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→ Nate Silver projects Kamala Harris to lose election
Election forecaster Nate Silver has updated his model for the match between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and it’s not looking great for the likely Democratic nominee.
Nate Silver relaunches his model with Kamala Harris at 38.1% to win the Electoral College and 53.5% to win the popular vote (what a country!). When he retired the Biden-Trump model Biden was down to 27%https://t.co/YRLzamVv4i pic.twitter.com/jYxpEVLNmy
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) July 30, 2024
Trump is leading Harris 61-38 in Silver’s probability model for the electoral college, which determines the outcome of the election, while Harris is favoured to win the popular vote by 53-46. While not an optimal outcome for Democrats, it’s a major improvement on last month. When Biden was still on the ticket, his probability of winning was only 27%.
“Stranger things have happened than a candidate who was behind in the polls winning”, Silver writes. It’s not over yet.
→ Tobacco ban fuels black market in Britain
The uniparty strikes again. Just as Labour seeks to press ahead with Rishi Sunak’s smoking ban, new data shows that a tobacco black market is ballooning.
According to figures from research company Circana, spending on illegal tobacco in 2023/24 was £5.7 billion — up from £4.2 billion the previous year and £3.5 billion in 2020. As Guido Fawkes notes, that £5.7 billion figure is roughly equivalent to a quarter of the police budget. If Keir Starmer really wants to be tough on crime, maybe he should reconsider the ban. Talk about black holes…
→ Can AI replace your friends?
Artificial intelligence isn’t just coming for your job — it’s also coming for your social life.
Avi Schiffmann, a 21-year-old tech entrepreneur, has released a product called “Friend”, a wearable AI device that records one’s environment and sends texts in response to whatever is going on. An ad shows Friend encouraging a solo hiker, teasing a man who’s losing a video game, and asking a young woman if she’s enjoying her dinner. The users wear the device around their neck, and it lights up when in use, discretion be damned.
introducing friend. not imaginary.
order now at https://t.co/7kGiH5pQVK pic.twitter.com/qU58xNvX5v
— Avi (@AviSchiffmann) July 30, 2024
The message, of course, is that being friends with an AI chatbot is not at all sad, embarrassing, or an obvious cry for help. Will it have the same personality flaws as other AI?
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SubscribeHow would Nate Silver know any better than I do? The future remains unpredictable on something like this. Giving 61% to 38% precision to this matchup is a fool’s game. All models are wrong. Ignore them. Don’t encourage the modelmakers.
That said, I did enjoy Nate Silver’s book The Signal and the Noise and am looking forward to the release of his new book On the Edge in two weeks. He does have a good feel for the logic of risk and uncertainty (though no one can match Nassim Taleb.)
I am always entertained by the concept of “the popular vote” in the USA.
The USA is not a unitary state, it is a federation of states. The idea that if all of the most populous state voted for Harris then she would have won the popular vote and therefore has some authority is preposterous. Try running it in Texas, or indeed any other state, and see how it flies.
Each state is an individual STATE, with individual governments and individual laws, although ultimately subject to Federal law. That each State is individual was confirmed by the Supreme Court correctly overturning Roe v Wade and thus confirming it was a STATE not a Federal matter, and each state has acted accordingly.
The electoral college is there precisely because the “popular vote” dominating would lead to mayhem.
There is no rational justification for the electoral college, and no reason federal offices should be held by minority elected candidates. All Americans are subject to federal law and we should ALL have an equal vote in determining who makes those laws. The electoral collage dangerously complicates our elections, routinely elects presidents who failed to win a majority of the votes, and perverts the process by ignoring the majority of the country as candidates campaign for votes in a small number of swing states.
And so much for States’ rights…
While you may not agree with it, there certainly is a rational justification for the Electoral College. As far as who makes the laws (i.e., Congress), more populated states have more representatives in the House than less populated states. Hence, more populated states have more Electoral College votes than less populated states. Every state has at least 3 votes in the Electoral College because every state has 2 senators and at least 1 Representative. Rationale for the Senate runs along the same lines as rationale for the Electoral College.
The Founding Fathers were very wise indeed.
Right, I am sure that you can come up with a better Constitution that will propel a country to world dominance and unequalled prosperity and it will last for 235 years.
I wait, in breathless anticipation.
Yes they were.
It is unfortunate that many of their rational Enlightenment principles are now being rejected, in favour of emotionalism and attempts to impose those judgments on the past.
I need to meet an AI who really gets me.
I suppose the last article draws out interesting questions, like how essential are your social needs (in the sense that they can possibly be served simply by meeting a set of essential criteria, and providing you with essential, definable stimulus, standards and responses), and to what extent are your social needs in fact dependant on indefinable, shifting networks of subjectivity and emergent properties from inimitable networks