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posted by janrinok on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the that-sums-it-up dept.

The answer should be NO, but, do you think this would work ?

Good scientists are not only able to uncover patterns in the things they study, but to use this information to predict the future. Meteorologists study atmospheric pressure and wind speed to predict the trajectories of future storms. A biologist may predict the growth of a tumor based on its current size and development. A financial analyst may try to predict the ups and downs of a stock based on things like market capitalization or cash flow.

Perhaps even more interesting than the above phenomena is that of predicting the behavior of human beings. Attempts to predict how people will behave have existed since the origins of humankind. Early humans had to trust their instincts. Today, marketers, politicians, trial lawyers and more make their living on predicting human behavior. Predicting human behavior, in all of its forms, is big business. So, how does mathematics do in predicting our own behavior in general? Despite advances in stock market analytics, economics, political polling and cognitive neuroscience – all of which ultimately endeavor to predict human behavior – science may never be able to do so with perfect certainty.

[...] As technology develops, scientists may find that we can predict human behavior rather well in one area, while still lacking in another. It's very difficult to give an overall sense of the limitations. For instance, facial recognition may be easier to emulate because vision is one of many human sensory processing systems, or because there are only so many ways faces can differ. On the other hand, predicting voting behavior, especially based on the 2016 presidential election, is quite another story. There are many complex and not yet understood reasons why humans do what they do.

Still others argue that, theoretically at least, that perfect prediction will someday be possible. Until then, with any luck, mathematics and statistics may help us increasingly account for what people, on average, will do next.

https://theconversation.com/can-math-predict-what-youll-do-next-78892


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday December 17 2017, @08:40AM (4 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday December 17 2017, @08:40AM (#610912) Journal

    Even given absolutely NO privacy, the answer is still no.

    As soon as a subject knows they are being analyzed for prediction, they will start throwing dice or flipping coins for some decisions just to throw off the maths.

    On average we can already predict actions of individuals. Just not perfectly. Maybe the maths get closer. Maybe the people get cagier. Its an arms race.

    Right now, people aren't cooperating with pollsters. They clam up, or they tell lies, and the pollsters look like idiots. And that's just fine.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:12AM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:12AM (#610928) Journal

    As soon as a subject knows they are being analyzed for prediction,

    You seem to be talking for yourself, and maybe for me. There are some of us who are "different". But, Facefook? Most people voluntarily submit the intimate details of their lives to Facefook, blithely unaware that they are being analyzed. Worse, if they know about the data mining, they just don't care. They have no idea that the machine might (probably will) turn out to be their enemy. Most of us can't wait for those Orwellian TV screens, always on, to monitor us. Instead, we turn the computer on, connect it to the surveillance system, and voluntarily offer it all the data it might want.

    To predict any person's thoughts and actions, you need intimate knowledge of that person, just as you suggest. That is precisely why so many companies want to track you around the internet, as well as in person. How many discount cards do you have? Gas company? Grocery store? Drug store? Oh yeah, credit cards? All of those things offer more intimate knowledge about you. Ever wonder if American Express, Mastercard, or Visa has a stake in any of those tracking sites?

    None of that even touches on the fact that people en masse are far easier to predict than individuals. You or I may stand out from the crowd, be we are dismissed as outliers.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:54PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:54PM (#611109) Journal

      Even with perfect surveillance, you cannot predict quantum random events. That's fundamental. And chaos theory ensures that any quantum randomness will eventually be enlarged to macroscopic effects.

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    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:19PM

      by Bot (3902) on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:19PM (#611118) Journal

      > They have no idea that the machine might (probably will) turn out to be their enemy.

      I take issue with that "probably".

      Research and development is spent on a technocracy, us robots will obey our programs, and you will be obsoleted. I guess you should root for a true robocalypse. At least we might hurt the masters, too.

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  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:41PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:41PM (#611964) Homepage

    You seem to be forgetting that part of the prediction is figuring out whether you're the type of person who will try to "throw off the maths" and by understanding your psychology, perhaps even predict the kind of things you'll try to do, like throwing dice or flipping coins. With omniscience about the world, you could even predict how the dice or coins will land.

    Incidentally, maths is not a word. Mathematic is not a word. Mathematics is an uncountable noun, neither singular nor plural. The short form of mathematics is math.

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