Making the case for Ed Zitron as the last of the great bloggers | Hacker News Reader

Making the case for Ed Zitron as the last of the great bloggers

observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com

19 pointsbediger400015 comments

Maybe not the greatest blogger, but certainly the most wrong blogger: https://danluu.com/zitron/

Discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49526069

Being reliably wrong is indistinguishable from having superhuman predictive ability.

No, it's actually very easy to consistently make wrong predictions. You're imagining a scenario where the incorrect and correct options are symmetric in some way, such as predicting whether a stock will go up or down.

Yeah it's wrong in a specific way that probably doesn't apply here but I wanted to emphasize how impressive it is to be professionally wrong for so long.

> very easy to consistently make wrong predictions

Not really. Two cases. If one makes a prediction via some fair random means (flipping coins, tossing dice, etc) then there are consistently the same chances of being right vs wrong at every instance. And if one makes a prediction by actually studying relevant trends (like weather forecasting, etc), then over time it becomes increasingly easier to make right predictions.

The only route to being consistently wrong is through bias, whether via unfair random means or being deliberately blind to the trends. And those can't be called predictions, by definition.

1. Find a secure random number generator that outputs a number between 1 and 1000

2. Guess the next number

3. You'll be reliably wrong

Do you have "superhuman predictive ability" in this case?

Ed Zitron has a similar success rate, perhaps lower

Nate Silver hasn't look great in ages. I'd put him up against Ed.

For a long time, even when I disagreed with Ed I appreciated his earnestness and clarity of intent, but after reading that Wired profile that came out and learning that his day job involves doing PR for AI companies, I can't even take what he's saying at face value

I just read the Wired thing which I hadn't realised existed. It's interesting - gives you a new insight as to it all.

Ed Zitron's predictions have been proven hilariously wrong for years. So you can't really claim that he's uniquely insightful. If we're going to set insight aside, and look at his credentials as "the last great blogger", the qualification of:

> An individual who, with no resources or special standing or institutional support, simply goes online, does his research, and starts writing,

could apply to a huge range of bloggers, thought leaders, substackers, and straight up shitposters, many of whom get even more attention than Ed. In fact, this type of personality is much more influential and popular these days than they have ever been.

If this person like's Ed's writings, and believes that his predictions could still pan out some day, I'm not going to take that away from them. But coming up with this strange criteria of being a "last great blogger" that Ed doesn't even meet that well seems like a sleight of hand.

I've chosen to believe that the author perished in front of their keyboard as soon as they embedded the YouTube link; their body must have slumped forward at precisely the angle needed to bump their head into their mouse until the left-click button collided with a book and clicked the 'publish' button.

How else could you explain writing, like, half of an essay puffing up a fellow blogger without actually making the case for why you like him?

The quoted passage makes one of the great mistakes in analyzing an industry like this: assuming that people are stupid and that is why they make bad decisions. If you want actual insight assume that people in positions to make consequential decisions are smart and well-informed (they probably have far more information than you or I) and then ask why they still make bad decisions.

There are often other incentives at work, structural issues, etc., and sometimes the answer is that their decisions weren't actually as bad as you assumed.

I should start a blog under the name of Zid Edtron where I write with the most ridiculous pomp, taking the exact opposite stance. Maybe I’ll even get to go on TV.

He's just a niche populist.

Smugly professing prediction ability years after being categorically wrong, digging in and doubling down, it's not a good look.

He's causing a remarkable amount of harm to some very scared people.

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