If Wii Are Right, Do Wii Win?
I got a lesson in life last night. Weirdly, I got it from playing with the Nintendo Wii.
The Wii has wireless networking and a few games that take advantage. One is Everybody Votes. It's simple. People submit questions and answers. Nintendo sifts through the submissions and finds about one a day to put to the people. Players at home then have the option of voting on which answer they think is right (What is a rhino's horn made of, bone or hair?) or sharing their personal habits (When do you usually shower or bath, at night or in the morning?).
There's another feature. After you've given your vote, you get to guess how the majority of voters responded. I find this feature far more interesting than the actual voting. First, it forces you to guess the demographic makeup of the voters. Next, you have to put yourself in their demographic shoes. I like it for the same twisted reason I liked this ill-fated game show.
Last night, we got the answers from an old question, "Which was invented first, shampoo or the telephone?" Shampoo won. That is, more people guessed shampoo was older on the first round of polling. Ah, but I guessed they would say that in the polling's second round. I originally guessed the telephone.
So I won twice.
You see, this question has an answer. An answer that does not rely upon the whims of those that accept an answer, but rather the answer that exists outside of public opinion. A quick Google search finds that "the first successful bi-directional transmission of clear speech by Bell and Watson was made on March 10, 1876", while "shampoo originated in England in 1877".
The telephone wins. I win. I doubly win because I correctly suspected that most people would not suspect or know this. My Mii jumps for joy.
But my wife pointed out a problem. Her Mii was also jumping for joy, even though she originally guessed "shampoo." Wasn't she right, too?
And that was a problem. In answers testable in the real, physical world, opinion doesn't matter. Opinion may in fact be so very wrong that it clouds one's judgment, interferes with one's ability to see the answer staring them in the face. There are so, so, so very many issues that can be simply or painstakingly tested (depending upon how subtle the science of detection in the specific arena has become) that are being obfuscated because people have already determined the "truth" of the issue and do not wish to confront the hard physical realities that bitch-slap their opinions into submission.
Ah, but the Telly News does not work that way. If you don't agree in the science of anthropomorphic climate change, natural selection as the originator of species diversity, or coming shortages in primary energy supplies, you get just as much air time as experts in their fields. Never mind that there are ten, twenty, perhaps a thousand experts who would disagree with you -- you get just as much time to present your case (or more likely, to try and obfuscate, belittle and dismiss theirs).
The Telly News is wrong to do this. They have probably been cowed by vested interests (which keep funding them through advertising and therefore can yank their leash and chokechain). Their news budget dedicated to actual investigative reporting has been slashed and burned, even though their revenue expectations continue to rise. They are being punked (and I mean that in the proper prison meaning, not as a more recent synonym for "practical joke") by their owners, corporations and individuals who have a very meaty vested interest in seeing public opinion kept ill-informed simply because that ignorance means dollars in their pockets.
Life is not fair. Reality is not balanced. It doesn't matter how many people agree with you: If you hold an opinion on a topic that attempts to directly contradict demonstrable physical evidence, you are very simply just wrong.
The Wii has wireless networking and a few games that take advantage. One is Everybody Votes. It's simple. People submit questions and answers. Nintendo sifts through the submissions and finds about one a day to put to the people. Players at home then have the option of voting on which answer they think is right (What is a rhino's horn made of, bone or hair?) or sharing their personal habits (When do you usually shower or bath, at night or in the morning?).
There's another feature. After you've given your vote, you get to guess how the majority of voters responded. I find this feature far more interesting than the actual voting. First, it forces you to guess the demographic makeup of the voters. Next, you have to put yourself in their demographic shoes. I like it for the same twisted reason I liked this ill-fated game show.
Last night, we got the answers from an old question, "Which was invented first, shampoo or the telephone?" Shampoo won. That is, more people guessed shampoo was older on the first round of polling. Ah, but I guessed they would say that in the polling's second round. I originally guessed the telephone.
So I won twice.
You see, this question has an answer. An answer that does not rely upon the whims of those that accept an answer, but rather the answer that exists outside of public opinion. A quick Google search finds that "the first successful bi-directional transmission of clear speech by Bell and Watson was made on March 10, 1876", while "shampoo originated in England in 1877".
The telephone wins. I win. I doubly win because I correctly suspected that most people would not suspect or know this. My Mii jumps for joy.
But my wife pointed out a problem. Her Mii was also jumping for joy, even though she originally guessed "shampoo." Wasn't she right, too?
And that was a problem. In answers testable in the real, physical world, opinion doesn't matter. Opinion may in fact be so very wrong that it clouds one's judgment, interferes with one's ability to see the answer staring them in the face. There are so, so, so very many issues that can be simply or painstakingly tested (depending upon how subtle the science of detection in the specific arena has become) that are being obfuscated because people have already determined the "truth" of the issue and do not wish to confront the hard physical realities that bitch-slap their opinions into submission.
Ah, but the Telly News does not work that way. If you don't agree in the science of anthropomorphic climate change, natural selection as the originator of species diversity, or coming shortages in primary energy supplies, you get just as much air time as experts in their fields. Never mind that there are ten, twenty, perhaps a thousand experts who would disagree with you -- you get just as much time to present your case (or more likely, to try and obfuscate, belittle and dismiss theirs).
The Telly News is wrong to do this. They have probably been cowed by vested interests (which keep funding them through advertising and therefore can yank their leash and chokechain). Their news budget dedicated to actual investigative reporting has been slashed and burned, even though their revenue expectations continue to rise. They are being punked (and I mean that in the proper prison meaning, not as a more recent synonym for "practical joke") by their owners, corporations and individuals who have a very meaty vested interest in seeing public opinion kept ill-informed simply because that ignorance means dollars in their pockets.
Life is not fair. Reality is not balanced. It doesn't matter how many people agree with you: If you hold an opinion on a topic that attempts to directly contradict demonstrable physical evidence, you are very simply just wrong.