• orioler25@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Kind of a misleading headline and article. Literally, the survey they’re citing just asked randos “What do you think of [political ideology/topic]?” and reported the rates of responses. It doesn’t account for how “socialism” is a nebulous term colloquially, or that welfare liberals have readily appropriated many socialist talking points and rhetoric. This is more accurately read as, “Americans don’t like big business, take ‘socialism’ as an alternative; oh also it went down among the purportedly more ‘leftist’ Dem voters.”

    • yeahiknow3@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      These are different questions. We can survey people about specific policies (which happen to be socialistic) and those rates will be much much higher. But that’s not what we are currently asking.

      • orioler25@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Okay, so what do these results tell us, exactly? That there are Americans in this sample who like “small business” more than “big business,” what does that do?

        • yeahiknow3@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          People’s attitudes towards a particular word.

          If that word loses negative connotation, that’s incredibly telling (for lots of rhetorical and sociopolitical reasons). To be clear, the survey says nothing about the meaning of that word or what it refers to.

          • orioler25@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            Telling of what? Again, what does it mean? Because I’m guessing, based on the shit responses in thread, that you guys are skipping some steps. What is it telling?

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Literally, the survey they’re citing just asked randos “What do you think of [political ideology/topic]?” and reported the rates of responses.

      “This article is so misleading! All they did was survey people to ask if they approve of the thing and then directly report how many of them approve of the thing. How dare they obtain a representative sample “ask randos”. I mean for crying out loud, they didn’t even lead the respondents based on assumptions I’ve made about their knowledge! And the fact it went very marginally down among Democrats somehow negates that it shot up among independents, making it even misleadingerer!!”

      This is more accurately read as, "Americans don’t like big business, take ‘socialism’ as an alternative

      Ah, yes, and your brilliant insight explains why, uh:

      • Support for big business absolutely plummeted among Democrats over the last half-decade while support for socialism stayed functionally the same.
      • Support for big business and socialism among Republicans is roughly positively correlated.
      • Independents’ support for big business and socialism is a historical mix of positive and negative correlation.

      “I looked at the graph for three seconds and saw clear as day that those two trend lines intersected, which has to mean they’re being substituted.”

      • orioler25@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Look at you making the same mistakes. Hey, what about anything you said address the issues with perception of “socialism” as it exists in American culture, which was the main issue? The results don’t mean anything because they asked the participants to apply their own understanding to the terms. What the fuck does that do?

        They could have asked based on specific policies, values, talking points, etc., but they simplified it to generic, undefined terms. This is populist vibe reading, nothing substantial. You think this sample could tell the difference between welfare liberalism and socialism?

        • yeahiknow3@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          The results don’t mean anything because they asked the participants to apply their own understanding to the terms. What the fuck does that do?

          It literally tells us their own perception of the terms. The information you’re demanding is different, and there’s an obvious and interesting discrepancy between the favorability of certain policies versus the language used to describe them.

          The purpose of polls is not to educate people. It’s to figure out what they think in their dumb misinformed animal minds.

          • orioler25@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            Unironically very funny to talk down about people’s dumb animal minds while actively misunderstanding the usability of a survey based on vibes without accounting for vibes.

            • yeahiknow3@lemmy.world
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              9 days ago

              This survey is useful for tracking attitudes about concepts over time (and for guiding rhetorical strategy). It doesn’t tell us if people like socialism. It tells us about their perception of that word (use-mention distinction).

              Folks perceive the same thing differently depending on how it’s phrased, obamacare vs the ACA, for instance. Ever heard of manufacturing consent? If the word “socialism” is losing negative connotation, that’s quite telling. I’d also like to emphasize that human intelligence is impossible to underestimate.

              • orioler25@lemmy.world
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                9 days ago

                Why would you comment the same (bs) line twice in different threads?

                yOu eVEr hEaR aBouT aPprOPriAtIOn? You’re demonstrating exactly why this is a dumbshit survey. It could just as easily mean that it is being effectively appropriated and had its meaning changed you DENSE motherfucker. It doesn’t actually tell us anything if we just assume the word itself is what was stigmatized.

                For fuck’s sake, baby’s first peer review.