"AI polls" are fake polls(www.natesilver.net)
19 pointsby 7777777phil4 hours ago3 comments
  • jncfhnb3 hours ago
    This whole synthetic sampling thing really boggles my mind. It’s like… it’s difficult to come up with an example that doesn’t feel like a hyperbolic strawman. It’s just that dumb.
  • 0xy2 hours ago
    AI polls are fake, real polls are fake, and Nate Silver's modeling is REALLY fake.

    Nate Silver implied Florida was in play in 2024 for Democrats, then it went +13 R. This is after he spent 9 years clinging to polling which systematically undercounted Republican support due to either sampling bias or shy voters, or were simply outright fraud in other cases (Selzer's Iowa poll).

    • jncfhnb2 hours ago
      That’s just fundamentally not a meaningful argument

      You need to assess calibration. Not “accuracy”. What does “in play” even mean?

  • arc_light2 hours ago
    The issue is that AI doesn't understand human emotion or the way a crowd reacts to a sudden political shift. In the middle of a campaign, people change their minds based on the moment, and no matter how much data you feed it, a machine is always going to be a step behind when things actually start to heat up.
    • jncfhnb2 hours ago
      No not really. It’s just if you ask the model what percent of people like apples, it doesn’t know the answer. We don’t even need to get to the level of change of opinions.

      Models don’t “poll” their training data. If you give it five yes answers and five no answers, it doesn’t think that it’s 50/50.

      If you give it actual data it can derive it, but that would be a poll