Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can | Hacker News Reader

Can You Locate Iran? Few Voters Can

morningconsult.com

48 pointsvo2maxer96 comments

Not sure if only taking into account the % of voters that precisely mapped where Iran is located is enough, as it would put someone that selected Egypt and South America in the same group (wrongly identified the location).

I would prefer an 'average distance from the border' analysis, in which we would be able to compare which group is clearly unaware of Iran's location (selecting Europe or even North America, for example) and which group at least has a basic idea of the location (Middle East).

"Men were about twice as likely as women to be able to identify Iran on both maps"

Wow, that's unexpected. Is there some credible source on why this is the case? Also curious if this is generally true...would you get the same result if they were asked to identify Belgium on a map?

Scientific studies suggest men generally have a better sense of direction than women, and use that sense of direction more effectively. Kind of makes you wonder where the "fails to ask for directions" trope comes from! :) https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2015/12/10/do-...

And yes - I know it didn't PROVE men have a better sense, it suggests that based on the effects of hormones administered to women.

I'd guess the trope comes from a combination of men traditionally doing more of the driving and having a stronger desire to figure out problems on their own.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are a number of confounding factors that skew male, such TV shows/movies/video games marketed to men that feature Iran and/or the region.

I have been surprised to discover how many people know very little about geography but even more surprised to learn what a high proportion of people who do know geography know it mostly from military history, which is a stereotypically masculine interest.

Back in late 2003 I was visiting a friend in Florida. News was filled with the war on terror, with the invasion of Iraq starting a few months earlier.

He introduced me to his neighbor, who asked where I was from. Norway I replied. "Oh, hmm, we haven't bombed Norway yet... where is it?"

After a moment he added that he was only half joking, as a reference to the geography lessons he had received at school and the news coverage.

"God created war so that Americans would learn geography." - Mark Twain - The Innocents Abroad

That doesn't appear in the Gutenberg.org version of the text [1], and according to the Quote Investigator, Twain didn't say it [2].

1. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3176/3176-h/3176-h.htm

2. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/19/geography/

I've gotten to observe some tutoring recently and it gives me a different perspective on this than the typical "Oh look how stupid people are" reaction than probably got this post flagged.

Some people, when faced with a problem they can't answer, respond with a glib answer, or a panicked one. I propose that when you ask someone where Iran is and they don't know, they click on Northern Africa not because they think it's in Africa but because as soon as they give any answer they can be done. "Fuck it, I'm choosing North Africa."

It's like that kid who answers '5' when the teacher asks what 2x4 is. How the fuck could five be the answer? It's not even an even number! Are you stupid? No. You've given up, and you think guessing will get you out of this experience. Many of the teachers I knew would double down in this situation. Yes, you should not condition the child to get out of things by doing them badly, but now they're the focus of everyone's attention which is also detrimental to the process.

I would like it if education focused on making people more resilient and empowered to figure out what they don't know instead of trying to get out of the uncomfortable situation. If people can learn on their own you don't have to min-max education to help the most people with a single process (leaving both the gifted and the slow kids in the dust in the process).

I've said before that I think physical education should focus on how to do physical things without hurting yourself (ex: how to fall properly).

Now I'd also like it if academic education focused not on how to cram things into people's heads faster but how to keep from getting frustrated or panicked when facing adversity in learning.

This sort of poll is perennial but never says anything interesting, imo.

I get the impression from the map of responses that many respondents were taking the piss. Who really thinks Iran is Greenland?

Clearly. So many also pointing right in the middle of the US, Brazil and Australia.

I’m not sure if the poll was portrayed to be serious.

Also, as someone who was in the US for quite some time, I found that (very much contrary to national stereotypes), Americans were quite knowledgeable about geography and global current affairs. This was evident from the multicultural societies where people knew about their friends, social meetups talking about a lot of different subjects across the world, etc. I refuse to believe that most people are bad at pointing out roughly where different countries are, unless they are countries which genuinely aren’t very well known.

> I’m not sure if the poll was portrayed to be serious.

Indeed, Politico used a survey company that claims they apply "rigorous scientific methodology, trusted by leading organizations across business, policy, media, and tech."

But I find it very difficult to believe that someone identifying Iran by pointing into the ocean, Greenland, or the USA is taking the survey seriously. I mean, American education is certainly horrible, but come on!

https://morningconsult.com/product/survey-research/#section_...

Yeah. They probably paid for completion of the poll, and completing the poll required some selection of a location, so a ton of people did exactly that without even reading what the question was.

Yup. Why is this even posted on HN? Seems really low brow, honestly. I see this as the exact sort of click bait, anger inducing content a lot of people here want to avoid.

Why do we trust the poll if it doesn’t publish the survey contents and describe the methodology for participant selection? Survey design is extremely important, it’s like Stats 101. 2% margin of error, oh I’m sure.

Fun anecdote time: my high school was selected to take a survey on extracurricular activities. It was taken over a couple of days in the period before lunch and took like 2 hours total.

My memory is that everyone in the school used it as an exercise in creativity, with lots of people making themselves out to be drug abuser or gang members on paper, just for the novelty. I distinctly remember being surprised because so many people I didn’t expect(because they were typically honest, straight and narrow type folks) were laughing at their made up character who took meth every day before school and did heroin on the weekends, or whatever. Maybe it’s for this reason that the extreme importance of test design and method has stuck with me, but it seems like most people forget it after they pass Stats? hmmmm.

It’s akin to asking Iranians, can you point out Missouri [or Texas or Calif] on a map?

It's not at all like that. Missouri is irrelevant to international politics. (don't tell the farmers that though)

It's more akin to asking Iranians, can you point out Ukraine?

No, because Missouri is not a country. I'm always puzzled by this attitude that individual US states should have the same hierarchy in knowledge of the world as actual countries.

US states are like Chinese provinces. We know about our states, they know about their provinces and we both know a little bit about the countries we have ties to. US and Europe and the Americas, China and East Asia/pac rim and a bit of Africa.

Basically, smaller countries study more about their surroundings more and bigger countries have more internal stuff to learn.

A lot of Americans have trouble locating Nebraska or Kansas on a map. I’m sure a lot of Chinese might get confused about where Shanxi is, especially since many of them have never left their own counties before.

Not sure that it is. Obviously, you will get people that have no clue, but people should roughly know where most countries are.

Not really, Iran is a little bit less than ten times the size of Missouri and is a regional military power, as well as controls globally relevant petroleum interests.

Hm, are you comparing a state of 6 million people with a country of 83 million that has existed for thousands of years?

maybe they would if the state of Missouri starts bombing Iran.

That seems rather likely, all things considered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteman_Air_Force_Base

Actually it's akin to asking Americans, can you point out Missouri on a map?

I'm European and California, New York, Hawaii, Florida would be easy (and relevant for me).

Missouri...to tell you the truth I don't even know what is interesting about it (I'm sure it has a lot of interesting things going on though).

Christ. I'm from the U.S. and I can pick Iran on a map without thinking. If you asked me to pick Missouri and Missisippi on a map ... I'd probably get it but I'd sweat a little bit until I heard I was right.

Missisippi is a bit further south but it's not Louisiana.

Missouri is a bit further north but it's not Kansas.

Now that I've looked at a map I can safely say, yeah, I woulda got that wrong.

There were a worrying amount of people clicking on the water.

If they used the same map as in the article (edit: rather, the first regional map, not the world map), that actually doesn't surprise me. It took me a good 10-20 seconds to figure out what part of the world and scale the first picture was at, because I had land and water inverted in my head.

Why would anyone use blue for land instead of water?

Is it not interesting because of the lack of novelty, or not interesting because you think it's acceptable to want to kill someone but not to actually know much about them?

I don't think being able to accurately tell where Iran is is a requirement for wanting to kill someone from there, no. Knowing approximately where it is is useful, but what does it really matter if you confuse it with the next country over?

If one lacks the knowledge to even identify another nation on the global map, you have to wonder if this person actually has strong, sound judgement (when they speak in favor of dropping bombs) or if they’re easily malleable partisans.

It means that you have been wholesale influenced rather than informed about the conflict that politicians are peddling to you, as you don't have a grasp on the most basic facts of the matter. We're talking of civilian support for acts of war here.

Specially since an actual war with the people of that polity is an obvious outcome.

There are a lot of comments here relating this to the escalation in tensions in the region - making very strong arguments for and against the idea that because 77% of the US could not place Iran on the map it is ridiculous that they should consider going to war.

Let me clear this up: it is ridiculous regardless of this statistic. Sure it might be a little embarrassing for Americans that there are so many people fired up to declare war on a country they know precious little about, but war with Iran would still be terribly wrong even if they could pinpoint Iran on the map and draw a little dot exactly where Tehran is.

And for those suggesting that this exercise is like asking Iranians to pick out Wyoming or Missouri on a map ... I really don't think you want to open that can of worms.

I came to complain about the graphs...

Their 38%s don't line up; like at all.

Also, they don't go into what they mean by "unlabeled" in either the current methodology or their previously linked North Korea methodology either for how the people selected where Iran was. With the datapoints on the map, I'm wondering if they even had country borders; otherwise I'd think a heatmap of the selected countries would be a better telling of the data.

In general, their visual representations of what was produced was, in short, hot freaking garbage. Which may mean that the data is; and kinda throws the entire survey into question.

Maybe unpopular opinion: Most people don’t have any reason to look at maps beyond local area and it doesn’t automatically mean they’re stupid.

Middle east is not a continent and if you look at a global map without country lines then you might not notice it in relation to any point of reference, and as such have trouble locating it.

Knowing where a place is on map is not necessary to participate in democracy. Most people vote instinctively and just have a mental map that there’s a potential external threat and how should we respond to this threat. It’s about liberty vs. safety. Maps offer no help in this whatsoever.

I remember writing a report about Afghanistan in middle school (long before US involvement). Other kids thought I made the country up. But I always loved history and geography so I guess I am not typical.

And yet Twitter is the becoming-heroic war machine of the ordinary citizen, because it and other armaments of information allow a person to independently participate in information warfare on rival states. Just like the capsuleer pod technology found in the lore of the futuristic space setting massively multiplayer online roleplaying game Eve Online. It's safe to conclude that generally Twitter democratizes power.

The poll is telling given survey findings of only 36% correct answers on geographical knowledge among high school students:

https://calgeography.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/GeoEduRepor...

To paraphrase what wise people have warned for millenia: Democratic government by an ignorant populace is a recipe for disaster.

We get the government we deserve, but that same malfeasant government we deserve is responsible for educating us.

I’m not sure we “deserve” the unprecedented propaganda efforts, the weaponization of social media, the think tanks that have been iterating more and more sophisticated manipulation methods, gerrymandering which makes voting useless in key districts etc.

Also see the work of George Lakoff. Enlightenment thinking is a myth. We’re super easy to manipulate and that’s where the effort and money goes.

Confident good looking people on tv repeating carefully constructed lies with authoritarian voices and straight faces. It is impossible to argue with their viewership.

Propaganda works.

Do we deserve this almost impossible to navigate environment where it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not?

In my opinion this is the result of criminal efforts to normalize crime.

47% supported the strike? How could they possibly have had enough information to support it?

Iran = Bad

Man from Iran = Bad

Kill Man from Iran = Good???

“Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”

― Arthur Schopenhauer

edit: it's easy to read this pridefully yourself ("i have other things to be proud of and therefore i'm immune from such petty things"). i think the most significant part of the quotation is the last part - you can derive pride in direct proportion to how invested you are. most people (those that aren't nihilists) have such things that function for them in exactly the same way. it's ultimately a sublimation urge -- we prove ourselves insofar as we sacrifice. if nationalism vexes you then i challenge you to reflect on your own loyalties/commitments.

> if nationalism vexes you then i challenge you to reflect on your own loyalties/commitments.

I agree, but just because the psychological mechanisms that give rise to both humanism and nationalism are related, doesn't mean that we can't make reasonable judgments about which is better than the other, especially when the nationalism is of an ethnic or racial variety.

>doesn't mean that we can't make reasonable judgments about which is better than the other

i'm not advocating for reserving judgment. i'm simply saying that being proud of yourself for not being nationalist is pointless and if you want to understand nationalists (to whatever end -- even eradication of nationalism) then study yourself in analogy as a proxy for the other.

Or simply, be self-critical, which is the number one trait disappearing from public conversation, if not for the fact that being self-critical is seen as weakness, perhaps the reason you're reiterating yourself

"Perception is reality."

- Lee Atwater

"One has not only an ability to perceive the world but an ability to alter one's perception of it; more simply, one can change things by the manner in which one looks at them."

- Tom Robbins

"One may reasonably ask: Why do people cling to the values and practices of the past, when they so obviously no longer work? Long-standing thought patterns are hard to overcome because they often appear to serve the interests of the individual, and old ways of thinking are simpler and easier to handle. In a two-valued way of thinking, as in good and bad, right and wrong, love and hate, cause and effect, very little logical analysis is involved."

- Jacque Fresco

So Soleimani = "Man from Iran"?

Yes.

I love and sympathize with your comment heavily. As far as 47% support I think it because:

Trump = Good

Something Trump ordered = Good

Also, their only news source told them it was a good thing.

> How could they possibly have had enough information to support it?

That is true for just about any political question. The consequences are usually so complex that the average citizen can't possibly be informed well enough on the matter. Just look at what happened with brexit...

Mandatory political disclaimer: I'm not saying democracy is wrong, and I wouldn't know how to solve this problem either.

and the most divisive political questions don’t even have objective answers.

Fox news typically has more viewers than MSNBC and CNN combined. So 47% doesn't surprise me.

The real question is how could anyone not know the US and Iran have been at each other's throats for over a decade and that things were always a hairs breadth from exploding into outright warfare?

How about:

Soleimani = Quds leader

Quds = responsible for Iranian military actions outside Iran

Kill person responsible for Iranian military actions outside Iran = Good

Reading the above seems a bit contrived, but I know it pretty much fits for me. I had heard his named before the news broke, but wouldn’t have been able to tell you what he did upon hearing it again. As soon as I discovered he was a Quds general, I had enough information to know that I supported striking him. Granted I was already aware of Iran’s involvement in Iraq over the past few years, and that he had been killed in Iraq.

That you know who Soleimani is places you as an outlier. Nobody would know unless told he's from Iran, and even more so that he lead the Quds.

That’s the point, though - I didn’t know who he was when I first heard the name. It took maybe 30 seconds for me to determine he lead Quds, at which point I had enough information to know that I supported his being targeted.

That is by far more informed and sophisticated than most people's knowledge on this topic.

Further questions: Why was he in Bagdad? Why did the US use an airstrike? Why was he not arrested? Did the Iraqi government invite him to the country? Was he pursuing diplomatic relations with the Iraqi government, the nominal allies of the United stakes?

Speaking for myself, I could not support the killing without answers to those questions.

I would take the results of this poll keeping "Boaty McBoatface" in mind.

Huge majority of them was decently close, what's wrong with that?

Can we talk about how the map they chose doesn’t show Kuwait?

But ... they do. It's right there where it's supposed to be.

https://morningconsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2020-P...

Oh my, you are correct. The southern border is obscured by dots. On my screen I couldn't see it at all. It looked like Saudi Arabia had absorbed Kuwait.

My brain zeros in on irony, and I thought it was funny that we're talking about not finding things on the map and the map was wrong.

Why is this flagged?

How the heck someone put Iran in South America? Just a little exposure to everyday media should give you enough to rule out that completely. That's such a basic geography understanding.

This completely blows my mind.

With any public opinion survey there's going to be a certain amount of "noise" results. You can't _force_ people to give serious answers. But if your methodology is sound (Morning Consult's certainly is) then they will tend to cancel each other out.

You can't force people to give serious answers, but you can incentivize them to do so. My guess is that the results would be dramatically better if the respondents were paid for correct answers.

That would incentivize respondents to cheat and look it up. I think you'd find that would make the results much worse.

I guess the same way somebody would put Iran in the middle of the ocean

Given that it's a completely nonsense answer among the outliers, I wouldn't be as concerned as to with the people that put it in the Balkans or confuse it with Turkey.

How the heck someone put Iran in the US?

Far more alarming is that so many US voted marked The United States as Iran.

I'm curious about the little cluster inside the US around Oklahoma or Kansas

I think that's just likely the perceived geographic center of the US. Meaning they just were clicking on the US, not a specific area of it.

There's a similar center cluster in Australia.

I'm pretty sure this was just an internet survey that people didn't answer seriously. About 1% of the clicks are in the water and a lot of answers are in North America. I have trouble believing anyone is that ignorant.

Lizardman's constant https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

Everyone who knows how to read and know an approximate location of the middle east will be able to locate it.

Not sure what's the point though? Is it to highlight how stupid average American voters are? That's a broad generalization and just a blunt offense.

Also how is it an indicator of anything? 99% I Iranians wont be able to locate Wyoming. So what?

"and just a blunt offense" if you are offended you shouldn't hide behind a throwaway!

> Wyoming

Wyoming is not an international political entity. I also wouldn't expect americans to reliably locate Montreal, but they damn well better know where Canada is.

It's an indicator of the sad state of affairs, that most "voters" (presumably those that voted in the presidential election) cannot locate a country as important as Iran. Are you kidding me that you think someone voting for president should have such little knowledge of the world?

This is why (eg) climate change is an insoluble problem. The masses don't know and don't care.

It's an extravagant view to say the least. Iran is one of a series of major, independent, influential polities that have succeeded one another since 550 BC in the same region with a degree of continuity, with an immense historical impact.

Knowledge of it is being equated with knowing about Missouri or Wyoming, seriously?

I think there is a strong argument to be made that having the US police the world, in the name of democracy, is not great if a large proportion of the voters are not educated enough to make rational voting decisions on such issues. And geography is a fairly fundamental part of understanding geopolitics. Arguing the other way around also isn't quite the same thing, partly because Iran doesn't have military bases in Canada and Mexico.

I don’t know if a majority of Americans could find Wyoming on a map or even know it’s capitol, so that’s probably a bit unfair ask.

I’m not sure what’s offensive here. Given the current geopolitical climate, I do think certain politicians are trying to provoke a Iran into a bigger war and these folks, who couldn’t identify the Wyoming on the map let alone Iran, are ready to support said politicians blindly... but I digress.

It’s not an offense if it’s true. It’s crazy how stupid the general population of the US is. Especially when you leave highly educated coastal social circles.

To be fair most of the dots landed in what Trump and his demographic call "Shithole Countries", you couldnt make a better move to stay in power than this new war.

Not at all surprising. Sad, but not surprising.

How many voters know who the Secretary of State is? How many voters know who their local congress critter is? I guarantee the numbers are similarly dismal.

It's pretty typical for the kind of answers you get from polling people walking around the mall in the middle of a weekday.

aka voters

I actually regularly forget my local Reps - because every time I check in they've been voting the way I want, so I have very little reason to think about them. I generally know about them for a few weeks before elections and rapidly forget after that. (with the occasional hot button issue making me check in on them, but then my memory lasts only for an hour or so)

I used to feel a lot of guilt about this, but eventually I decided that's the whole point of a representative democracy. Depending on people to be aware and informed on all the issues is extremely likely to fail. Whatever system of govt we want to strive for, it has to build on that reality.

"Ah, war. It's God's way of teaching Americans geography" [1]

And not just Americans. Anyone, really.

[1] Attributed to many people, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/19/geography/ I heard it from in a Daily Show segment on Russia-Georgia war in 2008.

Not being able to identify Iran is one thing. But it takes a special kind of stupid to think it's in Australia or the Americas. I was going to comment that we don't need yet another article pointing out the stupidity of Americans. I was wrong. This points out either stupidity beyond any comprehension or that a lot of people did not take this seriously. I hope it's the latter. It's embarassing to me to be a part of a society that is this stupid otherwise.

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