This is the last article in our series on polling. Polls have become a quintessential example of “inside the box” thinking. We know how to do them, so we depend on them instead of inventing something better.
If we didn’t have polling, reporters would have to actually ask many people what they think about an issue. In the article criticizing their questions, we saw that the way simple questions on nuclear power were asked, the government thinks they know what people want. But people were never polled about safer kinds of nuclear plants. Nor were people asked about reactors that can consume the dangerous radioactive waste from today’s light water reactors.
Due to their poor design and widespread use, polls actually prevent society from being better informed and making good decisions.
If reporters had to actually ask people instead of consulting polls, they would ask a wider variety of questions. They’d certainly run into some people who knew about alternatives.
By taking a limited method of finding out information and standardizing it, we’ve limited ourselves to what it can provide us. Worse, by touting its solid mathematical foundation, we’ve put it into a category of sacredness that protects us from questioning its limits.
There have been efforts to invent something better, but they’re not widespread. A few companies are analyzing what people post on different types of social media to try to figure out what we want. Others are trying to bring down the cost of polling by popping up questions at the bottom of articles, or letting you tweet an answer.
But as a society, our mythology says surveys tell us valuable information. The problems with polling are not part of popular culture.
We rely on polls to know ourselves as a society. But polls convey little information and they’re often inaccurate. So we try to change society without really knowing the society we’re trying to change. It makes sense that our efforts to change have so little success.
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