Al Gore’s New Movie Exposes the Big Flaw in Online Movie Ratings | Hacker News Reader

Al Gore’s New Movie Exposes the Big Flaw in Online Movie Ratings

fivethirtyeight.com

85 pointsmcone88 comments

The following explanation is probably implied but I still want to mention it: When a movie (or any form of media really) discusses such a polarizing issue like climate change doesn't the rating always lose its meaning? When a film, book, etc. treats a polarizing issue, most people probably abuse ratings as a (binary) vote on whether or not they agree with the narrative. And not whether it's a good movie based on film theory (ie. characters, visuals, story arc, etc.). Does this issue have a name? We see it on HN too, where people use up- and downvotes for agreeing/disagreeing, rather than separating informative, from non-informative comments.

Another thing to keep in mind here is that these kinds of review systems will often result in high amounts of polarization regardless of whether the topic is controversial. My feeling is that people often vote based on how they want the current average to change rather than based on how much they liked the movie.

E.G. Sometimes I'll watch a movie, I'll think it's an 8/10 but then see it has 4/10 on imdb, so I'll give it a 10.

Presumably this may affect another person's vote. Maybe someone saw the film, hated it, wondered why the review was so high, and gave it a 0 to bring the average down.

IMDB recognizes this and uses a "secret formula" (http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?ratingsexplanation) as a result.

Most of the times it'd be the opposite of what you have said because the moment people see 4/10 for a movie they liked, self-doubt clouds hence people are more likely to give it a lower rating in the same range rather than 10 thinking about Mean static to improve the rating.

> Sometimes I'll watch a movie, I'll think it's an 8/10 but then see it has 4/10 on imdb, so I'll give it a 10.

Do you really do this?

+1 I agree with you. :P

Yes - averages are poor representations of many irregular distributions.

Polarized opinions are the most common example of a case where averaging the results fails (what's the average of a coin flip?)

A good context to this piece would be the recent NYTimes article ("Attacked by Rotten Tomatoes") that claims Rotten Tomatoes is damaging sales for films. Everyone is to blame except for the studios, who are producing bad movies that no one wants: endless sequels, remakes, and adaptations of successes in other media.

If An Inconvenient Sequel really were controversial, that would be all the more reason for its success. Controversy sells. In fact, it's the least-risky kind of film to make: a sequel to a widely-lauded, successful film (An Inconvenient Truth has 93% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). Hollywood execs can cry me a river.

It actually has an okay rotten tomatoes score.

You see this kind of voting on anything where people get angry at it. Look at games that have their audience scores drop massively because they make something some portion of their audience decides is just absolutely awful despite the fact that they still play it (e.g. Playerunknown Battlegrounds is massively popular but has a mediocre score because they pissed off some people with some DLC thing).

I do agree though, all the complaining about rotten tomatoes is misplaced.

who are producing bad movies that no one wants: endless sequels, remakes, and adaptations of successes in other media.

How do you square that belief with the fact that 8 of 10 top grossing movies so far this year (and 7 out of 10 for last year) is a sequel, remake or adaptation? Obviously someone seems to want them

Everybody hates sequels when they sit down and think about it. But, when they don't... When it's "Eh... Let's go see a movie. What's playing?" They are faced with two investment choices: One selection of high-risk, unknown, unproven, original movies Vs. another selection of low-risk, familiar, proven productions --some of which are well-known to be liked by their group and others are well-understood to be skippable.

The "Eh... Let's go to a movie" scenario makes up a far larger portion of the total revenue than the carefully researched, highly anticipating planners. It should be no surprise that they spend so much on sequels and adaptations.

People love sequels that are good movies - movies that tell you more about a beloved world and characters and recapture or extend the feeling of a good previous film.

The problem is too many sequels are simply not good movies - they exist only because they can sell tickets based on the strength of the previous film(s). They reduce or dilute the overall experience of the franchise.

> Everybody hates sequels when they sit down and think about it.

As someone whose only hobby is watching and discussing movies: No, this isn't true.

People just go to the movies for the sake of going to the movies. When there are no good options, they choose one of the bad options. The ultimate result is that they go to the movies a lot less frequently, because as much as they like the "movie theater" experience, most of what comes out is boring.

What we're seeing is a cinematic environment where there's very little passion for movies. Once all the passionate cinema-goers have tuned out (because there's nothing that excites them anymore), all that's left is reflexively going to the movies for the sake of killing time. And if you're only there to kill time, you'd might as well see the Emoji Movie, or Pirates of the Caribbean 11 or whatever.

Yeah. I saw an ad last night during a late night comedy talk show. Said, "boy, sounds like someone didn't see this same exact movie two decades ago, Flatliners."

Turned out, no, that's exactly what happened. They remade the exact same movie with different actors. Why bother??? How stupid. What a waste.

Endless sequels, remakes and adaptations aren't necessarily a bad thing - it's just that they are sequels made without having good ideas for sequels, and remakes/adaptations done worse than the last time.

I really hope that the big rise of crappy Cinematic Universes trying to cash in on where Marvel have succeeded won't kill the idea of continuity in Film for a time afterwards. So many of the adaptations are terrible precisely because they try and cram novels/series/games/whatever into a single film and end up with something with no time to be good. Allowing films to take time to explore smaller parts of a bigger plot is a good thing, provided it is done well.

I suspect that Al Gore's name had the biggest impact on the polarization of the score. He's been a polarizing figure (for whatever reason) for a very long time. Not to mention it's a "sequel".

I'm not attacking the man in any way, but I do wonder if furthering the polarization of the issue using his name (which he cannot reconcile with the public at this point) does the movement a disservice. I place more blame on us as a species than Al Gore himself, but here we are.

I doubt that leaving his name off of it would really change much. The people giving it the lowest possible score are reacting to what they see as political propaganda pushing the hoax of climate change. That Al Gore is involved certainly doesn't help, but they'd still hate it even if he had nothing to do with it.

Without Al Gore's name nobody would have noticed. There are a lot of people who throw a fit when they just hear that name. Now imagine if Hillary Clinton did a documentary. That would probably be the most rated movie ever.

And, in all probability, the most controversially received.

And the least watched too. People would be excited or horrified just by the name and rate accordingly without watching.

At some point a significant proportion of the people who have been ridiculing climate change (or to a large extent just going along with a political movement which incidently ridicules it) will shift their beliefs to accept moderate action to tackle climate change, and it's important they can do that without being forced to admit they are actually changing their minds.

That means leaving open, for people who previously dismissed it, the narrative of "I don't believe in climate alarmism pushed by radical leftists, but I do believe in following the science, and now that the evidence is in, I support reasonable action". I think it is true that a figure like Al Gore acts as an anchor to make those sorts of changes more difficult.

Great points and I think you're spot on.

I'm personally a skeptic of the claims made by the AGW side and the alarmism pushed out by so many. The proposed AGW solutions are not feasible worldwide either which is what would be necessary to solve the problem they outline. I'm saying this not to get into a discussion about it at this time but to lay out why I would STILL support the agenda: essentially there are several great secondary benefits from doing what they recommend.

This is the biggest failure of the AGW side - they have terrible positioning and think you're stupid if you question science. If you tell people they're stupid (even if they are) they aren't changing their minds.

This is how you push the AGW agenda. "Let's say we're wrong. Here are the benefits of doing what we're suggesting and making some changes & investments":

- Better air quality

- It's good for national security - we no longer need to send large sums of money to hostile countries, many of which support terrorist organizations and other groups which are Anti-American / Anti-Western values.

- Cheaper energy

That's hard for anyone to argue, assuming the legislation is sensible.

That argument is already being made, if people were open to this line of reasoning they would have heard it a long time ago.

I think the longer term and overarching issue is that we don't have a shared reality. Science is not a method of finding truth for a large proportion of the American electorate. Academia, scientific institutions, and journalism might as well not exist if people don't believe in them.

If that's the case, then it's requires a much more in depth answer than "well look, we might do some good if we spend billions in (perceived) cost". I don't have the answer and perhaps there isn't one.

> The proposed AGW solutions are not feasible worldwide either which is what would be necessary to solve the problem they outline.

Just to pick out this point, I don't agree, I think actually most of the action to reduce emissions will be profitable. Low energy lighting pays its investment back in 6 months, on a ten year lifetime. Electric cars are significantly cheaper than petrol already in many countries and particular situations. Solar panels are similarly on the verge of profitable in high insolation, high energy cost places. Both are seeing continual reductions in cost, which will open up new markets, which will lead to economies of scale, which will reduce cost. And there are a lot of situations like housebuilders not putting in decent insulation, because they don't pay the heating bills, where good information can again provide the opportunity for investment with an amazing return. A large amount of the necessary reduction is not difficult, once you properly direct the market economy and industrial civilization against the challenge.

You have a pretty good understanding of the issue however you're either unaware or omitting one important fact.

Much of the friction in left v. right issues tied to science or "science" is that in recent decades the Science Community has produced and condoned a wide body of junk science through poorly-designed studies, slavish worship of the P value, outright industry-based lies, corrupting control groups with non-inert placebos. All relying on a sacrosanct Peer Review system wherein it is impossible to find capable reviewers that are not tainted by industry money. Not even at the university level. Add to that several editors of prestigious journals like NEJM and The Lancet coming forth and saying "half of what was published in my journal was crap". Don't forget all the scientists who support this system through silence, coerced by their fear of losing their jobs for challenging the "science" published by their employers.

In short, the Science Community has created what appears to many as an insurmountable problem of credibility and integrity. In other words, no such "I believe the science" assertions will be forthcoming from climate change deniers. Maybe if the Science Community as a whole can divorce itself from its numerous conflicts of interest and excoriate and excise the junk from its current offerings.

I'm a strong advocate of science and the scientific method, and I think much of what is labeled as "Science" should more appropriately be labeled "Propaganda". I've read plenty of stuff that a 6th Grade Science teacher would easily call out for violating the fundamentals of the Scientific Method. Add a little quid-pro-quo with your peer reviewers, and voila, study published in prestigious journal. Career advancement.

I'd wager a trivial percentage of the people who refuse to accept climate change would actually (credibly) use any of those reasons. They might parrot them because it's a talking point now, but ask them to explain the problem of p-value misuse.

Probably similar on both sides of the debate. Does Al Gore understand p-value misuse? Probably. Bill Nye? Not so sure.

Yes focus on the P value and ignore a system of science that has no independently-funded researchers.

People who are turned off by Al Gore's name on it aren't going to say "now that the evidence is in, I support reasonable action" if presented with the same thing without it.

In some sort of abstract experiment, where you take hypothetical voter A and show them hypothetical non-partisan movie B, I'm sure it could easily make or break it. But in the real world, where you take Fox News watching, New York Times hating, Rush Limbaugh listening, Republican voter A, and show them "non-partisan" climate change activist movie B, they're going to be told that it's all part of the vast liberal conspiracy before the movie is even available, and they'll hate it no matter what.

When Republicanism has climate change denial as one of its fundamental beliefs, the only way to get people to abandon climate change denial is to get them to abandon Republicanism. And you can't get them to do what without being forced to admit they are actually changing their minds.

>> At some point a significant proportion of the people who have been ridiculing climate change ... will shift their beliefs to accept moderate action to tackle climate change...

what makes you so sure of that (assuming by 'climate change' you mean 'anthropogenic global warming') ?

Because a significant percentage of anthropogenic warming is down to the direct heating effect of CO2, and the positive feedback of that direct heating raising evaporation of water, and the direct heating effect of water. i.e. it's based on simple calculations from core scientific principles. If there's going to be no effect, it requires some negative feedback effect which is not adequately described. So there is a baseline of warming which is very likely to occur, and over time that kind of evidence of rising temperatures becomes undeniable.

>> anthropogenic warming is down to the direct heating effect of CO2...

OK, let's say this was the case. First question - what percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is attributed to human activity?

We've increased it by about 50% since the industrial revolution, from about 280ppm to 410ppm. You can tell both from isotope analysis and inventory studies most of the ongoing excess is down to humans.

Also, I'm not sure what in that statement is even up for debate, does anyone question that a concentration of CO2 in a volume of space absorbs light at particular wavelengths? It's core science, and a straightforward calculation.

That's not what I asked. If total CO2 in the atmosphere is 100%, what portion of that number is attributed to human activity? Also, CO2 itself - out of all of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere - what percentage belongs to CO2?

How is that not what you asked? If we've increased the amount by 50% over preindustrial levels, then the current portion attributable to us is about 33%.

...except that figure is less than 4%. about 8 gigatons are attributed to humans out of ~220 gigatons injected into the atmosphere overall on a yearly basis.

the kicker is - the percentage of CO2 in the overall greenhouse pool is also in the single digits, the most significant (volume-wise) greenhouse gas which comprises about 95% of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is water vapor.

so if you factor that in - if humanity ceases to exist tomorrow, there is a potential for a .3% change in greenhouse gas volumes.

> ...except that figure is less than 4%. about 8 gigatons are attributed to humans out of ~220 gigatons injected into the atmosphere overall on a yearly basis.

This is like the difference between profit and savings. Accumulated CO2 is a savings accounts, and the pre-industrial climate in the short term acts like a business which has zero profit, balanced revenues and expenditure. If you come into the business, and hold expenditure the same, but increase revenues by 4%, and yield a 4% profit, which every year you put in the bank account, that is going to accumulate over time. And the warming is created by the accumulation. You talk about a 4% yearly excess as if that was a small amount!

Also, your point about water vapour ties into what I said in the earlier comment, a lot of the warming is exactly that secondary effect - CO2 has a direct heating effect, that raises temperature, which then raises the partial pressure of water vapour, which increases concentrations of water vapour in the atmosphere, which as you say is a very important greenhouse gas. It's the combination of these two effects, of direct CO2 warming, causing increased water vapour concentration, which accounts for the baseline warming which everyone who is sceptical of computer models should believe in. This very well-established baseline warming accounts for about half of the climate sensitivity proposed by the IPCC, if you think computer models are junk, that discounts many of the positive feedbacks proposed, but also the negative feedbacks which would have to exist, to lead to zero warming.

>> You talk about a 4% yearly excess as if that was a small amount!

This analogy would only make sense if somehow this 4% wasn't spent or was spent differently than the rest of the money. Also don't forget we're talking .3% if you take all of the greenhouse gases into consideration.

>>...if you think computer models are junk, that discounts many of the positive feedbacks proposed, but also the negative feedbacks which would have to exist, to lead to zero warming.

This sounds like mental gymnastics trying to single out the evuuhl CO2. Given the fact that planet Earth went through multiple heating/cooling cycles way more severe than the current warming trend without any antropogenic influence, applying Occam's razor here would lead me to believe the issue lies elsewhere.

If you want to just examine emissions, humans have emitted about 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2 since the industrial revolution, and the atmosphere contains about 3.2 trillion tonnes of CO2 in total. So if you go by that reasoning, we're responsible for about 47% of the total.

that's not apples to apples. how much CO2 was naturally emitted in that timeframe? that would be an apples-to-apples comparison.

So you understand that the amount emitted over time is not equal to the amount currently present? Why, then, do you compare emissions when your question was about the amounts currently present?

>> So you understand that the amount emitted over time is not equal to the amount currently present?

I do, but you don't seem to since you came back with an attempt to quantify the "amount emitted over time"

my question was: >>> what percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is attributed to human activity?

...and I even answered it myself :) ... it's ~4%

Your 4% number is also based on emission rates. My number and yours are both nonsense for the same reason. You can't make the attribution by looking at emissions alone.

It's interesting that the original did not see anywhere close to the same polarization.

Why do you think Al Gore caused the polarization of climate change and not that the polarization of Climate Change caused Al Gore to be a more polarizing figure?

Except for being a climate change activist he is a pretty bland public figure. It's not like he's Ann Coulter or Michael Moore.

He still gets a lot of flak from that "invented the internet" comment. Probably one of the few comments in politics that makes critics of it even more angry if they don't take it literally.

> He still gets a lot of flak from that "invented the internet" comment.

He never claimed to have invented the internet.

He did claim to have taken the initiative in creating it in the context of a broader claim about taking the initiative to advance various important economic, environmental, and educational advances through policy and legislation.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

Well yeh, that's what I was getting at hence the "don't take it literally" part.

I've seen people still don't like what he said even after knowing it was not literal. Some people just don't want to see the internet as something not only invented by the government, but was not the total wild west they romanticized it as.

Isn't it interesting that such a minor (and misconstrued) comment could have such a lasting effect on the man's career while the guy now in power spews far more outrageous falsehoods daily and it just doesn't seem to matter.

"binders full of women" used to be unacceptable.

> Al Gore's name had the biggest impact on the polarization of the score. He's been a polarizing figure (for whatever reason) for a very long time.

That statement seems to imply that polarization is caused by and originates with Al Gore.

More evidence supporting the claim that, as a society, we have completely lost the capability to have a conversation on anything. Everything is polarizing and everyone feels the need to pick (and defend) a side.

Well, in reference to the subject of this particular movie, one "side" of the "conversation" is frequently in the news as wanting to put nonbelievers of their view of the issue in prison. That might tend to create some animosity.

Can you give some examples? I have never heard of this.

https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+change+deniers+%28de...

Death penalty, tried for crimes against humanity, jail, fines for disagreeing...

I don't think any of these are mainstream ideas yet, but there was failed bill in the California legislature to have the AG sue those who "spread disinformation" on climate change. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/2/calif-bill-pr...

Can't reply to responder below - but I am not your research assistant. The parent asked a question, I showed where they could find answers. The google search above links to a professor speculating on death penalty for skeptics, and others speculating on trying them for crimes against humanity.

For spokesmen, Al Gore didn't mention jail, but said we should "punish" and politicians should "pay the price" for differing perceptions (and note that even climate change advocates who are not extremists get branded as "deniers").

http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/chi-sxsw-al-...

""" Former Vice President Al Gore on Friday called on SXSW attendees to punish climate-change deniers, saying politicians should pay a price for rejecting “accepted science.” ... we need to put a price on denial in politics """

That is a google search. Do you have evidence that people in such a prominent position as to speak for their "side" as a whole are "frequently in the news" wanting to put people in prison?

Much more easily found are examples of the other "side" making such (climate-change-denying) claims.

The one example provided was a proposal that would allow someone to sue another party, not "put nonbelievers in prison".

Re: your edit:

>but I am not your research assistant

Correct. Also correct: you need to cite specific examples to back up the claim, which you have not done. "A professor speculating" and the nebulous "others" are, again, not in such a prominent position as to speak for their "side" as a whole.

>For spokesmen, Al Gore didn't mention jail

Correct, which would make this not an example of "wanting to put nonbelievers of their view of the issue in prison," OP's only claim.

>>but I am not your research assistant >Correct.

Glad we cleared that up.

>Also correct: you need to cite specific examples to back up the claim, which you have not done.

Hmm. See above.

I chose to contribute to the conversation by pointing to examples of behavior that poison the discussion, in the spirit of thrill's comment.

I personally thought "death penalty" and "war crimes" were stronger examples than just "prison".

I did not attempt nor do I need to prove the ancestor literally correct, but just for fun, here are a couple of links that do - you'll have to decide if Bill Nye and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. meet your criteria as "prominent" (which was not in thrill's post - just that they are in the news).

Rfk, jr. http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/23/robert-kennedy... Koch brothers should be in prison in the Hague

Bill Nye http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/14/bill-nye-open-... compares it to jailing guys from Enron

Examples, plural, specific, people in the news claiming their opponents should be imprisoned.

Good enough for me.

I agree, you did not prove them correct, indeed that was my only point.

Now you have presented new evidence. Simply linking to a Google search was not sufficient after all?

The RFK quote gets thrown around a lot, in context it's much more clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41yJTxrPFhM

He says the Koch brothers are treasonous, and for that reason should be arrested. He goes so far as to clarify that there is no law politicians can be punished under (the opposite of the ancestor's claim).

Bill Nye compares them to the guys at Enron. He does not suggest jailing them.

SippinLean> The RFK quote gets thrown around a lot

Thrill> one "side" of the "conversation" is frequently in the news as wanting to put nonbelievers of their view of the issue in prison

Yeah, what you both said.

(And Rfk said the Koch's "treason" was co2 "pollution", and he wished there were a law, which pretty much matches thrill's statement)

So we can agree that the idea is "thrown around a lot", even apparently by someone prominent enough to be recognized as a spokesman, but (thankfully or regrettably) there isn't yet a law to enforce it.

If we didn't tie the acceptance of statements which can be supported or dismissed by evidence

  * climate change is a measurable effect

  * humans have a non-trivial impact on climate change

with and particular blame or course of action

  * The coal industry is *bad* for contributing climate change.

  * We must immediately reduce our consumption of meat and oil.

then I think we would have a lot people suddenly be in agreement about the facts.

Trying to shift the blame for disagreement to the people who are on the right side of the facts is mistaken. People are deluded on the facts because of a massive decades long propaganda effort. The left moving to the center hasn't brought the right to the center on any issue, it's just allowed the right to get even crazier.

I'm surprised the article makes no reference to the worst of this phenomenon: 2016's The Promise: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4776998/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

* 52.9% 10/10 * 42.6% 1/10

For a total of 95.5% polarizing votes!

Interesting that The Ottoman Lieutenant is top of the 538's list and it deals with exactly the same subject matter.

Turks really need to grow up and stop being such babies about their history. Face it, don't go spamming down the ratings for movies that dare talk about your history.

See also Zoe Quinn's "Crash Override"- totally polarized reviews, with notable difference between verified purchasers and not.

https://www.amazon.com/Crash-Override-Gamergate-Destroyed-Ag...

Someone writes a book about how anonymous people on the internet tried to ruin her career by spreading fake stories. People don't like that, so they post fake reviews in an attempt to ruin the book's sales.

...making the author's point for her.

Interestingly, the 1 star reviewers are claiming the book was leaked and that they did in fact read it.

It does seem like they still didn't read it though despite having access to it. They're universally a sentence long and are either vague or GG talking points that don't really have to do with the book.

I wish someone would create a more personalized algorithm for movies. Use the movie critics' reviews, and compare the other movies they liked to the other movies you liked. Even bad movies get a few good reviews, and there are people out there who would still enjoy those generally poorly received movies. Why not show me the reviews of people who liked a lot of the same movies I liked?

I found the fact "The Emoji Movie" getting 74% 1-star reviews in their ranked chart to be a more interesting fact. Climate change and Al Gore being controversial and highly politicized is nothing new. South Park has been satirizing Gore's hyperbolic approach for years. An approach which tends to draw tribalistic audiences who have opinions formed well before hearing the arguments.

But the fact Hollywood spent $50 million on such a disaster as T.J. Miller's big feature film is what is somewhat shocking. Especially given it had some big names like Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation behind it.

You'd think with the data-driven cookie-cutter focused-grouped-to-death process that is the modern film industry would be able to avoid producing one of the worst rated films in the history of online film reviews. I thought modern Hollywood was extra careful? Or are those resources only limited to hedging their financial performance rather than producing enjoyable content?

The primary KPI of any movie by a major studio is box office revenue. Making the movie good is a correlation but not causation. (Especially for children's movies.)

Case in point, the Emoji Movie made way more than its budget. ($150M)

Begs the question why does the IMDb voting system allow reviews before the movie's release date?

Because many movies are actually screened months before the official release date in film festivals and the like.

The same reason the "top 40 pop charts" can put a song in the number 1 position before it's release.

It makes more money.

I'm curious if there was an organized campaign to give the movie low votes or if it was simply an army of similarly minded trolls.

I would like to point out that there are times when critics pay more attention to the hype surrounding the movie when it fits their agenda, "XX" the horror anthology film directed by women directors for example was hated by the audience because it's bad. Check out the "I Hate Everything" review for the film.

Filter bubbles ie when you consume content by your previous content to provide confirmation bias on your already existing ideas.

Filter bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

Confirmation bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

On rating systems including how the IMDB rating system works https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/6418/rating-system...

> men hate the film way more than women do

The "climate change is bullshit" narrative is engineered to appeal (among many other things) to this whole mythology of rugged individualism. If you "believe in that global warming stuff" it must be because you're a weakling - as opposed to the strong manly individuals who choose to reject it.

It's gut instinct politics.

I've a hunch (heh) that gut instinct politics correlates with falsehood (and perhaps specifically with engineered, purposeful falsehood) more strongly than intuition would guess. E.g. the whole rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany in the 1930s was entirely predicated on a backwards, anti-intellectual, think-with-your-guts ideology.

Great comment. Despite my fears/concerns about Trump and seeing the similarities to Hitler, your comment is the first one that hit me with a "crap! it _could_ happen here too!" realization.

Only after I posted that comment did I realize that I was pushing the discussion in this unfortunate direction.

First off, this dead horse has been beaten until it's just a greasy smear on the asphalt.

Secondly, there are similarities and there are differences. Could the same thing happen again the same way? Likely not. Could things go to hell in a handbasket in ways that are somewhat similar, and yet different enough to account for the passage of time, economic and geopolitical differences, etc? Maybe, but there are certain pre-requisites that need to be satisfied first, and it's not clear that that's the case yet, or ever.

The use of demagoguery in politics has not started with Hitler and will not end with Trump. Ancient Greeks and Romans did it occasionally. McCarthy and Huey Long did it too. The examples go on and on, and every such figure has different skills and characters and attributes. One thing to keep in mind is that Hitler was really, really freaking good at it; he's set a very high bar, if that's the right word for it. He makes the others in this category look like amateurs in comparison.

Also, the socio-economic conditions in Germany in early 20th century were pretty spectacularly bad. I'm not saying that everything is just sunshine-and-bunnies now in the world, but there's nothing going on like the triple whammy of global great depression, hyperinflation, and national humiliation after losing a great war, that helped the ascension of Nazism to political hegemony.

Time will tell, as always.

---

P.S.: For a history of the rise and fall of Nazism in Germany, along with plenty of details about social, political and economic conditions that accompanied those events, see the Third Reich trilogy by Richard Evans. Link to the first volume:

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/0...

That's just one of the counter-narratives. Unlike the "97% narrative", the counter-narratives are not monolithic.

Another counter-narrative says that climate change is happening but the models to date are inaccurate and overblown.

Another counter-narrative says that man-made or not, it's hubris to assume that humans can do something about it.

And yet another counter-narrative acknowledges climate-change but says that the prescriptions for fighting climate change aren't guaranteed to work and will hurt humanity - in that we should spur innovations that continuously adapt to climate change and boost economic prosperity for all mankind while avoiding worldwide austerity controlled by an earth-worshipping misanthropic orthodoxy. (or something like that ;) )

All that is technically true.

What's missing is that Reality doesn't care about human narratives. It is what it is. Narratives align with it in varying degrees. Some align with it quite well, and we call them true. Others don't align with it at all, and we call those bullshit.

In general, I find 1-10 rating systems too much, it's just too much granularity when the measure is purely subjective anyway.

I like 1-5 better, but the descriptions are the best, "Hated, Didn't Like, No Opinion, Liked, Loved".

At the end of the day, if your sample is big enough, I think the new Netflix approach is really the best, liked or didn't like, and then you can draw from that what you want based on demographics, etc.

This is why YouTube went from a 5 star rating system to a thumbs up / thumbs down system back in 2009. See: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-r...

I'm not sure the ratings are that broken in this case. Googling it I get:

78% Rotten Tomatoes 5.5/10 IMDb 3/5 The Guardian

above the fold, which is enough to guess it's quite good but not amazing. It's kind of obvious IMDB will be polarized if you look or just use common sense.

Gore's response to critics: "You don't have to get snippy about this!"

This is a worthwhile analysis - interesting to see the graphs and breakdown along different angles.

But I don't see the "big flaw" exposed. You've democratized movie rating and got an accurate reflection of the polarized feelings on the topic. Are you arguing people should be "objective"? Are they objective about any movie?

People voting before really seeing the movie - a problem yes, but the outcome wouldn't change much. And it is an implementation problem, not a problem with online rating per se.

The "big flaw" is that a film that people either love or hate is indistinguishable from a film that everyone thinks is OK.

So on Amazon page we see the distribution in addition to the average score. People clearly either love it or hate it.

https://www.amazon.com/Inconvenient-Truth-Al-Gore/dp/B00AB0S...

Plus it skews toward the positive, since we would expect a verified buyer is more likely to be someone that already approves.

On the other hand, films that everyone thinks are OK are still indistinguishable from a film I may either love or hate. This is not a flaw, but inherent in the idea of ratings itself.

I don't see bimodal distributions as a problem, but hiding them might be.

Climate change conspiracy theorist really hate the truth.

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