XPost: alt.fan.tolkien, rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: derek@pointerstop.ca   
      
   Öjevind Lång wrote:   
      
   > "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 ...   
      
   OK, I don't have to repeat the whole list.  That's fantasy for you.  Of   
   course, it's impossible (or maybe only "Magic" :-)) but theoretically if you   
   _could_ get all that data, it doesn't seem unreasonable that psychohistory   
   could work.   
      
   You're right, that the best analogy at the current time is meteorology.   
   Climate prediction is fairly good (even if there are many nay-sayers), but   
   actually predicting weather more than a couple of days ahead is poor and   
   more than a few weeks is nearly impossible.  We _know_ we could do it with   
   sufficient information, but getting that much data is currently not   
   possible.   
   --   
   derek   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)