Trump explained - because you all are blind

[Synobun]

And I never claimed it does, why Politifact's data collection does not translate into proper statistics about politicians, I had already explained after all.

It is a proper statistic, though. You are considering it an inferior source because it doesn't judge intentions when it was never meant to do so. The premise here is very simple. Is the claim (politician) made true or false? Sort of true? Sort of false? Laughably wrong? The truth-o-meter will let you know (with proof to back it up). Your pointing out of its 'limitation' and how it doesn't 'translate into proper statistics' seems based on an idea that it's trying to do something it isn't.

Your clarified objection to Ziggy also does not make sense. The numbers are verified. You can check them yourself. They didn't come up with their tallies out of thin air. Each truth or lie is linked to evidence that supports the truth (or the lie). And as stated twice now, if something is wrong or they missed a claim, you can let them know! They'll fix it if you're right.

 

[Ryika]

I guess I'll leave this discussion now, because I get more and more of an urge to say some things that would most certainly would not be family friendly.

Let me end with this last attempt to make you understand the difference:

If a Trump Supporter goes around and asks their friends what they think about Trump, then they will create a valid statistic. They might come up with something like 80% Support for Trump.
There's nothing wrong with that statistic, and the Trump supporter did nothing wrong gathering that statistic.

If now another person takes that statistic and says: "See, 80% of America support Trump.", that's where you have a problem, for reasons that are hopefully obvious to you.

That's exactly the same thing that is happening here. Politifact chooses the facts they want to check. They make statistics about the facts they checked. All of that is perfectly fine.

If however now a person takes those statistics and says: "49% of what Obama said was true of mostly true. That's below 50% and is really bad. Just 1 in 2 things Obama said. Trump achieves a whopping 17%. 1 in 6 things the man said is true." then that's simply out of the scope of what these statistics tell us, because again, it's not based on a random sample, it's based on hand-picked facts that were checked.

Which doesn't mean that Politifact manufactures statistics, it doesn't mean that Politifact is biased on what facts they check. It doesn't even mean that they don't show an accurate picture, they very well might, or they might not. Because the sample is not randomly selected it just cannot be used for statistical analysis of the greater picture.

 

[Synobun]

Fourth time's the charm: If they've missed something, you can let them know.

Your example still doesn't fit. A survey of local pedestrians isn't what Politifact is deliberating on. They are deliberating on definitive claims, like Obama saying terror attacks haven't increased (mostly false) or Trump saying America's lost 70,000 factories since China's joining of the WTO (mostly true).

Politifact isn't extrapolating survey statistics here. If you took that Trump supporter's survey results and sent it in to Politifact with two different premises, they'd have two very different answers. "80% of survey recipients support Trump" would be classified as true. "80% of America supports Trump" would be classified as a pants-on-fire lie. Definitive claims are judged.

You're not wrong that they are picking what gets checked, but this is a universal fact that applies to literally everyone. It seems like an invalid point to throw out into the aether unless you have cause to believe that this ability is being taken advantage of by Politifact. Do you have a reason to believe they are misleading people with these true/false statistics? Or a reason to believe that they ignore claims?

 

[Ryika]

You're not wrong that they are picking what gets checked, but this is a universal fact that applies to literally everyone.

So everybody's statistics cannot be used to make a definitive claim on that. Really easy to understand, you're again making the argument you already made a few posts ago, that because it's the best we've got, we somehow need to give it a pass. No, we don't. We accept that we don't have the ability to make claims about statistics and only have a rough picture to go by, and that's it.

It seems like an invalid point to throw out into the aether unless you have cause to believe that this ability is being taken advantage of by Politifact. Do you have a reason to believe they are misleading people with these true/false statistics? Or a reason to believe that they ignore claims?

That's not how statistics work. You don't ask: "Do you believe they'd do it?", you ask: "Could they do it?", or even "Could it happen?" as selection bias might happen subconsciously with no ill-intend, and if you can answer either of these with "Yes", then the statistics should be ignored when it comes to the bigger picture.

Generally, look at the number of claims that have been judged and you'll that if they continue with the current speed, Politifact is only a few months away from having checked as many claims of Trump as they have checked claims of Obama if they continue at current speed. That's a huge discrepancy, which may come to be because Trump says a lot more things that are controversial, or that may be because he's put under bigger scrutiny, or maybe a bit of both (which I think is the most likely explanation). Do we have a way to perfectly distinguish between the two? No? Then there's your evidence for a potential problem.

If you have a potential problem with the method that you can't rule out, then statistics are dismissed, you don't get to decide that based on whether you personally trust them or not.

 

[Synobun]

So everybody's statistics cannot be used to make a definitive claim on that. Really easy to understand, you're again making the argument you already made a few posts ago, that because it's the best we've got, we somehow need to give it a pass. No, we don't. We accept that we don't have the ability to make claims about statistics and only have a rough picture to go by, and that's it.

Don't need to give it a pass. Just don't see a point in objecting to the stats because there's a chance the one aggregating them is coo-coo for coco puffs. Generally if publications aren't caught blatantly lying, they develop a positive reputation for what they put out for public consumption. If one cannot prove that Politifact is corrupt or otherwise taking everyone for a spin, it seems reasonable to trust what they are saying unless there's a competing voice saying differently. Politifact isn't a random blog that just appeared out of thin air with wild claims. They've been around for years and have been doing this for a long time. If they were as suspicious as you claim they're capable of being, they likely would not be pointed to as a credible source.

Generally, look at the number of claims that have been judged and you'll that if they continue with the current speed, Politifact is only a few months away from having checked as many claims of Trump as they have checked claims of Obama if they continue at current speed. That's a huge discrepancy, which may come to be because Trump says a lot more things that are controversial, or that may be because he's put under bigger scrutiny, or maybe a bit of both (which I think is the most likely explanation). Do we have a way to perfectly distinguish between the two? No? Then there's your evidence for a potential problem.

Obama was a trained politician with a skilled team behind him every step of the way. He also did not take to Twitter every day to disseminate the latest of his half-baked musings to the world. Trump, while 'charismatic', isn't great at politics and his team is for the most part made up of unqualified people who got in due to business or family ties. Many of his publicists echo his lies and those in his inner circle aren't great at making him fact check before speaking.

Trump, by virtue of his nature, is going to make more claims than Obama did. He is far more candid about his opinions and thus we have more opinions to judge. Talk more, be judged more. It doesn't help that Trump likes making claims. He structures his opinions as factoids. He possesses very little tact in presenting his points.

But let's assume you're onto something here. Can you prove that a large majority of Obama's definitive claims have gone unchecked? That there is some agenda against Trump being enacted here? This seems like something that would have come to light since we now have 8 years of evidence to look at.

Right now it seems to be reasonable to come to the conclusion that Donald Trump lies to a far greater extent than Obama did during his tenure. It does not seem to be reasonable to reject this conclusion based on the possibility that it's all a ruse (when there's no evidence to support such a claim).

 

[Ryika]

Right now it seems to be reasonable to come to the conclusion that Donald Trump lies to a far greater extent than Obama did during his tenure. It does not seem to be reasonable to reject this conclusion based on the possibility that it's all a ruse (when there's no evidence to support such a claim).

Thankfully, I did not make such a claim to begin with.

You're constantly arguing against straw men while seemingly incapable of comprehending the thing I took issue with. The rest is just you building up possible explanations that yes, are possible, but could also be wrong, and thus are meaningless to the discussion.

 

[Synobun]

Thankfully, I did not make such a claim to begin with.

I suppose you are right. The claim made was that the statistics are 'entirely useless', with further replies providing clarification such as the possibility of bias or neglect. Going the verbatim route here doesn't seem to change what I said.

You're constantly arguing against straw men while seemingly incapable of comprehending the thing I took issue with. The rest is just you building up possible explanations that yes, are possible, but could also be wrong, and thus are meaningless to the discussion.

I am arguing against your explanations. I feel I've done a good job of this regardless of your choice to simply ignore the majority of my replies so far.

We now circle back around to the overarching point. Is Politifact wrong? Is there a reason to believe they are? They've done their work in trying to prove their claims. Have you done your work in proving yours? Has anyone? I've asked a couple times now for you to provide a link to a competing source that tells a different story than Politifact. Instead you've elected to be hyper-focused on the possibility that they might be wrong, without any consideration as to whether or not they actually are. You have yet to provide concrete evidence that says they're misleading us. I've linked to several of their articles where they outline the claim being judged and explaining why the claims are wrong (or right) with links to corroborate whatever it is they're saying.

 

[Ryika]

I suppose you are right. The claim made was that the statistics are 'entirely useless', with further replies providing clarification such as the possibility of bias or neglect. Going the verbatim route here doesn't seem to change what I said.

Yes, and they are useless as statistics about Trump and Obama. Which is all I argued for, independent from all the nonsense that you keep bringing in.

I am arguing against your explanations. I feel I've done a good job of this regardless of your choice to simply ignore the majority of my replies so far.

No, you've done a terrible job and everything you've said is utter nonsense. More so, it's pretty ridiculous that you continue to ask these questions...

We now circle back around to the overarching point. Is Politifact wrong? Is there a reason to believe they are? They've done their work in trying to prove their claims. Have you done your work in proving yours? Has anyone? I've asked a couple times now for you to provide a link to a competing source that tells a different story than Politifact. Instead you've elected to be hyper-focused on the possibility that they might be wrong, without any consideration as to whether or not they actually are. You have yet to provide concrete evidence that says they're misleading us. I've linked to several of their articles where they outline the claim being judged and explaining why the claims are wrong (or right) with links to corroborate whatever it is they're saying.

...after I already told you twice that these don't matter, and have explained in detail why that is the case. What matter is whether their method is designed to get a statistical analysis on how often which politician lies, and the answer there is clearly that it's not - and Politifact doesn't claim that it is, the only one who insists that we should use them for that, is you, and the only real reason you give for it is that you believe they're not biased. Great for you, but entirely meaningless.

It's like you have a doctor do an experiment, and then you ask: "Could he have consciously or subconsciously manipulated the results?", and your answer is: "Well... yeah, but I know that doctor, he's very trustworthy and you have no proof that he did such a thing!" ..what an idiotic standard that would be. You're wrong, accept it.

 

[Synobun]

No, you've done a terrible job and everything you've said is utter nonsense. More so, it's pretty ridiculous that you continue to ask these questions...

You won't answer the questions. If you want me to stop asking them, you should answer them.

...after I already told you twice that these don't matter, and have explained in detail why that is the case. What matter is whether their method is designed to get a statistical analysis on how often which politician lies, and the answer there is clearly that it's not - and Politifact doesn't claim that it is, the only one who insists that we should use them for that, is you, and the only real reason you give for it is that you believe they're not biased. Great for you, but entirely meaningless.

The answers explicitly do matter because the argument you're making is entirely dependent on Politifact being wrong or neglectful.

I didn't make the claim they weren't biased. I made the claim that they've done their part in proving what they're saying and nobody else has done their part in proving that what they're saying is incorrect or misleading. Like I said, since we have 8 years of Obama's administration to look at now, it would stand to reason that if Politifact simply didn't check most of his claims it would be widely known and it would have discredited Politifact as a result. This hasn't happened.

This also connects to my secondary point here that you can manually verify what they're saying in their truth-o-meter articles. They aren't making deliberations and then calling it a day, asking you to trust them because they've got a trustworthy face. They make the effort to prove their rating for the claim. The fortunate thing with this approach is that if they are wrong, you can prove it easily! And yet... nobody is doing that. If someone is or has done it, you've certainly not made an attempt to make this attempt visible. Demonstrating that Politifact is misleading people or neglecting to check large portions of claims would make your arguments shine above mine rather deftly.

It's like you have a doctor do an experiment, and then you ask: "Could he have consciously or subconsciously manipulated the results?", and your answer is: "Well... yeah, but I know that doctor, he's very trustworthy and you have no proof that he did such a thing!" ..what an idiotic standard that would be. You're wrong, accept it.

This is a misunderstanding of my argument. I'm not sure how to adequately respond to it since the wording is divorced from the premise we're dealing with in the Politifact scenario. Politifact isn't running an experiment and my point has never been "you should believe them because I think they're trustworthy". My point has been that they've done their part towards proving their determinations over claims and their truthfulness. Opposing viewpoints don't seem to be present with any semblance of real evidence towards the theory. The opportunity is there for you to verify their determinations or to otherwise out them as misleading us.

 

[Ryika]

You won't answer the questions. If you want me to stop asking them, you should answer them.

Fine, if that stops you from asking, here are my answers:

"Is Politifact wrong?"
Probably every now and then, as everybody is, but no, usually they're doing a good job getting all the facts right.

"Is there a reason to believe they are?"
I don't think so.

"Have you done your work in proving yours?Has anyone?"
I don't understand what you're asking here, but I assume that given that we agree that they're usually in the right, it's probably meaningless.

Somehow I assume this won't help at all.

The answers explicitly do matter because the argument you're making is entirely dependent on Politifact being wrong or neglectful.

No, I'm not. You either lack the ability, or the interest in understanding my argument.

I didn't make the claim they weren't biased. I made the claim that they've done their part in proving what they're saying and nobody else has done their part in proving that what they're saying is incorrect or misleading. Like I said, since we have 8 years of Obama's administration to look at now, it would stand to reason that if Politifact simply didn't check most of his claims it would be widely known and it would have discredited Politifact as a result. This hasn't happened.

I'm not interested in discrediting Politifact. Your argument however, is nonsensical. There's no reason Politifact would go back to check a smaller claim that was made by Obama once and has fallen through the cracks because people weren't interested in checking it at the time. If you actually look through their history, you see that they mostly answer questions that are relevant at the given moment. Which is sensible, as it will be interesting for most people.

This also connects to my secondary point here that you can manually verify what they're saying in their truth-o-meter articles. They aren't making deliberations and then calling it a day, asking you to trust them because they've got a trustworthy face. They make the effort to prove their rating for the claim. The fortunate thing with this approach is that if they are wrong, you can prove it easily! And yet... nobody is doing that. If someone is or has done it, you've certainly not made an attempt to make this attempt visible. Demonstrating that Politifact is misleading people or neglecting to check large portions of claims would make your arguments shine above mine rather deftly.

This is, for the tenth time, utterly meaningless, as again I am not claiming Politifact does a bad job, I am saying that they're selecting the claims they want to prove and thus the process is not designed to lead to unbiased statistics.

This is a misunderstanding of my argument. I'm not sure how to adequately respond to it since the wording is divorced from the premise we're dealing with in the Politifact scenario. Politifact isn't running an experiment and my point has never been "you should believe them because I think they're trustworthy". My point has been that they've done their part towards proving their determinations over claims and their truthfulness. Opposing viewpoints don't seem to be present with any semblance of real evidence towards the theory. The opportunity is there for you to verify their determinations or to otherwise out them as misleading us.

It's exactly the same thing. The doctor may very well have done what they needed to do to be seen as trustworthy, and the doctor may very well try to be as unbiased as possible, and think that he is doing unbiased experiments, but because the experiment is not designed in a way that guarantees that the results are unbiased, the statistics produced cannot just be assumed to be unbiased. Very easy, really.

 

[Hrothbern]

It is even in an agreed methodology of getting statistics more than just the numbers. The numbers as if every event has the same weight, or better, the same significance

If someone is always drinking one or two too many, but is sober when it is his turn to drive the car, I will feel ok about him.

 

[Samson]

I suppose you are right. The claim made was that the statistics are 'entirely useless', with further replies providing clarification such as the possibility of bias or neglect. Going the verbatim route here doesn't seem to change what I said.



I am arguing against your explanations. I feel I've done a good job of this regardless of your choice to simply ignore the majority of my replies so far.

We now circle back around to the overarching point. Is Politifact wrong? Is there a reason to believe they are? They've done their work in trying to prove their claims. Have you done your work in proving yours? Has anyone? I've asked a couple times now for you to provide a link to a competing source that tells a different story than Politifact. Instead you've elected to be hyper-focused on the possibility that they might be wrong, without any consideration as to whether or not they actually are. You have yet to provide concrete evidence that says they're misleading us. I've linked to several of their articles where they outline the claim being judged and explaining why the claims are wrong (or right) with links to corroborate whatever it is they're saying.

I do not think anyone is saying Politifact is wrong in what it claims. What is wrong is to extrapolate from descriptive statistics from a non-random sample to make claims about the whole population. Politifact specifically says its sample is not random (see below). You can therefore not with confidence extrapolate from "17% of the fact checked statements are true" to "17% of all statements are true".

I do not think anyone is saying that Trump is not telling many more lies than Obama. It is just that this data is not sufficent to say that.

Because we can't possibly check all claims, we select the most newsworthy and significant ones.

 

[El_Machinae]

You cannot create a problem and then pat yourself on the back when other people fix the problem you created. You also certainly can't claim benevolence or compassion on your part while doing this. You need to contribute, and creating a problem isn't contributing.

I agree, no real credit is deserved. In his defense, he has nothing to contribute. His base can't offer anything. He has no theory to offer.

We'll see. The most critical component will be whether Congress can get its act together in time.

 

[plarq]

Ah, we're comparing ... lets compare. Where did I hear the term pants on fire before?

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/barack-obama/

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/

Trump: false + pants on fire = 216
Obama: false + pants on fire = 80

And these are absolute numbers. Trump is only getting started. Obama took 8 years for 80. 10 each year.

49% of what Obama said was true of mostly true. That's below 50% and is really bad. Just 1 in 2 things Obama said. Trump achieves a whopping 17%. 1 in 6 things the man said is true.

Cue: politifact is a liberal biased partisan organisation because the numbers are detrimental to my world view.

My friend, if you reverse everything Obama said, you still get half wrong half right, but if you reverse everything Trump said, his statements suddenly become plausible.

 

[Zkribbler]

Someone needs to tell Trump that, under the Accord:
1) Each nation sets its own goals
2) There is no penalty for any nation who fails to meet its goals.
What "more favorable goals" could he possibly want?

Trump is a numbskull. Trump is a numbskull. Trump is a numbskull. Trump is a numbskull. Trump is a numbskull.

 

[Colon]

OTOH it also means that they can shuffle a bit with their commitments and declare victory anytime they want to.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Someone needs to tell Trump that, under the Accord:
1) Each nation sets its own goals
2) There is no penalty for any nation who fails to meet its goals.
What "more favorable goals" could he possibly want?

But Climate change is a Hoax by GYNA ?

 

[Angst]

This OP is so cringe, and the following accusations about the "liberal elite" are nearly as absurd. People don't care about Trump's "winning", they care that his political output is as bad as it is. The West has a lot of problems and Trump is making them worse. This is why people resent him.

 

[metatron]

Cue: politifact is a liberal biased partisan organisation because the numbers are detrimental to my world view.

Erm... yes?
Politifact is a liberal biased partisan organisation.
It's also a stupidity biased and hick biased organisation.
Both being a function of "organisation" really meaning journalism students/interns at the Tampa Bay Times (read: the c-words that sooner or later wash up at Buzzfeed, the Breitbart of the left).

Politifact would be a prank.
It should be a prank.
If it weren't for people like you citing it at face value.
Look at it!
It's an embarrassment to liberalism!

The simplification! The intentful naivete regarding any degree of rhetoric (above Trump's that is).
The latent preachyness.
Politifact is not just bad. It is disgusting.
And it is way more tent revival than enlightenment.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Thanks for the illustration buddy. Lord knows I appreciate that