[AequitasOmnibus]

In one fell swoop, Nate tries to redefine political alignments in order to artificially distance himself from a concept he personally dislikes (“wokeness”).

His statistical analysis is a fun way to follow political horse racing (even if his models aren’t perfect) but this post is the chef’s kiss of ham-fisted amateur political science. Appreciate the earnestness, but can’t agree with basically any of his unsourced “theory.”

[bomewish]

Would sprinkling on some citations of academic books magically confer authority somehow? Feels like really the wrong model.

[RugnirViking]

sourcing isn't about the presence or not of a [3] next to your wild claims

it's about having engaged with work other people have done on the subject. Like, actually read and understood other people's ideas. You can really tell the difference between someone who just googled things to support whatever they wanted to say vs someone who is straight out the gate with "there are three prevailing schools of thought on this issue; the first, characterized by xyz, posits that abc" and so on

[gnicholas]

You think that Nate Silver used Google to find out about the American political landscape? Don't you think that the many years he spent working in a field where he learned a lot about American politics would have made him pretty well-informed on the topic?

[uoaei]

The question is, which perspectives did he expose himself to during that time, and what did he conclude from those inquiries? Data is easy; interpretation is hard. It's not enough to say he had an accurate model, it has to be reasonable, too.

[evv555]

In critical theory liberalism is synonymous with colonialism, capitalism, and all the other isms that are meant to be deconstructed. The antagonism is a core component of postmodernism.