Psychohistory & Big Data


















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  1. Mike: there are several reasons why such projects are doomed to failure.

    1/. Any computational machine big enough to analyse the entire universe would have to be
    (a) not in the universe when it did it, or problems of recursions arise
    (b) as big as the universe.
    (c) Even if (a) is satisfied, since no part of it including its output could be allowed to enter the know universe, the answer would not in any case be available.

    Looking at more realistic partial approximations we come up against – even there – more problems.

    We may be able to reduce the universes supposed causal change to partial or complete time differential equations as we do with g.g. Newtons laws, but the existence of e.h. the three body problem shows that the time integral of such derivatives, no matter how simple, is both extraordinarily complex and subject to extreme sensitivity: That is, simple formulae when integrated over time can and do lead to massively chaotic results.

    Finally, we have no way of knowing whether such derivative formulae that we may derive are in fact correct, or merely local approximations to the actual behaviour (as e.g. Einsteins corrections to Newtonian mechanics showed).

    Thus there is no hope of a total solution of any value that can be relied on.

    That doesn’t mean that no solutions of any value cannot be produced.

    One of my grandmothers aphorisms was that ‘it takes three generations to make a gentleman’ by which she meant that only the great grandchildren of a peasant would be so inculcated with the correct behavioral norms that they were indistinguishable from the extant aristocracy. That does suggest some kind of psychological lag – and indeed I have seen such lags over my lifetime, with issues such as racism and homophobia. Which in my teenage years were so common as to pass unremarked, but are now more or less rare in educated people.

    So whilst the idea has merit, it will never be as complete a science as to make it more than a better guess IMHO.

    Occasionally it does have merit. Way back in 2008 I predicted that the global financial crisis would last 15-20 years, for no other reason than it would take at least a generation of ~zero growth before people accepted it as the ‘new norm’ and adapted to it psychologically and culturally.

    5 years on I see no sign that they are, nor any reason to change that prediction.

  2. But this is just the beginning:,0,409336.story
    and it will never be as predicted
    Why would you say that Asimov was not a ‘real thinker’?

  3. In my opinion free will, determinism and the fundamental nature of reality are largely irrelevant to this question. Even if reality is perfectly predictable in principle for a predictor with perfect knowledge of the present and unlimited processing power, that is of little use to us, since we will never have that capability. Our predictions will always be subject to unforeseen contingencies.

    In many respects humans and societies are chaotic systems, where small contingent events (or differences in initial state) can lead to greatly different outcomes. Even the weather will never be predictable very far ahead because of chaos. Such prediction is subject to dimishing returns: a large improvement in models and processing power will render only a modest increase in forecasting range.

    In the case of society, a single particle of cosmic radiation can cause a cancer that kills a person who, if she’d lived, might have had a major effect on the course of history. I think Foundation-style psychohistory will always be out of reach because that kind of historical development is too dependent on unforeseeable contingencies.

    Sorry to be a spoilsport. :wink:

  4. Very enjoyable read. I have some other thoughts on big data and psychohistory.

  5. Big data. Buzzwords? « out of my mind - pingback on July 31, 2012 at 3:51 am

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