"That’s because a position that seems to have deep backing from the evidence may really just be a reflection from the echo chamber. You should be looking toward how much evidence there is for a particular position as opposed to how many people hold that position: Having 20 independent pieces of evidence that mostly point in the same direction might indeed reflect a powerful consensus, while having 20 like-minded people citing the same warmed-over evidence is much less powerful... [T]he conventional wisdom can congeal so quickly — and yet has so often been wrong — a certain amount of contrarianism can go a long way."
Writes Nate Silver in "There Really Was A Liberal Media Bubble/Groupthink produced a failure of the 'wisdom of crowds' and an underestimate of Trump’s chances."
(The point he's making is so ridiculously obvious that the length and seriousness of this piece is evidence of the pathetic dilapidation of the press.)
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142 comments:
Was?
Fat chance.
They are working to change the world to the Progressive paradise they all want.
"Dilapidation of the Press." That is Mark Twain level writing talent. Has spending time out west has changed your perspective on Easterners.
Another perspective changer is a careful study of the history of the Presidency of Andrew Jackson. It is like watching Trump experience what a westerner, of his day, had to fight through in order to be the leader for the people.
Old Hickory also had to replace the ruling Eastern elites with a powerful Party he called the Democracy Party. And he faced down the Bank Rule of his day, and killed their bank before it killed him.
It was interesting to see the hive mind in New York and DC that was oblivious to the pretty obvious problems that Hillary had.
She has medical issues and has no experience of success in politics.
At least Obama had race going for him, and white guilt.
97% of scientist say there is man made global warming...
Also, I will never ever forgive nor forgot that many of the Washington journalist, conspired to accuse Mitt Romney of being racist. See old JournoList.
"Journalists should recalibrate themselves to be more skeptical of the consensus of their peers." Why should they? It's not as if they are interested in reality, or have any skills in figuring out that reality. Nor are they trying to be fair and impartial. Peddling the consensus narrative, whatever it happens to be--Mitt is crazy to oppose the Russians, the Donald is crazy to cozy up to them, whatever--is their job and purpose. They are just trying to enclose the U.S. in their bubble.
"That’s because a position that seems to have deep backing from the evidence may really just be a reflection from the echo chamber. You should be looking toward how much evidence there is for a particular position as opposed to how many people hold that position." Evidence, schmevidence. Sure, the real elections proved MSM expectations wrong--too bad for the real elections. Time to manufacture conditions for new ones.
Nate Silver has a keen grasp of the obvious:)
"pathetic dilapidation of the press" -- I'm going to use that.
This basic lesson applies to all groups. I am constantly surprised by the number of people who post here who feel the need to shout down different voices. It seems like the very existence of people with different opinions is painful for them or a personal affront. Diversity of opinion is a strength, not something to be suppressed.
https://xkcd.com/386/
Twain was pretty good, but the real master of invective was William C. Brann, "The Iconoclaust". Ambrose Bierce was pretty damn good too.
The excuse making** Most of the media a biased towards the party they are affiliated with and donate to. Not hard.
The NY Times and Washington Post are arms to the democrat party. It's not hard.
"The point he's making is so ridiculously obvious that the length and seriousness of this piece is evidence of the pathetic dilapidation of the press."
True.
The press as a whole are a poorly educated group. They are probably much better credentialed than they were in my day. Big networks hoovering up credentialed bodies from elite schools or a while. Credentialed but often not educated. Like too many these days, they lack the skepticism, curiosity and (yes) humility to question deeply enough. Back in the day, there was less group think and there were more editors that would challenge and teach the then less credentialed reporters as they moved through the ranks. There are exceptions nowadays to the poorly educated rule, but the exceptions are depressingly rare.
Bay Area Guy said...
Nate Silver has a keen grasp of the obvious:)
Better than no grasp, like many of his peers.
Unknown said...
https://xkcd.com/386/
I like this guy, he is consistently very funny. He has been around for a while and seems to have made a career out of being a freelance internet comic. Would not of thought that was possible.
I think the point IS obvious. It is also a strong argument for the electoral college.
The problem with assigning nefarious intentions to the press in this particular case is that it would have been much better for Hillary if the press had all been in a panic about Trump winning. That would have driven turnout for Hillary. Their complacency/lack of imagination hurt her.
The hack press = wish fulfillment, false narrative pimping with half-truths, coverups and lies.
- percentages.
"It was the video", Benghazi, Libya, Michael Brown "hands up don't shoot" -to name a few. The BS reporting on these issues alone qualifies the hack press to be known as the hack press.
Hack press - own it.
Would have liked Silver to address what happened in Germany last year or in Rotherham (which caused Brexit!) not long before. Massive sex assault on hundreds of women by hundreds more refugees and German press decides not to report/discuss/investigate until literally forced to do so. Why did UK press fail to uncover 1,400 kids being ritually abused over several years. Would that be possible here? No, we're not yet that bad. But awful lot of U.S. journo types would have felt right at home ignoring these inconvenient stories. Many of them are spineless cowards who don't to make anyone on the left uncomfortable or challenge multicultural shibboleths.
Hillary's Private Server set-up would have killed the candidacy of ANY other candidate with an (R) behind their name.
"....1,400 kids being ritually abused over several years. Would that be possible here? No, we're not yet that bad.....
*****************
Oh yes, "We" are. The press assiduously gave the Gosnell abortion monster story what editors used to call "a good leaving alone".
It was just a "local story", you see....
I wonder how many of Clinton's less enthusiastic supporters (a large group if my friends are any indication) decided not to vote because the press had assured us all, many times, that there was no way she could lose.
We are still doing it.
It's a well known fallacy. And yet, we have forgotten.
You get enough people, saying the same thing, and everyone begins to believe it.
Silver is of course being disingenuous.
The press writes or says what they are told to write or say.
There is no agency, that popular word.
They do not come up with their opinions on their own, nor do they necessarily take them from the bubble. Their livelihoods depend on their opinions.
"This basic lesson applies to all groups. I am constantly surprised by the number of people who post here who feel the need to shout down different voices. It seems like the very existence of people with different opinions is painful for them or a personal affront. Diversity of opinion is a strength, not something to be suppressed."
Boy, ain't that the truth?
97% of journalists are hacks.
"The point he's making is so ridiculously obvious that the length and seriousness of this piece is evidence of the pathetic dilapidation of the press"
Funny! Made me laugh
This topic isn't about squishing opinion - it's about the hack press.
Oh the schadenfreude.
"I am constantly surprised by the number of people who post here who feel the need to shout down different voices."
I agree but it's what Leftists do here.
ARM, you're not very good at being innocently disingenuous. It's very transparent. I'm surprised you've chosen that as your shtick.
It's going to be interesting to see how well Althouse can keep up her Trumpist "war on journalism" at the expense of ever calling out a single one of Trump's infinite chain of never-ending lies. She seems not to understand that the role of the press is the challenge and call out a president's lies, and Trump is simply too delusional to care about the truth, let alone to tell it. So their work is vast. If she were a moral citizen, she might take an interest in the importance of that effort. But like Trump, she is apparently more of a dramatist instead.
Pity. But the people know better. Subscriptions to print MSM outlets are skyrocketing. The people simply don't want to be lied to as much as the crowd here would like. They simply don't want to put up with it, either. They want the lie machine torn down. End of story.
So do not piss off the dead. Probably something there. Peers? Lunatics, unless some sense ot transmission.
This reminds me of something.
"I am constantly surprised by the number of people who post here who feel the need to shout down different voices."
"Different voices" apparently = "alternative facts" = liars.
Expect liars to keep getting shouted down.
April Apple completely misses the schadenfreude on the left seeing what a disaster the Trump presidency has been so far. LOL!
Oh, and as long as the "War on the Press" was raised, here you go.
Keep up the distractions. You're just playing to type. It's nice to see it out in the open.
The Cracker Emcee said...
I'm surprised you've chosen that as your shtick.
To me, this is a disappointing response, attacking someone's motives/character rather dealing with the various issues that have been raised in a thoughtful and neutral fashion.
Unknown said...
April Apple completely misses the schadenfreude on the left seeing what a disaster the Trump presidency has been so far. LOL!
Job growth strong in Feb; Wages Up...
Record Number of Americans Employed...
Manufacturing TRIPLED Growth in Gov't Jobs...
Construction largest gain in 10 years...
WIRE: Better by Almost Any Measure...
Debt Decreases $60B Since Inauguration...
School choice coming for inner city poor...
Yeah, everything fucked up beyond repair, after less than two months..
Journalists these days source entire stories from Twitter. Twitter!
They source the story and quite anonymous supporting and anonymous disapproving reactions from Twitter Egg accounts.
Did you see the story about the lights at the Statue of Liberty mysterious going out? Totally fake and sourced from Twitter - and published in the WaPo!
Modern journalists deserve every bit of criticism they get. I'm sure there're are economic reasons for what they do, but it's just disgusting and they've abused their power for so long that I am rooting for them to fail.
Like Hollywood being destroyed by apps like Kodi (look it up). I'm glad it's happening even though it's an important part of America. They couldn't use their power responsibly so they need to be destroyed.
Unknown: "April Apple completely misses the schadenfreude on the left seeing what a disaster the Trump presidency has been so far."
A claim quite reminiscent of assertions of the Trump Campaign "disaster". A theme omnipresent in the MSM coverage in the lead up to Nov 8.
Of course, in retrospect it was the Clinton campaign that was a disaster. This Clinton campaign disaster should have resulted in a primary defeat of Hillary by Bernie, but we all watched as the dems hacked their own primary to ensure Queen Hillary's coronation and Bernie showed himself to be quite "pliant" in regards to dem demands that he shut up about certain things.
And the continued pathetic efforts of Silver to get back into the limelight.
That made me laugh aloud, ARM. Well played.
Lefties take time out and crawl out of their "safe spaces" where no opposing viewpoints are allowed to critique others on accepting other opinions.
By the way, Mark Twain was a very funny writer. Hal Holbrook did a one man stage act of Twain's humor that lasted two hours.
And there are parts of Twain's " Life on the Mississippi" that still make me roll on the floor laughing...but it is inside humor for the Scots Irish.
ARM's passive/aggressive lefty/"reasonable" thing is pretty amusing most of the time and always welcome.
All you have to do is ask yourself what you would think if it was the consensus of the other side of the political spectrum. Would you immediately buy it or reject it?
"Alternative facts" is actually a very accurate way of describing the phenomenon. Nearly everything has two sets of facts, both true, and yet arguments for opposite sides of the issue. It's the very dynamic of politics, trials, and advertizing. It's what facts you leave out or give unfair weight that makes the difference.
The Neuron-Depleted Revolutionary said...
"Oh, and as long as the "War on the Press" was raised, here you go.
Keep up the distractions. You're just playing to type. It's nice to see it out in the open."
*********
Go to the site to learn that someone supposedly shouted "Lugenpresse" at a Trump rally.
Yeah, that's what Trump supporters do: they shout an obscure Nazi phrase, IN GERMAN, at a Trump rally.
Why, The crowd roared in recognition, delight and rage!
Oh wait.....Americans don't speak German...............oh wait...it easily could have been that Dem provocateur Creamer or his surrogates...
Snort!!!
Face it, Neuron-Depleted Revolutionary: you're as dumb as a cherrystone clam --- a Special Needs cherrystone clam.
I'm deeply disappointed in all of you. Especially those of you who don't care that I'm deeply disappointed, but my disappointment in you only makes me more powerful, more righteous and an all around better dude.
Nearly everything has two sets of facts, both true, and yet arguments for opposite sides of the issue.
Yeah. Gravity either pulls objects toward objects of greater mass or pushes them away from them. Alternative fact!
Atmospheres are either necessary to regulate climate or asteroids and the moon and outer space itself have their very own climates, regulated by sunspots. Alternative fact!
Not every interpretation has evidence to back it up. Journalists gain credibility by shutting out mythical, wishful thinking scenarios. Not by indulging them as "alternative." "Alternative" is just a way for right-wing kooks to think they've made themselves as trendy as "alternative rock," "alternative bands," or "alternative art." We get it. You guys are going through your goth phase. So stay in your basements with your nose-rings and black clothing and stop pretending that you're fit to run the world at this time. You're not. You need to grow up first. Learn how to deal with all these things about the world that you're too uncomfortable to face, first.
I'm so glad you got that out of your system, Jay Elink.
Do you feel better, now?
Reviving the credibility of Richard Spencer's organization and followers must be really rewarding work for you.
Staying off of Twitter while making fool of self- fail
Vetting his NSA director- fail
Muslim travel Ban- fail
TrumpCare- fail
Getting along with foreign leaders- fail.
Building the Wall- fail
Getting along with other Branches of the Government- fail
Telling the Truth- fail
Talking Nukes seriously-fail
Acting Presidential for more than one day at a time-fail.
Acting respectfully toward previous Presidents- fail
Just for starters.
"(The point he's making is so ridiculously obvious that the length and seriousness of this piece is evidence of the pathetic dilapidation of the press.)"
I was going to comment independently, but Althouse stole my comment before the comment thread even opened.
"Lefties take time out and crawl out of their "safe spaces" where no opposing viewpoints are allowed to critique others on accepting other opinions."
Drago wouldn't last an hour on a mostly liberal forum. He'd slink away like a little girl.
Wasn't it the goal of "Journolist" listserve to coordinate messages? The goal is not to report accurately, it is to create an echo chamber.
Mission accomplished!
Oh yes, how about Trump getting his terrorist attacks straight- fail.
Sweden was perplexed by our nutty President.
Staying off of Twitter while making fool of self- fail
Vetting his NSA director- fail
Muslim travel Ban- fail
TrumpCare- fail
Getting along with foreign leaders- fail.
Building the Wall- fail
Getting along with other Branches of the Government- fail
Telling the Truth- fail
Talking Nukes seriously-fail
Acting Presidential for more than one day at a time-fail.
Acting respectfully toward previous Presidents- fail
Just for starters.
For the righties, having no response to any of this is its own "alternative fact."
Normal people call it "denial," though.
Denial is a way of having an alternative response - the response being that such fact just plain doesn't exist. Or isn't a problem.
Don't bother them with the facts. They are quite happy in their alternative reality.
It would be nice if they'd stop seeking to inflict it on the sane, though.
Diversity of opinion is a strength, not something to be suppressed.
Yes and there are some of us here who would enjoy thoughtful debate with others. The trouble is that most "debate" consists of DNC talking points with no thought behind them.
For example:
Staying off of Twitter while making fool of self- fail
Vetting his NSA director- fail
Muslim travel Ban- fail
TrumpCare- fail
Getting along with foreign leaders- fail.
Building the Wall- fail
Getting along with other Branches of the Government- fail
Telling the Truth- fail
Talking Nukes seriously-fail
Acting Presidential for more than one day at a time-fail.
Acting respectfully toward previous Presidents- fail
Just for starters.
How do you conduct a discussion with fools like that ? There are other sites, like Chicago Boyz, where interesting discussions are held. There are even a couple of resident leftists.
I used to post and comment at Washington Monthly years ago but I was banned about 2004 because I did not agree that single payer was the answer to health care.
It's interesting that I have seen Ritmo adopt similar obscene and abusive comments as response to thoughtful comments.
There simply aren't that many deep thinkers in the news media. This is an unfortunate aspect of most professional fields.
I know a lot of conservatives don't like Silver, but he is a deep thinker- at least deep enough to realize the mistakes he made during this cycle- that ain't nothing.
"Gravity either pulls objects toward objects of greater mass or pushes them away from them. Alternative fact!"
Good example. Why doesn't the moon crash to earth (an object of greater mass)? Could there be alternative facts involved? It's all just a matter of focus. Your raw emotional partisanship makes you incapable of honest argument. In other words you don't look for, and thus do not find the alternative facts. You stop looking as soon as you find any evidence of your pre-formed hypothesis. Then you run around posting you evidence halfway through the experiment - a very unscientific approach. As Paul Harvey would say: "Now you know the rest of the story."
Michael K,
Are you saying that my list didn't happen? Are they merely DNC talking points? Hahaha, I wish that were so. Sadly your hero really did do the things I listed and the entire world sees this embarrassing excuse for an American President making a fool of himself and this country on a daily basis.
Oh yes, here's couple more
His obsession with Inauguration crowd size.
His lie about 3-5 million people voting illegally.
The problem isn't just that journalists are looking toward how many people hold a given position, it's also that they're swayed by how it make them feel to hold that position.
In other words, it's not just an echo chamber.
It's a wankfest held in an echo chamber.
Unknown: "Drago wouldn't last an hour on a mostly liberal forum. He'd slink away like a little girl."
Lefties are so confident in this position that they dare not test it.
"You wouldn't last an hour in a venue where won't allow you!"
If this leftist argument sounds familiar, it ought to since there are many examples.
The Berlin Wall was put up to stop everyone from sneaking into our leftist paradise!
Good example. Why doesn't the moon crash to earth (an object of greater mass)? Could there be alternative facts involved?
Sounds like there are is another fact, not an "alternative" one. It's called Newton's First Law, you dilweed. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. You can also get into centripetal or centrifugal perspectives, but you don't sound advanced enough for that. Nope, it's the fact that it's in motion. An orbit is the balance between the inertia of maintaining its motion with the gravity pulling it back inward into an ellipse. All perfectly explainable. All part of theory/explanation/interpretation matching FACT.
It's all just a matter of focus. Your raw emotional partisanship makes you incapable of honest argument. In other words you don't look for, and thus do not find the alternative facts. You stop looking as soon as you find any evidence of your pre-formed hypothesis. Then you run around posting you evidence halfway through the experiment - a very unscientific approach. As Paul Harvey would say: "Now you know the rest of the story."
A person who can't explain orbital motion says "what?"
I thought so.
Just give it up. You're trying to justify ignorance and lying. One of those things at least has its uses when something isn't known, and creativity or further investigation is needed to find the answer. Your problem however is that you apply ignorance intentionally to things that are known, just to satisfy yourself politically. And that's as bad as lying. You just aren't able to cope with things that are known that you have an emotional barrier against accepting. True fact, Baggy Panties: Something can be true whether or not you're capable of accepting it as true/a fact or not. Did you know that? You might want to learn it.
But I forgot. Learning is something you find that insults your sense of do-it-yourselfness. You flatter yourself too much. Not everything that you want to get credit for one day (or never) discovering is not known. Knowledge is not a bad thing. And making up false ignorance is not a good thing.
I would strongly advise Unknown to steer clear of astrophysics based analogies.
For obvious reasons.
Toothless: "A person who can't explain orbital motion says "what?"
I thought so."
It's not really cricket to pose a question, allow no opportunity for response and then critique the responder.
How do you conduct a discussion with fools like that ? There are other sites, like Chicago Boyz, where interesting discussions are held. There are even a couple of resident leftists.
Michael K doing his familiar thing of focusing on ideology and balance and a supposed utopia of constructive discourse while doing nothing to promote it himself.
Michael K: BE the solution you propose.
As my brother said when we'd hang out with my nephew: BE the example.
Michael K has an allergy to setting the example that he believes others should follow. Which is just plain weird. How do you successfully call out others as acting in a way that's somehow beneath you when you don't do a thing to exemplify a "better" approach.
Dilemmas, dilemmas. Right-wing land certainly is filled with lots of detached theory and not a whit of people living that reality they seem to tell everyone to be a part of.
It's not really cricket to pose a question, allow no opportunity for response and then critique the responder.
I used to respect Bags. And I'm still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt any day now.
But he kind of gave away the game when pretending away Newton's very well-known First Law as some sort of elusive and unknowable "alternative fact" that had been the lynchpin keeping every other part of his theory of gravitational motion from crashing down until now.
Newton himself knew this very well four centuries ago.
I guess it's never too late to teach a new dog like Bags an old trick. ;-)
Yancey Ward said...
I know a lot of conservatives don't like Silver, but he is a deep thinker- at least deep enough to realize the mistakes he made during this cycle- that ain't nothing.
He didn't make that many mistakes, because of the tactics he uses as a matter of routine. He didn't predict that Trump would win but he didn't predict he wouldn't either, he gave probabilities based on his models that had very large variances and consequently produced many outcomes where Trump did win in repeated trials. His models routinely have more variance than most competing models, this worked well for him this time and is generally the safest strategy. He is a fox who likes to hedge.
He received a lot ofcriticism from the left because of this strategy, unreasonably as things turned out.
So, what he is saying, is that it was the Japanese who influenced our election. Specifically, the JournoLists of the Fourth Estate committed harikari in order to present and defend the special and peculiar interests of the establishment, foreign and domestic. Such a shameful loss of unearned, overstated credibility. RIP JournoLism
@ARM, no one is shouting you down. Laughing at you, yes.
"the entire world sees this embarrassing excuse for an American President making a fool of himself and this country on a daily basis."
This is the kind of brainless stuff that is not worth addressing.
You could actually make an argument about one item but you are not up to it, I fear.
My dinner reservations are calling.
he gave probabilities based on his models that had very large variances and consequently produced many outcomes where Trump did win in repeated trials. His models routinely have more variance than most competing models,
Probabilistic prediction models mean never having to say you're sorry.
rehajm said...
Probabilistic prediction models mean never having to say you're sorry.
Yes, it is a good business model for a prognosticator.
CJ said:
"Modern journalists deserve every bit of criticism they get. I'm sure there're are economic reasons for what they do, but it's just disgusting and they've abused their power for so long that I am rooting for them to fail."
So am I.
It used to be "if it bleeds it leads" in the media. Today hatred sells papers, and web-sites, and cable news. The Trump presidency will allow those in the left-leaning media to fill the so-called "decent" folk with their daily dose of hatred of all things Republican.
It will likely serve the MSM economically to become hate-peddlers, but long term they will all reach a status of the National Enquirer in terms of believability to moderates. At present, I don't believe anything the MSM write about Republicans or conservatives, and don't bother wasting my time with cable news at all. And that's their own fault-- the turning point was their treatment of Mitt Romney; the "dog on the car" and the "giving a woman cancer" stories did it for me.
The hate-mongers--left or right-- may continue to make money, but the so-called "reputable" ones-- like WAPO and NYT-- will continue to lose their ability to influence people, as they did during this last election. I'll settle for that if I have to.
"And there are parts of Twain's " Life on the Mississippi" that still make me roll on the floor laughing."
"Life on the Mississippi" is one of those books I keep in my office. My little library for rainy days and late nights. Its not all silly fun, that one.
Sorry, you can't handle the truth Michael K. Nor would you be able to handle any argument from anyone that doesn't jive with your own narrative, thus making argumentation with you fruitless.
To Unknown:
I'd advise others not to waste their time trying to convince people who are so deeply entrenched in their own worldview. He's a hopeless case, as Hillary said, "irredeemable".
"the so-called "reputable" ones-- like WAPO and NYT-- will continue to lose their ability to influence people"
They seem to see their primary function now as influencing people rather than informing people.
"Sorry, you can't handle the truth Michael K."
There is no truth, only interpretations.
It is how you support your interpretation that matters.
The irony of unknown posting this abject idiocy on this specific thread is awesome. Completely lacking self awareness.
Alexa traffic stats
New York Times -
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/nytimes.com
Washington Post -
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/washingtonpost.com
Does not seem like they have actually gotten more popular.
They have both had episodes of someone up to some monkey business on their traffic, bumping up their ranks, apparently bots from China. That was manufactured traffic. This ended when revealed.
I doubt their subscriptions have actually grown, web or print, if their traffic hasn't.
Ah, Achilles! So how's the Destruction of the Oligarchy going? Has King-Oligarch Slayer Trump made any inroads yet with his billionaire Cabinet? Can't wait to see the oligarchs defeated at last! His TrumpCare is a good start, huh?
The press is in the narrative business, not the truth business.
It's about money. They need money or they're out of business.
The cover story is truth but that's not the business.
"They seem to see their primary function now as influencing people rather than informing people."
Yes; to that end, too many have embraced the concept of "fake but accurate" and threw away all pretense of objectivity. They've replaced facts with opinions. I would rather read uncredentialed bloggers and commenters and evaluate their opinions then be led by the nose by some dishonest hack masquerading as an unbiased reporter of facts.
Gee, if they start thinking like this, the whole global warming thing will collapse.
I always think that there is somebody behind the groupthink who is cynically manipulating the press, but does understand that they are inventing propaganda, but now I am not so sure.
Being tuned in to what they are supposed to say is how they keep their phoney baloney jobs.
Nate was right in 2012. Not so much since. Why is he even worth quoting 5 years later? He's a one trick pony, a one hit wonder. Put a fork in him, he's done.
Hillary eschewed the rich and powerful.
"I used to respect Bags. And I'm still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt any day now.
Be still, my heart!
"But he kind of gave away the game when pretending away Newton's very well-known First Law as some sort of elusive and unknowable "alternative fact" that had been the lynchpin keeping every other part of his theory of gravitational motion from crashing down until now."
Do you really believe that the people here are impressed with you? You sound like me, and I suppose many others in here, WHEN WE WERE 8 YEARS OLD, and suddenly came across the encyclopedia with something the other kids didn't know yet. We are not eight anymore. Most of us anyway.
A lot of groupthink practiced on this site.
And how needy do you have to be to go through the trouble of typing all that junior high school level stuff out, make sure you got it right, and then post it with a big smile, like a kid bringing home a spider to impress his mom, and proudly informing her that it's not an insect, but an arachnid. Good boy! Now go wash your hands for supper. "My mom thinks I'm cool."
"A lot of groupthink practiced on this site."
This anti-Hillary group --I won't say pro-Trump since many (possibly most?) here were not "for" Trump-- was more in touch with the pulse of the nation than the group that was pushing Hillary... for what it's worth.
"(The point he's making is so ridiculously obvious that the length and seriousness of this piece is evidence of the pathetic dilapidation of the press.)"
Yea, but his target market thinks more words equals more wisdom. He could have just said "we bought our own hype" and been done, but nobody pays for that much honesty in such a simple package.
I don't get the hate for Nate Silver. He uses imperfect data (polling) to get a best estimate of odds of an election, and he is honest about the errors inherent in his method. He also gave Trump the greatest chance of victory amongst all the media, roughly at 35% the morning of the election, and quickly showed Trumps odds rising as results came in that evening. That was why there were such sad faces at the Hillary election night celebration well before the final results were in, they knew Nate had Trump winning.
readering: "A lot of groupthink practiced on this site"
But certainly perfected on every leftwing site. But only every single one.
sane_voter: "That was why there were such sad faces at the Hillary election night celebration well before the final results were in, they knew Nate had Trump winning."
Wait, what?
Trump won?
Not possible since Unknown and her pals said Trump had no chance and only a fool would believe Trump that he did.
Since Unknown is absolutely, irrefutably, undeniably a member of the left reality-based community, one dares not accept any reality different than what Unknown describes.
Hence, Trump cannot be President.
I hope President Hillary doesn't pick a Supreme Court nominee that is too liberal.
Hate Loves Abortion
SOunds like he's talking to climate "scientists"
Be still, my heart!
Bullshit. You don't have a heart. This is why you will die alone.
"But he kind of gave away the game when pretending away Newton's very well-known First Law as some sort of elusive and unknowable "alternative fact" that had been the lynchpin keeping every other part of his theory of gravitational motion from crashing down until now."
Do you really believe that the people here are impressed with you? You sound like me, and I suppose many others in here, WHEN WE WERE 8 YEARS OLD, and suddenly came across the encyclopedia with something the other kids didn't know yet. We are not eight anymore. Most of us anyway.
And yet, you didn't know what kept the moon from falling into the earth! Hahahahaha. Loser. Liar. Bullshitter.
Some people can discuss facts and reality and science without needing to feel impressed. The fact that you can't understand that people would discuss things factually without caring who they impress says a lot about just how unimpressive you are.
Now go get to work ruining that perfectly good borrowed liver of yours. You don't want the end to come once you're no longer young enough to think it's cool to die alone.
I prefer history. Journalists herd. Historians wander.
And how needy do you have to be to go through the trouble of typing all that junior high school level stuff out, make sure you got it right, and then post it with a big smile, like a kid bringing home a spider to impress his mom, and proudly informing her that it's not an insect, but an arachnid. Good boy! Now go wash your hands for supper. "My mom thinks I'm cool."
Shorter Bags: "I didn't know what kept the moon from crashing into the earth and I drank too much to remind myself that no one would believe I'm not just typing this to cover my tracks."
Sane voter wrote: I don't get the hate for Nate Silver.
His models successfully predicted the Democrats huge win in 2008 and for that conservatives will never forgive him.
related: The once great “SNL” is now another hopeless house organ for the DNC.
Nor would you be able to handle any argument from anyone that doesn't jive with your own narrative, thus making argumentation with you fruitless.
I'm not interested in discussing any topic with you Inga,. You are a fool and that is all there is to it.
"There Really Was A Liberal Media Bubble/Groupthink produced a failure of the 'wisdom of crowds' and an underestimate of Trump’s chances."
The media doesn't just encompass the NYT and Washington Post. It's an umbrella term that's used to describe everything from muckraking journalists to bloggers. Data driven journalists like Nate don't report the news but try to predict it. If anything, the 2016 election showed that we can't blindly rely on sites like Fivethirtyeight and the Upshot if the underlying poll data is suspect.
The media landscape has changed a lot over the past 10 years and it's no longer profitable for companies to invest money in good old fashioned, unsexy, on-the-ground reporting. It's easier to crowdsource news gathering and have a core group of opinion makers and "influencers" package that news for their partisan readers. We need to go back to the traditional news model highlighted so beautifully in the film "Spotlight". Sites like the Intercept, Pro-Publica, and Center for Public integrity on the left and the Washington Free Beacon on the right still do quality muckraking journalism and they must be supported.
Having 20 independent pieces of evidence that mostly point in the same direction might indeed reflect a powerful consensus, while having 20 like-minded people citing the same warmed-over evidence is much less powerful...
Okay... isn't this something a five year old can grasp? Are we really supposed to believe journalists didn't realize this, or is it more likely they didn't look too closely into the stories they wanted to believe?
The spam filter here has been doing a very poor job of blocking spam. Re the above two posts. Also appearing on other comment threads.
The AP, Reuters, and the NY Times & WaPo drive almost all political reporting in the US. Their preferred narratives even appear on the local news. Local newspapers and television news look to the AP, Reuters, the NY Times and WaPo when they decide what to report and how to report it.
AP, Reuters, the NY Times and WaPo have no desire to change that dynamic.
I don't know, the spam may be giving Titus creative ideas.
He may be inspired to run off to Makassar.
Thats a bit off beat sort of vacation spot. Gets only a small fraction of the business Bali does.
(The point he's making is so ridiculously obvious that the length and seriousness of this piece is evidence of the pathetic dilapidation of the press.)
@Althouse, I've been thinking about what you wrote here for much of the evening, and I think the problem is that the bubble is so pervasive for the entire life of the individuals caught up in it, that there's no notion that there even could be thinking people living outside it. Lets time travel back fifty years to when Walter Cronkite was labeled the "most trusted man in America" with the Huntley-Brinkley Report competing against him. Chet Huntley and Walter Cronkite had been war correspondents during World War II, and David Brinkley had been a soldier. Over at ABC Harry Reasoner and Frank Reynolds had fought in World War II and Howard K. Smith had been a war correspondent (expelled from Germany in 1941, he left the day before Pearl Harbor). My point is that the war forced these people to meet with people from all walks of life -- not just the people educated in elite colleges but also the high school educated steel worker drafted into the infantry and the not even high school educated farmer who joined the Marines. I think it helped them understand that there is a world outside of Washington, New York, LA, and San Francisco, and their reporting was better for it.
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Bob Loblaw wrote:
"Are we really supposed to believe journalists didn't realize this, or is it more likely they didn't look too closely into the stories they wanted to believe?"
I believe they don't understand this. The quality of the intellect of these people is no better than the trolls you see on this site. Deep thinkers are sadly rare, and it takes a deep thinker to understand the difference between an array of provable facts and an array of people believing in a particular idea. I have seen this in areas outside of political reporting, so it doesn't really surprise me to find if prevalent in news reporting, and it happens on both sides unfortunately. It is just more noticeable on Left in news reporting because it really is almost all left-leaning in the big league parts of it. And it only gets worse as time goes by because we no longer teach young people how to think, only how to believe.
An orbit is the balance between the inertia of maintaining its motion with the gravity pulling it back inward into an ellipse.
Yet, according to the modern “law of gravity” — Einstein's general theory of relativity, a.k.a. geometrodynamics — there is no “force” of gravity at all; and the moon is merely traveling along that so-called “geodesic” (Newtonian “straight line”) that bodies always move along when acted upon by NO force.
As a geometrodynamicist might explain it: in the particular case of earth + moon, spacetime (3-dimensional space + time) is itself warped in a 5th-dimensional kind of way, which causes the moon's (otherwise Newtonian) motion to appear to our eyes (fed by photons shooting between us at the speed of light) to curve into the form of an ellipse. That's because curved spacetime affects speedy things like photons differently than it does objects tooling along at the slow velocity of the moon.
This whole gravity kerfuffle regarding bagoh20 was manufactured by Commander Coded-Out.
drago nailed it: It's not really cricket to pose a question, allow no opportunity for response and then critique the responder.
AprilApple said...related: The once great “SNL” is now another hopeless house organ for the DNC.
Here's hoping that Lorne Michaels finally has his "have you no decency" moment.
Major schadenboners all around.
Blogger The Toothless Revolutionary said...
"Stuff"
You are not arguing in good faith tonight. You weren't last night either.
If you read your own posts you will realize you are arguing with yourself about how dumb everyone else is and you never honestly engaged a single point. You can do better.
Unknown though is just really dumb. Sorry not a single post of yours was anything other than dumb projection from a fractured paradigm that can't adjust to a trump victory.
traditionalguy said...
By the way, Mark Twain was a very funny writer. Hal Holbrook did a one man stage act of Twain's humor that lasted two hours.
The most entertaining show I've ever seen. Holbrook was superb.
Mark Twain was a very funny writer. And for someone who grew up in small-town Missouri in the 1840's, remarkably un-racist. His books would be required reading for that reason alone, if the people who determine book lists weren't so blinded by their ignorance.
Sounds like there are is another fact, not an "alternative" one.
Once again, it is impossible to overstate Toothless's ignorance, obtuseness and arrogance in this thread.
Bullshit. You don't have a heart. This is why you will die alone.
Ever notice that almost every commenter spends most of the day away from this blog comment section to be with friends and loved ones? Everyone except Toothless, that is. But why would anyone want to spend time with a person who interacts with other people like that. Toothless. Ritmo. Don't project your own personality disorder onto normal, well-adjusted people, mmmkay. You aren't smarter than them.
But they just don't understand how this can be.
Nobody they know voted for Trump.
Channeling Nate Silver, I profer a prediction: More of the same.
The main problem is capital-J Journalism has become a bug in an Edgar suit.
There were folks who predicted a Trump win, myself included, they are:Helmut Norpoth, Allen J. Lichtman,Jacob Montgomery of Vox, Florian Hollenbach, Allan Abramowitz, Roy C. Fair, Arie Kapteyn, and of course Michael Moore. Granted many of these folks are professors and intellectuals therefore discounted by most Americans, but there were even some public polls that got it right such as Arizona, Virginia, So there were many independent pieces of evidence, just not from the usual sources-- lesson to be learned read widely and visit folks out side the circle of your friends.
Funny how many of Unknown's list of Trump's failures can be also attributed to Obama, who we all know was a staggeringly effective president.
TrumpCare: Fail (See Obamacare)
Getting along with foreign leaders: Fail (See Netanyahu)
Building the wall: Fail (See closing Gitmo)
Getting along with other branches of government: Fail (See Obama's non-stop dissing of law enforcement)
Telling the truth: Fail ("If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance")
Acting respectful to previous (or subsequent) presidents: Fail (See Obama's actions to sabotage the Trump transition)
And we can go on and on with those failures that are unique to Obama (See weaponizing the IRS, sending $1.4 billion in small bills to a terrorist state, and so on.
Silver dances around... as he makes the same excuses for the same hacks.
The media is an arm to the democrat party. They are hacks.
Lets time travel back fifty years to when Walter Cronkite was labeled the "most trusted man in America" with the Huntley-Brinkley Report competing against him. Chet Huntley and Walter Cronkite had been war correspondents during World War II, and David Brinkley had been a soldier. Over at ABC Harry Reasoner and Frank Reynolds had fought in World War II and Howard K. Smith had been a war correspondent (expelled from Germany in 1941, he left the day before Pearl Harbor). My point is that the war forced these people to meet with people from all walks of life -- not just the people educated in elite colleges but also the high school educated steel worker drafted into the infantry and the not even high school educated farmer who joined the Marines
I think this is significant but Brinkley was always sophisticated about the human ego and the behavior of elites and would-be elites.
I have his book, Washington Goes to War, which described the behavior of people who saw the war as an opportunity, not a cause or patriotism. It's excellent.
The ABC program, "This Week" was the best of the talk shows until he died. Now, it is useless.
You are not arguing in good faith tonight. You weren't last night either.
People who insult me I see no reason to be civil to.
If you read your own posts you will realize you are arguing with yourself about how dumb everyone else is and you never honestly engaged a single point. You can do better.
Methinks you elevate the concept of an "argument" above what could just be called a simple row. Do people in 2017 really need to "argue" about how the moon is kept from crashing into the earth? (Well, apparently a certain CEO does). My point is that the need to apply the label "alternative" to everything, including empiric facts and reality, betrays a whole lot of wishful thinking. (And I'm being charitable with that description. The better description is really "mass delusion." Or proud ignorance). I don't care about how I "come across". Not to a childish bootlicker and violent immigrant defender, not to a narcissistic manufacturing executive who failed physics, and not to a hanger-on like Jason. These are not honest or honorable people. You OTOH have some decency and honesty to you, so I'll listen to a personal appeal from you to me or about me or about something else in general. But that's because you are not a liar. They are. They don't have anything worthwhile to contribute to people who come here for something other than social approval, pseudonymously... ON-LINE! Lol!
If the others care more about appearances or how people come across or who looks smart or dumb, let them. People should care less about "self-awareness" and more about being aware of the world around them generally. If they don't, then there aren't any arguments to be had in the first place. Arguments are necessarily impersonal.
"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are."
Nicolo Machiavelli (1469 - 1527)
Let them be. After all, he was the expert on the amorality of manipulating people.
I have no interest in or talent for herding self-absorbed sheep.
This whole gravity kerfuffle regarding bagoh20 was manufactured by Commander Coded-Out.
drago nailed it: It's not really cricket to pose a question, allow no opportunity for response and then critique the responder.
If he had known the answer, he wouldn't have presented it as if it were some some sort of elusive, world-changing, mind-blowing reality that science is too "self-absorbed" or "self-unaware," or prone to "journalistic" groupthink to currently figure out, you autistic defender of violent commenters. As I said to the drunk manufacturing exec, Newton had had it figured out in the 17th century, along with everything else he put together to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies.
His response afterward was further evidence that he didn't know the answer, as he obsessively doubled-down on a rant trying to call me a mean grade-schooler, and filled it with all sorts of other invective. If he'd actually known the answer beforehand he would have probably, at least casually, thrown that in there too. But no, his pride was hurt, you see.
Obvious. Agreed. Forrest for the trees.
Not content that classical liberals who wish for greater autonomy and freedom are called racist, misogynist and so forth (by Leftist Collectivists - responsible for untold mass deaths this last century) Leftist Collectivists must now call us murderers because we believe a government takeover of the medical insurance market will yield suboptimal results.
The Othering continues apace. I wish they had the courage of their convictions and got to the revolutionary phase more quickly. If we are murderers because of policy preferences surely it is self defense to attempt to kill us all. It would be more honest too, even if honesty is not highly valued by Leftist Collectivists.
The poker can always be poked, TTR. Nothing in the Newtonian or Einsteinian frame of reference says that the smaller mass is pulled to the greater mass; each is pulled towards the other. So nyahh nyahhh? Not really.
All masses are pulled towards one another in what is really a very difficult problem to solve so generally we stick to two-body problems (three-Bs e.g. a Trojan, a Lagrangian point, HAVE a solution, but more or less empirical) so we don't get embarrassed by our inadequacies.
It's not alternative facts inasmuch as American gravity attracts objects, Russian gravity repels objects, Chinese gravity applies a normal force. It's that insufficient data degrades or nullifies solutions, and F=ma isn't all there is to it (e.g., you forgot friction).
Likewise, IRL (not that physics is non IRL), communism or other statisms might pan out, if men were angels, both wise and good; but a solution ignoring that men are not angels is not a valid solution.
Trump may appear a buffoon, but this may be simultaneously true, while also it may be true that his buffa tactics are effective and possibly essential. I think you and I agree that no other Republican would have beat HRC.
I think it's a danger and a mistake to run roughshod over (or even worse, to junk) the post-WWII global order for drama king's obsessions with "looking better than" the Chinese, the Russians, and playing down to their level and their game, BL.
Sure, I may be wrong.
The problem is, it's Trump's ego being drawn into an international food-fight at President Bannon's egging on. Trump doesn't read books or articulate foreign policy doctrines, let's be honest. But Bannon does and if people want an understanding of where this is going, they'd best review his own reading list. And let's be honest, that list is not all that pretty, and it's not all that attuned to global realities discovered after 1930s fascists came to develop their own worldviews.
Beating HRC was a silver lining in itself. I'll not pretend that her course (or that of the party she owned generally) was sustainable. Or that of the duopoly itself.
But that doesn't mean that Trump's bull in a china shop routine - with Bannon there throwing plates for him to catch - is without problems. It's starting to appear that these self-inflicted problems might be of a whole higher order of magnitude altogether.
Basically my take is that the working class in this country need their piece, and then the problems with our role in the world will work themselves out. We can block out immigrants, let them in, whatever. I'm not hugely concerned.
But we don't need to pretend that we're just another country Europe. We don't have their historical baggage and we've got homegrown shooters who pose a much greater statistical threat than any Muslim fanatics we happen to have let in or who are brewing and stewing here. The Muslim ban is a feel-good thing for nationalists, basically, IMO.
I thought I'd included this one but apparently forgot.
The Russians have a saying: It is not the right time, while engaged in a fight, to part one's hair.
Beware Trump's need to focus on appearances. Especially his own, and by extension that of his country.
I'm not saying Muslim terrorism isn't a problem, either.
I'm just saying that the last eight years seem to have not been so bad comparatively speaking when it comes to that, and I'm sure our internal counter-terrorism measures were active all this time. So they seem to be successful.
The ban was just a big "Mission Accomplished" sign, redux. It was for purposes of propaganda. I don't need the U.S. to become the next Mecca, or even the next Brussels. But was that really starting to happen before? Is our greatest stream of Muslim immigration really coming from those 7 countries (now six, after rethinking the diplomatic shitstorm of also excluding Iraqi nationals (AND veterans) who've helped us out)? We probably get more Muslim immigrants from Pakistan.
As for counter-terrorism, Trump is taking special pride in purging the civil service, not letting his nominees name their own staff and do their own hires, and letting large sections go unfilled. Does anyone believe effective counter-terrorism will be maintained with this many positions going unfilled? With these many civil servants being targeted as enemies?
Basically my take is that the working class in this country need their piece, and then the problems with our role in the world will work themselves out. We can block out immigrants, let them in, whatever. I'm not hugely concerned.
I was listening to the radio late at night and it was a couple of WSJ journalists talking about how good the news was this month on the economy. Then the discussion turned to "inflation" and whether or not the Fed was too late in keeping the economy from "overheating."
It became clear that "inflation" was code for higher wages. It was a bit of an epiphany. The democrats, republicans, banks, globalists, and the fed have always been in it for the oligarchs. I just never thought about the fed and media team that way.
Obama's policies: Obamacare, open borders, stifling regulation particularly on energy- all predictably caused stagnating wages. Trump has already started wages for Americans to go up and the usual suspects are bleating about "inflation."
But we don't need to pretend that we're just another country Europe. We don't have their historical baggage and we've got homegrown shooters who pose a much greater statistical threat than any Muslim fanatics we happen to have let in or who are brewing and stewing here. The Muslim ban is a feel-good thing for nationalists, basically, IMO.
Those Muslims came here a generation ago. There is no reason to create more problems for ourselves in 20 years like we did 20 years ago. We have no need in this country for people who believe in sharia law. Zero. Maybe if they reform and drop the medieval barbarism they can come in again.
God, a Ritmo thread.
Pardon me. The water is boiling, or something.
How does any woman put up with your melodrama, K?
Do you need a manservant to follow you 24/7 ready with the smelling salts for when you inevitably faint?
Eve Ensler should change her show to allow for Michael K. Call it The Mangina Monologues.
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