a controlled economic cycle
efficient city distribution
currency stabilization
a move "'...away from barbarism toward the first really mature civilization...'" (p. 43)
In a mature civilization, everyone will be sane - but that time is not yet.
Robert Heinlein's Future History Time Chart culminates in the first mature civilization but we do not see it. (I do not count Time Enough For Love.) In Question And Answer, it will turn out that psychocrats are manoeuvring mankind down too safe a path. Lorenzen's misgivings at the end of CHAPTER V foreshadow the end of the novel. He reflects that psychocrats, like engineers, cannot be elected and must remain advisors but there is a dangerous social habit of letting advisors lead.
11 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't believe that kind of "mature" civilization will ever exist, even if Anderson sometimes played with that idea--and eventually rejected it.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think he rejects it here. The view that I summarized was attributed to one of the characters.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I am not surprised, by the time Anderson wrote QUESTION AND ANSWER, he was moving away from impossibilities like "predictive sciences" of humanity.
Ad astra! Sean
See "Chaos Theory" for the limits of predictive science even for things like classical physics.
A equation for a physical system like atmosphere of the earth has "sensitive dependence on initial conditions". I.e: change something minutely for the start of the calculation and conditions become *very* different later on. This is why weather forecasts get more inaccurate the more days in the future they are.
See also the 'three body problem' in celestial mechanics.
How much less predictable is something as complex as a society of millions of humans?
Jim,
Society is indeed complex and is composed of billions of complex individuals.
Predictive science deals with empirically observable objective phenomena whereas states of consciousness are subjective. (Objectivity is an intersubjective consensus, thus an abstraction from the subjective-objective totality.)
If a self-conscious being knows that it has been predicted that he will perform a particular action, then he might deliberately act otherwise.
Paul.
Kaor, Jim and Paul!
Jim, I have heard of the chaos theory and the three body problem. I esp. recall how large a role the concept of chaos played in Anderson's Time Patrol stories. Esp. in "Delenda Est" and THE SHIELD OF TIME.
Paul: Ha! If I ever find out such a prediction was made about me, I too might act otherwise, just to tick off the predictors!
Ad astra! Sean
paul: very true.
You can make -general- predictions about human behavior, but not particular or detailed ones.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It's also possible to predict what will likely happen from trying out bad ideas--esp. if precisely the same failed ideas were attempted in the past.
Ad astra! Sean
I was just listening to "Quirks and Quarks" a science show on CBC Radio. One of the items was about studying just how far back or forward in time the motions of the planets can be calculated with any reasonable accuracy. The astronomers tried including the effects of a relatively close pass by another star based on data from the Gaia space telescope. This reduces the time scale for accurate prediction considerably.
I suppose the effects of contact with other intelligence would make any science of human society even less able to make predictions than without the outside influence.
Kaor, Jim!
Exactly! It's going to be predict what will be the likely consequences of mankind making contact with non-human intelligent races from other planets. I like how Poul Anderson gave us some speculations about that in "The Word to Space."
Ad astra! Sean
Grrrrrrr! I omitted a word. I meant to write above "It's going to be IMPOSSIBLE to predict what will..."
Sean
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