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Watching the first episode of Foundation. A character claims he can predict when large empires will fall but can only explain it to a "mathematician conversant in ordinal analysis". Is this how physicists feel when they watch The Core?

Steve Haroz

@steveharoz.com

They describe a sample size of "trillions of people", but it's one empire. Their sample size for modelling empire collapse is one incomplete sample.

27/10/26, 5:54 am0 reposts3 likes

Todd Horowitz

@toddhorowitz.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy

14h

@steveharoz.com Psychohistory is not fictional statistics, it's fictional physical chemistry. Individuals are like atoms, the Empire is like a gas cloud. Asimov was a chemist.