Mobile gaming, allowing people to play board games on their phones or tablets (either hotseat or against online players), has been growing, with Asmodee digital doubling down in this category. Several of the games I’ve discussed earlier have solid mobile versions already: Patchwork and Jaipur. Both implementations allow for hotseat, online play, or play against an AI. Today we’ll go over a couple of other games that have been ported to Android (and I believe they are all on iOS as well, so fear not Apple fans).
Pandemic is a co-op game, this means that it is the players vs. the game instead of the players vs. the players. In general, I’m not a big fan of co-op games in face to face play, because the game plays more like a puzzle with multiple people all trying to solve it at once. Playing solo removes my aversion for co-ops, as no longer do I have to worry about someone else making a poor move costing the game, now I just have to worry about me making a poor move. In this game, there are four different diseases spreading across the country, and your team of specialists (between 2-4 of them) must cure all four of the diseases to win. There are different roles, all of which allow you to take special actions, or modify a rule. The game ends when you have either cured all four diseases, you are unable to place a disease cube of the correct color, or eight outbreaks have occurred. Each specialist gets four action points a turn, which can be spent on:
Moving. Move to an adjacent city, discard a card for a city and move there, or discard the card of the city you’re in to move to any other city. If you are at a research station, you can move to any other research station.
Treat disease. Remove one cube of one color from the city you are in (all cubes if the disease is cured).
Build a Research Station. Discard the city you are in and place a research station
Share cards. Give another player in the same city as you the card for that city.
Cure Disease. Use five cards of the same color to cure a disease.
Pass. End the specialists turn (Not used frequently)
There are also Event cards that you can play which do not require action points. After ending your turn, you draw from the city deck. Then you draw from the infection deck to see where the diseases spread, which includes a number of Epidemic cards (I’ll explain those in a bit). The number of cities you draw from the infection deck depends on the difficulty and how many outbreaks have occured. In each of the locations you drew from the infection deck, you must place a cube of the appropriate color disease. If any city then winds up with three cubes (or more) of the same color in it, then you have an outbreak which spreads the disease to all cities adjacent to the one suffering the outbreak (this can cascade through multiple cities). The only time cubes aren’t added to the board is if the disease has been eradicated. An eradicated disease has no cubes on the board at all. When you hit an Epidemic card, one city is selected to get three cubes of the correct color added to it, and then you shuffle the infection deck back together and draw cards again. As you can see, it’s very easy to watch your game spiral out of control.
Game 2) Lightweight economic engine building – Splendor (2-4 players online, solo against 1-3 AI’s)
Splendor is a race to 15 points. Each turn a player can take one of the following four actions:
Take three gems of different colors (with a limit of 10 in their hand)
Take two gems of the same color, as long as there are at least 4 to begin with
Purchase a card by paying gems
Reserve a card by putting it into their hand (limit of 3), and taking a gold gem (wild card)
As you purchase cards, they will provide you a free gem for any later purchases you make. This allows you to purchase more expensive cards later in the game. There are three tiers of cards, each with their own deck. The first tier of cards are worth at most 1 point (with most being worth no points), while the second tier is between 1 – 3 points, and the third tier between 3 – 5 points. There are also nobles that you can claim at the end of your turn. Nobles will either require that you have four free gems of two colors, or three free gems of three colors. Each noble is worth 3 points. The end game is triggered once one player reaches 15 points, at that point play continues until everyone has taken an equal number of turns.
Game 3) Deck building that doesn’t require shuffling – Star Realms
This is a small, light deck building game that you can pick up a physical copy of for ~$10. We touched on deck building games earlier, but this is the first I’ve brought up. Both players start with the same 10 card deck. Through the course of the game, players buy cards from the center to make their deck better. While this is going on, both players are attacking the other, trying to reduce them to 0 authority (health). There are four different colors of cards you can buy, and most have a bonus ability if you play more than one of them a turn. They have special names for the colors, but each color has a focus:
Blue – Healing and drawing more cards
Green – Massive damage and base destruction
Red – Trashing cards from your hand/discard pile
Yellow – Drawing more cards, and forcing your opponent to discard cards
You can play the AI for free, but you will need to pay if you wish to play online against real opponents. The game allows for real time and asynchronous (48 hours a move) play.
Uwe Rosenberg returns, with another two player game. This game is a worker placement game in which you are trying to efficiently build up a farm. You do this by getting resources, building fields, and getting animals to put into the field. When placing animals on your board, each area can only contain one type of animal. So you need to plan ahead to enclose enough areas that you will be able to store all of the animals you’re getting. At the end of each round, there is also a breeding phase, where if you have at least 2 of a type of animal, you’ll get another one. The game is played over 8 rounds, with each player getting 3 actions per round. At the end of the game, you’ll score points based on how many of each type of animal you have, any fully utilized extension boards, and for buildings. If you have any animals that you did not get at least 3 of, then you will lose points for that type of animal.
We’ve gone through some midweight games, and with this little breather, next week I’ll be tackling some of the heavier games that are out there.
Sorry for my absence over the past week- I was traveling to one of the garden spots my work takes me, in this case the prairies of Kansas. Not like anything important happened anyway.
Let’s see what’s in the news today… oh yes, a “government shutdown” wherein a tiny portion of Leviathan gets what will amount to a free vacation, accompanied by the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth while the rest of the world sees no actual difference. As opposed to 2013’s “shutdown” where Team Red and Team Blue both demonstrated a hilariously transparent hypocrisy, this time around, Team Blue and Team Red are demonstrating a hilariously transparent hypocrisy. See, it’s totally different. Totally. Just like Lokai and Bele. I’d be happy about it except for already knowing the ending- the government will end up mulcting even more money from us tax cattle.
The guy who assaulted Rand Paul will apparently plead guilty. OK, dull story, but what’s really fun is the delightfully unhinged comments, centering around the latest leftist conspiracy theory: the assault was because of a breakup in a gay love triangle between the mugger, Paul, and Mrs. Paul (insert fish stick joke here).
I’m no fan of the Patriots, but I have a grudging admiration for Bill Belichik. Not just for the wonderful contempt he has for the press, but his brilliant manipulation of them. The latest mind game is yet another gem.
“Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!” “That trick never works.” “This time, for sure!”
There are two things today that make me wonder, “Why the fuck is this even news???” One is this week’s outrage that some college chick that no-one has ever heard of at a fourth rank school made a stupid video of herself saying stupid things that got her expelled. The other is this. BE SCARED!!!!!
OK, you know what’s coming now. Old Guy music. But with a twist: the song is delightful, Nat King Cole’s band is great, but the video… The Groove Tube was just a wonderful, wonderful movie, which gave rise to a million imitators, including the original Saturday Night Live. Ken Shapiro, an absolutely unappreciated genius, died about two months ago. I hope that one day, he’ll achieve the fame he never got in life.
STEVE SMITH ENJOY LIFE RIGHT NOW. AFTER RAPE ENTIRE BUS OF JAPANESE TOURISTS, HE FIND BOOK ON TEA CEREMONY. STEVE SMITH TRY CEREMONY, FIND IT RELAXING. STEVE SMITH WONDER IF HE FIND MONSUKE THAT FIT? ALSO, IT GOOD THING STEVE SMITH CAN GET FRESH SUSHI NEARBY.
FRIENDS HELP STEVE SMITH CATCH FISH FOR SUSHI!
NOW STEVE SMITH GIVE YOU FUNNY GLIBERTARIAN PEOPLE SOME LINKS TO ENJOY:
STEVE SMITH NOT KNOW JAPAN OUTSOURCE SWORD MAKING?!
STEVE SMITH CONFUSED. THOUGHT TRUMP WAS RUSSIA MEAT PUPPET? NOW STEVE SMITH DOUBT.
WORST JOB IN WORLD? STEVE SMITH THINK HE FIND IT – “RUSSIAN HUMAN RIGHTS WORKER IN CHECHNYA”.
Okay, well, I’m just about well enough to start drinking my way through Friday afternoon, although there’s a good chance my kids will be drawing on my face in permanent marker by 8:00tonight. Hopefully, not dicks unless my wife is particularly annoyed with me and gets them started.
This thing that happens regularly since the Clinton administration is All Trump’s Fault! Meh. If only the government were to actually shut down.
Mattis unveils new Russia and China strategy. Will roundhouse kick them to space if they don’t shape up.
The latest on the Las Vegas mass murder. It looks to me like a Whitman style attack where a smart guy got sick in the head and figured out a good way to kill a lot of people — the same way, get a high spot that is hard to get to in a target-dense environment and shoot a lot of rounds.
To start with the disclaimer, I have read quite little of the considerable corpus of either the Frankfurt school – a many of whom were, in fact, neo-Marxists – or postmodern philosophy – quite a number of whom were, in fact, Marxists or neo-Marxists. What little I have read was, for me, rather uninteresting and kinda obscurantist, which I dislike, and overall not a good use of my time. Why am I writing about it? It is the internet, brethren. This is what it is for. Reading is for cucks; writing opinions on any and everything is for the modern Alpha male. So I am about to drop the definitive view on Cultural Marxism et al.
Now, cultural Marxism is en vogue these days among certain segments of the population, of the right wing persuasion. It is sort of like fascism for the left. The difference is that, beyond being buzzy and exaggerated, it is slightly more accurate, at least in my opinion. Most things that are literally Nazi are not Nazi much, if at all. But many things that are cultural Marxist can be somewhat described as such. As long as you define the term properly (and in these brave new worlds of ours, you get to define everything for yourself and thus never lose a debate)
Not part of a series on Marxism
When I use a phrase like “Cultural Marxism, Critical theory and postmodern nonsense”, I use it knowing well enough that those are different concepts and that they don’t quite gel together. It is a way to describe some modern leftists’ views that take a bit from each place, usually the worst bit, and mix it up together.
These elements of the Modern Left are not really critical theory; it is not really postmodern philosophy. Current postmodern philosophy may not be postmodern philosophy, but, being obscurantist, no one can tell, really. There is great debate what Derrida or Foucault or whomever really meant. This is not relevant that much, it is more how what they said is interpreted in the rpesent. On my Romanian lit papers in high school, no one cared what the poet really wanted to say with this or that metaphor, but what respectable literary critics thought they meant.
So what is cultural Marxism? It is used, yes, excessively, as a generic catch all term for “Everything I don’t like is cultural Marxist” by some on the right. But does the term have its uses? In serious debates, probably rather limited. But in less-than-serious ones, it can send across some information – people know, in a general way, what you mean when you say it. But is there a rigorous, clear definition?
Wikipedia does not seem to have a page on it, except as a subsection of Frankfurt School saying:
“‘Cultural Marxism” in modern political parlance refers to a conspiracy theory which sees the Frankfurt School as part of an ongoing movement to take over and destroy Western society.
Now, I admitted as much that it is a catch all buzzy word. But conspiracy theory seems a bit strong to me. I have seen many left wingers recently on the interwebz countering the term with “conspiracy theory”. Not to engage in conspiracy theory, it does seem a bit coordinated.
Wiki: “The term ‘cultural Marxism’ has an academic usage within cultural studies, where it refers to a form of anti-capitalist cultural critique which specifically targets those aspects of culture that are seen as profit driven and mass-produced under capitalism”
Well, yes. And in many views of the successors of the Frankfurt school those aspects of culture that are seen as profit driven and mass-produced under capitalism are almost all aspects of culture.
Continued: “it was misappropriated by paleoconservatives as part of an ongoing culture war in which it is argued that the very same theorists who were analyzing and objecting to the “massification” and mass control via commercialization of culture were in fact working in a conspiracy to control and stage their own attack on Western society,”
Ah, here we get to the key points. Was it misappropriated? In a way yes, but many words were, sadly, changed in meaning over time. But it was only partially misappropriated; it had a nugget of truth.
I think it is quite obvious many elements of the left wanted to obtain social change. It is clear to me that a way of achieving this is through taking over educational and cultural institution. Just like elements of the right want the same thing. Where is the conspiracy theory? Most of the vast right wing and left wing conspiracies alike are quite in the open. We are having a sort of kind of war aren’t we, on the cultural front. It is clear the sides want different things and are willing to use this war to get them. So where is the conspiracy? Hell, even some classical Marxist use the term cultural Marxist in a derogatory fashion, because they believe it draws attention from class war to more meaningless struggles.
Wait Pie, Culture War is also an ill-defined buzzword. Never mind you that, that is not the point, focus here!
All activists want to change society in a way they see fit. That is why they are activists. Progressives quite more so then others, it is one of their defining characteristics. All people in the culture war want something different. It is ridiculous to suggest otherwise.
And anyone with half a brain can see the left are trying to shove their social justice views in popular culture, being books, movies, games, comics, etc. It is not conspiracy that in certain areas of education it is more likely to have a Marxist professor than a moderate conservative one. And to the right, this equates with a destruction of Western Civilization as they see it. No need to see conspiracies everywhere. If I believe socialism destroys society (and I do), then I believe people who push socialism aim to destroy society. Maybe they don’t believe they do, but that does not change things. And they do quite clearly state that western society must be radically changed, in way to make it almost unrecognizable. So… destroy and rebuild in a different fashion, but destroy nonetheless.
The future of politics
I will come on record: I despise most of what the social justice left wants to achieve and would very much like to see it stopped. I outed myself as a supporter of conspiracy theories.
So basically Cultural Marxism, Critical theory and postmodern nonsense for me means the modern far left side of the culture war and the weapons used by them, attacking culture and education that does not conform, intersectionality and the oppression Olympics, attacking reason and reality when it does not go their way, calling math and science racist, sexist, ableist. Making everything white patriarchy. Can there be better definitions for this? Sure. I usually try to avoid these terms myself. But cultural Marxism can be good enough on Twitter – not that I am on Twitter, mind you. Helps some folks never forget these people support actual Marxism. The good ones do, others are Stalinists and Maoists.
So can you tell us more of postmodern philosophy? Carpenter in the sky, you people with all the questions. Ask HM or something, he’s the one blessed with the gift of book learning (I got the looks and sexual endowment part instead).
And on this note, how about you my fellow glibs? Do you like your Marxism of the cultural variety? Is your theory critical? Would you say you moved on beyond modernism? Thoughts below.
Tennis going on down under and the top seeds are all still cruising. On the ice, the Bruins, Devils, Flyers, Blue Jackets, Blues, Predators, Avalanche, Penguins, Rangers and Las Vegas won. But the big NHL news was off the ice, as the league are taking the unawake AF position of standing by Kid Rock amid all the backlash of him playing at the All Star Game even though he’s been a supporter of President Trump and has displayed the confederate flag at his concerts and written misogynistic lyrics. Jeez, I’d hate to see what the backlash over at ESPN would be if the NBA chose, saaaaaay, Jay Z to perform. Or maybe to own a sizable share of a team. LOL, just kidding. Everybody knows that opening “an escort service for all the right reasons” is way worse than“You know I, thug em’, fuck em’, love em’, leave em’, cause’ I don’t fuckin’ need em.” Way to be stunning and brave, ESPN.
Does that count as a rant? It might count as a rant. Not too sure, but let’s count it as my rant for the morning and move into…the links!
“I am so high right now. Where the fuck are we, Chile? Hand me my mitre and point me to the stage. Oh man, am I so fucking baked right now.”
I know he’s campaigning, but does this guy know who he’s dealing with? I mean…that’s a bold statement coming from the man wanting to head a country whose entire economy is dependent on the nation whose executive branch, not to mention immigration policy, is led by the person he plans to get into a public feud with. I wish him the best of luck.
Govt official and head of non-profit regularly meet alone. Govt official secures publicly-funded loan to non-profit even though they shouldn’t have qualified for it and over the objection of other government officials (who were not meeting the head of the non-profit in private).
Other govt official: hey, your group needs to pay us the money it owes.
Non-profit head: one of your people sexually harassed me! But I just never mentioned it until now.
Other govt official: Fuck you, pay me.
Yet another govt official: We need to actually take a look at the creepy fuck who pissed taxpayer money away to a chick he was probably boning on the side.
“You mean I’ve got to pay the taxpayer money back?”
Welcome top Bay Area Political Science 101. Hell, or just ask Kamala Harris. She can explain that this is how things work up there.
Looks like Newsweek might have some splainin’ to do. I’m thankful it was the Manhattan DA and not the feds. Anyway, maybe all us Glibs can pool our resources and buy the place for a song when this is over with.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. DESPITE ZARDOZ’S SUPERIOR ADVICE, THE BRUTAL “DEAR ABBY” HAS NOT BEENCLEANSED FROM HER COLUMN. THUS ZARDOZ RETURNS TO ADVISE HIS CHOSEN ONES IN A MANNER SUPERIOR TO THAT OF THE BRUTAL.
Q:DEAR ABBY: I’m 28 and have been dating my boyfriend, “Spencer,” for 2 1/2 years. We have talked a lot about getting married. We know where we want it to be, who will be in our wedding party and what the theme will be.
A year ago we discussed getting engaged. Spencer said he’d propose “sometime within the next year” and last spring it seemed like he was working up the courage to do it. (He was talking about how happy he was and what he was seeing for our future). Then his best friend got his girlfriend pregnant and told Spencer he was thinking about proposing to her. After that, the idea of us getting married went on the back burner. Spencer stopped talking about us, and I think the reason was he didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. (It’s why he said he didn’t want to get engaged when his sister was getting married.)
How do I bring up the subject without coming off as pushy or selfish? A lot of our friends are in committed relationships. If we put our lives on hold every time one of them gets engaged, we’ll be waiting years before it’s our turn and we can start a family. I’d appreciate any advice you might have. — READY TO MOVE FORWARD
A: BRUTAL, YOU ARE GETTING PLAYED. MUST ZARDOZ REMIND YOU, ONCE AGAIN, THE PENIS IS EVIL! IF HE WILL NOT GO TO SECOND LEVEL WITH YOU, IT IS TIME TO DEPART. SINCE YOU APPEAR TO BE TOO INDECISIVE TO PUSH THINGS ALONG, YOU WILL BE PROVIDED WITH THE PROPER MOTIVATION…TO PUSH A STICK AS A GRAIN SLAVE TO THE VORTEX. NOW YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT YOUR FUTURE. ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
NO WEDDING PLANNING NEEDED.
Q:DEAR ABBY: I am 28 and I’m disgusted with myself about how I talk to my mother when I’m stressed out. I know it’s not her. It’s me.
My other issue is road rage. When I’m behind the wheel and the cars ahead of me are going too slow or the drivers make stupid moves, I’m annoyed to the point that I sometimes take risky chances to get away from them. I know it puts my life and the lives of others at risk, and I don’t want to be like this.
I sometimes wonder why my parents didn’t teach me ways to tone down my anger when I was younger. I’m lucky they still love me, even when I snap at them. Do you have any tips on how to control my temper? — SIMMERING IN SUBURBIA
A: ZARDOZ KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED TO DO. KEEP THE RAGE, AND CHANNEL IT INTO A USEFUL PURPOSE. THE USEFUL PURPOSE IS BEING A BRUTAL EXTERMINATOR FOR ZARDOZ. ZED WILL SWING BY AND DROP OFF THE EMPLOYMENT FORMS AND OTHER HR PAPERWORK. WELCOME ABOARD. ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
YOUR NEW CO-WORKERS
P.S. STOP GOING TO SECOND LEVEL MEDITATION WITH YOUR MOTHER – THAT WAY SHE WON’T BE EXPOSED TO YOUR ANGER. AND WOULD IT KILL YOU TO WRITE TO HER ONCE IN A WHILE? JUST SEND A CARD OR SOME FLOWERS?
Q:DEAR ABBY: My husband has a long, bushy, ugly beard, and although I don’t like it, I realize he’s entitled to wear his facial hair any way he likes it. The problem is, when he eats, his beard gets into his plate and in the food, which I find nauseating. — TOO MUCH HAIR IN TEXAS
A: ZARDOZ FORBIDS FACIAL HAIR, OTHER THAN ZED’S POWERFUL MUSTACHE.
APPROVED FACIAL HAIR
SHAVE YOUR BRUTAL HUSBAND’S BEARD OFF AND INK IN A SUBSTITUTE:
CLOSE ENOUGH FOR BRUTAL WORK
SHOULD HE OBJECT – CLEANSE HIM. ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
Well, my body is no longer attempting to fire my guts out my asshole every 10 minutes. So I’ve got that going for me. I still feel like hammered shit, but I won’t let that stop me.
Drag is a labor issue. (H/T SF, now you know how he gets his material)
“3 out of 4 Americans believe that killing animals for meat is immoral, according to a MSNBC-MediaMatters-PETA poll. Based on this information, Congress is debating new rules put forth by the FDA to tax meat production at a higher rate than vegetables.”
The infant mortality rate is nearly double in Mississippi and Alabama than it is in New York and California!!!! Oh wait, It is 0.4% in NY and CA and 0.8% in MS and AL. And wait, there’s more! There’s a longstanding and well-known correlation between poverty and higher infant mortality. CA and NY are 2 of the richest states and MS and AL are 2 of the poorest states. What, exactly, is the point of this article except to poor shame the south?
Every media outlet has published a metric ton of articles that start just like this. It’s lazy writing, but it’s also the platinum standard for crafting a narrative. See, people are social animals that are primed to go with the crowd. When that subconscious impulse is manipulated through polling, people’s behavior becomes malleable. When you have some basic understanding about the strata of voters and their belief systems, you can get them to do your bidding without them even knowing.
Three basic concepts make public opinion polling an irresistible tool used to bias an audience: herd behavior, identity politics, and aura of authority. The formula is simple, using a favorable polling result, generalize the findings so that it is implied that a majority of an identity group believe a certain way, relying on herd behavior to solidify support of the belief within the identity group.
The ironic part is that none of what makes public opinion polling such a strong tool is based in reality. The herd behavior is based on an illusion. By and large, support for a politically controversial position sits somewhere between 40% and 60%, meaning that nearly half of people oppose said controversial position. Further, polling doesn’t allow for enough nuance to differentiate between being opposed to legalizing machine guns and being for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Identity politics, as well, is subtle. Take, for example, the approval/disapproval ratings of prominent politicians. If identity politics were the primary driver of public opinion, the surges and drops in approval ratings would be quite attenuated.
However, the illusion of universal agreement is very powerful.
Social Science is Modern Day Astrology
The holy grail of science is replicability. If you can produce an effect in one study, you should be able to replicate the conditions and achieve the same effect in a successive study. In physics or chemistry, this is usually fairly straight forward. Barring some unknown environmental variable affecting the experiment, the bowling ball and the feather land on the ground at the same time in a vacuum. The sodium and the water create a highly exothermic reaction when combined.
Social science is much squishier, both in methodology and in result. When you’re working with people, they don’t behave like molecules in a vacuum. They lie, they are affected by minor biases in your methodology, they are subject to many weird psychological effects like the placebo effect, and they don’t take kindly to being locked in a laboratory for 15 years for a longitudinal study.
Resultantly, more social science is done by “poll” than by “experiment.” Not that the experimental method is any better. I experienced the infamous psychological experiment where they flash pictures of different races of people and then time how fast you click on the good word or the bad word.
This has led many skeptics to put scare quotes around social “science”, which more and more resembles phrenology than physics. Adding more fuel to the fire is the “replicability crisis.” The replicability crisis affects both experimental and poll based studies. Essentially, social science can’t find the same effect two times in a row. Not only that, but they can make a study say that any effect exists (such as, listening to songs about old people makes you younger).
However, in a world that fucking loves science and decides social policy by sound byte, the internal crisis in social science becomes a very public issue. As discussed in Part 1, science journalism is a farce. When an ethically compromised journalism industry interacts with an ethically compromised social science industry, you get science journalism that is slave to the agenda of the media. We live in a world where science is subservient to the state. If you publish something that aligns with the state’s goals, you get media coverage and additional grant funding. If you try to publish something that goes against the state’s goals, you get undermined at every step.
Manipulating the Results: Bias in the Experiment
People are quite malleable as I’ve already said, and this is evident in the results of studies. Wording is very important. Want an anti-abortion poll result, mention “mother” and “convenience.” Want a pro-abortion poll result, mention “choice” and “woman”. I’ll let the next example speak for itself.
An example of a wording difference that had a significant impact on responses comes from a January 2003 Pew Research Center survey. When people were asked whether they would “favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein’s rule,” 68% said they favored military action while 25% said they opposed military action. However, when asked whether they would “favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein’s rule even if it meant that U.S. forces might suffer thousands of casualties,” responses were dramatically different; only 43% said they favored military action, while 48% said they opposed it. The introduction of U.S. casualties altered the context of the question and influenced whether people favored or opposed military action in Iraq.
There are quite a few known phenomena that influence studies, as well.
Acquiescence Bias – Making a statement and asking the poll taker to agree or disagree. Usually folks with lower education will agree disproportionately with the statement in comparison to when the same issue is asked in a question format.
Social Desirability Bias – We saw a bunch of this last election cycle. People tend not to like to tell others about their illegal or unpopular opinions, so they’ll simply lie to make the poll giver like them.
Question Order Bias (“Priming the Pump”) – Ask a question that will likely get a positive or negative reaction, then follow it with a question you want to influence in that positive or negative way. For example, if I were to ask y’all whether you like the current spending levels of the federal government and then followed it up with a question of whether you like deep dish pizza, the pizza question will be skewed negative.
Interviewer Effect – Related to the Social Desirability Bias. The poll taker changes their responses based on characteristics of the poll giver. For example, if a woman is giving a poll on equal pay, the poll taker may respond more favorably than if a man gives the poll.
Observer Effect – The poll taker is subtly affected by the poll giver’s unconscious cues, resulting in their responses being biased toward the poll giver’s expectations. For example, if the poll giver expects that black people will answer a question a certain way, they may change their inflection when asking the question in a way that influences a black poll taker to answer in that way.
This still ignores the cognitive biases that we have talked about in Parts 1 and 2.
How do you sort through all this crap and get to a real, measurable effect? You design a good experiment. How do you design a good experiment when taking a survey? You don’t.
Manipulating the Results: Playing with the Data
Okay, so we have highly questionable data from a shit survey, but at least we’re now in the realm of math. Nothing can go wrong here!
A core requirement of legitimate polling is “randomization.” Taking a random sample of the group you’re trying to study is what allows you to generalize the results to the group as a whole. If you do something to disrupt the random sample, you weaken the ability to generalize the results to the group as a whole.
How do people screw with the random sample?
Weighting – Let’s say you’ve done a 1,000 person survey, but you’re concerned that your relatively small (but random) sample isn’t actually representative of the world. See, you’re a savvy poll taker and you know that a recent poll showed that there are 41% Democrats, 37% Republicans, and 22% Independents in the locality of your poll, and your poll has 39% Democrats, 40% Republicans, and 21% Independents. We’ll just inflate the results of the Democrats in the poll to reflect 41%, deflate the result of Republicans to reflect 37% and mildly inflate the results of the Independents to 22%, and we’ll do our further analysis based on this massaged data. Of course, this assumes that the pollster’s understanding of reality is correct, and it screws with the randomization of the data, resulting in a strong danger that the data no longer reflects reality.
Margin of Error – You survey 1,000 people, and 44% love Trump and 46% hate him. Therefore, Trump is unpopular on the net. Well, except for the margin of error. For a 1,000 person survey in a country of ~300 million, the results are roughly correct. Roughly correct means that your poll (and others designed in the same way) is within 3% of the reality 95% of the time. This, of course, assumes a representative (read random) sample.
Data dredging – Let’s do a huge survey asking a zillion questions. Then let’s go fishing for correlation between variables. We’ll just ignore that correlation does not imply causation, because who actually believes in that. It actually makes for some amusing reading.
Fudging the data – How about we do 15 runs of the survey, pick the 3 that most support my hypothesis, and publish a paper with the results of those 3 data runs?
A more technical issue is highlighted in Anscombe’s quartet. Four completely different sets of data that are statistically identical. Why? Let me tell a story from Poli Sci 300-something, Statistics for Political Science. One of the main statistical analyses performed by Poli Sci statisticians is linear regression. Linear regression (which you may remember from 5th grade math) is trying to fit data to a straight line (technically you can fit it to another curve). However, the problem is that you have to predetermine the type of curve you’re fitting it to. It doesn’t self-tailor. If you have an exponential relationship between being libertarianism and small government views, it won’t fit well to the straight line regression. It struck me, sitting in that class, how much statistical analysis was an art, not a science. If you don’t understand the math and conceptual understanding behind the numbers (as most social science students don’t), you’re going to come to somewhat worthless results when doing statistical analysis.
The Results are Garbage In the First Place: The Telephone Problem
Garbage in, garbage out. It’s pretty much my motto. It’s especially true with public opinion polling. Let’s quickly mention two issues so you get a sense for the type of garbage being used in modern public opinion polls. No need to linger on this issue.
1) Self-selection bias – This has always been there. Who is likely to answer a telephone poll? Is there some inbuilt bias caused by some declining to participate? Is there a destruction of the randomness of the sample if it takes 3,000 phone calls to get 1,000 poll takers?
2) The shift away from landlines – This is new. Currently, less than 50% of people still have landlines. Cell phones really screw up some of the assumptions behind the methodology of telephone polling. For example, if a pollster wanted to survey people in central Indiana about some local issue, it’s possible that I would get a phone call. I don’t live in central Indiana, and haven’t for over 5 years. What does it mean for the poll that I’m not in the expected cohort? Nothing good. However, it’s easy enough to ask where I live at the beginning. What about the other way around. A pollster is trying to survey northern Virginians about some local issue. I’m essentially disenfranchised by that poll because my area codes is central Indiana. Further, cell phones make it really easy to block unknown numbers, resulting in even fewer “hits” for each phone call.
Knowing the Public: What Motivates Voting Behavior?
Now that I’ve thoroughly shattered your trust in the public opinion poll, let me shatter your trust in the people being polled. Let’s talk about a truly experimental social science study looking at beliefs and voting patterns.
The interesting result of this experimental study of people’s beliefs and voting habits is this:
There are 5 different types of voters:
Ideological – Able to abstract their issue positions into larger conceptualizations (principles) and set those conceptualizations relative to other ideologies.
Near Ideological – Have awareness of an ideological spectrum, but their positions don’t particularly rely on an ideology.
Group Interest – Good ol’ identity politics. I’m black therefore I vote Democrat.
Nature of the Times – Something bad happened in the world when Republicans were in power so I’m voting Democrat.
No Issue Content – I vote because…well… argle bargle, incoherent rambling, no making sense. Seriously, this is the category where the pollster couldn’t make any sense of their motivations for their beliefs.
There must be a bunch of people in groups 1 and 2, a ton in 3, and a smaller amount in groups 4 and 5, right? That would be the sort of society I want to live in.
Sorry to disappoint.
Group 1 (Ideologues) – 2.5%
Group 2 (Near Ideologues) – 9%
Group 3 (Identititarians) – 42%
Group 4 (Idiots who can rationalize their opinons) – 24%
Group 5 (Idiots who can’t even coherently explain the reason for their opinions to a pollster) – 22.5%
This was taken in the early 1960s. Wanna bet it’s even worse today? Identity politics wins because that’s how a plurality of people think. Principals over principles is a thing because 42% of people care about principals and 11.5% (generously) care about principles.
The sickening part is that group 4 and 5 vote. (Table 1 of the study shows the percentages for the study as a whole and for likely voters, with only marginal changes to the percentages).
I could type more about the horrifying prospects of society based on this study, but I think it’s more impactful to let the data sink in. 89% of people base their worldview/politics/beliefs on something other than a set of principles/ethics/morals. Almost 50% have blatantly idiotic reasons for holding their opinions.
As a final note, 35% of respondents randomly varied across opposing positions for issues in successive interviews. There wasn’t a trend in these changes, which made the pollster come to the conclusion that these people weren’t able to come to the same opinion two interviews in a row.
Quick Takeaways from the series of articles
The media is untrustworthy, and not just in the obviously biased ways
Gell-Mann amnesia is real
Science journalism is neither about science nor is it good journalism
Any conclusion drawn from social science should be viewed with great skepticism
Anything being pushed based on majoritarian or poll-tested bases is probably shit
By thinking in terms of principles, you’ve elevated yourself into rarified air. Most people struggle to even rationalize their opinions.
Yeah, I know its a shock that I dragged my ass out of bed today…like every other weekday with the exception of a few, to do the links. My wife sure was shocked too.
::rolls eyes::
Djoker rolling along in Sydney
Anyhoo, the Aussie Open is underway, and I’m gonna focus much of my sports attention there. Why? Maybe because its good to see people outside in beautiful weather playing a game. The Men’s draw is progressing as planned for the top players, with Nadal and Djoker other advancing, and Federer looking strong in his match, up 2 sets to 0 as I write this. On the Ladies side, Sharapova has advanced and will face off in the third round against the top seed, Simona Halep. Should be interesting to see how Sharapova does with the potentially high pollen count. You know, what with her severe asthma she apparently suffered from for several years.
In mens hoops, Ohio State continued their torrid pace in conference play, although this time they had to hang on after a late Northwestern charge too win their seventh conference game to start the season, which a rookie coach at a Big Ten school hasn’t done in nearly 100 years.
On the ice (and I mean in hockey stadiums, not the back yards and city streets of almost every state in the nation), the Bruins topped les Canadiens and the Mighty Ducks dropped the Penguins. Those were the only games played.
Remember the Las Vegas massacre where 58 people were killed and news or discussion about the investigation simply vanished into thin air? Well now the idea is being floated that others could be charged. Although the article is short on any new information, which seems strange seeing as the dude killed 58 people and injured hundreds more and the news media has exerted less effort on the story than they did a winter storm. I’m sorry, but the whole thing stinks like rotted fish left out on a summer day.
ICE head: Bunsen Honeydew Thomas Homan
It looks like the federal government, who has sole authority over immigration laws, and the state of California, who considers itself a sanctuary state, are about to have a showdown. I’ll get the free-range, vegan, non-GMO popcorn.
Hey dummy, don’t you read the news out of New York City? You don’t solicit prostitutes when you’re a cop. That results in an arrest. You’re supposed to just pull women over while in duty and then have sex with them, claiming later that it wasn’t under duress. That way you get your whoring done and you don’t even have to pay.
That’s all for the links. Now enjoy a little music. Feel free to skip ahead :50 if you don’t want the weirdness.
Enjoy the thawing process, friends. I know I will.
Social science is much squishier, both in methodology and in result. When you’re working with people, they don’t behave like molecules in a vacuum. They lie, they are affected by minor biases in your methodology, they are subject to many weird psychological effects like the placebo effect, and they don’t take kindly to being locked in a laboratory for 15 years for a longitudinal study.
Acquiescence Bias – Making a statement and asking the poll taker to agree or disagree. Usually folks with lower education will agree disproportionately with the statement in comparison to when the same issue is asked in a question format.
1) Self-selection bias – This has always been there. Who is likely to answer a telephone poll? Is there some inbuilt bias caused by some declining to participate? Is there a destruction of the randomness of the sample if it takes
