Anecdotes aren't good for determining truth, but if you vote based on personal anecdotes you get a large statistical sample of the population when they count the votes up.
> but if you vote based on personal anecdotes you get a large statistical sample of the population when they count the votes up.
You're saying that by sampling opinions that are formed in small neighborhoods around voters, we can get a picture of ground truth -- even if reality is distorted in various ways around those small neighborhoods.
This can work, but not in the case where there's something masking a portion of the data set such that personal anecdote isn't indicative of underlying reality, even locally.
In that case, anecdotes aren't even locally accurate, and that effect amortizes over the voting population to result in a globally inaccurate picture of reality.
Which is the case here. Criminalizing and stigmatizing drugs means that grandma doesn't necessarily know successful son-in-law smokes pot on the weekend, for example.
You're saying that by sampling opinions that are formed in small neighborhoods around voters, we can get a picture of ground truth -- even if reality is distorted in various ways around those small neighborhoods.
This can work, but not in the case where there's something masking a portion of the data set such that personal anecdote isn't indicative of underlying reality, even locally.
In that case, anecdotes aren't even locally accurate, and that effect amortizes over the voting population to result in a globally inaccurate picture of reality.
Which is the case here. Criminalizing and stigmatizing drugs means that grandma doesn't necessarily know successful son-in-law smokes pot on the weekend, for example.