Election Eve self-indulgence

I bet you’re expecting a Cubs-themed KJR this week. It’s a rich vein to tap, what with a World Series featuring two excellent managers who are class acts all the way; who win by recruiting the best talent, treating players with respect, turning them into team, and not over-reacting when things don’t go their way … and I could go on and on and on, but there’s already been so much written about the subject that really, what would be the point.

On a personal note, there were two big events I was hoping to enjoy during my stay here on earth: Halley’s comet, and the Cubs winning the World Series. Halley’s comet was a serious let-down. But the Cubs? After 59 years of rooting, the Cubbies, along with their partners in coronary sports the Cleveland Indians, gave us what might have been the best Game 7 in history.

One out of two ain’t bad. Even the best hitters don’t do that well.

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Tomorrow is election day. We appear to have a national consensus on the most important issue: Is this the best we can do?

Please don’t vote. Every citizen who refrains makes me more important. Mathematically speaking, my vote constitutes 1/nth of the POTUS decision. Those who don’t vote make n smaller. So stay away from the polls, and ask all your friends to do likewise. Thanks.

If you insist, but still can’t make up your mind, try this: List of all the reasons to vote against each of the two major-party candidates … tangible, separate reasons, not vague statements like “she’s corrupt” or “he’s a horrible human being,” no matter how fervently you believe such things.

List only those issues that are tangible and backed by evidence that doesn’t require a conspiracy with a hundred or more members to be credible.

So Clinton’s email server is in. Vince Foster is out. The Trump Foundation paying to settle lawsuits against Trump’s for-profit businesses is in. The rumor that he molested 13-year-old girls is out.

The shorter list wins, no matter how angry any one transgression makes you.

Or, take the advice given in this space from time to time: Ignore policy and ethics completely, and vote for whichever candidate you think would be more competent in the job.

Competence matters most. Competence is what separates those who trust evidence and logic from those who trust their instincts. It’s what separates those who appoint the most qualified people they can find from those who prefer cronies who tell them what they want to hear.

It’s what separates those who take Salvor Hardin’s advice (The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov) that “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent,” from those whose first instinct is to nuke ’em.

* * *

Following my recent Sherlock Holmes pastiche, some correspondents raised a significant challenge to making evidence-and-logic based decisions: Given the ease of setting up plausible-looking but phony websites, how can anyone decide which sources are credible and which should be ignored?

Here’s how I go about it, for whatever it’s worth:

• Read multiple fact checkers. Any one fact-checking site could be a fraud. When FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” agree, fraud would require a conspiracy.

• Spot-check the fact checks. Don’t just read the ratings. Read some of the essays behind the ratings. If you detect ranting, raving, and expressions of outrage, chances are good it’s a fraudulent site.

• Spot-check sources. No matter what you’re reading, if the author’s evidence mostly traces back to a few obviously partisan sources (e.g. Breitbart, Michael Moore) you’re looking at a phony fact checker.

• Look for one-sidedness. If every claim of falsehood is about one political tribe while confirmations of veracity are always about the other, someone is trying to sucker you.

• Read the opinion columns. I rely on these more than on news stories, with these provisos: (1) I ignore columnists who demonize those they disagree with. This cuts out at least 90% of the noise. And (2) I search for writers I don’t agree with who aren’t screened out by proviso #1.

What’s this have to do with the worlds of business and IT? Well, there is a nice irony: While we’re busily turning into a post-factual society, the world of business, awash in data that’s subjected to sophisticated multivariate analysis, is becoming increasingly dependent on evidence and logic for decision-making.

Other than that, not much. We’ll get back to it next week. That’s a promise.

Not a campaign promise. A real promise.