David Piepgrass
2 min readNov 15, 2020

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Sure, but you're preaching to the choir. Meanwhile, conservatives are out watching videos like this one my uncle sent me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztu5Y5obWPk

Note well the matter-of-fact, calm, "scientific" tone of this video, even as the allegation it makes is extreme.

The graph of Detroit contains impossible results. One precinct, for example, has X=4% and Y=-21%, implying that Trump got -17% among non-party-line voters. Nice math, Phil Evans.

I predict that, insofar as Phil didn't mess up his math, a door-to-door exit poll of several precincts would suggest that the graphs of Oakland, Macomb and Kent counties look the way they do because that's how people actually voted. America is diverse and it is not surprising that if you go searching for places in swing states where Phil's chosen metric looks unusual, you can find some.

However, mainstream media will dismiss Dr. Shiva as an anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist and so are unlikely to commission a poll. Dr. Shiva himself will not do any polling.

But suppose a poll (or audit) happens and vindicates my prediction. In this case I suppose Dr. Shiva will not publish a retraction video on YouTube about him being wrong. But if he does publish one, it will get much fewer views than the original video.

As Churchill said, "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." But the structure of the web today further reinforces existing biases: YouTube would recommend that video to my uncle, but would never recommend it to me. Medium recommends to me an article by Larry Lessig, but would never recommend it to a Trump fan. Trump is merely a symptom of how modern media works.

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David Piepgrass
David Piepgrass

Written by David Piepgrass

Software engineer with over 20 years of experience. Fighting for a better world and against dark epistemology.

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