SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 HiThere on Monday November 18 2019, @05:50PM (1 child)
Which is why it was proper to court-martial Gen. Douglas MacArthur, even though he was the proper governor for Japan.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 18 2019, @06:33PM
Can't blame 'em (Generals) - they have a very important job to do and the consequences of them not doing it to the best of their ability are tremendously dire. However, once a society is "out of the soup" and no longer requires war to survive, the best and only valuable function of the Generals is to reassure enemies who would plunge the society into War again that it would be a mistake.
🌻🌻 [google.com]