No one needs to be told that 2016 was an unusual election year. For social science, its strangeness has two implications. First, it is a learning opportunity. Whether we think of 2016 as a highleverage case or as off the equilibriumpath, an unusual case gives perspective that we do not usually get to see. This is the potential that Julia Azari and Andrew Gelman have exploited. Second, however, is that unusual cases are, well, unusual. They are often outliers. They differ onmultiple dimensions, and we may not know why they came about. Lessons from them may not generalize. The election of 2016 was unusual or even unprecedented in so many ways. Not only do we want to be cautious about extrapolation, but the way we learn from outliers is different than the way we learn from typical cases. They can function asmuch as counterfactuals as cases, unless, of course, we think they are harbingers of a new normal. It is notable how many of the things Azari and Gelman note we learned from 2016 were things that at least some social scientists had already articulated. And I would argue that many of the othersmay not be as large as they are portrayed here. Despite the outrageousness of the 2016 election in so many ways, its lessons are mostly modest revisions of well-established work or raising still unanswered questions about less-established work. I think Azari and Gelman would agree. Most of their points comewith caveats that predictmy reactions. I think if we amplify the caveats over the initial points, we get a very different thesis. The 2016 election was a strange one, but one that can be explained fairly well by existing social science theory, once we know the parameters.With this inmind, a few reactions to some of the points raised by A&G.

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我们从不寻常的案例中学到的东西：对Azari和Gelman的“我们从2016年大选中学到的19件事”的评论

无需告知2016年是不寻常的选举年。对于社会科学而言，其陌生性有两个含义。首先，这是一个学习的机会。无论我们将2016年视为高杠杆案例还是偏离均衡路径，不寻常的案例都提供了我们通常看不到的观点。这就是朱莉娅·阿扎里（Julia Azari）和安德鲁·盖尔曼（Andrew Gelman）所挖掘的潜力。第二，但是，不寻常的情况是不寻常的。它们通常是异常值。它们在多个维度上有所不同，我们可能不知道为什么会这样。他们的经验可能无法概括。在许多方面，2016年大选是不同寻常的，甚至是前所未有的。我们不仅要对推论保持谨慎，而且我们从异常值中学习的方法与从典型案例中学习的方法是不同的。它们可以起到与事实相反的作用，除非，当然，我们认为他们是新常态的预兆。值得注意的是，阿扎里（Azari）和盖尔曼（Gelman）从2016年中学到的东西至少是一些社会科学家已经阐明的东西。我想说的是，其他许多可能并不像这里描绘的那么大。尽管2016年大选在许多方面都令人发指，但其教训主要是对行之有效的工作进行了适度的修改，或者提出了对行之有效的工作仍未解决的问题。我认为Azari和Gelman会同意。他们的大多数观点都带有警告我的反应的警告。我认为，如果我们扩大了最初要点的注意事项，我们将得出截然不同的论点。2016年的选举很奇怪，但是一旦我们知道了参数，就可以用现有的社会科学理论很好地解释这一选举。