Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
I haven't read the book. I don't know much about this guy. I wonder if anyone familiar with his work can tell me whether he's really making useful predictions:
Thanks for visiting this website for my book, The Predictioneer’s Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future. Let me tell you a bit about what you can learn and do here.
Decision making is one of the last frontiers barely touched by science in day-to-day use. The Predictioneer’s Game was written to help change that. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for wisdom and “street smarts.” But it is awfully hard to know who is wise and who has great intuition before decisions have to be made. It is much more helpful to have a proven method to connect the dots correctly beforehand. That is true whether addressing everyday life, business choices, or the biggest national security questions. The Predictioneer’s Game is about learning to come up with reliable predictions to foresee and even engineer the future.
I'm all for trying to do it. I certainly do think certain ideas in game theory are quite valuable when trying to make sense of the world. But my first thought, looking at his PR: He would say this to advance his own interests, wouldn't he?
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Sep '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
Try this blog post of his and I think you can form a quick opinion of where he's going.
Sep '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
Or this excerpt:
With our analysis in hand, we can cast the debate over whether to leave the troops in place or pull everyone out by August 2010 in a clearer light. Pulling out is tantamount to inviting Iran to step in to fill the void. That would be extremely dangerous from the American perspective. On the flip side, however, we should also ask to what extent a continued US presence is likely to stymie efforts by President Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to negotiate a resolution of Iran’s growing nuclear threat. The risk, based on other assessments I have done, seems small. What is more, if the Qum Quietist Ayatollahs are on the rise, as seems true from the game, and if the Bonyads and the military are also on the rise, then Iran is soon to enter a more pragmatic era that will help foster resolution of issues, like the nuclear issue, that loom so large now. Time will tell. I invite others, studying these problems from different perspectives, to dare also to be embarrassed and tell us now what they think will happen two years into the future.
Jan '11
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
A few years ago, game theory started winning Nobel Prizes ... and aspiring game theorists started coming out of the woodwork. Game theory can be interesting, but that doesn't mean that every book will be logically sound. Game theory can't tell whether your boyfriend or girlfriend is really telling the truth, no matter what the book jacket claims.
I don't know this guy, but claiming that you're the next Nostradamus is usually a turn-off for me.
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
I'm not interested in his agenda, but in a serious look at whether he has in fact had a better record of predicting anything than you'd expect. Everyone can get a few things right and then highlight them retrospectively (I should know). The question is whether you can truly test any of these hypotheses in a meaningful way.
As someone who is herself trying to make predictions about this region, I'm curious.
Sep '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
He has been a frequent guest on this excellent podcast series, http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/02/bruce_bueno_de.html
This does not answer you question about his track record. I do think his methods are probably more testable than most since they involve game theory so at least there should be consistency however I am suspicious of all forms of mathmatical modeling of human nature. Still the podcast even though dated now are quite interesting. Something to do in traffic.
Sep '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
As someone who is herself trying to make predictions about this region, I'm curious.
Game theory went through a faddish surge in the business world a few years back. It has its uses but, as far as I can remember, is useful mainly as a simulation backed by lots of computing horsepower to play out scenarios that aren't envisionable except by massive computing power.
Nov '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
It's definitely worth a read, especially given that many political experts make demonstrably poor predictions.
http://fora.tv/2007/01/26/Why_Foxes_Are_Better_Forecasters_Than_Hedgehogs
Funnily enough, the dedication on Page 3 of The Predictioneer reads:
To Claire Berlinski, who I knew just couldn't resist.
Jan '11
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
Pseudodionysius:
Game theory ...is useful mainly as a simulation backed by lots of computing horsepower to play out scenarios that aren't envisionable except by massive computing power.
A rare occasion on which I will disagree with you.
I find game theory immensely useful, not so much for any particular prediction, but because it instills an intellectual habit. The discipline of game theory is to think strategically - meaning that you respect that other people will respond to whatever you're doing. Chess does the same thing, of course, but game theory gives us a few more tools and techniques to work with.
It also reveals some interesting things about rational self-interest, which has come up several times, even on Ricochet lately. (I'm still intrigued by/waiting for your member post-reply to Richard Epstein, by the way. I was looking forward to that.)
I agree that it became a fad, and now has a lot of trendy nonsense associated with it. But there's still a lot of good stuff.
Oct '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
I looked at the excerpt. There's no actual math. Useless.
Game Theory is a form of Decision Theory is a form of Probability Theory, so at the risk of becoming a complete broken record, the definitive work is still Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. If you read it (as Dr. Berlinski Sr. has promised to do and to review :-) ), I promise you will be astonished at what Probability Theory, correctly understood and applied, can, in fact, predict with great success.
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
I looked at the excerpt too--but I was wondering if anyone had actually read his work, as opposed to his PR. The excerpt is completely empty because none of the terms are defined. The math is the least of the problems. But PR and someone's real work are two different things.
Sep '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
A rare occasion on which I will disagree with you.
I don't think we disagree at all. What you're discussing though is a very common cognitive process that most of us do -- and Newman discussed in his work on epistemology an Essay In Aid Of...(you know the rest).
I view Game Theory as an attempt to formalize that process and simulate on a digital computer. Scenario building in our imaginations though is done by novelists (I'm thinking Andrew Klavan does it quite often as does Rob Long when he's at work) as did Machiavelli in his scheming.
Formalizing it in Game Theory has its uses, though specialized ones.
Sep '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
(I'm still intrigued by/waiting for your member post-reply to Richard Epstein, by the way. I was looking forward to that.)
Good heavens. First katievs and now you! I think this is that "pressure" thing that Pat Sajak was complaining about once on a Ricochet podcast. Writer's block starting 3, 2, 1....
Aug '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
It looks like his main idea is a version of public choice theory applied to an international scale, which he uses to inform his values in the game analysis.
As for game theory itself, yes, it's mostly useful as a cognitive process or to highlight the oft-forgotten point that other people think strategically. But this guy seems to commit the cardinal sin of game theory by assigning arbitrary numbers to specific, real world outcomes. He might only use them to rank outcomes instead of do math on Nash equilibriums, but that is still a misuse of the concept.
Nassim Taleb pointed out the logical error of using game theory for predictions in arenas subject to "black swan" events. Thinking about international alliances by examining politicians' self-interest is a good idea, but I would never want to try and make concrete predictions based on that.
Sep '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
I read the Predictioneers Game back in '07 - I guess, after listening to the podcast on econtalk - but it doesn't seem that long ago. It is an effort to explain the logic of his methods without the math. It is interesting but, if I remember correctly, it is all based on attempting to determine the rational best interest of each actor as they perceive it. Once you know that the formula helps to weight the influence of each actor but knowing that not the sort of thing one can google, so like all programs if you get it wrong - garbage in, garbage out. He is a proponent of a more benign view of Iran than probably most of us on ricochet, but suppose you predicted the demise of the USSR based on Truman's containment policy...was it inevitable without Reagan?
Oct '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
Minor quibble: while it's true that an excerpt of a book is "PR," isn't the goal of that PR to convince you to buy the book based on an exemplar of its content?
Here I have to respectfully suggest you're making a category error. It's a game theory book. Game theory is math. The whole point of math is that you don't get to leave your terms undefined. It's only possible to leave his terms undefined because there's no math.
Regardless, this mathless excerpt from a math book purports to do what game theory purports to do, apart from the fact that real game theory uses math to do it. This makes it an instant "don't bother reading" for me. If it turns out there's actual math elsewhere in it, that will tell me whoever chose the excerpt didn't understand their task.
Edited on Aug 25, 2011 at 12:56pmOct '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
I really wish Taleb weren't degenerating into the Carl Sagan of finance, but let's face it, it's selling books a lot more than dry language about what mathematicians call "outliers" does. For what it's worth, Probability Theory is perfectly competent to deal with outliers; it's Chapter 21 of Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. I'm linking to the pre-print PDF that's still online, because it's an excellent example of what an actual mathematics text looks like.
Update: It looks like the PDF is only of the first three chapters, so it's an... excerpt. Compare and contrast at your leisure. :-)
Edited on Aug 25, 2011 at 1:00pmRe: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
Paul Snively
Minor quibble: while it's true that an excerpt of a book is "PR," isn't the goal of that PR to convince you to buy the book based on an exemplar of its content?
Here I have to respectfully suggest you're making a category error. It's a game theory book. Game theory is math. The whole point of math is that you don't get to leave your terms undefined It's only possible to leave his terms undefined because there's no math.
Somewhere on the site he says, "The math is in my articles"--which may be true. What I'm not seeing defined are the actors "interests," selfish or otherwise. But I guess I'll reserve judgment until I read the book--which I may have time to do in, say, 2017, assuming the world's still here.
Oct '10
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
OK, so it's a popular work. Nothing wrong with that per se. I just find the excerpt disturbing because, to me, it reads a lot like "All you have to do is think strategically, and, hey presto, you can draw valid conclusions!" And, to be frank, that's how most writing on game theory strikes me. As if it's math for political science majors who are mathematically illiterate.
Since we're on the math subject, by the way, please thank your father for "One, Two, Three." I greatly enjoyed it. My review is taking a bit longer to write than I anticipated, a phenomenon with which I doubt you're unfamiliar. :-)
Aug '11
Re: Predicting the Future: Thoughts About A Book I Have Not Yet Read
Ms. Berlinski, he was a professor of mine while I was an undergraduate at the University of Rochester. He is an outstanding academic and teacher, and I am greatly indebted to him. Without going into a philosophical discussion of prediction and knowledge and rational choice theory, I would say there is no one like him for what he can do (which is why he can claim what he can). I am sure his more recent writings discuss his model but I believe my initial reading was in "Forecasting Political Events: The Future of Hong Kong". Off-the-cuff I would say his model takes multiple sources of expert information and synthesizes them, and the prediction is only as good as the information put in. He has much published work, and he can tell you exactly what assumptions in the model have not worked, etc. He has done much work for business too, in calculating bargaining solutions, etc. There are some YouTube videos of him I saw, e.g., one regarding advancement within the leadership of the government of Iran. He does have a prediction firm, so if he was disparaging of his work I doubt he would get any business.