A Meandering Review of Nate Silver’s “On the Edge”
A view from the apex of the bell curve
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.
Nate Silver is a statistician, math guy, pundit, writer, podcaster, and social media provocateur. I like him. I use his statistical models to get an edge in my March Madness pools and in election years to feed my obsession with politics. I am a subscriber to his Substack publication and downloaded his latest book, On the Edge, the day it came out.
The book is about risk. Understanding it, taking it, and controlling it. He explains risk and then explores a segment of American society that lives by making risk calculations. He calls it the River. The River is the rival of the Village. I will let him explain.
In recent years, for a new book, I have spent time in a community of like-minded thinkers who take calculated risks for a living. These people, from poker players to venture capitalists — I call them the River, and they are from Silicon Valley, Wall Street, sports betting, crypto — make decisions based not on what they know at the moment but on expected value. For them, when it is time to make a decision, the question is: Do the risks outweigh the…
