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I've always treated 538's forecasts as meaning nothing more or less than "We have a model, we fed the current data into it and ran N simulations of the event, a

I've always treated 538's forecasts as meaning nothing more or less than "We have a model, we fed the current data into it and ran N simulations of the event, and in X% of those simulations, this was the result". Which, as I understand it, is literally how they're generated. Any discussion of the accuracy of the model (which should be the only thing that admits debate) has to be retrospective. Just saying "well the forecasts changed" doesn't inherently discredit the model, especially because things like elections turn out to be highly sensitive to tiny variations (even something as simple as a rainy election day in a few key precincts can completely flip an outcome).

zellyn 8y ago
I came here to post this exact comment — except less eloquently. Hi, ubernostrum! :-)
huffmsa 8y ago
Yes but that's not how the proles understand the blog. They take it as "x has a y % chance of happening". Which is Taleb's beef with it. The commoner thinks its Silver putting his money on something, but when it doesn't happen he says "well I didn't say _that_". And it in the day and age of more robust machine learning models, that the 538 models are so volatile is a pretty weak excuse.
- mercutio2 8y ago
  Humans are volatile. Politics even more so. Our options aren’t “high confidence converging predictions, or 538”. The options in the current era for understanding of the electorate’s mood are “overly confident individual polls, poorly analyzed with completely inadequate models”, vs “538-style epistemically humble models accompanied by discussions of their confidence, which can be scored in aggregate after each election”. I’ll take 538 any day.
  - huffmsa 8y ago
    But it's not about you. Just being on this forum puts you in the critical thinking 1%. 538 fails in that most people think that the daily stats are Silver's betting positions. He "predicted the 2008 election." We understand the difference, but the crying campaign staffers last November did not.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > We understand the difference, but the crying campaign staffers last November did not. Campaigns aren't relying on Silver’s model.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > The options in the current era for understanding of the electorate’s mood are “overly confident individual polls, poorly analyzed with completely inadequate models”, vs “538-style epistemically humble models accompanied by discussions of their confidence, which can be scored in aggregate after each election”. Also, “politically motivated actors selling narratives that reinforce their preferred outcome largely without data or with cherry-picked data.” Don't forget that option
rue 8y ago
I think that goes to say that probability isn't really useful to most people when we're talking about elections.

zellyn 8y ago

I came here to post this exact comment — except less eloquently. Hi, ubernostrum! :-)

huffmsa 8y ago

Yes but that's not how the proles understand the blog. They take it as "x has a y % chance of happening". Which is Taleb's beef with it. The commoner thinks its Silver putting his money on something, but when it doesn't happen he says "well I didn't say _that_". And it in the day and age of more robust machine learning models, that the 538 models are so volatile is a pretty weak excuse.

mercutio2 8y ago
Humans are volatile. Politics even more so. Our options aren’t “high confidence converging predictions, or 538”. The options in the current era for understanding of the electorate’s mood are “overly confident individual polls, poorly analyzed with completely inadequate models”, vs “538-style epistemically humble models accompanied by discussions of their confidence, which can be scored in aggregate after each election”. I’ll take 538 any day.
- huffmsa 8y ago
  But it's not about you. Just being on this forum puts you in the critical thinking 1%. 538 fails in that most people think that the daily stats are Silver's betting positions. He "predicted the 2008 election." We understand the difference, but the crying campaign staffers last November did not.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > We understand the difference, but the crying campaign staffers last November did not. Campaigns aren't relying on Silver’s model.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > The options in the current era for understanding of the electorate’s mood are “overly confident individual polls, poorly analyzed with completely inadequate models”, vs “538-style epistemically humble models accompanied by discussions of their confidence, which can be scored in aggregate after each election”. Also, “politically motivated actors selling narratives that reinforce their preferred outcome largely without data or with cherry-picked data.” Don't forget that option

rue 8y ago

I think that goes to say that probability isn't really useful to most people when we're talking about elections.