EPTAfter reading lots of Asimovs books a few years ago i was very intrigued by his idea of Psychohistory - in short, a way of predicting what is ahead by looking at the past by means of mathmatics. I though about it for weeks and then - as it happens with so many things - i forgot about it again.
However, some recent events triggered the memory again and i feel like the idea actually has a lot of merit, though we lack the data to make use of it.
In a rough summary, he states that many things happen in a waveform and you can combine them to predict events by looking at the position of the waves and their interactions. A simple example would be the seasons. We have a temperature peak in the summer, a low in the winter and that curve alone continues for infinity. Then there are other waves, like the position of the magnetic poles that changes constantly and modifies the weather further.
Another example is the business cycle that repeats itself, though having in total an upward trend (which might also just be a part of a bigger curve).
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It is my opinion that, if we could find the base waves that control the more visible waves, we could actually calculate the combined waves. For example, the seasonal wave together with the business wave results in the waveforms of (simple examples) Birthrates or Suicide rates. Ofc there are always other influences, though if we could find them and they (as i think) turn out to have a waveform themselves i think we could actually create accurate enough predictions.
Now lets move to the more abstract things that actually triggered the memory of the psychohistory, the most recent one being the Finnish parliamentary election. I noticed - as in some other countries - that there is an increase of nationalistic tendencies while we are in an economic low while immigration rates rise due to political chagrin because of a weak government. It is a combination like the beginning to the mid of last century, where - even ignoring germany for the moment - there was a lot of violence, for example in the US between african immigrants and the white population.
Looking at all those facts, it makes me think about how it will develop next. Are those theories stupid and wrong, so everything will develop differently? Do they have some merit? Am i just crazy?
What are your opinions?
PS: I could write a lot more about it, but i'm at work and my coffee break is over :-/
I think that psychohistory is possible but only with extremely powerful computing. Discovering the tendencies of live, the universe, and everything, well, you'll need a lot of data and a lot of processing.
