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Guessing at what Teleb would say: if it rained on 2% of days, and weather forecasts are only good a week out, you'd expect a reasonable model to have the probab

Guessing at what Teleb would say: if it rained on 2% of days, and weather forecasts are only good a week out, you'd expect a reasonable model to have the probability sit around 2% until a week or so before the prediction date, then move up or down, maybe with some noise. If you saw the probability swinging from 20% down to 0.1% a month out you should be suspicious. A 90% chance in the election a long way out is suspicious if we think that the chance effects are large and roughly even-handed. Regardless of assumptions about the distribution of chance events though, multiple large swings are themselves suspicious because they each by definition imply the observation of highly improbable events.

pwinnski 6y ago
We've had Trump as President for four years, and it seems like most people have forgotten how incredibly unlikely that seemed in August or even October. Trump himself was laying the groundwork for launching a TV network until things changed quite dramatically at the end of October with Jim Comey and some other factors. Taleb seems to be arguing that 90% confidence was crazy given what eventually happened, with the benefit of hindsight, but that does seem to ignore just how crazy the idea of a Trump presidency seemed before it happened.
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  In the scope of this thread - Silver v. Taleb - there's no need to mention the layperson's memory of their internal prediction. We know that 538 had a 30% chance of a Trump victory, which is the relevant piece of information - not our perception.
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    I disagree. Taleb's key assertion seems to be that Silver should never have given Clinton a 90% chance of winning with the level of uncertainty in that race. But there were times when Trump having only a 10% of winning seemed completely justified, and I think to say otherwise at this point seems like projecting backward with hindsight.

pwinnski 6y ago

We've had Trump as President for four years, and it seems like most people have forgotten how incredibly unlikely that seemed in August or even October. Trump himself was laying the groundwork for launching a TV network until things changed quite dramatically at the end of October with Jim Comey and some other factors. Taleb seems to be arguing that 90% confidence was crazy given what eventually happened, with the benefit of hindsight, but that does seem to ignore just how crazy the idea of a Trump presidency seemed before it happened.

edmundsauto 6y ago
In the scope of this thread - Silver v. Taleb - there's no need to mention the layperson's memory of their internal prediction. We know that 538 had a 30% chance of a Trump victory, which is the relevant piece of information - not our perception.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  I disagree. Taleb's key assertion seems to be that Silver should never have given Clinton a 90% chance of winning with the level of uncertainty in that race. But there were times when Trump having only a 10% of winning seemed completely justified, and I think to say otherwise at this point seems like projecting backward with hindsight.