Talk Back: Mind-reading software anything but predictable

Well, it’s happened once again. Some dude wearing a top hat stuck his big ol’ hand into a hole in the ground, pulled out a varmint, hoisted it high and proudly proclaimed, “What a good boy am I.” Rodents look a lot like plums, you see. Whereupon the critter bit his finger — you’d have done the same thing had it happened to you — saw the guy’s shadow, and predicted six more weeks of winter. After which the mercury promptly soared to 50 degrees.

Stupid groundhog.

Of course, that’s nothing compared to what happened just seconds ago. When Super Bowl-bound quarterback Patrick Mahomes came out of the Kansas City dugout, saw President Joe Biden’s shadow, and boldly declared that not only will the Detroit Tigers win this year’s Stanley Cup but in just six weeks, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — a 900-1 longshot — will pass the field down the stretch to take the Kentucky Derby by a nose.

Over Tom Brady.

Proof positive that even those who sustain a high ankle sprain should have to pass NFL concussion protocols before touting themselves as multi-sport prognosticators extraordinaire.

You gotta admit predictions like these are kind of fun. Partly because they’re guaranteed to prompt all sorts of water cooler arguments as to which is superior — Miggy’s patented slapshot technique or Kelce starting from the number 15 post position after a pre-race diet of carrots and sugar cubes — and which of them would fare better at Pebble Beach if their golf clubs were replaced by pickleball paddles. But mainly because no matter which side prevails, anything beats having to fulfill the pointy-haired boss’s daily workload expectations. But there’s another sort of prediction we’ve run across that’s giving us the heebie-jeebies. One that kicks in anytime we make a social media post. After we type the first two or three words, the darn thing starts telling us how we’re going to complete the sentence.

Like it’s reading our minds.

Unlike Uncle Google — who routinely suggests eleventy-million different search options after the first letter is entered — this new form of predictive analytics employed by what we’re dubbing “The Amazing Kreskinbook” adds two or three words at a time, then double dog dares users not to conform with its pre-ordained selections, all of which appear in ghostly images that must be painstakingly typed over — letter for letter — before they become fully visible.

So whoever’s operating Nena’s 99 spy balloons over Montana can read them from 70,000 feet up.

Sure, there’s a work-around. Hitting the “tab” key auto-completes the algorithm’s suggestion, but in the time it takes to remember that shortcut and figure out how to do it, the average person could have written the works of William Shakespeare a dozen times over, so what have you gained? Not to mention how your blood pressure goes off the charts whenever you’re telling people about your plans for the last day of the week, and the thing insists you say something about “Saturday Night Live” instead.

That’s why we make our predictions the old-fashioned way. Using sound science and historical analysis. Just as an object in motion tends to stay in motion, if it’s happened before, it’ll happen again. Hence our Super Bowl prediction, and you can take it to the bank. Nobody will be talking about the Eagles, the Chiefs or even the commercials. For this year, there will be only one topic of conversation.

Gronk.

How he whiffed on his $10 million field goal try. And landed with a resounding thud.

Because at the last second — just as she always does — Lucy yanked the ball away.

Talk Back with Doug Spade and Mike Clement is heard every Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to noon Eastern Time on Buzz 102.5 FM and online at www.dougspade.com and www.lenconnect.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Talk Back: Mind-reading software anything but predictable