On election night, Fox News called Arizona very early. This surprised pretty much everyone. The Fox News team had improved their election model in 2020, and was confident their call was correct, even if unconventional.
Conservatives love to complain about the media.
But there's an inside baseball media that reveals how destructive the conservative media criticism environment can be to the conservative movement.
Enter, Fox News:
On election night, Fox News called Arizona very early. This surprised pretty much everyone. The Fox News team had improved their election model in 2020, and was confident their call was correct, even if unconventional.
Who stole the election changed over time. Fox News. Some rando in Atlanta. Poll workers. China.
There was less true uncertainty about who would win at 11:20 PM on election night than in any election ever, because sooooo many votes had been cast early.
Analysts in finance get paid lots of money for that kind of call!
1) Fox News recruited high-quality analytic talent into the conservative movement
2) That talent delivered, providing accurate results faster than competitors
3) Those results didn't fit "The Narrative" that the Trumpist echo chamber wanted
4) Fired
But our media critics really need to pay attention to stuff like this. It's open hostility on even *irrelevant* truth claims.
It didn't matter what Fox called! The results weren't influenced by that!
But in the media-and-commentary-addicted mind of politics-overdosed Trump supporters.... it really mattered what The Media said.
.... but we don't really fund "data stuff." We're more interested in commentary. Do you want to repackage this as some op-eds?
Not quite. They got rid of two people responsible for *reporting* that decision. But the guy who actually *made* the decision - Arnon Mishkin - is still there, afaik. Decision Desk is still sacrosanct, apparently.
— Ezra Glinter (@EzraG) January 22, 2021
More from Lyman Stone 石來民
So a few days back I was tweeting about SSRIs. The big question with these drugs is: why do controlled trials routinely show such small effects when practitioners and patients report life-changingly-large effects?
So first off, at this point the evidence is pretty clear that SSRIs and other anti-anxiety/anti-depression drugs truly don't do very much. Their average effects are beneath clinical significance, as I tweeted about here:
Basically, the problem these drugs face is that while they actually see relatively LARGE effects.... but that placebos in those trials ALSO see large effects (and most untreated depression improves within a year anyways).
So basically you have this problem where:
1. The condition tends to improve on its own in a majority of cases
2. Placebo effects for the condition are unusually large
Which means the large crude effects of SSRIs get swamped.
So that raises two new questions.
1. (Not my focus here) Are we treating these conditions appropriately given their untreated prognosis is usually (though certainly not always!!) "goes away in a few months"?
2. Why are placebo effects so unusually large?
So first off, at this point the evidence is pretty clear that SSRIs and other anti-anxiety/anti-depression drugs truly don't do very much. Their average effects are beneath clinical significance, as I tweeted about here:
What's the best recent empirical assessment of SSRI/SNRI effectiveness which deals with heterogeneity and long-term effects in a plausible way?
— Lyman Stone \u77f3\u4f86\u6c11 (@lymanstoneky) December 4, 2020
Basically, the problem these drugs face is that while they actually see relatively LARGE effects.... but that placebos in those trials ALSO see large effects (and most untreated depression improves within a year anyways).
So basically you have this problem where:
1. The condition tends to improve on its own in a majority of cases
2. Placebo effects for the condition are unusually large
Which means the large crude effects of SSRIs get swamped.
So that raises two new questions.
1. (Not my focus here) Are we treating these conditions appropriately given their untreated prognosis is usually (though certainly not always!!) "goes away in a few months"?
2. Why are placebo effects so unusually large?
Ulysses S. Grant would like a WORD
Or Teddy Roosevelt. Or Dwight Eisenhower. Or Andrew Jackson. Or Abraham Lincoln. Or George Washington. Or Zachary Taylor. Or any of numerous presidents who were honest-to-goodness battle-hardened warriors.
James Monroe fought the Hessians at Trenton and nearly died of wounds sustained there, then wintered in Valley Forge, then fought until Monmouth, then repeatedly tried to raise new regiments for the war until he went bankrupt doing it.
James Monroe, of the Era of Good Feelings, longest serving president of all time.... was in the boats crossing the icy Delaware.
Andrew Jackson was in a duel. He was shot in the chest right by his heart.
But he didn't go down. He stood there and, while bleeding out, steadily took aim and killed the dude who shot him.
Stone cold.
Hogan Gidley: Trump is "the most masculine person to ever hold the White House as the president of the United States" https://t.co/fcoYWyaEhz
— Eliza Relman (@eliza_relman) January 11, 2021
Or Teddy Roosevelt. Or Dwight Eisenhower. Or Andrew Jackson. Or Abraham Lincoln. Or George Washington. Or Zachary Taylor. Or any of numerous presidents who were honest-to-goodness battle-hardened warriors.
James Monroe fought the Hessians at Trenton and nearly died of wounds sustained there, then wintered in Valley Forge, then fought until Monmouth, then repeatedly tried to raise new regiments for the war until he went bankrupt doing it.
James Monroe, of the Era of Good Feelings, longest serving president of all time.... was in the boats crossing the icy Delaware.
Andrew Jackson was in a duel. He was shot in the chest right by his heart.
But he didn't go down. He stood there and, while bleeding out, steadily took aim and killed the dude who shot him.
Stone cold.
More from Politics
1/ Imagine that as soon as the referendum result the EU announced that it was looking forward to the end of free movement of UK citizens in the EU
2/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those retired Brits in the EU27 could go home
3/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those Brits in the EU could stop driving down wages, taking jobs and stop sending benefits back to the UK
4/ Imagine if the EU said it was looking to use UK citizens as “bargaining chips” to get a better trade deal
5/ Imagine if the EU told UK citizens in the EU27 that they could no longer rely on established legal rights and they would have to apply for a new status which they have to pay for for less rights
Imagine, for a moment, the reaction of the UK Government, Brexiters, and the RW UK press if Juncker, Tusk, Macron or Merkel went on TV to say that Brexit was worth it to stop Freedom of Movement for UK citizens, and to stop Brits being able to come to the EU and jump the queue.
— Steve Bullock (@GuitarMoog) November 20, 2018
2/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those retired Brits in the EU27 could go home
3/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those Brits in the EU could stop driving down wages, taking jobs and stop sending benefits back to the UK
4/ Imagine if the EU said it was looking to use UK citizens as “bargaining chips” to get a better trade deal
5/ Imagine if the EU told UK citizens in the EU27 that they could no longer rely on established legal rights and they would have to apply for a new status which they have to pay for for less rights
This idea - that elections should translate into policy - is not wrong at all. But political science can help explain why it's not working this way. There are three main explanations: 1. mandates are constructed, not automatic, 2. party asymmetry, 3. partisan conpetition 1/
First, party/policy mandates from elections are far from self-executing in our system. Work on mandates from Dahl to Ellis and Kirk on the history of the mandate to mine on its role in post-Nixon politics, to Peterson Grossback and Stimson all emphasize that this link is... 2/
Created deliberately and isn't always persuasive. Others have to convinced that the election meant a particular thing for it to work in a legislative context. I theorized in the immediate period of after the 2020 election that this was part of why Repubs signed on to ...3/
Trump's demonstrably false fraud nonsense - it derailed an emerging mandate news cycle. Winners of elections get what they get - institutional control - but can't expect much beyond that unless the perception of an election mandate takes hold. And it didn't. 4/
Let's turn to the legislation element of this. There's just an asymmetry in terms of passing a relief bill. Republicans are presumably less motivated to get some kind of deal passed. Democrats are more likely to want to do *something.* 5/
I\u2019m sorry it\u2019s just insane that Democrats are like, \u201cwe won everything and our opening position on relief is $1.9T\u201d and Republicans are like, \u201cwe lost and our opening position is $600B,\u201d and the media will be like, \u201cDemocrats say they want unity but reject this bipartisan deal.\u201d
— Meredith Shiner (@meredithshiner) January 31, 2021
First, party/policy mandates from elections are far from self-executing in our system. Work on mandates from Dahl to Ellis and Kirk on the history of the mandate to mine on its role in post-Nixon politics, to Peterson Grossback and Stimson all emphasize that this link is... 2/
Created deliberately and isn't always persuasive. Others have to convinced that the election meant a particular thing for it to work in a legislative context. I theorized in the immediate period of after the 2020 election that this was part of why Repubs signed on to ...3/
Trump's demonstrably false fraud nonsense - it derailed an emerging mandate news cycle. Winners of elections get what they get - institutional control - but can't expect much beyond that unless the perception of an election mandate takes hold. And it didn't. 4/
Let's turn to the legislation element of this. There's just an asymmetry in terms of passing a relief bill. Republicans are presumably less motivated to get some kind of deal passed. Democrats are more likely to want to do *something.* 5/
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The UN just voted to condemn Israel 9 times, and the rest of the world 0.
View the resolutions and voting results here:
The resolution titled "The occupied Syrian Golan," which condemns Israel for "repressive measures" against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights, was adopted by a vote of 151 - 2 - 14.
Israel and the U.S. voted 'No' https://t.co/HoO7oz0dwr
The resolution titled "Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people..." was adopted by a vote of 153 - 6 - 9.
Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No' https://t.co/1Ntpi7Vqab
The resolution titled "Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan" was adopted by a vote of 153 – 5 – 10.
Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/REumYgyRuF
The resolution titled "Applicability of the Geneva Convention... to the
Occupied Palestinian Territory..." was adopted by a vote of 154 - 5 - 8.
Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/xDAeS9K1kW
View the resolutions and voting results here:
The resolution titled "The occupied Syrian Golan," which condemns Israel for "repressive measures" against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights, was adopted by a vote of 151 - 2 - 14.
Israel and the U.S. voted 'No' https://t.co/HoO7oz0dwr
The resolution titled "Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people..." was adopted by a vote of 153 - 6 - 9.
Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No' https://t.co/1Ntpi7Vqab
The resolution titled "Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan" was adopted by a vote of 153 – 5 – 10.
Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/REumYgyRuF
The resolution titled "Applicability of the Geneva Convention... to the
Occupied Palestinian Territory..." was adopted by a vote of 154 - 5 - 8.
Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/xDAeS9K1kW
