There are several problems with both of them. (1) Most of Nassim Taleb’s math is more branding and showing off than actual science or statistics. It has been s

There are several problems with both of them. (1) Most of Nassim Taleb’s math is more branding and showing off than actual science or statistics. It has been stated by people who are far smarter than Taleb that “if you can’t state it simply then you don’t understand it.” If Richard Feynman can explain physics in a relatable way, then taleb can talk about statistics in the same. He doesn’t because explaining is not his objective, personal branding is. Taleb uses obscure, nonsensical math to show off and brow beat opponents. In my experience, working with people who are actually smart, this is not what very educated and intelligent people do. The general public may fall for pictures of pages of obscure nonsensical calculations depicting god knows what, all I see is fraudulent personal marketing. I say this having worked for and known CEOs who use the same tricks to lie to investors. It’s bullshit. (2) Nate Silver runs a media opinion network. I followed his work and early on they did very rigorous analysis and had great and accurate visualizations which did seem to accurate predict results. For whatever reason, I saw five thirty eight evolve into a bunch of media talking points and opinion mongering. The coverage on five thirty eight for the 2016 election resembled strongly that of standard news networks. Why? Because if you want to make money on advertising you need to completely fill the airwaves with as much content as possible and opinion content is the cheapest and easiest to produce. My opinion is that Nate slipped. His data analysis got distracted by running a media business, which focuses on advertising revenue and being likable by target demographics. Frankly I don’t trust either of them. I also side more strongly with Taleb - predicting outcomes with random hidden variables is an exercise in chicanery. No one wants to hear that the universe is random and that predicting it is impossible for long stretches of time. Look at the comments here, 90% of people (probably programmers) think that if they can just find the right equations then predicting the future is possible. Nope.