Predicting History is Easy: Model Politics as a Game

Prof. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita wants that the world knows he can do the unthinkable. With >90% accuracy he can predict the future. This is what his recent popular science book "The Predictioneers Game" claims. Others strongly contradict his claim.

Because his model is not shown in the popular book, I asked him to point me out the right sources. He kindly answered: 

The ISA paper is scheduled for publication in the journal Conflict Management and Peace Science (CMPS). [...] you might want to read European Community Decision Making, edited by Frans Stokman and me and published by Yale University Press or my short boo[k], Predicting Politics (Ohio State University Press) but these are on the old model. The math and structure of the new model is set out in the CMPS paper that is due out within the next few months.

Let me play a game:
What would it mean if his astonishing predictive power turns out to be true? would it mean we know the state of the world in 20 years? would it mean that your fate is given? would it mean that we will all use his method in business and private life in the future? 
what would it mean if his claim is wrong. he wants to put his academic renown at stake to be invited to talkshows? he don't know he is wrong and will be derided and forgotten? Or is he playing an aggressive game to promote his...

[...] company, Mesquita & Roundell,^[1] that specializes in making political and foreign-policy forecasts using an unpublished and proprietary computer model based on game theory and rational choice theory.

The future will tell, because I will read his paper when its published.

Less is more: Braess' Paradox

Like many counterintuitive anomalies, it needs the right combination of conditions to actually pop up in real life; but it has been observed empirically in real transportation networks — including in Seoul, Korea, where the destruction of a six-lane highway to build a public park actually improved travel time into and out of the city (even though traffic volume stayed roughly the same before and after the change)

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/networks-book-ch08.pdf

Dissimnation of a great Technology now easier

The Brunswick Society Newsletter is now online even for nonsubscribers. Sensible decision Brunswickians!
http://www.brunswik.org/newsletters/2010news.pdf

They laught when I said "Influence Diagrams" but when I made better decisions...

I almost forgot them! Influence Diagrams! We have a decision shaping tool at hand. We can do what Paul Meels envisioned. Shaping the qualities of our decision. Let the computer do the number crunch. I will show you my experience with this, have to reiterate over the great book Bayesian Networks and Influence Diagrams, then they will stop laughing.

Big B., Rest In Peace

“He Gave Us Order Out of Chaos” — R.I.P. Benoît Mandelbrot, 1924-2010

Clinical vs Statistical Prediction

Got a very old copy of Meehl's "Clinical vs Statistical Prediction" sent over from the US yesterday. The text is as  promising as I expected. There is no real argument for intuition, but speed in decision when you don't have a model at hand.

A remarkable point of view: Egon Brunswick's Lens Model

Vienna during the dawn of the 20th century was a remarkable place.

The list of residents - and their ideas - shaping the century is exhaustive.

The most knows: Freud and Hitler.

The known to the many: Edward Bernays, Peter Drucker, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Popper, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Kurt Goedel, Artur Schnitzler, Robert Musil,... to mention a few important to me.

The Psychologist Egon Brunswick is a true maverik. Although only a small inner circle is aware of his work, he did some remarkable thinking.

Representative Design

Is a true theory how to to capture reality into your experimental setting

Ecological Validity is a theory how a subject's intepretation relates to real world

Vicarious Function is a true idea how this interpretation goes.

Probabilistic Functionalism is a scientific revolution, that could relieve us from the analytic trap: get rid of simplistic models.

Brunswick Lens Model has shown to predict better than experts the lens model was trained on. Thats a fascinating way: augmented intellect.


I will deepen my Brunswickan knowledge and share it on this blog
Read about current Brunswickian Research on http://www.albany.edu/cpr/brunswik/newsletters/2009news.pdf