#846 - Nate Silver - How Will The 2024 Election Play Out?

27:22I think she got a lot better at the art of retail politics. She also was not running. I mean, 2019 was a strange time for Democrats when she ran on the primary. This is kind of like during the peak of what is sometimes called wokeness. Everyone was running way to the left. They thought Bernie Sanders had proven that was the way to beat the establishment. And so I think she was ill -served by that, by that period. She was not known as being so necessarily so progressive, for example, as a DA in San Francisco, but she got very carried away with moving to the left. What do you think of the impact of this discussion around wokeness and its capturing of both the left and the right, as signal counter signal reaction, pro action?

28:08How's that changed the landscape? Look, I think it's very unappealing messaging just from the standpoint of like, if you were to try to survey it, You know, messaging that makes people feel guilty for their race or their other identity characteristics is messaging that tends to exclude people from your coalition. But I also think there were always like a lot of people on the center and on the left who were never really on board with wokeness and just felt like they couldn't say anything about it until maybe a couple of years ago. You know, in particular during 2020 when it's an election year in the middle of the pandemic and you have these protests that sometimes turn violent.

28:52People understandably were afraid to speak up, I think. And so I think you've seen pretty big shifts away from that particular movement. And this happened in the past. I mean, we had like, I'm a little bit too young to have experienced this first time, but you had political correctness in the late 80s and early 90s that had a shelf life of a couple of years, because it was easily, easily mockable. So I think some of this has peaked. What's different about Trump's coalition of voters than past Republicans and the same for Kamala? So what's interesting is that we actually have some degree of racial depolarization in the electorate, meaning that white voters are getting more democratic whereas voters of color, especially younger ones, younger black voters, younger Hispanic, younger Asians, are getting more Republican.

29:45So in one sense, that's good. You know, other things being equal, I'd rather not have a vote that you can strictly determine by who's in what racial group in the United States. But it does lead to some counterintuitive things on the map. You know, if you're doing better with white voters, if Harris is doing better with white voters, then Biden was four years ago, that's why you can keep like the wider Pennsylvania with constant Michigan states, even if her polling is not as strong in say North Carolina or Arizona. It's so fascinating how all of this stuff breaks down. What do you think that we need to know about the seven and a half states that are likely going to determine this election?

30:25You probably don't want to turn on a TV in one of those states from about now onward. You'll literally see a spend a time in Las Vegas. I'm sorry. Yeah, you'll see every single commercial as a campaign commercial by the time you get into September, October, November. But yeah, obviously, if you are interested in the outcome of the election, I think it's an important election, then vote, donate. By the way, you might want to donate not to Trump or Harris, who have lots of money, but to your favorite down -ballot candidates, things like state Supreme Court races matter a lot, and get far less attention, or even city council and things like that.

30:59But yeah, I mean, some people enjoy the scoreboard watching element of elections, where they'd like to see the numbers go up and down. But you're not going to really learn anything new from the polls between now and November. Not that you should read my newsletter, but like, but it's very likely to be close. We have a very good idea of which states are likely to be most important. And if you're in one of those states, then you should probably vote. Which are those states? So Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, are like the Northern Midwestern group, and then Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina.

31:34I'm surprised by Nevada. I have to admit that I'm a total like noob to this. This is my first election being in the US. I'm not used to this sort of set of insights. If you gave me most of those states, except Nevada or a map, I wouldn't be able to put a pin on them. But it surprises me that Nevada would have been one of those. That being a swing state is kind of culturally surprising to me. Yeah, so if you go to Nevada and spend time in the casino settings there, you'll see why it's a swing estate because you have this very working class workforce that is often people who are minorities, you know, Hispanic, Asian, Black, it's a diverse workforce, diverse working class workforce, casino industry.

32:22And that's a group that has shifted more toward Trump. If Democrats are relying on these like college educated knowledge sector workers, that's not the typical blackjack dealer, although it does require quite a bit of skill, frankly. That's not the typical person working in food service in a big resort or room service in a big resort in Las Vegas. So that population has been risky for Democrats. that's would a viable third option ever be able to get in. You know, we saw RFK Jr. give it as good of a crack, I think, as could have been expected this year, or is this essentially just impossible right now?

33:03I don't think it's impossible, but the issue is that the parties are pretty clever at adapting to the changing political tides, right? So like in some ways, in some ways Donald Trump was like a third party candidate. He disagreed in 2016 with George Bush and Mitt Romney and criticized John McCain and was moving toward a much more culturally conservative but fiscally, maybe less conservative actually, policy than you have like under Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney for example or Bernie Sanders who is technically an independent. He ran for the democratic nomination and he produced change on things like the minimum wage and stuff like that.

33:42But like, so I think the risk is that third party most get co -opted by the two major parties. Yeah, that is, it's interesting to consider Trump as kind of like an outside option previously. This is what people are saying when they're shouting about drain the swamp and he's not one of the globalist elite lizard people, whatever. This is what they, this is kind of how they see him, right? Yeah, and you know, keep in mind that there was a whole GOP autopsy. they have to move to the center on immigration. He had the foresight, I guess, to kind of zig where other people's ag. Whatever else you say about Trump, he's a former real estate guy.

34:24He maybe has some sixth sense for when there's an underpriced piece of political real estate somewhere. Yeah. Why did the polls lobe all Trump in the past? Is there a risk of that happening again? There is a risk. In fact, there's probably a risk of both directions. In 2022, you had polls underestimate Democrats in some big races in 2012. They underestimated Obama a little bit. So, pollsters offer two basic excuses. And I say excuses because how valid they are. I think the pollsters would love to have unbiased results, but it's tricky. One problem is that people who are more politically engaged in college educated are more likely to respond to polls and also more likely to be Democrats.

35:07You know, your typical MSNBC watching New York Times, whatever, you know, Starbucks drinking liberals is pretty likely to respond to a poll, but we'll embovote Democrat in November. That's one issue. There were also issues in 2020 potentially related to COVID. We are Democrats for much more likely to socially distance. So they're sitting around without much to do. And you know, I probably made more phone calls during COVID than I ever have in my life, right? So, Democrats are more likely to respond to surveys during COVID, and that may have caused issues in 2020. But, yeah, these are legitimate reasons to worry.

35:46The reason why I would say maybe I'd expect less of a polling year at the series, is because like, what the polls are saying is that it's 50 -50, which is like a very reasonable suggestion, I think. Right? There's saying we're going to be somewhere in between 2016 and 2020 most likely comes down to a photo finish again in the electoral college, and that's like not exactly going out on a limb. Is there a social design ability thing still with Trump? I walk around my very white, very three and a half kids in a golden retriever neighborhood here in Austin, Texas. And I see a whole host of blue signs for Harris Waltz and I don't see a single one for Trump.

36:24Something tells me that people in two and three million dollar houses aren't all Democrats. I think there is some, but maybe less than people assume for a couple of reasons. One is that Americans tend to be pretty forthcoming when you ask them in surveys, which is not true everywhere, right? In India, for example, it's just considered kind of a bad idea to share your political opinion with a random stranger, which in some ways maybe it is, right? But Americans tend to answer polls pretty honestly. the issues more that you're not getting Trump supporters answering polls in the first place that they're less likely to trust.

37:04Trust a news outlet that calls and says, do you want to take a survey? I would also say that the degree of social acceptability is wider now for Trump than it used to be. Certainly on Silicon Valley and in Wall Street, you have more explicit Trump support than you had four years ago or eight years ago, also in communities like younger black men, for example, are younger Hispanic men and things like that. I think the social circles expanded a little bit where you're allowed to say you're a Trump voter. I would agree. Getting into your current thesis of choice, how have you come to think about the sort of landscape of influential cultures in in America, the village, the river, et cetera.

37:51Yeah, so the village and the river are terms from my book on the edge. The village is kind of what it sounds like. It's the East Coast establishment. It's Harvard, it's the New York Times, it's a Washington Post, it's academia, media government. Tens to be politically progressive, tends to be very collective in its orientation. What you don't wanna do in the village is be canceled or ostracized. It's about kind of the group cohesion plus winning elections for Democrats. Whereas the river is my name for a community of like -minded risk takers, so it's people in Silicon Valley and Wall Street. It's the casino business.

38:29It's people trying to, you know, who are a very, very competitive and be very analytics driven. So they're smart about things or trying to estimate and quantify things, but they also really want to win. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of those groups? So, as we kind of move into a world that's more algorithmatized and where like basically math and probability are becoming a more and more important skill, then that reverian, I call it, you know, someone from the rivers of Ravarian, that cluster of attributes is becoming more and more important, right? As like tech and finance basically become a larger and larger share of the economy, then that's kind of more emergent and important than maybe some of the more verbal skills.

39:16So we can say we can't just vibe our way through the future. I think it's a work it's more complicated and it gets harder to harder and harder to vibe. Or maybe I don't know about you. I'm vibe in I've been vibing throughout this whole conversation. It's fun. No, having conversations is good. And actually if you look at large language models like Chachy PT, like language is actually more mathematical than people maybe assume. You can kind of like transform it to vectors and do math on on language basically. But yeah, I look, I think, you know, it's also the fact is that we live in a very competitive world where the capitalist system, and I'm for the most part, pro -free market, is very efficient at producing winners and losers, and sorting through different ideas for better and for worse.

40:05And so the people who are naturally competitive get ahead, of course. is the village not made up of a lot of people who are also competitive, though. They're highly decorated in terms of academia. They're still working in areas that are, although internally, they may try and sort of relabel it. They're driven by capitalist sort of fundamentals. Is that not the case still for them? I mean, I think they are very concerned with their social status, right? That you want a certain credential. I mean, these are people where during COVID, um, if you didn't have the right credential, or even if you had the right credential and said the wrong thing, then people say, oh, it's not that what he's saying is wrong.

40:50It's that he's the wrong person to say it. Or that's also adjacent to some of the wokeness stuff, right? Where, well, as a person of x, y, and z, then I have the right to say this, but not the right to say, talk about was other thing. So yeah, whereas classically people in the river are more willing to be contrarian. They don't care as much about offending society. They just want to be right. They just want their bets to win. And appearances say don't matter as much. What are the advantages of the village and disadvantages of the river? So I think the village sometimes has its heart in the right place, right?

41:36I mean, I believe that climate change is a big issue and I believe that we're a very wealthy country that can afford to have some redistribution and things like that. I believe in expanding rights to LGBTQ people. So, and that stuff, I'm probably kind of culturally aligned with them. You know, they certainly perceive Trump as being quite dangerous to democracy. I think after January 6th, then that argument becomes very credible, frankly. Yeah, look, I mean, we have had historically in the US very competent institutions. Although I know Americans are frustrated with the government, You look at us compared to these middle income country Greece or things like that.

42:24Like our economy is still growing when other economies aren't as much. But I worried that this is getting swallowed by partisanship. I think during COVID that we saw that the expertise is kind of conditional on the politics a little bit. I media is complicated. I mean, media is a very dynamic business, but I think sometimes there are thumbs on the scales in different directions. So I worry that the river is going to kind of lose what or the village is going to lose what make it what made it great. I mean, the disadvantage is to the village or to the river rather is like I think you are getting you are getting a lot of difficult people right if they want the once in a generation founder who breaks the mold well you're going to have a lot of people like Sam McMinn freed or Elizabeth with homes that do this in a destructive way, potentially instead.

43:18I think there can be some selection bias in who they pick to be founders. I mean, it's still very male, not very diverse in terms of black or Hispanic representation in the VC industry. And so I think those things are valid critiques. Yeah, certainly one of the things I've noticed, one of the reasons I think being left leaning is so seductive at the moment is that much communication is going on through social media and whoever sort of prioritizes for first order compassion sounds like somebody that cares more and it's all well and good being Tim Kennedy or Tucker Maxx and telling everyone to go fuck themselves because I've got an AR 15 and a thousand like magazines of ammunition but it's not as compelling at getting other people on board by definition it's exclusionary in a way that the sort of left -leaning talking points also can be exclusionary, but they're like inclusionary exclusionary.

44:14Yeah, look, and I do think that, you know, it's inherently, I like how you put it. I think it's inherently like a more sympathetic argument that's a little bit more humane, and that goes, that goes a fairly long way. I mean, let's keep in mind that even though there are excesses on the left, Democrats win their fair share of elections, they win the popular vote almost every time now in the presidency. They control the Senate. They might win back the House later this year. So it's a message that actually is maybe more broadly appealing than people might assume. Talking about some of the more risky people, Elizabeth Holmes, sentence recently, Caroline Ellison in court recently, Sean Diddy -Combs and Sandbankman Freed in the same Brooklyn jail unit at the moment.

45:01Apparently, what did you learn from being around and SPF and can you sort of tell that story of how that happened? So I spent a lot of time with SPF. I first talked to him in I think January 2022, which is during one of the early Bitcoin peaks. And he's riding high. He can't seem to imagine that you'd ever have a sustained decline in crypto or at least it's kind of like what he's telling me, right? And was insanely tolerant for risk. I mean, it's a book about people who are risk takers. But so he told me that if you're not willing to risk ruining your life that you're doing something wrong that you're not Accepting enough risk Which seems crazy right if you're worth a lot of money What you should be doing to some degree or another is paging your risk That you can make is very big bets because if you lose the bets will you still have a billion dollars?

45:52I'll go with your SPF or five billion dollars a 10 billion dollars You know he was not doing that whatsoever and I think was like enabled by a lot of people who who ought to have asked more questions. You had, I think, in New York, we have the bystander effect where you see somebody leading out on the street or something and everyone walks by, they figure someone else has called 911. Well, sometimes nobody called 911 into the due diligence and that person winds up dying or being gravely injured because of the bystander effect. There were so many people who were vouching for Sam. He is on stage with the World Economic Forum with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and he's hanging out with these like Oxford philosophers, but the whole time he was giving very dangerous signals.

46:38Is he actually smart? Or is he just a moron that was able to tolerate more risk than everyone else and get first mover advantage? I think he's smart, but I think he's like 99 .5 percent Gentile smart and not like 99 .95 % of smart, like 1 in 1000 and not 1 in 10 ,000. I think he's also somebody who is overconfident. I mean, this is a big problem that actually people in the river can have. In theory, they're supposed to be probabilistic and cautious and learn how to make well -calibrated bets in practice that can lead itself to overconfidence. And so, you know, he, I think, overestimated his ability to navigate these various rapids that we have with crypto prices and NFTs and so forth going up and down.

47:28I think he was over optimistic about his persuasive ability. When I talked to him and I went down eventually to the Bahamas and talked to him a couple of days there, he seemed to think that he could charm his way into a very sympathetic jury verdict. You know, I asked him, last time I met him, he was in Palo Alto, California at his parents' place where he's under house arrest, has an ankle bracelet. And I said, what if he just got two years in jail on then some light probation after that? Would you take that deal? And he said, I'd have to think about it. When it would have been a great deal, he wound up getting 20 years instead, which was, I think, a fairly predictable outcome.

48:06Not just 20 years, Nate. 20 years in the same jail as P Diddy. Yeah, which I think is the same function as 10 ,000 years, actually. Yeah, I know it is. There's some riddle I think about like forever being trapped in a jail and that's going to be, I don't know, although I'm sure I'm sure SPF will find ways to have little schemes and so forth in jail. I'm sure I'll have an interesting time. Well, look, to sort of tie the two big topics that we've been talking about today together, presidential candidates and high risk take as Caroline Ellison, SPF's girlfriend, managed to finesse an entire army of nerds into being some weird inverted haram, and then managed to finesse her way into a 107 -year discount on her jail sentence.

48:56She went from 110 -year potential maximum to three years of, you can kind of go around, just don't go near the internet or something for a while. She is the person that we should be looking to for president. and she can feed the Ukraine sort of the Middle East to sort it. I'm Caroline Ellison for president. That's me. That's my vote. It's probably her versus Mr. Beast next time around.

49:22Oh, man. So you looked at the sort of sociology psychology of crypto investors, why they were so prone to being scammed. What did you learn there? I think part of it is the kind of time of human history when this is happening. If you read Matt Levine from Bloomberg, he's fond of talking about something called the boredom market hypothesis, which is that people are locked down. I know it's in a formal lockdown, but people's social lives are radically curtailed during COVID. They're spending a lot of time on the internet. Meanwhile, the government is pumping a lot of money into the economy. So there's a lot of cash.

50:02So I think it was just like, you know, look, I think the blockchain's a really interesting technology. So I'm not trying to demean it But I think you had kind of a that you know that NFT era I mean most bubbles people kind of they kind of almost know they're in a bubble and they kind of can't help themselves Anyway sometimes because it's fun and also there times if you if your timing is perfect then you can come out ahead very few people do But I think it's this boredom and anxiety of the pandemic is producing producing a lot of speculative assets. And although this is amazing, when people forget how annoying the game stop, how amazing rather not annoying, how amazing the game stop story is, that basically keep people band together on the internet to severely disrupt stock prices.

50:50I'm not sure that it's good for the economy, but it's amazing that people are able to do that for sustained periods of time. Yeah, two thoughts on that. first one being I have asked a lot of my friends who are into crypto if there was no potential to make a profit from your trading in it and your investment in it would you still put your money in it and the number of people you 95 % of people I think if you ask them like carefully and get that real opinion doesn't I'm like dude you don't love the blockchain this isn't about somebody in Zambia being able to send money back home safely and securely It's because it's fucking high risk gambling with massive upside.

51:28That's why you love it. Second thing, do you read much Morgan Howell? You subscribed to collaborative fund his blog. I have I have not no dude So he put a post up that is very similar to what you're talking about. I read it this morning. So I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you about it Compounded knowledge versus cyclical knowledge. So he starts off with this story of germ disease. So before or germ diseases were understood. And these surgeons used to think that a crusty blood filled, pus soaked operating room was kind of like a, it was evidence of all of the work that you'd done. That they thought they basically mocked the first proposals of germ disease and said, this is the same as relying on spirits.

52:17There's no way that this could be the case. Like this is so tiny invisible little things that get it. It's not, it's the miasma. You know, they were putting cow manure into people's wounds. They were injecting cow milk into people's veins in the hope that the fat would turn into white blood cells, like just like really, really out there stuff. And then Morgan's point is that as soon as you learn about a germ theory of disease, that knowledge is locked in. So it compounds over time. And yet he has, you know, maybe 10 different examples, 10 different quotes from Senica 2000 years ago to the Great Depression to the Florida housing prices in the 1900 all over the place and everybody is saying the same thing that Anytime that you get some money one of the primary problems is that it makes you want to protect your money Which makes you actually more skewed in weird directions you become sort of more illogical the richer you are as opposed to being more rational with it.

53:13And he talks about that being cyclical knowledge that each time that a situation comes back around, this time it's different, this time the market conditions are altered. People always are going to be driven by this desire for more. It's got this built in hedonic adaptation thing and this sort of dissatisfaction that humans have. His point being that he can see a time in future where maybe all cancers are solved. We don't have to deal with death and disease in the same way as we do now. We basically sort of conquered human health, but there is no time in future when he doesn't see that greed and envy in the desire for more will not be a fundamental driving force.

53:49I thought that was a really nice concept. Yeah, look, I mean, one thing I worry about, again, I'm pretty pro -capitalist for the most part, but I worry about where we are giving all our data to these big powerful companies and potentially AI systems. And they know more about us than we know about them. and that if you're not smart that you want to get in taking advantage of it and exploited. If the economy becomes more casino -like, that seems probably pretty bad for human and well -being. What is some of the most interesting insights or lessons that you learned from researching Vegas and casinos and stuff like that?

54:28I think one thing that's a little bit counterintuitive is, people don't understand how important regulation actually is to having a functional casino industry at all because for years, Casino just cheated their patrons, right? And they kind of competed to see who could play better tricks on their patrons who are like no real way to establish credibility. And then on top of that, you have the mob skimming profits off the top before the era of all these big entrepreneurs. And so the fact that like casino industry is now this respectable business is actually kind of an underdog story. I mean, there's nothing else to do in Nevada, right?

55:09It's beautiful land, but like it's not very hospitable to the population. It's surrounded by mountains in all directions. And so, yeah, it's built a whole bunch of casinos and, you know, and Vegas is an incredible success story in certain ways. But it's, you know, partly because of the, you know, the visions of the Steve Wins of the world. These are the big casino magnates who was like, we can make casino a luxury destination item and they made that big bet and they were and they were right. Was it not always? No, I mean it was kind of very much, you know, you read the mobile travel guide I'm dating myself, but no, the casino industry was seen as like maybe cheap lower middle brow fun.

55:52I mean, there were something, there was like the rat pack era, of course. But you go into like the old school casinos on downtown Las Vegas. Some of which are a lot of fun. It's a good thing to do together strip sometimes. But they're, yeah, they're showgirls kind of vibes. Maybe a little bit of a speakeasy vibe, but it's not it's not highbrow luxury, right? You get a $20 room that they give you for free. So you'll gamble more. You get a coupon for a free steak dinner, but it's not, you know, Michelin star, we're winning three -star chefs next to the poker room kind of thing. Going back to the high -risk takers and the people from the village that you were talking about before, what are the big lessons that you want people to understand about the sort of psychological makeup of these people and sort of how they can use those lessons the best the best of each of them to sort of embody them themselves?

56:49Yeah, even though it's cliche, it's extremely important to be cool under pressure and to understand that when you're facing high -stress situations that involve physical risk or real financial risk that your body has a reaction to them. That if I'm playing a $1, $2 poker game, just nothing is going to phase me. If I'm playing a $100 poker game where pots get into the five figures easily, then the The fact is that your body will intuitively recognize that this is a fight or flight moment where you have more on the line. And there are other moments like that. If you do our inter -public speaking and you walk out on a stage in front of a couple of thousands of people, you're naturally going to get butterflies because that's an important moment compared to when you're just walking down the street to catch the cab to the airport or something.

57:43So understanding that when that's happening, you're actually on a different operating system. I've talked to guys who study the neuroscience of all of this. And understanding that when you're under pressure that you have to slow down and simplify things sometimes, people want to be a hero to make some really exotic play in poker. If you can just kind of execute and stick to your training when other people are losing their shit, then that's a really powerful advantage. How do you step in to do that functionally or practically yourself? I think I saw somewhere in the release about the book that you've made not insignificant amount of some of money while writing the book in poker.

58:24So it seems that you must have sort of been around some of these high -stress situations. Someone has got a presentation to do at work or they've got a job interview or for some reason playing in a poker game that's got you on the other side of the table. What should they do to regulate themselves in that moment? Or what do you do? So one thing it's you know it's recognizing that having a physical stress response isn't necessarily a bad thing. So for example when I talk to a professional golf trainer he's a guy who trains golfers and poker players can both get both get the yips both get nerves.

58:58A professional golfer who is a fit athlete maybe not as fit as like a basketball player or something but these hundred beats per minute just from walking around the golf course at a major tournament. Because it's the body is correctly saying this needs to have an increase in my performance. And so understanding that if you feel nervous, that it isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you're doing public speaking, what you don't want to do is kind of what Joe Biden did in the first debate and began to freeze. Usually if you just kind of say the words that are coming out of your mouth, then they'll work perfectly fine.

59:38And you can't be as cerebral about things as you would be ordinarily. However, it also means that you're actually in taking more information. If you've ever heard the phrase being in the zone, like Michael Jordan would describe where I'm seeing things as though they're in freeze frame or slow motion, right? And I'm able to anticipate my opponents moves before they make them and things like that. Like that's, that's actually a real thing you can experience like when you're when you're under stress and being able to get used to that is helpful. I had an incident on a podcast a few years ago where I'd decided to fast before I did it and that's good because it meant I was super aroused and had all of this adrenaline coursing through me.

1:00:24But I went hypo during the middle of the episode which caused my brain to just go completely blank. so I'm sat there watching this person go, but uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, and listening back to the episode, now in retrospect, there was some bit of me cruise control governor that was just saying things. But my mind was captured with me going, oh my god, I can't believe that I've got nothing to say, how am I gonna get some blood, is that chocolate over the fast, I can ask for some chocolate, do you think that I could get a break and get a gate rate? But my brain was just going looping around in this, and my mouth was just feeding stuff out of it that was totally cogent.

1:00:59I was like, ah, okay, that's interesting. That's getting out of your own way and sort of using experience. Now, people's ability to go on autopilot and the amazing like plasticity we have with how we direct our attention to, I mean, you know, imagine that you're in this crowded restaurant in the middle of Manhattan and there's bad acoustics and 500 conversations. You're able to like attune to the conversation with your friend most of the time. I mean, our minds are quite, are quite amazing in that respect. Although I would recommend against fasting and poker like don't go well together. I don't like to be super stuffed when I play, but I don't wanna be totally famished either because your body will find ways to make you lose, to feed you.

1:01:42That your friend will be like, hey, we're going out to get dinner at the Japanese play slater. We know you're still in the game, right? You'll always find a way to like bust out when that, if you're starving. Yes. What are the disadvantages of being a person who lives life with the worldview and perspective and predilection and disposition that you have? I think sometimes you rub certain people the wrong way. I mean, I always felt kind of estranged in politics because I'm concerned with this question of like, who's going to win? And what's the optimal strategy and the kind of game theory of politics?

1:02:26And most people are into politics because they are on one team, and they want that team to win. The reasons ring on that team might differ from identity stuff to more high -minded policy stuff or thinking, you know, and that's fine. But that's not my people. So I kind of wind up getting thrust into environments where the thing I'm best known for politics is is not a thing I that's my most natural interest. Is that something you're worried about? Is a legacy type picture being the political forecast guy? I mean, it's probably irreparable at this at this, although I could, you know, I thought about not running an election forecast publicly this cycle.

1:03:12I thought about just doing some consulting. We had, we had with several different firms, different discussions about just taking the forecast, totally private. I decided in the end that, like, so I'm building a small business. I have this newsletter, Silver Bulletin, which is subscriber newsletter on Substack and like - Everyone should go and subscribe. I love it. Appreciate it. And that's doing really well, right? And so now, I've said, half my burnout about the election stuff was working for a giant corporation called the Walt Disney Corporation, that owned 538 before and so yeah I don't know I mean we'll see I was having a lot of fun I will say I know you're not allowed to say you're not supposed to have fun when you cover politics something a lot of fun until about like two weeks ago where you know after Labor Day people just kind of lose their minds they get very mad at any poster or forecaster who doesn't say good news for their candidate.

1:04:10But we're in the stretch run here now. We only have, what is it, 44 more days to go or something? Not that you're counting down, obviously. No, no. I mean, I've got a trip to Korea plan for December. I got some poker stuff planned for earlier December, so I have some things to look forward to. Oh, you absolutely deserve it. One of the words that me and a bunch of my friends are massive, massive fans of is agency. And you've got agency plurality and reciprocity as three sort of very important traits. You just explain what those mean to you and why they're so crucial. Yeah, so these are kind of my core values that I think we need in a more in a more gated driven slash risk on world.

1:04:53Agency means having good choices is how I define it, right? So liberty is great, but like, you know, We want you able to have two or more real choices for how you lead your life, where you're well -informed about those choices. It's not coercive. I worry, for example, that with algorithms, you have people who are manipulated into making false choices. Plurality just means that I don't want any dominant group or faction to dominate. I want to have, this is why I like democracy still, is that you have to have agreement between different perspectives or different people. I think that's very important.

1:05:30And reciprocity is kind of a form of fairness, but in a more complicated way that gets derived from game theory. This is about not exploiting people, right? In game theory, you adopt a strategy, say, and poker, that assumes that you're playing perfectly. And we are playing against one another and trying to balance our strategies out with one another so that neither of us lose in the long run. I know it's a complicated metaphor, for where, but it's basically saying, you know, treat others how, how you want to be treated. Hmm. What about what is sort of when it comes to a personal level, you know, you're not just this nameless faceless data inputter that's writing words and trying to predict elections.

1:06:12You've got the stuff that you do with poker, private life, all the rest of it. What are the traits or habits that you rely on yourself personally the most? I think there's a lot of people, certainly myself, I want to become better with dealing with risk. I want to, I would say I'm the sort of opposite in terms of risk taking to Sandbankman Freed that my required barometer needs to hit an unreasonable level for me to make a decision. So what are some of the traits that you rely on or that you value most in yourself when it comes to your ability to sort of deal with risk and move forward. Um, you know, look, I think I understand that we live in a world where there's a lot of abundance, at least if you're a lucky person like I am.

1:06:57Um, so, you know, I think people who I'm in a group middle class basically, right? I think a lot of people like that don't realize that sometimes it's worth it to, um, to pay to make your life easier and more convenient. I think so not feeling guilty or shame about that. I mean, I work really hard. And I have a lot of - Even like getting a god in a or a maid or something like that. Yeah, things like that or, or, you know, or saying in a nicer hotel, well, you're sleep better. Because if you do the math and you have these election years where that's where most of your income is made, then like, you know, one hour of extra sleep is worth quite a bit in terms of productivity.

1:07:36If you can write in other newsletter posts and get more subscribers and things like that, you know, I think I'm very good at like intense, focused work. I mean, if you ask me, I'd probably say that like, I worked more hours 10 years ago when I was a younger, but like I work much more focused now, right? If you're working for yourself and there are no like pointless meetings to take, then if you don't have any busy time and it's all real work, then doing like, then doing six to eight hours of real work in a day is a lot of real intellectual work can kind of recognizing that you have to like pace yourself a little bit.

1:08:13And also if you're a writer, at least for me, you're constantly writing in the background, right? Like I'm writing like four blog posts whenever I go out and get coffee or something. So you're optimizing for a maker schedule rather than a manager schedule in Paul Graham language? Absolutely. You know, the manager schedule, you know, when I have more than three schedule commitments in a day, right? Even three is pushing it, then I'm like, okay, the day is kind of ruined. We are the founder mode versus manager mode, blog post that Pulpo Up the other week, me and my housemate have been talking about that a lot.

1:08:49Really interesting little pivot that he found with that, which is if the beginning of his day gets side swiped by something which puts him into manager mode or manager schedule, I guess technically, he just commits the rest of the day. He's like, right, okay, I'm going to commit that the rest of this is fucking ruined. I'm not going to get anything sort of meaningful or deep done. So he then just starts messaging all of the outstanding meetings that he knows he's got. I guess it's kind of like, I don't know, your first hand going really badly around the poker table and go, okay, I'm just going to adapt the rest of my game to this and maybe I'm going to just try and learn stuff and then I'll come back to the table a better way tomorrow.

1:09:29I think that's smart. I think, and I think batching your work like that is smart too, right? Like I'm not really a clothes fan, but you know, you have to go shopping to look nice sometimes. And like I will just go fucking balls out and be like, I'm just going to spend six hours shopping today and then not do it again for six months or something. I think that's more efficient than doing a little bit in a time. Agreed. I'm currently testing trying to have Wednesday as a meeting day and then the rest of the week is nothing as opposed to this sort of weird like distribution of seeds on an open field that I had previously on my calendar.

1:10:00No, I think that's much better. Because you really do need, especially writing a book, you really do need these times of three hours minimum to get totally immersed in it, I think. Okay. Nate Silver, ladies and gentlemen, Nate, I love your work. The book's fantastic. It's really story driven, which I appreciate from someone that has the seduction of numbers, I guess, in front of them all the time. Why should people go? They want to keep up to date with all the stuff you're doing. So Silver Bulletin is my newsletter and risky business is my podcast that I co -host with another poker player Maria Conocova.

1:10:33I can. Night, I appreciate you. Thank you. Of course. Thanks so much.