Could a “ Theory Of Mind ” predict future chronicle , based on attend at how people think and carry ? It may have aid prognosticate World War II and our current econom - ick . Is psychohistory finally come to take place ?
write in the New York Times the other day , Robert J. Shiller says that the same kind of understanding of the way citizenry behave seems to have helped diarist Johannes Steel predict World War II in 1934 , and Obama aideLawrence Summersto forebode our current economical meltdown in 1989 :
Rather than depending solely on quantitative analysis , this method acting relies on a “ theory of creative thinker ” – defined by cognitive scientist as humans ’ unlearned power , germinate over millions of year , to judge others ’ interchange thinking , their sympathy , their intention , their pretenses . It is a sagacity faculty , quite dissimilar from our quantitative faculties .
This sound somewhat less statistically establish than the possibility of psychohistory , as expounded byIsaac Asimov , but still slightly interchangeable in terms of trying to predict mass behaviour using psychological science as well as other factors :
Psycho - account parcel out not with human being , but with valet de chambre - masses . It was the scientific discipline of mob ; syndicate in their billions . It could forecast reaction to stimuli with something of the accuracy that a lesser skill could bring to the forecast of a repercussion of a billiard ball . The response of one Isle of Man could be forecast by no known maths ; the response of a billion is something else again .
Hari Seldon plot the social and economical trends of the time , sighted along the curves and foresaw the continuing and accelerating fall of civilisation and the gap of thirty thousand years that must elapse before a struggling newfangled Empire could go forth from the ruins .
Certainly , Asimov flex out to have been a major influence on one of the current crisis ’ most prescient forecasters , Princeton economistPaul Krugman . Froma recent profile in Newsweek :
Krugman says he set up himself in the scientific discipline fable of Isaac Asimov , especially the “ Foundation ” series-“It was swot saving civilization , quants who had a hypothesis of smart set , people writing equations on a blackboard , saying , ‘ See , unless you follow this pattern , the empire will fail and be followed by a thousand eld of barbarism ’ . ”
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