Socionomics: the Science of History and Social Prediction 326
| Socionomics: the Science of History and Social Prediction | |
| author | Robert R. Prechter, Jr. |
| pages | 900 + |
| publisher | New Classics Library |
| rating | Oustanding |
| reviewer | Fred Reynolds |
| ISBN | 0932750575 |
| summary | A new science of human social prediction |
Yet...it's also easy to see that people do a lot of nutty things, and usually do so in groups. They wear leg warmers, wide neckties, then narrow neckties. Long skirts, short skirts. No skirts. Paisley. They ride roller skates, then scooters. They buy Pet Rocks, collectible Beanie Babies, and stocks of dot-com companies with no profits and no business plan. They ingest odd substances, and subscribe to odd belief systems. They also fight wars, and blow up themselves and others.
This jackass behavior has lead to some telling but apparently casual observations, such as this gem by Charles MacKay: "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." Offhand observation aside, it remains true that the non-rational behavior of human beings in society has usually made monkeys out of those who seriously attempt to forecast it.
This is why Robert Prechter's 2-volume opus Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction is such a joy to read. It's a credible and provocative attempt to found a predictive science of human social behavior. It's also a truly different work. The number of new propositions and arguments advanced in Socionomics is matched by their highly controversial nature, and by the amount of evidence put forth by Prechter and his co-authors. Readers looking for non-fiction that is wide in scope, provocative, and meaty will enjoy these two books.
What's It All About?
It's helpful to think of Prechter's massive argument as if it was structured like an hour-glass. The first volume of the set, The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior and the New Science of Socionomics (hereafter: HSB) is the fat upper part of the glass. It provides the theoretical justification for a shorter set of linked propositions or principles that constitute the narrow neck. The second volume,Pioneering Studies in Socionomics (hereafter: PSS) consists of a series of essays and articles that apply those principles to a wide swath of human endeavor: music, sports, politics, war and peace, scientific and intellectual trends, religion, economics and finance. This is the fat bottom of the glass, the payoff of analysis and prediction.
The Propositions
Socionomics has been defined as
the field of study encompassing the origins and effects of an endogenous human social dynamic called the Wave Principle, a specific sequence of progress and regress that regulates the complex system of collective mood and social interaction. It examines and forecasts market and social trends on the following basis: that the character of social, political, cultural, financial and economic trends are the product of collective human psychology, which is based upon an unconscious herding impulse deriving from pre-rational portions of the brain.
This definition shows why Socionomics... is a two-volume set: it's not easily summarized.
Any science must have a way to measure its subject. Prechter claims that human social behavior can be measured with several meters, but the most accurate meter is the movement and fluctuation of economic values, as expressed in stock markets every trading day. He believes that markets provide a real-time reflection of the collective social mood. Measuring social mood is important because:
1. The events of history and culture are driven by the engine of collective social mood. Social mood temporally and logically precedes social events, and is the cause of social events. War and terrorism don't cause distressed people; distressed people create the conditions and events that lead to and comprise war and terror. A booming economy does not create ebullient people; ebullient people produce more, consume more and participate in and contribute to market manias.
2. Social mood is itself the product of the interaction of the society's members. Collective mentation -- herding -- arises from the interaction of the players in a process similar to the emergent behavior of other complex, non-linear systems. Prechter quotes philosopher Eric Hoffer: When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
3. Social mood fluctuates between polarities of primitive emotional states, such as confidence/fear, skepticism/credulity, optimism/pessimism, benevolence/malevolence, etc. These fluctuations are not effected by outside events, but move according to their own internal logic. They appear to arise in a dynamic that is endogenous to the social system.
4. Social mood fluctuations are patterned by the [Elliott] Wave Principle, a specific sequence of progress and regress that regulates the complex system of collective mood and social interaction. Prechter cites the work of market analyst R.N. Elliott, who, in the 1930's, discovered the patterns in the markets that bear his name. These patterns -- Elliott waves -- are measurable and may be charted.
5. Elliott waves, which are typically used to chart and forecast the movement of stock market valuations, are self-similar at different degrees of scale; i.e. a monthly chart of the Dow looks a lot like a weekly chart, or a 5-minute chart...or a 5-decade chart. Elliott apparently discovered that the market movements are fractal, decades before Mandelbrot invented the term and took credit for that observation.
6. The specific patterns described by Elliott Waves are in close relation to the Fibonacci sequence of numbers. The Fibonacci sequence, and the Fibonacci ratio derived from it, appear ubiquitously in natural forms ranging from the geometry of the DNA molecule to the physiology of plants and animals.
7. The behavior of these fractal, Fibonacci-based waves is specific and patterned. Hence, it is (probabilistically) possible to predict human social behavior.
Given the emphasis placed upon it, it's probably not too gross a distortion to define socionomics as the science of social mood: its genesis, behavior, and effects.
Justification
Any one of the propositions above is controversial; taken together they an extraordinarily claim. In the first volume of the set, Prechter attempts to provide extraordinary evidence to support his claims, and he makes a strong case.
HSB surveys the evidence of fractals and Fibonacci in nature and finance. Prechter sites study after study that finds the Fibonacci sequence in phyllotaxis, in branching or arboral systems, in nautilus shells, pine cones, the DNA molecule, neurons and galaxies ... and in the Dow, Nasdaq, and other market indices. The implication is clear: human social activities are a natural process, no less than the growth of trees or the formation of solar systems. For some readers, this tour-de-force alone may be worth the price of the book.
Prechter then leans heavily on Paul MacLean's book, The Triune Brain in Evolution to explain his endogenous herding impulse. MacLean and others have found evidence that the pre-reasoning limbic system may be hard-wired to herd or flock. The reasoning neocortex may override the impulsive, emotional limbic system if given sufficient time -- and in this possibility lies our experience of free will. But the emotional limbic system is faster and more powerful than the reasoning neocortex, and often wins out. As Prechter puts it: If you doubt its power and speed, try to envision how you would react if someone suddenly dumped a dozen writhing three-foot blacksnakes in your lap. Understanding that they are harmless, try to decide how long it would take you nevertheless to train yourself not to budge upon being surprised that way in the future.
Building on this theoretical base, HSB goes on to develop detailed statements about socionomics proper, statements that Prechter identifies as observations, not yet a hypothesis. He categorizes various social polarities that seem to characterize all social interaction. He traces -- measures -- the ebb and flow between these polarities with various social meters, including popular culture (movies, fashion, music, sports) and, of course, the stock market. For one example, there is a chart of baseball stadium attendance figures in the U.S. that sports a clearly developed Elliott Wave pattern. Based on the pattern, Prechter predicted that baseball's popularity would wain, as it subsequently has.
Application
Pioneering Studies in Socionomics continues this analysis of contemporary trends and events as seen through a socionomic lens. Here's a short list of grist for the socionomic mill: restaurants, Broadway, religion, central-banks (e.g. the Federal Reserve System), Pro Wrestling and the Bull Market, Microsoft, the attacks of 9/11, macroeconomics, and song lyrics. All of these human endeavors are found to fluctuate over time, in the now familiar fractal, Fibonacci-based Elliott waves.
Many Slashdot readers will be amused/intrigued/outraged by the chapter on quantum physics, and its parallel to the social sciences. Here Prechter sites the work (published and unpublished) of physicist Lewis E. Little. Little's thesis challenges the conventional view of quantum mechanics and presents a new theory that places activity at the sub-atomic level on the same grounds of cause and effect as all other physics. There's enough controversy in this chapter alone to merit a separate book!
What's Missing?
As sprawling as these books are, there is no discussion of methodology, seemingly a critical lacuna in the founding of a new science. In the hard sciences there is today little discussion of methodology; the discussion has concluded. In the soft or social sciences, entirely libraries could be filled with the debates on proper methodology. Which subjects should be chosen for research, and how should they be chosen? How should experiments be conducted? Or is experimentation possible? Or even desirable? Is the use of mathematics appropriate? If so, how?
Answers to these questions, which Prechter may provide in due time, are needed to defend what's proposed. For example, an easy criticism to make of the various essays in PSS is that the subject matter is cherry-picked, and that choosing different subjects may have yielded different results. The particular criticism may or may not be valid; it will take a methodological argument to answer.
A Closing Analogy
James Gleick's Chaos tells the story of the scientists and researchers who founded a new science. Over and over, they tell a similar story: that chaotic behavior was ever-present in the physical world, but dismissed as noise in the experiment. It required a profound shift in perspective to realize that the noise was worth studying.
Is Prechter, with his Fibonacci-based fractal waves of human social behavior and socionomic insight, correctly pointing out a similar need for a profound shift in perspective? Is the noise of pre-rational human social behavior worth studying? Does our future lie in our reasoning mind, or our prehistoric brain?
Some Useful Links
- The web site of the Socionomics Institute
- An overview of socionomics by John Casti, of the Santa Fe Institute.
You can purchase Socionomics: the Science of History and Social Prediction from bn.com -- the official release date is September 23rd. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Some Useful Links (Score:3, Informative)
An overview of socionomics by John Casti, of the Santa Fe Institute. [socionomics.org]
Isaac Asimov... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Isaac Asimov... (Score:2)
The Second Foundation has to remain hidden you know.
Re:Isaac Asimov... (Score:3, Funny)
I know that. What I want to know is where's my telepathic humaniform robots!? We already have the U.S. Robotics Corporation...
Re:Isaac Asimov... (Score:4, Insightful)
Like millions and millions of people, the foundation series has had a huge impact on me. Besides from the fact that I first read it when I didn't speak english, using a spanish-english dictionary to translate many many words, that it was the first sci-fi novel I ever read, and other such "specials" that make it such an influential story in my life, there's also the fact that a huge part of my life's philosophy is derived from this work:
One of the central themes of psychohistory is that sociological and even personal momentum can only be counteracted by an equal and different "force". In other words, if you've followed a path in your life, wether it is your career, romantic life, studies, etc., and have spent months or years in one direction, only a huge event in the opposite direction, or a path equally long also in the opposite (or just different) direction can change the course of that aspect of your life.
I've made many decisions to shape my life the way I wanted based on this principle. My marriage, my carrier changes (from technology to finance), weight loss, my relationship with my partnts. And they've all been conscious decisions, which makes it a lot easier when you need to find the willpower or patience to really commit to something.
In fact, it's work so well that you can almost believe there's a mathematical model behind it all.
Basically the bad news is that it's never easy and rarely quick. The good news is, it's ALWAYS possible.
Re:Isaac Asimov... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Isaac Asimov... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Asimov's psychohistory was a sham (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhm, Psychohistory wasn't a sham in the Asimov universe. Psychohistory was predicated on *human* behavior as a society. The Mule disrupted it because he was a *mutant*, a radical in the equation that threw everything off like a Visual Basic script-kiddy. However, the Second Foundation defeated him and returned the galaxy upon the Seldon course... Its like if Nostradamus had a powerful cult that policed our planet ensuring ev
Re:Asimov's psychohistory was a sham (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, I have a bone to pick with you. Where's my membership card? Did the mailman lose it again? If so, how come you guys couldn't predict that and sent the card via UPS or FedEx instead? Plus, I still don't have my ceremonial mask for the upcoming *Eyes Wide Shut* themed pot-luck!
Re:Asimov's psychohistory was a sham (Score:5, Informative)
Um, no.
Chaos theory has nothing to do with a lack of understanding of the underlying phenmonena. One of the first chaotic systems that was well studied after all was Isaac Newton's three body problem. Everyone knew how gravity worked between two bodies, but the greatest minds of two centuries could not figure out what happend with three or more bodies. Finally it was proven that except for a small handful of exceptions, there is no way to determine what three or more bodies will do to each other under the influence of gravity. (Fortunately for life on Earth, our solar system appoximates one of those handful of solutions.)
Chaos theory is not about the problems understanding the causes, but the problems predicting the effects.
Right (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Right (Score:2, Insightful)
It's easy for children:
When a parent asks you to do something, immediately say no.
When someone asks you to calm down, be louder.
When choosing between sweets and other, always choose sweets.
When you get a new toy, use it for a while, then try to destroy it.
Focus on any perceptible lack in your life and throw a fit of raging, pouty, indignant victimhood for each one.
Some days anyway...
Re:Right (Score:2)
Damn! That sounds like a few of the people I work with <grin>.
Human Behavior: Selfishness' not Only Factor (Score:2, Interesting)
Wrong. Human economic motivation is driven by two principal impulses: selfishness and compassion. Still, there is considerable variation across societies.
First consider Western society. Capitalism and free markets are essentially driven by selfishness. Each consumer and producer wants to maximize her own gain, regardless of the outcome to other consumers
Re:Human Behavior: Selfishness' not Only Factor (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly, a search on Google [google.com] for "John Nash Rational Actor" reveals a number of relevant articles, one of which suggests that Nash overstated his discovery's impact on economics [mises.org].
Re:Human Behavior: Selfishness' not Only Factor (Score:3, Insightful)
Wave Principle -> Traffic Jams (Score:3, Interesting)
What would be cool is to use the principle to cancel out traffic jams before they become huge jams.
-Cyc
Traffic Waves (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wave Principle - Traffic Jams (Score:5, Interesting)
It is reportedly working better than the previous (fixed speed) system though, with friends of mine who have to drive a car around the M25 claiming their journey time is shorter. Personally I've got a 'bike
Simon
Re:Wave Principle - Traffic Jams (Score:2)
Thanks for the explanation. Every time someone from the UK mentions a road designation, I spend a few moments thinking it is a nebula or star cluster.
Re:Wave Principle - Traffic Jams (Score:2)
Wrong type of waves (Score:4, Insightful)
The wave theory Prechter is talking about is the Elliott Wave Theory [elliottwave.com] addressing the cyclic nature of all aspects of human society including economic markets and cultural trends.
The waves describing traffic patterns come from fluid dynamics.
Prechter's theories may predict the number of cars on the road by looking at things such as good economy==move cars purchased, less use of mass transit vs bad economy==more two-income households, more commuters vs really bad economy==less two-income households because they can't find two jobs.
But that won't describe the behavior of those cars once they're on the road or explain why one interchange design is better than another. That's fluid dynamics.
My kneejerk response ... (Score:5, Funny)
People act without thinking?!
People follow the crowd in making bad decisions?!
People buy products without researching them?!
Bad products actually sell because of this?!
WOW!
Re:My kneejerk response ... (Score:2, Informative)
A terrorist attack on American soil a few days before 9/11
The dot-com bust before anybody was talking about it (a few years before it happened)
The gold market taking off well before it took off
He predicts deflation, common theory now, but he said this before anybody else was saying it.
His book is about prediction. But a certain part of the prediction depends on the theory of herding. The above (
Re:My kneejerk response ... (Score:2)
Thanks
Re:My kneejerk response ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone with even a basic clue, which evidently leaves out most economists, knew the dot-com boom was going to end. As I said, Amazon was worth billions and could be replicated with a million dollars and six months. Obviously even if the online book market was big enough other
Prediction (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Prediction (Score:2)
Sociology and Physics (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sociology and Physics (Score:2)
Re:Sociology and Physics (Score:3, Informative)
Eeh, not quite. August Comte coined the term "social physics" because he felt that the scientific study of society really was a positivist endeavor, one that built on and used the methods of physics, chemistry, and astronomy. It wasn'
Re:Sociology and Physics (Score:3, Informative)
For example, much of the effort in Biology has been spent in trying to explain how living systems work. Even now, we are pretty far from being able to predict how biological systems react to change. For a concrete example, take the theory of evolution. Darwin's work was done primarily to try and explain
Re:Sociology and Physics (Score:4, Informative)
However, simply collecting information is not science in and of itself; that information must be tied together in some way. The classic scientific method cycle of observation -> hypothesis -> experiment -> revision -> theory is one way to do this, but certain fields of study (paleontology, astronomy, climatology) have conditions that make the "experiment" step kind of hard. The usual response, and I think it's a valid one, is to substitute "more observation." And in the observational sciences, the theories that result, no matter how rigorous, tend to face a lot more controversy than those tested in the lab.
So is "socionomics" a science yet? I'm not saying it can't be, but I'm far from convinced that it already is. I'm willing to accept a lot of Prechter's observations as valid, but I also think that any theory of mass behavior has to be tested as rigorously as the assertions of those in the hard sciences before being accepted as valid. Generally, the performance of theory-above-all sorts (e.g. Marxists) in the world arena, vs. the historically-minded, intuitive pragmatists, isn't that great.
Re:Sociology and Physics (Score:2)
Theory, testing, revision. Part of the difficulty in Sociology is finding people (or stopping people) from making the experiments. I admit though, it would be nice if someone could come up with some theory or pattern that neatly followed Man from Sargon to salad forks and showed even a _little_ coherence in the predictive model. I'm not sure if we hav
What really affects how people behave (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What really affects how people behave (Score:2)
You must be a St. Louis Cardinals fan.
-Cyc
Re:What really affects how people behave (Score:2)
Re:What really affects how people behave (Score:2)
I just know people think the Cubs are "losey". :)
I don't know if it's the effect of those people around you that cause you to issue a statement like that or whether you keep up to date with current events in major league baseball. Right now, the Cubs are winning and contending for their first Division title in 14 years. Ahh, what am I doing, I shouldn't be pushin
Re:What really affects how people behave (Score:2)
Re:What really affects how people behave (Score:2)
You know, the people of England have a lot of nerve naming their country after my language.
Unlike some other languages, there is really no standards body that maintains the English language. Modern English, regardless, is a creole of French and Germanic languages with a whole lot of seasoning thrown in. It is impossible to speak of a "standard" English, and the UK is
Re:What really affects how people behave (Score:2)
Re:What really affects how people behave (Score:3, Informative)
I would like to offer this quote from the Oxford English Dictionary Newsletter for June 2002 [oed.com].
Re:What really affects how people behave (Score:2)
Yes. If you want a "canonical" reference, you can only go to Oxford.
But they don't set the standard--they merely report it.
Re:What is the English language? (Score:3, Insightful)
When I write professionally, British English is expressly forbidden from the journals I publish in. I would imagine that is because they are American journals. This is, effectively, an international website and no one adheres to any standards of any kind. You might want to try to write so that other people can understand you, but believe me there are people who do not. If I were to publish in an En
Re:What really affects how people behave (Score:2)
"Think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are dumber than that!" - George Carlin
Yes, I know he's confusing the mean with the median, but it's still funny :)
Re:What really affects how people behave (Score:2)
This might be the common attitude for Americans (IME, that is certainly true) but there are numerous cultures around the place that tend to "support the underdog" and do so proudly.
The "average" IQ is NOT 100 by definition. (Score:2)
Just like the "average" SAT score, it "drifts" from time to time, and at this point it needs to be re-centered. I recall hearing that it's somewhere between 105 and 110 at the moment (which seems like an improvement, but just as likely is due to the "test culture" in today's schools which obsessively prepares people for tests, but not the real world).
Re:What really affects how people behave (Score:2)
That's why we have Occam's Razor... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, I disagree (Score:2)
In my experience, not only is human stupidity infinite, but human irrationality is also unbounded. Even the most "irrational" economic models I've seen assume a certain level of implied rationalism which is sometimes completely lacking. But in business economics you can usually rationalize them away as being an insignificant por
Jargon. (Score:2)
Funny how sociologists write about how scientists use jargon to create a cult-like atmosphere impenetrable to outsiders while doing so themselves.
And how exactly is sociology a science? What theories does it have, and what predictions has it made that have come true?
--grendel drago
I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Prediction: Reducing enormous chunks of social behavior to Elliot waves (!) and Fibonacci series is going to turn out to be at least as much of an oversimplification as anything any economist has done.
Foundations (Score:3, Funny)
[grin, for the humour-impaired]
Simon.
A few moments more reflection ... (Score:4, Interesting)
A few moments more reflection, and I realize people occasionally do so, but not always. Even when they do try to act to further their own interests, they do so with inadequate and poorly-understood information, and often with poor understanding of basic logic. This throws a hell of a lot of noise into any theory based on humans acting out of self-interest.
Even aside from that, I think what happens at least as often is that people react emotionally, and then -- if they think they need to -- they come up with more-or-less logical-sounding "reasons" for their actions.
Re:A few moments more reflection ... (Score:2)
I could spend 30,000 dollars building the best rose garden in the world around my house, and is that "following my interests"?
It is, but only because having a really expensive rose garden is now defined as part of myself, and as part of my interests.
So really, the entire process is defined by tautology.
Even Monkeys are irrational this way (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Even Monkeys are irrational this way (Score:3, Interesting)
The price that two other parties negotiate for a unit of work should make no difference to you.
Why not? If I see that others are willing to pay more for the same work, I will naturally re-evaluate the value of my work and conclude that I can successfully demand more than I am currently getting. To NOT do that would be irrational.
Who said it? (Score:2)
Re:Who said it? (Score:2)
C'mon, those people get laid even less than geeks.
Re:Who said it? (Score:2)
Re:Who said it? (Score:2)
It's not entirely one way or the other (Score:2)
Totally selfless comment (Score:2)
So, like, let's say I'm performing the action of posting this comment to further my own interests. So, if I know this comment will get modded up, when I am in the action of posting it, you could, arguably, say that I acted in order to further my own interests, which is, in this cases, a higher karma. Take the second case. What if I knew this comment would not be modded up, but I posted it anyway. That would not b
Dow 777? (Score:2)
In this same book, he advises cashing out 401(k)s in spite of the penalties and buying gold and storing it in safety deposit boxes, etc. Unfortunatly, a friend of mine followed the advise and ended up in a much worse financial situation as a result.
I am not entirely sure its the same guy, as this is Prechter Jr. I've noticed joint publications of the Prechters. Fa
Predictions (Score:2, Informative)
(1) He predicted the dot-com burst and was calling for it when the dot-com's were strong. He was seen as extremely controversial in this respect and anybody who said this was considered an idiot who obviously did not understand the market. His predictions were based on the wave principle and also worked within other predictors in the market. Having read his theories, it is actually very impressive. To find more about his actual predictions on the market,
It has been obvious for some time that (Score:3, Informative)
It's a layman's Socioeconomic Theory of Everything!
Re:It has been obvious for some time that (Score:2)
You can find it by following links from a search engine called "google" here [aol.com].
sounds like Asimov and Hari Seldon should sue (Score:2)
Re:sounds like Asimov and Hari Seldon should sue (Score:2)
Austrian Economists actually explain human action (Score:4, Interesting)
It is the major alternative to traditional Macro-Econ and Marxism. Among the economists of this "school" of thought are Nobel Prize winners Freidrich Hayek and renowned economist Ludwig Von Mises. It explains all economics starting with the premise that all action occurs because people are uneasy. If they were not uneasy they would not act. People exchange act to exchange a less desirable set of circumstances for a more desirable one. What people desire is subjective but people arrange their wants in a scale choosing the most desired things and setting aside others they cannot have simultaneously. It then goes from there to develop theories of money, credit and the business cycle. They were the only ones to explain and predict the current economic malaise we are in now. A good sources for information on the Austrian School is Mises Institute [mises.org].
They have a free library of online books where you can read the classics. Among some of those I recommend are
Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth [mises.org] which gives some very interesting arguments as to why pure central planning is impossible that have to with problems of information distribution to the planners.
Economic Science and the Austrian Method [mises.org]. This is a good explanation of the school and why and how its methods and understanding are different from traditional macro econ.
Chaotic principle (Score:2)
But it's likely that such theories can be used to make models - like weather maps - that allow short-term prediction of events with a certain degree of accuracy.
hence my history degree (Score:3, Informative)
Pre-Law Degrees. (Score:2)
--grendel drago
Hegel and Marx (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hegel and Marx (Score:2)
How much? I think Marx (and don't forget Engels) had some really powerful ideas (most of them wrongheaded esp. about human nature and power), but don't try to hang the horrors of the 20thC on ole Karl. He was steadfastly anti-statist. I would point to totalitarianism as the real fuckall of the 20thC and it is still rearing its ugly head. Give Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" a whirl. It is turgid, but excellent and attacks both th
There are lots of other theories. (Score:3, Insightful)
After visiting the web site I can't say I'm a fan of "socionomics." It's like socio-economics, but half-ass. When I pulled up the "manifesto" I felt like I was reading the works of some of Karl Marx wannabe.
I don't think this guy has spent enough time doing sociological and anthropological research. I understand the cheesy "wave effect"
Things get good, people get happy and apathetic, people get taken advantage of in that state, things get bad, people get pissed, people fix what's wrong, people work hard for things to get good, things get good, people get happy and apathetic, etc etc
As over simplified as that may be, it's important to realize that not every society in the world works like this. You really need to look a broader perspective in order to get some sound research.
A quote comes to mind... (Score:3, Interesting)
Self-interest is rarely the main driving force in our life. To accept the idea that you are driven by self-interest is demeaning. ... It's like admitting
that you are essentially a dog, whose major preoccupation is five o'clock, when
the little food pellets go into your bowl.
-- John Ralston Saul, "A Wondrous Uncertainty" in Queen's Quarterly, Spring 2002
Re:A quote comes to mind... (Score:2)
One thing that seperates thinking humans from animals is our ability to delay gratification, to do something that has no reward now, in order to get a reward later (e.g. work late), or to avoid somethign that would be nice now, in order to avoid a penalty later (e.g. don't overeat).
I would say that long-term enlightened self-interest is usually the main driving force in our lives
Re:A quote comes to mind... (Score:2)
IMHO hedonism is equally valid and consistent as any other moral theory. Just remember that it does not mean naive pleasure-seeking; and that self-interest is not always in conflict with the interest of others.
Ultimate Test (Score:2, Funny)
What part of this should shock us? (Score:2)
Okay, the apparent reversal of cause and effect may come as a surprise to some people, but if we consider it from the perspective that backcasting sometimes yields more stable and accurate results than forecasting, it doesn't really take any major leap-of-faith to agree.
So... Why the big deal? Perhaps someone more familiar with this field
WARNING: Spoiler (Score:2)
Prediction?! (Score:2)
Seriously though, I'd be cool to see a website with a graphical view of some of the things he's talking about. Shouldn't be to hard to put together assuming you know the math.
Non-rationality in Social Structures (Score:2)
Though this may happen most of the time, a lot of fascinating research (beyond this book) explores times when it doesn't. For example, Jean Ensminger at Caltech has been doing a series of games with various cultures around the world (involving sizable chunks of cash so participants should rationally try to do well).
One game is the "Ultimatum" game. Person 1 gets to decide how to split up $X between himself and person 2 (whose identity is unkn
Re: (Score:2)
my argument (Score:2, Informative)
In any scientific endeavor, methodology is CRITICAL. It's awfully hard to believe the measures and subsequent analysis if there is no basis for what is trying to be proved or disproved. Not only that, if the guy indeed is as focused on the stock market trends as this reviewer seems to think, then perhaps the guy who wrote the book is a bit more interested in proving someth
Human behavior acts like a wave... (Score:2)
Lets face it: If this guy's theories could really predict the future, he would have already applied them to get rich on Wall Street, not write a book about them.
Let me know when the author gets to be worth $1 billion, then I'll start taking him seriously.
Only a single nerd could say this (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who has ever been married and/or had the care of children ( of any age ) knows how laughably naive it is.
Ok, so people do things for their own benefit. A simple enough concept. The problem arises in the definition of "own benefit."
Clearly some people, for some peculiar reason, think it's in their own benefit to climb a clock tower with a 30-06.
All attempts to accurately predict just which individuals are likely to do so have proven futile and are likely to remain so. Any cursory examination of the record will quickly show that the clock tower people are roughly divided between those that "we always knew would be trouble" and "I never would have expected it of her. She was always so sweet and caring."
You might just as well needlessly sacrifice a chicken for scrying, or toss sticks about, to determine the likely behaviour of individuals.
Masses of people are a different issue, within limits. Do you know what tool they use to determine traffic patterns in shopping malls?
The kinetic theory of gasses, which assumes purely random motion of ideally spherical and inelastic particles.
Statistically large numbers of people confined to a corridor behave almost exactly like the molocules of a gas in a cylinder.
This has nothing to do with the herd like instinct that results in cultural fads though. Predicting fads falls much into the same catagory as predicting the behaviours of individuals and is much easier post facto than a priori. ( Go ahead, tell me you actually predicted the craze for Hula-Hoops or Davey Crockett hats)
Not that there aren't people ( can you say Jeanne Dixon) who aren't beyond making post facto "predictions" and claiming them as a priori.
Most marketing people fall into this catagory. No one makes a multi-million dollar salary for saying, "Gee, damned if I know."
Market predictors are people no better than ( and fall into the same catagory as ) the average, run of the mill, "psychic," astrologer or Tarot Reader. They give things their best guess, couched in weasel words in case things go wrong, disregard their misses and offer their odd hit as "proof" that their predictive theory actually works.
It's all hogwash, smoke, mirrors and a waving of hands so that you don't notice Dearly departed Aunt Millie is really just a ballon with a tissue over it being dangled about by a sting.
I'm not saying that all of these people are being deliberately fraudulent ( although many of them are, thus the cynicism among some of the populace who realize they are being treated like morons ), most astrologers actually deeply believe their particular line of bullshit. This doesn't mean they aren't deeply self-deluded though. Sincerity is evidence of nothing but sincerity.
But I'm being redundant. All of this is common wisdom.
Isn't it?
KFG
Boy, is this: (Score:2)
a Freudian, Pepsi Syndrome induced, typo, or what?
I have got to get around to cleaning my keyboard.
KFG
Observations without explanation ... (Score:2, Interesting)
A rough quick guess is that systems with a large number of interacting particles with only a limited set of behavioural degrees of freedom (or states, if this pleases more) must exhibit the type of pattern as described.
CC.
Yet another example of junk "science" (Score:5, Interesting)
I found this review of Socionomics interesting. There has recently been some interesting work in behavioral finance, so I thought that these books might be worth reading. That is, until the Elliot Wave and Fibonacci sequences were mentioned. There is no statistical evidence for Elliot waves, or at least for a predictable periodicity of market and economic cycles. At most the Elliot Wave is another name for the capitalist economic cycles of expansion and contraction. Yes, these cycles definitely exist. But they don't reoccur in the same way. Put another way, there is no predictability that anyone with a command of statistics and mathematical technique has found.
Only chartist cranks believe this stuff. And a quick Google search shows that the author, Robert R. Prechter is, in fact, a chartist crank. He runs a company called "Elliot Wave International" which apparently sells a newsletter for other chartist cranks.
There are people on Wall Street that believe in Elliot Waves. I saw a self-produced documentary on a very successful trader named Paul Tudor Jones. He and one of his colleagues are shown pouring over a chart and babbling on about Elliot waves. It then shows Jones trading. The market starts to move against his position. He then whips out his lucky gym shoes and his lucky inflatable dinosaur (I'm not making this up!) In the end Jones managers to profit from his positions. It it Elliot waves or was it the lucky inflatable dinosaur?
Successful traders have been notably unable to explain how they do what they do. Even a bright intellectual like George Soros has never been able to explain his method in terms that had any meat or meaning. His son once mentioned that after watching his father trade for years he thought that it was Soros' back that was the key - it started to hurt when it was time to get out of a position.
Successful traders seem to have a talent for merging information from a variety of sources and the ability to act on these almost unconscious patterns. So some of them may claim they follow Elliot waves, but it has no more meaning the the lucky inflatable dinosaur.
One poster claimed that Prechter has predicted this or that. Well, so has the Jenne Dixon (the psychic astrologer who wrote for the National Enquirer). Anyone who makes lots of predictions will be right sometime.
One of the problems in this whole area of discussion is that people switch topics when they argue that Elliot waves exist. For example, the presence of short term trends is sometimes used as evidence for Elliot waves. This is not true. There is a lot of work at Wall Street investment funds on doing statistical prediction in the markets (this is called statistical arbitrage). But none of this has to do with Elliot waves or Fibonacci series. Wall Street has one ideology: making money. They don't care what works. If it could be shown that voodoo worked they would do it. There was a fad for Elliot waves. It did not make money in a reliable fashion and now no major investment funds uses these techniques. They are discredited.
A great example (Score:2)
I certainly take issue with the notion that peo
Internet forums are predictable (Score:3, Funny)
What about Game Theory? (Score:2)
Slightly OT movie reference (Score:3, Funny)
Being nitpicky (Score:4, Interesting)
No, the science of economics was founded on the concept of alocation and distribution of scarce resources. While it can be inferred by extension that humans will typically act in their own best interests in order to maximize their share of these resources, the science of economics is hardly based on that fact.
The distinction is subtle, but important. So much of modern economics relies on the fact that greater economic efficency can be obtained through pariatio efficent solutions, it sort of flies in the face of the assumption that the course of study was founded upon entirly self serving interests.
Apparent irrationality (Score:3, Insightful)
I argue that the real problem for socio-economics is not irrational decisions, but is instead a combination of consumers having incomplete data and the naturally subjective nature of value.
I'm not a marketing expert, but let's start with value. Paying actual money for a pet rock is not apparently economically rational on the surface. People bought something they could as easily pick up in the back yard. I submit that the value was the belonging that came from the purchace itself rather than any intrinsic value in the object (an ordinary rock).
We can question the rationality of such a value, but that many consumers valued it is a simple fact.
The other big factor is lack of sufficient information. In general, that translates to the cost of gathering information needed for an economic decision. Too many economists (in particular armchair economists) assume that the consumer actually has all information relevant to a decision in hand at the time a decision is needed. That is almost never the case. I argue that it is less the case today than in the past. A consumer may place value on environmental friendliness but will have to spend a great deal of money and time to find out that brand Q is actually made by R which is a subsidiary of S which also owns T which has division U that makes V and in the process polluted the drinking water where they live. You can bet that R and S value the consumer's ignorance and spend good money making sure that the relevant information never becomes common knowledge. If it ever does, they'll form company W (wholly owned by S) which will 'buy' R and rename the product to X. That's how we have someone who protests polluters but at the same time economically supports one of the worst.
As an example of a similar practice, consider that many people value organic food. A great many companies are fighting hard to make sure that 'organic' never recieves a legal definition. Many object to GM foods. Nearly every company that produces GM foods is lobbying hard to restrict other companies from labeling their products as GM free.
Another case that confounds economic prediction is advertising specifically designed to create illusory value without actually lying by tying their product with unrelated but valued things (romance, family togetherness, big boobs, etc.) The only real question there is how suggestable are consumers really, and do the many conflicting false associations more or less cancel out.
Re:What about Foundation - Asimov??? (Score:2)
Wouldn't Harry Wheldon have something to say on this subject?
Not only would he, but Hari Seldon [wikipedia.org] would have predicted the broad psychohistoric context in which it would have been said.
Top Three Reasons. (Score:2)
(3) Knuth doesn't use the internet any more (except to occasionally update his website). He's holed up in an undisclosed location working on TAoCP Volume 4. He has grad students slip him errata emails through a slot under the door, and that's about it.
(2) The text in this comment, as well as that in your userinfo, is cut-and-pasted from Knuth's website.
(1) Donald Knuth has never, to my knowledge, used LaTeX. All of his papers, preprints and books use his own home
Re:Economics != Socionomics (Score:2)