Hi Ho Silver into the future…
No one blogger seems to have grasped the full implications of Nate Silver’s election predictions. I’ve seen bits and pieces of the deeper meanings scattered about. I suspect that’s because the blogosphere, immersed as it is in the “battle for reality,” has a difficult time separating itself out and seeing things from the 10,000 foot level. This post seeks to climb high and chronicle the three massive changes secretly afoot…
Firstly the most mundane one: Mr. Silver’s numerical model versus the Main Stream Media’s traditional way of calling a horse race. To read Silver’s posts and compare then to the headlines on newspaper sites is to have one foot on shore and the other at sea. It’s a massive disconnect.
To accept Silver’s electoral math is to feel like an insider trader leveraging 10 million on a sure thing. Yes there is the danger of arrogance, but consider the other extreme: Those not even aware of Nate Silver’s blog. Those thusly ignorant were totally duped into accepting a few national poles as meaningful barometers of a race “pre-decided” by the electoral votes of a few key states.
Again, there is the danger of arrogance that comes with “being in the know”. One must guard against that. But there is this too: Since Mr. Silver’s 538 blog went viral, since everybody+everybody now reads him, should his model accurately predict the outcome, political punditry will never be the same. It corks the past. Everything changes immediately. The networks, the major online players, will be in the market for Nate Silver competitors. This is of course, a good thing…
Secondly, there is the right-wing pushback against Nate Silver’s “model”. No one has captured that pushback more vividly than Brad DeLong. This post of his, one in a series, is an absolute classic in multiple fisking: Today’s war on Nate Silver. Ezra Klein and Kevin Drum have also posted on the right’s 538 denialism.
There are actually four things going on here: 1) Loathing of the left’s numerical arrogance. 2) The Republican Party loathing of the NY Times. 3) The country is in battle for the control of its reality. The other side must reject Mr. Silver to insist on the reality of “Mittmentum”. 4) The Republican war against science is necessarily a war against probabilistic modeling.
Thirdly, let’s suppose Mr. Silver’s predictions go awry. One can absolutely be certain that this will energize the anti-scientism of the right. Models will have been shown to have flopped. And easy models at that. How much more complicated is global warming modeling? Orders of magnitude more complicated. A great cheer will go up, and the great tug-of-war for control of reality will shift in their favor a bit more.
Now instead imagine if Mr. Silver’s model proves deadly accurate. It’s nearly a complete emotional and rational reversal of fortunes. Not only will Mr. Obama be president again, but the validity of scientific modeling will get an enormous boost. It will be a huge moment for science and global warming models. Probably as stunning a moment as perhaps the prediction of an earthquake to the nearest day. An A+ accurate prediction will also provide a check against the possible stealing of future elections by electronic vote fraud.
In summary, I argue that this is a monster moment. A possible historical inflection point. All eyes are on Mr. Silver, his maths, and his model. It’s a huge dice roll for mankind. And as of the moment of this post, as I sit typing this instant on election night, the dice look to be summing to seven…