Trump vs Clinton Round 3. Probably the biggest debate ever.

You should read Matt Ridleys Royal society lecture - would be helpful for perspective

Arf don't worry ice you could always go and watch newsnight

Or maybe I'll go and watch qvc cos that's all I can manage

four I think one of my biggest sources of daily despair is that I respect politicians for admitting their new intervention didn't work, or that on closer examination their policy wasn't right...I despair because there apparently aren't enough people who feel the same way as me to actually allow politicians to operate efficiently and to make good evidence based decisions for the common good without losing their jobs.

WW yes I am, I am upset with myself. It is so mind bendingly stupid to do the same thing twice and expect a different result.

In this case the stupid thing I have done is engage with a thread with you on it. This has resulted once again in provoking in me a powerful sense of despair for the human race and its inability to raise itself to any sensible level of rationality, alongside anger at wasting time trying to change the above.

Ice I agree. I think that there are all manner of heuristics involved but the beauty of the scientific method is that it allows the scientist to correct for them. Also, it allows the researcher to change their mind in the face of evidence as part of the process. Carl Sagan's famous quote that science is unique in this, relative to politics or religion, springs to mind. I wonder if politics creates partisanship in the sense that there's no mechanism to change one's mind once the process is underway, which results in favouratism of the party position over evidence.

Anyway, up too late again. It's been very interesting. Good night!

Ice perhaps you missed the post earlier where I mentioned about changing my mind from thinking like you lot.

If anyone ELSE fancies a tour of biophysics lab then let me know .

We have a new spectrometer, that for reasons best known to the manufacturer lights up blue when its measuring....it also beeps to let you know its done, which is pleasing.

kaija its all establishment lies.....

part of me would like to invite WW to my lab for a day so I could go through the process of collecting this strange stuff called 'data' and the way in which we then examine the data and then form a hypothesis, design a new experiment, test it, then publish to let others know what we did, let them attempt to reproduce it and confirm (or not obviously).

But then I realise what a total waste of time and effort it would be.

Ooh ice you are upset

Ah now that's why I said ordinary people. The people with a financial dog I the fight - that's something else again. Your talking about venality, career survival, lack of exposure to alter rice explanations, reinforcement verging on brainwashing that starts at school - all sorts of factors.

Being a scientist is defined as changing your mind when you see new compelling evidence. Only an antivaxxer could paint that as a semi-religious epiphany experience. Get back to worshiping your discredited godhead.

Actually don't answer... I think I can guess this one. You don't believe in polls, right?

ODFOD...back to your little fluffy antivax, science is bad world.

You said it was a clincher yourself. You've just described a very emotional moment in almost religious terms. Folding money you never change your mind. The fall would be hard and heavy for you.

"Well I suppose if you want blunt speaking I would have said a long time ago that regular people who are clintonites, remainers and greenies are well intentioned, but struggle with clarity of thinking, have a sort of sentimental woolliness that's smothering their grey matter, and feel validated by sharing their opinions with a large number of similarly weakly endowed intellects. But that's just me."

So, leaving aside for the moment the idea that the overwhelming majority of the world's leading scientists would be "weakly endowed intellects" in this scheme, how would you explain the correlation between education and voting intention in both the EU Ref and the US election?

Wow. It really was the clincher.

WW I'm not interested in debating scientific method or anything else with you. I am not a 'believer' there is no 'clincher', if the tide turned and evidence actually did mount up to show that the earth is heating at an unprecedented rate entirely coincidentally with us burning all the fossil fuel and undergoing an uncontrolled population explosion, then I will be surprised, but then I will change my mind.

fourmummy I think it is straight up familiarity bias. I will remember the global average rainfall data and its 7 day periodicity for ever, because I saw it in a seminar at a conference in a lecture given by a good speaker....and because when I saw it, it just clicked with me, why it was a big deal, before the lecturer really got to explaining it. Sometimes you see something and it changes your world view in that moment. It is very hard to turn around a personal connection like that, even when the evidence begins to mount up that it was incorrect. Of course as scientists you have to fight this and all other forms of bias - equally when all the other evidence also points the same way, you can just relax (well when it isn't your field anyway).

No but you said it was the clincher. Don't worry about explaining I'm good. But was it really the clincher? Yes or no would be so good to know.

I'm not going to bother explaining my reasoning for accepting the overwhelming data in favour of anthropomorphic climate change to an anti-vaxxer though....because that way lies true madness.

NB. you can add a correlation between non-believe in climate change and anti-vaxing too. The causal factor there is the obvious complete denial of the value of the scientific method.

Well I suppose if you want blunt speaking I would have said a long time ago that regular people who are clintonites, remainers and greenies are well intentioned, but struggle with clarity of thinking, have a sort of sentimental woolliness that's smothering their grey matter, and feel validated by sharing their opinions with a large number of similarly weakly endowed intellects. But that's just me.

It's the blog of a reputed academic statistician

There are hundreds of reputed academic statisticians with contrary views. That is the process of science. What is interesting (to me) is that we are emulating this very process here - and I do wonder what makes someone selected this eminent statistician over this one when citing evidence, or this piece of information about Trump instead of that piece.

"Misti I think that's beneath us all"

I see you've got your pearls back on

I'm not sure that if can come down to independent thought. One thing that Trump, Brexit and climate change denial have in common is that a tremendous amount of money has been spent on their promotion by interested parties. Another is that that promotion takes the form of very simple, direct, positive messages rather than appeals to research or reasoned argument. In each case the product sold is not being marketed at independent thinkers.

ww I thought you trumpettes approved of blunt speaking and political incorrectness? ;)