Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
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Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
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Re: Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
#2If 538 is trying to do aleatory probabilities, then it is kinda like a broken clock - right sometimes, but as a tool for answers about future events of any complexity (i.e. the real world, where actions have consequences, and errors can be grave..), I'd avoid putting one's confidence in something that claims it has a simple/'linear' relationship to the real future.
It is also a cop out to claim "everybody who thinks probabilities based on initial poll responses are not representative of eventual votes" must clearly not understand probability. Maybe I am straw-manning or just don't understand the actual disagreement.
As a poll aggregator? I'm sure it's probably a fabulous tool for past, historical, observed data. The brand itself, probably even more valuable, as a symbol with some sort of social authority in certain circles, I guess.
Anybody who reads my comment history will see I have obviously become a Taleb stan, but his approach seems right to me: "show me the money". Which in his case means mathematical papers of proofs primarily, actual money, second.
Re: Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
#3He should not have accepted the honor if he didn’t call a winner in any of the states!
And he didn't, as far as I recall. I remember him saying something to the effect of "that isn't that impressive, even a simple method looking at polls would have gotten nearly all the states correct". Don't confuse what other people focus on for something he is boasting about.
Re: Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
#4If 538 is trying to do aleatory probabilities, then it is kinda like a broken clock - right sometimes, but as a tool for answers about future events of any complexity (i.e. the real world, where actions have consequences, and errors can be grave..), I'd avoid putting one's confidence in something that claims it has a simple/'linear' relationship to the real future. It is also a cop out to claim "everybody who thinks…
I mean obviously its hard to make predictions of complex things as the data from every angle is difficult to get and sometimes incorrect. I used to love Taleb but he is more of a broken cloc, many say if he stopped writing after black swan he would have gone down as great but some of his other points and politics have undermined him.
I think Silver is actually pretty legit. He was over-hyped, then he was largely panned as a chrlatan but through and through he has been pretty consistent. The Obama elections he rose to prominance but he also did well in the most recent election. The absolute only news outlet saying that Trump had a statistical chance of winning. He hovered around 20-33% at peak while Huffington post told him he was an idiot. Many major outlets didn’t personally attack him obviously but had Trump in low single digits throughout the last weeks
Re: Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
#5As a non-specialist, I like how the discussion boils down the picture at the end: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*D_tidaT-fHMY3DRLg... in that it is something I can understand.
Re: Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
#6If 538 is trying to do aleatory probabilities, then it is kinda like a broken clock - right sometimes, but as a tool for answers about future events of any complexity (i.e. the real world, where actions have consequences, and errors can be grave..), I'd avoid putting one's confidence in something that claims it has a simple/'linear' relationship to the real future. It is also a cop out to claim "everybody who thinks…
I mean obviously its hard to make predictions of complex things as the data from every angle is difficult to get and sometimes incorrect. I used to love Taleb but he is more of a broken cloc, many say if he stopped writing after black swan he would have gone down as great but some of his other points and politics have undermined him. I think Silver is actually pretty legit. He was over-hyped, then he was largely pann…
Taleb actually makes a great point here and published a pretty cool paper about it. The point is that if a probability of the event changes too much, you can arbitrage it. E.g. assume these are payoff odds and you can sell your position before the event. He then found some nice no-arbitrage conditions that "real" probabilities must meet and showed that Nate's predictive timeline allowed arbitrage. Unfortunately Nate never responded to this claim with anything other than "math is hard" and other nonsense.
You can read the paper here:
Re: Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
#7The difference between epistemic and aleatory uncertainty is not well understood even in the machine learning world. Most applications of machine learning to domains where uncertainty needs to be quantified use aleatory uncertainty, when epistemic uncertainty is the right one. I wish we had better ways to explain these concepts, and perhaps better terms too. Alternatives like intrinsic/extrinsic or irreducible/reducible don't really work either, because they make it seem like it's a dichotomy.
Re: Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
#8If 538 is trying to do aleatory probabilities, then it is kinda like a broken clock - right sometimes, but as a tool for answers about future events of any complexity (i.e. the real world, where actions have consequences, and errors can be grave..), I'd avoid putting one's confidence in something that claims it has a simple/'linear' relationship to the real future. It is also a cop out to claim "everybody who thinks…
Taleb is just mixing up the nowcast and the forecast, even after being corrected many times.
Re: Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
#9As a non-specialist, I like how the discussion boils down the picture at the end: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*D_tidaT-fHMY3DRLg... in that it is something I can understand.
Shows the brilliance of a true data scientist/statistician, condensing all the info in one graphic so that a layman can understand.
Re: Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
#10It's not clear to me what the author is getting at. 538 is good at aggregating polls and showing some probability. The author complains that's not enough because a non zero probability of the less probable outcome gives 538 too much cover when the less probable outcome occurs.
Isn't that a shared characteristic of any other model dealing with probabilities?
Is the author trying to say Nate Silver gets too much spotlight considering he doesn't guarantee outcomes?
I didn't sell in 2008 and kept buying. I have the same strategy today. Not sure if that also makes me a guru if that's the bar (as the author applies it to Taleb).
Disclaimer: not a mathematician