Beans and Vibes in Even Measure

Taking this up a level, I think Nate Silver wrote something yesterday about how much better modern polling and models were from like a reporter on a bus hanging out with the candidates.

But I think we don’t often think about what we lose when things are more efficient. There’s something about vibes based elections that has something too much data doesn’t, and I think humans are inherently vibes based(we see this in the focus of stories in marketing, and given how controversial polls are, are we really happier with all this data? One of the most interesting stories of the past 100 years of politics is “Dewey defeats Truman” an impossible story in the era of publishing and polling efficiency.

We’re starting to see this in some tech visions of the future, the most efficient system is probably one with super-AI and all humans are dead.