this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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I really don’t understand the hate for Nate Silver. He’s obviously a smart guy who knows how to build a good polling model, and his models have performed quite well generally.
Sometimes he goes into pundit mode and that stuff is obviously nonsense but you just ignore it like you should all punditry. But I don’t have to agree with him politically to respect his work on election forecasting and his deep knowledge of the polling industry.
There's the whole being paid by Peter Thiel thing.
Can you elaborate? I’m not aware of this.
He was hired by Polymarket as an advisor, which is partly funded by Peter Thiel.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/polymarket-hires-nate-silver-taking-154956290.html?
Get that time machine and we'll have him fix his mistake.
Also he seems to think that the US obtaining Greenland is like, totally reasonable.
Lots of smart people are dumb outside of their area of expertise. This is important to remember.
I guess my point is this: if you’re listening to his takes on anything other than elections, polling, or sports, then that’s a you problem.
[Note: I don't have a fully-formed opinion about Nate Silver, so I'm speaking in general terms.]
People should be accountable for what they say. If you routinely spout off bullshit and people decide you're full of shit, you have nobody to blame but yourself. If people don't listen to what you have to say in your area of expertise because you've developed a general reputation for being full of shit, you also have nobody to blame but yourself.
When it comes to random C-list celebrities, I don't have the patience or inclination to figure out which of their opinions I should or should not take seriously. It's all or nothing, because I have better things to do with my time than try to figure out whether a particular statement by an untrustworthy person happens to actually be accurate. If I know enough about a topic to tell which of their statements are accurate, then I can just figure out on my own what to believe and skip the middleman.