Welcome Colin Irvin to the podcast Sanity Check.
It's great pleasure to be here. Thank you for asking me.
Yeah, but I'm glad you said yes. Could you tell a little bit
about yourself and your work? Maybe we start there, Yeah.
Well, it goes back a long time. I, you know, having been sort of
grow up in the 60s and going around the world being a bit of
a peace advocate. I, I went, ended up in the
Arctic. I crossed the Arctic by dog team
and got, got adopted into an Inuit family and then worked on
Inuit land claims settlement in the Canadian Arctic.
And then I discovered really that the Inuit were as, as a
group of people, well, they're far nicer and better than most
of the people around the rest of the world that, that I, that I
had a, had a problem with. And it turned out that they're
one of the few societies without war.
They can only say, let us go and murder many people.
They, and they don't have chiefs that can organise people into,
into, into group, group, group violence.
And they have many mechanisms for stopping conflict simply
because so many young men were dying from hunting accidents.
If they had war, there would, there would be no enemy.
They had a culture without war. So I ended up working on land
claims settlement in the Canadian Arctic and I worked up
with native organizations and I wrote my PhD thesis on how they
developed a society without war. So one of the most important
elements of that was if you have a really difficult decision to
make, everyone has to agree. It has to be by consensus.
And so when I was working on the land claims settlement, at one
point we had 300 delegates from all the villages across the
Arctic to decide some important decisions in the land claim
process. And actually one guy disagreed
with what every the other 299 had agreed to and they had to
wait. And, and so I guess someone went
and had dinner with him one evening and the next day it was,
it was Kalujak from Whale Cove. And he said I've changed my
mind. And everybody was greatly
relieved because they couldn't have a decision until everyone
agreed. So they rarely meant it.
I mean, it was a very serious, very serious matter that
everyone had to agree. So I kind of learnt that
discourse from the Inuit, the successful politician amongst
the Inuit is someone who can listen to the different points
of view and then try and bring people to a consensus.
And so that when I ended up in Northern Ireland using public
opinion polls, we designed with colleagues their public opinion
polls to measure consensus. So what you had to do was get
all the different points of view on a given issue into the
question. And then with a special scale
that we used, we could find out where, where the compromises
were. And we used that on issues like,
should kids go to integrated schools together?
The, the political elites didn't want it and the, the ministers
and the priests didn't want it, but the, the parents and the
kids wanted it. So we could use public opinion
to actually in that case, we, we, we took a human rights
complaint to the neighbour and we want it.
The people wanted schooling together and in Geneva the human
rights Rights of the Child Commission and the Economic and
Social Rights Commission, they agreed that that should be the
that should be the number one choice.
And that that is really the role of public opinion as as showing
the voice of the people is I think about that.
I think George Caleb actually also focused on that a bit to
say people who understand each other don't go to war against
each other. And, and, and looking at the how
politics is is using now in demonizing an enemy.
It's not just in North Korea and, and this dictators around
the world. It's, it's, it's happening in
the Western world more and more. Look at the American election
right now, where where especially Trump right now is
focusing everything he can on demonizing the other side,
making them look much stupider than they are.
And and these big polarizations, which when you meet you, you can
often find a common ground face to face.
You seldom want to make a fight with with people if you're
sober, listen, in the middle of the day.
But but yeah, I think this, this is something that so often is,
is getting forgotten and then it's being misused in the public
space that beware of the enemy. They are evil.
They want you bad. And but we see in research that
most people are just sane, normal people who actually would
just wants to live their lives. Absolutely.
That's, that's spot on. People, people want security and
they they want a good life for themselves and their children.
Every time I run polls on on conflicts around the world, nine
time or more than nine times out of 10/1 can guarantee the result
that the the people will be more accommodating and be willing to
compromise more than the political elites.
The political elites exploit the, the bad, the bad aspects,
the unfortunate aspects of human nature, human nature.
We're inclined to fall into groups and and the the group
people often say of the Irish, the Irish are the nicest,
friendliest, loveliest people in the world, but their group
behaviour leaves something to be desired.
And that's that's true of actually most people around
individually, they're absolutely just fine.
It's, it's the group behaviour that's a problem.
So how can we get around that? Well, we can use polling.
Well, Poland can be used to, to demonstrate polarities in, in,
in societies. I call that partisan polling as
opposed to peace polling. The way you design the
questions, the way you design the questionnaire, what you
publish and what you don't publish.
You can, you can use it either way.
I mean, all adventures are double edged swords and, and
that includes public opinion polls.
Let's use it with the good angels and find out.
I know what people can agree to. Yeah, but definitely do that.
That is definitely true and, and and was it Mark Twain who said
the lies lies of statistics and me as running public opinion
polling firm where where we do a lot of we do every type of
research. Our focus is not to present
numbers, is to present the correct image of the view of the
people based on the facts that we get.
So, so the explanation is the core of what we're doing, not to
fool people with numbers or statistics, but actually give
the relevant statistics. But this is what's happening.
This is what we know. This is what we don't know, but
that it's very easy to to just take random data point that you
want to to prove your point. So yeah.
And that's the danger. You have to always put
everything in the context. Yeah, and I remember when I
started, I was, I was, I was asked by the UN to help them use
artificial intelligence for polling.
And the guys who started with this building up these AI models
of Remesh AI, they, they had published a paper, oh, this is
going back a few years and they said, well, there's there's lots
of problems here. One of them would be that, well,
we wouldn't understand the context and that that really,
you have to really, really appreciate that.
So working with the AI, we were doing a lot of that online,
particularly during the COVID years, but I found it very
frustrating. I really want to sit down with
the people on each side when I'm working on a conflict, have a
coffee with them, have a long chat with them as we are now,
but maybe even longer chat. And unless you do that, you can
really not find out what the real problems are because people
will just tell you what the what the, what the party message is.
I found the same when, when interviewing politicians to, to
get them to devise questions. Quite often the lead politicians
that they would, they would just give me the party line.
But actually, what Americans call the staffers would often be
far more helpful because they'd be far more experimental and be
willing to go outside the party line and look for alternatives
to the to the party line. That's a very good point because
most of the time the politics right now is just staying in
power or gaining power. I also worked a lot with
political consultants and, and the quickest way to get a
reaction is fear that that's the most effective, just getting
people not to go in in the wrong way, scare them.
So if, if these win the election, the world will end.
OK, OK, at least you're not doing the it's better if you
don't vote than if you vote on the wrong guy.
It's part of the entire political structure right now.
And it's being also fueled with the current media logic because
that is also the strongest reaction from getting you to
share a story is fear. So these two coincide so much
and it demonizes everyone who's not in the same group.
And it's impossible to understand the other side from
these two parts. The politicians aren't
interested because they they just want to stay in power.
And news media don't think we as an audience is interested but
but we are. We just don't want to be drowned
in all these horrible stories. So all the time I tend to to
summarize this that people are not stupid, but more and more
people think everyone else is because it looks like everyone
else is an idiot. Because looking through the
media, except the people you know, because they, they, you
have the nuances. You, you know them, you, you
grow up with them, you work with them.
But looking at the politicians through the eye of the media or
every analyst in the official space, it's being like an an
entertainment show more than a nuanced person.
You have to have your one line. You have to have this thing that
introduces some sort of feeling in the audience more than
actually building trust. It's going very fast right now
from from that perspective. It's really.
I think you're absolutely right about people using fear,
particularly that that class of politicians that that I call
ethnic entrepreneurs, They exploit the community behaviour
and and and identity for their own ends, not for the benefit of
their community. When we were doing a lot of
polling in to resolve the Northern Ireland conflict, we
always found that we got far better results in our peace
polls than general and people would say, well, why aren't
people voting more for the Alliance Party and the women's
coalition and the center parties?
Why are they voting for the extreme parties?
Well, what happens come an election is that the, the
politicians, the political elites of the, the, the, the,
the, the more extreme parties on, on either side of, of any
issue, whether it's in America or Northern Ireland or or Israel
and Palestine, whatever it happens to be, they'll, they'll
just use fear to, to get people to, to vote for them as opposed
to voting for, for the peaceful parties, which would be merits
and Labour in in Israel right now.
Or they were Alliance and Women's Coalition when I was
working there. Fortunately, Alliance are doing
better and better every year now.
But it it's taken a, it's taken a long time to get there, but
they are getting there. I realized that as well.
And I think maybe the US is quite an interesting example
right now because when Biden stepped down and Kamala Harris
and Tim Waltz became the alternative, they have a
different tonality. They more focus on we've got
your back. They have a more positive view
on the future and and I think people are starving for that
kind of message from a politician because it's such a
stark contrast to to the other these two old guys fighting
who's the toughest guy basically.
And that's not what you really want.
But when the alternative is 2 guys fighting, you're you're
forced to choose side. Now you can start just
listening. OK, what's in it for me really?
Do I really want to fight? No, but if they are punching at
me, I have to punch back. So you get tricked into these
false, false choices in the public space.
Either you're for abortion or either you want to kill children
or you want them to live. It's like what?
That's not the question, but it's gets so extreme.
So you're forcing people to and most people leave this.
That's also what I realized in research.
Most people don't want to make the choice of life and death
just to make it because Oh no, this is just stupid and they
leave. But that that benefits these
extremist parties, but it undermines the basis of
stability for democracy in the long run and and some democracy
for someone else. And suddenly you have this
authoritarian leader who who's used oh wow, I can have all the
power and you don't have to vote ever again.
It's it's happened some places, yeah.
Yeah, it's a very dangerous situation, but we have to be a
little bit optimistic. So I, I, I mean, my country, the
UK has, has gone through a bit of a cycle in the last few
years. We, we went into a period of
extreme politics and leaving the European Union and then
everybody got fed up with those extreme politicians.
And now we have a, a very stable Labour government and help, as
long as they don't mess up, they'll probably be in for two
terms. So now everybody's looking, oh
wow, UK has got a stable government.
Everybody else is going nuts and going crazy in France and in
America. Maybe we just went through our
crazy spell a few years ago and now the other guys are going
through a crazy spell and maybe they'll get over it.
Maybe America's getting over it now.
Let's hope so. Yeah.
And I think that that that is really spot on and that that's
actually the point I tried to make, but I missed it because
because you could get to a point where finally politics makes
sense again, because in the Western world, I don't think you
see any alternatives to a democracy really.
But these false choices fully away from the common sense and
and the common good. Because you don't see that
there's it, It looks like it's a martial law.
Every day is only see murders. You only see death, you only see
problems. And the driving factor in
populist part is always worry and fear not that much anger
because but it's more oh, OK, this is looking bad.
Someone needs to do something. But the same people leave
basically because the the ones who aren't really afraid, they
say, OK, never mind I'll I'll just focus on my own life.
I just taking the kids to school, keep get a better job,
let's focus on my own life because this, I can't be
bothered with this. But then there comes this
tipping points, I think, and probably what's happened in the
UK and, and maybe also in United States.
I, I, I have a feeling I have been wrong before, but I have a
feeling that's what happened now in US as well.
Well. That would be great.
I mean, yes, we did reach a tipping point and it and it
tipped and Labour got a landslide victory in the last
election. Maybe, maybe Harris will pull it
off. Let's hope.
Yeah, But it looks like that they're mobilizing people who
who from Republican perspective should not vote because they
will not vote Republican basically because the
demographics are not on the Republican side at all.
But I think I think also what most like if, if I remember
correctly from your peace polls and also from my research that
the silent majority is often the same one, but it's almost often
a majority. So when when you let them
actually listen to that. That's exactly what peace polls
do. They tap into the silent
majority. But the silent majority is much
bigger than the the polarizing political elites.
The ethnic entrepreneurs want to believe in the Northern Ireland
peace process. Senator George Mitchell was in
the negotiations and they had all the results of one of our
peace polls in front of them. And, and Ian Paisley senior, who
was the, the, the radical unionist who wasn't going to
accept any kind of a peace deal, he said, oh, something was
suggested in the negotiations. They said, oh, my people can't
possibly accept that. And then George Mitchell said,
but according to the public opinion polls, your people
actually think this is quite a good idea.
And then, and then the Reverend Ian Paisley said, well, it was
the wrong question and this was the secret with it all.
George Maple said, you guys agreed the question.
We always got it. The important thing here is to
give the ownership of the research to the political
parties, to the politicians, so they can't walk away from it.
You, you've got to make them part of the research process.
They've got to take ownership of the results.
So I mean, you and I, we could probably come up with a, a
pretty smart questionnaire to look at some particular issue
and find out what the, where the convergence is.
But then if the, if the politicians weren't part of that
design and that, and they didn't agree the methodology, they're
just going to say, well, that was a bad sample or that was the
wrong question. So you you have to bring the
parties on board and give them ownership of the research.
Yeah, that it's a very good point And, and, and my contact
with politicians is that they really want the people's
support, but they often get the skewed views because they look
at social media and think this is my following because their
response is immediate. But that is such a small
minority. And I, I mentioned to you last
time we met about the Swedish NATO process that, which really
surprised me when I, when I, I realized what happened, because
to be part of NATO, you have to show that you have a public
support that's part of the application.
But it's not a referendum. It's showing that you have the
basically opinion poll. And we and, and some other firms
in Sweden did track the, the view on NATO.
But what I did, because we published a research on our
homepage and we also showed what different supporters for
different parties thought and the Swedish Democrats with is
the Swedish twist of populist party.
It's a typical Swedish populist party because it's, it's not the
same as Boris Johnson or Trump. And basically it's, it's a, it's
a Swedish twist, but it's still a very populist party.
They really want the majority of everyone to, to vote for them.
And they know they cannot get real power if they don't have a
majority. So they, they really focused on,
on The Voice of the people and tapping into the most urging
ideas. But two days after we released
our polls showing that the Swedish Democratic voters were
for NATO, the party leader said we are for NATO.
And I just say, hang on. I did that.
It was not my intention. But I just realized because they
don't want to go against their voters because this is not an
election issue, because traditionally they have been
against NATO. So, so they, they were the
furthest away from being part of NATO, but they switched in two
days when they saw that their voters actually wanted this.
And that is, that is a really shows a little bit the power
that we have as opinion pollsters, but but also the
responsibility we have. And, and then the power to
actually, when the voice of the people gets out, it actually has
an effect. It's good for me because I don't
want to misuse that power. I really think it's so important
to even show the voice of correct you, otherwise of the
people. And then we have to be
independent, we have to have reliable methods.
It's not just noise, it is actually the voice of the
people. But it's fascinating when this
happens. That's why I think polling on
peace processes should be done globally all the time, because I
mean, one very good example of that is in in in the Ukraine.
The polling that was done up to the invasion of Ukraine showed
very clearly that the Ukrainian public would resist the invasion
and fight back. And under those circumstances,
either the Russian generals didn't look at the data or they
were too embarrassed to show it to to Putin, because this, this
is this wasn't something he wanted to know.
So if, if we can do truth, this is what my supervisor, my PhD
supervisor said. We, he calls it truth telling,
which we're social scientists, we we're truth tellers.
So that kind of truth needs to be told all the time,
everywhere, all the time. The same same with the with the
peace process in Israel and Palestine.
I was running a peace poll there in two O 8 and at that time I I
met with the president Shimon Peres, with Prime Minister
Olmert, with I met with Hamas. They were all fined to do the
peace poll and do the work. But then Benjamin Netanyahu got
elected and he had no interest in making peace.
So after after a couple of years, Senator George Mitchell,
who I'd worked with in Northern Ireland, resigned.
But what should have happened is that the kind of polling that I
did, it should have been done regularly all the time in any
conflict. And you just have to keep
hitting that same nail on the head and keep making the same
point. The difficulty is that as one of
my good colleagues who does a lot of polling around the world
for different governments and different agencies, it says
calling them there's no money in peace anytime, anytime there's a
war. Our colleagues in the World
Association of Public Opinion Research, they're running quite,
quite, quite big businesses and it's actually the multi
$1,000,000 business to be running public opinion for their
clients where there is a war, if just a a percentage of that of
that money was spent on doing peace polling.
So that we, we could expose the kind of truth which which you
presented in Sweden to the political leader there.
I mean, and they and they changed their policy.
We need to do that globally. And we have the where we were
able to do it. We have all the skills to do it.
Yeah, we really do. And and the Gallup model is, is
is so magical in that sense that it's extremely cost effective.
People say it's expensive. I think it's almost for free
because compared to. Yeah, the costs are coming down
all the time. And sadly right after the way
poor and and Gallup was all set up right after the Second World
War. And the intention of the
founders was that we would do polling around the world and
we'd work with UNESCO and that would help prevent another war.
Well, then the Korean War came along and the people who wanted
to do that then got well paid contracts to explore what public
opinion was, where the war was. And that became the paradigm.
And then the original intention was lost.
But you're right. I mean with your example of the
the Swedish politician and him changing his opinion, the same
can happen in any country in the world.
The same can happen probably and we just be truth tellers.
Because the people find fighting wars, plan on war to end and
they'll be on the winning side. But you cannot win without the
people behind you. Yeah, so much of these issues
that that also we've we've done a lot of view on the environment
and climate change and and see that the people are on on the
same track. The politicians aren't.
Globally you'd get the same result.
I'm absolutely certain of it. You know that as well as I do.
We talked to our colleagues doing polling around the world
and we know that we're of the same mind and the people they
poll are of the same mind. The problem here is the United
Nations, they could be doing this stuff, but they don't
publish. They do quite a lot of polling
and in conflicts, but they don't publish any of it because they
don't want to upset their member states.
Oh. Yeah, that's right, There are.
Five, There are five countries in the Security Council who have
a veto. So all UN missions have to come
up and get renewed every year through a vote through the
Security Council. And so if they go and upset
somebody on the Security Council who has a vested interest either
in Israel or in Ukraine or wherever it happens to be, then
their mission could get shut down or their research program
could get shut down. So the, the the UN actually do
very, very good research because I've been involved in quite a
lot of it, but it doesn't see the light of day.
And if it doesn't see the light of day, then people can walk
away from it and ignore it. We have to find another vehicle
for this research. Yeah, that is a really good
point. It's it's, it's like when you're
the example in the beginning with this 300 person with one
who was against it, It's it, it only takes one guy in these
kinds of organizations. It's it's actually, it's really
sad because yeah, you've been doing it longer than I have, but
I've been doing this for a decade now and I see that people
are good people. Most people are, but the good
people don't want to fight. But the fighters tend to steal
all the tension in the public space and also have
self-proclaimed voices for the group they choose.
And nobody's challenging them. So everyone thinks like me, I'm
a Christian or I'm a Muslim. And then we who are not part of
that, we are the silent minority.
We won't challenge this. But they tend to skew the view
on on all these these groups all the time.
I mean, 11 good example, which is very domestic for me here in
the UK is that during the the Brexit debate, the guys who
wanted to leave the European Union, they were getting all
kind of funding for their polling and they were running
polls to which were what I call partisan polls.
They were designed to promote their own point of view.
And then the guys on the other side who wanted to stay in the
European Union, they were getting funding too, but nobody
was doing polling on what the compromises were, which would be
something like the Norwegian model or whatever it happened to
be, or just staying in the customs union.
I mean, there were lots of compromise models.
Nobody wanted to get funding for that.
So actually I ran one of my own polls and I used Google and it
must have cost me about £100 just to get a sample and I
published it and I did that with the intention.
Well, if somebody says well that wasn't a very good sample, OK,
give me, give me a couple of 1000 lbs and I'll give you a
good sample. So sometimes I don't know, we,
we just have to sort of go out there and, and be experimental
and say, well, this isn't a very good sample.
I couldn't afford to get a good one and then just publish the
result and say, well OK, this is actually what people really
want. Yeah, prove me wrong.
Yeah. You know, if you don't agree
with me, give me some real money and I'll get a I'll get a better
sample for you. Yeah.
Yeah, it's, it's a it's a good idea and sad at the same time
that you have to go that route. And, and it's also, yeah, you
can't have a referendum about compromise.
And that's probably, but, but I think also one thing thinking
about the Brexit of well, there was so much misinformation.
So, so having like a knowledge, knowledge research, what do
people really know about the European Union?
What is facts? What is propaganda?
That that also were no interest, of course, of any of the parties
to do. But that probably was the key
issue because the voices who voted for leave were surprised
they they had problems staying in in France.
Yeah, probably. It's already always a key key
issue. Yeah.
Yeah, it is. I can't think.
I'm just thinking, you know, when did everybody completely
understand the situation and then.
Yeah, that, that is true. It's something.
Stupid. Yeah, yeah, we actually do a lot
of like knowledge things for our own say just because what do you
know about the climate change? Because people say the climate
deniers are so many. And then when I start to dissect
this and no, it's like 1-2 percent.
Yeah, it's or the anti vaxxers. Yeah, it's 2%, yeah.
This is where a deliberative process can help.
So I mean, the nice thing about running polls on peace polls
where there's conflicts is that everybody understands the
conflict. You can ask almost any question
you want, very rarely have to explain stuff to people.
Yeah, but I was working with Open AI on writing governance
for artificial intelligence and we were running polls in America
and we had to go through about a 1015 minute deliberative process
to explain what AI Rs and how it could go wrong and what it could
do. And, and before we could start
to ask questions. And of course we always in the,
in the, in the, in the demographics, we would ask
questions. Well, how much do you know about
AI? How often do you use it?
And then we could split out our our samples by the people who
are familiar with it and the people who are not familiar with
it, in addition to the deliberative process of
explaining it before we actually got into asking people's
opinions. But you don't have to do that in
a war zone. People understand the war very
well. That is true.
So deliberative process can help.
And one can do that in, in a poll, I mean, with the, with
the, with the digital dialogues that we've been doing, you can,
you can spend 1015 minutes explaining stuff before you
start asking questions. Yeah.
And that then it's basically
like a focus group combined with a quantitative research.
And that, that it's, it's really fascinating what you can do now
with, with like a big online group with, with 1000 people.
So you, you can get up to 1000 people and it, it's like having
1000 people in a focus group. And but the, the advantage from
my point of view is that, I mean, the advantage of the focus
group is you, you have a dialogue, the, but everybody can
give their opinions anonymously when they're online.
So you're, you're not getting too much, you don't get too
much, you don't get groupthink. The trouble with the focus group
is you can end up in groupthink. Yeah, especially 1000 person.
Actually, there's a couple of very dominant individuals in the
group, but you avoid that with the online digital dialogues,
digital focus groups, Yeah. So I think that's a big a big
plus. Yeah, yeah, it is.
After the pandemic, everyone got got used to online communication
It it really boosted the possibility to to use the
technology in in our field of work, I think and also using AI
to to quickly summarize large bodies of text that that is that
that is really useful then the other.
Providing 1 doesn't forget that it's always great to go and sit
down and have a coffee with someone for a couple of hours
and rarely find out what the what their point of view really
is. Yes, I think you should always
start there actually. Yes, yes, you should always
start there. That's the best starting point.
Yeah, then you can quantify exactly your theory is based on
that, because I think there's two different first you have to
build a theory base and that that is individual discussions,
I think just to get to different views and not just yes or no to
Brexit or whatever. It's more what?
What are you really talking about?
OK, well, it's a great chat. We understand what the problem
is Yeah, we and we know how to be truth tellers and we know
that it works. You, you had a, an immediate the
impact with your, the political party.
You, you had an intent to influence, but you did it works.
So how are we going to get to do this globally?
How are we going to get to do this all the time?
How are we going to make it the norm in society as opposed to
the exception? That's that's the thing.
That is the thing because I'm also part of the Board of
directors of Gallup International since the year
back and then are more active in way for and I realized these two
networks have a possibility to do this, but we have to find a
smart way of financing because as you said, everything is run
by money. That's not what you said,
getting the right people because maybe the economy benefits from
war, but not the society. If you start thinking of money
in a different way, peace is always more profitable than war.
So maybe actually I had a had a 17 podcast with with the
economist and I realized that their way of thinking of economy
is destructive. That's not.
Yeah, because that also drives conflict.
It drives war. It drives.
Yes it does. Because people have no value in
the global economy. But we really need to think of
people as an asset in, in a, in a democratic society.
But but finding a way to to actually getting all these
people who actually do not want war.
They actually want a good open society, not being driven by
fear. There, there is something here,
but I I haven't found out exactly how, but every
discussion that I have with people like you, that's a
somehow maybe someday we will figure out how to do something.
Well, I, I, I asked that question last towards the end.
I guess we're getting on with our interview because I don't
have the answer yet. I'm sorry today if I had the
answer I'd be telling you, but I haven't.
I haven't gotten an answer. Yeah, yeah.
But. Everything but I haven't got an
answer yet. Yeah, but you are not alone, and
I'm not alone, and that's a good story.
Yeah. We, we're both thinking about
this because I've been thinking about this for a couple of years
and I've met you a couple of times as as well during, during
the years. But but there's, there's,
there's something here. It, it, as you said, we have the
tools we have, we have the wheel.
We just have to find a little bag of money.
It's not that much, as you said, it's not that expensive and it
has to be independent of bad guys vetoes because that's
what's messing up now. And I I have no problem with
going and doing a bit of polling on the cheap and say well if you
don't like the sample give me some real money and I'll get a
better sum. Yeah, I have problems with that
because I'm, I'm always that guy talking about representative
sample. If you're not doing, I
understand yourself. Of course I do, yeah.
Yeah, just to trick people into actually doing good.
I think that that could be one way of doing.
It, I mean to get to get actually a good global sample
cost you about $1,000,000. I mean you can't, you can't get
a really good global sample for no less than that kind of money.
So, you know, I'd go out and get something a little less
expensive and then just just to prove my point that.
Is true. If you don't like it, give me a
million and I'll get you a representative sample of the
world. Maybe we should trick World
Value Service into joining us as well.
What do you think? Well, I, I, I mean, we know all
these guys. They're all.
Let's get more into this yeah game the.
Difficulty is, well, with the kind of stuff I do with wars, I
mean, one should have been doing polling and it should have been
very public coming up to the war in Ukraine.
I mean, wars, wars like that should be tracked all the time.
You know, then people would perhaps be a little bit more
careful with with what they do. The cost is nothing.
The cost is nothing to the cost of war.
I mean, exactly, yeah. It's basically a couple of
missiles, to be honest. It's weird.
Yeah, it's it's really cheap. But let let's keep thinking
about this, OK? Yeah, I'm really glad you wanted
to have this discussion with me and hope the people listening
would get a lot. Out when you figure it out when
you figure out the. The answer to the. $64,000
Question. Yeah.
Any day now, give me a call, let's have another chat.
Yes, of course. OK.
Thank you. Thank you.
Very much. Thank you very much.
OK, bye, bye.