Transcript Computational thought is good for business.

Computational thought is
good for business.
Senior Symposium: Shende
Adam Fariss
Outline
•
•
Successful business
•
Economic predictions difficult and imprecise
•
Archaic
Traditional Economic Theory: Concerned with what not how?
•
•
Economic Instincts
Understanding of decision-making process
•
Is thought computational?
Human Capabilities
Traditional Economic Theory vs. Computational thought
•
•
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Exploitation of information
Past Experience
• Rationale
• Could a program prioritize rationale?
•
Effects
• Forced smoothing of cycles
• Predictions
• Control
• Negative?
Business Success
 Ability
to predict
 Accuracy

Largely based on “gut feeling” or “Business
Sense”
 Economic

pays
Archaic
principles very influential
Economics

“Traditionally… concerned with what decisions are
made rather than how they are made” (Simon
494)

Predicting and extrapolating


Accuracy
Economic instincts?

“Natural selection built the decision-making
machinery in human minds” (Cosmides and Tooby
328)
 Ex: Invisible hand
Computational Thought
 Cosmides

and Tooby:
“The Brain is complex computational device” (pp. 328)

Evolution created inherent hard wiring
 Baum:

“The mind could not be just a computer program” (pp. 76)


Semantics
Understanding = Compression

Human capability
Traditional Economic theory
vs. Computational Thought

Basis:


Exploitation
Experience

Rationale


Intentional Irrationality
 “risk preferring…males” (Robson 209)
- Gambles
 Herd Mentality vs. self preservation
How would a program differentiate?
Effects
 Existence
of Economic/Business
instincts would allow:
 Smoothing
of cycles
 Computers could make accurate
predictions for humans

Proactive
 Control

of economy/people
Negative?
Work Cited

Answers.com. Investment. Invisible Hand. 2006. <http://www.answers.com/topic/invisiblehand>
Cosmides, Leda; John Tooby. The American Economic Review. Better than Rational:
Evolutionary Psychology and the Invisible Hand. Vol. 84, No. 2. pp. 327-332. May, 1994.
Baum, Eric B. What is thought? Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
2004.
Damasio, Antonio. The Feeling of What Happens. “Body and Emotion in the making of
Consciousness.” Florida: Harcourt inc. 1999
Jackson, Frank. “Epiphenomenal Qualia” The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 32, No. 127: April
1982.
Robson, Arthur J. The Journal of Economic Perspectives. [Evolution and Human Nature]:
Response from Arthur Robson. Vol. 17, No. 2. pp. 209. Spring 2003.
Simon, Herbert A. The Bell Journal of Economics. On how to Decide What to Do. Vol. 9, No.
2. pp. 494-507. Autumn, 1978
The Mind. “Thinking.”