From "The Worst Predictions of 2020/This year was impossible to predict. But that doesn’t mean people didn’t try" (Politico). Lots more predictions at the link. Unfortunately, they're all about either coronavirus or the elections.
December 29, 2020
"One of the more unexpected character arcs of the Trump era is the emergence of 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams as a pro-Trump political commentator."
"Adams, a 'trained hypnotist' with a self-proclaimed expertise in the rhetorical dark arts, has made any number of dazzlingly confident predictions over the last four years. But few are quite as grim as his March 12 tweet predicting that before November 3, Sanders, Biden and Trump would all contract Covid-19 — and one of them would die from it.
It’s December, the election is over, and all three men are still alive. Though Trump did contract coronavirus before Election Day, after a hospitalization and VIP treatment, he quickly recovered."
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One evergreen, never-fail prediction: "liberals" (i.e, "tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping government humpers and State fellators") will continue to advocate stupid stuff.
In this Era of Psephologic Improbability, the Politico asshats want to pick on Scott Adams? Every single poll about election 2020 was way off, other than supposedly unreliable partisan outfits like Trafalgar that actually came pretty close. Every single election predictor, from primary voting trends to bellwether counties to bellweather/swing states, everything we've relied upon to predict and then make sense of elections, is trashed. But Scott Adams said something silly, and that's a big fucking deal.
They haven't got the stones to read the pebbles at Politico.
Adams is interesting because he says things, or used to, that I hadn’t thought of. He's a good hypothesis generator. I often feel he must be punking me though. Interesting tweets but I almost never watch him though.
Biden led polls steadily since WH covid pressers.
I try my best to avoid the temptation of making predictions. I don't have a great track record of them being correct, and usually the ones that I do get right are the ones that I wish I was wrong on anyway.
That said, this year I did have one correct prediction (that I never voiced here) that turned out to be right: back in March I predicted that we'd have a vaccine by Christmas.
Don’t you worry about Scott Adams predictions being wrong: he will twist them into being right and YOU WILL BELIEVE IT. (You are feeling very sleepy .....)
One thing that has become clear to me this year is how much the media hates "the deplorables", who to them is anyone who supports Trump. It's very sad, and it actually triggers depression in me. I wouldn't be surprised if this hatred triggered anger in others.
The media's entire business model now involves feeding the narcissism of liberals by making them feel that they're better than those icky deplorables. It's really an evil business now.
As usual Scott is over the target and the fake news scandal creators are firing all they have at him. Scott is actually a liberal, but he sticks to the truth. So he is their worst enemy.
I wouldn't be surprised if this hatred triggered anger in others.
We will not be in a hurry to forgive those who trespass against us.
Notice Politico didn't include a prediction that Biden would win by means of fraud.
Something about all the elections and coronavirus news has made me stop listening to Scott Adams. There's a way that the news has been annoying me for the last few months that is made worse by the way he talks about it.
You may have noticed that I can barely stand to blog about Trump since the election, and as for coronavirus, I just want to say hooray for the virus and let's hang on as we wait our turn for the shot. What's all the other jibber jabber about?! Blecch.
I mean hooray for the vaccine!!!
Blogger readering said...
Biden led polls steadily since WH covid pressers.
Hilarious that the left thinks polls mean something when the Media is all in for their side.
Polls did not elect Biden. Vote fraud did.
I mean hooray for the vaccine!!!
I think the main effect of the vaccines will be to reduce mortality by protecting old people. Virus infections are following the seasonal curve and appear to have peaked in the first two weeks of December and are headed down. Even without the vaccines I expect infections would peter out around March.
I don't blame Ann for avoiding the post election. Getting into the weeds when all the Media is against it and threatening anyone who tries to find out what happened. Maybe we will know what happened some day but I would not bet on it.
Adams has takes that are just far enough off of the normal that show he has a different way of looking at things.
If one gets into the prediction game and wants to stand out, one must go for the risky pick now and again.
He's rich, seemingly very happy, and married to a 32-year-old model...so good for him.
Even without the vaccines I expect infections would peter out around March.
And it is nice how WuFlu cancelled flu season. ;)
Althouse, I have mostly stopped listening to Adams as well, but I did listen to his Christmas Eve episode, and the last half of it was outstanding. He had a very optimistic and heart-warming Christmas message about our changing world that actually brought me to tears. I highly recommend the last half of that episode.
Adams was not the only person taken in by the Covid hoax. Not by a LONG shot.
Somewhat surprisingly, the very best information we have on the Covid is still, after all these months, the experience of the passengers on the Diamond Princess. That is because an isolated population was exposed to Covid and observed for a period of weeks. In every other situation, there is no way of knowing who has been exposed.
It killed seven out of about three thousand, in an unusually vulnerable population. BFD.
Scott Adams has an interesting way of interpreting events that I found refreshing, and I really credit him for getting me to think about certain issues in new ways. But I can honestly say that I haven't paid a ton of attention to him for a couple years now. I have nothing against him, in fact I really like him, but for whatever reason I haven't felt the need to check in on him and see what he things of things. I can't say if my disintrest was because he became too predictable in his analysis or if I just cooled on his style. But there it is.
Scott Adams' success as a political commentator may be inexorably linked to Trump, I don't know. I'm a little curious to see how he'll do in the post-Trump era. Can he bring some new and interesting?
"I wouldn't be surprised if this hatred triggered anger in others."
Here's a funny joke I heard;
Q - "How do you stop Liberals from stealing national elections?"
A - "Line them up against a wall and shoot them through their fucking skulls, one by one. Then shoot the ones that tried to get away."
I don't make any point to listen to Scott Adams. He's interesting once in a while - when someone points it out. I'll admit to finding him likable.
I'm not anti- Scott Adams. Still, he's just another on-line dude, with a following, who is full of himself.
The vaccine was evil and wrong... not to be trusted.
Until Biden.
The nice old democrat - who we all like and we all ignore his family grifting.
ahhhh.
In March we had a lot less information about the virus. From what we knew (or thought we knew), that was a reasonable prediction.
Yes, Trump deserves giant credit and the gratitude of the Nation for pushing the vaccines through in record time. But he will get little praise.
Last spring, Adams went on for days saying that he believed only Asians could contract the virus.
Yesterday, he said when he first heard the news of the Christmas bombing in Nashville, he immediately thought the bomber was a white, 63 year old, IT expert. He kept going on about how obvious that was.
Chi Com virus is not a hoax.
It's real. The timing and the origin of the virus are happy coincidences that benefit vote fraud and the Democrat party. Jane Fonda knows.
I mean hooray for the vaccine!!!
I’m sure you meant what you typed the first time.
Yes, let's talk about wrong predictions and the real consequences to the American people.
The Global Warming crowd has been WRONG for 30 years, but they have gotten through Congress horribly expensive investment tax credits for wind, solar and EV's. We are paying for it.
In the bill that Trump just signed, the investment tax credit for wind energy was extended. But for the federal tax code there would be no wind, solar or Tesla.
It is all a giant scam. American taxpayer's paid $1b to Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Energy to build windmills all over Iowa. Warren said they never would have done it but for the federal tax credits.
So, when do we get that Page One story in the NYT and WaPo about how the CAGW crowd was totally wrong about 2020?
I'm a little curious to see how he'll do in the post-Trump era.
@Nonapod, you think there’s going to be such a think?
I follow Adams daily -- through his comic strip.
I would follow his commentary if it were written. The video format drives me crazy. Too long. To inflexible. Same thing for many youtube commenters I might otherwise like. Give me text.
And it is nice how WuFlu cancelled flu season. ;)
Yeah. What's up with that? Flu fatalities aren't based on tests and only estimated 1-2 years later. Makes me wonder if the estimates aren't just a big bag of leftovers.
The Chi-Com democrat party alliance destroys and crushes... the little guy.
not to worry - the bureaucratic over-lords are still hard at work.
I'm texty, so Adams's viral bloviations aren't of much interest. I almost never followed the Prof into her discussions with other pundits (what are those duets called?), and only listened to a few podcast moments.
Professor Martin van Creveld's is the only other blog I check with any regularity, and if he started doing a lot of video and audio I'd drop it. Strategy Page is worth the occasional look.
Narr
I visit Insty once or twice a week, but don't stay long.
Is Adams really pro-Trump or ,like me, just anti anti-Trump?
"I would follow his commentary if it were written. The video format drives me crazy. Too long. To inflexible. Same thing for many youtube commenters I might otherwise like. Give me text."
+1 for text. This thing where websites superimpose video over text I'm trying to read drives me crazy. What's up with that?
I listen to Adam's podcasts semi-regularly. The trick, that Adam's himself suggested in the very first of his podcasts I listened to, is to play him at 1.5x speed.
Martin van Creveld and Edward Luttwak are actually the same person.
Prove me wrong.
I also do not understand how anyone can sit through video or audio blogs. Same with youtube instructional videos. Give me text and illustrations any day!
Two million dead
Several years for the vaccine
Two weeks lockdown to stop the spread
Whatever the latest is on how many years till the earth is doomed from warming
Adams also predicted that, with no safeguards in place to prevent the Democrats from doing it, and significant benefit from doing so, 100% guarantee that they would cheat on this election would occur.
Two million dead
Several years for the vaccine
Two weeks lockdown to stop the spread
Whatever the latest is on how many years till the earth is doomed from warming
Imagine if there were actual consequences for making wrong predictions? Like, for each prediction declared publicly that doesn't come true the predicter loses a finger. Heck, I just settle for people not paying attention at all to anything that comes out of the failed predicters mouth. Yet Paul Krugmen is still gainfully employed.
I listen to Adams as 2x speed and will skip through stuff when he get off on one of his pet peeves. Haven't listened much lately, he was going all Covid. His Bill Nye impression when demonstrating why he thought masks worked was... well, never mind. I'll see how he does with Biden.
I listen to Scott Adams daily and read Althouse daily. For the same reason.
Quick minds. Unique perceptions. News and culture analysis. On the last one Althouse and Adams are different. You know they would sit next to each other in homeroom. Would they be cruelly neutral to each other?
They are both filters in a complex information world. I'm not yet persuaded that persuasion is a fundamental human skill above all others. An important one. Adams did say well before the election that the tech giants would determine who the winner was.
Roughcoat, I never thought of that!
But seriously, now that you mention it, it seems Luttwak is a Twitterer, while van Creveld is just a hashtag for other Twitterers.
Either way, I'll start following Luttwak more. I had not thought of him much recently.
Narr
Good call
I listen to Scott Adams at 1.75 x normal speed. Much better.
I didn't see the prediction that it was impossible to come up with a corona virus vaccine by the end of the year anywhere in there. They must have missed it their rush to find pro-Trump predictions that didn't come true.
One problem with stuff like this is that what happened can be as questionable as the predictions. Are all those deaths really from coronavirus? Did South Carolina really give Biden the nomination or was it a result of everyone else quitting? Did Trump really lose the electoral college?
Another problem is that most predictions are just throwaways. Fifty people make pronouncements about an event and one of them is bound to be wrong. So what? Happens to all of us.
I watch and listen to most things on a higher speed whenever it's available. On Netflix you can watch stuff at 1.5 speed, but with Youtube you can watch stuff at 2X.
In the year 2055, Creighton will win the Division I Men's basketball tournament.
In the year 2055, the Earth will be burning up due to global warming. No water. Famine.
Check back with me then to see if I'm right.
I predicted the mail-in ballot changes due to panic over the Wuhan Flu would lead to election chaos. How'd I do on that prediction?
"Chi Com virus is not a hoax."
Depends what you mean. Flu isn't a hoax, either. Comes every year. People die. So what?
Fundamental Law of Problems;
When there is no solution, there is no problem.
We're all gonna die. Could be tomorrow, could be later, but every single one of us, including you, is gonna die.
Is that a problem?
Did Adams hypnotize that young lady he married this summer?
I’m going to be a contrarian and forgo the China virus shot.. y’all hurry up and get protected so I don’t have to worry about you.
Bidens prediction of 250,000 Deaths for December was wrong by more that a factor of 4. That would be the crack team of experts that gave Biden that number. Unless they are knowingly lying, like Fauci does. Tell me again why experts are expert.
Haven't checked in an a while - busy with holiday. Interesting to read Ann's comments regarding not wanting to watch Scott Adams or deal with Trump blogging. Immediately my thought was that she wants "boring" and can't/won't deal with the issue of actual obvious voter fraud that is being actively suppressed by all the big players. The opposite of boring is interesting times - and that's where we are. People want to pretend things will go back to normal - but there are those whose eyes have been opened wide by this situation who can't go back to normal - can't watch people cancelled, fraud ignored, mentally failing person installed in our highest office without realizing that there has to be active pretending in order to think the status quo will remain. Having to deal with that makes one uncomfortable I think. I know I can barely read/watch anything because I, also, don't want to have to change my "comfortable life" to stand up to what amounts to a coup of our government. Not sure what happens next...
Is that a problem?
Well, yes :) Although there are circumstances when it might be the best choice.
Let's see.
I made predictions and haven't erased them.
And my predictions have proven a whole helluva lot better than most.
Lockdowns make people suffer needlessly.
Masks are ineffective on a virus and cause other problems (google Mask Mouth, aka yeast infections around the mouth).
The Left pushed Winnie Xi Flu as a means to power.
Ruining a country economically is bad policy.
The Third World will suffer because of The Deep State's perfidy.
Oh, and several commenters here were consistently wrong and pretend otherwise.
Neat-o!
I also don't see Dr. Fauci's statement that "There's no reason to be walking around with a mask."
Granted, that wasn't a prediction and Fauci's view changed as circumstances changed, but other "predictions" were also subject to changing circumstances.
We need to set Fauci's misjudgment of how serious the virus was (if indeed it was a misjudgment) alongside the assessments of various politicians that the outbreak wasn't that serious to show that "Science" wasn't always right either.
daskol said...
In this Era of Psephologic Improbability, the Politico asshats want to pick on Scott Adams? Every single poll about election 2020 was way off, other than supposedly unreliable partisan outfits like Trafalgar that actually came pretty close.
So I follow the convention of italicizing quoted comments instead of using quotation marks; to me, it makes these comments pages read better. But in this case, I also want to bold the quoted comment, for emphasis. Emphasis, that is, on the plainly monstrous wrongness of what was written.
Trafalgar, it is now pretty well known, specializes in over-evaluating Trump (and Republican) support by about 4 to 7 percentage points. All over. In race after race, state after state.
Trafalgar was so bad and so wrong in 2020 that it now barely survives as a usable poll on Nate Silver's website. Trafalgar predicted a comfortable Trump win; they were wrong. Trafalgar predicted Trump winning Georgia by more than 4 points. Wrong. Trafalgar predicted Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada going to Trump. Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong. And with lots of Robert Cahaly's fall '20 attention devoted to Pennsylvania, he got that one wrong as well.
Cahaly got many of his state polls wrong, by larger margins than other polls infamously overestimated a Biden winning margin. He had a really shitty 2020 election, prediction-wise.
Don't believe me? Of course not; most of you just want any excuse to take a shot at me. So check out Trafalgar's performance for yourselves, here:
https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/
True story: The ancient Chinese saying, "May you live in interesting times" was not an ancient Chinese saying. It was, rather, the invention of the great Ernest Bramah (1868-1942), author of his wonderful (and charming, and delightful, and funny) Kai Lung series of novels. Kai Lung, a wandering story teller in an enchantingly idealized version of dynastic China (possibly during the Ming era), frequently uttered this expression to those whom he encountered during his never-ending journey through the Middle Kingdom.
That is a pretty dumb prediction to focus on. How about Scott Adam's slaughter-meter, where he predicted that Trump was 100% certain to win - over and over?
'Course, he became well-known because he predicted that same thing in 2016. And obviously - obvious to anyone who thinks - no one can really know ahead of time who will win a presidential election that will be decided by a few percentage points either way. No one can tell 54% of the vote from 46% of the vote.
one is south africa, one is israeli, the latter focuses more on economics,
Jupiter:
I tried to post your joke on Facebook but I used symbols for "fucking." It was not allowed as it violated FB's community standards.
Fuck Facebook.
Roughcoat - didn't know that! Thanks :) now want to check out Kai Lung
The pandemic is over, at least in WI. Just have to wait until the bureaucrats in white coats decide to get over their bias confirmation and finally admit they are no longer necessary.
https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/county.htm#number
"What's all the other jibber jabber about?! Blecch."
It's ICKY!
Adams' path is that of mostly outcome based moral relativism in hopes of avoiding conflict at almost any cost.
Things like Sure..there was massive election fraud. But it's best for SCOTUS to protect us from upheaval of addressing that. And..of course there were ballots under the table. That's where ballots go.
lb:
You're quite welcome. Always delighted to introduce people to the redoubtable Kai Lung.
There's good write-up on Kai Lung on the Wikipedia entry for Ernest Bramah. Includes samples of Bramah's style in the Kai Lung novels. Think of the way Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan spoke in the Charlie Chan movies of yesteryear: except that Bramah's rendering of "Manderin English" is vastly wittier, more amusing, subtle, and engaging.
My favorite in the series is "Kai Lung Unfolds His Mat," but they're all excellent, all of a piece.
The Kai Lung novels are unique. Sui generis, and we won't see their like again. You're in for a treat, I think.
Ann Alhouse said... I mean hooray for the vaccine!!!
With an impending biden-HARRIS administration soon to begin flailing and failing, you had it right the first time.
(Yawn) a new year, time for new predictions.
Yet, who ever goes back to the prior new year to evaluate the predictions made then? No one.
Which is why such predictions remain forever worthless: there's no corrective feedback, no reward/punishment for getting it right/wrong, just always more vapid, yet superficially entertaining, speculations tossed out for whatever acclaim they may earn.
In the present, of course. For once they're made, no one will ever visit these again.
"Vote fraud did."
"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy"
Months ago Adams predicted we would have two presidents. BINGO!
Whoops. Will Scotty revise? Swallowed it like a pelican:
Scott Adams
@ScottAdamsSays
·
10h
Ouch
Quote Tweet
L Karelli (VOTE WARNOCK & OSSOFF)
@lkarelli
· 20h
Replying to @MZanona
Luke Letlow was not wearing a mask at his runoff victory party Dec 5. He said we need to open the economy & live with COVID. Now he died with COVID & will never be sworn in. His beautiful wife, 3-year old son & 9-mo old daughter will take cold comfort in the stock market
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