President Donald J. Trump

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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Lance » Fri Feb 17, 2017 11:18 pm

Yup, I can't disagree there!
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Lance » Sat Feb 18, 2017 1:53 am

I posted this on Facebook earlier today but I figured I'd share it here too.

On Facebook, I wrote:Today is 0217 2017. This combination foretells that President Trump will do something stupid.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby FZR1KG » Sat Feb 18, 2017 12:19 pm

I foretell that Trump will do something stupid on any give day that ends in "y".
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Lance » Sat Feb 18, 2017 3:05 pm

FZR1KG wrote:I foretell that Trump will do something stupid on any give day that ends in "y".

Then there's that.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Мастер » Sat Feb 18, 2017 4:24 pm

Lance wrote:Yes. Of three people I know who voted for Trump, one did so because he honestly believed Trump was the better choice but two did so specifically citing the things I've brought up. They said had it not been for those issues they'd have voted for her. So 2/3 in my very small sample but definite proof that the disinformation and misinformation changed some peoples' minds. And remember, the margins in the swing states that Trump won were small. It didn't take much.


I would like to explore that further.

There is some claim made. You hear this claim, and the other people hear this claim. You don't believe it, and they do.

So, what accounts for the difference? Do you have access to information that they don't have? Did you take the trouble to research the claim, and they don't bother? Or do you both look at the same evidence, and reach different conclusions nonetheless?

If the Trump campaign makes a verifiably false claim about Clinton, was the Clinton campaign just not very effective at debunking it? Or if they got their message out, and these people don't believe it anyway, why is that? Why do you not fall for it, but they do?

If your opponent is making verifiably false claims about you, it seems to me, that's a relatively easy problem to solve - show them the truth. So, did the Clinton campaign try to do this? Did they make an effort, and just botched the job? Or did they show everyone clear and convincing evidence that the lies were lies, and these people chose to believe the lies anyway?

This is the sort of thing I wonder about. What makes the lies stick so easily?

Lance wrote:
Мастер wrote:There were persistent rumours about Obama being born in Kenya, or some variation thereof. As nearly as I can tell, these rumours do not have the slightest basis in fact, but a lot of people at least suspected that they were true.

That was started by Trump, after Obama was elected. It never really had a chance to alter the outcome.


I know that Trump was a promoter of this idea, but I didn't think it originated with him, and I thought it did go back before the 2008 election. As per the Wikipedia page, the Obama campaign posted a copy of his birth certificate at the website in June of 2008, several months before the election, and they did this to counter rumours that were going about at the time. Whether it had an effect or not, I guess we don't really know - perhaps he would have won by a wider margin without these rumours, or perhaps not. But, at least from what I've seen, there is not a shred of evidence that these rumours are true, and a good deal of affirmative evidence that they are not true.

But, among the people I know who believed, or were at least willing to consider, these rumours, all of them, no exceptions at all, were pretty hard right-wing; most of them seemed able to turn the most innocuous conversations into partisan rants. So why do only righties believe this? Do people become righties after hearing such rumours, or do they believe the rumour because it reinforces a belief system they already have?

In either case, this is what bugs me about this. Two people reach different conclusions. Do they have different information? If so, why? And if they have the same information, why do they reach different conclusions based on it?

The only reason I can think that would cause lies to stick would be, if the victim of the lie isn't very good at a counter-attack. Well, that could be, but Clinton was very much an establishment candidate, party organisation and all that; Trump was an outsider, largely despised even within his own party. But, incompetence is one possible reason the Clinton campaign wasn't able to counter any lies directed towards their candidate. What are the other reasons?
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Enzo » Sat Feb 18, 2017 5:02 pm

I think most people in the USA are not thinking about it analytically. They listen to all the stuff flying around and accept that which supports their notions. Yes, the birther thing predates Trump, but he brought it back up as an argument. But in watching the debate on that topic, they come up with a copy of Obama's birth certificate. They look at that and say "Yeah, but SEE? This doesn;t say "birth certificate" on it, it says "Certificate of live birth", and then some rationalization ensues.

Pretty standard around here, if someone gets arrested for some crime, which is later shown to be someone else's crime. They say "Well, them people wouldn't have arrested him if he didn't do nothing." Pretty common college classroom demonstration: accuse a guy of something, then later explain he had nothing to do with the crime, the whole thing was a classroom ruse, the majority of students will nonethelss approach the actor with suspicion, and attribute motives and trustworthiness estimates lower than other candidates.

I think people believe what they want to believe. And where do they get their news matters. Those who rely on Fox NEws won't be seeing teh Clinton responses in substantive ways.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Мастер » Sat Feb 18, 2017 5:14 pm

Enzo wrote:I think most people in the USA are not thinking about it analytically. They listen to all the stuff flying around and accept that which supports their notions. Yes, the birther thing predates Trump, but he brought it back up as an argument. But in watching the debate on that topic, they come up with a copy of Obama's birth certificate. They look at that and say "Yeah, but SEE? This doesn;t say "birth certificate" on it, it says "Certificate of live birth", and then some rationalization ensues.

Pretty standard around here, if someone gets arrested for some crime, which is later shown to be someone else's crime. They say "Well, them people wouldn't have arrested him if he didn't do nothing." Pretty common college classroom demonstration: accuse a guy of something, then later explain he had nothing to do with the crime, the whole thing was a classroom ruse, the majority of students will nonethelss approach the actor with suspicion, and attribute motives and trustworthiness estimates lower than other candidates.

I think people believe what they want to believe. And where do they get their news matters. Those who rely on Fox NEws won't be seeing teh Clinton responses in substantive ways.


Well the first and third paragraphs at least sound essentially like the one possibility I raised - they believe rubbish, because it's what they want to believe. In that case, people who believe verifiably false claims about Clinton probably weren't going to vote for her anyway.

The second paragraph is a bit different, in that the people don't come to the table with some preconceived notion prior to the time of the lie. Rather, it says that the debunking just isn't as effective as the original misinformation, for reasons of human psychology or something like that. That could cause people to be persuaded by misinformation.

For what it's worth, I see the phenomenon in the middle paragraph in spades - well, if the person wasn't a terrorist, then obviously the US wouldn't have killed him, so the fact that the US did kill him proves that he must have been a terrorist.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Lance » Sat Feb 18, 2017 7:36 pm

The people that understand the psychology of all this are on the teams of the ones that win the elections.

Yes, Clinton's team did a terrible job of debunking the lies. I think some of what was said was just dismissed as being ludicrous, so not worthy of comment. That was a mistake.

Of course there are those on both sides that will believe what ever reinforces their beliefs, veracity be damned. But there is that small percentage in the middle that will believe what ever they hear loudest and most often. And the anti-Hillary propaganda was loud and frequent. That's the group Hillary lost because she, like the GOP itself, didn't recognize the threat was real and serious.

The one gentleman I spoke of above was a Hillary supporter until that movie, 13 Hours, and that changed his mind. Clearly not good criteria on which to base such a decision but it's what did it for him. And I can't believe his situation is unique. He didn't like Trump at all but the disinformation made Hillary even worse in his eyes. In the previous two elections he voted for Obama.

The whole "James Comey, Director of the FBI announcing they were reopening the investigation into Hillary's email" a week before the election didn't help either. I don't remember the numbers, but I remember poll data that showed it pushed some people the last bit away from her. The follow-up announcement from the FBI a day or two before the election that there was nothing new was too little too late.

The most important thing to remember here is how little it took to swing it. The phenomenon didn't need to be wide spread.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Enzo » Sun Feb 19, 2017 1:20 am

Debunking doesn't work well. Ther was an article about it in a recent Skeptic or maybe Skeptical Inquirer. They didn't say it this way, but I think for a lot of people it boils down to "Why should I listen to you instead of the guys I already listen to?" Most possitions are not reasoned out after carefull weighing of data. Offering up more facts doesn't usually get past the brain barrier.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Lance » Sun Feb 19, 2017 1:37 am

That makes a lot of sense. If you are analytical, a critical thinker already, you probably don't need your beliefs to be debunked. But, there are some pretty bright people that are still religious...
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Мастер » Sun Feb 19, 2017 2:11 am

Enzo wrote:Debunking doesn't work well. Ther was an article about it in a recent Skeptic or maybe Skeptical Inquirer. They didn't say it this way, but I think for a lot of people it boils down to "Why should I listen to you instead of the guys I already listen to?" Most possitions are not reasoned out after carefull weighing of data. Offering up more facts doesn't usually get past the brain barrier.


I'm just trying to get an idea of why this advantage would push things towards Trump.

During the election, it wasn't possible to attack Trump's record in government, because he had none. So the potential targets would be a) his public statements, and b) his track record in business. For a), it seems possible that one could spend an entire life in politics and not come across such a rich source of potential targets, and yet this steady stream of (apparently true) negative information about Trump did not stop about 46% of people from voting for him. So why would lies about Clinton be more influential than truths about Trump?

So that's the thing that gets me about this - yes, it was a close election, and you can always point to this or that factor as being the one that put the winner over the top. But one or two percent swayed by some dubious (or definitively false) information do not a victory make without the other forty-something percent. If Clinton had won in a close election, we could be saying, "if it weren't for <some small mistake made by the Trump campaign, some minor dirty trick by the Clinton campaign>, Trump would have won". But it took the whole 40-something percent to win, and I am very skeptical that so many people were persuaded by easily debunked false information about Clinton. (Were they?) What caused a vulgar, pompous, self-contradicting blowhard who is considered a bad joke by much of his own political party, to have forty-something percent support?

Personally, I don't think lies are at all necessary to paint a highly negative picture of Clinton (although I emphasise that dislike of Clinton is not the same thing as support for Trump). However, my impression is that in the US, "let's go kill hundreds of thousands of foreigners who did nothing to us" isn't considered a negative, it's considered a positive.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Lance » Sun Feb 19, 2017 6:55 am

Мастер wrote:So why would lies about Clinton be more influential than truths about Trump?

...and I am very skeptical that so many people were persuaded by easily debunked false information about Clinton.

No one is making that claim. As previously discussed, there were people that wouldn't piss on Hillary if she were on fire. They were never going to vote for her anyway. The group in play were those very few that "fell for it". They were the gullible ones that followed the loudest, most persistent message. I think you're assuming a level playing field, intellectually, among the undecided. And that's demonstrably not so. There were a couple of studies on exactly that. The ones that were swayed were just kind of, oh, easy to persuade by a strong personality.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Мастер » Sun Feb 19, 2017 7:35 am

Lance wrote:No one is making that claim.


No one is claiming anyone made that claim :)

Lance wrote:As previously discussed, there were people that wouldn't piss on Hillary if she were on fire. They were never going to vote for her anyway. The group in play were those very few that "fell for it". They were the gullible ones that followed the loudest, most persistent message. I think you're assuming a level playing field, intellectually, among the undecided. And that's demonstrably not so. There were a couple of studies on exactly that. The ones that were swayed were just kind of, oh, easy to persuade by a strong personality.


I'm not making any particular assumption or making any argument, just trying to understand.

Thing is, there is always someone like Trump. Usually, very few people vote for such candidates. This time, lots of people did. (And it's arguably not exclusively a US phenomenon.) I'm trying to understand why.

Sometime not too long before the election, the Republic party essentially cut off funding for the presidential campaign, assuming it was a lost cause (and many establishment Republicans were never very enthusiastic about their candidate anyway), and redirected it towards congressional races. Some party stalwarts (e.g., McCain) stated openly that they would not vote for Trump. He won anyway.

I wouldn't piss on Hillary if she were on fire, but that doesn't translate into support for Trump. Being a more effective liar than the other side was a truth-teller, well, that is possible, and it might have swung a few percent over enough to change the outcome - that may well be. The phenomenon I'm stuck on is, why did the other forty-something percent go this way? Usually Trump-like candidates are in the low single-digit vote-share category. I can see why a lot of the electorate might be pissed off, they're in socio-economic groups that haven't seen much improvement for decades, and they're angry that they only earn ten times the wages of Vietnamese workers with the same skills they have, when they should earn thirty or forty times more based on their birthplace. This I understand (without necessarily agreeing), but - is this really the solution to their problem?
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby FZR1KG » Sun Feb 19, 2017 1:38 pm

Мастер wrote:I wouldn't piss on Hillary if she were on fire, but that doesn't translate into support for Trump. Being a more effective liar than the other side was a truth-teller, well, that is possible, and it might have swung a few percent over enough to change the outcome - that may well be. The phenomenon I'm stuck on is, why did the other forty-something percent go this way? Usually Trump-like candidates are in the low single-digit vote-share category. I can see why a lot of the electorate might be pissed off, they're in socio-economic groups that haven't seen much improvement for decades, and they're angry that they only earn ten times the wages of Vietnamese workers with the same skills they have, when they should earn thirty or forty times more based on their birthplace. This I understand (without necessarily agreeing), but - is this really the solution to their problem?


I think there are quite a few reasons for the vote towards Trump, technically it was more of a non vote combined with I'm not voting for Clinton than a vote for Trump.

1) Anti establishment. The US population is really sick of establishment politics. For example, what is considered bribery in most other democratic countries is called lobbying here and it's a big industry. There were two candidates that weren't seen as establishment: Sanders and Trump. We see next what happened to the former.

2) The DNC screwed over Sanders in very shady and fraudulent ways. I can provide details to actual evidence of fraud in the Democratic primaries as ruled by judges. This is not the same thing as the DNC spin, which was that independents being angry about not being able to vote in some elections. This was actual fraud which they refused to investigate and because they are the only ones that can initiate an investigation, it will never be done. Hence, a backlash in a lot of Democrats and independents that now know the DNC is corrupt and rigging elections and screwing over the only popular non establishment candidate.

3) The population is sick of not getting anything their way other than by accident. See here: Princeton Oligarchy Study. It basically shows that the lobbyists and economic elite have representative government, the people do not and it appears as if they never had. That applies for either party in case anyone systematically believes that one party is better than the other.

4) Campaign failure. The popularity of the anti-establishment candidates was completely lost on Clinton and the DNC. People wanted non establishment and they offered someone who is seen as completely establishment and even ran her campaign on "more of the same". Had they offered a candidate that was seen as neutral they would have had a chance. They completely failed to read the obvious mood of the nation. Trump ran with it. It was the only legitimate thing he had. Drain the Swamp and all that crap. He read the people, the democrats failed to.

5) The USA has voluntary voting. So it's the job of the actual candidate to get people to come vote for them. Hillary failed in that regard. The fear of Trump was not enough motivation to get people to vote for Hillary. A leader needs to inspire them to do that. She ailed. Combined with the screwing over of Sanders many had no desire to vote since they felt it was all rigged anyway and neither choice was great.

6) The DNC failed to understand the difference between the primaries and the general election. In the primaries not all states allow independents to vote.They were under the impression that because they won the popular vote in the primaries (that's including cheating) they would do well in the general election too. Problem is that Republicans vote Republican and Democrats vote Democrat. There isn't enough migration to make a difference typically. The DNC completely failed to appeal to the independents. In fact they pushed them away. Hillary herself stated that she wasn't interested in adopting any of Sanders positions because she got more votes than him.

7) Some people could not bring themselves to vote for someone who was involved with her husband in making the USA the country with the highest population of people in prison. If it had been in any other country there would have been an outcry from the US. They made the US not only the country with the highest prision population but also a close second in the per capita incarceration rate. Who would want to vote for anyone that treats it's citizens so badly that they put them into prison so their rich friends can profit. See kids for cash scandal. Note, there was an unexpected back lash from the traditional black supporters of the Clintons.

8) Then there is the obvious, the Clinton's have a bad reputation. People can claim it's deserved or not. They have it. Just point (7) is enough for me. People are worried about Trump incarcerating millions so would vote in the Clinton's (they are a package) who actually did it! That's just bizarre to me and I imagine others.

9) Lastly, the womens vote. That pissed off a lot of women. Hillary's campaign distanced many younger women by pushing the "first woman" President and the "all women should vote for Hillary" stuff. Many flat out said, not her first. IOW, not Hillary as the first female President. The percentage of women voting for Hillary actually was normal, even a bit lower than Obama. She couldn't even bring women together.

There's probably more but those above imho would have made a significant difference.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Lance » Sun Feb 19, 2017 4:02 pm

Мастер wrote:No one is claiming anyone made that claim :)

Okay, I don't know how I got this twisted up in my head but I was answering a different question. I was discussing the few in the middle that made the difference and you were asking about why he had so many on his side in the first place.

Gotcha! :)

FZR1KG wrote:I think there are quite a few reasons for the vote towards Trump, technically it was more of a non vote combined with I'm not voting for Clinton than a vote for Trump.

[... reasons...]

I think some of this is pretty spot on.

Cyndi and I were fans of Trump from his shows The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice. It was very clear early on that he was just a glorified Stand Up Philosopher but he was good at it. Until you really start looking into him, it was easy to see a very successful businessman that had recovered more than once from bad situations.

When he announced his candidacy we were behind him. As much as I hate to admit it, we thought his style would be good, and something the country needed. It was tough for Cyndi because she was torn between Trump and supporting a woman. I'm not sure she ever fell in on either side early on but it wasn't necessary that early anyway. Just the idea that Trump was running was exciting.

I think that describes a lot of people. It was easy to get behind him in the beginning.

But then the orange, racist, xenophobic, pussy grabber showed himself for who he really is and we left that camp pretty quickly. It was the "Mexicans are rapists" news conference that turned us. At that point we both went firmly behind Hillary. A lot of people didn't though. All the racism and hate we're seeing here now isn't new, it's just that people are no longer hiding it.

So the real answer to your question is: "because Americans are stupid, and we suck."
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Мастер » Sun Feb 19, 2017 4:44 pm

So, I'm seeing a lot of reports that the surveillance state, which seems to grow without interruption across multiple administrations, was the source of the leaks about Flynn easing sanctions on Russia, and the Great Orange One is up in arms about that.

So spying on you or me is all perfectly well and good, but the government spying on itself - now that's just outrageous!
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Halcyon Dayz, FCD » Sun Feb 19, 2017 8:57 pm

Let's not forget voter suppression and having a quaint, antiquated election system.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Enzo » Sun Feb 19, 2017 11:32 pm

Let us also not forget that Hillary managed to attract three million more votes than did the Orangutan. It is easy to after the fact decide the DNC did this or that wrong, but the question is not why she didn't lure more voters, it is why she didn't lure more electoral votes.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Lance » Sun Feb 19, 2017 11:55 pm

And that question takes us back to those few 10s of thousands of votes in the swing states.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Мастер » Mon Feb 20, 2017 12:41 am

Enzo wrote:Let us also not forget that Hillary managed to attract three million more votes than did the Orangutan. It is easy to after the fact decide the DNC did this or that wrong, but the question is not why she didn't lure more voters, it is why she didn't lure more electoral votes.


I just checked some numbers. Clinton received almost the same number of votes as Obama in 2012; Trump scored about two million more than Romney. Five states changed columns, all in Trump's favour (that is, Clinton did not win anything that Obama did not win in 2012) - Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. (There was a partial shift in Maine, which divides its electoral votes; also, 2016 seems to have had a bumper crop of faithless electors.)

So let us suppose that in 2012, Obama had received one million fewer votes, and Romney one million more, making the spread about the same as in the 2016 election. Would those five states have spilled over, creating a Romney victory instead of the 332-206 Obama victory that actually occurred? Or was the distribution of votes quite different in 2016 than it was in 2012? I don't have this information at-the-ready.

Lance wrote:And that question takes us back to those few 10s of thousands of votes in the swing states.


Well, perhaps that is the margin that made the difference (or perhaps there was a more fundamental shift in the distribution of the votes, if not the absolute numbers), but I wonder not so much about a few tens of thousands, but the rest of the 62 million who voted for Trump. I would have expected this election to be 65%-35% or something like that. Obviously, it wasn't.

Well, you folks are stuck with him, and perhaps we will be too, should your country decide to "defend" itself over here.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby FZR1KG » Mon Feb 20, 2017 1:24 pm

Enzo wrote:Let us also not forget that Hillary managed to attract three million more votes than did the Orangutan. It is easy to after the fact decide the DNC did this or that wrong, but the question is not why she didn't lure more voters, it is why she didn't lure more electoral votes.


Technically a lot of people were screaming that they were screwing up well before the general. So it's not really after the fact. It's more of reiterating a prediction that came out horribly correct.
r.e. electoral votes, that's just the way things work here. Not every President gets in with more popular votes than their competitor. People seem to be complaining about it more now because they hate Trump, but it's not anything new or surprising, the hate for Trump or the electoral College. It's happened three times in the past not including this one. Al Gore won the popular vote and didn't get in either. John Adams got in even though he had neither the electoral nor the popular vote and the decision was deferred to the House of Reps who voted him in.
Last edited by FZR1KG on Wed Feb 22, 2017 2:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Lance » Tue Feb 21, 2017 12:10 am

Tell it loud enough, often enough and people will believe it.

The Big Lie
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby FZR1KG » Wed Feb 22, 2017 2:31 am

Lance wrote:Tell it loud enough, often enough and people will believe it.

The Big Lie


The funny part is the distribution of that effect is uniform across all views. So who you hang around with tends to influence your views. IOW, Republicans hear what Republicans say and believe it. Democrats hear what the Democrats say and believe it. I personally think that both parties are full of shit. I've been trying to convince the American public of this fact for a long time but they just aren't listening. I've even tried screaming it. No real difference.
It reminds me of a study that basically went along the lines of; once a person has made up their mind, presenting actual facts (as opposed to alternative facts) has the opposite effect to expectations. People just entrench themselves further.
It takes a very open mind to be willing to constantly look at new information and re-evaluate its position on an issue. It's certainly not the norm.
How depressing is that? What's worse is that most people who think they are open minded are not as open as they believe.

How to avoid getting trapped into that kind of thinking?
Start looking for things that go contrary to your position instead of dismissing them, then verify them and accept them if true.
Likewise , verify anything that supports your position instead of just accepting it.
Re-evaluate your positions when new information surfaces.
Hardest of all, go back to find things you believe to be true based on past knowledge. Re-check to see if you had the correct knowledge back then to make an informed decision. Has new evidence come about or was the information correct back then. It's surprising how much stuff I'd heard in the news and remembered from way back was actually incorrect or completely fabricated. The internet is a wonderful tool for it.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Enzo » Wed Feb 22, 2017 8:52 am

Thanks for the life lesson, but I don't think claiming ther was a massacre at Bowling Green or a terrorist event in Sweden quite comes down to political stance. The events happened or they did not. Now the neocons may want us to overlook those things, and the liberals may think it is real important to pursue it, but in either case the basis for the issue is not in question. How shall I re-evaluate my position on this? The president makes up things out of whole cloth - he is a liar.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby FZR1KG » Wed Feb 22, 2017 1:55 pm

Thanks for the life lesson, but I don't think claiming ther was a massacre at Bowling Green or a terrorist event in Sweden quite comes down to political stance. The events happened or they did not. Now the neocons may want us to overlook those things, and the liberals may think it is real important to pursue it, but in either case the basis for the issue is not in question. How shall I re-evaluate my position on this?


It seems you've missed the point of what I wrote as well as taking offense.

You just found out Trump lied. You verified it. You add it to the list of, "Trump lied".
Did you think he was a liar before?
Yes-> position still hold true
No-> Time to add lying to the list of Trump qualities.

Do the same for information you might have accepted at face value (this is harder as you have to identify it and verify it).
Do the same as above for long held views/facts except if your information was found false you also have to search yourself to see how false information negatively impacted your view. It always does, whether by accumulation of small things or big events.

Consider factoring weights such as, lied to say his wife looked pretty in a dress when the public laughed or lied to cover his/her ass, or lied to gain political advantage, or lied to create a different image of themselves etc. Then gauge how those lies impacted people around them. Did the lie get someone into serious trouble? Did the lie question another persons credibility? Did the lie help someone feel better? Did the lie help a friend? Did the lie create greater national or global stability? etc Most times you just won't be able to figure it all out. That means you have less information about those lies than you do about others so keep an eye out for new information that might resolve it.

Choose your won weighing system. It will be different to mine but that's ok and great.
My personal big no's in lying are for personal gain at another's cost and building a false image of themselves and ruining credibility of others.
The former tells me what their motivation is, the latter that they don't want me to know who they really are.

After you've gone through this for a year or more, you can be pretty confident you've done enough research to trust your own position on some things. Not all things.

Then, new information comes out: Sweden: Sweden riots

Either this is coincidence, Trump is a psychic, Trump organised the riots to fill his agenda or he knew classified information we are not privy to and spilled the beans early.

Personally I would assume the latter. The coincidence there is probably a bit much. That implies he had fore knowledge (the US does a lot of surveillance) is is quite possible. So my lie scale on this one would go down but my trust in Trump's ability to keep national secrets/surveillance to himself would as well. In this case the latter is far worse offense than lying. Maybe the latest doesn't sway your position at all, to you he just lied and it's coincidence and you don't need to think more about it. That's your call. If someone spills the beans early, it can be treated as a spilling information situation or lie depending on your preference. If the same style of event repeats enough, then calling it a lie is lying to yourself. Timing matters.

Just the way I look at things after reading the research about human tendencies to deceive itself regardless of evidence. Though the paper was the catalyst, I was headed that way for some time. It is an interesting road to travel, Just as interesting is observing others on different paths.

If none of this makes makes sense or sounds snarky, it's probably me. Early morning, BC (Before Coffee) and rushing as it's going to be a hectic day with a storm blowing in. My apologies in advance.
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