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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:
WTF?
That is not what was said at all. I saw Scildfreja say that we act like things that we have no evidence for is false, which is true. You said good evidence, but the difference does not matter because bad evidence is the same as no evidence AT BEST.
Politifact does no use probability labels, they use QUANTITY labels. A statement making a claim typically contains supporting information. Some may be total BS, some may be accurate but used in dishonest ways, some may be black-and-white versions of things that are more complex, there are many ways to be wrong and mislead. It’s not a matter of chance.
That is a positive statement, meaning you phrase it in a way that indicates you have knowledge of this, it’s information. What do they consider interesting and where did the outline it? You characterization is a second degree source.
What did irrational bias did you see? Coming to a decision always includes bias and there is nothing wrong with rational bias. One should be biased towards things that reflect reality.
So, Roger, was Pyrrho about to blow the whistle on the link between Politifact and Benghazi before he was assassinated by Chaucer and the Pope on Hillary’s orders, and if so, how many movies did Stanley Kubrick base on the conspiracy?
Jeez I need to edit more before I post.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Five over the last 200 years. Can you guess how many were funded by lizard people in their plot to destroy marriage?
@Scildfreja
That’s … I need to go back and read about neural networks again. I almost understood that. There IS an intellectual feedback loop after all! Thank goodness.
Unlike Roger’s “Consider how they thought we thought several thousand years ago before fMRI, PET scans, and Chomsky” topic derail.
@Roger
I don’t think you understand how fact checking works. Pyrrho, Aristotle, and Plato are generally not directly involved. Checking that non-controversial things are true is important, but so is realizing that being controversial whenever possible leads to people fact-checking EVERYTHING you say that’s even slightly controversial. People don’t fact-check Clinton on less controversial things as much, because she tends not to say untrue controversial things nearly as often as Trump.
Roger,
I think you’re probably just a troll that likes arguing but in any case I urge you to really look into what we (the US) puts refugees through before letting them resettle here. Folks like you act as if we’re filling planes to capacity with random people and just plopping them here, no questions asked. The process we put them through is beyond paranoid. You would have to be the dumbest wanna be terrorist of all time to choose that avenue. Of course, I also suspect it’s more about bigotry than safety.
I’ll never tire of the fact that Adams tried to sockpuppet his way into a conversation about himself once:
http://comicsalliance.com/scott-adams-plannedchaos-sockpuppet/
@ scildfreja
Everyone, especially your good self, has already covered the general semantic points so I’ll just drop this bit of trivia for you.
Different areas of law use different criteria with regard to testing meaning. So, for example, when it comes to the meaning of particular words in libel, courts (here) use what we call the ‘one meaning’ rule. I.e. What would your proverbial reasonable person think the phrase meant? (regardless of what the maker of the statement says they meant)
However in the related ‘malicious falsehood’ tort, the test is “can the words be reasonably interpreted to mean what the defendant claims?”
It’s a subtle distinction but I’m sure you see it.
Scildfreja Unnýðnes –
(Euler once wrote a letter to Diderot, ‘Sir, (a+bn)/n=x, hence God exists; reply’.)
“behave as if uncertains were false. We must do this, else H(y|α) → ∞, and all of our means of knowledge fail.”
OK so there are an infinite number of possible outcomes of small probability, so… what? Isn’t it a bit like saying if I ask you to choose a prime number you’ll never be able to do so?
Why not just choose the one with the highest probability? It doesn’t mean that the others are “false” – we don’t know and are acting in conditions of uncertainty.
Looking back through the conversation, I think we’ve both made mistakes here.
Firstly, I said “no evidence doesn’t mean it is false”. You correctly pointed out that if there is no evidence for something, then it doesn’t exist.
However, you then said that “unproven is the same as false”, which is not true.
In the situation we’re looking at, there is “information” so the first mistake isn’t really relevant. However, the information doesn’t give us 100% probability that the statement is true, so your error is.
Also, we have a metaphysical problem. Trumps statement is about causation – and as per Hume, we can’t observe causation. All we ever have are greater or lesser degrees of correlation. So, if you were so inclined, you could declare this statement false for those metaphysical reasons, but I personally think that would be a little unfair on Trump.
Anyway, on the broader point. Yes, Trump is lying. But I think you have to look at each lie individually – some of these “falses” are just part of his conversational style – use strong negation as a prelude to a qualification. The content of his disagreement is often less strong than the initial “No!” or “Wrong!” would suggest.
It’s a useful site all the same, I’ll be having more of a look at it – just not too sure that the ratings show much.
@ roger
Yes, but we don’t need observation when it comes to people who can explain their actions.
I can’t rule out that the next time I drop a stone it might go upwards. However what I can do is ask someone why they made a decision.
So if Hillary had said “The reason I changed my mind was because of what you said” that would be very strong evidence of causation (actual proof of causation if you believed her).
Similarly, if she said “I changed my mind but it had nothing to do with you” then that’s strong evidence/proof that it wasn’t causative.
(Scildfeja would probably have put that better but hopefully you get my drift)
I don’t think it is strong evidence because Hilary is obviously motivated to not agree with Trump on this issue.
It comes down to how much you trust Hilary clinton – if you trust Hilary then Trump is a liar, if you don’t then he might not be.
Not sure we need a fact check to tell us that.
(Or at least to give us a rating of Trumps truthfulness without explicitly stating how much they trust Hilary when calculating it)
That’s not even going into the psychology of decision making…
I see that Roger is employing the common trolling tactic of ignoring 99% of what’s been presented to him, in favor of obsessively over-analyzing one minor point on which he thinks he can plausibly maintain his position.
Rog, we get it, you think Trump was right about one thing. We don’t, and you have no evidence. What about the dozens of other lies he told?
@ roger
Not necessarily. There are ways of evaluating the truth of a statement independently of the credibility of the maker of the statement; we do it all the time.
You could apply something like the ‘criterion of embarrassment’ or, as we say in the legal trade, whether it’s “a statement against self interest”. In other words what’s the cost/benefit of making the statement?
You could look at the explanation for the statement. Can the person making it ‘show their working out’. Is there an audit trail that explains the change of position?
To give an example: Imagine I’m in the pub and I say “Spurs are the best football team”. I then notice a bunch of big scary blokes in Arsenal shirts stood next to me. I immediately say “Thinking about it though, maybe they aren’t”
Well, you’re entitled to be sceptical.
If however I come in two weeks later and I say “I’ve been reading all the stats and looking at both historical and recent performance and after considering that I’ve revised my opinion as to Spurs. Here’s the figures that drew me to that conclusion for you to analyse yourself”
Then maybe you might believe me.
Other truth evalutation tools are also available.
Imaginary Petal –
Yes, Trump is lying. But I think you have to look at each lie individually – some of these “falses” are just part of his conversational style – use strong negation as a prelude to a qualification. The content of his disagreement is often less strong than the initial “No!” or “Wrong!” would suggest.
It’s a useful site all the same, I’ll be having more of a look at it – just not too sure that the ratings show much.
@Roller
Jebus. So his “conversational style” involves telling blatant lies every time he opens his mouth. And somehow this makes him less of a liar?
Rogark,
Stop trying to come up with all these convoluted reasons that Trump is lying but not a liar. It’s boring.
Just come out and say it. You know Trump is a liar. You know he’s the less qualified and competent candidate. You don’t care because Hillary Clinton has girl germs.
@Roger
Trump is a liar
But he isn’t a liar
With some word salad.
Roger:
On that particular example you’ve been harping on (re: the PPT agreement)–I’m gonna introduce you to another concept: “preponderance of evidence”.
In civil law, the rule for evidence is not ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, but rather, ‘preponderance of evidence’. The reason for this difference is that while in criminal cases all the weight of the loss is born by the accused, in civil cases, a judgement against is equally damaging to both. It’s fairly clear that Politifact uses a preponderance of evidence standard.
So, we have two competing claims:
Trump states that Hillary switched from supporting the agreement to opposing it because of the arguments he was making against it.
Hillary states that she changed her mind because the final agreement did not have the protections from abuse she had previously believed it would have, and thus she withdrew her support.
Now, when deciding between these two claims, since we lack a mind-reading machine, we have to see which one of these is more likely based on activity at the time.
At the point where Donald was talking about the PPT, there were still, as noted, 15 candidates vying for the Republican ticket, and Trump was rated as a very unlikely candidate. It would be months before the conflation of events that led to him remaining in the campaign trail actually took hold. (Specifically, the reluctance of all his major opponents to stand aside in deference to a single consensus candidate, who would’ve then pretty much squashed Trump.)
Meanwhile, as noted, Hillary was beginning to feel pressure from her own party base, manifested in the form of a surprisingly strong support for Bernie Sanders. Bernie also was very opposed to the deal.
And then the deal came out, and Hillary changed her mind two days later. If she was being influenced by Trump, she should’ve changed her position much sooner; instead, she was a supporter of the broad concept (which is not surprising, given her general support of using free trade agreements to open up foreign markets) until the precise details became known.
The idea that a then-fringe candidate was the basis for her decision lacks any sort of credibility without some sort of independent verification–a comment made by her or one of her key advisors, for instance–that she was actually thinking about Trump.
What I’m getting is that Roger thinks Trump tells a lot of lies, but that’s okay, because he’s a habitual liar and that’s just part of how he speaks. If a habitually honest person tells a lie, that’s much worse. Sure, okay. Anything to justify your shared fear of brown people, right?
I am 500 year old Lizard person wearing the skin of 75 year-old man. Every word in that sentence except one was false, but since I make a habit of lying regularly as part of my conversional style I am also telling the truth.
except in the part were I’m not.
I mean, it’s really unfair to hold habitual liars to the same truthiness standards as honest people. And it’s not like you need to be able to regulate your speech and ensure you’re not possible off millions of people with easily debunked lies when you’re president of a nation or anything.
@Scildfreja:
It’s a bit of a digression, but what is the proof for there being Aleph-zero unproven statements? I would have thought that since statements can be made about statements, there would be Aleph-one.
@Roger:
Sophistry is the lowest form of wit. Please have some self-respect.
eheeee
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I posted a ridiculously over-precise, technical and pedantic definition of knowledge, said “now ain’t that pedantic?” and followed with “focus on the important stuff.” So of course the reply would be more huffery-puffery about philosophy, even including a quote from Euler!
(For context, to the best of our knowledge Euler was trying to embarrass Diderot with that statement (which is a pretty banal formula) for the purpose of shaming him out of the court of Catherine the Great. So he’s saying I’m trying to get him to shut up about the topic. Unlike Euler, though, my statement is the fundamental structure of knowledge as best we understand it, and not just a goofy formula designed to brow-beat someone into silence. I’m demonstrating that I know my shit, Roger, and the fact that you see it as a silencing tactic says more about you than it does me.)
I of course made mistakes in my statements in the past; I’m only human. I’m trying to put that whole part of the conversation aside, because it’s goofy and distracting from the stuff that actually matters.
Which is that you’re supporting for president
– a compulsive liar,
– someone who uses the tactics of an emotional abuser,
– someone who has deep ties to oligarchs in Russia,
– someone who evades paying taxes wherever possible,
– someone who boasts about evading those taxes
– someone who hires people to do work and then doesn’t pay them
– someone who boasts about bilking those workers
– someone who boasts about corrupting the democratic process
And more. Lots more – anyone else who wants to add to the list, feel free. Trump’s a dumpster-fire. Okay, sure – he makes you feel better. So explain why someone with these listed qualities – all of which are documented on video – makes you feel more confident. Why?
– Someone who is being investigated for three alleged rapes, two of which were against little girls, one of which was never seen again.
I think there isn’t enough assholery to go around, so let’s link to someone who is roughly as pleasant (it seems) like the new mousetoy.
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/u-of-t-professor-attacks-political-correctness-in-video-refuses-to-use-genderless-pronouns