
A simple puzzle to tell whether you know what people are thinking - bemmu
http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/wonkblog/majority-illusion/
======
JoshTriplett
So, if you're trying to change public opinion, rather than changing the minds
of the most people, you need to change the minds of the people who others
respect and whose opinions influence those of others.

This also explains why some issues seem difficult to change public opinion on.
For instance, if you want to get a majority of people to care about privacy,
or more specific issues such as encryption backdoors and spying, you need
those people's social circles to include many people who care. Since those
people also tend to disproportionately avoid social networks...

~~~
munificent
This was basically official process for Scientology. That's why they
deliberately aimed for celebrities—get them and (presumably) the rest will
follow.

~~~
saurik
Wait, but did that work?

~~~
chippy
The organisation appears to have been successful after implementing that
approach. But causation doesnt imply etc etc

~~~
saurik
The reason I made that comment is that I would not in any way describe
Scientology as "successful". Most of the stories I know of people who
associated themselves with it are people who were leaned on by the
organization and essentially forced to remain active. I also don't find myself
thinking there are tons of people who are part of the organization, which was
supposed to be the entire point of this strategy. I am actually kind of
shocked that you say "the organization appears to have been successful after
implementing that approach". Like, the idea wasn't just that they'd succeed in
tricking people into thinking they had a ton of members and was successful,
but that they would actually be successful, and that seems to not be the case.

[http://www.villagevoice.com/news/scientologists-how-many-
of-...](http://www.villagevoice.com/news/scientologists-how-many-of-them-are-
there-anyway-6717701)

"That's one Scientologist for about every 12,000 Americans. In other words,
the total number of active U.S. Scientologists is about the size of your run-
of-the-mill local credit union."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology)

"In 2008, the American Religious Identification Survey found that the number
of American Scientologists had dropped to 25,000."

~~~
ClashTheBunny
But the fact that many people even have heard of Scientology means that it's
far more successful than it should have been in an information based society.
25k is a ton of people for such a radical idea.

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dalke
This is the Friendship paradox
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox)
) applied to polling. If the people with the most acquaintances have similar
viewpoints, which differ from those with fewer acquaintances, then it will
skew responses to questions concerning the viewpoints of the respondent's
acquaintances.

~~~
Excavator
Spiral of Silence¹ is basically the same idea, as I read it.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence)

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kristopolous
So a devious entity can shift mass opinion through selective filtering and
promotion of content on a social network.

I wonder what the nature of a "Pravda effect" would be where people suspect
their information source has been corrupted and made unrepresentative and thus
will distrust many traditional mechanisms of authority.

Is there an actual assuaging of opinion, a disengagement of the process, an
increase in conspiratorial beliefs ... what happens?

Propaganda does this through smear campaigns - e.g., painting an academic as
being egotistical and seeking money (thus making them corrupted by undisclosed
motives). I see this with regard to climate change, evolution, and formerly
tobacco smoke.

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ThrustVectoring
What's funny is that you can guess the answer to these kinds of questions - if
it was what you'd naively think it would be, then there wouldn't be an
article, so you can easily guess the "counterintuitive" answer.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Yeah, you can look at it like that, but if you don't mind me saying I'd
suggest that attitude is indicative of our approach to formal education, which
rewards being 'right' regardless of how deeply something is understood, rather
than rewarding getting something 'wrong' and learning why in the process of
exploring further.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I completely agree - I was definitely taught the skill of guessing the
teacher's password.

~~~
ZenoArrow
I was too. It's a useful skill, but I'd still prefer its use wasn't
encouraged.

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zeveb
I wonder to what extent this sort of thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If
most folks don't want to feel like they're out of the norm (which I suspect is
true), then if they think that most folks disagree with them, they might be
willing to change their opinions in order to fit in with a perceived majority.

As a couple of folks have noted, this means that all one has to do is suborn a
relatively few influencers in order to effect mass change, despite the fact
that the majority would have resisted that change if they'd known the truth.

As the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy might have said, some suspect that
this has already happened…

------
Freeboots
"Assume each person based their vote solely on how the people they know would
vote"

This is misphrased, they vote based on their friends opinions, not the way
their friends would vote. Otherwise it becomes a chicken and egg situation.

------
jokoon
I'm wondering how this apply to reality.

~~~
zdean
The article makes a passing mention of media being a hub of these networks.
One effect of this is that people will believe that there are epidemics of
sorts (violence, economic, etc.) when in fact there aren't. This will often
happen with pessimistic viewpoints.

An interesting example of this is explored in this article:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/opinion/nicholas-
kristof-t...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/opinion/nicholas-kristof-the-
most-important-thing-and-its-almost-a-secret.html?_r=0)

~~~
jokoon
I wonder about reddit. I guess this doesn't apply to reddit? Or less ?

~~~
wsxcde
Some people seem to spend all day on Reddit, and some of them end up being
"Reddit famous". I guess this would make others think the opinions of these
"hardcore" redditors is more prevalent than it really is.

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hsshah
This post reminded me of the ideas discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in "The
Tipping Point". IIRC, talks about highly networked individuals starting new
trends.

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cubano
It seems to me that opinion shaping on Twitter has been using this effect for
at least the past year.

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drdeca
If one, instead of considering the ratio among those one know, what if people
consider the ratio of the ratios of the people that the people that you know,
know, can the same type of thing happen?

~~~
chippy
Could you rephrase the question, please? I was a bit confused by the wording.

~~~
drdeca
Ah, yes, sorry:

I meant:

If instead of each person checking if an opinion is held by the majority of
the people they know,

and seeing what the typical result for that would be,

what if the operation was doubled?

So, each person would check what the majority opinion is among those they
know, and then store that value.

Then each person would check what the majority of /those/ values are among the
people they know.

I was wondering if this might partially undo the effects from some people
being known to more people.

so, if a person x 's opinion on a topic is f(x), and the friends of a person
is x.friends

then instead of majority(map(f,x.friends)) , instead use majority(map(lambda
z:majority(map(f,z.friends)), x.friends))

So instead of using "what opinions do I see", instead using "what opinions do
I see people saying they see". Would that be a more or less accurate measure
of "what opinions do people have"?

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resonanttoe
That second graph they use as an example (Same sex marriage one) adds up to
101%...

~~~
DoctorZeus
Presumably that's from rounding errors... for example, the distribution could
be 4.7, 38.7, and 56.6 ... which adds up to 100, but when those numbers are
rounded up they then add up to 101.

