I mostly agree, and that’s why I said the results were still interesting. In fact, both numbers should be lower bounds; it says at least that 33% of conservatives are willing to tell surveyors they’d support violence. I would crowdfund a study similarly phrased so that left-wing respondents can say yes; I could imagine it coming up with 15%, 40%, 30%, but I don’t really know and I think I would have probably undershot it a few days ago. If the left and the right are equally bellacostic, then that would mean we’d expect a third of the country to support violence, not a fifth.
Perhaps I’m being partial, but I don’t think I’m making an isolated demand for rigor. It’s not a general critique of the methods of scientific polling as much as punching in the effects of the wind. If you had said “I see Facebook posts by conservatives making similar threats all the time’ I wouldn’t have had a problem with that. On the other hand, if I had said something like “well, you need a meta-analysis of different results by different polling companies before you can make that claim”, then that would of course be unfair because I’d have no a priori expectation that the further evidence would move away from the already established conclusion. In this case however we do have the ability to conclude that the study is biased based on mechanical details, so we can and should adjust our GPS coordinates.
I do, by the way, totally believe conservatives on the whole are more willing to use violence, mostly because they have a self image as political underdogs who have been shut out of large institutions like Hollywood/News media/Education by elites and have “no other option”. I’m more scared of communists because I think their extremists are more capable, and that might reflect a bias on my part.
I mostly agree, and that’s why I said the results were still interesting. In fact, both numbers should be lower bounds; it says at least that 33% of conservatives are willing to tell surveyors they’d support violence. I would crowdfund a study similarly phrased so that left-wing respondents can say yes; I could imagine it coming up with 15%, 40%, 30%, but I don’t really know and I think I would have probably undershot it a few days ago. If the left and the right are equally bellacostic, then that would mean we’d expect a third of the country to support violence, not a fifth.
Perhaps I’m being partial, but I don’t think I’m making an isolated demand for rigor. It’s not a general critique of the methods of scientific polling as much as punching in the effects of the wind. If you had said “I see Facebook posts by conservatives making similar threats all the time’ I wouldn’t have had a problem with that. On the other hand, if I had said something like “well, you need a meta-analysis of different results by different polling companies before you can make that claim”, then that would of course be unfair because I’d have no a priori expectation that the further evidence would move away from the already established conclusion. In this case however we do have the ability to conclude that the study is biased based on mechanical details, so we can and should adjust our GPS coordinates.
I do, by the way, totally believe conservatives on the whole are more willing to use violence, mostly because they have a self image as political underdogs who have been shut out of large institutions like Hollywood/News media/Education by elites and have “no other option”. I’m more scared of communists because I think their extremists are more capable, and that might reflect a bias on my part.