Nostrachainus: An aggregated future predictor
In the past, there were some people who were pretty predictive of the future but I wonder if it is through confirmation bias where the things that did happen were cherry picked as highlights while the things that didn't, fell into obscurity. I think as more and more data pours online (and especially on chain), there are going to be some very interesting people to look back at while we go forward.
It is no surprise that all of the financial and market analysts who failed to predict the last financial collapse in 2008 are still working as analysts because, we tend to have short memories. Also, there is a swapping out of narratives and rewriting of histories that change the perceptions of the past. this is relatively easy to do by, just ignoring you were wrong and repeat, "I saw it coming" enough.
What is going to be interesting going forward however is that as events happen, an AI could potentially scour the databases and blockchains for groups or people who were speaking about such things and plot them on some kind of accuracy scale. If we were able to look back at our own words in such a way and pluck all of our future predictions up until this point today, how many have come to pass, how accurate were we and, did our accuracy depend on the field we were predicting?
Is a financial analyst anymore capable of predicting the markets than a non-professional, are the teachers. I remember reading (I think it was in Thinking fast and Slow) that professors teaching finance had worse performing portfolios than the average. It had to do with a specialization bias, overconfidence. Do we do the same? How about the people in cryptoland - To the moon? We talk about volatility and uncertainty yet, we act pretty cocky.
(It is going to the moon, don't worry.)
What I am wondering is if the data is crawled by an AI for past accuracy, could groups or people be identified in various domains that could be used as predictors of future events. Could there be a 'Wisdom of crowds' factor that is able to be tapped but, without triggering the respondents so as not to dirty their predictions and thereby perhaps avoid the overconfidence issues?
It is interesting to think about isn't it? How accurate we are as a group, generation, an individual who daily makes evaluations and often broadcasts what we think will happen through various channels. I would say there are going to be some very predictive people who consistently get things right and, they aren't going to be specialists, they are going to be generalists who play across many fields.
I make no claims to my accuracy but I tend to be somewhat of a generalist in nature who likes to dabble in many things. This means that I am not a specialist in any, nor am I really a Jack of all Trades because how I use the information professionally is to find the trend lines between fields (I work with several), listen to the odd podcast or read an interview and discover patterns and similarities. Based on this, I am able to stay somewhat ahead of the curve( at least for large companies) and provide some kind of rough direction in which they can add some resources or, remove some that are no longer returning the value they once did.
I for one would be interested on my own track record, not that it is going to change the world but would give a different perspective on the way I judge and perhaps give me better tools or warnings as where I myself can add or remove resources.
What is also going to be a little bit of fun in the future with so much of our information recorded and scrapable is, just how wrong some of the highly paid experts truly were. There is going to be a great deal of back peddling going on and, *Shaggy, *It wasn't me" words.
I wonder if this could be realised in real time, how predictive it would be of other things also. Could the AI predict market sentiment like Facebook can identify a potential suicider? Could a political uprising or coup be seen before it actually happens and be neutralized by a government? With all of the data we publish about our thoughts and moods, the expressions on our face in photos or the types of words we use, how much of it could be aggregated and used to predict the near future, and in time, the longer view?
I would say, a lot more than most of us predict. At the moment.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
Posted with Steempress
When most talk about the "future," it is essentially their wish for the present to extend to eternity. The futurists can only envision a world, in which only they, and the like-minded, hold the levers of power. Humans are myopic creatures with limited perspective, who are blind to the greater forces that shape their universe.
The crypto-nerds who only envision some insipid decentralized utopia never seem to consider the massive external force outside their little bubble that are poised to swallow them whole. How can cryptocurrencies "go to the moon" without the tacit consent of the financial and political institutions? One financial company within the banking cartel can buy the entite crypto market with only a fraction of their asset reserves. The idea of decentralized financial universe "free" from current financial matrix is both comical and tragic, in the nerds' conviction in their collective myopia.
The talking heads and academic professor are places in their position not because they are insightful, but precisely because they are obtuse and stupid. If all market participants behaved professionally, trading within discipline, no one makes money. We need fools to lose money, in order that wealth is transferred from the weak to the strong. We already predict the future by preying on the greed, envy, and pride of the masses, who dance to the jingle of celebrity endorcements, insipid expert analysis, and monumental ignorance.
It can be a life imitating art thing too where if the collective vision is created, the collective is nudged to create it.
What I find interesting is that those who seemingly know how it all works still suffer the same fate as almost everyone else. This includes those in the crypto space who despite knowing exactly how the markets operate, are still quibbling over curation cents here or chasing every single minor airdrop.
The greater forces whether known or not still play their part but, if one can't find some semblance of contentment in life, why live? Regardless of whether there is meaning or not, whether there is control or fate, each individual within the system can still have purpose.
Man arrives at happiness by accepting his allotted station in life and gains purpose by living according to his being. The discontented mob of modern humanists derive their misery from chasing meaningless freedom and deluding themselves as being "masters of fate." Man quickly realizes that he is not some clay-god, but a flawed creature subject to the whims of greatet forces in his universe. Contentment can only be achieved, when man rejects the humanist nonsense regarding freedom, rights, and some such drivel and live according to his purpose given by his station in life.
His purpose may be to untether from his station. While other's purpose might be to keep him in his station.
How certain are you?
What is contentment but accepting his station in life and being grateful for his being? Such is the very definition of being content. Man ought to know his place and purpose.
Was it contentment derived from living their purpose that drove the muck in France into "untether" from their station and rebel against their betters? Was it not their petulant ignorance born of envy, pride, and greed that motivated the ungrateful swines to grasp beyond their station and ability? What has the humanist poison born of ignorance and pride wrought in this world other than increase in death, war, pestilence, and misery? How can man have any purpose, when he reject his very being?
So the station you describe is static and unbending yet, the complexity of the universe is impossible to comprehend or predict with accuracy as all things are affected in its chaos. One position must be false, mustn't it? The moment is what the moment is but the next moment is ultimately unknowable which means that anything that is stationary need not always be so, no matter what the perceived reality of it may be.
Stagnation is wrought not by accepting one's station in life, but by refusing the life allotted by the universe. What typifies the stagnant qi flow more than the proverbial fat American, who already can not utilize or assimilate the energy he has accumulated, turning it instead into mass, yet continues to consume increasing amounts of food? Worse still, is the fat Western humanist intellectual, who continues to consume ideas and paradigms that he can not possibly integrate into his cultural matrix, creating mutually exclusive and contradictory paradigms, resulting in intellectual paralysis. The definition of "genius" in Western humanist tradition is the man who "can hold two opposing ideas simultaneously." Even the ideal model for Western humanism defines stagnation, and the modern Western humanist exists as a garbage dump of partial ideas from Zen Buddhism to Haitian Voodoo.
When a man has no reference point to center his life, what is he but a leaf floating in the wind, dependent upon the whims of chaos? When there is no reference to refer regarding motion, what is that state but stationary stagnation? When man rejects his very being, by what reference point can he possibly judge anything? It is fashionable in the modern West to be an acolyte of chaos and skepticism. Such concept extended to its logical end, inevitably presents with the matrix that provides pure uncertainty. Even your thoughts can not be considered your own, as according to the new doctrine, they are nothing more than byproduct of random electrical impulses of neuronal misfire. Under such doctrine, your entire being is nonexistence and nonsense.
I would consider that reference point a self-imposed limitation that stops one from actually experiencing life itself as it puts boundaries on all other things. I might offer psychological and emotional comfort but, that isn't contentment. What you are tying yourself to is an external tether (your station) rather than internal reference which is in continual flow and is not dependent on being in any position, it is where it is.
Some people just want to be owned I guess. Neediness to belong to something even at the expense of finding truth.
I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer gets lucky football tips in his letterbox.
Lisa correctly discerns that the cost to print and deliver the leaflets is so low that even if there's only a 1:20 chance of any given prediction turning out to be correct, that 5% of recipients who get the leaflets which turn out to be correct will be sufficiently impressed to pay more than enough in future subscription fees to make the activity profitable.
There is actually (perhaps from thinking fast and slow again) an email scam that does similar. send a million emails predicting up or down every month. month 2 500k emails to those who got the right prediction, month 3 250K. After a year or so there are a few hundred people who have never been given a bad tip and then, they invest more and more.
You are doing well if you can stay ahead of the curve. Some things are more obvious than others, but it is the others we need help with.
Hey Taraz. I hope your day is going well mate and all is well in Funland.
I would say there are probably significant blind spots for both the generalist and specialist alike so, as with most things in life, I suppose a line has to be found somewhere between the two. Perhaps the best approach is to specialise in the general. :)
As to the future, in many respects it's already here with the technological and pharmaceutical enhancements on offer to increase physical and mental cognitive abilities, mental stamina and concentration. We're transitioning to a future where a present day prolific thinker could be left behind to a new world and perhaps even a seperate societal class of enhanced thinkers.
As for the markets, I think like everything else in life, they're largely controlled towards achieving thr agenda of those in control. There will be some who are able to identify the order from the chaos and benefit (or predict) accordingly but I don't think anyone outside of the controllers can be 100% accurate in their predictions because they don't have knowledge of the ultimate agenda. I think it's much easier to predict human behaviour. Even without AI this is something we can do manually now if we wanted to on a personal, specialised level with so much data available on the average man or woman and something we've been doing (or having done to us) on a general, socital level for as long as anyone can remember. :(
I work solely with specialists in their fields so it is kind of a marriage of sorts in the workplace, and I have the luxury of exposure to various fields and, one to one personal discussion.
I hope they solve bigger problems than what to do at a bus stop other than talking to the person standing next to you like now. Because of the reduction in thinking ability and the giving up of cognitive skills through reliance on tools, there is defiintely going to be a class gap. Combine this with health issues, weight issues, diet issues etc, the gap is going to increase rapidly.
Humans are easy to predict and manipulate through the predictions so this is what I wonder when it comes to AI modelling possible future positions. I could run multiple scenarios of events and simulate what we would do. All it needs is enough data on how we act which isn't too hard to acquire. If it can see various predicted patterns forming, it can then look at the models along the next link in the chain and then predict a little further. With enough experience, how far can it see? It is interesting I think as essentially it will be able to model us like a line of ants with different sized and shaped obstacles placed on the path.
welcome by the way :)
now I am off to bed.
Choose your words carefully. The bus stops in Glasgow, the UK's first 'Smart City' are now fitted with listening devices (for emergencies only, of course). I have every cobfidence that they'll only listen for keywords such as 'help' and record appropriately just as I have every confidence that Google only listen in when I say 'Ok Google'. :)
As well as the reliance on technology a number of different factors, such as the rise in children with autism which is generally considered to be a condition that leads to focus in specific areas of interest with little to no interest outside of these areas, it would sppear that we are heading in a direction that prophets such as Huxley and Orwell were able to predict msny years ahead of time without big data or AI.
I wonder what is better. Predictability or unpredictability. I suppose again a line has to be found somewhere in between. :)
Welcome back would be more accurate. And welcome back again would be even more accurate.:)
Cheers mate.
That would be the 'worst bus stop in all of Scotland' :D
Yes so, once the real data starts to flow through all of the aggregators and AIs, what will they see? It could be life imitating art now but, what is it when the art is the manipulating algorithms of an AI with for all intents and purposes, super intelligence?