Impossible, you say? That must be why Bueno De Mesquita's predictions have had something like a 90% success rate over the course of his career.
I also enjoyed the part where BDM engaged in a bit of retroactive predictioneering--ie, using only his prediction model & information widely available at the time to show that both the Cold War & its resolution were basically preordained at the end of World War II, that Britain likely could've prevented WWI, and Sparta might have survived but for its addiction to horse racing. It was also neat to see that predictions he & his students made in the last chapter using the model (the failure of the Copenhagen Conference to do anything about global warming, & the US upping aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion being enough to get them to stop making side deals with the Taliban Al Qaeda, but not to squash them completely) have come to pass since the book was written in '09.
Brilliant. If you want a friendly, interesting, not-too-technical introduction to game theory (and also how to save hundreds or thousands when buying a car), this book is for you.
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