10 ms·

There is a strange cast of right-once hangers-on from a decade ago like burry that people love to quote in headlines. Nate silver is another example. Why are t

There is a strange cast of right-once hangers-on from a decade ago like burry that people love to quote in headlines. Nate silver is another example. Why are these people so interesting to bloggers/journalists?

RC_ITR 4y ago
It's cover for the increasing editorialization of 'news.' Reporter wants to say something about 'I bet WFH will have negative impacts on white collar workers." Their options are: 1) Do data-driven research and come up with a dry, sort-of-compelling article about recent data releases that doesn't get traction 2) Use a 'famous for being right in a big way' celebrity to 'launder' their idea.
rchaud 4y ago
We may live in an irreligious society, but humanity's innate desire to anoint prophets to warn us of a coming reckoning continues unabated.
pohl 4y ago
Not a Nate Silver fan, here, but I don't think the "right once" sentiment about him captures his record accurately. What really happened is that millions of people who have an underdeveloped understanding of what it means for a lower-probability event to happen in a single trial are telling on themselves whenever they refer to him as having been "wrong". I mean, if you play only one round of russian roulette — but you lose — it's not really a surprise, is it. There are only six chambers.
- bena 4y ago
  Yeah, Silver simply tells us the odds. Someone did the analysis on it at one point and 538 was "right" at about the rate of their percentages. i.e. For all the times they called an event 65%, it happened about 65% of the time. So they weren't "wrong" the other 35% of the time, it's just those are the times the 35% chance bore out. People have a habit of assuming "is likely" is the same as "guaranteed". Or that that's what the caller believe will happen. And then using the event once passed to discredit the initial analysis.
  - mabbo 4y ago
    This is exactly why the 2016 election was interesting. Silver called it about 33% chance Trump would win. And then he did, and people said "AHA! You were WRONG!" But he gave Trump a higher probability of winning than just about anyone, other than Trump himself. One of Silver's detractors, Sam Wang, even said it was so impossible Trump would win that he'd eat a bug if he got more than 240 electoral votes. (he chose a gourmet cricket https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/sam-wang-poll-expert-eats-bug-231278 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/sam-wang-poll-expert-...)
    - greesil 4y ago
      Nate and team do modeling well. Fat tails, correlated populations, and they deal with the crap datasets they get from pollsters. I always tune into his podcast when an election rolls around.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      > This is exactly why the 2016 election was interesting. Silver called it about 33% chance Trump would win. And then he did, and people said "AHA! You were WRONG!" What was funny about that one was he also got a bunch of "LOL no way you lunatic, he can't possibly have that large a chance and no-one else is saying so, so you're dumb, or maybe you're secretly a pro-Trump shill". Caught it going both ways.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    That “someone” includes 538 themselves. They’re very transparent about their track record and methodology.
  - refurb 4y ago
    That logic means you can never prove them wrong (or judge accuracy) unless they give a 100% probability to an outcome which they never would. Sounds kinda useless? I mean, if they said the probabilities were 99 to 1 or 1 to 99, regardless the outcome they can say “well, we never said it couldnt happen”
    - 4y ago
mbesto 4y ago
Simple - they get clicks. Pop culture knows the movie 'Big Short', but they probably have never heard of a Nobel prized economist.
- dominotw 4y ago
  > but they probably have never heard of a Nobel prized economist. I think paul krugman is an pop culture figure too.
  - atdrummond 4y ago
    Probably for all the wrong reasons. He was pretty widely mocked at LSE when I attended there a decade ago and that’s an institution I’d expect him to still be well regarded at. He traded his academic bonafides years ago.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  Milton Friedman had a television show on PBS in the 1980s. It's not as though economists don't sell well on television.
  - Gibbon1 4y ago
    Paul Krugman writes a column in the New York Times.
    - anm89 4y ago
      Paul Krugman is under qualified to write about economics for a hishschool newspaper.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rchaud 4y ago
    That was the 1980s and it was PBS, one of the biggest of the few major channels on American airwaves. It wouldn't work today because economists cannot boil down complex ideas into 15 second videos.
weeksie 4y ago
Generally I agree with you, but Nate Silver has yet to perform poorly.
grey-area 4y ago
How about right 4 times, is that enough for you? https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/grantham-this-is-a-bubble-this-is-serious https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/grantham-this-is-a-bub...
- ac29 4y ago
  Grantham is a notorious perma-bear, and given that article was posted right before a 20% rise in the market, I'm inclined to say that's another wrong call for him.
chasd00 4y ago
people know the names (or movie name in this case) and clicking on a familiar name is probably more likely than a name no one has ever ever heard about.
- cmsj 4y ago
  there's also something inherently compelling about the outsider who gets something more right than the experts.
Sakos 4y ago
I don't really understand why people are so obsessed with Nate Silver (particularly negatively). I listen to the 538 podcast and I'm interested in what he has to say about polling (and the discussions are always interesting, even if I don't always agree with them), but that's about it. I also listen to dozens of other podcasts where they talk about other things they know a lot about. It's also not like Nate is the word of god on polling. He's just another source of information. You can take or leave it. It doesn't matter. But why complain about him?
mrwww 4y ago
There was a movie etc, and people know his name, and how hw knew about the crash, when nobody else did. So it attracts clicks because people want to know this time. Bloggers/journalists are interested in clicks.
arbuge 4y ago
Burry was actually just right again, and in a major way. He predicted the market would crash this year, and liquidated most of his portfolio in the first half of the year to get out of harm's way. Most of the rest of us are now nursing massive losses. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/big-short-michael-burry-scion-q2-stock-portfolio-market-crash-2022-8 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/big-short-mi...
- radicaldreamer 4y ago
  He deletes the takes and tweets where he's obviously wrong.
  - arbuge 4y ago
    Actuslly he deletes all his takes and tweets.
- lossolo 4y ago
  If you are in finance/hedge funds you would need to be blind to not know that based on all the indicators around the world in the first quarter of 2022 - inflation, war, energy prices, lockdowns in China, data about trade and maritime transport etc. I also liquidated most of my stock positions based on that data and I'm not in finance.
theknocker 4y ago
trenning 4y ago
Does Nassim Nicholas Taleb qualify under this umbrella? I don’t see talked about as much these days, curious what the sentiment is on him now? (I really enjoyed his books)
timmaxw 4y ago
I don't know about Burry, but Nate Silver has been right more than just once! https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/checking-our-work/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/checking-our-work/ is a statistical analysis of 538's track record in forecasting elections going back to 2008. The analysis shows that 538's predictions are generally pretty well-calibrated, in the sense that e.g. if there were 100 races where 538 predicted "Democrats have a 70% chance of winning this race", then the Democrats did actually win about 70/100 of those races.
- encoderer 4y ago
  I do agree with you, but if 2008 primary hadn’t happened I don’t think anything he’s done since is notable enough that we’d know who he is. Just a guess though of course.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

RC_ITR 4y ago

It's cover for the increasing editorialization of 'news.' Reporter wants to say something about 'I bet WFH will have negative impacts on white collar workers." Their options are: 1) Do data-driven research and come up with a dry, sort-of-compelling article about recent data releases that doesn't get traction 2) Use a 'famous for being right in a big way' celebrity to 'launder' their idea.

rchaud 4y ago

We may live in an irreligious society, but humanity's innate desire to anoint prophets to warn us of a coming reckoning continues unabated.

pohl 4y ago

Not a Nate Silver fan, here, but I don't think the "right once" sentiment about him captures his record accurately. What really happened is that millions of people who have an underdeveloped understanding of what it means for a lower-probability event to happen in a single trial are telling on themselves whenever they refer to him as having been "wrong". I mean, if you play only one round of russian roulette — but you lose — it's not really a surprise, is it. There are only six chambers.

bena 4y ago
Yeah, Silver simply tells us the odds. Someone did the analysis on it at one point and 538 was "right" at about the rate of their percentages. i.e. For all the times they called an event 65%, it happened about 65% of the time. So they weren't "wrong" the other 35% of the time, it's just those are the times the 35% chance bore out. People have a habit of assuming "is likely" is the same as "guaranteed". Or that that's what the caller believe will happen. And then using the event once passed to discredit the initial analysis.
- mabbo 4y ago
  This is exactly why the 2016 election was interesting. Silver called it about 33% chance Trump would win. And then he did, and people said "AHA! You were WRONG!" But he gave Trump a higher probability of winning than just about anyone, other than Trump himself. One of Silver's detractors, Sam Wang, even said it was so impossible Trump would win that he'd eat a bug if he got more than 240 electoral votes. (he chose a gourmet cricket https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/sam-wang-poll-expert-eats-bug-231278 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/sam-wang-poll-expert-...)
  - greesil 4y ago
    Nate and team do modeling well. Fat tails, correlated populations, and they deal with the crap datasets they get from pollsters. I always tune into his podcast when an election rolls around.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    > This is exactly why the 2016 election was interesting. Silver called it about 33% chance Trump would win. And then he did, and people said "AHA! You were WRONG!" What was funny about that one was he also got a bunch of "LOL no way you lunatic, he can't possibly have that large a chance and no-one else is saying so, so you're dumb, or maybe you're secretly a pro-Trump shill". Caught it going both ways.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  That “someone” includes 538 themselves. They’re very transparent about their track record and methodology.
- refurb 4y ago
  That logic means you can never prove them wrong (or judge accuracy) unless they give a 100% probability to an outcome which they never would. Sounds kinda useless? I mean, if they said the probabilities were 99 to 1 or 1 to 99, regardless the outcome they can say “well, we never said it couldnt happen”
  - 4y ago

mbesto 4y ago

Simple - they get clicks. Pop culture knows the movie 'Big Short', but they probably have never heard of a Nobel prized economist.

dominotw 4y ago
> but they probably have never heard of a Nobel prized economist. I think paul krugman is an pop culture figure too.
- atdrummond 4y ago
  Probably for all the wrong reasons. He was pretty widely mocked at LSE when I attended there a decade ago and that’s an institution I’d expect him to still be well regarded at. He traded his academic bonafides years ago.
Dracophoenix 4y ago
Milton Friedman had a television show on PBS in the 1980s. It's not as though economists don't sell well on television.
- Gibbon1 4y ago
  Paul Krugman writes a column in the New York Times.
  - anm89 4y ago
    Paul Krugman is under qualified to write about economics for a hishschool newspaper.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rchaud 4y ago
  That was the 1980s and it was PBS, one of the biggest of the few major channels on American airwaves. It wouldn't work today because economists cannot boil down complex ideas into 15 second videos.

weeksie 4y ago

Generally I agree with you, but Nate Silver has yet to perform poorly.

grey-area 4y ago

How about right 4 times, is that enough for you? https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/grantham-this-is-a-bubble-this-is-serious https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/grantham-this-is-a-bub...

ac29 4y ago
Grantham is a notorious perma-bear, and given that article was posted right before a 20% rise in the market, I'm inclined to say that's another wrong call for him.

chasd00 4y ago

people know the names (or movie name in this case) and clicking on a familiar name is probably more likely than a name no one has ever ever heard about.

cmsj 4y ago
there's also something inherently compelling about the outsider who gets something more right than the experts.

Sakos 4y ago

I don't really understand why people are so obsessed with Nate Silver (particularly negatively). I listen to the 538 podcast and I'm interested in what he has to say about polling (and the discussions are always interesting, even if I don't always agree with them), but that's about it. I also listen to dozens of other podcasts where they talk about other things they know a lot about. It's also not like Nate is the word of god on polling. He's just another source of information. You can take or leave it. It doesn't matter. But why complain about him?

mrwww 4y ago

There was a movie etc, and people know his name, and how hw knew about the crash, when nobody else did. So it attracts clicks because people want to know this time. Bloggers/journalists are interested in clicks.

arbuge 4y ago

Burry was actually just right again, and in a major way. He predicted the market would crash this year, and liquidated most of his portfolio in the first half of the year to get out of harm's way. Most of the rest of us are now nursing massive losses. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/big-short-michael-burry-scion-q2-stock-portfolio-market-crash-2022-8 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/big-short-mi...

radicaldreamer 4y ago
He deletes the takes and tweets where he's obviously wrong.
- arbuge 4y ago
  Actuslly he deletes all his takes and tweets.
lossolo 4y ago
If you are in finance/hedge funds you would need to be blind to not know that based on all the indicators around the world in the first quarter of 2022 - inflation, war, energy prices, lockdowns in China, data about trade and maritime transport etc. I also liquidated most of my stock positions based on that data and I'm not in finance.

theknocker 4y ago

trenning 4y ago

Does Nassim Nicholas Taleb qualify under this umbrella? I don’t see talked about as much these days, curious what the sentiment is on him now? (I really enjoyed his books)

timmaxw 4y ago

I don't know about Burry, but Nate Silver has been right more than just once! https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/checking-our-work/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/checking-our-work/ is a statistical analysis of 538's track record in forecasting elections going back to 2008. The analysis shows that 538's predictions are generally pretty well-calibrated, in the sense that e.g. if there were 100 races where 538 predicted "Democrats have a 70% chance of winning this race", then the Democrats did actually win about 70/100 of those races.

encoderer 4y ago
I do agree with you, but if 2008 primary hadn’t happened I don’t think anything he’s done since is notable enough that we’d know who he is. Just a guess though of course.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]