Thursday, November 10, 2016

Pseudoscience, Media and the Republic


This election cycle has been a disaster and there is enough disillusionment to go around but the one that surely stands out is the quackery of Nate Silver (fivethirtyeight.com) and the rest of the pollsters. Their punditry based on false precision and illusion of scientific-ness created complacency on the left and they were left completely blind sided on the momentum of the anti-establishment support.

Taleb has been calling out the stupidity of these idiots for a while, but did anyone in the media pay attention? No. Any critique that requires complex thought and nuanced explanation they have pretty much wiped their hands off of - why bother explaining complex structural problems when its so much easier to write a headline about "Grab them by the p****" and generate tons of shares, likes, and clicks?








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