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Comment by kafkaesq | Hacker News Reader

This is different than every Presidential transition of power, how?

It's the aims of the control, and the utter brazenness with which the new administration attempts to manipulate facts and reality in general that are different.

There's never been an administration (well, maybe in the 19th century; but I mean, not since the dawn of modern journalistic reporting) that blatantly and transparently lied about such publicly known and immediately fact-checkable things as crowd sizes on inaugural day.

I don't see what's Orwellian about it.

This morning the press secretary asked you -- yes, you -- to not see anything wrong with the fact that President still believes that "millions of people voted illegally" in the last election. And that he has "studies and evidence" on which he bases that belief.

You don't see anything Orwellian about that?

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Don't forget that he's press secretary for the one guy who actually made accurate polling assessments prior to the election.

If your source on disproving the "millions of illegal votes" is one of the same sources that thought Hillary was going to win in a landslide, then you have nothing to say.

I'm not going to say I agree there were illegal votes, but I am holding out for better evidence.

Don't forget that he's press secretary for the one guy who actually made accurate polling assessments prior to the election.

So if you met someone on a street corner who pointed at the sky, and told you "Hey look, it's orange with pink polka-dots" -- would you think to yourself, "Hmm, I'm tempted to be skeptical -- but then again, when I asked this guy for the time the other day, he gave a correct enough answer. So maybe he's right this time, too."

If your source on disproving the "millions of illegal votes"...

So are you suggesting that the "millions" claim stands until disproven? Is that really how you see things?

If yesterday I thought the sky was going to be blue, everyone else swore the sky would be blue, and this lone fellow told me it'd be a blood red sky---and he was correct right down to the particular shade of crimson it would be, then yes I would take him a little more seriously.

No one thought Trump would win. Even in the states he lost in, he lost be lesser margins than was predicted. Hiliary seemed to be inevitable---after all she is an actual politiclan, with real experience. The democractic machine is behind her, isn't it? She has the force of history behind her driving her to be the first female president. How can she lose?

Then she lost rather dramatically. I looked at the election results and saw a sea of red from coast to coast, with Hilary doing well in high population areas but losing majority everywhere else.

You have completely missed the point of the comment to which you are responding. In kafkaesq's analogy, knowing the time does not really indicate good understanding of the color of the sky, and should not be considered as evidence of credibility about sky color claims. Similarly, being able to read polls well does not really indicate ability to predict voter fraud. They both have to do with voting. That's about it, as far as similarities go.

There is a rather huge expanse of land where that "sea of red" is very, very few people compared to the rest of the country. The color maps are silly and deceptive.

Perhaps, but if a geographical area of your country produces most of your food, and contains nearly all of your natural resources, you can't look at the citizens who choose to live there and say "sorry guys, there's too few of you so we're going to ignore your wants and desires".

Such is the path to resentment, secession and violent revolution.

>Perhaps, but if a geographical area of your country produces most of your food,

As a matter of fact, much to most of our food comes from California.

>Such is the path to resentment, secession and violent revolution.

Why is ignoring the majority of the people, who produce 2/3 of the GDP, not considered a path to resentment, secession, and violent revolution?

That is, why should we in the sane, tolerant, productive, non-fascist majority not just declare independence from a government which plainly has no intention of listening to our voices or interests, which rigs elections against us year after year, and which considers itself the only legitimate Americans?

Why should only the loser minority get to revolt?

> As a matter of fact, much to most of our food comes from California.

Nope. It's 11% by value.[1]

The breadbasket of America is still keeping its namesake, then Texas produces the most beef.

[1]http://beef2live.com/story-states-produce-food-value-0-10725...

Does the red or the blue half of California grow the food? I suspect the red does.

I looked at the election results and saw a sea of red from coast to coast, with Hilary doing well in high population areas but losing majority everywhere else.

But you understand the part about the "sea of red" mostly reflecting the (much) lower population density (and hence, greater land area per voter) in pro-Trump states, right? And that if you actually looked at map that expanded or contract each precinct according to population size -- that that map would be nearly evenly split between red and blue, right? Such that'd you'd hardly be able to tell which side (red or blue) had the greater share.

Right?

Then she lost rather dramatically.

Actually in historical terms, she lost the electoral vote rather narrowly (specifically in the bottom quartile of loss margins, throughout U.S. history).

Yet somehow you settled on the belief that she lost "dramatically." How so, exactly?

Predicting election outcomes based on polling (including exit polls) is very different than alleging massive voter fraud.

In the case of Clinton losing the election, the predictions which were based on statistical evidence did not match the actual outcome. Even so, an unlikely outcome is understood as a possibility within the domain of predictive statistical modeling and the wholesale dismissal of the utility of statistical modeling is anti-science at best.

On the other hand, asserting voter fraud without providing a single shred of evidence (regardless of claims to have said evidence) is quite different from evidence-based statistical modeling. So people who "thought Hillary was going to win in a landslide" could actually have quite a bit to say about alleging voter fraud without producing evidence. For example, such people could say that Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of nearly 3 million votes.

To turn your statement on its head, it is in fact the people who allege voter fraud without evidence who have nothing to say.

EDIT: spelling, reduce number of single-sentence paragraphs

  predictions which were based on statistical evidence

Polls aren't evidence. In this case, they were barely data.

There are polls which are designed to gauge opinion, and there are polls which are designed to steer opinion.

  evidence-based statistical modeling

Given that the model failed, it apparently wasn't evidence-based.

The Trump team's "polling prescience" has been vastly overstated. Trump himself has admitted that, reading the polls, he thought that he was going to lose the election as late as election night itself [0]. In fact, he says, this is why he rented a smaller ballroom for his end-of-night speech than he would've rented had he thought he was going to win. (Leave it to Mr. Trump to feel the need to defend the size of his ballroom.)

The idea that no outlet which was incorrect in predicting election results can be used as a credible source for post-election reporting is preposterous. Where do you get your news, if you abandon sources the instant that they make an incorrect prediction? Do you ignore meteorologists because they were wrong about that big thunderstorm that one time?

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-12-14/trump...

So you exclude any pollster that's been wrong once? Doesn't that strike you as very un-statisticianlike?

Flip a coin 4 times, all 4 times the coin lands on heads.

You: "Statistics is bullshit."

Flip a coin 10,000 times, 8200 times it lands on heads.

You: "The coin is not imbalanced nor is the process gamed in any way."

Not a very reasonable analogy at all. Of course you and your ilk need to resort to such nonsense to waste everyone's time.

Ok, wow. That blew up. Let me see if I can respond to the main points. Seems like I went for shock value more than clarity in how I said things.

The point with the election polling wasn't statistics. I don't have a source, but I read on HN and Hillary's emails that much of the mistake was a misassessment of the voter base due to bias. I'm questioning the likelihood that the news sources that were biased then will be unbiased now.

> So are you suggesting that the "millions" claim stands until disproven? Is that really how you see things? Check my last statement...I'm agnostic until better information shows itself.

Fact-check: There is at least one study that support the President's beliefs on millions of people voting illegally. - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379414...

There is a Harvard rebuttal to that study, but that doesn't change the fact there is a study supporting the President's position.

The inauguration was the most-watched in history (person + tv + live-streaming), yet the "reality" I'm seeing in California is that Obama's was far more popular. Who is bending reality? It depends on the reality you're already pre-disposed to believe.

There is at least one study that support the President's beliefs on millions of people voting illegally. ... There is a Harvard rebuttal to that study...

This rebuttal, you mean?

"This paper documents how low-level measurement error for survey questions generally agreed to be highly reliable can lead to large prediction errors in large sample surveys, such as the CCES. The example for this analysis is Richman, Chattha, and Earnest (2014), which presents a biased estimate of the rate at which non-citizens voted in recent elections. The results, we show, are completely accounted for by very low frequency measurement error; further, the likely percent of non-citizen voters in recent US elections is zero."

...but that doesn't change the fact there is a study supporting the President's position.

Do you realize what you're saying, here? "The study has since been revealed to have been basically bullshit. But that doesn't change the fact it supports the President's position."

It depends on the reality you're already pre-disposed to believe.

If you're already that relativist about about basic events in recent history that were attended by hundreds of thousands in person -- and witnessed on television many many hundreds of millions, worldwide -- as to basically say, "How can ya really know? It all depends on what you're pre-disposed to believe" -- then I'm afraid there's not much I can do for you, pal.

I'm not an expert enough on the math to decide which study is accurate, the original or the rebuttal (nor did I read the original because it's behind a paywall). Nor, I doubt, is Trump. It's not an official government position that millions of illegal immigrants voted, it's Trump's personal opinion. Much like it was Obama's opinion that Trump would never be President (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FkIJEmOyoA). Or that pulling out of Iraq and leaving a power vacuum wouldn't lead to the horrifying rise of ISIS and genocide (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/isis-gen...). I think Trump's opinion is on the more banal side of things and won't have any severe consequences if he's wrong. That's just my opinion.

There's also a difference between being wrong about opinions (like statements about the future) and being wrong about things that are factual while making a claim that presents itself as a factual assertion. While the nature of what he's wrong about is banal, it represents an extremely dangerous disregard for facts. That he would make up facts out of whole cloth (or fully believe such a poorly done study because it suits his ego) should be extremely worrying to everyone. You knock Obama for his miscalculations, but if Trump's belief formation process is so defective when it comes to the banal, false beliefs are guaranteed to plague his decision making when it really counts.

[On the one hand, maybe Trump's false claim of illegal voters is wrong. But on the other hand, maybe he's right that ISIS and genocide are Obama's fault. So does it really matter if Trump is wrong?]

It's not an official government position that millions of illegal immigrants voted, it's Trump's personal opinion. Much like it was Obama's opinion that Trump would never be President.

Do you see a difference between someone having...

(1) an "opinion" about something that happened in the recent, knowable past -- but which flies in the face of all available evidence; and which, when challenged, you're unable to offer any evidence for -- like for example claiming that "The Kansas City Royals won the World Series last year", or "The Russians were the first to land on the moon", when everyone knows they didn't); and

(2) an "opinion" (i.e. a hunch) about what might happen in some future event -- who might win a football game, or an election, say?

Or do you think these are basically equivalent?

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