Trò chơi của nhà tiên tri

by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Nguyễn Hằng (Translator)

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita can predict the future. He is a master of game theory, a rather fancy name for a simple idea: when people compete with each other they always do what they think is in their own best interest. Bueno de Mesquita uses game theory to foretell - and even engineer - political, financial, and personal events. In fact, Bueno de Mesquita's forecasts, for everyone from the CIA to major companies, have an astonishing ninety per cent success rate. In this startling and revelatory book, he describes his methods and allows us to play along.

Bueno de Mesquita explores the origins of game theory as formulated by John Nash, the Nobel Prize winner who became the subject of the film "A Beautiful Mind." He has developed Nash's ideas to create a rigorous and pragmatic system of calculation that enables us to think strategically about what our opponents want, how much they want it, and how they might react to our every move.

Bueno de Mesquita applies his methods to many of the most pressing issues of our day. He advises how best to contain the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea. He shows how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be resolved. He explains how corporate fraud can be anticipated and prevented. He addresses climate change and international terrorism: their likely evolution and our most effective response.

But, as Bueno de Mesquita makes clear, game theory isn't just for saving the world. It can also help in your own life - to succeed in a legal dispute, to advance your career or that of a colleague, and even to buy a car at the lowest possible price.

Shrewd, provocative and original, "Predictioneer" will change your understanding of the world - both now and in the future. If life's a game, then Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is the one essential member of your team.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Psychology, Economics, Business, Science, Mathematics

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist, professor at New York University, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in international relations, foreign policy, and nation building. He is also one of the authors of the selectorate theory.

He has founded a company, Mesquita & Roundell, that specializes in making political and foreign-policy forecasts using a computer model based on game theory and rational choice theory. He is also the director of New York University's Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy.

He was featured as the primary subject in the documentary on the History Channel in December 2008. The show, titled Next Nostradamus, details how the scientist is using computer algorithms to predict future world events.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Seyed Hashemi · Rating 1 out of 5]

حرص خوردن و فشاری شدنم از دست این کتاب دو مرحله داشت (مراحل توالی زمانی دارند):

اولش از این حرص می‌خوردم که کتابی که به عنوان منبع درسی بهمون انداختن نباید کتاب پاپ ساینس توی اون فیلد/رشته باشه مخصوصا توی نظریه بازی‌ها که به غایت فراوان منبع معتبر و خفن براش هست،

ولی بعدش که بیشتر کتاب رو خوندم خودِ ماهیت کتاب و اصل‌واساس‌اش حالم رو به‌هم زد. انگ زدن به مردم درست نیست، ولی انقدر منم منم توی متن هست انگار یه بنده‌خدایی با وضعیت بغرنج نارسیستی نوشته متن رو. در کنار این پر از ادعاها و حرف‌های شاذ و عجیبه. پر از تبختر کسی که دوتا دونه مدل‌سازی ابتدایی آماری، ریاضیاتی و مبتنی بر نظریه بازی‌ها بلده و بعدش دور افتاده که می‌تونم مثل نوستراداموس آینده رو پیش‌بینی کنم و حتی روی این مورد هم توقف نمی‌کنه و از "مهندسی آینده" هم تزسرایی می‌کنه.
خلاصه اگه جاهایی که نویسنده داره از خودش و کارهاش می‌گه و اطناب‌هایی که توی متن هست رو فاکتور بگیریم که برسیم به جانمایه و محتوای کتاب، نهایتا به یه جزوه 30 صفحه‌ای می‌رسیم. تازه دست بالا می‌گم.


واقعا حیف وقت. سریع پیش می‌رفت البته!

[Esteban del Mal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rational Self-Interest!*

This guy declares that everyone is an egotist. Nothing very earth shattering there. Then he sets about proving it by name dropping all the important people who have seen fit to pay him money to solve problems.

One gets the feeling that he's missed out on the cottage industry of pop prognostication that has sprung up in recent years (he even mentions how Nate Silver is the son of an old friend) and is desperately trying to get some street cred. It's as if the dad from Leave It To Beaver got on the Internet and started LOL-ing inappropriately and telling you how the intransigent geopolitical quandaries of the age are no different from haggling over the price of a new car with a cynical, albeit perfumed, salesman.

My estimation is that it's a clumsy book, but I'm sure he forecasted a certain amount of disappointment with startling accuracy.

______________________________

* now with algorithms!

[Atila Iamarino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Li este livro por conta do The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, que me impressionou muito. O Bruce Bueno De Mesquita trabalha com teoria dos jogos e predição e nesse livro explica como faz isso. Dá uma passada por cima (e uma atualizada) em teoria dos jogos e explica como formula as pequenas perguntas que usa para responder as grandes perguntas, como as chances de um país entrar em guerra com outro.
Vi muita ressonância com o que o Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction descreve sobre pessoas que realmente sabem predizer situações.


Também fica claro todo o começo do raciocínio do The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics aqui, mas não tão bem escrito. Não me acrescentou muito além do Dictator's, que recomendo mais para quem se interessar.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

De Mesquita's book is on the whole quite interesting, but ultimately very frustrating as well.

The essential idea is that he has created a computer model that simulates the interactions of multiple agents to predict the likelihood and form of an outcome. The basic form of the simulation is an iterated and evolving game. The inputs to the model are, apparently, purely quantitative representations of various attributes of those agents, including influence, salience and preferred outcome; the logic of the model is derived from game theory and rational choice theory.

What makes this intriguing is that De Mesquita's consulting firm apparently has had some signal successes with his predictions. He isn't shy about pointing to a CIA assessment giving him a 90 percent accuracy rate. More interesting, to me, is that he reports taking his model into the classroom of a skeptical professor and working the students through several analyses. Since those students provided the inputs and monitored the use of the model, it seems unlikely that it was being tweaked by its author — and since the model was used to successfully (at least according to the author) predict events several months in the future, its legitimacy is boosted.

The frustration of the book is that the model is proprietary, and De Mesquita provides practically no information regarding how it works. And its predictive powers as well as some of the details revealed should certainly raise skeptical eyebrows.

Why the cynicism?

First, the idea that complex negotiations and interactions can be reduced to simple numbers is tenuous itself. For example, he apparently believes that China's relative influence in negotiations over the regulation of greenhouse gases is 15, compared to the EU's influence of 87. Nuance and complexity are both elided.

Even if numbers can do the job, there is a big problem with knowing which numbers to include and which to ignore. Chapter 8 somewhat deals with this, when he acknowledges that his analysis of the Clinton health care effort came out completely wrong — because he included the House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dan Rostenkowski, who then went on to get himself indicted and convicted on corruption charges. If that actor had been left out of the equations, we are told the model would have done just fine.

The larger problem is that the modeler must explicitly choose beforehand what to include in the model, and any exogenous effects cannot be known of until they become salient. De Mesquita seems to be implicitly arguing that history is effectively convergent: as long as there is no "earthquake", an analysis that includes only trivial representations of the most major agents involved will still usually be correct.

As an example of how flawed this might be, consider his presentation of his analysis of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. Using only data that was known in 1948, he set up multiple somewhat randomized simulations of the following fifty years. On the face of it, his results are deliciously plausible: in 78 percent of the simulations, the United States emerged the sole superpower at some point during those fifty years; in 11 percent, the Soviet Union emerged the victor, and in 11 percent the conflict continued.

But he claims that his model predicted the formation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, "each of which emerged in almost every simulation as the nations' positions shifted from round to round according to the model's logic." (This is footnoted with a reference to the Journal of Conflict Resolution, but I'm not so obsessed that I'm going back to the source. Oddly enough, as an international relations student I subscribed to that journal back in 1998 when his article was published, but I don't recall reading it.)

But if you put numbers into the model, how is it going to create the answer that some specific organization or coalition was formed? Only by programming the question into the model. But that adds another set of variables, doesn't it? Which questions should be asked, and how do we interpret the numeric outcomes to mean which answers?


The idea that the future could be predicted and even shaped is tantalizing, but such a bold claim requires much more detailed evidence than De Mesquita is willing to offer about his treasured model.

P.S.: oddly, one of the more intriguing discussions in the book is a game-theoretic analysis of the decline of the Catholic Church's political hegemony after the Concordat of Worms in 1122. For those that do choose to read the book, this is a delightful tidbit in the final chapter.

P.P.S.: The book was well reviewed in the New York Times under the title "Forecast: Self-Serving" on 8 November 2009.

[Chris Esposo · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has aged poorly in the ten years since its publication. De Mesquita’s claim-to-fame is that he constructed "successful" game theory models for several intelligence agencies. I expected that a well-published academic like this would write something more along the lines of Judea Pearl's The Book of Why, which omitted most of the mathematical content, yet retained a lot of rich conceptual structure that provided useful ideas to the reader. Though Pearl’s graphical models may well lend themselves best towards visual thinking, while de Mesquita’s does not, what we have in The Predictioneers Game are brief outlines of several historical scenarios as well as others that were timely as of the public ation date. The author has applied his game theoretic reasoning but provides no real specification of the underlying model that he presumably leveraged, which stands in contrast to Pearl’s work where the model is explained in some conceptual detail.

The book makes reference to game trees several times, though no actual trees were depicted. A depiction of the trees would have helped, but even then such games are highly dependent on the payoffs presumed for each actor and how they relate to his or her moves; the problem is that specifying these payoffs and their relation to each actor’s moves seems arbitrary. It may well be that the author didn't feel this actually critical step in his model construction was relevant for the target audience. Either way, the result is that an informed reader of some technical acumen will likely find the analysis unconvincing.

It doesn't help to instill confidence in the savvy reader that de Mesquita opens the book with a scenario he claims to be profound and revealing but that ends up being nothing of the sort. The opening pages cover tactics for negotiating a better deal on a new car, but the solution ends up being a technically trivial and unsurprising resolution to the scenario. In fact, the strategy he promotes, to call dealerships and solicit bids on cars by revealing the current minimum one has gotten from other dealers, is one that a relative of mine has employed for years. This same relative never went beyond a high school education and came up with the strategy as a matter of common sense. Though game theorists and economists would likely respond to these critiques with a variation on the "as-if" argument, the author fails in his opening pages to convince the reader that the mechanics of his models will reveal anything profound.

Other scenarios provided, such as predicting an Iran-Iraq entente upon the withdraw of US forces from Iraq were foreseen in the pages of Foreign Affairs, just prior and during the second Iraq War (no fancy model needed), some six to seven years before this book was written. Another big case-study, predicting both World War I and the path of the Cold War were problematic. In both cases the author's analysis depends upon identifying all relevant actors within and between the European states in question, knowing their incentive structure correctly, correctly identifying maps onto some domain for his model parameters, then executing the simulation (hoping no one component is particularly ill-posed and will blow up or shrink up some critical set of parameters that would degenerate his end-result). How the author built this particular model would be interesting commentary but no such explanation was provided. Instead, we get an interesting, but totally achievable by non-technical means, analysis of the move and counter-move that informed the start of World War I. There's a similar study provided for the Cold War, wherein the author tries to answer the question of whether that conflict could have been concluded successfully much earlier.

Overall, the book is passable as a pop political science book. It fails to convince on the technical merits of de Mesquita's approach. Some aspects of his model building seem quaint in the era of machine learning, like his description of model validation and the power of the maximum likelihood estimators. This effect may have more to do with the rapid development in machine learning and less to do with the sophistication of the author when the book went to press, but the results are the same nonetheless. All-in-all, not recommended.

[Mostafa Bushehri · Rating 2 out of 5]

کتابی سرشار از کلی‌گویی، داده (و نه دانش!) و شرح ما وقع بدون اینکه اطلاعات دقیق و جزئی‌ای درباره عنوان و موضوع کتاب داده شود!

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has demonstrated the power of using game theory and related assumptions of rational and self-seeking behavior in predicting the outcome of important political and legal processes. No one will fail to appreciate and learn from this well-written and always interesting account of his procedures.
Kenneth Arrow, Stanford University

Organized thought applied to problems can illuminate and help solve them. This easy and enjoyable read is, in many ways, a how-to book for that very purpose.
George P. Shultz, Secretary of State

Shakespeare said that poetry was giving ‘to airy nothingness a local habitation and a name.’ Game theory has never been airy nothingness, but to those who through lack of exposure or (like me) the wrong kind of exposure years ago may have had such thoughts, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita follows Shakespeare's path and opens a new world. In Bueno de Mesquita's hands, game theory becomes a fascinating tool for understanding everything from how to steer the selection of a CEO to great swaths of both the past and future. Don't miss this one if you care about understanding how decisions are made–pretty much all decisions.
R. James Woolsey, CIA, Stanford's Hoover Institution

(de Mesquita is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution]

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I wasn't overly thrilled with this book

Natalie Kilpatrick

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Some people like it a lot

It is entertaining but you won't become knowledgeable in game theory or an expert predictioner from reading it. The book leaves a lot to be desired.

It doesn't properly explain game theory or how to deal with uncertainty and is mostly about himself with claims that the claims are substantiated, but are not.

If you are only interested in examples and don't want to go deeply into the subject to learn how, maybe this book is for you.

Some people like it a lot, and some see its flaws, so check out other reviews.

Gerry

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One Great Ego Trip for the Author

If you buy this book looking for an insight into the practical application of game theory and an informative guide on the application of quantitative analysis to political science - prepare to be deeply disappointed.

Bueno De Mesquita is mostly interested in explaining to the reader how extraordinary clever he and his model is - but gives virtually nothing to the reader who is interested in the mechanics of the application of the theory.

The book is mostly composed of superficial and highly subjectively presented case studies, with plenty of self-congratulatory prose on how extraordinarily accurate his modeling has been proven to be but with really nothing that you can sink your teeth into as to the details.

The few cases he does go into detail with are so simplistic that they really don't need a computer model applied - just a pencil and the back an envelope.

So, at the end of the book, you are left with the feeling of being cheated - the book promises some thought provoking and original perspectives - but the only viewpoint that I was left with was the one that attending a lecture by this egotistical academic would require a bucket (to vomit into) and an extra large room to accommodate his inflated ego.

Badger McBadgerface

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An advertisement, mostly

I'm interested in game theory, which is why I bought the book. Unfortunately, the book follows this formula throughout:

1. Here is a bunch of historical background on an issue, the outcome of which needed to be predicted
2. After I ran all the data through my top secret model, I made a prediction and I was right!

Occasionally, the prediction is wrong, which causes the author to refine the model.
Bully for him.

This book is basically an ad for world governments and corporations to hire him, there is little for the general reader.

vildegrul

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Interesting but where is the beef?

The book begins with good tips for buying a new car, followed by a nice intro about the basics of game theory, particularly for the laymen.

Therefore, those readers already familiar with game theory can jump directly to chapter 4. From here on I bear patiently asking myself "where is the beef?"

In the end Mr. De Mesquita does not shows how he actually applies game theory to make his almost always accurate predictions, particularly within the field of political sciences; he will just give a hint, and talk about his models, under which circumstances this approach is useful, how his students use it, and why he his predictions failed (the few times he did).

If his algorithms for game theory are proprietary (certainly they must be), then why did he bother to write this book? Ego? Marketing for his services? Quite a deception.

Emc2

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A few good ideas, but the amount of self promotion is distracting and annoying

It's hard to fully regret reading a book. Hey even if it sucks, you still got SOMETHING out of it, no matter how small, right?

This is sort of how I feel after reading The Predictioneer's Game. The author has a few good ideas here and there, but I don't think it's really worth buying and reading. After all, there's an opportunity cost as well - when you're reading this book, you could be reading a much better book and learning a lot more.

The author seems fairly intelligent and has some good ideas on how to approach problems. But 3 things kept bothering me as I read this.

1. the incessant self promotion (some colleagues say I'm magical, I've never made a bad prediction, my consulting team is always being called on to help make decisions..etc

2. the frequent mentions of this magical model that is never fully explained

3. the feeling I got as I continued to read that half of this was BS.

On the one hand he always refers to the model and only going by what the model says, but in example after example he gives mostly common sense reasoning behind his predictions and what he advised.

It's like someone who claims to have psychic ability, yet in all of their predictions they give common sense reasons for why something is going to happen.

I think if you took away all the self promotion crap, and references to the suspect model, you might actual have a decent book with some interesting ideas. Then again that book would probably only be about 25 pages long.

Bottom line: this book comes off as a sales pitch to hire the author as a consultant. He gives you enough information to impress you and gain his trust, but not enough to warrant reading a book. I'm sure he's a smart guy, but I'm not convinced in the model and I really didn't take away much from the book either.

zkcom1

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Better than a crystal ball

Wouldn't it be nice to not only predict how political disputes will be resolved, but also devise strategies to shape the outcomes? Indeed, and "the predictioneer" could expect to be richly rewarded.

Thus, the author recounts being offered a success fee of potentially over $1 billion for helping Mobutu of Zaire to retain power.

(Mesquita declined the offer - page 137)

The basic concept is game theory, where the analyst identifies the prime players and determines, for each, their preferences as to the outcome (including desire to receive public credit or not), relative influence or "clout," and determination about getting his or her way.

It is assumed that the players will act "rationally" in pursuing their goals, even if their goals may not be commendable.

Be prepared for what may seem a cynical view of human behavior, i.e., the primary objective of political leaders is to gain and retain power, senior corporate leaders may not be worried about the long-term interests of the shareholders, etc.

Also, the belief that some people just cannot be understood, e.g., the North Koreans or suicide bombers, is wrong. You simply need to consult the right experts or sources to come up with the assessments that are needed.

The details of Mesquita's model are not provided (most readers would not be interested anyway), but many applications are described:

(a) historical events that could have been predicted and perhaps changed (decline of Sparta after winning the Peloponnesian War, deal struck between Columbus and Ferdinand & Isabella, how the British could have averted World War I)

(b) client engagements for the US government (strategic assessments) and private firms (litigation, acquisitions)

(c) academic analyses of several issues that are still pending (e.g., will Iraq and Iran make a deal, will efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions be successful?).

Example: a large company was embroiled in criminal litigation with the US Department of Justice. Mesquita was supposedly able to "engineer" a better settlement for the client than would have been achieved if pre-trial discussions had proceeded along the contemplated lines (with hardliners within the Department of Justice eventually maneuvering their boss into a hardball stance). He did this using the client's data and the logic of his computer model, never mind the merits of the legal issues.

(see pages 89-101)

Mesquita's claims for his model are suspiciously one-sided. Thus, he mentions only one significant forecasting error: a 1990s prediction that HillaryCare would be enacted did not prove out, supposedly due to a fluke event (the fall from grace of the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Representative Dan Rostenkowski, D-IL)

Some of the cases sound overly simplistic. For example, does one really need a sophisticated computer model to conclude that leaving 50,000 US troops in Iraq for an indefinite period might have a big effect on the future behavior of key Iraqi leaders?

And can it really be that the US could persuade Pakistan to pursue internal militant groups more aggressively simply by doubling the foreign aid they are receiving?

The final chapter accepts the manmade global warming theory at face value, but concludes that the nations of the world will not enforce the commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions that they make.

Happily, however, research will establish ways to produce dirt-cheap energy from the wind, sun, etc. Really?

Most scientific experts doubt that renewable energy will become genuinely cost competitive any time soon, and this prediction surely did not come out of the author's rigorous computer model.

Conclusion: "The Predictioneer's Game" is very interesting, but read it with a proverbial "grain of salt."

William Whipple III

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Three Stars
The book is fairly mediocre in terms of interesting new insights. I quit half way through.

Stuckinlb

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Interesting idea for a book, but not applied well here

It took me more than a month to finish this. Since I usually read 3-4 books a month, and this book is not excessively long, that's saying something. In many ways, it is depressing.

The central premise is that people behave solely in their own best interests, a premise I tend to agree with.

The author then sets out to manipulate situations to arrive at his (paying) clients desired end. At many points, the book seems like a combination of bragging and advertising, the author boasts of a 90% "success" rate, but the cases presented lack specificity, making them hard to verify.

My biggest problems is that the author spends a fair amount of time slamming "experts", you can almost hear him spit when he writes the word.

But the author relies on the very experts he also denigrates.

He says he can get better results than the experts, but, in his words, the best source of information he requires (i.e., the answers to 4 questions), he, um...asks the experts.

So, are the experts worthless, or does garbage in, garbage out hold true?
It's impossible to tell from reading this book.

Also, don't expect to learn anything you can use in your own life. Game theory ultimately depends on mathematics and a fair amount of guess work, and the author never really delves into those aspects, or how to use game theory in cases where the information he requires is not available.

3tabbies

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Mr. Mesquita's rubber didn't quite meet the road

In chapter 10 of "The Predictioneer's Game", Mr. Mesquita dared to be embarrassed by putting his new and improved prediction model to the test by predicting various important events in Pakistan such as future distribution of political power. Unfortunately, many of his and his students' predictions failed to materialize.

For starters, there was no military coup between February 2009 and July 2009.

Mr. Mesquita's model had predicted a decline in Pakistani military power that would serve as the impetus for such a coup during the period stated, which as of late October, 2009 has yet to occur.

His model also predicted "The new president [Obama] is not likely to do much of anything about the rise of terrorist influence within Pakistan at least through the end of 2009."

Wrong again. A January, 2009 Times Online article titled "President Obama orders Pakistan drone attacks" had this quote on the subject: "Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed."

Obama, as it turned out, pursued a more vigorous effort of hunting down Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives and senior leaders in Pakistan as evident by the following quote from an October 24, 2009 "The Long War Journal" article: "The US has carried out 45 airstrikes inside Pakistan so far this year [2009]. In all of 2008 [when Bush was in office], 36 strikes were carried out."

Mr. Mesquita stated, "The analysis shows that substantial domestic pressure is likely to push for cuts in American aid to Pakistan."

Wrong on that account as well. In an October 21, 2009 Newsweek article titled "About Those Billions", Ms. Katie Paul, the author reported "2009-2014: A new five-year, $7.5 billion assistance package was passed by Congress in September and signed by President Obama in October..."

Lastly, the author's prediction model showed "After June 2008, their (the Pakistani government's) approach along with everyone else's, including the Pakistani military and the U.S. is projected to be little more than rhetorical opposition to the militants with almost no serious commitment to go after them....The air just pours out of the anti-militant effort."

This prediction was supposed to hold through December 2009, which was the end of the forecast period for this project. Unfortunately, this too did not pass the muster.

However, I am not as convinced as the author about the accuracy and simplicity [of things]....the models the author described harbor much subjectivity in such input factors as the assignment of salience and influence of stakeholders. Game theory is as much an art as it is a science.
Brian

[thewestchestarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mostly fascinating consulting firm commercial. The unusually named Bruce Bueno De Mesquita (does this roughly translate to Bruce The Good Female Mosquito?) is a New York professor, Stanford University fellow and most relevantly runs a consulting firm you can hire to show (or “predictioneer” in consultant-speak) you the future. The peering into the future via the application of higher game theory math, as celebrated in the film “A Beautiful Mind”, is described in the first roughly 60% of the books and it is fascinating. Bueno De Mesquita’s equations can tell you with what he claims the CIA believes to be 90% accuracy the outcome of elections, power struggles, policy votes even though a multitude of variables and players affect the outcome. The book’s recounting of how game theory works (basically every outcome is a product of each party looking out for their most salient self-interest) and Bueno De Mesquita’s bona fides gives make the claims sound credible and leaves the impression his firm can help you control the future. The examples of CEO elections rigged, justice for guilty lawsuit defendants avoided and sovereign foreign government changes perverted make for intriguing here’s-how-the-real-world-works stories although the openly expressed amorality of the enterprise will unsettle even the most hard-bitten cynic. But as Bueno De Mesquita says repeatedly nice guys really do finish last (I sense he really isn’t a good, female mosquito at heart). If you stop reading after he covers “Game Theory 101”, “Game Theory 102” and rest of clearly written synopsis of the classes he teaches you will have learned a great deal and enjoyed yourself in the process and I encourage you to do just that. In remaining third or so of the book, Bueno De Mesquita walks away from the poli sci and gets into history by applying game theory to events such as the fall of Sparta. These intellectual exercises are neither useful nor interesting. The final sections of the book go far afield and get into the global warming debate, the Kyoto Protocol and other political hot buttons and feel very much like padding to bring the text to an editorially acceptable length for publication. In short the book is very interesting but not applicable beyond making you aware that this consulting help exists if you can afford it.

[Clay Wescott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looks at an application of game theory for predicting the future of business and political negotiations. The model relies on political or business experts to identify specific issues, their possible outcomes, and the key players. Players are the people who influence a negotiation or decision. Experts are asked to answer narrow questions about which outcome each player would prefer, how important the issue is to each player, and how much influence each player can exert. The model simulates a number of rounds of a game. At each round, players make proposals to one or more of the other players and reject or accept proposals made to them. Through this process, the players learn about one another and adapt their future proposals accordingly. Each player incurs a small cost for making a proposal. Once the accepted proposals are good enough that no player is willing to go to the trouble to make another proposal, the game ends. The accepted proposals are the predicted outcome.

The model doesn't directly take into account the history of the issue, the cultural norms of the area, or what the experts think will happen. The basic assumption is that people make choices based on their own self interest, which for political and business leaders means maintaining their jobs and/or influence for as long as possible.

The result is 90% accuracy, according to a CIA assessment cited. Lots of fascinating applications are discussed.

[Satar Mahmoudi · Rating 3 out of 5]

از حدود ده سال پیش که با نظریه بازی ها آشنا شدم، جسته و گریخته! راجع به آن خوانده‌ام. در فارسی منابع اندکی برای آموزش این نظریه و ابزار تفکر استراتژیک داریم.
تا جایی که من به فارسی خوانده ‌ام، اولین کتابی است که به مباحث کاربردی، واقعی و روز این نظریه می‌پردازد، البته متاسفانه مدام به یک جعبه سیاه به نام برنامه کامپیوتری تحلیلی اشاره می‌شود که چندان تصویر شفافی هم از آنذبه خواننده داده نمی‌شود.
کتاب آن غنای لازم را ندارد. از همه بدتر همان چهار تصویر و نمودار کتاب که گویا خروجی آن برنامه کامپیوتری است، بسیار بی‌کیفیت کپی پیست شده، حداقل من هیچ کدام را نتوانستم واضح ببینم و بخوانم.

[Wout Vekemans · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much bragging, not enough game theory .

[Frank Goebel · Rating 1 out of 5]

God where do I start. If I ever met this man in real life I’d go for the hand shake then dab. What a self congratulatory, naive, and pathetic waste of paper. Under all circumstances do not read this book. I generally try to refrain from being too harsh in a review but this calls for an unfiltered tangent.

The author has never considered the concept of morality. Most of his predictions led to non virtuous outcomes (again, why does he have so much pride in this). The book is now dated too and shows his whole prediction of what would happen geopolitically with North Korea was wrong. This is one of those guys who loves to quantify categorical and qualitative aspects of being. This is also a guy who thinks human nature is about eating, sleeping, and pooping. Now, human nature does consist of these things but also love, passion, thinking, curiosity, and many more capacities that overwhelm the traditional characteristics of “human nature.” I think this author has never experienced love before.

Also, and a key point, reducing life and death struggles to payoff matrix’s is becoming way too normal (when did we lose our humanity?). The oversimplification of overly complex social dilemmas for the sake of publishing a book or assisting the CIAs prediction efficacy is also pathetic. What ends is this guy chasing? What even are these means? He has no philosophical grounding. Like if you borrowed a pencil from this guy in class and you lost it, the next day he’d say “it’s okay, just Venmo me 5.” Shame shame shame. Are we letting anyone publish a book these days my god.

Please note I did not voluntarily read this…it is required reading for a course.

[Ji · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book introduces applications of an applied game theory modeling on political events. Some parts are very interesting and inspiring, some parts are not too relevant for my lack of interest in the events themselves.

This is the third book of the same author who wrote The Logic of Political Survival, The Dictator's Handbook, and this one. I'm going to read The Logic of Political Survival soon.

[Bethany]

I don't know that I'll ever actually read this, but there was an interesting article about this guy in the NYT about using game theory to predict whether (or when, actually) Iran will build an atomic bomb.

[Mohammad Mollanoori · Rating 3 out of 5]

اینکه کتاب تلاش می‌کند بر اساس یک مدل نظریه بازی، پیش‌‌بینی کند جذاب است اما عین یک بازاریاب خوب، هی به دارایی خودش اشاره می‌کند و جنبه آموزشی آن، در سطحی که من می‌خواستم نبود.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The principles involved in the "predictioneering" described in this book are those that any good consultant employs on a daily basis - walking a mile in the other guy's shoes (or at least understanding what makes the guy tick) in the context of your own objectives goes a long way, and is not done often enough by most people. The scenarios I face as a consultant may not be as complicated as those described by Mr Bueno de Mesquita, but the principles are the same.

The Predictioneer's Game is a mostly enjoyable read. I grew a little bored with two elements: 1) The chapter "Fun with the Past" describing the art of the possible in alternative histories was wearisome as the scenarios seem either simplistic, or seem to travel well-worn paths blazed by history's Monday morning quarterbacks, and 2) the author's (perhaps deserved) well-nourished ego on display. My favorite example of (2) was his reluctance to share a particular insight to Iraqi politics because "there is a good chance Iraqi or Iranian diplomats might read this, I leave it to them to work out how to solve their problem." This, at worst, implies solutions to problems in this part of the world are highly detrimental to US interests, in which case why include this segment at all... The cynic would say the solution isn't necessarily detrimental to US interests; rather, the author is offering the Prime Minister his services - perhaps with an expectation to recoup the unrealized windfall from the author's examples of turning down blood money from African dictators - to right the ship of state.

I realize I'm being overly pessimistic here, and I shouldn't be. I rather enjoyed the book. Although The Predictioneer's Game appears, at the end of the day, to be little more than an advertisement for the consulting services offered by Mr Bueno de Mesquita's firm, it's a good one.

[Ying · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this book about maybe three years ago, but I wasn't serious until about a month ago, when someone urged me to return it (I have a borrowed copy). Let me first say, this is a great book. I wish more people know about it: it has many interesting things, including:

(today's topic) how you should buy a car, how corporate look at litigation cases, accounting scandals, North Korea nuclear problem, Iraq and Iran, Pakistan, and global warming!

(historic topic): Catholic church, WWI and Hitler's rise to power.

My praise of the book:

Read it. It will teach you much more than NYTimes (which, in my personal opinion, sometimes leads you in the wrong way and, perhaps unintentionally, shows you the wrong side of things.) Just look at how this book describes the North Korea nuclear problem and you will see what I mean (look at how much influence is assigned to the US president vs Kim.)

My critique of the book:

1. The first four chapters moved too slowly (maybe except chapter 1). I felt at times the information was ``diluted". These chapters could be greatly abridged. (Starting from Chapter 5, the author can't ``hide" any more and reveals his true colors as an excellent scholar and academic!)

2. The ``proposal" to solve the problem of between Israel and Palestine in this book, unfortunately is biased. In game theory terms, Israel will not have enough incentive to be interested in the author's suggestion, in my opinion.

[Thanh Huyền · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cho dù trong suốt quyển sách thấy ghét ông tác giả như thế nào (vì sự bi quan về bản chất con người) thì cũng phải công nhận mô hình mà ông ta làm rất có giá trị. Mô hình này xây dựng trên lý thuyết trò chơi và dựa trên giả định là mọi người đều tìm kiếm những gì đem lại lợi ích cao nhất cho bản thân mình. Quyển sách nên đọc nếu muốn tiếp cận các quan điểm trái chiều và đạt được quan điểm cân bằng và bao quát, mặc dù đọc cần chuẩn bị tinh thần để không cảm thấy tự ái về những vấn đề tôn giáo và con người vì mọi thứ đều được lượng hóa. Thêm một điểm nữa là tác giả không phải là người trung lập và dự báo kết quả dựa trên lợi ích của Mỹ. Review thế thôi, 50 năm nữa đọc lại xem dự báo chương cuối chuẩn không :))

[Ali Kheyri · Rating 1 out of 5]

شارلاتان واقعا برازنده نویسنده این کتاب هست. در کل ۴۰۰ صفحه کتاب, فقط ۵۰ صفحه شما مطلب در مورد نظریه بازی یاد میگیرید که اونم اگه توی اینترنت سرچ کنید راحت تر هستید. نویسنده یه کامپیوتر هم داره که هر جا کم میاره میگه داده ها رو دادم کامپیوترم و پیس بینی کردم. سرچ که کنید نقدهای وارد بر این شارلاتان رو, بر میخورید به نوشته جالب. ظاهرا آقای مسکیتا تمام پیش بینی هاش تکراریه... یعنی قبل از ایشون آدمهای گمنامی در مقاله های گمنام این پیش بینی و تحلیل رو ارایه دادند و مسکیتا طبق اصل اولیه خودش فقط شامه ی قوی در پیدا کردن داره نه تحلیل. در انتها باید بگم اون فصلی که در مورد مذاکرات صلح فلسطینه با اطلاعات امروزی که داریم بقدری غلط و بده که از اون به بعد ادامه دادن کتاب واسم مثل یک شکنجه بود...

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting moments; best in the analysis of historical scenarios and for some of the rather dramatic anecdotes the author includes.

However. If techno-utopianism and Silicon-Valley type "the algorithm is God" optimism irritates you, this is going to as well. The author is not as smart as he likes to think he is and is regularly guilty of blurring the lines between the mathematical predictions of his model and the interpretation of the numbers (which is often better with hindsight). An interesting approach to problem-solving but not the panacea it's presented as

[Arne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite sure what to make of it.
This really drives home for me how powerfull game theory can be in analysing situations.
The examples he gives are interesting and impressive.
But I can't really shake the idea that i'm reading marketing material for his consulting firm.
I plan to read up on some of his more recent work to make up my mind.
4 stars because surely this book will stay with me for a while and even though it's a single idea being spread out across 200+ pages it's potentially a very powerfull one.

[Sameer Alshenawi · Rating 3 out of 5]

هذا كتاب لعشاق نظرية الالعاب مثلي حيث استخدم " دي مسكيتا" نظرية الالعاب لعمل نموذج للسلوك البشري يتوقع به المستقبل، و يحسّن نظام الحوافز.
و لقد استهل الكتاب بشرح نظرية الالعاب بشقيها " التعاونية" و التنافسية، و قام بتطبيقها من خلال نموذج أعده مكتبه الاستشاري على الكثير من الوقائع السياسية و الاجتماعية ، و الشركات، و توصل الى نتائج باهرة.
هو كتاب ممتع نسبيا يدفعك الى القراءة بنهم في نظرية الالعاب ، و ان عابه بشكل نغص علي متعتي إحساسك ان الكاتب يروج لشركته ، وان ما تقرأه هو كتيب إعلاني .

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author describes scenario in which he used the principles of game theory and an algorithm he developed to successfully model and predict outcomes ranging from political conflicts to business competition to legal disputes. Interesting ideas. At the same time the author touts the effectiveness of his model but l, for proprietary reasons, does not share many details of the modeling process. General principles are explained, but much detail remains sufficiently mysterious. Nonetheless, the qualitative aspects of the book are nonetheless powerful in suggesting new ways to look at some interesting scenarios.

[Van Anh Huy Tu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Không phải là một tự sách thường thức phù hợp cho hầu hết mọi người, mà là một cuốn sách diễn bày về một phương pháp giúp dự đoán các sự kiện kinh tế, chính trị, hoặc có thể áp dụng cho các lĩnh vực khác dứa trên các sự kiện đã diễn ra, các yếu tố hiện tại cân đo đong đếm để dự đoán. Tuy nhiên trong cuốn sách vẫn còn khá chung chung, chưa cụ thể và chi tiết ứng dụng vào một tình huống thực tế để những người nghiên cứu có thể áp dụng.

[Kelly Pattison · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, sometimes challenging read about how logic & math can be used to predict future outcomes. Some of the theories were confusing, but the real world examples were helpful to put the research in perspective. The chapters about past historial situations such as Columbus convincing Spain to pay for his quest to what he thought was Asia, & the ongoing land-for-peace debate between Israel & Palestine were especially intriguing.

[Tarek Amr · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting a book about game theory. And when the author introduced himself as an academic, I expected more formal explanation of the theory and more, well, beef. I ended up reading a very shallow superficial book about the topic full of stories and loads of bla-bloody-bla, and at some parts I even asked myself if I am reading a book or the author's resumé.

[Shervinrmz · Rating 4 out of 5]

جالب بود و ارزش خوندن داشت. نویسنده با استفاده از زبان ریاضی و تبدیل مسائل سیاسی‌اجتماعی به زبان ریاضی، بر اساس آمار و احتمال، گزینه‌هایی که احتمال وقوع بیشتری داره رو محک می‌زنه. امیدوارم فرصت بشه و بقیه تحقیقا و پیش‌بینیاشو بخونم

[Giulio G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The theory behind this book is exposed rather well. Bueno de Mesquita knows how to talk about himself while keeping a shroud of mistery. Unfortunately, I was bored easily about the stuff on international politics, because they are definitely out of my interests.

[Mahdi Khalil Nejad · Rating 5 out of 5]

در مورد خوده کتاب اینکه بسیار عالی بود
در مورد ترجمه اینکه فصل ۱۰ در مورد ایران و عراق و روابط این دو صحبت کرده که شرایط عراق رو بررسی و ترجمه شده اما به قسمت ایران که خیلی هم طولانی و بد هم نبود میرسه ترجمه نشده و سانسور شده است
برای همین پیشنهاد اینه که متن اصلی خونده بشه

[Diana Andrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very interesting to read although I honestly wish I was smarter and could have better understood the math of it (maybe I need to take one of his courses). Worth reading even if you don’t get into the depths of the mathematical aspect.