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If you thought Chuck Tingle’s version of the Clinton-Trump debate last night was surreal, well, take a look at what Dilbert creator and wannabe master persuader Scott Adams has to say about it.
Unlike some of Trump’s superfans, Adams is willing to admit that, yeah, Hillary kind of won the debate, at least by normal debate standards.
Clinton won on points. She had more command of the details and the cleaner answers. Trump did a lot of interrupting and he was defensive. If this were a college debate competition, Clinton would be declared the winner.
But Adams thinks this “victory on the 2D chess board” doesn’t really matter, because in his mind, apparently, Trump is playing some kind of 95th Dimensional mashup of Chess, Cribbage, and Hungry Hungry Hippos, or something. And in this game, Trump is the clear winner.
“Clinton won the debate last night,” Adams explains. “And while she was doing it, Trump won the election.”
IS YOUR MIND BLOWN YET
On the off chance that your mind is not, in fact, blown, let’s look at exactly why Adams thinks Trump is the real victor in this game of 95th Dimension Chesscribbippos.
As he sees it, Hillary needed to prove to skeptical Americans (or at least to Dr. Adams) that she’s healthy. And she failed.
Clinton looked (to my eyes) as if she was drugged, tired, sick, or generally unhealthy, even though she was mentally alert and spoke well. But her eyes were telling a different story. She had the look of someone whose doctors had engineered 90 minutes of alertness for her just for the event.
Huh. This is your takeaway from a debate in which Trump sniffled so much that people started to wonder if he wasn’t hopped up on the cocaine?
Some will say Clinton outperformed expectations because she didn’t cough, collapse, or die right on stage.
But that’s not enough for Adams, who raises the serious medical question: Is Hillary’s smile kind of weird?
Clinton’s smile seemed forced, artificial, and frankly creepy. … My neighbor Kristina hypothesized that Botox was making her smile look unnatural. Science tells us that when a person’s mouth smiles, but their eyes don’t match the smile, they look disingenuous if not creepy. Botox on your crow’s feet lines around your eyes can give that effect. But whatever the reason, something looked off to me.
CLEARLY UNQUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT
Trump, by contrast, was the perfect model of health and handsomeness! Well, not entirely.
To be fair, Trump’s physical appearance won’t win him any votes either. But his makeup looked better than I have seen it (no orange), his haircut was as good as it gets for him … .
But Trump didn’t WIN THE ELECTION LAST NIGHT just by being somewhat less orange than usual. He showed what a calm, cool, and collected customer he is.
Trump needed to solve exactly one problem: Look less scary. Trump needed to counter Clinton’s successful branding of him as having a bad temperament to the point of being dangerous to the country. Trump accomplished exactly that…by…losing the debate.
Wait, what?
Trump was defensive, and debated poorly at points, but he did not look crazy.
MASSIVE WIN
And pundits noticed that he intentionally avoided using his strongest attacks regarding Bill Clinton’s scandals.
You actually think he lost the debate … on purpose?
In other words, he showed control. He stayed in the presidential zone under pressure. And in so doing, he solved for his only remaining problem. He looked safer.
As I put it in a tweet to Adams last night (you’ll have to forgive my typo):
Yeah, Trump throwing a tantrum as the same exact moment he was attacking Hillary for having a bad "temperament" was super duper reassuring. https://t.co/RQnRLxd66C
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) September 27, 2016
Trump definitely looked presidential, not at all like a giant petulant baby who shouldn’t even be in the same city as the nuclear codes.
BLINKING SARCASM.GIF
The most memorable moments of the first debate: Clinton laughs off Trump’s temperament barb https://t.co/NW6ToTCDFS https://t.co/IR90V9KcLc
— POLITICO (@politico) September 27, 2016
Ladies and gentleman, Donald J. Trump! https://t.co/H9Uy8yzNYZ by @RiosJose559 via @c0nvey
— FLOR DO DESERTO (@FlorDeserto) September 27, 2016
https://twitter.com/peterwsinger/status/780607277938147328
https://twitter.com/CCW000/status/780897508310458368
Oh, wait, that last one isn’t Trump. Hard to tell sometimes.
And here’s the latest Pledge Drive capybara, with a friend:
littleknown – that’s exactly what I’m saying – like literally the first Hillary fact I looked at, it was something that no-one contested.
So if no one contests a fact that makes it less true?
@Roger, that one’s easy.
It could be that Hillary changed her mind because of Trump.
It could also be that Hillary changed her mind because of Bernie.
It could also be that Hillary changed her mind because of the public opinion of TPP.
It could also be that Hillary changed her mind due to internal reflection.
I can go on.
Ever heard of the phrase “Correlation is not causation”? There are many, many valid factors that could cause Hillary to change her mind on TPP. It’s wrong to say that Trump caused it. Hence – false.
Remember what I said about truth-seeking requiring you to shed all of your subjective desires and opinions and only look at the evidence? This is an example of that.
I think I’ll just make the Franziska gifs my thing now. Scildfreja has Fluttershy gifs, I’m going to use Ace Attorney ones. (I only say Ace Attorney, because there’s only so many sprite gifs I can use. I’ll stick to one character per thread though. ;3)
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/aceattorney/images/a/a3/AA_Franziska_von_Karma_Finger_Wag_2.gif
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/aceattorney/images/0/04/%40rs8.png
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/aceattorney/images/5/5a/AA_Franziska_von_Karma_Whipping.gif
Foolish fool.
We could go on potentially forever about what Trump (or anyone else for that matter) “actually meant”. Trump can insist one thing, while you or I could insist another thing entirely, and all three of us could be right based on what we’ve inferred from the conversation.
Trump is also not above being Shrodinger’s Douchebag, I assure you.
Also, what happened to Trump supporters who want to vote for him because he “says what he means”? Now all of a sudden, he’s a master of ambiguity and we’re just taking his words out of context?
I dare say, if we have to nitpick everything the man says because he can’t say what he means when he means it, perhaps he’s not concise enough to be president.
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/aceattorney/images/d/d0/AA_Franziska_von_Karma_Thinking_2.gif
This idea depends on your idea of “reasonable”. According to you, wanting to vote for Trump because Hillary is “too self-assured” is “reasonable”, but to me this appears to be the foolish ramblings of a foolish fool, who has no regard for facts.
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/aceattorney/images/6/6f/Einspruch%21.gif
I find it odd that people have given you evidence, but you’ve dismissed it because you don’t feel it’s correct. You have your evidence, you’ve chosen to reject it.
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/aceattorney/images/6/67/AA_Franziska_von_Karma_Arm_Out_3.gif
So, you’ve contradicted yourself there with your petty rules.
Though, I would posit to you (If I might paraphrase you): “Who would be checking those who check the evidence?”
What qualifications do you feel like someone should have before they are allowed, under your system, to present evidence? What sources should be considered “trustworthy” and which ones should not? What kind of litmus test would there be for the sources? Who can and cannot apply for the position of “fact-checker”?
Your system is far to vague and inefficient to survive scrutiny.
Is that not obvious to your foolish self?
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/aceattorney/images/d/d0/AA_Franziska_von_Karma_Thinking_2.gif
All of them. Especially in Trump’s case. That man lies so much, the devil himself would be impressed.
And before you try to tell me it’s not possible or a good idea, I beg to differ. There are thousands of people on the internet at any given time, especially from the United States, or people who are from other countries but whom are interested in US politics, who would be willing to do the legwork for whatever reason.
No doubt that with that many fact-checkers, there would be any number of people who can see contradictions and lies far better than yourself.
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/aceattorney/images/c/cf/AA_Franziska_von_Karma_Courtsey.gif
Donald Trump declared that he influenced her. It has nothing to do with when she changed her mind but if she decided to follow Trump because he said so.
There’s a bunch of different variables to which Clinton may have changed her mind, for instance, Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders are also against it. Can you prove that Clinton changed her mind to be more like the Republican candidate or more like the Democrat she was running against for nomination or if the change was influenced by anyone?
So, yes, it IS false because there’s no proof that it’s true. I know that’s hard to comprehend, but evidence is usually needed to make sure something is real, not just feelings.
EDIT: Ninja’d by other people oopsy.
@Roger
Politifact has a whole page dedicated to elaborating on their whole process. We shouldn’t need to do your homework for you: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/nov/01/principles-politifact-punditfact-and-truth-o-meter/
(1) Something being unclear or unproven isn’t the same as something being false.
Anyway, let’s look at the text shall we? No ambiguity.
Trump says:
“You heard what I said about (the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal), and all of a sudden you were against it.”
Well, it seems likely to me that Clinton would have heard what Trump said about TPP. And she did change her mind about it.
100% TRUE!
(2)”So if no one contests a fact that makes it less true?” Completely missing the point.
@Roger
What’s your explanation for Trump denying he ever said that climate change is a hoax made up by China?
@Roger: And what would this uncontested fact be? Care to share?
ETA: Oh, dear. Read the thread, sweetie. Read the actual article you are cricitizing.
His claim was that his opposition caused her opposition. There is no evidence for that claim. In fact, had you bothered to read the Politifact article, you would have read the very obvious point that it was far more likely that she would be influenced by Bernie Sanders’ opposition, if anyone, because:
A) She was running against Sanders at the time, not Trump.
B) Trump was not even considered the likely Republican nominee at the time, and the consensus of the other Republican candidates was to be in favor of the TPP.
I know it’s hard, but try reading first.
@Handsome Jack
Pretty good one, though I’d probably switch “them” on the last line to “him” since you already said codger for Trump.
@Scild
Why thank you.
@PI
I’m reading your posts like they’re being spoken from Ace Attorney, and I am absolutely charmed by how well they go together, especially with JoJo poses.
@Roger
Would you care to share
The smoking bullets you’ve found
I am all ears mate
Yeah, and I could have seen people call you a dumbass but if I already thought you were a dumbass, them saying it wouldn’t have influenced me at all, I just hadn’t said it yet.
I thought about that but I have no idea if Rodger uses he/him pronouns. I’m trying to do gender neutral pronouns so I don’t misgender or use the wrong pronouns with people.
I don’t just want to assume people who use masculine names use he/him since I use a masculine name but I use they/them, ya dig?
little-known –
uncontested fact:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/27/hillary-clinton/true-hillary-clinton-says-federal-government-sued-/
petal –
It looks like he was lying on the climate change one.
Handsome –
but she was in favour of it to start with?
@ IP
Well, you see, the Internet Archive is a giant hoax perpetuated by liberals. Nobody can prove that the Trump campaign began scrubbing his Twitter account of inconvenient posts during and after the debate.
@Roger
You need to actually state your point. I don’t understand why you complain that a site dedicated to fact checking does so even if they’re not contested.
Roger, you were not “undecided” and changed you mind because of this debate.
You knew who you were going to vote for already; show the integrity Trump lacks and admit that.
Correct! On a technical level, they are different things.
On a functional level, there’s no real difference between being unproven and being false. If there were a difference, we’d all be paralyzed by indecision, since there’s a literal infinite (aleph-zero infinite, to be exact) number of things that can be unclear or unproven.
We treat unproven things as false. It’s how humans work.
As always, you’re free to make your own evaluations. If you want to believe that a rigorously examined crowd-sourced fact checking repository is wrong, but your gut is right, well, go ahead. Just be aware of how ridiculously arrogant you look in doing so.
@Roger
If you look fully at what Trump said:
It’s abundantly clear that he is saying she changed her mind because of him. That is what’s being checked.
@Roger
Okay, so he lied there. What’s your explanation for Trump saying China is devaluing their currency?
http://i.imgur.com/amrAI5Q.jpg
@Roger
Some things about feelings is that they are only as good at what they are attached to. An emotion is basically your brain running a program and the felt part is sensory readout of motivational logic. They are an urge-to-do X when you experience Y. That logic was carved in through a previous experience and/or set of experiences and stored in memory.
We want those experiences.
We want to know why they warrant a change in belief, manner of thought, or behavior. Every human being wants those feelings to one extent or another and if you want to change the behavior of another, feelings only get you part of the way. The rest depends on who you are communicating with, their standards of evidence, and how they make decisions.
The fucked up part about being human is that we can’t store everything, or retrieve everything fast enough, and sometimes we need to make a fast decision. So we make little rules for how we respond to things based on a simpler set of features and what they represent to us. It takes a culture to be able to make tools for being able to critically analyze one own rules and the rules of one’s group, and change them.
We want to know the who, what, when, where, why, and how of your rules.
Not all rules are equal. Some of those rules are codified and called reason, logic, critical thinking and other things. Some of those rules result in xenophobic and bigoted thought manifested as irrational prejudice and discrimination. The dishonesty in how the media and a lot of society uses the word “bias” is that one can be biased in rational and irrational ways, and so they act like many things are equal that are not pretending that all bias is irrational bias. Both kinds use the same system.
When I experience most Trump supporters I encounter people who seem to have no idea how check to see if what they believe reflects reality, and who only seem to have gotten their information from at least one degree away from the source. And they don’t seem to know how to determine the accuracy of their beliefs. This is because when I try to get them to unpack the experiences behind their feelings about things it’s like hitting a brick wall, and I see them mostly use social rules that would work in a group of people that already believe the way they do.
I’m going to get black-and-white here in order to get some things across but the reality has a diversity in the categories I’m bringing up. I see mostly symbols of things and not the thing itself, which is what bigotry is based off of when that thing is a person. Too many people only attached by feelings and symbols, which is what a group that was only focused on winning and not on being correct about reality would be like (we are capable of that as a species. In a social conflict the side that did not reflect reality would shed people who know better as the ones in it for reasons other than reality competed better.
Such a group would contain people who fear intellectuals, and they would have messages for putting fear to rest about being on the right side. Symbols that satisfy the feelings but don’t touch reality. So I need the reality you experienced and why I should be changed by it, as well as the details on your rules.
kupo –
My point. The site is providing useful information – that’s great.
It’s also providing a “truth-rating” of statements and of people.
So they’ve taken a statement from Hilary (which no-one contests) and said ok this is 100% true. Hilary now has a truth rating of 100%.
Then they’ve taken a statement of Trumps which someone has contested, and they say … ok this is 100% false. Trump is a liar.
The problem is that they haven’t chosen to rate the uncontested statements that Trump has made – it’s possible that bias in the statements being chosen might make the candidate’s truth ratings meaningless.
It’s potentially like me saying I’m faster than Usain Bolt because I can run 1m in 1 sec and his time is 9 sec. You’ve got to be comparing the same distances.
@ Roger
What do you imagine the point of this statement:
is, if not to imply Clinton changed her mind because of what Trump said? Why would that even be a thing he thought worth saying if he wasn’t trying to imply that his words caused her change of heart?
Do you notice how you change your understanding of language depending on whatever is necessary to make Trump not horrible? When he says something unambiguously repugnant, you insist that his words require extensive reading between the lines to see how they’re actually quite reasonable. Then, when he says something that any reasonable person would interpret a certain way, connotation doesn’t exist anymore and there is only denotation.
Scildfreja Unnýðnes –
Completely wrong and philosophically indefensible.
Ever heard of Pyrrho? I hear he used to fall down lots of holes.
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/aceattorney/images/3/38/AAI_Franziska_von_Karma_Courtesy.gif
I’m not sure what you mean by “JoJo poses” (I know what show you’re referring to, but not what you mean), considering I’m just using sprites from the game, but I’m flattered nonetheless.
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/aceattorney/images/f/f3/AAI_Franziska_von_Karma_Finger_Wag_2.gif
It is common to change one’s mind based on new information. It’s how people learn and grow. Politicians are people as well, and thus are subject to the same line of reasoning.
However, it has not been proven that she changed her mind solely because of what Trump said or did.
As several others have said here: “Correlation does not equal causation.” And also: There were far more factors at work than simply Trump saying something.
If you want to convince us that she changed her position solely because Trump did, provide evidence. So far, you have nothing.
She was in favor, yes, and then she was still in favor as long as some things were changed, and then she was against it because things weren’t changed, but, guess what, there’s still no evidence that Trump influenced her which was the statement being contested.
Also, I believe the reason they fact checked it was because Trump said there was no admission of guilt, however his company had to go through process to make sure the company did not discriminate against. No admission of guilt doesn’t mean he wasn’t guilty. A murder could say they didn’t commit murder but still be found guilty upon the evidence, which Trump’s company was.
The statement was scrutinized because the general public may not know the exact situation in which Trump did not admit guilt, you see.
Like, JoJo Bizarre Adventure, right?
So you’re saying that, in order to compare Group X and Group Y, the size of Group X and Group Y need to be the same? That seems to be what you’re suggesting? So you need an identical (or at least similar) number of statements in order to make a fair comparison?