Possibly! Though really I think it more comes from my general dismay at the dumbing down of culture in general. Every day feels closer to idiocracy and missing you/you're seems like a symptom.

But maybe I'll try thinking of the internet as a sea of dyslexics, just in case...

Your history is a confession you have waaaaay too much time on your hands, do you have someone you trust?

Ha, that was my favourite bit by a long shot.

Ahaha, that's a great sentence and a brutal curse! I legit wonder if that would be the end of social media for me.

Or the difficulty in some sort of extension to autocorrect said media on one's browser?

That movie scared the hell out of me as a kid, does it sort of hold up a quarter century later?

This is absurd. I simultaneously cannot watch or look away.

The Economist did a fascinating dive into the gender voting gap. One thing they noted that the gap is really between men who simultabeouslu characterize themselves as both very masculine AND not being masculine enough. Basically, dudes who are insecure about their masculinity.

All that to say, I think if you edited this down it could be a painfully good attack. Having a jacked wrestler compare him to Dolly Parton? Can't think of a more pointed attack.

If that person had said anything interesting, maybe it'd be different. But another "those people don't believe what I believe and so are evil/stupid" comment, well it's pretty childish and dull. And rife with poor grammar!

Absolutely but polls one way get huge upvotes and polls the other get huge downvotes.

You can't keep going to this big profits small costs argument without details of how much benefits and burdens is allocated to the parties involved.

You are fundamentally misunderstanding the original quote. Only one person's benefits (their salary) is being considered. That's basically the entire point of the quote! And frankly, that does seem to be how most people live (if people really cared about the costs to others, no one would buy sweatshop clothes.)

Also to be upfront about it. I find your grammar thing to be rather annoying so this will be the end of the conversation for me.

To be upfront about it,, I find poor grammar annoying and the second hand embarrassment bugs me. Like people misusing exponential to simply mean lots or rapid, without actually being exponential. (If you'd made exponential profits, even a small investment of 1k would mean you're sitting on a million now.)

*its - it's is either it is or it has.

Anyhow, if you don't believe climate change is real then why not celebrate carbon?

And, even for those who do understand/acknowledge climate change, from first order consequences, this isn't a huge deal for somewhere like Alberta. Yes, bad things will happen but losing almost a quarter of your economy is also a pretty bad thing. (Consider a devastating thing like Jasper... That's cost about 800 million in insurance claims etc, even multiply that by ten and you still don't come close to the revenue from a single year of oil/gas (27.5 billion.)

Frankly, thinking through the numbers, there's a kind of nihilistic correctness to their position. The costs of climate change, for this generation of Albertans, is much less than the revenues from fossil fuels.

*lobbyists.

For the supporters, in Alberta, where almost a quater of gdp is oil and gas, and culturally the pride is in their meat production, you can't imagine why they don't want to believe in climate change?

You are fundamentally misunderstanding the difference between polling aggregators, like 538 and a poll.

Though, if you really believe what you're saying, how crazy lucky do you think, 538 must have been to get 32/35 senate races right, 417/435 house races and the presidential rave. Seeing as they repeated the performance in 2022, those lucky jerks should be going to Vegas, not working! /s

This is getting into some pretty nonsense conspiracy level.

Given that high quality pollsters like Emerson, Sienna, the Times are all showing similar movements in their polls, your theory about buying out reputable pollsters requires most pollsters to simultaneously burn their reputations, be open to corruption etc allegations and presumably suffer criminal penalties as most of their polls are technically done for a client. And none of whom are instead exposing the very offer as a huge media boost? And for what? So the polls look marginally better for trump?

This kind of wishful thinking reminds me of listening to stolen election nonsense, where yeah, you can make believe a conspiracy where the Dems bought off a bunch of judges, election officials, forensic analysts etc but it beggars belief.

You do realize that most people do not vote, right?

Except that isn't true. In 2020, 2/3rds of eligible voters voted. Which, if your math is rusty, is a healthy majority of people.

And that most people are indeed idiots when it comes to politics? It's those people that will not turn out when it's needed because they saw a pollster say their candidate was ahead.

I mean, if this is correct, polls showing trump ahead should depress Right votes which I presume we agree is a good thing. (Though, this seems counter to the whole narrative about Republican pollsters flooding the zone.)

I dunno, it really seems like you have a lot of problems with polls that are simply misunderstanding, like not knowing how aggregation works, not understanding what a probabilistic prediction is or just ignoring reality (like the impressive number of accurate predictions in most cycles.)

I think to dislike something, you should be moderately informed about it. Your attitude to polling feels a bit like right wing attitudes towards lgbtq stuff "I don't get it, I don't want to learn about it so I dislike it!"

Goodness gracious.

In 2016, 538 argued trump had a 1/4 chance of winning. And the thing about 1/4 changes is that they happen every so often, about, oh. 1/4 times.

And meanwhile, if you actually read what I quoted, you'll note how astoundingly accurate they were in 2020.

And if you or anyone else is dumb enough to see "trump has a 51% chance of winning" and that somehow makes you not want to vote, damn, how many tries does it take you to put your shoes on the correct feet? Three?

All they do is predict the future.

Here's 538 going over the 2020 predictions (in a historically difficult polling year):

Even in a year when the polls were mediocre to poor, our forecasts largely identified the right outcomes. They correctly identified the winners of the presidency (Joe Biden), the U.S. Senate (Democrats, after the Georgia runoffs) and the U.S. House (Democrats, although by a narrower-than-expected margin). They were also largely accurate in identifying the winners in individual states and races, identifying the outcome correctly in 48 of 50 presidential states (we also missed the 2nd Congressional District in Maine), 32 of 35 Senate races1 and 417 of 435 House races.

This article is pure silliness but extrapolating from it.to say all polls are useless is to miss even the point of the article!

Yes, national polls aren't particularly helpful because of the electoral college. Which means state level polling is what matters. And polls 6 months out, are not helpful. This is why no polling aggregator is still including them.

Meanwhile, in reality, the polling aggregators pretty much called every 2022 midterm race. In 2020, 538 "correctly identified the winners of the presidency (Joe Biden), the U.S. Senate (Democrats, after the Georgia runoffs) and the U.S. House (Democrats, although by a narrower-than-expected margin). They were also largely accurate in identifying the winners in individual states and races, identifying the outcome correctly in 48 of 50 presidential states (we also missed the 2nd Congressional District in Maine), 32 of 35 Senate races1 and 417 of 435 House races."

Calling Silver a right winger is more than a bit silly. He's not as far left as some but damn, to call hin right wing, that's just some kind of ridiculous.

And no, he's not affiliated with 538 but he is explaining how polling aggregation, which 538 and others do, works.

Yes, but their "house effects" (how much their polls lean Republican or Democrat) are accounted for by every worthwhile polling aggregator.

If they were just taking the averages and spitting out results, well, it'd be nonsensical. You could maybe argue that Republican pollsters have tweaked their systems to be more trumpy but that'd be a pretty huge red flag and mark you as completely non trustworthy in your professional field.

You can read Silver's more in depth and interesting explanation here:

https://www.natesilver.net/p/are-republican-pollsters-flooding