Using Game Theory to Predict the Geopolitical Climate
Game theory or the study of strategic or interactive decision making has been used across the board in a vast array of topics, including: economics, gambling, and psychology, with clear implications in logic, computer science, and mathematics. This subject initially got attention when it applied itself to zero-sum games, a game in which one person’s gains exactly equal the net losses of the other participant or participants. However, as the subject grew and developed, game theory branched out to a wide range of behavioral relations, developing into an umbrella term for the logical side of decision science. A cool and unique application is found in this article found (here): predictions of the geo-political climate.
In this article, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, an academic at New York University, utilized the princeps of game theory to make some very bold and accurate political forecasts by applying it to a game theory model that would predict the political outcomes of events given certain indicators as inputs. Mesquita’s model uses “numerical values [that] are placed on the goals, motivations and influence of “players”—negotiators, business leaders, political parties and organizations of all stripes, and, in some cases, their officials and supporters” as inputs and then uses these inputs to make judgement calls on what options are available to the other players and what is the likely course of action to each of the participants given their ability to influence others and as a result predict events that would outcome from such inputs. Some successful predictions: “in February 2008 Mesquita predicted that Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, would leave office by the end of summer. He was gone before September. Five years before the death of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, Mesquita correctly named his successor, and, since then, has made hundreds of prescient forecasts as a consultant both to foreign governments and to America’s State Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies.” In an impressive feat Mesquita has gamified the way politicians and world leaders interact and has developed a whole new strategy in predicting future courses of action in the geo-political sphere.
But why must it stop there? Maybe, with such predictions, we could use this information as a vessel to preemptively resolve political and military disputes before they even happen? Interestingly game theorists, who have considered these types of models have been quoted in the article to “take these variations to the same kind of problem, [and have] developed an intriguing conceptual model of war. ”
Who knows what his model says about the president election? Maybe it could be used to persuade some candidates to team up and challenge the clear front runner; the applications are endless.
“Game Theory In Practice”
http://www.economist.com/node/21527025