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The final 538 pre-election forecast is available here: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/ https://projects.fivethirtyeig

The final 538 pre-election forecast is available here: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-f... (it moved slightly towards Dems in the last few days) Silver's point is that their model results in a probability distribution of outcomes and, at the time he was commenting, in 10% of the cases Dems won 19 or fewer seats, resulting in a GOP majority, and in 10% of cases Dems won 51 or more seats, resulting in an overwhelming Dem majority. That those extremes were approximately equally likely (in CDF terms) tails is willfully missing the point that the vast majority of the 80% of outcomes in the middle between those relatively fat tails involved Democrats winning, which is why the prediction was a 4 in 5 chance of Dems retaining control. By missing that rather obvious point, D'Souza unsurprisingly comes off as a moron and Taleb also fails to cover himself in glory.

paultopia 8y ago
Yeah, this is the key point. I was shocked when I saw the linked twitter posts from that exchange (having not followed it at all). Just based on that snapshot my take is even more grim. Taleb surely knows how probability distributions work. The fact that he sneeringly dismissed basic reasoning like that in the political context he did suggests not cluelessness but malice. One thing we do know is that Taleb is very smart and very good at making money. And right now there's a lot of money to be spent pandering to the dumb nihilistic and pseudo-intellectual wing of the political right; indeed, the same people that D'Souza has been pandering to for decades.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  And beyond that, the other reason I attribute malice to Taleb is that he is just such an asshole. D'Souza of course, he's a political hack, but I feel that Taleb could have easily made his points without so obviously willfully misconstruing what Silver actually said, and without the Trump-esque name calling. If he's so smart he should let his ideas state on their own without using the cheap "let's have a Twitter war for views" tactic, which was obviously intentional.

paultopia 8y ago

Yeah, this is the key point. I was shocked when I saw the linked twitter posts from that exchange (having not followed it at all). Just based on that snapshot my take is even more grim. Taleb surely knows how probability distributions work. The fact that he sneeringly dismissed basic reasoning like that in the political context he did suggests not cluelessness but malice. One thing we do know is that Taleb is very smart and very good at making money. And right now there's a lot of money to be spent pandering to the dumb nihilistic and pseudo-intellectual wing of the political right; indeed, the same people that D'Souza has been pandering to for decades.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
And beyond that, the other reason I attribute malice to Taleb is that he is just such an asshole. D'Souza of course, he's a political hack, but I feel that Taleb could have easily made his points without so obviously willfully misconstruing what Silver actually said, and without the Trump-esque name calling. If he's so smart he should let his ideas state on their own without using the cheap "let's have a Twitter war for views" tactic, which was obviously intentional.