gwern comments on Open Thread: April 2010 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Unnamed 01 April 2010 03:21PM

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Comment author: taw 04 April 2010 02:15:07AM 4 points [-]

Is there any evidence that Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is anything else than a total fraud?

Am I missing something here?

Comment author: gwern 07 April 2010 09:26:50PM 0 points [-]

Well, his TED talk does make a number of specific testable predictions. They were registered in wrongtomorrow.com, but that's down.

Comment author: taw 10 April 2010 12:53:14AM 0 points [-]

Here they are. These are 5 predictions all basically saying "Iran will not make a nuclear test by 2011" as far as their predictive content is concerned, which is not much unlike predicting that "we will not use flying cars by 2011".

Comment author: gwern 10 April 2010 03:05:34AM 0 points [-]

I don't think they're that vague and obvious.

  • No nukes was something of a surprise to many people when that NIE came out
  • the loss of Ahmadinejad power prediction is nontrivial. I, and most others, I think, would have predicted an increase.
  • The noone-endorsing-nukes 2011 prediction is also significant, if heavily correlated with Ahmadinejad losing some power.
Comment author: taw 10 April 2010 11:13:36AM 0 points [-]

He predicts "Ahmedinijad will lose influence and the mullahs will become slightly more influential", not loss of office - which is not testable.

All Iranian officials have claimed endlessly that their program is "civilian only" etc. - it would be a huge surprise if they made a sudden reversal.

If someone expected Iran to have had nukes, they have a serious prediction problems. The only people "expecting" that were the same who were expecting Saddam to have nukes.

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