What do you think? Don't know. Couldn't care less.

My goal for 2013 is to go through every shelf, drawer, file, and closet and decide anew what to keep and what to toss.  It’s a touch job.  But I keep finding things I forgot I had, and often these things bring back good memories.  A photocopy of an essay in a February 6, 1995 New Yorker—“The Intellectual Free Lunch” by Michael Kinsley—was still mostly relevant.  Earlier this year, I wrote about my annoyance at a call from a poll taker.  This annoyance came partly from common sense and partly from internalizing Kinsley’s point in this essay:

The typical opinion poll about, say, foreign aid doesn’t trouble to ask whether the respondent knows the first think about the topic being opined upon, and no conventional poll disqualifies an answer on the ground of mere total ignorance.  The premise of opinion polling is that people are, and of right ought to be, omni-opinionated—that they should have views on all subjects at all times—and that all such views are equally valid.  It’s always remarkable how few people say they “aren’t sure” about or “don’t know” the answer to some pollster’s question.  (“Never thought about it,” “Couldn’t care less,” and “Let me get back to you on that after I’ve done some reading” aren’t even options.)  So, given the prominence of polls in our political culture, it’s no surprise that people have come to believe that their opinions on the issues of the day need not be fettered by either facts or reflections. 

It’s depressing and maybe even more of a problem now that when the article was written almost 20 years ago.  I think I’ll continue to say yes to the poll-takers who call so I can give my honest I-don’t-know answers.  Maybe from time to time, I should question a published poll, but I probably won’t.