01-09-2017, 05:31 PM
Quote:Touche...though I lay no claim to "precision." (I did pull the 5-10 percent probability out of the air.) My broader point is simply to say that Trump's chances of being the next Gray Champion is not a "fat-tail" event. He could pull it off. It is certainly more likely than his transmogrifying into Hitler or Mussolini. But I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that the latter event is a fat-tail risk of less than one percent. I probably don't need to be a statistician to be right about that. It would take a confluence of dire events to come together, a "perfect storm," if you will, for some variety of fascism to take hold in America.
God, the default quoting scheme on this site is awful.
Yeah, I lean towards the idea that he is "it" for the turning, for better or worse, and that he has a greater chance of actually doing something useful than he does becoming this century's trope-defining dictator.
I realize you are using those "numbers" rhetorically, and I understand what you mean, but it really is a pet peeve of mine. Too many science classes where they ding you for false precision, I guess. Making numbers up wholesale? Gah!