The magic predictor black box

[ACPlayer]

You are approached by the administration to design a magic predictor black box. The requirement is that the box produce a prediction on whether the US will be at war with an Islamic nation in the next 10 years. You are assured that the administration and the powers have complete confidence in your ability to build this box and will take the prediction very seriously. However, you will only get paid if the prediction comes true.

Your plan? Obviously as a poker player you plan to do whatever you can to make the most money in the deal.

Option A: Hire the best minds in artificial intelligence, world political analysis, social science analysis, religion and theological analysis and any other analysis you can think of. Build neural networks, genetic algorithms, invent new techniques and build a box that meets the requirements.

Option B: Pretend to work very, very hard while simply producing a box that at the press of the appropriate buttons issues a statement that in the next 10 years there will be a terrorist attack backed by an Islamic nation in the middle east and fingering say Iran as the culprit.

[12AX7]

I'm not gonna vote. But man, that is hilarious.

[BluffTHIS!]

You are approached by [insert any person/organization] to make a magic predictor green box. The requirement is that the box produce a prediction on whether if the US takes no pre-emptive action to prevent rogue nations known to support terrorism from acquiring nuclear weapons, it or an ally will suffer a nuclear attack in the next 10 years. You are assured that the poster has complete confidence in your ability to build this box and will take your prediction seriously. However, you only get paid if the prediction comes true.

Your plan? Obviously as a poker player you want to maximize your EV. So that means you need to know how much you stand to gain. All you will get paid is 2+2 political bucks, and if you are wrong, you are out nothing unless unfortunate enough to live in a city that gets nuked if you predict no attack will occur.

Option A: Hire the best minds in intel, political analysis and probability/risk assessment. Then come with with a method of analysis that balances the probability of an attack versus the consequences of same, and which takes into account the values, stated aims and past behaviour of those rogue nations/terrorists.

Option B: Pretend to work very, very hard, while simply talking out your ass by making assumptions of how other countries would act based upon your own values and not theirs or their past actions.

Option C: Have an agenda favoring those rogue nations/terrorists, and predict the opposite of what you want to happen so that their victims will not be prepared.

[madnak]

B is a freeroll. Yay!

[ACPlayer]

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B is a freeroll. Yay!

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Yup.

The black box already exists. It is the neo-con cabal. They predict a disaster (which specially in the case of Iraq was not shared by any of the serious analysts), and act on the predition and voila the prediction is fulfilled.

That is going on in Iran as well.

Poor poker.

[HLMencken]

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Poor poker.

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Poor analogy.