Something I found fascinating from Susan Murphy’s half of the interview is her work on helping people overcome addiction and avoid stress. In particular, she mentions developmental technology that can warn an individual if they will be entering a period of high stress that may lead to relapse. Her example involves said technology warning the individual about a stress period a few hours away. However, I was wondering how far in the future this technology would be able to detect a stress period? I will give the benefit of the doubt, seeing as she describes the technology as in the early stages of research and trial. But in conjunction to earthquake prediction -- which can only foretell a coming earthquake a few days or hours before it occurs -- it seems worth knowing if this stress detector has a greater range, or if it too has ‘nearsighted’ vision.
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I think this is a super fascinating question, Jaida. As someone who was also amazed by the potential of the mobile health technology discussed by Susan Murphy, this strikes me as the perfect follow-up question. Judging by her explanation of the technology and methodology, it seems that the question may have a somewhat counter-intuitive answer: that the predictions may not be tied to time at all. As described by Murphy, some factors—while obviously derived from quantitative measurements of stress levels—are more qualitative. Specifically, Murphy mentioned that stress levels are sometimes associated with certain relationships, so the mobile health technology could qualitatively predict to a user that time spent with that individual increases their stress.