Nathan Answers Questions: What About Manipulation?

Over on Facebook, reader Jonathan Wang asks,

"…how about cases where politicians or interest groups deliberately misrepresent the facts?"

It's a good question with a number of facets. Three issues come to mind immediately: framing, media priming, and the many ways in which people either ignore or fail to use new information that could correct false beliefs.

Here's a quick overview, with some examples. Well, we'll see about quick, but there will be examples.

Fielding Reader Questions: The Strength of Voter Preference

Reader F. Tyler asks the following (slightly edited) question regarding the Borda count, a voting method in which people rank alternatives, higher-ranked alternatives get fewer points, and the option with the fewest points wins, just like golf (see this post and its follow-up on basic problems with voting):