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Supercomputer predicts revolution
- zeteo 15y agoWith a supercomputer, it's easy to tune lots of parameters, and make models that fit the past well. I'll believe it when they make some falsifiable predictions about the future.
- chriseppstein 15y agoThere is a statistical margin of error. They will need to make many such predictions. Also, the act of predicting an event might cause it to become more or less likely to occur.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- felipemnoa 15y agoMake the prediction, encrypt it with a private key. Release the encrypted prediction with a "do not open till...". Release the public key at a given date. This way the prophecy won't influence the future.
- zeteo 15y agoWhat kind of cryptography do you need to use, in order to avoid the prospect of two different predictions, encrypted with different private keys, resolving to the same encrypted text?
- felipemnoa 15y agoI've never heard of anybody being able to achieve something like that. If you have some examples please share. For all practical purposes I'll say it is not possible. Especially if you are using AES.
- Palomides 15y agoit seems to me this isn't any better than what a person reading the news could do; if you're using mass-media as your input, I kinda doubt you're going to get surprising predictions.
- bdhe 15y agoIn the rare circumstance that someone hasn't read Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series, this immediately reminded me of Hari Seldon's work (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional))
- Xlythe 15y agoEgypt dipped lower in 1991 than in 2011, yet Mubarak was in power for 30 years. And the dip leading to the revolution only started in 2011, making predictions about his removal from power very nearsighted. Obviously, like weather, specific and accurate long range predictions are almost impossible, but its still a fault that should be brought to attention. As for the map of Osama, it's very hard to see specifics. I'm also not quite sure what the lines mean (Newspaper based in x guesses y? Why even show x?). But there are several hotspots and I'm sure the government was checking most of them. There's definitely politics involved in combing through a 200km territory in someone else's country... I'm a bit cynical about predictions, sorry. Especially when your proof is looking back at the past and say "Well duh".
- goombastic 15y agoAfter a revolution, I wish some of the world's artificial boundaries would go away. There is a huge overhead (money, and power brokers) in maintaining these boundaries. I hope the next revolution de-brokers everything with enforced gaps.