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#302 Jan 09 2012 at 8:16 PM Rating: Good
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True, it's a risk. But being to the point is a pretty big part in making sure you get straight to the point.
#303 Jan 09 2012 at 8:23 PM Rating: Good
This reminds me of that time I was stuck in the Tautology Zone.

Not a bad place, but you wouldn't want to live there.
#304 Jan 09 2012 at 8:31 PM Rating: Default
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Allegory wrote:
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By "low GOP turnout" did you mean they lost the election? If that's all you meant, then yeah I guess losing an election is a major factor in losing an election.

gbaji wrote:
It was lower than it was in 2004, which is the only data point that really matters in terms of what I was talking about in my original post.

Ah, so that is what you meant. Well why didn't you just say so?


Um... Really? You just finished talking about how you could lose a race even though you got a better time, and you can't noodle out how "lower turnout" isn't the same as "loosing the election"? More to it than that, isn't there?
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#305 Jan 09 2012 at 8:35 PM Rating: Decent
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Allegory wrote:
True, it's a risk. But being to the point is a pretty big part in making sure you get straight to the point.


My original point was quite clear. You just keep insisting on looking for ways to interpret it in a way that is frankly bizarre and makes no sense at all.


What part of "People who voted GOP in 2004 didn't in 2008" do you not understand when I say that "GOP turnout" was relatively lower?

And what part of "swing voters shifted to the Dems" do you not understand?


And what part of those two combining to result in the GOP losing the election is also beyond your mental grasp?


Honestly, I didn't think what I'd said was so complicated, but somehow you manage to make it so. Amazing!
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#306 Jan 09 2012 at 8:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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Yet not beating one of your all time best showings is necessarily a poor performance? I can't imagine the kind of inferiority issues you had as a child.
#307 Jan 09 2012 at 8:39 PM Rating: Decent
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Allegory wrote:
Yet not beating one of your all time best showings is necessarily a poor performance?


Huh? If you won last time, and didn't win this time, noting that your "showing" was worse this time than last time would seem to be relevant, right? Comparing it to some historical statistical average is not.

You have the most muddled thinking process.
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#308 Jan 09 2012 at 8:42 PM Rating: Excellent
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Given that the GOP painted Obama as Satan incarnate, tell me why you think the turnout was lower? I would think they'd have come out and voted in droves to keep him out of the White House.
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#309 Jan 09 2012 at 8:43 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Huh? If you won last time, and didn't win this time, noting that your "showing" was worse this time than last time would seem to be relevant, right? Comparing it to some historical statistical average is not.

You have the most muddled thinking process.

When assessing whether or not I had a low voter turnout, it would *not* be relevant to compare it to my previous voter turn outs? Wah?
#310 Jan 09 2012 at 9:09 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
Given that the GOP painted Obama as Satan incarnate, tell me why you think the turnout was lower? I would think they'd have come out and voted in droves to keep him out of the White House.


You're assuming that the set of "all normal GOP voters" is equal to the set of "extreme right wing GOP voters". The second set is a subset of the first and while they might be motivated by such Satan incarnate talk, the larger set will often be turned off by it. And frankly, I suspect a good number just didn't believe that Obama could be that bad. Surely the far right was exaggerating, right?

Remember, it had been 15 years since the Dems held the White House and Congress, and they had marginal control at that. The last time they really had significant numbers in Congress and the White house was back in the late 70s. A lot of people have forgotten just how bad the Dems can be when they have that much power. Combine that with a general wearing down of the right by constant attacks on Bush and the GOP over the previous 8 years and the result isn't surprising. Disappointing, but not surprising.


But like I said earlier, those factors aren't going to play this time around. The right is much more active today than it was in 2008. The middle has been reminded just how terrible the Dems can be with too much power. Remember, they'd been constantly told for the better part of a decade about how the GOP was doing all these terrible terrible things holding congress and the white house between 2001 and 2006. A good part of the swing vote going for Obama was because they believed it. They'd been convinced that the GOP had failed utterly with that power. Then the Dems got into control and the were faced with real failure.

I don't think they'll make the same mistake this time around. It's possible, of course. Sometimes people do continue to hit themselves on the head even though it hurts. But usually they don't.
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#311 Jan 09 2012 at 9:18 PM Rating: Decent
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Allegory wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Huh? If you won last time, and didn't win this time, noting that your "showing" was worse this time than last time would seem to be relevant, right? Comparing it to some historical statistical average is not.

You have the most muddled thinking process.

When assessing whether or not I had a low voter turnout, it would *not* be relevant to compare it to my previous voter turn outs? Wah?


Except I was assessing why the Dems won the presidency in 2008. A comparison of the voter turnout to the last time the GOP won would seem to be relevant, right?

I mean the first thing you do when you want to know why something happened is look at what changed since the time when something different happened, right? If my computer is crashing, I look at what has changed since it wasn't crashing. If what changed was that I installed a new program, it's a good bet that's the culprit, right? I mean, I could discount that because I actually installed fewer programs in the last month than I did statistically each month for the last 2 years, but that would be a really stupid way to diagnose the problem.


Similarly, if my party loses an election, I'm going to look at what changed since the last time they won. What changed is that GOP turnout was lower *and* swing voters shifted to the Dems, resulting in about a 4-5% shift of votes from one party to the other. While I could compare relative voter turnout to historical averages, that really doesn't tell me why I lost *this* election, does it? And frankly, I'm not sure why anyone would think it would.


That's what I mean by muddled thinking. You seem to be deliberately looking at data that's irrelevant to the question at hand.
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#312 Jan 09 2012 at 9:59 PM Rating: Excellent
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Kavekk wrote:
This reminds me of that time I was stuck in the Tautology Zone.

Not a bad place, but you wouldn't want to live there.



All the streets loop back on themselves, I hear.

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#313 Jan 09 2012 at 10:14 PM Rating: Excellent
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Even more problematic when all the streets have no names. Even on a beautiful day you can't find what you're looking for. You just walk on and on and on.

Edited, Jan 9th 2012 11:15pm by lolgaxe
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#314 Jan 09 2012 at 10:46 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Except I was assessing why the Dems won the presidency in 2008. A comparison of the voter turnout to the last time the GOP won would seem to be relevant, right?

But only one election back and no further, because that's how statistics is done. You compare one data point to exactly one other data point, no more and no less.
#315 Jan 10 2012 at 10:08 AM Rating: Excellent
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One of Gingrich's Super PACs gets $5m from billionaire Sheldon Adelson, which goes to show just how good these people are with their money and how we should be giving them tax breaks. Also goes to show that just because your money comes from a casino that you don't have to be any good at actually gambling.
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#316 Jan 10 2012 at 10:48 AM Rating: Excellent
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Allegory wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Except I was assessing why the Dems won the presidency in 2008. A comparison of the voter turnout to the last time the GOP won would seem to be relevant, right?

But only one election back and no further, because that's how statistics is done. You compare one data point to exactly one other data point, no more and no less.
Well, obviously. If you compare more then that then the data points to the opposite of his conclusion. Duh!!
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#317 Jan 10 2012 at 2:50 PM Rating: Excellent
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Samira wrote:
Kavekk wrote:
This reminds me of that time I was stuck in the Tautology Zone.

Not a bad place, but you wouldn't want to live there.



All the streets loop back on themselves, I hear.



It's not so much a network of roads, rather series of concentric, interconnected traffic circles. There's a certain type of logic to it, I'm told.

Edited, Jan 10th 2012 3:51pm by Timelordwho
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#318 Jan 10 2012 at 4:07 PM Rating: Default
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Allegory wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Except I was assessing why the Dems won the presidency in 2008. A comparison of the voter turnout to the last time the GOP won would seem to be relevant, right?

But only one election back and no further, because that's how statistics is done. You compare one data point to exactly one other data point, no more and no less.


It's not about statistics though. That's where you're going wrong here. It's about a change from one point in time to another. If something changes from state1 to state2 and you want to know why, you look at what happened between when it was at state1 to when it changed to state2. How do you function in life without understanding this?
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#319 Jan 10 2012 at 4:11 PM Rating: Excellent
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If you're going to insist that voter turnout is low, it has to be compared across multiple scenarios, to ensure that the perceived change from state1 to state2 is actually meaningful. But yeah, I get how that shatters your argument so you'll just keep ignoring it.
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#320 Jan 10 2012 at 4:22 PM Rating: Default
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Sir Xsarus wrote:
If you're going to insist that voter turnout is low, it has to be compared across multiple scenarios, to ensure that the perceived change from state1 to state2 is actually meaningful.


Um... You left out the word "relatively" in there. If I say that one of the reasons the GOP lost the 2008 election was a relatively low GOP voter turnout, what the hell do you think it's "relative" to? I'll give you a hint: It's relative to the last time the GOP didn't lose. I'm making a direct comparison to turnout in 2004. WTF?


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But yeah, I get how that shatters your argument so you'll just keep ignoring it.


You might want to stop ignoring important words in the sentences I write. Just a thought. Smiley: nod


If I'd used a phrase like "historically low", you'd have a point. Cause then I'd have been making a statistical historical comparison. But I didn't

Edited, Jan 10th 2012 2:23pm by gbaji
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#321 Jan 10 2012 at 4:42 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Allegory wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Except I was assessing why the Dems won the presidency in 2008. A comparison of the voter turnout to the last time the GOP won would seem to be relevant, right?

But only one election back and no further, because that's how statistics is done. You compare one data point to exactly one other data point, no more and no less.


It's not about statistics though. That's where you're going wrong here. It's about a change from one point in time to another. If something changes from state1 to state2 and you want to know why, you look at what happened between when it was at state1 to when it changed to state2. How do you function in life without understanding this?


I'm late to the discussion (as usual); but this seems precisely the kind of thing that should have a 'correlation =/= causation' warning flag on it.

Edited, Jan 10th 2012 2:43pm by someproteinguy
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#322 Jan 10 2012 at 5:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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Can we definitively count the swing voters who changed sides and the new, first-time voters? I thought that was the crux of this argument.
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#323 Jan 10 2012 at 5:05 PM Rating: Good
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I've not been following this thread at all, but does anyone else think calling Rick Santorum a piece of shit be unfair to a piece of shit?
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#324 Jan 10 2012 at 5:29 PM Rating: Decent
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Debalic wrote:
Can we definitively count the swing voters who changed sides and the new, first-time voters? I thought that was the crux of this argument.


You'd think so. But oddly, no one's even tried to make that point. Which somewhat baffles me really.
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#325 Jan 10 2012 at 5:39 PM Rating: Decent
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someproteinguy wrote:
I'm late to the discussion (as usual); but this seems precisely the kind of thing that should have a 'correlation =/= causation' warning flag on it.


If you want to toss out smart sounding rhetoric in a simplistic fashion with only minimal relevance, sure. While correlation does not prove causation, the cause *is* going to be present within the set of correlative data, right (assuming a complete data set)?

If I walk into a room and flip a switch on the wall and the light turns on in the room, it's reasonable to look at the set of things that happened between when the light wasn't on to when it was. I walked into the room and I flipped a switch. The light could be on a sensor which detected me walking into the room and the switch did nothing, or the switch could have turned on the light. But assuming I know that those are the only two changes which occurred, one of them must have been responsible for the change of state in the light.

It would be absurd to instead embark upon a statistical analysis of how often the lights in any given room in the house are on or off over time, but that's essentially what Allegory was trying to argue we should do to figure out why the light turned on. It's ridiculously convoluted thinking and makes no sense at all. It's the kind of thing one might suggest, not to clarify the question at hand, but to muddy the issue with extraneous and useless data (which I suspect is exactly why he brought it up).


If you want to know why the GOP lost in 2008, you look at the set of things which changed between then and 2004, when they won. That is the set of possible causative factors. Then you assess each factor to determine to what degree each may have had an impact on the resulting change. This is how anyone who understands critical thinking goes about doing things. Surely, you agree?


And that's what I did. Not sure what Allegory was trying to do though.
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#326 Jan 10 2012 at 5:47 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
It's not about statistics though. That's where you're going wrong here. It's about a change from one point in time to another. If something changes from state1 to state2 and you want to know why, you look at what happened between when it was at state1 to when it changed to state2.

But you don't look at how it changed from state 3, 4, 5, or any others right?

You're trying to make the word "low" mean "lower." 2008 had a lower GOP turnout than 2004, not a low turnout. One is a comparison between a singular other instance and the is a generalization.

If I told you my girlfriend was tall at 4'2", I don't point to a midget standing next to her and say "see, she's tall." When I say tall you expect I'm comparing her to a typical female. Compared to a typical GOP presidential race they had a high turnout in 2008.
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