DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL

Re:DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL by JohnTHaller on Thursday February 20, 2025 @10:03PM (#43123530)

Considering the COBOL Metre date screw-up, it's pretty obvious that the folks doing this don't understand the most basic underpinnings of the systems they're poking and prodding.

For those who missed it, DOGE claimed there were tons people who were about 150 years in the system. In actuality, the the default date in COBOL is May 20, 1875 (the date of the Metre Convention) which works out to about 150 years old.

Elon Musk publicly stated: "cursory examination of Social Security, and we got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone that's 150? I don't know. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records... So that's a case where I think they're probably dead."

That's how little Musk understands about computer systems he's supposedly responsible for analyzing. And Elon has publicly stated he'll often be wrong wrt DOGE.

EDIT: Elon also posted a Tweet showing age buckets, but according to other Social Security Association folks, they didn't filter out dead people or non-recipients. When you do, only 89,106 are aged 99+. Less than the number of living centenarians in the US: https://x.com/justinwolfers/status/1891678450487841007

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Re:DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL by gs17 on Thursday February 20, 2025 @11:22PM (#43124009)

That whole thing was debunked AFAIK. Well, it kind of self-debunked since the original tweet that was posted as a reply to said "over 150 years old", not "exactly slightly under 150 years old", and "a number in ISO8601 format", but see e.g.: https://iter.ca/post/1875-epoch/ DOGE has plenty of ways to demonstrate ineptitude without us making some new ones up.

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Re:DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL by JohnTHaller on Thursday February 20, 2025 @11:26PM (#43124030)

It was debunked, but to show Elon's bucket list was also poorly compiled by folks who don't understand the database they are pulling from: https://x.com/justinwolfers/status/1891678450487841007

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Re:DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL by gs17 on Thursday February 20, 2025 @11:37PM (#43124076)

I believe you're still within the edit timer for that comment, please help reduce the spread of misinformation.

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Re:DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL by reustle on Thursday February 20, 2025 @10:17PM (#43123622)

If this post is accurate (big if), wouldn't it prove that theory false?

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1891350795452654076

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Re:DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL by JohnTHaller on Thursday February 20, 2025 @11:18PM (#43123985)

"And here's the number of RECIPIENTS of social security in each age bucket with the death field set to false (and recipient set to true). A mere 89,106 are aged 99+, not the tens of millions suggested by @elonmusk."

https://x.com/justinwolfers/status/1891678450487841007

Also Elon's other Tweet is: "Yes, there are FAR more “eligible” social security numbers than there are citizens in the USA. This might be the biggest fraud in history."

Lawful permanent residents (LPRs), asylees (noncitizen who has been granted asylum in the United States), refugees, some temporary non-immigrants, etc all get social security numbers. Elon doesn't appear to research much before posting and has publicly stated that he'll often be wrong with respect to everything DOGE.

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Re:DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL by bargl on Thursday February 20, 2025 @10:21PM (#43123650)

Yeah this is the part I find hard to suss out. If they said we have people who are 104 and the next oldest is 150 holy shit. That's case closed, but the link you sent makes me suspicious of the bias on the other side...

I agree with original comment. I just don't know who to trust to do a deep enough dive to give me good information.

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Re:DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL by gs17 on Thursday February 20, 2025 @11:25PM (#43124028)

This page I found ( https://iter.ca/post/1875-epoch/ ) had a link to some data from SSA: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v71n4/v71n4p33.html , and the "Individuals by YOB" section does indeed not show anything special about 1875 (and has people from before then).

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Re:DOGE employees don't understand the basics of SQL by Banned_IT on Sunday February 23, 2025 @06:15PM (#43154162)

Garbage in, Garbage out! The data is entered in by SS employees (basic data entry). Several scenarios plausible!

Could be that someone is fairly receiving a payout, but the birthdate was keyed in incorrectly & never corrected (a one key error of "1875" instead of 1975"...would make the person 150 years old instead of 50).

The DB should have had safeguards to avoid this.

And no deduplication is just asking for problems!!!

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