Nate Silver: belief

Transcript context

…It’s because you know game theory and they don’t. Thomas Schelling was what, 1960; Von Neumann, Morgenstern just after World War II. Game theory is not that new. What exactly is it you know? To be a “Tight Aggressive” player with your strategy? None of them knew that? I feel I saw that in a lot of old movies. “Tight Aggressive” is part of it. It’s very hard to maybe intuitively know what the right bluffing frequency is in a certain spot. For many years, people would also give away lots and lots and lots of tells. If you go back and watch footage of the 1987 World Series of Poker, there are incredibly obvious tells. I think it’s just like there’s pressure on the market to compress it into a diamond or — what am I even talking about? I think we were just very early in the life cycle of the competitive pressures on the game in poker. In some ways it’s a metaphor for other capitalistic ventures. I think you of all people may be underestimating the efficiency gains that are to be had when there are proper incentives and proper technology — basically, the combination and just the sheer volume of the number of nodes on the game tree that have been explored. Let’s say you’re a poker champion, and you want to quit. You can prove you are a champion. You’re still young. Who is it who wants to hire you in the actual world? Where would you go? A trading firm?…

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