Comments on: The death of the mind

By: Rhotomago

Rhotomago — Tue, 17 May 2011 09:19:15 +0000

It’s the first step to developing Pscyhohistory. All it needs now is the attention of Hari Seldon.

By: Check Out Mind Hacks Blog for Your Regular Fix of Neuroscience and Brain Stuff | Dynamic Subspace

Thu, 12 May 2011 20:20:23 +0000

[...] The death of the mind In this post, Bell discusses a Business Week article about corporations using large data sets of human behavior to model and influence outcomes in favor of their business models. Technology to anonymize or combat what I see as an eventual abuse of human behavior might be one solution. I am also envisioning a future course that raises student awareness of how their behavior is used, studied, and exploited by big corporations. It would be a theory course with several modules on application. [...]

By: kriss

kriss — Fri, 06 May 2011 12:58:25 +0000

Doesn’t matter if the actions are by design, smart data mining or simple random choices and the feedback system of evolution.

The problem is that the environment rewards this behaviour.

This sort of thing is just a spam problem and the real problem with spam is that it works…

By: Andrew Wilson

Andrew Wilson — Tue, 03 May 2011 12:47:30 +0000

Behaviourism was many things, but ‘wrong’ was not really one of them. I’ve always thought psychology could do with regaining a little more behaviour and a little less mind in it’s studies. Obviously, data mining has limited utility for explanation, but given how structured and (globally) predictable behaviour actually is, it’s not a bad place to start.

By: George

George — Mon, 02 May 2011 10:23:46 +0000

I am not so sure about that. First, every data set needs a setup-model, an analyse-model and an interpretation-model, all of these are made by humans. Second, empirical data were always the basis of new theories. In the above case of “death of mind” the new data will lead to new models of the mind and not make it redundant.

By: Anne McCrossan

Anne McCrossan — Sun, 01 May 2011 09:14:14 +0000

This is a pretty big issue. It only takes a small algorithmic error, compounded thousands of times by big data sets, to make this kind of commercial thinking seriously flawed and potentially very dangerous.

It’s a development that fails to take in the notion that the most fruitful progress is often made through asynchronous events and that creative opportunity is, by definition, unpredictable.

I was writing about this in 2008 http://www.visceralbusiness.com/algorithmic-error/. Doug Rushkoff’s raised it recently and eloquently in his book Program or Be Programmed.

The question is who has it in their interests to educate and empower large swathes of consumers to develop more collaborative and visceral business models? I wonder if we will see a splitting of brands and businesses into two camps, the ones that want zombie numbers to swell their ranks and the ones that seek out intelligent and aware consumers in it for the longer term and for quality of life relationships over, quite literally, mindless transactions.

By: C.H.

C.H. — Sun, 01 May 2011 08:48:48 +0000

“People enjoy the games more if they receive gifts from their friends…” Nope. Wrong. People feel obliged to play these retarded games because other people are sending them things constantly.

Many people find this annoying in the extreme.

That’s one chink in the armor of data crunching without insight.