You could always try listening to people. (re: Nate Silver and climate change denial)

[cthulu2016]

There is some shock that Nate Silver would hire one of the more notorious climate-change deniers to write about climate.

Nate Silver said ages ago—when charged with supporting Obama because he predicted Obama would win—that he isn't a Democrat and is pretty much a libertarian.

Folks blew right past that, for some reason.

I have only minor interest in what Silver has to say or promote about economics or science involving questions so complex that they are bound to be affected by the subjective framing of starting assumptions and weighting of evidence.

But he's fine on simple matters of prediction. (An analog: He'd be a fine weather man, but that doesn't make one a climate expert. We can all agree on how to parse a prediction of 3" of snow Tuesday... does it snow on Tuesday, and how much?)

Who wins an election is a distinct binary datum... like who wins a super bowl. So I have no problem with his work on elections and sporting events. They are such simple, well-defined events that simply trying to be objective about elections and politics is enough to be pretty objective in practice.

An Aside: And I find the folks who assume that people predicting election outcome X must be hoping for election outcome X to be revealing that their own head is too stuffed with nonsense to think about much of anything. Why not extend the thought to say that people who predict the climate is changing must want the climate to change. Ahhhh.... see? Nate Silver is currently giving Republicans the edge in 2014 because they kind of obviously have the edge in 2014 based on everything quantifiable we know today. And he predicted Obama would win because Obama was gonna win.

And guess what? I also do not slavishly follow Paul Krugman's music recommendations and I don't like his sense of humor, while I grant him more weight on economic matters than any other individual commenter.

There are no gurus.

Silver is probably what I'd call a "Penn Gillette" libertarian. It's a type. I agree with Penn Gillette about some things and disagree about other things... but mostly I like him as a magician and juggler. And enjoying his entertaining juggling does not oblige me to favor everything he might ever say... or even to hate him when he says stuff I find wrong-headed. Because he's a fricking juggler. And Bill Maher is a comedian.

And Nate Silver predicts who will win narrowly defined contests, based on statistical analysis of narrowly defined contests.

And expertise is expertise. No more, no less.

If anyone wants a hero, read a comic book.

[cthulu2016]

1. .

[el_bryanto]

2. Worth thinking about - that said I think responding to this

with let's rededicate ourselves to defeating REpublicanoids is an appropriate response
Bryant

[cthulu2016]

3. Yes, it is ALWAYS correct to seek the best outcome.

GOTV is never wrong.

And defeatism and optimistic complacency are both ways to have lower turnout.