Agrabah : exposing the fear of ignorance

hi - we now have 2 polls published that ask the interviewees there opionons on what should happen to the denizens of Agrabah .

the details of these polls is IMHO - irrelevant

what does matter is that those polled would not admit thier ignorance of Agrabah

i assume the above statement is true - based on the premise that if they did know that Agrabah was a fictional city from a film - no one in thier right mind would advocate bombing it , or accepting its refugees .

so - we are left with the reality that :

to mask thier ignorance - people will voice an opinion on issues of which they know nothing .

as Agrabah is a fictional city - none of those polled knew any valid reason for it to be bombed - or why its refugees should be afforded sanctury

but they opinied anyway .

thats the truely scary take home message of these polls

a reply to: ignorant_ape

Good point, I would say we have too many ignorant and led by ego fools running amok on this planet, blinded by delusions yet opinionated as if they were experts on things they truly know nothing about.

Why is it so difficult for people to admit they aren't sure on an issue?

Agrabah just sounds totally stupid by the way haha

It seems to me that we have had a number of so-called "polls" recently that are designed not to discover information or opinions, but to mislead those polled into doing stupid stuff. For example, there was a "poll" of Yale students who were tricked into saying the First Amendment should be abolished. In another "poll" some "researchers" took Bible quotes and presented them as part of the Koran and had people say how horrible those Muslims' beliefs were. And now we have this fake poll, tricking people into believing a fictional city is real.

These are not scientific polls at all. They are just azzhats who are designing these "polls" to deceive people so they can be made fun of. You could reverse any one of these polls and make any group of people you wanted to look stupid. It's easy to do this because people are basically trusting that they are not being tricked. As slashdot.org says in its polls (paraphrased) "If you're using these numbers to do anything serious, you're insane."

I agree that a person voicing an opinion on a topic they know nothing about is VERY alarming. I'd say it's equally damaging to our society as willful ignorance- both have the same end result, the refusal to seek out and learn the facts in order to truly reason for oneself and reach understanding.

In the matter of feigning knowledge of a topic to conceal ignorance, the tendency to do this starts early. In groups of young people (primary school age), admissions of ignorance and/or asking for knowledge from peers is typically met with sarcasm and ridicule. It seems to me that after the first couple times a child's requests for help are met with hostility and some measure of ostracization, they're going to give up on that behavior in order to fit in with the group. This singling out of those in need of facts and/or knowledge may be a product of our outdated educational system. Some would argue it's a part of nature, the Darwinian process at work in our more intelligent human species, just a natural pecking order being established - instead of the group pecking at the exposed sensitive physical areas of the smaller and slower members of the flock, the flock takes aim at exposed ignorance wherever it appears... pushes that individual away from the proverbial teat of knowledge and attention. Whatever the reason, this behavioral phenomenon is an obstacle to the furtherance of our societies, and a detriment to humanity as a whole.

Good teachers say that there's no such thing as stupid questions, only stupid answers. A very wise saying- but unfortunately, a sentiment that doesn't seem to be understood by many folks these days.

Also, there are dozens of countries in the East whose names the average citizen may not remember, and in truth has absolutely no reason to remember. Azerbaijan and Agrabah? How many Americans or Europeans really need to know which place is real, and which is fictitious?

I had never heard of Agrabah or whatever it is and I would have just said I don't know what is going on there. It could have been a city somewhere for all I know because I don't know every location in the entire world.

It sounds a bit like Abu Ghraib

originally posted by: M4nWithNoN4me
Also, there are dozens of countries in the East whose names the average citizen may not remember, and in truth has absolutely no reason to remember. Azerbaijan and Agrabah? How many Americans or Europeans really need to know which place is real, and which is fictitious?

Yea no need to know anything about the places we are bombing. If someone says we need to bomb them, we must need to bomb them, because we are America and bombing is what we do! Foreign policy smloreign policy. It's not like horrible foreign policy decisions have real life consequences.



But seriously, uninformed citizens have no way of holding their government accountable. It's a real problem. it's terrify to think people in this world would just say "yea ok bomb them" with out knowing anything about them.

We bitch and moan about the horrible politicians in washington, but it's these damn low information voters who keep them in place. We complain about the direction the world is going, but we don't know enough to stop it.

originally posted by: schuyler
It seems to me that we have had a number of so-called "polls" recently that are designed not to discover information or opinions, but to mislead those polled into doing stupid stuff. For example, there was a "poll" of Yale students who were tricked into saying the First Amendment should be abolished. In another "poll" some "researchers" took Bible quotes and presented them as part of the Koran and had people say how horrible those Muslims' beliefs were. And now we have this fake poll, tricking people into believing a fictional city is real.

These are not scientific polls at all. They are just azzhats who are designing these "polls" to deceive people so they can be made fun of. You could reverse any one of these polls and make any group of people you wanted to look stupid. It's easy to do this because people are basically trusting that they are not being tricked. As slashdot.org says in its polls (paraphrased) "If you're using these numbers to do anything serious, you're insane."

What you call being tricked, I call being uninformed.

You may say these people where "tricked" but this isn't a question that can trick someone who isn't insanely uninformed. With the endless ISIS/Al Quaeda/muslim boogie man news, it's hard to imagine that anyone who has even spent minimal time watching TV in the last 15 years would not know what Sharia is, but unsurprisingly low information voters can be "tricked" into supporting it.


The questions that "trick" them are not that hard.

a reply to: mahatche

Oh my... the ignorance!!

It is jaw dropping to see even one person so out of touch with the world around them that support things without knowing anything about it, however... no one wants to look stupid.

Rather than doing the right thing and asking what or who something is or why this action is purportedly going to take place, they think about what they do know about a situation, person, place or event and how they generally align and go from there.

People are conditioned to answer questions as best they can.

The next thing about these polls is that the sampling size is just too small and these gotcha type polls don't ever include people who say "I don't know enough about ______", to answer or the ones who would actually say "Agrabah isn't even a real place."

These types of things are only meant to reinforce negative opinions by one group of another.