Nicholas Thompson
www.wired.com
Originally published October 4, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
Hacking a Human
NT: Explain what it means to hack a human being and why what can be done now is different from what could be done 100 years ago.
YNH: To hack a human being is to understand what's happening inside you on the level of the body, of the brain, of the mind, so that you can predict what people will do. You can understand how they feel and you can, of course, once you understand and predict, you can usually also manipulate and control and even replace. And of course it can't be done perfectly and it was possible to do it to some extent also a century ago. But the difference in the level is significant. I would say that the real key is whether somebody can understand you better than you understand yourself. The algorithms that are trying to hack us, they will never be perfect. There is no such thing as understanding perfectly everything or predicting everything. You don't need perfect, you just need to be better than the average human being.
If you have an hour, please watch the video.
