Preliminary report of closed, on-site polling

Poll #1

Duration: + / - 3 months

Sample size: A surprising amount. To be expanded as results showed promise.


Preliminary disclosure:

Users that scored elevated Scale 7 [Psychasthenia] on the MMPI-2 AND were in possession of standard blood test reported overwhelmingly to having higher white blood cell counts than red blood cell counts. With regards to if one or both of these numbers were in the abnormal range, the results were mixed, with the sample size proving insufficiently large to achieve the statistical significance necessary to back any correlation or, inversely, back the null hypothesis against any specific combination.

A follow-up poll will open, staying open over a longer period, and those numbers will be combined with those already obtained. MMPI-2 test takers that meet the criteria stated above are strongly encouraged to participate because it is likely that enough data will be collected to offer strong support with regards to a key skewed dynamic in the human psychoneuroimmunological system, which has been recently found to exhibit bidirectional communication between neurons and cells in the immunological system.




Poll #2


Duration + / - 10 months

Sample size: 500+ users


Results:

Users reviewed our on-site search engine, Cog, a custom Google search engine modified to filter out most of the noise on the Internet with the purpose of landing users directly on useful results or on the primary sources corresponding to their query. Cog received over 75% favorable reviews, with less than 20% of users reporting that they either weren't able to find the primary sources being sought out or having experienced any sort of processing or coding bug upon using the on-site CSE. To obtain positive percentages so high is extremely rare in anonymous, on-line attitude polling. Needless to say, I am very happy that I was able to provide you all with a useful tool that is becoming increasingly important as the Google search algorithms get hacked to the point that reliable information is no longer readily accessible. Since voters largely approved the design of the tool, I will be expanding and tweaking it over the medium-term.

Adam Smith's Real Thoughts on the Free Market

Adam Smith warned -

“The interest of the dealers [the stock holding class], however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."


- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Chapter XI, Book I. 


(Full book, originally published in 1776, Revised Fifth Edition)