Comment by PeterisP | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PeterisP | Hacker News Reader

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If asked about the outcome of some uncertain future event (say, an election or some sports game), saying "team A has a 20% chance of winning" is making a prediction.

Making a decision/declaration in such a case where the outcome isn't (yet) certain does not mean "being held accountable", it means that you're either stupid, or a liar, or a stupid liar. If you want to call the results of a game before it's certain, then you shouldn't say a damn thing, because anything you say is a lie if you're falsely implying that the result is certain.

If reality is uncertain, then any certain statements/predictions are by definition wrong. Some predictions have more certainty than others, you can stake things on such predictions (sports betting is a great example - if you think that there's a 20% chance of winning but others think that it's 10% or 30%, then there's an opportunity), but it's ridiculous to require certainty where certainty shouldn't be expected.

This is not what the disagreement is about. It’s got nothing to do with uncertainty in the predictions and the debate is not about saying for certain what is going to happen. We know that distributions have means and variances so one can’t say what WILL happen. The point taleb is making is that Nate presents likelihoods and then throws his hands up and says whoa there I’m not saying what is going to happen just look at these likelihoods and draw your own conclusions. When the public naively looks at them and it looks as if it was right he gets praise for being a predictive genius and when the less likely outcome occurs he covers his arse with “well it was part of the 10% chance so I’m still right”. one is approaching stats from a real world perspective of there being consequences for actions and the other wants the praise that comes with being seen as a predictive so and so but never be accountable for his predictions. Put it another way: Nate’s “predictions” are only worth how much money/reputation he stakes on them. So far that’s zero by his own admission

I think this is a mischaracterization of Nate's own words. He certainly stakes his own reputation on the accuracy of his forecast. They spend a lot of time looking back and seeing how accurate the model was for the election as a whole.

There are two kinds of things Nate is saying here, and they are related but distinct:

1. Educating readers/listeners about how 20% chances happen all the time 2. Internal analysis and external reporting of how often his 20% predictions were right. If 538 predicts a group of 100 congressmen to all have a 20% chance of being elected and then 21 do get elected, the model did well and Nate's work is worth money to ABC and his reputation is improved (or maintained). If instead 33 of those congressmen get elected, the opposite result happens.

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