Prediction, Probability, Agency

Technology has created an impasse of overdetermination and indeterminacy. On the one hand, ‘automatic’ health insurance claim rejections turn possibilities into probabilities and probabilities into mathematical-logical necessities. On the other, unsupervised machine learning unleashes new forms and scales of indeterminacy in machinic operations. How do prediction techniques—scenario modelling, data visualisation, gaming—affect self-fulfilling and self-denying predictions? And how do they affect (post)human agency more generally? This talk is an attempt to begin to answer these questions.