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Cake day: June 29th, 2024

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  • Here’s a link to the study I mentioned earlier, which indicates that list experiments are not an accurate way to determine the level of preference falsification.
    In it, the real response was often more than double the difference between direct polling and the list experiment results.

    You continue to argue against things I’ve never said. Calling you out for saying I’ve said or argued for something which I haven’t is not acting high and mighty.
    And yet, here you are doing it again…

    I never said all polling is wrong, just polling that didn’t properly account for falsification, which the list method is clearly unable to do.

    More of the surveyed Russians said they would prefer to talk with Ukraine over continuing military actions.
    That doesn’t mean that’s what the government/Putin also believes, it means the population would generally prefer diplomacy over war.

    By your same line of logic, why should anyone support LGBT people in places where it’s illegal if you don’t have any plans to change their country’s laws?
    We need timeline estimates otherwise it’s pointless.

    It’s a terrible defeatist argument which is not worth humoring.

    I’m done talking with you now.
    You’re deliberately ignoring and misinterpreting any points that don’t align with your view, and its tiring.

    All that said, this has been an interesting bit of insight into the mind of a bigot.


  • Sorry, I was under the impression that you hadn’t read the study because of our vastly different takeaways.

    And strawman was probably the incorrect term in that context.

    By external factors and social influences, I mean the social consensus that going against the government is unsafe.

    That presidential candidates who have any chance of beating Putin are banned from the ballots, jailed, or coincidentally die before they’re able to build a large enough following.
    That it’s safer to just play along than to put a target on your back.

    If you were unable to piece together what I meant in the context of this conversation, I’m not convinced this discussion will lead anywhere productive.

    Given that the study makes no claim that the statistics accurately represent the true beliefs of the Russian population, I’m suggesting that taking those numbers and concluding otherwise so you can justify calling the overhwelming majority of Russians ‘genocidal imperialists’ is irresponsible at best.

    I’ve also never stated that Russians who genuinely support genocide should not be held accountable for their actions. Maybe this is a better example of a strawman argument?

    Checking the latest released polls from levada, you can see that the majority of polled participants indicated support for what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
    Yet, further down, it shows more participants indicated support for diplomatic resolution over military action.
    I see this as a reasonable indicator that the majority of Russians are not genocidal.
    And taking preference falsification and levada’s polling methods into account, the numbers could be even more in favour of both diplomatic resolution and disapproval of the war as a whole.

    Maybe the overwhelming majority don’t want change in their society, or maybe they don’t have a choice (I’m talking about rigged elections, in case you were struggling to figure out the context again).

    I have no idea when any societal changes within Russia will happen, I don’t happen to own a time machine.
    I can only guess and assume that there won’t be any substantial publicly-expressed change in ideology while Putin is still in charge.

    I’ll let people in those countries make up their own minds about what they should do, and I would hope the rest of the world will continue to support them with whatever that may be.

    I’m not sure why you’re asking me these things, they aren’t really relevant to any of the points I’ve been trying to make.

    I appreciate you sticking around for this argument, but I think I’m done.


  • In that particular study, yes, they measured a ~10% difference in support when using the list method vs directly asking.
    I didn’t mention the exact figure because if you read the study, you would see that even they claim this isn’t a perfect method.
    There could be many more supporters of the war, but there could also be many fewer.

    As they say, they sampled a relatively liberal demographic, so it’s likely that the national average result from this survey would be higher, which would certainly help your argument.

    But they also say that there’s “empirical evidence that list experiments reduce response bias but do not eliminate it entirely (Rosenfeld et al. 2016).”

    Like I said earlier, I’m not a statistician, so I have no idea if the bias can be estimated to have been reduced by 90% or 20%.
    All I know is that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions, especially when there’s many external factors at play.

    I’m willing to be proven wrong, and I don’t appreciate your attempts to strawman me as somebody who isn’t.
    I’ll admit that I’m biased because I want to believe that most people over there aren’t terrible, and in my anecdotal experience, they have been. So yes, I’m more likely to be skeptical of results that indicate the opposite, especially if they don’t properly account for the external social influences at play.

    I’ve never stated that there isn’t a large percentage of Russians who are genocidal imperialists, I’m arguing that we should try and figure out the facts before claiming that the overwhelming majority of the population are that way.

    The way you jump to the opposite conclusion without definitive evidence leads me to believe that you are also biased in your beliefs.

    I’m not sure what this argument is trying to accomplish anyway?
    I’m not convinced that ‘white washing’ the beliefs of the Russian population are to blame.
    What Russia is doing is fucking horrific, there’s no argument to be had there. But should the entire population be monstrified for the actions of their government?

    Instead of just slapping a label on the entire population, we should be working on lowering those statistics, and spreading awareness that there’s a huge percentage of Russians who disagree with their government.
    The people over there need to know that they aren’t alone in their beliefs, and that they have more like-minded supporters than they realise.
    Otherwise the thought of fighting back and enacting change seems hopeless.


  • Read the conclusion of the study. The list experiment very clearly proved that there’s a lot of preference falsification happening, which was all they were testing for.
    The survey results are unlikely to be an accurate representation of the public’s support of the war, there are many factors which could raise or lower the true level of support. Getting an accurate percentage wasn’t the purpose of the study.

    And I don’t think Russians are innocent. Propaganda and local news may have a strong influence, but the genuine levels of support for their government’s actions is still seemingly much higher than it has any right to be.
    But I don’t think its fair to say the vast majority of Russians are genocidal imperialists without accurate figures to back it up.
    Those sort of blanket statements lead to racism, hate crimes, etc, against many innocent people.


  • I’m willing to accept your claim, I’m just yet to see enough evidence to prove it.

    Put yourself in their shoes for a moment.
    People who criticise Putin over there don’t seem to last very long.
    Maybe the average Russian citizen won’t have to worry about that, but there’s still the implication that having different political beliefs is something that should be shunned.

    Checking the Levada polling methods, it doesn’t sound like those who are polled are always able to answer anonymously.

    Judging by that page, they seem to prioritise door-knocking and in-person interviews.
    Are you going to tell the person interviewing you, without knowing if they work for your corrupt government or not, that you disagree with your government?

    I’m not a statician, but I think this is called social desirability bias. And when there’s a potential risk to your safety, or even the slightest suspicion that your answers could negatively impact you, that bias increases.

    Yes, I’ll admit anecdotal findings are essentially useless when discussing a population, but those statistics aren’t much better.


  • Fuck off with your xenophobia-biased opinions.

    If you actually spent any amount of time communicating with people in Russia, you’d realise the overwhelming majority are not genocidal imperialists.

    The overwhelming majority of Russians I’ve spoken to do not support the ongoing war, and would prefer if Ukraine was left alone.

    I’d be interested in seeing where you’re pulling these extrapolated statistics from, including the demographics of the people who were surveyed.

    If 7/10 Texans oppose abortion, does that mean 70% of the country believe the same thing?





  • Why not?
    I’ve been in situations where I couldn’t release the code to a project, but I was able to use some decent libraries because they were MIT licensed.
    So I’m happy to do the same for libraries I write so that others in similar situations could also receive the same benefit I did.
    I see it as an act of public goodwill, like paying it forward for the times you can’t directly contribute to another project.

    Just my personal view on it, anyway.
    I’m not claiming it’s a bulletproof solution or that it isn’t open to being ‘abused’.




  • I just don’t think it’s fair to tell somebody with over 20 years of experience with C++ that their decision to use C++ in their next project is a ‘fail’.

    Learning a new language will probably not be faster than using one you’re already deeply familiar with.

    I’m not sure why you’re asking me about the merits of C++ over rust, that wasn’t my point. I was simply advocating for personal choice.

    Also, my first sentence was literally praising rust, but I guess I didn’t deepthroat it enough for you to notice? Presumably because you’ve taken the thought of somebody advocating for anything other than rust as a personal attack.