
Psychohistory - sebastianconcpt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory
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dunstad
I wasn't aware this was an actual field of study. I fully expected to be
directed to the article in the disambiguation at the top, about Asimov's
Foundation series.

They make an interesting pair, with this real life version focused on the
motivations of an individual and how they shaped our world, and the fictional
version focused on the motivations of large groups, and how they will shape
the world to come.

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Red_Tarsius
Psychohistory is _also_ one of the most interesting theories of science
fiction. Here's a recent thread on _The Foundation_ : _will psychohistory ever
become
reality?_[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9052538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9052538)

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qsymmachus
It should be said that psychohistory is not taken very seriously by most
historians.

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emmab
> On the other hand, the end of swaddling and wet-nursing made possible the
> explosive modern takeoff in scientific advance.

I don't see a citation for this one and I'm not sure why it would be true

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fishnchips
I recently re-read Asimov's Foundation series after having read it long long
time ago as a 12 year old. I was kind of disappointed.

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zxyzzxxx
Could you elaborate, while keeping it spoiler-free?

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Frondo
I read it as an adult and was disappointed by the flatness of the characters
and the almost-total absence of any female characters.

To clarify: I'm not saying that people should shoehorn women into stories to
satisfy a quota, I'm saying that stories that include women are _simply more
interesting, because they display a wider range of humanity and of the human
experience_.

Or, to put it another way, it's just boring to read a story where all the
characters fit within a very narrow range of personality.

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meatysnapper
I donno, Plato's Dialouges are pretty interesting.

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fishnchips
Sure, but 2500 years passed since and you'd expect writing to get a bit
better. And yet Homer's characters are way more nuanced than Asimov's. Also,
in Plato's Dialogs characters are completely irrelevant and are merely
instruments that directly represent philosophical standpoints.

