It helps to let things die down a bit before making any big decisions.
Here are a few links to ponder as you sip your morning coffee.
Paul Wells has done the invaluable service to thinking Canadians of providing the text to the Conservative so-called non-confidence motion. It's pretty clear that it is just an instruction to a committee to reconsider something.
Put that in the context of the continued nonsense on Wednesday over "non-confidence" motions, as reported by the Globe.
Then have a gander at the poll results compiled by SES Research for the Canadian Parliamentary Affairs Channel. SES did the CPAC nightly polling during the last federal election and was deadly for its accuracy.
Note especially the high number of respondents who want to wait until after Gomery for an election.
Then, just for curiosity sake, flip over to this piece from last week about Stephen Harper's love of game theory and the fact that he now has two of the country's leading game theory proponents (more of the U Calgary Mafia) on his payroll. This single fact explains much of Harper's ongoing strategic problems, but I'll develop that in another post.
I don't want to burst any Conservative bubbles here but game theory has been around for a while. It was tremendously popular in the 1950s and 1960s among American academics many of whom wound up helping Robert Strange MacNamara run the war in Vietnam. You can see perhaps where I might wind up going in my discussion of game theory and crap strategy.
Mapping scenarios is one thing and running simulations is all fine and good. Here's a little reality check: game theory is not exactly the most precise of sciences. In fact, the political scientist/ historian in me wants to scream that game theory is to the practice of policy making as Intelligent Design is to science. Or maybe astrology to psychology.
Game Theory has a number of fundamental flaws one of which is the tendency to assume rationality, or more correctly, to assume that people behave according to the game parameters and the game-related definition of reality. Like economics, it is built around assumptions and that, as my faithful readers well know, is the second most abysmal science of all. I am still hunting for the first.
Remember the joke?
[Hold up one hand.]
"First, we assume a can opener."
If you can't go back to here, and scroll down to the post entitled "Morning smile - here's the real can opener joke".
Here's one link I came across from 2002 on the application of game theory to the current Iraq conflict and the broader revival of Thomas Schelling's The strategy of conflict. If you want to buy the book, try the local Chapters. Better still get it from a library. Here's the online info and it is relatively cheap.
While it is all neatly laid out, the whole approach seems to be a peculiarly American approach to strategy that rests in part on the exclusion of anything which cannot be quantified. It is also an approach with very limited successes, as I will discuss in that other post to come right next to the discussion of Trevor Dupuy.
If you want a well-presented critique of the application of "rational actor" models to life, try reading Voltaire's bastards by His Excellency John Ralston Saul.
Armed with all those threads, you can now go off and weave some kind of afghan to ward off the chill of the pending election.
Personally, I am heading to Tim's for another large double-double. This one game theory thing may now give me enough to figure out the peculiar world of Harper's Conservatives.
