Trump vs. Biden - the Final Showdown

[Archinerd]

There was absolutely no reason to tackle him to the ground like that. He wasn’t a threat to anyone. He didn’t have anywhere to conceal a weapon in those too-tight shorts and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He was calm, the situation was calm. Police need to stop escalating things.

They should have waited until he fell asleep, then shot him five times.

[Isgrimnur]

I ... might not have gotten to that paragraph.

[malchior]

We accept a certain number of deaths for pretty much everything. Energy, travel, convenience, recreation, cost savings, you name it. The real question is how many deaths are we willing to live with. And whose.

Yes. And our national policy is essentially the officer in *all* cases. In any case, it be great if they'd just acknowledge that this is a massive gap/problem that we need to begin to address and then start collecting actual data to get to the bottom of it. You know like bothering to count the civilian casualties. I can't think of any other governmental function where people get killed and we don't even track it at any level. It can't be an accident the system has evolved this way. It was likely steered here and far too few in power care about it.

[stessier]

We accept a certain number of deaths for pretty much everything. Energy, travel, convenience, recreation, cost savings, you name it.

No we don't. Everyone one of those topics have people fighting to decrease the deaths for each one of those items. To do less makes us less.

That's super nitpicky. LawBeef is correct. A few things we shut down when someone dies. Others, we continue on as if nothing ever happened. Yes, there are always active processes and people doing work to increase safety, but it's not news and we don't do a thorough review.

Who said anything about shutting it down? You don't have to shut down the world to say you don't accept the deaths. You work to improve the situation so it doesn't happen again. It's not being nit picky. What industry do you work in where a death doesn't lead to an investigation and mitigation of the hazard?

[NickAragua]

We accept a certain number of deaths for pretty much everything. Energy, travel, convenience, recreation, cost savings, you name it.

No we don't. Everyone one of those topics have people fighting to decrease the deaths for each one of those items. To do less makes us less.

That's super nitpicky. LawBeef is correct. A few things we shut down when someone dies. Others, we continue on as if nothing ever happened. Yes, there are always active processes and people doing work to increase safety, but it's not news and we don't do a thorough review.

Who said anything about shutting it down? You don't have to shut down the world to say you don't accept the deaths. You work to improve the situation so it doesn't happen again. It's not being nit picky. What industry do you work in where a death doesn't lead to an investigation and mitigation of the hazard?

Law enforcement? lol j/k, kinda

[Fireball]

Agreed. The mindset should not be "as long as the cops were safe, it doesn't matter what happens to the citizen."

I think we'll find it a lot harder to hire and retain cops of the ROE is get shot first, then return fire. Unless we also give them the option to bug out anytime thing look a little bit shady.

There is a world of options between what I said and what you arrived at.

So long as any of those options end in a civilian death or injury, they will be second guessed. Ultimately the only protection would seem to be a bona fide attack. And even then proportionality will be a factor. "He only had a [baseball bat/knife/screwdriver/automobile], use of [gun/taser/truncheon] was not justified!"

You're right and they should be second guessed. It is how we will come up with new and better plans of interaction and accountability. The idea that we just have to accept a certain amount of citizen deaths as the price for having a police force is appalling.

It's not the price for having a police force. It's the price for protecting assets and property and lives (yes, ironically). And of note, those with the least to protect seem to the the ones killed the most. Funny how the system manages to make that happen.

Amazingly, other countries are able to protect property rights and lives without allowing wanton murder by officers of the government.

Obviously we have to balance the risk to the officer against the risk to the person the officer is engaging with, but right now we have the balance skewed far too severely towards protecting the government official and not the member of the public, and I don't think that is ethical or acceptable.

[Isgrimnur]

wonton murder

Tasty, tasty murder...

[Carpet_pissr]

Amazingly, other countries are able to protect property rights and lives without allowing wonton murder by officers of the government.
.

Guns, guns GUNS, brother. How many hundreds of thousands in the hands of civilians? That is what ruins the comparison to other countries.

[Fireball]

wonton murder

Tasty, tasty murder...

Ha! Fixed.

[Fireball]

Amazingly, other countries are able to protect property rights and lives without allowing wonton murder by officers of the government.
.

Guns, guns GUNS, brother. How many hundreds of thousands in the hands of civilians? That is what ruins the comparison to other countries.

In interactions between armed government agents and the general public when risk is increased most of it should be borne by the government agents, not the general public.

[malchior]

Amazingly, other countries are able to protect property rights and lives without allowing wonton murder by officers of the government.
.

Guns, guns GUNS, brother. How many hundreds of thousands in the hands of civilians? That is what ruins the comparison to other countries.

The data doesn't support it though. Officers killed by firearms/knives is relatively low in comparison to citizens killed. Maybe 20-1 or more. And then there are the non-lethal injuries that don't get counted almost everywhere. What we do know is that it is not even close. And guns simply can't explain that all. Almost every defense anyone brings up is essentially police framing that they created to justify this system. We need to break their grip on the story. Especially since they *lie* so often.

[noxiousdog]

We accept a certain number of deaths for pretty much everything. Energy, travel, convenience, recreation, cost savings, you name it.

No we don't. Everyone one of those topics have people fighting to decrease the deaths for each one of those items. To do less makes us less.

That's super nitpicky. LawBeef is correct. A few things we shut down when someone dies. Others, we continue on as if nothing ever happened. Yes, there are always active processes and people doing work to increase safety, but it's not news and we don't do a thorough review.

Who said anything about shutting it down? You don't have to shut down the world to say you don't accept the deaths. You work to improve the situation so it doesn't happen again. It's not being nit picky. What industry do you work in where a death doesn't lead to an investigation and mitigation of the hazard?

I thing our perspectives might be different. I'm looking at this externally. I don't evaluate my driving every time there is a crash and investigation. I don't take a gun safety class every time there's an accidental shooting.

Sure, there are localized impacts, but I wouldn't call that "we."

[Defiant]

BILLINGS Mont. (AP) — A former Montana governor and Republican National Committee chair said he will vote for Democrat Joe Biden in the November election, citing character flaws in President Donald Trump.

https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/ap-on ... -for-biden

[Smoove_B]

Alternatively titled, Donald J. Trump, go fuck yourself:

Twelve Democratic governors issued a joint statement on Wednesday defending American democracy, vowing that every valid ballot will be counted in the election after President Donald Trump sowed distrust during the first presidential debate.

...

“Any efforts to throw out ballots or refuse a peaceful transfer of power are nothing less than an assault on democracy,” they wrote. “There is absolutely no excuse for promoting the intimidation or harassment of voters. These are all blatant attempts to deny our constituents the right to have their voices heard, as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, and to know the will of the people will be carried out.”

Signing the statement were Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gavin Newsom of California, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Ralph Northam of Virginia, Jay Inslee of Washington, Tony Evers of Wisconsin, Tim Walz of Minnesota, Kate Brown of Oregon, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico and John Carney of Delaware.

The governors said all valid ballots cast in accordance with state and local laws must be counted and if Trump loses, “he must leave office — period.”

I'm still trying to process that this is a statement elected state officials need to emphatically and repeatedly clarify.

[Victoria Raverna]

Amazingly, other countries are able to protect property rights and lives without allowing wonton murder by officers of the government.
.

Guns, guns GUNS, brother. How many hundreds of thousands in the hands of civilians? That is what ruins the comparison to other countries.

The data doesn't support it though. Officers killed by firearms/knives is relatively low in comparison to citizens killed. Maybe 20-1 or more. And then there are the non-lethal injuries that don't get counted almost everywhere. What we do know is that it is not even close. And guns simply can't explain that all. Almost every defense anyone brings up is essentially police framing that they created to justify this system. We need to break their grip on the story. Especially since they *lie* so often.

There are more citizens than officers, right? Much more than 20-1?

[malchior]

Amazingly, other countries are able to protect property rights and lives without allowing wonton murder by officers of the government.
.

Guns, guns GUNS, brother. How many hundreds of thousands in the hands of civilians? That is what ruins the comparison to other countries.

The data doesn't support it though. Officers killed by firearms/knives is relatively low in comparison to citizens killed. Maybe 20-1 or more. And then there are the non-lethal injuries that don't get counted almost everywhere. What we do know is that it is not even close. And guns simply can't explain that all. Almost every defense anyone brings up is essentially police framing that they created to justify this system. We need to break their grip on the story. Especially since they *lie* so often.

There are more citizens than officers, right? Much more than 20-1?

Right now we *think* about 1000 people per year are shot by the police. In a typical year 30-50 officers are shot and killed. That number we know because it is the only metric the government actually cares to count. I don't know if adjusting per capita is all that useful. I guess you could but the number of officers killed by year is pretty stable even with population growth so over time it could be argued it has gotten progressively safer for police officers. That makes sense since that is what the policy is meant to achieve.

[El Guapo]

I do enjoy Nate Silver dunking on Cillizza here. Even though that's like dunking on a kids' basketball hoop.

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/statu ... 6261777418

[Tao]

To be fair Cillizza's statement is "almost no chance" which also not equal to zero. When someone says to me "there is almost no chance" I associate that with a very low percentage, not 0%. I am not a statistician or particularly versed in math so I don't know if 20% falls in the very low percentage category but as a laymen is seems pretty low.

[YellowKing]

At this point in 2016, there were models showing Trump had a 23% chance of winning the election (Nate Silver's) and some were even lower.

[Smoove_B]

Hey Nate, now do epidemiology!

[El Guapo]

To be fair Cillizza's statement is "almost no chance" which also not equal to zero. When someone says to me "there is almost no chance" I associate that with a very low percentage, not 0%. I am not a statistician or particularly versed in math so I don't know if 20% falls in the very low percentage category but as a laymen is seems pretty low.

20% is not "almost no chance". One in five probability things happen all the time. This is part of the problem, that people tend to round down probabilities in the range of 10% - 30% to be "almost no chance" when that's very much not what is being conveyed.

[El Guapo]

Hey Nate, now do epidemiology!

Nate Silver vs. epidemiologists is not the beef that I was expecting to come out of 2020, but here we are.

[LawBeefaroni]

To be fair Cillizza's statement is "almost no chance" which also not equal to zero. When someone says to me "there is almost no chance" I associate that with a very low percentage, not 0%. I am not a statistician or particularly versed in math so I don't know if 20% falls in the very low percentage category but as a laymen is seems pretty low.

20% is not "almost no chance". One in five probability things happen all the time. This is part of the problem, that people tend to round down probabilities in the range of 10% - 30% to be "almost no chance" when that's very much not what is being conveyed.

People tend to confuse an 20% chance win model with a 20% vote model. If he gets 20% of the vote he has no chance but that's not what the election models are showing.

[Defiant]

I would be a little careful putting it as "One in five probability things happen all the time." While things with one in five probability happen all the times (because there are lots of things with that kind of probability, and as long as you've got at least five things with that probability you would expect one of them to happen), if you're looking at a specific thing, it's only going to happen one fifth the time. As an analogy, if you were to say there's a 20% chance in any TV episode that a character is going to die. On any given night, you're expecting to have a character on some show die, because there's a lot of TV episodes on. But if you look at a specific show, you would only expect about four episodes a season to have a character death.

But yes, people tend to confuse improbable with impossible. And yeah 10-30% is the range where they start thinking things are very improbable and round it down to 0.

[Defiant]

People tend to confuse an 20% chance win model with a 20% vote model. If he gets 20% of the vote he has no chance but that's not what the election models are showing.

Possibly, but there are definitely some people who pay attention to elections and would know better than to confuse the two who made this mistake in 2016.

[The Meal]

To be fair Cillizza's statement is "almost no chance" which also not equal to zero. When someone says to me "there is almost no chance" I associate that with a very low percentage, not 0%. I am not a statistician or particularly versed in math so I don't know if 20% falls in the very low percentage category but as a laymen is seems pretty low.

4 times no, 1 time yes.

OR

Roll a die. Did you roll a 1? That was less than a 20% chance of happening.

[Smoove_B]

Hey Nate, now do epidemiology!

Nate Silver vs. epidemiologists is not the beef that I was expecting to come out of 2020, but here we are.

It's been ongoing since March/April and it sustains me.

[El Guapo]

I would be a little careful putting it as "One in five probability things happen all the time." While things with one in five probability happen all the times (because there are lots of things with that kind of probability, and as long as you've got at least five things with that probability you would expect one of them to happen), if you're looking at a specific thing, it's only going to happen one fifth the time. As an analogy, if you were to say there's a 20% chance in any TV episode that a character is going to die. On any given night, you're expecting to have a character on some show die, because there's a lot of TV episodes on. But if you look at a specific show, you would only expect about four episodes a season to have a character death.

But yes, people tend to confuse improbable with impossible. And yeah 10-30% is the range where they start thinking things are very improbable and round it down to 0.

Honestly, one thing that I think board games are great for giving people a better inherent sense of probability. Like, there's nothing like Blood Bowl for making *very* clear that a one-in-6 event is not rare in the slightest.

[Defiant]

Honestly, one thing that I think board games are great for giving people a better inherent sense of probability. Like, there's nothing like Blood Bowl for making *very* clear that a one-in-6 event is not rare in the slightest.

True, unless you're like my friend Tim, who is convinced that the probability of him rolling a 1 is higher than the probability of all other faces combined. And from what I've seen of his rolls, I'm not sure I disagree with him.

[Jeff V]

True, unless you're like my friend Tim, who is convinced that the probability of him rolling a 1 is higher than the probability of all other faces combined. And from what I've seen of his rolls, I'm not sure I disagree with him.

Is there any reason to believe that die isn't severely loaded?

[Defiant]

True, unless you're like my friend Tim, who is convinced that the probability of him rolling a 1 is higher than the probability of all other faces combined. And from what I've seen of his rolls, I'm not sure I disagree with him.

Is there any reason to believe that die isn't severely loaded?

It was partly meant tongue in cheek - he was clearly exaggerating. But it's from different games with different dice (and everyone uses the same dice). But it did seem to happen more frequently than I would have thought. And of course, it also tended to happen more in "important" rolls, which get all the attention and thus overshadow the less important rolls, and thus helped produce a skewed view of the probability.

[Isgrimnur]

We were playing Downtown and a MiG jumped a flight of four loaded bomb trucks. Each one had to roll to see if they were spooked enough to drop their air-to ground munitions, a 1-in-10 chance. The player promptly rolled four straight ones. The strike team pilots got to go home early that day.

[RunningMn9]

The other issue of course is that there isn’t a 20% probability that Trump wins. One particular model might see that Trumps wins in 20% of its simulations, but that has nothing to do with reality.

There is one single election in 2020 between Trump and Biden. There is no model that can control enough variables to be predictive. It’s all guesswork and we will never know if any of these models are worth anything. Either Trump or Biden will win, and every model allows for that outcome.

[El Guapo]

We were playing Downtown and a MiG jumped a flight of four loaded bomb trucks. Each one had to roll to see if they were spooked enough to drop their air-to ground munitions, a 1-in-10 chance. The player promptly rolled four straight ones. The strike team pilots got to go home early that day.

The one that stands out in my memory was when I was playing Axis and Allies in college (as Germany) and attacked with a force that included five infantry (who only hit on 1s), and rolled five 1s. 1 in 7,776.

[Defiant]

The other issue of course is that there isn’t a 20% probability that Trump wins. One particular model might see that Trumps wins in 20% of its simulations, but that has nothing to do with reality.

There is one single election in 2020 between Trump and Biden. There is no model that can control enough variables to be predictive. It’s all guesswork and we will never know if any of these models are worth anything. Either Trump or Biden will win, and every model allows for that outcome.

It's an estimate of the probability, and includes the limitation of the polling inputs it gets (MoE's, outliers, etc). But it's not just guesswork.

And we *can* verify whether a model is worthwhile or not, after sufficient number of elections, of which, between the House, Senate and the Presidential election in each state, there are hundreds of elections every couple of year. Just look to see if the elections return the expected results (so if you have, say, 10 elections with an 80-20 probability, you would expect the candidates with the 80% chances to win about 8 of those elections and about two of the underdogs to win).

[Holman]

Pure anecdote, but I take good news where I find it:

I'm currently visiting my parents in Fairhope, AL on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. Fairhope is an artsy and well-to-do community that's probably more liberal than most of (white) Alabama, but it is still very much Alabama.

I wasn't here in the 2016 election season, but I remember visiting in 2012 and being surprised to see so many Obama signs among the Romney ones. They were probably 60-40 GOP at that time.

This time I've been taking walks around town and down to the beach to de-stress from the fact of my Dad's approaching death, and I've been very surprised at what I've seen. Biden/Harris and other Dem yard signs easily outnumber Trump or GOP messaging. Yesterday and today I started counting, and I noted more than a dozen Blue houses to just four openly Red ones (including the "Jesus 2020" sign that I’m counting for Trump).

Again, this is pure anecdote, and I have no doubt that Trump will easily win the state, but it certainly looks like (at least around here) the Republicans aren't proud of him.

[Carpet_pissr]

I also live in a “little blue dot...”

[RunningMn9]

there are hundreds of elections every couple of year.

There are, but there are complex and ultimately unique events. So you have hundreds of individual events rather than hundreds of iterations of an event of interest where you can track things the way you need to for this kind of analysis.

It’s like the difference in analytics between baseball and football. In baseball you have hundreds of substantially similar events per year for a player. You can make better predictions with that kind of data.

In football, nerds might think there’s a similar amount of data, but there isn’t. A given situation might occur three times per year.

The factors that are at play in an election in 2020 between Trump and Biden are absolutely nothing like the factors in play in an election in 2004 between Bush and Kerry.

The 2020 election between Trump and Biden will be executed with exactly one time. There’s no way to test a predictive model on that.

[msteelers]

Success!

After years of trying and failing to get my wife to register to vote, I finally convinced her. We got her registered this evening (the deadline to register in Florida is Monday I believe).

Hers is a purely anti-Trump vote. I don’t know if I can get her to vote on anything else on the ballot. I don’t know if I’ll ever get her to vote again. But I’ll take this win and be glad about it.

[Kraken]

Thank her for her service. Whether or not it's the only vote she ever casts, it is certainly the most important.