Hmm. Just a quick search brings this up (you know, just as an example):
“Ignore your feelings and go with Nate Silver. Why trust something as unreliable as your feelings when there are experts with great track records to trust?”
I agree. Cause chaos, poke the bear, twist the nipples, with the possibility of some violent backlash forthcoming, and then respond with a smackdown/unprecedented power-grab. I doubt he even cares if it’s Americans that respond with violent protest or Muslims that commit an act of terror against us. Either way, he’ll “do what has to be done in the name of Making America SAFE Again!!!11”
So Scott Adams tried the old “Mary Rosh” gambit, huh? To the extent that he hadn’t already discredited himself, that finishes the job IMHO.
Of course it is clear that you did not check the link on why Adams is such a dunce. As others noted he got lucky and he is conning many (just like Trump) into thinking that he is a great guru.
I’ll have to come to the mild defense of FiveThirtyEight here: the linked piece encourages the media to stop freaking out because (way back in November 2015) it was too early to tell:
And although Silver was ultimately wrong about Trump securing the Republican nomination, he gave him odds to win the presidency significantly higher than pretty much anybody else. If you want to cast stones at someone who got it Really Wrong, try Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium. (I wonder if he ever ate the bug he promised to eat should Trump win.)
Yes he did.
He did.
He did. Live on CNN.
And another one, on Nov 7th
“That result just kept showing up over and over and over. Based on all the most recent polls and Nate’s state-by-state forecasts, I don’t see her losing any of those toss-ups. Game over, and get ready to start dodging the musket fire.”
I think the above two statements are contradictory. Adams isn’t being particularly clever. And his roundabout way of calling those opposed to Trump “morons” is blatantly stupid.
I doubt there are any intelligent people who look to Adams for political analysis.
Let me explain this to you in small words, because you seem especially stupid: The best facts available at the time showed that Trump was likely to lose. And in fact he lost the popular vote.
Making forecasts based on the best available evidence is smart behavior. However you are, for obvious reason, incapable of understanding this.
Unlike Adams, who predicted multiple things on multiple occasions, Nate Silver was consistent, and consistently gave Trump a substantial chance of electoral victory. And he correctly predicted the popular vote outcome within a couple of points.
His prediction was, once again, relatively close to on target, if not as on-the-nose as his 2008 and 2012 predictions. He said “Trump really has a decent chance to win”, and he was right, even if he thought Hillary had a slightly larger chance of winning.
Now, hold on a second there, hoss. Just because he doesn’t is not the same as he can’t. I’m entirely capable of drinking Coors “beer”, I don’t because water is already freely available.
And yet, based on “best available evidence”, all the “experts” were laughably wrong (to the point of eating a bug on national TV). Yet the cartoonist, not just once, but for the whole election period, was correctly predicting the events, based on his “theory of persuasion”. Every time the “experts” were running around screaming “Trump is doomed!!!111!!”, Adams consistently predicted that the particular incident will not doom Trump but will help him. Who was right?
Remind me, where is the proof of the pudding?
Don’t get upset. I didn’t link to your post to make fun of you. I was responding to Czarcasm’s contention that no one “here” was using Nate Silver as their political guru.
Yeah, I was right about your inability to comprehend.
See, there’s smart bets and stupid bets (let me know if any of these words is too big). You can make a stupid bet and win, but it was still a stupid bet (for instance, it would be a bad idea to bet that you can understand this). Saying “how can it have been a stupid bet if he was right” is the definition of not understanding the difference between a stupid bet and a smart bet.
I wish I knew you in person. I could make so much money off your dumb ass in poker.
BTW in all the times Scott Adams was wrong he never AFAIK accepted it.
Adams did not consistently predict anything – his predictions changed constantly. He was right in some of his predictions and wrong in some others. Which was pretty much guaranteed considering that he predicted nearly every possible outcome at various points.
Unlikely, sure. But illegal? Remember, in my scenario the marshals do the actual arresting, while all the cops do is provide backup.
When it is one bet, yes. When it is a long series of bets, over and over, for the period of more than a year, and the “smart bets” keep losing, maybe they are not so smart.