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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
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Sunday December 17 2017, @08:52AM (6 children)
The answer is yes. If by prediction you mean a pretty good and solid guess that is statistically going to be true most of the time. Then YES. Most people are extremely predictive in what they do. I don't know if "perfect" prediction will ever be a thing, no matter how much data you gather there is always the possibility that the individual will do something weird and out of the normal. There is that pesky "free will" that gets in the way of perfect prediction.
Most of the time tho they/we will follow their same predictable patterns that they/we always do. The more data you gather the clearer said patterns will be. We probably all think that we are unique little individuals that are are own captains but we usually follow similar patterns day in and day out -- we wake up, eat the same things, sometimes you try something new but usually it does not stick, if it does it become part of the new pattern, you usually take the same route to work, you do the same non-work activities on the same days and at the same times, you sort of meet and communicate with the same people over and over and over again. Our lives as a matter of data points might indeed appear quite dull.
From a personal perspective; my fridge is filled with the same things I always eat, I take the same bus/train to work every day, I hate going on vacations, my "best friends" have been the same five people for that last couple of decades, I like the same things today as I liked decades ago, I listen to the same music, my political opinions have not changed in decades either ... the list goes on like this. They might change radically when you are very young but once you are no longer a child things start to settle -- becoming more predictable if anything.
Voter prediction 2016? Seems that worked quite well. CA managed to find all these people that are not liberal coast-people and trigger them into action. They where tired of the "liberal elite" and their bullshit projects and didn't want to be part of them no more. Tada! Victory for the candidate of their choice and Queen Hillary could go and suck it. It's getting real tiresome to hear the liberal lefties cry about it and come up with one farfetched explanation after another. They clearly just don't want to comprehend that not all people are like them and don't want the same shit as they do.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:37AM (3 children)
Free will is an illusion, just like identity and consciousness.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:57AM
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:44PM (1 child)
Identity, AKA I am, is the only thing you are 100% sure of, works even for solipsism. Does not matter what it consists of.
Any assertions that start saying "I am" is an illusion are just calling reality an illusion. Guess what, it's just a matter of definition. Reality the domain of "I am". What is in reality can interfere with me and vice versa.
The nature of it is not provable as being such, from the inside.
Now, philosophers keep looking at the fabric of reality like it yielded true knowledge. Wrong, it yields technical knowledge, hacks. True knowledge of a game is attained by the PLAYERS of the game, not the programmers. The program offers another perspective, useful, vital maybe but not as much as they make it.
Now, spiritualists INVERT the I am putting it as the Ultimate objective. Meditation, saying OMMMMMMMMM. Nice, but if you strive to go where you started, you are going BACKWARDS.
Now, Religions are a mixed bag. Some look like they thought stuff over, some are monkeying.
You are quite in the dark about this as you call identity an illusion, which is denying the only thing that you ever truly felt. Do you feel like you are not? No? then why start with the equiprobable option that leads to the opposite of the only thing you can define as true?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @04:51PM
Consider that all of your atoms have been part of some other "I" in the past and you can start doubting about what identity really is. Every second we all lose atoms and gain new ones. We are in a constant state of flow. What part of you is really you, when everything will be ultimately replaced?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:00PM (1 child)
That may be, but I'm pretty sure you actually meant "predictable".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:46PM
I guess he did not see that coming, either.
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