Wednesday, June 09, 2004
(5:45 PM) | Anonymous:
Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands
Here are the final results of my survey. Turns out a whole 23.5% of the 34 responders don’t like root beer.But that kind of statement is incompatible with the spirit and structure of my survey. To the extent that the response group is not a random, representative, replicable, sample of the right size, this is not a scientific project. Someone responded to a question “…though it depends on what you mean.” No, that’s exactly (part of) the point: I’m interested in how you interpret these deliberately formulated questions.
And by the way, I do not assume that the amount of verbiage laid down in a response is either directly or inversely proportional to the amount of thought put into the answer.
On the questions:
# 5 – the Harley centennial/Elton John question: The Fixer says, “I’d love to see that.” Well… it did happen—and, as the story goes, it cleared the amphitheatre. After Tim McGraw, Kid Rock, and the Doobie Brothers played, the bikers were hoping their big surprise was The Rolling Stones, and when they got Sir instead, they turned heel and walked out.
# 9 – the cat question: The sliding screen door scenario is also non-fictional, and it sparked a discussion about whether non-human animals make mistakes. Response option “d” was filler, and “c” was bait (We officially have two Jokers).
# 15 – the educated female reproduction question: This is not about a mommy/career dilemma. My intent here is to suggest the question of whether people who understand the significance of the Earth’s overpopulation problem have a responsibility to avoid physically creating new children (They could instead, say, adopt one of the world’s many orphans and other children who need parents).
# 17 – the economic growth question: This question arises from my exasperation with orthodox economic dogma. Growth, growth, growth. Everyone’s always talking about economic growth. Three percent. We’ve gotta have at least three percent. Even progressive political darlings like Ralph Nader don’t go much farther than emphasizing corporate social responsibility or sometimes disputing greedy capitalist policy. They never challenge growthmania. There is a basic flaw in the revered Keynesian-neoclassical economic theory which is the basis for all public debate of economic policy, and this flaw is bafflingly overlooked: The absurdly simple fact that there is never going to be any more stuff on earth than there always has been, is absolutely germane—as well as nullifying—to the prevailing economic theory, since production and consumption don’t just happen on paper. Economists are obsessed with making the proverbial “pie” bigger so everyone can have a bigger piece, but since the Earth isn’t getting any bigger, there is undeniably a limit to economic growth. This is not even to ask whether having a bigger pie is desirable, especially given the non-economic costs of the means used for such result.
I’m raring to say more on this, and I will in a post soon to come: “Robert Rubin Spoke to Me.”
# 27 – the man/hard life question: Of course, netsqueech, by “a man” I do not mean “a human being.” I mean a male person. The question is whether life is hard for men in ways that are particular to the fact that they are men. This is not to overlook the particular difficulty of life for people of other genders. That’s obvious.
On spreadsheet format:
1. In adding the second wave of responses to my spreadsheet, I’ve been less liberal in space allowance, so I’ve employed Excel’s comment function. Position your mouse over any cell where you see a red triangle in the upper right corner to see the rest of the response.
2. Responses culled from postings on other blogs are identified by notes after the responder names (blog names are in parentheses).
3. It became impractical to include a listing of all “other answers” at the bottom of the document.
The spreadsheet:
Survey Results2.xls
Are you surprised?
Everybody wants to make the world better.
