“However, positioning yourself to appear correct regardless of the outcome, making users infer their own decision boundaries, over-reporting of predictions, and ignoring epistemic uncertainty should not be overlooked.”

I don’t see how any of this is on 538 or Silver. The decision boundary has nothing to do with him. Why should he put one forward? Who would take note if he did?

And he doesn’t position himself to appear correct regardless of the outcome. He states probabilities based on the analysis, within stated margins of error. Of course if he says there’s a 30% chance trump will win, he’s going to point to that if he does win. If, in his predictions over time, those 30%ers are cropping up significantly more often than 30% of the time, he’s going to lose credibility. That’s not happening.

And the epistemic uncertainty thing is a complete red herring. Of course chance of an unidentified Black Swan isn’t included. It can’t be, by definition. The prediction is based on what’s known. If the media report things in a simplified way, that’s on them. If the public make no effort to understand the qualifications offered by Silver et al around their predictions, that’s on them.

I loved the Black Swan, and obviously when Taleb takes down somebody deserving of a takedown like the Charlatan Steven Pinker, I cheer. But unles you’ve explained him really badly here (possible), he seems to be splitting hairs here and applying criticisms that aren’t really relevant to 538’s context. Maybe they’re relevant to Taleb’s, but — to go back to your title — why should we care?