Terrifying Numbers-Wizard Nate Silver Predicts Electoral College; Future Elections To Be Replaced By Math
Good morning, America! Does this map look familiar to you? Of course it does, it's the map appearing on every newspaper website in the country, indicating which party won all the various states in the Electoral College in last night's election. Except this particular map actually comes from Nate Silver's math and numbers emporium , and was created before any votes were counted! Is this proof that all elections will be replaced by the soulless beeping of IBM computers? Let's hope!
The creepiest thing about Nate's prediction is that the only state that he didn't claim better than 79% certainty about was Florida, which he called as an almost exact tie (probability of going for Obama: 50.3%). Naturally Florida is, as of this writing, leaning towards Obama but still too close to call.
Anyway, we would like to urge everyone to go read this Politico piece again about how dumb and wrong Nate is and how math and numbers are ruining political punditry forever, and then laugh and laugh at how upset people were by the concept that you could tell how an election might turn out by asking people in advance how they'll vote and then figuring a way to accurately assess the answers they give. And then turn yourself into your local processing center to have your brains replaced by microchips and your guts by circuitry, because everything great about being a human being in general and a political pundit in particular has now been ruined forever.
Schadenfreude is a dish best served warm.
Craig rocks.