Silver Bulletin

Just follow the man, not the brand. He’s still doing his thing: https://www.natesilver.net/

The site has become a right-wing echo chamber and Musk's personal soapbox: https://www.natesilver.net/p/social-media-has-become-a-freak-show About 90% of the interesting people I ever followed on Twitter are now on Bluesky or Mastodon. They're never coming back.

https://www.natesilver.net/ i was a casual reader of 538 back in the day. his substack feels pretty similar, if smaller in scope.

Apparently 37.7% of Americans, so roughly 116 million people, support the war. I'm not sure "this was a good idea" was a the exact question though. https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54454-most-americans-oppose-sending-… https://www.natesilver.net/p/iran-war-polls-popularity-approval Clearly this war isn't popular but that's a far cry from saying there's no debate. Like many other topics/questions we're seeing people following their tribe and bubbles rather than actual debating.

Their last peak of subscriptions was when Trump got elected in 2016. It was a good time for newspapers and TV. The NYT is having an even higher peak now[1]. Surely the Sulzbergers aren't the only family competent enough to run a newspaper. Lots of papers aren't owned by billionaires and manage to do ok. Wapo didn't have games in 2016 and people still subscribed. It just lost it's value to readers, so people unsubscribed. I certainly did. Bezos is literally just showing his incompetence at this point in running a paper, and the NYT is probably loving it. Sure billionaires can buy social networks and papers, but people can also subscribe to and use things not owned by billionaires. [1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-sad-and-self-inflicted-decline

None of this matters to conservatives. Look at the US South. They have been poor for generations because they dislike diversity more than they want a strong economy and common prosperity. There's a reason Immigration is Trump's best-polling issue https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bullet… As far as I can tell the best fix is higher education. Exposure to diverse viewpoints & critical thinking predicts partisan shifting. But I'm sure there are other options.

Bluesky is miserable. Great post about what makes it what it is: https://www.natesilver.net/p/what-is-blueskyism

> However, by almost any way you can present "popularity" of a president - be it approval ratings, polling figures, popular vote, electoral vote, etc. - he is one of the more popular presidents in US history. You might want to look up those data yourself because uh he's actually unpopular in those metrics. Approval - 42.5% [1]. Much better than Trump's love interest Biden's 37.1% [2] but being below 50% is unpopular. Popular Vote / Electoral Vote - 49.8%, 312. I may need to tell you this so I will. 50% is greater than 49.8%; a majority of voters (nevermind the country) did not want Trump. As before, this is better than Biden's 306 and Trump1's 304 but worse than Obama2 (332), Obama1 (365) and in general 312 (57%) is nothing to write home about. [1]: https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bullet… [2]: https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-biden-failed

Then I recommend you have a look at the polling numbers on free speech presented here: https://www.natesilver.net/p/free-speech-is-in-trouble

See https://www.natesilver.net/p/chatgpt-is-shockingly-bad-at-poker (has one of the best AI generated blog images ever)

> FiveThirtyEight's method is overrated but they basically put the last three elections as 50/50 You may be thinking of Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin [1]. He took the original 538 model with him when he left. The model 538 runs now is something they made up afterwards. [1] https://www.natesilver.net

The 'political repercussions' case is pretty flimsy [0]. Bigger picture - this disagreement seems fundamentally rooted in conflicting political philosophies, as alluded to above. More facts are not going to change that. An example... "'Realpolitik' is not a defense complicity in genocide." Says who? I mean I agree with you on the face of things, but who gets to decide what genocide means? And what does it mean for international law to be "binding on all signatory states"? Some view overconfidence in this notion as Wilson's great and lasting mistake. Unfortunately, there is no compiler that can adjudicate these types of questions for us. 0 - https://www.natesilver.net/p/your-friends-are-not-a-representative

> No conservative I know "hates immigrants." Consider what the policy intends to do rather than blanket-blaming it on hate. If you look at the rhetoric from the Trump people over the years, they absolutely and clearly do hate immigrants, or are doing their best to seem that way. As an example, consider the following quote^[1] from Trump just a few years ago: > They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country [...] That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. It's trivial to find more like that. Weird white supremacist-adjacent rhetoric. Equating immigrants with animals. Etc. American conservatives may not hate immigrants, but they sure love a guy who fervently expresses his hatred and disdain for immigrants every chance he gets. They've voted him into our highest office twice, and immigration was a central pillar of his campaign both times. I fully understand that many people who voted for him did so for reasons besides immigration, but at this point if they aren't willing to disavow him after the catastrophic first year-and-change of his second term then I am done giving them the benefit of the doubt, because there must be some…

> Wouldn't it normatively be more in keeping with a proper distinction between public and private to say lobby your congressman to stop the ceaseless funding and weapon deployments to countries in the ME that don't share our values? If an individual lobbying the government wouldn't be overpowered by monied corporate interest in the government, maybe. Sadly that's not the case, at least in the US. > The NSA has all your data anyway. Yes, and this is incredibly unpopular and if we had a real representative democracy we'd be able to do something about it. > In some jurisdictions you can even claim a right to be forgotten. This too is popular and would be codified more broadly if, again, it wasn't for corporate lobbyists. > Do you really think such public entities are more trustworthy than their private bedfellows merely because they fall on opposite lines of the public/private divide? To beat a dead horse... > the fact that a majority of your fellow citizens (in the USA at least) don't actually care about their (and by extension - your) privacy or human rights in the Middle East Factually untrue. The Iran war is incredibly unpopular, beating Iraq and Vietnam in unpopularity this quickly into the operation [1] Most Americans want us to stop funding Israel [2] Most Americans are against spying on fellow Americans (esp democrats/the left; tho republicans love a good ole police state)[3]. I'd argue strongly the reason these numbers aren't more in favor of…

He's not the final word on the matter, but Nate Silver writes... > I've worked a lot with data produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other federal agencies. In fact, an economic index based on a half-dozen of these statistics is part of our presidential election forecast, so we’ve pulled this data all the way back to World War II.3 > And I consider it to be of very high quality. When BLS data is revised as more information becomes available, it’s meticulously documented and explained. For more on how this works, including just how difficult the BLS’s job is and how it’s being made harder by declining survey response rates and cuts to federal agencies that track economic activity, I’d strongly recommend this edition of the Odd Lots podcast with Bill Beach, the former BLS commissioner under Trump 1.0 and Biden. It might not be the most riveting interview, but one thing that comes through is just how much of a straight-shooter he is. https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont-fool

> When a mainstream media outlet takes a position, most people are able to distinguish between that outlet's position and a large social movement in favor of a particular political position I hesitate to reference politics here, but read Nate Silver's writings on what he's termed "the Indigo Blob"[0][1]... > The same cannot be said for these platforms, which by design attempt to make you feel like you're interacting with a large number of real people who hold real opinions When I think back to how things went down during the pandemic, I'm convinced that the "real opinions" that most people held were based on blindly following position of whatever media they were consuming (and that media likely blindly following whatever government messaging). Actual scientists posting actual statistics?[2] No-one wanted to see the data on who was - and wasn't - at significant risk from Covid. At one point back then, one of my closest friends bluntly told me in a group chat that I was "a sociopath", despite him knowing that out of the two of us, I'm the one with the science PhD + published papers, and (at least science-wise) he's the layman. Hey ho, he and I eventually made up... [0] https://www.natesilver.net/p/twitter-elon-and-the-indigo-blob [1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/how-the-indigo-blob-runs-a-bluff [2] https://medium.com/wintoncentre/what-have-been-the-fatal-risks-of-covi…

>Biden is polling 4-8 points behind where he was in June in those states in 2020 Further, Trump consistently did better than the polls in almost every state in both 2016 and 2020. To have him actually be up in the polls—something he never did nationally in the aggregate in 2016 or 2020—is signaling landslide. >and where Clinton was in 2016. I highly recommend this excellent Politico article on 10 key moments of the 2016 election campaign <http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/2016-presidential-elect… One is how Trump campaigned like crazy while Clinton took weeks off just loafing in Chappaqua. Eight years later Trump is still campaigning like crazy while Biden is hiding in his basement. I was amazed to learn recently that Biden as president has never done an interview with a major newspaper <https://www.natesilver.net/p/its-time-for-the-white-house-to-put>; only podcasts like Conan O'Brien's, where he knows he'll only get softball questions.

That prestige is fading rapidly: https://www.natesilver.net/i/143904654/perceptions-of-higher-ed-are-cr… In 2015, 57 percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, according to Gallup polling. By summer 2023, that number had declined to just 36 percent. The decline has been especially bad among Republicans — although only 32 percent of independents have confidence in higher education, and the numbers have also declined among Democrats. That is from mid 2023 so predates the campus protests. Universities have chosen to consume their political capital to deliver short term wins to the left, e.g. by appointing diversity hires to top positions who have engaged in easily spotted plagiarism or academic fraud. People are noticing and trust is falling, even amongst those the universities are directly pandering to. There's not much sign they're going to change strategies though, so probably there will soon be a gap in the market for education startups.

A good counterpoint to this is this post by Nate Silver (of 538 fame): https://www.natesilver.net/p/twitter-elon-and-the-indigo-blob >Casey Newton hypothesizes that Musk bought Twitter essentially in order to destroy it. And guess what: maybe Musk wasn’t wrong. The Old Twitter kind of sucked, especially if you ever had the experience of dissenting from the consensus. It reinforced the worst impulses of the Indigo Blob, making it more partisan and rendering its institutions less effective. >There were also a lot of great features of Twitter. It was terrific for professional networking, for real-time coverage of some types of events, for cultivating interests in niche subjects, and even for encouraging pithy writing (my brain will forever be programmed to think in 280-character segments). Unfortunately, we probably aren’t getting the New Twitter — er, the new X — that I would want; Musk’s performance has been haphazard and he has a lot of hang-ups that I don’t share. But to the Old Twitter, good riddance.

>The like and reply system is an organic and representative method of what comments people find interesting I think maybe you've got rose-colored glasses on? See e.g. this post from Nate Silver about old Twitter: >If you’re one of those annoying people like me who thinks there’s value in pointing out hypocrisy ... you will get absolutely shat upon on Twitter. People feel extremely threatened when you point this stuff out. They will go great lengths to deter it. They will launch all types of ad hominem attacks against you. >... >Twitter’s architecture makes this worse, particularly the quote retweet and the Trending Topics module. It is a medium where dissent from the consensus is treated punitively. https://www.natesilver.net/p/twitter-elon-and-the-indigo-blob Or here's another post about old Twitter: >Really, the problem with Twitter is just that it’s ruled by shouty jerks. All of the other problems — ubiquitous fear of “cancellation”, disruption of organizations, toxic status anxiety — ultimately come back to the Shouting Class. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-to-fix-twitter It's interesting to me that HN threads about Twitter seem uniquely toxic, e.g. namecalling Elon. My hypothesis is that there's been a population replacement. Twitter was previously dominated by a certain group of shouters. The old shouters lost their power to a new group of shouters, and now the old shouters shout about the situation here on HN.

10 years ago, I thought it was important have newsrooms reporting on current events. But now it's so schlocky, even on things I agree with them on, that I think they do more harm than good. Really anyone who has to come up with something shocking to report everyday is going to put out garbage. I include in this major city newspapers, news only websites (like tech press), network and cable news, and weekly magazines. Here are two good breakdowns of the problems/limits of modern mainstream news. https://www.natesilver.net/p/journalism-needs-more-taylor-swift https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1714648538746118265 Americans wisely agree, trust in media is very low https://news.gallup.com/poll/403166/americans-trust-media-remains-near… It's worth pointing out that mass media has had a brief lifespan, about from the 1920s. And the "golden age" when everyone was following it was really only 1950 to 2000. It's fine if it declines, and even if it disappears. Canada's accidental banning of links to news is a good model, we should do it in the US. Let's tax any links to news sites from major web platforms.

> you and yours whining after you lose another election Lol my man have you looked at the polls lately https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bullet… Haha

Have you not been present in our recent two-decade credentialed make-believe economy? The one that puts government in the place of a father? https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelletravis/2026/01/29/women-exiting-w… Edit: "Based on this grid, what is the most Democratic voting group in America? It’s voters with postgraduate degrees but lower-to-middle household incomes of $30K to $60K per year." https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-dsa-sweet-spot-highly-educated

I don't know what the baseline is for CEO popularity (I guess most people don't know that many CEOs by name?) but I'd be hard-pressed to call a 37/50 favorable/unfavorable ratio popular: https://www.natesilver.net/p/elon-musk-polls-popularity-nate-silver-bu…

Nate Silver with the receipts: https://www.natesilver.net/p/social-media-has-become-a-freak-show Most of the top engagement on Twitter comes from the right.

you think Musk is charismatic? https://www.natesilver.net/p/elon-musk-polls-popularity-nate-silver-bu… majority view him unfavorably.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/disney-erased-fivethirtyeight Here are some numbers roughly in the right ballpark: during the Disney era, which lasted about 10 years, FiveThirtyEight published about 20 stories a week. Let’s say that each story took about 20 hours to produce between research, writing, graphics and editing.3 Do the math, and that works out to about 200,000 person-hours of work that ABC News just deleted.

Like others have pointed out, it reads like a horoscope. The example images give a reasonable approximation of what I'd profile them as too, but after trying a few of my own picture it's clearly BS. Garbage in, garbage out. This "use LLMs as psychometric/political polling substitutes" idea seems to have jumpstarted a weird cottage industry of "synthetic" surveys. The model is pattern-matching on superficial visual cues and dressing it up as insight (I have a long beared and hence I vote for the green party). Nate Silver put it well recently: [AI polls are fake polls][1]. An LLM inferring personality from a photo is even further down that chain of abstraction. That's not profiling, it's stereotyping with extra steps. [1]: https://www.natesilver.net/p/ai-polls-are-fake-polls

The problem they're not talking about is that for all the X users they could potentially help, their messages will be actively suppressed by the platform owner. Nate Silver, famously popular (...lol) with the online left, made a post about this recently: https://www.natesilver.net/p/social-media-has-become-a-freak-show EFF is, politically, left wing.

I stick with Nate Silver on how to weight and average the polls. https://www.natesilver.net/p/iran-war-polls-popularity-approval 53.8% disapproval