Your argument doesn't hold water at all. Today's blurb in the forecast page - "First, the forecast is now totally polls-based; that is, any advantage our foreca

Your argument doesn't hold water at all. Today's blurb in the forecast page - "First, the forecast is now totally polls-based; that is, any advantage our forecast gave Trump for the economy or for being an incumbent is no longer factored in. Second, the uncertainty around how much the polls will change between today and Election Day is also no longer an issue." - that means Nate Silver is explicitly saying his forecast is always trying to predict what is going to happen on November 3. Heres an alternative hypothesis that involves no fancy math just anthropology - Taleb is right that the stats don't make sense, but Nate is also not an idiot - it's just in his financial best interests to make a website that can throw out confidence inducing pseudonumbers that will make people like us visit it every few hours for months at a time every two years. Perhaps he knows perfectly well the farce he's pulling (at least at a fundamental level though he might have convinced himself otherwise as academics always do) but just plays the game to make sure he's relevant. And thus, we are all the idiots.