"The election of Trump is therefore a serious repudiation of media “experts.” Pundits like those at Vox position themselves as “explainers” of reality, disguising the fact that they are making an awful lot of things up in order to cover gaps in their knowledge. [...]
Thus, going forward, we need to have far less confidence in the power of existing empirical data to predict and explain the world. There needs to be a complete reevaluation, not of techniques for estimating probability, but of the meaning and importance that is attributed to probabilities. The truth is that the world is far more unknowable than we think. [...]
Could this all have been avoided? It’s worth saying that in retrospect, running Hillary Clinton for president was never a very good idea. [...]
Let’s learn an important lesson here: do not run a widely-despised ruling-class candidate who has open contempt for the white working class. That is a recipe for electoral catastrophe. [...]
Let’s never again have a campaign in which people were constantly having to defend the indefensible."
Current Affairs via SlateStarCodex
This was one of the few articles about the election that made some sense to me. But so far I don't see that Democrats or the media learned all that much from this debacle - at least not yet.
4 comments:
From the article, "You can’t persuade them, because they’re racists, and racism is an irrational feeling."
I agree with the things you quoted from the article because they happen to fit my view, but he's still just guessing like everybody else. I like the quote above though. I'd really like to know what a rational feeling is. Evidently, in terms of survival of the species, hatred of the other group is as rational as any other feeling.
>> he's still just guessing like everybody else
Yes and I don't agree with everything he wrote.
But it is somewhat close to how I think about this election (this also applies to SlateStarCodex).
Let me add that imho this young guy writes interesting stuff and is worth a bookmark.
>> and is worth a bookmark.
I went to bookmark the link and found I already had it bookmarked, but in a folder that I never look at. I must have thought Robinson was worth reading at one time before but saved it in the wrong place so that I ended up forgetting about it. I also agree that Scott Alexander at least makes an attempt not to write mindless crap and often succeeds.
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