A Sore Temptation Indeed

by · October 15, 2015

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Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Pursuer of happiness. Bon vivant. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Ordinary Times. Relapsed Lawyer, admitted to practice law (under his real name) in California and Oregon. There's a Twitter account at @burtlikko, but not used for posting on the general feed anymore. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

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22 Responses

  1. veronica d says:
    October 15, 2015 at 3:30 pm

    You have surely made the right choice.

    I don’t even know what the kerfuffle is about, but nevertheless, you have surely made the right choice.Report

  2. Kolohe says:
    October 15, 2015 at 3:52 pm

    This make Silver look really bad. Don’t wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it.Report

  3. Kazzy says:
    October 15, 2015 at 4:06 pm

    Why are you following Trump?Report

  4. Richard Hershberger says:
    October 15, 2015 at 4:37 pm

    Is it just me, or is the current iteration of 538 a huge disappointment? Earlier versions were daily must-reads, both to keep up with what’s going on and as a corrective to the bullshit that pervades the political press. The current version seems mostly irrelevant, and prone to its own brand of bullshit (of the ‘we are data-driven, so if there is no data to analyze we will go make some, no matter how crappy!’ variety). It might pick up as we get closer to actual voting, but that is just to say that right now it is mostly filler (in the ‘scrapple rather than real sausage’ sense).Report

    • Will Truman in reply to Richard Hershberger says:
      October 15, 2015 at 4:40 pm

      I still like it quite a bit. Oddly, it’s become more interesting and useful since the polls have become less reliable and more interesting.

      In contrast to Vox, which has become so much less than the sum of its parts.Report

      • Michael Drew in reply to Will Truman says:
        October 15, 2015 at 5:11 pm

        Precisely the opposite opinion. Largely because I agree with Richard H.: 538 makes grand claims that its analysis is superior because data-driven, and what I tend to find there is largely people making intuitive arguments about data using common judgement that I feel pretty much isn’t significantly better or worse than my own. Sometimes they deliver on the real regression-type analysis, but I think they discovered early in that there’s a limit to what you can say that’s of interest that way.

        Whereas Vox promises to “explain” things, and that’s essentially what they do. They research questions of current interest and provide what they find. It might be incomplete, but at least they’re doing what they promise and don’t claim a false authority for their reporting/analysis/opinion. They do publish arguments and opinions that aren’t explanations, but if you passed that unit in fourth grade where they taught us to distinguish factual statements (whether true or false) from opinion, you should be able to tell whether yo’re reading a Vox argument or a Vox explainer.Report

        • DavidTC in reply to Michael Drew says:
          October 16, 2015 at 4:43 pm

          I don’t like either of them.

          Although I do admit I have Vox in Feedly, but only so I can quickly scan for interesting political stuff that is happening. I don’t actually *believe* their take on things, at least not without additional checking, and a good 80% of the articles I don’t even expand to glance at. (‘America’s 4,150 traffic cameras, in one map’? WTF?) Scroll scroll scroll, open that one, scroll scroll scroll, mark all as read.

          Also, they just sorta subtlely shifted into Buzzfeed-style headlines without anyone noticing, didn’t they?

          And I can’t even remeber why I stopped reading 538.Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to Richard Hershberger says:
      October 15, 2015 at 4:41 pm

      There’s usually something interesting going on over there vis-a-vis sports statistics. Those get so complex, so quickly, that the nuts and bolts are often over my head. So I content myself with the graphics and simple predictive numbers, and recall from time to time that probabilistic predictions are not the same thing as gambling advice.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Richard Hershberger says:
      October 15, 2015 at 4:48 pm

      I agree. They went “pop” over “sound science”.Report

    • Jesse Ewiak in reply to Richard Hershberger says:
      October 16, 2015 at 5:00 pm

      It’s pretty simple. Nate Silver is good at one thing – taking all the random polls and changing it into something a normal human can look at and get something out of.

      He thought he could do that for everything.Report

  5. LeeEsq says:
    October 16, 2015 at 10:15 am

    Have you ever considered just finding a support group for political junkies trying to break their habit?Report

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