On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 2:36 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
There's a massive selection bias there! Of course the NGOs that do lots of lobbying think lobbying is a great idea, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.
Not only that, but of course people who eat food and drink water to sustain themselves are unlikely to give proper weight to Breatharian points of view!
That pesky POV problem keeps rearing its noisy head wherever you look. ;)
I welcome your independent research project when you get it started. Or anybody's, really. I suppose the null hypothesis is that one can simply stay silent and wins the issue anyway. Obviously, I tend to fall on the Gandhi/Martin Luther King side of that issue -- at least I'm transparent about my biases.
--Mike
On 22 January 2012 22:54, Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 2:36 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
There's a massive selection bias there! Of course the NGOs that do lots of lobbying think lobbying is a great idea, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.
Not only that, but of course people who eat food and drink water to sustain themselves are unlikely to give proper weight to Breatharian points of view!
That pesky POV problem keeps rearing its noisy head wherever you look. ;)
Indeed. That's why I asked for independent research. Research from NGOs that have chosen not to engage in lobbying would be just as useless.
I welcome your independent research project when you get it started. Or anybody's, really. I suppose the null hypothesis is that one can simply stay silent and wins the issue anyway. Obviously, I tend to fall on the Gandhi/Martin Luther King side of that issue -- at least I'm transparent about my biases.
I disagree - the null hypothesis is that the gain from lobbying isn't worth the cost, not that the gain is zero. (Cost includes far more than just monetary cost, of course.)
On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I disagree - the null hypothesis is that the gain from lobbying isn't worth the cost, not that the gain is zero. (Cost includes far more than just monetary cost, of course.)
Ah, then the proper experiment would have been for Wikipedians not to black out enwiki for a day and see how effective that was in changing the debate?
Because, as you know, the blackout did entail a significant non-monetary costs.
The trick, of course, is that political experimentation of this sort is similar to human experimentation generally -- the risk is that the experiment, for all you learn from it, leads to negative consequences down the line. My own view is that the blackout was unquestionably the right thing to do, and I'm hugely proud to be associated in my own small way with the people who took the risk of making our voices heard this time.
--Mike
On 22 January 2012 23:09, Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I disagree - the null hypothesis is that the gain from lobbying isn't worth the cost, not that the gain is zero. (Cost includes far more than just monetary cost, of course.)
Ah, then the proper experiment would have been for Wikipedians not to black out enwiki for a day and see how effective that was in changing the debate?
Of course not. If you were going to do that kind of experiment, you would need to both blackout Wikipedia and not black it out and compare the two. Obviously, that isn't possible. Not everything lends itself to such simple experimentation.
Because, as you know, the blackout did entail a significant non-monetary costs.
Of course, and very difficult ones to quantify, which makes analysing this sort of thing even harder.
The trick, of course, is that political experimentation of this sort is similar to human experimentation generally -- the risk is that the experiment, for all you learn from it, leads to negative consequences down the line. My own view is that the blackout was unquestionably the right thing to do, and I'm hugely proud to be associated in my own small way with the people who took the risk of making our voices heard this time.
That's a good analogy. The approach often taken with studies about humanity is not to do experiments (because they can be harmful) but instead to examine things that have already happened or are happening anyway.
You could make some progress in working out how effective lobbying is for non-profits by comparing countries where such lobbying is common and countries where it isn't, or by comparing sub-sectors where it is common and sub-sectors where it isn't. It wouldn't surprise me if someone has done some research like that. As an expert on the subject, I was hoping you would know about some.
Le 22/01/2012 20:18, Thomas Dalton a écrit :
That's a good analogy. The approach often taken with studies about humanity is not to do experiments (because they can be harmful) but instead to examine things that have already happened or are happening anyway.
But then you won't act until studying it all, rejecting any opportunity to take a stance in the meanwhile. That is, you make the choice of consenting what's happening without good reason. That's a choice, that's an experiment: the experiment of passivity.
From a thousand years of dark ages, Les Lumières [1] have drawn one
lesson : control of information flow is best fought than allowed. It is best for everyone to be the master of his or her own life.
[1]: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumi%C3%A8res_%28philosophie%29 (the english article is urgent, it's about wikipedian values)
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