Thanks joj!

Wonderful link and topic. I'll comment more later today after I get the weather threat done and take care of some other business. 

Not telling us how and why ,what facts they observed, this chart is just someone's biased opinion. Everyone has their own bias, but can you give facts for your view?

It's always fun to see what different individual people think about media sources and what various sources themselves think.

Here was a pretty objective source using a more scientific method:

                HiddenTribes: America’s Polarized Landscape            

                            12 responses |            

                Started by metmike - Sept. 27, 2019, 7 p.m.            

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/39903/

Here's are some comments that I made related to the media:

"In this report, group #1 is progressive activists. They are the most assertive of the groups and they also dominate the MSM because that field provides them with the power/opportunities  to deliver the altruistic messages that THEY FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT based on how THEY define their belief system.......which they have deemed to be superior to others belief system.

This is what's happening on CNN, CNBC, the NYT and other media sources.

No doubt that they are very sincere but are also very biased, which is a bad thing when you have the enormous power they have. In today's extreme world, its allowing them to abuse professional journalism ethics/standards because freedom of the press gives them  an almost unlimted ability to state the news how they want people to see it. 

We are seeing this in extreme fashion with anything that has to do with President Trump. They want him out at any cost because his belief system and views don't' line up with theirs in many realms."

"Progressive Activists represent 8% of the total and Devoted Conservatives represent 6% of the total. As mentioned previously, the MSM is massively over weighted with Progressive Activists/Liberals giving us their interpretation of the news."

One of my favorite examples of CNN demonstrating this is here:

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/42786/

How the source on the top page can rate CNN near the middle and close to being the least biased is pretty funny when you actually watch them for a good portion of the day as I do. My wife gets upset with me for watching in the evening.

It depends on the topic of course. When it comes to President Trump, which swamps any other political topics, they might have to stretch the chart out farther on the left than there is room on the screen to find the appropriate place for CNN (-:

I also get the NYT's email updates every morning. One of my brothers has been getting the physical paper NYT for 35+ years. He tells me that they hate President Trumps guts and it affects their reporting but he is a far left liberal as you might imagine and enjoys it.  joj also gets the NYT and I would appreciate his opinion. 

Why would I read and listen to stuff from these places that hate Trump and push the fake climate crisis? I want to hear, read their points and the NYT's especially has some really good stuff, outside of their political bias. They are just as biased on climate change too BTW but I actually appreciate hearing all the false narratives and junk science that people read and hear out there, so I can address it with authentic data/science here. 

Am I biased?

Of course. Everybody is biased. This is why I always use the authentic facts/data/science to go with my excessive amount of time blabbing, hopefully much of it spent analyzing and interpreting that data in a way to make it understandable. 

I was thinking more about personal bias.

People that give us the news about anything have personal bias's that sometimes comes out.

As an operational meteorologist, every time I (and others like me) issue a weather forecast, we become biased.

When somebody makes a prediction on anything, they will usually want it to happen. Previous to making the prediction, they might have been believing the same things for the same reasons but once a person comes out telling people something is going to happen, or even what their position is, their thinking is changed a bit...........their credibility/reputation, at the very least is on the line.

There are notable exceptions. If I forecast a violent tornado outbreak, for instance, my compassion/empathy for other people in the path of the violent tornadoes could be more powerful than my cognitive bias and ego.............if being right means people dying.

Out side of examples similar to that, most meteorologists really want their forecasts to be right.

Yesterday, I issued a Summer outlook that increased the odds of hot and dry weather for the Cornbelt vs the NOAA forecast. 

I almost never do seasonal forecasts because their skill is pretty low and usefulness is debatable. In that profession, however, some meteorologists have no choice because paying clients demand it. 

I don't get paid and had the choice but decided this time that the conditions were compelling enough to share. This instantly created a bias. Now, admittedly, I want it to be hot/dry in a large area of the Cornbelt for several reasons.

1. I want to be right for my own feeling of reward/self confidence in using the long range forecasting tools to accurately a weather tendency for 3 months out.

2. I want others that I shared the forecast with to respect my skills, even though I am warning them to take such a forecast with a grain of salt.

3. Most importantly, as an ethical person, I want to feel like people might have received benefits from the forecast. If a producer has the ability to irrigate and its helpful to be able to plan ahead, for instance and this helps. Or if they are trying to decide on how much new crop to hedge, hot and dry vs normal and wet might cause them to hold off, banking on some weather scares spiking the price higher and better opportunities to sell their crop this Summer.

4. It also will greatly increase trading opportunities for speculators like myself.

So those are 4 good reasons for me to be biased, wanting this Summer to be hot/dry. 

This same bias also kicks in immediately when somebody puts on a trade. Before the trade, you might have all the same reasons to think that soybeans are going higher than after you get long. 

However, BEFORE you buy, you may actually be wanting the price to go DOWN because: 1. You will get a better price and

 2. You don't want to miss the buying opportunity and be kicking yourself for NOT buying. 

AFTER you buy, your mindset changes instantly. Unless you plan to buy even more at lower prices, you put the trade on to make money and that can only happen if the price of beans goes higher. The best traders can analyze the trade without getting married to the position. Pretend that they were not long and let that analysis determine if they should stay long. Have preset risk levels, stops, upside objectives and a well thought out plan that is exercised with discipline based on non emotional factors.

Doing this, offsets the natural cognitive bias in everybody that makes them WANT the price to go higher. Sometimes, even more than they can see new information telling them why something has changed and if they are paying close attention..........telling them the outlook using their objective trading system(from a non positioned viewpoint) is now saying beans will not go higher..........and to get out. Or to even go short.

This has been the hardest thing for me and many others.  If you are looking to go long for several weeks and especially if you are long for what appears to be good reasons, you clearly have embraced a biased frame of mind that sees beans going higher.

If/when things change and your trading system is suddenly telling you to be short, it's extraordinarily difficult to immediately respond and change your frame of mind to the opposite one..........because the bullish/long bias can linger past its time to be that way.

Just like every position you have about everything in life that you are wrong about. When the first signs that you MIGHT BE wrong pop up, it takes more than that to convince you.  Depending on the person, some might be getting hit over the head for a long time with the authentic truth before they accept it. Some never do. 

Back to weather forecasting and the numerous times that we bust the forecast.

A good objective, sometimes is to look for reasons to be wrong to change it ASAP. Judging weather forecasts are not always based on how right it is from the start  but instead,  how long it took for you to finally get it right.  Keeping a bad forecast longer than you should have is the absolute worst situation.

Just like trading. It's called cutting your losses. Some of our best trades are entirely based on losing a tiny sum vs what would have been a massive loss if cognitive bias kept you in the trade.

There are many other examples in life where we fail to cut our losses quickly on a flawed belief because our ego's won't let us admit that we are wrong.

That guy in the White House, frequently gives us examples of it. Ideally, if you see it fast enough, it causes an adjustment in your strategy that results in  being on the right path sooner and longer. 

The longer you go in the wrong direction, the more you have to make up for once you turn around to the right direction.