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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.”" |
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