UK General Election

[3point14]

Point 4 shows why. A clear majority, 40% of the electorate, thinks UK can secure a free trade deal to it's liking while achieving control over immigration. The fact this would cause the EU to disintegrate doesn't seem to register with them.

McHrozni

Just demonstrates the enormous amounts of voting from a position of complete ignorance going on.

 

[DreadNiK]

I'd genuinely have been slightly pro brexit (at the least!) had it been campaigned on and handled better, instead of a disgusting festival of lying, bigotry and idiocy. In principle I don't have an issue with it (not that it matters as I'm not USAian but the same probably applies for trump)

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

You've got to be kidding me?

Well of course he is denying it but for Labour in Scotland it is the Union above all else it seems.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

The best advice I can give to you is to establish a republic and start growing bananas. You have everything else already, you might as well do these last two steps.

McHrozni

If only we could grow bananas in Scotland

 

[Craig B]

The best advice I can give to you is to establish a republic and start growing bananas. You have everything else already, you might as well do these last two steps.

McHrozni

A Scottish Republic sounds fine to me; but if we remain in the EU we'll have to grow straight bananas, not more than two to a bunch. I can learn to live with that, however, if it puts an end to that damned Union.

 

[McHrozni]

Just demonstrates the enormous amounts of voting from a position of complete ignorance going on.

It's a symptom of the information revolution. Never before in history has information been so easily available, or in such quantities. The society wasn't ready for it, so it leads to problems down the line. In a generation or two the public at large will be able to distinguish facts from fiction with relative ease, because skepticism will be drilled into their minds from an early age. This is a skill some of us were able to learn but most people were not so fortunate.

I just hope the idiots don't do too much permanent damage in the meantime. Poor UK, I'd thank them for all the fish, but I don't like those anyway.

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

If only we could grow bananas in Scotland

Set up a heated greenhouse with lights and you should be all set.

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

A Scottish Republic sounds fine to me; but if we remain in the EU we'll have to grow straight bananas, not more than two to a bunch.

I'm reasonably certain you can grow and sell curved bananas in the EU. I bought a few yesterday and no one was summarily executed over the curvature.

McHrozni

 

[3point14]

It's a symptom of the information revolution. Never before in history has information been so easily available, or in such quantities. The society wasn't ready for it, so it leads to problems down the line. In a generation or two the public at large will be able to distinguish facts from fiction with relative ease, because skepticism will be drilled into their minds from an early age. This is a skill some of us were able to learn but most people were not so fortunate.

I just hope the idiots don't do too much permanent damage in the meantime. Poor UK, I'd thank them for all the fish, but I don't like those anyway.

McHrozni

you are a great deal more optimistic than I. I see the situation only getting worse as rich, vested interests learn to manipulate the poorly educated and just plain stupid into voting against their best interests.

 

[McHrozni]

you are a great deal more optimistic than I. I see the situation only getting worse as rich, vested interests learn to manipulate the poorly educated and just plain stupid into voting against their best interests.

You could say the same about television sixty years ago or so and that didn't work in the long run. You could also say the same about the printing press five hundred years ago or so and that didn't last forever either.

Ways to manipulate the public come and stay, they're highly effective for a generation or two and then phase in the background as the society adapts to their strengths and finds out their weaknesses. It's a normal cycle, during the Gallic wars and codification of Christianity a few centuries later assertions of greatness in writing were enough to convince the masses you truly were onto something. Today people demand more, much more in terms of evidence if you try writing it in a book and sell it as proof of your greatness, but they believe a great many things if they get them through internet. The masses will learn to distrust the internet just as well as they learned to distrust orators, pamphlets and television. It'll take a while, but we'll get there.

We're screwed in the meantime though

McHrozni

 

[Craig B]

... I'm not saying a turn to the left is bad by itself. Calling yourself socialist while promising a vote buying scheme and nothing else that would be meaningful gives me precisely zero confidence however. It's how banana republic^WPs are set up in the first place.

McHrozni

Err, no it isn't

Moreover, by the late 19th century, three American multinational corporations—the United Fruit Company, the Standard Fruit Company, and the Cuyamel Fruit Company—dominated the cultivation, harvesting, and exportation of bananas, and controlled the road, rail, and port infrastructure of Honduras. In the northern coastal areas near the Caribbean Sea, the Honduran government ceded to the banana companies 500 hectares per kilometre (2,000 acre/mi) of railroad laid, even though there was still no passenger or freight railroad to Tegucigalpa, the national capital city. Among the Honduran people, the United Fruit Company was known as El Pulpo ("The Octopus"), because its influence had come to pervade their society, controlled their country's transport infrastructure, and sometimes violently manipulated national politics.​

 

[Information Analyst]

Point 4 shows why. A clear majority, 40% of the electorate, thinks UK can secure a free trade deal to it's liking while achieving control over immigration. The fact this would cause the EU to disintegrate doesn't seem to register with them.

Yes, the real problem is pollsters offering "options" that have no connection with reality. They just perpetuate the misconceptions many Leave voters had in the first place.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

You could say the same about television sixty years ago or so and that didn't work in the long run. You could also say the same about the printing press five hundred years ago or so and that didn't last forever either.

Ways to manipulate the public come and stay, they're highly effective for a generation or two and then phase in the background as the society adapts to their strengths and finds out their weaknesses. It's a normal cycle, during the Gallic wars and codification of Christianity a few centuries later assertions of greatness in writing were enough to convince the masses you truly were onto something. Today people demand more, much more in terms of evidence if you try writing it in a book and sell it as proof of your greatness, but they believe a great many things if they get them through internet. The masses will learn to distrust the internet just as well as they learned to distrust orators, pamphlets and television. It'll take a while, but we'll get there.

We're screwed in the meantime though

McHrozni

Are you sure about this?

Do you honestly believe that people have seen through TV and print and aren't influenced by it anymore?

I mean 'The Secret' has sold 20 million copies. And 1.5m people buy the Daily Mail every day.

 

[McHrozni]

Err, no it isn't

I used "set up" in lieu of "function", not "are created".

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

Are you sure about this?

Do you honestly believe that people have seen through TV and print and aren't influenced by it anymore?

No, I'm not saying the means of manipulation come and go. I explicitly say they come and stay, but phase into the background. Over time their power to manipulate public opinion decays until it is no more effective than the other media.

Of course television still shapes public opinions, just as newspapers and speeches do. Internet looms incredibly large today though, just as television did sixty years ago. A few decades from now internet will be far less effective than it is today.

I mean 'The Secret' has sold 20 million copies. And 1.5m people buy the Daily Mail every day.

For one reason or another British public is more gullible than the norm.

McHrozni

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

No, I'm not saying the means of manipulation come and go. I explicitly say they come and stay, but phase into the background. Over time their power to manipulate public opinion decays until it is no more effective than the other media.

Of course television still shapes public opinions, just as newspapers and speeches do. Internet looms incredibly large today though, just as television did sixty years ago. A few decades from now internet will be far less effective than it is today.



For one reason or another British public is more gullible than the norm.

McHrozni

I haven't seen the data but is the internet more effective than TV or print in terms of persuasion or is it just that it is easier to publish large quantities of tripe on?

Are people more likely to believe something they read on the internet vs something they read in a newspaper?

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

For one reason or another British public is more gullible than the norm.

Possibly a sidetrack but might be an interesting topic. I would imagine the vast majority of tripe on the internet is published in English. I wonder if there is a connection between consuming media in English and believing tripe?

 

[3point14]

I haven't seen the data but is the internet more effective than TV or print in terms of persuasion or is it just that it is easier to publish large quantities of tripe on?

Are people more likely to believe something they read on the internet vs something they read in a newspaper?

The internet allows the demagogue to more carefully craft their demagoguery to fit the target audience. The effect is magnified because no-one running a social media site wants to upset their readership and risk revenue and so people don't even get to find out that ideas contrary to their own exist, let alone have to defend those ideas against any sort of criticism.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

The internet allows the demagogue to more carefully craft their demagoguery to fit the target audience. The effect is magnified because no-one running a social media site wants to upset their readership and risk revenue and so people don't even get to find out that ideas contrary to their own exist, let alone have to defend those ideas against any sort of criticism.

Is this different than what newspapers have been doing for decades? I can see how the internet helps with getting the right information to the right people but that effect isn't going to go away over time.

 

[baron]

If you want to spin it that way. The poll shows - after stripping out the don't knows - that 48.9% support Brexit, while 51.1% oppose/d it, but are split on what should happen next.

Maybe if you stuck to the figures in the report without trying to re-analyse them using laughably biased 'techniques'? And you talk about spin.

It is also a question that does not address the type of Brexit we "should" have. The reality of that has not bitten yet, and even after it has, many people will not truly understand it until they're faced with the tabgible consequences of what they have lost.

The doomsday scenario is always just around the corner. When it doesn't play out that doesn't matter because it's still just around the corner! Remoaners put me in mind of the End of Times crowd, always predicting the end of the world yet totally unphased when their dates pass unnoticed, concentrating instead on the next date when Armageddon will really happen, honestly!

Yes, two-thirds saying we should have free trade with the EU is pretty massive.

You seem to have magicked this figure out of nothing and summarised a cherry-picked portion of the explanation to fit your biases. What it boils down to is everybody wants the best possible outcome, that's hardly surprising, but it's not how negotiation works. Indeed, the report states this:

Asking about the individual parts of Brexit is probably the wrong way to do it. The public won’t get to pick an a la carte Brexit, they will be presented with a Brexit deal by the government and will, presumably, either think it is a good or bad deal for Britain.

When you look at the figures overall they tell a very different story. The fourth graphic shows that 52% of people think 'TM's Brexit deal would be good for Britain' and 61% believe that her deal 'would respect the result of the referendum.' Furthermore, 64% of people believe that a 'hard Brexit would respect the result of the referendum', only one point below the 'Canada-style' deal which includes free trade. Kind of makes a mockery of the significance of your 'two-thirds' claim.

You've really got your finger on the pulse there....

So you can't answer, then.