alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

May 14, 2008

Analytical vs. Persuasive Hackery

by @ 5:03 pm. Filed under 2008 Elections

The Great Blog War of 2008 has not been a good season for the reality-based community. And, unnecessarily so. The fight between the Clinton and Obama camps could have been over substantive issues. Instead, the tenor of the discussion was just a tad better than out-and-out name-calling.

Still, I reserve a special place in hell for those who pretend to be applying analysis to one candidate or another, but in fact are just being hacky. By hacky in this case I really mean dishonest; attempting to mess with people’s minds.

To explain what I mean, I wanted to link to two posts. The first is clearly identifiable as opinion, the second appears to be analysis, but isn’t.

Eriposte: (I’m using key sentences from the post that serve to summarize the arguments)

Jerome: (again, using key sentences to summarize his points)

While I disagree with both Eriposte and Jerome, at least Eriposte stays well within the framework of “here’s what I think…” as opposed to “science and history tell us that…” For instance, it’s impossible to say exactly why Clinton is staying in the race, as no one can read minds. Science and history tell us that. Yes, she could believe she has a better chance of winning. She could also believe that she just really wants to be president, so there. She could believe that Obama is secretly a Scientologist. The point is, no one knows what she really believes. Indeed, no one can.

Jerome, on the other hand, tosses around what appear to be concrete facts. Like how many votes Obama currently is ahead, and how Clinton will ultimately be the popular vote winner. Unfortunately, he omits key assumptions like using 0 votes for Michigan. Or, even that the “popular vote” is not a directly measurable quantity, but requires a degree of estimation.

As I say, there’s been a high degree of hackery in the campaign. It’s the form of hackery that Jerome uses that I object most strongly to.

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
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