The term 'psychohistory' originated in the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. He started writing this in the 1940s, and after a long gap following the first three books continued to the end of his life. They sold very well.
Psychohistory is the concept that the future of societies can be predicted – in outline – given a lot of data and a lot of computer power. At the time in which Book 1 was set, a Galactic Empire existed and its bureaucrats recorded more or less everything. Asimov was quite clear that he borrowed heavily from the Roman Empire. There were no Jedi nor Sith.
Book 1 was simply called Foundation. It was a collection of short stories that had been published in magazines. The Galactic Empire was falling and a bunch of academics wanted to preserve a kernel of knowledge. They established a sort of college on an obscure planet and had it chartered as a foundation.
They used psychohistory to map out the future and selectively interfere using forms of political warfare. Their planet mutated into a sort of mayoral republic: first a city state, then a nation state. Rome again. The mayors were portrayed a bit like New York City mayors. They used the predictions of the academics to operate a strategic plan. Sometimes they used propaganda, false religion, economic warfare or covert operations. It is reminiscent of the Cold War.
Book 2 was called Foundation and Empire. The principal tale concerns the last gasp of the old Empire and its best general, who might look like Scipo Africanus in certain lights. The Foundation deal with the Empire by essentially doing nothing. They manoeuver on the periphery and let the Empire become snarled in its internal politics in the centre. It reminds me of Imperial China around 1890.
The mercantilists become rich, and are a rising power. The imperialists become divided, and are a falling power. The second tale concerns a unique individual who could not be predicted by the old-school politicians. His name is not Donald, but nothing he does lasts and he does a lot of damage.
Book three is called Second Foundation. The old academics knew that psychohistory was only approximate, and there would be a residual error. There might also be random errors, such as Not-Donald. They founded an invisible college to deal with this, with the best computer – the Prime Radiant (data science!) – and new intuitive powers. Also whole food, fresh air and exercise. They fixed a few glitches. Manifest Destiny was back on. Also suburban life and atomic powered cars. Quite the Sixties.
Book 4 is called Foundation’s Edge, but it could be called Third Foundation. Asimov seemed to reconsider his vaunted Trilogy and find it wanting. He invented a third power, which was aware of Empire, First Foundation, and Second Foundation. And it could meddle. But it wanted independent verification. Affirmation.
It viewed the Empire as now dead, the First Foundation as clunky as the Soviets were – coal, oil, steel, and ships – and the Second Foundation as some sort of computer-bound outfit with too many PhDs and too little wisdom. The book tours around and then ends. More books follow, but do not really matter: the characters were rubbish and the settings only sketched. They all sold well.
Almost everybody who read Foundation wondered if psychohistory could be real. Could Immanuel Kant be right that "we could reason together"? Could rational modern planning smooth out the economy and herald "an end to boom and bust"? Could we have five-year plans?
Obviously the whole concept was incredible. Impossible. Philosophically a category error of misunderstandings. Besides, the compute that would be required would be unheard of and the Data far too big. Where could it all be stored? It was pie-in-the-sky. OK, so a cloud. Most people with a STEM degree would have looked out the window, scoped it out and shaken their heads.
Until Peter Turchin. Around 2005. Peter discovered that there was data from early modern England, the Han and Tang China, and the Roman Empire that related population, state stability, growth, food production and the state of social elites. He called subsequent studies cliodynamics – the dynamics of power. These seemed to be related in dynamical oscillations across decades. The behaviour predicted can be quite interesting, such as "elite overproduction".
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| Figure
1: Population-Instability cycle in England, from Turchin, P. (2005) Dynamical Feedbacks between Population Growth and Sociopolitical Instability in Agrarian States |
Dynamical means that the model predicts output from previous data using update rules (e.g. parents have children, surplus leads to more surplus). I first learned about dynamical models from the game Yellow RiverKingdom that came with the original BBC Micro. This was a port of the 1968 mainframe classic Hamurabi .
These games have the player as the manager of an agrarian society next to a river. You must manage population pressure, food production, famine, flooding, bandits, and social unrest. At first it is difficult to avoid instability: over-population, famine, flood deaths and so on.
So I looked at the BASIC source and wrote out the dynamical equations. Drew a few graphs. Used the game as a simulator. Soon I had stabilised society – with some effort – by raising the counter-bandit activity. The deaths of soldiers on counter-bandit patrols stabilised the runaway population explosion. Having done that, I found it easier to modify the BASIC code to make this easier to automate – Psychohistory in action!
The more alert reader might notice a similarity between counter-bandit patrols and having foreign wars of choice. As a tool of policy. You can – if you want – export instability. Second sons and all that. It might be more responsible to change your 'War Department' to a 'Ministry of Defence', and put more effort into foreign aid and exporting stability. This avoids what it called blowback.
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