Slashdot Mirror
Your Political Facebook Posts Aren't Changing How Your Friends Think (qz.com)
An anonymous reader writes:It may be hard to resist airing political grievances or appealing to voters on social media during a U.S. presidential race as heated as this one. But no one wants to hear about your politics, least of all on Facebook. Those long rants about how Trump is a bully and a buffoon, Hillary is a crook, and conspiring against Bernie Sanders has doomed America forever aren't changing voters' minds, a new study found. A staggering 94% of Republicans, 92% of Democrats, and 85% of independents on Facebook say they have never been swayed by a political post, according to Rantic, a firm that sells social media followers. The firm surveyed 10,000 Facebook users who self-identified as Republicans, Democrats, or independents. The only thing those opinionated election posts are doing is damaging your friendships. Nearly one-third of Facebook users surveyed said social media is not an appropriate forum for political discussions. And respondents from each political affiliation admitted they've un-friended people on Facebook because of their political posts.
But they are changing how your friends think ABOUT YOU!
All the more opportunity to serve you advertisements you also don't want to see.
Your Political Facebook Posts Aren't Changing How Your Friends Think
This study is just a rip-off of earlier research into human psychology--specifically, of all previous research into human psychology--which has proven pretty conclusively that nothing anyone says has ever changed anyone's mind about anything ever.
>>>A staggering 94% of Republicans, 92% of Democrats, and 85% of independents on Facebook say they have never been swayed by a political post
I think it is appropriate to state that majority of people are never swayed by an argument coming from out-group. That is, trying to reason with people that made up their mind is highly ineffective in all circumstances.
They're looking at the wrong number by using the 94%.
If 6%, 8%, and 15% of people are swayed, and the vote is nearly 50/50, then these posts are in fact potentially effective...
Nearly one-third of Facebook users surveyed said social media is not an appropriate forum for political discussions.
Then where is the appropriate forum? Seriously, what does this third of users think it's for?
And by the way ...
... a firm that sells social media followers
That makes me sad.
Nope, no sig
I don't say anything political on Facebook because as the study says, whose mind would it change? In the end it's only virtue signaling at best, semi-trolling at worst. And there's the potential of friends I like going cold because they can't handle different political views (even though that's a flaw in people it's the kind of flaw I forgive friends for, even if a little sad).
That doesn't stop everyone ELSE on Facebook ramping up political expressions though, which is why I've pretty much stopped reading Facebook (and Twitter) until after November.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Negative advertising (and ranting in general) reduces a person's motivation to vote for their candidate. They won't change their mind and vote for the other person, but they might stay home on election day.
In other words, 6% - 15% of the people reading have a chance of being swayed. I think this result will only encourage people who want to get their side elected to continue to rant.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
It's ironic, but the same is also true for Democrats. Democrats constantly use pseudo science to justify their non-scientific position and ideology. Worse, for many on the left, science is becoming their religion. So you wind up with two religiously dogmatic zealots arguing about who's idiocy is best.
Those incessant political Facebook posts have certainly changed the way I think.
First, they have changed my opinion of many of my Facebook friends due to their endless attempts to shove political arguments (of all persuasions) in my face (thank God for the "unfollow" button).
Second, they have changed my opinion of Facebook and social media as a whole. Social media continues to devolve into more yelling, screaming, threats, trolling, guilt by association, and mob justice. And what makes it bad for Facebook is that the harder they try to "fix" things, the worse it becomes.
I learned long ago to be extremely careful about discussing politics or religion, especially with friends. I sincerely wish more people would take that lesson to heart.
As a moderate conservative and registered Democrat, I believe in both God and Science. Believing in one doesn't cancel out the other.
That's not quite a fair assessment of their stance. In general they believe that the profit motive applies to scientists as well as business-persons such that scientists will bias their results to get more money just like any salesperson would. You could argue they are projecting their own greed into scientists, but they can claim that human nature is human nature, and most humans are naturally greedy (which is the basis of capitalism's feedback mechanism).
You can argue specific climate facts, but they can always find a scientist (or a shill acting like a scientist) to poke holes in such facts.
It's true that the Earth is a complex system with lots of "moving parts" such that its climate is the aggregate result of jillions of factors.
You could point out that in most models, more CO2 warms the earth, and we know the CO2 increase is largely man-made due to the isotope signature.
But they may reply that not all models show CO2 warming the Earth and/or the temperature readings are rigged by those "greedy scientists" I mentioned above such that there is no excessive warming beyond the normal natural ebb and flow.
How does one prove scientists didn't rig temperature readings? There were no cameras following them 24/7. Ultimately it relies on trust, and if they believe scientists don't deserve our trust, there's not much one can do.
Unfortunately we may have to wait until their tushies bake off or their houses are under the sea until they get a clue. Reality is merely poking them right now, but they'll only notice it when it kicks them in the nuts/cunt.
Table-ized A.I.
"94% of Republicans, 92% of Democrats, and 85% of independents on Facebook"
THINK that they have never been swayed. They are wrong. Maybe no individual post has ever swayed them; however, multiple people posting opinions almost certainly has. There's a reason why WWII Germany, modern day Russia, and political parties worldwide put out propaganda. IT WORKS.
Look at all the politicians who were against LGBT rights 10 years ago compared to now. Someone has changed their mind. It is the gradual acceptance of people and the political zeitgeist. People preaching acceptance have made a difference on their audience. A single post may not change anyone's mind. Dozens of people expressing an opinion might change someone's mind without them even knowing it.
Sure, some things may never change. Trump's die hard supporters are never going to give him up- and Hillary's won't either; however, chances are at some point in our lives EVERYONE has changed their opinion on something- and it might have been the opinion of another that changed our opinion but we just didn't realize it.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Posting the damning email evidence that she is lying crook will change the minds of any sensible people
Problem is, you think that is smoking gun evidence, but the people you send it to don't see it as such, because they view it critically and know how to read between the lines, which maybe you should start looking into as well... if there is good evidence, it isn't what's been passed around, so you should probably figure out what's wrong with that "evidence" and find the real evidence. And if there is actually no such evidence, well, maybe it's you who should change your mind.
Someone had to do it.
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
Werner Heisenberg
Yeah it does. Science is not a belief. In fact it is more of a rational disbelief.
Silence is a state of mime.
I like to get in a good discussion, but I would be daft if I thought everything I have ever written on the internet would change how people think.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Your Political Facebook Posts Aren't Changing How Your Friends Think
This study is just a rip-off of earlier research into human psychology--specifically, of all previous research into human psychology--which has proven pretty conclusively that nothing anyone says has ever changed anyone's mind about anything ever.
That's certainly true in the studies, and of course the scientists couldn't think of any other avenue to research so it must be true.
OTOH, listening to Brian Tracy's "The Psychology of Selling" gave me the chills because, listening to him explain the methods, I got the distinct feeling that these methods would work on me *and* I can recall many times when they were used on me.
The audio is downright scary at times, but I highly recommend it simply because it'll help you put your guard up against some of the techniques.
He points out, quite correctly, that you can't get someone to change their mind without first pulling them out of heuristic mode and into systemic mode. The easiest way to do this is to ask a question, but there are other methods.
Then you need to phrase the concept in a way that's important to the listener. You don't come in to an office and say "our copiers make xxx copies per minute, and are very reliable", you say "our copiers can save you $2000 per month in expenses, would you like to know how?". The $2000 is something the listener is interested in, and the question pops them into systemic mode. It's how you start a successful sales call.
Most political screeds don't do this - they just state the position, and mostly it's not very convincing to begin with. Donald Trump has been called every bad name in the book, but I don't see how any of that would be persuasive or even make him a bad president. Donald Trump is behind in the polls *if the election were held today*, that's not persuasive *and* I don't even see the point of posting something like that.
So if I wanted to convince people to vote for Trump, I might point out that amnesty for 14 million illegals will bring unemployment to 20% and decrease job security, then ask if there's any other issue that's more important to them than their own job security.
(Is there? I'd be interested to know.)
So if I wanted people to vote for Hillary, I might suggest that Trumps policies will cause economic decline in the US, and companies will flee to other countries or go out of business, then ask if there's any other issue that's more important to them than the economy.
(Is there? I'd be interested to know.)
And then there's people like Scott Adams, who has put a completely original spin on everything about the election, and predicted everything that actually happened from the viewpoint of hypnosis. (Even Nate Silver mis-interpreted Trump's popularity, which is what you get when you look solely at the numbers and not at the situation.)
So no, I don't think it's quite correct to say "nobody has ever changed anyone's mind about anything ever". It happens all the time... in sales.
(Here's Scott Adams talking about trying to purchase a vehicle. It's quite an interesting story, and shows a first-person view of one of the techniques of sales.)
... could decide the race. The race is largely boiling down to which party can get more of their followers to vote for their candidate based on endorsement alone (look at how many republicans don't like Trump but will vote for him because he is the republican candidate and how many democrats don't like Hillary but will vote for her because she is the democratic candidate), and then pick up enough of the independent vote.
Donald Trump could be beaten severely by any random democrat except Hillary Clinton (who brings out massive amounts of GOP hatred based on her name). Hillary Clinton could be beaten severely by any random republican except Donald Trump (who sabotages his own campaign on a daily basis). It almost seems as if neither of the two parties actually want to win this election.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If you're only looking at the Presidential general election, then it's probably true that Facebook posts aren't going to be flipping votes. But that's not the only election. Political posts can make a huge difference in primaries. Political posts can also make a difference in down-ticket races.
Several times people have told me that my posts have convinced them to change their vote in a primary to a different candidate in the same party. I once had someone tell me that they flipped their vote to a candidate in a different party in a general election (down-ticket) based on my Facebook post (in what turned out to be the closest state-wide race on the ballot).
For example:
If you're in Massachusetts, please vote in the state primary on September 8th. If you take a Democratic ballot, I've met the Middlesex Sheriff, Peter Koutoujian, several times, and he's working on important criminal justice reforms. Please vote for him. Also, Bob Jubinville is doing an excellent job on the Governor's Council--please reelect him (I could go on and on and on as to the reasons why). If you're in Tom Sannicandro's district, he's stepping down, and Brett Walker is the best of the three seeking to replace him; I was briefly running myself and withdrew to support him--I'm that convinced he's the best candidate.
Maybe I shouldn't impulse post, but wow, that's significantly higher than I thought! Political posts are almost always emotional tirades, rarely including any new facts or analysis, and are extremely repetitive, and you're telling me ~ 8% of the population can be swayed by this? That's enough to convert some swing states, and for how little effort they require, that's a massive gain. On the contrary, if you could snatch 8% of your opponent's supporters, by investing as little as half an hour per day in a post, then I'd be inclined to label this as quite possibly the single most effective method for garnering votes then - even conventions are usually filled with people who already support you, and TV audiences are likewise rather polarized. For how much more these cost, somebody should see what percentage of people are swayed by political ads...
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Rallies aren't valuable because the attendees are swayed. They're valuable because they appear in glowing terms on local TV. They're valuable because they pump up the attendees to vote/donate/volunteer. They're valuable because without them diehards won't have seen the candidate and may lose faith.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Science 101 should have taught you that with any chaotic system, it is not possible to make predictions about the future state of said system.
That is a misunderstanding of deterministic chaos based on oversimplified popular science.
Some things can be predicted in a deterministic system, some cannot. But, in general, you very often predict the average properties of the system, even if you cannot predict the exact path through the phase space. In a chaotically dripping faucet, you can predict the average number of gallons per hour, even if you cannot predict the exact pattern of the drops. In a weather system, you can predict that July in Bismarck North Dakota will be warmer than January, even though you can't predict whether July 12 2019 will be rainy or dry. In a climate system, you can predict that radiative input equals radiative output, even if you cannot predict the exact temperature in Bismarck on July 12.
Chaos is well defined. It does not mean "anything at all can happen."
To Be honest, the main difference between socialism and Capitalism is the fact that capitalism actually accounts for greed and deception, while Socialism really cannot.
Why? Because captialism (free economics) is about people being able to make decsions for themselves (libertarian) while socialism says that government should decide for everyone, regardless of how good it is to the individual. Socialism doesn't care about the individual, and therefore the individual is at odds with socialism (and why Socialism punishes individual success).
You can see this in Bernie type people who always seem to spew about the "rich" paying "their fair share" ... and then run off and buy a $600K beach house, his 3rd home. It is all well and good as long as it is the OTHER guy that pays.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Whenever I look into the attacks, they either turn out to either have no real substance, or else be on some subject I really don't care about. They keep saying there's a smoking gun, but all I ever see is smoke. But the attacks seem to be mostly "let's make a lot of smoke, so that people will think, 'where there's smoke there's fire'."
About the worst people really say is "well, she does all the same things all successful politicians do!"
So, I'd say in this case, social media is changing my mind, although in the opposite direction perhaps from the one intended.
(Similar things are partly true of Trump: half of the stuff people accuse him of is out of context or stuff he didn't really said at all. But there's the other half, which is stuff he really did say or do.)
By the way, is it getting any more obvious to anyone that Trump is a Hillary plant?
He seems to act just exactly like what he seems to be: like a reality-television performer who has learned that the more outrageously he talks, the more viewers are attracted to the show.
Every day he's shooting his mouth off with some preposterous remark,
Which gives him more press coverage, which is what he wants.
Science is not a belief.
It takes faith to believe that 2 + 2 is 4. The word "because" isn't a good answer.
No. There are plenty of examples of the requirement of "belief" in science, this isn't one of them.
You cannot be an expert in every field of study, and perform all your own experiments verifying the entirety of accumulated human knowledge. That means, to some extent, you must trust (i.e. have faith in) the processes that produced all that knowledge. It's the kind of faith that can be replaced with a degree of certainty, if you care to prove these things to yourself and replicate the experiments, but it's a kind of faith nonetheless.
Two plus two equals four not because you believe the results of an experiment you did not yourself verify, but because you were taught a mathematical system in which the result of performing the arithmetic operation of addition on the numbers 2 and 2 results in 4. No faith necessary.
If you're using math to describe real world objects, then you can grab two oranges and two plums and put them together and count them. You don't have to call the result "four," you can call it "quattro" or "loS" or "harfshump." Whatever you decide to call that collection of four objects is your description of a group of things that has a cardinality of 4. You need only have faith in your ability to put a descriptor on a fact that is independently true. If you just got hit over the head, and you see four pieces of fruit but there's really only two, 2 + 2 still equals 4. You were just wrong about starting with 2 and 2.
If you'd prefer that two plus two equals something other than four, you are free to use a different system (e.g. one where 2 + 2 = 0 and 2 * 2 = 3) or cook up your own. Go nuts, toss the integers out the window, devise a system where [nothing] plus <purple> equals {%%%}. However, 2 plus 2 will still equal 4, axiomatically, in the system everybody else uses.
Nothing posted to
2+2=4 is a matter of stipulation. It isn't a matter of observation, nor of faith, but of agreement to the convention.
The scientific method is firmly founded upon a set of metaphysical assumptions which have proven to have high practical value, but cannot themselves be demonstrated (such as: the outer world actually exists, and is not an elaborately-crafted illusion). So, there is belief involved. But it is much less belief than what is involved in religious doctrines.
Sorry, but 2 rocks plus 2 rocks still equals 4 rocks.
Birds have been shown to have a sense of numbers, without any metaphysical assumptions.
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
Werner Heisenberg
He's overstating it. He was uncertain about the outcome.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Congratulations. You've finally done it. You've made the post that will convince everybody to change sides in the election! Someone nominate this person for the Presidential Medal of Freedom!
I think that technique is this: Post in Internet forums that you know a sales technique that is sooo effective it's forbidden. Don't go into any specifics! Just give enough pointers that people can find the book. Sold!
Really, the website I found after actually googling your hints had no useful content whatsoever, and did not talk about any ingenious sale strategy. What it said could be on any generic sales newsletter.