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Deleted member 888

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Oct 25, 2017
14,361
What is your background/ education in statistics, because you're doubling down on this really hard and I'm curious if you actually have any reason to do so.

Do you actually have a substantial, real reason to disregard these statistics? Or are you just plugging your fingers in your ears, closing your eyes and shouting until people stop talking about this issue?

Seemingly thinking all polls ever carried out are bad actors, as in, poorly picked samples. Which is just outrageous. As the video I posted above says, yes, sometimes if a website carries out a web-poll, there is issues to be had with the sample taken. It's often only going to be readers of that website, and some sites, for example, can have massive skews towards male-only/female-only. Or maybe age skews, such as overwhelmingly browsed by young/old.

Such polls might be bad examples of a generalization fitting of the whole population and even trying to weight them in the analysis could prove problematic if skews are just that high in certain directions.

Polls like the one in the OP are far more in-line with what we expect, a proper sample of all demographics from race, age, gender, income, location in the country, etc.

The frustration is myself and other posters took some time to explain to Winny how stats work without being snarky, but every reply just gets responded to with more doubling down.
 

Irminsul

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,041
Congratulations, you found roughly one hundred people who are either not especially well-educated or are intentionally and consciously refusing to accept the Holocaust happened for whatever personal reasons they have.
No. That's why pollsters ask about demographics too when they're asking people on their opinions. Because then, you can compensate for things like, in your example, getting more people with lower education than the proportion of those people in the UK.
 

Guppeth

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,850
Sheffield, UK
I also find 5% hard to believe. If the number was 20% it'd be more representative of how stupid I think my countrymen are. For me this is a pretty uplifting bit of news.
 

PJV3

Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,676
London
I also find 5% hard to believe. If the number was 20% it'd be more representative of how stupid I think my countrymen are. For me this is a pretty uplifting bit of news.

Yeah, it's pretty good when you think about the numbers in the EDL/BNP and the barking mad end of ukip and the hard left.

I imagine it's pretty good compared to other countries. (I hope so at least)
 

Deleted member 7051

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Oct 25, 2017
14,254
Congratulations you don't understand how stats work and even with people helping you politely to start with, and your resistance in the face of good faith conversation in response to you still results in really stupid replies.

Maybe I'm just not explaining myself properly, I dunno. Extrapolating data from surveys like these are fine in situations where emotion isn't involved in the questioning, but different people feel differently about different things and you cannot concretely prove that because a small number of people in a group feels a specific way, the same amount of people in a larger group must also feel the same way.

That's just not how people work.

Either way, I should stop here. I'm clearly not getting my point across properly and I apologise for that. I just hope people don't look at this survey and start shitting on millions of Brits because the statistics imply they may share a similar view.
 

spam musubi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,381
An important aspect to this is that these people are not oblibious to the truth. They went to school, they likely saw Holocaust-themed movies or documentaries. They know what is the timeline of events.

These kind of people intentionally choose to believe in mindless conspiracy theories like the non-existence of Holocaust, chemtrails or whatever the fuck. That's the scary part: this percentage of people can see the stats and facts but are unable to process them because they contradict their horrible views.

Scary stuff.

I mean we see this very thing happening in this thread. The stats and facts are here but someone is legitimately not able to process them and keeps replying with the same nonsense appeal to emotion.
 

Guppeth

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,850
Sheffield, UK
Maybe I'm just not explaining myself properly, I dunno. Extrapolating data from surveys like these are fine in situations where emotion isn't involved in the questioning, but different people feel differently about different things and you cannot concretely prove that because a small number of people in a group feels a specific way, the same amount of people in a larger group must also feel the same way.

That's just not how people work.

Either way, I should stop here. I'm clearly not getting my point across properly and I apologise for that. I just hope people don't look at this survey and start shitting on millions of Brits because the statistics imply they may share a similar view.
We already knew before this story that millions of Brits hold shitty views. As I said, this is a better statistic than I expected.
 

Deleted member 888

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Oct 25, 2017
14,361
Maybe I'm just not explaining myself properly, I dunno. Extrapolating data from surveys like these are fine in situations where emotion isn't involved in the questioning, but different people feel differently about different things and you cannot concretely prove that because a small number of people in a group feels a specific way, the same amount of people in a larger group must also feel the same way.

That's just not how people work.

Either way, I should stop here. I'm clearly not getting my point across properly and I apologise for that. I just hope people don't look at this survey and start shitting on millions of Brits because the statistics imply they may share a similar view.

But you do understand how this is coming across like "Please don't shit on bad people!"? If you're one of the people in the UK who think the Holocaust is outright a hoax, or is in some way partially a hoax, then yes, people are going to shit on you.

There's a reason some responses in this topic are "While this is disgusting I'm happy it's only 5%". People understand 5% being shit people is statistically low, and while in the perfect world it would be 0%, we don't live in a perfect world and assholes exist.

It's always productive to find out what % of the population we are possibly up against when it comes to spreading racism/hate/conspiracy theories/etc.
 

Frozenprince

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,158
Within ten years of the last survivor dying we will see upwards of 30% of the population denying its existence entirely. You can already see the right and its talking heads priming that direction.
 

King_Moc

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,127
Maybe I'm just not explaining myself properly, I dunno. Extrapolating data from surveys like these are fine in situations where emotion isn't involved in the questioning, but different people feel differently about different things and you cannot concretely prove that because a small number of people in a group feels a specific way, the same amount of people in a larger group must also feel the same way.

That's just not how people work.

Either way, I should stop here. I'm clearly not getting my point across properly and I apologise for that. I just hope people don't look at this survey and start shitting on millions of Brits because the statistics imply they may share a similar view.

The reason you can't get your point across is because you're wrong and everyone else is right.
 

Tygre

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,139
Chesire, UK
For anyone disbelieving of how so many people can deny the Holocaust happened, I'd like to thank this thread for demonstrating how stupid and obstinate people can be when presented with information that clashes with their world view.

Better, it shows how stupid and obstinate these people are willing to show themselves to be, just imagine how many more do it privately.
 

Deleted member 7051

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Oct 25, 2017
14,254
But you do understand how this is coming across like "Please don't shit on bad people!"? If you're one of the people in the UK who think the Holocaust is outright a hoax, or is in some way partially a hoax, then yes, people are going to shit on you.

There's a reason some responses in this topic are "While this is disgusting I'm happy it's only 5%". People understand 5% being shit people is statistically low, and while in the perfect world it would be 0%, we don't live in a perfect world and assholes exist.

It's always productive to find out what % of the population we are possibly up against when it comes to spreading racism/hate/conspiracy theories/etc.

5% may be statistically low, but in terms of actual people that's abhorrently high. If we take this data at face value, that means there are millions of people in this country alone that either don't believe the Holocaust really happened or refuse to believe it did.

Millions.

If you asked me how many people I thought didn't believe in the Holocaust, I would have said tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands. Not millions.

If the figure is really that high, if millions of people in the UK truly do not believe the Holocaust happened, we have failed as a society. There's no other way to look at it. You can't downplay that shit as "better than expected".
 

Deleted member 888

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Oct 25, 2017
14,361
5% may be statistically low, but in terms of actual people that's abhorrently high. If we take this data at face value, that means there are millions of people in this country alone that either don't believe the Holocaust really happened or refuse to believe it did.

Millions.

If you asked me how many people I thought didn't believe in the Holocaust, I would have said tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands. Not millions.

If the figure is really that high, if millions of people in the UK truly do not believe the Holocaust happened, we have failed as a society. There's no other way to look at it. You can't downplay that shit as "better than expected".

Yes? Millions of people are pieces of shit. On the news tonight.

The planet has upwards of 7 billion people. The numbers we are dealing with are not outwith the realms of possibility. The whole world isn't contained within one leafy suburb in England. As I said earlier to you, stop projecting your lived experience of being around possibly hundreds or a few thousand people in your lifetime as more representative of scientific polling of large numbers of people.

I'd like to think anyone decent on Resetera surrounds themselves with friends and work colleagues who are also decent people. So your lived experience may well be, being around 100% of people who don't think the Holocaust was a hoax. Good. That's how YOU tailor YOUR life to wanting good friends and acquaintances.

But that doesn't nullify the assholes you wouldn't be friends with/would ignore. It just means they aren't in your life/close proximity.

Strap in because the number outside of the UK in certain countries goes through the roof.

These beliefs follow some unexpected patterns, too. The Middle East and North Africa had the largest percentage of doubters, with only 8 percent of respondents reporting that they had heard of the genocide and believed descriptions of it were accurate. But only 12 percent of respondents in sub-Saharan Africa said the same, and only 23 percent in Asia. People in these groups were likely to say they believed the number of deaths has been exaggerated—just over half of Middle Easterners and a third of Asians and Africans think the body count has been distorted over time.

https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...he-world-is-full-of-holocaust-deniers/370870/

So yes, 5% is statistically low, even if it's not a number we want to see. We want to see 0%, but that's not how life works with free-will and freedom of thought mixing with human behaviour/belief.
 

Guppeth

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,850
Sheffield, UK
5% may be statistically low, but in terms of actual people that's abhorrently high. If we take this data at face value, that means there are millions of people in this country alone that either don't believe the Holocaust really happened or refuse to believe it did.

Millions.

If you asked me how many people I thought didn't believe in the Holocaust, I would have said tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands. Not millions.

If the figure is really that high, if millions of people in the UK truly do not believe the Holocaust happened, we have failed as a society. There's no other way to look at it. You can't downplay that shit as "better than expected".
This is really about you realising the scale of humanity's fuckupedness*. I agree that it's abhorrent, but it's true and it has always been true.


*couldn't think of a proper word for it.
 

DBT85

Resident Thread Mechanic
Member
Oct 26, 2017
16,310
They not teaching about this in school or something?
We teach about landing on the moon and people say it didn't happen

We teach about Chuchill and people think he is fictional

We teach about racism and people are still racists

A sad fact of the world is that there are rather more dumb cunts out there than we often like to admit.
 
Oct 27, 2017
16,621
We teach about landing on the moon and people say it didn't happen

We teach about Chuchill and people think he is fictional

We teach about racism and people are still racists

A sad fact of the world is that there are rather more dumb cunts out there than we often like to admit.
I've learned last year people are dumvber than I previously thought. How do you think Churchill wasn't real?
 

Deleted member 3010

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Oct 25, 2017
10,974
People are forgetting history.

Slippery slope.

I remember my history teacher at high school getting in a heated argument with a young nazi, dude was one year from retirement so he mostly said he was an ignorant piece of shit who wouldn't go far in life with views like that.
 

KimiNewt

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,749
5% may be statistically low, but in terms of actual people that's abhorrently high. If we take this data at face value, that means there are millions of people in this country alone that either don't believe the Holocaust really happened or refuse to believe it did.

Millions.

If you asked me how many people I thought didn't believe in the Holocaust, I would have said tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands. Not millions.

If the figure is really that high, if millions of people in the UK truly do not believe the Holocaust happened, we have failed as a society. There's no other way to look at it. You can't downplay that shit as "better than expected".
Yes, it's unbelievable that people will be presented with facts and then still deny it despite overwhelming evidence.
 

deadman322

Member
Oct 29, 2017
2,396
We have what I thought was pretty good coverage of the holocaust and WW2 in general in my experience. And that was all pre-GCSE too.

I'm curious if my school experience wasn't universal, or if education isn't the issue.
i never actually studied WW2 at school, WW1, Normans and Tudors were the main topics of the three years i did it before dropping it.
 

Deleted member 7051

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Oct 25, 2017
14,254
Strap in because the number outside of the UK in certain countries goes through the roof.

https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...he-world-is-full-of-holocaust-deniers/370870/

So yes, 5% is statistically low, even if it's not a number we want to see. We want to see 0%, but that's not how life works with free-will and freedom of thought mixing with human behaviour/belief.

Except none of those countries should be held to the same standard ours is when it comes to education of the second World War. You know how involved the UK was in it. The things we saw, the things we did. This country has extensive education programmes and curriculums and museum exhibits about that war and the horrors it gave birth to, including the Holocaust. I remember specifically having a class on Jewish people who escaped to the UK from Germany, only to join the British Army and go back into the war to free their country from the Nazis.

I said only yesterday in another thread that our country seemed to educate people more on the war than many others and I was proud of this fact, but if we're taking those survey responses and attributing them to the UK at large, then our education system has failed. It doesn't matter if those millions of people are unintentionally or willfully ignorant of the Holocaust because either means we fucked up.

It's not about the statistics themselves but what we're being told they represent. Isn't it only going to get worse over time, too? The number of Holocaust deniers isn't going to go down. How long before we sanitise and romanticise the two World Wars the way we sanitise and romanticise the Middle Ages and the Crusades?
 
Oct 27, 2017
3,483
Maybe I'm just not explaining myself properly, I dunno. Extrapolating data from surveys like these are fine in situations where emotion isn't involved in the questioning, but different people feel differently about different things and you cannot concretely prove that because a small number of people in a group feels a specific way, the same amount of people in a larger group must also feel the same way.

That's just not how people work.

Either way, I should stop here. I'm clearly not getting my point across properly and I apologise for that. I just hope people don't look at this survey and start shitting on millions of Brits because the statistics imply they may share a similar view.
Statistical methodology doesn't care one iota about the emotion involved, as long as the wording of the question doesn't influence the answer. Do you think 2000 is a fine sample size to find the nation's favourite Spice Girl but when it comes to a question about a sensitive issue it's "no no, they didn't ask everyone"?

And you should probably be more concerned about the effects of a couple of million people that don't think the holocaust took place than whether those people get shit on for their views.
 

Okamiden

Member
Oct 25, 2017
355
5% may be statistically low, but in terms of actual people that's abhorrently high. If we take this data at face value, that means there are millions of people in this country alone that either don't believe the Holocaust really happened or refuse to believe it did.

Millions.

If you asked me how many people I thought didn't believe in the Holocaust, I would have said tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands. Not millions.

If the figure is really that high, if millions of people in the UK truly do not believe the Holocaust happened, we have failed as a society. There's no other way to look at it. You can't downplay that shit as "better than expected".

It's possible but really really unlikely that the sample was biased in a meaningful enough way that actually less than a million UK adults are holocaust deniers.

It's possible but really really unlikely that the question was asked in such a loaded way that the real number was much lower.

It's even possible that this whole survey is made up and it's a conspiracy to get people to click and read their article.

I think those possiblities are far-fetched enough to not be worth entertaining but they're technically possible.

You know what's NOT possible though? That a sample size of 2000 with over 100 positives could be qualified as "not enough". And that's what you've been repeatedly saying. And that was your first post. And that's what people are trying to educate you on.

Don't be the person who refuses to admit they're wrong. Take this as a learning experience and never think again "wow 2000, sample size too small." It is provably more than enough. In fact it was proven ages ago and the proof is out there. 2000 is enough.
 
Oct 25, 2017
7,523
Winny's refusal to believe statistics is becoming more upsetting than 5% of the British population being Holocaust deniers.
 
Oct 27, 2017
2,350
Except none of those countries should be held to the same standard ours is when it comes to education of the second World War. You know how involved the UK was in it. The things we saw, the things we did. This country has extensive education programmes and curriculums and museum exhibits about that war and the horrors it gave birth to, including the Holocaust. I remember specifically having a class on Jewish people who escaped to the UK from Germany, only to join the British Army and go back into the war to free their country from the Nazis.

I said only yesterday in another thread that our country seemed to educate people more on the war than many others and I was proud of this fact, but if we're taking those survey responses and attributing them to the UK at large, then our education system has failed. It doesn't matter if those millions of people are unintentionally or willfully ignorant of the Holocaust because either means we fucked up.

It's not about the statistics themselves but what we're being told they represent. Isn't it only going to get worse over time, too? The number of Holocaust deniers isn't going to go down. How long before we sanitise and romanticise the two World Wars the way we sanitise and romanticise the Middle Ages and the Crusades?
Honestly, the only failure of the UK education system I see in this thread is you.
 

Deleted member 888

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Oct 25, 2017
14,361
Except none of those countries should be held to the same standard ours is when it comes to education of the second World War. You know how involved the UK was in it. The things we saw, the things we did. This country has extensive education programmes and curriculums and museum exhibits about that war and the horrors it gave birth to, including the Holocaust. I remember specifically having a class on Jewish people who escaped to the UK from Germany, only to join the British Army and go back into the war to free their country from the Nazis.

I said only yesterday in another thread that our country seemed to educate people more on the war than many others and I was proud of this fact, but if we're taking those survey responses and attributing them to the UK at large, then our education system has failed. It doesn't matter if those millions of people are unintentionally or willfully ignorant of the Holocaust because either means we fucked up.

It's not about the statistics themselves but what we're being told they represent. Isn't it only going to get worse over time, too? The number of Holocaust deniers isn't going to go down. How long before we sanitise and romanticise the two World Wars the way we sanitise and romanticise the Middle Ages and the Crusades?

Yes, you're correct education in areas of the world rife with poverty can play a big factor, more so on the first point, "Aware of the Holocaust".

csISVnA.png


It becomes more concerning though when we look at "Aware of the Holocaust and believe it has been accurately described by history". A lot of Holocaust denial is based around knowing what it is, but claiming it's a hoax or exaggeration, versus genuinely not having heard of it.

The education system in the UK is actually pretty decent off the back of this, as it's been said a few times even with good education you're still going to get a minority who resist facts. For whatever reasoning they choose. 5% is that minority in this case.

The 12% may be more around education confusing people, which could play into some failings of the system. It's understandable how knowing the exact death numbers of the Holocaust can be a genuine bit of ignorance for some. Even in this topic, some got the numbers wrong. There isn't necessarily malice involved when getting figures incorrect.
 

Principate

Member
Oct 31, 2017
11,186
What's the confidence percentage on this because 5% is really fucking low. Even if it's just 2% potential error your looking at as low as 3% and 7% at max.
 

Deleted member 835

User requested account deletion
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Oct 25, 2017
15,660
Stuff like this makes you lose faith in humanity






More here

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47015184
The Guardian article on it is even more crazy

"The poll, commissioned by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, a charity established and funded by the UK government to promote and support the international day of remembrance, echoes the findings of a survey carried out in seven European countries in November.
That poll found that one in three people knew little or nothing about the Holocaust, and an average of 5% said they had never heard of it. In France, 20% of those aged 18-34 said they had never heard of the Holocaust; in Austria, the figure was 12%. A survey in the US last year found that 9% of millennials said they had not heard, or did not think they had heard, of the Holocaust."

20% of French young people? Wtf

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/27/one-in-20-britons-does-not-believe-holocaust-happened
 

Guppeth

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,850
Sheffield, UK

Principate

Member
Oct 31, 2017
11,186
4-6% Is surpsingling low. I mean it's awful that it's not zero but considering my low expectations driven by experience it's better than what i was expecting.
 

Conor419

Banned
Nov 26, 2017
2,320
London
Almost not surprised: with the World War 2 generation almost fully passed, morons are voting against peace in Europe and Nazism is beginning to once again rear its ugly head.
 

$10 Bagel

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,481
Maybe I'm just not explaining myself properly, I dunno. Extrapolating data from surveys like these are fine in situations where emotion isn't involved in the questioning, but different people feel differently about different things and you cannot concretely prove that because a small number of people in a group feels a specific way, the same amount of people in a larger group must also feel the same way.

That's just not how people work.

Either way, I should stop here. I'm clearly not getting my point across properly and I apologise for that. I just hope people don't look at this survey and start shitting on millions of Brits because the statistics imply they may share a similar view.
Home of brexit and you're worried about people judging your countrymen bc they think Holocaust was fake
 

TinfoilHatsROn

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
3,119
It's painting three and a half million faceless Brits with an opinion that you cannot actually say they definitively have. Can you point out the millions of Holocaust deniers in my country? If we extrapolate that survey's data, nearly four thousand people in my town alone don't believe the Holocaust happened. Want to point out who?

It's insulting and inaccurate yet people are parading it around as if there's actually three and a half million British people no different to me who believe the Holocaust never happened.

What's next, a hundred people out of two thousand say they don't believe the moon exists and so we just assume nearly four hundred million people across the planet share their opinion?
Yes?

Brits are so well educated compared to other EU countries that 5 percent of the country couldn't possibly be Holocaust deniers? Is that the argument? I don't get this nationalism. Your country had Brexit and if y'all had another referendum, it's STILL not clear if Leave would win. Your countrymen got duped by false promises so easily and you can't believe they'd fall for neo-Nazi propaganda?

Honestly I'm just surprised it's so low.