Letters to the Editor
Reilly
Published Letters: 178
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-- GlennGreenwald @ Chris Boston
[Read the article: Bill Clinton: The Chris Matthews of South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I cited the polling data that showed that more people who said that Bill Clinton's presence mattered said they voted for Obama, not Hillary. That's pretty extraordinary. What do you attribute that to?
Actually your point about the polling was quite clear.
You said that ..."One highly likely explanation for this huge (17 point pre-election polling) disparity is that so many voters decided to vote for Obama in the last several days... "
On page 13, I addressed this same issue, highlighting not only the influence the media would have to be credited with in this outcome but also addressing the actual math that you used to transfer your subjective opinion onto the voters of South Carolina.
I'll post it again here:
Let's look though at the math behind your assertion that the 17 point difference can be explained by the fact that "so many voters decided to vote for Obama in the last several days..."
According to the CNN website with 99% reporting there were a total of 530,322 people voting in the Democratic South Carolina primary. Let's round that number down to 500,000 to make the math easier.
According to the CNN breakdown that you sourced:
Twenty percent of South Carolina Democrats made their decision in the last three days and 51 percent of them chose Obama, while only 21 percent picked Clinton.
20% of the 500,000 voters = 100,000 voters who made their decision in the last three days.
Obama captured 30% more of those voters than Hillary did, which makes a 30,000 voter differential for Obama. That equates to only 6% of the entire pool of 500,000 voters. And while 6% is a very strong showing, it is far from the 17% that you're positing.
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-- DCLaw1 re: hyper-sensitive Obama supporters
[Read the article: Bill Clinton: The Chris Matthews of South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yesterday I heard one of the talking heads say that "Obama is a special person and Bill Clinton has to watch how he treats him".
So your point applies not just to the supporters but to Obama himself. And of course it is condescsnding, although this person said it as if it (Obama's specialness) were an accepted fact rather than as a couched insult. Still it has that same weak-sister-needs-protecting element to it no matter how it's said.
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-- lateagain re: I'm not sure I've ever seen GG acknowledge that he's wrong about something.
[Read the article: Bill Clinton: The Chris Matthews of South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He had a chance to today and avoided it twice.
My only problem with this post was Glenn's "highly likely explanation" of the disparity between the actual poll results and the pre-primary polling data - which he cited to transfer his subjective opinion onto the voters of South Carolina but which didn't bear out to the extent that he claimed.
I made that point on page 13 and it went unanswered.
Chris Boston also brought this up later stating:
I have no idea how you infer from this polling data that "[s]o many voters decided to vote for Obama in the last several days as a result of their revulsion towards Obama's treatment by the Clinton campaign."
Glenn responded on page 19:
I cited the polling data that showed that more people who said that Bill Clinton's presence mattered said they voted for Obama, not Hillary. That's pretty extraordinary. What do you attribute that to?
This was either a mistake or disingenuous as, although that paragraph was included in the CNN piece, it wasn't the paragraph that Glenn cited in his comment or the one he used to extrapolate his point. (By the way that data wasn't "pretty extraordinary" as the 11 point difference was right in line with pre-poll data.)
I brought that up on page 22, and still got no response.
It seems that my disagreement with this post was based on my analysis and critical thinking, the things that Glenn seems to pride himself in and continually laments as lacking in others.
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Human behavior was studied, not the internet
[Read the article: Why Google only tells you what you already know]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If your book is exploring the question, "Is digital technology advancing truth in the world, or is it distorting it?", then I hope you've found other studies for corroboration.
The study you site here isn't a study about the effects of the internet, it's a study of human behavior.
The internet is simply the delivery system of information that was used by the studies participants. It was the behavior of the participants (whether that behavior changed or not) after being expoused to additional information (whether that information was accurate or not) that was being studied.
Here are the conclusions you stated:
Both the health professionals and the regular people were reluctant to change their views, Coiera and Lau found. It's pretty remarkable: People who answered a question incorrectly before doing a Web search were more likely to still be wrong after the search than those who answered correctly.
For the health professionals, researchers also found that the more confident people were of their answer to the question, the more likely they were to stick to their answer after conducting a search. In other words, the strength of their previous beliefs affected their openness to new ideas.
None of these conclusions are dependent on the internet in any way. The internet could be replaced with a group or groups of other sources of informatiion without changing the results of the study.
I wish I had more time to bring up a few other points, but I do want to say (without meaning anything unkind in the least) that your human behavior fits in perfectly with the results of the study; you found a source of new information and took from it a conclusion that wasn't supported but which you were predisposed to believe.