
Paul Graham: Silicon Valley Favors Obama Over Romney 2 To 1 - tomio
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/10/12/paul-grahams-poll-silicon-valley-favors-obama-over-romney-2-to-1/
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tokenadult
I'm not perceiving the news value here. California has never been in doubt as
a state that will provide Electoral College votes to President Obama. (The
same is true of Minnesota, where I live.) And anyone who knows California
knows that the Bay Area is even more "blue" than greater Los Angeles, so what
other election result would we expect in Silicon Valley? Now that I've
commented, I should probably agree with my friends on Hacker News that posts
about politics should be flagged ruthlessly.

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pg
The reason these 24 people's opinions are significant is obviously not that
their votes are going to affect the outcome of the election. It's that they
are experts on growth, which seems to be one of the most important issues in
the election.

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ivankirigin
But you didn't ask them which they thought would drive the most growth. You
asked which they prefer, which is personal.

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pg
I'm not sure what you mean by "personal." I think what you meant to say is
that the reasons for their preference are unknown. Yes, obviously. But it
seemed to me telling that while Romney presents himself as a businessman who
can solve our problems with growth, rather than a politician, the real growth
experts have more of an affinity for his opponent.

If Romney actually was what he tries to seem, he'd be more popular in the
Valley. That's what makes this poll significant. The leaders of the startup
community don't have the natural affinity they'd have for him if they believed
his claims. Which in turn is fairly good evidence they're false.

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chacham15
> I think what you meant to say is that the reasons for their preference are
> unknown. Yes, obviously.

> If Romney actually was what he tries to seem, he'd be more popular in the
> Valley.

These two statements are contradictory.

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pg
I don't understand why you think that.

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chacham15
The second statement assumes that the reason Romney is not popular with people
in the valley is _because_ he does not appear to be what he claims. This
contradicts the first statement because it says that we don't know why these
people prefer one candidate over another. To be more concrete, people could
strongly dislike Romney's stance on abortion. In that case, it would not
matter whether Romney appears or does not appear to be what he claims to be,
that individual still would not like him.

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pg
No it doesn't. It merely says he'd be more popular if he were what he claimed.
That doesn't require the reason he's not popular to be that he's not what he
claims.

Suppose a restaurant is unpopular, due to bad food, bad service, high cost,
whatever. There's no contradiction in expecting it would become more popular
if a movie star started to hang out there every night.

We're now arguing about basic logic. I've found threads are usually
irrecoverable at that point, so if you don't mind, I'm done.

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chacham15
I think that you are missing the heart of the matter. That is that the only
piece of data that you have is popularity. Given that, how can you determine
how well Romney was what he tries to seem? To put this into the context of
your restaurant example, how can you differentiate between a restaurant that
is unpopular otherwise but has a movie star and a restaurant with the same
level of popularity but no movie star (with the movie star being analogous to
Romney being what he tries to seem)?

I'm sorry if you do not like these kinds of arguments as I try to involve as
much base logic as I can. I think that base logic is to arguments what
functions are to algorithms. Furthermore, sticking to logic results in an
argument at least on the level of DH4 in your essay "How to Disagree."

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001sky
_Poll: Area Man finds 2/3 of his friends share his political views_

\-- The Onion.

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alexholehouse
I'm not sure you can have a "landslide" with a sample size of 24...

