spiritofenter's comments

Thank you for your points and information.

I have the same feelings but have trouble finding good statistics that help tell this story. Do you know where to start looking?

Thank you, I will try to research this for myself.

Thank you, I will try to educate myself.

Here is one interesting plot: national employment-to-population ratio. Try plotting it from 1990 to 2016, it shows a significant drop in '08 which has not recovered very much since.

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000

You may be underestimating how difficult it is to make good and correct strides in social science, compared to hard sciences.

To a large extent progress in sciences like sub-atomic physics depends on ability to (1) simplify the problem down to mathematical laws, (2) conduct repeatable, randomized controlled experiments to rule out hypotheses about them.

Social sciences deal with phenomena that are extraordinarily complex, so hypotheses usually have to be qualitative rather than mathematical, and devising good experiments is very hard. Falsification is hard. Most hypotheses can be "generally true" yet have specific counterexamples in some times and places.

As for empirical data, you can use data to tell a million plausible stories, and many of those probably have some nugget of truth. But without randomized trials, how do you falsify any of these stories? It's hard.

Thank you for responding, this gave me food for thought. (Also, you can add extra line breaks in your comment to get breaks between your numbered points.)

Also wondering how much you were convinced about Trump's sincerity. Whether he truly cares about the promises he made or the people he made them to.

- I hear a lot from people that issues like gay rights didn't hit home until they became friends with (or realized that they were friends with) a gay person. Similarly with for example Muslims. This article hit home there.

- The point about jobs seems very spot on - jobs have been drying up throughout the Midwest, particularly steady/long-term low-education (i.e. manufacturing) jobs, and national leadership has not done anything to address it. The economic story of the last 8 years has been a recovery for the wealthy and financial sector only, so it's no wonder the rural midwest see no hope from the Democrats. It sounds like Trump's main plan for this is to create jobs for people that destroy the very environment they live in, which is tragic. Long term, I wonder what feasible plan could address the jobs issue besides a basic income, or massive government hiring for jobs like building infrastructure.

I would like to hear you elaborate on your reasons for voting Trump, particularly what kinds of changes you are expecting/looking forward to.

I could guess why:

- Thiel is a founder of Palantir, a.k.a. the private branch of the NSA.

- He also has strong vested interests in the health of hedge funds and the financial industry, as well as strong opinions favoring deregulation.

- He does not believe in global warming or the urgency of combating it.

- His statements in the past have shown lack of respect/consideration for minorities and women.