There’s no way to create a non-vague, predictive, model of human behavior, because most human behavior is (mostly) random reaction to stimuli.
Corollary 1: most models explain after the fact and require both the subject to be aware of the model’s predictions and the predictions to be vague and underspecified enough to make astrology seems like spacecraft engineering.
Corollary 2: we’ll spend most of our time in drama trying to understand the real reasons or the truth about our/other’s behavior even when presented with evidence pointing to the randomness of our actions. After the fact we’ll fabricate an elaborate theory to explain everything, including the evidence, but this theory will have no predictive power.
This (modulo the chance it was made up) is pretty strong evidence that you’re wrong. I wish it was professionally ethical for psychologists to do this kind of thing intentionally.
“Let me get this straight. We had sex. I wind up in the hospital and I can’t remember anything?” Alice said. There was a slight pause.
“You owe me a 30-carat diamond!” Alice quipped, laughing. Within minutes, she repeated the same questions in order, delivering the punch line in the exact tone and inflection. It was always a 30-carat diamond.
“It was like a script or a tape,” Scott said. “On the one hand, it was very funny. We were hysterical. It was scary as all hell.”
While doctors tried to determine what ailed Alice, Scott and other grim-faced relatives and friends gathered at the hospital. Surrounded by anxious loved ones, Alice blithely cracked jokes (the same ones) for hours.
I wish it was professionally ethical for psychologists to do this kind of thing intentionally.
They could probably do some relevant research by talking to Alzheimer’s patients—they wouldn’t get anything as clear as that, I think, but I expect they’d be able to get statistically-significant data.
How detailed of a model are you thinking of? It seems like there are at least easy and somewhat trivial predictions we could make e.g. that a human will eat chocolate instead of motor oil.
How about a prediction that a particular human will eat bacon instead of jalapeno peppers? (I’m particularly thinking of myself, for whom that’s true, and a vegetarian friend, for whom the opposite is true.)
This model seems to be reducible to “people will eat what they prefer”.
A good model would be able to reduce the number of bits to describe a behavior, if the model requires to keep a log (e.g. what particular humans prefer to eat) to predict something, it’s not much less complex (i.e. bit encoding) than the behavior.
It seems to me that your original prediction has to refer either to humans as a group, in which case Luke’s counterexample is a good one, or humans as individuals, in which case my counterexample is a good one.
It also seems to me that either counterexample can be refined into a useful prediction: Humans in general don’t eat petroleum products. I don’t eat spicy food. Corvi doesn’t eat meat. All of those classes of things can be described more efficiently than making lists of the members of the sets.
No, because preferences are revealed by behavior. Using revealed preferences is a good heuristic generally, but it’s required if you’re right that explanations for behavior are mostly post-hoc rationalizations.
So:
People eat what they prefer. What they prefer is what they wind up having eaten. Ergo, people eat what they eat.
I think “vague” is a poor word choice for that concept. “(not) informative” is a technical term with this meaning. There are probably words which are clearer to the layman.
Downvoted in agreement. But I think that the randomness comes from what programmers call “race conditions” in the timing of external stimuli vs internal stimuli.
Still, these race conditions make prediction impossible as a practical matter.
There’s no way to create a non-vague, predictive, model of human behavior, because most human behavior is (mostly) random reaction to stimuli.
Corollary 1: most models explain after the fact and require both the subject to be aware of the model’s predictions and the predictions to be vague and underspecified enough to make astrology seems like spacecraft engineering.
Corollary 2: we’ll spend most of our time in drama trying to understand the real reasons or the truth about our/other’s behavior even when presented with evidence pointing to the randomness of our actions. After the fact we’ll fabricate an elaborate theory to explain everything, including the evidence, but this theory will have no predictive power.
This (modulo the chance it was made up) is pretty strong evidence that you’re wrong. I wish it was professionally ethical for psychologists to do this kind of thing intentionally.
Here’s another case:
They could probably do some relevant research by talking to Alzheimer’s patients—they wouldn’t get anything as clear as that, I think, but I expect they’d be able to get statistically-significant data.
How detailed of a model are you thinking of? It seems like there are at least easy and somewhat trivial predictions we could make e.g. that a human will eat chocolate instead of motor oil.
I would classify such kinds of predictions as vague, after all they match equally well for every human being in almost any condition.
How about a prediction that a particular human will eat bacon instead of jalapeno peppers? (I’m particularly thinking of myself, for whom that’s true, and a vegetarian friend, for whom the opposite is true.)
This model seems to be reducible to “people will eat what they prefer”.
A good model would be able to reduce the number of bits to describe a behavior, if the model requires to keep a log (e.g. what particular humans prefer to eat) to predict something, it’s not much less complex (i.e. bit encoding) than the behavior.
Maybe I’ve misunderstood.
It seems to me that your original prediction has to refer either to humans as a group, in which case Luke’s counterexample is a good one, or humans as individuals, in which case my counterexample is a good one.
It also seems to me that either counterexample can be refined into a useful prediction: Humans in general don’t eat petroleum products. I don’t eat spicy food. Corvi doesn’t eat meat. All of those classes of things can be described more efficiently than making lists of the members of the sets.
No, because preferences are revealed by behavior. Using revealed preferences is a good heuristic generally, but it’s required if you’re right that explanations for behavior are mostly post-hoc rationalizations.
So:
People eat what they prefer. What they prefer is what they wind up having eaten. Ergo, people eat what they eat.
Consistency of preferences is at least some kind of a prediction.
I think “vague” is a poor word choice for that concept. “(not) informative” is a technical term with this meaning. There are probably words which are clearer to the layman.
I agree vague is not a good word choice. Irrelevant (using relevancy as it’s used to describe search results) is a better word.
Downvoted in agreement. But I think that the randomness comes from what programmers call “race conditions” in the timing of external stimuli vs internal stimuli. Still, these race conditions make prediction impossible as a practical matter.