So, if you're serious about *your* attempt to model Nate Silver, then you would find something in your experience that *means* something similar to what Nate means. And jargonal "expected value" <=> vernacular "I expect" isn't that thing.
Your last paragraph comes closer. But you chose to frame it as something you would prefer him to say, as opposed to using your own words to restate what he's actually saying. To me, I think what he's actually saying is "It's my job to collect and clean some data, often based on heuristics, then run that data through some (admittedly biased) algorithms, present the result to you, and engage in some light-handed (also biased) interpretation of that data." Then he might go on to say something like "What you infer from that output data is your own business. But don't tell me what I implied simply based on your (mistaken) inference." That's *my* rewording because it's analogous to experiences I have every single day building and running models for (often computationally incompetent) people. It has nothing to do with prediction and *everything* to do with putting computational power into the hands of people who, without me, wouldn't ordinarily have that power. Nate's a (horizontal) technologist. It's regrettable that he's being thought of as some sort of oracle. (Even if he ends up getting off on the attention.) Technologists, like scientists, struggle a LOT with packaging what they do and how their produce can be used. And *always* ... always always always, there's some non-tech person somewhere imputing things that are not there (or ignoring things that are there). It would help a lot if you "soft skilled" people would actually use your soft skills and make a real effort to understand what's being said without imputing what you want to hear. (To be clear, I'm not making accusations against you or anyone here, right now... just venting a little. ... Just this morning a fellow technologist was telling me how his executives renamed a relatively straightforward machine learning tool with some high-falutin' misleading references to "virtuality" and AI. Arg. You metaphor people make our lives so difficult.) On 4/17/20 4:08 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: > I think an obsessively metaphorical thinker is one who has the arrogance to > suppose that s/he has */some/* familiar experience by which s/he can model > any experience of another person. I actually don't believe that that is > true, but I think it is true enough that I feel it is my obligation to try. > > I am deeply suspicious of modal talk of any form because it is so often used > in human interactions to manipulate other people. "I probably will return > your tools tomorrow". My colleagues used to say, "I think the Department > should improve its teaching." So often in human affairs, modal language has > no practicial consequences whatsoever except to confuse and lull the > audience. > > Now, what most people wanted to know from Nate Silver is whether Clinton was > going to win the election. Nate constantly says that making such predictions > is, strictly speaking, not his job. As long as what happens falls within the > error of his prediction, he feels justified in having made it. He will say > things like, "actually we were right." I would prefer him to say, "Actually > we were wrong, /but I would make the same prediction under the same > circumstances the next time.” /In other words, the right procedure produced, > on this occasion, a wrong result. -- ☣ uǝlƃ .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
