

Supercomputer predicts revolution - erehweb
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14841018

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zeteo
With a supercomputer, it's easy to tune lots of parameters, and make models
that fit the past well. I'll believe it when they make some falsifiable
predictions about the future.

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chriseppstein
There is a statistical margin of error. They will need to make many such
predictions. Also, the act of predicting an event might cause it to become
more or less likely to occur.

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felipemnoa
Make the prediction, encrypt it with a private key. Release the encrypted
prediction with a "do not open till...". Release the public key at a given
date. This way the prophecy won't influence the future.

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zeteo
What kind of cryptography do you need to use, in order to avoid the prospect
of two different predictions, encrypted with different private keys, resolving
to the same encrypted text?

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felipemnoa
I've never heard of anybody being able to achieve something like that. If you
have some examples please share. For all practical purposes I'll say it is not
possible. Especially if you are using AES.

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Xlythe
Egypt dipped lower in 1991 than in 2011, yet Mubarak was in power for 30
years. And the dip leading to the revolution only started in 2011, making
predictions about his removal from power very nearsighted. Obviously, like
weather, specific and accurate long range predictions are almost impossible,
but its still a fault that should be brought to attention.

As for the map of Osama, it's very hard to see specifics. I'm also not quite
sure what the lines mean (Newspaper based in x guesses y? Why even show x?).
But there are several hotspots and I'm sure the government was checking most
of them. There's definitely politics involved in combing through a 200km
territory in someone else's country...

I'm a bit cynical about predictions, sorry. Especially when your proof is
looking back at the past and say "Well duh".

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bdhe
In the rare circumstance that someone hasn't read Isaac Asimov's _Foundation
Series_ , this immediately reminded me of Hari Seldon's work
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)>)

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goombastic
After a revolution, I wish some of the world's artificial boundaries would go
away. There is a huge overhead (money, and power brokers) in maintaining these
boundaries. I hope the next revolution de-brokers everything with enforced
gaps.

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Palomides
it seems to me this isn't any better than what a person reading the news could
do; if you're using mass-media as your input, I kinda doubt you're going to
get surprising predictions.

