I've called people out on this before. I cannot emphasise how red-hot angry this makes me. Based on his prediction, Nate would have bet on Trump and MADE MONEY. To say his prediction was bad is absurd, and a complete self-own.
Basic, foundational, indisputable facts are ignored or even ridiculed by some of Nate's critics. Facts like "Uncertain events require probabilistic forecasts" or "Predictions with X% probability should happen around X% of the time". It is incredibly frustrating.
The problem is that huge intellectual differences are not evident to everyone in the same way that, say, superiority in sprinting the 100m is. Dumb people can convince themselves that the smartest person in the world is an idiot, and then hurl insults at them with impunity. And it's not just idiocy, it's the astounding rudeness that comes with it. No wonder Nate always asks them to make a bet. And he's criticised for that too...
This was a fun read not because I've forgotten but because I was a huge fivethirtyeight and Nate Silver fan around 2016 and I remember this pretty vividly. I had read the signal and the noise some years prior and was a big Nate Silver fan. I had really taken the vision he was selling of careful cold probabilistic thinking to heart. One of my mini-idols. Listened to the pod weekly to hear them discuss the intricacies of polling (I'm not even American, this was just some weird nerdy obsession with people who I saw as good thinkers/thought-leaders).
And I remember it was so frustrating to watch all these people online, almost immediately, contort the image of Nate Silver from "the guy who was least wrong" to "the guy who got it wrong". I don't want to psychoanalyse a public figure too much but it seems to me he's withdrawn from fivethirtyeight since then and I can't help but imagine that it partially has to do with how frustrating this must have been.
Great summary.
I've called people out on this before. I cannot emphasise how red-hot angry this makes me. Based on his prediction, Nate would have bet on Trump and MADE MONEY. To say his prediction was bad is absurd, and a complete self-own.
Basic, foundational, indisputable facts are ignored or even ridiculed by some of Nate's critics. Facts like "Uncertain events require probabilistic forecasts" or "Predictions with X% probability should happen around X% of the time". It is incredibly frustrating.
The problem is that huge intellectual differences are not evident to everyone in the same way that, say, superiority in sprinting the 100m is. Dumb people can convince themselves that the smartest person in the world is an idiot, and then hurl insults at them with impunity. And it's not just idiocy, it's the astounding rudeness that comes with it. No wonder Nate always asks them to make a bet. And he's criticised for that too...
This was a fun read not because I've forgotten but because I was a huge fivethirtyeight and Nate Silver fan around 2016 and I remember this pretty vividly. I had read the signal and the noise some years prior and was a big Nate Silver fan. I had really taken the vision he was selling of careful cold probabilistic thinking to heart. One of my mini-idols. Listened to the pod weekly to hear them discuss the intricacies of polling (I'm not even American, this was just some weird nerdy obsession with people who I saw as good thinkers/thought-leaders).
And I remember it was so frustrating to watch all these people online, almost immediately, contort the image of Nate Silver from "the guy who was least wrong" to "the guy who got it wrong". I don't want to psychoanalyse a public figure too much but it seems to me he's withdrawn from fivethirtyeight since then and I can't help but imagine that it partially has to do with how frustrating this must have been.
Another interesting post