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People should be cautious when citing Taleb as an absolute authority. He envisions himself as an anti-intellectual, and doesn't mind talking out of his rear. I

People should be cautious when citing Taleb as an absolute authority. He envisions himself as an anti-intellectual, and doesn't mind talking out of his rear. I enjoyed his book Fooled by Randomness, but he repeatedly bashed "journalists" throughout---maybe an early indicator of the "fake news" movement even among those who should know better. Anyone who proposed 98% certainty was ridiculous and should not be taken seriously either (there could be exceptions but I don't think so). It amounts to beating up a strawman. But I just don't understand what that quoted paragraph means and how it proves that it was 50% or anything else. A forecast should go bankrupt before it gets to the final event, what? Dynamic time constraints meaning what exactly? I'm genuinely curious. Maybe Taleb is just an intellectual god that my puny intellect will never completely understand, and I should just take him at his word, and I'm sure he would agree. But I remain skeptical of people who display open contempt for people (I used to follow him on Twitter) who require a better explanation to understand what they're saying.

21 9y ago
> A forecast should go bankrupt before it gets to the final event, what? Can go bankrupt, not should. He is saying that if in finance someone would make such a ridiculous forecast, his forecast would be shorted into oblivion and he would have lost most of the money bet on the forecast before the event even took place. Imagine two relatively matched football teams, but a bookie offering 10:1 bets on one of them. There would have been massive bets against that bookie. Given the recent history of american elections and other factors, a 50:50 prediction is much more sensible than a 98:2 one. But because journalists don't actually put money on their predictions, they can spout whatever numbers. He is also complaining that even with a lot of polls hovering around 50%-50%, that 98%-2% prediction was still on, which doesn't really make any (math) sense (binary options, delta, ...). In his math paper he describes this in more precise form.
- TheCowboy 9y ago
  I don't think any of this explains the jargon in that paragraph from the paper, which is what I questioning. And Nate Silver didn't have a 98:2 forecast. If I make a bad bet I don't go "bankrupt" or lose that money before the event happens. There's more than one way to structure betting on events than the way he proposes as well, so I still don't understand why his is an authoritative take. "Given the recent history ... and other factors" is more of an explanation for why someone thought it was a coinflip, but doesn't represent "a proper statistical analysis" modeling 50:50.

21 9y ago

> A forecast should go bankrupt before it gets to the final event, what? Can go bankrupt, not should. He is saying that if in finance someone would make such a ridiculous forecast, his forecast would be shorted into oblivion and he would have lost most of the money bet on the forecast before the event even took place. Imagine two relatively matched football teams, but a bookie offering 10:1 bets on one of them. There would have been massive bets against that bookie. Given the recent history of american elections and other factors, a 50:50 prediction is much more sensible than a 98:2 one. But because journalists don't actually put money on their predictions, they can spout whatever numbers. He is also complaining that even with a lot of polls hovering around 50%-50%, that 98%-2% prediction was still on, which doesn't really make any (math) sense (binary options, delta, ...). In his math paper he describes this in more precise form.

TheCowboy 9y ago
I don't think any of this explains the jargon in that paragraph from the paper, which is what I questioning. And Nate Silver didn't have a 98:2 forecast. If I make a bad bet I don't go "bankrupt" or lose that money before the event happens. There's more than one way to structure betting on events than the way he proposes as well, so I still don't understand why his is an authoritative take. "Given the recent history ... and other factors" is more of an explanation for why someone thought it was a coinflip, but doesn't represent "a proper statistical analysis" modeling 50:50.