Asimov's Psychohistory Becoming a Reality?

northernboy writes "Today's LA Times has an article describing how a Wikileaks data dump from Afghanistan plus some advanced algorithms are allowing accurate predictions about the behavior of large groups of people. From the article: 'The programmers used simple code to extract dates and locations from about 77,000 incident reports that detailed everything from simple stop-and-search operations to full-fledged battles. The resulting map revealed the outlines of the country's ongoing violence: hot spots near the Pakistani border but not near the Iranian border, and extensive bloodshed along the country's main highway. They did it all in just one night. Now one member of that group has teamed up with mathematicians and computer scientists and taken the project one major step further: They have used the WikiLeaks data to predict the future.' Considering they did not discriminate between types of skirmish, but only when and where there was violence, this seems like an amazing result. It looks like our robotic overlords will have even less trouble controlling us than I previously thought."

Comments

That is no prediction

[siddesu]

In the absence of change in circumstances, it is quite obvious that areas of conflict will have more conflict. TFA doesn't say enough about the methodology for one to be able to estimate how valuable it is.

On the other hand, yet another good thing about the Wikileak emerges. Were those data hidden by the secrecy wall, this research would not have been available to the NATO forces over there. Is secrecy really productive? Was the leak good or bad? Are the costly measures to make future leaks less likely a good investment?

Re:That is no prediction

[slew]

[W]e weren't broke during WWII and the Civil War was not about slavery.

Actually we were pretty broke during WWII. Remember WWII was right after the great depression and many think it was the event that allowed us to pull out of the depression. The US treasury debt was ~$40B in 1941, and $250B in 1946 when the war ended. The US financed WWII with lots of warbonds...

FWIW, I don't think any historians would agree that we fought WWII to protect the rights of any people (other than US self interest). The US entered WWII to stop Japan from gaining too much influence in the Pacific (of course we were at the same time giving lots of money to England in their fight against Germany, but that wasn't really to protect their rights either). History records that it all came to head when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The fact that Germany wanted to pick a direct fight with the US pretty much gave us no choice but to go over to Europe for real too...

And of course the Civil war wasn't about slavery, but states rights. Is it okay to secede from the union when you don't get your way? Apparently, no say the winners.

Re:It's only temporary

[HornWumpus]

Sounds like algorithmic trading.

Re:Moslem beheading non-moslem

[z0idberg]

And in the countries the US hasn't gotten to yet, they just stone women who've been raped for adultery, sell daughters into marriage and generally work against any sort of progress.

From Wikipedia:
Current dowry practices
#India
#Bangladesh
#Pakistan
#Nepal
#Afghanistan
#Vietnam


Good luck with getting through that list. Are they starting their way from the bottom and working upwards? Perhaps should have ticked the bottom one off before moving to the next one.