Robots that predict the future

If you ask its author Benjamin Recht Irrational decisions: how we gave computers the power to choose for usHe’ll probably tell you that our current predicament has a lot to do with the ideas and ideology of decision theory – or what economists call rational choice theory. Recht, a polymathic professor in UC Berkeley’s electrical engineering and computer science departments, prefers the term “mathematical rationality” to describe the narrow, statistical concept that fueled the desire to build computers, explained how they would ultimately work, and influenced the types of problems they would be good at solving.

This belief system dates back to the Enlightenment, but according to Recht, it really took hold at the end of World War II. Nothing focuses on risk and quick decision-making like war, and mathematical models that proved particularly useful in the fight against the Axis Powers convinced a select group of scientists and statisticians that they could also be a logical basis for designing the first computers. Thus was born the idea of ​​the computer as an ideal rational agent, a machine capable of making optimal decisions by quantifying uncertainty and maximizing utility.

Intuition, experience, and judgment gave way to optimization, game theory, and statistical prediction, says Recht. He writes, “The core algorithms developed over this period drive the automated decisions of our modern world, whether it’s managing supply chains, scheduling flight times, or serving ads to your social media feed.” In this optimization-driven reality, “each life decision is presented as if it were a round of an imaginary casino, and each argument can be reduced to costs and benefits, means and ends.”

Today, mathematical rationality (wearing its human skin) is best represented by pollster Nate Silver, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, and an assortment of Silicon Valley oligarchs, Recht says. These are people who fundamentally believe that the world would be a better place if more of us adopted their analytical mindset and learned to weigh costs and benefits, estimate risks, and make optimal plans. In other words, these are people who believe that we should all make decisions like computers.

How can we demonstrate that (indefinable) human intuition, morality, and judgment are better ways to solve some of the world’s most important and pressing problems?

He says this is a ridiculous idea for several reasons. To name just one, it’s not like humans couldn’t make evidence-based decisions before automation. Recht writes, “Advances in clean water, antibiotics, and public health reduced life expectancy from 40 in the 1850s to 70 by the 1950s.” “From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, we had world-changing scientific breakthroughs in physics, including thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and new theories of relativity.” We also managed to build cars and airplanes without a formal system of rationality and somehow came up with social innovations like modern democracy without optimal decision theory.

So how do we explain to the Pinkers and Silvers of the world that most of the decisions we make in life aren’t actually geared to the unrelenting mill of mathematical rationality? Furthermore, how can we demonstrate that (indefinable) human intuition, morality, and judgment may be better ways to solve some of the world’s most important and pressing problems?

Doubleday, 2026

One might begin by reminding logicians that any prediction, computational or otherwise, is really just a Desire-But a man with a powerful tendency to self-satisfaction. This idea brings to life Carissa Veliz’s amazing sweeping controversy Prophecy: Prophecy, Power, and the Battle for the Future, From Ancient Prophecies to AI.

Welles, a philosopher at the University of Oxford, sees prophecy as “a magnet that draws reality to itself.” She writes, “When the force of the magnet is strong enough, the prediction becomes likely to come true.”