Of Hurricanes and political prophacy – and an emerging disaster

If you live in Florida for any length of time, you learn something about hurricanes.  I am far from an expert.  

Updated at 6:46</b – Philosophy now seems inappropriate. The tracks have shifted, and it now appears Irma will move up the spine of Florida, spreading a 100 mile wide path of devastation.

Consider the scope of this storm

• There is an evacuation for everyone east of I-95 in Savannah
• 200 miles sw, schools are closed in Tampa and St Pete and there is a mandatory evacuation for people living in flood plains.
• Two nuclear power plants have announced they are shutting down.
• There is a mandatory evacuation in the Keys.
• There are traffic jams on both I-75 and I-95.
• Gas is running out – people want to leave but worry they will not find a second fillup.

Still becoming familiar with them brings certain things into high relief.  The computer models built to model hurricanes are probably the most sophisticated in existence.  They run on the fastest super-computers in the world, and they take hours to run. In a way they represent the best attempt to model reality in its complexity.

And yet those who rely on them are quick to point out how unreliable they are.

Here are the two best.  And they suggest a disaster of epic proportions may be in the cards for Miami.

And here is the best, the Euro

And yet in its analysis, the National Hurricane Center doesn’t talk about how good its models are.  It emphasizes uncertainty.

One can argue, I suppose, that politics should be more predictable than Hurricanes.  But I am not sure why would people think that.  Political predictions suck – and they always have.  What I find refreshing about the NHC is their honesty and humility.  Over and over again they stress how much they DON’T know.

No similar instincts exist in political punditry.  In fact, there is virtually no accountability.  Sam Wang was wrong in 2004 and 2014, and yet people cited his absurd odds over and over again.

Virtually nobody was right about 2016 in any predictive way.  But that doesn’t stop the same people from suggesting they can predict the future.

Few economists predicted the 2007 recession with great accuracy, and a number that did haven’t been right since.

Why is this important?  Because to some extent these predictions define what we think is possible.  Clinton cannot be beaten, so we should not try.

Trump cannot win, so we don’t really need to protect the blue wall.

The Great Depression won’t happen again, so we can loosen the rules on the banks.

So I look back and wonder at the cost of this absurd confidence.

It is good thing for all the NHC is immune.