Remembering psycho-history?
kub...@athena.mit.edu
In one of Asimov's books, the hero founds a new science:
something like psycho-statistics-history...
Could anyone elaborate on that please?
Mark Schnitzius
>Hi,
> In one of Asimov's books, the hero founds a new science:
>something like psycho-statistics-history...
> Could anyone elaborate on that please?
Well, it's something I never really bought... It bugged me just
enough that I didn't enjoy the series.
I doubt that the Good Doctor would have used that idea if he had
written the books after the advent of chaos theory, which shows
that many, many things have a sensitive dependence on initial
conditions... But then, I never read beyond the second book. Did
he continue using this idea in his more recent books in the series?
--
Mark
Lewis Stiller
He did write many of the foundation books after chaos theory. It's
true that many, many things do have a sensitive dependence on initial
conditions, but many, many things don't. You sound like someone who
just watched Jurassic Park :-) .
--
Lewis Stiller
Dept. of Computer Science, The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD 21218-2194
email: sti...@cs.jhu.edu
Silent Dreamer
>Hi,
> In one of Asimov's books, the hero founds a new science:
>something like psycho-statistics-history...
> Could anyone elaborate on that please?
Sure. Psychohistory was REALLY developed by R. Daneel, and the idea was
implanted in Hari Seldon. Its axioms are:
(1) The # (number) of people being looked at must be quite large
(2) The people must NOT know the reults of psychohistory
Also, as to how it would be developed:
Start with a "simple" (yeah, RIGHT) set of formulae which predict individual
human reactions (given personality structure, motivating and inhibiting
emotions) and then integrate them along with a formula that accurately
describes how humans will interrelate and how one person will affect others.
Take the asymptotic integral up to infinity (the ideal configuration for
psychohistory), to get the psychohistorical formulae.
BUT, you'll need exceptions for smaller #s of people.
Did I say this would be easy? NO! R. Daneel had a good 12,000 years (at
least) to work on it.
--
Quote: "Love may conquer everything, but it needs Time as its Field General."
Let darkness disappear/In the rays of sunshine/That come from within my heart/
Whenever I think of you.
Christian Almgren
>kub...@athena.mit.edu writes:
>>Hi,
>> In one of Asimov's books, the hero founds a new science:
>>something like psycho-statistics-history...
>> Could anyone elaborate on that please?
> Sure. Psychohistory was REALLY developed by R. Daneel, and the idea was
>implanted in Hari Seldon. Its axioms are:
> Did I say this would be easy? NO! R. Daneel had a good 12,000 years (at
>least) to work on it.
And It wasn't even he that came up with the original idea.
R. Giskard was the true visionary.
--
-Christian Almgren Internet: d93...@nada.kth.se
Pratap Khedkar
In article <28elc8$s...@usenet.rpi.edu>, pet...@nuge109.its.rpi.edu
(Silent Dreamer) writes:
|> kub...@athena.mit.edu writes:
|>
|> >Hi,
|>
|> > In one of Asimov's books, the hero founds a new science:
|> >something like psycho-statistics-history...
|>
|> > Could anyone elaborate on that please?
|>
|> Sure. Psychohistory was REALLY developed by R. Daneel, and the idea was
|> implanted in Hari Seldon. Its axioms are:
|>
|>
|> Did I say this would be easy? NO! R. Daneel had a good 12,000 years (at
|> least) to work on it.
|> --
If memory serves me right, the first glimmerings of psychohistory
are due to Dr. Han Fastolfe in "The Robots of Dawn" (?). He mentions
this idea to Elijah Bailey. He is of course very vague about it,
but this is the first reference to the term in Asimov's timeline.
Also, I think Hari Seldon rediscovered the idea and put it on a
mathematical footing (though not a practical one). Which is why
Daneel develops an interest in Seldon. At least that is the feeling
I got from "Prelude_to_F", rather than Daneel developing the entire
science. Daneel has never come across as highly creative or a
genius. His mental reading/control powers, longevity,
memory, processing power, and reflexes make him the most powerful
entity in the galaxy, but he demonstrably took a back seat to Seldon
as far as developing science/math was concerned.
As far as the practicality of psychohistory goes, Asimov did try to
limit the damage to the predictability of psychohistory
due to discoveries of chaos theory. One of the scientists is very
aware of the "chaotic" mess being created in the model, and develops
special equations to handle it and get around it to where
statistical prediction is possible. The original inspiration of the
Good Doctor was of course statistical thermodynamics. The kinetic
theory of gases extended to people -- thats what psychohistory was
intended to be, with the two axioms roughly coming from the large
no. of molecules and a closed, ideal system. And it is clear in the
Second FOundation that it is by no means easy to predict the future
since a multitude of paths must be followed, and constantly
controlled. Control seems to be more important than prediction.
And if anyone read a recent SciAmerican, work has started on
controlling apparently chaotic systems so that they do nice things.
So IMHO, psychohistory is not really in contradiction with science
to upset the series premise, as long as the second foundation was
there.
In terms of remaining true to psychohistory, Foundation is the best
novel. It de-emphasizes individuals and stresses the role of
socio-economic forces moving masses of humanity. After that it
became more of a soap (don't get me wrong, I LOVED it all!), but
less of an inexorable, majestic sweep of scientific laws, and more
human interest.
All this of course is my opinion. Comments welcome,
\Pratap Khedkar
PS: Here's a thought : If you had to weave the remaining Asimov
SF novels into the Robot/Foundation timeline, how would you do it?
You have to provide good explanations for why Pu-186 (or whatever it
was) disappeared from our universe, and other such
inconsistencies....
jcat...@umiami.ir.miami.edu
planet? Didn't he want to find that so he could find the initial conditions
and test his formulas out to go to the "present" day. If his results were the
same as what society was at that time, it would prove his formulas to be
correct.
Jerry
--
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
! Jerry Cattell ! _____ _____ !
! JCat...@umiami.ir.miami.edu! |***| |$$$| '83 !
! University of Miami ! |***| |$$$| '87 !
! Computer Engineering ! |***| |$$$| '89 !
! Computer Science ! |***|___ ___|$$$| '91 !
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Tom O Breton
> He did write many of the foundation books after chaos theory. It's
> true that many, many things do have a sensitive dependence on initial
> conditions, but many, many things don't.
And in _Prelude To Foundation_ Asimov said essentially that, presumably
in response to a line of thought like this.
Problem is, if you look at real populations, they obviously DO have many
sensitive dependences.(*) So a theory that says they don't tends to hurt
believability. Kinda like a theory that says the earth is flat, it's
*real* hard to think of it as futuristic science.
Tom
(*) In fact, what is the Seldon->Psychohistory->Foundation->fate-of-the-
galaxy thing, if not an overwhelmingly sensitive dependence on minute
conditions?
--
The Tom spreads its huge, scaly wings and soars into the sky...
(t...@world.std.com, TomB...@delphi.com)
C. Douglas Baker
Silent Dreamer <pet...@nuge109.its.rpi.edu> wrote:
>kub...@athena.mit.edu writes:
>
>
> Sure. Psychohistory was REALLY developed by R. Daneel, and the idea was
>implanted in Hari Seldon. Its axioms are:
>
If I remember correctly, in __Prelude to Foundation__, the robot tells
Seldon that it does not know how to develop psychohistory, but needed
Seldon specifically because Seldon was the only person that had the
requisite knowledge and expertise to develop it.
Doug Baker.
Silent Dreamer
>Problem is, if you look at real populations, they obviously DO have many
>sensitive dependences.(*) So a theory that says they don't tends to hurt
>believability. Kinda like a theory that says the earth is flat, it's
>*real* hard to think of it as futuristic science.
> Tom
>(*) In fact, what is the Seldon->Psychohistory->Foundation->fate-of-the-
>galaxy thing, if not an overwhelmingly sensitive dependence on minute
>conditions?
In a sense, you're correct. However, IMHO, humans have many tendancies
towards certain kinds of actions when counted in mobs---so that, although
it's NOT likely that you'll be able to figure out the actions of a particular
human in detail, you CAN make an excellent guess how a situation will affect
the population in general.
Lewis Stiller
>sti...@rhombus.cs.jhu.edu (Lewis Stiller) writes:
>> He did write many of the foundation books after chaos theory. It's
>> true that many, many things do have a sensitive dependence on initial
>> conditions, but many, many things don't.
>
>And in _Prelude To Foundation_ Asimov said essentially that, presumably
>in response to a line of thought like this.
>
>Problem is, if you look at real populations, they obviously DO have many
>sensitive dependences.(*) So a theory that says they don't tends to hurt
>believability. Kinda like a theory that says the earth is flat, it's
>*real* hard to think of it as futuristic science.
>
> Tom
>
>(*) In fact, what is the Seldon->Psychohistory->Foundation->fate-of-the-
>galaxy thing, if not an overwhelmingly sensitive dependence on minute
>conditions?
Oh dear. Anyway, I think psychohistory supposedly was limited to
populations larger than any of us have experience unless we are
modeling bacteria or something, the behaviour of which, in point of
fact, I imagine we can predict to some extent in the large.
>
>--
>The Tom spreads its huge, scaly wings and soars into the sky...
>(t...@world.std.com, TomB...@delphi.com)
Tom O Breton
> And if anyone read a recent SciAmerican, work has started on
> controlling apparently chaotic systems so that they do nice things.
I've been following that for years, and I don't think it's applicable
since it requires special conditions.
Tom