Help this student understand the society!
« on: December 20, 2017, 02:08:15 PM »
Hey guys,

I'm a communications student, I'm doing a project on the Flat Earth society and I'd love to know more about you! And no, I'm not talking about the theory itself, but I'm talking about the people behind it. If you think, or should I say, KNOW the Earth is flat and have 5 minutes to spare, then you could help me lots be filling in this questionnaire: https://goo.gl/forms/0CCVKq4bWCCfqTq83

Thank you lots!

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Offline Dr David Thork

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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2017, 02:42:33 PM »
Your first question is "What is the highest form of education you enjoyed?"

My answer to that is nursery. After the potato painting was over, school became a bit of a chore.

Why would you set out to try and pigeon hole flat earther's as stupid and ill-educated and then expect co-operation in your survey? The survey is already loaded, from the off. That isn't going to tell you anything about the society.

You are also looking for quantitative data. Not qualitative. Lots of people answering a few facile questions. How is that going to tell you things you have no idea about for the flat earth society? More interesting questions involve what religion do you subscribe to? Historically in polls we have conducted, Deism always comes out on top here, with atheism second and so on. I would think that in itself would lead to all kinds of questions about the mindset and convictions of flat earthers. Deism isn't exactly an off-the shelf religion and you don't meet many Deists in your local Walmart. Why is it the most prevalent religion in this society?
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Offline AATW

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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #2 on: December 21, 2017, 01:42:02 PM »
Why would you set out to try and pigeon hole flat earther's as stupid and ill-educated and then expect co-operation in your survey? The survey is already loaded, from the off. That isn't going to tell you anything about the society.
That's not very fair. If this person is looking for demographic data about the people who make up the society then it's a perfectly reasonable question.
Kinda agree that the questionnaire is not particularly well designed, but accusations of pigeon holing seem a little harsh.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline Dr David Thork

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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #3 on: December 21, 2017, 01:47:30 PM »
That's not very fair. If this person is looking for demographic data about the people who make up the society then it's a perfectly reasonable question.
Kinda agree that the questionnaire is not particularly well designed, but accusations of pigeon holing seem a little harsh.
Well that's easy for you to say when you aren't the lab rat under the microscope. If I'm to be examined and voluntarily give up my data, I'd like to be treated with respect.
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Offline AATW

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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #4 on: December 21, 2017, 01:59:06 PM »
If you don't want to fill in the questionnaire then don't, but a question about education level is a reasonable one in assessing the demographics of the members.
I'd say gender, age, country of original are all reasonable questions in assessing that.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline Dr David Thork

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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #5 on: December 21, 2017, 02:08:01 PM »
If you don't want to fill in the questionnaire then don't,
I didn't. And so how does that help the OP? No point in a questionnaire that alienates the very people you want to fill it in.

but a question about education level is a reasonable one in assessing the demographics of the members.
I'd say gender, age, country of original are all reasonable questions in assessing that.
Why are those things relevant over other things such as race, sexuality, height or annual income?

So the average age comes out as 35. So what? What did you learn? This is not a way to understand the flat earth society. It is a way to pigeon hole it.
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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #6 on: December 21, 2017, 02:20:14 PM »
If you don't want to fill in the questionnaire then don't,
I didn't. And so how does that help the OP? No point in a questionnaire that alienates the very people you want to fill it in.

but a question about education level is a reasonable one in assessing the demographics of the members.
I'd say gender, age, country of original are all reasonable questions in assessing that.
Why are those things relevant over other things such as race, sexuality, height or annual income?

So the average age comes out as 35. So what? What did you learn? This is not a way to understand the flat earth society. It is a way to pigeon hole it.
Presuming you get enough responses to make things statistically significant, age/education/race/sexuality/etc can all tell you things about the demographic you are looking at. Which could indeed lead to understanding things. It depends on the core premise of the questionnaire. Is it trying to see if there are any sorts of patterns in believers? Maybe the goal is to create a quiz that is taken every year, and see how the demographics change or if they do at all. The relevancy of a particular question is dependent upon the goal of the questionnaire, not the feelings of those taking it. Maybe his class has specific requirements about the information he needs to gather too for some reason, classes usually will.

Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #7 on: January 08, 2018, 02:47:19 PM »
Thank you guys for the responses!

This survey was meant for me to find which channels are the usual channels for people to communicate Flat Earth Theory. It was only meant as a starting point for further research. Even though this method gives quantitative information, it will ultimately lead to qualitative information, since I will be able to focus my research more clearly.

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Maybe his class has specific requirements about the information he needs to gather too for some reason, classes usually will.

That is indeed the case, thanks for clearing that up.

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Why would you set out to try and pigeon hole flat earther's as stupid and ill-educated and then expect co-operation in your survey?

I'm sorry I made you feel that way. I tried to be as respectful as possible and I apparently failed at that. Could you tell me which part of the survey made you feel disrespected? Was it the question about education or was there more?

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Offline Dr David Thork

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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #8 on: January 08, 2018, 04:11:15 PM »
Education was the very first thing you asked. Not age, not sex, not religion ... you went straight to education. As if your inner monologue thought "Right, flat earth society. They're are idiots so I'll ask them about their education, and form my conclusions around that. Should be an easy A grade here. Oh, and to make it look like a survey, I better ask some other questions too. What to ask? Erm, age, sex ... yeah, starting to look like a survey now. Juicy worm stuck on the hook. Now to cast it out and catch some halfwits".

You led out with the wrong question. Your intentions to humiliate, not understand were clear. Still, I guess you learned something after all.
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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #9 on: January 08, 2018, 04:52:15 PM »
You led out with the wrong question. Your intentions to humiliate, not understand were clear. Still, I guess you learned something after all.

It sounds to me that you are immediately assuming his intentions are aggressive. There is a possibility that he randomly chose to put that question first. I really think we need a statement from the student to see what he thinks about all this.

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Offline Boots

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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #10 on: January 08, 2018, 10:33:33 PM »
Hey PingPong, might I suggest donning a pair of kid gloves and trying again?
“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.” - George Orwell

Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #11 on: January 10, 2018, 12:43:45 PM »
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You led out with the wrong question. Your intentions to humiliate, not understand were clear. Still, I guess you learned something after all.

That is definitely not the case here. Again, I'm sorry I made you feel this way. The order of the questions were semi-randomly chosen, the only thing that wasn't random is that I wanted to start of with demographic-centric questions first and go in-depth later. That's the only decision I consciously made while preparing this questionnaire. Would it help if I started of with a different question? And what question would that be?

My intentions where not to humiliate, but to find out what channels are the main channels for communicating the Flat Earth Theory, and my plan was to do it as objectively as possible. It seems that I failed at doing that.

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Hey PingPong, might I suggest donning a pair of kid gloves and trying again?


Great suggestion, but considering how the response was to this survey makes me think a survey isn't the best way of going about this. I at least need to edit the survey if I want to reach the people I want to reach without eliciting the response I'm getting now.

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Offline Dr David Thork

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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #12 on: January 11, 2018, 11:08:36 PM »
considering how the response was to this survey makes me think a survey isn't the best way of going about this.

Most students request interviews and conduct them on Skype etc.
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Offline PickYerPoison

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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #13 on: January 12, 2018, 03:16:40 PM »
Education was the very first thing you asked. Not age, not sex, not religion ... you went straight to education. As if your inner monologue thought "Right, flat earth society. They're are idiots so I'll ask them about their education, and form my conclusions around that. Should be an easy A grade here. Oh, and to make it look like a survey, I better ask some other questions too. What to ask? Erm, age, sex ... yeah, starting to look like a survey now. Juicy worm stuck on the hook. Now to cast it out and catch some halfwits".

You led out with the wrong question. Your intentions to humiliate, not understand were clear. Still, I guess you learned something after all.

Demographic data is usually near the top/front of questionnaires, but that doesn't make them the most important questions. If a survey asked if you identified as a man or a woman before diving into the meat of things, would it be sexist? If it asked your ethnicity, would it be racist? If it asked if you were religious, would it be antireligious?

It was a simple question, and one that I'd also be interested in the answer to if I were running the survey. If you feel like you're being talked down to, insulted, or attacked when an anonymous voluntary survey asks what your highest level of education is, you should probably take a step back.
Remember that "The truth is out there" as long as you are willing to look!

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Offline Dr David Thork

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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #14 on: January 12, 2018, 06:54:18 PM »
If you feel like you're being talked down to, insulted, or attacked when an anonymous voluntary survey asks what your highest level of education is, you should probably take a step back.
That's exactly what I did. I didn't fill in the survey. Neither did many other flat earthers. And the student asks "Why is no one filling in my survey?". And the answer is that it was clumsy at best, insulting at worst.

The answer to education from surveys we have done in the past is that the overwhelming majority of flat earthers here are degree educated, myself included. And most of those have degrees in STEM subjects, not arts.

But you don't go to a society that is ridiculed for being backwards and open with "Do any of you have an education?".
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Offline PickYerPoison

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Re: Help this student understand the society!
« Reply #15 on: January 14, 2018, 03:20:55 PM »
That's exactly what I did. I didn't fill in the survey. Neither did many other flat earthers. And the student asks "Why is no one filling in my survey?". And the answer is that it was clumsy at best, insulting at worst.

The answer to education from surveys we have done in the past is that the overwhelming majority of flat earthers here are degree educated, myself included. And most of those have degrees in STEM subjects, not arts.

But you don't go to a society that is ridiculed for being backwards and open with "Do any of you have an education?".

You've misunderstood what "take a step back" means. It implies "...and reevaluate".

As I said in my post, these questions are commonplace. What if everyone answered the question with higher degrees? Then it would serve to dispel the idea that flat earthers are uneducated. Either way, it helps provide what I consider relevant context to the matter at hand.

I honestly don't think I've ever seen anyone get offended by a demographical question on a survey before, or to act like its purpose was to ridicule. Do you do this on every survey you take? Or just the ones where the demographic questions come first?
Remember that "The truth is out there" as long as you are willing to look!