预言动机：我们为何痴迷预测，以及将预测外包给机器的意义

Three books unpack our infatuation with prediction, and what outsourcing this task to machines might mean for our future. By Bryan Gardiner Illustration by Eva Redamonti To be human is, fundamentally, to be a forecaster. Occasionally a pretty good one. Trying to see the future, whether through the lens of past experience or the logic of cause and effect, has helped us hunt, avoid being hunted, plant crops, forge social bonds, and in general survive in a world that does not prioritize our survival. Indeed, as the tools of divination have changed over the centuries, from tea leaves to data sets, our conviction that the future can be known (and therefore controlled) has only grown stronger. …