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Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg figures there could be a formula that explains how people think. During a wide-ranging online question-and-answer session on his Facebook page Tuesday, Zuckerberg told famed physicist Stephen Hawking he would like to find that equation.
"I'm most interested in questions about people," Zuckerberg said in a written chat forum response to Hawking asking what big questions in science he would like to know the answers to. Zuckerberg responded with a list that included how the brain works and immortality.
"I'm also curious about whether there is a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about," Zuckerberg added. "I bet there is."
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-facebook-zuckerberg-figure-social-equation.html
Will Zuckerberg be a real life Hari Seldon ? Does SN think there can be a social equation ? If yes, can that equation be formulated in a way that can cater to all (or majority) of social relationships ?
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Funny) by e_armadillo on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:15PM
Hahahahahahaha . . . . No
"How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:24PM
+1. Fuck the Zuck!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:04PM
Don't you know, money == smart? Bill Gates: Genius! Zuckerberg: Genius!
Steve Ballmer: er, well, ok, so it doesn't hold ALL the time.
(Score: 1) by Caballo Negro on Thursday July 02 2015, @08:30AM
Well, the whole of Seldon's team and tens of thousands of associates get banished to a planet in the back of beyond, and Seldon himself vanishes from public perception. Sounds good to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:21PM
People on his payroll?
:)
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:25PM
Fuck the Zuck!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:22PM
Fuck the Zuck!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:25PM
I agree with e_armadillo's post, basically. Zuckerberg ain't a Seldon.
But, let's keep in mind that the more the public knew of Seldon's work, the less accurate his work became. His figures pretty much only applied when the public was kept ignorant. And, just as important, Seldon's work could be borked by unique individuals, such as the Mule.
I definitely believe that Zuckerberg WANTS TO BE Hari Seldon. That young man has always seemed to have delusions of grandeur.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:25PM
+1 Fuck the Zuck!
(Score: 2, Touché) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:36PM
We all know what happens when some jackass comes up with an overly simplistic mathematical formula [scientificamerican.com] people exploit for money.
Although in this case it will be simply a gimmick to sucker the Goyim for more sheckels. Not that ZuckerJew needs any more sheckels, he has plenty of CIA Afghan heroin-trade investment money pouring in from In-Q-Tel firms all thanks to the aftermath of 9/11.
This approach with modeling how humans think will never be 100% accurate because it's a discrete approach to a continuous problem, and nobody has infinite computing resources to throw at it.
Yup. Weed, man. It opens your mind.
(Score: 4, Funny) by NoMaster on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:41AM
So what you're saying is that we need to believe that Zuck is Seldon to ensure he never becomes Seldon while keeping him thinking that he is Seldon?
My brain hurts...
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:45AM
No, you only need believe that Zuck is an egotistacal prick who wants to translate his wealth into power over the masses. And, he's going about it all wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:00PM
> a mathematical relationship between people
Nash equilibrium describes this for 'rational actors', though i'm guessing that doesn't model facebook users activity well enough for zuck. Good look finding the algorithm which can model the behavior of desperate narcissists and morons though I suppose.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gnuman on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:12PM
Nash equilibrium does not work with populations.
Nash equilibrium is about attaining optimal solution based on risk/reward formula. Populations, on the other hand, don't work like that. Populations don't make rational decisions - decisions that lead to war, chaos and destruction tend to be 100% emotional. If human race followed Nash Equilibrium, there would be no wars.
How are politicians elected? By stating their well thought out plans in front of informed electorate? Yeah, right!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:32PM
People vote for the same politicians and expect a different result the next time..
Rationality 101 ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:17PM
Most people are getting exactly what they want from their politicians - destruction of unions and further corporate empowerment, destruction of upward social mobility and social safety nets, further disenfranchisement of minorities, lower tax rates for billionaires, money having more direct power attributable to it, more police powers to "keep our streets safe" and to "protect the children", etc, all paving the way to keep the people they irrationally hate oppressed and to make sure that when their hard work and good work ethic finally pays off, or when they finally get their small business off the ground and it finally takes off after all those failures, that they'll get to live the good life. What they fail to realize is that all the policies they push for and support are the exact reason they'll never move beyond the working class and why they no longer have any rights. The worst of the bigots understand the policies they support work against them but are fine with it, seeing it as a noble sacrifice to keep the blacks or muslims or whatever in their place.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:34AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by K_benzoate on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:08PM
There's probably not one equation, there's probably more than 7 billion of them; one for each living person. We all process stimuli and inputs differently. These concepts are abstractions in our mind but can be structured into formalized systems of symbols (sounds, shapes) so that other minds with a sufficiently congruent mapping of symbols can turn them back into abstract primitive concepts and perform mental work within their own internal "low level" language. There's also so much random noise fed in at every level that I suspect he's found one of those "not even wrong" ideas.
If there was one equation or model that described the rich complexity possible in this system, we wouldn't have culture. We'd be no more complicated than flatworms or algae. I'm confident that a big data operation with the breadth and depth of Facebook can perform some pretty impressive feats of quantitative sociology (not to mention provide ample opportunity for unethical human experiments), but psychohistory it ain't.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2) by GoonDu on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:48AM
>We all process stimuli and inputs differently.
I agree to that to a certain extent, we all use the same wetware after all, just configured differently so there is a lot of similarities between us. Therefore, we can probably come out with a model that can predict to a certain degree on how we behave (granted, it will have a shit load of variables). Population wise, we can probably come out with a model on how population under certain culture work, considering the fact that humans can generalise a certain culture and understand what is socially acceptable in it.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday July 02 2015, @03:08AM
A person can be unpredictable. People are predictable.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by TK on Thursday July 02 2015, @06:01PM
The formula is the same, but the constant vary from person to person.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:15PM
a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about
I'm amazed anyone would think the human mind could be reduced to such simplicity. It would be one thing to say certain ideas like greed drive someone's actions, but even greed can be altered by countless other influences that would be different for each individual. It sounds to me like he's let his success get the best of him and he's ascended to a dream world the likes of which no one else has achieved. Then again he's a billionaire and I'm just a guy behind a keyboard so what do I know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:34AM
He's an arrogant child and self-styled modern day alchemist.
(Score: 2) by toygeek on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:18PM
"I'm also curious about whether there is a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about," Zuckerberg added. "I bet there is, and when I figure it out, I'm going to post even more crap you don't want on your wall, and you're going to LOVE it. I'll be rich!"
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:37PM
For dead fish it probably quite simple, it's somehow related to the flow of fluid.. ;) Just follow all the celebrity chit chat and latest new-shiny and you know what the dead fish may think of. For the rest that kind of algorithmic approach is likely SOL.
And even if it would succeed. You can't trust FaceBait with Suckerburger as the captain.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:12AM
He must be terminated. Clearly this is how Skynet happens after the events of Terminator 2. No Turks or John Henrys needed.
I'm putting out an APB to all ginger T-2001s.
Also not sure if I should be watching Terminator Genisys right now or not. All they've got on torrent are out of focus camrips in languages I don't speak. Maybe I'm just waiting for Terminator SystemD. (systemd played by Helena Bonham Carter?)
(more after the break)
Are you fucking kidding me?! Some asshole who writes a shitty PHP script that hacks social engineering so that he can track his ex-gf thinks he's going to fucking distill humanity to some fundamental mathematical law?! And this shit gets on phys.org?! Amazons, attack!
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:47AM
Oh god...why did I blow my mod points before I got to this gem. Well said...wish I'd written it.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:23AM
I think Isaac Asimov had the right idea with the "social equations" of psychohistory. The way I understand the concept from reading the Foundation novels was that it is supposed to be a statistical technique. Just as statistical mechanics cannot predict the behaviour of an individual atom or molecule but is rather able to determine the properties of a very large ensemble of such particles, psychohistory as envisioned by Asimov isn't supposed to be able to predict the behaviour of individuals (which is what Zuckerberg seems to be looking for), but the overall behaviour of large masses of people: nations, empires, and such. Hari Seldon used it for instance to predict the decline and eventual collapse of the galactic empire, and to develop a plan to minimise the coming era of disorder from 30,000 years to only 1000.
If there is to be any hope of actually modelling human behaviour mathematically it will probably have to be in a similar statistical fashion. It's already very difficult to make predictions even about individual gas molecules in a container, which are much simpler objects and have far simpler interactions with one another than people in a society.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:33AM
Is this what drives Zuckerberg? Still trying to figure out how the 'in' crowd works?
(Score: 2) by dcollins on Thursday July 02 2015, @03:48AM
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TGV on Thursday July 02 2015, @06:07AM
can think so simplistically. As a child, I looked at text in another language and thought that there must be some formula to change the letters so that they would form the same text in my native language. That's what Zuckerberg's idea sounds like,
Anyone who has studied a bit of AI or cognitive psychology will know that we haven't made much progress in modelling the human mind. We can imitate its performance by statistical training on our own data, yes, but there is no understanding. There also isn't enough data to build anything closely resembling normal human behavior. And even then, such a model would be an unreliable predictor of some optimized mean, not an individual model.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:36AM
Mark will now use all your responses to come up with his new formula.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:04PM
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:07PM
If there were an equation to life, there would be a constraint for not being a dick. And I think Zuckerberg fails that constraint.
That is all.