Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
 |
Comments on Asimov's Psychohistory May Be Possible
Many of us enjoyed the Foundation stories; did you think that psychohistory might actually be a workable discipline? (Read
the complete story)
| "In the late 1960's and early 1970's Volney J. Stefflre at the University of California, Irvine was doing things in this direction. A lot of his work earned him a place in Market Research because of the practical application of psychohistory. He used to say that Asimov described what the "social sciences" would be if they existed.
And other than that fleeting bubble in time, I don't think anyone else came close to Asimov's ideas. " (Volney Stefflre 7/30/2009 2:08:42 PM) |
| "you ask "If we produced psychohistorians, what would they plan to do?" Probably split into rival factions & conduct a covert war down the centuries, like Michael Flynn's "In The Country of the Blind"." ( 7/31/2009 9:24:28 PM) |
| "Asimov's model depends on the assumption that people in large groups are more predictable than individual people.
I don't think this is true in general.
I think the education and marketing industries spend really large amounts of money to try to MAKE it true. It works, except when it doesn't work." (. 8/2/2009 4:59:42 AM) |
| "Related work is being performed via the Fast Entropy Project's Physical History and Economics. Unfortunately, most people find the fast entropy driver to be quite upsetting. We could use the help, especially with the psychological derivatives. It would be interesting to hear more about Volney Stefflre's work in this area." (Mark Ciotola 7/2/2011 9:08:11 PM) |
| "Mark, I've written a short article on your Fast Entropy project; see Fast Entropy, PHE And Psychohistory. I've also included links to other related efforts at the end of the article." (Bill Christensen 7/3/2011 9:38:10 AM) |
| "Indeed, something like Asimov’s psychohistory may have recently become a reality “here on Earth”: I have found a group that claims to have derived a system of seven psychohistorical equations, using a new mathematics that their founder, “Karl Seldon”, discovered, and that allegedly reconstruct humanity’s past on this planet, and that ‘pre-construct’ its future. See –
http://www.dialectics.org/dialectics/Aoristoss_Blog/Entries/2012/5/19_The_F.E.D._Psychohistorical_Equations.html
– and which give the locations of their offices as “Stars’ End, NY” and “Terminious, CA.”" |
Get more information on Asimov's Psychohistory May Be Possible
Leave a comment:
Please send your comments to @technovelgy and I'll post them. Thanks!
More Articles
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come
Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'
What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
AIs Turn Marxist Under Bad Management
'It was a general strike of the robots...'
Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones
'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
Nifty Folding Electric Bicycles!
'Separate paths were provided for them...'
