Why Does Predicting Behavior Fail to Show What to Do?

Joon Sung Park says a forecast is not what people came for. A warning that a market will crash in two quarters does not help unless the aim is to beat the stock market. The next question is what to do now, and a correlation cannot supply that lever.

Asking the right questions matters. The interview idea came in 2023 and 2024, during podcasts about academic work at Stanford. After an hour or two, a good interviewer who asks the right questions knows a tremendous amount about a field and a person. Questions are both topical and general, and asking someone to tell the story of their life reveals pockets of knowledge. Behavior data is collected too, including transaction data and mobility data.

What matters is the cause, through randomized trials. The same setup changes one variable, a product feature or a message, and records how behavior changes. Understanding that cause is what can shift the direction of the future.