Nate Silver

Posted it themselves Jul 31

“Timing lines up remarkably well with gas prices and the resumption of hostilities in Iran.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 2

“Todd can blame higher ed for being under "attack" all he wants, but perceptions of higher ed have tanked among Republicans, independents *and* Democrats, albeit from different starting points. Only 50% of Democrats have confidence in higher ed now!”

on declining confidence in higher education across parties

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 4

“This is an interesting admission from Claude, and it's consistent with my experience with it. It gets more stubborn and attached as the context window gets longer. Kind of like people as they age, arguably.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 2

“Another question I'd have about the AI math breakthroughs is how they compare to the results you would have gotten if you'd budgeted the same amount of resources on human mathematicians and created incentives for them to go super hard on proofs.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 2

“There aren't all that many working mathematicians, and most of them are academics with teaching responsibilities. So it's possible that the labs represent a fairly high share of the aggregate amount of capital directed toward mathematical proofs in recent years.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 2

“The AI math proofs are impressive. But also probably among the hardest things for normies to appreciate. Personally, I think the AI labs underweight the value of putting bandwidth into achieving results that impress normies as opposed to evals/people within the peer group.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 29

“In the midst of my 3rd big coding/model project since March. I just can't emphasize enough how much a) AI tools are very helpful to someone (me, I suppose) with relevant domain knowledge, but b) would likely produce extremely buggy models without a human expert in the loop.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 26

“I don't think we have good ways to distinguish "AI discovers things" from "humans discover things, with help from expertly directed use of powerful software," but I think there's probably a bias toward classifying things that are really in category #2 as being in category #1.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 26

“To me, one of the best parts of AI programming is routinizing tedious parts of the job and overcoming small hurdles in my technical knowledge, freeing up time for creative, value-added work and hypothesis testing. So maybe that can increase the rate of human-inspired discovery.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 26

“But I still think there's a disconnect between claims of imminent AGI, and the comparatively few truly creative breakthroughs by *non-experts* using AI, especially given the huge amount of resources directed toward these sorts of problems.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 24

“Just a very consistent Claude thing where it will extremely confidently blame user error when there's a bug it introduced. Thought it might be an Opus thing but it's happening with Fable too.”

on Claude, Opus, and Fable models blaming user error for introduced bugs

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 24

“I guess this example is boring, but in this case, it's failing to flag various Senate races that occurred in off-cycles (e.g. Alabama 2017) and which require special handling. It's "almost [certain]" they're not in the input files when they are! This kind of thing happens A LOT.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 24

“This is not even remotely complex code. These tools are still very net helpful. But it's hard for me to believe we're on the brink of some self-reinforcing AGI improvement loop when they completely lack any sort of roughly Bayesian inner worldview for self-diagnosing problems.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 5

“Right, if he wins by any margin, it's still very impressive in an objective, non-expectations-adjusted sense. It was also stupid AF for him to release a bunch of internals showing himself +13 or whatever.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 5

“If I were a campaign manager, not only would I never release internal polls, I'd also set a clear expectation that my campaign would never discuss polls, on or off the record. Voters couldn't give a shit, and the expectations management stuff often comes back to bite you.”

on why campaigns should avoid releasing or discussing internal polls

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 5

“A lot of the pollsters in Michigan are herdy and/or shitty. But it's a legit hard race to poll. Black voters, especially working-class Black voters, can be hard to reach. Young voters may be underrepresented in traditional surveys, but now we've mostly shifted to online panels.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 5

“And then you have some potential effects from non-response bias. AES supporters are almost certainly more enthusiastic than "Shy Stevens" voters, which can help with turnout, but it also means they might be more likely to respond to surveys, creating bias.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 5

“Then there's a question of what pollsters do with Arab-American voters. Important in Michigan, but still too small in an n=600 survey to be a reliable crosstab on their own. Do pollsters lump them in with "other"? With "white" (as the Census Bureau did prior to 2020.) Or what?”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 4

“I feel like there's an increasing amount of cope when an establishment candidate loses to a progressive to just say, "Oh, they were obviously a weak candidate, a different/better establishment candidate would have won."”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 4

“Certainly, progressive/DSA candidates aren't winning every primary. And there's some cherry-picking in which races get media coverage. But I think it's pretty hard to argue that, say, Stevens (who hasn't lost *yet* to be fair) is a bad candidate from first principles.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 4

“It's a fairly low-probability outcome at this point. But how could Republicans hold the House? They probably need at least 2 big things to go right: 1) A substantial economic recovery 2) Winning the argument that Democrats are too far left 3) A systemic 2016-style polling error”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 4

“I think the author of the DNC autopsy is giving himself too much credit. If you actually read the omitted chapter (good of the NYT to include it), it consists largely of boilerplate and clichés and mentions Biden's decision to run only in passing.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 2

“IDK, I don't think she's a strong candidate, but it's not because of her affect. Of course, politicians are supposed to be better at feigning interest. But being a politician who gives great TV interviews is closer to aberrant than normal, often kind of Dark Triad-adjacent tbh.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Aug 2

“I think it would be reasonable for academic organizations to be "political" in advocating for things like academic freedom. but idk why they're making endorsements in a Senate primary between two Democrats in a race where this isn't even like one of the top 1000 issues.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 31

“Progressives have pretty good timing to have these primary wins in what's likely to be a D +7 cycle. Like you can underperform by 5 points or whatever and still win a lot of places. And most people just look at the Ws and Ls, not the margins.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 31

“Yeah I don't know why groups like this are endorsing political candidates. But IMO we're seeing an increase in circa 2019-style woke politics lately. I don't think we'll hit particularly close to the 2019 peak, but it's higher than the ~2025 floor.”

on a resurgence of 2019-style progressive identity politics

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 31

“Some of it comes from increased confidence on the left that political trends are blowing in their favor again, which is not necessarily wrong. People haven't changed that much since 2019. The difference this time is that people who didn't like Woke 1 probably won't nod along.”

on the left's renewed confidence and backlash to 2019-style progressive politics

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 31

“Trump's approval had improved slightly earlier this month, but is now at a new 2nd-term low in our tracking.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 31

“Granted, we didn't have a particularly good baseline of where the race stood before, and primary polls are error-prone, etc etc etc. But if AES were to win by 12 points or whatever, that Whitmer endorsement of Stevens isn't going to look great.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 29

“A more accurate paraphrase: 1) Trump scandals are an extremely target-rich environment 2) The public has a limited attention span 3) "Focusing" on everything, everywhere, all at once has been a catastrophically failed strategy for 12 years QED: you should pick your battles”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 29

“Democrats have been running on this "let's not normalize Trump thing" for 12 years and he got elected president twice. He's been normalized. He's super unpopular now because of big substantive non-abstract things like Iran and the economy that have a direct impact on people.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 29

“People have finite attention spans. The economy, Iran and maybe ICE is a more than sufficient list of issues to motivate swing voters. If you want to elevate an overlooked issue, there are things orders of magnitude more objectively important than the fucking reflection pool.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 25

“Biden was helped by SC in 2020 because it totally reversed the media narrative at a key juncture in the primary. Of course, it was a great state for him all along, especially with no Black candidates left. But it felt like a huge W because he'd been left for dead by the media.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 25

“Morris Katz is probably a brilliant strategist. But I thought he came across as dubious in the Ezra Klein interview on the question of what the campaign knew when and frankly kind of scummy for not apologizing to Genevieve McDonald.”

on Morris Katz denying prior knowledge of sexual assault allegation

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 25

“Like Katz acting like the sexual assault allegation totally blindsided the campaign. Not only was it extremely widely rumored but the accuser was actually named in a NYT story weeks earlier alleging unsettling conduct but declining to go further.”

on sexual assault allegation was widely known before official disclosure

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 24

“Indeed, the smart thing to do is to look at margin relative to the national environment rather than binary win/loss. The Democratic establishment is not looking at things this way. It's hard to escape the inference that they're just not very bright.”

on Democratic electoral strategy and evaluation

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 28

“Who fucking cares it's literally not even in the top 100 Trump corruption scandals”

on dismissing a story as minor compared to other Trump scandals

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 27

“It's kind of striking how, apart from Iran, most of the Trump-related stories this summer have been boring and dumb (reflection pool, White House Correspondents' Dinner) or kind of funny (FIFA), maybe we're moving on from him being the central figure in American politics.”

on trivial Trump news displacing his political centrality

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›

Posted it themselves Jul 28

“Ok maybe my tweet yesterday should have been more direct: too many of the Resistance newsletters focus on the stupidest possible shit. Yes, *this* is important/newsworthy. But there's so much about the fucking reflecting pool and FIFA and the WHCD and the White House ballroom.”

Posted on @NateSilver538 Center / Nonpartisan @NateSilver538 on X ›