[Foundation-l] Politico: "Wikimedia foundation hires lobbyists on sopa, pipa"

[Thomas Dalton]

On 22 January 2012 22:54, Mike Godwin <mnemonic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 2:36 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at 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.)