The Hidden Factors Influencing The Election - Nate Silver

1. 0:00 – 4:01

   How Nate Mastered Sports Betting

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      What is this period of the cycle like for you?

   2. NSNate Silver0:04

      It's pretty insane. I mean, I liken it to if you're, like, running some lobster stand in Maine, then in August you're gonna be really busy day and night. That's kind of your, your busy season. Um, I mean, I try to stay relatively grounded. It's not my first rodeo covering an election campaign, not my first involving Trump even.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:21

      Oh, I meant, I, I meant Shohei Ohtani's current run for the Dodgers.

   4. NSNate Silver0:25

      Oh.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:25

      I, we can talk politics if you like, but.

   6. NSNate Silver0:26

      Okay, perfect.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:27

      Uh...

   8. NSNate Silver0:27

      No, all this crazy stuff's happening, 50-50 and like...

   9. CWChris Williamson0:30

      (laughs)

   10. NSNate Silver0:30

       But no, I try to, I try to watch a little baseball and football and basketball and all that stuff and, and stay sane. But definitely, I mean, the compression of events we had in the summer with Biden dropping out and then the assassination attempt and then the conventions, uh, will maybe never be replicated in American political history again.

   11. CWChris Williamson0:50

       I was g... How much of an outlier is that, do you think? To have s- the, the speed of news and incidents occurring so quickly?

   12. NSNate Silver0:55

       I mean, let's keep in mind that, like, two, th- a lot of elections are crazy now, right? We had the recount in 2000. We had the pandemic in 2020. But yeah, nothing, nothing quite like that I don't think.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:04

       Yeah. I heard that you've been limited on sports betting websites, by maybe, uh, something in the teens. 15 different sports betting pages have stopped you from playing the game?

   14. NSNate Silver1:15

       More like five or six, yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:16

       Okay.

   16. NSNate Silver1:16

       There are about, like, n- there are nine or 10 legal ones in New York and I only have a clean bill of health at, like, two and a half of them anymore. (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson1:22

       How do you g- I'm a, a Brit which means that sort of sports betting is in our blood. There's the high street, uh, sports betting shops that you can go into and bet on horse races and everything else. How do American sports betting organizations ensure that the house doesn't lose?

   18. NSNate Silver1:39

       Well, that's by, they do it by banning players who are perceived winning players. Or not banning, they'll, they'll say they're limiting players, right? So at DraftKings, if I wanna bet on, um, a random NBA game, it might only let me bet 80 bucks or something. Whereas my friend who's considered a degen, degenerate gambler, or the term whale is sometimes used, he's allowed to bet $25,000 on a random NBA game. Um, and the reason is because DraftKings thinks I have the hallmarks of a winning bettor. Um, whether they're actually a winning bettor or not, they don't care, they don't wanna take that risk. So if, for example, that you bet early, um, the lines are easier to beat early than late when everybody has weighed in. Um, if you're giving big action on games that aren't very popular, right? I don't know if you're an NBA fan, but, like, if you're betting, like, the Charlotte Hornets or Washington Wizards game, then that's a sign that you're, you're trying to actually win and you're a sharp and not a degen.

   19. CWChris Williamson2:33

       Yeah.

   20. NSNate Silver2:34

       Um, and so different sites have different levels of tolerance for this. The old model used to be that, hey, let's say I'm a, a reasonably sharp bettor. When I bet and you're the house, I'm giving you information, right? It's saying, "Okay, um, I have this model and it's trustworthy and therefore, yeah, you have to give me a winning bet, but now you can update your line and therefore you'll be sharper for when the recreational money pours in." Um, but they've now moved away from that model toward, uh, saying they don't want action from perceived winners.

   21. CWChris Williamson3:05

       It's the most stark reminder, I think, that, uh, betting is not a fair game that's supposed to give you a crack at winning money. It's rigged, as, as, as rigged as it can be. And in the games where it isn't rigged and there isn't a house edge where education or insight or whatever can actually beat in, in some ways, uh, the odds need to be stacked at... the scale needs to be pressed in one form or another again.

   22. NSNate Silver3:30

       Yeah, I, I, you know, rigged is a certain term of art. Um, you know, it's not rigged in the sense that if you go and play in Las Vegas the games are scrupulously fair according to the rules of the state of Nevada. They just have a negative expected value for you. When you play, um, slots, every dollar you put in a slot machine, the house keeps about 10 cents out of that. And if you're pressing a slot machine hundreds of times in an hour, then that really starts to add up.

   23. CWChris Williamson3:58

       Spoken like a true statistician. So

2. 4:01 – 8:03

   Models Used to Predict Elections

   1. CWChris Williamson4:01

      you try to predict what's going to happen in elections. Just how complex are the models that you use behind the scenes now?

   2. NSNate Silver4:10

      They are somewhat complex. Not so much because they account for all these different factors. I mean, it's basically just the polls and the economy. Um, but because the way that we vote in this country is unusual. Um, we have an electoral college. So you have, uh, 50 states voting. And figuring out how they all tie in together is challenging, right? So certain maps make more sense. Um, if Michigan votes for Trump, like in 2016, then Wisconsin probably comes along with it. They're similar states. Um, Arizona and Nevada might vote together, things like that. If Texas were to turn blue, another southern state like Florida or Arizona might also. So figuring out all the correlations in the model is actually somewhat complicated. And there's things like when there's a shift in the polls, how aggressive should a polling average be about adjusting for it? So it's not... There is real art and science in this, I guess I'd say.

   3. CWChris Williamson5:03

      Yeah. Is it... What is it behind the scenes? Is it just one huge fuck off Exce- Excel spreadsheet? Like, what is it?

   4. NSNate Silver5:11

      (laughs) It's not Excel. It's in a programming language called Stata or Stata, people say it differently. Um, yeah, it's about 5,000 words of, of code.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:18

      Oh, okay. Interesting. Okay, so what is different about this election compared to past elections? And how has the model had to change to account for that?

   6. NSNate Silver5:29

      So in some ways it's not that different. Um, this is the third election in a row with Donald Trump as a Republican nominee. Um, so far he's won for one, or one for two rather, one and one. Um, one win, one loss. Um, you know, so from my n- naive perspective, you might say, "Okay, well, the odds are probably about 50-50 again." And, and that's probably what we're getting. I mean, so it's not that the model changes so much as that the condi- conditions change. Um, one thing that we saw in 2016 obviously is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote that, th- l- that year and lost the electoral college. Um, that is probably a persistent problem for Democrats in a world where they turn out the college-educated coalition in California, New York, places like that.... places where they wind up having a lot of wasted votes, so the GOP more populous coalition is more efficient. So, so therefore you bet on Harris to win the popular vote, as Democrats usually do, but the electoral college is about 50/50.

   7. CWChris Williamson6:22

      Wow. It's kind of a running meme that nobody knows anyone who's answered a political poll, and yet the entire country seems to sort of hang on this kind of data. Wh- wh- what's going on here? Do you, do you need to control for the kind of people who pick up unknown phone calls? Do you, uh, do you decide on who to sample? Like, do people sign up to get polled? Do they, do they pick up less calls than 10 years ago? This whole sort of concept seems quite archaic given to how much weight we give to it, which leads me to believe that we either shouldn't be giving some weight to it or there is a large misunderstanding about how it actually works.

   8. NSNate Silver6:56

      No, I don't think you're misunderstanding. I mean, so look, um, in principle, if you poll 800 people because of the magic of statistics, that can give you, with a margin of error, a good indication of how the whole country would vote. The problem, though, what you're getting, as you're getting at, is that a lot of people are not equally likely to respond to phone calls. If you, um, just call people on landlines, like, you'll get a lot of old white women picking up and not (laughs) not many other people. Women tend to answer the phone from strangers more than men do and older people more than younger people. Um, so most calls now are either done on the internet, or excuse me, are done to cellphones or pollsters have gone to various online methods. Um, but that's harder. In the golden age, you could, like, literally ring someone's phone up and be like, "I'm from the Gallup Agency. I'd like to survey the next, the woman with the next birthday in the household." Um, and actually people would answer calls from strangers, and like, that's just not really a thing anymore. And so yeah, the people that respond to polls are weird, um, and well, it's kinda a weird thing to do. Uh, (laughs) and you have to make some sausage out of that mincemeat basically.

   9. CWChris Williamson8:02

      Yeah, I understand.

3. 8:03 – 11:02

   The Way People Vote Today

   1. CWChris Williamson8:03

      What is the truth behind most people are just protest voting now? That it's not a vote for love of one party, it's a vote of hate for the other?

   2. NSNate Silver8:13

      I think there's a lot of that. There's a lot of negative polarization. Um, you know, politics in the United States operates a lot on grievance, um, and grievance goes a long way. Yeah, you're not, you're not telling people you're gonna fulfill their wildest dreams so much as saying the other guy is too scary and so it's a moral imperative.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:30

      Yeah, the other guy is going to fulfill your nightmares, not that we're gonna-

   4. NSNate Silver8:33

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson8:33

      ... come up with the solution.

   6. NSNate Silver8:35

      Exactly.

   7. CWChris Williamson8:35

      Yeah, yeah, it's very, uh... Do... What's the implication for that around messaging do you think? Like, what- what's downstream from that?

   8. NSNate Silver8:44

      I mean, the parties are a little bit different in the sense that, like, Democrats I think tend to... If you look at the big five personality traits, right, they're sorted a little bit by party. Um, so Democrats are higher on neuroticism or negative emotionality, and so, um, a lot of themes in their commercials are trying to, um, touch on people's anxieties and say, "Hey, remember what happened in 2016 where you thought we were gonna win and Hillary lost?" Um, whereas the GOP is more, um, is low on openness to experience, so they might touch more on anti-immigration or, "Hey, change is scary. You can't trust Kamala Harris." And so, um, so both campaign messages fit the party's respective personality types.

   9. CWChris Williamson9:25

      Yeah. What are the most important battleground topics this year? Which issues do different cohorts of voters care about the most?

   10. NSNate Silver9:33

       Um, for Democrats, the single best issue is probably abortion. Um, you know, a lot of moderate voters, especially younger women, um, did not approve of Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade a couple of years ago. Um, and for the GOP, immigration is almost undoubtedly their best issue. Um, they aren't necessarily always talking about it in, um, the most elevated ways necessarily, but people are concerned about, about, uh, the influx of, of immigrants into the United States.

   11. CWChris Williamson10:03

       So, you know, we're talking about, uh, you, a very sophisticated, highly credentialed, very smart statistician, but largely just some bloke, right-

   12. NSNate Silver10:13

       Yeah, um-

   13. CWChris Williamson10:13

       ... that's sort of out there in the ether doing this thing and writing a great Substack and, and, and also a fantastic new book. How much or how sophisticated are the parties individually with... Can they do what you do or are they downstream from y- Are they subscribed to Silver Bulletin as well and just, like, hoping for the best?

   14. NSNate Silver10:32

       (laughs) No, look, I'm sure they're doing their own modeling. Um, you know, in sports, you have this kind of Moneyball story of where, um, where for a long time in sports, you had outside authors using statistics and things like that, um, and the insiders were very vibes and feel-driven. Um, in politics, it's kinda the opposite. The m- the media is very vibes-driven and the campaigns are more data-driven. So I'm, I'm sure they have versions of what I do that are, are probably pretty similar.

4. 11:02 – 14:54

   Why Kamala Harris Isn’t Appearing on Podcasts

   1. NSNate Silver11:03

   2. CWChris Williamson11:03

      So you mentioned there about, uh, uh, Gen Z, uh, young women especially. Trump is on every podcast, every long form interview that he can. Kamala Harris isn't doing any of this despite being sort of the queen of Gen Z. Wh- why? What do you think is going on there?

   3. NSNate Silver11:21

      I think 'cause she's getting bad advice. Um, so she inherited a lot of the people that, um, that ran the Biden campaign. Uh, and Biden because of his age and inconsistent, shall we say, performance with impromptu public speaking, they became, I think, paranoid about the press, and I, I think, I think it's stubborn and stupid. Um, you know, look, because of the electoral college, she has to win a majority of the popular vote, right? She's gotta get to 51, Trump's gotta get to 49, and, and if you're at 49 now and, and you wanna get to 51, then every, every marginal vote matters.

   4. CWChris Williamson11:58

      Yeah, I think I'd seen you tweet that, uh, basically the, uh, Democratic campaign has PTSD from-

   5. NSNate Silver12:05

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson12:06

      ... the Biden performance, and, uh, that's being rolled forward into a candidate that's very different.

   7. NSNate Silver12:11

      Yeah. You know, we all get into our filter bubbles and, and you have a lot of Democrats who believe that, um, oh, the mainstream media is biased against, against Democrats, and I just do not... I work in the mainstream media. I just do not believe that's objectively (laughs) accurate, right? I think, I think they have different conflicting incentives, and the media makes different types of mistakes, but like, you know, if you're a Democrat who thinks The New York Times is biased against Democrats, then I'm not sure what to tell you.

   8. CWChris Williamson12:37

      (inhales deeply) Yeah. It's, it's very interesting, you know, i- it looks like, uh, it is an actual, uh, coin toss at the moment, uh, going into, uh, November. I've heard you say it is sort of 50/50. I im- I imagine the least exciting of all of the, uh, sort of statistical predictions that you could make. Um, but I wonder how much of an influence mainstream media has, and given that we're talking about things being a toss-up when it comes to November, but that there is such a bias in mainstream media toward the Democratic, uh, talking points, how different would things be if we had an equally represented, uh, uh, mainstream media?

   9. NSNate Silver13:19

      Uh, it's a great question and a complicated question. And by the way, I'd be happy if it's 50/50. If it's 50/50, then, then the stakes are much lower for me personally, I guess, on election day.

   10. CWChris Williamson13:27

       (laughs)

   11. NSNate Silver13:27

       Um...

   12. CWChris Williamson13:28

       Oh, because you've got equal chance of vote, right? Okay, I understand.

   13. NSNate Silver13:31

       So, yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna be wrong half the time either.

   14. CWChris Williamson13:34

       Zero pressure.

   15. NSNate Silver13:34

       Um, so it's a great question. For one thing, um, look, I think the mainstream media, The New York Times, the NBC, ABC, CBS News, um, is on balance center left, right? And that it does frame certain issues, especially on culture war stuff, um, toward a more progressive worldview, you know, toward a more pro-Democratic worldview. You do, however, have some powerful counterweights. You have Fox News, um, you have Twitter where there's still a lot of liberal journalists, including me on Twitter, but, um, but the discourse has moved to the right. You know, you have things like TikTok potentially and Facebook. Um, you know, and also you have a lot of Republicans who are Republicans because they don't trust the mainstream media, because they lost trust during COVID or during the financial crisis or, or whatever else. Um, so yeah, I'm not sure it, it helps Democrats to have, uh (laughs) to have the media... I mean, I don't think it's in their pocket either. I think it's complicated, um-

   16. CWChris Williamson14:32

       Mm-hmm.

   17. NSNate Silver14:32

       ... but I'm not sure it's so... You know, people also are skeptical, right? There's this political operatives think that, "Oh, you just say something and people believe it," and like, belief is a complicated thing. Um, you know, most of the time people are reluctant to change their mind and pretty stubborn, and so it's like not just 'cause they hear something or read something the first time do they necessarily change their mind.

5. 14:54 – 17:22

   Do Debates Change People’s Minds?

   1. CWChris Williamson14:54

      Talking about that, what is the legitimacy of saying that debates change people's minds? It seems to me that they don't impact the polls, uh, immediately as much as people might think, and it generates a lot of headlines, but then it doesn't move stuff, but then does it actually eventually? So what's the truth when it comes to that?

   2. NSNate Silver15:12

      Um, so, um, we're in an environment where moving the polls by a single point can matter a lot, right? Kamala Harris gained about a point after that first debate, or actually the second debate, her first, second total, a point. I mean, the last two elections came down to a point basically, and so yeah, if we're talking about like trying to find tho- those 3% of voters who are still undecided or the 3% who are considering both candidates, um, th- it's so efficient that like it's gonna come down probably to a few tens of thousands of votes in the, in the, in the same states over and over again. So can you find just that... You know, and this gets back to the question of like, you know, why wouldn't you wanna do more media if you're Harris 'cause you... it's, it's really a matter of, of winning the vote on the, on the margin.

   3. CWChris Williamson15:58

      Mm-hmm. But, uh, still just to sort of linger on that point, why aren't debates more, uh, persuasive apart from when you have a sort of seppuku, uh, self-immolation-

   4. NSNate Silver16:11

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson16:11

      ... that occurs cognitively?

   6. NSNate Silver16:14

      Um, because people have thought about this question for a long time. I mean, lo- look, um, in England, they have these so-called snap elections that can start and finish in a period of five weeks. Um, in the US, our elections last for basically two years, uh, and Trump has been running for president or been president continuously since 2015. Um, so people don't need that much more information. I guess the kind of flip question is like, you know, how are people still undecided (laughs) is the opposite question from that.

   7. CWChris Williamson16:48

      (laughs) Yeah.

   8. NSNate Silver16:49

      But yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson16:49

      How, how many people say that they are? How many people say, "I'm not sure"?

   10. NSNate Silver16:53

       Only about three or 4% now, which is historically low. It's, it's often higher than that at this point in the campaign.

   11. CWChris Williamson17:00

       Wow. Okay. Getting into the, uh, constitution of the, the different sides, was not picking Josh Shapiro a mistake?

   12. NSNate Silver17:09

       I think if you're playing the percentages, it's probably a mistake, um, just because Pennsylvania winds up being the most important state in our model about a third of the time. Um, you know, that is a state where Harris has gotten some better polling lately. She's maybe ahead

6. 17:22 – 23:53

   The Impact of Running Mates

   1. NSNate Silver17:22

      by a point or two. Um, but yeah, and to explicitly signal that you're playing for the center, um, this is one of the cliches that I think has gotten underrated actually, but it used to be seen as, "Hey, you wanna win independents, you wanna play to the middle." I think that's still actually correct if you look at the long term, that, um, that the candidate who is seen as more moderate... I mean, this is why Harris, for example, is trying to moderate, or if you prefer flip-flopping on-

   2. CWChris Williamson17:47

      (laughs)

   3. NSNate Silver17:47

      ... issues like fracking or policing, or now taking a much harder line on the border and things like that, is she recognizes that, um, that elections are usually won in the center. Whereas Trump maybe doesn't agree with that. I mean, although, although Trump is also on particular issues, on abortion, Trump has tried to moderate. Everything else, not really.

   4. CWChris Williamson18:08

      That's been an interesting change. And, and, and you're right there that I think, um...People on the right accuse Kamala Harris of, of flip-flopping or not holding to her principles or not having any principles in the first place, or hypocrisy or whatever, uh, for holding quite different opinions to those that they have video footage of from a few years ago. Um, I don't know if the same criticisms are being leveled at Trump, uh, and J.D. Vance for a, what seems to be move toward the middle with regards to abortion, given how important it is.

   5. NSNate Silver18:41

      Well, a- and J.D. Vance was formerly anti-Trump, an anti-Trump intellectual. Um, so he's flip-flopped too. I mean, you know, Trump has always been someone willing to say a lot of different things depending on who the audience is in front of him. But yeah, look, it's, it's, uh, it's a legitimate concern that, um, that we're a little bit less sure what we'll be getting with Harris, in my view. Um, you know, I mean, the funny thing is the fact that we have, um, a sitting president who's 81, is he 81 or 82 now? 81 years old, um, and by his own advisors' admission, like only has like four to six good hours a day, right? And the fact that the country is (laughs) running well, depends on who you ask, I guess, but the fact that these decisions are being, being made anyway, it's- it's a little bit interesting. Um, but no, I think, I think there are legitimate questions about, like whether Harris is the more pragmatic version we've seen this year or the more progressive version that we saw in 20- 2019 in the primaries.

   6. CWChris Williamson19:38

      Yeah. That's a really interesting question, this sort of a when does hypocrisy, or when does saying what needs to be said in order to win the vote discourage or degrade faith that you are anything? Because it seems, uh, you know, you mentioned before, was not picking Josh Shapiro a mistake? Well, if we're going to go by the numbers, if we're just looking to improve the chances in Pennsylvania, then perhaps that's the case. But that's not actually really what you're supposed to be picking somebody for. It's for their capacity to be able to run the country and help you run the country when you hopefully get into power. So there is this sort of weird balancing game in terms of optics, in terms of what you're talking about, in terms of the promises that you're making to people on the campaign trail. Can we deliver on them when we get into, uh, office? And then what, what, wh- wh- what does this mean for me and- and my sort of overall arc? So yeah, I- I think blowing with the wind, uh, it seems like the public has quite a strong tolerance for, uh, politicians that flip-flop left and right.

   7. NSNate Silver20:37

      Look, in some ways it's a representative democracy. Um, and so like I don't necessarily mind if a politician is instrumental in trying to (laughs) trying to affect public popularity into- into different laws and things like that. So I- I'm probably like less bothered by that than the average person. I think I'd rather have that, um, before we get closer to di- direct democracy than to have a bunch of ideologues, I suppose. Um, but if you don't know what you're getting into, that can be a challenge.

   8. CWChris Williamson21:07

      That, uh, holding those two things, um, in the same reality, the cognitive superposition is fascinating to me. So people that are able to say, "Well, it doesn't actually matter who gets into power because ultimately it's run... there's this whole big team of people and they don't actually do all that much in the fir-" And then also saying, "Well, if my person doesn't get into power, this is the end of the world." And it's this, uh, it sort of seems to move between the two, uh, sometimes on the internet.

   9. NSNate Silver21:35

      Y- yeah, look, I mean, I think, I think most people are not sitting down and working in a spreadsheet to calculate who they think will be the best party for their country or even for their lives necessarily. Um, I think they feel like either some parties they feel excluded and some parties they feel part of the coalition, right? Um, you know, one, I think, problem that the left had during, um, the kind of COVID summer is that, you know, you were seen as very, like the wrong type of person if you weren't wearing your mask or if you were going out to restaurants or if you were, you know, not- not vaccinated and things like that. And we can debate whether those are good policies or not. I'm pro-vaccine myself. Um, but, uh, but they were saying, "Hey, you're not part of our- our little circle anymore." Um, so I think somehow sometimes Trump, despite having many problems of his own, being very unappealing to many people, younger people especially, um, he is at least trying to like expand the circle a little bit. When he goes on these pod- different podcasts or goes to communities that Republicans typically don't go to, um, you know, he's trying to expand that circle.

   10. CWChris Williamson22:42

       What about picking J.D. Vance? Do you think that was a mistake?

   11. NSNate Silver22:46

       I think it was a mistake if you read the reporting on- on why the pick was made. Um, so for one thing, he, uh, Trump was influenced by, um, by the advice of his sons apparently, Don (laughs) and Eric Jr., um, and they made this pick at a time when it looked like Trump was just gonna win. Um, so this had been while Biden was still running and way behind in the polls, and also just after there had been the assassination attempt against Trump in Pennsylvania. Uh, so the calculation was that, "Well, we're gonna win, so let's get a big, uh, young smart guy who can extend Trump's legacy for many years to come." Um, and I think that was a mistake. He- he is, in the polls, negative favorability ratings. He's net underwater in those categories. I think somebody who had, you know, more than two years of experience in the Senate, um, might have sold better to the public.

   12. CWChris Williamson23:37

       Who would have been a better pick in your opinion?

   13. NSNate Silver23:40

       I mean, the boring answers are, you know, Marco Rubio or- or Nikki Haley or things like that. Um, you know, there could have been people who were more explicitly moderate, um, but a more kind of establishment Republican.

   14. CWChris Williamson23:52

       Yeah.

7. 23:53 – 30:16

   Have the Assassination Attempts Impacted the Election?

   1. CWChris Williamson23:53

      Uh, what was the result of Trump being shot at once and in the vicinity of a guy that wanted to shoot at him a second time? What's that done? 'Cause I'm very surprised. I would've thought when that happened Bi- it doesn't matter about Biden, Kamala, whatever it is, slam dunk. This guy's taken a bullet for democracy or for the country or whatever you wanna call it. I would've just thought, "Wow, game over."

   2. NSNate Silver24:17

      Yeah, so it's hard to know because all these different things were happening at once, right?

   3. CWChris Williamson24:20

      (laughs)

   4. NSNate Silver24:20

      This is also in the period when Joe Biden's campaign is imploding. You have the Republican National Convention. You have the Vance pick. Um, you know, by the time Biden left, Trump was ahead by four points in the popular vote, which is actually, actually quite a lot given that Trump has lost the popular vote twice before. Um, so I think there was some impact, but yeah, you're right. I mean, and, um, you know, and the assassinations have kind of fallen off, um, the map a little bit. They haven't gotten a ton of, of media coverage. I mean, this is why when I hear my liberal friends complaining about kind of the media, I'm like, "I don't know." Um, you know, another thing that hasn't gotten much coverage lately is, uh, is again, is Joe Biden's performance or fitness for office. It's not just an election story, it's also a governance story and things like that. He's making high level decisions. Um, so yeah, I, I, you know, the polls did move some, but again, if 95% of people are locked in, then they're on- only gonna move so much.

   5. CWChris Williamson25:18

      Does it kind of show that there's such a recency bias now on the internet? Uh, 24 hours is basically the longest memory that anyone c- I- I- if, if it's older than the duration of an Instagram story, we can't recall what happened. And if you supplant a Trump assassination with a Kamala brat girl, cat-eating Haitian summer, uh, before you know it, it's, the, the, the memes have just kept memeing and, and now we're on to something new.

   6. NSNate Silver25:47

      Yeah, it's, uh, I mean, it's hard to sustain any momentum in politics for that reason, that these events might have a duration of a week or two. Some of that, by the way, is potentially biases in who answers the polls, that when a party is having like an upcycle, then their voters get more excited and are more likely to respond to surveys. And pollsters, you know, try, but aren't always successful in trying to avoid that response bias in polls.

   7. CWChris Williamson26:10

      Oh, there's like a desirability effect. "Oh, my side's winning, I'm gonna talk more."

   8. NSNate Silver26:15

      Yeah, I mean, you, you know, if, uh, I'll put it like this, right? If you're talking to a poker player and that poker player had a winning night, they're much more likely on the car ride home to talk about the glory of the big bluff they made or, or, or making a full house or whatever else.

   9. CWChris Williamson26:30

      How masterful was the pivot to Kamala Harris? Because before it happened, I think everybody was up in the air, this woman's kind of unknown, she was a bit of a meme, everyone was sort of laughing at the, the silly laugh and she hadn't done anything, she was the most invisible vice president. And then in retrospect, it seems like, oh my God, absolute slam dunk. Why wouldn't they have done this sooner?

   10. NSNate Silver26:50

       So she's been a much more capable politician than, than I would have thought. I mean, partly though is that, you know, there are some natural politicians, but most politicians are not naturals. Um, if you look at kind of like the, um, great politicians of our era, Barack Obama lost his first race for Congress, Bill Clinton was almost laughed off the stage, um, at his first Democratic National Convention where he gave a keynote speech. Uh, so like, um, Harris going all around the world for four years giving speeches and rubber chicken dinners and whatnot, I think she got a lot better at the art of retail politics. She also was not running... I mean, 2019 was a strange time for Democrats, when she ran in the primary. This is kind of like during the peak of, of what is sometimes called wokeness. Everyone was running way to the left, they thought Bernie Sanders had proven that was a way to beat the establishment. Um, and so I think she was ill-served by that, by that period. She was not known as being so, necessarily so progressive, for example, as a DA in, in San Francisco, but she got very carried away with, with moving to the left.

   11. CWChris Williamson27:56

       What do you think of the impact of this discussion around wokeness and its sort of capturing of both the left and the right, uh, as signal, counter-signal reaction, pro-action? Uh, how, how has that sort of changed the landscape?

   12. NSNate Silver28:12

       Look, I, I think it's very unappealing messaging just from the standpoint of like if you were to try to survey it. Um, you know, messaging that makes people feel guilty for, uh, for their race or their other identity characteristics is messaging that tends to exclude people from your coalition. Um, but I also think there were always like a lot of people on the center and on the left who were never really on board with wokeness and just felt like they couldn't say anything about it until maybe a couple of years ago. Um, you know, in particular during 2020 when it's an election year, in the middle of a pandemic and you have these protests that sometimes turn violent, um, uh, people understandably were afraid to speak up, I think. And so I think you've seen pretty big shifts away from that particular movement. And this has happened in the past. I mean, we had like, um, a little bit too young to have experienced this firsthand, but you had political correctness in the late '80s and early '90s that had a shelf life of a couple of years because it was easily, easily mockable. (laughs) Um, so I, I think some of this has, has peaked.

   13. CWChris Williamson29:19

       What's different about Trump's coalition of voters than past Republicans? And, and the same for Kamala.

   14. NSNate Silver29:27

       So what's interesting is that we actually have some degree of racial depolarization in the electorate, meaning that, um, white voters are getting more Democratic, whereas voters of color, especially younger ones, younger Black voters, younger Hispanics, younger Asians are getting more Republican. Um, so in one sense that's good. You know, other things being equal, I'd rather not have a, a vote that you can strictly determine by who's in what racial group in the United States. But it does lead to some counterintuitive things on, on the map. Um, you know, if you're doing better with white voters, if Harris is doing better with white voters than Biden was four years ago, that's why you can keep like the whiter Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan states even if her polling is not as strong in, say, North Carolina or Arizona.

   15. CWChris Williamson30:13

       It's so fascinating how all of this stuff breaks

8. 30:16 – 32:50

   The States That Decide the Election

   1. CWChris Williamson30:16

      down. W- what do you think that we need to know about the seven and a half states that are likely going to determine this election?

   2. NSNate Silver30:24

      Um, you probably don't wanna turn on a TV in one of those states from about now onward. You'll literally see a, I spent enough-

   3. CWChris Williamson30:30

      Ham it. Ham, it. Ham, it.

   4. NSNate Silver30:31

      ... time in Las Vegas. Yeah, you'll see every single commercial is a campaign commercial by the time you get into September, October, November. Um, but yeah, obviously, look, if you are interested in the outcome of the election, I think it's an important election, then, then vote. You know, donate. By the way, you might want to donate, um, not to Trump or Harris who have lots of money, but, um, to your favorite down-ballot candidates. Things like state Supreme Court races matter a lot and get far less attention, or even city council and things like that. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, some people enjoy like the scoreboard watching element of elections where they like seeing the numbers go up and down. Um, but you're not gonna really learn anything new from, from the polls between now and November. Not that you shouldn't read my newsletter, but like, but it's very likely to be close. We have a very good idea of which states are likely to be most important, and if you're in one of those states, then you should probably vote.

   5. CWChris Williamson31:23

      Which are those states?

   6. NSNate Silver31:25

      Um, so Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan are like the Northern Midwestern group, and then Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina.

   7. CWChris Williamson31:35

      I'm surprised by Nevada. Rem- I'm, I have to admit that I'm a total like noob to, to this. This is my first election being in the US. I'm not used to this sort of se- set of insights. If you gave me most of the states except for Nevada on a map, I wouldn't be able to put a pin on them. Um, but it surprises me that Nevada would have been one of those. Uh, i- i- that being a swing state is kind of culturally surprising to me.

   8. NSNate Silver31:59

      Yeah, so if you go to Nevada and, uh, spend time in the casino settings there, um, you'll see why it's a swing state, because you have this, um, very working class workforce that is often people who are, um, who are minorities, you know, Hispanic, Asian, Black. It's a diverse workforce, diverse working class workforce, because you know, industry. Um, and that's the group that has shifted more toward Trump. Um, if Democrats are relying on these like college-educated knowledge sector workers, um, that's not the typical blackjack dealer, although it does require quite a bit of skill, frankly. Um, that's not the typical person working in, in food service at a big resort or room service in a big resort in, in Las Vegas. So that population has been, uh, risky for Democrats.

9. 32:50 – 37:39

   Likelihood of a Third-Party Candidate Being Elected

   1. NSNate Silver32:50

   2. CWChris Williamson32:50

      Would a viable third option ever be able to get in? You know, we saw RFK Jr. give it as good of a crack, I think, as, as, uh, could have been expected this year, or is this essentially just impossible right now?

   3. NSNate Silver33:03

      Uh, I don't think it's impossible, but the issue is that the parties are pretty clever at adapting to the changing political tides, right? So like in some ways, in some ways, Donald Trump was like a third party candidate. Um, he disagreed in 2016 with George Bush and, and Mitt Romney and criticized John McCain and was moving toward a much more culturally conservative but fiscally maybe less conservative actually policy than you had like under Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, for example. Or Bernie Sanders, who is technically an independent, he ran for the Democratic nomination, and he produced change on things like the minimum wage and stuff like that, but like so I think the risk is that, um, third party votes get co-opted by the two major parties.

   4. CWChris Williamson33:49

      Yeah, that is, uh, it's interesting to consider Trump as kind of like an outside option previously. This is what people are saying when they're shouting about drain the swamp and he's not one of the globalist elite lizard people, whatever, uh, this is what they, they, it's kind of how they see him, right?

   5. NSNate Silver34:07

      Yeah, and, you know, keep in mind that, um, there was a whole GOP autopsy. Hey, they have to move to the center on, on immigration, um, and he had the foresight, I guess, to kind of zig where other people zagged, and, and you know, whatever else you say about Trump, he's a former real estate guy, and so he can kind of like maybe has some sixth sense for when there's a underpriced piece of political real estate somewhere.

   6. CWChris Williamson34:31

      Yeah. Why did the polls lowball Trump in the past? Is there a risk of that happening again?

   7. NSNate Silver34:37

      There's a risk. In fact, there's probably a risk of both directions. In 2022, you had poll balls, polls underestimate Democrats in some big races in 2012. They underestimated Obama a little bit. Um, so pollsters offer two basic excuses, and, you know, I say excuses because how valid they are we can, I mean, I don't think they're, I think the pollsters would love to have unbiased results, but it's tricky. Um, one problem is that people who are more politically engaged and college educated are more likely to respond to polls and also more likely to be Democrats. Um, you know, your typical MSNBC watching New York Times whatever, you know, Starbucks drinking liberal is, is pretty likely to respond to a poll but will vote Democrat in November. Um, that're one issue. There were also issues in 2020 potentially related to COVID, um, where Democrats were much more likely to socially distance. So they're sitting around without much to do and, you know, I probably made more phone calls during COVID than I ever have in my life, right? Um, so Democrats are more likely to respond to surveys during COVID, and that may have caused issues in 2020. Um, but yeah, these are legitimate reasons to, to worry. Um, the reason why I would say maybe I'd expect less of a polling error this year is just because like what the polls are saying is that it's 50/50, which is like a very reasonable suggestion, (laughs) I think, right? They're saying we're gonna be somewhere in between 2016 and 2020 most likely, comes down to a photo finish again the Electoral College, and that's like not exactly going out on a limb.

   8. CWChris Williamson36:05

      Is there a social desirability thing still with Trump? I, you know, I walk around my, uh, very white, very, uh, three and a half kids and a golden retriever neighborhood here in Austin, Texas, and I see a whole host of blue signs for Harris Waltz and I don't see a single one for Trump. Uh, something tells me that people in $2 and $3 million houses aren't all Democrats.

   9. NSNate Silver36:30

      Um, I think there is some but maybe, maybe less than people assume, for a couple of reasons. Um, one is that Americans tend to be pretty forthcoming when you ask them in surveys, which is not true everywhere, right? Um, in India, for example, it's just considered kind of a bad idea to share your political opinion with a random stranger, which in some ways maybe it is, right? Um, but Americans tend to answer polls pretty honestly. The issue is more that you're not getting Trump supporters answering polls in the first place, that, um, they're less likely to trust, um, trust a news outlet that calls and says, "Do you want to take a survey?" Um, I would also say that the degree of social acceptability is wider now for Trump than it used to be. Um, certainly on Silicon Valley and in Wall Street, you have more explicit Trump support than you had four years ago or eight years ago. Um, also in communities like, like younger Black men, for example, um, or younger Hispanic men and things like that. I- I think, I think the social circle has expanded a little bit, where you're, where you're allowed to say you're- you're a Trump voter.

   10. CWChris Williamson37:38

       I would agree. Uh,

10. 37:39 – 44:48

    The Power of ‘the Village & the River’

    1. CWChris Williamson37:39

       getting into your current, uh, thesis, uh, of choice, how have you come to think about the sort of, uh, landscape of influential cultures in America, the village, the river, et cetera?

    2. NSNate Silver37:51

       Yeah, so the village and the river are terms from my book, uh, On The Edge. Um, the village is kind of what it sounds like. It's the East Coast establishment. It's Harvard, it's the New York Times, it's the Washington Post, it's academia, media, government. Uh, tends to be politically progressive, tends to be very collective in its orientation. What you don't want to do in the village is be canceled or ostracized. It's about kind of the group cohesion plus winning elections for- for Democrats. Um, whereas the river is my name for a community of like-minded risk-takers. So it's people in Silicon Valley and Wall Street, it's the casino business, it's people trying to, you know, who are, A, very, very competitive, and B, very analytics-driven. So they're smart about things or trying to estimate and quantify things, but they also, they also really want to win.

    3. CWChris Williamson38:42

       What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of those groups?

    4. NSNate Silver38:46

       Um, so as we kind of move into a world that's more algorithmatized, um, and where, like, basically math and probability are becoming a more and more important skill, then- then that riverian, I call it, you know, someone from the river is a riverian, that cluster of attributes is becoming more and more important, right? As, like, tech and finance basically become a larger and larger share of the economy, then that's kind of more emergent, uh, and important than maybe some of the more verbal skills. So we can, we can debate-

    5. CWChris Williamson39:17

       Would you say that we can't just vibe our way through the future?

    6. NSNate Silver39:20

       I think as the world gets more complicated, then it gets harder to, harder and harder to vibe. Um, or maybe you can just-

    7. CWChris Williamson39:26

       I'm vibing. I don't know about you, I'm vibing, I've been vibing throughout this whole conversation.

    8. NSNate Silver39:28

       It's fun. No, having conversations is good. And actually if you look at large language models, like ChatGPT, um, like language is actually more mathematical than people maybe assume. You can kind of, like, transform it to vectors and do math on- on language basically. Um, but- but yeah, I- I... Look, I think, um, you know, it's also a... L- the fact is that we live in a very competitive world where the capitalist system, and I'm for the most part pro-free market, um, is very efficient at producing (laughs) winners and losers, um, and sorting through different ideas for better and for worse. And so the people who are, who were naturally competitive get ahead, of course.

    9. CWChris Williamson40:10

       Is the village not made up of a lot of people who are also competitive though? They're v- highly decorated in terms of academia. Uh, they're still working in areas that are... Although, uh, internally they may try and sort of relabel it, they're driven by capitalist, uh, sort of fundamentals. Is that not the case still for them?

    10. NSNate Silver40:31

        Uh, I mean, I think they are very concerned with their social status, right? Um, that you want a certain credential. I mean, these are people where during COVID, um, if you didn't have the right credential or even if you had the right credential and said the wrong thing, then people say, "Oh, it's not that what he's saying is wrong. It's that he's the wrong person to say it." Um, or that's also adjacent to some of the wokeness stuff, right? Where, "Well, as a person of X, Y and Z, then I have the right to say this but not the right to say, talk about this other thing." Um, so yeah, whereas classically people in the river are more willing to be contrarian. They, uh, don't care as much about offending society. Um, they just want to be right. They just want their bets to win. Um, and appearance's sake, don't matter s- as much.

    11. CWChris Williamson41:23

        What are the advantages of the village and disadvantages of the river?

    12. NSNate Silver41:28

        Um, so I think the village sometimes has its heart in the right place, right? I mean, you know, I- I believe that climate change is a big issue and I believe that, um, you know, we're a very wealthy country that can afford to have some redistribution and things like that. Um, you know, I believe in expanding rights to LGBTQ people, all... So on that stuff, I'm probably kind of culturally aligned with them. Um, you know, they certainly perceive Trump as being quite dangerous to democracy. I think after January 6th and that argument becomes, you know, very credible, frankly. Um, yeah, look, I mean, we have had historically in the US very competent institutions. Um, although I know Americans are frustrated with the government, you know, you look at us compared to, um, you know, these middle income country, Greece or things like that, like our economy is still growing when other, uh, economies aren't as much. Um, but I worry that this is getting, like, swallowed by bipartisanship, uh-Um, you know, I think during COVID that we saw that the expertise is kind of conditional on, on the politics a little bit. You know, I-

    13. CWChris Williamson42:41

        Mm-hmm.

    14. NSNate Silver42:41

        Media is complicated. I mean, media's a very dynamic business, but I think sometimes there are thumbs on the scales in different directions. Um, so I worry that the river is gonna kind of lose what... or the village is gonna lose what make it, what made it great. Um, I mean, the disadvantages to the village, or to the river rather, is, like, I think you are getting, um, you are getting a lot of difficult people, right? If they want the once-in-a-generation founder who breaks the mold, well, you're gonna have a lot of people like Sam Bankman-Fried or Elizabeth Holmes that, um, that do this in a destructive way potentially instead. Um, you know, I think it's, uh, it's... there can be some selection bias in who they pick to be founders. I mean, it's still very male, um, you know, not very diverse in terms of Black or Hispanic representation in the VC industry. And so I think those things are valid critiques.

    15. CWChris Williamson43:34

        Yeah, the... Certainly one of the things I've noticed, uh, one of the reasons I think being left-leaning is so seductive at the moment, uh, is that much communication is going on through social media and whoever sort of prioritizes for first-order compassion sounds like somebody that cares more. And it's all well and good being Tim Kennedy or Tucker Max and telling everyone to go fuck themselves because I've got an AR-15 and 1,000, uh, like magazines of ammunition, but it's, it's not as compelling at getting other people on board. By definition, it's exclusionary in a way that, uh, the sort of, uh, left-leaning talking points also can be exclusionary, but they're like inclusionary-exclusionary.

    16. NSNate Silver44:15

        Yeah, look, and, and I do think that, you know, it's inherently... I like how you put it, I think it's inherently like a more sympathetic argument that's a little bit more humane and, and that goes, that goes a fairly long way. I mean, let's keep in mind that, um, even though there are excesses on the left, uh, Democrats win their fair share of elections. They win the popular vote almost every ni- time now in, in the presidency. Um, they, uh, control the Senate, they might win back the House later this year. Um, so it's a message that actually is maybe more broadly appealing than people might assume.

11. 44:48 – 49:24

    Nate’s Experiences With Sam Bankman-Fried

    1. CWChris Williamson44:48

       Talking about some of the more risky people, uh, Elizabeth Holmes sentenced recently, Caroline Ellison, uh, in court recently, uh, Sean Diddy Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried in the same Brooklyn jail unit at the moment, apparently. Uh, what did you learn from being around SBF and, and can you sort of tell that story of how that happened?

    2. NSNate Silver45:08

       So I spent a lot of time with, with, um, SBF. I first talked to him in, I think, January 2022, which is during one of the early, um, Bitcoin peaks. Um, and he's riding high. He can't seem to imagine that you'd ever have a sustained decline in crypto, or at least it's kind of like what he's telling me, right? Um, and was insanely tolerant for risk. I mean, it's a book about people who are risk-takers, but... So he told me that if you're not willing to risk ruining your life, that you're doing something wrong, that you're not accepting enough risk. Um, which seems crazy, right? If you're worth a lot of money, what you should be doing to some degree or another is hedging your risk, um, that you can make these very big bets because if you lose the bets, well, you still have a billion dollars left over if you're SBF, or $5 billion or $10 billion. Um, you know, he was not doing that whatsoever. And I think was, like, enabled by a lot of people who, who ought to have asked more questions. You had, I think... You know, in New York we have the bystander effect where you see, like, somebody, like, bleeding out on the street or something and everyone walks by, they figure someone else has called 911. Well, sometimes nobody called 911 and did the due diligence and that person winds up, you know, dying or being gravely injured because of the bystander effect. There were so many people who were vouching for Sam. You know, he is on stage at the World Economic Forum with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and, and he's hanging out with these, like, Oxford philosophers. Um, but he... the whole time, he was giving very dangerous signals.

    3. CWChris Williamson46:39

       Is he actually smart or is he just a moron that was able to tolerate more risk than everyone else and get first-mover advantage?

    4. NSNate Silver46:47

       I think he's smart, but I think he's, like, um, you know, 99.5 percentile smart and not like 99.95 percentile smart, like one in 1,000 and not one in, in 10,000. Um, I think he's also somebody who, um, is overconfident. I mean, this is a big problem that actually people in the river can have. In theory, they're supposed to be probabilistic and, and cautious and learn how to make well-calibrated bets. In practice, that can lead itself to overconfidence. And so, um, you know, he, I think, overestimated his ability to navigate these various rapids that we have with, um, crypto prices and NFTs and so forth going up and down. I think he was over-optimistic about his persuasive ability. When I talked to him and I went down eventually to the Bahamas and talked to him a couple of days there, uh, he seemed to think that he could charm his way into a very sympathetic jury verdict. Um, you know, I asked him... Last time I met with him, he was in Palo Alto, California at his parents' place where he's under house arrest, has an ankle bracelet. And I said, "What if you just got, um, two years in jail and then some, some light probation after that? Would you take that deal?" And he said, "I'd have to think about it." When it would have been a great deal. He wound up getting 20 years instead, which was, I think a fairly predictable outcome, and so-

    5. CWChris Williamson48:06

       Not just 20 years, Nate, 20 years in the same jail as P. Diddy-

    6. NSNate Silver48:12

       Yeah.

    7. CWChris Williamson48:12

       ... uh, which I think is the, the, the same functioning as 10,000 years actually.

    8. NSNate Silver48:16

       Yeah, no, it is. It... There's some riddle I think about, like, forever being trapped in a jail and that's gonna be... I don't know. I- I'm... Although I'm sure, I'm sure SBF will find ways to have little schemes and so forth in, in jail. I'm sure he'll have an interesting time.

    9. CWChris Williamson48:30

       Well, look, to sort of tie the two big topics that we've been talking about today together, uh, presidential candidates and high-risk takers, Caroline Ellison, SBF's girlfriend, managed to-... finesse an entire army of nerds into being some weird inverted harem, and then managed to finesse her way into 107-year discount on her jail sentence. She went from 110-year potential maximum to three years of, uh, you can kind of go aro- just don't, don't go near the internet or something for a while. She is the person that we should be looking to for president. She can f-

    10. NSNate Silver49:07

        (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson49:07

        The Ukraine is sorted. The Middle East is sorted. I'm Caroline Ellison for president, that's me, that's my vote.

    12. NSNate Silver49:13

        Uh, it's probably her versus Mr. Beast next time around, I don't know.

    13. CWChris Williamson49:21

        (laughs)

    14. NSNate Silver49:21

        (laughs)

    15. CWChris Williamson49:22

        Oh, man. So, w- you

12. 49:24 – 56:29

    Why Crypto Investors Are More Likely to Be Scammed

    1. CWChris Williamson49:24

       looked at, um, the sort of sociology, psychology of, uh, crypto investors, why they were so prone to being scammed. W- what did you learn there?

    2. NSNate Silver49:33

       Uh, I think part of it is the kind of time of human history when this is happening. Um, you know, if you read Matt Levine from Bloomberg, he's fond of talking about something called the boredom market hypothesis, which is that people are locked down, I know it's not a formal lockdown, but people's social lives are radically curtailed during COVID, they're spending a lot of time on the internet. Meanwhile, the government is pumping a lot of money into the economy, so there's a lot of cash, and so I, I think it was just, like... You know, look, I think the blockchain's a really interesting technology, so I'm not trying to demean it, um, but I think you had kind of a, that, you know, that NFT era. I mean, most bubbles, people kind of, they kind of almost know they're in a bubble and they kind of can't help themselves (laughs) anyway sometimes, 'cause it's fun. And also there are times if you, if your timing is perfect, then you can come out ahead. Very few people do. But I, I think it's this boredom and anxiety of the pandemic is producing, you know, producing a lot of speculative assets. Al- although, you know, this is amazing. People forget, like, how annoying, like, the GameStop... How amazing rather, not annoying, how amazing, like, the GameStop story is, right? That basically kee- people band together on the internet to severely disrupt stock prices. I'm not sure that it's good for the economy, but, like, it's amazing that people are able to, to, to do that for sustained periods of time.

    3. CWChris Williamson50:57

       Yeah. Uh, two thoughts on that. First one being, I have asked a lot of my friends who are into crypto, if there was no potential to make a profit from your trading in it and your investment in it, would you still put your money in it? And the number of people, y- 95% of people, I think, if you ask them, like, carefully and get their real opinion, doesn't... I'm like, "Uh, dude, you don't love the blockchain." This isn't about somebody in Zambia being able to send money back home safely and securely. It's because it's fucking high-risk gambling with massive upside. That's why you love it. Uh, second thing, do you read much Morgan Housel? Are you subscribed to Collaborative Fund, his, his blog?

    4. NSNate Silver51:35

       I have, I have not, no.

    5. CWChris Williamson51:36

       Dude. So he put a post up that is very similar to what you're talking about. I read it this morning, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you about it. Um, uh, compounded knowledge versus cyclical knowledge. So he starts off with this story of germ disease. So before, uh, germ diseases were, uh, understood and that, uh, these surgeons used to think that a crusty, blood-filled, puss-soaked, uh, um, operating room was kind of like a... It was evidence of all of the work that you'd done.

    6. NSNate Silver52:08

       (laughs)

    7. CWChris Williamson52:08

       That they, they thought, th- they basically mocked the first, um, uh, proposers of germ disease and said, "This is the same as relying on spirits. There's no way that this could be the case." Like, "This is so, such tiny, invisible, little things that get in." It's not, it's the miasma, uh, you know, they were putting cow manure into people's wounds. They were injecting cow milk into people's veins in the hope that the fat would turn into white blood cells. Like, just, like, really, really out there stuff. And then, uh, Morgan's point is that as soon as you learn about a germ theory of disease, that knowledge is locked in, so it compounds over time. And yet he has, you know, maybe 10 different examples, 10 different, uh, quotes, from Seneca 2,000 years ago, to the Great Depression, to the Florida housing prices in the 1900s, all over the place, and everybody is saying the same thing, that anytime that you get some money, one of the primary problems is that it makes you want to protect your money, which makes you actually more, uh, skewed in weird directions. You become sort of more illogical the richer you are, as opposed to, uh, uh, uh, being more rational with it. And he talks about that being cyclical knowledge, that each time that a situation comes back around, this time it's different, this time the market conditions are alt- altered, uh, people always are going to be driven by this desire for more, it's got this built-in hedonic adaptation thing, and this sort of dissatisfaction that humans have. Uh, his point being that he can, can see a time in future where maybe all cancers are solved, uh, we don't have to deal with w- with death and disease in the same way as we do now. We've basically sort of conquered human health. But there is no time in future when he doesn't see that greed, and envy, and the desire for more will not be a fundamental driving force. I thought that was a really nice, uh, a really nice concept.

    8. NSNate Silver53:52

       Yeah. Look, I mean, one thing I worry about, again, I'm pretty pro-capitalist for the most part, but I worry about, um, where we are giving all our data to these big powerful companies and potentially AI systems, um, and they know more about us than, than we know about them. And that if you're not smart, that you wind up getting taken advantage of and, and exploited. If the, if the economy becomes more casino-like, um, that seems probably pretty bad for, for human wellbeing.

    9. CWChris Williamson54:21

       What are some of the most interesting insights or lessons that you learned from researching Vegas and casinos and stuff like that?

    10. NSNate Silver54:28

        I think one thing that's a little bit counterintuitive is, you know, people don't understand how important regulation actually is to having a functional casino industry at all. Because for years, um, casinos just cheated their patrons, right? And they kind of competed to see who could play...... better tricks on their patrons. There was, like, no real way to establish credibility and then on top of that, you have, um, the mob, uh, skimming profits off the top before the era of all these big entrepreneurs. And so, um, the fact that, like, casino industry is now this respectable business, um, is actually kind of an underdog story. I mean, there's nothing else to do in Nevada, right? It's beautiful land, but like, it's not very hospitable to the population. Um, it's surrounded by mountains in all directions and so, "Yeah, let's build a whole bunch of casinos and," you know, and Vegas is an incredible success story in certain ways, but it's, you know, partly because of the, you know, the visions of the Steve Wynns of the world. These are the big casino magnates, um, who were just like, "We can make casino a luxury destination item," um, and they made that big bet and they were, and they were right.

    11. CWChris Williamson55:38

        Was it not always?

    12. NSNate Silver55:40

        No, I mean, it was kind of very much, you know, you read the Mobile Travel Guide. I'm dating myself, but no, it, it, the casino industry was seen as, like, um, maybe cheap lower-middle brow fun. I mean, there were some things. There was, like, the Rat Pack era, of course, um, but you go into, like, uh, the old school casinos on, in Downtown Las Vegas, some of which are a lot of fun. It's a good thing to do to get off the Strip sometimes. Um, but there, yeah, it's showgirls kind of vibes and maybe a little bit of a speakeasy vibe, but it's not, it's not high-brow luxury, right? You get a $20 room that they give you for free so you'll, so you'll gamble more. You get a coupon for a free steak dinner, but it's not, you know, Michelin star, award-winning, three-star chefs next to the poker room kind of thing.

13. 56:29 – 1:01:54

    Psychology of High Risk-Takers

    1. CWChris Williamson56:29

       Going back to the, uh, high-risk takers, uh, and the, the people from the village that you were talking about before, what are, what are the big lessons that you want people to understand about the sort of psychological makeup of these people and, and sort of how they can use those lessons, the best, the best of each of them to sort of, uh, embody them themselves?

    2. NSNate Silver56:50

       Yeah. Even though it's a cliché, it's extremely important to be cool under pressure and to understand that when you're facing high-stress situations that involve physical risk or real financial risk, that your body has a reaction to them. Um, that if I'm playing a $1, $2 poker game, just nothing is going to faze me. Um, if I'm playing a $100, $200 poker game where pots could get, get into the five figures easily, then the fact is that your body will intuitively recognize that this is a fight or flight moment where you have more on the line. And there are other moments like that. Um, if you do... are into public speaking and you walk out on a stage in front of a couple of thousands of people, you're n- you're naturally gonna get butterflies because that's an important moment compared to when you're just walking down the street to catch your airport, or catch the, the cab to the airport or something. Um, so understanding that when that's happening, you're actually on a different operating system. I've talked to guys who study the neuroscience of all of this. Um, and understanding that when you're under pressure that you have to slow down and simplify things sometimes. People want to be a hero to make some really exotic play in poker. If you could just kind of execute and stick to your training when other people are losing their shit, then that's a really powerful advantage.

    3. CWChris Williamson58:11

       How do you step in to do that functionally or practically yourself? I think I saw somewhere in, uh, the release about the book that you've made a not insignificant amount of sum of money while writing the book in poker.

    4. NSNate Silver58:24

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson58:24

       So, it, it seems that you must have been around some of these high-stress situations. Someone has got a presentation to do at work or they've got a job interview or they're e- for some reason playing in a poker game that's got you on the other side of the table. What should they do to, uh, regulate themselves in that moment? Or what do you do?

    6. NSNate Silver58:41

       So, one thing, it's, you know, it's recognizing that having a physical stress response isn't necessarily a bad thing. Um, so for example, when I talked to a professional golf trainer, he's a guy who trains golfers and poker players 'cause they can both get, both get the yips, both get nerves. Um, a professional golfer who is a fit athlete, uh, maybe not as fit as, like, a basketball player or something, but these guys are pretty fit, um, will have his resting heart rate at like 90 or 100 beats per minute just from walking around the golf course at a major tournament, um, because it's a, it's... The body is correctly saying, "This needs to have a... I need to have an increase in my performance." And so, understanding that if you feel nervous that it isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you're doing public speaking, what you don't wanna do is kind of what Joe Biden did in the first debate and began to freeze. Um, usually, if you just kind of say the words that are coming out of your mouth, then they will work perfectly fine, and you, and you can't be as cerebral about things as you would be ordinarily. However, it also means that you're actually intaking more information. If you've ever heard the phrase being, um, "in the zone," like Michael Jordan would describe where I'm seeing things as though they're in freeze-frame or slow motion, right, and I'm able to anticipate my opponent's moves before they make them and things like that. Like, that's, that's actually a real thing you can experience, like when you're, when you're under stress and being able to get used to that is, is helpful.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:00:11

       I had a, an incident on a podcast a few years ago (clears throat) where I'd decided to fast before I did it, and, uh, that's good because it meant I was super aroused and had a- all of this, you know, adrenaline coursing through me. But I went hypo during the middle of the episode, which caused my brain to just go compli- completely blank. So, I'm sat there watching this person go, "Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da."

    8. NSNate Silver1:00:33

       Yeah.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:00:33

       "Ba-da-da-da-da-da. Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da." And listening back to the episode now in retrospect, there was some bit of me, cruise control Governor, that was just saying things, but my mind was captured with me going, "Oh my God, I can't believe that I've got nothing to say. How am I gonna get some blo- Is that, is that chocolate over the far side? Can I ask for some chocolate? Do you think that I could get, get a break and get a Gatorade?" But my brain was just going, uh, b- looping round in this and my mouth was just feeding stuff out of it that was totally cogent. I was like, "Uh, okay, that's interesting." That's getting out of your own way and sort of using experience.

    10. NSNate Silver1:01:04

        Yeah, people's ability to go on autopilot and the amazing, like, plasticity we have with how we direct our attention to c- I mean, you know, imagine that you're in this...... crowded restaurant in the middle of Manhattan and there's bad acoustics and 500 conversations, you're able to, like, attune to the conversation with your friend most of the time. I mean, our-our minds are quite, are quite amazing in that respect. Although I would recommend against ... Fasting and poker, like, don't go well together. Um, I don't like to be super stuffed when I play, um, but I don't wanna be totally famished either because your body will find ways to make you lose to feed you.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:01:42

        Yes.

    12. NSNate Silver1:01:42

        That your friends are like, "Hey, we're going out to get dinner at that Japanese place later. Uh, we know you're still in the game, right?" You'll, you'll always find a way to, like, bust out when that-- if you're, if you're starving.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:01:52

        Yes. What are

14. 1:01:54 – 1:04:30

    The Price You Pay to Be Nate Silver

    1. CWChris Williamson1:01:54

       the disadvantages of being a person who lives life with the worldview and perspective and predilection and disposition that you have?

    2. NSNate Silver1:02:05

       Um, I think sometimes you rub certain people the wrong way. I mean, I don't know. I mean, um, I mean, I've always felt kind of estranged in, in politics 'cause I'm concerned with this question of, like, who's gonna win and what's the optimal strategy and, and the kind of game theory of politics. Um, and most people are into politics because they, um, are on one team and they want that team to win. The reasons for being on that team might differ from identity stuff to, to more high-minded policy stuff or thinking, you know. And that's, and that's fine, but, like, th- that's, like, not my people. So I kind of wind up getting thrust into environments where the thing I'm best known for, politics, is, is not a thing I-- that's my most natural interest.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:02:53

       Is that something you're, uh, worried about as a legacy, uh, type picture being the political forecast guy?

    4. NSNate Silver1:03:01

       I mean, it's probably irreparable at this (laughs) at this-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:03:07

       (laughs)

    6. NSNate Silver1:03:07

       Although I could... You know, I thought about not running an election forecast publicly this cycle. I thought about just doing some consulting. We had, um, we had, with several different firms, different discussions about just taking the forecast totally private. Um, I decided in the end that, like... So I'm building this small business. I have this newsletter, Silver Bulletin, which is a subscriber newsletter on Substack, and like-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:03:30

       Everyone should go and subscribe. I love it.

    8. NSNate Silver1:03:31

       Appreciate it. Um, and that's doing really well, right? And so now, all of a sudden, half my burnout about the election stuff was working for a giant corporation called the Walt Disney Corporation that owned FiveThirtyEight before. And so, um, so yeah, I don't know. I mean, we'll see. I, I, I was having a lot of fun, I will say. I know you're not allowed to say, you're not supposed to have fun when you cover politics. Was having a lot of fun until about, like, two weeks ago where, you know, after Labor Day, people just kind of lose their minds. They get very mad at any pollster or forecaster who doesn't say good news to their candidate. Um, but we're in the stretch run here now. We only have, what is it, 44 more days to go or something.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:04:14

       Not that you're counting down, obviously.

    10. NSNate Silver1:04:16

        No, no (laughs) . I mean, I've got a, a trip to Korea planned for December. Uh, got some poker stuff planned for earlier December, so I have, I have some things to look forward to.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:04:27

        Oh, you absolutely deserve it. Um, one

15. 1:04:30 – 1:10:13

    Nate’s Core Values

    1. CWChris Williamson1:04:30

       of the words that me and a bunch of my friends are massive, massive fans of is agency. And-

    2. NSNate Silver1:04:35

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:04:35

       ... you've got agency, plurality and reciprocity as three sort of very important traits. Can you just explain what those mean to you and, and, and why they're so crucial?

    4. NSNate Silver1:04:45

       Yeah, so these are kind of my core values that I think we need in a more, in a more data-driven/risk-on world. Um, agency means having good choices is how I define it, right? So liberty is great, but like, you know, we want you to be able to have two or more real choices for how you lead your life, um, where you're well informed about those choices, it's not coercive. I worry, for example, that with algorithms, you have people who are manipulated into making kind of false choices. Um, plurality just means that I don't want any dominant group or faction to dominate. I wanna have... This is why I like democracy still, is that, um, is that you have to have agreement between different perspectives or different people. I think that's very important. Um, and reciprocity is kind of a form of fairness, but in a more complicated way that gets derived from game theory. Um, this is about not exploiting people, right? In game theory, you adopt a strategy, say, in poker, that assumes that you're playing perfectly and we are playing against one another and trying to balance our strategies out with one another so that neither of us lose in the long run. Um, I know it's a complicated metaphor, but it's basically saying, you know, treat others how, how you want to be treated.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:06:01

       Mm. What about what is sort of, when it comes to a personal level, you know, you're not just this, uh, nameless, faceless data inputter that's, uh, writing words and, and trying to predict elections. You've got the stuff that you do with poker, private life, all the rest of it. What are the traits or habits that you rely on yourself personally the most? I think there's a lot of people, certainly myself, I want to become better, uh, with dealing with risk. I want to... I would say I'm the, uh, uh, sort of opposite in terms of risk-taking to Sam Bankman-Fried that, um-

    6. NSNate Silver1:06:35

       (laughs) .

    7. CWChris Williamson1:06:36

       ... my (laughs) , my-my, uh, required barometer needs to hit an unreasonable level for me to make a decision. So, what are some of the, uh, traits that you rely on or that you value most in yourself when it comes to your ability to sort of deal with risk and, and move forward?

    8. NSNate Silver1:06:49

       Um, uh, you know, look, I think I understand that we live in a world where there's a lot of abundance, at least if you're a lucky person like I am. Um, so, you know, I think people who... I mean, I grew up middle class basically, right? I think a lot of people like that don't realize that sometimes it's worth it to, um, to pay to make your life easier and more convenient, I think, so not feeling guilty or shame about that. I mean, I, I work really hard, um, and I have a lot of-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:07:17

       You mean like getting a, a gardener or a maid or something like that?

    10. NSNate Silver1:07:20

        Yeah, things like that or, or, you know, or staying in a nicer...... hotel where you'll sleep better. 'cause if you do the math and you have these election years where that's where most of your income is made, then like, you know, one hour of extra sleep is worth quite a bit in terms of productivity. If you can write another newsletter post and get more subscribers and things like that. Um, you know, I think I'm very good at, like, intense, focused work. I mean, if you ask me, I'd probably say that like, I worked more hours 10 years ago when I was a little younger, but like I-I work much more focused now, right? If you're working for yourself and there are no, like, pointless meetings to take, um, then if you don't have any busy time and it's all real work, then doing like, then doing six to eight hours of real work in a day is a lot of real intellectual work and kind of recognizing that you have to like pace yourself a little bit. Um, and also if you're, if you're a writer, at least for me, you're constantly writing in the background, right? Like, I'm writing like four blog posts whenever I go to get coffee or something.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:08:23

        So you're, uh, optimizing for a maker schedule rather than a manager schedule, in Paul Graham language?

    12. NSNate Silver1:08:30

        Ab- absolutely. You know, the, the manager schedule, you know, when I have more than three scheduled commitments in a day, right, even three is pushing it, then I'm like, "Okay, the day's kind of ruined."

    13. CWChris Williamson1:08:41

        We, uh, the founder mode, uh, versus manager mode, uh, blog post that Paul put up the other week, me and my housemate have been talking about that a lot. Uh, really interesting little pivot that he found with that, which is if the beginning of his day gets sideswiped by something which puts him into, uh, manager mode, uh, or manager schedule, I guess technically, he just commits the rest of the day. He's like, "Right, okay, I'm gonna commit that the rest of this is fucking ruined. I'm not gonna get anything sort of meaningful or deep done." So he then just starts messaging all of the outstanding meetings that he knows he's got. I guess it's kind of like, uh, I don't know, uh, your first hand going really badly, uh, around the poker table and go, "Okay, I'm just, I'm just gonna adapt the rest of my game to this and maybe I'm gonna just try and learn stuff and then I'll come back to the table a better way tomorrow."

    14. NSNate Silver1:09:29

        I think that's smart. I think, and I think batching your work like that is smart too, right? Um, like, I'm not really a clothes fiend, but you know, you have to go shopping to look nice sometimes and like I will just go fucking balls out and be like, "I'm just gonna spend six hours shopping today and then not do it again for six months or something." I think that's more, that's more efficient than doing a little bit at a time.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:09:48

        Agreed. I'm currently testing trying to have Wednesday as a meeting day and then the rest of the week is nothing, as opposed to this sort of weird, like, distribution of seeds on a, an open field that I had previously on my calendar.

    16. NSNate Silver1:10:00

        No, I think that's, I think that's much better 'cause I, you know, you really do need, like, especially writing a book, you really do need these times of like three hours minimum to get totally immersed in it, I think.

16. 1:10:13 – 1:10:47

    Where to Find Nate

    1. NSNate Silver1:10:13

    2. CWChris Williamson1:10:13

       Heck yeah. Nate Silver, ladies and gentlemen. Nate, I love your work. The book's fantastic. It's really story-driven, which I, I appreciate from someone that, uh, has the, uh, seduction of numbers, I guess, in front of them all the time. Where should people go if they wanna keep up to date with all the stuff you're doing?

    3. NSNate Silver1:10:26

       Um, so Silver Bulletin is my newsletter, and Risky Business is my podcast that I co-host with another poker player, Maria Konnikova.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:10:34

       Heck yeah. Nate, I appreciate you. Thank you.

    5. NSNate Silver1:10:36

       Of course. Thanks so much.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:10:37

       If you enjoyed that episode, you will love a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last couple of months, and it's available right here. Go on, give 'em a watch.

Episode duration: 1:10:48