Foundation

The TV adaptation of Isaac Asimov's classic trilogy is still fundamentally about the ways in which politics and objective truth inevitably clash.

The central conflict in Isaac Asimov's classic science fiction trilogy, Foundation, is between science and the state. Composed from a series of linked short stories originally published between 1942 and 1950, the books follow the creation of a scientific outpost, the Foundation, meant to preserve knowledge during a predicted collapse of the ruling Galactic Empire. The book's heroes are scientists who (sometimes grudgingly) learn they must practice politics—or at least work within its limitations—in order to survive.

Foundation, a lavishly produced Apple TV+ series based on Asimov's books, is less of a direct adaptation and more of an expansion on the original stories, with a host of new characters and plot elements, including a cloned emperor who takes governing advice from older versions of himself while training a younger cloned successor.

It's not as tightly structured as Asimov's original stories, which tended to take the form of intricate logic puzzles, and it isn't as satisfying. But the story is still fundamentally about power and scientific inquiry and the ways in which politics and objective truth inevitably clash.

Comments

[Jerryskids]

A clash between science and politics? I thought Foundation was science fiction, I didn't know it was fantasy. Science has been politics' bitch since at least Lysenko.

[dbruce]

The unindicted Co-Conspirator lost an average of 62,500 jobs per month for 4 years, admitted he didn't have a plan to fight COVID, and killed 100,000 because he didn't look good in a mask. In 2020, the GDP contracted a NEGATIVE -3.5%, the worst performance since 1946, which will guarantee his lock on the worst President ever.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

Your a retard aren't you?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

In the woke future, retards will be elites. (Unlike now, when elites are retards.)

[R Mac]

I assume autistic.

[mad.casual]

An autistic person wouldn't have said "NEGATIVE -3.5%", they would've just said 3.5%, -3.5%, or NEGATIVE 3.5%.

[R Mac]

Good point. I apologize to all autistic people for comparing you to the stupidity that’s posted by db.

[Erin R. Morgan]

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[dbruce]

Only assholes have never apologized for anything in their entire life...PeeResident Trump is one of them. When asked how this could be possible he said he has never done anything that he regretted. This is a man who has married 3 times and publicly cheated on all of them including paying hush money to porn stars. Lied about the Commander in Chiefs citizenship for years after proof was provided....no apology. Insulted Gold Star parents telling them he sacrificed as much as their dead hero son because he worked "very, very hard". Nothing there to apologize for because they are non-white.

[dbruce]

No, I am not Republican. What have we got with the Agent orange?...
“Conspiracy theories and fabrications?” Check and check. “Nationalism and nativism?” Check. A “degraded discourse?” Big check. “Bigotry and white supremacy?” Trump was criticized for not calling them out strongly enough in Charlottesville. “Bullying?” Huge check. Not “living up to civic values?” Check, definitely.

[R Mac]

Why do you post the exact same shit in every article regardless of its topic?

Are you a fifty center, or an actual bot?

[dbruce]

Truth is ALWAYS good. You and Pussy grabber suffer from "the Dunning-Kruger effect", which is the phenomenon which describes how people with low ability are too incompetent to recognize their own incompetence. Bankrupting 6 casinos where every game has an over-all guaranteed winning edge is a perfect example. US Poison Control Centers across the nation had a 40% hike in cleaning-chemical exposure cases. When asked about this Bone spurs said "I can't imagine". Trump received dozens of daily briefs about the pandemic in Jan and Feb and still said on Feb 27 "It's like a miracle, it will disappear". He also got many updates and still said "the virus snuck up on us" and calling it a "very unforeseen thing". The Robot Model B-9

[R Mac]

So a fifty center.

[dbruce]

Mushroom dick literally ONLY cares about himself....he couldn't even run a charity foundation ….he had to shut it down because he thought it was an ATM to be used for anything OTHER than charities. Read the Pulitzer Prize winning book UNCOVERING TRUMP for all the NON-charity stuff he bought instead. On page 58 heading..."Trump promised millions to charity. We found less than $10,000 over 7 years." It was just one charity and they couldn't verify if it was him or not. If you think he cares about the US, Constitution or Democracy you will be sadly surprised.

[R Mac]

You should see a psychiatrist.

[dbruce]

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B076245F8N/reasonmagazinea-20/ 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President

[R Mac]

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd

[The Great Negro]

They would recommend euthanasia.

[Utkonos]

Off center definitely. And those 50 cents are counterfeit. I know noncents when I see it.

[dbruce]

Mushroom dick always goes for the cash, donations to his charity went directly into his pocket and were replaced with chits ($1720) to play at his golf courses, which were just a tax scam, which were never used (Pg 39-40). Fun Fact: Another stipulation ensures that Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump received training on the duties of officers and directors of charities so that they cannot allow the illegal activity they oversaw at the Trump Foundation to take place again.

[SQRLSY One]

All Hail Der TrumpfenFuhrer, Full of Grace
Savior of the human race!
Never mind, us all, He’ll disgrace!
Conservaturds, above all, MUST save face!
In glory, a glaze of Vaseline,
Behold Stormy Daniels, our Queen!
What a scene, what a scene!
The Donald? NEVER so obscene!
Now don’t you DARE throw a fit,
It won’t matter, not even a bit,
We mustn’t ever, EVER quit,
We be saved, by The Trumptatorshit!

[Unicorn Abattoir]

In 2020, the GDP contracted a NEGATIVE -3.5%, the worst performance since 1946

The result of a catastrophic event. Funny how you start at 1946, avoiding another catastrophic event.

[Chumby]

dbruce is a dbag that dbates with dbunked dbauchery.

[Utkonos]

Even by those abysmal standards the result is dminus

[kcuch]

since at least Lysenko

since at least Galileo.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

But what variant of COVID are they up to?

[R Mac]

Phi…

Fuck, there’s no Greek letter for J.

[R Mac]

A reply to Earth-based

[Jimbo BTR]

How about Iota? The new slogan writes itself.

"Iota, Get a Covid shot!"

[Ken Shultz]

If you need someone to tell you that there are spoiler alerts in a thread like this, you don't deserve a spoiler alert.

"The story is still fundamentally about power and scientific inquiry and the ways in which politics and objective truth inevitably clash."

----Suderman

Two points:

1) The story arch is still set up to show intellectuals and scientists as the means by which humanity is saved from the destructive power of freedom. Destroying a soulless authoritarian emperor simply won't do--and the three in one emperor is surely a stand-in for the eternal struggle of humanity against tyranny. Aren't they all the same? In this universe, freedom without putting the experts in charge means everyone in the universe destroying each other.

From a libertarian capitalist perspective, we've seen people put scientists and intellectuals in charge of society (and the revolution) before. And whether we're talking about centrally planning the economy or centrally planning the culture, it always ends in tears for the same reasons.

No matter what Foundation the TV series says, the problem is not the soullessness of the emperor, the problem is not that the right people aren't in charge, and the problem is not that they aren't properly motivated or don't have the real truth. When I see intellectuals and scientists, who understand evolution and the underlying forces that drive it, completely ignore the basic principles of Adam Smith--which describe the exact same underlying forces--I'm reminded of Socrates coming to terms with what he didn't know. It's as if the intellectuals of today still haven't come to terms with the very foundation of western thought. The first thing our central planners need to understand is that they know nothing.

No, you cannot plan a society for 325 million people better than the outcome that happens when each of those 325 million individuals are free to make choices for themselves without your input--not even when half of those 325 million are uneducated and of below average intelligence. Geese were flying south for the Winter in v-formation long before any human or goose understood anything about physics of aerodynamics, but when individual geese--dumb as could be--pursue their own best interests and their own path of least resistance, they behave as if they understood things, like aerodynamics, that the experts among them do not and cannot understand.

2) The series is at its most interesting when it's portraying the scientists' belief in Hari Seldon's plan as religious. Suffice it to say (spoiler alert), the scientists who follow Hari Seldon do not understand how his plan works. Their belief in his plan--for everyone except one person who is lost to them in space--is indistinguishable from religious belief. They're the scientists and intellectuals, but they do not understand the underlying mathematics of psycho-history. They're deterministic in the sense that all scientists tend to believe that what happens is a function of the inputs that made it happen rather than the free will of any individual, but they believe in Hari Seldon's vision for reasons that can only be described in terms of faith.

The most interesting twist in the Foundation TV series, which I do not remember reading in the book (I read the books a long, long time ago), is that in the book, when Hari Seldon appears in the first crisis, long after he's dead, he was like a recorded hologram. He'd predicted the crisis they were in and he had recorded the right words to say as a hologram decades before he died. This confirms the faith of his believers. In the TV series, Seldon uploads his consciousness and becomes an AI. Is he still thinking out the plan? Regardless, the TV series seems to be set up to praise the faith of people who believe in our tech and scientific priesthood, which is fundamentally at odds with libertarian capitalism. The faith of these people in their technological and scientific superiors will be tested--and ultimately rewarded, even as it becomes indistinguishable from religious faith.

I think the series is one of the best things available for streaming, but it's one of those things where libertarians may appreciate it for the being on the topics we like to talk about--without being on our side of the argument. If you watch it with friends and family, it may give you a great opportunity to talk about libertarian and capitalist ideas, but don't expect the series to make the libertarian and capitalist case for you. It just gives you an opportunity to talk about libertarian and capitalist ideas outside the context of hot button issues. For example, why talk about global warming with some friend or family member, over the holidays, who can't imagine us avoiding the doom without scientists and bureaucrats reorganizing our economy? Why talk to them about that when you could talk to that person about the same principles--only talking about Foundation, the TV series, instead?

[Chumby]

Many cannot put themselves in another pair of shoes consciously. So good advice about using a story to help folks do that.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

I am a scientist, or at least claim to be. I have worked my entire career with other scientists, and engineers, in industry and academia. And I have enjoyed getting to know most of them, and learning about both their technical expertise, and their philosophies of science and life in general.

But I still feel amazement at scientists, including in field related to evolutionary biology, who fervently condemn creationist biology but are eager for creationist economics and government. They clearly embrace if not celebrate how randomness and forces of natural selection gave us the species and ecosystems we have, but then pursue an authoritarian approach to society.

And they do have a contradiction when it comes to religion, or at least what they perceive as dogmatic, doctrinal name-brand religions, versus their own allegiance to equally dogmatic social and political causes. As others have pointed out, some of the most highly educated and truly smart people can be the most blind when it comes to personal ideology. They are very, very good at confirmation bias.

[Ken Shultz]

There are two topics I like to discuss with the . . . um . . . well credentialed.

1) The evolutionary origins of altruism.

"We show that inclusive fitness is not a general theory of evolution as its proponents had claimed," says Nowak. "In the limited domain where inclusive fitness theory does work, it is identical to standard natural selection. Hence there is no need for inclusive fitness. It has no explanatory power."

----Nature

"Altruism can be explained by natural selection"

https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2010.427

When we talk about the invisible hand, their eyes gloss over and they become distant. Inclusive fitness and kin selection being the explanation for the evolutionary emergence of altruism in whatever species you want to talk about is a hard case to make. And the more I read about it, the more it appears that the emergence of altruism as an advantage in the evolutionary struggle runs along the lines of Adam Smith and emergence of the invisible hand of benevolence. Why wouldn't it work the same way outside of economics? Darwin was trying to reconcile Adam Smith with Malthus. Species diverge in terms of specialization and exchange.

2) The evolutionary origins of religion.

I know a lot "hard science" people look down their noses at cultural anthropology, but the emergence of religion in homo sapiens isn't limited to the field of cultural anthropology. We're talking about the physical emergence of the neocortex in the genus homo and the explanations for it. The consensus has it that our neocortex (the thing that makes us human) evolved so that we could harness the advantages of language and religion, with the religious advantages having a lot to do with group cohesion and group size.

Even leaving the cosmological argument for God alone, faulting people for being religiously inclined is to fault them for what makes them human. It's like faulting us for having opposable thumbs. Our brains evolved to be religious. The fact that no society survived into the historical record without some form of religion suggests that it may not have been possible for us to become modern humans any other way. I tend to find that much of the snobbery seems to be directed at one particular spectrum of religious belief, too--almost as if they don't think of Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews as true believers.

I once had a knock down drag out with a Latin professor over "you all" being proper English--even if it sounds like "y'all" to Northern ears. She came back to argue with me about it for two classes, each time going back to arm herself with more information. In the third class, she finally conceded that "you all" is not improper--it's just not considered sophisticated to differentiate the second person plural. And that was my original point, that there are a lot of people out there who mistake fashion for knowledge. All the people out there who think less of people who use the second person plural that way should be ashamed of themselves--for being wrong and being snobs.

I think that's what happens with religion for a lot of intellectuals, too. They think they're being smart, but they're really just being fashionable.

[Titus PUllo]

Bingo. As a former research scientist (worked on plasma physics a very long time ago), scientists (and I mean real scientists not "social scientists") don't really understand human actions or the limits of central planning. They can control dependent variables in the lab and run the experiment and get the same answer each time (F=MA) but with humans....you can't.

Psycho History was Asimov's thinking that "science" could solve politics/economics (through statistical methods) and it obviously can't.

[CarlosT]

Seldon set up the First Foundation to be ignorant of the the workings of psychohistory, intentionally. The predictions only worked of the population being modeled is unaware of the model's conclusions. Otherwise, the model itself becomes an input, and the feedback loop becomes impossible to correct for. According to Asimov, anyway.

[Spoilers]

In any case, at the first opening of the Vault, no one expected anything other than a pro forma "congratulations on your 50th anniversary" message from Seldon. The people in charge saw themselves as a scientific institution charged by the Emperor with producing an encyclopedia. That first message from Seldon shattered that illusion, explaining the encyclopedia was just a pretext to establish the colony on Terminus, and it never mattered to him if they ever produced a single volume. He lays out the sketch of their current crisis and says the solution should be obvious. Salvor Hardin, Mayor of Terminus, sees it immediately, and implements it, seizing overall power for himself in the process.

[/Spoilers]

From the first trailers, I could tell the Apple series was going to have pretty much nothing to do with the Asimov stories. I don't have the streaming service required and there was zero chance I was going to get it for that.

[mad.casual]

I also never got the impression that the scientists were saving all of humanity but helping to save the civilization from itself... with the knowledge that their ability to foresee and correct civilization's serial attempts at self-destruction the further along they went.

Not to say I approve of the notion of social engineers saving civilization but at least the fictional engineers had the audacity (relative to the Faucists of our reality) to recognize that they weren't all seeing and that there were powers outside their influence.

[CarlosT]

Seldon doesn't promise to save the Empire, or civilization. He says it's too late for that. What he claims is the establishment of his Foundations, at "opposite ends of the Galaxy", will shorten the period of chaos between the fall of the Empire and the rise of new civilization from 30,000 years to just a single millennium.

As for the problems of social engineering, "Foundation and Empire", the second book in the original trilogy, introduces The Mule. When the Seldon hologram in the vault appears, he's suddenly spouting irrelevant nonsense, and it looks like everything has gone completely off the rails. Desperate scrambling ensues, and doubt hangs in the air after that about Seldon's Plan.

[CE]

Sort of like when the Romans took the Ark of the Covenant to Oak Island?

[Chumby]

As trolled in the archeology iceberg:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1o2fnTNxE_Q

[Ken Shultz]

The series hasn't made it to the Mule yet, but doubts about Seldon abound--by the only other person in the galaxy (in the series) who does understand--as well as among the descendants of his original followers.

I don;t know how they can pull off the confusion caused by the Mule with Seldon's hologram in the series because he isn't a hologram in the series. He's a conscious AI that answers questions and argues with people.

Regardless, the central message of the series--brought to you by the good people at Apple--will almost certainly not lead people to think that our technocrat overlords don't know what they're doing. Apple's product placement in their series are notorious, and it wouldn't surprise me if the ultimate hero wears a black turtleneck sweater and looks like Steve Jobs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xAvVfJ_xyI

The series will not be anti-technocrat.

[The Great Negro]

The foundation is in the same universe as Asimov’s robot stories.
The show somehow has a killer robot in it though.

[The Great Negro]

Good bye, three laws.

[Jimbo BTR]

Hello, three Emperors.

[markm23]

IIRC, R. Daneel Olivaw (the quite humanoid robot from space who becomes the partner of an Earth cop jn _Caves of Steel_ and _The Robots of Dawn_) remained functioning through the founding and the fall of the Trantorian Empire, and eventually invented the Zeroth law: For a sufficiently advanced robot, the preservation of humanity as a whole takes precedence over even the First Law (the preservation of individual humans). I doubt R. Daneel could assassinate a bad Emperor to save the lives of any number of other humans, but he could conceive of robots who could, and the book capping both series implies that a society of such robots is manipulating both the First and Second Foundations.

[Ken Shultz]

In the series, she's undercover that way.

No one but the three know she's a robot, and she's a robot with a soul--serving an emperor without one.

[Ken Shultz]

"From the first trailers, I could tell the Apple series was going to have pretty much nothing to do with the Asimov stories. I don't have the streaming service required and there was zero chance I was going to get it for that.

The things I was talking about were about the series rather than the books, but Seldon centrally planning all of society--and doing even a minimally good job of it for a second--doesn't speak to libertarian capitalism in either medium.

The show is extremely well done--it just isn't the Foundation of hundreds of pages in a series of books because it can't be. It is what it is, and what it is is better than 95% of what was made for streaming over the last year.

[Jimbo BTR]

"...it is ... better than 95% of what was made for streaming over the last year."

So, a turd with sprinkles on it instead of just a plain old turd?

[Ken Shultz]

Some of the arguments I agree with wholeheartedly are poorly presented by their original authors, and I don't need to agree with the conclusions of a well written book to see that it was well written.

And streaming shows aren't any different.

Meanwhile, Orwell's takedowns of communism are classics, and he was a dyed in the wool socialist--who was trying to save socialism from communism. The capitalist argument for creative destruction was formally written by Marx.

"It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the whole of bourgeois society on trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of existing production, but also of previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed."

----Karl Marx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction#In_Marx's_thought

We libertarian capitalists have Marx to thank for bringing this to our attention. The real difference between libertarian capitalists and Marx on this issue is that he thinks creative destruction is a bad thing, where we champion it as the very means by which progress happens. Three cheers for wiping out the horse and buggy!

The point is that good ideas come from wherever you find them, and something can be well done--even if it's opposed to your own position. Discussing Marx from a capitalist perspective can even be enlightening.

Marx and Keynes were wrong about some really important things, but they weren't anywhere near as stupid as the progressives who quote them make them seem--and from a libertarian capitalist perspective, it can even be important for progressives to learn a little something about Marx and Keynes. If progressives were only as stupid as Marx and Keynes, the world would be a better place.

Death on the Installment Plan was hilarious, and Gunther Grass was a great writer--worthy of the Nobel prize for his writing. Their writing was not good because it was in any way about the Nazis, but, it turns out, they were both Nazis. If a great symphony were written by a Stalinist, does that make the music any worse? Rage Against the Machine was a great album. The crux of the Aeneid was based on propaganda for Augustus Caesar.

I reject cancel culture on a more fundamental level than most. To do good work worth consuming, one doesn't need to agree with me about anything but the value of rational thought and a excellent way of expressing their point of view. A well made drama that draws the wrong conclusions gives us a great opportunity to point out why the creator is wrong.

Some of my favorite punk rock was about doing things that are purposely so offensive, they made people angry to hear them. Foundation ultimately being wrong about technocrats ordering society is nothing compared to that, and they're doing us a great service by giving us an excellent opportunity to tell people why Foundation gets it wrong.

[Bubba Jones]

I don’t think the foundation is trying to “order society” so much as preserve it.

I do think it’s funny in the age of Wikipedia to think that people will need to hide on the other side of the galaxy and purposely curate a finite collection of works.

Why not just build hardened caches in a few places and be done with it?

[Ken Shultz]

I'm talking about the TV series rather than the books, and yet, in both, we are assuming that someone has the ability to see the golden path forward for humanity--and can orchestrate a soft landing--where the individuals of an entire society, on the other hand, are distracted with their own self-interests from their own limited individual perspectives. This is fundamentally wrong from a libertarian capitalist perspective in numerous ways.

325 million individual Americans, with the right to make choices for themselves--well protected by a legitimate government--will outperform one, dozens, or thousands of Hari Seldons--and they will certainly outperform the Seldons in the way those 325 million individual Americans collectively value whatever goal you have in mind. The Hari Seldons may be able to inflict their own qualitative preferences on the future of society--but how can their qualitative preferences be objectively superior than the conflicting, yet fully optimized, qualitative preferences of 325 million individuals?

Add that to the realization that the Seldons can't outperform 325 million individual simultaneous perspectives from a purely quantitative standpoint when we share their objective either. Show me a government bureaucrat that can outperform the S&P 500 on a consistent basis. Over a five, ten, or thirty year period, I'll bet on the stupid index fund outperforming the stock picking bureaucrats every time--no matter how smart the bureaucrats. Meanwhile, those 500 CEOs, each pursuing their own interests from their own individual company's perspectives, are desperately trying to predict ( i.e. outperform) the actions of 325 million individual American consumers--half of which are of below average intelligence. Those consumers, we know, will destroy the wealth of some S&P 500 companies over five, ten, and thirty years--despite their ingenious CEOs and their brilliant underlings--while simultaneously bringing untold wealth to other S&P 500 companies that don't even exist yet!

Geese do not fly in v-formation because there was a Hari Seldon among them who understood the physics of aerodynamics thousands of years before Newton formulated the basics of physics and calculus. There is nothing magical about their "instinct" that tells them to do things for aerodynamic reasons they couldn't possibly understand either. Those individual geese are simply pursuing their own individual best interests from their own individual perspectives. The constraints of what's possible make them cooperate and behave AS IF they possessed knowledge about aerodynamics when they follow the path of least resistance.

Human beings work the same way in that we behave as if we possessed knowledge we couldn't possibly possess when we participate in markets. The power of that market intelligence is far greater than anything Hari Seldon could possibly know about and account for before the fact presents itself in the market--and the facts constantly change in real time. Participating in markets makes people who don't know anything about aerodynamics fly in v-formation, too, and the biggest threat to our abundant future is the mistaken belief that the Hari Seldons of the world could possibly make better choices for 325 million Americans collectively than 325 million individual Americans can for themselves--because he knows something we don't.

"There is something fundamentally wrong with an approach which habitually disregards an essential part of the phenomena with which we have to deal: the unavoidable imperfection of man’s knowledge and the consequent need for a process by which knowledge is constantly communicated and acquired. Any approach, such as that of much of mathematical economics with its simultaneous equations [psycho-history?], which in effect starts from the assumption that people’s knowledge corresponds with the objective facts of the situation, systematically leaves out what is our main task to explain.

----Friedrich A. Hayek

https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html?chapter_num=1#book-reader

That's Hayek looking back to Socrates (The wise man knows what he doesn't know) and pulling the rug out from under Asimov and Seldon--before the book even gets started. The book and the series are fundamentally wrong before they even get started.

[Titus PUllo]

Ken,

You said it all very well there!

[markm23]

No one in history has created "hardened caches" of information that survived for long. Most of the ancient texts we have were not stashed away, but rather have been copied many times, so some (probably more or less corrupted copies) survived when the original scrolls rotted away or were destroyed.

Most of what survived of the original writing was short inscriptions chiseled into stone monuments. The great majority of that was lost to wind and sand scouring the writing off, the stones being re-used, or deliberate destruction by someone who wanted to write their enemies out of history or destroy the remains of an older religion. We only have the few percent that survived by repeated good luck over the centuries. Fortunately, there have been many, many rulers egotistical enough to have their accomplishments etched in stone and erected in the public square, so a few percent of survivors adds up to quite a few. Unfortunately, they are in dead languages, often so long removed from the previous survivor that the language or script changed, and even when they can be deciphered, they are more likely to be propaganda than history.

And NO ONE before Georgius Agricola in the 16th Century wrote down the details of their technology in any form. Kings who ordered monuments generally didn't even know how smiths made their toys, monks and historians weren't interested, and the smiths and engineers themselves usually preferred to keep their secrets - if they were literate at all. Agricola was an exception that was not repeated for centuries.

As for actual caches, hiding something in caves has had the best success in a single case (the Dead Sea Scrolls), but there was a lot of luck involved in that - for most of the 2,000 years the scrolls were hidden in that cave, the most likely result of them being found was their destruction. The most likely finders would always have been barbarians who could not read them and would have burned the papyrus and leather to provide part of the heat to melt down the copper. Or they might have come to the attention of the authorities, most of whom would have declared the scrolls "heretical" and destroyed them. They were preserved only by the luck of remaining hidden into the 20th Century, and then being found by people who probably saw no value in the text but _happened_ to know someone who might buy ancient writings.

[m4019597]

Arc. Not arch.

[Ken Shultz]

Is that the only flaw you found? Nothing about the facts or the logic?

Please leave grammer, vocabulary, punctuation, and spelling alone--and tell me where I'm wrong on the facts or the logic. I'll thank you for it if you can teach me something about these ideas rather than proofread them.

[jonnysage]

Why didnt Reason pay this guy to write this review instead of Suderman?

[CarlosT]

"The book's heroes are scientists who (sometimes grudgingly) learn they must practice politics—or at least work within its limitations—in order to survive."

This is just out and out false. The heroes are leaders who use various means, including science and technology, to carve out a sphere of influence where the knowledge and of the Empire is preserved.

One of these is an actual religion of science. This is Clarke's Third Law put into practice, where the advanced technology of the Foundation is wrapped in mysticism, and administered to the masses by an actual priesthood. The Foundation imposes this on its neighbors after an early conflict, and it's key to resolving one of the Seldon Crises.

I can't really think of any major characters in the original trilogy that are scientists, using science to further the plot.

Foundation was inspired by Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It's a "hey, what if that happened... IN SPAAAACE!" story. Politics is the central pillar of that story.

[Winston in Wonderland]

CarlosT:

I agree. The last scientist to figure prominently in the books is Seldon, himself. Otherwise, the Foundation's heroes are a newspaper owner-turned-mayor, a trader, a 13 year-old girl, a playboy, a...

But not much in the way of scientists.

[CE]

Seems like it's more about which TOP MEN should rule:

A very stable genius emperor who clones himself in perpetuity, or a government bureaucrat who can predict everything that's going to happen.

[Jimbo BTR]

The TV series is more about which TOP WAHMEN should rule:

The killer female robot with a soul (who's therefore good) that serves the three male emperors without souls (who are therefore bad) OR the mother/daughter combo (who are therefore good) who possess magical powers that will help them save the galaxy from evil men*.

*You know this is a woke show because all the heroes are women and all the men are either evil or incompetent or both.

[The Great Negro]

Good synopsis.

[CarlosT]

The thing about how the Foundation actually works is Seldon doesn't actually ever tell them anything, really. What they get from him are essentially occasional pep talks, letting them know they're on track.

The secret sauce of the the Foundation is a sense of destiny. They know that their history is going to be punctuated by a series of epoch defining crises, each of which will be both a test of their as advancement as a society and a stepping stone on the path to accomplishing their grand purpose.

What those crises look like from moment to moment issues the point of the stories.

[Jimbo BTR]

If you've read the books, don't watch the show. Spare yourself the disappointment.

It's just another attempt by the body-snatchers to replace the something we love with something crappy that adheres to their agenda. Woke Hollywood has become the Ministry of Truth and their scripts are all full of Newspeak these days.

[Entelechy]

Mister Suderman, I knew Isaac Asimov, You're no Isaac Asimov.

You should be very relieved . He was a shallow writer of juvenallia, and a crashing bore.

[Bubba Jones]

The Zeroth Law concept of an AI disregarding the commands of humans was unintentionally dystopian.

[mshousel]

"...with a host of new characters and plot elements, including a cloned emperor who takes governing advice from older versions of himself while training a younger cloned successor."
Sounds like a concept drawn from The Last Emperor" by John Scalzi

[Mickey Rat]

Or the Court of a Thousand Suns series.

[Winston in Wonderland]

For the past 50 years, I have wanted to see the Foundation series turned into a movie or TV series: And I'm still waiting.

Aside from using the names of a few characters and planets from Asimov's books, there really is no connection between the books and the series.

That said...I'm watching the series and kind of like it; however, I have had to accept that it isn't really based on the books.

[Titus PUllo]

Just announced the director of Dune was hired to direct "Rendezvous with Rama"...that could be very good.

[Bubba Jones]

It’s about TOP MEN predicting and shaping the future.

[Entelechy]

It's almost as bad as The Wheel Of Cheese.

[m4019597]

This isn’t TV.

TV is free, paid by advertisers.

This is Apple junk. Will not watch.

[Mickey Rat]

The original books were about making the social sciences into a rigorous scientific discipline. The thing is, the Foundation were not the social scientists, they were the experiment.

[Entelechy]

Aa production as retromingent as the Great Leap Forward.

[Titus PUllo]

I'm trying to recall the books which I read as a kid in the 70's and then the sequels Asimov did in his later years (the 80s think).

As a kid I liked the idea of applying physical science to "social science" and am guessing this idea was very popular in the 40's when social science became a "big thing" in the media and pop culture. Perhaps Asimov was influenced by Keyne's theories as well which were championed by the intellectual classes (Asimov being a Russian Jew most likely favored these types of theories given the social class he lived in). I do recall being exposed to Austrian Economic ideas in graduate school (I was one of those hard science BS nerds who then went to B school) and one of my thoughts on reading Hayek was Asimov was all wrong. I think he even admitted that in his last few books where if I recall the individual determining human fate choosing "galactica" or some such decentralized "thing." Either way I can't bring myself to read the original 3 books anymore. I think Arthur C Clarke was more on point with his view of the future and entraprenuers pushing spaceflight not government.