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Nate Silver's guide to "The River"

In an excerpt of his new book, ‘On the Edge,’ the statistician explains why “Riverians”— with their penchant for data, free speech, and unfettered capitalism—are steeped in a political power struggle against the Democratic-aligned “Village” elites.

But the various regions of The River have a lot in common, and there are many connections between people in different parts of the environment: hedge-funders who play poker, sports bettors who become entrepreneurs, crypto billionaires who pal around with Oxford philosophers that take a mathematical approach to studying the human condition. It’s the ability to separate, to view things in the abstract, to play devil’s advocate.” Decoupling has been found by the psychologist Keith Stanovich to correlate highly with performance on certain tests of logical and statistical reasoning, a type of intelligence that is valued in The River. They think these problems were particularly apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic and that The Village often adopted nakedly partisan positions—from endorsing public gatherings for the George Floyd protests after weeks of telling people to stay at home, to pushing to discourage Pfizer from making any announcement of the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine until after the 2020 presidential election to suppressing discussion of the lab-leak hypothesis—under the guise of scientific expertise.

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