The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 47 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 4 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Nate Silver: California's official vote count accurately reflects ballots cast
“I think the California vote count is an accurate tally of the votes that were cast.”
Silver: 10% or higher risk of severe US constitutional crisis in 2024
“It may not resolve itself in the end of democracy, but like, that's like a, you know, a risk that's, you know, in the 10% range or maybe higher of a severe constitutional crisis in twenty-twenty-four and maybe repeated that in twenty-twenty-eight and so forth,…”
Nate Silver: 43 states can be predicted for 2028 with 97% confidence
“43 of the 50 states, David, we could probably predict right now with 97% confidence who they'll vote for in 2028, and it's not because of rigging, it's because polarization and partisanship are very powerful forces that we can't seem to escape from.”
Nate Silver: Democrats are slight favorites to win in 2028
“I think Democrats are slight favorites to win in 2028.”
Nate Silver: Immigrant and entrepreneurial groups are shifting away from Democrats
“You have seen shifts in those groups and the most entrepreneurial groups away from Democrats.”
Nate Silver: Democrats have an 85% to 90% chance to take the House
“Prediction markets say Democrats are around, I think, 80 or 85% to take the House and 40 or 45% to take the Senate. Those both seem pretty reasonable to me. I think, if anything, it's a little bit low on the House. I think it might be more like 85 or 90.”
Nate Silver: GOP has a slight edge to retain the Senate
“Whereas on the flip side, needing to pick up four Senate seats when you might blow the opportunity in Maine, it's a toss up probably, probably slight edge to the GOP with maybe gas prices and Iran determining whether it's more truly fifty-fifty or maybe, maybe…”
Silver: Politics discourages critical thinking and encourages confirmation bias
“I just don't think that like politics teaches people to think critically and it's like, yeah, part of that is like, they're not thinking probabilistically, but it's more like people just want to see their kind of priors confirmed.”
Silver: Political left and right are becoming increasingly authoritarian
“Both the left and the right have become more authoritarian in certain ways. I think the type of authoritarianism on the right It's quite a bit more dangerous in the moment, but, ah, they're both kind of moving away from kind of liberalism in some kind of class…”
Silver: Silicon Valley grasps scale, whereas social media flattens all discourse
“One thing that people in Silicon Valley get right for all their faults and self-servingness in some ways, right, They kind of get the orders of magnitudes, right? They understand scale and social media and the daily news cycle really collapses that, right? So …”
Silver: Base case for 2022 midterms is Republican majorities in Congress
“Midterm elections are more predictable Than presidential elections. And the base case is that you wind up with Republican majorities of some magnitude.”
Silver: Moderate political candidates gain a two to four point electoral advantage
“You can actually see the effect of being more moderate will gain you an extra two or three or four points, right? Being less More moderate, more radical in some cases, will lose you two or three or four points.”
Nate Silver: Donald Trump's approval rating has fallen to 38%
“Donald Trump in our approval ratings now is down to. 38%.”
Nate Silver: Socialism is significantly more popular among younger Democrats
“I think people who are a little bit older don't realize that like the socialism brand Is much more popular among younger Democrats.”
Nate Silver: The AI capital boom is keeping the stock market afloat
“I personally think the AI capital boom, whatever becomes of it is responsible for keeping our economy, at least the stock market in relatively good shape.”
Nate Silver: Jon Ossoff is likely more electable than Gavin Newsom
“I think maybe the most electable Democrat might be somebody like a John Ossoff, who is younger, who is pretty progressive if you look at his voting record, but like, but isn't like a brawler in quite the same way that, that Newsom is trying to be.”
Nate Silver: Claude and ChatGPT are less polarizing than Twitter or Bluesky
“Claude or ChatGPT is probably less polarizing than Blue Sky or Twitter.”
Nate Silver: 80% of voters agreed Joe Biden was too old
“Saying, Biden is obviously too old, Democrats, you're gonna lose unless you replace him. Like, that, even though it's a stance that, like, literally 80% of voters agreed with, will make you, like, seem like a heretic on Twitter.”
Silver: Probabilistic intuition matters more than formal mathematical modeling in VC
“In the VC field, I don't know if you're necessarily doing as much modeling as I might in election model, for example, but at the very least, people understand the intuition, and the intuition is, you need both, but I think the intuition is more important than …”
Silver: VC investing requires being six to twelve months ahead of the curve
“In VC, I mean, you might want to find a founder or a sector or a company that's undervalued by the market, but eventually you want that sector to grow. You want to attract more talent. You want to attract future fundraising rounds. So you kind of are more bein…”
Silver: Sam Bankman-Fried accepted bets with 50% failure odds for huge payoffs
“I talked to Sam Beckman-Fried for the book, for example, and he's like, yeah, I knew this would have like a, only a 50% chance of succeeding, but the payoff was so high, I would take it.”
Silver: Highly successful individuals may take on excessive risk
“The people who are super uber successful maybe are almost taking on more risk than they maybe should.”
Silver: Political discourse relies on hypocritical, short-term reasoning
“It's a lot of very hypocritical and ad hoc thinking in politics, right? It's instrumental reasoning toward trying to win an argument at that moment in that day”
Silver: The most successful gamblers do not care much about money
“The most successful gamblers don't actually care that much about money.”
Silver: Liberals criticized FiveThirtyEight for being too bullish on Trump in 2016
“Before the election, we got a lot of criticism from like liberals for being too bullish on Trump. The market price was about 15%.”
Silver: Polling affects voter behavior in multi-candidate races, not two-way elections
“In two-way races, it's not clear if there's any impact either way, where canon effect is when you're having a multiple candidate race, right? In twenty-twenty, when Elizabeth Warren started to fall behind Bernie Sanders in the polls, right, if you're a left-wi…”
Nate Silver says DraftKings and BetMGM limited his betting accounts
“So I've been limited by DraftKings and MGM.”
Nate Silver: Recounts almost never overturn vote margins above 0.05%
“Almost never have you had a margin larger than oh point oh five percent or so overturned.”
Nate Silver: Almost every modern US election is a change election
“Almost every election now is a change election.”
Nate Silver: Conditional on winning Senate, Democrats almost certainly win House
“They're almost perfectly correlated. So if the odds of Democrats winning the Senate, but not the House are like one percent, if you go to Kalshi or Polymarket, whatever else, they have to be like around one percent. So conditional on Democrats winning the Sena…”
Nate Silver: Gavin Newsom's Democratic primary polling fell from 25% to 15%
“Newsom has fallen in Democratic primary polls from around 25% to 15%. He's fallen on polling market from like 33% to 22% or something.”
Nate Silver: Successful gamblers require comfort with uncertainty, not just probability
“Really obvious one is that successful gamblers think probabilistically. It's not just a matter of understanding probability, but being comfortable with uncertainty, being willing to take bets on an uncertain basis.”
Silver: The average VC investment makes money, unlike average poker hands
“The average investment makes money. It may not make a above market return, but it'll make money, which is not true for the average Poker hand that you play.”
Nate Silver: Only about 10% of poker players profit long term
“In poker where only 10% of players probably make money in the long run, you have to be very, very detail oriented.”
Silver: Successful gamblers must be contrarian to maintain a market edge
“Successful gamblers are contrarian, at least to some degree. And again, I'm kind of repeating myself a little bit, but there's no edge if someone, if everyone does the same thing in the same way.”
Nate Silver: Magnus Carlsen loses five pounds per chess match from thinking
“Magnus Carlsen will lose, you know, five pounds over the course of a chess match just thinking”
Silver: Gut intuition is ineffective for forecasting rare events like elections
“I think people can, in matters that happen only occasionally, like a presidential election, people think, well, my gut is that so-and-so will win. You don't have enough practice at forecasting elections to really, for that to be very useful, right?”
Silver: FiveThirtyEight was bullish on Joe Biden in 2020 primary
“If you get kind of, like, the twenty-twenty primary, like, we were very bullish on Joe Biden when people weren't and thought he was gonna lose, and so you don't get, like, a lot of credit, and you do face, like, a lot of downside for being actually wrong or pe…”
Nate Silver: Democrats probably keep Senate if generic ballot GOP lead is 2 points
“If you have a generic ballot that favors Republicans by like two points, the Democrats can probably keep the Senate.”
Nate Silver: Half of US student loan debt is from graduate school
“Half of student loan debt is people going to graduate school”
Nate Silver claims he is ranked 301st in global poker rankings
“I'm currently I think number three-oh-one in the global poker rankings.”
Silver: Daniel Negreanu remade his poker game using computer solver models
“I talked to Daniel Negreanu, for example, one of the probably five best puck players of all time. And he told me that about four years ago, he realized that these solver kids, as he calls them, the math whizzes were better than him, at least at certain forms o…”
Nate Silver: Sports bettors need a 52.5% win rate to break even
“You have to win 52 and a half percent to make up for the house cut for the rake or the vig as different names.”
Nate Silver: Poker players generally fluctuate between super rich and broke
“In poker is basically like, you know, three states, right? Super rich, somewhat rich, and dead broke, like not a lot in between.”