never published on any of their other albums (a slightly edited version of this live recording was included in the compilation The Best of Emerson, Lake & Palmer of 1980 and published in certain countries). ELP often opened with this song during the Works Volume 2 tour. The group hired an orchestra of 70 musicians for some concerts on this tour, but ultimately had to fire the orchestra due to budget constraints that almost bankrupted the group. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051301/ Kinescope Kabuki 25 April 2004 | by rrichr But in terms of pure style, no TV series of that time, of any genre, could match the half-hour crime drama Peter Gunn, a production so stylized and stylistically detailed, and so measured, that it almost resembled Japanese Kabuki. Every aspect of this Blake Edwards-produced series was meticulously detailed and managed, from the near-blank style of its acting to even the visuals that preceded and terminated breaks for commercials. In fact, it was the pre-commercial segue that became my favorite. In the sequence, a musical G-clef unwound itself and morphed into a Giacommeti-like human figure, all against a slowly-arpeggiated, extremely cool jazz guitar chord. This very slick sequence got past me the first time around, when the show was in its network run and I was too young to really appreciate it. But years later, when the series was in local syndication and airing at midnight, I stayed up just to watch and listen to it. It was that cool. Most Peter Gunn episodes were cut from a similar template: the caper to be addressed transpired in a pre-credit sequence (Peter Gunn was one of the first shows to jump directly to story before rolling opening creds.) Then Craig Steven's almost impossibly urbane private eye, Peter Gunn, would step onto the case, always bending the law just enough to keep Herschel Bernardi's way dour NYPD detective, Lt. Jacobi, unsure of whom to arrest first: Gunn or the perps in question. The often-repeated sight of Jacobi arriving on the scene, snub .38 drawn, ready to arrest the suspect, only to find Gunn already there and in control, never failed to amuse. When Gunn was not effortlessly staying two steps ahead of Jacobi, he was lizarding at Mother's, a waterfront jazz club, and getting his flirt on with its sultry headlining singer, blonde neutron bombshell Edie Hart, played by Lola Albright, a type of lady that might be defined as Marilyn Monroe's far more experienced sister. The show's sense of cool was almost too much, but not quite, a fact that made it eminently watchable then, and has allowed it to live on even now in syndication. Underpinning and significantly defining the series was Henry Mancini's superb music. Mancini passed away in the mid 90's and is just now getting his due, including a postage stamp in his memory. His Peter Gunn theme is still being covered today but it was his incidental music for the series that I loved best, especially the stuff that played as the pre-credit story opened. Mancini took the then-popular West Coast, cool jazz sound and further iced it down, doing things like blending flute and tremoloed vibraphones to sustain a menacing, ever-darkening cloud behind the plot. Mancini was a master of all moods, which he crafted with lush harmonies and gliding melodies (The ageless Days of Wine and Roses and Moon River are his; lyrics by Johnny Mercer.) Mancini was very prolific and did many great things that sort of slid by while no one was really looking, probably because he never tried to acquire the spotlight himself, as himself. He mainly let his work do the walking and talking. His soundtrack to the movie Hatari (an intermittently very entertaining action flick with John Wayne as an African big game capture expert) remains worthy and remarkable to this day. As a freshman at the University of Idaho, I watched Mancini guest-conduct the university orchestra; the Maestro forbearing graciously as his `Baby Elephant Walk', an incidental piece from the Hatari soundtrack that became an international hit, was butchered by the inept flute section. It was heart-rending. Mancini also did the music for another similar but unsuccessful TV series, Mr. Lucky, based on the Cary Grant movie character from the mid-forties. Mr. Lucky died fairly quickly, but its theme music, featuring the squishiest, most liquid Hammond organ voice ever recorded, lives on, in my memory at least. For more go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gunn IN DEFENSE OF MORAL LIBERALISM John Ryder Széchenyi István University jryder6682@gmail.com
ABSTRACT: Though it is much maligned, liberalism remains a vital component of any viable political and social condition. This claim can be defended, though, only once the confusions concerning the meanings of liberalism are resolved. This can be done by considering the primary contemporary challenges to liberalism, of which there are five: populist nationalism, authoritarianism, elitism, traditionalism, and moral absolutism. Each of these, though in differing ways and some more than others, are sources of illiberalism. To appreciate the meaning and import of what is here called moral liberalism, it is valuable to clarify the nature of the challenges to it and the reasons we have to prefer moral liberalism over any of its illiberal alternatives. In the end, moral liberalism may serve as a viable grounding for contemporary societies and states only in so far as it rests, not on commonly held ideas or consensus, but on the recognition of the many interests that members of groups and societies hold in common. Keywords: liberalism, illiberalism, elitism, traditionalism, authoritarianism, populism, It is with this end of unifying the sciences of the mind with social life that the pragmatists began their attempts to define ‘belief’. Adopting a developmental perspective, Bain observed that mammals are born in action: sucking, swallowing, rooting, and so on. But belief does not guide these initial actions until some interruption or obstacle prevents instinctive behavior from serving an animal’s need for nourishment, security, and affection. Because of inevitable environmental irregularities, an animal must draw on sensorimotor memories and expectations to gain control over its initial attempts to move and feed. As these memories and expectations are representations of its past and future actions and observations, they do ‘reference’ a time beyond that at which they occur. Memories and expectations are therefore an animal’s most basic beliefs. Human minds are indeed variations on this theme.
[Referencing Alexander Bain, Mental and Moral Science, Part 1: Psychology and History of Philosophy. Longmans & Green, 1872 and his Mind and Body, 2nd ed. Henry S. King and Co., 1872.] From : Belief: A Pragmatic Picture: A Precis by Aaron Zimmerman, William James Studies, v. 16, no. 1, Fall 2020, pg. 37 What about those political polls?
Are they worthless? Can they predict the election outcome? Why are the results of this year’s election not like the outcome as the polls were showing before the election tallies? This same scenario happened in 2016 – the polls pre-election said one thing and the actual voting came out differently – what is going on? Well, to begin with – you have to consider what a poll is and is not. A poll, done right, is simply a measure of the present time. It is a record of who they were talking to at the time that they were talking to them. That’s it. Nothing else. Imagine taking your temperature today at noon. Now, does that have any predictive value? Well, it might. You could say that IF nothing significantly changes for you then your temperature at noon will be a prediction of your temperature for 6 pm that same day. However, does that tell you anything about your temperature at noon the next day? Or noon the next week? The next month? You should by now be getting the idea. A poll, just like taking your temperature, is only telling you accurately about the present and only is useful to predict the future in a short window of time and it is only useful IF nothing significant changes. Change and the possibility of change is one of the keys for the failure of prediction. A poll could get it right…for the population that it did poll. But, it won’t tell you much about the people who didn’t respond to the poll. They are significant because you have to ask who were they and why didn’t they respond? As well as ask who did respond and why did they? The poll only tells you who responded and what they were thinking at that moment in time. It’s predictive value dimensions over time – since people have free will! They can change their minds and make new decisions. That’s a good thing. People are not Newtonian billiard balls. 100% determinism is not possible with people – they can change and make changes over time. A poll is a useful tool if you understand what it is. It tells you that x group of people, within that specific demographic of people who did respond, how they were willing to tell a pollster about their thinking at that moment in time. That’s all it can tell you. It may, assuming it was done as accurately as possible, tell you accurately about that moment in time for that specific group of people. It is useful if you want to reach that group of people and persuade them. If the poll is going your candidate’s way, then what you are doing in reaching them is working. If the poll is not going your candidate’s way, then what you are doing is not working and guess what? You had better do something differently! That change that you make on behalf of the candidate will not invalidate that poll. Since the poll’s accuracy was in the past. It doesn’t guarantee any future event. You can hope it will convince those people to choose for your candidate. The only way you can tell if it is working is… with another poll! That is the actual use of a poll. Casting your ballot is the ultimate and the final poll! It is a measure of what you were thinking and feeling at the time you cast that ballot. Casting and counting those votes is just like taking a huge poll! It accurately measures the people who voted. It doesn’t measure much of anything about all the people who didn’t vote. So even the election results are a sample poll of only the opinion of those who voted on the day they voted. You must have heard of the idea of ‘buyer’s remorse’, right? Tell me, have you ever cast your vote and then regretted that decision months or years later? See, even your own vote doesn’t predicate with 100% accuracy how you will think and feel years later. A poll is an act of taking the temperature of a specific demographic group at a specific moment in time. It has little value to tell you the outcome for even that exact group of people in the first poll about their decision tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Things don’t stay the same – things change and thus people can change. The good news is – they have free will and they do indeed utilize that free will. Even if you don’t like it or don’t think they do. If you don’t plan on their ability to change and choose – the mistake is yours and not theirs. So, polls give you a rough idea of a very specific demographic’s temperature at the time of the taking of the poll. If you use it to judge the future outcome of an event months later, well then, the fault is with you. Not the poll. Remember your temperature today doesn’t tell you much about what your temperature will be in three months. John Stuart Mill and the origins of the Libertarian philosophy
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Gary Jaron's musings.
In my High School Art Department someone had made an ornate sign on hung it on the wall that read: 'Ignore this sign completely.' A paradox couched in sarcasm and irony. This blog is for random musings on anything and everything that comes into my head. Archives
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