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Digression here: This reminds me of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, based around a genius that predicts events and cultural paths based on a mathematical form

Digression here: This reminds me of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, based around a genius that predicts events and cultural paths based on a mathematical formulas for aggregated human psychology. It led me to imagine a world where societies can not only be influenced, but their actions predicted, and a system that would emerge that capitalizes on alphas in this environment much like the stock market. This would almost act as a solution to this problem we currently have, if many agents were predicting and acting on these alphas so that the alphas that do exist are very small. After all, most of the problems we currently experience are due to this potential (alphas, in my analogy) being so large and profitable.

carapace 7y ago
I've heard that Behavioral economics is inspired by "Psychohistory", and these Seshat folks are also pretty serious about it. Any attempt that wants to be predictive will have to contend with "strange loops" of propaganda/PR efforts as well as the side-effects of their own work (since they arn't hiding.) > Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions and how those decisions vary from those implied by classical theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics > TerminusDB powers Seshat, the Global History Databank, which is like the Foundation in that Seshat is dedicated to bringing together the most current and comprehensive body of knowledge about human history in one place. The massive collection of historical information allows researchers to rigorously test different hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies and human history. The core TerminusDB team are active in the Cliodynamics community. Cliodynamics treats history as science — practitioners develop theories that explain such dynamic historical processes, translate these theories into mathematical models and then test predictions against data. https://medium.com/terminusdb/terminusdb-whats-in-a-name-27b8be6b0794 https://medium.com/terminusdb/terminusdb-whats-in-a-name-27b... > Our unique Databank systematically collects what is currently known about the social and political organization of human societies and how civilizations have evolved over time. This massive collection of historical information allows us and others to rigorously test different hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies across the globe and human history. http://seshatdatabank.info/ http://seshatdatabank.info/ > Cliodynamics (/ˌkliːoʊdaɪˈnæmɪks/) is a transdisciplinary area of research integrating cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the longue durée, and the construction and analysis of historical databases.[1] Cliodynamics treats history as science. Its practitioners develop theories that explain such dynamical processes as the rise and fall of empires, population booms and busts, spread and disappearance of religions.[2][3] These theories are translated into mathematical models. Finally, model predictions are tested against data. Thus, building and analyzing massive databases of historical and archaeological information is one of the most important goals of cliodynamics.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliodynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliodynamics
mar77i 7y ago
Wow, you're prompting as little as I ever knew about the book "The I inside" by Allan Dean Foster of an artificial intelligence named Colligatarch mostly capable of, let's say, aggregation far beyond what Cambridge Analytica was capable of. It ends up leading to a high level detection of a very miniscule (an individual on a global scale) intrusion, but that's beside the point. World peace, if achieved, has nothing to do with the eradication of free will. This is exemplified by Colligatarch's recipe for success in the book. It is not conquering the world step by step in any way, but it accurately enough predicts patterns on what the future will bring, and if the various people adhere, they automatically learn to fare better to follow these action plans. If you'd imagine the beginning of this kind of world-spanning awareness as described would start out very messy, at this point it's safe to assume that we might even be past that initial mess - which came into being through the two world wars at the beginning of the 20th century. Disclaimer: I'm treading far outside my field of expertise here, so if you know more than me, chime in, let's discuss the topic.

carapace 7y ago

I've heard that Behavioral economics is inspired by "Psychohistory", and these Seshat folks are also pretty serious about it. Any attempt that wants to be predictive will have to contend with "strange loops" of propaganda/PR efforts as well as the side-effects of their own work (since they arn't hiding.) > Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions and how those decisions vary from those implied by classical theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics > TerminusDB powers Seshat, the Global History Databank, which is like the Foundation in that Seshat is dedicated to bringing together the most current and comprehensive body of knowledge about human history in one place. The massive collection of historical information allows researchers to rigorously test different hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies and human history. The core TerminusDB team are active in the Cliodynamics community. Cliodynamics treats history as science — practitioners develop theories that explain such dynamic historical processes, translate these theories into mathematical models and then test predictions against data. https://medium.com/terminusdb/terminusdb-whats-in-a-name-27b8be6b0794 https://medium.com/terminusdb/terminusdb-whats-in-a-name-27b... > Our unique Databank systematically collects what is currently known about the social and political organization of human societies and how civilizations have evolved over time. This massive collection of historical information allows us and others to rigorously test different hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies across the globe and human history. http://seshatdatabank.info/ http://seshatdatabank.info/ > Cliodynamics (/ˌkliːoʊdaɪˈnæmɪks/) is a transdisciplinary area of research integrating cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the longue durée, and the construction and analysis of historical databases.[1] Cliodynamics treats history as science. Its practitioners develop theories that explain such dynamical processes as the rise and fall of empires, population booms and busts, spread and disappearance of religions.[2][3] These theories are translated into mathematical models. Finally, model predictions are tested against data. Thus, building and analyzing massive databases of historical and archaeological information is one of the most important goals of cliodynamics.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliodynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliodynamics

mar77i 7y ago

Wow, you're prompting as little as I ever knew about the book "The I inside" by Allan Dean Foster of an artificial intelligence named Colligatarch mostly capable of, let's say, aggregation far beyond what Cambridge Analytica was capable of. It ends up leading to a high level detection of a very miniscule (an individual on a global scale) intrusion, but that's beside the point. World peace, if achieved, has nothing to do with the eradication of free will. This is exemplified by Colligatarch's recipe for success in the book. It is not conquering the world step by step in any way, but it accurately enough predicts patterns on what the future will bring, and if the various people adhere, they automatically learn to fare better to follow these action plans. If you'd imagine the beginning of this kind of world-spanning awareness as described would start out very messy, at this point it's safe to assume that we might even be past that initial mess - which came into being through the two world wars at the beginning of the 20th century. Disclaimer: I'm treading far outside my field of expertise here, so if you know more than me, chime in, let's discuss the topic.