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Five per cent of UK adults do not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 believes its been exaggerated
- Thread starter Garfield
- Start date
You obviously feel insulted, but why do you think it's inaccurate?
No, it's an estimate. If the thread's title was "approximately 5% of British people may not believe the Holocaust happened and roughly 8% are possibly incapable of accurately stating how many lives were lost", it would be fine.
You wouldn't be labelling anyone or stating anything definitively, but it would be like pulling ten fruits out of a barrel, finding three of them are oranges and saying you think roughly 30% of the fruit in the barrel are oranges. You're not saying that, out of a barrel of two hundred fruits, exactly sixty of them are oranges.
Semantics are kind of important when discussing serious issues like this, otherwise you end up attributing opinions to people you have no way to definitively prove they even have. You're just assuming they do and forming an opinion on them because of your assumptions.
I'm just going to assume Winny is showing us how people can come to disbelieve something despite the evidence at hand.
I do not deny that one hundred people out of the two thousand they surveyed do not believe the Holocaust happened. I do, however, refuse to accept that because those one hundred people do not believe the Holocaust happened, that we must assume there are 3'299'900 other British people in this country that also do not believe the Holocaust happened.
This is literally the opposite of "there are dozens of us! Dozens!"
The secondary school (high school) graduation rate in the UK is lower than 95%. The idea that all pupils watch (and actually immerse themselves) in historical movies/documentaries is ludicrous, especially if you expect more than 95% to retain the knowledge.
You really have no case to argue that those people are believing in alternative history/conspiracies as opposed to simply not knowing it.
Take it from someone well educated in the field of stats and polling, you are not right here and are making yourself look bad doubling down.
I gave you the quick tldr on polling on the last page, you need to go do some more reading.
There is some great irony in a topic involving conspiracy theorists, you're effectively doing your own conspiratorial thinking around the fields of science and essentially stating "fake news".
That 5% isn't too bad considering how little people trust the UK press. Truth is on shaky ground here, so there's plenty of room for crazy people to start believing all sorts of wild conspiracies.
Yeah. 95% accepts that the Holocaust happened.
If you had told me it was 90% I would have believed you.
Proof means nothing, and this is an issue the world over.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...-their-knowledge-holocaust-history-180968783/
US Poll said:
This isn't even just an issue with the Holocaust. It's literally everything.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1577511/Winston-Churchill-didnt-really-exist-say-teens.html
In 2008 3000 under 20s in the UK were surveyed
A fifth of British teenagers believe Sir Winston Churchill was a fictional character, while many think Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur and Eleanor Rigby were real, a survey shows.
Despite his celebrated military reputation, 47 per cent of respondents dismissed the 12th-century crusading English king Richard the Lionheart as fictional.
More than a quarter (27 per cent) thought Florence Nightingale, the pioneering nurse who coaxed injured soldiers back to health in the Crimean War, was a mythical figure.
King Arthur is the mythical figure most commonly mistaken for fact - almost two thirds of teens (65 per cent) believe that he existed and led a round table of knights at Camelot.
Sherlock Holmes, the detective, was so convincingly brought to life in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novels, their film versions and television series, that 58 per cent of respondents believe that the sleuth really lived at 221B Baker Street.
Fifty-one per cent of respondents believed that Robin Hood lived in Sherwood Forest, robbing the rich to give to the poor, while 47 per cent believed Eleanor Rigby was a real person rather than a creation of The Beatles.
But sure, lets let these fucking idiots (everyone, not just these teens) decide whether we stay in the EU or not.
Would you accept that there's a 95% probability that between 4.04% and 5.96% of the population deny the holocaust?
Are you similarly bamboozled by other polls and surveys?
Is it all polling methodology you "refuse to accept" or just this one?
*2000 is an extremely large sample size.
If you think 2000 is not "good enough", you don't understand how statistics work
Congratulations! you are finally understanding statistics
The sample size is actually greater than 2,000, but we'll say 2,000 as it's likely not far beyond it
Its 5% of adults, there's only about 50m adults, so only 2.5m loonies on this particular issue.
If was wasn't lazy I would whip out my Prob and Stats notes/exams and do the math out for the guy in the thread rofl
Working with IBM SPSS Statistics is the bane of my life, but at least it automates most shit.
On topic, in terms of population and believing in stupid crazy shit, 5% denial of the Holocaust actually seems pretty good all things considered. Although it is one of the more hardcore conspiracies, and is directly tied into white nationalism, so it makes sense it's so low.
Because nobody understands statistics. This is the reason why I feel journalists shouldn't even attempt to print any story based on statistics. They just create more confusion overall, often because they themselves can't read and parse the findings of the scientific papers they report on.
That's a hot take in itself. The goal is to help more people understand statistics in order to improve education and awareness.
I somewhat get what you're saying, but if journalists represent stats correctly/without bias, then it's not on them when the public gets confused or says something stupid. That's on us to help educate people. Some journalists can of course try and do their part a bit by relaying a complex matter with as much layman terms as possible.
That's a great introduction line for people to read. Think about it. If you go make a pot of soup and do it well (the creation of it), stir it and then take a big spoonful, you're happy that is a good indication how the pot tastes? You don't think "this tastes shit, I'll eat the whole thing just in case".
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Why is their willful ignorance of the Holocaust different to your willful ignorance of statistics?
It's the wording used with the findings, specifically. It's attributing an opinion to millions of people with no actual way to back up or prove such a statement and people are taking it as fact despite how outlandish it is. How can anyone seriously assume that nearly three and a half million people in the UK don't believe the Holocaust happened with their only supporting evidence being that one hundred people in a survey expressed such an opinion?
If this was a thread about how one hundred British people in a survey of two thousand didn't believe the Holocaust happened, there would be literally nothing to argue about because it would only be stating fact.
I cannot say with certainty how many people in the UK do not belive the Holocaust happened. There could be a hundred and one that believe it didn't or I could be the only person in the whole country that believes it did.
All this survey proves is that, out of two thousand people, one hundred of them don't believe the Holocaust happened. It's when you make the claim that, on the basis of those one hundred people, almost three and a half million British people must also refuse to believe the Holocaust happened that you lose me.
But they can actually back that up. That's why it's statistics. That's why it's not just asking 2000 random people, but people where you know their demographics so you can extrapolate from that. That's how that stuff works. It's science and the statistical principles behind it are no different than polls before elections, which, in contrast to popular belief, work pretty well most of the time. Or do you reject that election polls work as well?
The next step in combatting your unwillingness to listen, instead of words, here's a video to watch
This is both awful and not very surprising.
That being said, this number actually seems low compared to other polls in different countries I've seen in the past.
That being said, this number actually seems low compared to other polls in different countries I've seen in the past.
Yeah, no. Saying this makes you about as stupid as the Holocaust deniers.
No, this is where you are losing touch with maths and reality.
If a carefully chosen sample of that size produces those results, it creates a strong statistical presumption. If you're merely quibbling that the actual number may be a million or so more or less, I don't think this is making a strong case against.
Edit: why are you using apostrophes instead of commas to demark your large numbers? Do you spend a lot of time using a computer in another country?
User Banned (1 Week) Dismissing concerns over antisemitism and derailing thread over series of posts
It's still reducing human beings to a statistic on a subject as emotional as the Holocaust. Do those one hundred people that stated they don't believe the Holocaust happened truly represent the rest of us or are they outliers, contrarians and right wing propagandists?
There's literally no way of telling why those one hundred people said they don't believe the Holocaust happened, let alone state without any doubt at all that millions of other British people must share their opinion.
You could probably quite easily get two thousand people together, ask them if Hitler was right, and get way more than a hundred of them saying he was. Do we then state as fact that millions of British people support genocide?
There are some subjects that it's entirely wrong to have a survey about and just assume everyone thinks the same way. The Holocaust is one of them.
I'm not surprised, I work with someone (here in Manchester) that doesn't even know what the Holocaust is.
Okay, this must be trolling. But I'll break it down
5% of 50m can indeed reflect outliers, contrarians and anti-semites/racists/right-wing propagandists. It's 5%. Not 95%. 5% is a statistical minority. Overwhelmingly so. Not that that makes it any less disgusting to swallow even 5% denying the Holocaust. You can laugh at 5% thinking the earth is flat, but due to the loss of life in the Holocaust, it's harder to find it funny when people deny it.
2.5m adults out of 50m adults are assholes/conspiracy theorists around the Holocaust.
Those who deny may have different bullshit thinking for denying? How is that a surprise? The fact that is shocking is that they deny historical fact, not really what stupid reasoning they have for doing so.
Depends on how the sample of 2,000 were picked. That's the thing everyone in here is educating you on. How samples are picked. You don't go to the KKK meeting and pick 1,000 KKK members and ask them do you support Hitler? You would pick a representative random sample of the population of the UK.
Facts and stats don't care about your subjective opinion on what we should do research on. As one of the most horrific and notable moments in our history, we want to know how well-educated people are on it/what people think about it.
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They literally asked randoms. If you somehow believe that at random and over a 2000 person sample they managed to get a statistically larger than average collection of nutjobs, I can't help you any further. This isn't like they popped into a Greggs in Leeds and just asked the first 10 people they met.
Good day to your sir, I'm done.
If those 2000 people are a statistically representative sample of the British population, then... yes?
You're reacting with extremely irrational emotion and melodrama but that doesn't mean the numbers are wrong. You want to bury your head in the sand and pretend that these millions of people don't exist, when they very likely do. Do you think combatting prejudice and ignorance begins by pretending that this type of person doesn't exist?
Depending on how knowledgeable you are on the numbers it's not unsurprising some people underestimate/overestimate (without malice). The overall number is higher than just the Jewish people killed and the individual breakdown contains many different numbers.
I knew the total was around 18 million, but it's been awhile since I saw the exact break down. It's a heart breaking number and I wonder if some deniers do so because they can't even comprehend such a large number of deaths.
So that's a yes. If you had a survey asking people if they supported genocide and a very small number of them did, you would extrapolate that millions of other people must also support genocide.
This isn't like asking people to look at a colour and tell you if it's green or yellow.
Congratulations, you found roughly one hundred people who are either not especially well-educated or are intentionally and consciously refusing to accept the Holocaust happened for whatever personal reasons they have.
Congratulations you don't understand how stats work and even with people helping you politely to start with, your resistance in the face of good faith conversation in response to you still results in really stupid replies.
What is your background/ education in statistics, because you're doubling down on this really hard and I'm curious if you actually have any reason to do so.
Do you actually have a substantial, real reason to disregard these statistics? Or are you just plugging your fingers in your ears, closing your eyes and shouting until people stop talking about this issue?
Not as bad as I would have expected. There's the uneducated and there's those who simply hate Jews. I saw this comment below one article:
"It was PLANNED in 1913/14 ....the ZIONISTS planned this holocaust of the Jewish ppl in order to obtain Palestine as their homeland. Plz do your research its not that difficult to join the dots."
It wasn't that long ago that you could find copies of Mein Kampf in convenience stores in parts of London. Might still be the case.
"It was PLANNED in 1913/14 ....the ZIONISTS planned this holocaust of the Jewish ppl in order to obtain Palestine as their homeland. Plz do your research its not that difficult to join the dots."
It wasn't that long ago that you could find copies of Mein Kampf in convenience stores in parts of London. Might still be the case.
The sad thing is one of my recent professors who was a hardcore Metallica fan (which I respect) tattoos, earrings etc... Believed it was exaggerated and that the Berlins were responsible for most of the deaths...literally had to stay after to talk and understand what he was trying to say or report him to Staff
Bingo.
Bingo.