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Ask HN: will psychohistory ever become reality?

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Ask HN: will psychohistory ever become reality?

#1

Post by Red_Tarsius »

For those who have never read Isaac Asimov's Foundation, psychohistory is "the FICTIONAL science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about mankind's future behavior. Asimov used the analogy of a gas: in a gas, the motion of a single molecule is very difficult to predict, but the mass action of the gas can be predicted to a high level of accuracy. Asimov applied this concept to the population of the fictional Galactic Empire, which numbered in the quadrillions." http://goo.gl/09ypYw

Asimov's psychohistory is based on the following assumptions:

- The population under scrutiny is oblivious to the existence of the science of Psychohistory.

- The time periods dealt with are in the region of 3 generations.

- The population must be in the billions for a statistical probability to have a psychohistorical validity.

- That human reactions to stimuli would remain constant.

Given a sufficiently large population, will psychohistory ever become reality?

Re: Ask HN: will psychohistory ever become reality?

#2

Post by vdaniuk »

Thanks for reminding me about psychohistory and providing an opportunity to reflect about it. I've got a few thoughts.

If we are very strict about sticking to the initial assumptions, psychohistory as formulated in the Foundation is impossible for several reasons. 1. The population is already aware of the psychohistory (though it may not change anything, see the tragedy of the commons). 2. Human reactions won't remain constant because humans as acting agents won't remain constant(transhumanist future is an inevitability).

If we relax our requirements a bit, the answer is quite complex :)

At first it seems that the random nature and black swan events (which both are qualities of an immensely complex system) of the human society would mean that psychohistory will stay in the real of fictional sciences.

However, it is quite possible that human future may be converging to a specific state, like total human annihilation or transhumanist ascension to a biomachine symbiosis. Both events effectively end the timeline of "mankind's behaviour" but these are sort of singleton hacks, not a working system.

What do you think?

Re: Ask HN: will psychohistory ever become reality?

#3

Post by Khelavaster »

The closest you'll find right now is the theory of Schumpeterian waves, which can be applied to the resolution of an arbitrary-precision fourier analysis over continuous 3-space given sufficient input resolution. Schumpeter's theories boil down to conclusions about principal component analysis applied to the global macroeconomy, but he himself never made the jump to pure mathematics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter

One of the more recent champions of his work is Leo Nefeodow, who predicts that according to Schumpeter's theories the next spike will be in "psychosocial healthcare" and "bioinformatics". He successfuly deduced the emergency of Obamacare in America, and a unified European currency and subsequent debt crisis (blaming Portugal over Greece as the primary debtor) caused by lax central European lending practices. And he predicted the US real estate bust because the market wasn't as cyclical as it should've been. (His book, "The Sixth Kondratieff", was published in the mid 90's, updated in 2014, and is available on Amazon.)

http://www.kondratieff.net/#!the-sixth-kondratieff/c1rxx

Re: Ask HN: will psychohistory ever become reality?

#4

Post by PaulHoule »

If you got to the second book in Foundation, you found out that (in universe) psychohistory is a scam -- that it is based on telepathic mind control, not on control based on predictive models.

If you look at the works of Wallerstein and Braudel, I think there is some basis for a science of civilization, but there are limits to prediction.

For instance some would say nuclear energy is our best hope for a sustainable civilization at our current level of energy use. Thanks to some bad choices and bad luck in Japan, however, progress has been set back 30 years or more.

Re: Ask HN: will psychohistory ever become reality?

#7

Post by marvy »

PaulHoule wrote: post #4

If you got to the second book in Foundation, you found out that (in universe) psychohistory is a scam -- that it is based on telepathic mind control, not on control based on predictive models. If you look at the works of Wallerstein and Braudel, I think there is some basis for a science of civilization, but there are limits to prediction. For instance some would say nuclear energy is our best hope for a sustainable c…

No, it's not a scam. The mind control is used only rarely. The whole thing would not work if the predictions were not accurate.

Re: Ask HN: will psychohistory ever become reality?

#8

Post by Red_Tarsius »

Khelavaster wrote: post #3

The closest you'll find right now is the theory of Schumpeterian waves, which can be applied to the resolution of an arbitrary-precision fourier analysis over continuous 3-space given sufficient input resolution. Schumpeter's theories boil down to conclusions about principal component analysis applied to the global macroeconomy, but he himself never made the jump to pure mathematics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose…

Thank you letting me discover Leo Nefeodow's work, I'm going to get my hands on his book as soon as possible!

Re: Ask HN: will psychohistory ever become reality?

#9

Post by Red_Tarsius »

PaulHoule wrote: post #4

If you got to the second book in Foundation, you found out that (in universe) psychohistory is a scam -- that it is based on telepathic mind control, not on control based on predictive models. If you look at the works of Wallerstein and Braudel, I think there is some basis for a science of civilization, but there are limits to prediction. For instance some would say nuclear energy is our best hope for a sustainable c…

Thanks for pointing out Wallerstein and Braudel, I'm going to check out their work.

Spoilers

The Second Foundation really creeps me out and definitely puts the Plan on a different light. 1) those sentinels are well aware of the Plan; 2) Seldon could not predict the behaviour of such a small community, yet they have tremendous power over the universe; 3) Mentalists behave differently from humans. They break psychohistory's fundamental assumptions – to be fair, Seldon himself is an anomaly –, yet without them the Plan is likely to fail. Overall, I like how the books never fully explain the actual extent of Seldon's strategy: Asimov is clever enough to let the reader draw his own conclusions.

On a side note, I didn't enjoy at all the last books about Gaia. Imho the writing seems rushed and lacking the quality and depth of the original series.

Re: Ask HN: will psychohistory ever become reality?

#10

Post by Red_Tarsius »

vdaniuk wrote: post #2

Thanks for reminding me about psychohistory and providing an opportunity to reflect about it. I've got a few thoughts. If we are very strict about sticking to the initial assumptions, psychohistory as formulated in the Foundation is impossible for several reasons. 1. The population is already aware of the psychohistory (though it may not change anything, see the tragedy of the commons). 2. Human reactions won't remai…

You summed up my doubts perfectly, especially the black swan events.

The series conveniently puts a quintillion people through dark ages where no major technological breakthrough is supposed to occur. Psychohistory seems to be based on a more fundamental assumption: technological advancement is not going to change our baseline behaviour.

However, Mule aside, the real world shows a small sample of people changing dramatically in only +-200 years. Technology is not only a tool, but an environment that shapes us in an unpredictable way due to physical and biological unknowns. Deviations compound over time and, eventually, will result in the transhumanist ascension.

The same deviation makes any long term analysis flawed. I can't see how analyzing a much bigger population would make it any easier, like Boyle's gas law. Hopefully, time will prove me wrong. :)

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