Top three SF authors

[Ramo]

You inherently cannot make repeatable tests in psychohistory. That's the nature of the system. It can never be a science.

[Kuciwalker]

I just finished Ringworld about forty-five minutes ago. Excellent

[self biased]

i'm actually reading foundation now. my only grudge with it is that as soon as a start to really like a character, the story ends and he moves on to the next crisis.

[chequita guevara]

Psychohistory is an interesting plot device, but as far as reality goes, it is beyond the realm of possiblity. Simply put, there are enough events in history that occured that no one could have possibly forseen. Even looking back with hindsight they seem improbable.

[Kuciwalker]

Who knows, with infinitely more powerful computers, mathematics, and billions of worlds to study?

[chequita guevara]

History only follows general patterns, and they aren't deterministic.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Ramo
Yes, it's fantastic. Hell, most of economics is fantastic. The idea that one can accurately model a massively nonlinear system as the behavior of a society is bollocks. Of course, that's not really the point. Believable or not, it's an interesting premise and we're supposed to suspend disbelief.

The real point is that they're not sciences (hard or soft). You can't make controlled, repeatable tests, meaning it ain't a science.

So astrophysics isn't a science?

It's an observational science, not an experimental science.

In other words, you have to wait for the experiment to come to you instead of setting it up yourself. It's still a science.

Not that I disagree with you on the likely impossibility of predictions wrt a ridiculously complex system like society on anything except the coarsest level and the shortest timescale. The day somebody manages to predict the weather a month in advance is the day I'll start believing psychohistory might be possible.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Who knows, with infinitely more powerful computers, mathematics, and billions of worlds to study?

Have you ever heard of quantum mechanics or chaos theory?

It's likely that in a large multinonlinear system like society anything except the broadest predictions over relatively short timescales are possible because solutions to the related classical problem are ridiculously unstable wrt initial conditions therefore uncertainty introduced via QM renders meaningful detailed predictions of long periods even theoretically impossible.

[KrazyHorse]

In other words, even if you started two isolated societies with the exact same quantum state (i.e. as perfect approximations of each other as possible) that within a few generations of each other they would resemble each other little if at all. Certainly not to the extent of being able to predict elections etc.

If the system itself cannot predict future results then no model can. Models only simplify.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
It's likely that in a large multinonlinear system like society anything except the broadest predictions over relatively short timescales are possible because solutions to the related classical problem are ridiculously unstable wrt initial conditions therefore uncertainty introduced via QM renders meaningful detailed predictions of long periods even theoretically impossible.

Psychohistory doesn't trace out particles, it traces out societies. It can't even predict individuals people's actions.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
History only follows general patterns, and they aren't deterministic.

You're a bad Marxist

[aaglo]

Arthur C. Clarke - space odyssey's (2001, 2010 and 2060), Rendevouz with Rama, Rama II

Kim Stanley Robinson - Antarctica, Mars-series (Red, Green & Blue)

Douglas Adams - Do I need to explain this?

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Psychohistory doesn't trace out particles, it traces out societies. It can't even predict individuals people's actions.

You demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of the difference between a linear system (gas in a box) and a nonlinear system (the Earth's weather patterns)

[LDiCesare]

Lem, Le Guin, Vance.
Lem and Le Guin tend to be more original than most other writers. Lem's favorite themes also appeal to me a lot. Le Guin's Always Coming Home was a little marvel, as ethnology-fiction, but ethnology of people who 'might be going to have lived a long long time from now'.
Vance's space operas often have very little science inside but sometimes he wrote things like The Languages of Pao, which explores a linguistic hypothesis and shows what would happen should it be true and one apply it. Most often, his work is just weird characters in a weird world, though, but it's great fun.
I would also rate Brin, Van Vogt and Robert Forward as being very good.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


You demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of the difference between a linear system (gas in a box) and a nonlinear system (the Earth's weather patterns)

But I dig what you're saying Dawg, and it's right on!