Results of Poll 11: Public Spaces

 

Comments

[Chris]

This was an interesting poll for me, and despite concerns by other players it was remarkably well attended.

I regret the wording, which clearly confused a lot of people, but never mind. :) I didn't mean "is one of these three the greatest influence in your life?", but rather "which of these three had the *greater* influence in your life?"

Nearly 45% of respondents either couldn't pick just one of these public spaces, didn't understand what I meant (my bad!), or genuinely believe that they have not been influenced to any degree by any of these three - a proposition that I find woefully unlikely.

Even if you hate sports, surely your hatred of sports has influenced you? Even if you have no religion, surely this absence has influenced you? Even if you detest politics, you can't have escaped influence from the political world.

What this result suggest to me is that many of you are so introverted that you believe that you aren't influenced by the outside world - and who knows, maybe you are freakishly insular and haven't been. I rather suspect, though, that you have been more influenced by these things than you think - but again, I take responsibility for a wording that was perhaps confusing.

Anyway, in this three-way battle of the public spaces, Religion is the clear winner. I rather expected Sport to put up more of a battle, to be honest, but it still managed to beat Politics. People just aren't that interested in politics - I guess they don't believe in it, in our cynical world. This encourages me to post more about political games, heh heh... >:)

Thanks to everyone who participated!

[Peter Crowther]

Chris, your wording in these comments appears to contradict your response to me in the priginal set of comments, where I said essentially that politics had the greatest influence on me and you directed me to put "none of the above" because I was not involved in the political process. What's happened?

[Chris]

Best guess: between setting the poll and writing this comment, the meaning the poll had for me changed completely, probably as a result of forgetting what was originally in my mind and replacing it with fragments of various conversations in the comments. :)

I do remember that previous interpretation of the poll... it shows how badly worded it was that even *I* couldn't hang onto the sense I originally meant!

Oh well, fun poll all the same. :)

[Neil]

I also think that of the three things (which by no means cover everything in life, so to assert if someone did not pick one that they are "freakishly insular" is a bit off), that religion is the one that, if it had the greatest influence, you were most likely to say so.

Of the others people are less likely to feel/admit to themselves/want to publicly admit that they had "the most effect on their lives".

It's a little thing, but it is the same as the people who respond more positively about their service when responding to the person who gave them the service, but are more likely to be much less positive if giving the response to someone who did not give them service. It's that admitting-the-reality-thing versus responding how you feel you should respond.

Anyway. Oh, and the other thing is that the image of the poll results is *slightly* wider than the blog page here so, for instance, we cannot see how many respondents to the poll there were. Currently all I can see is the number 1.

[Chris]

Neil: "which by no means cover everything in life, so to assert if someone did not pick one that they are "freakishly insular" is a bit off"

*sigh* I never did manage to get across to you what this poll was about: that these three things are not all things in life is entirely irrelevant and to suggest otherwise is to admit to missing the point of the poll entirely. What is it that you think this poll was asking?

This is a poll about the influence of public spaces upon people's lives. It asks them to choose which of three specific ones (I excluded the market, for reasons discussed previously) had greater influence. Non-public spaces have nothing to do with this poll, and given that three specific public spaces are named the decision of assessing which had greater influence seems a perfectly sound question. What possible objection can you have here, other than the apparently arbitrary nature of the inquiry, or a continued confusion about the wording?

And yes, I'm afraid I do believe that anyone who thinks they have not been influenced to any degree by sports, politics or religion is insular - you are free to believe otherwise, but someone has to be pretty trapped in their own head to think politics has had no influence upon them whatsoever. That *doesn't* mean I think anyone who put "none of the above" is freakishly insular, of course, since there are other reasons for choosing this answer beyond not acknowledging any influence at all, of which the most relevant is my failure to accurately get across (or, indeed, remember) what the poll was about, an issue which you seem to embody. ;)

Peter's original objection (now validated) was the fairer complaint here in my eyes - how do you eliminate the omnipresent influence of these things on culture? Peter's new objection is also pretty apposite, namely that what I meant when I first posted the poll put a different spin on it, which I latter silently retracted. That was naughty of me! Oh well... I offer double apologies to Peter for the mixups! :)

I've resized the image - thanks for the heads up!

Since I'm about to go on hiatus, can I ask you that if you still have issues here that you talk to me about them face to face instead of posting a comment - it might be the only way of clearing this one up once and for all at this point! :)

Cheers!