Psychohistory

[bellisarius]

I have to give credit to Que for 'triggering' this thought.

"Psychohistory" was a field of science conjured up by Isaac Asimov in his "Foundation" trilogy. (Well worth reading still.) The premise is that by the study of history and the application of certain algorithms the future can be predicted with a high degree of certainty.

So I got to thinking about what's going on in the innards of Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, etc. and their use of algorithms to predict our behavior as groups and individuals. Initially they did it as a means of moving product but as of late it's taken a more ominous turn and started to stick it's nose under the tent of politics. Even worse they are transitioning from being a predictive tool to becoming an influence tool. I don't see this ending well.

 

[Kirkrapine]

For such a thing to be possible assumes a deterministic theory of history, and such always founder on unpredictable factors. For instance, Marx was correct in perceiving that material and economic changes are important drivers of social and political changes. But economic progress depends in large degree on technological progress, which is inherently unpredictable. Look through old issues of Popular Mechanics and you'll see all kinds of nifty inventions which, for one reason or another, never came on the market. Some people in Marx' time might have envisioned the automobile or the radio, but they could never have predicted the social effects of those technologies.

 

[CandiCame]

I've always liked thinking about prederminism vs free will, as well. Because people do fall into predictable patterns of behavior pretty quickly. Everyone has a routine at least a little bit. Sociologists know that groups function that way too, and it is predictable. And the thing about groups is that free will kind of becomes null at that point, because a few outliers don't change the overall growth rate of a certain behavior within the group.

Like, I could decide to stop brushing my teeth right now, and in the long term, that won't man a goddamn thing to colgate, because everyone who DOESN'T want their teeth to rot out will still go through those motions, still wake up, wash their face, shave, and brush their teeth. Not just because you don't want your teeth to rot out, but because that's what you /do/. That's just how it's done.

Like for that morning routine- you could not shave. You could tell Gillette to go straight to hell and never shave again and look like you got lost in the woods for a decade. But it won't matter, because everyone else still will. And they don't have to. You can just have a beard, people do it all the time. But razor companies stay in business.

That's probably a better example, because you can change that behavioral pattern and your teeth won't rot out.

But people are predictable, is my point. People are super predictable.

Because predictable is another way of saying "Dependable", and we hold people to that standard.

 

[CandiCame]

For such a thing to be possible assumes a deterministic theory of history, and such always founder on unpredictable factors. For instance, Marx was correct in perceiving that material and economic changes are important drivers of social and political changes. But economic progress depends in large degree on technological progress, which is inherently unpredictable. Look through old issues of Popular Mechanics and you'll see all kinds of nifty inventions which, for one reason or another, never came on the market. Some people in Marx' time might have envisioned the automobile or the radio, but they could never have predicted the social effects of those technologies.

Technological advancements are perfectly predictable, by design. You have to envision something before you can build it. Like... an individual person might not be good at predicting it, but economists, as a whole, have been pretty good about that.

The issue with a lot of things, like automation, is that economists have hurdles that complicate the issue and make the wrong call through pure dumbassery. Because it takes a working knowledge of economics AND sociology to know not just how that change will happen, but how certain groups will react to it. So, for example, when certain economists famously predicted that automated check-out counters would reduce retail jobs, they neglected to take in that people fucking hate those things and even if they use them they're going to get into an argument about the fact THAT THERE IS NO UNSCANNED ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA, MISS! MISS! CAN YOU PLEASE COME OVER HERE AND TELL THIS ROBOT BITCH I'M NOT TRYING TO STEAL THIS FUCKING KOOL-AID!? Thank you!

Now that we know how people react to automation- by being mean to and pissy with robots, and that they will always desire some level of human interaction, we can make more accurate predictions. Folks just didn't have all the data and can't be faulted for that. Unless they went out of their way NOT to collect data, which I do see financial analysts doing sometimes. That aggravates me, because that is just them being bad at their jobs.

 

[toeskr]

I have to give credit to Que for 'triggering' this thought.

"Psychohistory" was a field of science conjured up by Isaac Asimov in his "Foundation" trilogy. (Well worth reading still.) The premise is that by the study of history and the application of certain algorithms the future can be predicted with a high degree of certainty.

So I got to thinking about what's going on in the innards of Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, etc. and their use of algorithms to predict our behavior as groups and individuals. Initially they did it as a means of moving product but as of late it's taken a more ominous turn and started to stick it's nose under the tent of politics. Even worse they are transitioning from being a predictive tool to becoming an influence tool. I don't see this ending well.

Thank you asshole for triggering Oreo and the queer man can I cum with only men.

I think those two should hook up if they haven't already.

Maybe cuke can jump in on this gay parade.

 

[bellisarius]

Ahh, Free Will vs determinism. The age old question.

Science tends to indicate that we're all slaves to out biology, our culture, and our environment.

Looking at the current rebellion against two out of the three, and the advances there the last bastion is the biology and the barbarians are at the gates there as well.

It's like an old Yardbirds song. Gravity is a myth.
'

 

[CandiCame]

Ahh, Free Will vs determinism. The age old question.

Science tends to indicate that we're all slaves to out biology, our culture, and our environment.

Looking at the current rebellion against two out of the three, and the advances there the last bastion is the biology and the barbarians are at the gates there as well.

It's like an old Yardbirds song. Gravity is a myth.
'

Which two do you think are being rebelled against? That wasn't super clear from the post.

 

[toeskr]

Ahh, Free Will vs determinism. The age old question.

Science tends to indicate that we're all slaves to out biology, our culture, and our environment.

Looking at the current rebellion against two out of the three, and the advances there the last bastion is the biology and the barbarians are at the gates there as well.

It's like an old Yardbirds song. Gravity is a myth.
'

Oh good hell these threads deteriorate.

That fucking queer still thinks it is relevant as cuke.

Nothing further from the truth.

 

[bellisarius]

Which two do you think are being rebelled against? That wasn't super clear from the post.

Once again you point out the communication problem, not just between you and I but between the conservative and the liberal. It's as if a translator is required.

1. Culture. We're all the same culturally, well, not quite, but it's all about diversity. You're a murderer and I'm a cop, but we can all just get along. I want to kill anyone that doesn't follow 'my' God, you think that's barbaric. But we'll still can get along. Ironically "cultural appropriation. has become some sort of big deal now. A tool of segregation.

2. Environment. We all live in a jungle. Changing that is as easy as moving a block away. But we don't Our own little jungle has it's own rules and we know those rules even if we don't know the animals. We do anything possible to get back to our jungle. There are exceptions, but they're few and far between.

Biology. The science of biology is daily refuting the above. But when your advancing on two fronts no point in allowing biology to hinder your notions. to dare to suggest that there are biological difference between the genders is bordering on commi9ting cultural suicide. (see above)

 

[CandiCame]

Once again you point out the communication problem, not just between you and I but between the conservative and the liberal. It's as if a translator is required.

1. Culture. We're all the same culturally, well, not quite, but it's all about diversity. You're a murderer and I'm a cop, but we can all just get along. I want to kill anyone that doesn't follow 'my' God, you think that's barbaric. But we'll still can get along. Ironically "cultural appropriation. has become some sort of big deal now. A tool of segregation.

2. Environment. We all live in a jungle. Changing that is as easy as moving a block away. But we don't Our own little jungle has it's own rules and we know those rules even if we don't know the animals. We do anything possible to get back to our jungle. There are exceptions, but they're few and far between.

Biology. The science of biology is daily refuting the above. But when your advancing on two fronts no point in allowing biology to hinder your notions. to dare to suggest that there are biological difference between the genders is bordering on commi9ting cultural suicide. (see above)

This makes it super obvious why you can't predict 6:00 at 5:30. You have to look at the real world as it is to be able to make those kinds of predictions.

Diversifying your population is a good thing- to take one of your examples, many people are both cops AND murderers. That's a dangerous job, and a lot of people hurt or kill other people in the line of duty. I know some folks that's happened to. Because of that, they have certain issues that need to be addressed specifically for them. Knowing that dangerous jobs create situations where people can develop disorders like PTSD BECAUSE they're forced to kill, we can predict that people like police officers, soldiers, trafficking survivors, etc, are going to need a safe space to work through that, pharmaceuticals to help them with that, etc.

We can predict that NOW. "Shell shock" was not something that was ALWAYS obvious to humanity. But now we've studied it and know to accept it, and we know to help those people so that they CAN get along with people of different backgrounds and reintegrate into society. We don't lock our veterans away into institutions anymore. Using the information that we've gained, we know that there's still work to be done, and using those longitudinal studies we can predict the outcome of treatment plans.

If we take the approach that you seem to be suggesting here, which is to suggest that cops & murderers will never get along, then we won't progress as a society. We also know enough about the overall group to know that humans prefer a society with less violence than more- sociologists call it the "principle of least suffering". That means that we know that the public will always sway more toward a diverse population (in this case neurodiversity) than a less diverse one, because there will be less overall suffering in such populations in the long run.

I think you don't understand the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange as it relates to diversity, and from your other posts I think that explaining it to you might be a lost cause- but people WANT cultural exchange. That's also something that we can predict with a good deal of accuracy. People don't want cultural appropriation, so if your company uses it, there will be backlash, but if you had used cultural exchange you would see higher sales. It's important to know the difference.

Let me give an economic example. There's been a trend, especially among Millenials, of calling companies out for violating the Indian Arts & Crafts Act- that is, for cultural appropriation. This should have been SUPER easy for companies to predict. The easy way around this would have been to use cultural exchange instead- hiring actual Native designers instead of just stealing their work and thinking no one would notice. Because the general populace loves the designs- they don't like the theft. They think that the actual clothes are pretty and worth wearing, but they think the theft is unethical. We KNEW that people would react this way, because traditional native motifs have been popular for decades (that was the whole reason to steal them), but companies SHOULD have predicted the backlash knowing how racism is trending among the youth right now. This, in fact, was predicted by many economists. If you watch the trends you should be able to figure shit like this out. That's just one example.

For #2 I still don't know where you're going with this jungle thing, but people are heavily influenced by their culture. That's just a fact. The way that you're raised shapes you, because certain things are emphasized, given more importance, so that's what you learn. Cultural changes, again, are often easy to predict. People on here sometimes talk about how fast I type. None of the other social media I use generates that response. The reason is because many of the posters here are older than I am- that is, when they were growing up, their generation's culture didn't place a high importance on technology. Home computers were apparently pretty rare, and I guess a lot of people didn't use typewriters. But then the culture shifted, and we began to place more importance on typing as a skill. I had a typing class in kindergarten where I had to type sentences fast enough to keep a cartoon cat from drowning. I had to do that. Or the kitty would drown. So now my generation types at a rate that seems, to older generations, to be really fast.

There are other changes too, because the culture had to adapt to things like the internet. There have been studies that show that people my age, but especially those younger, get EXTREMELY frustrated if we can't get answers to questions. We do not like uncertainty. We don't like to form opinions without all the available information. It pisses us right off. This isn't the case in older folks. They're content to have what the researchers called "incomplete data" but what I would call "mystery in life". The reason for that is pretty obvious. We're used to being able to look it up. If we have a disagreement over something factual, we can solve that disagreement INSTANTLY. If you turn that instant access to information off, and we have to deal with not knowing something, we're just... not equipped to do that.

I don't like that research because I don't think it accurately represents me. But then I try to put my phone down and realize I might be full of shit. Maybe I really am like that. Maybe I really don't want any mystery in my life. If I get to wondering some random bullshit, I don't want to daydream about it, I want to look it up, get that information, and go on with my life.

My point is, culture changes, and it also influences our behavior. We react to the world around us, and we adapt really quickly. We know from our research that, if something were to happen and we DID have to go without internet, we'd be pissed. We'd bitch about it NON STOP. We'd die angry about it. But we would live, because we're adaptable. The culture would change and we'd all be fine. Just bitchy.

Biology supports the diverse and environmental factors. The human brain craves stimulation, and develops much better if exposed to diverse stimuli, especially differing viewpoints. This is more true of children than adults, but adults can also benefit. That's one of the reasons why it's important to have as many caring adults around a child as possible. If the child gets a diverse worldview, they will be more intelligent and have fewer fear responses.

Gender is a psycho-social term, not a biological one, so I guess you mean sex here? Like, I'm psycho-socially genderfluid, but I'm biologically male. There are notable differences between the sexes, but the closer you look at biology the more difficult it is to find them because intersex people do exist and have been studied, and it's difficult to reduce anyone to just one sex because we're not yet at the stage in medical science where we know what those perimeters are.

I'm biologically male, with all the sex characteristics that go along with that- I was lucky, because that's one of the sexes, biologically that we know a lot about. But, apparently, a lot of people don't know what that means. Like, if you were to take a blood test and isolate a red blood cell, you couldn't tell my sex. They lack nucliod DNA, and mitochondrial DNA is ALWAYS matralineally inherited. If you were to pick a random white blood cell, you STILL couldn't tell my sex- because not all cells in a person's body that contain a nucleus are going to have the same chromosomal configuration. When cells divide during mitosis, there are often variations along every chain- that means that some of my cells are going to double the X at 23, because when they split, remember, one of the new cells is copying the full chromozone, because of how mitosis works.

So we know sex isn't determined by chromozone, we normally identify it by first and secondary sex characteristics. For me, that ALL checks out. I'm producing tetosterone in the levels I'm supposed to, I've got a dick, I've got the proper fat and muscle distribution, etc.

But then there are people who... don't do that. There are people who have primary sex characteristics, that is, they have the dick and balls, but don't have secondary sex characteristcs, because of things like hormonal imbalances. Maybe they have low testosterone, or their glandular system is on the fritz, or their dick doesn't work because they just got old and their sex drive petered out. Maybe they had a horrible accident that resulted in castration or penilectomy.

Those guys are still guys, it just probably sucks. I don't know, I don't plan to ever get old enough to see my T-levels drop. But my point is, we can't use primary or secondary sex characteristics to determine sex either, because they're going to be hit or miss.

That means that right now we have to use our current understanding of how humans are sexed, which is on a spectrum. You're placed onto whatever side of the scale you fall the most onto, as an infant. Sometimes doctors fuck up that call, but usually they're pretty good at it.

Now, because we have the biological differences to determine that scale, we do have to accept that biology plays a role in how we interact as humans, and we can make predictions based on that. That's literally the entire medical field. Like, I got sick as a kid and I had to have treatments, and during those treatments I had a fracture in my spine, when I was 5. The doctors were able to look at that and predict that I'd have crippling back pain for the rest of my life. They couldn't do anything about it, really, because it wasn't somewhere where I could have surgery, but they could look at the biology and predict that would be a thing. They were right as fuck.

They can make all kinds of biological predictions, not just like, "You have a dick so you'll probably grow up to develop secondary sex characteristics like facial hair". But also more important shit like, "If you smoke you'll probably get cancer" or "If you eat peanuts your fucking throat will close together and you'll die."

Like... to the point that we literally live and die by biological predictions.

So yeah, bullet point is that all three of these things are important for making predictions, and they can interact in a variety of ways.

For example, if you're biologically male, and you're born into a culture where there are certain gender rolls assigned to people who are male, you'll probably grow up to fit those gender rolls because you were trained to. You can predict that pretty accurately, and marketing does this all the time. Like, I grew up male in a culture that says that to look presentable for an office job, guys should shave. So I buy razors and shaving cream and moisturizers with robotic predictability even though there's no biological reason for me to do that. I don't have a biological drive to scrape the hair off my face, I have a biological drive to grow it. But companies know from tracking consumer trends that I'm going to do it, and they're gonna make commercials telling my why I should use their product to it, and I might buy old spice aftershave because a genie told me to.

They're making a lot of predictions there- that I'll grow hair on my face (biology) that I'll want to remove it (culture) and that despite being in the states, far away from the place where the legends of the djinn originated, I'll know what a genie is and the commercial will appeal to me (diversity). They're using all 3 of those aspects to make their prediction- and they're right.

So you're also right about those 3 aspects being important for making predictions, but there are a LOT more facts. Like SES is a major one that you didn't even mention. They're predicting that I'll have the disposable income to pay more for Old Spice than the generic store brand, for example.

There's a HUGE number of factors that go into making successful predictions, not just those 3.

Edit: I don't know that I should have used aftershave as an example, because that cultural gendered expectation is actually changing right now. A LOT of the kids are wearing beards as compared to my generation. Those hipsters just don't seem to give a fuck that they look like a redneck stereotype that you'd buy at Cracker Barrel.

I'm kind of old man pissed about it, and it hurts me that I'm like that. Because I can see the cultural divide and I know I'm not part of youth culture anymore when I see them walking around with their fucking Mario mustaches like that's acceptable.

Get off my lawn and shit.

 

[IG_88]

Watching a drunk and an idiot talk about such things is both amusing and annoying.

 

[Notcastor]

Anyone who types that many words brings laughter to my day.

Yay losers!

 

[CandiCame]

Watching a drunk and an idiot talk about such things is both amusing and annoying.

Which am I?

Yay losers!

Accurate. A loser AND a procrastinator. So I'm pulling double duty.

 

[IG_88]

Which am I?



Accurate. A loser AND a procrastinator. So I'm pulling double duty.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg/300px-Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg

 

[CandiCame]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg/300px-Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg

...does the fact that I don't know make me the idiot?

 

[Kirkrapine]

Technological advancements are perfectly predictable, by design. You have to envision something before you can build it.

But until you have built it, you never really know if it will work as intended.

 

[CandiCame]

But until you have built it, you never really know if it will work as intended.

Yeah, but he was saying tech growth was difficult to predict. It's super not.

 

[Rightguide]

is it related to present day leftist psycho-babble?

 

[Kirkrapine]

Yeah, but he was saying tech growth was difficult to predict. It's super not.

It is predictable that technological progress will happen so long as the circumstances on which it depends continue. But the all-important details are unpredictable. Will we ever have a faster-than-light drive? Nobody can say with any confidence. Will we develop alternative energy sources fast enough to avoid a peak-oil crisis in industrial civilization? Nobody can say with any confidence.

 

[Kirkrapine]

is it related to present day leftist psycho-babble?

No, it seems to be related to overreliance on the predictive power of statistics.

 

[Oblimo]

I have to give credit to Que for 'triggering' this thought.

"Psychohistory" was a field of science conjured up by Isaac Asimov in his "Foundation" trilogy. (Well worth reading still.) The premise is that by the study of history and the application of certain algorithms the future can be predicted with a high degree of certainty.

So I got to thinking about what's going on in the innards of Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, etc. and their use of algorithms to predict our behavior as groups and individuals. Initially they did it as a means of moving product but as of late it's taken a more ominous turn and started to stick it's nose under the tent of politics. Even worse they are transitioning from being a predictive tool to becoming an influence tool. I don't see this ending well.

Well, if you read the series, you’d learn that aspect of psychohistory, the ability to predict long-term group behavior, is a fraud, and that the secret Second Foundation has had to constantly monitor and influence events in the galaxy as they adjusted the predictions.

And then something happens that neither the Second Foundation members nor the original psychohistorian ever predicted and nearly ruins everything.

 

[Kirkrapine]

Science tends to indicate that we're all slaves to out biology, our culture, and our environment.

But not, with any precision, predictably.

 

[Libsam]

bellisarius, you'll like the documentary Creepy Line.

trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqlDtjnwyPA

 

[CandiCame]

But not, with any precision, predictably.

You buys razors, Kirk?

 

[Oblimo]

Will we ever have a faster-than-light drive? Nobody can say with any confidence.

Oh yes we can. If true FTL were possible, that is taking our atoms and accelerating them past the speed of light, then our fundamental understanding of relativity is so wrong that global position satellites wouldn’t work. (GPS satellites are high enough up Earth’s gravity well that time dilation would be significant enough to completely ruin their accuracy if we didn’t know the mathematics to adjust their clocks at just the right amounts). So we can be very confident of true FTL travel being impossible, although of course there’s always someone thinking of ways to prove current theory wrong. I mean, nothing grants a scientist immortality better than their favorite game of Proving the Old Man Wrong.

The Alcubierre drive doesn’t move matter (or energy) faster than light, it fucks with spacetime. It’s something that I find difficult to understand, but the speed of light limit is special relatively, which concerns the local universe, and not general relativity. Consider the ever accelerating expansion of the universe. Galaxies aren’t accelerating away from each other, spacetime is expanding at an accelerating rate (67 somethings per something per megaparsec, I don’t wanna google just now) and galaxies are being dragged along for the ride. But spacetime doesn’t give a damn about special relativity and can “accelerate past” the speed of light.

(Anyone reading this who actually understands astrophysics — I know how horribly imprecise I’m being with my language, and I apologize. With my level of understanding I can only hope for speaking in effective metaphors.)

In fact, we apparently have already found galaxies expanding away from us FTL. They are giving off their last light before they will appear to freeze and eventually fade, since they have left our local universe. And no level of spacewarp drive fuckery will ever get us there.