Science Fiction

Psychohistory is a Top Blog… For Today

/ Adam Nash / 4 Comments

Wow. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, here are the daily visits to my blog over the last 30 days:

As some of you know, I decided a few months ago to give blogging a try. Over the past two months, I’ve written about ninety posts, on a wide variety of topics.

Until today, my most popular post was:
VMware Fusion Goes Beta & Virtualization for Mac OS X Goes Pro

This was a post that got a lot of hits for a couple of days, most likely because the Mac has a pretty intense fanbase, and the news was pretty timely.

Today was the first day for a new post I made last night on one of my favorite TV shows, Battlestar Galactica:
My Theory on How Battlestar Galactica Will End

Here are the latest stats on the top posts for my blog over the last 30 days now:

All those visits in about 24 hours. It’s exciting, largely because unlike other posts, this one was something purely driven by personal interest, and less about “what people want to read”. It also is a more frivolous topic.

What really happened is this: someone found the post, and started a thread on the SCI FI channel website chat boards for Battlestar Galactica. So, it’s kind of like I was SlashDot’ed, but at one millionth the scale. 🙂

But success breeds success, so I’m happy to announce that today, for the first time, my blog is actually ranking well across all WordPress.com blogs!

My post is currently the 8th most popular post on WordPress.com today!

My blog is rated 22nd for the fastest growing blogs on WordPress.com:

And, as I mentioned, it is now in the Top 100 ranked blogs on WordPress.com (#41):

It’s possible that the fifteen minutes of fame for this blog have started counting right now. In the end, the goal of this blog was not to become any sort of popular site or property. At eBay, we typically measure success in the millions, if not billions, of page views.  It’s funny to think that 600 page views is significant.

But it is kind of a kick to see the numbers jump like this, even if in absolute terms they are small. I continue to learn a lot about blogging through this process – I’m just glad that people are interested and enjoying my writing for the time being.

It’s also definitely fun to watch people debate my little theory on a potential ending for Battlestar Galactica.

Tomorrow I’ll be back to posts about personal finance and growing tomatoes.

My Theory on How Battlestar Galactica Will End

/ Adam Nash / 144 Comments

A lot of pop-culture posts today, but time for just one more.

I’ve been a big fan of the new Battlestar Galactica series since it first launched a few years ago. It’s one of the television highlights for me these days for a lot of reasons, some of which have to do with the quality of the show, and some of which have to do with the propensity for the networks to cancel other shows I like.

I’ve read some coverage of the series in Entertainment Weekly, and it sounds like the show is written in an incredibly open style. Some fiction know the ending of their stories from the beginning, but not necessarily the path. Orson Scott Card writes like that, as does J. K. Rowling. From the press, it sounds like the Battlestar team is incredibly open about where the series will end up. They say they haven’t decided on an ending yet, and are taking the story season-to-season.

To me, however, the ending looks painfully obvious. So, I thought I’d share it here, and see if people agree. I’ve been searching online, and I’ve found just a few posts on the subject, but there are clearly a couple people who see the same thing I do.

Here’s what we know, from the new series:

  • 3,000 years ago, humanity split into 13 colonies to settle. 12 that were close together in one system, and one remote planet. This journey was captured in religious text that is part history, part prophecy.
  • The one remote planet is Earth
  • The 12 colonies have a polytheistic culture that matches Greek mythology exactly. Even the pilots have call signs like “Apollo”.
  • The 12 colony locations match the Greek names for common constellations, like Gemini.
  • 40 years ago, the Cylons (which are the robots built by the 12 colonies) revolted. There was a war, and they retreated. Now, they have come back and literally obliterated the 12 colonies, to the point where only 41K or so humans survived and are now searching for Earth.
  • The Cylons have made themselves in their creator’s image (human), and have developed a powerful monotheistic culture. They are also aspiring to breed the next step in their evolution – a human/cylon hybrid.

So, how does it end?

I see two possibilities:

  1. The series takes place in modern times, or the near future. It turns out that the original 13th colony ended up founding Atlantis, approximately 1000 BC, which they will posit was the basis for Greek culture, etc. The humans connect with modern humanity on Earth, and somehow the Cylon problem “goes away” – either through victory, or via the Cyclons deciding that humanity deserves their respite on Earth.
  2. The series actually takes place in the past. When Battlestar Galactica and fleet get to Earth, it is roughly 2000 BC. They discover that the previous colony lost its technology, and has regressed to primitive status. They fight off the Cylons in one final battle, and settle on an island in the Mediterranean called Atlantis. They reach out to their distant brethren in nearby Greece, and start re-educating them in math, philosophy, democracy, and of course, religion with the Olympian gods. Meanwhile, in a teaser/ending, one of the last Cylons lands in the desert across the sea, and speaks to a nomad named Abram, and convinces him that there really is only one true god. There is an implication that the Cyclons are somehow the progenitors of the Judeo-Christian faith, maybe even extending to some concept that they are still around somehow.

In case you think I’m off the deep end here, consider the original speech that Patrick Macnee used to give as part of the opening narration of the original series. I never watched the original series, but it stands to reason that this does integrate into the vision for the end of the new series.

“There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. They may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens…”

I love ancient mythology and history, so I’m clearly rooting for (2) as the potential ending. Would love to hear what other fans of the show think.

Update (11/14/2006): My blog traffic is up nearly 100% due to this post. It looks like people are discussing this post on the boards. I’m seeing a lot of links to this blog from this thread on the Sci Fi Channel Forums. Thanks for reading!

Update (1/8/2007): A new post is up on the potential spoilers for the fifth and final unknown cylon.  Season 4 is almost here.

The Robots Have Spoken: Humans Taste Like Pigs

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

A slightly unnerving article on Good Morning Silicon Valley tonight:

Doesn’t this violate one of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics?

The news comes from Japan, where a robot built to detect smell and taste also evaluated the taste of the reporters covering the story.  Apparently the writer “tasted” like prosciutto and the cameraman like bacon.

It is going to be very interesting over the next twenty years as we learn to view humanity through the eyes of our non-human creations.  Despite Asimov’s best intention, they will likely not be bound by our explicit or implicit moral codes or societal norms.  At least, not completely.  We are are immensely biased and subjective when evaluating ourselves – it will likely be quite illuminating to start learning about ourselves from non-human sources.

Then again, maybe it’s just because I saw this news on Friday, the night Battlestar Galactica airs, and I’m a little sensitive to the idea that machines might decide that they like the taste of bacon.  BTW If you are not watching Battlestar Galactica, you are missing one of the best shows on television.

Invisibility & Cloaking Experiment Successful

/ Adam Nash

Any fan of Star Trek knows all about “cloaking” technology.  Well, we’re one step closer as of yesterday.

LiveScience.com – Scientists Create Cloak of Partial Invisibility

Interestingly, while groundbreaking, the basic concept for cloaking has been worked out quite well in the science fiction community.  This experiment seems to confirm the basic approach:

Bend light around you, and there will be no reflection of light for an observer to see.   The experiment used the latest technology in metamaterial fabrication, and was limited to the microwave spectrum.  It also wasn’t perfect, with some small amount of distortion & reflection.

Still, it’s an impressive demonstration, and it’s extremely likely that this technology will progress with nano-materials to true cloaking capability at a variety of wavelengths, including visible light.

Most of the coverage I’m reading argues that this will be of limited use, largely because unlike Harry Potter, when you bend light around you, none of it is captured resulting in an inability to “see” outside of the cloak.  You are invisible to others, but others are invisible to you.

It seems to me that there is an easy solution to this:  the device in the cloak needs to be able to capture a percentage of light hitting it so it can “see”, but then have an energy source to duplicate the signal with sufficient fidelity to make it appear that the light was never captured at all.

I love seeing metamaterials play a strong role here.  As a trivia point, I originally planned to major in Molecular Biology at Stanford.  But my freshman year, I took an introductory course in Material Science & Engineering, and I fell in love with the science.  I ended up majoring in Computer Science, but Material Science was my “first love” in the Engineering School.

The advances in materials are every bit as breathtaking as the advances in software these days.  There is something magical about creating these materials with almost magical properties.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke

Why Psychohistory?

/ Adam Nash / 8 Comments

The first question that people ask me about my blog is:
“Why is it called Psychohistory?”

This is, of course, a great question, and I think it ties closely to the first question that I had to ask myself when I decided to start blogging again: “What am I going to blog about?”

I’ve been fortunate enough in my academic and professional careers to have had exposure to a wide variety of subjects and businesses. However, I’ve realized in the past decade that my primary interest has always been the intersection of the rational (technology & economics) with the irrational (people).

As a software engineer, my primary interest was in human-computer interaction and the recognition that technology is useless without significant thought given to how people perceive and interact with it. As my interests shifted to the study of economics, I developed a deep fascination with the study of behavioral finance and the recognition that classic economic models fail to predict activity in many cases because people are often not rational actors.

These insights are fascinating to me because I firmly believe that in fact, there is a method to the madness. People are irrational in many situations, but in many cases predictably so. In my recent professional roles in early stage venture capital and product management, I have been repeatedly astounded with the level of value generated from insights into human behavior with technology and economics.

When I was in junior high school, I voraciously read the works of Isaac Asimov, and to this date I remain a fan of his intellect and insight. In his “Foundation” series, he introduced a fictional science called Psychohistory, which was based on the idea that even though individual humans were not statistically predictable, large groups of humans were. This was a direct analogy to the growing awareness of the impacts and contradictions inherent in quantum mechanics: there is uncertainty when evaluating the velocity and position of a single particle, but yet we can still accurately predict where a large mass of them (a baseball) will go when dropped.

When I think about the topics I will blog about here, I know since it’s a personal blog that there will be a fair share of “books I’ve read” and “baby/puppy/family” posts. But in the end, my guess is that the relatively unique theme to most of what I share here will lie somewhere in the intersection of my passions for technology and economics and my fascination with people and their motivations. This means common topics will likely include:

  • Personal finance
  • Economics
  • Venture Capital
  • Product Design & Product Management
  • Silicon Valley
  • Software
  • Science Fiction & Future Technology
  • Video Games

As a result, I decided that Isaac Asimov’s simplistic vision was probably the best title to capture the essence of my personal blog.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ll be experimenting with a new post to this blog every day for the next 30 days. We’ll see how close my guesswork here comes to the actual topics I post to this blog.

Thanks for reading.
Adam

BTW I do realize that there is now an actual field of study called psychohistory which is defined as the study of the psychological motivations of historical events. Obviously, I think that this is unfortunate nomenclature, and I’m siding with Asimov on this one.