I read his book years ago, the one he wrote after he was really, really right that one time, and it’s clear in hindsight that he didn’t even learn the lesson he claimed to have learned in the book from his days playing poker. Back when online poker first got big, in the early 2000s, and it hadn’t been made illegal yet, Silver really got into it for awhile. And he had some early success, and thought his statistical knowledge was the reason, and massively over evaluated his skill. He literally talks about this in the book, that he did this, and then started losing, and realized he had overestimated his abilities. And then he fucking does the same thing with polling. He had some big early success, especially in the 2008 election, and thought he had it all figured out. The difference is that, unlike with his poker playing experience, he has yet to acknowledge that he’s not as good as he thought.
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