I confess, I still don't follow the critique. Let's take the output of a skin-in-the-game model, like a binary futures market. This also predicts numbers between 0 and 1, that look a lot like probabilities, but by the argument presented here, they are not probabilities, and if you look at the output of a futures market, then you are being scammed because the market itself is not giving a decision boundary; it's just outputting the last trade price.
Yes, this allows a forecaster to say that even if the <50% candidate wins, that they weren't wrong, but so what? The forecasts should be reasonably well-calibrated -- that is, of all 20% predictions, 20% of them go in the 20% direction. 538 recently published a report of their calibration, which bears out their results (and kicked off the latest round of name-calling between Taleb and Silver).
Is the criticism just that we shouldn't look at Silver as a person with anything interesting to say because he won't commit 100% to one side of an argument? I honestly don't understand what the critique is, and this link I don't find helpful.
Yes, this allows a forecaster to say that even if the <50% candidate wins, that they weren't wrong, but so what? The forecasts should be reasonably well-calibrated -- that is, of all 20% predictions, 20% of them go in the 20% direction. 538 recently published a report of their calibration, which bears out their results (and kicked off the latest round of name-calling between Taleb and Silver).
Is the criticism just that we shouldn't look at Silver as a person with anything interesting to say because he won't commit 100% to one side of an argument? I honestly don't understand what the critique is, and this link I don't find helpful.