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passive_fist comments on Open Thread August 31 - September 6 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I wouldn't put it at 98%, but I definitely wouldn't put it at Nate Silver's 2%, which I think comes from an analysis that is just way too simplistic.
I would take Silver's analysis over Adams' any day. Look at their respective prediction track records.
It was because of Nate Silver's track record that I initially had high confidence in his estimate. Then as I read his justification my confidence in his estimate decreased. I think he's just being lazy in his justification, here, when he says things like:
To be fair to Silver, when he wrote the article he might not have considered Trump's campaign plausible enough to give serious thought. I suspect that if Trump continues to perform well in the polls Silver will give a more thoughtful and realistic analysis later on.
Were any of Silver's previous predictions generated by making a list of possibilities, assuming each was a coin flip, multiplying 2^N, and rounding? I get the impression that he's not exactly employing his full statistical toolkit here.
Isolated demands for rigor -- what do you think Adams is doing? (I think he's generating traffic.)
But sure, I agree, that's more of a reasonable prior than an argument. There's more info on the table now.
What Adams does is that he looks at Silver's estimate, says that it is way too low and then takes 1 minus Silver's estimate as his own estimate just to make a point. He does not attempt any statistical analysis and the 98% figure should not be taken seriously.
What Adams has said he's doing is simulating the future along the mainline prediction--i.e. nothing too weird happens--and under his model, Trump is guaranteed to win. Then he says "well, maybe something weird will happen" and drops that confidence by 2%, instead of a more reasonable 30% (or 50%).
Does Adams have a track record at predicting this sort of thing? I am not aware of any instances he's said "here is a master persuader trying to do X, they will succeed" and them having failed, but I can't remember more than one instance of him saying that and it being correct (and I don't remember the specifics), but I don't follow Adams closely enough to have a good count.
I think that Adams is raising the sort of challenge that Silver is weakest against: Trump's tactics are a "black swan" in the technical sense that no candidate in Silver's dataset has run with a similar methodology. That Silver thinks Herman Cain's campaign is the right reference class for Trump's campaign seems to me like a very strong argument for Silver not getting what's going on.
He has an excellent track record of saying outrageous things -- that's what he is optimizing for, I think.