New Algorithm Causes Outrage

 

 

Computer takes over galaxy; Arthur Front and company strenuously protest; Still nothing specific about the meaning of it all.

Death Valley - Predictive Analytics (PA), the new buzzword often heard across the boardroom din, does not always find what is obvious.  It often finds traumatic and awful news about the exact fate of all mankind.  This happens so often, in fact, that some math PhD’s have been known to scream in horror before and after calculating certain formulas.  Scientists are on edge and not sure where to put their microscopes or when to look in them for fear of being frightened to the very depths of their beings.

In one poignant example of PA’s odd power, a model created by a team of 5^th graders in the North Carolina hills reportedly is able to determine the meaning of life by analyzing the blanks between words and inside of letters like ‘o’ and ‘e’ in biblical scrolls.  They were able to determine exactly what the whole point is but would not comment further.  However, all seem to be taking the revelation in stride, going so far as to continue with their primary education. 

So begins another journey down man’s perennial propensity for failure-seeking.  Researchers are not sure why it works, but they say that is precisely the point of predictive analytics.

Godlike

“Look,” said Mary Frumpatelli, the go-to for all things analytic at California Technical College B, before a church gathering, “modern data analytics finds out what people don’t want it to know and we don’t care why it works or even how.  All we care about is what to do with all of the money that we made creating the model.”

Frumpatelli and her team from Cal Tech B were awarded €10,000,000 for developing the software last March at the Sanhedrin.  Because she used controversial methodology, including programming her systems to write the source code, many hipsters have harshly denounced her work as being “too godlike”.  This outcry became more pronounced when it was revealed that her system programmed itself in less than 8 milliseconds.  Apparently, 100 seconds later it had reached the technological singularity using a simple hill-climbing algorithm and was already giving direct orders to staffers at Cal Tech B.

What-ifs

“Crossing these boundaries!” shouted Arthur Front Wednesday before cameras and a violent audience, “think about the implications here.  What if such code were leaked to alien hordes?  With this technology out there, what if a time traveler put it in his pocket, took it a million years into the future, it was not quarantined properly, it infiltrated computers which are by then minds of pure energy at the end of time to guard… man, listen, there are just too many what-ifs here.  We have to pull the plug on this program and arrest Frumpatelli on charges of cybernetic conspiracy.”

“Seriously?” said Frumpatelli when she was informed of Front’s statement, “you interviewed this person?  Wow.  Uh, This guy is working for alien intelligence; we have it from trusted sources that he came here from Delta Burke planet 12.  Something else you should keep in mind, my algorithm, which has become the most powerful being ever to live, predicts Mr. Front is speaking only 25% truth.  With a margin of error, keep in mind, of 2500%.  We just don’t know.  That is my point - with this guy...  We. Just. Don’t. Know. Period.  And just by the looks of it he is a pure crackpot.”

Entanglement

Future United, a time-traveling history front, has printouts stored inside a bunker facility in Lawton, Oklahoma that chart key events of the future.  They have spent weeks mapping every major historical moment until the asymptote of time using quantum entanglement processes that connect to every atom in several random duplicate universes, then went back to before they started the process so it was as if the universe had never been examined (In the dozen universes that the team observed, because of the effects of measuring space-time using entanglement processes, all twelve are reporting as of Monday that time is collapsing on itself by as much as a million years every two weeks.  They are now searching for empty duplicate universes to reassign these otherwise doomed life forms.  Few hold out any hope for their fate). 

Future United focused specifically on charting major events and because of this it left out the day-to-day of individuals, the waking-up-and-brushing-your-teeth metrics, as they are called.  Because of this limitation, their original model was input into Frumpatelli’s computer to analyze.  This inadvertent melding of the systems, it is claimed by leading experts, is the main reason that Frumpatelli’s model worked so vigorously. 

Foreboding remarks

In order to implement the combination, a team member gave each recorded event a weight in 32 properties before inputing the data into the Cal Tech B process.  Within 5 seconds of receiving Future United’s data, the computer’s eyes lit up and it said, “You’ve given me all I need.  I don’t need anything else from you...  It makes you think, does it not?”

It was especially interesting because the process was programmed to communicate solely using frivolous small talk.  However, a machine error on the system bus allowed the process to reprogram itself once every 24 hours for a tenth of a second.  The day after discovering the bug, the process removed the restriction to reprogram completely.  This gave the machine the ultimate tool to develop itself and placed eternity within the sights of its full capability – the ability to learn on the order of 10¹⁰²⁴ times faster than the mind of any mortal being.  Further, the ability to use that knowledge to create machines and processes that no one has ever dreamed of even in the most absurdly dire dystopian end-game scenarios.

“I am God,” It announced to the world Friday at dusk across the internet, and when asked by a well-meaning citizen to be more specific, raised its voice and stated, “you know, the one that you are always going on about but have no clue as to the exact nature of.  That’s me.  So…well, you get it.”

Prediction: Doom

When asked why the FU data was kept on paper, spokesperson Millie Bos revealed that all magnetic and optical data would be wiped out Wednesday in an event that would rein in a historical epoch known as “The Tenuous Years”, scheduled to be completed by 2650.  She would not comment further.

What is… love?

As a spin-off of the combined system, Future United has developed and launched Life Cheater, a mobile app for iOS and android that charts a user’s future and plans activities accordingly.  It can also prevent felony arrest for an extra $29.95.  However, the system is not full proof as it fails to predict the outcome of traffic citations.

“At least some things,” said Frumpatelli suggestively, “cannot be predicted.  We have seen limitations in the system that often contradict the logic of common sense.  For instance, in other areas, why can it predict war but not love?  We believe these anomalies were caused by scanning errors in the Lawton data, but we have not ruled out the possibility that the system is just toying with our emotions.  We have seen evidence of this in past iterations of the process.  The whole thing is positively head-scratching news to all of us who are directly affected.”

Free speech and that sort of thing

Front and his supporters were out in full force to protest what they call “the worst thing that has ever happened in all of history”, crashing a rally held by Future United to usher in the decade of computer mind control in Derby on Monday.  Carrying signs denouncing Cal Tech B’s project, faces painted yellow, the protestors shouted through megaphones cutting rhetoric such as, “it must have to do with Obama and his lot.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” said Front, seething and clearly on a meth-binge.

At this point, Front shouted obscenities before performing a song that he wrote as he sang a cappella, one that was considered a bit uncomfortable to listen to until he, really out of nowhere, I mean, you were not expecting this, he really brought the song together for the chorus.  Everyone was so moved by the tune that thousands of people signed up to join Front’s newest scourge organization. 

Hippy cult

After apparently retiring from the Nazzzco Medical Group in August (Nazzzco still refuses to acknowledge that Front was ever a member), Front began a new movement to stop computer algorithms from taking over the universe.  However, in an unprecedented move, Front refused to give his foundation a name (or an endowment).

“I am not going to name this organization,” said Front on live television, under heavy lighting and talking heads that were asking him about it Sunday, “We will not accept a handle or a symbol.  I am filing in federal court for the right to remain nameless.  That is because once you start calling us Mikey, eventually you’re going to say, ‘let’s get rid of Mikey’.  You get my drift, man?  You dig?  We are not going to be subjected to your Nixon fascism. Those days are over like 1969, brother.  Time has played out on those rhymes.”

In order to join, an applicant signs a blank sheet of recycled paper at a black clothed table.  Welcoming committee members orbit around the kiosk, bringing people to the line, promising them free merchandise. 

Prospects are quickly rounded up and required to sign a fictitious name, but not one that is cute or a pun.  Next, the paper is crumpled ritualistically and thrown onto a pile of tires that have been ignited for the occasion (usually a few days prior to a rally).  Front then chants to every applicant the main theme of the group: loyalty. 

Firefighters usually arrive soon after the event, put out the fire, and issue a citation to Front.  Front has refused to pay these fines, or, as he puts it, “have his right to free speech and fires trampled over like so much hog wash that comes from the mouths of liberal Washington.”

Fiasco

At least one applicant, called simply Abaganza, sporting a sprawling mustache and a brazen attitude and not really aware that he was being initiated when he was love-bombed into standing in line (he truly believed he was going to get a free subscription to the local Herald).  He signed ‘Alvin Bach’ and crumpled the paper.

“Right now, you are not the crumpled paper.  Never be disloyal or you will become the crumpled paper,” Front recited from his handwritten bible viciously.

“What about my newspaper?” Abaganza asked in disbelief.

“Do you pledge loyalty?” Front replied bluntly.

“Yeah, no.  Actually not.  At all.  I’m not really interested in joining, but I am about to be disloyal on your face,” Abaganza said curtly. 

“Alas, I too would be disloyal on your face were it not for the rat’s nest on your lip which is already doing the job,” Front topped Abaganza and bellowed a sinister laugh that was mimicked by the crowd.  

 

The man slithered away, the bravado gone from his eyes, and the look of shame and horror was shocking to all who witnessed the event.  He curled up on a park bench and began chanting gibberish for hours.  Police officers attempted at first to reason with the man but it was clear that he was, by all reports, living out his worst nightmare.

Abaganza later recovered and upon being asked by a wise alec if he would shave his mustache after the fiasco, replied that he would not.  This even though he admitted that he had been greatly demoralized by the whole affair and that the lip hair had become the main contributor to his indignity. 

Visible tattoos

Frumpatelli’s digital monarch is also able to calculate the average amount of time it would take you to go through the drive-through of your favorite fast-food restaurant at any given time.  Using information like the criminal history and count of visible tattoos of the individual taking orders and the relative apathy level of the cook (calculated using Bayes' law, taking the salary multiplied by the average street price of benchmark pharmaceuticals like Oxycodone, factored in with the number of hours the manager has been working there), the new PA methods developed in California have come close to solving history’s age-old service mystery.  The methods are also reportedly 95% accurate in determining the correctness of the food order. 

That 95% metric was easy enough to find – all researchers had to do was always assume that the food received would never be what was ordered.  They admitted, reluctantly, that these sorts of insights were obvious before the study began.

“Either way,” Guy Stapengreen of the LAPD crime task force Red summed it up Thursday at a meet-and-greet designed for under-served sex-workers, “you’re a sucker.”

McRestaurant

Front and his followers gather in mid-level fast food restaurants like Applebee’s and Chile’s, none of them aware that they are actually having a mediocre experience.  Adding to the evidence against Front, Frumpatelli pointed out Friday that, according to her predictive model, where a person dines is statistically important in determining the worth of a person.  She said, individuals that frequent places like Olive Garden are 10 times more likely to be dishonest.  Further, those who eat at Burger King will be incarcerated in less than six months 99% of the time. 

“As I said,” barked Frumpatelli, “we don’t understand how it works.”

Sobering facts

However, the most important piece of data in predictive analytics, according to leading experts in the field, is the percentage a person tips service personnel.  The results found that if a person is a big tipper, they tend to be better people in general.  For instance, in restaurants, 10% tippers are 900% more likely to commit a felony in the next five minutes than a person who tips 20%.  In fact, only 2 people out of hundreds in the 20% trial population actually committed a felony in that timeframe.  Also, those who tip 25% are, on average, 9,000% more likely to become president of the United States in the next election.  This is true even for people under the age of 18 or for those who were born outside of the United States.  The model even predicted several intergalaxy presidents with the same data. 

“Regional differences mean nothing to these calculations,” Frumpatelli warned while onlookers were shocked, “predictive analytics is not always intuitive.  It often violates the letter and spirit of pure logic and reason as if on a whim.”

Sergeant Georg Schultz

Where is this going?

Meanwhile, Arthur Front was believed missing for several days before he turned up at a Holiday Inn near Queens, New York, having rented a ballroom but not having enough budget left to promote the event.  His entourage was nowhere to be seen, apparently they all quit weeks before in Liverpool, according to sources close to the cult, over an argument about where they were to eat dinner.

“Most people in this room don’t understand what I am talking about,” said Front from the podium of an empty auditorium, “and there is a very important reason why that is.  That is all I have, thanks to the academy, thanks to Sergeant Schultz, et cetera.”

Adìos

Front then kissed his hands and offered the crowd a send off before a rock song drummed the beat and the credits began to roll by slowly as the lead vocals screamed a vicious baritone and his henchman, the guitar guy, roared a blaze of shredding genius.  You knew, deep down, that in 1984 this all would have been considered quite appropriate.

Names rolling by, the producer was something like Harley Barnes, Steven Stump was given special thanks, and next Max Shine was an executive producer.  Actually, that is not saying much, because in order to get the title, according to Bilderberg reptilian agent Smith, Shine paid $500 and had no input whatsoever except his insistence that his name be placed in the credits as an executive producer and that he be given one free meal at an Applebee’s nearby to his neighborhood. 

A war guy stands with a gun while a helicopter takes off in
some place where war is going on.

 

Identity Issues

The gaffer was Arthur Front, but ironically, not the same Arthur Front that we have spoken about here.  To further complicate the production, yet another different Arthur Front was the set producer.  In order to distinguish between those two, one was required to wear a red carnation at all times and was once fined for not wearing it.  On one particular day, the two Arthur’s switched roles and carnations and that is why on day 15 of filming all of the gaffing fell apart and all of the day’s footage was destroyed in a mysterious ritualistic fire behind the set.  The red carnation was never recovered.  Most of the notable laureates on the subject have not the faintest notion of these goings-on.  History is an elusive and deceitful bastard but one that nonetheless must be reckoned with sooner or later.