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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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Northern Ireland26856 Posts
On May 21 2026 05:30 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 05:08 LightSpectra wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:
[quote]
Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:
[quote]
No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more.
But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand.
I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Don't worry, nobody is actually mad that you say such radioactively dumb shit on the regular. As long as this website remains on the internet it'll be a permanent testimony to how brain damaged you have to be to be a modern conservative. Yes, yes when I say sloppy and incorrect instead of #%^*, all the not-mad people on the forum say it’s radioactively dumb shit and brain damage. Totally normal response. Granted, you can’t even admit to the “why” of why Trump is doing it, because that would mean agreeing with me!
Does anyone on this forum not know why Trump is doing this and similar?
Anyone? Hands up in the back?
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Norway28804 Posts
On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 03:26 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 02:39 LightSpectra wrote:
[quote]
Translation: after this blatant embezzlement falls out of the news cycle because the next blatant act of corruption takes its spot, conservatives like you will pretend it never happened. Oh believe me I'll be calling for impeachment the minute there's proof a president pocketed a BILLION DOLLARS from the Department of Justice. Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:On May 20 2026 03:41 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 03:35 Billyboy wrote:
[quote]
I get you like them, it’s the snake oil you bought. The crazy part is you keep buying it.
Oh you're actually against cheaper groceries, free ballrooms, free walls, cheaper drugs, 2 dollar gas, Greenland hospital ships (?), 10% app credit cards (?), stimulus from reducing government waste, and stimulus from punishing companies that undercut America? Don't I have egg on my face... I didn't realize those were actually bad. On May 20 2026 03:35 Billyboy wrote:
How have the Dems blocked them when you control all levels of government and the judiciary?
You severely overestimate my power. No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more. But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand. I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs.
Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting.
And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order.
Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA.
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On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 03:26 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 02:39 LightSpectra wrote:
[quote]
Translation: after this blatant embezzlement falls out of the news cycle because the next blatant act of corruption takes its spot, conservatives like you will pretend it never happened. Oh believe me I'll be calling for impeachment the minute there's proof a president pocketed a BILLION DOLLARS from the Department of Justice. Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:On May 20 2026 03:41 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 03:35 Billyboy wrote:
[quote]
I get you like them, it’s the snake oil you bought. The crazy part is you keep buying it.
Oh you're actually against cheaper groceries, free ballrooms, free walls, cheaper drugs, 2 dollar gas, Greenland hospital ships (?), 10% app credit cards (?), stimulus from reducing government waste, and stimulus from punishing companies that undercut America? Don't I have egg on my face... I didn't realize those were actually bad. On May 20 2026 03:35 Billyboy wrote:
How have the Dems blocked them when you control all levels of government and the judiciary?
You severely overestimate my power. No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more. But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand. I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ?
Sure, based on RFKs numbers we can find out the value of the maga constant (henceforth noted with the tsu ツ character cause the greek letters are all used up) .
ツ = 600 / ((600-10) / 600 * 100) = 6.1
Now we can freely apply the maga constant to any other decrease (price or otherwise) to find out the maga percentage.
Let's say Iran had 5000 missiles and now it has 4000.
ツ * (5000-4000) / 5000 * 100 = gloriously wiped out 122% of Iran's capabilities
If there's no decrease at all there's no issue as ツ * 0 = 0
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On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 03:26 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 02:39 LightSpectra wrote:
[quote]
Translation: after this blatant embezzlement falls out of the news cycle because the next blatant act of corruption takes its spot, conservatives like you will pretend it never happened. Oh believe me I'll be calling for impeachment the minute there's proof a president pocketed a BILLION DOLLARS from the Department of Justice. Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:On May 20 2026 03:41 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 03:35 Billyboy wrote:
[quote]
I get you like them, it’s the snake oil you bought. The crazy part is you keep buying it.
Oh you're actually against cheaper groceries, free ballrooms, free walls, cheaper drugs, 2 dollar gas, Greenland hospital ships (?), 10% app credit cards (?), stimulus from reducing government waste, and stimulus from punishing companies that undercut America? Don't I have egg on my face... I didn't realize those were actually bad. On May 20 2026 03:35 Billyboy wrote:
How have the Dems blocked them when you control all levels of government and the judiciary?
You severely overestimate my power. No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more. But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand. I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ?
Yeah and I will have to just resolve that this is my last post on it, because although I think the success of lowering drug prices is more important than everyone using communications disagreements to reassure themselves they're smarter than the administration, otherwise I get baited too easily by people who claim to want to understand something.
$10 is an oral typo, he meant $100, same as he said later in the article you read, and then he's off because it's 500% not 600%. $600 is 600% of the amount of $100 but it's 500% more than it.
You couldn't figure this out? It takes two seconds.
+ Show Spoiler +The extra 100% mistake happens because around the time English switches from "thrice," the comparison of amounts forks between referring to the total and to the difference.
If I have 20 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have twice as many tanks as you. Not "once/one time as much more" or something. You can say 100% more but there's no other equivalent. But if I have 90 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have nine times as many, but eight times more. 900% as many and 800% more. People misplace the first 100% in that often. Like with the naive approach to odds also. People see a one to five chance and then think oh, must be 20%, same as one in five, until they start to realize actually it's one in six - people are off by one, or 100%, in this way often.
Like if you're tracking sales or something and have a target of 1000 widgets and sometimes do great and sometimes miss, you don't want to be tracking percentage changes on a constantly rolling basis that have no direct comparison to each other. So if your 2020 sales are 1300 and 2021 is 800 and 2022 is 900% it's very useful to go +30% -50% +10% because the percents admit to addition/subtraction by being fixed on the same baseline. The fact that 2020 is 30% up and 2021 is 20% down takes you straight to a 50% drop of the target so you can convert immediately to widgets. Or if Shkreli's stock is $1 on day 1, $50 on day 2, and $100 on day 3, the day over day change from 1 to 2 is 4900%, and day over day from 2 to 3 is 100%. But also from day 1 to 3 is clearly a 9900% increase, and the advantage is if you fix everything vs. day 1 you can now add a 4900% to a 5000% change to see a broader picture. On a rolling basis SOME dolt or other will go "from day 2 to 3 it only went up 100% so that means the total increase is 4900% + 100% = 5000%," which is wrong.
When you communicate numbers, your baseline can be the beginning, it can be the top, it can be the bottom, it can be the target/goal, it can be the average comparison from Europe... It's more unusual for it to just be the whatever the final figure ended up being, but there is a reason for that too.
People in general can instinctively get as far mentally as say... a half drop has to be made up by a 100% increase, a one third drop made up by a half increase, a one quarter drop made up by a one third increase, and they get lost somewhere around the fact an 80% drop means the original was 5x, a 90% drop means the original was 10x, 95% means 20x, 98% 50x and 99% 100x. Fall in between those and people go "okay a 92.168% drop..." and as their eyes glaze over they leave without any awareness or care of how much higher the original was. Yet tell them there was a 1276% drop, they immediately rule out the top being the baseline because as DPB says every elementary schooler knows something that can't be negative can't decrease by more than 100% OF ITSELF, and immediately after that realizes ah, the big one must have decreased by 1276% in terms of the smaller one, meaning it was 12.76x higher before than after. That's instantly and immediately and clearly accessible and the inverse of 92.168% drop is just a general kind of "yeah... sounds nice I guess."
So just use the real units? Certainly also valuable. Plavix going from $756 to $16 is just a home run. But then you have other cases of like "We reduced it from $7000 to $1500!" and then people go why the fuck everything cost money, how is there medicine that's more than $1000" and they don't buy the significance of the accomplishment. People pad numbers to be the most alluring. If a drug takes your risk of cancer from 0.8% to 0.4%, it didn't decrease your risk by 0.4%, it was a 50% DROP IN RISK!
There is also the population that thought a third pound burger was smaller than a quarter pounder. When they hear prices went up 300% and then went down 80%, they are dissatisfied. But they will "get it" if you use another baseline. Now, the people who think Trump and Kennedy can't tie their own shoes are not going to be as happy with that. But they already won't give a shit when you use the baseline they're used to in order to explain how the price of something dropped 90% (which is normal and fine and nothing wrong with it) so nothing was lost.
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On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 03:26 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Oh believe me I'll be calling for impeachment the minute there's proof a president pocketed a BILLION DOLLARS from the Department of Justice. Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:On May 20 2026 03:41 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Oh you're actually against cheaper groceries, free ballrooms, free walls, cheaper drugs, 2 dollar gas, Greenland hospital ships (?), 10% app credit cards (?), stimulus from reducing government waste, and stimulus from punishing companies that undercut America? Don't I have egg on my face... I didn't realize those were actually bad.
[quote]
You severely overestimate my power. No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more. But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand. I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA.
The problem isn't Trump being bad at math, or liking big numbers, it's as you said, that his followers can't even agree that this one time, he isn't making sense and laugh it off.
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On May 21 2026 05:58 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 03:26 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Oh believe me I'll be calling for impeachment the minute there's proof a president pocketed a BILLION DOLLARS from the Department of Justice. Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:On May 20 2026 03:41 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Oh you're actually against cheaper groceries, free ballrooms, free walls, cheaper drugs, 2 dollar gas, Greenland hospital ships (?), 10% app credit cards (?), stimulus from reducing government waste, and stimulus from punishing companies that undercut America? Don't I have egg on my face... I didn't realize those were actually bad.
[quote]
You severely overestimate my power. No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more. But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand. I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ? Yeah and I will have to just resolve that this is my last post on it, because although I think the success of lowering drug prices is more important than everyone using communications disagreements to reassure themselves they're smarter than the administration, otherwise I get baited too easily by people who claim to want to understand something. $10 is an oral typo, he meant $100, same as he said later in the article you read, and then he's off because it's 500% not 600%. $600 is 600% of the amount of $100 but it's 500% more than it. You couldn't figure this out? It takes two seconds. + Show Spoiler +The extra 100% mistake happens because around the time English switches from "thrice," the comparison of amounts forks between referring to the total and to the difference.
If I have 20 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have twice as many tanks as you. Not "once/one time as much more" or something. You can say 100% more but there's no other equivalent. But if I have 90 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have nine times as many, but eight times more. 900% as many and 800% more. People misplace the first 100% in that often. Like with the naive approach to odds also. People see a one to five chance and then think oh, must be 20%, same as one in five, until they start to realize actually it's one in six - people are off by one, or 100%, in this way often.
Like if you're tracking sales or something and have a target of 1000 widgets and sometimes do great and sometimes miss, you don't want to be tracking percentage changes on a constantly rolling basis that have no direct comparison to each other. So if your 2020 sales are 1300 and 2021 is 800 and 2022 is 900% it's very useful to go +30% -50% +10% because the percents admit to addition/subtraction by being fixed on the same baseline. The fact that 2020 is 30% up and 2021 is 20% down takes you straight to a 50% drop of the target so you can convert immediately to widgets. Or if Shkreli's stock is $1 on day 1, $50 on day 2, and $100 on day 3, the day over day change from 1 to 2 is 4900%, and day over day from 2 to 3 is 100%. But also from day 1 to 3 is clearly a 9900% increase, and the advantage is if you fix everything vs. day 1 you can now add a 4900% to a 5000% change to see a broader picture. On a rolling basis SOME dolt or other will go "from day 2 to 3 it only went up 100% so that means the total increase is 4900% + 100% = 5000%," which is wrong.
When you communicate numbers, your baseline can be the beginning, it can be the top, it can be the bottom, it can be the target/goal, it can be the average comparison from Europe... It's more unusual for it to just be the whatever the final figure ended up being, but there is a reason for that too.
People in general can instinctively get as far mentally as say... a half drop has to be made up by a 100% increase, a one third drop made up by a half increase, a one quarter drop made up by a one third increase, and they get lost somewhere around the fact an 80% drop means the original was 5x, a 90% drop means the original was 10x, 95% means 20x, 98% 50x and 99% 100x. Fall in between those and people go "okay a 92.168% drop..." and as their eyes glaze over they leave without any awareness or care of how much higher the original was. Yet tell them there was a 1276% drop, they immediately rule out the top being the baseline because as DPB says every elementary schooler knows something that can't be negative can't decrease by more than 100% OF ITSELF, and immediately after that realizes ah, the big one must have decreased by 1276% in terms of the smaller one, meaning it was 12.76x higher before than after. That's instantly and immediately and clearly accessible and the inverse of 92.168% drop is just a general kind of "yeah... sounds nice I guess."
So just use the real units? Certainly also valuable. Plavix going from $756 to $16 is just a home run. But then you have other cases of like "We reduced it from $7000 to $1500!" and then people go why the fuck everything cost money, how is there medicine that's more than $1000" and they don't buy the significance of the accomplishment. People pad numbers to be the most alluring. If a drug takes your risk of cancer from 0.8% to 0.4%, it didn't decrease your risk by 0.4%, it was a 50% DROP IN RISK!
There is also the population that thought a third pound burger was smaller than a quarter pounder. When they hear prices went up 300% and then went down 80%, they are dissatisfied. But they will "get it" if you use another baseline. Now, the people who think Trump and Kennedy can't tie their own shoes are not going to be as happy with that. But they already won't give a shit when you use the baseline they're used to in order to explain how the price of something dropped 90% (which is normal and fine and nothing wrong with it) so nothing was lost.
I don't know what I was expecting when I clicked the spoiler but holy fuck. Tell me you told ChatGPT to sound schizophrenic and you didn't actually write that yourself.
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On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 03:26 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Oh believe me I'll be calling for impeachment the minute there's proof a president pocketed a BILLION DOLLARS from the Department of Justice. Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:On May 20 2026 03:41 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Oh you're actually against cheaper groceries, free ballrooms, free walls, cheaper drugs, 2 dollar gas, Greenland hospital ships (?), 10% app credit cards (?), stimulus from reducing government waste, and stimulus from punishing companies that undercut America? Don't I have egg on my face... I didn't realize those were actually bad.
[quote]
You severely overestimate my power. No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more. But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand. I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA.
I think it is important to keep perspective here. Imagine any pre-Trump president doing this. It would have been an absolutely massive scandal that the president is so uneducated. And rightfully so. The president of the United States of America should be able to somewhat reliably do middle school math. Anything else is just ridiculous and embarrassing.
But Trump just shifted shit so far, has so many scandals constantly going on, that this is at best a minor thing with him. We should hold Trump to the same standards that we held previous presidents, instead of holding him to the standard of some angry special needs kid, where you can excuse a lot of things.
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Northern Ireland26856 Posts
On May 21 2026 06:05 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 05:58 oBlade wrote:On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:
[quote]
Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:
[quote]
No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more.
But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand.
I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ? Yeah and I will have to just resolve that this is my last post on it, because although I think the success of lowering drug prices is more important than everyone using communications disagreements to reassure themselves they're smarter than the administration, otherwise I get baited too easily by people who claim to want to understand something. $10 is an oral typo, he meant $100, same as he said later in the article you read, and then he's off because it's 500% not 600%. $600 is 600% of the amount of $100 but it's 500% more than it. You couldn't figure this out? It takes two seconds. + Show Spoiler +The extra 100% mistake happens because around the time English switches from "thrice," the comparison of amounts forks between referring to the total and to the difference.
If I have 20 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have twice as many tanks as you. Not "once/one time as much more" or something. You can say 100% more but there's no other equivalent. But if I have 90 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have nine times as many, but eight times more. 900% as many and 800% more. People misplace the first 100% in that often. Like with the naive approach to odds also. People see a one to five chance and then think oh, must be 20%, same as one in five, until they start to realize actually it's one in six - people are off by one, or 100%, in this way often.
Like if you're tracking sales or something and have a target of 1000 widgets and sometimes do great and sometimes miss, you don't want to be tracking percentage changes on a constantly rolling basis that have no direct comparison to each other. So if your 2020 sales are 1300 and 2021 is 800 and 2022 is 900% it's very useful to go +30% -50% +10% because the percents admit to addition/subtraction by being fixed on the same baseline. The fact that 2020 is 30% up and 2021 is 20% down takes you straight to a 50% drop of the target so you can convert immediately to widgets. Or if Shkreli's stock is $1 on day 1, $50 on day 2, and $100 on day 3, the day over day change from 1 to 2 is 4900%, and day over day from 2 to 3 is 100%. But also from day 1 to 3 is clearly a 9900% increase, and the advantage is if you fix everything vs. day 1 you can now add a 4900% to a 5000% change to see a broader picture. On a rolling basis SOME dolt or other will go "from day 2 to 3 it only went up 100% so that means the total increase is 4900% + 100% = 5000%," which is wrong.
When you communicate numbers, your baseline can be the beginning, it can be the top, it can be the bottom, it can be the target/goal, it can be the average comparison from Europe... It's more unusual for it to just be the whatever the final figure ended up being, but there is a reason for that too.
People in general can instinctively get as far mentally as say... a half drop has to be made up by a 100% increase, a one third drop made up by a half increase, a one quarter drop made up by a one third increase, and they get lost somewhere around the fact an 80% drop means the original was 5x, a 90% drop means the original was 10x, 95% means 20x, 98% 50x and 99% 100x. Fall in between those and people go "okay a 92.168% drop..." and as their eyes glaze over they leave without any awareness or care of how much higher the original was. Yet tell them there was a 1276% drop, they immediately rule out the top being the baseline because as DPB says every elementary schooler knows something that can't be negative can't decrease by more than 100% OF ITSELF, and immediately after that realizes ah, the big one must have decreased by 1276% in terms of the smaller one, meaning it was 12.76x higher before than after. That's instantly and immediately and clearly accessible and the inverse of 92.168% drop is just a general kind of "yeah... sounds nice I guess."
So just use the real units? Certainly also valuable. Plavix going from $756 to $16 is just a home run. But then you have other cases of like "We reduced it from $7000 to $1500!" and then people go why the fuck everything cost money, how is there medicine that's more than $1000" and they don't buy the significance of the accomplishment. People pad numbers to be the most alluring. If a drug takes your risk of cancer from 0.8% to 0.4%, it didn't decrease your risk by 0.4%, it was a 50% DROP IN RISK!
There is also the population that thought a third pound burger was smaller than a quarter pounder. When they hear prices went up 300% and then went down 80%, they are dissatisfied. But they will "get it" if you use another baseline. Now, the people who think Trump and Kennedy can't tie their own shoes are not going to be as happy with that. But they already won't give a shit when you use the baseline they're used to in order to explain how the price of something dropped 90% (which is normal and fine and nothing wrong with it) so nothing was lost. I don't know what I was expecting when I clicked the spoiler but holy fuck. Tell me you told ChatGPT to sound schizophrenic and you didn't actually write that yourself.
It’s some of the biggest bollocks I have ever read, and yet the example numbers still are far more fundamentally sound than with some of the shite Trump and RFK have been spouting
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Norway28804 Posts
On May 21 2026 06:07 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:
[quote]
Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:
[quote]
No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more.
But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand.
I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA. I think it is important to keep perspective here. Imagine any pre-Trump president doing this. It would have been an absolutely massive scandal that the president is so uneducated. And rightfully so. The president of the United States of America should be able to somewhat reliably do middle school math. Anything else is just ridiculous and embarrassing. But Trump just shifted shit so far, has so many scandals constantly going on, that this is at best a minor thing with him. We should hold Trump to the same standards that we held previous presidents, instead of holding him to the standard of some angry special needs kid, where you can excuse a lot of things.
I could totally see Dubya do something like this. One of our leading newspapers had a column called 'Bush of the day' during his first term at least (I stopped buying the paper regularly at some point, so I dunno when they stopped), and well, that column consisted of one stupid quote by Dubya per day, like 'I know the man and fish can coexist peacefully'. I'd laugh at that, and then participate in marches against the invasion of Iraq, because that shit actually pissed me off, but the dumb incoherent statements were ridiculous.
And yes, it's ridiculous - and even embarassing. I see dyhb as being entirely in agreement with that. But while there's a bunch of shit Trump does that is outrageous, this, to me, isn't one of them. To be fair I can understand how math teachers might have grounds to be more appalled than others.
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Norway28804 Posts
On May 21 2026 06:01 Geiko wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:
[quote]
Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:
[quote]
No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more.
But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand.
I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA. The problem isn't Trump being bad at math, or liking big numbers, it's as you said, that his followers can't even agree that this one time, he isn't making sense and laugh it off.
Yeah but dyhb isn't a Trump supporter and he's saying that Trump isn't making sense and yet he's being attacked for essentially not being outraged enough. oBlade is a different matter.
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Northern Ireland26856 Posts
On May 21 2026 06:07 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:
[quote]
Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:
[quote]
No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more.
But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand.
I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA. I think it is important to keep perspective here. Imagine any pre-Trump president doing this. It would have been an absolutely massive scandal that the president is so uneducated. And rightfully so. The president of the United States of America should be able to somewhat reliably do middle school math. Anything else is just ridiculous and embarrassing. But Trump just shifted shit so far, has so many scandals constantly going on, that this is at best a minor thing with him. We should hold Trump to the same standards that we held previous presidents, instead of holding him to the standard of some angry special needs kid, where you can excuse a lot of things.
Aye, not that he was without other flaws, but Bush II got routinely hammered and lampooned for many a faux pas that, being somewhat reasonable were generally him actually misspeaking
Trump tops the worst Bushisms almost on the daily, and what’s more it’s pretty damn obvious he isn’t having the odd verbal slip that is somewhat natural to make if one is surrounded by media all the time. It’s lies or genuine idiocy a fair bloody chunk of the time, and simultaneously not too infrequently. Doesn’t matter if it’s a press release, a Truth Social post or basically any form of communication going, there will be frequent bullshit there.
It’s an utter, ludicrous farce and defences and deflections of this are beyond pathetic lickspittle nonsense
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On May 21 2026 05:58 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 03:26 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Oh believe me I'll be calling for impeachment the minute there's proof a president pocketed a BILLION DOLLARS from the Department of Justice. Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:On May 20 2026 03:41 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Oh you're actually against cheaper groceries, free ballrooms, free walls, cheaper drugs, 2 dollar gas, Greenland hospital ships (?), 10% app credit cards (?), stimulus from reducing government waste, and stimulus from punishing companies that undercut America? Don't I have egg on my face... I didn't realize those were actually bad.
[quote]
You severely overestimate my power. No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more. But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand. I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ? Yeah and I will have to just resolve that this is my last post on it, because although I think the success of lowering drug prices is more important than everyone using communications disagreements to reassure themselves they're smarter than the administration, otherwise I get baited too easily by people who claim to want to understand something. $10 is an oral typo, he meant $100, same as he said later in the article you read, and then he's off because it's 500% not 600%. $600 is 600% of the amount of $100 but it's 500% more than it. You couldn't figure this out? It takes two seconds. + Show Spoiler +The extra 100% mistake happens because around the time English switches from "thrice," the comparison of amounts forks between referring to the total and to the difference.
If I have 20 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have twice as many tanks as you. Not "once/one time as much more" or something. You can say 100% more but there's no other equivalent. But if I have 90 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have nine times as many, but eight times more. 900% as many and 800% more. People misplace the first 100% in that often. Like with the naive approach to odds also. People see a one to five chance and then think oh, must be 20%, same as one in five, until they start to realize actually it's one in six - people are off by one, or 100%, in this way often.
Like if you're tracking sales or something and have a target of 1000 widgets and sometimes do great and sometimes miss, you don't want to be tracking percentage changes on a constantly rolling basis that have no direct comparison to each other. So if your 2020 sales are 1300 and 2021 is 800 and 2022 is 900% it's very useful to go +30% -50% +10% because the percents admit to addition/subtraction by being fixed on the same baseline. The fact that 2020 is 30% up and 2021 is 20% down takes you straight to a 50% drop of the target so you can convert immediately to widgets. Or if Shkreli's stock is $1 on day 1, $50 on day 2, and $100 on day 3, the day over day change from 1 to 2 is 4900%, and day over day from 2 to 3 is 100%. But also from day 1 to 3 is clearly a 9900% increase, and the advantage is if you fix everything vs. day 1 you can now add a 4900% to a 5000% change to see a broader picture. On a rolling basis SOME dolt or other will go "from day 2 to 3 it only went up 100% so that means the total increase is 4900% + 100% = 5000%," which is wrong.
When you communicate numbers, your baseline can be the beginning, it can be the top, it can be the bottom, it can be the target/goal, it can be the average comparison from Europe... It's more unusual for it to just be the whatever the final figure ended up being, but there is a reason for that too.
People in general can instinctively get as far mentally as say... a half drop has to be made up by a 100% increase, a one third drop made up by a half increase, a one quarter drop made up by a one third increase, and they get lost somewhere around the fact an 80% drop means the original was 5x, a 90% drop means the original was 10x, 95% means 20x, 98% 50x and 99% 100x. Fall in between those and people go "okay a 92.168% drop..." and as their eyes glaze over they leave without any awareness or care of how much higher the original was. Yet tell them there was a 1276% drop, they immediately rule out the top being the baseline because as DPB says every elementary schooler knows something that can't be negative can't decrease by more than 100% OF ITSELF, and immediately after that realizes ah, the big one must have decreased by 1276% in terms of the smaller one, meaning it was 12.76x higher before than after. That's instantly and immediately and clearly accessible and the inverse of 92.168% drop is just a general kind of "yeah... sounds nice I guess."
So just use the real units? Certainly also valuable. Plavix going from $756 to $16 is just a home run. But then you have other cases of like "We reduced it from $7000 to $1500!" and then people go why the fuck everything cost money, how is there medicine that's more than $1000" and they don't buy the significance of the accomplishment. People pad numbers to be the most alluring. If a drug takes your risk of cancer from 0.8% to 0.4%, it didn't decrease your risk by 0.4%, it was a 50% DROP IN RISK!
There is also the population that thought a third pound burger was smaller than a quarter pounder. When they hear prices went up 300% and then went down 80%, they are dissatisfied. But they will "get it" if you use another baseline. Now, the people who think Trump and Kennedy can't tie their own shoes are not going to be as happy with that. But they already won't give a shit when you use the baseline they're used to in order to explain how the price of something dropped 90% (which is normal and fine and nothing wrong with it) so nothing was lost.
Oblade, everyone knows why Trump says "5000% decreases", it's not because he is stupid it's because he thinks americans are stupid and won't understand that 98% decrease is already impressive. He's maybe right about that but that's besides the point. The point is that he is factually incorrect and refuses to admit it even when it's pointed out. He could easily have said "I meant we divided the price of that drug by 5000%" and then everyone would be happy and the effect would be the same.
Saying something has been decreased by x% has only one meaning and it would be incredibly stupid to say that it can have different meanings. All your counter examples have to do with the ambiguity of cumulative percentage differences (up by x% today then down by y% tomorrow). If one was to tell you "wow I just a got a 400% decrease on my prescription drug" any sane person would think about it for a while, and realize the person he is talking to is confused and probably means his formerly 100$ drug is now either 20$ or 25$. However if someone tells you "wow I just got a 50% decrease on my drug" you would have to be nuts to understand that he now pays his drug 66,7$ instead of 100$.
Everyone has the same convention, 50% decrease on something means it's now half the price. That's correct math. Any other math is false and would lead to confusion if it weren't , which is why RFK made 2 different errors when trying to justify a "600% decrease" and no one at that hearing even picked up on it.
By all means, continue defending his policies, it's refreshing to have a coherent line of thought coming from someone "maga friendly" even if we don't agree, but please don't play devil's advocate for every stupid and obviously false things Trump says.
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On May 21 2026 06:14 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 06:05 LightSpectra wrote:On May 21 2026 05:58 oBlade wrote:On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it.
There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment.
Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic.
[quote]
You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity.
Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it.
The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ? Yeah and I will have to just resolve that this is my last post on it, because although I think the success of lowering drug prices is more important than everyone using communications disagreements to reassure themselves they're smarter than the administration, otherwise I get baited too easily by people who claim to want to understand something. $10 is an oral typo, he meant $100, same as he said later in the article you read, and then he's off because it's 500% not 600%. $600 is 600% of the amount of $100 but it's 500% more than it. You couldn't figure this out? It takes two seconds. + Show Spoiler +The extra 100% mistake happens because around the time English switches from "thrice," the comparison of amounts forks between referring to the total and to the difference.
If I have 20 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have twice as many tanks as you. Not "once/one time as much more" or something. You can say 100% more but there's no other equivalent. But if I have 90 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have nine times as many, but eight times more. 900% as many and 800% more. People misplace the first 100% in that often. Like with the naive approach to odds also. People see a one to five chance and then think oh, must be 20%, same as one in five, until they start to realize actually it's one in six - people are off by one, or 100%, in this way often.
Like if you're tracking sales or something and have a target of 1000 widgets and sometimes do great and sometimes miss, you don't want to be tracking percentage changes on a constantly rolling basis that have no direct comparison to each other. So if your 2020 sales are 1300 and 2021 is 800 and 2022 is 900% it's very useful to go +30% -50% +10% because the percents admit to addition/subtraction by being fixed on the same baseline. The fact that 2020 is 30% up and 2021 is 20% down takes you straight to a 50% drop of the target so you can convert immediately to widgets. Or if Shkreli's stock is $1 on day 1, $50 on day 2, and $100 on day 3, the day over day change from 1 to 2 is 4900%, and day over day from 2 to 3 is 100%. But also from day 1 to 3 is clearly a 9900% increase, and the advantage is if you fix everything vs. day 1 you can now add a 4900% to a 5000% change to see a broader picture. On a rolling basis SOME dolt or other will go "from day 2 to 3 it only went up 100% so that means the total increase is 4900% + 100% = 5000%," which is wrong.
When you communicate numbers, your baseline can be the beginning, it can be the top, it can be the bottom, it can be the target/goal, it can be the average comparison from Europe... It's more unusual for it to just be the whatever the final figure ended up being, but there is a reason for that too.
People in general can instinctively get as far mentally as say... a half drop has to be made up by a 100% increase, a one third drop made up by a half increase, a one quarter drop made up by a one third increase, and they get lost somewhere around the fact an 80% drop means the original was 5x, a 90% drop means the original was 10x, 95% means 20x, 98% 50x and 99% 100x. Fall in between those and people go "okay a 92.168% drop..." and as their eyes glaze over they leave without any awareness or care of how much higher the original was. Yet tell them there was a 1276% drop, they immediately rule out the top being the baseline because as DPB says every elementary schooler knows something that can't be negative can't decrease by more than 100% OF ITSELF, and immediately after that realizes ah, the big one must have decreased by 1276% in terms of the smaller one, meaning it was 12.76x higher before than after. That's instantly and immediately and clearly accessible and the inverse of 92.168% drop is just a general kind of "yeah... sounds nice I guess."
So just use the real units? Certainly also valuable. Plavix going from $756 to $16 is just a home run. But then you have other cases of like "We reduced it from $7000 to $1500!" and then people go why the fuck everything cost money, how is there medicine that's more than $1000" and they don't buy the significance of the accomplishment. People pad numbers to be the most alluring. If a drug takes your risk of cancer from 0.8% to 0.4%, it didn't decrease your risk by 0.4%, it was a 50% DROP IN RISK!
There is also the population that thought a third pound burger was smaller than a quarter pounder. When they hear prices went up 300% and then went down 80%, they are dissatisfied. But they will "get it" if you use another baseline. Now, the people who think Trump and Kennedy can't tie their own shoes are not going to be as happy with that. But they already won't give a shit when you use the baseline they're used to in order to explain how the price of something dropped 90% (which is normal and fine and nothing wrong with it) so nothing was lost. I don't know what I was expecting when I clicked the spoiler but holy fuck. Tell me you told ChatGPT to sound schizophrenic and you didn't actually write that yourself. It’s some of the biggest bollocks I have ever read, and yet the example numbers still are far more fundamentally sound than with some of the shite Trump and RFK have been spouting
I love how oBlade still managed to never actually address the original question(s). He just doesn't understand math.
I also laughed really hard when he tried to misdirect by saying that it was all one big misunderstanding because Trump actually lowered the costs by 500% instead of 600%, as if that fixes the problem of supposedly reducing a cost by more than 100% lol. Maybe oBlade thinks that 500 is less than 100.
On May 20 2026 22:56 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2026 22:36 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 22:10 WombaT wrote:
Are we really at the point where we’re having to argue how math(s) works? First They Came for the mathematicians twelve-year-olds who understood what "percent decrease" means... On May 20 2026 22:22 misirlou wrote:
here I was thinking "doesn't a 99.9% reduction just sound better" ? and then I realized who the target audience was A thousand is sooooo much bigger and better than 99.9, therefore a thousand should be used! On May 20 2026 22:17 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 22:13 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 21:17 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 21:11 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 17:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 14:06 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 06:58 Simberto wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:
[quote]
How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at?
I think i got this one. You use increases in reverse. So basically, you are looking at what starting number would mean a 1000% increase to get where you are at the beginning, and if you reduce the price to that number, that is a 1000% decrease in TrumpMath. However, you also need to be bad at maths. So in this case, i say if you drop the price from 100 dollars to 10 dollars, that is a TrumpMath decrease of 1000%. Because if you increase the price from $10 to $100, you increase it to a 1000% of the original price, which if you are bad at maths is the same as increasing it by 1000%. And of course, reversing that 1000% price increase must also be a 1000% price drop. This is how maths works if you never understood beyond 5th grade in school. And since we got a group in power who really hates anyone with any education or anyone who is smarter than them, they love this kind of shit. Because they know how stuff ought to work, and finally someone in power is also willing to tell those nerds how stuff is supposed to work in the real world. Now it is those university nerds who are bad at math, while the guys in the trailer park are right. (final_price /initial_price)^-1 * 100, doesn't include baseline, it's just a rate of change that is defined backwards in time, a sort of "what will have been" the price type definition. oBlade explicitly mentioned that trump was using a different baseline so just wondering how that bit of math works, presumably so the rate of change is still defined as going forward in time, rather than backward. Oh yeah, oBlade is totally making stuff up too in that regard. Trump's version of math, which oBlade has decided to bizarrely defend, isn't actual math. You never heard of a fixed baseline? If Shkreli's stock went from $1 to $50 and then from $50 to $100 you'll have an aneurysm if someone says it increased 5000% since it only increased 100% from yesterday? Why deal with hypothetical numbers when RFK Jr's math is right here for everyone to see? “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” And as your link says: "Trump defended his past claims that prices on prescription medications had been cut by well over 100% — something that is mathematically impossible without manufacturers dropping prices to zero and then presumably paying consumers to use their product." Looks like another source has confirmed: Trump and RFK Jr. and oBlade are all really bad at understanding percentages. oBlade seems smart enough to know how percentages work, but aggressive gaslighting is his default option and nobody can find the factory reset button. Yeah sometimes it's hard to figure out if the problem is due to sincere ignorance or malicious intent. I don't know if Hanlon's Razor still applies to someone like oBlade anymore, who's pretty much exhausted any possible semblance of being a good-faith interlocutor. But for today, I'll be generous and err on the side of Hanlon, and assume oBlade is just really, really bad at math. + Show Spoiler + Oblade is a performance artist testing the limits of bullshit argumentation and TL.net is their chosen canvas They’re obviously not thick, I presume they like a challenge hence the perpetual defence of the seemingly indefensible. If they were a StarCraft player they’d be pushing boundaries there too, ‘can I get GM building only probes?’
Just to circle back to this... His insane rants today confirm (for me) that he's legitimately "thick" and not simply "testing the limits of bullshit argumentation". I think he's more on the sincerely-ignorant side than the malicious-troll side. I also think this post, in particular, epitomizes his lack of understanding:
On May 20 2026 22:49 oBlade wrote:
"Nice to meet you DPB, my name is Ethel, I had four sons. I lost half of them in WW2 and then half of them in the Korean War."
"Nice to meet you as well. So may I meet him?"
"Pardon me? My husband? Yes, he's in the other room, he was an oil man."
"Nice to meet you sport, what can I do for you?"
"No no, I mean the other son."
"My wife and I lost our sons, I just heard her telling you."
"No, she said she lost half of 4 which is 2, and then later lost half of the remaining two, but half of 2 is only one, which means she lost a total of 3 sons so one must be around here still somewhere. Can I meet him?"
"That's not what she meant, son, she meant a loss from the 4 sons we had originally. The other 50% died, the second half."
"Why are you bizarrely defending your wife's totally made-up version of math?" When the question is how can you have a 600% decrease of an item, since 600% is greater than 100%, the answer is, apparently, by creating a weird strawman scenario where 50% (notoriously less than 100%) is used to completely not address the concern.
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Northern Ireland26856 Posts
On May 21 2026 06:22 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 06:01 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it.
There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment.
Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic.
[quote]
You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity.
Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it.
The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA. The problem isn't Trump being bad at math, or liking big numbers, it's as you said, that his followers can't even agree that this one time, he isn't making sense and laugh it off. Yeah but dyhb isn't a Trump supporter and he's saying that Trump isn't making sense and yet he's being attacked for essentially not being outraged enough. oBlade is a different matter.
There is a remarkably effective antidote to this that has very little to do with intensity of outrage and it’s a as simple as ‘Yeah that thing is stupid’ and leaving it at that. Boom, done. Bob’s your bloody uncle
Rather than ‘well… anyway you may as well just have a laugh about it right?’ or whatever
There’s a remarkable correlation between either outright defences, or ecquivocations around Trump from ostensible non-Trump supporters, attracting criticism for doing so. Who’d have possibly thunk it?
Especially if you don’t support Trump, it should be a bloody doddle to, I don’t know, say something like ‘yes that’s not how maths works’
Still, despite trying to learn I still cannot peer into the souls of my fellow humans, at least yet. But what is the Occam’s Razor calculation looking like on ‘I don’t support Trump I just defend or deflect his bollocks all the time’ looking like?
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Northern Ireland26856 Posts
On May 21 2026 06:39 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 06:14 WombaT wrote:On May 21 2026 06:05 LightSpectra wrote:On May 21 2026 05:58 oBlade wrote:On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:
[quote]
How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at?
Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ? Yeah and I will have to just resolve that this is my last post on it, because although I think the success of lowering drug prices is more important than everyone using communications disagreements to reassure themselves they're smarter than the administration, otherwise I get baited too easily by people who claim to want to understand something. $10 is an oral typo, he meant $100, same as he said later in the article you read, and then he's off because it's 500% not 600%. $600 is 600% of the amount of $100 but it's 500% more than it. You couldn't figure this out? It takes two seconds. + Show Spoiler +The extra 100% mistake happens because around the time English switches from "thrice," the comparison of amounts forks between referring to the total and to the difference.
If I have 20 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have twice as many tanks as you. Not "once/one time as much more" or something. You can say 100% more but there's no other equivalent. But if I have 90 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have nine times as many, but eight times more. 900% as many and 800% more. People misplace the first 100% in that often. Like with the naive approach to odds also. People see a one to five chance and then think oh, must be 20%, same as one in five, until they start to realize actually it's one in six - people are off by one, or 100%, in this way often.
Like if you're tracking sales or something and have a target of 1000 widgets and sometimes do great and sometimes miss, you don't want to be tracking percentage changes on a constantly rolling basis that have no direct comparison to each other. So if your 2020 sales are 1300 and 2021 is 800 and 2022 is 900% it's very useful to go +30% -50% +10% because the percents admit to addition/subtraction by being fixed on the same baseline. The fact that 2020 is 30% up and 2021 is 20% down takes you straight to a 50% drop of the target so you can convert immediately to widgets. Or if Shkreli's stock is $1 on day 1, $50 on day 2, and $100 on day 3, the day over day change from 1 to 2 is 4900%, and day over day from 2 to 3 is 100%. But also from day 1 to 3 is clearly a 9900% increase, and the advantage is if you fix everything vs. day 1 you can now add a 4900% to a 5000% change to see a broader picture. On a rolling basis SOME dolt or other will go "from day 2 to 3 it only went up 100% so that means the total increase is 4900% + 100% = 5000%," which is wrong.
When you communicate numbers, your baseline can be the beginning, it can be the top, it can be the bottom, it can be the target/goal, it can be the average comparison from Europe... It's more unusual for it to just be the whatever the final figure ended up being, but there is a reason for that too.
People in general can instinctively get as far mentally as say... a half drop has to be made up by a 100% increase, a one third drop made up by a half increase, a one quarter drop made up by a one third increase, and they get lost somewhere around the fact an 80% drop means the original was 5x, a 90% drop means the original was 10x, 95% means 20x, 98% 50x and 99% 100x. Fall in between those and people go "okay a 92.168% drop..." and as their eyes glaze over they leave without any awareness or care of how much higher the original was. Yet tell them there was a 1276% drop, they immediately rule out the top being the baseline because as DPB says every elementary schooler knows something that can't be negative can't decrease by more than 100% OF ITSELF, and immediately after that realizes ah, the big one must have decreased by 1276% in terms of the smaller one, meaning it was 12.76x higher before than after. That's instantly and immediately and clearly accessible and the inverse of 92.168% drop is just a general kind of "yeah... sounds nice I guess."
So just use the real units? Certainly also valuable. Plavix going from $756 to $16 is just a home run. But then you have other cases of like "We reduced it from $7000 to $1500!" and then people go why the fuck everything cost money, how is there medicine that's more than $1000" and they don't buy the significance of the accomplishment. People pad numbers to be the most alluring. If a drug takes your risk of cancer from 0.8% to 0.4%, it didn't decrease your risk by 0.4%, it was a 50% DROP IN RISK!
There is also the population that thought a third pound burger was smaller than a quarter pounder. When they hear prices went up 300% and then went down 80%, they are dissatisfied. But they will "get it" if you use another baseline. Now, the people who think Trump and Kennedy can't tie their own shoes are not going to be as happy with that. But they already won't give a shit when you use the baseline they're used to in order to explain how the price of something dropped 90% (which is normal and fine and nothing wrong with it) so nothing was lost. I don't know what I was expecting when I clicked the spoiler but holy fuck. Tell me you told ChatGPT to sound schizophrenic and you didn't actually write that yourself. It’s some of the biggest bollocks I have ever read, and yet the example numbers still are far more fundamentally sound than with some of the shite Trump and RFK have been spouting I love how oBlade still managed to never actually address the original question(s). He just doesn't understand math. I also laughed really hard when he tried to misdirect by saying that it was all one big misunderstanding because Trump actually lowered the costs by 500% instead of 600%, as if that fixes the problem of supposedly reducing a cost by more than 100% lol. Maybe oBlade thinks that 500 is less than 100. Show nested quote +On May 20 2026 22:56 WombaT wrote:On May 20 2026 22:36 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 22:10 WombaT wrote:
Are we really at the point where we’re having to argue how math(s) works? First They Came for the mathematicians twelve-year-olds who understood what "percent decrease" means... On May 20 2026 22:22 misirlou wrote:
here I was thinking "doesn't a 99.9% reduction just sound better" ? and then I realized who the target audience was A thousand is sooooo much bigger and better than 99.9, therefore a thousand should be used! On May 20 2026 22:17 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 22:13 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 21:17 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 21:11 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 17:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 14:06 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 06:58 Simberto wrote:
[quote]
I think i got this one. You use increases in reverse.
So basically, you are looking at what starting number would mean a 1000% increase to get where you are at the beginning, and if you reduce the price to that number, that is a 1000% decrease in TrumpMath. However, you also need to be bad at maths.
So in this case, i say if you drop the price from 100 dollars to 10 dollars, that is a TrumpMath decrease of 1000%. Because if you increase the price from $10 to $100, you increase it to a 1000% of the original price, which if you are bad at maths is the same as increasing it by 1000%. And of course, reversing that 1000% price increase must also be a 1000% price drop.
This is how maths works if you never understood beyond 5th grade in school.
And since we got a group in power who really hates anyone with any education or anyone who is smarter than them, they love this kind of shit. Because they know how stuff ought to work, and finally someone in power is also willing to tell those nerds how stuff is supposed to work in the real world. Now it is those university nerds who are bad at math, while the guys in the trailer park are right. (final_price /initial_price)^-1 * 100, doesn't include baseline, it's just a rate of change that is defined backwards in time, a sort of "what will have been" the price type definition. oBlade explicitly mentioned that trump was using a different baseline so just wondering how that bit of math works, presumably so the rate of change is still defined as going forward in time, rather than backward. Oh yeah, oBlade is totally making stuff up too in that regard. Trump's version of math, which oBlade has decided to bizarrely defend, isn't actual math. You never heard of a fixed baseline? If Shkreli's stock went from $1 to $50 and then from $50 to $100 you'll have an aneurysm if someone says it increased 5000% since it only increased 100% from yesterday? Why deal with hypothetical numbers when RFK Jr's math is right here for everyone to see? “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” And as your link says: "Trump defended his past claims that prices on prescription medications had been cut by well over 100% — something that is mathematically impossible without manufacturers dropping prices to zero and then presumably paying consumers to use their product." Looks like another source has confirmed: Trump and RFK Jr. and oBlade are all really bad at understanding percentages. oBlade seems smart enough to know how percentages work, but aggressive gaslighting is his default option and nobody can find the factory reset button. Yeah sometimes it's hard to figure out if the problem is due to sincere ignorance or malicious intent. I don't know if Hanlon's Razor still applies to someone like oBlade anymore, who's pretty much exhausted any possible semblance of being a good-faith interlocutor. But for today, I'll be generous and err on the side of Hanlon, and assume oBlade is just really, really bad at math. + Show Spoiler + Oblade is a performance artist testing the limits of bullshit argumentation and TL.net is their chosen canvas They’re obviously not thick, I presume they like a challenge hence the perpetual defence of the seemingly indefensible. If they were a StarCraft player they’d be pushing boundaries there too, ‘can I get GM building only probes?’ Just to circle back to this... His insane rants today confirm (for me) that he's legitimately "thick" and not simply "testing the limits of bullshit argumentation". I think he's more on the sincerely-ignorant side than the malicious-troll side. I also think this post, in particular, epitomizes his lack of understanding: Show nested quote +On May 20 2026 22:49 oBlade wrote:
"Nice to meet you DPB, my name is Ethel, I had four sons. I lost half of them in WW2 and then half of them in the Korean War."
"Nice to meet you as well. So may I meet him?"
"Pardon me? My husband? Yes, he's in the other room, he was an oil man."
"Nice to meet you sport, what can I do for you?"
"No no, I mean the other son."
"My wife and I lost our sons, I just heard her telling you."
"No, she said she lost half of 4 which is 2, and then later lost half of the remaining two, but half of 2 is only one, which means she lost a total of 3 sons so one must be around here still somewhere. Can I meet him?"
"That's not what she meant, son, she meant a loss from the 4 sons we had originally. The other 50% died, the second half."
"Why are you bizarrely defending your wife's totally made-up version of math?" When the question is how can you have a 600% decrease of an item, since 600% is greater than 100%, the answer is, apparently, by creating a weird strawman scenario where 50% (notoriously less than 100%) is used to completely not address the concern.
I stick by my assessment, I may have spent more of my youth LARPing as a follower of a good chunk of political ideologies to annoy people than I should have. Game recognises game
If I were to say go ‘DPB, please defend a claim of a 600% decrease being a reasonable claim’, you can’t do it. It’s stupid, it’s not how maths works. That’s how most people operate provided they were in class the period how percentages were taught.
Oblade? They’re sitting there going ‘fuck yeah I love a challenge, I’m going to show those fucks how a 600% decrease is a reasonable claim’
That they’re unable to do so even after injecting experimental drugs to exponentially increase one’s ability to talk utter, utter bollocks speaks to the rather intractable scale of the initial problem.
It is my preferred headcanon anyway, I feel it beats alternatives such as OBlade being a medically diagnosable insane person, or suffering from brain damage after an ill-advised period inhaling oven cleaners in their formative years
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On May 21 2026 06:39 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 06:14 WombaT wrote:On May 21 2026 06:05 LightSpectra wrote:On May 21 2026 05:58 oBlade wrote:On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:
[quote]
How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at?
Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ? Yeah and I will have to just resolve that this is my last post on it, because although I think the success of lowering drug prices is more important than everyone using communications disagreements to reassure themselves they're smarter than the administration, otherwise I get baited too easily by people who claim to want to understand something. $10 is an oral typo, he meant $100, same as he said later in the article you read, and then he's off because it's 500% not 600%. $600 is 600% of the amount of $100 but it's 500% more than it. You couldn't figure this out? It takes two seconds. + Show Spoiler +The extra 100% mistake happens because around the time English switches from "thrice," the comparison of amounts forks between referring to the total and to the difference.
If I have 20 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have twice as many tanks as you. Not "once/one time as much more" or something. You can say 100% more but there's no other equivalent. But if I have 90 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have nine times as many, but eight times more. 900% as many and 800% more. People misplace the first 100% in that often. Like with the naive approach to odds also. People see a one to five chance and then think oh, must be 20%, same as one in five, until they start to realize actually it's one in six - people are off by one, or 100%, in this way often.
Like if you're tracking sales or something and have a target of 1000 widgets and sometimes do great and sometimes miss, you don't want to be tracking percentage changes on a constantly rolling basis that have no direct comparison to each other. So if your 2020 sales are 1300 and 2021 is 800 and 2022 is 900% it's very useful to go +30% -50% +10% because the percents admit to addition/subtraction by being fixed on the same baseline. The fact that 2020 is 30% up and 2021 is 20% down takes you straight to a 50% drop of the target so you can convert immediately to widgets. Or if Shkreli's stock is $1 on day 1, $50 on day 2, and $100 on day 3, the day over day change from 1 to 2 is 4900%, and day over day from 2 to 3 is 100%. But also from day 1 to 3 is clearly a 9900% increase, and the advantage is if you fix everything vs. day 1 you can now add a 4900% to a 5000% change to see a broader picture. On a rolling basis SOME dolt or other will go "from day 2 to 3 it only went up 100% so that means the total increase is 4900% + 100% = 5000%," which is wrong.
When you communicate numbers, your baseline can be the beginning, it can be the top, it can be the bottom, it can be the target/goal, it can be the average comparison from Europe... It's more unusual for it to just be the whatever the final figure ended up being, but there is a reason for that too.
People in general can instinctively get as far mentally as say... a half drop has to be made up by a 100% increase, a one third drop made up by a half increase, a one quarter drop made up by a one third increase, and they get lost somewhere around the fact an 80% drop means the original was 5x, a 90% drop means the original was 10x, 95% means 20x, 98% 50x and 99% 100x. Fall in between those and people go "okay a 92.168% drop..." and as their eyes glaze over they leave without any awareness or care of how much higher the original was. Yet tell them there was a 1276% drop, they immediately rule out the top being the baseline because as DPB says every elementary schooler knows something that can't be negative can't decrease by more than 100% OF ITSELF, and immediately after that realizes ah, the big one must have decreased by 1276% in terms of the smaller one, meaning it was 12.76x higher before than after. That's instantly and immediately and clearly accessible and the inverse of 92.168% drop is just a general kind of "yeah... sounds nice I guess."
So just use the real units? Certainly also valuable. Plavix going from $756 to $16 is just a home run. But then you have other cases of like "We reduced it from $7000 to $1500!" and then people go why the fuck everything cost money, how is there medicine that's more than $1000" and they don't buy the significance of the accomplishment. People pad numbers to be the most alluring. If a drug takes your risk of cancer from 0.8% to 0.4%, it didn't decrease your risk by 0.4%, it was a 50% DROP IN RISK!
There is also the population that thought a third pound burger was smaller than a quarter pounder. When they hear prices went up 300% and then went down 80%, they are dissatisfied. But they will "get it" if you use another baseline. Now, the people who think Trump and Kennedy can't tie their own shoes are not going to be as happy with that. But they already won't give a shit when you use the baseline they're used to in order to explain how the price of something dropped 90% (which is normal and fine and nothing wrong with it) so nothing was lost. I don't know what I was expecting when I clicked the spoiler but holy fuck. Tell me you told ChatGPT to sound schizophrenic and you didn't actually write that yourself. It’s some of the biggest bollocks I have ever read, and yet the example numbers still are far more fundamentally sound than with some of the shite Trump and RFK have been spouting I love how oBlade still managed to never actually address the original question(s). He just doesn't understand math. I also laughed really hard when he tried to misdirect by saying that it was all one big misunderstanding because Trump actually lowered the costs by 500% instead of 600%, as if that fixes the problem of supposedly reducing a cost by more than 100% lol. Maybe oBlade thinks that 500 is less than 100. Show nested quote +On May 20 2026 22:56 WombaT wrote:On May 20 2026 22:36 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 22:10 WombaT wrote:
Are we really at the point where we’re having to argue how math(s) works? First They Came for the mathematicians twelve-year-olds who understood what "percent decrease" means... On May 20 2026 22:22 misirlou wrote:
here I was thinking "doesn't a 99.9% reduction just sound better" ? and then I realized who the target audience was A thousand is sooooo much bigger and better than 99.9, therefore a thousand should be used! On May 20 2026 22:17 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 22:13 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 21:17 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 21:11 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 17:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 14:06 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 06:58 Simberto wrote:
[quote]
I think i got this one. You use increases in reverse.
So basically, you are looking at what starting number would mean a 1000% increase to get where you are at the beginning, and if you reduce the price to that number, that is a 1000% decrease in TrumpMath. However, you also need to be bad at maths.
So in this case, i say if you drop the price from 100 dollars to 10 dollars, that is a TrumpMath decrease of 1000%. Because if you increase the price from $10 to $100, you increase it to a 1000% of the original price, which if you are bad at maths is the same as increasing it by 1000%. And of course, reversing that 1000% price increase must also be a 1000% price drop.
This is how maths works if you never understood beyond 5th grade in school.
And since we got a group in power who really hates anyone with any education or anyone who is smarter than them, they love this kind of shit. Because they know how stuff ought to work, and finally someone in power is also willing to tell those nerds how stuff is supposed to work in the real world. Now it is those university nerds who are bad at math, while the guys in the trailer park are right. (final_price /initial_price)^-1 * 100, doesn't include baseline, it's just a rate of change that is defined backwards in time, a sort of "what will have been" the price type definition. oBlade explicitly mentioned that trump was using a different baseline so just wondering how that bit of math works, presumably so the rate of change is still defined as going forward in time, rather than backward. Oh yeah, oBlade is totally making stuff up too in that regard. Trump's version of math, which oBlade has decided to bizarrely defend, isn't actual math. You never heard of a fixed baseline? If Shkreli's stock went from $1 to $50 and then from $50 to $100 you'll have an aneurysm if someone says it increased 5000% since it only increased 100% from yesterday? Why deal with hypothetical numbers when RFK Jr's math is right here for everyone to see? “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” And as your link says: "Trump defended his past claims that prices on prescription medications had been cut by well over 100% — something that is mathematically impossible without manufacturers dropping prices to zero and then presumably paying consumers to use their product." Looks like another source has confirmed: Trump and RFK Jr. and oBlade are all really bad at understanding percentages. oBlade seems smart enough to know how percentages work, but aggressive gaslighting is his default option and nobody can find the factory reset button. Yeah sometimes it's hard to figure out if the problem is due to sincere ignorance or malicious intent. I don't know if Hanlon's Razor still applies to someone like oBlade anymore, who's pretty much exhausted any possible semblance of being a good-faith interlocutor. But for today, I'll be generous and err on the side of Hanlon, and assume oBlade is just really, really bad at math. + Show Spoiler + Oblade is a performance artist testing the limits of bullshit argumentation and TL.net is their chosen canvas They’re obviously not thick, I presume they like a challenge hence the perpetual defence of the seemingly indefensible. If they were a StarCraft player they’d be pushing boundaries there too, ‘can I get GM building only probes?’ Just to circle back to this... His insane rants today confirm (for me) that he's legitimately "thick" and not simply "testing the limits of bullshit argumentation". I think he's more on the sincerely-ignorant side than the malicious-troll side. I also think this post, in particular, epitomizes his lack of understanding: Show nested quote +On May 20 2026 22:49 oBlade wrote:
"Nice to meet you DPB, my name is Ethel, I had four sons. I lost half of them in WW2 and then half of them in the Korean War."
"Nice to meet you as well. So may I meet him?"
"Pardon me? My husband? Yes, he's in the other room, he was an oil man."
"Nice to meet you sport, what can I do for you?"
"No no, I mean the other son."
"My wife and I lost our sons, I just heard her telling you."
"No, she said she lost half of 4 which is 2, and then later lost half of the remaining two, but half of 2 is only one, which means she lost a total of 3 sons so one must be around here still somewhere. Can I meet him?"
"That's not what she meant, son, she meant a loss from the 4 sons we had originally. The other 50% died, the second half."
"Why are you bizarrely defending your wife's totally made-up version of math?" When the question is how can you have a 600% decrease of an item, since 600% is greater than 100%, the answer is, apparently, by creating a weird strawman scenario where 50% (notoriously less than 100%) is used to completely not address the concern.
What oblade is saying in his weird post is that depending on the baseline, percentage decreases will have different values. In his example, 4 decreased by 50% is 2. Another 50% decrease can mean either another -2 or a -1 depending on the baseline.
He uses this to justify that it's not dumb for Trump to take the baseline as the end result. The rest of us are telling him that, in no case can you use the end result as the base for calculating percentage decreases.
As for me, I'm in the camp of "oblade chose the Trump side in the TL debating tournament and took it too far" rather than "oblade has brain damage"
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On May 21 2026 06:49 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 06:39 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 21 2026 06:14 WombaT wrote:On May 21 2026 06:05 LightSpectra wrote:On May 21 2026 05:58 oBlade wrote:On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
[quote]
Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars?
"Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000?
(A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ? Yeah and I will have to just resolve that this is my last post on it, because although I think the success of lowering drug prices is more important than everyone using communications disagreements to reassure themselves they're smarter than the administration, otherwise I get baited too easily by people who claim to want to understand something. $10 is an oral typo, he meant $100, same as he said later in the article you read, and then he's off because it's 500% not 600%. $600 is 600% of the amount of $100 but it's 500% more than it. You couldn't figure this out? It takes two seconds. + Show Spoiler +The extra 100% mistake happens because around the time English switches from "thrice," the comparison of amounts forks between referring to the total and to the difference.
If I have 20 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have twice as many tanks as you. Not "once/one time as much more" or something. You can say 100% more but there's no other equivalent. But if I have 90 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have nine times as many, but eight times more. 900% as many and 800% more. People misplace the first 100% in that often. Like with the naive approach to odds also. People see a one to five chance and then think oh, must be 20%, same as one in five, until they start to realize actually it's one in six - people are off by one, or 100%, in this way often.
Like if you're tracking sales or something and have a target of 1000 widgets and sometimes do great and sometimes miss, you don't want to be tracking percentage changes on a constantly rolling basis that have no direct comparison to each other. So if your 2020 sales are 1300 and 2021 is 800 and 2022 is 900% it's very useful to go +30% -50% +10% because the percents admit to addition/subtraction by being fixed on the same baseline. The fact that 2020 is 30% up and 2021 is 20% down takes you straight to a 50% drop of the target so you can convert immediately to widgets. Or if Shkreli's stock is $1 on day 1, $50 on day 2, and $100 on day 3, the day over day change from 1 to 2 is 4900%, and day over day from 2 to 3 is 100%. But also from day 1 to 3 is clearly a 9900% increase, and the advantage is if you fix everything vs. day 1 you can now add a 4900% to a 5000% change to see a broader picture. On a rolling basis SOME dolt or other will go "from day 2 to 3 it only went up 100% so that means the total increase is 4900% + 100% = 5000%," which is wrong.
When you communicate numbers, your baseline can be the beginning, it can be the top, it can be the bottom, it can be the target/goal, it can be the average comparison from Europe... It's more unusual for it to just be the whatever the final figure ended up being, but there is a reason for that too.
People in general can instinctively get as far mentally as say... a half drop has to be made up by a 100% increase, a one third drop made up by a half increase, a one quarter drop made up by a one third increase, and they get lost somewhere around the fact an 80% drop means the original was 5x, a 90% drop means the original was 10x, 95% means 20x, 98% 50x and 99% 100x. Fall in between those and people go "okay a 92.168% drop..." and as their eyes glaze over they leave without any awareness or care of how much higher the original was. Yet tell them there was a 1276% drop, they immediately rule out the top being the baseline because as DPB says every elementary schooler knows something that can't be negative can't decrease by more than 100% OF ITSELF, and immediately after that realizes ah, the big one must have decreased by 1276% in terms of the smaller one, meaning it was 12.76x higher before than after. That's instantly and immediately and clearly accessible and the inverse of 92.168% drop is just a general kind of "yeah... sounds nice I guess."
So just use the real units? Certainly also valuable. Plavix going from $756 to $16 is just a home run. But then you have other cases of like "We reduced it from $7000 to $1500!" and then people go why the fuck everything cost money, how is there medicine that's more than $1000" and they don't buy the significance of the accomplishment. People pad numbers to be the most alluring. If a drug takes your risk of cancer from 0.8% to 0.4%, it didn't decrease your risk by 0.4%, it was a 50% DROP IN RISK!
There is also the population that thought a third pound burger was smaller than a quarter pounder. When they hear prices went up 300% and then went down 80%, they are dissatisfied. But they will "get it" if you use another baseline. Now, the people who think Trump and Kennedy can't tie their own shoes are not going to be as happy with that. But they already won't give a shit when you use the baseline they're used to in order to explain how the price of something dropped 90% (which is normal and fine and nothing wrong with it) so nothing was lost. I don't know what I was expecting when I clicked the spoiler but holy fuck. Tell me you told ChatGPT to sound schizophrenic and you didn't actually write that yourself. It’s some of the biggest bollocks I have ever read, and yet the example numbers still are far more fundamentally sound than with some of the shite Trump and RFK have been spouting I love how oBlade still managed to never actually address the original question(s). He just doesn't understand math. I also laughed really hard when he tried to misdirect by saying that it was all one big misunderstanding because Trump actually lowered the costs by 500% instead of 600%, as if that fixes the problem of supposedly reducing a cost by more than 100% lol. Maybe oBlade thinks that 500 is less than 100. On May 20 2026 22:56 WombaT wrote:On May 20 2026 22:36 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 22:10 WombaT wrote:
Are we really at the point where we’re having to argue how math(s) works? First They Came for the mathematicians twelve-year-olds who understood what "percent decrease" means... On May 20 2026 22:22 misirlou wrote:
here I was thinking "doesn't a 99.9% reduction just sound better" ? and then I realized who the target audience was A thousand is sooooo much bigger and better than 99.9, therefore a thousand should be used! On May 20 2026 22:17 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 22:13 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 21:17 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 21:11 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 17:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 14:06 EnDeR_ wrote:
[quote]
(final_price /initial_price)^-1 * 100, doesn't include baseline, it's just a rate of change that is defined backwards in time, a sort of "what will have been" the price type definition. oBlade explicitly mentioned that trump was using a different baseline so just wondering how that bit of math works, presumably so the rate of change is still defined as going forward in time, rather than backward. Oh yeah, oBlade is totally making stuff up too in that regard. Trump's version of math, which oBlade has decided to bizarrely defend, isn't actual math. You never heard of a fixed baseline? If Shkreli's stock went from $1 to $50 and then from $50 to $100 you'll have an aneurysm if someone says it increased 5000% since it only increased 100% from yesterday? Why deal with hypothetical numbers when RFK Jr's math is right here for everyone to see? “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” And as your link says: "Trump defended his past claims that prices on prescription medications had been cut by well over 100% — something that is mathematically impossible without manufacturers dropping prices to zero and then presumably paying consumers to use their product." Looks like another source has confirmed: Trump and RFK Jr. and oBlade are all really bad at understanding percentages. oBlade seems smart enough to know how percentages work, but aggressive gaslighting is his default option and nobody can find the factory reset button. Yeah sometimes it's hard to figure out if the problem is due to sincere ignorance or malicious intent. I don't know if Hanlon's Razor still applies to someone like oBlade anymore, who's pretty much exhausted any possible semblance of being a good-faith interlocutor. But for today, I'll be generous and err on the side of Hanlon, and assume oBlade is just really, really bad at math. + Show Spoiler + Oblade is a performance artist testing the limits of bullshit argumentation and TL.net is their chosen canvas They’re obviously not thick, I presume they like a challenge hence the perpetual defence of the seemingly indefensible. If they were a StarCraft player they’d be pushing boundaries there too, ‘can I get GM building only probes?’ Just to circle back to this... His insane rants today confirm (for me) that he's legitimately "thick" and not simply "testing the limits of bullshit argumentation". I think he's more on the sincerely-ignorant side than the malicious-troll side. I also think this post, in particular, epitomizes his lack of understanding: On May 20 2026 22:49 oBlade wrote:
"Nice to meet you DPB, my name is Ethel, I had four sons. I lost half of them in WW2 and then half of them in the Korean War."
"Nice to meet you as well. So may I meet him?"
"Pardon me? My husband? Yes, he's in the other room, he was an oil man."
"Nice to meet you sport, what can I do for you?"
"No no, I mean the other son."
"My wife and I lost our sons, I just heard her telling you."
"No, she said she lost half of 4 which is 2, and then later lost half of the remaining two, but half of 2 is only one, which means she lost a total of 3 sons so one must be around here still somewhere. Can I meet him?"
"That's not what she meant, son, she meant a loss from the 4 sons we had originally. The other 50% died, the second half."
"Why are you bizarrely defending your wife's totally made-up version of math?" When the question is how can you have a 600% decrease of an item, since 600% is greater than 100%, the answer is, apparently, by creating a weird strawman scenario where 50% (notoriously less than 100%) is used to completely not address the concern. I stick by my assessment, I may have spent more of my youth LARPing as a follower of a good chunk of political ideologies to annoy people than I should have. Game recognises game If I were to say go ‘DPB, please defend a claim of a 600% decrease being a reasonable claim’, you can’t do it. It’s stupid, it’s not how maths works. That’s how most people operate provided they were in class the period how percentages were taught. Oblade? They’re sitting there going ‘fuck yeah I love a challenge, I’m going to show those fucks how a 600% decrease is a reasonable claim’ That they’re unable to do so even after injecting experimental drugs to exponentially increase one’s ability to talk utter, utter bollocks speaks to the rather intractable scale of the initial problem. It is my preferred headcanon anyway, I feel it beats alternatives such as OBlade being a medically diagnosable insane person, or suffering from brain damage after an ill-advised period inhaling oven cleaners in their formative years
I don't blame you preferring your headcanon over my headcanon!
On May 21 2026 06:57 Geiko wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 06:39 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 21 2026 06:14 WombaT wrote:On May 21 2026 06:05 LightSpectra wrote:On May 21 2026 05:58 oBlade wrote:On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
[quote]
Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars?
"Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000?
(A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ? Yeah and I will have to just resolve that this is my last post on it, because although I think the success of lowering drug prices is more important than everyone using communications disagreements to reassure themselves they're smarter than the administration, otherwise I get baited too easily by people who claim to want to understand something. $10 is an oral typo, he meant $100, same as he said later in the article you read, and then he's off because it's 500% not 600%. $600 is 600% of the amount of $100 but it's 500% more than it. You couldn't figure this out? It takes two seconds. + Show Spoiler +The extra 100% mistake happens because around the time English switches from "thrice," the comparison of amounts forks between referring to the total and to the difference.
If I have 20 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have twice as many tanks as you. Not "once/one time as much more" or something. You can say 100% more but there's no other equivalent. But if I have 90 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have nine times as many, but eight times more. 900% as many and 800% more. People misplace the first 100% in that often. Like with the naive approach to odds also. People see a one to five chance and then think oh, must be 20%, same as one in five, until they start to realize actually it's one in six - people are off by one, or 100%, in this way often.
Like if you're tracking sales or something and have a target of 1000 widgets and sometimes do great and sometimes miss, you don't want to be tracking percentage changes on a constantly rolling basis that have no direct comparison to each other. So if your 2020 sales are 1300 and 2021 is 800 and 2022 is 900% it's very useful to go +30% -50% +10% because the percents admit to addition/subtraction by being fixed on the same baseline. The fact that 2020 is 30% up and 2021 is 20% down takes you straight to a 50% drop of the target so you can convert immediately to widgets. Or if Shkreli's stock is $1 on day 1, $50 on day 2, and $100 on day 3, the day over day change from 1 to 2 is 4900%, and day over day from 2 to 3 is 100%. But also from day 1 to 3 is clearly a 9900% increase, and the advantage is if you fix everything vs. day 1 you can now add a 4900% to a 5000% change to see a broader picture. On a rolling basis SOME dolt or other will go "from day 2 to 3 it only went up 100% so that means the total increase is 4900% + 100% = 5000%," which is wrong.
When you communicate numbers, your baseline can be the beginning, it can be the top, it can be the bottom, it can be the target/goal, it can be the average comparison from Europe... It's more unusual for it to just be the whatever the final figure ended up being, but there is a reason for that too.
People in general can instinctively get as far mentally as say... a half drop has to be made up by a 100% increase, a one third drop made up by a half increase, a one quarter drop made up by a one third increase, and they get lost somewhere around the fact an 80% drop means the original was 5x, a 90% drop means the original was 10x, 95% means 20x, 98% 50x and 99% 100x. Fall in between those and people go "okay a 92.168% drop..." and as their eyes glaze over they leave without any awareness or care of how much higher the original was. Yet tell them there was a 1276% drop, they immediately rule out the top being the baseline because as DPB says every elementary schooler knows something that can't be negative can't decrease by more than 100% OF ITSELF, and immediately after that realizes ah, the big one must have decreased by 1276% in terms of the smaller one, meaning it was 12.76x higher before than after. That's instantly and immediately and clearly accessible and the inverse of 92.168% drop is just a general kind of "yeah... sounds nice I guess."
So just use the real units? Certainly also valuable. Plavix going from $756 to $16 is just a home run. But then you have other cases of like "We reduced it from $7000 to $1500!" and then people go why the fuck everything cost money, how is there medicine that's more than $1000" and they don't buy the significance of the accomplishment. People pad numbers to be the most alluring. If a drug takes your risk of cancer from 0.8% to 0.4%, it didn't decrease your risk by 0.4%, it was a 50% DROP IN RISK!
There is also the population that thought a third pound burger was smaller than a quarter pounder. When they hear prices went up 300% and then went down 80%, they are dissatisfied. But they will "get it" if you use another baseline. Now, the people who think Trump and Kennedy can't tie their own shoes are not going to be as happy with that. But they already won't give a shit when you use the baseline they're used to in order to explain how the price of something dropped 90% (which is normal and fine and nothing wrong with it) so nothing was lost. I don't know what I was expecting when I clicked the spoiler but holy fuck. Tell me you told ChatGPT to sound schizophrenic and you didn't actually write that yourself. It’s some of the biggest bollocks I have ever read, and yet the example numbers still are far more fundamentally sound than with some of the shite Trump and RFK have been spouting I love how oBlade still managed to never actually address the original question(s). He just doesn't understand math. I also laughed really hard when he tried to misdirect by saying that it was all one big misunderstanding because Trump actually lowered the costs by 500% instead of 600%, as if that fixes the problem of supposedly reducing a cost by more than 100% lol. Maybe oBlade thinks that 500 is less than 100. On May 20 2026 22:56 WombaT wrote:On May 20 2026 22:36 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 22:10 WombaT wrote:
Are we really at the point where we’re having to argue how math(s) works? First They Came for the mathematicians twelve-year-olds who understood what "percent decrease" means... On May 20 2026 22:22 misirlou wrote:
here I was thinking "doesn't a 99.9% reduction just sound better" ? and then I realized who the target audience was A thousand is sooooo much bigger and better than 99.9, therefore a thousand should be used! On May 20 2026 22:17 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 22:13 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 21:17 LightSpectra wrote:On May 20 2026 21:11 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 17:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 14:06 EnDeR_ wrote:
[quote]
(final_price /initial_price)^-1 * 100, doesn't include baseline, it's just a rate of change that is defined backwards in time, a sort of "what will have been" the price type definition. oBlade explicitly mentioned that trump was using a different baseline so just wondering how that bit of math works, presumably so the rate of change is still defined as going forward in time, rather than backward. Oh yeah, oBlade is totally making stuff up too in that regard. Trump's version of math, which oBlade has decided to bizarrely defend, isn't actual math. You never heard of a fixed baseline? If Shkreli's stock went from $1 to $50 and then from $50 to $100 you'll have an aneurysm if someone says it increased 5000% since it only increased 100% from yesterday? Why deal with hypothetical numbers when RFK Jr's math is right here for everyone to see? “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” And as your link says: "Trump defended his past claims that prices on prescription medications had been cut by well over 100% — something that is mathematically impossible without manufacturers dropping prices to zero and then presumably paying consumers to use their product." Looks like another source has confirmed: Trump and RFK Jr. and oBlade are all really bad at understanding percentages. oBlade seems smart enough to know how percentages work, but aggressive gaslighting is his default option and nobody can find the factory reset button. Yeah sometimes it's hard to figure out if the problem is due to sincere ignorance or malicious intent. I don't know if Hanlon's Razor still applies to someone like oBlade anymore, who's pretty much exhausted any possible semblance of being a good-faith interlocutor. But for today, I'll be generous and err on the side of Hanlon, and assume oBlade is just really, really bad at math. + Show Spoiler + Oblade is a performance artist testing the limits of bullshit argumentation and TL.net is their chosen canvas They’re obviously not thick, I presume they like a challenge hence the perpetual defence of the seemingly indefensible. If they were a StarCraft player they’d be pushing boundaries there too, ‘can I get GM building only probes?’ Just to circle back to this... His insane rants today confirm (for me) that he's legitimately "thick" and not simply "testing the limits of bullshit argumentation". I think he's more on the sincerely-ignorant side than the malicious-troll side. I also think this post, in particular, epitomizes his lack of understanding: On May 20 2026 22:49 oBlade wrote:
"Nice to meet you DPB, my name is Ethel, I had four sons. I lost half of them in WW2 and then half of them in the Korean War."
"Nice to meet you as well. So may I meet him?"
"Pardon me? My husband? Yes, he's in the other room, he was an oil man."
"Nice to meet you sport, what can I do for you?"
"No no, I mean the other son."
"My wife and I lost our sons, I just heard her telling you."
"No, she said she lost half of 4 which is 2, and then later lost half of the remaining two, but half of 2 is only one, which means she lost a total of 3 sons so one must be around here still somewhere. Can I meet him?"
"That's not what she meant, son, she meant a loss from the 4 sons we had originally. The other 50% died, the second half."
"Why are you bizarrely defending your wife's totally made-up version of math?" When the question is how can you have a 600% decrease of an item, since 600% is greater than 100%, the answer is, apparently, by creating a weird strawman scenario where 50% (notoriously less than 100%) is used to completely not address the concern. What oblade is saying in his weird post is that depending on the baseline, percentage decreases will have different values. In his example, 4 decreased by 50% is 2. Another 50% decrease can mean either another -2 or a -1 depending on the baseline. He uses this to justify that it's not dumb for Trump to take the baseline as the end result. The rest of us are telling him that, in no case can you use the end result as the base for calculating percentage decreases. As for me, I'm in the camp of "oblade chose the Trump side in the TL debating tournament and took it too far" rather than "oblade has brain damage"
Oh I completely understand the point of his weird post, which is why I know it's a strawman. His double-interpretation of 50% can't be done with 600%, despite being asked multiple times by multiple people, and he knows it. You can reduce a whole or a half by an additional 50%, but neither interpretation addresses the actual problem of removing more than the whole amount from a cost.
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United States44012 Posts
On May 21 2026 06:05 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 05:58 oBlade wrote:On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:On May 20 2026 04:03 LightSpectra wrote:
[quote]
Yep, I'm sure that'll be the thing that crosses the line for you. Not the child rape or violent insurrection or losing a war against Iran or appointing incompetent alcoholics to critical positions overseeing national security, but the sixteenth or seventeenth time when Trump siphons taxpayer dollars into his own accounts. Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it. There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment. Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic. On May 20 2026 03:57 Billyboy wrote:
[quote]
No I’m for most of those things. Just if I was promised them all and it didn’t happen, I would be mad at the people who promised it, not their rivals. And I’d be extra mad if they were all getting themselves rich well I was paying more.
But I don’t want to be a peasant to an emperor. So my mindset is impossible for you understand.
I’m also not so stupid to believe the next promises. Or dumb enough to believe 1500% decreases in drug costs, other people paying for stuff or most of these vague promises without a plan. You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity. Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it. The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ? Yeah and I will have to just resolve that this is my last post on it, because although I think the success of lowering drug prices is more important than everyone using communications disagreements to reassure themselves they're smarter than the administration, otherwise I get baited too easily by people who claim to want to understand something. $10 is an oral typo, he meant $100, same as he said later in the article you read, and then he's off because it's 500% not 600%. $600 is 600% of the amount of $100 but it's 500% more than it. You couldn't figure this out? It takes two seconds. + Show Spoiler +The extra 100% mistake happens because around the time English switches from "thrice," the comparison of amounts forks between referring to the total and to the difference.
If I have 20 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have twice as many tanks as you. Not "once/one time as much more" or something. You can say 100% more but there's no other equivalent. But if I have 90 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have nine times as many, but eight times more. 900% as many and 800% more. People misplace the first 100% in that often. Like with the naive approach to odds also. People see a one to five chance and then think oh, must be 20%, same as one in five, until they start to realize actually it's one in six - people are off by one, or 100%, in this way often.
Like if you're tracking sales or something and have a target of 1000 widgets and sometimes do great and sometimes miss, you don't want to be tracking percentage changes on a constantly rolling basis that have no direct comparison to each other. So if your 2020 sales are 1300 and 2021 is 800 and 2022 is 900% it's very useful to go +30% -50% +10% because the percents admit to addition/subtraction by being fixed on the same baseline. The fact that 2020 is 30% up and 2021 is 20% down takes you straight to a 50% drop of the target so you can convert immediately to widgets. Or if Shkreli's stock is $1 on day 1, $50 on day 2, and $100 on day 3, the day over day change from 1 to 2 is 4900%, and day over day from 2 to 3 is 100%. But also from day 1 to 3 is clearly a 9900% increase, and the advantage is if you fix everything vs. day 1 you can now add a 4900% to a 5000% change to see a broader picture. On a rolling basis SOME dolt or other will go "from day 2 to 3 it only went up 100% so that means the total increase is 4900% + 100% = 5000%," which is wrong.
When you communicate numbers, your baseline can be the beginning, it can be the top, it can be the bottom, it can be the target/goal, it can be the average comparison from Europe... It's more unusual for it to just be the whatever the final figure ended up being, but there is a reason for that too.
People in general can instinctively get as far mentally as say... a half drop has to be made up by a 100% increase, a one third drop made up by a half increase, a one quarter drop made up by a one third increase, and they get lost somewhere around the fact an 80% drop means the original was 5x, a 90% drop means the original was 10x, 95% means 20x, 98% 50x and 99% 100x. Fall in between those and people go "okay a 92.168% drop..." and as their eyes glaze over they leave without any awareness or care of how much higher the original was. Yet tell them there was a 1276% drop, they immediately rule out the top being the baseline because as DPB says every elementary schooler knows something that can't be negative can't decrease by more than 100% OF ITSELF, and immediately after that realizes ah, the big one must have decreased by 1276% in terms of the smaller one, meaning it was 12.76x higher before than after. That's instantly and immediately and clearly accessible and the inverse of 92.168% drop is just a general kind of "yeah... sounds nice I guess."
So just use the real units? Certainly also valuable. Plavix going from $756 to $16 is just a home run. But then you have other cases of like "We reduced it from $7000 to $1500!" and then people go why the fuck everything cost money, how is there medicine that's more than $1000" and they don't buy the significance of the accomplishment. People pad numbers to be the most alluring. If a drug takes your risk of cancer from 0.8% to 0.4%, it didn't decrease your risk by 0.4%, it was a 50% DROP IN RISK!
There is also the population that thought a third pound burger was smaller than a quarter pounder. When they hear prices went up 300% and then went down 80%, they are dissatisfied. But they will "get it" if you use another baseline. Now, the people who think Trump and Kennedy can't tie their own shoes are not going to be as happy with that. But they already won't give a shit when you use the baseline they're used to in order to explain how the price of something dropped 90% (which is normal and fine and nothing wrong with it) so nothing was lost. I don't know what I was expecting when I clicked the spoiler but holy fuck. Tell me you told ChatGPT to sound schizophrenic and you didn't actually write that yourself.
$10 is $100 is not a strong start to an explanation.
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What about "if I have 90 tanks and you have 10, I have eight times more than you"?
Also, just to share around the "getting trolled by the usual crowd into actually posting" energy, I'd like to point out that GH is all about principles in this thread, "a vote for a lesser evil is still a vote for evil", but all his posts in the Russia thread were the complete opposite, realpolitik as his chosen lens (his words). "A wicked result with less harm is still less harm".
Tankies gonna tank (their credibility)
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On May 21 2026 07:43 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 06:05 LightSpectra wrote:On May 21 2026 05:58 oBlade wrote:On May 21 2026 04:47 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it.
There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment.
Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic.
[quote]
You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity.
Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it.
The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. That extra context of removing a percent increase and sloppily calling it a percent decrease isn't even close to what Trump and RFK Jr. are talking about though. That's an extra step that you just fabricated, but Trump and RFK Jr. don't actually say something like that. Trump said, quote: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re going to get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%.” RFK Jr. said, quote: “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” ( https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-rfk-jr-losing-fight-math-hearing ) They are not (still mistakenly) claiming that the removal of a 600% increase is the same as a 600% reduction. They are revealing that they don't even know that 100% of a cost is the entire cost. Once again, even this quote of RFK makes no sense. An increase from 10$ to 600$ is a 5900% increase. What I understood is that Trump uses the opposite for decreases so he would call a decrease from 600$ to 10$ a 5900% decrease ? So what does RFK mean by "a 600% reduction" ? Did he mean 6000% ? Does he mean that the price is divided by 60 and 60=6000%In that case, would a 100% decrease mean the price hasn't changed at all ? Can an expert on maga math (such as oblade) enlighten me on how that math works ? Yeah and I will have to just resolve that this is my last post on it, because although I think the success of lowering drug prices is more important than everyone using communications disagreements to reassure themselves they're smarter than the administration, otherwise I get baited too easily by people who claim to want to understand something. $10 is an oral typo, he meant $100, same as he said later in the article you read, and then he's off because it's 500% not 600%. $600 is 600% of the amount of $100 but it's 500% more than it. You couldn't figure this out? It takes two seconds. + Show Spoiler +The extra 100% mistake happens because around the time English switches from "thrice," the comparison of amounts forks between referring to the total and to the difference.
If I have 20 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have twice as many tanks as you. Not "once/one time as much more" or something. You can say 100% more but there's no other equivalent. But if I have 90 tanks and you have 10 tanks, I have nine times as many, but eight times more. 900% as many and 800% more. People misplace the first 100% in that often. Like with the naive approach to odds also. People see a one to five chance and then think oh, must be 20%, same as one in five, until they start to realize actually it's one in six - people are off by one, or 100%, in this way often.
Like if you're tracking sales or something and have a target of 1000 widgets and sometimes do great and sometimes miss, you don't want to be tracking percentage changes on a constantly rolling basis that have no direct comparison to each other. So if your 2020 sales are 1300 and 2021 is 800 and 2022 is 900% it's very useful to go +30% -50% +10% because the percents admit to addition/subtraction by being fixed on the same baseline. The fact that 2020 is 30% up and 2021 is 20% down takes you straight to a 50% drop of the target so you can convert immediately to widgets. Or if Shkreli's stock is $1 on day 1, $50 on day 2, and $100 on day 3, the day over day change from 1 to 2 is 4900%, and day over day from 2 to 3 is 100%. But also from day 1 to 3 is clearly a 9900% increase, and the advantage is if you fix everything vs. day 1 you can now add a 4900% to a 5000% change to see a broader picture. On a rolling basis SOME dolt or other will go "from day 2 to 3 it only went up 100% so that means the total increase is 4900% + 100% = 5000%," which is wrong.
When you communicate numbers, your baseline can be the beginning, it can be the top, it can be the bottom, it can be the target/goal, it can be the average comparison from Europe... It's more unusual for it to just be the whatever the final figure ended up being, but there is a reason for that too.
People in general can instinctively get as far mentally as say... a half drop has to be made up by a 100% increase, a one third drop made up by a half increase, a one quarter drop made up by a one third increase, and they get lost somewhere around the fact an 80% drop means the original was 5x, a 90% drop means the original was 10x, 95% means 20x, 98% 50x and 99% 100x. Fall in between those and people go "okay a 92.168% drop..." and as their eyes glaze over they leave without any awareness or care of how much higher the original was. Yet tell them there was a 1276% drop, they immediately rule out the top being the baseline because as DPB says every elementary schooler knows something that can't be negative can't decrease by more than 100% OF ITSELF, and immediately after that realizes ah, the big one must have decreased by 1276% in terms of the smaller one, meaning it was 12.76x higher before than after. That's instantly and immediately and clearly accessible and the inverse of 92.168% drop is just a general kind of "yeah... sounds nice I guess."
So just use the real units? Certainly also valuable. Plavix going from $756 to $16 is just a home run. But then you have other cases of like "We reduced it from $7000 to $1500!" and then people go why the fuck everything cost money, how is there medicine that's more than $1000" and they don't buy the significance of the accomplishment. People pad numbers to be the most alluring. If a drug takes your risk of cancer from 0.8% to 0.4%, it didn't decrease your risk by 0.4%, it was a 50% DROP IN RISK!
There is also the population that thought a third pound burger was smaller than a quarter pounder. When they hear prices went up 300% and then went down 80%, they are dissatisfied. But they will "get it" if you use another baseline. Now, the people who think Trump and Kennedy can't tie their own shoes are not going to be as happy with that. But they already won't give a shit when you use the baseline they're used to in order to explain how the price of something dropped 90% (which is normal and fine and nothing wrong with it) so nothing was lost. I don't know what I was expecting when I clicked the spoiler but holy fuck. Tell me you told ChatGPT to sound schizophrenic and you didn't actually write that yourself. $10 is $100 is not a strong start to an explanation.
Reminds me of the time that Ethel lost 600% of her sons in WW2.
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EPT
