Talk:Psychohistory (fictional science)

message: "...that humans are the only sentient intelligence in the galaxy."
"sentient intelligence" must be changed to "sapience". All life is sentient, else it cannot survive; intelligent life is sapient. The two terms have very different meanings. "Sentient intelligence" is redundant, as intelligence cannot exist without awareness of its environment.
50.49.139.77 (talk) 17:27, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Word choice error

message: According to the article psychohistory "combined history, psychology and mathematical statistics". I remember that in one interview Asimov once told that originally he used the term 'sociology' instead of 'psychohistory'. (Unfortunately I can't locate the interview anymore.) - Does anyone recollect such an interview?
At that time sociology was quite young human/social science and it had only recently adapted statistical methods. It was as if sociology was promising to deliver a modern, statistical science of society and that seemed to inspire Asimov. However, he then decided to replace the term in order to create more science-fictional imaginery (i.e. not to use a well-known term 'sociology'). The result was 'psychohistory'.
:The first Foundation story, the one which became the "Encyclopedists" chapter, refers to Seldon as a "psychologist".  (Just a data point for your consideration.)
:Anville 16:43, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I remember Asimov saying that he thought about psychosociology but decided that psychohistory sounded better.  It may be in one of the standard interview collections of his.Hillgentleman 06:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the term 'psychohistory' 

message: From The Robots of Dawn, ISBN 0553299492, 1983:
:Baley said curiously, "Do you see the future?"
:"No sir, but studying minds as I do, I can tell dimly that there are laws that govern human behaviour as the Three Laws of Robotics govern robotic behaviour; and with these it may be that the future will be dealt with, after a fashion, someday.  The human laws are far more complicated than the Laws of Robotics are and I do not have any idea as to how they may be organised.  They may be statistical in nature, so that they might not be fruitfully expressed except when dealing with huge populations.  They may be very loosely binding, so that they might not make sense unless those huge populations are unaware of the operation of those laws"
:"Tell me, Giskard, is this what Dr. Fastolfe refers to as the future science of psychohistory?"
:"Yes, sir.  I have gently inserted it into his mind, in order that the process of working it out begin...
::--Perfecto 02:10, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[R. Giskard Reventlov]] devised [[psychohistory]] 

message: The article mentions New York Times reporter Terry Gross. Has Terry Gross ever worked for the NY Times? As far as I know, she's always been with NPR. Can anyone back this up? Osprey39 23:47, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terry Gross 

message: Since psychohistory depends on the assumption that one man cannot change the course of the entire galaxy, wouldn't Hari Seldon's attempt to do exactly this invalidate his entire analysis? --Zemylat 18:44, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Seldon had inspiration from R. Daneel Olivaw, who was in turn created by Falstofe, and so on and so forth, so there was a long chain of events that lead to Hari Seldon developing Psychohistory. It can be interpreted in a number of ways.--70.178.224.84 06:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seldon invalidates psychohistory? 

message: I recall hearing at some point 10 to 20 years ago that the popular acceptance of Chaos Theory pretty much meant the end of popular acceptance of new hard-SF featuring anything along the lines of psychohistory, mainly due to the fact that it is completely, utterly incompatible with the butterfly effect.. basically, the observation that even if we knew almost everything almost precisely, down to the rough locations of the atoms everywhere in the universe including the charges on every neuron in every persons brain, and had exact and precise understanding about the workings of the human brain and every cell in the body... it still wouldn't ever be good enough to predict the outcome of an election even a mere 4 years from now. Except, whatever it was I read in review was phrased a whole lot more elegantly than that. Anyways, if anyone else knows of this material, a cite from it would make an excellent addition to the article.Zaphraud (talk) 02:29, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: However, even if atoms are totally random in their movement, can't chemistry sitll predict the outcome of a reaction? Yes, tiny events may cause or effect seriously larger events, but still, if we know what happened in the past based on certain stimuli, we should be able to predict what will happen in the future. This is the same reason why Sheldon's psychohistory shouldn't be able to predict a person's future, but given enough people, it becomes an exercise in probabilities. From my understanding of psychohistory, it involves an understanding not of what people are, but in how they react to certain stimuli. (Chswolflax17 (talk) 06:03, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: and then, Chaos Theory

message: Ok, after reading Michael Flynn's In the Country of the Blind, it would seem that cliology is extremely similar to psychohistory (in the back of the book, Flynn even mentions how psychology took the use of psychohistory, which is why he uses the term cliology). Would a discussion of cliiology as the scientific study of history, in order to predict trends and future happenings, be best as a subsection of Asimov's psychohistory, or would it be best in its own section? Currently, I have cliology redirecting to this page. (Chswolflax17 (talk) 06:03, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cliology? 

message: I know this doesn't have a place here, but I can't help myself: I started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by number of edits#Calculating your rank regarding a simple formula that relates the rank of an editor and his number of edits.
Fictional, eh? ;) Wnt (talk) 01:30, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Psychohistory of Wikipedia ;) 

message: ...IMHO 
Randroide (talk) 19:01, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Victorian era Hari Seldon 

message: Asimov's and his concept of Psychohistory inspired more than one economist (evidenced by joint mention in blogs by economists) to pursue their discipline in general.  I believe that Behavioral Economics may be the ungrateful child of inspiration spawned from Asimov's idea of predictive economics he called Psychohistory.  Pointedly Asimov divided the herd between the pragmatists (Rational) and the esoterically oriented (Irrational).  Behavioral Economics may be the most functional economic models to describe and predict "Irrational Self-interest" as most neoclassical economic theory remained tethered to the idea of "Rational Self-interest" largely because "Irrational" is difficult to characterize except with enormous sample points and the capacity to process the data that modern machine leveraged statistical analysis now provides.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.225.10.87 (talk) 16:34, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Asimov's Legacy of Inspiration 

message: It's been nearly 50 years but I believe the § on this may be in gross error. The device that projected the image of the Prime Radiant I think had another or perhaps no given name. Also this article conflates, the critical path of the Seldon Plan or by generalization mathematical optimization of culture, with its depiction via the device. Through the original trilogy it was more or less commonly used in the former sense. Lycurgus (talk) 04:34, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  What the Prime Radiant was 

message: The section Beyond fiction reads like a haphazard collection of research fields that may have same similarity to psychohistory. But what should be the inclusion criterion here? It is not enough that some editor sees the similarity, however evident it may appear to them. That amounts to OR. We should only include things here that are explicitly linked to Asimov's concept of psychohistory by reliable sources.  --Lambiam 02:36, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:16, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beyond fiction — also beyond OR 

message: There's an Asimov (I think) short story that predates the Foundation trilogy, and which concerns the capture and imprisonment of an expert in extrapotential logic, which might be precursor of psychohistory in Asimov's thought. 
Does anyone know the story? Without wanting to stray into OR, if we can source that factoid it might be an interesting one to document. Andrewa (talk) 15:29, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extrapotential logic 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: *Psychodynamics from The Psychotechnic League
*71.80.203.159 (talk) 01:29, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Similiar concept

message: I just discovered -- and inserted the citation into the Development section -- a letter to the editor from Asimov published in the January 1941 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, under the heading, "Psychology isn't an exact science-but it can be." This strikes me as a possible--even likely--initial grain of sand that turned into the pearl of psychohistory. In my citation, I believe I accurately use 'alluded to' to describe this probable connection. 
The letter challenges remarks by Lynn Bridges in the Science Discussions section of the November 1940 issue that understanding of psychology and predicting behaviors is an insoluble problem. Asimov complains, "To be more specific, psychology seems to occupy the same place in Mr. Bridges' mind, that organic chemistry did in the mind of the chemist of the early nineteenth century." He then explains that organic chemistry was once thought to require "a vital force out of reach of ordinary man," but later became a predictable science. 
Similarly, he suggests that, "It remains for psychology to incorporate into the eventual strict laws of mathematical physics and chemistry that will be developed the effect of any possible change of conditions upon any given stimulus." Here, he predicts that eventually, "Mathematical psychology may show just exactly why Einstein is Einstein". Drdaviss (talk) 12:26, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  January 1941 Letter to the editor re 'mathematical psychology'