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Whether you're studying at Harvard or online, please feel free to add posts that don't fit in other categories here!
A place to talk about the Future of the Future pathway, especially about AI and the evolution of modern predictive systems.
Here's a spot where you can add thoughts about what you'd like added to the Prediction Project in the Future!
A place to talk about Economic Modeling, Behavioral Economics, Corporations & how these affect Wealth.
Welcome! This is a space for forum members, including students, to create posts describing methods of divination.
For discussion of headlines, articles and news media that make predictions.
New Posts
- HealthDr. de Vivo talks about cancer prediction with respect to aggregate risk factors, which is really fascinating. Taking into account BMI, number of children, hormone use, etc. can provide a profile of sorts to give a woman's risk of endometrial cancer-- in her example specifically. This is similar to what I am looking at in my final project, seeing how well we can predict longevity based on lifestyle choices, disease risk, and genetics, as well as charting how prediction tools of human lifespan have developed over the years. A part of this is similar to something Dr. de Vivo touched on, having to take into account genetic factors working in concert with environmental risks to get a better understanding of the disease. https://www.labxchange.org/library/pathway/lx-pathway:0b417a9e-6227-44a8-a887-dbfdf44e37e3/items/lb:HarvardX:15f6a2e5:lx_simulation:1/62348?source=%2Flibrary%2Fclusters%2Flx-cluster%3AModernPrediction&fullscreen=trueLike
- The Future of the FutureWhile this was indirectly mentioned in the Dan Gilbert interview on prediction and psychology, one thing that stuck out for me was the surface-level, inverse relationship between belief in the uncertainty of a predictive model versus belief in the predictive model itself. A great example of this is any current predictive model on climate change. On a surface level, if one rejects the notion of climate change, they are (usually) more invested in the uncertainty of such a predictive model, rather than the validity of the predictive model itself. On the other hand, if one believes in climate change (and science by extension), they are more invested in the predictive model of climate change itself, rather than the uncertainty that inevitably comes with any climate-related model. To raise awareness for climate change for example, we could use "bandwagon effect" which was mentioned by Gilbert in the interview when referencing how most people use blue bins to recycle throughout a city primarily because others are doing it. While I wish the interview delved deeper into creative ways this phenomenon could be used to elevate climate awareness in the future, I still found the idea that the bandwagon effect on humans originates from our herd-like psychology compelling. Lastly, I found the conversation early on in the interview about the idea of animals thinking about their future to be fascinating. According to Gilbert, he believes no other animal thinks about the future like we do. He also mentions that the action of remembering something is equivalent to imagining the past, and also relates imagining the past to imagining the future. By this logic, orca whales, which have a more developed paralimbic system than humans (part of the brain related to spatial memory and navigation), are essentially able to imagine the future, slightly contradicting Gilbert's claim? Attached below is a link to an article which highlights the intelligence of orcas: https://orcanation.org/the-social-intelligence-of-orcas/#:~:text=Orcas%20have%20a%20highly%20developed,to%20spatial%20memory%20and%20navigation.Like
- Earthhttps://www.labxchange.org/library/pathway/lx-pathway:0b417a9e-6227-44a8-a887-dbfdf44e37e3/items/lb:HarvardX:fe7fbba2:lx_simulation:1/62346?source=%2Flibrary%2Fclusters%2Flx-cluster%3AModernPrediction&fullscreen=true I watched Brendan Meade's interview. Earthquake prediction has always been fascinating to me. I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, where my school taught me every year what to do before, during, and after an earthquake. Watching Brendan Meade's interview was a great experience because I could connect my prior experience and knowledge of earthquakes with the information he was sharing. The most surprising part of the interview was when Meade spoke about predicting earthquakes. As a kid, I always heard there was no possible way to predict earthquakes. Although Meade mentioned that there is still no way to predict earthquakes accurately, some progress has been made. I was shocked when Meade said that an industrial version of a GPS can help them not "only see the motion of tectonic plates, but more interestingly, we can see where they come together and grind." This information cannot help them predict accurately when the next earthquake will be, but can help them find where the next large earthquake will be. For additional information on this GPS, you can consult these articles: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasa-tests-gps-monitoring-system-for-big-us-earthquakes-148720795.html Uncovering Earthquakes with Computational Scientist Brendan Meade,https://hmsc.harvard.edu/2020/06/24/uncovering-earthquakes-with-computational-scientist-brendan-meade/ This is a picture of the GPS found in https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/01/06/174723/how-gps-can-keep-track-of-earthquakes-and-flooding/Like
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