This is going to be a long one, even by my standards. (I started it last year and finished it this year.) It’s focused on the relentless advances of the Cult of Prediction on every front. Even when it “loses,” it swallows more media time and attention and eyeballs and…
Category: Polls
SCA 8: Thanks to Dr. J. Bradford DeLong…
CROSSPOST: Patrick Marren on Nate Silver: One & a Half Cheers, Perhaps? Nate Silver’s poll-aggregation work remains very valuable, even though we are trapped by the cult of prediction: polls paralyzing politics by not predicting the future but simply chaining us to uncertainty… Yet one more intelligent word on Nate…
Forecasting
SCA 7: A Steelman Defense of Nate Silver
A lot of what I have said in the past few weeks may give you the idea that I think Nate Silver is a fraud, or at best a non-serious person. Neither of those things is true. I recently have had, let us say, some of my fellow-traveling partisans tell…
Forecasting
SCA 6: Review of Nate Silver’s On the Edge on the Futures Strategy Group Blog
For a more general treatment of On the Edge, go here: https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/nate-silver-on-the-edge/
Algorithms
SCA 5: The Wrecks of the Bayesian
A couple of weeks ago, in a terrible accident, the Bayesian, an imposing 184-foot-long sailing yacht topped by a 237-foot mast (one of the tallest in the world), sank, as the result of a sudden and violent storm off the coast of Sicily. The Bayesian was owned by “the Bill…
Algorithms
SCA 3: “The Bold” vs. Wayne Newton Fans
I begin today expanding upon my previous analysis of Nate Silver’s distinction between “Riverians” and “Village People.” Silver says that River People possess the following two “clusters of attributes”[1]: COGNITIVE CLUSTER PERSONALITY CLUSTER Analytical Competitive Abstract Critical Decoupling Independent-minded (contrarian) Risk-tolerant “Analytical” – Nate says this is “to resolve something complex…
Artificial Intelligence
This Was Predictable…
A new book is out by the journalist Tom Chivers, author of The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy and How to Read Numbers. The Wall Street Journal likes it. Kirkus Reviews calls it “An ingenious introduction to the mathematics of rational thinking.” Oliver Burkeman wrote, “Life is shot through with uncertainty, but in this fascinating,…
Forecasting
The Economist Succumbs to the Cult of Prediction…Again
The Economist’s annual preview of the coming year once again includes predictions. And that is a problem. To show you why it was a problem for 2023, let me share some slides I presented recently to the Intelligence Leadership Forum. The tl;dr version: Things that can be predicted with certainty are almost never strategic;…
Forecasting
Horserace Episode 3.5: Pundit Whiplash/Pigheadedness Edition
November 9, 2023Yesterday, Democrats nearly swept the table in an off-year election, easily passing a referendum in red-state Ohio enshrining the right to abortion, easily re-electing a Democratic governor in Kentucky, and sweeping into the majority in both houses of the Virginia legislature. None of these things were predictable; all…