📑 Learn from machine learning

Bookmarked Learn from machine learning (Aeon)

The world is a black box full of extreme specificity: it might be predictable but that doesn’t mean it is understandable.

David Weinberger compares the way in which the Western world has traditionally conceived of generalisations and certainty with the way in which machine learning works.

We like traditional generalisations because (a) we can understand them; (b) they often enable deductive conclusions; and (c) we can apply them to particulars. But (a) an MLM’s generalisations are not always understandable; (b) they are statistical, probabilistic and primarily inductive; and (c) literally and practically, we usually cannot apply MLM generalisations except by running the machine learning model that resulted from them.

aeonmag https://aeon.co/essays/our-world-is-a-black-box-predictable-but-not-understandable

This move away from certainty to a probabilistic understanding of outcomes has an impact on our conceptions of knowledge. For some like Ayad AKhtar uncertainity is actually a good thing, however this is still somewhat corrupted by machine learning and the way it warps our minds.