Functions in the brain

How would you feel if I said I could predict your future actions?

Impossible！ "This must be your first reaction.

But is it really impossible? When you think about your life, don't anyone ever predict your behavior?

Can parents guess your little thoughts? Can your opponent expect your next step when playing chess? Did the magician perform a prophecy on you? Even in the stage of hypnosis, the hypnotist can not only predict your actions, but also control your actions!

You are not angry, "This is not counted, they just can guess what I was thinking, not fully predict my behavior." ”

But why should your actions be guessed? Don't you have any laws to act on?

Economics is a subject that studies human behavior. This discipline assumes that people are rational and will maximize the advantages and disadvantages of this foundation, the calculation of gains and losses. Economics has been able to successfully predict human group behavior, such as how high a commodity is sold and how much it buys at a higher price.

But there are times when people are opposed to the underlying assumption of economics: man is rational. They think that man is not rational. If everyone is the selfish ghost of avoiding the advantages and disadvantages, then why does the world have good deeds? Why would someone selflessly help others and even risk their lives to save others?

A famous game is often used for example. To give a participant 10 yuan, the participant can choose how to allocate the 10 dollars to himself and another participant. For example 55 equally, oneself more cent six, only gives the others four. You can even get 10 of your own, just give someone zero. Of course, you want to give others more than you can. When the allocation scheme is decided, another participant can only choose to accept or not accept. If you choose to accept it, the money is allocated. If you choose not to accept, then both sides can not get a penny.

According to the traditional rational person of economics hypothesis, the participant who gets the money should choose to divide oneself 9 yuan, give each other 1 yuan. Because he will think, if the other side accept, can get 1 yuan, if the other party does not accept, can only get 0 yuan, 1 yuan is better than 0 yuan, so the other side will choose to accept.

But what is the truth? What would they do if we really found two people to play the game?

Experimental economics is such a discipline that it would really design a lot of different experiments to study how they would choose when people were doing these games.

The real data is that most people have chosen 55, and a few have divided themselves by 6 or 7. And almost no one will give themselves more than 7. Those who give themselves 6 or 7 may also be rejected, and 55 are equally divided, and almost no one rejects it.

Why is that? Aren't people rational?

No, this is because when we calculate the gains and losses, we only take into account the money, and not consider the real gains and losses: utility.

It is not just money, but also a lot of things that bring us utility. When the other side chooses to leave himself 8, only gives you 2 o'clock. You can choose to reject this proposal, although you lost 2 yuan, but this "everybody does not get" the "vengeance" can also bring you effect. And when you split the money, you do not give others 1, on the one hand is afraid of others refused, on the other hand can show their generosity, and this "face" is also a utility.

Experimental economists also conduct the experiment under different conditions, such as repeated experiments, switching roles for participants, increasing the amount of money, and so on. After many experiments, we can get a lot of data about human behavior.

And what does this data tell us?

We can find invisible hands based on these data. We can sum up a variety of functions that affect utility, such as "unfair aversion function", which reduces utility when the distribution of money is unfair. There are "envy envy hate function", when other people's money than their own, will reduce the effectiveness. There is also the "Kinship benefit function", when the effect of relatives increases, their effectiveness will increase. In addition to these, there are many different kinds of functions.

What can we do with these functions?

That is predicting a person's behavior, when we know the various functions of a person, and the stimuli given in the environment, we can know the person's response. The mental process of this person is like a black box, but after countless experiments, we know what kind of response we can get from the input stimuli and sum up a lot of regular functions. By applying these functions, we can predict a person's behavior.

Isn't that incredible? This is even more surprising when the utility analysis of economics extends to the entire social sciences.

Perhaps all of our actions can be based on this utility analysis, creating mathematical models to predict. When the teacher erudite in class, it is increasing his utility. When the classmate a serious class, this is to increase his effectiveness. When classmate B is playing mobile phone, this also increases his utility. When we honor our parents and raise our children, this is an increase in our own effectiveness. Our so-called code of conduct, the moral laws of our hearts, are all part of these utility functions.

God, these functions are like the rules of operation in our brain. If anyone could know all the utility functions about me, that person would really be able to predict my behavior and think it would be scary.

But you don't have to worry about it yet. Because the environment is so complex, no one can describe all the variables in the environment in mathematical language. And your brain is complicated enough that no one can work out all the utility functions about you. Not to mention that your utility function will continue to change. Unless you're a world-class figure, 24-hour people collect your data and send it to a top team of scientists who use supercomputer to process the data and finally get a probabilistic judgment about your future behavior.

Perhaps, some day in the future. Everyone is surrounded by high-tech wearable and even implanted equipment from birth, and his data is collected all the while, and is transmitted to a giant computing center via high-speed wireless networks. A highly intelligent AI can work out a variety of utility functions about you, giving you the appropriate stimulation of the environment in order to cultivate you into the proper form.

Will you expect this day to come?