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On August 24 2017 05:35 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:10 mozoku wrote: I'm pretty surprised that so many people are defending the journalism status quo. I think the current echo chamber flavor of journalism is quite self-evidently destructive for society. That isn't really a partisan issue at all.
Nor is it necessarily journalists' fault, but the system is clearly broken imo. And a lot of what oBlade said is fairly true (journalists wield a massive amount of power in society by nature of their position, there's no real implicit or explicit checks on them to ensure they use it vaguely in society's interest, and journalism is arguably the largest contributor to the current federal government's dysfunction).
I'd love to see some public debate on how to fix journalism. journalism doesn't seem remotely like the largest contributor to the current federal gov't dysfunction. I see no reason to claim that; far simpler to say that the politicians themselves are responsible for that, throguh their own choices and actions. Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Politicians act the way they do because they are (rationally) obsessed with their public image (i.e. what gets through the news media filter) due to election survivorship bias. If you want to change politicians' behavior, you either have to change elections or change the filter. I'm not comfortable switching to a CCP-style authoritarian government, so changing the way the news media operates seems like the better plan.
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On August 24 2017 05:36 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:30 Plansix wrote:On August 24 2017 05:28 mozoku wrote:On August 24 2017 05:26 Plansix wrote:On August 24 2017 05:24 mozoku wrote: I was using "journalism" rather loosely to mean the news media organizations in general. I was under the impression oBlade was doing something similar.
Though I'm not quite as quick to absolve journalists of blame as Plansix, I think. It was a little striking to see how confident journalists' were of HRC's impending victory when her national polling advantage was within a fairly standard presidential election polling error, and I find it hard to believe it has nothing to do with the fact that 90% of journalists at such organizations are liberals/leftists.
Not sure how to fix that issue though, and I think it's far less of a problem than the misaligned incentives of news media organizations combined with modern day internet technology. Are you talking about the hosts of cable news networks, like CNN and MSNBC? I'm talking about the entire mainstream industry--TV and print/internet--(ignoring HuffPo, Breitbart, Infowars, etc.). I'm pretty sure even the WSJ was declaring an inevitable HRC victory. Yes, that is because the polling data said it was likely. There were 90000000 stories about how the data changed in the week leading up to the election. They literally wrote stories about what they and the polling missed. They wrote stories about their own mistake. I don't recall any election day stories writing about the changing poll numbers giving Trump a realistic shot though (besides 538). Shouldn't that have been newsworthy?
Things with a 5% chance happen every day. If a model indicates a 1% chance of something happening, and it happens, the model was not wrong or even flawed.
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On August 24 2017 05:40 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:35 zlefin wrote:On August 24 2017 05:10 mozoku wrote: I'm pretty surprised that so many people are defending the journalism status quo. I think the current echo chamber flavor of journalism is quite self-evidently destructive for society. That isn't really a partisan issue at all.
Nor is it necessarily journalists' fault, but the system is clearly broken imo. And a lot of what oBlade said is fairly true (journalists wield a massive amount of power in society by nature of their position, there's no real implicit or explicit checks on them to ensure they use it vaguely in society's interest, and journalism is arguably the largest contributor to the current federal government's dysfunction).
I'd love to see some public debate on how to fix journalism. journalism doesn't seem remotely like the largest contributor to the current federal gov't dysfunction. I see no reason to claim that; far simpler to say that the politicians themselves are responsible for that, throguh their own choices and actions. Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Politicians act the way they do because they are (rationally) obsessed with their public image (i.e. what gets through the news media filter) due to election survivorship bias. If you want to change politicians' behavior, you either have to change elections or change the filter. I'm not comfortable switching to a CCP-style authoritarian government, so changing the way the news media operates seems like the better plan. that's not putting the cart before the horse. the politicians were responsible for SETTING UP the system; for setting up the elections, and for setting up rules in whcih the meida operates. If the media is only rationally acting in their own interest, why hate on them rathre than the politicians? politicians also have many ways to get throug hthe news media filter. and how do you change the filter without violating the first amendment? what you're proposing is FAR more CCP style than changes to the election system. and there's plenty of ways to alter elections, or the system in general, that could potentially work. there's of course also alot of flaws in the fundamental design of democracy itself.
PS I'd added some responses in my previous post while you were typing up your reply.
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On August 24 2017 05:40 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:35 zlefin wrote:On August 24 2017 05:10 mozoku wrote: I'm pretty surprised that so many people are defending the journalism status quo. I think the current echo chamber flavor of journalism is quite self-evidently destructive for society. That isn't really a partisan issue at all.
Nor is it necessarily journalists' fault, but the system is clearly broken imo. And a lot of what oBlade said is fairly true (journalists wield a massive amount of power in society by nature of their position, there's no real implicit or explicit checks on them to ensure they use it vaguely in society's interest, and journalism is arguably the largest contributor to the current federal government's dysfunction).
I'd love to see some public debate on how to fix journalism. journalism doesn't seem remotely like the largest contributor to the current federal gov't dysfunction. I see no reason to claim that; far simpler to say that the politicians themselves are responsible for that, throguh their own choices and actions. I'm not comfortable switching to a CCP-style authoritarian government, so changing the way the news media operates seems like the better plan. Well the government is the only one that is going to change the news media and make new rules. They could bring back the fairness doctrine, but conservative talk radio would be very grumpy. They could also bring back some of the laws from pre 1996. Maybe apply some of these to youtube and the internet too.
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On August 24 2017 05:43 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:36 mozoku wrote:On August 24 2017 05:30 Plansix wrote:On August 24 2017 05:28 mozoku wrote:On August 24 2017 05:26 Plansix wrote:On August 24 2017 05:24 mozoku wrote: I was using "journalism" rather loosely to mean the news media organizations in general. I was under the impression oBlade was doing something similar.
Though I'm not quite as quick to absolve journalists of blame as Plansix, I think. It was a little striking to see how confident journalists' were of HRC's impending victory when her national polling advantage was within a fairly standard presidential election polling error, and I find it hard to believe it has nothing to do with the fact that 90% of journalists at such organizations are liberals/leftists.
Not sure how to fix that issue though, and I think it's far less of a problem than the misaligned incentives of news media organizations combined with modern day internet technology. Are you talking about the hosts of cable news networks, like CNN and MSNBC? I'm talking about the entire mainstream industry--TV and print/internet--(ignoring HuffPo, Breitbart, Infowars, etc.). I'm pretty sure even the WSJ was declaring an inevitable HRC victory. Yes, that is because the polling data said it was likely. There were 90000000 stories about how the data changed in the week leading up to the election. They literally wrote stories about what they and the polling missed. They wrote stories about their own mistake. I don't recall any election day stories writing about the changing poll numbers giving Trump a realistic shot though (besides 538). Shouldn't that have been newsworthy? Things with a 5% chance happen every day. If a model indicates a 1% chance of something happening, and it happens, the model was not wrong or even flawed.
Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that anyone who suggested that Trump could win was aggressively shouted down by the Left. Even Nate Silver caught a lot of shit for following his models and saying that Trump could win.
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Sam Wang's 99.99% model was pretty bad. The NYT and Huffpost models were also very far from the mark.
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On August 24 2017 05:43 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:36 mozoku wrote:On August 24 2017 05:30 Plansix wrote:On August 24 2017 05:28 mozoku wrote:On August 24 2017 05:26 Plansix wrote:On August 24 2017 05:24 mozoku wrote: I was using "journalism" rather loosely to mean the news media organizations in general. I was under the impression oBlade was doing something similar.
Though I'm not quite as quick to absolve journalists of blame as Plansix, I think. It was a little striking to see how confident journalists' were of HRC's impending victory when her national polling advantage was within a fairly standard presidential election polling error, and I find it hard to believe it has nothing to do with the fact that 90% of journalists at such organizations are liberals/leftists.
Not sure how to fix that issue though, and I think it's far less of a problem than the misaligned incentives of news media organizations combined with modern day internet technology. Are you talking about the hosts of cable news networks, like CNN and MSNBC? I'm talking about the entire mainstream industry--TV and print/internet--(ignoring HuffPo, Breitbart, Infowars, etc.). I'm pretty sure even the WSJ was declaring an inevitable HRC victory. Yes, that is because the polling data said it was likely. There were 90000000 stories about how the data changed in the week leading up to the election. They literally wrote stories about what they and the polling missed. They wrote stories about their own mistake. I don't recall any election day stories writing about the changing poll numbers giving Trump a realistic shot though (besides 538). Shouldn't that have been newsworthy? Things with a 5% chance happen every day. If a model indicates a 1% chance of something happening, and it happens, the model was not wrong or even flawed. I'm literally a statistician. You can spare me the explanation on the topic. A 5% chance of winning was a probability estimate that was inconsistent with historical election results and election day polling data.
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On August 24 2017 05:43 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:36 mozoku wrote:On August 24 2017 05:30 Plansix wrote:On August 24 2017 05:28 mozoku wrote:On August 24 2017 05:26 Plansix wrote:On August 24 2017 05:24 mozoku wrote: I was using "journalism" rather loosely to mean the news media organizations in general. I was under the impression oBlade was doing something similar.
Though I'm not quite as quick to absolve journalists of blame as Plansix, I think. It was a little striking to see how confident journalists' were of HRC's impending victory when her national polling advantage was within a fairly standard presidential election polling error, and I find it hard to believe it has nothing to do with the fact that 90% of journalists at such organizations are liberals/leftists.
Not sure how to fix that issue though, and I think it's far less of a problem than the misaligned incentives of news media organizations combined with modern day internet technology. Are you talking about the hosts of cable news networks, like CNN and MSNBC? I'm talking about the entire mainstream industry--TV and print/internet--(ignoring HuffPo, Breitbart, Infowars, etc.). I'm pretty sure even the WSJ was declaring an inevitable HRC victory. Yes, that is because the polling data said it was likely. There were 90000000 stories about how the data changed in the week leading up to the election. They literally wrote stories about what they and the polling missed. They wrote stories about their own mistake. I don't recall any election day stories writing about the changing poll numbers giving Trump a realistic shot though (besides 538). Shouldn't that have been newsworthy? Things with a 5% chance happen every day. If a model indicates a 1% chance of something happening, and it happens, the model was not wrong or even flawed.
If people understood this then gambling wouldn't exist.
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United States42009 Posts
On August 24 2017 05:28 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:26 Plansix wrote:On August 24 2017 05:24 mozoku wrote: I was using "journalism" rather loosely to mean the news media organizations in general. I was under the impression oBlade was doing something similar.
Though I'm not quite as quick to absolve journalists of blame as Plansix, I think. It was a little striking to see how confident journalists' were of HRC's impending victory when her national polling advantage was within a fairly standard presidential election polling error, and I find it hard to believe it has nothing to do with the fact that 90% of journalists at such organizations are liberals/leftists.
Not sure how to fix that issue though, and I think it's far less of a problem than the misaligned incentives of news media organizations combined with modern day internet technology. Are you talking about the hosts of cable news networks, like CNN and MSNBC? I'm talking about the entire mainstream industry--TV and print/internet--(ignoring HuffPo, Breitbart, Infowars, etc.). I'm pretty sure even the WSJ was declaring an inevitable HRC victory. I think you're not understanding the statistics. Say there is a six sided die. On five sides are written "Hillary" and on the sixth side is written "Trump". If you get together six journalists and ask them what they expect to be the outcome of the roll of the die then you won't have five saying they expect Hillary and one saying they expect Trump, even though a Trump win is a perfectly realistic outcome and will happen one time in six. You'll have all six saying Hillary and all six being wrong one time in six. An absolute consensus that a likely outcome is more likely than an unlikely outcome does not represent an absolute consensus that the likely outcome will be the outcome that happens.
Consensus is the expected outcome when it comes to these events. You would expect a consensus in all cases where there is agreement upon the data. The proportion of commentators who expect a particular outcome is completely unrelated to the specific probability of that outcome.
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On August 24 2017 05:45 Nevuk wrote: Sam Wang's 99.99% model was pretty bad. The NYT and Huffpost models were also very far from the mark. Then the model was bad and they write a story about it. I'm not really going to rake outlets over the coals for not being able to accurately predict the future.
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On August 24 2017 05:45 Nevuk wrote: Sam Wang's 99.99% model was pretty bad. The NYT and Huffpost models were also very far from the mark.
The polls were bad, the model was fine. The relevant question is whether anybody could have predicted that the polls were bad before we had the election results, which probably isn't the case.
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Plenty of us on the left were warning for months that Trump could beat Hillary and the "it's all over but the crying" crowd were overestimating Hillary's support and underestimating Trump's.
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On August 24 2017 05:30 Nevuk wrote: I will always recall some journalists blasting 538 for saying Trump had a 30% chance to win. I'll also always remember that HuffPost said Clinton had a 98% chance to win
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United States42009 Posts
On August 24 2017 05:49 GreenHorizons wrote: Plenty of us on the left were warning for months that Trump could beat Hillary and the "it's all over but the crying" crowd were overestimating Hillary's support and underestimating Trump's. I prefer to think that they were overestimating the American public. Victims of their own belief in America being a better place than it turned out to be.
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On August 24 2017 05:49 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:45 Nevuk wrote: Sam Wang's 99.99% model was pretty bad. The NYT and Huffpost models were also very far from the mark. The polls were bad, the model was fine. The relevant question is whether anybody could have predicted that the polls were bad before we had the election results, which probably isn't the case.
What makes you say the polls were bad and the model was fine? My impression is that it's incorrect.
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On August 24 2017 05:45 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:43 Mohdoo wrote:On August 24 2017 05:36 mozoku wrote:On August 24 2017 05:30 Plansix wrote:On August 24 2017 05:28 mozoku wrote:On August 24 2017 05:26 Plansix wrote:On August 24 2017 05:24 mozoku wrote: I was using "journalism" rather loosely to mean the news media organizations in general. I was under the impression oBlade was doing something similar.
Though I'm not quite as quick to absolve journalists of blame as Plansix, I think. It was a little striking to see how confident journalists' were of HRC's impending victory when her national polling advantage was within a fairly standard presidential election polling error, and I find it hard to believe it has nothing to do with the fact that 90% of journalists at such organizations are liberals/leftists.
Not sure how to fix that issue though, and I think it's far less of a problem than the misaligned incentives of news media organizations combined with modern day internet technology. Are you talking about the hosts of cable news networks, like CNN and MSNBC? I'm talking about the entire mainstream industry--TV and print/internet--(ignoring HuffPo, Breitbart, Infowars, etc.). I'm pretty sure even the WSJ was declaring an inevitable HRC victory. Yes, that is because the polling data said it was likely. There were 90000000 stories about how the data changed in the week leading up to the election. They literally wrote stories about what they and the polling missed. They wrote stories about their own mistake. I don't recall any election day stories writing about the changing poll numbers giving Trump a realistic shot though (besides 538). Shouldn't that have been newsworthy? Things with a 5% chance happen every day. If a model indicates a 1% chance of something happening, and it happens, the model was not wrong or even flawed. Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that anyone who suggested that Trump could win was aggressively shouted down by the Left. Even Nate Silver caught a lot of shit for following his models and saying that Trump could win.
Anyone with a brain was sweating bullets after Comey's announcement. And even if something with a 5% chance of happening happens, it isn't necessarily fair to say the people siding with the 95% were dumb.
In this particular case, the fact that Clinton lost to Trump in the same way she lost to Bernie should highlight why this was never in the bag. She was already rejected in the states she lost.
Overall, I think people aren't giving credit to the idea that some things are actually really close and that neither side would be properly blamed for believing one side or the other. If Clinton won, it wouldn't mean everyone who thought Trump would win were suddenly complete morons. Sometimes things are close and a certain result doesn't mean people betting on the other result shouldn't have.
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Yeah, but HuffPost is a garbage publication, right up there with the Boston Herald and New York Post.
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On August 24 2017 05:51 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:49 Nyxisto wrote:On August 24 2017 05:45 Nevuk wrote: Sam Wang's 99.99% model was pretty bad. The NYT and Huffpost models were also very far from the mark. The polls were bad, the model was fine. The relevant question is whether anybody could have predicted that the polls were bad before we had the election results, which probably isn't the case. What makes you say the polls were bad and the model was fine? My impression is that it's incorrect.
Sam wangs model was literally just aggregating the state polls and running a monte carlo simulation on them which gives you 99%+ chance of winning when both candidates are 3-4% percent apart in the polls.
There literally wasn't more than this to it, it's the most minimal model that you can go with and it relies entirely on the fact that your polling data is accurate.
Of course it's easy now to say that it wasn't, but that is only a fair criticism if you could have known beforehand.
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I'll just post it here, since you're more likely to see it. But Happy Birthday KwarK. May you piss off more people today than any other day. Cheers.
President Trump led an incendiary rally at which he ripped at cultural divides, played to white grievance, defended himself by stretching the truth or leaving out key facts, attacked members of his own party and the media, played the victim and threatened apocalyptic political consequences — all the while doing so by ignoring political norms and sensitivities.
The only thing that's surprising is if you're surprised by it. Source
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On August 24 2017 05:44 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2017 05:40 mozoku wrote:On August 24 2017 05:35 zlefin wrote:On August 24 2017 05:10 mozoku wrote: I'm pretty surprised that so many people are defending the journalism status quo. I think the current echo chamber flavor of journalism is quite self-evidently destructive for society. That isn't really a partisan issue at all.
Nor is it necessarily journalists' fault, but the system is clearly broken imo. And a lot of what oBlade said is fairly true (journalists wield a massive amount of power in society by nature of their position, there's no real implicit or explicit checks on them to ensure they use it vaguely in society's interest, and journalism is arguably the largest contributor to the current federal government's dysfunction).
I'd love to see some public debate on how to fix journalism. journalism doesn't seem remotely like the largest contributor to the current federal gov't dysfunction. I see no reason to claim that; far simpler to say that the politicians themselves are responsible for that, throguh their own choices and actions. Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Politicians act the way they do because they are (rationally) obsessed with their public image (i.e. what gets through the news media filter) due to election survivorship bias. If you want to change politicians' behavior, you either have to change elections or change the filter. I'm not comfortable switching to a CCP-style authoritarian government, so changing the way the news media operates seems like the better plan. that's not putting the cart before the horse. the politicians were responsible for SETTING UP the system; for setting up the elections, and for setting up rules in whcih the meida operates. If the media is only rationally acting in their own interest, why hate on them rathre than the politicians? politicians also have many ways to get throug hthe news media filter. and how do you change the filter without violating the first amendment? what you're proposing is FAR more CCP style than changes to the election system. and there's plenty of ways to alter elections, or the system in general, that could potentially work. there's of course also alot of flaws in the fundamental design of democracy itself. PS I'd added some responses in my previous post while you were typing up your reply. I never said it was the news media organizations' fault. I expect them to be profit-driven. All I meant was that I'd love to see public discussion on changes to media, which would then hopefully produce ideas to fix the clearly broken news media status quo, and in turn pressure politicians to change said status quo.
Fwiw, I think a lot of old school journalists hate the news media status quo as much as I do. There's been a lot of complaints from them looking to strengthen their negotiating leverage with Facebook/Google and reduce their sensitivity to click-driven traffic. I'm fairly sympathetic to those complaints, though not informed enough to make strong judgments on the matter.
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