[HN Gopher] In the Network of the Conclav: How we "guessed" the ...
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In the Network of the Conclav: How we "guessed" the Pope using
network science
Author : taubek
Score : 89 points
Date : 2025-05-09 17:53 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.unibocconi.it)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.unibocconi.it)
| tyleo wrote:
| It's interesting but also reminds me of US presidential
| predictors. All the models that guess right come out saying they
| have the magic formula but are often refuted by future elections.
|
| This model needs a few more popes under its belt to build
| confidence in it.
| bombcar wrote:
| The best ones would show how they mopped up in the prediction
| markets with their brilliant model.
| vasco wrote:
| If it's so good it could at least predict more past popes
| already.
| luqtas wrote:
| sociology has same weird data showing even the weather can
| change for who people vote [0]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09626...
|
| and this is only an example of the multiple and more extensive
| studies made on this field
|
| the moment people mock data from AI crawlers, this technology
| is useless?
| coliveira wrote:
| This is not different from any exercise in seeing the future:
| some people will get it right, and they will be hailed as
| having some secret sauce when in fact it is mostly based on
| luck.
| schiffern wrote:
| I do appreciate that, on HN at least, the headline writer had
| the decency to honestly say "guessed" instead of a more
| certain-sounding word like "predicted."
| qznc wrote:
| Related recent podcast interview from the Star Spangled
| Gamblers: https://starspangledgamblers.libsyn.com/the-trader-
| who-guess...
|
| > In 2016, Blitz (@blizzythegoat24) bet on Donald Trump to win
| the general election.
|
| > In 2020, Blitz not only bet on Biden to win the election, he
| guessed the outcome of every state correctly.
|
| > In 2024, he managed to do the same. He bet on Trump to win
| the election and guessed every state correctly.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are people who've won the lottery more than once, too,
| out of pure chance. It doesn't necessarily mean there's skill
| involved.
| mattm wrote:
| Also most states are foregone conclusions so there's really
| only a handful in doubt.
| slg wrote:
| You have a 12.5% chance to correctly predict 3 coin flips in
| a row. You need a lot more than 3 examples before we can
| actually be confident that a successful prediction is
| anything more than luck.
| achierius wrote:
| To be fair "guessed every state" carries significantly more
| bits of information than 3 coin tosses.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| What are the chance of guessing 50 coin flips in a row?
|
| What are the odds of doing it again four years later?
| slg wrote:
| This question shows a fundamental misunderstanding of
| predicting presidential elections. There is no value in
| predicting New York would go blue or Alabama would go
| red. Most states are easy to predict and the states that
| are more difficult are correlated.
|
| Especially in an election like 2024 when all the swing
| states went the same way, getting them all right isn't
| much of an accomplishment. These weren't 51 independent
| coin flip predictions. There was one prediction, Donald
| Trump would do slightly better than polling indicated (or
| really more accurately Harris would do worse), and the
| results all flowed logically downstream of that.
| pc86 wrote:
| Your hubris would be justified had every media outlet and
| pundit been talking ad nauseam about how Trump was
| absolutely going to sweep the field, but they didn't.
| Harris losing was a shock to many, many informed people.
|
| Claiming "guessing every state right isn't much of an
| accomplishment" is a joke and absolutely, categorically
| not true. Otherwise I hope you made a lot of money on the
| prediction markets!
| foobarian wrote:
| I knew the minute I saw Obama pull frozen Biden off a
| podium at some random event in early '24. It was no
| surprise he bowed out later, and it was downhill from
| there doubling down on the 2016 mistakes. Oh well.
| slg wrote:
| Once again, this is not an accurate description of
| presidential elections or even what I said for that
| matter. I did not say that everyone knew Trump would win
| in the manner in which he did. But once we take Trump
| winning as a prediction, the results of the individual
| states mostly fall in line.
|
| For example, a standard path to victory for Harris was to
| win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. But those
| states are pretty similar to each other and their results
| are correlated. If you think Trump is going to win, you
| could have just awarded him one of those states, but that
| isn't actually a likely outcome due to their similarity.
| Whatever hypothetical reason that would explain Trump
| being underestimated in Michigan likely also applies to
| Wisconsin. The reverse is also true, if Harris won one of
| those, it was likely she would win the other. Therefore
| predicting Trump winning both Wisconsin and Michigan is
| not nearly as bold of a prediction as winning one and not
| the other. Considering the way that every swing state
| went to Trump makes it very easy to predict all 50
| states, because the only actual prediction you need to
| reach that conclusion is that Trump will outperform his
| polling (or like I said before, Harris to underperform).
|
| It seems like ABC has wiped the full 538 predictions from
| the web, but look at this chart of their predictions[1].
| They have Trump winning by roughly his margin of victory
| as the most likely of any individual outcome. It doesn't
| mean he was favored, it is just the way all these state
| results are correlated to each other. If Trump were to
| win, the manner in which he did is not surprising.
|
| [1] - https://i.abcnewsfe.com/a/ff20d77c-0734-48d0-b9b3-7
| 2eb9bec8a...
| skissane wrote:
| > Your hubris would be justified had every media outlet
| and pundit been talking ad nauseam about how Trump was
| absolutely going to sweep the field, but they didn't.
| Harris losing was a shock to many, many informed people.
|
| My own sense is a fair number of people were predicting
| Harris to win because _that 's what they wanted to be
| true_ - people on the centre-left who said she was in
| trouble would be attacked for dragging their own side
| down rather than taken seriously - and other people saw
| that and didn't want to be attacked so they kept quiet.
| And it was a "shock to many, many informed people"
| because journalists and pundits were subject to the same
| phenomenon. Polling averages showed a race which was
| either 50-50 or with Trump slightly ahead, yet many
| Democrats were confident Harris would win.
|
| I don't think it was always like this. I think if someone
| on the centre-left said in 2008 or 2012 that they thought
| Obama was in trouble, people may well have disagreed
| (correctly, as it turned out), but their opinion would
| not have received the same strong negative emotional
| reaction.
| vkou wrote:
| Most of them aren't coinflips, and all of their outcomes
| are strongly dependent, and you don't have to call it
| until the coin is about to land.
|
| It does boil down to predicting a coinflip of 'Which
| party will outperform the polls (and by roughly how
| much).'
|
| And getting three of those in a row is, while not
| trivial, does not in itself a dynasty make.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The presidential election is 50 independent events, 20% of
| which are moderately variable. It's impressive, especially
| 2024.
| slg wrote:
| >The presidential election is 50 independent events
|
| This is just fundamentally not true. See my other
| comment, the results are heavily correlated making
| prediction of them all easier, especially in 2024 when
| they all moved in the same direction.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| From that podcast, it sounds like his predictions were very
| reliant on his judgement calls: "you could sense that people
| really wanted a change", "if you could call it a formula,
| sure", etc.
|
| Clearly it's worked for him, but I'm not sure you can call
| that a model.
| baxtr wrote:
| Most likely the pope will be replaced by AI before there is a
| new election.
|
| No need to predict.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| That is a prediction.
| poincaredisk wrote:
| This is a pretty wild thing to say. Pope will probably never
| - or at least for a very long time - be replaced by AI,
| simply because he's a symbol first and foremost. Actual
| decisions may be hypothetically made by AI, but you still
| need the pope to announce them.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| The authors do not suggest using this model for prediction.
| FTA: "We do not claim to predict the outcome of the Conclave,"
| Soda points out. "As the great statistician George Box said:
| 'All models are wrong, but some are useful.' Ours is intended
| to be a tool for reading the context, not an oracle."
| divbzero wrote:
| Was this published before the Pope was elected?
|
| The article byline indicates _08 May 2025_ but response header
| shows _Last-Modified: Fri, 09 May 2025 13:39:02 GMT_ and the
| earliest entry in the Internet Archive is _Fri, 09 May 2025
| 12:28:01 GMT_.
|
| The white smoke emerged from the Vatican _Thu, 08 May 2025 16:07
| GMT_ and Pope Leo XIV was announced shortly thereafter.
| schrodinger wrote:
| Interesting observation!
|
| One explanation:
|
| There's a "Research" heading at the bottom that links to an
| article from today: "The Long Hand of Brussels on U.S.
| Businesses", 09 May 2025 by Barbara Orlando.
|
| Maybe they have a static site generator or even dynamic with
| caching that piled this in?
| croes wrote:
| And even if. Just publish multiple versions and keep the one
| that is right.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Linkedin post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/universita-
| bocconi_a-new-way-...
|
| Posted at Thu, 08 May 2025 08:24:51 GMT according to
| https://trevorfox.com/linkedin-post-date-extractor.html
| rrherr wrote:
| Thanks! Also, according to that LinkedIn post date extractor,
| this post by first author Giuseppe Soda was made on Thu, 08
| May 2025 06:22:28 GMT:
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/giuseppe-beppe-
| soda-414749b0_...
| losteric wrote:
| Prevost was at the top of the "status" list. They also
| published guesses by "information control" and "coalition
| building".
| divbzero wrote:
| Thank you! That answers my question definitively.
|
| It's notable, of course, that Robert Prevost was highlighted
| in this post but left off of many other lists of papal
| candidates.
| leoedin wrote:
| We're only reading this particular list because Robert
| Prevost was at the top of it!
| rrherr wrote:
| Good question!
|
| Leonardo Rizzo, one of the researchers, claimed on X.com that
| they published before the Pope was elected.
|
| An X user commented:
|
| > "Guessed" after the fact. Interesting nonetheless and worth
| sharing before the event next time!
|
| Rizzo replied:
|
| > Thanks a lot! We shared it the 8th morning on linkedin, the
| university website and few other sources (italian press). Next
| time I'll also share it on X
|
| https://x.com/LnrdRizzo/status/1920841806096343409
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/universita-bocconi_a-new-way-...
| riedel wrote:
| It is not that unlikely that some model predicts the right
| outcome. The only question is: can it be reproduced?
| SamBam wrote:
| Forcing the conditions to allow this to be reproduced quickly
| would probably be unethical.
| valorzard wrote:
| Shoutout to the Pope Crave (@ClubConcrave) account on Twitter/X.
| They somehow went from a fandom account posting yaoi/BL content
| for the movie Conclave to an actual journalistic outfit who
| posted the results of the actual conclave before mainstream news
| outlets did
| rafram wrote:
| Did they post it before the cardinals came out onto the balcony
| to make the announcement? If so, that's impressive. If not, I
| assume they were just watching the livestream like everyone
| else.
| antognini wrote:
| For anyone interested in more serious journalism about the
| Church, I can't recommend The Pillar enough. The guys who run
| it have a lot of connections and know how the Church works
| inside and out. They had identified Prevost as being one of the
| top contenders in the days leading up to the conclave [1].
|
| In their final "gut check" analysis, one of the two editors
| said his gut was going with Prevost. (Unfortunately behind a
| paywall, but here for reference [2].)
|
| [1]: https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/why-prevosts-papal-
| prospect...
|
| [2]: https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/conclave-day-1-head-
| check-h...
| slg wrote:
| Why is "guessed" in quotes in the HN headline. That word does not
| appear in the article. They even say the following:
|
| >The Bocconi team is the first to point out the limitations of
| the model. "We do not claim to predict the outcome of the
| Conclave," Soda points out. "As the great statistician George Box
| said: 'All models are wrong, but some are useful.' Ours is
| intended to be a tool for reading the context, not an oracle."
|
| Trying to take a victory lap on something like this seems to fly
| in the face of the statistical thinking that goes into creating a
| model like this.
| rodiger wrote:
| Also the explicit survivorship bias... this would not be near
| the front page if their predictions were all wrong.
| mapt wrote:
| Polymarket had this guy at something like 1%. Enjoy your
| winnings, modellers.
| taubek wrote:
| I took that "guessed" from their twitter post at
| https://x.com/lnrdrizzo/status/1920783054181728701?s=46
| slg wrote:
| Fair enough, but I think that makes this a lesson in the
| importance of context.
|
| When someone uses quotes in their own informal original
| writing, they will often be received as scare quotes[1].
| Knowing nothing about that author, I would assume he is using
| the word with some detachment. He knows the analysis wasn't
| trying to guess the pope, but he is having fun with the fact
| that the analysis pointed in the right direction.
|
| When someone uses quotes to summarize something someone else
| wrote or said, especially when it is in a more formal context
| like a headline, it generally comes across as a direct quote.
| The headline therefore implies that the goal of this exercise
| was to predict the pope, which the article directly refutes.
|
| The quote in the context of the headline wasn't "guessed" it
| was "How we 'guessed' the Pope using network science".
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
| lanyard-textile wrote:
| The real lesson here is that you can't please everyone.
|
| Quote it literally, some people say you missed the context.
|
| Edit the quote, some people say you editorialized away the
| true meaning.
|
| Summarize the situation yourself, some people say you took
| away the essence when there was a perfectly good quote
| available.
| slg wrote:
| Which is part of the reason that the HN guidance is to
| use the original headline, which OP didn't do here.
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| I would add, this wasn't really a prediction anyway, they
| listed 14 total people across three separate top 5 lists.
| That's a pretty sizeable chunk of the total people who had a
| chance of being elected pope and they didn't try to make a
| unified list or assign percentages of getting elected.
| xhevahir wrote:
| > Informal relationships: mapped through authoritative
| journalistic sources, these include ideological affinities,
| mentoring relationships, and membership in patronage networks.
|
| So a key part of this is impressionistic stuff: labels like "soft
| conservative," "liberal," and so on. Doesn't sound very rigorous.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It doesn't need to be for this type of analysis. Given the
| information available, you're looking for ways to bend the
| odds, not necessarily "know" with precision. Facebook makes
| billions with similar techniques.
| lormayna wrote:
| I have tried to estimate when the Pope will be elected with a
| bayesian model, but it's failed predicting that the Pope will be
| elected at 7th ballot.
|
| Proof:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/1kgst9c/concla...
|
| Maybe I can make a blog post, just for the sake of whom that are
| curious
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| Why would a bayesian model be better than, say, astrology in
| pricing that?
| lormayna wrote:
| Bayesian models are working fine when you have few datas, and
| I have used the last conclaves ballots number to "train"
| that. It was mostly a toy project to understand better how a
| Bayesian model is working.
| the_arun wrote:
| It will be interesting to add Pope Francis to this graph OR study
| similar graph as of 2013.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Should have hit the Polymarket. tbh good predictive models give
| you money nowadays and money lets you do more science. So if you
| have good model, you should use it.
| jdlyga wrote:
| It would be interesting to backtest this to see if it can predict
| previous popes.
| caturopath wrote:
| Their model had 15 slots spread across three lists, with Prevost
| appearing on one list in the top spot (and not in the other two
| lists at all). I am not sure we can conclude a ton about their
| predictive power.
| yubblegum wrote:
| Look at the graph at the end. Prevost is the largest circle.
| jbellis wrote:
| This is particularly impressive because polymarket failed harder
| than I can remember it ever doing at predicting the Pope
| https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/PRqb1nBVhA
| mmooss wrote:
| All they said about Prevost is that he had the highest status,
| which is just reporting a fact.
| micw wrote:
| I wonder if predictions of various models are spread more or less
| evenly across the candidates. Like one out of then knows the last
| digit of pi.
| alexmolas wrote:
| This is textbook survivorship bias. Out of 133 electable
| cardinals, someone was bound to guess Robert Prevost. If they
| were wrong, no one would remember. You could probably find 132
| others who guessed wrong.
| farceSpherule wrote:
| The person who was elected Pope is meaningless if he does not
| clean house of sex abusing priests - past and present - as well
| as the cardinals and bishops who covered it up.
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