Marvin wrote: >Ok, this one's kind of a cheap shot, I admit. > >I recently began reading Benford's _Foudation's Fear_. Reading about >Nick's Arnet's career projects and watching all the commercials during the >Superbowl yesterday brought me to a conclusion. Psychohistory, or some >form of predictive sociology, will be developed by advertisers and >lobbyists who are constantly looking for ways to change mass behaviors to >their own advantage. That's because advertising gets all the big bucks, >and because to reliably change future behavior you have to be able to >predict responses to stimuli. > >These disciplines leave out much of the question of how we arrived at a >given state, however, which also must be taken into account by any decent >science. Also, I'm wondering if email groups might make a fertile ground >for basic psychohistorical research simply because here is a place where >personalities interact, laden with the baggage of ego but not with the >baggage of having to survive. (I.e., we don't argue with each other as a >way to compete for resources, which might simplify observations and >analysis.) After all, predicting that two tribes will come into conflict >once they start competing for resources isn't terribly hard work. The >trick would be looking at the ideas at work and predicting how the >conflict would come out, which would imply some kind of analysis of memes >and the sorts of egos a society tends to produce. > >So...any thoughts?. > >
First, Marvin, how dare you start a thread on the Brin list that actually has something to do with David Brin. I'm shocked and dismayed ;-) Actually, it has two things to do with Brin; one, Brin writing about psychohistory as part in the new trilogy, and two, Brin's writing on memes. On second thought perhaps those two things are really the same. If different ego types are discussed in terms of memes (the "type a" meme, the disgrutled engineer meme, also known as the Dilbert, etc.), then maybe psychohistory is just memetics (if genetics is the study and manipulation of genes, then memetics would be the study and manipulation of memes). Just a thought. Reggie Bautista [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
