I don't think they are downvoting as a disagreement in this case. The answer seems self serving and less about fostering discussion about the information presented so much as self-aggrandizing.
It read, to me, like "I don't see why medieval monks cared about death since I don't." Then there was the dollop of "I am atheist/agnostic," which again didn't seem to be usefully on topic.
That isn't to say you shouldn't discuss these things, it is an interesting conversation to have... But look at where this comment was placed; on a summary of the article.
The whole thing just felt like something that deserved a place on Reddit's "IamVerySmart" subreddit rather than on Hackernews.
That idea is not new, either -- we just have a collective propensity to forget hard lessons.
>Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. -Mark Twain
The strange irony is that you no longer have to travel very far to meet a broad range of people, but still so many avoid leaving their gated communities.
The Roman Empire was fantastically multicultural at its high points and its low. The United States has never been homogeneous, no matter where in its history you find yourself -- the low or the high points.
In fact, I (and many others) would argue that a lot of the meteoric rise of the United States occurred on the backs of labor that did not match the current ideals of those far enough right to want a homogeneous United States -- whether it was black slavery, cheap Chinese labor, late 19th century immigration towards the American Dream...
There is more to the equation than homogeneity is what I am saying here.
> The ageing mill towns of East Lancashire, UK, still enjoyed a culture of trust and respect for your neighbours such that you could leave your front door open without fear of theft.
That is a strange line to include there, as I am not sure how people staying inside and having very little social life would erode public trust in the idea that your house won't be robbed while you're away. There are hundreds of factors that play into the changing landscape of trust, but I know my small town parents still have no real concern leaving the door unlocked in their small town of ~1000 or so people.
Personally, I'd say the trust issue has to do with the fact that the world population has almost perfectly doubled since 1969, and humanity's short history has not prepared us for the population explosion that has occurred over the last 150 years. We live closer together than ever before -- but cities have never really been safe, and serial killing predates electricity (oddly) without even getting near to modern technology or us collectively being "blinded by everything shiny".
The issue with our population now is that our cities are larger, there are fewer small towns and rural areas, hence the erosion of trust.
I think Dunbar's Number (colloquially the Monkeysphere) kind of covers why we aren't handling the explosion of social circles well. But that can't be blamed completely on technology.
I almost didn't want to type this, because not really sure if trolling or if typing this out doesn't count as pointing out the obvious -- but the implication is that Shen is a victim of the Chinese regime.
> It is a risk that ruling by executive decree entails.
The problem is the gross disconnect between Local, State, and Federal interests. Polls have support for the Paris agreement well into the majority, beyond the margin for error; were it to head to something like a referendum, the US would have signed onto the Paris agreement.
And even that being the case, President Obama was well aware of the fact that it never would have been ratified by the Senate.
The international credibility problem also reaches critical levels when you consider that the United States has 4 year terms but signs onto 20 year agreements, when the political sphere is so radically split. Every four years, the International community is forced to hold its breath as one of the top world superpowers seemingly flips a coin as to whether or not it will uphold its bargains. It is worth noting that this wasn't always the case; it was standing tradition that you followed through on a previous administration's agreements, simply to maintain credibility.
Whether it is a function of Trump himself, his die-hard base, or a large group of confluent factors (my vote is for this one), this tradition of maintaining credibility despite political cost holds very little water with the current administration. Worse, this is exactly what his base seems to want and clamor for. They are painting a political climate where the country takes a 180 degree turn (rather than, say, a 120 degree curve) every 4 to 8 years.
How long can a country in a global economy at the scale of the United States maintain that strain without snapping? It'll be interesting to watch, if nothing else.
> If the US was able to survive the loss of the Vietnam war and the Bay of Pigs where many people who bet their lives on the US died after being abandoned by them, the US will survive this as well and American credibility will be just fine in the long term.
That isn't a hypothesis you want to stress-test, though. "My reputation survived the last great gaffe, therefore it will survive the next one" is a very poor long term gamble.
> When did American exceptionalism turn into "It's too hard so I'm going to do nothing"?
That's been a painfully common refrain in the current generation of political discourse (though the generational line is difficult to pinpoint; there seem to be as many young people talking about it as 60 year old lifetime senators).
Climate change? Hard to deal with, we should do nothing.
Gun control? They will take all our guns, or take none, and the second amendment said I could have guns. There is no middle ground.
But the root cause is polarization; rather than middle grounds, shades of gray, or compromises, everything in the current political climate seems to boil down to black or white, right or wrong, with no space between.
The early predictions were based on the early polls, and the later predictions were based on data after election results started to come in. A lot of the States that ended up swinging were on the eastern half, so the rapidly changing outlook makes sense if you look at the bigger picture (rather than just the number at the end).
That being said, predicting the outcome of an election with some 250 million potential voters based on a few hundred thousand polled individuals is a tricky game to play.
> The explanation is that the polling data was simply made up.
You don't feel like you are oversimplifying a bit, and applying your own bias? Any pollster knows (and I realize you may ignore this point due to that opening bit) that there are margins for error as long as your sample size is any smaller than 100% of the population. Further, any pollster knows that your data will be skewed by how a question is worded.
The data wasn't made up, and each outcome was within the predicted margin for error. Many people will accuse the statistician of using large margins for error to cover any issues in the data, but that is straight from the opposite end of the spectrum of error.
> People want to believe they aren't biased or that everything they read and see everyday is somehow "clean" or being presented by rational experts. That is a scary thought process...
No one believes that everything they read is clean; anyone who does has (again) oversimplified the world. It isn't black and white. Every day, the margin for error is being examined, polls are being refined, questions are being tweaked. If the pollsters thought they had it all nailed down, why would they even be re-evaluating the method?
The only way to get 100% accurate data would be to poll 100% of the people who are going to vote -- and 0% of the people who aren't. Oddly, that is what happens on voting day -- at great expense, through great manpower, and with great effort. Pollsters simply don't have those kinds of resources.
> There are direct financial rewards for telling people exactly what they want to hear.
People do love to be reinforced, but again you are drastically oversimplifying a more complex issue. No matter what happens, no matter the outcome, people want to read the polls.
I mean, why do we even have them otherwise? So regardless of the error bars or margins, polls are going to keep happening; some will be correct, some won't. Most will fall within fairly narrow margins for error, but often the <50%> marker is in that margin -- so the opposite outcome could happen, even within the poll's own admitted rules.
> So instead of thinking like this, they crack open statistics textbooks and start reading chapter 4 at you. Its a defense mechanism to avoid reality.
Unnecessarily inflammatory, I think. The worst part about this rant is that the polls were so close to accurate -- especially if you count the popular vote, instead of the electoral college outcome. It all seems to be a symptom of a country that is, perhaps, too large and diverse for a federal government. I would argue for States' rights here, or say States should be more largely self governing -- but you do need a mechanism to get money from California (taxed $405B, received $343B in federal expenditures) to Kansas (taxed $9.9B, received $24.2B).
That was a bit of a tangent; the point is that the setup of the United States government, both from the State side and Federal side could use some work.
> What is Nate Silver's punishment for being wrong over and over again?
And what is his reward for how often he is right? He works in an industry with a large margin for error. Are you arguing that statistics should basically be abolished? Fivethirtyeight does far more than political polling, mind.
The other thing is relative; Nate Silver was far closer to the mark than any other publication, and his data were more robust. If you are arguing that Nate should lose traffic, every other organization (including those that argued for a Trump win based on similarly faulty statistics) should receive even more loss?
> If what Nate Silver was doing was really "data journalism," shouldn't his following online have dropped off a cliff?
But he was working with the data he had. Fivethirtyeight doesn't even do its own polls; it aggregates data from other polling organizations. Should Nate have made up the data? That is the exact opposite of what you are arguing, and I think your anger is misplaced.
> I am fairly disgusted by humanity at this point as a result.
If a set of polls being off by less than 3% is your threshold for a disgust in humanity, I am afraid your view is narrowed to the point of being useless. There are bigger things to worry about, at least as far as I am concerned.
That is kind of a false statement, though. If he were to say that Freedom of the Press is no longer protected, the press would be very angry with you -- but I don't think it would improve your image of being against the establishment.
"The best" way to show you are against the establishment is to either a) prove the media's criticisms wrong, or b) have several actions that would stand against whatever "the establishment" is in our example.
What Trump has done is very seldom given examples of what is wrong, he has just unilaterally declared that the MSM is crooked. He has not eroded trust in an article or statement, or in most cases proving the left-leaning or progressive media wrong, he has made declarations that reach far further than his original aim. This is very in line with his character, which has been largely reactionary and often quick to pass judgments without truly "aiming" them first.
The parallels, for example, between his declarations of the media being wrong having much broader effects than intended, and his immigration bill which ultimately affected masses of people it shouldn't have, are difficult to ignore. Both were made in haste, both were aimed at a specific goal, and both had broad implications that were not originally intended.
Obama's inability to get much done can be, objectively, attributed largely to an obstructionist Congress. While not wholly to blame, it certainly both slowed his agenda, and often caused him to gut key provisions from legislation in order to get it ultimately passed. Looking at initial drafts of the Affordable Care Act early in its history versus what ultimately passed Congress is a depressing reminder of how willing Democratic partisans are willing to compromise their values in terms of playing ball with an enemy team whose explicit, stated, and recorded goal was paraphrased to "Take the other side's ball and go home."
While many bills have unintended consequences and side effects, these are often not recognized at the time. Pointing out the negative consequences for people who have already passed American vetting procedures, preventing access to persons already in flight when it passed, detaining persons in airports immediately, and the failure of the bill to provide any tangible benefits as far as anti-terrorism measures are concerned were hardly unforeseen. These were immediately pointed out by security professionals.
I am still of the hopeful and optimistic opinion that Trump does not use his "very lean and agile approach" to unilaterally void NAFTA and impose a 20% fee on Mexican imports, as just the foreseeable consequences of that action are far reaching, negative, and highly deleterious to the United States' reputation internationally. The unforeseen consequences? The economic fallout that we cannot immediately predict? If they are mere extensions of what we already can see, I am afraid.
>CNN for sure did not cover these issues proportionately to their gravity.
This is a very reasonable statement, but ultimately does not encapsulate the rhetoric that has been levied against the media by Trump specifically, nor his more ardent supporters.
Not covering proportional to gravity is not:
Anything similar to lies, fabrications, false news, misconstruing the news, or presenting the topic with a completely false narrative.
While it does certainly affect the narrative, and while CNN gives far more weight to articles favoring the left, this does not hurt Trump in any way as far as his getting elected was concerned. At the very least, the song played by the left leaning MSM (and that is a VERY IMPORTANT distinction, as Fox News represents the right leaning MSM; their viewer numbers have them as a larger body than CNN--how would they not be the true MSM?) lulled many Clinton supporters into a false sense of security. The post-election meltdowns by people who claimed they did not vote directly as a result of this false security, while anecdotal, points directly at that narrative.
And even if you allow that CNN reports on left leaning issues in a positive light while decrying conservative viewpoints, and Fox reports on right leaning issues positively while pointing out the issues in progressive topics, one cannot use them as direct opposition to each other, as neither tends to focus both on the positives and negatives in an issue in a way that could be considered equal. Equal airtime doctrines have also caused a negative skew, but that is another topic altogether.
Trump is a more long term threat due to the long term fallout and international perception of the United States as a result of his actions.
Yes, his Immigration related EO does not affect nearly as many people as the rhetoric would indicate -- but what it does do is prevent travel to the United States for some 22,000 persons (and counting) at the very least while, by consensus, not really being likely to prevent entry to actual terrorists. It is not that the bill is truly discriminatory, just that it is likely to be ineffective in its aims while damaging international credibility of America as a land of inclusion (or, to rely on imagery from the plaque of the Statue of Liberty, a golden door, to accept your tempest-tossed refuse).
Second, while his threat of 20% tariffs on importation from Mexico may seem like it originally promotes "buying local", there are several long term ramifications. First, construction materials and machinery [1] for American factories will ultimately increase the price of American produced goods as a result of this measure. Second, this bill will, directly and immediately, grant China greater bargaining power--with the United States. Thirdly, it causes Mexico to negotiate more aggressively with its local neighbors and with overseas partners, potentially closing trade avenues altogether with America.
Ultimately, it boils down to one thing: Trump's measures appear to be reactionary, with little view for long term fallout, international reputation, and future trade relations with partners that are not directly related to his current target (eg: trade relations with Mexico deteriorating, giving China greater negotiating power).
The linked Reuters article said their polls showed a 90% chance of a Clinton win, but the polls across all boards proved to be unreliable after the fact. What they did that advanced the idea of unbiased journalism is twofold:
First, they reported on early election numbers in North Carolina which directly contradicted their poll numbers and showed Trump performing better than predicted.
Second, they outlined a clear and realistic path to Trump winning. While their own poll numbers did not support this fact, they ultimately included it. They also did not rule out a Trump win in any way.
It is always important to note that a 90% chance of winning is in no way a guarantee, and I do not believe Reuters ever truly ruled out Trump as a contender. They used the only early data available, polls--and when every poll is wrong, and psychics are still not a real thing, they did what they could with the data they had. At least, in my reading of the article you linked.
Regarding the polls you linked, those are not the Reuters/Ipsos polls of 15,000 participants. Those are much smaller polls (850 users) with far larger margins for error.
While I cannot speak to the censoring of the 11/6 poll mentioned in the second tweet, having Trump leading in popular vote nationally (eg: what polls generally check) was ultimately incorrect, regardless of what you believe. Polls need to be carefully read, interpreted, and corrected for -- which is why fivethirtyeight gave Trump a much higher chance to win than any other body.
It read, to me, like "I don't see why medieval monks cared about death since I don't." Then there was the dollop of "I am atheist/agnostic," which again didn't seem to be usefully on topic.
That isn't to say you shouldn't discuss these things, it is an interesting conversation to have... But look at where this comment was placed; on a summary of the article.
The whole thing just felt like something that deserved a place on Reddit's "IamVerySmart" subreddit rather than on Hackernews.