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Can GenAI give accurate results for chaotic systems and black swan events?

This morning (March 19 2025) I attended an IEEE virtual meeting titled "Demystifying GenAI for Telehealth"

One of the attendees was a Surgeon, who made the following statement concerning his major concern about "over reliance" on the output from Gen AI Healthcare systems:-

"THE HUMAN BODY IS A CHAOTIC MACHINE!"  

To me this a critical detail that engineers fail to understand about Heathcare.  

  

   

Parents
  • I'm a bit skeptical on black Swan theory.

    The definition given by Nassim Taleb is: The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.

    To me, if you're accepting that black swan events exist then you're simply acknowledging that your model of probability distribution is wrong.  Nobody, in the financial markets now believes that price movements follow a normal distribution - they have fat tails. This is a sign of active manipulation and corruption in my opinion which is to be somewhat expected when considering human factors.  Do fat tail distributions or black swan really exist in purely natural systems?

  • Do fat tail distributions or black swan really exist in purely natural systems?

    Simple answer; Yes. Such is Darwinian evolution, such as that mutant gene that allows 'us' [subset of homo-sapiens] to drink milk and live through European winters from cows milk, to name one.

    The 'fat tail' thing of extreme event prediction is that it's the errors bars that make it "fat" (in common perspective).  Extreme events are always on a very long thin rapier-like tail, where you can't even see the tip of the rapier (events yet to come).

    I remember my extreme event lecture with the analogy of an exam supervisor trying to predict how many spare pencils would be needed given the occasional student would forget theirs. The 90% confidence number (Pareto exponential tail IIRC) was to have more spare pencils than students taking the exam.

    The "Black Swan" analogy is useful but is of the 'already happened' type, so it won't be a black swan event to see a black swan. Can't step into the same river twice, ergodicity, and all that philosophical stuff ;-)

    Given 'dumb humans', the artificial replicas will be 'haphazard in parts'. Remember we use humans because we are mass produced by unskilled labour Rolling eyes ["why send a man to the moon?"].

Reply
  • Do fat tail distributions or black swan really exist in purely natural systems?

    Simple answer; Yes. Such is Darwinian evolution, such as that mutant gene that allows 'us' [subset of homo-sapiens] to drink milk and live through European winters from cows milk, to name one.

    The 'fat tail' thing of extreme event prediction is that it's the errors bars that make it "fat" (in common perspective).  Extreme events are always on a very long thin rapier-like tail, where you can't even see the tip of the rapier (events yet to come).

    I remember my extreme event lecture with the analogy of an exam supervisor trying to predict how many spare pencils would be needed given the occasional student would forget theirs. The 90% confidence number (Pareto exponential tail IIRC) was to have more spare pencils than students taking the exam.

    The "Black Swan" analogy is useful but is of the 'already happened' type, so it won't be a black swan event to see a black swan. Can't step into the same river twice, ergodicity, and all that philosophical stuff ;-)

    Given 'dumb humans', the artificial replicas will be 'haphazard in parts'. Remember we use humans because we are mass produced by unskilled labour Rolling eyes ["why send a man to the moon?"].

Children
  • Simple answer; Yes. Such is Darwinian evolution, such as that mutant gene that allows 'us' [subset of homo-sapiens] to drink milk and live through European winters from cows milk, to name one.

    I don't think this is a good example. This is a bit of a tangent but here goes Relaxed:

    I would highly recommend Wolfgang Smith's Cosmos and Transcendence. There's a chapter on Darwin's evolutionary hypothesis which implicitly includes two elements:

    1. Natural selection (theory) - animal groups genetically adapting to their environment over many generations, of which there is an abundance of direct scientific observations and evidence.

    2.  Common descent (hypotheses) - which claims that because of 1., cats, dogs and humans therefore share a common ancestor. In fact, it does not logically follow that common descent is justified by natural selection. It is okay to call it a hypotheses, but since there is no direct scientific observations and evidence of common ancestors it cannot be elevated to a theory, and certainty isn't scientific fact. Even Darwin himself stated that the paleontological record did't match the theory - and this basic state of affairs hasn't changed. Even if it did, a fossil is not direct observation of a mouse evolving into a rabbit etc. Just because two fossils look similar, it's a fallacy to say that it proves that one evolved into another - it's arbitrary and ad hoc as to what you define a similarities. Most of the evidence put forward as proof of common decent is, in fact, merely proof for natural selection.

    Maybe I'm splitting hairs but science is science and we should follow the methodology properly.

  • Hello Tim:

    One has to remember that Darwin and others of his generation were making theories based on 19th Century knowledge and they really shouldn't be used or referenced today.

    Much of if has been discredited by DNA and recent environmental related information.

    Peter Brooks

    Palm Bay FL