Me too. Though I think Cronos refers to psychohistory.
However, it sounds a little like the ideas behind the Wisdom of Crowds millarkey. Which is bunk because of Chaos Theory.
Me too. Though I think Cronos refers to psychohistory.
However, it sounds a little like the ideas behind the Wisdom of Crowds millarkey. Which is bunk because of Chaos Theory.
"If there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this one."
Albert Camus "Noces"
Yes. I am not referring to Psychogenic crap.
A small demonstration:
Take a handful of Orgahs and place them in a chain, cuff them and have them run in a straight line blindfolded.
Some run faster, some stumble, some are left-footed, others are right-footed.
But you'll witness a motion.
Double the number of Orgahs and the movement will be smoother.Get all Orgahs in a massive chain and they'll produce no deviation.
All individual qualities will be obliterated by social dynamics encouraged by certain stimulus that affect not the boy/girl, but the group itself.
Such subconscious factors are unaccounted for by normal psychiatry and psychology and you cannot understand them by individual observation, but by mathematical equations and statistical deviations.
The tree helps you understand a tree, but you cannot grasp a forest by cataloging individual trees.
Such is the story with Psychohistory vs. Psychology.
You can't apply Psychology to masses because of chaos theory which ruins your conclusions, like you cannot apply Psychohistory to an individual because the variables are too few.
" If you don't want me, I want you! Alexandru Lapusneanul"
"They are a stupid mob, but neverless they are a mob! Alexandru Lapusneanul"
The ability to extrapolate small-group behavior into predicting large-group behavior is fraught with peril. Though theoretically possible, there are too many unknowable, or unquantifiable, factors to be precise. Folks a lot smarter than I have shown that, statistically, The Roman Empire should have "fallen" 200 years before it did, and that the Soviet Empire should have lasted well into the 22nd century. Yet Rome and the USSR fell when they did.
IMO emotion drives as much of history as enlightened self (group)-interest. And we don't have a good handle on being able to measure emotional motivation.
All that said: good luck Cronos. on your project.
Be well. Do good. Keep in touch.
The only thing I've noticed related to this is: the larger the crowd, the dumber they collectively get.
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Nice input so far:
The Internet is the best medium to test the theory and have a controlled enviroment for such an experiment and carry it objectively.You just can't do it in RL without huge logistics and costs. Therefore a forum offers the best ground for a psychohistorical experiment to take place, without losing your life's earnings and no forum existed before, for such purposes.
I'll try to get my own psichohistorical experiment here with Mafia games. If I'm succesful and predict with a deviation of a night round the outcome of 3 large Mafia games, than we have a low-level Psychohistorical formula, which could be extrapolated upon to include other variables and increase in significance.
Stage 1: Identify the stimulus
For Gameroomers:
This would determine the key factors in a Mafia Game which influence your behaviour:
a) What number do you trust more?
1
2
3
4
5
6
20
b) Which of the previous figures made you sick?
c) Which sample arrangement you like more?
Aa
Aa
-----------
Aa
Aa
d)How many Mafia games you played?
e)How many have you won/lost?
f)Mention those Games so I could get my synopsis for them.
Be relaxed.Be yourselves when posting. Try to focus on your inner self.
Last edited by Cronos Impera; 10-12-2009 at 15:47.
" If you don't want me, I want you! Alexandru Lapusneanul"
"They are a stupid mob, but neverless they are a mob! Alexandru Lapusneanul"
Days since the Apocalypse began
"We are living in space-age times but there's too many of us thinking with stone-age minds" | How to spot a Humanist
"Men of Quality do not fear Equality." | "Belief doesn't change facts. Facts, if you are reasonable, should change your beliefs."
Cronos Impera,
The org, wonderful as it is, does not make a valid base for human behaviour.
First of all, it is way to centered around americans. Secondly, all of the people here have one thing in common, we like strategic games.
I think we can take for granted that the IQ of a general org poster is significantly higher than the human average.
Oh, and we basicly have NO girls here. As they make up roughly half of the population I'd say they should be included in the formula, no?
This is a side note, but I don't agree.
In a way, yes they get dumber individualy. However, they will collectively make better decisions (up to a point).
100 people will make a better decision that 10 people, however, a million people will generally make a worse decision than 100 people.
With only ten people, even the idiot needs to be listened to.
With 100 people, people will choose someone to think and argue for them, someone they think is doing a better job at it.
With a million people (or more of course) individual thought does not exist, and information will be filtered through external means, both on the way up, and on the way down.
And as someone pointed out, yes the american elections is a very good example of this.
Explain how an individual, with a LOT of life experience, only gets to choose between 2 (!) options, and these two options filters down to gunbortion.
Sorry if I am ranting, hope my thoughts were interesting to someone :)
They slew him with poison afaid to meet him with the steel
a gallant son of eireann was Owen Roe o'Neill.
Internet is a bad place for info Gaelic Cowboy
There is a reason no serious psychologist or sociologist dabbles much in this, or more accurately, why there are no serious centres of higher education devoted to it. As much as I esteem Asimov and appreciate his works, psychohistory is well..., I think we all know what it is. I would not say pseudoscience, given the reason why Asimov created the concept of it, but it is certainly not real science.
The useful and agreed-upon concepts of psychohistory are a part of sociology. The other parts are junk science, or so goes the general scientific consensus. Particularly amusing, I find, is its interpretation of history and societies based on the methods of child-rearing.
Often times, when reading their awkward, bumbling, and grotesquely generalising methods of data collection and organisation, reminded of creationism for some reason... The general atmosphere is the same, in my amateur judgement, in the sense that the result is equally comical. Except that by nature, sociology is a greatly less precise science, always floating barely above pseudoscience given the farcical assumptions that cannot be accurately propped up by empirical data or the scientific method it is do fond of employing.
The chief problem of psychohistory, in my opinion, even if the indomitable barriers of the impossibility of reliable data collection are at last surmounted (inconceivable), then the results would prove to be overwhelming, presenting a stupendously low deviation, as all will inevitably average out to the point of indistinctness. There is a reason why sociologists do their best to refrain from wholescale analysis of an entire nation.
That and the Chaos Hypothesis of course, which is an even “chiefer” barrier. The factors are infinite and humans appear to display a trend of flaunting randomness nowadays, which will further complicate the picture. Trivial events, trivial pieces of misderived data can complicate the flow of history, and ugh, my cognitive functions are already overloading from the torrent of pertinent, yet madly varied factors... Enough of this, such calculations are a fantasy…
I know how simple it is to become caught up in the lectures about such fascinating material, believe me, I have been there, and done that, but the best part about those “revelations”, or at least for me, was stopping to play the Devil’s Advocate in an internal debate within oneself, deducing why they would not work. Once again, there is usually a solid rationale for that. That said, this is valuable intellectual experience, and by no means should it be circumvented for varying reasons.
Last edited by Aemilius Paulus; 10-12-2009 at 23:57.
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