Requirements for Predictive Models of Human Behavior

Psychohistory is a concept from the renowned science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.  In his Foundation books, a small group of individuals used a complex mathematical formula to predict the movement of the entirety of the human race.  His supposition was that in aggregate, humans are predictable - especially when the numbers got very large.

There are three things necessary for such a fantastical mathematical model to be possible, and we're approaching them all at an accelerating pace.

Statistical Significance

Perhaps the easiest for humans to strive for is the numbers required to move humans into statistically governed quantities.  Similar to how we can predict the pressure exerted by air when it is compressed, we'd need a very large number of people to make sweeping generalizations.  We're approaching seven billion people on the planet, but is that enough to be statistically valid?  I think not, but we're probably not that far off.  

Unified Theory

The is probably the most difficult of the three requirements to achieve.  Right now, there are many different areas of study of the human condition.  Psychology, physiology, crowd behaviors, emotions, philosophy, political science, and many more.  Each of them is revealing insights into how people act as either individuals or part of a group.  Each of them is giving a single, minuscule building block to the big picture.  To make this work, all the different scientists will have to come together to put their piece into a single model with standard measures.  It's like hearing cats, if all the cats have P.H.D's.  

Computing Power

The most important one is a computer to run the entirety of the equation.  Without a computer of sufficient speed, we would never know the output of our equations, and possibly be unable to interpret them anyway.  When we break through the barrier of quantum computing, it opens up the possibility that we will have enough data storage capacity to make possible the complex calculations needed to make an educated prediction on the future of man-kind.  

Until all those come together, there will be no way to determine what will happen in the future with any scientific accuracy.  We have to rely on futurists and dreamers to help us envision the future and what it means to us.  I have no doubt that we'll get there... eventually.  

How much TV will be in your transportation?

Today, there is an epidemic of distracted driving.  The most visible cause is texting on cell phones - reading and typing at 60 MPH.  All the old causes are still there - eating, reading the newspaper, cell phone calls, shaving, makeup, and plain old inattentiveness.  None of those, or any of the other distracted driving causes, are built into your car. 

Unfortunately that isn't going to be the case forever.  Aftermarket tech providers are offering a multitude of digital monitors that you can install into the dashboard of your car.  One web site actually gave directions on how to mount your iPad to your car, presumably for hands-free distraction.  

Just like texting in cars, this is going to cause many accidents.  There will always be people that choose to do things at inappropriate and sometimes dangerous times.  And as more people do, it will cause more accidents, and there will eventually be a backlash by the public.  

So my prediction is that we will start seeing more dashboard televisions in cars, rather than just the digital status display in many cars today.  And then their use will get out of hand, including streaming video from internet services while driving.  And finally there will be laws against their use in some states, and they will only be available through aftermarket sellers again.  

Will that save us from distracted drivers?  No, but it will certainly cut the number of drivers who hit you while watching their favorite television shows.  

Computer Mind Reading

When computers were first invented, they had a keyboard and a cursor.  Then later we added a mouse and graphical displays.  Video games came out with joysticks.  Trackballs.  Touch-screen virtual keyboards.  Swipe-typing.  All of them are physical physical physical!  

Enter the brainwave control helmets!  The ones for sale a few years ago were definitely geeky.  They had electrodes, wires, and probably gears and steam engines.  But today the helmets are becoming smaller, more stylish, and more sensitive.  

Eventually someone (ghost of Steve Jobs) is going to make a product that has no controls other than a headband.  Typing a paper will no longer give you carpal tunnel syndrome.  And it could be faster for navigation, too, as long as you can remember what you need to navigate to.  

And that's just within the next 20 years!  There is every possibility that these types of controls will eventually be implantable, and that people will be able to continuously link to computers around them.  You could have a iHouse that links to your iBrain.  The danger, of course, is the possibility of viruses!  There needs to be some damn good error testing!  

-sjk

Reused Everything

For many years, we've been hearing about more and more about recycling and its importance.  The EPA, though, included two more - reduce and reuse.  I'm all for reduction, but that isn't something you can see with your eyes.  Reusing, though, has caught on and there are several niches where that maxim is becoming important.  

Artwork

I've started to see more examples of people reusing materials for art projects.  This is especially evident trash from our childhood or refuse with a deep cultural significance, or both.  For instance, I love this home decoration made out of discarded computer keys.  Here is an article with 7 more reuse artwork projects.  

Building

New houses tend to be made out of less sturdy materials than the houses still standing from 50+ years ago.  Even then some architects were reusing materials from large building projects in their houses.  I read a book about building houses that advocated using old railroad ties to support the roof, as well as salvaged doors, windows, floors, etc.  

Books

I enjoy books, and I'm so glad that there is such a large market for used and donated book.  I'm sad, though, that there isn't more strictness on what gets written down (somehow) because libraries are often overflowing with texts, which get indiscriminately destroyed when space requires.  

Internet

If you haven't heard of it, check out Freecycle.  It is an online service that allows you to post your unwanted junk, and others will often say they want it, and come pick it up from you.  It's taking advantage of the idea that one person's trash is another's treasure in a unique, technologically sophisticated way.  I wonder when small businesses are going to get in on that, and eventually there could be an associated trade in old business furniture or other un-marked office equipment.  

Animation

If you've seen 5 episodes of Dragonballz, you've seen 500, am I right?  

-sjk

Modern Day Hitchhiking

In the golden years, you often saw idealized accounts of people hitchhiking across the United States.  Or hopping on trains and riding the rails.  Those idyllic scenes have been changed over the years.  Stories of hitchhikers attacking kind motorists or motorists picking up hitchhikers for nefarious purposes percolated through our culture and now I know of very few people who would be on either side (hitcher or motorist) for their own safety.  

Our current energy crisis could be alleviated a little by hitchhiking.  I see many cars with only the driver, which is a huge waste of space.  And many places people want to go are destinations for thousands of others, making it more likely that both hitchhikers and motorists would want to go there.  If we could double the average occupancy of each car, we could save millions of driving hours a year!

It would require some very important changes.   

• An electronic thumb of some sort (like in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), rather than using your regular thumb.  
• The ability for hitchhikers and motorists to rate one another, similar to couch-surfing.  
• The tipping point where both motorists and hitchhikers have a large enough pool on the other side to use the app.  
• Cultural adaption to having strangers in your car. 

Hitchhiking, or a sanitized version of it, can make a comeback if the right minds get behind it.  In the future, community will be ever more important.  Sharing (or selling?) resources like your driving time would be a great way to spread the wealth.  

Government Gridlock Consequences

Many people today are worried about the fact that politicians today can't agree upon issues.  You see articles all the time such as "Medicaid group can't agree on cuts."  If you'd like more, just do a google search.  Many people are concerned about the polarization that seems to be happening in the political system - when the Democrats and the Republicans take increasingly divergent positions - because it makes compromise almost unthinkable for the two sides.  But what does a grid-locked political system do to our world?  I've listed below several outcomes that intrigue and/or frighten me.  And it will all happen because our government can't agree on action.

Shrunken FDA

All that needs to happen to cripple the FDA is for the government to allow Prescription Drug User Fees Act (PDUFA) to lapse.  That would mean the FDA wouldn't be able to collect user fees from drug companies for expediting approvals.  Which would reduce the number of drugs coming through.  It is also a major source of funding for the agency, and would cut drastically into their activities, including inspecting food and drug companies.  

State-Level International Policy

When you think of international policy, I'm sure you think of the ability to sign treaties.  But I'm talking specifically about immigration a possible slippery slope.  If the federal government can't agree on a standard US  immigration policy, then the states will take it on themselves.  Arizona, for example, passed a bill that is targeted at curbing illegal immigration, and is on its way to the Supreme Court to hear whether it is constitutional.  If it survives, individual states could use it to take international policy away from the Federal government, which is the rightful holder of those duties.  

Unending War

We've been at war for most of the past 20 years.  The reasons why are debated, and I'm not going to get into them.  But without the government working together, it's unlikely we will ever get fully out of the unpopular conflicts in the Middle East.  A strong force keeping us involved is the inertia we've gathered during the military actions of the recent past.  That inertia is reinforced by the stalemate in the government, because its almost impossible to get a large enough majority to do something dramatic, like end a war, with 100% die-hard opposition.  

Market Volatility

Immobile law makers or regulatory agencies put strain on our markets.  And that strain is translated into volatile stock and bond prices, as speculators cause large swings in the value of market instruments.  The market actually responds favorably to final action by the government, because that reduces uncertainty and calms risk.  The less that gets done in the government, though, the more uncertainty there is as issues build up in the queue.  

I'm not a doom-sayer.  I don't think that the worst will happen in all cases.  But I do think there needs to be a change in the political landscape so we can avoid some of the consequences above.  What do you see as the biggest outcome of a fully gridlocked government?  

Overlooked Over-consumption

I've heard a lot about information overload in the past few weeks.  There was a big story on NPR about the need to filter to get quality information to help build our world view.  And their prescription was consistent with some of the current thinking on food.  In fact, the speaker adapted a saying from Michael Pollan and said "Consume news, not too much, mostly facts."  

The theme was that society is providing an unhealthy version of something (information, food) that we had evolved to prefer over traditional "healthy" consumption.  But those are just two epidemics that have come to the attention of the national media.  There have been other overload that have been less publicized and/or neatly packaged.  In fact, with the current post-industrial era, there are many other areas where we have an overload that needs to be corrected.  

Transportation

Four thousand years ago, during the agricultural age, people lived their entire lives within a few miles of where they were born.  During the industrial revolution, people lived in cities near their factories.  But with the invention of air travel and proliferation of cars, people have spread out across the countryside.  They are spending hours per day traveling and their health is suffering.  Air pollution, excessive sitting, high-speed fatalities and lost time with family are increasingly large problems that are exacerbated by increased travel.  

Emotions

I'm sure I'm going to get some push-back on this one.  Emotions have existed since the beginning of time.  Our ancestors were afflicted by the same range of emotions as us - everything from happiness to fear to stress to anger.  But with media (first mass, then social), we've gotten both more homogeneous and more extreme in our feelings as a culture.  Fear of communists and terrorists, anger at our economy and political system, love for cute kittens.  Emotion sells better than cold, hard facts, and today almost everything has an emotional component to its advertising, use, or value.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a consumer product that isn't associated with an emotion.  

Any Communication that's not "In Person"

In the discussion above about information, they talked about how some information is bad and you need to limit your consumption. I go further.  Any form of information transfer that was developed after agriculture is something we need to consume with care.  We are not designed for either large-scale mediums or direct communications that are missing body language and inputs for our other senses.  It's unhealthy for humans as currently evolved.  We need to balance it with a healthy dose of face-to-face personal relationships, or we isolate ourselves.  

What other overloads have you seen in our society?  If you don't see them, just think about what we have now that we didn't have 100 years ago, and I bet people are consuming way too much.  

-sjk