PART TWO: A Hat, those Lips, pose Akimbo and Prophesy Prefigure

[Lerner, M. A. M. 2007; SOURCE]
The New Nostradamus
Words By Michael A.M. Lerner | Photos By Ethan Hill

Can a fringe branch of mathematics forecast the future? A special adviser to the CIA, Fortune 500 companies, and the U.S. Department of Defense certainly thinks so.

If you listen to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and a lot of people don’t, he’ll claim that mathematics can tell you the future. In fact, the professor says that a computer model he built and has perfected over the last 25 years can predict the outcome of virtually any international conflict, provided the basic input is accurate.

What’s more, his predictions are alarmingly specific. His fans include at least one current presidential hopeful, a gaggle of Fortune 500 companies, the CIA, and the Department of Defense. Naturally, there is also no shortage of people less fond of his work.

“Some people think Bruce is the most brilliant foreign policy analyst there is,” says one colleague. “Others think he’s a quack.”

For instance -- Back in March 2004, when al-Qaeda bombed a Madrid train station, influencing the course of Spain’s general election three days later, a lot of U.S. security folks were nervous. Worried that al-Qaeda might try something similar here in the run-up to the November, 2004, presidential elections, the Pentagon hired Bueno de Mesquita to run some data through his forecasting model to tell them what to expect. The results were unequivocal. “I said there would be no homeland attack. I also indicated that bin Laden’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, would resurface around Thanksgiving, 2004,” he says. Just after the elections in November that year, Zawahiri released a new videotape. Bueno de Mesquita was right on both counts. “One of the things government needs most is advice that’s not wishy-washy. I try to be as precise as I can.” (GOOD; magazine)

[blah, blah, blah...] Then this Comment:

Do homework first.

For all of you who are questioning Bueno de Mesquita's methods, predictions, etc., I suggest you do your homework first. It's not all that difficult to find his publications. A quick internet search will yield his curriculum vita which lists most of them.

While many of you may not have access to them online, you can certainly go to any local university library and gain access to at least part of them. I would refer you first to his work entitled The War Trap (1981) which is a standard on most international relations reading lists (at least in graduate school).

Then I would direct you to a follow-up piece, "The War Trap Revisited," in the American Political Science Review. Then maybe you could check out some critiques of his work such as one that appeared in the June 1984 edition of The Journal of Conflict Resolution. That piece is followed by another piece by BdM defending his work. You can also check out works such as War and Reason (1992) co-authored with David Lalman or Forecasting Policy Futures and The Logic of Political Survival (2003) co-authored with Alastair Smith, Randolph Siverson, and James Morrow (quickly becoming a stable of graduate education in political science as well).

His predictions are not something conjured up as if out of a book of spells and incantations. His methods have been rigorously tested and critiqued over time by some of the top scholars in the field.

His methods, as with those of any other scholar of rational choice and game theory, are based on basic assumptions about values and preferences of individuals and societies as well as their attitudes toward risk.

Is he perfect in his predictions? No, of course he's not.

Does he do a good job? Yes. Calculating and predicting human action, even that which many people are not sure is understandable (like that of many dictators), is something BdM seems to have been able to do well thus far.

For those who are critics: Before you criticize him, I would suggest you try to find a more accurate means of prediction. Otherwise, you will not be heard, nor will your critiques.

Or we could just ask Brian Jones if these lines are parallel each other? And rely on the Eight Ball foreteller... or... who the hell knows? What do we want to know anyway... ?