10 ms·

I normally like Taleb's insights but it was obvious when following this that he (and Dinesh D'Souza) were ridiculously misconstruing Nate Silver's comment. Two

by ummonk 8y ago

I normally like Taleb's insights but it was obvious when following this that he (and Dinesh D'Souza) were ridiculously misconstruing Nate Silver's comment. Two outcomes being "extremely possible" in no way means they have a 50/50 chance of happening. It merely means that neither outcome has a low enough chance that you should assume it won't happen.

logifail 8y ago
>> Two outcomes being "extremely possible" What on earth is a professional like Silver doing using the word "extremely" in that context? If I'd have written that kind of statement in school, the teacher would have crossed it out in red pen and told me to rephrase. If I toss a coin, are the outcomes "heads" and "tails" both supposed to be "extremely possible", with "landing on its edge" being merely "unlikely"? (In case you can't already tell) I'm with Taleb on this one.
- MattHeard 8y ago
  Both events are extreme yet possible.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- mannykannot 8y ago
  > What on earth is a professional like Silver doing using the word "extremely" in that context? Extemporizing while being interviewed on TV, presumably to stress the uncertainty in the prediction, is what he is doing, not writing an HN post, tweet or paper. I suppose that whenever you are interviewed on national TV, you only say exactly what you mean, nothing more and nothing less?
- lozenge 8y ago
  There's nothing wrong with extremely likely if defined. Even without a strict definition people have some understanding of what it means. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/what-likely-and-extremely-likely-really-mean-in-climate-speak/article14564689/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/what-likely-and-e...
ThrowMeDown01 8y ago
As the blog post rightly said, they present 538 present the forecast in a way that they are never wrong. I can see the point. I also fond the comparison of NFL vs. Senate forecasts meaningful. This kind of "forecasting" seems to be the current version of crystal balling and astrology. They (models) don't really know anything (no causation, and definitely nothing close to an actual model of the real world like in physics). It's a bit like high-performing fund manager sand CEOs who fail to replicate their successes after they were crowned "person of the year", depending on what exactly they forecast a bit better than that because even without having any models that model actual causation, since the world is pretty stable overall (compared to what the universe could throw at us) even correlations may hold for a while. As for the "50/50" here, I don't think this is meant as being exact numbers (after all, the whole point of the issue is that those exact numbers don't really tell you anything, if anything still is possible and any outcome can be justified later), but simply as the common usage of a phrase in the vernacular for "we don't know either way".
- yorwba 8y ago
  > As the blog post rightly said, they present 538 present the forecast in a way that they are never wrong. The whole point of probabilistic modeling is to replace absolute decisions like "right or wrong" by continuous weights on the possibilities. If you absolutely need a definite decision, you can sample a prediction according to the probability assigned by the model. If the true outcome is x and the model assigned it probability p, then that procedure is going to be wrong (1-p) of the time. You could define that number as the "wrongness" of the probabilistic model, as a continuous analog of the definite case. The advantage of probabilistic modeling is that you can also ask how wrong the model expects to be and get a meaningful answer. If there are many possible outcomes and none of them very likely, any choice is going to be wrong a lot. But you should expect a good model to have a small difference between its expected and actual wrongness. One might call that value "honesty".
  - ThrowMeDown01 8y ago
    > The whole point of probabilistic modeling The whole point about the current topic as well as of my post: You missed by about a thousand miles. Please read it again. It's really pointless to argue about a strawman created by you. Your model is useless, that's the point! It makes no real(!) predictions - not usable for anything apart from blowing ever more hot air, and if it doesn't come to pass, you are never wrong because you left the door open by not actually saying anything in the first place. Do you not understand that the guy/his company did nothing at all? And that giving some arbitrary probability was/is utterly devoid of any meaning (especially if you can't be wrong whatever the actual outcome)? They could have made any prediction at all, what difference would it have made? That is the value of that "work". However, I realize there's people who like such meaningless drivel. It is a version of appearing to actually do something while not actually doing anything. You make it into the news but you can never be held accountable because whatever happens happens, you just helped create a few more entirely useless headlines (apart from helping with page views and ad impressions of course). It's actually quite ingenious to misuse actually useful tools like statistics.
_0ffh 8y ago
Yeah, essentially "extremely possible" is just "far from impossible". Something can be very possible but still not very likely, surely?
- logifail 8y ago
  If you say that X is extremely possible does that mean that X is unlikely to happen (probably won't), or that X is very likely to happen (probably will)? I'd never come across anyone using this phrase until Nate Silver did. Is it a US English thing?
  - n-gatedotcom 8y ago
    Read very much
  - DougBTX 8y ago
    I’ve not heard “extremely possible” used like that before, but it is pretty similar to “completely possible” or “entirely possible”, example in a headline: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/its-entirely-possible-to-die-of-a-broken-heart/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/its-entirely-possible-to... It doesn’t mean that a broken heart will definitely kill you, just that there is definitely a chance that it will kill you. I could totally imagine Nate trying to emphasise the idea that 20% is a much bigger probability than say 1% by using language like that, but put too much weight on it here leading to confusion.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kilburn 8y ago
Using the phrase "extremely possible" as an expert is either a gross mistake or intentional misguidance. "Possibility" is like "optimality" in the sense that they are binary attributes and thus don't admin grades. Something either is or isn't possible. Qualifying something as "more possible" is a mistake, and qualifying it as "extremely possible" is just nonsense. A guy who lives from probabilistic analysis should now better.
- 0-_-0 8y ago
  I suspect the main reason he was attacked by Taleb was this misuse of language, which can be misinterpreted as meaning a 50-50 chance. Like others have said, he could have said "far from impossible" or "entirely possible" to convey that he meant the estimate had a large variance. Then again, I think Taleb should have realized this and not attacked him for simply failing to convey variance correctly. This seems like another example of Twitter bringing out the wrost in people...
  - kilburn 8y ago
    Apparently there's people who have hard feelings in this argument too. I could understand people downvoting my comment (it may be interpreted as harsh even if that wasn't my intention) but... yours? Something weird is at play here.
    - 0-_-0 8y ago
      Maybe it's just people being emotionally invested in Nate Silver being right (because they defended him publicly before for example), so they interpret any criticism of Nate Silver as a personal attack.

by ummonk 8y ago

logifail 8y ago

>> Two outcomes being "extremely possible" What on earth is a professional like Silver doing using the word "extremely" in that context? If I'd have written that kind of statement in school, the teacher would have crossed it out in red pen and told me to rephrase. If I toss a coin, are the outcomes "heads" and "tails" both supposed to be "extremely possible", with "landing on its edge" being merely "unlikely"? (In case you can't already tell) I'm with Taleb on this one.

MattHeard 8y ago
Both events are extreme yet possible.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mannykannot 8y ago
> What on earth is a professional like Silver doing using the word "extremely" in that context? Extemporizing while being interviewed on TV, presumably to stress the uncertainty in the prediction, is what he is doing, not writing an HN post, tweet or paper. I suppose that whenever you are interviewed on national TV, you only say exactly what you mean, nothing more and nothing less?
lozenge 8y ago
There's nothing wrong with extremely likely if defined. Even without a strict definition people have some understanding of what it means. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/what-likely-and-extremely-likely-really-mean-in-climate-speak/article14564689/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/what-likely-and-e...

ThrowMeDown01 8y ago

As the blog post rightly said, they present 538 present the forecast in a way that they are never wrong. I can see the point. I also fond the comparison of NFL vs. Senate forecasts meaningful. This kind of "forecasting" seems to be the current version of crystal balling and astrology. They (models) don't really know anything (no causation, and definitely nothing close to an actual model of the real world like in physics). It's a bit like high-performing fund manager sand CEOs who fail to replicate their successes after they were crowned "person of the year", depending on what exactly they forecast a bit better than that because even without having any models that model actual causation, since the world is pretty stable overall (compared to what the universe could throw at us) even correlations may hold for a while. As for the "50/50" here, I don't think this is meant as being exact numbers (after all, the whole point of the issue is that those exact numbers don't really tell you anything, if anything still is possible and any outcome can be justified later), but simply as the common usage of a phrase in the vernacular for "we don't know either way".

yorwba 8y ago
> As the blog post rightly said, they present 538 present the forecast in a way that they are never wrong. The whole point of probabilistic modeling is to replace absolute decisions like "right or wrong" by continuous weights on the possibilities. If you absolutely need a definite decision, you can sample a prediction according to the probability assigned by the model. If the true outcome is x and the model assigned it probability p, then that procedure is going to be wrong (1-p) of the time. You could define that number as the "wrongness" of the probabilistic model, as a continuous analog of the definite case. The advantage of probabilistic modeling is that you can also ask how wrong the model expects to be and get a meaningful answer. If there are many possible outcomes and none of them very likely, any choice is going to be wrong a lot. But you should expect a good model to have a small difference between its expected and actual wrongness. One might call that value "honesty".
- ThrowMeDown01 8y ago
  > The whole point of probabilistic modeling The whole point about the current topic as well as of my post: You missed by about a thousand miles. Please read it again. It's really pointless to argue about a strawman created by you. Your model is useless, that's the point! It makes no real(!) predictions - not usable for anything apart from blowing ever more hot air, and if it doesn't come to pass, you are never wrong because you left the door open by not actually saying anything in the first place. Do you not understand that the guy/his company did nothing at all? And that giving some arbitrary probability was/is utterly devoid of any meaning (especially if you can't be wrong whatever the actual outcome)? They could have made any prediction at all, what difference would it have made? That is the value of that "work". However, I realize there's people who like such meaningless drivel. It is a version of appearing to actually do something while not actually doing anything. You make it into the news but you can never be held accountable because whatever happens happens, you just helped create a few more entirely useless headlines (apart from helping with page views and ad impressions of course). It's actually quite ingenious to misuse actually useful tools like statistics.

_0ffh 8y ago

Yeah, essentially "extremely possible" is just "far from impossible". Something can be very possible but still not very likely, surely?

logifail 8y ago
If you say that X is extremely possible does that mean that X is unlikely to happen (probably won't), or that X is very likely to happen (probably will)? I'd never come across anyone using this phrase until Nate Silver did. Is it a US English thing?
- n-gatedotcom 8y ago
  Read very much
- DougBTX 8y ago
  I’ve not heard “extremely possible” used like that before, but it is pretty similar to “completely possible” or “entirely possible”, example in a headline: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/its-entirely-possible-to-die-of-a-broken-heart/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/its-entirely-possible-to... It doesn’t mean that a broken heart will definitely kill you, just that there is definitely a chance that it will kill you. I could totally imagine Nate trying to emphasise the idea that 20% is a much bigger probability than say 1% by using language like that, but put too much weight on it here leading to confusion.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

kilburn 8y ago

Using the phrase "extremely possible" as an expert is either a gross mistake or intentional misguidance. "Possibility" is like "optimality" in the sense that they are binary attributes and thus don't admin grades. Something either is or isn't possible. Qualifying something as "more possible" is a mistake, and qualifying it as "extremely possible" is just nonsense. A guy who lives from probabilistic analysis should now better.

0-_-0 8y ago
I suspect the main reason he was attacked by Taleb was this misuse of language, which can be misinterpreted as meaning a 50-50 chance. Like others have said, he could have said "far from impossible" or "entirely possible" to convey that he meant the estimate had a large variance. Then again, I think Taleb should have realized this and not attacked him for simply failing to convey variance correctly. This seems like another example of Twitter bringing out the wrost in people...
- kilburn 8y ago
  Apparently there's people who have hard feelings in this argument too. I could understand people downvoting my comment (it may be interpreted as harsh even if that wasn't my intention) but... yours? Something weird is at play here.
  - 0-_-0 8y ago
    Maybe it's just people being emotionally invested in Nate Silver being right (because they defended him publicly before for example), so they interpret any criticism of Nate Silver as a personal attack.