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I just (like two days ago :) finished reading the Foundation series. Psychohistory loses some of its magic for twenty-first century readers in the face of chaos

I just (like two days ago :) finished reading the Foundation series. Psychohistory loses some of its magic for twenty-first century readers in the face of chaos theory and black swans. If we are facing a societal collapse, we will have a hard time bootstrapping a reboot because we've consumed most of the easily accessible fossil fuels. We're in a virtuous cycle of high technology and fossil fuels that continue to support access to more fossil fuels.

davorb 11y ago
> black swans To be fair, he does have a black swan event in the form of the Mule.
coldtea 11y ago
>I just (like two days ago :) finished reading the Foundation series. Psychohistory loses some of its magic for twenty-first century readers in the face of chaos theory and black swans. Chaos theory might be good for the weather (or the stock market and other such micro/fast events) but it might not apply that well to human societies in long term trends (which are not that chaotic and unpredictable, most of history reads like a continuous narrative with cause and effects quite very much at play). He also predicted the possibility of "black swans" ruining psychohistories predictions and had an agency (let's call it a "second foundation") to influence things and handle those situations. That said, there were rumors of a Foundation based tv series. I wonder how that's going... http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/asimovs-foundation-trilogy-to-be-made-into-hbo-series.454575436/ http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/asimovs-foundation-trilogy... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804484/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804484/