Bruce Bueno de Mesquita Uses Games To See the Future

parallel_prankster writes "Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a professor of politics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. In his new book, The Predictioneer (The Predictioneer's Game in the US), he describes a computer model based on game theory which he — and others — claim can predict the future with remarkable accuracy. The website also has a game page where he provides an online version of the game and information on how to play." The (semi-paywalled; may need to register) New Scientist has a story on de Mesquita, too; a snippet: "Over the past 30 years, Bueno de Mesquita has made thousands of predictions about hundreds of issues from geopolitics to personal problems. Overall, he claims, his hit rate is about 90 per cent."

Comments

What's he predicted?

[Mr. Freeman]

I can believe a 90% hit rate. I can predict the future, and so can you, with 90% accuracy. See, if you don't claim to be able to predict EVERYTHING then you can easily "predict" obvious things.

I predict that tomorrow someone will die in the world.
I predict that tomorrow at least one person will spend $100 on a TV somewhere in the US.
I predict that tomorrow the temperature will be higher than 32 deg F in California.

Tomorrow look up these details and see how many I get right. I CAN PREDICT THE FUTURE!!

This guy claims to be able to predict "only certain things" which really means he's predicting things obvious even if it's not obvious that they're obvious. For example, he claims to be able to predict foreign policy. Did he predict foreign policy, or did he just watch the news and make some predictions based off of what all the political analysts are saying?

From TFA "These [predictions] include whether or not North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong II, would dismantle his nation's nuclear arsenal" How stupid do you have to be to believe that he "predicted" this? Everyone and their fucking aunt is watching the news, everyone is reporting on it, the government is doing fucking insane amounts of research and analysis as to what foreign leaders' views are regarding nuclear weapons. It's not that hard to make a guess as to what's going to happen when you have that much information available to you.