reason why i don’t believe in surveys
There can only be one. So many survey companies and surveys going about recently and not a single one has come up to me to ask what I think. Imagine the absurdity. Tsk! To think that my opinion counts a million more than those who think through their lung.
Surveys are like this: riffling through the pages of a, let’s say, thickish don quixote book and randomly picking entries and passages to quote from. Thus, it is an attempt to understand the entire work with just a few words and paragraphs lifted here and there.
Elections are like this: reading from cover to cover, careful not to miss a dot, and after relishing the full flavor of the entire magnum opus, measure its worth or understand the story.
Okay. Surveys have some probative value at the least. The scientific method, by which surveys are conducted with rigorous discipline, gives the assurance of veracity and authority because it is scientific. Thus, I beg the question. Understandably, a person with some knowledge of highschool statistics will support any result from collected and mathematically processed data.
A survey is rather useful to companies that wish to ascertain the probability that their line of products will succeed in a specific market. But where the survey pertain to issues that affect the nation, asking a little more than 2,000 people around for their opinions, is stretching the powers of statistical theory too far and thin. Really, relative to the 60 or so million thinking majority, 2,000 represent meager instances to come up with a convincing scientific conclusion about how the entire nation thinks and breathes and runs.
The words used to carry the weight of the conclusion is likewise misleading. To say that 50% of Filipinos believe in so and so, or that 30% are this and that, is to give the apperance that everyone in the entire country took part in the survey. What happened to the more cautious phraseology, to wit, one out of ten Filipinos in a test sample of 2,000 respondents in places purported as the bulwarks of anti-government groups, believe that they are not so sure what is exactly on their minds?
Better yet, why not say, Carl, the respondent of great authority, believes 120.23% that people need to calm down. He also 120.23% believes that the search for truth will not reveal the corruption of the current administration, because obviously there abound a-plenty at present (such facts are not in dispute of course) but shall lead to the discovery of a bigger truth that our current governmental structure is founded on a pile of goo and tripe, and political personalities have taken the system hostage for all their self-serving interests and needs. Each so(u)l(-e)d separately.
Indeed, so much so, totally in fact, quite absolutely and damnedly irrefutably, that it is virtually impossible for anyone, not even the most well-intentioned president, to escape the filth and grime of immoderate greed, or whatever, the moment he steps into of(fece[s]). Because there is no revolution where we just keep on changing the people on top but keep the rest of the beast’s (reference to beast of golgotha, fictional character in Dogma. Dir. Smith, Kevin. Damon, Affleck, Morissette. Lions Gate Films, 1999.) body thrashing about. Silly, it will just grow another head.
Arroyo is corrupt for sure. But that is hardly surprising. She merely inhereted an already desecrated and decaying institution. What else can you expect but for her to try to survive for six-years until expiration of term? And to do so would mean that she kiss a lot of asses and parry away eager sharks that threaten to bite her off her seat: while she swims with them in a pool of vile filth (what worser punishment than that can one possibly think of? Ipso Jure). Hence, EO 464 et als.
If anything, let’s give her a little credit for innovation and creativity in leadership and politics. Let’s make her a professor emeritus or grant her honoris causa doctorate degrees on philippine politics, dodgeball and creative non-fiction after her term ends.
Meanwhile, survey as you will and as often as you want, but it won’t be legitimate until you ask me to fill one out, the definitive one, for you.
I will be extra gracious on the seventh of march because is my birthday. I will use a special pen too. Or if it is done verbally, I shall dress befitting the status of my acclaim.
Wherefore, reversed and remanded, affirmed and denied. etc. etc.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:12 pm
the survey companies have not included uhhh not just you but also your friends, their friends and everyone in their friendster accounts. Come to think of it, does anybody really know someone who knows someone who knows someone in the nth degree who has been asked to participate in such surveys? Will the real slim shady, please stand up? Bakit kailangan ipromote ang birthday?
For the benefit of all, maybe the survey companies should have an experiment–publish the results of their survey after elections no? just so we could see if their surveys really represent what the people think before the survey results are published. if people do think, that is.