
Factiness - csantini
http://nathanjurgenson.com/post/152938927255/factiness
======
yummyfajitas
It's entertaining to read an article which simultaneously recognizes it's
sources are deeply wrong about some things, and then _immediately_ parrots
information gained from those very same sources:

 _It shouldn’t have surprised you that the United States is a deeply racist
country. And because that fact is more obvious now, you shouldn’t be surprised
what will happen when open bigotry is given even more permission, legitimacy,
and empowerment._

It's almost completely impossible to comprehend the possibility that many
Trump supporters aren't racist, because the very same media that got the
election wrong told us it was true.

Shocking fact: I know a number of Trump supporters and only one of them is
white. White supremacists, all of them? Including the African woman who's
literally never been in a social setting that was majority white?

Shocking fact #2: you probably also know a Trump supporter or two who are
simply afraid to tell you.

~~~
maxerickson
The author might point out that you are getting caught up in factiness.

I don't think anyone has figured out exactly how important white nationalism
was to Trump's victory (he carried most of the traditional Republican
coalition), but it is clear enough that he got support from white nationalists
in a different manner than any recent president, and that he was doing things
to court that support.

~~~
imgabe
My problem with this is, if there is a coalition of white supremacists
powerful enough to propel a President to a decisive victory, where were they 4
years ago? 8 years ago? Why did they vote for Obama? It doesn't make sense.
They suddenly care enough to go out and vote in large numbers, but they didn't
care 4 years ago to vote against an African-American president? That doesn't
add up. The only conclusion is that Trump's win is due to something other than
racism.

I'm not saying there aren't racists who support Trump. There undoubtedly are.
But that's not why he won.

~~~
hga
You don't have to go so far as "supremacy" to have one good explanation along
these lines, unless it's axiomatic that it's racist and supremacist for
whites, _but no other group_ , to join the game of identity politics.

That could be what changed in the very people in the Rust Belt who voted for
Obama in 2008 and then gave the election to Trump in 2016.

I don't consider it to exactly be a good thing (among other minor details,
absent e.g. Trump building that Big Beautiful Wall, it will inevitably lead to
civil war and ethnic cleansing), but I think it's hard to argue it's not
inevitable, unless whites just collectively decide to commit suicide as so
many are individually.

------
airesQ
FiveThirtyEight did not dismiss Trump, in fact it kept saying that Trump had a
very real chance of winning. The last prediction was a 29%, and a 29% chance
is quite a lot. If you interpret a 29% chance as 'dismissing' then you are
misreading the numbers, and besides the numbers, they never said/wrote that
Clinton was anywhere close to a sure thing.

Regarding election day coverage, 538 did report that some districts in Florida
were doing very well for Clinton, compared with 2012. But they quickly
reminded people that this could just mean that the votes were distributed
differently.

~~~
empath75
He also caught a lot of crap from the media for giving trump that high of a
chance including a fucking embarrassingly stupid and uninformed attack from
Ryan Grim at Huffington Post.

~~~
dictum
It's the _downvoting your comment because I disagree with an opinion you don
't hold, but recognize as being held by some people_ of media commentary.

------
rhapsodic
_" As I type this, Trump’s crowd is chanting for Clinton to be jailed. It’s
horrifying."_

What is horrifying to me is the prospect of living under a government that is
not bound by its own laws. It's fairly obvious that Clinton knowingly broke
the law, despite others advising her not to. There are people in prison "as I
type this" for similar, but far less serious offenses. Why should Clinton be
above the law?

~~~
hga
The only horrifying thing about it is if it's viewed as a punishment for
losing the election, that sort of thing quite reliably kills Republics.

But so does the end of the Rule of Law in them....

------
sambe
Nate Silver made a rather good analysis of his own failings with respect to
the primary: [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-
pundi...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-
screwed-up-on-donald-trump/).

I agree substantially more with his own analysis than I do with this blog
post. He even mentions that the introspection may have gone too far. Why is it
that Trump's victory has been seen as a "another failure of the pollsters"?
Fivethiryeight had him at 35% chance. Betting markets were at around 4.1 the
day before IIRC. In my view it's just another narrative to sell to people -
laughing at other "stupid" people, here, read our newspaper instead.

~~~
rjdagost
The day before the election, Nate Silver took a lot of heat from the left
because he rated Trump's chance of success as being much higher than most
other prognosticators. The day after the election, he took a lot of heat from
the same people because he didn't rate Trump's odds highly enough.

~~~
inimino
This has been fascinating to watch.

Conjecture: before the election, liberals wanted reassurance, so he took heat
for not being reassuring enough, afterwards they wanted someone to blame for
their shock.

Also relevant: people (other than gamblers) have no sense of what 70% means,
so they round up to "Hillary".

------
matt4077
I much prefer Richard Feynman's term of "cargo-cult science" for what is
basically the same idea.

But I think it's misguided to apply it to this situation. 538 had Trump at a
chance of 1/3 on election day. Not because there were any polls that pointed
at a possible Trump win, but because their model was excellent enough to
detect the uncertainty in the polls (mostly the high number of undecideds and
volatility).

Regarding the "mainstream Media" I fail to see what they did wrong. They
showed Trump for what he is (after some hesitation). We now know that 30% of
Americans are willing to throw millions of people under the bus, either
because they're racists, or because they're willing to empower racism and an
assortment of other hate just because some caricature of an imagined "coastal
liberal" made fun of them. Another 50% can't be bothered to vote at all. Are
people expecting the media to take its clues from these voters and triangulate
their morals? Luckily, minority rights aren't actually subject to popular
approval, even in a democracy.

~~~
dhimes
_Regarding the "mainstream Media" I fail to see what they did wrong._

From what I've been reading and my own anecdote it's that they didn't follow
Trump _enough_. They didn't hear his true message, and that was one that
appealed to many. You don't have to be racist to buy into it.

My anecdote: One fine afternoon, in fact it was the afternoon after Trump won
the NH primary, I found myself at home for some reason far too early in the
day. I flipped on the TV and came across a news network that I had never seen
before. It's called the One America Network. The mission of the One America
Network is to bring a conservative viewpoint to the masses through media. Fox,
it seems, has become nothing but a bunch of crybaby liberals and for Real
Americans (TM) OAN is the new place to be.

OK. Let's see what these dipshits have to say.

On comes Trump. He is at a rally in (IIRC) South Carolina. OAN had him
budgeted for an hour of air time, but _stayed with him until he finished_.

He talked about ObamaCare. It was a horrible system. It was made by Obama but
he was in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry ( _sic_ \- most would say
insurance, but- _truthiness_...). He was going to throw it out _and replace it
with something better_.

Did you catch that last part? Had you heard that before? His appeal to his
supporters was that ObamaCare wasn't working because it was written for big
business by corrupt politicians and not for everyday Americans. And he was
going to have a better plan. For them.

You don't have to be a racist for that to resonate. And for the mainstream
media to miss the nuance in these messages (I'm _guessing_ there were more) is
to not understand what the election was truly about. And, as everybody on this
board knows, when you don't understand the fundamental concepts the Final Exam
is a crapshoot.

~~~
sesqu
Your anecdote supports the truthiness vs. factiness argument. Trump avoided
making statements, such as what his improvement would be, so that didn't get
reported. He only made claims about at issues he considered needing
intervention, leaving the specifics to implementation. One set of people
assumed he wanted to undo progress, while another assumed he wanted to advance
it. One statement, two conclusions.

------
bryanlarsen
What an excellent word. "thruthiness" is an awesome word to describe what's
happening out there now, so "factiness" as its corollary should also join the
popular lexicon.

However, "factiness" as a concept has been recognized for much longer. The
most popular expression expressing it would be the quote that Twain attributes
to Disraeli: "lies, damned lies and statistics".

Thruthiness probably grew up as an antidote to factiness. Proper math
education and recognition that most preliminary scientific studies are
bullshit is probably a better antidote, but trusting your gut is an easier
antidote, and often effective. It's just that when your gut is wrong, relying
on your gut makes it almost impossible to change your mind.

------
hunvreus
The author is assuming media have a sacred mission of objectively informing
us. Media ethics haven't been honored in a long time, if ever.

If the Second Amendment is the last line of defense against tyranny, a skeptic
and inquisitive mind is the first and most important one.

------
partisan
Nowadays you can have reality your way with relatively little work. In fact,
you have to work hard to get other perspectives. You can even lie to yourself
about your own viewpoint. You could be a left leaning liberal ready to say all
of the right things on all of the right topics and then feel uncomfortable
when a person of color enters the room. Or joke with your friends in "Ebonics"
when everyone in the room looks the same. Ever done a triple take when an
interracial couple sits near you at a restaurant? I see it all of the time.

This country is out of touch with itself and we are out of touch with
ourselves. We worry about what others think of our opinions and bury the parts
of us that don't align with the right opinions. But they stay there, latent
until they are triggered by something that is outside of the script that we
prepared for. As one of my friends put it, "I'd rather know who is racist than
not know and have people pretend they are not". It starts there. By knowing
who we are and who others are. By being honest with ourselves. And then
looking outside of the bubble we created for ourselves and understanding the
other perspectives that exist and why they exist.

Personally, I listen to a wide range of podcasts from far left to far right. I
am uncomfortable with the intolerance I hear on both sides of the spectrum but
I would rather know what the perspectives are than not know and be surprised
and completely unable to understand when someone like Trump wins.

------
ecnmic
I don't understand what this article is saying?

~~~
crispyambulance
He wrote it at 2:41 am, Nov 9th.

People are just trying to understand what happened and for some this involves
exercises in thinking out loud.

~~~
MichaelMoser123
> People are just trying to understand what happened and for some this
> involves exercises in thinking out loud.

i think that every eight year the pendulum swings between Democrats and
Republicans; people get tired of one side and choose the other one. In about
two years we will know more...

------
fagnerbrack
My theory is that everybody thought Trump winning was so "out of reality" that
they just didn't care in doing the count right.

I was keeping tracking in the NYT real-time dashboard and all started 80/20
for Hilary and then it suddenly changed 80/20 to Trump (I guess Pareto is
happy with that).

------
carsongross
Smart people find very elaborate and clever ways to be wrong.

