XPost: alt.fan.tolkien, rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: bredband.net@ojevind.lang   
      
   "Dirk Thierbach"  skrev i meddelandet   
   news:20090811105555.19F2.8.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de...   
      
   [snip]   
      
   >> One idea that definitely didn't make sense even at the time was that   
   >> one could foresee the future if one only assembled enough facts   
   >> ("psychohistory").   
   >   
   > I always imagined that similar to thermodynamics: You have lots of   
   > particles moving completely randomly, but nevertheless one can assign   
   > properties to the complete ensemble like pressure or temperature which   
   > obey rather strict laws.   
      
   Yes, but a lot of particles moving at random are only one category of   
   phenomena; in psyhohistory, you'd have to process population statistics,   
   economical facts and forecasts and action programmes, bullish or bearish   
   stock markets (including crashes), branches of manufacture becoming obsolete   
   or going bust, political developments, migrations, unforeseen wars, mad   
   political leaders, religion, meteorology, possible outbreaks of new   
   diseases, the impact of new life styles, entertainment, employment issues,   
   the environment, the impact of new inventions which by their very nature   
   must be unknown to the analyst, and so on. There is no way one could   
   assemble, let alone analyse and correctly collate all those things. As you   
   know, meteorology by itself remains largely a matter of guesswork.   
     Arnold Toynbee and other historians claimed to see "historical cycles" and   
   "laws of history"; few if any modern historians subscribe to any such   
   theory, which very much smacks of the 19th century with its belief in   
   "laws".   
      
   [snip]   
      
   > BTW, Asimov actually showed in the Foundation series that in the long   
   > run, the laws don't hold -- a single individual can have enough   
   > influence to let the course of events take a different turn.   
   > Today we'd call that "chaotic behaviour", I guess.   
      
   True, but the idea of introducing a rogue factor which upset the flow of the   
   planned future, in the shape of the Mule, was actually suggested by John W.   
   Campbell, the editor of "Astounding Science Fiction". And if I have been   
   correctly informed, Asimov later on became nervous about this irrational   
   anomaly and made up a story showing that the Mule was actually aslo part of   
   the Plan. Of course, this ambiton to make everything fit neatly into one   
   master plan/future history, which also took in all his other major works, is   
   one reason why his late production is so boring.   
     However, I suspect not so boring as his idea of a perfect society would be   
   if it somehow ever comes into existence.   
      
   > In the same way, most of his robots stories are actually about   
   > situations where the three laws *fail* to make a robot behave properly.   
      
   I know. That's what makes them fun to read. At the same time, it is hard not   
   to feel that manufacturing robots with too much authority would be a crappy   
   and dangerous idea. Economically inefficient too, I suspect.   
      
   Öjevind   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)