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Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

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Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#321

Post by dom96 »

jonhohle wrote: post #123
softwaredoug wrote: post #81

On the data nerd side I continue to be shocked at how people misinterpret the certainty of polls/forecasts. Forecasts give us probability distributions based on historical polling error data. Not infallible predictions the expected value will 100% happen. It’s fairly revealing of society’s general innumeracy, just as it was 4 years ago when Trump won.

But the polls then and now weren’t just bad, they were shockingly bad and not representative of any real population that matters in an election. I’d expect something like this from junior engineers looking at metrics for the first time, but these are supposedly the most respective organizations in their field that have failed spectacularly for the second presidential election in a row. What value do they possibly ser…

I feel like everyone who's criticing these polls is forgetting one thing: COVID. These polls can only be as good as historical elections, and there really is not a lot of data for US elections during pandemics.

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#322

Post by eecc »

gigatexal wrote: post #138

What is really keeping me up at night is the existential problem the US faces for the next 50 years: the ever increasingly large divide that is the polarizing of the electorate. We have to come together as Americans or someone will divide and conquer us.

I was talking to a US expat this afternoon. Besides the congratulations and commenting the expectations for the new administration we reflected on the damage the last 30-40 years of propaganda for individualism have made.

Individuals, their inner world and potential are very important, but you have systematically mortified the importance - and the “evolutionary advantage” - of the human societal organization.

Over optimization for the hedonistic “self bootstrapped” man turned most of you - that don’t have the strength, but most likely the luck, to be Randian heroes - into the exact opposite: submissive corporate drones.

It’s time to lay the groundwork for long term change, isn’t it?

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#323

Post by tsimionescu »

jebronie wrote: post #261

For me the bottomline of the Trump administration is that he has started zero new wars, sparing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. As an outsider I hope that the US will not go back to its foreign military interventions.

That is good, but counts for very little when he has helped sow the seeds of numerous other wars, especially by rolling back most climate change fights.

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#324

Post by the-dude »

markus_zhang wrote: post #279
gigatexal wrote: post #138

What is really keeping me up at night is the existential problem the US faces for the next 50 years: the ever increasingly large divide that is the polarizing of the electorate. We have to come together as Americans or someone will divide and conquer us.

From what I see, the polarization is continuing to grow, and with Trump grabbing 70 million votes even when his gov failed majestically at beating the virus, the next few years is going to ne interesting.

Practically all western governments failed majestically.

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#325

Post by [deleted] »

ojnabieoot wrote: post #299

While it’s true that the US government needs structural reform, the issue wasn’t anything the Constitution can fix by nibbling around the edges. The issue is that the unified Republican elite, along with > 35% of the electorate, is fundamentally lawless and anti-democratic, and will do anything it can to cheat its way into power. All three branches are implicated and have been for a while: Bush v Gore in 2000, the US…

[deleted]

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#326

Post by tshaddox »

deftnerd wrote: post #179

I've always felt that the Trump presidency served as an effective form of "Chaos Engineering". Regardless of your views of Trump's politics, his administration and method of leadership has exposed a lot of flaws in how our government has been designed and engineered. The postmortem of the last 4 years should be analyzed deeply in order to identify the weak points in the infrastructure of our government in order to ma…

What flaws did the Trump administration demonstrate that weren’t already obviously flaws? Did we actually get new information about previously hidden flaws?

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#327

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Being a centrist, I can definitely understand the desire for more conservative policies, and a rejection of more liberal policies. What has been tough for me personally, though, is to see a person as amoral as Trump get so much support. I DO agree that Trump has done some good things, things that before him neither the left nor the right was willing to do in a substantial way (mainly his forcing a re-evaluation of our relationship with China). But his utter (and ongoing) disregard for our democratic system, his incessant lying, the fact that all he cares about is loyalty to him but gives no loyalty in return, the insane narcissism, treating the Justice Dept. like his personal legal firm, etc., etc.. I just find it disgusting on every level.

That said, the recent Sam Harris podcast really helped me understand his appeal. And I hope (but am not hopeful) that the left tries to mend their ways by refraining from pushing (mainly white, straight men, but also others, like the religious) many further from the Democratic party.

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#329

Post by newherefordc »

jebronie wrote: post #261

For me the bottomline of the Trump administration is that he has started zero new wars, sparing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. As an outsider I hope that the US will not go back to its foreign military interventions.

He got lucky with foreign policy, and he did start a war against immigrants and people whose skin color is not white in the USA itself, led by Stephen Miller.

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#330

Post by pmoriarty »

deftnerd wrote: post #179

I've always felt that the Trump presidency served as an effective form of "Chaos Engineering". Regardless of your views of Trump's politics, his administration and method of leadership has exposed a lot of flaws in how our government has been designed and engineered. The postmortem of the last 4 years should be analyzed deeply in order to identify the weak points in the infrastructure of our government in order to ma…

This reminds me of a story about when Kurt Gödel, who had fled Nazi persecution of Jews in Austria, went to apply for US Citizenship.

In the taxi, on the way to the citizenship hearing, Gödel excitedly told his friend Albert Einstein that he intended to talk at the hearing of a flaw he had discovered in the US Constitution that could allow a dictatorship to take over.

Einstein managed to convince Gödel not to talk about that at the citizenship hearing, and just answer to questions.

But perhaps Gödel wasn't so wrong.

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