2024 Election Thread

[Kaelik]

Is deaddm a bot?

Not like, actually, but in spirit?

[PseudoStupidity]

Maybe dead is the one running all the bots and forgot to switch accounts before posting? Because that post he made is one of the most bot posts I've seen from someone who has made non-bot posts before.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Is deaddm a bot?

Not like, actually, but in spirit?

One of the key things that keeps coming up in discussions of chat bots and "AI" is the idea of the person who is already functioning as one.

Notably though those discussions usually talk about someone whose job is writing predictable low content low importance cookie cutter emails and reports back and forth. The economic and social forces that create those jobs are the same ones that create, and are the primary political ideals held by, DeadDM.

Yes.

[Kaelik]

Joe Biden did a little wearing a trump hat, as a treat.

I leave commentary up to the reader.

[PseudoStupidity]

Somebody (allegedly) tried to kill Trump again, was creeping around a golf course with his rifle and got caught by the Secret Service. Dude was super pro-Ukraine (like, literally went to Ukraine and also asked the US government to put all troops on paid leave so they could all go to Ukraine and fight), used to be a Trump guy but most recently voted in the Dem primary, and apparently also supported Haley and Ramaswamy. Another total psycho trying to murder Trump, will we get a third attempt before the election? At the current rate he's due for 1 more.

[Thaluikhain]

I heard the guy claimed he fought in Ukraine, but was lying.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

So. What are the odds that Trump will die before the election? Resulting in Vance winning the election.

Because I got a local online betting company giving me 126 to 1 odds. I still feel like dropping $100 on it is a mugs game because Trump is immortal, but it is tempting on the off chance.

[PseudoStupidity]

There was an e coli outbreak at McDonalds, Trump's favorite restaurant, so I wouldn't say he can't die before the election, but I would be pretty surprised if Trump died of disease or natural causes. He's got a lot of assassins gunning for him though, maybe a third person will get lucky (or just not be as catastrophic of a fuckup as the other 2). I'd personally not take the bet, especially because I'm not so sure Vance would win if Trump died. I think a lot of Trump voters wouldn't actually vote for Vance because of how culty his base is. They love Trump and nobody else, not even their own families.

[deaddmwalking]

There is about 2/3 of 1% chance that Trump dies before the election. Your expected return on an investment of $1 is $0.84. Put another way, if you were able to make this bet again and again (the way you buy a lottery ticket) you'd lose $0.16 for every dollar you gamble this way, on average. Unlike the lottery, eventually you would win and that win would restore 84% of your losses (assuming the odds remain unchanged over time, not something that would actually happen.

So yeah, while something that happens a little less than 1 time in 100 is not completely surprising, it's still a bad bet.

[Kaelik]

I'm filing this in the chatpgt posts.

Imagine saying you know what the percent chance of Trump dying is to such a weird and unjustified level of specificity.

[deaddmwalking]

I'm filing this in the chatpgt posts.

Imagine saying you know what the percent chance of Trump dying is to such a weird and unjustified level of specificity.

The calculations are taken from actuarial data. It's specific in that it applies to people his age and doesn't rely on knowledge of his specific medical conditions. If you had better information (like a cancer diagnosis) you could use that knowledge to place a winning bet.

Quick and dirty version - among all 80 year-olds alive on January 1st 2024, approximately 25% of them will be dead by December 31st, 2024. With 52 weeks in a year, each person has about a 1/2 percent chance of dying on any given week. Since there are two weeks to the election it's closer to 1%.

[Kaelik]

I'm filing this in the chatpgt posts.

Imagine saying you know what the percent chance of Trump dying is to such a weird and unjustified level of specificity.

The calculations are taken from actuarial data. It's specific in that it applies to people his age and doesn't rely on knowledge of his specific medical conditions. If you had better information (like a cancer diagnosis) you could use that knowledge to place a winning bet.

Quick and dirty version - among all 80 year-olds alive on January 1st 2024, approximately 25% of them will be dead by December 31st, 2024. With 52 weeks in a year, each person has about a 1/2 percent chance of dying on any given week. Since there are two weeks to the election it's closer to 1%.

Yes, and that kind of thinking is literally fucking Bot thinking.

He's the fucking presidential candidate for a major party. If he had cancer he would have a 100% chance of living to take the oath of office, because they'll fucking hook him up to a machine to simulate every organ that fails until they finish swearing him in.

He's not going to die of "old" or "cancer" or "the flu" or "falling over and breaking a hip" he's only going to die from being shot in the head or sudden cardiac arrest while he's asleep and no one thinks to check until it's too late.

[PseudoStupidity]

Unless I parsed it wrong the bet also requires Vance winning the election after Trump dies, so you wouldn't want to just consider the odds of Trump biting it. You'd also have to consider the odds of Vance winning if Trump died, which is far from a sure thing. Even going 50/50 on election odds (fucking lol, as if Trump people like Vance even half as much as they like Trump) you'd be looking at ~.375% chances of Trump dying and Vance winning. But even doing the math is insane, because Trump is in one of the most unique positions one can be in, a former president currently running for office who multiple assassins have tried to kill recently.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Yes, and that kind of thinking is literally fucking Bot thinking.

It's also a failure to understand the difference between an average and a single data point. Even if Trump was an average 80 year old, its one bet. You don't make back 86% of investment, you loose 100%. Discrete instances do not work like averages. The outcome is either or, that's it.

A more useful speculation, other than being a killjoy and pointing out that Trump is such an outlier that any and all speculation is pretty much pointless would be to point out that assassination, the most likely Trump cause of death in the time frame, is probably about as unlikely as it could possibly be after 2.5 scares and a secret service with something to prove now and only a few weeks in which they need to put the extra effort in to prove it.

Or. Something like Pseudostupidity presenting the idea that Vance is so bad at politics he couldn't even ride the wave of grieving hysterical Trump cultists into office. That's conversation at least.

Also, as far as I read the odds, there is wiggle room to deny a win if Vance takes the office but doesn't "win the election" so to be safest Trump has to be out BEFORE the election and it can't be a post election succession, and even if that happened before swearing in or something that might not count.

[Kaelik]

I honestly just assumed the specific bet language was miscommunicated and it is like most bets, a bet about the next president, which actually gives a wider range of possible success, where Trump wins the election but then still dies before taking office.

[deaddmwalking]

It's also a failure to understand the difference between an average and a single data point. Even if Trump was an average 80 year old, its one bet. You don't make back 86% of investment, you loose 100%. Discrete instances do not work like averages. The outcome is either or, that's it.

That's exactly wrong.

When you buy a Powerball ticket, you either win or lose. But Expected Value is a calculation you can apply by figuring out how much you win IF YOU WIN against the percentage chance of losing. How Not to Be Wrong - The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg has a chapter about this (and uses the example of a Massachusetts Roll-Down Lottery).

If you offer me a bet that I have a 1% chance of winning and pays me $100, I either win $100 (1% of the time) or nothing (99% of the time). To determine if that's a 'good deal' I can multiply out the percentages and find out that the expected value of my wager is $1.00 - break even. If instead you let me win $200 with that 1% chance of success, the expected value would be greater than the cost - even though I'd most likely lose any individual game, it's actually not a bad investment.

As for political figures like Trump, there's some things that make his death more likely (assassins, travel, stairs) and less likely (24-hour care, protection).

Ultimately, I think that you can call those things a wash and assume that Trump's chances of dying are effectively the same as any other man his age.

[Kaelik]

As for political figures like Trump, there's some things that make his death more likely (assassins, travel, stairs) and less likely (24-hour care, protection).

Ultimately, I think that you can call those things a wash and assume that Trump's chances of dying are effectively the same as any other man his age.

Besides the rest of this post being bot posting, this is incredibly fucking stupid thing to say or think.

[phlapjackage]

As for political figures like Trump, there's some things that make his death more likely (assassins, travel, stairs) and less likely (24-hour care, protection).

I think this shows the flaw in the assumptions used. Once you start throwing in extreme outliers such as "assassination attempts", you can't use data on the "average man", as this is something the average man doesn't deal with. Better to use data on those in a position to have assassination attempts against them. Higher profile people in positions of power, people with money and means (usually). People with access to much better medical care. I would bet the data for that group has a higher-than-average life expectency.

*edit* quick n dirty search: https://theconversation.com/politicians ... rch-185821

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

That's exactly wrong.

And demonstrating your usual level of innumeracy. Statistical math is useful for approximating outcomes for large sample sizes or understanding trends in large populations or data sets.

In the case of a single discrete piece of data they mean fucking nothing. The average change of death for a population tells me NOTHING about the chance of death of one specific known individual. If you missed that, you don't even known what statistical math is, and as usual, have no idea about anything even bordering on the concepts of discrete math.

What you can do is parrot repeat some text from some NYT article with some pop science layman's misunderstanding of statistical math which even then if the meaning sank in you would understand is not helpful, relevant or even correct.

And if you need a demonstration of how insanely innumerate your understanding of these things even is, you say this.

Ultimately, I think that you can call those things a wash and assume that Trump's chances of dying are effectively the same as any other man his age.

Nothing, NOTHING, no hard fact, no statistic, no number, NOTHING, indicates that those factors could be dismissed "as a wash".

If someone says the words "I think you can call those a wash" and the only other provided information was to name the relevant details being dismissed out of hand, THEY ARE NOT DOING MATH.

Which would be fine, I didn't ask for a conversation about math, I was looking for speculation about politics and unpredictable events.

The problem is YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING MATH.

Edit: Also dismissing things you don't want to consider as a wash with no supporting information or argument, VERY neo-liberal brain rot.

[deaddmwalking]

I'm going to double down. The number of political figures assassinated is statically zero (though alarmingly high for U.S. Presidents historically). The actuarial tables don't tell you about one specific individual but they do allow you to calculate base percentages of mortality from all causes for that group.

If you don't think that Trump is a representative sample from the group of [all ~80 year old American men] you need to have some explanation for why he isn't. We know he's got weight issues and poor diet but also good health care. Until you attach numbers to those you assume the one guy you're looking at is right in the middle.

There are examples of this as it relates to tank serial numbers (from when they were produced in sequence). If you find 1 tank and it's number 300, you infer that there are approximately 600 tanks. It could be that your individual example is very close to the beginning or end so there could be 3 million or 301, but there's a better likelihood that any single entity chosen at random is somewhere in the middle (see German Tank Problem).

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

THE NUMBER OF KNOWN US PRESIDENTIAL ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS IS NOT A STATISTICALLY USEFUL SAMPLE SIZE YOU FUCKING INNUMERATE MORON

Edit: Also. THE NUMBER OF US PRESIDENTS IS NOT A STATISTICALLY USEFUL SAMPLE GROUP YOU FUCKING INNUMERATE MORON

[phlapjackage]

If you don't think that Trump is a representative sample from the group of [all ~80 year old American men] you need to have some explanation for why he isn't. We know he's got weight issues and poor diet but also good health care. Until you attach numbers to those you assume the one guy you're looking at is right in the middle.

I've already done this, it would be more accurate to say he's part of the [politician] group, not [all ~80 year old American men]. It boils down to "those with money live longer than those without".

There was an interesting story going around recently, a researcher(journalist?) went looking into the Blue Zones data, and ended up deciding that the biggest decider for "Blue Zones" was a) areas where record keeping was really shoddy, b) areas that made fraud easier and more likely (like not reporting a death to keep receiving govt assistance payments). He concludes by surmising that in reality, lifespan is tied to having more money.

[Kaelik]

If you don't think that Trump is a representative sample from the group of [all ~80 year old American men] you need to have some explanation for why he isn't.

Truly if only every single person in this thread was making fun of you specifically because this had already been done.

[deaddmwalking]

Trump wasn't a politician at age 45, so wouldn't fit into the study presented. A 40 year remaining lifespan on average would indicate that if he did qualify, he would live to, on average, 85. The Actuarial data I'm using suggests that, if you are alive at age 80, you'll live, on average, to 88.

The 'longer life span because you're a politician' is already covered by the 'you're still alive at 80, so you're clearly not part of the group that dies young because you're poor'.

[PseudoStupidity]

It is impossible to satirize ddm's position of "presidents have normal health outcomes." A monument to his very well-informed view of the world.