The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
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@hannah how big of a sample size is worthwhile when 100% of your respondents can’t tell you the current date
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
@hannah manufacturing consent
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
@hannah I feel like this practice is a fundamental misunderstanding of its own problem space.
This doesn't come within three or four degrees of freedom of measuring what the advocates seem to think it measures.
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
@hannah Well, shit, I can make old-school Markov chainbots that will answer your poll questions that will emulate human answers too. This is literally less than useless.
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
@hannah oh this is going to fuck up so many things in an election year
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
@hannah oh my GOD
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Our innovative approach: instead of doing something, we simply do not do it. at a fraction of the cost
@hannah millennials kill yet another industry! *adds a notch*
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
@hannah what the fuck
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Our innovative approach: instead of doing something, we simply do not do it. at a fraction of the cost
@hannah the federal government has been doing this for decades
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Our innovative approach: instead of doing something, we simply do not do it. at a fraction of the cost
@hannah obviously the model needs to be trained on a sample of typical responses from the specific population(s) to be surveyed.
... so, thats it, AI something something magically gets more precision out of the same dataset, by adding simulated data? They're saying the simulated responses are more accurate than the real responses???
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
@hannah what the actual fuck is this
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
@hannah I have this same instinctive response every time I've seen reference to "synthetic data." People have been (successfully!) selling this crap for almost a decade!
There is no way to synthesize data that meaningfully replicates a real world investigation. Simulate volume? Sure. Test specific scenarios or fuzz inputs? Yep, I'll buy that. But there is no expositive value in synthetic data - by definition. It's synthetic! It reflects only the algorithms used to synthesize it!
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@hannah what the actual fuck is this
10/10 LLMs think that this is a tremendous idea.
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@hannah obviously the model needs to be trained on a sample of typical responses from the specific population(s) to be surveyed.
... so, thats it, AI something something magically gets more precision out of the same dataset, by adding simulated data? They're saying the simulated responses are more accurate than the real responses???
@hannah Wait, I've got a better idea that will still cut their polling costs in half: we survey people but with half the standard sample size, then we run it all through a photo copier and tabulate the results. We'll get the normal sample size and accuracy!
Also, copy machines use a lot less power than AI, its win-win!
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
@hannah "we're going to make up numbers now instead of polling" is a hell of A Choice
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
@hannah hello? I’d like to return my psychology degree for a full refund. I guess I don’t need all that statistics and test theory and construction any more. I was fun while it lasted though. (It wasn’t.) /s
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@hannah
️ They can’t possibly be that dumb can they?(Yes I know)
@foobarsoft @hannah I bet they are hip deep in "digital twin" kool-aid.
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The part of me that used to work for a survey research nonprofit is screaming into a pillow
"we don't need to get actual data to get an accurate average. we'll just average up all the already averaged data. it will be just as good."
narrator: "someone flunked their stats 101 course..."
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@foobarsoft @hannah I bet they are hip deep in "digital twin" kool-aid.
@andygates @foobarsoft bingo, those are mentioned later in the article
