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from the Wait-long-enough-and-sc-fi-always-becomes-sci-fact dept.
In 1951 Isaac Asimov inflicted psychohistory on the world with the Foundation Trilogy. Now, thanks to data sets going back more than 2,500 years, scientists have discovered the rules underlying the rise and fall of civilizations, after examining more than 400 such historical societies crash and burn - or in some cases avoid crashing. More here:
Turchin's approach to history, which uses software to find patterns in massive amounts of historical data, has only become possible recently, thanks to the growth in cheap computing power and the development of large historical datasets. This "big data" approach is now becoming increasingly popular in historical disciplines. Tim Kohler, an archaeologist at Washington State University, believes we are living through "the glory days" of his field, because scholars can pool their research findings with unprecedented ease and extract real knowledge from them. In the future, Turchin believes, historical theories will be tested against large databases, and the ones that do not fit – many of them long-cherished – will be discarded. Our understanding of the past will converge on something approaching an objective truth.
Discuss. Or throw rocks.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 18 2019, @02:14PM (11 children)
Follow the money, the people getting academic funding are not politically free at this time, and as such only some "discoveries" will be permitted, making the system not work overall.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 18 2019, @04:57PM (2 children)
When were they ever? At any given time in history, I believe only a minority of academic research was free of political pressure and filtering.
The "age of enlightenment" came about, in part, due to publication of research by independently wealthy research organizations, but the pressure of the Church was never absent.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 19 2019, @12:53PM (1 child)
Didn't invent sarcasm with the declaration of independence or whatever, I'm sure they did not operate under a delusion of "approaching an objective truth"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 19 2019, @02:19PM
My kid's high school history fair project is about declarations of rights in the U.S. - starting with "All men are created equal" in 1776, "ex-slaves too" 90 years later. "...and women can vote" ~50 years after that, now, nearly 100 years after that we seem ready to declare women equal to men under the law of the constitution. It's progress, of a sort.
Late 1950s, ~90 years after emancipation, the supreme court struck down federal funding for "separate but equal" schools on the basis of race. Then, around 1974 they decided that the handicapped and disabled deserved schools under federal funding, but in many cases they are provided on a "separate but equal" basis, and the 1990 "Least Restrictive Environment" laws do little if anything to improve that.
Life is a journey, I doubt we'll ever achieve nirvana, but as long as it feels like we're moving toward it, I suppose that quiets the calls for open rebellion.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday November 18 2019, @05:46PM (7 children)
As a poet I once knew wrote "Rust and the moth are the only true critic".
History, over enough time, winnows away those things not worth copying.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday November 18 2019, @09:31PM (6 children)
Sadly, history is not an optimizing process. It is not the teleos the keepers of the status quo would have us believe. Sometimes, they take that to absurd extremes. Per the Chinese Communist Party, the entirety of the previous 5,000 years of Chinese civilization has value only insofar as it produced communism as its final, perfect blossom. Seriously. Pick up a Chinese history book from the mainland. 5,000 years of pre-modern history will occupy about 50 pages of a 300 page volume, with everything since 1949 the remainder.
A person could cite many other examples of things that could have been world-changing many centuries ago, if their potential had only been recognized and developed. Examples comprise the Baghdad Battery, the Antikythera mechanism, and the Aeolipile. But history swept them away.
Or, more recently, history swept socialism away 30 years ago, but now it's popping up again like an unflushable turd. How many more millions have to die to disprove such an evil doctrine as something-for-nothing?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday November 18 2019, @11:38PM (5 children)
The rise of rent-seeking in the US economy is "something for nothing" in ways no socialist ever dreamed of. Let's not be selectively blind here: bad economics is bad economics, whether collectivist or (ostensibly) free-market.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 19 2019, @05:59PM (4 children)
I completely agree with you. In a capitalist, competitive economy there would be no monopolies because market entrants would constantly challenge the status quo trying to get a slice of that sweet, rent-seeking pie. But they don't because we don't live in a capitalist society, but a crony capitalist society which is what can rightly be called "socialism by the rich." In other words, they use government to prevent new market entrants or any one of dozens of other dirty tricks to preserve their rent-seeking monopolies.
It makes me cranky.
At this point I am so disgusted with the discursive clusterfuck that critical inquiry has become, so exasperated with the endless circlejerk of the false dichotomy of socialism vs. capitalism, that I want to walkaway down a DIY path I call FOALMA (Fuck Off And Leave Me Alone).
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday November 20 2019, @02:52AM (3 children)
Amazing how adult wisdom looks a lot like being completely out of fucks to give, isn't it?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:46PM (2 children)
Today's high degree of ennui is symptomatic of societies near the breakdown point, as people feel that "the system " no longer works for them. That's why higher levels of inequality are so damaging, and so dangerous. Unfortunately, as the researchers point out, the ones who benefit are effectively insulated from the consequences and tend not to realize the problems before it's too late to take effective measures, so they end up suffering the consequences. Including violent dispossession of their wealth, status, freedom, even life.
The NRA is going to regret all that lobbying against gun control.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday November 20 2019, @11:53PM (1 child)
So why is it only people like us can see this? Or is it that others do and refuse to admit it?
I have a hypothesis that being out of the norm in very personal ways--you trans, me lesbian and from poverty for example--tends to make us 1) think harder about things on a systems level, if only to understand why we've suffered so, and 2) have more compassion for others who suffer.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday November 21 2019, @01:21AM
As for sexual orientation, one of these days I really need to sit down and address that, because it's something I have been putting on the back burner for a couple of decades - my life has just been too complicated ever since I transitioned. As an atheist, all I can say is thank $DIETY I'm not into cats - there are too many crazy cat ladies already :-)
One thing I noticed is that since transition I interact far more often with other women than with men - there really is a sisterhood (though when I mentioned it, one of my sisters denied it exists, guess she's never experienced it, but it kicks in when I need it - we support each other in ways men can't even imagine).
It's one of the things I cite when people ask me if I'd ever consider going back to being a guy (not really a physical possibility, but people ask). Why would I want to be someone else again? The loss of male privilege was itself liberating, because I could no longer use that as a social crutch, I guess.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.