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Citations Needed: Nate Silver and the Crisis of Pundit Brain
- Thread starter Deleted member 22490
- Start date
Swing voters being economically left, socially right populist voters who can't get everything they want out of one party are the demographic that causes this problem. But it's made magnitudes worse than it would be otherwise because of the Senate and E.C. shifting that median voter WAY over to the right on both axes.
Like, when Bernie talked about Vermont Guns vs Chicago Guns, he's very much being horrible in order to play into the Vermont electorate.
are you all talking about rentier capitalism? If so, I can't think of a more appropriate descriptor for the US health insurance industry - monopolization and massive profits without providing any good.
The insurance they are managing and providing is the value they are creating. That's... not obvious to you?
Nope. For the record I also believe the finance industry is non-productive as I don't consider the management and shifting around of risk "productive".
I'm not sure if you're familiar with Mazzucato but my idea of "value" is closer to hers than, probably, yours.
Is this a descriptive claim or normative claim? 🤔
Wait a minute, it's just plain irrelevant.
People who honestly make that argument are being dumb. Ezra doesn't say that though. I listened to that podcast too, and I don't think his argument was that Single-payer people should stop campaigning for single-payer. I don't remember him saying that Bernie should actually just stop campaigning. Saying that something appears to be a better option as of right now, doesn't mean that people who support the other option should just shut up and fall in line.
Polls describe what though, if not people's values? When we talk about "Polls" in the way that we're talking about, it's frustrating because it's almost like we're forgetting that they're a reflection of the thoughts and ideas of the electorate, they don't come out of nowhere. It sounds self-evident to say that in politics, it's about solving shit. But, what shit? Who's values are represented in your politics? Well, in a representative democracy, politics, what we should fight for, generally, that's determined by the people being represented. And polls are a way of determining that.
So, now, it appears that what we're really talking about is what's the role of a politician in a representative democracy? Should they support their own values, or the values of the people they represent, or the values of their political party, or something else? I don't have a good answer. But it needs to be pointed out, that your beef is more with an entire political system which motivates politicians to act in certain ways.
Yeah, of course, there are going to be cases when your electorate wants something which is morally wrong. However, what did happen in those cases is political violence and mass protest, sometimes even on an international level. Massive political pressure. It wasn't that "these things didn't poll well but these politicians just decided to do the right thing because that's what good politicians do".
And I think everyone understands that polls are more than a snapshot. Things obviously can change. However, we have to change them, we can't assume that things will change in a positive way.
OP
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It's amazing how many time people come in to do the thing this podcast calls out
So the people managing claims, working numbers, managing payments in and out- those are all functions you don't see as "productive"? That's ridiculous.
Shifting around and defraying risk for people absolutely is productive. Car insurance preventing you and other from being on the hook for massive amounts of bills in the wake of an accident is absolutely something of value, just as health insurance and homeowners insurance are meant to do. Had a tree fall on our house years back during a thunderstorm, USAA covered virtually the entire thing post-deductible, and it was a lot of work due to needing to deal with the tree removal, structure repair, carpet replacement necessitated by it. When I buy my Renter's Insurance policy to cover my stuff I am getting value out of that. Having that insurance coverage, whether or not you actually need to ever use it, is valuable in the exact same way that social safety nets are, but since people underestimate tail risk we generally have to use the government's monopoly of force to make people do the necessary thing, like with the mandate and car/home insurance.
On that last note given we're heading into benefits re-up season- you want to be maxing out your long-term disability because the loss of income is generally the big thing that gets you if you become medically disabled. Having a compulsory requirement for it with full time jobs (on top of existing universal programs) for the same risk ignorance reason we mandate insurance elsewhere would likely be a good policy move.
Managing risk is absolutely a productive activity and an absolutely essential economic activity.
Leftists only complain about Politics as Sports because they're the Cleveland Browns of American politics.
why are you defending insurance *as a concept* rather than the current manifestation of health insurance in the US? Health insurers don't defray risk, they deny legitimate claims to inflate profits.
Because people are blaming insurance for cost inflation and that's not where the problem is originating. This isn't a minor point- it's critical to understanding the morass that the rising insurance premiums are obfuscating. Insurance companies have lots of problems that require a lot of additional regulation. But they're not the reason premiums are exploding on people.
But it's the very existence of the health insurance industry that is at the heart of the health care crisis. Rather than centering the profit motive, why not do what pretty much every other developed country does and have medical professionals, not MBAs, make health care decisions? It's completely dysfunctional.
Its really hard to have a discussion while only saying no.
Costs are rising because of, rising populations and age. both of which are super fucked by rating health services based on a patients happiness level and not their care level. The medicaid/care expansions raised costs as well. They added millions more patients into a bloated system, raising the demand for care.
I think this is because you define value as "anything that results in a net gain of money for someone, usually me." As in the insurance case, the "value" you perceive to have gotten from the insurance is the cost of the services you would've been on the hook for, had you not had that insurance. And by calculating the delta between having your insurance cover the damages and whatever you spent on that insurance, you came to the conclusion "this was a worthwhile trade and therefore valuable".
But I question how much value was created for the system. Let's limit the scope to you, your house, and the USAA. I think we can both agree that your house has value in so far as it provides you shelter and storage. When the tree fell, the value of your house was partially destroyed. What restored value to the house was not actually the insurance payout, but the work done to remove the tree, fix the structure, replace the carpet, etc. What the insurance did there was shift the cost from you to its other members, but in the end you were left with the same house you had before, maybe a little worse for wear. The cost for the labor was paid by the USAA with its payments from its other members that did not have trees fall on their houses. Nothing has actually changed there although your premiums or whatever the hell might have went up and/or down, I don't know how this stuff works. The total value contained in the system is the same, but you personally bore less of the financial burden.
Now, you might say, "if we put everyone on the hook for accidents or acts of god, they would fall into destitution whenever something severely unfortunate happens", and yes, this is true. There's a loss of potential productivity there if you, assuming you perform some kind of useful labor, are unable to perform it because you no longer have a place to live. Therefore, it seems reasonable to me that the government should perform this role of risk defrayment, because a nation can barely be called as such if its citizens aren't engaging in useful self-sustaining activity, so by alleviating the financial burdens on its worst off member, it is simply performing its function as the continuation of the nation it oversees.
Why not the private sector? Well I have an objection to things like this on first principles:
You see, I'm not sure if any value is being created when a company like Anthem reports 469% increase in its stock price. Where is this value reflected in the real world? Are people getting more services? Is the quality of the healthcare being improved? What are Aetna, WellCare and United Health contributing to the insurance market that the government wouldn't be able to?
Good to see drivebys from lazy posters unwilling to follow a conversation.
I'm too lazy to take part in a health insurance discussion in a thread about Nate Silver and his misuse of statistics
No but you don't understand. They make money. What is more right and correct than making as many dollars as you can? Grifting middlemen between real people and medical care they need? Who cares, look at that stockholder value baby! I'm sure fossil fuels and predatory lending are next for him on "Create profits so are good actually" list.
My fault, actually I engaged him on this. It's only fair that he gets to respond.
This is not intended as a dunk even though it may come off like it. You're accidentally spouting an industry line originating from the failed 90s Clinton health care reform used to fight against cost controls they were attempting to implement.
The line you just quoted is the AMA line they use to fight back against cost controls in the public sphere. In the early 90s, HMOs were very effective at cost control. Doctors also... .did not like this because they were one of the costs being controlled, and so took to the airwaves pushing back against them and the HC reform in 1993 that was attempting to move things further in that direction. (Kaiser Permanente is an HMO, for reference)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_1993
This is why this tweet going "Wow, Pete's the first guy to call this out directly" exists, because candidates deliberately do not call this out directly as they all remember what happened in the '90s and how it completely derailed them. This is why Obama was insistent on getting industry on board first w/ the ACA.
You're too lazy, period. The conversation evolved into the substance of the disagreement regarding policy and polling. One of those policies is health care.
Stop being terrible.
User Banned (1 Week): Trolling and Thread Derailment Over Multiple Posts; Accumulated Infractions
So how does discussing the inherent value of health insurance have anything to do with Nate Silver or his misuse of statistics?
I'm too lazy and terrible to understand this, please help me
User Banned (1 Week): Hostility and Thread Derailment Over Multiple Posts; History of Similar Behavior
Maybe read the fucking thread? It didn't just appear out of nowhere.
Not sure why that would be a dunk because what I said was used as a propaganda line. Is this not actual reality right now? Doctors prescribing treatment which is subsequently denied by admin?
That is clear to everyone. Next time feel free to be those things quietly instead.
If I did those things I wouldn't be terrible or lazy then!
Why are so upset that I want the thread to get back on topic rather then devolve into a topic that is irrelevant to the thread, or the discussion the creators of the podcast wanted to have?
Because posters parachuting into the middle of a discussion to dismiss a position based on ignorant, lazy garbage unrelated to any argument is a real pet peeve of mine. The discussion moved this way. It didn't need your fucking permission. If you don't like it, discuss something else.
Polls tell you where people are at but once again this is descriptive, not normative. This means it describes something to me but it doesn't make the argument that I should stop valuing what I currently do. Let's pretend I did a poll and it somehow told me that the majority of people living in NYC want their schools and communities to stay racially segregated. This is only descriptive. To use this poll as an argument as to why we SHOULDN'T try to desegregate schools and communities is where you get in trouble with me.
As I said before I think politicians should work to solve societal problems.
Don't worry, a real pet peeve of mine is threads where the leftists argue with the moderates about something that is completely unrelated to the thread topic or title for the sole purpose of proving themselves right at the detriment of the actual discussion happening. But that's irrelevant apparently, and no one can chime in when a discussion goes off the rails and goes away from it's intended purposes.
I'm glad you can come and lecture us about discussion etiquette in a thread about Nate Silver.
Yeah, I tried to listen to them a few times, and I usually agree with their Central thesis, e.g. Nate is terrible at punditry, especially when he leaves the data behind (which he is doing with increasing frequency). But once they get into the weeds, their far left virtue signaling is just too much to deal with
OK this one I laughed at
It's just kind of amazing how on-the-nose the whole discussion has been. I wanted to discuss how polling is irrelevant to actually doing the work to shift public opinion and we got the perfect object lesson on how pundit brain manifests in political discussion.
The reason I don't like looking at political polls is because it can't forecast future non-political events. For example, no poll tells us the opinion of voters if Saudi Arabi has 50% of their oil production knocked out. No poll can tell me how they plan to vote in the primaries in the case of a BoJo no-Deal crash out or a Corbyn soft-Brexit or even a Corbyn Remain. No poll can tell me how they plan to vote when the Fed injects 120 billion into the over night lending market, or when the ECB embarks on a track of infinite quantitative easing.
The future isn't in the polls, so it feels weird to guess the future from the polls. The polls tell you "what things look like and what may they look like if all other relevant variables are held constant", but the real future doesn't play out based on constant variables, the future is in those variables, so I spend more time looking at them instead of at the polls. It be like trying to forecast the weather by going outside, in fact that is more or less exactly what it is, but replace weather with politics.
The future isn't in the polls, so it feels weird to guess the future from the polls. The polls tell you "what things look like and what may they look like if all other relevant variables are held constant", but the real future doesn't play out based on constant variables, the future is in those variables, so I spend more time looking at them instead of at the polls. It be like trying to forecast the weather by going outside, in fact that is more or less exactly what it is, but replace weather with politics.
I just wanted to make sure you knew I wasn't trying to clown on you just to clown on you for not knowing where that originated. There are issues with treatment restrictions, denials, and such, but my impression is that post-ACA w/ the baseline requirements that claim denials are standard insurance things that will come up regardless if it's privately or publicly run insurance, with the exception of prescription drug issues, which are a mess in general reflected in the claims issues. (I could be off on this fyi, I've not looked at stats on this aspect in a very long time.)
The issue with the line coming from the AMA/Hospitals/etc. is that because the providers are fee-for-service, they're actively interested in reducing Insurance's ability to say no and try and maintain PPOs rather than pushing to HMOs due to the flattened payment structure of the latter.
It really shows how modern politics is structured in a way that only advantages those in the status quo and making things easier for those who don't want changes.
The polling discussion reminds me a lot of the analytics discussion that ends up happening in sports. Nate had his money ball moment when he predicted the EC, but if all you depend on is stats, you quickly lose out to those who use stats and the old school guy feeling. I think Nate realized this and added more punditry, but he's so blatantly bad and irresponsible at punditry that it makes all of the good things he did add moot.
Nate reminds me of Chip Kelly, someone who was innovate a few years ago, but is now running on the fumes of that innovation rather then trying to innovate more.
I think polling has a lot of uses still, but they are limited as a statistical method of parsing political debate. I think it's really irresponsible of Nate to mix punditry and data like he does, because he's so much better at just data analysis and so much worse at punditry.
I think that sometimes people make a descriptive claim, and in the subtext of that descriptive claim is a normative claim. However, people miss that the normative claim even exists and try to apply the critique that you're applying now. To follow on from your example, A politician might say, "I've looked at polls and the vast majority of them show people disagree with segregating schools, so I'm going to go with that.". The normative claim, the subtext which is missing could be, "As a politician, I should represent my constituents and embody their values" or it could be, "As memeber of party X, I should make the best decision for party X.". Instead of focusing on the often unsaid subtext, and the normative claim therein, we have this discussion where we ignore the fact that there's more to what these people are saying.
"politicians should work to solve societal problems." is, unfortunately, a vacuous statement that doesn't really answer the questions. Almost everyone thinks this, even republicans. Who even gets to determine what the societal issues even are?
Every person should determine it for themselves, and then make their opinions known. The consequence of "pundit brain" is the risk of people no longer doing this.
The subtext in that claim is actual is "politicians SHOULD only care about what the majority of their constituents care about with in the snapshot of a poll." Which is dumb as fuck and the problem I'm literally pointing out.
I'm pretty sure you understand what I'm saying so I said what I said 🤷🏾♀️Going any further is well beyond that the scope of this thread and what I care to discuss. Sorry.
thanks for saying this but im perplexed it has to be said even.
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Is that even possible for someone to make determinations like this entirely on their own? And if so, should this change in regards to politicians who function in our system as representatives of groups of people?
I'm sympathetic to the idea that good, but unpopular ideas might die as people become too obsessed with winning. However, our society appears to be moving in the complete opposite direction to that.
This appears to be a complete goalpost move. We're talking about using descriptive and normative claims, and you complaining that people's descriptive claims are taking over normative conversations, and then I point out that when people in these conversations bring up a descriptive claim, it's generally with a normative claim subtext, and then you turn around and say "yeah, but that normative claim as I interpret it is dumb". Yeah sure, but that's not our initial argument. We weren't talking about if a politician should only be using a singular poll to determine how they should act, that's not a claim I'm making or defending. But whatever.
And the other point. I asked how should politicians in a representative democracy decide how they should act? Simply saying, they should work towards a better society, as I said, is completely without meaning. It doesn't specify anything. Their constituents, their party, themselves all have different versions of that better society in their head. I honestly have no idea if you're talking about a better society according to you or me or whoever. I wasn't trolling there.
At the end of the day, I'm still grateful for the time. Do you friend.
I feel like something must be missing here because this is a nonsense question. Yes, of course it's possible. We've been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years. The bedrock of human morality only came from our individual capacity to judge and determine the state of society, unless you think our morals and norms were handed down to us by God. Also, no one does this "alone". They do it in the context of the society and environment they live in and with people around them.
No? What? Why would it? Representative democracy would have no point if people weren't, on some level, capable of analyzing and making value judgments about society for themselves. It'd be aristocracy if a privileged class of educated rulers determine what was best for everyone without input from the majority.
I didn't know if you meant truly as an individual or meant with others that's why I asked the question. I'm talking about other people informing what our understandings about what is right and wrong, because "In the context of society and environment and with the people around them" when I read it, on its face, appears very different from "Every person should determine it for themselves".
You're missing my point, maybe I'm stating it poorly. I'm saying should elected representatives apply their own judgement or follow their party's judgements or follow the judgement of the people they're representing.
I felt like there was no need to be so specific but I did mean the former, in so far as no one is born or raised in a vacuum.
A mix of all three I think.
Then that's my bad as I misread your post, it seems. So for clarity, what are you defending? I'm not arguing that polls aren't useful. A good poll should tell you where people are. However, that's only descriptive. You shouldn't base your values on what is presently polling well. You should use polling to know how hard you have to fight for something. In summation my argument is X isn't polling well is not an argument for why we shouldn't have X.
Also to your second point, isn't the conceit of Representative Democracy that the populace isn't that good at knowing what's best for them so they vote for someone who able to articulate that in ways they can not? am I bugging here?
No worries. Okay, for ME personally. Polls don't affect my values. If you're just an average person I think it's dumb if it affects your values, but they do affect my expectations. They do affect how mad I am if something not completely in line with my values happens. I accept that repeated polling can be a signal (one of many signals I'd hope if you're making a big decision) to a politician that maybe they do not want to support something I want to support. I don't blame them, I blame the population that pressurises them to not advocate for the right thing (in my eyes), and bemoan the system that exists and advocate for changing it.
Yes, that's the idea. However, voters don't really see it that way. I could be wrong, but my instinct is that voters think they already know what's best for them and that their representative should just follow that.