Division and the Silent Majority

2025-01-23

I tried to visualize some kind of skin feeling.

• A: Opinions seem to be dividing into parts on social networking sites
  • It looks as if it may be clearly divided into red and blue clusters.
  • but this is a bias that mistakenly assumes that everything that is easy to observe is
• B: In fact, the silent majority is a huge lump with no clear boundaries
  • The red and blue that stood out were just small bumps in that big mass.

• So which is the majority can be arbitrarily controlled by how the boundaries are drawn.
  • The way the clusters are cut changes what is the majority.

impetus

• 62% in favor of "selective married couple surname", 27% opposed NHK Poll | NHK
• Selective surname for married couples, 16% "for" and 49% "against" survey of 2,000 elementary and junior high school students, questions and answers deceptive selective surname debate - Sankei News

relevance

• I initially wrote it as if the gray distribution encompassed the whole thing, but the political conflict picture is relevant, too.
  • 
  • Bias due to the more radical things you say, the more attention you get.

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