# Obama made Glenn Beck "a better man"



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Nov 9, 2016)

On a more light-hearted topic, I thought this was interesting...

Seems like Donald Trump made Glenn Beck realize how ....ing crazy the alt-right can be, and he seems to be leaning a lot more liberal these days... Praising Michelle Obama's recent speeches, supporting Black Lives Matter, and even praising the president he once hated.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...016/11/07/beck-new-yorker-interview/93453742/

We'll have to see how far he goes under a Trump presidency, though.


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## Edika (Nov 10, 2016)

Having seen what Beck has spewed out of his mouth the last 8 years that is a surprise. I wonder if the next step would be to actually comprehend his role in fueling the alt-right movement to what it has become.


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## Demiurge (Nov 10, 2016)

Just a strange way of acknowledging how his bread gets buttered, perhaps. 8 years of the opposing party in the White House has been nothing but good for business. 

Next up is at least two years (if Dems want to be optimistic about midterms but... eh) of a Republican congress, WH, and likely a right-leaning Supreme Court- what's a conservative pundit going to do all day, _agree_ with everything? A good hedge is to show some sympathies for the other side and so in the event they become the angry group of people who want to watch an angry person say things they like- boom, he's there.


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## feraledge (Nov 18, 2016)

Maybe Beck was just getting blasted on chalk dust all those years at Fox. Dust bender.


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## AngstRiddenDreams (Nov 18, 2016)

This is him talking about how at the height of his career with Fox, while he had millions of viewers he was experience major neurological problems. 

"We didn't know at the time what was causing me to feel as though, out of nowhere, my hands or feet or arms and legs would feel like someone had just crushed them or set them on fire or pushed broken glass into my feet," Beck said. "I can't tell you how many nights my wife would sit in the light, looking at the bottom of my feet to make sure that there really wasn't any glass in it."
At times crying, Beck explained how he has visited various doctors who were unable to figure out what was wrong. He's also experienced sleep problems, which at first allowed him to function with just two to four hours of shut-eye per night. "Quite honestly this isn't a symptom that you look to fix," Beck said. "If you have a ton to do, you're like, 'I don't need sleep this is great.'" 
However, doctors told him he hadn't had any REM sleep in about a decade.
Beck detailed his health problems during a filmed broadcast shown Monday night, saying that his troubles began while he worked for Fox News and they &#8220;quite honestly made me look crazy&#8221;. He described the first symptom as a &#8220;time collapse&#8221;, saying he lost the ability to connect memories and facts. &#8220;I then began to lose names and faces &#8230; entire conversations would go away.&#8221;
Beck went through a battery of tests, including one for traumatic brain injury. "I did so poorly on this test the doctors shared the results with my wife and not me. I never wanted to see the results," Beck said. "I knew I was functioning at about the bottom 10 percent. I knew when I couldn't figure out simple math problems or remember a series of words I was in real trouble."


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## Randy (Nov 18, 2016)




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## Drew (Nov 18, 2016)

"Indiana Pale Ales."


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## celticelk (Nov 18, 2016)

Drew said:


> "Indiana Pale Ales."



That's how you know he's a plant. We've all moved on to small-batch meads by now.


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## CapnForsaggio (Nov 18, 2016)

AngstRiddenDreams said:


> This is him talking about how at the height of his career with Fox, while he had millions of viewers he was experience major neurological problems.
> 
> "We didn't know at the time what was causing me to feel as though, out of nowhere, my hands or feet or arms and legs would feel like someone had just crushed them or set them on fire or pushed broken glass into my feet," Beck said. "I can't tell you how many nights my wife would sit in the light, looking at the bottom of my feet to make sure that there really wasn't any glass in it."
> At times crying, Beck explained how he has visited various doctors who were unable to figure out what was wrong. He's also experienced sleep problems, which at first allowed him to function with just two to four hours of shut-eye per night. "Quite honestly this isn't a symptom that you look to fix," Beck said. "If you have a ton to do, you're like, 'I don't need sleep this is great.'"
> ...



And now he's more liberal.... What is the point of this thread again?


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Nov 18, 2016)

That he probably found some help? 

By the sounds of it, the dude was driven to paranoia because of his mental disabilities and mental exhaustion. I'm guessing he's finally getting the help he needed?


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## Drew (Nov 18, 2016)

celticelk said:


> That's how you know he's a plant. We've all moved on to small-batch meads by now.



..... I, no joke, finished off a bottle of locally brewed small batch mead after I ran out of scotch on election night. Turns out it mixed pretty well with bourbon, as kind of a riff on a manhattan.


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## CapnForsaggio (Nov 18, 2016)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> That he probably found some help?
> 
> By the sounds of it, the dude was driven to paranoia because of his mental disabilities and mental exhaustion. I'm guessing he's finally getting the help he needed?



You could say that, or the opposite: That he finally parted ways with reality and became a liberal


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Nov 18, 2016)

CapnForsaggio said:


> You could say that, or the opposite: That he finally parted ways with reality and became a liberal


Obama being the Antichrist doesn't exactly sound like reality to me.


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## AngstRiddenDreams (Nov 18, 2016)

CapnForsaggio said:


> You could say that, or the opposite: That he finally parted ways with reality and became a liberal



I've seen this too much from Trump supporters. "Oh this person or information proves something negative of Trump or the alt-right. They/it must be delusional or biased"


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Nov 18, 2016)

And even Glenn said he's been having trouble for years. So, as I said before, his mental instabilities could be the reason he was an insane, over-emotional nutcase. Now he's possibly finding the help he needs, or Trump's/the alt right's hatred and insanity made him realize how terrible his own opinions were and he decided to overcome that and become a changed man. 

It's obviously ....ty how he helped brew the tea party and the alt-right's hatred, but I'm willing to give him props if he finally realizes how ....ty those viewpoints were, and he's willing to make amends. I mean, he ....ing supports Black Lives Matter now, a movement most alt righters (and possibly CapnForsaggio) view as a terrorist group.


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## celticelk (Nov 18, 2016)

AngstRiddenDreams said:


> I've seen this too much from Trump supporters. "Oh this person or information proves something negative of Trump or the alt-right. They/it must be delusional or biased"



I'm seeing more and more people on the right simply refusing to accept that anything coming out of "the mainstream media" (which seems to mean anything with an editorial slant to the left of Fox News) could possibly be trustworthy. This is a serious problem. It's one thing to say that, of the NYT's opinion columnists, you like Ross Douthat and abhor Paul Krugman (or vice versa); it's another to say that the most prestigious newspapers in the country can't be trusted on reporting of basic facts. I don't know how we even engage with people operating in this frame of mind.


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## CapnForsaggio (Nov 18, 2016)

In their defense, your MSM media outlets had Hillary at 98% chance of winning at 7pm on election night.

No one can say that this was the result of willful untruth, head in the sand optimism, or just stupidity. 

But does it matter? The MSM lost most of its remaining credibility in the last year. THIS is the reason that "fake news" has gained traction. 

'If everyone is lying to you, listen to the lies you like.'


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## celticelk (Nov 18, 2016)

^^^ I get my forecasts from FiveThirtyEight, which gave Trump a substantially higher chance of winning and could explain how their model was likely to fail, if it failed. That's really not relevant, though. The lack of substantive evidence for your "if everyone is lying to you..." position is a much bigger concern. It seems to me more like the position is "if they're not telling you something you like, they're lying to you," based entirely on the fact that someone else *is* telling you something you like, whether that someone else is a more credible source or not.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Nov 18, 2016)

CapnForsaggio said:


> In their defense, your MSM media outlets had Hillary at 98% chance of winning at 7pm on election night.



EVERYONE had Clinton winning, not just the "MSM". Polls, betting markets... Even Trump's own pollsters had Trump losing with, at best, 230 EVs. The only people that had Trump winning were guys like Dick Morris, who are historically wrong. They had their wet dream, though; non-enthusiastic democrats.


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## AngstRiddenDreams (Nov 18, 2016)

I guarantee there's a much more large percentage of liberals voting in online polls than conservatives. If Trumps supporters were middle class rural White voters, do you imagine these people as the type that spend a large enough time on the internet to participate in a poll?


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Nov 18, 2016)

AngstRiddenDreams said:


> I guarantee there's a much more large percentage of liberals voting in online polls than conservatives. If Trumps supporters were middle class rural White voters, do you imagine these people as the type that spend a large enough time on the internet to participate in a poll?



Surprisingly, a lot of online polls swung more towards Trump. But the alt-right tends to hijack a lot of polls.


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## Randy (Nov 19, 2016)

celticelk said:


> ^^^ I get my forecasts from FiveThirtyEight, which gave Trump a substantially higher chance of winning and could explain how their model was likely to fail, if it failed. .



Election is way over and we're still doing the partisan, knowingly deceptive word smithing? Come on, man. Nearly every poll had Hillary ahead, some (more than any poll favoring Trump) by large numbers. "FiveThirtyEight predicted how it model could be wrong if things went the other way" is hilarious. Id love to be able to bet on a team and still win the bet as long as I recognize the other team might win, too. Wow.

Since we partially "went there", the whole "fake news" thing is hilarious "sorry, not sorry" excuse making for the echo chamber in journalism. Snopes exists because fake stories have persisted for a long time, notably going back all the way to George W. Bush. I read a tone deaf article in NYT this morning about how deceptive fake news is because of logos and domain names. I'm pretty sure I remember conservatives buying those Re Re Re Re: emails as gospel and not bothering to fact check them over a decade ago. People have just shifted away from email and onto Facebook, so that's the only real change in how fake news gets spread. And that arguably less brainwashing of a format because friends or friends of friends or family can be of different political leanings, see the post and stick barbs in it; the old chainmail format made that essentially impossible.

Id also like to note that Obama is a black man, with a "funny sounding" name (which includes a middle name reminisct of a Muslim leader we deposed) had every possible fake story thrown at him from Genesis and he still won a primary and two general elections. The argument the Dems lost the race over face news or racism is just "feel good" self assurance bull.... that resolves nothing and will forecast another loss if we choose to be guided by it.


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## Randy (Nov 19, 2016)

Regarding Beck, the guys a shill. He hopped on the Republican and Christian Right bandwagon because it was a silent majority group who were perpetrating this storyline were they were being persecuted for their beliefs ("We can't say Merry Christmas anymore!"). You essentially had a large group of people playing the role of the victim, and someone like him sees that as an opportunity to cash in. He pushes his "I feel your pain and I'll help you through this" malarkey.

Same deal with 2016 Democrats. We still outnumber Republicans nationally, and we're coming of a pretty clean 8 years with our guy in office. We're no underdog, we just lost in a raw deal. Easy for a guy like him to swoop in and use the same routine, while we're busy licking our wounds. The guy's an opportunistic social climber. "Ive got the cure for whatever ailes you" snake oil salesman.

Also, if we're going to niggle over where the hipster trend is in booze, I think its drifted over to small batch distilleries. Might be too bleeding edge though. /hipsterAF


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## celticelk (Nov 19, 2016)

Randy said:


> Election is way over and we're still doing the partisan, knowingly deceptive word smithing? Come on, man. Nearly every poll had Hillary ahead, some (more than any poll favoring Trump) by large numbers. "FiveThirtyEight predicted how it model could be wrong if things went the other way" is hilarious. Id love to be able to bet on a team and still win the bet as long as I recognize the other team might win, too. Wow.



Funny thing about statistics: low-probability events actually happen. They just happen with less frequency than higher-probability events, by definition. The difficulty comes when you have an event that, by its nature, can only occur once - like, for example, a presidential election (every election is a unique event by virtue of its historical circumstances): does the occurrence of a low-probability outcome actually signify that the model was wrong, or just that Trump got lucky? And FiveThirtyEight was giving Trump something like a 1-in-3 chance, which is not that remote - less than winning a coin toss, but better than rolling a 1 on a standard die. And the election was *actually* close: flip 55,000 Trump votes in MI, WI, and PA to Clinton, and she wins those three states and the election. (For perspective, Trump earned more than a million votes in MI alone.)


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## thraxil (Nov 19, 2016)

celticelk said:


> Funny thing about statistics: low-probability events actually happen. They just happen with less frequency than higher-probability events, by definition. The difficulty comes when you have an event that, by its nature, can only occur once - like, for example, a presidential election (every election is a unique event by virtue of its historical circumstances): does the occurrence of a low-probability outcome actually signify that the model was wrong, or just that Trump got lucky? And FiveThirtyEight was giving Trump something like a 1-in-3 chance, which is not that remote - less than winning a coin toss, but better than rolling a 1 on a standard die. And the election was *actually* close: flip 55,000 Trump votes in MI, WI, and PA to Clinton, and she wins those three states and the election. (For perspective, Trump earned more than a million votes in MI alone.)



Yeah, I'm kind of tired of seeing fivethirtyeight slagged like that. I think that perhaps they did a poor job of conveying how statistical models like theirs work to non stats-geeks. That, combined with their having been astonishingly accurate in a few previous election cycles led too many people to see "70% Clinton, 30% Trump" from them and interpret it as a foregone conclusion that Clinton would win. Even Nate Silver and the other editors got caught up in that thinking in their interviews and more editorial articles. But their numbers and models were pretty solid overall.


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## Randy (Nov 19, 2016)

celticelk said:


> Funny thing about statistics: low-probability events actually happen. They just happen with less frequency than higher-probability events, by definition. The difficulty comes when you have an event that, by its nature, can only occur once - like, for example, a presidential election (every election is a unique event by virtue of its historical circumstances): does the occurrence of a low-probability outcome actually signify that the model was wrong, or just that Trump got lucky? And FiveThirtyEight was giving Trump something like a 1-in-3 chance, which is not that remote - less than winning a coin toss, but better than rolling a 1 on a standard die. And the election was *actually* close: flip 55,000 Trump votes in MI, WI, and PA to Clinton, and she wins those three states and the election. (For perspective, Trump earned more than a million votes in MI alone.)



Ah, that makes a lot more sense when you flesh it out that way. That I can agree with.

My one caveat would be that, while FiveThirtyEight MAY have been explicit in stating the stats didn't guarantee the outcomes, the entire rest of the media were not as explicit. Not even close. And that's not conjecture based on poor reading of stats, thats based on 24/7, opinion and analytical news coverage with talk heads continually stating the results were all but locked down completely. I don't think it would be unfair to say there WAS a narrative saying consensus believed Hillary would win, period. An average person can only hear that repeated so many times before they believe it.


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## celticelk (Nov 19, 2016)

Randy said:


> Ah, that makes a lot more sense when you flesh it out that way. That I can agree with.
> 
> My one caveat would be that, while FiveThirtyEight MAY have been explicit in stating the stats didn't guarantee the outcomes, the entire rest of the media were not as explicit. Not even close. And that's not conjecture based on poor reading of stats, thats based on 24/7, opinion and analytical news coverage with talk heads continually stating the results were all but locked down completely. I don't think it would be unfair to say there WAS a narrative saying consensus believed Hillary would win, period. An average person can only hear that repeated so many times before they believe it.



No argument there.


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## Demiurge (Nov 19, 2016)

thraxil said:


> Yeah, I'm kind of tired of seeing fivethirtyeight slagged like that. I think that perhaps they did a poor job of conveying how statistical models like theirs work to non stats-geeks. That, combined with their having been astonishingly accurate in a few previous election cycles led too many people to see "70% Clinton, 30% Trump" from them and interpret it as a foregone conclusion that Clinton would win. Even Nate Silver and the other editors got caught up in that thinking in their interviews and more editorial articles. But their numbers and models were pretty solid overall.



Maybe it was just a matter of time before projections based on polling would fail, and, given Nate Silver's past successes, 538 would be the biggest giant to fall.

Statistics class is long behind me so please correct me if the concept isn't as significant, but I don't really see participation bias brought up that much. Do pollsters forget that not everyone likes participating in polls & surveys and that those who do might be specifically motivated? There's hand-wringing that the sample sizes weren't large or diverse enough, but the sample population itself might be skewed.


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## Randy (Nov 19, 2016)

thraxil said:


> Yeah, I'm kind of tired of seeing fivethirtyeight slagged like that. I think that perhaps they did a poor job of conveying how statistical models like theirs work to non stats-geeks. That, combined with their having been astonishingly accurate in a few previous election cycles led too many people to see "70% Clinton, 30% Trump" from them and interpret it as a foregone conclusion that Clinton would win. Even Nate Silver and the other editors got caught up in that thinking in their interviews and more editorial articles. But their numbers and models were pretty solid overall.



Ehhh, theres some self defeating logic going on in there. You say you're not happy with the bad rap FiveThirtyEight is getting, because their numbers were "solid" but then you mention their editor was going on TV projecting results. In a perfect world i suppose we could separate raw numbers from the opinion of those collecting them, but this isnt a perfect world and he belies his credibility or his sites credibility by jumping into crystal ball reading. You can't blame anybody for criticizing that. 

Also, theres this "FiveThirtyEight had it right while everyone had it wrong" simply because they were supposedly explicit in the fact "over 51% probability =/= guarantee". Thats great and all but FiveThirtyEight doesn't run the polls, some independent and mostly other media outlets do. To say FiveThirtyEight did anything exceptional by just reporting everyone else's numbers is fetishizing FiveThirtyEight. If we're opening up anybody who statically had Trump above 0% chance of winning as being right, then technically the whole media had it right. I'm not ready to give anybody that much credit.


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## AngstRiddenDreams (Nov 19, 2016)

I think the problem lies in the average American having little understanding of how numbers, let alone statistics work. Situations like this remind me of the time A&W (fairly sure) released a 1/3 pound burger that consumers rated as tasting better than a McDonald's quarter pounder. But when asked which they would purchase, the majority of people said they'd stay with the quarter pounder because 4 is bigger than 3. I'd say fractions are significantly easier to understand than statistics, but maybe I'm skewed as a math major. 

It would awesome if there could briefings on television news station where people get explained, "80% odds aren't a guarantee. The polls used to generate these statistics are highly unreliable as bots have been found to cast poll votes, among other issues that make them non-representative. People are highly unpredictable. Voter turnout is highly unpredictable."


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## Smoked Porter (Nov 20, 2016)

Randy said:


> Regarding Beck, the guys a shill. He hopped on the Republican and Christian Right bandwagon because it was a silent majority group who were perpetrating this storyline were they were being persecuted for their beliefs ("We can't say Merry Christmas anymore!"). You essentially had a large group of people playing the role of the victim, and someone like him sees that as an opportunity to cash in. He pushes his "I feel your pain and I'll help you through this" malarkey.
> 
> Same deal with 2016 Democrats. We still outnumber Republicans nationally, and we're coming of a pretty clean 8 years with our guy in office. We're no underdog, we just lost in a raw deal. Easy for a guy like him to swoop in and use the same routine, while we're busy licking our wounds. The guy's an opportunistic social climber. "Ive got the cure for whatever ailes you" snake oil salesman.



Yep. Everybody loves a good redemption story, but I'd have to see a decade (at a minimum) of consistent logical thinking and points from the dude to maybe believe he's a changed, sane man.


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## thraxil (Nov 20, 2016)

Randy said:


> Ehhh, theres some self defeating logic going on in there. You say you're not happy with the bad rap FiveThirtyEight is getting, because their numbers were "solid" but then you mention their editor was going on TV projecting results. In a perfect world i suppose we could separate raw numbers from the opinion of those collecting them, but this isnt a perfect world and he belies his credibility or his sites credibility by jumping into crystal ball reading. You can't blame anybody for criticizing that.



The distinction I was trying to make was between their model and its results, and the editorializing that the staff engaged in on the side. The former were solid, the latter got swept up in the same wishful thinking that the rest of the media did.



Randy said:


> Also, theres this "FiveThirtyEight had it right while everyone had it wrong" simply because they were supposedly explicit in the fact "over 51% probability =/= guarantee". Thats great and all but FiveThirtyEight doesn't run the polls, some independent and mostly other media outlets do. To say FiveThirtyEight did anything exceptional by just reporting everyone else's numbers is fetishizing FiveThirtyEight. If we're opening up anybody who statically had Trump above 0% chance of winning as being right, then technically the whole media had it right. I'm not ready to give anybody that much credit.



fivethirtyeight doesn't just "report everyone else's numbers". They aggregate pretty much every poll out there and analyze them based on past performance, sample size and demographic targeting and then use them to build their own model that incorporates various things like certain demographics across different regions that tend to vote as a block. Then they run thousands of simulations based on those models and show the results.

The editorializing usually took the form of "for Trump to win, he needs to flip all of these states that are leaning towards Clinton; he might get one or two, but it's unlikely that he'll get all of them". But that logic was predicated on the results of those states being statistically independent, while 30% of their own simulation runs had them all flipping together.


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## Drew (Nov 22, 2016)

Fivethirtyeight's projected result was wrong this election, no doubt. But, their probabilistic forecast wasn't necessarily off. Basically, they gave Trump a one-in-three chance of winning at a time where many of their peers were more like 1-in-10 to 1-in-20, citing the uncertainty in the polls. They forecast a Clinton victory, but they also forcast a way less certain outcome than their peers.

And that's the thing with probability - speaking as a financial professional who spends a lot of time playing with numbers and not as a frequent FiveThirtyEight reader, when working with small sample sizes (which, with one election result, is what we have) it's challenging to evaluate the prior forecasts. A 1-in-3 probability may very well have been exactly right coming into the election, but with only one result, that looks like a "miss" if Trump wins, and "way too conservative" if Clinton wins. If you could rerun the election as a hypothetical using different voter universes that when randomly sampled would give you the same polling data and expected errors as what had been previously obtained, you'd have a bigger sample size to work with, and you very well might see two out of three of those universes consistently elect Clinton, with one out of every three breaking towards Trump. The problem is, we only have one universe of voters, one result, and no _good_ way to go back and evaluate the forecasts made beforehand. Technicallly speaking, even the guys projecting a Clinton win with 99% probability can't be proven to have been wrong just because Trump won, because a 1% probability event can still be expected to happen one time out of one hundred. 

This is all very tangential, but I think it's important. I'm not even trying to defend FiveThirtyEight here, as they made plenty of errors this cycle (and their mea culpa on getting the Trump nomination is worth re-reading here). I'm just defending statistics, and saying that if an event is forecast to have a one-in-three probability of happening, that doesn't prove the forecast was wrong if it actually happens.


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