Tuesday, November 03, 2020

538

If I start following the results anywhere, I will get sucked into caring deeply about small changes in numbers that will be unimportant in 12 hours.

That's actually true about following the news in general.  CS Lewis did not take a daily newspaper, as most of it would turn out to be untrue in a few days anyway, and if anything important really did happen, everyone would want to tell him anyway.

2 comments:

Michael or Janice said...

I started looking at early results. It is looking to be a long slow moving night. I think I will take the implied advice and go to bed.

Thanks
Mike

james said...

Years ago I sat up for the election returns, and found that by 11 the count still wasn't final. There was a lot of "inside baseball," which is useful if you're into that, and if you're not it can give you a sense of being "in the know"--a least until you realize that you can't even remember the _names_ of the counties, much less their expected turnouts.

It's a little like watching a replay of a horse race. You can cheer all you like, but the jockey won't hear you. The winner is already determined.

I determined to avoid the morning's reports too, unless there was an obvious landslide. If the big race was close (as it seems to be) I knew there'd be recounts and lawsuits which would postpone the answer even farther.