Newsgroup: it.fan.asimov
Titolo: Psychohistory and SDML

I sent a similar message to the following to the IndieSA mailing list (at
http://www.yahoogroups.com
), a list for independent members of the Socialist
Alliance, yesterday evening and there has been a considerable delay (after over
sixteen hours the message still had not been delivered or appeared on the
website). This happens quite a bit, since the list server is infiltrated,
and some important messages get delayed or not sent on at all in order to
frustrate the forces of the working class (but the working class infiltrates
as well or the messages probably wouldn't be sent on at all). Anyway, this
has led me to believe that it was an important message deserving wider
publicity. Hence I am sending this message to some
socialist/psychohistory/Asimov newsgroups.
To recap, psychohistory is about modelling the past (history) using
psychological analysis in order to predict the future and work out what to
do to achieve a particular outcome. Somebody on the UK Left Network (at
yahoogroups) asked if I think Marx was a psychohistorian, which is a very
good question because it is something that Marxists do to some extent. I
replied by pointing out that it is something we all do to a greater or
lesser extent in order to get by in the world, but that Marxists do it
better than others (generally) and "psychohistorians" do it much better
still, using computers.
I've just composed a message for the "psychohistory" mailing list at
yahoogroups, which some of you may be interested in - therefore I've
included it below. I seem to have prompted a discussion on how to do such
things on that list; some of you may like to go over there and look at, and
possibly take part in, the discussion.
Chris Battey suggested encoding history numerically and using a genetic
algorithm. He correctly said that converting history to numbers is hard - it
also means that you only get numeric results, which are less useful than
symbolic ones.
If you want to use genetic techniques then genetic programming is better,
because you manipulate symbols rather than numbers. Bruce Edmonds, one of my
former colleagues at the Centre for Policy Modelling (
http://www.cfpm.org
),
Manchester Metropolitan University, has done some work on that, using my
language SDML.
SDML is designed for symbolic modelling, and is based on rules. Rules are
basically statements that if something is true, something else is true. You
can use variables to specify the circumstances under which something is
true. Rules can be fired in either direction - forwards or backwards.
SDML is based on logic, and part of it is very similar to the most commonly
used logical programming language Prolog (the backward chaining part of
SDML) - but it does not have the imperative exceptions that break the logic
of Prolog, and it provides a declarative way of doing forward chaining which
is not provided as part of Prolog.
SDML is quite hard to understand for somebody who has not done any logic
programming before, and there is a shortage of documentation. Therefore I
recommend those who may be interested in it to try Prolog first. The
tutorial takes about five days to complete, and it is difficult to resume if
you have taken a break - therefore you are recommended to find a period of
time when you can complete it in one go. Go to 
http://sdml.cfpm.org
 to find
out more and/or download SDML.
I have reason to believe that this sort of modelling has been done before,
and that SDML has already been used for some of the task. Why? Simply
because control of the world is at stake. Some of you may already be
involved in such work (but maybe those who do prefer to listen in to our
conversations rather than participate in order not to blow their cover).
Regards,
Steve.
--
Steve Wallis, a member of South Manchester Socialist Alliance
My socialist web page - 
http://www.stevewallis.org
Also involved in the Coalition Against Sanctions and War on Iraq
(
http://www.stevewallis.org/iraq
)
The start of my autobiography, 'Transition', is now available on the web
at: 
http://www.stevewallis.org/transition.htm

 wrote in message

 socialist/psychohistory/Asimov newsgroups.
Oh, no! My killfile has been infiltrated by the forces of global
capitalism!!!!
*Plonk* :P
MTPT