I am currently reading Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise. The review will go live concurrently with Jim Manzi’s Uncontrolled, which I finished weeks ago. The two works are qualitatively different, but fundamentally they’re both concerned with epistemology. I do have to admit that halfway through The Signal and the Noise I long for Manzi’s density and economy of prose. As someone on the margins of the LessWrong community I’m already familiar with many of the arguments that Silver forwards, so perhaps this evaluation is not fair.
But this post isn’t about The Signal and the Noise. Rather, I want to state that I’ve put some bets down on the upcoming election. Silver attempted to do the same, and got some blowback from The New York Times public editor. I’m not surprised, the idea of betting on ideas strikes many as transgressive. But what people have to understand is that this isn’t gambling, it’s putting your money where you mouth is. As Alex Tabarrok has stated it is a “tax on bullshit.” I really hate bullshit. I hate it from other people, and I hate it from myself. The more bullshit there is in …