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If I confidently declare ahead of time the result of a coin flip, I may turn out to be correct, but my confidence was still unjustified. And furthermore, my get

If I confidently declare ahead of time the result of a coin flip, I may turn out to be correct, but my confidence was still unjustified. And furthermore, my getting it right would not necessitate a “fluke”. I’m on Reddit a fair bit and while it’s difficult to know the overall biases of the greater community based on what I see individually, I don’t have a lot of trouble believing that there was a bias toward a particular desired result. But, I honestly didn’t see much in the way of a bias one way or the other in the expected result. I mostly saw a lot of anxiety over not knowing what result to expect.

lazyeye 2y ago
Elections are not remotely a "coin flip" though?
- jkubicek 2y ago
  Well sure, but the predicting the results of this particular election was very much a coin flip.
  - lazyeye 2y ago
    I disagree. The media makes it seem like a coin flip, but the prediction markets where people are focused on making money was accurate. This is compared to the media who are more interested in pushing lies and ideology.
    - threeseed 2y ago
      The prediction markets can be influenced by governments, companies etc who have no desire to make short term money.
      - itsoktocry 2y ago
        But polling results cannot. Right.
    - bandyaboot 2y ago
      Personally, I don’t care what the “media” was saying. I care what the polling data and the election models based on the polling data were saying. They were saying pretty consistently that this could go either way, but that at the same time the result may not turn out to be actually that close. Those two aren’t incompatible.
      - lazyeye 2y ago
        If any other profession was as consistently wrong as pollsters are, would they be taken seriously? I think the main job of pollsters is to provide content for corporate media (the closer the polls the better for attracting eyeballs for advertisers). And they do this job admirably. It just has nothing to do with the election.
        bandyaboot 2y ago
        You don’t value polling, ok. No use continuing to go back and forth about it. Instead, maybe you’ll feel like responding to one of the other commenters that replied to you about prediction markets…
        eastbound 2y ago
        Polls are twisted to return falsehoods from gray information. It’s hard to fathom that you don’t notice neither the methods nor the results. It’s a bit like living in Beijin and saying that Tiannenmen is conspirationist storytelling, or a coin flip on whether it happened or not. It did. 100% chance. “It’s 50% probability. Either it’s true or it isn’t.” — what meddlers pretend when they’re not happy admitting the high probability of their enemy candidate being elected. It wasn’t a coin flip.
        thomaslord 2y ago
        Assuming that random factors like "it rained" or "voters got in car accidents and couldn't make it to the polls" aren't a significant factor, there's always a 100% probability of one specific candidate winning since everyone has made up their minds before the day of the election. What polls do is not telling you the real-world probability, it's telling you the likelihood of a given outcome given known data. Polls always need to be skewed in some way to be accurate, since not everybody will vote. You can't just get a random distribution of the population's preference and assume the more-preferred candidate will win. Polls can never be truly accurate because people will lie about which candidate they're voting for and whether they're planning to vote, and sometimes people who genuinely intended to vote never make it to the polls. There are a huge number of variables to consider when trying to predict the outcome of the election, but it's important enough that it's still worth trying.
    - anon373839 2y ago
      > the prediction markets PredictIt was predicting the opposite outcome up to the day of the election.
      - lazyeye 2y ago
        Not true. PredictIt was predicting Trump for 3 weeks prior up until 27th where it took a dive. This is likely due to over-reacting to the Puerto Rican island garbage joke at MSG on the 27th. Not saying prediction markets will be perfectly accurate but they will certainly be better than pollsters. https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7456/Who-will-win-the-2024-US-presidential-election https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7456/Who-will-win-t...
        anon373839 2y ago
        I didn’t say it always predicted Harris the winner. I said that it was predicting her to win just before the election. She was also leading during the entire period between August 17-October 10, and likely somewhat earlier (I can only see the 90-day history on my phone). The point here is that there is no “the prediction markets” one can speak of as a cohesive unit.
        alecst 2y ago
        I don’t see how someone at ~50/100 odds is predicted to win. That’s just a toss up with a slight statistical edge. Goes for both candidates.
    - inpdx 2y ago
      The most historically accurate and least able to be gamed, predictit.org, did not overwhelmingly predict Trump.
eastbound 2y ago
> I’m on Reddit a fair bit and while it’s difficult to know the overall biases of the greater community based on what any one person sees Left. Censored media leans left. Censored forums, news, communities are censored to give credit to left ideas. Symmetrically, left ideas only thrive by hiding information. With complete transparency, people lean right.
- ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
  Thank you for capably providing a successful demonstration of the point you replied to: it’s difficult to know the overall biases of the greater community based on what any one person sees.
- thomaslord 2y ago
  Moderated media leans left. At least some of the reason it ends up that way is that many of the people who violate incredibly reasonable rules are conservative. Certain groups of hard-right people will say some incredibly bigoted shit that's absolutely out of line and makes it impossible to have a civilized conversation, then they complain about getting banned and drag a bunch of moderately-more-reasonable people with them when they leave. Once those people leave, normal everyday non-asshole conservatives realize the platform has less conservative content and leave in search of spaces that they feel respect their viewpoints more. In some cases entire topic-groups get banned (/r/the_donald is a good example) for legitimate reasons that frequently involve a small extremely-active group of members, and the rest of the members will also leave the platform because all they see is that a group they were part of got banned. People who lean to the left tend to believe that it's bad to do some of the things that get you justifiably banned (such as intentionally using language that demeans people based on immutable traits). Because of this, it's much easier for them to avoid being deplatformed.

lazyeye 2y ago

Elections are not remotely a "coin flip" though?

jkubicek 2y ago
Well sure, but the predicting the results of this particular election was very much a coin flip.
- lazyeye 2y ago
  I disagree. The media makes it seem like a coin flip, but the prediction markets where people are focused on making money was accurate. This is compared to the media who are more interested in pushing lies and ideology.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    The prediction markets can be influenced by governments, companies etc who have no desire to make short term money.
    - itsoktocry 2y ago
      But polling results cannot. Right.
  - bandyaboot 2y ago
    Personally, I don’t care what the “media” was saying. I care what the polling data and the election models based on the polling data were saying. They were saying pretty consistently that this could go either way, but that at the same time the result may not turn out to be actually that close. Those two aren’t incompatible.
    - lazyeye 2y ago
      If any other profession was as consistently wrong as pollsters are, would they be taken seriously? I think the main job of pollsters is to provide content for corporate media (the closer the polls the better for attracting eyeballs for advertisers). And they do this job admirably. It just has nothing to do with the election.
      - bandyaboot 2y ago
        You don’t value polling, ok. No use continuing to go back and forth about it. Instead, maybe you’ll feel like responding to one of the other commenters that replied to you about prediction markets…
        eastbound 2y ago
        Polls are twisted to return falsehoods from gray information. It’s hard to fathom that you don’t notice neither the methods nor the results. It’s a bit like living in Beijin and saying that Tiannenmen is conspirationist storytelling, or a coin flip on whether it happened or not. It did. 100% chance. “It’s 50% probability. Either it’s true or it isn’t.” — what meddlers pretend when they’re not happy admitting the high probability of their enemy candidate being elected. It wasn’t a coin flip.
        thomaslord 2y ago
        Assuming that random factors like "it rained" or "voters got in car accidents and couldn't make it to the polls" aren't a significant factor, there's always a 100% probability of one specific candidate winning since everyone has made up their minds before the day of the election. What polls do is not telling you the real-world probability, it's telling you the likelihood of a given outcome given known data. Polls always need to be skewed in some way to be accurate, since not everybody will vote. You can't just get a random distribution of the population's preference and assume the more-preferred candidate will win. Polls can never be truly accurate because people will lie about which candidate they're voting for and whether they're planning to vote, and sometimes people who genuinely intended to vote never make it to the polls. There are a huge number of variables to consider when trying to predict the outcome of the election, but it's important enough that it's still worth trying.
  - anon373839 2y ago
    > the prediction markets PredictIt was predicting the opposite outcome up to the day of the election.
    - lazyeye 2y ago
      Not true. PredictIt was predicting Trump for 3 weeks prior up until 27th where it took a dive. This is likely due to over-reacting to the Puerto Rican island garbage joke at MSG on the 27th. Not saying prediction markets will be perfectly accurate but they will certainly be better than pollsters. https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7456/Who-will-win-the-2024-US-presidential-election https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7456/Who-will-win-t...
      - anon373839 2y ago
        I didn’t say it always predicted Harris the winner. I said that it was predicting her to win just before the election. She was also leading during the entire period between August 17-October 10, and likely somewhat earlier (I can only see the 90-day history on my phone). The point here is that there is no “the prediction markets” one can speak of as a cohesive unit.
        alecst 2y ago
        I don’t see how someone at ~50/100 odds is predicted to win. That’s just a toss up with a slight statistical edge. Goes for both candidates.
  - inpdx 2y ago
    The most historically accurate and least able to be gamed, predictit.org, did not overwhelmingly predict Trump.

eastbound 2y ago

> I’m on Reddit a fair bit and while it’s difficult to know the overall biases of the greater community based on what any one person sees Left. Censored media leans left. Censored forums, news, communities are censored to give credit to left ideas. Symmetrically, left ideas only thrive by hiding information. With complete transparency, people lean right.

ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
Thank you for capably providing a successful demonstration of the point you replied to: it’s difficult to know the overall biases of the greater community based on what any one person sees.
thomaslord 2y ago
Moderated media leans left. At least some of the reason it ends up that way is that many of the people who violate incredibly reasonable rules are conservative. Certain groups of hard-right people will say some incredibly bigoted shit that's absolutely out of line and makes it impossible to have a civilized conversation, then they complain about getting banned and drag a bunch of moderately-more-reasonable people with them when they leave. Once those people leave, normal everyday non-asshole conservatives realize the platform has less conservative content and leave in search of spaces that they feel respect their viewpoints more. In some cases entire topic-groups get banned (/r/the_donald is a good example) for legitimate reasons that frequently involve a small extremely-active group of members, and the rest of the members will also leave the platform because all they see is that a group they were part of got banned. People who lean to the left tend to believe that it's bad to do some of the things that get you justifiably banned (such as intentionally using language that demeans people based on immutable traits). Because of this, it's much easier for them to avoid being deplatformed.