The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction

by Nate Silver

differentiate the useful information from the mistruths.13 Paradoxically, the result of having so much more shared knowledge was increasing isolation along national and religious lines. The instinctual shortcut that we take when we have “too much information” is to engage with it selectively, picking out the parts we like and ignoring the remainder, making allies with those who have made the same choices and enemies of the rest.

we can never make perfectly objective predictions. They will always be tainted by our subjective point of view.

“When the facts change, I change my mind,” the economist John Maynard Keynes famously said. “What do you do, sir?”

Partisans who expect every idea to fit on a bumper sticker will proceed through the various stages of grief before accepting that they have oversimplified reality.