Fair question! My goal was to say, ‘Hey, look what an interesting thing for a US president to say!’ without any particular comment on the fact that it was Trump in particular, and my first sentence (‘Many people (including me) have opinions on current US president Donald Trump, none of which are relevant here because, as is well-known to LessWrong, politics is the mind-killer’) was intended to try to emphasize that this wasn’t intended as a comment on Trump. I read your comment (maybe wrongly?) as a comment on Trump in particular and whether he’s someone we should expect to say statistically literate things.
Frankly I’m just worried, possibly overly so, that the comments to the post will descend into the usual sorts of angry political discussion that controversial figures tend to generate. Not that I thought your comment was inflammatory; just that it seems better to try to steer clear of object-level political discussion entirely.
Thanks very much, I appreciate it!
Fair question! My goal was to say, ‘Hey, look what an interesting thing for a US president to say!’ without any particular comment on the fact that it was Trump in particular, and my first sentence (‘Many people (including me) have opinions on current US president Donald Trump, none of which are relevant here because, as is well-known to LessWrong, politics is the mind-killer’) was intended to try to emphasize that this wasn’t intended as a comment on Trump. I read your comment (maybe wrongly?) as a comment on Trump in particular and whether he’s someone we should expect to say statistically literate things.
Frankly I’m just worried, possibly overly so, that the comments to the post will descend into the usual sorts of angry political discussion that controversial figures tend to generate. Not that I thought your comment was inflammatory; just that it seems better to try to steer clear of object-level political discussion entirely.