A year ago, I wrote a post called Nobody knows anything. Here’s what I said:

The older I get and the more I learn about things, the more I realize that nobody knows nuthin’ about anything.

Those self-proclaimed experts are lying. Predictions are pointless. Anyone that tells you that they know for certain how something is going to turn out is probably going to be wrong.

All simplicity is a lie.

It was written in the context of baseball, but it was eerily prescient given the outcome of the Presidential election.

We have statistical models and advanced polling and supercomputers, and they all pointed to a decisive Hillary Clinton victory. They were all wrong. And what I think this shows – and where I think the failure of big data lies – is that people are wildly unpredictable and don’t fall neatly into models. Clearly, there’s a real anger that permeates throughout our country far more than we thought. Our echo chamber on Facebook and Twitter is not how the majority of this country thinks and feels.

I had trouble sleeping last night and woke up this morning with a feeling of profound anxiety. Then I took a shower and started feeling a little better. The sun still rose, the subway still came, I listened to my morning podcast, had my two cups of coffee like I always do, and life goes on. My mom texted me ‘it will be OK’ and I think that’s right. Things will be OK. They have to be.

But I can say that from a position of immense privilege. Things might not be OK for immigrants or Muslims or women or the LGBT community. And the new wave of anti-Semitism that’s been popping up on social media is absolutely terrifying. So part of me doesn’t know if things will be OK. I hope they are.

I was in London a few months ago. Everyone was fresh off the panic of Brexit, and people were endlessly fascinated with the US election. As soon as someone – a cab driver, a barista, a random person on the street – heard my American accent, they immediately asked about Trump.

Is he actually going to win this thing?

My response each time was a confident No.

But despite my confidence, people there weren’t so sure. Everyone I talked to thought Trump could win. Social stigma disappears in the booth, they said. People are angry. People want change. No one thought Brexit would happen, and then people voted, and then it did. The same will happen across the pond, mate.

They were right.

Donald Trump is our next President. No one knows anything.

I am appalled by the amount of misinformation out there – on the economy, on crime, on investing, on baseball stats, on just about everything.

I am even more appalled by how when confronted with real, empirical stats, people don’t care. Lately I’ve heard a lot of this:

It doesn’t matter what the facts are, I don’t feel as safe as I used to.

I don’t care what the government says, the economy is worse than it was eight years ago.

I don’t care what sabermetrics say, lineup protection is really important.

Blargh.

Never mind that violent crime is on a decades-long trend downward.

Or that unemployment has halved, the deficit has plunged, and the stock market has tripled.

Or that I literally wrote a thesis on the myth of lineup protection.

People don’t care! None of it means anything. The other day, Jake Tapper of CNN confronted Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chair, about the declining crime in this country. And here’s what Manafort said: “It doesn’t matter, people don’t feel safe.”

Sighhhhhh *takes swig of whiskey*

There are a myriad number of reasons why our feelings are different than reality. A lot of it has to do with the 24 hour news cycle. A lot of it has to do with how every bad thing is now broadcasted live, on people’s cell phones, for all the world to see, and it spreads like wildfire on social media. A lot of it has to do with political theater and fear-mongering. A lot of it has to do with the fact that everyone has a voice now. I mean, you’re reading this, aren’t you?

We are exposed to much more than we used to be. We used to live in these nice bubbles where our only source of news was the paper and the evening nightly news. Now we don’t.

I don’t doubt that people don’t feel as safe as they used to. But I was taught to question everything, to look at the data, to keep an open mind, to act pragmatically, and to call out BS when I see it. That’s what informs my feelings. I don’t care about thundering rhetoric or fear tactics or ridiculous online memes. I care about the facts. I hope you do too. I realize not everyone is a robot like me, but I expect facts to have some bearing on how you view the world.

Ezra Klein at Vox:

Donald Trump is not a candidate the American people would turn to in normal times. He’s too inexperienced, too eccentric, too volatile, too risky. Voting Trump is burning down the house to collect the insurance money — you don’t do it unless things are really, really bad.

Here is Trump’s problem: Things are not really, really bad.

But people are angry nonetheless. Really angry. It’s unsettling to see this much anger when things have improved. What if things really were bad?

**

It can be difficult to have disagreements in real life without devolving into an angry demon monster. We don’t always have the facts at our disposal, we don’t always express our views eloquently, and if you’re in a large group it can be difficult to get a word in edgewise.

So, here is what I propose to my many thousands of readers. Let’s enter a new stage of life, where we listen to what others have to say, where we present evidence-based information if it doesn’t jibe with reality, and where we hold people accountable for spreading misleading information or outright lies. We can get there, I think, by following these five rules:

1. Listen.
2. Question everything.
3. Look at the data.
4. Keep an open mind.
5. Be kind.

Imagine having an imaginary conversation with your Aunt Judy. She’s 67 years old, she first logged onto the internet in 2014, and her primary source of news is through email forwarding chains. Here’s a picture of her:

At a family gathering, Aunt Judy has a few too many glasses of wine and blurts out: THIS COUNTRY IS VERY UNSAFE, CRIME IS TERRIBLE, I REMEMBER WHEN I COULD LEAVE MY DOORS UNLOCKED, GIVE ME MORE WINE.

Now let’s follow the five steps.

Listen. Hear what she has to say, even it disagrees with your own opinion. Especially if it disagrees with your own opinion.

Question everything. Is this backed up by facts? Is crime actually going up?

Look at the data. There are literally an endless amount of sources that show that crime has decreased over the last several decades. It will take you five minutes to Google this.

Keep an open mind. Maybe crime is going up in certain parts of the country! Maybe gun crime is a real problem! Maybe this is a nuanced issue with many things to consider!

Be kind. Don’t yell at Aunt Judy. There is no need to get angry. Give her another glass of wine.

Aunt Judy may not change her mind, but maybe she’ll start to question her own beliefs. Maybe she’ll start to look at the facts. Maybe she’ll reconsider that third glass of wine. All of these things are small steps on the way to a more informed, a more civil, and a more intelligent society.

We like to talk about what makes us outraged. This is true in the media. This is true among our friends on Facebook and Twitter. It is true everywhere, because we are humans, and we are innately drawn to fear and anger. Outrage gets ratings. It can be intellectually seductive. And so we listen.

And if you’ve been listening to the outrage, then you have heard people talk about a world that is dark and scary and terrifying. It is a world that is worse than before. Maybe you share this view.

This is not wrong, necessarily. The world is a scary place. But it’s always been that way.

You think the past was better? Then you haven’t studied your history. Please check your frame of reference. Do you want to go back to pre-1973, when you could be drafted and die in combat without having a choice? You want to go back to the 1980s, with its 14% unemployment and 15% inflation, plus the constant fear of nuclear annihilation? Seriously, when do you want to go back to? You want to go back to a time with no electricity, or running water, or indoor heat, which was true for 99% of all human history?

I would like to argue that, despite everything that is truly screwed up in this world, we are living in the best time in all of human history, especially here in good ol’ America. TO THE FACTS:

Violent Crime

Ask any old person and they will tell you about the days they could leave their house without locking the doors. They’ll lament about the rise in crime, specifically violent crime, over their lifetime.

Except … none of that is true. Violent crime rates in the US have dropped significantly – and continue to drop with each passing year. In 1991, the year I was born, there were over 750 violent crimes for every 100,000 Americans. It’s now closer to 350.

Source: here

So why does it feel like crime rates are going up?

Well, there’s terrorism. School shootings. Gun violence. It seems like these have only increased over the years. But in reality, you are far less likely to die of a violent crime in 2015.

And yes, gun violence is absolutely a problem. In fact, I would argue it is our biggest national security threat. Look at this:

If we were rational beings, we would be more concerned about gun violence at home than terrorism abroad. But we are not rational. Terrorism is scary and unknown and random. As a child of New York and a runner of the 2013 Boston Marathon, I can attest to that.

But I am also a student of MATH. And the math tells me that in America you are far less likely to die of a violent crime. You are, however, more likely to die of:

A drug overdose
Asthma
Complications from pre-term birth
A traffic accident

And that is why I:

Don’t do drugs
Run
Am a male
Don’t drive.

The Economy

First, let’s talk about our friend GDP, or gross domestic product. GDP is the aggregate monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced. So when we talk about growing the ‘real economy’, we’re really talking about GDP, or the total output we create in a given year.

GDP growth has hovered around 2-3% for the last few years. It’s not a particularly sizzling rate of growth. But it is growth. And yet many people think we are still in a recession. Do people know what a recession is? It’s two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. We haven’t had that since September 2009.

In 2015, the United States’ GDP will be at its highest point ever, over $18 trillion in the aggregate. Well done, everyone.

OK, now let’s talk about unemployment. We’ve had 68 consecutive months of job growth and an unemployment rate that has halved since 2010. We are now at 5% unemployment, a rate that the Fed deems full employment.

Source: here

Say what you want about the Obama administration, but there’s no doubt that his fiscal policies have been huge drivers of job creation. Like, how could you look at the chart above and think otherwise?

Finally, we have the stock market. Now, I must put on my finance hat and note that the stock market is not the economy. Corporate profits do not define the health of a nation. As an example, in 2015 we saw lower oil prices and a stronger US dollar. Both were great for the American consumer. But they had negative effects on the market, especially oil suppliers and companies that do a lot of business abroad.

That said, millions of people have their savings locked up in 401k’s and pensions and mutual funds, and their livelihood is directly tied to the performance of the market. So while the stock market is not the economy, it is hugely important.

The S&P 500 dropped by more than 50% between October 2007 and March 2009, and I am so very thankful that I did not reach retirement age in 2008. But the market has recovered all of its losses and then some in the six years since, compounding at a yearly rate of almost 20%. This year, the market reached its highest point ever.

This chart reminds me of the Warren Buffet quote:

The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.

If you had sold your investments in 2009, you would have lost quite a bit of money. If you were able to weather the storm until present day, you’re in pretty good shape. And if you had bought in during the 2008 and 2009 lows, you would actually be in better shape. In summary:

DON’T PANIC

and

Everything will be alright.

Yes, there are still problems in the economy. We need better infrastructure – our roads and highways and railroads and bridges and tunnels are crumbling. Millions of Americans are living in poverty. The real median household income has been stagnant for quite some time. But on the whole, we are in a much better place in 2015.

Technology

Could you imagine, twenty years ago, that in 2015 the vast majority of us would have a device, in our pockets, that held all of the world’s information? It could send signals to space and back in a tenth of a second. It could make phone calls and play music and record video in HD. And it would cost a small fraction of what computers cost in the ’90s.

We have Google Maps. There is no excuse to get lost anymore. You can calculate the most efficient routes to any place in the world. You can get real-time traffic data. You can find places to eat.

We have Amazon. You can buy anything you want from the comfort of your own home.

We have logistical systems that, while still flawed, are vastly improved. Shipping. Mass transit. Air travel. Food production.

Sometimes I walk around New York City and I think to myself, how does all of this food get here? The process of feeding nine million people, in a confined space, every single day, goes largely unnoticed. Food does not spontaneously appear. We’ve developed these amazing systems to transport, store, and serve food on the largest of scales.

Back in the 1970s, there was a pretty big concern about overpopulation, made famous by Paul Ehrlich’s* book The Population Bomb. It warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. And guess what? The population did explode – the world population has more than doubled since the book’s release in 1968. And we’ve adapted. Hunger and poverty rates have dropped worldwide.

*Paul Ehrlich is still alive, and he still stands by the basic ideas of the book. In 2009 he said that “perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future.” He believes that the book achieved its goals because “it alerted people to the importance of environmental issues and brought human numbers into the debate on the human future.”

**

Despite all of these objectively cool and amazing things, why does it feel like everyone is always complaining?  We’re doing alright, guys. We are living in the best time.

As I’ve said many times before, it is not a bad thing to have optimism as a default setting. So I’ll say: I think 2016 will be even better than 2015. And I hope this trend continues, every single year, until the inevitable heat death of the universe.

I am officially registered to vote, which means that, on Tuesday, I will be fulfilling my civic duty to the country by participating in the odd, confusing, and outdated electoral college.

A brief reminder of how the electoral college works: when you vote on election day, you are actually voting for a group of state electors who will usually* vote for the state majority. The 538 electors are spread out across the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and the first candidate to 270 wins.

*There have been 87 instances in the past where electors have voted against the wishes of the majority. It has never decided an election, but it is a possibility.

I’ll be honest: I really dislike this process. Not in a I’m going to make it my life-long mission to eliminate the electoral college way, but in a  This system is very outdated and we can do better way. The electoral college was instituted in the eighteenth century when it was difficult to collect votes and travel to faraway places – so it was necessary to have a group of electors vote on the country’s behalf. This system was also used to protect the rights of the states that were struggling to free themselves from tyranny.

This was all well and good 200 years ago in a nation trying to institute federalism. But, I would argue, it is no longer necessary – and it gives swing states like Florida and Ohio a disproportionate influence on the election. In a fair democracy, all votes should be equal. A country that is by the people and for the people should, in fact, give the votes to the people – not to the states and their respective electors.

And the states, by the way, are not represented proportionately.* Take my home state of New York, for example. New Yorkers make up 6.2% of the U.S. population, but the state only accounts for 5.4% of the electors. This means that a vote in New York actually counts for less than a vote in Wyoming or Alaska. The disparity in California and Texas is even greater. This is because smaller states are given three electors no matter what, even if proportionately they should only receive one or two.

*Some U.S. territories aren’t represented at all – American citizens in Guam, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands have no impact on the Presidential election. The District of Columbia didn’t have electors until 1961.

Here’s a crazy scenario: since a candidate only has to win ‘states’ and not ‘people,’ a candidate could, in theory, win only 22% of the popular vote but still win the election thanks to the electoral college. This is unlikely, but there have been instances where a candidate wins the majority but still loses the election, most recently in 2000.

It boils down to this – I believe that every American vote should count equally. I also believe in simplicity, progress, and reason.

—

The way I see it, there are 42 states that will vote one way or the other no matter what this Tuesday, which leaves eight undecided: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire. There is a possibility that Romney wins Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, and Virginia, with Obama winning Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Hampshire. And what would happen in this case? It would be a tie – 269 to 269.

The chances of this happening are pretty low, but what if it did? The House of Representatives (controlled by Republicans) would pick the President and the Senate (controlled by Democrats) would pick the Vice President – which means we would most likely see a Romney/Biden White House. I think the country would explode.

I’ll leave it to the great CGPGrey to explain further and send us out in style: