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Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

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Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#471

Post by deaux »

gs17 wrote: post #164
deaux wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turnout in the past few elections was already extraordinarily high. In a sense, this in itself is the issue. It's long-term _worse_ to vote for the "lesser of two serious evils". This extreme "long-term pain for short-term gain" attitude is what's gotten the US to where it is. If in 2016 of 2024 even 20% of the dems would've stayed home or voted third party, the DNC's continuous forcing of awful corpocrats with zer…

> The whole idea of "third-party voting is a complete waste in the US" is incredibly dumb because a vote for someone who loses isn't a wasted vote. Yes, but with a caveat, if you had a strong preference between the top two actually-likely-to-win candidates (assuming the third party wasn't competitive), it's at least not voting the most in your interests for the outcome. Which is why we really need approval voting, so…

> Yes, but with a caveat, if you had a strong preference between the top two actually-likely-to-win candidates (assuming the third party wasn't competitive),

Fully agreed, I vaguely implied this by talking about the "lesser of two evils" scenario but good to make it explicit.

> Which is why we really need approval voting,

Agreed here too, but it's not happening so people better wake up and realize that even without it, continuously voting for the "lesser of two evils" is the opposite of strategic.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#472

Post by bombcar »

fwipsy wrote: post #150
Pragmata wrote: post #3

Frankly i see no reason to keep this data private. They should simply publish a full dataset of the census, with no such data coarsening/differential privacy/ etc... Fundamentally this is public data. If it's to dangerous to make public, it's too dangerous to collect, and people should be aware of exactly what it is. There are very few things that the state has data on that should not be made public. Census data is s…

So do you believe that individual income should be public? Or do you believe that the government should not take income into account for taxation or distribution of benefits?

some countries do make income available publicly.

even the USA does it for public employees in many states.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#473

Post by iwontberude »

js2 wrote: post #454
spaceisballer wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real decline started after Edward Snowden and all the information that came out about the NSA. It really sparked distrust in the government. Trying to get people to respond to surveys was already hard, why would those general people believe the Census Bureau is actually keeping their data safe? Doesn’t matter when it comes to laws and the constitution, if you work for an Agency. You are the government. Response r…

> The real decline started after Edward Snowden and all the information that came out about the NSA. It really sparked distrust in the government. Do you have evidence of this? Because I'd bet 90% Americans have no idea who Edward Snowden even is.

I’ll take the under on that bet any day. Maybe around 75% is where I would feel more confident. 25% of a country is more than enough to meaningfully shift perception.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#474

Post by deaux »

mullingitover wrote: post #176
deaux wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turnout in the past few elections was already extraordinarily high. In a sense, this in itself is the issue. It's long-term _worse_ to vote for the "lesser of two serious evils". This extreme "long-term pain for short-term gain" attitude is what's gotten the US to where it is. If in 2016 of 2024 even 20% of the dems would've stayed home or voted third party, the DNC's continuous forcing of awful corpocrats with zer…

> Every time I've explained this I've gotten instantly downvoted without a single reply making an argument against it, Ok I'll break it down for you. > If in 2016 of 2024 even 20% of the dems would've stayed home or voted third party Parties cater to their bases, and putting yourself out there as an unreliable voting bloc is exactly how you get your demands ignored. > The whole idea of "third-party voting is a comple…

> Parties cater to their bases, and putting yourself out there as an unreliable voting bloc is exactly how you get your demands ignored.

Reality shows the exact opposite. Why do campaigns and candidates put an incredibly outsized effort into swing states? Those are the exact "unreliable voters". Yet they get the most attenton. In policies too, it's all about convincing those who otherwise might stay home or might swing. What you're saying doesn't reflect reality whatsoever.

> It's not incredibly dumb, it's simple mathematical reality.

This isn't an argument, or you struggled to read. It's not a wasted vote because of its secondary effects, as explained. Voting on someone who loses isn't a wasted vote.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#475

Post by Sabinus »

vjulian wrote: post #313
vjulian wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us find voting insulting, given very low marginal power in a vote; it’s akin to throwing breadcrumbs to the poor. The structure of governance (the reality, not the mythology taught in schools or pushed forth as propaganda) is not in support of ‘the people”. Right or wrong, this is how many of feel. Voting is silly and futile.

Civics is a kind of religion, and it is difficult for people caught up in it to approach discussion from a logical and external perspective. This kind of civics is dangerous to society.

Conversely, I think civics where anonymous people tell you voting isn't effective and promote a kind of resentful powerless nihilism is dangerous to society.

Reform is preferable to revolution which is preferable to oppression.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#476

Post by Sabinus »

bobthepanda wrote: post #281
jrflowers wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other party needs to run better candidates. It’s their job to drive voter turnout in their favor (not internet argument warriors) and they’ve lost two out of the last three elections by sabotaging their own primaries and doing “Our candidate isn’t good but at least they’re not a got dang cheeto!!” campaigns. “Less bad doesn’t have to mean good” is a mantra with a current 67% loss rate, soon to be 75%, and then 80…

There also needs to be, probably, more party diversity. The fact that the current president has such a stranglehold over their party is pretty unprecedented; normally, the big tent parties have lots of little camps with power bases that somewhat insulate independence, whether that be on an issue or regional level. It's kind of odd that the disenfranchised members of that party have not started up their own party. Als…

Ranked choice voting and the implementation of independent impartial redistricting are very urgently needed reforms.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#478

Post by anjel »

roenxi wrote: post #455
clipsy wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of the Republican party for half a century now has been: "The government can't do anything right, and if you elect us we'll prove it!"

And it's something of a coin flip whether people prefer that philosophy to the other mob. Trump has made it to a seconds term and is talking about a third because of the stunning policy failures of the US government over the last 50 years.

He's arguably in worse shape than FDR in his last term. I've come around to seeing such talk as yet another clever and effective bum rush to stave off hisgetting written off as the lame duck he actually is.

Think what you want about him, he is if nothing else, a manipulative genius, so it tracks.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#479

Post by jezzamon »

nullc wrote: post #450
nullc wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my ideal the state should have visibility into the shape of the people present so that we can make good decisions about our combined organization. That ideal became tantamount to enabling genocide when the US government breached the confidentiality of the census in order to prison camp the japanese on the basis of their race. > I understand why people decide to diminish all state capacity It's not even just a qu…

Replying to a dead comment that demanded an example, for example, Mao's mass killing of somewhere on the order of 30-40 million people famine (in addition to the million straight up murdered in the cultural revolution) created as a result of "helping" through planned economy food distribution and the Eliminate Sparrows Campaign. People only kill at a truly massive scale because they believe they are doing something g…

Counter point: Government inaction and easily cause deaths at a similar scale, and some types of things only really work with large scale collective action

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#480

Post by deaux »

zimpenfish wrote: post #186
deaux wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turnout in the past few elections was already extraordinarily high. In a sense, this in itself is the issue. It's long-term _worse_ to vote for the "lesser of two serious evils". This extreme "long-term pain for short-term gain" attitude is what's gotten the US to where it is. If in 2016 of 2024 even 20% of the dems would've stayed home or voted third party, the DNC's continuous forcing of awful corpocrats with zer…

> 2024 [...] the DNC's continuous forcing of awful corpocrats with zero charisma would've become completely untenable and Trump would've been limited to one term. You mean the 2024 election cycle where incumbents all around the globe were beaten because the economic situation was strongly anti-incumbent? Are you positing that the US election was somehow a unique outlier and solely down to Harris being the Democrat ca…

> Are you positing that the US election was somehow a unique outlier and solely down to Harris being the Democrat candidate?

There is never a sole factor. The problem by talking about 115k votes is, once again, not taking into account the strength of the opposition. The US losing in hockey to Canada by a tiny margin is not the same as losing to Spain by the same margin.

Ironically, in a sense you're only strengthening the point that an even moderately better candidate would've won.

> It sounds like you have a particular issue with the 2016 and 2024 elections and I'm wondering if there's something in common that might explain it...

What a vile implication. Selectively ignoring my mention of Newsom in the exact same bucket. I'm wondering if you're a state-backed operator, that might explain the trying to rile things up through FUD.

I mentioned 2016 and 2024 because they lost, and the candidates were indeed awful.

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