"Wisdom and perspective will remain priceless, and human connection will remain the most important part of life. It will become increasingly easy to lose sight of this, and increasingly important not to."
Important quote for those listening or reading.
All the best to You and Yours through 2024 and thank you for your shared thoughts, perspective, and wisdom.
Discombobulating is a great word and also apropos. I feel it, the ground shifting under our feet. I love that feeling, generally, and I'm still discombobulated.
On the political front, I don't have any predictions but I have a curiosity I'll be watching for. And that is whether in the United States the results match what journalists call "the fundamentals."
The reason I bring this up is because if you took the fundamentals of 2016 of who would win and the actual result in 2016 and removed everything in between -- Trump, Clinton, the news cycles, the FBI investigation, every single twist and turn, removed them completely -- the fundamentals matched the result: a very close Republican win, popular vote loss based on a sludgy but not-even-bad economy and the tendency for incumbent two-term parties to lose, balanced off of a voter population that leans Democratic and a voting map that leans Republican.
2020 is basically the same: with a huge global crisis and terrible economy, you'd expect the non-incumbent party to win the Presidency resoundingly, all January 6 stuff aside.
Based on the fundamentals NOW, a strong economy but with lingering resentment for inflation and an incumbent one-term party, the Democrats should win narrowly. Putting who is the actual people and whatever crazy twists and turns aside.
I don't actually believe in the fundamentals. It's just sort of crazy that after all the howling fantods and fury of 2016, it still boiled down to rough statistical par.
Oh, cool - do you have an algorithm for how you view the fundamentals? So part of it is, incumbent one-term party favors the current party, incumbent two-term party favors the opposite party. Another part is strong-but-inflation-plagued economy favors the current party, sludgy-but-not-terrible economy favors the opposite party. Another part is voter population versus voter map (which one dominates?). And how do you weight each of these to get your balance?
The fundamentals were discussed in 538. They had a fundamentals prediction and polls prediction, and iirc one of their ways of weighting back then included weighting the polls toward the fundamentals, for which they were criticized despite being right.
I know nothing about these particular models (yet), but would be interested in identifying potential causal relationships (if any) and seeing if it's possible to figure out which ones dominated in which years. The 2016 election felt (to me) highly driven by personalities and voters' emotions and pent-up anger, so it's intriguing that you say it can be boiled down to data; it feels less scary if it's more predictable.
"Wisdom and perspective will remain priceless, and human connection will remain the most important part of life. It will become increasingly easy to lose sight of this, and increasingly important not to."
Important quote for those listening or reading.
All the best to You and Yours through 2024 and thank you for your shared thoughts, perspective, and wisdom.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts as well, I enjoy reading them and wish you a wonderful year in 2024!
Yes, a big year of change coming up. Although that’s been the case for many of the last 10 years or so.
My boss recently used the word discombobulating. Like that word. Sums it up nicely.
Discombobulating is a great word and also apropos. I feel it, the ground shifting under our feet. I love that feeling, generally, and I'm still discombobulated.
On the political front, I don't have any predictions but I have a curiosity I'll be watching for. And that is whether in the United States the results match what journalists call "the fundamentals."
The reason I bring this up is because if you took the fundamentals of 2016 of who would win and the actual result in 2016 and removed everything in between -- Trump, Clinton, the news cycles, the FBI investigation, every single twist and turn, removed them completely -- the fundamentals matched the result: a very close Republican win, popular vote loss based on a sludgy but not-even-bad economy and the tendency for incumbent two-term parties to lose, balanced off of a voter population that leans Democratic and a voting map that leans Republican.
2020 is basically the same: with a huge global crisis and terrible economy, you'd expect the non-incumbent party to win the Presidency resoundingly, all January 6 stuff aside.
Based on the fundamentals NOW, a strong economy but with lingering resentment for inflation and an incumbent one-term party, the Democrats should win narrowly. Putting who is the actual people and whatever crazy twists and turns aside.
I don't actually believe in the fundamentals. It's just sort of crazy that after all the howling fantods and fury of 2016, it still boiled down to rough statistical par.
Oh, cool - do you have an algorithm for how you view the fundamentals? So part of it is, incumbent one-term party favors the current party, incumbent two-term party favors the opposite party. Another part is strong-but-inflation-plagued economy favors the current party, sludgy-but-not-terrible economy favors the opposite party. Another part is voter population versus voter map (which one dominates?). And how do you weight each of these to get your balance?
Yes, I am a nerd :-)
The fundamentals were discussed in 538. They had a fundamentals prediction and polls prediction, and iirc one of their ways of weighting back then included weighting the polls toward the fundamentals, for which they were criticized despite being right.
I know nothing about these particular models (yet), but would be interested in identifying potential causal relationships (if any) and seeing if it's possible to figure out which ones dominated in which years. The 2016 election felt (to me) highly driven by personalities and voters' emotions and pent-up anger, so it's intriguing that you say it can be boiled down to data; it feels less scary if it's more predictable.
Great post. Wondering if there’s any word yet on regulating AI.
Not soon enough! But regulation is coming. The Executive Order is a first step, and lots more progress needed.
I'm really hoping the biotech revolution pans out! Not a day too soon. Also hoping 2024 is, if not mundane, a source of optimism.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year! I feel so optimistic about biotech, AlphaFold 2 was the spark and recent news shows where we are going: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/ai-discovers-new-class-of-antibiotics-to-kill-drug-resistant-bacteria/ar-AA1lO33P - it's just a matter of time, probably less time than most people think.
Wow, this is really something!
A nice post to finish the year. A great mix of things to think about mixed in with optimism. Good luck with your Substack in the new year.
Thanks, Mark! Happy New Year to you :-)