- - P S Y C H O - H I S T O R Y (Part 3) - - =============================================== - Keywords: Isaac Asimov, Science Fiction, Psychohistory, Patterns in history. Predictions. Return of psychohistory. -------------------------- You win a little, and then its done. Your little winning streak. A thousand kisses deep. Leonard Cohen. But psychohistory remains. Another crisis. At times it seems as problems, problems always face the poor defenceless humans. How nice it would be, just to push a bottom on a computer and be given the solution to our problems. It was for that purpose Isaac Asimow invented the theory of psychohistory. Precisely, Science Fiction author Isaac Asimow has taken the belief that there are patterns to human history to its logical conclusion, and introduced the concept psychohistory - how human behaviour can be calculated with the help of mathematical equations. And thats what Science Fiction is all about. A nice playground where you test ideas. What would the world look like, if you changed some particular feature. Obviously, Psychohistory is nonsense - but what if it was not! The professional historian. ---------------------------- A professional historian will certainly tell you - that you obviously can not predict anything based on historical similiarities. The complexity of historical events and the often unique nature of such events makes precision guessing hopeless. A major stumbling block is determining motivation. Human thought is hidden from us and so we must use indirect methods, Only when a person writes down precisely what they're up to -- unless they're lying, of course -- can we determine something of motivation. The use of all traditional analysis, can be incredibly useless. Many arguments can look good statistically, but will fall apart in the realm of psychological and sociological perspectives. Statistics is not life. Still, the human mind is a pattern machine, and will look for patterns in history. Seeing if any given pattern fits the current situation. Patterns. ------------ However adament historians deny the existense of patterns (with predictive power) they still see them everywhere. And it is pretty easy to collect them just looking in your daily paper. I found the following 10 (fun) patterns, used by historians, just looking in this months papers and giving my own guess on what pattern was being used. Pattern -> Prediction. 1. Tylers meta-pattern for the rise and fall of governments. The philosopher Tyler believed there was a pattern to the rise and fall of government systems. Tyler belived that democracy will last only until the voters realize that they can get charity from the state through their vote. Then a majority will only vote for candidates who promise maximum charity to all from the state. The sad consequense will be that the democratic state collapses and is succeeded by a dictatorship. According to Tyler a major civilisation last about 200 years. In this period it goes from bondage to spiritual belief. From belief to courage. From courage to freedom. From Freedom to prosperity. From prosperity to selfishness, From selfishness to complacency. From complacency to apathy. From apathy to dependency. And from dependancy to bondage. Full circle. 2. State types A state must belong to a certain type: It must be either a warrior state, i.e. a fortified state, a tribal state, an imperial state or a fragmented state. Or it must be a business state, i.e. one more interested in conducting business (but can nevertheless pay for conducting defensive wars and have armies to conduct forreign policy with). Etc. I.e. it makes sense to a historian to classify a state as belonging to a certain group (pattern!). Which then again can lead to predictions. 3. Battles between states, (ideas?) Clausewitz teoretical object was the war. A struggle to the death between parties who wants to dominate each other and destroy each others plan. Battles can be fought offensively or defensively. Here offensively is the weakest, as it raises opposition. Consider two free armies of equal strength. Attacking means opposing your opponents free forces - and his defensive forces, that will only enter the battle as an result of an attack. You can then (easily) reuse the pattern to the arena of battle of ideas. And make some predictions ? I.e. despite the wonders of psychohistory, the psychohistorian idea can not win if it was to attack the conventional ideas. On the other hand, conventional ideas can not beat psychohistory, if they were to attack ?? :-) 4. State religion - predicting psychohistory as state religion. How is a religion adopted by a state? Usually adoption goes through state officials (most likely the states specialists, i.e. academia), and then into the mental makeup of a state - or through a revolt in the masses. And here you make prediction on whether psychohistory will ever become state religion. It is hard to see masses rampaging through the streets shouting: "We want psychohistory now", so lets look at the other possibility. Can psychohistory be adopted by a state official (as a first step towards becoming the official religion). Recognition relations will be important here. Can a person obtain recognition, acceptance and applaus if he adopts psychohistory as his religion. The assumption is that if he can - he will. Now, 2001->, obviously only fringe people can polish their fringe mentality by adopting psychohistory as first religion. The exciting part is the leap toward becoming state religion. State policy is the arena for the various ideas recognition struggle. Another way to put it is that the state seeks out what it considers the best ideas in the reservoir of ideas. Looking at the french revolution (pattern) will tell us that almost anything is possible. But not likely. In the end, The authority of the sovereign depends on the fact that the supreme power is used to provide for the citizens that physical security with which life would be "a war of every man against every man - and the condition of humanity - brutish and short". Thomas Hobbes, 1588 - 1679. A wise state will not choose rubbish ideas :-) 5. Explanations of social phenomena. - the fits all pattern. A society is a structure of norms, rights and obligations. within such a structure there are certain social roles that member of such a society can play. When a certain individual plays a role, he makes transactions with other players. - which all together makes up the society in a feedback loop. Doesn't altogther hold much predictive power. You better run a complete simulation if you wants to see what this will end up with. On the other hand, it describes all kinds of societies well. Could it be that any (more) precise description automatically also indicates more precise predictions? Fits all patterns aren't very useful, are they? 6. Pattern of wisdom. It is possible to find lots and lots of books on the subject of what is wise - and what should a society consider wisdom. A pattern that runs thorugh a good deal of them is the pattern of withdrawel of senses: E.g. In Bhagavad Gita we read of the unenlighthed that "when a mans mind follows after the wandering senses, his wisdom is carried away, as the wind (carries away) a ship on water". Contrastingly, "everywhere a man withdraws his senses from their objects then his wisdom is firmly established". A number of predictions usually follows from this. 7. Pattern of problems when there is no pattern. Going deep down in human history one would begin to think about evolution. And the mechanism of evolution that created human society. So, evolution, has it a purpose? Historians do have problems with this: "If one reserves the word "aim" for something that is sought consciously - It can not be used for the actions of all living things. Many biologists are indeed unwilling to admit to any signs of progress in evolution. However, humanity have a long and wonderful history, involving increasing collection of information....". Which we will use for .... nothing? Or creating purpose or prediction? 8. People classification Most people are familiar with the old (and discredited) idea that a particular humour determined a persons temperament: Humour..........................Temperament Blood (warm and moist)..........Sanguine Phlegm (cold and moist).........Phlegmatic Choler (hot and dry)............Choleric Black bile (cold and dry).......Melancholic. Still, the idea about taking some little measurement and thereby making predictions about a persons place in society is still much in demand. It is only a question of accurancy and refinement of technique. Not the general idea. 9. Start of the "war on terror". When America and Britain attacked Afghanistan, october 2001, a number of news organizations invited historians to talk about previous Afghan wars. I.e. the 3 British - Afghan wars. And the russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. One historian predicted that it would be a difficult war for the americans. Using the other 4 wars as pattern - and completely forgetting his own professions ideology, that such predictions are meaningless. And indeed - psychohistory or not - such predictions are meaningless. 10. Who will be the next president pattern. I saw the following in a newspaper: Father John Adams......Son John Quincy Adams. Teddy Roosevelt........Fifth cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt. Father George Bush.....Son George W. Bush Husbond Bill Clinton...Wife Hillary Clinton. It was supposed to say something about family relations in american presidential politics. Hillary Clinton has not been elected president yet - But I guess we think that is a foregone conclusion. The article looked for patterns of familily relations and concluded (predicted) that it is much easier for you to be president, if you have a family member who has already been president. Again, this was out on the word of a historian. Pattern -> prediction. PsychoHistory as chaos control. -------------------------------- So even if the professional historian will deny it, he still finds patterns in history and sometimes jumps out on deep murky waters and makes predictions. And surely he a shouldn't, as human history is a chaotic system. Where Chaos theory (or more properly dynamical systems theory) mainly shows how many very simple systems become unpredictable quickly; Anders Sandberg (asa@sans04.nada.kth.se) got my attention with the following comment - not all is lost - : >There is an interesting caveat here, and that is chaos control. >If you record the behavior of the system for a while, >you can identify the unstable fixed points >and nudge the system each time they are close to >them, making the chaotic behavior periodic. >This has been demonstrated for both mathematical models, >physical systems like oscillators and >even chaotic rhythms in the hear muscle. >I heard that some researchers had modelled trapping >the el Nino into a 4-year rhythm. -Hence the Second Foundation (In Asimows work). JWMeritt (jwmeritt@aol.com) >This seems to be applied psychohistory rather than predictive >psychohistory: you have to constantly meddle subltly to keep the >system stable. Foundations triumf by David Brin --------------------------------- This leads us back to the books on Foundation, psychohistory and all the rest. In Foundations triump (a science fiction book :-) ) David Brin told us how it will all end: According to psychohistory a tiny colony of mathematicians and psychologists, the Foundation, should take over when the old empire crumples and dies. Unfortunately, pertubations will nudge the psychohistorical parameters - knocking the Seldon plan off course. For that purpose a shadowy elite of "demigods" is set up to protect the plan. And beyond all that yet another layer for the future of humanity. The plan set up by R. Daneel Olivaw. A plan that uses the other plans to buy time before this master plan can come into effect. In the Olivaw plan humanity is changed into a GAIA like structure called the Galaxia superorganism - Every human soul in contact with every other one. All knowledge shared instantly. All misunderstandings erased. All unified into the vast unified web. Hari Seldon: Yet, your plan is incomplete Daneel! ... the simple gets incoporated into the complex. For all its power Gaia and Galaxia... are simple beings. The future Foundation (based on psychohistory) will be so strong, so diverse, so open, that it will simply absorb your innovation, GAIA, and move on to even greater things ! Human diversity and individualism will continue. First version September 1995. This version Oct 10th 2001. -Simon Laub Previous posts on this subject: The Psychohistory introduction text: http://www.angelfire.com/oh3/vrag/silas/Psycho1.txt The sequal - with extraterrestrial psychohistory, more robots and more psycho-patterns. http://www.angelfire.com/oh3/vrag/silas/Psycho2.txt Inspiration: "Omkring Livsformens udvikling", Thomas Hoejrup, Museum Tusculanums forlag, DK. 1995.