I took a quick peek at the site. They are trying to machine learn (from their behavior) what people are likely to do. They are ‘explaining’ why people choose X rather than Y only in a probabilistic sense, if that even constitutes explanation. For their purposes, and those of their clients, maybe that’s enough. So, I’m not sure what you mean by ‘behaviourism’ or why, for the intended purpose, it is (if it is) a ‘bad, bad, thing’.
By behaviourism I mean exactly what you say (but orientated towards ‘big data’ which is what I find it interesting) and I didn’t say it was a ‘bad, bad, thing’!
Ok. Lacking ‘big data’ about you, I imputed to you a motive in order to ‘explain’ your penultimate blog post. Maybe I should use machine learning on your blog entries instead. 🙂
I’ve heard dogs can infer intention from human behavior. As one character in a J. P. Donleavy novel said, “Bow Wow”.
Mark,
I took a quick peek at the site. They are trying to machine learn (from their behavior) what people are likely to do. They are ‘explaining’ why people choose X rather than Y only in a probabilistic sense, if that even constitutes explanation. For their purposes, and those of their clients, maybe that’s enough. So, I’m not sure what you mean by ‘behaviourism’ or why, for the intended purpose, it is (if it is) a ‘bad, bad, thing’.
Roy
By behaviourism I mean exactly what you say (but orientated towards ‘big data’ which is what I find it interesting) and I didn’t say it was a ‘bad, bad, thing’!
Ok. Lacking ‘big data’ about you, I imputed to you a motive in order to ‘explain’ your penultimate blog post. Maybe I should use machine learning on your blog entries instead. 🙂
I’ve heard dogs can infer intention from human behavior. As one character in a J. P. Donleavy novel said, “Bow Wow”.
Oh I don’t think it’s a good thing either though…