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Can Statistics Predict the Outcome of a War?
StatisticallyDeadGuy writes "A University of Georgia scientist has developed a statistical system that can, she claims, predict the outcome of wars with an accuracy of 80 percent. Her approach, applied retrospectively, says the US chance of victory in the first Gulf War was 93%, while the poor Soviets only had a 7% chance in Afghanistan (if only they'd known; failure maybe triggered the collapse of the USSR). As for the current Iraq conflict: the US started off with a 70% chance of a successful regime change, which was duly achieved — but extending the mission past this to support a weak government has dropped the probability of ultimate success to 26%. Full elaboration of the forecasting methodology is laid out in a new paper (subscription required — link goes to the abstract). Some details can be gleaned from her 2006 draft (PDF)."
It's 0% if you play "Global Thermonuclear War". The only winning strategy is not to play.
Sounds like fun. Let's test this theory =)
Life is not for the lazy.
The only way to win is not to play.
Is that lots of people are going to suffer and die, and lots of money will be spent, usually with detrimental results to all parties involved.
Oh yeah, and the companies that make bombs and guns will get richer.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
I notice that the probability of success in Iraq correlates well with George's approval rating.
She took a bunch of historical information about wars, built a model and then when run on that historical information it was 80% accurate.
Amazing stuff.
Why not read `a beautiful mind` for a few observations on this. BTW has anyone ever seen any of John Nash's computer programs? They're supposed to be pretty elegant.
Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
As in all projects, when you let the scope blow out, then the costs blow out proportionately. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the initial scope was to topple Saddam Hussein. Scope then changed to include installation of democracy.
Nobody wrote up a scope change request, let alone getting it signed off...
There are many throughout history who have attempted to reduce the Art of War to a science.
But a few would include, Vietnam and Iraq, and any number of CIA interventions.
That's nothing! I can predict the outcome of a war with 100% accuracy when applied retrospectively.
I will predict the winner of the World Series, for any year up through 2006. Looks like the White Sox had a 96% chance of winning in 2005. I'm not gaming the numbers, I swear. I've got a perfect system for retroactive "prediction."
John Edward has a better act, Ms. Sullivan.
--
Toro
Hari Seldon, is that you?
What did the formula make of the "war on terror"?
Or RIAA vs piracy?
Hindsight is 20/20. I would be more interested in what the odds of Future wars would be. Like against Iran or North Korea, simultainiously.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
pure historical data. At least it looks that way to me. I find it hard to believe that one can predict accurately the outcome of a war. Think about the super technologies that the involved parties may keep in secret just to have the surprise factor in a war. That could definitely screw up the statistics :)
Try reading The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
As far as I know nobody has formally specified the 'win' outcome for the war -- so I'm a bit doubtful that anyone has worked out an EXACT 26% (not 25%! That number would sound like a guess! But 26% sounds like SCIENCE!) chance of the US side achieving it.
If the 26% really was worked out with a reasonable methodology, then the interesting part isn't the number so much as whatever definition they came up with of 'victory'.
That said, giving ridiculously exact answers to impossibly vague questions is fun and harmless. 92.8% of the time.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
You don't need fancy statistics to predict that a foreign military invasion will ultimately fail. In the meantime you can also be sure of what a previous poster suggested.
Invasions may work when they are combined with a civilian invasion if the population numbers allow for it (like China in Tibet and the like). And even in that example, China has a hard time completely assimilating Tibet and it's not quite done with it yet, after half a century and no armed resistance.
"The odds are stacked against us! We have no hope and our best option is to surrender immediately!"
-(Paraphrased) Jack, DS9 Statistical Improbabilities
Just a little guy, y'know?
The idea of studying history, and learning from it in order to avoid mistakes, is a good idea. The trick is if you can define sufficiently and accurately, many of the significant condtions and possibilities. For instance, the Vietnam war is a success if you consider the objective to be standing up to and halting the spread of worldwide communism, but could also be seen as a failure if you ignore the rest of the world and simply see America pulling out and the remaining Vietnamese being slaughtered.
Winning a war in modern times means that the war has ended - and that's something that nowdays never happens because there will always be "resistance (one man may call it "freedom-fighters", another calls it "terrorist").
There are numerous historical examples of this (Ireland, ETA, Tibet, Afghanistan, vietnam), and you'd think someone would get the message.
The winners of war are the ones profiting on war, and by that I mean convert it into cash (territory/resources can be retaken).
It's the same entity with one hand destroying infrastructure/society in a warzone, and the other getting the contracts for rebuilding.
I'd like to see a return to common sense, diplomacy, and compromize when dealing with conflicts.
"If it can be thought up, there exists at least one person trying to make it happen for real" - Phil
Psychohistory anyone?
That said, odds are someone will stumble across a retrospective analysis of this sort. Wake me after they have correctly predicted the outcomes of the next few wars, then color me impressed.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
What meaningless statistics. Even if it's a single bipolar result, it either happens or it doesn't. It's not like we have large numbers of Vietnam Wars to prove the veracity of these numbers.
Also, how does one term 'successful result'? Is a pyrrhic victory a successful result? Were the crusades initially successful for the christians, then not successful later?
Isn't it a failure every time the phrase 'home by christmas' is proven false?
WWI had a winner and a loser, but for both sides, it was a failure with astounding numbers of dead and ruined economies everywhere.
What about unforseen results that aren't what was desired but are better than a straight-out loss?
...as opposed to Cryonuclear?
The U.N. Security Council, along with pretty much everyone with half a brain living in most of the civilized world, used their own mental heuristics to correctly predict the outcome of the disaster in Iraq. The neo-conservatives in the U.S. and, inexplicably, Great Britain, were the only ones talking about a "cakewalk".
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
That 74% of war historians think that 26% of war historians have less than 10% of a clue clue about more than 90% of what they are talking about, when it comes to statistics. This assessment of course is subject to adjustment depending on perceived public opinion and verified by use of the retrospectoscope.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
In 2005 the economist had a report on war forecasting:? Story_ID=4368226
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
The problem with this is that the model was "trained" on the same historical data on which it is eventually tested. This doesn't prove anything.
As an example, a defence contractor once built a system that would recognize wether or not a tank was in a picture. First the system was trained on half the "with tanks" and half the "without tanks" pictures. Next the system got a good percentage correct on the second half of the pictures. It turns out the "with tanks" pictures had been taken on a sunny day, and those without on a cloudy day. So the system was actually telling "sunny" or "cloudy".
In this case, it could very well be that her system predicts the outcome of the war, based on the weather in tokyo 6 weeks before the start of the war. This example was chosen so that you, not an expert in this field, immediately can dismiss this as a nonsense predictor. But as the model gets more complicated, and you feed it lots of parameters that might seem relevant, even the experts will no longer be able to see the value of such complicated predictions. At some point you just have to "trust the computer".
Aerodynamics: Yes. We understand the underlying principles, we've verfied the predictions made by the models in real life, and found that it matches very good.
In this case: No. Before I trust such a model, it would need to be verified (as is, no modifications allowed!) against say at least 20 wars that haven't started yet. If it preditcs the outcome of those correctly, the model has merit.
I'm not going to wait around (I hope).
Anyone who has played an RTS knows this...
Can someone explain me how she can go on about conflicts between states, when the majority of conflicts are characterized by the opposition not being a state? I also have a hard time accepting the definition of victory. She defines it as "A state can attain its political objectives in war by rendering its opponent physically incapable of continuing to fight" (or make them believe that such an outcome is unavoidable). Given these criteria, how can an asymmetric war be won? Is it possible to render every terrorist/freedom fighter "physically incapable of fighting"? It probably isn't, so how many attacks are "just" violence and how many attacks constitutes an opposition?
while the poor Soviets only had a 7% chance in Afghanistan (if only they'd known; failure maybe triggered the collapse of the USSR)
That is because in Russia the outcome of war predicts Statistics!
Yes they can; but only 50% of the time.
Wikipedia
If ever there was an article that wanted the "No" tag... Damnit Slashdot, give us the old style tags back!
So, what are the chances that the Cavs are going to come back from their three-game deficit in the finals and put the Spurs in their place?
Reply hazy, try again.
Anyone remember the Powell Doctrine? Nope? Well it was designed to meet this lady's stated points for sucess and it served us well from Vietnam till Iraq. Then a Bunch of draft dodging Dixiecrats and Nixon era hawks ignored those lessons in a classic case of groupthink and now we are back in Vietnam.
I think we should impose a punitive tax on anyone who contributed to the Republican party during the last 6 years equal to the cost of the war.
You can make an equation that'll fit any known values. Trick is to apply her equations to a future war and see if her predictions measure up with reality. Iran. North Korea. Maybe China as she gets bigger and bolder, or Russia if Putin finds Yeltsin's Kremlin Vodka stash.
:-)
> Full elaboration of the forecasting methodology is laid out in a new paper (subscription required -- link goes to the abstract)
Too bad she's not smart enough to post to an Open Journal. More government-funded research being resold by private publishers (in this case $AGE Publications). "Published in association with Peace Science Society (International)". Explain to me how you guys benefit from fewer people reading your stuff?
> That's nothing! I can predict the outcome of a war with 100% accuracy when applied retrospectively
Hey Hillary is posting to Slashdot!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ah, the joys of revisionism...
Let me see, what happened in Vietnam (and eerily enough, Korea didn't go that differently either.)
1. Actually refused to allow elections and backed an inept dictator that was hated even by the south. That's a funny way to spread democracy, you know.
2. It lost its chunk of Vietnam to the communists.
3. It actually created such an anti-american sentiment in Laos and Cambodia that they went Communist too. You know, let's bomb some countries which aren't our enemies, just because the communists smuggle arms and supplies through their territory. In fact, let's bomb a country that's our _ally_ FFS. If you trace the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, it went from a fringe group that noone really supported, to _massive_ support in the zones bombed by the Americans.
At any rate, voila, two more countries lost to communism as a result of inept American meddling in the area. Way to stop the spread of communism, buddy.
4. That and Korea scared China into flipping from a country just licking its wounds and wanting to be left alone, to becoming a lot more politically and militarily active. Just because some idiot generals wanted to push the border all the way to China, and at least one idiot actually advocated attacking China.
5. It takes some massive dose of revisionism to call it some spread of communism in the first place, when it was just a country (two, if you count Korea too), that just wanted to reunite. And that the _only_ reason it escalated to war is because the USA didn't allow elections.
Contrary to Domino theory bullshit and McCarthist propaganda, the USSR was _not_ your enemy at that point. The only reason why there was, say, a north and south Korea was because the Russians actually stopped their advance at the exact spot where the USA asked them to ask. The USSR was still licking its wounds after WW2 anyway, and it knew it's in no condition to start a world war.
You know what the USSR and China wanted at that point? They just wanted to have no border with NATO, if possible, because the USA had suddenly flipped from being their ally to treating them like mortal enemies. That's one reason why, for example, Stalin actually proposed to let Germany reunite if it stays neutral and doesn't join either pact. The wars in Korea and Vietnam just convinced them to rearm faster and help start the Cold War sooner.
And if you want something which stopped both sides, that was the rise of long ranged nuclear weaponry and the mutually assured destruction.
Redefining it as, basically, "nah, see, they calmed down because of the war (USA lost) in Vietnam" is pretty laughable.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That said, I find this very unconvincing. And why? Because it is actually very hard to measure the outcome of a conflict, especially when the actual strategic objective of the conflict may be a state secret on the side of the aggressor. Put simply, we do not really know, in the case of Iraq, what the real objective of the US Government is. Is it:
- To stabilise Iraq with a government that will be a more reliable client of the US than Saddam was?
- To destabilise Iraq and the Middle East to prevent power accumulations that threaten the US regional aircraft carrier, USS Israel?
- To maintain high oil prices by creating instability, enriching the Bush family and their clients?
- To keep up pressure on other states by showing that the US will intervene and create anarchy if it wishes (The old "remember what happened to XXX country?" "There is no XXX country." "Exactly, that's what you need to remember")
My point is that for any desired outcome other than the first, the US Government would be achieving its strategic objectives. The fact that these objectives might be objectionable to the majority of the US population is irrelevant; for most of history, wars have been fought by military elites without reference to the interests of the majority of the population. In exactly this way, Vietnam can actually be seen as a victory for the US if the strategic objective was to stop the expansion of Communism. Personally I don't believe in the domino theory, but if you do you can argue that the example of Vietnam stopped other regional states from going Communist.In the past, wars usually ended when one side ran out of resources, whether provisioning, human, strategic or geographical. The constraint on warmongers in democratic societies is that society can ultimately strangle the resources of its internal warmongers without, necessarily, killing anybody. It is also possible for democratic societies to change the playing field so that strategic objectives change or become irrelevant. (e.g. by doing so much business with other countries that it becomes impossible to pursue strategic objectives without doing more harm to yourself - which you could say is happening with the US and China.)
Pining for the fjords
With Thanks,
Vendikar Battle Simulation Department
we overlooked the "terrorist" contingent
Should be:
we "overlooked" the terrorist contingent
And now my question is: who's we? Because, I'm sure the Pentagon planners never overlooked anything.
Forget about the statistical model, the Slashdot blurb has completely missed the point (as usual) by emphasing it. The point that Mrs. Sullivan is trying to make - and it's a good point - is that the traditional criteria for assessing the outcome of the conflict and whether you have won or lost (such as the number of buildings blown up and enemies killed, number of square kilometers controlled, etc) have become irrelevant in new types of (asymetrical) conflicts, where the objectives are political more than geographical, and where sociological aspects (support of the population, curbing down radicalism or sectarianism, promoting a particular form of government) determine the outcome of the conflict more than raw firepower.
The relevant part:
Driving Saddam Hussein's army out of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War and overthrowing his government in 2003 was a brute force objective that was accomplished relatively quickly, for example, but quelling sectarian violence and building support for the current government has been much more difficult because it requires target compliance.
"We can try to use brute force to kill insurgents and terrorists, but what we really need is for the population to be supportive of the government and to stop supporting the insurgents," Sullivan said. "Otherwise, every time we kill an insurgent or a terrorist, they're going to be replaced by others."
So, don't panic. No one is seriously trying to "predict" the outcome of a war by statistics alone. It's about time the American academia and military ditch the Cold War mindset they've been stuck in since 1947, and start adjusting to the new realities of warfare and conflict resolution. This has happened in smaller countries (in Europe and elsewhere) some time ago, with varying degrees of success. French opposition to the war in Iraq, for instance, was largely based on a good understanding of which political and sociological forces would naturally prevail in Iraq once the artificial Baathist regime was terminated. In other words: yes, we can blow the country to bits, but once we've done that, there is very little that can be done to manage the country's politics afterwards.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
So, the Soviets should have invaded at least 15 times to succeed, or something. At the moment it seems USA needs to try again five times, but it needs to do it fast because the probability is decreasing rapidly and I don't think it can bear the expenses.. Interesting statistical fact is that humans have less than two arms and legs.
Sun Tzu did that. Statistics is just analysis of data, and its what data you analyse that gives you a good result.
If you take into account the number of UN troops to Dafur and the local population stats, you might be wrong, because you forgot the tactics that can be used against a conditioned millitary force(Guerrilla warfare). some data might is intangible, and we need a new science that does quantitative analysis of these intangible expertise.
http://monkeynesianeconomics.blogspot.com/
This has been covered rather thoroughly on Deep Space Nine - the upshot was something like, 'there might be a 99% chance we're gonna get our asses kicked, but we're human (ie special) so to hell with statistics; bring on the Breen!'
(if the researcher is allowed to compile averages and call it research, I can quote fictional sources and call them precedent. pbbbt.)
Triv
http://www.valenzettifoundation.org/
Loved the first few, but it got rather far fetched towards the end of the series. Kindof like he ran out of ideas.... a common failing of too many authors trying to milk a franchise.
The model doesn't have to be precise, and maybe it's doing itself a disservice by spitting out seemingly accurate chances.
But - if it is even reliable in the ballpark, say it is within +/-10% in 95% of the cases, then it might well find useage and prevent a war or two. Would the russians have invaded Afghanistan had they known that their success chance is somewhere between 0% and 17% ? Would the US stay in Iraq if it had reliable guesses as to its chances, instead of lots of lobbyists persuading everyone that of course success is just around the corner if just another billion is dumped into whatever they're lobbying for?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
'Nuff said
I completely agree there are wars started by psychopaths who just want to spread death and destruction while profiting as a consequence (both monetarily and through conquest). But the question then becomes, how exactly do you stop such a psychopath if not through war?
Wow, I get to play the Hitler card and still be on topic.
In Soviet Russia wars predict you !
The really interesting question is whether the overall interests of the Israeli people and the Jewish world as a whole are really well served by the current relationship with the US. I realise the whole Middle East is now so poisoned that disentanglement may be well nigh impossible. But you will be aware that the outgoing UN representative in the Middle East has had leaked his remarks on how the US pressure is not helping the resolution of Middle East problems. I cannot help but think that overall it would be better if the EU could guarantee the security of Israel and negotiate with the other regional powers. Otherwise, I suspect that my own children will be the last generation of our family to spend summers on a kibbutz.
Pining for the fjords
You lose too, and maybe they have less to lose.
The full text of the article is available on Freenet:- 8/jcr.pdf
CHK@vmxTAeoZplt67tvKYrE5O7DbJt7MFxJcWYku95sORQ0, OXM5D2cJdu167LLeBKgj2qXDZNG0jEaxb3pH-MJIt9g,AAIC-
(Remove the space inserted by slashcode.)
Can the model predict the next time the Leafs win the Stanley Cup?
--
BMO
80% of all statistics are made up.
My Starcraft 2 Blog
As Maximillian Cohen (from the movie Pi) would say:
11:15, restate my assumptions: 1. Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature.
Maybe Bush is 'the mule'?
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Now we just need to convince the rulers to do away with the little detail of actually of actually waging the war.
"Statistically, all your base are belong to us. So you might as well just hand it over."
Are you sure that's been the goal? Sometimes the real goal isn't stated, and the stated goal is just the most plausible excuse.
E.g., if the goal was to give Bush's big oil buddies some lucrative contracts and resources in the area, then making sure Iraq stays a puppet is kinda part of the spec. Getting out before they get a stable puppet government... well, it's sorta like saying "the request was to put the poster on the wall, if you want it _glued_ to stay there, well, that's gonna cost you extra."
But the same applies to IT (and other) projects, yeah, so I guess your metaphor still stands. E.g., I've seen projects where:
- the boss was actually trying to keep it from succeeding, just to prove to everyone that Java is crap and causes projects to fail. The guy was a die-hard one-trick pony, and that one trick was VB. So when someone from above decided to go with Java, the guy switched full time to trying to prove that Java sucks. Not only he didn't spend any time trying to get the project on track (though he did pull stunts like expanding or changing the scope all the time), he spent three quarters of his time convincing the other departments (which were not IT-savvy, since it was a manufacturing company) that, hey, look what happens if you want your programs done in Java.
- someone from above was just syphoning funds to his brother-in-law's contractor company
- it was actually some politics game between departments, and/or showing to someone else down the hierarchy who's boss. In at least one instance it got as frivolous as "if those guys get what they want, then _I_ am not signing the spec." In another, pretty much a replacement to MS Project was coded just so one manager could enforce that all reports ever will be done with his favourite colours and fonts.
- someone needed more people in the team to get a promotion to the next management rank. So an otherwise simple spec got blown up into a thoroughly baroque thing that is now 4 years overdue.
- gaming some dysfunctional corporate rules. E.g., someone gets a bonus if they "save" enough money when they negotiate a server or a project. So they'll get the same product or project as 4 million where he negotiated a 50% discount, instead of a 50000$ thing with no discount. Or conversely, once the suppliers get wind that they'll have to go through that, the prices start directly inflated to some arbitrary value where they can offer a generous "discount" to get the contract.
- consultants or employees (managers included) whose only real goal is to get paid for the rest of their days. Bonus points for consultant or contractor company whose goal isn't just to get fixed to the teat for eternity, but to bring more of their people to that teat too.
Etc.
A _lot_ of projects seem a lot less absurd or like management failures, when you understand what the actual goal was. Often the covert real goal was an outstanding success, even if the overt "goal" looks like a total failure.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
> Is that lots of people are going to suffer and die, and lots of money will be spent
Not necessarily. Imagine how great it would be if everyone adopted this statistical model as the standard method of warfare. Suppose country A wanted to go to war with country B. A declares war on B. A and B both go to their computer labs and run simulations. If simulations predict that A will lose the war, B declares victory. If simulations predict that B will lose the war and B's simulations say the same, B will surrender. See how nice things are? Nobody has to get killed, there is no wasteful spending, and hell, we will not even need standing armies any more. If this is not a way to world peace, I don't know what could be.
Well, success if you ignore the fact that the country is falling apart, has become a haven and catalyst for terrorism, has worse access to health care/clean water/safe streets/medicine/electricity than when Saddam was in power, and their current government also uses torture, detention without trial, death squads, etc. But even if what we're doing is making things worse, more of the same will no doubt constitute improvement.
Okay, sorry for the diatribe. I'm sure you can use stats to analyze who will win a particular armed conflict--the fact that the USA represents half the global arms expenditures might be relevant. But Iraq isn't a war, but an occupation, which is of a completely different nature. If you just tasked the US military with killing Iraqis all day long, they could do that without any impediment. But asking them to make Iraq into a USA-loving western-style freedom-loving democratic republic, by the brilliant combination of the force of arms and handing out candy to kids, is a bit daft.
Don't think that Israel's "democracy" is like America or the European democracies, it is not. It is a democracy like Apartheid South Africa's, dedicated to keeping the "right" type of people on top and the "wrong" type of people on the bottom. Let us end this horror. There were few tears shed when South Africa's Apartheid democracy fell there should be few tears then Israel's Zionist democracy falls.
Dude, Condi Rice called and wants your phone number.
Are you aware that in 1066 England was successfully invaded by the Duchy of Normandy? Most of Normandy was subsequently successfully invaded by the French, but the UK is still today under the yoke of the remainder, the Channel Isles.
It depends on what you mean by "ultimately" I suppose. Nothing remains for ever and even the Third Reich was meant to last for only 1000 years. However, when that Sun balloons into a Red Giant those Normans won't know what's hit 'em.
Years ago I remember reading about a study that predicted, with surprising accuracy (>2/3, if I remember) that the side with the better uniforms loses the war. Anecdotally, this does seem to be true!
I always think about that when I see someone in our ugly Army uniforms, particularly standing next to someone in an USMC dress uniform.
dave (MAJ, USAR, retired)
Who actually knows the series of tactical realities that led to the final defeat? Other than German generals and their 20/20 hindsight w/ regards to the battles fought against the Soviets, where the Allies just wanted to cull information on potential vulnerabilities of their new enemy, when exactly in history has the losers ever told their story factually?
You can use economics though, statistics only gives you the probability. With economics, you can develop a model, which may incorporate those statistics, and predict an outcome.
Deleted
The answer is yes. With somewhere around zero to a hundred percent accuracy. Next question.
Bill Watterson said it best:
http://www.webskinz.com/photoshop_intro/projects/
Any predictions?
And starts a war 100% favored by the military-industrial complex and big oil, in an area that is maybe 40% pro-US (if we're lucky), and expends ~120% of the lives taken on 9/11, and spends another 100% of the previous National debt to do it, it seems like the odds of success are somewhere down in the 10% range to me.
But then what do I know? I never went AWOL from the Alabama National Guard...
subscription required
Yet another example of parasitic middlemen who seek to profit from someone else's work. Yeah the cost of distributing a 600k PDF file is really $25 per copy. Oh and before someone starts screaming about how the author deserves to make money - as far as I know, scientists do NOT earn money for their publications. They earn the ability to put their publication on their resumé, and that's it.
Peer review can easily be handled at the university level, by people who are on salary (after all, if ethics committees can exist, so can peer review). I pay thousands of dollars a year in professional magazine subscriptions, yet if I'd like to apply my mind to something outside my field for _fun_ or _curiosity_, apparently I have to pay the parasites even more.
After we kill all the lawyers, lets kill all the publishers, please.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I have to disagree with this characterization of Israel - we don't have any significant amount of force based there, and we've never to my knowledge used it as a base from which to project power into the region, so I don't think it makes sense to refer to Israel as our "regional aircraft carrier". Israel is an important ally in the region, but that's not the same thing at all.
Yes, and it's a great game! In it, you can win.. sort of. Or at least lose less than others. The game does not, of course, deal with post-apocalyptic world (see Fallout, Fallout 2).
We had reliable estimates of what was likely to happen before we invaded Iraq. We did it anyway. We have reliable guesses now as to the likely outcome if we stay. But we're not leaving. The point here is that sometimes people don't behave rationally, and better statistics about the outcome are not likely to change that.
Can statistics predict the outcome of war? Yes.
Will they be right? Probably not.
There is no such thing as an accurate predictive model, all systems succumb to good ol' chaos theory.
The summary states a somewhat precise estimate for ultimate success.. but what is the objective? At what point does one declare "Mission Accomplished, we've achieved ultimate success". What are the outcomes that would make the mission fall into one of the 70% or 30% buckets of failure or success. "Supporting a weak government" is a highly relative and ambiguous objective, (even if that is the real objective), while success and failure are binary outcomes.
This seems more like knowing the answer to the Ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42, without really knowing what the question is..
>>extending the mission past this to support a weak government
>>has dropped the probability of ultimate success to 26%.
"So you're telling me there's a chance!"
- Lloyd, "Dumb and Dumber"
What is the probability of the Empire winning?
>At what point does one declare "Mission Accomplished, we've achieved ultimate success".
;)
May 1st 2003.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
98% of statistics are made up on the spot
I've posted the text below to today's thread on vegetable oil, but I think it's relevant for this thread, so here goes a copy:
The actual reason your (I'm Brazilian) government doesn't do this [the message I was replying to suggested USA simply stopped using foreign fuels] isn't because of oil itself. It's because it has since the 1970s a deal with OPEC by which all OPEC countries would accept only US dollars as payment for their oil, no matter who was purchasing it.
Now think about it: Germany, Brazil, China etc. want to purchase oil. Their currency isn't US dollar, it's something else. So, they must first acquire US dollars, and then use these dollars to purchase the oil. How do they do obtain US dollars? Well, the US government doesn't give US dollars to other countries for free, to get some they must sell goods to USA. At good prices, mind you, otherwise Americans won't purchase their goods, but those sold by some other country.
All these countries get the US dollars they need to purchase oil. But not only this amount. Imagine what would happen if for some reason Americans slowed down the purchase of their goods? No US dollars, no oil. Pretty bad, eh? So, all countries build reserves with billions of US dollars, as a way to purchase oil when and if the need arises. Now, obviously, some of these US dollars do come back to USA, otherwise USA would have no exports at all. OPEC countries, for instance, import lots of things from USA. They have tons of US dollars available due to only accepting this as a means of payment. Even so, though, most of these US dollars remain outside USA. Everyone has it, and everyone needs it, so other countries also allow exchanging goods among themselves using US dollars.
Now, US dollars reserves in foreign countries, as well as foreign exchange of goods using US dollars, both cause one important effect, more important than the above mentioned cheap import goods: less US dollars inside USA. And less dollars inside USA equals low inflation. In other words, this system allows USA to export its inflation to other countries, so that Americans themselves don't feel it. Were all the US dollars abroad come back to USA, and USA would feel a recessive inflation so extreme that 1929 would pale in comparison.
So, as I said in the beginning, the problems isn't oil itself. It's the money supply. Were OPEC to begin accepting other currencies, all these US dollars floating outside USA would be far less needed, thus starting to flow back into USA. And, guess what? Some months before USA deciding to wage war on Iraq, Saddam Hussein had decided to accept other currencies. Recently Iran has also shown interest in doing so. And what we began to hear? That USA is thinking about waging war on Iran.
So, don't be fooled. No matter whether the government is Republican or Democrat, any President of the USA will do the exact same thing. Because not doing, by allowing OPEC to accept other currencies, will mean years or even decades of extreme suffering to the American people. And no one has any idea how to solve the problem by any means other than bullying OPEC countries into conformance.
On the other hand, China, Russia, the European Union, all of them hate this system, because it ties their development to whatever is happening inside USA. And all of them would love to have their currencies among those accepted by OPEC countries, for this would yield them the same benefits USA have: inflation export and direct, non-USA dollar backed, cheap goods imports from all those countries who would need to build reserves of their currencies.
Do you smell 3rd World War on the air? I do. In a few years, decades if we're lucky, at everyone's backyard.
[PS for this statistics thread: if you consider that the actual goal is to stop OPEC countries from accepting currencies other than the US dollar, then so far it's being successful. Maybe not 100% so, but nevertheless more than if there were no war. Add this consideration to the statistical analysis and I bet its result would be very different.]
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Nice post. And me without mod points.
I am 80% (maybe more) certain that he is being sarcastic.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
its easy if you just let them change the definition of 'success' :(
:(
:(
or reasons for going to war
or the words used to describe the inevitable
or let them point at the other mob and say 'its their fault'
New realities? What is new? Nothing is new, save perhaps the scale.
There is nothing essential about the Iraq war which is new: the government of two countries are at odds, one sends troops into the other and eviscerates the existing government, attempts to instantiate a more friendly government in its place, and spends years trying to be nice to the population at large while quelling violent opposition.
"Asymmetric warfare" is nothing new; it has simply re-emerged as a relevant issue after decades of being more focused on symmetric warfare. The American academia and military are ditching the Cold War mindset they've been stuck in since 1947, and adjusting to the old realities of standard warfare and conflict resolution.
To deal with the old realities of asymmetric warfare, they are exploring the so-called notion of "hyperwar": the natural extention of blitzkreig, Sherman's March, etc., with an attempt to achieve great speed without the "scorched-earth policy". This was indeed achieved in Iraq, with the primary goal (overthrow of Saddam) achieved practically in a matter of days. The under-appreciated and under-handled old issue - separate from the initial goal - is coping with the subsequent power vacuum.
If anything is "new", it's the operational precision which results in (this will freak some out) astoundingly low casualties: rates which take years to accumulate into what was suffered in months or days in prior wars.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
What will determine if this model is interesting is whether it does better than the models it replaces. For instance, the draft states that a model that predicts that the militarily stronger state will win is right only about 60% of the time (looking either at wars in the last 200 years or at major power interventions in the last 60). This model claims to be right 80% of the time.
So, if people adopted this model, they could avoid 20% of wars/interventions by realizing that they were going to lose even though the old model said they would win.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
First, this sort of exercise is done all of the time in quantitative political science; the main difference is that most universities don't issue press releases on it. Check out http://polmeth.wustl.edu/ to get a sense of what is currently being done.
Second, the zillion comments that an in-sample test is not a forecast are correct but the field has been aware of this for, oh, maybe a century or two. Sorry guys, prior art. That said, what an in-sample tests does provide is a lower bound on the possible accuracy: no statistical model is going to provide 80% accuracy predicting a table of random numbers, for example. As a rule-of-thumb in these things, the out-of-sample forecast will be about 10% to 20% less accurate than the in-sample -- no theoretical reason this should be true, but I've seen it a lot.
War does change and yes, we have noticed that there has been a shift to fourth generation warfare, asymmetrical warfare, whatever you want to call it, and much of the current professional literature reflects this. However, this has to be balanced by institutional inertia, which is huge, particularly among major powers (witness the very slow rate of adaptation by the US in Iraq versus the very rapid rate of innovation by the insurgency). That still gives you predictability.
Finally, $age Publications are friggin' parasites; you can be darn sure that the author is not making a penny off of this, and the sooner we shift to open-access models for government-financed publications, the better
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
This is not a new idea... the Rand Corporation tried doing this during the Cold War. The problem anyone will face when trying to predict a war through mathematics is that it assumes that both sides are going to behave rationally in everything they do. There was a BBC documentary done in the early 90's called Pandora's Box-- the second episode in the series, To The Brink of Eternity, focused almost exclusively on the Rand Corporation's exploits. I'd recommend watching it if you'd like some historical perspective on the same issue.
The problem has been that W. has worked hard to pervert the CIA and other agencies to be nothing but yes-men. The CIA has predicted exactly what would happen and this occupation has taken the exact path that the CIA predicted. Sadly, at every fork where we had to make choices, the neo-cons picked the worse choice that they could. All in all, this has made 'nam look positively brilliant.
Nice point about the superpower. While there is no doubt that W. has caused America to lose a lot of power, I wonder if he has destroyed our superpower status. In light of how much we have to negotiate over North Korea and Iran, It would appear so. I suspect that his occupation combined with his deficits (and reagan's), is our undoing. Sadly, it takes about a decade to tell how things go. For example, USSR died in the 70's. It was not until the 80's that it became apparent. Of course, reagan helped extend the USSR by restoring the selling of cheap grain and other trade to them, in spite of their invasion of Afghanistan.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I was all set to make exactly your points when I see you have done it perfectly. Thank you.
That's just stupid. Give anyone any PAST war and they can tell you who won 100%.
In South Africa blacks had no part of the political process. In Israel, there are Arab parties, Arab members of parliament, Arab diplomats, etc. I fail to see how the democracies of the two countries are the same. One is exclusive while the other is inclusive.
Michael Dinowitz House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com
America: What are the chances of a nation like you and a nation like me... ending up together, in peace?
Iraq: Well, that's pretty difficult to say.
America: Hit me with it! I've come a long way to free you, Iraq. The least you can do is level with me. What are my chances?
Iraq: Not good.
America: You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?
Iraq: I'd say more like one out of a million.
[pause]
America: So you're telling me there's a chance.
A black hole is where God divided by 0
While statistics can help predict certain aspects of war fought according to historical conventions it can not account for an experienced and innovative commander that does not conform to the conventional concepts. For more info see Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and specifically the section on The Millenium Challenge where the US war games went horribly askew due to the brillian and primative tactives of the man playing the "rogue state". The sad part is the DoD made them reset the game and "outlawed" his tactics rather than learn from what had happened.
They all usually do - they aren't the ones being shot at.
The best ones, like the Kaiser, usually go in with the question of "what's the worst thing that can happen, and how can I minimize the chances of that happening?".
But nowadays they would be considered wafflers, and not confident enough.
"First you get the Linux, then you get the power, THEN you get the women"
I don't know about that exact quote, but a few dozen sites seem to attribute the quote "Peace is the interlude between two wars" to an Indian spiritual leader called "Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba". There are other attributions (such as somebody's unnamed boss), but this seems to be the most popular. If nothing else, try a google search with 'interlude' as one of the key words (along with war / peace).
Just in case that hits the nail on the head - send your $5 to a Multiple Sclerosis research center plzkthx.
But can it predict if Colt .45 truly works EVERY time?
"But this one goes to 11!"
"If you know some key variables - like the major objective, the nature of the target, whether there's going to be another strong state that will intervene on the side of the target and whether you'll have an ally - you can get a sense of your probability of victory,"
Gee, thanks for the brain flash, Professor. The upshot here is that when all is certain, future events can be predicted. That should prove to be extremely helpful to policymakers in this certainty-filled world of ours.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
You fools owe the conservatives for everything you have. The worst atrocities in human history were all done by liberals. In fact, conservatives fought these liberals, because conservatives are for the "status quo." Liberals are all about growing in new directions.
We conservatives said the Communism was flawed. You didn't believe us. We argued against the Prohibition. You arrested us... The crackpot ideas of our time, the greatest wastes of human achievement known- these were caused by liberals, destroying the old to make way for the new...
Conservatives are the ones who like things the way they are. The liberals want to change things to make it 'better'. The liberals are certainly right sometimes, and clearly wrong other times. Any crackpot with delusions of grandeur can say how things should be, and everyone with fear of the unknown rails against change. Certainly liberals have been as horrible about purging those who opposed them as conservatives have been. Check out the French and communist revolutions.
Claiming that liberals and progressives are 'good' because they want to change things is silly. If the change is good, it should be made, if it's bad, it should be avoided. People who fear all change are the idiots you suggest them to be, and the people who radically transform society often make it into a much worse place.
Of course, it really sounds like your grief is with the current Republican party, and you're claiming that all the great accomplishments of Humanity were made against the will of idiots like them. I think they're idiots too, but I'm not going to lump them together with every other idiot throughout history. After all, there are at least 3 kinds of idiots, the ones who vote Republican, the ones who vote Democratic, and the ones who don't vote at all.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Her study methodology was prone to over-fitting: She used the same data for training and validation of the model, so no comment can be made on how well her model would predict future wars. Here's what she should have done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-validation
Doesn't the very act of announceing to the public a possible percentage alter the very percentage that she has given by putting a new factor into her equations by annoinceing the possible outcome?
I looked through a lot of quotes about life and they are all bullocks.
Are you suggesting there wasn't a better outcome that could have been negotiated without having a war?
Plausibly, there was. Might also have prevented the horrid mess of the US Civil War, too.
I'm advocating the construction of a future in which we don't slaughter each other anymore. We are human beings, not lions or baboons. We're able to exchange knowledge to better ourselves and thereby avoid conflict through negotiation and compromise.
We're still animals. And, yes, while we have the abilities to exchange knowledge, negotiate, and compromise, the use of the first does not assure the latter two will be used, nor does anything assure that we'll even exchange knowledge.
For example... say you have a bundle of cash and a couple of cute college age daughters. (Unlikely combination, but just barely imaginable; Warren Buffett might have managed it if his daughter had had an identical twin.) I'm a sociopath who'd like to kill you, take your money, brainwash the girls, and add them to the harem of human sex toys I keep locked in my basement. It's not in my interest to exchange knowledge with you (since you probably don't know if they're carrying any STD's); even if I'm crazy enough to do so, I'm not sure there's any "compromise" to my "proposal" we'd agree on.
The problem with many idealists is they assume everyone will choose to be good, rather than selfishly evil. Evil is always a possibility; society tries to discourage it, and increases the probabilities of undesirable consequences. However, no matter how many meddling kids it throws at the problem, there's always a chance of getting away with it... and often the chance is perceived wider than it is. If the outcomes posed by being good are sufficiently undesirable (like being born black and poor in a ghetto), the potential gains of being evil (like becoming a violent crack dealing pimp) become more palatable. The nature of evolution is that almost any possible strategy gets tried, and it only needs to prosper slightly and sometimes to continue on down towards eternity.
Yeah, it would be nice if we didn't kill each other. However, we're still a pretty stupid species, and the societies we run around in (which are also subject to evolutionary pressures) are universally moronic. War isn't going away any time soon.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
"if only they'd known; failure maybe triggered the collapse of the USSR"
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe failure was intended. In politics, hardly anything DOES NOT go as intended I learned throughout the years.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton secretly wants to extend the troop presence (and hence conflict) in Iraq through 'her second term', NPR recently revealed HERE ahref=http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/The_New_Pr ince_Hillary_Clinton_s_Duty_to_Mislead_One_More_De cade_in_Iraqrel=url2html-6277http://digg.com/2008_ us_elections/The_New_Prince_Hillary_Clinton_s_Duty _to_Mislead_One_More_Decade_in_Iraq>
... well hours to be honest. The Lizard Queen publically speaks about bringing the troops home, but secretly will continue the occupation and 'wars without end'. Truly an Orwellian, or Machiavellian stepford candidate.
This is the most disgusting thing i've read in
Let's see what will the republicans bring to the table? An *ACTOR* Thompson perhaps? (Who will be the director, hmmm?)
The only candidate who will keep his promise to stop the wars without end, and who has the financial acumen to heal our national maladies is Ron Paul.
No comparison. No question.
But this is not the first attempt (unsurprisingly) at trying to put together an objective system of predicting military outcomes. Actually, lots of models have been applied, such as the Tactical Numerical Determinisitic Model with varying degrees of success.
My tank got killed by a frig'n phalanx despite the 100 to 1 odds!
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
Here is a question for you to ponder; could Israeli Arabs vote themselves equal rights? Something as simple and basic as equal rights is out of the question for Israel's majority.
How do we prevent the contamination of our precious bodily fluids?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
It's not quite the same, but this, from Mark Twain's What is Man, has a certain similairity: "Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. ..And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man"--with his mouth."
War has _always_ been about politics (or economics, which is virtually the same thing), and geographical objectives are chosen (or forced upon the combatants) in support of those goals.
Nothing new their either - sociological aspects have long played a role in ending and/or winning wars. Compare the ends of WWI and WWI in Europe with each other and with the end of WWII in Japan for example. (And compare the occupations of Germany and Japan at the end of WWII.) Examine the War of the Roses and the English Civil War, etc... etc...
American academia (just like their European counterparts) have been studying this type of war for decades (centuries?) - because it's nothing new. Conquering territory and winning the hearts and minds of a hostile populace (or eradicating them outright) goes back at least as far as the campaigns of Julius Caesar.
Statistics of a general order cannot, alone, determine the course of a war. Because the statistics can change. Consider World War II: when Pearl Harbor was bombed, they changed tremendously. It was, in some ways, an incredibly wonderful day for the Britain, Canada, Russia, etc... -- because of the production abilities of the US. (Yes, a service based economy is a terrible strategic disadvantage in a war scenario. Re-tooling to that scale for a long term conflict would take decades.) The numbers changed on that day. The statistics changed with Lend-Lease, too, and when it was extended to Moscow. Had our carrier fleet been at anchor in Pearl along with Battleship row, or had midway gone against us instead of so heavily in our favor, the west coast of the continental US would sooner or later have begun to suffer bombing campaigns, which would necessarily make us re-orient our "Germany-First" policy, and very much changed the course of the war. What if Churchill hadn't been so damn stubborn about refusing a separate peace? What if the fellows at Bletchley Park hadn't been quite so good, or the intercepted message to the Japanese Ambassador in Washington had been decrypted the night it was intercepted, in time to warn Pearl of the attack? It's not just about attrition...
While the statistics can tell you a lot, a single individual can cause shifts in policy which effect the course of a war, even to the extent of determining whether it's won or lost. You do need the statistics, but they're not everything.
It is not separate. The Arab parties many times have been a deciding coalition member in Israeli governments. To say they have no real power is to ignore the actual political situation there. Would a police officer in South Africa be jailed for beating a Black? The answer is no. But when an Israeli police officer beats and Arab, he's put on trial and jailed. BIG difference. Now you say equal rights. Define them. What rights need to be equal? Right to speak? Right to worship? Right to travel? Right to work at whatever job they want? All possible.
Michael Dinowitz House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com
Let's say I predict US has a 51% chance of winning if it invaded Canada. Does a US victory validate my model is correct? Does a US failure invalidate the model? It's not like we can just rewind time and run this experiment 100 times and see how often US actually defeated Canada.
What she's saying makes some sense. In retrospect at least, Germany wouldn't have been the odds on favorite in either world war. But those were different wars with different expectations of what "victory" was. I doubt this lady can read the minds of the politicians (Bush or Pelosi or anyone) and figure out what the final objective of the conflict in Iraq is. No one is going to agree on it, particularly if we can't even agree on why we're their now. With that in mind, this lady can come up with any findings she wants, not that I'm implying she might have an agenda. People will note that the far-left (Karl Marx, environmentalists) and the far right (Adolf) have invented their own "science" to justify their politics. One of the problems with the time we live in is that "science" (which often really amounts to advancing lies and half-truths with bad statistics and false assumptions) is not thought of as an objective way of testing an assertion but simply a way to squelch debate. In the end, the simplest questions about this conflict in Iraq revolve around one thing that has little to do with science: ideology. If you don't want politics to taint your "science", try answering simple questions and don't make sweeping conclusions from the answers.
The point was that US's war in Vietnam was a failure, not some glorious act that stopped communism. It was something self-produced and then lost abjectly. It actually pushed two _additional_ countries to communism: Laos and Cambodia.
How the heck can _that_ count as having won the fight and stopped communism? That's what I'm primarily ranting about. Because that's the kind of boast I was answering to. Basically, "yeah, see, if you look at the big picture, we actually won the war, 'cause we stopped the communist expansion." Not an exact quote, but that was the gist of it.
That said, if you want to get bogged in further details:
You mean just like the USA did in Vietnam and Korea? Or the way the USA couped the neutral Cambodia just because they needed a yes-man at the helm who'd allow the Americans to bomb his country? (Surrealistic as that may sound, that's just what happened there.)
Or do you ever wonder why Iran hates the USA and the west now? Because the CIA couped their democratically elected government and re-installed the brutal autocratic shah. You know, better have a dictator as your puppet than a democratic government with delusions of self-determination rights. (Unfortunately, all that hatred against the shah and the westerners who installed him, then got harnessed by the islamists in a bloody insurrection.)
Or a few other places? Believe it or not, the USA was _very_ active in installing and supporting banana-republic dictators left and right. The suicide keyword was "left". Just say that your views are left-side, and you'd get couped by the CIA in no time. And then they'd teach your successor how to torture dissidents. Literally.
Heh. That's champions of democracy and human rights at work for ya. _Obviously_, that's so morally superior compared to the Soviets
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I think many who have seen the hit documentary "Supersize me" would agree that, while making cheeseburgers might involve a certain level of intelligence, eating them clearly does not.
... can it really be something so simple as a purely animal activity?
I do like your analogy between the simplicity/complexity of War and Sex. Where does Rape fit into the picture, though? When making a moral judgement (which this thread is trying to do), questions of Intent and Consent have to come into play. I hope most of the people reading this thread recognize the difference between Rape and a couple adults enjoying a pleasant passtime. I think a parallel can be meaningfully drawn: a War where only those who consent to fight are involved is a morally different sort of thing from a War where bystanders are murdered, or one where there is a forced draft.
Consider an analogy to sports, such as U.S. Football: the people who are "fighting" on the field are people who choose to fight, based on the rules of the engagement. When someone breaks those rules, they involve the other players in a fight they did not agree to participate in. Throwing punches in professional hockey is expected, and playing that game means accepting the rules surrounding it (penalty time). Throwing punches is *not* part of the agreement when playing Tennis, so there would be some moral outrage involved if someone did it.
Someday, maybe human society will evolve to the point where Terrorism doesn't exist and Wars only occur between people who consent to rules of engagement. I think the fact that we can *conceive* of the idea is proof that we're evolving towards it. And if Society is evolving its behavior regarding War
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there's a big difference.
Statistics are by nature quantized information and not accurate at all for precision.
They exist only so Statisticians won't go on welfare and someone can have a guess look official on paper.
'Nuff said.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
The author assumes free access to the actual variables involved. Few people actually have access to the real reasons for pursuing combat. The majority get reasons that the few want them to have. Basing the statistics on these would produce invalid results. The few pursue combat for reasons of their own, and are willing to gamble on the outcome because they can arrange to benefit regardless of the outcome (Vietnam had its own Haliburtons; President Johnson was a major shareholder in two of them). They wouldn't use such a statistical method because they intend to change their reasons as the situation demands according to their own profit.
The author would benefit (or maybe throw her hands up in despair) from reading not only such writers and researchers of actual activity vs. public policy as Noam Chomsky, but also political analysis of decision makers and decision making as taught to those charged with carrying out the activities as taught in War College. The former provides the reader with the OMG! portion, the latter tells you who gets the ponies.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
So what does she say out odds are of winning the 'war on terrorism'?
Hmm, first we had 76% chance of winning the war in Iraq, and now it is 26%?
I'm not trying to be a troll, but this post sounds more like reviewing historical data and coming to obvious conclusions about what is already known. I've always heard that statistics can be used to say anything.
What are the odds of my post being modded up to a 5? What are the odds of my post being modded down to a -1?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Would you be troubled if America treated Jews the way that Israel treats it's Arab minority? Read this; http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/nimer_sultany/ 2007/04/dont_call_it_discrimination.html.printer.f riendly
In Israel a man who murdered thousands of women and children is elected prime minister rather than tried for genocide.
Oh, right, about the right... here's one fun concept for you: McCarthyism.
You know, let's persecute some people for _maybe_ having a different political point of view. Obviously unlike the USSR who was doing the same thing.
Have you heard of this guy? Helped develop the atom bomb that won the Pacific war. During McCarthyism and being branded a communism, he found himself:
A) unable to find work in the USA, because the FBI was actually sending threatening letters to potential employers, and
B) denied a passport, so he couldn't go find work somewhere else either.
Land of the free at its finest, really. So much for the right being sane at the time, eh?
It wasn't a new thing either. A similar commission, even if slightly less rabid had been in effect before the war too.
Did you also know that the right in the USA already had a long history of calling anything it didn't like a "communist plot"? Women's suffrage? According to the right, that was a communist plot. Laws against child labour? You guessed, red commie traitor plot too. Etc.
So, heh... regardless of how you feel about the the USA on the whole after WW2... the right was _nuts_. At times _rabidly_ nuts, at times just vocally nuts, but nuts nevertheless
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Those statistics for the Iraq war look a lot like Bush's approval rating. Maybe we could use that to predict the outcome of the war.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
but extending the mission past this to support a weak government has dropped the probability of ultimate success to 26%.
Success? Don't you have to know what the actual goal is before you can talk about the probability of obtaining that goal?
Does anyone actually know what the goal in Iraq is anymore?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
For those following along, the amount of currency traded EVERY DAY is equivalent to the entire ANNUAL GDP of China. The annual currency trades are about 20 times that of the US GDP. One month sees about the same money flow as the combined GDPs of the US and the EU. Annually more currency is traded than the actual GDP of the world.
That's a bit of cash flowing around...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
When I see anything that could remotely be classed as "emoticon" I instinctively turn my head (or usually just rotate the screen in my mind as if i turned my head) to the left. In that orientation, 3 doesn't look anything like a heart. It does look like something else, that is definitely not a heart, though...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Ah, poor liberals. You can't engage in actual debate so you just mod facts down as flamebait.
Wow, using hindsight, I can make up any whack-job theory and claim that its accurate, then apply it to some current event that I'd like to try and sway people to my viewpoint. Nice science slashdot... this is really great "news for nerds, stuff that matters". What a crock.
From the article you link to:
"Probability always lies between 0 and 1. If probability is equal to 1 then that event is certain to happen and if the probability is 0 then that event will never occur."
"certain to happen" doesn't sound to me like "almost surely".
Figures show that they will predict correctly some of the time.
World: There are lots of tyrants, what about the ones killing lots of people RIGHT NOW?
USA: We're going after this one.
World: The RICH one, huh. Whatever, we won't stop you or put up trade sanctions or anything.
USA: That means you're fighting on his side! With us or against us!
World: My god your an asshole, but he's even worse. Kill your own soldiers in the oil grab and good luck trying to keep the middle east under control.
USA: Canada are you with us?
Canada:All our troops are fighting with you in Afghanistan. Does even the USA have enough troops to start a second war?
USA: Don't you want to stop terrorism! Otherwise you're a terrorist
Canada:I thought you were talking about Iraq? Finding Osama Bin ...
USA: Mentioning failures is supporting terrorism!
A tyrant is sitting on enough oil to shake the world economy. US actions make complete sense when oil is factored in and take strange convoluted loops otherwise. Even if you personally don't believe this, many people in the US and worldwide do. Now consider people in Iraq might think while still occupied years after Saddam is gone and WMDs are found to be a joke? Poor ignorant Iraqies might confuse bombs dropped from planes for WMDs even.
No Bush could not have just bought the oil; US citizens would not support trillions of dollars in trade with a tyrant who would use the money to build WMDs. Other countries were well ahead in negotiating trade.
Most importantly, what justified a new war while you are still fighting a war in Afghanistan?
WMD and defense of the USA! Is that a joke? Okay, maybe you were surprised that Saddam had already used all the chemical weapons sold to him by the USA, but aren't places like say North Korea a bit more of a concern.
Iran glaces over: "Shit we got oil and gas, too and the US will invade regardless of any evidence or weapon inspector claims just like Iraq. Unless we actually do have nukes (or they think we do), in which case the US backs down like for North Korea."
Then there is terrorism. After watching Fox News, for some reason you ended up thinking Al Qaida was linked to Iraq. Information sources outside the US (and those inside the US that focus more on facts) all seem in remarkable agreement that their was no link before the US invaded, because Saddam ruthlessly crushed anything that could potentially threaten his power.
Americans seem a bit confused about terrorism, especially for a country that insists its citizens should be allowed guns in case they need to overthrow their government in terrorist/revolutionary manner. Wars don't tend to make people like you better, especially when innocent people get killed.
Say Canada decides it's going to kill drug dealers and mafia in the US. Most US citizens don't like those people, so it's okay at first. Now imagine people are getting killed in the cross-fire, say 30 000 or so American civillians although not that many Canadian soldiers. Now how many Americans are rabidly anti-Canadian after their little sister and neighbour were accidently blown up?
The final possible justification is to help the people of Iraq. Instead of say the people of Sudan, or say roughly 50 billion dollars to bring AIDS under control in Africa or the people of Afghanistan, who really could have used the extra troops to finish the war there quickly. Actually there are too many ways to list that all that death and money could have aided humanity better.
Everyone knows its oil. That's why the US and all other countries act the way they do.
There is no hunger in the USA, there is only Food Security. The US will not retreat in Iraq, there will be a Tactical Redeployment. Anything between 0% and 100% is going to come with spin :p
This approach is useless for one simple reason: it would appear to be inapplicable as long as one side is unwilling to muster its full ability to project force.
If the model is looking at our current situation, it is not taking into account the fact that we have the ability to drastically improve our ability to win, if needbe - whereas the terrorists/insurgents/Islamists do not. We are not utilizing our Air Force or Navy in the least bit, and our Army and Marines are serving as (mostly) police. We have not used even the level of tactics we displayed during WWII in Europe, let alone the level of force (which is now substantially more potent than in 1943).
In short, we could win this hands down. Yes, there would be untold collateral damage. But the problem would be neutralized and the people subdued: fuck around with your trivial religious differences or attempt to enslave a people, and you'll have the hammer drop.
If the insurgents and separatists were afraid of us and that we'd likely decimate a neighborhood which opened fire on us, do you really think they'd be willing to attack us? For that matter, don't you think the Iraqis would put up with the insurgents operaitng out of their neighborhoods?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
the US started off with a 70% chance of a successful regime change, which was duly achieved
Um, there was some regime obliteration as I recall. I don't understand the current structures of authority in Iraq to constitute a government but in name. Effective local government is in the hands of armed mobs, effective national government is non-existent and *Coalition* control barely extends beyond its bases.
illegitimii non ingravare
Excuse me, but Jews are the majority in Israel, at about 80% of the population. Your attempt to call Arabs the majority betrays your conflation of Palestine with Israel. They are two different nations. Please feel free to write back if you have an accusation that doesn't stem from that fundamental flaw in your logic.
Can statistics predict what will cause a war?
That's the million dollar question. Wars are like herpes. There is no cure, and when they break out the first priority is to beat them into remission. No one "wins."
The outcome of a war is always bad. We need to work on prevention and control.
--
Toro
I couldn't find very many reliable sources to support these claims, but for those interested, here's the wikipedia topic (a start):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_warfare
One fact that appears to be valid is that U.S. dollars are required to purchase oil, but it is not clear how that affects the dollar's value and more importantly the U.S. government's decisions. Perhaps someone with more knowledge (economics?) can chime in?
I love attempting to use math and numbers to define day-to-day events.
That having been said, the notion that one could statistically predict the outcome of something so random and chaotic as war is highly unlikely.
I'm forecasting a 95% chance of bullshit.
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You write; "They are two different nations." I don't think that many people would agree that the Palestinians have a nation. Many Israelis want to take the occupied territories and cleanse them of the Palestinians in service to their ideal of "Greater Israel".
Israel is a country dedicated to maintaining Jewish supremacy, which is the nature of Zionism. Here is a discussion of Israel's racist laws; http://www.adalah.org/eng/backgroundlegalsystem.ph p
If you are a friend of Israel you do them no favors by letting them believe that they can have peace through oppression, they cannot! They should have learned that through 60 years of war. If Israel wants peace; it can had only through equal rights.
>> No statistical model, no battle plan can succeed if the people in charge can't even
>> make up their mind what they are fighting for.
You are in the illusion that there isn't an economic goal since day 1. There is, only it's not one that the US public is willing to support. Namely, control over strategic oil resources. The "Project for New American Century" stated and called for this many years before the war and even before 9/11, openly hoping for a new "Pearl Harbor." It was the giant American corporations and the cream of US government (during Bush tenure) that were writing that paper. They got exactly what they wanted with 9/11, and they got exactly what they wanted with the holy mosque bombings in Iraq that they can lay the blame on Al Qaeda for. There's evidence all of these were done by hired help or western agents pretending to be Al Qaeda. 9/11 was to motivate americans. The mosque bombings are to divide the Iraqis and create an "evil" among them that they can help support the americans to defeat, instead of allowing Iraqis to stand united against US occupation troops. Civil war and torture kidnappings were always part of Negroponte's repertoire and they started in Iraq as soon as he got there.
Two words: CHAOS and THEORY
The real question is can Star Trek be used to predict the future?i ties_(DS9_episode)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_Probabil
Stats was a long time ago, but I do remember this point that the stats prof made, because it was so non-intuitive.
Of course we're talking about mathematics here, not the real world. In the real world I'm not sure you'd ever have an infinite number of possible states something could wind up in (of course someone is bound to find an example of this)
AccountKiller
Calling simple factual statements about reality a "troll" is pathetically contemptible.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
To be fair, though, those estimates were given by humans, and it can always be claimed that a human is biased. It's much more difficult to claim that a machine is biased (particular examples like opaque voting machines aside...).
If Congress had had access to data like this, it's an interesting question as to whether they would have been as willing to vote for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (or whatever the heck BS name they came up with for the thing)...
It might still have happened, but it would at least have made people think more about it from the start.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.