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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?

Seems fucking stupid to me, a god damn socialist.

Nate was, of course, a LIBERAL (spits, makes sign of the cross) and had some takes I thought were pretty dumb, but he is the guy at 538. It's just him. The whole point was that his models beat random chance and beat the average at doing something purely empirical: using poles to predict outcomes. Why bother even having the outfit at that point?

Also, why bother sending a letter at all? Pointlessly demonstrative. If I wanted to punish Rasmussen from Morris's position, I'd just make consistent noise about "Rasmussen is so biased we actually give them negative weight in out model" or some shit.

Nate was, of course, a LIBERAL (spits, makes sign of the cross)

I laughed thanks.

How the hell are you supposed to produce good results if you're deliberately cutting yourself off from data about the views, beliefs, actions and behaviour of Those People Over There? You can think they're all rich white cis het Christian old guys who want to eat the poor, burn gay trans non-binary furries at the stake, and chain women up in breeding camps to pump out babies, and still need to incorporate that data into your forecast about a national election.

What is gained by becoming Site Number 9658742 on the Innertubes that rants about the Rethuglicans?

Also, why bother sending a letter at all? Pointlessly demonstrative.

I wonder. Maybe the message isn't for Rasmussen as such, it's to demonstrate to the people on the right side of history that no, we got with the programme, we're not even going to give the Fascists that much toleration by letting them contribute to our site. We are purging the wrongthinkers and demonstrating our purity.

How the hell are you supposed to produce good results if you're deliberately cutting yourself off from data about the views, beliefs, actions and behaviour of Those People Over There?

Parsing polls to learn how to win elections for the team is at most a secondary goal among most people: to win a purity spiral among your peers is far more immediate and practical. And why shouldn't it, to be honest? If you somehow knew the exact outcome of an election a year in advance, you're not going to be able to do anything to change it. Even skilled politicians with top pollsters usually just flail against the tide of shifting poll numbers.