4 ms·

> He could be right, but so could a stopped clock. A stopped clock is right for two seconds a day out of 86400, i.e. 0.002% of the time. The problem with Trump

> He could be right, but so could a stopped clock. A stopped clock is right for two seconds a day out of 86400, i.e. 0.002% of the time. The problem with Trump is it's more like 30-50% of the time. And then there are three things you can do when he says something. You can ignore it, but that's not a great option when he's the President of the United States. You can dispute the narrow ways he gets the details wrong, but that's just pedantry and you'll spend all day doing it to no avail because he can say stuff like that faster than you can fact check the details. Or you can engage with the general shape of the argument he's trying to make and see if this is one of the times that there's actually something there. Which doesn't happen all the time, or even necessarily most of the time, but it's still often enough that universally assuming the opposite of anything he says isn't a valid heuristic.

vkou 2y ago
As stopped clock is mostly right - within less than an hour of the truth - ~17% of the time. If you're requiring five nines-level precision, he is right precisely zero percent of the time. > but it's still often enough that universally assuming the opposite of anything he says isn't a valid heuristic. He doesn't have the magic power where the truth is always the opposite of what he says. It's just that what he says is white noise. Its Shannon entropy is near-zero. The response to that isn't to assume the opposite is correct. It's to just assume it's hallucinatory bullshit that's not worth listening to, or repeating, except to inform yourself on what he is going to do. His speech teaches us a lot about him, and nothing about anyone else.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Stopped clocks have more problems than precision. Their Shannon entropy is literally zero, because when you already know what time they say it is, the result will never change. Whereas if Trump is talking about DEI stuff, regardless of the details, you can deduce that he's soliciting support for a policy change there, which means it's time to have the debate about that policy and see if we should support it or not. You can't distinguish the things he says he's going to do from the things he says are happening, because the reason he says the latter is in support of the former.
  - jibal 2y ago
    > Whereas if Trump is talking about DEI stuff, regardless of the details, you can deduce that ... ... it's consistent with his lifelong racism, as well as the racism that permeates Project 2025. On day one he rescinded LBJ's executive order from 1964 barring federal contractors from discriminating.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      Accusations of racism have been bandied about with such reckless abandon that they've lost all meaning without specifics and hard evidence of context. Employers are prohibited from discriminating by statute which can't be amended by executive order. The executive order in question was regarding the use of affirmative action.
      - vkou 2y ago
        If a little Sieg Heil at the inauguration didn't convince you that this administration is pretty down with racism, I don't believe there's any evidence on Earth that will. Specific, hard evidence, all in context, the man who gave it got an ovation and an office built in the White House, and a free hand in the agencies that are supposed to be regulating him.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        You're referring to the thing the Anti-Defamation League called "not a Nazi salute" and the prime minister of Israel said he "is being falsely smeared". It's exactly what I mean by reckless abandon. It's a desperation to find something regardless of whether it's actually there. It seems like we've gotten to the point that actual racists are so uncommon that people have forgotten what they look like: > "We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race of men by the Creator" -Jefferson Davis (referring to black people) > "Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results." -FDR > "We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race." -Strom Thurmond These quotes are not ambiguous or taken out of context. If you had asked these people if they were being misconstrued, they would have reiterated their positions, because they were actually racists who thought that other races were inferior and openly favored slavery or internment or segregation. And it's sad that we're losing the ability to distinguish these things because of all the crying wolf.

vkou 2y ago

As stopped clock is mostly right - within less than an hour of the truth - ~17% of the time. If you're requiring five nines-level precision, he is right precisely zero percent of the time. > but it's still often enough that universally assuming the opposite of anything he says isn't a valid heuristic. He doesn't have the magic power where the truth is always the opposite of what he says. It's just that what he says is white noise. Its Shannon entropy is near-zero. The response to that isn't to assume the opposite is correct. It's to just assume it's hallucinatory bullshit that's not worth listening to, or repeating, except to inform yourself on what he is going to do. His speech teaches us a lot about him, and nothing about anyone else.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
Stopped clocks have more problems than precision. Their Shannon entropy is literally zero, because when you already know what time they say it is, the result will never change. Whereas if Trump is talking about DEI stuff, regardless of the details, you can deduce that he's soliciting support for a policy change there, which means it's time to have the debate about that policy and see if we should support it or not. You can't distinguish the things he says he's going to do from the things he says are happening, because the reason he says the latter is in support of the former.
- jibal 2y ago
  > Whereas if Trump is talking about DEI stuff, regardless of the details, you can deduce that ... ... it's consistent with his lifelong racism, as well as the racism that permeates Project 2025. On day one he rescinded LBJ's executive order from 1964 barring federal contractors from discriminating.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Accusations of racism have been bandied about with such reckless abandon that they've lost all meaning without specifics and hard evidence of context. Employers are prohibited from discriminating by statute which can't be amended by executive order. The executive order in question was regarding the use of affirmative action.
    - vkou 2y ago
      If a little Sieg Heil at the inauguration didn't convince you that this administration is pretty down with racism, I don't believe there's any evidence on Earth that will. Specific, hard evidence, all in context, the man who gave it got an ovation and an office built in the White House, and a free hand in the agencies that are supposed to be regulating him.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        You're referring to the thing the Anti-Defamation League called "not a Nazi salute" and the prime minister of Israel said he "is being falsely smeared". It's exactly what I mean by reckless abandon. It's a desperation to find something regardless of whether it's actually there. It seems like we've gotten to the point that actual racists are so uncommon that people have forgotten what they look like: > "We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race of men by the Creator" -Jefferson Davis (referring to black people) > "Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results." -FDR > "We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race." -Strom Thurmond These quotes are not ambiguous or taken out of context. If you had asked these people if they were being misconstrued, they would have reiterated their positions, because they were actually racists who thought that other races were inferior and openly favored slavery or internment or segregation. And it's sad that we're losing the ability to distinguish these things because of all the crying wolf.