Scoping the Future with Theory-Driven Models—Where’s the Uncertainty?: Commentary on Lustick and Tetlock 2021

Lustick and Tetlock outline an intellectually ambitious approach to scoping the future. They are particularly interested in sectors of national security and foreign policy decision-making that require anticipatory strategic intelligence that is difficult to produce because there is insufficient data, even if relevant theories are available. They propose that in these theory-rich/data-impoverished cases, there can be great value in developing agent-based simulation models that incorporate probabilistic rules that cohere with postulates of the theory or theories that are brought to bear on the intelligence challenge. This is the gist of the “simulation manifesto.” The aim of this commentary is to focus on the assessment and representation of key uncertainties in such models and I outline several ways in which uncertainty may arise in the process of simulation model construction.