Why this election is an epistemological watershed

Yesterday Nate Silver, superstar data-based Five Thirty Eight political analyst, shared an enigmatic tweet: "This election is an epistemological watershed."

I loved it. Even though I really didn't know for sure what Silver was talking about. I felt like I did, though. 

Thus my divided reaction to the words "this election is an epistemological watershed" seems to reflect why the 2012 election here in the United States is so important.

Knowledge vs. feeling. Facts vs. fantasy. Science vs. religion. 

A watershed is marked by a divide.

The choice between Romney and Obama, along with the choice between Republicans and Democrats generally, indeed involves two ways of how we gain an understanding about reality -- the province of epistemology. 

Nate Silver is a proud member of the knowledge/facts/science community.

So am I. So is Obama, by and large. Romney and most Republicans running for office at the national level are part of the feeling/fantasy/religion community.

Thus when ballots are counted tomorrow, voters not only will be electing candidates, they'll be choosing a worldview that will be a basis for guiding our country during the next four years. Or longer.

I'm confident that Obama and the Democrats will come out on top, in large part because I've been closely following Silver's sophisticated projections of election outcomes. At the moment he gives Obama a 92% chance of winning. That's a huge difference from all the blather about the election being a toss-up.

It isn't.

Not according to the polls, analyzed by Silver in detail. When Silver expresses a judgment about who is going to be elected president, he has facts, reasons, and logic to back him up.

Most other "talking heads" on television and radio are just making stuff up. We've been hearing about Mittmentum for weeks, fact-free opinionating about how Romney caught up to Obama after the first debate and now is cruising to a win.

During those same weeks, Nate Silver has been showing that Obama has been enjoying a steady rise in state-level/battleground polling. Recently national polls have become more closely aligned with this Obamentum. 

I very much want Obama to win tomorrow. I also want Silver's epistemological perspective as shared on Five Thirty Eight to win. Which it will, if Obama gets an electoral college win close to the 315 (O) - 223 (R) split Silver is projecting. 

That would be a giant Obama victory. And also a victory for the reality-based community.

The United States can't solve its problems if the Republican party is in control. Sadly, modern day conservatives are tenaciously anti-science, anti-facts, and pro-religious fantasizing. I know this both from observing national political goings-on, and also seeing how right-wing commenters on my blog posts think.

In short, poorly. 

When facts about climate change, Chrysler adding jobs in this country, the Benghazi attack, or other issues are pointed out to them, their reaction is Doesn't matter. Amazing. Neuroscience knows that emotions play a big role in how we think about problems, but we humans should be able to integrate facts into our viewpoints a heck of a lot better than right-wingers do these days.

On November 6 I'm hopeful that Americans will have re-elected President Obama, and also chosen which side of the epistemological divide they want our nation's leaders to operate from. The side of... 

Facts. Reason. Science. Openness. Tolerance. 

Mitt Romney has been astoundingly dishonest. The Washington Post got it right when they said his one consistency has been a contempt for the electorate. That's what happens when a candidate, indeed the entire Republican party, doesn't respect objective truth or fact-based reality.

Yes, we're at an epistemological watershed. Tomorrow we'll know which way the nation's knowledge drop flows.  

Update: just came across "The Real Loser:Truth" by history professor Kevin Kruse. Excellent essay. Excerpt:

PolitiFact has chronicled 19 “pants on fire” lies by Mr. Romney and 7 by Mr. Obama since 2007, but Mr. Romney’s whoppers have been qualitatively far worse: the “apology tour,” the “government takeover of health care,” the “$4,000 tax hike on middle class families,” the gutting of welfare-to-work rules, the shipment by Chrysler of jobs from Ohio to China. Said one of his pollsters, Neil Newhouse, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

To be sure, the Obama campaign has certainly had its own share of dissembling and distortion, including about Mr. Romney’s positions on abortion and foreign aid. But nothing in it — or in past campaigns, for that matter — has equaled the efforts of the Romney campaign in this realm. Its fundamental disdain for facts is something wholly new.

The voters, of course, may well recoil against these cynical manipulations at the polls. But win or lose, the Romney campaign has placed a big and historic bet on the proposition that facts can be ignored, more or less, with impunity.

Comments

[DJ]

Ohioan Billy Cunningham on Hannity this afternoon: Bell weather counties Butler and Hamilton reporting Republican turnout surpassing Bush ‘04, with a Republican favored swing already surpassing the Democratic early vote advantage by 2x or more. Source was official county raw voter turnout data – these are not exit polls. Again, these are bell weather counties…so, if accurate, Ohio is already in Romney’s column. Search Twitter for Billy Cunningham.

Sincerely,
Big Oil

[Brian Hines]

DJ, give it up. I waited to publish your comment until Obama was re-elected, and was judged by reputable news outlets (excludes Fox New, of course) to have won Ohio.

So...

You were wrong about Ohio. You were wrong about global warming. You were wrong about Benghazi. Reality wins; you and other right-wingers lose.

I feel your pain. And am enjoying it.

[Nw]

Yes, time to consign the religiosity-based fantasy right-wing blather to the dust bin of history.

DJ comment is a microcosm of the right-wing self delusion: seize on one piece of evidence, no matter how small, and try to project it onto the big picture: reality.

[DG]

So, what you are saying is that it is okay that your guy lied about things... but not Romney?

I mean, I guess you can justify that his lies are okay, if it is for the better good in your opinion right? That makes it okay then?

Tolerance... what exactly is tolerance when you are a liberal? Liberals are all about freedom of speech and expression unless your opinion is not the same as theirs, they you need to shut up. Isn't that how it works?

[Brian Hines]

DG, did you read the "update" at the end of this post? Independent fact checkers affirm that Romney lied much more, and more vigorously, than Obama did. So don't equate the two campaigns.

Republicans were caught in lies by a discerning electorate. Earth to GOP: women who are raped still get pregnant; God doesn't intend for a rapist's baby to be born. Get real. Lies like those are much worse than anything Democrats said during the election.

Last night reality won and lies lost. Americans stood up for truth. If Republicans get back on the truth train, they might have a chance of being competitive again.

[DG]

Fact: 4 American lives were lost in Libya because of a video on Youtube that caused a protest that escalated. Is there are fact check on that one?

[Brian Hines]

If you're making that claim, you should be the one to fact check it. So far as I know, the intelligence agency assessment of the attack hasn't been completed yet.

Makes sense to wait for intelligence experts to give us the full story, rather than jump to premature conclusions. But I'm part of the reality based community. Fox News likes premature conclusions, which is why they were so surprised when Obama won last night, and have been so obsessed with Bhengazi.

[DJ]

Four years ago I voted against Obama. This year I voted for Mitt Romney. Fellow conservatives will call me a sap, but despite my strong convictions both times, I reacted to each Obama win – if only briefly – with a sense of pride of country. Pride in the historic significance. Pride in Romney’s gracious concession. Pride in the vision of Obama and family taking the stage late last night.

But I have no difficulty separating my feelings from the reality of what we now face as a nation. Obama’s victory speech quickly splashed water in my face when he said this: "We are an American family and we rise and fall together as one nation."

Ask yourself – What family, community, nation, business, machine, species, or organism of any kind – including the human creature – can survive such a vision? Ultimately, none can.

Yes, it’s true, the whole thrives best when each part is firing on all cylinders. But when the tide turns and one cylinder misfires – is it best that all others do as well? (If you drive an EV: would you prefer one cell or all cells in your battery underperform at the same time?)

When a family member becomes sick, is it better for that member if the others become ill as well? Wouldn’t a strong healthy family provide better care? And is it better that the illness remain confined to one part of the body or that the entire body be infected?

Do smart companies diversify their business or put all their eggs in one basket? And when a diversified company has a business unit underperform, is the CEO’s vision that the remaining units thrive to make up the loss – or that all units fall together as one company?

History records endless families, companies, societies, empires, etc. that have disappeared by “falling together.” Obama’s vision is the model of Greece, of managing decline.. The people of Greece are falling together as one nation – with no end in sight – and nobody around them rising who could otherwise offer hope.

You may have done some nail biting along the way, Brian, but your election expectations won out big time in the end. On that I congratulate you. It was a watershed election indeed…what that translates into for yourself and a nation that is governed to “fall together” I think you have no idea.

Sincerely,
Big Oil

[DJ]

Catching up on the commentary above, I couldn’t help but notice Brian made his own bone-headed Akin-Mourdock comment: “God doesn’t intend for a rapist’s baby to be born.”

Tell that to product of statutory rape, Jesse Jackson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson

Tell it to the descendants of Frederick Douglas, himself the result of a slave rape.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass

Do you know any adoptees, Brian? For all you know you have friends, acquaintances, and readers who themselves are the product of rape or have adopted children who are.

Sincerely,
Big Oil

[Brian Hines]

Note the word "God" in my statement. Guess you didn't follow the Mourdock debacle very closely. This is why he's not a US Senator: he said that if a raped woman became pregnant, God intended this to happen.

What an idiot. The Republican Party is going to continue to fade into irrelevance if it can't purge fundamentalist religious no-nothings from its leadership ranks. That's one thing this election proved.

[DJ]

(…fading GOP relevance…yet somehow the voters strengthened the GOP position in the House. Go figure.)

“Note the word ‘God’ in my statement.”

OK, Brian, here are your words: “God doesn’t intend for a rapist’s baby to be born.” Duly noted.

Mourdock’s bonehead statement is about the conception of a zygote. Yours, Brian, is about the birth of a baby. Your comments clearly indicate that you each believe you know God’s will, and that He’s an omnipotent God as well.

So who’s the greater extremist? The religious and non-religious predictably debate Mourdock’s view within and between each group. But scant few from either camp – aside from an extremist minority – agree with Brian’s view of God’s will. And how could they? Doing so only compounds a tragedy by telling thousands around us born annually to rape in the US that God didn’t intend they be born in the first place. The often vulnerable who may need God the most, denied worthiness of existence by those who speak as if they understand His will. Even an agnostic can understand this is the definition of perversion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_from_rape#Children_of_rape

Americans of all stripes share more common ground than not, even on divisive issues. But politicians/propagandists zero in on the uncommon ground to uncover and fuel wedge issues that otherwise never register more than a blip on national political radar. The topic of rape and abortion will now all but disappear from the political forefront, until it’s time to campaign for the 2014 midterms and whip up the useful idiots once again.

Sincerely,
Big Oil

[Brian Hines]

DJ, my inclination is to make the above your last comment. It's simply too time-consuming for me to keep on fact-checking your comments, especially after I warned you to spend a minute or so doing this yourself.

You should look into Google. It's a wonderful thing. You can actually learn things about reality there. Try it, rather than Fox News.

Sorry to break this to you, but current results show that the 2012 election didn't strengthen the GOP position in the House.

Results from the NY TImes 2012 Election iPhone app as of now show Democrats with 193 seats and Republicans with 233 seats. That's a gain of plus 3 for the D's and a loss of minus 3 for the R's. Nine seats are undecided.

Early today Democrats led in seven of them.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/08/1158643/-Daily-Kos-Elections-Morning-Digest-Democrats-lead-in-seven-of-nine-uncalled-House-races

Look: reality isn't that hard to figure out. You just need to pay attention to it. Thanks for your prior commenting, DJ. You've been a good example of a reality-denying right-winger, but my post-election resolution is to not give air time on my blog to people who intensely disrespect factual reality.

Opinions, we all have them. But when someone, like you, isn't willing to spend a few seconds checking their unfounded factual assumption that the Democrats haven't gained seats in the House, it's time to say bye-bye to them commenting on this blog.

[tucson]

Well, I admit I was hoping to write here "I feel your pain".

However, I don't feel much pain even though I was for Romney. It is what it is, as it is popular to say these days.

It is amazing that O could win this election with this kind of economy, but the storm sank Romney's ship, I think, and R should have played the Libya card in hind sight (not Hinesight). That would have forced the media to give it the attention it deserves. I think the Republicans need to take a new approach of "secular conservatism". Maybe that will work with younger and female voters.

Apparently conservative values of initiative and hard work have yielded to "I want mine"... for free. I guess we have a nation of takers and not makers. Here is a typical Obama supporter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tpAOwJvTOio

One thing is certain. The Dems will sink like a rock in two years if O can't get the economy rolling. He can't blame Bush anymore.

[Robert Paul Howard]

Cf.:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2230222/Presidential-Election-2012-Map-charts-racist-tweets-nation.html?ICO=most_read_module

Robert Paul Howard

[tucson]

Nothing racist about that at all. It was just a crude woman, speaking poorly and unintelligently. To take the video as racist is a form of racism in itself.

[Richard Windsor]

On second thought, Nate’s now thinking 2012 was merely epistemillogical. (Nate Silver: GOP on the verge of gaining a senate majority in 2014).

http://www.businessinsider.com/nate-silver-senate-2014-election-republicans-gop-takeover-2013-7