Monday, July 17, 2017
Totally uncorrelated
ZH showed this chart from OECD:
ZH took some unwarranted conclusions. Note that the poll was done in 2016, before Trump was in office and before Modi crashed cash in India.
The INSTANTLY DRAMATIC aspect of the chart is that it DOESN'T CORRELATE WITH ANYTHING MEANINGFUL.
Big nations at both ends. Small nations at both ends. Rich and poor scattered. Ethnic purity scattered. "Authoritarian" (sane) at both ends. "Democracy" (infinitely bonkers and unimaginably evil beyond evil) at both ends. Genuinely competent scattered. Genuinely incompetent scattered.
Either the poll is based on a totally bad question and totally useless sampling, or it's detecting a basic long-standing cultural habit in each country, immune to all objective facts.
A bit later, after closer look: No, it's not total. One of those pairs is one-way correlated. The two countries typically called "authoritarian", Russia and Turkey, are at the top in confidence. "Democracies" are scattered. Maybe we could lear.... No.
¶ 1:25 AM 
ZH took some unwarranted conclusions. Note that the poll was done in 2016, before Trump was in office and before Modi crashed cash in India.
The INSTANTLY DRAMATIC aspect of the chart is that it DOESN'T CORRELATE WITH ANYTHING MEANINGFUL.
Big nations at both ends. Small nations at both ends. Rich and poor scattered. Ethnic purity scattered. "Authoritarian" (sane) at both ends. "Democracy" (infinitely bonkers and unimaginably evil beyond evil) at both ends. Genuinely competent scattered. Genuinely incompetent scattered.
Either the poll is based on a totally bad question and totally useless sampling, or it's detecting a basic long-standing cultural habit in each country, immune to all objective facts.
A bit later, after closer look: No, it's not total. One of those pairs is one-way correlated. The two countries typically called "authoritarian", Russia and Turkey, are at the top in confidence. "Democracies" are scattered. Maybe we could lear.... No.
¶ 1:25 AM
