psycohohistroy

[hopewrites]

In the thread the naivete of early SF I asked if this was a real thing yet.

The reason I asked was not just that I liked the idea that it could be done, but I remember watching a program a while back on the stalk market and how the mathematicians were running it, and how those that adhered strictly to the mathematics of it didn't believe in bubbles in the market, and those that studied a little psychology (or a lot) before entering the field did because they understood that mob-mentality was a thing and needed to be accounted for in the equations.

so is it a thing? is it almost a thing? all thoughts welcome.

[J-Sun]

Computer analysis predicted rises, ebbs in Afghanistan violence

What Asimov was talking about was taking large groups of humans who were unaware of the predictions and modeling the whole sweep of society analogous to the kinetic theory of gases where individual items are just that - individual and impossible to predict - but large masses develop a sort of bulk tendency. A more modern theory would have to account for aspects of chaos theory. The article I link to seems to be using large amounts of data and sort of brute-force calculating a specific type of behavior in a specific place. Whatever the specifics, something like psychohistory is probably possible and aspects of it are becoming more and more apparent, such as the above study (if valid). But whether it's possible to actually "predict the future", I don't know. It would necessarily have to be a statistical thing - the weatherman said it was going to rain today and it didn't. A psychohistorian might say it's highly likely that we'll have a war or a recession or whatever, and I don't think it could ever be 100%. It does raise interesting philosophical questions of freewill and determinism and complicates it by putting it on a species/social level. But, in terms of whether it's "a thing", I'd say something analogous to it is a small but growing thing. The more data and the more computational power, the more you can produce predictions that aren't wild guesses. So the more feasible it becomes to test those predictions and refine the principles you use to make them. So the more we'll find out whether it, or something like it, can indeed be a science.

But I'm not at all versed in the scientific literature on the subject - it could be here and I wouldn't know it (and, indeed, the corporations and governments with the computational power might not broadcast it) or it could be completely infeasible and I just haven't come across the reason why.

[hopewrites]

Well if it is a thing we cant know about it can we. The encyclopedia galactica says the populations under study cant know they are being studied. The weather will do as it will whatever the weather man says, but people would make decisions about how to act based on the predictions of a psychohistorian thus altering the course of future history and making the predictions seem invalid.

[Venusian Broon]

Hi Hopesprings,

This is an interesting question. I believe there are scientists/companies that have claimed they can 'predict' 90% of human behaviour in simulations....but....what they are predicting is the day-to-day behaviour of US citizens in a society identical to current. (I think they use this to run simulations to try and predict traffic patterns, people flow in big public areas and what happens in emergencies etc...)

What I am sure they can not do at all is predict how this will fundamentally alter over time. So I think (this is just my opinion so I am happy for it to be superceded by those with more knowledge ) there are some serious big reasons to suspect that a approach such as psychohistory may never really be possible:

• You have no good data. Your history will always only show one path and what it did. Compare that to physics where the same experiment can be repeated time and time again, perhaps changing only one variable to see the effects on the results. We are not able to go back in time and see, 'Well what if food prices were a bit lower - what would happen to the Arab spring' It means we are almost powerless to really get to the bottom of exactly what triggered big events and hence history is relegated to interpretations.
• The models you would probably need would be immensely complex (and forever incomplete) Ok, so perhaps it needs a Seldon-like genius to simplify the behaviour of humanity and society into a few number of variables...but...the usually simplification means that you are cutting down the question areas of research. Take the Theory of Everything - the idea that the basic equations that govern everything may potentially be able to be written on a T-shirt. Impressive stuff. But this is for most purposes a completely useless theory - it can't tell us anything about fluid dynamics, about how weather operates, how to build a bridges etc... On top of that, given that we only have the past to model on, how can we be at all sure that we have not completely missed whole boatloads of potential societies and modes of thought. I believe that humanity is at root a creative animal and we adapt in non-linear and creative manners to problems. Which brings me to...
• The 'atoms' of the calculation, humans, never operate as 'theoretical' humans! This is the problem with another dismal science (their own name, not mine!) Economics. Here they are struggling because humans do not behave like our economists theoretical model - Homo Finance, who always gets the best price, invests wisely, has rational and predictable behaviour. Possibly this could be tackled by a more detailed look at proper psychology and brain science, but what this does do is add even more complexity to an already mind-boggling complex problem!

These are my main objections! But I should state 'Never say never' - who knows what will happen in the future.

[Vertigo]

The fundamental problem I have (and have always had) with pyschohistory is that it cannot take into account new discoveries that will inevitably be made in the future. These new discoveries, if significant enough, will change the social beahviour of the group/nation/species and so invalidate any previous predictions.

Just think, if pyschohistory, no matter how accurate it was, had been applied to the human race before the creation of the internet. It might have predicted stuff up to that point but beyond that it would have been invalidated as the internet has already radically changed our social behaviour. And this would then require new predictions to be generated. So basically you would still only be able to predict out to the next significant unpredicted discovery/development and since you can have no idea when that might occur the whole thing becomes, I won't say useless, but less that useful.

[Fried Egg]

That's an excellent post, Venusian Broon, saying much of what I would have said (and probably more succinctly).

I think that much modern sociology and economics does attempt to use complex mathematics to model collective human behaviour. They cling to the belief that the inherent unpredictability of individuals can be averaged out by studying large numbers in a similar way that it is with gas molecules. But the advocates of such theories have a blind spot that they wilfully cling to. They will not let the fact that human's are purposeful beings inform their methods. They abhor the teleological approach as unscientific, denying themselves the logical, praxeological framework in which they can understand human behaviour.

Personally, I tend to think that psychology and sociology/economics are two categorically different disciplines. The former is concerned with ends, the latter with means. Economics takes the ends as a given and from there considers how best to employ the available means to achieve those ends. Hence it is strictly hypothetical and not predictive. It can be used as a tool to better understand how certain changes might lead to different behaviour becoming more or less likely but not as a tool to actually make specific predictions, even on collective scale.

[Kylara]

Also you can't forget that the psychohistory in Asmiov's books is basing itself on the death and resurgence of an Empire...something that can be seen many times over in our history. So it is saying "looking at how all these Empires died, we can say that ours will die too, in about X years, and look how the new Empires rose, what did they have, what did they do? So if we engineer our people to have all this stuff, then we can create a new Empire in less time" To me it always seemed like cheating at Age of Empires, you know, that addictive computer game? You start at the bottom of the tech tree and then work your way up to the top...always easier if you play a map you have designed yourself because then you can lay all the wood and gold etc., right where they will be most useful for you, thus allowing you to reach supremacy quickest. They are using psychohistory to manipulate people, engineering a society that is most likely to survive and become dominant after the former Empire dies and people return to barabarian state...they are determining a single outcome - the resurgence of an Empire, of THEIR design...we are not determining a single outcome, you want something that will say everything...if you want an example, look at the people working on global warming, they are trying to predict how, compared to present and past use of the Earth, the Earth will change, based on the results seen in the past...

[ghost8772]

Asimov's Psychohistory, started as a mathematical idea, where large masses od people, and their interactions within each type, as well as with other types could be given accurate mathematical values, then those values used to calculate the probabilities of each distinct people's actiona and reactions to stimuli. Asimov took it further, in the concept to planning out how to speed up the re-emergence of an empire from barbarism. In short the path was set up, and ran using the periodic appearances of Seldon to make a direct influence on the Foundationers to the shorter path.

How Psychohistory as written differs from "real life" solutions, is that one strong leader can influence people in a direction he, or she, wants, which would skew a mathematical prophecy which cannot predict a wild card influence like one person existing. Asimov did touch the issue with the emergence of The Mule, who was a "mutant" and not human, but overall the entire science ignored strong and influential people who might change a group of people's direction by applying their own charisma to a situation.

Yeah it would be nice if Psychohistory could have existed, and to some small level (demographics and nillson ratings) there are some predictions of how people will react to things, but an overall social prediction is still fiction, not likely to happen.

[steve12553]

Algorythms are being written and refined everyday that take into account what groups and individuals do and try to predict what they will do (or want). I'm talking about marketing of courseand obviously the motives are not as pure as those of Asimov's psychohistorian. That is, of course, the downfall of the Science. The funding will never be available to create the pure science necessary and the money spent in that direction will always be based on motives that would influence society in less than the purest of directions. Unfortunately, the idealism of an Asmovian future or even Roddenberry's pure motive based future must unfortunately be tempered by the fact that the allmighty Dollar (or Pound or Ruble or whatever) makes the world go round. In other words, if we had the motivation we would lack the resources, and if we had the resources our motivation would definitely come into question.

[Abernovo]

Originally Posted by hopewrites

In the thread the naivete of early SF I asked if this was a real thing yet.

The reason I asked was not just that I liked the idea that it could be done, but I remember watching a program a while back on the stalk market and how the mathematicians were running it, and how those that adhered strictly to the mathematics of it didn't believe in bubbles in the market, and those that studied a little psychology (or a lot) before entering the field did because they understood that mob-mentality was a thing and needed to be accounted for in the equations.

so is it a thing? is it almost a thing? all thoughts welcome.

Some aspects of what Asimov called psychohistory are included in economics, where individuals' utility (preference levels) can be grouped together in patterns and examined to give values for certain goods or services. It's used in the stock market and in everyday life.

Supermarkets have large car parks to draw you in, making it easier to shop there for multiple items than on the high street which has parking restrictions and requires you to go to several different shops. This helps make supermarkets more profitable and can squeeze out high street traders. It is more complicated than that, but you get the picture - factor X leads to predictable decisions, or a range of predictable decisions.

Behavioural economics, or behavioural game theory, concentrates on just this sort of question. It's even used to help national parks attract visitors, hence my limited knowledge of it. Ramped up to mass psychology and imperial history levels, I suppose it would be possible to make broad predictions. With a massive supercomputer (Deep Thought level (sorry to mix authors here )) you might even be able to predict an individual's response, but there are so many variables, you'd probably come up with an undecipherable number for an answer.

The concept of psychohistory always fascinated me in the Foundation books, though.