Glen writes: < I'm attracted to the idea of runaway processes. Apathy and nihilism *as* runaway processes is especially attractive. It kinda reminds me of "pandemic fatigue". At this point, I don't even care if I or my loved ones die of COVID-19 or the country devolves into a tin-pot dictatorship anymore. I need to see a good band up on stage ... have too many pints at the pub ... share spit arguing with drunk Christians over a rowdy game of pool ... that feeling definitely smacks of a runaway heat death. >
Ok, I'll admit I don't want to do any of these latter things, but I'm strangely intrigued by the possibility of millions of people doing them. You said something along these lines about four years ago, with regard to the possibility of Trump presidency. -----Original Message----- From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of u?l? ??? Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2020 11:22 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] high turnout and tight races? On 10/29/20 10:44 AM, Steve Smith wrote: > My instinct is to go to "correlation" only when causal relations are > hidden, overly tangled, or demonstrably wrong. That's interesting. In all my hand-wringing arguments about the hyper-skepticism I adhere to, I don't think I've ever heard anyone express their objection to it like that: that conceptions of cause are preferable to conceptions of correlation. I think I tend the other way. Cause is a fiction useful for brainwashing engineers into great feats like colonizing Mars. But metaphysically, it's all ambiguous mush that you can knead into whatever you want if you're motivated enough. > Given that we only have > a presidential election every 12 years and have had only 45 elected > presidents, and a much shorter record (150 years?) of turnout, it > seems we *could* do some kind of exhaustive analysis (and perhaps some > have). In any given election from say 2000-2020 we have our own > personal experiences and opinions to draw on (and make the process > less > objective?) One of the papers I skimmed talked about the significant difference between national and state/local elections. Nick's mention of "small sample theory" threw me for a loop because most of what I saw focused on larger datasets than what we have for presidential elections. The assumptions about dimension reduction and population biases are massive statements of ignorance. I can't even imagine leaping by faith from correlation to cause. Even the relatively validated partisan effect Gary mentioned seems suspicious to me. > So I suppose my answer to the original question is that it can be > either/both... It seems likely to be a (at least) bimodal > distribution. A one-sided landslide can cause a large turnout while > a tight, competitive race can do the same. Maybe more interesting is > what leads to a low-turnout? Voter apathy (second term, a pendulum > swing toward a weak candidate?) seems to be the dominant cause? I'm attracted to the idea of runaway processes. Apathy and nihilism *as* runaway processes is especially attractive. It kinda reminds me of "pandemic fatigue". At this point, I don't even care if I or my loved ones die of COVID-19 or the country devolves into a tin-pot dictatorship anymore. I need to see a good band up on stage ... have too many pints at the pub ... share spit arguing with drunk Christians over a rowdy game of pool ... that feeling definitely smacks of a runaway heat death. I did vote, though. 8^D -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
