Lizardman's Constant
Our perception of the world is informed by—among other things—the data we engage with directly, and that which shapes the conclusions of domain experts.
That data is itself forged in the fires of processes that vary in reliability, comprehensibility, and transparency. It’s possible to get your hands on a data set that comes from a seemingly reliable source, only to later find out that, while the intermediary source was legitimate, the original source they relied upon gathered or fabricated flawed, incomplete, or intentionally deceitful figures.
Part of this uncertainty with any data, then, can be attributed to our inability to know with absolute certainty everything we don’t know: we tend to collect such data to further our collective understanding, and there’s always a chance that we won’t know enough to perceive our own blindspots as we work through that process; not till later, or perhaps ever.
Part of it, though, can be traced back to other variables, like approaches that don’t take human nature into proper consideration.
The term “Lizardman’s Constant” refers to the somewhat consistent tendency of an estimated 4% of people who respond to polls and surveys (in the US in particular, but presumably elsewhere to some degree, as well) to choose the most outlandish option possible when given a pre-written batch of answers to choose from.
This term was coined by Slate Star Codex blogger Scott Alexander when writing on a then-recent (2013) poll about climate change, that seemed to indicate a not-insignificant number of Americans believed some pretty wild things about climate change (among others: because the US Moon landing was a hoax, according to such respondents, so is climate change).
In that piece, Alexander flipped a heuristic that’s become known as Hanlon's Razor (never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity or ineptitude) for the purposes of poll-taking, because it would seem that in such contexts, either out of revenge against bothersome pollsters or just for fun, a certain number of respondents will give the most outlandish answer possible.
Alexander posited that about 4% seemed right—a very rough estimate that seemed to line up with a flurry of then-recent poll results—and one especially out-there poll result indicated that about 4% of Americans believed that lizardmen are running the world (which refers to a hilariously sprawling conspiracy theory about such lizardmen).
This is a potentially useful concept, because—although many of the reporters writing about such poll results no doubt understand the possibility of such revenge- or humor-based manipulations to the numbers—the practices and economics of journalism often require that they report such numbers as equal to other numbers that are less likely to have been fabricated or boosted for comedic or malicious purposes.
Consequently, we end up with a lot of panicky stories about a seemingly large percentage of Americans believing this or that about climate change, the Moon landing, or lizardmen in the White House, and that can inform our individual perception of our fellow human beings, but can also influence more people to believe (or say they believe) such things due to the social effects of tribalism: we tend to bend our biases toward those held by the ideological groups (religious, political, national, economic, etc) that we perceive ourselves to be a part of.
Thus, if we’re told that a significant portion of people from our perceived demographic believe that the Moon landing was a hoax perpetrated by the US government, there’s a non-zero chance that we’ll either rethink our position on the matter, or tell others that we also believe this conspiracy theory, which can further muck up poll results, but can also cause a cascade of misinformation and demographic realignment, if left unchecked.
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