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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9026036" data-attributes="member: 82106">Here's the thing, if ANY REASONABLE EFFORT would produce good probabilistic ideas of the outcomes of courses of action in the real world that are non-trivially complex, then why isn't the CIA feeding the US government with incredibly accurate advice? We know from historical record that, in fact, the advice given to national leaders by extremely well-funded, highly expert, and vastly experienced intelligence organizations is famously filled with garbage. Clearly no scientific discipline has been invented which is of much use in this endeavor! Heck, as a guy with a math degree and an avowed interest in this subject I am certainly no world-class expert, but if major advances, to the level of being at all useful, had been made,I'd probably have heard about it. We would certainly see the results! I mean, your point about &quot;things happen and many of them are not the most probable&quot; IS actually a really good point. I think the problem is, there are such a vast array of possible outcomes of complex situations that most of the probability space is filled with very low likelihood ones. So even if a model can pick out a few of the most likely, they only represent a few % of the total probability.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 9026036, member: 82106"] Here's the thing, if ANY REASONABLE EFFORT would produce good probabilistic ideas of the outcomes of courses of action in the real world that are non-trivially complex, then why isn't the CIA feeding the US government with incredibly accurate advice? We know from historical record that, in fact, the advice given to national leaders by extremely well-funded, highly expert, and vastly experienced intelligence organizations is famously filled with garbage. Clearly no scientific discipline has been invented which is of much use in this endeavor! Heck, as a guy with a math degree and an avowed interest in this subject I am certainly no world-class expert, but if major advances, to the level of being at all useful, had been made,I'd probably have heard about it. We would certainly see the results! I mean, your point about "things happen and many of them are not the most probable" IS actually a really good point. I think the problem is, there are such a vast array of possible outcomes of complex situations that most of the probability space is filled with very low likelihood ones. So even if a model can pick out a few of the most likely, they only represent a few % of the total probability. [/QUOTE]

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