[ExI] quote of the day - on fame

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan
…

 

>…And, again, I don't believe Dickinson had that in mind…And I think she might be taken aback by that interpretation. This, again, is based on my reading about her…Regards, Dan 

 

 

I am over my posting limit for the day.  Do forgive please; I won’t make a habit of it.

 

Dan I have a fun story for you.

 

The day was 7 November 2000.  We had been doing Ideas Futures (Robin Hanson’s play money version which predated the real-money versions of today.)  We were learning all kinds of new statistical modeling from that, creating derivatives, all that cool stuff.  We had a separate Ideas Futures chat group, many of whom came from ExI.  As far as I know it was the only successful ExI-spinoff subgroup that persisted for more than a few weeks.  That group was active for a coupla years as I recall, in the 1999-2001 timeframe.  

 

Ideas Futures always does well on elections: it is like a big political Super Bowl game, except there is a lot more money involved and people don’t care as much as they do about football.  But the math geeks do, and we were creating statistical models for figuring out who would win the election on election day, perhaps with plenty of “money” changing hands that day, for Ideas Futures never closed.  You could bet on claims any time you wanted.

 

I didn’t play the political memes, since I was doing the prime number predictions in those days and mopping up like a rabid janitor on amphetamines, but I watched.  The Gore shares were selling for about 60 cents and gradually rising the week before election day.  It was anyone’s game, but the media were generally predicting a Gore victory.

 

Nate Silver had a website and a prediction model which showed that he could predict a winner based on early returns.  I had been watching that one.  The Silver-believers thought he could predict the outcome of the entire election by comparing early returns of 2000 with early returns in previous elections.  Cool!

 

7 November Tuesday.  My bride and I had tickets to a play in which Julie Harris was to do The Belle of Amherst, a one-woman play in which the actress would tell of her life, recite Dickenson poetry etc.  I had been listening to the election results most of the afternoon; even Silver was still saying this election was a toss-up.  On our way over to Palo Alto for the play, Silver and several other pundits realized that the election would most likely come down to the results in Florida.

 

Living on the US west coast, I assumed it would be all over by the time the play was to start, because the polls would close in Florida.  By the time we arrived at the theatre about 6pm it was closing time for the Florida polls and some of the news agencies were calling it for Mr. Gore, who had been leading in Florida all day.  But Silver was reminding all that there are ten counties out in western Florida which are in the Central Time Zone, and the polls were still open there, and that CNN and these others couldn’t legitimately call this yet because out west Florida was Bush country.  Nate Silver’s models all STILL were showing Florida as a tossup even as the polls closed in 95% of Florida.  Silver himself got on one show and commented that his models showed the lead in that state had been and still was changing hands every few minutes, if you take into account the previous voting patterns.

 

All this was going on right as the play was about to start, which was nerve-racking even for someone like me who could scarcely tell the difference between these two candidates.  I suggested to my bride we skip the play and listen to the results of these last polls which were due in only 15 minutes.  She insisted not; what will be will be, we paid a lotta money for these tickets, they don’t allow people go in late and yakkity yak and bla bla, so in we went, with Nate Silver telling the world this was still a tossup, which may have tipped the election.  Reasoning: the news biggies were already calling Florida for Mr. Gore, which may have caused late voters in western Florida to give it up and go home.  But Silver was reminding people the polls were still open in western Florida and that they might count.  But FoxNews was the only station that I recall who didn’t call Florida by 9pm Eastern, and were broadcasting Silver’s comments.

 

Well now, it could be that Bush voters are more likely to listen to FoxNews, so they would hear it was a close race, and might reconsider their decision to not vote, might turn around a second time, go back and vote.  We don’t know.  Perhaps the Gore voters in western Florida had no idea their votes would still count, so they went on home without voting, because the mainstream news biggies already announced their candidate had won Florida.

 

On our way in, I noticed that plenty of the other play-goers were agitated.  Perhaps they had been listening to the radio on the way in as well.  I struggled to concentrate on this excellent play.  

 

There was a 15 minute intermission coming, so I made plans to dash out to my Detroit and find out who won at that time.  However… during that play, during the first half, the man immediately behind me apparently had a stroke, for there was a bit of commotion, someone left as Harris recited her lines, the parameds came in a few minutes later, hauled this man out as limp as a dishrag, as the play went on uninterrupted.  

 

The second the intermission started, I bolted, ran out and saw them loading this man in the ambulance and drive off without a siren, which suggested to me he was gone.  I went out, turned on my radio only to find they STILL didn’t know who won Florida but that a bunch of other polls had closed with the expected results, increasing Silver’s credibility and drawing attention to his prediction that it would all come down to Florida, as Mr. Bush was sweeping middle America as expected, and we already knew the west coast would go for Mr. Gore, and it was STILL a tossup in Florida even after the western Florida polls had closed.

 

OK so… the future of American presidency was still a tossup, we had no way of knowing what would happen if there was a disputed outcome in Florida, a guy perished in the seat behind us.  I told my bride I wasn’t in the mood for any more poetry.  She agreed, we called a night at intermission.

 

Robin’s carefully-designed Ideas Futures meme for that election had no provision for what happens if 8 November comes and we STILL don’t know who won.  Those who were playing in those days may remember how that all played out.  After that event, you will note that election-based Ideas Futures all have provisions for what happens in those once-in-a-nation’s-lifetime events like the 2000 election.

 

This is my Emily Dickenson/Ideas Futures/ExI story for a Friday afternoon.

 

Here is what I am looking for: if the statistics hipsters will be able to predict the outcome of the 2016 elections based on the first returns.

 

spike

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160325/79fbac22/attachment.html>