People are bunch of liars

Tags

Clinton, election, forecast, Nate Silver, people, politics, populist, president, Trump, USA

Have a look at this picture (it comes from Nate Silver website here):

This image was on his web site on the 8th of November, meaning that his forecast was wrong right up to the last minutes of the election. Why? I can only speculate, but I base this speculation on election results in Poland and in Hungary and on recent successes of all populist parties in Europe. My speculation is this: all polls check what people say, not what people feel or really think. We live in times where all issues where politics have failed us (income inequality, immigrants, refugees, unemployment, lack of future) have become playing field for all kinds of populists. They know how people feel and use it to gain power – but have no real solutions to those problems. Look at Brexit. It was easy to play on people’s feelings, but after it was done, masters behind that referendum disappeared, leaving a big mess behind (here too, all sorts of forecasts showed Britain staying in the EU). I am sorry to say to all Americans, Trump will not leave. You are stuck with him for at least 4 years – unless you will impeach him for something. Which is not that unlikely.

Similarly I guess all the recent elections were lost to populists, and there is plenty to come, next one being Germany. Those parties promise money, or building walls, or whatever – and sometimes really keep their promises by paying for them with taxpayers money – and even though your reason tells you that they are not the best solution, your heart wins, because you feel in your heart that this is what you would like to happen, even if it logically cannot as there are no easy solutions to all current problems. And you vote for them. Lying at the same time to all polls you came across, so you don’t look stupid.

My advice to Nat Silver and all other guys (including the one from Stanford who ate a bug on national TV) is to add “feeling factor” to their algorithms. The more all issues are hot in terms of beliefs and feelings, the bigger impact that factor should have over cold data based on interviews. Eventually you will be able to adjust over people’s lies.

 

 

Somewhere in Yosemite

Tags

California, forest, national park, nature, rocks, USA, valley, Yosemite

El Capitan, Yosemite

Tags

California, El Capitan, USA, Yosemite

Chicago

Tags

architecture, Chicago, downtown, USA

Just look at that building in the center of the image. How it can stand on its seemingly narrow base is beyond me… Another engineering wonder.

Chicago as town is (maybe luckily for its inhabitants) still a secret gem in the USA.

Relative Freedom – Sold!

Tags

crowd, freedom, political correctness, politics, public, Snowden, stupidity, USA, values

Recent history showed us true nature of crowds, or to put it differently, of us. Single person had the guts to expose actions of one of the world powers, making himself a possible victim of the wrath of that same titan. I am sure that Mr. Snowdon was hoping for a different reaction of all the public – or if not different, then maybe a lot stronger. But we, crowds, have pretty much ignored him and as a consequence, we have ignored – or accepted – what is being done to us.

Why is so? Why don’t we care anymore about our rights (especially right to privacy) and freedoms? Why, through silence, we allow others to read our mail, follow our steps through the World Wide Web, peek at our shopping lists, save all we do? All this in the name of fight with terrorists… imaginary and real.

The USA played it very right, ignoring and downplaying the whole issue. But we, people, have helped them with this. First of all, as single people, we cannot prove – or find out – in what way we were followed or spied upon. Secondly, we possibly anyway expected that this is happening and therefore accepted the confirmation as old news. Thirdly, we maybe don’t care, as we are busy fighting crisis…

European politicians have reacted with political correctness and managed not to say anything of any real value, which could not be later withdrawn or interpreted in different way (the only black spot in all this is a story of Bolivian president airplane…). I think that they are much more personally annoyed (as they are the ones who definitely were spied upon) and wonder what dark secrets Obama now has managed to gather about them. On one side then they need to be careful with what they say (an Edgar Hoover effect), on the other too much money is at stake to do anything worthwhile about the fact.

So where are we, so-called average citizens? We have sold ourselves cheap. We have also taught all governments a valuable lesson – we are stupid and malleable. If issue is not sensational, if it is smartly downplayed, it will disappear. Same thing happened to organized thievery of saving accounts on Cyprus. Through our lack of resistance we only confirmed that anything can be done to us. That is the real outcome of this history.

And Mr. Snowden? I, for one, am thankful to him and I am amazed at his courage. But he will disappear in on pages of history, just as he will disappear one of these days from the cover pages of the magazines. Note that the stories written about him have an aura of sensational escape, barely touching the real issue behind it… Poor Edward. He acted out of his personal anger, miscalculating ignorance and indifference of crowds. We sold him too.