The Algorithmic Debate Is Over- The Loser Is Clear - Jaffer Ali

quotHowever beautiful the strategy you should occasionally look at the resultsquotWinston ChurchillThere has been a long running debate in social sciences military strategy online advertising and marketing circles The language used for each field obscured the fact that the debate was really one and the same Since few folks move from one discipline to the other each felt that there was uniqueness to their side of the debateThe central point of debate centered on problems of predicting human behavior and social interactions Social sciences have been in search of an algorithm to predict human behavior although the language may not have precisely utilized these wordsBF Skinner epitomized this algorithmic search with his behaviorism theories Skinner believed that individual behavior could be reduced and therefore predicted by a thorough understanding of every stimulus and response For Skinnerians our environment and experiences just don39t create who we are they determine who we are and what we will doWhen I was in college in the 70s EO Wilson was busy reducing social behavior to biological drives in the attempt to predict social interactions Reducing is the operative wordIn economics predicting human behavior and financial market movements became the central focus for this discipline Thousands of very bright mathematicians joined the economics fray to reduce thousands of variables in the vain hope of distancing themselves from chance Once again quotreducequot is the operative wordIn the military hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in designing battle scenarios in computer simulations This is just one element in the preparation for war Yet EVERY military strategist will tell you that one cannot reduce the complexity of the battlefield to a spreadsheet or algorithm and EVERY plan is thrown out after the first five minutes of the battle Prediction remains not just elusive but impossibleSo we come to online marketingThe predictive obsession has arrived utilizing the same reductionist methodology as its social science predecessors And the same math wizards who could not predict their way thru the financial markets are applying disproven principles to online marketing As Churchill said it is a wonderful strategy but you still have to ask quothow39s that working for youquotThe results have been in for a long time only there are too many people focusing on the limited successes to be bothered with failures But the acolytes of prediction believe they are innovators and fail to look at the history of this misguided meme Here is Laplace39s version of the issue stated back in 1816 We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion and all positions of all items of which nature is composed if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyesPierre Simon Laplace A Philosophical Essay on ProbabilitiesModern day marketing quotLaplaceansquot are devoted with religious zeal Their faith makes them believe that they can predict the future if only they had a big enough computer that would know all the past behavior of individuals So the fool39s errand of collecting quotmore dataquot became the new obsession and few looked at how the results turned out They have been rather poor Not surprising since the theoretical foundations of Laplace have been disproven by quantum theory Uncertainty is a fundamental part of realityI spent the better part of the last three years of online debate taking the data reductionists to task I think what was driving me was the gulf between what I knew and what I wanted as a marketer and entrepreneur I wanted to be wrong Uncertainty is daunting when you set out to overcome it and that is precisely what I tried to do But the results were miserable The journey to discover quotWHYquot led to studying physics economics philosophy psychology and military theoryAnd I discovered that this debate has long been decided and I am moving on my friends Moving on to embrace uncertainty and develop business strategies that do not rely on what is inherently unknowableJaffer Ali is the CEO of the online video network Vidsense and the ecommerce company PulseTV He can be reached on the phone he still answers his phone at 7084784500 ext 105Read all Jafferamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at On the Other Handamp8230Check us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

Become a Thought Leader.
Share your thought leadership article with industry professionals & have them archived in Thought Leadership

The Algorithmic Debate Is Over- The Loser Is Clear - Jaffer Ali

Author

Publish date

Channel

Archived in

Jaffer Ali

Hispanic Leadership Roundtable: Inclusion, Mentorship, and Building the Next Generation (Video) - By Juan Ayala

More Videos:

Become a Thought Leader. Share your thought leadership article with industry professionals & have them archived in Thought Leadership

The Algorithmic Debate Is Over- The Loser Is Clear - Jaffer Ali

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Jaffer Ali

Hispanic Leadership Roundtable: Inclusion, Mentorship, and Building the Next Generation (Video) - By Juan Ayala

The payment was successful

Cookies

Become a Thought Leader.
Share your thought leadership article with industry professionals & have them archived in Thought Leadership