2 ms·

Still I don't get it... > Since it is now possible to predict human development hundreds of years into the future no idea is really new anymore. It is just sa

• ronilan 12y ago
  Neither. It is the type of comment that takes two opposing concepts and instead of contrasting them on both edges of the idea spectrum places them one inside the other.
• egypturnash 12y ago
  From a ways down the Wikipedia article on "psychohistory": "Science fiction author and scientist/science writer Isaac Asimov popularized the term in his famous Foundation series of novels, though in his works the term psychohistory is used fictionally for a mathematical discipline that can be used to predict the general course of future flow." So the humor lies mostly in the second line about how Asimov is not applying the discipline of psychohistory to his thinking about the future, when he wrote an entire fictional trilogy about people using said discipline. The comment you're confused by is written from the perspective of someone who lives in that fictional world. If you have read this trilogy (which is one of the early classics of science fiction), there may be an additional layer of irony, as much of the story concerns the grand plans based on psychohistorical predictions going horribly awry due to not accounting for a wild card that comes up.