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Notes -
https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-i-dont-buy-538s-new-election
FiveThirtyEight versus 538
Nate Silver, public statistician, has launched a broadside against the forecasting blog he originally set up, which continues to produce modelling that indicates a incredible dead heat between Biden and Trump. What gives?
What it really comes down to is how unusual this election is turning out, and how forecasting is not keeping up with reality. On paper, Biden is secure - he's an incumbent President in an America that is peaceful and prosperous. These indicators have been long championed as the surest omens of victory. But nothing lasts forever. As Silver points out, those advantages count for less and less nowadays. And they assume that the candidates are otherwise mentally competent to run an effective campaign. If Biden still retains the faculties to run the country, he's not demonstrating them.
There of course, is a limit to models. We cannot predict exactly how Biden's incapacity might affect the election, or a horse switch to Harris, because events like this have never occurred before in modern electoral history. But it's at the point where these models now interfere with normal political judgement. Biden backers use the 538 model as a palliative, even as Biden slips further in the polls. As a result they are sleepwalking into picking a candidate who himself seems to be sleepwalking.
Nate Silver's own model does give Biden a fighting chance, especially when fundamentals are emphasized over polling. But he himself admits that the model is probably useless by this point, and that polling is a better indicator of Biden's weakness. Silver also has reason to say "I told you so" - he has beaten the Biden is too old drum for years now, and gotten plenty of flak from his own team over it.
As usual, The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does.
Thinking the purpose of 538 is to forecast elections is like thinking the purpose of slot machines is to give out prizes.
538 exists to sell ads, and to sell ads you need engagement. Tell people (in this case Blue Tribe midwits) that their team is going to win, with sufficient math numbers to bypass their critical thinking abilities into Believe the Science territories, and they'll peck away like starving chickens. Every refresh is a little dopamine hit for them. Their brain might want the truth, but their brain stem wants to feel good.
This isn't an indictment of the Blue Tribe or 538. If 538 decided to tell the truth as it is, the Blue Tribe midwits would migrate to 537.99999, a new site that gives them their fix, and 538 would go broke. Us mottizens want the truth, but we're all also using adblockers, so the algorithm routes around us. We're not the ones paying three figures for slave labor Chinesium vegan shoes.
The internet is a horror show - clickbait, rage bait, gold Trump coins, donate NOW to EMPATHIZE with WOMEN OF COLOR, influencers REACT to THIS clickbait YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! The stupid are too poor to be worth exploiting, the smart are cost too much to exploit, but everyone in the middle is pulling the handle on their handheld slot machine as fast as their thumbs can move..
That's fundamentally what the algorithmic internet is - an omnipresent distributed casino metastasizing into the brain stem of every midwit, sucking out every dollar of surplus value from anyone that's conscientious and agreeable enough to produce anything above their survival needs.
It's amazing watching the real time decline of an heuristic catchphrase.
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