The Tyranny of Data (and polls)

Wisecrack recently released a video essay on how ‘data’ was fundamentally changing the film industry. All you need to do is put in a few variables and an algorithm will spit out a perfect script, complete with the perfect actors. Boom - instant hit!

They called it the simulation of films. All the ingredients are there for the film to be absolutely perfect, except one; the scripts have no human element, they therefore lack any soul. Because only humanity can inject soul into a project.

And so the film fails; there is just no connection to it from the audience.

Unfortunately this phenomenon is also infecting modern politics and journalism. While I wouldn’t call them a simulation, they have become a parody of what they were, slowly losing all that was human about them, putting society on course for a dystopian future. By removing the human, and relying only on ‘data’ to tell them what people think and what people want, politics has ceased to be the ‘art of the possible’, but has become, instead, the ‘pursuit of the unthinking’, while journalism no longer speaks truth to power, preferring to preach data to the powerless.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

And it’s obvious who and what are the main contributors to this state of affairs. Pollsters, polling companies and their polls, as well as those who analyse the data they provide. Add this to lazy, boring and underfunded journalism, and a population which wishes, always, to be told what to think, and this is the road to disaster. Why write an in depth, well researched piece of journalism which few people will read, when you can instead just commission a poll on an issue and write about that instead. It will probably be read by more people anyway, and your findings will be incontestable, in a way that actual stories from real human beings could never be.

Humans are fallible; data is not. While this was once embraced, it has now become a problem.

And this is a problem on both a micro and a macro level. That is, small issues can be controlled by data as can the whole idea of politics and journalism as a pursuit.

As much as they claim to be ‘independent’ and ‘neutral’, all polling companies still have a bias. Whether that’s towards one side of politics, one side of an issue, or simply towards making profit, modern polling companies are some of the most powerful entities in the world.

And their word has become Gospel. Unable to be questioned, because questioning it means you’re questioning the mathematical certainties of the universe itself. All human experience can be explained through the algorithms that polling companies come up with. And even when they’re provably wrong, pollsters will simply rearrange a few numbers and claim that everything is fixed.

So we don’t need artists anymore. We don’t need storytellers or journalists. We barely need politicians. We just need pollsters, data analysts and algorithms.

The Worst of it

But the worst form of journalism has leaned into this. Seeing the writing on the wall they have embraced this future instead of fighting against it. And the weakest, laziest and most inept journalists have worked out that they can always rely on poll numbers to make up for any lack of knowledge on a subject.

Some of this is also out of fear. If you write something based on human experience or testimony, well then, that might be proven wrong, or disputed or even simply challenged by others. But, if you write based on the unquestionable science of polls, then you cannot be challenged; and you will always be correct. But not right.

Either way, through laziness or fear, the poll numbers themselves become the story, further cementing pollsters at the true heart of government; not the Parliament, nor the Fourth Estate.

So pollsters have become a kind of Sixth Column, seeking to undermine the will of the people, the energy of a nation’s politics and the skills of its storytellers, not for the benefit of any foreign power or government, but solely to increase their own influence.

The irony of this though is that, as a result of the data driven politics and journalism, truth has been lost. Because data, that is the result of a statistical, mathematical and algorithmic analysis of some human thoughts, is not ‘truth’, no matter how much it pretends to be. Data, and the analysis of it, believes it can tell people what they want and what they believe. It cannot.

It’s important to remember that fact is not truth. Fact is correct, it’s in the name, but that is not enough to be right. So even when polling data is factual, which if it comes from reputable polling companies it usually is (to a point), it is still a problem. And to discover why we need to go back to Victor Hugo.

Fact v Right

When writing about the July Revolution of 1830, Victor Hugo identified two things that were at war with each other, Fact and Right. That Revolution, he claimed, was the triumph of right over fact. Fact, according to Hugo, is monstrous, ugly and even unnatural. To illustrate this point, he brings up Machiavelli. Machiavelli is not evil, not demonic, he was simply fact.

This is hard to disagree with. The Prince is merely a reflection of the ruling classes at the time it was published. What it is not is Right.

Why bring this up in relation to polling data?

It’s simple; the truth is, right now, politics is too consumed by fact and has given up caring about what the right thing to do is. Because what is right in a given situation is usually subjective, hard and must be fought for, usually without help from a fact-minded and data driven media and journalistic class.

Any politician who tries to do the right thing without having data to back them is going to be pilloried by the press. So we get into the ridiculous situation where forecasts, which most people know are wildly inaccurate, and are based once again on assumptions and mathematical equations, are used to justify decisions. But at least that gets some things done.

Problems arise when polling data is used to justify the non-making of decisions, or to rally support against progress. If there is something that needs to be done, but a poll shows a majority of even a large minority are against it, then what’s a politician going to do? What is a Government going to do?

Because you can be sure that the media, bloated by that polling data and always looking for the easy story, is going to jam that poll into everyone’s face until the only fact that people know is that poll. And then people, who may have originally supported the decision, see the polling data and start to wonder if they want to be in that majority. So polls start shifting more and more against the right decision towards the only fact that they know.

And then the shifting polls become the story; ensuring that the polling data will always be the only thing people know and accept.

So all progress is halted; data has robbed humanity.

Polls against Humanity

There’s one final thing we need to talk about. Every two weeks or so Newspoll releases their poll and everyone looks at it and goes ‘that is the unadulterated truth’. The problem is the poll itself has a claimed 3% margin of error, and most movements in the poll are less than 3%, making the entire thing useless.

But despite this uselessness, it is still used. And a two point change in the vote or in approval rating or any other metric that can be taken is, once again, seen as the only fact. And this has brought down Governments. Completely unchecked, polling companies have destroyed the will of the people. Helped along by their media allies for reasons already discussed above.

But apparently this is an acceptable state of affairs. At least the media and polling class thinks so.

And the rest of us are dragged along.

The Place of Data

Data has its place, as do polls themselves. They can be used, ethically, to illustrate a point or provide evidence to back up a point. That is, they can be used in the background.

What is completely unforgivable is to use them as the basis of a story or the basis of a policy. Or, at the very worst, the basis of an entire government. A government run by algorithm is not a strong, effective or legitimate government.

But that is the way we are heading. The overconfidence in, and over reliance on, polls has infected the political and journalistic class to such an extent that it will be very difficult to halt. Independent journalism is, mostly, doing its best to fight, but it can only hold out for so long.

It will take some brave politicians to make a stand against the pollsters and the mainstream media, to implement policy in spite of them. Once the reliance is broken, then, hopefully, the world can move on.

But that of course relies on the population to see what is happening, how they are being manipulated by polls, how their opinion is being transformed and changed by pollsters. we definitely need a ‘scales lifting off your eyes’ moment. Or to realise that we are merely being shown shadows on the side of a cave when we base our lives off polls, and not the real world just beyond.

But humanity can break out of this poll induced slumber. We can make politics better, we can save journalism from the parody it has become. And we can still progress as a society, free from that control we have found ourselves bound by.