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SBF
@SBF_FTX
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@SBF_FTX
15) Basically: sure, 538 guessed the winner more confidently. But both guessed it right, and in fact prediction markets guessed the margin about right; 538 was off. The election was fairly close! Prediction markets nailed this; 538 didn't.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
16) All of this, BTW, is assuming that Biden did/does win; if you disagree with that, you have different updates, and in fact update much _further_ towards prediction markets. But even this approach can be flawed.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
17) What if, in an alternate universe, Biden won by 4%, but also 24h before the election he got caught in an armed robbery (unlikely, but you never know!). Sure, prediction markets would have been "right". But the truth is _no one_ was predicting burglary.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
18) Really he would have been about to win by 8% before that really unlikely event. An even which wasn't contributing to either 538's or PM's models. I think the *right* update would have been: 538 was about right with +8%, and then some really unlikely thing happened.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
19) So you can't even just look at the result and impute to models: you have to understand whether that was really part of what the models were modeling, and what the real update was. If you'd asked 538 and PMs how likely +8% --> burglary --> +4% was, 538 would have been higher!
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
20) So in fact the _full_ Bayesian update would have favored 538 there, even though updating on the % vote would have favored prediction markets. In this case, though, it wasn't shocking. Polls were wrong in about the way some thought they might be. About the same as 2016.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
21) This was, in fact, pretty close to exactly what I think prediction markets were predicting. It wasn't *shocking* to 538 -- just over 1 standard deviation away from their mean! But it was a *little* bit surprising, at least more than it was to markets.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
22) And this doesn't mean markets are always right either! After results started coming out, all PMs went to ~80% for Trump. Trump going up was correct! Florida was good for him. But 80% was probably too high, and PMs probably overreacted.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
23) To be honest I'd be surprised if they *didn't*. Ask my rational brain and it'd have said "eh this takes it from 30/70 to 50/50".
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
24) Tell my emotional brain, and: "so you're saying TRUMP was heavily favored to lose, and was about to lose Florida and thus the election, but then one late-reporting Florida county came in way better for Trump than expected so he won Florida instead"--
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