Nate Silver: The Art of Risking Everything: Politics, Poker Players, and Silicon Valley

John Donvan
Hi, I’m John Donvan, Moderator and Chief for Open to Debate. As many of you, our listeners, know, we occasionally offer an episode that isn’t a debate per se, but is aligned with our core themes and our curiosity. In this case, just ahead of the 2024 presidential election, we’re offering a wide-ranging conversation with leading political forecaster Nate Silver about his new book, On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, where we take a close look at the dynamics of risk and how they shape power. So over to my good friend, Nick Gillespie, Reason’s editor at large, who moderated this engaging conversation at a live event in New York City.

Nick Gillespie
Welcome to Open to Debate. I’m Nick Gillespie, and I’ll be guest hosting today’s episode. The 2024 election has been about the craziest in American history. With just days to go, the polls are neck and neck, polarization is through the roof, and all of us are wondering not just who’s going to be the next President of the United States, but what sort of country we’ll be living in come January. It’s a lot of uncertainty, no matter what your political persuasion, and it seems like a perfect time then to see what we can learn from people who excel at navigating uncertainty. So today, instead of a debate, I’m sitting down with Nate Silver.

Nate is a leading political forecaster, and the founder and former editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight, who writes Silver Bulletin at Substack. He’s also a former professional poker player, and the author of the bestselling book, On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, a book where he discusses what we can learn from professional risk-takers about navigating uncertainty in the 21st century. Nate, thanks for joining Open to Debate.

Nate Silver
Yeah.

Nick Gillespie
All right. So, it is good to see you, sir. All right, let’s, uh, let, we’re gonna talk about the election, uh, but first let’s talk about the book, which is an incredible way of talking about life in, in today’s America. Walk me through the major way you organized the book, where you describe two types of people, or two modes of being, the river and the village. What are the main features of each? And why are they in opposition to one another?

Nate Silver
So the village is the East Coast establishment. It’s media, it’s academia, Harvard University, New York Times. It’s, like, kind of old money, it’s social, but also, uh, risk averse, and also communitarian, in a way, or community oriented. In the, in the village you’re afraid of offending people, you’re afraid of, of getting canceled, saying the wrong thing, and so forth, whereas the river is the world of, I mean, the colloquial way to put it is, like, degenerate gamblers, basically.
You know, yeah.

Nick Gillespie
Degenerates on water, that’s even better.

Nate Silver
Well, it’s kind of more of a, you know, a river is a long thing, right? Like, a river, you get, like, different subcommunities that kind of have similarities and differences. You know, Silicon Valley is different than, um, than Wall Street or than kind of poker and, like, gambling proper. Um, but it’s people who fuse being very analytical with being very competitive. Um, and these two things put together are a very high variant skillset, um, you either tend to win big or lose big, but as r-, kind of becomes more financialized, so, um, you know, quantitative things, finance, tech, I mean, large language models are, are made of just, like, matrix algebra. I’m simplifying a lot here, right?

Um, that skillset becomes more and more favored in society, but we’ve also seen the river become more politicized. It used to be that they would say, “I’m in the, I’m in the gray tribe. I’m apolitical. We’ll do our own thing in Silicon Valley. Um, and if Washington tries to regulate us, then we’ll fight back. But otherwise, leave us alone. We’re out here in California, 3,000 miles away.” Um, but now certain parts of the river… And I wanna be clear, the average riverian is probably, like, a moderate Democrat. They’re college educated, they kind of wanna be left alone, probably a little bit libertarian. Um, but you are getting, like, the Elon Musk’s, in particular Elon Musk-

Nick Gillespie
Yeah.

Nate Silver
… and, and, you know, Peter Thiel was early on the Trump train, and, and Marc Andreessen, and people like that. Um, and so this kind of predicted clash in the book, as I’m kind of finishing the book late last year, earlier this year, it kind of becomes a reality where when you see Bill Ackman leading the charge against the presidents of MIT, PEN, um, which other school?

Nick Gillespie
Harvard.

Nate Silver
Harvard. That’s, like, the actual clash coming to fruition more and more. Um, I mean, Elon’s a complicated character, in that, like, he is way more impulsive, I think, than you typically want in someone from the river, where you’re supposed to be, arm’s length analytically, you’re supposed to be, you know, fox and hedgehogs, which was in my previous book. But you’re supposed to be fox-like, meaning you gain a lot of perspective from different things. You’re not going all the way in, you’re not too ideological, and Elon violates that part. Um, but certainly you have this clash that’s becoming more and more explicit.

Nick Gillespie
Yeah. When, uh, you identify yourself as a riverian, right? As, as a person of the river-

Nate Silver
Probably-

Nick Gillespie
… you’re a degenerate gambler, right, by your own admission.

Nate Silver
I don’t wanna say how much was involved in my fantasy basketball draft [inaudible

].

Nick Gillespie
When, um, when did you first kind of see yourself as part of the river?

Nate Silver
I mean, when I was 13 I started, like, a little betting pool in my neighborhood-
… where people would get a spreadsheet every week and, like, uh, actually physical, I’m old enough where it physically printed out, right? And, like, fill in the NFL games. My friend, Ray, cheated one time ’cause he, he submitted the thing late, and he got, like, all 14 games right. I’m like, “Ray-”

Nick Gillespie
Yeah, yeah.

Nate Silver
… “if you had gotten 12 out of 14, then this wouldn’t be so suspicious. But 14 out of 14, come on, Ray. You can’t, you can’t be doing that.” It was, the stakes for five bucks, so whatever, but.

Nick Gillespie
What, uh, what are the aspects of the river do you, uh, most identify in yourself?

Nate Silver
I mean, those two things. I, I, I am certainly good with math and things like that, and very analytically oriented, and, and good at the phenomenon known as decoupling, where you’re able to separate out one component from another. So the example I give is that, um, if you’re able to say, “I really dislike the Chick-Fil-A president’s stance on gay marriage, but they make really good sandwiches.” Right? That’s-
… that’s decoupling. Um, so I think I’m pretty good at, at parsing things into different parts, but also, I’ve just, I’ve just also been really competitive, I did, this is the most predictable thing ever if you’ve seen my Twitter feed, I did like debate team. In high school, I’d get a kick out of, out of poker tournaments and like, and like testing your metal.

Nick Gillespie
But you also, you had a foot in the village. I mean, you, you, uh, grew up as a, a son of university people, you went to Chicago-

Nate Silver
Some univers- university presidents who bought the New York Times and he [inaudible

] walked down to buy the New York Times every day before you had like-

Nick Gillespie
Yeah.

Nate Silver
… home delivery.

Nick Gillespie
Do you, are you a typical, uh, I mean, do people, are they kinda born on the river or do they, are they born in they migrate to the river because they’re not getting what they want out of life in the village?

Nate Silver
I think there probably is a genetic component.

Nick Gillespie
You know, one of the things that I think your book clarifies, which I hadn’t thought of in these terms, is the analytic level of, uh, of people in the river. So like somebody like Donald Trump, and you know, this, it all gets super confusing very quick, right, because-

Nate Silver
Yeah.

Nick Gillespie
… he is brash and a kind of norm breaker, but he obviously, you know, grew up, uh, with money and k-, you know, went to Penn, all of this. But he’s not a river person, is that correct?

Nate Silver
He’s not, I mean, he has some things. He, t-, Donald Trump understands, uh, strategy in kinda like a game theory way, he understands reciprocity and that kind of tactical thing. Um, but yeah, most people are not in either. The, you know, my friend, uh, calls it the wilderness, so these are the rival one percent communities. They’re both privileged, they’re both elites, um, but they increasingly are battling for, for cultural supremacy.

Nick Gillespie
How, um, you know, we’re in very polarized, uh, times. Um, does, uh, would it be helpful if the river and village kind of called a truce or would that be even, especially if their elites, would it be even worse for the 99% percent or, or the 98% percent, if these two one percent groups teamed up?

Nate Silver
No, part of, part of why I’m trying to encourage with this book is for there to be more shared and kind of common understanding, ’cause I think the village critiques of the river are kind of true and, and vice versa, right?

Nick Gillespie
You mentioned something in the book that was interesting when you talked to Peter Thiel who is a, a river person, uh, in your, in your scheme. Um, when you suggested at one point that some or much of his success might just be luck or contingent, not, not-

Nate Silver
Yeah.

Nick Gillespie
… you know, like how he just got lucky, but that some part of it is, you know, just chance.

Nate Silver
I mean, he had kind of a metaphysical objection to it, which is… So I asked him, this is also like a warm-up softball question, right? Um, first question in the interview, I’m like, “Peter, if you ran the world, simulated the world 1000 times, how often would you be in a position roughly like the one you’re in now, right? And most people, you know, would be like, “Well, I’m so lucky, I’m so lucky. I got lucky at this juncture and that juncture. I’m a pretty talented guy, but like I got lucky.” But Peter took half an hour to answer the question.

He brought up like Joseph Conrad and things like that. I mean, he is a very illiterate and thoughtful guy. Um, he’s not so impulsive. Um, his objection was that like either world is deterministic, in which case 100, or 1000 times out of 1000, or otherwise, it’s like a poorly specified problem, it’s just a question of how many things-

Nick Gillespie
Or he’s a Calvinist, right? He’s a, believes in pre-determination.

Nate Silver
I think he probably does, he’s quite religious. And also, if you wake up… Like, so, a couple of years ago, I got 97th place or 87th place out of 10,000 people in the World Series of Poker, which was fun. I started to think, like, “What if I won the World Series of Poker and writing a book about gambling?” Wouldn’t that be pretty (censored) weird, right? Wouldn’t you start to say, “Is this like a simulation, or am I pre-ordained, or something?” ‘Cause like inherently is a bazy and it gets like pretty weird if you like actually won the main event of the World Series of Poker. So if you’re like, if you’re Elon Musk or you’re, or you’re Joe Biden or Xi Jinping or V- Vladimir Putin, one of the most powerful people in the world, it’s gotta be very strange.

I think people feel like the rules don’t matter anymore and you can do and, and say whatever you want. It’s a very different approach than the typical like calculating politician.

Nick Gillespie
Let me ask a, as, a, a question about the, the split between the river and the village. Nobody really wants, I mean, nobody really want to live in the village, right? Or nobody wants to be part of the village, they might want to live there. But we all wanna see ourselves as the, the gambler floating down the Mississippi River and having adventures, right?

Nate Silver
I think people, N-, you and I, Nick, or people in this room, I don’t think it’s, there are a lot of, there are a lot of strivers out there. I have an instinctive revulsion to like the strivery people. Um-

Nick Gillespie
What do you mean by that?

Nate Silver
They just want, they’re the do-good-er types, right? They want to advance in their career and gain social standing by doing things the conventional way quite well. And I’m, I’m gay and like, like gay men have this kind of paradox where on the one hand, they can be counter-cultural and rebellious. On the other hand, they’re trying to be normal and like kind of fit in and be like the bestest boy in the world, kind of thing. And so, I see that in, in one of my communities as well, but there are a lot, I mean, go to, go to D.C., there’s a lot of strivers in D.C.

Nick Gillespie
W-, um, where, where did that come from in you? And you, I mean, you did, you went to University of Chicago, which, you know, has some kind of reputation, uh, and then you did finance or consultancy, right? And then you started doing all this stuff kind of on the down low, right, where you writing, uh, uh, uh, anonymously or pseudonymously at FiveThirtyEight. Um, where did that come from in you?

Nate Silver
I mean, it probably skipped a generation. My parents are both… So, the term we use for someone who is neurotic and risk-averse in the poker world is, is a nit, N-I-T, so my parents were fairly nitty. They wouldn’t let me have like chocolate at night, for example. Um, so maybe that inspired it in part. Um, but it skipped a generation, I mean, my like grandma was a big gin rummy, r- rummy player, um, my great-grandfather committed very innovative forms of, of arson and s-, insurance fraud, right?

Uh, my great uncle was one of the few Jewish oil barrens, he, not an oil barren, he was a geologist who was very good at like finding oil deposits, and wound up working for a big oil company in, in Colorado, and would go to like the rattlesnake boot ranch and [inaudible

]-

Nick Gillespie
Yeah.

Nate Silver
… the other guys, and they’re building up in Denver, the only Jewish guy there. And so, um, there is something that I think is probably-

Nick Gillespie
Yeah.

Nate Silver
… genetic and just the, the dice roll that-

Nick Gillespie
Right.

Nate Silver
… came up.

Nick Gillespie
Okay, we’re, we’re gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we’ll get back to my conversation with Nate Silver. I’m Nick Gillespie, this is Open To Debate. We’ll be right back.

Welcome back to Open To Debate. I’m Nick Gillespie here with Nate Silver, leading political forecaster and author of the book On The Edge. We’re getting back into our conversation. You take risks, uh, but you also try to be rational and analytic. Do you, you know, what are the strategies you use to manage your risk-taking and to make sure that you’re not, your personal biases are not taking you into a place you shouldn’t be?

Nate Silver
I mean, so in the context of election forecasting, one thing is being aware that you have biases, that’s a good first step. With election forecasting, the advantage of having a model is that you make up the rules in advance and there is room for interpretation in how you build a model, I mean, these models say different things. Um, but so you’re not tempted by your subjective emotional response in the moment. You agree to a process, um, and not just pure adhockery.

Nick Gillespie
Yeah.

Nate Silver
Uh, ’cause sometimes a model will, you know, a model says what it says. Um, and I chose to build the model how I did so I would not have to make decisions 13 days before the election, “Oh, I don’t like, I don’t like this poll. I don’t like that poll.” ‘Cause it’s all, it’s all just part of some motivated reasoning.

Nick Gillespie
Is this a kinda broader shift, uh, at least in, in certain parts of Saudi away from that kind of subjective understanding of things, I think of Moneyball where, you know, there’s the old time baseball scouts who, where it seems to be all hunch and kind of intuition, and then there’s a newer way of looking at it where it’s like, “We’re going to try and extract something kind of objecting,” realizing you can never get fully there. So, is what you’re doing, is that happening throughout society or is it-

Nate Silver
Oh, it’s, it’s happened.

Nick Gillespie
Yeah.

Nate Silver
That’s a dominant paradigm. And this is a Peter Thiel thing also, he’s like, “Well actually, now Moneyball-ing everything is the norm, and so maybe the edge has come from understanding where there are flaws in the model.” I mean, the, the default is that, is that everything is optimized and analytical and I mean, there might be a little, um, you know, tide water areas where, where the river hasn’t conquered-

Nick Gillespie
Yeah.

Nate Silver
… quite yet. But like, it’s, it’s a default way of like organizing society, yeah.

Nick Gillespie
Why do you think that happened? And how much of that is, is tied to technology that allows it to happen?

Nate Silver
I think capitalism is very efficient (laughs)-

Nick Gillespie
Mm-hmm.

Nate Silver
… at, at optimizing things. Um, I think people leave a dated trail here, like the, uh, uh, there, assymetry is when we leave a kind of cloud of data everywhere we go. We leave a lot of hints and like, and smart, powerful companies use algorithms to help get us to pay more of something or manipulate us in certain ways, so I, I worry about, I worry about that a lot. It’s good for corporate bottom lines, but like corporate bottom lines are increasing their record corporate profits at the same time you see like the savings rate declining. So it’s just, it’s, yeah, it’s technology plus the relentless march of, of capitalism, plus kind of generational turnover.

I mean, the people who were in charge 20 years ago kind of grew up before even like, before having personal computers as like children, right, but like my generation grew up in an era where you have a computer, you have video game systems, right, you have the Internet. Um, and so, and so less phobic of analytics.

Nick Gillespie
Do you think it has stopped or will it continue the idea of disintermediation? This was one of the great promises of the Internet, that you could get away from giant bureaucratic corporations or service providers and you could individualize everything. You clearly individualize your career, the whole idea of Moneyball and everything like that is that, you know, some weirdo working in a paper bag factory in Lawrence, Kansas or something, can come up with a better way to do things and then have a major impact that completely changes an industry. In that case, uh, Bill, uh, James in baseball analysis and things like that. Is that still happening or did it happen and now it stops?

Nate Silver
I mean, it’s happening in, in some field. I, I worry about it like a little bit in, in media where, look, I love Substack, it’s been very, a very good move in terms of both lifestyle and finances and whatever else. But it’s kinda this thing where if you have an established brand, it’s great, and if you don’t… Um, maybe that’s wrong, maybe there are like some niche communities that develop. Actually, maybe I take that back. Probably it’s easier to get famous on a Substack on your own than going through like the firearm system of like, you know, the Buffalo News and the Rochester Post Gazette and you get to the New York Post and the New York Times. Like, I guess maybe that’s, maybe that’s better-

Nick Gillespie
Or let’s say somebody like, uh, Heather Cox Richardson, whose-

Nate Silver
Yeah.

Nick Gillespie
… one of the, uh, most highly subscribed people at Substack who’s an academic. Nobody really knew who she was before Substack, right?

Nate Silver
Yeah, there, there are fewer gatekeepers, I would say, um, I think mostly for better, but maybe also for (laughs) maybe also for worse.

Nick Gillespie
What’s a case where that’s worse? And I, ’cause that’s, the village is kind of a, a, it’s, it’s a place of gatekeepers, right?

Nate Silver
I mean, if you go through like the top 50 US politic Substacks or, or, there’s some wacky ones, I would say, right? Um, but I, I think on, on balance, it’s better. And it also kind of gives the market a response to when the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Village are, are shutting out points that like, people want to hear. I, I, I feel like, again, the market is efficient at meeting demand. Maybe you don’t want to meet demand because people have like, frankly, quite weird demands, that’s one thing you learn in Vegas, for example.

Um, but the market’s very efficient at meetings demands and there are, there are kinda fewer roles and fewer, and fewer barriers, and kinda as the, as the river becomes more ascendent, potentially… I mean, look at, look at AI, for example. Um, you know, if you believe the people developing AI, it’s like the most important technology in terms of existential impact on society, potentially, since like new fair weapons were developed.

Nick Gillespie (
But let’s talk a little bit about AI ’cause in the book you, you talked about Sam Altman and the, uh, head of OpenAI. Um, he seems to be a pretty good, uh, citizen of the river. Can you talk about, what is he doing right?

Nate Silver
Um, well, he certainly understands risk and reward. So I, I talked to Sam in mid-2022, um, I tried to get another interview with him after, uh, GPT 3.5 came out, and then GPT 4.0, which were kinda the breakthrough products. Um, he’s like, “I’m traveling the world. You can ask me a couple of questions over email.” Right? And so I’m like, “Okay, I’m gonna have to make-do with this interview from like 2022,” which was actually better because back then, he was more candid-

Nick Gillespie
Right.

Nate Silver
… and less reserved. And he’s like, “Yeah, I think that, sure there’s a chance…” I’m paraphrasing, do not take this as an exact quote, right? He’s like, “Sure, there’s a chance that it could kill everybody, um, but it could also be really, really good, and the good outweighs the bad.” Right? Like that’s a very riverian-

Nick Gillespie
Yeah.

Nate Silver
… mindset. We can debate the flaws in that, but like, um, but he unders-, he understands that. He’s not-

Nick Gillespie
And that is, that is a good position, right? Or not, not specifically about AI, but there are people who would say, “If there is any chance that something can be bad, we should just shut it down.” That’s not how you think-

Nate Silver
Well, I mean, there are all these philosophical debates, uh, about what if you face a truly existential risk-

Nick Gillespie
Mm-hmm.

Nate Silver
… that you can’t recover from. Could you weigh that at infinity or kind of some very large number, which I think is a complicated argument, um, but I think is not, uh, not the worst characteristic. And like, yeah, look, I don’t, I don’t know that like anybody could have the power to develop a technology, there’s a tangible chance, by their own admission, of like destroying civilization. But like, so in the book, I propose this option where could you, if you had the power to press a button and permanently shut down any further AI developments, we, we have to keep the current, we get to keep GPT 4.0, we can keep that, but no more progress from there. Would you press the button?

If you don’t press the button, by the way, this is important, you get the option after 10 years, the option to press the button turns back on. Um, and I said I wouldn’t press the button for a couple of reasons. One is that, um, I don’t think I have the right, as a rich Westerner, to turn off technological growth for the rest of society, right? If everyone lives like it’s Denmark or some (censored), right, and they have like bike paths everywhere and, and everyone’s living at, you know, 70K Euro a year standard of living then, okay, we’ve achieved maybe not the highest form of human evolution, but you know. But I, I don’t think I have the right to stop that unless, unless you can be confident there’s an urgent problem that needs to be fixed now.

And in general, technological growth has been substantially good for human being.

Nick Gillespie
Um, one of the people who is, uh, I wouldn’t say you, you create heroes and villains in this book, but if you do, uh, Sam Bankman-Fried, uh, the head of, uh, known as SBF, the head of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange that turned out to be a passive, uh, kind of Ponzi scheme or fraud, he’s one of them. What features made Sam Bankman-Fried part of the river?

Nate Silver
Um, well he was involved in everything, right? He was involved in crypto, he was getting VC funding, he actually got involved, um, wanted to get involved in sports betting, he was an investor in Anthropic, which is one of the leading AI labs now. Um, was also involved in politics, he wanted to become president and seriously thought he had a chance to become president. Um, yeah, the-

Nick Gillespie
Well, you know, when he gets out of prison, maybe. You know?
We’re a forgiving-

Nate Silver
In 25 years, yeah.

Nick Gillespie
Yeah. You know?

Nate Silver
Um, l- look, I think the metaphor for Sam is that he kind of like hacked the river’s algorithm in different ways ’cause he would go to investor meetings and be like playing video games during investor meetings. People were like, “Oh, it’s so authentic. This like specter-me nerd.” Right? He must be very authentic, he’s like the new Marc Zuckerberg. There was a lot of like fear of missing out from Silicon Valley investors, especially in the category of crypto, which is, which is seen as kinda foreign and weird, a lot of the lean crypto proprietors are, are, are Chinese or foreign. Here’s this, here’s this nerdy MIT kid, um, who seems like a relatively safe investment. Um, but yeah, look, anytime that people take shortcuts in terms of saying, “Okay…”
And by the way, if you talk to any VC’s, the thing they’re most worried about is the one who got away. They’re like, “Oh, I could’ve invested in Google and gotten 10,000 [inaudible

] return, but I didn’t like this guy,” and, and they feel guilty about it the rest of their life, and so-

Nick Gillespie
Wh- when you say he hacked the algorithm, I’m, part of it is he clearly tapped into that, right, where VC’s instead of like, “Let me see your numbers.” They were, it was all hunch with him.

Nate Silver
It was, I mean, one VC I spoke with asked for the numbers and he didn’t send them, but I mean, again, in Silicon Valley, you have an asymmetric payoff matrix where in principle, you only can lose one time your money, whereas you can get paid back infinity basically or, or 5,000 times your money, 10,000 times if you invested in Google early on. Um, so in some ways they don’t care, I mean, Alfred Lin of Sequoia, uh, Capital said, “I would make the same investment again.” (laughs) Even with the benefit of hindsight, which is kind of a very honest response. Um, but it’s also-

Nick Gillespie
Is, is that a stupid response, though?

Nate Silver
Given his objective function, it’s probably not, it’s probably very honest. Right?

Nick Gillespie
Right. Talk-, uh, it, it’s really an interesting kind of narrative writing when you talk about going to, uh, meet SBF who, by the time you get there, he’s already, it’s, the, the empire is crumbling. Um, can you talk about what it was like going to meet him? And how did, how did he strike you as somebody who is interested in analysis, but also understands, you know, how people create characters that pay off?

Nate Silver
So, um, I get a little car. So I’m saying at Baha Mar, which is this giant casino resort, one of two very nice casino resorts in the Bahamas. His compound is on the other side of the island. It’s not a huge island, but you know, it’s 45 minutes, maybe 35 minutes away by a taxi. It’s kind of isolated and, and you get in, security people are very hush, hush, right? And then it’s a little bit of getting to like The Wizard of Oz. Is he in a castle or whatever, or-

Nick Gillespie
I guess, yeah.

Nate Silver
… a mansion? I don’t know what it is.

Nick Gillespie
He’s behind a curtain, we know that.

Nate Silver
Right, so it’s a little bit… So, I get there, and there’s this woman whose like his press wrangler and I expected like someone super organized. Instead, she was the, um, wife or girlfriend of, uh, of FTX’s head of data science, who was the only remaining FTX employee, um, who had come to the Bahama’s ’cause she was like, uh, super woke and had studies, um, small island anthropology. And small islands actually have it really tough, they’re very isolated, so they’re very dependent on the tourist trade or one particular commodity or the ships coming in, so they, they do actually get (censored) over all the time, and she wanted to make sure that all of the other people fled the moment that they declare bankruptcy.

She wanted to make sure, a very honorable thing to do, um, that, uh, the Bahamas was made whole as to the extent they could be. But she’s an anthropologist, and now she’s serving as like his press secretary, and she was like, “I didn’t like your post about Covid during the pandemic, Nate, but that’s okay. You know, I, I trust you.” And then S- Sam is sleeping. Um, so like, “Well, we’re gonna send Sam’s mother to wake him up.” And then, in the meantime, I think we had some like lentil stew or something that Sam’s mother… This was the next day. I ate like some of Sam’s mom’s food, which was just kind of weird. Um-

Nate Silver
It’s a very, it’s a very r-, surreal experience ’cause y- you see how isolated that is.

Nick Gillespie
Right.

Nate Silver
You might think, “Oh, Bah- Bahamas is an hour from Miami,” but like, but you’re in a part of the island where there’s like not really anything to do, so you’re eating all of your meals, and everything is within this, I don’t want to call it a cult, that’s a strong term, but, um, but he had very little outside advice. His girlfriend ran his hedge fund, his parents worked for him, um, and if you’re worth supposedly $15, $20 billion dollars, then people are very much [inaudible

] to you, so they’re not gonna give you good and honest advice. And so he had, um, also poor impulse control.

Nick Gillespie
Right.

Nate Silver
Um, but he was enabled by, he was enabled by a lot of people.

Nick Gillespie
Was that, so, uh, I guess one of the questions is the village is, you know, is the group or the system that would reign him in, but they really didn’t do that, right? And he was busy, uh, uh, spending a lot of money to buy politicians who would actually change regulations or create regulations to his favor, but not other crypto people. You know, w- what can you talk about, like, the saga of SPF, does it show, you know, either that, um, you know, markets work or markets don’t work or, uh, you know, what, what is a big moral that we might draw from that episode?

Nate Silver
I, I mean, look, there is such a thing as having too much trust and having these kind of like, you know, we talk about like, “Oh, snowballs of distrust and disinformation.” This was like a snowball of trust, um, that first of all, Sam is in good with the effective altruists, who were all these very well quaffed like Oxford professors and things like that, so they’re vouching for him. Sequoia Capital, one of the the top firms in Silicon Valley is v- vouching for him. And, and once you get that, it’s like you’re part of a club and more and more people keep, keep vouching for you, right? Um, he’s doing the World Economic Forum and he’s getting the invites to the Met Gala, and he’s kinda like the next big thing.

Um, shooting commercials with Steph Curry and Tom Brady and then, and at that point, it’s kind of impossible to, to… I mean, he’s, ’cause he’s saying very dangerous things. He went on the Odd Lots podcast, the [inaudible

] Bloomberg podcast and told Matt Levine, a financial reporter, “Yeah, I basically want to build a, a Ponzi coin, right? Yeah, there’s no ultimate value, but people won’t figure it out until it’s too late.” Um, he told Tyler Cowen, the economist that, “Yeah, if I could press a button repeatedly to spend double or nothing stakes in the world, 50% percent of the time, the world’s destroyed. But if it’s not destroyed, the world is 2.01X times as good. And as a strict utilitarian, it says I have to press the button, so I would just keep pressing that button over and over. It’s a positive expected value bet.”

Like, this is (censored) insane and he’s saying this out loud and people are, it’s a bystander effect where people are afraid to, to point out that’s he’s saying… Th- there, there were lots and lots of, of warning signs, including, by the way, in, um, in my own reporting, I talked to him first in like January 2022, um, and kind of when you’re doing an initial kind of strafing of different things for the book and like the guy’s a wacky, he talks really fast, kind of seems, this kind of weird nerd before, right? Smart guy, um, and then you go back and he’s saying like all these crazy things. He told me that, um, “Unless you’re willing to like literally risk it all, that you’re being too risk-averse.” ‘Cause most people would say, um…

You know, Elon Musk can spend $50 billion dollars on Twitter and burn it to the ground, or I think he’s actually had a lot of cultural and political influence from Twitter, frankly, I’m not sure it’s a bad cultural investment. Um, but if he loses that, he’s still worth $170 billion dollars, so he’s not really taking very much risk as all in that sense, and like, and Sam Bankman-Fried is saying, “No, you have to literally be willing to ruin your reputation and destroy your life. That’s the only way to like maximize your expected value, and maximize expected value is the only honorable way to live your life, basically.”

Nick Gillespie
And I guess when you talk to him next, he’ll be like, “Yeah, I’ll make the same choices.” Right? Just like, uh, the guy at Sequoia Capital.

Nate Silver
Uh, he, he, he might. I, I mean, he, he didn’t show much reflection at any point.

Nick Gillespie
If he, um, kind of represents what can go wrong on the river, what can go in the village.

Nate Silver
I mean, not every, every day stuff, but like, you know, some of the, the chilling of free speech I think is, is pretty bad. Um, I think you had like a, a kind of near miss where like, you know, Joe Biden was a democratic nominee until July and it was obvious that this is a terrible idea and that he’s going to lose to Trump, number one, and that like he can’t consistently complete, complete sentences. And like it’s an emperor has no clothes moment where you’re not allowed to like say this without being ostracized. I mean, um, and even now, I think Biden’s had some residual effects that make Kamala Harris’ life hard, but those are just kind of like from the last five years, roughly.

Nick Gillespie
Uh, now, we are going to take a quick break, but when we return, we’ll invite questions from the audience to further the conversation with Nate Silver. This is Open To Debate, we’ll be right back.

If you enjoyed this debate, please keep an ear out for more. We are working hard to bring you a series of debates and other special episodes in the coming weeks. We’re excited, really excited about these programs, and we think that you will be, too. In the meantime, if you’re looking for more debates to listen to, visit our website OpenToDebate.org.

Welcome back to Open To Debate.
I’m here with Nate Silver. All right, uh, we’re gonna get started in just a second taking questions from the audience and somebody will bring a microphone. Uh, but to start this off, I’m gonna ask a question. Uh, Nate, who is going to win the 2024 presidential election?

Nate Silver
There is a 47.2% percent chance that Kamala Harris wins and a 52.5% percent chance that Donald Trump. I mean, there’s, look, we had, first of all, Trump wins the ties ’cause the electoral college, if the popular vote is tied Harris plus one or Harris plus two he wins, it’s, it’s a lot easier to lose a football game when the o-, when the other team gets a free field goal, basically. Um, the incumbent president is very unpopular. Typically, when incumbent presidents are very popular and they went for re-election, then, then they lose. Democrats had the clever idea of tying him out, which has definitely improved the situation, but, but all around the world, incumbent parties are losing. Um, there’s been I think a backlash against some of the successes of 2019 and 2020, and Kamala Harris, someone who represented some of those successes.

Um, so there are all these kind of fundamental kind of glacial factors that work, that work against her.

Nick Gillespie
I just, and you’re-

Nate Silver
And it’s, and it’s a toss-up.

Nick Gillespie
How do you deal with people getting mad at you because you tell th-, you, you’re bringing news that they don’t like to hear?

Nate Silver
Again, if you’re, if, for every person that gets mad at me on, on Twitter, I get like an annual paid Substack subscriber, then I’ll, I’ll take that deal every time.

Nick Gillespie
Very good. All right, let’s open it up for question. Uh, let’s go right up here.

Audience
All right, thank you, this is great. Um, I have to ask why, on the eve of the World Series, you’re not wearing your sometimes ubiquitous Yankee cap. Uh, could there be a little superstition at work here? And by the way, uh, what do your numbers show for whose going to win?

Nate Silver
It’s because I went to a New York Rangers game-
Audience (33:46):
Yay!

Nate Silver
… back in the Spring and I’m like, “Oh, I need to get a Rangers cap,” and I left my Yankees cap under the seat and I forgot it, and yeah.

Nick Gillespie
Next question.

Audience
Hi, my name’s Christopher. Um, I work in democratic politics so I apologize on behalf of my brethren for the replies, uh, in your Tweets the past few years. Um, I was talking to my colleagues today that I was coming to this event and I wanted to get a sense of, you offer probability of elections, but you also occasionally offer analysis. I think I’m a proud Silver Bulletin subscriber.

Nate Silver
Thank you.

Audience
Um, you should subscribe as well. Um, you recently offered analysis about Kamala was presenting herself on her website. What informs your world view on your analysis? Is that probabilistic thinking or is that just Nate Silver-ism?

Nate Silver
It’s just a person who reads a lot and has a lot of weird life experience and, and yeah, I’m not, I, you know, I think the whole brand of like, “Oh, data driven.” Like, data is a tool to be correct about the world and it’s not the only tool to be correct about the world, you can use your eyes and ears and talk to people and be networked and have the weird set of experiences that I’ve had, and also, it’s an advantage to like not really give a (censored) if you offend people. If you’re someone the democrats read and you don’t give a (censored) if you like offend neurotic democrats, and like you can write really good stuff, right, because you’re, you’re uninhibited, um, and you’re staking out ground that like maybe people aren’t really going into as much.

I mean, um, you know, if you read kinda the analyses of, of why is Harris in a toss-up election, um, either it’s, “Well, she is the worst candidate of all time.” Which is not, I think she’s a pretty good, a pretty good candidate. Or it’s like, “Oh, it’s because the New York Times is too mean to Joe Biden,” which is the most diluted thing I’ve maybe ever heard in my life, right? And because I think the Biden Harris administration made some, what in retrospect look like mistakes, with respect to, you know, probable level of government spending, they were able to keep the, um, the labor market very afloat, which is a big accomplishment, but at the price of very high inflation for a few years.

Um, you know, the border was quite lax for a few years, I think democrats are lucky that people are, um, are not rushing Biden based on foreign policy because the world is less safe than it was four years. This is not, by the way, a recommendation that Trump would make it more safe, it’s just saying that like there are a lot of logical reasons why, and the fact that like people are perpetually negative, um, I mean, to the extent that like news coverage matters, it’s, it’s because we always extenuate, you know, if it bleeds, it leads, um, w-, people who are using algorithms understand that playing into people anxieties click better than making people happy actually and it, it’s kind of hard to have the good news stories. Um, “Oh, now things are pretty good.” Right?

It’s absolutely true that like inflation makes more news when it’s on the rise and when it’s on the decline, um, but still, uh, that’s a nuance perspective that, that I think you get from someone who just spent a long time studying this and is not like aligned in anyone, like faction, necessarily.

Nick Gillespie
Next question.

Audience
I, I really jive with your river versus the, uh, uh versus the village and I’m wondering, is it possible to be someone in between? Because it seems like we’re living in a world where you’re either, this is, my friend calls it like a hive mind or a anti-hive mind. And shouldn’t the world be somewhere in between? How do we get there? Who’s there? Um, please answer.

Nate Silver
Yeah, like, I mean, obviously, you can be in between. I mean, I fancy myself a riverian, but like I, you know, I work for a big New York publisher and I freelance the New York Times, and, and I went to University of Chicago. Although, the University of Chicago is a little bit weird. It’s maybe not quite as village-y as other, other schools. Um, but no, you, you, you want to be both, I think, I mean, because, um, these communities do not understand one another I don’t think very well at all. The, the village, uh, or the river, rather, often has like rather poor instincts for politics than like, you just, I know, the, the rapidness of when someone gets into politics for their first time and-

Nick Gillespie
Did you ever go through a phase like that?

Nate Silver
Maybe a little. I went through kind of a phase where, uh, I was like friends with a lot of like… ‘Cause I started out as an anonymous vlogger on like Daily Coasts and like I got into-

Nick Gillespie
Which is a far left wing, a progressive site back in the [inaudible

]-

Nate Silver
I mean, I think the good is that like this is in 2006 when they banned poker, [inaudible

] poker, um, online poker through 2008. This is like a time of like a really big tent coalition because Bush is extremely unpopular, um, so leftists, centrists, liberals, um, eccentrics, all were on this big anti-Bush coalition and the, and the Internet back in these days is like a friendlier and nerdier place. By a virtue of being on the Internet and writing about policies on the Internet, you’re being somewhat self-selecting, so it was a, it was a really happy time, I think, to, to be in politics. Um, and so for that reason, I think maybe I got less of that than I otherwise, than I otherwise would.

Um, I remember the first big falling out I had was after, uh, after 2009 where Obama’s trying to pass Obama Care, um, and Joe Lieberman was being Joe Lieberman, difficult about different things, right, he refuses to, uh, sign off on like a public option, for example, and so l-, there’s progressive saying, “Okay, no public option than kill the bill.” And everyone posts saying, “That’s insane.” Right? Um, just because you can’t get everything you want doesn’t mean you should therefore throw out the things that you do want that are still pretty good if you’re a progressive and wants, um, more health insurance coverage, and so, and so that was kinda the first falling out. But like, but there was a period when it was kind of like kumbaya in, in the left and center that’s since passed us.

Nick Gillespie
Uh, next question.

Audience
Hi, I wanted to ask a very basic question. So we asked about, um, what, who you thought would win in the games. Who do you think would win in this race? Why am I asked this? Because in my understanding, for whatever reason, polls, official polls tend to underestimate Trump’s success. So we discussed some of the reasons as to why he may be popular, but why do you think, do you think the poll’s underestimated generally? And if so, why? And if not, why do you think there is ideas even out there that that might be the case?

Nate Silver
So, thank you. The polls underestimated Trump, obviously, in 2016 and 2020. Um, if you talk to pollsters, uh, they give somewhat different… I’m not a pollster, by the way. People call me that, I don’t, [inaudible

] shorthand, but like, um, they give somewhat different reasons. In 2016, the official excuse is that the country became really polarized on educational lines. So if you’re college educated now, particularly advanced degrees, then you’re more likely to vote democratic, that’s not a Trump demographic. Um, but you’re also much more likely to respond to survey, you’re like, “Oh, I’m college [inaudible

] survey, that sounds very exciting and benefits the public to give my information.” Um, if you’re a busy, non-college working class person, then you don’t trust the media organization, trusting surveys as much, so that’s…

So, polls used to have too many educated respondents, and now they weight, W-I-I, W-E-I-G-H-T that away. They be like, “Okay, if we actually do find a non-college respondent, we’ll count them double,” basically to, to match census demographics. Um, in 2020, it may have been Covid related. So, that created a different in response rate. Um, if you look at polls from before the pandemic really hit our shores, like February 2020, they’re actually pretty accurate, right? They had like, Wisconsin’s one point, Michigan’s one point. Biden gets this big surge that may have been caused by, by non-response bias. So, depending on which of those explanations you believe might explain what happens this year. What I don’t think is true is this notion that, um, that like Trump supporters are shy and refuse to say…

They’re not shy, I was like, it’s not like Trump supporters are, are shy-

Nick Gillespie
Right.

Nate Silver
… exactly.

Nick Gillespie
Um, you also, in a recent New York Times, uh, story, you also talked about the revert or obverse of that, where there might be an under count of Harris, uh, uh, voters. Can you talk a little bit about where that idea comes from? And it, and it may not be the case, but-

Nate Silver
It’s plausible.

Nick Gillespie
Yeah.

Nate Silver
There are a few different mechanisms. Um, one is that, so increasingly, democrats actually prefer lower turnout, that the marginal voters, um, are, are mostly Trump voters, and the loyal, regular suburban, uh, voters are, are mostly democrats. Um, so you know, if the irregular voters don’t turn out, maybe if Elon Musk’s turnout operation proves to be a failure, um, or they just don’t seem to care that much, we’re kind of in a less political climate than we were four years ago, that’s one scenario. Um, you know, I don’t know that anybody’s doing a particularly good job of capturing a preference as, uh, of younger voters. Um, polls have shown a drop-off for democrats among younger voters.

If that’s not true, then Harris could over-perform. It’s also, it’s also shown a drop-off among Black and Hispanic followers. If that proves to be exaggerated, maybe the Black voters are getting on the phone and not representative, then, then she could over-perform, but the argument is mainly about, um, the kind of incentives in the polling industry and the fact that like, like polls are not so much like surveys of public opinion anymore, but like, but like models with like data flavored characteristics. Um, I think most pollsters are, are pretty honest, but you know, but it’s also like they probably live in fear of making the same mistake a third time in a row. ‘Cause in politics, I mean, in sports, you have a 3M losing streak all the time, right?

Nick Gillespie
Yeah.

Nate Silver
In politics, where people treat every election as the new iron law of politics, if you (censored) up in the same way three times in a row, then three strikes and, and you…

Nick Gillespie
Yeah.

Nate Silver
Although, I don’t know, you still see polls, we’ll still see polls no matter what. I, people just have this fascination with trying to predict the outcome. But yeah, there’d be, there’s a lot of, a lot of fear and uncertainty about missing low on Trump, that the rules, that the problems in 2016 and 2020 may have been fixed, and so therefore, they’re making conservative assumptions. Is it likely? I mean, you don’t need that much of a polling error for one candidate to win. In, in every state, it’s within one point, and polls are off by an average of three and a half points, historically, and usually in the same direction, right?

In 2016, Hilary Clinton underperformed in almost every swing state, so there’s about a 40% percent chance that these seven swing states, Georgia, North Carolina, I have to recite them, that one candidate sweeps all seven states.

Nick Gillespie
Well, hopefully we’ll know in a couple of months who’s-
… president, right? So, uh, next question.

Audience
Yeah, hi. Um, thank you so much. Um, quick question as you recently joined Polymarket as an advisor. Just curious to hear your take, the way you see prediction markets, um, and the impact on society as, as a whole in, in the coming years.

Nate Silver
Um, so for society, it’s good because now when people are (censored) then you can make money off their (censored), right?

Nick Gillespie
Hm.

Nate Silver
If you think that rep-, [inaudible

] just drinking the Kool-Aid. You can’t bet on Polymarket in the US, I should specify that. Um, oh, there are others, Kalshi opened up to US trading. Um, so if there are people who have a lot of conviction in, in, you know, the gambling world revolves around whales, um, as we call them. Whales are, are people with a high propensity to spend large amounts of money in negative EV, negative expected value wagers. Um, and there’s evidence that at Polymarket, you have, you have a few traders or maybe one trader with different pseudonyms, um, who has bet something on the order of like $40 or $50 million dollars on, on Trump, and will buy up the Trump contract when it gets too low.

Um, you know, looking on the context of Wall Street, that’s not that much money. In the context of prediction markets, which are a rapidly growing but still growing industry, you need a lot of people who just want to bet $500 bucks on Harris or something to make up for $40 million dollars in, in equity, and so, and so, you know, the markets aren’t quite robust enough to, to cover for that. But still, like, I think they’re a big improvement. Like during the debates, for example, the markets figured out very, very quickly, um, that the, the first debate was bad, it was really bad for Biden. I figured that out after about like six minutes.

Um, where in the second debate, they kind of figured out once you started talking about abortion and Harris is better on that issue, they figured it would probably be good for Harris and kind of prices in almost instantly like the c-, the correct amount of gains in her poll. So for events like that, I think they’re really valuable. I think when you do have good models, that I think the models are better, I’ll just say that, um, um, but I think, I think they’re a valuable tool, they let businesses hedge different types of financial risk as well and, and I don’t know. Again, I think it’s better when people have, um, skin in the game and, and, and, uh, and bear consequences for being (laughs) for being wrong, financial consequences.

Nick Gillespie
Do you, uh, you know, people are increasingly talking about prediction markets kind of replacing or supplementing polls. Do you-

Nate Silver
Yeah, that’s-

Nick Gillespie
You know, and, and do, should we take it as a given that if both polls and prediction markets are going in the same direction, they must be correct?

Nate Silver
That’s, no. Um, that’s wrong-headed. I mean, ’cause you need, you need to be able to touch… This is one thing I worry about, by the way, in like a virtual AI world. You need to be able to touch grass, right? But like there’s one firm that’s like, “We’re gonna survey AI people that we create and do a poll that way.” It’s like, “That’s the stupidest idea that I’ve heard.” Right? You need like raw input, you can just have a process of a [inaudible

] of a [inaudible

] of a [inaudible

]. Um, and there can be these spirals where, um, so let’s say that, um, that this whale on Polymarket, let’s just say that’s he’s not, even, I assume it’s a he, probably, you know. Let’s assume that he has just has really, has a lot of conviction in Trump and whatever.

Uh, $40 million dollars is not that much maybe if you’re a, a billionaire or something, and so, so he makes these trades, Polymarket first moves all the other prediction markets and then it maybe starts to move the actual markets and other, uh, derivative markets from that, right, and then he influences the narrative and then kind of like, and then you hear people talking about Polymarket, and it kinda feels like you’re hearing, um, have you ever like told a friend a rumor and then you like meet them for like a beer or like a month, uh, later, and they’re like, “Did you hear this rumor about, uh, person X?” I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve been hearing that everywhere.”

It’s like, “Oh, I probably told them that and they forgot it was me who told them that, and then they bring it back to me and now it feels like there’s a cluster of everyone in my life is, is, has this rumor, it must be true.” Which is same with information being like regurgitated, um, and so, and so I, I think people need to be… Look, I, I’ll put it like this. I think that, um, you know, if I were betting, then I, well I would take Harris at like, you know, at 37% percent, I think that’s a good bet, I think that’s almost a two to one underdog, I think she’s gonna win the election 45% percent of the time. Right? That’s not the way most people think about it, but like, but I think it’s become, become mispriced.

Nick Gillespie
Yeah. Um, we are out of time. Nate Silver, thank you so much for joining me today. Again, the, the book is On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything. I’d also like to thank everyone who asked a question here today, and finally, a big thank you to you, the audience, for tuning into this episode of Open to Debate.

We are Open to Debate. As a non-profit working to combat extreme polarization through civil debate, our work is made possible by listeners like you, the Rosenkranz Foundation, and supporters of Open to Debate. Robert Rosenkranz is our chairman, our CEO is Clay O’Connor, and Leah Mathau is our chief content officer. Elizabeth Katzenberg is our chief advancement officer. This episode was produced by Jessica Glazer and Marlette Sandoval. Editorial and research by Gabriela Mayer and Andrew Foote. Andrew Lipson and Max Fulton provided production support. The Open to Debate team also includes Eric Gross, Gabriela Onicelli, Analisa Cochran, Rachel Kemp, and Linda Lee. Damon Whitamor mixed this episode. Our theme music is by Alex Clement. And I’m your guest host today, Nick Gillespie. We’ll see you next time on Open to Debate.