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Does Your Worldview Reflect Reality?
Everyone, through growth, learning, interaction, and beliefs, develops a model of the world that represents reality for them. When new information comes in, we process it and filter it through this model, and build expectations or predictions of what we expect to happen next. If the cat jumps on the counter and knocks the glass of water, our model easily predicts the glass falling, causing us to reach out and catch it before it falls.
Some will say that was great reaction time! But what it really was was a byproduct of rapid pattern recognition and reacting to the most likely event before it occurs.
A parent lazily watching their crawling baby on the couch is more alert than appearances let on. A little give under that hand there and a slight wobble of that heavy head and a parent’s leg is immediately there to cradle baby to the ground without one bump or bruise.
The more your model resembles reality, the more accurate your model is at predicting outcomes. This gives rise to fast reflexes, actions that seem to anticipate instead of react. It also helps in making accurate guesses on what to expect in the future… whether near or far. Sometimes, we might call them prophets.
A lot has been said about the 2024 election with prognostication and prediction. I’ve put very little stock into them because most of the people tossing predictions and holding tight to them were wrong in 2016. In 2020, they threw out every single pre-existing predictive model that had worked for decades in swallowing Biden’s #lol81millionvotes election. For me, I simply do not find their models to have any resemblance to reality anymore. And no time has been spent on attempting to re-adjust those models.
Currently, I’m not predicting any outcome. My current model is giving more weight to widespread fraud and the hubris of our elected officials in not taking it seriously skews a lot of my ability to predict. If both parties are involved, then at the end of the day, my preference won’t win. But I sense so much anger and energy against the politicos that is still being channeled into politics (vs. guillotines), that I sometimes wonder if enough people could overwhelm it. Regardless, my model of political reality is broken.
But so are a lot of others on Ricochet. Maybe you know it is broken, maybe not. Maybe some of you have worked harder than I at recalibrating your model after being wrong about 2016 and 2020.
For those of you who have stated who won the debate, I want you to check this out (PDF). If it matches your initial reaction to the debate, then good for you… you have a model that more accurately reflects reality. For those where it is at complete odds, you can check out Susan’s post on political humility.
Published in General
I want reality to bend to my world view. It is going to a lot of work.
I spent the last few working years doing engineering modeling and simulation. The experts from whom I learned a bit had a standard quip: All models are wrong, but some are useful.
The limited model I have tells me that the country is broken beyond repair. The model I’m trying to develop will tell me how to best deal with that fact. Still working on it ;-)
That’s a great set of slides.
Takeaways: Trump is the presumptive nominee, Trump can beat Biden in a fair election, and Democrats prefer Christie or Pence more than they like Trump, Ramaswamy and DeSantis combined.
This is consistent with the view that Trump already beat Biden in 2020, if magically valid ballots had been magically honestly tallied, rather than what happened in the mundane world. We must chase the corruption out of our elections process or else get good with magic, or else no Republican will win without Democrat permission.
I found the results of the poll believable . It reflects who is trusted most in the batch of candidates . I expect Vivek’s star to grow and Ron’s to recede .
What about outliers ? What if a significant number of black males identify with Trumps persecution and vote for him on that basis . Wouldn’t that shock the pants off of all the pundits .
I would think black males are one of the largest demographics that vote the least in most elections .
Interesting survey. One of the most fascinating aspects is the regional breakdowns among Republican voters.
DeSantis results are quite even: NE (20%), MidW (22%), S (21%), W (24%).
Meanwhile, …
Ramaswamy (the survey’s winner) results are all over the place: NE (25%), MidW (17%), S (31%), W (11%).
I have no idea how to interpret that, I must say. Scratching my head, stumped.
Stina, I find that I may be exactly where you are.
For two reasons, I am hesitant to prognosticate too much. Although I confess a knee-jerk “shut up” when the same people from 2016 issue the same definitive statements that there’s simply no way Trump can win the general. Heard you the first time, loser! Still, this does not mean that I predict a Trump victory. Thangs have indeed changed, and face it — Trump has much baggage. Fine, he also has a record to run on. I further confess that I view many of his non-accomplishments in light of Paul Ryan’s defection.
Remember (y’all) that we finally delivered the House, Senate, White House, and (arguably as ever) the Supreme Court to the GOP — and they blew it up. Not the bomb-tossers and the barn-burners, but the “I ain’t working with that boorish outsider Trump” GOP, to include John McCain spiting three generations of Americans by sabotaging the repeal of ObamaCare. Burn in Hell, McCain — your political vandalism against the Republic from the highest levels of power have vastly outweighed your noble and heroic conduct in the Vietnam War. Freedom is not self-replenishing — neither is honor.
It may be that the “Trump can’t win!” people are correct, if interpreted as will not or did not rather than a blanket statement that it is literally outside what is technically possible — this would be borne out by him in fact not winning. Yet for those who view the corruption of the 2020 election as dispositive, this election malfeasance is the only credible basis on which one could even say that Trump “can not” win. You would think that those who lean “can’t” would also lean “stolen,” but this is not the case.
It may come to pass that Trump does not win in 2024, and in fact he may be prevented from running by present-day DoJ malfeasance and governors like Newsom “calling for” his name to be obliterated from ballots. That may even be a valid part of the political (as opposed to judicial) process. If a State should amend its laws, who wins — the FEC or the State? And the fact is that the FEC will pull in the same direction as a defecting Marxist State, or face the Obama DoJ (under Biden’s hand). So this is a very real possiblity. And therefore so is civil war, which has typically been used to break important impasses between State and Federal policy.
Big picture, I hopefully think that Trump can and will win. If he is removed, then I think DeSantis, as I view a 2nd vs 3rd competition between RDS and Vivek as a very different contest than between 1st and 2nd. I like Vivek, but I think that he currently enjoys a fleeting wave, and that DeSantis is right to stupidly slog on — he has a solid record which I think will buoy him when needed — later.
Our motor-skill based pattern recognition predictive abilities have been hard-wired over a few million years’ worth of evolutionary selection/deselection.
Elections, on the other hand, have only been around for a few thousand years. We might develop the ability to predict elections with the same accuracy as we can predict the trajectory of a glass falling by the year, say, 2,408,933. Give or take.
I, for one, am looking forward to it.
This is like ranking NFL teams by their won/loss record in exhibition season. For those who don’t know, NFL teams have different philosophies when playing exhibition games. They are generally trying to keep their stars and best players out because of possible injuries. They know their position well enough. Some teams, however, want to play their new quarterback and thus also start their best players to protect him, while the other team is playing third stringers on defense and offense.
So the GOP ‘first team’ so to speak, was not on the field playing.
But it’s even worse than that, because these debates aren’t really akin to a “game” situation, other than testing how well the candidates respond to the filtered questions asked. And there is little to no consistency in who gets what question. They get different questions, have much different amounts of time to respond. Or they are just getting a token number of questions considering they are token players to begin with. It is in part how assertive a candidate can be whilst ‘breaking the rules’ interrupting, or talking over other candidates. At every level the producers – in this case Fox News – is in near total control of the entire event, the questions, the format, and the commentary afterword. The “hosts” are the referees who can control the debate in real time or in-game.
Back to a sports analogy, it’s like testing players in physical strength, speed, quickness etc. but not considering their game performances, and declaring a winner. But also giving certain players (higher in the draft?) more chances to succeed.
Like an all-star game, another absolutely meaningless exercise.
A poll based on this farce is yet another layer of nothingness.
Where is the poll asking which were the best and worst questions? Where is the poll asking the relative ‘fairness’ of the format, the questions themselves, or the tone of voice from the interlocutors? Where was the poll asking, “What questions weren’t asked that you wish were asked?
This was a reality show that was at least as rigged as any of Trump’s Apprentice episodes.
Takes one to know one?
The whole format seems to me to facilitate what I think of a the current “gotcha culture”. Nothing matters unless someone on stage comes up with a devastating, sarcastic retort or someone else misspeaks and makes himself or herself look temporarily stupid. Reminds me of the debate between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman on a larger scale. Whatever someone says is not examined for the real intent, but instead opens the door for, “So what you’re saying is . . .” or “So what you really mean is . . .” Pointlessly confrontational, which is why I didn’t bother watching.
One quibble. Don’t try to define reality, not ever. It’s the one thing you’re certain to get wrong.
What I know to be true is that when the GOP could have backed Trump to the hilt, they didn’t.
What I know is that National Review could have backed Trump as president and didn’t.
What I know is that many who claim to be interested in America are only interested in their jobs and incomes and power.
Stina,
I haven’t read past this point. I am afraid I will find out that I’m just dreaming and I will wake up. Or that you will say, “Just kidding!–I am making fun of Camper who lives in his abstract theoretical bubble!”
Yes, but, if either Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski (I think it was) had voted for repeal, McCain’s vote wouldn’t have mattered.
Well said!
And I still haven’t finished recalibrating. Dang if this reality ain’t hard to pin down.
Well, . . . a little of that is good. William James is right.
The very idea of reality is an illusion.
How do we know this? We dream. When we are in a dream state, we think it’s reality. when we wake up, we say “it’s just a dream”. Maybe our dreams are telling us ‘reality’ is just a dream.
So-called mind altering drugs, show users other ways of looking at the world. This includes alcohol which revolutionized creativity and thought by suppressing critical functions.
Travel helps perspective tremendously.
A trip for me to 1970’s Japan blew my mind. There are people who have not experienced different perspectives and values.
LSD blew my mind. In a good way. My casual hippie use wasn’t intentional psychonaut experimentation, but in retrospect I learned a things beyond what I could have possibly ever known. Does knowing these things help? I honestly don’t know.
Most profoundly that there are entirely different ways of looking at things.
What most people think as ‘reality’, is really just common norms and the consensus of their peers and idols.
It’s a scary thought but it’s true: we don’t even know what ‘reality’ is.
I would probably argue that anything “learned” while in an altered mental state was neither actually “learned” nor valid.
It’s like the dreams, right? In dreams, you “learn” that you can fly. But you really can’t. So “learning” that you can is at best meaningless and likely counterproductive.
Sure, but they’re the usual suspects. McCain ran against ObamaCare and railed against it. I also believe that he genuinely did not like ObamaCare, but hated Trump more, and put his pique above his duty. Greek tragedies have been better with less material.
Collins, Snowe, Murkowski and so forth are the usual damp squibs of the party. They’re priced in. Nobody is surprised when these people, Like Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney, go “off the reservation” because they’re not real Indians.
Years ago, I had a dream. Details don’t matter, but I looked into a mirror and saw somebody else. I remember thinking that I must be dreaming. To test that I slapped my hand down on a hard surface and it hurt. My immediate thought was, “Dream or real, pain is real here. Act accordingly.”
It seems the picture I had from my first point of thinking in the terms described, probably a really favorable view of the United States of America coming out of World War II until 9/11, was the precise false view fronted by the decepticons who frequently led the Republican Party. I had no particular conspiracy that I then adopted but I began not to believe some major elements pushed by our leaders. With time this shift continued until Trump entered seriously into the political picture in 2015.
I have been here on R> since then and I progressed from knowing essentially nothing about Trump and supporting Cruz for the Republican nomination in 2016, to becoming a reluctant Trump supporter as he garnered the nomination and won the 2016 election, To becoming an avid Trump supporter as his Presidential presence revealed to me a new reality of what we are.
I think I might now have that view close to being accurate.
?
Captain Pike learned that back in 1964. :-)
Great minds think alike.
Huh?
As with many things, the value, meaning, and boundaries of things depend upon purpose.
Greatly simplifying, for most uses of the term “reality”, the measure of a model of reality is its predictive power.
If you know that there is hole in your database, it may be that your db is modeled poorly. Or it may be that your db is well modeling a hole in reality.
My view of determining reality is what we take for granted without ever messing up. We drive our cars without checking the brakes. We work at a desk to eat. We cook knowing the stove will work. We pay our mortgage because we know what will happen if we don’t. We calculate our bank accounts so we know what we can buy today. We talk to friends because they talk back. I look at the sky for consolation, which always comes.
That’s my idea of reality.
Well, it’s not “learning” and it has nothing to do with so-called reality. I probably tripped 30 times in two or three years between 15 and 18 and a few times scattered after that. I’m almost seventy now.
Never once did I think I could’fly’
But, like my experiencing Kobe, Japan for the first time in the early 70’s, well before all the globalism. Different smells, different customs differ social hierarchies… everything different. I didn’t’learn’ particular things, I experienced an alternate reality. Things can be very different.
This experience serves to undermine my previous conception of ‘reality’ .
As to psychedelics they provide perspectives you didn’t know you didn’t know.
Ny favorite cartoon:
Could you simplify even more?
Should I try paraphrasing some?