All good, except you are a bit misinforming. Actually it was the Democrats
who paid for that Tues. Nov 7th afternoon telemarketing firm to go out and
call all those people in Palm Beach. Of course they have plausible deniability,
but it is pretty clear to me that they poured some serious gasoline on this
right from the beginning. I will be completed disgusted (as a FL voter!) if
the "only hand recount 4 counties and declare Gore the winner of FL" scenario
comes to pass.
Spike Jones wrote:
>
> hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> > The moral is that while the networks may have been guilty of simplistic
> > analysis by focusing solely on vote totals, it may also be wrong to
> > focus solely on percentages. Hal
>
> Why? Sorting either by total Buchanan votes or by
> size of the county is sorting by an irrelevant statistic. Why should
> the size of the county be a factor? If you arbitrarily drew two
> lines to quadrisect Palm Beach county, the charts formed by
> such sorting would change the picture significantly. On the other
> hand, all four quadrants of a chart sorted by percentage of Buchanan
> votes should be unchanged by the arbitrary division, that is, all
> four quadrants should still be a moderately Buchanan-favorable
> 0.79%. So they like Buchanan down there in Palm Beach, that
> should not be a shocker. Some other counties like him even better.
>
> Do we really wish to argue that high population *density* should
> lead to a lower *percentage* of legitimate Buchanan votes? Why?
>
> Do allow me to put another spin on this that is relevant to extropians.
> We know that the press can plant an idea in the minds of the masses.
> What was done was to contact a telemarketing firm, which called a
> bunch of people, thousands, and *planted in their brains* the idea
> that they may have voted for the wrong guy, which they responded
> to en-mass. There were more people who signed petitions saying
> they may have mistakenly voted for Buchanan than there were
> Buchanan votes!
>
> The scary part of this is that the press has such power to influence
> the masses, and that this may someday be very destructive to what
> extropians wish to accomplish. For instance, suppose truly dramatic
> breakthrus begin to be made in life extension. Could not the press
> jump all over this, and plant in the minds of the masses the idea that
> a few wealthy technocratic elite have discovered the fountain of
> youth, which you, the poor victimized downtrodden proletariat, will
> never be able to afford, but which will result the overpopulation of
> our delicate planet and in your grandchildren and their grandchildren
> to being robbed of their future and ground into poverty for perpetuity, etc.
>
> This display of power by the press is quite disturbing. spike
-- Brian Atkins Director, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:21 MDT