2 ms·

I much prefer Richard Feynman's term of "cargo-cult science" for what is basically the same idea. But I think it's misguided to apply it to this situation. 538

I much prefer Richard Feynman's term of "cargo-cult science" for what is basically the same idea. But I think it's misguided to apply it to this situation. 538 had Trump at a chance of 1/3 on election day. Not because there were any polls that pointed at a possible Trump win, but because their model was excellent enough to detect the uncertainty in the polls (mostly the high number of undecideds and volatility). Regarding the "mainstream Media" I fail to see what they did wrong. They showed Trump for what he is (after some hesitation). We now know that 30% of Americans are willing to throw millions of people under the bus, either because they're racists, or because they're willing to empower racism and an assortment of other hate just because some caricature of an imagined "coastal liberal" made fun of them. Another 50% can't be bothered to vote at all. Are people expecting the media to take its clues from these voters and triangulate their morals? Luckily, minority rights aren't actually subject to popular approval, even in a democracy.

fixxer 10y ago
The basic reason the polls failed was upstream from averages generated by 538 et al. Those polls tragically expected a repeatable electorate ("everyone who voted in 2012, less the dead and plus some fraction of new voters, will turn out"). Arguably, the shy Tory effect was at play as well. We shouldn't celebrate poll averaging as some data science genius; it is only as good as the polls being averaged.
dhimes 10y ago
Regarding the "mainstream Media" I fail to see what they did wrong. From what I've been reading and my own anecdote it's that they didn't follow Trump enough. They didn't hear his true message, and that was one that appealed to many. You don't have to be racist to buy into it. My anecdote: One fine afternoon, in fact it was the afternoon after Trump won the NH primary, I found myself at home for some reason far too early in the day. I flipped on the TV and came across a news network that I had never seen before. It's called the One America Network. The mission of the One America Network is to bring a conservative viewpoint to the masses through media. Fox, it seems, has become nothing but a bunch of crybaby liberals and for Real Americans (TM) OAN is the new place to be. OK. Let's see what these dipshits have to say. On comes Trump. He is at a rally in (IIRC) South Carolina. OAN had him budgeted for an hour of air time, but stayed with him until he finished. He talked about ObamaCare. It was a horrible system. It was made by Obama but he was in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry (sic - most would say insurance, but- truthiness...). He was going to throw it out and replace it with something better. Did you catch that last part? Had you heard that before? His appeal to his supporters was that ObamaCare wasn't working because it was written for big business by corrupt politicians and not for everyday Americans. And he was going to have a better plan. For them. You don't have to be a racist for that to resonate. And for the mainstream media to miss the nuance in these messages (I'm guessing there were more) is to not understand what the election was truly about. And, as everybody on this board knows, when you don't understand the fundamental concepts the Final Exam is a crapshoot.
- sesqu 10y ago
  Your anecdote supports the truthiness vs. factiness argument. Trump avoided making statements, such as what his improvement would be, so that didn't get reported. He only made claims about at issues he considered needing intervention, leaving the specifics to implementation. One set of people assumed he wanted to undo progress, while another assumed he wanted to advance it. One statement, two conclusions.
petemill 10y ago
What they did wrong is they didn't actually report news, they just followed Trump and said what he's doing and fed the press releases given out, which we could have gotten ourselves anyway. They didn't use their army of reporters to travel to the rust belt and show us the ghost towns. They didn't talk to the people there and really show the country why people are voting for Trump. Instead they just laughed about the possibility of Trump winning the Primaries (people voting for Trump don't watch CNN they watch Fox News), laughed about the possibility of Sanders winning (he got extremely close with 0 name recognition despite all the dismissing, laughed about the possibility of Trump winning. They did their normal of prioritizing access to politicians in the future, and helping their advertising donors, instead of feeling passionate about showing the truth.
- hga 10y ago
  This goes beyond Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds' "Just think of the media as Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense" and beyond Ben Rhodes' (who sold Obama's Iran policy), "The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. They literally know nothing." They didn't, as you said, get outside of the bubbles created by the campaigns themselves, or the reality distortion fields AKA narratives they pushed for both candidates, and wear out any shoe leather talking to real people. And perhaps this was true for any side of the campaign? Of course, we have to factor in that anything contrary to those narratives, i.e. anything they'd have discovered that would be vaguely interesting, would have been spiked at best, see this testimony from one of our own: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12928615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12928615 Given that, would they have even gotten authority or budget to get out there? So maybe we shouldn't be blaming the reporters, except that they continue to play this lazy, if not intellectually corrupt game.

fixxer 10y ago

The basic reason the polls failed was upstream from averages generated by 538 et al. Those polls tragically expected a repeatable electorate ("everyone who voted in 2012, less the dead and plus some fraction of new voters, will turn out"). Arguably, the shy Tory effect was at play as well. We shouldn't celebrate poll averaging as some data science genius; it is only as good as the polls being averaged.

dhimes 10y ago

Regarding the "mainstream Media" I fail to see what they did wrong. From what I've been reading and my own anecdote it's that they didn't follow Trump enough. They didn't hear his true message, and that was one that appealed to many. You don't have to be racist to buy into it. My anecdote: One fine afternoon, in fact it was the afternoon after Trump won the NH primary, I found myself at home for some reason far too early in the day. I flipped on the TV and came across a news network that I had never seen before. It's called the One America Network. The mission of the One America Network is to bring a conservative viewpoint to the masses through media. Fox, it seems, has become nothing but a bunch of crybaby liberals and for Real Americans (TM) OAN is the new place to be. OK. Let's see what these dipshits have to say. On comes Trump. He is at a rally in (IIRC) South Carolina. OAN had him budgeted for an hour of air time, but stayed with him until he finished. He talked about ObamaCare. It was a horrible system. It was made by Obama but he was in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry (sic - most would say insurance, but- truthiness...). He was going to throw it out and replace it with something better. Did you catch that last part? Had you heard that before? His appeal to his supporters was that ObamaCare wasn't working because it was written for big business by corrupt politicians and not for everyday Americans. And he was going to have a better plan. For them. You don't have to be a racist for that to resonate. And for the mainstream media to miss the nuance in these messages (I'm guessing there were more) is to not understand what the election was truly about. And, as everybody on this board knows, when you don't understand the fundamental concepts the Final Exam is a crapshoot.

sesqu 10y ago
Your anecdote supports the truthiness vs. factiness argument. Trump avoided making statements, such as what his improvement would be, so that didn't get reported. He only made claims about at issues he considered needing intervention, leaving the specifics to implementation. One set of people assumed he wanted to undo progress, while another assumed he wanted to advance it. One statement, two conclusions.

petemill 10y ago

What they did wrong is they didn't actually report news, they just followed Trump and said what he's doing and fed the press releases given out, which we could have gotten ourselves anyway. They didn't use their army of reporters to travel to the rust belt and show us the ghost towns. They didn't talk to the people there and really show the country why people are voting for Trump. Instead they just laughed about the possibility of Trump winning the Primaries (people voting for Trump don't watch CNN they watch Fox News), laughed about the possibility of Sanders winning (he got extremely close with 0 name recognition despite all the dismissing, laughed about the possibility of Trump winning. They did their normal of prioritizing access to politicians in the future, and helping their advertising donors, instead of feeling passionate about showing the truth.

hga 10y ago
This goes beyond Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds' "Just think of the media as Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense" and beyond Ben Rhodes' (who sold Obama's Iran policy), "The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. They literally know nothing." They didn't, as you said, get outside of the bubbles created by the campaigns themselves, or the reality distortion fields AKA narratives they pushed for both candidates, and wear out any shoe leather talking to real people. And perhaps this was true for any side of the campaign? Of course, we have to factor in that anything contrary to those narratives, i.e. anything they'd have discovered that would be vaguely interesting, would have been spiked at best, see this testimony from one of our own: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12928615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12928615 Given that, would they have even gotten authority or budget to get out there? So maybe we shouldn't be blaming the reporters, except that they continue to play this lazy, if not intellectually corrupt game.