Reality Programming Association

Chapter 146 -60: Fortune-telling and Curve Fitting

He grew more and more excited as he spoke:

“We can totally adapt the Rabbit Hole to this system! Wouldn’t that be like a mobile base station that never disconnects?”

“They’re giving them out for free? What company is that rich?” Shao Yiyi leaned in for a closer look.

Wen Xiao also stared at the wristband, seeming a bit hesitant. Then she looked up, her gaze passing over Shi Zuozhou to meet Yu Xian’s across from her.

“I think it’s feasible too.” Yu Xian met her gaze and nodded.

“Since this wristband runs on an Android core, adapting it won’t be too difficult. We can package a node and promote it along with the software people will want for the wristband.”

“O-Okay!” Wen Xiao reached out, took the wristband from Shi Zuozhou, and nodded emphatically.

…

The group discussed the technical details of the Rabbit Hole for a while longer.

During a lull in the conversation, Yu Xian turned to Shao Yiyi, who was sitting to the side.

“By the way, there’s something I wanted to ask you about.” He voiced the question that had been on his mind since last night:

“I don’t know much about metaphysics, but I’m very curious about your ‘AI fortune-telling model.’ What’s the underlying logic? Are the results scientific?”

Unexpectedly, the question stumped Shao Yiyi.

She blinked a couple of times, scratched her bun hairstyle awkwardly, and stammered:

“Oh, come on, Brother Cos. I told you last time, I’m just a newbie… I only know *what* to do, not *why* it works. My master just gave me a set of formulas and deduction rules, and I just have to follow them…”

Shi Zuozhou didn’t seem to have caught up with the change in topic, but that didn’t stop him from bickering with Shao Yiyi.

“So you really are a half-baked amateur! HAHA!”

“Hmph. Well then, let me ask you, Senior Brother Shi, you know how to heat up food in a microwave, but do you know how a microwave *works*?” Shao Yiyi pointed at the communal microwave on a nearby table, her tone scornful.

Shi Zuozhou put on a smug expression that screamed, ‘You’ve picked the wrong fight.’

“Of course I do! The principle of a microwave is called dielectric heating. It uses 2.4 GHz electromagnetic waves to cause the water molecules inside food to resonate and generate heat…”

Yu Xian ignored Shi Zuozhou, who looked like he was posing for an MVP screen, and Shao Yiyi, who stood beside him looking utterly defeated, and turned to Wen Xiao.

‘Since Shao Yiyi, the one who provided the rules, doesn’t know, maybe Wen Xiao, the one who turned those rules into code, has a deeper understanding of the logic?’

Sensing Yu Xian’s gaze, Wen Xiao shrank back a little, as if feeling guilty.

“I-I understand even less…”

Wen Xiao said in a small voice, her fingers gripping the edge of her keyboard tightly.

“All that metaphysical theory about generation and restriction cycles, the five elements, and the eight trigrams is like another language to me… I just took the procedures and logical judgments Yiyi gave me, abstracted and refined them into instructions a computer could execute, and then wrote an algorithm to make it all run.”

Yu Xian felt a little disappointed. If they didn’t understand the logic behind it, the credibility of these “trigrams” dropped significantly…

“But…” Wen Xiao suddenly looked up and added hurriedly:

“Although I don’t understand the metaphysical terminology, during the process of writing the code and training the model, the whole process felt to me like…”

She said seriously:

“The entire fortune-telling process is a lot like ‘curve fitting’ for a complex function.”

“Curve fitting?” Yu Xian raised an eyebrow. He was very familiar with the term; it was one of the most common methods for data processing in physics experiments.

The term might sound abstract, but it’s actually easy to understand.

If you were to spatter a white piece of paper with many random ink drops, you could take a pen and draw a smooth curve that “passes as close to all the points as possible” to make them look less chaotic.

That’s called “curve fitting.”

For example, your daily weight when on a diet, sales data, or the relationship between height and age.

Real data has errors and random fluctuations, but a fitted curve can help you summarize the “general trend” from all that messy data.

“Are you talking about the curve fitting used in regression analysis?” Yu Xian asked.

“Yes, exactly, regression analysis.” Wen Xiao nodded, tracing a wavy line on the tabletop with her finger.

“You can think of a person’s destiny as a complex function curve extending along a timeline. The x-axis is time, and the y-axis is the state of their life or its events.”

Wen Xiao’s voice was soft, but she was exceptionally clear when explaining algorithms:

“And so-called ‘fortune-telling’ is really just using a few known ‘data points’ to reverse-engineer the expression of this function. Then, you plug in the x-coordinate *t* of a future ‘point in time’ to find the corresponding y-coordinate *y* of their ‘life state’.”

She opened the images of the ancient texts that Shao Yiyi had sent her before on her phone.

“The rules Yiyi gave me are like different weight parameters and various regression algorithms in the code.”

She pointed to the requirements for a divination during the “casting a trigram” phase:

“The more information the person seeking the divination provides—meaning, the more ‘data points’ they give—the higher the goodness of fit of the simulated curve. In other words, the more precisely the curve matches the data points, the more accurate the prediction will be.”

Yu Xian’s mind buzzed.

‘If that’s the case…’

He looked at Wen Xiao, a hint of shock in his voice.

“So, the birth date and time required before a fortune-telling session are essentially… sampling? To establish the initial ‘data point’?”

“You could put it that way.” Wen Xiao seemed to agree with this interpretation and nodded quickly.

“But…” Yu Xian frowned slightly. The rigor of his scientific mind had spotted a logical flaw.

“That doesn’t add up. Whether it’s a straight line or a curve, you need at least two points to determine its trajectory, right? It takes two points to define a line, and three to define a parabola.”

He looked at Wen Xiao.

“The birth date and time—the x-axis being the time of birth and the y-axis being the state of life at birth—is indeed one definite and precise ‘data point.’ But where’s the other point?”

‘If there’s only one point, couldn’t the line point in any direction? Wouldn’t there be infinite possibilities? How is that any different from a wild guess?’

“Oh, come on, Brother Cos. You used to be so smart. Did Senior Brother Shi’s dumbness rub off on you?”

Shao Yiyi, who had been bickering with Shi Zuozhou, suddenly interjected.

“The other definite and precise point is ‘this very moment,’ isn’t it?”

“This very moment?” Yu Xian was taken aback.

“That’s right! The moment you came to me for a reading—the time, the place, the thing you were doing at that instant—isn’t that locked in? Isn’t that the second confirmed point on your life’s coordinate axis?”

Shao Yiyi unwrapped a piece of candy and popped it into her mouth.

“Ancient diviners had a principle: ‘No divination without a catalyst.’ In Meihua Yi Shu, they might even cast a trigram based on whether the person seeking the reading entered with their left or right foot first, or based on a flower they saw or a bird they heard at that moment. All of these are definitive ‘spacetime coordinates.’”

Yu Xian understood their logic.

The time of birth is the starting point, and the time of the query is the current point. With these two definite points, even if they couldn’t determine the exact shape of the curve, they could at least lock in a general “trend” and “slope.”

“Of course, just those two points are definitely not enough. The goodness of fit would be too low. At best, it would only give a rough direction of one’s fortune. A person’s destiny is a very complex curve,” Wen Xiao added softly from the side.

“That’s why, when inputting data, you usually need to incorporate more questions, like ‘Did you have a major illness last year?’ or ‘Have you had any bad luck recently?’ and so on.”

Wen Xiao looked at Yu Xian, like a top student answering a teacher’s question.

“It’s like… solving a system of multivariate equations.”

She paused, then continued:

“Each question is actually adding another ‘constraint’ and ‘data point’ to this system of equations. The more constraints you have, the more unique and precise the solution for ‘X’—the future outcome—becomes.”

“The more complex the matter and the more variables involved, the more the function oscillates and the harder it is to fit, resulting in a lower goodness of fit.”

“That’s why it can be very accurate for predicting small things, but when it comes to predicting something like the ‘fate of a nation,’ it often requires an extremely large sample size and complex parameters. Otherwise, the resulting prediction will have a huge deviation.”

Yu Xian sat on the sofa, gazing at the endless curtain of rain outside the window. An indescribable sense of absurdity gradually welled up inside him.

‘What kind of logic is this? How can a complex and ever-changing life be equated to a non-sentient function?’