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Spouting Thomas's avatar

On journalists:

They're allergic to context. Whenever anyone working for me provides a number or fact without context, I get fired up. But most people, who tend to read a lot about the world through journalism, seem to pick up this habit of describing the world like journalists. In the real world, a number or fact without context does not inform your decision-making in any way.

I don't think Selzer did anything especially wrong. It seems correct to me, based on all the evidence, that polls were heavily herded this time around and the effect of Selzer's career being destroyed is that they will be even more herded in the future. So yes, Aaron is right to blame the journalists. The problem here is 100% with their refusal to provide context. Which is probably driven by a combination of the facts that (1) Very few journalists have minds that are well-equipped for analysis in the first place, and (2) Short-term thinking (motivated in part by desperation) is leading to a pursuit of click-bait incentive structures.

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Rich's avatar

I can’t thank you enough for this post. Yuval Levin’s book A Time to Build essentially makes the same argument. He points out that people used to understand the institutions they inhabited and that they were responsible to be caretakers of their professions or vocations. Now, whether it be journalism, government, or (sadly) medicine some use the institutions as a platform for self promotion.

A good example is that politicians act as the inherent “outsider” and paint the institution they inhabit as the problem and never work to restore the respect of the instiitution to be what it was intended to be. He argues that we never really escape the reality that there are always going to be elites in any society. For good or ill, prior generations of elites believed they were caretakers for others. Now our elites deny that they are elites and promote themselves and tear down the credibility of institutions with their words or actions. It’s especially sad to me to see how the medical profession has undermined their credibility in so many ways when the culture relies upon them to provide care.

I was getting an Uber ride the other day from a man from Egypt. He loves this country and is like every Uber driver I’ve run into over the years whether it be from Latin America, Africa, or China. They come here for opportunities that they lack in their native lands and articulate that, if they work hard, they can provide for their families in ways they cannot in the land of their birth. The difference between their own countries and our prosperity owes, in no small measure, to the large amount of social trust that exists. Yet, on a daily basis, we are increasingly losing that social trust and it does not bode well for our further if we do not actively seek to preserve what we have left and restore (where possible) what has been lost.

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