from Hacker News

If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

by sandwall on 9/14/20, 3:54 PM with 66 comments

by jrochkind1 on 9/14/20, 5:34 PM
Recent lengthy New Yorker article on the same topic, Simulmatics in the JFK presidential campaign: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/how-the-simulm...
And a couple subsequent letters from readers on the article:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/07/letters-from-t...
The New Yorker article was odd to me for a New Yorker article, it had a lot of historical context without a lot of details of what Simulmatics actually did for the Kennedy campaign. Perhaps there isn't a lot of historical record/people who want to talk about it. I was left feeing like I had learned that the Simulmatics founders had an idea, and successfully sold it to the Kennedy campaign and made some money, but not sure to what extent it actually provided value in that actual campaign.
With some people suggesting the same might be true of Cambridge Analytica.... the more things change? (I have no opinion on what value either CA or Simulmatics actually provided, I don't know enough).
I haven't listened to/read the NPR piece yet.
by jgalt212 on 9/14/20, 9:59 PM
Her podcast, The Last Archive is good.
I enjoyed the following episodes. I have not listed to the entire season, so the list below is not comprehensive.
https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-5-project-x
https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-7-the-comput...
https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-1/episode-10-tomorrowl...
by lazycrazyowl on 9/14/20, 6:01 PM
Sentimetrix is another major player, who were the winner of DARPA competition in this domain and have customer across public and private sectors.
http://www.sentimetrix.com/
by dang on 9/14/20, 10:59 PM
The CA aspect is distracting from the interesting part of this story, i.e. the part that hasn't been discussed before. Curiosity wants diffs (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).
I've changed the title to be that of the book under review. Actually we've started doing that for most book review posts (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24474073). It seems to make for better discussion.
by andy_ppp on 9/14/20, 7:57 PM
The problem back then I guess was there’s no feedback loop and a limit to the propaganda you can produce.
by mc32 on 9/14/20, 4:29 PM
What’s fascinating is that prior to CA helping targeting in the previous election cycle, this capability was kind of embraced by politicians and industry as the next evolution in political campaigning... but few recognized an issue with that kind of data usage at the time...
by lanevorockz on 9/14/20, 4:41 PM
It's very silly to imagine that CA was the only player on the market. They are just the one that worked for the incorrect candidate.
by hardlianotion on 9/14/20, 4:55 PM
Apologies for not reading the article, but the key feature of Cambridge Analytica seems to have been that their stuff didn’t appear to work.
by dariusj18 on 9/14/20, 8:07 PM
There's nothing new about using data and analysis to attempt to target voters. The issue with CA was the methods they used to obtain that data.
by ryanmarsh on 9/14/20, 7:16 PM
Cambridge Analytica was a pissant compared to the data political parties easily buy from advertising data companies. The whole controversy surrounding them is like getting upset about grocery store discount cards but ignoring that Facebook exists.
Also, campaigns don't have to buy or amass that data anymore. Facebook is the largest purchaser of consumer data. So now if you use Facebook for campaign ads you get all that "for free".
Lastly, wait until you find out what the NSA knows about you. Surely that data would never be used for nefarious purposes...