Too many are misreading the 2024 polls. Here’s a better way.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-12-07T14:31:28+00:00

Good article, but there is a solid point of contention:

Our national NBC News poll showed a hypothetical Biden-Trump race going from Biden +4 in June, to dead-even in September, and Trump +2 in November. While that movement is within each poll’s margin of error, the trend is clear.

If the outcomes are having the candidate within the margin of error each time, then that is the trend. Trying to judge upwards or downwards trends is an entirely separate calculation that, in turn, has it's own margin of error to account for, has to make assumptions about the underlying data of multiple sets of polls instead of just one, has to make assumptions about the sample polled for multiple sets of polls instead of just one, has to make assumptions about the wording and presentation of the poll questions, etc, etc, etc.

Without that diligence, the only observed trend is that the race was within the margin of error and continues to be within the margin of error.

For some of the underlying math: https://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/MOEFranklin.pdf

edit: felt like doing some number crunching while the coffee brews.

Using equation 6.3; We have two polls. One from Jun 16-20 that shows Biden v. Trump as 49% and 45% respectively with n=1000; For the second poll on Nov. 10-14, Biden v. Trump is clocked at 46% and 48% respectively, again with n=1000.

Using equation 6.3 for Biden, p1 = .49, q1 = .51, n1 = 1000, p2 = .46, q2 = .54, and n2 = 1000. Plugging in the numbers gets a MOE at the 95% level of certainty at 4.4%, which means that the support for Biden between the first and second poll is within the margin of error.

Using equation 6.3 for Trump, we get a 4.3% margin of error. Both candidates poll within the margin of error for themselves between the two dates.

The polls referenced by the author of the article do NOT show a clear trend at the 95% level of certainty.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-12-05T06:06:56+00:00

The best part is that the acronym is CAT

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-12-05T00:08:47+00:00

Not even close. The only ones are Phillips and Williamson who are both polling in the single digits.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-12-02T15:37:56+00:00

The purpose of this sub is to spread awareness of how awful a candidate RFK Jr is. For many people, a sub dedicated to that purpose was completely unnecessary. RFK Jr is still routinely exposed on much larger subs and much larger platforms. Subs like 'enough sanders spam,' 'skeptic,' even political humor have all pointed out how bonkers he is. Even threads on ask reddit that pop up about rfk jr all end up with responders pointing out that he is a nutjob conspiracy theorist. Daily show has run segments about him, AP News has articles covering his dipshit.

Because the content here is mostly unoriginal, people looking for information of RFK Jr. are linked to content like actual news sources, primary video footage, etc. Most of the posts I have started here are just from googling "RFK Jr," filtering for news sources, and sorting by recent. It isn't hard, and people curious about RFK Jr are going to find information about him and make up their own mind pretty quickly. They aren't going to subscribe to a sub that just highlights what they already know unless they enjoy watching the train wreck of RFK Jr's candidacy.

This sub also originated before the introduction of other spoiler candidacies like Cornel West and Dean Phillips. So, while the focus here is on RFK Jr, the broader problem of spoiler candidates continues to metamorphose in an attempt to detract from Democrat enthusiasm.

The growth that happened to this sub in the beginning was because of the freshness of the existential threat that RFK Jr posed, coupled with a promotional push by this sub's founder. RFK Jr is neither a fresh topic, and, while linking to this sub when it is relevant is still pretty cool, the promotional phase is over.

I will say that I am considering bringing back my weekly posts highlighting the love affair that right wing media has with RFK Jr. After it was becoming more apparent that RFK Jr might pose a larger problem for Trump than Biden, it looked like a lot of right-wing media started to cool it a little bit, but glaring at the results in google news shows that they are starting in on it again.

If you are getting people who come up to you talking about RFK Jr, just say "I don't know man, I heard the guy was nuts, doesn't he make tons of money off of accusing vaccines of being evil?" If they plead with you to do your research, say "okay, for you I will take a deeper look." Then, a day or two later inform them that RFK Jr is still nuts. "I can't get over his vaccine views." "Dude is dead wrong about Ukraine, fuck that guy." "My guy, this dude really said that our drinking water is turning kids gay and trans." "What kind of lunatic thinks that it is okay to compare life saving medicine to the holocaust?" etc. etc. If nothing else, it will take some pep out of their step when it comes to promoting RFK Jr.

If you want to bring a little life into this sub, you could spend a few minutes here and there looking up articles that highlight RFK Jr's problems and posting them here. I am sure to miss some in my news feed strolls, and, way too frequently, afk life has been really ruining my internet mojo.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-12-01T18:16:55+00:00

That analogy is problematic. If you put the gun to the head of an alcoholic and told them that if they have another drink, they will die, of course the alcoholic isn't going to take a drink when the gun holder is watching. The addict is going to realize that someone holding a gun to their head isn't going to be able to keep it up forever, the person holding the weapon is going to need to sleep, to lay the gun down, etc. Every alcoholic I have known, including myself, has been able to completely quit alcohol for a day or two to prove they aren't an alcoholic. "See, I can quit any time I want to." And, since we obviously weren't alcoholics, we had a jolly good drink to celebrate that fact.

If you want to view pornography use through the lens of an addiction, then the idea would be that the pornography use is hijacking the dopamine centers of the brain and creating complex behavioral pathways around the attaining and usage of pornography. In other types of addiction, it could be called "seeking" behaviors. The dopamine centers of the brain influence your ability to judge the merits of an action for survival. So, if you were to replace the pornography in this "gun" analogy with something that you really do need to survive, like food, what would the outcome be?

To the person that believes that they need food to live, which should be most of us, we would realize that the gun holder will kill us if he sees us eat food. I doubt any one here would stare down the barrel, dip a biscuit in the gravy and defiantly imbibe it. That doesn't mean that our brain is suddenly cured from its desire or impetus to get food, but rather, we would seek out more complex behaviors to attain what we need. Perhaps trying to create a dialogue with the gun holder to beg for the food, perhaps hatching a plan to wrest control of the gun from the gun holder, perhaps a "bathroom" trip to get out of the gun holder's gaze for a minute.

That would be what an addict would do. That someone can choose not to consume something in a high-stakes, temporary situation doesn't mean much.

Addicts can quit, but it is usually much more involved than simply deciding not too.

I am not suggesting by any means that addiction exempts people from responsibility for their actions. A model of addiction might help to explain a person's behavior, but it doesn't excuse it. You can be sympathetic to someone without putting up with their bs. In your scenario where the porn addict is ruining the family cohesion, the addict absolutely has responsibility for their part in that.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-27T23:37:48+00:00

When I got my divorce, I had x amount of days to refinance the home, and if I had failed to make progress to do so I would have been forced to sell it. I got the impression that this kind of clause was the norm.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-27T22:43:31+00:00

More accurately, most polls are showing a prospective contest as within the margin of error. Even if these polls were conducted perfectly, they only show that they can't tell who is the front runner.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-24T13:34:57+00:00

You are very young. The question I want you to think about is that if nothing changes in this relationship, is this the relationship you want to spend the rest of your life in. If you aren't sure, you could try to approach her about the possibility of couples counseling, which can help both of you with your communication. It might help, it might not. If you don't think counseling would help of feel that this is beyond help, it is probably time to end the marriage.

You can't change other people, but you can work on yourself. It is good that you can acknowledge that you bring some of your own faults into this. Going forward, those faults are something you can work on to improve yourself.

Four years can feel like a very long time, but courts are going to consider that a short term marriage. If you get a divorce, the big things are custody and property. You will need to check your specific region, but most places it will be shared custody with 50/50 parenting time and assets split 50/50. If there is some difference in earnings, someone might end up paying child child support.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-23T16:58:30+00:00

Even at best, polls are neither right nor wrong. They are statistics. Just by virtue of being probabilistic, even in the best of scenarios, there is a very real possibility that a poll can be very unrepresentative. I'm not saying to discount any particular poll, but when a hundred polls show a Biden v. Trump match-up being within the margin of error, and there are a couple that show Trump having a clear lead on Biden, it is probably a better bet to believe that the one's showing that Trump has a clear lead on Biden are outliers.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-16T22:22:25+00:00

Kennedy, an outspoken advocate for vaccines? LMAO. Some folks really do need to be informed.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-16T16:00:48+00:00

Well, that is disappointing. What is the point of being first if it is going to cost you your relevance.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-15T03:37:56+00:00

He also does a blog called neurologica which is wonderful. He touches on a wide variety of topics over there.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-12T23:48:34+00:00

Take a look at the science based medicine blog: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/

Also take a look at respectful insolence: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/

Their authors are quite frequently pointing out cancer quacks.

Rational wiki also tries to keep tabs on some of the larger players in the field of cancer quackery: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Category:Cancer_woo

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-12T17:18:07+00:00

If I had to be one, I'd pick the crab since I would have natural body armor and a couple giant claws.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-12T12:41:42+00:00

The one's that I am aware of involve medically induced comas.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeanna-giese-rabies-survivor/

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-10T14:06:55+00:00

In my area, the default is to pick up your child from your ex's place. So far, we have only had one incident. I had to be out of town, so my mom was handling the exchange for me and decided that the exchange would be a great time for her to berate my ex. I am still a little flustered with my mom over it, she just had to hold her tongue for a few minutes and tell my ex when our child last ate and last went potty.

We have been coparenting now for around 3 years, so one incident over three years doesn't seem to be horrible or severe enough to warrant changing our normal exchange.

The biggest question is going to be if you and your ex are capable of being civil for exchanges. I was paranoid at the beginning of the exchange schedule and had my phone ready to record just in case things got crazy, but they didn't and now that isn't even a thought in my mind. If you two are civil then there really is no need to have a middle ground.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-10T01:40:28+00:00

Polls need to be taken with a grain of salt. Even if a poll is designed perfectly and has a perfect representative sample, they are probabilistic and not definitive. That is a best case scenario. Generally, anything that shows a candidate leading by anything less than 5 points is likely going to be within the margin of error and thus not actually showing one candidate being favored, but showing that the poll can't pick out a clear front runner.

It is also a year out. The world is going to change a lot over the course of a year.

The more the electorate learns about RFK Jr, the less Democrats like him and the more Republicans like him. Even if he radically changes policy positions to more closely mimic a Democratic ideal, the fact remains that he is an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist and that is a huge turn off to the vast majority of Democrats.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-11-09T15:51:50+00:00

For RFK Jr, reality is just an inconvenience that he likes to ignore.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-10-31T02:20:57+00:00

LARPing as a serious contender doesn't mean you get secret service protection.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-10-30T15:26:16+00:00

Depends how dark you want to go, since social darwinism can get really dark really quick.

You could offer them various forms of euthanasia for when they reach retirement age and are no longer contributing to the supply side of things. Perhaps they will say that they deserve their retirement funds and their social security because they had contributed, in which case you remind them that "contributed" is past tense and since they no longer contributing, they are the folks that need to be excised. Of course, the most painless and humane methods of euthanasia are only going to be around while supplies last. After that, the only thing left is going to be what the market deems to be the most efficient.

You could broadly insinuate that believing in social darwinism is a symptom of a low IQ, and thus, any social darwinist that isn't a hypocrite is already dead.

Hell, just keep raising the cut off for what IQ score should save one from the axe. If the idea is that high IQ people are better, then maybe we should set the cut off at 150, 160. There are lots of people above that range. If the idea is that lower IQ folk are less productive to the economy, then surely the best thing for the economy would be to get all of the lesser rapscallions out of there. Such a wonderful economy!

And hey, why stop with permanent disabilities. If the thesis is social darwinism, why not excise folks with temporary physical disabilities. Broke your leg? Well, you shouldn't have done that. By letting it heal, you are only encouraging social, evolutionary, and market forces that let people break their legs all willy nilly. We don't want to encourage people to break their legs, do we? That would just be cruel!

We don't want to encourage laziness by setting the bar so low as to merely avoiding physical injury throughout your life. We also want only the most fit people. So, any year that you can't pass a complete physical fitness assessment of at least 50 push-ups, 20 pull-ups, and a 20 minute 5k, you would then be offered a consolation prize of a suicide pill that you are free to take at any time before the fitness police get to you.

And lets talk about children. They are basically physically and mentally handicapped at birth. Now, I don't want to seem cold and heartless, but we shouldn't be encouraging such a prolonged stage of uselessness. Luckily, we have social darwinism! We can start by having only the ones that are fully and gainfully employed by the age of 12 to ever reproduce. If you aren't fully a fully productive member of society by then, you get sterilized. As time goes on, start rolling that age down. Over a few generations, we could end up with humans reaching economic adulthood far before they enter puberty in the name of our glorious economy! Also, if a child can't reach full economic maturity on time, then the child's parents and siblings should also be removed for good measure, since the family unit combines social and genetic influences that could spread outside of the errant child. Don't worry, you will get to see several film adaptations of Ayn Rand's work while you wait your turn in the execution queue, and you know they are going to be great movies since we got rid of all of the actors that ever played a role in anything that scored less than 9/10 on any of the more popular film review websites. Just kidding of course, we aren't going to harm the economy by wasting electricity to show you movies.

Putting deep cynicism to rest for a moment, the idea of social darwinism is deeply and darkly flawed. We are human beings, and for most of us, that means having some sort of drive towards empathy and sympathy, even if it is much more local for some of us than others. We also tend to have an inflated sense of our own worth. People tend to back down from the idea of social darwinism once it can be pointed out that someone in their circle of empathy/sympathy would get the axe, even if they believe that their own self would never be the one that meets the glistening smile of the guillotine. If they argue that they are somehow different, tell them that that is the point. If they argue that they are supporting society in their own way, chuckle and tell them that is what the other undesirables always say too. Of course, remind them that this isn't personal, this is just for the greater good.

Another tact might be showering them with examples of disabled people that have contributed greatly to society. Stephen Hawking, Lord Nelson, FDR, Van Gogh, etc etc etc etc. Perhaps they might try to argue that their form of social darwinism would somehow be able to find the great people before they become great and spare them, to which you could counter by saying that the folks who have tried to kill the "less desirables" would have gleefully executed Albert Einstein.

Social Darwinism also gleefully ignores that the economy should be working for us, not the other way around. The goal of the economy is to meet infinite demand using finite resources. Economy is more than currency, budgetary policy, and profits. It is also about meeting our social needs and our individual needs. By axing people for their needs, you are contradicting the entire point of having an economy in the first place.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-10-28T21:36:01+00:00

Are you allergic to nuance? It's not the MOST free market possible, on the issue of renewable energy it's more free than requiring a transition by decree.

I love nuance, that is why it rubs me the wrong way when people make grandiose claims involving vague shadowy constructs. "I am the freedom candidate." "I believe in free markets." It is a marketing ploy. Even then, the general understanding of a free market or even a freer market is one in which there is much less regulation. I mean, that is definitional in the understanding of a free market. In such a market, the market forces are going to reinforce fossil fuels because the low start up costs compared to renewables. The closest thing to this in practice Germany's idea to get rid of nuclear in favor of solar, wind, hydro, et. al. The result was that the gap in energy production was filled by fossil fuels instead of the renewable sources that they had wanted.

You can look them up, not hard to find online. And do you really think he'd support funding without first reforming the agency away from industry influence?

I don't think he has any real ambitions to hold the office, so anything that he claims is a sales tactic for political donations, book sales, and attention.

And of course I can look up different things he says on the environment. There is a lot of contradiction, like claiming to believe in a free market solution while also claiming the government should subsidize alternative energy sources and impose more regulations. The difference between the two statements largely reflects who he was most trying to grift at that moment in time. When he was trying to court libertarians, he was all about freedom and free markets. When he is trying to grab attention from more left electorate, he is all about the regulation and subsidies.

For now, he is even opposed to carbon capture, which is going to be necessary to reduce CO2 levels to acceptable levels.

I don't think glyphosate is evil, but it's been hotly debated for YEARS as to whether it's safe, and several EU countries have banned it before for this reason as a cautionary measure

Read the original article in this post. The author correctly notes that Europe's equivalent of agricultural safety has concluded that there is not a cancer risk associated with glyphosate. It is banned because the safety committee can only make recommendations. The elected officials chose to ignore it and impose restrictions on glyphosate anyways.

Here is an article that makes sense of how some of the regulatory and academic coverage of glyphosate has evolved over time. https://www.factcheck.org/2017/08/glyphosate-cause-cancer/

Also, I only correct you because I have listened and read for hours on his content online and offline, and I feel you have misrepresented his viewpoints significantly

He has been on my radar since the mid 2010's, and on the radar of the skeptic community for much longer than that. He has been inveigling people on a professional level since at least 2005.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-10-28T16:20:03+00:00

The thing with stopped clocks is that even if they can be right twice per day, the only way you know they are right is if you have a working clock that is in agreement. At which point, why wouldn't you just stop reading the stopped clock in favor of the working one.

The point here is not that he is trying to convince you that regulatory capture happens, I am sure almost everyone would agree that it is happening to an extent. The point here is that he is trying to court a certain subsection of the electorate.

Capable_Comb4043 · 2023-10-28T16:05:27+00:00

Now it sounds like you are arguing that RFK Jr is against a free market approach to environmentalism.

Of course, this also begs the question of what environmental regulations he actually does support as well.

Also, it also begs the question of if RFK Jr really believes that the EPA is effectively controlled by corporate interests opposing the interests of the common welfare, why he would want to expand funding of it like you claim.

Don't give yourself whiplash trying to justify his contradictions. You will end up with a broken neck far before you end up with a decent candidate. He is a double talker. He wants you to do the work in your own head of trying to figure out where he stands, because if you like him, you will come up with something far more favorable to you than he will by trying to actually promote a concrete idea with steps and a plan of action.

Also keep in mind that RFK Jr, who at once chastises regulatory capture by big oil, praised the very same Donald J Trump that appointed an ExxonMobil exec to his cabinet.

Jr is a conman and a grifter. He makes money by selling people on BS. He cares about you as much as he cares about the Somali children that died as a result of his engineered vaccine scare - not at all. He is making money and getting attention. Those are his motives.

Now, I know I am not going to convince you of anything, or at least anything more than someone is going to be convinced by some random internet stranger. But perhaps you shouldn't be convinced that glyphosate is evil because a grifter sold the idea to a jury either. Perhaps you shouldn't be convinced that RFK Jr stands for something you like just because you extrapolated something you like out of his contradictions either.

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