They're actually great for preparing black swan events. Taleb talks about them in "The Black Swan". Usually the rules of the game aren't as clearly stated as i

They're actually great for preparing black swan events. Taleb talks about them in "The Black Swan". Usually the rules of the game aren't as clearly stated as in this problem. Sometimes there is a literal coupon contest, or a node randomly pairs with another node. But usually you're looking at history to try to to understand the odds and then forecast some futures. The problem with doing that with statistics is it's not very receptive to "fiddling", even if it's Bayesian. With a simulation it's generally easier to throw something weird in there, like an effect orders of magnitude larger, dynamic effects, or a totally new rule.