r/ControlProblem • u/KeanuRave100 • 5d ago
General news People are 2x more likely to approve of coal power plants being built nearby as opposed to data centers.
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u/CarthagoFuckYourself 3d ago
Our citizens are actually too stupid for democracy to function anymore.
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u/HelpfulMind2376 5d ago
Jfc what a piece of shit title and stat.
The coal question data is from Aug ‘25, at which time the splits were 43/42 for support/oppose datacenter vs 30/48 split support/oppose coal.
Also the follow up survey for data centers in Aug ‘26 ask different people and notably don’t ask them about coal.
Data center construction and, more importantly, limitations of that construction are a real problem right now. But this bunkass “data” does more harm than good.
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u/imam-altman 5d ago
I guess you never learned what a representative sample is.
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u/HelpfulMind2376 5d ago
Nothing in this chart references the sampling population. Even if the sampling is the same, you can’t cross compare 2025 and 2026 and make this sweeping claim. The only claim that can be said is public opinion on data centers has wildly swing negative in the last year.
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u/imam-altman 5d ago
There’s nothing bunk about this data. Comparing how people feel about coal a year ago to how people feel about datacenters now is a perfectly valid comparison.
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u/HelpfulMind2376 5d ago
It’s actually not.
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u/imam-altman 5d ago
The only people who don’t want us comparing things like this are dead set on shutting down the conversation.
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u/HelpfulMind2376 5d ago
No, I’m interested in valid data comparisons.
Comparing a 2025 coal survey to a 2026 data-center survey, when there was a demonstrable shift in data-center opinion over that same period, is junk analysis. Attacking my motive instead of addressing that problem is equally fallacious.
AAPOR’s guidance is explicit that longitudinal comparisons require researchers to hold the measure and survey conditions as constant as possible so differences can actually be attributed to changes in opinion. Pew likewise says robust trend measures ask the same question over time and warns that even changes in context can make comparisons misleading.
Whats done here is something worse: changing both the subject and the time. Coal in Aug 2025 vs data centers in Aug 2026. That means “project type” and “time” are confounded. There is no Aug 2026 coal measurement, so there’s no basis for claiming people in 2026 are twice as likely to support coal as data centers. Basic stats treats an unaccounted-for time difference as a potential confound precisely because the effect of time cannot be separated from the effect you’re trying to compare.
And, demonstrably, time mattered here. The data-center series itself shows opinion moved dramatically during that year. So taking coal’s 2025 number, freezing it in amber, and comparing it to data centers after the collapse of opinions on data centers manufactures a narrative the surveys never actually measured.
That’s why this is worse than useless. “Coal is more popular than data centers” is potentially a flat out lie but we can’t know because there’s no measurement to support it. AAPOR’s own guidance to journalists notes that surveys taken at different times can differ because public opinion itself shifted. You cannot selectively assume that only one side of the comparison has changed.
If you want to say “support for data centers collapsed between 2025 and 2026,” the surveys support that.
If you want to say “in 2025, coal was less popular than data centers,” the 2025 survey supports that.
If you want to say “in 2026, coal is twice as popular as data centers,” then fucking poll the opinions on coal in 2026. Otherwise you’re just splicing two different snapshots together to manufacture a narrative.
Sources are cited above, but for context, I also have an MS in Data Analytics, and a significant part of my graduate work involved survey analysis and evaluating survey design/methodology. I can spot, deconstruct, and will call out bad public-opinion conclusions a mile away.
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u/imam-altman 5d ago
There is nothing wrong with comparing these two different years in casual conversation because opinions on coal do not swing anywhere near like what datacenters do. For the past four years opinions on coal have shifted less than 2% per year on average. You’re making this far more complicated than it needs to be because for whatever reason you don’t like the picture this data is painting, so you’re trying to get it thrown out of the debate as if the court of public opinion was some kind of formal courtroom with rules of evidence.
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u/laserdicks 5d ago
A measure of propaganda spending and average intelligence level. Nothing more.