Of percentages and probabilities
Oct. 19th, 2005 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ebonlockTristero takes exception with the latest Matt Yglesias post on why he originally supported the Iraq war and responds thusly:
But the truth is that Makiya was a hopeless optimist. The goals of Bush/Iraq were impossible to achieve. Only in an abstruse, technically mathematical sense was there a probability of success. Why was Bush/Iraq utterly impossible?
Because nothing is certain. Again, please hear me out:
The success of Bush/Iraq depended, with absolute certainty, that just about everything the neocons predicted would, in fact actually, happen. An unbiased study of the full range of opinions and research on foreign affairs -one not skewed to the right and the far right, one not skewed towards naive optimism - would make it abundantly clear that at best, less than 1/3 of the neocons' predictions about the course of the war could ever possibly come true. That fact, based on a genuine understanding of uncertainty,exponentially increased the odds that the alternative scenario, an unmitigated disaster, would occur.
The actual odds of success were closer to .00000000000000005% than 5%. That was patently obvious to anyone who was doing research that wasn't biased.
But part of the marketing of the "new product" was to turn the notion of doubt on its head. We, who knew how utterly beyond reason a successful outcome was - because we understood the full extent of the sheer improbability of Perle/Wolfowitz's scenarios, which depended on a near-absolute certain unfolding of events - were accused of not taking into account how uncertain things are in the real world!
Bush/Iraq should never have been taken seriously, anymore than Curtis Lemay's suggestion to use nuclear bombs in Vietnam or during the Missile Crisis should have been taken seriously.
[...]
Not all arguments are worth the status of intellectual consideration. Bush/Iraq was one of them, even though a former John Hopkins professor like Wolfowitz and the president of the United States thought otherwise.
Bush/Iraq was no more realistic than the arguments for a UFO behind the Hale/Bopp comet and it should have been treated accordingly. Again, not recognizing that immediately was your mistake and that is what you need to come to grips with. Not the morality of the war, but the extent to which you and so many of your colleagues were bamboozled and provided Bush with an opening to tap into American mythologies.
But the truth is that Makiya was a hopeless optimist. The goals of Bush/Iraq were impossible to achieve. Only in an abstruse, technically mathematical sense was there a probability of success. Why was Bush/Iraq utterly impossible?
Because nothing is certain. Again, please hear me out:
The success of Bush/Iraq depended, with absolute certainty, that just about everything the neocons predicted would, in fact actually, happen. An unbiased study of the full range of opinions and research on foreign affairs -one not skewed to the right and the far right, one not skewed towards naive optimism - would make it abundantly clear that at best, less than 1/3 of the neocons' predictions about the course of the war could ever possibly come true. That fact, based on a genuine understanding of uncertainty,exponentially increased the odds that the alternative scenario, an unmitigated disaster, would occur.
The actual odds of success were closer to .00000000000000005% than 5%. That was patently obvious to anyone who was doing research that wasn't biased.
But part of the marketing of the "new product" was to turn the notion of doubt on its head. We, who knew how utterly beyond reason a successful outcome was - because we understood the full extent of the sheer improbability of Perle/Wolfowitz's scenarios, which depended on a near-absolute certain unfolding of events - were accused of not taking into account how uncertain things are in the real world!
Bush/Iraq should never have been taken seriously, anymore than Curtis Lemay's suggestion to use nuclear bombs in Vietnam or during the Missile Crisis should have been taken seriously.
[...]
Not all arguments are worth the status of intellectual consideration. Bush/Iraq was one of them, even though a former John Hopkins professor like Wolfowitz and the president of the United States thought otherwise.
Bush/Iraq was no more realistic than the arguments for a UFO behind the Hale/Bopp comet and it should have been treated accordingly. Again, not recognizing that immediately was your mistake and that is what you need to come to grips with. Not the morality of the war, but the extent to which you and so many of your colleagues were bamboozled and provided Bush with an opening to tap into American mythologies.
