Nate Silver. If you don’t know that name by now you should probably crawl out from under your rock.
The ability to predict human behavior to a high level of probability and be able to calculate your chances of being wrong, statistics. Anyone who has taken a statistics class knows how mindbogglingly boring that task can be, but at the same time, it fascinates me. To take a grouping of people, ask them a bunch of questions and then predict what others will do based upon that data, it just blows my mind.
Mr. Silver took that to a level beyond what I have seen in the past. He took a lot of heat for his predictions but stood by the math only to be proven right, exactly.
This in turn begs the question, are we predictable? Are the behaviors that we believe we have chosen, really ours? Granted the data used to make these predictions is based upon individuals predicting what they are going to do and sharing that “choice” with the pollsters. So it could be argued that the choice is individual and the predictions are only valid on a mass scale.
Mining down to the micro level of this thought process, we instantly see that although those who’s statements about future events are being used are theirs alone, that little bit of information can predict what we will do. So after questioning a thousand people from what is supposed to be a random demographic, that information can be extrapolated beyond those individuals to create a near certain prediction of all of us.
If those individuals can then be predicted with any level of certainty, then what is motivating the choice to dictate that we will all choose within the same set of options?
When I was a student attending the second rate institution from where I graduated, my favorite classes were in Spanish. Procuring a minor in a secondary language requires one to attend and pass multiple language classes. Yup, that means Spanish Literature. Literature animates me in a way that few things do. I would venture to say it is the very expression of the masses filtered through the individual’s thought process and then reflected back upon us to analyze where we are and from whence we came.
I also love Spanish classes because most of the professors come from a background that I don’t fully understand. They are capable of making questions to me that I would never ask, let alone try to answer on my own.
One of said professors was from Spain. His accent was thick with the zeta and the lisp that accompanies that accent. He had studied at the University of Salamanca and his doctoral dissertation was on Don Quijote de la Mancha. He was one of my favorite professors because he made me think.
Day one. We discussed reality and how it effects literature, but more importantly the idea that none of us experience the same reality, regardless of what it is that we think is fact and can be objectified , our realities are filtered through our experiences giving each person their own hue of what is occurring. If every perception of reality is cured by our biography, then reality may not exist for the only thing that is real is the perception of it and that can only be experienced on a personal level.
This same professor argued the point that I presented above, about choice.
Think about what you wore today. Did you make a conscious decision about what it was you wanted to use to clothe yourself? Was it your decision? Of course it was. I assume there wasn’t anyone else sitting there telling you what you had to wear (this is assuming that you aren’t married and that you weren’t about to go out to some special event that would require something beside a t-shirt and jeans, then of course, there would be a nagging female voice deciding for you). You like blue, so you picked a blue shirt. Choice made, freedom of choice proven…
But what about the choice that wasn’t considered.
First, you picked the clothes in your closet from a preset, fabricated choice. Sure you decided on blue, but someone else decided that blue was an acceptable color and that it was made available for you to choose out of the set of options. The options were predetermined for you by someone you have absolutely no connection to and you will never meet, yet they made your choices.
Second, did it ever pass through your mind that getting dressed was optional? When you woke up did you make a decision to get dressed, or was it habit. Did you decide to clothe yourself or was that societal pressure? There are times of the year that going naked should be a completely acceptable choice. Yet, it isn’t even within the data set.
The most fascinating part about statistical predictions, to me, is the margin of error. Within those numbers lies the rogue, the individuals within the data set that don’t fit. It’s amazing that this can be predicted and configured down to a margin of a percentage, but it’s always there. There are always those who cannot be predicted to act within the perimeters provided. If you take a data set and plot it graphically, you will find those individuals out in space in a place where no one else has chosen to go. There they are, often alone in a point on the graph that doesn’t make sense. The margin of error.
If it is to say that behaviour that can be predicted has not been personally chosen, then it would lead to the conclusion that those who are the margin of error are those who are truly living. Those who have taken a course of action that is not predictable, is their own. They are open. They are thinking simply to explore the process of thought.
Obviously, this is nothing more than the synapses in my brain causing things to rattle around and get caught in the small spaces of my brain of brains. There is no answer, no clear cut ideal that can give us the answer. Chances are that we are nothing more than the biological processes that control our lives with our biography simply laid out on top of it to give us the aspect of individuality.
And then there’s the rogue factor. I think that is what I would like to aspire to. To sit outside the data set that can predict what I will do next.
P. L. and R. or if we can’t have that, something very similar.
I leave you with a scene from Waking Life, if you haven’t seen it, find it and watch it.
Out.