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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8169 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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Kamala's word salad causes prediction market meltdown?

https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1843450980291010656

Question: "What does success look like in ending the war in Ukraine?"

Answer: "There will be no success in ending that war without Ukraine and the UN Charter participating in what that success looks like."

I guess she could be referring to Article 2(4)?

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Even with a positively colossal steelman it's hard to understand what she's saying, charters cannot participate in successes. I think she doesn't really mean anything by this statement. It's what Gary Marcus says about LLMs, how they're just spinning word associations around.

She then continues on to repeat fairly standard US rhetoric 'we're not going to do a deal without Ukraine at the table' and dodges the question of NATO membership. None of it is particularly adept politician-speak IMO, she could do with lessons on muddying the issue.

How hard would it have been to say 'we want a free, democratic Ukraine with 1991 borders' or if they want 2014 borders, why not say that? Or if territory is too sensitive to talk about, just say 'we want a free and democratic Ukraine, a Russia that isn't going to be invading any more countries, deterrence for all America's enemies'? It was a pretty easy question!

It's not just that, there's more:

https://x.com/ClayTravis/status/1843449294008836567

She's asked about whether it was a mistake to let illegal immigration rise so dramatically and fails to dodge the question. She could've said 'oh there are enforcement problems since it's a big border' or given a distracting pre-prepared anecdote about one of the challenges they faced. She just says 'oh we have been offering solutions, solutions are at hand and we'll make more solutions on day one, when I'm elected!"

Here's a bigger chunk of the video, each minute I watch there's all this word salad and flailing question-dodging:

https://x.com/ThisIsJnored/status/1843473339085631770

For instance, at about 1:50 there's a question about the extensive US military aid to Israel and whether the Biden Harris administration is capable of putting any pressure on the Netanyahu govt.

Her answer: the work that we do diplomatically, with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles.

Him: But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.

Her: We're not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.

She does say something substantive from time to time, carefully implying that the alliance is between the American people and the Israeli people, not with Netanyahu. She uses a proper technique like 'the real question is...' there which makes her look more in control. But it's still a pretty bad performance overall.

Presumably this is why polymarket has gone from parity to 53-46 in Trump's favour): https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024?tid=1728364599343

And then there's the editing! I think whatever portion of the interview they're releasing is the most flattering stuff they could get. How else do you explain this: https://x.com/LangmanVince/status/1842964122553761982

He asks the same question "but it seems Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening" with the exact same head movements (from a slightly different camera angle) and she gives a different answer, even more full of spaghetti:

Well Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of... movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.

What's going on here? Am I missing something basic? Kamala's answer isn't coherent either way but it's vaguely related to the question, was it edited from something else? This is why you should just give clear answers that specifically engage the question. Not interchangeable babble with with six clauses to a sentence.

I feel concerned (not only because I've placed bets that Donald Trump will lose the popular vote since I thought it was a dead sure thing) but also because this is the apparent calibre of American leadership. Even if we assume that Elite Human Capital or the Deep State is running the show, why can't these people find a decent media spokesperson? How hard can it be?

Apologies for how much of this post is rhetorical questions, twitter links and transcription, I'm truly confused by the whole thing. I also feel like people should know what I'm linking to, they should be able to scan the link with their own eyes and know to nitter or whatever if they don't have an account.

Edit: https://x.com/mazemoore/status/1843664856446316758 (this shows the editing they did somewhat more clearly)

Is the Ukraine video really that bad? She looks a bit stiff and uncomfortable but that's not particularly unusual when you've got a camera in your face. Her answers are vague but that's the modal politician response to most questions on contentious topics.

he looks a bit stiff and uncomfortable but that's not particularly unusual when you've got a camera in your face.

This is not an answer a politician can give. Sure, for your first couple years, I guess you could say this. But when you've (allegedly) been "leading" for many years, cameras, interviews, tough questions should be utterly banal to you.

A lot of people relate that when they meet one of the "big" politicians in person (Trump, Obama, Clinton (Bill)) etc. that they really do have this massive, reality distorting charisma. I think a large part of that is just relentless practice because it became part of their everyday.

Kamala has negative charisma, is a poor speaker, and can't handle basic interviews. She's a bad politician.

Kamala is a last minute swap in because Biden is senile. And trump is, well, trump. If the median America had discovered the monkeys paw in 2023 and wished for an election that’s not Trump V Biden so they both died, then it’d be, like Desantis v Whitmer or something. Normal politicians.

I agree that Kamala is uniquely dangerous due to her stupidity- she appears to truly and genuinely believe whatever cynical bullshit is most convenient for democrats at any moment, Obama knew it was cynicism- but I disagree that this is the American leadership class these days.

but also because this is the apparent calibre of American leadership. Even if we assume that Elite Human Capital or the Deep State is running the show, why can't these people find a decent media spokesperson? How hard can it be?

That US is led by midwits has been evident since 2001 at least. The war on terror was a grotesque miscalculation-the neocon dreams of seven countries in five years delusions, Iraq a fumble, the war was a strategic victory for Al-Qaeda because it led to a decrease in US power and influence, loss of trust in the USG. Then you had the Arab Spring, which succeeded only in ruining things and not increasing US power either. Let's not even speak of Afghanistan. Then we got to Ukraine. Chinese have made no secret they're not going to be color-revolutioned, yet Americans thought driving China and Russia closely together was just the thing.

Putin clearly wanted in, was cooperative post 9/11, asked to be considered for membership and seeing as NATO has at times contained wholly authoritarian regimes like Turkey's various juntas , Portugal (somehow a founding member) etc, there were no obvious reasons why not to admit them. This would've gone some way to containing China.

That China would become extremely powerful was obvious since early 1900, when they were found to be not intellectually deficient, just merely medieval.

Emanuel Todd, the anthropologist famous for calling Soviet decline back when people thought USSR was eternal has an some interesting remarks in an interview about his upcoming book. Translation here.

Putin clearly wanted in, was cooperative post 9/11, asked to be considered for membership

Am I misremembering or was that a single sarcastic quip by Putin and not sincerely asking for NATO membership?

From memory, Russia never put in a formal application to NATO, but it wasn't just a sarcastic quip. You could probably debate the sincerity of the interest of Russia joining NATO, but it definitely wasn't an prima facie sarcastic suggestion.

You have to remember the geopolitical context at the time. Russia was a newly "liberal" country after the collapse of the Soviet Union only a decade ago, and while significant tension did still exist between USA and Russia (particularly relating to NATO's involvement in the Yugoslav Wars), relations between the two was much more optimistic that is now or has been recently.

9/11 presented a reasonable opportunity for a genuine, renewed, positive relationship between Russia and USA. One thing that Russia and the US have in common (even to this day) is dealing with Islamism/Islamic terrorism, a threat to both nations. Russia had been, and has been, constantly dealing with Islamic terrorism within its own borders long before 9/11, and could reasonable see opportunity for US cooperation and support post 9/11 (it actually did happen to a limited extent under much worse circumstances dealing with ISIS).

Fucking up the opportunity to normalise relations with Russia and bring them into the greater west and instead driving them into the arms of China was the second worst foreign policy mistake the USA ever made in my opinion, matched only by donating the country's productive economy and manufacturing base to China.

Putin clearly wanted in, was cooperative post 9/11, asked to be considered for membership and seeing as NATO has at times contained wholly authoritarian regimes like Turkey's various juntas , Portugal (somehow a founding member) etc, there were no obvious reasons why not to admit them.

It wasn't about them being authoritarian, it was about them being Russia. I doubt Poland has the same emotions about Portugal

Then you had the Arab Spring, which succeeded only in ruining things and not increasing US power either.

I concur on a lot of the aforementioned U.S. foreign policy being a failure but think this veers into a Chomyskite type dismissal of anyone’s agency other than the U.S. government’s. The Arab Spring in Egypt and Syria began organically, as corrupt authoritarian states did not yet have a handle on the virality of social media. The U.S. government certainly picked sides, but I think it is unfair to treat this as the type of own-goal attempting the regime change and democratization on of Iraq was.

I think the aftermath is a complete loss. The Arab Spring wasn’t about democracy, it was an Islamist movement based in getting rid of the old guard who were largely secular socialists and nationalists. Our ignorance of the region and what these despots were holding back is obvious now and anyone familiar with the region and the history of could have easily told you that weakening these secular regimes is good optics and terrible policy. And where these despots were weakened or overthrown, we now have either outright Islamist governments or powerful military junta’s threatening jihad at either the secular government or the designated target of the Jews. But then again our midwits are not exactly scholars and were taken in by the optics that happened to coincide with their interpretation of the neo-liberal right side of history narrative that holds that humans all naturally are alike and think exactly like post-modern liberals and want nothing other than to join the Rules Based International Order and drink Starbucks and send their daughters to humanities programs at Evergreen.

To be blunt, my take on politics both domestic and international is Real Politick. You are a fool if you’re trying to govern based on delusions and fantasies about how you wish the world works. And you are a double fool if you’re misunderstanding human nature. We are not fundamentally good people, no one is. And pretending that if we just ignore reality hard enough we can wish ourselves to Utopia is just going to set everything back.

The Arab Spring wasn’t about democracy, it was an Islamist movement based in getting rid of the old guard who were largely secular socialists and nationalists.

Maybe democracy in the Middle East will naturally tend towards some form of Islamism and we just have to get over it?

Imagine if early Western democracy was under the watch of secular aliens searching for any sign of deviation from laicite. It'd never get off the ground because it'd permanently be at odds with the desires of the population.

Even granting that Islam is exceptional that's probably an argument for some role instead of continually trying to quash it. That may just radicalize Islamist parties into jihadis.

Yes, the midwit position of "let them have democracy and they'll converge on modern liberalism on some reasonable timescale" is ludicrous. But maybe they should just have democracy , damn what happens to the gays and women.

If any of these nations were at risk of spawning some Lee Kuan Yew-esque illiberal reformer or a liberal autocracy that could set the stage for liberal democracy it'd be one thing. But Egypt was corrupt and autocratic before Morsi and corrupt and autocratic after and all of this will almost certainly happen again.

or the designated target of the Jews

Yeah, you got me there. Democratic Islamic governments will have more issues with Israel.

I have accepted that Islamist ideology is the natural bent of Islamic countries. What I do not accept is that we should allow a major portion f the globe to destabilize so they can have democracy. The results of supporting these popular movements is basically that the region is much more unstable, much less secular, and more likely to persecute women and minorities in their own countries and launch attacks against Israel. The result of democracy in Iraq was a radical Shia regime, not a Jeffersonian democracy.

I think any sane alien would be doing much like what I’m proposing. If the results of our democracy were constant attacks on other planets, murder of anyone who didn’t match our ideology, and destabilizing the rest of the galaxy, these aliens would not be in favor of us having a democracy. They’d much rather we were stable, peaceful, and under a dictatorship than that we’re attacking Alpha Centauri, killing Swedes and killing anyone who isn’t fitting in with religion.

I’ll disagree with you on the point that the Arab Spring itself wasn’t about democracy. But as it was decentralized, it could only create a vacuum, and that then let groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, that had organization and structure, fill that vacuum.

I’ll disagree with you on the point that the Arab Spring itself wasn’t about democracy.

It was about poverty. Higher grain prices meant that for the first time a lot of people didn't had food security.

I dont have the link on hand, but someone dumped $7 million onto prediction markets overnight, betting against Kamala. People are suspecting Elon. The swing is artificial knee jerk, but your sentiment is genuine.

Remember, Kamala was never supposed to get this far. 2020 was peak woke and Biden felt pressured into choosing a minority. Kamala had the perfect optics - woman, blackish, indianish, well educated, compliant, could signal as woke but fundamentally centrist.

She was the perfect puppet and therefore a good VP candidate. But the same thing makes her a horrible presidential candidate. Off the top of my mind, every other primary candidate did better than her. Pete, Warren, Bernie.... are all articulate and sharp (whether I agree with some of them or not).

IMO, the deepstate chooses bumbling idiots because they are easy to control. Kamala is perfect.

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Isn’t the obvious use case for election prediction markets to hedge agains unfavorable election outcomes? Why do we assume that people betting on Trump are Trump supporters? Shouldn’t, for example, Israeli settlers be betting big on Kamala to win so that they have money to relocate if Trump loses and they get kicked out of the West Bank? DEI consultants betting on Trump so they have insurance against losing their cushy jobs?

Who is going to buy an insurance policy where the payout is only twice the premium? Just save the premium.

The fundamental difference between insurance an gambling is that gambling is predicated on the idea that people want to win, wheras insurance is predicated on the idea that people don't want to 'win' (i.e. have to claim on their policy), and this shapes the two industries into fundamentally different things.

That said, I've heard of people using gambling as an emotional hedge, e.g. 'I'll bet on the other team, so if my team loses at least I'll win $100'

Isn’t the obvious use case for election prediction markets to hedge agains unfavorable election outcomes?

Sometimes actual sports betting is used to hedge against unfavorable sports outcomes. Houston's "Mattress Mack" is famous for promotions like "Buy furniture today, and if [local sports team] wins, I'll give you your money back," which he's been known to fund by betting accordingly in Vegas.

I could imagine doing this with political outcomes ("If Kamala wins, I expect to have higher taxes"), but I can't imagine the market is liquid enough to support doing this for anyone large enough to care about hedging. But maybe it will be possible in the future.

Houston's "Mattress Mack" is famous for promotions like "Buy furniture today, and if [local sports team] wins, I'll give you your money back," which he's been known to fund by betting accordingly in Vegas.

That's fucking genius. Unethical, but genius.

This is the kind of chaotic neutral thinking that we need more of in American entrepreneurship. Fuck Bay Area CS grads trying to come up with robo-dildo-taxis. I want dangerously unstable fly-over people using corporate treasury funds to seed fund a local strip club.

robo-dildo-taxis

...Are these a real thing, or did you just give the porn industry a free idea?

What's wrong with that? I mean it's exactly as playing white elephant as the VC types funding uber for furniture psychics apps to cash out at IPO using low interest loans. Just benefits the common man a little.

That's fucking genius. Unethical, but genius.

Why unethical?

Responding to @hydroacetylene and @Lizzardspawn.

I'm alright with it! And I'm not sure it's illegal on its own.

It's definitely unethical in that, if that company has a board, there are probably terms that limit what corporate treasury funds can be used on (gambling is a no no). If the owner has sole ownership of everything, it's okay so long as gambling winning come back in as revenue to the company, I think. There's probably some tax gotchas.

I don’t think these prediction markets are big enough to hedge against catastrophic geopolitical outcomes, whatever one’s views and hopes. $7 million moved the market noticeably toward a Trump victory. I’m not sure how a bunch of Otzma Yehudit hardliners could offset the cost of having to leave their settlements without driving down the expected return.

Just like prediction markets can be assassination markets, so too can they interfere with normal democratic processes if taken too seriously. If there are people who will cut their losses and stop donating to their preferred candidate when that candidate's odds get too low, then manipulating a market can become positive EV even if you're inflating the price of your candidate's shares above where you believe they should be.

You're assuming the people gambling on elections are using it as an investment vehicle or hedge and not just, y'know, gambling. Most people betting on prediction markets are idiots trying to get rich, not people making rational choices.

Remember, Kamala was never supposed to get this far. 2020 was peak woke and Biden felt pressured into choosing a minority. Kamala had the perfect optics - woman, blackish, indianish, well educated, compliant, could signal as woke but fundamentally centrist.

I'd disagree that she was centrist. She was simply the only option. Clyburn didn't demand a minority. He demanded a black person. IIRC Biden already promised a woman.

Who else could it be?

If someone wanted Trump to win, wouldn't they want to manipulate the market in the opposite direction, to make it look like they're in danger of losing? I'd be less likely to vote for my preferred candidate if I thought they had it in the bag.

As Patton once said, "Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time." If you think your candidate is probably going to lose, then you're less likely to vote at all. There are a lot of people who would be motivated to vote if they thought their candidate had a good chance of winning. Who wants to be on the losing team?

Elon (or presumed anon billionaire) doesn't want to make money off the bet. They want to influence public opinion towards their intended candidate. Movements in betting markets trigger articles titled : 'why kamala is losing ground to Trump - 6 policy fails of the Biden govt'. Additionally, these articles actually draw eyeballs when there's an idle curiosity for why Kamala is losing ground.

Then why don't you vote for a third party that aligns further with your preferences? People like to be a part of a movement, they want to have a good chance of winning instead of "throwing their vote away."

This is the question I always have in mind when I see ideologues of any stripe popularize poll numbers that show their preferred candidate for an upcoming election in the lead and denigrate polls that show the opposite. There's certainly a "celebrate the home team winning" aspect that I understand - when the Red Sox have a good record or have a big lead against the other team, I, too, like to remind other Red Sox fans of this if the context is appropriate, and we both have a positive experience from it.

But unlike professional sports, elections are things that the fans actually have pretty direct input on the outcome of. So one would think that a committed fan of a particular politician or party would try to behave in a way as to increase the odds of their preferred team winning. Which, I think, would lead one to the exact opposite of the abovementioned behavior; present the polls that show your favorite team losing as the most dependable, most reliable polls that everyone needs to be paying attention to all the time, and present the other ones as fake and flawed and maybe even part of a conspiracy theory to keep people on your side complacent.

But I also see an argument for the opposite case, that, as one Osama Bin Laden said, IIRC, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they instinctively side with the strong horse." So presenting your favored politician as "stronger" in the polls could actually lead other people into learning that they genuinely, in good faith, agree with that politician's ideology, and thus they become more likely to vote for them.

I admit I haven't looked hard, but I've yet to see any empirical evidence for which factor is stronger and by how much. As it is, the fact that it feels really really good to celebrate your favorite team politician being in the lead (certainly it feels far better than "celebrating" the opposite) makes me highly skeptical of any evidence or arguments that such celebration also conveniently helps your favorite team politician win in the upcoming election.

Or they might feel “it is a lost cause” so why bother voting

Everyone likes a winner. Making your side look good inspires enthusiasm and demoralizes the other side. Much bigger bump than making your side incrementally more afraid.

Any yet Trump won in 2016 despite the common wisdom being that Clinton would likely win.

I think that there are effects in both directions.

If I think that the election result is already predetermined with a very high probability, I am less inclined to vote strategically. So if a candidate is polling at 80% in a state, I will vote for whomever I like most in general, while if two candidates are both polling at 45%, I am much more likely to the one of them whom I consider the lesser evil.

I am sure that the impulse to pick the side of the winner also exists in people. In the ancestral environment, picking the winning side of a group-internal conflict was likely conductive to reproductive success, while habitually backing the underdog was not. Rationally, this matters a lot less in representative democracies where what you do in the voting booth stays in the voting booth.

Personally, I am mildly disinclined to vote for a winning candidate. Statistically speaking, I tend not to be a huge fan of most administrations, and if it is all the same, I would rather be able to say "I voted for Kodos" than sharing the responsibility.

Exactly.

The expected value theory here is symmetric. If you're close to 50/50 odds then your vote has a relatively high chance of making a huge impact, and you should make absolutely sure to cast it. If you're at 90/10 or 10/90, then whatever; why bother making your margin of victory a tiny bit larger or your margin of defeat a tiny bit smaller?

The psychological theory here is what's asymmetric. Social Desirability Bias tells you that if you agree with the majority and high-status leaders of Our Tribe then you are in sync with the community and safe and loved, whereas if you agree with the outnumbered and low-status dissenters from Our Tribe then you are a traitor and a risk and what are you even still doing here anyways? Best to hop on the bandwagon.

It's weird to see people blowing money on prediction markets to that end, though. They used to be such a niche nerd idea, mostly talked about among small groups who saw expected utility maximization as a goal and biases as obstacles inherited from our less-evolved ancestors, but I guess they're now just as fertile a target for hoary advertising tricks as "people who didn't even get up to stretch during the commercial breaks" used to be.

As I understand it, social desirability bias as a theory is meant to suggest why people may respond to, say, questionnaires in ways that may make them seem in harmony with favored social norms, eg if you ask someone directly (even anonymously) how many units of alcohol do you drink per day they may round down by one or more, if they're a heavier drinker. To do otherwise would give a feeling of hedonistic depravity (disfavored) even if true. This creates considerable noise in self-reported data, and is why parallel forms (similar but not exact) questions are sometimes used within in one questionnaire (and why Cronbach's alpha is used in analysis). Surveys of this sort are very difficult to do even passably well if one wants any data close to reflective of reality.

In this case--voting--it may apply but I would argue only within one's own imagined society. In other words so-called red tribe types will vote red because their people vote red. It's arguably not about some larger percentage of the population, it's about whom you value socially. I suppose you could tell some "blue triber" that the vote is 99% Trump and argue that they will be swayed to vote Trump to stay in sync, but I'm not so sure that wouldn't be very inconsistent across a large population.

edit: of to if

Polarization these days is strong enough that I wouldn't expect that bias to make a huge difference, it's true, only a difference on the margins. But we're on the margins again with this election, aren't we? +3% Harris nationally, but Trump's leading in a couple swing states he lost last time, probably within one swing state's electoral votes of winning. I could easily imagine a decent number of undecided voters being swayed (or just persuaded not to stay home) by the belief that one candidate or the other is socially acceptable or at least not too socially unacceptable.

It is already reversing to the mean and the NYT/Sienna poll that dropped shows her at +3 - and according to Nate Silver this is the most reliable pollster right now.

He also made the point that prediction markets are vulnerable to whale movements such that they cannot sufficiently clear in the short term, meaning you shouldn't weigh drastic short term movements of these markets very highly as indications of market consensus.

If the prediction markets are onto something it'll show up in the polls, otherwise things will reverse to the mean as the market clears.

Polls are of course also subject to buses (including weighting voting population).

True. But the rule of thumb that the side that is unskewing the polls is losing usually holds true.

I think the rise of LLMs has revealed that we have at least two distinct ways of thinking. Next token prediction is the most common, and what I’m engaged in now that I’m trying to communicate an original thought. Given the germ of an idea, we can almost unconsciously generate a stream of words to describe it. iOS is even suggesting many of the words I’m composing now.

I think anyone who has been in a conversational flow state can intuit that there’s something like an LLM in their heads.

When I see Kamala seemingly surprised at where her sentences end up, I see next token prediction.

I think its obvious that some political consultant told her to work certain key words into all her answers. "Doing the work" and variations of it is a common one. I know other politicians have followed strategies like this. But good god does Kamala give the game away with how artlessly she strings these vocab snippets together. It's only barely grammatically correct English, nakedly void of any informational value. A good politician at least creates the successful illusion of having said something, or evoking in you a belief that you heard what you wanted to hear.

It's so bad because she's so bad.

Body language is a pseudo-science, but tells do exist. Harris looks to the side when she's try to fetch and retrieve talking points. That's a novice move. The really good politicians can maintain eye contact even when they're doing the memory recall of talking points. The really good ones can smile, emote, gesture non-robotically when they do it. Harris is just overmatched.

Trump doesn't face these challenges because he will not be constrained by your plebe confines of sentence structure and grammar. His words are impressionistic-abstract devices that can be deployed and rearranged dynamically. If you're too dumb to follow his 9th order logic, that's on you pal.

Serious: Trump's tell is that he just starts a new sentence. It's obvious and horrible. More recently, he's been getting stuck in doom-loop repeats of the same anecdotes and basic sentence themes. They aren't even fully fleshed out talking points. He'll get stuck on individual words. Listen to him talk about his alcoholic brother on the Theo Von podcast. This is, funnily enough to @NewCharlesInCharge point, this is a failure mode of less sophisticated LLMs - they can get into latent spaces that are impossible to exit, so they just end up repeating the same output again and again even if you try to coach them away from it.

And yet there are many (or at least some) who weep at her speaking in breathless praise. I feel the same about them as I feel when I see people in not only MAGA hats, but Trump (or, formerly FJB) t-shirts, holding Trump mugs and posters and talking about how great a man he is. It's really a potentially fantastic dark comedy film, if one could avoid camp and cynicism. Which probably one couldn't.

I would love to see a work of fiction where each side conspires among themselves in hushed tones about how, even though their candidate is garbage, they have to pretend to be strong enthusiastic unqualified supporters, lest they express any honest reservations and thereby let the even-worse candidate win instead. In the climax of the story, everybody discovers that this is what everybody is doing, and for once they break the hysteresis of plurality voting and elect a decent third-party candidate instead.

But back to non-fiction, obviously that's not what's consciously happening, because people just aren't that good at deliberately lying to each other and keeping it a secret; we have to do it unconsciously. That's probably why we evolved half of our cognitive biases: to help us accomplish useful deception of others via the intermediate step of lying to ourselves first. "Gosh, it's a good thing my candidate is so great, because otherwise we'd be mostly screwed either way", is the sort of thing people actually come to believe. In the climax of reality, we all just keep lobotomizing ourselves in such fashion to a greater and greater extent, because to reverse course would require reducing our present persuasiveness and admitting the magnitude of our past mistakes, and none of that is something we can easily do when we've evolved to try to impress others.

I’m not sure how much a 60 Minutes interview matters. I guess it does slightly on the margins and if you believe the polls this race is just on the margins.

The one thing I would add is why did Harris and her team put her in this setting why they know she is “turrible” in these settings?

My guess is internals might not be as positive as external polling so they were hoping to shore up a criticism but it didn’t go well.

You just have to go through some motions.

, why can't these people find a decent media spokesperson?

Because they thought they could hide Bidens senility to the end of the election. They are just arrogant or it’s just too hard to coordinate of a problem, replacing an aging president, that Kamala just sort of fell into this position. She didn’t earn it, and if she wins it’ll be pure luck on her part: “the accidental president”

I’m actually somewhat looking forward to a Kamala presidency. She’s going to make DEI look horrific, by showcasing what it looks like to put someone so unprepared into the highest visibility role there is. She lacks the personality of a president, is utterly unpresidential, sort of like Trump but in a very different way as well. She can’t speak eloquently and has weird social mannerisms, and is apparently quite unlikeable as a leader. Trump, for all his narcissism (narcissism actually helps leadership in some ways) is at least charismatic and has a great sense of humor.

Because they thought they could hide Bidens senility to the end of the election. They are just arrogant or it’s just too hard to coordinate of a problem, replacing an aging president, that Kamala just sort of fell into this position. She didn’t earn it, and if she wins it’ll be pure luck on her part: “the accidental president”

I don’t think this captures the internal dynamics of the Democratic Party. It isn’t a monolith.

It’s hard to go against an incumbent and the Bidens as a family, are very clannish (small-c, not ‘k’, please). When you say, “…they thought they could hide Biden’s senility…”, that is certainly true for the Bidens, as they shrank the inner circle around and access to Joe as criticism mounted.

Plus, a particular source of stubbornness from Biden was 2016. He was dealing with the loss of his son, true, but in order to get the Clinton machine behind him for his own election, Obama had already accepted it would be Hillary’s turn that year, after being his Secretary of State. And it bothered Biden when Obama informed him the support would be behind Hillary, it bothered Biden even more when Hillary lost to Trump as he felt he would have done better, and then Biden took 2020 as vindication of all his prior grievances about 2016. So, when people were trying to nudge him away from running again, in Biden’s mind, they were just more skeptics that he’d already proven wrong.

The next guard of Democratic presidential hopefuls — Whitmer, Shapiro, etc. — didn’t have the clout to push Biden aside on their own, and evidently none wanted to risk dimming their own star by losing an open primary going up against Biden and the money he had already raised from Democratic donors worried about a second Trump term.

The in for those outside Biden’s camp was the early debate and a bad performance, so power brokers from other camps within the party could claim through clenched teeth, of course they still supported Biden, but it was the public and donors had lost faith, and their hands were forced. This is when Pelosi, the Obamas and large donors struck.

As mentioned elsewhere on this topic, Harris was then effective in back room dealings and was able to scuttle a contested convention on the grounds that internal division might harm the chances of defeating Trump, and also, that if Biden withdrew, she was the candidate that would retain access to the money that had been raised for the Biden-Harris ticket.

I suspect if Whitmer and Shapiro could travel back in time, knowing what they now know, they would take their shot in an open primary. Now, there is at least a possibility Harris serves two terms, and who knows how hot their careers will be in eight years, plus Walz’s increased name recognition puts him in the mix.

She apparently earned it in the sense that she was on the phones calling all the Party people she needed to call to prevent an open convention pretty much the moment Biden dropped out. She apparently has some kind of knack (hard to call it a 'talent') for internal party politicking that got her where she is today.

The problem there is that was also the talent Hillary Clinton had and she was much better at it.

That was my take as well: Hillary Clinton is a ghoulish power-seeker, but a competent one. If she won, she'd be a continuation of the Democratic technocrat rule.

If Kamala wins, America gets to experience its own 'time of troubles.'

Yep. The cold solace that it will be the cabinet and bureaucracy running the government so it doesn't matter if Kamala is an incompetent executive is not comforting at all after the last four years, where the cabinet and the bureaucracy were running the government and they were bad at it.

You don't earn it by brownnosing or politicking, you earn it in the primaries by appealing to actual voters.

She apparently has some kind of knack (hard to call it a 'talent') for internal party politicking that got her where she is today.

Are you saying she is... a good politician?

The appropriate word is apparatchik.

In the context of the definition of "apparatchik" (a term English speakers borrowed from Russian), "apparat" essentially means "party machine."

Kamala is an exceptionally dumb politician. She mostly never knows what she's talking about. Even when she does she can't avoid noodles spilling out of her mouth. This was all basically priced-in until August, when for political reasons the Democrat base pretended she was this amazing undiscovered talent. "Joy!" But we knew this already. I predicted in August that it wouldn't last until November, and here we are.

I think Kamala is actually kind of likeable for being so dumb. Her answer the kther week about shooting a criminal with her very real gun is one example. Another is a rumor I saw going around that the once-great White House Cocaine was actually hers, not Hunter Biden's. Well, whatever, probably not, but granted that she's a normal untalented striver who somehow ended up as VP, that implies a different path for her to run on. Briefing her on policy issues way out of her depth isn't working.

I've heard she's deeply unlikeable in private and chews through her staff. Which makes me wonder how she got this far. Somebody has to like her!

Compare Kamala's world salad to other politicians. Trump rambles because he is always juggling three or four different conversations, and he doesn't bother with the political cliches that tie everything together. But he's basically perfectly intelligible, which is how we get regular two-movies-one-screen on partisan lines. Biden rambles because he's going senile, but speaks in perfectly normal sentences when he's having a good day. He was always fairly dumb by Washington standards, but it was an aggressive and belligerent dumbness that made him colorful and interesting. Obama almost never gave word salad unless he was away from his teleprompter at an unexpected moment. Hillary was too smart for this. And it's possible Bush was only incoherent when he wanted to look folksy.

And it's possible Bush was only incoherent when he wanted to look folksy.

I forget where, but I remember hearing some anecdote about how Bush was really smart and eloquent in private, and he'd talk about how he was usually just stammering when speaking in public because he was terrified and nervously choosing his words, because of how much could go wrong if the POTUS said something incorrect or damaging.

Looking back on his public performances it's clear that he absolutely wasn't dumb even if that was him at his best. The extent to which "Bush is a moron" took off as a meme is actually quite remarkable in retrospect.

Bush was also being compared to the hyper-articulate Bill Clinton, and with memories of his father's media-aided gaffes smoothing the path as well.

hyper-articulate Bill Clinton

Don't you know you're not supposed to call America's first Black president "articulate"?

Randomly, I actually know a guy (who happens to be black) who was in the Arkansas All-State Honor Band with Bill in high school.

And Al Gore too.

You hear similar things about how HRC focus tested each word in public to death due to being burned badly in the past.

Not sure how seriously to take it. Or whether or not it's still a failure of intelligence and character worth noting.

HRC would never have gotten "deplorables" past a focus group, even if they'd missed all the other hints in her speeches that pointed in the same direction.

She had more than enough intelligence that she could have done a competent job without anyone double-checking her every word; her problem was that she was aware of her intelligence and she let that awareness fester into contempt rather than compassion for those not so endowed. That is a failure of character which she should have worked on, but of all the people in the world she was probably the most painfully aware that it's possible to be a great politician and a decent president without bothering to work on your failures of character. She just didn't realize that voters who will forgive failings like "contempt for your spouse" still won't forgive failings like "contempt for us". I think it was someone on TheMotte who pointed out that true meritocracy can be actually much worse than ending up with an incompetent candidate, if a competent person picked on merit would be using their competence in opposition to your values rather than in support of them.

HRC would never have gotten "deplorables" past a focus group

IIRC, wasn't that said at a private donor event and someone released a surreptitious recording? That is, it was never intended for a wide or unfriendly audience. Or am I getting it mixed up with Obama's "God, Guns any Gays" remark?

"LGBT for Hillary", Barbara Streisand performing, $1,200 per "Friend"-level ticket for the cheapest seats, so definitely not for a wide or unfriendly audience. But it was still the keynote speech at a gala widely reported a month in advance, not an off-the-cuff unprepared remark among a select group of actual friends. I vaguely recall learning that early 19th century Presidential candidates would make one set of promises to crowds in Northern states and another set to crowds in Southern ones, but that kind of thing shouldn't have survived for very long after the telegraph, much less after the private-recording-device-in-everyone's-pocket.

I had a vague recollection of the same thing, but I thought I might be confusing it with Romney's 47% remark that was surreptitiously recorded and released. From my Googling, Time doesn't mention any secret recordings for Hillary's remark. Says it was at a fundraiser, but it doesn't seem like it was a closed event, and a full transcript of her speech is also in the article, which points to it not being surreptitiously recorded.

Her team’s polling models also assured her the “Blue Wall” states weren’t in play, and she ended up losing Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, without much personal campaigning in or money spent on those states. Trump got 258 electoral votes absent those three states, Hillary got 227, and that trio was worth 46.

Trump is intelligible in the sense that, if you're already familiar with the context he's speaking in, you can follow what he's trying to say. However, of you're not, you'll be lost.

His chatter about the Charlottesville fact check in the Biden debate made it exceptionally clear that he struggles to actually bring a point home and land it. If you knew already that Snopes had changed the status of the fact check then you could follow perfectly well what was going on but, if you were coming in cold, his point came off very weak and diffuse.

Knee-jerk I disagreed. But to test this, I opened up the Lex Fridman interview, which I haven't listened to, and copied a random clip from the transcript without looking at the context:

(00:10:39) So I’ve done a lot of debating, only as a politician. I never debated. My first debate was the Rosie O’Donnell debate, the famous Rosie O’Donnell debate, the answer. But I’ve done well with debates. I became president. Then the second time, I got millions more votes than I got the first time. I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, you would win, you can’t not when. And I got millions of more votes on that and lost by a whisker. And look what happened to the world with all of the wars and all of the problems. And look what happened with inflation because inflation is just eating up our country, eating it up. So it’s too bad. But there are a lot of things that could happen. We have to get those wars settled. I’ll tell you, you have to get Ukraine done. That could end up in a third world war. So could the Middle East. So could the Middle East.

So, yeah, without seeing what Lex said to prompt this, I have no fucking clue what the main point or thesis of this rambling is, or what it might be responding to. This bit as bad as anything Kamala says, tbh. Looks like total free assoication. (not word salad).

here's another one just to be fair:

(00:24:09) Nothing. I know nothing about it. And they know that too. Democrats know that. And I purposely haven’t read it, because I want to say to you, I have no idea what it’s all about. It’s easier, than saying I read it and all of the things. No, I purposely haven’t read it and I’ve heard about it. I’ve heard about things that are in there that I don’t like, and there’s some things in there that everybody would like, but there are things that I don’t like at all. And I think it’s unfortunate that they put it out, but it doesn’t mean anything, because it has nothing to do with me. Project 25 has absolutely nothing to do with me.

This one is quite a bit easier, and pretty coherent.

He's easily coherent (sometimes moreso than Kamala), he just seems to have no concept of the difference between what's in his head and what might be in other people's heads. He often talks as if everyone is just as online and embedded in the right wing echo chamber as he is, referring to people and events off hand and just kind of assuming everyone understands what he's talking about. This works fine at rallies but it really doesn't with general audiences.

I think his main issue is the interview format in general. He's good at rallies because he controls the entire conversation there. He's also good at one-on-one discussion because he'll just overwhelm the person and schmooze them and it usually works very well. But when talking to one person for the benefit of an audience, neither of these work. If he schmoozes the interviewer that does nothing for the audience and if he takes control of the discussion then it looks like he's evading questions. Simply having a conversation on another person's terms, or at least as equals, seems very difficult to him. I can't stand hearing him in interviews.

Are there any popular interviewers in the US that are known for playing hardball with their guests and not letting them get away with a non-answer? Is there a chance one of them could interview at least one of the candidates?

How hardball can you really get? The man asked her the same question three times. If she can't answer it in a coherent way with three at-bats it is unlikely she'll be able to come up with anything more coherent if you ask her this question ten more times, and it's evidence enough of whatever qualities an interview is supposed to show. He who has ears, let him listen.

"Did you threaten to overrule Derrick Lewis?"

Infamous as the most hardball interview in British political history (and the British are already tougher on politicians than the Americans). The question was asked 12 times, and Michael Howard gave 12 non-responsive answers. Both side remain unflappably polite throughout.

Later it turned out that he was supposed to have been let off the hook, but a technical problem with the next item on the schedule meant that the interview was extended by about a minute without either Paxman or Howard being told in advance.

"Did you threaten to overrule Derrick Lewis?"

On a slightly amusing side note, when I hear Derrick Lewis, I can only picture Hot Balls, Black Beast, Popeyes Derrick Lewis. Woe to the man who threatens to overrule him.

/images/1728430008500899.webp

I just don't see how asking the same question twelve times is better than asking it three times. Has anyone ever answered a question on the fourth time after dodging thrice?

What if we take the hardball metaphor seriously, and the interviewer tells the interviewee straight-up, after each non-answer, "Okay, so you just struck out. Want to try again?" And as the interview progresses, the interviewer brings up the scorecard and reminds the interviewee of their performance so far and perhaps their need to hit a grand slam now if they want to win?

More realistically, when a politician non-answers a question like in some of these clips, I'd like it if the interviewer explicitly called it out and refused to move on until it was answered in a way that a reasonable layman would understand as "answered." There's probably too many incentives against any interviewer in a position to interview anyone that matters actually doing this sort of thing, though.

I don't think anyone would benefit from this guy asking Kamala Harris the same question for an hour.

Au contraire, I think if this guy was placed in a position by Harris to ask the exact same question at her for a full hour, this would be of great benefit to all American voters.

How hardball can you really get? The man asked her the same question three times.

Start asking closed questions, for example.

What is a closed question?

A question that has a finite set of possible answers. Yes/no questions are the most common form, but asking for a name or a number is a closed question as well.

What is the point? This isn't a CIA black site, ve don't have vays of making you talk. It's already obvious she's dodging the question.

Also I hate to be pedantic but a question with a number for an answer doesn't have a finite set of answers.

I lied, I don't hate to be pedantic.

Kyle Clark who works for Denver’s NBC broadcast affiliate station has rightly gotten good press for his moderation of debates. But given he is only moderating debates between mayoral candidates and people running for Colorado’s seats in congress, I am not sure if he rises to the threshold of popular. Would love to see the national network put him in font of Trump and Harris.

you really can't "play hardball" with a presidential candidate, because everyone they're the belle of the ball right now. everyone wants to interview them, so they can pick and choose their venues. There's zero incentive for them to go on a hostile interview, or even a less-than-friendly interview. Especially for Democrats, since so much of the mainstream media is sympathetic to them.

I wish there was more cultural demand for, not exactly hardball questions, but a surprise quiz here and there to let voters know the candidate isn't completely out to lunch.

"Yes, thank you for delivering your prepared remarks on immigration and the southern border, but if you don't mind, could you please name the President of Mexico?"

"That depends on which cartel is currently most powerful"

"I hear they have a great president, people tell me all the time, I tell you what, when you reelect me, we'll sit down and make a deal. All of these people from jails, from mental institutions- they won't be coming through Mexico anymore."

Presidential candidate jeopardy would be enormously interesting.

I mentioned Kyle Clark in another reply but he said something along these lines when asked why his debates/interviews were as substantive as they are. He said that whomever is running for mayor of Denver or one of Colorado’s seats in the house still needs Denver’s NBC affiliate to reach voters, and that may not hold up with national office.

yeah, it's a whole different ball game between local and national office, and then president is a whole other level. With the lower levels, a lot of the race is just name recognition, getting voters to know and care about who you are. Journalists there have a lot of power, since they gatekeep the shows that can make the politicians famous. But Harris and Trump are already the most famous people on earth, there's really nothing that a journalist has to offer them except bootlicking.

Ironically enough, despite being criticized for being soft I always thought Joe Rogan was very good at not letting the interviewee get away with non-answers.

The long form podcast format helps of course, but while he'll let people blabber for hours about things that may be completely untrue he does not let you slinker away from a line of questioning that you don't like until you've given an answer.

This was in display even recently in his Matt Walsh episode. They talked endlessly about moon landing conspiracies, not just because Joe enjoys the topic but because Matt kept giving him slippery non committal answers so he had to continue pushing.

Well, I'm happy that at long last she's finally being forced to answer some substantive questions, even if they're being lobbed to her from the most friendly possible journalist. her answers... are about what I expected, given what I remember of her from the 2020 primary. She just has no understanding, at all, of policy issues. Her word salad is her realizing she doesn't know what to say and frantically trying to dodge the question and move on.

To be fair those are pretty difficult issues. No matter what she said, she'd be guaranteed to piss off a lot of people. So I understand why a pro politician would want to avoid talking about them as much as possible. Trump has also been highly evasive on the issues of Ukraine and Israel, other than his usual "I'll make a deal" vague nonsense.

There seems to be this huge blindspot in American politics, where no one can admit or even notice that, despite all the US aid and influence, it's currently failing to achieve its goals. Ukraine is getting steadily pushed back, the violence around Israel rages on, and the US can do nothing but give away money to corrupt military-industrial contractors. I give Biden a lot of credit for being the one to finally admit that the situation in Afghanistan was bad and taking the political hit to withdraw. I wish he'd do the same and take the fall for those other bad situations.

I don't think taking the fall for Ukraine or Israel is something Biden even has the option to do. Afghanistan, sure, it's our army and we can pull it out whenever we want, but both those others we're just subsidizing a foreign army and ultimately it's their own government that decides when they stop fighting, not us.

I give Biden a lot of credit for being the one to finally admit that the situation in Afghanistan was bad and taking the political hit to withdraw. I wish he'd do the same and take the fall for those other bad situations.

Trump did this, the stonewalling just lasted until 2021.

Am I missing something basic?

Yes.

Kamala Harris has been a bad speaker for most of her public career. It's like being confused about why a politician known for gaffes continues to make gaffes. The quality is meeting expectation.

In turn, Harris' rise to her current position is largely the result of two things largely indifferent to her public speaking skills: Democratic Party political faction alliances of the 2020 election cycle, and campaign finance laws in the 2024.

In 2020, where Harris bombed pretty early in no small part because of her propensity to word salad, Biden's victory in the Democratic primaries was hinged on the support of the African American wing of the Democratic party, particularly specific political machines. The quid for the quo was rewarding allies of the allies with places in the administration. Part of that was the selection of Harris for Vice President, as she met various political faction interests (most notably known, but oversimplified to, Biden's announcement of his vice president criteria). Harris was a VP selection to balance internal party politics, not her speaking role. If anything, her lack of speaking skills was an asset, as it reduced the threat / feelings of being slighted to those who didn't get an ally into the VP slot, and Harris was so weak as to not threaten to overshadow Biden as a more ambitious VP might have. (Even in his fall, Biden's fall is generally believed to have been much more at the instigation of Party Elders, not Kamala herself.)

In 2024, Harris's ascension largely revolves around campaign finance limitations, in that when Biden was pressured to step down from the race, she was the only potential candidate who could legally utilize the Biden campaign fund without potential legal risk freezing a pillar of the Democratic campaign. As most sitting Presidents do, Biden's control of the presidential campaign relied on control of the money, which was under the legal control of the Biden-Harris campaign, as opposed to the Democratic Party. If, and when, Biden was pressured to drop out, the Democratic Party leaders who pressured him to couldn't demand control of the money already raised. In a choice between a possibly bitterly contested / coalition-fracturing contested convention, in which the huge fundraising sums wouldn't be usable, or between a better funded and smoother party politics, Harris was the beneficiary regardless of speaking skills.

OK, she's a bad speaker, we all knew that: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/09/29/vp-harris-hails-us-alliance-north-korea-speech-gaffe/10460822002/

That's an embarrassing mistake, maybe she could have misspoken. But past a certain point we have to wonder whether there is anything in her head at all.

Kamala enjoys the favour of the media establishment. She had plenty of time to prepare for this. She knew what kind of questions they were going to ask her. She could have given some convincing lies and hope nobody would fact-check her, that's a strategy. A primary plank of her campaign is lying about Trump's plans to ban abortion. Trump himself is no stranger to lies, they're a vital political tool.

But she isn't even capable of that!

It might even be edited to look a little better than it actually was, people have been remarking that the interview was shorter than expected. That was why I was confused, wondering how Kamala could answer the same question twice.

The same thing happened with the Dana Bash CNN interview. They clearly left a lot on the cutting room floor. She is a midwit. Basic 100 IQ person who through a combination of social striving, whoring, and being the right skin tone and gender at the right moment has ascended to almost be president. Sad state of affairs.

I doubt she is 100 iq. She did pass the bar. I would guess 110-115

There have been rumors circulating for a bit, at least on right-wing Twitter, that Kamala has a serious drinking and/or pills problem. That for many public appearances she’s on some combination of substances in order to quell her paralyzing anxiety. I have absolutely no idea if any of this is true, but if it is then it could explain why someone who, in her youth, was fairly cognitively acute could now, decades later, have lost a lot of that acuity or could be unable to demonstrate it when under the influence.

Didn’t she fail the first time?

She is also 60.

100 might be too low but she clearly is lower than 115 IQ.

The California Bar pass rate is about 1/3, including repeat testers.

Edit: Some other sites are giving me different numbers, about 50% here. But still I would argue knowing the general pass rate is important context.

That is for the February bar exam. Most new lawyers out of law school would be testing in July while those who failed in July would retest in February. I suspect that if you fail once the odds are good that you will fail again.

July 2023 pass rate was 51% and the overall pass rate seems to be between 40% and 50% depending on year.

https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/0/documents/admissions/Examinations/July-2023-CBX-Statistics.pdf

Fair. I actually did add most of that in an edit, because I do want to make sure I have my numbers right.

Still, I'm aware Kamala is not liked here, and I'm not that impressed by her either. But it seems a bit much to act like anyone at barely above average intelligence should be able to go to law school and pass the bar on the first try, when half of law school students couldn't.

I didn’t know she failed it, is that official or just a rumour?

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