Probability Leads Only to Death
Be careful how closely you follow the data
I suppose we all want the greatest chances of a successful outcome in anything we do. Most of us want to take whatever steps offer us the highest probability of getting the job, winning the pitch, selling the book, beating the cancer, meeting a compatible mate, or getting/doing/achieving whatever it is we’re after. But I’ve started to wonder if our digital tools, or at least the tech solutionist mindset they afford (see Survival of the Richest) may be fetishizing the powers of probability at the expense of true human ingenuity.
Digital technologies not only offer the ability to calculate probabilities based on unprecedented volume of data and statistics; they also allow engineers to model and iterate scenarios through simulations. That’s what so many of our artificial intelligences are busy doing most of the time. The plots of Westworld, Terminator, The Peripheral and many other science fiction stories are based on the idea that we can run millions of simulations in order to identify the one that leads to the greatest probability of success or even survival. After gaining that knowledge, it could be considered almost unethical not to take that path.
For example, imagine a situation where a relative has been told they have a likely fatal cancer, but have the greatest…
