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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Divining the future out of sports statistics seems like the modern variant on number divination. I'm always a little surprised how much old pagan believes are still around despite paganism being a niche belief at best, even among Christians (though maybe not that surprising for Christians, considering their past).
And horoscopes are still popular, being printed in news papers and all.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesPeople suffering from uncertainty seek out proof that the universe has order and that things are related. It's basic human nature, but it is something we should train ourselves against.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"You have to keep in mind that, after The Primaries, a literal coin flip has a 50% chance of accurately predicting the election.
Leviticus 19:34Reminds me of the old times when people gutted fish and small animals in order to gaze at their entrails just to predict the weather of tomorrow...
...things such as superstitions are never going to be outgrown, huh?
...
It's just a few days left, I hope people are voting like mad until then...
Edited by TitanJump on Oct 31st 2020 at 6:26:25 PM
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Texas sharpshooter fallacy is a subset of confirmation bias. In confirmation bias, you see things that appear to predict events while ignoring things that don't. In Texas sharpshooter, you intentionally exclude contradictory evidence.
Edited by speedyboris on Oct 31st 2020 at 10:34:32 AM
Superstition probably won't go anywhere, and this makes a bit of sense when you think about human evolution.
Humans are kind of paranoid by nature and are very quick to spot patterns, even when there are none. This is because spotting a pattern where there is none is usually a lot less destructive than failing to spot a pattern that exists. That second mistake is frequently one you're only allowed to make once. You know how in stealth games the guards sometimes dismiss sounds as "just a rat", before getting killed? That's the natural selection here.
As such, humans are effectively coded on a neurological level to be very slow to accept the idea of coincidence or trivial and mundane explanations for events. If we see some tall grass move, it's difficult to dismiss it as the wind because that one time it's a predator is all takes.
With superstition: You're either wrong and have what's probably a mostly harmless eccentricity...or you're right and can manipulate destiny.
Leviticus 19:34![]()
Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight
re Washington Football Team: As mentioned before, it was a case of both overfitting and Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy — the prediction went haywire as soon as it was published in 2000, first by surreptitiously changing "winner" to "popular vote winner" before 2004, and then getting it wrong three of the past four elections under the modified rule.
Edited by megarockman on Oct 31st 2020 at 1:42:49 PM
The damned queen and the relentless knight.It's astonishing how much paganism there still is around just under the surface. I remember in Nijmegen, just a short travel into the forest there, you can find a wishing tree right next to a church ruin. A wishing tree is a special old tree where you hang a piece of clothing from a branch and make a wish. It had hundreds of pieces hanging from it, and not just on the lower branches.
And you think you live in a thoroughly Christian country...
Biden also has zero say over whether or not charges will be pressed here. Only a prosecutor can press charges, people can report a crime but that’s no guarantee of anything.
I’d say it’s going to depend on how the election swings in Texas. There’s been a lot of progressive DAs getting elected in Texas recently, but they might be more willing to prosecute if they felt the state shifting their way.
Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 31st 2020 at 11:11:38 AM
They should have sent a poet.This article highlights that Trump needs a polling error bigger the ones in 2016 to win. And across more states than that. If Biden were subject to a Clinton size error right, he's still forecasted to win over 300 Electoral Votes.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/31/politics/polling-trump-biden-analysis/index.html
More I think about it, the more comfortable I feel about Biden carrying this. Yes, Trump still has a chance, but Biden is still comfortably ahead on many fronts. And polling errors can go in both directions.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.![]()
to be frank, it wouldn't surprise me if the margin of error was on Biden's side in a few states. You have to consider that trump is coming into this in a severely weak position, in the middle of a national health crisis that he failed to do anything about, several scandals over the years, stoking division and unpleasantness in the national climate, etc. I'm pretty sure people are fed up with him by this point.

Which means that them losing technically has a higher chance of predicting the election.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times