pychohistory and John F. Nash
Tony
All,
I know many of you were delighted with Asimov Foundation series. Hence
we are familiar with Psychohistory. -the ability to predict human
behavior in groups- What I didn't know was, there was already a theory
in action to determine this in the real world. Game theory .. a
Concept worked on by John F. Nash. I connected the dots when I saw
the movie "a Beautiful mind" with my wife past weekend. I didn't want
to see the movie because I have family with mental illness, including
my Father who has schizophrenia. Hence I don't like anything to do
with mental illness. However I did see the movie, and I was attracted
to the math.
This when I made the connection. Have anybody who read the Foundation
series made the same connection?
--
============================
You get strong when you learn to hate weakness
================================
SciF...@googlegroups.com
safeho...@googlegroups.com
FredJeffries
> All,
>
> I know many of you were delighted with Asimov Foundation series. Hence
> we are familiar with Psychohistory. -the ability to predict human
> behavior in groups- What I didn't know was, there was already a theory
> in action to determine this in the real world. Game theory .. a
> Concept worked on by John F. Nash. I connected the dots when I saw
> the movie "a Beautiful mind" with my wife past weekend. I didn't want
> to see the movie because I have family with mental illness, including
> my Father who has schizophrenia. Hence I don't like anything to do
> with mental illness. However I did see the movie, and I was attracted
> to the math.
>
> This when I made the connection. Have anybody who read the Foundation
> series made the same connection?
>
See chapter 9 of "A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the
Modern Quest for a Code of Nature" by Tom Siegfried
BURT
You should leave psychiatry out when speaking about John Nash.
Mitch Raemsch
Joseki
Burt, aren't suppose to be getting Insulin shots?
Shawn Wilson
<response cross-posted from alt.books.isaac-asimov>
> I know many of you were delighted with Asimov Foundation series. Hence
> we are familiar with Psychohistory. -the ability to predict human
> behavior in groups- What I didn't know was, there was already a theory
> in action to determine this in the real world. Game theory .. a
> Concept worked on by John F. Nash. I connected the dots when I saw
> the movie "a Beautiful mind" with my wife past weekend. I didn't want
> to see the movie because I have family with mental illness, including
> my Father who has schizophrenia. Hence I don't like anything to do
> with mental illness. However I did see the movie, and I was attracted
> to the math.
>
> This when I made the connection. Have anybody who read the Foundation
> series made the same connection?
Economics in general, and specifically macroeconomics is as close as
we come to psychohistory. Game theory is a subset/tool of that
analysis (among other things, game theory is useful but not
overwhelmingly so). Unfortunately, the real world precludes specific
long term predictions. Probability distributions of various outcomes
is the best anyone can even theoretically do.
To the extent that predictions can be made, people will take them into
account in their actions in ways that make them useless. Predict that
the market will crash tomorrow and people will sell out today and the
smart ones sold out yesterday. Instead of tomorrow, the crash came
yesterday. So much for the prediction...
Note that in WW1 Germany had the meticulously worked out Schlieffen
Plan for a war with France. They followed it religiously. Yes, the
Schlieffen Plan DID predict that they would lose. (or rather that the
war would come down to a battle outside Paris which they would be
unable to win for want of sufficient troops).
Can anyone predict WW1, that kind of mistake, in advance? And pretty
much all of world history afterwards follows as a result of that
mistake. The war with France itself came about because his chief
general lied to the Kaiser*. Can anyone predict that lie?
*War with Russia was inevitable**, and France would declare war as a
result. The course of the war would be very heavily influenced by
mobilization. Mobilization was very strongly a function of specific,
detailed railroad movements to join reservists with regulars with
their equipment and supplies and to get everyone and everything in the
right place at the right time. Overrun his mobilization areas, which
are necessarily near the anticipated front, and the enemy has a
serious problem which is very hard to recover from. These movements
had been carefully planned and rehearsed and exercised, *including*
last minute disruptions and changes of plan... (Germans ARE
meticulous...)
At the 11th hour the Kaiser asks his general if the attack on France
could be cancelled, and the German army defend only on that front,
with the bulk of the Army being sent against Russia, instead of a
defensive against the Russians and offensive against the French. The
general, despite knowing that such things could be done and had been
practiced, said "no". The timetables were too inflexible and they
would be destroyed by the French if they tried to change at the last
minute. He lied with reasonably good intentions. It was possible but
very risky to totally rework mobilization like that at the very last
minute. The head of the German railroads had much more faith in their
ability to do so than the chief general. Screw it up and your armies
aren't in position and ready to fight the French when they show up.
The attack on France went ahead.
**Austria owns part of Serbia as a result of History at work. They
want to be joined with the rest of Serbia rather than remain
Austrian. 'Freedom fighters' assassinate Austrian Archduke
Ferdinand. Austrian investigation points to Serbian government
involvement. Demands were made, pointed (indeed, sharpened and
metallic...) demands. Serbia was about to be fucked. They called on
their ally Russia. Austria is now about to be fucked. Austria called
on their ally Germany. Germany knows that France will join in if
Germany attacks Russia. Germany can't fight France and Russia at the
same time. Russia is slow. Solution is to attack and defeat France
first.
To support large armies in France Germany absolutely needs the roads
and railroads through Belgium, which is taken en passant. This brings
in Belgium's protector England. Problem is, even with the Belgian
logistics, Germany can't *quite* support an army at war in France
large enough to defeat the French army. It isn't a question of how
many troops they can raise in Germany, but how many they can support
at war *in France*. The German generals know this, but hope to get
lucky or something. They don't. The western front becomes a
deadlock.
Oh, finally, other powers are distributed- the allies get Italy, the
central powers get Turkey. The battles on the Eastern front are
mostly the Austrian and Russian armies destroying each other, with
some German involvement. Serbia gets crushed like a bug once Austria
can spare the time.
WW1 is fascinating because of the sheer number of single decisions by
single individuals that so strongly shape its course.
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
Is that supposed to be an insult? My father had diabetes.
mazorj
"Shawn Wilson" <ikono...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:bbbb64da-2680-4406...@o9g2000vbj.googlegroups.com...
<response cross-posted from alt.books.isaac-asimov>
<remainder of interesting analysis snipped>
=============================
As I remember it, Asimov's psychohistory did not deny the role of
individuals and specific decisions in its analysis of large-scale
developments. The assumption was that they would cancel each other out or
be overwhelmed by larger influences, so that only the larger-scale
influences had to be calculated. I always thought that the term was a
misnomer because it seemed to be based at least as much in sociology, with
psychological factors differentiating it from pure sociological theory. I
suppose that the term "psychosociohistory" would have been a bit clunky
while the shorter "psychohistory" more easily rolls off the tongue.
Like many SF writers, Asimov was adept at picking up on recent scientific
developments and incorporating them without necessarily having the
scientists' complete mastery of the subject. He wrote that the reason that
his robots have positronic brains was because when he was developing his
first robot story, he was looking for some scientific-sounding explanation
for thinking robots. The recently discovered existence of positrons
conveniently and perfectly filled that square for him. The term
"positronic" carried the requisite hand-waving cachet at a time when no one
knew enough about positrons to dismiss their mere existence as sufficient
explanation for a brain-sized supercomputer powerful enough to mimic human
behavior.
The 1920s and 1930s saw the popular emergence of psychology, sociology, and
anthropology as recognized disciplines. Today we don't think twice about
stories that use these as underlying themes, but expressly incorporating
their principles was relatively unplowed ground for SF when Asimov used it
in his Foundation series.
Given his personal predilection for applying rational analysis over emotion
to areas such as religion, politics and ethics, along with his accompanying
distress over the fact that individuals and even groups don't always follow
such logic, I'd say it was an easy leap for him to posit (and even wish for)
the possibility of a method to analyze these psychological and sociological
dimensions and develop them into a comprehensive theory of human behavior.
While man is only partly a rational animal, his actions can be analyzed
rationally. From that, it would be inevitable that broad predictions about
human behavior en masse could be calculated.
IMO, a psychohistorian operating around 1870 would have predicted WW1 and
possibly its outcome, just as would one operating 50 years prior would have
predicted the American Civil War and its outcome, and a hundred years before
that, the American Revolution. He might even have predicted the intervening
smaller-scale European conflicts that set the conditions for WW1. However,
none of the individual decisions cited here would have been included because
they are inherently random and unpredictable. As interesting as they may be
in the actual history of WW1, they also would have been irrelevant to a
psychohistorian's major analysis and predictions, the fundamental conclusion
of which would be that no actions by any individuals or nations could
prevent a major European "great war" from erupting early in the 20th
century. Individual actions can influence the details of the course of
events but not change the fundamental flow and direction of the predicted
history.
(And as I recall, whenever the psychohistorian appeared with a previously
recorded message to the masses, he was rather vague about details. His
assessments of the current crises weren't much more specific than a
psychic's prediction that "You are about to come into some money, embark on
a long journey, and meet a tall dark stranger." Yes, they were detailed and
accurate enough to be recognized and everyone understood what he was talking
about, but only the necessary details were included.)
As to game theory being a part of the theory of psychohistory, my guess is
that it would have been incorporated as a fundamental axiom but would only
be a tiny fragment of the much more comprehensive overall theory. Modern
game theory is to psychohistory as identifying the chemical characteristics
of carbon is to biochemistry. It's an important basic step but nowhere near
encompassing the whole.
Joseki
No Insulin shots were used at one time to treat mental illness.
Joseki
> On Nov 30, 7:12 am, Tony <jabriol2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <response cross-posted from alt.books.isaac-asimov>
>
> > I know many of you were delighted with Asimov Foundation series. Hence
> > we are familiar with Psychohistory. -the ability to predict human
> > behavior in groups- What I didn't know was, there was already a theory
> > in action to determine this in the real world. Game theory .. a
> > Concept worked on by John F. Nash. I connected the dots when I saw
> > the movie "a Beautiful mind" with my wife past weekend. I didn't want
> > to see the movie because I have family with mental illness, including
> > my Father who has schizophrenia. Hence I don't like anything to do
> > with mental illness. However I did see the movie, and I was attracted
> > to the math.
>
> > This when I made the connection. Have anybody who read the Foundation
> > series made the same connection?
>
> Economics in general, and specifically macroeconomics is as close as
> we come to psychohistory. Game theory is a subset/tool of that
> analysis (among other things, game theory is useful but not
> overwhelmingly so).
Have you read material from Bueno de Mezquita?
> Unfortunately, the real world precludes specific
> long term predictions. Probability distributions of various outcomes
> is the best anyone can even theoretically do.
>
> To the extent that predictions can be made, people will take them into
> account in their actions in ways that make them useless. Predict that
> the market will crash tomorrow and people will sell out today and the
> smart ones sold out yesterday. Instead of tomorrow, the crash came
> yesterday. So much for the prediction...
>
Asimov in his foundation series actually mentioned Psycho history
would work well without the general population knowing. And even if
they did know, wouldn't change the outcome much. For example I will
make a sociophysics prediction;
Many Atheists will celebrate Christmas in 2009, with their families
regardless christmas is a confirmed christian holiday.
Poetic Justice
> On Dec 2, 4:13 pm, Shawn Wilson <ikonoql...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Nov 30, 7:12 am, Tony <jabriol2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> <response cross-posted from alt.books.isaac-asimov>
>>
>>> I know many of you were delighted with Asimov Foundation series. Hence
>>> we are familiar with Psychohistory. -the ability to predict human
>>> behavior in groups- What I didn't know was, there was already a theory
>>> in action to determine this in the real world. Game theory .. a
>>> Concept worked on by John F. Nash. I connected the dots when I saw
>>> the movie "a Beautiful mind" with my wife past weekend. I didn't want
>>> to see the movie because I have family with mental illness, including
>>> my Father who has schizophrenia. Hence I don't like anything to do
>>> with mental illness. However I did see the movie, and I was attracted
>>> to the math.
>>> This when I made the connection. Have anybody who read the Foundation
>>> series made the same connection?
>> Economics in general, and specifically macroeconomics is as close as
>> we come to psychohistory. Game theory is a subset/tool of that
>> analysis (among other things, game theory is useful but not
>> overwhelmingly so).
>
> Have you read material from Bueno de Mezquita?
He has a formula that will predict the future, a "Nostradamus" formula....
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
Really? Did they give people hypoglycemia in order to sedate them?
Tim Little
> Really? Did they give people hypoglycemia in order to sedate them?
Much worse than sedation. Look up "insulin shock therapy", mainly for
schizophrenia. A significant fraction (about 10% IIRC) of patients
died and more were left permanently damaged by the repeated
deliberately induced comas.
- Tim
Shawn Wilson
> The 1920s and 1930s saw the popular emergence of psychology, sociology, and
> anthropology as recognized disciplines. Today we don't think twice about
> stories that use these as underlying themes, but expressly incorporating
> their principles was relatively unplowed ground for SF when Asimov used it
> in his Foundation series.
Yes, as fiction it's fine. Some things just won't work in the real
world though.
> IMO, a psychohistorian operating around 1870 would have predicted WW1 and
> possibly its outcome
Would he? WWI being fought AT ALL turned on Gavrilo Princip chosing a
specific coffee house to mope in after the assassination attempt on
Ferdinand failed. Ferdinand's car happened to stop in front of it,
and Princip still had his gun...
A trivial decisioon by a trivial person and world history changes.
Predict that?
Artur Zimmerman decides to be honest rather than otherwisde and as a
result America enters the war against Germany. A diplomat and a high
German official choses honesty over a lie that would have served his
nations' interest? Predict that?
A general lies to his Kaiser? Predict that?
The demands against Serbia were delayed because of a state visit by
the president of France. If they had been delivered in the heat of
the moment France would have let Serbia deal with the problem it had
created ITSELF. By delaying them passions cooled and the immediate
provocation was forgotten. In cool consideration France decides to
back Serbia. Predict that?
WW1 is just full of stuff like that, and all of world history
afterwards changes as a result.
, just as would one operating 50 years prior would have
> predicted the American Civil War and its outcome, and a hundred years before
> that, the American Revolution.
The wars? No. The end result possibly, but things didn't have to
work out the way they did. The wars could have had different victors,
or might not have been fought at all. You can't predict the actions
of individuals that the end revolved around.
He might even have predicted the intervening
> smaller-scale European conflicts that set the conditions for WW1. However,
> none of the individual decisions cited here would have been included because
> they are inherently random and unpredictable. As interesting as they may be
> in the actual history of WW1, they also would have been irrelevant to a
> psychohistorian's major analysis and predictions, the fundamental conclusion
> of which would be that no actions by any individuals or nations could
> prevent a major European "great war" from erupting early in the 20th
> century. Individual actions can influence the details of the course of
> events but not change the fundamental flow and direction of the predicted
> history.
Predicting history with thousand year granularity might be possible,
but it seems pointless.
David Friedman
"mazorj" <maz...@verizon.net> wrote:
> "Shawn Wilson" <ikono...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:bbbb64da-2680-4406...@o9g2000vbj.googlegroups.com...
> On Nov 30, 7:12 am, Tony <jabriol2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <response cross-posted from alt.books.isaac-asimov>
>
> > I know many of you were delighted with Asimov Foundation series. Hence
> > we are familiar with Psychohistory. -the ability to predict human
> > behavior in groups- What I didn't know was, there was already a theory
> > in action to determine this in the real world. Game theory ..
...
My guess would be that Asimov was thinking of Marxism, which claimed to
predict things along more or less the lines of his psychohistory.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of
_Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_,
Cambridge University Press.
Joseph Nebus
>In article <hf9573$ert$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> "mazorj" <maz...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> "Shawn Wilson" <ikono...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:bbbb64da-2680-4406...@o9g2000vbj.googlegroups.com...
>> On Nov 30, 7:12 am, Tony <jabriol2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> <response cross-posted from alt.books.isaac-asimov>
>>
>> > I know many of you were delighted with Asimov Foundation series. Hence
>> > we are familiar with Psychohistory. -the ability to predict human
>> > behavior in groups- What I didn't know was, there was already a theory
>> > in action to determine this in the real world. Game theory ..
>My guess would be that Asimov was thinking of Marxism, which claimed to
>predict things along more or less the lines of his psychohistory.
Your guess would be wrong. Asimov was thinking of thermodynamics,
which he had been studying along the way to his chemistry degree, and the
startling way in which the behavior of a system impossibly difficult to
study precisely could nevertheless be precisely predicted by a handful of
simple assumptions and statistical methods. Josiah Willard Gibbs had
similar ideas, although I don't know whether Asimov was aware of that.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Ciszek
In article <nebusj.1...@vcmr-86.server.rpi.edu>,
Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote:
>David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:
>
>>My guess would be that Asimov was thinking of Marxism, which claimed to
>>predict things along more or less the lines of his psychohistory.
>
> Your guess would be wrong. Asimov was thinking of thermodynamics,
>which he had been studying along the way to his chemistry degree, and the
>startling way in which the behavior of a system impossibly difficult to
>study precisely could nevertheless be precisely predicted by a handful of
>simple assumptions and statistical methods. Josiah Willard Gibbs had
>similar ideas, although I don't know whether Asimov was aware of that.
Judging from what I remember of Asimov's science essays, that sounds
right. Plus, Asimov would have had no reason to love Marxism--his
parents left Russia for a reason, and always seemed wary of authoritarianism,
in no small part because of its intolerance for wiseassery.
--
Please reply to: | "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is
pciszek at panix dot com | indistinguishable from malice."
Autoreply is disabled |
Paul Ciszek
In article <hfa3rv$64$4...@reader1.panix.com>,
Paul Ciszek <nos...@nospam.com> wrote:
>
>right. Plus, Asimov would have had no reason to love Marxism--his
>parents left Russia for a reason, and always seemed wary of authoritarianism,
>in no small part because of its intolerance for wiseassery.
That should read "and *he* always seemed wary of authoritarianism..."
Perhaps his parents did too, but I was referring to him.
Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr.
> On 2009-12-04, Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr. <ostap_bender_1...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Really? Did they give people hypoglycemia in order to sedate them?
>
> Much worse than sedation. Look up "insulin shock therapy", mainly for
> schizophrenia. A significant fraction (about 10% IIRC) of patients
> died and more were left permanently damaged by the repeated
> deliberately induced comas.
>
I am sure that hypoglycemia can do that to you, if severe enough.
I just saw Eastwood's movie about how LA police threw their opponents
in mental hospitals and tortured them there in the 1920s. As
libertarians like to say, ask not what your government can do for you,
ask what it can do TO you.
mazorj
"David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in message
news:ddfr-065901.1...@newsfarm.phx.highwinds-media.com...
> In article <hf9573$ert$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> "mazorj" <maz...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> "Shawn Wilson" <ikono...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:bbbb64da-2680-4406...@o9g2000vbj.googlegroups.com...
>> On Nov 30, 7:12 am, Tony <jabriol2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> <response cross-posted from alt.books.isaac-asimov>
>>
>> > I know many of you were delighted with Asimov Foundation series. Hence
>> > we are familiar with Psychohistory. -the ability to predict human
>> > behavior in groups- What I didn't know was, there was already a theory
>> > in action to determine this in the real world. Game theory ..
>
> ...
>
> My guess would be that Asimov was thinking of Marxism, which claimed to
> predict things along more or less the lines of his psychohistory.
Perhaps so. Isaac was definitely leftist in his thinking, and both Marxism
and psychohistory take a decidedly deterministic view of human behavior.
The principal difference is that the former applies it to individuals while
the latter applies it to the behavior of statistical populations.
The next poster had a different, equally plausible take on that. Barring a
citation dispositively disproving one or the other as an influence, I don't
see the two as mutually exclusive. If you think about it, they could have
been complementary influences in Asimov's formulation of his brand of
psychohistory, where behavior was largely deterministic but inherently
unpredictable except in large numbers. See my reply to Mr. Nebus.
mazorj
"Joseph Nebus" <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote in message
news:nebusj.1...@vcmr-86.server.rpi.edu...
Was that from his two-volume autobiography? My copy lamentably is lost or
buried somewhere but I vaguely recall reading something about that when it
was published.
OTOH, as I noted in my previous post, I don't see the two as necessarily
mutually exclusive. Asimov may have had the thermodynamics thing uppermost
in his mind when he said that, but his far-left views suggest a certain
acceptance of some of the precepts of Marxism. (Be sure to note the
distinction between Marxism and authoritarian communism.) To the extent
that he thought that man should act rationally and not out of ignorance and
emotion, he at least tacitly accepted a more or less deterministic view of
human behavior, which is a basic tenet of Marxism.
And while there are aspects of thermodynamics that seem to verge on chaos
theory when it comes to the movement of specific atoms, closed systems still
follow the highly deterministic ideal gas laws. Measure two variables, and
you know with deterministic certainty the value of the third. I don't know
that Asimov ever expressly dwelled on that particular factoid as an
influence in formulating his psychohistory, but nevertheless, there it is.
mazorj
On Dec 3, 12:55 pm, "mazorj" <maz...@verizon.net> wrote:
> The 1920s and 1930s saw the popular emergence of psychology, sociology,
> and
> anthropology as recognized disciplines. Today we don't think twice about
> stories that use these as underlying themes, but expressly incorporating
> their principles was relatively unplowed ground for SF when Asimov used it
> in his Foundation series.
< Yes, as fiction it's fine. Some things just won't work in the real world
though.
I never said it would.
> IMO, a psychohistorian operating around 1870 would have predicted WW1 and
> possibly its outcome
< Would he? WWI being fought AT ALL turned on Gavrilo Princip chosing a
specific coffee house to mope in after the assassination attempt on
Ferdinand failed. Ferdinand's car happened to stop in front of it,
and Princip still had his gun...
<
< A trivial decisioon by a trivial person and world history changes. Predict
that?
Oh, c'mon. That was just a trigger event (no pun intended). If it hadn't
been Princip in the coffee house with the gun, it would have been Col.
Mustard in the colonies with the expedition that encroached on someone
else's claims, or whatever. Every analysis I've read implies or explicitly
states that the economic, nationalist, and diplomatic rivalries of the time
established conditions where only a miracle could have prevented war from
eventually erupting.
Hell, I'm not a historian let alone a psychohistorian, but I will tell you
flat out that sometime in the next ten years there will be a major terrorist
attack on U.S. soil. Don't know when or where or how or by whom or how
successful it will be, but the march of history clearly leads to that
inevitability. As a bonus, I'll throw in a prediction of a nuclear
detonation, for reasons of combat or terrorism, somewhere by someone in the
next 50 years. And anyone who doesn't believe that is a Pollyanna or hasn't
been paying attention. If I'm wrong (and of course I wish I would be)
you'll be able to find me at the nearest church professing my newly restored
belief in miracles.
< Artur Zimmerman decides to be honest rather than otherwisde and as a
result America enters the war against Germany. A diplomat and a high
German official choses honesty over a lie that would have served his
nations' interest? Predict that?
And you of course can prove the negative that America otherwise would never
have entered the war? Not to mention the fact that by then, the
psychohistorian's prediction already would have been proven correct for
several years.
< A general lies to his Kaiser? Predict that?
Any competent psychohistorian would have assumed that some political leader
would have been lied to by his military. The details of which are
immaterial to higher-order calculations and predictions.
< The demands against Serbia were delayed because of a state visit by
the president of France. If they had been delivered in the heat of
the moment France would have let Serbia deal with the problem it had
created ITSELF. By delaying them passions cooled and the immediate
provocation was forgotten. In cool consideration France decides to
back Serbia. Predict that?
That's a highly speculative, post hoc opinion, the proof of which is not in
evidence. And even if it were provable, to repeat - it's *immaterial* in
the fictional world of psychohistory. The fact that psychohistory does not
and probably cannot exist is irrelevant to its concepts and constructs as
postulated by Asimov.
< WW1 is just full of stuff like that, and all of world history afterwards
changes as a result.
Sure, and butterflies in China affect U.S. weather patterns. So what? That
doesn't mean that today's hurricane barreling down toward the Mexican coast
was "the result of" Chinese butterflies playing in a field last week.
Speaking analgously, psychohistory would have predicted that there would be
a hurricane somewhere along the Mexican coast, some time this week, of
indeterminate force but at least a Category 2. All the flapping butterflies
in China - which here represent the specific events immediately prior to WW1
that you listed - at most might shift the timing, exact location and
strength of the storm by a trivial, barely perceptible amount. They neither
cause, nor can their absence prevent, the gathering storm, which is caused
by higher-order weather factors. (And ironically, aspects of chaos theory
may be the very reason why psychohistory will remain fiction and not fact.)
The most telling flaw in your explication here is that you presume or at
least imply that all of these events were not only sufficient, but necessary
for WW1 to occur. Stop just one of them from happening and the chain is
broken and WW1 never happens. Do you seriously believe that?
>, just as would one operating 50 years prior would have
> predicted the American Civil War and its outcome, and a hundred years
> before
> that, the American Revolution.
> The wars? No. The end result possibly, but things didn't have to
work out the way they did. The wars could have had different victors,
or might not have been fought at all. You can't predict the actions
of individuals that the end revolved around.
A thorough analysis by even a good analyst of history and current events -
never mind a psychohistorian - might have concluded that civil war and the
preceding revolution were inevitable. He just needed to have in foresight
the 20-20 hindsight we now have, which could have been provided to him by a
thorough contemporary knowledge of all the social, economic, and yes, even
psychological factors and events at work all across colonial America and
both the North and the South in the preceding 100 years. Remember, Asimov's
psychohistorians weren't operating in a vacuum either. They had access to
every jot and tittle of galactic current events and human history and
behavior going back to their lost Terran ancestors.
So could the armed Revolution theoretically have been avoided? Sure, just
as theoretically, the crown and Parliament could have said "Oh, bother.
Let's just let those smelly colonials have their wilderness, stop providing
us with protected two-way trade on our terms, and stop paying taxes to the
exchequer." And how about the Civil War? The South theoretically could
have caved on slavery and abolished it in 1850, thereby avoiding the
otherwise inevitable armed civil conflict.
Neither of those scenarios are the only way that war could have been
avoided, but hey, if we're going to piss up a rope by dwelling on
contrarian, counter-factual speculations, let's swing for the fences.
> He might even have predicted the intervening
> smaller-scale European conflicts that set the conditions for WW1. However,
> none of the individual decisions cited here would have been included
> because
> they are inherently random and unpredictable. As interesting as they may
> be
> in the actual history of WW1, they also would have been irrelevant to a
> psychohistorian's major analysis and predictions, the fundamental
> conclusion
> of which would be that no actions by any individuals or nations could
> prevent a major European "great war" from erupting early in the 20th
> century. Individual actions can influence the details of the course of
> events but not change the fundamental flow and direction of the predicted
> history.
< Predicting history with thousand year granularity might be possible, but
it seems pointless.
Huh? Are you and I even reading the same thread? Where did "thousand-year
granularity" enter the picture? "WW1: The Epilog" (AKA WW2) had a putative
Thousand Year Reich but neither I nor Asimov's story of the Mule were
dealing with time sweeps of 10^3 years.
At first I thought the problem was simply that I was dealing with Asimov's
psychohistory on its own admittedly unrealistic but internally consistent
terms while you were focused on disproving psychohistory (you're pushing on
an open door there) by citing real but random historical events that,
individually and perhaps even in their entirety, still would not have
precluded WW1 if a time traveler had intervened to prevent them. After
reading that last comment, now I'm wondering if the problem goes deeper than
some crossed-up communications?
David Friedman
"mazorj" <maz...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> "David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in message
> news:ddfr-065901.1...@newsfarm.phx.highwinds-media.com...
> > In article <hf9573$ert$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> > "mazorj" <maz...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> >> "Shawn Wilson" <ikono...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> >> news:bbbb64da-2680-4406...@o9g2000vbj.googlegroups.com...
> >> On Nov 30, 7:12 am, Tony <jabriol2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> <response cross-posted from alt.books.isaac-asimov>
> >>
> >> > I know many of you were delighted with Asimov Foundation series. Hence
> >> > we are familiar with Psychohistory. -the ability to predict human
> >> > behavior in groups- What I didn't know was, there was already a theory
> >> > in action to determine this in the real world. Game theory ..
> >
> > ...
> >
> > My guess would be that Asimov was thinking of Marxism, which claimed to
> > predict things along more or less the lines of his psychohistory.
>
> Perhaps so. Isaac was definitely leftist in his thinking, and both Marxism
> and psychohistory take a decidedly deterministic view of human behavior.
> The principal difference is that the former applies it to individuals while
> the latter applies it to the behavior of statistical populations.
I would have said that Marxism applies it to populations. Volume I of
Kapital gives the impression of a vast historical panorama with
societies changing in predictable ways.
I'm not assuming, incidentally, that Asimov was a Marxist; I don't know
much about his politics. But he was surely familiar with Marxism, and so
could have used it as a model for his imaginary science.
mazorj
"Paul Ciszek" <nos...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:hfa3rv$64$4...@reader1.panix.com...
>
> In article <nebusj.1...@vcmr-86.server.rpi.edu>,
> Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote:
>>David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:
>>
>>>My guess would be that Asimov was thinking of Marxism, which claimed to
>>>predict things along more or less the lines of his psychohistory.
>>
>> Your guess would be wrong. Asimov was thinking of thermodynamics,
>>which he had been studying along the way to his chemistry degree, and the
>>startling way in which the behavior of a system impossibly difficult to
>>study precisely could nevertheless be precisely predicted by a handful of
>>simple assumptions and statistical methods. Josiah Willard Gibbs had
>>similar ideas, although I don't know whether Asimov was aware of that.
>
> Judging from what I remember of Asimov's science essays, that sounds
> right. Plus, Asimov would have had no reason to love Marxism--his
> parents left Russia for a reason, and always seemed wary of
> authoritarianism,
> in no small part because of its intolerance for wiseassery.
Marxism does not equate point for point with authoritarian communism. You
can be a Marxist while at the same time reviling Soviet Russia.
Many of Asimov's decidedly liberal views seem to be influenced by, if not
firmly anchored in aspects of Marxism. I doubt that he considered himself a
Marxist, but if the glove even partially fits, you must not acquit. :-)
Michael Stemper
>As I remember it, Asimov's psychohistory did not deny the role of
>individuals and specific decisions in its analysis of large-scale
>developments. The assumption was that they would cancel each other out or
>be overwhelmed by larger influences, so that only the larger-scale
>influences had to be calculated.
Pretty much like the Ideal Gas Law, yeah.
> I always thought that the term was a
>misnomer because it seemed to be based at least as much in sociology, with
>psychological factors differentiating it from pure sociological theory. I
>suppose that the term "psychosociohistory" would have been a bit clunky
>while the shorter "psychohistory" more easily rolls off the tongue.
That's a good point. Psychology had much less to do with it than did
sociology. In fact, I'd take your suggestion a step further and say
that "Sociohistory" would have been a better name for it. Except, of
course, that history is about the past (no matter what lessons for
the future we should learn from it). A better name still would have
been "Quantitative Sociology", which probably wouldn't have played
well in the pulps.
>Like many SF writers, Asimov was adept at picking up on recent scientific
>developments and incorporating them without necessarily having the
>scientists' complete mastery of the subject.
[snip example of positronic robots]
He also was adept at taking whatever he was currently learning in
school and incorporating that, as well. Two examples come to mind,
both short stories:
1. "Half-breed", in which he reveals that he's just learned the
equation of a sphere in Euclidean 3-space.
2. "The Imaginary", which appears to have been written shortly
after he was exposed to (i)^2 = -1.
>IMO, a psychohistorian operating around 1870 would have predicted WW1 and
>possibly its outcome, just as would one operating 50 years prior would have
>predicted the American Civil War and its outcome, and a hundred years before
>that, the American Revolution. He might even have predicted the intervening
>smaller-scale European conflicts that set the conditions for WW1.
Have you ever read Michael Flynn's _In the Country of the Blind_?
It posits a group of psycho-historians dating back at least as
far as the early nineteenth century. They made working Babbage
Engines when the theoretical foundations were laid, and used those
to help in making their predictions. I thing that it's a pretty
good story, especially after the revelation of the existence of
"splitters". It's reminiscent in a way of Chesterton's _The Man
Who Was Friday_. Vaguely.
>(And as I recall, whenever the psychohistorian appeared with a previously
>recorded message to the masses, he was rather vague about details.
If I recall correctly, the recording of Seldon included his statement
that he was being vague.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Life's too important to take seriously.
Shawn Wilson
> > Economics in general, and specifically macroeconomics is as close as
> > we come to psychohistory. Game theory is a subset/tool of that
> > analysis (among other things, game theory is useful but not
> > overwhelmingly so).
>
> Have you read material from Bueno de Mezquita?
Never heard of him. 'Good of Corn'?
Shawn Wilson
> > IMO, a psychohistorian operating around 1870 would have predicted WW1 and
> > possibly its outcome
>
> < Would he? WWI being fought AT ALL turned on Gavrilo Princip chosing a
> specific coffee house to mope in after the assassination attempt on
> Ferdinand failed. Ferdinand's car happened to stop in front of it,
> and Princip still had his gun...
> <
> < A trivial decisioon by a trivial person and world history changes. Predict
> that?
>
> Oh, c'mon. That was just a trigger event (no pun intended). If it hadn't
> been Princip in the coffee house with the gun, it would have been Col.
> Mustard in the colonies with the expedition that encroached on someone
> else's claims, or whatever.
Without THAT trigger, there was no reason for the war to be fought at
all. It isn't like vague hostilities were building to 'inevitable'
explosion, as say the American Revolution or Civil War. Europe was
getting along just fine as it was.
WW1 was a result of a specific series of events and forces, set in
motion by exactly the right impulse under exactly the right
conditions. All coming down to Gavrilo Princip chosing this coffee
house rather than that one...
> Every analysis I've read implies or explicitly
> states that the economic, nationalist, and diplomatic rivalries of the time
> established conditions where only a miracle could have prevented war from
> eventually erupting.
Yes, people like to say things like that. Saying war is inevitable is
like saying that rain is inevitable. Sure, some war of some kind will
always come along, baring the end of history. There are ALWAYS
economic, nationalistic and diplomatic rivalries going on. Most of
the time they don't lead to war. Wars are expensive and nasty and
dangerous in an uncertainty of outcome sort of way such that leaders
try to avoid them. They failed this time because of specific
circumstances and a chain of events predicated on Gavrilo Princip's
taste in coffee houses.
> < Artur Zimmerman decides to be honest rather than otherwisde and as a
> result America enters the war against Germany. A diplomat and a high
> German official choses honesty over a lie that would have served his
> nations' interest? Predict that?
>
> And you of course can prove the negative that America otherwise would never
> have entered the war?
No, but that America DID enter the war was a direct result of that
truth. Can you prove that they wold have anyway without it?
> < A general lies to his Kaiser? Predict that?
>
> Any competent psychohistorian would have assumed that some political leader
> would have been lied to by his military. The details of which are
> immaterial to higher-order calculations and predictions.
But that that specific and critical lie would be said by that general
to that leader at that time? He tells him the truth ('it can be done,
but it would be very risky') and everything after changes.
> < The demands against Serbia were delayed because of a state visit by
> the president of France. If they had been delivered in the heat of
> the moment France would have let Serbia deal with the problem it had
> created ITSELF. By delaying them passions cooled and the immediate
> provocation was forgotten. In cool consideration France decides to
> back Serbia. Predict that?
>
> That's a highly speculative, post hoc opinion, the proof of which is not in
> evidence.
We know what did happen, we know the way opinions were being formed
and changing. Sentiment was that Serbia had created it's own
problem, The treaties did not require they be defended from the
consequences of their own actions. As passions cooled, opinions
changed. People do write letters and keep diaries stating their
thoughts and opinions at the time...
And even if it were provable, to repeat - it's *immaterial* in
> the fictional world of psychohistory. The fact that psychohistory does not
> and probably cannot exist is irrelevant to its concepts and constructs as
> postulated by Asimov.
As I said, it's fine in fiction.
> < WW1 is just full of stuff like that, and all of world history afterwards
> changes as a result.
>
> Sure, and butterflies in China affect U.S. weather patterns.
Do they? Frequently claimed but never actually shown.
> The most telling flaw in your explication here is that you presume or at
> least imply that all of these events were not only sufficient, but necessary
> for WW1 to occur. Stop just one of them from happening and the chain is
> broken and WW1 never happens. Do you seriously believe that?
Yes, entirely.
> >, just as would one operating 50 years prior would have
> > predicted the American Civil War and its outcome, and a hundred years
> > before
> > that, the American Revolution.
> > The wars? No. The end result possibly, but things didn't have to
>
> work out the way they did. The wars could have had different victors,
> or might not have been fought at all. You can't predict the actions
> of individuals that the end revolved around.
>
> A thorough analysis by even a good analyst of history and current events -
> never mind a psychohistorian - might have concluded that civil war and the
> preceding revolution were inevitable.
In the late 18th century war with France was 'inevitable', until it
turned out not to be.
He just needed to have in foresight
> the 20-20 hindsight we now have, which could have been provided to him by a
> thorough contemporary knowledge of all the social, economic, and yes, even
> psychological factors and events at work all across colonial America and
> both the North and the South in the preceding 100 years.
Different policies could have ended slavery peacefully without war.
Different public opinion could have left the South independent and
slave owning.
> < Predicting history with thousand year granularity might be possible, but
> it seems pointless.
>
> Huh? Are you and I even reading the same thread?
The point being that it would take a long time for the specific
details and consequences of unpredictable individual actions to become
irrelevant. 1000 years seems about right. Not any shorter certainly.
David Friedman
mste...@walkabout.empros.com (Michael Stemper) wrote:
> It's reminiscent in a way of Chesterton's _The Man
> Who Was Friday_. Vaguely.
You mean a day late?
Mac
wrote:
> In article <hfbidl$nh...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> mstem...@walkabout.empros.com (Michael Stemper) wrote:
>
> > It's reminiscent in a way of Chesterton's _The Man
> > Who Was Friday_. Vaguely.
>
> You mean a day late?
What kine de Wormy talk is that? He means a troller short.
mazorj
views on history, I'll just top-post and paste two of them here:
"Different public opinion could have left the South independent and slave
owning."
Sure. And differing public opinion during the settlement of the colonies
could have outlawed slavery from the start. So what? By 1800 the facts on
the ground were that the steadily growing political pressure from Northern
abolitionists, coupled with the South's economic dependence on slavery,
would make a North-South showdown inevitable. This regional conflict was
inherent in the system from the moment the colonies went from separate
entities under Crown rule (where Georgia didn't give a fig what
Massachusetts thought about slavery and could totally ignore abolitionism)
to a nation of United States, where everyone now was locked in the same
cage, i.e., a federal government, and had to get along under a union.
There's no way you can wiggle out of that with some concocted "what if".
Neither side was going to concede. They kept a lid on it for a few decades
with gimmicks such as the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850.
By 1860 the politicians had run out of wiggle room, the South was seething
with secessionist sentiments, abolitionists were demanding an end to slavery
ASAP, and the fuse had been lit. If South Carolina hadn't forced Lincoln's
hand at Ft. Sumter, some other trigger event would have occurred.
"The point being that it would take a long time for the specific details and
consequences of unpredictable individual actions to become irrelevant. 1000
years seems about right. Not any shorter certainly."
Now that's just plain silly. If Paul Revere had been captured by the
British before he made his ride, how long a time would it take for this
notably important change to have been "washed out" as an influence on the
outcome of the Revolution? Indeed, how would the course or the outcome of
the Revolution been affected at all? The Minutemen wouldn't have dissolved
or refused to fight. It might have taken them a month or two to recover
from not being prepared for Concord, but there would be other triggering
skirmishes with the Redcoats and combat would have spread to all the same
colonies, perhaps delayed as much as a month or two, but war was inevitable.
The granularity of the changed course of events here is anywhere from months
to, in the most extreme credible cascade of altered events that I can
imagine, a year or two.
And as to your statement that all the the events that you listed leading up
to WW1 were absolutely necessary - as in "change one and the chain is
broken, resulting in no WW1" - this is where I stop. Good grief. This kind
of thinking only works on a small scale, such as the chain of events leading
to an aviation accident. When you are talking about broad sweeps of events
in history, the system can compensate for the loss of specific trigger
events. Which is what I meant when I said "If it hadn't been Princip in the
coffee house with the gun, it would have been Col. Mustard in the colonies
with the expedition that encroached on someone else's claims, or whatever."
Europe had spent decades building a powder keg. There are a great many
(probably thousands) of conceivable, credible trigger events that were in
the making and that would have set off the keg. Every one of them was a lit
fuse. It was just a question of which fuse (trigger event) got to the keg
first.
Enough. You're entitled to your opinions but you've obviously bought into
some revisionist book claiming that even right up until the last moment, WW1
was avoidable. I can accept an alternate history that starts 20-40 years
earlier and strings together a series of plausible (if improbable) changes
in events and decisions by the players that would have prevented the powder
keg. But at the 11:59 p.m. hour, there are no plausible changes you can
postulate that would have prevented armed conflict. You might delay it, you
might alter the order of certain events, you might even switch or subtract
one of the combatants. But you cannot stop this Juggernaut.
"Shawn Wilson" <ikono...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:b29aea6a-1789-40f8...@o9g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
Gene Wirchenko
(Michael Stemper) wrote:
[snip]
>If I recall correctly, the recording of Seldon included his statement
>that he was being vague.
Sure, but the timing was spot on, not just vaguely correct, for
the first two recordings.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
DouhetSukd
analysis knew what would happen. I don't buy it, at least not the
analysis carried out by the military at the time.
Another way to put it is that the shield got _unexpectedly_ way better
than the sword, in terms of trenches and machine guns.
Sure, there had been inklings of that. Even the Civil War saw
trenches come into power and by the Boer War, the addition of machine
guns and barbed wire definitely tipped the balance towards defense.
Even if you managed a tactical breakthrough, your troops would be
_walking_ into an area with very limited roads and transportation,
while the defender would still have his railroad network in the rear.
Hard to envision Rommel's dash to the sea under those conditions.
But I don't think anybody in the military mainstream _quite_ expected
it to turn out that way. If the French hadn't been so willfully
stupid about it, they would have had fewer losses in the beginning of
the war by being more defensive. And they would have had an easier
time defending. Instead, they kept their blue uniforms and stuck to a
doctrine that battles were won by bayonet charges for a while. Their
massive losses made things more iffy later on than they had to be.
Same w WW2, where the armored blitzkrieg had a very limited following
amongst the military cognoscenti. Ditto the aircraft carrier vs.
battleship debate.
And ditto the high tech fiasco we've been carrying out in Iraq and
Afghanistan, past the initial, very successful invasions. We're
seeing a gradual switch towards less bombing, more policing. Could be
too late, but again, lots of smart folks made some decisions that
turned out to be incorrect. I figure at least part of the blame can
be laid at the Pentagon's assumptions, not just at Bush + Rumsfeld's
pipe dreams.
When technologies and tactics change quickly, it's naive believe in
something like military determinism extrapolated from previous
conditions. And, at the political level, if you throw in the
randomization factor brought in by key individuals - for example,
Hitler, it'd be foolish to read tea leaves too far ahead in the
future.
Not that people will ever stop trying to.
Bill Snyder
<douhe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>That's a kinda glib jump through WWI history that implies that
>analysis knew what would happen. I don't buy it, at least not the
>analysis carried out by the military at the time.
[considerable snippage]
>
>But I don't think anybody in the military mainstream _quite_ expected
>it to turn out that way. If the French hadn't been so willfully
>stupid about it, they would have had fewer losses in the beginning of
>the war by being more defensive. And they would have had an easier
>time defending. Instead, they kept their blue uniforms and stuck to a
>doctrine that battles were won by bayonet charges for a while. Their
>massive losses made things more iffy later on than they had to be.
>
>When technologies and tactics change quickly, it's naive believe in
>something like military determinism extrapolated from previous
>conditions. And, at the political level, if you throw in the
>randomization factor brought in by key individuals - for example,
>Hitler, it'd be foolish to read tea leaves too far ahead in the
>future.
Yes, the "analysis" is Shawniana. Rudyard Kipling witnessed the
Boer war, and makes it clear that the Brits learned entirely the
wrong lessons from it; at the outset of WWI they took the famous
aphorism one step further -- the radicals among them were still
trying to get ready to fight the last one:
"The junior officers agreed that the war ought to be a
'first-class dress parade for Armageddon,' but their practical
conclusions were misleading. Long-range, aimed rifle-fire would
do the work of the future: troops would never get nearer each
other than half a mile, and Mounted Infantry would be vital. This
was because, having found men on foot cannot overtake men on
ponies, we created eighty thousand of as good Mounted Infantry as
the world had seen. For these Western Europe had no use.
Artillery preparation of wire-works, such as were not at
Magersfontein, was rather overlooked in the reformers' schemes, on
account of the difficulty of bringing up ammunition by
horse-power. . . . [One] heard free and fierce debate as points
came up, but -- since no one dreamt of the internal-combustion
engine that was to stand the world on its thick head, and since
our wireless apparatus did not work in those landscapes -- we were
all beating the air."
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
Paul_AtreidestheMuadib
bump,intresting topic,i nicholas ng sing kwong,love asimov
Shawn Wilson
> As to game theory being a part of the theory of psychohistory, my guess is
> that it would have been incorporated as a fundamental axiom but would only
> be a tiny fragment of the much more comprehensive overall theory.
Fragment of a larger theory, yes. "Axiom"? never. Game theory is
not axiomatic, it is solidly founded on theorems. There is a rather
huge and important difference between axioms and theorems, and
theorems are stronger. Axioms are merely *assumed* to be true.
Theorems are proven.
Shawn Wilson
> "Different public opinion could have left the South independent and slave
> owning."
>
> Sure. And differing public opinion during the settlement of the colonies
> could have outlawed slavery from the start. So what?
So the outcome we saw was *not* inevitable.
> By 1800 the facts on
> the ground were that the steadily growing political pressure from Northern
> abolitionists, coupled with the South's economic dependence on slavery,
> would make a North-South showdown inevitable.
Leading to war or leading to seperation? If the South hadn't fired on
Ft Sumter it is unlikely that the North would have started the
shooting. War was not inevitable.
This regional conflict was
> inherent in the system from the moment the colonies went from separate
> entities under Crown rule (where Georgia didn't give a fig what
> Massachusetts thought about slavery and could totally ignore abolitionism)
> to a nation of United States, where everyone now was locked in the same
> cage, i.e., a federal government, and had to get along under a union.
Regional conflicts can be resolved without war.
> There's no way you can wiggle out of that with some concocted "what if".
> Neither side was going to concede.
Concession was not necesary from the South. At that needed to be
diffferent was not firing on Ft Sumter (and a few other attacks on
federal installations, Sumter wasn't unique). No shooting, no war.
With time the de facto independence becomes accepted and later even de
jure and the conflict is resolved, with no war and none of the
consequences of that war. (a whole raft of different consequences
instead...0
> "The point being that it would take a long time for the specific details and
> consequences of unpredictable individual actions to become irrelevant. 1000
> years seems about right. Not any shorter certainly."
>
> Now that's just plain silly. If Paul Revere had been captured by the
> British before he made his ride, how long a time would it take for this
> notably important change to have been "washed out" as an influence on the
> outcome of the Revolution?
THAT wouldn't have made a difference (Revere wasn't acting alone- he
had confederates). Gavrilo Princip's taste in coffee houses, on the
other hand... If he had gone to Starbuck's instead he would have
merely drunk his coffee and gone home.
If Colonel Mustard kills Ferdinand, that doesn't lead to war with
Serbia, nor do Germany, Russia and France get drawn in.
Indeed, how would the course or the outcome of
> the Revolution been affected at all? The Minutemen wouldn't have dissolved
> or refused to fight. It might have taken them a month or two to recover
> from not being prepared for Concord, but there would be other triggering
> skirmishes with the Redcoats and combat would have spread to all the same
> colonies, perhaps delayed as much as a month or two, but war was inevitable.
> The granularity of the changed course of events here is anywhere from months
> to, in the most extreme credible cascade of altered events that I can
> imagine, a year or two.
Not everything is the result of minor individual actions, but some
things have such utterly huge consequences arising from amazingly
trivial individual decisions that the idea of history being anything
but chaotic is simply foolish.
> And as to your statement that all the the events that you listed leading up
> to WW1 were absolutely necessary - as in "change one and the chain is
> broken, resulting in no WW1" - this is where I stop. Good grief. This kind
> of thinking only works on a small scale, such as the chain of events leading
> to an aviation accident.
You mean like the accident that might have killed Paul Sommerfield,
whose religious instruction of Saint Hitler led to the Golden Age we
are now experiencing?
Or maybe Hitler wasn't taught to love all mankind. Maybe he catches
syphilis from a jewish prostitute instead, leading to an obsession
with contamination of pure German blood by evil Jews... Who knows, we
might even speculate on the effects of treatment of that syphilis by a
quack doctor...
> When you are talking about broad sweeps of events
> in history, the system can compensate for the loss of specific trigger
> events.
Maybe. Sometimes. But not everytime. And the excepts become the
foundation of later events of their own.
Which is what I meant when I said "If it hadn't been Princip in the
> coffee house with the gun, it would have been Col. Mustard in the colonies
> with the expedition that encroached on someone else's claims, or whatever."
> Europe had spent decades building a powder keg.
Except that Europe wasn't a powderkeg. Europe was at peace and
cordial, with only the usual rivalries going on.
> Enough. You're entitled to your opinions but you've obviously bought into
> some revisionist book claiming that even right up until the last moment, WW1
> was avoidable.
Without Gavrilo Princip Austria doesn't declare war on Serbia.
Without Austria declaring war on Serbia none of the rest follows.
mazorj
My bad, another example of the hands typing faster than the brain can call
up the right word.
No excuses, though, I should have caught it in the edit.
mazorj
On Dec 4, 4:57 pm, "mazorj" <maz...@verizon.net> wrote:
> "Different public opinion could have left the South independent and slave
> owning."
>
> Sure. And differing public opinion during the settlement of the colonies
> could have outlawed slavery from the start. So what?
< So the outcome we saw was *not* inevitable.
So what color is the sky in your world, Shawn? It's blue over in this
corner of the galaxy.
I don't argue with brick walls or their Usenet equivalents. Buh-bye.
Hieronymus Agricola
(in article
<6cbe792a-7130-415a...@j9g2000prh.googlegroups.com>):
> There is a rather
> huge and important difference between axioms and theorems, and
> theorems are stronger. Axioms are merely *assumed* to be true.
> Theorems are proven.
... from axioms.
Shawn Wilson
> > There is a rather
> > huge and important difference between axioms and theorems, and
> > theorems are stronger. Axioms are merely *assumed* to be true.
> > Theorems are proven.
>
> ... from axioms.
Yes, but building on a minimum spanning set of carefully chosen axioms
with meticulous reasoning is still a stronger tool than merely
*assuming* something is true.
Joseph Nebus
>"Joseph Nebus" <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote in message
>news:nebusj.1...@vcmr-86.server.rpi.edu...
>> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes:
>>>My guess would be that Asimov was thinking of Marxism, which claimed to
>>>predict things along more or less the lines of his psychohistory.
>>
>> Your guess would be wrong. Asimov was thinking of thermodynamics,
>> which he had been studying along the way to his chemistry degree, and the
>> startling way in which the behavior of a system impossibly difficult to
>> study precisely could nevertheless be precisely predicted by a handful of
>> simple assumptions and statistical methods. Josiah Willard Gibbs had
>> similar ideas, although I don't know whether Asimov was aware of that.
>Was that from his two-volume autobiography? My copy lamentably is lost or
>buried somewhere but I vaguely recall reading something about that when it
>was published.
No, it's not from his autobiography (first or third volume), as
best as I can find on not searching too rigorously. However, in a 1979
interview with James Gunn reprinted in _Conversations With Isaac Asimov_
there's this exchange:
GUNN: ... In Donald Wollheim's book _The Universe
Makers_, he speculates that psychohistory is the science that
Marxism pretended to be and I wondered whether you ever
consciously thought about that in that relationship.
ASIMOV: Well ... you know that's so difficult to answer
because psychohistory originated in a discussion between myself
and [ John W ] Campbell, as so many of the things in my early
science-fiction stories did. And I think Campbell must have
been reading about symbolic logic at the time. There is some
reference to symbolic logic in the first story and that was more
or less forced on me by John Campbell; it didn't come naturally
to me, because I knew nothing about symbolic logic.
And he felt in our discussion that symbolic logic,
further developed, would so clear up the mysteries of the human
mind as to leave human actions predictable. The reason human
beings are so unpredictable was we didn't really know what they
were saying and thinking because language is generally used
obscurely. So what we needed was something that would unobscure
the language and leave everything clear.
Well, this *I* didn't believe, so I made it mathematical
and *my* analogy was, of course to the kinetic theory of gases,
where the individual molecules in the gas remain as unpredictable
as ever, but the average action is completely predictable, so
that what we needed were two things, a lot of people, which the
galactic empire supplied and secondly, people not knowing what
the conclusions were as to the future so that they could continue
to act randomly. And that's the way it worked out.
Now, when Wollheim says that it was what Marxism
pretended to be, well when Wollheim was young he was very
interested in Marxism and undoubtedly read a lot about it. I've
never read anything about it, you see, so it's a case of his
reading his bent into me. For me, it was the kinetic theory of
gases and that was secondarily imposed and it was John Campbell
who really started it with symbolic logic.
He repeats these claims in some of the editorials he wrote for
_Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine_ describing how he wrote science
fiction; these were collected in either _Gold_ or _Magic_, but both those
books are evading my search efforts right now.
>OTOH, as I noted in my previous post, I don't see the two as necessarily
>mutually exclusive. Asimov may have had the thermodynamics thing uppermost
>in his mind when he said that, but his far-left views suggest a certain
>acceptance of some of the precepts of Marxism. (Be sure to note the
>distinction between Marxism and authoritarian communism.) To the extent
>that he thought that man should act rationally and not out of ignorance and
>emotion, he at least tacitly accepted a more or less deterministic view of
>human behavior, which is a basic tenet of Marxism.
But see above. Mind, it is possible that Marxist views worked
into Asimov's thinking since they were not unknown in the 1930s, and
Asimov certainly knew people who were studying it, and I imagine that
he rarely missed the chance to listen to someone who seemed to know
more than he did on a subject. But it'd be second-hand stuff, whereas
what he had in mind was what he thought he had in mind.
I would also note the difference between supposing human beings
are rational and supposing that they are, on average, predictable.
>And while there are aspects of thermodynamics that seem to verge on chaos
>theory when it comes to the movement of specific atoms, closed systems still
>follow the highly deterministic ideal gas laws. Measure two variables, and
>you know with deterministic certainty the value of the third. I don't know
>that Asimov ever expressly dwelled on that particular factoid as an
>influence in formulating his psychohistory, but nevertheless, there it is.
Yes, in the 80s Asimov was quite impressed with what he learned
about chaos theory and there are even a few mentions in _Prelude To
Foundation_, mostly to assure that despite chaos theory the books may
still carry on.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mazorj
Great reply. That would seem to pretty much settle the whole issue.
Asimov's personal politics were well to the left - to the point of
envisioning a One World government - but this apparently was accidental and
motivated more by his desire for rational (i.e., logical and science-based)
public policy than by any "Isms". Political theory seems to have not been
on his radar, whereas, as you point out, he was consumed by certain areas of
science (and on occasion, history) that attracted his attention. So this
was what informed his writing.
Joseki
wrote:
> Joseki wrote:
> > On Dec 2, 4:13 pm, Shawn Wilson <ikonoql...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Nov 30, 7:12 am, Tony <jabriol2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> <response cross-posted from alt.books.isaac-asimov>
>
> >>> I know many of you were delighted with Asimov Foundation series. Hence
> >>> we are familiar with Psychohistory. -the ability to predict human
> >>> behavior in groups- What I didn't know was, there was already a theory
> >>> Concept worked on by John F. Nash. I connected the dots when I saw
> >>> the movie "a Beautiful mind" with my wife past weekend. I didn't want
> >>> to see the movie because I have family with mental illness, including
> >>> my Father who has schizophrenia. Hence I don't like anything to do
> >>> with mental illness. However I did see the movie, and I was attracted
> >>> to the math.
> >>> This when I made the connection. Have anybody who read the Foundation
> >>> series made the same connection?
> >> Economics in general, and specifically macroeconomics is as close as
> >> we come to psychohistory. Game theory is a subset/tool of that
> >> analysis (among other things, game theory is useful but not
> >> overwhelmingly so).
>
> > Have you read material from Bueno de Mezquita?
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
A math formula or a bowl of water?
Beam Me Up Scotty
Maybe chicken bones... but who cares?
He says it's a MATH formula.
What a scam, even if you did have visions like Nostradamus and knew no
one would believe you, you could just say it's a
*secret-computer-formula* and suddenly people will believe you, whereas
if you said you used chicken bones no one would believe you.
The public are so easily scammed by people claiming "Science" as their
base. This replaces the Religious scams that worked for centuries.