In Anderson's Psychotechnic History, psychotechnics is a predictive science of society. As such, it has its limits and can be and is misused. When their predictions failed, the psychotechnicians should have admitted this, not lied. Still less, after being outlawed, should they have tried to regain power with a genetically engineered army. But the science survives its misuse. And philosophy survives the political manipulation of any particular set of philosophical ideas.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The mere fact the Psychotechnicians denied or lied about the failures of their "science" is a proof of how THEY themselves were all too predictably human, chaotic, and unpredictable. I suspect this was deliberately built into the series by Anderson, to give readers a hint on how he did not himself believe in Psychotechnology.
I have a somewhat vague recollection from the HARVEST series of how Avantism claimed to base its assertions on empirical and quantifiable scientific data.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Maybe the Avantists made that claim but a premise of the Psychotechnic History is that psychotechnics is a science with equations and some predictions that work.
Paul.
Basically, when humans want something really badly -- political fights for power are a good example -- they will believe that which gives them a prospect of getting what they want.
The psychological mechanisms are known, fairly well, but that doesn't mean you can stop them. The tendency is overwhelmingly powerful.
This is why science is having a "replicability crisis" right now, particularly in the 'soft' sciences.
The conclusions can't be experimentally reproduced because the will to believe distorted the original investigations -- mostly at an entirely subconscious level.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: And Stirling's comments helps to explain why the Psychotechnicians failed. Because the will to believe got in the way of OBJECTIVITY.
Mr. Stirling: And by their very nature, focused as they are on human beings, the "soft" sciences will never achieve the degree of "hardness" seen in chemistry, biology, physics, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
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