AABoyles comments on The "best" mathematically-informed topics? - Less Wrong Discussion
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The point is that elected officials are the experts at politics. If they have no use for knowing the math, then the math is not central.
So you're criticizing Capla's interest in models of electoral dynamics because politicians don't do it. That misses the point: electoral dynamics are mathematically explicable. They don't cause electoral outcomes, so an in-depth understanding of them is of limited value to candidates themselves. But trusting the explanations of the politicians as to why they won an election is a genuinely terrible approach to understanding anything but the politician's own beliefs.