Evo said:
Evo's post about Trump being a modern day Wallace, had me go back and research the McCarthy hearings, as Trump's one time lawyer, Roy Cohn, was the chief legal council in the hearings.Borg said:
Out of 19 questions ranked 0 to 5, Trump gets a grand total of 7. I think we can safely say that anti-scientific is just the first name. Neither Clinton's or the others' scores are great, but Trump's is just apalling across the board.
From the first one for Trump:Orodruin said:
Given a contradiction, always assume the worst of Trump, of course!
In 10 years! 4 years!? Utter nonsense empty promise: 9/10, A for effort!
Are you saying that you do not let your own bias rule yours?russ_watters said:
Why do you call Scientific American "biased"? That by itself seems a bit biased to me.russ_watters said:
To make the claim one would have to explore the affiliations and missions of Nature Publishing Group, Editor Mariette DiChristina and direct writers Christine Gorman, Ryan F. Mandelbaum.Krylov said:
I gave the explanation/analysis in the post.Krylov said:
You can approach the question based on the input or the output. Using the input (who did the work) can be useful but gets messy. Judging the output on its own merit (which is what I did) is more direct.Greg Bernhardt said:
Everyone is affected by their own biases in some non-zero way, including you, me* and SA. One would hope a scientific source like SA would do better based on a scientific worldview that should be good at minimizing bias, but if I had to guess, I'd say that when dealing with non-quantitative judgements rather than hard data, they get out of their normal approach and are not as good at making objective judgements.Orodruin said:
Krylov said:
Well, this much is obvious and I have never claimed otherwise. Any scientifically inclined person knows this. Yes, I know that I am biased and that we are all biased by the sources that we have selected to get input from. Of course knowing about your bias is the first step in countering it, but it is still there. However, based on the coverage we have seen in Europe, I think most Europeans are baffled by the fact that Trump is still in the running. Clinton is not ideal and there are issues that would have cost her the election in a normal year. However, judging by what I see from Trump, what he says is often completely incoherent and not related to a question he is asked - far more so than any politician I have seen (and that is being said having a Spanish wife so I have heard quite a lot of awful stuff about Spanish politicians lately). From what I see, Clinton is far from ideal, but Trump is inherently unfit for office.russ_watters said:
This is something that have not been clear to me in your argumentation. From the way you have argued previously, I would have deduced you as strongly supporting Trump. So let me just ask you one question: If you had to pick one of them to govern, which one would you pick? - or in other words - Who do you find the lesser of two evils?russ_watters said:
...But you still had to ask me.Orodruin said:
I largely agree with that paragraph (and wrongly predicted his demise multiple times during the primary race), but that is largely irrelevant to the current discussion.
That's disappointing since I try to say as often as I can (including twice in our current exchange plus a detailed description of my voting dillema/logic in the post at the top of this page of the discussion). I guess I should just put it in my signature.
If the ballot only had two choices and no write-in ability, I'd probably leave it empty. If someone held a gun to my head and made me chose one button or the other, I'd probably waver a bit before pressing Hillary's.
I don't understand: what is a real scenario? The idea of only having two choices? No it isn't: there are 3rd party candidates on the ballot in my state and I can even write-in someone if I want (as I said above, I'm still considering it).
Well, you are not forced to pick a candidate but also have the choice of letting others decide for you (which is your democratic right). However, in the end we both know that barring some very unlikely scenarios, Clinton or Trump will be president in january. Your vote will not matter more than if you chose not to vote apart from making a democratic statement (which again is fine by me). How you chose to exercise your democratic rights is up to you. All I am saying is that while I can understand your reasoning, I would have come to a different personal conclusion.russ_watters said:
Well, one might suggest that voting for any candidate besides the eventual winner is letting "others decide for you", but others might suggest that either such view is decidedly anti-democratic!Orodruin said:
Of course! I just didn't understand your language when you pointed to an "very real scenario" that actually wasn't real at all.
Fair enoug. And yes, I went through the actual math of the various chocies above/a couple of days ago: Since I'm a life-long Republican, a vote for Hillary instead of Trump would be a swing of two votes between them whereas a vote for a third party or write-in instead of Trump is a swing of one vote between Trump and Hillary.
While this may be true in actual number of votes, I do not think that using number of votes accurately describes the utility value of the vote. Of course, this depends on how you assign your value function, which is ultimatelt a subjective choice. In my choice of value function, based on a winner takes it all system, I would essentially only consider the difference between the winner and runner up as this is what matters in the end. With such a value function, voting for a third-party or independent candidate would have the same value change as not voting.russ_watters said:
We are finally exactly in agreement about something: yes, a person's choice of value function is personal/subjective.Orodruin said:
The value function I proposed is my zeroth order approximation. I have not given it much thought on top of that as the elections I vote in do not assign parliamentary seats in the same way as yours do. I would agree that your value function may prove a good approximation (with appropriate weights to all candidates) in a close three-way race. I would probably go for a soft threshold rather than a hard one.russ_watters said:
Certainly my tastes and distates for the candidates should enter into the value function, but again I have not given it much more further thought for the same reasons as stated above.russ_watters said:
When I read the article, my first thought was it was biased. Scientists are really just another special interest group looking for their cut of the political pie, so it's not surprising that Hillary's tendency to see government as the solution to many problems is going to win her some points. There's also an underlying assumption in some questions that the government has a role in solving some problems that candidates like Gary Johnson simply don't accept as valid.Krylov said:
I think it baffles many US citizens too. That said, I can understand why Trump is still in the running. In my opinion, there's a very justified impression that the political class has grown completely self-serving. If its members breaks the law, they get away with it. Clapper blatantly lying to Congress about widespread surveillance yet not going to jail, Comey giving Hillary a pass on the e-mail scandal (well, at least until last Friday), no one from Wall Street going to jail for almost destroying the economy, etc. The Iraq War is seen now as a colossal mistake, sold to the public with lies, yet no one has taken responsibility for it. On the flip side, the homeowner who took out that ill-advised mortgage didn't get help from Washington while Congress made sure the bank who sold that same risky mortgage was supplied with billions of dollars to keep from failing. Both Sanders and Trump had success because of this frustration with the people in power, both Republican and Democratic.Orodruin said:
It struck me a while ago that Clinton and Trump seem to enable each other. Trump is only succeeding because Clinton represents exactly what many Americans can't stand about the current political system; Clinton meanwhile hasn't crashed and burned like she might have in other years because Trump is a nut job. It's pretty common to hear that you should vote for Clinton because we can't risk a Trump presidency, not because Clinton is a great candidate.
I noticed the 2/5 score for Johnson on climate change. Unfortunately, I can't read their article they link as a source for why the market alone can't solve the problem, so I don't know the specifics of their tack (how much of the market can be harnessed?), but there is little doubt that the primary cause of the US's remarkable carbon emission reduction to date was market driven, not government regulation driven; it was the rise of fracking for natural gas. Sure, the carbon reduction was an accidental side-effect, but it is still dismaying that more good came from an accidental expansion of a greenhouse gas emitter than all of the government's concerted efforts at promoting "green" energy and speaks to his point of the ineffectiveness and special-interest driven nature of government efforts, which is the premise of his point.vela said:
Fair enough. It appears to me that our thought process isn't actually that dissimilar, we just place different values on the input "values" based on our values/judgement.Orodruin said:
Strange, my thinking is who is best for the country despite of how much I like or dislike them. The answer is Clinton. I don't have to like someone to know that they are more competent. The Presidency isn't a popularity contest, this isn't voting for prom King or Queen, but listening to people's reasons for voting, I'd think this was high school. It's so disappointing.russ_watters said:
Evo said:
Yes, she is best for the country, and the people that are best at judging that have said so, and that's been posted in the previous thread already, and no I don't have time to dig up all of the endorsements right now, but I probably should because it would be a real eye opener. Angry people aren't the best judges of who is capable.Student100 said:
Student100 said:
The same can't be said for Hillary?vela said:
Greg Bernhardt said:
But Hillary has the competency and qualifications to be President. There is the difference. Oh, not nuts, many people refer to Trump as nuts.Greg Bernhardt said:
No, I don't think so. Even if I were to stipulate that Hillary is a narcissist and a pathological liar, Trump exhibits those traits to a much greater degree. It's not even close.Greg Bernhardt said:
vela said:
OmCheeto said:
Don't be glib, Evo; you know this isn't simply a personal like/dislike issue but what a like/dislike on relevant character traits means for the country. If I voted based on who I'd like to have a beer with, Obama would be my favorite recent President!Evo said:
LOL, back to the idea that people should be told what to do instead of allowed to choose themselves. I'm glad we don't live in the country you describe and you probably should be too, otherwise the "Obamamaniacs" wouldn't have been allowed to vote!Evo said:
I didn't actually say "character" there, I just said "distaste". There are a lot of components of that, and character is just one. But unfortunately, in an election that hasn't been much about the issues, I therefore haven't discussed the issues much.TurtleMeister said:
Evo said: