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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.

#241

Post by dantheman »

louwrentius wrote: post #218
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.

The past four years and this election has exposed some deep problems within American Society. If about 47% of your country was happy to kill democracy and reward immoral behaviour just to retain power, often justified by religious beliefs... And Trump is not gone yet... Who knows what the Republicans will do with the stacked Supreme Court...

I think you need to take a step back and really try understand those who disagree with you - your views or maybe just the way you express it is toxic and dividing. If you can't think of one reason why someone might not want to vote your candidate I feel sorry for you.

There are many valid reasons to vote for all candidates and the weighting of the issues is personal and perhaps not everyone agrees with the weighting that you do.

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

#242

Post by mrlala »

layer8 wrote: post #106

I just realized that Trump could become presidential candidate again in 2024 for a second term. So it might not be over yet.

So could you. I'm not sure what your point is? That is about the most ridiculous statement ever.

Career republican politicians HATE TRUMP whether they admit it or not. They had to put up with it, and kiss his ass, and fuck them for it. But they aren't stupid.

Trump is done. If you honestly think he has any chance after this is over I don't think you have been paying attention over the years.

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

#243

Post by luminati »

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 fear this too. As someone who had read a fair bit of the history of India, and how the British/east India company mind-fucked and pillaged them it scares the hell out of me. The after effects are still there even 70 years later.

“History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes”

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

#244

Post by tsimionescu »

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.

You're picking the easiest number to misread - the overall "chance of being elected", which doesn't really mean anything.

Much more interesting are the direct results predictions, especially per state where they matter most. Those are polls that give a particular result with a +- confidence interval. If the polls were to any extent competently done, you expect the result to be well within that margin of error.

The reality though has been that the results have been well outside the margin of error, sometimes multiple sigmas from the actual result - that is simply unacceptable for a poll. The only conclusion should be that polling data can be completely ignored, as it doesn't seem to have any clear relationship with the final results.

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

#245

Post by atoav »

listenallyall wrote: post #206
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.

if you're a data nerd, how can you NOT be shocked by so many results falling far outside the confidence interval (often multiple sigmas), and all in the same direction?

Well this measures how many people are willing to admit they would vote for Trump which is not surprisingly a lower number than people who will vote for him in an unobserved secret vote.

Even if the pollsters are the most neutral nonjudgmental people on earth there will still be a fraction of the electorate that will (irrationally) shy away from telling them the truth.

This effect is certainly real.

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

#247

Post by unstatusthequo »

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.

Also realize that may not be possible. Regardless of who won this, half of the country does not approve. So the division you speak of has already occurred. Probably earlier than now. I could imagine a time when a Roman said the same thing you did there. "let's unite" and then the eventual collapse happens. I don't really see "conquer" in the normal sense, but the U.S. will be weaker and other countries will surely gain as a result of our division. Then I think I need to get out of here, and I wonder where I would go in the world? In the end, I agree with your sentiment. It's disturbing. The polarization is palpable. M

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

#249

Post by willis936 »

charliemil4 wrote: post #217

We should trust but verify the results. The basis of facts should be settled in the following: 1. Select all ballots that were sent to the same address - or sent to the same Post Office (grouping all PO Boxes by post office). ^ Here you are trying to see if there is systemic voting behaviors out of the ordinary -- i.e. did 10+ ballots go to one address. 2. Select all ballots that were sent to an alternate address tha…

The actual scale of the audit of 100 million ballots is an insane cost with extensive time. The verification is built into the system. Key features include: states conducting their own elections, paper ballots being required, ballots need to have a chain of custody to be valid, and counting is done in a transparent and continuously audited manner.

Making lists and centralized techniques are a Bad Idea and exactly what authoritarian regimes go about doing.

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

#250

Post by api »

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…

I thought the same thing. Expose our system to an inept wannabe despot. Hopefully the system is antifragile and this will make it much harder for a more serious and competent future one.
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