22-07-2004 09:15									#91
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You inherently cannot make repeatable tests in psychohistory. That's the nature of the system. It can never be a science.

	22-07-2004 09:18									#92
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I just finished Ringworld about forty-five minutes ago. Excellent

	22-07-2004 09:19									#93
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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.

	22-07-2004 09:22									#94
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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.

	22-07-2004 09:52									#95
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Who knows, with infinitely more powerful computers, mathematics, and billions of worlds to study?

	22-07-2004 09:54									#96
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History only follows general patterns, and they aren't deterministic.

	22-07-2004 10:16									#97
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quote: 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.

	22-07-2004 10:19									#98
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quote: 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.

	22-07-2004 10:24									#99
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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.

	22-07-2004 10:31									#100
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quote: 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.

	22-07-2004 10:32									#101
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara History only follows general patterns, and they aren't deterministic.

You're a bad Marxist

	22-07-2004 10:47									#102
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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?

	22-07-2004 10:57									#103
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quote: 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)

	22-07-2004 12:32									#104
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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.

	22-07-2004 13:06									#105
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quote: 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!

	22-07-2004 13:14									#106
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quote: Originally posted by molly bloom I'd rather read an honest science fiction writer's work (or any other 'genre' novelist's for that matter) than yet one more f*cking tedious Anglo-French anti-novel or magic realist bowl of tripe, or 'Great American Novel' focussing on infidelity in commuter societies in Pennsylvania.

I don't know, The Secret Wives of Poughkeepsie was pretty good, though it did have the advantage of being set in New York rather than Pennsylvania.

	22-07-2004 13:29									#107
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Oh, and I have to agree with those who are underwhelmed by Douglas Adams. He's mildly amusing, but from the hype the man generated I expected a lot more.

I prefer fantasy to SF for the most part, though I've read a bit of both. Assuming that we are talking about speculative fiction in general, then some of my favorites are:

Roger Zelazny - I've read almost everything he's written, which I can't say for any other author in the genre. I like both his ideas and his style. Nonetheless he produced an uneven body of work, with some of his stuff barely able to hold together in novel length, but often worth the effort anyway.

Urslala K. Leguine - I read Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea Trilogy and something else that I can't remember the name of at the moment when I was about 17-19. She also has good ideas though they are less vicerally thrilling than Zelazny, and a decent writing style, and unlike Zelazny she is much more organized which gave every novel of hers I read a palpable impact on the largest scale.

Fritz Lieber - I've only read the Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser books, though I've read them all more than once. What can I say, the man is funny and his characters and world are interesting. These books provided me with many more laughs than Douglas Adams ever hoped he could provide, and did so with a vehicle which wasn't primarily comedic.

(edit: to make me look smarter than I am)

	22-07-2004 13:30									#108
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Isaac Asimov , Arthur C. Clarke , and Douglas Adams .

	22-07-2004 13:50									#109
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I also would like to mention the finnish SF-writer I've read quite a lot: Risto Isomäki.
He's very Green in his books.

	22-07-2004 19:53									#110
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WRT: Foundation debate. I suscribe to the theory that if it is in space and there are spaceships involved, it's sci-fi .

	22-07-2004 20:05									#111
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quote: Originally posted by Ramo You inherently cannot make repeatable tests in psychohistory. That's the nature of the system. It can never be a science.

All these arguements were the basis of Asimov's reluctant hero Seldon and morevoer one of the primary reasons for his reluctance.

He (Asimov through Seldon)likewise argued that the so called science of psychohistory was not necessarily predictive and used previous history to substantiate his theorums.

He also lays considerable groundwork for arguements that societal history is too complex to accurately model without tampering and computational techniques/methods that outstrip modern day mathematics and computers.

	22-07-2004 20:11									#112
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quote: Originally posted by ajbera You could set Romeo & Juliet in space, but that doesn't make it a science-fiction story. If the scientific aspects are mere trappings, it ain't sf.

The only books where scientific aspects aren't mere trappings are text books.

the science part of science fiction is either made up pseudo-science, or not fictional and merely a documentation of what is already done.

Take asimovs books, for instance. The entire premise of his robot stories was that an artificial brain is impossible to build without it being dependant on three magical rules to function. There is no explainable reason why a brain could not be constructed without these three rules, and no reason why the rules have to be what they are - It's just stated and taken for granted for the sake of the story.

	22-07-2004 20:17									#113
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quote: Originally posted by General Ludd The entire premise of his robot stories was that an artificial brain is impossible to build without it being dependant on three magical rules to function.

The entire premise was that the three rules were needed to keep humans safe from robots. In later stories some or all of the three rules were absent from robots, or else a fourth rule was added as well.

	22-07-2004 20:44									#114
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quote: Originally posted by loinburger The entire premise was that the three rules were needed to keep humans safe from robots. In later stories some or all of the three rules were absent from robots, or else a fourth rule was added as well.

I was talking specifically about the stories in I, Robot.

Through out I, Robot it is mentioned numerous times that a robot can not phsycially be built without the laws, and that even slight alterations in the rule will cause it to stop functioning properly.


I've only read one book in the detective series, but like in all science fiction much is stated and taken for granted in Caves of Steel aswell, otherwise it would be (among other things) an architectural and city planning textbook on building a megatropolis.

Of course, the most obvious piece of pseudo-science that is featured in all of his books without any scientific explanation is artificial intelligence. (Otherwise it'd be a ground breaking thesis on the development of intelligent robots and artifical life)

	22-07-2004 20:45									#115
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quote: Originally posted by loinburger The entire premise was that the three rules were needed to keep humans safe from robots. In later stories some or all of the three rules were absent from robots, or else a fourth rule was added as well.

You are correct... that humans feared robots is the reason for the rule, not that it was impossible to build a robotic brain without them.

	22-07-2004 20:49									#116
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quote: Originally posted by Ming You are correct... that humans feared robots is the reason for the rule,

Is that why they ended up becoming compliant slaves to them at the end of I, Robot?

	22-07-2004 21:11									#117
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quote: Originally posted by General Ludd I was talking specifically about the stories in I, Robot. Through out I, Robot it is mentioned numerous times that a robot can not phsycially be built without the laws, and that even slight alterations in the rule will cause it to stop functioning properly

His contention was that the three laws were engrained so deeply in the design history of robotic brains that to simply remove or alter certain pieces of the laws would cause unforeseen consequences without spending another 100 years starting from the simplest robotic brains and building forward.

In other words, it'd be like yanking two cylinders out of a 6 cylinder car and expecting it to work. It doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a 4 cylinder engine possible.

	22-07-2004 22:18									#118
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quote: Originally posted by KrazyHorse In other words, it'd be like yanking two cylinders out of a 6 cylinder car and expecting it to work. It doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a 4 cylinder engine possible.

That's a really good analogy.

	22-07-2004 22:22									#119
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Thank you.

	22-07-2004 22:34									#120
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Hm, tough call.

Philip K. Dick
Samuel R. Delany
Roger Zelazny

Unmentioned here but a huge fave because of his imagination and his dedication to
Making The Science Work -- Robert L. Forward.

Other faves -- Spider Robinson (Callahan stuff), LeGuin, Niven/Pounelle, Harry Harrison (Stainless Steel Rat), M. A. Foster (The Morphodite -- an awesome book).