Using Maths to Predict the Future - TOK

Bruce Buene de Mesquita uses mathematical analysis to predict events such as war, political power shifts and so on. A consultant to the CIA and the Department of Defense, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has built an intricate computer model that can predict the outcomes of international conflicts with bewildering accuracy- 90%! He is a scholar of rational choice theory, which says that maths underlies the nation scale consequences of individual acting for personal benefit. This is important because if you can predict what people will decide then surely you can go some way to altering their decisions and therefore changing the world.

“If you listen to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and a lot of people don’t, he’ll claim that maths can tell you the future” (Michael Lerner, Good Magazine)

Bruce uses Game Theory. It assumes that people are looking out for what is good for them. People act in their own best interest.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita bases his theory on the notion that if you can work out who influences us in decision making and to what extent, then we can predict what people will decide. He then extends this model to apply it globally. He goes on to make three predictions about Iran.

He asks the following questions to predict the future:
What do we need to know when trying to ascertain an outcome?
Who influences us?
What they think?
How focussed are these people?
How much clout could they bring to bear if they chose to engage with the issue?

This information is then added to the fact that people care about 2 things
1) Outcome
2) Credit

This is an interesting look at mathematics being applied to human nature. It also raises interesting questions about free will and determinism.
Whist Bruce says that everything is not predictable he does believe that most complicated negotiations are predicatable. The reason that this is important is because if you can predict what people will do then you can engineer what people can do - you can change the world.
click here for the link to listen to the full talk (20mins)