Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias I sort of appreciate them saying the quiet part out loud, I suppose! It's sort of like with Fauci admitting to "noble lies" about masking in the early days of the pandemic, the herd immunity threshold, etc. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I swear I'm sick of posting about the lab-leak stuff, but it seems very warped that a bunch of prominent scientists are saying we shouldn't investigate the claims for reasons that have little to do with science and lots to do with politics. https://t.co/iJXcctCvk6 https://t.co/aznY8QPrjE — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

BTW, this may be related to increasing political polarization by education levels. If highly educated elites—including in the media—overwhelmingly prefer one political party, it's going to become harder to untangle partisan views from expert views. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

In light of other recent debates, another interesting example of where (at least according to @jasonfurman) the actual expert consensus doesn't match the media/Twitter impression of the expert consensus. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I used to assume that "wrong" views were more shallowly-held (i.e. "you don't *really* believe that, do you?"). But after years of arguing with people on the Internet, if anything the opposite is true. People's "wrong" views are often more deeply-rooted than their "correct" ones. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@davidshor Sort of? Not in a centrist direction though. I also think Democrats were very prone to mean reversion after 2006/08. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@allahpundit Take the complaint to the league office. I don't make the rules. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@allahpundit This is an illegal formation of the siri and [check notes] memes. 5 yard penalty and loss of down. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

4) After GOP turnout declined in the Georgia runoffs, I wouldn't totally dismiss the idea that a party can sabotage its own turnout when it claims that elections are stolen. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DKarol I'm not sure that's right, because Democrats didn't do particularly well in the House in 2020 (+3% in the House popular vote) so mean reversion will cost them less. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@NickRiccardi I'd say the extraordinarily high turnout in 2020 and the GA runoffs are some evidence. But I'm also just going from my intuition of what tends to motivate Democrats. Both communities of color and college-educated liberals are concerned about it and that covers most of the D base. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@FridaGhitis I'd say they won't necessarily lose seats, sure. Way too early to put a percentage on it. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

3) Even if swing voters don't care, Democratic base voters are likely to be very motivated by the claim that Democrats must keep control of Congress to prevent the presidency from being stolen in 2024. This may reduce the typical "enthusiasm gap" in midterm voting. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

2) Swing voters tend to elect the out-party in midterms to create a balance of power. If they're convinced that the GOP will not wield its power responsibly or will even use control of Congress to permanently seize power, that calculation changes. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There are a few mechanisms here: 1) Parties usually course-correct after defeats and the GOP is doing the very opposite. It's not clear how well empirical precedents about mean-reversion during the midterms holds up under these conditions. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I still think there's a little bit of tension between the notion —which I largely agree with—that the current GOP represents an unprecedented (at least in modern American history) threat to democracy and the CW that Democrats will surely suffer the usual midterm penalty in '22. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @AstorAaron: @NateSilver538 We really need an update to the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to make it much harder for a House majority to o… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I missed this thread yesterday but mostly agree with it. I think the risk of Republicans throwing the US into a crisis by failing to certify election results has greatly increased from 2020 and is now a very credible threat. But HR1 is a pretty indirect response to that threat. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Very interesting. The 7-day average for first vaccine doses recently went on a nice little uptick after weeks of decline, and the timing lines up precisely with the new CDC guidance on 5/13. One confounder is people age 12-15 became eligible to receive the vaccine that week. https://t.co/S5AiPV96W3 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@K_G_Andersen I think you're still missing the point, which is that playing semantic games about what constitutes "evidence" isn't persuasive. Just argue most of the evidence lines up on your side, as you've been doing in this thread. You'll have a way better chance of convincing people. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@K_G_Andersen The fact that the virus emerged in a city with a laboratory performing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses would also seem to fall into the category of "evidence" but not proof. I don't think it's persuasive to parse the definition of "evidence" in this way. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@K_G_Andersen I'm sensitive to this language because it comes after a year of the WHO and other groups saying that there was "no evidence" of things that later proved to be true when what they really meant (in a layperson's terms) was "no definitive proof yet". https://t.co/77ulagloBp — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@pwnallthethings I think we're getting into some epistemological eddies about "uncertain" versus "close" that I'm happy to hash out but I'm not sure are terribly relevant to the debate people are having here. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@pwnallthethings The statement also said though that different groups within the intelligence community saw each of the two scenarios as being more likely. That was what drew my attention. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@K_G_Andersen I'm not going to go down this road with you, but I find discussions of what counts as "data and evidence" are often pretty disingenuous. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I see people responding to this with "they're just covering their bases, this doesn't imply the White House thinks the scenarios are equally likely". That's not true. Biden's statement makes clear they think it's genuinely a very close/uncertain call. https://t.co/W8Jz1rlPTg — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@K_G_Andersen I certainly agree that this question benefits a lot from relatively specific domain knowledge, even as compared to other COVID questions. My impression is that there's a lot of disagreement among people who possess that knowledge. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

People here are aware that just yesterday, the Biden White House launched an investigation into the origins of COVID-19? It is not some contrarian position to suggest there is considerable uncertainty about it. It is the mainstream position, rather. https://t.co/uN8PTuxsMb https://t.co/1Tv0vwf1Qe — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @ScottGottliebMD: @florian_krammer @NateSilver538 We need to assess possibility of lab leak not in isolation, based purely on scientific… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @Yair_Rosenberg: @jonathanchait In March 2016, I wrote a piece suggesting Trump could win after watching him speak live. I got a TON of… — PolitiTweet.org