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Saturday, Sep 24, 2016 - 23:50 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

The Explainer

"...and the Lost One wandered in the desert wastelands, for four months and forty days, where he drank of the wine of regret, and partook the bitter fruit of sorrow; and the GOD-EMPEROR decreed that his penance was done, and in His unparalled grace opened the gates to His walled Kingdom. 'Arise, chikun!' He saith. 'El Rato Lyin' Ted ye art no longer; henceforth, ye shalt be known as Cruz The Champion, Protector of All Thy Internets!'; And thus was it done."

- Ted Cruz bends the knee, endorses TRUMP


Remember Hillary slandering a quarter of America (and a frog) as Deplorables? Did she seriously think that would help?


Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men...
[N.B. TRUMP Persuasion Ju-jitsu Technique #52: Agree and Amplify]


Well, the phrase has instead appeared to have spawned a heartfelt grassroots movement, with citizens proudly self-identifying as Deplorables. The GOD-EMPEROR read the mood perfectly, as usual, and incorporated the label into an official rally, using one of the best responses to a slur: own it.

But anyway; I figured I might as well try to respond to a few points, on how and why anybody could countenance a TRUMP presidency. This happens to be an attitude commonly encountered on Reddit (outside of r/the_donald and similar MAGA strongholds): give an opinion as a Hillary supporter, and conversation proceeds as per normal. Give any hint that one is a TRUMP fan, however, and the first reply invariably becomes: mind explaining why you're for him?

As Scott Adams, wiseguy Dilbert cartoonist (and longtime self-recognized asshole) has long suggested, people are fundamentally irrational (more on this soon, hopefully), and it's not difficult to imagine why he's been talking up TRUMP: at heart, he (and many others, one imagines) privately self-identifies with the GOD-EMPEROR, as a glorious, glorious troll - and, remember, identity trumps everything.

But, one might realise - what is wrong with said "trolling"? Yeah, they may say mean things, but the abandonment of more delicate graces, to a higher purpose, is hardly unknown. The Cynic philosophers were often rude to a fault, and Zen training can encompass even physical abuse. The thing, though, is that such behaviour is intended as a means to a greater end - enlightenment, it is recognized, is too easily obscured by polite sophistry and pretty lies.

Fine, TRUMP probably just enjoys it, but the point stands.



Military patriots have spoken: GOD-EMPEROR 38, Crooked Hillary 16.
Among Marines: GOD-EMPEROR 50, Crooked Hillary 10.
[N.B. Based Chinese comrade at 1:52]
[Lyrics; voiceover is of Patton]


But, seriously, one can find any number of depressing articles on how a Hillary presidency could turn out, too - it mainly depends on where you look. I mean, I've been through it: got started on Slate, Salon, New Yorker, Huffington Post and r/politics (which, laughably, has become a pro-Hillary echo chamber after having been appropriated by Berniebros) etc, where one unavoidably gets force-fed a certain perspective. However, if one is mentally adventurous enough to then venture to Fox News, Breitbart, National Review etc, one could begin to understand the other piece of the puzzle; which, it should be reminded, represents roughly half the population.

Tying this back to my personal ambition as regards accuracy - being accurate, one realises, has next to nothing to do with being agreeable, or comfortable, or indeed happy. It tends to involve a chunk of self-doubt, plenty of realisations that are not nice, and raise many questions that would be far easier to ignore. And, most of all, it entails choosing between honesty and social acceptance, because let's face it, one's circle of acquaintances exerts tremendous pressure on one's expected beliefs and thoughts. On large liberal college campuses, to be a TRUMP supporter is to be an automatic pariah - is it any wonder why many of them elect to stay closeted?

I've given my reasons as to why TRUMP is likely to be the next POTUS (but, like Adams, I'm not outright endorsing him, for my own safety). These reasons mostly still stand, but I'll expand on the GOD-EMPEROR's broad appeal further - with reference to pro wrasslin'.

[Hint: When we cast the election process into the wrestling business previously, it wasn't purely for fun.]


"In The Know"

"The press takes him literally, but not seriously;
his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."

- a moment of clarity from The Atlantic



It's sledgehammer time! (Everyone loves it)
(Source: amny.com)


It is Wrestlemania.

The lower cards have been done with, and it's time for the main event - Triple H versus Mark Henry, in a No Holds Barred match for the WWE Championship. The two legends enter and have at each other for ten pulsating minutes, and just when the action is really heating up, a latecomer arrives and pushes his way to the front... and is appalled by what he sees.

"Is the black guy viciously stomping the white guy? Hello?"

Those seated around him grin inwardly. Fresh blood. This was going to be fun. The beatdown continues. Then, suddenly, Shawn Michaels appears ringside and taunts Henry! Triple H seizes the opportunity and trips his opponent. Then, to the horror of the new spectator, he reaches under the ring for a real, honest-to-goodness sledgehammer, and starts yelling about how he's gonna cave Henry's head in.

"He's going to kill him! Call security! My God, is everybody here crazy? Why are you all sitting happily watching a murder in progress? Stop him!"

Increasingly frantic, the newcomer stands and contemplates jumping the barrier to do something, anything, but his movements are lost in the general buzz of excitement. Triple H dramatically brings the hammer up... and forcefully crashes it down on Mark Henry's skull! Henry collapses!

"He's dead! You... you... absolute monsters! Why aren't any of you concerned? A man was just slaughtered! You're insane! All of you are insane! I'm out of here!"

...then the lights go off, and when they come on again... OH MY WORD, IS THAT *THE DAHNALD*?


Boooooooooo! Booooooooo!
(Source: youtube.com)

...

As shrill-voiced blue-haired Hillary volunteers - who now expect to be commended for getting STDs - so often wonder, how can it be that there are roughly as many GOD-EMPEROR devotees in the country, as Clinton supporters? The man is literally Hitler! And, for all their self-righteousness, there has to be some nagging seed of doubt - unless they are total recluses, they in all probability have to know of a TRUMP fan or two... who are, in other respects, normal everyday people. How then are they voting for Hitler? What spell has he cast?

As it turns out, those TRUMP fans are overwhelmingly smarks - "smart marks".

They've seen the show so many times. They can often guess how the storylines go. They've joined together in gleefully chanting "You Suck!" at Kurt Angle. They've gone against golden boy John Cena. Most recently, they've booed Roman Reigns. However, they've been capable of genuine pops too - Stone Cold. The Rock. Zack Ryder. Above everything else, they're there for the spectacle. They know.

Which might partly explain why they're not especially concerned about TRUMP's bluster and posing. It's all part of the show. When Papa Shango's placing a gall bladder curse on a rival, it isn't actually real. When the limo explodes with Mr. McMahon supposedly inside, he isn't actually dead. Ergo, when the GOD-EMPEROR says that he'll ban all Muslims... you've figured out how this works, right?

Sure, it might be fair to question - is this truly what is happening, for the most part? Which brings us to how, indeed, facts don't matter. Frankly, how many truly care about, say, illegal migrant workers, outside of fleeting virtue-signalling? Because if they did, they might have known that the Clinton administration set the record for deportations... but who cares, everyone knows that the Democrats are the Friends of Immigrants, while the Repubs are the Racist Xenophobes. Does TRUMP mean what he says? It doesn't matter, the smarks shrug. Big Government does what it will, always has - but at least we'll get some free entertainment out of it now!


Us wrasslers, we're all in this, gotta stick together, brah.
(Source: r/the_donald)


In short: TRUMP knows it's all about the show, and it doesn't quite matter whether they love you or hate you, as long as you draw heat. In contrast, Hillary is the schoolmarm who's snagged free tickets, and is horrified at what's happening in the ring. To be fair to her, it's a new genre of reality television, and while Obama has tried to play this development down as previously mentioned, this has been about as effective as if George H. W. Bush had tried to aid McCain in 2008 by insisting that the presidential election should not be a "social media popularity contest" - i.e. not very.


Stats, Stereotypes, Sorting

"As Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs pointed out, corrupt and dishonest politicians are often entertaining, and dull politicians are usually earnest and honest.
Hillary manages to be boring and corrupt."

- r/politics


Moving on, there's this other slightly irritating assumption - you seem educated; how can you be pulling for TRUMP?

Then again, this is indeed a relatively reasonable expectation, as FiveThirtyEight explains: voters can indeed be stereotyped, to fairly high accuracy, using just a few scraps of information. For example, if one has graduated from college and is irreligious, there's a 77% chance he's going for Hillary. On the other hand, if he's never been to college, and attends church weekly, there's a 77% chance he's a GOD-EMPEROR guy... wait, these stats don't even consider gender, so throw on several more percentage points for a male, probably.

Hopefully, this should serve to persuade - if it wasn't obvious before - that stereotyping has some basis (consider these discussions on Singaporean prestige accents); humans are pattern-recognition entities, after all, it would hardly be reasonable to expect people to continually discard all their prior experiences, and operate as a "blank slate".

Of course, there are a few issues:
  • It's unfair - clearly, many stereotypes are merely probable, and only really work with large sample sizes. Individuals can be short-changed if the stereotype is applied as a rule, which is why heavy burden of proof is - and should be - required for actual convictions.

  • It doesn't work (or more precisely, doesn't help perceptibly) - from what I understand, this is partially true, and depends on the exact circumstances. To illustrate, I'll delve into two scenarios: terrorism and weed possession.

    Consider first terrorism, which has an extremely low incidence rate (one case a year). Imagine a population of one million citizens, of which 900000 are of the majority race, and 100000 of the minority race. Then assume that a member of the minority race is nine times more likely to be a terrorist, and the police have the capacity to check on 1000 individuals a year. Sure makes sense to pat them down more often, right?

    Well, so the argument goes, it's sort of pointless in any case. Given these numbers, even if the police were to use all their monitoring resources on the minority race, they would still only have about a 0.5% chance of detecting the terrorist, versus a 0.06% chance had they focused on the majority race. The reasoning here is that both figures are so tiny, that there would be no material difference even if the prior probabilities were true... which is hard to determine to begin with, for such small priors (poor Timothy McVeigh tends to be dragged out as a standard exception, about now)

    Of course, this changes when the underlying numbers are tweaked. Now assume that only 10% of the majority race transport weed in their car, while 50% of the minority race do so (hey, it's popular). Also assume that the police do 100000 traffic stops in a year (it's far easier than full-time surveillance, after all). Then, if they focus on the minorities, they'll get 50000 busts, versus merely 10000 for the majority... which makes a world of difference, if there're incentives involved.

  • It breeds resentment - however, even in the second case, where a high incidence of both offences and checks produces a meaningful difference in outcomes, the more-checked group would inevitably feel unjustly treated, especially if they were not, in fact, more likely to offend (i.e. the estimated priors were wrong).

    Further, such profiling would tend to exacerbate the unfairness further. Suppose that the minority group actually only had a 10% chance of offending (same as the majority), instead of 50% as wrongly assumed. Then, if the police decided to check on them half the time to begin with (disproportionately, since they're just 10% of the population), they'd end up with 5000 minority busts, and 5000 majority busts.

    Of course, if the authorities had been keeping track, they'd realise that their priors were wrong; however, it's far from unlikely that these rates would simply be placed against the population numbers, and used as evidence that minorities were far more likely to offend... which is then used to justify future profiling being even more biased against them.
But, what if all conditions are actually met?


[N.B. Chart provided only as an example of a reference perspective. This blog does not vouch for the veracity of, nor endorse, either chart or perspective. Officially, the BLM movement is also concerned with black-on-black crime.]
(Original source: r/the_donald)


Then, it can get extremely tricky, indeed... (also, it remains that nobody's very interested in anti-Asian quotas at universities, and they're finally losing patience.)

[Bonus note on priors in Bayesian statistics: it is a dirty little trade secret of machine learning, that Naive Bayes (i.e. assuming conditional independence between all variables) can be unreasonably effective.]


Buddy Chat

Mr. Ham: He's gonna win, isn't he? The GOD-EMPEROR TRUMP, I mean.

Me: Eh, let's just say that I'm cautiously optimistic. FiveThirtyEight has him near 40% currently, and I'm expecting a shy TRUMP voter demographic to take him over the edge. While there's some evidence that this was not the case during the primaries, those mostly involved hardcore Republicans to begin with. I'd chance that it'd be tougher with burned Berniebros and other Democrat-in-name converts, for them to admit having turned to the Holy Light of TRUMP.

Okay, the matter of Supreme Court appointments has given me a teeny bit of pause, since His Himperial Majesty has been moved to acquiesce to party demands on that, but look on the bright side - Ginsburg for one will probably simply refuse to pass on, if the GOD-EMPEROR succeeds.

Anyway, back to the more important - and satisfying - work of catching Pokémon. *checks handphone* Oh look, it's time. Gimme some candy, Hamchu.

Mr. Ham: Whoa, whoa, who the f**k do you think you are? Go and buy your own candy!

Me: It's right here, in Update 0.37.0 - buddy Pokémon must give their trainer candy for every kilometre walked. C'mon, follow the rules, Hamchu.


Ya gotta give it to hamsters, they're more productive than camels.


Mr. Ham: Yeah, well, I never agreed to that. Stuff yourself.

Me: I regret that this has to be settled the hard way.

*turns Hamchu upside down and shakes out the contents of his cheek pouches*

Mr. Ham: Sothpp iit! Tihsish hatsmeraesub!

Me: *continues shakedown* Polo mints, coconut drops... hey, there's White Rabbit sweets! My favourite! And waitamin... isn't that my thumbdrive filled with proprietary scripts, which you said that you had "accidentally" lost, some time ago?

Mr. Ham: I can explain it, boss...



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