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As 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.
I don’t think their disagreement has much to do with science or mathematics. I think the two guys have big online followings, each leaning heavily toward two different political ideologies, and the two leaders just have to try to beat each other up on a Twitter to decide which side is better.
The 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/reduci…
Shouldn't a guy like Taleb be able to propose a bet with Silver that demonstrates he (Taleb) is right?
Btw, I read 3 of Taleb's books, 1 from Nate Silver. Both are pretty good. Taleb is the more original, but also more often-objectionable.
I listen to the 538 podcast every episode, and I think I agree with cm2012 that this is a case of mixing up the "nowcast" with the actual forecast.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…