Silliest "good" research
"Social" "science" "research" is pure raw idiocy from miles beyond the start to miles beyond the finish. Nonsensical question, absolutely false assumptions, useless method, perfectly reversed logic in the conclusion. Unfortunately all those negatives don't cancel out, they just lead to a ferocious waste of money and an absolute profanation of the word science.

Here's one basically valid study from a normally valid discipline that delves into the political realm and immediately goes blooey. Ingo Titze is a good acoustical researcher who knows how to do things properly, and his result here is objectively good but essentially useless.

The question is so obvious it didn't need any research in the first place. The answer is self-contained.

Parliamentary bodies often use voice votes. Is this valNO.

Anyone who has watched one minute of C-Span, or watched any sort of parliament or large council, knows this instantly. Titze went ahead and proved it acoustically with a class of 50, trying various combinations and proportions of Yes and No. The result was objectively and subjectively unsurprising: One good shouter matters far more than the number of 'regular' voices on both sides.

This makes sense acoustically in two ways. (1) Intensities don't add. They combine logarithmically. Robert's Rules assumes, incorrectly, that e.g. 20 'regular' voices will sound discernibly louder than 18 'regular' voices. Nope. Probably indistinguishable to an honest ear. (2) Frequency is critically important. One trained voter, with knowledge of projection and penetration, can make the perceived intensity much louder without affecting the dB as read by a meter. He can shape his throat to produce a set of formants that are not already in the mix, triggering parts of the leader's cochlea that weren't struck by the untrained mass. Result: Much more perceived loudness, because more of the leader's cochlea is vibrated.

But the acoustic stuff doesn't matter because real parliaments never use voice votes honestly. 99% of the stated and labeled voice votes in US Congress don't even happen; it's just a thing the leader says on the way to a roll call or electrical vote with predetermined result. In non-Congress situations where the voice actually happens, the leader is 100% biased, picks the side he wants 100% of the time. When the leader wants Yes, the result is Yes, even if there was dead silence for Yes.

And we can take one more step via Manweller's Rule: Democracy is not an ingredient or a cause of good government. It's just a bunch of rituals that all governments use for their own purposes. Decisions are never made by votes. The only difference is: People in so-called "democratic" countries are easier to fool than people in so-called "dictatorial" countries.

Labels: Askedanswered, Language update

  ¶ 4:14 AM