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jboolo

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  response to  Michael A.M. Lerner and Ethan Hill's post The New Nostradamus

  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.

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  Commented on April 17, 2008 by - jboolo