This is a topic I have found myself thinking a lot lately as well. I have found it useful to decompose a non-repeatable event (will X will the elections?) in two parts: one consisting of a combination of repeatable events and a “specific residual”.
Let’s start with a coin toss. It is, in a very Heraclitean sense, a one time event which we can decompose as a throw of an ideal coin plus a tiny, negligible “specific residual”.
Let’s go back to the problems in question. You could decompose them into combinations of events for which we have historical frequencies (how many times an incumbent politician...? how many times an election during an economic crises...? how do the probabilities of wining an election relate to the polls three months before...=), plus conceivably larger “specific residual” given the particularities of the question.
This approach is more useful than vague considerations on “probability is in your head” or “it just relates to information”. It is actually how predictors work: decomposing the question into subquestions on which frequency considerations are easier to elicit, recombining them, and adding an extra layer on uncertainty on top.
This is a topic I have found myself thinking a lot lately as well. I have found it useful to decompose a non-repeatable event (will X will the elections?) in two parts: one consisting of a combination of repeatable events and a “specific residual”.
Let’s start with a coin toss. It is, in a very Heraclitean sense, a one time event which we can decompose as a throw of an ideal coin plus a tiny, negligible “specific residual”.
Let’s go back to the problems in question. You could decompose them into combinations of events for which we have historical frequencies (how many times an incumbent politician...? how many times an election during an economic crises...? how do the probabilities of wining an election relate to the polls three months before...=), plus conceivably larger “specific residual” given the particularities of the question.
This approach is more useful than vague considerations on “probability is in your head” or “it just relates to information”. It is actually how predictors work: decomposing the question into subquestions on which frequency considerations are easier to elicit, recombining them, and adding an extra layer on uncertainty on top.