Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 3:17 AM UTC

MattHeard wrote: post #104

logifail wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Two outcomes being "extremely possible" What on earth is a professional like Silver doing using the word "extremely" in that context? If I'd have written that kind of statement in school, the teacher would have crossed it out in red pen and told me to rephrase. If I toss a coin, are the outcomes "heads" and "tails" both supposed to be "extremely possible", with "landing on its edge" being merely "unlikely"? (In ca…

Both events are extreme yet possible.

Post by ThrowMeDown01 » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 6:10 AM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #163

ThrowMeDown01 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point of probabilistic modeling The whole point about the current topic as well as of my post: You missed by about a thousand miles. Please read it again. It's really pointless to argue about a strawman created by you. Your model is useless, that's the point! It makes no real (!) predictions - not usable for anything apart from blowing ever more hot air, and if it doesn't come to pass, you are never wrong…

Nate Silver analyzes their recent predictions against actual outcomes here: How FiveThirtyEight’s 2018 Midterm Forecasts Did, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-fivethirtyeights-20...

Post by vanderZwan » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 9:46 AM UTC

coryfklein wrote: post #186

zimablue wrote: post #87

To try and explain Taleb's argument as simply as possible: If someone tells you today that an event is 100% certain, and tomorrow tells you that it is impossible, then you intuitively will not trust their forecasting. If it's certain, then it's certain not to be impossible tomorrow Now if someone tells you something is a 90% chance today, and a 10% chance tomorrow, again you don't trust their predictions. There is a…

Could you use the same reasoning to discount weather predictions? September 10, 2018 - Hurricane Florence predicted to be category 4 hurricane on landfall, 80% Septemeber 12, 2018 - Hurricane Florence predicted to be category 4 hurricane on landfall, 20% September 14, 2018 - Hurricane Florence makes landfall as Category 1 hurricane (the above numbers are demonstrative, loosely based on my memory of how events actuall…

Post by darawk » Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

OscarCunningham wrote: post #101

darawk wrote: post #64

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I believe he's making a slightly more subtle point. It's not just that the forecasts are swinging too much, it's that they're swinging too much too early. Consider an option on a stock (which is the analogy Taleb is making here). If you buy a 1 year call option on AAPL and tomorrow they announce that they beat earnings by 10%, that's not a huge deal for you. If on the other hand, you owned a 1-week expiration call, i…

I think that Taleb's problem is that he thinks all the uncertainty in Silver's model comes from the fact that people might change their minds about who to vote for. This is why Taleb can't make a model that fits Silver's forecasts. Silver could only be confident early on if he knew that people weren't going to change their minds much. But if people don't change their minds much then Silver's forecast shouldn't fluctu…

Post by VintageCool » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:39 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #194

scott_s wrote: post #192

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Yup, and after that, he issued a complete mea culpa and made it a point to look at the actual data.

Yes, and he admitted to misleading with fake math: > But it’s not how it worked for those skeptical forecasts about Trump’s chance of becoming the Republican nominee. Despite the lack of a model, we put his chances in percentage terms on a number of occasions. So it would be more accurate to say that he was careful during the second half of the election, after making significant mistakes (both mathematical and ethica…