Comments on: Game theory and future forecasting

By: dave

dave — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

One of the unique things about GOOD Magazine BB readers might not know is the subscription of $20 goes to charity.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hari Seldon would be proud.

By: WTF Pancakes

WTF Pancakes — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

No, it’s Yogi Berra (not Bera) all right. The quote is actually “Its tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Yogi had a gift for the reflexive principle…

By: Nelson.C

Nelson.C — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

#8: I was going to point out the preponderance of google hits for Bohr +”Prediction is very difficult” compared to Yogi +ditto, but I found this, which suggests that it may in fact have originated in the Danish parliament in the 1930s. Was Yogi Berra Danish?

By: Dan Blum

Dan Blum — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If this is accurate, he must have improved his methods considerably since he wrote The War Trap. I was not at all impressed by that book. Some of it was based on handwaving, and the mathematical model was “confirmed” by data that was… idiosyncratic (the data was in an appendix).

By: Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

That story really had me going until I got to the part about the 90% accuracy rate. I’d have been seriously impressed if his predictions were accurate one time in three.

By: crashtested

crashtested — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is really fascinating, and completely bizarre if it really can predict what happens to individual people.

I’m not that impressed by its Hong Kong prediction though. That result had already been well known for 99 years.

By: Gag Halfrunt

Gag Halfrunt — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If Bueno de Mesquita 'foresaw that China would reclaim Hong Kong 12 years before it happened', that means that he made the prediction in 1985, after the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration established that Hong Kong would revert to Chinese control in 1997.

By: Andrew Denny

Andrew Denny — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If Bueno de Mesquita thought “that China would reclaim Hong Kong 12 years before it happened”, surely he was severely mistaken. Surely things happen when they happen, not 12 years before they happen?

Although come to think of it, someone called ‘George Bush’ did become President 12 years before it happened!

By: Pyros

Pyros — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

That’s really quite interesting and funny as when it was reported, “But he does not ask … what the experts think will happen.” Obviously what we have here is a truly brilliant individual.

By: Nelson.C

Nelson.C — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Er, Neils Bohr, surely? I know, physicist, baseball player, very easy to get them confused.