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Exponential Lying and Trump

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 11:23 am
by _moksha
On March 20, when the Saudi crown prince visited Washington, Trump claimed the arms deal would generate “over 40,000 jobs in the United States.” Last Saturday, that number jumped to 450,000 jobs, then to 500,000 jobs, then 600,000 jobs on Friday, and finally “over one million jobs” a few hours later, while visiting Luke Air Force Base in Arizona.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/donald-trump-brazen-lies-migrant-caravan?



On a side note, the Internet Association of Conservative Bots and Posters (IACBP) has released a complete set of talking points addressing Trump's next contention of "four feet good, two feet bad". Wonder whether the EAllusion or Res Ipsa will allow Bach to post that first on this forum?

Re: Exponential Lying and Trump

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:11 pm
by _EAllusion
I believe this observation came originally from Daniel Dale, though I might be mistaken. He does an excellent job of cataloging Trump's lies and otherwise ridiculous statements at his rallies.

https://Twitter.com/ddale8

What you'll find is no matter how much Trump lies or says completely unacceptable things, local papers and TV news almost always have a story template on Trump's rally that goes:

1) Trump holds well-attended, raucous rally where

2) Trump criticizes local Democrats and maybe

3) Trump says, "{Insert claim}"

That's it. The is no cost to his sociopathic lying in the local coverage.

Re: Exponential Lying and Trump

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:17 pm
by _subgenius
moksha wrote:
On March 20, when the Saudi crown prince visited Washington, Trump claimed the arms deal would generate “over 40,000 jobs in the United States.” Last Saturday, that number jumped to 450,000 jobs, then to 500,000 jobs, then 600,000 jobs on Friday, and finally “over one million jobs” a few hours later, while visiting Luke Air Force Base in Arizona.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/donald-trump-brazen-lies-migrant-caravan?



On a side note, the Internet Association of Conservative Bots and Posters (IACBP) has released a complete set of talking points addressing Trump's next contention of "four feet good, two feet bad". Wonder whether the EAllusion or Res Ipsa will allow Bach to post that first on this forum?

seems more akin to a linear instead of exponential...or is the Thread Title an object lesson for the Thread Title?

Re: Exponential Lying and Trump

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:32 pm
by _EAllusion
subgenius wrote:seems more akin to a linear instead of exponential...or is the Thread Title an object lesson for the Thread Title?
Image

Re: Exponential Lying and Trump

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:06 pm
by _Chap
OK. When mathematicians say that a quantity is increasing exponentially with time, they mean that whenever a certain period of time elapses since the starting point (could be 10 seconds, 10 days, ten years), the original quantity is multiplied by a certain fixed amount.

Thus if a guy eats 3 donuts on Monday , 6 on Tuesday, 12 on Wednesday, 24 on Thursday, 48 on Friday ... then as long as that goes on we can say that his daily consumption is increasing exponentially with time.

When non-specialists use the term 'increasing exponentially', they often just mean "Wow! That quantity is not just increasing steadily over time, it's growing faster and faster!"

On March 20, when the Saudi crown prince visited Washington, Trump claimed the arms deal would generate “over 40,000 jobs in the United States.” Last Saturday, that number jumped to 450,000 jobs, then to 500,000 jobs, then 600,000 jobs on Friday, and finally “over one million jobs” a few hours later, while visiting Luke Air Force Base in Arizona.


Given that the number took seven months to grow by a factor of nearly ten, then more recently doubled within a day, I'm not surprised or shocked to see the word 'exponential' used colloquially. In fact, you might say the number was increasing FASTER than exponentially, since in a true exponential we might have expected to have had to wait a lot longer for the doubling from 500,000 to a million to take place (a little over two months if my mental calculation is correct. :confused: )

But the more interesting question is - what on earth is Trump thinking as he pushes the numbers up and up and up like this? Is it some kind of automatic exaggeration module in his amygdala, that goes a step up every time he repeats a number that he thinks makes him sound good?

Trying to exercise the principle of maximum charity, maybe this is his way to talking about the fact that if you give a person a job, that person then has their spending capacity increased, and by buying more things is able to support the employment of others? I mean, I buy a hamburger, and I very very slightly increase the chance that the hamburger joint may take on a new employee. Very, VERY slightly ...

But even by doing that I can't think of a way that 45,000 people getting employment can be say to have 'generated' (which suggests creating something not there before) more than twenty times the original number of jobs.

Sorry, Donald, can't help you there ...

Re: Exponential Lying and Trump

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:29 pm
by _canpakes
Chap wrote:But the more interesting question is - what on earth is Trump thinking as he pushes the numbers up and up and up like this? Is it some kind of automatic exaggeration module in his amygdala, that goes a step up every time he repeats a number that he thinks makes him sound good?

Gotta scare the peeps and keep them in line with promises of candy.

Look, that journalist guy got killed, but do you really want your own job killed next because we asked questions?

Re: Exponential Lying and Trump

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 2:15 pm
by _subgenius
canpakes wrote:
Chap wrote:But the more interesting question is - what on earth is Trump thinking as he pushes the numbers up and up and up like this? Is it some kind of automatic exaggeration module in his amygdala, that goes a step up every time he repeats a number that he thinks makes him sound good?

Gotta scare the peeps and keep them in line with promises of candy.

Look, that journalist guy got killed, but do you really want your own job killed next because we asked questions?

I agree, messages should be more motivational, less reliant on emotion, less fear-mongering, and generally just more indelible to the hippo-campus : like "Russia!", "Collusion!!", "Rapists!!!", "Racists!!!!", "Child Prison!!!!!", "Liar!!!!!!", "Fascist!!!!!!!", "Nazis!!!!!!!!", "Guns!!!!!!!!!".

Re: Exponential Lying and Trump

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 2:44 pm
by _Some Schmo
The fact that the number goes up indicates to me that Drumpf is aware he's lying (and is not just daft - always a reasonable explanation). He's just getting more bold about how outrageous he can be and still get away with it.

One day, I hope for a reckoning, but my guess is that KFC will catch up with him before the Justice Department does.

Re: Exponential Lying and Trump

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 3:33 pm
by _canpakes
subgenius wrote: "Russia!", "Collusion!!", "Rapists!!!", "Racists!!!!", "Child Prison!!!!!", "Liar!!!!!!", "Fascist!!!!!!!", "Nazis!!!!!!!!", "Guns!!!!!!!!!".

Immigrants! Border!!! Taking our guns! Soros! Clinton!! Rapists! Religious persecution! War on Christmas!!! Leftists! Gays!!! Agenda 22! Freedomz! Hondurans!! Socialism!!!

Re: Exponential Lying and Trump

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 3:41 pm
by _Water Dog
In my view, this is a classic case of the left and their counterparts in the media lying. Not Trump.

Watch what he actually said, in context. Why doesn't the article quote him in full? Because they want to paint a different picture. Instead of simply presenting what Trump said, letting people decide for themselves, they report how they interpreted what Trump said. A huge difference. I just watched Trump and don't agree with their interpretation. At all.

This is not a case of "lying," it's a case of showmanship, perhaps. It's classic "yuge" Trump. If you guys had been even a tenth as critical of your messiah Obama, all the crap that guy said, Trump wouldn't even be the president right now. This is like saying someone is lying when they use the word "million" to merely express a large quantity without necessarily literally meaning a million.

Is there a $450 billion deal that has been signed? No. Nor did he ever make any such claim. Does that mean he isn't in the process of negotiating in that direction for one? No. You can't say he's lying about this. Are you privy to these backdoor communications and negotiations? Nope. You're not.

And as for the jobs numbers, he's not lying about that either. You can see him engaged in napkin math right in front of the camera speculating about how many jobs that could potentially be worth. Vanity doesn't show him in context though, because they don't want you to know that. They want you to think he lied in some overt calculating kind of way. He, in his usual style, merely speculated this is a lot of money potentially worth a lot of jobs.

How is that calculated anyway? Average teacher salary is what, about $35k. Does that count as a job? Let's see. 110 billion / 35k = 3.14 million jobs. Huh. How about if we use $60k instead, the average household income in the USA. 1.83 million jobs. Huh. Now what if we actually do 450 billion worth of business. That would be 7,500,000 jobs. Huh, maybe Trump's numbers are really low.

This man is very clearly just trying to make a simple point. You've got media hounding him, being deranged and hyper critical, trying to somehow link him to this incident, this murder that took place. He's saying, look, we're doing business with these people. I'm taking it seriously, we've responded and are taking actions, but I don't think we should “F” up this business deal which is potentially worth some major coin. Perhaps up to a million or more jobs.

He's not lying, you guys are. You're wackos. I can understand how people would make fun of Trump's style, there's a lot of material there to work with. But he's not lying. He's not this heinous monster. That's you. And the thing is, when you act in this deranged way, that is objectively a gross misrepresentation of reality, it leads to the opposite. Instead of offering reasonable criticisms, which I could get behind, you make it into this divisive contest. When you do this, you put people in a situation where they have to choose sides.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPdXJqOkNsM

Iran literally funded terrorism that killed our people in Afghanistan. Obama, in response, secretly flew pallets of cash to them. Media was nowhere to be found. Saudis kill one of their own. Some hotheads that went too far, a personal feud, a goofy op that went wrong, whatever, it's none of our business at all, and the media loses their minds and blames it on Trump and believes diplomatic ties with the country that controls the lever to the world's oil supply should be forever severed in response. Y'all are complete and total wackos.

How many black men are killed in Chicago every day? Who gives a damn about this Saudi journalist?