holiday across the Atlantic and finding
out that your pilot has no access to
live weather data to warn him or her
about potential storms in your path
would you be comfortable stepping on
that plane or imagine investing some of
your money buying stocks but she only
had access to last month’s financial
data would you be confident in your
financial decisions now it’s hard to
imagine making these decisions without
live a reliable data and I’m sure none
of us ever want to be in these kinds of
situations but I hate to break the news
to you we’re all on that plane right now
not knowing what’s ahead of us and we’re
all making these important decisions
with obsolete data what I’m talking
about are polls polls promise to be a
reflection of what we think but the
industry has and has been repeatedly
failing to deliver the Scottish
referendum UK general election
Poland’s election Israel’s election the
brexit referendum and recently Donald
Trump winning the White House time and
time again we’re all being let down by
inaccurate information
but why should we care about polls and
their failures while polling is a
scientific tool used to help us stay
connected with public opinion and when
they failed to deliver as they have done
in the past few years the consequences
are disastrous and disastrous not
because of which side wins the election
or which side wins the argument
disastrous because that uncertainty
now everyone knows that polls are
failing to work in less than 24 hours
after the UK’s last election day the
founder of Yuga of Stephen Shakespeare
tweeted a terrible night for us
pollsters I apologize for poor
performance we need to find out why but
not much has been done to figure out why
and so far the search has been in the
wrong place
and it’s all turned into a blaming
situation the social media gets blamed
for decreasing engagement for pollsters
older generations get blamed for not
adapting to new tech
oh geez younger generations get blamed
for being disengaged with societal
issues shy voters get blamed undecided
voters get blamed but what I realize in
the middle of this blame game is that we
forgot something more fundamental to the
whole process something simple but with
huge implications and something unique
to our time that we’ve gradually evolved
into the polls assume that our views are
set in stone but here’s the secret our
views are not set in stone our views can
change and I’ve usually change not
always abruptly what I’ve used may
change as we know a little bit more now
I want to share with you a classic
ethics problem known as the trolley
dilemma which I’m sure many of you have
heard but I want to repurpose it here
and for you to be aware of each decision
you make as you know a little bit more
now imagine you the driver of a trolley
a tram hurtling down a track and you
have no brakes now straight down the
track you see standing five people now
as you get closer you see it as a fork
in the path and on the left-hand side is
a track that leads to only one person so
if you end up continuing straight you
end up killing five but if you turn
laughs you only kill one so what do you
do and many of you will say you’ll turn
left and maybe some of you will continue
straight now what if as you got a little
bit closer you saw that the one on the
left is really just a child what would
you do now maybe some of you might
change your mind or what if I told you
that one on the left that child is
actually terminally ill what would you
do now it’s complicated isn’t it now our
views only make sense with the context
around them and as the context changes
now I know this is a hypothetical
situation an everyday life we’re not
asked to give our views about ethical
questions so let’s go with a real-life
example your car rental business owner
near an airport let’s say Heathrow and
you were told that if a Heathrow
expansion bill passed you would have to
relocate your entire business obviously
you’re not happy to hear about this but
today when the council opened up the
plans for public viewing you realize
that not only do you not have to move
your business but you’ll end up in a
prime location when the construction is
over our views can change as we know a
bit more the same scenario is brexit he
may voted to leave when you’re more sure
about the world’s existing order but
many now argue if the world is still in
the same order as it was was president
Scotland you may have voted to remain in
the UK when the UK was still part of the
European Union with the UK leaving the
EU many now say there should be another
referendum now some politicians say it’s
your right to be able to change your
mind and other politicians say it’s an
insult to your intelligence if you ask
to change your mind now whatever the
case it’s up to the politicians to
decide the solutions to their problems
we’re here to talk about public opinion
now of course whether it is right or an
insult I say a different thing I say
it’s natural to change our minds and in
reality we do it all the time it’s in
our nature to physically adapt to new
environments and mentally adapt to new
information and as Darwin said it’s not
the strongest of the species that
survives nor the most intelligent that
survives is the one that’s most
so you might be thinking if we’re always
changing our minds how can we reliably
measure public opinion how can we ever
make any sense of it all and you’re
right it’s a different situation now but
public opinion is not the only
phenomenon with a dynamic nature in 1885
king oscar ii of sweden and norway
decided
celebrate his sixtieth birthday by
offering a prize to the following
mathematical challenge can we establish
that our solar system will continue to
work like clockwork or at some point in
the future will the earth just spiral
off into space and disappear from our
solar system how to simplify things on
Reap on Kure a French mathematician
began his work by considering a solar
system with only two objects this system
but the trouble started when the third
object was introduced now by working
through this problem
not only did punker a win the prize his
three-body paper and subsequent papers
laid the foundation for what we now know
as chaos theory and chaos theory not
meaning randomness but chaos theory
meaning that a change a small change in
the initial parameters of an experiment
does not necessarily result in a small
change at the end of the experiment in a
dynamic system but like many
mathematical theories it was shells for
many years until in the 1960s
LeBron’s and meteorologists at MIT
accidentally observed chaos theory and
one of his experiments he was running
multiple simulations of a model to
predict weather forecasts and when he
changed one initial parameter ever so
slightly that slight change create a
completely unexpected result an outcome
of his forecast now he later published a
paper on his observation that we now
commonly know as the butterfly effect
does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in
Brazil set off a tornado in Texas so
let’s think about it if a stable
two-body system became vulnerable to
small changes as soon as that third body
was introduced what makes us think a
virtual space for the minds of millions
are continuously interacting is not
vulnerable to these small changes the
seven billion of us was seven billion
views views that may change as we know a
little bit more or views that may change
as we have a little bit doubt
or views that may change as we have a
little hope depending on our day and
these small changes are the flaps of the
butterfly’s wings a compact system of
public opinion mathematically speaking
where each view can affect millions of
others in a split second these changes
cannot be ignored so as you see the
problem is not the pole itself it’s a
condition in which we apply them because
we’re dealing with a dynamic system the
pole is only good for that one moment
because the next moment something else
is going on and by the time the results
are published there are dated you want
your data to be as close as possible to
the present you wouldn’t look at last
month’s weather to figure out how to
morrow would be so what are the experts
doing to catch up with this
ever-changing entity well many experts
now are taking polls more frequently but
taking more polls doesn’t work millions
of pounds are being spent on series of
polls to measure public opinion this way
but like disjointed wings unable to fly
these studies produce unrelated
snapshots even when collecting data on
the same subjects at the same time so
what are the tools that we have them
millions now prefer using social media
the great bottom-up platform for
exchanging views without waiting for
anyone’s permission but in social media
you can end up in ongoing discussions
and analyst debates without ever knowing
the numbers on either side Donald
Trump’s executive order on immigration
is now one of the most discussed topics
in social media he’s tweeting his
followers are cheering and his opponents
are arguing but when it comes down to it
to show your numbers on either side you
still have to pour on the streets and
millions still have to sign petitions so
how do we know what people think before
we reach these breaking points our
democratic society doesn’t have a tool
for public opinion as a reference point
public opinion becomes the interests of
this or that party every
four or five years but the reality is we
don’t stop having views when polls –
stop asking questions four or five years
is too long to wait for pulses to ask us
again it’s only been six weeks after the
inauguration of a president and a
democratic election in America and
already thousands are on the streets and
millions are petitioning four or five
years is too long to wait to be asked
again we need a new tool built from a
new vision that same vision that
revolutionized top-down elite media with
bottom-up platforms like YouTube that
same vision that revolutionized so many
of our industries by sharing our cars
and uber or sharing our homes on Airbnb
that same vision for creating Wikipedia
by putting together the things that we
all know and this vision is not just my
vision it’s our vision but from our new
values those values where we don’t
always have to wait for experts to fix
things and those values where we can
make better things by simply
collaborating and we do this because
this is who we are and we’re doing it
again we’re creating a platform for live
public views for everyone not just
special interest groups where these
butterflies’ can flap their wings where
you can say your views as you go where
you can change them as you wish and so
we stand at a crossroads now and we have
a choice we can continue to ignore the
problem sit around in total darkness and
wave the pulses to show up once in a
while and take snapshots of us with
their cameras to tell us who we are and
what we want or we can finally take that
camera turn it around and take the
biggest selfie ever thank you you