5 ms·

I "enumerated" for the last census. Trust in my community was already not high* and I had lots of interesting encounters. I really believed the rather invasive

by kajman 4mo ago

I "enumerated" for the last census. Trust in my community was already not high* and I had lots of interesting encounters. I really believed the rather invasive data I was collecting with a friendly face would be used and handled responsibly. I feel for the poor souls that'll sign up to go door to door for 2030 now that the firewalls against weaponizing and monetizing all of our sensitive government data has been torn down, and even more for those that will volunteer information that can hurt them. The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me. The data collected was such an important baseline of common understanding, and this will not be a good thing for its future quality. I've grown very jaded now seeing all the things taken for granted in this country and lost or degraded recently with a whimper. *: To be fair, they sent me specifically to places that didn't respond, so I was naturally led to believe that everyone in my region hated the government, ignored bizzarrely threatening fliers, or had recently moved and had no knowledge of the inhabitants (if any) during the census period.

sieabahlpark 4mo ago
[dead]
windthrown 4mo ago
I did similar and you summarized the feelings well. It's really sad and hard to rebuild that trust And disheartening that people continue to gravitate to a political party that proudly announces desires to abuse this data.
- alterom 4mo ago
  >And disheartening that people continue to gravitate to a political party that proudly announces desires to abuse this data. The same party that promotes distrust in the government (that is justified by the abuse the same party does when in power). Amazing, innit.
  - specialist 4mo ago
    The worse things get, the better they do. It's an insidious, vicious cycle.
    - idiotsecant 4mo ago
      No, this isn't a natural law of the universe. Sometimes thing get worse and then stay bad for a long, long time. We happen to exist in a relatively stable, prosperous period. We have used that prosperity to build a system that is more complex and brittle than any time in the history of the species. It won't be pretty when we reach the inevitable crisis. The people in charge have never seen suffering and don't understand the essential role they have in preventing it. Instead they're disassembling the plane for parts while we hurtle toward the ground.
    - sofixa 4mo ago
      Iran, Haiti, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Argentina have been at the "worse and worse" stages for decades and there is no "better" in sight.
      - Semaphor 4mo ago
        > Iran, Haiti, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Argentina have been at the "worse and worse" stages for decades and there is no "better" in sight. Unless I’m completely misunderstanding things, it’s "better for the party". Our new Nazi party in Germany (AfD) even said something like that openly.
        hang_semaphor_3 4mo ago
        [flagged]
        cindyllm 4mo ago
        [dead]
      - drysine 4mo ago
- uoaei 4mo ago
  You're playing party politics. That's the risk you take: that the party has goals beyond your (dareisay naive) utopian ideals for civic engagement. Parties are not universally evil, when I malign them in this way it is in full acknowlegment that organization is the nearly singular path to "effect on target" as regards society-scale politics. What I mean is the party per se becomes a superorganism that has always as its first priority self-preservation (a la homeostasis) and it is very worth remembering this when subsuming oneself into their structure.
testing22321 4mo ago
> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me Countries conduct censuses so they can understand, in great detail, what is going on with the people who make up the country. With this accurate information, improvement plans can be made, and life can be improved for everyone. The comments about just making it a head count give a very interesting window into the mentality of many these days. They don’t want to - it can’t fathom how to - make life better. It’s sad, really
- fragmede 4mo ago
  Or worse, they actively don't want to make life better for the "wrong" kind of people.
- lazide 4mo ago
  Eh, that’s the ‘if people do the right thing’ approach. Many countries use census data to target (or even round up and murder) specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc.
  - heheheisis 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - angry_octet 4mo ago
    "Many countries"? Do you have any evidence for this statement? I think that actually the US is an outlier.
    - lazide 4mo ago
      Here is a case study from Greece in the ‘20’s, but all you need to do is google ‘ethnic cleansing’ and dig in, and you’ll see government data sources (including census data) all played a part. [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11208589 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11208589] “The census was conducted in a period of successive wars and rapid territorial expansion. We focus on the handling of the census data for Macedonia, a newly annexed territory that would soon become the site of the first instance of large-scale ethnic cleansing in modern Europe.”
nxobject 4mo ago
> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me. The data collected was such an important baseline of common understanding, and this will not be a good thing for its future quality. Even without considering the Census data products alone, Census demographic data underlies virtually all extrapolation from other survey research. Everything from national opinion surveys based on tens of thousands of respondents, to small community surveys. A Census product with the most diverse participation pays off almost infinitely for America. It benefits everyone from national newspapers to rural counties. If the smallest communities lose what little trust remains in the privacy of the Census, they have the most to lose in all of these ways.
- estearum 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - inigyou 4mo ago
    We have a screwworm infestation now because the Idiot In Chief sawthe previous control method had transgenic flies.
    - dmd 4mo ago
      One of my colleagues study was shut down because the medication “engendered a strong response”.
      - estearum 4mo ago
        Calling this administration an idiocracy is insanely generous
- nandomrumber 4mo ago
  [dead]
- mzmzmzm 4mo ago
  That's my thought when I see the Census downplayed -- a massive amount of social sciences research revolves around the ACS. And it gets worse! Census data doesn't just control reapportionment (and/or gerrymandering), it directs how federal dollars trickle down to huge programs like Medicare and Medicaid that are then administered by states. Eroding more detailed household data like income throws programs designed to help people more out of whack, likely harming civic engagement even more.
spaceisballer 4mo ago
The real decline started after Edward Snowden and all the information that came out about the NSA. It really sparked distrust in the government. Trying to get people to respond to surveys was already hard, why would those general people believe the Census Bureau is actually keeping their data safe? Doesn’t matter when it comes to laws and the constitution, if you work for an Agency. You are the government. Response rates keep going down, now we have attacks from the President on statistics about the economy. I’m a little cynical and I just assume they will continue to shrink the statistical agencies and make the statistics more useless (which is what this recent policy change does), and they will shift to the private industry. Even though the private industry cannot do the work in the Field that the government does.
- js2 4mo ago
  > The real decline started after Edward Snowden and all the information that came out about the NSA. It really sparked distrust in the government. Do you have evidence of this? Because I'd bet 90% Americans have no idea who Edward Snowden even is.
  - iwontberude 4mo ago
    I’ll take the under on that bet any day. Maybe around 75% is where I would feel more confident. 25% of a country is more than enough to meaningfully shift perception.
- InitialLastName 4mo ago
  I buy the argument that a functioning democracy requires the populace to believe that the government is honest, competent, and working in their interests. Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Vietnam war (respectively) undermined those notions. As of ~2016, half of the US voting population had come of age after those events.
m3047 4mo ago
I respect that you recognize that the sample you were given for investigation may not be representative of your community in all respects. Does the Census Bureau publish statistics on the people they have to send interviewers for? Just asking, maybe I'll have to go check their site. Other comments here about Germany and whatnot falls flat, and short. This is America, and part of it is being ok with your neighbors (unless they're truly insane and release plagues of rabbits or burn themselves out of their homes, but I digress), try to find some common ground even if it's awkward and you have to look the other way about some slights and trespasses. I don't know how much trouble they went to to "fit" you to the cohort they tasked you with, or how much of a natural fit there was. Did you grow up / do you live in the area? There's an element of "liking" (Cialdini) each other which colors participants' perception of tasks. OTOH nothing like talking to perfect strangers to flex that muscle or find out you really don't have it.

by kajman 4mo ago

sieabahlpark 4mo ago

[dead]

windthrown 4mo ago

I did similar and you summarized the feelings well. It's really sad and hard to rebuild that trust And disheartening that people continue to gravitate to a political party that proudly announces desires to abuse this data.

alterom 4mo ago
>And disheartening that people continue to gravitate to a political party that proudly announces desires to abuse this data. The same party that promotes distrust in the government (that is justified by the abuse the same party does when in power). Amazing, innit.
- specialist 4mo ago
  The worse things get, the better they do. It's an insidious, vicious cycle.
  - idiotsecant 4mo ago
    No, this isn't a natural law of the universe. Sometimes thing get worse and then stay bad for a long, long time. We happen to exist in a relatively stable, prosperous period. We have used that prosperity to build a system that is more complex and brittle than any time in the history of the species. It won't be pretty when we reach the inevitable crisis. The people in charge have never seen suffering and don't understand the essential role they have in preventing it. Instead they're disassembling the plane for parts while we hurtle toward the ground.
  - sofixa 4mo ago
    Iran, Haiti, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Argentina have been at the "worse and worse" stages for decades and there is no "better" in sight.
    - Semaphor 4mo ago
      > Iran, Haiti, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Argentina have been at the "worse and worse" stages for decades and there is no "better" in sight. Unless I’m completely misunderstanding things, it’s "better for the party". Our new Nazi party in Germany (AfD) even said something like that openly.
      - hang_semaphor_3 4mo ago
        [flagged]
        cindyllm 4mo ago
        [dead]
    - drysine 4mo ago
uoaei 4mo ago
You're playing party politics. That's the risk you take: that the party has goals beyond your (dareisay naive) utopian ideals for civic engagement. Parties are not universally evil, when I malign them in this way it is in full acknowlegment that organization is the nearly singular path to "effect on target" as regards society-scale politics. What I mean is the party per se becomes a superorganism that has always as its first priority self-preservation (a la homeostasis) and it is very worth remembering this when subsuming oneself into their structure.

testing22321 4mo ago

> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me Countries conduct censuses so they can understand, in great detail, what is going on with the people who make up the country. With this accurate information, improvement plans can be made, and life can be improved for everyone. The comments about just making it a head count give a very interesting window into the mentality of many these days. They don’t want to - it can’t fathom how to - make life better. It’s sad, really

fragmede 4mo ago
Or worse, they actively don't want to make life better for the "wrong" kind of people.
lazide 4mo ago
Eh, that’s the ‘if people do the right thing’ approach. Many countries use census data to target (or even round up and murder) specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc.
- heheheisis 4mo ago
  [dead]
- angry_octet 4mo ago
  "Many countries"? Do you have any evidence for this statement? I think that actually the US is an outlier.
  - lazide 4mo ago
    Here is a case study from Greece in the ‘20’s, but all you need to do is google ‘ethnic cleansing’ and dig in, and you’ll see government data sources (including census data) all played a part. [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11208589 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11208589] “The census was conducted in a period of successive wars and rapid territorial expansion. We focus on the handling of the census data for Macedonia, a newly annexed territory that would soon become the site of the first instance of large-scale ethnic cleansing in modern Europe.”

nxobject 4mo ago

> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me. The data collected was such an important baseline of common understanding, and this will not be a good thing for its future quality. Even without considering the Census data products alone, Census demographic data underlies virtually all extrapolation from other survey research. Everything from national opinion surveys based on tens of thousands of respondents, to small community surveys. A Census product with the most diverse participation pays off almost infinitely for America. It benefits everyone from national newspapers to rural counties. If the smallest communities lose what little trust remains in the privacy of the Census, they have the most to lose in all of these ways.

estearum 4mo ago
[flagged]
- inigyou 4mo ago
  We have a screwworm infestation now because the Idiot In Chief sawthe previous control method had transgenic flies.
  - dmd 4mo ago
    One of my colleagues study was shut down because the medication “engendered a strong response”.
    - estearum 4mo ago
      Calling this administration an idiocracy is insanely generous
nandomrumber 4mo ago
[dead]
mzmzmzm 4mo ago
That's my thought when I see the Census downplayed -- a massive amount of social sciences research revolves around the ACS. And it gets worse! Census data doesn't just control reapportionment (and/or gerrymandering), it directs how federal dollars trickle down to huge programs like Medicare and Medicaid that are then administered by states. Eroding more detailed household data like income throws programs designed to help people more out of whack, likely harming civic engagement even more.

spaceisballer 4mo ago

The real decline started after Edward Snowden and all the information that came out about the NSA. It really sparked distrust in the government. Trying to get people to respond to surveys was already hard, why would those general people believe the Census Bureau is actually keeping their data safe? Doesn’t matter when it comes to laws and the constitution, if you work for an Agency. You are the government. Response rates keep going down, now we have attacks from the President on statistics about the economy. I’m a little cynical and I just assume they will continue to shrink the statistical agencies and make the statistics more useless (which is what this recent policy change does), and they will shift to the private industry. Even though the private industry cannot do the work in the Field that the government does.

js2 4mo ago
> The real decline started after Edward Snowden and all the information that came out about the NSA. It really sparked distrust in the government. Do you have evidence of this? Because I'd bet 90% Americans have no idea who Edward Snowden even is.
- iwontberude 4mo ago
  I’ll take the under on that bet any day. Maybe around 75% is where I would feel more confident. 25% of a country is more than enough to meaningfully shift perception.
InitialLastName 4mo ago
I buy the argument that a functioning democracy requires the populace to believe that the government is honest, competent, and working in their interests. Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Vietnam war (respectively) undermined those notions. As of ~2016, half of the US voting population had come of age after those events.

m3047 4mo ago

I respect that you recognize that the sample you were given for investigation may not be representative of your community in all respects. Does the Census Bureau publish statistics on the people they have to send interviewers for? Just asking, maybe I'll have to go check their site. Other comments here about Germany and whatnot falls flat, and short. This is America, and part of it is being ok with your neighbors (unless they're truly insane and release plagues of rabbits or burn themselves out of their homes, but I digress), try to find some common ground even if it's awkward and you have to look the other way about some slights and trespasses. I don't know how much trouble they went to to "fit" you to the cohort they tasked you with, or how much of a natural fit there was. Did you grow up / do you live in the area? There's an element of "liking" (Cialdini) each other which colors participants' perception of tasks. OTOH nothing like talking to perfect strangers to flex that muscle or find out you really don't have it.