people are stupid

Grayson

There's a catchy title.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-public-wrong-about-nearly-everything-survey-shows-8697821.html

(This is just a snippet, the full article is at the link above)

British public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows
A new survey for the Royal Statistical Society and King's College London shows public opinion is repeatedly off the mark on issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration.

The research, carried out by Ipsos Mori from a phone survey of 1,015 people aged 16 to 75, lists ten misconceptions held by the British public. Among the biggest misconceptions are:

- Immigration: some 31 per cent of the population is thought to consist of recent immigrants, when the figure is actually 13 per cent. Even including illegal immigrants, the figure is only about 15 per cent. On the issue of ethnicity, black and Asian people are thought to make up 30 per cent of the population, when the figure is closer to 11 per cent.

- Crime: some 58 per cent of people do not believe crime is falling, when the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that incidents of crime were 19 per cent lower in 2012 than in 2006/07 and 53 per cent lower than in 1995. Some 51 per cent think violent crime is rising, when it has fallen from almost 2.5 million incidents in 2006/07 to under 2 million in 2012.

- Teen pregnancy is thought to be 25 times higher than the official estimates: 15 per cent of of girls under 16 are thought to become pregnant every year, when official figures say the amount is closer to 0.6 per cent.

There's a book called "Risk" that I read a while back. It's similar to Gladwells "Blink". The main jist of the book is that people are naturally stupid at certain things. Especially when it comes to statistics and gauging danger. people naturally over or under estimate everything. Throw into the mix politicians and newspapers who can benefit from scaremongering and you have a lot of confused people.

Personally I love statistics. I'm good at reading them, but more than that I'm good at seeing what they do and don't imply. This is mainly because I've spent years working with them so I've managed to partly get over my natural inability to work with them.

So, what do you guys think. Are people naturally stupid?

The Backwards Man

Eighty percent of people exaggerate

GLaDOS

Backs up what I've always thought

gobnaitolunacy

Statistics can't prove everything, esp. not every crime is reported.

krudler

That's not necessarily stupidity though, the average person isn't going to know exact crime or teen pregnancy stat figures so you can only make a guess. Everything is relative anyway, if you lived in a city or area where social issues like crime are more prevalent then obviously you're going to think its on the rise not decline.

People can be stupid, work with the general public long enough and that becomes clear, but not knowing something about a topic you have no staked interest in doesn't mean you're stupid. I know absolutely fcuk all about soccer, couldn't tell you who plays for what team, because I have zero interest in it, doesn't make me stupid.

coldcake

And a recent survey said..........

Artful_Badger

Yes people are generally stupid, journalists included. To say people are wrong about nearly everything based on 10 popular misconceptions is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Teyla Emmagan

That cat is trying to eat my breakfast again.

kunst nugget

Grayson wrote: »

So, what do you guys think. Are people naturally stupid?

I don't think that people are naturally stupid but I do think a certain amount of groupthink comes into operation with certain issues which is in turn stoked by the media. Stories about fraud, violence and immigration are inescapable and are completely exaggerated by the like of the Daily Mail. People's perception of these things are never backed up by statistic but fueled by urban legends.

If Men in Black give me one thing it's the quote 'A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.'

krudler

kunst nugget wrote: »

I don't think that people are naturally stupid but I do think a certain amount of groupthink comes into operation with certain issues which is in turn stoked by the media. Stories about fraud, violence and immigration are inescapable and are completely exaggerated by the like of the Daily Mail. People's perception of these things are never backed up by statistic but fueled by urban legends.

If Men in Black give me one thing it's the quote 'A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.'

And cab driver stuff like de Mooslims are comin' over stealing Christmas and we'll all be in burkas rabble rabble. You see plenty of it on here too.

gramar

People are stupid but not for the reasons given in the survey.

kneemos

Somebody mention the weather.

omahaid

The Backwards Man wrote: »

Eighty percent of people exaggerate

I thought it was eighty thousand percent?

Grayson

gobnaitolunacy wrote: »

Statistics can't prove everything, esp. not every crime is reported.

But you can trust statistics like how many people are black. Or how much is spent on welfare etc...

Even with crime, you can work in an error margin. there will always be crime that is going unreported, but to say it's that it's responsable for nearly a 50% drop is quite a strech.

Grayson

krudler wrote: »

That's not necessarily stupidity though, the average person isn't going to know exact crime or teen pregnancy stat figures so you can only make a guess. Everything is relative anyway, if you lived in a city or area where social issues like crime are more prevalent then obviously you're going to think its on the rise not decline.

People can be stupid, work with the general public long enough and that becomes clear, but not knowing something about a topic you have no staked interest in doesn't mean you're stupid. I know absolutely fcuk all about soccer, couldn't tell you who plays for what team, because I have zero interest in it, doesn't make me stupid.

I think the jist is that people do make guesses but they're wildly off target. I don't know anything about soccor. The best stat I could come up with off the top of my head is that there are a lot of games on saturday or sunday
But when it comes to stuff like crime or government spending, which impacts us all (unlike soccor), and which we all read about or hear in the news, you'd expect people to be better informed.

who the fug

Grayson wrote: »

But you can trust statistics like how many people are black. Or how much is spent on welfare etc...

Even with crime, you can work in an error margin. there will always be crime that is going unreported, but to say it's that it's responsable for nearly a 50% drop is quite a strech.

Yes but if the people who are gathering the statistics have a vested interest , are they not liable to adjustments

Artful_Badger

Grayson wrote: »

I think the jist is that people do make guesses but they're wildly off target. I don't know anything about soccor. The best stat I could come up with off the top of my head is that there are a lot of games on saturday or sunday
But when it comes to stuff like crime or government spending, which impacts us all (unlike soccor), and which we all read about or hear in the news, you'd expect people to be better informed.

Yeah but how were these surveys done ? If you ask 1000 people how many of them are gonna give you an exact figure right off the bat ? Very few, you ask those who say "a lot", "not sure" etc to make a guess then you get the wild percentages. Not informed doesnt mean stupidly wrong, just as you are not stupidly wrong about soccer, you just arent informed enough to give an exact figure so its pointless trying to crowbar one out of you.

daithi1970

It's not that people are stupid per se, it's probably more the case that people are gullible. There is a growing trend for people to watch news channels that suit their own particular worldview eg Fox has its own conservative agenda which serves to reinforce their viewing public's opinions on subjects such as God, Guns and Gays, whereas a channel such as AlJazeera or China Daily news have their own ideological axes to grind. In a nutshell,large numbers of people are prepared to believe what they are told by a much smaller group of people.

Oh, wait, we are actually stoopid.....

RikkFlair

Some are stupid, but generally I'd go with strange

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3CHi_9sxj0

Grayson

Grayson wrote: »

So, what do you guys think. Are people naturally stupid?

It doesn't tell me that people are stupid.

It does tell me that people will tend to believe whatever reinforces their own perceptions and prejudices.

A person living in a mixed community with a higher than average population of color is going to have their view of the average skewed by experience, as is a person who's ideologically attached to a vision of a community negatively dominated by immigrants. Ditto teen mothers et al.

Rightwing

People are stupid,,,no question about that. Some of the threads here leave a lot to be desired.

kunst nugget

Artful_Badger wrote: »

Yeah but how were these surveys done ? If you ask 1000 people how many of them are gonna give you an exact figure right off the bat ? Very few, you ask those who say "a lot", "not sure" etc to make a guess then you get the wild percentages. Not informed doesnt mean stupidly wrong, just as you are not stupidly wrong about soccer, you just arent informed enough to give an exact figure so its pointless trying to crowbar one out of you.

The gist of the survey was to find out people's perception of certain problems versus the statistical truth. Everybody is going to be wrong when questioned like that but what is interesting is how wide off the mark people's perception of these problems is.

OneArt

Teyla Emmagan wrote: »

That cat is trying to eat my breakfast again.

My breakfast is trying to eat that cat!:eek:

Dravokivich

kunst nugget wrote: »

The gist of the survey was to find out people's perception of certain problems versus the statistical truth. Everybody is going to be wrong when questioned like that but what is interesting is how wide off the mark people's perception of these problems is.

Their perception is going to be based on what they see. If the survey was conducted with regards to local stats, it might have been more relevant.

kunst nugget

Dravokivich wrote: »

Their perception is going to be based on what they see. If the survey was conducted with regards to local stats, it might have been more relevant.

But I'm presuming the survey was done with a random selection of people from different socio-economic groups and geographical locations to get an average reading on the overall national perception on these topics. So the relevance is showing that overall this is what Britons think about different topics as opposed to what the figures are actually like.

Also, their perception not going to be based just on what they see themselves but what they read and what they hear from others.

Frank Black

Not only are many people stupid, but stupid people do actually consider themselves to be intelligent, this is due to the effects of 'illusory superiority', which you can read about on wikipedia, but all you really need to know is that it's main effect is to make stupid people unaware of thier stupidity, making them doubly-stupid.

kunst nugget

Frank Black wrote: »

Not only are many people stupid, but stupid people do actually consider themselves to be intelligent, this is due to the effects of 'illusory superiority', which you can read about on wikipedia, but all you really need to know is that it's main effect is to make stupid people unaware of thier stupidity, making them doubly-stupid.

The problem is that you could be accused of illusory superiority by making that statement…

GSF

Its not stupid to have a healthy dis-regard for official figures. The UK government has no clue about the number of migrants if it were truely honest, so calling anyone stupid who doesnt repeat the governments official number is a bit much.

Frank Black

kunst nugget wrote: »

The problem is that you could be accused of illusory superiority by making that statement…

How so? I haven't included or excluded myself from the ranks of the stupid.

Christ the Redeemer

gobnaitolunacy wrote: »

Statistics can't prove everything, esp. not every crime is reported.

Has the reporting of crimes dropped since the mid nineties?