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Archives for February 2014
Unlikely Things that Could Be True
Reader J sends this Washington Monthly piece detailing how the midterms could go better for the Democrats than expected:
Despite current conventional wisdom, such an election [a Democratic win] is not only possible but probable, but only if three signals occur – if September polls, the polls taken when people are paying attention to the upcoming election, show a substantial improvement in Obama’s approval rating and an equally substantial increase in public support of the Affordable Care Act, and if the economy does not relapse into recession.
In my opinion, and probably that of anyone else who’s tried to do Democratic GOTV, the fourth thing that has to happen is that a unicorn with a rainbow mane needs to shit a glitter path lined with $100 bills from the doorstep of Democrats to their local polling place to get them to go vote when there’s no President on the ballot.
In a similar vein, there’s been a lot of wondering about the Comcast/Netflix deal. Does it affect net neutrality or this story nothing but business as usual? I’m more in the former camp, but it may be true that the Comcast deal is just business as usual (or a refinement on business practices that might not be a big deal, as Kevin Drum seems to be leaning). I think that’s unlikely, given that the Comcast deal comes on the heels of the FCC losing a network neutrality case in court, and that Verizon, which has terrible Netflix service because it has been dragging its feet upgrading its connection to Netflix’ ISP, is now claiming that it will soon have a deal similar to Comcast’s, with Netflix.
We’ve made a huge mistake
Actuaries are guesers. They are systemic guessers, but they make guesses none the less. The larger the population and the richer the data history, the closer to reality their guesses tend to be as long as we can assume no massive step functions in the input-outcome matrixes. Actuaries really don’t like making guesses when they are working with mostly unknowns or at best extraordinarily wide parameters of plausible values as they know that their error bars will be significant.
The Exchange has been a source of night terrors for actuaries for eighteen months now. It was the ultimate in vaguely defined parameters. No single company knew what other companies were doing, no one knew exactly how people would choose plans, no one knew who exactly was in the eligible population and more importantly who would be in the sign-up generation. No one had a representative claims history.
Companies made massive efforts to get some structure to their guesses. For instance, my company participated in a consortium that interviewed 100,000 people with in-depth focus on several thousand people in order to get a feel for what potential Exchange customers wanted and what types of medical needs they would have. My company had a role play team that attempted to game out various strategies we could use as well as our competitors. Another company conducted over a hundred focus groups in a single market. Data miners created proxy consumers from claims data. But the actuaries and finance people priced 2014 Exchange products with at least severe glaucoma in their eyes.
Vision is improving now as the unknowns are shrinking and the known knowledge space is increasing. The 2015 product development round should see significant mistake correction on pricing. But let’s review a few common sources of error.
Wednesday Morning Open Thread
I take my happy stories where I can find them. So here’s my new blog favorite David Roth, at SB Nation:
… The work that Jason Collins does is not the sort of thing basketball fans talk about. Collins was there on Sunday night, as he has been for his entire long career, to give some fouls and set some picks and play the sort of humbly virtuosic defense he plays. When he does all that right, as he generally does, his work on the court is visible only in a sort of intentional absence — in negative space surrounding someone else’s success, in what and who Collins displaces to make other things happen for his teammates.
As he has grown into the sort of valuable and supremely unglamorous basketball player that he is, Jason Collins has simultaneously faded from the game. This is not just an abstract thing: Collins’ statistical contributions have dropped, from modest early-career highs to zero. Some of that is just the decline that age and attrition bring, but it can also be seen as Collins further refining his rough craft. When he is at his best, he is invisible. He’s good at what he’s good at, but he is not a player who fans talk about.
Collins is, now, a person that people talk about because he is his sport’s first openly gay player and because he put the last quiet years of his career at risk by being open about who he was. In the long, limping march of tolerance in this country and its games, Jason Collins is a significant figure because he was brave enough to be first. In this case, as on the picks and charges taken that are his gig, Collins did his modest work simply by being a large human being standing in the right place. There wasn’t dudgeon or theater or any inauthentic salesmanship — a pinwheeling flop in the service of drawing a charge doesn’t count — so much as there was Jason Collins and his big body and his oblique skills, and there were teams that could use him.
There was nothing to insist about. One of the most useful 7-footers not in the NBA happened to be a gay man. Collins believed that some team would need him and he stayed in shape. The Brooklyn Nets eventually needed him, and in his first game with his new team — his first team, now coached by the first point guard ever to pass him the ball in the NBA — he was ready to play….
… Collins deserves the chance to inhabit the enlightened anonymity that he cultivates on the floor. His job is to disappear into the oscillations and surges and stagnations of the game, into his job’s least obvious and ostentatious tasks, which also happen to be the ones at which he is best. He has earned that applause. He will earn the silence that follows, too. Jason Collins will do what he does, how he does it and as himself.
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What’s on the agenda for another ragged-end-of-February day?
An Armed Society, Not So Polite As Terrified?
The estimable Dahlia Lithwick, on “How America Has Become a ‘Stand Your Ground’ Nation”:
… [I]t’s not unreasonable to argue that, in America, you can be shot and killed, without consequences for the shooter, for playing loud music, wearing a hoodie, or shopping at a Walmart. The question is whether the wave of “stand your ground” legislation is to blame.
Let’s first define terms: “Stand your ground” laws are different from the Castle Doctrine, which has its roots in centuries-old British common law and allows you to use force to protect yourself in your home. “Stand your ground” essentially provides that you can bring your castle wherever you go. The rule allows you to shoot first, not just in your home, but anyplace you have a right to be and is a much newer, and more controversial, proposition. (The first “stand your ground” law was enacted in Florida in 2005.) Historically, United States self-defense laws have followed British common law by imposing a duty to retreat, requiring those in a dangerous situation to try to withdraw (if they could do so safely) before resorting to killing. (Under the Castle Doctrine there is no duty to retreat because you’re already home, in your safe haven.) “Stand your ground” by design cancels out the duty to retreat and, in sum, allows you to shoot first if you feel your life is in danger, just like you can do at home….
The fact that “stand your ground” defenses have been staggeringly successful in Florida in recent years (one study shows it’s been invoked more than 200 times since being enacted in 2005 and used successfully in 70 percent of the cases) suggests that it’s been embedded into more than just jury instructions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a Tampa Bay Times study from 2012 shows that “as ‘stand your ground’ claims have increased, so too has the number of Floridians with guns. Concealed weapons permits now stand at 1.1 million, three times as many as in 2005 when the law was passed.” Put bluntly: As Floridians sense that other Floridians plan to shoot first, they buy more guns… The gun lobby has single-handedly made certain that the very definition of what one might reasonably expect from an altercation at a Walmart, a movie theater, or a gas station has changed. By seeking to arm everyone in America, the NRA has in fact changed our reasonable expectation of how fights will end, into a self-fulfilling prophecy about how fights will end. It should surprise you not at all to learn that of the 10 states with the most lenient gun laws in America, seven support “stand your ground.” In those jurisdictions shooting first isn’t merely “reasonable.” It borders on sensible…
… “Stand your ground” laws, or at least the public conception of what they do, are changing the way the rest of us think about self- protection. This is, of course, exactly the world the NRA dreams of constructing: Everyone armed and paranoid that everyone else is armed. But the old canard that an armed society is a polite society is pretty much bunk. Ours is not a polite society; we are rude and hotheaded and terrified. Now we have guns to help us sort it all out.
An Armed Society, Not So Polite As Terrified?Post + Comments (67)
A New Low
Shawn tested 121 before dinner, and then after dinner (we had NY Strip since neither of us had had red meat in three weeks, steamed cauliflower, and baked sweet potatoes with some butter and sour cream), an hour later, he was 128.
That is, in the vernacular of the kids and middle-aged bloggers who want to sound somewhat cool or who are so out of touch they actually think the kids say this and then repeat in an attempt to look cool and fail miserably, what we call winning.
Open Thread: Is It April 1st Already?
According to NYMag:
Hipster Beard Transplants Are at Least Kind of a Thing… DNAinfo reports that facial hair transplants are hot right now among young, stylish men, who pay up to $7,000 to enhance their visible manhood. “Whether you are talking about the Brooklyn hipster or the advertising executive, the look is definitely to have a bit of facial hair,” said one plastic surgeon, who says he averages three beard implants a week….
Truly, we live in an age where all things are risible possible.
Open Thread: Is It April 1st <em>Already?</em>Post + Comments (91)