We’re not that much smarter than we used to be, even though we have much more information - and that means the real skill now is learning how to pick out the useful information from all this noise.

Silver contrasts the modern glut of data with the relatively unchanged limits of human judgment. The quote argues that information abundance does not automatically produce better decisions; instead, it can amplify confusion, bias, and overconfidence. What matters is the epistemic craft of filtering—distinguishing signal from noise, weighing evidence, and resisting the temptation to treat quantity of inputs as a substitute for quality of reasoning. In Silver’s broader outlook as a statistician and forecaster, the line also implies a moral about humility: better tools and more data require better skepticism, clearer models, and disciplined attention to what actually improves predictive accuracy.