> Now Nate Silver accepts this, but says that he's not actually putting a probability on the event in the future, but some non-existent "probability on that event in the future if the future was now".
Could you link to where Silver discusses this? I'm interested in seeing his description of exactly what his numbers mean.
What I'm referring to is the "now-cast", but his other two definitions both seem to shy away from saying "this is flat-out the probability we think of the election".
The point is, you can redefine or choose a definition of probability if you want, but if it's less useful than the normal definition (and confusing to people!) then people are free to criticize your work on that basis.
And there's a very useful, testable, mathematical definition of probability that allows us to equally assess everyone's predicting ability, and Nate Silver is dodging it.
If you're interested in this subject, there's a non-mathematical discussion somewhere in Tetlock's book Superforecasting which is interesting in general.
Oh okay. I think it's fair to just take his polls-plus model as his prediction and ignore the now-cast. But I wouldn't say that showing the now-cast is somehow being sneaky. He's just providing extra information.
Could you link to where Silver discusses this? I'm interested in seeing his description of exactly what his numbers mean.