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Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2017 8:34 pm
by ThisDinosaur

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2017 10:16 pm
by BRUTE
ThisDinosaur wrote:
Wed Jul 12, 2017 11:53 am
I'm interested if anyone can still convince me that this dude is still just manipulating us with his unique insight into human psychology.
brute thinks liberal humans get hung up on the "genius" or "manipulation" part. Trump manipulates humans in the same way a cute puppy or a hot girl manipulates humans. whatever he does might not be devious, cigar-smoke-filled-backroom conspiracy, but it's working on a lot of humans, pushing their emotional buttons.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 6:35 am
by ThisDinosaur
Disagree about the deviousness. The version of Scott Adams' thesis that is still plausible is that Trump's low intelligence doesn't prevent him from using manipulation skills he learned from Tony Robbins, Wharton business school, and his father. Devious but unsophisticated is all he has left.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 8:36 am
by IlliniDave
Interesting interpretation. Would the same interpretation apply to, say, a foreign national that might, say, appear at a party's national convention and speak disparagingly against an opposition party candidate? Luckily for some, it's clear Mueller will only be fishing off the right side of the boat.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:16 am
by jacob
Here are the top 5 articles (judged by font sized and reading left-right, top-down) currently on http://foxnews.com (go look for yourself)
  • WORK OF A SERIAL KILLER? Remains of missing man found in mass grave on Pennsylvania farm (large print)
  • Sanders draws Democratic challenger tired of his 'Robin Hood shtick' (medium font)
  • Teacher, 40, who had sex with teen student, is re-arrested for violating probation (medium font)
  • Why alligator attacks are spiking in Florida (medium font)
  • Trump: Son's meeting with Russian lawyer was routine (small font) [Not really a headline as such. Foxnews leads with 4 headlines.]
Here are the top 5 articles currently on http://msnbc.com (go look) [msnbc uses a mobile-friendly (ARGH) format, so you really have to scroll a lot]
  • Changes in Senate Health Care Bill Coming But Medicaid Cuts Remain
  • GOP in crisis over Trump Jr.-Russia email revelation
  • Parisians Resigned to Hosting President Donald Trump in France for Bastille Day
  • Trump: Claims of collusion 'dumbest thing I've ever heard'
  • Intel cites Trump Russia timeline starting in spring 2015: WSJ
Here's http://memeorandum.com (which algorithmically ranks according to what the news services are mostly talking about --- these are toplines and they attempt to group them in related matters .. so the top entry here has many related sub-coverings.)
  • Russian Officials Overheard Discussing Trump Associates Before Campaign Began
  • Exclusive: DOJ let Russian lawyer into US before she met with Trump team
  • Here comes the brand new Senate health bill
  • Sheldon Silver's Conviction Is Overturned
  • Justice Department Defies Court Deadline To Release Sessions' Contacts With Russians
Here's http://drudgereport.com selection of the top news.
  • OBAMA DOJ GAVE NATALIA SPECIAL ENTRY MYSTERY SURROUNDS VESELNITSKAYA
  • Group Robs, Sexually Attacks Woman Leaving Church in Queens: Police
  • Gore compares climate fight to slavery, gay rights & apartheid at Aussie summit
  • TRUMP Records His 23rd New Stock Market High – Market Up 17% Since Election
  • Ivanka Trump & Jared Kushner set to mingle with media moguls at Sun Valley conference
Question:
1) How would a person whose news stream is only/mainly reported via one of these four outlets see the world?
2) How do you think these headlines in these outlets (e.g. foxnews or msnbc) would be today in an alternate universe where Hillary Clinton had won the election---presuming the same rate of alligators, serial killers, and naked school teachers---if it had been discovered that Chelsea Clinton had attended a meeting with a lawyer acting for the Chinese government claiming to have damaging information on Trump they were willing to share in support of the campaign against Trump; if emails confirmed that Bill Clinton and John Podesta were aware of this offer. If the National Security Advisor had been found to work with China to find Trump's tax returns. If that person and several people in the Clinton administration had not disclosed several meetings with Chinese government officials when filing for their security clearances. If HRC during the campaign had stood up encouraging those Chinese hackers to go digging. If those tax returns had subsequently been released via wikileaks. (Borrowing this exercise from https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... ng-clinton)

PS: These questions are strictly intended to investigate how things would be reported on different outlets and what kind of world-view single-source voters would construct from that if the shoe was on the other foot.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:34 am
by ThisDinosaur
None of your hypotheticals, Jacob, would be necessary to arm Clinton's political opponents. She probably had Saudi Arabian and Ukranian money funding her campaign. The Clinton Foundation would be under investigation. Benghazi and her email server would still be in the news.

I'm not claiming absence of bias. But I don't claim allegiance to any one news source, either. My workplace employee lounge has TVs tuned to Fox News and CNBC damn near all day. Then I go home and my wife gets all indignant about stuff she read on CNN.com and Huffpo. In both situations, I find myself rolling my eyes harder than Anderson Cooper.

Politico assembled a bunch of legal and counterintelligence opinions from some experts. They mostly agree that 'collusion' is a meaningless media word. One angle I hadn't considered was toward the bottom of the article.
There is another problem with Trump Jr.’s story as well. His claim that they “only” spoke about the adoption issue does not help him at all. Russian adoptions were stopped by Vladimir Putin because of sanctions put in place by the U.S. government. So it would be almost impossible to discuss the adoption issue without discussing the sanctions issue. It seems very likely that much of what was motivating Russia to help Donald Trump win was because it wanted sanctions relief. So this story is damaging to the president for that reason as well.

--Peter Zeidenberg is a partner at Arent Fox and served as an assistant special counsel in the prosecution of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:02 am
by Chad
One interesting thing about the top 4 articles is that Fox and Drudge are obviously targeted at an older demographic. I don't make this assumption based on politics, but on these articles:

Fox
WORK OF A SERIAL KILLER? Remains of missing man found in mass grave on Pennsylvania farm (large print)
Teacher, 40, who had sex with teen student, is re-arrested for violating probation (medium font)
Why alligator attacks are spiking in Florida (medium font)

Drudge
Group Robs, Sexually Attacks Woman Leaving Church in Queens: Police

My grandma would love these. They show how "dangerous" cities are and give her someone, the teacher, to feel morally superior too.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:25 am
by jennypenny
Usually stories are published online in time stamp order at news sites. Clicks are what push stories up or down the food chain. It's still self-reinforcing, but not quite in the way mentioned. Website content isn't usually as influenced as TV coverage by the editorial staff, except obviously for choosing what gets published.

Drudge will sometimes feature a benign story from an online news outlet so the resulting traffic will drive a story that he doesn't like on that website further down the page. I remember one time a big outlet (WaPo?) was running a flattering piece on Chelsea Clinton and within an hour Drudge had linked to three stories on the site, effectively burying the CC story.

Online editorial management can be very different than other formats.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:27 am
by BRUTE
ThisDinosaur wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 6:35 am
The version of Scott Adams' thesis that is still plausible is that Trump's low intelligence doesn't prevent him from using manipulation skills he learned from Tony Robbins, Wharton business school, and his father. Devious but unsophisticated is all he has left.
agreed. it was pretty clear from 1980 onward that Trump is unsophisticated in the cosmopolitan sense, and incurable. but brute thinks many cosmopolitan elites (=democrats) confuse cosmopolitan sophistication with intelligence, and they confuse arrogance with elite. this is what made them underestimate Trump until it was too late. even now, it seems that 50% of all liberal news is about how dumb Trump is, completely ignoring that it's working for him (for some definition of working).

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 11:05 am
by ThisDinosaur
cosmopolitan sophistication vs. intelligence.

What's the difference? Vocabulary?

Defining intelligence will derail the thread. Suffice it to say, you get a sense of someone's "smartness" from listening to them talk for a while. Sometimes you get it wrong. There's well-read pseudointellectuals who don't think critically and there are Spartan philosophers who say lots with few words.

Adams says Trump's fourth grade vocabulary is a tactical decision. I'm more unconvinced than ever. With this much media exposure, he should have accidentally referenced a nuanced understanding of any subject by now.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 12:43 pm
by IlliniDave
jacob wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:16 am



Question:
1) How would a person whose news stream is only/mainly reported via one of these four outlets see the world?
2) How do you think these headlines in these outlets (e.g. foxnews or msnbc) would be today in an alternate universe where Hillary Clinton had won the election---presuming the same rate of alligators, serial killers, and naked school teachers---if it had been discovered that Chelsea Clinton had attended a meeting with a lawyer acting for the Chinese government claiming to have damaging information on Trump they were willing to share in support of the campaign against Trump; if emails confirmed that Bill Clinton and John Podesta were aware of this offer. If the National Security Advisor had been found to work with China to find Trump's tax returns. If that person and several people in the Clinton administration had not disclosed several meetings with Chinese government officials when filing for their security clearances. If HRC during the campaign had stood up encouraging those Chinese hackers to go digging. If those tax returns had subsequently been released via wikileaks. (Borrowing this exercise from https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... ng-clinton)
Random comment : I think it would be more revealing to look at the trends of what the TV stations broadcast (where applicable) versus what happens to be on the front web pages at an instant in time (for example, on Fox it's their "breaking news" feed, I presume the others are similar). I just looked and the top block on Fox now is a half dozen or so stories focused on the Russian lawyer. Judging by the titles, they appear not to not be negative towards the administration (not a surprise there). It's not a static thing.


1) There's a line from an old song: "A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest." Most people tune into the "news" that is aligned with their basic outlook, so they would see what they want to see it. So the hypothetical person will see the world through a relatively narrow framework that would cause the least conflict with their team's creed.

2) It would more-or-less be the converse. If available, an archive of the pages from 24 months ago would easily show that. Fox et. al. would be picking at everything BO said/did, the lefty outlets would cover events giving full benefit of the doubt to the administration.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 12:44 pm
by Dragline
BRUTE wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:27 am
. . . completely ignoring that it's working for him (for some definition of working).
What is the definition of "working" being applied here? Is it objective (numbers please) or subjective (what actual goal or interest is being furthered)?

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 12:55 pm
by Dragline
IlliniDave wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 12:43 pm


1) There's a line from an old song: "A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest." Most people tune into the "news" that is aligned with their basic outlook, so they would see the world how they want to see it. So the hypothetical person will see the world through a relatively narrow framework.
That would be "The Boxer" by Simon & Garfunkel: "

"All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest"

BTW, the demographic data on who watches what is pretty easy to find, because its needed to sell advertising.

Whenever I'm forced to watch TV I often ignore the program and just watch the ads to guess who its being marketed to. You can see the US TV audience getting older and older through this lens, especially the news channels. It's weird when you go to another country and see all the ads for household products featuring happy families that used to dominate in the US. Now we're all about ED and menopause.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 12:58 pm
by jennypenny
Dragline wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 12:44 pm
BRUTE wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:27 am
. . . completely ignoring that it's working for him (for some definition of working).
What is the definition of "working" being applied here? Is it objective (numbers please) or subjective (what actual goal or interest is being furthered)?
Most people who voted for Trump would vote for him again. (I'm in the car or I'd find the recent poll.) That's one way to measure it. It's probably what Republicans up for reelection in 2018 are watching.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 1:10 pm
by Dragline
That's a pretty low bar. What politician does not meet it simply by wearing the right red/blue shirt?

Here is the latest poll on "vote for him again", though, from yesterday. It looks pretty bad for someone who should be in a honeymoon period:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-tru ... 38043.html (story)

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-vo ... 47390.html (survey)

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 1:33 pm
by Dragline
More hard data: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epoll ... -6179.html

I still don't see what's "working" here by anything that's measurable unless "working" just means "is still upright", "has not switched parties", or is counted in tweet or insult production. Virtually any other GOP candidate as president would likely be doing better right now.

Edit: More granular data -- see "Trump Approval Now Net-Negative in Four Community Types That Were Previously Net-Positive":
http://www.gallup.com/poll/213941/trump ... rural.aspx

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:43 pm
by BRUTE
Dragline wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 12:44 pm
What is the definition of "working" being applied here?
he's the president

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:55 pm
by BRUTE
ThisDinosaur wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 11:05 am
cosmopolitan sophistication vs. intelligence.

What's the difference? Vocabulary?
short answer: brute doesn't believe in intelligence, if it's defined as "a general inherent ability that applies broadly". there are aptitudes, there are skills, there is specialization, there are jacks of many trades, there are practice and experience, but brute has yet to see one human that demonstrated a broad enough "intelligence" as to warrant that a useful term.

there was a single human that came close. interestingly, an ex-atheist, now-believer, studied academic, ex-military, married, no children, rich, dressed very utilitarian, so post-libertarian it wasn't even libertarian, completely driven by cause. what the cause was, hard to determine.

sophistication as brute means it here is basically a skill set many humans acquire by living in big cities most of their lives and traveling to other countries at least a bit. it might involve basic knowledge of other languages, other cultures, their politics, or politics in general, a certain degree of formal education, a certain perspective on the world..

humans who are sophisticated in this sense like to confuse this with intelligence, and they confuse its absence in others (Trump) with dumbness. brute thinks this is a pretty fatal conceit.
ThisDinosaur wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 11:05 am
Adams says Trump's fourth grade vocabulary is a tactical decision. I'm more unconvinced than ever. With this much media exposure, he should have accidentally referenced a nuanced understanding of any subject by now.
brute doesn't believe Trump talks like Obama behind closed doors, debating greek philosophy with French intellectuals. Trump probably is as vulgar as he appears.

the whole point is that he is effective while being vulgar because the two are orthogonal. by believing that someone as vulgar as Trump is not "intelligent", and valuing "intelligence" very highly, liberals lost the election.

it's a bit like saying that a bear is not dangerous because a bear is dumb. sure, the bear hasn't read Aristotle, and the bear can't recognize a Parisian accent on a stranger, but if the bear is in front of a human and feels like it, the bear wins.

maybe brute should phrase it this way: whatever "intelligence" means, if Trump doesn't possess it, it wasn't required to win the Presidency against a highly "intelligent" human.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:58 pm
by Dragline
BRUTE wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:43 pm
Dragline wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 12:44 pm
What is the definition of "working" being applied here?
he's the president
So if he does not get removed from office or die, that's what you would call success for any President?

I guess that means FDR was the most successful president, then any of the two termers, then the partial twos like Lincoln, then the ones, then the screw ups who died early like Garfield and William Henry Harrison at the bottom.

Re: Trump - Clown Genius

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:21 pm
by BRUTE
brute isn't sure how he would rank Presidents. he didn't mean that Trump is successful in his role as the President. brute doesn't have a strong opinion on that, and doesn't really believe Presidents have much direct influence on most things ascribed to them anyway. but becoming the President of the US is a success. very few humans have ever done it.

looking at this the other way, was Obama a successful President? despite elegant rhetoric, great education, and witty speeches, brute can't remember many accomplishments. ACA is already falling apart after only a few years, like predicted. the country is more divided than ever. the Iran deal might be a positive thing - to be honest, brute has zero knowledge about foreign policy in the Middle East. what else did Obama do? he failed to do anything about the drones, the drugs, the jails, the working class, the problems of blacks, student loans are higher, drone kills are higher, war involvement and costs are higher, terrorism has expanded..

now Dragline can argue that mean Republicans blocked Obama from doing anything, but then, by definition, Obama was not "intelligent", because he couldn't get them to do anything. the alternative is, and brute believes this, that the President actually has very little direct influence. a monkey throwing darts would probably have had a similar chance of achieving the same. not because Obama was not "intelligent", but because it's a chaotic system with too many variables.

as far as Presidents are "successful", it probably has very little to do with them, and what they choose to do. got elected right before the Internet became big? "grew the economy". got elected right before war? "strong".