Comparative Counterfactual Cases

Help us imagine the impact of new weapons

It would be great fun to speculate about the way the Punic Wars might have turned out if Hannibal had possessed a machine gun company. I think, however, that such an exercise would teach us little of value.*

Ludwig Ritter von Eimannsberger

A ‘comparative counterfactual case’ begins with a thorough discussion of an ordinary decision-forcing case. Once that discussion has taken place and students are thoroughly familiar with what actually happened, the teacher replaces a true fact with a false (or ‘counter-factual’) one, thereby creating a ‘counter-factual case’. The class then works through the second game, paying special attention to those things that change as a result of the replacement of ‘what actually was’ with ‘what might have been’.