> Trump did not in fact win the most electoral votes by convincing the electors.
That’s not what I meant. It was really just an analogy. I meant that Trump aimed to win the actual election as performed by the electoral college, not the popular vote, since the popular vote does not determine the election. Trump convinced the states that mattered, not the electors. In the same way, Scott Adams would have it, Trump is skilled at convincing people who matter to the issue currently at hand, not the popular opinion of all people in general.
Arguing that Trump's success is due to his personal qualities is very controversial. I think Adams is trying to emulate Trump's purported persuasive abilities, so whether people are convinced by Adams is evidence for or against what he is claiming. I think this is the attraction of the whole thing - magical things might happen because he believes in them.
> Arguing that Trump's success is due to his personal qualities is very controversial.
That never occurred to me. I simply assumed that everyone thought that Trump won the election by somehow being different from the other candidates. I mean, an election is a competition; One would normally assume that a winner had something personally to do with actually winning, you know?
But now that you mention it, it’s clear why it indeed is very controversial to assume this; the popular explanation (in many circles, at least) instead assumes an incompetent Trump and/or external electoral influence, and anything which detracts from this view (including alternative explanations) would therefore obviously be controversial.
I’ll try to not make this unwarranted assumption in the future. It was only an analogy, anyway, and since I have no stake in whether or not Trump has personal qualities, I hope I’ll be able to refrain from ascribing such where not warranted.
Also, good point about the correctness of Adams’ explanation somewhat hinging on itself being successful.
"the popular explanation (in many circles, at least) instead assumes an incompetent Trump and/or external electoral influence,"
There is also a view that he won because of luck. Not that he won the lottery against incredible odds, but that he had about a 1/3 chance of winning enough electoral votes on the eve of the election, and also his polling followed a cyclical pattern that happened to have just peaked a few days before.
It's hard to say what governed that cyclical pattern, but if it was skill at convincing people, it seems like it wouldn't have been cyclical. It would have gone up and stayed there.
Sure, that also fits. The problem with “it was just luck” is that it’s essentially the null hypothesis; it’s always a possible explanation, but unprovable except by eliminating all the other explanations.
That seems like...an unconventional epistemic outlook. Enough that, if you are saying this is Adams view, it might explain why people think he's acting insane.
No, I’ve never seen Adams say this. Can you explain what’s insane about it?
If some unlikely event happens, one could assume that it was just a random occurrence, and leave it at that. But that is an assumption one could always make, for any event; “random chance” can explain anything. If, instead, one sets random chance aside for a moment and looks for reasons beside random chance, one could find other possible reasons for the event, and possibly learn something new. Of course, there’s always the possibility that it actually was random chance, in which case one risks seeing spurious non-related events as being causal, and thereby learning the wrong thing. But I think it’s a risk one will have to take in order not to always go “a wizard did it”, never learning anything.
The expression “a wizard did it” means an all-purpose explanation. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AWizardDidIt). I did not refer to literal wizards. I assumed that this expression was well-known enough for me to use here.
The null hypothesis is, likewise, an assumption that nothing has happened; in this case, it would mean that no events have happened to cause the observed unlikely event (which, to be clear, did happen); i.e. it must have happened by random chance.
Yes, to ascribe causation to random chance could be the result of the Holmesian fallacy. But, of course, not necessarily.
That’s not what I meant. It was really just an analogy. I meant that Trump aimed to win the actual election as performed by the electoral college, not the popular vote, since the popular vote does not determine the election. Trump convinced the states that mattered, not the electors. In the same way, Scott Adams would have it, Trump is skilled at convincing people who matter to the issue currently at hand, not the popular opinion of all people in general.