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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30473 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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Nate Silver left FiveThirtyEight amid layoffs and Elliott Morris, ABC's new hire immediately set about ruining it. A threat he sent to conservative polling company Rasmussen Reports:

Rasmussen must explain the nature of its relationship with several right-leaning blogs and online media outlets, which have given us reason to doubt the ethical operation of the polling firm... Failure to reply, or failure to notify us of an intent to speedily reply, by the end of the day on Friday, June 30th, 2023 will be taken as a final concession of our grounds for a ban. The ban would take effect imminently thereafter.

As Nate Silver puts it, Why, unless you’re a dyed-in-the-wool left-leaning partisan, would having a “relationship with several right-leaning blogs and online media outlets” lead one to “doubt the ethical operation of the polling firm”?. I agree with Silver's overall attitude on the new direction of his company: hope ABC will stop use of 538 brand so it isn't associated with me.

Some people are probably mad at ABC for being partisan hacks but frankly that's business as usual. I'm mad because FiveThirtyEight was one of the only good analysis sites out there and these vandals are going to turn it into another factory pumping out generic progressive sludge. God damnit! 538 was the best in the business, where am I supposed to go for election forecasts now?

Rasmussen does lean right but 538 has applied 'House effects' to various pollsters to deal with right/left bias for ages. The posture of 'banning' biased pollsters rather adjusting for bias is a bad omen.

I think this is an also an instance where actual expertise is expensive and replacement level biased writers are cheap. Part of the reason Nate Silver is out is because he had a big contract and 538 itself didn't make money it was purchased as a prestige booster for ABC news.

Or a good omen. People doing this kind of stupid things are usually worried.

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