# isaac asimov



## NyQuilninja (Aug 9, 2019)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)

Was Issac Asimov right when he wrote the foundation series 
Here’s a quote that helps sum psychohistory 

The laws of history are as absolute at the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more."

Here’s a link to the books
https://archive.org/stream/AsimovTheFoundation_201705/Asimov_the_foundation_djvu.txt


----------



## Rand /pol/ (Aug 9, 2019)

I think he's a shitty author.


----------



## wylfım (Aug 9, 2019)

Dialectal materialism is one of the most low-effort metaphysical shitposts possible, it's literally not even an internally consistent position to hold.
So no, utterly wrong, and a communist to boot.


----------



## NOT Sword Fighter Super (Aug 9, 2019)

Ron /pol/ said:


> I think he's a shitty author.


Yeah, Issac Hayes was better.


----------



## Rand /pol/ (Aug 9, 2019)

wylfım said:


> Dialectal materialism is one of the most low-effort metaphysical shitposts possible, it's literally not even an internally consistent position to hold.
> So no, utterly wrong, and a communist to boot.





> REEEEEE GOMMIES


You seem kinda autistic bro.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 10, 2019)

I wasn't talking just about the author,
More so about the idea
 there might patterns to civilization that can be calculated and predicted
And if so,
Is they really chain of events once set into motion that can’t be undone?
Is humanity set to play out in predictable patterns that change very little ?


----------



## Marco Fucko (Aug 10, 2019)

NyQuilninja said:


> I wasn't talking just about the author,
> More so about the idea
> there might patterns to civilization that can be calculated and predicted
> And if so,
> ...



Personally I think that's a lazy answer. If everything's so pre-ordained behavior wise, then how do we come upon new technology and newer theories on social behavior, even if those may have alike precursors? That being said, the Empire is basically just the Fall of Rome in space, with the interjection of someone preparing for it and chronicling knowledge for whoever comes after the fall. I enjoyed the Foundation series in my teens, I'm especially fond of the Mule character.



wylfım said:


> and a communist to boot



This is as objectively incorrect as calling Nietzsche a Nazi. He was New Deal Democrat investigated by the FBI because the Communist Party considered him agreeable, he wasn't a member or proponent.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 10, 2019)

Marco Fucko said:


> Personally I think that's a lazy answer. If everything's so pre-ordained behavior wise, then how do we come upon new technology and newer theories on social behavior, even if those may have alike precursors? That being said, the Empire is basically just the Fall of Rome in space, with the interjection of someone preparing for it and chronicling knowledge for whoever comes after the fall. I enjoyed the Foundation series in my teens, I'm especially fond of the Mule character.
> 
> 
> 
> This is as objectively incorrect as calling Nietzsche a Nazi. He was New Deal Democrat investigated by the FBI because the Communist Party considered him agreeable, he wasn't a member or proponent.


I agree it’s kinda a lazy theory in principal 
But I do think there’s some truth to it.
There does seem to be an ebb and flow to civilization,
And there’s noticeable patterns to the way great empires grow and decay over time.
I do believe once certain events take place they have a snowball effect growing larger until its to late.
I wonder if an artificial intelligence could plan and predict events before they happen based off history ?


----------



## Damn Near (Aug 10, 2019)

science fiction is almost never good as literature. Like fantasy, it's really determined to get in its own way and shit its own pants while the reader observes, helpless


----------



## Lemmingwise (Aug 10, 2019)

NyQuilninja said:


> I wasn't talking just about the author,
> More so about the idea
> there might patterns to civilization that can be calculated and predicted
> And if so,
> ...



It only seems that there are patterns to civilization because we deeply crave to see patterns instead of the utter chaos that is reality. Civilization itself is a rebellion against that chaos and an attempt to set things in order and despite our obvious successes, it is an asymptote, an ever unachievable thing. No matter how absolutely extraordinary our technology is, we still have to deal with random failures and turn it off and on again in the hope that that will fix it. Sometimes things just turn off and never go on again. Like humans.

As said, foundation is basicly the fall of rome in a galactic empire (Asimov himself said that, too). Asimov was trained as a chemist so he transposed the idea of despite not being able to predict behaviour of individual molecules of gasses or liquids, that you could predict the aggregate behaviour of gasses or liquids. He also wrote it in a time when psychotherapy and psychology were so much the rage that L Ron Hubbard's nonsense book Dianetics becoming a best seller in the US.

In some sense it was the question: what if we could unlock and understand human behaviour that well, that you can influence civilization?

And of course he also explored various answers to that in the various books he wrote on it. What if you come across something completely unpredictable (the mule), what if another group has their own version of psychohistory and is also influencing results?

But in essence psychohistory is even theoretically an impossibility unless you had tremendous AI and data to work with and you'd have to have a monopoly on it too. That's the thing, as soon as this kind of ability/power/technology is in human hands, there will on the one hand be competition over who gets to pull the levers, as well as espionage or reverse-engineering to build their own levers.



Damn Near said:


> while the reader observes, helpless



Is this a comment on all fiction? Because it should be.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 10, 2019)

I think,
I know we’re your coming from
we humans are constantly struggling to bring order
To a world that has no order
We can’t control the weather or earths many natural disasters
Even
The universe with it’s vast expanse and the micro-verse
Adhere to laws that we can’t change
I suppose it only makes sense we try to bring some order and control to the world around us
Though the act of building civilizations even if the fight against the natural order of things[/QUOTE]


----------



## Terminus Est (Aug 10, 2019)

At the end of the day psychohistory never meant shit. Because 1 person got to decide the fate of mankind. And decided to choose "galaxia" and will inevitably turn everyone into a drone and individuality would die. Very sad. But also remember that psychohistory wasn't perfect. It was accurate as long as it didn't deviate in any form from Hari's plan and calculations. 

Psychohistory deals with many individuals. But the "group" must not change course and human nature must stay as it is. Be it that humans cause destruction on themselves or attain peace and harmony. But once something happens that does not match the "group" way of doing things, it all goes to shit. This isn't a spoiler but one such instance is "The Mule". It fucked up Hari's psychohistory for a long time and only thanks to the Second Foundation intervening and "fixing" things did Hari's calculations return to the path of psychohistory. And the immense power of the Second Foundation was literally all that could fix things. Without them it would have all been ruined.

But psychohistory is basically just "human history" and Hari's plan was only there to shorten the decay and decline of mankind. But history always repeats itself. And we are doomed as a species to fuck and unfuck ourselves in repeated cycles.


----------



## drtoboggan (Aug 10, 2019)

Asimov was an awesome writer. I'm actually rereading Foundation right now.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 10, 2019)

> But psychohistory is basically just "human history" and Hari's plan was only there to shorten the decay and decline of mankind. But history always repeats itself. And we are doomed as a species to fuck and unfuck ourselves in repeated cycles.
> 
> You are correct on that point
> And since the mule was the great unknown variable that couldn’t be predicted
> ...


----------



## Nu11ptr (Aug 10, 2019)

Anything can be similar if you strip enough detail away from it.  Viewed from a distance of a a few thousand feet, every screen becomes a single pixel.

I believe that the patterns we see are mostly born of confirmation bias due to the large sample size we currently find ourselves presented with.  If you slice a statistical model with a certain idea in mind, you can invariably make it speak for any point you wish.  If you want to see similar behaviors, you have literally millions of cases at your fingertips to select from.

An additional point of interest becomes that of novelty.  Is there any behavior that humans are currently exhibiting that they have not before?  One could argue that the influence of many humans (i.e. social trends) would lead to further sophistication of data sizes, expanding the size of your set (example: one person doing a hallucinogenic versus the use of hallucinogenics becoming commonplace).  The amount of interactions, however, provide for an almost unquantifiable number of novel situations to prevent themselves as once you start having to exhaustively map data sets to account for interdata relations you begin to expand at a prodigiously exponential rate.

Furthermore, the dogged march of technology means that humans are forever fated to be presented with new, interesting stimuli.  These technological changes can affect how humans communicate, inherently modifying what a social interaction is.  Fifty years ago, talking to someone on the phone would not be a ready substitute for a personal conversation, but in this day and age you can talk to people you will never meet in your lifetime via the internet and still consider them to be close friends.

Taken together, these would lead you to believe that the only human behaviors worth noting as repetitive would have to be those that have demonstrable social implications, while being rudimentary enough to stand the test of time, no matter how the human or his environment changes.  To be frank, the only things you would learn would be things that are regarded as common sense (i.e. "people crave power", "people crave self-affirmation", "collections of humans will generally provide for the weakest in the society" etc).  




Lemmingwise said:


> But in essence psychohistory is even theoretically an impossibility unless you had tremendous AI and data to work with and you'd have to have a monopoly on it too. That's the thing, as soon as this kind of ability/power/technology is in human hands, there will on the one hand be competition over who gets to pull the levers, as well as espionage or reverse-engineering to build their own levers.




As to being able to 'solve' psychohistory, I believe that determinism was officially slain by the rise of quantum mechanics, but if we're being realistic we know that the information paradox hasn't been satisfactorily proven yet.  Until such a time, I believe that given Laplace's Demon we could 'solve' human behavior.  I also believe, however, that collection of information on that level with regards to all humans would be a practical impossibility, especially since humans are not always honest with even themselves, often acting in an inconsistent manner based on current stimulus.  In any case, I believe it to be a moot point due to the effective predictability of the grand majority of humans.  Orange man bad, no?


----------



## Terminus Est (Aug 10, 2019)

drtoboggan said:


> Asimov was an awesome writer. I'm actually rereading Foundation right now.


Which order are you reading it in? 

Prequels first? Or main trilogy? Because I recommend reading the 2 prequels last. It ruins to many awesome moment for the main trilogy, Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth.


----------



## Terminus Est (Aug 10, 2019)

Lemmingwise said:


> psychohistory is even theoretically an impossibility unless you had *tremendous AI and data to work with* and you'd have to have a monopoly on it too.


It's called *R. Daneel Olivaw*


----------



## drtoboggan (Aug 10, 2019)

Phantom Cheese said:


> Which order are you reading it in?
> 
> Prequels first? Or main trilogy? Because I recommend reading the 2 prequels last. It ruins to many awesome moment for the main trilogy, Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth.


I'm reading the main trilogy first. I guess you could say I'm reading them in order of publication.


----------



## Lemmingwise (Aug 10, 2019)

Phantom Cheese said:


> It's called *R. Daneel Olivaw*



That's an odd way to spell cosmic AC.



> *The Last Question by Isaac Asimov © 1956*
> 
> The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21,  2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:
> Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.
> ...


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 10, 2019)

This has been the most thoughtful threads I’ve been in on 
I think I’ll get the old tomes out and give the foundation a reread
 it’s been awhile
 its odd to think that humans can be as unpredictable as the world around us
And yet 
sometimes just as predictable as the world around us
Despite are best efforts to think otherwise


----------



## Terminus Est (Aug 10, 2019)

Lemmingwise said:


> That's an odd way to spell cosmic AC.


Didn't read that wall of text.


----------



## Terminus Est (Aug 10, 2019)

drtoboggan said:


> I'm reading the main trilogy first. I guess you could say I'm reading them in order of publication.


Yeah that's good to read it that way. The 2 prequel books ruin way too many awesome moments. Or waters down very important moments. The prequels especially ruin a lot for Foundation and Earth


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 10, 2019)

Lemmingwise said:


> That's an odd way to spell cosmic AC.


That’s one of my favorites 
There’s a good audiobook of it


----------



## drtoboggan (Aug 10, 2019)

Phantom Cheese said:


> Yeah that's good to read it that way. The 2 prequel books ruin way too many awesome moments. Or waters down very important moments. The prequels especially ruin a lot for Foundation and Earth


I heard Foundation has retcons to fold the Robot trilogy into it so they're the same universe.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 10, 2019)

drtoboggan said:


> I heard Foundation has retcons to fold the Robot trilogy into it so they're the same universe.


Yeah I was wondering if his books were interconnected 
In a similar way Steven kings books are


----------



## Lemmingwise (Aug 10, 2019)

NyQuilninja said:


> Yeah I was wondering if his books were interconnected
> In a similar way Steven kings books are


They weren't at first, but he wrote them together in his later years.

People also forget just how fricking many books Asimov has written and published. People tend to think of Stephen King as a prolific author. He published about 65 books.

Asimov wrote 515 in his life, if you include all the educational ones and the collections (where he didn't write all stories in the collections). Without the collections it's somewhere in the 400. It's mind boggling.


----------



## Ashenthorn (Aug 10, 2019)

Ron /pol/ said:


> I think he's a shitty author.



Asimov could've been truly great if only his writing wasn't so goddamned *DRY*.
Even the worst RAH is more enjoyable than slogging through most of Asimov's textbooks "novels".


----------



## Terminus Est (Aug 10, 2019)

drtoboggan said:


> I heard Foundation has retcons to fold the Robot trilogy into it so they're the same universe.


That is correct. The robots novels are actually my favourite to be honest. Naked Sun being the best in my opinion. Elijah Baley was great. I wasn't planned to be part of the same universe. But Asimov managed to do it quite well and tie it all together nicely


----------



## Clop (Aug 10, 2019)

@Lemmingwise


----------



## AnOminous (Aug 10, 2019)

Ashenthorn said:


> Asimov could've been truly great if only his writing wasn't so goddamned *DRY*.
> Even the worst RAH is more enjoyable than slogging through most of Asimov's textbooks "novels".



His short stories were better than his novels and his nonfiction was better than his fiction. 

He also did some really great annotations of classic literature like Milton's Paradise Lost and Shakespeare, which he gets practically no credit for because "hurr durr science fiction writer."

And his book on algebra did more to teach me algebra than all of high school algebra.


----------



## Lemmingwise (Aug 10, 2019)

Clop said:


> @Lemmingwise


Weird how you mentioned me without it showing in your post.

Also.


----------



## Clop (Aug 10, 2019)

Lemmingwise said:


> Weird how you mentioned me without it showing in your post.
> 
> Also.


It didn't show because originally I quoted you, but since I wasn't referring to "That's an odd way to spell cosmic AC." I erased that bit and in response it didn't show quoting you at all. So I just edited the post to tag you, which doesn't notify anyone. I just wanted to post what I personally prefer as my philosophy to the eternal search for immortality.

Anything truly eternal or infinite loses its meaning and beauty, and I'm all for that beauty.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 10, 2019)

There's not a ton I can add to here other than to say that Galaxia and the Foundation probably don't belong in the same universe. Especially the choice between them at the end of Foundation and Earth feels almost like Asimov admitting he wrote himself into a corner and now he has no idea where the hell to go with the setting. Which, it literally was because he later stated he wrote the prequels because he was out of ideas for what to do next. I don't outright hate the idea of portraying a hivemind as potentially benevolent or at least an entity you can have friendly relations with, but it doesn't gel with the Foundation mythos.

Its kind of that original problem with SF where the premise is way more interesting than the execution. Foundation is very close to my heart since it got me into Classic SF, but the build-up to the decline of the Empire and its slow disintegration is far more interesting to read than what comes later. Also as much as he tried Asimov just couldn't create a character with as much charisma as Salvor Hardin had at the start, though The Mule made a heroic effort. His works are also quite dry and even cold at times. This certainly was a strength when he was writing about robots or borderline sociopaths with extreme self-confidence in their presumption that everything would work out in the end, but not so much for the rest of his characters.


----------



## Lemmingwise (Aug 10, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> There's not a ton I can add to here other than to say that Galaxia and the Foundation probably don't belong in the same universe. Especially the choice between them at the end of Foundation and Earth feels almost like Asimov admitting he wrote himself into a corner and now he has no idea where the hell to go with the setting. Which, it literally was because he later stated he wrote the prequels because he was out of ideas for what to do next. I don't outright hate the idea of portraying a hivemind as potentially benevolent or at least an entity you can have friendly relations with, but it doesn't gel with the Foundation mythos.
> 
> Its kind of that original problem with SF where the premise is way more interesting than the execution. Foundation is very close to my heart since it got me into Classic SF, but the build-up to the decline of the Empire and its slow disintegration is far more interesting to read than what comes later. Also as much as he tried Asimov just couldn't create a character with as much charisma as Salvor Hardin had at the start, though The Mule made a heroic effort. His works are also quite dry and even cold at times. This certainly was a strength when he was writing about robots or borderline sociopaths with extreme self-confidence in their presumption that everything would work out in the end, but not so much for the rest of his characters.



I thought it was really interesting reading foundation books that he wrote in his youth and those that he wrote with one foot in the grave. The latter being polished and stylisticly practised and the former being more a tour de force of ideas. I read them when I was young and I think it was the first I realised that easy to read is not always prefferable to worth reading.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 10, 2019)

Lemmingwise said:


> I thought it was really interesting reading foundation books that he wrote in his youth and those that he wrote with one foot in the grave. The latter being polished and stylisticly practised and the former being more a tour de force of ideas. I read them when I was young and I think it was the first I realised that easy to read is not always prefferable to worth reading.



I've noticed Classic SF gets this treatment a lot more as time goes on. I dunno if its a combination of hype or just modern expectations, but its really a genre that has its origins in highly educated people of mathematical or historical backgrounds positing what the future may look like. Its kind of watching one of those raw unedited tapes of one of the later moon landings. Its pretty boring for 90% of it. When I was younger and could sit still without needing a drink I used to have a lot more patience for the genre, but as time has gone on I've found it harder and harder to get into the classics. H Beam Piper's works are kind of my last bastion, but you could tell that man wanted to write Space Opera.


----------



## Lemmingwise (Aug 10, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> snip



I think it's just one of the perks of getting older. The wonder goes out of your eyes and instead of being enchanted by it you say  "this is some obvious bullshit".


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 10, 2019)

Lemmingwise said:


> I think it's just one of the perks of getting older. The wonder goes out of your eyes and instead of being enchanted by it you say  "this is some obvious bullshit".



Eh, there's more to it than that for me. I don't mind obvious contrivance in fiction since, well, its fiction. Its obviously going to be contrived. These days stuff just needs a little more meat to it. Revisiting stuff I liked as a kid and parsing out what held up was an interesting experience. I expected to hate most of it, but only ended up hating about half of it. 

Getting back on topic with Asimov, I can certainly see the dryness in his writing that people are complaining about. That said, one of his books I happened to not read when I was younger was Nemesis. Which Asimov once claimed was one of his favorites because it featured "aliens, sex, and alien sex", themes he always avoided in his other works for various reasons. Supposedly its a classic, but I've always been a little afraid to open it and find Asimov's stash of alien furry porn. Can anyone here confirm if it was any good?


----------



## Lemmingwise (Aug 10, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> Eh, there's more to it than that for me. I don't mind obvious contrivance in fiction since, well, its fiction. Its obviously going to be contrived. These days stuff just needs a little more meat to it. Revisiting stuff I liked as a kid and parsing out what held up was an interesting experience. I expected to hate most of it, but only ended up hating about half of it.
> 
> Getting back on topic with Asimov, I can certainly see the dryness in his writing that people are complaining about. That said, one of his books I happened to not read when I was younger was Nemesis. Which Asimov once claimed was one of his favorites because it featured "aliens, sex, and alien sex", themes he always avoided in his other works for various reasons. Supposedly its a classic, but I've always been a little afraid to open it and find Asimov's stash of alien furry porn. Can anyone here confirm if it was any good?



I don't remember reading it. I started out writing a long reply, but then realised I was thinking about "The Gods Themselves", which still remains the most interesting alien sex I've read, with an alien race of three different sexes and for a third of the novel you kinda follow three adolescents trying to figure out all parts of their reproduction, which was written like a good mystery thinking back to it.

Sorry, can't help you.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 10, 2019)

Lemmingwise said:


> I don't remember reading it. I started out writing a long reply, but then realised I was thinking about "The Gods Themselves", which still remains the most interesting alien sex I've read, with an alien race of three different sexes and for a third of the novel you kinda follow three adolescents trying to figure out all parts of their reproduction, which was written like a good mystery thinking back to it.
> 
> Sorry, can't help you.



Its actually possible I got them confused. The Gods Themselves has been sitting on my shelf for years anyway, so that's still useful info.


----------



## nonvir_1984 (Aug 10, 2019)

Lemmingwise said:


> They weren't at first, but he wrote them together in his later years.
> 
> People also forget just how fricking many books Asimov has written and published. People tend to think of Stephen King as a prolific author. He published about 65 books.
> 
> Asimov wrote 515 in his life, if you include all the educational ones and the collections (where he didn't write all stories in the collections). Without the collections it's somewhere in the 400. It's mind boggling.


Another hyper lexic was Georges Simenon a Belgian writer. He published nearly 500 novels and numerous short works and is best known as the creator of the fictional detective Jules Maigret. From 1921 to 1934 he used a total of 17 pen names while writing 358 novels and short stories.
He did all this while moving between Europe and the US and back again and being something of a mad rooter.


----------



## Lemmingwise (Aug 10, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> Its actually possible I got them confused. The Gods Themselves has been sitting on my shelf for years anyway, so that's still useful info.



I would consider the gods themselves worth rereading. If you're unsure, you can always just read the 2nd part only. First part is earth, second part is aliens, and third part is moon. I never liked the human parts much of that book, but the aliens bit is a proper good mindfuck... and it has interesting analogies with his own life.

In some sense it seems to be about his difficulties with married life as he seperated/tried again, published the book and then divorced and found a new partner that was much like one of the alien characters in some ways. A left em, so to speak.


----------



## Glad I couldn't help (Aug 10, 2019)

AnOminous said:


> His short stories were better than his novels and his nonfiction was better than his fiction.
> 
> He also did some really great annotations of classic literature like Milton's Paradise Lost and Shakespeare, which he gets practically no credit for because "hurr durr science fiction writer."
> 
> And his book on algebra did more to teach me algebra than all of high school algebra.


I loved his histories of Classical Civilization (Greece, Roman Republic, Empire and Byzantium), much better than his fiction, although I did enjoy his last novel, Nemesis.


----------



## wylfım (Aug 10, 2019)

Marco Fucko said:


> This is as objectively incorrect as calling Nietzsche a Nazi. He was New Deal Democrat investigated by the FBI because the Communist Party considered him agreeable, he wasn't a member or proponent.


Dialectal materialism is a Marxian philosophy. Just because he doesn't agree with the political views doesn't change the rest of the philosophy to be non-marxist.


----------



## TaimuRadiu (Aug 11, 2019)

The point of psychohistory was that it only worked if all people thought the same. Sociological trends are absolutely predictable, after a fashion, but Asimov was very much a SCIENCE! sort of person  and, according to one of his memoirs, was literally autistic.

He was an absolutely fantastic author and if it weren't for how his son turned out I'd call him righteous among the Hebrews.


----------



## ClickerCar (Aug 11, 2019)

I think I had to of been around nine or ten when I read his books, like the foundation series. I remember enjoying them, though not enough to now go back and re-read them. From the conversations it seems like there was more to it then I was able to grasp back then.

Maybe, ill have to revisit his stuff now as an adult.

I still have his 'Understanding physics' book, just not any of his others. Now im bummed. As well as not knowing he was jewish apparently. I have tended to separate the person from the work.

I also have the 'science fiction of Isaac Asimov' by Joseph E. which I haven't read. Wondering if anyone has and if I should bother reading it for myself.


----------



## AnOminous (Aug 11, 2019)

ClickerCar said:


> I still have his 'Understanding physics' book, just not any of his others. Now im bummed. As well as not knowing he was jewish apparently. I have tended to separate the person from the work.



Lol how the fuck could you not know someone named (((Isaac Asimov))) was Jewish?

Also he was an atheist anyway not that that is uncommon among Jewish intellectuals.


----------



## KimCoppolaAficionado (Aug 11, 2019)

Damn Near said:


> science fiction is almost never good as literature. Like fantasy, it's really determined to get in its own way and shit its own pants while the reader observes, helpless


Confirmed for having read Honor Harrington or other pulp and nothing else.


----------



## Damn Near (Aug 11, 2019)

Senior Lexmechanic said:


> Confirmed for having read Honor Harrington or other pulp and nothing else.


shut up, fag


----------



## XYZpdq (Aug 11, 2019)

It's been a while but iirc Psychohistory is basically like the Three Robotic Laws, a plot convenience for a bunch of The Way Things Are Supposed To Go so the plot can do something else?

I love the short stories of the first book (publication order) and increasingly less loved the subsequent ones. After the two partner with the weird attempt at sexing things up I stopped.


----------



## Large (Aug 11, 2019)

Damn Near said:


> science fiction is almost never good as literature. Like fantasy, it's really determined to get in its own way and shit its own pants while the reader observes, helpless


Not really, it's just extremely easy to write a fantasy/sci-fi book with no talent and no experience and have it considered decent/good by most people.
Proof:








						Eragon (The Inheritance Cycle, #1)
					

An alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780375826696 can be found here.  One boy... One dragon... A world of adventure.   When Eragon finds ...



					www.goodreads.com
				



Book series written by a 15-year-old boy and published by his parents. 4/5.


----------



## ClickerCar (Aug 11, 2019)

AnOminous said:


> Lol how the fuck could you not know someone named (((Isaac Asimov))) was Jewish?
> 
> Also he was an atheist anyway not that that is uncommon among Jewish intellectuals.



For the same reason someone names their kid apple, im not going to assume they come from a tree. haha, but ya. I disagree with the thought that someone is born, jewish, christian, muslim, whatever. I remember a text book from school, that tried to paint that very idea. To me, people are just born human and anything else is just indoctrination and projection to the level of child abuse.

Like how is anyone, especially a kid who can't even read yet or talk, let alone formulate idea's, somehow conform to a religious ideology. Let alone come into the world and with their first words, say hey doc, id much appreciate it if you take a knife to my dick. Or if a gal, say hey shaman, cut off my clit, cuz it goes against my tribes beliefs for me to enjoy pleasure when im an adult and will be a nuisance once im forced into a marriage.


----------



## AnOminous (Aug 11, 2019)

Not very fun fact:  Isaac Asimov died of AIDS.

He contracted it from a blood transfusion after surgery, following a heart attack.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 11, 2019)

TaimuRadiu said:


> He was an absolutely fantastic author and if it weren't for how his son turned out I'd call him righteous among the Hebrews.



I've heard Robert Mueller was involved in David Asimov's case. Anyone here know if there more to that connection or was that just a coincidence used as ammo against him in the whole Mueller Report shitfest?


----------



## AnOminous (Aug 11, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> I've heard Robert Mueller was involved in David Asimov's case. Anyone here know if there more to that connection or was that just a coincidence used as ammo against him in the whole Mueller Report shitfest?



Looks like everyone from the investigators to the judge to the local DA to the FBI fucked it up and Mueller inherited the case.

https://archive.md/Cknfg#selection-481.511-487.211


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 11, 2019)

AnOminous said:


> Looks like everyone from the investigators to the judge to the local DA to the FBI fucked it up and Mueller inherited the case.
> 
> https://archive.md/Cknfg#selection-481.511-487.211



I recall you once said something somewhere of there being no magic "Jew Button"/Money Button (Green Alert?) to just delete court cases but if anything this makes me think it may exist. I have to wonder if Asimov's estate didn't just drown this fucking shit in money and try to pretend it wasn't happening the whole time. I'm suprisied lunatics like David don't have threads.


----------



## AnOminous (Aug 11, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> I recall you once said something somewhere of there being no magic "Jew Button"/Money Button (Green Alert?) to just delete court cases but if anything this makes me think it may exist. I have to wonder if Asimov's estate didn't just drown this fucking shit in money and try to pretend it wasn't happening the whole time. I'm suprisied lunatics like David don't have threads.



He had a bunch of buttons.  Be the kid of a famous person and you don't need to be a fucking Jew to get special treatment.  He could also play the autism card.  It's pretty likely the case was deliberately fucked up to get him off because of connections or otherwise.


----------



## Lemmingwise (Aug 12, 2019)

ClickerCar said:


> For the same reason someone names their kid apple, im not going to assume they come from a tree. haha, but ya. I disagree with the thought that someone is born, jewish, christian, muslim, whatever. I remember a text book from school, that tried to paint that very idea. To me, people are just born human and anything else is just indoctrination and projection to the level of child abuse.
> 
> Like how is anyone, especially a kid who can't even read yet or talk, let alone formulate idea's, somehow conform to a religious ideology. Let alone come into the world and with their first words, say hey doc, id much appreciate it if you take a knife to my dick. Or if a gal, say hey shaman, cut off my clit, cuz it goes against my tribes beliefs for me to enjoy pleasure when im an adult and will be a nuisance once im forced into a marriage.



Protip: Not everyone who says x person is jewish is referring to religious status. It can also be a referrence to the genetic detail. It's confusing with jewish being the same word, but there ya go.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 12, 2019)

All jew sperging aside 
Here's an audiobook you may like
nemesis








						THE COMPLETE NEMESIS NOVEL BY ISAAC ASIMOV (AUDIOBOOK COLLECTION) - YouTube
					






					www.youtube.com


----------



## Y2K Baby (Aug 12, 2019)

Ron /pol/ said:


> I think he's a shitty author.


I think you are a faggot.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 13, 2019)

The Jew thing being mostly a joke, I have to admit that something that's been stuck in my head for awhile now is the sheer premise and world of The Naked Sun. 

A world where human beings are so absolutely repulsed by each other that they isolate themselves to the point where a few seconds of interaction with another person is revolting and traumatizing. The whole thing sounds like a bad SNL sketch about antisocial weirdos. Then his son gets picked up for CP, living alone in some random apartment complex on $3000 a month. Even his prosecutors said he never talked to anyone, never showed interest in anyone, never interacted with anyone unless he had to. 

Now we're all living in an age where people don't like venturing outside and everybody under the age of 30 lives on their computer. If The Naked Sun included an edgy hot take on pedophilia, it would pretty much be a snapshot of the actual future we're living in. That book actually scares the shit out of me even worse than 1984 or Brave New World ever could because it seems to be the most accurate and the lunatic who wrote it knows what he was talking about.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 13, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> The Jew thing being mostly a joke, I have to admit that something that's been stuck in my head for awhile now is the sheer premise and world of The Naked Sun.
> 
> A world where human beings are so absolutely repulsed by each other that they isolate themselves to the point where a few seconds of interaction with another person is revolting and traumatizing. The whole thing sounds like a bad SNL sketch about antisocial weirdos. Then his son gets picked up for CP, living alone in some random apartment complex on $3000 a month. Even his prosecutors said he never talked to anyone, never showed interest in anyone, never interacted with anyone unless he had to.
> 
> Now we're all living in an age where people don't like venturing outside and everybody under the age of 30 lives on their computer. If The Naked Sun included an edgy hot take on pedophilia, it would pretty much be a snapshot of the actual future we're living in. That book actually scares the shit out of me even worse than 1984 or Brave New World ever could because it seems to be the most accurate and the lunatic who wrote it knows what he was talking about.


Caves of steel was one that struck me as well
....".............
Over thirty of the fifty Outer Worlds, including my native Aurora, were directly colonized by Earthmen. Is colonization no longer possible?” “Well …” “No answer? Let me suggest that if it is no longer possible, it is because of the development of City culture on Earth. Before the Cities, human life on Earth wasn’t so specialized that they couldn’t break loose and start all over on a raw world. They did it thirty times. _But now, Earthmen are all so coddled, so enwombed in their imprisoning caves of steel, that they are caught forever.”_
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuUdrZOGTTxnegBzLtOSFmKARdrjLYpy4


----------



## TaimuRadiu (Aug 15, 2019)

Asimov was both a claustrophile and a self described generalist.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 15, 2019)

TaimuRadiu said:


> Asimov was both a claustrophile and a self described generalist.



In a way that makes his work almost prophetic since we have indeed ended up in a world that quite resembles what he was envisioning. Now it feels like everyone is like that. Nobody leaves the house and everyone's head is filled with useless trivia.


----------



## AnOminous (Aug 15, 2019)

TaimuRadiu said:


> Asimov was both a claustrophile



That's pretty autistic.  The hugbox is a thing for a reason.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 15, 2019)

AnOminous said:


> That's pretty autistic.  The hugbox is a thing for a reason.



When your kid ends up like David Asimov, that's pretty much the textbook DSM definition of autism. I once owned one of Isaac Asimov's books of completely useless trivia, literally called Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts, and it was laid out in a way similar to TvTropes or something despite being published in the 1980s. I think this guy predicted autism on the internet.


----------



## TaimuRadiu (Aug 15, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> When your kid ends up like David Asimov, that's pretty much the textbook DSM definition of autism. I once owned one of Isaac Asimov's books of completely useless trivia, literally called Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts, and it was laid out in a way similar to TvTropes or something despite being published in the 1980s. I think this guy predicted autism on the internet.


He literally thought he was autistic and said his son had been diagnosed as such in the 60s.

Also, he modeled the Caves of Steel and Trantor on NYC. Space Kowloon is probably what we're going to get, though.


----------



## AnOminous (Aug 15, 2019)

TaimuRadiu said:


> Space Kowloon is probably what we're going to get, though.



That would be pretty cool, though.  At least if you could somehow do it without the rats and filth and only the fun crime.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 15, 2019)

AnOminous said:


> That would be pretty cool, though.  At least if you could somehow do it without the rats and filth and only the fun crime.



Harry Harrison has you covered with Stainless Steel Rats and dropping anvils on robots.


----------



## XYZpdq (Aug 15, 2019)

iirc Issac said if he hadn't ended up an author he would have liked to be a newsstand/bookseller in an NYC subway station, which to be fair sounds pretty comfy


----------



## AnOminous (Aug 15, 2019)

XYZpdq said:


> iirc Issac said if he hadn't ended up an author he would have liked to be a newsstand/bookseller in an NYC subway station, which to be fair sounds pretty comfy



That way he could watch the trains all day, like a frigging sperg.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 16, 2019)

You know I wonder how many famous authors are a little bit exceptional. looking into Isaac Asimov he definitely looks like he's on the spectrum.
 I bet even Stephen King is to, 
definitely Lewis Carroll he was a pedophile sperg


----------



## TaimuRadiu (Aug 16, 2019)

You don't have to be autistic to be a pedophile.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 16, 2019)

TaimuRadiu said:


> You don't have to be autistic to be a pedophile.


 however in the case of Lewis Carroll he was indeed a pedophile sperg


----------



## TaimuRadiu (Aug 16, 2019)

NyQuilninja said:


> however in the case of Lewis Carroll he was indeed a pedophile sperg


Yeah, when I learned about the story behind the Alice books I was... horrified


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 16, 2019)

TaimuRadiu said:


> You don't have to be autistic to be a pedophile.



Either way they found way more than just pedo shit when they raided David Asimov's place. Not just fucked up porn, but everything. The guy archived nearly everything he touched. They even tried to use that in his defense since about 3/4ths of the stuff police collected was mundane crap like old TV shows or whatever. Again, saving a bunch of shit is not really uncommon these days since now everyone pirates a mountain of content, but the sheer amount of it is pretty staggering.


----------



## TaimuRadiu (Aug 16, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> Either way they found way more than just pedo shit when they raided David Asimov's place. Not just fucked up porn, but everything. The guy archived nearly everything he touched. They even tried to use that in his defense since about 3/4ths of the stuff police collected was mundane crap like old TV shows or whatever. Again, saving a bunch of shit is not really uncommon these days since now everyone pirates a mountain of content, but the sheer amount of it is pretty staggering.


Could have been some stuff he had that he could presume were legal, like Traci Lords videos or that one movie where Linda Lovelace has sex with a dog or... whatever was advertised in small print in the back pages of Hustler

(I'm not defending this, just pointing out that king autist there might have been unfamiliar with what may or not be legal)


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 16, 2019)

TaimuRadiu said:


> (I'm not defending this, just pointing out that king autist there might have been unfamiliar with what may or not be legal)



That was pretty much what his defense said, though there were several _thousand_ disks, some 4000 or so, and about 1000 of them contained graphic illegal content. My guess is that David Asimov was running the 1990s equivalent of a torrenting site. Illegal content distribution sites and other smugglers used to proudly display the fact that they would trade you/host anything you wanted to see. Then CP became a huge thing and now everyone has sort of decided to rethink that whole paradigm.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Aug 16, 2019)

Makes sense  
I had friends in high school  
that were obsessed which trading files over leapftp
and would download just about anything without checking it first
even AOL clubs and yahoo clubs would have all shorts of random shit  
it wasn't uncommon to randomly come across cp


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 16, 2019)

NyQuilninja said:


> Makes sense
> I had friends in high school
> that were obsessed which trading files over leapftp
> and would download just about anything without checking it first
> ...



My depressive personality prevents me from giving David Asimov the benefit of the doubt here though, unless he was so autistic that he trickfucked his computer into having some kind of program where the file would download and them immediately be copied to the disk. I figure that would have come up in his defense trial though.


----------



## TaimuRadiu (Aug 16, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> That was pretty much what his defense said, though there were several _thousand_ disks, some 4000 or so, and about 1000 of them contained graphic illegal content. My guess is that David Asimov was running the 1990s equivalent of a torrenting site. Illegal content distribution sites and other smugglers used to proudly display the fact that they would trade you/host anything you wanted to see. Then CP became a huge thing and now everyone has sort of decided to rethink that whole paradigm.


>tfw you come across porn images with someone's BBS number on them


----------



## Shoggoth (Aug 16, 2019)

wylfım said:


> Dialectal materialism is one of the most low-effort metaphysical shitposts possible, it's literally not even an internally consistent position to hold.
> So no, utterly wrong, and a communist to boot.


I don't think he was suggesting dialectical materialism as much as applying statistical mechanics principles to human behavior. You'll bleed from your eyes before being able to descrbine what a thousand particles will do, be 6e23 particles? easy.





						Statistical mechanics - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				



Also keep in mind the entirety of the foundations' plans have a wrench thrown in them by one individual, because statistical methods by definition can't handle outliers. So he set up a thought experiment and tore it down all by himself.


----------



## AnOminous (Aug 16, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> My depressive personality prevents me from giving David Asimov the benefit of the doubt here though, unless he was so autistic that he trickfucked his computer into having some kind of program where the file would download and them immediately be copied to the disk. I figure that would have come up in his defense trial though.



It was mountains of shit like VHS tapes and VCRs too.  He was probably trafficking.


----------



## wylfım (Aug 16, 2019)

Shoggoth said:


> I don't think he was suggesting dialectical materialism as much as applying statistical mechanics principles to human behavior. You'll bleed from your eyes before being able to descrbine what a thousand particles will do, be 6e23 particles? easy.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


You could probably argue the book takes a stance against dialectical materialism, but OP's presentation was clearly edging on the topic, and the distinctions between dialectical materialism and psychohistory are pretty thin.
Ted Kaczynski has a pretty compelling argument for why any important historical event is necessarily unpredictable, in his section _SOME PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY_ from _Industrial Society and it's Future_. The gist of it is that any change radical enough to alter the course of history will also alter the environment of the society it is in, to a degree that the net effect is impossible to discern.


----------



## MarvinTheParanoidAndroid (Jan 5, 2020)

He wrote a scathing review on 1984 that reads more like it was written in the interest of spiting Orwell more than it was in actually evaluating the work by its own merits, possibly because he resents even the most fringe possibility of standing in Orwell's shadow. I say this because most of his criticisms are just out of hand dismissals or holding the book to unrealistic expectations. It reads like one of Spoony's anti-Trump rants on Twitter. He would froth at the mouth to learn that 1984 recently became a #1 best seller if he were still alive.

I was going to give examples of some of the worst quotes, but I don't feel like it. So here it is.



> *REVIEW OF 1984*
> 
> 
> By Isaac Asimov
> ...


----------



## Y2K Baby (Jan 5, 2020)

MarvinTheParanoidAndroid said:


> He wrote a scathing review on 1984 that reads more like it was written in the interest of spiting Orwell more than it was in actually evaluating the work by its own merits, possibly because he resents even the most fringe possibility of standing in Orwell's shadow. I say this because most of his criticisms are just out of hand dismissals or holding the book to unrealistic expectations. It reads like one of Spoony's anti-Trump rants on Twitter.
> 
> 
> 
> I was going to give examples of some of the worst quotes, but I don't feel like it. So here it is.


Based tbh.


MarvinTheParanoidAndroid said:


> He would froth at the mouth to learn that 1984 recently became a #1 best seller if he were still alive.


Cringe-worthy.


----------



## XYZpdq (Jan 5, 2020)

Issac Asimov said:


> This is an extraordinarily inefficient system of keeping everyone under
> control. To have a person being watched at all times means that some other
> person must be doing the watching at all times (at least in the Orwellian
> society) and must be doing so very narrowly, for there is a great
> ...


hahaha holy shit this is literally TJ Church grade sperging
the point is that they don't give a shit and will squash you like a bug if they even think something's up, not that they're accurately reading the Outer Party and would go "oh okay he raised his eyebrow a third of an inch so it's okay"


----------



## AnOminous (Jan 5, 2020)

I like calling him Isaac Azathoth for no reason at all.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Jan 6, 2020)

I hadn't realized Isaac Asimov
Was such a spurg


----------



## Y2K Baby (Jan 6, 2020)

NyQuilninja said:


> I hadn't realized Isaac Asimov
> Was such a spurg


His heart's in the right place though.
Fuck Orwell.


----------



## Billy "the Bot" Bobson (Jan 6, 2020)

The only predictable things in human life is death and suffering. There is no rhyme or rhythym to it, but it will always happen gauranteed.


----------



## Y2K Baby (Jan 6, 2020)

Billy "the Bot" Bobson said:


> The only predictable things in human life is death and suffering. There is no rhyme or rhythym to it, but it will always happen gauranteed.


Shut up, faggot.


----------



## NyQuilninja (Jan 6, 2020)

Y2K Baby said:


> His heart's in the right place though.
> Fuck Orwell.


Orwell Fabian socialist who later in life snitched out his fellow communist so a true lefty


----------



## Otterly (Jan 6, 2020)

AnOminous said:


> His short stories were better than his novels



agree with that. Huge fan of golden era scifi and almost all the best stuff is the short story types (probably because of astounding and amazing magazine being the major publishing format.)

I haven’t read any of his nonfiction, but I shall remedy that.


----------



## Y2K Baby (Jan 31, 2020)

Asimov >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> shit >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Orwell.


----------

