The Predictioneer’s Game is officially published tomorrow. I hope you will take a moment to buy a copy at your local bookstore or at one of the links provided at this website. You can listen to me discuss the book tonight on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central and on October 19th on a CNBC special about the future of work. On October 1st, those of you in New York might stop by at the Carnegie Council where I will discuss The Predictioneer’s Game and then hold a book signing. I will have a similar program in San Francisco on October 26th at the World Affairs Council.
For those of you in the UK, I will be on BBC radio on the morning of October 19th discussing Pedictioneer — the British title. Later that week I will give a talk at the London School of Economics. It is free and open to the public so I hope you will come to it. Check out the time and place at the LSE website. On October 20th I will give a talk at 10 Downing Street which will be available later as a podcast. And then it wil be on to Dubin for a TED-like presentation on the book.
Later today I will post an apprentice version of the model online, a version that you can download and use on your own computer. A programmer and I are still working on a web-based version and will post that as soon as we overcome some problems we have encountered. Who knows, maybe that version will be up and running today and we will provide that instead of the down-loadable version. We are doing our best!
I am looking forward to your feedback on the book after you have had a chance to read it and also on how the software is working for you. Happy predictioneering!
Bruce
Iran is much in the news so this seems like an appropriate time to bring you up to date on how I think my earlier forecast is doing and on what all the current action — missile firings, revelation of a second uranium enrichment facility, threats of greater sanctions — mean.
Back in February, I predicted that by early 2010 we would see that Iran — perhaps with concessions from the US and other international players — will develop enough weapons grade fuel to show it knows how, but that it would not go so far as to build a bomb. Let’s put that in the context of the lead international affairs story in The New York Times on September 9, 2009. Here is what the first paragraph of that story reported:
oNY Times, September 9, 2009: “American intelligence agencies have concluded in recent months that Iran has created enough nuclear fuel to make a rapid . . .sprint for a nuclear weapon. But new intelligence delivered to the White House says that the country has deliberately stopped short of the critical last steps to make a bomb.”
Sounds an awful lot like what I predicted in my TED Conference talk in early February 2009.
How does this play against recent revelations? The US and several European powers are slated to begin negotiations with Iran later this week. Iran earlier announced that it had a second uranium enrichment facility under construction and now has tested several missiles (all had been tested last year as well so there is not much new in these tests) ostensibly as part of an annual commemoration of its war with Iraq. Iran has invited UN inspectors to check out the second nuclear facility which is still under construction. President Obama revealed that he was briefed on this facility in the fall of 2008. So, while it is news to many of us, it is not news to the US, our friends, or, of course, the Iranian regime.
What are all of these activities about then? They are part of the Bargaining Ballet orchestrated to gain leverage in the upcoming negotiations. Unfortunately I haven’t analyzed these negotiations so I have no prediction on what may come out of the discussions. Maybe someone out there can try to build a reasonable data set of positions etc. going in so we can predict what is likely to happen. but for now, I view all of the recent developments as just posturing before the different domestic constituencies in Iran, the US, etc. to win political credit or shift blame. remember, all the developments of the last several days are news to us but not news to the parties to the upcoming talks. and remember what the New York Times reported on September 9th — Iran has deliberately stopped short of the critical last steps to build a bomb!
On a more sobering note, look back at my TED talk and you will see that if a deal is not struck with Iran over its nuclear program — and to me that means a deal to have a credible inspection regime that assures the international community that Iran will not take further steps toward building a nuclear weapon — in 2010 the influence of the pro-bomb interests, whle still not the winning position in 2011 in Iran, grows stronger at the expense of those who want a more moderate and pragmatic policy.
Hi,
Sorry to have been “off the air” for a bit — this is a very busy time. Before getting into substance, I know many of you are waiting for the online access to The Predictioneer’s Game software that I promised. This has taken longer than I hoped but it is VERY close to being ready. The conversion to a web version was a bit more complicated than I thought. It should go up this week.
President Carter has raised the spectre of racism as an explanation for the sometimes harsh — maybe even mean-aspirited — opposition to President Obama’s health care proposal and lots of his other policies. I doubt racism is much of a factor but I want to present a way to think about this that reminds us that whether racism is a motivating factor or not is beside the point and adds nothing to the merits or demerits of arguments on either side of the fence. But before doing that, we would do well to remember that President Reagan was called terrible names (fascist, even Nazi) by various and sundry groups. One of the rhetorical questions at Stanford university when there was a serious prospect that Reagan’s library would be located just across from the campus was, “Would we take Hitler’s library?” I always thought the obvious answer should have been, “Yes.” A library is an invaluable educational resource. Having Hitler’s archives would have been a great asset for those trying to understand what twisted reasoning led to the holocaust. And let’s remember that President Bush was routinely described as stupid (although apparently his SAT scores were higher than Al Gore’s) and much worse and Vice President Cheney is still routinely described in the nastiest terms by those who disagree with his views. President Clinton was impeached for his personal failings (and lying to Congress about them) but I suspect most of the opposition was motivated by dislike for his policies especially since some of those who rose up against him were guilty of similar personal failings. President Roosevelt (Franklin) was called a communist. Nothing new in any of this. But I still digress.
Whether arguments against policy are motivated by racism, anti-Illinoisism, anti-anyism really is not that important. What is important is whether the content of the arguments has merit. That is, even despicable motives may still lead to smart arguments — that is the logical foundation for free speech going back to the early emergence of Britain’s parliament. We should worry less about motives — which are hard to establish — and worry more about whether the arguments for and against any policy carry weight in terms of their logic and evidence.
So if motivations are not that important why is it so common to impugn the motives of others? Let’s put on our Game Theory Goggles so we can see through the mist of motives. Attacking motives is a particularly effective strategy, just like accusing a foe of being a child molester (which does matter!). It costs the impugner very little. Jimmy Carter is unlikely to bear much cost because of his claim that racism is behind opposition to Obama’s policies. But those who oppose the policies now anticipate that they may be tainted with a heinous label, like “racist,” and so may be more likely to self-censor. Thus, debate quiets down, intensity of preferences becomes muted, and we, the public, lose the opportunity to hear the full range of arguments. That may serve partisan interests but it doesn’t serve We, the People very well. So let’s stop debating whether racism is behind opposition and get back to debating (civilly but forcefully) the merits of alternative health care plans and other policy proposals. Let’s finally start talking logic and evidence — what do we know and how do we know it — about health care reform instead of slinging mud and cherry picking examples to support our personal point of view.
OK, that’s my rant for the day.
Japan’s election has ended with the resounding defeat of the LDP — the party that has ruled Japan continuously (with one short interruption) since that country had its first free election in 1955 without the supervision of the victorious powers in WW II. This is really a huge step in the maturation of Japan’s democracy. Nothing improves the quality of policy more than the realization that electoral defeat follows the failure to produce good policy in a competitive political system. Now we can just keep our fingers crossed that other maturing democracies will, like Japan and Mexico just a few years ago, continue on the path to electoral defeat for the incumbent party. In thinking about places at risk, we should look to South Africa. there, following a heroic struggle for independence, the grip of the African National Congress has not yet been shaken. Of course, the voters may be happy with the job the ANC is doing (although the record is spotty) and that may be why no other party has yet won control of the national government. But as lnog as that remains true, there is a serious risk of poor econonomic and political progress and a grave danger of sliding down the path of robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. I sure hope not — it would be interesting to see someone out there design a data set to predict South Africa’s political future, and Japan’s too. The web model will be up very very soon so this is a good time to start thinking about issues like that to look at for the future.
Cheers,
Bruce
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced today that he had seen no convincing evidence that foreign powers were involved in the anti-government demonstrations following the June election. This is rather extraordinary for two reasons.
First, he has said this in the midst of trials alleging that protesters were part of a foreign — US and British inspired — plot against the Iranian regime. So, Khamenei’s statement — and he is after all the SUPREME LEADER — undermines the premise of many of the trials and challenges the many confessions by demonstrators and prominent figures who have been arrested. It is widely believed in the west that these confessions were coerced. We have to conclude that Khamenei has essentially admitted the truth behind that belief.
But there is a second, equally extraordinary feature to this declaration. President Obama allegedly has offered to take a tougher stance toward Iran if Netanyahu’s government in Israel will go along with preventing more settlements. Of course we do not know what back channel conversations are taking place between US and Iranian leaders and we don’t know whether the reported “get tough” offer by Obama has actually been made. Still, we can see in Khamenei’s declaration a signal that he wants to lower the temperature and perhaps get on track to come to a negotiated resolution of the outstanding issues between the US and Iran, most notably, of course, the nuclear issue.
Maybe I am drinking my own whiskey but this looks very promising to me. Back in February in my TED talk I predicted that Khamenei’s power was declining and I also predicted that the Iranian leadership would strike a deal with the US in which they might develop some weapons grade fuel but they would not build a bomb. Khamenei’s statement — coupled with the intensity of the demonstrations in June — is consistent with the projection that his power is on the way down (and he is trying to maneuver to slow or reverse his declining fortunes) and also is consistent with an effort to get negotiations going. Surely he would get some significant boost from reaching an agreement on the nuclear front that does not impede Iran’s demonstration that they have the know-how to build a bomb and that, as they have been claiming all along, that know-how does not mean they want to build a bomb. (Let’s hope that if and when negotiations get underway, if they are not already going full steam ahead, that the Obama foreign policy team will be careful to extract a credible, verifiable commitment from Iran to allow sufficient oversight to ensure they don’t make more than a minimal, research quantity of weapons grade fuel).
Could be a very interesting year before us!
OK, it’s time to get started. When I read the newspaper lots of ideas jump out at me about things that could be predicted, analyzed and maybe even engineered for the better. Politicians like to say and do things that make us feel good but that don’t have a real impact. For example, after the Libyans cheered the return of the Lockerbie mass murderer, President Obama said we won’t stand by idly. Sure we will probably make some tough statements, but let’s think about what we really could do. We could boycott Libyan oil but oil is in demand and there is a world market. What we don’t buy from Libya we have to buy somewhere else and somebody else will step in and buy the Libyan oil we don’t buy. It’s not likely to have much of an impact. We could go to the UN Security Council for sanctions. Senator Schumer from New York has proposed doing just that. But there are at least two problems with this. First, to impose sanctions we will have to have unanimity among the 5 permanent members of the UNSC. It doesn’t seem all that likely that China or maybe even France will go along. It would be interesting to model that. Maybe in a week or two when I have the model up and running on the web site, someone out there can put a good data set together on this and we could see. But then, we must also realize that sanctions work best when they are threatened but not implemented. If you have to put them into use then the target has probably already concluded that the cost of the sanctions is smaller than the political costs of giving in to the sanctioners demands. Foreign policy is tough but we could model the likelihood of sanctions working after we model whether they are likely to be implemented at all. Maybe someone could build the beauty contest data set — 100 means the player in question is completely for imposing sanctions through the UNSC and 0 (zero) means absolutely opposed (with intermediaite values capturing degrees of leaning for or against) — and someone else could build a more detailed data set on positions regarding the stiffness of sanctions. Then we could anaylze both.
Bruce
Hello and welcome to The Predictioneer’s Game blog. I will be launching this very soon. In the meantime, keep your eyes out for a profile on the book and on me (Bruce Bueno de Mesquita) in the Sunday New York Times Magazine Section on August 16th. I will start the blog shortly after that article appears.
I’ll try to address questions about foreign policy and sometimes business from a strategic point of view, always trying to work out what motivates the actions by others as well as by ourselves. For instance, think about the imposition of economic sanctions as a foreign policy. Are sanctions more likely to work when they are threatened or after they are implemented? My answer: they will hardly ever work if they have to be implemented but they can work as a threat. I’ll explain why later. How about health care? There seem to be two conflicting objectives but the debate never seems to focus on them together. One idea is to provide universal coverage. The other is to reduce the cost of health care which currently takes up about 1/6th of the US economy and maybe more. But then it turns out — not too surprisingly — that universal coverage means higher costs, not lower costs. We must choose between better coverage for all at a cost to those already paying to be covered while making the cost a larger share of the economy or not increasing coverage and not boosting the cost to achieve universal coverage but leaving some vulnerable to the costs of illness. How might we use logic and the evidence in terms of the experience of other systems to work out what the right trade-off, if any, is between costs and benefits. Why doesn’t the debate focus on the logic and a balanced look at evidence rather than partisan points of view? How will universal, subsidized health care influence demand for care? Will it make the society healthier and more productive or will it distort the economy and reduce the average person’s quality of care? Do we have reason to believe the declarations — cheap talk in game theory terms — of the parties on either side? Is the debate just another form of negative campaigning by all sides? I hope you will think about these questions while I get this blog up and running.
In the meantime I’d welcome your thoughts on these and other subject. Maybe we can all learn something about what sanctions on Iran might do to their nuclear ambitions or what impact they might have on North Korea, or what sorts of illnesses (or prevention) a British-style system is good at and what it is bad at treatingjust to throw out some stuff to think about.
Bruce
Next Posts
