Twelve days. I can hold my breath for 12 days, can't I? So it comes down to this. After 11 years of blogging, well over 1 million words, 4.25 million views, the question is can I wait 12 more days? Perhaps I could get my doctor to put me in a medically induced coma. Would Medicare pay for that?
If Biden is leading Trump by three or four points in three or four polls in a state and in each of those polls three or four points is "within the margin of error" is the fact that there are three or four polls any evidence that he is actually leading?
Having run out of things to speculate about, I have started making my plans for election night. From my favorite take-out Chinese restaurant, I will get General Tso's chicken and I will open a bottle of inexpensive Cabernet and I will prepare to stay up all night. The good news is that both Florida and North Carolina are early count states and we should have their results by 9:30 or 10 PM. It Biden takes both of them, as now seems genuinely probable, perhaps I will get some sleep.
I have a vague memory of two things that I believe Aristotle said somewhere. The first is that shit does not have a form. The second is that the prime mover has knowledge only of general principles but like the overlord of an estate, does not trouble himself with the details that his estate manager deals with. If these memories are correct, then perhaps I ought to stop trying to say something philosophical about what can only be described as a rancid pile of dung.
18 comments:
(First of all; sorry guys for my bad english, i'm working on it.)
As the philosopher Slavoj Zizek rightly remarked in an interview, the really important and interesting thing is not the revolution itself, but the answer to the question "what should happen the day after?" As a good Hegelian, he knows that a simple negation is not enough to get across the river.
So the question is what if Biden wins. What changes? What can you expect? In his entire election campaign I have heard nothing that even suggests what fundamental change is necessary in order to meet the challenges of the future.
And these challenges are not that difficult to name. Anyone who can even think straight ahead knows that the term "climate change" means more than just an ecological process. If this process goes as it is predicted by a majority of scientists worldwide, then the Trump era will work in the memory like a warm wind in summer against a storm over the Atlantic. The distortions within the political and social orders of the societies on this globe, which are already very clearly visible during the pandemic, will be harmless in comparison.
What about the structural poverty that has persisted for decades and the perceived poverty of large parts of the middle class with their fear of decline? No change in tax systems in Western democracies has changed it in any relevant way over the past four decades. The divisions in societies that can be observed everywhere there, and the tendency to choose radical forces is a sign that it is less and less successful to even out inequalities. (Piketty, T. (2020). Capital and Ideology Harvard University Press. Http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fr/ideology)
The worst scenario is not; Trump wins the election. The worst scenario is; Biden wins and everyone says: Thats it, we are back again.
A.K.
If Biden is leading Trump by three or four points in three or four polls in a state and in each of those polls three or four points is "within the margin of error" is the fact that there are three or four polls any evidence that he is actually leading?
Could be, it depends. Presumably the samples for each poll are not only randomly drawn from the same universe (e.g., set of registered voters) but also independent of each other. If the polls are also in the field at approximately the same time and ask approximately the same question, then they can be combined (but see caveats below). The result is similar to a single survey based on a larger sample size. Because the margin of error (MoE) is inversely related to the sample size -- it decreases linearly with the square root of the sample size -- the result is a smaller MoE.
Consider this example: 3 independent polls in a state, each with a sample of size 750, and they are each trying to estimate the percentage of registered who prefer Biden to Trump.
The results are
Poll 1) 52% prefer Biden, MoE 3.576%
Poll 2) 53% prefer Biden, MoE 3.572%
Poll 3) 54% prefer Biden, MoE 3.567%
Combining them gives us a sample size of 2250. In that larger, combined sample, 53% prefer Biden (average of 52%, 53% & 54%) and the MoE is 2.06%, which allows you to exhale.
Complications arise from 2 source that I am aware of.
One, which I think is not too serious, is that non-response to surveys is an increasingly severe problem. This is the case not just political polls but also for such basic things as the Current Population Survey, which forms the basis of the monthly employment and unemployment numbers. Pollsters respond by looking at the demographics of the people who actually answered the survey and reweighting the responses so that the weighted survey resembles the underlying population, which is presumably known from other sources like the Census.
Two is I think more serious. To improve their predictions of election outcomes pollsters further weight responses by how likely they think it is that each respondent will actually vote (& I imagine have the vote counted). This is the "likely voter" screen we hear about as we approach the election. Each pollster uses a different formula/algorithm, which may make it very difficult to compare, or at least properly combine, the result of different pollsters. I don't think Nate Silver loses too much sleep on this, however.
Clearly you have not been reading this blog very long. I agree with everything you have said and have said it myself several times in earlier posts. You will find my 9000 word thoughts about the Piketty book archived at box.net, accessible via the link at the top of the blog.
Hell, I was playing around with my example, and just realized that in the last poll, the result is outside the MoE. So I try again. Same %age prefer Biden in each poll, but smaller samples and larger MoEs.
Sample size of 500.
Poll 1) 52% prefer Biden, MoE of 4.379%
Poll 2) 53% prefer Biden, MoE of 4.375%
Poll 3) 54% prefer Biden, MoE of 4.369%
Combining them gives the result that 53% prefer Biden, with a MoE of 2.53%. Rest easy (sort of).
About the comments you attribute to Aristotle at the end, the first one is actually from Plato, from early on in the Parmenides. The other remark is from Aristotle, I am happy to confirm.
Yes, I have only read the blog for a short time and with great pleasure. I am sure there are many posts and comments covering these important topics.
A.K.
I believe Aristotle also said that on special occasions such as this, where you'll
be up for hours, "don't chintz on the wine."
My thanks to all of the commentators, especially to Marcel Proust for that very clear explanation and to Marinus for guiding me to the correct source for my vaguely remembered classical quotes. As for Jerry, I learned long ago that spending more money on wine is useless for me since I can't really tell the difference for the most part. I realize this identifies me as a boor but honesty requires that I confess the truth.
@Jerry, Lagavullin
Guardian podcast with the U.S. data editor where she warns us that we can't trust the polls, that Trump could still win.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/oct/22/us-election-2020-can-we-trust-the-polls-podcast
Dunno about any of this but I’m leaving instructions to put “shit does not have a form” on my gravestone.
This blog is referenced here:
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2020/10/post-election-scenarios.html
It seems to fit the anxieties of the moment on this blog to reference this:
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2020/10/some-election-musings.html
and this:
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2020/10/new-study-of-non-voters-in-the-us.html
and this:
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2020/10/another-take-on-the-election.html
Moving away from Leiter, Sam Wang has this to say [“To me, elected officials and policies are the product. You are the customer. That is the central motivation behind this site – to give you the same kind of information that political parties get, except to empower you instead of them.”]:
https://election.princeton.edu/2020/10/21/pec-where-youre-the-customer-not-the-product/#more-24706
Don't know which channel you'll be watching on election night, but stay away from MSNBC---Steve Kornacki's gesticulatory schtick on, "the big board" is deterrent enough.
As a cabernet drinker who can tell the difference, Carnivore is a very drinkable, inexpensive cabernet.
S. Wallerstein,
I wouldn’t credit her analysis. She starts out by saying the problem with poll is that journalists have biases and they interpret the data through the lens of that bias. That’s not a problem with polls. She thinks that the reliance on polls is a result of the emotional needs of those commissioning the polls. Really? If you want to bet on the election, you can look at Silver’s odds. If you want to know who is going to win, look at the reliable polls. Nate Silver has a good analysis and ranking of pollsters. There does seems to be a sudden upwelling of democratic/liberal angst recently stemming from memories of 2016. If folks want to look at the past for some indication of how it will influence the present, then look at the 2018 results: massive turnout, crushing republican defeat, significant involvement for the first time by millennial voters, huge Black turnout, etc. Look at past election results and compare to present predictions. You will find, for example, that Romney won Arizona’s by 9%, Trump by 3.5%, and Biden, according to the RCP average, has a 3.2% advantage.
Yea, Silver really did a great job with predictions in the past...why continue to listen to him?
in vino veritas
Shout out to PhilosophicalWaiter: Yes indeed -- Carnivore is a very drinkable and affordable Cabernet. It even goes well with vegetarian dishes. Highly recommended as a value wine. And, I too, can tell the difference. I admit it -- I am a victim of first world concerns.
-- Jim
I believe Aristotle also said that you can't tell the difference from good wine to bad, go for the pretty label.
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