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Yes I am troubled by how reactionary we are. I am not troubled by how the Internet enables gossip on a global scale. Improved capability for communications an

Yes I am troubled by how reactionary we are. I am not troubled by how the Internet enables gossip on a global scale. Improved capability for communications and cross-culture dialog is always a good thing. Not all human communication is Yeats poetry. "conspiracy theory" (in my opinion) is a weakened phrase which in modern usage seems to mean "narrative I find unbelievable" rather than an actual conspiracy. For better or worse, it seems to be a phrase that indicates a profound arrogance of the speaker, rather than a description of the topic they don't believe. I wish this phrase would die. It is a polarizing tool that is not effective for persuading people who are inclined to disagree.

bduerst 10y ago
I like the phrase that came up on one of the 538 podcasts, basically calling them Data Deniers. Even if you make ad hom accusations of speaker bias, i.e. "MSM is rigged against me!", it doesn't immediately invalidate the message.
- paulmd 10y ago
  That's ironic because this year Nate Silver is big on his polls-plus models that include all kinds of non-data factors. He talks the talk but then goes and pushes a bunch of models that don't focus on data. He's right though, data talks. The only model that was even more accurate than 538's in the 2012 election was Sam Wang's model at the Princeton Election Consortium and Sam Wang did only the bare minimum to mesh the gears* whereas Nate Silver was trying to "weight" some of the polls and blew the call on some states. * Note that there's a difference between accuracy and precision. A poll can be very accurate (little variation between measurements) but not very precise (the center of the distribution is skewed to one side). For example Rasmussen is famous for this, they are a super accurate pollster but average something like +7 Republican. Different types of polls survey different groups of people (landline, cell, online, focus-group, etc) and you have to take that "house effect" out to really average different types of polls together.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Not quite sure how experimenting with different data models is ironic to calling someone a data denier. Which "non-data factors" does the polls-plus model use, specifically?
deleted 10y ago
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bduerst 10y ago

I like the phrase that came up on one of the 538 podcasts, basically calling them Data Deniers. Even if you make ad hom accusations of speaker bias, i.e. "MSM is rigged against me!", it doesn't immediately invalidate the message.

paulmd 10y ago
That's ironic because this year Nate Silver is big on his polls-plus models that include all kinds of non-data factors. He talks the talk but then goes and pushes a bunch of models that don't focus on data. He's right though, data talks. The only model that was even more accurate than 538's in the 2012 election was Sam Wang's model at the Princeton Election Consortium and Sam Wang did only the bare minimum to mesh the gears* whereas Nate Silver was trying to "weight" some of the polls and blew the call on some states. * Note that there's a difference between accuracy and precision. A poll can be very accurate (little variation between measurements) but not very precise (the center of the distribution is skewed to one side). For example Rasmussen is famous for this, they are a super accurate pollster but average something like +7 Republican. Different types of polls survey different groups of people (landline, cell, online, focus-group, etc) and you have to take that "house effect" out to really average different types of polls together.
- bduerst 10y ago
  Not quite sure how experimenting with different data models is ironic to calling someone a data denier. Which "non-data factors" does the polls-plus model use, specifically?

deleted 10y ago

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