On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

by Nate Silver

Multidisciplinary: Incorporate ideas from different disciplines, read widely across the political spectrum. Specialized: Often have spent the bulk of their careers on one or two great problems. Adaptable: Find a new approach—or pursue multiple avenues at the same time—if they aren’t sure the original one is working. Stalwart: Stick to the same “all-in” approach. Prone to confirmation bias. But will double down when others would quit. Self-critical: Sometimes willing, if rarely happy, to acknowledge mistakes in their predictions and take the blame for them. Stubborn: Mistakes are blamed on bad luck or idiosyncratic circumstances—a good idea had a bad day. Tolerant of complexity: See the universe as complicated, perhaps to the point of many fundamental problems being inherently unpredictable. Order seeking: Have an engineer’s brain. Expect that the world will be found to abide by relatively simple governing relationships once the signal is determined through the noise. Empirical: Rely more on observation and time-tested strategies than theory. Principled: Expect that solutions to many day-to-day problems are manifestations of some grander ideological theory or struggle. May believe that civilization stands at a pivot point.